Embedding Quantum into Classical: Contextualization vs Conditionalization

We compare two approaches to embedding joint distributions of random variables recorded under different conditions (such as spins of entangled particles for different settings) into the framework of classical, Kolmogorovian probability theory. In the contextualization approach each random variable is "automatically" labeled by all conditions under which it is recorded, and the random variables across a set of mutually exclusive conditions are probabilistically coupled (imposed a joint distribution upon). Analysis of all possible probabilistic couplings for a given set of random variables allows one to characterize various relations between their separate distributions (such as Bell-type inequalities or quantum-mechanical constraints). In the conditionalization approach one considers the conditions under which the random variables are recorded as if they were values of another random variable, so that the observed distributions are interpreted as conditional ones. This approach is uninformative with respect to relations between the distributions observed under different conditions, because any set of such distributions is compatible with any distribution assigned to the conditions.Comment: PLoS One 9(3): e92818 (2014

Margins and monsters: How some micro cases lead to macro claims

ABSTRACTHow do micro cases lead us to surprising macro claims? Historians often say that the micro level casts light on the macro level. This metaphor of “casting light” suggests that the micro does not illuminate the macro straightforwardly; such light needs to be interpreted. In this essay, I propose and clarify six interpretive norms to guide micro‐to‐macro inferences.I focus on marginal groups and monsters. These are popular cases in social and cultural histories, and yet seem to be unpromising candidates for generalization. Marginal groups are dismissed by the majority as inferior or ill‐fitting; their lives seem intelligible but negligible. Monsters, on the other hand, are somehow incomprehensible to society and treated as such. First, I show that, by looking at how a society identifies a marginal group and interacts with it, we can draw surprising inferences about that society's self‐image and situation. By making sense of a monster's life, we can draw inferences about its society's mentality and intelligibility. These will contest our conception of a macro claim. Second, I identify four risks in making such inferences — and clarify how norms of coherence, challenge, restraint, connection, provocation, and contextualization can manage those risks.My strategy is to analyze two case studies, by Richard Cobb, about a band of violent bandits and a semi‐literate provincial terrorist in revolutionary France. Published in 1972, these studies show Cobb to be an inventive and idiosyncratic historian, who created new angles for studying the micro level and complicated them with his autobiography. They illustrate how a historian's autobiographical, literary, and historiographical interests can mix into a risky, and often rewarding, style

Hip Hop Hermeneutics: How the Culture Influences Preachers

Hip Hop Hermeneutics essay lays out findings of current research into how Hip Hop culture has been formational for African American preachers, and how that culture informs their preaching. There is a generation of preachers leading congregations today that have grown up with Hip Hop. Hip Hop culture has left an indelible mark upon them; just as the church has. How does the cultural influence of Hip Hop affect their preaching? Hip Hop hermeneutics is the response put forth by this article. This article traces the practice and theology of early African American preachers, the work of James Cone in Black Liberation theology, and Womanist theologians to demonstrate how Black theology has always included the Black experience as part of its theological norm. The article then posits that the next generation of Black theology must take into account that Hip Hop is also part of that Black experience, before going on to delineate a Hip Hop hermeneutic. A Hip Hop hermeneutic is a particular way of reading scripture that embraces the honest and raw fullness of the Black experience

Contextualizing Conceptions of Corruption: Challenges for the International Anti-corruption Campaign

While in an initial legal and academic anti-corruption wave corruption itself was at the center of analysis, research is now increasingly focused on anti-corruption discourse and praxis. The latter analyses have generated numerous criticisms of anti-corruption activities and anti-corruption research, and these are presented in this literature review. These criticisms range from the anti-corruption norm’s legitimacy deficit, to the difficulty of defining and measuring corruption, to the discourse’s depoliticization through its technicalization. The anti-corruption movement faces particular difficulties with respect to the tension between the universality of the anti-corruption norm and its simultaneous contextualization for specific and local application. This tension is especially important because it touches upon the central issues of the respective political communities, such as the division of the private from the public, which differ from one cultural context to another. The contextualization of anti-corruption concepts has to be enabled in various areas: first, with respect to the culturally shaped conception of the division between the public and the private; second, with respect to local understandings of corruption, that is, what is actually meant when talking about “corruption”; and third, with respect to the low socioeconomic development levels in some countries, which do not permit the absence of corruption (evading a zero-tolerance rhetoric).corruption, anti-corruption, global governance, norms, cultural specificity, local implementation

Contemporary Representations of the Female Body: Consumerism and the Normative Discourse of Beauty

In the context of the perpetual reproduction of consumerism in contemporary western societies, the varied and often contradictory principles of third wave feminism have been misunderstood or redefined by the dominant economic discourse of the markets. The lack of homogeneity in the theoretical debates of the third wave feminism seems to be a vulnerable point in the appropriation of its emancipatory ideals by the post-modern consumerist narratives. The beauty norm, particularly, brings the most problematic questions forth in the contemporary feminist dialogues. In this paper I will examine the validity of the concept of empowerment through practices of the body, practices that constitute the socially legitimized identity of women in a consumerist western society. My thesis is that the beauty norm is constructed as a socio-political instrument in order to preserve the old, patriarchal regulation of women’s bodies. Due to the power of invisibility of the new mechanisms of social control and subjection, the consumerist discourse offers the most effective political tool for gender inequality and a complex discussion about free will and emancipation in third wave feminism debates. This delicate theoretical issues question not only the existent social order, but the very political purposes of contemporary feminism

Education for power: English language in the workplace

Developed countries around the world are increasingly competing for highly skilled, educated immigrants. A case in point is Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). The NZ Immigration Service actively encourages skilled migrants, and around the country there are numerous English language programmes focussing on English for employment. The dominant focus of these programmes is on migrants' acquisition of correct, appropriate language form, with some attention to intercultural communication. In the view of the authors, this focus is reductionist and provides inadequate preparation for communication in the workplace. This article considers ambiguity and power relations in positioning and interpreting migrant employees in the workplace. Two sets of data are drawn upon. First, a workplace ethnography in a 'migrant friendly' NZ engineering office reveals a management culture that exercises the power of the dominant Anglo-Saxon population to control and exclude a Japanese migrant engineer. Second, a published analysis of immigrant employees' interactions is revisited in order to interrogate the interpretation of workplace texts and underlying discourses of 'appropriate' workplace language. The analysis traces implications for both formal and informal education, and the discussion raises larger questions of social justice concerning migrants

Building rapport and a sense of communal identity through play in a second language classroom

Many teachers would recognize that a certain amount of laughter and play in a classroom is one of the signs of a socially cohesive and contented group of learners. However, on the face of it, language play in a multinational second language classroom would seem to be highly constrained by an apparent lack of common cultural reference points and, at the lower end of the proficiency spectrum, by the linguistic abilities of the learners. This paper features an investigation into language play consisting of a teacher and two low-proficiency adult learners from different professional fields and nationalities, enrolled on an intensive Business English course. The analysis is informed by Goffman’s concept of frame, by Bakhtin’s ideas about the heteroglossic and dialogical nature of language, and by Bauman and Briggs’s notion of recontextualization. It shows how the learners build a common pool of prior talk and reference points, alluding to them humorously. The data consists of a series of short episodes which together trace the development of one such shared reference point. Over two days, the learners transform an incident which highlights their shortcomings in the language into a celebratory resource that they playfully use to build rapport and to help in the construction of a shared sense of identity and culture. I argue in this paper that the language play found in the featured data is very similar in kind to that in native speaker interactions

Excursus on Hapa; or the Fate of Identity

This paper focuses on the contradictions and tensions inherent in self-identification and oppositional identities. In the past twenty years, Hapa has emerged as an oppositional identity used by mixed-race Asian Americans. While many scholars have noted the tension of the term for its linguistic appropriation from the Native Hawaiian language, fewer scholars have concentrated their examinations on the ways in which the term reproduces the very notions it aims to subvert. This paper concentrates on the areas of contradiction inherent in finding and using a word of power and making that word into a recognizable identity