NYAS @ WGF: March Madness Double Feature!
March 2014 is a special month for our annual NYAS Anthropology Section Lecture series, as we’re offering a double-dip of great anthropological programming beginning Friday, March 21, when CUNY Graduate Center hosts Gavin Smith, Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto. And on the following Monday, March 24, join us at the Wenner-Gren offices for an after-work discussion with New York University’s Rayna Rapp and South Florida’s Daniel Lende on “Culture and the Brain”!
Here are the details:
Intellectuals and Counter-Politics: Between Reflexivity and Engagement
Friday, March 21, 2014 | 4:15 PM – 6:00 PM
The Graduate Center, CUNY, Room C415A
Dr. Gavin Smith (University of Toronto) argues that the forms capitalism takes is best seen in terms of the dominance of specific power blocs, rather than as an expression of neoliberalism — either as a form of governance or as a kind of capitalist market ideology. He suggests that in the major social formations the conditions for the reproduction of finance capital have to be secured by the hegemonic strategies of this fraction of capital. As a result, we have seen a shift from a kind of hegemony whose ideological authority rested on expansion through a population configured as ideally homogenous, to a kind of hegemony whose ideological authority rests on selectivity and distinctions among the population. The intellectual task for a philosophy of praxis has three foci: assessment of the conditions of possibility, of the potentialities for popular mobilization, and of appropriate strategic actions — identifying key points of leverage.
Culture and the Brain: A Panel Discussion
Monday, March 24, 2014 | 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
The Wenner-Gren Foundation
Rayna Rapp, New York University — “Big Data, Small Kids”
Dr. Rayna Rapp, in collaboration with Dr. Faye Ginsburg, has recently been examining cultural innovation in special education and the rise of disability consciousness. Together they have carried out fieldwork in scientific laboratories on brain research about learning, memory, childhood psychiatric diagnoses, and epigenetics. In this talk, Dr. Rapp tells the story of how she began tracking one set of scientists in a pediatric neuroscience lab looking at Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Learning Disability (LD), and ended up watching the scientists construct international Big Data coalitions as part of a massive undertaking in brain mapping now ongoing across several continents.
Daniel Lende, University of South Florida — “Hooked on the Brain? On Using Neuroscience in Anthropology”
Dr. Daniel Lende areas of expertise include medical anthropology, the synthesis of biological and cultural anthropology, and applied anthropology. His research centers on behavioral health problems, particularly substance use and abuse. Dr. Lende is the co-founder of the Neuroanthropology blog and co-editor of The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology (MIT Press). Neuroanthropology is a new field that draws on neuroscience to examine anthropological questions. Using the case study of addiction, this talk will examine both the promise and peril of such an approach, and demonstrate how effective use of neuroscience requires both synthesis and critique.
As always, it is FREE to attend these events, but REGISTRATION WITH NYAS IS REQUIRED. Visit the links provided or contact the New York Academy of Sciences for more information.