Today’s approaches to the study of the human mind are divided into seemingly opposed camps. On one side we find the neurosciences, with their more or less reductionist research programs, and on the other side we find the cultural and discursive approaches, with their frequent neglect of the material sides of human life. Persons and their Minds seeks to develop an integrative theory of the min…
The central theme of the volume is interdisciplinary experimentation. The volume includes collaborative and interdisciplinary studies on a variety of topics, from territorialisation of theory, relations between culture theory and research methodology, culture-dependent meaning formation, power relations in discourses on religion, communal heritage management, celebration practices of (national)…
Executive function is an umbrella term for various cognitive processes that are central to goal-directed behavior, thoughts, and emotions. These processes are especially important in novel or demanding situations, which require a rapid and flexible adjustment of behavior to the changing demands of the environment. The development of executive function relies on the maturation of associated brai…
Sustainability has become a key socio-political issue over recent years. However, whilst the literary-critical community has advanced enthusiastically on an exciting range of environmentally-based analyses (most obviously through the work of ecocriticism), its response specifically to sustainability—as an attempt to reconceptualise the way we live, as an idea with a particular history, and as…
The concept of ‘cultural heritage’ has acquired increasing currency in culture, politics and societies in East Asia. However, in spite of a number of research projects in this field, our understanding of how the past and its material expressions have been perceived, conceptualised and experienced in this part of the world, and how these views affect contemporary local practices and notions …
This book shows that William Shakespeare was a more personal writer than any of his innumerable commentators have realised. It asserts that numerous characters and events were drawn from the author's life, and puts faces to the names of Jaques, Touchstone, Feste, Jessica, the 'Dark Lady' and others. Steven Sohmer explores aspects of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets that have been hitherto overlo…
The structure and regulation of consumption and demand has recently become of great interest to sociologists and economists alike, and at the same time there is growing interest in trying to understand the patterns and drivers of technological innovation. This book brings together a range of sociologists and economists to study the role of demand and consumption in the innovative process. The b…
Much nuance and variability have been lost in the process of the reductivist analysis of Islam post 9/11 and, as this study amply demonstrates, we are all the poorer as a result. This exhaustive examination of the rise and spread of the Tablighi Jama't, arguably the world's largest Islamic missionary movement, locates it in the larger perspective of global Islam and developments in the Muslim s…
Researchers in landscape archaeology use two different definitions of landscape. One definition (landscape as territory) is used by the processual archaeologists, earth scientists, and most historical geographers within this volume. By contrast, post-processual archaeologists, new cultural geographers and anthropologists favour a more abstract definition of landscape, based on how it is perceiv…
Shortlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2017*Over a million people in the UK work in call centres, and the phrase has become synonymous with low-paid and high stress work, dictatorial supervisors and an enforced dearth of union organisation. However, rarely does the public have access to the true picture of what goes on in these institutions. For Working the Phone…
How is performativity shaped by digital media – and how do performance practices themselves reflect and alter techno-social configurations? Performing the Digital inquires into the technological terms and conditions of performance and performance studies, and maps and theorizes the registers of performance at work in digital cultures. The contributions range from the performativity of algorit…
From its beginnings, the theory of evolution has unsettled fundamental anthropological assumptions about the place of human beings in nature. The integration of human origins into natural history by Darwinism was countered by the philosophical anthropologies of the 20th century. Their attempts were to hold on even more resolutely to the special status of humans as beings 'open towards the world…
Offering key insights into critical debates on the construction, management and destruction of heritage in Muslim contexts, this volume considers how Islamic heritages are constructed through texts and practices which award heritage value. It examines how the monolithic representation of Islamic heritage (as a singular construct) can be enriched by the true diversity of Islamic heritages and ho…
This book explores how modern media practices can illuminate participatory reading in England from the late-fourteenth to the early-sixteenth centuries. Nonlinear apprehension, immersion and embodiment are practices intimately familiar to readers of Wikipedia, players of video games and users of multi-touch mobile devices. But far from being unique to digital media, they have clear analogues in…
Shows how the interactive, confrontational practice of courtly arts shaped imperial thought in the Middle AgesA probing inquiry into medieval court struggles, this book shows the relationship between intellectual conflict and the geopolitics of empire. It examines the Persian Buyids’ takeover of the great Arab caliphate in Iraq, the counter-Crusade under Saladin, and the literature of soverei…
Anyone who studies the history of modern art—in art museums, in the classroom, in art historical handbooks or specialist surveys—will soon be aware of a certain recurrent pattern governing the selection of objects and forming a certain type of narrative where the history of modern art is presented as a variety of different -isms that dissolve into each other in the coherent sequence that co…
edited by Kalissa Alexeyeff and John Taylor.
Between 2014 and 2017, the artistic research project "TransCoding – From 'Highbrow Art' to Participatory Culture" encouraged creative participation in multimedia art via social media. Based on the artworks that emerged from the project, Barbara Lüneburg investigates authorship, authority, motivational factors, and aesthetics in participatory art created with the help of web 2.0 technology. T…
Since the 1980s, scholars have made the case for examining 19th-century culture, particularly literary output, through the lens of economics. Bivona and Tromp have collected contributions that push New Economic Criticism in new directions.Spanning the Americas, India, England, and Scotland, this volume adopts a global view of the cultural effects of economics and exchange. Contributors use the …