Distinct Ideas Research Articles

Affective shifts: mood, emotion and well-being

It is a familiar feature of our affective psychology that our moods ‘crystalize’ into emotions, and that our emotions ‘diffuse’ into moods. Providing a detailed philosophical account of these affective shifts, as I will call them, is the central aim of this paper. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of emotion and mood, alongside distinctive ideas from the phenomenologically-inspired writer Robert Musil, a broadly ‘intentional’ and ‘evaluativist’ account will be defended. I argue that we do best to understand important features of these affective shifts–which I document across this paper–in terms of intentional and evaluative aspects of the respective states of moods and emotion. At same the time, the account is pitched at the phenomenological level, as dealing with affective shifts primarily in terms of moods and emotions as experiential states, with respect to which it feels-like-something to be undergoing the relevant affective experience. The paper also applies the intentional-evaluative model of affective shifts to anxiety in more detail, developing the idea that certain patterns of affective shift, particularly those that allow for a kind of ‘emotional release’, can contribute to a subject’s well-being.

Trading on Identity and Singular Thought

ABSTRACT On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests that singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or in inferences that ‘trade on identity’. First, this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other about a kind of process that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Second, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second might help us to better understand singular thought. However, it does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us to understand the nature of information-based thought.

Central Park and its Provision

In Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary, Jonathan Kahana paraphrases Hannah Arendt as follows: ‘Public things do not just appear, in some quasi-natural event, but are the result and legacy of human fabrication, of work’. Through a detailed interpretation of Frederick Wiseman’s Central Park (1990), this essay asks what it means for a film to register and document this fabrication, and how the fact of provision can be made present and meaningful in such a film. It brings together three distinct but related critical ideas – the commons, infrastructure and the everyday – to examine the formal and aesthetics means by which Central Park depicts urban phenomena not as an immanent condition, but rather as something which has deliberately and actively been made available to a public.

Vaižgantas in Lithuanian Schools

The author of the article examines the representation of Juozas Tumas - Vaižgantas’s biography and works in gymnasium literature curricula and textbooks from 1916 to the present day. The focus is on the canonical short story “Dėdės ir dėdienės” [Uncles and Aunts], highlighting its place in gymnasium literature curricula and the semantic-interpretive points of reference in literature textbooks.The research had revealed that Vaižgantas was included in gymnasium literature curricula in the second decade of independence of Lithuania, when the state was already being established and the opportunities for the creation of a national education system opened up. The gymnasium curricula in interwar Lithuania included a number works by Vaižgantas: extracts from “Pragiedruliai” [Cloud Clearing], impressions, journalistic articles, and fragments of the short story “Uncles and Aunts.” Vaižgantas’s stories were studied in lower and upper grades. Only starting in 2002, they were no longer part of the lower secondary school curricula.Even before World War I, excerpts from Vaižgantas’s works entered various reading books (earlier than gymnasium curricula). Soon after the publication of author’s main works, “Cloud Clearing” and “Uncles and Aunts,” Vaižgantas was added in school curricula as an important 20th century Lithuanian author. His reception in literary science and Lithuanian school went hand in hand, as the major academic studies of Vaižgantas’s works appeared after his death. Undoubtedly, the school played the role of preserving or memorializing Vaižgantas’s life and works, and to some extent began the process of canonizing his oeuvre.The ideologies of different political periods led to distinct idea- and value-based points of reference for reading the Vaižgantas’s biography and works, which prevented the creation of a solid approach to perception and interpretation of his oeuvre that was binding on the canon. The obligatory ideological interpretation in the Soviet period overshadowed the aesthetic dimension of writer’s works; even though it was this dimension that had guaranteed constant renewal and change of Vaižgantas’s works in the literary canon.

Island-raised but foreign-made: Lived experiences, transnational relationships, and expressions of womanhood among Cape Verdean migrant women in Greater Lisbon

Cape Verdeans have migrated to many parts of the world. In Portugal, they are prominent demographically and socially. The archipelago of Cape Verde presents a unique combination of colonial past, immigration history and geographical features that complexifies a study of interpersonal and spatial relationships. The present study has two aims. It seeks to illustrate how Cape Verdean migrant women in Greater Lisbon live, define and negotiate their relationships with people and places, given the transnational configuration of contemporary migration. It also attempts to highlight how these women exercise creativity in expressions and assertions of womanhood. Based on fieldwork, I suggest that Cape Verdean migrant women are historically, socially, and culturally situated subjects. Not only do they possess the capacity to forge meaningful relationships, but they also navigate a sea of multiple and overlapping identities and belongings. They reassess and appropriate interpersonal and spatial relationships with reference to distinct ideas and criteria drawn from their migratory experiences. Taken together, their lived experiences reflect on their self-image as women, mothers, migrants and citizens.

From WASD to BLS with application to pattern classification

The single-hidden-layer feedforward neural network (SLFN) exhibits an excellent approximation ability, despite its simple structure. This study examines two neural network models developed based on the general structure of the SLFN, i.e., the weights-and-structure-determination (WASD) neural network and broad learning system (BLS). The BLS and WASD neural networks exhibit many similarities in terms of their structure and algorithm, while BLS incorporates certain distinct ideas that render it an improved version of the WASD neural network. The research described in this paper is the first approach to establish a connection between the BLS and WASD neural networks. Moreover, pattern classification experiments on a foot dataset and several benchmark datasets are conducted using these two kinds of neural network models, and the performance of different models is compared and analyzed.Experimental results show that dividing the feature nodes into one group is the best choice for our foot dataset, and that the cross-layer connectivity and sparse coding of BLS can effectively improve the classification accuracy. In addition, it is shown that the dynamic update algorithm of BLS can improve the accuracy and save a lot of time when updating the model structure, but the final accuracy depends on the initial structure and parameters. Comparative experiments show that BLS achieves 89.12% classification accuracy for the foot dataset, which is the highest among all the demonstrated WASD neural networks and two other SLFN models. Finally, extended experiments on five benchmark datasets show that BLS can achieve satisfactory accuracy on multiple types of datasets, while WASD neural networks are possibly inadequate in processing image datasets in contrast.

The ‘outward/inward-looking principle’: Akìwowo and the sociology of development in Africa

ABSTRACT Akìwowo’s vision and scholarship were very much impacted by his historical context. Most of his work was conducted after independence when the issue of development was upmost in the minds of Nigerian academics. Born in 1922, he was an elder among the post-independence scholars who sought to help move the new nation forward. This paper focuses on the distinct ideas Akìwowo brought to this endeavour. It was the area in which I had the most discussions with him and in which I collaborated on a publication. I focus on (1) the context within which his ideas developed, (2) his perspective on indigenous sociologies and (3) his output. Akìwowo’s concerns in the 1970s are still with us as is clear from Burawoy’s Presidential address at the International Sociological Association meetings in Japan, 2014, and the ongoing work of sociologists and social scientists from other regions of the world.

Creating psychometric scales for perceptual assessment of fruit juices’ refreshing and thickness attributes

Persons look for beverages to satisfy thirst (refresh) and feel fulfilled (thick). However, refreshing and thickness are concepts that lack a measurement instrument that captures an accurate judgment of consumers' perceptions. This research aims to propose a tool to assess consumers' refreshing and thickness expectations of fruit juices. Items were developed through a two-stage qualitative-exploratory study, followed by a quantitative study describing the scale's composition using an Item Response Theory approach. Hence, we suggest a set of items to consider when measuring both concepts from a perception task. Moreover, results show that thickness and refreshing are distinct and independent ideas. We provide a theoretical contribution defining each construct and recognizing the attributes that best describe refreshing and thickness for five different fruit juices. Our methodological contribution is creating a scale for each of the concepts. Practically, developing a thickness and refreshing scale is useful for product developers and marketers who expect to satisfy consumers' needs for soft drinks.

Deeds, Reward, and Divine Mercy: Jewish Views and Pauline Passages

Abstract The present article deals with a strand of ancient Jewish theological notions (in rabbinic literature, Fourth Ezra, and elsewhere) and Pauline ones. In these Jewish passages—sharing similar religious sensitivities and using similar terminology—human works stand vis-à-vis God’s mercy and his benevolence (צדקה). In some passages these categories turn out to be in tension in view of human sinfulness, since no human being can comply with the rigid standards of observing God’s commandments, resulting in the emphasis of divine mercy. Paul’s view, according to which “works (of the law)” and “grace” are mutually exclusive, is a radical intensification of this tension. Paul’s distinct ideas display the inherent dynamics of contemporary Jewish notions and reveal the inner tension within Jewish thought of the late Second Temple period, a tension that continued in Jewish writings (including rabbinic literature) after the Second Temple’s destruction.

Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body by Anton Wilhelm Amo

Reviewed by: Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body by Anton Wilhelm Amo Yual Chiek Anton Wilhelm Amo. Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body. Edited and translated by Stephen Menn and Justin E. H. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 252. Cloth, $74.00. Replete with insightful historical commentary on the life of Ghanaian-German Enlightenment philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo, this fascinating volume by Stephen Menn and Justin Smith (henceforth "MS") offers a detailed study of two of Amo's most important works. In addition, the book offers a careful study of both the intellectual and political context in which Amo wrote and the reception of his work in the centuries following. The book is divided into four parts. The first part houses a substantial introduction, while the second part is devoted to notes on the texts and translations of Amo's dissertations. The third part contains the Latin text alongside MS's English translations of Amo's Inaugural Dissertation on the Impassivity of the Human Mind (Impassivity). The fourth part houses Amo's Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of Those Things That Pertain Either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body (Distinct Idea), with, likewise, the Latin text and MS's translation. Section 1 of the introduction begins with a brief general overview of Amo's life and philosophical achievements. MS then take the reader through a discussion of the complex and rapidly changing social status of Africans in eighteenth-century Germany. In this section, MS discuss not only Amo but other notable Africans in eighteenth-century Germany and Europe. Here we find an examination of Amo's life, including a careful analysis of documents [End Page 686] bearing on the circumstances surrounding Amo's arrival in Germany, his identification in Germany, and the financial difficulties that befell him as a result of the death of Duke Ludwig Rudolph of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, the last of his patrons. In this section too is a discussion of his entrance into the University of Halle, his studies at the University of Wittenberg, and his tenure at the University of Jena. We are also introduced to Amo's two principal works: De Jure Maurorum in Europa (On the Right of Moors in Europe), and Tractatus de Arte Sobrie et Accurate Philosophandi (Treatise on the Art of Philosophizing Soberly and Accurately). Section 2 gives an in-depth discussion of the history of the reception of Amo's life and work. MS trace the reception of Amo, from the mention of him by eighteenth-century white antiracists like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach to twentieth-century African and African-American writers like Kwame Nkrumah and William E. B. Du Bois, and the use of his work in twentieth-century debates about the delineation of African philosophy (49). MS argue convincingly that attempts to cast Amo as an African philosopher are mistaken: Amo was an early modern German philosopher. As such, Amo's philosophical views should be assessed against the intellectual context in which they were written (44–51). Section 3 treats of the political and intellectual climates at Halle and Wittenberg, the two institutions Amo was most closely affiliated with, by giving a fascinating study of the complex interplay between the more conservative Pietists and the liberal advocates of Enlightenment sensibilities in eighteenth-century Protestant Germany. MS trace the development of the two camps, starting from the founding of Wittenberg and Halle universities, to well-known controversies between Leibniz and Wolff and Pietistic thinkers like Georg Ernst Stahl. Considered "one of the most prominent Wolffians," Amo was affiliated with Leibnizian-Wolffianism (30). MS emphasize, however, that the two schools were not clearly delineated sects, and that antagonism was often confined to individual thinkers. Section 4 adumbrates the conventions and purposes of eighteenth-century dissertations, and their differences with modern-day dissertations. Sections 5 and 6 are devoted to a discussion of ancient and modern debates on action, passion, and sensation, as well as an explanation of the arguments of Impassivity and Distinct Idea. It is in this section that MS offer their interpretation of Amo's dissertations. MS situate both of Amo's dissertations in the modern debates about action/passion and...

The transformation of the authorized approaches to assessing the effectiveness of state and municipal property management in modern Russia

The article presents the results of a study of changes in the methodological (government-approved) approaches to the problem of the efficiency of state and municipal property management in the course of Russian reforms. Four stages are identified from the beginning of the 1990s to the present, each of them being characterized primarily by its own distinctive conceptual ideas regarding privatization, the scale of the public sector, and state participation in the economy. These conceptual approaches are reflected in specific regulatory documents and in official statistical indicators, the development goals of which and the directions for their improvement have been analyzed by the authors of the article.

Mullā Sadrā’s Criticism of Suhrawardī in Context of the Distinction Between Being and Quiddity

Bu makalede, Sühreverdî’nin Ḥikmetü’l-İşrâḳ kitabında mâhiyetin/özün asaleti düşüncesini ispatlamak için ortaya koyduğu kanıtlar, Kutbüddin-i Şîrâzî ve Şemsüddîn Şehrȗzî’nin yorumları da dikkate alınarak incelenmiş ve Molla Sadrâ’nın Ḥikmetü’l-İşrâḳ kitabına yazdığı talikât çerçevesinde dile getirdiği eleştiriler ele alınmaya çalışılmıştır. İbn Sînâ, Aristotelesçi varlık ve mahiyet ayrımını son sınırlarına kadar geliştirmiş ve bu ayrımı İslâm felsefesinin ana konuları arasına katmıştır. Sühreverdî, İbn Sînâ’ya yaptığı itirazlarla meseleyi birincil tartışmalı konular kategorisine çıkartmış; Molla Sadrâ ise Ḥikmetü’l-İşrâḳ kitabına yazdığı talikâtta Sühreverdî’nin bazı eleştirilerine cevap vermiş ve tartışmanın İbn Sînâ lehine dönmesinde etki sahibi olmuştur. Özellikle varlık ve mahiyetten hangisinin asalet sahibi olduğu fikri net bir şekilde Mîr Dâmâd ve öğrencisi Molla Sadrâ tarafından ortaya konmuş ve sonraki dönemlerde tartışma bu çizgide devam etmiştir. Sühreverdî ve şârihleri İşrâkî sistemi inşa ederken Meşşâî felsefeyi birçok açıdan eleştirmiştir. Bu eleştirilerin İslâm felsefesinin gelişmesinde çok önemli katkıları olduğu aşikârdır. Bunun yanında Sühreverdî, yeni bir sistem kurduğunu iddia etmiş olsa da İşrâkîliğin Meşşâî alt yapıyı kullandığı ortadadır. Örneğin Meşşâî felsefedeki varlık mahiyet tartışması İşrâkîlikte dikey ve yatay nûrlar öğretisine dönüşmüştür. Sühreverdî, varlık kavramı yerine nûr kavramını koymuş, varlık mahiyet ayrımının sadece zihinsel bir ayrım olduğunu kabul etmiş ve dış dünyada asaletin mahiyetlere ait olduğunu iddia etmiştir. Buna göre varlık kavramı, dış dünyada karşılığı olmayan zihinsel tümel kavramlardan birisidir. Ayrıca yine bu kavram, Meşşâîler tarafından cisimleri de içine alacak genişlikte kullanıldığına göre metafizik hakikatleri ortaya koyamayacak kadar gerçeklikten uzak bir kavramdır. Çünkü Tanrı, nûr ve melek gibi metafizik varlıklar cisimler gibi karanlık nesnelerle aynı payda altında toplanamazlar. Sühreverdî ve şârihleri, varlığın asaletinin kabul edilmesi durumunda vacip ve mümkün ayrımının anlamsızlaşacağını, mümkün mevcutların varlığından bahsetmenin aslında mevcudun tekrar hâsıl olması anlamına geleceğini ve teselsüle düşülmeksizin mümkünlerin mevcut olamayacağını ileri sürmüştür. Molla Sadrâ’nın Sühreverdî’ye yönelik eleştirilerinin İslâm felsefesine önemli katkıları olmuştur. Ona göre, “varlığın dış dünyada karşılığı olmayan zihinsel bir kavram olduğu” iddiası, varlığın hakikatini kavrayamamaktan kaynaklanır. Sühreverdî’nin varlık kavramının özel konumuna dikkat etmeksizin onu, dış dünyada karşılığı olmayan diğer tümel kavramlarla karıştırması, aslında aynı değerlendirmenin nûr kavramı için de yapılabileceğini görememesine neden olmuştur. Hâlbuki dış dünyayı var kılan varlığın, hakikati yönünden herhangi özel bir mahiyete sahip olmaması gerekir ki böylece bütün diğer mahiyetlere gerçeklik kazandırabilsin.Molla Sadrâ, varlığın asaletini kabul durumunda vacip mümkün varlık ayrımının ortadan kalkacağı iddiasının varlığın teşkîki yapısını anlayamamaktan kaynaklandığını ileri sürmüştür. Yani ona göre, varlığın nihai gerçeklik olması onun zuhur ve sudûrunun farklı seviye ve mertebelerde gerçekleşmesine engel değildir. İşte mümkün mevcutlar bu mertebeli varoluş seviyelerini ifade ederler. Bir mevcudun varlığı ne kadar güçlü, şiddetli, zengin, önce ve mükemmel ise onun imkân yönü yani mahiyeti de o miktarda azalır.Sadrâ’ya göre mahiyetler özdeşlikleri cihetinden varlık ve yoklukla nitelenemezler. Dış dünyadaki zuhurları yönünden ise mahiyetler, varlığa bağlı olarak ancak ortaya çıkabilirler. Bu anlamda mahiyetlerin kendilerine ait ontolojik bir statüsü yoktur. Bu kabul, varlığın tekrar tahsili ve teselsülün ortaya çıkma iddialarını geçersiz kılar. Sadrâ’ya göre, “varlığın asaletinin kabulü durumunda varlığın varlığı ve onun da başka bir varlığı gerektireceği yönündeki” iddia, varlığın kendisinin başka bir şeye ihtiyaç duymayacak biçimde kendi başına kâim olduğunu anlamamaktan neşet eder. Zihinde gerçekleşen teselsülün kesilmesi için ise herhangi bir noktada zihinsel itibarın sona erdirilmesi yeterlidir. Kısacası Sadrâ’ya göre tek bir varlık vardır ki o da varlığı kendinden ve zorunlu olandır. Mümkünler ise Zorunlu Varlık’ın zuhur ve sudûrunun bir sonucu olarak bağıl durum ve hallerden başka bir şey değildir. Şu hâlde varlık asıl, mahiyetler ise varlığa bağlı görece durumlardır.

Simmlowska koncepcja mody a ubiór współczesnych seniorek i seniorów. Podejście badawcze

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the undiscussed and yet very interesting issue of fashion and the clothing of senior citizens. The issue is analyzed here in relation to Georg Simmel’s concept of fashion and specifically his idea of imitation and distinctiveness inscribed in the fashion system. Simmel seems to indicate that the social order determined by fashion is more often respected by women than by men. Therefore, the issue of fashion and clothing is discussed in relation to the gender of the individual. Age is also important. In her own research among people aged 60 and over (a diagnostic survey and interviews), the author of the article sought answers to the following questions: what do seniors think about the clothing of today’s older people? Do they think they dress fashionably – in the sense of following the spirit of modern times, which promotes youth? What determines the way seniors dress in contemporary Poland? The respondents were aware of a change in how seniors dress today and view the change positively. The fashion behavior of seniors is more often approved by women than by men and by younger seniors rather than older ones.

Introductory biology undergraduate students' mixed ideas about genetic information flow.

The core concept of genetic information flow was identified in recent calls to improve undergraduate biology education. Previous work shows that students have difficulty differentiating between the three processes of the Central Dogma (CD; replication, transcription, and translation). We built upon this work by developing and applying an analytic coding rubric to 1050 student written responses to a three‐question item about the CD. Each response was previously coded only for correctness using a holistic rubric. Our rubric captures subtleties of student conceptual understanding of each process that previous work has not yet captured at a large scale. Regardless of holistic correctness scores, student responses included five or six distinct ideas. By analyzing common co‐occurring rubric categories in student responses, we found a common pair representing two normative ideas about the molecules produced by each CD process. By applying analytic coding to student responses preinstruction and postinstruction, we found student thinking about the processes involved was most prone to change. The combined strengths of analytic and holistic rubrics allow us to reveal mixed ideas about the CD processes and provide a detailed picture of which conceptual ideas students draw upon when explaining each CD process.

Diagramming Sabbateanism

Abstract Scholars have only recently started to study ilanot (lit., “trees”), the cosmographic genre constituted by the wedding of kabbalistic diagrams—the trees of the metonymic name—and large parchment sheets. Differences of kabbalistic opinion naturally found expression in these “maps of God.” The Sabbatean messianic movement of the 1660s and its prolonged and impactful afterlife produced, among other things, a number of distinctive kabbalistic opinions. For the most part, these innovations were tightly integrated with the speculations associated with “Lurianic” Kabbalah based on the teachings of R. Isaac Luria (1534–1572). The great Lurianic ilanot were designed and circulated in the second third of the seventeenth century, not long before the emergence of Sabbateanism, but their golden age was “the long eighteenth century”—a British coinage for roughly 1660–1830—and thus coincided with the profound and pervasive absorption of Sabbatean elements in precisely those sectors that produced and consumed these artifacts, including nascent Hasidism. The deceptively simple question at the heart of this article is this: What would it mean to diagram Sabbateanism? Or to put it another way, what would constitute a Sabbatean ilan? How might distinctive Sabbatean ideas have found diagrammatic expression in this genre? Once identified as such, what do Sabbatean ilanot tell us about the meanings of Sabbateanism in the contexts within which they were produced?

Bloodworlds

In 1952, a joint Indo-Australian team undertook one of the first genetic studies of the Chenchu people of southern India. Long thought of as one of the oldest populations on the subcontinent and a potential link between South Asian and Aboriginal Australian populations, the study hoped to illuminate the deeper demographic histories of both India and Australia. Coming as it did immediately on the heels of decolonization, it also signaled a new era of scientific collaborations after empire. But what exactly does “collaboration” entail? How far do agendas and imaginations actually cohere in such a “collaboration”? The various collaborating actors in the Chenchu project held very distinctive ideas and agendas. Keeping blood at the center, this article explores those distinctive “bloodworlds” that were mobilized in the course of the Chenchu study. The published text of the study was a potpourri of these different bloodworlds; equally important, however, was the bloodworld this potpourri could not accommodate: the bloodworlds of Chenchu wizards. Not a world engendered in some pure or isolated “tribal culture,” but a magical bloodworld created through historical interactions with Shaivism and Shi’ism. This was a bloodworld eminently recognizable by the Chenchu themselves, but incapable of accommodation in the published study on them. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.

Case Study of a Blind Computer Graphics Student's Online Interactions

Previous research points that computer-supported collaborative learning is an educational approach that suits blind students, because they have high verbal capacity. The authors believe that both sighted and blind students may gain from knowledge sharing, transactions on collaborative tasks, and being aware of distinct cognitive aspects, ideas, and activities, due to different behaviors, perceptions, and backgrounds. To unveil new insights concerning this assumption, they present an exploratory case study that provides an analysis of one blind undergraduate computer graphics student's online interactions during collaborative learning. They approached a qualitative technique to analyze results obtained from the blind student participation and interaction in discussions. The analysis of a blind student interactions, participation, and interaction patterns revealed emotional and deep relationships that implied in profitable interactions, knowledge construction, and better blind and sighted students' performance.

The Diversity of Economic Nationalism

ABSTRACT The growing political salience of economic nationalism after the 2008 financial crisis has strengthened arguments made in pre-crisis political economy (PE) scholarship about the enduring importance of this ideology and the need for more study of the economic significance of nationalism and national identities. Scholarship on this topic suffers, however, from some blindspots that inhibit understanding of the two most systemically important strands of this ideology in recent years: those associated with American populist conservatism and Chinese developmentalism. Both can be described as neomercantilist forms of economic nationalism, a form most commonly identified with the ideas of Friedrich List. But List’s ideas are much less useful for understanding them than the distinctive ideas of two other historical thinkers – Henry Carey and Sun Yat-sen – who have been quite neglected in PE scholarship on economic nationalism. These empirical blindspots are related to two deeper conceptual ones: insufficient recognition of the diverse origins and content of neomercantilist economic nationalism and, in the case of Sun’s neglect, the Western-centric nature of PE’s intellectual history. If these blindspots can be overcome, PE scholars will be better positioned to interpret these – and other – diverse varieties of contemporary economic nationalism.

Resources, capabilities and public value creation in a healthcare IT project: an action research study

PurposeThis paper reports on an action research study based optimization project related to healthcare IT implemented on the Faroe Islands. The aims were to study what constitutes value in the public healthcare setting by applying and activating existing resources in the organization, hence answering the overall research question: How can a resource-based view (RBV) improve benefits management (BM) practices?Design/methodology/approachBy applying a RBV to findings from an action research study of an optimization project of an integrated health information system (HIS), a framework of capabilities needed in a public HIS setting to create value was developed.FindingsThe theoretical contribution is a framework explaining how BM practices and, hence, value can be interrelated in a public healthcare IT system.Research limitations/implicationsThe study shows the need for academic IT professionals to structure and facilitate value generation, especially in the form of creating an innovative and learning environment in the form of an action research based project.Practical implicationsThis study suggests which actors should be motivated and developed in order to ensure value in healthcare IT projects. Having value creation in mind, the model could have potentially broad applicability in a variety of healthcare IT settings.Social implicationsThe findings leads to better usage of public healthcare resources.Originality/valueThe present research studies real problems in a real setting, thus providing distinct ideas on how to improve public value creation by direct engagement of researchers.

Conjuring the Criminal State: The “State-Idea” in Post-Conflict Reconstruction and International Statebuilding

AbstractA central challenge of post-conflict recovery is the reconstruction of state institutions, which often emerge from war destroyed or otherwise unable to carry out core administrative activities. But scholarship on international peacebuilding and post-conflict politics tends to focus narrowly on the functional aspects of the state, the state-system, to the neglect of another critical dimension: the state-idea, or its symbolic and normative authority. How do internationally backed institution-building efforts shape the ideational foundations of the state following conflict? Drawing on original interviews and archival research from postwar Guatemala, this article illustrates how, paradoxically, postwar peacebuilding and rule of law initiatives that sought to strengthen the capacity of state institutions simultaneously contributed to the discursive construction of the state as a criminal organization. Specifically, the United Nations’ International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), in seeking to combat state-based criminal structures and bolster institutions, transformed long-held conceptions of Guatemala's “weak” or “failed” state into an alternative vision of the state as a powerful complex of clandestine, predatory networks, and practices. In conjuring the state as a criminal organization that appropriates the formal organs of political power for illicit ends, this international statebuilding initiative generated a coherent and durable state-idea that belies key advances in institutional capacity and the rule of law. Overall, this article contributes to growing debates about the unintended, deleterious effects of international statebuilding efforts by demonstrating how distinct ideas of state power come to fill the void between state capacity and legitimacy.