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The Material Life of Human Beings

The Material Life of Human Beings PDF Author: Michael Brian Schiffer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113463725X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Book Description
In this ground-breaking work, the distinguished anthropological theorist, Michael Brian Schiffer, presents a profound challenge to the social sciences. Through a broad range of examples, he demonstrates how theories of behaviour and communication have too often ignored the fundamental importance of objects in human life. In The Material Life of Human Beings, the author builds upon the premise that the most important feature of human life is not language but the relationships which take place between people and objects. The author shows that artifacts are involved in all modes of human communication - be they visual, auditory or tactile. By creatively folding elements of postmodernist thought into a scientific framework, he creates new concepts and models for understanding and analysing communication and behavior. Challenging established theories within the social sciences, Michael Brian Schiffer offers a reassessment of the centrality of materiality to everyday life.

The Material Life of Human Beings

The Material Life of Human Beings PDF Author: Michael Brian Schiffer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113463725X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173

Book Description
In this ground-breaking work, the distinguished anthropological theorist, Michael Brian Schiffer, presents a profound challenge to the social sciences. Through a broad range of examples, he demonstrates how theories of behaviour and communication have too often ignored the fundamental importance of objects in human life. In The Material Life of Human Beings, the author builds upon the premise that the most important feature of human life is not language but the relationships which take place between people and objects. The author shows that artifacts are involved in all modes of human communication - be they visual, auditory or tactile. By creatively folding elements of postmodernist thought into a scientific framework, he creates new concepts and models for understanding and analysing communication and behavior. Challenging established theories within the social sciences, Michael Brian Schiffer offers a reassessment of the centrality of materiality to everyday life.

Levels of Organic Life and the Human

Levels of Organic Life and the Human PDF Author: Helmuth Plessner
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 082328400X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
The groundbreaking classic of twentieth-century German philosophy now available in English—with an introduction by J.M. Bernstein. Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human, draws on phenomenological, biological, and social scientific sources to offer a systematic account of nature, life, and human existence. The book considers non-living nature, plants, non-human animals, and human beings a sequence of increasingly complex modes of boundary dynamics—simply put, interactions between a thing’s insides and the surrounding world. Living things are classed and analyzed by their “positionality,” or orientation to and within an environment. According to Plessner’s radical view, the human form of life is excentric—that is, the relation between body and environment is something to which humans themselves are positioned and can take a position. This “excentric positionality” enables human beings to take a stand outside the boundaries of their own body, a possibility with significant implications for knowledge, culture, religion, and technology. A powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment, the Levels shows, with reference both to science and to philosophy, how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries, and how, from the standpoint of life, the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman. As such, the book is not merely a historical monument but a source for invigorating a range of vital current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition.

The Art of Being Human

The Art of Being Human PDF Author: Michael Wesch
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781724963673
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Anthropology is the study of all humans in all times in all places. But it is so much more than that. "Anthropology requires strength, valor, and courage," Nancy Scheper-Hughes noted. "Pierre Bourdieu called anthropology a combat sport, an extreme sport as well as a tough and rigorous discipline. ... It teaches students not to be afraid of getting one's hands dirty, to get down in the dirt, and to commit yourself, body and mind. Susan Sontag called anthropology a "heroic" profession." What is the payoff for this heroic journey? You will find ideas that can carry you across rivers of doubt and over mountains of fear to find the the light and life of places forgotten. Real anthropology cannot be contained in a book. You have to go out and feel the world's jagged edges, wipe its dust from your brow, and at times, leave your blood in its soil. In this unique book, Dr. Michael Wesch shares many of his own adventures of being an anthropologist and what the science of human beings can tell us about the art of being human. This special first draft edition is a loose framework for more and more complete future chapters and writings. It serves as a companion to anth101.com, a free and open resource for instructors of cultural anthropology. This 2018 text is a revision of the "first draft edition" from 2017 and includes 7 new chapters.

A Sociological Theory of Value

A Sociological Theory of Value PDF Author: Natàlia Cantó Milà
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839403731
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
In this book, Natàlia Cantó Milà elaborates on Georg Simmel's relational approach to a theory of value, pointing at the heuristic possibilities that this approach offers to modern sociology and to a sociology of modernity. She does so by focusing on the theory of value Simmel developed in his »The Philosophy of Money«, delivering an alternative reading of this book that views its theory of value as its main axial point. Simmel's theory of value is depicted by Cantó Milà as including an intrinsically sociological aspect, since economic as well as moral, ethic and aesthetic values are conceived as resulting from human relations.

Nature as Landscape

Nature as Landscape PDF Author: Kraft E. Von Maltzahn
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773565027
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
Von Maltzahn focuses on how we experience aspects of nature in terms of their outer appearance, such as landscape, and contends that the naturalistic scientific tradition has taught us to divorce ourselves from the natural world, to become impartial observers rather than participants. He examines the nature of the human life-world and describes the process of self-deception that has led to the contemporary dismissal of that life-world as merely subjective. Drawing on phenomenology, semiotics, visual thinking, gestalt psychology, and Polanyi's arguments about tacit knowing, he offers an alternative way of perceiving the natural world that would reunite humans and nature. Given the current state of the global environment, it is crucial that the debate on the relationship of human beings and nature take place on many levels.

Dao Companion to Liang Shuming’s Philosophy

Dao Companion to Liang Shuming’s Philosophy PDF Author: Thierry Meynard
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303118002X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
This book provides an analysis of the complex philosophy of Liang Shuming. This twentieth-century thinker opened up a number of paths that were to become central components of modern Chinese philosophy. For the first time, experts are brought together to analyze the complexity of his philosophy, which continues to exert a considerable influence today. This edited volume covers Liang’s multifaceted thought as informed by his many identities as a Buddhist, a Confucian, a Bergsonian, a rural reformer, and a philosopher. The volume will appeal to students, scholars, and general-interest readers.

Prehistory

Prehistory PDF Author: Chris Gosden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198803516
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 153

Book Description
Recent archaeological discoveries from China and central Asia have changed our understanding of how human civilization developed in the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden explores the current theories on the ebb and flow of human cultural variety.

A Society Fit for Human Beings

A Society Fit for Human Beings PDF Author: Elie Maynard Adams
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791435243
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
Argues for a humanistic cultural reformation to counter our materialistic values and science-dominated intellectual life and shows how this would affect our lives and transform our society. A Society Fit for Human Beings contends that there is a profound incoherence in the foundations of modern Western civilization and that we are on a self-destructive course. With the quest for wealth and power our dominant concern, we find ourselves with a flourishing economy and a supreme military force based on science and technology, but with our moral, civic, and religious culture undermined by our way of comprehending the world. Our human identity is problematic, the wells of meaning that nourish the human spirit are polluted or drying up, and the social order is in disarray. This situation, E. M. Adams argues, requires nothing less than a historic cultural revolution based on a shift in priorities from wealth and power to humanistic values -- those grounded in selfhood and lived experience that are essential for human growth, meaningful lives, and a healthy society. Such a shift in our governing values would require a restructuring of our intellectual vision of humankind and the world in terms of humanistic categories This book shows the import of such a humanistic cultural revolution for our human identity, morality, the social order, and our major institutions, including the family and community, education, the economy, the government, the military, and religion. It outlines how we can work toward such a cultural revolution and develop a constructive postmodern civilization with a society fit for human beings.

Human Beings in International Relations

Human Beings in International Relations PDF Author: Daniel Jacobi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316369048
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
Since the 1980s, the discipline of International Relations has seen a series of disputes over its foundations. However, there has been one core concept that, although addressed in various guises, had never been explicitly and systematically engaged with in these debates: the human. This volume is the first to address comprehensively the topic of the human in world politics. It comprises cutting-edge accounts by leading scholars of how the human is (or is not) theorized across the entire range of IR theories, old and new. The authors provide a solid foundation for future debates about how, why, and to which ends the human has been or must (not) be built into our theories, and systematically lay out the implications of such moves for how we come to see world politics and humanity's role within it.

New Essentials of Unification Thought: Head-Wing Thought

New Essentials of Unification Thought: Head-Wing Thought PDF Author: Sang Hun Lee
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1304509133
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 631

Book Description
Unification Thought is the philosophy derived from the Divine Principle of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. It is a powerful key that is capable of solving any problem, no matter how difficult it might be. This Thought presents a new view of life, of the world, of the universe and God's work in history. It is a principle of integration that can bring different religious doctrines and philosophies into unity, while preserving their diverse characteristics.