Mature Work Research Articles

“That Light Beyond Metaphor”: Derek Walcott’s Ekphrases

This article looks at Derek Walcott’s ekphrastic writing, i.e. its combined use of poetry and painting, from a twofold perspective: 1) the primal employment of a densely visual language for descriptive purposes which carries out the proverbial Walcottian ‘naming’ of the Caribbean reality, often in conjunction with the memory of Walcott as a young painter; 2) the transforming dialogue with actual paintings of the European canon in mature works like Tiepolo’s Hound, The Prodigal and White Egrets. I will especially explore the dramatic figure of the ‘failed painter’ that first emerges in the poetic autobiography Another Life as a ‘self-portrait’ of Walcott’s ekphrastic writing itself and the ways ‘the failed painter’ subject evolves assuming a functional role to accomplish an overall dismissal of the received ‘colonial visuality culture’ and the establishment of an Antillean aesthetics.

Mathematical sciences as symbolic form: the objects and objectivity of science in Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of science and culture

AbstractIn this paper, I explore how Cassirer’s early and mature epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of culture make up a coherent and comprehensive view of the mathematical sciences that is fruitful for understanding contemporary science. In Cassirer’s first systematic work, Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, the mathematical sciences are understood through the concept of function. This implies that scientific investigation aims at increased unity in a system of functional concepts, rather than at answering the substance-rooted question of what is. In his mature work, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Cassirer expands his inquiry to diverse notions of objects and principles of symbolic forming, recognizing the mathematical sciences as one of many ways of structuring experience, alongside other symbolic forms such as myth and ordinary language. Together, Cassirer’s early and mature works detail the preconditions and idiosyncrasies of the unfolding of scientific objects and situate the mathematical sciences within the totality of human experience. Applying these insights to contemporary interpretations of science suggests connecting common misconceptions of science to challenges in translating objects between symbolic forms. I propose the concepts of domestication and mythification of science as instructive for clearing up such misunderstandings.

Foucault’s Hegel Thesis: The “Tragic Destiny” of Life and the “Being-There” of Consciousness

In this paper, I offer an intellectual-historical reading of Foucault’s unpublished master’s thesis. In contrast with other recent scholarship on the pre-1961 period of Foucault’s career, the purpose of this paper is to grapple with the philosophical content of this thesis on its own terms, distinguishing it as far as possible from his mature work. This allows forgotten concepts to re-emerge in the course of reading the text and for a novel engagement with such neglected facets of Foucault’s oeuvre. Indeed, the key concept which I argue emerges from Foucault’s early thesis is that of language as the être-la of thought. By closely following Foucault’s Husserlian reading of Hegel, and his response to Eugen Fink’s paradoxes of phenomenology, it is possible to see how Foucault briefly lands upon a novel kind of scepticism about the reality of history and minds. In the same way, I will also show why Foucault was unable to fully develop or commit to these sceptical positions during this part of his career. The article concludes by briefly suggesting contrasts between my reading of this early text and the way Foucault’s oeuvre is more generally understood.

Moving from opportunity: Intergenerational mobility of rural–urban return migrants in Sweden, 1890s–1940s

AbstractUsing a novel longitudinal dataset, we study the intergenerational mobility of rural–urban migrants who returned to the countryside in due course. By examining pairs of brothers during the entire migration lifecycle – from childhood until age 34 – we estimate the effect of temporarily relocating to an urban area on occupational income over the mature working ages of 35–44 between the 1890s and the 1940s in Sweden. The results show that rural–urban migrants who returned to the countryside were not failures who did not improve their social position, but instead experienced substantial gains compared with their non‐migrant brothers. These gains were similar to those of migrants who had permanently settled in urban areas. This pattern is mainly attributed to their capacities to leave farming and enter white‐collar positions to a greater extent than non‐migrants. The extent of temporary rural–urban migration, combined with the high levels of intergenerational mobility of return migrants in Sweden during the period examined, suggests that rural–urban migration to towns resulted in positive feedback effects for the countryside.

Using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to explore higher education decision-making for working class women on an access to higher education course

Despite the increasing number of non-traditional students entering higher education (HE) in England, HE choices remain stratified by social class. Mature working class students are a target group of the widening participation policy, yet little attention has been given to their HE choices and decision-making. Through narrative inquiry, this study uses a creative method alongside focus groups and semi-structured interviews, and contributes a class perspective to the HE decision-making for 13 women on an Access to HE course. It links sociological theory to adult education, through a Bourdieusian framework. It evidences structural constraints and perceptions of belonging that impeded choices. A sense of place and feelings of fit (habitus) were significant for destination decisions. However, Access to HE course teachers were positively influential in helping students challenge embedded habitual ways of thinking and practice and in raising self-efficacy. The findings offer explanations as to why participation rates may be increasing but not widening enough. It illuminates how social class differences (intersected by age and gender) are crucial to understanding HE decision-making and places a much-needed focus on mature students to the widening participation and social mobility agenda.

The impact of diversity statements on age diversity: More than just window-dressing?

Abstract Many organizations are committed to age diversity and inclusion, aiming for a fair treatment and balanced representation of younger and older employees in all units of the organization. However, the continuing workplace discrimination against mature workers demonstrates that older employees are often excluded and remain underrepresented. Hence, organizations still struggle to reach their diversity goals and finding ways to effectively foster employee behaviors that result in more age diversity is therefore crucial. We investigate the impact of age diversity statements on selecting older and younger individuals into teams in 3 experimental studies. We find consistent evidence that when building teams, short diversity statements increase the selection rates of older individuals so that teams become more age balanced. With no age diversity statement in place, older teammates are hardly chosen, showing that diversity statements can help overcome negative age bias. We found no evidence that age diversity statements produce unintended negative side-effects in terms of increased bias based on dimensions other than age. Overall, this research provides a first examination and encouraging conclusions regarding the effectiveness of age diversity statements, laying the groundwork for more field research in this area.

Allegorie/Symbol (Allegory/Symbol)

For Goethe, allegory and symbol function as poles of the dyad “sinnliche Darstellung” (representation). He introduced the contrasting pair in the second half of the 1790s, in the context of his project for a German classical aesthetics with Friedrich Schiller, his translation of Germaine de Staël’s Essai sur les fictions (Essay on Fiction), his ongoing work on morphology and optics, and his engagement with idealist philosophy. Despite the priority given to the symbol in Goethe’s scientific writings, he applied the term only occasionally to literature; he remained committed to the sophisticated allegorical poetics and imagery of the high baroque drama (e.g. Shakespeare, Calderón) in essentially all his mature work and was sympathetic to its use by the German Romantics. While Goethe’s own terminology often wavered between the poles of symbol and allegory, his distinction became the standard theme in discussions of poetic representation for more than a century, with symbol heavily prioritized over allegory, and it remains a theme in Goethe scholarship. The post-modernist return to allegory in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man is more a skeptical version of the Goethean symbol than earlier definitions of either allegory or symbol.

Bagehot’s classical money view: a reconstruction

Bagehot is difficult for modern economists to read with understanding, for three reasons. He was a classical economist not neoclassical, his orientation was global not national, and most importantly his intellectual formation was as a practicing country banker not an academic. This paper adopts all three perspectives, and uses this frame to reinterpret his mature work, both Lombard Street and the unfinished Economic Studies, as the origin of the key currency tradition which continues as a minority view in modern economics.

The Cultural Consequences of Market Transition: An Empirical Examination of Rising Materialism in Twenty-First-Century China

This study examines how markets affect personal culture in the context of postsocialist China. Drawing on several bodies of literature, I argue that China’s transition to a market economy promotes materialist values via two causal pathways. First, market transition entails a process of economic liberalization, which accentuates economic incentives and exacerbates existential insecurity. Second, market transition also entails a process of commodification that, by immersing individuals in market relations, crowds out intrinsic motives and normalizes the pursuit of material self-interests. My empirical analysis uses repeated cross-sectional data from a large-scale national survey to demonstrate the effect of market transition through the lens of work values. Taking advantage of China’s regional variations in the pace of institutional change, I show that, between 2005 and 2015, provinces where market transition had made greater progress tended to experience a sharper rise in materialist work values. Additional analyses reveal significant differences in work values between state-sector employees and workers in the market sector, and that the relationship between market transition and materialist values extends beyond the work domain. These findings contribute to the theoretical literature on the cultural consequences of markets and the empirical knowledge on cultural change in contemporary China.

The Idea of “Restoration of a Ruined Person” in Classic Russian Literature (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov)

Dostoevsky considered “restoration of a ruined person” to be “the key idea of all art of the nineteenth century.” This is exactly what makes up the inner plot of many of the writer’s works. Such a “restoration” is not so much actually happening as it is implicit in some of them. This is the case in “Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov.” At the same time, in both works it is not only not articulated, but is barely outlined. Meanwhile, there are researchers who believe that Dmitry Karamazov is not sent to hard labor, but flees to America — this is how open the novel’s ending is. At the same time, Dostoevsky has, on the contrary, “ruined heroes,” i. e., the “underground paradoxalist,” Alexey Ivanovich from “The Gambler,” Svidrigailov, Stavrogin. Sometimes the “resurrection of a new man” occurs in the most unlikely Dostoevsky’s characters. One of such characters in “Demons” is Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. In such deeply interconnected works of Russian literary classics as Dostoevsky’s “Idiot” and Tolstoy’s “Resurrection”, attempts to save the “fallen woman” are in the center of attention. Tolstoy even included this theme, understood after Dostoevsky precisely as “the restoration of a ruined person,” in the title of his novel. In “Resurrection”, Tolstoy actually rewrote the storyline of Myshkin, Totsky and Nastasia Filippovna. At the same time, he remade the plot of the novel “Idiot” into a more realistic one. In Dostoevsky, one of the characters, Totsky, seduces and uses Nastasia Filippovna, while another, Prince Myshkin, tries to save her. In Tolstoy, Prince Nekhludoff pays for his own sin. The transformation in the “Resurrection” of the plot situations from the novel “Idiot” is aimed at their happy resolution; meanwhile it is not Nekhludoff's repentance for his actions, but Katyusha Maslova’s quiet self-sacrifice that leads to it. Unlike Myshkin and Nekhludoff, the hero of Chekhov’s novella “My Life” is by no means conceived as a “positively wonderful person,” much less Christ. However, in some incomprehensible way, unlike Myshkin and Nekhludoff, he achieves his goal. Apparently, such, according to Chekhov, is the power of not just a word, but a beneficent example. Misail tries to find a path consistent with his conscience, and thereby sets a beneficent example to his entire environment. Thus, in Chekhov’s mature works, there is a constant reliance on the aesthetics of the “transformation of man.” So, this theme turns out, mutatis mutandis, to be common to all Russian literary classics — from Pushkin to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Movoraunnahr Scholars of Islamic Law and Their Mature Works

A historical analysis of the origin of Islamic law in … It focuses on the great contributions made by the scholars of Central Asia who are often remained unacknowledged. This study shows how the scholars of this region have learnt and traelled to learn Islamic law and how their contribution originates and develops some of the key litereatueres of Islamic law.

Slowing Workforce Growth: Predicting Labour Trends and Investigating Perspectives of Mature Workers and Women With Caregiving Responsibilities

The labour force is experiencing an increased proportion of mature workers, alongside a slowdown in the number of young entrants joining the workforce. Many organisations will need to adapt their workforce management strategies to cushion the reduced labour supply in the workforce. This paper explores the implication of this demographic development by utilising a multimethod approach to examine current and future trends in the labour market as well as the key factors that can influence the decisions to remain in the labour market for mature workers and women with caregiving responsibilities. Forecasting methods were applied to explore how various demographic scenarios could impact specific industries. We found that the labour market is generally expected to recover based on the forecasted increase in the job vacancy-to-unemployment ratio and fall in the unemployment rate. At the industry level, however, the manufacturing industry is expected to experience some headwinds in employment growth, which is expected to be weak, while the construction industry is expected to see a decline in employment growth. Finally, job vacancies across all industries are expected to decline over time. From the qualitative study, we found mature workers and women with caregiving responsibilities face challenges such as having limited and unequal access to employment, facing skills gap barriers, and struggling to balance between their personal commitment and professional demands. By addressing the unique needs of mature workers and women with caregiving responsibilities, organisations can adopt successful workforce management strategies to cultivate a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Max Weber and the Labour Constitution

Abstract: Max Weber's early works on agricultural working conditions in Germany east of the Elbe River remain little-known. Their anteriority in relation to Weberian sociology proper, the apparent primacy of value judgments within them, and a strongly dated historical context may explain this lack of interest. The author, for his part, defends the opposite point of view: not only do Weber's early studies pave the way for his later conceptualization, but they are characterized by a meticulous effort of scientific objectivity. Moreover, if we focus on the Archimedean point of all these Weberian studies, that is, the concept of the 'labour constitution', they are of indisputable—and universal—interest for the study of the dynamics of labour relations in the context of modernity. However, it seems indispensable to reinterpret the concept by considering Weber's mature work, notably his sociology of law as it emerges from Economy and Society . In the author's opinion, there is sufficient scientific continuity in Weber's work from 1890 to 1920 to justify such a reinterpretation, which may prove to be all the more fruitful in that it aims to take advantage of the later innovations of Weberian sociology, both methodologically (the ideal type, the relationship to values) and conceptually (the concept of rationalization, the sociological definition of law)

Jane Austen's Youthful Art of Anticlimax

Jane Austen wrote three volumes of juvenilia, entitled Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third. Most scholars agree that they were written between the ages of eleven and eighteen (1787-1783). These stories are hilarious and outrageous, particularly considering the understated decorum of her later novels. It is true, as Margaret Anne Doody claims, that these youthful writings “point in directions in which their author was later not permitted to go” (Doody, 103). Yet in many ways, these teenage writings nonetheless proleptically define her taste and mission in her mature works. This essay focuses on one aspect of her style in these teenage writings, as well as its afterlife in her later writings. In considering her use of anticlimax, this essay also suggests the ways in which this particular stylistic device or figure of speech shapes Austen's greater mission and strategy as a novelist, suggesting continuity rather than discontinuity between the teenage writer and the mature author. In fact, the use of anticlimax is directly related to the critical disputes over Austen’s endings and whether or not she is impatient with conclusions in general.

A Comparative Study of Female Images Between Traditional Drama and Modern DramaTaking Two for the Road and Dou E Yuan as Examples

As a mature work of ancient Chinese tragedy, Dou E Yuan not only accuses the cruel reality of disregard for human life, but also has a great influence on later literature and drama. Up to now, it has also appeared as a classic in stage performances, teaching books, etc. Many dramas are deeply inspired by its artistry, theme and realism. The "red literary works" with the same goal as "two for the road" also need a strong political propaganda means to publicize revolutionary thoughts by means of this art form. From the perspective of female images in Dou E Yuan and Two for the Road, this paper comprehensively analyzes the embodiment of female personality characteristics, values and artistic techniques in the two dramas, and compares and investigates the characteristics, situations and changes of gender consciousness of female images in the two dramas.

The imaginary doctor and his speech mask in the works of A.P. Chekhov and in Russian humorous literature at the end of the 19th century

The proposed study delves into the depiction of an imaginary doctor in mass humor during the late 19th century and in Chekhov’s early work. Its aim is to provide an explanation for Chekhov’s innovative humor, which stands out in comparison to that of his contemporaries. The work’s scientific novelty lies in the clarification of the concept of “speech mask in literature”. This refers to a hybrid of two languages, one inherent to the hero and the other appropriated from someone else, presented in a dialogic manner. Chekhov’s contemporaries such as Leikin, Amfiteatrov, and Shcheglov created simplistic comic scenarios in their works. The intentions of these authors were aimed solely at entertaining and distracting readers from their daily worries. Chekhov takes a complex stance on mass humor. On one hand, he must adhere to its demands in order to publish his stories in magazines. On the other hand, he subverts existing conventions by complicating his heroes’ speech characteristics through a speech mask. Chekhov not only entertains his readers, but also provides depictions of provincial customs and various social types. The image of the doctor in Chekhov’s mature works is ambivalent and only indirectly related to the imaginary doctor from his humorous pieces.

Hubungan Efikasi Diri dengan Kesiapan Kerja pada Siswa SMK

As a provision for work, vocational high school students are required to have mature work readiness so that they can compete for the desired job. Job readiness for the workforce of vocational high school graduates is influenced by several factors, one of which is self-efficacy. This study aims to determine the relationship between self-efficacy and work readiness in vocational students. The method used in this research is quantitative method. In this study, the subjects were 323 SMKN students in Padang city. The data collection method in this study used a self-efficacy scale and a work readiness scale. Data analysis techniques using product moment correlation techniques. The results of hypothesis testing obtained a correlation coefficient value of 0.560 and a significance value of 0.000. This shows that there is a significant positive relationship between self-efficacy and work readiness in vocational students, meaning that the higher the self-efficacy of a student, the higher the work readiness of vocational high school students.

Nature and the Value of Learning in Classical Chinese Philosophy and in Augustine—A Comparative Study

This paper compares Augustine’s view on the value of learning to classical Chinese philosophy (Laozi, Confucius, Mengzi, Xunzi, Zhu Xi). While Laozi has a quite negative notion of learning as leading humans away from true nature, most Confucians esteem learning highly as the only way to human perfection. Similar to the Confucians, the early Augustine sees knowledge and learning as a way for humans to ascend to divine truth. In his mature works, however, Augustine points out more clearly the dangers of learning: it can make humans proud instead of humble, causing them to rely on their own power instead of confessing their weakness and their need for divine grace. His hesitations on the value of learning bear some similarity to Laozi’s view.

Дипломатическая карьера английского поэта Мэттью Прайора

Introduction. There are only a few special works about the English poet Matthew Prior as a diplomat in historical literature, and his diplomatic service did not receive an assessment in Russian historiography. Methods and materials. During the study of the poet’s diplomacy practice, the author used systematic and anthropological methods, content analysis of his correspondence, biographies, and research works. Analysis. Prior was one of the few Englishmen of his time who was able to combine a political and poetic career. He met the main criteria for climbing the career ladder in the era of “courts and alliances” because he had professional abilities, excellent knowledge of languages, art knowledge, wit, and the ability to compose well. As a diplomat, Prior successfully proved himself during two European wars: the Augsburg League war and the War of the Spanish Succession. As a secret agent, embassy secretary, and ambassador, he was prominent in all negotiations with France. Results. The most important achievement of his diplomacy was the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht between Britain and France. Prior’s diplomatic activities harmoniously combined with his erudition in the field of artistic culture and poetry. Diplomacy defined his most successful and mature works, and poetry perfected his art of diplomacy.

Prior’s turn from determinism to indeterminism

Indeterminism assumes a central place in Arthur Norman Prior’s invention and development of modern tense logic. Before this indeterminism, Prior was for a number of years a devout determinist. But Prior’s turn from determinism to indeterminism, so important for his mature work, has never been explained properly. This article presents the enigma of Prior’s turn from determinism to indeterminism. We know much about his early determinism and recently have learned more about how he became a determinist, but, apart from the fact that he in the course of the years between 1949 and 1953 became an indeterminist, we know very little about how or why he became an indeterminist and what exactly he then understood by free will and indeterminism. He never explained this himself at any length, but scattered remarks in various texts provide some aid in approaching this issue. We here take a look at some important texts in which Prior writes about the free will to help us a step further toward solving this riddle.