Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience
edited by Suparna Choudhury and Jan Slaby
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012
Description
Critical Neuroscience brings together multi-disciplinary scholars from around the world to explore key social, historical and philosophical studies of neuroscience, and to analyze the socio-cultural implications of recent advances in the field.
- explores the creative potential for engaging experimental neuroscience with social studies of neuroscience
- Furthers the dialogue between neuroscience and the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities
- Transcends traditional scepticism, introducing novel ideas about ‘how to be critical’ in and about science
- Features contributions from eminent scholars including Steven Rose, Joseph Dumit, Laurence Kirmayer, Shaun Gallagher, Fernando Vidal, Allan Young and Joan Chiao
“Neurological thinking has extended itself into a great many spheres of life, from ‘neuroanthropology’ to ‘neurozoology’. We have urgently needed to understand this development within a broad historical and cultural context and Critical Neuroscience provides us with the necessary tools to engage with neuroscience and its social impacts in productive and intelligent ways. The book will be an extremely important resource for anyone interested in understanding how and why neuroscientific research has led us to think about social life in new ways.”
[Emily Martin, Professor of Anthropology, New York University and author of ‘Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture’]
About the editors:
Suparna Choudhury is Junior Professor at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and the Berlin Institute for Mind and Brain, Humboldt University, Germany. Her research examines the emergence of the ?neurological adolescent’. She has also published on cultural neuroscience and topics at the intersection of neuroscience and society.
Jan Slaby is Junior Professor in Philosophy of Mind and Emotion at Free University Berlin, Germany. The author of a German-language book exploring the world-disclosing nature of human emotions, he has also been involved in research and teaching on the philosophy of psychiatry, with a particular focus on affective disorders and background feelings.
