Contingent Meanings Research Articles

Cultural Presentation of the ‘Turk’ in the history of Pakistan: From Monarchy to Modern State

History represents itself in language and historiographical performance reflects cultural patterns. Both history and historiography not only pass through cultural windows but also create certain cultural impressions of understanding that become the dominant agent in the extension of historical meanings and identity. The importance of history is developed both with the reflection of cultural codes and creation of its own system of understanding. This relationship between the history and culture is important and diverse in case of Pak-Turk relations. Politically, Pak-Turk relations started in 1947 after the creation of Pakistan. On the other hand, this relationship dates back to the dates that encompass the history and historiography of Pakistan, the advent of Arabs in Sind for example. Following the historiographical patterns of historiography of Pakistan, this paper takes the advantage of time and analyzes the cultural representation of the ‘Turk’ from the early medieval period till now to have a cultural outlook of political, social and religious formations that represented the ‘Turk’. It focuses on the historical dialogue between different shades of political relations, Social formations and religious proximities. Paper argues that although ‘Turk’ is an integral part of ‘History of Pakistan’ yet its cultural representation through history and historiography is different on the basis of time. Its presence is essential as compared to its mode of presence. It has passed through different formations of time and its current locale is modern. Continuity of Pak-Turk relations requires more modern symbols for the representation of meaning of their recent historical ties. It also stresses on the question of existential irrelevance of traditional cultural understandings of relationship and focuses on the establishment of future contingent means for strong relations

Mask Aesthetics: Prophylaxis, Post -Digital Arts, and Reimagining Vulnerable Selves

Affirming masks’ proven efficacy in preventing the airborne transmission of COVID-19, this paper seeks to understand face covering during the pandemic from a different but complementary angle: that is, as a deeply relational and thoroughly multimodal practice. Drawing on concepts of automediality, crip and feminist theories of affect and embodiment, biopolitics, and pandemic temporalities, I analyze artists’ mask-themed projects created during the first two years of the pandemic across forms including sculpture, performance, digital photography, social media, online visual diaries, and mutual aid projects. Through theoretical, analytical, and self-reflexive writing, the discussion draws out the shifting, contingent meanings of masks; their relation to currents of power, affect, and memory; and their implications for selfhood, community, and solidarity. Artists’ automedial projects show how masks have become integral to the life of the body, the upheaval of our lives, the losses we are mourning, the overlapping injustices we must fight, and the stories we tell about what it was and is like to be in our situations and to be connected to one another during the pandemic.

COVID-19, the slow-moving apocalypse, and The Sopranos: investigating new interpretive contexts

ABSTRACT In 2020, 21 years after its original release, The Sopranos (1999–2007) experienced an unexpected surge in popularity online. Outlets like The Guardian and GQ were quick to label it as “the hottest show of lockdown” suggesting the show’s resurgence was due to its resonance with the unfolding pandemic. This article explores how the Covid-19 pandemic informed distinctive and new understandings of The Sopranos. I provide my own critical/cultural “pandemic reading” to investigate what exactly it was about The Sopranos that resonated so well during lockdown. In particular, this article identifies the precise textual elements of the show that facilitate historically contingent meanings. In the pandemic context, certain elements of The Sopranos take on a more impactful double meaning and the show offered an allegorical pressure valve. This article outlines how resurgent television can help us work through contemporary cultural events and how the temporal position we watch from can transform our understanding of an “old” television text.

Лингвокультурологический потенциал пресуппозиционного компонента лексических единиц моделирования культурного пространства (на материале немецкого языка)

The paper examines the linguocultural features of the influence of presupposition on the modelling of the cultural space of a literary text. The analysis of the presuppositional component of linguistic units expressed by various lexico-semantic means contributes to the identification of extralinguistic information in the text. The aim of the research is to determine the linguocultural potential of presupposition in the text based on the analysis of the features of lexical units and their contextual relations reflecting the specifics of culturally relevant elements in Daniel Kehlmann’s novel “Tyll”. The scientific originality of the research lies in applying the theory of presupposition to the linguistic modelling of the cultural space of a literary text. The research findings showed that the presupposition of culture-specific lexical units contextually interacts with other intra- and inter-lexical means and participates in the formation of a model of the cultural space of the text as a hierarchically structured system of culturally contingent meanings. The combination of the denotative, connotative and other types of semantic meaning of lexemes determines the isolation of linguoculturemes in a literary text, which makes it possible to gradually explore the cultural space of the analysed German historical novel.

Praying in the pandemic, and after

What is everyday life like under a militarized pandemic where the brute force of the state is deployed to contain an outbreak? What lifeworld is generated against the backdrop of authoritarian control? What holds us together when our lives are quarantined? I will answer these questions by looking at the practice of mass listening. In particular, I look at a recorded prayer to provide a picture of an island life. In this essay, I call attention to what may be termed the vernacular will to life in a carceral regime in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the oratio imperata as a case study, I think more broadly about the meaning of freedom, restraint, and contingency. Namely, I describe the lifeforce buried in everyday acts of praying wherein repressive social forces, be they the police or religious authorities, come to enable world-making possibilities for ordinary lives in paradoxical ways. I argue that the recorded prayer helps us to grasp the dynamics of repression and agency. Using memoir and ethnography, I propose the theory of vernacular biopoetics to explore the possibility of freedom in a carceral condition wherein the constriction of spaces becomes an opening for alternative forms of imagination.

Seeing like a routier: routiers’ borderscapes between Southern Europe and West Africa

Routier is the self-designation employed by Senegalese men driving decades-old vehicles overloaded with mostly second-hand items from Southern Europe to be sold in West Africa. This activity involves navigating a constellation of overlapping politico-administrative, socio-economic, cultural and geographical borders. Building on the concept of borderscapes, whose plasticity and aesthetic qualities allows us to interrogate diverse border universes, this essay visually explores routiers border(ing) enactments and contingent meanings. By seeing like a routier, the piece seeks to feed an on-going debate not only on how to depict borders writ large but also on how certain groups of people embody, see and are seen by contemporary borders.

Sugar

Sugar is in the bloodstream of our modern world. We crave it as a treat and fear it as an increasingly urgent health risk. Although sugar had been used for centuries in small quantities as a spice, a medicine, and a foodstuff, it was only in the nineteenth century that it became the omnipresent, mass-produced, habit-forming, and health-impacting commodity we recognize today. This article charts the staggering increase in sugar production in the Victorian period—from 572,000 tons in 1830 to 6.1 million tons by 1890—to suggest that sugar, and acts of consuming it, acquired figurative and culturally contingent meanings that Victorian writers could use to represent and respond to some of the most pressing cultural questions of their day. For scholars of the nineteenth century, sugar affords us a lens for viewing Victorian cultural change and for interrogating the stories that Britain continues to tell itself today about the physical, economic, and moral health of the nation.

An assemblage of everyday technologies in the practice of western herbal medicine - a photo essay

Small, mundane technologies, such as stethoscopes, medicinal bottles, labels, cleaning and dispensing equipment, are integral to the practice of western herbal medicine (WHM) in the UK. A focus on such technologies reveals the dynamic character and porousness of medical systems and allows us to identify cultural interactions. In this photo essay, based on long-term anthropological research, I explore an assemblage of everyday technologies used by WHM practitioners and the ways in which these technologies contribute to shaping diagnostic stories, to performing (bio)medical legitimacy and invoking herbal traditions. The biomedical, herbal and domestic technologies-in-use come into view as vibrant and dynamic objects with highly contingent meanings and identities. Their absorption into this non-biomedical therapy supports the performance of (bio)medical legitimacy, authority, tradition and professionalism, while the use of everyday domestic objects may signal female-coded practices of care. This demonstrates the adaptability of a medical practice situated at the margin of mainstream healthcare and subject to ongoing technological and ideological influence. The strategic integration of this assemblage of everyday technologies into WHM contributes, I suggest, to evoking a competent, trustworthy and time-honoured medical practice, which is simultaneously inscribed with multiple tensions, ambiguities and contestations.

Metaphysics, Meaning, and Morality: A Theological Reflection on AI

Theologians often reflect on the ethical uses and impacts of artificial intelligence, but when it comes to artificial intelligence techniques themselves, some have questioned whether much exists to discuss in the first place. Ancient thinkers—namely Augustine of Hippo— enable us to draw forth the moral and metaphysical significance of current developments like the “deep neural networks” responsible for some of the most remarkable achievements of the past few years. First, Augustine’s theology of the natural world’s rationes seminales makes sense of neural networks’ success by explaining the world as a kaleidoscopic refraction of divine Wisdom rather than as a collection of discrete objects standing in crisp relations. Second, his account of interpretive judgment as a moral act bound up with love reveals how our training and use of AI relates to the Christian’s assimilation to Wisdom. The contingent meaning of the neural network reveals AI’s potential either for standing between us and the world or in some sense facilitating a Christian’s regathering of the created echoes of divine Wisdom throughout his or her journey into the Trinity.

A Singular Remedy: Cinchona Across the Atlantic World, 1751–1820 by Stefanie Gänger

<i>A Singular Remedy: Cinchona Across the Atlantic World, 1751–1820</i> by Stefanie Gänger

Spills and thrills: internship challenges for learning in epistemic spaces

ABSTRACT We examine the challenges and emergent nature of learning during undergraduate internships. Much scholarly inquiry on the latter focuses on internship experiences within traditional professional domains such as medicine, teacher education, and other fields. There is less knowledge about undergraduate interns entering more fluid and recent work sectors such as Public Relations and Communication. In this study, a sociomaterial perspective guided the interest in the situated and emergent nature of learning as an intern in such tool-saturated environments. Specifically, we examined how interns learn to participate in such activities, and how they encounter and appropriate sociomaterial resources used for coordinating and performing work practices. Using a case study method, we examined internship experiences of penultimate undergraduates in communication studies (N = 38). From semi-structured interviews, strategies such as scaffolding, networking and negotiating with colleagues, and technological tools as contingent means for coping with workplace challenges were reported during the initial stage of their internship. By making visible knowledge strategies undergraduates interns employ for learning at the workplace, we call to attention the role of and access to technologies, significant others, and workplace culture in the development of professional learning in such dynamic professional settings.

Contingent Writing Center Work: Benefits, Risks, and the Need for Equity and Institutional Change

This study investigates and reports on the personal, professional, and programmatic benefits and risks associated with contingent writing center work. Interviews were conducted with 48 contingent writing centers workers, including directors, assistant directors, associate directors, graduate student workers, and tutors. Survey data of the interview participants showed contingent writing center workers are usually White women with advanced degrees. Most of this article focuses on interview data, analyzed using grounded theory. Interviews revealed participants’ understanding of what contingency means and revealed their struggles with instability, insecurity, and uncertainty even while they lauded the flexibility, freedom, and autonomy their contingency afforded them. The interview data also further revealed the ways in which these working conditions were created and maintained by the institution. These findings suggest the need for collective action across the composition and writing center fields—from professional organizations, tenure-line writing center workers, and contingent workers themselves. Through collective action, we can create equitable working conditions for all writing center workers.

Is the fiṭra mutable? A reformist conception of human perfection in Shāh Walī Allāh's Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha

AbstractThis article examines the question of whether the created human nature, or fiṭra, is portrayed as mutable in Shāh Walī Allāh's (d. 1762) Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha. I argue that Walī Allāh uses the fiṭra — or the perfection of four qualities that make for human flourishing — to anchor a unified concept of human perfection that can fit different ages without essentially changing. Walī Allāh accomplishes this by affirming the particularity of divine laws and the efficacy of local customs in realising the eternal demands of the human form. More specifically, he posits that established practices can become second nature to a community, enter the divine system of requital, and thus help a people develop the necessary qualities through highly contingent means, all without violating the Qur'anic and traditional claim that the original nature itself never changes. With recourse to some of his other works and potential influences, I conclude that Walī Allāh's conception of the fiṭra accommodates traditional theological assertions regarding the singularity of human perfection, on the one hand, and the possibility of reformed norms, on the other.

Decentering the Study of Migration Governance in the Mediterranean

To what extent can a decentred approach improve our understanding of migration governance? In the field of public policy, it ‘highlights the diverse and contingent meanings that inform the actions ...

Jaded jezebels, chainsmokers, gypsies, and ninjas: Criminality and the refurbishment of lesbian identity and gender non-conforming identities in Sri Lankan newspaper narratives

This essay focuses on how Sinhala and English newspapers in Sri Lanka interpret and refurbish lesbian identity and gender non-conforming identities using tropes of criminality. My premise is that, despite the existence of British colonial laws against ‘sodomy’ and ‘impersonation’ in the Sri Lankan Penal Code, law does not offer a clear definition or interpretation that can act as an organizing narrative for these identities. Although newspapers cite these laws, criminality has to be narrated, and the modes of narration produce instabilities around, and re-articulations of, those identities. Thus, the essay asks how Sri Lankan newspapers discursively construct the criminality of lesbian and gender non-conforming identities. I survey print and online newspaper articles dating from August 1999 to August 2020, critiquing attempts to make these identities explicable by way of strict legal framings of criminality. I draw out four tropes, “Jaded Jezebels,” “Chainsmokers,” “Gypsies,” and “Ninjas,” arguing that they are proxy categories for lesbian and gender non-confirming identities and that they reflect how the meanings of criminality are discursively produced and rendered unstable across frames of reference such as religious orthodoxy, cultural conformity, heteropatriarchal norms, and modernity vs. tradition. I highlight moments of narrative instability, including the above bizarre tropes, forced discursive connections, misfiring formulations, and rag-tag collections of meanings. The article concludes that the question of whether lesbian identity and gender non-conforming identities are obsolete is inflected, in Sri Lankan newspaper narratives, by how they are refurbished via proxy categories with their own contingent meanings and frames of reference.

Design of emergency response manufacturing networks: a decision-making framework

In times of large-scale crises, seemingly streamlined supply chains could become prone to unforeseen disruptions, leading to interruption in the provision of vital supplies. This could lead to severe consequences if such interruptions include vital products, such as lifesaving medical supplies or healthcare workers’ protective gear. Shortages of vital supplies could occur due to unexpected sharp spike in demand, where manufacturers are unable to produce the necessary quantities required to meet the unusual demand. They could also be the result of a disruption in the product’s supply chain, originating in another country, or even continent, worse affected by the crisis. In either case, localized production, enabled by efforts and resources of local establishments and individuals, could provide a contingency means to produce such vital products to serve local needs, temporarily. Motivated by the growing availability of advanced manufacturing technologies, in particular additive manufacturing (AM), this paper aims to develop a decision-making framework for the design of AM enabled local manufacturing networks in times of crises. The framework consists of complementing interrelated optimization and simulation models that operate iteratively in an uncertain environment, until a local production network, producing the desired performance targets, emerges. Finally, a case study inspired by the shortages of medical supplies, and healthcare workers’ personal protective equipment (PPE), during the worldwide 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus is employed to demonstrate the applicability of the framework.

The contested meanings of race and ethnicity in medical research: A case study of the DynaMed Point of Care tool.

Although the use of race and ethnicity for diagnostic purposes remains a controversial practice given the socially contingent meaning of the terms (Bowker and Star, 1999), health researchers continue to report possible relationships between health outcomes and race/ethnicity in the literature. As summaries of these types of studies are incorporated into commercial databases designed to provide medical practitioners with actionable information, there is a risk that the algorithms that drive the databases may unintentionally incorporate racist biases (O'Neil, 2016) in search reports that use race and ethnicity as query terms to identify findings to help in the diagnosis and treatment of particular patients. As a first step to unpacking this risk, we conducted a content analysis of the records and related citation trails in DynaMed's Point of Care (PoC) tool that refer to racial and ethnic research findings. Our analysis demonstrates that DynaMed does not control for how meanings of race and ethnicity are constructed in its entries, does not always accurately represent the nuanced and contingent nature of the findings about race/ethnicity that it cites, and relies on sources that are not always consistent with the 'evidence-based' criterion that the company self-promotes as a feature of its PoC tool. We conclude that, by failing to acknowledge the complex and contradictory ways that race and ethnicity may, or may not, correlate with the risk of a medical ailment, algorithmically-driven tools that use these concepts to establish group risks for medical ailments may unintentionally work to 'resuscitat[e] biological theories of race by modernizing old racial typologies that were based on observations of physical differences with cutting-edge genomic research' (Roberts, 2011: 567).

The (De)materialization of Criminal Bodies in Forensic DNA Phenotyping

Forensic DNA phenotyping is a genetic technology that might be used in criminal investigations. Based on DNA samples of the human body found at crime scenes, it allows to infer externally visible characteristics (such as eye, hair and skin colour) and continental-based biogeographical ancestry. By indicating the probable visible appearance of a criminal suspect, forensic DNA phenotyping allows to narrow down the focus of a criminal investigation. In this article, drawing on interviews with forensic geneticists, we explore how their narratives translate contemporary focus on criminal molecularized bodies. We propose the concept of (de)materialization to approach three aspects of the forensic geneticists’ views. The first regards considering bodies as mutable entities. The second relates to socially contingent meanings attributed to bodies. The third regards to controversies surrounding data reliability. By reflecting upon the (de)materialization of criminal bodies, forensic geneticists juxtapose the defence and unsettling of forensic DNA phenotyping claims.

Re-visioning Academic Medicine Through a Constructionist Lens.

Constructionism in academic medicine matters. It encourages educators and researchers to question taken-for-granted assumptions, paying close attention to socially and historically contingent meanings. In this Invited Commentary, the authors explain what constructionism is; examine its ontological, epistemological, and axiological underpinnings; and outline its common methodologies and methods. Although constructivism favors the individual, constructionism privileges the social as the controlling force behind the construction of meaning. Where micro-constructionism attends to the minutiae of language, macro-constructionism focuses on broader discourses reproduced through material and social practices and structures. While social constructionists might situate themselves at any point on the relativist-realist continuum, many constructionists focus on constructionism as epistemology (the nature of knowledge) rather than ontology (the nature of reality). From an epistemological standpoint, constructionism asserts that how we come to know the world is constructed through social interaction. Constructionism thus values language, dialogue, and context, in addition to internal coherence between epistemology, methodology, and methods. Constructionism similarly values the concepts of dependability, authenticity, credibility, confirmability, reflexivity, and transferability. It also embraces the researcher-researched relationship. Given the privileging of language, qualitative methodologies and methods are key in constructionism, with constructionist-type questions focusing on how people speak. Here, the authors encourage the reader to develop an understanding of constructionism to re-vision academic medicine through a constructionist lens.

Analyzing neoliberal discourse: An integrated dialectical-relational critical discourse analysis-discourse theory framework utilizing conceptual metaphor

AbstractAn integrated Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)-Discourse Theory (DT) framework is proposed that utilizes the Dialectical-Relational (DR) approach from CDA as its primary basis and incorporates DT concepts of articulation and nodal point to further develop DR and thus enhance descriptions and analyses of the complex, shifting and contingent nature of meaning making in discourses of late modernity that impact the construction of social realities (logic) and subjectivity. This paper argues that the addition of the above DT concepts enhances the description and analysis of the dynamics of meaning making by focusing on shifting and contingent meanings present in discourses operating within and between particular social contexts as a means to specifically and systematically capture the influence of context-specific ideologies. Furthermore, using DR allows for the inclusion of the relative permanence of social structures in dialectical relation with processes of meaning making which avoids the risk of a radical contingency that DT potentially entails. The framework is demonstrated using conceptual metaphors in the context of Singapore higher education discourse to show how neoliberalism as a seemingly hegemonic phenomenon operates as a variegated mobile technology adapting to its specific context by manifesting context-specific meanings, thus reflecting characteristics of complexity, non-permanence and contingency.