Identity Statements Research Articles

Tracking the professional identity changes of an accountancy institute

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how a professional accountants' Institute has projected its changing professional identity through its annual reports. Extensive research has shown that the annual report is one of an organization's most important documents to communicate with stakeholders. The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants celebrated its centenary year in 2008. It is therefore timely to explore how this influential professional institute has projected its evolving identity to its stakeholders over 100 years of annual reports.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a content analysis of archival records. The type of information and the manner of presentation via textual information and visual images in the Institute's annual reports are used to track a changing professional identity.FindingsThe analysis did not find any definitive statements of professional identity by the professional accountants' Institute. Early annual reports used a singular visual image to project authenticity. Increasing use ansd complexity of visual images and mission/vision statements projected an identity of expertise, integrity and global relevance, paralleling the impacts of globalization and advances in technology. The last decade of the Institute's annual reports reveals a sophisticated use of visual images and printing to enhance textual information. This marked a dramatic turn in the projection of professional identity whilst retaining the communication of a basic reality and professional traits to its members and stakeholders.Originality/valueThe paper is valuable as few other research studies have investigated the projection of changing professional identities via identity statements and visual imagery in annual reports.

L'Art de la biographie dans les Vies imaginaires de Marcel Schwob (review)

Reviewed by: L'Art de la biographie dans les Vies imaginaires de Marcel Schwob Michael G. Kelly Fabre, Bruno . L'Art de la biographie dans les Vies imaginaires de Marcel Schwob. Paris: Honoré Champion (Coll. Romantisme et Modernités, Vol. 129), 2010. Pp. 374. ISBN: 978-2-7453-2058-2 Contemporary interest in Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) has gravitated around the related questions of his appropriations of the textual past and his status as a practitioner of the imaginary within his own literary work. His exemplarity as a creative re-writer, the importance of erudition and bibliophilia as the source of numerous "hypotexts" (Genette) with respect to his authored creations, was the object of extended demonstration and discussion in Agnès Lhermitte's Palimpseste et merveilleux dans l'œuvre de Marcel Schwob (2002). Bernard De Meyer's Marcel Schwob, conteur de l'imaginaire insisted, two years later, on the originality of the works resulting from Schwob's imaginary processes, and hence the originality of their creator. The view of Schwob as a pivotal literary individual, between nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between erudition and creation, and between different understandings of literary selfhood, arguably coheres in the complex interrelationship of these aspects of the author and his œuvre. In his new study, Bruno Fabre traces this interrelationship in depth through the prism of the Vies imaginaires (1896), a collection he argues to have been relatively neglected in critical debate. That neglect is all the more curious given the work's recognised [End Page 348] influence amongst subsequent writers. Indeed, Fabre identifies a range of contemporary French writers, including Gérard Macé and Christian Garcin, along with a number of illustrious foreigners such as Borges, Bolaño and Tabbuchi, for whom the work has been of significance. The sense is of a work anticipating, through its compositional strategies and theoretical horizons, much that would inform modernist and post-modernist preoccupations. Through his scrupulous anatomisation of the work, Fabre also makes the case for the Vies imaginaires, "cette histoire du monde insolite réduite à vingt-deux personnalités célèbres ou inconnues" (133), as an achieved statement of Schwob's own complex creative identity. The study adopts a four-part structure, modulating between intercultural and trans-historical considerations of literary principle, discussion of Schwob's prior development as a writer, and extended passages of intertextual reconstitution and commentary. The opening part, titled "Le Renouvellement du genre biographique," places the work in relation to previous "biographical" practice, including identified precursors in the category of fictional biography in nineteenth-century France. Schwob is seen, on the basis of the memorable préface to the work, to adopt the biographical mode in defence of the principle of individuality, thus aligning literary art with the illustration of human difference in response to scientific and political developments of the era. The concern with the distinguishing detail does not lead to exemplary fictional lives—Schwob's millennium-hopping cast of (in large part) criminals and ne'er-do-wells suggests instead a strange equality of all subjects before the "biographer's" pen. This pen had been used by the author previously, in a more conventional mode, as Fabre outlines in his relatively brief second part ("Schwob biographe")—the fact that its principal prior subject had been François Villon suggesting strong continuities across the "imaginary" or fictional divide. But it had also undergone the "secret" influences of a number of English-language writers, notably De Quincey, Defoe, Stevenson and Wilde, enthusiastically assumed by Schwob the angliciste and literary translator. These considerations are all arguably preparatory to what reads as the scholarly core of Fabre's engagement with the Vies imaginaires, an extensive third part titled "Récriture et création" in which he classifies and examines in extensive detail each vie in terms of the kind of "hypotext" to which it is principally related. Such hypo-texts include actual biographies of the subject, the written œuvre of the subject, historical documents, etc.—and in each case Fabre relates Schwob's vie to the identified hypotext(s) with no little sureness of foot. He successfully illustrates the case for seeing the work as one profoundly engaged with the practice and...

On a Broader Notion of Rigidity

Abstract According to S. Kripke, an expression is rigid provided it refers to the same object in all possible worlds in which the object exists. On the other hand, H. Putnam claims that an expression is rigid provided it refers to the same object in all possible worlds in which it refers to anything at all. The paper shows that the two notions of rigidity are not equivalent because (i) Putnam's rigidity is much broader than Kripke's; (ii) unlike Putnam's rigidity, Kripke's is interwoven with essentialism; and (iii) identity statements between rigid designators in Putnam's sense need not be necessarily true (if true at all).

Do Conceivability Arguments against Physicalism Beg the Question?

Many well-known arguments against physicalism—e.g., Chalmers’s Zombie Argument and Kripke’s Modal Argument—contend that it is conceivable for there to be physical duplicates of ourselves that have no conscious experiences (or, conversely, for there to be disembodied minds) and also that what is conceivable is possible—and therefore, if phenomenal-physical identity statements are supposed to be necessary, then physicalism can’t be true. Physicalists typically respond to these arguments either by questioning whether such creatures can truly be conceived, or denying that the conceivability of such creatures provides good evidence for their ‘metaphysical’ possibility. An increasing number of physicalists, however, contest these arguments in a different way, namely, by suggesting that the conceivability premises in these arguments beg the question: one’s ability to conceive of the existence of zombies (or disembodied minds) depends exclusively on what one antecedently believes to be the nature of conscious experience (or the theories of consciousness one tacitly accepts)—and therefore cannot legitimately be used to draw conclusions about whether conscious experiences could be physical states or processes. My aim in this paper is to consider, and raise questions about, (various versions of) this response to the antiphysicalist arguments—and argue that physicalists have more promising ways to disarm them.

Tropes, Bare Demonstratives, and Apparent Statements of Identity

NoûsVolume 47, Issue 2 p. 346-370 ARTICLE Tropes, Bare Demonstratives, and Apparent Statements of Identity Friederike Moltmann, Friederike Moltmann IHPST (Paris1/ENS/CNRS)Search for more papers by this author Friederike Moltmann, Friederike Moltmann IHPST (Paris1/ENS/CNRS)Search for more papers by this author First published: 29 December 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2011.00844.xCitations: 3Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume47, Issue2June 2013Pages 346-370 RelatedInformation

Books Like Clothes: Engaging Young Black Men With Reading

AbstractUsing 18 weeks of classroom data from a much larger ethnographic study, Kirkland examines the reading ideologies influencing the literacy engagement of a young Black male, Derrick. (To protect participants’ identities, this article uses pseudonyms in place of participants’ actual names.) In doing so, Kirkland theorizes about how young Black males express thoughts about reading through specific statements of identity—what he calls genres of self. He concludes that many Black males read or don't read based on their thoughts about particular reading tasks—which include complex and layered beliefs around texts, contexts (of instruction), and the subtexts that permeate both. Kirkland suggests that young Black men often express such beliefs through grammars of acceptance/rejection. However, when the situation of reading fits them (i.e., corresponds with their reading ideologies), Black males read and find pleasure, interest, and purpose in doing so.

Faire crier les pierres : les musées contemporains face au défi de la culture

Contemporary museums continue to play a vital role in articulating powerful statements of national and cultural identity for broad and diverse audiences. Focusing on a range of global case studies – from recently instituted displays at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and from the British Museum in London to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne – the author will consider some of the key challenges facing contemporary museums in their efforts to incorporate new insights and approaches to presenting art and culture in contemporary contexts. With a particular emphasis on the presentation of Indigeneity in museums, the article will explore the tensions as well as the possibilities involved in the museum’s mandate to present Indigenous culture as vital, diverse, constantly changing and yet at the same time grounded in traditional understandings of identity and history. Although museums of anthropology/natural history have been defined historically by very different traditions of collecting and display they have nonetheless in recent years derived much of their relevance and innovativeness from incorporating ideas and approaches to display and interpretation found initially in public art museums. Conversely public art museums have also been equally attentive to recent developments in museum display so that the contemporary field of museums and public art galleries more generally is now more rich and diverse than ever before.

Research Report: A Grounded Theory Description of Pastoral Counseling

Historically, clerical paradigms of ordained ministry have defined pastoral counseling. However, these fail to describe pastoral counselors in the complex social, theological and medical contexts in which they now work. This study asks the question: How do pastoral counselors in clinical practice describe what is uniquely "pastoral" about the counseling they offer clients? Grounded theory was used to propose a preliminary description and an intermediate theory of how pastoral counselors interpret "pastoral." Eighty-five pastoral counselors were selected for the study over a four year period using criteria to assure maximum variation. Interviews and pastoral identity statements were collected and coded, and theoretical models were organized using NVIVO, a computer assisted qualitative design and analysis software (CAQDAS) package. Results suggest that pastoral counselors share some common ideas regarding "pastoral identity" and clinical practice. How pastoral counselors interpret "pastoral" is highly context sensitive and varies widely.

Make the Stones Shout: Contemporary museums and the challenge of culture

AbstractContemporary museums continue to play a vital role in articulating powerful statements of national and cultural identity for broad and diverse audiences. Focusing on a range of global case studies – from recently instituted displays at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and from the British Museum in London to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne – the author will consider some of the key challenges facing contemporary museums in their efforts to incorporate new insights and approaches to presenting art and culture in contemporary contexts. A particular focus will be provided on the problem of the repatriation/reunification of ancient sculptures and artworks, of which the Parthenon sculptures is a major case.

Characterizing minimal semantics-preserving slices of predicate-linear, free, liberal program schemas

A program schema defines a class of programs, all of which have identical statement structure, but whose functions and predicates may differ. A schema thus defines an entire class of programs according to how its symbols are interpreted. A subschema of a schema is obtained from a schema by deleting some of its statements. We prove that given a schema S which is predicate-linear, free and liberal, such that the true and false parts of every if predicate satisfy a simple additional condition, and a slicing criterion defined by the final value of a given variable after execution of any program defined by S, the minimal subschema of S which respects this slicing criterion contains all the function and predicate symbols ‘needed’ by the variable according to the data dependence and control dependence relations used in program slicing, which is the symbol set given by Weiser’s static slicing algorithm. Thus this algorithm gives predicate-minimal slices for classes of programs represented by schemas satisfying our set of conditions. We also give an example to show that the corresponding result with respect to the slicing criterion defined by termination behaviour is incorrect. This complements a result by the authors in which S was required to be function-linear, instead of predicate-linear.

Causation at different levels: tracking the commitments of mechanistic explanations

This paper tracks the commitments of mechanistic explanations focusing on the relation between activities at different levels. It is pointed out that the mechanistic approach is inherently committed to identifying causal connections at higher levels with causal connections at lower levels. For the mechanistic approach to succeed a mechanism as a whole must do the very same thing what its parts organised in a particular way do. The mechanistic approach must also utilise bridge principles connecting different causal terms of different theoretical vocabularies in order to make the identities of causal connections transparent. These general commitments get confronted with two claims made by certain proponents of the mechanistic approach: William Bechtel often argues that within the mechanistic framework it is possible to balance between reducing higher levels and maintaining their autonomy at the same time, whereas, in a recent paper, Craver and Bechtel argue that the mechanistic approach is able to make downward causation intelligible. The paper concludes that the mechanistic approach imbued with identity statements is no better candidate for anchoring higher levels to lower ones while maintaining their autonomy at the same time than standard reductive accounts are, and that what mechanistic explanations are able to do at best is showing that downward causation does not exist.

Remembering and imagining: The role of the self

This study investigated whether temporal clustering of autobiographical memories (AMs) around periods of self-development (Rathbone, Moulin, & Conway, 2008, 2009) would also occur when imagining future events associated with the self. Participants completed an AM task and future thinking task. In both tasks, memories and future events were cued using participant-generated identity statements (e.g., I am a student; I will be a mother). Participants then dated their memories and future events, and finally gave an age at which each identity statement was judged to emerge. Dates of memories and future events were recoded as temporal distance from the identity statement used to cue them. AMs and future events both clustered robustly around periods of self-development, indicating the powerful organisational effect of the self. We suggest that life narrative structures are used to organise future events as well as memories.

Términos de género natural e identidades teóricas

Kripke afirma en Naming and Necessity que existen ciertas similitudes entre los nombres propios y los terminos de genero natural. Una de ellas radica en que ambos tipos de expresiones figuran en enunciados de identidad que, en caso de ser verdaderos, son necesarios a posteriori; en el caso de los terminos de genero natural Kripke denomina a estos enunciados �identidades teoricas�. Kripke sostiene que esta similitud se sigue de otra, consistente en que ambos tipos de expresiones son designadores rigidos. Mi objetivo en este articulo es alegar que, aunque cabe sostener que los terminos de genero natural son designadores rigidos, esta propiedad de los terminos de genero natural no permite justificar el rasgo de necesidad que Kripke atribuye a las identidades teoricas. A este respecto centrare mis consideraciones en un tipo de terminos de genero natural, los terminos de sustancias quimicas, a los que aludire como �terminos de sustancia�.

The Evolution and Ideology of Global Constitutionalism

It has become almost universal practice for countries to adopt formal constitutions. Little is known empirically, however, about the evolution of this practice on a global scale. Are constitutions unique and defining statements of national aspiration and identity? Or are they standardized documents that vary only at the margins, in predictable and patterned ways? Are constitutions becoming increasingly similar or dissimilar over time, or is there no discernible overall pattern to their development? Until very recently, scholars have lacked even basic empirical data on the content of the world’s

Desconstruir para problematizar matrizes identitárias

A rede social contemporânea encontra-se marcada pela construção e pela disseminação de matrizes identitárias configuradas por binarismos, hierarquias e atribuição de específicos sentidos às configurações subjetivas. Com este estudo, objetiva-se problematizar as possibilidades de desconstrução dessas matrizes concomitantemente ao deslocamento de sentidos a elas agregados. Os aportes teóricos de Butler e Derrida possibilitam compreender que as referências identitárias fundamentadas na tradição filosófica ocidental da metafísica da presença engendram o enunciado da subjetividade e os sentidos agregados ao masculino e ao feminino. A construção do enunciado do gênero como identidade possibilita aos sujeitos se reconhecerem em referência às suas práticas de sexualidade e à heteronormatividade, que estabelece tanto as oposições masculino/feminino, heterossexual/homossexual quanto a hierarquia entre esses pares. Entende-se que o deslocamento dos sentidos atribuídos aos pares binários pode ocorrer a partir da desconstrução dos pressupostos que organizam as matrizes identitárias dominantes na rede social.

Some objections to Chalmers’ solution to Frege’s puzzle

Chalmer?s version of two-dimensional semantics offers interesting and original solutions to traditional problems of neo-Fregean and neo-Russellian theories of meaning. However, I will argue that his theory is not completely successful because it does not solve some important forms of Frege?s puzzle (Mates? puzzle, and the informativness of identity statements with demonstratives). First I will show that the solution to Mates? puzzle offered by Chalmers is metalinguistic, and therefore inappropriate since it avoids the problem which is to be solved. Next I will show that the solution makes Chalmers break the compositionality principle, which he says he accepts, and on which some of the main notions of his theory are based. Finally I will point out that Chalmers? theory cannot account for the informativness of identity statements with demonstratives, no matter whether they are interpreted de dicto or de re.

Rigidity and actuality-dependence

It is generally assumed that rigidity plays a key role in explaining the necessary a posteriori status of identity statements, both between proper names and between natural kind terms. However, while the notion of rigid designation is well defined for singular terms, there is no generally accepted definition of what it is for a general term to be rigid. In this paper I argue that the most common view, according to which rigid general terms are the ones which designate the same kind in all possible worlds, fails to deliver a posteriori necessities. I also present an alternative view, on which the work of explaining a posteriori necessities is not done by rigidity, but by a related metasemantic notion, which I call actuality-dependence.

The number of planets is not a number

In a number of places, Quine deploys variations on a certain argument to show that modal contexts are referentially opaque and therefore suspect.1 Here is a streamlined version: ... Since (3) is obviously false (we do not think that the number of planets must be nine), we must conclude that modal contexts are not well behaved in that they do not allow the substitution salva veritate of co-referring expressions. They are referentially opaque (and a symptom of a suspect underlying metaphysics). Quine takes it as evident that the inference in (Q) has a false conclusion.2 Since it appears to be valid, the trouble must lie in one of the premisses. If by ‘necessarily’ we mean ‘it is analytic that’ (as Quine does in this argument), (1) appears to be unexceptionable. But perhaps (2) does not licence substitution in the way Quine assumes (Cartwright 1971, Marti 1989). Or perhaps there is a scope ambiguity in (2) (Smullyan 1948, Neale 1990). In either case, the inference would be invalid and (Q) would show nothing about modal contexts. I shall not discuss these well-known and controversial lines of resistance.3 Instead, I shall suggest that there is a different reason to worry about (Q). Contrary to what Quine says and most commentators accept, (2) is not an identity statement, hence it cannot license the problematic inference. Before showing this, I briefly discuss another reply that leaves the usual interpretation of (2) unchallenged. The fact that it, too, leaves things unsettled will, I hope, add to the incentive to take a closer look at the construal of (2) shared by critics and defenders of (Q) alike.

Decidability of strong equivalence for subschemas of a class of linear, free, near-liberal program schemas

program schema defines a class of programs, all of which have identical statement structure, but whose functions and predicates may differ. A schema thus defines an entire class of programs according to how its symbols are interpreted. Two schemas are strongly equivalent if they always define the same function from initial states to final states for every interpretation. A subschema of a schema is obtained from a schema by deleting some of its statements. A schema S is liberal if there exists an initial state in the Herbrand domain such that the same term is not generated more than once along any executable path through S. In this paper, we introduce near-liberal schemas, in which this non-repeating condition applies only to terms not having the form g ( ) for a constant function symbol g. Given a schema S that is linear (no function or predicate symbol occurs more than once in S) and a variable v, we compute a set of function and predicate symbols in S which is a subset of those defined by Weiser’s slicing algorithm and prove that if for every while predicate q in S and every constant assignment w ≔ g ( ) ; lying in the body of q, no other assignment to w also lies in the body of q, our smaller symbol set defines a correct subschema of S with respect to the final value of v after execution. We also prove that if S is also free (every path through S is executable) and near-liberal, it is decidable which of its subschemas are strongly equivalent to S. For the class of pairs of schemas in which one schema is a subschema of the other, this generalises a recent result in which S was required to be linear, free and liberal.

The Evolution and Ideology of Global Constitutionalism

It has become almost universal practice for countries to adopt formal constitutions. Little is known empirically, however, about the evolution of this practice on a global scale. Are constitutions unique and defining statements of national aspiration and identity? Or are they standardized documents that vary only at the margins, in predictable and patterned ways? Are constitutions becoming increasingly similar or dissimilar to one another over time, or is there no discernible overall pattern to their development? Until very recently, scholars have lacked even basic empirical data on the content of the world’s constitutions, much less an understanding of whether there are global patterns to that content.This Article offers the first empirical account of the global evolution of rights constitutionalism. Our analysis of an original data set that spans the rights-related content of all national constitutions over the last six decades confirms the existence of several global constitutional trends. These include the phenomenon of rights creep, wherein constitutions tend to contain an increasing number of rights over time, and the growth of generic rights constitutionalism, wherein an increasing proportion of the world’s constitutions shares an increasing number of rights in common. Perhaps our most striking discovery is that 90% of all variation in the rights-related content of the world’s constitutions can be explained as a function of just two variables. Both of these variables are underlying traits of a constitution that can be measured quantitatively. The first variable is the comprehensiveness of a constitution, which refers simply to the tendency of a constitution to contain a greater or lesser number of rights provisions. The second variable is the ideological character of the constitution. We find empirically that the world’s constitutions can be arrayed along a single ideological dimension. At one end of the spectrum, some constitutions can be characterized as relatively libertarian, in the sense that they epitomize a common law constitutional tradition of negative liberty and, more specifically, judicial protection from detention or bodily harm at the hands of the state. At the other end of the spectrum, by contrast, some constitutions are more statist in character: they both presuppose and enshrine a far-reaching role for the state in a variety of domains by imbuing the state with a broad range of both powers and responsibilities. For every constitution in the world, we calculate a numerical score that measures its position on this ideological spectrum. These scores yield an ideological ranking of the world’s constitutions – the first of its kind.Using these scores, we are able to map the ideological evolution of global constitutionalism. We show that the world’s constitutions are increasingly dividing themselves into two distinct families – one libertarian in character, the other statist. Within each family, constitutions are becoming increasingly similar to one another, but the families themselves are becoming increasingly distinct from one another. The dynamics of constitutional evolution, in other words, involve a combination of ideological convergence and ideological polarization.