8,631 research outputs found

    Complicated objects: artifacts from the Yuanming Yuan in Victorian Britain

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    The 1860 spoliation of the Summer Palace at the close of the Second Opium War by British and French troops was a watershed event within the development of Britain as an imperialist nation, which guaranteed a market for opium produced in its colony India and demonstrated the power of its armed forces. The distribution of the spoils to officers and diplomatic corps by campaign leaders in Beijing was also a sign of the British Army’s rising power as an instrument of the imperialist state. These conditions would suggest that objects looted from the site would be integrated into an imperialist aesthetic that reflected and promoted the material benefits of military engagement overseas and foregrounded the circumstances of their removal to Britain for campaign members and the British public. This study mines sources dating to the two decades following the war – including British newspapers, auction house records, exhibition catalogs and works of art – to test this hypothesis. Findings show that initial movements of looted objects through the military and diplomatic corps did reinforce notions of imperialist power by enabling campaign members to profit from the spoliation through sales of looted objects and trophy displays. However, material from the Summer Palace arrived at a moment when British manufacturers and cultural leaders were engaged in a national effort to improve the quality of British goods to compete in the international marketplace and looted art was quickly interpolated in this national conversation. Ironically, the same “free trade” imperatives that motivated the invasion energized a new design movement that embraced Chinese ornament. As a consequence, political interpretations of the material outside of military collections were quickly joined by a strong response to Chinese ornament from cultural institutions and design leaders. Art from the Summer Palace held a prominent place at industrial art exhibitions of the postwar period and inspired new designs in a number of mediums. While the availability of Chinese imperial art was the consequence of a military invasion and therefore a product of imperialist expansion, evidence presented here shows that the design response to looted objects was not circumscribed by this political reality. Chinese ornament on imperial wares was ultimately celebrated for its formal qualities and acknowledged links to the Summer Palace were an indicator of good design, not a celebration of victory over a failed Chinese state. Therefore, the looting of the Summer Palace was ultimately an essential factor in the development of modern design, the essence of which is a break with Classical ornament

    Polarisation and Cultural Realignment in Britain, 2014-2019

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    Following decades of reduced ideological competition, mainstream party policy diverged in Britain after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This is motivating renewed interest in mass polarisation, yet that concept remains understudied relative to the American political science literature. Almost all existing research is based in the post-Thatcher era of left-right convergence, leaving gaps in our understanding of cultural realignment during the Brexit period. I consider three perspectives on polarisation in this thesis: (1) sociological accounts claim that polarisation reflects changes in distributional properties of public opinion; (2) party sorting accounts contend that public opinion is not necessarily polarising so much as partisanship is more organised around issue positions; (3) elite cue accounts argue that partisanship causes polarisation and thus limits attitude change to politically engaged voters. These accounts are tested using cross-sectional and panel data from the British Election Study, 2014-2019. I operationalise aggregate outcomes and individual-level mechanisms contested in the American case, examining the extent to which citizens are dividing through different variables (attitude versus partisanship change), via different voters (partisans versus non-partisans), and on different issues (cultural versus economic). Little evidence is found for elite cue accounts throughout the thesis. Despite strong left-right policy divergence among Labour-Conservative platforms, I observe depolarisation in the distributional properties and partisanship of mass economic preferences. More ambiguous elite disagreements surrounding European integration, immigration, and broader social values are associated with escalating social division, meanwhile. I find liberal attitude change suggesting socio-demographic culture shifts, yet this trend is unfolding in conjunction with party switching mechanisms. The product of these changes drives mass polarisation from 2014 to 2019, indicating an overarching account of cultural realignment based on sociological and party sorting processes

    American Literatures After 1865

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    This work was created as part of the University Libraries’ Open Educational Resources Initiative at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. A web version of this text can be found at https://umsystem.pressbooks.pub/ala1865/. This book is an anthology of American Literatures After 1865, a new revision of the open educational resource entitled Writing the Nation: A Concise Introduction to American Literature 1865 to Present. It contains works that have been newly introduced to the public domain and provides direct links to reading materials that can be borrowed for free from Archive.org

    Toward a Theory of Political Science and the Future of Exopolitics

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    The aim of this paper is to inform (or enlighten) the public about exopolitics, which is a sub-discipline of political science that puts a new spin on studying extraterrestrial life or non-human, intelligent entities — that is, as it especially relates to politics. And despite its contrary and controversial message, exopolitics pushes the political science envelope. Indeed, the discipline speaks volumes about a supposed relationship we (humans) may have with intelligent creatures outside our realm of understanding, particularly with an unprecedented wave of UFO sightings worldwide. Of course, human beings have always felt the need to connect with other humans; but will this position mean that we can also come together with humanoids from another planet? Exopolitics is also concerned with other alien worlds, and different academic thought processes that might led to profound misunderstandings about this specific political science discipline, and our understanding of the fabric of the universe. Further, we need objectivity and clarity when it comes to studying exopolitics. Finally, exopolitics, fortunately, has not caused some kind of academic backlash; nor is it some namby-pamby academic discipline that has no bearing on anything

    Beyond Catching Fish: Exploring the role of Relational Values in Mobilizing Community-based Management Efforts in a north Norwegian lake

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    All over the world, local communities are actively engaging in the management and monitoring of natural resources. The underlying driver of most community-driven efforts goes beyond the direct utilization of natural resources to entail a deeper relation to the place or ecosystem they are managing. Relational values have been suggested as a potential driver of such initiatives, but empirical research remains limited. In this study, I explore the role of relational values underlying the volunteer engagement in a previously undocumented Community-Based Natural Resource Management project carried out by locals over ten years in a small subarctic lake. Through narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews, the study reveals that relational values served as both a driving force and the ultimate goal of the project. Especially the participants' personal connection to the lake, fostering relational values such as care, responsibility, and stewardship, seemed to play a major role in initiating and implementing the project, while the goal of improving fish quality indirectly served to promote and maintain relational values such as social cohesion, cultural identity, and knowledge-sharing. Furthermore, the lake has retained its cultural and social significance for the community in terms of relation values despite no longer being essential for subsistence. The lake is currently considered as having a good ecological status, and my study underscores the need to work with local communities to document the role of informal community-based monitoring and management practices for understanding the ecology of the lake. More generally, the study highlights the importance of recognizing the role of relational values in shaping people's behavior and actions towards nature, as this can be a crucial step towards fostering and achieving sustainability

    Artificial Intelligence, Robots, and Philosophy

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    This book is a collection of all the papers published in the special issue “Artificial Intelligence, Robots, and Philosophy,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.13, No.1, 2023, pp.1-146. The authors discuss a variety of topics such as science fiction and space ethics, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, the ethics of autonomous agents, and virtuous robots. Through their discussions, readers are able to think deeply about the essence of modern technology and the future of humanity. All papers were invited and completed in spring 2020, though because of the Covid-19 pandemic and other problems, the publication was delayed until this year. I apologize to the authors and potential readers for the delay. I hope that readers will enjoy these arguments on digital technology and its relationship with philosophy. *** Contents*** Introduction : Descartes and Artificial Intelligence; Masahiro Morioka*** Isaac Asimov and the Current State of Space Science Fiction : In the Light of Space Ethics; Shin-ichiro Inaba*** Artificial Intelligence and Contemporary Philosophy : Heidegger, Jonas, and Slime Mold; Masahiro Morioka*** Implications of Automating Science : The Possibility of Artificial Creativity and the Future of Science; Makoto Kureha*** Why Autonomous Agents Should Not Be Built for War; István Zoltán Zárdai*** Wheat and Pepper : Interactions Between Technology and Humans; Minao Kukita*** Clockwork Courage : A Defense of Virtuous Robots; Shimpei Okamoto*** Reconstructing Agency from Choice; Yuko Murakami*** Gushing Prose : Will Machines Ever be Able to Translate as Badly as Humans?; Rossa Ó Muireartaigh**

    Academic integrity : a call to research and action

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    Originally published in French:L'urgence de l'intĂ©gritĂ© acadĂ©mique, Éditions EMS, Management & société, Caen, 2021 (ISBN 978-2-37687-472-0).The urgency of doing complements the urgency of knowing. Urgency here is not the inconsequential injunction of irrational immediacy. It arises in various contexts for good reasons, when there is a threat to the human existence and harms to others. Today, our knowledge based civilization is at risk both by new production models of knowledge and by the shamelessness of knowledge delinquents, exposing the greatest number to important risks. Swiftly, the editors respond to the diagnostic by setting up a reference tool for academic integrity. Across multiple dialogues between the twenty-five chapters and five major themes, the ethical response shapes pragmatic horizons for action, on a range of disciplinary competencies: from science to international diplomacy. An interdisciplinary work indispensable for teachers, students and university researchers and administrators

    Monetary Muddles: Money and Language, Ethics and Theology

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    This dissertation offers a theological critique of political economy by turning to Wittgenstein in order to re-think what “criticism” is and can be. It diagnoses the current state of critical discourse about money as incapable of properly dealing with the confusions or illusions such criticism identifies as intrinsic to our ways with money and economic production and exchange. The dissertation argues that while political economic critiques and heterodox theories of money rightly challenge the economic orthodoxy’s individualism and its illusions of an apolitical money and an autonomous market economy, these “social” critiques are caught in a Geltungslogik that dichotomizes “value” and “validity.” As a result, such critiques or heterodox theories attempt to see underneath the illusory “appearance” of money and economy rather than stick with the surface. The dissertation contends that the deliverances of socio-theoretical investigations of money can have no organic or natural connection to consciousness or to desires and sensibilities formed in a society suffering from “monetary muddles.” The dissertation offers a resolute Wittgensteinian account of language and of money as a language-game as one way to therapize our desires to refute illusion. By connecting money and language with a natural theology the dissertation points towards a theologically informed practice of “looking at what we do” with money in order to treat monetary illusion. In looking, the dissertation suggests, we can find new ways of using money which may in turn transform the social conditions which give money the meaning, significance, and power it currently has

    The well-tempered android: philosophical posthumanism in science fiction cinema.

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    This dissertation examines philosophical posthumanism as a means for critical analysis of the interaction between humans and nonhuman androids in select science fiction cinematic universes. The interaction is analyzed through several facets, notably the interactions between humans and nonhuman androids, particularly as interactions between the human and nonhuman are often sites of violence. Chapter one is an introduction. Chapter two describes the development of philosophical posthumanism from humanism, also including an analysis of philosophical posthumanism, and how it can be used as a critical lens. Chapter three begins an analysis of science fiction cinema by examining the Blade Runner films and HBO’s Westworld series (season one). Chapter four discusses director Ridley Scott’s Alien movies, and the Star Wars films. Chapter five provides an overview of previous discussion, along with introducing some other, more discrete films that have posthumanistic methods/ideas as main plot points. The conclusion also explores ideas about how the science fiction may have implications for real-world technological advances and living in the age of the Anthropocene
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