Conceptual Tension Research Articles

CRITICAL REVIEW OF ASSESSMENT APPROACHES OPERATIVE AT SCHOOL LEVEL- A JOURNEY FROM MINIMUM LEVELS OF LEARNING TO LEARNING OUTCOMES

Assessment being an inextricable part of any learning process has gone through many ups and downs since independence in India. Transformations have seen from the introduction of Minimum Levels of Learning: to measure a list of competencies as an end product, to the introduction of theoretically sound Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE)to guide the overall learning process of student. With time, many pitfalls and implementation failures have been observed in these approaches of assessment. Thus, the inception of learning outcomes approach after CCEs unexpected implementation failure opens a scope for critical discourse in the field of school education in India. The term learning outcomes reflects a conceptual tension and far less scope of flexibility as propounded by many educationists globally. Thus, the paper attempts to show the post-independence journey of assessment procedures at primary and elementarylevel in India and critically reflects upon the current learning outcomes approach from national and international perspective to predict its futurefeasibility and upshots.

Metatextual Commentary to the Heroic Poem Suvoroida by I. I. Zavalishin: Authorial Manifestation and Understanding of the Genre

Issues concerning the emergence and decline of the epic poem are fairly well researched in Russian literary criticism. Irinarkh Ivanovich Zavalishin was the second author who successfully completed works of this genre following in the footsteps of M. M. Kheraskov. Yet, this author’s poems are often considered superficially as having had no serious influence on the literary process or the consciousness of contemporaries. This article looks at the unique aspect of his poem, Suvoroida, its extensive metatextual and paratextual structure, its relation to the core text and impact on the further development of the genre. The article demonstrates how in his commentary on the poem, the author expresses a new approach to the genre itself, i.e. a decisive rejection of classical fantastic elements of the traditional epic poem of the eighteenth century, postulating the value of historical accuracy and personal attitude to historical events. The article considers the immediate features of historical commentary, noting that, first of all, the author seeks to convey accurate historical information about the obstacles overcome by Suvorov and the losses of the enemy, which serves to formalize the image of the invincible hero. Finally, attention is drawn to the conceptual tension between the text of the poem and the author’s commentary on it, manifesting an active authorial presence in the text. From this tension comes the complexity in the interpretation of Suvorov’s image. As a character of the poetic text, he appears in the image of a classicist hero, sublime, magnificent, formidable, and gracious. The Suvorov of the metatext is down-to-earth, surrounded by everyday details and realities, and easy to deal with.

Two levels in the feeling of familiarity

AbstractThis paper explores the role of phenomenology in the understanding of the cognitive processes of coupling/decoupling, defending the Wittgensteinian idea that phenomenology can play a crucial role as a description of immediate (social) experience. We argue that epistemic feelings can provide a phenomenological description of the development of a subject's everyday experience, tracking the transition from the processes of coupling/decoupling and recoupling with the world. In particular, the feeling of familiarity, whose key features can be considered the core of epistemic feelings, signals a novelty in the flow of experience that makes sense and is worthy of remarking on or even articulating. By describing the primary features and sources of the feeling of familiarity, we highlight a conceptual tension related to its sources, which could be based on processing both fluency and discrepancy. We proposed a solution to the conceptual tension by introducing two levels of the feeling of familiarity: epistemic and experiential.

(Un)consciousness-Raising, (Un)knowability, Lack and Spectrums of Solidarity: Discussion of “Unconsciousness-Raising”

ABSTRACT In this response, I address five selective arguments in relation to Malherbe’s thesis on the implication of the unconscious in the structuring of our political orientations and activities, and the importance of engaging in a process of unconsciousness-raising. First, I raise a seeming conceptual tension in his argument about the relationship between conscious and unconscious activity. Second, I highlight the challenge of occupying a range of subject positions and how their associated multiple unconscious lack(s) may compromise solidarity in political formations. Third, I suggest that surrendering individual unconscious needs to that of the group is a more troublesome process than we anticipate, as it is always ideologically contested, both consciously and unconsciously. Fourth, I argue that unconsciousness-raising is not in and of itself implicitly connected to a specific set of political goals, as the unconscious is not inherently politically partisan, and I consequently conclude with the suggestion that the very idea of solidarity is an unstable and dynamic construct and process.

The critique of social reason in the Popper–Adorno debate

This article examines the differences and affinities between Karl Popper's critical rationalism and Theodor Adorno's critical theory through renewed attention to the original documents of their 1961 debate. While commentaries often describe the Popper–Adorno encounter as a theoretical disappointment, I reveal a confrontation between conceptually opposed programs of social research. Though both theorists are committed to critique as a political and epistemological struggle for human freedom, their conceptions of this struggle are starkly different. In the original seminar papers, we find a conflict between critique as a practice of social rationality (Popper) and a critique of social rationality itself (Adorno). The versions of critical rationalism and critical theory meeting in this debate thus emphasize opposite dimensions of a reflexive practice of immanent critique. In closing, I suggest dissolving this conceptual tension by recovering the educational orientation of critique.

Do we know it when we see it? (Re)-conceptualizing rebel-to-party transition

In addition to providing crucial insights, the rebel-to-party literature exhibits an unacknowledged conceptual tension: despite remarkable agreement on what ‘rebel-to-party transition’ should capture, there are nearly as many definitions and measures as there are studies of it. I demonstrate that conceptual imprecision has an analytic ripple effect—compromising the validity of the concept, the quality of the measure, the validity of inclusion criteria, and the results of analyses. Across four existing rebel-to-party variables, scholars only agree with regard to eight transitions (out of 161) and five failures (out of hundreds). To address these limitations, I propose a novel conceptualization and measure of rebel-to-party transition—distinguishing between failures, nominal participants (the conventional benchmark for transition), and seated participants. I demonstrate that some definitions of ‘failure’ induce selection effects into samples, and that minimalist indicators of ‘transition’ introduce problematic heterogeneity into ‘successes’. My analyses reveal that nominal participants are statistically indistinguishable from failures on key traits predicting transition and, moreover, seated participants consistently drive results. As such, the new conceptual framework advances the literature on conceptual and empirical grounds.

Conclusion to the special issue on the interdisciplinary study of intellectual humility: unifying themes from divergent theories and research programs

ABSTRACT This article concludes the special issue on the interdisciplinary study of intellectual humility. We offer five suggestions for addressing some of the key challenges facing scholarship. These suggestions include (a) finding sources of common ground, (b) focusing on areas of conceptual tension, (c) applying new methods, (d) tackling big problems together, and (e) keep choppin’ (i.e., return to the fundamentals of gradually advancing a research program).

Visual metaphors in advertising: An interplay of visual structure, visual context, and conceptual tension

ABSTRACT This study examines the role of figurativeness and conceptual tension in the effectiveness of visual metaphors. It proposes that the level of figurativeness is rooted in both visual structure and visual context. An experimental study was conducted to test the effectiveness of contextual fusion over simple fusion and contextual replacement respectively in both low and high conceptual tension conditions. The results showed an interaction between metaphor type and conceptual tension. When conceptual tension is low, contextual fusion metaphors are more artful, more humorous and generate more favorable ad attitude than simple fusion and contextual replacement. When conceptual tension is high, simple fusion metaphors are more artful, more humorous and generate more favorable ad attitude than contextual fusions. For low conceptual tension metaphors, there is a simple mediation through artfulness to ad attitude, and a serial mediation from metaphor type to artfulness, humor and to ad attitude. For high conceptual tension fusion metaphors, artfulness and comprehension both mediate the effect of simple fusion (vs. contextual fusion) on ad attitude, and there is a serial mediation from metaphor type to comprehension, humor and to ad attitude. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Ordinary Referring Names in Fictional Contexts

Ordinary proper names can be taken to be referring expressions in non-fictional contexts. But what happens when such names occur in literary works? Within the realist stance, there are two approaches to the issue. Some say that ordinary proper names retain their real world referents in literary fiction. Others argue for the view that ordinary proper names are related there to surrogate referents. It can be pointed out, however, that both approaches create a conceptual tension within the realist doctrine. Fiction-internal contexts are incompatible with any reference-based interpretation of names. The proposal of this paper is, therefore, a shift in perspective: instead of sticking to the notion of reference, the behaviour of ordinary names should be described in terms of representation.

Metamodern model for managing stakeholder relationships in non-profit organisations

It is posited that this article is an important theoretical addition in the field of strategic communication as it seeks to eradicate the conceptual tension between the two dominant discourses, namely modernist and postmodernist explanations of how organisations should manage stakeholder relationships. Modernists believe in a single truth, accept metanarratives and believe that grand theory represents knowledge and can explain everything, whilst postmodernists reject the absolute standards and grand theories typical of modernism in favour of awareness and tolerance of differences, ambiguity and conflict. This article links these two perspectives in a new metamodern model for stakeholder relationship management, aimed specifically at the South African non-profit sector. A conceptual theoretical framework was developed and tested by means of exploratory qualitative and interpretative research through interviews with senior management in the non-profit sector. The findings suggest that a metamodern perspective requires constant negotiation between modernism and postmodernism. We also highlight the need for formaltraining in stakeholder relationship management. This entails adopting a micro-perspective by regularly identifying current strategic issues, mapping the stakeholders involved and linking them to these issues, and designing focused communication strategies to manage stakeholder relationships. The main research implications are that stakeholder relationship management is afunction which should not simply be delegated to the communication specialist, and that it should be practised from a metamodern perspective and not a modernistic or postmodern perspective. The originality and value of this research initiative lies in the development of a metamodern model for stakeholder relationship management for the non-profit sector which has been proposed and tested in practice.

Reconciling essential and socially constructed selves: Han Chinese travelling to Tibet and the making of assemblage self

In post‐reform China, Han Chinese urbanities traveling to Tibet have contributed to a new literary genre that documents tourist mobility as a means of self‐finding and self‐exploration. The sample of data in this study consists of 28 book‐length travel writings by Han travellers, and the primary research question addresses the relationships between tourism mobility and self‐making, a widely debated issue in cultural and tourism geographies. Engaging with the conceptual tension between an essential self and a socially constructed self, this study argues that while Han writers' travels to Tibet are germane to the hunt for an essential self as a hidden treasure to be redeemed, the self is by no means merely introspective, but intrinsically relational and constituted by social, embodied and materially mediated practices. For the purpose of reconciling and synthesizing the two theoretical positions, this study proposes an alternative concept known as the ‘assemblage self’, which tries to capture how the more‐than‐human and more‐than‐representational dimensions of mobilities can speak back powerfully to the phenomenology of the self. This concept is relational and performative in the sense that it is constituted by networks of discourses, practices, and materialities. We develop this concept by engaging with the recent literature on more‐than‐representational mobility as a conceptual nexus connecting the concepts of the essential self and the socially constructed self.

Anti-mafia Cross-border: Conceptual and Procedural Asymmetries in the Fight against Italian Mafias in Europe

Abstract This article explores some of the challenges to fighting against Italian mafias and mafia-type organized crime in Europe, specifically in eight countries—Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Romania, the UK, and Italy. Data have been collected and analysed in two phases: first, from open sources (including media and official reports) and judicial files; secondly, from 40 individual or collective interviews. European institutions still struggle to counter the mobility of Italian mafias because of conceptual asymmetries in policing mafia-type crimes/groups and procedural challenges. We present two analytical foci: first, the existence of a conceptual tension in the definition of mafia and mafia mobility between Italy and European countries and institutions; second, emerging procedural asymmetries in countering mafias across borders, which relate more broadly to cross-border countering of organized crime. This article wishes to screenshot the state of the art and advance some reflections, without pushing any specific theoretical framework. After exploring the two main analytical foci emerging in this research, we advance recommendations.

Housing temporalities: state narratives and precarity in the Global South

In the Global South, urban space is appropriated through diverse informal housing arrangements, with characteristic inherent and relational temporalities. While these forms of housing often consolidate through incremental growth, change in materials and perceived security, they also exist precariously through changing circumstances. While some urban scholars have discussed the characteristic in-betweenness of informality, others have noted the conceptual tension that policy holds in addressing this temporality. This article builds on these discussions to argue that the temporality within and across diverse informal housing arrangements matters not due to the ways in which it manifests, but due to what happens within it as a space of transformation, that is, of socio-economic and political mobility. It draws from literature across disciplines on mobilities, poverty and capabilities to posit that a conceptual frame of choice and agency is key to policy engagement with housing temporalities. The article locates this discussion in the city of Delhi, where cycles of evictions have broken large ‘slum’ clusters, or bastis, into further spatial and temporal configurations. The article uses two distinct housing models to illustrate narratives of the state across two sites: Savda Ghevra, a case of peripheral resettlement; and Kathputli Colony, a case of in-situ redevelopment. It reveals how the state not only does not recognise the temporality of self-made housing practices, but also sets into motion temporalities that, through the absence of choice and agency, create conditions for precarity, highlighting the need to keep choice and agency central to discourses on housing and well-being.

A importância das ideias na mudança institucional e nos processos políticos

This article aims to show the crucial role that ideas play in institutional change, the formation of public policies, and actors’ grouping and orientation. These scenarios involve processes of creation of ideas and discourses, of disputes over the solution to problems and the legitimation or not of decisions. The role of ideas depends on our conception of their relationships with institutions, interests, and actors, and of the determinants of the changes we appreciate. The assumption promoted by rational choice that they are instrumental means of interests limits the understanding of the complexity of political processes. To vindicate the role of ideas, the article analyzes: various schools and authors based on the conceptual tension between interest and institutions; the relationship between ideas, political changes, and coalitions; and the role of discourse concerning them.

Descartes on fermentation in digestion: iatromechanism, analogy and teleology.

Fermentation is a cornerstone phenomenon in Cartesian physiology, accounting for processes such as digestion or blood formation. I argue that the previously unrecognized conceptual tension between the terms 'fermentation' and 'concoction' reflects Descartes's efforts towards a novel, more thoroughly mechanistic theory of physiology, set up against both Galenism and chymistry. Similarities with chymistry as regards fermentation turn out either epistemologically superficial, or based on shared earlier sources. Descartes tentatively employs 'fermentation' as a less teleological alternative to 'concoction', later renouncing the explicit use of the term, possibly to avoid chymical overtones. However, his continued use of analogies with fermentative processes in the natural world and in winemaking, coupled with a strong ontological commitment (the stance that the physiological processes are actual fermentations), leads to a reintroduction of natural teleology in his medical system, which I argue may be understood in an Aristotelian sense of 'simple necessity'. The paper reveals a more nuanced account of Cartesian fermentative medicine, delineating some of its tensions with regard to chymistry as they play out in the dynamics of fermentation and concoction, and linking the analogies to fermentation processes to the difficulties in erasing teleology altogether.

An Accidental Genre

An Accidental Genre

‘In the Light of Leibniz and Lucretius’: An Encounter between Deleuze and New Materialism

While most new materialists, including Thomas Nail, tend to distance themselves from Deleuze, this essay reads the encounter of Nail's ‘process materialism’ and Deleuzian philosophy as productive rather than contentious. After tracing the affinities of their notions of continuity and discontinuity by way of Deleuze's The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque and Nail's Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion and Being and Motion, the essay considers Nail's unfolding of Lucretius’ luminous philosophy in relation to Deleuze's reading of Lucretius from within Deleuze's own ‘philosophical luminism’. Within the multiple overlaps between Nail and Deleuze, particularly vis-à-vis quantum physics and quantum field theory, their divergent readings of the particle–wave duality bring about a productive conceptual tension. Nail's argument about the ontological precedence of waves over particles (‘process precedes existence’) is illuminated by Deleuze's concept of their ontological complementarity (actual particles and virtual waves, virtual particles and actual waves), and vice versa.

Understanding a Player's Decision-Making Process in Team Sports: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence.

Three perspectives were taken to explain decision-making within team sports (information processing, recognition primed decision-making, and ecological dynamics perspectives), resulting in conceptual tension and practical confusion. The aim of this paper was to interrogate empirical evidence to (1) understand the process of decision-making within team sports and (2) capture the characteristics of decision-making expertise in a team sport context. Nine electronic databases (SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, PsycArticles, PsycTests, PubMed, SAGE journals online, Web of Knowledge, Academic Search Complete, and Web of Science) were searched until the final return in March 2021. Fifty-three articles satisfied the inclusion criteria, were analysed thematically, and synthesised using a narrative approach. Findings indicate that the relative absence or presence of mental representation within the decision-making process depends on factors, including complexity, typicality, time available, and contextual priors available in the game situation. We recommend that future research integrate concepts and methodologies prevalent within each perspective to better understand decision-making within team sports before providing implications for practitioners.

Terminology Change for Small Low-Risk Papillary Thyroid Cancer As a Response to Overtreatment: Results from Three Australian Community Juries.

Background: The majority of small papillary thyroid cancers (sPTCs) are treated surgically, rather than by active surveillance. Patient and clinician preference for surgery may be partially driven by the use of cancer terminology. Some experts propose that changing terminology would better communicate the indolent nature of sPTCs and improve uptake of active surveillance. Others argue that terminology that includes "cancer" correctly reflects the biological nature of these tumors. The views of informed lay publics can provide value-based perspectives on complex issues and guide policy discussions. Methods: We recruited 40 people for three community juries, held in Sydney, Wodonga, and Cairns, Australia. Participants were of diverse backgrounds and ages, recruited through random digit dialing and a topic-blinded social media strategy. Juries were informed about thyroid cancer, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment, and heard arguments for and against terminology change before deliberation. The deliberative process in Jury 1 led to a refinement of jury charge, the updated version that was then used in Juries 2 and 3. Results: Jury 1 favored no terminology change, and Juries 2 and 3 were divided on the topic. Key reasons for opposing terminology change included a strong desire to retain terminology that aligns with the pathological definition of cancer, and to avoid even a minimal risk of harm that could arise if patients became complacent in follow-up. Key reasons to support terminology change included a desire to reduce psychological distress, stigma, and discrimination associated with a cancer diagnosis, and an argument that terminology change may be a more effective trigger for health system reform compared with other options. The juries unanimously recommended community education and health system reforms to reduce harms of overtreatment, and expressed an expectation that clinicians and researchers reach agreement on clinical guidelines to promote better uptake of active surveillance. Conclusions: The conceptual tension between a pathological and an outcome-based understanding of cancer was apparent in deliberation. This highlights an ongoing challenge for those advocating changing disease terminology. Regardless of action on terminology, jurors shared a strong expectation that practical changes would be made to respond to the harms of overtreatment.

Mind After Uexküll: A Foray Into the Worlds of Ecological Psychologists and Enactivists.

For several decades, a diverse set of approaches to embedded, embodied, extended, enactive and affective cognition has been challenging the cognitivist orthodoxy. Recently, the prospect of a combination of ecological psychology and enactivism has emerged as a promising candidate for a single unified framework that could rival the established cognitivist paradigm as “a working metatheory for the study of minds” (Baggs and Chemero, 2018, p. 11). One obstacle to such an ecological-enactive approach is the conceptual tension between the firm commitment to realism of those following James Gibson’s ecological approach and the central tenet of enactivism that each living organism enacts its own world, interpreted as a constructivist or subjectivist position. Baggs and Chemero (2018) forward the concept of Umwelt, coined by the biologist Jakob von Uexküll, as a conceptual bridge between the two approaches. Inspired by Kant, Uexküll’s Umwelt describes how the physiology of an organism’s sensory apparatus shapes its active experience of the environment. Baggs and Chemero use this link between the subject and its objective surroundings to argue for a strong compatibility between ecological psychology and enactivism. Fultot and Turvey on the other hand view Umwelt as steeped in representationalism, the rejection of which is a fundamental commitment of radical embodied cognition (Fultot and Turvey, 2019). Instead, they advance Uexküll’s “compositional theory of nature” as a conceptual supplement for Gibson’s ecological approach (von Uexküll, 2010, p. 171; Fultot and Turvey, 2019). In this paper, I provide a brief overview of Uexküll’s thought and distinguish a crucial difference between two ways of using his term Umwelt. I argue that only one of these ways, the one which emphasizes the role of subjective experience, is adequate to Uexküll’s philosophical project. I demonstrate how the two ways of using Umwelt are employed in the philosophy of cognitive science, show how this distinction matters to recent debates about an ecological-enactive approach, and provide some critical background to Uexküll’s compositional theory of meaning.