This article analyzes discourse, narrative, and video editing to introduce the concept of ‘historical coherence’. This concept is an expansion of Alessandro Duranti’s notion of ‘existential coherence’ – the construction of an embodied narrative connecting a candidate’s past with his or her decision to run for office – from his 2006 study of a candidate’s campaign speeches. This study examines how language and communication are linked with historical narratives through the use of multimodal stories in which US political commercials link (...) candidates’ present actions with historical events, dynamics, artifacts, and/or figures. This ‘historical coherence’ is constructed through the following strategies: constructing a narrative in which popular historical figures or archetypal figures are in agreement with the candidate; preempting charges of lack of historical coherence; and presenting historical restrictions to freedom and casting the candidate, or the candidate’s party, in general, as a preventative from future calamities and transgressions to freedom. (shrink)

Margaret Wiley, Women, Wellness, and the Media, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008, reviewed by Chris La Barbera and Melissa Meade.

The shift in focus has changed the nature of the Project in a way which we hadn't expected and didn't really notice until this revision. Back in the late 1980s, we started the project as a "work around" for a situation that we found personally frustrating. We believed that widely-held beliefs about Mead's ideas were misinterpretations. But his published statements were often difficult to obtain. It was easier for scholars to rely from the secondary literature about Mead than to consult (...) primary sources. As a result, those frustrating misinterpretations persisted. Our solution: republish as much of Mead as possible in machine-readable form to make distribution, familiarity, and study easier. When the Web was established, we abandon plans for a CD and prepared the documents for the new medium. George's Page was born. (shrink)

This book introduces social scientists to the ideas of George Herbert Mead - one of the most original yet neglected thinkers of early twentieth century sociology. Mead is an exceptional case amongst sociological classics in that, until now, there has been no comprehensive reader of his work. As the first one-volume, comprehensive edited collection of Meadâes published and unpublished writing, this book fills this gap. It is the first to critically assess all of Mead's writings and draw out the aspects (...) that are central to his system of thought. The book is divided into three parts, comprising a total of 30 chapters - a third of which are published here for the first time. G.H. Mead: A Reader provides a unique and timely contribution to the understanding of this key theorist. It is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of sociology, social psychology, philosophy of social science, social and cultural anthropology, and social and political theory. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) had a powerful influence on the development of American pragmatism in the twentieth century. He also had a strong impact on the social sciences. This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasizes the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on the assumption that (...) the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. The emergence of novelty within the perceived rational order of reality is the crux of the problem that Mead explores. The present, in his words, is "the emergent event . . . something which is more than the processes that have led up to it and which by its change, continuance, or disappearance, adds to later passages a content they would not otherwise have possessed." The present as "the seat of reality" heavily conditions our retrospective view of the past as much as it helps to shape the future. The novelty of every present experience causes us to reconstruct our preceding experiences to make sense of the past, which is naturally assumed to be the main cause of what we presently experience. Our perspective on reality is thus relative to the conditioning of each new event and it changes continuously as the effects of the present shift our view of the past and future. This emphasis on the integrative, holistic nature of reality, in which everything past, present, and future is a condition of everything else, makes Mead's philosophy highly relevant to today's scientific picture of a quantum universe, where chance and probability play a role in the emergence of reality. Also of great interest is the way in which he extends his basic analysis of temporal-spatial reality to the emergence of mind and consciousness as a natural development of the evolutionary process. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as "the most original mind in philosophy in America" of his generation. (shrink)

The construct of wellbeing has been criticised as a neoliberal construction of western individualism that ignores wider systemic issues such as inequality and anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, there have been increasing calls for a broader conceptualisation of wellbeing. Here we impose an interpretative framework on previously published literature and theory, and present a theoretical framework that brings into focus the multifaceted determinants of wellbeing and their interactions across multiple domains and levels of scale. We define wellbeing as positive psychological experience, (...) promoted by connections to self, community and environment, supported by healthy vagal function, all of which are impacted by socio-contextual factors that lie beyond the control of the individual. By emphasising the factors within and beyond the control of the individual and highlighting how vagal function both affects and are impacted by key domains, the biopsychosocial underpinnings of wellbeing are explicitly linked to a broader context that is consistent with, yet complementary to, multi-levelled ecological systems theory. Reflecting on the reciprocal relationships between multiple domains, levels of scale and related social contextual factors known to impact on wellbeing, our GENIAL framework may provide a foundation for a transdisciplinary science of wellbeing that has the potential to promote the wellbeing of individuals while also playing a key role in tackling major societal challenges. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a global threat to physical and mental health worldwide. Research has highlighted adverse impacts of COVID-19 on wellbeing but has yet to offer insights as to how wellbeing may be protected. Inspired by developments in wellbeing science and guided by our own theoretical framework, we examined the role of various potentially protective factors in a sample of 138 participants from the United Kingdom. Protective factors included physical activity, tragic optimism, gratitude, social support, and nature connectedness. (...) Initial analysis involved the application of one-sample t-tests, which confirmed that wellbeing in the current sample was significantly lower compared to previous samples. Protective factors were observed to account for up to 50% of variance in wellbeing in a hierarchical linear regression that controlled for a range of sociostructural factors including age, gender, and subjective social status, which impact on wellbeing but lie beyond individual control. Gratitude and tragic optimism emerged as significant contributors to the model. Our results identify key psychological attributes that may be harnessed through various positive psychology strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of hardship and suffering, consistent with an existential positive psychology of suffering. (shrink)

The picture which one naturally presents of the situation is that which would arise before an observer placed outside the earth, who could watch the light wave starting from the central mirror and pursuing the distant mirror, catching up with it at some distance beyond the point at which it was when the light wave started. In this case the observer is able to locate the points at which the parts of the apparatus were at different moments and to measure (...) the distances between. We could simulate this situation on the earth by assuming an enclosed square car, from some point in which two balls were shot out in directions at right angles to each other to the walls of the car, bounding back to the point at which they started. We will assume that the balls move with uniform velocity going and coming, and we will assume that the car is moving. An observer outside the car who marked the point on the rail directly over the starting point and the points reached by the balls when they struck the sides of the car, and then measured the distances which the balls travelled, would find that the ball which travelled with the car covered a greater distance than that traversed by the ball which went at right angles to the direction of the train, and yet the balls would return to the starting point at the same moment, provided they travelled over both their paths at the same velocity during their entire trajects, i.e., the same velocity measured within the car. The observer would be at no difficulty to explain this, for he would see that the velocity in the direction of its motion of the car had to be added to that of balls within the car. That is not the case of the light wave. The velocity of a moving shining body is not added to that of the light wave. The wave motion being set up in ether travels with its own uniform velocity of approximately 300,000 kilometers a second. The light waves then, from the standpoint of the observer outside the earth, traverse through the stagnant ether different distances at a uniform velocity and yet the ether waves exhibit on their return none of the evidence which they should exhibit in the interferometer. (shrink)

James Edward Meade was a renowned British economist who, alongside Bertil Ohlin, was joint winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Economics. Originally published in 1958, this book contains the transcription of Meade's inaugural lecture as Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, delivered during the same year. Concise and highly readable, it will be of value to anyone with an interest in economic history, theories regarding inflation, and macroeconomic theory in general.

Preface, by Margaret Mead -- Introduction, by Margaret Mead -- The Arapesh of New Guinea, by Margaret Mead -- The Eskimo of Greenland, by Jeannette Mirsky -- The Ojibwa of Canada, by Ruth Landes -- The Bachiga of East Africa, by May M. Edel -- The Ifugao of the Philippine Islands, by I. Goldman -- The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island, by I. Goldman -- The Manus of the Admiralty Islands, by Margaret Mead -- The Iroquois, by B. Quain -- The (...) Samoans, by Margaret Mead -- The Zuni of New Mexico, by I. Goldman -- The Bathonga of South Africa, by I. Goldman -- The Dakota, by Jeannette Mirsky -- The Maori of New Zealand, by B. Mishkin -- Interpretative statement, by Margaret Mead. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead, one of America’s most important and influential philosophers, a founder of pragmatism, social psychology, and symbolic interactionism, was also a keen observer of American culture and early modernism. In the period from the 1870s to 1895, Henry Northrup Castle maintained a correspondence with family members and with Mead—his best friend at Oberlin College and brother-in-law—that reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought in that complex era. Close friends of John Dewey, Jane (...) Addams, and other leading Chicago Progressives, the author of these often intimate letters comments frankly on pivotal events affecting higher education, developments at Oberlin College, Hawaii, progressivism, and the general angst that many young intellectuals were experiencing in early modern America. The letters, drawn from the Mead-Castle collection at the University of Chicago, were collected and edited by Mead after the tragic death of Henry Castle in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Working with his wife Helen Castle, he privately published fifty copies of the letters to record an important relationship and as an intellectual history of two progressive thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century. American historians, such as Robert Crunden and Gary Cook, have noted the importance of the letters to historians of the late nineteenth century. The letters are made available here using the basic Mead text of 1902. Additional insights into the connection between Mead, John Dewey, Henry and Harriet Castle, and Hawaii’s progressive kindergarten system are provided by the foundation’s executive director Alfred L. Castle. Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, has added additional comments on the importance of the letters to understanding the intellectual relationship that flourished at Oberlin College. Published with the support of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation. (shrink)

This is intended as an introductory statement to the explorations undertaken in the essays that follow. The authors of these essays attempt to introduce the reader to some of the insights of Michael Polanyi and their implications for the reader who wishes to come to a greater understanding of modern technological society, which — for better or worse — has come to define his very existence. Arguably, no twentieth-century thinker has probed more deeply than Polanyi into the dynamics of scientific (...) discovery or demonstrated more courage in his willingness to think outside the box of ruling orthodoxies and, consequently, come up with more profound insights and radically new ways of understanding the processes of scientific inquiry, their technological implications, and the sometimes fateful, but potentially fruitful, relationships that exist among science, technology, and society. Each of the following nine authors, grounded in different fields of study and research, but also in a common appreciation of Polanyi’s contributions, offers valuable insights into this multi-faceted subject. (shrink)

This three-case series examines the dilemma that faced the Japanese company Snow Brand Milk Products (SBM) as it confronted the task of rebuilding and revitalization after a series of scandals, many self-induced, had threatened the company’s future. The A case begins in spring 2002 when leading consumer activist Nobuko Hiwasa was invited to join Snow Brand’s board of directors. The CEO wanted her to assist in SBM’s revitalization efforts, which were beingimplemented in the wake of two recent scandals—contaminated milk and (...) beef mislabeling—that had almost brought down the venerable company. Hiwasa was ambivalent about taking on this Herculean task. Was the company sincere in wanting to reform and revitalize? Would the board take her seriously? Was her presence to be mere publicity-driven window dressing? How would fellow consumer advocates view her if she accepted the position? This case details the history of Snow Brand Milk Products and the missteps and scandals that plagued it in the 1990s and early part of the decade that followed, and includes Hiwasa’s decision-making process as she considers whether to join the board of a company that has been badly tainted by scandal. (shrink)

Social theorists in recent years have concerned themselves with the matter of the kind and intensity of people’s everyday reflective capacities. In this respect, Bourdieu has mostly been found wanting. This article seeks to counter this sentiment with recourse to an ‘anti-mechanistic’ reading of Bourdieu’s theory of practice. It begins by arguing that in imposing a strict delineation between consciousness and habitus, Bourdieu and his critics alike at times unwittingly conflate habitus and mechanistic habit, at once vaunting conscious deliberation and (...) neglecting the non-habitual acts that habitus makes possible. Next it turns to the treatment, within the mechanistic reading, of the notion of the ‘social world’. The argument is that in this reading the social world is reified and rendered the mere background or setting for social practices rather than the product of those practices. Without recognition of this latter quality, the social world becomes hypostatized and exists outside of time. The secondary aim, then, is to argue for a thoroughgoing temporal relation to social reality in Bourdieu’s theory. (shrink)

The B case jumps ahead several years and outlines the turnaround efforts SBM undertook to address its grave missteps: shifting to a consumer-oriented, integrity-focused management style; providing greater transparency and communication; and establishing a corporate ethics committee and a Snow Brands Code of Conduct. In June 2002, after much consideration and reflection on Snow Brand’s issues (as outlined in the A case), Hiwasa joined its new board as its sole outside director, serving as the impetus for the changes the company (...) made. Her appointment indicated SBM was indeed serious about reform and revitalization. (shrink)

G. H. Mead left the following heretofore unpublished material in his desk at the University of Chicago, and it was first discovered by Charles W. Morris in the Summer of 1931. Mr. Morris, who was one of Mead's students in the 1920's, had been teaching at Rice University, but was appointed as a full-time staff member in the department of philosophy at Chicago in 1931; he was given the same office that Mead had occupied for many years prior to his (...) death in April of that year. Due to severely strained relations between the then newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and the regular staff members in the philosophy department, several of the latter left Chicago and were employed elsewhere in the fall of 1931. Consequently it seemed appropriate that Mr. Morris and some of Mead's other students should deal with the many unpublished typewritten conjectures that Mead left in his office. The entire book, The Philosophy of the Act, is a collection of items found by Mr. Morris, and the following material is from the same source. It came to my hands twenty-seven years ago because I was one of the collaborators in editing The Philosophy of the Act. If there is a slight over-lapping of the following material and subjects discussed in The Philosophy of the Act, it is for the sake of continuity and clarity. I have corrected the material for spelling and punctuation, and I have tried to give it a systematic arrangement. (shrink)

The only collection of Mead's writings published during his lifetime, these essays have heretofore been virtually inaccessible. Reck has collected twenty-five essays representing the full range and depth of Mead's thought. This penetrating volume will be of interest to those in philosophy, sociology, and social psychology. "The editor's well-organized introduction supplies an excellent outline of this system in its development. In view of the scattered sources from which these writings are gathered, it is a great service that this volume renders (...) not only to students of Mead, but to historians."--H. W. Schneider, Journal of the History of Philosophy. (shrink)

For John Kinsella place and space, with all their historical, cultural, political, geographical, epistemic and environmental dimensions, are explicitly constitutive of his writing. But the ruling imaginary of this writing is “displacement,” the problems and paradoxes of home, country, travel, knowledge, ecology, activism that characterise his critical and poetic engagements. From multiple angles Kinsella’s writing anatomises the unsettledness of Australian history and consciousness, but it also conceives of these national dimensions in inter- and transnational terms. Kinsella is always concerned to (...) show place, belonging and “international regionalism” alive in negotiations with the writing of any location, of all social and biological environments. Further his work reflects an activist politics of knowledge, with its recognition that a broad knowledge of locality needs to critique “Place” studies and discourses from privileged institutions of learning that fail to acknowledge the place-knowledge of communities that do not have access to means of articulating what makes their “local” knowledge relevant, dynamic and essential to themselves as well as to the wider world. At the same time, this critical discourse is shadowed by the affective realities of displacement, of never being able to be at home. (shrink)

Histories of Japanese science have been integral in affirming the Meiji Restoration of 1868 as the starting point of modern Japan. Vernacular genres, characterized as “premodern,” have therefore largely been overlooked by historians of science, regardless of when they were published. Paradoxically, this has resulted in the marginalization of the very works through which most people encountered science. This article addresses this oversight and its historiographical ramifications by focusing on kyūri books – popular works of science – published in the (...) years following the Restoration, when there was unprecedented public interest in science. It asks, what if we take these kyūri books on their own terms as science books, just as those of the time saw them? This article explores three genres of kyūri books, namely fictionalized formats, such as the epic tale ( monogatari); epistolary guides; and genres, such as the sutra, that drew on religious textual practices. It argues that these literary genres provided interpretive frameworks that shaped readers’ encounters with “modern” science. This exploration underscores the importance of engaging with vernacular genres to understand the emergence of science as a global category in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

In the C case, the turnaround at SBM has been effected. Most significant is the company’s realization that it exists to serve the consumer and, through that service, the broader society. This brief case outlines the successes Hiwasa pushed SBM management to accomplish and introduces the challenges the company faced in 2009: primarily, continuing to build its corporate social responsibility approach and addressing environmental and social issues.

The experience of a teacher educator in England : values-based professional knowledge at stake -- International perspectives on values and professional knowledge in teacher education -- Applied theoretical principles for developing the relationship between trainee teachers' values and their professional knowledge -- The impact of university and school-based training contexts on the development of values-based professional knowledge -- The challenge of a values-based professional knowledge to current teacher education practice.