Three participatory geographers: reflections on positionality and working with participants in researching religions, spiritualities, and faith

This paper advances the geographies of religion, spirituality and faith's limited attention to positionality by discussing the critical issues raised when using participatory approaches. Reflecting on three cases of participatory research, we foreground the dynamics of being a researcher with faith when working with participants from faith communities. Advocating participatory approaches as valuable methodologies that should be used more extensively to explore beliefs, faith practices, and social justice, we argue that greater attention needs to be given to the positionality of researchers undertaking this sort of research. Our cases raise three themes for discussion. First, the variety of ways in which faith positionalities influence how research is developed, conducted and concluded. Second, the intersections between our faith and other positionalities and how they shape our roles and relationships with research participants. Third, the fluid and multifaceted nature of faith positionalities and how they are changed, emphasized, and softened through the dynamics and entanglements of fieldwork. In doing so, we reflect on the complexities of being a researcher with faith, argue that faith positionality is a helpful dimension of their research rather than a limitation, and that all cultural, social and historical geographical researchers should reflect on their faith positionality

The New Protectionism and the American Common Market

For nearly two centuries, the U.S. Constitution through the dormant Commerce Clause has protected the American common market from protectionist commercial stale regulations and taxes. During the past two terms, however, the U.S. Supreme Court created a new exception to the dormant Commerce Clause for protectionist state and local taxes and regulations that favor public rather than private entities. In this Article, we describe this “New Protectionism” and argue that the Court\u27s embrace of it is profoundly misguided. As we document, there is no material difference, economically or constitutionally, between public protectionism and private protectionism. As illustrated by the variety of ways in which government and private enterprise interact, there is no coherent distinction between public and private activities, and ensuing efforts to draw such a line will only serve to embroil the courts in tasks for which it is ill suited. Worse, this new exception only encourages stale and focal governments to engage in protectionism in a variety of contexts, such as education and local economic development, in which the dangers to national economic union are paramount. Coupled with the Court\u27s recently declared unwillingness to subject nondiscriminatory regulations and loses to minimal judicial scrutiny, this endorsement of public protectionism threatens to emasculate the constitutional protections for the American common market and should therefore be rethought by the Court or legislatively superseded by Congress. Reprinted by permission of the publisher

White paper: A plan for cooperation between NASA and DARPA to establish a center for advanced architectures

Large, complex computer systems require many years of development. It is recognized that large scale systems are unlikely to be delivered in useful condition unless users are intimately involved throughout the design process. A mechanism is described that will involve users in the design of advanced computing systems and will accelerate the insertion of new systems into scientific research. This mechanism is embodied in a facility called the Center for Advanced Architectures (CAA). CAA would be a division of RIACS (Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science) and would receive its technical direction from a Scientific Advisory Board established by RIACS. The CAA described here is a possible implementation of a center envisaged in a proposed cooperation between NASA and DARPA

Non-interference for deterministic interactive programs

We consider the problem of defining an appropriate notion of non-interference (NI) for deterministic interactive programs. Previous work on the security of interactive programs by O'Neill, Clarkson and Chong (CSFW 2006) builds on earlier ideas due to Wittbold and Johnson (Symposium on Security and Privacy 1990), and argues for a notion of NI defined in terms of strategies modelling the behaviour of users. We show that, for deterministic interactive programs, it is not necessary to consider strategies and that a simple stream model of the users' behaviour is sufficient. The key technical result is that, for deterministic programs, stream-based NI implies the apparently more general strategy-based NI (in fact we consider a wider class of strategies than those of O'Neill et al). We give our results in terms of a simple notion of Input-Output Labelled Transition System, thus allowing application of the results to a large class of deterministic interactive programming languages

INTERIM REPORT IMPROVED METHODS FOR INCORPORATING RISK IN DECISION MAKING

This paper reports observations and preliminary investigations in the first phase of a research program covering methodologies for making safety-related decisions. The objective has been to gain insight into NRC perceptions of the value of formal decision methods, their possible applications, and how risk is, or may be, incorporated in decision making. The perception of formal decision making techniques, held by various decision makers, and what may be done to improve them, were explored through interviews with NRC staff. An initial survey of decision making methods, an assessment of the applicability of formal methods vis-a-vis the available information, and a review of methods of incorporating risk and uncertainty have also been conducted

A comparison of journalism and non-journalism students' English competency

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1979 D45Master of Scienc