Dominant View Research Articles

Communication as power in South Africa: the proposed Northern KwaZulu-Natal cableway

ABSTRACT This study explores the media portrayal of a highly controversial cableway proposed for the Northern Drakensberg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The project is being driven by the provincial government, specifically, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, purportedly to develop tourism in this poor, peripheral mountainous area. The project has been criticized for a weak consultation process, as well as been flagged it as highly problematic in a feasibility report. The proposed site is unsuitable, as it borders a World Heritage Site, is within a culturally sensitive area, and is prone to highly variable weather, including thunderstorms. A mountain user group, an important stakeholder, voiced serious concerns ranging from economic and environmental issues to statutory and political impacts. Despite this, the project has been portrayed in a variety of ways by the media. This study explores this by assessing 40 media articles released by 12 publications and the South African government, between 2012 and 2023. It was determined that these outlets either portrayed the project in a negative, neutral or positive light. That is, three dominant views were presented by the media: pro-environment anti-cableway, pro-development and pro-cableway, and a neutral stance.

Self‐location in perceptual experience: A top‐down account

Perceptual experience is self‐locating. This claim aligns with our intuitions and is the dominant view in philosophy. To defend the claim, some philosophers have advanced perspectival accounts and others have advanced agentive accounts. Here, I explore tensions between the two accounts and propose a novel, integrative account: the top‐down view, which defends that visual experience is self‐locating in virtue of cognitive maps that modulate visual processing in a top‐down fashion. I assess recent neuroscientific evidence of spatial modulation in the visual cortex and show how it turns existing notions of self‐location upside‐down, shifting the focus from bottom‐up to top‐down processes.

Are there subintentional actions?

AbstractWhen I fiddle with my hair, or adjust my posture, it is plausible that these activities fall well below my cognitive radar. Some have argued that these are examples of ‘sub‐intentional actions’, actions which are not intentional under any description at all. If true, they are direct counterexamples to the dominant view on which the difference between actions and other events is their intentionality. In this paper, I argue that the case for sub‐intentional actions fails. Firstly, I show that the main argument for the sub‐intentionality of these actions has a structural fault. Secondly, I argue that two apparently natural ways to remedy this fail. Thirdly, I argue that one of the main arguments for thinking of the phenomena as actions undermines thinking of them as sub‐intentional. Finally, I argue that a natural defensive move for the defender of sub‐intentional actions actually undermines the theoretical significance of the view. Ultimately, my aim is to show that although the case for sub‐intentional actions seemed both simple and compelling, it is in fact deeply troubled.

Contingentism and fragile worlds

ABSTRACT Propositional contingentism is the thesis that there might have been propositions which might have not have been something. Serious actualism is the thesis that it is impossible for a property to be exemplified without there being something which exemplifies it. Both are popular. Likewise, the dominant view in the metaphysics of modality is that metaphysical possibility and necessity can be understood – in some sense – in terms of possible worlds, i.e. total ways the world could have been. Here, I argue that, given some minimal assumptions, the conjunction of propositional contingentism and serious actualism entails that worlds are modally fragile – every world is ontologically dependent on every proposition. I then show that such a consequence is inconsistent with the claim that propositions true at all possible worlds are necessary.

Care leavers’ journeys into university: A narrative study examined through a Bourdieusian lens

This paper reports the findings of a narrative study exploring the journeys of nine care leavers into university, answering the research question: How do care leavers explain their journeys into university? Care leavers are one of the least represented groups in the university setting. Therefore, examining the journeys of those who do enter the university field is important for understanding how to help raise aspirations and support other care leavers to follow. Recruitment to the study took place across all five universities in the Northeast of England, with nine students from three of these institutions taking part. Individual face to face and telephone interviews were conducted to capture the narratives and these were examined through a Bourdieusian lens, drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, using an experience centred thematic approach. The findings underline the dominant view that university education is culturally desirable and valuable, but also serve to highlight the diversity and complexity of the aspirations and experiences of care leavers’ journeys into university. This research study contributes to the developing evidence base concerned with the educational experiences and trajectories of care leavers, highlighting the need for further research and review of both policy and practice in this area.

Adorno’s negative dialectics and its debt to Nietzsche: Could Nietzsche be the originator of Adorno’s negative dialectics?

The dominant view for the relation between Adorno and Nietzsche is that the latter’s influence on the former, in terms of style and content, is primarily to be found in Adorno’s book Minima Moralia. Contrary to the dominant view, this article takes seriously Adorno’s admission that ‘of all the so-called great philosophers I owe [Nietzsche] by far the greatest debt – more even than Hegel’ and investigates the extent of Nietzsche’s influence in the conception of negative dialectics. It is argued that there could be a significant as well as inconspicuous influence that runs through Adorno’s Negative Dialectics to the point where Nietzsche legitimately be proclaimed the originator of Adorno’s negative dialectics. For those who consider negative dialectics to be the paramount achievement of Adorno’s thought, this claim would be equivalent to the claim that Nietzsche’s most significant contribution in Adorno’s thought is to be found in Negative Dialectics rather than in Minima Moralia.

Language at school: literature or linguistics?

This opinion piece argues that the education system in England suffers from a lack of KAL (Knowledge About Language) which is so extreme that it deserves the name KAL desert because children are taught virtually nothing about the languages that they study, whether English or a foreign language. The dominant view of language sees it merely as a skill, rather than as something interesting which is worth exploring, and the only content taught and tested in language lessons comes from literature rather than linguistics. This desert is to be found not only in our schools but also in our university departments of English and of foreign languages, so future teachers of English and foreign languages are not equipped to teach about language; modern linguistics has very little impact on the school curriculum apart from the Advanced Level exam in English Language. I also show that the present decline in both English and foreign languages actually started about 1970, and may arguably be due in part to the KAL desert. However, I also report evidence from three recent initiatives that a lot of children enjoy exploring language and learning about it, so I suggest that the decline in languages, both English and foreign, might be halted by teaching more KAL. Finally, I suggest a roadmap for achieving this by increasing KAL first in universities and then in schools.

Measuring and understanding contemporary English educational inequalities

Abstract This commentary argues that educational inequality is not one thing but an intricate and complicated amalgam of many different factors. The dominant political view regarding education is one that accepts the efficacy of the market, and does not question the consequences of the preoccupation with performativity and outcomes for learning processes and pedagogy. Furthermore, there has been a general endorsement rather than challenge of social mobility as the main mechanism of social justice in education, an acceptance of private schools, and an influential movement within the discipline that promotes the notion of knowledge as power rather than any strong concern with analysing and understanding the workings of power within education. I will focus on all these trends and their consequences for educational inequalities, taking a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together insights from sociology and psychology as well as education. However, first I will examine the issue of measurement in relation to educational inequalities.

How Partisanship Can Moderate the Influence of Communicated Information on the Beliefs of Agents Aiming to Form True Beliefs

ABSTRACT Partisan epistemology – individuals granting greater credibility to co-partisan sources in evaluating information – is often taken to be evidence of directionally motivated reasoning in which concerns about group membership override concerns about accuracy. Against this dominant view, I outline a novel accuracy-based account of this mode of reasoning. According to this account, partisan epistemology stems from the inference that co-partisans are more likely to be right as they have superior epistemic access to the relevant facts and seek to realize the correct values. I argue that this theory fits better with relevant findings than motivated-reasoning theories of partisan epistemology. Finally, I suggest it has adequate explanatory power vis-à-vis patterns of misinformation belief.

Domestic and Care Work Platforms in Latin America: A Typology Based on Worker Employment Classification

Domestic and care work is a largely feminized sector marked by high levels of informality, low wages, and precarious working conditions worldwide. Over the past decade, particularly in the United States and Europe, new intermediaries have emerged, organizing search and hiring services through digital platforms. More recently, significantly driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, these platforms have proliferated in Latin America, raising questions about the effects of this new form of intermediation in the region. While the dominant global view on digital labor platforms is that they lead to the precarization of working conditions, emerging international literature questions whether they might contribute to the formalization of the sector. This hypothesis is based on recognizing certain characteristics of digital intermediaries that can institutionalize the employment relationship in an activity that largely operates outside of regulation, where direct hiring and personalized negotiation of working conditions prevail. At the same time, the literature warns that certain business models of these platforms contribute to non-formalization and promote hiring practices that deepen precariousness. Within this debate, this article aims to contribute to understanding the intermediation methods of these new actors in Latin America, considering that the employment classification of workers is crucial for their access to rights. To this end, the article presents a regional mapping of digital platforms operating in the sector and proposes a typology based on the business models and types of hiring promoted by the studied platforms.

Black Students’ Experiences and Perceptions of the Library at a Predominately White Institution

abstract: In this study, researchers investigated the library experiences of Black undergraduate students at Penn State in University Park, a predominately white institution. Their goal was to improve services and spaces and to highlight and validate experiences with race, racism, and microaggressions on campus and in the library. Twenty undergraduate students were interviewed and asked to talk about their experiences and how these affected their perception of the University Libraries. Using the lens of critical race theory, which sees race as a socially constructed category used to oppress people of color, this study seeks to present a counternarrative to the prevailing dominant view of the library as a neutral space. Several consistent themes were identified. The themes included, but were not limited to, a low awareness of library services, lack of Black representation in the University Libraries, and a general lack of comfort within the library space.

Linking Developing Country Firms’ Relational Capital to Their Export Performance in Global Value Chains: The Moderating Role of Technological Turbulence

Global value chains (GVCs) involve globally dispersed activities among interdependent firms. They provide an avenue for developing country firms to improve their export performance. A dominant view is that they can accomplish this outcome with close or trusted relationships with more established GVC partners. However, other factors determine how much such relational capital translates into superior export performance. Drawing on an interfirm learning perspective, we explain why the export effects of developing country firms’ relational capital with GVC buyers and suppliers could depend on technological turbulence. We hypothesize a positive relationship between these firms’ export performance and their relational capital with GVC buyers and suppliers. But we expect technological turbulence to weaken this relationship. Based on a sample of 95 Bangladeshi firms in the ready-made garment industry, this quantitative analysis reports evidence that partially supports our predictions. Specifically, we find a positive relationship between these firms’ relational capital with GVC buyers and their export performance. In addition, the higher the technological turbulence, the weaker this relationship. Overall, this research adds to the theory and practice of interfirm learning in GVCs from the perspective of developing country firms.

Happiness and well‐being: Is it all in your head? Evidence from the folk

AbstractDespite a voluminous literature on happiness and well‐being, debates have been stunted by persistent dissensus on what exactly the subject matter is. Commentators frequently appeal to intuitions about the nature of happiness or well‐being, raising the question of how representative those intuitions are. In a series of studies, we examined lay intuitions involving happiness‐ and well‐being‐related terms to assess their sensitivity to internal (psychological) versus external conditions. We found that all terms, including ‘happy’, ‘doing well’ and ‘good life’, were far more sensitive to internal than external conditions, suggesting that for laypersons, mental states are the most important part of happiness and well‐being. But several terms, including ‘doing well’, ‘good life’ and ‘enviable life’ were substantially more sensitive to external conditions than others, such as ‘happy’, consistent with dominant philosophical views of well‐being. Interestingly, the expression ‘happy’ was completely insensitive to external conditions for about two thirds of our participants, suggesting a purely psychological concept among most individuals. Overall, our findings suggest that lay thinking in this domain divides between two concepts, or families thereof: a purely psychological notion of being happy, and one or more concepts equivalent to, or encompassing, the philosophical concept of well‐being. In addition, being happy is dominantly regarded as just one element of well‐being. These findings have considerable import for philosophical debates, empirical research and public policy.

Getting the Recipe Right: How Content Combinations Drive Social Media Engagement Behaviors

Social media has become a key touchpoint in contemporary customer journeys. Consequently, prior studies have investigated how social media content drives outcomes. However, much of this research has focused on the design of individual, isolated content elements, paying limited attention to how individuals respond to their holistic combinations. Drawing on multimodality, this study investigates how combinations of content elements drive social media engagement behaviors (SMEBs), a critical social media outcome. Through a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis with 516 Instagram stories, the findings reveal four content element configurations that can drive high SMEBs: the loud, the informative, the affective, and the relational. These findings contribute to the literature by demonstrating that multiple configurations of content elements can simultaneously drive SMEBs, thus challenging the dominant view in the literature, which has focused on the effectiveness of isolated elements on diverse outcomes.

External task switches activate default mode regions without enhanced processing of the surrounding scene

Abstract Default mode network (DMN) activity, measured with fMRI, typically increases during internally directed thought, and decreases during tasks that demand externally focused attention. However, Crittenden et al. (2015) and Smith et al. (2018) reported increased DMN activity during demanding external task switches between different cognitive domains, compared to within-domain switches and task repeats. This finding is hard to reconcile with many dominant views of DMN function. Here, we aimed to replicate this DMN task-switch effect in a similar paradigm and test whether it reflects increased representation of broader context, specifically of a scene presented behind the focal task. In the Core DMN, we found significant activity for all task switches, compared to task repeats, and stronger activity for switches between rest and task. Although the content of the background scene was attended, recalled, and neurally decodable, there was no evidence that this differed by switch type. Therefore, external task switches activated DMN without enhanced processing of the surrounding background. Surprisingly, DMN activity at within-domain switches was no less than at between-domain switches. We suggest that modulation of DMN activity by task switches reflects a shift in the current cognitive model and depends on the overall complexity of that model.

CSP2023: 7 - Cancer-related pain: a review of patient education to challenge a dominant biomedical view

CSP2023: 7 - Cancer-related pain: a review of patient education to challenge a dominant biomedical view

Individual differences in the use of top-down versus bottom-up cues to resolve phonetic ambiguity.

How listeners weight a wide variety of information to interpret ambiguities in the speech signal is a question of interest in speech perception, particularly when understanding how listeners process speech in the context of phrases or sentences. Dominant views of cue use for language comprehension posit that listeners integrate multiple sources of information to interpret ambiguities in the speech signal. Here, we study how semantic context, sentence rate, and vowel length all influence identification of word-final stops. We find that while at the group level all sources of information appear to influence how listeners interpret ambiguities in speech, at the level of the individual listener, we observe systematic differences in cue reliance, such that some individual listeners favor certain cues (e.g., speech rate and vowel length) to the exclusion of others (e.g., semantic context). While listeners exhibit a range of cue preferences, across participants we find a negative relationship between individuals' weighting of semantic and acoustic-phonetic (sentence rate, vowel length) cues. Additionally, we find that these weightings are stable within individuals over a period of 1 month. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that theories of cue integration and speech processing may fail to capture the rich individual differences that exist between listeners, which could arise due to mechanistic differences between individuals in speech perception.

Serendipity and surprise: A diachronic analysis of <em>International Baccalaureate</em> in the global press 1977-2019

This study examines perceptions of the International Baccalaureate (IB) over five decades to better understand its growing influence on education systems around the world. As part of the global education industry, the IB plays an important role in shaping national public education discourse. Building on previous synchronic analyses that used a corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) approach, the present study conducts a diachronic exploration of the same 28 million word corpus of global press articles to see how perceptions of the IB may have changed over its 55-year history. Trends over time revealed five main shifts in IB discourse: (i) from education to brand; (ii) from concrete curriculum-related lexis to recurring value-laden terms; (iii) from comparison to competition with other national curricula; (iv) from academic qualification to institutional regulation; and (v) from students to IB coordinator. Findings also showed a stable group of collocates that occurred consistently across all time periods, pointing to an “invariant core” (Morley & Partington, 2009) meaning of the IB that provides fresh insight into how the dominant view of the IB as a singular standardized brand may be entrenched and taken for granted.

‘Baby Ban’ and ‘we are not the same’: creative non-fiction dialogue exploring pregnancy and motherhood for a funded Paralympic and unfunded Olympic athlete

ABSTRACT Elite athlete mothers are an under researched population. This is remiss given their increasing prevalence, sporting successes, and importance as role models that challenge dominant and traditional views of pregnancy and women in sport. Indeed, sporting organisations are gradually adopting policies to support elite athlete mothers. That said, elite sport is part of a complex social and economic environment that is likely to shape support available to elite athlete mothers. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to explore the shared and different experiences of elite athlete mothers in and out of UK national funding programmes. Longitudinal semi-structured individual interviews with two elite athlete mothers, one Paralympian receiving funding and one Olympian not in receipt of funding, were conducted. Bengtsson’s 4-stage process was adopted to analyse data through the bioecological model. Data were merged and reorganised into two creative non-fiction dialogues; ‘Baby Ban’ and ‘We are not the same’. These reveal that national funding bodies’ pregnancy and motherhood guidelines, and funding policy were found to conflict, causing confusion and unsupportive experiences. Inconsistencies appeared in the exosystem guidelines and policy, and resulted in differences in communication, pressure, and support that prompted more positive interpersonal experiences for funded athletes than unfunded. Effective communication appeared as crucial for understanding athletes’ needs and to foster a supportive environment, irrespective of funding status. This study was the first to apply a creative non-fiction approach and a bioecological lens to elite athlete mothers’ postpartum experiences and explore the inequalities between those who are funded and unfunded.

An Invisible Impediment to Progress: Perceptions of Racialization in the Nonprofit Sector

Popular beliefs about the nonprofit sector suggest it as a place devoted to the public good on behalf of disadvantaged individuals and groups. This dominant view implies an organization’s success or failure as the result of individual decision-making, capacity issues, or inability to behave like successful organizations. This fuels a view of the sector as race-neutral where all organizations encounter the same challenges and in the same ways. In this article, I use interview data from a 2-year qualitative study of Black-led organizations in Madison, Wisconsin to examine how Black-led organizations perceive racialization in the sector and its impact on their work. Findings suggest that Black-led organizations perceive racialization in the sector across key areas understood as central to an organization’s operation: leadership, funding, data, collaboration, and volunteering. I conclude by calling for a more robust theory of racialization in the nonprofit sector that might vary by place.