Crossing Cultures: From Conversation to Participation

Mary Catherine Bateson is a writer and cultural anthropologist who has taught at Harvard, Northeastern University, Amherst College, Spelman College and abroad in the Philippines as well as in Iran. In 2004 she retired from her position as Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University, and is now Professor Emerita. Since the Fall of 2006 she has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College and is a special consultant to the Lifelong Access Libraries Initiative of the Libraries for the Future, with an emphasis on conceptualization, testing and implementation of her Active Wisdom model for community dialogues as a signature program of the Initiative. She serves on multiple advisory boards including that of the National Center on Atmospheric Research and the National Science Foundation, dealing with climate change. Her new book Composing a Further Life is due out on September 15, 2010

Causality and Reponsibility

Systems theory developed within the cybernetics movement as an enriched understanding of causal connections, but most people still make decisions on the basis of simple lineal connections between actions and desired outcomes.  Decisions made on this basis are at the root of todays environmental crisis, which is only intelligible in systems terms.  As we look ahead at the anthropocene,  it is essential to shift from lineal to systemic decision making and reshape our "common sense" about the nature of responsibility, intention and causation.  When and how is such a change possible in the life cycle?

Arabic language handbook

xvi, 127 p.; 22 c

Systems

"In the late 1950s, experiments such as the cybernetic sculptures of Nicolas Schöffer or the programmatic music compositions of John Cage and Iannis Xenakis transposed systems theory from the sciences to the arts. By the 1960s, artists as diverse as Roy Ascott, Hans Haacke, Robert Morris, Sonia Sheridan, and Stephen Willats were breaking with accepted aesthetics to embrace open systems that emphasized organism over mechanism, dynamic processes of interaction among elements, and the observer’s role as an inextricable part of the system. Jack Burnham’s 1968 Artforum essay “Systems Aesthetics” and his 1970 “Software” exhibition marked the high point of systems-based art until its resurgence in the changed conditions of the twenty-first century." -- Publisher's website