Research Links
A New Understanding of Narrative Explanations: Gestalt Psychology in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mariana Imaz
The philosopher W. Sellars, wrote that “to the extent that a specialist is more concerned to reflect on how his work as a specialist joins up with other intellectual pursuits than in asking and answering questions within his specialty, he is said, properly, to be philosophically minded.” By this standard, philosophical work becomes fundamental in explaining the particular nature of social sciences and humanities. My project evidences this point by explaining the nature of narrative explanations through the principles of organization of Gestalt psychology. Although odd at first, this linkage between perceptual organization (Gestalt psychology) and narrative brings a completely new perspective in understanding the logical configuration of narrative explanations. If we agree that both humanities and social sciences take narrative as central in their effort to explain events, then, the interdisciplinary practice that my work entails, sheds light on the epistemological structure that both social sciences and humanities share.
Strange Bedfellows: Using Philosophy to Bridge the Divide Between the Natural and Social Sciences
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Aaron Grinter
The consensus within the scientific community is that human economic and industrial activity has caused disastrous changes to the biosphere. With the urgency of the approaching environmental catastrophe, there is a need to transform old practices and find new and innovative approaches in both the public and academic spheres. Until now, the social and natural sciences have tended to concentrate in separate silos, with limited knowledge transfer between the two. However, in order to address the broad social problems at the heart of the environmental crisis, all disciplines must unite. Ecological philosophy, the philosophy of building an environmentally sustainable society, draws upon both scientific disciplines, such as thermodynamics, systems ecology and non-linear dynamics, as well the social sciences, such as cultural studies, narrative, and history. Because this philosophy already connects these normally disparate fields, it has the potential to act as a framework for uniting other disciplines. This paper discusses the methodology of my PhD thesis, which utilises the ecological philosophical program to construct a broad approach to sustainable practices on multiple scales. Specifically, the paper explores the role of philosophy in connecting and contextualising sustainability across disciplines. Some examples from the thesis that will be explored are history, economics, and biology. It is hoped that by providing the framework to bridge disparate disciplines, future work will provide superior outcomes, as it is empowered to draw upon a greater body of research, construct more connections between social and historical contexts, and make a larger contribution to knowledge.
New Classical Research in Anthropology: Cultural Interpretations and Social Configurations in the Digital Landscape
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jacobo Córdoba Jáquez Jacobo Cordoba
As we move on to the 2020´s, by the end of this decade there will be an estimate of 34 billion mobile devices connected to the internet. This number can change radically as the digital gap between generation and accessibility transforms rapidly. Today there is a more evident phenomenon in which the number of people who know how to utilize mobile media technologies is larger than does who don’t. The integration of digital-media technologies into numerous aspects of our daily lives such as work, socialization, entertainment, health, economy, and politics has generated in a rapid pace, new and innovative cultural interpretations and social configurations of the use of these technologies. In this paper we concentrate on addressing some of the many scenarios (economic, political, scientific, entertainment, social, emotional, medical) where technology, society, and culture have had radical and significant changes and anthropology can and is being utilized to understand and analyze such changes. The challenge here is to keep up with the pace of the continuous transformations where technology and information has drawn a thin line; making it difficult to describe and analyze where technology ends and where information begins. Addressing these social, technical, cultural and technological knowledge from an anthropological methodological, theoretical and conceptual point of view can only enrich the understating of the affordances and hindrances of digital-media technology in society and culture. We strongly believe that this paper can contribute in this understating thus aligning both in a critical-analytical and empirical way.
