Plural Modes Research Articles

Beyond the non/monogamy system: fluidity, hybridity, and transcendence in intimate relationships

ABSTRACTWhile the traditional understanding of monogamy and nonmonogamy as polar opposites has been deconstructed, the conceptual and experiential territory beyond the non/monogamy system (and attendant mono/poly binary) has not been systematically discussed. This article considers three plural relational modes – fluidity, hybridity and transcendence – that disrupt and arguably outdo the non/monogamy system. Moving beyond the mono/poly binary opens up a fuzzy, liminal and multivocal semantic-existential space this article terms nougamy. After describing several transbinary pathways, the article concludes by sketching a critical pluralist approach that eschews universal sequences or hierarchies among monogamy, nonmonogamy and nougamy, as well as provides tools for the making of qualitative distinctions both within and among relational styles.

Modes of pluralism: critical commentary on roundtable dialogue on pluralism

In 2015, The International Journal of Pluralism in Economics Education published a 'Roundtable dialogue on pluralism' in order to reflect on the economics profession and on the theory and practice of pluralism within academia. This paper starts by analysing critically this roundtable and continues with the theoretisation of various modes of pluralism that have been implicitly or explicitly used by the respondents of the roundtable such as theoretical pluralism, systematic pluralism, reflexive pluralism. The paper also discusses the achievements and failures in implementing pedagogical pluralism and pluralist perspectives within and related to economics.

複数把持モードを有するユニバーサルハンドの開発

複数把持モードを有するユニバーサルハンドの開発

Unpeeling action: critical writing, training and process

For political philosopher Hannah Arendt, action is also that which inserts us into the world, makes possible our public appearance and our political participation. In performance, action is that which invites us in, marks or blurs the boundaries between public and private, theatrical gesture and its spectating. In writing about performance, I am confronted with action two-fold. In the instance in which I encounter it in the live moment, raw and incomplete; and in the textual gesture I extend in return. This paper considers the relationship between critical writing about performance and training practice, through an exploration of action. It draws on Arendt’s philosophy to examine the ways in which action operates in pedagogical approaches to critical writing. It does so by considering the plural modes of action and representation as found in a Jackson Pollock painting inspired by William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In this manner a gentle confrontation is staged between the process of critical writing, marked by encounter, resistance, articulation, interpretation and dialogue, my own experience of training critical writers, and the politics of description that shape the critical text. The article considers how this confrontation might offer configurations of encounters with performance, allowing for change and specificity in the training process.

Reframing Problems of Incommensurability in Environmental Conflicts through Pragmatic Sociology: From Value Pluralism to the Plurality of Modes of Engagement with the Environment

This paper presents the contribution of the pragmatic sociology of critical capacities to the understanding of environmental conflicts. In the field of ‘environmental valuation', nowadays colonised by economics, the approach of plural modes (or ‘regimes') of engagement provides a sociological understanding of the unequal power of conflicting ‘languages of valuation'. This frame entails a shift from ‘values’ to ‘modes of valuation', and links modes of valuation to modes of practical engagement and coordination with the surrounding environment. Different social sources of incommensurability are thus detected and reframed as critical tension within and among modes of human coordination with the environment.

‘A habitual disposition to the good’: on reason, virtue and realism

Amidst the crisis of instrumental reason, a number of contemporary political philosophers including Jürgen Habermas have sought to rescue the project of a reasonable humanism from the twin threats of religious fundamentalism and secular naturalism. In his recent work, Habermas defends a post-metaphysical politics that aims to protect rationality against encroachment while also accommodating religious faith within the public sphere. This paper contends that Habermas’ post-metaphysical project fails to provide a robust alternative either to the double challenge of secular naturalism and religious fundamentalism or to the ruthless instrumentalism that underpins capitalism. By contrast with Habermas and also with the ‘new realism’ of contemporary political philosophers such as Raymond Geuss or Bernard Williams, realism in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle can defend reason against instrumental rationality and blind belief by integrating it with habit, feeling and even faith. Such metaphysical–political realism can help develop a politics of virtue that goes beyond communitarian thinking by emphasising plural modes of association (not merely ‘community’), substantive ties of sympathy and the importance of pursuing goodness and mutual flourishing.

Evaluating multimodal literacies in student blogs

AbstractThis research presents ways in which high school students used the multimodal and interactive affordances of blogs to create, organize, communicate and participate on an educational blog. Their actions demonstrated how plural modes of literacy are infiltrating digital environments and reshaping literacy and learning. Multimodal blogging practices of participants broaden the discourse about educational blogs to include an understanding of blogs as media‐rich platforms in which learners operate with plural modes of literacy to construct meaning, communicate and participate.

Netizenship, security and freedom

We [Cyberspace] must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty … We will spread ourselves across the planet so that no-one can arrest our thoughts… May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.1 Failing to anticipate how authoritarian governments would respond to the Internet, cyber-utopians did not predict how useful it would prove for propaganda purposes, how masterfully dictators would learn to use it for surveillance, and how sophisticated modern systems of Internet censorship would become. Instead most cyber-utopians stuck to a populist account of how technology empowers the people, who, oppressed by years of authoritarian rule, will inevitably rebel, mobilizing themselves through text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever new tool comes along next year.2 The above statements seem to suggest that the Internet is a space for contestation between freedom and security, but, for Morozov, in that contestation it is the forces of security, for regulation and control of the Internet which may be gaining the upper hand. (cf. Mueller3) The primary aim of this article is to consider ways in which a Netizen culture of free and open internet is constrained by forces of state surveillance and control. The developments in the Middle East provide one example of the apparent relationship of contestation between oppressive states and freedom-seeking cyber-citizens or Netizens within cyberspace's complex plural network modes of governance. The article compares Middle Eastern developments with developments elsewhere, particularly in China and the United States. It suggests that the relationship between Netizens and states needs to be understood in the context of the culture of the internet and modes of governance that involve complex networking among Netizen groups, commercial providers, governments and international institutions. Only through such a contextual examination of the complex interactions is it possible to understand the power (im)balances that provide the continuing tensions of global network information society. There have been many claims that the Arab spring was an Internet event. Egyptian security personnel cut off almost all access to the Internet other than to the stock exchange.4 Yet this did not stop the filling of Tahrir Square and ultimately the end of Mubarak. Some attributed this to the ‘mosque net’ as the traditional channel of communication, others have extolled the role of the more traditional medium of television and especially the new El Jezira.5 Some have focused on the role played by collaboration between social network sites, for example enabling Google and Twitter to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages by leaving a voicemail on a specific phone number.6 The Google executive Wael Ghoneim became an internet hero of the revolution through coordinating a crucial Facebook page.7 Global Cybercitizen organisations such as the Electronic Freedom Frontier had already been urging social network sites such as Facebook to take technical steps that would ensure the privacy of web users in countries with heavy internet surveillance.8

A Produção de Conhecimento Situado e Implicado: caminhos e descobertas de uma etnografia global sobre educação cultural e artística contemporânea

This paper about contemporary cultural education discusses the methodological procedures (fundamentals, processes and procedures) of a global ethnography, without forgetting the enabled findings. It starts by debating the global ethnography possibilities, of disclosing the localresistance, interpretations and incorporations, and exposes the four extensions of the extended casemethod to three contemporary art galleries, three cities European Capitals of Culture (Liverpool,Vilnius, and Porto), during the 1st decade of this century. Secondly, the article shows singular and plural modes of producing museum and city dynamics – deindustrialization, decentralization andde/re-privatisation – while analyses cultural and educational strategies of each gallery by the singular combination of pedagogical, cultural, aesthetic, social, and political purposes.

Discovering gupta-Vrindavan: Finding selves and places in the storied landscape

This article seeks to be a contribution to the recent bourgeoning of studies in the anthropology of (sacred) spaces, places and landscapes. Ethnographically, it deals with the social topography of Navadvip and Mayapur, vaishnava pilgrimage places in the Nadia district of West Bengal. It analyses the contemporary articulations of the experience and making of a contrasted and consecrated landscape, and its potential in embodying differentiated community identities. It describes the various public faces of Bengal-Vaishnava groups and argues in favour of the inherent relationships between devotional self-experiences and the emotional landscape which is inhabited and constituted simultaneously. It details the cultural geography of Navadvip and Mayapur as embodied in the layout of different temples and ashrams, and the circulating stories establishing their significance. The stories sometimes hunt out lost sites, sometimes legitimise existing ones and, at other times, override all such concerns over specific sites in favour of a passionate engagement with the entire landscape. In every instance among the plural modes of ‘dwelling’ in the mnemonic-fabled sacred space, the vaishnava groups claim to discover the essence of the landscape and thereby assert their multiform practices of self-experiences as authentic representations of the sect. In the end, the article also contrasts the inhabitants’ landscapes and devotional self-experiences with that of the traveller and throws up new questions in the anthropological understandings of places, landscapes, journeys and devotion.

Beyond “Methodological Islamism”? A Thematic Discussion of Muslim Minorities in Europe

In this discussion we offer an overview of the place of Muslim actors in European scholarship. We especially focus on the second and subsequent generations of European Muslims, and how future research agendas could conceptualise the relationship between contemporary Muslim identity and citizenship regimes in Europe. We explore the way in which our understanding is formed by a concern with socio- economic processes, cultural adaptations and civic status. We include questions of citizenship and “difference”, and the extent to which there has been a re-imagining and re-forming of national collectivities in the face of Muslim claims-making. By claims-making we invoke a further register which centres on the creation of a Muslim infrastructure, perhaps through modes of religious pluralism (or opposition to it), and how this interacts with prevailing ideas that to greater and lesser extents inform public policies e.g., multiculturalism, interculturalism, cohesion, secularism, or Leitkulture, amongst others. While the latter register focuses more on nation-state politics, there is a further transnational dimension in the Muslim experience in Europe, and this assumes an important trajectory in the ways discussed. It is argued that Muslim identities in Europe contain many social layers that are often independent of scriptural texts; such that the appellation of “Muslim” can be appropriated without any unanimity on Islamic matters. We conclude by observing how this point is understudied, and as a consequence the dynamic features of Muslims’ leadership in Europe remain unexplored.a

Development of Shimming System for a Highly Sensitive NMR Spectrometer With a Superconducting Split Magnet

A highly sensitive NMR spectrometer with a superconducting split magnet and a solenoid-type probe coil is being developed. One of the most challenging tasks is to achieve high homogeneity of magnetic field in a measuring volume with this configuration, because inevitable structural asymmetry and limited production accuracy of the magnet cause larger inhomogeneity of magnetic field compared with a conventional solenoid-type NMR spectrometer. Numerical estimation revealed that field correction capability of conventional shim coils, i.e., superconducting solenoid and saddle coils placed outside main coils, is insufficient for the split NMR magnet. Therefore, we have designed and constructed superconducting shim coils with sufficiently high capability by adopting the following three novel ideas: (1) superconducting shim coils are placed not only outside main coils but also inside them in the vicinity of a measuring volume; (2) superconducting shim coils with ldquoperiodically wavyrdquo shape are utilized to correct non-axial inhomogeneous magnetic field; (3) the current of each superconducting shim coil is independently controlled to correct plural modes of magnetic field simultaneously.

Of Tensions and Tricksters: Grassroots Democracy between Theory and Practice

Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy. By Mark R. Warren; Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life. By Harry C. Boyte; Going Public. By Michael Gecan; and Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice. By Edward T. Chambers with Michael A. Cowan.These are not easy times for democracy. In the face of multinational corporations, an increasingly corrupt and deceitful political system, mega-media conglomerates, and militaristic televangelists, it is easy to understand how some radical democrats succumb to a politics of the bullhorn. The objective of such politics is to hone the correct line and strategize ways to project it clearly, loudly, and righteously into the public arena. Yet the success of politics thus framed has been marginal in recent decades, and its democratic credentials questionable—if by democratic we mean a politics that engages a manifold people in the difficult reciprocities of active critical judgment, organizing, action toward common goods, more egalitarian distributions, and deepening acknowledgments of plural modes of being. Most Americans are Teflon to it.Romand Coles is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University (coles@duke.edu). The author wishes to acknowledge helpful comments and criticisms from Susan Bickford, Kimberley Curtis, Jeffrey Isaac, Sanford Schram, and anonymous reviewers for Perspectives on Politics. Romand Coles is the author of Self/Power/Other: Political Theory and Dialogical Ethics, Rethinking Generosity: Critical Theory and the Politics of Caritas, and most recently Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy.

Security in the age of networks

Using the literature on the networked society as a starting point, this article argues that security can also be conceptualized as being produced by various networks of actors—public and private. This approach eschews the usual debate between those who defend the pre‐eminence of the state (general interest) and those in favour of a plural mode of security production (market‐oriented) to focus instead on the shared complex morphology that characterizes security assemblages in the present era: networks. Security networks are found in both Anglo‐Saxon and Continental societies at the local, institutional, international and informational levels. In order to overcome the descriptive tendency of network approaches, a dynamic framework based on the capital metaphor shows how each actor of a security network mobilizes distinct forms of resources in order to maximize its position in the network. This framework can be applied to chart the emergence and transformation of security networks and the strategies deployed by their nodes.

振動系のオペレータ指令に基づく搬送制御と自動整定制御の統一的設計(J22-2 センサ・アクチュエータシステムとその知能化(2),J22 センサ・アクチュエータシステムとその知能化-実環境で活躍するメカトロニクスを目指して)

Nonstationary optimal control method (NOCM) is one of the most effective methods for control problems consisting of plural control modes. NOCM realizes a smooth switching of the modes along time passage and enables us to unify the designs for plural modes and produces the optimal controller based on single criterion function including plural control objectives. In conveyance systems as crane, both a control mode based on operator's command and an automatic control mode are required. Taking the feature of NOCM into account, this study applies NOCM to the problem consisting of the traveling control mode following the operator's command and the automatic settling control mode for positioning of a cart with vibration system. The effectiveness of the method is verified theoretically and experimentally.

大スパン建築構造における複数モード制御のためのMTMD法に基づく分散型TMDに関する研究

The purpose of this study is to develop the vibration control system of plural modes of large span structures using spatially dispersed arranged TMDs(tuned mass dampers). In this study, in order to determine the design parameters of TMDs, MTMD(Multiple TMD) method is applied. And to determine the arrangements of MTMD, the method using the superposed shape of controlling modes is newly proposed. The following results of the proposed method compared with the method using the usual single TMD of equal mass were found thorough numerical experiments. 1) The proposed method is especially effective for controlling structures overall and the effect is closely connected with the bandwidth of MTMD. 2) The difference between responses using the equivalent mass and the mass of whole structure for setting up design parameters of MTMD is small and the newly proposed average equivalent mass is useful.

Time scales for structural formation in an electrorheological suspension probed by optical and electrical responses

Responses of the diffuse transmitted light intensity and the current passing through an electrorheological suspension to the stepwise electric field were measured in the quiescent state, and the time scales for the structural formation of the polarized particles were reported. It was found experimentally that both of the responses consist of plural modes, the faster and slower modes even in the quiescent state. The optical response was also expressed as an exponential function with two modes, which take place in succession.

Measurement of Leaky Lamb Wave Velocity Using Raman-Nath Diffraction

A method of measuring the phase velocity of a leaky Lamb wave using Raman-Nath diffraction is investigated. Each mode of the wave with the different phase velocity in a substrate is radiated at each radiation angle into a load medium that is in contact with the substrate. An incident optical wave into the load medium can be diffracted by the radiated acoustic wave, and the diffraction image is formed in parallel to a wave vector of the radiated acoustic wave, reflecting the phase velocity of the leaky Lamb wave. By observing and processing the diffraction image stored in the form of digital matrix data, the phase velocity can be estimated. This method can be used to observe the dispersion of the phase velocity, the separation of plural modes excited at the same frequency, and the generation of the third harmonics of the wave number. This technique has the merit of measuring the leaky Lamb wave phase velocity separately, simply and precisely.

Demographic Foundations of Political Empowerment in Multiminority Cities

As U.S. cities accommodate increasing ethnic and racial diversity, political choices may unify or divide their local populations. Those choices pull communities toward two different modes of pluralism: traditional "melting pot" assimilation or a complex mosaic of racial and ethnic assertiveness. Central to this issue is equity and empowerment, which may be accentuated by minority populations' size, structure, and spatial concentration. We examine two potential modes of local empowerment: "dominance," whereby each group is the majority of voters in single election districts (reinforcing separative tendencies), and "influence," whereby a group gains "influential minority" status in several districts (reinforcing unifying tendencies).

Transient stress response of ER suspension

Stress response of an ionic exchange resin suspension was measured by two types of stimulus; a step electric field in a steady shear flow and sinusoidal strain with various amplitudes under dc electric fields. It was found that the stress response to a step electric field of 1.38 kV/mm in a steady shear flow of 2.3 s−1 was composed of plural modes that took place in succession. These modes were assigned to fast and slow modes with response time of 7 and 100 ms, respectively. Also, it was found that sinusoidal wave forms of the stress response to the sinusoidal strain of 0.5 Hz in the dc electric fields up to 2 kV/mm changed to nonsinusoidal ones with yield stress above critical amplitudes of strain.