An important task in mathematical sciences is to make quantitative predictions, which is often done via the solution of differential equations. In this paper, we investigate why, to perform this task, scientists sometimes choose to use numerical methods instead of analytical solutions. Via several examples, we argue that the choice for numerical methods can be explained by the fact that, while making quantitative predictions seems at first glance to be facilitated by analytical solutions, this is actually often much easier with (...) numerical methods. Thus we challenge the widely presumed superiority of analytical solutions over numerical methods. (shrink)

In one conception of cultural evolution, the evolutionary success of cultural units that are transmitted from individual to individual is determined by forces of cultural selection. Here we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between several distinct phases of the transmission process in which cultural selection can operate, such as a choose-to-receive phase, an encode-and-retrieve phase, and a choose-to-transmit phase. Here we focus on emotional selection in cultural transmission of urban legends, which has previously been shown to operate in (...) the choose-to-transmit phase. In a series of experiments we studied serial transmission of stories based on urban legends manipulated to be either high or low on disgusting content. Results supported emotional selection operating in all three phases of cultural transmission. Thus, the prevalence of disgusting urban legends in North America may be explained by emotional selection through a multitude of pathways. (shrink)

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements. Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content among Americans but not among Indians. Four (...) subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors, the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news. We discuss various possible explanations and implications. (shrink)

The contributors to this issue focus on legal internationalism, including hybrid mixes with nationalist forms. They have provoked us as editors to think more about these sites and forms of engagement. Sankey shows how civic participation in the ECCC has played a key role in surfacing the gendered harms of separation and starvation. Turan highlights the problems with ICC exclusion of the experience of men and boys from sexual violence. Peroni expresses her hesitations over the Istanbul Convention given an association (...) between assumed vulnerability and migrant women, while admiring its uncoupling of violence and culture. Cruz’s interview with Wendy Brown contextualizes and expands on these themes as they consider, with other participants, the future of feminist theory in the context of neo-liberal capturing of rights and legal space. Thinking more about internationalism and commitment in this context also helps us hold a mirror up to ourselves as we reflect more critically on our own naming of FLS as an ‘international’ journal. Together these contributions, and the reviews of new work, play a role in fleshing out an editorial commitment to enacting the journal as a living thing that ‘hangs together somehow’ even as it is known differently in different places. (shrink)

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, reminders of death are particularly salient. Although much terror management theory research demonstrates that people engage in defensive tactics to manage mortality awareness, other work shows that existential concerns can motivate growth-oriented actions to improve health. The present study explored the associative link between coronavirus anxieties, fear of death, and participants' well-being. Results, using structural equation modeling, found that increased mortality concerns stemming from COVID-19 were associated with heightened benefit finding from the pandemic. Increased benefit (...) finding, in turn, was related to higher life satisfaction, meaning in life, self-esteem, resilience, and vitality while also correlating negatively with depression and stress scores. There was no evidence for reverse mediation in that fear of mortality did not predict well-being through coronavirus worries. Overall, although many persons have experienced mental health concerns as a function of the COVID-19 pandemic, our findings demonstrate positive benefits that paradoxically follow in terms of an increased appreciation of life, improved relationships, and better health. (shrink)

Since the last issue of Feminist Legal Studies, we editorial board members have had lots of conversations about comfort, displacement and alienation. As we developed the programme for #FLaK2016 we thought about it as a kind of pulling ourselves out of our comfort zone, if academic events and journals ever have a comfort zone. Drawing on a mix of feminist live performance methods and a science and technology studies-type curiosity for objects of experimentation, we tried out a kitchen table method (...) of hosting a live research conversation with activists, artists and academics over two days. But we had not fully anticipated the way that the Brexit result would contribute to and complicate discomfort. A fuller analysis of FLaK awaits a later moment, but here we pick out this one aspect of our gathering—feelings of discomfort – as they animate the contributions to this issue in interesting ways. (shrink)

This experiment uses quantitative and qualitative measures to address the effect of two syllabus statements on academic misconduct: one based on prohibitions and one on academic integrity. Students expressed favorable attitudes toward the statements, showed an increase in guilt compared to a control group, but showed no decrease in intentions to cheat. Including only a standard academic misconduct statement in one's syllabus is not sufficient to alter behavior, which should be acknowledged by faculty.

Remote monitoring of implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) patients links patients wirelessly to the clinic via a box in their bedroom. The box transmits data from the ICD to a remote database accessible to clinicians without patient involvement. Data travel across time and space; clinicians can monitor patients from a distance and instantly know about cardiac events. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in two Danish hospitals, this article explores the configuration of the wireless ICD patient by following a number of patients through (...) hospitalisation, implantation, in-clinic follow-up, and remote monitoring. Wireless therapy, we argue, scripts the patient as data. In high-tech clinical encounters, data are enacted as extensions and copies of the patient, and even proxies that, in patients’ experiences, may turn into identity thieves. In illuminating the multiple positions that data take in such clinical encounters and in patients’ experiences we discuss the ambiguities that arise when patients go wireless. (shrink)

In philosophical studies regarding mathematical models of dynamical systems, instability due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions, on the one side, and instability due to sensitive dependence on model structure, on the other, have by now been extensively discussed. Yet there is a third kind of instability, which by contrast has thus far been rather overlooked, that is also a challenge for model predictions about dynamical systems. This is the numerical instability due to the employment of numerical methods involving a (...) discretization process, where discretization is required to solve the differential equations of dynamical systems on a computer. We argue that the criteria for numerical stability, as usually provided by numerical analysis textbooks, are insufficient, and, after mentioning the promising development of backward analysis, we discuss to what extent, in practice, numerical instability can be controlled or avoided. (shrink)

In this paper, we show how game theoretic work on conversation combined with a theory of discourse structure provides a framework for studying interpretive bias and how bias affects the production and interpretation of linguistic content. We model the influence of author bias on the discourse content and structure of the author’s linguistic production and interpreter bias on the interpretation of ambiguous or underspecified elements of that content and structure. Interpretive bias is an essential feature of learning and understanding but (...) also something that can be exploited to pervert or subvert the truth. We develop three types of games to understand and to analyze a range of interpretive biases, the factors that contribute to them, and their strategic effects. (shrink)

In the context of the mandated phaseout of methyl bromide, California’s strawberry industry has increased its use of chloropicrin, another soil fumigant that has long been on the market. However, due to its 2010 designation as a toxic air contaminant, the US Environmental Protection Agency and California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation have developed enhanced application protocols to mitigate exposures of the chemical to bystanders, nearby residents, and farmworkers. The central feature of these mitigation technologies are enhanced buffer zones between treated (...) fields and nearby buildings. Not only do buffer zones inherently privilege neighbors over farmworkers, but the determinations of the size of these buffer zones are also based on acceptable threshold levels and probabilities that allow significant exposures to those they are designed to protect. Moreover, these protocols require human monitors to detect sensory irritation. While the science and technology studies literature is highly useful for understanding the inextricability of science and politics in developing protective measures and is attentive to what counts as data in setting acceptable thresholds, it tends to overlook that social sorting is intrinsic to such regulation. We thus turn to Foucault’s biopolitics to make sense of regulations that are designed to protect but inherently allow some to become ill. Doing so illuminates how determinations of the bright line are at once technical–political as well as implicit decisions about whose bodies count. (shrink)

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it is timely to ask what continuing role, if any, the concept of sovereignty can and should play in the emerging "new world order." The aim of _Law, Power, and the Sovereign State_ is both to counter the argument that the end of the sovereign state is close at hand and to bring scholarship on sovereignty into the post-Cold War era. The study assesses sovereignty as status and as power and (...) examines the issue of what precisely constitutes a sovereign state. In determining how a political entity gains sovereignty, the authors introduce the requirements of de facto independence and de jure independence and explore the ambiguities inherent in each. They also examine the political process by which the international community formally confers sovereign status. Fowler and Bunck trace the continuing tension of the "chunk and basket" theories of sovereignty through the history of international sovereignty disputes and conclude by considering the usefulness of sovereignty as a concept in the future study and conduct of international affairs. They find that, despite frequent predictions of its imminent demise, the concept of sovereignty is alive and well as the twentieth century draws to a close. (shrink)

Tentant de rompre avec une représentation de la sérendipité comme produit du hasard et de la chance relatifs à « l’esprit scientifique », il s’agit ici d’analyser comment la sérendipité peut être le produit d’une concordance des « temporalités de champs » résultant d’une combinatoire de temps d’habitus, d’activité et d’institution propres à chaque champ. Ces temporalités de champs rythmant leurs luttes pour le monopole de la pratique scientifique, elles constituent un point de concordance entre champs à partir desquels s’agencent (...) les conditions de production et d’identification d’une découverte « par sérendipité ». Une telle approche a, au reste, l’avantage de combler un point aveugle de la littérature sociologique et de proposer une analyse structuraliste du processus de découverte scientifique permettant de l’appréhender comme « pratique coordonnée d’institution ». (shrink)

In 2003 the UK National Blood Service introduced a policy of ‘male donor preference’ which involved women’s plasma being discarded following blood collection. The policy was based on the view that data relating to the incidence of Transfusion-Related Acute Lung Injury (TRALI) was linked to transfusion with women’s plasma. While appearing to treat female donors as equal to male donors, exclusion criteria operate after donation at the stage of processing blood, thus perpetuating myths of universality even though only certain ‘extractions’ (...) from women are retained for use in transfusion. Many women in the UK receive a plasma-derived product called Anti-D immunoglobulin which is manufactured from pooled male plasma. This article examines ways in which gender has significance for understanding blood relations, and how the blood economy is gendered. In our study of relations between blood donors and recipients, we explore how gendered bodies are produced through the discursive and material practices within blood services. We examine both how donation policies and the manufacturing and use of blood products produces gendered blood relations. (shrink)

Comment et en quoi les études sur le genre permettent de retravailler les disciplines scientifiques? Comment la pré-valence de l'androcentrisme des sciences crée des apories au sein des connaissances scientifiques? En quoi le prisme du genre peut-il requestionner les pratiques scientifiques, particulièrement au sein des sciences dites 'dures' et expérimentales? En quoi le genre permet aussi de renouveler ler l'appréhension des pratiques militantes et professionnelles? et ouvrage s'intéresse aux apports du genre, un concept u des sciences humaines et sociales qui (...) tend à s'appliqu r à la réflexion scientifique menée au sein d'autres mondes de la recherche. Cette inclusion permet de pointer les écueils, dans des domaines scientifiques longtemps restés hermétiques aux enjeux du genre. Il rend compte de travaux récents questionnant les enjeux épistémologiques de la critique féministe des sciences, mais aussi portant sur les questions d'identité de genre ainsi que de santé et de contrôle de la sexualité. II réunit des recherches inédites émanant de diverses disciplines scientifiques : pharmacologie, physiologie, biologie, toxicologie, mais aussi sociologie, anthropologie, histoire, droit et philosophie, présentées par des spécialistes des sciences sociales et des études de genre comme par des Fornnières et pionniers ayant relevé le challenge de croiser s enjeux de genre à des objets de recherche nouveaux. Son originalité tient également à l'apport de réflexions croisées sur les enjeux contemporains du genre émanant des pratiques ancrées sur les terrains militants et professionnels."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Our senses are constantly stimulated in our daily lives but we have only a limited understanding of how they affect our cognitive processes and, especially, our autobiographical memory. Capitalizing on a public science event, we conducted the first empirical study that aimed to compare the relative influence of the five senses on the access, temporal distribution, and phenomenological characteristics of autobiographical memories in a sample of about 400 participants. We found that the access and the phenomenological features of memories varied (...) as a function of the type of sensory cues, but not their temporal distribution. With regard to their influence on autobiographical memory, an overlap between some senses was found, with on one hand, olfaction and taste and, on the other, vision, audition, and touch. We discuss these findings in the light of theories of perception, memory, and the self, and consider methodological implications of the sensory cuing technique in memory research, as well as clinical implications for research in psychopathological and neuropsychological populations. (shrink)

Photographers John Shimon and Julie Lindemann use antique cameras, modern lens technology, artificial light, and contemporary pop culture to create portraits of the people in their native state amidst backyards, living rooms, parking lots, and the landscape of Wisconsin. These recent photographs are juxtaposed with portraits from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s permanent collections, including daguerreotype portraits, ambrotypes, and tintypes of anonymous people taken by nineteenth-century photographers, as well with photographs by such well-known artists as Alfred Stieglitz, Sally Mann, Larry (...) Clark, Walker Evans, Nan Goldin, Eugene von Beuenchenhein, and Francis Ford. The pairings of new and old illustrate the legacy of portraiture and the significance of “posing” before the lens, and each image is enriched by its proximity to another, unmasking sitter, photographer, and viewer. Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture includes more than sixty color and black-and-white photographs plus essays by Shimon, Lindemann, and Milwaukee Art Museum curator Lisa Hostetler. (shrink)

In this volume we will focus on how educators in high schools (grades 9-12) can incorporate the teaching of ethics effectively across all disciplines.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning in Dramatic and Virtual Worlds:What Do Students Say About Complementarity and Future Directions?John O'Toole (bio) and Julie Dunn (bio)A top financial backer has arrived to determine which team of computer interaction designers has developed the most exciting and innovative proposal for the Everest component of the Virtually Impossible Computer Company's Conquerors of the World Series. Tension is high as the presentations begin, but this tension soon turns (...) to outright conflict as some proposals suggest George Mallory as the conqueror, and the financial backer will have none of him. The backer, it seems, has her own agenda and is determined to allow for only one view of history—the one that records Sir Edmund Hillary as a New Zealand hero and the only real conqueror of the tallest mountain on earth. The designers become more and more agitated until suddenly someone bangs their hand on the table and calls out, "Hang on... just because you've got the money doesn't mean... kids need to learn about both these men... they need to learn about history." With that the drama is cut by the teacher. The deep understandings about "history's purchased page" that can be generated when drama and computers are brought together for learning have been made explicit... but could these same outcomes have been achieved using just one of these approaches?IntroductionThe research explored within this article was generated as part of the Media Station, a project funded by the Australasian Collaborative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID), with an overall mission to investigate the potential of massively multiplayer online games for learning. This particular subproject, History's Purchased Page, saw researchers from interaction design [End Page 89] and drama education come together with a group of young learners to investigate their perceptions of the complementarity of computers and live classroom drama and to brainstorm future possibilities for applying computer-based technologies to drama-based learning. We sought to discover the following:• What do young learners say about how they experience and value learning in a context involving a combination of drama and computers?• What ideas do these young learners have about how future technologies might enrich the complementarity of this combination?As the drama researchers involved in this project, we had been experimenting with this perhaps slightly unusual combination for over a decade by incorporating computers into a number of our drama units within our primary textbook Pretending to Learn.1 Our goal in these experimentations had always been to enrich the classroom drama experience by taking advantage of the information capacity of the Internet and other computer-based resources, including databases. For example, we had used The First Fleet Database2 to support a drama unit where the learners take on the role of convicts arriving in Australia in 1788. We discovered that this material, combined with other documentation and historical materials available via the Internet, greatly enhanced not only the historical accuracy of the work but also the level of engagement experienced by the learners when in role. Therefore, we were very keen to extend this work by exploring new possibilities and were especially keen to develop a better understanding of what the learners made of this interactivity.In recent years the partnering of these two quite different approaches to learning has developed quite a research following, and a number of drama teachers and researchers have become interested in the complementarity of these ways of learning.3 At the same time, researchers and designers from the field of computer-assisted learning have also noted these connections. This goes back to the work of Brenda Laurel, who first drew attention to the intriguing links between computers and theatre in her now famous text Computers as Theatre.4 With the rapid growth of interactive learning tools such as 3-D immersive worlds, blogs, and online voice and text chat spaces, the opportunities for exploration of these connections have also grown, with each of these offering exciting new possibilities when used in conjunction with the highly interactive and engaging strategies of process drama.Process drama is a way of group learning, through whole-class improvised drama, with students (and sometimes the... (shrink)

People struggle with religion and spirituality in several ways, including challenges in trusting God, confronting supernatural evil, tolerating other perspectives on religion, maintaining moral propriety, finding existential meaning, and managing religious doubt. These religious and spiritual struggles relate to both physical and mental health independently of other religious and distress factors. Causality in this connection needs further study, but evidence supports many potential causes and moderators of the link between R/S struggle and health. These include personality, social, and environmental influences, (...) including traumatic experiences and subcultural differences. Many theoretical questions remain unresolved, including how change in R/S struggle can predict or be predicted by change in health and other connected constructs, and how one might intervene to aid those who struggle with religious or spiritual challenges. Nonetheless, research momentum has grown, having already produced a wealth of information that underscores the need for greater attention to this domain. R/S struggle poses an important exception to generally positive overall associations between religion and well-being, though even R/S struggle may promote growth. This review offers a brief introduction to emerging psychological theory and research on R/S struggle with an emphasis on its relevance to wellness and illness. (shrink)

This article discusses the discourses of disability through a parallel `disabling' of its own text. It draws on literary as well as sociological sources in order to interrogate the nature and relations of the `tragic', the `heroic' and the `comic'. The authors offer the conclusion that the comic is never quite absent from the discourse of tragedy (after Kundera), and turn that insight back on their own text, in an attempt to refuse the solemnities and closures of their own narrative.

The classic model of blood pressure regulation by Guyton et al. (Annu Rev Physiol 34:13–46, 1972a; Ann Biomed Eng 1:254–281, 1972b) set a new standard for quantitative exploration of physiological function and led to important new insights, some of which still remain the focus of debate, such as whether the kidney plays the primary role in the genesis of hypertension (Montani et al. in Exp Physiol 24:41–54, 2009a; Exp Physiol 94:382–388, 2009b; Osborn et al. in Exp Physiol 94:389–396, 2009a; Exp (...) Physiol 94:388–389, 2009b). Key to the success of this model was the fact that the authors made the computer code (in FORTRAN) freely available and eventually provided a convivial user interface for exploration of model behavior on early microcomputers (Montani et al. in Int J Bio-med Comput 24:41–54, 1989). Ikeda et al. (Ann Biomed Eng 7:135–166, 1979) developed an offshoot of the Guyton model targeting especially the regulation of body fluids and acid–base balance; their model provides extended renal and respiratory functions and would be a good basis for further extensions. In the interest of providing a simple, useable version of Ikeda et al.’s model and to facilitate further such extensions, we present a practical implementation of the model of Ikeda et al. (Ann Biomed Eng 7:135–166, 1979), using the ODE solver Berkeley Madonna. (shrink)

To study the interaction of forces that produce chest wall motion, we propose a model based on the lever system of Hillman and Finucane :951–961, 1987) and introduce some dynamic properties of the respiratory system. The passive elements are considered as elastic compartments linked to the open air via a resistive tube, an image of airways. The respiratory muscles force is applied to both compartments. Parameters of the model are identified in using experimental data of airflow signal measured by pneumotachography (...) and rib cage and abdomen signals measured by respiratory inductive plethysmography on eleven healthy volunteers in five conditions: at rest and with four level of added loads. A breath by breath analysis showed, whatever the individual and the condition are, that there are several breaths on which the airflow simulated by our model is well fitted to the airflow measured by pneumotachography as estimated by a determination coefficient R2 ≥ 0.70. This very simple model may well represent the behaviour of the chest wall and thus may be useful to interpret the relative motion of rib cage and abdomen during quiet breathing. (shrink)

Abstract:Given the distinctiveness of its urban and civic spaces and of the famously strong but also complex sense of civic identity among its populace, sixteenth century Venice is a prime case study for applying spatial thinking when imagining the deliberate construction of space and the relationship of inhabitants to that space; in particular, the relationship between those in power and those without power as indicative throughout the cityscape. The formation and development of central features of Venetian urban space and identity, (...) since maritime topography constrained its urban space, created an unusually cohesive sense of civic identity linked to mythic historical memory. Looking through an interdisciplinary lens, theories of space offer a conceptual framework for imagining how the Venetian cityscape was created and evolved into one of the most diverse and unique cityscapes in the sixteenth century. (shrink)

Gauz revient dans cet entretien sur son dernier roman, Camarade Papa, lequel a reçu le Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire en 2018. Il nous ouvre des chemins pour mieux le lire. Celui de raconter une histoire de l’Histoire, à hauteur d’hommes, adultes ou enfants, pleine de beauté, d’idéaux et de liberté. Celui de sortir de la couleur pour retrouver la capacité de ravissement et défendre les façons de parler comme cultures et armes politiques. Celui de nommer la beauté de l’espoir (...) des migrants, qui sont des « super espérants ». (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Personal Narratives: Parenting Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Through the Transition to AdulthoodCatherine Cornell, Julie Herren, Susan Osborne, and Kelly WeissTransition years: From Learning, Living and Loving to Maintenance and MediocrityCatherine CornellWhat does every parent of an autistic child worry about the most? For those of us with severely affected children, the answer to that question is: “Who will care for my child and keep her safe when (...) I am gone?”I drove my daughter back to her “group home” for a scheduled drop off on Saturday. There was only one car in the driveway and the house van was gone. Lily was not happy about returning “home.” Agitated, she opened the door to the car, almost before it was stopped, ran to the back of the house, and up the fire escape stairs to the door of her third floor bathroom, as if she was avoiding going through the main living rooms of the house. I called up to her that there was no one at home and she came back down and pushed through the unlocked door. Racing ahead of me, she was already shed of her clothes and in the shower: her self–calming method that she used whenever returning to the house. Thirty minutes later, after three attempts to leave the shower and throwing up in the shower, she dressed and ran back out to our car. I played her favorite music, attempting to calm her anxiety. This transition, from home to “group home,” was increasingly difficult due to recent changes in staff and housemates. Having no one there to greet her was ratcheting up the anxiety level for both of us.When the on–call manager came, Lily was so distraught that I asked for her medications and took her back home with me. Two days later she was calm enough and I was reassured enough to return her to the house. Somehow the house manager made the incident my fault. Perhaps I did react strongly, but on reflection, what triggered the strong reaction in me was the insecurity I felt at finding no one home. It seemed like a breach of trust. Like we were left, abandoned, our plans shattered and at the mercy of fate. Strong emotions for a little mix–up in communications (if that is what it was) but, nevertheless, there it is—how I felt and more to the point how my daughter felt.I relate this story because it illustrates what has changed the most about our lives since Lily left her school and entered the world of adult services: missing is the feeling of trust and security that responsible caring people would keep Lily safe when my husband and I cannot.My 25–year–old daughter Lily has severe autism. She was the most beautiful and easy baby imaginable and appeared to develop normally until she began to lose speech and have night terrors at 15 months of age. She was diagnosed initially with atypical autism, then pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, and finally with autism at age four.From age four to twenty–two, she attended a specialized school for autism where she received age level academics, therapies for speech, and training in self–care and independent living. She did not do well in academics nor did she regain her lost speech. She did learn to care for herself with assistance and, as important, she gained social and behavioral skills and learned to live with others in a social way. She [End Page E1] also learned recreational and vocational skills that would be transferrable to the community, such as bicycle riding, rollerblading, swimming and jogging. The philosophy of her school was to build self–esteem and confidence by teaching music, art and physical skills—in small steps, ensuring success, and then building on those skills.In her last year at school, Lily was a happy and well–adjusted member of her small group of five young women living in a town house with support from trained school staff. She participated in job programs, earning money by recycling and working for Meals–On–Wheels. She went out into the community with her group... (shrink)

The rediscovery of Aristotle’s works on syllogisms in the Latin world, especially the Sophistici Elenchi and then the Prior Analytics, gave rise to sophisticated views on the nature of syllogistic form and syllogistic matter in the thirteenth century. It led to debates on the ontology of the syllogism as studied in the Prior Analytics, i.e. the syllogism made of letters and the four logical constants a/e/i/o, with deep consequences on the definition of logic as a universal method for all sciences (...) and as a science itself. (shrink)

_In _Challenging the One Best System_, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the “portfolio management model.”_ They investigate the degree to which this model—a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy—challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as “the one best system.” The authors examine the design and enactment of the portfolio (...) management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model—planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports—and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices. Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, _Challenging the One Best System_ represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education. (shrink)

There is limited research into the situations of people living with precarious status in Canada, which includes people whose legal status is in-process, undocumented, or unauthorized, many of whom entered the country with a temporary resident visa, through family sponsorship arrangements, or as refugee claimants. In 2005, a community-university alliance sought to carry out a research study of the lived experiences of people living with precarious status. In this paper, we describe our negotiation of the ethics review process at a (...) Canadian university and the ethical, legal, and methodological issues that emerged. Although being able to guarantee our participants complete confidentiality was essential to the viability of the project due to their vulnerability to detention or deportation, we discovered that the Canadian legal framework limited us to being able to offer them confidentiality “to the fullest extent possible by law.” One way to overcome this conflict would have been through the construction of a Wigmore defence, in which we would document that the research would not be possible without assurance of our participants’ confidentiality. Such a defence would be tested in court if our research records were subpoenaed by immigration enforcement authorities. Rather than take the risk that this defence would not be successful and would result in our participants being deported, we altered the research methods from using multiple interviews to establish trust (which would have required that we store participants’ contact information) to meeting participants only once to discuss their experiences of living with precarious legal status in Canada. Our encounter with the ‘myth of confidentiality’ raised questions about the policing of knowledge production. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aesthetics in Feminist PerspectiveJulie Van CampAesthetics in Feminist Perspective, edited by Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer; xv & 252 pp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, $39.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.Has feminism been hijacked by one lock-step agenda, suppressing all dialogue and debate? Far from it, judging from this collection of seventeen essays on feminist aesthetics. The first such collection in English, it includes eleven essays previously published in Hypatia (...) (1990).This well-organized volume offers both broad theoretical considerations and applications to specific art forms, diverse methodological perspectives, and healthy debate among the contributors. The section on “The Nature of Art: Some Feminist Alternatives” considers feminist perspectives as alternatives to traditional concepts of art, motivated by considerations of the art of women. Skepticism abounds in the section on “Interpretation and Point of View” concerning a “universal” or “paradigmatic” female voice in literature, film, and visual art. “Philosophical and Critical Legacies” reveals diverse feminist readings of Kant, Nietzsche, Cartesian metaphysics, and postmodernism.Co-editor Hilde Hein proposes that aesthetics provides a promising road map for feminist philosophy and indeed philosophy generally. Aesthetics has learned to reject foundationalism and essentialism in favor of pluralism, a necessity in the face of the astonishing diversity and ever-changing landscape in contemporary art. This theoretical transition in aesthetics shows how philosophy could fruitfully shed the false security of essentialism to embrace the sometimes raucous pluralism of methods, races, cultures, and genders assaulting all humanities disciplines in recent decades. As co-editor Carolyn Korsmeyer notes, feminist scholarship challenges “the mask of universality and gender-neutrality” (p. vii). [End Page 178]The myth that feminist scholarship is merely thinly veiled political action, devoid of intellectual integrity, is shattered by this collection. Well-represented is the diversity of analytic and European methodologies that enrich contemporary philosophical dialogue. Many of the articles scrutinize the nature of “feminism” itself, as well as appropriate methodologies and questions. The interdisciplinarity of feminist research also is in welcome evidence, with seven essays by scholars from English, African-American studies, music, and psychology.Should feminist art and aesthetics be “nondominative”? Should it “endorse” female experience? Do proposals for “ideal” feminist artistic expression inadvertently retreat to the essentialism and uniformity that feminists have sought to dispel? Should feminists reject the tradition of “formalism” in favor of an approach that re-integrates art with the community and the concerns of daily life? This perspective is widespread today in postmodern thought, but feminist considerations bolster the case made elsewhere for the fall of the so-called elite object.Are there distinctive features that mark the work of female artists, such as group participation, rather than performances for passive audiences? This feature is pervasive in contemporary art, from the happenings of Andy Warhol in the 1960s to the “Messiah” sing-alongs popular for decades. Is feminist art marked by a melding of aesthetic and erotic elements? Surely that is also a trait of the art of most cultures, by men as well as women.These explorations reveal a paradox in today’s feminism. In highlighting female traits (such as the virtues of being caring and nondominating), are women being celebrated, liberated, and freed? Or are they frozen into roles which not all women consider their most important attributes as persons?Female artists and theorists deserve enormous credit for encouraging a re-thinking of the ways in which art is created and understood, but many other forces drive these developments as well. Indeed, some of the harshest critics of analytic philosophy are analytic philosophers steeped in that tradition, both male and female. It seems a pointless chicken-and-egg exercise to wonder if feminists caused this re-thinking or were one of several groups in a happy confluence of re-examination from various perspectives. Fortunately, the issue need not be resolved for scholars and students to appreciate this outstanding volume.Julie Van CampCalifornia State University, Long BeachCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Nik Byle argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer theologically adapts Heideggerian concepts about human existence such as temporality. Bonhoeffer is thus able to provide a positive account of Christ’s relation to time and history moving, Bonhoeffer beyond impasses found in both dialectical and liberal theology.

Heidegger scholarship has done an admirable job accounting for Luther’s influence on key Heideggerian concepts such as his method of destruction and anxiety. Yet given Heidegger’s statements concerning Luther’s immense personal and philosophical importance, it is likely that Luther’s influence extends further and deeper than might first appear. I argue that this influence also manifests in Heidegger’s concept of authentic existence. In particular, I argue that Luther’s understanding of Christian freedom and servitude form ontic material from which Heidegger draws to (...) come to his general ontological understanding of Dasein’s freedom as power over its existence and servitude to its communal involvements. As Luther understands the freedom of a Christian, everything comes to aid the Christian in salvation, much like Dasein gains power over its existential possibilities in coming to authenticity. Yet this newly created freedom also creates additional ontological or existential connections with one’s community. The consequence of such connections is the addition of new responsibilities, or form of servitude, to one’s community wherein one aids others in coming to faith or authenticity, respectively. (shrink)

Recent debates about inequality have focused almost exclusively on the distribution of wealth and disparities in income, but little notice has been paid to the distribution of free time. Free time is commonly assumed to be a matter of personal preference, a good that one chooses to have more or less of. Even if there is unequal access to free time, the cause and solution are presumed to lie with the resources of income and wealth. In Free Time, Julie (...) Rose argues that these views are fundamentally mistaken. First, Rose contends that free time is a resource, like money, that one needs in order to pursue chosen ends. Further, realizing a just distribution of income and wealth is not sufficient to ensure a fair distribution of free time. Because of this, anyone concerned with distributive justice must attend to the distribution of free time. On the basis of widely held liberal principles, Rose explains why citizens are entitled to free time—time not committed to meeting life's necessities and instead available for chosen pursuits. The novel argument that the just society must guarantee all citizens their fair share of free time provides principled grounds to address critical policy choices, including work hours regulations, Sunday closing laws, public support for caregiving, and the pursuit of economic growth. Delving into an original topic that touches everyone, Free Time demonstrates why all citizens have, in the words of early labor reformers, a right to "hours for what we will.". (shrink)