Intellectual Practice Research Articles

Символічний капітал і морально неприпустиме в інтелектуальних практиках сучасного університету

The article deals with the interconnection between pragmatic and axiological dimensions of intellectual practices of contemporary university, practice of a university intellectual in conditions of contemporary university mission in Europe, in particular. The author analyzes the content of morally unacceptable in a university teacher activity within current symbolic production and exchange and criteria for their defining. Morally unacceptable is defined as the threshold created by conscience. Conscience of an intellectual outlines the measure which is impossible to overcome in any circumstances, disregarding any provocative factors. These factors are defined in the paper. Among external factors are: direction on public requests and underfunding of higher education. In practice these factors turn into the neglect of humanities component in education, demand on indulgent attitude of avaluation, redundancy of research component in education process, involvement of university teachers into educative services aggressive marketing campaigns and so on. Internal professional factors are conditioned by external tendencies and mean destruction of prestige of teaching, reduction of a role of a university teacher as an authoritative source of knowledge, experience and skillfulness at the ground of quick access to technically perfect sources of information. These factors change pragmatic and axiological core of the university symbolic capital where a demand to university teacher to be the source of authentic knowledge in teaching and shaping of social elite (technical, academic and artistic) was a traditional one. The paper defines that in such circumstances the role of conscience and moral choice of an intellectual is increased. It is conscience that can force a university intellectual to refuse unacceptable. The content of morally unacceptable is defined personally by everyone according to personal comprehension of the symbolic capital axiological core.

Being Soviet, Muslim, Modernist, and Fundamentalist in 1950s Central Asia

AbstractHow far, if at all, did the intellectual legacy of early 20th-century Muslim reformism inform the transformative process which Islam underwent in Soviet Central Asia, especially after WWII? Little has been done so far to analyze the output of Muslim scholars (ʿulamāʾ) operating under Soviet rule from the perspective of earlier Islamic intellectual traditions. The present essay addresses this problem and sheds light on manifestations of continuity among Islamic intellectual practices—mostly puritanical—from the period immediately before the October Revolution to the 1950s. Such a continuity, we argue, profoundly informed the activity of the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM) established in Tashkent in 1943 and, more specifically, the latter’s attack against manifestations of religiosity deemed “popular,” which were connected to the cult of saints. Thus, this essay posits that the juristic output of Soviet ʻulamā’ in Central Asia originates from and further develops an Islamic reformist thinking, which manifested itself in the region in the late 19th- and early 20th-century. By establishing such an intellectual genealogy, we seek in this article to revise a historiographical narrative which has hitherto tended to decouple scripturalist sensibilities from Islamic reformism and modernism.

Bergson and the spiritualist origins of the ideology of creativity in philosophy

ABSTRACT Henri Bergson (1859–1940), the most prominent member of nineteenth-century French spiritualism, is the first philosopher who explicitly defined philosophy as a practice which consists in posing problems anew and in creating concepts. In this article, I will try to reconstruct the progressive importance acquired by the terms ‘problem’ and ‘concept’ in nineteenth-century French philosophy and how they combined in Bergson’s theories about creativity, invention and novelty. I will argue that Bergson’s conception of philosophy as a creative intellectual practice was the result of a negotiation, inside a pre-existent spiritualist framework, between, on the one hand, neo-Kantianism and, on the other hand, evolutionism which strongly influenced empirical psychology and the emerging social sciences. Bergson’s solution, influenced by the evolution of mathematics and literary theory, was just one of the possible options, and the main alternative to a new form of transcendental philosophy.

COMMON PURPOSE: NETWORKING INITIATIVES TO FOSTER DEMENTIA-CAPABLE CARE FOR LIFELONG DISABILITIES

As individuals with I/DD live longer, Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise, particularly in individuals with Down syndrome. Practitioners have recognized that the I/DD system does not possess the expertise to provide appropriate care for this population as it ages. A series of federally funded initiatives in Rhode Island – supported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Administration for Community Living (ACL), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) -- have begun to equip health care and direct care professionals to meet the needs of individuals with I/DD and AD. Using a “connector” model, the GWEP at RIGEC has woven together these efforts, aligned program goals from disparate funders, built connections between the Aging Network and the disability system, and worked with the National Task Group on Intellectual Disabilities and Dementia Practices (NTG) to create sustainable resources for the health care and direct care workforces.

The Shaping of Design Methodology in Russia: Alexander Bogdanov and Alexander Rosenberg

The article analyzes the initial stages of the shaping of design. Like the situation when the shaping of science was preceded by the emergence of methodology, a similar process had been taking place in this domain: First, methodological studies aimed at the forming of design thought made their appearance and then—on their basis—design as an independent sphere of activity and practice began to take shape. The article analyzes the methodological principles of design (the principles of correspondence, of economy, of optimum, etc.) formulated by Alexander Vladimirovich Rosenberg, demonstrating that, in his suggestions, he was drawing not only on his vision of the design experience available at the time but also on the ideas of Alexander Bogdanov’s Tectology—primarily the organizational and systemic ones. The author reveals certain particulars of the shaping of design: the role of prerequisites of its emergence, the significance of methodological research, the impact of Bogdanov’s Tectology. Furthermore, the author formulates the hypothesis of the two languages (systemic and systemic-objective) describing design and intellectual practices of similar complexity.

The Between

Thinking with this special issue's group of feminist thinkers – some artists and others scholars – this introduction makes a strong case for co-authorship and a more collaborative humanities, while also insisting that the couple form – that stalwart object of queer and feminist theory – is neither a known quantity nor an exhausted entity, but rather, a field ripe for analysis. Situated squarely within performance studies, this introduction pivots away from questions of ontology and toward method and performativity, in order to ask: what modes of intellectual practice, erotic exchange, political work, and aesthetic experimentation happen uniquely within couple forms, in their most capacious and non-self-same iterations? What queer and feminist work can they do? What, in other words, is possible in the infinity, if indeed it is an infinity, between one and two?

Scaling Nature

Late medieval writers were enamored with metaphors of scale for imagining mankind in relation to the rest of the created world. This article takes the minor mundus — the idea of the human as a “lesser world” patterned after the greater, cosmic one — as a point of departure for exploring medieval debates about what it meant to be an embodied human that stood simultaneously apart from and yet within the natural world. It argues that microcosmic thinking was particularly prominent in the tradition of the Roman de la Rose, because it allowed writers to enter into a long-standing conversation about how the physical environment potentially influenced the human will. A scalar logic of nature was embraced by some of these popular writers and rebuffed by others, depending on their view of how the soul was situated with respect to the material body. Revisiting these ubiquitous microcosmic figures gives us insight into sometimes opaque medieval intellectual practice even as it demonstrates how the history of rhetoric can contribute to a broader history of materialism.

Aestheticism versus Utilitarianism: The Reception of the “Tragic” in 1930s Chinese Literary Discourse

This study examines the construction of the Chinese literary discourse on tragedy in the 1930s, when the intertwining connections between literature and politics left a noticeable influence on the Chinese understanding of the concept. It approaches the subject from three angles: first, it reviews both theoretical discussions of the concept of tragedy and the literary practice of the tragic, exploring possible factors that have either promoted or prevented the application of theory to practice. Second, it traces the changing relationship between pragmatic and aesthetic perspectives during the formation of the Chinese intellectual discourse on tragedy, analysing its relevance to the inextricable link between literature and politics in the 1930s. Thirdly, it investigates the differences between the Chinese perception of tragedy and its foreign origins, presenting the constant interplay among several cultural, social, and political elements that affected the establishment of the 1930s Chinese tragic tradition. In doing so, this study demonstrates the particular features of the Chinese perception of the tragic in the 1930s, as well as the decisive role that socio-political factors played in manipulating the intellectual practices at the time.

The Everywhere and Nowhere Skill: Sustaining the Assessment of Analytical Reading as Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum

Abstract Despite efforts of both administration and faculty, the intent and the execution of new curricular initiatives are not always in alignment. To understand how the declaration of a campus-wide general education initiative was being implemented, this article combines analyses of syllabi and courses from across disciplines. In an initial review, the goal was to understand how new elements of Core Objectives and Student Learning Outcomes were being incorporated into syllabi. After this general review, the authors sought to understand how core elements associated specifically with reading were being implemented in syllabi and in the classroom. This article finds that while critical analysis and reading are valued as cornerstones of the university, the details of who is responsible for teaching and assessing these important features remains less clear. “Reading” is variously prevalent across disciplinary courses: while present in the course structure and assessment mechanisms of syllabi across the university, there is little evidence that instructors are holding themselves responsible for teaching and assessing it as an intellectual practice. Amid a national scholarly conversation about reading and its role in critical thinking, this study contributes ideas for how institutions can more explicitly align stated values with curricular outcomes in practice.

The politics of intellectual labor under contemporary capitalist restructuring

Originally published in 2014, Gavin Smith’s Intellectuals and (Counter-) Politics: Essays in Historical Realism felt like a jolt of adrenaline for politically engaged scholarship, in anthropology and beyond. One of the book’s core provocations was methodological: it asked how exactly, in a pragmatic sort of way, we might do intellectual work that is not only politically effective (i.e. that gives additional “leverage” to collective struggle) but also works with, not against, the unique forms of intervention open to members of our profession. Its answer was deliciously heretical. Smith suggested the most politically valuable contributions of intellectual work might not come from the orthodox methods we tend to adopt when we commit ourselves to joining political struggles, such as aligning ourselves with the collective movements we support and offering them an audience and theoretical lens for their voices of dissent. The importance of ground-level solidarity work cannot be overstated. But allowing such alliances and their immediate challenges to shape the scope of our intellectual practice may confuse the kinds of practical knowledge necessary for one mode of activist struggle with that necessary for, and made possible by, another.

One nation, one spelling, one school: writing education and the nationalisation of orthography in the Netherlands (1750–1850)

ABSTRACTIn 1804, the first official spelling of Dutch was published as part of a national language policy that had been argued for since the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1805, an official grammar was published. The orthography and the grammar constituted regulations for the written language (schrijftaalregeling), which were part of a broader effort at nationalisation. Other societal domains affected by this attempt at nationalisation included education. The first decade of the nineteenth century also produced a series of educational reform. In this paper, we first discuss the ideological aspects of the nationalisation of language and education. Focusing on writing education, we then discuss eighteenth-century teaching practices, and the criticism these gave rise to, particularly for the strong focus on technical skills. We argue that writing education became increasingly important in the new school system, in which writing was conceptualised as a grammatical and intellectual practice as well. As a result, new teaching practices were developed. Adopting the officialised spelling of 1804 was part of the grammatical aspect of writing education. We show how grammar books and reading materials pre-dating and postdating the official Dutch language policy shifted from a situation of variable orthographical practices towards orthographical homogeneity through a strict adoption of official prescriptions.

Fields and dialectics in social movement studies

ABSTRACT In spite of the dialogue with and use of dialectics in Bourdieu’s foundational work on fields, recent work in social movements that employ fields and kindred concepts have generally abjured dialectics and, especially, Marxism. A renewed dialogue with Marxism is important to overcome some of the key limits of these meso-level analytic concepts. Several areas of extension are discussed, including the process of abstraction; the centrality of contradiction in driving change; the question of real potentials for change; and the problem of cohesion, including of consciousness. It is argued that Marxism pushes a sociology of movement fields back toward reflexivity, and from there to critical questions of intellectual practice.

Toni Morrison’s Experimental Novel, The Bluest Eye: Tempering ‘Disinterested Violence’ Through the ‘Narrative Project’

In “Toni Morrison’s Experimental Novel, The Bluest Eye: Tempering ‘Disinterested Violence’ through the ‘Narrative Project,’” I claim that Morrison critiques the intellectual practice known as modernist purification. This essay complicates earlier studies which simplify The Bluest Eye as a text solely concerned with racism inflicted on African Americans by whites. Rather, modernist purification and mediation shed light on the underlying mechanisms by which characters in the text (blacks and whites) are reduced into ideological abstractions devoid of subjective experiences and worth. This practice allows for the “disinterested violence” to be inflicted on all races seem more permissible. I then assert that the notion of the “narrative project” (coined by Morrison) provides the proper medium by which a critique of purification may be made. However, in order for Morrison to critique purification as afflicted on characters, such as the protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, Morrison must engage in a type of scientific inquiry which necessitates the enactment of purification, echoing Emile Zola’s notion of the “experimental novel.” In Morrison’s “scientific inquiry,” however, there arises a paradox: she must enact and reify that which she also critiques. In a fashion that recalls Robert Musil’s juxtaposed discursive modes in The Man without Qualities , Morrison attempts to alleviate the aforementioned conundrum (her own potential for “disinterested violence” in the writing of her novel) by establishing a pair of paradigmatic shifts in the novel’s narrative structure and its ethical/moral aims.

КОНТЕКСТНЫЕ СТРАТЕГИИ АРГУМЕНТАЦИИ В ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОМ ДИСКУРСЕ РОССИЙСКИХ РУКОВОДИТЕЛЕЙ

The article is devoted to argumentation as intellectual practice in different spheres. The argumentative component of politicians’ speech is defined as a basis of speech influence and the main means of achieving the goal in the process of communication with the mass audience. The use of proverbs is a tactical tool in the process of implementing the contextual strategy. The linguistic analysis of argumentation is conducted by the example of well-known politicians’ speech from the point of view of the system approach. The role of proverbs in speech is determined as arguments expressing cultural-historical and value-based experience.

Judean Onomastic Hermeneutics in Context

AbstractThe termVolksetymologiehas frequently been applied to the etiological passages of the Hebrew Bible and occasionally to such passages in Mesopotamian literature that explain the origin of the name of a person, place, or thing. Originating in mid- nineteenth century GermanSprachwissenschaft, the term generally assumes that the authors of such passages were possessed of a considerable philological ignorance and naïveté. These etymological narratives are thus regularly brushed aside as childish though charming. Alternatively, they are often understood as interesting aesthetic devices, related to paronomasia and punning.It is becoming increasingly evident, however, that the activity of parsing a name is linked to broader interpretive methods employed by scribes in the ancient Near East. Indeed, our developing understanding of intellectual practices in Mesopotamia and among the Bible’s tradents has demonstrated that Babylonian and Judean scribes could employ rather sophisticated hermeneutics. This fact has significance for our evaluation of biblical etymological passages in many ways including, for example, the methods employed by ancient authors to interpret names within narratives and their motivation for doing so.

Hidden Between Craft and Industry: Engineering Patternmakers’ Design Knowledge

Abstract Craft is currently experiencing an academic and popular revival, as evidenced by increasing interest in ‘makers’ and artisanal practices, both within and beyond design history. Yet, in this moment of craft’s resurgence, some aspects are regularly overlooked. Industrial craft in manufacturing, for instance, is a field ripe for closer analysis. Engineering patternmaking is an industrial craft that remains almost invisible in design history, despite the design-related nature of patternmaking, and its centrality to many industrial manufacturing processes. Drawing on oral histories with Australian patternmakers, this article emphasizes that patternmaking is both a manual and intellectual practice that requires thorough knowledge of drawing, materials, geometry, three-dimensional visuality and manufacturing processes planning. Accordingly, I argue that patternmakers possess and enact a specific type of design knowledge, a form of expertise that has thus far been undervalued in both design and craft histories. Making use of Nigel Cross’ influential theorization of ‘designerly ways of knowing’, this article explores the connections and divergences between design and patternmaking knowledge sets, reminding us that the making of manufactured objects is deeply collaborative across professional and class formations. In doing so, I highlight the significance of industrial craft knowledge in the actualization of design. This example has broader historical implications for how design history frames and values the knowledge, skills and influence of those engaged in industrial production.

This Conjuncture: For Stuart Hall

When Stuart Hall died in 2014, many tributes and memorial activities were planned by organisations, institutions and publications that felt they owed him a debt. New Formations was no exception, and the editorial board spent some time reflecting on an appropriate tribute. Stuart himself, as many of us knew, had little interest in seeing his work codified or memorialised for its own sake. But there was one injunction that many of us were familiar with from that work, his example, and from frequent personal and political conversations with him. The importance of thinking about 'the conjuncture', of 'getting the analysis right', was one that Stuart frequently emphasised to his students and interlocutors. The importance of mapping the specificity of the present, of situating current developments historically, of looking out for political threats and opportunities, was always at the heart of Stuart's conception both of 'cultural studies' as a specific intellectual practice, and of the general vocation of critical and engaged scholarship in the contemporary world. This is double-issue is the first of two volumes of New Formations to be dedicated, in Stuart's honour, to the understanding of this conjuncture. This introductory essay/editorial considers the relationship between 'cultural studies' and 'conjunctural analysis' as specific types of intellectual practice, before proposing a specific analysis of our present 'conjuncture', in dialogue with the other contributors to this volume.

What’s in a latin name?: Cycas wadei & the politics of nomenclature

This history piece analyzes colonial-era correspondence and botany publications fascinated with Cycas wadei, a cycad observed only to grow on the island of Culion in the province of Palawan. First spotted in 1902 by U.S. botanist Elmer D. Merrill, the cycad became the preoccupation of U.S. and Filipino scientists alike. It took nearly three and a half decades before the species was introduced in the Philippine Journal of Science in 1936 as C. wadei, named after Herbert W. Wade, head physician of the Culion leper colony established by the U.S. colonial government at the turn of the century. Tracking the history of this species—from its first sighting to its debut before the international botany community—reveals much about the institutional workings of colonial science in the Philippines in the years leading up to the Commonwealth era. It further inspires us to take stock of the ways in which the politics of Latin binomial nomenclature of a species can be historicized across scales of human and institutional interaction. Such an intellectual practice can help us continue to shed light on the history of taxonomy in the Philippines.

The impact of intellectual capital disclosure and corporate governance practices on the cost of finance: Tunisian evidence

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) and corporate governance practices on the cost of finance. The sample consists of 27 Tunisian listed companies over a five-year period (2010-2014). Results show that intellectual capital disclosure is negatively and significantly associated with the cost of debt (COD) and the cost of equity capital (COEC). In contrast, only some corporate governance mechanisms namely managerial ownership (MO) and ownership concentration (OC) may influence the interest rate required by investors. These findings has policy implications for managers in the Tunisian setting and other developing economies similar to Tunisia, given the crucial role played by intellectual capital as a primary source of competitive advantage.

Intellectual Property Rights Practices and Its Influence on Firms Performance: An Empirical Study across Indian Software Product Firms

Studies on innovation have drawn the attention of the researchers. This paper discusses intellectual property rights as an innovation approach adopted by software product firms and its influence on the performance of these firms. The objective of the paper is to examine the influence of intellectual property rights practices on firm performance. The methodology comprises two steps. First, all the variables relevant to practices of open innovation with respect to IPR are identified. Subsequently, primary data is gathered from decision makers of 213 SMEs. IBM SPSS is the statistical tool employed and robust statistical technique such as ordinal logistic regression analysis is performed to test the hypothesis. The result shows that purchasing of intellectual property rights influences firm performance with respect to overall performance and more product development.