This research was designed to understand better the patterns of agricultural intensification and transformation occurring in Africa south of the Sahara using the Ghanaian case. The paper examines changes in farming systems and the role of various endogenous and exogenous factors in driving the conversion of arable lands to agricultural uses in four villages within two agro-ecologically distinct zones of Ghana: the Guinea Savannah and Transition zones. Using historical narratives and land-cover maps supplemented with quantitative data at regional levels, the (...) research shows that farming has intensified in the villages, as farmers increased their farm size in response to factors such as population growth, market access, and changing rural lifestyle. The overall trend suggests a gradual move toward intensification through increasing use of labor-saving technologies rather than land-saving inputs—a pattern that contrasts with Asia’s path to its Green Revolution. The findings in this paper provide evidence of the dynamism occurring in African farming systems; hence, they point toward a departure from stagnation narratives that have come to prevail in the debate on agricultural transformation and intensification in Africa south of the Sahara. We conclude that it is essential for future research to expand the scope of this work, while policies should focus on lessons learned from these historical processes of genuine change and adaptation. (shrink)

Going beyond the creolisation theories of Brathwaite and Glissant, I attempt to develop ideas concerning the gendering of creolisation, and a historicising of affects within it. Addressing affects as ‘physiological things’ contextualised in the history of the Caribbean slave plantation, I seek, importantly, to delineate a trajectory and development of a specific Creole history in relation to affects. Brathwaite's proposition that ‘the most significant (and lasting) inter-cultural creolisation took place’ within the ‘intimate’ space of ‘sexual relations’ is key to my (...) argument. In the light of this, I consider how Creole cultural knowledge about affect—as the primary motivational system inclusive of fear, anger, outrage and so on — might be identified, and what constitutes such Creole knowledge within which affect might be embedded. How might Glissant's relationality and Creole literary texts add to this knowledge? I focus primarily on three texts: Clarke's The Polished Hoe, Collins’ The Colour of Forgetting and Morejón's ‘Amo a mi amo’/‘l Love My Master’. Each text on which I draw is selected for its intersectional representation of gender relations, ‘knowledge about sexual difference’ and its representation of Creole subjectivities within the context problematised here as the ‘demonic ground’. Moreover, as auto-theorising texts, they represent both narrative and meta-narrative of a creolising of affects in and against the economy of the slave plantation. Each represents also a stage or aspect of the development of subjectivities and an affective community that inform this intervention concerned with theorising against consolidated, universalising and Eurocentric conceptualisations of affect. In the process, I attempt to offer a differentiated cartography and literary archaeology of affect. (shrink)

The use of upper limb vibration during exercise and rehabilitation continues to gain popularity as a modality to improve function and performance. Currently, a lack of knowledge of the pathways being altered during ULV limits its effective implementation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whether indirect ULV modulates transmission along spinal and corticospinal pathways that control the human forearm. All measures were assessed under CONTROL and ULV conditions while participants maintained a small contraction of the right flexor (...) carpi radialis muscle. To assess spinal pathways, Hoffmann reflexes elicited by stimulation of the median nerve were recorded from FCR with motor response amplitudes matched between conditions. An H-reflex conditioning paradigm was also used to assess changes in presynaptic inhibition by stimulating the superficial radial nerve 37 ms prior to median nerve stimulation. Cutaneous reflexes in FCR elicited by stimulation of the SR nerve at the wrist were also recorded. To assess corticospinal pathways, motor evoked potentials elicited by transcranial magnetic stimulation of the contralateral motor cortex were recorded from the right FCR and biceps brachii. ULV significantly reduced H-reflex amplitude by 15.7% for both conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. Therefore, ULV inhibits cutaneous and H-reflex transmission without influencing corticospinal excitability of the forearm flexors suggesting increased presynaptic inhibition of afferent transmission as a likely mechanism. A general increase in inhibition of spinal pathways with ULV may have important implications for improving rehabilitation for individuals with spasticity. (shrink)

In discussions of Kant’s contemporary relevance, the term ‘Kantian’ is usually used in three ways. First, it signifies the effort to make a fresh analysis of the text of Kant himself, in order to bring out its meaning and problems with more accuracy and penetration. Next, it is employed in a broader sense to cover the philosophical work being done by someone who belongs, however vaguely, to the Kantian tradition itself and who is seeking to prolong its method into present-day (...) issues. But there is a third meaning for the term, when it designates an independent treatment of a problem, in the course of which special attention is paid to the leads suggested by Kant for its resolution. The present paper can be called Kantian in this third sense. It does not attempt an exegesis of some texts in Kant himself, and neither does it work within the framework of a Kantian school of thought. But it does seek to show that one contemporary question receives considerable illumination, when the resources of Kant are brought to bear upon it. (shrink)

Undoubtedly, American Thomists owe a major share of their confident historical outlook to the writings of Professor Gilson whose latest work is formally concerned with the relative merits of Thomism and other important systems. This is not a new preoccupation with him, since a whole series of earlier books testify to his abiding interest in this problem. But he has now made a fresh exploration of the entire territory in the light of his revised view of the mind of St. (...) Thomas. During the war years, Gilson prepared a new edition of his pioneer study, Le Thomisme, in which the existential character of Thomistic wisdom is placed in high relief. St. Thomas regards God as the supreme and self-subsistent act of existing and the creative source of finite beings, whose highest act is also that of existing. This has a definite effect upon Thomistic metaphysics, since it involves a conception of being as something more than essence or nature. Both essence and existence are constitutive principles of being, and hence the science of being must be directed as well to the existential act. (shrink)

This title is now available in a new format. Refer to Heidegger: A Graphic Guide 9781848311749.

The authors of this article examine deliberative democracy and the value of dialogue in promoting the engagement of communities in deliberation and involvement in public issues. Focusing on the Texas Forum (TF), a member of the National Issues Forum (NIF), the authors discuss how diverse individuals are brought together with the purpose of cultivating public dialogue and discourse about significant policy issues, with a focus on the public's participation in the democratic process. The article addresses changes in civic engagement, dialogue, (...) and the use of technology to mediate civic discourse and create virtual civic communities. The TF and NIF provide practical examples of the work needed in promoting deliberative democracy and civic engagement. (shrink)

K. Danziger, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 305 pp. £24.99. ISBN: 978-0-521-89815-7 (hdbk) and 978-0-521-72641-2 (pbk).

IN the Sixteenth Satire, the first topic Juvenal takes up in detail is the impossibility of obtaining satisfactory legal redress from the praetorians. The account has two divisions: you will have a bad time yourself in the military court, and what friend will come to support you ?

Possession of a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation puts a woman at very high risk of developing breast and ovarian carcinoma at an early age. One treatment option is surgical removal of the target organs—breasts, ovaries, and fallopian tubes—before the malignancy develops. This risk-reduction surgery has been shown to significantly reduce the likelihood that a woman will develop one of these cancers. This paper argues that such surgeries do not violate Catholic moral principles, but can be justified using the principles (...) of double effect and totality and integrity. The paper does not recommend or endorse any specific treatment option. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 15.1 : 75–89. (shrink)

This paper begins with Hegel’s critique of Kant in the Encyclopaedia’s examination of three positions on objectivity. According to this critique, Kant’s philosophy is flawed because it reduces objectivity to a relation isolated within the subjectivity of the knower, does not integrate the contingent into its understanding of the rational, and does not acknowledge the reality status of contradiction. The second section of the paper examines Hegel’s analysis of dialectical proof procedure in the introductory essays of his major works. The (...) rest of the paper examines the way the Phenomenology proves that rationality is a common ground governing both independent thought and the independence of the natural world, that the contradictory otherness of nature requires an irrational element, which neither observational nor practical thought can overcome, and that truth is an infinite spirit that both transcends and dwells within the finite reality of the human spirit. (shrink)