Black History: Implicit Bias, Dishonest Scholarship and Colonial Propaganda

This article is a result of researching the work Akala presented at the Oxford Student’s Union for Black History month. It is part of a series which comes from the researching of one section at a time using the online video as a knowledge resource to structure a self directed curriculum.  This methodology is one which has been developed in order to facilitate independent learning especially in informal contexts of the lives of people like myself.

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Mad Studies: The Identitarian Problem

This piece of work although situated in the context of Mad Studies as an academic discipline, is part of work which extends beyond the boundaries of Mad Studies in all directions. These notes are partly a way of talking through various fragments and ideas in order to organise and coordinate a larger study which intersects class, community, gender culture and identity; it is work which is coordinated in a study I am calling ‘Sub-legal Violence’ as a working title. Read more…

Cult Behaviours: Avoiding Dissent – Reviewing Prof Arthur J. Deikman’s Work

This is the fourth part of a review and digest of the work of Professor Arthur Deikman who studied cults and identified how certain everyday tendencies in humans can coalesce in cult behaviours.  As someone who has spent his professional life examining cases of extreme cult indoctrination he is ideally placed to foster a discussion of cult like behaviours which are more common and distributed throughout our lives as human beings.

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Cult Behaviours: Devaluing the Outsider – Reviewing Prof Arthur J. Deikman’s Work

This is the third part of a review and digest of the work of Professor Arthur Deikman who published on cult behaviours examining how they manifest in every day circumstances.  He likened the natural pull in everyone towards cult behaviour to the comfort of being a passenger of a car and being driven along without having to think about where the journey is going or how they are getting there. Read more…

Cult Behaviours: Dependence on a Leader – Reviewing Prof Arthur J. Deikman’s Work

This is the second part of a review and digest of the work which Arthur Diekman published on cult behaviours manifest in every day life. As a professor of psychology he stressed how cult behaviours are intimately woven in the human’s psyche and actions arguing that for healthy, stable and constructive societies awareness of these facts was imperative.

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Cult Behaviours: Compliance with the Group – Reviewing Prof Arthur J. Deikman’s Work

This is a study article which is a review of Prof Arthur J. Deikman‘s work on cult behaviours in everyday life.  Deikman was clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Franscisco and published ‘The Wrong Way Home; Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society’ in 1990.  The book lays out his analyses of certain characteristics found in cults emphasising the point that, far from being unusual rarities of behaviour found in the easily led or weak minded, these ways of thinking and acting are widespread and nestled in the comfort of our own tendencies.
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