Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 09:10:29 -0600
Subject: SCIENCE-AS-CULTURE Digest - [forwarded]


  1. _Science as Culture_ no. 25 has appeared
  2. Book Announcement
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From:    Robert Maxwell Young <robert-AT-RMY1.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: _Science as Culture_ no. 25 has appeared

_SCIENCE AS CULTURE_
Volume 5, Part 4 (No. 25) has appeared in the US and will soon
elsewhere.
CONTENTS
'The water closet: public and private meanings' by  Marja Gastelaars
'Sex in the age of virtual reality' by Slavoj Zizek
'Naming the heavens: a brief history of earthly projections, Part I:
        nativizing Hellenic science' by  Scott L. Montgomery
'Farm pollution as environmental crime' by  Philip Lowe _et al_.
'Contested expertise: plant biotechnology and social movements' by
Derrick Purdue

Reviews:
_Media Freedom: The Contradictions of Communications in the Age of
Modernity_ by Richard Barbrook, reviewed by John Barker
_Contested Technology: Ethics, Risk and Public Debate_, edited by
Rene von Schomberg, reviewed by Alison J. Hill
_Juvenile Violence in a Winner-Loser Culture_ by Oliver James,
reviewed by Vincenzo Ruggiero

_SaC_ 26 will include:
'Reducing AIDS risk: a case of mistaken identity?' by Simon Carter
'The Californian Ideology' by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron
'A spoonful of blood: Haitians, racism and AIDS' by Laurent Dubois
'Naming the heavens: a brief history of earthly projections, Part II:
        nativizing Arab science' by Scott L. Montgomery

_SaC_ 27 will include:
'The corporate suppression of inventions, conspiracy theories and an
ambivalent American dream' by Stephen DeMeo
'Death comes alive: technology and the re-conception of death'
        by Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane
'Inoculating gadgets against ridicule' by Mike Michael
'Sperm stories: romantic, entrepreneurial and environmental
narratives about treating male infertility' by Kirsten Dwight

In future issues:
'Designing flexibility: science and work in the age of flexible
accumulation' by Emily Martin
'Healthy bodies, healthy citizens: the anti-secondhand smoke
campaign' by Roddy Reid
'Israel's first test-tube baby' byDaphna Birenbaum Carmeli

160pp. _Science as Culture_ is published quarterly by Process Press
Ltd. in Britain: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/process.html
and Guilford Publications Inc. in North America: info-AT-guilford.com.
For information about subscriptions and a list of back issues (half
price to subscribers),
go to: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/process.html#science

The journal has an associated email forum:
science-as-culture-AT-sjuvm.stjohns.edu. To join, send message To:
listserv-AT-sjuvm.stjohns
Body of message: SUB SCIENCE-AS-CULTURE  yourfirstname yourlastname
A web site associated with the journal and forum holds articles from
back issues of the journal, as well as submissions under
consideration (not obligatory), whose authors may benefit from
constructive comments for purposes of revisions before the hard copy
is printed, as well as longer piece not suitable for the email format
which forum members may wish to discuss:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/rmy/sac.html
__________________________________________
Robert Maxwell Young:  robert-AT-rmy1.demon.co.uk  26 Freegrove Rd.,
London N7
9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306  fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of
Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for
Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of  Sheffield. Home page and
writings:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/  Process Press publications:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html
 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus

------------------------------
Subject: Book Announcement 

This is a book which readers of science-as-culture might find of
interest.
For more information see:

http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/ronaldl/horst.html
http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/mitp/recent-books/cog/hench.html

_Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity,
Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought_
by Horst Hendriks-Jansen

This book presents a philosophical and methodological critique of
current cognitive science and puts forward an alternative explanatory
framework based on situated robotics, ethology, and recent
discoveries in developmental psychology.  It suggests that human
infants are born with species-typical activity patterns that have
evolved to engage the attention of adults, seduce them into
intentional interpretations of the infant s behavior, and in this way
establish the patterns of interaction that are essential to early
development.
Situated activity and interactive emergence are concepts that derive
>from the new discipline of autonomous agent research. The book puts
these notions on a firm philosophical basis and uses them to anchor a
genetic or historical explanation of mental phenomena.  A thorough
overview of the new discipline is provided and its foundational
issues are discussed, revealing methodological affinities between
situated robotics and ethology that allow the natural kinds of the
proposed explanatory framework to be grounded through natural
selection.

A Bradford Book
July 1996
ISBN 0-262-08246-2
367 pp.
US $35.00.   UKL22.50

The MIT Press*55Hayward Street*Cambridge, MA  02142*617.625.8569




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