Metaphorical Place Research Articles

From Embodiment to Agency

The primacy of practice in the development of knowledge is one of materialism's fundamental tenets. Most arguments supporting it have been strictly philosophical. However, over the past thirty years cognitive science has provided mounting evidence supporting the primacy of practice. Particularly striking is its finding that thought is fundamentally metaphoric—that images emerging from everyday embodied activities not only make ordinary experiences intelligible, but also underpin our more abstract engagements with the world, elaborated in disciplines such as ethics and science. Cognitive science's implications must now be absorbed into critical realism. Cognitive science bolsters critical realism by providing a scientifically-grounded analysis of the passage from body to mind and the fundamental unity between them, while sustaining their distinctiveness. Its implications for critical realism ripple out in four waves: first, critical realism's understanding of the mind/body relationship; second, its concepts of the process that connects theory and practice, and what that means for critical realism's view of intellectual production, the place of metaphor in scientific theorization, and cultural development; its view of culture as a complex whole; and finally, its theory of human agency as embodied and intentional.

From Embodiment to Agency: Cognitive Science, Critical Realism, and Communication Frameworks

The primacy of practice in the development of knowledge is one of materialism's fundamental tenets. Most arguments supporting it have been strictly philosophical. However, over the past thirty years cognitive science has provided mounting evidence supporting the primacy of practice. Particularly striking is its finding that thought is fundamentally metaphoric—that images emerging from everyday embodied activities not only make ordinary experiences intelligible, but also underpin our more abstract engagements with the world, elaborated in disciplines such as ethics and science. Cognitive science's implications must now be absorbed into critical realism. Cognitive science bolsters critical realism by providing a scientifically-grounded analysis of the passage from body to mind and the fundamental unity between them, while sustaining their distinctiveness. Its implications for critical realism ripple out in four waves: first, critical realism's understanding of the mind/body relationship; second, its concepts of the process that connects theory and practice, and what that means for critical realism's view of intellectual production, the place of metaphor in scientific theorization, and cultural development; its view of culture as a complex whole; and finally, its theory of human agency as embodied and intentional.

FOR HEALTH AND PLEASURE: THE TURKISH BATH IN VICTORIAN IRELAND

... GET A BATH round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water. Combine business with pleasure (Joyce 86). Here, Leopold Bloom, the central character in James Joyce's Ulysses, describes an imagined bathing experience. The mosque of to which Bloom refers was in Lincoln Place in Dublin's city center,1 one of a series of such vapor baths established across Europe in the nineteenth century. It was one of the first to be established by the inventor of an improved version of the Turkish bath, Dr. Richard Barter, and had been opened over sixty years before Joyce wrote his novel. Unfortunately, the minarets and onion domes of the baths in Bloom's city have long since disappeared, as have their counterparts in Bray, Co. Wicklow and St. Ann's Hill in Blarney, Co. Cork. During their existence, they became part of the leisure world of Victorian Ireland, one of the attractions offered to the growing numbers of middle-class tourists visiting from both within Ireland and England. Bloom describes a highly sensual experience, conjuring up an image of erotic encounters in the midst of gray city streets. Indeed, within this novel the Turkish bath seems to function as a metaphorical place apart from Joyce's depiction of Dublin as a place of cultural paralysis, a site where his character can seek out consolation in an inner world of fantasy (Kiberd 270). Yet, it is difficult to reconcile such an image with the restrictive norms we associate with middle-class Victorian society for whom these baths were first established. This article sets out to discover what exactly a Turkish bath, both as an activity and a material object, meant to its producers and consumers. Furthermore, it asks what the study of this cultural form can tell us about Victorian Ireland. Identity and authenticity are persistent themes in the discussion of Irish culture. The

Conversations at the Frontier of Dreaming

Conversations at the Frontier of Dreaming

Northern Athabascan survival: women, community, and the future

List of Tables Acknowledgments Map: The World of the Northern Athabascans 1. Contemporary Life: Caustic Bonds 2. Footprints: Metaphors of Place, Mobility, and History 3. Rural Economy: Whose Addict Now? 4. Leadership: Just One Mind 5. Women: She Who Is Ravished 6. What Does the Future Hold? Prognosis in Question 7. Final Comments Sources Index

Cyberspace as Place and the Tragedy of the Digital Anticommons

Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the Western Frontier, a place where land was free for the taking. This is true no longer. This Article argues that we are enclosing cyberspace and imposing private property conceptions upon it. As a result, we are creating a digital anticommons where suboptimal use of Internet resources will be the norm. Part I shows why initial discussions of the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor have confused the descriptive question of how we think about cyberspace with the normative question of how we should regulate cyberspace. It suggests that we can bracket the normative question and still answer the descriptive question of whether we think of cyberspace as a place. Part II examines the lessons of recent cognitive science studies, and demonstrates the importance of physical metaphors within our cognitive system. It then reviews the evidence of our use of the physical metaphor, CYBERSPACE AS PLACE, in understanding online communication environments. Part III focuses on this metaphor's unacknowledged and unrecognized influence on the development of the legal framework for the Internet. It examines tortious, criminal, and constitutional law responses to cyberspace, and concludes that the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor exercises a strong and unrecognized influence on the regulatory regimes of cyberspace. Part IV details why the effects of that metaphor's use - including the idea that there is property online, and that this property should be privately owned, parceled out, and exploited - are extremely troubling. Though private ownership of resources is not itself problematic, it can lead to the opposite of the tragedy of the commons: the tragedy of the anticommons. Anticommons property occurs when multiple parties have an effective right to prevent others from using a given resource, and as a result no one has an effective right of use. Part IV argues that this is precisely where the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor leads. We are moving towards a digital anticommons, where no one will be allowed to access competitors' cyberspace assets without a license or other transactionally expensive or impossible permission mechanism. This Article explains how the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor leads to undesirable private control of the previously commons-like Internet and the emergence of a digital anticommons. As we all stake out our little claims in cyberspace, we destroy the cyberspace commons.

Cyberspace as place and the tragedy of the digital anticommons

Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the Western Frontier, a place where land was free for the taking. This is true no longer. This Article argues that we are enclosing cyberspace and imposing private property conceptions upon it. As a result, we are creating a digital anticommons where suboptimal use of Internet resources will be the norm. Part I shows why initial discussions of the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor have confused the descriptive question of how we think about cyberspace with the normative question of how we should regulate cyberspace. It suggests that we can bracket the normative question and still answer the descriptive question of whether we think of cyberspace as a place. Part II examines the lessons of recent cognitive science studies, and demonstrates the importance of physical metaphors within our cognitive system. It then reviews the evidence of our use of the physical metaphor, CYBERSPACE AS PLACE, in understanding online communication environments. Part III focuses on this metaphor's unacknowledged and unrecognized influence on the development of the legal framework for the Internet. It examines tortious, criminal, and constitutional law responses to cyberspace, and concludes that the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor exercises a strong and unrecognized influence on the regulatory regimes of cyberspace. Part IV details why the effects of that metaphor's use - including the idea that there is property online, and that this property should be privately owned, parceled out, and exploited - are extremely troubling. Though private ownership of resources is not itself problematic, it can lead to the opposite of the tragedy of the commons: the tragedy of the anticommons. Anticommons property occurs when multiple parties have an effective right to prevent others from using a given resource, and as a result no one has an effective right of use. Part IV argues that this is precisely where the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor leads. We are moving towards a digital anticommons, where no one will be allowed to access competitors' cyberspace assets without a license or other transactionally expensive or impossible permission mechanism. This Article explains how the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor leads to undesirable private control of the previously commons-like Internet and the emergence of a digital anticommons. As we all stake out our little claims in cyberspace, we destroy the cyberspace commons.

Place and Cyberspace

For cyberlibertarians, the other shoe is rapidly dropping. In a curious inversion, those who argued less than a decade ago that cyberspace was a place all its own-and therefore unregulable by territorial governments'are finding their arguments and assumptions used for a very different end. Instead of concluding that cyberspace is outside of the physical world, courts are increasingly using the CYBERSPACE AS PLACE metaphor to justify application of traditional laws governing real property to this new medium. Dan Hunter's excellent article2 explains how and why this is happening with uncanny accuracy, pointing to the power of metaphor in influencing legal thinking and the particular strength of metaphor in making the new

Cyberspace as Place, and the Tragedy of the Digital Anticommons

Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the Western Frontier, a where land was free for the taking, where explorers could roam, and communities could form with their own rules. It was an endless expanse of space: open, free, replete with possibility. This is true no longer. This Article argues that we are enclosing cyberspace, and imposing private property conceptions upon it. As a result, we are creating a digital anti-commons where sub-optimal uses of Internet resources is going to be the norm. Part I shows why initial discussions of as have mistaken the idea of how we think about cyberspace, with the normative question of how we should regulate cyberspace. It suggests that we can bracket the normative question, and still answer the descriptive question of whether we think of as a place. Part II then examines the lessons of recent cognitive science, and demonstrates the importance of physical metaphors within our cognitive system. It then examines the evidence of our use of a physical metaphor, cyberspace as place, in understanding online communication environments. Part III focuses on the unacknowledged, and unrecognized, influence that this metaphor has had on the development of the legal framework for the Internet. It examines tortious, criminal, and constitutional law responses to cyberspace, and concludes that the metaphor of cyberspace as place exercises a strong, and unrecognized, influence on the regulatory regimes of cyberspace. Part IV details the implications of this observation and shows why they are extremely troubling. The conception of cyberspace as place leads to the implication that there is property online, and that this property should be privately owned, parceled out, and exploited. Though private ownership of resources of itself is not problematic, it can lead to the opposite of the tragedy of the commons: the tragedy of the anti-commons. Anti-commons property occurs when multiple parties have an effective right to preclude others from using a given resource, and as a result no-one has an effective right of use. Part IV argues that this is precisely where the cyberspace as place metaphor leads. We are moving to a digital anti-commons, where no-one will be allowed to access competitors' assets without some licensing, or other transactionally-expensive (or impossible), permission mechanism. The Article shows how the cyberspace as place metaphor leads to undesirable private control of the previously commons-like Internet, and the emergence of the digital anti-commons. As we all come to stake out our little claim in cyberspace, then the commons which is is being destroyed.

Dwelling in the House of Oppression: The Spatial, Racial, and Textual Dynamics of Harriet Wilson's Our Nig

Harriet Wilson's Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing that Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There (1859) is considered to be the first novel published by an African American woman. Set in a New England farming village, Our Nig tells the story of Frado, the child of an African American father, Jim, and a white mother, Mag. After the death of her husband Jim, Mag decides, along with the black man who becomes her new lover, to abandon her six-year-old daughter. is left at the house of the white Bellmont family, where she is taken in as an indentured servant. Within this space, is subject to the physical and verbal abuse of the tyrannical Mrs. Bellmont and her daughter Mary and to the apparent kindness of other members of the Bellmont family, particularly Mary's brothers Jack and James, their invalid sister Jane, and their Aunt Abby. The narrative follows Frado's trials, tracing her development to adulthood, when she leaves the Bellmont household, only to find she is too physically incapacitated from her treatment there to support herself. The final chapter documents Frado's marriage to a black man, the birth of her child, and her husband's abandonment of her, concluding with an appeal to the reader for support. Together with the preface, this appeal suggests that Frado, the narrator, and the author are one, and that Our Nig was produced in a final effort on the part of Frado to achieve financial security. This essay considers the effect of dwelling in a house marked by divisions of class and race on both and the white Bellmonts, and it probes how Wilson's authorial strategy in depicting the house of oppression contests the very assumptions that serve as the foundation for the racial and spatial practices in that house. Our Nig exposes how the racial dynamics of slavery are replicated in interracial encounters outside of slavery, in part through the spatializing of hierarchies of power within the private home. Analyzing this fictional dwelling reveals that social constructions of race are articulated, enforced, or challenged through the occupation of specific domestic spaces. My reading begins with a delineation of the assumptions about Frado's literal and metaphorical place in the house, contextualized in terms of the history of racialized domestic service and in terms of competing nineteenth-century racial ideologies about how blackness serves whiteness. In addition to examining the physical spaces of t he house, as described in the novel, I consider how these multiple spaces produce multiple narratives about and the Bellmonts. Locating the house in a conjunction of ideologies of race and labor circulating in the mid-nineteenth century, I then consider how Wilson's position differs from Frado's, as the author dwells literarily on this house of oppression in order to liberate herself from the very forces of domination to which the novel's protagonist is subjected. Our Nig reveals not simply that the shadows of the house of slavery fall upon the white house, North, but that the latter replicates the former: The model home for American society is built according to the spatial imperatives of slavery. Despite Frado's attempts to manipulate domestic space to ensure her own protection, the treatment she receives in the Bellmont house, from those who befriend her as well as those who berate and beat her, delimits her physical freedom and her emotional well-being. Slavery's shadows, the narrative implies, will continue to fall not just in the North during slavery but in any post-slavery America that does not directly counter the understanding of space, race, and labor that evolved through slavery. The novel itself initiates such a change, and Wilson's position as novelist suggests a possibility for a black woman both to exert her authority over domestic space by telling her version of what happens there and to escape the limitations of domestic service by becoming a writer. …

The place of metaphor and language in exploring nurses' emotional work.

An understanding of the importance of language as a symbolic artefact, particularly with reference to metaphor, has been little addressed within the nursing literature. Consequently, the potential richness of people's accounts may be missed. Data from a study which explored the nature of hospice work and nurses' experiences of professional and personal bereavements are used to illustrate the different understanding which an exploration of metaphor can bring to research. Meanings of metaphor and its role in language are initially presented before drawing on data concerned with the emotional aspects of hospice work. Root metaphors of emotion are identified and examples from nurses' accounts indicate how nurses draw on these metaphors to articulate their experiences. The strategies nurses employ to continue working within the hospice culture are identified both practically in their work and metaphorically in the language they use.

The Self in Minority–Majority Contexts

This chapter examines self-perception in minority–majority contexts. First, a self-aspect model of self-interpretation is outlined from which the distinction between the individual self and the collective self is derived. Next, the results from a series of experiments are discussed which examine the role of the collective self in minority and majority members' self-perception. This analysis takes into account not only minority–majority contexts characterized by an asymmetry in group size, but also contexts characterized by both size and status asymmetries. In addition, the role of several other factors is examined which are likely to further qualify self-perception in minority–majority contexts (i.e., meaningfulness of the underlying social categorization, accessibility of the individual self, and awareness of common fate). The chapter closes with a synthesis based on the “place metaphor”, which helps to integrate the present work into a more comprehensive perspective on the social self.

The Vernacular Imperative: Duke Ellington's Place in the National Pantheon

A pantheon, as you probably already know even if you don't remember your Elementary Latin because you never studied any to begin with, is a sacred place dedicated to all of the gods, whether of a tribal community, a city-state, or an empire of one sort or another. The original of such consecrated places was a domed circular temple created in honor of all the gods of ancient Rome by the Emperor Hadrian, and the idea has long since been adopted and adapted and institutionalized for secular purposes. Indeed, much goes to show that pantheons are now used for the express purpose of giving a sacred dimension to the secular. Thus public buildings commemorating and dedicated to the great citizens of a nation are now also regarded as pantheons. Such buildings may or may not contain tombs, statues, and various other memorabilia. In all events, there is also a world famous public edifice in Paris which honors the most outstanding rulers and citizens of France that is known as the Pantheon, Pantheon Francais. Sometimes, as common usage makes clear enough, a pantheon is not a natural temple of any sort but rather a metaphorical place. In this sense, it refers to all of the gods, heroes, and outstanding champions and achievers of a particular people or nation (or even an organization or line of endeavor) taken collectively as if existing somewhere in an imaginary place, say not unlike Olympus, if you will, which was not so much a mountain as it was a metaphor. As for the gods themselves of pre-Roman-Greek antiquity, certainly it was not their physical presence but their spiritual presence (always in the disguise of a human being) that counted. In one sense, the National Museum of American History (and also the Smithsonian Institution as a whole) is a temple. In effect, it enshrines and deifies and even idolatrizes human beings. At the same time, it is nothing if not a secular place, obviously concerned to a very great extent with the nuts and bolts of works and days in factories, fields, and offices, with weather vanes and windmills and so to airfoils and beyond. To many Americans, the very word Smithsonian is synonymous with the natural history of U.S. science, technology, and industry. And yet, as a repository of indigenous and vernacular artifacts and memorabilia, the Smithsonian also serves, intentionally or not, the very express purpose of pro-

Back to the garden: Therapeutic place metaphor infield of dreams

Field of Dreams provides “cultural therapy” for individuals concerned about the ongoing transformation from the industrial age to the technological age. The therapy, the creation of a place metaphor similar to the Garden of Eden, illuminates the benefits of self‐sacrifice and producerism valued by American culture prior to the industrial age. By sacrificing for others, the film suggests, individuals can transcend time and find their home on earth. The implications of this therapy, culturally and theoretically, suggest that place metaphors are perhaps the best symbolic approach to coping with cultural transformations.

Lost and found in America: The function of place metaphor insports illustrated

The writing in Sports Illustrated locates sport in the metaphorical, American version of the Elysian Fields. Because the metaphor is of a place rather than a concept, a number of different symbolic forms interact within the confines of Sports Illustrated’s field. For instance, the place metaphor itself is constructed through the collision of American realities and Elysian Fields ideals. This intersection of symbolic forms produces a metaphor that Sports Illustrated's readers can use to resist American culture's machine metaphor.

The Vernacular Imperative: Duke Ellington's Place in the National Pantheon

A pantheon, as you probably already know even if you don't remember your Elementary Latin because you never studied any to begin with, is a sacred place dedicated to all of the gods, whether of a tribal community, a city-state, or an empire of one sort or another. The original of such consecrated places was a domed circular temple created in honor of all the gods of ancient Rome by the Emperor Hadrian, and the idea has long since been adopted and adapted and institutionalized for secular purposes. Indeed, much goes to show that pantheons are now used for the express purpose of giving a sacred dimension to the secular. Thus public buildings commemorating and dedicated to the great citizens of a nation are now also regarded as pantheons. Such buildings may or may not contain tombs, statues, and various other memorabilia. In all events, there is also a world famous public edifice in Paris which honors the most outstanding rulers and citizens of France that is known as the Pantheon, Pantheon Francais. Sometimes, as common usage makes clear enough, a pantheon is not a natural temple of any sort but rather a metaphorical place. In this sense, it refers to all of the gods, heroes, and outstanding champions and achievers of a particular people or nation (or even an organization or line of endeavor) taken collectively as if existing somewhere in an imaginary place, say not unlike Olympus, if you will, which was not so much a mountain as it was a metaphor. As for the gods themselves of pre-Roman-Greek antiquity, certainly it was not their physical presence but their spiritual presence (always in the disguise of a human being) that counted. In one sense, the National Museum of American History (and also the Smithsonian Institution as a whole) is a temple. In effect, it enshrines and deifies and even idolatrizes human beings. At the same time, it is nothing if not a secular place, obviously concerned to a very great extent with the nuts and bolts of works and days in factories, fields, and offices, with weather vanes and windmills and so to airfoils and beyond. To many Americans, the very word Smithsonian is synonymous with the natural history of U.S. science, technology, and industry. And yet, as a repository of indigenous and vernacular artifacts and memorabilia, the Smithsonian also serves, intentionally or not, the very express purpose of pro-

Rethinking Virtual Commodification, or The Virtual Kitchen Sink

A virtual home, rented or on one's own land, whether similar to an actual world home or some other kind of space, is not just a simulacra of the familar to make the metaphors of place manifest in a virtual world. It is not just a mirror image, but its own place, a locus of experiences that have occurred there, and are now a part of me. I still do not see the appeal of a virtual kitchen, but I have also spent enough time in Second Life now to know that people's uses of commodities are often creative and ludic, providing frames for play and interaction that stimulate the imagination in ways I could barely glimpse a year ago. Maybe that could even include the kitchen sink. The video file can only be found on the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research main website: http://jvwresearch.org.