6,456 research outputs found

    Complexity Science in Human Change

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    This reprint encompasses fourteen contributions that offer avenues towards a better understanding of complex systems in human behavior. The phenomena studied here are generally pattern formation processes that originate in social interaction and psychotherapy. Several accounts are also given of the coordination in body movements and in physiological, neuronal and linguistic processes. A common denominator of such pattern formation is that complexity and entropy of the respective systems become reduced spontaneously, which is the hallmark of self-organization. The various methodological approaches of how to model such processes are presented in some detail. Results from the various methods are systematically compared and discussed. Among these approaches are algorithms for the quantification of synchrony by cross-correlational statistics, surrogate control procedures, recurrence mapping and network models.This volume offers an informative and sophisticated resource for scholars of human change, and as well for students at advanced levels, from graduate to post-doctoral. The reprint is multidisciplinary in nature, binding together the fields of medicine, psychology, physics, and neuroscience

    Constitutions of Value

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    Gathering an interdisciplinary range of cutting-edge scholars, this book addresses legal constitutions of value. Global value production and transnational value practices that rely on exploitation and extraction have left us with toxic commons and a damaged planet. Against this situation, the book examines law’s fundamental role in institutions of value production and valuation. Utilising pathbreaking theoretical approaches, it problematizes mainstream efforts to redeem institutions of value production by recoupling them with progressive values. Aiming beyond radical critique, the book opens up the possibility of imagining and enacting new and different value practices. This wide-ranging and accessible book will appeal to international lawyers, socio-legal scholars, those working at the intersections of law and economy and others, in politics, economics, environmental studies and elsewhere, who are concerned with rethinking our current ideas of what has value, what does not, and whether and how value may be revalued

    Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy

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    This Open Access book combines philosophical and historical analysis of various forms of alternatives to mechanism and mechanistic explanation, focusing on the 19th century to the present. It addresses vitalism, organicism and responses to materialism and its relevance to current biological science. In doing so, it promotes dialogue and discussion about the historical and philosophical importance of vitalism and other non-mechanistic conceptions of life. It points towards the integration of genomic science into the broader history of biology. It details a broad engagement with a variety of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century vitalisms and conceptions of life. In addition, it discusses important threads in the history of concepts in the United States and Europe, including charting new reception histories in eastern and south-eastern Europe. While vitalism, organicism and similar epistemologies are often the concern of specialists in the history and philosophy of biology and of historians of ideas, the range of the contributions as well as the geographical and temporal scope of the volume allows for it to appeal to the historian of science and the historian of biology generally

    Spirit and Healing in Africa

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    There is a great need for healing in Africa. This need is in itself no different elsewhere in the world, but it is greatly determined by the involvement of religious communities and traditions. Faith communities and religious institutions play a major role in assisting African believers to find health, healing and completeness in everyday life

    Thomas Hobbes and the phenomena of civil war: A textual exposition of Hobbes’s commitment to the empirical and historical existence of the state of nature.

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    Did Thomas Hobbes consider his conception of the state of nature to be based within any empirically verifiable reality? The foundational predicates of this thesis can be reduced to two fundamental points: 1. That Hobbes’s belief in the existence in the state of nature was sincere. 2. The most pertinent empirical basis for the state of nature expressed by Hobbes was civil war, specifically, the English Civil War Period. The analytical trajectory of the thesis will endeavour, whenever possible, to pursue channels of inquiry which correspond to the two key predicates adumbrated above. The format has been styled as a “textual exposition” because the method endorsed will seek to expose Hobbes’s commitment to the existence of the state of nature from the words that he himself had written. Whether they be elements of his renowned philosophical system, or written material situated outside the terminus of his political science. Such as his correspondence, or lesser-known publications. Secondary material written about Hobbes’s state of nature, and the judgments of such authors as created them will of course be consulted at various points. However, to the primary material, containing Hobbes’s own judgments on the state of nature and its relationship with civil war, is accorded the greater responsibility for validating the premises of this thesis

    Digital Literacy Education in Welsh Primary and Secondary Schools from the 1960s to the Present

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    Digital technologies are imbued with ideologies that impact culture and society. These technologies are ubiquitous, pervasive, and central to how people communicate, consume information, and orchestrate their lives. Therefore, for people to fully understand the impact and influence of these technologies on their lives and engage with them and the digital environment in a critically informed way - digital literacy is an absolute and necessary requirement. However, we are not seeing digital literacy as standard. This study assesses: (1) Whether students are being sufficiently educated about how digital technologies use and affect them in a social, cultural, and ethical capacity; (2) Whether the programme content of digital literacy education (DLE) is primarily driven by neo-liberal economically driven government policies; and (3) How much influence private neo-liberal capitalistic enterprises have in determining the educational agenda of DLE? Qualitative data was collected via three focus group interviews and twenty-six semi-structured interviews which explored students, educational professionals, and government officials’ views of DLE in Wales. The data was thematically coded using critical discourse analysis, and analysed using theories developed in Herbert Marcuse’s 1964 publication One-Dimensional Man. The results indicated that DLE educational policy has broadened to include knowledge that extends beyond the teaching of purely mechanistic skills. However, a variety of factors were identified that impede their implementation. Additionally, it is argued that students’ mechanistic digital skills have been declining since the introduction of touch screen technologies into primary and secondary schools. Findings also indicated that educators main DLE focus was on preparing students for employment purposes, and the influence private neo-liberal capitalistic enterprises have in determining not only the educational agenda of DLE, but education in general is profound, and has accelerated exponentially since the COVID-19 imposed lockdowns

    Combating the Hydra: Violence and Resistance in the Habsburg Empire, 1500–1900

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    Combating the Hydra explores structural as well as occasion-specific state violence committed by the early modern Habsburg Empire. The book depicts and analyzes attacks on marginalized people “maladjusted” of all sorts, women “of ill repute,” “heretic” Protestants, and “Gypsies.” Previously uncharted archival records reveal the use of arbitrary imprisonment, coerced labor, and deportation. The case studies presented provide insights into the origins of modern state power from varied techniques of population control, but are also an investigation of resistance against oppression, persecution, and life-threatening assaults. The spectrum of fights against debasement is a touching attestation of the humanity of the outcasts; they range from mental and emotional perseverance to counterviolence. A conversation with the eminent historian Carlo Ginzburg concludes the collection by asking about the importance of memorizing horrors of the past.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ces/1002/thumbnail.jp

    Evaluating the process of embodied experiences in critical moments of therapeutic change: a qualitative study

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    This research study set out to examine the embodied experiences of critical moments of change from the perspectives of psychotherapists and clients. The main aim of the research was to investigate how the psychotherapist- participants brought embodied attentional attunement to their clients with the intention to facilitate change sought by clients. The research was undertaken with nine psychotherapist-participants and four client-participants. The nine psychotherapist-participants were regular mindfulness practitioners and the four client-participants were in therapy with body-oriented/mindfulness and analytical psychotherapists. Braun and Clarke’s Reflexive Thematic Analysis was used to analyse the dataset. A phenomenological reflexivity or bracketing was also adopted in the data analysis. The psychotherapist’s embodied stance became a focus on how therapeutic processes were sensed and identified experientially. These processes included experiences of shifts or change, attunement and co-created intersubjective states. The five main themes generated were; ‘The body is a barometer’, ‘Mindfulness is not psychotherapy, it is a return the body’, ‘What’s mine and what’s yours?’, ‘Change is an active being-with’, and ‘Embodiment is the co-experience of sameness and alterity.’ These five themes were further organised under two overarching themes, ‘The moving body’ and ‘Talking therapy is intersubjective’ to encapsulate the concepts found in the data analysis. In conclusion, critical moments of change or shifts are identified as the recognition of otherness or alterity in embodied intersubjective experiences. These can happen in a ‘gap’, an ‘insertion point’ or an ‘interruption’ within a therapeutic exchange. This is also an ethical framework for psychotherapy in recognising the body’s response to experiencing empathy and attunement. This has also been supported by findings in brain studies in an intersubjective context. Given the current prevalence of online therapy, future research recommendations include investigating the body’s response to the co-created intersubjective in a virtual environment. Key words: mindfulness, embodiment, phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty, critical moments of therapeutic change, intersubjectivit

    Civility, Epistemic Injustice, and Criticality: Toward a Praxis of Affective Democratic Friction

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    Socially-privileged students’ discomfort in the social justice classroom as injustice is dramatically increasing in public discourse, especially as the Anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement thrives. It is in the current climate of Anti-CRT that social justice educators must be vigilant of how classrooms could reproduce the very injustices they seek to problematize. Coupled alongside social justice educators’ fears of job security and violence—physical, emotional, and epistemic—calls for civility that function to mute discomfort about systemic injustices could easily creep into classrooms. I claim civility can function speciously—when appeals to civility falsely claim, even if well-intentioned, to create just, open dialogue. Specious civility acts to conceal reiterations of socially-unjust power relations and, in turn, reify epistemologies of whiteness under the guise of “safe” or “comforting” spaces. I assert that such functions of civility conceal/maintain white students’ resistance to engage with counter testimony, especially testimony that might reveal their complicity in systemic oppressions. Social justice educators, then, must be hyper-cognizant of possible epistemic injustices perpetrated toward socially-marginalized students/testifiers. Building on the work of Miranda Fricker and JosĂ© Medina, I propose that our evaluations of testimony may be better served by practices of criticality that acknowledge the social, communal aspects of inquiry/critique/reflection. I, then, develop and illustrate a praxis of affective democratic friction, expanding on AnaLouise Keating’s “pedagogies of invitation,” Medina’s “epistemic friction and activism,” and Gloria AnzaldĂșa’s “spiritual activism,” to propose teaching practices that could incite students to recognize their discomfort, postpone assessment/judgments of testimony, and create opportunities for recognizing the affective happenings causing distress and, in turn, cultivate a relational criticality

    Endogenous measures for contextualising large-scale social phenomena: a corpus-based method for mediated public discourse

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    This work presents an interdisciplinary methodology for developing endogenous measures of group membership through analysis of pervasive linguistic patterns in public discourse. Focusing on political discourse, this work critiques the conventional approach to the study of political participation, which is premised on decontextualised, exogenous measures to characterise groups. Considering the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of decontextualised approaches to large-scale social phenomena, this work suggests that contextualisation using endogenous measures might provide a complementary perspective to mitigate such weaknesses. This work develops a sociomaterial perspective on political participation in mediated discourse as affiliatory action performed through language. While the affiliatory function of language is often performed consciously (such as statements of identity), this work is concerned with unconscious features (such as patterns in lexis and grammar). This work argues that pervasive patterns in such features that emerge through socialisation are resistant to change and manipulation, and thus might serve as endogenous measures of sociopolitical contexts, and thus of groups. In terms of method, the work takes a corpus-based approach to the analysis of data from the Twitter messaging service whereby patterns in users’ speech are examined statistically in order to trace potential community membership. The method is applied in the US state of Michigan during the second half of 2018—6 November having been the date of midterm (i.e. non-Presidential) elections in the United States. The corpus is assembled from the original posts of 5,889 users, who are nominally geolocalised to 417 municipalities. These users are clustered according to pervasive language features. Comparing the linguistic clusters according to the municipalities they represent finds that there are regular sociodemographic differentials across clusters. This is understood as an indication of social structure, suggesting that endogenous measures derived from pervasive patterns in language may indeed offer a complementary, contextualised perspective on large-scale social phenomena
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