221,428 research outputs found
âMacGyver-Meets-Dr. Ruthâ: Science Journalism and the Material Positioning of Dr. Carla Pugh
This article examines the rhetorical consequences of foregrounding female scientists\u27 materials through an analysis of seven news articles on Dr. Carla Pugh, a surgeon who designs medical patient simulators. Journalists foreground Pugh\u27s materials by positioning her as both âMacGyver,â creatively assembling simulators from everyday objects, and âDr. Ruth,â willingly discussing intimate parts. These positions avoid focusing on Pugh\u27s personal life or body but still ultimately gender her and her work. The MacGyver position associates Pugh with gendered activities, objects, and spaces while undermining her affiliation with the technical aspects of design. Meanwhile, the Dr. Ruth position implies Pugh\u27s knowledge comes from inherent bodily expertise, making certain scientific fields appear more natural for women
Elongated Intimacy: The intimate experience of owning / commissioning a craft object
âHow will you (craftspeople) make things that others will value, give a place in their
intimate space and include in the rituals of their daily life?â (Unger 2007)
Little has been written in either social science or material culture research about the
way contemporary craft objects are encountered and consumed and the meanings
and values that they subsequently inherit. In my research as a silversmith and
jeweller the made object embodies a set of intentions with symbolic significance and
narrative agendas. Until now only anecdotal data existed to support whether the
reception was equal to the intentions. This paper reports on the findings of primary
empirical data gathered through intimate in-depth interviews. The respondents
(unlike many studies) were invited to participate because they had purchased,
commissioned or acquired an object created by the author. The complex results
elicited knowledge about the life of the objects and the values and meanings they
hold for those who own them. The findings are presented in the context of current
critical debate in contemporary craft and describe how they inform creative practice.</p
Political geographies of the object
This paper examines the role of objects in the constitution and exercise of state power, drawing on a close reading of the acclaimed HBO television series The Wire, an unconventional crime drama set and shot in Baltimore, Maryland. While political geography increasingly recognizes the prosaic and intimate practices of stateness, we argue that objects themselves are central to the production, organization, and performance of state power. Specifically, we analyze how three prominent objects on The Wireâwiretaps, cameras, and standardized testsâarrange and produce the conditions we understand as âstatenessâ. Drawing on object-oriented philosophy, we offer a methodology of power that suggests it is generalized force relations rather than specifically social relations that police a populationâwithout, of course, ever being able to fully capture it. We conclude by suggesting The Wire itself is an object of force, and explore the implications of an object-oriented approach for understanding the nature of power, and for political geography more broadly
Appealing to men and women using sexual appeals in advertising: In the battle of the sexes, is a truce possible?
Sexual appeals remain a very popular advertising technique yet questions regarding their use remain, including how they can be used to appeal to men and women simultaneously. Literature examining what men and women find sexually appealing and the body language used to signal relationship status guided development of two appeal types: 'Intimate' portrayed a couple in an intimate stable relationship whereas 'Objectified' showed them as sexual objects. These were combined with different levels of nudity and product relevance and studied experimentally. As expected, both genders preferred intimate appeals though they only rated low nudity intimate adverts for relevant products positively
Introverted Metaphysics: How We Get Our Grip on the Ultimate Nature of Objects, Properties, and Causation
This paper pulls together three debates fundamental in metaphysics and proposes a novel unified approach to them. The three debates are (i) between bundle theory and substrate theory about the nature of objects, (ii) dispositionalism and categoricalism about the nature of properties, and (iii) regularity theory and production theory about the nature of causation. The first part of the paper (§§2-4) suggests that although these debates are metaphysical, the considerations motivating the competing approaches in each debate tend to be epistemological. The second part (§§5-6) argues that the two underlying epistemological pictures supporting competing views lead to highly unsatisfying conceptions of the world. The final part (§§7-10) proposes an alternative epistemological picture, which I call âintroverted empiricism,â and presents the way it provides for a more satisfying grasp of the ultimate nature of objects, properties, and causation. It is a consequence of this alternative picture that there is a kind of intimate self-understanding that underlies our understanding of the deep nature of reality
Wrath and Relationships: Homicide Weapon Choice and Victim Offender Relationships
The purpose of this study is to examine the influence that victim-offender relationships and the event circumstances have on homicide weapon choice. From Cornish and Clarkeâs Rational Choice theoretical perspective, offenders go through decision- making processes to determine which weapon will be the most effective to meet their goal, based on the circumstances of the event. This study examined the use of three weapon types: firearms, knife/ blunt objects, and personal weapons, amongst victim-offender relationships such as acquaintance, intimate, non-intimate family/friend, and strangers along with circumstances such as homicides committed as the result of a felony, and homicides committed as a result of an argument. Results show that firearms were used the most by strangers, and in felony circumstances, while knife/ blunt objects and personal weapons were used the most by non-intimate family/ friends and in argument circumstances
The intimate international relations of museums: a method
This article proposes a method for analysing museums as sites of intimate and colonially-produced international relations. Beginning with fieldwork that approaches museums as sites through which people intimately encounter the objects, institutions, selves and others of international politics, we explore how intimacy can be âreadâ as socio-sexual affect, scales and proximities, and colonial differentiation/racialisation. The article is grounded in fieldwork at the British Army Royal Engineers Museum in Kent, UK, conceptualised as an assembly of, following Stoler, imperial debris. We explore how certain museum exhibits work as intimate âorganising objectsâ, locating the museum collection, and those who visit or are excluded from it, within the intimate circulations of imperial and colonial violence. The article makes two core contributions: first, responding to recent literature in IR on museums we propose a framework for understanding how museums and exhibitions function as everyday sites of coloniality and racialisation. Second, we propose that approaching intimacy as a method is instructive for fieldwork in international relations (including museums) which takes the colonial constitution of the global/local seriously
The Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 Test of Surfaces in the Outer Solar System: The Compositional Classes of the Kuiper Belt
We present the first results of the Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 Test of
Surfaces in the Outer Solar System (H/WTSOSS). The purpose of this survey was
to measure the surface properties of a large number of Kuiper belt objects and
attempt to infer compositional and dynamical correlations. We find that the
Centaurs and the low-perihelion scattered disk and resonant objects exhibit
virtually identical bifurcated optical colour distributions and make up two
well defined groups of object. Both groups have highly correlated optical and
NIR colours which are well described by a pair of two component mixture models
that have different red components, but share a common neutral component. The
small, high-perihelion excited objects are entirely
consistent with being drawn from the two branches of the mixing model
suggesting that the colour bifurcation of the Centaurs is apparent in all small
excited objects. On the other hand, objects larger than are
not consistent with the mixing model, suggesting some evolutionary process
avoided by the smaller objects. The existence of a bifurcation amongst all
excited populations argues that the two separate classes of object existed in
the primordial disk before the excited Kuiper belt was populated. The cold
classical objects exhibit a different type of surface which has colours that
are consistent with being drawn from the red branch of the mixing model, but
with much higher albedos.Comment: Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal. 49 Pages, 15 Figure
- âŠ