Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Brainism: Understanding Our Recent Obsession With Stress and the Mind

April 24, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
brainism-brain

One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble With Stress as an Idea By Dana Becker (Oxford University Press) Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind By Nikolas Rose and Joelle Abi-Rached (Princeton University Press) “I never used to discuss neuroscience on the bus,” wrote the psychologist Vaughan Bell recently in The Guardian, “but it’s happened twice in the last month.” People these days love to talk about brains. In everyday conversation and mainstream media reports, the organ and its processes are casually invoked (“my synapses are firing”) where ... Read More

More like this: Health, May-June 2013
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Overwritten, Maybe, But Less Overwrought

March 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
American lit in the 20th century wasn't exactly known for its cheer.

There’s a widespread perception that we’ve gotten more touchy-feely over the past couple of generations—increasingly willing to express our emotions. If so, it’s not reflected in our writing. A new study finds that, in a large dataset of English-language books, the use of terms expressing six basic emotions steadily decreased over the course of the 20th century. “We believe the changes (in word usage) do reflect changes in culture,” writes the research team, led by anthropologist Alberto Acerbi of the University of Bristol. Writing in the online journal PLOS One, they ... Read More

More like this: Findings
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Let Us Now Praise Garbage Men

February 28, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
New York Department of Sanitation cleaning streets in Brooklyn, NY on February 9, 2013 after massive snowstorm Nemo struck the Northeast (PHOTO: LEONARD ZHUKOVSKY/SHUTTERSTOCK)

“Some people play fantasy baseball,” says Robin Nagle. “I play fantasy sanitation.” Nagle, an anthropologist at New York University, imagines idealized sanitation departments: the most reliable crews, the most capable garage supervisors. For more than a decade, Nagle has studied New York City’s department of sanitation. For a while, she even joined it. For two years, she drove garbage trucks and street sweepers, emptied sidewalk trash cans, and salted winter streets. Nagle’s forthcoming book, Picking Up, is a personal and anthropological exploration of the department and its ... Read More

More like this: March-April 2013
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False Clarity, Authentic Confusion

October 31, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Crowds in Shanghai, China (PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK)

The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy By Edward N. Luttwak, Harvard University Press. Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land Editors: Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, University of California Press. IN THE THREE DECADES since China opened its doors to the world, there is little indication that the West has grown any closer to understanding the Chinese. This is no surprise. Understanding China has been an elusive goal of the West—with, arguably, little progress—since the Jesuit missions of the 16th century. Two recent books provide ... Read More

More like this: November-December 2012
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A Woman’s Place is On the Page

August 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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There are many ways to chart the progress of women over the past 100 years. But a research team led by San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge has come up with a new metric: Pronouns. Last month, we described a sobering study of 50 years’ worth of books, which found “an increasing use of words and phrases that reflect an ethos of self-absorption and self-satisfaction.” The same research team—Twenge, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile—has just come out with another analysis of our reading matter, and its implications are more inspiring. Using the Google Books ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings
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Books Increasingly Show It’s All About Me

July 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Books Increasingly Show It's All About Me

See Dick. See Dick look in the mirror. See Dick admire his reflection. Researchers who have scanned books published over the past 50 years report an increasing use of words and phrases that reflect an ethos of self-absorption and self-satisfaction. “Language in American books has become increasingly focused on the self and uniqueness in the decades since 1960,” a research team led by San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge writes in the online journal PLoS One. “We believe these data provide further evidence that American culture has become increasingly focused on ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society, Findings
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India, China, and the Importance of Storytelling

March 14, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Every time they fly in and out of Mumbai, tourists, businesspeople, and politicians can see blue-tarp and cardboard rooftops squeezed between condominiums and luxury hotels. The irony of Mumbai's slums is that the urban poor are ubiquitous, simultaneously visible and invisible. But seeing slums from the perspective of those who inhabit them — and not just an aerial view — is crucial to gaining real insight into a place. As UCLA historian Vinay Lal asks, “How else is one to understand a civilization and a particular junction in time?” Katherine Boo’s debut book, Behind the ... Read More

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Children’s Books Increasingly Ignore Natural World

January 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Picture an illustrated children’s book — one that has won a prestigious award — and your mind conjures up images of furry animals, puffy clouds, and eager boys and girls enjoying adventures in the wild. In fact, our kids are entering a much different world in their earliest literary experiences — one in which nature plays an increasingly minor role. That’s the conclusion of a newly published study, which suggests these books reflect our growing estrangement from the natural environment. A group of researchers led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist J. Allen Williams ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Findings
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Reading Fiction Impacts Aggressive Behavior

September 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A popular, narrative-driven form of entertainment — one that can be easily accessed via a variety of electronic devices — has been linked to aggressive behavior. Violent video games? Well, sure. But newly published research points a finger at a much older art form: the written word. “Reading aggression in literature can influence subsequent aggressive behavior, which tends to be specific to the type of aggression contained in the story,” a Brigham Young University research team led by Sarah M. Coyne writes in the British Journal of Social Psychology. The study does not show ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings
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Finding a New Gandhi in the Book ‘Great Soul’

August 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Is there anything left to say about Mohandas K. Gandhi that has not already been said? If the sheer volume of writing by and about Gandhi is any indication, the answer is a resounding no. Consider the section of any university library where the books on Gandhi are located. There is, first of all, the works of the very prolific man himself. His Collected Works — autobiography, political treatises, letters, newspaper articles — now run to more than 100 thick volumes. The sheer weight and often contradictory nature of his output is both an archival goldmine and a great challenge for ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Mediator
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