Author : Matthew S. Weinert
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 14,61 MB
Release : 2015-02-20
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0472052497
An International Relations scholar examines the processes by which formerly denigrated peoples become recognized as human beings worthy of rights and dignity
Author : Joel Isaac
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 41,39 MB
Release : 2012-06-11
Category : History
ISBN : 0674070046
The human sciences in the English-speaking world have been in a state of crisis since the Second World War. The battle between champions of hard-core scientific standards and supporters of a more humanistic, interpretive approach has been fought to a stalemate. Joel Isaac seeks to throw these contemporary disputes into much-needed historical relief. In Working Knowledge he explores how influential thinkers in the twentieth century's middle decades understood the relations among science, knowledge, and the empirical study of human affairs. For a number of these thinkers, questions about what kinds of knowledge the human sciences could produce did not rest on grand ideological gestures toward "science" and "objectivity" but were linked to the ways in which knowledge was created and taught in laboratories and seminar rooms. Isaac places special emphasis on the practical, local manifestations of their complex theoretical ideas. In the case of Percy Williams Bridgman, Talcott Parsons, B. F. Skinner, W. V. O. Quine, and Thomas Kuhn, the institutional milieu in which they constructed their models of scientific practice was Harvard University. Isaac delineates the role the "Harvard complex" played in fostering connections between epistemological discourse and the practice of science. Operating alongside but apart from traditional departments were special seminars, interfaculty discussion groups, and non-professionalized societies and teaching programs that shaped thinking in sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, science studies, and management science. In tracing this culture of inquiry in the human sciences, Isaac offers intellectual history at its most expansive.
Author : Adam S. Wilkins
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 20,53 MB
Release : 2017-01-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 0674974484
Humans possess the most expressive faces in the animal kingdom. Adam Wilkins presents evidence ranging from the fossil record to recent findings of genetics, molecular biology, and developmental biology to reconstruct the fascinating story of how the human face evolved. Beginning with the first vertebrate faces half a billion years ago and continuing to dramatic changes among our recent human ancestors, Making Faces illuminates how the unusual characteristics of the human face came about—both the physical shape of facial features and the critical role facial expression plays in human society. Offering more than an account of morphological changes over time and space, which rely on findings from paleontology and anthropology, Wilkins also draws on comparative studies of living nonhuman species. He examines the genetic foundations of the remarkable diversity in human faces, and also shows how the evolution of the face was intimately connected to the evolution of the brain. Brain structures capable of recognizing different individuals as well as “reading” and reacting to their facial expressions led to complex social exchanges. Furthermore, the neural and muscular mechanisms that created facial expressions also allowed the development of speech, which is unique to humans. In demonstrating how the physical evolution of the human face has been inextricably intertwined with our species’ growing social complexity, Wilkins argues that it was both the product and enabler of human sociality.
Author : Karl Steel
Publisher : Interventions: New Studies Med
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 32,49 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780814211571
How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages tracks human attempts to cordon humans off from other life through a wide range of medieval texts and practices, including encyclopedias, dietary guides, resurrection doctrine, cannibal narrative, butchery law, boar-hunting, and teratology. Karl Steel argues that the human subjugation of animals played an essential role in the medieval concept of the human. In their works and habits, humans tried to distinguish themselves from other animals by claiming that humans alone among worldly creatures possess language, reason, culture, and, above all, an immortal soul and resurrectable body. Humans convinced themselves of this difference by observing that animals routinely suffer degradation at the hands of humans. Since the categories of human and animal were both a retroactive and relative effect of domination, no human could forgo his human privileges without abandoning himself. Medieval arguments for both human particularity and the unique sanctity of human life have persisted into the modern age despite the insights of Darwin. How to Make a Human joins with other works in critical animal theory to unsettle human pretensions in the hopes of training humans to cease to project, and to defend, their human selves against other animals.
Author : Eric Mosley
Publisher : McGraw Hill Professional
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 27,66 MB
Release : 2020-10-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1260464210
How do you keep your employees engaged, creative, innovative, and productive? Simple: Work human! From the pioneers of the management strategy that’s transforming businesses worldwide, Making Work Human shows how to implement a culture of performance and gratitude in the workplace—and seize a competitive edge, increase profitability, and drive business momentum. Leaders of Workhuman, the world’s fastest-growing social recognition and continuous performance management platform, Eric Mosley and Derek Irvine use game-changing data analytics to prove that when a workplace becomes more “human”—when it’s fueled by a culture of gratitude—measurable business results follow. In Making Work Human, they show you how to: Apply analytics and artificial intelligence in ways that make work more human, not less Expand equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives and strategies to include a wider range of backgrounds, life experiences, and capabilities Use recognition as an actionable strategy to create a truly inclusive, connected culture “The qualities that make us most human—connection, community, positivity, belonging, and a sense of meaning—have become the corporate fuel for getting things done—for innovating, for thriving in the global marketplace, and for outperforming the competition,” the authors write. By building a sense of belonging, purpose, meaning, happiness, and energy in every employee, you’ll create a profound connection between your organization and its goals. And Making Work Human provides everything you need to get there.
Author : Philip Ball
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 10,6 MB
Release : 2019-10-16
Category : Science
ISBN : 022667617X
The award-winning science writer shares “a winding romp through advances in cell biology [that] pushes readers to ponder the boundaries of life” (Science). In the summer of 2017, scientists removed a tiny piece of flesh from Philip Ball’s arm and turned it into a rudimentary “mini-brain.” The skin cells, removed from his body, did not die but were instead transformed into nerve cells that independently arranged themselves into a dense network and communicated with each other, exchanging the raw signals of thought. This was life—but whose? That disconcerting question is the focus of Philip Ball’s How to Grow a Human. In this mind-bending tour of cutting-edge cell biology, Ball shows how recent innovations could lead to tailor-made replacement organs; new medical advances for repairing damage and assisting conception; and new ways of “growing a human.” Such methods would also create new options for gene editing, with all the attendant moral dilemmas. Ball argues that these advances can never be “just about the science,” because they are already laden with a host of social narratives, preconceptions, and prejudices. But beyond even that, these developments raise provocative questions about identity and self, birth and death, and force us to ask how mutable the human body really is—and what forms it might take in years to come.
Author : Karl Steel
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 34,23 MB
Release : 2019-12-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 145296002X
From pet keeping to sky burials, a posthuman and ecocritical interrogation of and challenge to human particularity in medieval texts Mainstream medieval thought, like much of mainstream modern thought, habitually argued that because humans alone had language, reason, and immortal souls, all other life was simply theirs for the taking. But outside this scholarly consensus teemed a host of other ways to imagine the shared worlds of humans and nonhumans. How Not to Make a Human engages with these nonsystematic practices and thought to challenge both human particularity and the notion that agency, free will, and rationality are the defining characteristics of being human. Recuperating the Middle Ages as a lost opportunity for decentering humanity, Karl Steel provides a posthuman and ecocritical interrogation of a wide range of medieval texts. Exploring such diverse topics as medieval pet keeping, stories of feral and isolated children, the ecological implications of funeral practices, and the “bare life” of oysters from a variety of disanthropic perspectives, Steel furnishes contemporary posthumanists with overlooked cultural models to challenge human and other supremacies at their roots. By collecting beliefs and practices outside the mainstream of medieval thought, How Not to Make a Human connects contemporary concerns with ecology, animal life, and rethinkings of what it means to be human to uncanny materials that emphasize matters of death, violence, edibility, and vulnerability.
Author : Richard Wrangham
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 34,10 MB
Release : 2010-08-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 1847652107
In this stunningly original book, Richard Wrangham argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as "the cooking apes". Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. "This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive ... Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one." -Matt Ridley, author of Genome
Author : Natasha Iskander
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 12,17 MB
Release : 2021-11-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0691217572
Regulation : how the politics of skill become law -- Production : how skill makes cities -- Skill : how skill is embodied and what it means for the control of bodies -- Protest : how skillful practice becomes resistance -- Body : how definitions of skill cause injury -- Earth : how the politics of skill shape responses to climate change.
Author : Urie Bronfenbrenner
Publisher : SAGE
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 28,38 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Education
ISBN : 0761927123
This is a book that every developmental psychologist, educator, and public policy person involved with families and education will want Making Human Beings Human represents the culminating work and statement by a towering figure in the field of human development, a statement that will help to shape the future of that field. In particular, it shows the historical development of the bioecological model and the ecology of human development. Featuring contributions and commentary by distinguished scholars, Making Human Beings Human is rich in cultural and historical comparisons. The concepts of the bioecological model and the ecology of human development represent a unique contribution to the field of developmental psychology.
