A Suspicious Science

Throughout this thesis, performance theory and the accompanying practice as research are utilised, along with anthropological and philosophical analysis, in order to examine how gift intersects with live art practice. The ways in which it is made and encountered in contemporary (predominantly UK) society are of particular focus. The Horse’s Teeth, a 2012 project that saw the authorship of six new performance works gifted to six artists, is used, along with Bourdieusian notions of cultural capital and Sara Ahmed’s theory around the ‘stickiness’ of emotions to explore how authorship is both subjective lived experience and a means of accumulating capital. By then analysing the affective dimensions of gift giving within The Horse’s Teeth, a model is developed to show how gift can effect subject-formation. Building on this model, organ transplantation is proposed as an exemplary instance of the ‘successful gift’, a gift that both bridges identities and affirmatively increases the capacities of the recipient(s). The Kindness of Strangers, a solo performance in which I investigate the relationship between the work’s audience, my anonymous bone marrow donor and Blanche Dubois, is then used to consider the potential of performance to be such a gift. In the proposed understanding, what the audience and performer give to the performance and each other is presented using Jean-Luc Marion’s work on anamorphosis and Jacques Rancière’s emancipated spectator. Referencing the autobiographical element of The Kindness of Strangers, the transformative potential of Rosi Braidotti’s affirmative ethics is used to explain how the excess of trauma can sometimes be transformed into the excess of gift; a gift to both the traumatised self and, potentially, another. This develops the proposal made by thinkers such as Lyotard, Marion and Derrida that the gift cannot be fully comprehended at the time in which it is given. Inferring from this that the successful performance gift also resists being known by either audience or performer in its totality, the problem of how to make such unknowable performance is explored using Richard Sennett’s writing on craft. The second chapter concludes by considering reciprocity, in particular applause as a reciprocal gift from the audience, as an expression of thanks for what the performer has given. Having established a clear sense of how performance can be understood as gift, the final chapter examines how such gifts sit within capitalism. A variety of funding systems are considered, as well as the manner by which gift and performance, as Illichian blessings, defy capitalist valuation. Capital’s attempts to gain propriety by developing authorial relationships to the blessing is presented through analysis of corporate patronage, before an overview of current activist work to undermine this in the context of oil sponsorship is provided. The work of Liberate Tate, a group formed to break the relationship between BP and the Tate, is considered in particular depth here. The thesis concludes by proposing a reconsideration of how the arts are valued within funding systems, particularly in relation to waste and the way in which funders undermine the gift within performance by demanding quantified outcomes in advance.

The irruption and broad adoption of digital technologies such as video games are reshaping individuals and affecting fundamental aspects of their symbolic and material configuration such as their identity, gaze, body, and agency. This chapter focuses on what video gamers’ identities tell us about the contemporary processes of identity formation. Drawing on social theorists who have approached the crisis of identity in contemporary society, the chapter sets out a theoretical framework that describes the shift in the identity construction models from those based on solid and permanent identities to those centered around fluid and fragmented ones. The text then explores the most relevant empirical research on gaming and identity, linking it to the main debates on the subject. Not only do video games express the fluid, contingent, and volatile nature of identity in today’s world; they also anticipate social settings in which the very notion of identity is under scrutiny.

Our increased understanding of the biology of ageing has revived prospects for radical anti‐ageing medicine. Ethicists have often tried to argue against these endeavours, but with little success. Their arguments, which appeal to the natural order, are either circular or self‐defeating. Invoking the invariance of the human condition cuts no ice as rational argument and often turns into an avowedly irrational appeal to the ‘yuk reaction’ that exotic technologies evoke. Does that mean that anti‐mortality technologies are ethically innocuous? Not if we consider the reality of unequal death in today's world, in which differences in longevity highlight the gap between the haves and the have‐nots. Even in affluent societies, in which the basics of food, shelter and medicine are widely available, the grim reaper is very much class conscious. Without returning to the concern for equality that was once the hallmark of the Enlightenment, radical life extension may well add to these existing inequalities, and create more resentment and strife in the future. Many aspects of current biomedical research, especially in the more avant‐garde areas of neuroscience and stem‐cell research, are united under the alluring label ‘regenerative medicine’. These developments fuel legitimate hopes for new treatments of degenerative diseases, which, in an age of increasing longevity, represent the main focal point for prevailing anxieties about ill health and the frailties of old age. But regenerative medicine is often taken more literally to mean rejuvenation—a genuine turning back of the clock—which leads to more florid speculations about massive increases in human lifespan. These futuristic views are often criticized by scientists as daydreams that owe more to science fiction than to a sober appraisal of predictable advances. But they are taken more seriously by a different category of opponents, namely those who condemn these prospects on ethical grounds. For many conservative critics, …

This article presents a philosophical and anthropological analysis of cultural degradation and cultural stabilization under wartime conditions. The study has revealed that symptoms of cultural degradation manifest themselves on both the material and spiritual levels of culture. The following indicators have been identified: the destruction of cultural heritage through the ruin of museums, architectural monuments, and cultural symbols; due to the country’s economic challenges, support for arts and culture becomes secondary; there is also a certain informational and communicative simplification of cultural meanings, as superficial patriotic messages often replace the reflective depth of the cultural process. Furthermore, reality is distorted, and genuine meanings are substituted by mythologems. It has been proven that in a situation of cultural vacuum, narratives become a powerful instrument for shaping human consciousness. This underscores the relevance of the topic and the necessity of identifying symptoms of cultural degradation to develop an effective program of cultural resistance. As a result of a comprehensive analysis of the symptoms of cultural degradation, its causes, risks, and pathological consequences in contemporary society have been uncovered. It has been shown that manifestations of cultural degradation are multidimensional in nature and reflect involutionary processes within society. The phenomenon of creating a new culture centered on wartime themes is examined; this culture often acquires degrading characteristics due to propagandistic aims. It has been found that the most vulnerable and open domains for the penetration and dissemination of hostile narratives are the media space, which is overloaded with low-quality content. This leads to informational oversimplification, resulting in the suppression of critical thinking, which in turn renders individuals incapable of distinguishing genuine meanings from their surrogates. The article explores the causal relationships that contribute to the emergence of these phenomena, allowing for the identification of optimal methods and strategies to preserve cultural integrity under extremely challenging conditions, as well as to reveal destabilizing factors. It has been demonstrated that, alongside degradation, the opposite process also takes place – the emergence of new cultural forms reflecting the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. The study highlights the capacity of modern society to ensure information security and protection. The findings may be used to develop cultural protection strategies aimed at minimizing the risk of cultural losses in the future.

Historical reading of the actual picture of freedom in ancient civilizations and today’s realities indicates that the values of freedom and human rights have been violated. It also indicates that people have been subjugated by authoritarian regimes. The purpose of this research is to reflect on the actual reality of freedom in contemporary Islamic societies. To this effect, the study adopted a descriptive and historical approach using a survey to review the opinions of academics about freedom in contemporary Islamic societies. The study suggests that freedom is not granted easily but is rather obtained by force. It also indicates that freedom is inherent in human nature and it is often enhanced by persistence, enriched by satisfaction, and prescribed by good legislations. The opinions obtained by the survey also suggest that there exists an utterly insignificant and limited space of freedom in Islamic societies. To yield fruitful results in our contemporary life, freedom must be originated from the servitude to the Almighty Allah by adhering to the Islamic constants in the Quran and Prophetic traditions and referring to Islamic legislation in which all rights are protected without favor nor exception.

In contemporary society, teacher burnout (TB) continues to be a prevalent issue within educational contexts, negatively impacting teacher job satisfaction and student outcomes. This study investigates the efficacy of positive coping strategies, including effective emotion regulation (EER) and positive psychological capital (PPC), in mitigating TB. Based on conceptual analysis and an extensive narrative review of current literature, the research explores the relationships between these coping strategies and TB. This narrative review highlights that the combined utilization of EER and PPC may present a more robust and holistic strategy for reducing TB than any of these elements can individually achieve. An integrative approach that simultaneously addresses these dimensions will harness their synergistic effects, fostering a more resilient, competent, and emotionally balanced teaching workforce. This review contributes to the broader understanding of TB by emphasizing the need for interventions and professional development programs that enhance EER and PPC among teachers. Implementing such coping strategies can significantly improve teacher job satisfaction and, subsequently, the educational environment. The review calls for further research to develop targeted interventions addressing TB, ultimately fostering a more supportive and effective teaching profession.

For those in contemporary society who believe in an afterlife, there are a number of views available. The most common may be based on belief in an immortal soul. However, the early Christian account was, instead, bodily resurrection. As Christianity moved throughout the Mediterranean world, apologists and theologians adapted their teaching on human nature and the afterlife to Greek and Roman philosophies. By the time of Augustine (d. 430), the doctrines of body-soul dualism and immortality of the soul were firmly entrenched in Christian teaching. The incorporation of the concept of an immortal soul into Christian accounts of life after death produced a hybrid account. The body dies, the soul (at least of those who were to be saved) travels to heaven. At the end of history, there would be a general resurrection, and the souls would be reunited with their bodies, although the bodies would be in a transformed, indestructible state. This hybrid account of life after death went largely uncontested until the twentieth century. In this essay, I describe this history and argue for a return to the early Christian view of humans as a unity, not a duality, and for belief in resurrection of the body as the appropriate expectation for eternal life. This would not only be truer to Christian sources, but, valuable, I believe, in focusing Christian attention on the need to care for the environment.

Humanity is in dangerous ecological ‘overshoot’ – resource consumption and waste production exceed the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the ecosphere and threaten global civilization. This predicament seems inexplicable. Homo sapiens has several intellectual and behavioural attributes that should enable us to resolve the crisis. The more remarkable then, that the problem is mostly attributable to the world’s most-advanced best-educated countries and that the international community has been unable to act decisively in its own long-term best interests. Why are humans so seemingly myopic? What blinds decision-makers to biophysical reality so that they deny the world’s best science? Most explanations invoke some combination of economic, political, and sociocultural factors. By contrast, this chapter makes the case that society’s eco-dysfunction springs from the deepest roots of innate human nature and neuro-cognition. To begin, humanity’s once adaptive expansionist tendencies become highly destructive when reinforced by modern technology and growth-based cultural norms. However, even our most subjectively logical approach to this problem may be trumped by instinct and emotion. Humans experience life in conscious self-awareness and thus assume we are the intelligent masters of our will, but many neuroscientists assert that conscious motivation and control is illusion. Peoples’ conscious thoughts are pre-shaped by unconscious background causes over which we have little control; even where we locate ourselves along the liberal-to-conservative spectrum of political belief may be the result of subtle differences in neuro-anatomy; deeply embedded beliefs/ideologies/narratives acquire specific synaptic circuits in the brain which may become virtually impervious to new knowledge; politicians are in the sway of powerful elites and their own partially subconscious need to retain the trappings of power. The net effect is that decision-makers do not necessarily act rationally, at least as defined by the broader public interest. Society’s collective ‘executive functions’ often seem paralyzed and blind to our best environmental science. If the world community is to save itself, it must first explicitly acknowledge the contribution of both innate behavioral propensities and maladaptive narratives to our predicament and devise ways to confront them directly. Sustainability requires that we override our innate expansionist tendencies. Society must script a new cultural narrative that places cooperation and community above competition and individualism, equity and development above efficiency and growth. The good news is evidence that the human brain is remarkably plastic, able to ‘rewire’ itself even after physical or emotional trauma. If we can muster the necessary self-awareness, political will and resources, it is theoretically possible to inscribe new social norms on even the more resistant (that is, ideologically afflicted) of psyches. Of course, not all problems are solvable. History suggests that, like other complex systems, human societies may be fated to cycle repeatedly through predictable phases – from optimistic pioneering, through growth and complexification, to inflexible, top-heavy rigidity and ultimate collapse. The real question, then, is whether contemporary society can break from this dismal cycle and thus give our species the opportunity to climb yet another rung on the human evolutionary ladder.

We study the institution of pseudo-investment, that is, the placement of money by a layperson under the influence of a media personality who acts as a referral leader actively attracting naïve investors to high-risk yet high return project. We relied on four conceptual frameworks: household financialization as a part of critical macroeconomics; nudging, or pushing consumers to behave in a particular way, treated in our case as a set of unethical tools to pursue narrowly defined self-interest of a referral leader; original institutionalist evolutionary theory to identify behavioral patterns and motives which are targets to involve individuals or their groups in pseudo-investment schemes; reasoned action approach to structure the findings in the context of social psychology. Empirical data comprises the array of text extracted from the introductory video webinars on four investing courses authored by four financial consultants whose activities are featured by the sings of a funnel scam. Discourse analysis implied special attention to manipulative “nudges” financial consultants apply and people’s motives they refer to. Our findings confirm that, attempting to involve individuals into pseudo-investing, referral leaders exploit unproductive patterns related to self-regard proclivity in human nature (greed, self-interest, acquisitiveness, idleness, pecuniary emulation, ostentatious motives in consumption, the desire for undeserved profit, predatory habits, etc.). We also found that productive behavior (such as labor efforts, education activities, and nonspeculative professional engagement) is rendered less important than predatory motives which are hidden behind false care, empathy, and compassion. We claim that the conceptual difference between productive and unproductive behavior patterns, motives and values remains relevant in the contemporary society. Mixed method research and a combination of concepts from various research fields explain why this paper adds to academic literature in behavioral and institutional economics, social psychology, as well as critical macroeconomics research related to financialization and its effects.

My thesis conducts a close reading of major linguistic theories in the twentieth century with a focus on three themes: linguistic system and the individual speaker, social order, linguistic creativity. The examination of these three fundamental themes concerning language and human nature, I argue, on the one hand, provides a fine-textured understanding of the implicit and explicit models of human nature endorsed by major theorists, on the other hand, reveals the methodological dilemmas of linguistics. Modern twentieth-century linguistics struggles to solve the tension between the recognition that language is a phenomenon inseparable from individual speakers, culture, communities, society, history, politics and an explicit need to objectify language as an observable entity. The three themes mentioned are foregrounded in the respective theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, Harold Garfinkel and Noam Chomsky. By exploring how these linguists, together with those influenced by them and those who hold contrastive views, approach these themes, I attempt to demonstrate their efforts of confronting the inherent tension in linguistic theorizing. The mainstream theories under scrutiny all imply a reduced image of the human being characterized by a codified view of communication, a machine model of human behavior and a formalistic understanding of creativity, which do no justice to the reflexive and moral dimensions of human communication. By arguing that this representation is highly problematic my thesis seeks to counteract the tendency of mainstream linguistics to promote its status as an autonomous, scientific and ideologically neutral discipline. In the end, drawing on discussions about the heavily technologized nature of communication in contemporary societies, I examine closely the human-machine dilemma and advocate a more human view, which sees human speakers as socially embedded and having a history and a memory.

This comprehensive research paper examines the profound psychological impact of arts engagement within contemporary society. In an era marked by digital transformation, social fragmentation, and escalating mental health challenges, the arts have evolved from cultural luxuries to essential psychological resources. Through a multidisciplinary lens incorporating neuroscience, clinical psychology, social psychology, and public health, this paper analyzes how diverse art forms—including visual arts, music, performing arts, digital media, and community-based practices—influence cognitive functioning, emotional regulation, social cohesion, and overall well-being. The analysis reveals that arts engagement operates through multiple pathways: neurological (enhancing neuroplasticity and cognitive reserve), emotional (facilitating expression and regulation), and social (fostering connection and empathy). Contemporary developments, including digital arts, social prescribing, and arts-based therapies, are explored alongside critical considerations of cultural specificity, accessibility, and the tension between instrumentalization and intrinsic value. Drawing on empirical research from the past two decades, this paper argues for the integration of arts into public health strategies, educational systems, and clinical interventions as evidence-based approaches to enhancing psychological resilience. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy, practice, and future research directions to maximize the psychological benefits of arts in diverse contemporary contexts.

Postmetaphysical Conundrums: The Problematic Return to Metaphysics in Horkheimer’s Critique of Instrumental Reason

With the rapid development of digital media technology, the relationship between media representation and social identity has taken on new complexities in contemporary society. This study focuses on how marginalised groups in the digital age construct self-identity and strive for a voice through media participation practices. In the specific socio-cultural context of contemporary China, traditional power structures and discourse systems are undergoing profound changes brought about by digital technology. However, existing research is mostly limited to media empowerment theory in Western contexts, lacking a systematic exploration of the mechanisms of digital media empowerment in the specific cultural context of non-Western societies. This study aims to fill this theoretical gap. It uses a combination of multiple theoretical perspectives, such as critical discourse analysis, media representation theory, affective public theory and platform research, as well as mixed research methods such as digital ethnography, social network analysis and in-depth interviews, to explore in depth how the algorithmic governance of digital media platforms affects the media visibility of marginal groups, how marginal groups use strategic media practices to construct counter-hegemonic discourses, how the networked public sphere changes the process of collective identity formation, and how digital labour and cultural production in the context of platform capitalism reshapes the social identity of marginalised groups. The research will create a theoretically grounded framework with local adaptability, develop a mixed research method of computational-ethnography, propose a digital media literacy intervention model, construct an inclusive digital governance framework, and provide theoretical support and practical guidance for the construction of a more just digital media ecosystem.

ResumoDiversos autores conceituam a Web 2.0como uma "ecologia complexa" a fim de apreender as novas configurações da esfera pública nas sociedades contemporâneas. Contudo, raros estudos desenvolvem uma caracterização sistemática da especificidade das condições de comunicação nos ambientes digitais. Este artigo tem por objetivo caracterizar, numa base comparativa, três espaços de conversação online: blogs, sitesde redes sociais (como o Facebook) e plataformas de conteúdo colaborativo (como o YouTube). A partir de uma exploração crítica da literatura corrente e de estudos empíricos, examinam-se as implicações da identificação dos participantes, o papel da moderação, a interatividade social e a natureza do público presumido. Tomando como pano de fundo as condições normativas para a deliberação, defende-se o argumento segundo o qual a relação entre o designe a organização dos espaços virtuais tem impactos específicos na configuração da argumentação e da conversação mediada. Como conclusão, indicamos algumas implicações da arquitetura técnica de distintas plataformas para pensar o ambiente complexo das conversações onlinesob uma perspectiva deliberacionista.

Over 60 years ago C. Wright Mills wrote: contemporary society itself, with its alienating methods of production, its enveloping techniques of political domination, its international anarchy—in a word, its pervasive transformations have shaped the very ‘nature’ of man and the conditions and aims of his life. Neither view could address the fundamental concerns of classical social theorists - what Mills called the “sociological imagination” - how the historical changes that came with the rise of rational, capitalist, modernity, with its complex division of labor, shaped human nature as seen in an individual’s biography (experiences) and his/her life course. In late 1950s C. Wright Mills claimed that American sociology had lost its way, it had failed to live up to the promises of its founders. For Mills, the rapidly growing urban labor forces of white-collar workers, namely clerks, salespersons, and service workers, faced a new kind of alienation.