Emotions, Embodied Cognition and the Adaptive Unconscious: A Complex Topography of the Social Making of Things

Emotions, Embodied Cognition, and the Adaptive Unconscious emphasizes the importance of considering various factors, such as socio-biology, evolutionary psychology, emotions, the adaptive unconscious, senses, and conscious deliberation, in analyzing social action and the making of things. It argues that these factors are ecological conditions that shape the contemporary expression of complex societies rather than constraints on human plasticity. Inter-disciplinary and complexity perspectives need to be incorporated into the social sciences to understand the dynamics of identity, solidarity, differentiation, and communication in emergent contexts.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 260 pages
Publication date: 29 April 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Emotions, Embodied Cognition, and the Adaptive Unconscious present a compelling argument for the necessity of considering a wide range of factors, drawn from disciplines such as socio-biology, evolutionary psychology, the study of emotions, the adaptive unconscious, the senses, and conscious deliberation, when analyzing the intricate topography of social action and the creation of things. These factors are viewed as ecological conditions that shape the contemporary expression of complex societies rather than constraints on human plasticity. Without these foundations, complex society cannot exist or evolve. This is a well-known pairing from complexity theory: path dependency and dynamic emergence. Integrating inter-disciplinary and complexity perspectives into the social sciences is essential. Sociologists often perceive social phenomena as a distinct field, represented by the term "social construction," without a clear need to refer to other material, biological, psychological, material, or ecological conditions or agents.

This book demonstrates how the familiar sociological dynamics of identity, solidarity, differentiation, and communication are shaped through the persistent interaction of unconscious and affective processing with conscious deliberation in newly emergent contexts. It is this re-expression, rather than surpassing, of human characteristics in contemporary social action, that requires re-informing a complex, ecological approach to the theory and methodologies of the social sciences. The book is designed for a postgraduate/research audience and doctoral students to introduce and synthesize inter-disciplinary contributions to research into complexity theory in the social sciences.

Weight: 402g
Dimension: 154 x 233 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367568382