Ethnographic Advocacy Against the Death Penalty

This article develops the concept of “ethnographic advocacy” to make sense of the humanizing, open‐ended knowledge practices involved in the defense of criminal defendants charged with capital murder. Drawing from anthropological fieldwork with well‐respected figures in the American capital defense bar, as well as my own professional experience as an investigator specializing in death penalty sentencing mitigation, I argue that effective advocacy for life occurs through qualitative knowledge practices that share notable methodological affinities with contemporary anthropological ethnography. The article concludes with a preliminary exploration of what the concept of ethnographic advocacy might reveal about academic anthropology\u27s own advocative engagements

Rethinking authenticity in digital art preservation

In this paper I am discussing the repositioning of traditional conservation concepts of historicity, authenticity and versioning in relation to born digital artworks, upon findings from my research on preservation of computer-based artifacts. Challenges for digital art preservation and previous work in this area are described, followed by an analysis of digital art as a process of components interaction, as performance and in terms of instantiations. The concept of dynamic authenticity is proposed, and it is argued that our approach to digital artworks preservation should be variable and digital object responsive, with a level of variability tolerance to match digital art intrinsic variability and dynamic authenticity

Research on humanistic-experiential psychotherapies

In this chapter we focus on research published since our previous reviews (Greenberg, Elliott & Lietaer, 1994; Elliott, Greenberg & Lietaer, 2004), which covered research published between 1978 and 2001, plus additional earlier research on humanistic-experiential psychotherapy (HEP) outcome that we have been able to track down. A key element of the chapter is a meta-analysis of nearly 200 HEP outcome studies (through 2008) and a survey of the use of the approach with different client groups. In addition, we offer a meta-synthesis of qualitative research on these therapies (cf. Timulak, 2007), and provide a narrative review of recent quantitative research on change processes in HEPs. We conclude by reviewing and integrating the literature reviewed and discuss policy implications

Valuing Historic Places: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches

Decisions about which older buildings, structures, and places should be conserved are fundamental to the practice of architectural conservation. Conservation professionals use the interrelated concepts of integrity, authenticity, and historical value to determine which historic places are worthy of importance. Traditionally, these concepts are predicated on preserving the object rather than conserving the meaning and values associated with the object. In other works, the goal is to benefit the object and not the people who value the object. This method, which has roots in antiquated nineteenth-century Western scientific traditions, deprecates the importance of people, processes, and meanings in how places are valued and conserved. Thus, conservation professionals produce “objective” meanings for other conservators, but not for everyday people. The net result is a failure to understand how local populations actually value their historic places. A recent movement in architectural conservation is to emphasize the role of contemporary social, cultural, and personal meanings in valuing historic places and the processes in which places develop these values overtime. This pluralistic perspective recognizes that different populations and cultures will have diverse ways of valuing historic places. Ultimately, for places such as Iraq, we have very little, if any, data to support conservation decisions that understand and respect local cultures and tradition. The danger is in applying traditional, Western, concepts that still dominate the conservation profession to non-Western contexts. There is a tremendous learning opportunity to engage in the cross-pollination of ideas from the perspectives of the Western and Eastern traditions and to learn how the citizens of Iraq value their cultural heritage. This information, once gathered, can then inform how to best approach the conservation of Iraqi urban centers

Innovating Pedagogy 2017: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators and policy makers. Open University Innovation Report 6

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This sixth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). Themes: • Big-data inquiry: thinking with data • Learners making science • Navigating post-truth societies • Immersive learning • Learning with internal values • Student-led analytics • Intergroup empathy • Humanistic knowledge-building communities • Open Textbooks • Spaced Learnin

Humanities, Inc.

Hoping to re-energize the minds of its middle managers, between 1953 and 1960 AT&T annually sent a small cadre of employees, most of whom had been trained in business or engineering, back to school to get an education in the humanities. Relieved of all work responsibilities for nine months, participants took classes in history, politics, and literature, while attending concerts and visiting museums in the evening. Though alumni consistently described their experience in highly favorable terms, executives ultimately decided that their efforts were not yielding measurable benefits for the company. My essay seeks to understand the historical motives behind both AT&T's decision to initiate this program, called The Institute of Humanistic Studies, and the company’s eventual decision to discontinue it. How did cold war preoccupations make this unusual collaboration between business and the academy possible? Why did it fail ultimately to perform the ideological function assigned to it? What possibilities or what dangers does the Institute reveal for those seeking to justify the humanities in terms of their practical or vocational utility? Although AT&T’s experiment is a product of its historical moment, it may, I argue, help to shed light on the current crisis in higher education. If, during the immediate postwar period, executives at the largest public corporation in America held that the humanities constituted essential training for businessmen, why, in subsequent decades, have humanities departments had such difficulty articulating the significance or usefulness of what they teach, and why have they found themselves unable to compete with professional schools focused on subjects such as engineering, accounting, and finance

Operational Mechanism of Digital Humanistic Crowdsourcing Project Based on Actor Network Theory

This article is to promote the development of digital humanity-related crowdsourcing projects based on actor network theory (ANT). A case study on Shengxuanhuai Documents from Shanghai Library is selected as our research object. The article employs qualitative research approach to investigate core concepts, namely Problematization, Obligatory Passage Point, Interestment, and Mobilisation involved in the underway of the digital humanity-related crowdsourcing project. This study conducts interviews with 32 respondents, including the 10 contractees and 22 users. The crowdsourcing actors in humanity-related projects are mainly the organizers from public libraries, museums, archives, and other digital humanity institutions. Based on the project development documents and semi-structured interview data, we find that the main obstacles to prevent actors engaging in crowdsourcing projects include task guidance, user motivations, platform designs, and competition evaluations. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of ANT’s concepts and explores the contribution of each ANT analytical concept

Research on experiential psychotherapies

Reviews research on experiential or humanistic psychotherapies, including meta-analysis of outcome research and studies of particular change processes. Outcome meta-analysis shows large client pre-post change, as well as large controlled effects relative to untreated controls and statistical equivalence to nonexperiential psychotherapies, including CBT

Digitization and the Changing Roles of Libraries in Support of Humanities Research: The Case of the Harrison Forman Collection

Objective – this article examines the role of libraries in expanding access to primary sources through digitization and in providing support for humanities research. Research method – the author analyzes the literature on information behavior of humanist scholars in light of the increased use of digitized primary sources. Next, using the example of the digitized photographs and diaries from the Harrison Forman Collection, the author explores the emerging role of libraries in creating a new source of scholarly materials and supporting research in humanities. Results and conclusion – digitization increasingly matters not only for practical reasons of ease of use and access but also by offering a new potential for humanistic research. Digitization projects provide enhanced intellectual control of primary resources, offer an opportunity to uncover hidden collections, and bring together scattered materials. Digital collections in their present design demonstrate some limitations in supporting scholars’ browsing behavior and in providing contextual information. Creating digital collections in support of humanities research requires the transformation of library roles and collaboration with digital humanities scholars