The embody-ment of power? : women and physical activity

The thesis examines the connections between being physically active and becoming empowered. It centres on the experiences of women and investigates their involvement in physical activity and how this relates to the rest of their lives and their subjectivities. In so doing the research explores the relation between physicality and social power, and considers the role of the body in the construction of gender power relations. The key concepts used to explore this area are agency and structure, hegemony, negotiation, empowerment and physicality. More broadly the research has been informed by debates in feminist postmodernism and poststructuralism. The main data set were generated through interviews with twenty-eight women with additional information coming from questionnaires returned by one hundred and seventy-two women representing a range of activity levels, ages and class locations. The findings were generated largely from the experiences of white women living in a market town within commuting distance of London. The findings demonstrate the potential for women to become empowered through their bodies, as a result of being involved in physical activity. The acquisition of new skills and the discovery of new physical potential in their bodies such as feeling stronger, having more energy, were foregrounded by the women as being important to them. This led them to feeling more positive about themselves and their potential. There was nothing to suggest that particular activities were more empowering than others, although the context and purpose of the activity was found to be important. There is little evidence of there being any difference between working-class and middle-class women in terms of their experience of empowerment or disempowerment through physical activity. The findings also highlight the need to set an understanding of physical activity within the context of intra-household relations. By doing this it is argued that we are better able to understand how the construction of women's subjectivities operates simultaneously across fields of activity

Generalized Evidence Theory

Conflict management is still an open issue in the application of Dempster Shafer evidence theory. A lot of works have been presented to address this issue. In this paper, a new theory, called as generalized evidence theory (GET), is proposed. Compared with existing methods, GET assumes that the general situation is in open world due to the uncertainty and incomplete knowledge. The conflicting evidence is handled under the framework of GET. It is shown that the new theory can explain and deal with the conflicting evidence in a more reasonable way.Comment: 39 pages, 5 figure

Newton on action at a distance

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Universal Gravitation and the (Un)Intelligibility of Natural Philosophy

This article centers on Hume’s position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. To that end, the controversy surrounding universal gravitation shall be scrutinized. It is very well-known that Hume sides with the Newtonian experimentalist approach rather than with the Leibnizian demand for intelligibility. However, what is not clear is Hume’s overall position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. It shall be argued that Hume declines Leibniz’s principle of intelligibility. However, Hume does not eschew intelligibility altogether; his concept of causation itself stipulates mechanical intelligibility

Situating Kant’s Pre-Critical Monadology: Leibnizian Ubeity, Monadic Activity, and Idealist Unity

This essay examines the relationship between monads and space in Kant’s early pre-critical work, with special attention devoted to the question of ubeity, a Scholastic doctrine that Leibniz describes as “ways of being somewhere”. By focusing attention on this concept, evidence will be put forward that supports the claim, held by various scholars, that the monad-space relationship in Kant is closer to Leibniz’ original conception than the hypotheses typically offered by the later Leibniz-Wolff school. In addition, Kant’s monadology, in conjunction with God’s role, also helps to shed light on further aspects of his system that are broadly Leibnizian, such as monadic activity and the unity of space