Concept Of Reflection Research Articles

Migrant housing struggle and racial discrimination: The case of postsocialist Leipzig and Riga

The civic mobilisation welcoming Ukrainian refugees after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 has shown how housing is a social infrastructure based on care and solidarity. But it has also shown its discriminatory face. By drawing on our recent collaborative research in Leipzig and Riga and conceptual reflections from previous research, this paper elaborates on how practices of welcoming and housing refugees intertwine with state racism and everyday discrimination. It is grounded in two intersecting lines of inquiry. The first one focuses on migrant housing struggles in the context of increased financialisation, privatisation and austerity urbanism. The second expands on the intersection of race and discrimination with housing, asking how race and racial discrimination intersect and affect migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers’ access to and experiences with housing. The underlying argument is that while housing is the site where this type of discrimination becomes spatialised and visible (and thus can be challenged), there is still a missing discourse around discrimination in migration and housing policy.

Managing sustainability-oriented innovation in services: proposal of a scale for the future of hotel companies and travel agencies

PurposeThe concept of Sustainability-Oriented Service Innovation (SOSI) has been recently suggested from a conceptual reflection approach in an attempt to integrate innovation and sustainability in services, being an emerging field of innovation in services. This study aims to propose a scale to measure Sustainability-Oriented Service Innovation from the perspective of the company. Because the whole is different from the sum of its different parts, we need to better understand the synergy between sustainability and innovation for the future of tourism companies.Design/methodology/approachUpon a literature review, we propose a scale and explore its dimensionality with data from 268 to 256 Spanish hotel and travel agency managers, respectively. The dimensionality of the scale for measuring Sustainability-Oriented Service Innovation is similar in hotels and travel agencies.FindingsFive factors emerge from the principal component analyses carried out: two dimensions referred to technological and non-technological innovation, respectively, and three dimensions labelled as economic, social and environmental sustainability.Practical implicationsTo guide managers towards their operations, the proposed scale is expected to inspire models to assess the impact of SOSI practices in such a highly competitive industry and to identify the most influencing dimensions on the future performance of the tourism company.Originality/valueTo the best of our knowledge, no scale has been presented so far that brings together the dimensions of technological and non-technological innovation, as well as sustainability from a Triple Bottom Line approach.

Metacognition and Computational Thinking in Vygotsky's Historical-Cultural Perspective

In a post-pandemic context, where pedagogical practices evolve based on different epistemological bases, the encouragement of autonomy and innovation among students and teachers stands out. Aligned with the UN 2030 Agenda, research assumes as an epistemological basis the interdisciplinary relationship between education and Computer Science by exploring Computational Thinking associated with Metacognition. The text addresses the characteristics of this thought, identifies gaps in the theoretical bases and presents a scope that intertwines it with Vygotskian theory, Metacognition and Cognitive Educability. Results of the theoretical and conceptual reflections indicate that metacognition, when applied systematically, promotes the development of computational thinking. To this end, we propose a functional architecture anchored in Vygotskian principles, differentiating content and skills, contributing to a more robust understanding of this thinking with potential consequences for other conceptions and development of curricula, not only in computing, but in teacher education in all areas.

Forging Europe Under Communist Eyes: The European Community, the comecon, and Socialist Romania - Alexandru Cistelecan

This article aims to critically discuss the foreign policy of communist Romania, especially towards Western Europe and the socialist bloc. It does this firstly by reviewing Elena Dragomir’s recent ample analyses of communist Romania’s foreign policy. Its second section consists in a critical problematization of the allegedly “pragmatic” and “adaptative” nature of communist Romania’s dealings with its Western and Eastern partners, as established both by Dragomir’s recent contributions, as well as the traditional scholarship. The paper ends with some more general methodological and conceptual reflections on the role, weight, and meaning of “pragmatism,” “realism,” “context” and “ideology” in historiographical reconstructions.

Stakeholder engagement in managing systemic risk management

AbstractThis paper employs the interpretative lens provided by stakeholder theory to garner novel insights for research and managerial practices within the framework of high‐reliable organizations (HROs). It proposes an interpretative matrix for analyzing and explaining how stakeholders’ behaviors and interactions can transition from a “strategic” to a “responsibility” approach in the context of risk management. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology based on a case study of the Italian Civil Protection—an HRO—during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Through the analysis of institutional sources and reports, we apply two theoretical frameworks to examine how the organization's engagement strategy changed in response to an unexpected event. This case serves to illuminate the main implications and practical applications of shared conceptual reflections. The principal implications are traced in terms of theory, practice, and policy, focusing on the joint examination of organizational reliability and stakeholder engagement theory, the potential utility of the proposed case study, and the feasible policy actions. The main limitations of this study lie in the purely qualitative methodology employed, the nature of the organization analyzed, and the territorial scope of the study. Future works will address an empirical investigation of the theoretical relations uncovered herein, as well as the expansion of the spectrum of analysis (e.g., private organizations) and a cross‐country widening of the level of analysis.

Whistleblowing and interpretation, addressing organizational challenges: a conceptual reflection from Nigeria

PurposeThis study aims to explore the effect of whistleblowing and interpretation among practitioners in the Nigerian economy. The research puts a premium on understanding the relevance and critical issues in its practices and developing an improved model for the effective practice of whistleblowing and interpretation in Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a conceptual approach, relying on extant literature to understand the management of whistleblowing incidents and identify the managers’ and other stakeholders’ responsibility in the whistleblowing process. It applied systems dynamics conceptual modelling and presented an improvement approach to addressing the complexities associated with whistleblowing and interpretation among Nigerian organizations.FindingsThis study contributed to the extant literature by developing a model for proper management of whistleblowing in the Nigerian context and enhancing the robust practice of whistleblowing and interpretation in Nigeria. The findings highlighted critical factors such as managers’ skills development, legal system support, institutional stakeholders’ function and ethical balance as key factors to effective whistleblowing management and interpretation. This implies that the act of identifying and developing responses to an emerging case of whistleblowing requires a process of developing underpinning assumptions, engagement and consideration of stakeholders’ interests while driving the sustenance of organizational focus.Originality/valueThis study emphasized the departure from absolute best practice to developing idea approaches that reflect stakeholders’ interests and the context of whistleblowing and interpretation. While the study acknowledges limitations in the sole focus on the Nigerian private sector and the Nigerian economic background, it recommends further exploration of whistleblowing and its interpretation on a comparative approach, to improving the current understanding of the topic.

The Culture of Resource Production and the Production of Cultural Resources: A Preliminary Conceptual Reflection on Cultural Resource Management Pandemic Era

The Culture of Resource Production and the Production of Cultural Resources: A Preliminary Conceptual Reflection on Cultural Resource Management Pandemic Era

Poetological Essay by Yuri Linnik «Somnambulistic»
 about the Wreath of Sonnets by Maximilian Voloshin «Lunaria»
 (an Attempt at an Adequate Interpretation)

Yuri Linnik's talent harmoniously combined a deep philosophical understanding of the universe with the virtuosity of its poetic embodiment in the most complex genre-strophic form of sonnet associations. He created a fantastic number of wreaths of sonnets impeccable in their ideological and artistic merits – 651. The poet
 used to publish his works accompanied by original author's comments written in the stylistic manner of Socrates, Nietzsche and Viktor Shklovsky. A special group of his works are poetological essays, which also include conceptual reflections on two pioneer wreaths of Maximilian Voloshin's sonnets «Corona Astralis» and «Lunaria», consonant with their main pathos of a significant part of his own stephanism. One of them is presented in this publication with adequate comments. Another, dedicated to
 «Corona Astralis», as we hope, will be published by our Kazakh colleagues.

“Second generation”: a theoretical reflection on an ever-changing concept

ABSTRACT In recent decades, the issue of migrants’ children has received increasing attention within scientific research. This is due to the ongoing nature of the most current global migration phenomena. “Second generation” is the category often used in studies to define the field of reference, namely that of youth with foreign origin. However, this definition is sometimes generic or rather crossed by different interpretations depending on the application context, references considered or even used approaches. This contribution of theoretical nature aims to examine this concept by highlighting its empirical complexity. Based on a critical revision of classical and contemporary definitions, the analytical reflection focuses on a particular context, specifically the Italian one, about which the most recent conceptualisations proposed from below, for instance by the youth associationism’s world, are also considered. In conclusion, a broad conceptual reflection emerges that seeks to problematise the use of this ever-changing category.

I think they just logged on and fell asleep: Challenges to facilitating creativity online in higher engineering education

Creativity is a crucial skill for future engineers. Hence, it is becoming increasingly important for higher education (HE) engineering educators to foster and enhance engineering students' creative abilities. Simultaneously, online learning has found a place in engineering education. Nevertheless, we find that HE engineering educators in all domains continue to express a sense of inadequacy when it comes to fostering creativity in hybrid and online learning environments. This sentiment persists despite the existence of scholarly work that suggests strategies for addressing these challenges. In this paper, we assume that the rationale behind this is that the proposed pedagogical approaches are primarily established through conceptual reflections, whereas the perspective of the HE engineering educators on the perceived barriers has thus far been largely neglected. Therefore, we present a study that uses data from experience interviews and focus group techniques involving 71 HE engineering educators from Ireland, Germany, Denmark and Turkey to identify the common challenges that HE engineering educators perceive when facilitating creativity in online and hybrid classroom environments. These are used to extend theory by developing a four‐field conceptual model organizing the eight overarching challenges encountered. This model can be used as a basis for defining measures to support HE engineering educators in facilitating creativity online and serves as a guide for future research studies.

Political sensitivity and autoethnography: a case on negotiating the personal political front

PurposeThe paper introduces the autoethnography as a healing and everyday resistance strategy for marginalized voices. The focus is to deliver the author’s own reflections on some key moments and experiences to stimulate the discussion on autoethnography as a critical instrument channeling one’s reflexivity in the higher education context.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on a case study of Chinese academic professionals to inspire the discussion on the research and practical values of autoethnography. It also provides conceptual reflections on the political meaning and functions of autoethnography.FindingsThe paper highlights two key aspects of autoethnography in the higher education context. Firstly, it emphasizes the importance of autoethnography in navigating the personal political front. Secondly, it promotes the integration of autoethnography into the ordinary lives of overseas Chinese academic professionals for daily healing and resistance.Originality/valueThe paper explores political sensitivity as an important dimension of workplace ethnography. Recognizing political sensitivity avows autoethnography a political act and a research framework, through which the (auto)ethnographer examines his or her own principles for negotiating justice and interpreting the ownership of personal identity against the influx of politically-charged opinions from the surrounding.

The multiple olhares gives interdisciplinarity on the concept of sociocultural practices

The central proposal of this article is to discuss the conceptual nuances of the expression "sociocultural practices", from its scientific and social relevance. The article is based on the literature review methodology. The approach to "Sociocultural Practices" is often used in academic publications and is often found as a theoretical and epistemological foundation in Graduate Programs. However, in an interdisciplinary research vision there is a concern with the delimitation of its meaning, since there is no way of constituting itself into a static concept. This conceptual reflection is relevant in that it allows several areas to use it as epistemology for a scientific construction in comparison with reality, which will allow there to be no possible terminological inaccuracy, as this could jeopardize the scientificity of the publications.

Discourse on family values in public policy (content-analysis of the statements of Giorgia Meloni)

The paper represents a content analysis of statements by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, about family and family values. Interest in this topic is conditioned by the growing opposition of arguments manifested in the political field, expressed by opponents and supporters of G. Meloni and the Brothers of Italy party. The conceptual reflection of the idea of a “traditional” family in the these public statements conflicts with the European left-liberal ideal of gender neutrality. Within the analysis the author study the semantics of: (1) Giorgia Meloni’s political statements regarding family values; (2) assessments of Giorgia Meloni’s political rhetoric in the media and in the modern political discourse of the European Union. The study is based on publicly available media materials. Methods used: content and sentiment analysis. The results of the study have shown a large-scale value split starting from the level of Italian society up to the level of communities within the EU. Thus, in the discourse of family policy, opposing positions are indicated. The emotionality of the arguments used in the political struggle regarding the discussion of family policy indicates the urgency of the research questions arising in connection with the practical steps and consequences of the implementation of the “new” Italian policy.

«Рассказы из русской истории» А.Н. Майкова: от идеи к реализации

The article analyses the formation and development of the idea of the unfinished prose cycle Tales from Russian History by Apollon Maykov. The most important source of information about this part of the poet’s creative biography is considered his correspondence with Fyodor Dostoevsky, where the prerequisites for the origin of the cycle idea and the stages of its formation are revealed. One of the most expressive novelist’s letters to his friend is devoted to the discussion of the general idea of the cycle and its plots. It contains a conceptual reflection on the poem “as a precious stone, a diamond, in the poet’s soul” and highlights the most significant events in Russian history, according to the writer’s understanding. The plots of individual stories expressively described there by Dostoevsky originated the assumption that the writer was the author of the cycle concept and inspired Maykov to create it. However, a chronological analysis of the correspondence between Maykov and Dostoevsky in 1867–1869 allows us to gather and sequentially arrange facts reflecting the process of gradual development and final formation of the idea in the poet’s creative consciousness. It leads to the conclusion that the idea was formed in Maykov’s creative consciousness during an in-depth study of Russian history, prompted by his work on the translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. Dostoevsky took some part in shaping the key features of the content and the principles of the artistic form of the tales. He was not directly involved as the ideological inspirer. He participated as a friend, an interlocutor, and like-minded person, with whom Maykov shared the details of his own creative search and thoughts on pressing issues of Russian social life at that time, among which questions about the originality and identity of Russian history, and the relations between Russia and Europe were some of the most important.

Pseudociências e os Desafios Atuais Impostos ao Ensino de Ciências

ABSTRACT The article presents conceptual reflections on pseudosciences, introduces the psychological nature of pseudoscientific beliefs, and exposes some indications of how widespread they are among Brazilians and their harmful effects in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some indications taking advantage of the excess of information and inaccurate critical and scientific thinking of the general population, pseudoscientific beliefs were disseminated through fake news, denialism, and conspiracy theories to the point of shaping narratives and public policies. It then presents clear and concise strategies for improving science teaching to combat pseudoscience.

Techniques of Discovery: Cryptography and Design

Among the core technologies forming the rich archaeology of computation, cryptography is perhaps a subject that has received little attention in architectural studies thus far. However, there are fruitful considerations to draw from a closer inspection of the vast repertoire of techniques that cryptography has developed over a period of about seven centuries. First of all, a deeper historical perspective will help frame cryptography as a technology for discovery rather than solely protecting military and diplomatic secrets. Secondly, these considerations can be of relevance to design as they offer thoughts for both conceptual reflections and practical applications. At a conceptual level, the symbolic, discrete computation accompanying the evolution of cryptographic methods – such as Alberti’s one in 1467 – marked a radical departure from the iconic semiotics of analogue machines. The non-mimetic nature of symbolic computation provided the technological means to significantly widen its range of applications and enhanced speculative thinking. Understood along these lines, cryptography found more general applications beyond concealing diplomatic secrets to provide a rigorous method for inquiry into unknown domains in order to make ‘noisy data’ intelligible. Finally, symbolic computation also provided more advanced techniques for abstraction that were also instrumental for constructing notational drawings, whose emergence coincided with the introduction of more advanced mathematical instruments in the renaissance.
 The essay will discuss the key paradigmatic moments in the history of cryptography such as the polyalphabetic techniques proposed by L. B. Alberti in 1467 and the use of binary cryptography by Francis Bacon in 1605. Despite their distance from the present, these experiments provide a useful segue into a discussion on how the notion of cypher as a conceptual instrument accompanying the introduction of Machine Learning models in architectural and urban design.

Critical critical posthumanism in human geography

Abstract. In this brief contribution, I reflect on some of the newest tendencies and fashions in social theoretic thinking in the field of human geography and beyond. Human geography attracts its scholars, thinkers and audiences with its engagement to contribute to a better environment and a better world. As such human geography as a discipline is a political project, with high societal relevance. In this human engagement with the world around us, the relationship between the human and the spatial environment is of central importance, and thorough scientific conceptual reflections are crucial in a discipline that is not just political but also scientific. Geographers traditionally excel in sophisticated conceptualisations of our physical and social environment but have rather neglected the conceptualisation of the other end of this relationship, the human being and becoming. In the current debate on the various versions of posthumanism, we observe that one easily resorts to rather simplistic categorisations and qualifications of what we envision as posthuman utopias or dystopias, with sometimes also dangerous ethical consequences. In this contribution, I try to argue that, if we dig a bit deeper, with the help of the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner we gain a more nuanced and sustainable as well as ethically responsible view of the role of the posthuman self in the geography of today's world.

Investigating potential tourists' attitudes toward artificial intelligence services: a market segmentation approach

PurposeThis study profiles and segments potential tourists on the basis of their various attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI) services. Furthermore, this study distinguishes descriptors among the different clusters, such as preference for using diverse AI services, overall image of AI services, willingness to use AI services (WUAI), willingness to pay more for AI services (WPAI) in tourism and hospitality, and characteristics of respondents.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was conducted in South Korea. Data on 758 potential tourists were used for K-means cluster analysis.FindingsThis study identified three distinct tourist segments with differentiated attitudes toward AI services: the group aspiring to use or fantasizing about AI services (Cluster 1), the group being knowledgeable and supportive of AI services (Cluster 2), and the group having low interest about AI services (Cluster 3).Practical implicationsMembers of Cluster 2 were the most marketable as this segment exhibited the greatest knowledge of and support for AI services, while Cluster 1 would be an ideal segment to launch and test novel AI services.Originality/valueThis study extends the authors’ knowledge of AI scholarship by unpacking the existing market segments, which could be tapped to sustain AI penetration in the tourism industry. Hence, this study contributes to existing debates on AI scholarship, which is predominated by conceptual reflections and issues of AI services in the tourism and hospitality field.

The Role of the Body in Pandemic Geographies of Encounter: Anti-Restriction Protesters Between Collective Action and Political Violence

This article looks at public anti-restriction protests by framing public space as a vital component of urban life. It argues that the body is rarely introduced as a scale of spatial analysis and usually plays a more prominent role in the subfields of social movement or public space studies, which often tend to focus on the transformative and emancipatory side of urban encounters. By integrating a corporeal perspective, the article aims at understanding how the body transforms political passions into individual agency and collective action. Focusing on the Covid-19-crisis-related protests, particularly the anti-restriction protests, the study examines from different angles how a socially heterogeneous group consisting of both radicals and sceptics joined together, in anger, in an atypical coalition concerning state interventions in their very personal spaces. Based on a literature review of secondary sources on anti-restriction protests and an empirical analysis of media coverage of a key event in Vienna, the study identifies a gap in the theorisation of ambivalent geographies of encounter whose impacts range between collective action and political violence. To frame our key hypothesis, considering the body as a scale in spatial analysis is needed for future socio-spatial research to grasp new and pressing urban phenomena of social change. By bridging empirical observation, methodological considerations and conceptual reflection, this article contributes to an understanding of social change through less romanticised modes of analysis of geographies of encounter with a particular take on embodied space.

Specters of comfort women: Biopolitical colonial warfare, questions of humanity, and the haunted future

The memories of “comfort women” have been discursively represented primarily within the dynamic discussions that define narratives regarding the universal human rights of women. In this article, I attempt to re-read the history of the comfort women system against the paradigmatic human rights narratives of gender-based violence while contextualizing its history within the legacy of colonial racism. The understanding of the comfort women system as colonial violence that I put forward thus challenges the basic assumptions of current debates on contested memories in East Asia. For this, I draw on haunting aspects of Zainichi Korean documentary filmmaker Soonam Park’s archivization of human suffering during the colonial period and on Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics. I further discuss the contrasting implications of W. E. B. Du Bois’s visits to Japan and to the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto in light of Michael Rothberg’s reading of Du Bois and of his conceptual reflections on “marking caesuras.” In this regard, I characterize Imperial Japan as the absent empire of postcolonial grammatology, underscoring thereby the manner in which Eurocentrism, binary thinking, and habitual orientation around the color line inhabit and determine much of the work carried out under the banner of postcolonial studies. “Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost.” – Hamlet.