Much has been written of late on the ‘biosocial’ in the social sciences and humanities — see for example Ingold (2013), Meloni et al (2016), Lloyd and Muller (2018) — including postings in Somatosphere (Béhague 2020; Meloni 2014). In part this stems from the limits of ‘representational’ approaches and a need to marry the biological and social …
The sleep experiment, back in Chicago in 1992… was that really more than 25 years ago?
In that experiment he could locate the seed of what would become of him—and millions of others. It was a study of night shift work, when it could still be called that. Maximizing labor efficiency by regulating bodies. Today, it seems as if the …
During my first visit to Ghana in 1998, I was involved in a research project that looked at possible co-operations between healers and psychiatric clinics. I stayed in the healing camp of Prophet Abbam II, who was known in the area to heal patients with mental health problems. My presence at his healing church attracted many visitors, who kindly brought …
Last fall, a group of researchers – mostly biological anthropologists and sleep researchers – published a study of three ‘pre-industrial’ communities, one in Latin America, two in Africa, and claimed that based on their data, consolidated nightly sleep is a human norm, inferring that it is the product of natural selection. The media picked up the research findings, and I …
One of the insights into teaching provided to me by Donald Morse, one of my undergraduate professors, was to never teach the same class twice. But, simultaneously, not to overburden oneself by developing a new course every year. His model, which I’ve entirely stolen, was to teach one-third texts he knew intimately, one-third texts he was familiar with, and …
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
Verso Books, 2013. 133 pp.
Years ago, I gave a talk at Stanford University, an hour drive north from Santa Cruz. During the question and answer period after the talk, an economist in the audience raised a question about my argument that despite widespread belief in the emergence …