Universal Claims Research Articles

Employee Engagement Among Millennial Workforce: Empirical Study on Selected Antecedents and Consequences

Although employee engagement has been investigated by many scholars, there has been minimal research on this subject for millennial workforce. To bridge the research gap, the present study intends to examine employee engagement among millennial workforce of Saudi Arabia. In addition, the mediation effect of employee engagement on the relationship between antecedents; job characteristics, job satisfaction, and consequences; organizational commitment and intentions to quit is explored with social exchange theory (SET) as a theoretical underpinning. It tests the hypothesis by using data from 408 employees working in private sector companies located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia through a self-administered questionnaire. SPSS Amos 25.0 was used to analyze the data. The results suggest that there exists a satisfactory condition of employee engagement among Saudi youth. Findings propose a significant positive relationship between job characteristics, job satisfaction, and organization commitment. Employee engagement was found to be a significant and partial mediator amid job characteristics, job satisfaction, and organization commitment. However, the results were not significant for the variable turnover intentions. There is a dearth of research on millennial workforce of Saudi Arabia, and this study would be perhaps, the first one to explore employee engagement in this context. It contributes to the current literature and theory development of employee engagement. Since the findings are based on limited millennial employees’ responses, there is no universal claim for generalization.

WRITING IN PHILOSOPHY: REPLY TO FREDERICK

Frederick (2021, see the preceding article) offers a critique of my writing tips aimed at undergraduate students coming to philosophy – and in many cases, essay writing – for the first time (Earp, 2021, in this volume) Frederick claims that most of my tips are good tips but characterizes two of them as bad tips, as follows: Bad tip 1. Be very careful about making any universal claims (involving words such as ‘every’, ‘never’, ‘always’). Such a claim can be refuted by just a single counterexample. Do not leave yourself open to such refutation. Make a universal claim only if you are sure that there are no counterexamples.Bad tip 2. Pick a smaller, more narrow thesis and argue for it thoroughly rather than a more ambitious thesis for which you argue less thoroughly.

The vernacularisation of global rights discourses and social protection in regional African arena

International organisations have increasingly advocated a rights-based approach to social protection, especially in Africa, despite persistent criticisms from some African scholars that the globally dominant discourse of human rights reflects a specifically ‘western’ ideology. Regional African inter-governmental organisations have occupied a frontline between international organisations and national governments in ‘vernacularising’ global rights, that is, incorporating some ‘African’ norms and values into the universal claims of the dominant global discourse. This has entailed an emphasis on broadly communitarian responsibilities and obligations (including but not limited to the family and kin) alongside individual claims. The process of vernacularisation has been limited, however, in that it entails the adaptation of exogenous statements about rights. These tend to overlook the specific needs and claims of poor farmers and fail to recognise the full extent to which communitarian norms and values in Africa challenge the predominant global discourse.

Comparative Area Studies and the Study of the Global South

Comparative Area Studies (CAS) offers a template to bring the Global South back into the foreground of social science inquiry. CAS urges researchers to grapple directly with empirical variations derived from across the seemingly different global regions. CAS offers three comparative modes: intra-regional, cross-regional, and trans-regional. A number of scholars have used CAS’s comparative rubrics, even without knowing about the wider CAS agenda and program. CAS unsettles assumptions about discrete, fixed “regional” or civilizational blocks as well as about nomothetic theory-building aimed at universal or general laws. At the same time, CAS engages in the idea of medium-range theory-building, focusing empirical rigor and induction in order to create concepts and analyses that are portable yet contextualized. These macro-historical theories must be attentive to spatial and temporal variation in the social world. Claims of universalism are suspect. For the study of the Global South, in particular, CAS provides a path for aggregating and leveraging the wide range of observations and interpretations area specialists have to offer on regions as diverse as South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. CAS thus changes the division of labor within social science to allow greater input for scholarship derived from and originating in the developing world.

Classical Logic in the Quantum Context

It is generally accepted that quantum mechanics entails a revision of the classical propositional calculus as a consequence of its physical content. However, the universal claim according to which a new quantum logic is indispensable in order to model the propositions of every quantum theory is challenged. In the present essay, we critically discuss this claim by showing that classical logic can be rehabilitated in a quantum context by taking into account Bohmian mechanics. It will be argued, indeed, that such a theoretical framework provides the necessary conceptual tools to reintroduce a classical logic of experimental propositions by virtue of its clear metaphysical picture and its theory of measurement. More precisely, it will be shown that the rehabilitation of a classical propositional calculus is a consequence of the primitive ontology of the theory, a fact that is not yet sufficiently recognized in the literature concerning Bohmian mechanics. This work aims to fill this gap.

Against invisibilization—towards “Blackness” as a universal claim

From post-World War II Germany to contemporary contexts beyond Europe and the United States, this contribution considers the extent to which “Blackness” has become a universal claim. It thinks through this claim in relation to Aihwa Ong’s discussion of invisibilization. In a context in which new immigrants to countries such as the United States or Germany face at best exclusionary incorporation through a process that also appends their potential noncitizenship to Blackness, a reinvigorated Blackness offers a different kind of possibility. Ong’s discussion of ethnic succession in the United States also illuminates the persistence of systemic racism and “White” supremacy, making analytical space for the academic and the activist to consider the possibilities for Blackness as a universal claim.

“All Human Beings are of Equal Status Since Birth”: Caste, Inequality and B.R. Ambedkar’s Universal Claim for Human Equality

Focusing on caste-based oppression, B.R. Ambedkar made a universal claim for human equality and dignity which appeared long before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Taking the case of the Mahad movement, we argue that Ambedkar developed a significant egalitarian approach by pointing out how the caste system perpetuated existing inequalities. This article, specifically, aims to explore two central questions: first, what was the central focus of Ambedkar’s concerns at Mahad? Second, how can these concerns then provide a better understanding of his approach, with inequality and articulation of human equality and dignity? This article concludes that Ambedkar offered a distinct anti-caste philosophy and charted out a new path of civic and social liberation. His actions had moral philosophical implications for the question, what it fundamentally means to be a human, and what are the social processes that lead to the coming of an egalitarian society. From this philosophical standpoint, Ambedkar formulated the ethics of everyday social life.

Novel aspects of cosmic ray diffusion in synthetic magnetic turbulence

The diffusive motion of charged particles in synthetic magnetic turbulence with different properties is investigated by using numerical simulations with unprecedented dynamical range, which allow us to ensure that both the inertial range and the long wavelength part of the turbulent spectrum are properly described. This is of particular importance in evaluating previous suggestions that parallel and perpendicular diffusion coefficients differ in their energy dependence, an assertion at odds with the many claims of universality of the $D_{\perp}$ and $D_{\parallel}$ as functions of particle energy. Cases with and without an ordered magnetic field are discussed. Results of the numerical simulations are compared with available theoretical models, for slab, slab/2D and isotropic turbulence. We find widespread evidence that universality is broken, and that the ratio $D_{\perp}/D_{\parallel}$ is not independent of energy. The implications of this finding for the physics of cosmic ray transport are discussed in depth.

Space, particularity and the socialisation of production

Abstract Since the 1980s, there has been a considerable effort in critical analyses to design a particular research agenda centred on singularity and diversity in the name of avoiding “essentialistic and universalising claims.” The relations between generality and particularity are then not adequately taken into consideration while social and spatial objects are linked with each other only in external ways. In contrast, it is possible to analyse social reality in its both universal/general and particular aspects beyond their dualistic understanding. To do this, I suggest rethinking the Marxist concept of ‘socialisation of production’ by tracing the dialectical interplay between socialisation and value across geographies.

Testing the Utility of Electronic Health Records and Health Information Network Data to Determine Potential Health Impacts Associated with Opportunities for Exposure to Environmental Contaminants

It was hypothesized that health care claims (HCC) and electronic health records (EHRs) might provide the opportunity to access more timely and geographically refined data, and more information than is typically available from traditional public health surveillance systems; for example, measurements of risk factors (such as high cholesterol), co-diagnosis, medication prescription information and laboratory test results. We designed a pilot study in the state of Delaware (DE) to explore the utility of these data as a surveillance tool. The city of New Castle, DE was selected because: (1) it had levels of contaminants in drinking water that exceeded federal advisory levels and (2) it has universal claims and access to EHR data through the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN).We included residents who lived in New Castle City during the period 2013 to 2018. We selected the following outcomes to focus on based on the contaminants of interest: cardiovascular disease; thyroid disease; kidney cancer; and testicular cancer. We are in the process of defining the inclusion and exclusion criteria for de identified laboratory and clinical diagnosis data on these outcomes, to identify HCC and EHR datasets for analysis. We will analyze the data by zip code and census tract, and include demographic information (age, race/ethnicity, and gender) for each outcome of interest. We will also compare rates of health outcomes obtained using HCC data to those obtained using EHR data.The overall goal is to determine the value of conducting ecologic analyses using HCC and EHR data to inform the design of larger, long term epidemiological studies evaluating exposure to environmental contaminants and potential health impacts. The need to identify such surveillance tools is critical as existing disease registries are often not timely enough due to reporting requirements and disease latency and/or are limited by small numbers of events.

Using the realist approach to unravel the complexity of health programmes: the evaluation of smoke-free school policies as a case study

Numerous commentaries plea for the use of methods that take into account complexity when evaluating health programmes. These commentaries provide compelling arguments on why evaluations of health programmes should not...

Subjectivity and change in process of supervision

Supervising texts with a bachelor thesis as its outcome, has been prioritized in the Norwegian Early Childhood Teacher Education. The focus has been on recruiting enough supervisors, and on qualifying supervisors. There has not been a similar focus on the bachelor texts as such, and on questions concerning what kind of function these texts should have in professional education. From a Bakhtinian dialogic perspective we value variation and change in student subjectivity as a fruitful, rather than a problematic means of enhancing quality. The current study has two main research questions: (1) what typologies of subjectivity can be identified in student’s bachelor texts, and (2) what typologies of subjectivity are given priority and how these priorities respond to the possibility of change. Concerning the first question, students’ legitimations have been identified as typologies of uncomplicated and complex subjectivity. As for the second question we observed that individual voices in bachelor students’ texts were not given equal status compared with more powerful generic voices that represent sameness. The latter voices are interpreted as articulated intentions in the national curriculum for the Early Childhood Education and Care, and in local curricula. An important insight from this study is that changes in subjectivity is tightly connected to sameness for all bachelor students and educational cannons. Student subjectivity seems to be fixed and finished and in status of adjustment to universal claims. Such insight generates new questions concerning the space for students’ lived experience, emotions and creativity in higher education.

Synthetic biology as a technoscience: The case of minimal genomes and essential genes

This article examines how minimal genome research mobilizes philosophical concepts such as minimality and essentiality. Following a historical approach the article aims to uncover what function this terminology plays and which problems are raised by them. Specifically, four historical moments are examined, linked to the work of Harold J. Morowitz, Mitsuhiro Itaya, Eugene Koonin and Arcady Mushegian, and J. Craig Venter. What this survey shows is a historical shift away from historical questions about life or descriptive questions about specific organisms towards questions that explore biological possibilities: what are possible forms of minimal genomes, regardless of whether they exist in nature?Moreover, it highlights a fundamental ambiguity at work in minimal genome research between a universality claim and a standardization claim: does a minimal genome refer to the minimal gene set for any organism whatsoever? Or does it refer rather to a gene set that will provide stable, robust and predictable behaviour, suited for biotechnological applications? Two diagnoses are proposed for this ambiguity: a philosophical diagnosis of how minimal genome research either misunderstands the ontology of biological entities or philosophically misarticulates scientific practice. Secondly, a historical diagnosis that suggests that this ambiguity is part of a broader shift towards technoscience.

‘We Are Not Bad People’- Bricolage and the Rise of Community Forest Institutions in Burkina Faso

From a critical institutionalism and institutional bricolage perspective, this article analyses what drives institutional change in the commons and the outcomes for forest and people. It builds on the comparison of three neighbouring villages in Burkina Faso that in 1989, expecting higher returns, agreed to release their common lands for the creation of a community forest called Chantier d’Amenagement Forestier (CAF) within an international forestry project. The project created new bureaucratic institutions to replace the pre-existing customary and socially embedded system. Decades later, the three villages display different institutional change pathways and outcomes: one village abandoned the CAF, converted, and sold its forest and land; another maintained the CAF; and a third operates in-between. Using qualitative research methods, we ask why and how these different change trajectories and outcomes occurred among villages of identical cultural and sociopolitical background. The results show that poor design and implementation of the new bureaucratic institutions, as well as their disrespect of customary and socially embedded rules, led to forestland disputes between the villages. The bureaucratic institutions failed to solve those disputes, effectively manage the forest, and share the benefits equitably. This caused local people’s discontent and prompted actions for change. Actors in diverse ways made use of their social networks, agency, and power relations within and between the villages to either reshape, re-interpret or reject the new forest institutions. These processes of institutional bricolage led to highly diverse trajectories of change. The findings demonstrate the crucial role of locals as agents of change from below and question universal claims in institutional theory on how institutions induce rule-guided behaviour and create path dependencies.

Timelines in Spectral Composition: A cognitive approach to musical creativity

What takes place in the minds of composers when they struggle to incorporate a given temporal concept into a musical work? Spectral composers have produced detailed theoretical proposals about time in music, but how exactly those ideas influenced their musical practices remains an extremely challenging question. Graphical representations in their sketches provide invaluable clues. Through the analyses of Gérard Grisey’s and Kaija Saariaho’s manuscripts, we show how the theoretical frameworks for the basic cognitive operations of blending and anchoring, which underlie the construction of complex meanings, can shed light on the intricate musical uses of timelines by spectral composers. We combine the universal claims of this cognitive analysis with the diachronic perspective of a musicological study, teasing out the mental paths that these composers may have followed to create novel aesthetic proposals from their experience with graphic representations of sound, mainly spectrograms, and from techniques of electroacoustic studios. Thus we pave the way towards a common language for understanding time representation across electroacoustics and music in general, based on this mixed methodology. Through such shared tenets, the cognitive study of music can reciprocally contribute to burgeoning fields such as time representation, meaning construction and creativity.

Lipman e a filosofia para crianças: cultivo “do” pensamento ou cultivo de “um” pensamento?

This text aims to perform a “fly over” the Philosophy for Children program--created by the philosopher and educator Matthew Lipman-–in order to identify certain philosophical problems that might appear there, one of them being the issue of universality. In response to Lipman’s claims of universality, we try to uncover his underlying ideological position that informs his approach to the concept. To achieve that goal, we return to the program’s beginnings, in order to ask how the idea of Philosophy for Children appeared and how it has developed up to the present moment. We argue that Lipman’s novel proposal to think philosophically with children emerged, in part, as a response to the student movements of 1968--a response, that is, to a specific political context that was marked by strong social and ideological disputes. Finally, we make a comparative analysis of the social and political context that informs Latin American Philosophy, and the extent to which it, also, has been shaped by a pragmatic response to a particular historical moment. The difference between the Anglo-American and the Latin American contexts is here characterized as an obstacle to a certain “universal” logos to which the Lipmanian project is linked. Our analysis is aided by the Discourse of marginalization and barbarism, produced by the Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea.

Water/watery/watering: Concepts for Theorising in Environmental Education

AbstractThe assemblage of water/watery/watering is a lively cartography of how water may be accounted for when theorising with and through environmental education research. Challenging the universalising claims of Western technoscience and the colonial logic of extraction, the article develops an alternative theoretical mapping of environmental education through engagements with Ingold’s (2007, 2012, 2015) concepts of lines, knots, and knotting. For this article and for the Special Issue in which it is housed, the concepts of such knottings are defined as an assemblage of haecceities, lived events that are looped, tethered and entangled as material and conceptual agencies that inhere within situated encounters. Thus, this article grapples with the need to account for water differently in contemporary posthuman ecologies. To overcome anthropocentric and mastery-oriented approaches, various other ways to account for water in science or environmental education will continue to come to the surface, bubbling and rushing like a waterfall as they have done in this work. Some of these will include thinking with water, which will be central to a theoretical mapping of water that seeks embrace sticky knots. The article explores a (re)turn to artful practices and encounters as spaces in which posthumanist concepts for environmental education might be cultivated.

Independent and dependent possessive person forms

Abstract This study explores the coding asymmetry between independent and dependent possessive person forms (as in English mine/my) from a cross-linguistic perspective. On the basis of a typological survey of 70 geographically and genealogically diverse languages, this paper identifies three universal tendencies: the length universal, the constituent order universal and the alienability universal. First, the length universal claims that independent possessive person forms are either longer or as long as the dependent possessive person forms. Second, the constituent order universal claims that the internal constituent order of the person form and the substantivizer correlates with the constituent order of the possessor and the possessum. In addition, in languages where both a composite possessive marker and a composite substantivizer are used, the possessive marker is always closer to the person root. Finally, the alienability universal claims that the possessive person forms in the alienable possessive constructions are more likely to be used as independent possessive person forms than those in the inalienable possessive constructions. These universal tendencies are instances of form-frequency correspondence, which is shown by corpus evidence from three languages.

Comparing ‘Religion’ and ‘Nonreligion’: towards a Critique of Modernity

Abstract This essay starts with reference to “grapefruits” in Oliver Freiberger’s (2019) Considering Comparison and to “apples” and “oranges” in Bruce Lincoln’s (2018) Apples and Oranges: Explorations In, On and With Comparison. It disagrees with Freiberger when he compares “grapefruits” with some generic categories in Religious Studies including “shrine.” The category of “shrine” resembles more “fruits,” for example, because two shrines could have completely different genealogies, just like apples and oranges, but still belong to the same generic category. Then, the essay compares the categories of “religion” and “tree.” The boundary between “religion” and “nonreligion” is as arbitrary as that of “tree” and “non-tree.” At the same time, “religion” and “nonreligion” share common characteristics just like “tree” and “non-tree” do. Given this, it concludes with the suggestion that, when the “religiousness” of ostensibly “nonreligious” modernity is articulated, the category “religion” functions as a useful rhetorical tool to subvert modernity’s claim of universality and factual reality.

Security and Human Rights: Finding a Language of Resilience and Inclusion

This is the introduction to the second edition of Security and Human Rights (Hart Publishing 2019). When the first edition of this collection was published in 2007, many scholars were struggling with the question of whether it is possible to reconcile a commitment to human rights with the demands of security in a post-9/11 world. More than a decade later, this fundamental tension remains at the heart of many discussions about the relationship between security and human rights. But in the years that have passed since the first edition, we have also seen the re-emergence of nationalism and xenophobia, a hardening of attitudes towards migrants, and a dramatic increase in Islamophobia in populist security discourse. Combined, these trends mean that the liberal order underpinning the international human rights framework since World War II is now under threat. Two shifts may be necessary in order to reinvigorate an effective defence of rights in the face of security mandates. First, defenders of human rights must directly and critically engage with emotive claims of insecurity and unrealistic promises of security. Rather than reacting with similarly reductive narratives, we should seek to develop a discourse of sober resilience – one that provides a serious account of the risks to security while acknowledging both the inherent constraints on democratic states in achieving security and the wider security benefits to be gained from protecting rights. Ultimately, this narrative will need to build on a recognition, even a celebration, of the risk that comes with a free society. The second, related shift involves meaningful acknowledgment of the role that liberalism has played in the historical and continued oppression of vulnerable groups. By addressing the ways in which the law in supposedly liberal democracies has been co-opted in the name of security, we help to lay bare flaws in the individualistic liberal vision of rights and the disconnect between abstract claims of universality and lived experiences on the ground. This process of exposure should not be seen as a step towards the abandonment of the liberal human rights project but rather as part of an attempt to revive it and make it relevant to those who have borne the ‘costs of security’.