wallpaper dinding

One of the principal casualties of the economic crisis is economic theory. (Maybe bad theory is often the root cause of bad things!). The imputation of rationality behind economic behaviour is something that clearly has become highly suspect with the scale of apparently irrational economic decisions made by everyone from home-buyers to hedge-fund managers. With my recent posts about sensuality, I...

I was very stressed and tired yesterday, and driving home late, I turned on the radio to hear Vaughan Williams 'Lark Ascending'. I'm aware I have to be in the right mood for this, but I was certainly in the right mood yesterday. It was very beautiful. Given my thoughts about an 'emotion machine' and the caressing of the senses, what might be going here? Here's my attempt at an explanation:My stressful...

Drawing together my recent thoughts on knowledge performance, and the last few days thinking about sensuality and 'psychic systems' leads me to the following tentative conclusions:1. Any knowledge performance combines a communication with sensual stimuli2. The multiple descriptions of knowledge (Person-form, content-form, tool-form, purpose-form) are apprehended in the combination of sensual performances...

On emotions, Luhmann states:"emotions are not representations that refer to the environment but internal adaptations to internal problem situations in the psychic system that concern the ongoing production of the systems elements by the system's elements." (Social Systems, 1995, p 274)He goes on to say:"In terms of their function, emotions can be compared to immune systems; they seem to assume an...

There's some common ground to explore between Luhmann's work on communication and Bataille's work on eroticism and transgression which is interesting me - particularly as I think about the 'caress of learning'. My principle thought, in line with Bataille, is that every caress is a boundary-crossing between the individual and the infinite. Every caress takes us from what we know to be our own, to something...

I've just completed two papers which make use of Luhmann's theory of communication, and as often is the case, I learn new things as I look deeper into Luhmann's work. What's really hit me is the extent to which Luhmann thought about social form and how he made distinctions about it. For whilst his theory is really a theory about communication, he sees social forms as particular  bounded communication...

In a discussion on Friday, the topic of great teaching being like a caress came up again. I want to elaborate on this because the theme of caressing brings together a lot of what I've been thinking recently.Thinking about a caress - being caressed, or caressing - is very similar to thinking about grace: the gracefulness of motion, touch, elegance and poise. To me, all of these things are fundamentally...

The softest aspects of education are hardest to understand, whilst also being the most important. In so many educational situations - particularly those dealing with 'widening participation' students who have had a rough time both in school, and often in home, the natural instinct of compassionate teachers is to give them a hug, if not literally (which perhaps we ought to do more of!), then metaphorically....

The UK government is planning to sell off UK forests. It is interesting to see this move as part of a broader trend in servitisation of the economy, for it has resonances with the way we think about education. Basically, the deal is to sell the land to private companies on condition that those companies maintain rights of access, ecology, and leisure facilities. In effect, it will turn those private...

My eye was caught by an article on the BBC about libraries vs. the internet (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12340505). If I imagine the places I would go to feel 'at home', the library would be top of the list. From Luton public library, where as a teenager I worked my way through the record and sheet music section (before Spotify!) to Manchester's Henry Watson Music library - which is famously...

Benjamin Britten's music has always fascinated me. He uses very simple patterns which are almost childlike and naive - it portrays a kind of 'melancholic innocence': a feeling which takes me back to the roots of 'home': security, privacy, intimacy. What is it to be in a place all of your own.Privacy and intimacy are not features of social technology. Facebook and the like are precisely about...

What is it to 'be at home'? How does technology affect our 'being at home'? I think I would be at home if I had my family, a piano (important), my books and an internet connection. What is that? How is my experience of home different from previous generations or from other people? What is the relationship between home and geography?I have been familiar with the patch of ground in Manchester on which...