Despite the growing popularityof farmers' markets (FMs) across the UnitedStates, the experiences and perspectives offarmers who sell at markets have received verylittle research attention. This study describesthe views of 18 farmers from Upstate New Yorkon the importance of FMs as part of theirlifestyle and livelihood, the challenges theyface selling at markets, and their conceptionsof ideal FMs. Through in-depth, semi-structuredinterviews, farmers expressed economic andsocial motivations for selling at FMs; socialbenefits from interacting with customers; andthe challenges they faced as small-scalefarmers and sellers, (...) including extra-marketcompetition, uncooperative and problematicmarket vendors, rising farm input costs, andchanging consumer trends. Farmers alsodiscussed personal values associated withselling at FMs, such as pride in raising andmarketing one's own products, working togetherwith other farmer-vendors, and providingcustomers with honest information. Visions ofideal FMs were varied among farmers, but therewas general agreement that FMs should provide adiversity of products to attract customers andeducational opportunities for the public tolearn more about FMs and local produce. Theinterdependence of FM farmers was a majoremergent theme across interviews. Findingssuggested that market experiences of FMfarmers, including economic success, are notonly contingent on personal effort, but canalso be affected by the work of fellow vendors.Future research may look to further explore howFM farmers and other vendors interact ascooperative and competitive social and economicunits. At the community level, FM leadershipshould continue to focus on the experiences andperspectives of farmers and other marketvendors, in addition to identifying ways forenhancing cooperative FM enterprises. (shrink)

Philosophers and geographers have converged on the topic of public space, fascinated and in many ways alarmed by fundamental changes in the way post-industrial societies produce space for public use, and in the way citizens of these same societies perceive and constitute themselves as a public. This volume advances this inquiry, making extensive use of political and social theory, while drawing intimate connections between political principles, social processes, and the commonplaces of our everyday environments.

Data is essential to governing those emerging matters of concern that confront the agrifood every day. But data is no neutral intermediary. It disrupts, exposes, and creates new social, economic, political, and environmental possibilities, whilst simultaneously hiding, excluding, and foreclosing others. Scholars have become attuned to both the constitutive role of data in creating everyday worlds, and the need to develop critical accounts of the materialities, spatialities and multiplicities of data relationships. Whereas this emerging work develops insight to the capacity (...) for data topologies to reterritorialise the spatial performances of everyday life, it has largely reduced the associated temporal dimensions to matters of fact. The effect of these performances has been to naturalize the temporal quality of speed and elide the multiple temporalities required to enact contemporary data worlds. Applying the lenses of infrastructuring, performativity and ferality, this paper explores temporality and data in the everyday worlds produced through the New Zealand kiwifruit industry’s focus on dry matter. The paper argues that temporalities are deeply embedded in the kiwifruit industry’s data relations. We show that while temporal data relations are critical to the industry, we also highlight ways in which those relations introduce new, potentially destabilizing performances into kiwifruit relations. (shrink)

The style of weak thought associated with Gianni Vattimo involves positing that we are living after the death of God in an age of nihilism that is our ‘sole opportunity’. Nihilism, the lack of highest values, frees one from the ‘violence’ of metaphysics that silences one by reducing everything back to first principles. This article focuses on Vattimo’s return to Christianity, analysing in particular his use of terms found in the New Testament, kenosis and caritas. Vattimo sees the history of (...) the West as the secularisation of Christianity, reaching its culmination in the nihilism of late-modernity through the liberation of a plurality of interpretations from metaphysics. By analysing Vattimo’s notion of Being and use of Joachim of Fiore’s historical schema in relation to Paul’s distinction between the ‘spirit’ and the ‘letter’, it shall be argued that Vattimo’s understanding of Christianity does not involve the religion ‘superseding’ Judaism. However, this resolution comes at the cost of highlighting the lack of importance of Christianity for Vattimo if a broader understanding of Heidegger than Vattimo deploys is used to put Vattimo’s understanding of Being under scrutiny. (shrink)

This note studies the 1650 edition of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis. Using online and card catalogues, we have located eighty-nine copies, thirty-seven of which we examined in person, with an additional six fully digitised copies online. We hope that this research note on the preliminary results will generate greater interest in this unduly neglected edition. The note shows how, despite the connection established in the history of seventeenth-century politics that emphasized the ties between Grotius and the Peace (...) of Westphalia, the reception of Grotius’s 1650 edition bore no relation to the debates at Osnabrück and Münster. However, this is an influential edition, cherished by collectors and authors. According to our findings, it would be reproduced in a number of later reprints. (shrink)

Clarke and Beck suggest that the ratio processing system may be a component of the approximate number system, which they suggest represents rational numbers. We argue that available evidence is inconsistent with their account and advocate for a two-systems view. This implies that there may be many access points for numerical cognition – and that privileging the ANS may be a mistake.

This research note offers a contextual overview of the printing history of Johann Blaeu’s 1646 octavo edition of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis (ibp). The note examines the printing process of the last edition that was prepared while Grotius was still alive, though it was published after his death. The note also sheds light on the theological dimension of some readers’ annotations, and concludes by discussing the impact this edition had on the modern versions of the text.

The problem of evil asks why an all-loving, all-powerful God would permit evil and suffering. Gianni Vattimo, a postmodern philosopher influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger, returned to religion in the 1990s, but only addressed the concept of evil in a sustained fashion some twenty years later. Vattimo’s contribution to the problem of evil addresses the problem circuitously by analysing the concept of evil and by bringing in theological concept of grace, albeit rethinking these concepts in accordance with his own philosophical (...) style of ‘weak thought’. This article applies Vattimo’s understanding of evil and grace to the problem of evil, comparing his approach to Pareyson’s and analysing the extent to which Vattimo’s understanding of evil enables someone drawing upon his weak thought to provide an appropriate response to the problem of evil. (shrink)

This research note is the eighth instalment in our series of preliminary findings on the census and study of the reception of De iure belli ac pacis. The note presents a bibliographical description of Laurentius’ 1647 re-issue of the 1631 edition by Blaeu, considers Laurentius’ motivation and methods of production, lists and maps the currently known twenty-three surviving copies, and briefly describes two notable exemplars.

Groove—defined as the pleasurable urge to move to a rhythm—depends on a fine-tuned interplay between predictability arising from repetitive rhythmic patterns, and surprise arising from rhythmic deviations, for example in the form of syncopation. The perfect balance between predictability and surprise is commonly found in rhythmic patterns with a moderate level of rhythmic complexity and represents the sweet spot of the groove experience. In contrast, rhythms with low or high complexity are usually associated with a weaker experience of groove because (...) they are too boring to be engaging or too complex to be interpreted, respectively. Consequently, the relationship between rhythmic complexity and groove experience can be described by an inverted U-shaped function. We interpret this inverted U shape in light of the theory of predictive processing and provide perspectives on how rhythmic complexity and groove can help us to understand the underlying neural mechanisms linking temporal predictions, movement, and reward. A better understanding of these mechanisms can guide future approaches to improve treatments for patients with motor impairments, such as Parkinson’s disease, and to investigate prosocial aspects of interpersonal interactions that feature music, such as dancing. Finally, we present some open questions and ideas for future research. (shrink)

Salient landmarks enhance route learning. We hypothesised that semantically salient nostalgic landmarks would improve route learning compared to non-nostalgic landmarks. In two experiments, participants learned a route through a computer-generated maze using directional arrows and wall-mounted pictures. On the test trial, the arrows were removed, and participants completed the maze using only the pictures. In the nostalgia condition, pictures were of popular music artists and TV characters from 5 to 10 years ago. In the control condition, they were recent pictures (...) of these same artists and characters. In Experiment 1, in the test trial, participants in the nostalgia condition completed the maze faster than controls. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated these findings and extended them by exploring boundary conditions. Participants had to learn two mazes sequentially. In Maze 1, we placed nostalgic/control landmarks only at non-decision points (whereas we placed them at decision points in Experiment 1). In Maze 2, we placed nostalgic/control landmarks at decision points during acquisition but removed them in the test trial (whereas they were present in the test trial in Experiment 1). In both mazes, participants in the nostalgia (compared to control) condition completed the test trial faster. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 666-675, July 2022.

This research provides suggestions for identifying and addressing university students’ perceptions of systemic inequities related to racism and racial privilege.Suggestions are derived from findings of a confirmatory study conducted by the authors in three university classrooms. The project was motivated by theauthors’ on-going commitment to the struggle to eradicate racism and all of its deleterious effects, predicated on the early work of Dr. Joyce King and her conceptof dysconscious racism. The university students’ levels of dysconsciousness regarding systemic inequities related to (...) racism and racial privilege demonstrateddifferences in two of the three categories. Suggestions for increasing student consciousness in the classroom are included. (shrink)

How does talk work, and can we engage the public in a dialogue about the scientific study of talk? This article presents a history, critical evaluation and empirical illustration of the public science of talk. We chart the public ethos of conversation analysis that treats talk as an inherently public phenomenon and its transcribed recordings as public data. We examine the inherent contradictions that conversation analysis is simultaneously obscure yet highly cited; it studies an object that people understand intuitively, yet (...) routinely produces counter-intuitive findings about talk. We describe a novel methodology for engaging the public in a science exhibition event and show how our ‘conversational rollercoaster’ used live recording, transcription and public-led analysis to address the challenge of demonstrating how talk can become an informative object of scientific research. We conclude by encouraging researchers not only to engage in a public dialogue but also to find ways to actively engage people in taking a scientific approach to talk as a pervasive, structural feature of their everyday lives. (shrink)

This study defines the relationship between humanism and liberalism by comparing the two Victorian figures who were most concerned with the preservation of humanistic values in a free and democratic society: Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill. The book sets apart Arnold and Mill from their contemporaries and points out their similarities to one another in discussions of their theories of history, poetry, their celebration of the contemplative life and their willingness to welcome democracy. At the same time it (...) examines the differences between the two men, which he uses to create a dialogue between humanism and liberalism on the question of how a high cultural ideal can be realized in democratic society. (shrink)

This article sheds light on Grotius’s writings on slavery and the polyvalent ways in which his ideas have been interpreted and applied throughout history. The article focuses, in particular, on a tension at the heart of the Grotian theory of natural rights, as articulated in De iure belli ac pacis (ibp). Grotius’s views on slavery have attracted the attention of generations of legal scholars, who debated and explored them in courts of justice, in international disputes, and on the margins of (...) their own copies of Grotius’s magnum opus. Overall, this article shows that despite the rise in popularity of other authors and new ideologies, Grotius’s influence in debates about slavery and abolitionism endured well into the modern age. (shrink)

The focus of this study was to analyze the content, distribution, and comparative genome relationships of 996 chromosome bin-mapped expressed sequence tags accounting for 2266 restriction fragments on the homoeologous group 3 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat. Of these loci, 634, 884, and 748 were mapped on chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D, respectively. The individual chromosome bin maps revealed bins with a high density of mapped ESTs in the distal region and bins of low density in the proximal region of the (...) chromosome arms, with the exception of 3DS and 3DL. These distributions were more localized on the higher-resolution group 3 consensus map with intermediate regions of high-mapped-EST density on both chromosome arms. Gene ontology classification of mapped ESTs was not significantly different for homoeologous group 3 chromosomes compared to the other groups. A combined analysis of the individual bin maps using 537 of the mapped ESTs revealed rearrangements between the group 3 chromosomes. Approximately 232 of the consensus mapped ESTs matched sequences on rice chromosome 1 and revealed large- and small-scale differences in gene order. Of the group 3 mapped EST unigenes ∼21 and 32% matched the Arabidopsis coding regions and proteins, respectively, but no chromosome-level gene order conservation was detected. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics review is the process of assessing the ethics of research involving humans. The Ethics Review Committee (ERC) is the key oversight mechanism designated to ensure ethics review. Whether or not this governance mechanism is still fit for purpose in the data-driven research context remains a debated issue among research ethics experts.Main textIn this article, we seek to address this issue in a twofold manner. First, we review the strengths and weaknesses of ERCs in ensuring ethical oversight. Second, we map (...) these strengths and weaknesses onto specific challenges raised by big data research. We distinguish two categories of potential weakness. The first category concerns persistent weaknesses, i.e., those which are not specific to big data research, but may be exacerbated by it. The second category concerns novel weaknesses, i.e., those which are created by and inherent to big data projects. Within this second category, we further distinguish between purview weaknesses related to the ERC’s scope (e.g., how big data projects may evade ERC review) and functional weaknesses, related to the ERC’s way of operating. Based on this analysis, we propose reforms aimed at improving the oversight capacity of ERCs in the era of big data science.ConclusionsWe believe the oversight mechanism could benefit from these reforms because they will help to overcome data-intensive research challenges and consequently benefit research at large. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, this study investigates how U.S. higher education leaders have centered their crisis management on values and guiding ethical principles. We conducted 55 in-depth interviews with leaders from 30 U.S. higher education institutions, with most leaders participating in two interviews. We found that crisis plans created prior to the COVID-19 pandemic were inadequate due to the long duration and highly uncertain nature of the crisis. Instead, higher education leaders applied guiding principles on the fly (...) to support their decision-making. If colleges and universities infuse shared values into their future crisis plans, they will not have to develop a moral compass on the fly for the next pandemic. This paper suggests the following somewhat universal shared values: engage in accuracy, transparency, and accountability; foster deliberative dialog; prioritize safety; support justice, fairness, and equity; and engage in an ethic of care. To navigate ethics tensions, leaders need to possess crisis-relevant expertise or ensure that such expertise is present among crisis management team members. Standing up formal ethics committees composed of diverse stakeholders also is instrumental in navigating tensions inherent in crises. The next pandemic is already on the horizon according to experts. Through infusing values into future crisis plans, higher education leaders can be confident that their responses will be grounded in their communities’ shared values. (shrink)

The Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) is a federal-state partnership designed to provide fresh, locally grown produce to low-income participants at nutritional risk and expand consumer awareness and use of local produce sold at farmers markets. This paper describes the results of a collaboration initiative based on the typology of a “comprehensive, multisectorial collaboration” to support the FMNP. We report the outcomes of the partnerships that developed over three years, including increased outreach to FMNP participants and strategies to decrease barriers (...) to participation. Those partnerships that reached higher degrees of coordination or collaboration are now addressing market accessibility and market quality in new ways. Those partnerships that exhibited the highest degree of collaboration are contributing to community capacity building beyond FMNP issues per se and to larger issues affecting the agriculture community and the food security of residents. (shrink)

Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an exercise that reiterates the prejudices of one's times and at (...) best allows one to persuade others by appealing to these prejudices, or is it the royal road to first principles and philosophical wisdom? In From Puzzles to Principles? May Sim gathers experts to argue both these positions and offer a variety of interpretive possibilities. The contributors' thoughtful reflections on the nature and limits of dialectic should play a crucial role in Aristotelian scholarship. (shrink)

In this paper, we reflect on the disciplinary contours of contemporary sociology, and social science more generally, in the age of ‘big and broad’ social data. Our aim is to suggest how sociology and social sciences may respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by this ‘data deluge’ in ways that are innovative yet sensitive to the social and ethical life of data and methods. We begin by reviewing relevant contemporary methodological debates and consider how they relate to the emergence (...) of big and broad social data as a product, reflexive artefact and organizational feature of emerging global digital society. We then explore the challenges and opportunities afforded to social science through the widespread adoption of a new generation of distributed, digital technologies and the gathering momentum of the open data movement, grounding our observations in the work of the Collaborative Online Social Media ObServatory project. In conclusion, we argue that these challenges and opportunities motivate a renewed interest in the programme for a ‘public sociology’, characterized by the co-production of social scientific knowledge involving a broad range of actors and publics. (shrink)

In recent years, a dramatic increase in the study of infrastructure has occurred in the social sciences and humanities, following upon foundational work in the physical sciences, architecture, planning, information science, and engineering. This article, authored by a multidisciplinary group of scholars, probes the generative potential of infrastructure at this historical juncture. Accounting for the conceptual and material capacities of infrastructure, the article argues for the importance of paradox in understanding infrastructure. Thematically the article is organized around three key points (...) that speak to the study of infrastructure: ruin, retrofit, and risk. The first paradox of infrastructure, ruin, suggests that even as infrastructure is generative, it degenerates. A second paradox is found in retrofit, an apparent ontological oxymoron that attempts to bridge temporality from the present to the future and yet ultimately reveals that infrastructural solidity, in material and symbolic terms, is more apparent than actual. Finally, a third paradox of infrastructure, risk, demonstrates that while a key purpose of infrastructure is to mitigate risk, it also involves new risks as it comes to fruition. The article concludes with a series of suggestions and provocations to view the study of infrastructure in more contingent and paradoxical forms. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)