Belief In Reality Research Articles

Bogatyrs and Rulers: Folklore Characters in the Ethnic Identity and Religious Practices of the Vyatka Mari

The author examines the mythological aspect of the entoregional identity of the modern Mari population in the Kirov oblast’ (the Vyatka, the Urzhum-Vyatka Mari) living in the Malmyzhsky and Urzhumsky districts. The author identifies the role of heroic images in modern ethno-cultural activism and the representation of the Vyatka Mari as the main problem of the study. Due to the multidimensional aspect of the problem, the article includes thematic sub-items: Features of the ethnic and religious identity of the Vyatka Mari - Images of folklore rulers in the perception of local residents - Legendary rulers in ethno-cultural activism and commemorative practices - Sacralization of folklore characters. The author considers this problem on the basis of the field materials (interview texts) collected during his expeditions to the Kirov oblast’ in 2015, 2017, 2021, and the regional media. In a multicultural region, inhabited by different ethnic groups, the Mari represent their identity through festive and sacred practices, as well as the veneration of local legendary rulers and heroes: Princes Akpatyr, Akmazik, Boltush (Poltysh) and others. Folklore heroes are objects of the religious cult of the Mari traditional religion, which is manifested in the ethnoregional self-consciousness of the Mari population. Legendary heroes are perceived by the local population as real historical characters. It is revealed that the beliefs in reality of the Mari heroes reflect the idea of the “golden age” of the history of the Vyatka Mari and their heroized past. The images of Boltush, Akpatyr are actively broadcast through the media, the ethnic component in education, local history literature. Thanks to the efforts of local activists, new objects of the cultural landscape emerge in the Malmyzhsky district - monuments at the sites of the symbolic burials of the Mari rulers. The conclusion is formulated that cultural activism, which appeals to the images of Mari folklore, plays a significant role in marking the ethnoregional identity of the Vyatka Mari people. In the text of the article the characters of the Mari folklore of Vyatka are considered in the context of identity. The obtained result allows to apply this theoretical framework for the study of folklore images in relation to the identities of ethnographic groups of the Mari and other peoples of the Volga region. The article is based on the dissertation “The system of mythological characters in the representation of the identities of modern Mari” for the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences, defended in 2022 in the N.N. Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The Strengths Approach in Practice: How it Changes Lives Avril Bellinger and Deirdre Ford

In their chapter on a strengths approach to student learning, the authors of this fascinating book comment on how it can be challenging, in a neoliberal environment, to enable students to become critically reflective, social justice-oriented professionals. To be such professionals is a challenge for all of us, and for the organisations we work in, and we need all the help we can get. What Avril Bellinger and Deirdre Ford are offering us here is an account of a response to this challenge, with a strengths approach at its centre, made by one organisation and the students, service users, volunteers and professionals who are part of it. Based in Plymouth, START—Students and Refugees Together—has been providing support for refugees and learning opportunities to students—the mutuality involved in this is a fundamental aspect of the strengths approach of the organisation—for over twenty years. Avril Bellinger is START’s founder, and as she says in her preface, the book ‘is not an instruction manual, but rather a collection of stories that illustrate the strengths approach in action’. This is an important distinction, as its title might suggest—at least, it did to me initially—that the book is an introduction to the strengths approach, or the strengths perspective as it is often called, and the practice models subsumed under this umbrella. There are relatively brief mentions of such models, including narrative practice and, somewhat idiosyncratically in my view, the Human Givens, whereas others, such as solution-focused practice and asset-based community development (ABCD) are bypassed almost altogether. ABCD is actually given short shrift as a neoliberal approach, mainly on the basis of one critical article. I am not sure this is entirely fair, and responses to this article by the main proponents of ABCD are not mentioned. However, this does reflect the firm, uncompromising even, vision of the strengths approach that emerges in these pages. Not a strengths-based approach, which can be added piecemeal to a service, but a whole systems approach, rooted in relationships, values of social justice and mutuality, and a real belief in people and their abilities and potentials.

The Evacuation of the Customs Administration from the Kingdom of Poland to Russia in 1914

The customs administration in the Kingdom of Poland operated mainly in the borderlands. After the Triple Alliance was formed, it became obvious that both the German Empire and Austria-Hungary could be potential adversaries of Russia. The state administration in the Kingdom of Poland would be the most vulnerable to possible military conflicts. In the early 1890s, initial attempts were made to design evacuation protocols. The works continued until 1913 when they reached completion. In accordance with these guidelines, the customs administration was evacuated between July and August 1914. Customs offices and their personnel, along with their families, were transported further inland where they were supposed to await the positive outcome of the war, which, in contrast to expectations, never occurred. The way in which the evacuation of institutions managing the empire’s western land border was planned and carried out raises several specific and more general questions. The authors focus on the approach to evacuation emphasizing its deliberate character, privileges of the hierarchy of officials, approach to archives, as well as the implementation itself and its effectiveness. Further on, the issue of planning the return of the Russian administration to these territories arose, which could be perceived as real belief in victory. The reconstruction of the subject of research is developed with reference to numerous archival sources from the archives of Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia, as well as printed sources: legislation, official departmental publications, and press articles. The work uses or refers to all the literature on the subject that deserves attention. As a result of the analysis of the planning, evacuation, and operation processes in Russia of the examined structures, it can be concluded that the plans were implemented quite accurately and effectively. The authors draw this conclusion after many years of research on the operation and evacuation of other Russian offices of the Kingdom of Poland. These evacuation customs offices operated in a limited number, waiting for the end of the war, but ironically, while escaping from an external enemy, they fell into the hands of an internal one as they served the Bolsheviks in creating their “instruments of power”.

“What Is the Real Belief on Campus?” Perceptions of Racial Conflict at a Minority-Serving Institution and a Historically White Institution

An organizational conflict lens offers a distinct understanding of how higher education administrators and postsecondary students experience racial conflict on their campuses. Despite students of color historically reporting incidents with overt and subtle forms of racism on college campuses (George Mwangi et al., 2018; Hurtado & Ruiz, 2015; Nguyen et al., 2018; Serrano, 2020), postsecondary leaders continue to report positive race relations on campus (Jaschik & Lederman, 2017). This conflict in perception is the focus of this article. To understand how race-related conflicts are perceived in higher education, I examined perceptions of racial conflict across two types of postsecondary campuses. I used compositional diversity, or a numerical illustration of various racial and ethnic groups (Hurtado et al., 1998; Milem et al., 2005), as a determinant to decide which campuses to study for how racial conflict is understood by administrators, faculty, and students. Drawing from organizational conflict theory, this year-long qualitative study involved 35 open-ended interviews conducted at a minority serving institution (MSI) and a historically White institution (HWI). The main research question was: How does compositional diversity shape stakeholders’ perceptions of racial conflict? Across both campuses, and despite differences in compositional diversity, administrators responded similarly: they noted minimal problems among students regarding racism on their campuses. Alternately, students across both campuses responded similarly: they noted these issues as well but described it in terms of frequency and severity. To make sense of this, I describe findings in three ways: interpersonal and structural racism, intergroup conflict, and historical perspectives about racial conflict. Background/Context: Despite students of color historically reporting incidents with overt and subtle forms of racial conflict on college campuses, postsecondary leaders continue to report positive race relations on campus. Unfortunately, various forms of conflict are often reduced to isolated incidents that are disconnected from aspects of campus culture and climate. Although conflict is a permanent and indelible aspect of organizations, racism and other forms of race-related conflict on college campuses continue to be studied on an interpersonal level, less so at the organizational level of higher education. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: An organizational conflict lens offers a distinct understanding of how higher education administrators and postsecondary students experience racial conflict on their campuses. Despite students of color historically reporting incidents with overt and subtle forms of racism on college campuses, postsecondary leaders continue to report positive race relations on campus. This conflict in perception is the focus of this article. To understand how race-related conflicts are perceived in higher education, I examined perceptions of racial conflict across two types of postsecondary campuses. I used compositional diversity, or a numerical illustration of various racial and ethnic groups, a determinant to decide which campuses to study for how racial conflict is understood by administrators, faculty, and students. The main research question I asked was: How does compositional diversity shape stakeholders’ perceptions of racial conflict? Research Design: To understand perceptions of racial conflict, I conducted a multiple case study of two types of institutions in the northeastern United States: a historically white institution (HWI) and a minority-serving institution (MSI). I purposely selected two racially distinct institutions to explore compositional diversity in higher education. I first asked: How does compositional diversity shape stakeholders’ perceptions of racial conflict? Drawing from organizational conflict theory, this year-long qualitative study involved 35 open-ended interviews conducted at a MSI and an HWI. Specifically, I sought respondents who were positioned informants. This approach assumes that informants’ positions inform their behaviors. Conclusions/Recommendations: Although the data here cannot be applied to all institutions, some lessons can be extracted for further exploration, should administrators and researchers desire to understand race-based organizational conflicts. Indeed, across both campuses and despite differences in compositional diversity, administrators responded similarly: they noted minimal problems among students regarding racism on their campuses. Alternately, students across both campuses responded similarly: they noted these issues as well but described it in terms of frequency and severity. To make sense of this, I describe findings in three ways: interpersonal and structural racism, intergroup conflict, and historical perspectives about racial conflict.

Exploring views about mindfulness groups for voice-hearing from the perspective of service users and staff: A Q-methodology study

Objectives: Despite prevailing beliefs about the potential benefits and harmfulness of mindfulness for people who hear voices, there is a paucity of research into staff and service user views. Q-methodology was used to explore views about mindfulness groups for voice-hearers. Method: Opportunistic sampling of mental healthcare staff (N = 14) and service users with psychosis (N = 17). Both samples were analysed using principle components factor analysis to identify the range of attitudes held by staff and service users. Results: Staff participants were particularly knowledgeable and interested in mindfulness. A single staff consensus factor was found suggesting mindfulness is helpful, and not harmful for mental health, but uncertainty surrounded its usefulness for voice-hearers. Service users held four distinct attitudes: (i) mindfulness helps to calm a racing mind; (ii) mindfulness helps to manage stress; (iii) mindfulness improves well-being, and does not alter the brain, reality beliefs, or cause madness; and (iv) mindfulness helps with managing thoughts, fostering acceptance, and is acceptable when delivered in a group format. Conclusions: Staff viewed mindfulness groups for psychosis as helpful, not harmful, but were uncertain about their utility. Consistent with previous research, service users viewed mindfulness groups as useful to promote well-being and reduce distress for individuals experiencing psychosis.

Stilling Life: Deviant Realism in Sebald and Tripp

Stilling Life:Deviant Realism in Sebald and Tripp Naomi Beeman (bio) Sebald on Tripp1 Several perplexing features of W. G. Sebald’s mixed-media prose raise the question of what “realism” means to him: 1) the frequency with which he refers to writers and visual artists who work in a traditional realist vein;2 2) the fact that his most sustained remarks on visual realism surface not with respect to photography, but in his interpretations of paintings by artists not generally regarded as “realistic” in an art-historical sense;3 3) the variety of terms of disparate cultural-historical and linguistic origins that Sebald conflates in his scattered reflections on aesthetic realism;4 and 4) the tendency of Sebald’s critics to read his work against the backdrop of genres, disciplines and media that are the historical organs of a realist ideology—realist literature and painting, autobiography, historiography, documentary and memorial [End Page 643] prose, photography and film—whether these categories are used to taxonomize Sebald’s work or are presented as fruitful points of contrast. In this context, I would like to draw attention to an essay titled “Wie Tag und Nacht [As Day and Night]–” that Sebald wrote on his schoolfellow, the contemporary painter Jan Peter Tripp. “Wie Tag und Nacht–” is a work of art criticism driven by palpable artistic sympathy for the worldview enshrined in Tripp’s paintings. I read the essay as a tacit declaration of Sebald’s own aesthetic ideology in prose. I am particularly struck by Sebald’s explicit, polemical aim, which is to dislodge Tripp’s work from the tradition of trompe-l’oeil painting, photorealism and hyperrealism with which it has been, in his words, “almost compulsively” associated.5 Thus I ask whether his unorthodox interpretation of Tripp warns us against reading Sebald’s prose works through a (post-)realist lens.6 I would like to propose that here, as elsewhere, Sebald renders the term “realism” progressively stranger and more flexible by thinking against the grain of a certain historical reception of realist artworks. Finally, although a demonstration of this point exceeds the scope of this essay, the critique of visual realism Sebald puts forward in “Wie Tag und Nacht—” lays the groundwork for further study of Sebald’s prose fictions as a postmodern articulation of literary realism; it also provides us with the critical resources we need to interpret fully the commentaries on paintings embedded in his fictions, which have received more critical attention.7 Deviant Realism: “ … a much more deeply searching objectivity …” Although Sebald concedes that “one cannot avoid the tiresome question of realism” in any discussion of Tripp’s images, he denies a realist agenda in all but Tripp’s earliest pieces: “The pictures of the first three or four years still show the clear influence of surrealism, of the Vienna [End Page 644] fantastic realists and of photorealism […] ; but very soon […] this […] trend [is] replaced by a much more deeply searching objectivity […] .”8 It is precisely the imposture of reality that, according to Sebald, “prevents us from seeing [Tripp’s] true achievement.”9 Reversing the conventional observation that representations mediate our access to reality, Sebald opens with the more shocking claim that our belief in reality mediates our access to representations, blinding us to the priority of the work of art.10 And this is the most unsettling thing about the realist aesthetic: that while it seems to prioritize reality, it in fact transforms the world from an end in itself to a kind of filter—a set of historically specific aesthetic imperatives that mediate our access to the artwork that is actually privileged by the realist aesthetic as by any other. When realist artworks refer us to an outside world, they use a rhetorical strategy not unlike Socrates’ assertion of his ignorance: realism denies its aesthetic authority only to smuggle it back in while we are busy making the detour it has recommended through the so-called “real world.” Rather than asking how Tripp’s realism allows us to see reality, therefore, Sebald asks how Tripp’s realism affects our ability to see Tripp’s paintings. Nonetheless, Sebald misleads us when he describes Tripp’s...

Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's Georgics by Philip Thibodeau. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. Pp. iii, 326.

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 193 both emphasized the didactic approach Cicero was now embracing, but also relocated his philosophical work as less public, and thus subsidiary to his political career (212). A Written Republic is a thorough piece of scholarship, and while this review has highlighted the points that fit most coherently within the overall argument of the book, it cannot do justice to the many insights Baraz presents in her reading of Cicero’s philosophical prefaces. While none of Baraz’s interpretations of Cicero’s rhetorical effects are implausible, many of them are arguable and provocative of debate. Her prioritizing of Cicero’s political motives for writing the philosophica, for instance, is also the justification Cicero preferred to publicize; his less public-spirited reasons may have been more important than he sometimes claimed. His failure to write philosophy while exiled in 58 b.c.e. could also be argued to have stemmed from the despair of having been personally abandoned , whereas his later exile from politics left him with more enthusiasm for serious writing projects because he was one of many so excluded. Baraz’s interpretation of the letter couriered by the younger Quintus Cicero (Ad Att. 16.5) as evidence for Cicero’s real belief in the educative nature of his philosophical works is probably fair, but the letter could also have been written in a deliberately self-aggrandizing code intended to pass unnoticed by the snooping Quintus while alerting Atticus’ suspicions in case Cicero ’s other letter, explaining the real situation, went astray. That there are often other ways of reading the evidence does not, however, detract from the importance of such a detailed investigation of the texts. Baraz’s fine-toothed combing of the prefaces leads her to produce an impressively comprehensive analysis which might have been fruitfully expanded into a longer book. Baraz’s approach, which offers so many ways of accessing Cicero’s possible intent, has the advantage of appealing on multiple levels to her various audiences. Scholars of Ciceronian philosophy will doubtless be her prime audience. But, given its plentiful suggestions on how Cicero intended his works to be understood (as well as the fact that Baraz translates all but a few of her Latin quotations), A Written Republic could also serve as an introduction for Cicero’s philosophica to an educated but non-expert audience. Baraz’s project thus echoes Cicero’s, in that she presents her own sophisticated interpretation of the sources accessibly and persuasively. Bishop's University Catherine Tracy Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's GEORGICS. By Philip Thibodeau. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. Pp. iii, 326. In any attempt to interpret Vergil’s Georgics, there are certain big issues which must sooner or later be considered. They are issues that are important to the understanding of any written work, fiction or non-fiction, verse or prose, but seem more than usually central to the comprehension of this complex work. The first of these questions is that of audience: whom does the author expect to read the work? Whom does he envision as the recipient of his words, and what reaction does he anticipate or desire? The next question is of genre: how, exactly, can we categorize this work, and why? The third question, in the case of Latin literature, is, unfortunately, often presented as the consideration of sources: whence did the concept derive, and how has this particular Latin author adapted an original to serve his own purposes? More appropriately, this final question should be considered one of context: what is the literary 194 PHOENIX and social milieu in which the work under consideration has been created, and how do the work and the context influence each other? These are the questions that Thibodeau takes on in Playing the Farmer, and it is his approach to these issues that provides the greatest value in this very worthwhile book. Thibodeau does especially good work in his exploration of the context of the Georgics, both literary and social. In the first chapter (“Agricolae”), he provides the necessary background and comparative material with other ancient works on agriculture and other works, such as histories, that mention the...

Cinematic Belief

Given the so-called “crisis” in film theory, the digital mutations of the medium, and the renewed interest in historicism, cinephilia, and film philosophy, André Bazin's thought appears ripe for retrieval and renewal. Indeed, his role in the renaissance of philosophical film theory, I argue, is less epistemological and ontological than moral and aesthetic. It is a quest to explore the revelatory possibilities of cinematic images; not only their power to reveal reality under a multiplicity of aspects but to satisfy our desire for myth – to allow an aesthetic overcoming of the limits of consciousness and memory. The question I wish to explore is whether cinema has the power to restore our belief in reality, in the worlds that film can reveal, in the experience that it can capture and transfigure. My case study for exploring this question, the question of belief in cinema or what we could call a Bazinian cinephilia, will be Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011); a film whose sublime aesthetics and unorthodox religiosity has provoked polarised critical responses, but whose remarkable ambition is to create a mythology – personal, historical, and cosmological – capable of reanimating belief in cinema and in the world.

Emotions and Otherness in D. H. Lawrence’s Mexican Fiction

In “A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” Lawrence defines “higher emotions” as “love in all its manifestations, from genuine desire to tender love, love of one’s fellow-men and love of God: we mean love, joy, delight, hope, true indignant anger, passionate sense of justice and injustice, truth and untruth, honour and dishonour, and real belief in anything” (LCL 312). The range of “higher emotions” is wide but what they seem to share is their intensity and authenticity. Even desire is conside...

Religious and spiritual themes in British academic art during the Great War

The fascination with spiritual matters among many in Britain during the Great War and the impact it had upon attitudes towards death, bereavement, faith, sacrifice, and the growth of spiritualism in the country has been examined before; but few have considered the visual response, or the effects of such images on the imagination. These themes were translated into representational paintings and prints representing Christ, death and sacrifice, life after death, and inspirational visions that attempted to centre the scene in realistic terms. Related to this were symbolic allegories such as St. George, reflective of nationalistic tendencies, faith, and spiritual vengeance. It will be argued that such fictions perpetuated and grounded these beliefs in reality. In the majority of cases, the artists moved the discourse from the pulpit to the battlefield, placing common soldiers at the forefront of the experience, guaranteeing approbation among a public eager for visual reassurance. Four pictures in particular, each employing a different theme, will be examined: The Great Sacrifice by James Clark (1914), and its sequel The Greater Reward (1917); The White Comrade by G. Hillyard Swinstead (1915); and Greater Love Hath No Man by Charles Sims (1917). Pictures employing universal symbols such as the cross and the crucifixion became metaphorical indices for literal (the numerous wayside crucifixes along the roads of France and Belgium) or perceived (the myths surrounding the crucifixion of Allied soldiers by the enemy), and by extension the idea that the collective dead were ‘crucified’ for the greater good of mankind. Others were not so obvious, such as the bandaged head. This religious imagery found renewed vigour in the numerous war memorials of the post-war era, and it will be argued that the pictures fulfilled the need of a Christian population to grasp for visible signs of hope, reassurance, and an understanding of the bloodbath. Such illusions propagated concepts of sacrifice, spiritual intervention and life after death. While they created a false and deceptive hope, they nonetheless functioned as a survival mechanism for the bereaved.

Beyond Cultivation: Exploring the Effects of Frequency, Recency, and Vivid Autobiographical Memories for Violent Media

Using Shrum's (1996) heuristic processing model as an explanatory mechanism, we propose that people who hold vivid autobiographical memories for a specific past experience with media violence will overstate the prevalence of real-world crime versus individuals without vivid memories. We also explore the effects of frequency and recency on social reality beliefs. A survey was administered to 207 undergraduate students who were asked to recall one violent television program or movie seen in the past. Participants were asked to write essays describing the violence, which were coded for vividness. Results support not only cultivation theory, but also the effects of memory vividness: participants with more vivid memories of blood and gore gave higher prevalence estimates of real-world crime and violence than participants with less vivid memories. Findings also suggest that females had more vivid memories for prior media violence than males. Implications for cultivation, the heuristic processing model, and vividness research are discussed.

William James’s Ethical Republic

For William James (1842-1910), all philosophical problems were ultimately ethical. In Pragmatism (1907), James invoked the logical theory of his friend Charles Peirce to argue the of any belief consisted solely in conduct it is fitted to produce. There difference in abstract he elaborated, that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen. Indeed, James concluded truth not reflected in the consequences of conduct but shaped by them: Truth is he wrote, just as health, wealth, and strength are made, in the course of experience.1 This major thesis of Pragmatism distilled a career spent describing an unfinished world, in which human thoughts and actions made differences for which thinkers and actors were responsible. As early as 1878, James insisted beliefs imply to advance goals, creating effects valued in light of those goals. mind, he reiterated in his 1890 masterpiece Principles of Psychology, is a fighter for ends, and thinking, a act. Later, in The Will to Believe (1896), James argued when evidence is inconclusive, belief might create conditions in which hypotheses could be verified and potential goods realized - or lost. That frank (if often overlooked) assessment of the moral risks as well as rewards of intellectual life echoed James's most explicitly ethical work, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life (1891), where he asserted when choosing what to believe, it is simply our total character and personal genius are on trial; and if we invoke any so-called philosophy, our choice and use of also are but revelations of our personal aptitude or incapacity for moral life.2In short, James, as John Dewey elegized in 1910, was everywhere and always the moralist.3 Yet for much of the twentieth century critics deemed James's philosophy ethically vacuous, a warrant for moral solipsism. In 1909, Bertrand Russell criticized James for privileging belief over suspension of judgment, and thus encouraging people to live in private moral universes rather than seek objective grounding for common values. Today, some intellectual historians continue to echo Russell and likeminded contemporaries, judging ethical pragmatism tantamount to moral relativism, even moral apathy.4 Others, acknowledging James's impassioned pronouncements on lynching, industrial conflict, imperialist expansion, and other public moral issues, have interpreted them as expressing a particularly cosmopolitan but otherwise unremarkable American liberalism, rather than a coherent moral philosophy.5These criticisms are unfounded, but understandable. They reflect a general antipathy toward James's broader conceptions of knowledge, truth, and experience, and frustration with his unorthodox mode of philosophizing. In Pragmatism, James followed Peirce in arguing beliefs are not copies of reality, but rules for action resembling the probabilistic predictions guiding scientific inquiry. James, however, extended Peirce's argument, claiming there is no static reality beliefs can once-for-all describe. A self-proclaimed radical empiricist, James held the universe is pluralistic, and the only reality accessible to human minds is constantly changing - not least through the ceaseless flux of human consciousness, a fact as natural and consequential as any other.6 This blurring of subject-object distinctions scandalized contemporaries. It also underpinned James's equally scandalous claim ideas not only demonstrate their meaning through conduct, but derive both meaning and value from their origins and verification in human activity. To ask what is true in such a world to ask which ideas, moral or otherwise, allow people to navigate it successfully - which carry us prosperously from any one of our experience to any other part - and which do not. …

Remembering Past Media Use: Toward the Development of a Lifetime Television Exposure Scale

Cultivation theory, and the study of long-term media effects in general, could benefit from the development of a scale that measures long-term television exposure levels. Theory and research into the organization, storage, and retrieval of long-term memory are used to develop a scale for measuring past and present television exposure levels. In a survey of 207 young adults, a Lifetime Television Exposure (LTE) scale is submitted to tests of criterion validity. Findings show the scale positively predicts cultivation outcomes above and beyond existing measures of current television exposure. Television viewing during early childhood, in particular, predicts young adults' current social reality beliefs. Methodological considerations and directions for future research are discussed.

Always on My Mind: Exploring How Frequent, Recent, and Vivid Television Portrayals Are Used in the Formation of Social Reality Judgments

Prior research has found consistent support for the heuristic processing model of cultivation effects, which argues that cultivation effects can be explained by the availability heuristic. The present study represents an experimental test of the heuristic processing model and tests the impact of frequency, recency, and vividness on construct accessibility and social reality beliefs. 213 students participated in a 2 × 2 × 2 prolonged exposure experimental design varying the frequency of exposure to violent television programs, the level of vividness in the programs, and recency of exposure. Dependent measures were accessibility and social reality beliefs. Results showed that reaction times were largely unresponsive to the independent variables. Although there were no main effects for frequency on social reality beliefs, there was a significant interaction between frequency and vividness on beliefs: People watching vivid violent media gave higher estimates of the prevalence of crime and police immorality in the real world in the 3× viewing condition than those in the 1× viewing condition. In concluding, it is argued that this study has important implications for the heuristic processing model, cultivation theory, and research into vividness effects.

Influence of Incorporation Depth of Plum Seeds in Combating Pests Eurytoma schreineri

In a rational protection of plum orchards are taken into consideration all methods of fighting against damage agents: physical, agrotechnics, biological and chemical. By agrotechnics methods applied it reduces a large part of the biological reserve of insects. Making reference only to combat of pests Eurytoma schreineri ( waspy plum seed), the incorporation of infected fruit, in orchards in which the land is maintained as a black field, plowing through deep made early autumn or spring, digging on line or crown trees, through which a large part of the fruit fell arrive in unfavorable survival of larvae. Experience made in 2008, at the Fitosanitary Unit Mure? to determine the influence of depth of seed incorporation plum important in combating this harmful brings real belief that the practice of this method is very effective.

Anti-Anxiety Law: Winnicott and the Legal Fiction of Paternity

Winnicott's good-enough mother does not, on the face of it, seem to have anything to do with the process of fact-finding in law. Yet there is an uncanny similarity between Winnicott's theory of the good-enough mother and the legal understanding of factual knowledge, both of which are premised on the unattainability of perfection and the need to construct simulacra of truth on the basis of merely probabalistic evidence. In Winnicott, this theory of knowledge is presented in terms of the process whereby the (good-enough) mother enables the infant to acquire the illusion of contact with a reality outside of himself on the basis of a repeated convergence of subjective need (i.e., hunger) and objective provision (i.e., milk provided at the right moment). In law, a surprisingly similar theory of knowledge as illusion/construction is presented in terms of standards of proof that fall substantially short of certainty and in the concept of the legal fiction. The way that legal fictions work to construct beliefs in reality and to shape reality itself is explored through the example of the fiction of legitimacy, according to which the husband is the father of a child born to a married woman, as a matter of law, regardless of biological facts to the contrary. A close analysis of the legal fiction of paternity reveals the unexpected similarities between Winnicott's theory of the good-enough mother and the legal theory of adequate, albeit less than perfect, factual knowledge. The analysis shows that one of the key functions of legal fictions is the suppression of the anxiety that attends uncertainty. In this respect, law serves as a matrix of belief in much the same way as Winnicott's good-enough mother does.

Rumi and the Universality of his Message

This article evaluates the universal message of Rumi to offer it as a hopeful alternative to the ignorance and lack of spirituality in modern times. Drawing upon Rumi's writings of the thirteenth century, it advocates an understanding that there is something beyond religion and scholarly learning that can open our eyes to the reality beyond this existence; for Rumi we must climb a spiritual ladder of love. Furthermore, Rumi envisioned a universal faith, embodying all religions, because he understood that the cause of every religious conflict is ignorance. The article implies that religiosity consists in something other than outward religions. Real belief is apparent only on the inside of a person, which is not visible. Therefore, through Rumi, the article makes it clear that the religion of love involves loving the eternal and invisible source of existence.

Inside View

Change, a constant everywhere, seems particularly prevalent in the World Health Organization (WHO), and is coming again. On 21 July 2003, 57 year-old Dr Jong-Wook Lee of the Republic of Korea, took his place as the sixth WHO Director-General. He inherits a swollen organization that has put health on the political agenda and made many commitments for the next 12 years. He faces an or-ganization often described as underfunded, overcommitted, burdened with bureaucracy, and decades behind in its approach to management and governance. And he faces an organization that has seen many faces and much corporate history disappear in the past few years; one in which many of us now know few others. Tremendous challenges lie ahead, but Dr Lee is well qualified to address them. To begin with, he has spent 19 years inside WHO, in a variety of positions at country, national and headquarters levels. He has held tough portfolios in leprosy, polio, TB, and vaccine preventable diseases of children, as well as working in chronic care. And he is known as a patient listener, a sound administrator and a strong alliance builder. Dr Lee understands that to sustain an organization or a program requires stable resources, be they finances, staff, buildings, or technology. Among his priorities he cites his plans to: better use resources to serve countries more effectively, to run WHO more efficiently, to ensure that WHO becomes more accountable, and to strengthen human resources both inside WHO and within its member states. Committed to achieving tangible and measurable health outcomes, he plans to move more resources closer to the people needing them. He also promises to enhance transparency and communications so that people can work effectively together. What is most exciting is that these intentions imply strong support for the concepts of Primary Health Care, and a renewed commitment to Health For All. These are ideals close to the heart of nurses – ones for which we work and advocate daily. Today more than 12 million nurses stand ready to help advance a WHO agenda that addresses the ideals of primary health care, values the contributions all health professionals can make, and encourages nurses, midwives and others to work to their full potential in achieving the vision of healthy nations in a healthy world. But the real challenge for Dr Lee is internal. The challenge is not change itself, but managing the transitions that accompany successful change – the ‘psychological orientation’1 people must go through before the change can work. Managing the organizational and personal transitions – helping shift the internal culture as fluidly as possible – takes time and energy, and real belief in the importance of a positive work environment. Transitions should never be underrated. Today we have much evidence that managing them is worth the effort and much more to show that, without transitions, change simply doesn’t work. Dr Lee, we wish you highly successful transitions.

'The Trustworthy Agency of the Eyes': Reading Images of Music and Madness in Historical Context

peutic remedy within psychiatric institutions appear in the popular British and American press and also in Australia and New Zealand from the 1850s until the 1940s, and what they actually represent regarding cultural beliefs concerning madness and music as medicine over time. I look at how the press understood and represented music as therapeutic to the community, and examine how historians of psychiatry have read these images in recent historiography. I also consider why there has been a resurgence of the use of these images most recently by professional groups in commissioned commemorative histories about the asylum. These Australian and New Zealand images need to be understood within their Western context, and I investigate how these images reflect medical, musical, moral, and cultural understandings of music as medicine. Nothing has been written on how long-standing cultural beliefs about music as medicinal underpin the representations of the asylum ball in the press. Images of music-making and madness reinforce popular community beliefs that music has the power not only to 'soothe the savage breast' but also to trigger aggression and violence. This belief, which appears in nineteenthand twentieth-century medical tracts about the ideal treatment and care of the mentally ill within institutions, has not been explored in Western historiographical debates. Furthermore, the recognition, development, and professionalisation of, what were initially combined but later separate, therapeutic treatments including occupational, art and music therapies during the twentieth century point to a real belief in the potential therapeutic benefit of music within

Arguing With Pictures: Race, Class, and the Formation of Popular Abolitionism throughUncle Tom's Cabin

[St. Clare] lifted up a curtain that covered the glass-door, and looked in.... There sat the two children on the floor.... Topsy, with her usual air of careless drollery.. but, opposite her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears in her large eyes. What does make you so bad, Topsy?...Don't you love anybody... ? 0 Topsy, poor child, love you! said Eva..., and laying her little thin white hand on Topsy's shoulder;... I wish you would.. be good for my sake;it's only a little while shall be with you. The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;-large, bright drops rolled heavily down.. and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping reclaim a sinner. (410-11)' While Harriet Beecher Stowe was working on Uncle Tom's Cabin, she wrote her editor that she intended to paint for her readers because [t]here is no arguing with (Hedrick 208). define Stowe's pictures as brief scenes ranging in length from a paragraph a page or two, which feature dense physical description over the plot's advancement or the narrator's commentary.2 Stowe was prescient about the enormous power her verbal pictures would hold for a popular audience. Such pictures in Uncle Tom's Cabin are often striking because they solicit from readers almost instant, and often shared, recognition of their meaning, at the same time that they are charged with contradictions and uncertainties. The tableau of Little Eva bending over Topsy taps Christian iconography display as a simple and immediately accessible truth the allegory of Christian redemption. Framing the quasi-religious icon with curtain and glass, the novel at once presents the tableau as complete and advertises the transparency of its truth.3 The picture of Christian redemption is aligned with the narrative Eva tells Topsy about her equal inclusion in Christ's love in the same tableau. [D]on't you know that Jesus loves all alike? He is just as willing love you, as me.... [Y]ou can go Heaven at last and be an angel forever, just as much as if you were white. (410) However, the most striking visual feature of the image of Little Eva and Topsy in this novel that is fascinated with visuality-the sharp contrast between blackness and whiteness-is at odds with the narrative of redemption. The picture so fully links darkness and blackness heathens and sin (Baldwin 84)-opposed as they are whiteness, brightness, angels, and redemptionas imply that Topsy can never go heaven. Stowe's picture is infused with metaphors of darkness and light that call mind a Calvinist narrative of redemption, based not in equality but in opposition and exclusion, that relays the authority of the Book of Revelations. The most visual aspect of the picture implies a racially coded and culturally mediated counter-narrative in the very scene that advertises its transparency and immediacy. Stowe's verbal pictures and their popular variants became magnets for cultural fascination, which helped catalyze the identifications and exclusions of an imagined abolitionist community across the gaps and distances that extended from New York and New England Ohio, California, as well the identities of opposing sections and groups. Abolitionism spread and consolidated its following in the antebellum decades through the early stirrings of American mass culture which originated in the press. In the 1840s, slave narratives claimed a large popular audience; by 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin broke all previous sales records for American novels.4 Stowe's novel stimulated a consumer fad that took up its characters in plays, popular songs, lithographs, children's books, and various sentimental items for the middle-class home. …