Matter In Ways Research Articles

What matters and why? Ecosystem services and their bundled qualities

Much ecosystem service (ES) research is structured around four often implicit assumptions about ES, benefits, and stakeholders' conceptions of these: 1) ES assessors can identify and characterize priority ES across stakeholders without local participation; 2) Stakeholders derive one kind of benefit from each ES in a one-to-one, production function manner; 3) Most ESs are amenable to market or non-market economic valuation; and 4) Stakeholders primarily conceive of the importance of nature in terms of ecosystems' production of benefits. We empirically evaluated these assumptions with a map-based interview protocol to characterize what can be managed (ES and related activities), what matters (benefits) and why (values). Based on interviews with residents of coastal communities in British Columbia, 87% of responses to cultural ES interview prompts conveyed bundles of linked services, benefits and values. Many ES-related values (e.g., transformative and identity) matter in ways that are not adequately expressed using market or non-market valuation. Respondents used diverse metaphors about why the ocean is important, not only the ES production metaphor, which assumes that values are a function of ecosystem processes. Our research demonstrates the utility of our interview protocol for providing a fuller representation of ecosystem-related values and benefits, potentially informing environmental decision-making processes.

Social Capital, Information, and Perceived Safety from Crime: The Differential Effects of Reassuring Social Connections and Vicarious Victimization*

ObjectiveThe study investigates the role of information obtained through local social connections in judgments about the safety of a neighborhood from crime.MethodsThe study employs a neighborhood‐based survey of Seattle residents.ResultsResidents who are embedded in local social networks are more likely to become familiar with their neighbors, and this familiarity is associated with greater perceptions of safety. On the other hand, residents who are embedded in local social networks may also be exposed to accounts of local victimizations by talking with neighbors about local crime problems, which is associated with lower perceptions of neighborhood safety.ConclusionThis work poses an explanation for weak and inconsistent findings in prior research on the role of social connections in perceptions of crime: that connections matter in ways that are dependent on the kinds of information residents receive through them. Connections to broader debates about the value‐neutral role of social networks are discussed.

CREATIVE BECOMING AND THE PATIENCY OF MATTER

So-called ‘new materialism’ enables feminist theorists to emphasize the agential quality of matter, thereby challenging the notion that matter, particularly the biological body, is passive and inert – a notion that is gendered given the traditional association of passive matter with the feminine. While appreciating the materialist turn increasingly evident in feminist theory, Claire Colebrook warns feminist thinkers against an uncritical appeal to the vitalist tradition, which continues to privilege action, creativity and productivity over that materiality which remains unactualized potential (and is symbolically aligned with the feminine). After outlining the new materialist re-conception of matter, this paper considers the idea of a ‘passive vitalism’, which Colebrook develops in light of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's co-authored works. This paper shares Colebrook's contention that the new materialist emphasis on the agency of matter (particularly as it is informed by the vitalist tradition) simply extends the model of the (male) human person to the rest of nature. However, the final part of this paper begins to indicate how a theological materialism is able to affirm both the agency and patiency of matter in ways that challenge the view that the avowal of divine transcendence is inevitably opposed to the integrity of material immanence.

WRITERS' LINGUISTIC OBSERVATIONS AND CREATING MYTHS ABOUT LANGUAGES: CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ AND JOSEPH BRODSKY IN SEARCH OF THE ‘SLAVONIC GENIUS OF LANGUAGE’

Judgements on language matters made by recognized writers comprise a particularly interesting subject because the ‘judges’ themselves are not only sensitive and influential users of their language, but, owing to the nature of their work, have the skills and authority to speculate on these matters in ways that often go far beyond the common stereotypes. Moreover, either they openly declare the ideological motivations that lie behind their statements or these motivations can be decoded from their aesthetic or ideological creed. Their reflections can be particularly acute if they live and work in two (or more) language environments, as was the case with Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky, two Nobel Prize winners who both spent a significant period of their creative lives as emigres.

Understanding Personality and Predicting Outcomes: The Utility of Cognitive-Behavioral Probes of Approach and Avoidance Motivation

Approach and avoidance motivation may represent important explanatory constructs in understanding how individuals differ. Such constructs have primarily been assessed in self-reported terms, but there are limitations to self-reports of motivation. Accordingly, the present review concentrates on the potential utility of implicit cognitive-behavioral probes of approach and avoidance motivation in modeling and understanding individual differences. The review summarizes multiple lines of research that have documented the utility of such probes to the personality-processing interface. Although multiple gaps to our knowledge exist, and are acknowledged, the value of such implicit cognitive-behavioral assessments is emphasized both in modeling multiple sub-components of approach and avoidance motivation and in showing that such tendencies matter in ways that transcend momentary experiences or manipulations.

Le dire-vrai d’Alceste

Taking the assumption that, in The Misanthrope by Molière it is, more a matter of form rather than substance, more a matter of ways of being rather than absolute ideals, we propose to reexamine the play in the light of this modality of being, favored in Antiquity: parrhesia, usually translated as “outspokenness,” “truth-telling” (Michel Foucault), which Alceste claims to practice from the outset. However, if, the play seems to signify the banning of this outspokenness, by the final exit of the main character, we must still ask ourselves, first, if parrhesia - not only as an aesthetic principle of social representation, but also as a mode of subjectivation (ethics) -, does not continue, but in a different way, to feed the development of subjectivities in the seventeenth century, and, second, to what extent this new understanding of classical subjectivity may give us the opportunity to reassess our interpretation of morality at that time.

Spectral Readings

By enlisting material objects in the service of ideology critique, materialist criticism tends to dematerialize solid objects whose historical trajectories have been lost to performed memory ( kinamnesia ). A diachronic reading of Richard II ’s crown models how materialist criticism can reconstruct the ways that mobile physical objects set unstable, politicized meanings in motion at different levels of analysis. In addition to such elusive material stuff, theatre is made up of dark matter: an invisible dimension that evades detection, even though its effects are palpable in performance. Macbeth’s dagger is not there onstage, but it is not not there either. Dark matter resists semiotic and materialist analysis because it sheds no visible light. Detecting dark matter—offstage spaces and actions; absent characters; the narrated past; hallucination; blindness; obscenity; godhead; and so on—invites a new approach known as spectral reading. Both visible and dark objects matter in performance, but they matter in ways that demand distinct critical vocabularies.

Taking Stock: Historians and Canada’s Securities Markets and Exchanges

Most Canadians normally pay little attention to the daily gyrations of stock markets; however, markets rudely intruded into our consciousness in mid2008 when index values plummeted by over 40%. As many of us painfully witnessed the rapid contraction of our mutual funds and pensions, and saw planned retirements quickly recede from view, we learned a forceful lesson: our financial prospects are intimately enmeshed with market fortunes. Statistics Canada reported in 2007 that “Pensions, investment funds and equities account for 76% of household financial assets of $3.7 trillion” (Statistics Canada 2007). Evidently, market fortunes affect the lives of huge swaths of our population. It is also clear that stock markets are a critical part of Canada’s economy. Before the global credit crisis that began in 2007, the nation’s two stock exchanges—the Toronto and the Venture exchanges1—recorded an aggregate trading volume of over 149 billion shares. The value of these shares was over $1.7 trillion. About 3,951 corporations were listed on the exchanges with a combined capitalization value of $2.2 trillion, fully 157% of Canada’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) (TSX Group 2007). Stock markets matter, and they matter in ways we never really understood. The financial pain and panic of the credit crash elicited important questions: How had stock markets become so vast and so powerful that, within months, they could vaporize, or at least seriously damage, our personal wealth, fortunes, and retirement prospects? Where and when did these powerful market institutions originate? Does this history help us to understand the recent market crash and its lethal fallout for Canadians? Naturally, I expected that historians would provide the answers to these questions. To my surprise I discovered that they have shown scant interest in the history of our stock markets.2 Indeed, over two decades ago, in his massive history of Canadian business entitled Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business, Michael Bliss concluded, “The history on all non-bank financial institutions in Canada is very weak [and that] on stock exchanges and brokerage and investment houses is even worse” (1987, 601). Little has changed since then.3 This investigation summarizes what we know about the history of our stock market institutions, reveals the gaping holes that still need to be filled in order to explain their role in our lives today, and identifies the dangers of a short collective memory about our financial history.

Audience Matters: Teaching issues of race and racism for a predominantly minority student body

Some of the literature about teaching issues of race and racism in classrooms has addressed matters of audience. Zeus Leonardo, for example, has argued that teachers should use the language of white domination, rather than white privilege, when teaching about race and racism because the former language presupposes a minority audience, while the latter addresses an imaginary or presupposed white one. However, there seems to be little discussion in the literature about teaching these issues to an audience that is in fact predominantly minority. Leonardo assumes that minority students need little convincing about the reality of white domination, but students of color are not a monolithic group. The paper addresses some specific challenges the author has faced teaching theories of white domination to a predominantly minority student audience in New York City. Leonardo is right that audience matters, but audience turns out to matter in ways that defy common assumptions.

Brand image of company names matters in ways that can't be ignored

PurposeThis paper seeks to discuss the conceptual problems of family brands, and how conflict of images can work to the detriment of the entire line.Design/methodology/approachCase examples are presented of a few brands that keep different “levels” of product quality apart by different brand labels contrasting with one company that decided to make it all one name.FindingsCompanies often worry more about generating a well‐known brand than about what the brand means to consumers.Practical implicationsConsumers can discern the value of related brands of hotels or cell phones or internet service belonging to the same company even if they have different names built around distinct images in each category.Originality/valueNames matter beyond simplistic managerial thinking of brand name awareness.

Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation of Ship Design and Construction, 1820-1920 (review)

Reviewed by: Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation of Ship Design and Construction, 1820–1920 William R. Roberts Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation of Ship Design and Construction, 1820–1920. By William H. Thiesen. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN 0-8130-2940-6. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 302. $55.00. Industrializing American Shipbuilding is an ambitious and detailed examination of the development of American ship design and construction during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thiesen is primarily interested in the design and construction of ship hulls, but he includes their propulsion systems in this study. The thesis of the book can be quickly summarized. New technology led to the divergence of shipbuilding methods in Great Britain and America by the early nineteenth century. Thereafter American shipbuilding changed gradually until the 1880s, when the U.S. Navy transferred British methods of design to American shipyards. Those methods transformed shipbuilding into an engineering-based industry that borrowed not only new sources of power and machinery from other industries, but also new ways of organizing the shipyard and the flow of production in it. Prior to 1775 wooden ships in Great Britain and North America were designed and built in ways similar to those used by medieval shipwrights. By the early nineteenth century, the British, faced with a shortage of wood, began building iron ships, aided by civil engineers with experience in designing iron bridges. Even though American shipbuilders soon began using iron, too, they designed and built iron ships much as they had wooden ships—relying on intuition and half-hull models instead of detailed drawings and mathematical calculations. It was not until the 1880s that Americans adopted the "theoretical" or "scientific" methods of design and construction used by the British. The real strength of this book lies in Thiesen's understanding of nineteenth-century ships and shipbuilding. His discussion of the continuity [End Page 236] between wooden and iron shipbuilding methods in America is fascinating and persuasive. He explains technical matters in ways that even I can understand. For example, in his chapter on "Building Iron Ships in a Wooden Shipbuilding Culture," he offers a marvelous description of the construction of the iron steamer Saratoga in the 1870s. As I read about the tools and methods used by different gangs of workmen to build this vessel, I could not help but compare and contrast what I was reading with the discussion of how wooden ships were built in the preceding two chapters. I was less satisfied with the way in which Thiesen sometimes dealt with decisions to accept or reject new shipbuilding methods. He argues that congressional retrenchment after the Civil War brought on the navy's "Dark Ages." While true, that does not explain why only three of the twenty-two ships that the navy began building in this period had iron hulls. One must also take into account the failure of the Civil War monitor program and its effect on postwar technology—a topic explored by William H. Roberts (no relation to the reviewer) in his important study of Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Thiesen's discussion of the failure of the monitor program illustrates some of the drawbacks of building iron ships with wooden shipbuilding methods, yet makes no reference to Roberts or his argument. In similar fashion, I thought the author could have done more with the transformation of the American shipbuilding industry. As part of "a long-term campaign to reform itself" (p. 143), the navy sent a few deserving young engineers and constructors overseas from 1880 until the mid-1890s for postgraduate study under scholars such as William H. White at the Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. When these officers returned home, they not only helped to build the navy's first steel warships, but some of them also went on to run civilian shipyards. Others taught or directed ship design programs at schools such as M.I.T. and Cornell. In these and other ways, they introduced British methods of shipbuilding to America. These officers might have found a less receptive audience upon their return, however...

Problem-Solving Modules in Large Introductory Biology Lectures Enhance Student Understanding

A critical goal of introductory science courses is to develop students' understanding of key concepts and principles. Typically, introductory biology courses include two major parts--lecture and laboratory. In tab, students have opportunities to engage firsthand in scientific inquiry. However, students are exposed to the bulk of the subject matter in the lecture setting. Problems with the lecture format are well known. Instructors tend to present large amounts of information, and students tend to transcribe, but not process, what the teachers tell them. In large classes, students are inhibited from asking questions, and it is difficult for the instructor to be attuned to what students actually learn. Even when lectures are well organized, students tend not to be engaged with the subject matter in ways that lead to understanding (McKeachie et al., 1986: Cooper & Robinson, 2000: Gardiner, 1994; Vernier & Dickson, 1967). An increasingly popular way to deal with these kinds of lecture problems is to use 'active strategies to get students more involved in the class (MacGregor, Cooper, Smith & Robinson. 2000). Students report they like the class experience better than straight lecture, and that active learning exercises help them maintain their attention better throughout the class period (Bligh, 2000). Active learning is a step in the right direction, but it does not guarantee that students will understand the subject matter. Students need to be more than active; they need to engage the subject matter in ways that lead to a deeper understanding of it. Research indicates that understanding is more likely to develop when students engage in activities such as analysis, evaluation, interpretation, prediction, and explanation (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999; Coleman, 1998; Coleman, Rivkin & Brown, 1997). In biology, we want students to do the same kind of thinking that scientists do when they try to explain biological phenomena, such as interpreting data, making predictions, and explaining phenomena. These are sense-making activities through which students can develop deeper understanding of the subject matter (Perkins, 1998; Chi, deLeeuw, Chiu & LaVancher, 1994). We have designed problem-solving modules for introductory biology lectures in which students engage in this type of thinking. In a typical module, students are presented with a set of data about a biological phenomenon. They develop an explanation to account for the data, and then get feedback from the instructor about their explanations. In this study we examine the effects of a problem-solving module on student understanding of evolution and phylogenetic trees. In large lecture sections, students were presented with data about several animals and then worked in small groups to produce a phylogenetic tree to explain the data. The instructor collected and visually projected several of the models and analyzed them in front of the class. Instructor feedback focused on helping students develop their understanding of the concepts and revise any misconceptions of the material. This sequence was repeated two more times during the class period as students were presented with additional data. Assessment revealed that these in-class modules resulted in significant improvement in student understanding. Methods Course Background The module was tested during the fall 2003 semester in two different introductory biology courses, one for nonmajors (BIO 103) and one for majors (BIO 105). Both courses are designed for freshmen, have no pre-requisites, and course sections range in size from 40-150 students. These are traditional entry-level biology courses with sections on Ecology, Cells, Genetics, and finally Evolution. We tested the effectiveness of the module by assessing 577 students in six different lecture sections taught by five different instructors. Several of the lectures were videotaped and monitored by external reviewers. …

Problem-Solving Modules in Large Introductory Biology Lectures

critical goal of introductory science courses is to develop students’ understanding of key concepts and principles. Typically, introductory biology courses include two major parts—lecture and laboratory. In lab, students have opportunities to engage firsthand in scientific inquiry. However, students are exposed to the bulk of the subject matter in the lecture setting. Problems with the lecture format are well known. Instructors tend to present large amounts of information, and students tend to transcribe, but not process, what the teachers tell them. In large classes, students are inhibited from asking questions, and it is difficult for the instructor to be attuned to what students actually learn. Even when lectures are well organized, students tend not to be engaged with the subject matter in ways that lead to understanding (McKeachie et al., 1986; Cooper & Robinson, 2000; Gardiner, 1994; Vernier & Dickson, 1967).

"Law as Self-Defense": An Interview on Teaching and Asian American Jurisprudence with Jerry Kang

The inaugural "Teaching Texts" column appears in this issue. As JAAS readers will know, we wanted to create a space in the journal for starting and circulating conversations on pedagogy in the recognition that "a defining feature of Asian American studies has been and continues to be the attention we pay to our pedagogical practices," to quote from the "Teaching Texts" call for papers. We wrote in that cfp, "From class formats to assignment types, we know that the choices we make in our work as teachers matters a great deal in the enthusiasm and intensity with which students engage Asian American studies. The Journal of Asian American Studies intends to foster this interest in pedagogy, specifically by circulating work that promotes the scholarship of teaching -- here, by focusing on text selection and its consequences. What text(s) are you teaching in your Asian American studies or affiliated courses? What issues and/or objectives motivate your text selections?" The interview by John Torok of Jerry Kang, a law professor who has taught at UCLA and Harvard, which appears as our inaugural column, addresses these and other matters in ways that are sure to prompt further thinking and to help all of us in our development of Asian American studies curricula. We hope that this will be only the first in a series of interviews as well as other pedagogically-focused pieces that, briefly stated, make us better teachers.

Race Matters

Race matters. It matters in ways that transcend traditional theorizations of identity, 'color', 'race' and cultural difference around them/us, center/periphery or inside/outside categories. This paper draws on interviews with 50 interracial families and argues that the micro-localized site of the family reveals the complex ways in which race discourses and racializing practices are re-articulated within and across diasporic cultural groups and cross-generationally. The data suggest that the formation and 'lived experience' of interracial relationships draws individuals through a number of critical change events and into complex and unpredictable sites and moments of 'third space' otherness.

Spätmykenische Stadtheiligtümer: Systematische Analyse und vergleichende Auswertung der archäologischen Befunde. By Gabriele Albers.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsSpätmykenische Stadtheiligtümer: Systematische Analyse und vergleichende Auswertung der archäologischen Befunde. By Gabriele Albers.Robin HäggRobin Hägg Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 101, Number 2April 1997 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/506523 Copyright © 1997 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Cognitive views of creativity: Creative teaching for creative learning

What is creativity and how can we foster it in our students? According to cognitive views of creativity, creative problem solving can be defined as producing a novel method of solving a new problem. Creative teaching occurs when a teacher teaches subject matter in ways that help students to transfer what they have learned to creative problem solving. Three examples involving science, mathematics, and computing problems are presented to show how teaching with analogical models can lead to improvements in students' creativity. Creative learning occurs when students use active learning strategies for mentally representing new material in ways that lead to problem solving transfer. Three examples involving science, mathematics, and computing problems are presented to demonstrate how learning strategies for forming mental representations can lead to improvements in students' creativity. New developments in cognitive theories of transfer, mental models, and learning strategies are likely to contribute to our understanding of how to foster creativity in our students.

Infant Rights and the Morality of Infanticide

According to some philosophers, the morality of infanticide depends on considerations very different from those on which the morality of killing adult human beings depends. More specifically, these philosophers maintain that killing infants can be immoral only on general utilitarian grounds, but that killing adult human beings is sometimes wrong inherently and irrespective of utilitarian considerations. Other philosophers claim, however, that the morality of killing infants depends on the same non-utilitarian considerations as does the morality of killing adult human beings. I will refer to these respectively as the liberal and conservative positions on the morality of infanticide.' As these positions are elaborated and defended in the literature, they invariably take stands on the issue of whether infants are capable of possessing a right to life. Liberals insist that infants lack some property the possession of which is necessary (and perhaps sufficient) for anything to have a right to life. And conservatives argue that, while there are certain properties at least some of which individuals must possess in order to have a right to life, infants have all that are necessary. Discussions of infanticide typically center, therefore, on the idea that possessing certain properties is necessarily correlated with having a right to life, and on whether infants possess the properties in question. I think it is fair to say, however, that neither liberals nor conservatives have been particularly successful in their efforts to deal with these matters in ways which support their respective positions. I think too that, while it seems natural to regard someone wishing to establish either of these positions as having first to resolve the issue of whether infants have a right to life, this is not in fact

Prejudice, Reason and Force

Perhaps no other aspect of Hans-Georg Gadamer'sWahrheit und Methodehas generated more controversy and caustic criticism than his attempt to defend the role of ‘prejudice’ (Vorurteil) in human understanding. Gadamer's goal in challenging what he calls ‘the Enlightenment's prejudice against prejudice’ is not to defend irresponsible, idiosyncratic, parochial or otherwise self-willed understanding in the human sciences, but to argue that all human cognition is ‘finite’ and ‘limited’ in the sense that it always involves, to borrow Polanyi's phrase, a ‘tacit dimension’ of implicit judgments, concerns, or commitments which shape definitively our grasp of the subject matter in ways we cannot anticipate or control. This implies a ‘finite’ or ‘limited’ view of human understanding in at least two ways. First, Gadamer seems to use the word ‘finite’ in conscious opposition to Hegel's notion of an ‘infinite’ intellect. For Hegel the ‘infinite’ was the ‘unconditioned’ and ‘self-determining’. An ‘infinite’ intellect would be its own master, an autonomous, spontaneous source of all its essential activities and contents.

Blessed are the Merciful

The articles in this number on the works of mercy take the necessity of these works as axiomatic, as something so self-evident that it would be tedious to labour it. In this, surely, they are true to the spirit of St Vincent de Paul, who is the subject of the next article, by a Vincentian father, in honour of his tercentenary. The gospels leave us in no doubt at all about the Christian obligation of almsgiving—of'giving mercy'; all that the practical Christian is concerned to discuss is the matter of ways and means.Yet a little ‘theory', perhaps, may be useful in order to put this very practical, down-to-earth obligation in its full context of the Christian life. Why is almsgiving such a strict and universal duty? Because it is the acid test of charity. ‘If anyone says “I love God”, and hates his brother, he is a liar’ (I John iv, 20).