Day: September 10, 2009

Four Stone @ Ad

fourstonecomplete
Ad Hominin is hosting the anthropology carnival Four Stone Hearth #75. Ciaran Brewster has done an outstanding job putting together a carnival that covers the breadth and depth of anthropology.

From hand axes to fossils for all, focused gathering in teaching to design thinking, a review of the book Engaging Anthropology and debunking the idea that culture simply overrides biology, this anthropology carnival is a stand-out edition. Ciaran even includes a magical Flickr photostream that I encourage people to check out right at the bottom.

For lots more great stuff, head over to Four Stone Hearth #75.

Sex on the brain & neuroanthropology on sex

brainonsexI promised my Human Evolution students that I would compile a sort of ‘collected works’ posting on our discussions of sex and evolution here at Neuroanthropology.net. I’m a bit frightened to see just how much we talk about it, but here goes anyway…

Over our time at Neuroanthropology.net, there have been a few of posts on abuses of ‘evolutionary psychology’ in its popular incarnations. I suspect that these would be among the most relevant for my students in ‘Human evolution and diversity’: Chicks dig jerks?: Evolutionary psych on sex #1, Girls gone guilty: Evolutionary psych on sex #2, along with Bad brain science: Boobs caused subprime crisis.

Lecture yesterday and tutorial today covered quite a bit about sexual dimorphism and, at the same time, the homologies between men and women. For one take on this, and on how culture can affect the physiological development of gender traits, check our Throwing like a girl(’s brain).

A while ago, probably under the influence of last year’s lecture, I also posted a sprawling piece Neurosexism, size dimorphism and not-so-’hard-wiring’.

If you still haven’t had enough about sex, check out Daniel’s compilation of all sorts of links: The Sex Round Up.

Paul Mason provides a discussion of the Sex and Gender distinction along with a whole series of relevant online resources.

And our most recent discussion of a most egregious attempt to do research on slash fan fiction, alleging that these works exposed the ‘evolutionary roots’ of sexuality. The series has run onto three posts so far: Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail, SurveyFail redax: Downey adds to Lende, and Nature/Nurture: Slash To The Rescue.

Wednesday Round Up #80

Wednesdays this semester are busy. Yesterday it was teaching two classes, office hours, meeting with a thesis student, a reception, and then school information night. Not a lot of time in there for this…

Top of the List

Rex @ Savage Minds, Anthropology, ‘Internet Addiction’, and Care
World of Warcraft and thinking through addiction, treatment, and engagement. A most worthy read.

Keith Oatley, Changing Our Minds… by Reading Fiction
Reading fiction “measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.”

Neededalj, Recognizing and Responding to Legitimate and Illegitimate Researchers
A guide to recognizing good researchers and research, in response to the SurveyFail debacle

The Neurocritic, Rule 34: What Netporn Tells Us about the Brain
The Neurocritic also covers SurveyFail and the Ogas/Gaddam debacle – sorry for not catching that earlier in the week! As always, great coverage, including Ogas playing Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire? and of course some great visuals

Sharon Begley, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: Claims of Sex Differences Fall Apart
“Why parents may cause gender differences in kids” – a Newsweek piece

E. Blair Bolles, Three Years On: Voluntary Redirection of Attention
Babel’s Dawn hits three years of exploring language and language evolution, and Blair reflects on one of his main insights, that humans can voluntarily redirect attention and that this supports language use

Francisco Ortega & Fernando Vidal, Mapping the Cerebral Subject in Contemporary Culture
Online paper outlining much of the Brainhood project: “The ‘cerebral subject’ refers to the anthropological figure that embodies the belief that human beings are essentially reducible to their brains. Our focus is on the discourses, images and practices that might globally be designated as ‘neuroculture’.”
The paper can’t be accessed directly, so click on Online Texts on the left hand side. Mapping the cerebral subject is the first paper listed.

Anthropology

Rebecca Atwood, Institutions Slap Down Those Who Speak Up, Argues Campaigning Scholar
Public anthropology and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, via Times Higher Education

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #80”