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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TL;DR: In this article, young students have raised their voices in debates on what action for sustainable development (SD) is necessary, however, research that gives voice to 10 to 13-year-olds while looking into SD...
Abstract: Young students have raised their voices in debates on what action for sustainable development (SD) is necessary. Nevertheless, research that gives voice to 10 to 13-year-olds while looking into SD ...
11 citations
TL;DR: In political action is unpredictable because it unfolds among a plurality of independent actors as mentioned in this paper, and this unpredictability generates a fundamental puzzle: If an actor cannot know where her initiative will...
Abstract: Political action is unpredictable because it unfolds among a plurality of independent actors. This unpredictability generates a fundamental puzzle: If an actor cannot know where her initiative will...
11 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the recent development of public participation in environmental assessment and indicate some unfortunate and unintended results, and a number of Danish cases show how the tools in...
Abstract: The article analyses the recent development of public participation in environmental assessment and indicates some unfortunate and unintended results. A number of Danish cases show how the tools in...
11 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...With a view to the actually quite long-standing discussion of democratic political public spheres (Arendt, 1958; Habermas, 1971; Honneth, 1998, among others), one can thus point to the need for independent actors to secure the conduction of public comment periods and public participation in…...
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11 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The authors examines the mediation of non-normative genders and sexualities in contemporary Lebanese public culture since the end of the civil war in 1990, and concludes that processes of mediation shape the visibility of nonnormative subjectivities and give cultural representations their social meaning, revealing what a repressed discourse on sexuality can tell us about the mechanics of power in society.
Abstract: This dissertation examines the mediation of non-normative genders and sexualities in contemporary Lebanese public culture since the end of the civil war in 1990. Through a critical analysis of television performances, literary texts, digital media productions, and narrative films and interviews with cultural producers, I demonstrate how media discourses on sexuality engender the public sphere through the construction and contestation of ideal masculinity and femininity. The confessional television talk shows, feminist films, and autobiographical digital and print queer publications collected here are genres that unsettle distinctions between the private and the public, the personal and the political. Through their circulation, these representations produce social discourses that reveal the centrality of sex and gender in the articulation of individual, collective, and national identities. They are public interfaces where the recognition and contestation of social difference unfolds, but they are also cultural artifacts that record and document the otherwise unspoken and invisible violence of normativity on dominated subjects. I conclude that processes of mediation shape the visibility of non-normative subjectivities and give cultural representations their social meaning, revealing what a repressed discourse on sexuality – one I characterize as infrapolitical – can tell us about the mechanics of power in society. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Marwan M. Kraidy
11 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...The public, as Hannah Arendt (1958) has described it, is a “space of appearance,” where one is heard and seen by others....
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...The mere fact of appearing, as Thompson explains in his reading of Arendt, “endows words and actions with a kind of reality they did not have before, precisely because they are now seen and heard by others” (p.63). If we recognize the mediated nature of publicness it follows that the appearance of the nonnormative in mediated representations is necessary for alternative life forms to be real – recognizable and identifiable – particularly for the minoritarian subject in a phobic public sphere. It is through their visibility and existence in public that discourses on gender can produce political possibilities for social change. The texts under discussion represent stigmatized sexualities and gender roles but also, importantly, the taboo of their representation. The politics of representation they enact could be described as “infrapolitical,” to borrow James Scott’s (1990) term, inasmuch as they constitute attempts to display the forbidden through fugitive gestures of disguise, masquerade, and anonymity....
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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