The Foundations Of Primitive Thought

Political correctness in social anthropology has made the terms primitive society, social evolution and even human nature unacceptable, and removed the possibility of open academic debate about them. Written from the perspective of a lifetimes research, this collection of papers takes a hard look at these taboos, and challenges some fundamental assumptions of post-modern thinking. Including some new material on memetics, evolutionary psychology and Darwinian theory in the social sciences, this collection provides a long-overdue assessment of some key topics in modern anthropology.

This work approaches the question of the relationship of religious to scientific thought. The author argues that they evolved together and are therefore complementary.

A ground-breaking interdisciplinary study about conceptual origins linking hominid thinking with hominid evolution.

Melanie Klein Today, Volume 1 is the first of two volumes of collected essays devoted to developments in psychoanalysis based on the work of Melanie Klein. The papers are arranged into four groups: the analysis of psychotic patients, projective identification, on thinking, and pathalogical organisation.

The contributors to this volume investigate the ways in which religious experience is shaped by the new ethnic, national, and global contexts. Contents: Ethnicity and Nationality as Contexts for Religious Experience; 'Love the Stranger; Remember when you were Strangers in Egypt'; The Historical Relativity of Jesus' Experience of God; One Woman's Body: Repression and Expression in the Passio Perpetuae; Method in the Cur Deus Scandal: Shaking the Foundations?; Toward an Understanding of Prejudice: Contributions from Paul Ricoeur's Theory of Narrative; Ethnicity and Religious Experience in the Social Ethics of Gibson Winter; Philippine National Sovereignty and the U.S. Bases: An Ethical Analysis Rooted in Catholic Social Teaching; Parallels in Cultural and Individual Development; No Generic Spirituality: Ethnicity and the Spiritual Journey; Woman as Mediator of the Divine: Sor Juana's Celebration of Mary; Popular Religiosity and Sacramentality: Learning from Hispanics a Deeper Sense of Symbol, Ritual, and Sacrament; Ethnicity, Experience and Theology: An Asian Liberation Perspective; The Death of National Symbols: Roman Catholicism in Quebec; Being Church Today: Reflections on the Journey of the Church in Holland. Co-published with the College Theology Society.

This reader explores the nature of interactions between children and their teachers in the classroom. It emphasises the importance of such relationships for children's learning and for educational practice. Part 1 looks at different cultural conceptions of the teacher-learner relationship, and how this relates to schooling, cognitive development and the aquisition of knowledge. Part 2 takes a closer look at the role of language and dialogue in interactions between adults and children in classrooms. Part 3 describes research by developmental psychologists on peer interaction and collaborative learning, and discusses how it has advanced our understanding of how children learn from each other. Part 4 considers the implications of classroom-based collaborative learning initiatives and the potential for creating 'communities of enquiry' which change how we think about knowledge acquisition.

The seminal work of Russian theorist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) has exerted a deep influence on psychology over the past 30 years. Vygotsky was an educator turned psychologist, and his writings clearly reflected his pedagogical concerns. For Vygotsky, schools and other informal educational situations represent the best cultural laboratories to study thinking. He emphasized the social organization of instruction, writing about the 'unique form of cooperation between the child and the adult that is the central element of the educational process'. Vygotsky's emphasis on the social context of thinking represents the reorganization of a key social system and associated modes of discourse, with potential consequences for developing new forms of thinking. This volume is devoted to analyzing Vygotsky's ideas as a means of bringing to light the relevance of his concepts to education. What does Vygotsky's approach have to offer education? Distinguished scholars from various countries and representing several disciplines discuss the essence and significance of Vygotsky's work, analyze the educational implications of his thoughts, and present applications in practice, addressing educational issues such as school organization, teacher training, educational achievement, literacy learning and development, uses of technology, community-based education, and special education.