To scholars, the concept of innovation is intimately linked to science and industry. But this is a very recent story. Before the twentieth century, the concept was mainly used in religious and political affairs. The concept had a pejorative meaning
Representation of Innovation in Seventeenth-Century England
A View from Natural Philosophy
Benoît Godin
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 24–42
Experiments in Excreta to Energy
Sustainability Science and Bio-Necro Collaboration in Urban Ghana
Brenda Chalfin
cases like Ashaiman's ‘excreta to energy’ system, intimate bodily functions. As the renaissance of interest in energy across an amalgam of human sciences makes evident, beyond recognizing the importance of energy writ large to human technological
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 88–104
Introduction
Science/technology as politics by other means
Simone Abram
This article introduces a series of ideas about the categories of science and politics, by way of actor network theory, Gell's theories of index and agency, and governmentality studies. It explores the ways in which science has become a discursive element in contemporary government, and examines the tensions between the purifying categorizations of politics and science, and the re-embedding (or hybridizing) of science into national political discourse. What emerges is a series of practices by which science is nationalized, domesticating the ideal of a generalized science into localized political debates at both national and sub-national levels, practices which may be transformed at national boundaries. While we acknowledge that science in practice is not abstract or generalizable (since it must engage with a world which is not abstracted), it is the abstracting and purifying work attributed to science which makes it attractive as a political alibi for particular political projects. Rather than seeing science as politics by other means, perhaps we should be examining the creation of a rehybridized science-politics.
Ivan Jablonka
Translator : Nathan Bracher
In order to live and flourish, the human sciences need an entire ecosystem of universities, research centers, journals, publishers, bookstores, and readers. However, this ecosystem has been shaken by upheavals hitting universities, publishing houses
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 109–117
Believed Belief
Science/Religion versus Sukuma Magic
Koen Stroeken
Typically, magic takes no stance against the socialized beliefs that determine it, in contrast with both science and modern religion, which, in the face of doubt, assert the truth-value of their propositions against such determination. In other words, science and religion engage in 'believed belief'. Their aversion to magical belief is the one thing they can agree on. Believed beliefs produce convictions of truth sufficiently intense to base actions on, such as the killing of someone identified as a witch. Ethnography on Sukuma healing allows us to distinguish this experience of the witch from that of oracles and magical remedies. While research in terms of belief(s) tends to oppose cultures, an approach based on experiential structures links up seemingly distinct practices from different cultures, while differentiating seemingly similar practices within a culture.
Raymond Boudon
This is an essay – along with another, by Frank Pearce – on The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim (2005). The collection is heterogeneous, and good in parts. But there are also basic themes, driven by the concerns of the editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Alexander – especially with a 'cultural turn' in how Durkheim is interpreted. Accordingly, a major criticism is that Durkheim's 'culturalism' isn't a relativistic 'culturalism', but looks for universals. His work conjugates the contextual and the universal. It also conjugates the rational and the emotional, in a continuation rather than a radical break with Kant. But it is above all in a commitment to science, and to a search for explanation through intelligible connections in the underlying dynamics of social life. Accordingly, another major criticism is not only the collection's tendency to downplay reason, but a sort of black hole in which it fails to tackle Durkheim's very idea of a social science.
Exhibitions as Research
Displaying the Technologies That Make Bodies Visible
Anita Herle
Drawing on a recent exhibition, Assembling Bodies: Art, Science and Imagination, at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), this article argues that curatorial techniques, involving a sustained engagement with objects, can play a vital role in anthropological research. Processes involved in the creation and reception of the exhibition facilitated the investigation of how bodies are composed, known, and acted upon in different times, places, and disciplinary contexts. Assembling Bodies attempted to transcend the dualism of subject and object, people and things, by demonstrating how different technologies for making bodies visible bring new and oft en unexpected forms into focus. Processes of exploration and experimentation continued after the exhibition opened in the discussions and activities that the displays stimulated, and in the reflections and ideas that visitors took away.
Stephanie A. Limoncelli
science instructors have explored a variety of experiential learning approaches that stretch along a continuum from short-term assignments to long-term advocacy projects, all of which could be included under the wide umbrella of community-based learning
Natural Sciences and Social Sciences
Where Do the Twain Meet?
C. S. A. (Kris) van Koppen
Klintman, Mikael. 2017. Human Sciences and Human Interests: Integrating the Social, Economic, and Evolutionary Sciences . London: Routledge. Jetzkowitz, Jens. 2019. Co-evolution of Nature and Society: Foundations for Interdisciplinary
Racial and Social Prejudice in the Colonial Empire
Issues Raised by Miscegenation in Portugal (Late Nineteenth to Mid-Twentieth Centuries)
Patrícia Ferraz de Matos
, including racial classifications, as well as the emergence and institutionalisation of various branches of science ( Catroga 1996 ). The development of studies of colonised peoples was encouraged, and a need was felt to motivate the population of the
In Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 23–44