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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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
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...The disappearance of media intermediation seems not to have, as was believed, fostered a space for direct meetings in a sort of online Habermasian public sphere, but rather to have implied that the “world between them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them” [6] (p....
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...But despite early optimism about this ostensibly decentralized and democratic meetingplace, the online world seems less and less like a common “table” that “gathers us together” [6] (p....
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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
Cites background from "The Human Condition."
...Drawing on the communal power perspective (Arendt, 1958), we propose that humble CEOs do not stress power over other TMT members but, instead, have power to pursue goals for collective interest with the TMTs....
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...In this sense, humble CEOs exercise power in a way that diverts from an interpersonal power perspective (Sturm & Antonakis, 2015) and complies with a communal power perspective (Arendt, 1958)....
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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
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TL;DR: The authors examine the work of Donald Schon and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors' suggestions that technical rationality and modern technology are not the way to achieve good practice in the human services.
Abstract: Technology is fundamental to and embedded in the way practice is conceptualized and institutionalized in social service work Many scholars assume and expect that good practices of care are achieved with the correct application of theory produced by rigorous scientific research However, there are significant critiques of this viewpoint We examine the work of Donald Schon and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors’ suggestions that technical rationality and modern technology are not the way to achieve good practice in the human services At the same time, we are not convinced that the alternatives offered by Schon (artistry) and Heidegger (techne) provide what good practice requires We draw on Aristotle’s account of the intellectual virtues and make the case for phronesis and praxis as other possibilities for inspiring new kinds of social welfare practice in the twenty-first century
27 citations
DOI•
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The authors examined how the geographies of sexuality and race shape queer migrants' experiences of settlement and citizenship in Sydney, Australia, and examined participants' migration histories, everyday spatial trajectories in the city, and involvement with queer and ethnic communities in and beyond the city.
Abstract: OF DISSERTATION A PLURAL AND UNEVEN WORLD: QUEER MIGRATIONS AND THE POLITICS OF RACE AND SEXUALITY IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA This dissertation examines how the geographies of sexuality and race shape queer migrants’ experiences of settlement and citizenship in Sydney, Australia. Against a backdrop of economic shifts in the Asia Pacific and Australia's long history of racialized exclusion, I conducted 43 in-depth interviews with queer migrants and '2nd generation' adult children of migrants who reflect the diversity of Australia's migration streams, including historically important migration from Southern and Eastern Europe and increasingly significant movements from South, Southeast, and East Asia. Through those interviews, I examined participants' migration histories, everyday spatial trajectories in the city, and involvement with queer and ethnic communities in and beyond the city. This was supplemented by an additional 23 interviews with policy-makers and advocates whose work intersected with these issues, as well as the analysis of archival materials related to the politics of race and sexuality in Sydney. In contrast with a depoliticizing 'torn between two worlds' frame that imagines queer migrants as being torn between ethnic or religious communities on the one hand, and LGBTQ communities on the other, I showed—in dialogue with Hannah Arendt's writing on plurality in a single, unevenly shared world—how participants cultivated opportunities to appear and to act politically as they worked to make a place for themselves in Sydney. This dissertation collects three articles, which speak to both the quotidian politics of everyday life and participants’ organized political projects in Sydney. The first article examines the politics of race and multiculturalism in the context of a city council-sponsored project working to raise awareness about ‘sex, sexuality, and gender diversity’ within Sydney’s migrant and ethnic communities. The second contributes to literatures on encounters across difference by showing how experiences of sexual racism worked as an obstacle to participants’ sense of belonging and citizenship, even as these ‘bad encounters’ also provided an impetus to political organizing. The third article examines the publically intimate nature of debates around migrant integration and explores the intimate geopolitics through which participants made a place for themselves in Sydney, which entailed assertions of 'privacy' as much as more immediately recognizable forms of 'public' politics.
26 citations
01 Aug 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, a special issue of ephemera gets to the heart of this phenomenon, focusing on the ethico-politics of productive and consumptive aspects of contemporary life.
Abstract: Today, work and consumption are notably blurred. Consumption matters are found to make inroads into the realm of work, while consumption gains traction in the domain of production. This special issue of ephemera gets to the heart of this phenomenon. Covering a range of themes – genetic testing, self-quantification, migration, popular media and modern workplaces – the contributions to this issue call attention to the ethico-politics of productive and consumptive aspects of contemporary life. Specifically, the contributions address practices that, under capitalism, fall prey to self-perpetuating accumulation, as well as reproduction and sedimentation of social divisions, which shape who we are, what we do and how we relate.
26 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how Germany looks at its environment and how the world looks back, and offer five cuts of Germany's world, that is, how its power, place and ambition might be described from different angles.
Abstract: EUrope and Germany face unprecedented crises. Given its role as EUrope's “central power” the article explores how Germany looks at its environment and how the world looks back. I offer five cuts of Germany's world, that is, how its power, place and ambition might be described from different angles. First, I examine a “structural” interpretation of EUrope's setting which shows a certain affinity with German visions of a rules-governed world. Next I reconstruct how Germany's changing role is described from the outside and the inside. The stark contrast between images of overbearing “hegemony” and facilitating German “leadership” lay the ground for a third cut which examines how German leadership has fared in three recent EUropean crises. In a fourth cut I analyse Germany's leadership challenges against the foil of US leadership globally. The difficulties highlighted in Germany's world of “shaping powers” and tough love diplomacy, my fifth cut, leave it, and EUrope, in an unenviable position indeed.
26 citations