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, the authors propose an alternative idiom of sovereignty: a vulnerable sovereignty emerging with Hindu deities and based on interdependency and coexistence, and stress that vulnerability does not necessarily make the deities powerless but is the point where the sovereign deity reasserts its power.
Abstract: Until its defeat in 2009, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controlled numerous civil institutions in the north and east
of Sri Lanka. However, the Hindu temples within these territories managed to maintain their autonomy. Drawing on ethnographic
fieldwork in Sri Lanka, I contend that central to this paradox was contestation over who had the power to govern the life and death
of Tamil subjects. Revisiting the anthropology of sovereignty, I propose an alternative idiom of sovereignty: a vulnerable sovereignty emerging with Hindu deities and based on interdependency and coexistence. I stress that vulnerability does not necessarily
make the deities powerless but is the point where the sovereign deity reasserts its power. Finally, I contend that, faced with this
idiom of sovereignty, the LTTE learned to embody its logic in its relation with the deities. I argue, thus, that sovereigns can also be
thought of outside the notion of absolute sovereign power, bare life, and biopower and instead as sites of vulnerability.
16 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...…recent work on civility and citizenship by Thiranagama, Kelly, and Forment (2018), we learn that “there is no substance in a lone person that is essentially political; it is through people acting together and in reference to one another that politics is constituted” (Arendt 1998:20–78, 2005:95)....
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TL;DR: This paper explored the relationship between different forms of knowledge and the kinds of activity that arise from them within child protection social work practice and argued that social work is more than either either "science" or "art" but distinctly "practice".
Abstract: This paper attempts to explore the relationship between different forms of knowledge and the kinds of activity that arise from them within child protection social work practice. The argument that social work is more than either ‘science’ or ‘art’ but distinctly ‘practice’ is put through a historical description of the development of Aristotle’s views of the forms of knowledge and Hannah Arendt’s later conceptualisations as detailed in The Human Condition (1958). The paper supports Arendt’s privileging of Praxis over Theoria within social work and further draws upon Arendt’s distinctions between Labour, Work and Action to delineate between different forms of social work activity. The author highlights dangers in social work relying too heavily on technical knowledge and the use of theory as a tool in seeking to understand and engage with the people it serves and stresses the importance of a phenomenological approach to research and practice as a valid, embodied form of knowledge. The argument further explores the constructions of service users that potentially arise from different forms of social work activity and cautions against over-prescriptive use of ‘outcomes’ based practice that may reduce the people who use services to products or consumables. The author concludes that social work action inevitably involves trying to understand humans in a complex and dynamic way that requires engagement and to seek new meanings for individual humans.
16 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...In The Human Condition, Arendt (1958) challenges Aristotle’s view that theoria is a superior form of knowledge and instead privileges praxis....
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...(Arendt, 1958: 22–23) According to Higgins (2011: 91), she contends that as the contemplative life rose in the estimation of late antiquity, the active life came to be understood as opposite – i.e. non-contemplative life, which blurred the distinctions within it, cleaving theory and practice....
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...At what point, can we measure the outcomes of a person’s life – Arendt would say only when they are dead (Arendt, 1958: 192)....
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...(Arendt, 1958: 322) To illustrate the difference between ‘action’ and ‘process’, we need look no further than the recommendations that flow from published serious case reviews intended to promote learning and improve practice....
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...Action for Arendt must involve initiating a new beginning – natality (Arendt, 1958: 9)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the limits and potentials of young people's agency as a duty in regard to work precariousness with the help of research conducted in Italy from 2013 to 2017.
Abstract: Agency and vulnerability are not alternative terms; rather, their encounter designates a distinctive characteristic of agency: that of the "weaker" struggling between constraints and the discovery of new opportunities. After theoretical discussion of the relation between agency and vulnerability, and of the transformations of subjectivation processes, this article focuses on the specific situation of vulnerability in the job market experienced by the current generation of young people. It analyses the limits and potentials of young people's agency as a duty in regard to work precariousness with the help of research conducted in Italy from 2013 to 2017. The aim is to highlight how agency and vulnerability —more than being intrinsic characteristic of the individual— are related to temporary positions, as an intersection of categorizations and resources, in relational and situated conditions.
16 citations
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...This conceptualization is also related to a political idea of agency as the capacity to exercise will and intention and to act in concert with other individuals (Arendt, 1958)....
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01 May 2019
16 citations
Dissertation•
13 Feb 2020
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore which practices might support "wonder" in everyday and organisational life, including daily morning walks, writing "moment-stories" from within the experience of wonder and creating temporary constellations of inquiry with others.
Abstract: This doctoral research explores which practices might support ‘wonder’ in everyday and organisational life. How do I live my life with a sense of wonder? How do I create spaces of wonder with and for others? How do I create a wonder-full research practice? As an action researcher (Reason & Bradbury, 2008) with a background in Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987), I have endeavoured to ‘live’ these questions myself through developing an approach for wholeheartedly loving and living questions. Specific methods I created to do so are daily morning walks, writing ‘moment-stories’ from within the experience of wonder and creating ‘temporary constellations of inquiry’ with others.
Whereas some believe wonder is impossible because the world is disenchanted, I followed Bennett’s (2001) approach of enchantment by emergence by challenging the discourse of disenchantment individually. Building on Carson (1956/1998), I think of wonder as ‘seeing the extraordinary within the ordinary’ and found this seeing requires a continuous effort and benefits from routines and rituals as a daily reminder and opportunity to wonder. I distinguish between wonder as a way of seeing you can cultivate and ‘moments of magic’ that strike unexpectedly. ‘Windows’ in time when I feel fully alive in a world bursting with life. I learned these potentially transformative moments cannot be forced, predicted or replicated and therefore argue to approach them ‘obliquely’ – by holding the intention and possibility of magic in the corner of your eye. And instead focus on the practices that help you to wonder on a day-to-day basis.
I learned the most important thing I can do as a practitioner to invite others to wonder is to continue to actively and wholeheartedly live my own questions. This allowed me to create the conditions for wonder and magic through showing up differently myself and ‘embodying the container’. I also learned that giving words to wonder through writing and sharing moment-stories can increase the importance and possibility of wonder for myself and others.
16 citations
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