Critical Debate Research Articles

Shared Brains, Proprioceptiveness, and Critically Approaching the Animal as the Animal in Artworks

The animal and being animal is a proposition and position that invites observational and critical debate. Yet, the presence of the non-human animal is usually and normatively confined to representational artworks rather than the animal itself in the gallery or museum, which is, potentially, problematically anthropocentric. Using diverse methods, processes, and materials, and curious to a myriad of opening potentialities, Bartram + Deigaard, in contrast to this problem, explore working as humans from an animal-centric perspective through artistic research. They bring sensitivities to their handling of the animal, as both artistic subject and collaborator, to observe and engage with empathy and openness to animal insight and revelation and behaviour. Their works in performance, video, drawing, and printmaking foreground animal proximity and behaviour, inter-species proprioception, reciprocal caretaking, synchronised respiration, and companionate movement. This article explores the socialised and familiar in close observation, directly and indirectly, in their individual yet companion practices, illuminating the benefits of a radically enlarged sentiocentrism. It reflects on the allowing and embracing of other species within their artworks, and of being mindful and sensible with balancing sympathies and empathies as humans within an often unbalanced system of agency. Specifically, it gleans patterns and insights from their exhibition at Tippetts and Eccles Galleries at Utah State University in 2021, where they invited a canine collaborator into their thinking through praxis and the interventions and residual outcomes this created. This essay discusses two individual video artworks from each artist, which document their invitations to non-human animals into the gallery or museum, and two durational artworks curated within this exhibition.

Teaching students to R3eason, not merely to solve problem sets: The role of philosophy and visual data communication in accessible data science education.

Much guidance on statistical training in STEM fields has been focused largely on the undergraduate cohort, with graduate education often being absent from the equation. Training in quantitative methods and reasoning is critical for graduate students in biomedical and science programs to foster reproducible and responsible research practices. We argue that graduate student education should more center around fundamental reasoning and integration skills rather than mainly on listing 1 statistical test method after the other without conveying the bigger context picture or critical argumentation skills that will enable student to improve research integrity through rigorous practice. Herein, we describe the approach we take in a quantitative reasoning course in the R3 program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with an error-focused lens, based on visualization and communication competencies. Specifically, we take this perspective stemming from the discussed causes of irreproducibility and apply it specifically to the many aspects of good statistical practice in science, ranging from experimental design to data collection and analysis, and conclusions drawn from the data. We also provide tips and guidelines for the implementation and adaptation of our course material to various graduate biomedical and STEM science programs.

A Peripheral Movement?

Abstract This study analyzes the interplay between the public image and the self-image of the German Querdenken movement during the covid-19 pandemic. First, we reconstruct the public image of Querdenken with data from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Our findings reveal a multifaceted network of critical arguments against the government's public health measures during the crisis. Querdenken remained at the periphery of this newspaper discourse because it was mostly perceived as anti-democratic, particularistic, and irrational. Next, we compare this public image with Querdenken's self-image using the movement's press releases. Our analysis shows that Querdenken's supporters responded to public criticism by counter-labeling their critics as untrustworthy, conspiratorial, and corrupt. Our conclusion finds that due to its highly contentious “anti-science” and “anti-elite” approach, Querdenken failed to produce a positive “resonance” within the public sphere and developed only limited civil power.

Discuss to learn: a student-focused learning strategy

PurposeTraditional teaching strategies are making way for a more collaborative learning style, where students play active roles in their learning process. This work focuses on the discussant role activity in the market research subject in a business administration bachelor's degree as a way of empowering students' role. The discussant activity fosters critical thinking and debate between classmates while also encouraging communication and relational skills.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on expectation-disconfirmation theory, this study analysed students' expectations and perceptions before and after the discussant activity. Data were collected through two surveys carried out in class at the beginning and at the end of the course.FindingsThe empirical findings show that interactions in the classroom during the activity contribute to students' final evaluation of the activity and positively affect cross-curricular and subjective learning performance.Originality/valueActivities that recreate real-life experiences help students in the acquisition of certain key competencies related to their future inclusion in the labour market.

Surviving violent conflicts and climate variability: An intersectional analysis of differentiated access to diversification resources among smallholder farmers in Kuka

Kuka, a sub-district in Shendam Local Government Area of Plateau State-Nigeria has been experiencing violent conflicts since 2001 amidst damning ecological stressors. Between 2001 to date, Shendam Local Government, to which Kuka belongs, has experienced 28 different violent conflicts which were fought largely along ethnic and religious lines. This has intersected with climate variability to generate various risk factors for smallholder farmers in Kuka prompting varied diversification processes. While issues of diversification among smallholder farmers have been well documented in critical literature on adaptation, the extent to which social and relational factors inform differentiated access to diversification resources among smallholder farmers in the specific region of Kuka, to the best knowledge of the researcher, has been least investigated. This study contributes to critical debate on farmers' adaptation strategies by arguing that social and relational factors of sex, age, gender, social capital, economic status, religion and ethnicity intersect to inform differentiated access to diversification resources prompting differentiated vulnerabilities to social and ecological stressors among smallholder farmers in Kuka. This was arrived at by integrating an explanatory sequential design of the mixed methods approach with the Theory of Access to develop questionnaires and interview guides which enabled the collection of field data from 330 participants. It was therefore, recommended that: (1) the relational and social mechanisms of access should be checked to reduce the alienation of smallholder farmers from access and use of community resources, (2) the traditional authorities should work with the various religious leaders to address discriminatory cultural and social practices that inform differentiated access to diversification resources among smallholder farmers, and (3) the people of kuka should engage in collective projects that would provide avenues for cross-cultural and inter-religious interactions bringing about an integration of all social groups and the consequent elimination of discriminatory social practices that inform differentiated treatment of community members.

The Role of Regional Honor Council In Maintaining The Honor of Notary Position

A profession that in carrying out its duties, functions and authorities requires an ethics, so does a Notary. So the code of ethics is used as a guideline for the behavior of members of the profession in acting and behaving. The existence of a Notary code of ethics aims to make the Notary profession run professionally with motivation and orientation to intellectual skills as well as rational and critical argumentation as well as upholding moral values. So that the notary in carrying out his position is supervised by the Notary Honorary Council, because this supervisory function is very necessary so that the Notary does not ignore the nobility and dignity of his profession. Writing this article aims to identify, examine and analyze the role of the Honorary Board in maintaining the honor of the position of Notary Public by upholding a code of ethics. This writing uses a normative juridical approach, using primary and secondary legal sources. Primary legal materials are obtained from laws and regulations and secondary legal materials are obtained from library materials, archives, and documents related to the object of research. The results of the discussion show that the position of the Honorary Board in the Notary organization has a strategic and important role in enforcing the code of ethics as an effort to maintain the honor of a notary. The Ethics Council will supervise so that there are no violations committed by the Notary, such as signing the deed without dealing with the client and the Notary, Setting substandard rates, Carrying out efforts that can lead to unfair competition, Name sign issues and changing addresses are not reported. The obstacles faced by the Honorary Council were the increasing number of Notaries, the formation of the Honorary Council which only numbered three people and was collective in nature. The Honorary Council in enforcing the Notary's code of ethics identifies, evaluates and improves the supervisory system for Notaries so that violations of the code of ethics can be minimized, the Honorary Council makes strategic steps to be implemented and used according to the objectives to be achieved.
 KEYWORDS: Code of Ethics, Honor Council, Notary.

Space Sex-Machines: trans-planetary ethics and the mediatization of things

The progressive incorporation of devices, infrastructures, and interfaces in the communications ecosystems has provoked a transformation in the research fields too. Mediatization research for instance has started to incorporate data infrastructures, deep mediatization, and robots in the theoretical discussion. This paper roots in this trend by suggesting a field on mediatization of things that encompasses three areas: the considerations on human-machine assemblages, the entanglements at planetary scale of the material and environmental costs of connection, and the discussion about care and humanity as fundamental kin relational values. These three dimensions overlap, interact, and activate profound and critical ethical debates necessary to contribute to the discussions on long-duration space exploration, affective relations with machines, and for inter-species planet reproduction. Sex-machines are at the centre of these human-caring-beings and inter-planetary-networks; in this research we study the six types of sex-machines against the space-travelling conditions. This contribution reveals the urgency of establishing the field of Space Robot Ethics, including the discussion of Mediatized Intimacies and sexuality in space. This paper illustrates that robots and sex-machines are complex multi-agent networks of distributed responsibility; and reviewing the governance of their designs, and threat modelling their ethical and safety and security features not only anticipates more pleasant outer space travels, but also helps preparing for an earthy life with robots.

Relating economic openness and export diversification to eco‐efficiency: Is green innovation critical?

AbstractA critical debate on whether macro economies would achieve sustainability targets via green innovations could reach some informed consensus, given it is explicit how those innovations, directly and indirectly, interact with both economic and ecological systems through international economic activities. To unriddle this puzzle, this work is the initial attempt to examine how green innovation moderates the influence of economic openness and export diversification on eco‐efficiency in selected 13 European Union (EU) economies from 1995 to 2014. We employ advanced second‐generation econometric approaches robust to cross‐section dependence, slope heterogeneity, and the omitted variable bias concerns in panel data. The main results are firstly, economic openness and export diversification tend to deteriorate eco‐efficiency in the absence of a green innovation moderator. Secondly, in green innovation moderation models, both economic openness and export diversification are likely to improve eco‐efficiency. Thirdly, green innovation not only directly promotes eco‐efficiency but also positively moderates the influence of economic openness and export diversification on eco‐efficiency. Fourthly, a one‐way causality exists from green innovation moderators to eco‐efficiency, while economic openness, export diversification, green innovation, and other control variables establish a two‐way causal relationship with eco‐efficiency. Finally, for green innovation in place, the policy shocks of economic openness and export diversification are predicted to achieve the eco‐efficiency effects in more than 1 year in the EU members, while green innovation catalyses this convergence speed. Besides, economic openness and export diversification policies should be integrated with the green innovation framework to achieve eco‐efficiency for sustainable development

The wrong horse was bet on: the effects of argument structure versus argument adjacency on the processing of idiomatic sentences.

Psycholinguistic research remains puzzled about the circumstances under which syntactically transformed idioms keep their figurative meaning. There is an abundance of linguistic and psycholinguistic studies that have examined which factors may determine why some idioms are more syntactically fixed than others, including transparency, compositionality, and syntactic frozenness; however, they have returned inconclusive, sometimes even conflicting, results. This is the first study to examine argument structure (i.e., the number of arguments a verb takes) and argument adjacency (i.e., the position of the critical arguments relative to the verb) and their effects on the processing of idiomatic and literal sentences in German. Our results suggest that neither the traditional models of idiom processing (according to which idioms are stored as fixed entries) nor more recent hybrid theories (which concede some compositional handling in addition to a fixed entry) adequately account for the effects of argument structure or argument adjacency. Therefore, this study challenges existing models of idiom processing. In two sentence-completion experiments, participants listened to idiomatic and literal sentences in both active and passive voice without the sentence-final verb. They indicated which of three visually-presented verbs best completed the sentence. We manipulated the factor argument structure within experiments and argument adjacency across experiments. In Experiment 1, passivized three-argument sentences had the critical argument adjacent to the verb while two-argument sentences had the critical argument non-adjacent to the verb, and vice versa in Experiment 2. In both experiments, voice interacted with argument structure. Active sentences-both literal and idiomatic-showed equivalent processing of two- and three-argument sentences. However, passive sentences returned contrasting effects. In Experiment 1, three-argument sentences were processed faster than two-argument sentences and vice versa in Experiment 2. This pattern corresponds to faster processing when critical arguments are adjacent than non-adjacent. The results point to the dominant role of argument adjacency over the number of arguments in the processing of syntactically transformed sentences. Regarding idiom processing, we conclude that the adjacency of the verb to its critical arguments determines whether passivized idioms keep their figurative meaning and present the implications of this finding for relevant models of idiom processing.

Underrated, overlooked, suppressed, discarded: canonical discourse and 1980s rock music from Australia and New Zealand

ABSTRACT In canonical narratives of rock music emanating from the global North, the music of Australia and New Zealand continues to be overlooked. This article considers the international critical reception of a range of 1980s bands from Australia and New Zealand, both at the time and subsequently. The analysis shows how the music of the Antipodes largely has been rendered historically irrelevant in canonical terms, highlighting the general importance of subverting conventional narratives by giving voice to marginalized cultures and foregrounding alternative critical arguments.

“we are still here holding fast”: Stillness in the wake of Hurricane Irma in Richard Georges’ Epiphaneia

This article looks at Richard Georges’ poetry collection Epiphaneia, which is set on the British Virgin Islands in the aftermath of hurricane Irma. While Georges’ poems are placed amidst destruction, they go beyond narratives of devastation; instead, they articulate a poetics of livingness on the hurricane-struck island. This paper first draws out critical debates on the coloniality of climate that show the longue durée and complexity of a history of catastrophe in the Caribbean context. It addresses how Epiphaneia challenges one-sided discourses of island dependency and victimization by offering ways to perceive islands in the Anthropocene not as passive victims of catastrophes but as sites of living within what Glissant calls a chaos-world. This article then advances an ecopoetics of the archipelago in the wake of the hurricane. The various tensions held by the island after the storm will be traced through the word ‘still’: the ongoing violence of coloniality, still present; yet continuously resisted due to the island’s and islanders’ resilience and survival, still alive. This paper explores the poetics emerging from the island in the Anthropocene: What poetics are needed to sustain life after, and within, catastrophe? What does it mean to exist and move, still, on the island in the wake of the hurricane?

Centering Youth of Color Activism and Knowledge in the Critical Race Theory Debates

Background/Context: Leah Boveda, a sophomore at Brown University, collaborated with her mother—Mildred Boveda, an intersectional studies scholar situated in special education and teacher education—to make sense of her high school community activism in Arizona. They retrace how Leah’s experiences eventually shaped her understandings of and participation in adult-centered conversations about critical race theory bans. This daughter–mother authorial team offers lessons learned from Leah’s youth mobilizations and how they may inform education research about youth activists of color. Research Design: Using an intersectionally conscious, collaborative approach and a daughtering analytical framing, the authors revisited Leah’s high school youth activism. In addition to their memories, they returned to written documents, such as a 2019 interview between Leah and a correspondent at The New York Times, her notes from a 5-minute speech presented at a CRT summit, and shared files for a panel presentation that Leah gave as an assistant “faculty” member for the July 2021 CRT Summer School. The authors consider how Leah’s youth mobilization may inform how adults—whether educators, researchers, or policymakers—engage youths of color in the CRT debates. Conclusions/Recommendations: The authors analyzed how the adults Leah collaborated with engaged youth voice, including at events where student perspectives about CRT bans were invited. In her daughtering role, Leah both appreciated and pushed the nurturing adults in her life. The authorial team unveils how youth activists of color must deal with not only racialized oppression, but also the pressure to achieve proximity to adults in order to be heard and respected.

The stakes of abyssal geography. Response to commentaries on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

The stakes of abyssal geography. Response to commentaries on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

Ежен Дюпреель і Хаїм Перельман: нормативно-критичні засади «риторичного повороту» в сучасній філософії. Частина ІІ

The purpose of the article is, firstly, to explicate and give a critical assessment of the methodological, epistemological, and philosophical foundations that led to the “rhetorical turn” in modern philosophy, and, secondly, to answer the question of how justified the grounds for such a “rhetorical turn” are. The answer proposed is based on a reconstruction of Eugene Dupréel’s critical arguments that were directed against the “classical philosophy” and their reception in Chaim Perelman’s works during his “turning point” period (1947 – 1949). The article proves that these two scholars’ critique of classical philosophy proceeds from a realistic position, therefore it does not apply to the epistemological principles of idealistic philosophy. Their criticism of the classical theory of progress and the ideal of universally valid knowledge is “axiological” in nature and boils down to a reassessment of all traditional values. As a result of this reassessment, the methodological principles of sophistry (subjectivism, pragmatism, pluralism, relativism, conventionalism, etc.) are actually rehabilitated. The criticism of philosophy that appeals to spoken language and everyday knowledge, is not justified, since it is based on a misunderstanding of the conceptual and constructive nature of the philosophical language. Although the rhetorical analysis of philosophical texts should be recognized as fruitful and useful, rhetoric cannot be an instrument of philosophizing, since the interpretation of values depends on their understanding, which is given by “classical philosophy”.

Представяне на книгите на Венцислав Бондиков „PR като обект на познание. Към философията на пъблик рилейшънс“ и „Критични дебати за PR“

Book review: “PR as an Object of Knowledge. Towards the Philosophy of Public Relations” and “Critical Debates on PR” by Ventsislav Bondikov

Думи на водещите броя

Думи на водещите броя

‘You are not a loan’: contentious debt politics since the North Atlantic Financial Crisis

ABSTRACT Debt has constituted a pivotal theme of both older and more recent mobilizations and critical public debate. While academia has started new discussions about debt relations, literature on resistance against debt is relatively scarce and mostly focuses on the Global South before the North Atlantic Financial Crisis. The aim of this article is to contribute to filling this gap by studying debt-centered movements in recent anti-austerity politics. The article will argue that the 2007/2008 financial crisis has exacerbated debt-related grievances in the Global North to a degree already common across the Global South. I will argue that and show how in response to this spillover established debt abolition networks decided to now also work on Northern debt, while new movement networks for debt justice emerged from within and as a constitutive part of the 2010/2011 anti-austerity and pro-democracy protests.

Inside the treaty interpreter’s mind: An experimental linguistic approach to international law

AbstractOne particularly intense critical debate over interpretation in international law concerns the role of moral factors – specifically, the degree to which such factors influence legal interpretation, and how the law should deal with them. A formalist approach argues that moral considerations should be excluded as non-legal; a critical legal studies approach suggests they are an inevitable part of the functioning of international law and must therefore be acknowledged; and an inclusivist approach would suggest their influence is permissible, albeit only under certain circumstances. In this article, we are concerned with the question of whether moral factors influence interpretation at all, taking international treaties as the object of study. To address this question, we take a novel approach, proposing an experimental linguistic framework to test whether linguistic categorizations (originally developed for the analysis of everyday language) can be successfully applied to treaty interpretation, relying on both laypersons and experts as participants. Although some caveats must be made, the experiments deliver clear results: both groups are influenced by morals in their interpretation of international treaty norms. On this basis, we draw conclusions regarding (i) how the process of interpretation of international law operates; and (ii) what the institutions managing that process, such as courts, should factor-in when deliberating their decisions. By adopting this novel perspective, we also contribute to linguistic and experimental approaches to international law at the methodological level.

Poe, Queerness, and the End of Time

Poe, Queerness, and the End of Time

Motivation of Prospective Science Teacher While Reading Texts as a Part of Self-Regulated Learning: Study on Critical-Argumentation Reading Activities

Reading is an important activity that must be present in the science learning process, especially reading with meaningful activities, one of which is critical argumentation reading activity. Reading is very closely related to student motivation while reading. This motivation plays an important role in supporting the success of reading goals. So far, research related to students' reading motivation has rarely been carried out, especially for critical argumentation reading activities. Most of the research was conducted at the elementary and secondary school levels. Therefore, this research will be conducted with the aim of analyzing students' motivation while reading using critical argumentation activities. This study involved 83 science teacher candidate students. In practice, students were divided into three classes, namely group experimental class (N = 29), individual experimental class (N = 29), and control class (N = 25). The research was conducted using the think aloud protocol method, in which students were asked questions while reading the text, and recorded all the answers orally. The results showed that students' motivation during reading as part of a self-regulation strategy showed better results when students read using the critical argumentation reading model. In addition, students are able to carry out self-regulation strategies from a better motivational aspect if reading activities are carried out in groups.