Exclusive Perspectives Research Articles

Partitioning product footprint changes into yield and environmental improvement effects: toward life cycle assessment of agricultural system transitions

PurposeRecent agricultural policies require the complementary use of area-based and product-based environmental indicators to assess agricultural system transitions because both alleviating productivity-environment trade-offs and increasing food value chain sustainability are crucial in successful policy decisions. However, there is a dilemma due to the exclusiveness between representing trade-offs in the transition paths and connecting the calculated results to the assessment of downstream food products. Here, this paper proposes a procedure to resolve the dilemma.MethodsThe dilemma-resolving procedure is to partition product footprint changes into yield and environmental improvement effects in the same unit as the product footprint. After specifying a typology of transition toward agricultural sustainability, the partitioning procedure was developed on the basis of mapping from a two-dimensional space (area-based indicators) to a one-dimensional space (product-based indicators). To demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the partitioning procedure, this paper applied it to the three categories of agricultural system transitions, including those to organic agriculture, integrated production, and production systems involving new agricultural inputs such as microbial inoculants and biostimulants, using the cases of the impact category of global warming (carbon footprint). The transition dataset (matched pairs) was constructed using a bibliographical survey.Results and discussionThe results indicate that the partitioning procedure is effective and has good performance: (1) it was able to apply to all the cases in the dataset and to classify all the cases into six specified transition types; (2) it was differentiable between the three transition categories; and (3) it was able to explain the features of each transition category. These results imply that the perspective on agricultural system transitions can be integrated with the perspective on food value chains. Therefore, productivity-environment trade-offs during the research and development phase of agricultural technologies can be linked to environmental mitigation practices along the food value chains.ConclusionsThe results imply that, by applying the partitioning procedure, the recent agricultural policy framework contained two exclusive perspectives can be explained consistently. Every stakeholder related to agricultural policy making should be explicit about product-environment trade-offs during agricultural system transitions, as well as about food value chain sustainability. The partitioning procedure facilitates such stakeholder practices.

Toward a More General Understanding of Bohr's Complementarity: Insights from Modeling of Ion Channels.

Some contemporary theorists such as Mazzocchi, Theise and Kafatos are convinced that the reformed complementarity may redefine how we might exploit the complexity theory in 21st-century life sciences research. However, the motives behind the profound re-invention of "biological complementarity" need to be substantiated with concrete shreds of evidence about this principle's applicability in real-life science experimentation, which we found missing in the literature. This paper discusses such pieces of evidence by confronting Bohr's complementarity and ion channel modeling practice. We examine whether and to what extent this principle might assist in developing ion channel models incorporating both deterministic and stochastic solutions. According to the "mutual exclusiveness of experimental setups" version of Bohr's complementarity, this principle is needed when two mutually exclusive perspectives or approaches are right, necessary in a particular context, and are not contradictory as they arise in mutually exclusive conditions (mutually exclusive experimental or modeling setups).A detailed examination of the modeling practice reveals that both solutions are often used simultaneously in a single ion channel model, suggesting that the opposite conceptual frameworks can coexist in the same modeling setup. We concluded that Bohr's complementarity might find applications in these complex modeling setups but only through its realistic phenomenological interpretation that allows applying different modes of description regardless of the nature of the underlying ion channel opening process. Also, we propose the combined use of complementarity and Complex thinking in building the multifaceted ion channel models. Overall, this paper's results support the efforts to establish a more general form of complementarity to meet today's complexity theory-inspired life sciences modeling demands.

Muslim female subjectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: disrupting the binary of the religious and the secular in Pakistan

ABSTRACT Muslim female subjectivity in Pakistan has mostly been defined through the dualistic perspectives of secular and religious standpoints. This paper, however, aims to examine and foreground the agentive efficacy of subjectivity, which is neither exclusively secular nor religious. Mohsin Hamid’s novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia presents a nuanced literary depiction of the Muslim female subject position. By taking the ‘lived’ experiences of major and minor female characters in fiction as case studies, this paper argues that the subjectivity of Muslim women is interstitial, rather than exclusively religious or secular. It argues that exclusive perspectives restrict and reduce Pakistani Muslim women’s agency and that negotiated identity built through performativity somewhere in a third-space is more agential, workable and socially accepted. Such negotiated identity can bring about transformation in women’s gendered subjectivity. This paper advances feminist discourse in Pakistan by foregrounding the epistemology of performativity and third-space to ascertain the efficacy and workability of Muslim women’s agency.

Systematic review of STEP-NC-based inspection

Closed-loop inspection manufacturing (CLIM) and computer-aided inspection planning (CAIP) have increasingly been evolved into a size method that can be used to look at fashions in the industrial area with a number of methods. CAIP is hastily carried out in the gadget and will become an indispensable phase of the production system. Numerous scientific findings that tackle the theme from exclusive perspectives are accompanied by CLIM and CAIP in the measuring process. A systematic overview of these heterogeneous methods can be considered vital for CLIM to become aware of the ways in which CAIP can be used in your personal context. Thus, this systematic review of literature aims to analyze current inspection article and use of CLIM in CNC machines, assess heritage research to create a steady taxonomy, and provide a framework for forthcoming CLIM lookup in accordance with CAIP in the desktop gadget to enhance product quality. The consequences of this study provide a comprehensive taxonomy and a define in terms of the advanced features of this emerging technology. Articles on CAIP and CLIM, system-based technology, implementation of STEP/STEP-NC, and feature-based technology were discussed. As a result, various CLIM lookup findings regarding the machining machine tended to the center of attention rather on the VISION/aspects of the ISO14649-based computing device and further on inspection process planning perspectives, as well as factors indicating CLIM in technologies. This review paper will strengthen this study by supplying a deep analysis of the present facts to shut down the hole and lengthen the current literature.

The Transnational/Translational in Italian Studies

ABSTRACT Playing on Apter’s ‘translational transnationalism’ and on the tension between the national and global, this article asks what it means to think translationally and transnationally in the context of Italian studies. The three authors explore both the ‘transnational’ and ‘translational’ by focusing on issues of methodology and shifts in objects of analysis. They present the translation/reception of Dante as a particularly apposite case study in the complex interplay between the two concepts and discuss the questions that the large project, ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages’ (2014-2017), has sought to address. The relational link between the national and the transnational is explored in ways that challenge antithetical or mutually exclusive perspectives, shoring up their ‘contrapuntal’ tension. By observing the interplay between the national and the transnational/translational, this article explores the negotiation of identity and diversity which underlies all forms of cultural production and/or exchange and which is at the centre of pedagogical practice in Modern Languages.

International Political Economy of Labour and Gramsci’s methodology of the subaltern

Gramscian International Political Economy scholarship has predominantly focused on studying capital’s power to subsume labour under different hegemonic projects. Various Autonomist Marxists have recently sought to fill such gap by proposing a disruption-oriented International Political Economy. However, the article argues that it mirrors domination-oriented International Political Economy approaches for overemphasising labour’s disruptive potentiality and for paying little attention to the limitations that labour faces in its own empowerment. To escape from the unilateralism of these two mutually exclusive perspectives, the article reviews Gramsci’s ‘Methodology of the Subaltern’ in order to propose a Gramscian or strategic International Political Economy of Labour. Hence, the article shows that it is possible for International Political Economy scholars to study uneven capitalist development as the result of the agency of (dis)organised labour as well as to account better for the emancipatory potentiality of working-class strategies in specific contexts.

International Political Economy of Labour and Gramsci’s methodology of the subaltern

Gramscian International Political Economy scholarship has predominantly focused on studying capital’s power to subsume labour under different hegemonic projects. Various autonomist Marxists have recently sought to ‘voice labour’ by proposing a disruption-oriented International Political Economy. However, this article argues that such an approach mirrors domination-oriented International Political Economy approaches by overemphasising labour’s disruptive potentiality and by paying little attention to the historical limitations that labour faces in its own empowerment. To escape from the unilateralism of these two mutually exclusive perspectives, Gramsci’s ‘Methodology of the Subaltern’ is reviewed in order to propose a Gramscian or strategic International Political Economy of Labour. Hence, this article shows that it is possible for International Political Economy scholars to study uneven capitalist development as the result of the agency of (dis)organised labour and thereby to better account for the emancipatory potentiality of working-class strategies in specific contexts.

Law, democracy, and the state of emergency

The renewed scientific discussion about the state of emergency has led to many theoretical endeavours, which attempted to find appropriate descriptions of the exceptional phenomenon. However, because of this enormous diversity, their object-related connection threatens to become blurred. An essential reason for this lies in the interdisciplinary entanglement of the discourse. The aim of this article, therefore, is to formulate a meta-theoretical regulatory proposal to compare these competing legal-philosophical and political-theoretical explanatory approaches and to prove its suitability on the basis of the dispute between Otto Kirchheimer and Carl Schmitt in the last days of the Weimar Republic. The two authors act as representatives of two mutually exclusive theoretical perspectives, leading to significant differences in the descriptive and evaluative assessments of the state of emergency.

Measuring and reporting campus sexual assault: Privilege and exclusion in what we know and what we do

AbstractAs awareness of and national attention to campus sexual assault in the U.S. has grown, efforts to study and respond to the problem have increased. While these efforts are to be applauded, they have yet to fully challenge or correct the privileged and exclusive perspectives and assumptions regarding student experiences of campus sexual assault. Specifically, the experiences of white, heterosexual, cisgender, middle‐class, and American citizens who are students at primarily elite, traditional colleges and universities are taken as the norm, while experiences of students of color, LGBTQ students, and international students are neglected. Here we examine two primary sources of information regarding campus sexual assault: large‐scale self‐report surveys and individual reporting to authorities. We first review the content of select large‐scale surveys used to gather and measure self‐reported data from students on the scope, prevalence, and character of campus sexual assault, and identify areas of omission and neglect regarding marginalized students. We then review literature on barriers to reporting to authorities specific to these groups that further exclude them from our understanding of the problem. We end with recommendations for improved efforts to study and respond to campus sexual assault that are more inclusive and comprehensive.

الغش أو عدم الغش: دليل على اتخاذ القرارات الأخلاقية من دراسة للشباب العربي

How do young people make judgments about what is right and ethical? The challenge of cultivating ethical citizens is one that every community faces, yet it has received only limited research attention, with almost no work on this subject having been done in the Arab world. This paper summarizes much of what we know about how youth engage in ethical decision- making, with an emphasis on educational settings in which students are confronted with the question of whether to cheat or not. Its broader aim is to begin a more systematic and evidence- based discussion of the factors that influence ethical decision-making in the Middle East, which may have important implications not only for education but also for political and economic development. The paper first provides an overview of research on dishonesty, particularly cheating in schools and the question of whether cheating is ever justified. Second, it provides a conceptual outline of strategies that may be used to combat cheating and other forms of unethical behavior. The classification of strategies presented is based on differing (but not mutually exclusive) perspectives on the reasons for dishonesty in any given situation, including perspectives that emphasize external costs and benefits, social norms, self-awareness, and self-deception. Third, the paper summarizes findings from an original study of the attitudes and ethical choices of a sample of Arab students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A path forward in the debate over health impacts of endocrine disrupting chemicals

Several recent publications reflect debate on the issue of “endocrine disrupting chemicals” (EDCs), indicating that two seemingly mutually exclusive perspectives are being articulated separately and independently. Considering this, a group of scientists with expertise in basic science, medicine and risk assessment reviewed the various aspects of the debate to identify the most significant areas of dispute and to propose a path forward. We identified four areas of debate. The first is about the definitions for terms such as “endocrine disrupting chemical”, “adverse effects”, and “endocrine system”. The second is focused on elements of hormone action including “potency”, “endpoints”, “timing”, “dose” and “thresholds”. The third addresses the information needed to establish sufficient evidence of harm. Finally, the fourth focuses on the need to develop and the characteristics of transparent, systematic methods to review the EDC literature. Herein we identify areas of general consensus and propose resolutions for these four areas that would allow the field to move beyond the current and, in our opinion, ineffective debate.

International business and trust

There is academic consensus that trust facilitates economic cooperation since it helps to mobilize resources, acts as a mechanism to cope with uncertainty, diminishes transaction costs and reduces system complexity. In cross-cultural management, trust has been acknowledged as a facilitator of economic relations. Nevertheless, its nature, definition and sources are still debated from antagonistic and sometimes exclusive perspectives. Additionally, trust research has been pointed out as acontextual, which limits trust understanding across the cultures that interact in a global economy. This article attempts to enrich this debate by analysing the sources of trust within a cross-cultural case study: the Sino-Chilean economic exchange. Using a qualitative methodology, and based on empirical research, the article examines the contextual setting in which the Sino-Chilean relationship is embedded and proposes sinicization as an alternative source for trust, understood here as a rationally driven, restricted form of cultural adaptation adopted by the weakest party in the relationship, which is able to embrace different perspectives on trust building.

The skeleton flight apparatus of North American bluebirds (Sialia): Phylogenetic thrushes or functional flycatchers?

To better understand ecological traits of organisms, one can study them from two, not necessarily mutually exclusive perspectives: how the traits evolved, and their current adaptive utility. In birds, foraging behavior and associated morphological traits generally are explained by a combination of adaptive and phylogenetic predictors. The avian skeleton and more specifically, the skeletal flight apparatus is under well-known functional and phylogenetic constraints. This is an interesting area to partition the relative contributions of adaptive correlated evolution and phylogenetic constraint to species clustering in morphological space. A prediction of convergent evolution is that nonphylogenetic morphological clustering is a characteristic of ecological similarity. We tested this using representatives of North American birds from two clades, one with a mixture of foraging modes (Turdid thrushes, solitaires, and bluebirds) and one with more canalized foraging behaviors (Tyrannid flycatchers). Nine characters on the skeletal flight apparatus from 19 species were used to characterize the morphological space and test for ecomorphological clustering. When body size and phylogeny are considered, the three bluebird species and Townsend's solitaire cluster with the ecologically similar flycatchers rather than with their phylogenetic close relatives. Furthermore, sit-and-wait foragers tend to exhibit relatively long distal elements and a long keel while active ground foragers have deeper keels and a longer humerus. Distal elements, expected to be relatively shorter and more bowed in the flycatchers and bluebirds, were actually longer and narrower. A reduction of distal element mass may be more important for facilitating maneuverability than surface area for insertion of wing-rotational musculature.

Equality and academic subjects

A recent national curriculum guide for upper secondary schools in my home country, Iceland, requires secondary schools to work towards equality and five other overarching aims. This requirement raises questions about to what extent secondary schools have to change their curricula in order to approach these aims or work towards them in an adequate way. Textbooks on curriculum theory commonly invite their readers to choose between different perspectives that are presented as mutually exclusive. From one perspective, they tend to emphasize academic subjects, to the exclusion of perspectives that focus on improvement of society or individual development. There are, however, reasons to doubt that organizing a curriculum emphasizing general aims such as equality excludes using academic subjects as its principal building blocks. In this paper, I argue that if we take equality seriously as an aim of education, we should indeed emphasize academic school subjects, just as advocates of liberal education have done for a long time. Focusing on subjects and focusing on aims, such as equality, are therefore not mutually exclusive perspectives but two aspects that must coexist in any reasonable and sound pedagogy.

Values, Knowledge and Solidarity: Neglected Convergences Between Émile Durkheim and Max Scheler

Within the purview of the sociology of knowledge Durkheim and Scheler appear among its important inaugurators theorizing the social foundations of knowledge, seemingly from mutually exclusive perspectives. Scheler’s phenomenology of values and community is often juxtaposed with Durkheim’s attempt to integrate values in reality, represented by the social configuration of organic solidarity. This essay argues that the affinity between Scheler and Durkheim deserves reexamination. Means employed for pursuing this aim include a reconsideration of how values mediate reality, but, above all, an attempt to show that both thinkers converge on their principal normative goal. This is no other than a global community of solidarity which both Scheler and Durkheim, albeit through different trails, visualize as the culmination of value-ethics. While Durkheim pursues this goal through a systematic exposition of the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity, late Scheler’s view of ‘the age of adjustment’ discloses a normative approach on modernity at odds with the then prevalent Kulturkritik. This ideal helps to rehabilitate Scheler and to approach the notions of sociality, the sociology of knowledge and the configuration of the ‘encompassing person’ through Durkheimian lenses. The essay concludes with a brief appraisal of theoretical gains drawn from this newly lit affinity.

Rhetorical Features of Green Evangelicalism

Christian evangelicals and environmentalists are often viewed as holding irreconcilable and mutually exclusive perspectives. We argue that examination of the discourses of environmentalism and an emerging evangelical Christian discourse that we call “green evangelicalism” shows there are more grounds in common than is typically supposed. Using a conceptual framework that integrates Dryzek's ideas about how to map environmental discourses with Burke's concepts of terministic screens, orientation, and identification, we locate the discursive parameters of a distinctly green evangelicalism as it is manifested in response to the problem of climate change. Comparing the discursive map of green evangelicalism with charts of other environmental discourses enables us to locate rhetorical opportunities and obstacles for generating identification among otherwise distinctive orientations toward environmental problems.

(Visual) Disability – from exclusive perspectives to inclusive differences

By introducing the concept ‘inclusive differences’ of disability this paper suggests that disability is the outcome of historically specific, embodied human and non‐human configurations fabricated within the conduct of everyday life. Inclusive differences question the attempt given by exclusive perspectives that try to divide analytically, conceptually or politically ‘disability’ a priori into an individual (natural) bodily impairment or a purely socio‐cultural attributed disability. Applying the concept of inclusive differences, neither the domain of ‘nature’ nor ‘society’ can function as a disability’s self‐explanatory force. Rather, inclusive differences highlight the connection between human and non‐human relations that make up the different enabling and/or disabling scenarios of societal realities. Drawing on the practices of blind people in a visual culture this paper discusses related specificities of inclusive differences.

Teaching Supportive Psychotherapy to Psychiatric Residents

"Mr. A" is a 45-year-old married teacher pursuing a doctorate in education at a local university. Although he completed the course work without difficulty, he feels "stuck" and unable to move ahead with his dissertation. In this setting, his chronic, low-grade depression has worsened and now includes profound feelings of humiliation, despair, and hopelessness, near-panic-like anxiety, insomnia, and trouble functioning at his teaching job. His wife urges him to get help after he begins to talk about an impulse to jump from their balcony. Mr. A went through a period of depression, heavy drinking, and narcotics addiction in his early 20s, after a sports-related injury forced him to drop out of college. He was referred to a psychiatrist but felt the psychotherapy had been "too openended" and "a waste of time and money." With his wife's support, he managed to stop drinking and using narcotics and has remained sober ever since. He went on to become a valued high school teacher and coach, receiving several medals for excellence in teaching. Later he was awarded a full scholarship to an Ivy League university, where he earned a master's degree in education. Asked about any other events in his life that may have contributed to his current depression, Mr. A mentions that his father was a heavy drinker who used to chase him around the house with a loaded gun when drunk. The father was diagnosed with cancer shortly after Mr. A started the doctoral program and died after a brief illness, during which Mr. A lived with and helped care for him. The second-year resident to whom Mr. A has been assigned admits to her supervisor that she is already having a "sinking feeling" about Mr. A. He says he is too depressed to talk about his future, much less make any important decisions about his life. He is also reporting debilitating side effects from the antidepressant she has prescribed and has warned her that he is "sensitive" to most drugs. The resident describes him as "not just stuck, but sticky-I feel like I'm wading in molasses." She finds herself wanting to end sessions early but tends to run late because of his last-minute reports of alarming physical symptoms or fleeting thoughts about "blowing his brains out." The resident has noticed that although Mr. A is relentless in his protestations of worthlessness, he likes to wear a sweatshirt from the Ivy League school he attended, and he enjoys acting as an auxiliary therapist in groups-"a pretty good one, too." The resident adds ruefully, "I guess he just needs support, but we haven't had that course yet. What do you suggest?".

Discursive Practices in Disciplinary and Professional Contexts

Analysis of professional discourse, which often forms the basis of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) theory and practice, has often been constrained by its focus on textual characteristics, paying little attention to professional practices in specific disciplinary, institutional, or organizational contexts within which these discourses are embedded. This has led to a divide between discourse and genre analysts, on the one hand, and organizational analysts and professional communication theorists, on the other, even though all of them seem to pursue similar objectives. One of the consequences of such mutually exclusive perspectives is that they often take only a partial view of discursive, professional, institutional, and organizational practices. Just as professional communication scholars pay less attention to language use, similarly ESP practitioners do not view professional practices critically. Organizational theorists, in a similar fashion, tend to ignore discursive practices to focus entirely on text-external factors for the study of organizational behaviour. This paper argues that discursive practices within specific professional cultures have multiple perspectives and hence their analysis requires integration of discursive practices with disciplinary, professional, organizational and institutional practices, which are often realized through specialized discourses. The main purpose of the paper therefore is to review recent work in some of these diverse to propose an integration of text-internal as well as text-external perspectives on the analysis of professional discourses, so that we can have a more informed and comprehensive view of the discursive realities of disciplinary and professional practices.

Cultural Conflict as Anamorphosis: Conceptual Spaces and Visual Fields in the Roman De Perceforest

The Perceforest (c. 1344) describes a fictional period of British history in which Britain is ruled by Greek kings who are often in conflict with resistant elements among the people. Warring factions struggle to impose their conceptual map of the kingdom, one that will define 'inside' and 'outside' in terms favourable to themselves. These conflicts express themselves in part through mutually exclusive visual perspectives whereby each side contrives to be invisible to the other, or to distort the visual or conceptual field that the other side inhabits. The analogy of anamorphosis allows for analysis of this visual and conceptual fragmentation of the kingdom along the fault-lines if gender, class and ethnicity.