Concrete Context Research Articles

A Decomposition-based Approach of Global Norms for Hierarchical Normative Systems

Holonic Multi-Agent System (HMAS) forms a promising approach to software engineering for the modeling and development of hierarchical autonomous systems (Intelligent transportation systems, Smart city management systems, etc.). Effectively, norms concepts are well adapted to the definition of HMAS. Its can be considered as a powerful way to specify the non-functional requirements of these types of systems. Non-functional requirements can conflict with each other (for example, cost and quality, comfort and economy). One of the main challenges currently faced in HMAS research is the coherence checking of norms that specify non-functional requirements. However verification approaches are limited by the state-space of the system under study. Specifying and verifying a global normative model in a single level is then complex and difficult. However, most normative models for multi-agent systems do not take into account the complexity of coherence verification algorithms of norms. One of solutions is to employ the use of coherent refinement process of global norms.This paper proposes a Global Norms Decomposition (GND) approach for hierarchical and critical autonomous systems. Indeed, the GND approach allows (i) the specification and verification of global norms in the abstract level of the studied system, and (ii) the successive refinement of these norms using a set of refinement rules that preserve properties of the system already proven in the highest level, in order to arrive finally at a concrete normative context which constitutes the behaviour model of the system. The GND approach allows the simplification of specification of norms, for an incremental specification using a refinement process, and the reduction of complexity of checking the coherence of norms, building verification using refinement rules. Our approach is also illustrated by a case study describing smart city management system.

Stemming the Tide: Human Rights and Water Policy in a Neoliberal World by Madeline Baer

Reviewed by: Stemming the Tide: Human Rights and Water Policy in a Neoliberal World by Madeline Baer Christopher C. Robinson* (bio) Madeline Baer, Stemming the Tide: Human Rights and Water Policy in a Neoliberal World (Oxford University Press, 2017), ISBN 978-0-19-069315-2, 205 pages. Too often, studies of neoliberalism take on an elitist policy focus and corresponding abstractness that obscures the view to those victimized most by its policies: the poor and vulnerable. Water policy is an excellent window into the dehumanizing effects of neoliberalism if you study the formation of oppositional movements that express the idea that access to clean water and sanitation are human rights. From the perspective of the elites responsible for policy choices, however, the totalitarian and anti-democratic character of neoliberalism is depoliticized and reduced to claims about privatization or deregulation as efficient, if amoral ways to ensure clean water with the proviso that some democracy is possible if the state wills it. In Stemming the Tide, Madeline Baer attempts to escape and challenge the narrative of elites that seek to justify the efficacy of market forces as an able alternative to public administration, but while she gestures toward the counter narratives offered by oppositional movements, she focuses mostly on the way state power can preemptively blunting [End Page 484] neoliberalism or modify privatization through regulation.1 My two interrelated criticisms of Baer's study are that she offers an overly circumscribed perspective on neoliberalism that tends to equate it with privatization; and her observations on grassroots opposition to privatizing water and sanitation systems are not developed enough to give a sense of how activists see and are affected by the structures of neoliberal governance they oppose. Rather than wish aloud for a different book that studies the formation of political beliefs and strategies of water warriors, I want to examine the strengths and limits of Baer's analysis and her contribution to our understanding of the politics and legal framework of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRtWS). The strengths of Baer's analysis lie in its contribution to our understanding of the challenges that economic, social and cultural rights, framed as human rights, face in various national contexts and forms of state governance (authoritarian and representative). This work is dedicated to water and sanitation as sites of resistance to the neoliberal commodification of such basic human requirements for sustaining life. Readers alert to the struggle of indigenous water protectors throughout the Western Hemisphere, and the range of environmental justice issues exemplified by protests at Standing Rock and the exposure of children to elevated lead levels in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, will not require much convincing regarding the centrality of access to clean water as a vital issue of human rights. As Baer notes, "[o]ver 1.1 billion people currently lack access to clean water, and 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation. "The burden of water-related disease," she continues, "is heavy in the developing world, where 1.8 million children die each year from preventable diseases caused by dirty water."2 Thus the goal of universal access to clean water and sanitation is situated well in human rights discourse and worthy of ongoing political struggle. Disagreement arises, however, over whether this public good is defended best by state intervention or local and indigenous movement politics. The thrust of Baer's argument is in opposition to the application of market forces to the creation and maintenance of a clean water infrastructure. Still, she gives privatization a fair and scholarly hearing in her case studies of Chile and Bolivia. These cases also provide concrete contexts for analyzing the status of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which are viewed correctly as weak and difficult to enforce in comparison to and in isolation from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Indeed, it is not clear why potable water and sanitation are framed in the discourse on human rights as an economic right rather than, say, a political right. This strikes me as a brand of or predecessor to neoliberal thinking—the equation of cost/benefit analysis with rationality and its expansion into what were...

The dual reading of general conditionals: The influence of abstract versus concrete contexts.

A current main issue on conditionals is whether the meaning of general conditionals (e.g., If a card is red, then it is round) is deterministic (exceptionless) or probabilistic (exception-tolerating). In order to resolve the issue, two experiments examined the influence of conditional contexts (with vs. without frequency information of truth table cases) on the reading of general conditionals. Experiment 1 examined the direct reading of general conditionals in the possibility judgment task. Experiment 2 examined the indirect reading of general conditionals in the truth judgment task. It was found that both the direct and indirect reading of general conditionals exhibited the duality: the predominant deterministic semantic reading of conditionals without frequency information, and the predominant probabilistic pragmatic reading of conditionals with frequency information. The context of general conditionals determined the predominant reading of general conditionals. There were obvious individual differences in reading general conditionals with frequency information. The meaning of general conditionals is relative, depending on conditional contexts. The reading of general conditionals is flexible and complex so that no simple deterministic and probabilistic accounts are able to explain it. The present findings are beyond the extant deterministic and probabilistic accounts of conditionals.

Games With a Continuum: Globalization, Regionalization, and the Nation-State in the Development of China’s Online Game Industry

As a case study, this article examines the development of China’s online game industry and how China responds to the forces of globalization. Based on in-depth interviews, ethnographic research, and the analysis of archive documents from the past few years, this study identifies China’s evolving strategy of neo-techno-nationalism. In the Chinese context, this national strategy manipulates technology to create a version of popular nationalism that is both acceptable to and easily censored by the authorities. Therefore, cultural industries that adopt this strategy stand a good chance of prevailing in the Chinese market. This success explains why the regional competitors of Chinese online games—Korean games—are more successful in China than most of their Western counterparts. By providing a snapshot of the current ecology of China’s online game industry, this article also discusses the influence of regional and global forces in a concrete context and argues that the development of China’s online game industry depends more on political factors than economic factors.

Goal-Oriented Ethics: Framing the Goal-Setting Concretely

Joseph Selling, professor emeritus from KU Leuven, Belgium, recently made a significant contribution towards ethical methodology. It is in fact a continuation of the in-house conversations that have been in vogue about methods in moral reasoning since Vatican II in the discipline called theological ethics. What is specific about Selling’s attempt is that he re-orients or reframes the evaluation of the moral event to consider human intentionality or motivation before considering human behavior or human acts. He convincingly establishes his method by a meticulous reading of Thomas Aquinas. This paper is a response to the goal-oriented ethics that he has posited. As illustrated below, this paper evaluates the goal-oriented approach as solid and sufficient. While fully endorsing this approach, this paper argues that the process of ethical goal-setting is to be framed concretely. In a concrete historical context, so that a goal-oriented approach fully serves its purpose, this paper proposes that it is to be reinforced by four supportive pillars, which are in fact assumed by Selling in his work. They are openness to human sciences, conversation among various narratives, positing a theological frame for ethical reasoning, and recourse to non-discursive reasoning.

Pragmatic Belief and Political Agency

According to a recent methodological critique, much of contemporary political theory has lost touch with the realities of political life. The aim of this article is to problematise the underlying antagonism between distant ideals and concrete contexts of agency. Drawing on Kant’s notion of pragmatic Belief – the idea that in certain situations we can put full confidence in something we lack sufficient evidence for – I point to the distinctly practical function of political ideals that these disputes pay scant attention to. Particularly in political contexts, action is itself often framed by ‘ideal constructions’ that not only motivate and enable us to pursue uncertain goals but also ultimately feed back onto what is practically possible. The upshot is that especially if we are interested in a kind of theorising that is less detached from political practice, we should be wary of disregarding distant ideals as unduly utopian from the outset.

A Capabilities Approach to the Adjudication of the Right to a Basic Education in South Africa

This article explores the contours of what a capabilities approach to the adjudication of the right to a basic education in South Africa entails. The right to a basic education fulfils an important role within South Africa’s project of transformative constitutionalism, which aims to transform society through processes grounded in law. In turn, transformative constitutionalism’s focus on the fundamental constitutional values of freedom, dignity and equality—and its recognition of the relevance of context—resonates with the values underlying the capabilities approach. Certain principles common to transformative constitutionalism and the capabilities approach, namely participation through informational broadening and substantive reasoning through explicitness, should be observed by reviewing courts at all stages of the adjudicative process. Thereafter, the first step of a capabilities approach to adjudication is for courts to interpret the content of the right with reference to the capabilities and functioning outcomes it represents in concrete contexts. Next, a capabilities-based standard of review should be applied to impugned government laws, policy or conduct. Finally, a capabilities approach to remedies should be adopted. This article concludes by evaluating selected education-related judgments by South African courts against the requirements posited by a capabilities approach to adjudication.

How to overcome the implementation gap in ecosystem services? A user-friendly and inclusive tool for improved urban management

One of the main issues with the concept of ecosystem services is its absence on the ground in concrete operational decision-making contexts; that is, an implementation gap. In this study, we investigated if this gap could be overcome through the use of open-source data and free tools, and the adoption of a short-term participatory process. We tested these methods in the context of a project in the urban metropolitan area of Bordeaux (Communauté urbaine de Bordeaux: CUB) in France. The ecosystem services were defined using a participatory approach involving local stakeholders, and then selected scenarios were simulated to test the impact of various development or conservation plans. The study addressed three main questions: (1) Is it possible to adopt a simple methodological approach that overcomes the implementation gap through the development of a user-friendly and inclusive method? (2) What is the added value of a participatory approach? (3) With regards to four scenarios in this territory, what are the ES trends in the selected biophysical and monetary indicators, and will knowledge of these trends help planners to shape a sustainable trajectory for the territory?

Presidential Administration in a Regime of Separated Powers: An Analysis of Recent American Experience

This Article uses recent history to reconsider two longstanding debates in public law and administration. Specifically, this Article examines presidential direction of administrative action in the Obama and early Trump Administrations against the backdrop of ongoing debates concerning: (i) the desirability of and appropriate techniques for presidential control of administration and (ii) the relevance of separated powers when American government is under unified political control. To give this analysis a concrete context, the Article provides in-depth case studies of presidential administration in immigration policy, climate change policy, and executive structuring of the administrative state, under both the Obama and early Trump Administrations. Based on these three case studies, the Article argues that proponents of “presidentialism,” who base their support on the supposed effectiveness and democratic legitimacy of muscular presidential administration, have operated with an anemic and poorly specified set of normative criteria. These defects have led supporters to overstate the benefits and understate the risks of presidentialism. The article further concludes that claims of the functional demise of separated powers, like Mark Twain’s death, have been exaggerated. While one cannot understand the functioning of separated powers without an understanding of the dynamics of party competition, separation of powers has retained functional importance in periods of both unified and divided government notwithstanding the emergence of the current era of hyperpartisanship.

Programy polskich partii politycznych jako materiał empiryczny w badaniach dyskursu politycznego

Party manifestos are the only political documents which can be perceived as holistic visions of the social order formulated by political parties – the only political bodies eligible to implement them after winning elections. These are documents which place a given party in a concrete, historical and ideological context, therefore they should be seriously considered in academic discourse as descriptions of an envisioned and desired future of the nation, state and society. The paper aims to approach party manifestos as a specific kind of source data, present the most typical method of comparative analysis, and share the author’s own experiences from several research attempts which embraced a qualitative analysis of party manifestos from 2001–2011 (altogether 57 documents). The paper points at the peculiarities of Polish parties’ manifestos and attempts to explain their specific characteristics in comparison to other political documents, and discuss their advantages and weaknesses as a source data for the analysis of Polish political discourse and ideological stances of Polish parties.

Politics against Domination

A number of political theorists have turned to nondomination, with the concept playing a key role in the work of Michael Walzer, Iris Marion Young, and Philip Pettit. Ian Shapiro’s thinking has undoubtedly been shaped by their insights, yet his work on nondomination is uniquely his own. One of its most distinctive features is his pragmatism. Shapiro argues that ideal theories have little to say about the messy practice of politics, and he emphasizes that normative obligations are constrained by what is politically possible. Normative theorizing should begin with what is happening on the ground, according to Shapiro, not with an ideal world constructed by abstract principles of justice. His approach is explicitly Burkean, aiming for the incremental redesign of institutions, based on the results of experimentation (purposeful or not), taking into account the findings of empirical political science, all driven by the goal of combatting domination. Domination is, he argues, “rooted in the particular” (p. 24)—the particulars of who is being dominated by whom, how domination is occurring, and the consequences of such domination. Shapiro argues that our “oughts”—our normative obligations—derive from examining these dimensions of domination in the specific, concrete contexts in which we find ourselves entangled. Shapiro considers a large number of such entanglements, including debates over the role of constitutional courts, supermajoritarian decision-making procedures, world government, a global minimum wage, the containment of cross-border threats, and humanitarian interventions. Politics against Domination was intended as a long-awaited, complementary volume to Shapiro’s 1994 Democratic Justice. While Democratic Justice provided the foundational articulation of his normative approach and applied it to civil institutions—such as child rearing, marriage, and work—Politics against Domination focuses on public institutions and international politics.

The sensible health care professional: a care ethical perspective on the role of caregivers in emotionally turbulent practices.

This article discusses the challenging context that health care professionals are confronted with, and the impact of this context on their emotional experiences. Care ethics considers emotions as a valuable source of knowledge for good care. Thinking with care ethical theory and looking through a care ethical lens at a practical case example, the authors discern reflective questions that (1) shed light on a care ethical approach toward the role of emotions in care practices, and (2) may be used by practitioners and facilitators for care ethical reflection on similar cases, in the particular and concrete context where issues around emotional experiences arise. The authors emphasize the importance of allowing emotions to exist, to acknowledge them and to not repress them, so that they can serve as a vehicle for ethical behavior in care practices. They stress the difference between acknowledging emotions and expressing them limitlessly. Formational practices and transformational research practices are being proposed to create moral space in care institutions and to support health care professionals to approach the emotionally turbulent practices they encounter in a way that contributes to good care for all those involved.

Evaluating Clinical Ethics Support: A Participatory Approach.

The current process towards formalization within evaluation research, in particular the use of pre-set standards and the focus on predefined outcomes, implies a shift of ownership from the people who are actually involved in real clinical ethics support services (CESS) in a specific context to external stakeholders who increasingly gain a say in what 'good CESS' should look like. The question is whether this does justice to the insights and needs of those who are directly involved in actual CESS practices, be it as receivers or providers. We maintain that those actually involved in concrete CESS practices should also be involved in its evaluation, not only as respondents, but also in setting the agenda of the evaluation process and in articulating the criteria by which CESS is evaluated. Therefore, we propose a participatory approach to CESS evaluation. It focuses on (1) the concrete contexts in which CESS takes place, (2) reflective and dialogical learning processes, and (3) how to be democratic and inclusive. In particular, this approach to CESS evaluation is akin to realist evaluation, dialogical evaluation, and responsive evaluation. An example of a participatory approach to evaluating CESS is presented and some critical issues concerning this approach are discussed.

"Vamos vencer o tráfico": análise verbo-visual da significação e do tema de uma palavra em uma capa da revista Época

RESUMO Este artigo apresenta uma análise verbo-visual da significação e do tema da palavra tráfico, tal como aparece em uma das capas da revista Época. Para isso, leva em conta a etimologia e as mudanças históricas de significação da palavra em determinados contextos concretos em que ela circulou com o intuito de verificar como sua polissemia contribui, de forma articulada com o visual da capa, para produzir certo impacto sobre o público leitor. A análise se baseia na teoria de significação e tema de Bakhtin/Volochínov e enfatiza a importância do contexto social e histórico no estudo do tema de signos ideológicos. Os resultados apontam como uma análise desse tipo pode esclarecer o propósito comunicativo do uso da palavra, bem como permitir uma compreensão histórico-crítica de determinado assunto.

From Political Enchantment to Legal Logic—A Discursive Analysis of Contentious Labor Politics in Central China

The rise of ‘rights talk’ in Chinese contentious politics attracts numerous attentions and debates. Does it indicate the rise of citizens’ ‘rights consciousness’ and the retreat of the state, or the continuation of the mass’s ‘rules consciousness’ and the state’s control? Based on a discursive analysis to a wide variety of texts during a ten-year struggle for pension rights, I argue that the discourses used by the protesting workers depended on concrete contexts and power relations, and the institutional design from the state promoted the workers’ rational justification to their interest requests. The strategic employment of ‘rights talk’ by the workers, on one side, displayed the state’s symbolic domination, which successfully prevented the radicalization of protests; on the other side, it suggested that only through the realization of ‘rule of law’ could the state’s management of social contentions turn from short term containment to long range institutional absorbing.

A reference theory of globalized ideas

ABSTRACTThe essay attempts to develop categories for a global intellectual history that can deal with both temporal and spatial long distances. It is based on the observation that, in the case of long distances in the pre-modern period, incorrect references have often been made, since there was still insufficient information to ensure the correct “reach” of the reference. Therefore the essay develops a kind of reference theory of pre-modern global reaching out and shows how a global intellectual history can be designed from there, which is underpinned with concrete contexts. Non-Eurocentric narratives and a sense of the entanglement of ideas are essential to such a history.

The Agreement between Conjoined Subjects and Predicate: Croatian Church Slavonic Corpus Analysis

The abundance of grammatical categories in Slavonic and their overlap are particularly evident in the agreement between conjoined subjects and predicate. When they are accompanied by agreement conditions, such as word order and animacy in Slavic languages, different agreement patterns, dependent also on concrete context and speaker, are to be expected. In this paper the study of the agreement between conjoined subjects and predicate is based on an analysis of the medieval Glagolitic Croatian Church Slavonic corpus. Number, gender, and person are grammatical categories, i. e., features of conjoined noun phrases and predicate agreement. The analysis includes noun phrases conjoined by coordinating and some non-coordinating conjunctions as well as noun phrases conjoined by a gradational ‛not only [. . .] but also’ structure. Comitative and reciprocal noun phrases are included as well. The research in the given corpus shows that the conjoined noun phrases with predicate agreement can be syntactic (predicate showing agreement with one conjunct) or semantic (predicate showing agreement with all conjuncts). Syntactic agreement appears as the so-called contact agreement (predicate showing agreement with the closest conjunct) and as distant agreement (predicate showing agreement with the most distant conjunct). Semantic agreement is applied mostly in accordance with G. G. Corbett’s resolution rules for Slavic languages. However, the analysis shows that some resolution rules for number should be revised due to dual number. Although absent from the majority of contemporary Slavic languages, it is precisely in historical Slavic idioms that dual number reveals its identity, highlighted in agreement study as well.

PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM PENDIDIKAN KESETARAAN

The purpose of this research is to reveal how policy-makers and curriculum developers to design educational curriculum equality. This type of research is qualitative descriptive. The main data were collected by questionnaires and group discussions terpumpun. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, namely the depiction of the data with the pattern description. The study was conducted in November 2015 until June 2016, with a sample of teachers and education staff of three learning centers. The results showed. First, policy makers and developers are still putting that designing and realizing equality education curriculum has not made a top priority, but are waiting for formal education first. Second, policy makers and developers have not presenting concrete policy markers related complexity and context of the fundamental aspects of reality which represents the common interests of citizens of the nation that terejawantahkan in the curriculum as a tool tread life. Third, the design of educational curricula equality has not equip knowledge and competence as a prerequisite to work and also not strong attitudes toward integrity, hard work, discipline, mutual cooperation, independence, nationalism and specialized skills to solve the problem of life. Fourth, equal education curriculum design not describe the instruments to face the problem of dropouts and solve socio-economic problems oriented towards life skills in order to enter the life.

A Public-Private-Partnership Model for National Cyber Situational Awareness

Current data mining tools are characterized by a plethora of algorithms but a lack of guidelines to select the right method according to the nature of the problem under analysis. Producing such guidelines is a primary goal by the field of meta-learning; the research objective is to understand the interaction between the mechanism of learning and the concrete contexts in which that mechanism is applicable. The field of meta-learning has seen continuous growth in the past years with interesting new developments in the construction of practical model-selection assistants, task-adaptive learners, and a solid conceptual framework. In this paper, we give an overview of different techniques necessary to build meta-learning systems. We begin by describing an idealized meta-learning architecture comprising a variety of relevant component techniques. We then look at how each technique has been studied and implemented by previous research. In addition, we show how metalearning has already been identified as an important component in real-world applications.

Malliavin calculus for regularity structures: The case of gPAM

Malliavin calculus is implemented in the context of Hairer (2014) [16]. This involves some constructions of independent interest, notably an extension of the structure which accommodates a robust, and purely deterministic, translation operator, in L2-directions, between “models”. In the concrete context of the generalized parabolic Anderson model in 2D – one of the singular SPDEs discussed in the afore-mentioned article – we establish existence of a density at positive times.