Category: Links

Cognition and Culture Institute website


Olivier Moren just got in touch to tell us that the International Cognition and Culture Institute has just opened a new website/blog at http://www.cognitionandculture.net. I just surfed over to check it out, and there’s already plenty of stuff happening. Although it’s a new site, there’s a lot of good content already, and a formidable group of writers, from the sound of it. The writers used to have the AlphaPsy blog on humanities and human nature, but that site hasn’t had any new postings in a while, so it’s nice to have the group back with new material.

The International Cognition & Culture Institute comes out of the Department of Anthropology and apparently the Department of Political Science of the London School of Economics and Political Science with support from the Institut Jean Nicod (ENS, EHESS, CNRS) in Paris. Their website also includes a section for job listings (excellent!) and an intriguing note about a grant competition coming up in 2009:

Sometime in 2009, we will hold a small grant competition. Successful applicants will be funded to carry out the same research task in a variety of cultural settings, thus generating a body of comparable data

I’ll be interested to see what they come up with and the resulting data.

Although I’m fascinated by cognitive anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, and the field that we might describe as ‘culture and cognition,’ I often feel that some of the stuff that we do at Neuroanthropology doesn’t sit well within the ‘cognition’ category. I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I put together thoughts for a book proposal, but I worry that — nifty alliterations aside — the term ‘cognition’ puts front and centre certain qualities of the brain, body, and nervous system, and (even unintentionally) marginalizes other qualities, some of which I’m particularly interested in. Of course, the term ‘neuroanthropology’ has problems, too, as we’re just as interested in the effects of culture on the skeleton, muscle tissue, endocrine system, and other viscera as we are upon the neural wetware.

All reservations aside, I’m really happy Olivier contacted me. I’ll be putting their site on our blogroll (if Daniel hasn’t beaten me to it) and keeping a close eye on what they produce. Looking forward to the online seminars and more about the comparative projects that the Institute is able to sponsor.

The Moral Sense Test

Eric Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California at Riverside, is running an on-line test about moral dilemmas with his colleague Fiery Cushman, a psychologist at Harvard. Eric runs the blog The Splintered Mind, which I have quite enjoyed reading lately – it covers “the philosophy of psychology, broadly construed.”

So they want to recruit some anthropologists, neuroanthropologists, and other related ilk to take the Moral Sense Test. They need you! Otherwise the test, promoted on a philosophy site, will only get philosophy type answers. While we know that both philosophers and anthropologists can give screwy answers about moral questions, the burning question is: will they give different screwy answers?

Eric assures me the moral dilemmas will do just that, create dilemmas. But you have the power to decide! (Well, assuming your mind just doesn’t freeze up.) Plus you’ll get 15 to 20 minutes of edu-tainment, becaue that’s how long the test takes.

So mosey on over to the test site for your Moral Sense. Eric and Fiery send their splintered, burning thanks!

Wednesday Round Up #33

This week, besides the tops, we have education, animals, genetics, anthropology, and the brain.

Top of the List

Garrison Keillor, Dying of the Light
A captivating review of the new book, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes. The accomplished writer and “atheist turned agnostic” confronts (and reflects on) his fear of death at the age of 62

Sean Hurley/NPR, Boston Orchestra Makes Typewriters Sing
The Boston Typewriter Orchestra plays the QWERTY Waltz. Listen to the entire NPR story here.
This story highlights the difficulties of a brain-based or culture-based approach to creativity. Here we have a story about effort and spontaneity, where practice and the adaptation of technology, social settings and finding rhythms all “coalesced into a form” that is quite a show.

Bruce Bower, Body in Mind
Science News covers embodied cognition! How new experimental studies and robot designs are changing our very old views of cognition.

Steve Higgins, The Ass Area of the Brain Exists in Chimps
On top for the title alone! Chimps recognize each other by their asses – and what parts of the brain process that

Kenneth Chang, A Guiding Glow to Track What Was Once Invisible
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry went this year to three scientists who developed green fluorescent protein (from jellyfish!) to study cell function.
To see the amazing outcome of using a range of fluorescent colors to study the brain, check out our previous posts on Jeff Lichtman’s Brainbows and More on Brainbow. Truly some of the most striking science images I have even seen.

Education

Sam Dillon, Under ‘No Child’ Law, Even Solid Schools Falter
The perils of prescribing standardized change – schools making progress and using tough tests are not making the grade

Open Anthropology, A Crisis of Vast Quantities in Academia?
Publish or perish – academics on the production line

Chris Kelty et al., Anthropology Of/In Circulation: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies
Discussion by some prominent anthropologists concerned with open access over at Cultural Anthropology – and yes, it’s the actual pdf (not hidden behind a fee-access door)

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #33”

Clashing Stones


The new Four Stone Hearth is up over at Clashing Culture, the latest round-up of the four fields of anthropology.

Want to know more about all the recent claims and controversy that our ancestors practiced the Mediterrean diet (well, ate plenty of shellfish)?

Paddy K, always funny and controversial, takes on a female gorilla in a pink outfit.

Do you just dig onomatopoeia?

Think linguistic anthropology is the most integrative and applicable of the four fields?

Then you should definitely check out the Four Stone Hearth.

Clashing Cultures is also hosting the latest Carnival of the Liberals, so take a look at that as well – some good reading as we near the end of this presidential race.

Clashing Culture explores issues related to the clash of science and religion, particularly evolution and creationism, and also examines atheism. Their recent Who Owns Our Child’s Minds asks important questions about what and how we teach our children. One blogger also hosts a radio show, the most recent covered theistic evolution and religious discrimination against atheists.

Wednesday Round Up #32

This week I am introducing a new feature, Top of the List, which highlights some of my favorites for the week. After that, I’ve got a fun one, Sarah Palin and Language, followed by sports, anthropology, the brain, and medicine and health care.

Top of the List

Greg Downey, Turning a Blind Eye
Our own Greg gets his chance to shine in Seed Magazine! Here he covers the media reaction to a supposedly “undiscovered” tribe in Brazil that reached global proportions back in May. He writes, “In truth, our reactions to and perceptions of these people reveal far more about us than about them.”

Jonah Lehrer, The Future of Science… Is Art?
Art, the practical constraints of present science, and future creativity and inspiration

Zane Andrews and Tamas Horvath, Why Calories Taste Delicious: Eating and the Brain
Scientific American piece on our desire to eat beyond homeostatic regulation

Daniel Zwerdling, A Meal Fit For A Candidate: Barack Obama
Chef Rick Bayless talks real Mexican food as he cooks up grilled skirt steak tacos. The real surprise, Bayless was a PhD student in anthropology at Michigan before choosing food over academics. I say he’s reached more people that way!

Sarah Palin and Language

Maureen Dowd, Sarah’s Pompom Palaver
NY Times op-ed with delicious humor: from speaking in tongues in Wasilla to channeling Clueless

Language Log has featured a series of posts on the Governor from Alaska
Also Outside
Affective Demonstratives
Palin’s Accent

Daniel Libit, Palin’s Accent Takes Center Stage
Politico dissects the politics and sociolinguistics of the Palin accent

Mr. Verb, Palin’s Accent and Syntax
One big verbal trainwreck?

The Neurocritic, Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick
A mavericky transcript… Includes a bonus, The Sarah Palin Show!

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #32”