The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; ...5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions ("Why is this battle boring?") than big ones ("What does this game mean?"). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play -- how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons & Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail.Upton also examines the broader epistemological implications of such a framework, exploring the role of play in the construction of meaning and what the existence of play says about the relationship between our thoughts and external reality. He considers the making of meaning in play and in every aspect of human culture, and he draws on findings in pragmatic epistemology, neuroscience, and semiotics to describe how meaning emerges from playful engagement. Upton argues that play can also explain particular aspects of narrative; a play-based interpretive stance, he proposes, can help us understand the structure of books, of music, of theater, of art, and even of the process of critical engagement itself.
Unequal chances Bowles, Samuel; Bowles, Samuel; Gintis, Herbert ...
2005, 2005., 20091015, 2009, 2005-01-01, 20050101
eBook, Book
Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting ...ahead, why? And if the processes that transmit economic status from parent to child are unfair, could public policy address the problem? Unequal Chances provides new answers to these questions by leading economists, sociologists, biologists, behavioral geneticists, and philosophers.
Gender and Culture in Psychology introduces new approaches to the psychological study of gender that bring together feminist psychology, socio-cultural psychology, discursive psychology and critical ...psychology. It presents research and theory that embed human action in social, cultural and interpersonal contexts. The book provides conceptual tools for thinking about gender, social categorization, human meaning-making, and culture. It also describes a family of interpretative research methods that focus on rich talk and everyday life. It provides a close-in view of how interpretative research proceeds. The latter part of the book showcases innovative projects that investigate topics of concern to feminist scholars and activists: young teens' encounters with heterosexual norms; women and men negotiating household duties and childcare; sexual coercion and violence in heterosexual encounters; the cultural politics of women's weight and eating concerns; psychiatric labelling of psychological suffering; and feminism in psychotherapy.
Adolescents and War Barber, Brian K
2008, 2009-10-22, 2008-09-04, 20090101
eBook
Hundreds of thousands of children are forced or legally recruited combatants in no fewer than 70 warring parties across the world. In addition to these child soldiers, thousands of youth voluntarily ...participate in politically related conflict. Why, how, and in what capacities are such large numbers of teenagers involved in war, and how are they affected? This book brings together world experts in an evidence-based volume to thoroughly understand and document the intricacies of youth who have had substantial involvement in political violence. Contributors argue that the assumption that youth are automatically debilitated by the violence they experience is much too simplistic: effective care for youth must include an awareness of their motives and beliefs, the roles they played in the conflict, their relationships with others, and the opportunities available to them after their experiences with war. The book suggests that the meaning youth make of a conflict may protect them from mental harm.
In Israel, gates, fences, and walls encircle public spaces while guards scrutinize, inspect, and interrogate. With a population constantly aware of the possibility of suicide bombings, Israel is ...defined by its culture of security.Security and Suspicionis a closely drawn ethnographic study of the way Israeli Jews experience security in their everyday lives.
Observing security concerns through an anthropological lens, Juliana Ochs investigates the relationship between perceptions of danger and the political strategies of the state. Ochs argues that everyday security practices create exceptional states of civilian alertness that perpetuate-rather than mitigate-national fear and ongoing violence. In Israeli cities, customers entering gated urban cafés open their handbags for armed security guards and parents circumnavigate feared neighborhoods to deliver their children safely to school. Suspicious objects appear to be everywhere, as Israelis internalize the state's vigilance for signs of potential suicide bombers. Fear and suspicion not only permeate political rhetoric, writes Ochs, but also condition how people see, the way they move, and the way they relate to Palestinians. Ochs reveals that in Israel everyday practices of security-in the home, on commutes to work, or in cafés and restaurants-are as much a part of conflict as soldiers and military checkpoints.
Based on intensive fieldwork in Israel during the second intifada,Security and Suspicioncharts a new approach to issues of security while contributing to our appreciation of the subtle dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This book offers a way to understand why security propagates the very fears and suspicions it is supposed to reduce.
In this revised esition, Thomas Attig tells tales of survival to illustrate the poignant suffering that the loss of a loved one entails. Dr. Attig shows how through grieving we meet daunting ...challenges, make choices, and reshape our lives forever. In so doing, he redefines grief as an active, coping process rather than a stage to be endured, or a problem to be overcome. The book's many valuable lessons inform and instruct a wide audience of clinicians, caregivers, friends and family members of bereaved persons, and those who seek a general, non-clinical perspective on their own experience of grief.This version includes updated references and a new introduction.
Alessandra Lemma - Winner of the Levy-Goldfarb Award for Child Psychoanalysis!
Under the Skin considers the motivation behind why people pierce, tattoo, cosmetically enhance, or otherwise modify ...their body, from a psychoanalytic perspective. It discusses how the therapist can understand and help individuals for whom the manipulation of the body is felt to be psychically necessary, regardless of whether the process of modification causes pain.
In this book, psychoanalyst Alessandra Lemma draws on her work in the consulting room, as well as films, fiction, art and clinical research to suggest that the motivation for extensively modifying the surface of the body, and being excessively preoccupied with its appearance, comes from the person’s internal world – under their skin. Topics covered include:
body image disturbance
appearance anxiety
body dysmorphic disorder
the psychological function of cosmetic surgery, tattooing, piercing, and scarification.
Under the Skin provides a detailed study of the challenges posed by our embodied nature through an exploration of the unconscious phantasies that underlie the need for body modification, making it essential reading for all clinicians working with those who are preoccupied with their appearance and modify their bodies including psychotherapists, counsellors, psychiatrists and psychologists.
Alessandra Lemma is a psychoanalyst and a clinical and counselling psychologist. She is a Member of the British Psychoanalytic Society, a Senior Member of the British Association of Psychotherapists, and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She is the Trust-wide Head of Psychology at The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Professor of Psychological Therapies at the School of Health and Human Sciences, Essex University. She has published widely on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
The Body as Canvas. As You Desire Me. The Symptom of Ugliness Mirrors. Being Seen or Being Watched. Occupied Territories and Foreign Parts: Reclaiming the Body. Copies Without Originals: Envy and the Maternal Body. The Botoxing of Experience. Ink, Holes and Scars. An Order of Pure Decision.
" It is high time for clinicians to recognise that the body matters. This book is a brilliant illustration of how psychoanalytic therapy can illuminate our struggles with the physicality of our being and suggests effective solutions for the clinical management of these. With this book, Alessandra Lemma has established herself as one of the most original and creative contributors to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The book is replete with arresting clinical insights and provides innovative theoretical integration that the field concerned with the mind in the body has lacked for a generation." - Peter Fonagy, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis, University College London
"Beautifully written, this book is easily approachable by a large spectrum of readers while also addressing some deeply psychoanalytic and clinical issues. By discussing specific unconscious phantasies and the hatred of reality at work in the compelling need to modify the surface of the body, the book introduces an important psychoanalytic perspective on the complex and delicate role of early maternal responsiveness in development." - Dana Birksted-Breen, Training Psychoanalyst; Joint Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Psychoanalysis
" Under the Skin , is unique as an in depth psychoanalytic study of body modification, and needs to be recognized and commended for its insightfulness and the comprehensive integration of psychoanalysis with cultural studies, literature, art, and film. It is a powerful, well written treatise in the growing field of body modification...Lemma's mind, like the bodies she investigates, is worthy of exploring as she takes us on this journey through fascinating terrain. - Melanie Suchet, Ph.D., DIVISION/Review Vol.1., No. 1
How do we develop musical creativity? How is musical creativity nurtured in collaborative improvisation? How is it used as a communicative tool in music therapy? This comprehensive volume offers new ...research on these questions by an international team of experts from the fields of music education, music psychology and music therapy. The book celebrates the rich diversity of ways in which learners of all ages develop and use musical creativity. Contributions focus broadly on the composition/improvisation process, considering its conceptualization and practices in a number of contexts. The authors examine how musical creativity can be fostered in formal settings, drawing examples from primary and secondary schools, studio, conservatoire and university settings, as well as specialist music schools and music therapy sessions. These essays will inspire readers to think deeply about musical creativity and its development. The book will be of crucial interest to music educators, policy makers, researchers and students, as it draws on applied research from across the globe, promoting coherent and symbiotic links between education, music and psychology research.
Contents: Introduction, Oscar Odena; Part I Conceptualising Musical Creativity: Rethinking 'musical creativity' and the notion of multiple creativities in music, Pamela Burnard; Teachers' perceptions of creativity, Oscar Odena and Graham Welch. Part II Examples from Practice: Preparing the mind for musical creativity: early music learning and engagement, Margaret S. Barrett; Music composition as a way of learning: emotions and the situated self, Ana Luísa Veloso and Sara Carvalho; Towards pedagogies of revision: guiding a students' music composition, Peter R. Webster; The nature of the engagement of Brazilian adolescents in composing activities, José Soares; Empathetic creativity in music making, Frederick A. Seddon; Cognition and musical improvisation in individual and group contexts, Su-Ching Hsieh; Music therapy: a resource for creativity, health and well-being across the lifespan, Leslie Bunt. Part III Paths for Further Enquiry: Action-research on collaborative composition: an analysis of research questions and designs, Gabriel Rusinek; Perspectives on musical creativity: where next?, Oscar Odena; Index.
Oscar Odena is Reader in Education at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is past Co-Chair of the Research Commission of the International Society for Music Education (2012-14) and a member of the editorial boards of leading journals including the British Journal of Music Education, Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa and Research Studies in Music Education.
The twentieth century, a time of profound disillusionment with nationalism, was also the great age of internationalism. To the twenty-first-century historian, the period from the late nineteenth ...century until the end of the Cold War is distinctive for its nationalist preoccupations, while internationalism is often construed as the purview of ideologues and idealists, a remnant of Enlightenment-era narratives of the progress of humanity into a global community. Glenda Sluga argues to the contrary, that the concepts of nationalism and internationalism were very much entwined throughout the twentieth century and mutually shaped the attitudes toward interdependence and transnationalism that influence global politics in the present day.Internationalism in the Age of Nationalismtraces the arc of internationalism through its rise before World War I, its apogee at the end of World War II, its reprise in the global seventies and the post-Cold War nineties, and its decline after 9/11. Drawing on original archival material and contemporary accounts, Sluga focuses on specific moments when visions of global community occupied the liberal political mainstream, often through the maneuvers of iconic organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, which stood for the sovereignty of nation-states while creating the conditions under which marginalized colonial subjects and women could make their voices heard in an international arena. In this retelling of the history of the twentieth century, conceptions of sovereignty, community, and identity were the objects of trade and reinvention among diverse intellectual and social communities, and internationalism was imagined as the means of national independence and national rights, as well as the antidote to nationalism. This innovative history highlights the role of internationalism in the evolution of political, economic, social, and cultural modernity, and maps out a new way of thinking about the twentieth century.
