Intellectual Climate Research Articles

Is Organizational Justice the New Industrial Relations? A Debate on Individual Versus Collective Underpinnings of Justice

AbstractThis study is based on a debate about the nature of two intellectualdomains, industrial relations (IR) and organizational behavior (OB). RayHogler (Colorado State University) argues that the distinguishing featureof IR is its collectivist approach to work and organizations. As OB cameto dominate the academic landscape, the research landscape shifted to amicroanalytical focus. In consequence, business schools have failed toengage with the social problem of inequality of wealth. Early figures inAmerican economic development, such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,offered a more expansive vision of firms and labor than the current intel-lectual climate driven by an agency theory of management aimed at short-term profit. In his response, Stephen Gilliland (University of Arizona)asserts that the individualistic orientation of organizational justice pro-vides a much more strategic and aligned approach to employee–employerrelations. Unions provide a broad brush approach grounded in adversar-ial relationships and unfairness. By satisfying individual interests of fairtreatment, leading through organizational justice provides benefits foremployees, organizations, and their stakeholders. Fair treatment ofemployees has a ripple effect that impacts customer treatment and satis-faction. Whether the organization’s strategy is based on value, customerservice, or innovation, organizational justice can be aligned with strategicgoals for the benefit of all.The theme for the 73rd annual meeting of the Academy of Management held in Orlando, Florida, was“Capitalism in Question.” Broadly, the conference theme challenged historical notions of capitalismregarding market competition among profit-driven firms, wage employment within these firms, andlimited government over them. New to the academy meetings at the 2013 conference were plenarysessions—one sponsored by each division. For its plenary session, the Conflict Management Divisionsponsored a debate on organizational justice as it pertains to the conference theme. The debate dialoguewas transcribed, and an edited version of the discussion and the intellectual contribution from thetranscription is presented in this manuscript.

Max Horkheimer: The struggle against Total Bureaucratization

In July 1973, at the age of 78, Max Horkheimer passed away In the Swiss town of Montagnola. If not the founder, he has at least the most important director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt, from which the famous name “Frankfurt School” is derived. Actually, if we can believe Habermas, who began his academic career as Adorno’s assistant, there was never a Frankfurt ‘’school’’ in the strict sense of the word, except of course in its first year in exile from Germany after the escape from Nazism. At any rate, Horkheimer, more than Adorno and with grater incisiveness than Marcuse and Fromm, represents a basic point of reference for an intellectual climate that has had, despite obvious limitation, a crucial influence on both Marxist and non-Marxist thought. More rigorous than Adorno, and more open to economic and practical reality than Marcuse, the cautious Horkheimer was throughout the secure point of reference, especially after his return in Frankfurt.

The Reformation and the Principles of the English Constitution in Disraeli‘s ‘Young England’ Novels

The article explores some aspects of the intellectual climate of the first half of the nineteenth century and the new ideas about race and national identity. These in turn help to explain contemporary changes in historical perspective, particularly in respect to the English Reformation. Disraeli‘s novels reflect the ideas of the time on the above topics and echo contemporary historians in their views on the Reformation, its causes, and the religious and social changes that it brought about.

Salomon van Til (1643–1713)

In recent decades theologians and intellectual historians have given considerable attention to the dissemination of Cartesianism in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic. Scholars have focused primarily on the initial reception of Descartes’s ideas, the early reactions from his major critics and the more radical expressions of Cartesianism later on. Only in recent years have scholars begun to realize the considerable impact that moderate second-generation Cartesian theologians exerted on the intellectual climate in the Netherlands of the eighteenth century. Salomon van Til (1643–1713) ranks high among these thinkers. Yet despite his international reputation at that time, Van Til has been almost completely neglected in current research. This article analyzes Van Til’s appropriation of Cartesian tenets within his Compendium of Natural Theology (1704). Paying close attention to his intellectual context, it argues that the substantial usage of central elements of the Cartesian outlook, clearly manifested both in the method and in the content of the Compendium, should be interpreted in light of Van Til’s apologetic goal: to defend the Christian faith against the perceived onslaught of unbelief.

Marginalized Identities of Sense‐Makers: Reframing Engineering Student Retention

AbstractBackgroundStudents' identities and sense of belonging in a program affect whether they stay in engineering. Research suggests that students' ways of knowing and beliefs about what counts as knowing and learning – their personal epistemologies – can be aspects of their identities, or sense of self as knowers and learners.Purpose/HypothesisCombining personal epistemology and identity theories suggests epistemological aspects of students' identities can influence whether they feel they belong in their engineering program. We have two research questions: Can a high‐achieving engineering student be in danger of leaving a program because of a mismatch between epistemological aspects of his identity and his perceptions of the intellectual climate of their program? How does such a mismatch affect the student's day‐to‐day academic experiences?Design/MethodFor three years, we followed Michael, an electrical engineering student, through interviews and in‐class observations. From more than 12 hours of semistructured clinical interviews, more than 10 hours of videotaped discussion sections, and two in‐class observations in lectures, we produced a case study to characterize epistemological aspects of Michael's identity and how they influenced his perception of his program.ResultsMichael expressed and enacted a sense‐making epistemology that is a fundamental aspect of his identity as a learner. Due to this sense‐making aspect of Michael's identity, he often felt alienated from the intellectual climate of his program, and he considered leaving engineering.ConclusionResearchers focused on student retention should attend to epistemological aspects of student identities. Instructors and administrators focused on retention should attend to the epistemological messages students hear from their programs.

The Reception of Gratian'sTractatus de penitentiaand the Relationship between Canon Law and Theology in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century

Canon law and theology were not distinct, well-developed fields in the twelfth century. In theory, many if not all scholars recognise this, and yet, in practice, much scholarship on the intellectual and institutional history of the century operates as if the contrary were true. Often labeled as canonists or theologians, the intellectual figures of the century frequently devoted attention to the church's law and to the Bible, to issues of ecclesiastical structure and discipline as well to theological questions. One way of gauging the scholarly world of the century is to examine the reception of a particular text by various intellectual figures. This article surveys the historiographical problem, explores the reception of Gratian's Tractatus de penitentia from ca 1150 to ca 1200, and attempts to reformulate the nature of the intellectual climate in the period.

Investigating "mass hysteria" in early postcolonial Uganda: Benjamin H. Kagwa, East african psychiatry, and the Gisu.

In the early 1960s, medical officers and administrators began to receive reports of what was being described as "mass madness" and "mass hysteria" in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Uganda. Each epidemic reportedly affected between three hundred and six hundred people and, coming in the wake of independence from colonial rule, caused considerable concern. One of the practitioners sent to investigate was Benjamin H. Kagwa, a Ugandan-born psychiatrist whose report represents the first investigation by an African psychiatrist in East Africa. This article uses Kagwa's investigation to explore some of the difficulties facing East Africa's first generation of psychiatrists as they took over responsibility for psychiatry. During this period, psychiatrists worked in an intellectual climate that was both attempting to deal with the legacy of colonial racism, and which placed faith in African psychiatrists to reveal more culturally sensitive insights into African psychopathology. The epidemics were the first major challenge for psychiatrists such as Kagwa precisely because they appeared to confirm what colonial psychiatrists had been warning for years-that westernization would eventually result in mass mental instability. As this article argues, however, Kagwa was never fully able to free himself from the practices and assumptions that had pervaded his discipline under colonial rule. His analysis of the epidemics as a "mental conflict" fit into a much longer tradition of psychiatry in East Africa, and stood starkly against the explanations of the local community.

Entre la experimentación política y la circulación de saberes: la gestión de Bernardino Rivadavia en Buenos Aires, 1821-1827

<p>Este artículo tiene por objetivo analizar la relación entre el accionar político y el clima intelectual durante la gestión de gobierno de Bernardino Rivadavia en Buenos Aires, 1821-1827. En este marco, se considera la emergencia de un espacio de experimentación política que procura modernizar la cultura en su conjunto con el fin de eliminar las prácticas y los imaginarios coloniales. Asimismo, se identifica una fuerte presencia de contactos interpersonales con pensadores extranjeros y un proceso de intensificación en la circulación de saberes que resultaron funcionales al proyecto del gobierno. En tal sentido, se desea demostrar que el proceso de legitimación intenta construirse a partir de la interacción constante entre las prácticas introducidas por el nuevo modelo político y los saberes difundidos cercanos a la matriz republicana.</p>

The Social Role of Public Library Classifications

This paper seeks to understand the interaction between library knowledge organization practices and the social role of public libraries through an examination of the development of the Dewey Decimal and Soviet Library-Bibliographic classifications. I show that in spite of significant differences in the ideologies motivating the ontological design of the classifications themselves, the methods and motivations behind creating these classifications were very similar, whether the location was late nineteenth century America or early twentieth century Soviet Russia. Both classifications are highly instructive as snapshots of thinking contemporary to their creation, and in the Soviet Union, library classification was construed as one more layer in the process of information control and indoctrination in Marxism-Leninism. As products of a modern (as opposed to postmodern) intellectual climate, the overall tendency of these classifications to serve as a public common ground, a set of generally accepted knowledge principles, makes sense, however misguided any particular set of principles might have been. Today’s society, however, no longer wants or needs the kinds of unifying narrative that public library classifications speak to, raising questions as to how appropriate these modern classifications are for a postmodern world whose priorities have shifted radically in the last thirty years.

At home among strangers: Alfred Russel Wallace in Russia

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was an influential figure within Russian pre-Synthetic evolutionary biology, i.e. the time period before the Synthetic Theory of Evolution was established (ca. 1880-1930s). His major works were translated into Russian and his general ideas were read and discussed by both insiders and outsiders of scientific evolutionism. At the same time, Wallace played a controversial role in the growth of Darwinism in Russia, and Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) has eclipsed Wallace in his influence on Russian evolutionary thinking. In this paper we briefly outline Wallace’s impact on Russian pre-Synthetic scientific evolutionism and its general intellectual climate. We demonstrate that both Russian pro-Darwinian evolutionists and anti-Darwinians (scientific anti-Darwinians as well as creationists) were fully aware of Wallace’s contributions to the development of evolutionary theory. Yet, Wallace’s radical selectionism, as well as his controversial arguments for “design in nature”, predetermined his special place within the Russian intellectual landscape.

Research and Reflections on Zhang Taiyan

Historians generally describe Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (Binglin 炳麟, 1869–1936) as an anti-Manchu revolutionary and treat his Buddhism as subordinate to this larger political project. Far less commonly understood is Zhang’s role in preparing the groundwork for the establishment of Chinese philosophy as an academic discipline. Against the backdrop of an intellectual climate in Japan and China during the decades either side of 1900, in which a premium had come to be placed on logic as a precondition for the development of philosophy, Zhang was one of the first Chinese intellectuals to follow the lead of Japanese scholars in maintaining that classical Chinese philosophers had developed indigenous forms of logic. Significantly, he further argued that Chinese versions of Yogācāra texts on Buddhist logic and epistemology (yinming 因明; Skt. hetu-vidyā) made it possible once again to gain a proper understanding of China’s earliest writings on logic. In this paper I argue that Zhang sought to establish that early Chinese texts “bear witness” to insights into realities that transcend individual cultures but are most fully and systematically articulated in Yogācāra systems of learning; and that classical Chinese philosopher-sages had attained an awareness of the highest truths, evidence of which can be found in their writings. In short, I will show that Zhang used Yogācāra to affirm the value of “Chinese philosophy” and, in doing so, helped shape its early definition.

Measuring the research experience of research postgraduate students in Hong Kong

To date, there has been little research in non-Western contexts exploring the research experience of research higher degree (RHD) students and the effect of research experience on student outcomes. The purposes of this study were to validate the Student Research Experience Questionnaire (SREQ) developed in Australia in the Hong Kong context and to explore the relationships between student research experiences and their perceived skill development and overall satisfaction with their research degree experiences. Data were collected from 599 RHD students. The results supported the construct validity of four SREQ scales (supervision, infrastructure, intellectual climate and skill development). The results of the structural equation modelling suggested that supervision related to students' perceived skill development and overall satisfaction, while intellectual climate and infrastructure were related to overall satisfaction only. The data provide a better understanding of how we can promote positive learning outcomes of RHD students.

Why Bother with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning?

This paper argues that the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) matters on at least six interrelated levels. First, SoTL matters because learning matters, and SoTL can help students learn more effectively. Second, it offers professors the tools to more effectively share their disciplinary passions. Third, it offers faculty an avenue for continued intellectual growth. Fourth, SoTL can build strong crossdisciplinary communities that enliven the intellectual climate. Fifth, it can inform institutional policymaking. Finally, SoTL matters even when it does not directly transform institutional policy, because SoTL embodies a spirit of pedagogical innovation that enlivens the quest for learning and reminds us why it is worth pursuing.

Practices of Experimentation: Research and Teaching in the Arts Today

Practices of Experimentation: Research and Teaching in the Arts Today Department of Art & Media (DKM) at the Zurich University of the Arts, ZHdK (Ed.). (2012). Practices of Experimentation: Research andTeaching in the Arts Today. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 500 pages, 80 color plates, (paperback). ISBN 9783858812599.Practices of Experimentation: Research and Teaching in the Arts Today (2012) is the fou rth in a series of'yearbooks edited and compiled by the Department of Art and Media (DKM) at the Zurich University of the Arts. The book's organizing theme focuses on conceptualizing art as forms of experimentation. The edited collection of 17 contributions is derived from a wide-ranging scope of authors from inside and outside the school, including invitational works from international guests. Presenting a mixture of theoretical content and practical examples, scholars in theory, aesthetics, media arts, and cultural studies are situated alongside contributions from students, alumni, and artists. The project both documents the of the Department of Art and Media and explores contemporary problems concerning and teaching in the Arts. This paperback combines both English and German editions, visually separated by a series of color plates located at the heart of the book. Readers with particular interests in the epistemologies of art, philosophies or methodologies of artistic research, and the application of related contemporary theoretical inquiry to teaching artistic will likely find the conceptual offerings of this project to be academically enticing.Theoretical contributions from various positions of professional practice and knowledge discourses converge, providing the reader with a complicated impression of the school's intellectual climate. Examples of formal art teaching at a university of the Arts are presented in many formats to illustrate the alignment of theory to practice. As a collection, the essays provide fragmented entry points that seem only to scratch the surface of portraying the complexity of the school's ethos and curricular program as one that is guided by intensive theoretical inquiry into research, teaching, and in the Arts. Areas of study and the structural organization of the post-secondary institution are briefly outlined in the foreword by Schiesser and Brunner.Presented as an international model for arts education and that pushes the boundaries of contemporary practices, Zurich University of the Arts houses two dedicated centers (The Institute for Contemporary Art Research and The Institute for Critical Theory), which contribute to a cross-pollination of transdisciplinary discourses underpinning the school's creative and academic activities. In form, the book is an artful project. Rather than presenting a reductive narrative to describe specific qualities and methodologies of the school, the creative format positions the reader within an interpretive space to draw connections where theoretical experimentation and experimental overlap. Contributions include traditional scholarly articles, free-form theoretical brainstorming, reflective narratives, visual artifacts, and project descriptions.In Slow Practices-11 Theses, Christopher Brunner explores the epistemic surplus value of artistic research utilizing a phenomenological approach (p. 57). Focusing on the concept of being in the present moment of engagement in artistic practice, Brunneroffers a set of theoretical propositions as tendencies of acting and thinking by slowing down, feeling, and participating in an event (p. 57). Brunner outlines his individual theses separately, developing his initial thoughts on how slow practices problematize, produce subjectivity and objectivity, refer to collective processes, and are relational, heterochronic, political, creative, and not just productive transversal or techniques of existence based on intensity and duration that transform the concept of knowledge. …

Religion and Spiritual Experience: Revisiting Key Assumptions in Sociology

Sociology, and all the social sciences, have their origin in philosophical traditions dating back to Socrates. These classical traditions considered the possibility that religious experiences may reflect contact with a transcendent reality. The social sciences, however, became differentiated from philosophy during and after the Enlightenment in an intellectual climate that viewed religion skeptically. The founders of sociology adopted this separatist position and argued that sociology would show that religious beliefs were epiphenomena of social structures. They claimed that, as a science, sociology would disprove the claims of religion and establish human knowledge upon purely material foundations.

Review essay of "Max Webers tragische Soziologie: Aspekte und Perspektiven"

[MWS 13.2 (2013) 264-272] ISSN 1470-8078 Review essay of Max Webers tragische Soziologie: Aspekte und Perspektiven1 Hartmann Tyrell Stefan Breuer, Max Webers tragische Soziologie: Aspekte und Perspe ktiven (Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2006), 381pp. Paperback ISBN 3-16 148856-6. €59.00. I. In the past few years there have been repeated efforts by German sociologists interested in the work of Max Weber to translate his sociology and conceptual armoury into a 'sociological theory' that can hold its own in current theoretical debate. The most recent trend of this kind is called the 'Weber paradigm', making use of meth odological individualism and multiple levels of analysis in bring ing about a convergence between Weberian concerns and Rational Choice theory. Stefan Breuer, whose has long been deeply involved in the work of Max Weber, has always had great reservations about this 'modernisation' of Max Weber (Guenther Roth). Maybe one should say: he was resistant to the 'seduction' of updating Weberian sociology so that it might be attached to whichever theoretical pro gramme was currently in fashion. Breuer's restrained admiration for Weber was directed primarily at his 'material sociology', of which he has sometimes said that 'its empirical and historical saturation eclipses everything else'. The collection of essays reviewed here is primarily aimed at Weber's material sociology. The core of the col lection lies in essays on the sociology of rule and the sociology of the city—I will deal with these in Section III. It should be added at once that Breuer is well-versed in the ideas and theories of sociology. He has long had a great interest in soci ological theory, and this is carried over into his interest in Max 1. Translated by Keith Tribe.© Max Weber Studies 2013, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. Tyrell Review essay 265 Weber. These essays show that Breuer's interest in material sociol ogy are capable of revealing theoretical positions and definitions in Weber that stand in contrast to those subsequently employed, and which are also quite distinct from those in use today. One example in the volume is the essay devoted to the practice of social discipline, placing Weber alongside Gerhard Oestreich and Michel Foucault, ending with an accent upon Luhmann (326ff.). There is another deal ing with organisation and civilisation which places Max Weber with respect to Norbert Elias (349ff.). The point of departure that Breuer takes here is quite remarkable. Breuer finds astonishing 'the degree to which Elias was able to detach himself from the pull of Weber's system' (349); and he uses the autonomy of Elias' standpoint to cor rect some of Weber's one-sidedness. Breuer repeatedly expresses his scepticism of all efforts to tie Weber too closely to his concepts of action and, adopting the standpoint of Elias, writes of the need 'to free the interpretation of Weber from the constraints of methodolog ical individualism, placing more emphasis upon those elements that such a perspective excludes' (359). Moreover, Breuer has a rare knowledge of the 'intellectual climate of Germany before 1933', a knowledge that also draws upon the evo lution of ideas in the nineteenth century. There is throughout this volume a consistent interest in the sources for Weber's writing and sociological concepts. Regarding Weber's sociology of religion, for example, Breuer rightly directs attention to Schopenhauer and to the influence he had upon Eduard Hartmann (see in particular his Das religiöse Bewusstsein der Menschheit im Stufengang seiner Entwickelung, 1882). Here also of relevance is the interest in Weber's relation to his intellectual contemporaries, in particular Weber's 'professional friend ship' with Georg Jellinek. This is raised in an essay which impressively links Jellinek's 'social theory of the state' to Weber's political sociol ogy, while also investigating the impact of Jellinek's book on the Erk lärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte on Weber and Troeltsch. Breuer also deals with the 'Germanness' (H. Freyer) of sociology in Germany before and after 1900, tracing a particular 'German line' from Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft through Sombart, Scheler and Simmel to Max Weber. Here it is the after-effects and side-effects of...

Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity by Mahmood Mamdani (review)

Mahmood Mamdani, Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.168 pp.In an intellectual climate where scholars are increasingly wary of catego- ries like tribal, and traditional, Mahmood Mamdani's lat- est work offers a satisfying unmasking of colonial constructions, and an antidote to their legal and political legacies. As a scholar whose work fre- quently straddles border between law, politics, and culture, Mamdani has a reputation for revealing rational bases for otherwise unconscio- nable histories. From his examination of Rwandan genocide in When Victims Become Killers (2001), to more recent works examining politics, identity, and terrorism such as Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, Cold War and Roots of Terror (2004) and Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and War on Terror (2009), Mamdani convincingly traces philosophical foundations of community, citizenship, and policy to evi- dence influence of colonial categories. His latest work stems squarely from this tradition, offering added value of comparative analysis, and demonstrating holding power of as a political identity in post-colonial world.Indeed, while decades of anthropological literature on technolo- gies, philosophies, and legacies of imperialism have located origins of racism in practices of colonial rule, Mamdani asserts that racism is only half story. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity, Mamdani ar- gues that colonial from British India to Dutch East Indies was specifically based on two different axes of discrimination-race and tribe-through which natives and settlers were legally distinguished, differently ruled, and confined to separate social and political destinies. Mamdani further argues that shift from direct to indirect colonial rule, rather than lax control over colonized populations (which promises of non-interference might suggest), masked colonizers' vast ambitions to renegotiate native's subjectivity. Binding movement to indirect rule with parallel shifts-from civilizing missions to projects of protection, from assimilationism to a preoccupation with defining and managing dif- ference, and towards a new form of govern mentality dependent upon an emerging settler/native binary-Mamdani powerfully asserts that the native was creation of theorists of an empire-in-crisis (6). No longer under clear control of crown rule, colonial subjects became objects in need of stricter rule and, therefore, necessarily more subversive forms of subjugation.1Mamdani places colonial crisis point at 1857 Sepoy Mutiny in India: In reflection that followed crisis, Mamdani explains, the colonial mission was redefined-from civilization to conservation and from progress to (8). The movement culminated in 1858 with Queen Victoria's proclaimed doctrine of noninterference in India (8). While this doctrine superficially diluted colonial control of region by abandon- ing assimilationist projects in favor of protecting customary practices, Mamdani suggests that indirect rule achieved opposite, for the pre- rogative to define boundary, substance and of 'customary,' gave vast scope to powers of occupying authority (27). Combining political necessity of social order with an interest in conserving custom, administrators capitalized upon bureaucratic im- plications of indirect rule to emphasize differences that would keep masses divided among themselves.With great attention to colonial political history, Mamdani traces this movement from Indian subcontinent through reforms in British Malaya, Dutch East Indies, and several African colonies, arguing that colonial intellectuals undertook process of defining, and by extension trans- forming, race and tribe as academic and administrative shortcuts to gain- ing control of subject populations. …

Europe's Crisis without End: The Consequences of Neoliberalism

This paper argues that the eurozone crisis is the product of a toxic neoliberal economic policy cocktail. The mixing of that cocktail traces all the way back to the early 1980s when Europe embraced the neoliberal economic model that undermined the income- and demand-generation process via wage stagnation and widened income inequality. Stagnation was serially postponed by a number of developments, including the stimulus from German re-unification and the low interest rate convergence produced by creation of the euro. The latter prompted a 10-year credit and asset price bubble that created fictitious prosperity. Postponing stagnation in this fashion has had costs because it worsened the ultimate stagnation by creating large build-ups of debt. Additionally, the creation of the euro ensconced a flawed monetary system that fosters public debt crisis and the political economy of fiscal austerity. Lastly, during this period of postponement, Germany sought to avoid stagnation via export-led growth based on wage repression. That has created an internal balance of payments problem within the eurozone, which is a further impediment to resolving the crisis. There is a way out of the crisis. It requires replacing the neoliberal economic model with a structural Keynesian model; remaking the European Central Bank so that it acts as a government banker; having Germany replace its export-led growth wage suppression model with a domestic demand-led growth model; and creating a pan-European model of wage and fiscal policy coordination that blocks race to the bottom tendencies within Europe. Countries, particularly Germany, can implement some of this agenda on their own. However, much of the agenda must be implemented collectively, which makes change enormously difficult. Moreover, the war of ideas in favor of such reforms has yet to be won. Consequently, both politics and the ruling intellectual climate make success unlikely and augur a troubled future.

THE RACIAL STRESS OF MEMBERSHIP: DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTY INVENTORY OF RACIALIZED EXPERIENCES IN SCHOOLS

Research on the experience of faculty of color in predominately White independent schools (PWIS) is limited. This study explored faculty of varying racial backgrounds and their initiation of, interactions with, and stress reactions to racial conflicts within the school settings using an online survey. Several measures were developed according to the Racial/Ethnic Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (recast) model and administered to 339 faculty participants. Using factor analytic and correlational analyses, results from the highly reliable measures found that Black faculty show significantly less trust in schools to manage racial conflict, lower sense of school membership, greater racial stress, and more racial socialization than their White counterparts do. With reliable and valid measures on the racialized experiences of faculty in PWIS, future research can ask better questions on how much racial politics influence diversity initiatives, including faculty and student recruitment and retention, supportive racial and intellectual climate, and organizational mission and professional development. Implications for the development of racially relevant measures in schools are discussed.

Evading Frames: D’Antin van Rooten’s Homophonic Mother Goose

In 1967, American dialect actor Luis d’Antin van Rooten published his now-classic Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames, a non-organic arrangement of French-language words and phrases designed to approximate the speech sounds of Mother Goose Rhymes. Though much read and imitated, these homophonic translations have largely evaded theoretical focus. Perhaps this is because their unique structuring allows them to evade anchorage in any specific contextual frame, and to send up the researcher’s own efforts toward contextualization, which has been prescribed as the methodological “first step” in Translation Studies since the Cultural Turn. Presented here, first of all, is a search for the potential frames of the Mots d’Heures–biographical, inter-textual, cinematic. These homophonic translations, I will then contend with reference to Jean-Jacques Lecercle (1990), exist to defy these frames by collapsing together, at the phono-articulate level, the target text with its most obvious context: the English-language source. Finally, I would contend, this collapse exemplifies the phenomena of “weaning,” “trans-contextual drift,” and “remainder” argued by Derrida (1988) as the enduring property of the signifying structure. The Mots d’Heures serve, then, as a playful reminder, in an intellectual climate where context reigns, of the signifying form’s structural ascendancy over the frame, of its “iterability.”