Evolutionary Psychology
Back Again (with Narrative and the Body)
2009/02/14 16:18
Wow, haven’t I been awfully silent for the last year at this site? It’s been thirteen months since I last posted an entry. I will try to resume some blogging on psychology and science here.
I’m prompted to do so by the publication last week of my latest article, “Why Narrative Psychology Can’t Afford to Ignore the Body” at the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology (JSEC). It is one of the 11 articles in a JSEC issue serving as the proceedings of the 2nd annual conference of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychological Society (NEEPS). The NEEPS meeting had been held last May (2008) at Southeastern New Hampshire University, just outside of Manchester, NH. Organized by Sarah Strout of the SNHU faculty and co-editor o
f JSEC, the conference brought together a pretty sizable number of young and senior scholars. Steve Pinker of Harvard gave the keynote address and David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University was certainly among the most prominent other speakers.
My paper attempts to explore the ways in which the narrative perspective in psychology might enter into a fruitful dialogue with evolutionary psychology despite the almost complete absence of recognition of each subarea in psychology by the other. I also suggest a kind of lingering Cartesianism that may affect both narrative and evolutionary perspectives. When I got home from the conference I did an awful lot of additional investigation of evolutionary models and biological research pertaining to narrative. The published paper expands significantly on each of my four points of contrast compared to what I had the chance to review at the conference. I got the paper out to the journal for review just in the nick of time and was really happy when the word came back of acceptance by the editors with only minor revisions.
Browsers of this blog can look over the scope of the articles in the special issue at this link and can download my own article in pdf format at this link. The article runs 17 printed pages.
Reference
My paper attempts to explore the ways in which the narrative perspective in psychology might enter into a fruitful dialogue with evolutionary psychology despite the almost complete absence of recognition of each subarea in psychology by the other. I also suggest a kind of lingering Cartesianism that may affect both narrative and evolutionary perspectives. When I got home from the conference I did an awful lot of additional investigation of evolutionary models and biological research pertaining to narrative. The published paper expands significantly on each of my four points of contrast compared to what I had the chance to review at the conference. I got the paper out to the journal for review just in the nick of time and was really happy when the word came back of acceptance by the editors with only minor revisions.
Browsers of this blog can look over the scope of the articles in the special issue at this link and can download my own article in pdf format at this link. The article runs 17 printed pages.
Reference
- Hevern, V. W. (2008). Why narrative psychology can't afford to ignore the body (Special issue: Proceedings of the 2nd annual meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society). Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2(4), 217-233. Available from http://www.jsecjournal.com/archive2-4.htm