Negotiating the inhuman: Bakhtin, materiality and the instrumentalization of climate change

The article argues that the work of literary theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin presents a starting point for thinking about the instrumentalization of climate change. Bakhtin’s conceptualization of human–world relationships, encapsulated in the concept of ‘cosmic terror’, places a strong focus on our perception of the ‘inhuman’. Suggesting a link between the perceived alienness and instability of the world and in the exploitation of the resulting fear of change by political and religious forces, Bakhtin asserts that the latter can only be resisted if our desire for a false stability in the world is overcome. The key to this overcoming of fear, for him, lies in recognizing and confronting the worldly relations of the human body. This consciousness represents the beginning of one’s ‘deautomatization’ from following established patterns of reactions to predicted or real changes. In the vein of several theorists and artists of his time who explored similar ‘deautomatization’ strategies – examples include Shklovsky’s ‘ostranenie’, Brecht’s ‘Verfremdung’, Artaud’s emotional ‘cruelty’ and Bataille’s ‘base materialism’ – Bakhtin proposes a more playful and widely accessible experimentation to deconstruct our ‘habitual picture of the world’. Experimentation is envisioned to take place across the material and the textual to increase possibilities for action. Through engaging with Bakhtin’s ideas, this article seeks to draw attention to relations between the imagination of the world and political agency, and the need to include these relations in our own experiments with creating climate change awareness

The moral journey of learning a pedagogy: a qualitative exploration of student–teachers’ formal and informal writing of dialogic pedagogy

YesStudents of education encounter a range of pedagogies yet how future teachers’ appropriate moral principles are little understood. We conducted an investigation into this process with 10 international students of education attending an intensive course on ‘dialogic pedagogy’ in a university in Finland. The data comprising student learning journals and essays were coded for the level of questioning, acceptance and irreverence. In the findings, reverential acceptance was more frequent than questioning and irreverence; however, our qualitative analysis also found a large number of micro-transitions between questioning, acceptance and irreverence suggesting a dynamic interplay. Recognising this vacillation as part of a moral journey may support better understanding of what it means to engage with a different pedagogy

Dialogue as Moral Paradigm: Paths Toward Intercultural Transformation

The Council of Europe’s 2008 White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue: ‘living together as equals in dignity’ points to the need for shared values upon which intercultural dialogue might rest. In order, however, to overcome the monologic separateness that threatens community, we must educate ourselves to recognize the dialogism of our humanity and to engage in deep encounters with others with a mature skepticism of all dogmatisms, including our own. In order to aid us in reaching the necessary insight, the author calls upon Bakhtin’s ideas of the dialogism of every utterance and of the unity and heteroglossia of language, Gadamer’s hermeneutical experience that shakes us loose from what we think we know, and Levinas’s description of that transcendent ideal of a dialogue beyond reciprocity. These perspectives break open our certainty that tribalism and individualism are fundamental, placing them instead as secondary phenomena that, though powerful, pronounce neither the initial nor the final word on our life together

The Role of the Association of Entrepreneurs in the State Policy in Support and Development of Small and Medium Entrepreneurship

This article describes the role of various business associations in the development, support and promotion of business activities in big city. The article describes what associations of entrepreneurs are on what grounds they unite, and also tells about the largest associations of entrepreneurs and their role in the state policy of support and development of entrepreneurship.Настоящая статья описывает роль различных объединений предпринимателей в развитии, поддержки и популяризации предпринимательской деятельности в условиях большого города. Статья описывает на какие бывают объединения предпринимателей, на каких основаниях они объединяются, а так же рассказывает о самых больших объединениях предпринимателей и их роли в государственной политике поддержки и развития предпринимательства

Factors of youth motivation for business entrepreneurship

This paper aims to recognise the factors that motivate potential entrepreneurs in the commencement of one’s own business activity and to determine factors that hamper potential entrepreneurs in starting up their own businesses. Respondents recognised three main factors that motivate people to the commencement of one’s own business activity: self-realisation and self-satisfaction, the possibility of higher earnings and independence in decision-making. Among the factors that hamper the commencement of one’s own business, respondents cited lack of experience, lack of capital and risk of failure. There was no difference between women and men with regard to motives and barriers.Настоящая статья призвана выявить факторы, которые мотивируют потенциальных предпринимателей в начале их деловой деятельности, и определить барьеры, которые мешают потенциальным предпринимателям в создании собственного бизнеса. Респонденты признали три основных фактора, которые мотивируют людей к началу собственной предпринимательской деятельности: самореализация и самосовершенствование, возможность более высокого заработка и независимость при принятии решений. Среди барьеров, которые препятствуют началу собственного бизнеса, респонденты ссылались на отсутствие опыта, отсутствие капитала и риск неудачи. Не было никакой разницы между женщинами и мужчинами в отношении мотивов и барьеров

Invariant densities for dynamical systems with random switching

We consider a non-autonomous ordinary differential equation on a smooth manifold, with right-hand side that randomly switches between the elements of a finite family of smooth vector fields. For the resulting random dynamical system, we show that H\"ormander type hypoellipticity conditions are sufficient for uniqueness and absolute continuity of an invariant measure.Comment: 16 pages; we replaced our original article to point out and close a gap in the discussion of the Lorenz system in Section 7 (see Remark 2); this gap is only present in the journal version of this article --- it wasn't present in the previous arxiv versio