The Metamorphoses of the Brain – Neurologisation and its Discontents

The Metamorphoses of the Brain – Neurologisation and its Discontents
Author: Jan De Vos
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2016-05-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1137505575

What are we exactly, when we are said to be our brain? This question leads Jan De Vos to examine the different metamorphoses of the brain: the educated brain, the material brain, the iconographic brain, the sexual brain, the celebrated brain and, finally, the political brain. This first, protracted and sustained argument on neurologisation, which lays bare its lineage with psychologisation, should be taken seriously by psychologists, educationalists, sociologists, students of cultural studies, policy makers and, above all, neuroscientists themselves.

Secularizing Buddhism

Secularizing Buddhism
Author: Sarah Shaw
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0834843722

A timely essay collection on the development and influence of secular expressions of Buddhism in the West and beyond. How do secular values impact Buddhism in the modern world? What versions of Buddhism are being transmitted to the West? Is it possible to know whether an interpretation of the Buddha’s words is correct? In this new essay collection, opposing ideas that often define Buddhist communities—secular versus religious, modern versus traditional, Western versus Eastern—are unpacked and critically examined. These reflections by contemporary scholars and practitioners reveal the dynamic process of reinterpreting and reimagining Buddhism in secular contexts, from the mindfulness movement to Buddhist shrine displays in museums, to whether rebirth is an essential belief. This collection explores a wide range of modern understandings of Buddhism—whether it is considered a religion, philosophy, or lifestyle choice—and questions if secular Buddhism is purely a Western invention, offering a timely contribution to an ever-evolving discussion. Contributors include Bhikkhu Bodhi, Kate Crosby, Gil Fronsdal, Kathleen Gregory, Funie Hsu, Roger R. Jackson, Charles B. Jones, David L. McMahan, Richard K. Payne, Ron Purser, Sarah Shaw, Philippe Turenne, and Pamela D. Winfield.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies
Author: Daniel Thomas Cook
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 4001
Release: 2020-04-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1529721954

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies navigates our understanding of the historical, political, social and cultural dimensions of childhood. Transdisciplinary and transnational in content and scope, the Encyclopedia both reflects and enables the wide range of approaches, fields and understandings that have been brought to bear on the ever-transforming problem of the "child" over the last four decades This four-volume encyclopedia covers a wide range of themes and topics, including: Social Constructions of Childhood Children’s Rights Politics/Representations/Geographies Child-specific Research Methods Histories of Childhood/Transnational Childhoods Sociology/Anthropology of Childhood Theories and Theorists Key Concepts This interdisciplinary encyclopedia will be of interest to students and researchers in: Childhood Studies Sociology/Anthropology Psychology/Education Social Welfare Cultural Studies/Gender Studies/Disabilty Studies

Giving Bodies Back to Data

Giving Bodies Back to Data
Author: Silvia Casini
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 026204529X

An examination of the bodily, situated aspects of data-visualization work, looking at visualization practices around the development of MRI technology. Our bodies are scanned, probed, imaged, sampled, and transformed into data by clinicians and technologists. In this book, Silvia Casini reveals the affective relations and materiality that turn data into image--and in so doing, gives bodies back to data. Opening the black box of MRI technology, Casini examines the bodily, situated aspects of visualization practices around the development of this technology. Reframing existing narratives of biomedical innovation, she emphasizes the important but often overlooked roles played by aesthetics, affectivity, and craft practice in medical visualization. Combining history, theory, laboratory ethnography, archival research, and collaborative art-science, Casini retrieves the multiple presences and agencies of bodies in data visualization, mapping the traces of scientists' body work and embodied imagination. She presents an in-depth ethnographic study of MRI development at the University of Aberdeen's biomedical physics laboratory, from the construction of the first whole-body scanner for clinical purposes through the evolution of the FFC-MRI. Going beyond her original focus on MRI, she analyzes a selection of neuroscience- or biomedicine-inspired interventions by artists in media ranging from sculpture to virtual reality. Finally, she presents a methodology for designing and carrying out small-scale art-science projects, describing a collaboration that she herself arranged, highlighting the relational and aesthetic-laden character of data that are the product of craftsmanship and affective labor at the laboratory bench.

Constructions of Neuroscience in Early Childhood Education

Constructions of Neuroscience in Early Childhood Education
Author: Michel Vandenbroeck
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 109
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1315445115

What can early childhood scholars learn from neurosciences and its influence on children, education, policy and practice? This book explores and critiques topical debates in educational sciences, philosophy, social work and cognitive neuroscience. It examines constructions of children, parents and the welfare state, in relation to neurosciences and its vocabulary of brain architecture, critical periods and toxic stress.

The Digitalisation of (Inter)Subjectivity

The Digitalisation of (Inter)Subjectivity
Author: Jan De Vos
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351682725

This book explores the responsibility of psychological and neuropsychological perspectives in relation to the digitalisation of inter-subjectivity. It examines how integral their theories and models have been to the development of digital technologies, and by combining theoretical and critical work of leading thinkers, it is a new and highly original perspective on (inter)subjectivity in the digital era. The book engages with artificial intelligence and cybernetics and the work of Alan Turing, Norbert Wiener, Marvin Minsky, Gregory Bateson, and Warren McCulloch to demonstrate how their use of neuropsy-theories persists in contemporary digital culture. The author aims to trace a trajectory from psychologisation to neurologisation, and finally, to digitalisation, to make us question the digital future of humankind in relation to the idea of subjectivity, and the threat of the ‘death-drive’ inherent to digitality itself. This volume is fascinating reading for students and researchers in the fields of critical psychology, neuroscience, education studies, philosophy, media studies, and other related areas.

Cognitive Code

Cognitive Code
Author: Johannes Bruder
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2020-01-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0773559701

As the second decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, the cultural, social, and economic effects of artificial intelligence are becoming ever more apparent. Despite their long-intertwined histories, the fields of neuroscience and artificial intelligence research are notoriously divided. In Cognitive Code Johannes Bruder argues that seemingly incompatible scales of intelligence – the brain and the planet – are now intimately linked through neuroscience-inspired AI and computational cognitive neuroscience. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in brain imaging labs in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, alongside analyses of historical and contemporary literature, Cognitive Code examines how contemporary research on the brain makes routine use of engineering epistemologies and practices. Bruder elaborates on how the question of mimicking human cognition and thought on the scale of computer chips and circuits has gradually evolved into a comprehensive restructuring of the world through "smart" infrastructures. The brain, traditionally treated as a discrete object that thinks, is becoming part of the larger thinking network we now know as "the Cloud." The author traces a recent shift in the goals of brain imaging to show that the introduction of novel statistical and computational techniques has upset traditional paradigms and disentangled cognition from its biological substrate. Investigating understandings of intelligence from the micro to the macro, Cognitive Code explains how the future of human psychology is increasingly determined by engineering and design.

Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory

Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory
Author: Yannis Stavrakakis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2019-09-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315524767

The emerging field of psychoanalytic political theory has now reached a stage in its development and rapid evolution that deserves to be registered, systematically defined, and critically evaluated. This handbook provides the first reference volume which showcases the current state of psychoanalytic political theory, maps the genealogy of its development, identifies its conceptual and methodological resources, and highlights its analytical innovations as well as its critical promise. The handbook consists of 35 chapters, offering original, comprehensive, and critical reviews of this field of study. The chapters are divided into five thematic sections: • The figures section discusses the work of major psychoanalytic theorists who have considerably influenced the development of psychoanalytic political theory. • The traditions section genealogically recounts and critically reassesses the many attempts throughout the 20th century of experimenting with the articulation between psychoanalysis and political theory in a consistent way. • The concepts section asks what are the concepts that psychoanalysis offers for appropriation by political theory. • The themes section presents concrete examples of how psychoanalytic political theory can be productively applied in the analysis of racism, gender, nationalism, consumerism, and so on. • The challenges/controversies section captures how psychoanalytic political theory can lead the way towards theoretical and analytical innovation in many disciplinary fields that deal with cutting-edge issues. The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory will serve as a scholarly reference volume for all students and researchers studying political theory, psychoanalysis, and the history of ideas.

Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Childhood in Contemporary Britain

Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Childhood in Contemporary Britain
Author: Sandra Dinter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2017-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1315313359

In the light of the complex demographic shifts associated with late modernity and the impetus of neo-liberal politics, childhood continues all the more to operate as a repository for the articulation of diverse social and cultural anxieties. Since the Thatcher years, juvenile delinquency, child poverty, and protection have been persistent issues in public discourse. Simultaneously, childhood has advanced as a popular subject in the arts, as the wealth of current films and novels in this field indicates. Focusing on the late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, this collection assembles contributions concerned with current political, social, and cultural dimensions of childhood in the United Kingdom. The individual chapters, written by internationally renowned experts from the social sciences and the humanities, address a broad spectrum of contemporary childhood issues, including debates on child protection, school dress codes, the media, the representation and construction of children in audiovisual media, and literary awards for children’s fiction. Appealing to a wide scholarly audience by joining perspectives from various disciplines, including art history, education, law, film and TV studies, sociology, and literary studies, this volume endorses a transdisciplinary and meta-theoretical approach to the study of childhood. It seeks to both illustrate and dismantle the various ways in which childhood has been implicitly and explicitly conceived in different disciplines in the wake of the constructivist paradigm shift in childhood studies.

Psychologized Language in Education

Psychologized Language in Education
Author: Zvi Bekerman
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1137549378

This book explores how psychologized language has come to dominate education and schooling. Taking a critical lens to some major constructs in education—e.g. the mind, the self, identity, emotion, emotional intelligence, motivation, culture, language and meaning—and their grounding in psychologized discourses, the authors suggest possible ways to overcome these psychologized discourses and remedy their consequences. The book invites readers to move away from static, reified conceptualizations to a more active, social understanding of what education is all about.