Author: gregdowney

Trained as a cultural anthropologist at the University of Chicago, I have gone on to do fieldwork in Brazil and the United States. I have written one book, Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art (Oxford, 2005). I have also co-authored and co-edited several, including, with Dr. Daniel Lende, The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology (MIT, 2012), and with Dr. Melissa Fisher, Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy (Duke, 2006). My research interests include neuroanthropology, psychological anthropology, sport, dance, human rights, neuroscience, phenomenology, economic anthropology, and just about anything else that catches my attention.

Sex differences in the brain

Graphic from Slate
Graphic from Slate
I fear that I don’t link enough to Mind Hacks because I kind of assume that anyone who regularly reads us also checks out Vaughn’s excellent work over there. But he’s clued me into a series of articles on Slate that are excellent in his piece, Selling the ‘battle of the sexes.’ I won’t write something derivative here: you should really go read the piece by Vaughn and then link through to the series on Slate, starting with The Sex Difference Evangelists on several recent books that push the ‘sex differences are in the brain’ argument despite conflicting data. Vaughn nicely sums up the series by Amanda Schaffer:

Of course, there are cognitive differences between men and women, but the punchline of almost all sex difference research is that the extent of the difference between any two individuals, be they male or female, tends to vastly outweigh the average difference between the sexes.

Furthermore, while some of these books suggest the differences are innate many studies have found the differences change markedly over time and are influenced by cultural or social factors.

The series is well-researched, easy to digest and looks at the areas of communication, empathy, maths ability and development during childhood. It’s also accompanied by a three-part video discussion, which tackles similar issues.

And, as a bonus, when you link through to the material on Slate, there’s heaps of other links, including related book reviews, video segments, and other items (although some of it is not as solid as Schaffer’s work).
Graphic from Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2194486/entry/2194488/.

Four Stone Hearth #44: Everything fine on the 4th

Greg Laden has up the latest Four Stone Hearth. In the spirit of the holiday, it’s ‘Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival: The Fourth Of July Everything is Just Fine We’ve Got It Under Control In America Edition.‘ Lots of good anthropology.

I’ll be quoting from Laden’s own ‘Morning Sickness is an Adaptation, not a … Sickness‘ in my upcoming lecture on evolutionary perspectives on sex and sexuality. I also particularly liked The Myth of Cultural Miscommunication at Savage Minds. The post, by Kerim, uses a good video to point out why the problem with ‘miscommunication’ in the Iraq war isn’t always lack of knowledge; sometimes it’s simply lack of concern for the Iraqis and the relatively simple things that they are trying to communicate. Finally, Afarensis has a nice discussion of technological development of projectile points, and the issue of ‘optimizing’ design, at ‘Return of the Projectile Points.’ But please check out the original as there’s a lot of good material in this one, and happy 4th of July to all the Yanks!

Graphic from Greg Laden.

Cabbies’ brains

The BBC has a nice piece covering the continuing research of Prof. Eleanor Maguire (Wellcome Institute of Neurology, University College London) on the distinctive development of the hippocampus in the brains of London taxi drivers: Taxi drivers’ brains ‘grow’ on the job. Prof. Maguire’s research in this area is pretty extensive (see publication list). She’s found a great naturally occurring experiment in the brains of cabbies who have to navigate London’s notoriously byzantine downtown streets.

As the BBC report describes, driving a cab in London is difficult and demands a well-developed knowledge of urban geography:

In order to drive a traditional black cab in London drivers have to gain “the knowledge” – an intimate acquaintance with the myriad of streets in a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.

It can take around three years of hard training, and three-quarters of those who embark on the course drop out, according to Malcolm Linskey, manager of London taxi school Knowledge Point. “There are 400 prescribed runs which you can be examined on but in reality, you can be asked to join any two points,” he told BBC News Online.

Continue reading “Cabbies’ brains”

Slideshow on ‘Brain Rules’

Ian Boyle, a friend of mine here in Australia, just turned me onto SlideShare, a website where you can upload and share PowerPoint slide shows. I see myself losing more than a couple of hours into this as the downloading take some time, but there are some great neuroanthropology-related resources.

One of the slideshows that I came across immediately that may be relevant is one based on John Medina’s book, Brain Rules: The slideshow is titled, ‘Brain Rules for Presenters,’ and it was put together by Garr of Presentation Zen.

Chicks dig jerks?: Evolutionary psych on sex #1

In our continuing exploration of facile examples of ‘evolutionary’ explanations for human behavior (usually described instead as ‘human nature’), I have another couple of exhibits: Do Jerks Get Laid More?, a great attack on recent research by Jill Filopovic at Feministe (h/t: Alternet); and Science Daily‘s story, Women Have Not Adapted To Casual Sex, Research Shows (which I’ll discuss in the next posts). Daniel already discussed some of the recent research on homosexuality in The Gay Brain: On Love and Science, but this piece, the first of two, is dedicated to recent ‘evolutionary’ work on male-female relations, especially arguments about what is ‘natural’ in sexuality including that all-important question, ‘What do women want?’

Some of the problems that beset these articles are pretty general objections a person could have to evolutionary psychology, so I feel like I want to go over them a little bit (but I’ll try to keep it short).

Why women like bad boys: ev psych explains

Jill Filopovic discusses a story, Do Jerks Get Laid More? Good news for psycho-narcissists, by Jessica Wakeman, which is commentary on a story in New Scientist, Bad guys really do get the most girls (a similar piece also appeared on ABC News). In other words, this story has been ricocheting around the Internets for a while, getting reposted and commented upon all over the place (such as here, here, here and, my favourite, here, where democracy confirms ev psych stereotypes). With all sorts of people having things to say, some share a bit too much about their own personal lives and some involve cueing up familiar cliches (‘nice guys finish last,’ for example, is a favourite).

Continue reading “Chicks dig jerks?: Evolutionary psych on sex #1”

Affect at the Interface: Silvan Tomkins

Affect from conference websiteI just slept in a bit, recovering from a long weekend at a conference, Affect at the Interface, at the University of New South Wales. Although I sometimes felt out of my element (pretty typical for conferences), it was a great discussion, even if over-stimulating at times. Thanks to Prof. Anna Gibbs and Dr. Jennifer Biddle for all the hard work organizing it — and also to the staff and other folks who put together a great, stimulating weekend (including the brilliant caterer!).

A host of folks presented diverse papers. I’m reluctant to list any because I’ll inevitably end up slighting someone I don’t intend to, but in addition to Prof. Gibbs and Dr. Biddle, a number of folks were very active guests over the two days: Robyn Ferrell, Anand Pandian, Melissa Hardie, Jim Wilce, and Adam Frank (sorry — couldn’t find a good link quickly to info about him) stand out, not just because of their presentations, but because of their comments on other people’s work. However, I have to admit, pretty much every reference to Gilles Deleuze went over my head (alright, I suffered so much with trying to get into Anti-Oedipus that I never attempted A Thousand Plateaus).

I presented second-to-last and made the mistake of entirely rewriting my paper the night before because in an ill-advised attempt to engage with what had happened on the first day. I’m going to post something like the presentation I aspired to give but failed to because of overly-quick turn-around, lack of sleep, and generally not being clever enough on my feet.

The discussion of affect revived my long dormant interest in the work of Silvan Tomkins, the psychologist and cybernetic theorist. Although I had consulted his work briefly when I was writing my dissertation and first book, especially because of his discussion of shame and my interest in the bodily-nervous effects of inhibition in dance, I hadn’t really taken him seriously enough. Although there weren’t a lot of biologically-inclined individuals at the conference (probably Jennifer Biddle and I were among the most enthusiastic about this line of thinking), it was great to reconsider his work with Prof. Adam Frank there, as he, together with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, were instrumental in encouraging a revival of interest in Tomkins’ work, outside the narrower group familiar with Tomkins in psychology (like the Silvan S. Tomkins Institute).

Continue reading “Affect at the Interface: Silvan Tomkins”