Authority Figures Research Articles

Women, Role Failure, and the Nuclear Family in Stephen King’s The Shining

While Stephen King’s The Shining (1997) features a hotel haunted by ghosts, the main female character Wendy Torrance is much more haunted by her fear of failing to fulfill her gender role within the structure of the traditional, white, American nuclear family. In this paper, I analyze how the fear of being an unsuccessful wife and mother illustrates structural problems within the nuclear family that are detrimental to women. Not only do they produce persistent insecurity and anxiety, but they also reinforce the delegation of power to a sole patriarchal authority figure. The Shining reveals how these issues become especially problematic in situations of abuse. However, it also presents an opportunity for women to escape from both abuse and the fear of role failure: completely abandoning the structure of the nuclear family. Thus, The Shining illuminates inherent flaws within the nuclear family’s roles and suggests that women cannot find autonomy, freedom, or happiness within its confines.

Eli Friedman on Workers’ Struggle in China and Beyond

Abstract: Beginning in November 2022, China faced massive demonstrations contesting the strict “zero COVID” policies that left many citizens constrained within their homes and short of necessary materials. Multiple protests erupted in response to conditions faced by China’s workforce, including violent clashes in Zhengzhou against authority figures at the world’s largest iPhone factory. In this interview, GJIA sat down with Eli Friedman, Associate Professor at Cornell University, to discuss the context and ramifications of these protests as well as broader insights about the state of Chinese labor and its relation to the broader world.

Navigating privacy tensions when responding to online aggression at postsecondary institutions

AbstractPostsecondary institutions have a legal responsibility to ensure that students have access to a safe learning environment. While institutions adopt policies and hire administrators to protect students from harm, many are underprepared to support students when these harmful incidents happen online. This is of increased concern now that online aggression is pervasive across universities worldwide. While faculty, administrators and students agree that online aggression is a significant issue and that institutions ought to provide prevention and response services, there is concern that these efforts might violate privacy norms. We used the theory of privacy as contextual integrity (CI) to explore the tensions that postsecondary students and staff perceive regarding student privacy when responding to incidents of online aggression. To do so, we conducted focus groups with undergraduate students and student affairs administrators from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in the Mid‐Atlantic USA. Our analysis surfaced three considerations that inform students' and staff's decision to report an incident of online aggression: their closeness to the person making the post, their perception of the online post content as a real threat and their knowledge of an authority figure who could help resolve the situation. We used CI theory to explain how these considerations can inform institutional policy, practice and future research. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Online aggression is a pervasive issue at postsecondary institutions worldwide that can contribute to psychological, academic and developmental issues. Postsecondary students and staff are unsure of how to respond to incidents of online aggression. There is a gap in policies and procedures for responding to online aggression at postsecondary institutions. What this paper adds A novel use of Nissenbaum's (2010) theory of contextual integrity to understand students' and staff's perceptions of privacy. Students' and staff's decisions to intervene or report an online aggression incident are determined by their relationship to the perpetrator, the severity of the social media post and their knowledge of who to tell on campus. Students and staff are reluctant to inform the police out of fear of violence against the perpetrator. Implications for practice and/or policy Raise awareness about responding to online aggression incidents. Implement online bystander intervention training programs to increase awareness and self‐efficacy to intervene in unclear situations. Develop clear policies regarding online aggression, as well as a trustworthy procedure for how to respond.

How Leadership Failures Fuel Covetousness and Corruption in Nigeria's Educational System?

The importance of integrity is undermined in communities where corruption is pervasive and the respect for authority figures is diminished. This research paper aims to analyze how leadership failures contribute to covetousness and corruption within Nigeria's educational system. The study analyzes the impact of ineffective leadership on the prevalence of unethical practices, such as bribery, embezzlement and favoritism. Data sources included academic literature, reports and official documents. Then data is analysis and extracted from selected literature. Through an analysis of relevant literature and case studies, the research highlights the detrimental consequences of these corrupt practices on the quality of education and the overall development of the country. In conclusion, strengthening legal and regulatory frameworks, enhancing oversight mechanisms, investing in capacity building and promoting a culture of integrity are key recommendations that can help pave the way for a more transparent, accountable and effective educational system. By implementing these recommendations, Nigeria can ensure that its educational institutions are led by individuals who prioritize the well-being and future of the nation's students.

AUTHOR, NARRATOR, HERO IN M.YU. LERMONTOV’S NOVEL A HERO OF OUR TIME: NARRATIVE POETICS

The article is devoted to the analysis of the correlation between the figures of the real author and the fictional author-narrator in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov A Hero of Our Time. It is shown that as a result of the inclusion in the text of the second edition of the novel (1841) of the author’s preface, containing Lermontov’s polemic with the reviewers of the first edition, there was an interference of the “I” of the real creator of the work and the “I” of the fictional author, to whom the stories Bela, Princess Mary and the preface to the diary of the protagonist are attributed. It is significant that some of the biographical features of Lermontov and the fictional author coincide, and the two prefaces overlap. Thanks to all this, the effect of a non-trivial literary game arose, based on the illusion of the authenticity of the events set forth in the novel: the real author seems to get acquainted with Pechorin. This game is fundamentally different from the Sternian play and violation of the boundaries of the real and the fictional in A.S. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, whose main characters are represented both by real persons and creations of the author’s imagination. Unlike Pushkin and many contemporary Russian prose writers, Lermontov does not expose, but, on the contrary, hides the fictional, purely literary nature of his narrative. At the same time, the creator of A Hero of Our Time does not resort to literary hoax, does not directly try to pass off either the first-level narrator or Pechorin as the real authors of the novel or part of it. The story of A. von Chamisso The Extraordinary Story of Peter Schlemil could serve as a model for such a game, in which the central character, who tells a fantastic story of the events of his life, is an acquaintance of the author and his real-life friends.

Культурное знание как концептуальное основание речевого жанра религиозного наставления (на материале медиадискурса)

In the modern media environment covering all fields of human endeavour different types of discourse, religious ones with their genres as well, get representation. The speech genre of religious instruction seems to be most widely spread. The genre under discussion is viewed as a part of the primary genre in the religious discourse – preaching which is presupposed to interpret principles of practical usage of religious postulates and rules. In the Internet this genre acquires new characteristics, studying of which is seems relevant due to the researchers’ interest to media communication issues as well as to the society’s growing attention to religion in general. The present research is aimed at studying the ways of actualizing the speech genre of religious instruction, its cultural-conceptual bases, the genre being introduced in Internet publications at the biggest Orthodox websites. The interpretative and notional analysis, the conceptual analysis of discourse and the cultural-semiotic analysis of media texts have been applied as the research methods. The authors have defined cultural knowledge units which realize the main affective function of the speech genre of religious instruction. The cultural meanings and concepts are believed to be key knowledge phenomena organizing the semantic concept of the speech genre of religious instruction. The cultural dominant of the conceptual genre basis is the Holy Scripture text. The components of cultural knowledge are objectified by illustrations of the ways of behavior, appealing to the authority figures’ opinion and biblical texts’ quotations.

Economic Abuse and Help-Seeking Intentions Among Adolescents.

Economic adolescent relationship abuse (ARA) includes coercive behaviors leading to interference with education, employment, and finances. To date, no study has examined help seeking among adolescents and young adults if they were to experience economic ARA. The goals of this article include examining: (a) help-seeking intentions of adolescents regarding economic ARA; (b) help-seeking sources and reasons for not seeking help; and (c) differences in help-seeking intentions based on age, race/ethnicity, gender identity, and experiences of economic ARA. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of adolescents ages 13-19 focused on economic ARA experiences and help seeking. We performed descriptive statistics of help-seeking intentions, sources, and barriers. We utilized logistic regression, adjusted for age, race/ethnicity, and gender identity, to explore associations between economic ARA victimization and help-seeking intentions. Of 2,852 participants, 56% said they would seek help for economic ARA. Adolescents with positive help-seeking intentions shared that they would seek help from their parents (43%) or friends (35%). Those less likely to seek help were concerned about others finding out (32%), not being believed (31%), or authority figures being notified (31%). Help-seeking intentions were lower among Black/African American adolescents (aOR = 0.55, CI [0.43, 0.70]) and Multiracial adolescents (aOR = 0.26, CI [0.16, 0.42]) compared to White adolescents. Help-seeking intentions were higher among gender diverse adolescents (aOR = 5.78, CI [2.98, 11.22]) and those ages 15-17 years (aOR = 1.84, CI [1.36, 2.47]) compared to those identifying as female and ages 18-19 years. Help-seeking intentions were lower among adolescents who experienced economic ARA (aOR = 0.61, CI [0.51, 0.72]). While the majority of adolescents reported that they would seek help if they experienced economic ARA, those who had experienced economic ARA were less likely to report intentions to seek help. Supportive interventions for adolescents experiencing economic ARA are needed.

Treating Delinquent and Feebleminded Juveniles at the Beloit Industrial School for Girls in Early Twentieth-Century Kansas.

This study explores the troubling and unintended consequences of public health efforts to address the problem of juvenile delinquency and feeblemindedness. Health care professionals, superintendents, and other authority figures equated undesirable juvenile behaviors such as keeping "bad company" or "falling in with the wrong crowd," truancy, and petty theft with poor breeding, low intelligence, and inheritable criminal tendencies. This article interrogates historical documentation culled from the Kansas State Historical Society (KSHS) and focuses on a few specific cases to reveal the ways a patriarchal political and medical state system both protected and alienated young woman accused of a myriad of behavior issues including delinquency, incorrigibility, and feeblemindedness. I highlight the lives of juvenile women sentenced to the Beloit Industrial School for Girls not simply to better understand an isolated period in United States history but also reproduction. The broader implications of the narratives of girls housed at the Beloit Industrial School for Girls throughout the first half of the twentieth century in Kansas reveal troubling and unintended consequences of public health efforts to fix the problems of delinquency, contagion, and the generational inheritance of undesirable characteristics.

Do Children Expect Boys and Girls to Be Rewarded Differently for Doing the Same Work?

From a young age, children think resources ought to be distributed equally but expect resources to be shared preferentially with ingroup members. These desires for both impartiality and partiality take root in early childhood and likely become further entangled with age due to exposure to existing forms of group-based inequalities. Here, we ask whether children expect fairness or favoritism from an authority figure in the context of a real-world form of group-based inequality—the gender gap in pay. We tested 4- to 11-year-olds’ (N = 157) and adults’ (N = 101) expectations of how girls and boys would be rewarded by a teacher for performing a classroom task. Children were asked whether they expected a boy or girl to receive the larger reward (three versus two of five cookies) after completing a job. We found that 4- and 5-year-old children expected their own gender to be rewarded more favorably, an expectation that aligns with past work showing an own-gender bias in resource allocation. By contrast, and with the exception of 8- and 9-year-old boys, children in the 6- to 11-year-old range expected gender parity in pay, as did adults, a finding that contrasts with own-gender biases and with the real-world gender gap in pay. Our results shed new light on children’s evolving expectations of how rewards will be distributed in a context in which fairness and favoritism are in tension. Moreover, they provide a foray into children’s expectations about gender pay parity, an important and persistent issue in the society in which these children are developing.

From Paratexts to Print Machinery

This article seeks to decentre the proprietary author in copyright law by attending to some peripheral matters of Immanuel Kant’s periodical essay, ‘On the Wrongfulness of Reprinting’ (1785), as indices of its medial-material conditions of possibility. We consider not only the epitextual background of the German Enlightenment in which the Berlinische Monatsschrift was produced, but also the peritextual specimens of catchwords, signature marks, and various front matter of Kant’s essay. This medial reading suggests the periodical to be deeply involved in the operations of a print machinery preceding the authorial figure, the existence of which perturbs copyright law’s attachment to original authorship.

The Teacher-Centered and the Student-Centered: A Comparison of Two Approaches

There has been much discussion in the field of education concerning the differences between teaching based on the educator and teaching centered on the student. One of the main points of contention is that teaching should be student-centered. The claim that more student-centered instruction and less focus on the teacher is one of the most contentious aspects of the debate. Every tactic has unique advantages and disadvantages that cannot be had with any other approach. "Teacher-centered instruction" is a term that describes the educational approach that is sometimes referred to as "traditional education" by itself. The stage of learning in which the instructor acts as both the principal figure of authority and the primary source of information for the students enrolled in a particular class. On the other hand, learning focused on the student stimulates students to take an active part in the independent research that they perform by pushing them to concentrate on their requirements. This is because learning centered on the student encourages students to learn about themselves. In this investigation, comparison and contrast of these two approaches have been examined, and an attempt has been made to enumerate the advantages of each potential choice.

Liars, Skeptics, Cheerleaders: Human Rights Implications of Post-Truth Disinformation from State Officials and Politicians

The purpose of this paper is to philosophically examine how disinformation from state officials and politicians affects the right to access to information and political participation. Next to the more straightforward implications for political self-determination, the paper examines how active dissemination of lies by figures of epistemic authority can be framed as a human rights issue and affects trust patterns between citizens, increases polarization, impedes dialogue, and obstructs access to politically relevant information by gatekeeping knowledge. Analyzing European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) case law, the paper argues that human rights law provides some argumentative basis for extending individuals’ rights as epistemic and political agents towards a “right to truth spoken by politicians”. However, challenges in balancing a possible restriction of lies and assessing the real effective harm that comes from them remain, potentially leading to a vacuum of rights protection for less visible long-term harm to individuals and public discourse. In order to have a real chance at tackling the harmful consequences of publicly told lies from a human rights perspective, it is necessary to rethink the notion of harm to encompass more complex and abstract forms of politico-epistemic damage to individuals and the public.

Ibn Mujahid's Canonical Legacy: Examining Sanad Authentication and Political Factors in the Standardization of Qirā’āt Sab’ah

This research delves into the study of qirā’āt, specifically examining variations in Qur'anic recitation within the modern context of Qur'anic studies. Academic literature has typically overlooked qirā’āt, tending to emphasize linguistic aspects of qira'at in general. However, recent scholarly discussions underscore the increasing significance of scrutinizing the authenticity of qirā’āt. The presence of uncertainties and disputes concerning the authenticity of qirā’āt, both within Western and Muslim scholarly circles, renders this subject exceptionally intriguing for investigation. Drawing upon Michel Foucault's theory of the archaeology of knowledge and Shahab Ahmad, this study endeavors to bridge the existing knowledge gap by tracing the historical development of the standardization and canonization of qirā’āt. Specifically, our research will shed light on the motivations and procedures employed by Ibn Mujahid in designating seven Imams as authoritative figures in the canonization of qirā’āt sab’ah. Furthermore, we strived to uncover the ways in which political factors exerted influence over the endeavor to 'canonize' qirā’āt in seven distinct variants. Our findings ultimately reveal that the success of Ibn Mujahid's codification and canonization of qirā’āt hinged not solely on the narrative of unifying Muslim perspectives on the diverse recitation variants but was also significantly shaped by underlying political considerations throughout the process. These discoveries offer fresh insights into comprehending the historical dynamics of qirā’āt al-Qur'an and underscore the crucial importance of considering the political backdrop in understanding religious traditions.

The journey of late diagnosis of autism from an autoethnographic, neuroqueer, affective and performative perspective

In this article, I present my journey of late diagnosis of autism employing autoethnography with video performance, affects and the concept and practice of “neuroqueering”. Within the framework of Performative New Materialism, the neurodiversity paradigm and Critical Autism Studies, I try to respond to the cultural narratives created by non-autistic authoritarian figures, generate a different point of view within Critical Autism Studies by correlating the autistic experience with affects, and give a step forward in changing how the autistic experience is culturally researched, written about and spoken of.

Obedience to robot. Humanoid robot as an experimenter in Milgram paradigm

Humans will increasingly be influenced by social robots. It still seems unclear whether we will accept them as authorities and whether we will give in to them without reflection, as in the case of human authorities in the classic Stanley Milgram experiments (1963, 1965, and 1974). The demonstration by Stanley Milgram of the prevailing tendency in people to display extreme obedience to authority figures was one of the most important discoveries in the field of social psychology. The authors of this article decided to use a modified Milgram's research paradigm (obedience lite procedure) to compare one's obedience to a person giving instructions to electrocute someone sitting in an adjacent room with obedience to a robot issuing similar instructions. Twenty individuals were tested in both cases. As it turned out, the level of obedience was very high in both situations, and the nature of the authority figure issuing instructions (a professor vs. a robot) did not have the impact on the reactions of the subjects.

The many guises of machine translation

Abstract Machine translation (MT) tools are widely available. They may be present in different spaces in ways that consumers of the content do not necessarily control or realise, and research to date has paid little attention to these human-MT encounters. This article draws on the philosophy of technology literature to consider implications of MT’s permeating presence in online environments as well as in face-to-face interactions. The focus of the article is on two situations where humans can come across MT: while browsing websites and when speaking with figures of authority. The article highlights ways in which humans’ relationship with MT transcends conscious decisions to operate an MT tool directly. It argues that the human-MT relationship can also be one of immersion where MT blends with the environment in ways that, on the one hand, break language barriers but, on the other, influence, persuade, and on occasion misinform.

“I’m Owned no Longer”: Unveiling Muse’s Ideology in the Song Won’t Stand Down

Within a framework of political theory, and employing critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics, this paper demonstrates that the lyrics of the song “Won’t Stand Down” by the band Muse portray a left-libertarian political ideology. By focusing on the ideational function, which encompasses transitivity, textual, and interpersonal processes, the paper identified compelling evidence within the choice of words in the song. These words not only express a critical stance towards figures of authority but also shed light on their underlying negative intentions and the transformative process of attaining freedom. The analysis is based on the examination of the written lyrics of the song, ensuring a thorough understanding of its political implications.

Законодательное регулирование «фейк-ньюс» в России: в авангарде борьбы за информационную чистоту

The article dwells on Russian disinformation legislation and its evolution. The author analyses the disinformation types being prohibited by the Russian law and defines unlawful dissemination criteria of unreliable socially significant information. Moreover, the author figures out ‘fake news’ regulation purposes and conclusions, develops enhancement recommendations.

SCHOOL LIVING

The article addresses indiscipline as one of the primary obstacles for teachers in the classroom. Based on the main reasons for indiscipline, the solutions found in the literature, and the observation of successful conduct, a technique to manage the teacher-student relationship was developed during the 2011 school year in 8th-grade classes. The goal is to give students the autonomy to perceive their natural responsibilities in society, collaborating in constructing a new authority figure in the classroom. The experiment resulted in a clear paradigm shift between a classroom where management was not applied (control group) and the classrooms where the technique was used. More than creating an environment in which the elements that favor teacher stress were attenuated, with an improvement in school performance, the students’ ability to democratically act or react when faced with certain situations, colleagues, and teachers emerged.

Cutting off the King’s Head: Rethinking Authority in International Law

Abstract The renewed attention to the concept of authority in the literature of international law and international relations has allowed to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of authority in international affairs. But even recent works remain focused on ‘authority figures’ in the form of persons, offices and institutions. Building on an approach proposed by Kim Scheppele and Karol Soltan, this article frames authority as a matter of attractiveness in a choice situation, showing a way to go beyond the dominant actor-focused conception of authority. What it proposes, in particular, is to revisit the existing understanding of authority by shifting the focus from authority figures to authoritative resources. The practice of authority assertions and authority contestations in international law shows that rather than being ‘agent-centered’, claims and challenges to authority primarily turn around attributes that pass for ‘authoritative resources’ in the relevant contexts.