Age attitudes and age stereotypes in the workplace can lead to discrimination and impaired productivity. Previous studies have predominantly assessed age stereotypes with explicit measures. However, sole explicit measurement is insufficient because of social desirability and potential inaccessibility of stereotypical age evaluations to introspection. We aimed to advance the implicit and explicit assessment of work-related evaluations of age groups and age stereotypes and report data collected in three samples: students ( n = 50), older adults ( n = 53), and (...) workers ( n = 93). Evaluative age attitudes were measured implicitly with an Implicit Association Test. Regardless of group, age, and condition (neutral or semantically biased stimuli), the results confirm a stable, moderate implicitly measurable preference for younger over older workers. Whereas explicit measures of general age preferences showed no clear age preference, differentiated explicit measures of work-related age stereotypes also revealed stable preferences in all three samples: Younger workers were rated higher on performance and adaptability and older workers were rated higher on competence, reliability, and warmth. The explicit-implicit correlations were relatively low. Although explicit work-related age stereotypes are differentiated, the stable implicitly measured age bias raises concern. We suggest to apply implicit and explicit measures in the field of ageism in the workplace. (shrink)

This article argues that, at first, there appears to be little space for feminism in Virilio's general critique of the loss of physical and mental territories under the impact of technologies and teletechnologies. Allusions to women are mainly taken up in general arguments about progressive immobilization of humans. One exception, however, is a recurring passage of woman as carrier of man. This scene makes of woman a privileged mediator between immanence and movement and, through the introduction of Eros, even between (...) physical, grounded space and ungrounded mobility. (shrink)

Pylyshyn raises hot topics like the number and kinds of pictorialist theories there are and their explanatory power. Pylyshyn states that pictorialists have only two possibilities – they can posit either “only functional” images or “really spatial” images – and that neither of these possibilities is convincing or sufficient in explanatory power for empirical and theoretical reasons. Is pictorialism, in principle, untenable?

Verzeihen bedeutet Verzicht. Als ein zeitlicher Verzicht auf Tilgung von Schuld entzieht sich das Verzeihen dem Macht- und Möglichkeitsbereich normativ regulierbarer Handlungen und bildet die Grundlage für eine Ethik der Urteilsenthaltung. Verena Rauen weist in ihrer Studie das Verzeihen als Quellpunkt der ethischen Zeit aus. Das Verzeihen interveniert in den Schuldzusammenhang der kontinuierlichen Zeit der Geschichte und ermöglicht ethische, d.h. neue und nicht durch vorherige Schuld bestimmte Handlungen. Eine solche zeitliche Unterbrechung der Kausalverkettung der Schuld kann sich nur durch (...) einen Verzicht auf das moralische Urteil ereignen, der einen Wiederanfang in der Beziehung mit dem Anderen stets von neuem ermöglicht. So eröffnet das Verzeihen den ethischen Zeitraum des Zusammenlebens angesichts der nicht wiedergutzumachenden Schuld der Vergangenheit und der Ungewissheit der Zukunft - es bildet den konstitutiven Ursprung der Ethik. (shrink)

In accordance with societal norms and values, consumers readily indicate their positive attitudes toward sustainability. However, they hardly take sustainability into account when engaging in exchange relationships with companies. To shed light on this paradox, this paper investigates whether defense mechanisms and the more specific concept of neutralization techniques can explain the discrepancy between societal norms and actual behavior. A multi-method qualitative research design provides rich insights into consumers’ underlying cognitive processes and how they make sense of their attitude–behavior divergences. (...) Drawing on the Ways Model of account-taking, which is advanced to a Cycle Model, the findings illustrate how neutralization strategies are used to legitimize inconsistencies between norm-conforming attitudes and actual behavior. Furthermore, the paper discusses how the repetitive reinforcement of neutralizing patterns and feedback loops between individuals and society are linked to the rise of anomic consumer behavior. (shrink)

Ecopolitics is a study of environmental awareness--or non-awareness--in contemporary French theory. Arguing that it is now impossible not to think in an ecological way, Verena Andermatt Conley traces the roots of today's concern for the environment back to the intellectual climate of the late '50s and '60s. Major thinkers of 1968, the author argues, changed the way we think the world; this owes much to an ecological awareness that remains at the heart of issues concerning cultural theory in general. (...) The book points to critiques of ecology in the work of Luc Ferry and Jean Baudrillard before turning to more complicated ecological awareness primarily in French thought. The author considers key texts by influential figures such as Michael Serres, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Michel de Certeau, Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

Smart Cities consist of a multitude of interconnected devices and services to, among others, enhance efficiency, comfort, and safety. To achieve these aims, smart cities rely on an interplay of measures including the deployment of interventions targeted to foster certain human behaviors, such as saving energy, or collecting and exchanging sensor and user data. Both aspects have ethical implications, e.g., when it comes to intervention design or the handling of privacy-related data such as personal information, user preferences or geolocations. Resulting (...) concerns must be taken seriously, as they reduce user acceptance and can even lead to the abolition of otherwise promising Smart City projects. Established guidelines for ethical research and practice from the psychological sciences provide a useful framework for the kinds of ethical issues raised when designing human-centered interventions or dealing with user-generated data. This article thus reviews relevant psychological guidelines and discusses their applicability to the Smart City context. A special focus is on the guidelines’ implications and resulting challenges for certain Smart City applications. Additionally, potential gaps in current guidelines and the limits of applicability are reflected upon. (shrink)

In a world dominated by speed, global cities have become all powerful. They often seem to impose one world culture and eradicate citizens’ rights. In this article I will argue that, without going back to older ways of being, we can adapt the concept of cosmopolis to propose a world (as) city with multiple tiny centers that would diverge from the hegemonic global city. In a world as cosmopolis, singularities and aesthetics, multiplicities and ethics would prevail.

Zusammenfassung Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die Bedeutung der Idee der umma in der „Muslimischen Jugend in Deutschland e. V.“ und der sie umgebenden pop-islamischen Szene entlang der Frage sozialer Grenzziehungsprozesse. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass soziale Grenzen nicht nur durch Zuschreibungs- und Exklusionsprozesse von außen konstruiert, sondern auch entlang von gemeinschaftsbildenden Identifikationsprozessen junger Musliminnen und Muslime hergestellt werden. Indem individuelle und kollektive Bedeutungen der Umma im Kontext des Untersuchungsfeldes erfasst werden, werden Prozesse der Vergemeinschaftung ebenso in den Blick genommen wie (...) damit verbundene soziale Distinktionen, Exklusionen und Abwertungen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass soziale Grenzziehungsprozesse der pop-islamischen Szene sowohl gegenüber der deutschen Mehrheitsgesellschaft als auch gegenüber verschiedenen islamischen Strömungen je situations- und kontextabhängig ausgehandelt werden und sich als gleichzeitige Suche nach Partizipation und Abgrenzung bzw. Inklusion und Exklusion beschreiben lassen. (shrink)

Arts education in schools frequently experiences the pressure of being validated by demonstrating quantitative impact on academic outcomes. The quantitative evidence to date has been characterized by the application of largely correlational designs and frequently applies a narrow focus on instrumental outcomes such as academically relevant competencies. The present review aims to summarize quantitative evidence from quasi-experimental and experimental studies with pre-test post-test designs on the effects of school-based arts education on a broader range of competency outcomes, including intra- and (...) interindividual competencies. A systematic literature search was conducted to identify relevant evaluation studies. Twenty-four articles reporting on 26 evaluation studies were eligible for inclusion, and their results were reviewed in terms of art domains and outcome categories. Whilst there is some evidence of beneficial effects on some competencies, for example of music education on arithmetic abilities, speech segmentation and processing speed, the evidence across arts domains and for different outcomes is limited due to small sample sizes, small number of studies, and a large range of effect sizes. The review highlights that sufficiently powered experimental studies with pre-test post-test designs evaluating arts education are sparse and that the “gold standard” of experimental research comes at the expense of a number of other study characteristics such as sample size, intervention and follow-up length. By summarizing the limitations of the current experimental research, the application of experimental designs is critically assessed and a combination with qualitative methods in mixed-method designs and choice of relevant outcomes discussed. (shrink)

Tacitus understands himself as a historiographer who writes against forgetting. This essay examines how Tacitus conceives of forgetting and how he depicts processes of forgetting. (1) First I will introduce forgetting as an important research theme in modern memory studies. Research on forgetting can help us to understand transformations in the collective memory of modern and ancient social groups. (2) In Tacitus’ works about Roman imperial history forgetting stands out as a crucial topic. (3) When analysing processes of forgetting in (...) the Annals, the Histories and the Agricola, we can distinguish different forms of forgetting (such as ‘automatic forgetting’ and ‘directed forgetting’) as well as certain methods that Tacitus depicts as supporting or impeding forgetting. I will focus on ‘removing’ as an ambivalent method of forgetting, and on ‘writing’, which is central to Tacitus’ concept of the historiographer. This analysis of Tacitus’ works reveals that his ideas on forgetting are highly relevant to the twenty-first century. Tacitus’ age, like our own, was one of dramatic societal change, in which social frames are transformed, while the objects of collective memory are questioned and reevaluated. (shrink)

This article addresses intraorganizational pressures for organizational transformation toward more responsible business practices by exploring the role of internal activists. Building on the interactive framing perspective, I ask how internal activists develop a framing of their company’s responsibilities as they attempt to transform its business practices from the inside out. I explore this question in the context of a Danish pharmaceutical company’s responsibilities regarding the rising diabetes problem. Grounded in an inductive, interpretive analysis, I show how internal activists developed a (...) framing of the company’s responsibility over time and eventually instigated new ways of thinking about and doing business in their organization. I theorize the constitutive processes that strengthened frame alignment and allowed the internal activists to shape business practices. My study contributes to the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication by explaining how intraorganizational processes of meaning making may constitute more responsible business practices and by explicating the distinct role of internal activists as agents of organizational transformation. (shrink)

In this paper, I spell out a descriptive account of agnosticism that captures the intuitive view that a subject enters the mental state of agnosticism via an act or event called suspension. I will argue that agnosticism is a complex mental state, and that the formation of an attitude is the relevant act or event by which a subject commits to indecision regarding some matter. I will suggest a ‘two-component analysis’ that addresses two aspects that jointly account for the settled (...) state of agnosticism: the subject’s de facto indecision and the subject’s commitment to her indecision. Unlike meta-cognitivist or sui generis accounts, I do not take the agnostic’s commitment to indecision as constitutive for her indecision but rather as an evaluation or qualification of the indecision that she already exhibits. Agnosticism, thus, is a settled form of indecision that marks the end of inquiry. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy stands as one of the great French theorists of "deconstruction." His writings on philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and religion have significantly contributed to the development of contemporary French thought and helped shape and transform the field of continental philosophy. Through Nancy's immense oeuvre, which covers a wide range of topics such as community, freedom, existence, sense/ touch, democracy, Christianity, the visual arts and music, and writing itself, we have learned to take stock of the world in a more nuanced (...) fashion. In this collection, contemporaries of Nancy and eminent scholars of continental philosophy, including Giorgio Agamben, Étienne Balibar, Ginette Michaud, Georges Van Den Abbeele, Gregg Lambert and Ian James, have been invited to reflect on the force of Nancy's "deconstruction" and how it has affected, or will affect, the ways we approach many of the most pertinent topics in contemporary philosophy. The collection also includes Jean-Luc Nancy's previously unpublished 'Dialogue Beneath the Ribs', where he reflects, twenty years after, on his heart transplant. Nancy Now will be of critical interest not only to scholars working on or with Nancy's philosophy, but also to those interested in the development and future of French thought. (shrink)

Looking at current theoretical approaches to democracy and the city, this article deepens our understanding of the democratic relevance of cities. It suggests four ideals of the democratic city which are labelled the city as a school of democracy, the urban cosmopolis, the city as a commons and the sustainable city. Tracing commonalities between the ideals, while avoiding their pitfalls, the article develops an argument for understanding the democratic promise of the city by linking John Dewey’s concept of democratic action (...) as experimental problem-solving to the spatiality of the city. Building on Dewey, the article introduces the concept of urban experimentalism and points out prospects for a spatialized understanding of democracy and pathways for democratizing urban space. (shrink)

X‐chromosome inactivation ensures dosage compensation between the sexes in mammals by randomly choosing one out of the two X chromosomes in females for inactivation. This process imposes a plethora of questions: How do cells count their X chromosome number and ensure that exactly one stays active? How do they randomly choose one of two identical X chromosomes for inactivation? And how do they stably maintain this state of monoallelic expression? Here, different regulatory concepts and their plausibility are evaluated in the (...) context of theoretical studies that have investigated threshold behavior, ultrasensitivity, and bistability through mathematical modeling. It is discussed how a twofold difference between a single and a double dose of X‐linked genes might be converted to an all‐or‐nothing response and how mutually exclusive expression can be initiated and maintained. Finally, candidate factors that might mediate the proposed regulatory principles are reviewed. (shrink)

Recent studies have shed light on the emergence of Southern sustainability initiatives in commodity-based value chains. These initiatives position themselves as countering the exclusionary nature of many global multi-stakeholder initiatives, as critically analysed by previous studies. However, a common theoretical perspective on the inclusiveness of MSIs is still lacking. By drawing on the theory of regimes of engagement, we develop a theoretical framework which helps understanding the overt and subtle practices of including or excluding different stakeholders in MSIs. We apply (...) this framework to ‘Trustea’, an Indian MSI for sustainable tea production, to further investigate the ‘inclusiveness paradigm’ of Southern sustainability initiatives. Our findings highlight the complexity of stakeholder engagement across the different phases of Trustea’s development, from initiation and code development to formal launch and roll-out. We find that different types of engagement can exist in parallel. Justifiable engagement is expressed in the participating organisations’ reference to a shared common goal of Trustea, whereas familiar engagement is linked to the rootedness of the individuals involved in the Indian tea industry. Strategic engagement, in turn, comes to the fore through the strong emphasis on developing an Indian code for sustainable tea production and promoting adoption among tea growers. The importance of reaching this objective has led to the replication of exclusionary patterns also noted for global MSIs, as small-scale producers and other weak actors have been largely excluded from decision-making processes, despite informal efforts aimed at substitution of representation. (shrink)