The Well is Superdeep‘s joint research & reading group. We meet weekly to discuss work on a shared theme (over coffee, tea, & Pocki chocolates). Everyone (faculty, students, staff, visitors) is invited to attend and to source & draw from the Well.
The Well meets on Tue ~5pm in IB 1017 (Zoom attendance: …conceivable. Reach out for a link).
Inaugural theme: Creatures of Habit. We are considering materials on such issues as practical capacity, skill, & expertise; disposition, habit, & habitus; engrossed coping, flow, effortless or non-action (无为), etc; drawing on contemporary historical sources, across disciplines.*
“Social reality exists, so to speak, twice, in things and in minds, in fields and in habitus, outside and inside of agents. And when habitus encounters a social world of which it is the product, it is like a “fish in water”: it does not feel the weight of the water, and it takes the world about itself for granted.”
(Bourdieu, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology)
Meeting plan:
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- Tue Dec 5: John Dewey, “The Place…”, up to sec. 4. (“Custom and Habit”)
- Tue Nov 28: John Dewey, “The Place of Habit in Conduct” (Pt I of his Human Nature and Conduct), sec. 1-3.
- Tue Nov 21: William James, “Habit” (from his Principles of Psychology); DF Wallace, “This is Water”
- Tue Nov 14: initial planning meeting
☛ Reach out for access to our Zotero group & copies of readings!
If you would like to propose something or to get involved otherwise, follow this link; for other feedback, follow this one.
