Constitutive Elements Research Articles

How to Study the Historical Imprint of Religions on Cultures According to Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is one of the great philosophers of history. He understood the signs of the times and anticipated what was to come in Western society. He considered religion to be the soul of cultures and showed this in his writings. The aim of this article is to articulately present Dawson’s vision of how to study religions from his discipline. To this end, it first shows the possibility of the scientific study of religion. Then it explains the method suggested by Dawson for such a study and the relevance of religious experiences and religious social types as sources for the study of religion. Finally, it analyses the constitutive elements of religion and the notions of religion that Dawson handles, always from a historical approach open to the transcendent.

Architecture of memorialisation: the Spitfire and the making of a memorial icon

ABSTRACT During the Second World War, the Supermarine Spitfire played a pivotal role defending the British nation, notably during the 1940 Battle of Britain. Drawing from the aircraft’s historiography and its continuing afterlife, we discuss the constitutive elements supporting the Spitfire’s transformation from war plane to memorial icon for the British wartime experience. In the context of this machine as memorial, the elements comprising what we refer to as the architecture of memorialisation are narrative permanence, enchantment of war technology, dialogic geometry of remembrance and commemorative adaptive capacity. These elements work to silence war, killing and death and in so doing justify a nation’s values, its moral compass. While these four elements may be unique to this aircraft, the architecture of memorialisation is a conceptual framework for analysing other types of memorials including those that are contested or which reflect regimes of power or cultures of remembrance very different to those of the United Kingdom (UK). Diverse social and cultural contexts will reveal different constitutive elements of the architecture of memorialisation.

An interdisciplinary realist take on moral agency

ABSTRACT This paper reports an empirical study on moral reasoning. It seeks to answer two questions: in the moral framing of tourism matters, what does this reasoning consist of? How are these elements mobilized by actors to reach moral pronouncement(s)? Through the means of group interviews, abduction and retroduction, this study finds that moral muteness (i.e. silence to socially unacceptable conduct) seems to be the moral pronouncement that the participants are likely to conduct in a condition whereby the social and cultural systems being perceived insufficient to protect individuals who pursue a righteous action. The analysis reveals that (1) moral template, reflexivity, self-efficacy and emotions are constitutive elements of moral agency; (2) these agential properties permit the emergence of four moral reasoning processes, which explain moral muteness.

A bibliometric analysis of cultural heritage research in the humanities: The Web of Science as a tool of knowledge management

Substantial research on the topic of cultural heritage has been conducted over the past two decades. At the same time, the overall output volume of journals and citation metrics have become important parameters in assessing and ranking researchers’ performance. Even though the scholarly interest in cultural heritage has recently increased world-wide, a comprehensive analysis of the publication output volume and its correlation to the shift in the cultural heritage regime starting in 2003 is still lacking. The article aims to understand the role of Web of Science (WOS) as a tool of knowledge management in academia by drawing on the scholarly output volume, the patterns displayed by this volume, and the intellectual structure of cultural heritage research based on WOS-indexed journal articles. The data include 1843 journal articles published between 2003 and 2022 and indexed in the WOS Core Collection. The article draws on a bibliometric analysis by using WOS tools and employing VOSviewer software to map and visualize hidden patterns of research collaboration and avenues of knowledge progress. The cultural heritage research indexed in WOS was found to be Eurocentric, corresponding to the increasing funding provided by European national and supranational agencies for research funding. Although the indexed research has grown significantly, the bulk of studies on cultural heritage in WOS is concentrated in a reduced number of European institutions and countries, written by a small number of prolific authors, with relatively poor collaborative ties emerging across time between authors, institutions, and countries. The central themes reflect the development of digital technologies and increased participatory emphasis in cultural heritage care. This article brings new insights into the analysis of the cultural heritage research in correlation with the emergence of international heritage governance with new institutional actors, professional networks, and international agreements, which are all constitutive elements of scientific production. The article seeks to critically assess and discuss the results and the role of WOS as a tool of knowledge management in academia.

And Beauty Will Make You Free: On the Transformative Power of Beauty

In allusion to the famous Johannine dictum, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between beauty and liberation. Liberation is here understood in terms of a movement toward transforming all reality in accordance with the principles of the coming reign of God, ‘so that God may be all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28). Complementarily, beauty is not interpreted merely as a matter of taste and preference but as something that permeates all dimensions of being human. The paper, therefore, argues that beauty not only gives expression to the human yearning for transformation but that both beauty and liberation represent the constitutive elements of Christian praxis. Thus, beauty provides a framework through which the current reality can not only be seen but also discerned, experienced, and performed in a new way, thus effectively opening up possibilities for transformation as God’s project of inaugurating a new heaven and a new earth. Therefore, it will be proposed that beauty represents a key theme for theological reflection (locus theologicus), having aesthetic, ethical, and ontological implications for Christian theology. This point will not only be discussed in conversation with various theological voices but also illustrated through engagement with cinema, namely, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog.

Collective Competencies and their Constitutive Elements: a case study in a Brazilian Fashion Group

Collective Competencies and their Constitutive Elements: a case study in a Brazilian Fashion Group

Da polarização política ao esquecimento: um breve estudo dos cronotopos de Incidente em Antares, de Erico Verissimo

ABSTRACT This essay aims to investigate a few chronotopes that organize the narrative of Incidente em Antares [Incident in Antares], by Erico Verissimo. In particular, it intends to examine how political polarization and oblivion are constitutive elements of the novel and, for that reason, chronotopic. The first being a motif of chronotopic nature and occupies a permanent place in the (fictionalized) life organization of the society. The second leads to the epilogue of the narrative and reveals the modus operandi and modus vivendi of the actors. Modes that, in turn, establish a relationship with the oblivion and deceit chronotopes related today to fake news. The research intends to understand the vision of man and the world carved in the Verissian universe, if they are still present in society 50 years after the publication of the work or if they have undergone transformations.

Topographies of memory in the short stories Judite and Réquiem para um solitário by Samuel Rawet

ABSTRACT This contribution aims to analyze space as a constituent element of memory in the collection Contos do Imigrante (1956) by the Jewish-Brazilian writer Samuel Rawet. Following the example of the short stories Judite and Réquiem para um solitário, the domain of space is considered as a constitutive element of the individual, the family, and the collective memories of the characters. The point of departure is the assumption that the spaces they stage and inhabit, as well as the narrative functions attributed to the fictionalized spaces, set the basis for constructing the narrative of a topography of memory.

Applying an ecosystem lens to low-carbon energy transitions: A conceptual framework

Business model innovations aiming at systemic change influence the speed and direction of low-carbon transitions, thus supporting public decarbonization policies. However, their potential is often limited by institutional settings or a lack of alignment with potential partners. Therefore, to exploit the potential for systemic change of business model innovations in socio-technical systems, it is necessary to consider their interactions with their wider environment. In this conceptual study, we explore the mechanisms through which business activities interact with public policy goals under low-carbon energy transitions. We take an ecosystem lens to analyze value creation at the levels of customers, business, inter-organizational networks and the public. Based on an integrative literature review, we build a conceptual meta-model specifying the constitutive elements, dynamics and environmental dimensions describing regional energy ecosystems under transition. The main constitutive element of the ecosystem is the value network, i.e. the interlinked business models of collaborating organizations exchanging money, goods, services, information or intangible benefits. The value network interacts dynamically with a pool of resources (assets, capabilities and intangible resources) that improves the ecosystem's ability to enact systemic change. Orchestration is a crucial process to steer the ecosystem's development towards creating value for customers as well as for the public. Finally, the relevant environmental dimensions include policy, culture, markets, industry structure as well as potential future members or resources. We illustrate our conceptual model with the case of the development of low-carbon district heating to decarbonize space heating in a Swiss city. This illustrative case study shows that the ecosystem perspective combined with public value theory is well suited to describe the dynamics of a low-carbon energy transition and provides valuable insights on the prospects of novel business models.

Theoretical issues in the conservation of contemporary art: on paradigms, ontological and constitutive elements in some practical cases

This article provides an approach to some of the theoretical concepts necessary to deal with the conservation and restoration of contemporary art. In this sense, the status of four contemporary works after their restoration, or simply due to the passage of time, has been analysed in depth and from a theoretical point of view. The works chosen were made of chocolate; plastics such as latex, acrylic resins and epoxy; organic materials such as blood; liturgical fabrics; butterfly wings; natural flowers... all materials that degrade due to the natural passage of time and the effect of the agents of deterioration. The interesting thing about the work is that it establishes the need to situate each work of contemporary art in an appropriate paradigm before proposing a process of intervention. To do this, it is necessary to carry out a study of the constituent elements of the artworks, both material and immaterial. Furthermore, the study presents the different intervention processes carried out. Finally, we study how the state of conservation may have affected the consistency of the artwork, taking into account the artistic intention.

A typology of right-wing populism in Europe: Intersections of gender, religion and secularity

This study attempts to advance our understanding of the role gender plays in populist politics by proposing a typology of gendered populism. Our argument is that populist parties' discursive construction of “the people” against “elites” and “non-people” is a gendered process, in which gender operates as a constitutive element for determining who is included in or excluded from “the people”. We also argue that the gendered construction of “the people” intersects with parties' configurations of religion and secularism. We propose that this intersection forms a four dimensional space of gendered populism composed of inclusionary or exclusionary and religious or secular populisms. Our analysis comparatively examines the discourses and policies of the right wing populist parties (RWPPs) and their leaders in France, Sweden and Turkey. Despite sharing an exclusionary understanding of “the people”, the selected RWPPs represent a variegated gendered populism because of their diverging approaches to gender, religion and secularity. Our comparative analysis approaches national-institutional backgrounds concerning the legal status of secularism, political and socio-cultural secularization as possible explanatory factors for the formation of religious and secular exclusionary populism in the four dimensional space. We believe, a four dimensional approach to populism sheds light on our understanding of gendered populism and proposes a fruitful avenue for future comparative studies of populism.

Homeland echoes: music, sound, and devotion among the South Asian Hindu diaspora in Edmonton, Canada

ABSTRACT In Edmonton, the capital city of the province of Alberta, Canada, music, sound, and devotion have gained extraordinary popularity and proliferation among the South Asian Hindu diaspora. From festival celebrations to community gatherings or congregations in temples, this phenomenon of Hindu religio-cultural practice has been an important magnet to attract a vast number of the Hindu diaspora. Spending hours together, members of the South Asian Hindu diaspora engage in devotional musical soundscapes; immerse themselves in those soundscapes through clapping, singing, and bodily movements; and deeply engage in devotional activities. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2022, including three case studies, this article discusses how these homeland echoes – recreating and resembling homeland music, sound, and devotional practices – play a powerful role in maintaining homeland ties and function as a constitutive element of collective identity of South Asian-ness for the South Asian Hindu diaspora in the Canadian society.

PABPN1 prevents the nuclear export of an unspliced RNA with a constitutive transport element and controls human gene expression via intron retention.

Intron retention is a type of alternative splicing where one or more introns remain unspliced in a polyadenylated transcript. Although many viral systems are known to translate proteins from mRNAs with retained introns, restriction mechanisms generally prevent export and translation of incompletely spliced mRNAs. Here, we provide evidence that the human nuclear poly(A)-binding protein, PABPN1, functions in such restrictions. Using a reporter construct in which nuclear export of an incompletely spliced mRNA is enhanced by a viral constitutive transport element (CTE), we show that PABPN1 depletion results in a significant increase in export and translation from the unspliced CTE-containing transcript. Unexpectedly, we find that inactivation of poly(A)-tail exosome targeting by depletion of PAXT components had no effect on export and translation of the unspliced reporter mRNA, suggesting a mechanism largely independent of nuclear RNA decay. Interestingly, a PABPN1 mutant selectively defective in stimulating poly(A) polymerase elongation strongly enhanced the expression of the unspliced, but not of intronless, reporter transcripts. Analysis of RNA-seq data also revealed that PABPN1 controls the expression of many human genes via intron retention. Notably, PABPN1-dependent intron retention events mostly affected 3'-terminal introns and were insensitive to PAXT and NEXT deficiencies. Our findings thus disclose a role for PABPN1 in restricting nuclear export of intron-retained transcripts and reinforce the interdependence between terminal intron splicing, 3' end processing, and polyadenylation.

Characterization of Potato Tuber Tissues Using Spatialized MRI T2 Relaxometry.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a powerful non-destructive tool in the study of plant tissues. For potato tubers, it greatly assists the study of tissue defects and tissue evolution during storage. This paper describes the MRI analysis of potato tubers with internal defects in their flesh tissue at eight sampling dates from 14 to 33 weeks after harvest. Spatialized multi-exponential T2 relaxometry was used to generate bi-exponential T2 maps, coupled with a classification scheme to identify the different T2 homogeneous zones within the tubers. Six classes with statistically different relaxation parameters were identified at each sampling date, allowing the defects and the pith and cortex tissues to be detected. A further distinction could be made between three constitutive elements within the flesh, revealing the heterogeneity of this particular tissue. Relaxation parameters for each class and their evolution during storage were successfully analyzed. The work demonstrated the value of MRI for detailed non-invasive plant tissue characterization.

Mandatory non-financial disclosure: is everybody on the same page about business model reporting?

ABSTRACT Recent regulatory initiatives, such as the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive and the UK Companies Act, require companies to mobilise the business model concept as a framework to disclose non-financial information in the annual report. These regulatory initiatives are based on a reflexive legal approach that avoids specifying what should be disclosed or articulating minimum disclosure requirements. In this context, this study investigates whether and to what extent preparers and users of non-financial information have a shared understanding of the business model concept and its role in reporting. An exploratory survey was conducted involving 35 users and 13 preparers, followed by 13 in-depth interviews, with both stages of research conducted from Searle's perspective of institutional reality. The findings present a somewhat divergent picture, indicating a lack of widespread consensus around a specific definition of a business model, its constitutive elements, and its reporting function. Thus, we conclude that the business model remains a concept under social construction in this domain and highlights areas of intervention. This study contributes to the existing literature by discussing how the absence of a common definition might hinder the otherwise positive effects of business model disclosure regulation from enhancing corporate transparency. Archival studies on business model reporting generally show low levels of disclosure, indicating poor informativeness. Our evidence adds to the accounting literature by considering the role of a shared view of the business model among market participants as a determinant of business model reporting quality and informativeness.

Correlation Between Acoustic, Luminous, Thermal Dimensions of A Urban Park In an Oasis Settlement and emotional response of Visually Impaired Users

Occupants' interaction with urban spaces and their behavior is often influenced by environmental dimensions: thermal, visual, acoustic or air quality. Many studies have investigated the relationships between occupants' behavior and these dimensions, but just few of them have addressed occupants with special needs, such as the visually impaired. This study, based on measurements' campaign and research activities conducted at Biskra (Algeria) inside an urban park in an oasis settlement, provides further investigations about the relationship between acoustic, luminous, thermal dimensions and the emotional response of visually impaired users as a basis for validating and improving their wellbeing in important spaces of the urban environment such as the public parks. The methodological approach is based on both quantitative and qualitative assessment. The objective study is based on evaluating the physical dimensions of the site, while the subjective one is based on conducting in-situ questionnaires such as a multi-items Likert scale and multi-sensory evaluation towards the environment. Findings obtained from this study could offer a new vision to planners and designers to improve the wellbeing of visually impaired users by including the multisensorial dimensions as constitutive elements of architectural, urban and environmental projects.

Hospitality and Identitarian Tensions

The imperative to practice hospitality constitutes a mark of Western civilization. Already in Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Ulysses punishes Polyphemus for not having respected the obligation of hospitality towards him and his companions. In fact, hospitality has been a constitutive element of the West, marked by linguistic, cultural, and religious differences, in a world whose borders are supposed to be well defined. In his discussion of hospitality, Derrida shows how Socrates, in Plato’s dialogue The Apology of Socrates, places himself in the position of a foreigner. In fact, Socrates presents himself as foreigner, that is, someone who is alien to the language and procedures of the court that is judging him. According to Derrida, he shows, in this way, the extent to which the foreigner is forced to ask for hospitality in a language he does not know. The court reduces Socrates to the other, the different. Moreover, the court forces him to deny his difference, his own identity, asking him to adapt himself to a system that he does not control. The paradox arises when Socrates, who regrets being regarded as a foreigner, asks the court to treat him at least as a foreigner. He feels so outraged that he asks to be granted at least the rights of a non-national. In doing so, Socrates shows how recognizing the rights of the foreigner generates hospitality but, at the same time, also limits it. Whenever a human being is recognized as human being, he or she will necessarily be seen as another, as someone different. This person will have to adapt him or herself to a system, culture or world that will define him or her as a foreigner. In short, in the phenomena that we tend to see as hospitality there is always a certain hostility. In a world of ongoing migratory crises, and in the context of a return to nationalisms of exclusion combined with populisms of prejudice and aversion to those who are different, it becomes imperative to rethink the ethics and politics of hospitality. In this context, Derrida’s distinction between conditioned and unconditioned hospitality can be useful.

How path dependency manifests in flood risk management: observations from four decades in the Ennstal and Aist catchments in Austria

Path dependency occurs when a contingent event predetermines what further steps can be taken and self-reinforcing mechanisms lock-in any further development on a sub-optimal trajectory. Path dependency is a prominent concept in the adaptation pathways literature, but insufficiently defined and operationalised. The present paper empirically tracks all constitutive elements of path dependency for four decades of flood risk management (FRM) in two alpine mountain regions in Austria, the Ennstal and Aist river catchments, using a mixed-methods approach. FRM governance has a critical role whether decisions lead to path dependency. Lock-in manifests not just in technical structures, but also in inertia of incumbent actor coalitions and management paradigms. Sub-optimality is hard to assess for lack of clearly defined protection targets; however, it appears in the ways that structural measures are implemented—too little, too late or with negative impacts on nature conservation. Past floods do not qualify as contingent events, as they have not fundamentally changed FRM practice. By contrast, technological and institutional shifts over longer periods, such as digital hazard maps and EU directives, have gradually reoriented FRM strategies. Institution-based self-reinforcing mechanisms are more prevalent than technology-based self-reinforcing mechanisms. Established actor coalitions combined with institutional density illustrate how those in charge uphold a path to defend their position, power and resources. Our recommendations for how to overcome path dependency in FRM governance are: encourage niche experiments, link FRM more closely with climate change adaptation, revise the national policy framework towards polycentric governance approaches and improve professional training.

Vertical and horizontal dynamic response of suction caisson foundations

Abstract In this article, the dynamic response of suction caisson foundations is studied using a three-dimensional finite element model with an absorbing boundary. The adopted formulation is based on the substructuring method. This formulation has been applied to analyze the effect of soil–structure interaction on the dynamic response of the suction foundation as a function of the kind of load. The suction caisson foundations are embedded in viscoelastic homogenous soils and subjected to external harmonic forces. For each frequency, the dynamic impedance connects the applied forces to the resulting displacement. The constitutive elements of the system are modeled using the finite element volumes and shell elements. The numerical results for the dynamic response of the suction foundations are presented in terms of vertical and horizontal displacements as well as vertical and horizontal dynamic impedances. The results indicated that the overall dynamic response is highly affected by the suction caisson diameter, the soil stiffness variation, and the suction caisson length.

A Better Hegemon? My Little Pony as a Pop Representation of Diplomacy in the Context of American Hegemony

Summary Social imaginaries carried by the entertainment industry matter for understanding how the general public makes sense of complex social phenomena. Mass culture is a representation of pre-existing ideas on international politics, rooted in space and time, and a constitutive element of the social and political world. Mass entertainment, as well as massively popular forms of popular culture such as video games, are only now entering the field of vision of scholars interested in cultural representations of international relations. This article contributes to this trend by looking at visions of diplomacy present in a global mass entertainment franchise: Hasbro’s My Little Pony. Behind the lighter aspects of a show created for young children lies a fictional universe with elements of diplomacy and international relations. The article insists on the importance of visions of early 21st-century American unipolar order and a liberal view of international politics in the show’s world.