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.
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.
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.
Why Only Us Berwick, Robert C; Chomsky, Noam
2015, 2016-01-15
eBook
Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it.
Measuring Happiness Weimann, Joachim; Knabe, Andreas; Schöb, Ronnie
02/2015
eBook
Can money buy happiness? Is income a reliable measure for life satisfaction? In the West after World War II, happiness seemed inextricably connected to prosperity. Beginning in the 1960s, however, ...other values began to gain ground: peace, political participation, civil rights, environmentalism. "Happiness economics" -- a somewhat incongruous-sounding branch of what has been called "the dismal science" -- has taken up the puzzle of what makes people happy, conducting elaborate surveys in which people are asked to quantify their satisfaction with "life in general." In this book, three economists explore the happiness-prosperity connection, investigating how economists measure life satisfaction and well-being.The authors examine the evolution of happiness research, considering the famous "Easterlin Paradox," which found that people's average life satisfaction didn't seem to depend on their income. But they question whether happiness research can measure what needs to be measured. They argue that we should not assess people's well-being on a "happiness scale," because that necessarily obscures true social progress. Instead, rising income should be understood as increasing opportunities and alleviating scarcity. Economic growth helps societies to sustain freedom and to finance social welfare programs. In this respect, high income may not buy happiness with life in general, but it gives individuals the opportunity to be healthier, better educated, better clothed, and better fed, to live longer, and to live well.
Working Below the Surface Huffington, Clare; Halton, William; Armstrong, David ...
2004, 20180424, 2018-04-24, 2004-12-31, 20040101
eBook
The chapters contributed to this book have been written by the staff and associates of The Tavistock Consultancy Service, whose distinctive competence is in the human dimension of enterprise and the ...dynamics of the workplace. From their own perspectives, they tell a story of the experience of working as consultants over the decade with individuals, teams and whole organizations.
The environment, and how humans affect it, is more of a concern now than ever. We are constantly told that halting climate change requires raising awareness, changing attitudes, and finally altering ...behaviors among the general public—and doing it fast. New information, attitudes, and actions, it is conventionally assumed, will necessarily follow one from the other. However, this approach ignores much of what is known about attitudes in general and environmental attitudes in particular—a huge gap lies between what we say and what we do. Solving environmental problems requires a scientific understanding of public attitudes. Like rocks in a swollen river, attitudes often lie beneath the surface—hard to see, and even harder to move or change. This book helps us read the water and negotiate its hidden obstacles, explaining what attitudes are, how they change and influence behavior. Rather than trying to change attitudes, we need to design solutions and policies with attitudes in mind. Heberlein illustrates these points by tracing the attitudes of the well-known environmentalist Aldo Leopold, while tying social psychology to real-world behaviors throughout the book. Bringing together theory and practice, this book provides a realistic understanding of why and how attitudes matter when it comes to environmental problems; and how, by balancing natural with social science, we can step back from false assumptions and unproductive, frustrating programs to work toward fostering successful, effective environmental action.
