A Dangerous Knowing

This book is an exhilarating and important addition to the literature on sexuality and on education. An unusually international collection--with contributions on Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, the UK and the United States--it includes chapters written both by internationally known leaders in the field and by exciting newcomers. The book challenges conventional ways of thinking both about sexuality and about pedagogy, with sections on myth-making, identity, globalization and interventions in education. It will be a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of social and cultural theory, queer studies, gender and women's studies and education.

It is the story of Cerys, a girl finding her way through life and protecting herself and her younger brothers from its adversities. Two men on opposite sides of the ocean become part of her self-realization: Riordan in Wales consumes her thoughts and dreams; Lucien in California befriends her brothers and is himself a mystery. Life's circumstances direct her into the profession of nursing, a secondary choice..The characters she meets will be long remembered. The murder of a colleague within the hospital walls alerts us that danger may lurk anywhere. The strength and optimism of one young woman reminds us that life can and does go on.

By exploring indigenous people’s knowledge and use of sea ice, the SIKU project has demonstrated the power of multiple perspectives and introduced a new field of interdisciplinary research, the study of social (socio-cultural) aspects of the natural world, or what we call the social life of sea ice. It incorporates local terminologies and classifications, place names, personal stories, teachings, safety rules, historic narratives, and explanations of the empirical and spiritual connections that people create with the natural world. In opening the social life of sea ice and the value of indigenous perspectives we make a novel contribution to IPY, to science, and to the public

To what extent is it possible to know the past or to know other cultures? Can one describe the past without imposing one's own cultural, political, social, or personal preconceptions? Testing the current skepticism that insists that it is impossible not to read one's own moment onto other times and cultures, the essays in this collection use the Victorian era as a means of developing a theory and critique of historical reclamation.In Knowing the Past, a distinguished group of Victorian scholars reflect on the Victorian past and examine the Victorians' own sophisticated contributions to debates about historical and cultural knowledge. Confronting, confirming, and opposing the skeptics, the essays provide close readings of particular texts. They encompass the larger constellation of ideas and questions that went into the making of the texts while participating in larger theoretical debates about knowledge of the past and other cultures.

Modern thought, finally free from premodern excesses of belief, immediately fell prey to excesses of doubt. This book points toward a postmodern approach to knowing that moves beyond the tired choice between dogma and skepticism. Its key deconstructive aim is to help contemporary philosophers see that their paralyzing modern "epistemological gap" is a myth. Its positive outcome, however, reverses the identification of "postmodern" with deconstruction rather than construction, with the "end of philosophy" rather than renewal in philosophy. Knowing and Value begins by tracing how we got here, and argues that much of our modern dilemma rests on choices that might have gone otherwise. Key value judgments underlying Plato's and Aristotle's epistemological norms, which still tend to govern our theories of knowledge, are clarified. Next the value-laden sources of premodern attitudes toward knowing are exposed by showing how the Christian synthesis of faith and reason was at first built by medieval Platonists and Aristotelians, then razed by premodern nominalists. This diagnostic account concludes with a close look at how modernity, from Hobbes and Descartes to Kant, designed its own epistemological trap by rejecting some premodern values, while accepting others. The book also examines the principal ways moderns (positivists, idealists, existentialists, and pragmatists) have tried to cope with the supposed epistemological gap—each without success, but with every failure leaving resources for rebuilding. In a constructive climax, the book shows how an ecological worldview, emphasizing real relations (the view proposed in its predecessor volume, Being and Value) can heal the needless ruptures on which modern epistemic maladies depend. A reformed account of human experience confronts modern skepticism head-on; a fresh "process" approach to language and thinking is proposed; and finally, a postmodern, pluralist view of theories and truth is offered under a guiding aesthetic metaphor: "Knowing is the music of thought."

It gives me great pleasure to introduce this important and fascinating book on the internal dilemmas youngsters face in school, which often cause them to stop learning. We are all too ready to ascribe learning problems to an inability to learn and leave it at that. This book should go a long way toward convincing us that using such simpleminded explanations and remedial efforts based on them do not work. Unlike other books that identify the causes of learning disabilities in children or that detail society's impact on the so-called helpless child, The Risks of Knowing is an in-depth study of young people who for reasons of intrapsychic conflicts and of intellectual development make a nega tive decision about the learning process. This book is unique in its thorough analysis of the conflicts young people have with learning and in its treatment prescriptions. In case after case, Karen Zelan demonstrates that if young people declare themselves unable to learn it is because for some valid reasons they believe learning is dangerous. The reasons that cause a decision to fail often remain unconscious until they are brought to the child's awareness. When the child is helped to understand the source of any inner dilemmas, both child and parents are able to find better solutions to immediate learning difficulties. Karen Zelan brings a rare expertise to the problems young people find in academic learning.