Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer of 2000, (...) evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

We humans are a curious species. Of all the life forms that inhabit the earth, we alone strive to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves. For thousands of years we understood the world through stories. Our ancestors told stories of how the world began, how our people originated and came to be at this place, and how those people across the river or beyond the mountains came to be where they are. Some stories were of animals (...) and plants in our neighborhood, and their powers to help us, feed us, or cure our ailments. But in the last few centuries, starting in Europe and spreading throughout the world, a new way of understanding began competing with storytelling as a means of comprehending our world. Science supplanted storytelling largely because it empowered us to transform the world in ways that were unimaginable to our ancestors. We understand the world scientifically by describing the world instead of by telling stories about it. The stories our ancestors told no longer explain the world, but are data within the world, part of the world that science describes. Our stories have become myths, cultural artifacts that may be interesting and a subject of study, but cannot possibly be true. Yet even in societies that have thoroughly embraced science as a means of understanding the world, myths remain a powerful force. Myth and science exist side by side, often creating confusion and conflict. (shrink)

Collecting ethnographic items for the Estonian National Museum has been linked to the practice of buying objects during fieldwork. Often we can find metaphors or expressions connected with trading in the Komi fieldwork diaries. Comparing ethnographers with merchants is a stereotypical way of describing the activities of Estonian researchers in the field. If ethnographers use, in their diaries, metaphors and expressions connected to trading, it may be just a spontaneous phrasing or inter-textual play of words. Inside the community of Estonian (...) ethnologists there exists some kind of discourse style, which is followed in the fieldwork diaries, more or less consciously. This style of narration is also connected to the specific social and historical context in which ethnographers act. At the same time, even satiric inter-textual quotations do not exclude the possibility that some of this discourse is related to a deeper level of human consciousness. (shrink)

Collecting ethnographic items for the Estonian National Museum has been linked to the practice of buying objects during fieldwork. Often we can find metaphors or expressions connected with trading in the Komi fieldwork diaries. Comparing ethnographers with merchants is a stereotypical way of describing the activities of Estonian researchers in the field. If ethnographers use, in their diaries, metaphors and expressions connected to trading, it may be just a spontaneous phrasing or inter-textual play of words. Inside the community of Estonian (...) ethnologists there exists some kind of discourse style, which is followed in the fieldwork diaries, more or less consciously. This style of narration is also connected to the specific social and historical context in which ethnographers act. At the same time, even satiric inter-textual quotations do not exclude the possibility that some of this discourse is related to a deeper level of human consciousness. (shrink)

This essay reviews one of the most recent books in a trend of new publications proffering evolutionary theorising about aesthetics and the arts—themes within an increasing literature on aspects of human life and human nature in terms of evolutionary theory. Stephen Davies’ The Artful Species links some of our aesthetic sensibilities with our evolved human nature and critically surveys the interdisciplinary debate regarding the evolutionary status of the arts. Davies’ engaging and accessible writing succeeds in demonstrating the maturity (...) and scope of the field and his critique is timely and unparalleled. A laudable effort, however it may have benefited from espousing a co-evolutionary model more explicitly. Moreover there may be reason to question the usefulness of the standard set of distinctions (‘adaptation’, ‘spandrel’, ‘technology’) that Davies appeals to. (shrink)

Mobilising International Law for 'Global Justice' provides new insights into the dynamics between politics and international law and the roles played by state and civic actors in pursuing human rights, development, security and justice through mobilising international law at local and international levels. This includes attempts to hold states, corporations or individuals accountable for violations of international law. Second, this book examines how enforcing international law creates particular challenges for intergovernmental regulators seeking to manage tensions between incompatible legal systems and (...) bringing an end to harmful practices, such as foreign corruption and child abduction. Finally, it explores how international law has local resonance, whereby, for example, cities have taken it upon themselves to give effect to the spirit of international treaties that national governments fail to implement, or even may have refused to ratify. (shrink)

Lucid, learned, and incomparably rich in thought and detail, Art Without Borders is a monumental accomplishment, on par with the artistic achievements ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.1 (2004) 47-54 [Access article in PDF] Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research*(A Recommended Manuscript) Adopted on 16 October 2001Revised on 20 August 2002 Ethics Committee of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai, Shanghai 201203 Human embryonic stem cell (ES) research is a great project in the frontier of biomedical science for the twenty-first century. Be- cause the research involves (...) the use of human embryos, it triggers serious debate on ethical issues. Opponents consider the embryo to be an early form of human life that should be respected and not destroyed. However, the majority of scientists support embryonic stem cell research, believing that it offers good prospects for the treatment of diseases that have remained incurable until now and so will benefit humankind. The Ethics Committee of the Department of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai seriously discussed the ethical debate initiated by embryonic stem cell research. We concluded that we should support the scientists of our country in actively carrying out human embryonic stem cell research for the noble cause of "medicine being a beneficent art." For the healthy and orderly development of human embryonic stem cell research in our country, we put forward the following recommended Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research as a reference for leaders, administrative departments, and related scientists. Preface Article 1. Human embryonic stem cells are the primitive cells that play the main role in the growth and development of a human body. These [End Page 47] primitive cells have the potential for infinite proliferation, self-renewal, and multi-directional differentiation. If scientists can discover the mechanism of differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, it will be possible to induce differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to form various types of human cells for clinical cell therapy. If human embryonic stem cell research can be integrated with modern biomedical engineering techniques, it also will be possible to make repair and replacement of human tissues and organs a reality. Article 2. There are two ways to classify human embryonic stem cells. One way is to classify them according to their potential for differentiation. There could be three kinds of stem cells: totipotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, and unipotent stem cells.A totipotent stem cell has the potential to develop into a whole individual. It can differentiate into the more than 200 cell types in the whole body, construct any tissue or organ of the body, and finally develop into a whole individual. The fertilized egg and the cleavage cells at the very early stage of embryonic development are totipotent stem cells.A pluripotent stem cell has the potential to differentiate into many cell types derived from the three embryonic layers. However, it has lost the capacity to develop into a complete organism.A unipotent stem cell is derived from the further differentiation of the pluripotent stem cell. It can differentiate only into one cell type such as a hematopoietic stem cell, neural stem cell, and others.The other way is to classify human stem cells according to their source. There could be two kinds of human stem cells: embryonic stem cells and tissue stem cells (also called adult stem cells). The former involves experimentation with embryos, which has serious ethical implications. Ethical issues associated with the latter are mainly expressed in the various opinions regarding the allocation of health resources. Article 3. Human embryonic stem cells are the group of cells called the blastocyst inner cell mass during the early stage of embryonic development. They are the main source of totipotent stem cells, and hence the focal and hot point in stem cell research. Studies on the clinical application of embryonic stem cells probably will involve use of the somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT) technique, which destroys the early human embryo. At present, the ethical and moral debate is very serious in human embryonic stem cell research regarding whether the research will develop... (shrink)

This paper argues that research in the arts and humanities should not be marginalized in the academe, as has generally been the situation, but should equally be given emphasis together with those researches in the social sciences. All the more they should be equally funded because they generally require a smaller outlay compared to those in the natural and social sciences. Moreover, outputs in AH qualitative researches can also be comparatively significant epistemologically, culturally, and historically.

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted fantasy, (...) and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In this Editor’s column I discuss certain fruits and limits of applying the notion of ‘performance’ to works of art. Art works can be viewed as perfor- mances, the public furnishing of works’ final form. Concerts can be viewed as performances of a work scored by someone else, the composer, but not all arts are double in this sense. Moreover, art can be viewed as mirroring the psychological, phenomenological and rhetorical aspects of human interaction, which exemplify the way people (...) scrutinise moral situations. Not all performances are artistic, let alone art. (shrink)

Bhabha, Georges Didi-Huberman, David Morgan and Lee Siegel, as well as a series of focused contributions by Yve-Alain Bois, Wendy Doniger, Kenneth Frampton, Martin E. Marty, John Hallmark Neff, Annemarie Schimmel, and Helen Tworkov consider how rapture resonate's both in a cultural context and within the experience of a single human being.

While there have always been schools of religious and ethical thought favourable to poverty, or a simple life, the general opinion of mankind has always regarded the increasing wealth of an individual or a community as conducive to human happiness. Qualifications have commonly been attached to this judgment in recognition of a certain danger and deceitfulness of riches, especially when rapidly acquired and lavishly expended, but the presumption still stands that wealth in general conduces to well-being. The nature, degree or (...) conditions of this correspondence have, however, received singularly little attention from those thinkers who have given closest study to economic processes. Many of the founders of economic science in this and other countries were manifestly concerned for the general welfare of their fellowmen, and were active workers in many fields of social reform. But, in formulating the concepts and laws of their science, they deemed it unnecessary to give any close or continuous thought to the relations between economic wealth and human welfare. This was due, partly, no doubt to the natural desire to make the subject-matter and the treatment of a new science as definitely concrete and measurable as possible. It was this desire that made monetary valuation paramount in all economic estimates. (shrink)

Tejera, strongly influenced by Dewey, operates on the working hypothesis that art is both a kind of experience and a kind of making, and addresses himself to the "inextricably related" problems of the ends and the creation of art. Creativity becomes the key; man is viewed as "the creative animal," and artistic creation is seen as a sort of natural human activity, to be understood in relation to all other human activities. Most traditional problems of aesthetics are taken up at (...) some point, but it is not quite clear how all the parts fit together. The book contains forty-five prints and, considered in terms of its physical format, is something of a work of art in its own right.—A. E. J. (shrink)

Despite their recent proliferation in global agricultural commodity chains, little is known about the potential of intersectoral partnerships to improve the position of smallholder farmers and their organizations. This article explores the potential of partnerships by developing a conceptual approach based on the sustainable livelihoods and linking farmers to market perspectives, which is applied in an exploratory study to six partnerships in the coffee sector in Peru. It is concluded that partnerships stimulate the application of standards to receive market access (...) and therefore emphasize human capital development of farmers to facilitate certification. By transferring knowledge to farmers, partnerships present a new source of technological change, which, in combination with certification, holds potential for improved environmental management and price premiums for producers. However, the emphasis on certification results in a comparatively narrow target group of farmers and is associated with high financial burdens for producer organizations. At the same time, other assets of producer organizations are often not strengthened sufficiently for them to operate successfully without further external support. This suggests that preparing producers for certification is prioritized over empowering organizations toward self-dependence. (shrink)

What is the point of art, and why does it matter to us human beings? The answer that I will give in this paper, following on from an earlier paper on the same subject, is that art matters because our being actively engaged with art, either in its production or in its appreciation, is part of what it is to live well. The focus in the paper will be on the dispositions—the virtues of art production and of art appreciation—that are (...) necessary for this kind of active engagement with art. To begin with, I will argue that these dispositions really are virtues and not mere skills. Then I will show how the virtues of art, and their exercise in artistic activity, interweave with the other kinds of virtue which are exercised in ethical and contemplative activity. And finally, I will argue that artistic activity affords, in a special way, a certain kind of emotional sharing that binds us together with other human beings. (shrink)

Artists and humanists who work in universities are generally ambivalent about the idea of defending their enterprises in terms of social utility: on the one hand they do not want to claim that the Arts and Humanities are such exalted and selfjustifying endeavors that no one need bother explainingwhy such things are worth pursuing, yet on the other hand they are rightly skeptical that cost-benefit analyses of academic labor will do justice to disciplines devoted to the varieties of (...) human cultural expression rather than to the research and development of patentable forms of knowledge. This essay explores this ambivalence and suggests an alternative way of thinking about the ‘utility’ of cultural work. (shrink)

At a time when monuments are falling, learning processes and discourses accelerating, it seems apposite to pay attention also to artworks commissioned by established institutions in order to give form to good intentions. This essay focuses on a commissioned portrait of female professors, on art education, Dutch art policy / politics and the former colonial site that the University of Amsterdam occupies, in order to aide this institution’s desired process to become more inclusive. It proposes Art Research as a realm (...) that can contribute a differentiated and thoughtful positioning of research and universities in visual and public domains: a necessary ally. Since the essay was written in Summer 2019, much has happened: the Faculty in question has been found to be the locus of ongoing sexual harassment. The student victims did not feel that the complaints procedures were safeguarding them sufficiently. They went to the media. The university’s ombudsperson asked to investigate found no systemic deficiencies. Since George Floyd’s death, such a conclusion is no longer possible, and the Board of the university has admitted shameful and systemic failures.[1] We now know better what “systemic” means. This essay’s case study is meant to show that art and philosophy can jointly analyze systems and organizations as a basis for necessary conversations, followed by a broad range of people taking responsibility and acting accordingly. In Covid lock-down times, it became deceptively obvious how unimportant art is. Through an essay such as this, it is hopefully also evident how art can be an indicator of institutional culture: e.g. in relation to how embedded the principle to consult specialists is, even if this seems to be unimportant. And that is a matter of life and death. [1] https://www.folia.nl/actueel/138876/fred-weerman-en-geert-ten-dam-dit-is-ongehoord-beschamend. (shrink)

This paper offers an approach to support the development of reflective teaching practice among university academics that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement and the student experience. Pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching within universities by helping to maintain a simultaneous focus on key areas that are thought to impede development of pedagogy. These areas and the links that have been proposed to connect them (...) are interrogated here through the dialogic analysis of a framed autoethnographic narrative produced by a community ‘insider’ who has considerable experience of teaching within the arts and humanities. This person-centred methodology acknowledges the subjective nature of teaching and gives voice to important stories that otherwise might not be heard formally, and allows an academic to rehearse this voice individually before comparing it with others in the institution. (shrink)

This paper aims to position the birth of the Medical Humanities movement in a greater historical context of twentieth century American medical education and to paint a picture of the current landscape of the Medical Humanities in medical training. It first sheds light on the model of medical education put forth by Abraham Flexner through the publishing of the 1910 Flexner Report, which set the stage for defining physicians as experimentalists and rooting the profession in research institutions. While (...) this paved the way for medical advancements, it came at the cost of producing a patriarchal approach to medical practice. By the late 1960s, the public persona of the profession was thus devoid of humanism. This catalyzed the birth of the Medical Humanities movement that helped lay the framework for what has perpetuated as the ongoing incorporation of humanistic subjects into medical training. As we enter a time in medicine in which rates of burnout are ever-increasing and there are growing concerns about a concomitant reduction in empathy among trainees, the need for instilling humanism remains important. We must consequently continue to consider how to ensure the place of the Medical Humanities in medical education moving forward. (shrink)

The case studies in this book illuminate how arts and humanities tropes can aid in contextualizing Digital Arts and Humanities, Neogeographic and Social Media activity and data through the creation interpretive schemas to study interactions between visualizations, language, human behaviour, time and place.

Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, by NöeAlva. New York: Hill and Wang, 2015. Pp. xiii + 285.

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] is an ambitious and wide-ranging book. Here are some of its central claims. Human life is pervaded by ‘organized activities’, which are activities in which human agents interact with the environment and other agents, sometimes deliberatively but more typically semi-automatically, yet always intelligently and responsively, exercising the cognitive powers such agents are naturally endowed (...) with or naturally develop. ‘Technologies’ are patterns of use of a thing, or a ‘tool’, thanks to which organized activities have the structures that they do. For example, breast-feeding, dancing and perceiving are all organized activities, and the lullaby the mother might sing to soothe the baby, the slings she might use to hold him securely, the body of the dancer, the system of... (shrink)

Inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) approaches represent promising ways to address complex global challenges, such as climate change. Importantly, arts–sciences collaborations as a form of inter and transdisciplinarity have been widely recognized as potential catalysts for scientific development and social change towards sustainability. However, little attention has been paid to the process of reasoning among the participants in such collaborations. How do participants in arts–science collaboration reason together to overcome disciplinary boundaries and to co-create interventions? This article investigates how (...) inter- and transdisciplinary reasoning (or ITD reasoning) unfolded in a collaboration involving experts from the natural sciences, humanities, and the arts. We studied how collaborators reasoned through different understandings and experiences of climate change as well as through multiple ways of fostering motivation to take action via two co-designed artworks, HOMONEXUS (a participatory textile and acoustic installation) and GLACIER NEX US (a performance staging a dialogue between a melting glacier and a glaciologist). Our conclusions are threefold: (i) ITD reasoning can increase participants’ capacity to navigate often-unpredictable situations by cross-fertilizing ideas and overcoming blind-spots; (ii) humanities in arts–science collaborations can foster a more nuanced understanding of the differences and similarities of different knowledge systems as well as a deeper ecological understanding of sustainability problems; and (iii) the aesthetic experiences stimulated by arts–science interventions may help to raise awareness about the climate emergency and sustainable actions by providing pleasant and positive or dazzling and negative aesthetic experiences. (shrink)

_The Arts and the Definition of the Human_ introduces a novel theory that our selves—our thoughts, perceptions, creativity, and other qualities that make us human—are determined by our place in history, and more particularly by our culture and language. Margolis rejects the idea that any concepts or truths remain fixed and objective through the flow of history and reveals that this theory of the human being as culturally determined and changing is necessary to make sense of art. He shows (...) that a painting, sculpture, or poem cannot have a single correct interpretation because our creation and perception of art will always be mitigated by our historical and cultural contexts. Calling upon philosophers ranging from Parmenides and Plato to Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein, art historians from Damisch to Elkins, artists from Van Eyck to Michelangelo to Wordsworth to Duchamp, Margolis creates a philosophy of art interwoven with his philosophical anthropology which pointedly challenges prevailing views of the fine arts and the nature of personhood. (shrink)