Results by title
216 books match the query 'Social' and 6 start with i
Image
Three Inquiries in Technology and ImaginationMark C. Taylor, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Thomas A. Carlson
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Modern life is steeped in images, image-making, and attempts to control the world through vision. Mastery of images has been advanced by technologies that expand and reshape vision and enable us to create, store, transmit, and display images. The three essays in Image, written by leading philosophers of religion Mark C. Taylor, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Thomas A. Carlson, explore the power of the visual at the intersection of the human and the technological. Building on Heidegger’s notion that modern humanity aims to master the world by picturing or representing the real, they investigate the contemporary culture of the image in its philosophical, religious, economic, political, imperial, and military dimensions, challenging the abstraction, anonymity, and dangerous disconnection of contemporary images.
Taylor traces a history of capitalism, focusing on its lack of humility, particularly in the face of mortality, and he considers art as a possible way to reconnect us to the earth. Through a genealogy of iconic views from space, Rubenstein exposes the delusions of conquest associated with extraterrestrial travel. Starting with the pressing issues of surveillance capitalism and facial recognition technology, Carlson extends Heidegger’s analysis through a meditation on the telematic elimination of the individual brought about by totalizing technologies. Together, these essays call for a consideration of how we can act responsibly toward the past in a way that preserves the earth for future generations. Attending to the fragility of material things and to our own mortality, they propose new practices of imagination grounded in love and humility.
Imaginatelligence
Desire and Disaffection in Posthuman FuturesNatasha Lushetich
University of Minnesota Press, 2027
A new vision of imagination as a shared force across species, systems, and matter
Imaginatelligence addresses the contemporary “crisis” in imagination by advancing a nonanthropocentric, posthumanist account of this vital function. Rather than treating imagination as a uniquely human faculty, Natasha Lushetich presents it as an activity that stretches across species and remains inseparable from potentiality. If imagination arises from sensing, conjecturing, intelliging, and improvising, there is little reason to confine it to human experience alone. In this view, imagination becomes a distributed force, operating across biological, technological, and material domains.
Lushetich begins by considering the demise of human imagination alongside the neglect of other-than-human forms. She then considers creativity across nonhuman beings, examining cross-species intelligence and extending to iterative processes in what are typically regarded as inanimate objects. If the activities of organic and machinic agents are comparable, Lushetich argues, disciplinary divisions separating them become increasingly untenable.
Drawing on posthumanist approaches to liminality, distributed agency, and shared memory, Imaginatelligence proposes the emergence of a multispecies imaginatelligence. This perspective not only redefines imagination but also demonstrates how a cross-disciplinary configuration of imagination—linking critical thought, artistic practice, and scientific inquiry—is both possible and necessary. Lushetich reaffirms the relevance of critical posthumanism for everyday practice and for imagining the possibility of a future multispecies society.
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Interpretation and Social Knowledge
On the Use of Theory in the Human SciencesIsaac Ariail Reed
University of Chicago Press, 2011
Introduction to Non-Marxism
François Laruelle
University of Minnesota Press, 2014
Following the collapse of the communist states it was assumed that Marxist philosophy had collapsed with it. In Introduction to Non-Marxism, François Laruelle aims to recover Marxism along with its failure by asking the question “What is to be done with Marxism itself?”
To answer, Laruelle resists the temptation to make Marxism more palatable after the death of metaphysics by transforming Marxism into a mere social science or by simply embracing with evangelical fervor the idea of communism. Instead Laruelle proposes a heretical science of Marxism that will investigate Marxism in both its failure and power so as to fashion new theoretical tools.
In the course of engaging with the material of Marxism, Laruelle takes on the philosophy of Marx along with important philosophers who have extended that philosophy including Althusser, Balibar, Negri as well as the attempt at a phenomenological Marxism found in the work of Michel Henry. Through this engagement Laruelle develops with great precision the history and function of his concept of determination-in-the-last-instance. In the midst of the assumed failure of Marxism and the defections and resentment that followed, Laruelle’s non-Marxism responds with the bold declaration: “Do not give up on theory!”
Invasive Species in a Globalized World
Ecological, Social, and Legal Perspectives on PolicyEdited by Reuben P. Keller, Marc W. Cadotte, and Glenn Sandiford
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Yet even though ecological research has led to public conversation and policy recommendations, those recommendations have frequently been ignored, and the efforts to counter invasive species have been largely unsuccessful. Recognizing the need to engage experts across the life, social, and legal sciences as well as the humanities, the editors of this volume have drawn together a wide variety of ecologists, historians, economists, legal scholars, policy makers, and communications scholars, to facilitate a dialogue among these disciplines and understand fully the invasive species phenomenon. Aided by case studies of well-known invasives such as the cane toad of Australia and the emerald ash borer, Asian carp, and sea lampreys that threaten US ecosystems, Invasive Species in a Globalized World offers strategies for developing and implementing anti-invasive policies designed to stop their introduction and spread, and to limit their effects.
Islands On The Plains
Ecological, Social, and Ritual Use of LandscapesEdited by Marcel Kornfeld and Alan J. Osborn
University of Utah Press, 2003
Scattered throughout the Great Plains are many isolated areas of varying size and ecology, quite distinct from the surrounding grasslands. Such spaces can be uplands like the Black Hills, low hills like the Nebraska Sand Hills, or linear areas such as shallow river valleys and deeply incised canyons. While the notion of “islands” is not a new one among ecologists, its application in Plains archaeology is.
The contributors to this volume seek to illustrate the different ways that the spatial, structural, and temporal nature of islands conditioned the behavior and adaptation of past Plains peoples. This as a first step toward a more detailed analysis of habitat variation and its effects on Plains cultural dynamics and evolution. Although the emphasis is on ecology, several chapters also address social and ideological islands in the form of sacred sites and special hunting grounds.