Daniel did a posting earlier today on Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail that explores a research project that self-immolated through bad design, horrible conflict management, and a number of other character flaws. I’m really glad Daniel did this because he’s the more tech-savvy half of this duo. I just saw this yesterday and started to read up on the commentary but quickly realized that I was over my head, having pretty much exhausted my ability to navigate communication technology and resulting subcultural movements with a Twitter-related post a while back.
But I did want to add a couple of points because I’m particularly interested in research design and ethics and because I like kicking researchers when they’re down. No, no, just kidding — because I find the focus of ‘evolutionary’ theorists on the supposed ‘hard wiring’ of sexuality to be one of the more irritating and, well, hard-wired theoretical assumptions, even in the face of OVERWHELMING evidence to the malleability of human sexuality.
I apologize for not putting up some clever graphic, but I spent most of today helping friends build their mud-brick house and then went to a Showground Association meeting, where I was elected president (that’s kind of like the County Fairground in my town). My brain’s fried, but I don’t want to let this post sit for too long or it’s moment will have well and truly passed.
Research ethics
In my brief and incomplete survey of the discussions of this research, it became obvious that slash fans were particularly irritated, not just by the initial bad research design, but also by the seeming inability to apologize, learn from criticism or even simply back off on the part of the researchers.
Neuroscience researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam have done a massive FAIL through bad research, failed ethics, and greed. They created an online survey targeted at slash fiction fans that was a debacle start to finish.
Slash fiction takes prominent characters from movies, television, and fiction and explores their relationships in unconventional ways. The founding example is Kirk/Spock, where the slash indicates a story about Kirk and Spock getting it on. The creators and consumers of slash fiction are generally women.
Earlier this year Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam signed a deal with Penguin for a popular book with the initial title “Rule 34: What Netporn Teaches Us about the Brain.” Rule 34 is simply that online “If it exists, there is porn on it. No exceptions.”
Slash fiction fans became one of their “netporn” targets. Ogas and Gaddam created and distributed their online survey that aimed to prove their basic premise (well, my take on it): “When in doubt, the brain causes everything. When that’s something we don’t really understand, then it must be the primitive parts of the brain.”
Here’s how I derived that premise. First comes shaggirl’s description of Ogas’ response to criticism (Note: Ogas took down the survey and the livejournal that discussed the project, so I am relying on people who have captured their words):
He defends his comparison of women liking slash to straight men liking transsexuals because “some deep sense of pleasure or satisfaction ultimately rooted in subcortical circuits” compels us to seek out slash/transsexuals despite fearing exposure to society at large.
Today is the due date for abstracts for The Encultured Brain conference. I hope to see a bunch more come in!
ABSTRACT INSTRUCTIONS
Abstracts have a 200 word limit. Please follow the example below, and include the following information: name, contact info, title, abstract, and indication for a poster and/or speed presentation. We encourage people to indicate the “Format: Both” option, as this will help us accomodate more people. Note that co-authors are welcomed for posters.
LASTNAME Firstname (Affiliation; email). Title.
Body of abstract.
Format: Poster, Speed Presentation or Both
Here is an example:
LENDE Daniel (Notre Dame; dlende@nd.edu). Addiction and Neuroanthropology.
Approaches to addiction have been dominated by reductionist approaches in both the biological and social sciences…
Format: Both
Please email your complete abstract to: encultured.brain@gmail.com
First, a reminder that abstracts for The Encultured Brain are due this Friday, September 4th. Click here for the details on submission.
Below I’ve posted the titles and abstracts for our two keynote talks on October 8th, 2009, as well as the opening and closing addresses. Click here to see our preliminary schedule for what promises to be a great day.
KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
Patricia Greenfield (UCLA), Mirror Neurons: The Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Cultural Processes
The mirror neuron system enables both monkey and human to produce intentional motor acts and to respond when observing the same acts performed by another. This presentation will demonstrate the importance of these neurally grounded behavioral competencies for the evolution and ontogenetic development of two key aspects of human culture, tool use and language. The analysis of ontogeny draws upon observations and studies of the development of language and tool use in human children. The analysis of phylogeny draws on comparison of chimpanzees, bonobos and humans, in order to derive clues as to what foundations of human language may have been present in our common ancestor five to seven million years ago. Such foundations would then have served as the basis from which the ontogeny of human language and the ontogeny of complex tool use evolved in the following millions of years.
Harvey Whitehouse (Oxford), Explaining Religion
Much research in the cognitive science of religion emphasizes that some features of religious thinking and behaviour are universal, arising from our species’ evolutionary history. Examples include certain qualities attributed to supernatural agents (e.g. gods and ghosts), which humans everywhere appear to recognize with minimal need for instruction. But there is also growing evidence that many religious concepts require considerable cognitive, social, and technological resources to create, remember, and pass on. Cross-culturally variable aspects of religion arise in part from the evolution of cognitive systems devoted to connecting concepts (e.g. through the formation of novel analogies) and storing them (e.g. in semantic memory) and in part from the historically changing sociopolitical conditions in which such systems can be exploited. Only a coordinated, interdisciplinary effort that takes into account the role of both evolved cognition and human ecology in religious innovation and transmission will be sufficient to provide the broad empirical and theoretical base necessary for explaining religion.
OPENING AND CLOSING ADDRESSES
Daniel Lende (Notre Dame), Neuroscience and the Real World
In recent decades a new view of the brain has emerged that stresses plasticity over hard-wired approaches. At the same time, the social sciences have moved away from top-down concepts like “culture”, “social structure” and “ideology” to an emphasis on practices, cognition and embodiment. The time is ripe for a synthesis of these new views of neural function and social life. Using examples such as craving, stress, and neuroengineering, this talk outlines five ways to approach the encultured brain: (1) the examination of human behavior, experience and meaning; (2) the interaction of social inequality and the brain; (3) how ideas about and manipulation of the brain are used socially; (4) using neuroscience to inform social theory; and (5) using social theory to inform neuroscience. For all five, the study of people – examining the real world – is central. Real people help us avoid a return to brain- or culture-centered views of human life. Moreover, research on people, particularly ethnographic research, provides the data to examine the specifics of how brain function intersects with social life.
Greg Downey (Macquarie), A Brain-Shaped Culture: Ambitions, Acknowledgements and Opportunities
The human brain and nervous system are pre-eminently cultural organs, malleable and responsive to conditioning but also crucial in producing patterned behaviour. But what does culture look like from the perspective of the brain? That is, most anthropological models of culture derive from the study of sociological patterns, observable behaviour or conscious thought. Neuroanthropology offers an opportunity to work from the evidence of the encultured nervous system toward a better understanding of larger-scale patterns of induced human variation.
As a reflection on the first Neuroanthropology conference, this talk sketches out some of the resources for a brain-based account of culture, drawing on earlier cognitive and psychological anthropology, but also touching upon some of the areas yet to be explored. Understanding how the nervous system might be encultured highlights that a brain-shaped culture might be significantly broader and more complex than many contemporary anthropological accounts of cultural variation.
On your mark!
The format of our upcoming conference is unusual for anthropology: instead of the usual, 15- to 20-minute paper in a panel, with multiple parallel panels, we’re opting for very short presentations to the whole assembled conference. I’ll try to explain the logic, and my previous experience with speed presentations.
So often at conferences, the focus is on research that has already been conducted. It’s done and dusted, and the author reads a pre-publication version of a future article. In fact, sometimes the audience comes to feel that the presentation is even further along, that the published version is either in press somewhere or mostly finished. This can give many conference presentations a kind of maturity, but at the cost of discussion; when people do get to talk or ask questions, they may have the impression that they are talking to hear themselves speak. The author’s work is mostly done, and any question about research methods is too late.
In speed presentations, however, we’re encouraging people to present research ideas, works in the early stages of development, and first passes of ideas. Because the format is shorter, the research can still be in progress or even in proposal stages. This allows discussions to be much more productive; like the roundtable on research methods, we’re hoping that this will spark discussion of how to get at difficult questions, techniques for eliciting data, and hybrid methodologies that combine strengths from different fields.
Because neuroanthropology is a nascent field, this sort of collective brainstorming session, with presentation as much introductions, provocations, and ice-breakers for future exchange, seemed to us to make the most sense. So if you’re considering it, don’t hesitate to bring your half-baked ideas, your unrealized research ambitions, and your works in progress. This is exactly the sort of material that will benefit most from a forward-looking, future-oriented conference like The Encultured Brain.
In addition, at some conferences, you feel like you’re competing against other sessions. Someone you’d like to see present is talking at the same time your panel is scheduled; hell, you’d even skip your own talk if you could, so how can you expect to have a big audience? That won’t be an issue here. We’ve been very careful to invite some of the most generous, congenial, and free-thinking colleagues we could find, so we’re going to try hard to put everyone on equal footing. For at least five minutes, you’ll have everyone’s complete attention.
After your presentation, everyone will have pre-printed slips to respond to your work, so that they can’t drop you a note, pass on their cards if they want to get in touch, suggest a technique or a reading you might not know of, or otherwise give you some feedback. In the breaks, with food and drink to put us all in a better mood, you’ll have a chance to chase down that future collaborator who just inspired you with their presentation. And if someone’s presenting something you’re not interested in, you can relax — it’s going to be over quick.
The format is sort of like speed-dating for research exchange. It will help us to see what is out there, who’s doing what sort of work, to swap ideas, ask each other for assistance, and try to set up some future collaboration. So if you’re thinking about joining us, but you don’t think you’re quite ready to present at the American Anthropological Association or the Society for Psychological Anthropology or the Cognitive Science Society, then this conference is definitely the place to help bring your work closer to realization.
Neuroanthropology 