I’ve been thinking about online communities oriented around exploration, learning, and practice. Carol Higgison, editor of the Online Tutoring E-Book Tutorial hasn’t been thinking about those modalities, yet, her OTe at OTIS (Scotland) has lots of conceptual goods which translate to the more open-ended visions…that I keep having.
Monthly Archives: June 2005
MORE PATHWAYS
Juan Cole highlights an interesting story about primal genetics and the history (of what I term,) the genetic tribes. This subject interests me and has so ever since Abdullah Ibrahim (The South African composer and pianist,) delineated on a napkin the migration of musical form along ancient pathways.
History and Genetics in Madagascar
Genetics and history have joined forces to explain the origins of the people of Madagascar (the world’s fourth largest island, off the coast of East Africa). Early Muslim chronicles speak of the peopling of Madagascar from the islands to its far east, i.e., Indonesia. Geneticists have found that about half of the island’s people have Y chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA that most resemble that of the people of Borneo. Note that all the people in Madagascar by now have Indonesian ancestors and lots of genes from there. The other half of the markers go to East Africa. There must, however, also be an Arab heritage. Some 7 percent of the inhabitants of Madagascar are Muslim, and Muslim chronicles speak of several waves of immigration from places like Yemen.
Historical linguists have long been convinced that Malagasy is an Austronesian language (other members of the family include Malay and Bahasa Indonesia, but also Hawaiian). Since historical linguistics is by now a firmly grounded science, there really was no doubt about this. Malagasy also has some Bantu words and phrases, and the people of Madagascar use East African material culture. Africa is so much closer than Borneo (20 times) that it is incredible that this big group of people emigrated across the Indian Ocean beginning around AD 400-700, and that relatively few Africans ever ventured over in comparison.
[snip]
(Geneticists focus on the Y chromosome and the mitochondria because they do not divide in each generation and so do not change very quickly, allowing comparisons among populations long separated. A lot of us are afraid that this distinction will be lost on the general public and that they will take mitochondria or Y chromosomes as markers of “race.” All human beings are descended from most people who lived 50 generations ago, it is just that we may by now only have an infinitesimal genetic heritage from some of them. There are statistical aggregations of genes, just because some lineages are more likely to intermarry, but there are no “races” in the Romantic European sense of pure bloodlines. Y chromosomes and mitochondria are a tiny, tiny part of the human genome, and they just accidentally freeze a certain narrow kind of ancestry; they tell relatively little of the whole story. The whole story, of course, is that we all go back to a common origin in South Africa only about 100,000 years ago; we’re a very young species and haven’t had time to differentiate much except with regard to stupid little things like amount of melanin in our skin.)
Science Daily:Human Inhabitants Of Madagascar Are Genetically Unique
Filed under history
MONKEY SEE MONKEY DUPED
“This is about an experiment performed in 1966 by Harry Harlow, in which several rhesus monkeys had some very bad days.”
Filed under psychology, science
BOTH SIDES NOW
Underneath the complex clashes of the cultural war are very interesting conundrums which do not yield to superficial criticism. For example, any cost/benefit analysis used to rationalize real harm supports a dry ‘scientism’ unhooked from morality. From the other side, this same problem arises in most presumptions of primary substantive principles. With this, the cost/benefit analysis isn’t often done. Yet, in the clash between liberal social analysis and absolutist ‘guiding, a priori ordination’ both share a terrific insensitivity to real harm. The idea of Justice was once time-honored; it tends to disappear at both extremes.
I take problems like this to be problems of human sentience. The Sentient Times March issue contains an interview with Paul Krugman, yet another presentation from George Lakoff, and, pertinent to this item, an interview with John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
We’re a long way off from a Buddhist politics.
Filed under current events
KARL AND HENRY MAIN GUYS I.
In fleshing out the squareONE links page important thinkers on the periphery of experiential learning theory demand highlighting. Weick, who’s methodology of sensemaking is experiential remains a central influence to my own ‘galumphing,’ (a Weickian term for exploration). His book <The Social Psychology of Organizing> is an accessible, thought-provoking inquiry. As was the follow-up, <Sensemaking in Organizations>.
Henry Mintzberg stands a bit outside experiential theorizing, yet his work on strategy-making as a real-time activity tips the balance toward flexible designing and away from chilly planning. <Mintzberg On Management> and <Structure in Fives> and <The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning> are essential. Weick, Mintzberg and Peter Drucker, as I see it, are in a league of their own. (Okay, maybe Warren Bennis too.)
Karl Weick: | KW @business.com (links) | KW@veryard | KW @onepine |
“Leadership When Events Don’t Play By the Rules”
Henry Mintzberg: henrymintzberg.com | HM @business.com |
5 Basic Parts of an Organization | HM @theworkingmanager |
Filed under Karl Weick, sociology
