Empirical Phenomena Research Articles

‘Gambilng’ Cropping Patterns: Understanding Karo’s Vegetable Farmers Point of View to Cope with Risks and Uncertainties

This paper aims to discuss the coping mechanisms of a community in dealing with risks and uncertainties in new situations that have never been part of their local knowledge. The problem is focused on how the subject (farmer) formulates risk and uncertainty, and shows their coping mechanisms to deal with the complexity of the problem. The cultural approach is an important reference for understanding the empirical phenomenon being studied, combined with the concept of dynamic local knowledge and the concept of risk. Data were collected through fieldwork using an emic view approach with observation-participation techniques as well as in-depth interviews and qualitative data analysis processes. This study concludes that farmers have a risk conception which they call “try it out” on 4 sources of risk (air, pest, price, volcanic ash of Mount Sinabung) and develop coping mechanisms through variations in cropping patterns, even the type of 'gambling' as an opportunity for the complexity of the risks that occur. The risk symbols are also classified into 2 types of distribution; individual and communal. The ability to cope with each type proves the innovative capacity of the subjects, which is related to the dynamics of knowledge and the learning process in their community.

Why Do Corporations Merge and Why Should Law Care?

Mergers and acquisitions are extraordinarily prevalent in the United States, generating massive expenditures every year. However, a serious empirical puzzle lies at the heart of all that activity. That empirical phenomenon’s most remarkable feature by far is that even though it is well established in an extensive literature and implies far-reaching policy consequences, American law ignores it entirely. Generations of researchers have failed to find evidence that merger and acquisition activity generates any lasting benefits for the combining firms’ owners or anyone else. No one seriously doubts that efficiencies of scale or technological integration are real or that acquisitions sometimes achieve them. Still, the evidence strongly implies that they are mostly available in small deals among small firms. While the results are no longer very seriously contested, no one has any conclusive explanation for the several puzzles they pose. This paper comprehensively reviews the empirical literature and works through the policy implications for the major bodies of law it affects. The most important insights are two. First, the evidence should undermine the confidence among scholars of corporation law in the regulatory self-sufficiency of market institutions, on which corporation theory depends so heavily. In particular, a major hope for controlling managerial agency cost—one of the theory’s chief preoccupations—remains the hope that the so-called “market for corporate control” governing hostile takeovers will discipline underperforming managers. The evidence discussed here suggests that the market produces no meaningful benefits at all. The second lesson is simpler. The other major legal regime governing mergers and acquisitions—antitrust—should return to the simpler, pro-enforcement presumptions by which it once more effectively limited market concentration. The fear of jeopardizing pro-competitive gains, on which antitrust merger law has been rendered largely inert, is no longer very defensible. The balance between false positive and false negative should be reset.

AJARAN MORAL TUAN GURU DAN PENGARUHNYA TERHADAP LAKU KEBERAGAMAAN MASYARAKAT MUSLIM SASAK DALAM PERSPEKTIF ISLAM DAN SOSIOLOGI MODERN

This research departs from an empirical phenomenon that occurs in the social environment of the Sasak people on the island of Lombok, that the Sasak Muslim community in carrying out their daily lives (social and religious) always standardizes what is good and what is bad to them. what Tuan Guru has taught them. For this reason, this research will examine what kind of moral teachings taught by Tuan Guru to the Sasak people and how these moral teachings are used as a philosophy of life for the Sasak people. This research is a qualitative field research (field research) as well as library research (library research) is research that makes books that discuss the themes studied as data sources in research. The object to be studied in this research is Tuan Guru, who is used as a patron in living daily life by the people of Lombok in the social and religious dimensions. As for this study, the authors use the hypothetical structure or theoretical framework of Peter L. Berger's social construction (sociology of knowledge) which will then be used to analyze the social cycle of Tuan Guru and Lombok society in general. As for the results of this study, there are several value systems instilled by Tuan Guru in the Sasak people, namely; faith, piety and social values.

TYPOLOGIES OF RELIGIOUS MODERATION IN INDONESIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Typologies of religious moderation implementation in several State Islamic Higher Education and Public Higher Education are an interesting subject to discuss. The typologies can demonstrate the road model of educational institutions in building nationality and diversity. This study aims to analyze the typologies of religious moderation practiced at PTKI and PTU with a focus on studies at the State Islamic University Padang, State Islamic University Bandung, and Bogor Agricultural University. By employing a qualitative descriptive approach based on empirical phenomena and collecting data using interviews, participant observation, documentation, and literature review; the research finds that the typologies of religious moderation illustrate an integrative model of institutional and cultural interpolation, symbolic-paradigmatic schemes, internalization of Pendidikan Agama Islam ( PAI, Islamic Religious Education) subject, mainstreaming schemes of pesantren mahasiswa, and involvement of extra campus organizations. This study implies that there are various practices of religious moderation in higher educational institutions as models for other higher educational institutions.

Doing ethnomethodological ethnography. Moving between autoethnography and the phenomenon in “hybrid studies” of taiji, ballet, and yoga

Based on the authors’ ethnographies in the fields of taiji, ballet, and yoga, this article outlines and reflects the theoretical and empirical scope of what we mean by “ethnomethodological ethnography.” Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EM/CA) have been juxtaposed and pit against various forms of ethnography and vice versa—for example, by criticizing various theoretical underpinnings of ethnographies, viewing EM/CA as a very limited micro-sociological research method, or by critiquing (auto-)ethnography as egocentric, self-absorbed, and ill-equipped to account for the detail and sequential organization of natural occurring actions and circumstances. Contrary to such deliberations, we highlight their common interest in putting empirical social phenomena first. In getting access to and describing what social phenomena consist of, members’ competencies and detailed analysis of recorded data mutually elaborate each other. In this sense, they are potentially not only mutually inclusive but, as we shall argue, the entire field of EM/CA studies depends to some degree on actually doing ethnography. Based on our own ethnographic research, we will then zoom in on the case of taiji practice to highlight the relevance of autoethnography and evaluate how ethnographic reflections of self and body constitute and may foster “uniquely adequate” qualitative research. Ultimately, the aim is to explicate how EM/CA research policies differ from textbook oriented instructions and are better considered as praxeological respecifications of doing ethnomethodological ethnography in particular cases.

Bouncing back in turbulent business environments: Exploring resilience in business networks

This study explores resilience as an empirical phenomenon from the interactive perspective of Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) in order to understand how firms build and manage interdependencies within their business environment to become and remain resilient in the face of turbulent change. The paper reviews managerial literature on resilience and relates it to IMP's basic tenets of firm interaction and resource interdependence within the contexts of business networks and business environment, as well as the concept of social capital. This analytical framework is used to analyse selected vignettes from an in-depth case study of a firm and its business network operating in a turbulent industrial market under chronically uncertain institutional conditions in Russia. This paper presents a context-bound model of firm resilience, explaining how it is achieved in a business network situated in a particularly turbulent business environment, specifically highlighting the role of social capital in accessing resources. The paper contributes to the conceptual base of IMP with a context-sensitive interpretation of resilience, while also nuancing the views of IMP on the function of business networks and the nature of resource interdependencies, as well as problematising the network logic that may encourage the development of resilience through shady means.

The Study of the Ancient Philosophy of "Aboge" in the Embodiment of a Space (Case: Cirebon City, Indonesia)

Cirebon, in the Indonesian province of West Java, is a culturally and historically significant city. The past's culture is still alive and well today. One of these is the Aboge concept of space embodiment, which is still alive and well today. The goal of this study is to describe the Aboge philosophy in the creation of a space, such as a house. The research is carried out by collecting data through field surveys. Interview activities with respondents were carried out in a snowball manner. Field observations were used to record empirical phenomena. The analytical approach employs a qualitative descriptive data collection method, followed by synthesis and conclusions. The findings demonstrate that aboge is an old philosophy that regards humans as integral members of the universe. This old aboge ideology has grown among the Cirebon people as an intangible heritage. Its evolution is passed down from generation to generation through folklore, or

Some Conceptual and Empirical Shortcomings of IIT

The Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT) has generated much excitement inside and outside the scientific community, and seems to many the leading contender for a satisfactory theory grounded in systems neuroscience. It is a bold theory, one that provides plausible explanations for various recognized neuroscientific facts, makes surprising predictions that go beyond current scientific orthodoxy but are potentially testable, and has inspired development of what appears to be an effective technique for detecting the presence of consciousness in organisms incapable of verbal report, such as non-human animals, neonates, and severely brain-damaged adults. Despite these virtues, IIT appears fundamentally flawed: This paper first revisits some key conceptual and technical issues that have been raised previously but remain unresolved—in particular, issues concerning IIT’s concept of “information” and its approach to the “hard problem”—and then focuses on several empirical phenomena that IIT seems unable to handle satisfactorily. These include: 1. cases of multiple personality or dissociative identity disorder in which complex and overlapping centers of consciousness co-occur in single human organisms; 2. the failure of the intense phenomenology of psychedelic states to be straightforwardly reflected in accompanying neuroelectric activity; and, most critically; 3. the occurrence of profound and personally transformative near-death experiences (NDEs) under extreme physiological conditions such as cardiac arrest, in which IIT predicts that no conscious experience whatsoever should be possible. These empirical arguments show that IIT itself is untenable, and they apply also to its physicalist competitors. Scientifically and philosophically respectable alternatives, however, are available.

FMTP: A unifying computational framework of temporal preparation across time scales.

Temporal preparation is the cognitive function that takes place when anticipating future events. This is commonly considered to involve a process that maximizes preparation at time points that yield a high hazard. However, despite their prominence in the literature, hazard-based theories fail to explain the full range of empirical preparation phenomena. Here, we present the formalized multiple trace theory of temporal preparation (fMTP), an integrative model which develops the alternative perspective that temporal preparation results from associative learning. fMTP builds on established computational principles from the domains of interval timing, motor planning, and associative memory. In fMTP, temporal preparation results from associative learning between a representation of time on the one hand and inhibitory and activating motor units on the other hand. Simulations demonstrate that fMTP can explain phenomena across a range of time scales, from sequential effects operating on a time scale of seconds to long-term memory effects occurring over weeks. We contrast fMTP with models that rely on the hazard function and show that fMTP's learning mechanisms are essential to capture the full range of empirical effects. In a critical experiment using a Gaussian distribution of foreperiods, we show the data to be consistent with fMTP's predictions and to deviate from the hazard function. Additionally, we demonstrate how changing fMTP's parameters can account for participant-to-participant variations in preparation. In sum, with fMTP we put forward a unifying computational framework that explains a family of phenomena in temporal preparation that cannot be jointly explained by conventional theoretical frameworks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Nonlinear probability weighting can reflect attentional biases in sequential sampling.

Nonlinear probability weighting allows cumulative prospect theory (CPT) to account for key phenomena in decision making under risk (e.g., certainty effect, fourfold pattern of risk attitudes). It describes the impact of risky outcomes on preferences in terms of a rank-dependent nonlinear transformation of their objective probabilities. The attentional Drift Diffusion Model (aDDM) formalizes the finding that attentional biases toward an option can shape preferences within a sequential sampling process. Here we link these two influential frameworks. We used the aDDM to simulate choices between two options while systematically varying the strength of attentional biases to either option. The resulting choices were modeled with CPT. Changes in preference due to attentional biases in the aDDM were reflected in highly systematic signatures in the parameters of CPT's weighting function (curvature, elevation). In a re-analysis of a large set of previously published data, we demonstrate that attentional biases are also empirically linked to patterns in probability weighting as suggested by the simulations. Our analyses also revealed a previously overlooked link between patterns in probability weighting and response times. These findings highlight that distortions in probability weighting can arise from simple option-specific attentional biases in information search, and suggest an alternative to common interpretations of weighting-function parameters in terms of probability sensitivity and optimism. They also point to novel, attention-based explanations for empirical phenomena associated with characteristic shapes of CPT's probability-weighting function (e.g., certainty effect, description-experience gap). The results advance the integration of two prominent computational frameworks for decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

THE ROLE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN SUPPORTING TOURISM INDUSTRY POST COVID-19 (CASE STUDY YOGYAKARTA TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

The empirical phenomenon of the COVID-19 Virus has caused hardly disaster for all people around the world. Changes from various aspects of the world of the tourism industry, education, and socio-cultural that must run and carry out an innovation strategy in response to the demands of all millennials needs in the pandemic post-COVID-19. The tourism industry has stopped operating for supported government policies to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This research uses qualitative research by observation and searching information, which gives more flexibility in translating information more worthy and hoping the data are relevant to the research objectives and applied sustainably. The support for the development of digital information technology has to be improved fast. In fact, it helps to provide many opportunities for every individual in society to still be able to carry out business activities and innovations online, so as to cover the needs for their survival. Thus, this research is able to get a strategic solution to the impact of post-pandemic COVID-19 on sustainable tourism education development.

A localist turn for defending moral explanations

One influential positive argument for moral realism is the Explanatory Indispensability Argument. A crucial premise of this argument is the explanatory relevance of moral properties. On this premise, moral properties, such as wrongness, rightness, courage, and cowardice, are explanatorily indispensable to some empirical phenomena. Although there has been a lively debate on this premise, one crucial challenge to this thesis, what I call the Scientific Standard Challenge, has not been properly discussed. After explaining this challenge and a related concern, I argue that in response to this central challenge, the proponents of the argument should take what I call the localist turn to defend the explanatory indispensability of moral properties. The localist turn encourages the defenders of moral explanations to be more sensitive to the nature of each moral explanation. For instance, some moral explanations are explanations of social matters, so the standards they need to meet are provided by relevant branches of the social sciences. On the other hand, some other moral explanations are about our psychology, so the theoretical standards those explanations need to meet should come from psychology. I illustrate how this localist project can be conducted in the case of the moral explanation that appeals to injustice. I argue that the field of comparative politics provides the theoretical standards moral explanations of institutional change need to meet. I shall then illustrate how a sophisticated moral explanation can meet those theoretical standards and how this moral explanation can be strong evidence of injustice’s explanatory indispensability.

Shaping Civil Society Leaders: Horizontal and Vertical Boundary Work in Swedish Leadership Training Programmes

Civil society leadership training programmes are a new phenomenon, and they are often overlooked by civil society scholarship despite being linked to the professionalisation of the sector. In this article, we examine 14 Swedish leadership programmes in order to identify leadership ideals in the sector. Drawing on the notion of ‘symbolic boundaries’, we argue that leadership programmes produce horizontal boundaries in relation to other societal sectors and vertical boundaries between leaders of the sector and other members. Together, these symbolic boundaries form a leadership ideal that detaches leaders from their organisation and internal democratic processes, instead depicting leadership as a question of personal characteristics and values. Leaders in the sector need to be authentic and to anchor their leadership in the personal values they hold. Theoretically, our analytical model may prove useful in the study of other empirical phenomena in civil society.

Towards a Theory of Value as a Commons

This essay aspires to explore the contours of a theory of value based on the commons. Its starting point is an understanding of value as a means through which empirical economic phenomena are guided by an underlying structure. Value is understood as the way people’s actions become meaningful to them within a broader social whole defined by the said structure. We approach the digital commons as such a social whole, articulated by distinct value practices, emerging within, yet at odds with, capitalism. We employ interpretivist analysis to identify elements of a theory of value in the digital commons, borrowing from diverse theoretical perspectives, and utilizing the results of original research conducted elsewhere. The conceptualization of value as a commons places value itself in the commons, as a collective agreement, being part of the shared rules and norms guiding collective action. Our aim is twofold. First, to reinvigorate discussions on value in the study of social and economic affairs. Second, to formulate a perception of value that could guide meaningful and sustainable transformations of future social and economic arrangements based on the commons.

Perception and action as viewed from the Theory of Event Coding: a multi-lab replication and effect size estimation of common experimental designs

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) has influenced research on action and perception across the past two decades. It integrates several seminal empirical phenomena and it has continued to stimulate novel experimental approaches on the representational foundations of action control and perceptual experience. Yet, many of the most notable results surrounding TEC originate from an era of psychological research that relied on rather small sample sizes as judged by today’s standards. This state hampers future research aiming to build on previous phenomena. We, therefore, provide a multi-lab re-assessment of the following six classical observations: response-effect compatibility, action-induced blindness, response-effect learning, stimulus–response binding, code occupation, and short-term response-effect binding. Our major goal is to provide precise estimates of corresponding effect sizes to facilitate future scientific endeavors. These effect sizes turned out to be considerably smaller than in the original reports, thus allowing for informed decisions on how to address each phenomenon in future work. Of note, the most relevant results of the original observations were consistently obtained in the present experiments as well.

Beyond financialisation: thelongue duréeof finance and production in the Global South

AbstractOne of the central premises of the literature on financialisation is that we have been living in a new era of capitalism, characterised by a historical shift in the finance-production nexus. Finance has expanded to a disproportionate economic size and, more importantly, has divorced from productive economic pursuits. In this paper, we explore these claims of ‘expansion’ and ‘divorce’ based on a longue durée analysis of the link between finance and production in Senegal and Ghana. As such, we de-centre the dominant approach to financialisation. Seen from the South, we argue that although there has been expansion of financial motives and practices the ‘divorce’ between the financial and the productive economy cannot be considered a new empirical phenomenon having occurred during the last decades and even less an epochal shift of the capitalist system. The tendency for finance to neglect the needs of the domestic productive sector has been the structural operation of finance in many parts of the Global South over the last 150 years. Therefore, one cannot put forward a theory of the evolution of finance under capitalism without taking these crucial historical insights into account.

The Importance of Understanding Deep Learning

Some machine learning models, in particular deep neural networks (DNNs), are not very well understood; nevertheless, they are frequently used in science. Does this lack of understanding pose a problem for using DNNs to understand empirical phenomena? Emily Sullivan has recently argued that understanding with DNNs is not limited by our lack of understanding of DNNs themselves. In the present paper, we will argue, contra Sullivan, that our current lack of understanding of DNNs does limit our ability to understand with DNNs. Sullivan’s claim hinges on which notion of understanding is at play. If we employ a weak notion of understanding, then her claim is tenable, but rather weak. If, however, we employ a strong notion of understanding, particularly explanatory understanding, then her claim is not tenable.

Agency as conversion process

Its importance for understanding social dynamics notwithstanding, the concept of agency is one of sociology’s more controversial ideas. The debate around this concept has mostly been developed at a theoretical level and the empirical studies tend to rely on socio-psychological interpretations of agency as a stable, inner force capable of influencing prospects, decisions, and behavior with little room for change in agency capacity. Social sciences, though, should take a more dynamic stance on agency and highlight the role of the different elements of the social context that can enable or hinder individual agency capacity. Prompted by recent developments of the Capability Approach, this article proposes a framework for the study of agency that defines individual agency as the result of a conversion process of personal resources shaped by conversion factors. Conversion factors operate at micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis, each of which can be oriented toward past experiences, present conditions, and future prospects. This article also seeks to analytically distinguish three types of agency outcome: adaptation, autonomy, and influence. Such a framework will facilitate the transformation of the slippery notion of agency into more tractable empirical phenomena which increase its analytical and critical capacity.

Precise statistical analysis of classification accuracies for adversarial training

Despite the wide empirical success of modern machine learning algorithms and models in a multitude of applications, they are known to be highly susceptible to seemingly small indiscernible perturbations to the input data known as adversarial attacks. A variety of recent adversarial training procedures have been proposed to remedy this issue. Despite the success of such procedures at increasing accuracy on adversarially perturbed inputs or robust accuracy, these techniques often reduce accuracy on natural unperturbed inputs or standard accuracy. Complicating matters further, the effect and trend of adversarial training procedures on standard and robust accuracy is rather counter intuitive and radically dependent on a variety of factors including the perceived form of the perturbation during training, size/quality of data, model overparameterization, etc. In this paper, we focus on binary classification problems where the data is generated according to the mixture of two Gaussians with general anisotropic covariance matrices and derive a precise characterization of the standard and robust accuracy for a class of minimax adversarially trained models. We consider a general norm-based adversarial model, where the adversary can add perturbations of bounded ℓp norm to each input data, for an arbitrary p≥1. Our comprehensive analysis allows us to theoretically explain several intriguing empirical phenomena and provide a precise understanding of the role of different problem parameters on standard and robust accuracies.

Understanding Clustering-Segregating-Reconnecting Dynamics at Multiple Levels and Contexts

The main idea behind this symposium is premised on a series of core observations in social and organizational life: (1) social entities form clusters; (2) clusters result in segregation; (3) segregated clusters are reconnected by bridging ties. This clustering-segregating-reconnecting dynamics is the common mechanism underlying a wide range of empirical phenomena ranging from racial segregation to firm-level geographic clustering and small-world networks. Rather than examining these three dynamics separately, we bring them together and look for a common thread among them to acquire a holistic understanding of the segregating-integrating mechanisms. In this symposium, we bring together scholars who study a variety of empirical phenomena yet share a common interest in illuminating these forces. Each presenter will present and discuss their own cutting research on either clustering or reconnection in a diverse set of contexts: organizational coalitions, firm agglomeration, geographic clusters, racial segregation, and inventor networks. In the end, we highlight a future research direction for understanding the segregating-clustering-reconnecting dynamics from a holistic perspective.