Balance Metaphor Research Articles

The role of metaphor in the corporate political strategies of health harming industries: Comparing the concept of balance in the gambling and opioid industry discourses

Scholars have identified notable similarities between the political strategies employed by health-harming industries. This includes similarities in the narratives employed by industry actors seeking to oppose public health regulations that threaten their commercial interests. This study seeks to examine the use of a specific concept – the balance metaphor – in the policy discourses of two health-harming industries. Namely, the pharmaceutical industry implicated in the prescription opioid crisis in the US, and the UK gambling industry, whose products and practices are associated with a serious, but largely neglected, series of harms. We first review research on metaphors, demonstrating how this provides additional theoretically-informed concepts with which to understand how industry discourse circumscribes the terrain of policy debates in ways amenable to commercial interests. Building from these insights, we conducted a rhetorical analysis, examining how the concept of balance is employed by different actors in distinct contexts to shape understandings of the social and policy problems associated with gambling and opioid products and to promote industry-favourable regulatory responses to these. This brings a micro-level of analysis to supplement previous meso- and macro-level scholarship in this space. We use our findings to argue that the depoliticization of the policy process and objectivization of the policy space – in ways that obscure its contingent and political nature – through discourses of balance is itself an arch political act. Examining the metaphors used in policy debates and their functions provides important insights that can be used to inform the construction of counter-narratives to industry-favourable discourses, including the creative use of novel metaphors in the service of public health goals.

Digital transformation and its impact on our digital wellbeing

The pandemic has transformed how we engage with digital technologies. Technology is now used to support all facets of our daily lives, including work, learning, and enjoyment (Schleicher, 2020). While the pandemic may have accelerated our adoption, this upward trend has been happening for many years, and we are no longer in a world where the digital, virtual or online can be viewed as separate from our everyday life (Myers, Erikson & Small 2013). The effects of digitalisation have been felt at all levels, including education. As educators we can be optimistic, pessimistic or pragmatic about many of these changes, but they cannot be ignored (Gluckman & Allen, 2018). 
 The influence of digital transformation has highlighted the critical need to better manage our students' and our wellbeing. Wellbeing, as a concept has been challenging to define due to its complex and multi-faceted nature. More recent approaches have shifted towards ideas around the quality of life and the notion of flourishing in the positive psychology movement (Dodge et al 2012). In an endeavour to explain wellbeing which moves from the binary positive versus negative wellbeing, Dodge et al (2012), proposed that wellbeing is “the balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced” (p. 230). In other words, people's wellbeing can be positively influenced if they are given the resources to address and overcome the adversities they face. Using their balance metaphor, a person's feeling of wellbeing can be stabilized when they feel that they have the psychological, social and physical resources and skills necessary to meet a particular psychological, social and/or physical challenge. This approach, therefore, acknowledges the see-saw effect of wellbeing but also that individuals have agency over their wellbeing.
 So what does this mean for student wellbeing in the context of learning technologies? As highlighted by Gluckman and Allen, (2018) “to understand wellbeing in the 21st century requires an understanding of transformative digital technologies as drivers of change not just in human material circumstances, but also in human values and organisational systems that support wellbeing.” (p. 10). Therefore, when considering digital wellbeing we need to acknowledge the transformative power of digital technology to drive both positive and negative outcomes and ask how we can tip the balance by leveraging the positives of this transformation.
 The presentation will explore the challenges that digital transformation brings to education and how as educators we can tip the balance to leverage technology to support our student’s and our digital wellbeing. The presentation will also focus on ways as educators we can use learning technologies to support students with the resources and skills to enhance their digital wellbeing.

Enhancing the human dimensions of children's neuromuscular care: piloting a methodology for fostering team reflexivity.

For those with chronic, progressive conditions, high quality clinical care requires attention to the human dimensions of illness-emotional, social, and moral aspects-which co-exist with biophysical dimensions of disease. Reflexivity brings historical, institutional, and socio-cultural influences on clinical activities to the fore, enabling consideration of new possibilities. Continuing education methodologies that encourage reflexivity may improve clinical practice and trainee learning, but are rare. We piloted a dialogical methodology with a children's rehabilitation team to foster reflexivity (patient population: young people with Duchenne's or Becker's muscular dystrophy). The methodology involved three facilitated, interactive dialogues with the clinical team. Each dialogue involved clinicians learning to apply a social theory (Mol's The Logic of Care) to ethnographic fieldnotes of clinical appointments, to make routine practice less familiar and thus open to examination. Discourse analyses that preserve group dynamics were completed to evaluate the extent to which the dialogues spurred reflexive dialogue within the team. Overall, imagining impacts of clinical care on people's lives-emphasized in the social theory applied to fieldnotes-showed promise, shifting how clinicians interpreted routine practices and spurring many plans for change. However, this reflexive orientation was not sustained throughout, particularly when examining entrenched assumptions regarding 'best practices'. Clinicians defended institutional practices by co-constructing the metaphor of balancing logics in care delivery. When invoked, the balance metaphor deflected attention from emotional, social, and moral impacts of clinical care on patients and their families. Emergent findings highlight the value of analysing reflexivity-oriented dialogues using discourse analysis methods.

Lived experience of women with gestational diabetes mellitus living in China: a qualitative interview study

ObjectiveTo explore the lived experience of women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) living in China in order to add knowledge about how the Chinese women suffer from GDM.DesignA qualitative interpretive...

A just balance or just imbalance? The role of metaphor in misuse of private information

This article undertakes analysis of misuse of private information (MPI) caselaw informed by deconstruction and wider literary and critical theory. It specifically considers the rhetorical effect of the ‘balance’ metaphor in MPI caselaw. It starts by providing an account of select theorists who explore the subtle but vital role that metaphor, traditionally viewed as a poetic or literary device, plays in non-literary texts. This account highlights the fundamental role of metaphor in legal discourse. Following this discussion, the article investigates the ‘balance’ metaphor in MPI judgments. It identifies and analyses two distinct ways in which the balance metaphor subtly benefits judicial reasoning. First, it creates an impression of certainty by drawing on connotations of the quantifiable and calculable. Second, it fosters the moral appeal of a decision by alluding to notions of justice and equilibrium. In doing so, the balance metaphor marginalises the non-rational, inexpressible aspects of judicial rights balancing.

The Peculiar Nature of EU Home Affairs Agencies in Migration Control: Beyond Accountability versus Autonomy?

Abstract This article analyses the development paths and practices of three EU Home Affairs agencies: Frontex, Europol and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO). Particular attention is given to those tasks and forms of inter-agency cooperation raising fundamental rights sensitivities in the scope of migration controls. The article argues that the specific Home Affairs focus of these agencies and their ways of working, including the use of ‘experimental governance’ strategies, poses particular challenges to individuals on the move, specifically in relation to their right to an effective remedy. These findings are linked to the academic debate on the balance between accountability and autonomy of EU Agencies. Due to their peculiar nature, evidenced by several cross-cutting commonalities potentially impacting on basic rights of individuals, we argue that this balance metaphor is not appropriate for these Agencies; instead higher standards of accountability should apply with closer on-going control over their activities.

Irregular assimilation progress: Reasons for setbacks in the context of linguistic therapy of evaluation

The assimilation model suggests progress in psychotherapy follows an eight-stage sequence described by the Assimilation of Problematic Experiences Scale (APES). This study sought to reconcile this developmental stage model with the common but superficially contradictory clinical observation that therapeutic advances alternate with setbacks. Setbacks (n=466) were identified in therapy transcripts of two clients and classified using a preliminary nine-category list of possible alternative reasons for setbacks. Most of the setbacks involved switches among the multiple strands of a problem due to (a) therapists exceeding clients' therapeutic zone of proximal development, (b) therapists guiding clients to shift toward relatively problematic material (balance metaphor), or (c) spontaneous switches. Rather than contradicting the theory, this close examination of setbacks yielded elaborations of it.

Interest-Balancing vs. Fiduciary Duty: Two Models for National Security Law

The metaphor of the balance has long dominated national security law and policy. As Richard Posner has explained, one side of the balance “contains individual rights, the other community safety, with the balance needing and receiving readjustment from time to time as the weights of the respective interests change. The safer we feel, the more weight we place on the interest in personal liberty; the more endangered we feel, the more weight we place on the interest in safety, while recognizing the interdependence of the two interests.” While policymakers have debated the relative weight states should give to civil liberty concerns and public security concerns in various contexts, few question the general balance metaphor that structures these debates. By all accounts, interest balancing has provided the primary model for making national security law and policy worldwide since September 11, 2001.

"Læring er bare å ta trinn for trinn, det er et langt steg fra begynnelse til slutt": Noen førskolelæreres og grunnskolelæreres beskrivelser av læring og læringsprosesser i barnehage og skole

Title: Learning is to take it step by step it’s a big step from beginning to the end: Teachers’ descriptions of learningand learning processes in kindergarten and primary schoolAbstract: The purpose of this article is to shed light on how teachers describe learning and the processes of learning in kindergarten and school, by metaphors. How can the metaphors contribute to understand the teachers’ interpretations and constructions of learning? Empirical data are of five preschool teachers and four primary school teachers describing how they understand and experience learning and the learning processes in kindergarten and school. Three main metaphors were identified: metaphor of craft, metaphor of movement and metaphor of balance.

Restoring balance: How history tilts the scales against privacy. An Actor-Network Theory investigation

In this paper we problematize the metaphor of balance employed in the area of information privacy. Using Actor-Network Theory we conduct an historical investigation into the continuous release of the same personal data over the course of eight decades. Through the examination of actual enactments of balance over time we find that, in practice, balancing acts are conducted at local levels by local actor-networks within organizations, with limited overall organizational knowledge, raising challenges around interpreting statements made by organizational spokespersons. We also find a surprising lack of knowledge possessed by these local actor-networks about what is subsequently done with personal data and the extent to which networks that extend beyond the organization gravitate towards and form around available data. Through tracing and revealing this historical Actor-Network Theory investigation provides a means of probing and examining actual acts of balance in the area of information privacy and, through revelation, aid in the creation of the possibility of bringing the act of balance more in line with the concept.

Time and Work–Life Balance: The Roles of ‘Temporal Customization’ and ‘Life Temporality’

This article poses a challenge to the orthodox binary, conceptualization of work–life balance only made possible by relying on the widespread ‘clock time’ worldview, which understands employment practices in terms of the basic time = money equation. In particular, it is the balance metaphor which relies on a quantification of both work and life in order to make sense and can therefore be seen to be based on an understanding of time as a measurable and value‐able unit. This article seeks to begin the exercise of examining the concept of work–life balance through a broader concept of the temporal dimension than simply limited quantitative notions. Two temporal themes are reported from a study which identified employees who had customized their working pattern to suit the various and multi‐dimensional facets of their lifestyles and thereby successfully improved their work–life balance. Participants in this study demonstrated that an improved work–life balance is more about a mind‐set that refuses to be dominated by a work temporality and is determined to create ‘me time’ rather than e.g. simply choosing a four day week or a part‐time job. It is argued that the notion of work–life balance is more usefully conceptualized within a broader notion of ‘livingscapes’ which contain both elements of work and life and that as researchers, our challenge must be to reflect the complexity of this weave within our analyses of individuals’ work–life balance.

Securing Liberty in the Face of Terror: Reflections from Criminal Justice

Post-9/11 the equilibrium between security and liberty has been subject to intense political and philosophical interrogation. The metaphor of balance, although perilous, is so pervasive as to demand scrutiny of what lies in the scales, what tips them, and in whose interest. Though international and constitutional lawyers have dominated the debate about balance, the experience of criminal justice suggests that articulating a principled approach provides greater prospects of protecting rights against unwarranted erosion. This more modest approach imposes structural and procedural safeguards through the twin engines of judicial oversight and unremitting defence of due process. In this way it may be possible to enhance collective security against terrorism without diminishing individual security against the state. © Cardiff University Law School 2005.

A micro-analysis of the assimilation process in the linguistic therapy of evaluation

This paper reports a qualitative micro-analysis of the assimilation process in 18 events drawn from six patients treated in the linguistic therapy of evaluation. Each event began with a problematic situation introduced by the patient and ended with a marker showing either non-resolution or resolution of the problematic situation. These events all represented a common therapeutic task: The orders of abstraction technique, one of the main techniques of the linguistic therapy of evaluation. The non-resolved and resolved events tended to represent different levels on the Assimilation of Problematic Experiences Scale (APES). The non-resolved events tended to be associated with low APES levels, whereas the resolved events tended to include higher APES levels. The process of assimilation showed a sawtoothed pattern characteristic of directive therapies. To illustrate the process of assimilation, qualitative data—passages, excerpted from one patient, Silvia—are shown. The results are discussed in terms of the assimilation model and the balance metaphor.

Simplicity and Complexity in Design for Transportation Systems and Urban Forms

A metaphor of balance simplifies and guides transportation planning in Los Angeles and Sydney. Striving for balance, it calls for more or less of particular types of systems without examining whether those elements should instead be reconfigured. Urban consolidation plans in Sydney, as part of an effort to bring about this balance, illustrate what Christopher Alexander calls the yearning for the physical and plastic characteristics of the past. The diverse and overlapping urban interaction patterns of the automotive age-which the plans fail to recognize as natural and not to be transcended by physical planning manipulations-show why Sydney needs a more sophisticated approach. Transportation planners must move from attempting to shape lifestyles in ways which cannot succeed to appreciating the many dimensions of how people have chosen to live and interact across space and how this relates to their aspirations for life in the future.

Suspending disbelief—of Wynne‐Edwards and his reception

AbstractCritique of Wynne‐Edwards' views on population regulation and sociality suppose a population of discrete, mutually exclusive groups essential to his thought. Yet both his past and present work focus on continually distributed, philopatric populations; his critics have argued the untenability of a position never his own. Wynne‐Edwardsian ‘group selection’ focuses on local population productivity under philopatry. A ‘group’ is a local confluence of genotypes which need not be reified, and group selection consists of the differential replication (hence heritability) of the local social environment in which a genotype is embedded. Differential productivity contingent on social environment can eliminate some relational structures on genotypes in favor of others, creating an expanding wave of population productivity as in Wright's shifting balance metaphor. Such a process is inherent in the evolution of reciprocity, where cooperators must cluster to successfully invade a population of defectors. Regulation of resource exploitation in continuously distributed populations may be modeled as overlapping n‐person Prisoner's Dilemmas, where each individual participates in several distinct commons and defection represents local over‐exploitation of resources.