Meaningful Positions Research Articles

Structure of Cultural Rejection

This study explores the relationship structure of cultural rejection. The proposition is advanced that people reject cultural practices as the proxies of out-groups who are perceived to be associated with them, so that they would maintain social identities that are separate from those of out-groups. Using data on musical preferences from 1993 General Social Survey, it applies blockmodeling—a methodology originally developed in social network analysis—in a new way to analyze the structure of cultural rejection within U.S. society. The results indicate that blockmodeling based on cultural rejection is effective in uncovering sociologically meaningful positions among the respondents. The results are mostly consistent with the omnivore thesis, while highlighting the multifaceted nature of cultural divisions in the United States. Finally, the identified positions correspond with respondents’ perception of the degree of unity (or lack thereof) among Americans, consistent with the theoretical assumption of this study.

Masculinity, Makeovers, and the Ethics of Consumption in Japanese Films for Young People

This article examines three recent Japanese films for young people—Kyō, koi wo hajimemasu (Today, I Will Fall in Love), Paradise Kiss, and Runway Beat—that employ a common narrative strategy whereby interior development of the female protagonist is matched by a process of transformation through consumption, in the form of a makeover. The films code consumption as morally good in that the female protagonists, following this transformation, achieve some degree of subjective agency and find meaningful positions in their social worlds. Nevertheless, an examination of the process of transformation and of the depictions of the young men who initiate and control the transformations reveals that these films convey a problematic ethics of consumption.

Masculinity, Makeovers, and the Ethics of Consumption in Japanese Films for Young People

This article examines three recent Japanese films for young people— Kyō, koi wo hajimemasu ( Today, I Will Fall in Love ), Paradise Kiss , and Runway Beat —that employ a common narrative strategy whereby interior development of the female protagonist is matched by a process of transformation through consumption, in the form of a makeover. The films code consumption as morally good in that the female protagonists, following this transformation, achieve some degree of subjective agency and find meaningful positions in their social worlds. Nevertheless, an examination of the process of transformation and of the depictions of the young men who initiate and control the transformations reveals that these films convey a problematic ethics of consumption.

Navigating the insider-outsider hyphen: A qualitative exploration of the acculturation challenges of Aboriginal athletes pursuing sport in Euro-Canadian contexts

ObjectivesThe purpose of this project was to explore the acculturation challenges of Aboriginal athletes (14–26 years) from Canada as they moved off reserves to pursue sport within non-Aboriginal (Euro-Canadian) communities. The project was also aimed at contributing to the acculturation literature in sport psychology through an Indigenous decolonizing methodology. DesignUniversity academics partnered with Aboriginal community researchers from one reserve to facilitate an Indigenous decolonizing methodology rooted in practices from the local culture. The project was articulated as a form of cultural sport psychology. MethodsMandala drawings were used to facilitate conversational interviews with 21 Aboriginal athletes about their experiences relocating off reserves and the acculturation challenges they faced as they attempted to pursue sport within Euro-Canadian contexts. A local Indigenous version of an inductive thematic analysis was then conducted. ResultsThe acculturation challenges of Aboriginal athletes coalesced into two major themes: (a) culture shock (which occurred in relation to the host culture), and (b) becoming disconnected from home (which occurred in relation to the home culture). These themes illustrated how the athletes’ sense of identity and place were challenged and changed, as they (re)negotiated meaningful positions for themselves in and between two cultural realities. ConclusionThis project centralized a culturally resonant mode of knowledge production embracing local Aboriginal ways of knowing. This approach facilitated deeper insights into athletes’ acculturation challenges, which contextualized the complexity and fluidity of the acculturation process.

One really sick TV Christmas calendar: Negotiating identity in ‘Yallahrup Ferry Town’

Abstract The 2007 television Christmas calendar, Yallahrup Færgeby/‘Yallahrup Ferry Town’, upsets the normal conventions of Danish television Christmas specials, shifting attention away from the cosy aspects of the holiday season, and towards unsettling aspects of the contemporary urban Danish landscape. The 24-episode series, which uses puppets as part of an easily recognized satire of the classic 1974 Jullerup Færgeby/‘Jullerup Ferry Town’ calendar, focuses on the social challenges confronting two adolescents, Ali and Hassan, as they negotiate life in a dysfunctional urban school. The two boys, whose ethnic heritage is ‘other than Danish’, cycle through nearly all the Orientalist stereotypes of the immigrant in Danish culture, yet manage to emerge at the end of the series with an evolving sense of self that neither plays into the assimilationist policies of the Danish government nor aligns with the crippling stereotypes of criminal immigrant youths unable to find meaningful positions in Danish society.

Membrane bioreactor fouling behaviour assessment through principal component analysis and fuzzy clustering

Adequate membrane bioreactor operation requires frequent evaluation of the membrane state. A data-driven approach based on principal component analysis (PCA) and fuzzy clustering extracting the necessary monitoring information solely out of transmembrane pressure data was investigated for this purpose. Out of three tested PCA techniques the two functional methods proved useful to cope with noise and outliers as opposed to the common standard PCA, while all of them presented similar capabilities for revealing data trends and patterns. The expert functional PCA approach enabled linking the two major trends in the data to reversible fouling and irreversible fouling. The B-splines approach provided a more objective way for functional representation of the data set but its complexity did not appear justified by better results. The fuzzy clustering algorithm, applied after PCA, was successful in recognizing the data trends and placing the cluster centres in meaningful positions, as such supporting data analysis. However, the algorithm did not allow a correct classification of all data. Factor analysis was used instead, exploiting the linearity of the observed two dimensional trends, to completely split the reversible and irreversible fouling effects and classify the data in a more pragmatic approach. Overall, the tested techniques appeared useful and can serve as the basis for automatic membrane fouling monitoring and control.

Personal Position Repertoire (PPR) from a Bird's Eye View

To attain a bird's eye view of the dialogical self, we propose analyzing clients’ Personal Position Repertoires by creating a bi-plot of the factors underlying their internal and external positions. A bi-plot produces a clear and comprehensible visual map of the relations between all the meaningful internal and external positions within the self, so that clusters and dominant patterns can be easily observed and analyzed. This method can be used by researchers to study general deep structures of the self, and by practitioners to increase collaboration with participants and facilitate change and growth. There are multiple bi-plots technologies available today. However, the simplest approach psychologists can take is to perform a standard Principal Component Analysis (PCA). To obtain a bi-plot, one performs a PCA once on the external positions and once on the internal positions (by transposing the input matrix data). In both PCAs the number of components is restricted to two. Next, one plots a scatter of the two PCAs on the same plane, where results of the first components are projected to the X-axis and those of the second components to the Y-axis. To demonstrate the method, a bi-plot of the PPR data published by Hermans (2001) is analyzed. This analysis is consistent with recent views of motivation, which postulate two pairs of conflicting basic human needs: security versus self-actualization and competition versus cooperation. One can also observe the client's unique relational formation of internal and external representations that reflect these four basic needs. Need theories and value theories are discussed as possible dimensions that facilitate the analysis of the global visual maps of the dialogical self.

Three-component zipper assembly of photoactive cascade architectures with blue, red and colorless naphthalenediimide donors and acceptors

We report the programmed ("zipper") assembly of photoactive rigid-rod pi-stack architectures composed of blue (b), red (r) and colorless (n) core-substituted naphthalene diimides (NDIs) attached along p-oligophenyl (POP) rods. The design strategy and multistep syntheses of the required NDI-POP conjugates are described first. The activity of the obtained up to three-component cascade architectures is characterized in current-voltage curves, which are analyzed to reveal short circuit currents and fill factors as significant characteristics. With one-component zippers, rNDIs are found to give much higher photocurrents than bNDIs. In two-component zippers, substitution of rNDIs by nNDIs in meaningful positions is shown to give increased photocurrents despite reduced absorption of light. Three-component zippers are shown to provide access to an increased structural complexity for more subtle control of function. Reaching from 0.27 to 0.54, fill factors, a measure for the power generated with light, are found to be most sensitive to the directionality of multicomponent cascade architectures. Overall, these results are in agreement with photoinduced charge separation between rNDI (but not bNDI) acceptors and POP donors followed by directional intrastack electron transfer from rNDI radical anions to nNDI acceptors, that is, the formation of supramolecular cascade n/p-heterojunctions.

A temporal–contextual retrieval account of complex span: An analysis of errors

Complex working memory span tasks have been shown to predict performance on a number of measures of higher-order cognition including fluid abilities. However, exactly why performance on these tasks is related to higher-order cognition is still not known. The present study examined the patterns of errors made on two common complex span tasks. The results suggest that the patterns of errors made on these tasks are an important indicator of the processes that underlie performance and point to the importance of temporal–contextual cues. Furthermore, the individual differences data suggest that low scoring participants do not make more of each type of error at all serial positions, but rather the variability is localized to a few theoretically meaningful positions for each error type. The results suggest that low scoring participants have less precise temporal–contextual cues which leads to an inefficient search of memory.

Virtual Chess: Meaning Enhances Users' Sense of Presence in Virtual Environments

Presence refers to the sensation of going into a computer-simulated environment. We investigated whether presence and memory accuracy are affected by the meaningfulness of the information encountered in the virtual environment (VE). Non-chess players and three levels of chess players studied meaningful and meaningless chess positions in VEs. They rated the level of presence experienced in each and took an old-new recognition memory test. Non-chess players reported no difference in presence for meaningful compared with meaningless positions, yet even weak chess players reported feeling more present with meaningful compared with meaningless positions. Thus, only modest levels of expertise were needed to enhance presence. In contrast, tournament-level chess-playing ability was required before meaningful chess positions were remembered significantly more accurately than meaningless chess positions. Tournament players' memory accuracy was very high for meaningful positions but was the same as non-chess players for meaningless positions. Meaning did not significantly influence memory accuracy for weak chess players. Our memory results replicate and extend the findings of Chase and Simon (1973). Out presence results show how cognitive factors inherent in the user can influence the quality of the human-computer interface. Practical implications are discussed.

JavaShade: multiple sequence alignment box-and-shading on the World Wide Web.

JavaShade is a multiple sequence alignment box-and-shade tool for generating high quality printed output that uses a variety of methods for boxing and shading, allowing the most appropriate functions to be chosen for displaying the most meaningful positions in an alignment. JavaShade is available from the WWW at http://industry.ebi.ac.uk/JavaShade