What is a Laboratory in the Human Sciences?

ARC Working Paper No.

Two States of Emergency: Ebola 2014

Andrew Lakoff revisits the received wisdom that the WHO was slow to respond. Slow to respond to what exactly

Timeline: Ebola 2014

The timeline of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, compiled by Andrew Lakoff

The Zone of Entrainment

We know that environmental concerns have been used to block infrastructure projects. But can infrastructure be used to side-step environmental concerns? Andrew Lakoff on water provision and species protection in California

Managing learning trajectories: the case of 14-19 mathematics

In this paper we explore how mathematics department leaders manage curriculum (what is taught), teaching (how it is taught) and learner progression (what results) for 14-19 year olds. The background to the study is a range of national, and international, concerns about participation rates in university entrance level mathematics. Given the recommendation of the Smith Report (2004) that new pathways models be developed for 14-19 mathematics, this paper explores some of the strategies employed, and issues faced, by schools as they seek to maximise attainment and participation in mathematics. Following a thematic analysis of data from interviews with heads of department in fifteen schools we look in more depth at one school to see how it manages the mathematics learning trajectories of young people. The theme of performativity is all pervasive

The Bombing Encyclopedia of the World

How do you plan for the sudden onset of total war? Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff describe the construction of a vast collection of data about the vital, vulnerable systems of every nation in the world in the aftermath of World War II

Las ansiedades de la globalización : venta de antidepresivos y crisis económica en la Argentina

Fil: Lakoff, Andrew. Universidad de California; Estados Unidos.Fil: Hidalgo, Cecilia. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina.Fil: Albert, Matilde. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina.42 ref.En agosto de 2001, en diversos diarios de Buenos Aires aparecieron notassobre “La semana de los desórdenes de ansiedad”, una campaña de informacióndestinada a que los pacientes acudieran a hospitales para consultar a expertos.“Uno de cada cuatro argentinos sufre de ellos” proclamaba un artículo: “ataquesde pánico, fobias: los especialistas dicen que están incrementándose y que puedenestar influenciados por factores tales como la inseguridad o la incertidumbre res-pecto del futuro” (Cecchi 2001). La referencia a la incertidumbre y a la inseguri-dad era apropiada: el país entraba en su cuarto año de recesión, la tasa de desem-pleo había alcanzado el 20%, el índice denominado riesgo-país se elevaba a unnivel récord día tras día. La campaña fue exitosa más allá de las expectativas de suspromotores: los hospitales de la ciudad se vieron inundados de pacientes que sequejaban de síntomas de estrés. Los artículos periodísticos no mencionaban quela campaña había sido co-financiada por la empresa farmacéutica nacional Bagó,productora de Tranquinil, una variedad del alprazolam. Dado que en el mercadoargentino está prohibida la venta directa de medicamentos al público, una alter-nativa era “hacer crecer el mercado” logrando que tanto los médicos clínicos comolos pacientes se percataran de la enfermedad. En un artículo sobre el rol de lacreciente crisis económica en las ventas cada vez mayores de tranquilizantes apare-cido dos meses después en el diario Clarín, el gerente de ventas de Bagó informabaque agosto había sido un mes de crecimiento récord de las ventas de Tranquinil

Introduction: Ebola’s Ecologies

Andrew Lakoff, Stephen J. Collier and Christopher Kelty ask what the 2014 Ebola outbreak tells us about the history of pandemic preparedness and the blindspots of global health security today

Predicating from an early age: edusemiotics and the potential of children’s preconceptions

This paper aims to explain how semiotics and constructivism can collaborate in an educational epistemology by developing a joint approach to prescientific conceptions. Empirical data and findings of constructivist research are interpreted in the light of Peirce’s semiotics. Peirce’s semiotics is an anti-psychologistic logic (CP 2.252; CP 4.551; W 8:15; Pietarinen in Signs of logic, Springer, Dordrecht, 2006; Stjernfelt in Diagrammatology. An investigation on the borderlines of phenomenology, ontology and semiotics, Springer, Dordrecht, 2007) and relational logic. Constructivism was traditionally developed within psychology and sociology and, therefore, some incompatibilities can be expected between these two schools. While acknowledging the differences, we explain that constructivism and semiotics share the assumption of realism that knowledge can only be developed upon knowledge and, therefore, an epistemological collaboration is possible. The semiotic analysis performed confirms the constructivist results and provides a further insight into the teacher-student relation. Like the constructivist approach, Peirce’s doctrine of agapism infers that the personal dimension of teaching must not be ignored. Thus, we argue for the importance of genuine sympathy in teaching attitudes. More broadly, the article also contributes to the development of postmodern humanities. At the end of the modern age, the humanities are passing through a critical period of transformation. There is a growing interest in semiotics and semiotic philosophy in many areas of the humanities. Such a case, on which we draw, is the development of a theoretical semiotic approach to education, namely edusemiotics (Stables and Semetsky, Pedagogy and edusemiotics: theoretical challenge/practical opportunities, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2015)