The Self-Field

Chris Abel is an award-winning author of numerous interdisciplinary publications on the built environment and identity theory. He has taught at universities around the world, most recently at the University of Sydney and the University of Ulster, Belfast.

Preface

Introduction

PART I: The background

1. The nature-nurture debate

Personality traits – Cognitive abilities – Epigenetic factors – Gene regulation – New terms of debate – Neural plasticity – Embodied development

2. Inheritance systems

Evo-Devo – Homological thinking – Niche construction – Sociocultural learning – Cooperative behavior – Gene-culture coevolution – Interacting dimensions – Novel behavior

PART II: The metatheory

3. Self-organization

Order of a complex sort – Hierarchical model – Emergentism - Strong versus weak emergence – Levels of description – Autopoiesis – Structure and organization - Diachronic emergence

4. The invisible self

Science and common sense – The self that won’t go away – Psychological connectedness – Field theory – Boundary conditions – Social dimensions - The self as a self-organizing system – Some propositions

5. Mapping the field

Brain-body schemas – Spatial extensions – Unity of perception and action – Social cues – Self-agency – Mirror images – Emotional signals – Self-regulation of emotions

6. The evolving self

Metamorphosis - Memory and consciousness – Knowing and feeling – The three-stage self – The core-self across species - Evolutionary continuity – Subjective experience – The cultural ratchet

7. Tacit nexus

Overlapping brain functions – Stringing things together – Rapid sequencing –Practical intelligence - Dexterous hands - Science and praxis – Artifactual knowledge

PART III: The self in the world

8. Technically extended selves

Nature’s home builders – Animal tool use – Knowledge in common – Cumulative technology - Artificial versus natural selection – Self-producing technologies – Promethean gifts

9. Self-images

Good impressions – Bodily idioms – Reciprocal perspectives - Home-making as self-actualization - Attachments to things – Material culture matters - Fashion conscious - Automania

10. Self and group identity

Tribal ties – Discomfort with inconsistent beliefs - Self and the out-group other – Group dynamics – Sectarian conflict – Effects of spatial segregation

11. Occupational identity

Creation of a modern workforce – Class division and unionization - Fordism – Automation – The vanishing workplace – The encroachment of AI – Social groups most affected

12. Selves online

Cultivating the narcissistic personality – Bidirectional media - Hooked on the Internet – Games designed to keep players playing - The networked self – Promoting the self

13. Transformations

Turning points – Perpetual connectivity – Treating people as objects – Cultural shift – The threat to critical thinking - Rewiring the brain – Augmented reality

14. Loss of the private self

A cautionary tale of the digital age – Mining the data – Engineering social change – Winning tactics - Selves for sale – The fightback

Part IV: Summation

15. Instinctive and fuzzy selves

Resistance to change - Not just a collection of neurons – Relations of degree – Techno-cultural coevolution - The profligate species – Existential crisis

Pandemic postscript

Notes and references

Bibliography

Index