Download or read book Paleolithic Politics written by Barry Cooper and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using his background in political theory and philosophical anthropology, Barry Cooper is the first political scientist to propose new interpretations of some of the most famous extant Paleolithic art and artifacts in Paleolithic Politics. This book is inspired by Eric Voegelin, one of the major political scientists of the last century, who developed an interest in the very early symbolism associated with the caves and rock shelters of the Upper Paleolithic, but never finished his analysis. Cooper, who has written extensively on Voegelin’s theories, takes up the enterprise of applying Voegelin’s approach to an analysis of portable and cave art. He specifically applies Voegelin’s philosophy of consciousness, his concept of the compactness and differentiation of consciousness, his argument regarding the experience and symbolizations of reality, and his notion of the primary experience of the cosmos to images previously regarded as pedestrian. Cooper demonstrates the political significance of the earliest expressions of human existence and is among the first to argue that political life began not with the Greeks, but 25,000 years before them. Archaeologists, prehistorians, and political scientists will all benefit from this original and provocative work.

Download or read book Dynamics Of The Korean State From The Paleolithic Age To Candlelight Democracy written by Robert E Bedeski and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One Korea or two?The persistence of North and South Korea since 1948 has been a source of one war and fears of new wars. Although they share centuries of common culture, society and politics, the two nations differ on fundamentals today: capitalist democracy in the south and totalitarian communism in the north. Dynamics of the Korean State provides a unique overview of how humans treasure their individual lives and how these dynamics intertwine with Korean history and state evolution.The book examines the development of the Korean state from ancient times and sees its roots in the Stone Age struggle for survival. The persistent theme has been to Prolong Life — Postpone Death. Hence, the origins of every state can be found in man's Will-to-Live, and this is demonstrated in the Will/action framework offered by the author. Human Will, not material determinism or divine plan, creates the state. This primary Will generates five other Wills, which motivate actions to culminate in the state and give it a fluidity over time. The six Wills/actions are as follows: Will-to-Live/production; Will-to-Freedom/innovation; Will-to-Power/organization; Will-to-Comply/enforcement; Will-to-Transcend/political vision & religion; and Will-to-Redirect/reform, usurpation, rebellion, revolution. These in combination influence and partially determine state configuration and fluidity, creating order, disorder, war, prosperity, and poverty along the way. This book reveals the undercurrents of Korean society, politics and history from a fresh perspective. Neither pure history nor descriptive politics, it is a significant contribution to a philosophical anthropology paradigm.

Download or read book Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy written by Karl Widerquist and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How modern philosophers use and perpetuate myths about prehistoryThe state of nature, the origin of property, the origin of government, the primordial nature of inequality and war why do political philosophers talk so much about the Stone Age? And are they talking about a Stone Age that really happened, or is it just a convenient thought experiment to illustrate their points?Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall take a philosophical look at the origin of civilisation, examining political theories to show how claims about prehistory are used. Drawing on the best available evidence from archaeology and anthropology, they show that much of what we think we know about human origins comes from philosophers imagination, not scientific investigation.Key FeaturesShows how modern political theories employ ambiguous factual claims about prehistoryBrings archaeological and anthropological evidence to bear on those claimsTells the story of human origins in a way that reveals many commonly held misconceptions

Download or read book Becoming Human Amid Diversions written by Andreas Ervik and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a philosophy of the predominant yet obtrusive aspects of digital culture, arguing that what seems like insignificant distractions of digital technology ​- such as video games, mindless browsing, cute animal imagery, political memes, and trolling - are actually keyed into fundamental aspects of evolution. These elements are commonly framed as distractions in an economy of attention and this book approaches them with the prospect of understanding their attraction, from the starting point of diversions. Diversions designate not simply shifting states of attention but characterize the direction of any system on a different course, a theoretical perspective which makes it possible to investigate distractions as not only by-products of contemporary media and human attention. The perspective shifts from distractions as the unwanted and inconsequential to considering instead the function of diversions in the process of evolutionary development. Grounded in media theory but drawing from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives in biology, philosophy, and systems theory, this book provocatively theorizes the process of diversions – of the playful, stupid, cute, and funny – as significant for the evolution of a range of organisms.

Download or read book Eric Voegelin s Political Readings written by Bernat Torres and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-22 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eric Voegelin’s Political Readings fills a critical void by providing an original approach to studying the work of Eric Voegelin, one of the major political philosophers of the twenty-first century. Across six chapters, experts guide the reader from classical to modern times presenting six political philosophers who have had an impact on the life and philosophical production of Eric Voegelin. Philosophers examined include Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Hobbes, Weber and Kelsen. Through this innovative structure, the chapters collectively illustrate how Voegelin was an exceptional thinker through his engagement with political philosophers both modern and antique. The plurality of unique, academic perspectives and voices enriches our understanding of Voegelin’s own thought while also encouraging a re-think of ancient and modern thinkers, and the transformation and continuity between these. Designed for students and scholars alike, Eric Voegelin’s Political Readings will appeal to all those with an interest in Voegelin as well as readers familiar with classical and modern political philosophers.

Download or read book Reading the Body written by Alison E. Rautman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical and anthropological archaeologists share many of the same interests and confront many of the same problems studying extinct cultures. Despite differences in background and training, scholars in these disciplines are all engaged in analyzing and interpreting the archaeological record. Traditionally, however, there have been few opportunities for classical archaeologists and anthropologists to discuss mutually beneficial perspectives in method and theory. The study of gender and its representations affords an opportunity for archaeologists and anthropologists to share information and increase our understanding of how people lived in the past. Reading the Body contains current anthropological and archaeological research about the body and the archaeological record-both physical remains and artistic representations-from sites all over the world ranging in time from the European Upper Paleolithic to the Pueblo societies of the recent past. Essay topics include the reconstruction of the lives of Etruscan women from skeletal remains, gender symbolism in Inuit burials, the erotic clothing of Crete's Minoan culture, and gender identities in Maya ceramic paintings.

Download or read book Investor Politics written by John Hood and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Represents an attempt to sketch out, across a host of policy topics, a realistic strategy for shrinking the welfare state. This book looks backward to human history and even to prehistory to examine the origins of capital formation.

Download or read book Hierarchy in the Forest written by Christopher BOEHM and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong. The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. Hierarchy in the Forest traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at the loose group structures of hunter-gatherers, then at tribal segmentation, and finally at present-day governments to see how these conflicting tendencies are reflected. Hierarchy in the Forest claims new territory for biological anthropology and evolutionary biology by extending the domain of these sciences into a crucial aspect of human political and social behavior. This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism. Table of Contents: The Question of Egalitarian Society Hierarchy and Equality Putting Down Aggressors Equality and Its Causes A Wider View of Egalitarianism The Hominoid Political Spectrum Ancestral Politics The Evolution of Egalitarian Society Paleolithic Politics and Natural Selection Ambivalence and Compromise in Human Nature References Index Reviews of this book: This well-written book, geared toward an audience with background in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences but accessible to a broad readership, raises two general questions: 'What is an egalitarian society?' and 'How have these societies evolved?'...[Christopher Boehm] takes the reader on a journey from the Arctic to the Americas, from Australia to Africa, in search of hunter-gatherer and tribal societies that emanate the egalitarian ethos--one that promotes generosity, altruism and sharing but forbids upstartism, aggression and egoism. Throughout this journey, Boehm tantalizes the reader with vivid anthropological accounts of ridicule, criticism, ostracism and even execution--prevalent tactics used by subordinates in egalitarian societies to level the social playing field...Hierarchy in the Forest is an interesting and thought-provoking book that is surely an important contribution to perspectives on human sociality and politics. --Ryan Earley, American Scientist Reviews of this book: Combing an exhaustive ethnographic survey of human societies from groups of hunter-gatherers to contemporary residents of the Balkans with a detailed analysis of the behavioral attributes of non-human primates (chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos), Boehm focuses on whether humans are hierarchical or egalitarian by nature...[Boehm's hypotheses] are invariably intriguing and well documented...He raises topics of wide interest and his book should get attention. --Publishers Weekly Boehm has been the first to look at egalitarianism with a cold, unromantic eye. He sees it as a victory over hierarchical tendencies, which are equally marked in our species. I would predict that his insightful examination will reverberate within anthropology and the social sciences as well as among biologists interested in the evolution of social systems. --Frans de Waal, Emory University Hierarchy in the Forest is an original and stimulating contribution to thinking about the origins of egalitarianism. I personally find Boehm's ideas convincing, but whether one agrees with him or not, he has formulated his hypotheses in such a way that this book is likely to set the terms of the discussion for the forseeable future. --Barbara Smuts, University of Michigan The most unique and interesting feature of this clear, well written book is the way Boehm links the study of nonhuman primates (particularly chimpanzees) to traditional concepts of political anthropology. As a political scientist, I was intrigued by Boehm's suggestion that democracy, both ancient and modern, could be understood as the expression of the same natural dispositions that support the egalitarianism of nomadic bands and sedentary tribes. I expect that many scholars in biology, anthropology, and the social sciences would learn from this stimulating book. Even those who disagree with Boehm's arguments are likely to be provoked in instructive ways. --Larry Arnhart, Northern Illinois University Chris Boehm boldly and cogently attacks a whole orthodoxy in anthropology which sees hunter-gatherer 'egalitarianism' as somehow the basic form of human society. No praise can be too high for Boehm's brilliant and courageous book. --Robin Fox, Rutgers University

Download or read book The Paleolithic Paradigm written by Terry Stocker and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Paleolithic Paradigm takes us one step further in the nature/nurture debate. Certainly a certain percentage of our behaviors are biologically based. However, culture has the power to override much in genetic commands. The Amish exemplify this, no matter how much "we" qualify them as "quaint." Painting with a wide post-modern paint brush, Stocker takes on a journey through four cultures to show how different people can be. He offers the analogy: our genetic structure is the framework of any house. How we cover and decorate that frame is often the product of ancient traditions. However, we are all products of the same cognitive processes, thus explaining why we take ideas put into our heads as children to the grave whether we accept them, reject them, or alter them. It is this commonality the author examines. Accordingly, he wants to know, if we understand our cognition processes, can we change out behavior at will?

Download or read book The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere written by Paulette F. C. Steeves and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-07 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years. Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists who have excavated and reported on numerous pre-Clovis archaeology sites. In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere includes Indigenous oral traditions, archaeological evidence, and a critical and decolonizing discussion of the development of archaeology in the Americas.

Download or read book The Divine Feminine in Ancient Europe written by Sharon Paice MacLeod and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-12-23 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of the spiritual traditions of ancient Europe, focusing on the numinous presence of the divine feminine in Russia, Central Europe, France, Britain, Ireland and the northern regions. Drawing upon research in archaeology, history, sociology, anthropology and the study of religions to connect the reader with the myths and symbols of the European traditions, the book shows how the power of European goddesses and holy women evolved through the ages, adapting to climate change and social upheaval, but continually reflecting the importance of living in an harmonious relationship with the environment and the spirit world. From the cave painting of southern France to ancient Irish tombs, from shamanic rituals to Arthurian legends, the divine feminine plays an essential role in understanding where we have come from and where we are going. Comparative examples from other native cultures, and quotes from spiritual leaders around the world, set European religions in context with other indigenous cultures.

Download or read book Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 1329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive Archaeology is a relatively young though fast growing discipline. The intellectual heart of cognitive archaeology is archaeology, the discipline that investigates the only direct evidence of the actions and decisions of prehistoric people. Its theories and methods are an eclectic mix of psychological, neuroscientific, paleoneurological, philosophical, anthropological, ethnographic, comparative, aesthetic, and experimental theories, methods, and models, united only by their focus on cognition. The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology is a landmark publication, showcasing the theories, methods, and accomplishments of archaeologists who investigate the human mind, including its evolutionary development, its ideation (thoughts and beliefs), and its very nature-through material forms. The volume encompasses the wide spectrum of the discipline, showcasing contributions from more than 50 established and emerging scholars from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Prominent among these are contributions that discuss the epistemological frameworks of both the evolutionary and ideational approaches and the leading theories that ground interpretations. Significantly, the majority of chapters deliver substantive contributions that analyze specific examples of material culture, from the oldest known stone tools to ceramic and rock art traditions of the recent millennium. These examples include the gamut of methods and techniques, including typology, replication studies, cha?nes operatoires, neuroarchaeology, ethnographic comparison, and the direct historical approach. In addition, the book begins with retrospective essays by several of the pioneers of cognitive archaeology, presenting a broad range of state-of-the-art investigations into cognitive abilities, tackling thorny issues like the cognitive status of Neandertals, and concluding with speculative essays about the future of an archaeology of mind, and of the mind itself.

Download or read book Back to the Stone Age written by Ben Pitcher and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prehistoric human life is a common reference point in contemporary culture, inspiring attempts to become happier, healthier, or better people. Exploited by capitalism, overwhelmed by technology, and living in the shadow of environmental catastrophe, we call on the prehistoric to escape the present, and to model alternative ways of living our lives. In Back to the Stone Age Ben Pitcher explores how ideas about race are tightly woven into the powerful origin stories we use to explain who we are, where we came from, and what we are like. Using a broad range of examples from popular culture – from everyday practices like lighting fires and walking in the woods to engagements with genetic technologies and Neanderthal DNA, from megaliths and museum mannequins to television shows and best-selling nonfiction – Pitcher demonstrates how prehistory is alive in the twenty-first century, and argues that popular flights back in time provide revealing insights into present-day anxieties, obsessions, and concerns. Back to the Stone Age shows that the human past is not set in stone. By opening up the prehistoric to critical contestation, Pitcher places racial justice at the centre of questions about the existence and persistence of Homo sapiens in the contemporary world.

Download or read book In a Trance written by Jeffrey Skoblow and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a Trance is just the sort of genre-defying work we at Peanut and punctum and, as it happens, Jeffrey Skoblow, revel in. It is a book-length essay by a fiction writer. It is a fictional essay by a literary scholar. It is a gallant assay by a smart man who thinks while he walks, and he walks a lot.The book is a meta-meditation on Paleolithic cave drawings and the humans who ponder them. It is fact-based and entrancing just as the cave drawings are actual (existing in time - loosely - and space - more definitively) and mesmerizing. Skoblow is devising stories as "we" (humans) have always devised stories though in a less familiar mode, along a less travelled path.The essay draws on (!) the careful/thoughtful/whimsical notebooks kept by Skoblow over a dozen years. The notebooks record/illuminate/complicate his visits to twelve Paleolithic art sites as well as his deep, eccentric reading of texts concerned in some way with the subject of cave drawings by an array of scientists, anthropologists, archeologists, art historians, and other sundry enthusiasts and experts, so-called and otherwise."

Download or read book Religion in Human Evolution written by Robert N. Bellah and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal

Download or read book A Philosophy of Belonging written by James Greenaway and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Greenaway offers a philosophical guide to understanding, affirming, and valuing the significance of belonging across personal, political, and historical dimensions of existence. A sense of belonging is one of the most meaningful experiences of anyone’s life. Inversely, the discovery that one does not belong can be one of the most upsetting experiences. In A Philosophy of Belonging, Greenaway treats the notion of belonging as an intrinsically philosophical one. After all, belonging raises intense questions of personal self-understanding, identity, mortality, and longing; it confronts interpersonal, sociopolitical, and historical problems; and it probes our relationship with both the knowable world and transcendent mystery. Experiences of alienation, exclusion, and despair become conspicuous only because we are already moved by a primordial desire to belong. Greenaway presents a hermeneutical framework that brings the intelligibility of belonging into focus and discusses the works of various representative thinkers in light of this hermeneutic. The study is divided into two main parts, “Presence” and “Communion.” In the first, Greenaway considers the abiding presence of the cosmos as the context of personhood and the world, followed by the presence of persons to themselves and others by way of consciousness and embodiment, culminating in a discussion of the unrestricted horizon of meaning that love makes present in persons. In the second part, belonging in community is explored as a crucial type of communion that is both politically and historically structured. Moreover, communion has direction and a quality of sacredness that offers itself for consideration. Greenaway concludes with a discussion of the consequences of refusing presence and communion, and what is involved in the repudiation of belonging.

Download or read book Evolution Literature and Film written by Brian Boyd and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Gottschall teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College. --Book Jacket.