New Possibilities For Action Research Articles

“A Not Unworthy Record”?: Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam's 1901 Census of Ceylon and the Transforming of Dynamic Nominalism

Abstract Drawing inspiration from Ian Hacking's claim that new modes of description generate new possibilities for action, this essay explores the impact of changes to the mode of description through the 1901 Census in Ceylon. It begins by exploring the modes of description used in the censuses prior to 1901 to demonstrate that in Ceylon, the census was yet to emerge as the critical tool of colonial governance claimed by dominant scholarship around colonial census taking. This leads to an exploration of how the changes that Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, the first Ceylonese Census superintendent, made to the Census Ordinance, Census Manual, and Census Report impacted the function of the census as a mode of description. It then explores the possibilities for action generated by these changes in the mode of description, paying particular attention to the ways in which the census shaped elite, indigenous activism leading to the first major reforms of the colonial governance structure in Ceylon, including the introduction of limited franchise. Thus, Ceylon's 1901 Census affords a unique opportunity to examine the impact that shifts in modes of description have on possibilities for action.

Systemic vulnerability as a lens to explore young people’s experiences of transition from alternative provision settings to post-16 mainstream education

ABSTRACT This paper considers the experiences of transition for young people from alternative provision (AP) to post-16 mainstream settings, drawing on an online survey distributed via Headteachers of AP/ post-16 institutions to staff and young people in a large local authority in the Northwest of England. It reflects on previous transition research and argues that transition can be viewed as a site of vulnerability for young people, with consideration of transition from a lens of vulnerability apparently absent in previous research. The pervasive narratives describing young people in alternative provision as “vulnerable” are critiqued, as well as some of the issues in conceptualising vulnerability. “Toblerone model” of relational spaces of vulnerability has been reconceptualised in this paper to model the possible sites of vulnerability that impact on the transitions young people make from alternative provision to post-16 mainstream settings. The paper concludes by presenting an adapted model of vulnerability which could be used to reconsider some of the issues which may impact on young people’s transition to post-16 settings, before and after the point of administrative transfer, and provide the staff who support them, both in alternative provision and in the transfer setting, with new possibilities for action.

Cities in times of (post)pandemic: challenges of urban sociology research in Brazil

This article analyzes the urban studies debate on the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazilian cities, with a focus on the sociological discussion about public space and living conditions of the population. Dossiers published between 2020 and 2022 in national journals of urban sociology, as well as important contributions from urban anthropology, were reviewed. The analysis was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, studies on the new forms of urbanity and the crisis of public spaces during the pandemic were reviewed. In the second stage, the concepts and empirical frameworks used by the authors in their productions on the dilemmas of social distancing, denialism, and uncertainties in dystopian urban life in Brazil were examined. In the third stage, the concepts and themes aimed at deepening the understanding of the processes involved in the increase of urban inequality and the worsening of life conditions for a large part of the Brazilian population were analyzed. It is concluded that, despite the suspension of face-to-face encounters, social isolation measures have revealed new possibilities for action through virtual spaces of sociability, work, study, consumption, and access to public services via digital technologies, becoming an essential part of the "public-private" daily life of the city. However, the pandemic has also exposed existing social and economic inequalities, highlighting significant disparities in access to housing, health care, transportation, and the increase in informal and precarious work, as well as the decline in income among the urban population with lower purchasing power.

How to do things with legal theory

AbstractLegal theory must not merely describe our world; it must also assist us acting in it. In this paper, I argue that teaching legal theory should show law students how to do things with legal theory. My pedagogical approach is contextual and historical. Students learn how to use theory by seeing how past jurists acted in their particular worlds by changing dominant concepts of law. Most introductory legal theory courses are organised by what I will call the usual story of jurisprudence. In this story, great thinkers in rival schools of legal thought attempt to answer perennial questions about the nature of (the concept of) law. In this story, the thick context of our world recedes beyond the horizon of theory. I argue that critical genealogy can let us critique this usual story and its unspoken assumptions of morality, politics and history. Amia Srinivasan's account of ‘worldmaking’ is especially compelling in its emphasis on critical genealogies’ capacity to transform our representational practices (and thus open up new possibilities for action). Critical genealogy also has certain pedagogical ‘uses and advantages’ for teaching legal theory in law schools. Here, context is method. The teacher must defend their political choices of context – choices that are naturalised and so beyond critique in the usual story of jurisprudence. By making these choices explicit, students are invited to both challenge the teacher's choices of context and critique their own common law education. This pedagogical approach also encourages students to experiment in ‘worldmaking’ themselves, and so cultivate a creative capacity to use legal theory to change the world through transforming their representations of it.

Cascades in action: How the transition to walking shapes caregiver communication during everyday interactions.

New motor skills supply infants with new possibilities for action and have consequences for development in unexpected places. For example, the transition from crawling to walking is accompanied by gains in other abilities-better ways to move, see the world, and engage in social interactions (e.g., Adolph & Tamis-LeMonda, 2014). Do the developmental changes associated with walking extend to the communicative behaviors of caregivers? Thirty infants (14 boys, 16 girls; 93% White, not Hispanic or Latino) and their caregivers (84% held a college degree or higher) were observed during everyday activities at home during the two-month window surrounding the onset of walking (M infant age = 11.98 months, range = 8.74-14.86). Using a cross-domain coding system, we tracked change in the rates of co-occurrence between infants' locomotor actions and caregivers' concurrent language and gesture input. We examined these relations on two timescales-across developmental time, as infants transitioned from crawling to walking, and in real time based on moment-to-moment differences in infant posture. A consistent pattern of results emerged: compared to crawling, bouts of infant walking were more likely to co-occur with caregiver language and gestures that either requested or described movement or provided information about objects. An effect of infants' real-time behavior was also discovered, such that infants were more likely to hear language from their caregivers when they moved while upright compared to prone. Taken together, findings suggest that the emergence of walking reorganizes the infant-caregiver dyad and sets in motion a developmental cascade that shapes the communication caregivers provide. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Образ будущего и сценарии развития науки как культурного феномена

Designing an image of the future is not amusement of futurologists and visionaries, but a necessary tool for organizing social life. Today, the construction of such an im­age is formed around the question of the future of science. The article deals with this issue through the analysis of the current state of science, which uses the concept of technoscience explicated not only as a modern form of scientific knowledge pro­duction, but as a new form of existence science as cultural phenomenon. Based on this analysis author generates and discusses four scenarios for the possible devel­opment of technoscience in the long-term (5–20 years) and strategic perspective. Two scenarios are negative, since they are fraught with the actual abolition of science as a cultural phenomenon. The first is associated with the strengthening of applied re­search and the formation of an artificial intellectual environment that radically re­duces the need for developed theoretical knowledge. The second scenario assumes the continuation of the trend of commercialization of science and the commodifica­tion of scientific knowledge, affecting both the field of applied and basic research. The analysis of the directions combined under the name “Megascience” allows to speak about the possibility of two positive scenarios, one of which is inertial and as­sumes the preservation of the ideal of pure science as an activity motivated by the search for truth, and the second demonstrates the possibility of humanizing oper­ationally oriented cognition and softening the contradiction between the discovery of truth and the mastery of new possibilities of action in the world.

Edith Stein's Contribution to Critical Phenomenology: On Self-Formation and Value-Modification

One defining claim that critical phenomenologists make of the critical phenomenological method is that description no longer simply plays the role of detailing the world around the describing phenomenologist, but rather has the potential to transform worlds and persons. The transformative potential of the critical phenomenological enterprise is motivated by aspirations of social and political transformation. Critical phenomenology accordingly takes, as its starting point, descriptions of the oppressive historical social structures and contexts that have shaped our experience and shows how these produce inequitable ways of being in the world (Guenther 2020, 12). For example, critical phenomenologists have provided rich descriptions of marginalized lived experience, particularly racialized experience (Ngo, 2017; Yancy, 2017), dis-abled experience and experiences of illness (Lajoie and Douglas, 2020; Toombs, 1993), gendered experience (Beauvoir, 2009; Salamon, 2010), and so forth. What is common across these accounts is the assumption that these descriptions provide means of enacting political change. First, they illuminate the existence of oppressive structures and their effects upon us, our possibilities, and our relations. Second, through increasing awareness they begin to denaturalize the oppressive historical structures that “privilege, naturalize, and normalize certain experiences of the world while marginalizing, pathologizing, and discrediting others” (Guenther 2020, 15). Third, through strategic responses (e.g., hesitation in Alia Al-Saji’s work), they produce new possibilities of action and experience, which initiates the process of creating different ways of being in the world (Al-Saji 2014).2

Adverse Reactions to Drugs of Special Interest in a Pediatric Oncohematology Service.

Introduction: Drugs used in oncological diseases are frequently related to adverse drug reactions (ADR). Few studies have analyzed the toxicity of cancer treatments in children in real practice. Methods: An observational, longitudinal and prospective study has been carried out in an Oncohematology Service of a tertiary hospital. During 2017, patients exposed to one or more drugs of a previously agreed list were identified and followed-up for at least 6 months each. Characteristics of ADR, incidence, causality and possible preventability, have been evaluated. Results: 72 patients have been treated with at least one study drug, and 159 ADR episodes involving at least one of these drugs have been identified, with a total of 293 ADR. Most episodes required hospital admission (35.2%) or happened during the hospital stay (33%), and 91.2% were severe. Blood disorders were the most frequent ADR (96; 32.8%), related to thioguanine (42) and pegaspargase (39) mainly, followed by infections (86; 29.4%) related to thioguanine (32), pegaspargase (27), Erwinia asparaginase (14) and rituximab (13). Two ADR were unknown. Most ADR were dose-dependent or expectable (>90%). The global incidence of ADR was 3.1/100 days at risk (95% CI 2.7–3.5), with 3.5 ADR/100 days at risk with pegaspargase (95% CI 2.9–4.2), 1.2/100 days at risk with rituximab (95% CI 0.8–1.8) and 11.6/100 days at risk with thioguanine (95% CI 9.4–14.2). Controversial additional measures of prevention, other than those already used, were identified. Conclusion: ADR are frequent in pediatric oncohematological patients, mainly blood disorders and infectious diseases. Findings regarding incidence and preventability may be useful to compare data between different centers and to evaluate new possibilities for action or prevention.

What It Takes to Be a Pioneer: Ability Expectations From Brain-Computer Interface Users

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are envisioned to enable new abilities of action. This potential can be fruitful in particular when it comes to restoring lost motion or communication abilities or to implementing new possibilities of action. However, BCIs do not come without presuppositions. Applying the concept of ability expectations to BCIs, a wide range of requirements on the side of the users becomes apparent. We examined these ability expectations by taking the example of therapeutic BCI users who got enrolled into BCI research studies due to particular physical conditions. Some of the expectations identified are quite explicit, like particular physical conditions and BCI “literacy”. Other expectations are more implicit, such as motivation, a high level of concentration, pain tolerance, emotion control and resources. These expectations may produce a conception of the human and a self-understanding among BCI users that objectify the body in favour of a brain-centred, cerebral notion of the subject which also plays its part in upholding a normality regime.

Situated imagination

AbstractImagination is often considered the pinnacle of representational cognition. Looking at the concrete details of imagining in context, this paper aims to contribute to the emerging literature that is challenging this representational view by offering a relational and radically situated alternative. On the basis of observing architects in the process of making an architectural art installation, we show how to consider imagination not as de-contextualized achievement by an individual but as an opening up to larger-scale “affordances,” i.e. the unfolding possibilities for action. We show how the architects coordinate the enactment of multiple affordances across different timescales, from small-scale affordances of picking up a mobile phone to the large-scale affordance of making the installation that takes months to unfold. These affordances get co-determined as they are jointly enacted. It is within this determining process that imagination too finds its place. On our view it is the indeterminacy of multiple affordances unfolding in action simultaneously that can be experienced as imaginative. The indeterminate character of this coordinative process allows activities to widen and open up, letting new possibilities for action enter into them.

From volitional action to transformative agency: double stimulation in services for families with young children

ABSTRACT This article examines how transformative agency arises in families where parents are struggling with aspects of caring for young children. The mechanisms of how volitional action develops into transformative agency in everyday settings are not well understood. A fine-grained analysis of change is presented in the case of a parent who resolved difficulties relating to her daughter’s feeding. This case is situated within a broader dataset relating to diverse Australian parenting support services. Through double stimulation, parents used multiple auxiliary tools to construct new motives, enabling them to expand understandings and develop new possibilities for action. Evidence of transformative agency was apparent in longer trajectories in which the conditions of parenting were transformed. Relationships between expansive learning, double stimulation, and transformative agency are conceptualized dialectically, offering fresh insights into the dynamics of transformative agency ‘in the wild’.

Mesa Redonda de Santiago do Chile e o Desenvolvimento da América Latina

O presente artigo analisa a Mesa Redonda de Santiago do Chile a respeito do tema do desenvolvimento e da modernização da América Latina, considerando a interpretação feita sobre o papel dos museus nesse processo. Percebemos um expressivo esforço em associar os museus ao desenvolvimento da região através da ciência e tecnologia, voltados à superação do que se considerava o "subdesenvolvimento latino-americano". Por outro lado, vemos a criação de um modelo conceitual de museu, o Museu Integral, que anunciava novas possibilidades de atuação, sugerindo uma potência de enfrentamento dos efeitos negativos do desenvolvimento, este associado à s ideias de "progresso" e de "modernização".

L’enfant autiste, le clinicien et la tablette numerique. Pour un usage plus « libre » des tablettes numériques dans le cadre d’une médiation thérapeutique

BackgroundMany researchers and clinicians for several years have shown a strong interest in the use of digital tablets with children with ASDs. However, it seems that the majority of publications on this subject mainly focus on specific applications created to respond to the difficulties of autistic children, particularly in the educational, pedagogical or cognitive remediation fields. However, it seems a regrettable fact to us to see digital tablets only from this angle. Indeed, these are not only simple palliative tools to the communication or comprehension difficulties of autistic children, but they allow them to couple their inner world with the digital worlds in a simple and adapted way. MethodBased on the case of an autistic child that we followed in a “digital tablet” mediation therapy, in a Children's Day Hospital, we will try to show how a “freer” use of these tools can also have multiple therapeutic interests. The “Therapy with digital tablet” will also be described to help the clinician wishing to set up this type of therapy in his institution. FindingsChang's case showed us that the use of the digital tablet in a dual patient/therapist situation offered the autistic child an opportunity to establish an intersubjective relationship, and that the “free” use of the tablet allowed him to express his internal experiences more easily. ConclusionFrom his digital tablet, the autistic child will be able to try different actions to see the impact they may have on the digital objects presented to him. Every action can then reveal new objects, new possibilities for action or communication which, if they take place in an interactive loop with the caregiver, can encourage him to develop his exploratory process. Finally, if the digital medium offered by the tablet is caught in an interactive loop with the therapist, who comments on what he observes and shares his emotions about what the child gives him to see, the digital tool becomes secondary in itself: it is no longer really what happens on the screen that matters in this therapeutic situation but what is played and said around the screen.

Self-imaging: beyond children’s and adolescents’ self-image / El Self imaginando-se: más allá de la autoimagen de niños y adolescentes

This article documents the case studies of two Brazilian children aged 10 and 11, for whom drawing is a symbolic tool of self-meaning. Semi-structured interviews were methodologically carried out from drawings they had created previous to and during the interview. Using semiotic cultural psychology as a reference, the concept of Self-imaging is put forward as an alternative to the self-image construct, highlighting the active role of the subject in the construction of his/her life trajectory. Results suggest that the transition process to adolescence represents a challenge in which young people recreate images of themselves by projecting new possibilities of action in the world through their imagination.

Una Tarea Peculiar

Este artículo discute lo que llamo “práctica de la cuerda”, la cual está basada en una tarea de un performance en el cual una cuerda es integrada con el movimiento. Ésta fue presentada por primera vez en mi coreografía del año 2010 titulada Vielfalt. Se trata de una novedosa actividad de movimiento basado en una cuerda que ofrece nuevas posibilidades de acción, organización, dinámica relacional, así como oportunidades para usar lo que Eugene Gendlin llama “sentir sentido” (sentido sentido) para generar afecto y nuevas trayectorias para el performance y el movimiento. Relacionarse con la cuerda deviene una vía para que performers tengan una experiencia corporal de lo aún no conocido. Sentir sentido (sentido sentido) sirve como un umbral en el cual un conocimiento corporal pueda ser percibido, encarnado y articulado. El proceso de trabajar con la cuerda a través del sentir sentido (felt sense) – este fue un tema central de Vielfalt – permite a los artistas experimentar e incorporar el cambio.

Exploring the regulatory challenges of a possible rollout of smart water meters in the Netherlands

Big data have become a driver of innovation in multiple sectors, including the management of infrastructures employed for the provision of essential goods and services, such as drinking water. As technology enables new possibilities of action for infrastructure managers, it could be questioned whether the regulations in place still deal adequately with such possibilities or if certain adjustments are necessary, especially considering that infrastructure managers usually operate in highly regulated environments. This study explores the regulatory challenges of introducing smart water meters (SWM) in the Netherlands. In particular, it discusses whether the introduction of SWM will require adjusting the regulations of the sector, to deal with the new possibilities of action enabled by this technology.

New Descriptions, New Possibilities

ABSTRACT In “Race, Multiculturalism, and Democracy,” Robert Gooding-Williams offers an insight. He writes: “Our sense of ourselves and of the possibilities existing for us is, to a significant degree, a function of the descriptions we have available to us to conceptualize our intended actions and prospective lives…. ‘Hence if new modes of description come into being, new possibilities of action come into being in consequence.’” In this article, I discuss the philosopher's role in the articulation of new descriptions and thus new possibilities. I argue that potential modes of bold and assertive comportment are conjured when new insurrectionist descriptions are articulated within oppressed populations. To bring this to a higher resolution, I discuss the pervasiveness of dialectical conflict, the need to creatively reorient the descriptions of oppressed groups toward liberation, and the need for more than one prescriptive mode of social amelioration.

Business Model Innovation in Airlines

The business models innovation in airlines can contribute to the creation of value, competitive advantage and profitability with new possibilities of action. The proposed paper aimed to identify the business models adopted by airlines and identify how the innovation occurs at these organizations. The methodology adopted is characterized as empirical, exploratory and descriptive research by multiple case study with three major Brazilian airlines. The results demonstrate that the search for paradigm breaks, related to the dichotomic traditional models of low-cost and full-service, toward hybrid business models occur linearly, as examples highlighted by companies, in which internal changes in business models are considered major organizational innovations.

A Social Practice Theory of Learning and Becoming Across Contexts and Time

This paper presents a social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time. Our perspective is rooted in the Danish tradition of critical psychology (Dreier, 1997; Morck & Huniche, 2006; Nissen, 2005), and we use social practice theory to interpret the pathway of one adolescent whom we followed as part of a longitudinal study of interest-related learning. A social practice theory calls out the ways people pursue diverse concerns, become aware of new possibilities for action as they move across settings of practice, and learn as they adjust contributions to the flow of ongoing activity and to fit demands and structures of local institutions. It also highlights the ways that existing institutional structures of practice frame the choices people make about how and where to participate in activities. This perspective on learning is potentially transformative, in that it provides a way to promote equity by surfacing issues associated with linkages among settings of practice, networks of actors who support persons’ movement across settings, and diversities in structures of practices that shape opportunities to learn and become.

Crafting knowing-sensitivity as an intercultural innovation skill: a practical knowledge and knowing approach

The current conceptual article explores the crafting and refining of a foundational non-technical skill for intercultural innovation efforts, through a practice-based approach: the knowing-sensitivity. Knowing-sensitivity is a refined situational perception and judgement capacity necessary to get a maximum understanding of a situation, reach deeper insights, new forms of intelligibility, and new possibilities for action. It involves the capacity of seeing situations different configurations, potential and propensities, hidden meanings, silent changes, subtexts and interdependencies, and make creative connections that others do not or cannot, which is central to intercultural innovation interactions. The purpose is to explain a practice-based approach to craft knowing-sensitivity. Such approach re-educates our perceptive attention and judgment, decluttering, redirecting, and anchoring them in practical experience, beyond the sphere of intellection and the interference of our rigid, uncritical and simplifying clinging on generalisations, stereotypes, preconceptions, and dogmas. It enables us to see new possibilities, yet-unidentifiable and innovative combinations and responses.