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Introduction: The Interdisciplinary Study of Social Perception

M.D. Rutherford and Valerie A. Kuhlmeier

in Social Perception: Detection and Interpretation of Animacy, Agency, and Intention

The focus of this book is on the detection and interpretation of intentional social entities. While Fritz Heider is often considered one of the major influences on social psychology his emphasis on ... More

The focus of this book is on the detection and interpretation of intentional social entities. While Fritz Heider is often considered one of the major influences on social psychology his emphasis on the perception of intentional action may have had even greater influence within the field of developmental psychology. Heider was interested in causal attribution, and schooled in the non-social causal attribution that was of interest in his time. He made a novel advance by bringing the logic of causal attribution into the social domain. The present volume has an empirical emphasis on vision science, developmental science, and neuroscience owing to a recent upswing in research in these areas coupled with technological advances. Theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms that cut across these areas are: Developmental Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Neurocience, and Clinical Approaches. The goal was a collection of chapters that told a coherent story about three aspects of social perception: the perception of biological motion, the perception of animacy, and the attributions of intentionality.Less

Alt-Right ‘cultural purity’, ideology and mainstream social policy discourse: towards a political anthropology of ‘mainstremeist’ ideology

Julia Lux and John David Jordan

Elke Heins, Catherine Needham, and James Rees (eds)

in Social Policy Review 31: Analysis and Debate in Social Policy, 2019

A series of journalistic books and articles exploring the Alt-Right provide detailed empirical data critical to understanding the underpinning social networks of the Alt-Right. However, intensive ... More

A series of journalistic books and articles exploring the Alt-Right provide detailed empirical data critical to understanding the underpinning social networks of the Alt-Right. However, intensive media focus on young, working-class – usually American – white supremacists sharing extremist material over the internet masks incidences of closely related racist, conspiracist, misogynist, and ‘anti-elitist’ ideology in wider, often middle-class mainstream media, politics, and social policy discourse. This article problematises these narratives. Drawing partly on the work of Mary Douglas and Antonio Gramsci, we contribute to ongoing national and international ‘Alt-Right’ debates with an interdisciplinary, political-anthropological model of ‘mainstremeist’ belief and action. This approach highlights the links between ‘fringe’ and ‘centre’ into an entangled social network seeking to deploy social policy as a tool of misogynist, patriarchal, racist, and classist retrenchment. Less