Grammar Of Action Research Articles

The Clinical Gaze of Lurianic Kabbalah

AbstractWhat changes in the conceptualization of God, the ultimate healer, once God himself becomes the object of healing? This article examines the delicate tensions between divine and human agency in the Lurianic kabbalah, focusing on its grammar of action, and the complex relations between the subjects and the objects of this action. Rather than analyzing the relations between the kabbalists and their God through their conscious perceptions, the article explores how these relations emerge from the Lurianic discursive configurations and describes the role of medical discourse in their shaping. I claim that in order to perceive the transformation in the image of God in this early modern kabbalistic corpus, we should place at the heart of our inquiry the questions of who the patient is in the Lurianic medical clinic and how the relations between the human and the divine protagonists of the Lurianic drama are woven in this clinic.

Multistage temporal convolution transformer for action segmentation

This paper addresses fully supervised action segmentation. Transformers have been shown to have large model capacity and powerful sequence modeling abilities, and hence seem quite suitable for capturing action grammar in videos. However, their performance in video understanding still lags behind that of temporal convolutional networks, or ConvNets for short. We hypothesize that this is because: (i) ConvNets tend to generalize better than Transformers, and (ii) Transformer's large model capacity requires significantly larger training datasets than existing action segmentation benchmarks. We specify a new hybrid model, TCTr, that combines the strengths from both frameworks. TCTr seamlessly unifies depth-wise convolution and self-attention in a principled manner. Also, TCTr addresses the Transformer's quadratic computational and memory complexity in the sequence length by learning how to adaptively estimate attention from local temporal neighborhoods, instead of all frames. Our experiments show that TCTr significantly outperforms the state of the art on the Breakfast, GTEA, and 50Salads datasets.

Chimpanzee play sequences are structured hierarchically as games.

Social play is ubiquitous in the development of many animal species and involves players adapting actions flexibly to their own previous actions and partner responses. Play differs from other behavioural contexts for which fine-scale analyses of action sequences are available, such as tool use and communication, in that its form is not defined by its function, making it potentially more unpredictable. In humans, play is often organised in games, where players know context-appropriate actions but string them together unpredictably. Here, we use the sequential nature of play elements to explore whether play elements in chimpanzees are structured hierarchically and follow predictable game-like patterns. Based on 5,711 play elements from 143 bouts, we extracted individual-level play sequences of 11 Western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) of different ages from the Bossou community. We detected transition probabilities between play elements that exceeded expected levels and show that play elements form hierarchically clustered and interchangeable groups, indicative of at least six games that can be identified from transition networks, some with different roles for different players. We also show that increased information about preceding play elements improved predictability of subsequent elements, further indicating that play elements are not strung together randomly but that flexible action rules underlie their usage. Thus, chimpanzee play is hierarchically structured in short games which limit acceptable play elements and allow players to predict and adapt to partners' actions. This "grammar of action" approach to social interactions can be valuable in understanding cognitive and communicative abilities within and across species.

Risky businesses: economic crisis in Argentina and the generative power of generations.

How are risk orientations shaped in the sphere of work beyond proximate structuring institutions? In the absence of clear organizational imperatives or institutional supports, what provides the broad contours of a workable imaginary? Using interview data from small business owners in Argentina, I show that the form and content of generational memories of crisis influence the uptake of entrepreneurial discourse and apprehensions of economic risk. Older business owners draw upon their collective memory of the 2001–2002 economic crisis to engage in a process of adversarial personification that posits the macroeconomy as a cunning enemy and positions them as strategic actors. Conversely, younger small business owners—who did not live through these economic shocks as small business owners—draw upon the entrepreneurial ethos that they collectively cultivate through generational communities of practice to engage in a process of empowered distancing that minimizes the severity of economic crisis. Using Kenneth Burke’s theoretical schema to identify grammars of motive and action, I show how older business owners deploy a generationally shared narrative to develop a conceptualization of economic agency that does not derive from the entrepreneurial ethos. By arguing that collective memory generates economic subject positions, this article demonstrates that the “use value” of collective memory lies not only in its uptake by politicians, journalists, and activists engaged in political projects, but also in the everyday ways that economic actors use narratives about the past to develop strategies of risk management in the present.

Controlling civic engagement of youth spanish muslims

This paper focuses on Muslim Civil Society structures and, more specifically, on the gap between the organizations from the first (migrant) generation and the new grammars of action of new generations of Spanish Muslims. The originality of this article lies in its power to address three fundamental questions: (1) Are the umbrella organizations silencing the demands of Muslim youth?; (2) How do Muslim youth resist such representative hegemony? and; (3) What specific strategies are Muslim women currently developing to gain representation and involvement in mainstream Spanish society? We find evidence for new grammars of action defying traditional authorities and reject decontextualized, asynchronous Islam. Young women are engaging in broader and inclusive activism, inspired by religion affiliation in order to reinforce their external solidarity and engagement in mainstream political structures. By contrast, young men are calling for a new Muslim leadership to reinforce primary solidarity and concentrate more on earning religious rights. For women, religion is a vector to participation and for men, it is a form of participation.

The measurement, evolution, and neural representation of action grammars of human behavior

Human behaviors from toolmaking to language are thought to rely on a uniquely evolved capacity for hierarchical action sequencing. Testing this idea will require objective, generalizable methods for measuring the structural complexity of real-world behavior. Here we present a data-driven approach for extracting action grammars from basic ethograms, exemplified with respect to the evolutionarily relevant behavior of stone toolmaking. We analyzed sequences from the experimental replication of ~ 2.5 Mya Oldowan vs. ~ 0.5 Mya Acheulean tools, finding that, while using the same “alphabet” of elementary actions, Acheulean sequences are quantifiably more complex and Oldowan grammars are a subset of Acheulean grammars. We illustrate the utility of our complexity measures by re-analyzing data from an fMRI study of stone toolmaking to identify brain responses to structural complexity. Beyond specific implications regarding the co-evolution of language and technology, this exercise illustrates the general applicability of our method to investigate naturalistic human behavior and cognition.

The Emergence of New Street-Level Bureaucracies in Italy’s Asylum Reception System

How does the Italian system for asylum seekers and refugees work? How do the intrinsic characteristics of the system affect the (new) professional figures involved? Are there any hidden grammars of action arising from their everyday practices? This research subsumes and tries to move beyond the questions raised above. The purpose of the research is to reflect on the role social workers have as street-level bureaucrats, considering their discretional margin of actions and their consequences. Before proceeding to a more detailed analysis of the role of social workers as street-level bureaucrats, the article highlights the historical and political turning points of the Italian reception systems and clarifies in what sense the immigration issue has become a local matter. This study adopts a qualitative research design, comprising a ethnographic field study, 55 interviews with social workers, and two focus-groups with holders of an international protection status. While working in a Temporary Reception Center, the researcher has observed how the different actions, ideals and roles of social workers significantly influence and shape the experiences of asylum seekers. The hypothesis is that while local authorities have the greater discretion in reception system choices, a new form of street-level bureaucracy is developing through everyday practices of social workers.

Analysis of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Model in SMEs

In Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is considered as a cross-disciplinary segment applied in ergonomics, psychology and the engineering departments. HCI deals with the evaluation, implementation, designing and theoretical evaluation of means in which humans utilize and relate with computing applications. The term ‘Interaction’ is differentiated from other terminologies in the same application interface. The term refers to the abstract system which allows humans to interact with devices of computing for a particular industrial task. An application interface in this case applies to the selection of the technical (software and hardware) realization of a specified interaction system. Because of extensive research to incorporate diversified HCI into an understandable model, this paper evaluates HCI model in SMEs to provide the projected guidance to designers of the system using Information Technology (IT). The choice of a good model provides the recommendable direction for presentation languages e.g., Task Action Grammar (TAG) and the design actions determine the feel and look of the system. In this contribution, critical design projects in every discipline are identified alongside the present study trends and future research directions.

We accept: the constitution of Airbnb

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the transformation of Airbnb as a platform for a more general reflection on the technological and technical constitution of domains, political platforms, and subjectivities. Part I explores the various (juridical and digital) technologies and techniques employed by the service provider to ‘fight discrimination and bias’, as well as to encode a world where everyone can ‘Belong Anywhere’. Part II draws on social systems theory and Gunther Teubner’s societal constitutionalism, rethinking the processes analysed in Part I in terms of auto-constitutionalisation. The auto-constitutionalisation of Airbnb, Part III suggests, instantiates the emergence of a new grammar of political action, epitomised by the Airbnb Terms of Service agreement, and a new generalisable mode of subjectivation: the standard formation of subjects.

Analysis of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Model in SMEs

In Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is considered as a cross-disciplinary segment applied in ergonomics, psychology and the engineering departments. HCI deals with the evaluation, implementation, designing and theoretical evaluation of means in which humans utilize and relate with computing applications. The term ‘Interaction’ is differentiated from other terminologies in the same application interface. The term refers to the abstract system which allows humans to interact with devices of computing for a particular industrial task. An application interface in this case applies to the selection of the technical (software and hardware) realization of a specified interaction system. Because of extensive research to incorporate diversified HCI into an understandable model, this paper evaluates HCI model in SMEs to provide the projected guidance to designers of the system using Information Technology (IT). The choice of a good model provides the recommendable direction for presentation languages e.g., Task Action Grammar (TAG) and the design actions determine the feel and look of the system. In this contribution, critical design projects in every discipline are identified alongside the present study trends and future research directions.

Thinking, Acting, Flourishing: The Audacious Modesty of Pierre Manent’s Practical Natural Law

Pierre Manent's Natural Law and Human Rights is a brilliant contribution to the critique of the contemporary ideology of universal and ever-expanding “human rights” and of its foundations in the modern natural rights doctrine authored by Hobbes and prepared by Machiavelli. But Manent does not answer modern rationalism in the way we tend to expect. To open up the possibility of substantive goodness, he does not propose a new or restored theory or theology of the good, or some unified, authoritative vision of the whole that might serve as an antidote to the acids of modernity. Instead, he directs our attention again and again to the inherent character of human action itself, to the very “grammar of action.” This is the audacious modesty of Pierre Manent's practical natural law: his critique of the “hypertrophy of theory” invites us to recover our practical bearings by finding our starting point not in theory, but in a kind of phenomenology — a phenomenology of practice that must also be a practical phenomenology. Thus Pierre Manent judges it wise not to try to capture the élan of the noble in any determinate idea, but rather to keep it both tethered to the common goods of practice and open to a hope as much beyond human conception as it is beyond human power.

The means of complexity in a lithic reduction sequence

Recent studies in cognitive neurosciences have postulated a possible link between manual praxis such as tool-making and human languages. If confirmed, such a link opens significant avenues towards the study of the evolution of natural languages. Yet, archaeologists would need the development of a rigorous methodology to formalize language appearance. We propose a ‘formal grammar of action’ to help formalizing some early aspects of lithic chaines opératoires, and simultaneously question the link with human cognitive abilities. The approach, based on the foundations of Chomsky’s minimalist program and the grammar of action theory, focuses on the development of components and syntax suggested by some aspects of knapping during early phases and simple (Oldowan and early Acheulean) technologies. In this theoretical study, we rigorously analyse terminals and non-terminals (vocabulary), production rules and syntax (grammar) of idealized stone technologies and then provide possible productions (tools and handaxes). More specifically, issues related to platform preparation and cognitive strategies required during knapping are discussed. Formal grammars proposed here for interpreting knapping contribute to a greater systematization in classifying chaines opératoires and in exploring complexity in lithic reduction sequences. As a central result, these grammars are theoretically able to rigorously demonstrate syntax presence and central recursion, thus helping us to study early linguistic abilities.

Unsettling embodied literacy in QWOP the walking simulator

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to cast a critical eye on an arguably conservative aspect of so-called ‘walking simulators’ – their walking simulation and second, to position viral browser game QWOP (2008) as an intervention into dominant paradigms of video game walking control. The first half discusses how walking simulators inherit and share a ‘grammar of action’ for simulating walking with a number of other games (Galloway). I argue this grammar of action constitutes the reification of a particular subject position – one associated with a normative bodymind – in video gameplay via a combination of representations, control procedures and player ‘embodied literacy’ (Keogh). The second half considers QWOP’s alternate grammar of walking simulation and how this precipitates a different relationship between player and video game, prompting questions about distributed cognition, intentionality, failure and what it means for a game to be critical.

The Role of HCI in the Age of AI

ABSTRACTThis article examines some of the mystique surrounding AI, including the interrelated notions of explainability and complexity, and argues that these notions suggest that designing human-centered AI is difficult. It explains how, once these are put aside, an HCI perspective can help define interaction between AI and users that can enhance rather than substitute one important aspect of human life: creativity. Key to developing such creative interactions are abstractions and grammars of action and other notions; the article explores the history of these in HCI and how they are to be used in the contemporary interaction and design space, in relation to AI. The article is programmatic rather than empirical though its argument uses real-world examples.

The subject of circulation: on the digital subject’s technical individuations

The concept of the digital subject proposes that online subjectivity is a mediated construct. This article extends this concept by arguing that online subjectivity is not a property of human users, but of digital subjects enacted in circulating data. It develops the digital subject by, first, using Phillip Agre’s concept of “grammars of action” to argue that computational architectures exclude humans from the position of the user; and, second, using Gilbert Simondon’s and Yuk Hui’s philosophies of technology to posit the digital subject as a determinate technical entity that, as per Hui’s reworking of Simondon, inhabits a “digital milieu”. Online, this digital subject inverts the human–technology relationship. It individuates by entering circulation, excluding us from individuating whilst individuating us in turn. This article expands upon this claim by analysing projects by Amalia Ulman and Zach Blas and their thematisation of visibility, identity and authenticity in online subjectivity.

Post-Truth Protest: How 4chan Cooked Up the Pizzagate Bullshit

Post-Truth Protest: How 4chan Cooked Up the Pizzagate Bullshit

Entre la Democratización y la República. Revisitando el ciclo de movilización en el último gobierno kirchnerista (Argentina, 2012-2015)

The cycle of mobilization activated after 2012 configured new organizational experiences and redefined the movimentista and liberal grammars of political action, leading to a polarization of the political arena. This paper aims to reconstruct this cycle focusing on both grammars, with special attention on how the ideas of corruption claimed by liberals contributed to the establishment and consolidation of a new centre-right political party. The main argument is that within the political dispute, expressed in terms of democratization versus Republic, the reports of corruption cases played a key role in the configuration of the anti-Kirchnerist pole. This paper shows the results of the research study “The end of the left turn in Latin America? New actors and discourses shaping the political arena of the post-transition”, in which exhaustive fieldwork was carried out. Methodologically, it follows a genealogical strategy in an attempt to identify the main actors in the political dispute and the narratives shaped during the mobilization cycle.

「クリュシッポス『論理学研究』」残欠考

「クリュシッポス『論理学研究』」残欠考

What Counts? Reflections on the Multivalence of Social Media Data

Abstract Social media platforms have been characterised by their programmability, affordances, constraints and stakeholders - the question of value and valuation of platforms, their data and features has, however, received less attention in platform studies. This paper explores the specific socio-technical conditions for valuating platform data and suggests that platforms set up their data to become multivalent, that is to be valuable alongside multiple, possibly conflicting value regimes. Drawing on both platform and valuation studies, it asks how the production, storing and circulation of data, its connection to user action and the various stakeholders of platforms contribute to its valuation. Platform data, the paper suggests, is the outcome of capture systems which allow to collapse action and its capture into pre-structured data forms which remain open to divergent interpretations. Platforms offer such grammars of action both to users and other stakeholders in frontand back-ends, inviting them to produce and engage with its data following heterogeneous orders of worth. Platform data can participate in different valuation regimes at the same time - however, the paper concludes, not all actors can participate in all modes of valuation, as in the end, it is the platform that sets the conditions for participation. The paper offers a conceptual perspective to interrogate what data counts by attending to questions of quantification, its entanglement with valuation and the various technologies and stakeholders involved. It finishes with an empirical experiment to map the various ways in which Instagram data is made to count.

Acts and practices of citizenship: Muslim women’s activism in the UK

ABSTRACTDrawing on the growing literature on Muslim women’s activism, this paper explores grammars of action that frame political mobilizations of Muslim women in the UK. By taking a broad view of political activism, we identify acts and practices of citizenship through which Muslim women activists engage with, reinterpret and challenge social norms. The article critically engages with dominant readings of post-migration minorities’ political mobilization through the lens of citizenship regimes and draws attention to more processual and agency-centred perspectives on citizenship. We focus on two salient themes that Bristol-based Muslim activists were concerned with: mobilizing against violence against women, manifested in the anti-FGM campaign by Integrate Bristol, and attempts to re-negotiate the terms of participation in religious spaces, manifested in claims for more inclusive mosques. In both instances, mobilization was not confined to the local community or national level, but supported by and embedded in related transnational struggles.