Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Introduction - after the science question in feminism. Part 1 Science: feminism confronts the sciences how the women's movement benefits science - two views why \"physics\" is a bad model for physics. Part 2 Epistemology: what is feminist epistemology \"strong objectivity\" and socially situated knowledge feminist epistemology in and after the enlightenment. Part 3 \"Others\": \"...and race?\" - the science question in global feminism common histories, common destinies - science in the first and third worlds \"real science\" thinking from the perspective of lesbian lives reinventing ourselves as other Conclusion - what is a feminist science.

Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives

Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society

Answering Back exposes the volatility of gender reform in many different schools and classrooms. It tells stories in close up and from below, allowing everyone to talk: anxious boys, naughty girls, cantankerous teachers, pontificating principals and feisty feminists. This book challenges many sacred ideas about gender reform in schools and will surprise and unsettle teachers and researchers. It draws on a deep knowledge of gender issues in schools and of feminist theories, policies and practices. It is compelling and provocative reading at the leading edge.

Answering Back: Girls, Boys and Feminism in Schools

"Schools are dull, adults are dim, kids rule, pleasure can be purchased - these are canons of children's consumer cultures. In the places where kids, commodities and images meet, education, entertainment and advertising merge. Kids consume the corporate abundance with an appetite. But what happens now that schools are on the market? Is this a form of corporate gluttony? Are designer schools educationally "grotesque"? How are students packaged? How can curriculum compete with other attractions constantly advertised to students? Are students themselves both purchasers and commodities for sale?" This volume argues that people are entering another stage in the construction of the young as the demarcations between education, entertainment and advertising collapse and as the lines between the generations both blur and harden. Drawing from the voices of students and from contemporary cultural theory this book provokes the reader to ponder the role of the school in the "age of desire.

Consuming Children: Education-Entertainment-Advertising

This report set out to investigate the patterns of males' and females' educational participation and performance at school and their initial destinations after leaving school, the key influencing factors and the disadvantages that arise from them. While gender was the major factor under consideration, the research brief also required an examination of the relative impact of other independent variables on participation, performance and post-school destinations including geographic, demographic and socio-economic factors. The research comprised several inter-related elements: compilation and analysis of statistical data on participation and performance in schools and on patterns of participation in post-school destinations, including higher education, vocational education and training (VET) and the labour force; a review of the relevant research literature and production of an annotated bibliography; extensive consultations with experts and key figures in related fields with regard to interpretations of the data and the related research literature; and the preparation of this report drawing together the findings from the above elements. The report indicates that there are indeed major gender differences in educational participation, performance and outcomes. However, it also shows that these do not necessarily translate into disadvantage in straightforward ways. Research indicates that differences in performance need to be examined according to differences both between and within gender groups. The emphasis in the report is on analysing which trends and which differences matter and why.

Factors Influencing the Educational Performance of Males and Females in School and Their Initial Destinations After Leaving School

This paper has three major purposes. The first is to point to the connections between male to male, male to female and adult male to child physical and 'sexual' violence and such matters as masculinity, marginality, sexuality, intimacy and age. The understandings that arise from this discussion will be used to offer an interpretation of the connections between schooling and violence. In this context Alice Miller's ideas about 'poisonous pedagogies' will be applied to schooling. The second purpose of the paper is to identify the major orientations of mainstream, sociocultural and feminist anti-violence pedagogies and to offer an implicit critique of them, drawing from the ideas developed in the first section of the paper and from research about responses to gender reforms in schools. The third purpose of the paper is to identify the contours of an alternative anti-violence pedagogy. This will both draw from the above and from narrative therapy.

Jane Kenway

Papers

Answering Back: Girls, Boys and Feminism in Schools

Consuming Children: Education-Entertainment-Advertising

Factors Influencing the Educational Performance of Males and Females in School and Their Initial Destinations After Leaving School

Masculinity, Violence and Schooling: Challenging "Poisonous Pedagogies.".

‘Asia as method’ : Chen’s conceptual openings