The popularity of Fair Trade is increasing swiftly in many parts of the World. However, there is still a paucity of research analysing the northern fair trade actors outside the Anglo-American communities. This paper contributes by presenting a qualitative study of how the Finnish World Shop movements’ key actors understand the movement’s role and position in the rapidly changing operating environment. The study depicts the polyphonic nature of this particular democratic social movement and discusses how success, public trust and the (...) importance of different stakeholders become constructed in various ways within it. (shrink)

Throughout his literary career Walker Percy read and studied the philosophical thought of Charles Sanders Peirce in an attempt to re-present in language the world as Percy knew it. Beginning in 1984 and ending in 1990, the year of his death, Percy corresponded with Kenneth Laine Ketner about the "semiotic" of Peirce. Their letters - honest, instructive, and often filled with down-home humor - record an epistolary friendship of two men both passionately interested in Peirce's theory of signs. This (...) volume of letters provides a rich philosophical perspective for better understanding the fiction and nonfiction of Walker Percy. (shrink)

Based on interviews with climate-change activists and NGO workers in Finland and Malawi, this article reconsiders the ways in which the coordination of identity projects and action is approached in social movement scholarship. Rather than beginning with personal and collective identities, we take our cue from recent work by Laurent Thévenot and trace actors’ forms of engagement—the various ways actors produce commonality. As we show, doing so in vastly different social contexts allows us to see permutations in such forms afforded (...) by participation in a transnational social movement and to identify patterns of collective action that we would otherwise be apt to miss. Finnish activists narrated their activities by way of engaging in the forms of the common good driving the climate movement, but coordinated various situations also through engagement in familiarity, comfort, and ease. Malawian activists and NGO employees also spoke of the common good the movements worked to achieve, but principally created common ground by engaging in shared individual choices and projects, which were jointly consecrated by fellow NGO participants. Ultimately, we argue that tracing forms of engagement enables more in-depth understanding of what is at stake when people act together in social movement organizations: moving away from collective and personal identity to patterns of engagement allows a vantage point into the processes through which commonality is created and generates new hypotheses regarding the coordination of action in social movement organizations. (shrink)

The care of patients should be professional, human and humane. This is an ethical issue. The words human (inhimillinen) and humane (ihmisläheinen) have different meanings in the Finnish language. At Kuopio University Hospital (1200 beds), in Finland, it was decided to provide patients with professional and humane caring. Ethical values differ for different groups of people. Therefore humane caring was assessed by questioning both hospital patients (n = 160) and staff (n = 196). The data were subjected to content analysis. (...) The result was that the values obtained for both patients and staff were similar. Five descriptive categories of humane caring emerged. To discover what kind of caring was provided for patients, the categories were operationalized into 66 criteria and a questionnaire was drawn up on the basis of these criteria. The data for evaluation of the quality of caring were collected from patients (n = 1708). The data were analysed using cross-tabulations and the chi-squared test; sum variables were calculated for the five standards. The results suggest that special attention should be paid to vulnerable patient groups (e.g. the elderly and the young). One means of ethical management is to support our staff to care more humanely by discussing with them the results of this study, setting standards and criteria for humane caring and what this means in practice. It is hoped our caring will therefore be more humane. (shrink)

Co-écrit par Chloé Galibert-Laîné et Guillaume Grandjean, l’essai vidéo GeoMarkr (22 minutes, 2022) explore différentes pratiques de l’enquête spatiale médiatisée, des explorations filmiques de Chris Marker au jeu vidéo GeoGuessr. Les deux auteurices ont proposé à Corentin Lê de se joindre, le temps d’un échange, à leurs déambulations théoriques.

The unpredictability of maternal sensory signals in caregiving behavior has been recently found to be linked with infant neurodevelopment. The research area is new, and very little is yet known, how maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms and specific parental characteristics relate to the unpredictable maternal care. The aims of the current study were to explore how pre- and postnatal maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms and self-regulation capacity associate with the unpredictability of maternal sensory signals. The study population consisted of 177 (...) mother-infant dyads. The unpredictability of the maternal sensory signals was explored from the video-recorded mother-infant free play situation when the infant was 8 months of age. Pre- and postnatal anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured by questionnaires prenatally at gwks 14, 24, 34, and 3 and 6 months postpartum. Maternal self-regulation capacity, a trait considered to be stable in adulthood, was assessed using adult temperament questionnaire when the infant was 12 months of age. We found that elevated prenatal maternal anxiety symptoms associated with higher unpredictability in the maternal care while depressive symptoms were unrelated to the unpredictability of maternal care. Moreover, the association was moderated by maternal self-regulation capacity, as higher anxiety symptoms during pre-and postnatal period were associated more unpredictability among the mothers with low self-regulation capacity. The combination of higher amount of maternal anxiety symptoms and lower self-regulation capacity seems to constitute specific risk for the unpredictable maternal care. (shrink)

Both patterns of maternal sensory signals and sensitive care have shown to be crucial elements shaping child development. However, research concerning these aspects of maternal care has focused mainly on maternal sensitivity with fewer studies evaluating the impact of patterns of maternal behaviors and changes in these indices across infancy and childhood. The aims of this study were to explore how maternal unpredictability of sensory signals and sensitivity develop and associate with each other from infancy to toddlerhood and whether elevated (...) maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms relate to maternal unpredictable signals and sensitivity in toddlerhood. The study population consisted of 356 mother–child dyads assessed at 30 months; a subset of 103 mother–child dyads additionally participated in 8 months assessment. Maternal unpredictability and sensitivity were assessed from video-recorded free-play episodes at 8 and 30 months. Maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed with questionnaires at gestational weeks 14, 24, 34 and 3, 6, 12, and 24 months. Mean level of mothers’ unpredictability decreased on average whereas sensitivity did not change between infancy and toddlerhood. Both maternal unpredictability and sensitivity showed moderate level of individual stability from infancy to toddlerhood and these two measures were modestly correlated within each age. Elevated maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were not related to unpredictability but related to lower maternal sensitivity in toddlerhood. These results identify unpredictable sensory signals as a characteristic of parental care that is independent of standard quality measures and suggest that it may be less influenced by maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma pesquisa de natureza bibliográfica, com abordagem quanti-qualitativa, de caráter descritivo-exploratório que objetiva analisar a produção do conhecimento do Curso de Educação Física da Universidade do Estado do Pará em Altamira, no período de 2011-2018. Os achados apontam uma evolução do modo de produzir conhecimento, pois constatou-se uma redução dos vazios analíticos presentes nas pesquisas analisadas. Conclui que há um aumento no rigor cientifico presente nas produções devido uma maior utilização de técnicas, metodologias e teorias consistentes para a (...) verificação da realidade pesquisada e para a elaboração das respostas (R) dos problemas (P) investigados. (shrink)

Republicanism is increasingly attracting more attention from political philosophy. However, a mere hermeneutical approach it is usually used, which tends to neglect the political, social and economic circumstances that shaped this tradition of thought. This article addresses the modern conception of republican freedom with the North American and the French case through the work of two of their most representative figures, Thomas Jefferson and Maximilien Robespierre. The article defends that the political, juridical and economic government – the republican political economy– (...) devised by both, keeps important similarities that the current political philosophy cannot ignore. To illustrate this relationship, it is shown that both thinkers received a deep and similar influence of natural law philosophy and of fiduciary theory when thinking and trying to implement their models of government and their idea of ownership. (shrink)

Este artículo ofrece una aproximación psicoanalítica al Derecho en el contexto de un mercado global como el actual. El propósito es explicar la ruptura entre Derecho, mercado y política, como consecuencia de la globalización económica, y proponer un esquema para pensar su posible articulación. Para explicar la ruptura entre Derecho, mercado y política, se describen tres modos de relación con el Derecho en la evolución de la economía de mercado, en analogía con los modos de relación con la ley edípica (...) en las tres estructuras psíquicas que define Lacan (psicótica, neurótica, perversa); la conclusión es que el modo de relación con el Derecho en el contexto económico actual corresponde a una estructura perversa. Para pensar la posible articulación entre Derecho, mercado y política, se recurre a una analogía con los tres registros de lo psíquico según Lacan -Simbólico, Imaginario, y Real-, y al concepto de sinthome, como solución singular que permite anudar esos tres registros. (shrink)

Within cinematic horror, trauma as a concept has often been used as an allegorical strategy to work through collective anxieties. This article on It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014) and Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) strikes another note. It argues that, by their aesthetic qualities, both films are rendered traumatic in their affective orientation, both toward the cinematic world and toward the spectator. It analyses the two films through trauma as an affective-aesthetic strategy that puts emphasis on the edge of (...) the frame as well as on the offscreen space. This strategy evokes a sinister mood that exists independently of the protagonists, allowing us to meaningfully feel the effects of their trauma as we engage with the film. Especially the use of the offscreen space in both films contributes to the “traumatic mood” of the films, but it also functions to immerse the spectator in the invisible filmic world. In this way, It Follows and Get Out embody trauma as a denial of relief from dread, which we both recognize in the characters' experience, and feel in our own bodies through the effective creation of ever-present threat. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIs it possible to reconcile the concept of conscious agency with the view that humans are biological creatures subject to material causality? The problem of conscious agency is complicated by the tendency to attribute autonomous powers of control to conscious processes. In this paper, we offer an embodied process model of conscious agency. We begin with the concept of embodied emergence – the idea that psychological processes are higher-order biological processes, albeit ones that exhibit emergent properties. Although consciousness, experience, and (...) representation are emergent properties of higher-order biological organisms, the capacity for hierarchical regulation is a property of all living systems. Thus, while the capacity for consciousness transforms the process of hierarchical regulation, consciousness is not an autonomous center of control. Instead, consciousness functions as a system for coordinating novel representations of the most pressing demands placed on the organism at any given time.... (shrink)

This timely and topical look at the role of ethics in fieldwork takes into account some of the major issues confronting qualitative researchers. The main purposes of this book are twofold: to promote an understanding of the harmful possibilities of fieldwork; and to provide ways of dealing with ethical problems and dilemmas. To these ends, examples of actual fieldwork are provided that address ethical problems and dilemmas, and posit ways of dealing with them.

The study analyses how the corporate rhetoric of sustainability has developed in Finland during 1985-2005. The dataset consisting of the disclosures of four leading Finnish companies has been analyzed through discourse analytic methods. The findings question whether the ever-increasing popularity of sustainability-related concepts actually means that society is moving forward on the road towards sustainability.

The study provides insights on why large Finnish municipalities are engaging in sustainability reporting. The dataset consists of the sustainability disclosures of five large Finnish cities and of a set of interviews conducted with the personnel responsible for composing the sustainability reports in these cities. Preliminary findings suggest that this rising practice is again an example of a fad, arising as the public sector organizations mimic the corporate sector without anyone really pondering whether the municipalities and the public sector as (...) a whole truly need a similar practice the corporations have. We maintain that there are better ways to use a municipality’s scarce resources than imitating the corporate sustainability reporting practices through producing a sustainability report, the main task of which seems to be to exist. (shrink)

The conception of property is usually moulded upon diverting historical and political-philosophical frameworks. The current interest on the commons illustrates these divergences when they come up between a ‘pure’ public and a ‘pure’ private form of ownership. This conceptual triad misleads by conflating private property with an absolute property right while equating public property with a centralised political regime. This article traces the republican conception of property in order to show how it draws a legal and philosophical continuum around different (...) forms of ownership, based on a fiduciary principle underlying the relationship between the sovereign or principal and its agent. Despite modern socialism apparently left aside the question of the commons, the republican-fiduciary rationale was reformulated according to the modern industrial capitalist society. (shrink)

This paper intends to explore the topic of consciousness in relation to the domain of the contemporary dream, its narration and interpretation. "Consciousness" involves the experience and interplay of dream, fantasy and "reality." Hence an ethnography of the dreaming subject involves several interlinked domains: the cultural construction of dream symbolism, dream narration, and dream interpretation within and through a group setting. The paper is based on findings from a recent ethnographic study of dreamwork groups in the U.K. Examples from the (...) study will explore how personal identity and consciousness is represented and invented through the production of socially informed imaginative contents in both dreamwork and guided fantasy. Key words: dreamwork, anthropology, metaphor, group therapy. (shrink)

The purpose of cognitive diagnostic modeling is to classify students' latent attribute profiles using their responses to the diagnostic assessment. In recent years, each diagnostic classification model makes different assumptions about the relationship between a student's response pattern and attribute profile. The previous research studies showed that the inappropriate DCMs and inaccurate Q-matrix impact diagnostic classification accuracy. Artificial Neural Networks have been proposed as a promising approach to convert a pattern of item responses into a diagnostic classification in some research (...) studies. However, the ANNs methods produced very unstable and unappreciated estimation unless a great deal of care was taken. In this research, we combined ANNs with two typical DCMs, the deterministic-input, noisy, “and” gate model and the deterministic-inputs, noisy, “or” gate model, within a semi-supervised learning framework to achieve a robust and accurate classification. In both simulated study and real data study, the experimental results showed that the proposed method could achieve appreciated performance across different test conditions, especially when the diagnostic quality of assessment was not high and the Q-matrix contained misspecified elements. This research study is the first time of applying the thinking of semi-supervised learning into CDM. Also, we used the validating test to choose the appropriate parameters for the ANNs instead of using typical statistical criteria. (shrink)

In this book, Tarja Laine provides insights into how traumatic cinema invites profound affective engagement with the pathology of memory that lies at the heart of trauma. The author reveals that traumatic cinema communicates the inability to process a traumatic event by means of its aesthetic specificity as a time-based medium.

This paper looks at the current state-of-the-art and at potential changes in CSR thinking in a developing country: Romania. It seeks to understand what kind oftransformations are emerging in this field and what are the reasons behind them. The analysis is interpretative, using discourse analysis and focuses on the articles of the weekly Romanian business publication Capital. The results indicate that the local business environment features the characteristics of wild capitalism, largely contradicting the idea of responsibility. However, foreign actors have (...) recently entered the local environment, acting as travelling vehicles of Western ideas and inducing positive developments in business social behaviour. This study upholds that emerging trends in the business social thinking in Romania are not an outcome of local societal expectations but, rather, are brought from abroad and sold to the local community. (shrink)

Report on Charles Sanders Peirce and his contributions to a newspaper, includes yearly breakdowns of his contributions, analysis of his writings, his contributions to philosophy, and more.

While proponents of sustainability reporting believe in its potential to help corporations be accountable and transparent about their social and environmental impacts, there has been growing criticism asserting that such reporting schemes are utilized primarily as impression management tools. Drawing on Goffman’s self-presentation theory and its frontstage/backstage analogy, we contrast the frontstage sustainability discourse of a sample of large U.S. oil and gas firms to their backstage corporate political activities in the context of the passage of the American-Made Energy and (...) Good Jobs Act, also known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Bill. The ANWR Bill was designed to allow oil exploration within the most sensitive environmental areas in the Refuge and this bill was vigorously debated in the United States Congress in 2005 and 2006. Our results suggest that the firms’ sustainability discourse on environmental stewardship and responsibility contrasts sharply with their less visible but proactive political strategies targeted to facilitate the passage of the ANWR Bill. This study thus contributes to the social and environmental accounting and accountability literature by highlighting the relevance of Goffman’s frontstage/backstage analogy in uncovering and documenting further the deceptive nature of the discourse contained in stand-alone sustainability reports. In addition, it seeks to contribute to the overall understanding of the multifaceted nature of sustainability reporting by placing it in relation to corporate political activities. (shrink)

There is a longstanding debate in the stakeholder literature as to who and what really counts as the stakeholders of the firm. Likewise, there have been discussions on whether nature should be considered a stakeholder of the firm. However, one seldom encounters any definitions of the key concepts, that is of nature or the natural environment . We seek to contribute to the debate by taking a closer look at what this thing called nature actually is. In addition, we discuss (...) the implications of this conceptual refinement for the stakeholder model. In order to reinforce the status of the natural environment in the stakeholder model, we propose that any visualisation of a stakeholder network should be embedded in the natural environment. (shrink)

The sharing economy (SE) is a strongly contested idea, both conceptually and politically. This paper first explores multiple existing definitions, emphasizing the challenges in both conceptual and operational terms they usually entail. It is argued that most of the common definitions tend to exacerbate tensions between informativeness and veracity, resulting in the SE becoming a catch-all concept. Alternatively, it is often suggested to operationalize the concept by breaking it down among its main areas, such as consumption, knowledge, production, and finance. (...) However, these kinds of classifications lack logical-formal consistency and substantive validity. The paper then addresses the political-normative debate by briefly presenting the three main existing perspectives on the SE: (i) as a more inclusive form of capitalism, (ii) as the advancement of the neoliberal agenda, and (iii) as a sort of emancipatory economy. The primary aim of this paper, however, is not to advocate for a singular viewpoint or scrutinize any particular author’s theory, but to examine three common errors that the emancipatory conception may easily fall into: (i) overemphasizing the role of communities in economic activity, (ii) attributing an inherent collaborative propensity to individuals, and (iii) understanding markets from an a-institutional and psychological standpoint. The conclusions suggest that to truly realize the emancipatory potential of the SE, the conception should distance itself from standard economic theory and adopt a more institutional approach akin to classical political economy. (shrink)

Este artículo propone una lectura de la Crítica del Juicio a partir de los conceptos psicoanalíticos de idealización y de sublimación. La idealización se refleja en la noción kantiana de un fin final, el sumo bien, como el ideal que permite pensar la realización del mundo moral en el mundo de la naturaleza; por su parte, el proceso de sublimación aparece como el “reverso” del enjuiciamiento sobre el gusto. Esa correspondencia entre la sublimación y el enjuiciamiento permite describir una función (...) normativa de la sublimación análoga en el arte y en la moral. La perspectiva psicoanalítica de la sublimación explica así la lectura ético-política de la obra que ha venido haciendo la ética contemporánea, a partir del enjuiciamiento estético. (shrink)