Download or read book Practices of Selfhood written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary understanding of human subjectivity has come a long way since the Cartesian 'thinking thing' or Freud's view of the self struggling with its unconscious. We no longer think of ourselves as stable and indivisible units or combinations thereof - instead, we see the self as constantly reinvented and reorganised in interaction with others and with its social and cultural environments. But the world in which we live today is one of uncertainty where nothing can be taken for granted. Coping with change is a challenge but it also presents new opportunities. Uncertainty can be both liberating and oppressive. How does an individual understand her or his position in the world? Are we as human beings determined by our genetic heritage, social circumstances and cultural preferences, or are we free in our choices? How does selfhood emerge? Does it follow the same pattern of development in all people, all cultures, all ages? Or is it a socio-cultural construction that cannot be understood outside its historical context? Are the patterns of selfhood fundamentally changing in the present world? Does new technology allow us more autonomy or does it tempt us to give up the freedoms we have? These are the questions that Zygmunt Bauman and Rein Raud explore in their engaging and wide-ranging dialogue, combining their competences in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory to look at how selfhood is produced in social practice, through language, efforts of self-presentation and self-realisation as well as interaction with others. An indispensable text for understanding the complexities of selfhood in our contemporary liquid-modern world.
Download or read book Practices of Selfhood written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary understanding of human subjectivity has come a long way since the Cartesian 'thinking thing' or Freud's view of the self struggling with its unconscious. We no longer think of ourselves as stable and indivisible units or combinations thereof - instead, we see the self as constantly reinvented and reorganised in interaction with others and with its social and cultural environments. But the world in which we live today is one of uncertainty where nothing can be taken for granted. Coping with change is a challenge but it also presents new opportunities. Uncertainty can be both liberating and oppressive. How does an individual understand her or his position in the world? Are we as human beings determined by our genetic heritage, social circumstances and cultural preferences, or are we free in our choices? How does selfhood emerge? Does it follow the same pattern of development in all people, all cultures, all ages? Or is it a socio-cultural construction that cannot be understood outside its historical context? Are the patterns of selfhood fundamentally changing in the present world? Does new technology allow us more autonomy or does it tempt us to give up the freedoms we have? These are the questions that Zygmunt Bauman and Rein Raud explore in their engaging and wide-ranging dialogue, combining their competences in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory to look at how selfhood is produced in social practice, through language, efforts of self-presentation and self-realisation as well as interaction with others. An indispensable text for understanding the complexities of selfhood in our contemporary liquid-modern world.
Download or read book The Quantified Self written by Deborah Lupton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the advent of digital devices and software, self-tracking practices have gained new adherents and have spread into a wide array of social domains. The Quantified Self movement has emerged to promote 'self-knowledge through numbers'. In this groundbreaking book Deborah Lupton critically analyses the social, cultural and political dimensions of contemporary self-tracking and identifies the concepts of selfhood and human embodiment and the value of the data that underpin them. The book incorporates discussion of the consolations and frustrations of self-tracking, as well as about the proliferating ways in which people's personal data are now used beyond their private rationales. Lupton outlines how the information that is generated through self-tracking is taken up and repurposed for commercial, governmental, managerial and research purposes. In the relationship between personal data practices and big data politics, the implications of self-tracking are becoming ever more crucial.
Download or read book The Art of Self Improvement written by Anna Katharina Schaffner and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant distillation of the key ideas behind successful self-improvement practices throughout history, showing us how they remain relevant today "Schaffner finds more in contemporary self-improvement literature to admire than criticize. . . . [A] revelatory book."--Kathryn Hughes, Times Literary Supplement Self-help today is a multi-billion-dollar global industry, one often seen as a by-product of neoliberalism and capitalism. Far from being a recent phenomenon, however, the practice of self-improvement has a long and rich history, extending all the way back to ancient China. For millennia, philosophers, sages, and theologians have reflected on the good life and devised strategies on how to achieve it. Focusing on ten core ideas of self-improvement that run through the world's advice literature, Anna Katharina Schaffner reveals the ways they have evolved across cultures and historical eras, and why they continue to resonate with us today. Reminding us that there is much to learn from looking at time-honed models, Schaffner also examines the ways that self-improvement practices provide powerful barometers of the values, anxieties, and aspirations that preoccupy us at particular moments in time and expose basic assumptions about our purpose and nature.
Download or read book Rhetorics of Self Making written by Debbora Battaglia and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Departing from an essentialist concept of the self, this highly original volume advances the cross-cultural study of selfhood with three contributions to the literature: First, it approaches the self as an ideological process, arguing that selfhood is culturally situated and emergent in social practices of persuasion. Second, it demonstrates how postmodernity problematizes the experience and concept of the self. Finally, the book challenges the pervasive practice of equating an individuated self with the Western world and a relational self with the non-Western world. Contributions cover a broad range of topics—from the development of the eccentric self to the ritual circumcision of Jewish males.
Download or read book Developing the Dead written by Diana Espírito Santo and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its powerful influence on Cuban culture, Espiritismo has often been overlooked by scholars. Developing the Dead is the first in-depth exploration of contemporary Espiritismo in Cuba. Based on extensive fieldwork among religious practitioners and their clients in Havana, this book makes the surprising claim that Spiritist practices are fundamentally a project of developing the self. When mediums cultivate relationships between the living and the dead, argues Diana Espírito Santo, they develop, learn, sense, dream, and connect to multiple spirits (muertos), expanding the borders of the self. This understanding of selfhood is radically different from Enlightenment ideas of an autonomous, bounded self and holds fascinating implications for prophecy, healing, and self-consciousness. Developing the Dead shows how Espiritismo’s self-making process permeates all aspects of life, not only for its own practitioners but also for those of other Afro-Cuban religions.
Download or read book Neoliberal Selfhood written by Stephen Vassallo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses psychological constructs within an ideological framework and invites ethical reflections for practice.
Download or read book The Concealed Art of the Soul written by Jonardon Ganeri and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Concealed Art of the Soul, Jonardon Ganeri presents a variety of perspectives on the nature of the self as seen by major schools of classical Indian philosophy. For Indian thinkers, a philosophical treatise about the self should not only reveal the truth about the nature of the soul, but should also engage the reader in a process of study and contemplation that will eventually lead to self-transformation. By combining careful attention to philosophical content and sensitivity to literary form, Ganeri deepens our understanding of some of the greatest works in Indian literary history. His magisterial survey includes the Upanisads, the Buddha's discourses, the epic Mahabharata, and the writings of Candrakirti, whose work was later to provide the foundation for Tibetan Buddhism. Ganeri argues that many Western theories of selfhood are not only present in, but are developed to high degree of sophistication in these writings, and that there are other ideas about the self found in the work of classical Indian thinkers which present-day analytic philosophers have not yet begun to explore. Scholars and students of philosophy and religious studies, particularly those with an interest in Indian and Western conceptions of the self, will find this book fascinating reading.
Download or read book Escaping The Self written by Roy F. Baumeister and published by . This book was released on 1991-10-03 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the possible costs associated with the overemphasis on selfhood.
Download or read book Selfhood Identity and Personality Styles written by Giampiero Arciero and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selfhood, Identity and Personality Styles is an interdisciplinary study that describes a new perspective on psychopathology based on the search for the source of personal meaning and identity. The opening section develops a first-person approach to selfhood and personal identity, discussing relevant topics in personality and social psychology, developmental psychology, psychology of emotions and neuroscience. The second part presents five different personality styles distinguished on the basis of their emotional inclinations: Eating Disorder-prone, Obsessive-Compulsive prone, personalities prone to Hypochondria-Hysteria, Phobia–prone and Depression-prone. The classification based on affectivity makes it possible to illustrate the continuity between the study of personality and that of psychopathology. One distinctive feature of this extraordinary book is a discussion of recently published evidence that functional magnetic resonance imaging can show how brain activity may be related to personality styles. With a new Foreword by Shaun Gallagher, Professor of Philosophy, University of Central Florida. Praise for Selfhood, Identity and Personality Styles: “This is a scholarly book which will provide the reader with plenty to chew on. This book will make you think, will illuminate how people function and will help you understand how self disordered experience, such as the feeling that one disappears or doesn’t exist when another leaves, occurs. The authors tackle with great sophistication, the big questions of how sameness, changing experience and temporality are woven together by language and narrative. Refusing to be reduced to the simplicity of objectivist account of functioning they offer profound phenomenological views on identity and emotion that show a deep appreciation of the complexity of what it is to be a person. Their analysis of functioning leads to the specification of inward and outward dispositional dimensions and using clinical and literary examples they provide descriptions of different styles of personality along this continuum ranging from eating disorder prone personalities, focused on the other at one end of the continuum and depression prone personalities focused excessively inwardly, at the other end.” Leslie Greenberg, Professorof Psychology, York University, Canada “Arciero and Bondolfi have written a timely, thought-provoking and challenging book, providing the reader with a refreshingly new account of Self-identity and its disorders. A cogent and novel contribution to psychiatric thought that wonderfully integrates philosophy, psychopathology and contemporary neuroscience. This book will push psychiatry in new directions. A must read.” Vittorio Gallese, Professor of Human Physiology, University of Parma, Italy “Selfhood, Identity, and Personality Styles is a highly ambitious work of theoretical synthesis: neuroscience, phenomenology, and social constructionism are joined together with the study of both literature and psychopathology. Arciero and Bondolfi offer sophisticated and intriguing discussions not only of mirror neurons and developmental psychology, but also of ideas from Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger, of characters from Dostoevsky, Kleist, and Pessoa, and of patients from clinical practice. A ground-breaking, first attempt to show the relevance of the interdisciplinary study of basic self-experience for our understanding of character styles and personality disorders.” Louis A. Sass, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Rutgers University Winner of third prize in the ‘Specialist Readership’ section of the UK Medical Journalists’ Association Open Book Awards, 2010.
Download or read book Free Will Agency and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy written by Matthew R. Dasti and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the rich and variegated cluster of Indic philosophical traditions as they developed from the late Vedic period up to the pre-modern period, this book offers an understanding, according to each school, of the nature of free will and agency.
Download or read book Self Transformations written by Cressida J. Heyes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-16 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heyes' monograph in feminist philosophy is on the connection between the idea of "normalization"--which per Foucault is a mode or force of control that homogenizes a population--and the gendered body. Drawing on Foucault and Wittgenstein, she argues that the predominant picture of the self--a picture that presupposes an "inner" core of the self that is expressed, accurately or not, by the outer body--obscures the connection between contemporary discourses and practices of self-transformation and the forces of normalization. In other words, pictures of the self can hold us captive when they are being read from the outer self--the body--rather than the inner self, and we can express our inner self by working on our outer body to conform. Articulating this idea with a mix of the theoretical and the practical, she looks at case studies involving transgender people, weight-loss dieting, and cosmetic surgery. Her concluding chapters look at the difficult issue of how to distinguish non-normalizing practices of the self from normalizing ones, and makes suggestions about how feminists might conceive of subjects as embodied and enmeshed in power relations yet also capable of self-transformation. The subject of normalization and its relationship to sex/gender is a major one in feminist theory; Heyes' book is unique in her masterful use of Foucault; its clarity, and its sophisticated mix of the theoretical and the anecdotal. It will appeal to feminist philosophers and theorists.
Download or read book The Private Self written by Shari Benstock and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1988 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of twelve essays discusses the principles and practices of women's autobiographical writing in the United States, England, and France from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Employing feminist and poststructuralist methodologies, t
Download or read book The Self Relational Sociology and Morality in Practice written by Owen Abbott and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-21 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2020 British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Prize Providing a theory of moral practice for a contemporary sociological audience, Owen Abbott shows that morality is a relational practice achieved by people in their everyday lives. He moves beyond old dualisms—society versus the individual, social structure versus agency, body versus mind—to offer a sociologically rigorous and coherent theory of the relational constitution of the self and moral practice, which is both shared and yet enacted from an individualized perspective. In so doing, The Self, Relational Sociology, and Morality in Practice not only offers an urgently needed account of moral practice and its integral role in the emergence of the self, but also examines morality itself within and through social relations and practices. Abbott’s conclusions will be of interest to social scientists and philosophers of morality, those working with pragmatic and interactionist approaches, and those involved with relational sociology and social theory.
Download or read book The Autobiographical Self in Time and Culture written by Qi Wang and published by . This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the developmental, social, cultural, and historical origins of the autobiographical self - the self that is made of memories of the personal past and of the family and the community. It combines rigorous research, compelling theoretical insights, sensitive survey of real memories and memory conversations, and fascinating personal anecdotes to convey a message: the autobiographical self is conditioned by one's time and culture.
Download or read book Moments Attachment and Formations of Selfhood written by Kelly Forrest and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using innovative empirical data, this book presents a unique approach to looking at moments, exploring the deeper meanings of why memories stand out and how they influence an individual's sense of self. Forrest challenges the privileged position of narrative coherence as the basis for healthy identity and formations of selfhood.
Download or read book Becoming a New Self written by Moshe Sluhovsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Becoming a New Self, Moshe Sluhovsky examines the diffusion of spiritual practices among lay Catholics in early modern Europe. By offering a close examination of early modern Catholic penitential and meditative techniques, Sluhovsky makes the case that these practices promoted the idea of achieving a new self through the knowing of oneself. Practices such as the examination of conscience, general confession, and spiritual exercises, which until the 1400s had been restricted to monastic elites, breached the walls of monasteries in the period that followed. Thanks in large part to Franciscans and Jesuits, lay urban elites—both men and women—gained access to spiritual practices whose goal was to enhance belief and create new selves. Using Michel Foucault’s writing on the hermeneutics of the self, and the French philosopher’s intuition that the early modern period was a moment of transition in the configurations of the self, Sluhovsky offers a broad panorama of spiritual and devotional techniques of self-formation and subjectivation.
