Leaving the mainstream behind? Uncovering subjective understandings of economics instructors' roles

In the wake of the economic crisis, a number of student organizations and researchers highlighted the lack of pluralism and heterodox approaches in economics curricula. The relevance of pluralism becomes clear once set within the implications of a given scientific discourse on reality (e.g. economics and policy making). This study explores the role of instructors in co-constructing the pluralism discourse and debates, while recognizing the role of institutional obstacles to change within the discipline. An empirical field study is conducted with lecturers in introductory economics courses at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business where they place themselves within the pluralism discourse via a Q-study - a mixed method employed for studying subjectivity in socially contested topics. In Q, a set of statements undergo a sorting procedure on a relative ranking scale, followed by factor-rendering. Four voices are identified: Moderate Pluralist, Mainstreamers, Responsible Pluralists, and Applied Pluralists. The implications of their ideas are discussed from the viewpoint of discursive institutionalism, stressing the role of ideas and discourse in institutional change. Although a discursive readiness for changes towards more pluralism is claimed, strategies for overcoming the difficulties on the institutional level need to be developed

AMERICAN GOTHIC MAINSTREAM FICTION

This is my (Subhasis Chattopadhyay's) draft of PhD pre-submission. Dr. Scriver has (had) put it up online in her blog and I found it today, that is 1:06 pm, 28th May, 2017. I am grateful to her since intellectual ideas can otherwise be hijacked. She has done a wonderful editorial job

An Examination of Contemporary Christian Music Success Within Mainstream Rock and Country Billboard Charts

Ranging from inspirational songs void of theological language to worship music imbued with overt religious messages, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) has a long history of being ill-defined. Due to the genre’s flexible nature, many Christian artists over the years have used vague imagery and secular lyrical content to find favor among mainstream outlets. This study examined the most recent ten-year period of CCM to determine its ability to cross over into the mainstream music scene, while also assessing the impact of its lyrical content and genre on the probability of reaching such mainstream success. For the years 2008-2018, Billboard data were collected for every Christian song on the Hot 100, Hot Rock Songs, or Hot Country Songs in order to detect any noticeable trend regarding the rise or fall of CCM; each song then was coded for theological language. No obvious trend emerged regarding the mainstream success of CCM as a whole, but the genre of Rock was found to possess the greatest degree of mainstream success. Rock also, however, was shown to have a very low tolerance for theological language, contrasted with the high tolerance of Country. As such, it is reasonable to question whether Mainstream Christian Rock is even really Christian at all.

Mainstream parallel array programming on cell

We present the E] compiler and runtime library for the ‘F’ subset of the Fortran 95 programming language. ‘F’ provides first-class support for arrays, allowing E] to implicitly evaluate array expressions in parallel using the SPU coprocessors of the Cell Broadband Engine. We present performance results from four benchmarks that all demonstrate absolute speedups over equivalent ‘C’ or Fortran versions running on the PPU host processor. A significant benefit of this straightforward approach is that a serial implementation of any code is always available, providing code longevity, and a familiar development paradigm

Can the Capability Approach be Evaluated within the Frame of Mainstream Economics? A Methodological Analysis

The aim of this article is to examine the capability approach of Amartya Sen and mainstream economic theory in terms of their epistemological, methodological and philosophical/cultural aspects. The reason for undertaking this analysis is the belief that Sen’s capability approach, contrary to some economists’ claim, is uncongenial to mainstream economic views on epistemology and methodology (not on ontologically). However, while some social scientists regard that Sen, on the whole, is a mainstream economist, his own approach strongly criticizes both the theory and practice of mainstream economics.Amartya Sen, Mainstream economics, Methodological individualism.

Democracy and Feminism

Although feminist legal theory has had an important impact on most areas of legal doctrine and theory over the last two decades, its contribution to the debate over constitutional interpretation has been comparatively small. In this Article, Professor Higgins explores reasons for the limited dialogue between mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory concerning questions of democracy, constitutionalism, and judicial review. She argues that mainstream constitutional theory tends to take for granted the capacity of the individual to make choices, leaving the social construction of those choices largely unexamined. In contrast, feminist legal theory\u27s emphasis on the importance of constraints on women\u27s choices has led to a neglect of questions of citizenship and sovereignty within a democratic system. By comparing mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory, Professor Higgins highlights the existing limitations of both. She argues both that mainstream constitutional theory must take into account feminist arguments concerning constraints on individual choice and that feminist theory must take seriously the mainstream debate over democratic legitimacy. Integrating these distinct concerns, she suggests a framework for constitutional interpretation that reflects a feminist conception of citizenship under conditions of inequality

From Cellblocks to Suburbia: Tattoos as Subcultural Style, Commodity and Self-expression

This research study uses scholarship on tattooing, popular cultural representation and the practice and experience of tattooing to look at how subcultures (social groups excluded from mainstream society) express themselves through style and how style creates meaning and identification. These subcultures differ from other subcultures, such as racially marginalized groups, in that they create style in order to separate themselves from the mainstream. These marginal ideas of style are often picked up and adapted by America’s mainstream, materialistic culture and marketed as “cool” by corporations and other members of mainstream society for mass consumption. When discussing related subcultural theory in light of tattoos, one must not overlook the unique features of tattoos, including their permanent quality and the way society continues to perceive tattoos. Moreover, in today’s consumption-obsessed society, it is difficult to escape capitalism’s effect on “cool” and the ways in which cool is commodified. The mainstream is constantly commodifying subcultural trends, forcing subcultures to continually create new trends to remain marginal. Because commodification is perpetual and corporations are constantly seeking new ways to profit off of the mainstream’s next perceived idea of “cool,” it is somewhat remarkable that a centuries-old form of self-expression has largely managed to escape this process of commodification as tattoos have done