Analytical Reflection Research Articles

Environmental Anthropology: Systemic Perspectives

Our brief overview of developments in environmental anthropology since 1980 and their antecedents is organized around three themes: systems ecology, political ecology, and cognitive science. In some areas, the context is familiar. As Latour recently observed, the intellectual themes captured by the emergent concept of the Anthropocene have long been familiar to anthropologists. After decades of research on human–environmental interactions, anthropology, and more particularly environmental anthropology, suddenly finds itself pushed into prominence. A vibrant and kaleidoscopic research agenda has ensued and borrows extensively from other disciplines. This agenda coincides with increased interest in coupled human and natural systems from both the social and the natural sciences. Such attention is not solely the product of academic integration or the analytical reflection of empirical realities; it also stems from growing concern over the role of humans in the global transformation of the environment.

Trade and financial liberalization revisited: Mexico’s experience

In the middle of two crises, the first one in 1982 and a second one in 1986, Mexico initiated a new economic strategy, inaugurated with two important reforms: trade liberalization, and financial liberalization and deregulation. With the first reform the economic authorities wanted to reposition Mexico in the international division of labor. With the second one they aimed at attracting capital inflows and modernizing the banking sector. Resolute commitment to drastic trade and to financial liberalization brought praise from a large part of the press and from international organizations, especially during the years from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s when these two reforms were fully implemented. They were therefore greatly surprised when at the end of 1994 Mexico went into a deep crisis. The objective of this work is to study this period, to argue that the results of those reforms did not deserve to be praised, and to explain why the crisis could have been anticipated. Mexico’s experience is important in itself but we can also learn a lot from its positive results as well as its shortcomings. This is why an analytical reflection on the reasons for its failure to achieve the expected benefits is still important today.

Educação e Religião na propaganda para crianças

This article presents a theoretical and analytical reflection on the issue of education and religion in advertising aimed at children. It describes distinctive features of postmodernity – immediacy, consumerism and secularization – as constitutive elements of our time and characterizes media as a sort of all-powerful being that channels, processes, produces and disseminates these postmodern attributes, while offering products that form and shape the way of life of Western society. The article goes on to analyze the content of two advertisements, identifying in them the possible presence of an educational religious-theological discourse. It contends that there is an intrinsic relation between education and religion in advertising, one which strongly influences the learning, thinking and acting patterns of children through such practices as gaining power by what they consume and seeing consumption as a means to attain a more prominent position in this world. In advertising, forms of socialization are presented to children. Finally, it is suggested that one way to introduce and discuss advertisements in educational contexts is by reading and analyzing the narratives of advertising together with the children.

Is Our Group An Agent? Do We Want It To Be?

Christian List and Philip Pettit’s new book, Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents, is an interesting, timely, and extremely clever synthesis of the deliverances of their recent technical work on the philosophical, moral and legal nature of group agents. Their meticulously developed ideal group agent provides an excellent starting point for analytic reflection on group agency, identity, epistemology, and responsibility. Insofar as it is their intent for their account to have real world consequences, their model provides a template for political associations, businesses, and civil society organizations. This review essay explains List and Pettit’s model and then points out two unattractive features. First, a bird’s eye view of the conditions required to achieve ideal group agency reveals limitations that may make it impossible to realize. Second, some of these groups, especially businesses and civil society organizations, will find the model unattractive, limiting its real world applicability.

Locating hatred: On the materiality of emotions

How do we locate hatred in the social fabric of human life? Where is it, and how do we detect it? Recent scholarly engagements with emotions have provided (at least) two rather separate kinds of answer to such questions. One, largely espoused by philosophers and psychologists, has sought to conceptualize emotions as complex conglomerates of cognitive processes, bodily sensations and dispositions to act, experienced by an individual human subject. Another path, more affiliated with anthropology and STS, has been occupied with transcending the boundaries of the personal body-mind as the limit of affects and emotions, locating them also beyond the individual: in spaces, atmospheres, objects – dispersed, across and in between. In this article, I explore what can be gained from a constructive dialogue between these different agendas when trying to make sense of the location of hate. The article suggests that we can use the more detailed outlines of the textures of specific emotions, found in the philosophy of emotions, as a basis for thinking about hate as an assemblage of particular narratives, evaluations, actions, and bodily configurations that can be distributed across different kinds of materiality. These considerations will be anchored in analytical reflections on hatred and its potential spatial and material manifestations in the context of the German Nazi state.

How Teachers can Meet the Challenges of Sizable Classes and Student Disruptive Behavior

The challenges of large classes and student classroom disruptive behavior have been a fact of life the world over. What has triggered examining both issues is that in the Tunisian context, little has seriously and wisely been devoted to them on the part of the parties concerned, namely inspectors, teacher trainers, administrators, and the relevant ministries (i.e., the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research) with the object of dealing with them successfully. Relying on the author’s analytical and critical reflections, as well as his personal experience as an instructor, and on that of some fellows, this paper aims at discussing these challenges and attempts to suggest drastic measures that could help teachers meet them. As concerns the former issue, the paper will explore the concept of a large class, the reasons behind its prevalence, the ensuing difficulties it poses to teachers, and how it could be turned into a blessing in disguise. Regarding students’ disruptive conduct, the paper will look at the underlying causes of the frequency of the phenomenon and put forward a number of effective courses of action that could be taken to surmount it. On the other hand, this paper is meant to serve as an incentive for the aforementioned parties to attach paramount importance to sizable classes and student classroom misconduct, and have every intention of helping teachers manage both predicaments, and it may equally be utilized as a guide to assist them in achieving the same aim. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2015.v5n2p107

Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound by Lori Emerson (review)

Reviewed by: Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound by Lori Emerson Martha Nell Smith (bio) Emerson, Lori. Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. $25. Lori Emerson’s refreshing analysis of ways in which readers encounter texts through various interfaces and instantiations, ways their media transmission influence interpretation, is a welcome augmentation to the fields of digital studies, poetics, book culture, twenty-first-century literary cultures, textual studies, and, with its chapter on the fascicles, Emily Dickinson studies. Emerson reflects on interfaces of our everyday lives—iPhones/smartphones, iPads, MacBooks/PCs, and the computers that operate our video/audio systems, air conditioning systems, cars, household appliances. Pairing media studies and literary studies, Emerson appropriately makes clear her and our indebtedness to Marshall McLuhan, famous for “the medium is the message” (xx). “Marvelous,” along with “magical,” characterize Apple’s marketing rhetoric about the iPad, and immediately brought to mind Elizabeth Bishop’s “It is marvellous to wake up together.” Indeed, Reading Writing Interfaces is Emerson’s wake-up call for us to be mindful of how mechanisms act upon us and of the fact that interfaces both enable unprecedented [End Page 99] access to data and shape our choices about how that information might be used: “a passive acceptance of these algorithms necessarily means we cannot have a sense of the shape and scope of how they determine our access to information, let alone shape our sense of self, which is increasingly driven by autocomplete, autocorrect, automata” (164–65). From the Acknowledgments sometimes using twitter handles to thank readers for feedback during the writing process to its reverse chronological order recounting textual interface histories (note the subtitle “From the Digital to the Bookbound”), readers know that this book interfaces differently in both anticipated and unexpected ways, encouraging readers to expect surprise in the familiar format of the chapter-delineated bibliographic machine we all know how to operate. An astute digital archaeologist who introduces readers not as steeped in digital studies to key terms and to evolutions in the last several decades of personal computing (introduction and first chapter), Emerson provides a highly intelligible guide to these profound shifts in textual receptions and productions, as well as to negotiations of everyday life that rely on computers though we may not be aware of and/or take for granted their quotidian ubiquity. Doing so, she explicates how interfaces are consciously designed to make their programming operations disappear so that they are encountered seamlessly by common users. Readers unfamiliar with the acronyms GUI (Graphic User Interface), Fluid UI, OUI (Organic UI), NUI (Natural UI), and with terms such as ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) or even the more familiar phrase black boxing will find this an accessible, clear introduction to computing lingo and an incisive overview of the effects of personal and corporate computing that pervade our worlds. Consider your smartphone interface, a child of windows, in which icons mask the complex computing at the tip of your fingers, just as do the icons on your pc screen. Early adopters of word processing will remember the command line engagements to start Word Perfect (Alt-F3 would reveal codes) and even earlier adopters might recall Kaypro IIs or Osborne and the CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) interface rendering computing visible to users who had to use them to perform any task. With the advent of graphic interfaces, in which an icon only needs to be clicked to perform a task, the need to enter commands was disappeared. About this “ideology of the user-friendly,” Emerson aptly calls for greater self-consciousness about choices already made for users in this more easily negotiable environment. In calling for more conscious engagements with the digital world, Emerson also calls for a more self-consciously aware engagement with our literary world, which in turn helps the reader more acutely apprehend/read the digital: she calls [End Page 100] for a dynamic reading from the present forward and then backward in order to reread, proposing that back to the future is simultaneously forward to the past. The temporal disruption that organizes the book itself, which begins with analytical reflections...

Sustainable Communication Design Principles - 2.0 Version

Communication Design is still a relatively recent area whose professional recognition has just over 60 to 70 years. Only in recent years, designers have been concerned in undertaking a critical and analytical reflection about their work, contributions and impacts. With regard to sustainability, the discussion is still scarce, and contributions have come more from peers, such as the Society of Graphic Design of Canada, or from CUMULUS with the “Kyoto Design Declaration”, that from the academia. Recently, during my doctoral research, my theoretical contribution was not only to propose the Principles and the Practice of Sustainable Design Communication (SCD) but as well to define them as a new discipline. The SCD Principles guide and orient practice; and in turn the SCD Practice suggests designers an applied theory through the Process of SCD. Communication Design, from editorial to brand design is an area of a broad spectrum of practice and several types of impacts that may now contribute to a fair, just, resilient and culturally conscious development. For instance, in SCD cultural perspective, we propose users / consumers a transition from a personal material and external satisfaction, to another one, that is more internal, meaningful, fulfilling, long lasting, and, if possible, less material. To deliver the SCD Principles, Practice and Process, we have used a ground content methodology research, using a ground content analysis of 22 documents directly or indirect related with design and more specifically, with communication design. This paper's goal is to present an updated version for the Sustainable Communication Design Principles, in what may be considered a 2.0 version.

Bidirectional reflectance distribution function measurements and analysis of retroreflective materials

We compare the performance of various analytical retroreflecting bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) models to assess how they reproduce accurately measured data of retroreflecting materials. We introduce a new parametrization, the back vector parametrization, to analyze retroreflecting data, and we show that this parametrization better preserves the isotropy of data. Furthermore, we update existing BRDF models to improve the representation of retroreflective data.

How do gut feelings feature in tutorial dialogues on diagnostic reasoning in GP traineeship?

Diagnostic reasoning is considered to be based on the interaction between analytical and non-analytical cognitive processes. Gut feelings, a specific form of non-analytical reasoning, play a substantial role in diagnostic reasoning by general practitioners (GPs) and may activate analytical reasoning. In GP traineeships in the Netherlands, trainees mostly see patients alone but regularly consult with their supervisors to discuss patients and problems, receive feedback, and improve their competencies. In the present study, we examined the discussions of supervisors and their trainees about diagnostic reasoning in these so-called tutorial dialogues and how gut feelings feature in these discussions. 17 tutorial dialogues focussing on diagnostic reasoning were video-recorded and transcribed and the protocols were analysed using a detailed bottom-up and iterative content analysis and coding procedure. The dialogues were segmented into quotes. Each quote received a content code and a participant code. The number of words per code was used as a unit of analysis to quantitatively compare the contributions to the dialogues made by supervisors and trainees, and the attention given to different topics. The dialogues were usually analytical reflections on a trainee’s diagnostic reasoning. A hypothetico-deductive strategy was often used, by listing differential diagnoses and discussing what information guided the reasoning process and might confirm or exclude provisional hypotheses. Gut feelings were discussed in seven dialogues. They were used as a tool in diagnostic reasoning, inducing analytical reflection, sometimes on the entire diagnostic reasoning process. The emphasis in these tutorial dialogues was on analytical components of diagnostic reasoning. Discussing gut feelings in tutorial dialogues seems to be a good educational method to familiarize trainees with non-analytical reasoning. Supervisors need specialised knowledge about these aspects of diagnostic reasoning and how to deal with them in medical education.

Programme Profiles and the Reform of Higher Education in Europe: The Role of Tuning Europe

This article provides an overview of the profiling of higher education programmes in Europe as part of the overall process of higher education reform in Europe over the past decade (2000-2012) and of the role of Tuning in this process. The article starts with a recall of the architecture and objectives of the change process, based on the interplay between the intergovernmental Bologna process (with a main focus on structural change), the European Union’s parallel Agenda for the Modernisation of Higher Education (with a focus on policy change for the Union’s main objectives: growth and jobs, mobility, recognition and attractiveness) and Tuning. The second part of the article provides some data about and examples of the method and importance of Tuning in stimulating and shaping the renovation of higher education programmes, with a focus on Tuning’s initial geographical area (Europe) and a glimpse to other continents, in line with Europe’s need to build up the visibility and attractiveness of its universities in the rest of the world. The final section is a retrospective and analytical reflection about the impact of Tuning on some key dimensions of the agenda for the modernisation of higher education in Europe; while acknowledging that the Tuning method and principles have not always been fully understood by higher education as well as governmental institutions, Tuning has made an outstanding contribution to such key aspects as the relevance, comparability and quality of programmes, the development of quality assurance and accreditation policies and agencies and the recognition of qualifications — both within Europe and with partner countries in other parts of the world.

An Analytical Reflection towards Understanding the Effect of Children's Behavioral Regulation (CBR) on Children's Behavioral Nutrition (CBN) Through Computer-based Edutainment Environments

Despite the massive body of research on the effect of media and entertainment on Children's Behavioral Regulation (CBR) and Children's Behavioral Nutrition CBN), especially through computer-based video games, the multidisciplinary research, up to date, still lacks a true understanding of the powerful effect of the communication between users, especially young children, and the content of the entertainment. Remarkably, the relation between CBR and CBN is not comprehensible yet (i.e., still ambiguous) despite many studies investigated the the CBN research came up with the fact that the research on the Innovative Intervention Programs (IIP) are still needed to overcome the limitations in previous programs, and, concluded that serious video games show promise of changing in children's behavior. In sum, the more deeply research is still needed on: (1) the optimal design of behaviorchange procedures in video games, (2) the mechanisms that account for changes obtained, and (3) the groups in which these interventions work best. Such research will permit the optimal design of serious video games for children's better healthier behaviors in the future. On the other hand, creating the IIP in terms of CBR requires many various and different criteria! Thus, the present reflection paper was conducted to, analytically, clarifying the outlines of the current running new multidisciplinary project that mainly investigates the effect of CBR on CBN through computer-based edutainment environments.

What is armchair anthropology? Observational practices in 19th-century British human sciences

The study of human diversity in the first half of the 19th century has traditionally been categorized as a type of armchair-based natural history. If we are to take seriously this characterization of the discipline it requires further unpacking. Armchair anthropology was not a passive pursuit, with minimal analytical reflection that simply synthesized the materials of other writers. Nor was it detached from the activities of informants who were collecting and recording data in the field. Practitioners in the 19th century were highly attuned to the problems associated with their research techniques and continually sought to transform their methodologies. The history of British anthropological research is one of gradual change and the adoption of new observational techniques into its methodologies. This article looks at the history of 19th-century British anthropology and examines in detail the observational practices of its researchers. In doing so it aims to answer the question: What is armchair anthropology?

Achieving PMC boundary conditions through metamaterials

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to show how metamaterials with extreme values of permittivity and permeability, may be effectively used to design artificial magnetic conductors (AMC) at a given frequency. In particular, this paper theoretically determines, for the different polarizations of the incidence field, the conditions under which metamaterials can behave as an AMC.Design/methodology/approach– In order to find out the required values of the constitutive parameters, this paper has done a theoretical analysis based on the transmission-line theory. The obtained analytical reflection coefficient has been particularized for the different possible polarizations of the incidence field in order to find the constitutive parameters values that this paper needs for the AMC behavior.Findings– Depending on the polarization of the field, it is shown that different values of the constitutive parameters are needed to get AMCs. In particular, it is shown that in the case of TEM and TE polarizations, a large value of the permeability is enough to obtain an AMC boundary condition. In the case of the TM polarization, instead, the AMC boundary condition is effectively achieved by using a material with vanishing permittivity. The role of the permittivity in the three polarizations is discussed. Finally, possible implementations and applications at microwave and optical frequencies are presented.Originality/value– The idea of using miniaturized inclusions to obtain AMCs is not completely new. However, to the authors' best knowledge, a complete and rigorous theoretical analysis showing the capabilities and the limits of this approach has not yet been presented in the open technical literature.

Living Matter Observations with a Novel Hyperspectral Supercontinuum Confocal Microscope for VIS to Near-IR Reflectance Spectroscopy

A broad range hyper-spectroscopic microscope fed by a supercontinuum laser source and equipped with an almost achromatic optical layout is illustrated with detailed explanations of the design, implementation and data. The real novelty of this instrument, a confocal spectroscopic microscope capable of recording high resolution reflectance data in the VIS-IR spectral range from about 500 nm to 2.5 μm wavelengths, is the possibility of acquiring spectral data at every physical point as defined by lateral coordinates, X and Y, as well as at a depth coordinate, Z, as obtained by the confocal optical sectioning advantage. With this apparatus we collect each single scanning point as a whole spectrum by combining two linear spectral detector arrays, one CCD for the visible range, and one InGaAs infrared array, simultaneously available at the sensor output channel of the home made instrument. This microscope has been developed for biomedical analysis of human skin and other similar applications. Results are shown illustrating the technical performances of the instrument and the capability in extracting information about the composition and the structure of different parts or compartments in biological samples as well as in solid statematter. A complete spectroscopic fingerprinting of samples at microscopic level is shown possible by using statistical analysis on raw data or analytical reflectance models based on Abelés matrix transfer methods.

Refining Space Object Radiation Pressure Modeling with Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions

High-fidelity orbit propagation requires detailed knowledge of the solar radiation pressure on a space object. The solar radiation pressure depends not only on the space object’s shape and attitude, but also on the absorption and reflectance properties of each surface on the object. These properties are typically modeled in a simplistic fashion, but are here described by a surface bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Several analytic bidirectional reflectance distribution function models exist, and are typically complicated functions of illumination angle and material properties represented by parameters within the model. In general, the resulting calculation of the solar radiation pressure would require a time-consuming numerical integration. This might be impractical if multiple solar radiation pressure calculations are required for a variety of material properties in real time; for example, in a filter where the particular surface parameters are being estimated. This paper develops a method to make accurate and precise solar radiation pressure calculations quickly for some commonly used analytic bidirectional reflectance distribution functions. In addition, other radiation pressures exist, including Earth albedo/Earth infrared radiation pressure, and thermal radiation pressure from the space object itself, and are influenced by the specific bidirectional reflectance distribution function. A description of these various radiation pressures and a comparison of the magnitude of the resulting accelerations at various orbital heights and the degree to which they affect the space object’s orbit are also presented. Significantly, this study suggests that, for space debris whose interactions with electro-magnetic radiation are described accurately with a bidirectional reflectance distribution function, then hitherto unmodeled torques would account for rotational characteristics affecting both tracking signatures and the ability to predict the orbital evolution of the objects.

Using Peer Observation and Collaboration to Improve Teaching Practices

The study examined whether and how teacher practice can be influenced when the existing research bases on best pedagogical practice and personal motivation were operationalized and then supported with opportunities for self-reflection. Administrators created a professional development experience, called Instruction Cadres, focused on peer observation and structured discussion around an essential question. Data from those discussions and observations suggested that creating environments supportive of analytic reflection and collaboration positively influenced teachers' attitudes toward their practice. Results highlighted the notion that analytic reflection can support teachers as they work toward intentionally improving their pedagogical practices. Structured conversations resulted in reflections on practice, suggestions for specific teaching strategies, revisions of the ways students were conceptualized.

The Challenge for Peace within South Vietnam's Catholic Community: A History of Peace Activism

Beyond the common vision of Vietnamese Catholics as a group who supported the defense of South Vietnam at all costs, this article brings to light the thinking of those who contemplated the end of the war and its significance in terms of reconciliation. The history of this Catholic engagement for peace is the story of activism at the crossroads of religious and political spheres during the period 1962–1975. This group was particularly productive through an impressive number of publications, which offer a large corpus of texts over 15 years. Confronted by many challenges (religious, economic, political), this progressive wing endeavored to produce an analytic reflection based on Vatican II values, on the Vietnamese situation, and to participate in the building of a political alternative for their country.

Two approaches to the use of blogs in pre-service foreign language teachers' professional development: a comparative study in the context of two universities in the UK and the US

This article explores the use of blogs for pre-service language teacher education in two national settings, the UK (University of Cambridge) and the US (University of South Florida). Taking two approaches to blogging and to learning through blogging (one based on self-reflection and a constructivist approach and one based on social and collaborative learning and a sociocultural approach), the research examines how pre-service language teachers both use and understand the affordances of blogs for their professional development. Data were collected from the participants' blog entries during their eight/nine month courses and from individual interviews conducted and analysed inductively. Some distinct themes emerged from the two settings. In the UK setting, there was deep analytical reflection on professional development, on professional identity and on change, with the participants perceiving the benefits of the blog to be the distance it provides from events and the cathartic effects of writing. In the US setting, findings suggest that the blog was used as a space for joint sharing of resources and ideas, and for co-constructive learning. Participants noted the affordances to be sharing information, developing professionalism and collaborative learning. While the approach to blogging was different in the two settings, the engagement in both was dialogic; the blogs functioned as a ‘thinking device’ that enhanced professional development. Their use may transfer from pre-service teachers' learning to their teaching.

Covert Bilingualism and Symbolic Competence: Analytical Reflections on Negotiating Insider/Outsider Positionality in Swedish Speech Situations

Bilinguals often face the challenge of negotiating a range of insider/outsider subject positions when interacting in transnational and intercultural settings. This article takes up the concept of symbolic competence, the awareness of socially situated symbolic resources and the ability to use them to shape interactional contexts, to examine how the author, a Swedish–English bilingual, manages this negotiation. Drawing on principles of the ethnography of communication in concert with the complementary discourse analytic perspective of nexus analysis, ethnographic vignettes are analyzed to explore strategic language choices the author made during specific speech situations in Sweden. It is shown that the concealment of linguistic abilities, or covert bilingualism, served as a resource to support the symbolic competence needed to facilitate the presentation of self during social encounters while mitigating the ambiguity of being simultaneously insider and outsider. (Less)