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: A four-session roundtable series entitled Citizenship, Social Justice, and Collective Empowerment: Living Outside Mental Illness as mentioned in this paper was organized by the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network (MHTTC).
Abstract: Citizenship is emerging as one of the world's leading models to shift mental health care from artificial psychiatric settings into more natural community settings by incorporating human rights. This paper describes a four-session roundtable series entitled Citizenship, Social Justice, and Collective Empowerment: Living Outside Mental Illness. These roundtables were part of the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network (MHTTC). They were built on the conviction that people who have lived experiences of mental health challenges and engaged in making community connections should be at the center of teaching about those experiences. Presenters shared their experiences about how they navigated stigma and discrimination on their way to community inclusion, belonging, and empowerment. The common theme across the series was the citizenship framework. The citizenship framework has inspired people to become involved in an individual and collective dynamic experience that connects them with the 5R's of rights, responsibilities, roles, resources, relationships, and a sense of belonging in society. The outcomes from the discussion on the webinars demonstrated that peer support could be a promising intervention to increase the sense of belonging in the community.
9 citations
TL;DR: The authors examine a related tension within Afro-futurism, namely the tension between allegory and speculation, and examine the relationship between post-soul and the soulful in contemporary African-American music.
Abstract: In his seminal text, More Brilliant Than The Sun, Kodwo Eshun remarks upon a general tension within contemporary African-American music: a tension between the “Soulful” and the “Postsoul.” While acknowledging that the two terms are always simultaneously at play, Eshun ultimately comes down strongly in favor of the latter. I quote him at length:
Like Brussels sprouts, humanism is good for you, nourishing, nurturing, soulwarming—and from Phyllis Wheatley to R. Kelly, present-day R&B is a perpetual fight for human status, a yearning for human rights, a struggle for inclusion within the human species. Allergic to cybersonic if not to sonic technology, mainstream American media—in its drive to banish alienation, and to recover a sense of the whole human being through belief systems that talk to the “real you”—compulsively deletes any intimation of an AfroDiasporic futurism, of a “webbed network” of computerhythms, machine mythology and conceptechnics which routes, reroutes and criss-crosses the Atlantic. This digital diaspora connecting the UK to the US, the Caribbean to Europe to Africa, is in Paul Gilroy’s definition a “rhizo-morphic, fractal structure,” a “transcultural, international formation.” [...]
[By contrast] [t]he music of Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, of Underground Resistance and George Russell, of Tricky and Martina, comes from the Outer Side. It alienates itself from the human; it arrives from the future. Alien Music is a synthetic recombinator, an applied art technology for amplifying the rates of becoming alien. Optimize the ratios of excentric-ity. Synthesize yourself. [...] From the outset, this Postsoul Era has been characterized by an extreme indifference towards the human. The human is a pointless and treacherous category. (Eshun 1998, 00[-006]-00[-005])
The debate that Eshun outlines—along with its rich lexicon of terms—has a formidable history, both preceding More Brilliant Than The Sun, and following that book’s publication. Taking a cue from Eshun, in this paper I examine a related—although not identical—tension within Afro-futurism, namely the tension between allegory and speculation.
9 citations
TL;DR: In-between border spaces are numerous in the Levant region and are usually of two types: those resulting into buffer zones as a result of demilitarized spaces and those turning as a region under th...
Abstract: In-between border spaces are numerous in the Levant region and are usually of two types: those resulting into buffer zones as a result of demilitarized spaces and those turning as a region under th...
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze how collectives struggle to make invisible the place in infrastructure siting conflicts, particularly in the rural-urban fringe and the in-between city.
Abstract: Place is often made invisible in infrastructure siting conflicts; this seems particularly the case in the rural–urban fringe and the in-between city. This paper analyses how collectives struggle to...
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluate the quality of 60 city parks in Northwest Florida, using the Public Space Index developed by Vikas Mehta, which combines the following five dimensions of public space: inclusiveness, safety, comfort, pleasurability and meaningful activities.
Abstract: The current study evaluates the quality of 60 city parks in Northwest Florida, using the Public Space Index developed by Vikas Mehta. This index combines the following five dimensions of public space: inclusiveness, safety, comfort, pleasurability and meaningful activities. It uses 40 variables to score public spaces across these five dimensions. The analysis serves as a replication and extension of the PSI in a mid-sized city environment. The findings attest to the utility of this methodological tool for the study of public space across urban environments, on a larger scale, and across disciplines. However, the discussion and implications suggest the limitations of the PSI for use in smaller cities and less urban environments. The study concludes with specific suggestions for adapting the measures of the PSI to more appropriately capture the quality of public space in these settings.
9 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...From political theory, Mehta uses important thinkers such as Hanna Arendt (1958), Richard Sennett (1971), Marshall Berman (1986) and Setha Low (2000). Public space provides a forum for man to become a citizen, to freely engage with others, to encounter difference...
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...From political theory, Mehta uses important thinkers such as Hanna Arendt (1958), Richard Sennett (1971), Marshall Berman (1986) and Setha Low (2000)....
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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