Ambivalent Condition Research Articles

Houcine Slaoui’s Song ‘Lmarikane’ or ‘The Handsome Blue-eyed Ones’: A Postcolonial Perspective

The present paper is a retrospective journey/ ‘voyage back’ in Moroccan popular art, an invitation to cast a new perspective on its lyrical heritage, to uncover hitherto overlooked dimensions, and ultimately to rethink in novel and original ways Moroccan popular culture. Read through the prism of Postcolonial theory with its arsenal of conceptual tools, Houcine Slaoui’s Lmarikane or ‘The Handsome Blue eyed Ones’ is invested with unsuspected revolutionary potentials in so far as it erects itself as a genuine anthropological document unravelling the deeply ambivalent condition of subalternity. While being politically and historically grounded, the complexity of the song/ text lies in forcing the spotlight on the epistemic violence committed by Western imperial powers, namely the American presence in Morocco ensuing Operation Torch in 1942, and ultimately exploring how identity is constructed through a complex engagement with otherness.

Contouring the mobile risk society

ABSTRACT The contours of the “mobile risk society” are becoming increasingly visible. Contemporary discourses on climate change have gained in intensity and represent a significant semantic shift. The modern idea of the controllability and domestication of natural processes and the anthropogenic impacts of modern lifestyles, consumption and production patterns are being deconstructed and their side effects can be experienced on a daily basis. Multiple warnings seem to lack the impact necessary to stop the dystopian consequences of human activities in the Anthropocene. The “climate crisis” is pushing societies to their limits and revealing the limits of the problemsolving capacities of national and transnational institutions. Against this background, social science research on mobility is challenged in the same way as all other sciences. Without being able to provide comprehensive answers, it has certainly contributed to analyzing, understanding and sometimes solving some of the most pressing and risky problems in a turbulent world. The article takes these observations as a starting point to reflect on some aspects of the risky nature of mobilities and the consequences for the sustainability of lifestyles based on cultures of multiple mobilities. It elaborates on the conceptual differences between linear and reflexive modernization and on what it means to find ways of acting under conditions of ambivalence, uncertainty and insecurity. It also focuses on aspects of sustainable mobility policies and the future of communities and social integration. The article concludes with some conceptual considerations and an outlook on the future of mobilities in the age of climate change.

Expertise and professionalism for inclusive (mathematics) teaching and learning: reflections on findings from interdisciplinary professionalisation research

ABSTRACT Seen from an international perspective, the professionalisation of (prospective) teachers for inclusive education is a main determining factor for the inclusion-related further development of schools and classes in various subjects. However, the prerequisites for acquiring inclusion-related expertise and professionalism for designing inclusive teaching vary greatly from country to country. This is especially evident in the stratified secondary level of the education system in Germany. In this paper, we draw on the results of a study on the description and analysis with respect to the acquisition of expertise for inclusive mathematics teaching. Guided interviews were conducted with experienced mathematics teachers in inclusive teaching of the secondary level and analysed with qualitative methods. Among other elements, concrete tasks, assignments, and video vignettes from teaching were used as narrative-generating prompts. This paper elaborates on how the expertise and professionalism for inclusive mathematics teaching gained under ambivalent conditions can be described and what indications can be found for its acquisition. It pays special attention to the reflexive evocation and handling of contingencies as key moments for the further development of a teacher’s professionalism on inclusive mathematics teaching.

Torn between tradition and modernity: images of youth in the fictional work of Mariama Bâ

ABSTRACT This paper examines Mariama Bâ’s depiction of the hectic lives of young Senegalese, faced with the dictates of tradition and realities of modernity. If a great deal of scholarship has studied her feminist deconstruction of patriarchy, few studies have highlighted her depiction of young men and women negotiating the necessity to reconcile modernity and social pressures. This study explores Bâ’s representation of the young, torn between tradition and modernity. While analysing the implications of such an ambivalent condition, the paper highlights, from a sociological and feminist perspective, the alternatives set forth by the writer for cultural synthesis and the reevaluation of the social status of the young, in a context of patriarchy and gerontocracy. I argue that the youth in the novels strive to redress aspects of local culture, and to address cultural dissonances from contact with new cultural norms, through a redefinition of identity and gender roles.

Luigi Donato Ventura, a Trilingual Self-translator

Luigi Donato Ventura, a Trilingual Self-translator

The Entanglements of English in Contemporary Greenland

Greenland’s international presence intertwines with its emerging status as an autonomous Arctic nation and with reconfigurations of the postcolonial identities of its people. In this article, I explore the positions and practices of English in Greenland in relation to two conditions of ambivalence: the ambivalence of English as both imperialistic and empowering, and the ambivalence that textures postcolonial Kalaallit-Danish relations. I consider how exploring the arguments, desires, and contestations of English, gathered through diverse empirical fragments, draws attention to the entanglements of multidirectional aspirations, diverse communities, new technologies, and altered geographies. The connections to English emerge in the everyday communicative practices of Greenland’s people and in the demands of organizations and industries. These connections are just as formidable as those stemming from political rhetoric and policies. I propose that the significance of English is in the making and conclude by outlining three areas of further collaborative research to follow this development for Kalaallisut, for Kalaallit-Danish relations, and for the production of new forms of equalities and inequalities.

KUASA MEDIA ATAS MASTURBASI: STUDI DISKURSUS YOUTUBE CLARIN HAYES DAN LAMPU ISLAM

Various productions of knowledge about masturbation are channeled through the media. The production of knowledge disseminated through technology presents ambivalent conditions that make individual consciousness never complete. However, various studies on masturbation have not touched the media aspect. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine the power of the media on masturbation in producing social body discipline. Foucault’s concept of discourse becomes a theoretical knife. Foucault’s discourse orientation leads to an analysis of the power of knowledge on the discipline of social action. The research method is qualitative. The media used are Youtube Clarin Hayes and Lampu Islam. The results of the study show that the media is never neutral, because it is intertwined with the politics of knowledge. It affects the social reality of society in creating sex ideologies and technologies that go beyond the biological body.

Speficic Moral and Psychological Characteristics of Criminals Convicted for Crimes of Terrorism and Extremism

The authors continued their research of the personalities of terrorists and extremists and studied characteristics of 700 persons convicted for crimes of terrorism and extremism who served their sentences in penitentiary institutions of all territorial divisions of the Russian Federation. They studied indicators of additional scales of MMPI test, questionnaires, interviews, materials of personal files, court decisions (verdicts), disciplinary practice, penitentiary and criminal law characteristics, and made a number of conclusions. First, the results allowed the authors to verify a number of hypotheses on personal characteristics of terrorists and extremists analyzed by psychologists and criminologists. Second, generalized characteristics of persons convicted for terrorism and extremism crimes acquired through the use of additional MMPI scales proved and supplemented similar results from the basic scales of this methodology. Specifically, the authors found proof of a prominent conversion type of the personality profile of examined individuals manifested in a number of ambivalent conditions and aspirations. Third, the results also allowed to define key characteristics of the substructure of personality orientation of convicts of this category: amorality in their value system; following their own convictions, personal norms and principles; immunity against any moral authority; conviction that only their actions, deeds and life in general are the right ones, disregard for social values. Fourth, field data showed that it is necessary to single out one more (a third) subcategory of convicts who committed combined extremism-terrorism crimes. Based on the definition of this subcategory, such convicts committed several (two or more) crimes of both extremism and terrorism nature as part of one criminal case and, correspondingly, one court decision (verdict). A targeted approach to the correction and prevention work with this category of criminals convicted for terrorism and extremism crimes makes it necessary to examine the characteristics of each subcategory of convicts included in this category.

Coherence and Musical Meaning in Jazz Improvisation

In the context of improvised music, and more specifically in jazz—a situation in which at least part of the musical “work” is created at the moment it is perceived—the performers find themselves in an ambivalent condition: like their listeners at the same time they perform the music they experience it for the first time. Improvisers experience the musical content they produce in the act of improvisation as an improvised part of a “work”—an update of it. The “work”, in this case, reveals itself at the moment of performance. In this work I discuss the understanding of musical coherence in order to

Advertising in a Context Harm Crisis

Context harm crises concern the challenges of advertising morally sound products in a context that is failing, as during COVID-19. Following Koselleck, we argue that crises interrupt the trajectory of existing social processes, thereby preventing consumers’ expected future outcomes. We propose a three-step future framing advertising strategy in response: (1) mourning a future that was lost to facilitate emotional adaptation; (2) reconstructing a new future to facilitate rational action under conditions of ambivalence; and (3) establishing mythologies for future-oriented identity work to facilitate the existential demands of crises. We then discuss health messaging from the perspective of future framing.

The relationship between ambivalence, alexithymia, and salience network dysfunction in schizophrenia

Ambivalence in schizophrenia is worth investigating its association with salience processing and alexithymia using functional MRI. Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 22 healthy controls were scanned during the ambivalence task of matching picture (ambivalent, positive and negative) and word (positive and negative) stimuli, and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) was rated. Patients exhibited decreased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula compared to controls, and ACC activity in the ambivalent condition was negatively correlated with the TAS score in patients. Ambivalence in schizophrenia may be based on salience network dysfunction, and this disturbance may be related to alexithymia.

Clubes de lectura virtuales en España

Este artículo analiza los clubes de lectura virtuales en funcionamiento en España en 2019. Se pretende obtener una imagen de estos clubes virtuales a través del estudio de su funcionamiento, plataformas tecnológicas utilizadas, normas de uso y, con mayor detalle, el examen de sus participantes: perfil sociodemográfico, motivaciones, experiencias y valoraciones. Para ello se estableció, previamente, un estado de la cuestión actualizado de estudios y experiencias de clubes de este tipo. Seguidamente, se contactaron las redes de bibliotecas públicas españolas, así como universitarias, hasta un total de 103 instituciones, para identificar las iniciativas existentes en el territorio español. Esto permitió identificar 24 clubes de lectura virtuales que fueron encuestados para alcanzar los objetivos planteados. Las conclusiones arrojan luz sobre estas actividades de animación lectora: normas de funcionamiento diversas, plataformas dispares, pero con un perfil de usuario homogéneo, y una valoración positiva de sus participantes. Estas conclusiones, bajo la forma de buenas prácticas, pueden ser de ayuda para las instituciones en el diseño y la reorientación de clubes de lectura virtuales, así como la necesidad puntual —o sostenida, con la llegada de la COVID-19, de transformar los clubes presenciales en virtuales.

Alien—Different—One’s Own. North-east ethnic and lingual cultural frontier of Ukraine (Kharkiv, Donbas)

In the article, which continues the discourse of ethnocultural frontier, the attention is focused on the facts and problems referring to the Ukrainian-Russian cultural frontier of Eastern Ukraine. Polyethnic character of the society initially, since the mid 17th century, determined the presence of two culture-forming components in the region, namely Ukrainian and Russian ones, the dynamics of their correlation in various historical periods, the motion of transitive forms and ambivalent conditions. (The Jewish element acquired the essential function in the ethnocultural system of the region later, mainly in the 20th century.) In the frames of the so-called Kharkiv school of romantics a unique linguocultural situation, not deprived of paradoxicality, was formed, in which Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism objectively performed as one of the factors shaping the development of the Ukrainian literature. From this perspective, the article conducts the diachronic analysis of the main stages of the literary process in Ukrainian Slobozhanshchyna, mainly in its center, Kharkiv. The researcher focuses on such issues and phenomena as the role and signiƗ cance of Kharkiv University founded in 1805; Kharkiv periodicals and collections in the Russian and Ukrainian languages; the activity of such influential figures as H. Skovoroda, H. Kvitka-Osnovianenko, P.Hulak-Artemovskyi, I. Sreznevskyi, M. Kostomarov, O. Potebnia, etc.; contradictory and dramatic literary life in Kharkiv of the national cultural Renaissance epoch in the 1920s and early 1930s (‘Executed Renaissance’) and during the subsequent periods. The ‘Donbas segment’ of the eastern ethnocultural frontier, with its history being much shorter than the Kharkiv one though also abundant with contradictions, is considered in the synchronic aspect, in comparative contrast of the diferent writers’ fates and creative phenomena, including the background of the modern dramatic situation in the region.

Gaining Insight into Violence from Gender Stereotypes and Sexist Attitudes in the Context of Tourism

It is difficult to identify, but there is a type of harassment grounded in gender stereotyping in the context of tourism. It would be useful to discover the hidden relationships between gender harassment and certain beliefs about women as travellers, tourism professionals and sex objects in the field of hospitality. Methodologically, a survey was carried out reaching a sample of ±684 units by means of a convenience sampling procedure. The measuring instruments consisted of a structured questionnaire divided into two kinds of Likert beliefs scales comprising general statements and statements related to tourism. The survey respondent data were also gathered as regards sociodemographic characteristics. This paper presents empirical evidence to identify the causal factors of gender violence by considering general and particular stereotyping in tourism. Firstly, by performing three exploratory factor analyses, three female stereotyping dimensions were labelled in the field of tourism (occupational sexism, ambivalent sexist discrimination, and sex as a commodity), as well as three general prejudices about women (dysfunctional romantic relationships, ethically challenged presumptions, and aesthetical manners conventions) and the gender harassment factor. Secondly, a linear regression analysis was carried out to demonstrate that both general stereotyping related to a broader “life” framework and sectorial prejudices in tourism cause gender harassment. Finally, this research proves that general stereotyping determines sectorial prejudices in the field of tourism. The practical implications could be to enhance gender equality and combat gender harassment by revealing unintentional and unobserved prejudices that occur in a general life setting and in the tourism sphere against women as neglected professionals, under the subtle and ambivalent condition of travellers, and even as objects of consumption.

Partition of Bengal: a Posthumanist Study of Select Literary Works

The Indian Partition ushered in one of the most historical migrations in human history where millions had to change their native affiliations. This event led to the formation of two nation-states (India and East Pakistan) out of a single cultural geography and the drawing of boundaries (Radcliffe line) disrupted the emotional, cultural and spatial link of the people with the native countries. Selected short stories from Bashabi Fraser’s Bengal Partition Stories and the memoirs in Adhir Biswas’ Border: Bangla Bhager Dewal encapsulate the variegated experiences of the dislocated during 1946-1955, who were sabotaged by fellow Bengalis in the name of gender, community (bangal-ghoti), and religion. This paper looks at select samples from the collections mentioned above and correlates them with the history of the period. It raises the question “of which ‘human’ is the posthuman a ‘post’?” (Ferrando, 2019, p. 9) The narratives from the Bengal partition capture the phenomenon of border crossing which had led to fluid identities (refugees/migrants/infiltrators) as individuals had been deterritorialized and reterritorialized. The migrant bodies symbolize an anthropogeographic entity that had been exploited severely, and the refugees present themselves as the cultural metaphor in order to capture the traumatized and ambivalent condition of post-national human beings.

Atopic objects: The afterlives of gold teeth stolen from Holocaust dead

Transfers of property are an integral part of armed conflicts and instances of mass political violence. Not just the state and the military, but also civilians confiscate, dispossess, loot and redistribute wealth across ethnic, national, class or religious lines, in the process re-enacting and sustaining the boundaries of othering and belonging that stand behind the conflict. In this way, economic violence takes on an essentially political dimension. Although, to date, rarely conceptualized as such, even grave robbery perpetrated at the burial sites of a defeated enemy or a member of othered minority constitutes a practice of alterity and dehumanization. And while, in the aftermath of violence, this very fact has the ability to invest things taken from mass graves with a particularly disturbing potential, this article reflects on the practices and affective dynamics surrounding objects of a distinctively unsettling status: golden teeth and dental bridges in their ambivalent condition between material objects (valuables) and bodily remains of the dead. They are considered in this article through the conceptual lens of ‘atopic objects’, a notion designed to bring to the fore both the out-of-place quality and the at once as-well-as/neither-nor character of those things, suspended on the threshold between human remains and material objects, private possessions and body parts of othered and violently dispossessed people. In this article, the author asks how this uneasy ontological status is experienced, acted upon and negotiated by the new (and rarely rightful) ‘owners’ and offers an insight into the practical, affective, political and also legal framings through which ‘atopic objects’ are being constructed and reconstructed either as things or as body parts and, at the cost of their unsettling quality, become embedded in the postwar orders, both in the intimate order of the body and in the political–economic order of the state.

The Potential of Precarity? Imagining Vulnerable Connection in Chris Dunkley’s the Precariat and Amy Liptrot’s the Outrun

Reading contemporary literature can clarify a difficult and contested—yet important—argument made by Judith Butler and Isabell Lorey in their theorizations of precarity. For Butler and Lorey, precarity is an ambivalent condition: precaritization is a mode of domination, yet it also opens up new opportunities for creating political community. Such an argument runs the risk of seeming to justify or defend neoliberal exploitation. But we show how literary modes of representation work to make precarity’s complex ambivalence—the coexistence of despair and hope, isolation and belonging—visible and legible. To make this argument, we examine two very different examples of contemporary British writing: Chris Dunkley’s play The Precariat (2013), which focuses on inner-city, working-class youth, and Amy Liptrot’s memoir The Outrun (2016), in which an aspiring creative worker begins to feel increasingly attuned to nature during her recovery from addiction. Through close readings of these works, we show how their literary and dramatic strategies enable them to suggest both the difficulty and anxiety, and the possibility and hope, that exist within the experience of precarity. Reading these texts together therefore renders Butler and Lorey’s difficult and controversial argument about the potential of precarity easier to grasp and imagine.

Ambivalent Identification as a Moderator of the Link Between Organizational Identification and Counterproductive Work Behaviors

Although counterproductive work behaviors can be extremely damaging to organizations and society as a whole, we do not yet fully understand the link between employees’ organizational attachment and their intention to engage in such behaviors. Based on social identity theory, we predicted a negative relationship between organizational identification and counterproductive work behaviors. We also predicted that this relationship would be moderated by ambivalent identification. We explored counterproductive work behaviors toward the organization (CWB-O) and other individuals (CWB-I). Study 1, a survey of 198 employees, revealed that employees who identified strongly with their organization reported lower levels of CWB-O, but as predicted, only when ambivalent identification was low. Study 2 involved a manipulation in the form of a scenario presented to 228 U.S. employees, generally replicated the findings of Study 1: the link between organizational identification and CWB-O was stronger for participants in the low ambivalence condition than for those in the high ambivalence condition. The interaction effect of ambivalent and organizational identification on CWB-I was only marginally significant in the second study. These findings provide new evidence for the positive influence of organizational identification under conditions of low ambivalence on counterproductive behaviors toward an organization.

Influence of particle concentration on multiple droplet formation in Pickering emulsions

HypothesisMultiphase droplets form when oil and water are mixed together at the ambivalent conditions that occur close to phase inversion. In this paper we propose a mechanism for the stabilisation of multiphase droplets by a single population of particles. ExperimentsWe investigated the microstructure of emulsions formed when dodecane and water are mixed in the presence of hydrophobic fumed silica nanoparticles. We identified the range of compositions, mixing times and rates where water-in-oil-in-water emulsions are stabilised in a single mixing step. To explore how the particle availability and mixing conditions lead to multiple emulsion formation we used light scattering and microscopy techniques to probe the size and morphology of the drops, and the particle coverage of the interfaces. FindingsOur key finding is that to stabilise multiphase drops there should be sufficient particles available to coat water drops that are entrained within coalescing oil droplets. The size of an entrained drop is determined by the volume of the rupturing film that forms between the oil drops. The particle coating prevents the entrained drop from escaping into the external aqueous phase. These results suggest a simple route for controlling the formation and stability of multiple emulsions for encapsulation applications.

‘Singing Through the Wilderness’: Exile, Nomadic Lines of Flight and Music in Nancy Huston's Lignes de faille

Exile is a central theme in Nancy Huston's fictional writing and her novels give voice to a range of experiences of this highly ambivalent condition. This article considers how theories of nomadism developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari can elucidate the different expressions of exiled identity in Lignes de faille (2006). I argue that the interest which Huston, her characters and nomadic theory have in music suggest that this creative practice can facilitate the emergence of new paths, directions and nomadic lines of flight. By comparing the exiled states of two characters – Kristina and Sadie – I investigate the potential and limitations of nomadism in situations that transcend purely theoretical contexts. I consider the wider implications of the transformative potential of music and other forms of creative practice within Huston's œuvre as a whole, arguing that writing fiction is Huston's means of ‘singing through the wilderness’ of her own exiled state