The Human Condition.
TL;DR: In some religious traditions, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness.
Abstract: Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:
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26 Jul 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of emotions as sites of social reflexivity is highlighted, and a theoretical link between the contributions of the sociology of emotions and the theories of late modernity advanced by contemporary social theorists is developed.
Abstract: The overwhelming presence of the emotions both in science and contemporary social life begs for an explanation from the point of view of the same social theory. Even though the works of Hochschild, Scheff or Illouz contain indications that allow for a theoretical link between the contributions of the sociology of emotions and the theories of late modernity advanced by contemporary social theorists, this link has not yet been explicitly developed in the literature. The purpose of this article is to call attention on this link by highlighting the role of emotions as sites of social reflexivity.
16 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...Moreover, the presence of emotions in contemporary societies could be taken as an indication of the growing “psychologization” of social life, already highlighted decades ago by Arendt (1958) or Sennett (1977)....
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TL;DR: The authors investigates the anthropological foundations of European democracies' continuous entanglement with economic and military expansionism and a hierarchical separation between public and private spheres of public discourse in the European democracies.
Abstract: This contribution investigates the anthropological foundations of European democracies’ continuous entanglement with economic and military expansionism and a hierarchical separation between public ...
16 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...…Italian republics or in England beginning in the 17th century—arrived on the heels of expansive economic development (Moore, 1966) as the project of a bourgeois class that turned the spatial and social separation between public polis and private oikos into the principle of society (Arendt, 1958)....
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01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, a study of suicide in American literature and culture of the 1990s across disciplines within the humanities, medicine, and the social sciences is presented. But, as a means of rectifying the problematic absence of multidisciplinary scholarly work on suicide, the authors of this study focus on a trifurcated suicide response that arose in American culture in the 1990's as it emerged through major societal and legal events and as it coalesced through major literary texts of the period.
Abstract: As a means of rectifying the problematic absence of multidisciplinary scholarly work on suicide, this dissertation project interrogates suicide in American literature and culture of the 1990’s across disciplines within the humanities, medicine, and the social sciences. Utilizing a psychosocial approach to the study of suicide – that is, an understanding of suicide as produced both by one’s psychological development within and by one’s social relationship to his or her environment – I address what I have identified as a unique trifurcated suicide response that arose in American culture in the 1990’s as it emerged through major societal and legal events and as it coalesced through major literary texts of the period. While suicide has had a presence in virtually every culture across history, the convergence of these societal and legal events in this decade with a radically-changing perspective on suicide in medical theory and research emergent in the 1980’s and 1990’s created a culture of suicide unique to its time and place. The five essential problems that this project addresses are: (1) ascertaining the origins of the rise of preoccupation with suicide throughout the 1990’s as seen through mass suicide events; increased social debate, political action, and legal movements for the right to die, and as suicide attempts, completions, and bereavements increased across the decade; (2) determining the ways in which grieving suicide was complicated by the degree to which survivors or the public were able to make meaning of these deaths, simultaneous to psychological theories uncovering the importance of meaning making in unresolved grief; (3) interrogating the cultural intersections of power and privilege which altered the perceived suicide risk for and attention to members of groups disenfranchised due to sexual identity during the AIDS crisis; (4) examining the ethical and historical importance of the assisted suicide movement in the 1990’s; and (5) exploring the implications of American cultural inheritances of suicide in the contemporary moment. The significance of this study rests upon three key points in addressing the deficiency in scholarship about suicide in this period. First, this project makes important interventions in the field of literature by incorporating the work of scholars practicing in the disciplines of gender and sexuality studies, history, medicine, nursing, psychology, sociology, and thanatology in order to understand and explicate more fully the pervasive and particular presence of suicide in this decade. Whereas scholars of literature or cultural studies may reference or bridge theories of medicine or social sciences in their projects, there has been an absence of solidly interlocking lenses produced from these major fields through which to consider suicide as a cultural and literary presence in the 1990’s. Vast space exists in which a multifocal discussion of suicide across the major fields of literature, social sciences, and medicine is not only possible but, indeed, necessary. Second, in synthesizing theoretical frameworks across disciplines while engaging in textual analyses of the literature in which this project is grounded, I provide a multifocal argument for the particularly troubled culture of suicide that was both reflected in and further developed by American literature in the 1990’s. Third and finally, this study will notably increase the understanding of readers in approaching suicide as a psychosocial phenomenon and in approaching suicide in literature as both historically and culturally informed.
16 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that responding to the risks posed by endocrine disruptors such as brominated flame retardants and phthalates requires developing a theory of intergenerational justice that recognises relationality and transcorporeality, and that also recognises harm in terms of suffering, not in Terms of difference.
Abstract: Endocrine-disrupting chemicals have been identified as posing risks to reproductive health and may have intergenerational effects. However, responses to the potential harms they pose frequently rely on medicalised understandings of the body and normative gender identities. This article develops an intersectional feminist framework of intergenerational justice in response to the potential risks posed by endocrine-disrupting chemicals. We examine critiques of endocrine disruptors from feminist, critical disability and queer standpoints, and explore issues of race and class in exposures. We argue that responding to the risks posed by endocrine disruptors such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and phthalates requires developing a theory of intergenerational justice that recognises relationality and transcorporeality, and that also recognises harm in terms of suffering, not in terms of difference.
16 citations
TL;DR: Central Asian (international) politics has traditionally been understood as if domination were the core aim of local actors, and that they apply any sort of means (such as obtaining rent or coercio) as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Central Asian (international) politics has traditionally been understood as if domination were the core aim of local actors, and that they apply any sort of means (such as obtaining rent or coercio...
16 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...(Arendt 1958, 200) Arendt’s conception of togetherness constitutes an important dimension of international politics....
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References
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Book•
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27 Mar 2015
TL;DR: In this article, a series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human are presented, with a focus on the life of lines.
Abstract: To live, every being must put out a line, and in life these lines tangle with one another. This book is a study of the life of lines. Following on from Tim Ingold's groundbreaking work Lines: A Brief History, it offers a wholly original series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human.
In the first part, Ingold argues that a world of life is woven from knots, and not built from blocks as commonly thought. He shows how the principle of knotting underwrites both the way things join with one another, in walls, buildings and bodies, and the composition of the ground and the knowledge we find there.
In the second part, Ingold argues that to study living lines, we must also study the weather. To complement a linealogy that asks what is common to walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling and writing, he develops a meteorology that seeks the common denominator of breath, time, mood, sound, memory, colour and the sky. This denominator is the atmosphere.
In the third part, Ingold carries the line into the domain of human life. He shows that for life to continue, the things we do must be framed within the lives we undergo. In continually answering to one another, these lives enact a principle of correspondence that is fundamentally social.
This compelling volume brings our thinking about the material world refreshingly back to life. While anchored in anthropology, the book ranges widely over an interdisciplinary terrain that includes philosophy, geography, sociology, art and architecture.
410 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the fact that gender equality and women empowerment have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice.
Abstract: The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.
271 citations
TL;DR: A network simulation model used to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation finds an “echo chamber effect”: the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions.
Abstract: The viral spread of digital misinformation has become so severe that the World Economic Forum considers it among the main threats to human society This spread have been suggested to be related to the similarly problematized phenomenon of “echo chambers”, but the causal nature of this relationship has proven difficult to disentangle due to the connected nature of social media, whose causality is characterized by complexity, non-linearity and emergence This paper uses a network simulation model to study a possible relationship between echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation It finds an “echo chamber effect”: the presence of an opinion and network polarized cluster of nodes in a network contributes to the diffusion of complex contagions, and there is a synergetic effect between opinion and network polarization on the virality of misinformation The echo chambers effect likely comes from that they form the initial bandwagon for diffusion These findings have implication for the study of the media logic of new social media
223 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a mediation model to explain the relationship between CEO humility and firm performance and found that when a more humble CEO leads a firm, its top management team is more likely to collaborate, share information, jointly make decisions, and possess a shared vision.
215 citations
TL;DR: The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies.
Abstract: Beginning in the 1940s, mass production of antibiotics involved the industrialscale growth of microorganisms to harvest their metabolic products. Unfortunately, the use of antibiotics selects for resistance at answering scale. The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies. In turning to biological manifestations of antibiotic use, sciences fathom material outcomes of their own previous concepts. Archival work with stored soil and clinical samples produces a record described here as ‘the biology of history’: the physical registration of human history in bacterial life. This account thus foregrounds the importance of understanding both the materiality of history and the historicity of matter in theories and concepts of life today.
204 citations