Humanities

Effect on neonatal tetanus mortality after a culturally-based health promotion programme

by Michael Elmore-Meegan

From Behavior to Culture: An Assessment of Cultural Evolution and a New Synthesis

by Dwight Read

published in 'Complexity,' 2003

Three approaches to cultural evolution—sociobiology, dual inheritance, and memes—are reviewed and it is shown that... more Three approaches to cultural evolution—sociobiology, dual inheritance, and memes—are reviewed and it is shown that each makes use of an incomplete notion of what constitutes culture.

Cosmopolitanism vs Terrorism? Discourses of Ethical Possibility Before and After 7/7

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and terrorism, via the question... more The article provides a critical analysis of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and terrorism, via the question of response. Using 9/11 and 7/7 as key moments in the evolution of this relationship, the article asks: how does cosmopolitanism respond to terrorism? What limits does this response contain? How might we go beyond such limits? It is argued that cosmopolitan responses to terrorism provide an important, but limited (and sometimes limiting), alternative to mainstream discourses on terror. After 9/11 the possibility for cosmopolitan thinking ‘beyond’ the mainstream view was articulated by a range of authors, including Archibugi, Habermas, Held and Linklater. A brief survey suggests that defending international law, constructing international institutions and alleviating global poverty were seen as good responses, in the context of divisive mainstream politics. However, by engaging a case study of the Make Poverty History campaign, the article argues that when cosmopolitan ideas were cemented in practice, the distinctiveness of a cosmopolitan response faded. This point was brought into sharp relief by a number of moralising responses to 7/7. Straightforward dichotomies between ‘barbaric terrorists’ and ‘civilised cosmopolitans’ served to construct cosmopolitanism as a coherent, and united, global community. Available tactics, for this ‘community’, were reduced to more-of-the same – more aid, more global democracy – and assertions of a moral equivalence between Bush and ‘Terror’, such that ‘you are either with cosmopolitans, or, you are with the War on Terror’. In light of
these ethical closures, and drawing from the arguments of Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, the article identifies some cursory ways in which cosmopolitans might think beyond such limits, to articulate an imaginative and engaged approach to global ethics.

Performing the Sub-Prime Crisis: Trauma and the Financial Event

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery... more The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery during the sub-prime crisis. We develop a pragmatic approach to performativity that foregrounds the ambiguity between the importance of performative utterances, on the one hand, and overlapping performativities that produce subjects capable of ‘‘hearing’’ such utterances, on the other. We argue that a performative effect of the traumatic narrative of the sub-prime crisis was to constitute it as ‘‘an event’’ with traumatic characteristics. Financial subjects came to anticipate the object of financial salvation through intervention to save the banks; and such a view worked to curtail the range of political possibilities that were thinkable. Lines of pragmatic resistance are suggested, which turn the logic of trauma toward broadly progressive ends. In this way, the political dimension of performativity is brought forward: if finance is performative, then this only invites the question of how we might perform it differently.

Crisis Is Governance: Sub-Prime, the Traumatic Event, and Bare Life

by james brassett

co-authored with Nick Vaughan-Williams

This article provides a critical analysis of how discourses of trauma and the traumatic event constituted the... more This article provides a critical analysis of how discourses of trauma and the traumatic event constituted the ethico-political possibilities and limits of the sub-prime crisis. Metaphors of a “financial tsunami” and pervasive media focus on emotional “responses” such as fear, anger and blame constituted the sub-prime crisis as a singular, traumatic “event” demanding particular (humanitarian) responses. Drawing upon the work of Giorgio Agamben, we render this constituted logic of event and response in terms of the securing of sovereign power and the concomitant production of bare life; the savers and homeowners who became “helpless victims” in need of rescue. Using Agamben’s recent arguments about “the apparatus” and processes of subjectification and de-subjectification, we illustrate this theoretical approach by addressing the position of the British economy, bankers and homeowners. On this view, it was the movement between subject positions—from safe to vulnerable, from entrepreneurial to greedy, from victim to survivor—that marked out the effective manner of governance during the sub-prime crisis. In the process sovereign categories of financial citizenship, asset based welfare and securitisation (which many would posit as the very problem) were confirmed as central to our future “survival”. In short, (the way that the) crisis (was constituted) is governance.

Deliberation and Global Civil Society: Agency Arena Affect

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative... more The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative approaches to global governance. It critiques a common view that global civil society can/should act as an agent for democratising global governance and seeks to explore the importance of global civil society as an arena of deliberation. This more reconstructive aim is supplemented by an empirically focused discussion of the affective dimensions of global civil society, in general, and the increasingly important use of film, in particular. Ultimately, this then yields an image of the deliberative politics of global civil
society that is more reflective of the differences, ambiguities and contests that pervade its discourses about global governance. This is presented as a quality that debates about deliberative global governance might learn from as well as speak to.

Contingent borders, ambiguous ethics: Migrants in (international) political theory

by james brassett

The article engages a critical analysis of liberal theory in the context of transnational migration. Normative... more The article engages a critical analysis of liberal theory in the context of transnational migration. Normative arguments provided by liberal-cosmopolitan and liberal-communitarian authors are contrasted. While sympathetic to such approaches, we argue that traditional liberal theory has attempted to downplay the contingency and resultant ambiguity of many of its moral precepts. Historically contingent borders underpin neat universal categories like ‘‘citizen’’ and ‘‘refugee,’’ which fail to reflect the diverse and contested experiences of migration. But such ambiguities need not undermine liberal approaches. Indeed, a proper engagement with the problematic and uncertain realities of migration can provide a spur to a more thoroughgoing ethical praxis. We draw on the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty to outline an approach to migration that remains open to the contingent construction of terms like ‘‘migrant,’’ ‘‘refugee,’’ and ‘‘asylum-seeker.’’ By extending Rorty’s concept of sentimental education, we provide an imaginative and politically
challenging set of agendas for the ethics of migration.

British irony, global justice: a pragmatic reading of Chris Brown, Banksy and Ricky Gervais

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the concept of irony and how it relates to global justice. Taking Richard... more The article provides a critical analysis of the concept of irony and how it relates to global justice. Taking Richard Rorty as a lead, it is suggested that irony can foreground a sense of doubt over our own most heartfelt beliefs regarding justice. This provides at least one ideal sense in which irony can impact the discussion of global ethics by pitching less as a discourse of grand universals and more as a set of hopeful narratives about how to reduce suffering. The article then extends this notion via the particular – and particularly – ethnocentric case of British Irony. Accepting certain difficulties with any definition of British Irony the article reads the interventions of three protagonists on the subject of global justice – Chris Brown, Banksy and Ricky Gervais. It is argued that their considerations bring to light important nuances in irony relating to the importance of playfulness, tragedy, pain, self-criticism and paradox. The position is then qualified against the (opposing) critiques that irony is either too radical, or, too
conservative a quality to make a meaningful impact on the discussion of global justice. Ultimately, irony is defended as a critical and imaginative form, which can (but does not necessarily) foster a greater awareness of the possibilities and limits for thinking/doing global justice.

Deliberation and Global Civil Society: Agency Arena Affect

by james brassett

The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative... more The article provides a critical analysis of the role and function of global civil society within deliberative approaches to global governance. It critiques a common view that global civil society can/should act as an agent for democratising global governance and seeks to explore the importance of global civil society as an arena of deliberation. This more reconstructive aim is supplemented by an empirically focused discussion of the affective dimensions of global civil society, in general, and the increasingly important use of film, in particular. Ultimately, this then yields an image of the deliberative politics of global civil
society that is more reflective of the differences, ambiguities and contests that pervade its discourses about global governance. This is presented as a quality that debates about deliberative global governance might learn from as well as speak to.

Comparative 'research': a modest proposal concerning the object of ethics regulation

by Rena Lederman

CHURCH NEWS: NEW UNITY MOVEMENT STEPS PROPOSED

by Daniel Keeran MSW

by Daniel Keeran, MSW (distrbute freely without charge)

Against the unity prayer of Jesus in the gospel of John chapter 17, divisions within Christianity have been common... more Against the unity prayer of Jesus in the gospel of John chapter 17, divisions within Christianity have been common from the beginning. New steps for unity are outlined that provide grass-roots opportunities in local churches and communities.

Fundamental to the new unity movement are principles and a change in paradigm that give a fresh approach to the ancient problem of divisions among people who identify themselves as followers of Jesus.

“Innovazione” nelle scienze storiche e sociali: come, quando, a quali condizioni

by Michele Dantini

in: il manifesto, 14.1.2012, pp. 10-11.

Da circa quattro decenni l’analisi testuale (e iconografica) ha congiunto al proprio interno metodo filologico e... more Da circa quattro decenni l’analisi testuale (e iconografica) ha congiunto al proprio interno metodo filologico e prospettive critico-ideologiche maturate all’interno di discipline storicamente distinte dalla storia letteraria (o artistica), quali l’etnografia, la sociologia, gli studi geopolitici, gli studi di genere, l’ecologia politica e sociale.

Gli studi sull’immigrazione, la teoria postcoloniale o dell’incontro culturale, i dibattiti sulle politiche della memoria o l’industria culturale hanno prodotto formidabili ampliamenti interpretativi e discorsivi, destato nuove sensibilità, sospinto l’uso dei documenti in direzioni civili e democratiche. Si sono prodotte discontinuità tecniche e storiografiche che dobbiamo riconoscere come “innovazione” e che possiedono rilevanti implicazioni sociali.

Future of knowledge

by Sardar Anwaruddin

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

Changing publication patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities, 2000–2009

by Truyken Ossenblok

An analysis of the changing publication patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in the period 2000–2009... more An analysis of the changing publication patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in the period 2000–2009 is presented on the basis of the VABB-SHW, a full coverage database of peer reviewed publication output in SSH developed for the region of Flanders, Belgium. Data collection took place as part of the Flemish performance-based funding system for university research. The development of the database is described and an overview of its contents presented. In terms of coverage of publications by the Web of Science we observe considerable differences across disciplines in the SSH. The overall growth rate in number of publications is over 62.1%, but varies across disciplines between 7.5 and 172.9%. Publication output grew faster in the Social Sciences than in the Humanities. A steady increase in the number and the proportion of publications in English is observed, going hand in hand with a decline in publishing in Dutch and other languages. However, no overall shift away from book publishing is observed. In the Humanities, the share of book publications even seems to be increasing. The study shows that additional full coverage regional databases are needed to be able to characterise publication output in the SSH.

What symbols

by Dmitry Misyurov

This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response? This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response?

Faget Musikvidenskab og dets særlige problematik (The Discipline Musicology and Its Specific Set of Problems)

by Linda Maria Koldau

An concise analysis of the development of the academic discipline Musicology in the past decades, focusing on the... more An concise analysis of the development of the academic discipline Musicology in the past decades, focusing on the special problems of the discipline at Aarhus University, which is symptomatic for the development of the humanities in Denmark.
In Danish language.

PRACTICAL COUNSELING SKILLS AND APPROACHES

by Daniel Keeran MSW

By Daniel Keeran, MSW, President, College of Mental Health Counselling

This is a convenient list of practical counseling articles with clickable hypertext to access the full version. Topics... more This is a convenient list of practical counseling articles with clickable hypertext to access the full version. Topics include:

What To Say When Dying,
Working With Anger,
Counseling Depression,
Counseling Domestic Violence,
Healing Childhood Loss of Caring,
Healing Grief,
Healing Sexual Abuse,
Effective Counseling Skills,
Solving Issues in Marriage,
Solving Problems,
Steps To Prevent Suicide,
Steps for Healing Adultery

L’archivio, il diario e i giardinetti: un ambiente a supporto della didattica

by Manuela Delfino

Educazione nella Scuola Digitale - Newsletter della Fondazione Rosselli, n.5, Aprile 2012

The EU's Normative Power - Strength or Weakness?

by Tornike Metreveli

The paper tries to critically reflect on the concept of the European Union’s Normative Power as advocated by Ian... more The paper tries to critically reflect on the concept of the European Union’s Normative Power as advocated by Ian Manners. By drawing on comparative analysis, the paper seeks to illustrate that the EU’s normative power can be its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.