Based on an analysis of 137 texts written by pupils, this paper examines pupils? humour directed at teachers, its types and social functions. The collected data are divided into three categories that describe different modes of teachers as targets of pupils? humour. The first mode describes teachers as unintentionally comical, the second as duped by their pupils and the third as intentional users of humour. The analysis focuses on different functions that pupils? humour directed at teachers fulfils in the social (...) life of the classroom. The paper concludes by showing how key functions of social humour (such as creation of solidarity, negotiation of power and realisation of personal needs) are connected to the three modes of pupils? humour directed at teachers. (shrink)

Sometimes it seems that our traditional Christian churches - both different and identical denominations - do not share any insignificant differences in rituals, but the abyss. For, agree, believing in one God, the God of mercy and forgiveness, in one Holy Scripture that includes the New Testament, it is not possible to be at war with one another as some Christian Churches in Ukraine are at odds today.

Justice is a contested concept. There are many different and competing conceptions, i.e. interpretations of the concept. Different domains of justice deal with different fields of application of justice claims, such as structural justice, distributive justice, participatory justice or recognition. We present a formal conceptual structure of justice applicable to all these domains. We show that conceptions of justice can be described by specifying the following conceptual elements: the judicandum, the community of justice including claim holders and claim addressees, their (...) claims, the informational base for the assessment, the principles of justice, and on a more practical level, the instruments of justice. By specifying these conceptual elements of justice, it is possible to analyse and compare different conceptions of justice, to assess their internal consistency, to explore new definitions of justice in an analytical way, and to explicate an idea of justice in a manner that provides concrete links to the relevant context. (shrink)

In this paper the author developes an account of the issues of post-modernism. This account is then used to discuss the difference between the concept of philosophy as knowledge or as "Weltanschauung". The author offers a critique of the post-modern philosophy and argues that, post-modernism does not distinguish epistemology from social ethics topics. All topisc are considered in relation to the situation of philosophy in Slovakia.

This book describes the state of astrobiology in Europe today and its relation to the European society at large. With contributions from authors in more than 20 countries and over 30 scientific institutions worldwide, the document illustrates the societal implications of astrobiology and the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to European society. The book has two main objectives: 1. It recommends the establishment of a European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) as an answer to a series of challenges relating to astrobiology (...) but also European research, education, and society at large. 2. It also acknowledges the societal implications of astrobiology, and thus the role of the social sciences and humanities in optimizing the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to the lives of the people of Europe and the challenges they face. (shrink)

The paper examines the nature of the social fact in social knowledge on the background of the differences between sciences and social sciences. The approach applied is historical , as well as one based on differentiating between Humean conception of fact and the conceptions, in which facts are seen as determining the truth values of our propositions. Underlined are the intentionality and structure of social facts in terms of Searle’s construction of the social as well as the weakness of his (...) conception. In conclusion it is asserted that the construction of facts in social sciences is impossible without psychological vocabulary and concepts, whose contents are conceived – contrary to Searle’s internalism – in terms of externalism. (shrink)

The David Lewis’s article concerns the issue of penal substitution in the dual context of the contemporary system of criminal law, in which punishment does not perform a compensatory function, and in the context of the Christian interpretation of Christ’s death as Atonement. It may seem that we do not believe in penal substitution, but in fact we do believe in it selectively. There are Christians who believe that Christ’s death is a payment of the debt of punishment owed by (...) the sinners, but do not believe that a murderer’s friend can serve on his behalf a death sentence. Most of us believe in penal substitution with reference to fines but not other kinds of punishment. In both cases the beliefs concerning penal substitution are clearly inconsistent. However, if selective acceptance of penal substitution is so common, perhaps it makes sense after all. (shrink)

Observing dance improvisation provides a unique opportunity to understand how people collaborate together while creating. It is an opportunity to consider how new ideas appear, not simply from the internal processes of a single creator but rather from the interactions between the minds, bodies and the environment acting on and between a group of improvising dancers. Improvisational scores served in this study as a laboratory into group creativity. Using a video-stimulated recall method, which asks dancers to reflect upon their own (...) processes just after completing the score, I explored the interdependency between meta-cognitive strategies such as imagery and sense awareness, group processes, the role of others in one’s own creative processes, and interactions between bodies and with the environment. As a result I describe how dancers build together a common improvisational space, which allows them to co-create and share their ideas mostly in non-verbal, non-propositional ways. I discuss the co-agency of such a process, showing that intentionality is distributed between dancers at each moment of improvisation and that they are mainly focused on supporting the ideas of others. I also discuss the medium of the body and the embodied response as central to dance improvisation practice. (shrink)

To deal with the upcoming challenges and complexity of the nursing profession, it is deemed important to reflect on our current organization of care. However, before starting to rethink the organization of nursing care, an overview of important elements concerning nursing care organization, more specifically nursing models, is necessary. The aim of this study was to conduct a mapping review, accompanied by an evidence map to map the existing literature, to map the field of knowledge on a meta‐level and to (...) identify current research gaps concerning nursing models in a hospital setting. Next to nursing models, two other organizational correlates seem to be of importance when looking at the organization of nursing care: nurse staffing and skill mix. Although it seems that in recent research, the theoretical focus on the organization of nursing care has been left behind, the increasingly complex healthcare environment might gain from the use of nursing theory, or in this case, care delivery models. As almost no fundamental studies have been done toward the combination of care delivery models, nurse staffing, and skill mix, those elements should be taken into account to fully capture the organization of nursing care in future research. (shrink)

Previous studies have emphasized a person’s biological sex as a factor which influences online search behavior. This study aims to investigate how people search online for political information and if gendered online search exists. We examined online search behavior via eye tracking while the participants searched for information about political party positions on the Internet. A content analysis of the eye tracking data followed and was evaluated with a special focus on the role of biological sex and social gender, and (...) the relationship of both factors with other variables, such as self-reported prior political knowledge, political interest, and Internet skills. The results accord with previous studies in that the sex influences the online search process. However, this relationship was partially mediated by self-reported political interest and prior knowledge. This outcome calls for a more critical use of the sex variable in reference to political online search behavior, and the inclusion of sex and gender related variables. (shrink)

The author argues that the moral of the Frankfurt stories is this: if causal determinism rules out moral responsibility, it is not in virtue of eliminating alternative possibilities, and replies the most important challenge to this claim, namely an argument called “The Dilemma Defense.”.

This dissertation aims to develop a program resource for helping and mental health professionals to foster proactive coping and diminish dysfunctional coping from work stressors. Professionals succumb to chronic stressors and secondary traumatic stress due to their vocation, often disregarding self-care. Should this type of resource be implemented, psychological and social resources would be required. The need for proactive coping is a generally accepted concept, but helping and mental health professionals often lack resources, limiting advocacy and resilience. Self-help resources are (...) frequently perceived as self-indulgence, in addition to the concept that professionals provide care, not the clients receiving care. Moreover, victimization by stigmas and emotional contagion surrounds helping and mental health professions. Addressing these concerns by implementing an accessible and advocate-heavy website may mitigate experienced ramifications by increasing retention, psychological well-being, resilience, and support. Most importantly, it may reduce maladaptive behaviors and standardize professional self-care. (shrink)

In the present study, we explored the role of liking in the social induction of affect. Dispositional likeability was manipulated by written reports describing a sender as a likeable or dislikeable character. Afterwards participants watched short videos presenting the sender displaying happy or sad emotional expressions. We expected that exposure to the likeable sender would lead to reactions concordant with his emotional expression, whereas exposure to the dislikeable sender would result in discordant reactions. The results indicated that dispositional likeability influenced (...) the social induction of affect when the sender expressed positive emotions. Moreover, liking mediated the effects of the happy sender’s dispositional likeability on participants’ affective state. Exposure to the sad sender, however, led to assimilation regardless of the sender’s dispositional likeability. (shrink)

Since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005, interest has increased in cultural ecosystem services (CESs) research to understand the complexity of the non-material benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. The intangible and interactive characteristics of CESs present many challenges regarding how to approach, quantify and even define CESs. In this paper, we suggest looking at CESs through the lens of embodied and situated cognition theories. We advocate that such an approach should be applied to the development stage of CES research (...) projects, as the embodied and situated experience of the site aids the development of research questions and future interventions. We described a case study—namely, the Environmental Empathy Research Challenge, which took place during the ColLaboratoire 2020 Research Residency in the Philippines. This case shows how interactive, embodied and situated workshops, such as Embodied Empathy and Walking Maps, contributed to developing a research proposal and a novel research framework, ecological embodied cognition (EEC). EEC focuses on the concept of environmental empathy to redefine the human-environment relationship. Further, based on an example of a participatory research activity, Sensing-Playing-Moving, we examined how interventions founded upon EEC principles enhance environmental empathy. (shrink)

The concept of corporate citizenship as a form of corporate social responsibility theory challenged the traditionally accepted socio‐economic division of labor between government and corporations. Although the concept has been around for decades, its validity and applicability are still a matter of debate, with attention to the “chameleon” nature of the concept. Therefore, this paper defines and applies a conceptual framework to examine whether corporate social and political engagement is necessary and, if so, in what form it is beneficial for (...) both the company and society. This is the objective of the present study. The method used in this paper is critical analysis, i.e. the evaluation of arguments both pro and con, and the comparison of these arguments with empirical evidence within the defined conceptual framework. The study shows that the demand for corporate activism is contradictory, so companies need to determine whose interests they represent or balance between different expectations. In addition to analyzing and evaluating corporate activism from a specific conceptual framework, the novelty of the study lies in its differentiated approach to corporate citizenship according to the scope of the companies and in the corresponding proposal for a new socio‐economic division of labor between governments and corporations. (shrink)

The active transition to digital civilization coincided with the pandemic of the new coronavirus. It can be assumed that it was the pandemic that accelerated this process. In any case, people immediately faced to new phenomena, which can affect both physical and social health. Many phenomena, including both digitalization and pandemic, have not been explained and properly assessed yet. Absence of proper explanation and assessment creates a fertile field for insurance, doubts and mistakes. Therefore at the present time the evaluative (...) and explanatory role of bioethics is invaluable. But a paradoxical situation arises: the more bioethics help is needed, the less attention is paid to its development. The transfer of bioethics study for medical students into a distance format eliminates its communicative meanings and deprives future doctors of the opportunity to develop skills and competencies in medicine. Something must be done in order not to lose the achievements of the national training system in the field of bioethics. Certain suggestions are expressed in the article. (shrink)

The paper draws on Sperber's thesis, according to which the social and historical sciences are a free alliance of various research programs with various objectives. One of the most expanded of these programs is interpretativism. Although the author acknowledges various interpretative approaches , she focuses solely on the contextual interpretation. She defines it in the light of the difference between the thick and thin descriptions , analyzes the conditions and the chracteristics of the interpretation . The attention is paid also (...) to the consequences of Davidson´s radical interpretation for the interpretativism as well as to his conception, according to which reasons are not only causes, but also explanatory of what people do. Although the author sees the interpretation as an effective method in social and historical knowledge, its validity, its evidence and its intersubjective objectivity still remain open to questioning. (shrink)

Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress contributes significantly to the literary debate on the definition of whiteness. The socio-historical construction of whiteness emerging from the novel is amplified by white imagery dovetailing with the claims made about white people directly. For the African American first person narrator, Easy Rawlins, living in post-World War II Los Angeles, whiteness mostly spells terror. The oppressive faces of whiteness consist in the following trajectories: property relations, economic exploitation, labour relations, the legal system, different (...) miens of oppressive white masculinity denigrating blackness, spatial dynamics of post-World War II Los Angeles and the white apparatus of power that the narrator needs to confront throughout the novel. White imagery carried to the extreme magnifies the terrorizing aspect of whiteness in the narrative. Like many authors of colour, Mosley associates whiteness with death. Whiteness inundates Easy Rawlins from all sides, entailing insincerity, dishonesty, interestedness and hypocrisy. (shrink)

There is a growing focus on public health initiatives that prioritise well-being. The main question of our study is whether this, in its current form, can really represent a new response to the challenges of previous strategies, or whether there is a greater chance that it will essentially reproduce the problems associated with the paradoxical situation of public health. Based on a review, analysis and evaluation of the literature on well-being in public health, we outlined the foundations of a new (...) meta-theory of well-being and a possibility for its social application. In our view, well-being is seen as a social representation of a combination of positive and negative freedom of choice concerning the quality of everyday life, used in a positioning process involving both individual and collective aspects. Health is a particular aspect of the social representation and positioning of well-being, which encompasses aspects of the physical, psychological, social and spiritual functioning of individuals. The well-being meta-theory also opens up the possibility for more effective solutions to the social challenges related to well-being and salutogenetic health. It underscores the importance of the need for a dedicated social subsystem where the goals and organizational culture of the organizations involved are focused on well-being and health promotion. In our study, we consider this to be the Public Well-being System (PWS). (shrink)

The concept of love has emerged as a central topic for philosophical and theoretical discussion over the past few years. Whereas the dominant ideology of love in contemporary culture insists that love be understood as a discovery of my long lost second half with whom I merge and finally recreate a whole, contemporary philosophers and theorists have stressed the need to reconsider the concept of love within an ethical framework that can sustain the idea of the other as forever different (...) and separate. Taking as a starting point two different taxi scenes offered by Foucault and Woolf respectively, the article outlines and discusses those two contemporary love grammars, focusing on the concepts of lack and fantasy. Whereas Woolf’s taxi scene is reminiscent of a notion of love as a fantasy of unification, Foucault’s notion of love not only observes the need to maintain the other’s specificity and separateness, but also considers lack and fantasy to be primary and fundamental parts of love as lived experience. While Foucault insists on pleasure and action he also observes the central and unavoidable power of imagination that is attributed the name and function of recollection. The article finally addresses the question of if and how we might be responsible for our daydreams and fantasies. (shrink)

The future of work has become a pressing matter of concern: Researchers, business consultancies, and industrial companies are intensively studying how new work models could be best implemented to increase workplace flexibility and creativity. In particular, the agile model has become one of the “must-have” elements for re-organizing work practices, especially for technology development work. However, the implementation of agile work often comes together with strong presumptions: it is regarded as an inevitable tool that can be universally integrated into different (...) workplaces while having the same outcome of flexibility, transparency, and flattened hierarchies everywhere. This paper challenges such essentializing assumptions by turning agile work into a “matter of care.” We argue that care work occurs in contexts other than feminized reproductive work, namely, technology development. Drawing on concepts from feminist Science and Technology Studies and ethnographic research at agile technology development workplaces in Germany and Kenya, we examine what work it takes to actually keep up with the imperative of agile work. The analysis brings the often invisibilized care practices of human and nonhuman actors to the fore that are necessary to enact and stabilize the agile promises of flexibilization, co-working, and rapid prototyping. Revealing the caring sociotechnical relationships that are vital for working agile, we discuss the emergence of power asymmetries characterized by hierarchies of skills that are differently acknowledged in the daily work of technology development. The paper ends by speculating on the emancipatory potential of a care perspective, by which we seek to inspire careful Emancipatory Technology Studies. (shrink)

This special issue of AVANT is all about Cognitive Innovation. It is not about CogNovo, the interdisciplinary and international doctoral training programme that produced three different Off the Lip events. It is not about Off the Lip 2017, the novel symposium format we developed to collaboratively create a publication resulting in this special issue of AVANT. It is not about the seemingly heterogeneous collection of papers that follow this preface. Collaborative Approaches to Cognitive Innovation required something else, something we are (...) starting to capture in the four GIFT principles. While this special issue is not solely about CogNovo, Off the Lip events, or the content of the following submissions, all these aforementioned elements were necessary to shape our current understanding of Cognitive Innovation, the very process which led to numerous publications, exhibitions, and events during the past three years. In a sense, all of our previous endeavours have culminated in this collection of 26 distinct pieces of work, yet we hope and believe that this special issue also marks a beginning. Let us explain. [...]. (shrink)

Research objective: identify ways to improve the training process of athletes-veterans of the group "Health" in handball; determine the place of psychological training and its component - mental training in the training process of athletes-veterans of the group "Health" in handball; experimental testing of the dynamics of technical and tactical readiness of athletes, indicating the effectiveness of determining ways to improve the process under study.

Swedish beef and dairy farmers are currently facing a challenging financial situation. Simultaneously, beef farming contributes significant environmental impacts. To support farmers, actors from the whole value chain are now promoting Swedish beef as particularly ‘sustainable’. The paper draws on critical discourse analysis of interviews with and documents from the largest Swedish supermarket chain ICA, Swedish farmer organisations and farmers to study how ICA and farmers articulate sustainability and their responsibility for the same. Articulations are subsequently discussed in the light (...) of actual environmental impacts of beef production and the distribution of power in the beef value chain. The findings suggest that negative environmental impacts and farmers’ struggles are largely hidden in the dominant articulation of sustainability. Furthermore, ICA does not use the power it has to steer consumers toward reduced beef consumption. We conclude with suggesting more open deliberation about current levels of beef sales and consumption and about what compromises to make when striving for ‘sustainable’ beef consumption. (shrink)