David W Kidner
Biographic Data
| ID | 421060 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David W Kidner |
| GIVEN NAMES | David W |
| FAMILY NAME | Kidner |
| SIGNATURE | KIDNER D W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nottingham Trent University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
An anthropology of nature – or an industrialist anthropology
The alienation from nature that is foundational to so much of the industrialised world has also left its imprint on academic thought; and this trend has become even more firmly established since the mid-1980s. This chapter explores some of the ways that anthropology may sometimes unwittingly legitimate industrialism's destruction of the natural world, redefining humanity according to an industrial template and framing nature as the formless raw m…
Why ‘anthropocentrism’ is not anthropocentric
How the Mind Took Over the World
Reality can be inconvenient. It is hardly surprising, then, that we try to replace it with something more to our liking. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The Industrialised Individual
Our great symbolic power does not make our colonisation by industrialism inevitable; but it is nevertheless an Achilles Heel which loosens the constraining power of the real world and thereby makes us vulnerable to a range of ecologically malignant ideological systems. The capacity to focus on alternative realities is perilously close to the capacity to ignore current ones; and the size of the association areas in the human brain could be seen ei…
Symbolism Breaks Free
How is it that a tall, large-brained type of early human, living on the African plains many millennia ago, began to make tools and to use symbols in ways that would eventually revolutionise life on the planet? And how did these early developments set in motion trains of events that today seem to be hurtling towards an endgame over which we seem to have little control? In order to understand the initial stages of this process, we need to glance ba…
Growing Out of the World
Each of us comes into the world as a result of the natural processes of conception, gestation, and birth, the products of an evolutionary process spanning hundreds of millions of years — enormously exceeding the time language has existed. Our embodiment, including our neurological capacities, reflects this evolutionary heritage, imposing constraints on the sort of world we can adapt to flourish in. We are both natural and symbolically capable bei…
Lost in (Symbolic) Space
One might reasonably assume that our physical embodiment in a physically real world would be the foundation from which our understanding would grow; and it is bizarre and tragic that much philosophy and social science, as well as some of the major religious traditions, begins from precisely the opposite assumption — namely, that our embodiment leads us away from truth and understanding. It is an indicator of the estrangement of academia from real…
The Natural and the Industrial
Humans live on the cusp of a fundamental upheaval in the history of life on earth, as our symbolic capacity has brought with it the potential to transform, overwhelm, and perhaps destroy the evolutionary process out of which it originated. Yet despite the revolutionary character of this change, it is neither discontinuous with what has gone before nor easily perceived, largely because we do not observe it from some external point, but are ourselv…
Exploring the Farther Reaches of Commoditization
The structures and processes that provide a context favorable to commoditization are sedimented into our lives so that they become taken-for-granted and apparently unproblematic aspects of the cultural scenery. Language, economic “realities,” our styles of thought and categorization, education, the infrastructure we inhabit, and subjectivity itself have all been shaped in ways that make commoditization seem inevitable and even natural. Consequent…
Nature and Experience in the Culture of Delusion
While the historical development of symbolic power has benefitted humanity enormously, there is an insidious and seldom recognised price that goes beyond environmental degradation and cultural disinte
Fraud, Fantasy, and Fiction in Environmental Writing
Industrialism and the Fragmentation of Temporal Structure
Industrialism's assimilation of the natural world has developed over centuries through complex hierarchies of effects involving ecological, cultural and psychological dimensions. One of the consequences of this assimilation, I argue, is the fragmentation of the temporal structure of the world, and its replacement by a short-term logic that also infects human subjectivity. Because of this fragmentation, the healing of the natural world cannot be r…
Fabricating Nature
Models of nature have usually referred to ecological, or more generally, scientific understandings, and have seldom included cultural factors. Recently, however, there has been a trend toward defining nature as a “social construction,” that is, as an artifact of human social and linguistic capability. I argue that constructionism attempts to assimilate nature to an exclusively anthropocentric “reality,” and that it should be seen as expressing lo…
Culture and the Unconscious in Environmental Ethics
Why Psychology Is Mute about the Environmental Crisis
Creativity and Socialization as Predictors of Abnormality
Fabricating Nature
Models of nature have usually referred to ecological, or more generally, scientific understandings, and have seldom included cultural factors. Recently, however, there has been a trend toward defining nature as a “social construction,” that is, as an artifact of human social and linguistic capability. I argue that constructionism attempts to assimilate nature to an exclusively anthropocentric “reality,” and that it should be seen as expressing lo…
Why Psychology Is Mute about the Environmental Crisis
Creativity and Socialization as Predictors of Abnormality
Why Psychology Is Mute about the Environmental Crisis
Culture and the Unconscious in Environmental Ethics
Fabricating Nature
Models of nature have usually referred to ecological, or more generally, scientific understandings, and have seldom included cultural factors. Recently, however, there has been a trend toward defining nature as a “social construction,” that is, as an artifact of human social and linguistic capability. I argue that constructionism attempts to assimilate nature to an exclusively anthropocentric “reality,” and that it should be seen as expressing lo…
Industrialism and the Fragmentation of Temporal Structure
Industrialism's assimilation of the natural world has developed over centuries through complex hierarchies of effects involving ecological, cultural and psychological dimensions. One of the consequences of this assimilation, I argue, is the fragmentation of the temporal structure of the world, and its replacement by a short-term logic that also infects human subjectivity. Because of this fragmentation, the healing of the natural world cannot be r…
Fraud, Fantasy, and Fiction in Environmental Writing
How the Mind Took Over the World
Reality can be inconvenient. It is hardly surprising, then, that we try to replace it with something more to our liking. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The Industrialised Individual
Our great symbolic power does not make our colonisation by industrialism inevitable; but it is nevertheless an Achilles Heel which loosens the constraining power of the real world and thereby makes us vulnerable to a range of ecologically malignant ideological systems. The capacity to focus on alternative realities is perilously close to the capacity to ignore current ones; and the size of the association areas in the human brain could be seen ei…
Symbolism Breaks Free
How is it that a tall, large-brained type of early human, living on the African plains many millennia ago, began to make tools and to use symbols in ways that would eventually revolutionise life on the planet? And how did these early developments set in motion trains of events that today seem to be hurtling towards an endgame over which we seem to have little control? In order to understand the initial stages of this process, we need to glance ba…
Growing Out of the World
Each of us comes into the world as a result of the natural processes of conception, gestation, and birth, the products of an evolutionary process spanning hundreds of millions of years — enormously exceeding the time language has existed. Our embodiment, including our neurological capacities, reflects this evolutionary heritage, imposing constraints on the sort of world we can adapt to flourish in. We are both natural and symbolically capable bei…
Lost in (Symbolic) Space
One might reasonably assume that our physical embodiment in a physically real world would be the foundation from which our understanding would grow; and it is bizarre and tragic that much philosophy and social science, as well as some of the major religious traditions, begins from precisely the opposite assumption — namely, that our embodiment leads us away from truth and understanding. It is an indicator of the estrangement of academia from real…
The Natural and the Industrial
Humans live on the cusp of a fundamental upheaval in the history of life on earth, as our symbolic capacity has brought with it the potential to transform, overwhelm, and perhaps destroy the evolutionary process out of which it originated. Yet despite the revolutionary character of this change, it is neither discontinuous with what has gone before nor easily perceived, largely because we do not observe it from some external point, but are ourselv…
Exploring the Farther Reaches of Commoditization
The structures and processes that provide a context favorable to commoditization are sedimented into our lives so that they become taken-for-granted and apparently unproblematic aspects of the cultural scenery. Language, economic “realities,” our styles of thought and categorization, education, the infrastructure we inhabit, and subjectivity itself have all been shaped in ways that make commoditization seem inevitable and even natural. Consequent…
Nature and Experience in the Culture of Delusion
While the historical development of symbolic power has benefitted humanity enormously, there is an insidious and seldom recognised price that goes beyond environmental degradation and cultural disinte
Why ‘anthropocentrism’ is not anthropocentric
An anthropology of nature – or an industrialist anthropology
The alienation from nature that is foundational to so much of the industrialised world has also left its imprint on academic thought; and this trend has become even more firmly established since the mid-1980s. This chapter explores some of the ways that anthropology may sometimes unwittingly legitimate industrialism's destruction of the natural world, redefining humanity according to an industrial template and framing nature as the formless raw m…
Epistemology (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Environmental ethics (8 works) · History (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · General interest (5 works) · Applied philosophy (4 works) · Art (4 works)