Conceptual Reorientation Research Articles

The Metaverse’s Thirtieth Anniversary: From a Science-Fictional Concept to the “Connect Wallet” Prompt

The metaverse is equivocal. It is a science-fictional concept from the past; it is the present’s rough implementations; and it is the Promised Cyberland, expected to manifest some time in the future. The metaverse first emerged as a techno-capitalist network in a 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. Our article thus marks the metaverse’s thirtieth anniversary. We revisit Stephenson’s original concept plus three sophisticated antecedents from 1972 to 1984: Jean Baudrillard’s simulation, Sherry Turkle’s networked identities, and Jacques Lacan’s schema of suggestible consumers hooked up to a Matrix-like capitalist network. We gauge the relevance of these three antecedents following Meta’s recent promise to deliver a metaverse for the mainstream and the emergence of blockchain-oriented metaverse projects. We examine empirical data from 2021 and 2022, sourced from journalistic and social media (BuzzSumo, Google Trends, Reddit, and Twitter) as well as the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This latest chapter of the metaverse’s convoluted history reveals a focus not on virtual reality goggles but rather on techno-capitalist notions like digital wallets, crypto-assets, and targeted advertisements. The metaverse’s wallet-holders collect status symbols like limited-edition profile pictures, fashion items for avatars, tradable pets and companions, and real estate. Motivated by the metaverse’s sophisticated antecedents and our empirical findings, we propose a subtle conceptual re-orientation that respects the metaverse’s equivocal nature and rejects sanitised solutionism. Do not let the phantasmagorical goggles distract you too much: Big Meta is watching you, and it expects you to become a wallet-holder. Blockchain proponents want this as well.

Historical and legal aspects of the restoration of administrative justice in West Germany after 1945

The article is devoted to the issue of restoration of administrative justice in Germany after the Second World War. Historical and legal aspects of this process related to general administrative justice and branches of special administrative justice are considered. An overview of the legal and political background for the restoration of administrative justice in Germany after 1945 is offered. The impetus for the further development of the country in the post-war period was the political and territorial situation at the time of the collapse of Nazi Germany and its division into occupation zones, in which the allies - Great Britain, the United States of America, the Soviet Union and France - later formed lands, as well as the division of Berlin into relevant sectors. The debate over whether the German Reich ceased to exist as a subject of international law has been resolved in favor of the succession thesis, according to which Germany lost active legal capacity after the end of the war, but not passive legal capacity under international law. After the liquidation of administrative courts, the Allies restored them throughout Germany. This initiated the development and nationwide standardization of administrative justice, the establishment of the Federal Administrative Court in 1952 and the entry into force of the Regulation on Administrative Courts in 1960. The general provisions of the Allies on administrative justice in the western occupation zones and the conceptual reorientation of administrative justice in Germany after the Second World War are analyzed. Three concepts of legal protection in Germany were studied, each of which was used to a different extent and which formed a mixed system: (a) traditional administrative justice, i.e. legal protection by administrative bodies in the narrow sense of administrative appeal, (b) legal protection by courts of general jurisdiction and (c) legal protection by special, administrative courts.

Bringing the Environment Back In: Overcoming the Tragedy of the Diffusion of the Commons Metaphor

Contrary to calls for increased relevance, the discipline of political science has had lasting impacts in shaping environmental policy analysis. The ideas and approach advocated by former APSA president Elinor Ostrom, most comprehensively articulated inGoverning the Commons, have diffused to shape or reinforce generations of sustainability scholarship. We identify four “ideal type” problem conceptions that are distinguished based on their consistency or inconsistency with Ostrom’s inductive approach to problem structure and economic welfare emphasis, and four corresponding schools that reinforce each: commons (Type 1), economic optimization (Type 2), compromise (Type 3), and prioritization (Type 4). Whereas the prioritization school seeks to understand and identify lessons for minimizing the impact of human activity on the natural environment, the diffusion of the commons’ metaphor has led political scientists to champion frameworks that bias Type 3, 2, and 1 orientations. The latter all rest on moral underpinnings that promote human material interests as their goal, rather than recognizing them as also a primary cause of environmental degradation. A fundamental conceptual reorientation is required if social scientists in general, and political scientists in particular, are to generate an understanding of and identify tools for ameliorating rather than exacerbating today’s Type 4 climate change and species extinction crises.

Reclaiming the sacred: towards a holographic notion of power and peace

ABSTRACT This article reframes the relationship between peace and power through the notion of the sacred. Both orthodox and critical theorisations of power tend to be grounded within a power-as-force discourse, which sees peace and power as dichotomous rather than synergistic. In this article, I argue that in order to understand and embody power in a new way, we must bring attention to the relationship between the inner psycho-spiritual realm and the outer socio-political realm. I introduce the sacred through a holographic epistemology, which invites three conceptual reorientations. First, I posit power as distinct from force and compatible with peace. Second, I explore the ways in which power is holographically mirrored between inner and outer realms of peace. Third, I invite a peace-centric approach to researching conflict. These reorientations reclaim the sacred in peace research in order to conceptualise and embody a more congruent relationship between power and peace.

Germany After the Social Democratic Century: The Political Economy of Imbalance

The end of the social democratic century has marked the beginning of a new era of political and economic imbalance in Europe. These dynamics are visible even in Germany, despite its reputation for stability. This article proposes reorienting the paradigm for research on Germany’s political economy from stability to imbalance in order to help illuminate central causal processes within the country and across the rich democracies. As our review of prominent approaches to the German Model reveals, recent developments have unseated the mechanisms that once balanced competing social forces. Putting contemporary tensions centre stage, we outline three vantage points from which to study political and economic imbalance: the systemic properties of capitalism, multivalent policy feedback, and the organisational foundations of creative adjustment. This conceptual reorientation should equip scholars to use Germany not merely for theorising the roots of stability in the past, but also to employ it as a powerful prism to explain the dynamics of imbalance in the current era.

An Assessment of Brand Experience Knowledge Literature: Using Bibliometric Data to Identify Future Research Direction

AbstractThere is wide consensus that the brand experience literature (BEL) suffers from a deficit in conceptual works. This study argues that, for brand experience research to overcome its conceptual insipidity, it must re‐examine the core of its intellectual structure to rediscover what ‘an experience provided by brands’ truly implies. The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize and present a future research framework for research into the concept of brand experience, by identifying both the core and peripheral sources of knowledge of the concept and its association with brand meaning. Through a bibliometric process covering 136 articles published between 2002 and 2018, resulting in a database of 2698 citations, this brand experience conceptual paper fills a critical research gap by providing the first full‐scale bibliometric study to date of the BEL, using a combination of high citation and co‐citation metrics. Based on this conceptual reorientation, a matrix for future development is presented, enabling the reader to visualize the scope and breadth of potential brand experience research horizons in areas relating to customer experience, consumer–brand relationship, online brand experience and sensory brand experience. The four approaches listed in the matrix – firm‐based, social constructionist, virtuality and embodiment – provide a roadmap for future brand experience research undertakings to explore the rich potential of experience evoked by brands.

Informed Electoral Accountability and the Welfare State: A Conceptual Reorientation with Experimental and Real-World Findings

Retrospective electoral accountability was conceived as a mechanism that makes democracy work without highly informed citizens. However, recent theory suggests accountability in modern societies ca ...

Dimensions of Scale: Invisible Labor, Editorial Work, and the Future of Quantitative Literary Studies

This essay calls for a conceptual reorientation of how quantitative methods in literary studies are currently framed, arguing for an expansion from a linear model bounded by the endpoints ofdistantandcloseto a space defined by multiple dimensions of scale. I explore the axis bounded byvisibleandinvisibleas an example of one of the additional dimensions that might constitute this expanded conceptual frame. In demonstrating its potential for producing new knowledge, I examine the editorial work of two women abolitionists, Mary Ann Shadd (1823–93) and Lydia Maria Child (1802–80). I show how topic modeling and statistical analysis can help identify and describe their invisible editorial labor. I thus provide an additional layer of evidence in support of the argument that positions women, and black women in particular, at abolition's vanguard. I also show how both women employed editing as a method of community formation and world building. I conclude by extending the example of editorial work to the labor required to perform quantitative work today, underscoring the importance of expanding the frame in which quantitative methods in literary study are conceptualized and deployed. (LFK)

Persuasion architectures: Consumer spaces, affective engineering and (criminal) harm

Drawing together recent theoretical work from both within and beyond criminology, this article considers the role of strategically designed consumer spaces in eliciting potentially criminogenic and harmful dispositions and behaviours. First, the article introduces recent work in cultural geography and urban studies, which has drawn attention to the manipulation of affect through spatial design. Second, by way of example, the article considers how such strategies are deployed in three types of consumer environments: shopping malls and retail spaces; casinos and other gambling environments; and the so-called night time economy. Third, the article engages such developments theoretically. It is suggested we rethink the distinctions and interrelationships between human subjectivity and agency and the built environment. The implications of this proposed conceptual reorientation are explored—first, for our understandings of agency, intentionality, moral responsibility and political accountability; and second, for criminological thinking around embodied difference, power and exclusion.

Deprescriptivising folk theories: critical multilingual language awareness for educators in Pakistan

ABSTRACT This study examines the discourses of educators in Pakistan through the lens of Critical Multilingual Language Awareness (CMLA) to demonstrate how their lack of critical awareness reinforces and reproduces subtractive language policies and practices in a diverse multilingual setting. CMLA stands for the understanding of the social, political and economic struggles surrounding the use of languages (García, O. 2009, Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective, 302. Oxford: Wiley/Blackwell). Drawing on data collected through interviews and a questionnaire survey, the study analyses why most educators tend to manifest the following orientations/tendencies: monoglossic ideologies, devaluing native languages/cultures, normative assumptions about contemporary sociolinguistic order, English-medium fever, and fallacious folk theories about plurilingualism and multilingual education. The study suggests some policy measures that could foster CMLA, which could in turn help create ‘ideological and implementational spaces’ for multiple languages, literacies, and identities in classroom (Hornberger, N.H. 2003. Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Framework for Educational Policy, Research, and Practice in Multilingual Settings. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, Hornberger, N.H. 2016. Researching the continua of biliteracy. In Research Methods in Language and Education, ed. K. King, Y.-J. Lai and S. May, 1–18. Cham: Springer International Publishing). We propose that deprescriptivisation and conceptual reorientation of educators could be crucial in this direction. This entails deconstruction of socially constructed folk theories about languages and language use, developing an awareness that ‘language is socially created, and socially changeable to give voice and educate all students equitably’ (García, O. 2017, Critical multilingual language awareness and teacher education. In Language Awareness and Multilingualism, ed. J. Cenoz, D. Gorter and S. May, 263–280. Cham: Springer International Publishing). We propose that language activists and critical applied linguists could play their agentive role as public intellectuals to deconstruct negative views about the role and value of the native/indigenous languages as pedagogical resources, and create ideological and political openings for inclusive perspectives, policies and practices. This could be achieved through scholarly activism, advocacy campaigns, and public awareness programs.

Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Public and Private Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by Sarah L. Hyde

Reviewed by: Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Public and Private Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama by Sarah L. Hyde Alisha Johnson Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Public and Private Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. By Sarah L. Hyde. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2016. 240 pp. Cloth $42.50. Asserting that "one must jettison the historiographical bias that measures all academic progress in relation to the establishment of schools in Massachusetts," Sarah Hyde treats us to a long-due examination of white education in the antebellum South (170). Such a conceptual reorientation is fundamental to Hyde's central claim that education was valued and sought by Southern inhabitants during this period, a conclusion that has been obscured in critical comparisons of Northern and Southern educational achievement. Hyde's referenced body of literature further makes the point; the topic appears to have long ago fallen out of vogue under the presumption of Southern apathy toward education—there's nothing to see here, folks. Stepping back from the customary focus on outcomes as a means for determining inhabitants' intentions, however, the author reopens the conversation by highlighting Southerners' persistent efforts to expand schooling during this period. Hyde chooses Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama as representative settings by which to better understand the broader Southern educational context during this time. Several common threads run throughout these three cases. Most notably, schools were established at the insistence of community members. According to Hyde, in the 1840s Southerners began to see access to schooling as a right, and they "demanded that their state governments provide it" (105). Hyde traces the roots of statewide public schooling to early successful urban efforts in New Orleans, Mobile, and Natchez. These efforts provided blueprints for schooling across each state as lawmakers and citizens agitated for state-sponsored public schooling. Interestingly, Carl Kaestle (1980, 1983) and Nancy Beadie (2008) have pointed out a reverse trend, but a common process, in the North; common schooling began not in the cities, but in rural locales. In the urban South constituents were able to exercise their consolidated political will to move local and state governments on their demands. Likewise, Northern rural communities rallied their collective will and resources around the local schoolhouse. [End Page 468] To this end, Hyde uses governmental and voting records, to illuminating effect. In all three locations, governors regularly lobbied state legislatures for greater action in establishing state-sponsored school systems. Nonetheless, progress was consistently achieved as a result of community will. As evidence, Hyde points out that Louisiana and Mississippi governors held much greater power than did Alabama's governor, yet Alabama alone ultimately realized a stable statewide system. The author reasons that this was because Alabama legislators were more directly accountable to the public will. Moreover, Hyde contends that local administrative control was instrumental to the quality and operation of schools across the state; absent local administrations accountable to state-level authority, many schools foundered and closed. This work promises to open up renewed inquiry as it presents several opportunities for further study. To begin with, although the title alludes to a focus on schooling, the author takes an expansive view of education in the South. A full chapter is spent on home instruction. Indeed, universal common schooling was yet a relatively new innovation and children received formal instruction in myriad ways prior to its advent. Relying on modest evidence, exploration of informal education is difficult, but it is an integral part of the American educational legacy ripe for further exploration. Likewise, the author spends some time exploring private schooling, and there is still much to be known about this venue in the Southern antebellum context. Until the development of state-sponsored public schooling, formal education was obtained almost entirely in private schools. In many states, such as Louisiana, this mode of education proliferated even after the advent of public schooling, further supporting Hyde's claim that Southerners valued education. One difficulty touched upon by the author also begs further study: class certainly played a substantial role in the Southern social and economic hierarchy. Hyde points out the wealthy elite's frequent opposition to public school funding as the larger community...

New directions for research on the organizational and institutional context of child welfare agencies: Introduction to the symposium on “The Organizational and Managerial Context of Private Child Welfare Agencies”

This paper argues for a conceptual reorientation to research and practice that emphasizes the prominence of institutional and organizational factors in the lives of those who are involved in child welfare systems. Current child welfare reform efforts are premised on the idea that agencies—their structures, management, and internal approaches to organizing their workforce and frontline services—may be influential drivers of and barriers to innovation in practice and policy. We unpack this premise by providing an introduction to the institutional and organizational context of child welfare practice that highlights the diverse contexts and contributions of public and private child welfare agencies. We then review five domains for future research and present examples of studies that might be undertaken. The paper concludes by introducing the symposium papers and identifying their contributions to child welfare and human service research.

The future of missiology as a discipline: a view from the non-Western world

This article reproduces material originally presented in a plenary address at the annual meeting of the America Society of Missiology (in June, 2013) organized around the theme “The Future of Missiology.” It examines the prospects and predicaments that confront the discipline of missiology in non-Western contexts. This assessment revolves around three broad reflections. First, that while non-Western theological production and missiological thinking has shown tremendous growth in recent decades, captivity to Western training and intellectual traditions remains a major challenge. Second, that one of the most pressing concerns confronting non-Western missiological education and scholarship is the need for institutional models and programmatic approaches that reflect non-Western realities. In this regard, the article argues that in order to be effective and sustained, missiological education in non-Western contexts needs to be more integrative—that is, less dependent on the isolationist-specialist model prevalent in the West—and make greater use of the methodologies and analytical tools of social-scientific disciplines like the sociology of religion. Third, that for a reconceptualization of what “missions” connotes and represents it is vital for churches in the non-Western world to address key issues of ministry and witness. It is argued that many of the models and perceptions of mission inherited from the Western experience are no longer helpful or warranted and that widely used constructs such as “reverse missions” inhibit the conceptual reorientation needed to equip the church for a new era of missionary engagement.

Progress in thermal comfort research over the last twenty years

Climate change and the urgency of decarbonizing the built environment are driving technological innovation in the way we deliver thermal comfort to occupants. These changes, in turn, seem to be setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research. This article presents a literature review of major changes, developments, and trends in the field of thermal comfort research over the last 20years. One of the main paradigm shift was the fundamental conceptual reorientation that has taken place in thermal comfort thinking over the last 20years; a shift away from the physically based determinism of Fanger's comfort model toward the mainstream and acceptance of the adaptive comfort model. Another noticeable shift has been from the undesirable toward the desirable qualities of air movement. Additionally, sophisticated models covering the physics and physiology of the human body were developed, driven by the continuous challenge to model thermal comfort at the same anatomical resolution and to combine these localized signals into a coherent, global thermal perception. Finally, the demand for ever increasing building energy efficiency is pushing technological innovation in the way we deliver comfortable indoor environments. These trends, in turn, continue setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research for the next decades.

Normative Power Europe and the Moral Economy of Africa–EU Ties: A Conceptual Reorientation of ‘Normative Power’

‘Normative power’ is an increasingly popularised concept in the study of EU external relations in fields including military policy, human rights, and international trade. Defined by Manners, it acknowledges the normative foundations of the European project, examines how Europe acts to (re)shape internationally accepted norms, and makes the claim that Europe ought to influence external partners' conception of ‘normal’ behaviour in pursuit of a just global order. This article, however, argues that a moral economy perspective is central to a critical reorientation of the concept of normative power towards appraisal of discrepancies between nominal EU norms and material EU policy outcomes. Examining Europe's ‘normative power’ in its relations with the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries, it demonstrates how a moral economy of ACP–EU ties has been instituted in negotiation with European ethical norms as to solidarity with ‘the poor’. Nevertheless, the moral economy of ACP–EU ties is seen not to be ‘moral’ in terms of outcomes for vulnerable citizens in ACP countries. Rather the embedding of moral norms concerning pro-poor ‘development’ has rationalised asymmetric economic ties. ‘Normative power’ is understood as the EU's utilisation of moral norms in the public legitimisation and self-rationalisation of geopolitical interest and commercial gain in its relations with external ‘partners’.

A PRECEDENT IN SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE: BIOCLIMATIC DEVICES IN ALVAR AALTO'S SUMMER HOUSE

INTRODUCTION The problems discussed in forums such as that within the European Charter for Solar Energy in Architecture and Urban Planning are still up-to-date.1 The role architecture plays in energy consumption calls for a conceptual reorientation that ensures a responsible design approach to the environment and the use of renewable resources based on local conditions. In this sense, the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) figures as a pioneering precedent of a sustainable architecture. The Nordic climate and the deeply nature-concerned culture within which he lived are factors that derived a conscious design method characterised by the exploration of environmental concepts. The contextual approach was developed since his early career and reached a peak in his own summer house erected in Finland in the year 1953. As Aalto himself comments, this building had the advantage of being the ‘experimental game' of the architect, where he could freely work without worrying about the constraints of usual pro...

Consciousness Studies and a Transformation of the Western Worldview

The emerging field of consciousness studies offers the perspective we need to make our global human community sustainable.

The origin and the tradition of European herbalism for human wellness: from the roots of an ancient approach to modern herbalism

Since the beginning of civilization, people have used plants to improve their health. In recent years, there has been a reawakened scientific interest in the fundamental role plants play in many areas, including human health. Beginning from the 20th century, the field of folk tradition experienced a shift from the raw compilation of data to a greater methodological and conceptual reorientation. Research has concentrated mainly on the following periods: the Roman period, the Medieval Ages, the Renaissance, and the Modern Ages, and thousands of documentations focused that Italy and the whole of Europe have a consolidated tradition in the use of plants for wellness and human health, and not only as food. In Italy, at present there are about 5,000 “erboristeria” shops in which dried herbs and spices are sold packed or unpacked and mixed according to the consumer’s request. The purpose of this paper is to underline that a large enough body of evidence has survived to show that the folk tradition was impressively wide in its botanical reach and equally impressive in the range of situations it treated. The review will focus on the links between plants and traditions, art and history of typical Italian and European food plants. There has been a growing body of evidence and research, which studies the efficacy and safety of employing traditional knowledge based on approaches to health and healing. A significant number of food plant and/or plants for wellness have been used successfully for centuries, and in some cases millenniums. Many plants have a long and established history of use, no apparent adverse side effects, and social acceptance.

Repurposing for Neglected Diseases—Response

Although we proposed some technological approaches to repurposing pharmacovigilance, the fundamental, underlying challenge is the conceptual reorientation from seeking adverse effects to being equally vigilant about identifying unexpected beneficial effects. This new concept can be applied in a number of “low-tech” ways as well and, indeed, none of the examples cited by Uliana and Barcinski required online social networks or sophisticated data-mining but rather (to paraphrase Louis Pasteur) chance observations entering a prepared mind. Uliana and Barcinski's point about the “cost of repurposing projects” underscores the real need for novel business models and/or regulatory and legal reforms in order to capitalize on the candidate drugs that are identified. This is especially true in the case of generic drugs or drugs that cannot otherwise be patented or have small markets. In such cases, where there is inadequate or uncertain financial return on the investment needed to conduct rigorous clinical studies to validate a new use, a not-for-profit model may be the only current, practical solution. This approach is being tested by OneWorld Health and Global Cures, Inc. ([ 1 ][1]). Innovative public-private partnerships might also address this issue. Other solutions may require reforms of patent law and/or changes in FDA doctrine that create new financial incentives for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to invest in such clinical studies. If the cost of drug development could be substantially decreased by such approaches, the barriers to entry for new companies might not require “first-world” resource levels and make economically feasible the development of new treatments for neglected diseases. 1. [↵][2] Global Cures, Inc. was cofounded by V.P.S. [1]: #ref-1 [2]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text

A componential model of situation effects, person effects, and situation-by-person interaction effects on social behavior

Social and personality psychology seek to understand the regularities of human behavior in social context and to separate critical causal variables assumed to reside in the social situation, in the person, and in the interaction between the two. A componential model is presented, which assumes that the three types of effect are theoretically and conceptually independent, although they may be confounded in practice. A review of past theory and research suggests that many social and personality psychologists have misconstrued situation and person effects as competing for a limited pool of behavioral variance. A conceptual re-orientation may overcome the limitations of both radical situationism and defensive dispositionism.