I arrange things together into art, including paint, wood, plastic, raspberry pi, people, words, dialogues, arduino, sensors, web tech, light and code.
I use things other people have written to help guide these projects, so I read as often as I can. Most of what I read is literature (fiction) or nonfiction on philosophy, art theory, ethics and technology.
From sleeve: "Rosaleen McDonagh writes fearlessly about a diverse experience of being Irish. Unsettled explores racism, ableism, abuse, and resistance …
@wakest thanks. I spotted the z-lib link in the other reply too. I'll hold off for now as I prefer printed books - find screens hard to read off at length - but if the library takes too long I'll drop a line.
Enjoy it! I've heard only great things so far.
When I am asked why monkeys live in groups, the first answer that comes to mind is 'because they like each other's company' – and that is probably a better answer than many more seemingly sophisticated answers that have been offered like 'sexual attraction'.
— The social behaviour of monkeys by Thelma Rowell (Page 174)
I discovered Thelma Rowell through her more recent work, where she has taken her field studies with primates and applied their methods to domesticated livestock. So it was a surprise and a treat to discover a copy of this book, which I believe was the only one she ever published. It was even more a pleasure to discover that, even fifty years ago, Rowell had a keen sense of critique about the way humans observe our world.
The Social Behaviour of Monkeys was part of a series published by Penguin in the early 1970s. The book's title is self-explanatory; it explores in great depth the many research studies about social groups and behaviours in various primates, both in the wild and in captivity. A lot of the chapters are methodical references of different studies contemporary to the time of publication, and would not be to everyone's taste. What is striking …
I discovered Thelma Rowell through her more recent work, where she has taken her field studies with primates and applied their methods to domesticated livestock. So it was a surprise and a treat to discover a copy of this book, which I believe was the only one she ever published. It was even more a pleasure to discover that, even fifty years ago, Rowell had a keen sense of critique about the way humans observe our world.
The Social Behaviour of Monkeys was part of a series published by Penguin in the early 1970s. The book's title is self-explanatory; it explores in great depth the many research studies about social groups and behaviours in various primates, both in the wild and in captivity. A lot of the chapters are methodical references of different studies contemporary to the time of publication, and would not be to everyone's taste. What is striking is how often and how brilliantly Rowell points out the hypocrisy in animal observation - e.g. "It is surely a comment on our own species that we have attempted to explain the behaviour of other species almost entirely in terms of concepts defined by aggression" (p159). She begins the book in this vein, opening with an impassive chapter that highlights how humans tend to overvalue our near relatives in assumptions about what "social" means. She has a keen sense of bias, and of where scientists use assumptions that may have little evidence, such as that primates have a pecking order (some do, but many only do when in captivity; this point and many others have been revisited recently by Vinciane Despret in What Would Animals Say If We Asked The Right Questions? (2017)).
Rowell's contribution to zoology is substantial, but her best work is in her critique of the inherent bias of other research, and this book is a fascinating record that shows she was a thought leader in critique long before posthumanism and radical feminist theory became more broadly adopted in academic circles.
In the last ten years a large number of field studies on undisturbed groups were reported, and an interesting dichotomy began to emerge, because such studies rarely used the 'fundamental' concept of hierarchy in explaining the social organization observed, or occasionally paid lip-service by stating that hierarchy was 'latent', that is, so well established that it was never seen expressed (an idea which is difficult to distinguish from the hierarchy simply not being there).
— The social behaviour of monkeys by Thelma Rowell (Page 160)
My emphasis. Words up to 'fundamental' are on p159.
I did a 3-month writing course with Emergence Magazine in 2020, online. In a Zoom breakout room, I read a piece I had written about the Earth observed from the point of view of a cosmic ray passing through in a microsecond. The others in the room all recommended this book. I finally got around to it.
Finally, after waiting nearly two years, the library copy in Ireland made it to me and I had a chance to read Stamets' most well-known book.
We shall first consider two [social interactions] which have been widely used in our primate studies, hierarchy and territory. (It is surely a comment on our own species that we have attempted to explain the behaviour of other species almost entirely in terms of concepts defined by aggression.)
— The social behaviour of monkeys by Thelma Rowell (Page 159)
In this expanded edition of her bestselling 1989 CBC Massey Lectures, renowned scientist and humanitarian …
Added after reading @wynkenhimself review
@wakest I am 18th in the queue at the library for the one copy they have in the country. I'm sure they'll order more...
Annie Dillard is a writer who takes joy in writing, in learning, and piecing it all together. In her most well-known book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she perfects the art. The book is like Thoreau's Walden revised for a 20th Century audience (in fact, Dillard references the American philosopher several times) but with a more playful voice. Dillard explores the world around Tinker Creek, where she lives for the duration of the book, and interacts with the place, from watching a praying mantis egg sac hatch to standing in a field so full of grasshoppers the entire thing is moving, to a neighbour boy carrying a snapping turtle with leeches on it, to lying under the stars and considering their vastness.
Within all this, Dillard maintains a wit and a clever storytelling that is endlessly enjoyable. Every sentence drips with her own sharp prose. She is an avid reader, …
Annie Dillard is a writer who takes joy in writing, in learning, and piecing it all together. In her most well-known book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she perfects the art. The book is like Thoreau's Walden revised for a 20th Century audience (in fact, Dillard references the American philosopher several times) but with a more playful voice. Dillard explores the world around Tinker Creek, where she lives for the duration of the book, and interacts with the place, from watching a praying mantis egg sac hatch to standing in a field so full of grasshoppers the entire thing is moving, to a neighbour boy carrying a snapping turtle with leeches on it, to lying under the stars and considering their vastness.
Within all this, Dillard maintains a wit and a clever storytelling that is endlessly enjoyable. Every sentence drips with her own sharp prose. She is an avid reader, and intersperses religious texts, philosophy, nature writing and obscure historical books with her observations and ideas. She moves from micro to macro, and paints a landscape image of this place beautifully and excitingly. Wonderful.
...worms and other beings do take care of our waste even if they don’t commit intentionally to it. That relations are not reciprocally symmetrical doesn’t make them less vibrant with ethicality. What makes someone feel ethically obliged to worms can only be found in the grounded transformation of everyday practices that ravel asymmetrical modes of mutual obligation.
— Matters of Care by María Puig de la Bellacasa (Page 156)
Wormy networks of care.
Care is a broad subject, and not easy to pin down to one idea. María Puig de la Bellacasa approaches it from a study of ethics and philosophy. The first section sets out the possibilities for care across different types of human and more-than-human actors, including inorganic technologies. It is dense reading, and not easy to recommend for that reason, but it is also carefully written, with each word chosen for its accuracy and no term used lightly.
The second half of the book presents a possible real-world praxis for the theoretical framework in the first. Puig de la Bellacasa uses her own experiences learning from a permaculture retreat to begin an argument about how care of soil is a critical and central example of a system that requires care. Drawing from science, philosophy, experience and culture, she uses soil to show how complex webs of interconnected actors need to …
Care is a broad subject, and not easy to pin down to one idea. María Puig de la Bellacasa approaches it from a study of ethics and philosophy. The first section sets out the possibilities for care across different types of human and more-than-human actors, including inorganic technologies. It is dense reading, and not easy to recommend for that reason, but it is also carefully written, with each word chosen for its accuracy and no term used lightly.
The second half of the book presents a possible real-world praxis for the theoretical framework in the first. Puig de la Bellacasa uses her own experiences learning from a permaculture retreat to begin an argument about how care of soil is a critical and central example of a system that requires care. Drawing from science, philosophy, experience and culture, she uses soil to show how complex webs of interconnected actors need to care for one another to maintain healthy soil for present and future generations.
The theoretical framework in this book is one that anyone with an interest in networks and assemblages would find fascinating.
