{"title":"Paul Kockelman","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"chicken-and-the-quetzal-book-paul-kockelman-9780822360728","title":"The Chicken and the Quetzal","description":"In The Chicken and the Quetzal Paul Kockelman theorizes the creation, measurement, and capture of value by recounting the cultural history of a village in Guatemala's highland cloud forests and its relation to conservation movements and ecotourism. In 1990 a group of German ecologists founded an NGO to help preserve the habitat of the resplendent quetzal—the strikingly beautiful national bird of Guatemala—near the village of Chicacnab. The ecotourism project they established in Chicacnab was meant to provide new sources of income for its residents so they would abandon farming methods that destroyed quetzal habitat. The pressure on villagers to change their practices created new values and forced negotiations between indigenous worldviews and the conservationists' goals. Kockelman uses this story to offer a sweeping theoretical framework for understanding the entanglement of values as they are interpreted and travel across different and often incommensurate ontological worlds. His theorizations apply widely to studies of the production of value, the changing ways people make value portable, and value's relationship to ontology, affect, and selfhood.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50369969553681,"sku":"CIN0822360721G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50369973911825,"sku":"CIN0822360721VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008476184849,"sku":"NIN9780822360728","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822360721.jpg?v=1763474660"},{"product_id":"language-culture-and-mind-book-paul-kockelman-9781107689022","title":"Language, Culture, and Mind","description":"Based on fieldwork carried out in a Mayan village in Guatemala, this book examines local understandings of mind through the lens of language and culture. It focuses on a variety of grammatical structures and discursive practices through which mental states are encoded and social relations are expressed: inalienable possessions, such as body parts and kinship terms; interjections, such as 'ouch' and 'yuck'; complement-taking predicates, such as 'believe' and 'desire'; and grammatical categories such as mood, status and evidentiality. And, more generally, it develops a theoretical framework through which both community-specific and human-general features of mind may be contrasted and compared. It will be of interest to researchers and students working within the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50377679896849,"sku":"CIN1107689023G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52450960408849,"sku":"NLS9781107689022","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1107689023.jpg?v=1751048821"},{"product_id":"last-words-book-paul-kockelman-9781734643558","title":"Last Words","description":"What kind of meaning can machines make—and why does it matter that it’s not the same as ours?  Anthropologist Paul Kockelman's Last Words offers a rigorous but accessible account of how large language models actually work—and why the meaning they produce is fundamentally different from human meaning-making. Drawing on the semiotics of C.S. Peirce, Kockelman’s witty and insightful pamphlet shows how LLMs are trained to predict word-word relations, not word-world relations, which explains both their uncanny fluency and their systematic blind spots. The result is a compact, essential guide to cutting through the hype: not a dismissal of AI, but a precise account of what it can and cannot do—and who profits from the confusion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50886809583889,"sku":"NGR9781734643558","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51049578463505,"sku":"NIN9781734643558","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1734643552.jpg?v=1751344935"},{"product_id":"mathematical-models-of-meaning-book-paul-kockelman-9780262552684","title":"Mathematical Models of Meaning","description":"\u003cb\u003eA mathematical model of meaning that captures the dynamics and diversity of meaning-oriented agents.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eMathematical Models of Meaning\u003c\/i\u003e, Paul Kockelman offers answers to the following kinds of questions- What is meaning? What is the relation between meaning, information, value, and purpose? What ingredients are necessary for a system to exhibit meaning? What behaviors, and capacities for behavior, are particular to meaning-oriented agents? Is there a relatively simple mathematical model that can adequately capture the dynamics-and diversity-of meaning-oriented agents? And finally, how can we best bridge the divide between interpretive paradigms that are qualitative and context rich and formal methods that are quantitative and domain general?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Partially grounded in a pragmatist approach, this book rethinks the semiotic, statistical, and logical currents of Charles Sanders Peirce's thought in relation to more recent developments in allied traditions. Putting possible worlds, as well as social relations, at the center of significance, it focuses on the emergence of meaningful behavior among relatively distributed agents that choose in real time, learn over developmental time, or evolve over phylogenetic time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51628702662929,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51628702925073,"sku":"NGR9780262552684","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/026255268X.jpg?v=1769680507"},{"product_id":"anthropology-of-intensity-book-paul-kockelman-9781009011075","title":"The Anthropology of Intensity","description":"What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly feel restless at the imminence of a yet unknown occurrence? And who decides whether or not we are already in an age of unliveable extremes? The anthropology of intensity studies how humans encounter and communicate the continuous and gradable features of social and environmental phenomena in everyday interactions. Focusing on the last twenty years of life in a Mayan village in the cloud forests of Guatemala, this book provides a natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times, through a careful analysis of ethnographic and linguistic evidence. It uses intensity as a way to reframe Anthropology in the age of the Anthropocene, and rethinks classic work in the formal linguistic tradition from a culture-specific and context-sensitive stance. It is essential reading not only for anthropologists and linguists, but also for ecologically oriented readers, critical theorists, and environmental scientists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52130635612433,"sku":"NLS9781009011075","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52741698683153,"sku":"NIN9781009011075","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781009011075.jpg?v=1757504152"},{"product_id":"anthropology-of-intensity-book-paul-kockelman-9781316519721","title":"The Anthropology of Intensity","description":"What counts as too close for comfort? How can an entire room suddenly feel restless at the imminence of a yet unknown occurrence? And who decides whether or not we are already in an age of unliveable extremes? The anthropology of intensity studies how humans encounter and communicate the continuous and gradable features of social and environmental phenomena in everyday interactions. Focusing on the last twenty years of life in a Mayan village in the cloud forests of Guatemala, this book provides a natural history of intensity in exceedingly tense times, through a careful analysis of ethnographic and linguistic evidence. It uses intensity as a way to reframe Anthropology in the age of the Anthropocene, and rethinks classic work in the formal linguistic tradition from a culture-specific and context-sensitive stance. It is essential reading not only for anthropologists and linguists, but also for ecologically oriented readers, critical theorists, and environmental scientists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52145882235153,"sku":"NLS9781316519721","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781316519721.jpg?v=1757595589"},{"product_id":"art-of-interpretation-in-the-age-of-computation-book-paul-kockelman-9780190636531","title":"The Art of Interpretation in the Age of Computation","description":"This book is about media, mediation, and meaning. The Art of Interpretation focuses on a set of interrelated processes whereby ostensibly human-specific modes of meaning become automated by machines, formatted by protocols, and networked by infrastructures. That is, as computation replaces interpretation, information effaces meaning, and infrastructure displaces interaction. Or so it seems.   Paul Kockelman asks: What does it take to automate, format, and network meaningful practices? What difference does this make for those who engage in such practices? And what is at stake? Reciprocally: How can we better understand computational processes from the standpoint of meaningful practices? How can we leverage such processes to better understand such practices? And what lies in wait? In answering these questions, Kockelman stays very close to fundamental concerns of computer science that emerged in the first half of the twentieth-century. Rather than foreground the latest application, technology or interface, he accounts for processes that underlie each and every digital technology deployed today.   In a novel method, The Art of Interpretation leverages key ideas of American pragmatism-a philosophical stance that understands the world, and our relation to it, in a way that avoids many of the conundrums and criticisms of conventional twentieth-century social theory. It puts this stance in dialogue with certain currents, and key texts, in anthropology and linguistics, science and technology studies, critical theory, computer science, and media studies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52488757510417,"sku":"NLS9780190636531","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52858121847057,"sku":"NIN9780190636531","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780190636531.jpg?v=1759875926"},{"product_id":"agent-person-subject-self-book-paul-kockelman-9780199926985","title":"Agent, Person, Subject, Self","description":"This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while this theory is focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such (often erroneously) individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include mediation at any degree of remove).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52615590510865,"sku":"NLS9780199926985","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780199926985.jpg?v=1772275354"},{"product_id":"chicken-and-the-quetzal-book-paul-kockelman-9780822360568","title":"The Chicken and the Quetzal","description":"In The Chicken and the Quetzal Paul Kockelman theorizes the creation, measurement, and capture of value by recounting the cultural history of a village in Guatemala's highland cloud forests and its relation to conservation movements and ecotourism. 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