清华海外名师讲堂第四十五讲

英国华威大学校长Nigel Thrift教授437必赢会员中心演讲

【主讲】英国华威大学校长Nigel Thrift教授

【主题】PASS IT ON: Towards a Political Economy of Propensity

【时间】2009-5-22（周五）15:30（15:15入场完毕）

【地点】主楼接待厅

【主办】国际合作与交流处

【简介】华威大学创建于1965年，目前已经发展成为英国领先的研究型大学之一，近些年来在英国所有的大学排行榜上始终保持在前10名的位置，学校以其开拓和创新的精神、高质量的教学和研究水平、美丽舒适的校园环境、完备和方便的校园设施、以及国际化的学习与生活氛围而著称。

Nigel Thrift教授于2006年7月就任华威大学第五任校长，在此之前他曾任牛津大学主管学术研究的副校长，是国际知名的地理学家。在Thrift教授的职业生涯中，曾获得包括皇家地理学会维多利亚奖章等多种学术荣誉，他同时还是英国社会科学研究院和大英科学院院士。

【摘要】The paper argues that the work of Gabriel Tarde on imitation provides a fertile means of understanding how capitalism is forging a new affective technology which conforms to a logic of propensity rather than to means-end reasoning. This it does by drawing together a biological understanding of semiconscious cognition with various practical geometric arts so as to re-stage the world as a series of susceptible situations which can be ridden rather than rigidly controlled. The paper examines the advent of technologies which attend to the variable geometry of so-called animal spirits in the realm of business and then, using Tarde’s work as a springboard, considers some alternative means of understanding imitative rays which have less instrumental undertones. The paper is an illustration of the way in which biology and culture have increasingly become intertwined.

Keywords: animal spirits, biology, imitation, propensity, stage, geometry, capitalism

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