Invisible Dynamics Research Articles

Invisible dynamics: exploring the genetic diversity of peacock bass in Brazil

In Brazil, the introduction of non-native species into freshwater environments, such as peacock bass (Cichla spp.), was driven by aquaculture and sport fishing. These Amazonian fish possess phenotypic plasticity and resilience that facilitate their invasion and establishment in new habitats. Due to the taxonomic complexity of cichlids, studies on intraspecific variation are essential to mitigate the impacts of biological invasions. This study aimed to analyze the genetic diversity of peacock bass, assessing how invasive populations have diversified over time and across different regions in Brazil. Samples were collected from different invasive populations in Maranhão, São Paulo, Paraná, and Goiás. DNA was extracted and the 16S and COX1 genes were amplified. Ninety-seven specimens of the genus Cichla Schneider, 1801 were identified as Cichla monoculus Agassiz, 1831 (n=12); Cichla kelberi Kullander and Ferreira, 2006 (n=75); and Cichla piquiti (Kullander and Ferreira, 2006) (n=10). Sixteen 16S haplotypes (445bp) were identified, with haplotype diversity and nucleotide diversity values of Hd: 0.830 and Pi: 0.03777, respectively. The results showed proximity between the invasive populations from Maranhão and São Paulo, with haplotype sharing among Parque Nacional dos Lençóis Maranhenses, Baixada Maranhense, and Ilha Solteira. This highlights the fragility of species delimitation and definitions within the group, based solely on morphological data. By evaluating the set of morphological and genetic data, we found significant intraspecific variations, despite expecting population homogeneity due to the founder effect and bottleneck commonly observed in invasive populations. This underscores the adaptive potential of these cichlids.

City of icebergs: materiality, surface and depth in Nairobi’s built environment

AbstractThis article considers the materiality and substance of the built environment in Nairobi in light of concerns about surface, depth and the power of the unseen. Taking Nairobi’s high-rise construction boom and a recent spate of collapsed buildings as its starting point, it examines how longstanding ideas about the hidden and invisible dynamics of African cities do not operate in a realm distinct from the material world, but often stem from it: the stuff from which the city is made generates thought and action. High-rise buildings are sometimes described as ‘icebergs’ (structures where much of what is going on is under the surface) or as ‘fakes’ (buildings that superficially promise something, but that are qualitatively and morally suspect). Exploring Nairobi’s construction industry from sites of building collapse, I show how an emerging vertical materiality in the city’s built environment drives debates about deception, (im)moral economies and popular suspicions of power, complicating discourses about the relationship of surface to underneath. I examine how Nairobi’s frail buildings induce anxieties about the seen and the unseen, illuminating how the materials of verticality are entangled in economies of deception.

Uncertain and under Quarantine: Toward a Sociology of Medical Ignorance.

At the center of the COVID-19 pandemic lies a ubiquitous feature of medicine. Medicine is permeated with ignorance. Seizing this moment to assess the current state of medical sociology, this article articulates a sociology of medical ignorance. We join insights from earlier medical sociological scholarship on uncertainty with emerging research in the sociology of ignorance to help make sense of the omnipresent but sometimes invisible dynamics related to the unknowns in medicine. Then we examine two streams of inquiry with a focus on uncertainty and ignorance-(1) research on the interconnections between technology, medical authority, and ignorance and (2) research on lay expertise within the context of ever-present uncertainties. For decades, and to good effect, medical sociologists have asked, "What does medicine know, and what are the consequences of such knowing?" Going forward, we encourage medical sociologists to examine the unknown in medicine and the consequences of not knowing.

The Weight Women Carry: Research on the Visible and Invisible Baggage in Suitcase Trade between China and Africa

Grounded in ethnographic observations, this article offers a commentary on the visible and invisible dynamics of mobility between China and West and Central Africa. It follows the transnational trajectories of African trader women and takes stock of some of the weight that these women shoulder during trips where goods and money are set in motion. The materiality of the transported consumer items shapes traders’ experiences of mobility and immobility. Trader women also must carry immaterial baggage relating to what their mobile, racialized female bodies represent to various people they encounter. Specifically, the Chinese state and general public view their bodies as threats to social order and, in the context of Ebola and COVID-19, as threats to public health. Our analysis also attends to the weight that female scholars metaphorically carry while conducting research. We devote space to addressing our presence as White researchers, thus attending to methodological opaqueness alongside issues of hidden geographies in transnational trade and migration.

Digitalisation and work: challenges from the platform-economy

ABSTRACT The new ways of organising work and offering services on the market through the so-called digital platforms seem to have put the traditional legal standards for classifying employment relationships into question. The mechanism of functioning of digital platforms, in fact, seems to put together a series of ‘old’ problems in a new combination. On the one hand, platforms present themselves on the market as subjects with an apparently rarefied organisational structure, moving along the threads of algorithms; on the other hand, those who collaborate with them seem to do so in a spontaneous, voluntary, random and flexible way. The radical fragmentation, or reduction to the minimum, of the productive organisation, is accompanied by the fragmentation of the work activity itself, made by an anonymous multitude of people (‘crowd’), who move together in the light of invisible dynamics, dictated by unknown algorithms. Academic scholarship - and in some countries also case law - has already offered many and different answers to the problem of the legal classification of the relationship of those who work for/with the platforms. They vary according to the methodological approaches and the systems used as a reference. The present paper argues that it is not possible to provide for a general answer to such question, valid for every concrete case. In fact, the specific features of each relationship between the platform and the workers might largely vary from case to case. However, some elements that are functional to the solution of the classification issue are still disputable and shall be clarified: (a) in most of the cases, the platform does not act as a mere intermediary between the supply and demand for a certain service; instead, it represents the direct supplier of that service, which is provided through the activities of the workers; therefore, the workers are fully integrated into the platforms’ organisation; (b) in the light of the rating mechanism and the adoption of certain contractual clauses on withdrawal – that will be described –, often the worker is made illegitimately liable for the unfulfilment of the obligations to the customer; (c) when the conditions a) and b) occur, a substantial overlap between the business carried out by digital platforms and the workers’ activities can be detected and this shall be taken into consideration in the investigation on the legal status of the workers, especially in order to prevent any attempt to circumvent the application of the employment law protections.

Digitalisation and Work: Challenges from the Platform-Economy

The new ways of organising work and offering services on the market through the so-called digital platforms seem to have put the traditional legal standards for qualifying employment relationships into question. The mechanism of functioning of digital platforms, in fact, seems to put together a series of “old” problems in a new combination. On the one hand, platforms present themselves on the market as subjects with an apparently rarefied organizational structure, moving along the threads of algorithms; on the other hand, those who collaborate with them seem to do so in a spontaneous, voluntary, random and flexible way. The radical fragmentation, or reduction to the minimum, of the productive organization, is accompanied by the fragmentation of the work activity itself, made by an anonymous multitude of people (‘crowd’), who move together in the light of invisible dynamics, dictated by unknown algorithms. Academic scholarship - and in some countries also case law - has already offered many and different answers to the problem of the qualification of the relationship of those who work for/with the platforms. They vary according to the methodological approaches and the systems used as a reference. The present paper argues that it is not possible to provide for a general answer to such question, valid for every concrete case. In fact, the specific features of each relationship between the platform and the workers might largely vary from case to case. However, some elements that are functional to the solution of the qualification issue are still disputable and shall be clarified: (a) in most of the cases, the platform does not act as a mere intermediary between the supply and demand for a certain service; instead, it represents the direct supplier of that service, which is provided through the activities of the workers; therefore, the workers are fully integrated into the platforms’ organization; (b) in the light of the rating mechanism and the adoption of certain contractual clauses on withdrawal – that will be described –, often the worker is made illegitimately liable for the unfullfillment of the obligations to the customer; (c) when the conditions a) and b) occur, a substantial overlap between the business carried out by digital platforms and the workers’ activities can be detected and this shall be taken into consideration in the investigation on the legal status of the workers.

Isolating invisible dynamics in the design of robust hybrid internal models

The paper deals with the problem of output regulation for a class of hybrid linear systems and exosystems whose state jumps periodically according to a known clock. In this framework the main contribution of the paper is to present a general method for the systematic design of robust internal model-based regulators by extending results that are known for continuous-time systems. The internal model design procedure relies upon a notion of visibility of the so-called “hybrid steady-state generator.” The general theory is applied to the case of robust tracking of spline-based reference trajectories by showing how the latter can be thought of as being generated by hybrid linear exosystems.

Pubertet - pobuna i odrastanje - Koliko su tradicionalni scenariji u pretpubertetskoj i pubertetskoj dinamici još uvek prisutni?

Great instability in the roles, wide fluidity in the theater of love, which is contrary with stable world of yesterday, can not be transferred or impact on children growing up in space of fluid love. Parents who were given the right to determine the kind of pleasure and imposing a form of love to the children entries the confusion eliminating of those clear standards that were present in earlier periods. Pathological manifestations, especially of girls in the pre-puberty and puberty, which was reported on the psychotherapies undertaken because of the difficulty in adapting and education, can provide insights into normal processes such as are difficult to obtain with direct observation. Understanding any phase or any level within phase of development implies a clear insight into the history of the previous phases and level of the structure built by then. Even when it comes to revolutionary changes or about flurry in development process that is actually about amplifying evolutionary process. The theoretical problem with puberty, as a phase that can be defined as new edition of the infantile period, is that it comes after a period of so-called latency is illogical that after the (apparently) peaceful development can reach such large, revolutionary changes. It seems that even the development theory has not paid the necessary attention to something that could be defined as preparatory activities from which puberty depends. It is clear that this is the one invisible dynamics present in the psyche is in this quiet, pre-puberty period.

Visualizing Breath using Digital Holography

Artist Jayne Wilton and physicists Peter Hobson and Ivan Reid of Brunel University are collaborating at Brunel University on a project which aims to use a range of techniques to make visible the normally invisible dynamics of the breath and the verbal and non-verbal communication it facilitates. The breath is a source of a wide range of chemical, auditory and physical exchanges with the direct environment. Digital Holography is being investigated to enable a visually stimulating articulation of the physical trajectory of the breath as it leaves the mouth. Initial findings of this research are presented. Real time digital hologram replay allows the audience to move through holographs of breath-born particles.

The Aesthetics of Dissociation: Radiohead's “How to Disappear Completely” and Jasper Johns's Device Paintings

The Aesthetics of Dissociation: Radiohead's “How to Disappear Completely” and Jasper Johns's <i>Device</i> Paintings

Development Power: The Potential Dynamics in Economic Process

Stating from the intrinsic characteristics of macroeconomic development, this paper puts forward the concept of development power and its theoretical frame. The development power is the potential and invisible dynamics to promote economic growth. By means of the development power theory, we can explain some important problems in macro-economy. We discuss the basic properties of development power and obtain some results, such as, the effects of economic policy depends on the development power, the imbalance of economic development is caused by the different levels in development power. The method is given to evaluate development power, and then we may analyze the mutual effects among development powers. Finally, we illustrate that the development power movements exist widely in the economic development.

Complexity and safety

This article addresses the challenges of changing the way people make decisions about safety-related actions in a way that leads to fewer injuries and incidents. Violations of standard procedures occur routinely and sometimes result in injury. People walk by hazards that later result in incidents. The question arises, “Why didn't this person follow procedure?” Safety experts have long searched for the answer to this question at the level of the individual or even organizational systems with limited success. A deeper truth and the potential solutions to this conundrum may lie in the theories of complexity management and sensemaking, which attempt to help us understand the invisible dynamics that drive organizational behavior. Language: en

RewritingMoby-Dick: Politics, Textual Identity, and the Revision Narrative

The study of textual evolution, or revision as a textual phenomenon, requires a form of fluid-text editing that not only gives readers access to the textual identities that constitute the versions of a work but also makes the revision process witnessable by generating revision sequences and revision narratives for every revision event. Traditional editorial approaches that mix versions in the editing of a work compromise the integrity of textual identities, and the problem of mixing versions is demonstrated in three examples of the way editors and critics (in the context of orientalist and colonialist discourses) have changed the text of, or rewritten, Herman Melville'sMoby-Dick: Edward Said's mistaking John Huston and Ray Bradbury's film ending for Melville's, the British expurgations that modulate Queequeg's homosexuality to preclude the idea of homosexual domesticity and marriage, and the British editors' conversion of Queequeg's Christianity (and modern editors' perpetuation of the unwanted conversion). These historical and modern cases show that readers, sometimes despite themselves, revise texts materially in ways that mirror their desire and the ways of power. Editing the rewriting of a text likeMoby-Dickin a digital critical archive would preserve all versions and generate revision narratives that textualize the otherwise invisible dynamics of revision in a culture. With its capacity to edit fluid texts, digital humanities scholarship is well situated to expand the discourse on the dynamics of textual evolution into the literary and cultural criticism of the twenty-first century.

The Exploratorium's Invisible Dynamics Project: Environmental Research as Artistic Process

The Exploratorium's Invisible Dynamics project seeks to manifest the inevitable and reciprocal relationship between art and science that is at the heart of the museum's mission. An attempt to visualize invisible, often cartographic, systems in the San Francisco Bay Area, it places various elements of Bay Area life in a context that can then proportionally be used to relate San Francisco to the greater Pacific Rim in a similar scalar relationship. The paper analyzes one part in particular of the Invisible Dynamics project—Hidden Ecologies, a photographic, cartographic collaboration between a microbiologist and an architect. The flexibility between artistic and scientific processes is expressed by those involved in Hidden Ecologies as well as the “artists” of the other three projects that make up Invisible Dynamics.

Common Systems: The Invisible Dynamics of the Pacific Rim and the Bay Area

Common Systems: The Invisible Dynamics of the Pacific Rim and the Bay Area

Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon (review)

Reviewed by: Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon Françoise Pfaff Tcheuyap, Alexie , ed. 2005. Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon. Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth African Studies. 342 pp. Indigenous sub-Saharan African filmmaking began some fifty years ago. Initially studied within historical, sociopolitical, cultural, linguistic, or thematic paradigms, it was analyzed later from semiotic, structuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial perspectives. A number of books and journals have treated films by Cameroonian directors, but no volume on Cameroon appeared in the country series on African cinema edited by Victor Bachy in the 1980s and 1990s, and the only book on Cameroonian cinema was Guy Jérémie Ngansop's Le cinéma camerounais en crise (1987). [End Page 97] Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon, edited by Alexie Tcheuyap, professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada, brings a timely contribution, especially on post-1980 films. The collection includes fourteen articles, most previously unpublished, by African and Western specialists in various fields. Tcheuyap's introduction describes the precariousness of Cameroonian film production and distribution under postcolonial autocratic governments intolerant of spoken, printed or cinematic challenges. Emphasizing the lack of coherent cultural policy and infrastructure such as film schools or postproduction facilities, Tcheuyap states that "producing a film in Cameroon, as in many African countries, is still something of a miracle" (p. 2). Films selected for inclusion were directed by Cameroonians, consider Cameroon as a category of analysis, or were filmed there. The chapters "attempt to address the aesthetic, ideological, and social problems related to images and their political significance in what is left of this rich country" (p. 4). Opening the first section, "The State, Images and Cultural Discourses," Gilbert Doho establishes a clear delineation between two groups of Cameroonian directors: (1) A self-censoring first generation, including Jean Pierre Dikongue-Pipa, Daniel Kamwa, and Alphonse Beni, that produced propagandistic documentaries celebrating the "father of the nation" or the prowess of soccer players, politically benign feature films on marriage and the dowry, and escapist action movies—all of which "refused to engage with burning national issues. This cinema was the site of a vicious collaboration between the state and independent filmmakers" (p. 22). (2) A second generation—Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Bassek Ba Kobhio, Jean-Marie Teno, and others "who deliberately use the camera not only to decolonize the gaze but also to deconstruct neocolonial political monsters" (p. 29). In contrast to the older, "apolitical" or "amnesic" directors, they question the past and present, and contribute to national reconstruction. Bole Butake explores local and cable television shows and the impact that imported Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigerian video, and Latin American telenovela productions have had on viewers' expectations. In the field of television, Butake foresees the success of private enterprise over government-sponsored initiatives. In contrast to these studies, other chapters consider individual films that, for multiple reasons, are screened more often at African, European, and U.S. festivals than in Cameroon, where U.S., French, and Asian movies predominate, except for an occasional commercial success, like Kamwa's Pousse Pousse (1975). Using semiotics and postmodern Western theories, Boulou E. de B'béri provides an interesting explanation of Duala cultural connotations in Dikongue-Pipa's Muna Moto (1975). Edmond Mfaboum keenly investigates self-censorship, "social cries," and "political silences" in the early films of Kamwa and Dikongue-Pipa. [End Page 98] In section two, "Postcolonial (De)Constructions," Jonathan Haynes and P. Julie Papaioannou offer informative postcolonial explorations of stylistically innovative works by Bekolo: Quartier Mozart (1992) and Aristotle's Plot (1996). Alain Patrice Nganang skillfully analyzes Teno's documentaries and feature films as "essays on power and authority in postcolonial Africa" (p. 140), and Sheila Petty aptly explores Teno'suse of space and camera angle as expressive vehicles in Clando (1996). Tcheuyap presents an innovative discussion of the occult in Bekolo's Quartier Mozart and Kamwa's Le cercle des pouvoirs (1997). He concludes that Kamwa "reveals the dark side of modernity and the invisible dynamics at work in the (dis)function of the postcolonial state, a veritable witch state" (p. 190). In the third section, "Writing Back and Theoretical Challenges," Sarah B. Buchanan convincingly demonstrates Bekolo's untraditional cinematic...

Gender As Social Institution

This article encourages sociologists to study gender as a social institution. Noting that scholars apply the institution concept to highly disparate phenomena, it reviews the history of the concept in twentieth-century sociology. The defining characteristic most commonly attributed to social institution is endurance (or persistence over time) while contemporary uses highlight practices, conflict, identity, power, and change. I identify twelve criteria for deciding whether any phenomenon is a social institution. I conclude that treating gender as an institution will improve gender scholarship and social theory generally, increase awareness of gender’s profound sociality, offer a means of linking diverse theoretical and empirical work, and make gender’s invisible dynamics and complex intersections with other institutions more apparent and subject to critical analysis and change.

Celebrity Feminism: Nike Style Post-Fordism, Transcendence, and Consumer Power

We interrogate Nike’s implication in the developments of 1980s and 1990s popular feminisms by contextualizing and examining the advertising strategies deployed by Nike in its efforts to seduce women consumers. Although Nike is represented as progressive and pro-women, we demonstrate Nike’s alliance with normative forces dominating 1980s America. We suggest that Nike’s solicitation relies on the logic of addiction, which demonized those people most affected by post-Fordist dynamics. While Nike’s narrations of “empowerment” appeal to a deep, authentic self located at the crossroads of power and lifestyle, we suggest that these narratives offer ways of thinking/identities that impede political action. Finally, we consider the relations among Nike, celebrity feminism, and the complex and invisible dynamics that enable transnationals to exploit Third World women workers.

On the Continuity of the Generalized Inverse

On the Continuity of the Generalized Inverse