Multiple Standpoints Research Articles

When patriarchy and individualism collide: experiences of women entrepreneurial leaders

PurposeThrough a feminist lens, the study explores women’s experiences of entrepreneurial leadership in the UK and how the women manage competing and contrary patriarchal and individualism discourses and associated discursive paradox.Design/methodology/approachThis study follows social constructionism and Feminist Standpoint Research approach, providing space for women to voice and contextualise lived experiences from multiple standpoints. The study comprises five cases of women entrepreneurs in IT, law, construction, beauty and childcare, using a two-stage semi-structured interview process analysed through discourse analysis.FindingsThis study provides new insights into the entrenched patriarchal socio-cultural context for women entrepreneurial leaders in the UK. The competing discourses provoke a discursive paradox, which dominates and oppresses women. This is managed through a process of discursive blending, blurring and merging contrary discursive expectations. The women use the individualism discourse to obscure patriarchy’s domination and as a resource to resist patriarchal gender power relations. To blend the discourses, the women use particular tactics: engaging in patriarchal bargains, such as “dressing not to impress”; can sidestep and manoeuvre these bargains and can utilise “patriarchal advantages”, turning gender oppression into benefits by “working it positively”.Originality/valueThis study addresses the lack of research interrogating patriarchy in the Global North and the absence of understandings of how women entrepreneurial leaders manage the competing and contrary discourses of patriarchy and individualism, which actively shape their experiences. The study illuminates the significance and increasing requirement for feminism to disrupt the ever-increasing power of patriarchy in entrepreneurship.

ISPP presidential address: Why political psychology (and ISPP) benefit from including work (and members) from varieties of political systems, positions and locations, political cultures, theories, and methods

AbstractPolitical psychology has greatly benefited from work that together addresses the enormous variety of political problems faced by people around the world, including those that are universal (e.g., how one gains access to basic needs, how power should be governed) and problems that confront people in particular situations (e.g., transitions of governmental forms, war, group exclusion, rapid economic change, decolonization, external intervention, national dominance). Adopting multiple standpoints and research agendas is necessary for us collectively to make our work useful to publics and to further the work each of us does. Another strength of our discipline is to employ the assumptions of multiple disciplines and of a variety of research methods. I will illustrate these points with research examples from several ISPP members and discuss ways that those in our discipline try to confront the difficulties that lack of commonality in theory, standpoint, methods, and epistemological assumptions can pose. Finally, I will summarize some of the work that various ISPP members have done to promote the development of political psychology and our society this year and invite further suggestions and contributions from members in how we can serve one another.

Committing to Trauma-Informed Social Work Education in Chronic Syndemic Times

ABSTRACT COVID-19 has revealed and intensified economic and health disparities, prompting a profound national and global examination of racist systems perpetuating such disadvantage. The historic confluence of COVID-19 with movements for social justice offers a window, which COVID fatigue may already be closing, for us to enact true change in the process and content of a graduate social work education. This moment calls for re-envisioned process and content that addresses issues of oppression, social justice, trauma, mental illness, and health. As social work educators with a specialization in trauma, we are thinking deeply about how to harness this juncture to shape a more rigorous and responsive social work educational process. We believe trauma-informed principles must be applied across the social work curriculum, beyond trauma-focused or clinical courses, and to our social work educational institutions. We offer examples of how we have revisioned social work training for ourselves and our students, from our multiple standpoints as faculty, administrator, and field advisor, for the complex challenges and opportunities of chronic syndemic times. We conclude with an invitation to shift away from the social work education status quo and truly practice what we teach.

THE EFFECTS OF STUDENTS’ STANDPOINTS IN ARGUMENTATION REGARDING SOCIO-SCIENTIFIC ISSUES

This study examined the effects of students’ argumentation standpoints on their argumentation learning in the context of socio-scientific issues (SSIs). To that end, four kinds of argumentation standpoints were defined: affirmative standpoints, oppositional standpoints, multiple standpoints, and non-standpoints. These four kinds of standpoints allow for six possible combinations of any two of the different kinds of standpoints, which enabled us to conduct six kinds of 2-team format debates. The resulting differences of students’ four types of arguments (i.e., claims, warrants, rebuttals, and qualifiers) generated in six types of debates were examined. This study invited 208 10th-grade students to participate in a quasi-experimental research design. The results showed the affirmative group students demonstrated superior performance in terms of claims and warrants, and the oppositional group students had the largest number of rebuttals. The students in the debate with combinations of affirmative and oppositional groups exhibited the best performance regarding the generation of claims, warrants, and rebuttals. Based on the results, the present study concluded the standpoint had significant effects on the students’ argumentation learning, which suggests that teachers can investigate students’ standpoint on the learning topic of SSI and their prior knowledge about the standpoint before teaching. Keywords: argumentation learning, science education, socio-scientific issue, student standpoint.

Relocating Oneself Beyond Barriers

South-Asian diasporic authors write out of their specific cultural, individual and collective needs that relate to their experiences of racism, ethnic discrimination and sexism in the new space. The task at hand is to re-structure and re-constitute alien paradigms to suit the spaces inhabited by the immigrant. Immigrant writing involves a powerful “presencing” of source and host cultures. There are indeed variations within the immigrant groups in terms of the degree of retention of ethnic cultural values, the behavioural patterns and the degree of accommodation arrived at with the demands of the host culture. These various facets of immigrant experience, that are thrown into focus as a result of cross-cultural encounter, point to the shared experiences of the immigrant communities, which constitute the ethos of the diaspora. Diaspora is an important conceptual tool because it highlights the multiple standpoints borne of migration and displacement. It illuminates an ambivalent politics of positioning and being positioned, of identification and being identified.In her debut collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies, also called, “stories of Bengal, Boston and Beyond”, Jhumpa Lahiri probes deeply into the maladies of cultural dislocation and the consequential emotional trauma. This paper analyses four short stories titled “A Temporary Matter”, “The Third and Final Continent”, “Mrs. Sen’s” and “Interpreter of Maladies” in the anthology and attempts to trace how the immigrants who vacillate between two cultures overcome the identity crisis they face.

Comparative Analysis of Educational Approaches: Unveiling Strengths across Attributes

Design plays a pivotal role in the successful development of any interactive learning environment (ILE). Furthermore, in the realm of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), the design process necessitates contributions from a wide array of expertise areas. Therefore, individuals engaged in tool development must directly confront the design challenge from multiple standpoints. This article aims to present a comprehensive analysis of current research that centers on the utilization of various approaches as a means of enhancing technology-driven learning environments. The objective is to investigate how much of its instructional promise is genuinely put into practical implementation. The review exclusively considers empirical studies that have been published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, focusing specifically on the application of diverse approaches as educational environments. Over the past ten years, the methodology of design-based research has proven its potential in both the research and design aspects of technology-enhanced learning environments (TELEs). This article delineates and characterizes design-based research, outlining its significance in the development of technology-enhanced learning environments (TELEs). It also introduces principles for the integration of design-based research into TELEs, and deliberates on the forthcoming challenges associated with this approach. The introduction of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) techniques has transformed the allocation of the most crucial resource in the education system: the time of educators and learners. Although new technology holds the promise of increased personalization and efficiency, the impact on staff time must be meticulously analyzed. Without careful consideration, TEL methods might escalate expenses without proportionate advantages. The paper evaluates various methods of comparing teaching time costs between TEL and traditional approaches. The conclusion suggests that cost-benefit modeling conducted within the institution provides the most accurate means of comprehending how educators can leverage technology to attain the level of efficiency that renders personalization economically viable. Options explored include Interactive Online Courses, Virtual Reality Classrooms, Gamified Learning Platforms, Personalized Learning AI, and Collaborative Social Learning. Assessment criteria encompass Learning Effectiveness, Engagement, Adaptability, Skill Transfer, Cost, Accessibility, User Experience, and Data Privacy. The examination serves as a foundation for establishing prerequisites tailored to a forward-looking cost-benefit framework. The process commences with strategic decisions aimed at realizing the advantages of Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). These decisions, in turn, inform the identification of probable essential expenditures, thus delineating the inherent "benefits-oriented cost model." A key benefit of this approach is that it empowers innovators to strategically plan and comprehend the dynamic between anticipated educational gains and potential teaching expenses.

Applying Three Different Horizons to Understand Sibling Experiences When the Brother or Sister Dies for a Drug-related Reason

Abstract Sibling bereavement is a life-changing event with implications for the individual and family. In a study guided by Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics focused on sibling bereavement when the brother or sister dies for a drug-related reason, a critical realisation became apparent; it is possible to understand one person’s story from multiple standpoints. This is directly relevant to social work practice as different viewpoints make it possible to illuminate other aspects of the person’s experience keeping us open to hearing more, reflecting and willing to learn something new. A summary of the literature on the three subject areas is presented, as are the identified gaps that helped refine the research questions. A synopsis of what it means to conduct research underpinned by Gadamer’s philosophy is outlined and then elucidated through application to one participant’s interview. The article serves a dual purpose of presenting information on subject areas relating to drug and alcohol, thanatology and family therapy theory, promoting understanding in these horizons. The primary aim is to focus on one of the participants, Karen, from the larger study to show how different horizons bring different understandings to the fore. The article calls for social workers to expand their horizons of understanding.

Advancing Indigenous futures with two-eyed seeing: Strategies for restoration and repair through collaborative research

This article builds on the Indigenous research concept of two-eyed seeing, that is, learning from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing. We do so by drawing on the authors’ multiple standpoints (Karuk Tribal Member, Karuk Enrolled Descendent, and non-Indigenous ally) and experiences building longstanding research collaborations that apply biophysical science, ethnographic methods, and Karuk oral traditions to tribal lands protection. Using Kovach’s conversational methodology, we discuss problems of health and well-being that arise from two-eyed seeing research collaborations affecting Indigenous lands, waters, and resources. We specifically examine interventions for advancing Indigenous leadership in research that intersect with the Karuk Tribe’s ecocultural revitalization initiatives through (1) stewardship of baskets alongside basket-weaving communities (human and nonhuman); (2) family based management of ceremonial trails, and (3) allyship for tribal–academic collaborations. Our analysis emphasizes how the aliveness of Karuk knowledge resists ahistorical essentialism, for example, by engaging with the joy of human/nonhuman relations, ceremonial scale, and solidarity practices. Responding to ongoing challenges with knowledge hierarchies, this work recognizes the importance of mutual acknowledgment of persons across systems for advancing Indigenous research as a multi-vocal initiative with the capacity for restoration and repair.

Competences in parallax in higher education from multiple standpoints in a Brazilian undergraduate program in International Business

This article, a summary of a broader doctoral research study by the author, has different research participants, namely: graduates, their employers, professors, the College Dean and the Program Chair. The goal is to identify how these subjects comprehend the teaching and learning processes of professional competences, in the context of a Brazilian higher education program in International Business. For the theoretical reference, we discuss the concept of competence with different theoretical foundations. We present educational tools that promote teaching and learning competences, in addition to addressing competences for the 21st century. Using Textual Discourse Analysis, we deconstruct and categorize the transcribed discussions by the participants. We arrive at units of meaning, which are related to cognition, behavior, management, pedagogy, and technology, among others. Graduates understand competences are developed through work experience. Professors incorporate life and professional problems into their pedagogical practice, in line with the Dean and Program Chair, who claim the use of market values to structure the program curriculum. As for the employers, they conceive of college as background for the development of professional competences, which in their opinion, occurs via work experience. The process of analyzing and connecting the units of meaning led to the development of two emerging categories: culture and technology. They are in constant action and reaction, moving the dimensions necessary for competent action, under the aegis of the technological paradigm.
 Received: 25 August 2021Accepted: 9 August 2022

Kierkegaard’s Hermeneutics of Anxiety and Agonistic Hermeneutics

Abstract The issue of anxiety has been thoroughly debated in Kierkegaardian scholarship from multiple standpoints and traditions, but not so much when it comes to the hermeneutic undertone. This article is primarily concerned with tackling the concept of anxiety as a hermeneutical concept, or working with it through hermeneutical lenses; nevertheless, the implications go deeper—making a case for an original hermeneutic anxiety, an agonistic trait of hermeneutics. By exploring the hermeneutical dimensions of the Kierkegaardian anxiety we unravel a whole genealogy of the agonistic phenomena—a hermeneutical way that thrives in the paradox. The scope of it all is to break with the conciliatory ways of an epistemic hermeneutics, by regaining the Kierkegaardian hermeneutics of anxiety: preferring the fertile struggle over the passionless synthesis, paradox over soundness and agony over apathy.

Role Expectations for Nurses and Neuroscientific and Neurotechnological Advancements: A Qualitative Study on the Perceptions of Nurses on Their Roles and Lifelong Learning

Nurses can understand and evaluate the impact of neuroscientific and neurotechnological advancements (NNA) from multiple standpoints given their roles as patient liaisons, advocates for their profession and their clients, leaders, and educators as well as their interactions with NNA such including deep brain stimulation and neuroimaging. We conducted semi-structured interviews with Canadian nurses to understand their perspectives on their roles in and outside the workplace, their familiarity with NNA and their ethical, legal, and social implications, their participation in NNA governance discussions and how lifelong learning can be applied to empower their participations in NNA governance discussions. Participants felt that nurses had the potential to meaningfully involve themselves in NNA governance discussions if given a greater opportunity. Participants were not offered lifelong learning surrounding the ethical, legal, and social implications of NNA. It would be fruitful to facilitate and empower nurses as contributors to NNA governance and ethics discussions.

Triglyceride-Glucose Index and Hepatic Steatosis Index for the assessment of liver steatosis in HCV patients.

Liver steatosis in patients with chronic infection of hepatitis C virus (HCV) is important from multiple standpoints: faster disease progression, more frequent hepatocellular carcinoma and cirrhosis development or worse therapy response. Liver biopsy as diagnostic method, is in recent years more and more challenged due to its well-known flaws. Hepatic steatosis index (HSI) and triglyceride-glucose (TyG) Index, are surrogate scores developed in the first place for noninvasive assessment of steatosis in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). However, their use in the context of chronic hepatitis C (CHC) virus infection is still unclear. Aim of our study was to assess the accuracy of both HSI and TyG index in patients with CHC. The cohort included 814 patients with CHC infection in whom liver biopsy was performed. After implementing strict criteria for sample adequacy and necessary data, 424 patients were finally enrolled in our study. Histological findings were used as a reference point, and surrogate scores HSI and TyG index were expressed through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves in order to assess their ability in determining patients without (<5%) or with steatosis (>5%), but also to address their ability in assessing between different degrees of steatosis. The average age of study population was 37.09 years and the majority of patients were men (67%). Liver steatosis was detected in approximately half of the liver biopsy samples (50.4%). About 5% of them had severe steatosis. The area under the ROC curve values for HSI and TyG index when detecting liver steatosis were 0.76 and 0.629, respectively. Similar values were obtained comparing between absence of steatosis and mild steatosis (5-30%). Non-invasive surrogate scores HSI and TyG index in CHC patients, have good performance to detect the presence of steatosis. In this context, these tools are cheap, widely available and could be valuable asset in liver steatosis assessment outside liver biopsy.

The Immanent Infinite

The Immanent Infinite

Thermal delamination of end-of-life crystalline silicon photovoltaic modules.

Thermal delamination – meaning the removal of polymers from the module structure by a thermal process – as a first step in the recycling of crystalline silicon (c-Si) photovoltaic (PV) modules in order to enable the subsequent recovery of secondary raw materials was investigated. A correlation between treatment temperature and duration was established by an iterative process. Furthermore, chemical characterization of the resulting solid outputs (glass, cell, ribbons and residues) was performed in order to assess their further processing options. Additionally, the effect of removing the backsheet as a pre-treatment before the actual delamination process was investigated in relation to the aforementioned aspects of treatment duration and output quality. Results show that increased temperatures reduce the necessary treatment duration (65 minutes at 500°C, 33 minutes at 600°C) while generating the same output quality. The backsheet removal leads to an additional duration decrease of more than 45% at each considered temperature, while also having positive effects relating to fewer solid residues and easier flue gas handling. In regard to the main output specifications no significant influence of the pre-treatment is observed. Overall thermal delamination can be seen as a feasible method in order to obtain high value secondary raw materials from c-Si PV modules, while backsheet removal as pre-treatment should be considered as advantageous from multiple standpoints.

Holistic Pre-Feasibility Study of Comminution Routes for a Brazilian Itabirite Ore

Comminution is an essential step in processing itabirite ores, given the need to liberate silica and other contaminants from the iron minerals for downstream concentration and then pellet feed production. In general, these ores in Brazil are not particularly hard to crush and grind, but both capital (CAPEx) and operating (OPEx) expenditures in this stage of preparation can be critical for the project, in particular due to uncertainties in iron ore prices. Several circuits have been designed and are in operation for this type of ore in Brazil; however, it is not yet clear which technologies are more cost-effective and in which configuration they should be applied. This work critically analyzes four comminution circuits for an undisclosed case study. For these circuits, CAPEx, OPEx, and some environmental sustainability indices, as well as qualitative technical criteria, were used in the comparisons. This work concludes that two of these process routes, especially those based on more energy-efficient technologies (and one of these still rarely explored even at bench-scale), have demonstrated to be very attractive from multiple standpoints.

Super Edge 4-Points Congruent Sets-Based Point Cloud Global Registration

With the acceleration in three-dimensional (3D) high-frame-rate sensing technologies, dense point clouds collected from multiple standpoints pose a great challenge for the accuracy and efficiency of registration. The combination of coarse registration and fine registration has been extensively promoted. Unlike the requirement of small movements between scan pairs in fine registration, coarse registration can match scans with arbitrary initial poses. The state-of-the-art coarse methods, Super 4-Points Congruent Sets algorithm based on the 4-Points Congruent Sets, improves the speed of registration to a linear order via smart indexing. However, the lack of reduction in the scale of original point clouds limits the application. Besides, the coplanarity of registration bases prevents further reduction of search space. This paper proposes a novel registration method called the Super Edge 4-Points Congruent Sets to address the above problems. The proposed algorithm follows a three-step procedure, including boundary segmentation, overlapping regions extraction, and bases selection. Firstly, an improved method based on vector angle is used to segment the original point clouds aiming to thin out the scale of the initial point clouds. Furthermore, overlapping regions extraction is executed to find out the overlapping regions on the contour. Finally, the proposed method selects registration bases conforming to the distance constraints from the candidate set without consideration about coplanarity. Experiments on various datasets with different characteristics have demonstrated that the average time complexity of the proposed algorithm is improved by 89.76%, and the accuracy is improved by 5 mm on average than the Super 4-Points Congruent Sets algorithm. More encouragingly, the experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can be applied to various restrictive cases, such as few overlapping regions and massive noise. Therefore, the algorithm proposed in this paper is a faster and more robust method than Super 4-Points Congruent Sets under the guarantee of the promised quality.

Managing the Humanitarian Workplace: Capitalist Social Time and Iraqi Refugees in the United States

AbstractThis paper offers an ethnographic account of tensions around time that arose at a small nonprofit offering employment‐assistance programs for newly arrived Iraqi refugees in a large American city. Iraqi refugees have been subjected to multiple interventions, each of which put them on a strict timeline for results. Their experience gives rise to critical insights into the abstract, managerial representations of time that coordinate each of these successive programs. Staff responded to these concerns by attempting to correct clients’ expectations about the future, but this effort remained bound to the same temporal standard and therefore produced further frustrations on the part of clients. Meanwhile, the one employee who attempted to implement an alternative project ended up being disciplined by her employer for misusing time on the job. Tracing this dynamic of tension, conflict, and reconfiguration across multiple standpoints, the paper demonstrates how humanitarian work unfolds through the same contradictions between abstract and concrete forms of time that characterizes commodity‐directed labor under the capitalist mode of production as a whole. This finding complicates theoretical models of political subjectivity that have hitherto informed anthropological critiques of humanitarianism and points to abstract social time as a specifically capitalist mechanism of power at work.

Between liberty and control: citizens’ attitudes towards Romanian state surveillance

Surveillance was extensively analyzed in the literature from multiple standpoints. Some studies looked to the temporal development of surveillance, while others analyzed the traditional theories that influenced many of the contemporary surveillance studies. All these studies define surveillance as an activity that is ubiquitous and performed globally, by multiple private and public institutions, through the involvement of specific technologies. However, little attention was paid to the perceptions of citizens about surveillance. This article addresses this gap in the literature and analyses how state surveillance is perceived by the Romanian citizens according to the socio-demographic factors (i.e., age, education, income, gender and medium of residence). The aim of the study is to explain how socio-demographic factors influence the acceptance of state surveillance. It also controls for the left-right self-placement, and the use of Facebook as source of information. The statistical analysis uses individual level data from an original survey conducted between October-November 2020. The survey was completed by 1,140 respondents, and the article uses correlation and linear regression to analyze the data. The findings illustrate that the acceptance of state surveillance is influenced by the gender, level of education and medium of residence of the individuals. The age and income of the citizens have no effect on the acceptance of state surveillance.

AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE: SHAKESPEARE AND THE WORLD OF FAIRIES IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Purpose: This research aims to explore the world of fairies in a comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1605) written by William Shakespeare. This study proposes that the concept of fairies described by William Shakespeare is mere supernatural rather than being philosophical as the Elizabethan age itself is defined for its prudence and emerging philosophies. Further, This study intends to present an alternative perspective on Elizabethan Fairies.&#x0D; Methodology: This research is hermeneutic in approach and descriptive in nature. The sources are collected in the form of both print and web. The primary text used for this research is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1605).&#x0D; Findings: Shakespeare not only changes the physiognomy of Elizabethan fairies but also alters the functions that are associated with them.Elizabethan Fairies were known for their awe and evil-doing but the world of fairies that Shakespeare describes in the play is to some extent altered.&#x0D; Aplication of the study: This study is relevant to the field of literature, Elizabethan Literature ,and Occult philosophy. Students and researchers of Elizabethan drama will find it useful.&#x0D; Novelity or Originality of the study: The study is hitherto a novel approach to Elizabethan supernatural powers. By considering this alternative viewpoint, this qualitative study intends to study the world of fairies of this play in depth by focusing on multiple standpoints of the Elizabethan age contradicting with Shakespearian fairies characterized in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Impact of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on National Development and Integration in Pakistan

Islam This research focuses on the impact of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on the national development and societal integration in Pakistan. Substantial literature is available on the geo-political and geo-economics of CPEC; however, a literature gap exists on the interplay of the domestic politics of Pakistan and the CPEC. I want to explore the intrinsic linkage of federal and provincial disputes, which influence the implementation of CPEC and how such dialectic relationship is affecting nation-building and societal integration in Pakistan. The central argument I want to build is that how such a mega-investment project to the tune of US$ 62 billion, unprecedented in Pakistan's history at the most critical times of economy and energy crisis, is creating inter-provincial disharmony and polarizing the masses. In answering this question, the articles examine multiple standpoints in Pakistan and present critical inquiry of the impact of domestic politics on the CPEC, nation-building and societal integration by applying the theoretical lens of nation-building and societal integration.