Explanation Of Concepts Research Articles

Phenomenological Approach to Consumption Society Analysis: E. Husserl and J. Baudrillard

The notion of “consumption society” was introduced by J. Baudrillard in 1970, when he published the book of this name, so well-loved by researchers. Today, “impression society” or “experience consumption society” is getting more and more widespread along with the “consumption society” concept. Consumption of impressions means a certain industry producing impressions. This paper aims to identify the link between J. Baudrillard’s concept of “consumption society” and key explanatory concepts in the sphere of public production and consumption that existed in his time. The paper poses and answers the question of potential sources of Baudrillard’s research approach. It is argued that, despite his “leftist” aesthetics, J. Baudrillard was pretty far from C. Marx. His view of the purpose of consumer value is explained from E. Husserl’s perspective of the phenomenological methodology. We find attention to the context of contemporary economic ties in works by G. Simmel, specifically, in his The Metropolis and Mental Life. The paper ends with the conclusion that while C. Marx’s contemporary society, with all the significance of production processes, with its obvious commodity orientation and large-scale crises caused by commodities overproduction, still included lacunae not directly associated with the world of capital – family, religion, ethnicity, lifestyle – the “consumption society” seizes these, too.

Evidence for Cultural Variability in Right-Wing Authoritarianism Factor Structure in a Politically Unstable Context

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) has been a central explanatory concept and predictor of sociopolitical and intergroup attitudes over the last decades. Research indicates RWA is formed by the subdimensions of authoritarianism, traditionalism, and conservatism. The objective of this study was to assess the cross-cultural validity of this three-factor model in a politically unstable context where an alternative factor model was observed. Data from four Brazilian samples (Ntotal = 1,083) were assessed to test whether a four-factor model (with conservatism split) identified in Brazil recently was better fitting than the three-factor model. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and 3-year longitudinal evidence confirmed the four-factor model is the best RWA structure in the Brazilian context and that only the pro-trait conservatism items indexing submission to authority have adequate psychometric properties. Implications for future RWA propositions are discussed.

Getting caught between discourse(s): hybrid choices in technology use at work

Winner (1977, Autonomous Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 77), in defense of technology determinism, cautioned against ‘throwing out the baby with the methodological bathwater’. His concern was that in so doing STS research would underplay, or be unable to account for, the effects that technology change does have on society. We similarly now find that powerful explanatory concepts like ‘structural‐discourse’ have been largely expunged from the contemporary STS analytical lexicon; with consequences, we believe, for our ability as researchers to interpret and explain the rapid change we see in contemporary work places. In this paper we make the case for the continued use of a strong structural‐discourse theory alongside other emergent forms of discourse. We show how workers, responding to conflicting and different types of discourse, produce varying hybrid responses—actions that react to and combine elements of emergent and structural discourses. Our work considers the implications of this finding for contemporary STS theory.

Children's Intuitive Theories of Academic Performance.

How do children reason about academic performance across development? A classic view suggests children's intuitive theories in this domain undergo qualitative changes. According to this view, older children and adults consider both effort and skill as sources of performance (i.e., a "performance=effort+skill" theory), but younger children can only consider effort (i.e., a "performance=effort" theory). Results from two studies (N=240 children aged 4-9) contradict the claim of theory change, suggesting instead that children as young as 4 operate with an intuitive theory of academic performance that incorporates both effort and skill as explanatory concepts. This work reveals that children's understanding of academic performance is more continuous across development than previously assumed.

Ideas, Institutions and the World Bank: The Social Protection and Fragile States Agendas

AbstractIdeas and institutions are frequently used as explanatory concepts regarding policy development and change. There is an on‐going debate as to the explanatory weight that each should be afforded; Weiss and Carayannis (2001) identify a spectrum of opinions, with ‘institutionalist' approaches that embed ideas within institutionalist frameworks at one end, and ‘constructivist' approaches which argue that ideational concepts should be dis‐embedded from institutional considerations at the other. Drawing on 43 interviews with senior World Bank staff and a documentary analysis, this paper traces two policy agendas – social protection and fragile states – to identify the institutional and ideational features of the World Bank that a developmental agenda must navigate to achieve prominence in the Bank's work. It finds that the success of a policy agenda is determined by whether the ideas fit with a macro‐ideational dominant paradigm, and identifies several institutional features such as the incentive structure and lending mechanisms that influence an agenda's success.

Shadow organizing and imitation: new foci for research

PurposeShadow organizing refers to the emergence of parallel arrangements that sit alongside and imitate mainstream or conventional ways of organizing. It can be a response to challenges that require new ways of working without abandoning what is valuable about conventional arrangements. However, the processes through which shadow organizing is accomplished are not well understood; there is a need to go beyond traditional notions of mimicry and metaphor. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThis paper demonstrates how a Tardean approach to imitation can address this gap. It deploys imitation as an explanatory concept, based on contemporary readings of Tarde, as well as understandings of organizing as an unfolding process. Child and Family Centres in Tasmania (Australia), are used as an example of shadow organizing, delivering integrated health and education services in an emerging parallel arrangement.FindingsThe analysis highlights an imitation dynamic which is far from straightforward mimicry. Rather, it comprises repetition and generation of difference. This dynamic is conceptualized in Tardean fashion as three patterns: the imitation of ideas before expression; the selective nature of imitation; and insertion of the old alongside the new.Originality/valueThe paper moves beyond metaphors of shadow organizing, and understandings of shadow organizing as mimicry. Conceptualizing imitation in an alternative way, it contributes fresh insights into how shadow organizing is accomplished. This enriches and expands the conceptual apparatus for researchers wishing to understand the betwixt and between of shadow organizing.

Household Support and Social Integration in the Year After Prison

The conventional household is typically conceived as a fixed residence where married adults pool incomes and raise their children. In poor communities, however, households are often residentially unstable, fluid in composition, and economically insecure. Men and women who leave prison face extreme disadvantage, and their households are likely to shape social integration after incarceration. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from the Boston Reentry Study, this article describes the complex living situations of men and women newly released from prison and proposes a multifaceted concept of household support. Regression analysis with an index measuring household support shows that living in a stable well‐resourced household just after prison release is associated with reduced risks of a new criminal charge, social isolation, and unemployment six to twelve months later. More than just a social unit for sampling and enumeration, the analysis suggests the household is an explanatory concept that can account for the social integration of poor, minority populations often detached from formal sources of economic and social support.

Does Media Literacy Help Identification of Fake News? Information Literacy Helps, but Other Literacies Don’t

Concerns over fake news have triggered a renewed interest in various forms of media literacy. Prevailing expectations posit that literacy interventions help audiences to be “inoculated” against any harmful effects of misleading information. This study empirically investigates such assumptions by assessing whether individuals with greater literacy (media, information, news, and digital literacies) are better at recognizing fake news, and which of these literacies are most relevant. The results reveal that information literacy—but not other literacies—significantly increases the likelihood of identifying fake news stories. Interpreting the results, we provide both conceptual and methodological explanations. Particularly, we raise questions about the self-reported competencies that are commonly used in literacy scales.

You Don't Bend It Like Beckham if You're Female and Reminded of It: Stereotype Threat Among Female Football Players.

Originally, the stereotype threat effect – poorer performance due to a fear of fulfilling a negative stereotype about one’s group – was demonstrated for cognitive tasks (e.g. Steele and Aronson, 1995, or Steele, 1997). Drawing on the widespread stereotype of women being unable to play football we experimentally tested (N = 80) whether a respective threat affected female football players’ goal scoring precision, i.e. a complex and demanding motor task. Those participants who were reminded of the stereotype scored significantly less hits than those not reminded. Additionally, deviations from the instruction during task execution (e.g. shooting from another distance than demanded or using the wrong foot) were recorded. Stereotype threat did not affect this comparatively more cognitive task of following instructions correctly. In order to explore underlying mechanisms of the observed stereotype effect, several potential mediators, e.g. measures of cognitive interference, or collective identification, were tested. None emerged as an unquestionable link between threat and motor performance. We discuss, however, why collective identification – in comparison to cognitive demand – appears to be the more promising explanatory concept.

Do you only have yourself to blame? A meta‐analytic test of the victim precipitation model

SummaryThe current meta‐analysis sought to evaluate the empirical evidence for the victim precipitation model, which has become an increasingly popular yet controversial theory in the organizational sciences. We did so by testing the prediction that some victim dispositional traits contribute to or provoke experiences of mistreatment. We additionally provided preliminary examinations of two distinct conceptual explanations underlying the empirical relationships between victim personality and mistreatment. Finally, we examined the support for the situational antecedents of experienced mistreatment to compare the relative evidence for each of these dominant theoretical explanations. Results for the tests of the victim precipitation model showed that only victim negative affectivity was consistently related to experienced mistreatment. Examinations of the explanations for the relationships between victim personality and victimization showed relatively weak support for the notion that certain employees are more likely to perceive mistreatment and for the proposition that certain employees are mistreated because they are also more likely to engage in mistreatment. Finally, the situational predictors of mistreatment were all supported, and a test of relative importance revealed that the situational antecedents accounted for more variance in mistreatment than the victim dispositional traits. Implications for the theoretical understanding of the origins of mistreatment are discussed.

PERSPECTIVES OF DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICAL TOURISM IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION:ANALYSIS OF COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT BY METHOD OF DATA ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS

Explanatory concepts of internal, exit and entrance medical tourism have been given. The data environment analysis of Russia and other countries-participants of the market of medical tourism has been carried out. The key directions of international medical tourism have been defined. Based on the analysis, the conclusions about the prospects of Russia’s participation in this market have been made, recommendations for improving the system of medical services to foreign citizens have been given. The key perspective directions of medical tourism to Russia have been determined.

Changes in attitudes and willingness to use co-teaching through pre-service teacher training experiences

ABSTRACT Although the benefits of co-teaching are emphasised in the literature, implementing it is still problematic. Teacher training is necessary to change attitudes and encourage its use, but training alone is not enough. Opportunities to practice it must exist to appreciate the benefits for both pupils and teachers. This study focuses on pre-service training. Three groups of student teachers were created: one group received conceptual training only, another received conceptual training and the opportunity to co-teach, and a third group received initial conceptual training and explanations on its use from a member of the second group. An explicative sequential mixed design was chosen, which combines a quantitative study, conducted on a pre-post basis to compare test results on attitude and willingness to use co-teaching, with a qualitative study to analyse co-teaching student-teachers’ perceptions in both their own learning experience and the learning experience of the pupils. The results show that those who received only conceptual training modified their attitudes to a lesser degree and curiously, those in the group receiving explanations from a peer improved the most.

Should we study political behaviour as rituals? Towards a general micro theory of politics in everyday life

Political behaviour research is divided into several explanatory approaches. They have in common that they disregard, to varying extents, the social bases of their explanatory concepts. To fill this void, the present article explores the theoretical advantages of applying Randal Collins’s ritual theory to political behaviour. The central claim is that any cognitive factor, such as interests, values, norms or identities has to be infused with emotional resonance in concrete social interaction in order to become a relevant motivation for political behaviour. Based on this argument, the article develops four testable propositions and discusses how they relate to existing approaches. The article concludes that ritual-based emotions are a unified motivational basis for political behaviour, which help understand which cognitive factor becomes politically relevant in a specific situation. The theoretical discussion is complemented with suggestions of how to study political rituals empirically.

Policy entrepreneurship in developing countries: A systematic review of the literature

SummaryWhat can be learned from two decades of studies on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries? Policy entrepreneurship is a rapidly evolving analytical concept. A growing number of studies exploring public policy in developing countries use policy entrepreneurship as an explanatory theoretical concept. However, a substantial part of this research relies on qualitative case study analysis, lacking a comprehensive overview of the concept of policy entrepreneurship. This paper conducts a systematic review of the literature on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. A total of 47 papers addressing policy entrepreneurship in the developing world, published between 1993 and 2017, have been analysed. The purpose and contribution of this paper are to offer a clearer picture of policy entrepreneurship in the developing world by concentrating on two aspects. First, we describe the characteristics of the studies on policy entrepreneurship in the developing world. Second, we analyse such studies, identifying the lessons that can be drawn on the phenomenon of policy entrepreneurship in the developing world. We conclude with an agenda for future studies, examining new theoretical, methodological, and empirical opportunities to advance the understanding of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries.

When Anthropocene shocks contest conventional mentalities: a case study from Cape Town

ABSTRACTUnder conditions of protracted reduction in supply and heightened uncertainty, one of the notable responses to the Cape Town drought (2016–2018), was the proliferation of ‘water resilience’ in public and private discourses. Resilience was employed as an explanatory concept and governing tool, signalling a professed transition in the municipality’s understandings to an altered climate episteme – or what they have called, a ‘New Normal’. This article focuses on how public framings of resilience were used by the City of Cape Town to signal divorce from conventional approaches to climate and water. It contrasts conventional framings of a Holocene world, with those of a posited ‘mentality of the Anthropocene’ in order to elaborate this ostensible shift in mentality. Although this case study illustrates how public governors are finding utility in resilience as a term to facilitate explanation of their operating context, decisions and responses, contested and transitional mentalities elaborate why the municipality initially failed to anticipate, perceive and respond the drought. This article thereby highlights the cognitive tensions and practical challenges of transition for professionals patterned by conventional techno-managerial approaches, to a way of thinking more in line with reflexive and adaptive approaches anticipated to be necessary in an Anthropocene world.

The computational stance in biology.

The goal of this article is to call attention to, and to express caution about, the extensive use of computation as an explanatory concept in contemporary biology. Inspired by Dennett's 'intentional stance' in the philosophy of mind, I suggest that a 'computational stance' can be a productive approach to evaluating the value of computational concepts in biology. Such an approach allows the value of computational ideas to be assessed without being diverted by arguments about whether a particular biological system is 'actually computing' or not. Because there is sufficient difference of agreement among computer scientists about the essential elements that constitute computation, any doctrinaire position about the application of computational ideas seems misguided. Closely related to the concept of computation is the concept of information processing. Indeed, some influential computer scientists contend that there is no fundamental difference between the two concepts. I will argue that despite the lack of widely accepted, general definitions of information processing and computation: (1) information processing and computation are not fully equivalent and there is value in maintaining a distinction between them and (2) that such value is particularly evident in applications of information processing and computation to biology. This article is part of the theme issue 'Liquid brains, solid brains: How distributed cognitive architectures process information'.

Understanding Cultural Fidelity

Abstract A leading idea of cultural evolutionary theory is that for human cultures to undergo evolutionary change, cultural transmission must generally serve as a high-fidelity copying process. In analogy to genetic inheritance, the high fidelity of human cultural transmission would act as a safeguard against the transformation and loss of cultural information, thus ensuring both the stability and longevity of cultural traditions. Cultural fidelity would also serve as the key difference-maker between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, explaining why only us humans, with our uniquely high-fidelity transmission capabilities, are capable of evolving and sustaining complex traditions. But what does it mean for cultural transmission to be more or less faithful? This article has two objectives. The first is to clarify the meaning and uses of the concept of cultural fidelity and to evaluate their explanatory import. I argue that cultural evolutionists use several fidelity concepts (episodic, propensity, and generalized fidelity), concepts that I will define and clarify. The second objective is to challenge the explanatory significance of a general notion of fidelity (generalized fidelity) as being both explanatorily meaningful and operationalizable. I conclude that if fidelity is to serve as an explanation of the key differences between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, then the concept will have to be redesigned and rely on different assumptions. 1Introduction2Generalized Fidelity2.1The need for an explanatory concept of fidelity2.2Three conditions for a general notion of cultural fidelity3Episodic Fidelity 3.1Measuring episodic fidelity3.2The relevance problem3.3Explanatory pluralism3.4The incommensurability of fidelity metrics4Propensity Fidelity5Fidelity as an Explanatory Concept 5.1Explaining cultural stability5.2Explaining human distinctiveness6Conclusion

Customer trust recovery: An alternative explanation

The importance of trust and the prevalence of organizational trust transgressions have led to a growing number of studies investigating trust recovery. The extant literature is characterized as being almost entirely trust violator-centric, involving trust violator-centric explanations of trust recovery. Given the importance of both the trustee and trustor in the trust relationship, we ask: How does trust recovery work when the process is considered from the trustors' perspective? Using grounded theory methodology involving customers who experienced trust recovery in an organization, we find that customers’ trust recovery starts with their observation of initial trust repair activities, which helps them in their sensemaking about the organizational transgression. After this, trust recovery becomes a more trustor-driven process, involving perceived personal harm and forgetting the trust violation. This study contributes to extant theory and practice. First, it extends the extant literature by identifying forgetting as an important explanatory concept in the customer trust recovery process. Second, it shows that trust recovery is a complex process involving tensions and requiring a balancing act. Third, the study shows that approaching the trust recovery phenomenon from a non-trustee perspective holds potential for significant theory development about trust recovery.

“Are We MEN!!”

While not directly deploying “vulnerability” as an explanatory concept, scholarship on US slavery often turns upon an originary narrative of Black masculine vulnerability. The typical narrative pro...

Levitation? Yes, it is possible!

During July 2018, a group of top high school Spanish students attended a summer scientific camp at the University of Seville. The topic of the project was magnetic levitation. During the one-week-long stay, the students investigated several possible ways of achieving stable levitation. These included diamagnetic levitation, use of superconductors, induced current levitation, and the toy Levitron®. The experiments were accompanied by their corresponding conceptual and theoretical explanations.