Proximity

This article develops the concept of proximity as socio-spatial distance by looking at the temporally and spatially condensed events of contemporary art exhibition openings. The article begins by examining some developments in proximity research,the limitations of theorizing the importance of proximity as mere physical nearness,arguing that potentiality renders proximity meaningful. After introducing the art event, we offer a three-pronged approach to proximity by showing the imperatives for being-there, the conditional indeterminacy of potentiality and the politics of proximity. In contrast to much recent research, it is argued that the significance of events is not reducible to evaluated outcomes. Two ethnographic vignettes show the imperatives, indeterminacies and politics in action. We conclude by showing how this conceptualization of proximity has analytic purchase beyond the empirical realm of contemporary art.

Due to the link with the Qur'anic language and Muslims' verbal beliefs, the concept of metonymy has been considered as a controversial and important challenge from the beginning of rhetorical studies in the Muslim world. Farra, Ibn Abi al-Khattab Qureshi, Abu Obeida Moammar bin Muthanna, Jahiz, Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani are the most prominent people who have taken the basic steps in formulating the definition of metonymy. It has, however, changed in to a rhetoric term near Sakkaki and khatib Qazvini and has been realized with the same definition till now. Nowadays, metonymy is repeated with the same traditional definition and the interests exist in ancient rhetorical texts, however the contemporary linguistic studies help greatly in making the classification and modern definition of topics in eloquence clear. Drawing the evolution has happened in the definition of metonymy and its interests, the present study is to analyze it on the basis of Jakobson's theory of "metaphorical and metonymic poles of language" and through the concept of association and the law of proximity, it attempts to prove that metonymy applications are actually figurative associations to the semantic interests of proximity; and it would be possible to take a new look on the discussion of metonymic interests and to facilitate its instruction using this approach.

This essay demonstrates the centrality of impersonal intimacy to Virginia Woolf's modernist poetics. Unlike the major forms of intimacy—marriage, friendship, and family—"minor" intimacies that Woolf attends to generate a sense of significant relation with a proximate other without the backing of intersubjectivity or of established social form. This article engages with minor intimacy as an alternative to intimacy's—and realism's—given forms, in The Voyage Out (1915), "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown," and "An Unwritten Novel." Drawing on contemporary critiques of intimacy by Lauren Berlant and Leo Bersani, I argue that sociality in Woolf's writing is an unhealed scar, a problem of subject-world relation that doesn't go away, but which stimulates her formal inventiveness. By registering impersonal affective transmission through innovative literary form, Woolf frees her narratives to propose alternative modes of relation.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Ellipse als Nähemerkmal in der privaten E-Mail-Kommunikation. Um dem Rahmenthema Rechnung zu tragen, stehen die Fälle im Mittelpunkt dieses Beitrages, in denen die valenzgebundenen Elemente des verbalen Valenzträgers nicht realisiert werden. Andere Ellipsentypen werden daher nur am Rande erläutert. Obwohl die E-Mail-Kommunikation wie die Briefkommunikation medial schriftlich ist, geht diese Studie von der Hypothese aus, dass die E-Mail-Kommunikation dagegen mehr Merkmale der gesprochenen Sprache/Mündlichkeit als die Briefkommunikation aufweist. Diese Studie versucht zu beweisen, dass die tendenziell mündliche ‚Konzeption’ (Söll 1985, S. 19) der E-Mail der Grund dafür ist. Es soll hier untersucht werden, ob in der geschriebenen E-Mail-Kommunikation ähnlich wie in der gesprochenen Sprache auch Verbergänzungen ausgelassen werden, z.B. bei dialogischen Bezugnahmen auf vorhergehende Sätze (z.B. Frage-Antwort-Sequenzen), bei der Verwendung von Zeigwörtern und Ellipsen im metaphorischen E-Mail-Raum (visuelle Benutzeroberfläche des Emailprogrammes) oder in einem realen Raum der für beide Kommunikationspartner bekannt ist (z.B. der Ort, wo der Sprecher seine Mails tippt) bei der Benutzung von kurzen syntaktischen Strukturen usw. Für die Beschreibung der Phänomene werden wir authentische Belege analysieren und uns dabei auf ein Korpus stützen, das wir für unsere Dissertation erstellt haben. Das Korpus besteht aus 51 Privatbriefen (20157 Wörter) und 102 privaten E-Mails (16904 Wörter), die uns vor allem Germanistikstudenten der Universitäten Bochum und Hannover zur Verfügung gestellt haben. Das Korpus hat folglich insgesamt einen Umfang von ca. 37520 Textwörtern. Wir sind uns dessen bewusst, dass unser Korpus nur einen bescheidenen Umfang hat, dennoch glauben wir mit Carmen Scherer, dass »bereits ein Korpus mit zehn- oder zwanzigtausend Textwörtern verlässliche Auskunft über die zu untersuchende Fragestellung geben [kann]« (2006, S. 7). Das Briefkorpus besteht aus fast allen Briefen, die uns zur Verfügung gestellt worden sind. Das E-Mail-Korpus beschränkt sich hingegen nur auf eine Auswahl von insgesamt 300 zur Analyse benutzten Texten. Wir haben dabei vor allem solche ausgewählt, die in Beziehung zu jeweils anderen standen und deren Autoren durch regelmäßigen Austausch verbunden waren. Kurze kontextlose E-Mails wurden nicht mit einbezogen.
In Abschnitt 1 wird der Begriff “Ellipse” nach unterschiedlichen Kriterien beleuchtet. In Abschnitt 2 werden zwei „Nähe und Distanz Modelle“ (Koch/Oesterreicher (2010) und Ágel/Hennig (2006a) und die in diesem Kontext wichtige Unterscheidung von konzeptioneller und medialer Mündlichkeit vorgestellt. Ausgehend von dem Modell von Ágel/Hennig werden in Kapitel 3 unsere Belege analysiert und abschließend in Kapitel 4 die Analyseergebnisse vorgestellt und erläutert.

This paper shows how persecution is a condition that binds each in an ethical obligation. Persecution is functionally defined here as an impinging, affective relation, one that is neither mediated by reason nor open to apology. The works of Sigmund Freud help illuminate the psychological mechanism responsible for impeding rational transparency in delusions of persecution and super-egoical moral demands. Similar to Freud who employs what Paul Ricoeur has called a " hermeneutics of suspicion " to interrogate the status of a fully knowing subject, I contend that Emmanuel Lévinas's work on the ethical subject is useful for developing a " hermeneutics of trust " in an ambivalent ontological condition that is unavoidably ethical. By thinking Freud and Lévinas together, I show how the commitment to total mastery of an unknowable ego leads to a persecutory relation, yielding moralities that are unconcerned with injuring the other in the name of that which is judged as good. In answer to this ethical dilemma, I propose that a turn toward relational ethics and an intentionality of search offers traces of a morality where differences are preserved and thus prevent the persecution of the other for one's own moral fulfillment.

Structured peer-to-peer systems are popular solutions for large scale distributed computing and query processing. Heterogeneity among peers calls for peer virtualization to maintain a simple, yet powerful peer-to-peer overlay network. Nevertheless, peer virtualization generates a huge number of virtual peers and causes the unnecessary communication overhead in the routing process. In this paper, we propose a new peer-to-peer routing algorithm

I want to draw attention to problems that close physical proximity between the driver and bystander can reveal in a new take on Judith Jarvis Thomson's well-known Trolley Problem. I apply Thomson’s reasoning to hypothetical situations involving semi-autonomous, self-driving vehicles in order to highlight how complicated and counter-intuitive the distinctions between the two roles can become when physical distance is taken into account. This ‘Tesla Problem’ has clear implications for ethics and the laws governing autonomous vehicles, and they redound to how we should understand Thomson’s original problem. Beginning with a brief explication of Thomson’s original variations of the issue in ‘The Trolley Problem’ (Thomson, 1985), I suggest that her reasoning does not give us the tools necessary to unravel the Tesla Problem. Moreover, I argue that the implications of the Tesla Problem impose more stringent conditions on moral duty in situations similar to Thomson’s original Bystander Problem.

According to Adam Smith, the ideal moral judge is both well-informed and impartial. As non-ideal people, however, we tend only to be truly well-informed about those with whom we frequently interact. These, moreover, are also those with whom we tend to have the closest affective bonds. Hence, those who are well-informed, like our friends, tend to make for partial judges, while those who are impartial, like strangers, tend to make for ill-informed ones. Combining the two qualities in one individual is difficult, and everywhere the 'circles of sympathy' result—we more easily and readily sympathise with those who are close to us, giving our moral judgements a proximity bias. Still, if being well-informed is, as Smith claimed, a matter of 'bringing home to our own breast' the case of another with the help of our sympathetic imagination, we might think it possible for an impartial stranger to become well-informed without the emotional entanglement that comes from any actual proximity to those she judges. Against this intuition, I use Construal Level Theory to show that the tension between being well-informed and impartial is likely to persists even if we take any actual proximity out of the equation. The tension is rooted in perceived proximity in a way that makes it practically impossible to live up to the ideal of being both impartial and well-informed. Implications of this are discussed.

ABSTRACT One of the important tasks of mobile sociology is to attend to the diverse proximities that are generated through the interplay of multiple forms of mobility. In answering to this challenge, mobilities researchers have illuminated how multiple forms of mobility have given rise to different physical and virtual proximities, involving corporal travel and new communication devices. However, in spite of this apparent diversity, many discussions of physical and virtual proximity appeal to a similar ontology of connection. In the mobilities literature proximity is often understood in the context of an orientated connection towards points of significance and therefore can be described as ‘pointillist’. In response, this article stages an alternative way of apprehending proximity that removes the point. It does this by advancing the mobility-diagram of the loop. The ‘transversal’ proximities that the loop foregrounds seek to apprehend the transformative relations of mobile bodies and their near-dwellers, whilst at the same time untether the study of everyday ‘neighbourhood’ mobilities from their productivist heritage.

ABSTRACT One of the important tasks of mobile sociology is to attend to the diverse proximities that are generated through the interplay of multiple forms of mobility. In answering to this challenge, mobilities researchers have illuminated how multiple forms of mobility have given rise to different physical and virtual proximities, involving corporal travel and new communication devices. However, in spite of this apparent diversity, many discussions of physical and virtual proximity appeal to a similar ontology of connection. In the mobilities literature proximity is often understood in the context of an orientated connection towards points of significance and therefore can be described as ‘pointillist’. In response, this article stages an alternative way of apprehending proximity that removes the point. It does this by advancing the mobility-diagram of the loop. The ‘transversal’ proximities that the loop foregrounds seek to apprehend the transformative relations of mobile bodies and their near-dwellers, whilst at the same time untether the study of everyday ‘neighbourhood’ mobilities from their productivist heritage.

This paper presents an overview of the Spanish local digital media with the aim to see how the local media have adapted to new journalism’s characteristics. First, it offers a historical review of online journalism, it shows a list of the advantages and disadvantages that new media are offering and a description of the current situation of digital media market. The second part analyzes two cases of local digital media: Vilaweb in Catalonia (specifically the case of Vilaweb Mollerussa) and Madridiario, in the region of Madrid. It aims to evaluate their use of digital resources, such as the level of interaction with the reader-user and the personalized access to the information. This analysis shows how the potential of journalism 2.0 is not yet established in the digital local media. While the national media taks full advantage of the possibilities of digital media, like blogs or forums of opinion, the local media have not yet achieved a solid ground for popular segmentation to encourage the participation of citizens.

A reflexão sobre o serviço público de rádio e de televisão insere-se num cam-po de discussão muito mais extenso e que se inter-relaciona com outros domínios e contextos da sociedade contemporânea. São vários os autores que consideram que o serviço público está em crise e que é crucial encontrar soluções que possam contrariar este cenário, fortemente influenciado pelas leis do mercado bem como pelas políticas definidas para o setor dos media, quer a nível nacional quer a nível europeu. Daí que seja de crucial importância continuar a investigar e a aprofundar o conhecimento sobre esta temática. O serviço público encerra em si responsabilidades sociais, assentes em princípios e valores que lhe são exigidos e que são o fundamento da sua essên-cia e a sustentação da sua existência. A cobertura das diferentes regiões nacio-nais é uma das suas obrigações, especialmente num país que se caracteriza por acentuadas assimetrias regionais de ordem diversa e evidentes em quase todos os domínios da vida pública. Este artigo, que integra uma investigação mais abrangente e cujo principal ob-jetivo é a caracterização da informação diária de âmbito regional difundida nos principais canais da televisão e rádio públicas nacionais, procura refletir sobre a relação que existe entre regiões e serviço público, bem como o papel deste último em matérias de diversidade, pluralismo e proximidade.

In his most recents works Pierre Rosanvallon has studied in depth the transformations of contemporary democracies in the context of the current social state crisis, he rethought consolidated vocabulary and contributing to put the problem of solidarity and solidarism in a new way. In this article, I will focus in particular on the problematization and criticism by Rosanvallon of the notions of 'community' and 'individual' in order to try to rethink the question of solidarism and 'solidarity individualism' in terms of 'individualism of proximity'.