The recent enthusiasm for “participation” in agricultural development has fueled the development of new approaches to research and extension. The rhetoric of “participation” extends the horizons of agricultural research and extension beyond technical problem-solving. Yet in practice few of the personal, political, and experiential aspects of this process are addressed. This paper aims to draw attention to these elements of practice and to locate research and extension within wider social processes. Through a critique of conventional methodological strategies, this paper considers (...) the possibilities offered by “participatory” alternatives. Considering the scope and objectives of agricultural development raises a series of methodological questions: What counts as knowledge? Who defines and represents this knowledge? Whose knowledge counts? Knowledge for what? Knowledge for whom?The paper goes on to assess a number of these “new” methodologies, within and beyond agricultural development. Through a consideration of their strengths and weaknesses, a series of further issues are highlighted for future methodological development. It is argued that for agricultural research and extension to acknowledge process, closer attention needs to be paid to context. The activities of research and extension need to be set in time. Strategies are needed to explore and address diversity and difference in communities. Situating the actors and agencies involved in development within relations of power involves addressing—and redressing—the nature of interactions between these actors. These changes require not an ever increasing array of methods, it is argued, but new approaches to learning. (shrink)

Machine intelligence already helps medical staff with a number of tasks. Ethical decision-making, however, has not been handed over to computers. In this proof-of-concept study, we show how an algorithm based on Beauchamp and Childress’ prima-facie principles could be employed to advise on a range of moral dilemma situations that occur in medical institutions. We explain why we chose fuzzy cognitive maps to set up the advisory system and how we utilized machine learning to train it. We report on the (...) difficult task of operationalizing the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and patient autonomy, and describe how we selected suitable input parameters that we extracted from a training dataset of clinical cases. The first performance results are promising, but an algorithmic approach to ethics also comes with several weaknesses and limitations. Should one really entrust the sensitive domain of clinical ethics to machine intelligence? (shrink)

The relationship between aesthetics and science has begun to generate substantial interest. However, for the most part, the focus has been on the beauty of theories, and other aspects of scientific practice have been neglected. This book offers a novel perspective on aesthetics in experimentation via ten original essays from an interdisciplinary group comprised of philosophers, historians of science and art, and artists. -/- The collection provides an analysis of the concept of beauty in the evaluation of experiments. What properties (...) do practising experimenters value? How have the aesthetic properties of scientific experiments changed over the years? Secondly, the volume looks at the role that aesthetic factors, including negative values such as ugliness, as well as experiences of the sublime and the profound, play in the construction of an experiment and its reception. Thirdly, the chapters provide in-depth historical case studies from the Royal Society, which also allows for a study of the depiction of scientific experiment in artworks, as well as contemporary examples from the Large Hadron Collider and cases of experiments designed by artificial intelligence. Finally, it offers an exploration of the commonalities between how we learn from experiments on the one hand and the cognitive value of artworks on the other. -/- The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in philosophy and history of science, philosophy and history of art, as well as practising scientists and science communicators. (shrink)

This article explores how ethical agency, as ‘other-oriented’ caring, emerged from feelings of being ‘different’ in a cultural organization by drawing on feminist ethics of care. By analyzing interview material from an ethnographic study, we centralize the relationship between feelings of being ‘different,’ vulnerability and the development of sensibilities, practices and imaginaries of care. We elaborate on how vulnerability serves as a ground for caring with rather than for others, and illustrate how it allowed individuals to challenge both organizational, normative (...) diversity discourses and essentialization of differences. We contribute to the literature on critical diversity management by furthering problematizations of instrumental diversity management from the perspective of care, and to the organizational literature on feminist care ethics by empirically exploring how ethical agency emerges from tensions related to feeling ‘different.’ While previous studies have shown how marginalized individuals use their sense of ‘otherness’ to negotiate, conform to and resist organizational norms, practices and discourses, we provide further insights on how it also can drive concern and care for others, and thus serve as possible ground for ethical change initiatives within organizations. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch a Kantian account of duties of rescue, which I take to be compatible with Kant’s theory. I argue that there is in fact no “trumping relation” between imperfect and perfect duties but merely that “latitude shrinks away” in certain circumstances. Against possible demandingness objections, I explain why Kant thought that imperfect duty must allow latitude for choice and argue that we must understand the necessary space for pursuing one’s own happiness as entailed by Kant’s justification (...) of one’s duty to promote other’s happiness. Nevertheless, becoming worthy of happiness has always priority over one’s own happiness, even when circumstances are such that we cannot secure our own happiness without seriously neglecting more pressing needs of other persons. I conclude that Kant’s moral theory calls for complementation by the political and juridical domain. Implementing just political institutions and creating satisfactorily well-ordered societies create an external world which is friendlier to our attempts to reconcile moral integrity and a happy human life. (shrink)

Three experiments explored the effects of word problem cueing on debiasing versions of the bat-and-ball problem. In the experimental condition order, participants solved a simpler isomorphic version of the problem prior to solving a standard version that, critically, had the same item-and-dollar amounts. Conversely, in the control condition order, participants solved the standard version prior to solving the isomorph. Across the first 2 experiments, participants cued with the isomorph were more likely to correctly solve the standard version of the problem. (...) In the third experiment, this cueing effect was not replicated, but importantly cued participants were more likely to correctly solve the standard version of the problem with other item-and-dollar amounts, indicating near transfer. Far transfer was evident in faster response times to other problems in the Cognitive Reflection Test following practice. Along with providing converging evidence for the cueing account, these results are consistent with recent attentional debiasing findings. (shrink)

"A collection of essays on the early modern English writer, proto-feminist, and rhetorician Mary Astell. Includes discussions on human nature, equality, rationality, power, freedom, friendship, marriage, and education"--Provided by publisher.

Background: Stigma is considered a major barrier to accessing healthcare services by female sex workers. Current knowledge of nurses’ attitudes appears to imply a stigma toward female sex workers. But in-depth understanding of their perceptions is scarce. Furthermore, factors that inform a conceptual understanding of how this occurs are lacking. Objectives: The study aimed to explore nurses’ attitudes toward female sex workers and factors affecting caring for female sex workers. Research design: This was a qualitative study. A content analysis approach (...) was adopted in analyzing the data. Participants and research context: Thirty-three practicing nurses participated in seven semi-structured focus group interviews and three key informants participated in three individual interviews in Hong Kong. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of one university in Hong Kong. Findings: The findings revealed three themes: (1) accept, stigmatize, or against sex work; (2) reluctance, hesitation, or willingness to care for female sex workers; and (3) factors affecting the care of female sex workers. Discussion and conclusion: This study found that nurses held different attitudes toward female sex workers, and they experienced feelings of reluctance, hesitation, or willingness to care for female sex workers. Multi-level factors could affect their level of comfort of caring for female sex workers. Intervention should be developed to encourage health professionals to examine their personal views toward female sex workers introspectively, how their attitude may have affected the provision of quality services, and to enhance the provision of sensitive non-discriminative services to female sex workers. (shrink)

Hamblin distinguished between formal and descriptive dialectic. Formal normative models of deliberation dialogue have been strongly emphasized as argumentation frameworks in computer science. But making such models of deliberation applicable to real natural language examples has reached a point where the descriptive aspect needs more interdisciplinary work. The new formal and computational models of deliberation dialogue that are being built in computer science seem to be closely related to some already existing and very well established computing technologies such as problem (...) solving and decision making, but whether or how dialectical argumentation can be helpful to support these systems remains an open question. The aim of this paper is to examine some real examples of argumentation that seem to hover on the borderlines between deliberation, problem solving and decision making. (shrink)

Douglas Walton’s work is extremely vast, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary. He developed theoretical proposals that have been used in disciplines that are not traditionally related to philosophy, such as law, education, discourse analysis, artificial intelligence, or medical communication. Through his papers and books, Walton redefined the boundaries not only of argumentation theory, but also logic and philosophy. He was a philosopher in the sense that his interest was developing theoretical models that can help explain reality, and more importantly interact with it. (...) For this reason, he proposed methods that have been used for analyzing different types of dialogical interactions, and modeling procedures for regulating them. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has had, and still has, the risk to have an enormous impact on how people socially interact with each other due to possible lockdowns, quarantine and isolation measures to reduce infection rates. Consequently, these measures hold great implications for those medical disciplines that inherently rely on social interaction, such as psychiatry. In their article, ‘Can you hear me?’— Communication, Relationship and Ethics in Video-based Telepsychiatric Consultations’, Frittgen and Haltaufderheide1 show that videoconferencing holds potential to ensure that this (...) social interaction is guaranteed, be it in a technology mediated manner. In this sense, videoconferencing needs to be conceived as a pharmakon, a medicine, having both curative and toxifying elements, depending on why and how it is used.2 For example, videoconferencing allows continuity of care when physical proximity is impossible. At the same time, it allows the patient to interrupt the therapy by muting the therapist or ending the call at his/her convenience. To guarantee the curative side of videoconferencing, and as such avoid the toxifying elements, an ethical prescription needs to be developed and used. Despite the fact that videoconferencing seems to have a similar clinical effectiveness as face-to-face interaction, Frittgen and Haltaufderheide rightly point out that there are ethical impacts to be addressed to avoid …. (shrink)

Two studies explore the frequently reported finding that affective forecasts are too extreme. In the first study, driving test candidates forecast the emotional consequences of failing. Test failers overestimated the duration of their disappointment. Greater previous experience of this emotional event did not lead to any greater accuracy of the forecasts, suggesting that learning about one's own emotions is difficult. Failers' self-assessed chances of passing were lower a week after the test than immediately prior to the test; this difference correlated (...) with the magnitude of individual immediate disappointments, suggesting the presence of a cognitive strategy for recovering from disappointments. A second study investigated the theory that undue focus on the differences between present and future biases affective forecasts. “Defocusing” that induced low-level construals of the future reduced the extremeness of affective forecasts but a higher-level construal did not. We conclude that a focusing effect may bias affective forecasts. (shrink)

Contemporary epidemiological methods testing the associations between green space and psychological well-being treat all vegetation cover as equal. However, there is very good reason to expect that variations in ecological "quality" (number of species, integrity of ecological processes) may influence the link between access to green space and benefits to human health and well-being. We test the relationship between green space quality and restorative benefit in an inner city urban population in Bradford, UK. We selected 12 urban parks for study (...) where we carried out botanical and faunal surveys to quantify biodiversity and assessed the site facilities of the green space (cleanliness, provision of amenities). We also conducted 128 surveys with park users to quantify psychological restoration based on four self-reported measure of general restoration, attention-grabbing distractions, being away from everyday life, and site preference. We present three key results. First, there is a positive association between site facilities and biodiversity. Second, restorative benefit is predicted by biodiversity, which explained 43% of the variance in restorative benefit across the parks, with minimal input from other variables. Third, the benefits accrued through access to green space were unrelated to age, gender, and ethnic background. The results add to a small but growing body of evidence that emphasise the role of nature in contributing to the well-being of urban populations and, hence, the need to consider biodiversity in the design of landscapes that enhance multiple ecosystem services. (shrink)

Interoception, the ability to feel the body’s internal sensations, is an essential aspect of emotional experience. There is mounting evidence that interoception is impaired in common mental health disorders and that poor interoceptive awareness is a major contributor to emotional reactivity, calling for clinical interventions to address this deficit. The manuscript presents a comprehensive theoretical review, drawing on multidisciplinary findings to propose a metatheory of reinforcement mechanisms applicable across a wide range of disorders. We present a reconsideration of operant conditioning (...) through the co-emergence model of reinforcement, which is a neurophenomenological account of the interaction between cognition and interoception, and its consequences on behavior. The model suggests that during memory processing, the retrieval of autobiographical memory (including maladaptive cognition) is dependent upon its co-emerging interoceptive cues occurring at the encoding, consolidation and reconsolidation stages. Accordingly, “interoceptive reinforcement” during emotional distress is a common factor to all emotional disorders and a major cause for relapse. We propose that interoceptive desensitization has transdiagnostic benefits, readily achievable through the cultivation of equanimity during mindfulness training and can be integrated in cognitive and behavioral interventions to permit a transdiagnostic applicability. We summarize the contributions of this approach into 10 specific and testable propositions. (shrink)

Approximately 200 entries to scientific or medical topics of interest because of their ethical or moral implications. Intended primarily for laypersons and professionals in the United Kingdom, but also throughout the world. Each entry gives definition, discussion (1-several pages), cross references, references, and contributor's name. 1st ed., 1977.

The UK Government's Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is currently progressing through Parliament. The bill is designed to strengthen free speech and academic freedom in higher education, in response to what former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson describes as ‘the rise of intolerance and cancel culture upon our campuses’. But is there really a crisis of academic freedom in British universities?To see that there is, say Judith Suissa and Alice Sullivan, we need only look at the contemporary reality of (...) suppression of debate on sex and gender. The evidence they catalogue of suppression of research, of blacklisting, harassment and smear campaigns, of no-platforming, disinvitations and shutting down of events, is incontrovertible. The recent experience of scholars and students wishing to discuss the material reality and political salience of sex makes complacency about academic freedom a luxury we cannot afford.Suissa and Sullivan set out a powerful argument for the role of academic freedom in pursuing truth within the academy and developing democracy beyond it. They effectively counter attempts to narrow the scope of academic freedom so as to render it compatible with no-platforming. And they lay out a series of practical steps administrators can take to ensure that universities are places where an expansive and pluralistic intellectual climate prevails.This is a timely and compelling intervention in a vexed but urgent public debate. For their clear-sighted diagnosis of where and how academic freedom has been eroded in our universities, and for their judicious account of what must be done to rebuild it, Suissa and Sullivan deserve a wide and attentive hearing. (shrink)

When researching with or about families in home-based research, there are numerous unexpected ethical issues that can emerge, particularly in qualitative research. This paper is based on reflective accounts of four homed-based research projects, two in the UK and two Australia, which examined ethical dilemmas identified when engaged in home-based research with young children. Using a synergy of ecocultural theory and Foucauldian ideas of Heterotopia as theoretical conceptualisations, the authors employed reflective lenses to guide their approach, and examine dilemmas and (...) complexities when conducting research in the home. We argue that, to address ethical dilemmas, researchers need to problematise and reflect upon the nature of respectful approaches and the ethical implications of their behaviours. We conclude that, although ethical codes are valuable when researching families at home, researchers should plan for and forefront their methodological approaches in ways that are family-centred, whilst also framed by practices that are ethical, respectful and reflective to the situated contexts of family’s ecologies and heterotopias. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study aimed at standardizing and providing preliminary evidence on the clinical usability of the Italian telephone-based Verbal Fluency Battery, which includes phonemic, semantic and alternate verbal fluency tasks.MethodsThree-hundred and thirty-five Italian healthy participants and 27 individuals with neurodegenerative or cerebrovascular diseases were administered the t-VFB. Switch number and cluster size were computed via latent semantic analyses. HPs underwent the telephone-based Mental State Examination and Backward Digit Span. Construct validity, factorial structure, internal consistency, test-retest and inter-rater reliability and equivalence with (...) the in-person Verbal Fluency tasks were assessed. Norms were derived via Equivalent Scores. Diagnostic accuracy against clinical populations was assessed.ResultsThe majority of t-VFB scores correlated among each other and with the BDS, but not with the MMSE. Switch number correlated with t-PVF, t-SVF, t-AVF scores, whilst cluster size with the t-SVF and t-AVF scores only. The t-VFB was underpinned by a mono-component structure and was internally consistent. Test-retest and inter-rater reliability were optimal. Each t-VFB test was statistically equivalent to its in-person version. Education predicted all t-VFB scores, whereas age t-SVF and t-AVF scores and sex only some t-SVF scores. Diagnostic accuracy against clinical samples was optimal.DiscussionThe t-VFB is a valid, reliable and normed telephone-based assessment tool for language and executive functioning, equivalent to the in-person version; results show promising evidence of its diagnostic accuracy in neurological populations. (shrink)

Social behaviors rely on the coordination of multiple effectors within one’s own body as well as between the interacting bodies. However, little is known about how coupling at the interpersonal level impacts coordination among body parts at the intrapersonal level, especially in ecological, complex, situations. Here, we perturbed interpersonal sensorimotor communication in violin players of an orchestra and investigated how this impacted musicians’ intrapersonal movements coordination. More precisely, first section violinists were asked to turn their back to the conductor and (...) to face the second section of violinists, who still faced the conductor. Motion capture of head and bow kinematics showed that altering the usual interpersonal coupling scheme increased intrapersonal coordination. Our perturbation also induced smaller yet more complex head movements, which spanned multiple, faster timescales that closely matched the metrical levels of the musical score. Importantly, perturbation differentially increased intrapersonal coordination across these timescales. We interpret this behavioral shift as a sensorimotor strategy that exploits periodical movements to effectively tune sensory processing in time and allows coping with the disruption in the interpersonal coupling scheme. As such, head movements, which are usually deemed to fulfill communicative functions, may possibly be adapted to help regulate own performance in time. (shrink)

Este texto trata de uma experimentação na formação de professoras da educação infantil e dos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental de uma escola pública da região metropolitana de Porto Alegre (RS), por meio de práticas de leitura, escrita e conversação, as quais se desdobram em experimentações com as crianças. Tal processo é pensado nas companhias de Sêneca (2018), com seu conceito de leitura e escrita, de Kopenawa (Kopenawa; Albert, 2015), a partir do conceito de palavra, e de Foucault (2004, 2011), (...) considerando-se o conceito de subjetivação. Tal experimentação, que se deu no encontro entre a escrita e a oralidade, foi tomada para pensar nas contribuições para os estudos que compõem a filosofia com crianças. Nesse sentido, a leitura, a escrita e a contação de histórias teriam menos a ver com informações, e mais com o que estamos nos tornando, com a agilidade do nosso pensamento, com nossa sabedoria. Desse modo, conceitos da antiguidade greco-romana e das comunidades ameríndias brasileiras são tomados como ferramentas potentes para pensar a escola contemporânea como possibilidade, ainda, de formação humana. Para tanto, defende-se a conversação entre os vivos e os mortos via texto na escola, espaço público e coletivo, o que poderia ser tomado como uma perspectiva de subjetivação para um pensamento e uma vida mais afirmativos em tempos de tanta pobreza narrativa. (shrink)

The method chosen here draws on concepts borrowed from sociology and anthropology. This double conceptual approach is necessary for a society divided between values inherited from medieval Christianity and precapitalist practices. Seventeenth-century France did not think of itself as a class society but as a society of orders. Since sociology is a system of knowledge whose concepts are taken from an imaginary construct, it is thus more suited to analyzing bourgeois society than societies in transition.6 In trying to measure the (...) past with the aid of tools forged in and for contemporary societies, the sociologist runs the risk of only measuring an artifact, produced by his theories in the field of history. Hence the need for the anthropological concepts, including the notion of exchange, among others, whether material , symbolic , or sexual .This approach will bring to light the contradictions underlying the society of the ancient régime. Whereas an ordinary sociohistorical approach views the reign of Louis XIV as unified under a dogmatic classicism, the socioanthropological approach stresses the tensions and oppositions running through this society. Classicism appears then as a façade covering up the change that it cannot imagine. This “spectacle”7 makes it possible to unite contradictory social practices, both those produced by consumption and which originate in the medieval economy and those belonging to the early accumulation of capital which sketch future bourgeois economic practices. 6. See Cornelius Catoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey .7. See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, rev. English ed. . Jean-Marie Apostolidès is professor of French literature at Stanford University. His publications include Le roi-machine, Les metamorphoses de Tintin, and Le prince sacrifié. Alice Musick McLean, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, is specializing in medieval narrative and the literature of the fantastic. (shrink)

Do democratic systems that include binding referendum and initiative processes violate a core principle of democracy, namely that legislators should be accountable? Some have argued that they do: these popular vote processes would grant the right to legislate to ordinary voters even though they cannot be held accountable—i.e., face possible consequences imposed by others for their actions and decisions. As a result, we should favor conventional representative systems over systems with popular vote processes. In this article, I analyze this ‘accountability (...) objection’ to referendums and initiatives and the conception of voters as ‘legislators’ on which it relies and argue that it does not withstand scrutiny. I first demonstrate that there is no sound basis to characterize only voters in popular votes, and not voters in elections, as ‘legislators’. Therefore, the scope of the objection is broader than anticipated by its proponents: it cannot be consistently used to dismiss popular votes without also being fatal to elections. I then argue that voters’ lack of accountability is not fatal to either mass voting process. The institutional role of ordinary voters provides them with co-lawmaking powers; but these are not the kind of special powers that justify holding certain actors accountable in democratic systems. This does not exclude that voters have responsibilities. I close by highlighting that, compared to conventional representative systems, democratic systems including well-designed popular vote processes could offer voters more supportive conditions to meet such possible responsibilities. (shrink)

This article explores obstacles to understanding the history and contemporary experiences of women in Scotland, and to the development of feminist research in Scotland. It is argued that explanations which invoke Scottish male chauvinism and misogyny alone are insufficient, and that the marginalization of women in Scotland is produced both by male domination within Scotland, and by English cultural and political hegemony within the UK. The article comments on the relationship of the concept of ‘Britishness’ to that of ‘Scottishness’ (and (...) other identities within the UK) and illustrates how the frequent confusion of ‘British’ with ‘English’ serves to obscure Scottish experience. It is also argued that the place of Scotland within the British state has led to the creation of an institutional framework that disadvantages women, and a system of government that excludes women. This implies that feminist debates on the state in Britain require a specific focus on the form of the British state, and in the context of constitutional change in particular this is important for the development of future strategies. It is argued that the double marginalization of women in Scotland is not just a problem in relation to the development of feminist research, but is also a political problem in that it contributes to a degree of alienation from feminism in England. The article concludes by arguing for the necessity of recognition of difference, but also for dialogue, as the basis for feminist alliances in different parts of the UK. (shrink)

The literature has long noted the ethical challenges related to auditors’ dual affiliations with both a profession and an organization that practices the profession. The notion of organizational/professional conflict, in particular, was introduced to capture the potential problems involved in this situation, such as when an auditor engages in behaviors aimed at pleasing the client rather than safeguarding the public interest. However, inconsistent findings leave open the debate about how auditors manage their dual affiliation and question the underlying mechanisms by (...) which auditors structure their identity and experience their work life. To advance understanding of this issue, this research investigates the relationships between auditors’ organizational identification, professional identification, and emotions at work, using a questionnaire survey of 126 French Big 4 auditors and a two-step split-sampling design. The results show that the two forms of identification have a different relationship with emotions: positive for organizational identification but ambivalent for professional identification. These findings contribute to our understanding of professionals’ work experiences in large organizations. (shrink)

Logically, weighting is transitive, but similarity is not, so clustering cannot be either. Entailments must help a child to review attribute lists more efficiently. Children's understanding of exceptions to generic claims precedes their ability to articulate explanations. So agency, as enabling constraint, may show coherent covariation with attributes, as mere extensional, observable effect of intensional entailments.

Modelling human reasoning characterizes the fundamental human cognitive capacity to describe our past experience and use it to form expectations as well as plan and direct our future actions. Natural language semantics analyzes dynamic forms of reasoning in which the real-time order determines the temporal relations between the described events, when reported with telic simple past-tense clauses. It provides models of human reasoning that could supplement ACT-R models.

Semantic realism fits Millikan's account of kind terms in its focus on information-theoretic abilities and strategic ways of gathering information in human communication. Instead of the traditional logical necessity, we should interpret rigid designation in a dynamic semantics as a legislative act to constrain possible ways in which our belief may change.

This article presents a systemic functional perspective for understanding the social and philosophical meanings conveyed by Beauvoir’s iconic sentence “on ne naît pas femme: on le devient,” with a view to addressing the controversy surrounding its English translations and complementing current philosophical debates. It analyzes Beauvoir’s linguistic resources in the sentence in question and describes how its meanings are symbolically articulated through her lexicogrammatical selections. This analysis serves as a point of departure for discussing the 1953 and 2009 translators’ choices.

A recuperação da memória histórica em escritos biográficos e autobiográficos já não está mais restrita a um campo de pesquisa exclusivo. Autores como Georges Bataille, John Hersey e Beatriz Sarlo perscrutaram as correlações entre História e memória na literatura, avaliando questões éticas e de natureza social. A partir de tais estudos, este artigo comenta alguns excertos de Assombrações do Recife Velho, do sociólogo Gilberto Freyre e Baú de ossos, do memorialista Pedro Nava. O objetivo é expor como elementos ficcionais e (...) históricos se articulam nessas duas obras. Palavras-chave: literatura, ficção, memória, história. (shrink)

In the modular design of generative theory the syntax-semantics interface has accounted all along for meanings at the level of Logical Form. The syntax-pragmatics interface, on the other hand, is the result of what one may call the 'pragmatic turn' in the linguistic theory, where content is partitioned into given and new information. In other words, the structural division of the clause has been subjected to criteria of information, or discourse structure. Both interfaces require a structurally descriptive inventory whose specific (...) shapes can be motivated on theory-internal grounds only. The present collection of original articles develops the concept of these interfaces further. The papers in the first section focus on the syntax-semantics interface, those in the second section on the syntax-pragmatics interface. (shrink)

Andrew Abbott's Department and Discipline calls to mind an exchange I once had with an economist—prompted by my characterization of a recent work of urban sociology as part of the “Chicago‐school tradition”—who reminded me that in his profession “Chicago school” was associated with Milton Friedman, free market ideology, and a world made up of rational, self‐interest‐maximizing actors. What I had in mind could hardly be further from that: the highly contextual, neighborhood‐based mode of analysis that became a hallmark of the (...) University of Chicago Department of Sociology from the late 1910s through the 1930s and that explained such phenomena as juvenile delinquency, race relations, poverty, and urban ennui as the products of complex, historically rooted social processes, ecologies, and group interactions.The essays that make up Department and Discipline ask that we rethink “conventional” notions of “Chicago‐school” sociology as a body of work produced by a particular group of faculty and students in a bygone era. Instead, in an engaging, unapologetically polemical, and ultimately prescriptive blend of historical analysis and disciplinary critique, Abbott conceptualizes the Chicago school as a tradition that was invented and reinvented over time, and within the ever‐changing relationship between the department and the broader discipline over the first half of the twentieth century. With this as his central theme, Abbott contemplates the—highly contested—meaning of the Chicago school in historiography and departmental history; the historical transformation of the Chicago‐based American Journal of Sociology from early, shaping influence to a mere organ of an increasingly narrow, professionalized discipline; and the capacity of the discipline to transcend what Abbott believes to be its contemporary state of professional and intellectual exhaustion.Even within sociology, “Chicago school” has had varying connotations over the years. Some associate it with Robert Park and his cyclical, assimilationist vision of race relations; others with the organic, ecological view of urban growth and mobility patterns captured in such still‐ubiquitous concepts as ethnic “succession”; still others with symbolic interactionism, the social psychological study of how people engage with, give meaning to, and ultimately act within the object world around them. More recently there has been talk of a “second Chicago school,” a post–World War II generation of qualitative and interactionist scholars who kept those traditions alive even as the discipline was headed in more quantitative, grand theoretical directions. Complicating matters still further, members of the initial, now‐legendary founding generation did not think of themselves as engaged in a single intellectual project or “school” of thought. Indeed, Abbott tells us that it was not until the 1970s, decades after Chicago lost its dominance in the discipline, that “the loose tangle of maxims and practices that had sustained the department in its glory years” was actually presented as “the Chicago school” .So does it make sense to talk about a or the Chicago school of sociology? Abbott argues that it does, albeit not as something that exists in the ideas, the body of research, or the considerable institutional apparatus that characterized the department during its interwar “glory years.” Rather, it existed in the interactions among a methodologically diverse, often deeply conflicted department faculty, out of which emerged an eclectic tradition of inquiry dedicated to understanding social processes in the context of time and place. Ironically, it took a moment of crisis—a year‐long self‐study in 1951–1952 prompted by administrative pressure and foundation efforts to define sociology as a bona fide science—to bring this vision of the Chicago‐school tradition into full view. By then, the tradition was on the way out: its practitioners retiring or moving elsewhere; its sensibilities displaced by a type of analysis C. Wright Mills would scornfully refer to as abstracted empiricism, dedicated to the construction and manipulation of variables outside of time and place.Though not a book for the uninitiated—Abbott's detailed rendering of behind‐the‐scenes personalities and squabbles requires some knowledge of the department and its landmark works—Department and Discipline makes an important contribution to social science history as well as to the literature on the Chicago school. Informed by extensive archival research, the book is animated by a powerful argument that is likely to resonate with historians, if not with the AJS editors who declined to publish the essay they had commissioned from Abbott for the journal's centenary: that sociology must reconnect with and reinvigorate the tradition of contextual analysis. While intriguing, Abbott's argument that the Chicago “school” exists in departmental processes and faculty relationships is less fully realized—occasional references to the Chicago‐school tradition in its 1920–1930s “heyday” sound awfully like the conventional view. It also makes for a book that gives short shrift to the actual ideas and body of research associated with Chicago sociology—and to their extraordinarily enduring influence among social practitioners and analysts alike. Still, when Abbott does turn to the work, the discussion is, like the rest of the book, original, thought provoking, and rewarding to read. (shrink)