Irresistible (eBook)

How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World

Joshua Paul Dale (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023
321 Seiten
ProFile (Verlag)
978-1-78283-542-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Why are some things cute, and others not? What happens to our brains when we see something cute? And how did cuteness go global, from Hello Kitty to Disney characters?Cuteness is an area where culture and biology get tangled up. Seeing a cute animal triggers some of the most powerful psychological instincts we have - the ones that elicit our care and protection - but there is a deeper story behind the broad appeal of Japanese cats and saccharine greetings cards.Joshua Paul Dale, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of cuteness studies, explains how the cute aesthetic spread around the globe, from pop brands to Lolita fashion, kids' cartoons and the unstoppable rise of Hello Kitty. Irresistible delves into the surprisingly ancient origins of Japan's kawaii culture, and uncovers the cross-cultural pollination of the globalised world. If adorable things really do rewire our brains, it can help answer some of the biggest questions we have about our evolutionary history and the mysterious origins of animal domestication.This is the fascinating cultural history of cuteness, and a revealing look at how our most powerful psychological impulses have remade global style and culture.

Rezensionen

Our fasciation with cuteness is more than just a quirk of human psychology; it's fundamental to explaining what made us human in the first place .... an absolute treasure trove of unconventional and unexpected insight

A layer cake of cultural history and developmental biology ... peculiarly charming ... with such a wealth of examples to consider, cute studies has only just begun. There's plenty more to see, and plenty to wave a glow stick at

An irresistible read for a wide audience ... with a gift of story-telling and a firm grasp of scientific as well as historical and contemporary artistic sources, both in the West and Japan, Joshua Dale offers us (with good humour) reason to take seriously the cute to understand our contemporary world and its meaning for our humanity

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.11.2023
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: Belyaev • Cultural History • Culture • cuteness • Cuteness Bibliography • domestication • Foxes • Globalization • Japan • Joshua Dale • Kawaii • Memes • Peter Rabbit • Psychology
• ISBN-10: 1-78283-542-3 / 1782835423
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78283-542-4 / 9781782835424