It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Student Engagement in Europe: Society, Higher Education and Student Governance, 2015
For most of the second half of the twentieth century, Philip Altbach has followed, analysed and theorised student activism in North America, India, Europe and beyond, and become the foremost scholar on the topic. This chapter critically reviews Altbach’s work on student activism (1963 – 2006) and his efforts at developing a comparative theoretical understanding of student activism in terms of its causes, organisation, ideological orientation, and outcomes, along with the backgrounds and identity of student activists, the importance of national and institutional contexts and historical conjunctures in the emergence of student activism and in the response of national and university governments to student protest. In keeping with Altbach’s thinking on student politics and activism the chapter considers four questions: Under what conditions does student activism emerge? What are the typical characteristics of student organisations and movements? What are the typical characteristics of student activists? What are the effects of student activism? The chapter thus challenges Altbach’s own assertion that “student activism lacks any overarching theoretical explanation” (1991) showing that in various respects his work has eventually provided precisely that.
Publication Date: 2015
Publication Name: Student Engagement in Europe: Society, Higher Education and Student Governance
Why We Fight: Resisting the Incursion of Free-Market Technique in US Higher Education (An Educator’s Manifesto) Peter K Fallon Abstract Higher education in the United States of America over the last few decades has been undergoing an undeniably profound shift; in form, in philosophy, in mission, in goals. This paper seeks to describe that shift and identify the factors that have directed it, reshaped the structure of US higher education, and reframed our attitudes, beliefs and expectations about it. It is a fundamental hypothesis and assumption of this paper that technique and the values of the technological society have come to dominate academia and wield the same power there as they do in (what I will call) “the secular world.” The adoption of technical values in higher education must result in academia being reduced to a mere adjunct of the technological society, a seminary of the technical belief system. It is an assumption of this paper that both practical and liberal knowledge are of equal value and both should be seen as an appropriate end. But the paper also claims that one of the two, in fact, is disappearing. The paper uses both the theories of Jacques Ellul (as tools of critical analysis of the surveyed data) and his theology (to evaluate the data, draw conclusions, and suggest approaches to understanding – and living with – the stated problem). Peter K Fallon Roosevelt University Faculty Member Peter K. Fallon is Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He is the author of three books RELATED Universities between the State and the Market. Development Policy, Commercialization and Liberalization of Higher Education.
Taking Research off the Shelf: Impacts, Benefits, and Participatory Processes around the Oil Sands Industry in Northern Alberta Tara L Joly Report with Clinton N. Westman synthesizing recent literature on impacts, benefits, and participatory processes for Indigenous communities in the oil sands region. This project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's Knowledge Synthesis Grant.
This is Oil Country”: The Alberta Tar Sands and Jacques Ellul’s Theory of Technology
Environmental Ethics, 2015
The Alberta tar sands, and the proposed pipelines which would carry their bitumen to international markets, comprise one of the most visible environmental controversies of the early twenty-first century. Jacques Ellul's theory of technology presents ostensibly physical phenomena, such as the tar sands, as social phenomena wherein all values are subsumed under the efficient mastery of nature. The effect of technological rationality is totalizing because technical means establish themselves as the exclusive facts of the matter, which creates a socio-political environment wherein ethical engagement is precluded. Analyzing the tar sands controversy through Ellul's hermeneutic challenges environmental ethics to a more radical stance than the continuation of the technological worldview, and thus offers meaningful and hopeful alternatives to the status quo.
Randolph Haluza-DeLay Faculty Member, The King's University Most of my research is now on environmental social movements. Current research foci are Environmental justice; Social movements and community organizations; Religion/Spirituality and the Environment; Anti-racism and Aboriginal relations. I was a wilderness guide and ski patroller for years. My background includes anti-racism and environmental education. I attend a Mennonite Church (my intro to sociological theory was through liberation theology)and am active in a number of community social justice organizations. I also do some contract research and consulting work with CSoP Research & Consulting.
Nathan Kowalsky Faculty Member, University of Alberta Nathan Kowalsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He also teaches philosophy courses for the University of Alberta's Department of Philosophy as an affiliated faculty member. Furthermore, he is Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies and, through a secondment agreement, Associate Professor of Science, Technology & Society, both through the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Alberta.
Chimpanzees, human beings' closest animal relatives, share up to 98% of our genes. Their human-like hands and facial expressions can send uncanny shivers of self-recognition down the backs of zoo patrons.
Yet people and chimpanzees lead very different lives.Fewer than 300,000 wild chimpanzeeslive in a few forested corners of Africa today, while humans have colonized every corner of the globe, from the Arctic tundra to the Kalahari Desert. At more than 7 billion, humans' population dwarfs that of nearly all other mammals—despite our physical weaknesses.
What could account for our species' incredible evolutionary successes?
One obvious answer is our big brains. It could be that our raw intelligence gave us an unprecedented ability to think outside the box, innovating solutions to gnarly problems as people migrated across the globe. Think of "The Martian," where Matt Damon, trapped alone in a research station on Mars, heroically "sciences" his way out of certain death.
But a growing number of cognitive scientists and anthropologists are rejecting that explanation. These researchers think that, rather than making our living as innovators, human beings survive and thrive precisely because we don't think for ourselves. Instead, people cope with challenging climates and ecological contexts by carefully copying others – especially those we respect. Instead of Homo sapiens, or "man the knower," we're really Homo imitans: "man the imitator."
Watching and learning
In a famous study, psychologists Victoria Horner and Andrew Whiten showed two groups of test subjects—children and chimpanzees—a mechanical box with a treat inside. In one condition, the box was opaque, while in the other it was transparent. The experimenters demonstrated how to open the box to retrieve a treat, but they also included the irrelevant step of tapping on the box with a stick.
Oddly, human children carefully copied all the steps to open the box, even when they could see that the stick had no practical effect. That is, they copied irrationally: Instead of doing only what was necessary to get their reward, children slavishly imitated every action they'd witnessed.
Of course, that study only included three- and four-year-olds. But additional research has showed that older children and adults are even more likely to mindlessly copy others' actions, and young infants are less likely to over-imitate—that is, to precisely copy even impractical actions.
By contrast, chimpanzees in Horner and Whiten's study only over-imitated in the opaque condition. In the transparent condition—where they saw that the stick was mechanically useless—they ignored that step entirely, merely opening the box with their hands. Other research has since supported these findings.
When it comes to copying, chimpanzees are more rational than human children or adults.
Chimps and children watch how to open a puzzle box.
The benefits of following without question
Where does the seemingly irrational human preference for over-imitation come from? In his book "The Secret of Our Success," anthropologist Joseph Henrich points out that people around the world rely on technologies that are often so complex that no one can learn them rationally. Instead, people must learn them step by step, trusting in the wisdom of more experienced elders and peers.
For example, the best way to master making a bow is by observing successful hunters doing it, with the assumption that everything they do is important. As an inexperienced learner, you can't yet judge which steps are actually relevant. So when your band's best hunter waxes his bowstring with two fingers or touches his ear before drawing the string, you copy him.
The human propensity for over-imitation thus makes possible what anthropologists call cumulative culture: the long-term development of skills and technologies over generations. No single person might understand all the practical reasons behind each step to making a bow or carving a canoe, much less transforming rare earth minerals into iPhones. But as long as people copy with high fidelity, the technology gets transmitted.
Ritual and religion are also domains in which people carry out actions that aren't connected in a tangible way with practical outcomes. For example, a Catholic priest blesses wafers and wine for Communion by uttering a series of repetitive words and doing odd motions with his hands. One could be forgiven for wondering what on Earth these ritualistic acts have to do with eating bread, just as a chimpanzee can't see any connection between tapping a stick and opening a box.
But rituals have a hidden effect: They bond people to one another and demonstrate cultural affiliation. For an enlightening negative example, consider a student who refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Her action clearly telegraphs her rejection of authorities' right to tell her how to behave. And as anthropologist Roy Rappaport pointed out, ritual participation is binary: Either you say the pledge or you don't. This clarity makes it easily apparent who is or isn't committed to the group.
Surprise secret ingredient that makes us human
In a broader sense, then, over-imitation helps enable much of what comprises distinctively human culture, which turns out to be much more complicated than mechanical cause and effect.
At heart, human beings are not brave, self-reliant innovators, but careful if savvy conformists. We perform and imitate apparently impractical actions because doing so is the key to learning complex cultural skills, and because rituals create and sustain the cultural identities and solidarity we depend on for survival. Indeed, copying others is a powerful way to establish social rapport. For example, mimicking another's body language can induce them to like and trust you more.
So the next time you hear someone arguing passionately that everyone should embrace nonconformity and avoid imitating others, you might chuckle a bit. We're not chimpanzees, after all.
More information: Cristine H. Legare et al. Imitation and Innovation: The Dual Engines of Cultural Learning, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2015.08.005
Victoria Horner et al. Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens), Animal Cognition (2004). DOI: 10.1007/s10071-004-0239-6
Rohan Kapitány et al. Adopting the ritual stance: The role of opacity and context in ritual and everyday actions, Cognition (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.002
Mark Nielsen. The Social Glue of Cumulative Culture and Ritual Behavior, Child Development Perspectives (2018). DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12297
U of A undergraduate student Bryce Wittrock (left) and linguist Ben Tucker analyze a waveform from a recording for their study comparing dialects among people in southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan and Edmonton. Credit: Geoff McMaster
It's only a 40-minute drive from Queens to the Bronx in New York, but the difference in dialect is obvious to most familiar with the English language.
In Canada you probably have to cross the continent to hear such dramatic shifts in pronunciation. And in Western Canada, we all sound the same, don't we?
Not exactly, said University of Alberta undergraduate student Bryce Wittrock, who just published a study on Canadian Prairie dialects along with his supervisor, U of A linguist Ben Tucker.
Drive to Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan from Calgary or Edmonton, and if you listen closely enough, you'll hear slight differences in vowel pronunciation, said Wittrock.
"The dialects of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan English (SASE) and Edmonton English display measurable differences" in the pronunciation of certain vowels, he concluded in his study, published last month in the linguistics journal Canadian Acoustics.
One of the most striking examples of vowel shift is the word "fired," which in SASE country can sound similar to the way it's pronounced on the East Coast. However, Bryce pointed out this is an extreme example, and not everyone in the region necessarily pronounces it that way.
The word "head" sounds more like "hid" in the south, but that difference is only clear when pronunciations of the two regions are played back to back.
Wittrock recorded 24 interviews—13 with people from communities in southern Alberta, nine from southern Saskatchewan and two who had grown up in the south of both provinces—for a project that received funding from a Faculty of Arts Roger S. Smith Undergraduate Researcher Award two years ago.
Averaging about 25 minutes, the interviews were designed to be "free, light and conversational, often branching from summer holiday plans or leisure activities in an attempt to elicit maximally naturalistic vernacular," said Wittrock.
Interview subjects were encouraged to relax and think about what they were saying, not how they were saying it, he said, "because when people are self-conscious about how they're talking, they change it in ways that aren't necessarily authentic."
Comparing those recordings with samples from Edmonton residents already in Tucker's archive, Wittrock examined the "resonant frequencies" of the vocal tract, which produce qualities such as color and tone, to determine variation in dialects, said Tucker.
"Just like a pipe organ has a resonant frequency, your vocal tract has them too. The difference is that a pipe organ really only has one for each pipe, whereas your vocal tract has many colors and frequencies.
Those frequencies explain how we all identify subtle nuances of speech, said Tucker. "We can look at those resonant frequencies" to see how they shift between regions or populations.
A big challenge in defining a dialect is separating out differences between individuals or between, say, men and women. There are also variations according to social factors such as level of education, occupation and age.
"We're trying not to make assumptions and say a difference is necessarily dialectal, or related to differences between whole populations or regions," said Wittrock. "Maybe it's just that this is one social group of people and that is another."
Differences in Canadian dialect are largely determined by divides between rural and urban populations, he said, rather than between regions. Someone from Edmonton can sound more like someone from Calgary than like a person raised on a nearby farm.
Most vowel shifts are subtle in the Canadian West, but in certain rare cases, such as the English spoken by southern Alberta Mormons, the dialect has sharply distinct features.
Since the study of Canadian English in the West is largely unexplored territory—compared with research done in the East—Wittrock said there is plenty of work to carry him into graduate school and beyond.
One project he has in mind is an examination of English spoken by workers on Alberta's oil rigs, which may have unique inflections given that, traditionally, many of them have been workers from Newfoundland.
"He might just find a kind of hybrid there," said Tucker. "But he could spend the rest of his life just working with the data he's recorded so far
Solving the Greek monkey mystery gave us an important clue to Bronze Age world
by Tracie McKinney and Marie Nicole Pareja Cummings, The ConversationJANUARY 16, 2020
Monkeys frescoes in Akrotiri. Credit: Thera Akrotiri Excavations
The blue monkeys painted on the walls of Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini are among many animals found in the frescoes of this 3,600-year-old city. Historians have studied the murals for decades since they were unearthed in the 1960s and 1970s on the island, which was once known as Thera. But when we and a team of other primatologists recently examined the paintings, we realized the monkeys could provide a clue that the Bronze Age world was much more globalized than previously thought.
Archaeologists had assumed the monkeys were an African species, with which the Aegean people that built Akrotiri probably came into contact via trade links with Egypt. But we think the paintings actually depict Hanuman langurs, a species from the Indian subcontinent. This suggests the Aegean people, who came from Crete and the Cycladic islands in the Aegean Sea, may have had trade routes that reached over 2,500 miles.
The wall paintings of Akrotiri were preserved by ash from a volcano that destroyed the city some time in the 16th or 15th century BC and offer an incredible glimpse of an early civilization in Europe. We haven't been able to translate the earliest Aegean writing, but the paintings suggest just how developed these people's society, economy and culture were.
Much animal art from this period is generalized, meaning it's hard to confidently identify individual species. In the case of the monkeys, we also don't have any physical remains from Aegean settlements to provide additional evidence of which species are depicted.
The reason why archaeologists and art historians have assumed they came from Egypt is because that was the nearest location with an indigenous monkey population that had known trade links with the Aegean. As a result, the Akrotiri monkeys have been variously identified as baboons, vervets and grivet monkeys, all African species that live across a wide area.
Marie Pareja decided to take a different approach, gathering a team of primatologists who study apes, monkeys, and lemurs, including renowned taxonomic illustrator Stephen Nash. Together, we examined photos of the art and discussed the animals depicted, considering not only fur color and pattern but also body size, limb proportions, sitting and standing postures, and tail position. While we all agreed that some of the animals depicted were baboons, as previously thought, we began to debate the identification of the animals from one particular scene.
International travellers. Credit: Thera Akrotiri Excavations
Identifying the langurs
The monkeys in the paintings are gray-blue. But although some living monkeys have small patches of blue skin—the blue on a mandrill's face, for example—none have blue fur. There is an African forest monkey called the blue monkey, but it is mainly olive or dark gray, and the face patterns don't match those in the paintings. So we needed to use other characteristics to identify them.
They were previously believed to be vervets or grivets, small monkeys weighing between 3kg and 8kg (roughly the size of a housecat) that are found in the savannas of north and east Africa. Despite their silvery white fur, they also have dark-colored hands and feet and an overall look that matches the depictions in the paintings.
However, Hanuman langurs, which weigh a more substantial 11kg to 18kg, have a similar look. They also move quite differently, and this was crucial to the identification.
Both primates primarily live on the ground (as opposed to in trees) and have long limbs and tails. But the langurs tend to carry their tail upward, as an S- or C-shape or curving towards the head, while vervet monkeys carry their tail in a straight line or arcing downward. This tail position, repeated across multiple images, was a key factor in identifying the monkeys as Hanuman langurs.
Vervet (left) and langur. Credit: Stephen D. Nash
International links
We know from archaeological evidence that Aegean peoples had access to minerals such as tin, lapis lazuli and carnelian that came from beyond the Zagros mountains on the western border of modern Iran. But the artistic detail of the Akrotiri paintings, compared to other monkey art of the period, suggests that the artists had seen live animals, perhaps while traveling abroad.
It's understandable that earlier scholars thought the monkeys were African since relations between the Aegean and Egypt were already well known and supported by archaeological evidence. If you expect to find an African monkey, you will only look at African animals for possible explanations. But as primatologists, we were able to bring a fresh look at the evidence without preconceived notions of ancient peoples or trade routes, and consider species living further afield.
This study is an excellent example of the importance of academics from different disciplines working together. Without the expertise of primatologists, it may not have been possibly to confidently identify these animals. Conversely, primatologists may not have considered these ancient human-primate interactions without a prompt from archaeologists.
