Distinct Practices Research Articles

Defining Therapeutic Playgroups: Key Principles of Therapeutic Playgroups from the Perspective of Professionals

Therapeutic playgroups provide a unique service for children with developmental delays and disabilities and their families, delivering tailored play-based therapy while facilitating parent support and community connections. Despite the prevalence of playgroups within the disability sector there is a paucity of research defining the key principles of therapeutic playgroups and their perceived benefits. Taking the perspectives of early intervention professionals this study sought to provide a definition of therapeutic playgroups and identify the “active ingredients” of therapeutic playgroups for children with developmental delays and disabilities. Focus group methodology was used to gather perspectives of 40 professionals with experience facilitating playgroups for children with developmental delays and/or disabilities and their families. Findings highlighted the complex nature of therapeutic playgroups which require an interplay of five “active ingredients” to be perceived as beneficial: facilitator and participant characteristics; playgroup structural characteristics, information provision, administration and logistical considerations. Therapeutic playgroups have distinct practice principles that distinguish them from other playgroups and therapeutic models for children with delays and disabilities and their families. This paper provides a definition of therapeutic playgroups, outlining the core practice principles for therapeutic playgroups, an essential step in developing and evaluating the effectiveness of therapeutic playgroups.

Politics of neutrality: Urban knowledge practices and everyday formalisation in Karachi’s waterscape

Formalisation in cities is commonly associated with top-down processes like slum demolition, land titling and economic regulation. By contrast, this article explores processes of everyday formalisation by considering how locally grounded understandings of formality and informality are reproduced. It thus theorises everyday formalisation as a process distinct from state-led formalisation in terms of both the scale (local) and mechanisms (everyday) through which formal/informal dichotomisation occurs. To explore the effects of such everyday formalisation, this article draws on a case study of water access in a low-income settlement of Karachi, Pakistan. Turning attention to everyday practices of water access in the settlement, this article highlights how residents and water board officials understand and enact distinctions between formality and informality through daily knowledge practices and meanings of neutrality. By focusing on everyday formalisation, this article makes two wider contributions to urban theory. First, it demonstrates that urban informality gives rise to diverse lived experiences, not all of which may be characterised as examples of subaltern agency. Secondly, it demonstrates that urban learning and local knowledge generation can be conceptualised not only as tools for urban ‘navigation’, but as distinctive practices that reproduce urban space according to hegemonic categories like formal and informal.

How the Mount Wutai cult stimulated the development of Chinese Chan in southern China at Qingliang monasteries

ABSTRACTDespite the legendary role ascribed to Shaolin monastery 少林寺 it is probably not an exaggeration to say that it has been considered sacrosanct within Chinese Chan Buddhist discourse [since at least] the mid-8th century that legitimacy comes from the south, and not the north. Since the tenth century, the rhetoric of the so-called ‘five schools’ has perpetuated peculiarly southern lineages; in practice, both the Linji and Caodong lineages (in China and beyond) propagate stories of celebrated patriarchs against a distinctively southern Chinese backdrop. What are we to make of Chan monasteries or cloisters in Ningbo, Fuzhou Jiangning, and of course, Hongzhou, apparently named to reflect the enduring significance of Mount Wutai 五臺山, a notably northern sacred site? In the first part of this article I outline the less than marginal – or peripheral – role Mount Wutai appears to have played in ‘core’ Chinese Chan Buddhist sources. Then I proceed to explain how four Qingliang monasteries 清涼寺 in southern China attest to the preservation and dissemination of a lineage of masters who supported what looks like a ‘Qingliang cult,’ with a set of distinctive teachings and practices that appears to collapse several longstanding assumptions about what separates Chan from the Teachings in Chinese Buddhism.

Discourse Analysis of Indigenous Women's Construct on Biodiversity and Sustainable Development

Managing and understanding the environment and its issues is not limited to one environmental discourse but to numerous discourses. It is created through histories which result in contradictions as narratives may oppose each other. This opposition is considered an important aspect of discourse. This article explores how biodiversity and sustainable development were discursively constructed by indigenous women living in an agricultural society with distinct cultural practices closely linked to rice farming and examined the outcomes arising from their construction of biodiversity and sustainable development. Seven women farmers were interviewed and conversations were transcribed, coded and analyzed through discourse analysis using Maarten Hajer's conceptual tool. Five major discourses emerged from this study: conserving biodiversity through the notion of contrasting views on farming responsibilities, conserving biodiversity through a sense of community, sustainability of government initiatives, negotiating cultural heritage and economic benefits, and articulating sustainable development.

Expressive Wearables

Self-expression is a vital practice for a functioning social life. Wearables have become expressive everyday products, while studies showed how physical collocation can be an opportunity for social technology. This article identifies a perspective for future design of wearables as an extension of the body in its social context: designing for diversity in expression with respect to social boundaries. The collected literature demonstrates the development of new forms of expressive wearables that challenges norms of dress and three groups of participatory methods enable re-search into everyday life practices. The two initial studies—inquiring into everyday life and exploring the wearable design for new practices—exemplify these methods and point a way forward with a focus for design on distinct practices of self-expression.

IN THE CLOSE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN ART PRACTICE AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: THE FIGURES OF DISPLACEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY ART

The shifting position of the artist in the field of cultural inquiry in parallel with the emphasis on subjective truth replacing the objective basis in ethnographic research opens a shared ground for discussions between ethnography and art. Focusing on representations of displacement in contemporary art practice, the paper aims to understand different modalities of representing experience through studying the subjective responses of selected artists in the framework of ethnographic turn in art. The paper traces the figures of displacement within contemporary art criticism in parallel with the figurative language of contemporary social thought that manifests a thinking through spatial metaphors. In this regard, the cross field between ethnography and autoethnography in particular in relation to art practice is analyzed through case studies, in order to expand the interdisciplinary dialogue between these two distinctive forms of cultural inquiry. Instead of seeking methodological analogies between ethnography and art practice, the study focuses on this particular motivation of ethnographic work to capture reality and express experience. Beyond the mere replication of ethnographic methods that risks producing meagre ethnographies and restricting the emergence of possibilities across the distinctive practices of inquiry, the paper aims to locate the conversation between art and autoethnography on a transdisciplinary ground. In this way, the research strives to shift the focus from methodological disparities and mimicries towards the shared concerns of art and ethnography.

Maghi: The Festival Among The Tharus: Celebration of New Year

Nepal incorporates diversity of caste, ethnicity, language, social structure, culture and religion, among which Tharus are one of the indigenous groups of the Tarai and inner Tarai region of the country. The study is dedicated to explore the practice and process of celebrating Maghi as Tharunew year. This study has been conducted by employing both exploratory and descriptive research design. The data of the present article are based on published articles and books and on interviews with the elders of the Dangaura Tharus, ritual performers and educated persons of the community. This study represents the distinct socio-cultural structure and ethnic practice of Dangaura Tharu. Indigenous festivals are significant in anthropological research. So it helps to add specific knowledge about Maghi, the indigenous festival of Tharu people. But the central aspect of the celebration of Maghi is in the verge of gradual change. Because those characters which are not suitable for today is going to be abolished and those that are suitable are carried on continuously. Some factors that are core components cannot be changed and it is continuous even though they do not bear any meaning but continue in the respect of their fore ancestors.

‘They think of a family only in their thirties’: gendered subfertility and emergent intimate modernities in India

AbstractRecent anthropological scholarship on marriage in South Asia has chronicled a shift towards companionate marriage, with ideals of companionate conjugality becoming central to middle‐class self‐representations. However, the role of child‐bearing and fertility within these marriages, as emerging life projects related to new family ideals, has not received much attention, even as literature on India has recorded extensive family concern with fertility. In this article, I focus on the endocrine disorder polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) – one of the leading causes of female infertility world‐wide – to examine emerging conceptions of fertility and intimate modernities among the urban middle class in India. I argue that a comparatively limited concern with fertility forms a part of this class's self‐representations and practices of distinction. Such attitudes to fertility, enabled by new orientations towards medical risk and ideals of companionate marriage, also function as markers of the emerging ‘modern’ subjectivity of this class.

Grand challenges in management research: Attributes, achievements, and advancement

Management scholarship is increasingly paying attention to “grand challenges” such as climate and demographic changes, sociopolitical uncertainty, poverty alleviation, and global health improvement. Drawing upon a review of grand challenges research, we highlight the lack of a coherent conceptualization of a “grand challenge” and examine the diversity of the conceptual, policy, and empirical research. We problematize the failure in current research to distinguish between qualitatively different types of grand challenges—in our view, the resolution of different challenges calls for distinct research, policy, and practice approaches. We propose a novel framework that encompasses four distinct forms of grand challenge, situate the existing empirical literature within our framework, describe how the contributions to our special issue advance grand challenges research, and explore implications for future management research that responds to the imperatives of grand challenges.JEL Classification: D81, G01, M14, I18, Q54, Q55, Q56, Q57

Detailed global modelling of soil organic carbon in cropland, grassland and forest soils.

Assessments of the global carbon (C) cycle typically rely on simplified models which consider large areas as homogeneous in terms of the response of soils to land use or consider very broad land classes. For example, “cropland” is typically modelled as an aggregation of distinct practices and individual crops over large regions. Here, we use the process-based Rothamsted soil Carbon Model (RothC model), which has a history of being successfully applied at a global scale, to calculate attainable SOC stocks and C mineralization rates for each of c. 17,000 regions (combination of soil type and texture, climate type, initial land use and country) in the World, under near-past climate conditions. We considered 28 individual crops and, for each, multiple production practices, plus 16 forest types and 1 grassland class (total of 80 classes). We find that conversion to cropland can result in SOC increases, particularly when the soil remains covered with crop residues (an average gain of 12 t C/ha) or using irrigation (4 t C/ha), which are mutually reinforcing effects. Attainable SOC stocks vary significantly depending on the land use class, particularly for cropland. Common aggregations in global modelling of a single agricultural class would be inaccurate representations of these results. Attainable SOC stocks obtained here were compared to long-term experiment data and are well aligned with the literature. Our results provide a regional and detailed understanding of C sequestration that will also enable better greenhouse gas reporting at national level as alternatives to IPCC tier 2 defaults.

Resilience and transformation in times of economic crisis: The persistence of community in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

ABSTRACTThe economic and financial crisis that hit various European countries, including Portugal, has caused a series of social effects and reactions that have been studied using a number of different conceptual approaches. The article looks at two types in particular: those which analyze populations’ levels of resilience regarding proximity and community relations; and those which address collective action movements and practices that seek to transform society. The main goal is to consider the fact that these distinct practices coexist in the same territories, suggesting that they should therefore not be analyzed separately. The other objective is to determine what sociological variables and socio-spatial contexts are key to these different types of practices. The study was based on the territory formed by the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML) and entailed a survey of 1,500 of its residents. The data indicate a persistence of proximity and community relations, mainly among residents of rural areas.

How do board ties affect the adoption of new practices? The effects of managerial interest and hierarchical power

AbstractResearch Question/IssuesMost extant literature implicitly equates obtaining information through board interlocks to acting on the information. We investigate triggers that help to translate the information into action. In addition to exposure to the information by board interlocks, we suggest that the self‐interest of the individuals who create these ties and hierarchical power of interlinked firms determines the likelihood of taking actions of adopting new practices.Research Findings/InsightsUsing the action of adopting two distinctive governance practices, stock option pays or board reform, we find that sent ties and received ties affect the adoption decisions differently. Whereas sent ties reflect managerial interests, received ties derive power from a hierarchical relationship between the focal firm and the interlinked firm. Such differential nature of sent and received ties drives a differential result in terms of adopting two distinctive governance practices. We also find support for different moderating effects of firm performance on the impact of sent and received ties.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsIn this study, we incorporated the self‐interest of executives with sent ties to prior adopters and the power of directors who establish ties with prior adopters that are hierarchically positioned. By doing so, this study paints a more fine‐grained picture regarding underlying mechanisms by which information gained through ties is translated into action. This provides important insights for both agency theory and resource‐dependency theory.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsHierarchical board ties are not a unique phenomenon in Japan. We often find such ties in business groups in China, India, Korea, and some European countries. Establishing board interlocks among subsidiaries in a business group is an important governance resolution for controlling the whole business group. Hence, our findings that the ties carry not only information but also agent's interest and hierarchical power should be taken into account when a business group designs board interlocks.

New Media and the Dalit Counter-public Sphere

The recent surge of online mobilization among Dalits, who belong to India’s most oppressed caste groups, signals a remarkable trend in Internet activism and political engagement. Analyzing Dalit mobilization online, this article argues that technological affordances and distinct cultural practices associated with digital media have enabled certain sections of Dalits to resist the dominant caste narrative, thereby contributing to mobilization against caste-based discrimination. However, multiple “counter-narratives” within the subaltern digital sphere and hybrid media systems have placed limitations on unified action, signaling the need to address mediated factional positions and caste Hindu narratives online in efforts to strengthen the Dalit social movement. This article forwards the argument by examining the expansion of web forums organized by Dalits, with a closer focus on a nationwide online agitation that drew reference to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.

Understanding Meditation Based on the Subjective Experience and Traditional Goal: Implications for Current Meditation Research.

Owing to its benefits on various cognitive aspects, one’s emotions, and well-being, meditation has drawn interest from several researchers and common public alike. We have different meditation practices associated with many cultures and traditions across the globe. Current literature suggests significant changes in the neural activity among the different practices of meditation, as each of these practices contributes to distinct physiological and psychological effects. Although this is the case, we want to find out if there is an underlying commonality among all these different practices. Thus, we ask the following questions related to different practices of meditation, the traditional goal of meditation and its significance—what is the central purpose of meditation? Do traditions define the final goal of all the practices of meditation? Are the purpose and goal of these practices different or is there a common goal to be attained through all these distinct practices? Embracing the traditional perspective, through this paper, we want to emphasize that, although these techniques and practices may appear different on the periphery, eventually, they seem to subject one to the same experience at the end, a natural meditative state (discussed in various spiritual traditions as the goal of meditation). In view of future studies on different meditation practices and also those exploring this subjective state, we offer some interesting ideas based on the traditional insights into meditation. In this context, we would also like to make a few comments on the way contemporary researchers view different practices of meditation.

Commoning the Komal: The Toronto Kurdish Community Centre

Within the walls of this two-story storefront, a distinct alternative practice of radical politics and life is taking place. In fact, what would appear to be an extension of the Kurdish social movement, as it is understood, is being practiced against a backdrop of the refugee experience within the metropolitan city limits of Toronto. This practice of what is arguably feminist anarchism has become known in the recent years by the title “Democratic Confederalism” (Öcalan 2011). Democratic Confederalism in its feminist anarchist framework reflects our understanding of what is known within the Marxist tradition today as “the commons” (Federici & Linebaugh 2018). This paper seeks to show that the Kurdish Community Centre has, over nearly three decades, established for its members within Toronto a space that attempts to practice a radical feminist politics mirroring our understanding of “the commons”. However, similar to the dilemma of most leftist social movements, struggles with the divide between theory and praxis across space and time mark the centre’s main concerns. Exclusive to the diasporic experince, the Kurdish refugees are faced with trying to navigate their anti-state Kurdish revolutionary struggle within a nation that has provided them refuge. This paper will explore what is understood as “komal” (community) and how have these community centres come to represent the Kurdish social movement in diaspora spaces through refugee lived experiences—particularly the Kurdish woman’s.

Web Service Oriented Architecture Solution for Accounting Information System for SMEs Legal Firm

The need for efficient account management is critical because it gives an additional advantage to strategic information management. Accounting systems for legal firms involving distinct business processes and practices with client records and a reasonably detailed account of its own. Although currently there is a lot of accounting software locally and internationally, however, it is not appropriate to the needs of world-class firms, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), especially in terms of size, scope and cost. Majority of them manage the account by themselves such as manually record keeping or non-integrate system. Therefore, it is not surprising when the legal practitioner SMEs have difficulties in managing their account. Computerized Accounting Information Systems (CAIS @ Law) is proposed as a web service to help SMEs firms in managing financial transactions, performance monitoring firm, statements of cash flows and inflows out customer's account and the auditing process. Business process requirements have been identified, namely using web services oriented architecture through the virtual server. It requires a basic operating system, easy and reduced cost and customizable and easy to operate. This system can provide sufficient material for submission to the Bar Council as proof of the account as well as the use of a variety of clients and SME sector scale. The developed prototype successfully employed by local SMEs and shows competitive features with dynamics customization ability based on the capacity of the firm.

New Radiocarbon Dates Show Early Neolithic Date of Flint-Mining and Stone Quarrying in Britain

ABSTRACTNew radiocarbon (14C) dates suggest a simultaneous appearance of two technologically and geographically distinct axe production practices in Neolithic Britain; igneous open-air quarries in Great Langdale, Cumbria, and from flint mines in southern England at ~4000–3700 cal BC. In light of the recent evidence that farming was introduced at this time by large-scale immigration from northwest Europe, and that expansion within Britain was extremely rapid, we argue that this synchronicity supports this speed of colonization and reflects a knowledge of complex extraction processes and associated exchange networks already possessed by the immigrant groups; long-range connections developed as colonization rapidly expanded. Although we can model the start of these new extraction activities, it remains difficult to estimate how long significant production activity lasted at these key sites given the nature of the record from which samples could be obtained.

Axel's Classroom

Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle (1931) has been much blamed for characterising modernist literature by an aesthetic refusal to engage with society, and for encouraging the narrow formalism of New Critical pedagogy. The recovery of Wilson's own distinctive teaching practice, however, shows that he used the book to teach modernism's development out of coterie symbolism towards social engagement and cultural criticism. Modern literature classrooms like Wilson's functioned not to define literature's purity, but to explore the connections between then-contemporary modernism and all kinds of writing that describes, references, and names the material world in which it was created.

The making of authentic tortellini: Aestheticization of artisanal labor and elite univorism in the case of local food

In this article, I will look at two distinct Bolognese practices within the tortellini commodity circuit as a case in the cultural production of traditional local food. The article is based on ethnographic observation of laboratories in the city of Bologna, interviews with ‘sfogline’ [skilled workers] and with the ‘Dotta Confraternita del Tortellino’, a local association of amateurs responsible for the filing of the traditional recipe in 1974. By analyzing two practices of valorization of one product, I will point out two different simultaneous enactments of aesthetic and moral values. Two contrasting aesthetic framings – the artisanal craftsmanship of skilled workers (sfogline) and the exclusive practices of elite gourmand (Confraternita) – revolve around tortellini. They will allow us to address two main theoretical issues: the construction of elite consumption practices based on aesthetics and the orchestration of aesthetics and moralities at different stages of the social life of a traditional food product.

Shepherds and Shawls: Making Place in the Western Himalayas

Cars weave through the flocks of the Gaddi shepherds as they travel from the plains to high altitude deserts, winding along roads lined with shops selling Kullu shawls. In these ways and more, textiles are the face of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Yet dominant discourses position both the shepherds and weavers of the region as the last hold-outs of endangered traditions. These discourses continue colonial-era assumptions of rural artisans as “primitives” in need of either protection from encroaching industrialization or motivation to modernize. Academic writings, popular visual representations, and government policies also reinforce monolithic identities of herders and weavers. These discourses obscure the diversity of pastoral communities, practices, and products within the state. In this paper, I present vignettes from my ethnographic fieldwork among wool workers in Himachal. The liveliness of these artisans disrupts the assumptions of market-based and governmental livelihood interventions. In place of static and dying tradition, I encounter vibrant patchworks of distinct practices in neighboring valleys, woven together in the movements of shepherds and sheep along grazing routes, of women between their villages of birth and marriage, and of tourists and locals between rural and urban spaces. In place of uneducated artisans reluctant to adopt modern technologies, I find curious villagers eager to engage in skill-share with this anthropological knitter who has brought novel materials, equipment, and techniques from abroad. From the contact zone of our shared work with wool, I draw out the dynamic ways in which these textile artisans continue to create anew the Deep Local within the mountain heights.