Lack Of Imagination Research Articles

Conversations with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, By Daria Tunca

Reviewed by: Conversations with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by Daria Tunca Olajide Salawu Conversations with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie BY DARIA TUNCA UP of Mississippi, 2020. xxii + 211 pp. ISBN 9781496829313 e-book. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie remains one of the most controversial literary figures who has garnered and continues to garner immense attention from journalists, critics, and other writers. She is one of the renaissance faces of third-generation writers (see Adesanmi and Dunton), and her views are constantly sought on matters of social, political, and historical significance that inform her fiction and nonfiction and other profound issues in society. In Conversations with Chimamanda Adichie, Daria Tunca curates an impressive volume that leads to the heart of the matter of Chimamanda Adichie's personhood as a public intellectual, literary maestro, and global gender activist who parades an army of readers and followers in contemporary African literature, whether in a formal circle of literary enthusiasts/critics/pundits or informal spaces such as social media. In this cutting-edge effort, Tunca selects and collects Adichie's compelling interviews into a more appreciable and handier compendium. If interviews can therefore be argued as a genre on their own or archival site that can lend strength to scholarship, it is also cogent to surmise that they can be seen as a creative process where the interviewer and interviewee act as two characters and are involved in inter-agential dialectics. The dialogic space of interviews is dominated by politics of its own, with both participating protagonists seeking their agency constantly through their expressions, attitudes, and tones of exchanges. Tunca enumerates four categories to aid our understanding and appraisal of her collection. One is the axis of reading the book with attention to the inquisitive and provocative power of the interviewer. The second parameter is the responsive and sometimes defensive reactionary stance of the subject. The third is the way in which the volume builds a story on Adichie's works, especially embedded structures and literary influences in her narratives. The last of these frameworks shifts attention to the reader, whose assessment can offer insights into the dynamics of Adichie's positionality on issues that pervade her works and other facts that surround her life as a writer. The volume does not make an encyclopedic claim, as there are numerous interviews that Adichie has granted over the years, and an attempt to consider this as a weakness is swept off through this admission by the editor in the introduction. The volume takes a linear and traditional approach and shows a timeline of progression that follows the gritty and assertive personality of [End Page 246] Adichie from her nascency to her formidable status as one of the literary forces of the twenty-first century. Starting from Eve Daniel's 2003 interview, which focuses on her groundbreaking novel Purple Hibiscus, the book compiles sixteen interviews that end with Tunca's conversation with her on the "Novelist as a Therapist"—an appropriated titular dub that further consolidates Adichebean discourse (Tunca; see also Daniel Spencer in the edited collection under review). In self-absolving the book of other failings, since interviews are sometimes regurgitative, the editor charges the reader not to blame the "interviewers for any possible lack of imagination" (xii). Most of the discussions are viscerally linked and are interwoven around themes and issues such as the Biafran Civil War, race, immigration, love, religion, Nigeria's nationhood, family, childhood, gender; inclusive are familial stories, sociocultural, and political imaginaries that are stakes of her writing. However, the last quarter of the dialogues, starting from Mazi Nwonu, center around controversies that surround her life as a luminary, whose statements are often considered inflammable, and as an extra-literary figure who is a teacher, fashionista, and a celebrity—a descriptor she resists. Despite the hackneyed structure and repetitive tenor of these conversations, each of these interviews is useful in its own right and sometimes expands the reader's perception of earlier positions taken by the writer. For instance, when she contests the therapeutic power of writing as an offering restricted for self-healing alone in her first interview with Wale Adebanwi (13), she expounds her ambivalent position in the last chapter of the book...

América Latina en su “Momento Gramsciano”. Las limitaciones de una salida tipo “nueva socialdemocracia europea” a este impasse

América Latina está atrapada en un “Momento Gramsciano”, cuando lo viejo se desvanece, pero lo nuevo no logra nacer. En este interregno —como nos advertía Gramsci— es casi inevitable que aparezca “una gran variedad de síntomas dañinos”. Es como si las brujas de Macbeth nos hubiesen profetizado: vivirán empantanados entre un modelo neoliberal que perdió toda legitimidad y discursos progresistas que no logran generar suficiente credibilidad. En lo económico esto significa que además de tener que enfrentar la pandemia sanitaria, también tenemos que desafiar una de las endemias de la región: su falta de imaginación en materias de política económica. La primera hace estragos creando desafíos hasta hace poco inimaginables, los cuales inevitablemente chocan con los obstáculos que pone la segunda. Y así nos seguimos hundiendo en las arenas movedizas de la inercia; mientras tanto, el susto (en muchos el pánico) de una salida desordenada de la crisis lleva a algunos a idealizar una opción tipo “nueva socialdemocracia europea”. Esto es, mientras no toquemos la estructura de acumulación rentista o la tributaria, se podría permitir algo más de protección social (financiada, por supuesto, con deuda en lugar de impuestos), para así poder garantizar un mínimo de paz social y un asomo de equidad. En otras palabras, como en la letra de la canción Hotel California, seguimos siendo “prisioneros de nuestras propias cadenas” —y no logramos romperlas—. El gran desafío de este momento histórico es liberar nuestra imaginación social.

Factors Influencing Sense of Coherence: Family Relationships, High School Life and Autism Spectrum Tendency.

Adolescence is marked by significant life stress. Recently, school refusal and dropouts as well as suicide among Japanese adolescents have increased. Sense of coherence (SOC) is recognized as a competency that helps people deal with stress. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors influencing SOC in male and female high school students. We conducted a survey with 203 pairs of high school students and their mothers, in Tokyo, to explore their SOC, family relationships, school belonging, and autistic traits. Analysis of the data revealed a weak relationship between female students’ SOC and that of their mothers, and no relationship between male students’ SOC and their mothers’ SOC. Feelings of acceptance and recognition from teachers improved students’ SOC, irrespective of gender. Low SOC in mothers had a negative impact on female students’ SOC, and children’s lack of imagination (an autism spectrum tendency) had a negative impact on male students’ SOC. This study revealed the importance of support at home and school according to the needs of both genders.

Come‐hither looks: the Hollywood vamp and the function of cinema

Come‐hither looks: the Hollywood vamp and the function of cinema

‘The Machine Stops’: E. M. Forster's Esoteric Critique of H. G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia

AbstractThis article argues that E. M. Forster's dystopian science fiction story ‘The Machine Stops’ was conceived as a critique of H. G. Wells’ book, A Modern Utopia. The article shows how Forster responded to Wells’ utopia at almost every level. It demonstrates how the notion of making society function like a machine was an idea posited, if not implemented, by Wells. Forster sought to show how, rather than limiting pain, fear and anxiety, the machine‐society Wells envisaged would exacerbate all three. Forster regarded Wells a poor prognosticator of unintended consequences. On Forster's view, instead of a world of happy, healthy and vigorous citizens, Wells’ utopia foreshadowed a world of ill‐health and frustration. Instead of a world of variety and regular travel, Wells’ utopia foreshadowed a world of uniformity and stasis. Instead of a world of increased intelligence and personal initiative, Wells’ utopia foreshadowed a world of stupidity, credulity and lack of imagination. In ‘The Machine Stops’, Forster parodied Wells’ utopia, attacking Wells’ policy of state intervention in the family, his advocacy of euthanasia, his policy of expulsion and the details of everyday life in Wells’ utopia. In paying sustained attention to Forster's dystopia other scholars will recognise its intrinsic philosophical value. In its remarkable anticipation of technology resembling the internet, more than both Huxley's and Orwell's dystopia's, Forster's ‘The Machine Stops’ speaks directly to twenty‐first‐century predicaments.

When a Lie is More Believable than the Truth: The Dynamics of Lying and Discourse Analysis

This article describes the preliminary findings of a research project that is investigating whether there are stable and consistent personality traits found in propaganda texts that indicate whether a statement disseminated via a media is truthful or not. It is not often the case that official government sources will clearly state whether a statement previously release was intended to be truthful or not. Even when a statement is shown to be false, the claim is usually made that it was unintentionally wrong or misleading. The project uses the Rumours Broadcasts targeting German troops and civilians in France, created by the British Political Warfare Executive from July 1942 to May 1945, consisting of over 200,000 words, to analyse the personality differences between true and false statements made in those broadcasts. The first question answered in the study is the amount of fictional versus non-fictional material is necessary to make a broadcast believable. This establishes a benchmark for determining consistent differences between true and false statements in a news release or broadcasts. The analysis is done using tools developed by IBM to examine the vast amounts of data created and displayed on various social media platforms in accordance with the Big Five Personality Traits Theory. While most of the personality traits identified by these tools do not reveal any significant differences, there are some, such as a lack of imagination, cautiousness, a lack of willingness to compromise, and worry, that show consistent significant differences between the fictional and non-fictional statements.

The imaginary as method. “Lyrical sociology” as a heuristic of sociological description

The article draws on recent debates about empirical sociology’s lack of imagination in order to champion the strength and virtue of a peculiar type of close, but also thin description as a central mode of social scientific observation. A case in point for the evocation of a descriptive sociology is Andrew Abbott’s neologism lyrical sociology. Examining the lyrical-sociological approach, the article claims that the concept presents a distinct heuristic for the elicitation of a more colorful and vivid sociological imagination, namely, an emotional imagination in the empirical toolbox of the descriptive sociologist. After the article considers the potential of description as a specific type of sociological representation and thus discusses the concept of the social imaginary from a methodological point of departure, the article suggests three vantage points to qualify the lyrical mode as a sociological descriptive: First, it presents its central properties, thereby referring to the notion of a so-called “descriptive turn”; second, it examines the heuristic value of lyrical sociology. And third, the article juxtaposes lyrical sociology and the compelling work of French-American anthropologist Didier Fassin to evaluate the potential but also the limits of lyricism within the sociological craft.

Exploring the potential of the popular culture and world politics agenda: actors, artefacts and the everyday

ABSTRACTThe PCWP agenda has contributed a great deal to the discipline of world politics, empirically, methodologically and theoretically. However, there is scope to expand upon certain aspects of this body of scholarship. In particular, the agenda is developing some unfortunate hierarchies in its focus on high-budget ‘blockbusters’ at the expense of data from the everyday. It is displaying a lack of imagination in terms of its methodologies and forms of output, despite the aesthetic and creative nature of many of the artefacts. Finally, it is evincing a reluctance to explore representations beyond the textual or the visual, at the expense of other forms of representation, including sound, taste or, as I argue in this paper, artefactuality.

On the Attributes of Consciousness

One of the main fields of consciousness studies is the search for the function of consciousness. The article deals with the hypothesis of the function of imagination as an attribute of consciousness. In the regard of the issues of the attributes of consciousness, the author analyzes the phenomenon of aphantasia, that is, lack of imagination. Despite the lack of formalized ideas about the function of consciousness and despite the scientific trend of the narrowing research areas where subjective experience is necessary for a normal behavior of brain, there is a tendency to expand the presence of consciousness in the world in the modern Western philosophy of consciousness. The result of this “emancipation of consciousness” is the idea of the theoretical essential closeness of a human being and other agents: animals, artificial intelligence, plants. A consequence of the “emancipation of consciousness” is the emergence of modern versions of panpsychism, which propose expanding the space of consciousness to the world as a whole. However, studies in the field of conscious cognitive processes show that the processes that need the participation of consciousness, according to the standard intuitions, in some cases successfully performed without it. For example, the phenomenon of aphantasia shows that the tasks of imagination are performed in the absence of the ability to imagine. Therefore, it is important to take also into account the theoretical possibility of the lack of the realization of the function of consciousness. This makes it possible to ask a question about the presence of consciousness in the space that is traditionally endowed with consciousness, according to the dominant views in philosophy. Therefore, by approaching the question of the attributes of consciousness, the author demonstrates the limitations of the program for the emancipation of consciousness and offers an alternative solution to the question of the scale of the presence of consciousness in the world.

Swimming Against the Tide: Challenges in Pursuing Health Equity Today.

The term "health equity" has moved from obscurity to the mainstream, creating new possibilities for those who aspire to a world in which everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthy. One can now talk explicitly about health equity. The newfound acceptance, however, carries a risk: loss of meaning. Recognizing the need for a common understanding of the core concepts, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has promoted a definition that prioritizes being sufficiently concrete to guide action. Lack of conceptual clarity is, unfortunately, not the only challenge in pursuing health equity. Another challenge is the lack of respect for fundamental ethical and human rights principles-cornerstones of health equity-displayed almost daily by those in positions of power, including the president; this lack of commitment to fundamental values has an insidiously toxic effect because many people assume that presidential views must be legitimate. Yet another challenge is lack of imagination. Pursuing health equity inevitably requires swimming against the tide of prevailing forces that exclude, marginalize, or otherwise disadvantage groups of people based on their skin color, wealth, gender, disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, or other characteristics tightly linked with social advantage. To persist in swimming against the tide, the end goal and the reason for pursuing it must be very strong and very clear. Academic medicine can play an important role as a powerful force in setting norms and shaping the values and attitudes of medical students, attending physicians, and research faculty.

Appeal to Ignorance.

Appeal to Ignorance.

Control or influence? Conflict or solidarity? Understanding diversity in preferences for public participation in social policy decision making

AbstractParticipatory policy making is a contested concept that can be understood in multiple ways. So how do those involved with participatory initiatives make sense of contrasting ideas of participation? What purposes and values do they associate with participatory governance? This paper reflects on a Q‐method study with a range of actors, from citizen activists to senior civil servants, involved with participatory initiatives in U.K. social policy. Using principal components analysis, supplemented with data from qualitative interviews, it identifies three shared participation preferences: participation as collective decision making, participation as knowledge transfer, and participation as agonism. These preferences demonstrate significant disagreements between the key informants, particularly concerning the objectives of participation, how much power should be afforded to the public, and what motivates people to participate. Their contrasting normative orientations are used to highlight how participatory governance theory and practice frequently fails to take seriously legitimate diversity in procedural preferences. Moreover, it is argued that, despite the diversity of preferences, there is a lack of imagination about how participation can function when social relations are conflictual.

Thomas Carlyle's Calvinist dialogue with the nineteenth-century periodical press

ABSTRACTThis article signals at a dearth of critical engagement with Thomas Carlyle's Presbyterian heritage resulting from the received whiggish narrative of his Calvinism as unenlightened, anachronistic, and backward-looking. It proceeds to challenge this view by examining closely Carlyle's creative use of key Calvinist concepts in his cosmopolitan and enlightened dialogue with the contemporary periodical press over British and European cultures. Carlyle is shown to be an adept purveyor both of the Edinburgh Magazine's enlightened idiom and of Blackwood's morally conservative and artistically cosmopolitan agendas, while also making creative capital of the Anti-Jacobin's powerful Gothic imagery and of the critical verve of the Westminster Review. The main addressees of Carlyle's reading of the signs of the times, I argue, are contemporary Whigs. Carlyle's depiction of Macaulay as a ‘spiritual hippopotamus’ spells Carlyle's broader critique of the modern lack of imagination of the spiritual which sponsors deterministic religious and secular readings of reality. Carlyle displays his enlightened Calvinist perspective in discussing the French Revolution through such key Scottish Enlightenment concepts as free will, conscience, civilisational and moral progress, and divine providence. Insightful and creative use of his inherited Scottish Calvinist heritage characterises Carlyle's open, cosmopolitan reading of the signs of the times.

The modern state of self-work of students of medical universities at learning of intensive therapy

The organization of active self-work while studying at the highest school can teach the future doctors and effectively to replenish their knowledge, to think actively and creatively, to constantly improve themselves, to demonstrate an innovative approach in solving urgent situations. Objective — to analyze the current state of self-work of students of medical universities in the study of intensive care. Discussion of the problem of self-work in the study of intensive care or other professional discipline, as a specific form of educational activity of medical students, is induced by adequate motivation: own self-improvement, personal growth, deepening of knowledge, etc. In the study of intensive care it is advisable to organize the control of knowledge of students. Interviews were conducted to assess the quality, efficiency and necessity of self-training in the study of intensive care when they were students. According to interns, an important point that reduces the effectiveness of the study of intensive care in the form of self-work was low motivation associated with the lack of imagination about his future professional activities and the relationship with her basic provisions of intensive care. The second problem in self-work of students, according to the interns, was the lack of a phased study of the subject, which in their view was due to the lack of time and the large number of students in the group. The third problem is the difficulty in choosing the necessary information when studying intensive care. Often, students face the problem of lack of understanding of the degree of information need and the possibilities of its application, especially in the application of information technology. According to modern requirements, self-work in the study of intensive care by students of medical universities should be divided into self-work for: gaining new knowledge; for application of knowledge in practice; for repetition and verification of knowledge, skills and abilities. So, managed self-work of students is a purposeful activity of teachers and students for systematic assimilation of personality of professionally important knowledge, skills and abilities. The use of traditional and innovative forms and methods of training that, complementing each other, would be the only system in the study of intensive care methods is the main task of organizing self-work of students. Of great importance in the organization of self-work of students acquires a clear organization of this process from the side of the educational institution and its careful planning by the teacher.

Let’s Take Back Control! Of Our Imagination

The crisis of the European Union is explained to us as a political crisis, as an economic crisis, and as a humanitarian crisis. These descriptions are accurate, but they seem to bypass a more structural crisis that underlies them: the crisis of the imagination. In art discourse it is a reoccurring tendency to describe the importance of art in a political sense in terms of the imagination. If we cannot imagine a different future, how could we ever act upon such future politically? In this line of reasoning, artistic imagination might even precede political action. But there seems a second dimension to the crisis of the imagination that is less often invoked, namely the lack of imagination when it comes to understanding how devastating our present actually is, how little change the stakeholders of our reality are willing to accept, no matter how many alternative imaginations we confront them with, and no matter how “realistic” or “democratic” these alternatives might be.

The Future of Terrorism: The Practitioners’ View

 The 9/11 Commission identified “lack of imagination” within the counter-terrorism community as a key reason for the failure to stop the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. The failure to realize that airplanes

Tantrum Behavior Modification for Autistic Student at Secondary School Using Social Stories Technique

Autistic children have some social problems including weakness in bilateral interaction, communication problems and lack of imagination. The objectives of this study were to examine the effectiveness of social stories technique in reducing the duration of a student autistic tantrum and elimination of the problem tantrum. This study is a case study that builds quantitative behavior classical conditioning theory expounded by Ivan Pavlov and combined with the ADDIE Model. Observations carried out over a period of 20 days to see the effectiveness of social stories technique for changing the negative behavior of autistic students studying in a secondary school. The method of A-B where A represents the baseline phase and B-phase intervention represents. Social stories read to sample every day before the teaching begins within 10 minutes. The results of this study found that social stories technique successfully reduced the tantrum behavior study. However, tantrum behavior is still failing to be completely eliminated, but there is a significant reduction of the behavior. Through this study, it was found the use of social stories can reduce negative behaviors in autistic teenager. It is hoped that this study can serve as a guide and ideas for teachers to diversify the techniques to modify negative behavior among pupils in special education. We hope this study can be uplifting and inspiring teachers that negative behavior autistic students can be changed with the right technique.

Asperger syndrome and schizophrenia: Νeurodevelopmental continuum or separated clinical entities?

This article is an overview of the literature on Asperger's syndrome and schizophrenia and aim to discuss their similarities and differences. Eugen Bleuler who associated the terms "schizophrenia" and "autism" a century ago, viewed autism as a form of solitude of schizophrenic patients representing withdrawal from reality. Ever since, there has been confusion as to the boundaries between these conditions. Nowadays recent research, from a variety of perspectives-genomics, neurodevelopment, psychiatry, etc. has given new information on these conditions. It is easier to demarcate these two disorders at the extremes, but it is extremely difficult dissociating milder forms of both disorders. Asperger's syndrome (AS), is considered to be a continuous and lifelong disorder with strong heritability, present from early childhood. It is included within the category of autism spectrum disorders and it is usually diagnosed in childhood. Patients with Asperger syndrome are often diagnosed late or they are considered as having schizophrenia. Misdiagnosing Asperger syndrome creates severe problems by preventing effective therapy. A lot of clinical characteristics of Asperger's syndrome are also present in schizophrenia, such as impaired social interaction, disabilities in communication and restricted interests. On the other side some clinical features may facilitate the differential diagnosis, such as the younger age at onset, family history of pervasive developmental disorders, pragmatic aspects of language use, lack of imagination, ect. It is known that symptoms of Asperger's syndrome have some overlap with those of schizophrenia, but less is known about comorbidity between these two syndromes. It is still a question whether autism spectrum disorders in young children can increase the risk for the development of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, later in life. Both disorders are of neurodevelopmental origin and genetic factors are prominent. In both neurocognitive deficits as well as deficits in social cognition and social functioning are marked. The boundaries between AS and schizophrenia are still not clear even if this distinction is necessary for the appropriate treatment of the patient and his family. For the writing of the literature review, the following electronic databases were used: PubMed, Scopus, Psycinfo, Cochrane Library, Web of Science and Google Scholar. The key words used were: Asperger's syndrome, schizophrenia, children and adolescents, differential diagnosis, autism spectrum disorders.

Learning & Development in Times of Digital Transformation: Facilitating a Culture of Change and Innovation

The digital transformation is the very heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is about to change our understanding of doing business, of learning & development in a fundamental way – and with unrivaled speed. However, many companies and individuals hesitate to acknowledge the depth and impact of current developments. We suggest to distinguish four reasons: the striking impact of advanced digitization is not yet fully recognized (1); there is a lack of imagination and strategy, coupled with increasing unpredictability (2); a lack of agility and insufficient encouragement towards innovation (3); and a lack of pertinent competencies and insufficient innovation culture (4). New roles and action areas for Learning & Development (L&D) professionals enable possibilities to overcome these innovation barriers: change agent & consultant; designer of an enriched learning portfolio of products and services; shaper of innovation culture. Also facilitating a learning friendly culture by using different pillars is a way to generate innovation and to secure the existence of organizations in times of digital transformation.

Specificity, contexts, and reference groups matter when assessing autistic traits.

Many of the personality and behavioral traits (e.g., social imperviousness, directness in conversation, lack of imagination, affinity for solitude, difficulty displaying emotions) that are known to be sensitive to context (with whom?) and reference group (according to whom?) also appear in questionnaire-based assessments of autistic traits. Therefore, two experiments investigated the effects of specifying contexts and reference groups when assessing autistic traits in autistic and non-autistic participants. Experiment 1 (124 autistic and 124 non-autistic participants) demonstrated that context matters when assessing autistic traits (F(1,244) = 267.5, p < .001, η2p = .523). When the context of the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire was specified as the participants’ out-group (e.g., “I like being around non-autistic people” or “I like being around autistic people”), both autistic and non-autistic participants self-reported having more autistic traits; when the context was specified as the participants’ in-group, participants reported having fewer autistic traits. Experiment 2 (82 autistic and 82 non-autistic participants) demonstrated that reference group matters when assessing autistic traits (F(2,160) = 94.38, p < .001, η2p = .541). When the reference group on the Social Responsiveness Scale was specified as the participants’ out-group (e.g., “According to non-autistic people, I have unusual eye contact”), autistic participants reported having more autistic traits; when the reference group was their in-group, autistic participants reported having fewer autistic traits. Non-autistic participants appeared insensitive to reference group on the Social Responsiveness Scale. Exploratory analyses suggested that when neither the context nor the reference group is specified (for assessing autistic traits on the Autism-Spectrum Quotient), both autistic and non-autistic participants use the majority (“non-autistic people”) as the implied context and reference group.