Jeremy J. Shapiro
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
academic, a professor at Fielding Graduate University
Fielding Graduate University
Fielding Graduate University, previously Fielding Graduate Institute, and The Fielding Institute, is an accredited, nonprofit post-graduate institution of higher learning based in Santa Barbara, California, USA....
who works in the area of critical social theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
with emphasis on the social and cultural effects of information technology and systems, social change, and the aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
of music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
. His main intellectual products/innovations include
- the concept of the universal semiotic of technological experience: a language of images, symbols, and technologies that integrates the conscious and unconscious, the public and the private, in advanced industrial civilization;
- zenZenZen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
socialismSocialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, an approach to socialism that focuses on the need for simultaneous change at the personal, interpersonal and social levels, blends activism and non-attachment, and aims at the minimally, rather than maximally rational society; - mindful inquiry in social research (developed together with Valerie Malhotra Bentz), which integrates phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theoryCritical theoryCritical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
, and BuddhismBuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
as a framework for research; and - metaphorical metadata, amplifying standard analytical and conceptual classification schemes through classification based on metaphors, symbols, and analogieshttp://www.iath.virginia.edu/ach-allc.99/proceedings/shapiro.html;
- an expanded conception of information literacyInformation literacyThe National Forum on Information Literacy defines information literacy as “...the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand.” This is the most common definition; however,...
as a liberal art (developed together with Shelley K. Hughes) http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewarticles/31231.html; and - the notion of the streaming body (developed together with Linda F. Crafts) http://www.socialscience.t-mobile.hu/2007/Shapiro---Crafts_abstract_with_photos.pdf; and
- the notion that the philosopher/musicologist Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
's model of how to listen to modern music based on his analysis of the individuated nature of a modern musical work is a model for how to be an individuated person in contemporary society http://ojs.c3sl.ufpr.br/ojs2/index.php/musica/article/viewFile/21980/14342.
In addition he works in the following areas: the sociology of digital simulation
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
and of on-line environments; the experience of multiple identities and multiple realities among users of information and communication technologieshttp://gsb.haifa.ac.il/~sheizaf/AOIR5/ShapiroCraftDaniels.ppt; and enhancing the experience of music listening. He has worked as a computer programmer/analyst, as a director of academic computing and networking, and as a computer journalisthttp://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/j_shapiro_1.html. At Fielding Graduate University he is also senior consultant for academic information projects.
He studied at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
with Robert Paul Wolff
Robert Paul Wolff
Robert Paul Wolff is a contemporary American political philosopher and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wolff has written widely on many topics in political philosophy such as Marxism, tolerance , political justification and democracy. Wolff is also well known for his work on...
and Barrington Moore, Jr.; at the Institute for Social Research
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory....
in Frankfurt am Main with Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
, and Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
; at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
with Maurice Stein and Kurt H. Wolff; and at the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
with Abbe Mowshowitz
Abbe Mowshowitz
Abbe Mowshowitz , is an American academic, a professor of computer science at the City College of New York and a member of the who works in the areas of the organization, management, and economics of information systems; social and policy implications of information technology; network science;...
. He received his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
from Brandeis in 1976. Through his translations he introduced Habermas's work (Toward a Rational Society and Knowledge and Human Interests) and Marcuse's early work (Negations) to the English-speaking world. He has been corresponding editor for the journals Theory and Society and Zeitschrift für kritische Theorie and also writes cultural criticism and reviews http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol9-2005/n39shapiro.html.
Selected publications
- “Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) ”. Telos 41 (Fall 1979). New York: Telos Press.
- Valerie Malhotra Bentz and Jeremy J. Shapiro, Mindful Inquiry in Social Research (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998)
- John Downing, Rob Fasano, Pat Friedland, Michael F. McCullough, Terry Mizrahi, Jeremy J. Shapiro (eds.), Computers for Social Change and Community Organizing (New York: The Haworth Press, 1991).
- "One-Dimensionality: The Universal Semiotic of Technological Experience," (1970) in: Paul Breines (ed.), Critical Interruptions: New Left Perspectives on Herbert Marcuse (New York: Herder and Herder.)
- "The Slime of History: embeddedness in nature and critical theory," in John O'Neill (ed.), On Critical Theory (New York: Seabury, 1976)
- "My Funeral Music", in Carolyn Bereznak Kenny, ed., Listening, Playing, Creating: Essays on the Power of Sound (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995)
- "Evaluating the Internet: a social progress matrix", (co-author with Shelley K. Hughes) in Proceedings of INET '96 (Montreal: Internet Society, 1996) http://info.isoc.org/isoc/whatis/conferenceinet/96/proceedings/e1/e10_3.htm
- Information Literacy—Technical Skill or Liberal Art? Enlightenment proposals for a new curriculum" (1996—co-author with Shelley K. Hughes) http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewarticles/31231.html.
- "Interdisciplinary Knowledge Integration and Intellectual Creativity" [Original title: "Metaphorical and Symbolic Metadata for Interdisciplinary Knowledge Integration and Intellectual Creativity"], in M. J. Lopez-Huertas (ed.), Challenges in Knowledge Representation and Organization for the 21st Century: Integration of Knowledge Across Boundaries (Proceedings of the Seventh International ISKO Conference, Granada, 10-13 July 2002), (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2002), pp. 100-106.
- "The Case of the Inflammatory E-mail: Building Culture and Community in OnLine Academic Environments," (co-author with Shelley K. Hughes), in Kjell Rudestam and Judith Schoenholtz-Read (eds.), Handbook of Online Learning: Innovations in Higher Education and Corporate Training (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2002). pp. 91-124.
- "Digitale Simulation: Theoretische und geschichtliche Grundlagen”, in Zeitschrift für kritische Theorie 17(2003).
- "The Streaming Body as the Site of Telecommunications Convergence," (co-author with Linda F. Crafts), in Kristóf Nyíri (ed.), Integration and Ubiquity: Towards a Philosophy of Telecommunications Convergence. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2008.
- "Adorno´s Praxis of Individuation Through Music Listening", in Zeitschrift für kritische Theorie (in press) and Música em Perspectiva, Vol. 3, No 2 (2010).