Social Embodiment Research Articles

POVERTY POISONS THE BRAIN

The concept of “poverty poisons the brain” has become a major area of research in neuroscience and the health sciences, and an increasingly utilized metaphor to argue for the importance of addressing inequality and poverty in the United States. This article systematically presents the research behind poverty poisons the brain, which includes the impact of socioeconomic status on human development, the developmental models used to understand how poverty impacts children, and the proximate social factors and brain mechanisms that represent the core causal model behind this research. This overview examines the uses of this research for neuroanthropology, highlighting the impact of inequality and how experience becomes embodied. Nevertheless, a simplistic cause–effect approach and the reduction of the social to the biological often hamper this type of research. A critical approach to how poverty poisons the brain provides the basis for making the shift to a more robust neuroanthropological approach to poverty. Neuroanthropology can utilize social embodiment, the dynamics of stress, and the production of inequality to transform research on poverty and children, and to make policy recommendations, do applied research, and craft and test interventions to deal with the pernicious impact of poverty.

Naming bodies at work: considering the gendered and emotional dimensions of nicknaming

This paper applies historical and social-constructionist perspectives and methods to examine nicknaming processes in the workplace. By highlighting how the aesthetic and symbolic aspects of derogatory nicknames create links between the physical, sentient and social body/ies, it demonstrates the way certain patterns of talk provide a medium for emotional actions, interactions and reactions, which have important implications for the regulation of gendered identities, expectations and relations. It is argued that attention to the corporeal, gendered and symbolic nature of nicknaming offers insights into social embodiment in specific emotional arenas.

Cavendish's Body of Knowledge

Cavendish's contradictory natural philosophy and her complex multiplication of selves has been recognised as an epistemological critique of the New Science's claim to objective knowledge of nature. Using Latour's holistic approach, we will investigate in what way Cavendish's unstable representation of the body of knowledge leads to a fragmented representation of the body in Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy and Grounds of Natural Philosophy. This, in turn, underpins her concept of the self as a physical and as an authorial entity. The slipperiness of Cavendish's epistemology, which is reflected in her contradictory attitude towards empiricism and women, becomes a unifying force in her performance. This performance includes an authorial self-fashioning and a physical and social embodiment of her critique in reaction to, and partly incorporating, scientific notions of the body, which is necessarily a cultural representation in itself. Across the boundaries of these categories, Cavendish emphasised the unequivocal bond between the author and her work.

Southern Bodies and Disability: re-thinking concepts

Re-making disability studies from the global South requires a major reconsideration of concepts. Southern perspectives are emerging across the social sciences and humanities, and are now an important resource for disability studies. Impairment has to be understood in the context of the violence of colonisation and neocolonial power. The global dynamics of capitalist accumulation, and of hierarchical gender relations, change the material character and meaning of disability. Global society has to be understood as embodied, and social embodiment as a reality-forming (ontoformative) process, not a system-maintaining one. The intellectual, cultural and social resources of colonised and postcolonial societies provide vital resources for disability politics.

Wat op dees (van) aarde beteken die einde van tradisionele metafisiese taal oor God? In gesprek met die Nuwe-Testamentikus Andries Gideon van Aarde oor sy verstaan van ‘n postsekulêre spiritualiteit

What does the end of traditional metaphysical language about God mean? In conversation with New Testament scholar Andries Gideon van Aarde on his understanding of a postsecular spiritualitySouth African New Testament scholar Van Aarde’s explorative search for a new direction in theological reflection is explicated in this article with reference to his discussion of Peter Berger and Charles Taylor’s contemporary contributions, which Van Aarde takes as vantage point to articulate the meaning of his ‘courage to be a religious person today’. The articulation of his ‘courage’ to pursue a post-theistic understanding of a contemporary Christian religiosity (read: spirituality) that is non-fundamentalistic, non-populist and post-secular is discussed. At the same time, the basic tenets of his explorations are indicated, being constituted – negatively – by a de-centering of the power of institutional religion and, positively, by the enchantment of a Biblical hermeneutics that does not emphasise a proposition-like and moral code-like reading strategy. Finally, his ‘new direction’, which finds expression in the articulation of a ‘spirituality of living faith’, is scrutinised. It exposes the shortcomings in his (individualistic) exposition within the new correlation of modernisation and pluralism, causing it subsequently to bypass the necessary contemporary outcome in social embodiment.

Why immortality alone will not get me to the afterlife

Recent research in the cognitive science of religion suggests that humans intuitively believe that others survive death. In response to this finding, three cognitive theories have been offered to explain this: the simulation constraint theory (Bering, 2002); the imaginative obstacle theory (Nichols, 2007); and terror management theory (Pyszczynski, Rothschild, & Abdollahi, 2008). First, I provide a critical analysis of each of these theories. Second, I argue that these theories, while perhaps explaining why one would believe in his own personal immortality, leave an explanatory gap in that they do not explain why one would intuitively attribute survival of death to others. To fill in the gap, I offer a cognitive theory based on offline social reasoning and social embodiment which provides for the belief in an eternal social realm in which the deceased survive—the afterlife.

New directions, new questions? Social theory, education and embodiment

This paper introduces the contents of the special issue whose authors, in our view, together demonstrate the need for transdisciplinary study of body pedagogies focussed on embodiment, emplacement, enactment and subjectivity. We celebrate theoretical and methodological diversity in the social sciences while calling for border crossings between the disciplines and perspectives of the social and bio-physical sciences in the interest of better understanding how social and cultural reproduction occurs both within schools and beyond them.

Urban Morality and the Great City in the Book of Jonah

This paper reads the book of Jonah through the lens of moral geography. It focuses on the topic of the Great City, treating Nineveh as a character within the text, seeking to explore the question as to whether there is an urban morality which can be identified by reading the text of Jonah alongside key works from the field of cultural geography. In particular the paper discusses the parallelism between human and social embodiment as channels for exploring urban identity. In this study urban evil takes its place within a wider concept of city morality when it is measured by the tension between city-state as a powerful political force and the vulnerability and finitude of urban populations.

BEYOND SECULARISM? TOWARDS A POST‐SECULAR POLITICAL THEOLOGY

AbstractIn this article I analyse some of the reasons for a recent, resurgent interest in religion and theology by political philosophers and relate this interest to an inherent instability in modernity itself. In the first part I describe the landscape of current political philosophy with a particular emphasis on radical philosophers. In the second part I describe how the liberal distinction between religion and politics generates a theological instability due to the effective disappearance of the social embodiment of religion within modernity. In the third part I draw some conclusions regarding the challenges the new post‐secular condition presents to theology.

Social Contributions through Vihara Movement/Activity(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

Social Contributions through Vihara Movement/Activity(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

A Network Started by a "Development Monk" : The Case of Wat Pa (Forest Temple) Sukato in Thailand(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

A Network Started by a "Development Monk" : The Case of Wat Pa (Forest Temple) Sukato in Thailand(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

Summary of Panel Presentations(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

Summary of Panel Presentations(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

The Social Contribution of Contemporary Buddhist Monks in Japan(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

The Social Contribution of Contemporary Buddhist Monks in Japan(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

Buddhist Monks and Development : A Case Study of "Development Monks" in Northeast Thailand(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

Buddhist Monks and Development : A Case Study of "Development Monks" in Northeast Thailand(Buddhist Agent and Its Social Embodiment: Case Studies of Buddhist Social Contribution in Thailand and Japan,Panels,THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE JAPANESE ASSOCIATION FOR RELIGIOUS STUDIES)

Intrapersonal Communicology: Reflection, Reflexivity, and Relational Consciousness in Embodied Subjectivity

Ruesch and Bateson operationalize the intrapersonal level as a “one-person communication system” and describe the function of the communicative agent as a “self-observer.” In this article, I seek to establish a theory of intrapersonal communicology. My analysis follows a phenomenological and psychoanalytic consideration of G. H. Mead's concept of the “I” and “me.” In doing so, I articulate the ground of intrapersonal communicative experience as the phenomenological embodiment of social and cultural relations. We begin our psychological development in group relations (i.e., in the order of the family) and from the effects of this experience on our capacities for trust, autonomy, and initiative, we can begin to entail our social embodiment in a recognizable identity for the experience and articulation of our adult agency. My argument is that communicative embodiment and intersubjective social experience are simultaneous events.

Social Embodiment of Technical Devices: Eyeglasses Over the Centuries and According to their Uses

This article is an attempt to prepare the ground for the analysis and theorization of the connection between the body and technical devices emerging from miniaturized wearable technologies. The research object is a secular and common “body object,” namely, eyeglasses. The article reviews the social history of this artifact and analyzes its patterns of use, showing how the distributed sociotechnical networks of action containing these simple optical systems are constantly deconfigured and reconfigured. In other words, the device is not simply subject to physical incorporation. The unstable balance between the artifact's projection onto the surrounding space and its attachment to the physical body is analyzed through the heterogeneousness of bodies coming into play as the device is socially embodied. As the corporal frame and physical, distributed, and social bodies overlap, the notion of “bodies object” emerges. This covers the artifact-related and social environment, the plural nature of which could be of great value to research and development teams, helping them to diversify their representations of the user, as an agent acting in a variety of networks with a variety of bodies.

High in the hierarchy: How vertical location and judgments of leaders’ power are interrelated

Leadership implies power. We argue, from a social embodiment perspective, that thinking about power involves mental simulation of vertical location. Three studies tested whether judgments of leaders’ power and information on a vertical location are interrelated. In Studies 1a–1c, participants judged a leader’s power after being presented with, among other information, an organization chart containing either a long or a short vertical line. A longer vertical line increased judged power. Study 2 showed that this effect persists when longer (vs. shorter) vertical lines are presented in an independent priming task and not in an organization chart, and that horizontal lines do not have the same effect. Finally, Studies 3a and 3b showed the reverse causal effect: information about a leader’s power influenced participants’ vertical positioning of a leader’s box in an organization chart and of a leader picture into a team picture. Implications for leadership communication are discussed.

The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death (review)

Reviewed by: The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death Jeffrey Atteberry Abdul R. JanMohamed . The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. 327 pp. Via a sustained engagement with the entire arc of Richard Wright's career as a writer of narrative prose, Abdul JanMohamed's The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright's Archaeology of Death implicitly retrieves the moment when Western political philosophy articulates the ideological grounds for slavery and, through its critical reappraisal, rigorously works through "the agency of death," thus clearing the way for—as the title of the book's conclusion declares—"renegotiating the death contract." Although JanMohamed never points to John Locke as an explicit reference point, preferring instead to stick closer to Hegel and Heidegger, his project clearly situates itself on theoretical terrain that was laid out by Locke in his 1690 Second Treatise. Regardless [End Page 731] of where one stands on the question of Locke's philosophical position on actually existing slavery, his phenomenologically accurate description of slavery as a coercive institution sketches the basic structural outlines for a "death contract" theory of slavery that would rest upon the passive consent of the enslaved. In Book IV, Locke writes, Indeed having, by his fault, forfeited his own Life, by some Act that deserves Death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his Power) delay to take it, and make use of his to his own Service, and he does him no injury by it. For, whenever he finds the hardship of his Slavery out-weigh the value of his Life, 'tis in his Power, by resisting the Will of his Master, to draw on himself the Death he desires. (284) It is precisely this structure of slavery as a living under a conditionally commuted death sentence that JanMohamed will take up as the necessary precondition for both slave and Jim Crow societies. Of course, he does so with a difference, however; for whereas Locke claims that "no injury" is suffered by the slave under these conditions, JanMohamed's reading of Wright rigorously demonstrates how these conditions in their social embodiment violently produce a death-bound-subject. For such a subject, JanMohamed argues, a certain desire for death is the ineluctable result of the psychopolitical process of the subject's formation precisely because such a subject "can gain access to the potentiality of his life only via his willingness to risk the actualization of his death" (283). The central conceit of The Death-Bound-Subject is that with each successive work of fiction and autobiography Richard Wright excavates another layer in the psyche of a subject forged through a dialectic of death. JanMohamed plots the dynamics of this dialectic through a triad of terms: actual-death, social-death, and symbolic-death. In short, the ever-present threat of actual-death for both the slave and the black American in the Jim Crow South induces a terrorizing fear that results in a social-death, a condition in which the subject is denied any sociopolitical standing, including protection from the arbitrary execution of the suspended death sentence. By contrast, through confronting this fear and wielding the threat of actual-death on its own terms, the death-bound-subject undergoes a symbolic-death, which is a dialectical negation of social-death that confers a measure of agency that is otherwise foreclosed. The Hegelian resonances of this dialectic are duly noted, but JanMohamed argues that Wright's dialectic of death, with its emphasis on symbolic-death as a political and existential moment of sublation, constitutes a significant revision of Hegel's "uncritical valorization of 'work' as the singular avenue through which the slave can supposedly find his salvation" (13). [End Page 732] The unfolding of Wright's dialectic takes place in stages over the course of his career, and JanMohamed's book traces its coming to consciousness through a series of chapters, each devoted to an individual work and arranged in chronological order. According to JanMohamed, the dialectic initially comes into view over the course of Uncle Tom's Children, but the critical moment of symbolic-death begins to receive focused examination...

Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion

Findings in the social psychology literatures on attitudes, social perception, and emotion demonstrate that social information processing involves embodiment, where embodiment refers both to actual bodily states and to simulations of experience in the brain's modality-specific systems for perception, action, and introspection. We show that embodiment underlies social information processing when the perceiver interacts with actual social objects (online cognition) and when the perceiver represents social objects in their absence (offline cognition). Although many empirical demonstrations of social embodiment exist, no particularly compelling account of them has been offered. We propose that theories of embodied cognition, such as the Perceptual Symbol Systems (PSS) account (Barsalou, 1999), explain and integrate these findings, and that they also suggest exciting new directions for research. We compare the PSS account to a variety of related proposals and show how it addresses criticisms that have previously posed problems for the general embodiment approach.

Body Metamorphosis and Animality: Volatile Bodies and Boulder Artworks from Lepenski Vir

This article discusses the notion of body metamorphosis as a theory of phenomenal change by examining carved representational and ‘aniconic’ boulders from Lepenski Vir and other Meso-Neolithic sites in the Danube Gorges. The voluminous size of the boulders at Lepenski Vir, the way in which they occupy the three-dimensional space within buildings and around hearths, and the carvings over their surfaces suggest that they were understood as volatile bodies, undergoing continuous metamorphoses. The relationship between the seasonal recurrence of the Danube's migratory fish and these boulders is explored through the notion of animality. These boulders indicate prescribed stages of life-cycle metamorphosis that affected inextricably-linked realms of human and animal worlds. Prescribed stages of social embodiment at Lepenski Vir are discerned by looking at the archaeological context of representational boulders that sometimes directly commemorate particular deceased individuals. The possibility that boulder artworks acted as sacred heirlooms of particular buildings is connected to the social efficacy they might have acquired.