Dominant Constellations Research Articles

‘Work!’ Ballroom discipline, faking, and the production of queer freedom

This article gives insight into the ballroom scene in the Netherlands, in which queers of colour find a safe space that enables what they call individual ‘transformation’ towards becoming their ‘free-selves’. During lessons and club events called ‘balls’ their performances are constantly evaluated and corrected, as co-students, teachers, audiences, and judges at the end of the runway exhort them to ‘work’ and ‘fake it’. Understanding ballroom as a form of minoritarian liberalism, this article uses these phrases to explore through what precise operations of self ballroom generates a form of queer freedom. Drawing on post-secular theories of docility, imitation and agency, we show that the cultivation of queer ‘free-selves’ is arduous and requires incessant individual and collective disciplinary labour. By disciplining the body to the outer, scripted performance of alternative gendered ways of being, the inner self changes accordingly. It can become the free and confident self that the body has been taught to imitate and display. Ballroom’s critical force does not lie solely in its queering of dominant constellations of sex and gender, but also in its queering of the operation and meaning of freedom.

Contribution of informal and institutional skills provisions on business inception and growth: evidence from manufacturing and service industries

PurposeCriteria of skills and their schemata have evolved out of historical social practices. Interpretation of social events is guided and constrained by the prevailing rationality which itself reflects the dominant constellation of power. Hence, some argued that informal provision of skills delivery is the base of business growth. Upon the success of informal provision, institutional counterpart unethically grabs the market, kicking off the earlier. Evidences arguably confirmed that the institutional provision of skills delivery contributes to rapid business growth. Business growth is indeed important but not at the cost of exploitation of ethics which is the central focus of this study.Design/methodology/approachGiven the differentiated nature of research questions, multiple techniques are used to collect the data. However, this research adopts the norms of qualitative methods. Both secondary and primary data are used. While secondary data are collected through document reviews, primary data are collected via interviews. In total, 12 industries are sampled and equally distributed into two sectors (manufacturing and services).FindingsFindings show that the professional positions in the manufacturing industries at their inception phase were occupied by non-university graduates who received neither informal trainings nor on-the-job trainings. Over the time, university graduates started capturing the market. This has forced the non-university graduates to accrue a diploma from the universities in order to retain. Those who failed to obtain a university diploma are compelled to leave the sector. In fact, professional positions in service industries at the inception phase were mainly occupied by the university graduates who did not study the relevant subjects from the universities but received training from the informal provision. Later, universities started offering these programmes.Originality/valueA few studies have been published in the area of manufacturing industries especially on garments sector. None covers the paradigm transformation of skills (human capital theory) in garments. The authors also failed to locate a comparative study that maps the contribution of different provisions of skills providers and their paradigm transformations occurred within manufacturing and service industries. Therefore, this project explores the contribution of informal and institutional provisions of skills delivery for the inception and growth of industries by comparing between manufacturing and service industries.

Symbolic Meaning of the Image of the Bird as a Reflection of the Religious and Worldview Notions in the Paleolithic Art

Formulation of the problem. Most of the Paleolithic animalistic drawings not only reproduced the visual images of nature, but also had a symbolic and semantic load and were used as zoomorphic codes of the tiers of the universe. The image of the bird served as a symbol of the upper part in the vertical model of the universe. However, its semantics is not limited to this value and is not an entirely elucidated problem. Its solution should be related to another problem that has been raised in the scientific literature of recent decades and refers to the reflection of the leading religious worldview ideas of a particular period of history in the characterization of the dominant sign of the Zodiac (under which at that time was the point of intersection of the ecliptic and celestial equator during 2150 years). There is no doubt that in the civilized societies with the dominant constellation in which the sun rose on the day of the vernal equinox, ancient astronomers linked a number of concepts and principles that corresponded to the main religious worldview ideas of their time. But the problem of matching the characteristics of the dominant signs of the zodiac with the leading cults in earlier periods of the primitive history remains open. The purpose of the article is to determine religious ideas related to the bird image in the Paleolithic and to investigate whether they were reflected in the characteristics of the zodiac signs that dominated at the time of the emergence of these ideas. Results. The analyzed artifacts show that in the minds of the Paleolithic people the bird was perceived as the only one of natural beings able to overcome the earthly gravitation and ascend to heaven. As a result, its image acquired significance not only as a zoomorphic code of the upper part of the universe but also as the symbol of the soul of man who, after death, ascends to the higher world. In addition, the image of the bird could be combined with the image of the woman because she was considered a bearer of the soul of a child. Religious ideas related to the image of birds were reflected in the characteristics of zodiacal signs dominant at the time of the emergence of these ideas. The earliest evidence of the association of bird with soul and woman as a carrier of children’s souls (the image of a woman-bird on a bone plate from the Hayensenklosterl) falls on 38 millennia B.C., the astronomical era of the zodiac sign of Virgo, positioning the female maternal principle. The most ancient image of a bird as a zoomorphic code of the upper part in the symbolic model of the universe, made on stone from the settlement of Mala Siya, dates back to 33rd–32ndmillennia B.C. This coincides with the time of the Earth being under the zodiac sign of Gemini, positioning the pair principle. The most ancient laying of sculptures of birds in the burial place, as the cult analogues of the soul of the deceased (in the settlement of Malta) testifying to the awareness of the connection of the soul with the spiritual world of the sky, falls on 23rd - 22ndmillennia B.C., on the astronomical era of the zodiacal sign of Aquarius, positioning a special susceptibility to the supernatural spiritual reality. The awareness of the three-tier vertical model of the universe, where the bird played the role of a zoomorphic symbol of the upper zone, occurs in the 16th–15thmillennia B.C., the astronomical era of Scorpio, and is reflected in the characterization of this zodiacal sign which has three hypostases: a snake, a scorpion, and a bird, positions the combination of three tiers of the universe. The reflection of leading religious ideas in the characteristics of zodiac signs before the appearance of astronomy suggests that this phenomenon was a consequence of not a human thought but higher intelligence.Article received 16.04.2019

Constellations of Fragility: an Empirical Typology of States

We present a typology of states that distinguishes constellations of state fragility based on empirical patterns. State fragility is here defined as deficiencies in one or more of three core functions of the state. These functions include violence control, implementation capacity, and empirical legitimacy. Violence control refers to the state’s ability to manage the uses of violence within society. Implementation capacity refers to the state’s ability to provide basic public services. Empirical legitimacy refers to the population’s consent to the state’s claim to rule. Employing three to four indicators per dimension for 171 countries over the period 2005–2015 and finite mixture model clustering, we find six dominant constellations that represent different types of state dysfunctionality.

Different economic and policy perspectives in micro population for sustainable development: A study of the Haor livelihood in Bangladesh

Criteria of development approaches and their schemata have evolved out of historical social practices. Interpretation of social events is guided and constrained by the prevailing rationality which itself reflects the dominant constellation of power. With the course of change of time and modernization, a number of development approaches have taken place especially in the context of developing nations. However, the discourse of the development of a less number of populations who are having geographically disadvantaged, unskilled and physically challenged positions is always seen as critical, since it requires high investment from public subsidy but provides less public and private returns. Factually, without the development of these populations, state mission will be missed out. Considering this is an issue for research in the area of public policy and development studies, this study was conducted in Bangladesh with a scientific adoption of both quantitative and qualitative methods, intending to discover an approach that helps the particular group to develop without hampering the return to the investment made by the state. Although, this study was conducted in Bangladesh, the development approach discovered can be used to many other developing country contexts. Key words: Economic approach, economic model, development, sustainable development, Haor, Bangladesh, policy, governance and regulatory control.

Do developing countries need Education laws to manage its system or are ethics and a market-driven approach sufficient?

The Education sector is one of the fundamental industries as described by the recent concept of “state business,” which is also the most critical player in making other sectors of a state functional. The criteria of Education governance and legislations as well as their schemata have evolved out of historical social practices. The interpretation of social events is guided and constrained by the prevailing rationality which itself reflects the dominant constellation of power. Since its inception, the Education sector has been informally governed by the ethics. Before this, Education especially in developing world was provided on a very small scale through Guru-Shiso provision and was not a major concern of public policy. However, its recent expansion in the early 1950’s has made it a major cause for concern for developing world. The public policies currently available, particularly with regard to governance and regulatory control, are aimed at governing Education as a whole and Education itself lacks adequate rules and regulations. Now the question arises: is public policy, formal and informal governance, as well as regulatory approaches enough to control, monitor and to guide the Education sector while it experiences a numbers of challenges and dynamisms? Or is there a need for Education law? Law is considered as one of the fundamental tools for governance and regulatory control and once it is used; there will be little hope to control the sector with value and ethics. Therefore, the use of law is frequently unwelcome, since it is the method used when no other alternatives are available. With the phenomenal growth and challenges in Education, we need to revisit governance and regulatory control for the Education system. This article examines this issue, with a view at seeking the answer to the question: is there a need for Education laws or are ethics, value, policy and market-driven theory enough? Key words: Law, policy, ethics, value, governance, legislation, Education management, developing world.

Economic crime in Sweden

This article describes and explains the conflicts surrounding economic crime in Sweden between 1975 and 1997. A theoretical approach is employed that views social problems as collective outcomes arising from a clash of interests between different actors. The empirical material comprises public documents and the method employed is a form of qualitative content analysis. The study focuses on the views and positions of the actors concerned in relation to central themes of conflict, such as the phenomenon's definition, extent, victims and harm, causes and countermeasures. Major changes over time have seen the welfare state experiencing competition from the market system as the most prominent category of victimization, and the regulation/control strategy giving way to a strategy of deregulation and self-regulation. The two dominant constellations of actors are an offensive leftist bloc and a more conservative centre-right bloc. These groups represent dominant frames—the social justice/solidarity frame and the deregulation/tax-cut frame—that have served as an ideological infrastructure giving meaning to the economic crime discourse. A clear politicization and polarization have incorporated the economic crime issue into one of 20th-century politics' most well-established conflict patterns. The article concludes with a few comparative impressions based on the limited international literature available in this area.

Cortico-hippocampal relations of electrical activity in rabbits with a polarization-induced motor dominant focus.

1. During the formation of a polarization-induced motor dominant focus, created by the action of a dc anode in the senomotor cortex of a rabbit, the increase in components of the delta-band in the power spectra of area CA3 of the dorsal hippocampus coincides with performance of the motor dominant reaction. 2. In the presence of a dominant focus a new structure of intercentral relations of electrical activity of the sensomotor cortex and of area CA3 of the dorsal hippocampus is formed in the corresponding half of the brain, and is manifested as a decrease of coherence in the delta-band and an increase of coherence in the alpha-band. 3. The formation of a complex structure of coherent connections of hippocampal electrical activity predominantly with the sensomotor, and not with the premotor cortex, is evidence that the hippocampus is included in the motor dominant constellation. The optimum of the dominant focus and its inhibition during coupled activation of symmetrical brain zones are characterized by different interhippocampal coherent connections of electrical activity: At the optimum, the low band of the theta-rhythm is highly coherent, whereas the high band is highly coherent during activation of the nondominant hemisphere.