Normative Concept Research Articles

Why do Chinese overseas doctoral graduates return to China? The push‐pull factors and the influence of gender and gender norms

AbstractAlthough attention has been paid to return migration internationally, research studies on why Chinese overseas doctoral graduates return to China are few. A study that considers gendered motivations has yet to be found. Using a qualitative study with 31 Chinese overseas doctoral graduate returnees, this study examines factors influencing graduates' reasons for returning to China and how these relate to Chinese gender and gender role‐related cultural norms. Using the push‐pull theory and the concepts of gender (as an individual characteristic) and gender norms, the study shows that the reasons for return were gendered, with females motivated by family and emotional factors and males by economic and career benefits. The study identifies inequalities derived from traditional gender roles and cultural norms that persist in China. This has implications for state policy, higher education institutions and future research.

Study on the Incidental Consequences of Crime in the Era of Misdemeanor Era

Under the background of the misdemeanor era, the normative concept and functional orientation of the incidental consequences of crime have changed. Incidental consequences of crime refer to the adverse consequences that are stipulated outside the criminal law and apply to criminals or their relatives, which detract from social evaluation or increase the burden of obligations. The functional orientation is also different in the eras of misdemeanor and felony. There is no distinction between the incidental consequences of misdemeanors and felonies, which violates the principle of proportionality, and the principle of prohibiting repeated evaluation. The negative effects are becoming more obvious. We should strengthen the correlation between the incidental consequences of crime and the preconditions that trigger the consequences, adjust the conflicts between the provisions of different ranks of effectiveness, and adjust the provisions on the incidental consequences of criminals and non-criminals to follow the principle of proportionality so that the incidental consequences of crime can be more appropriately applied in the era of misdemeanors.

Heterogeneity of urban manufacturing – a statistical analysis of manufacturing companies in three German cities

ABSTRACT The paper delves into the normative Productive City concept as outlined in the New Leipzig Charter, focusing on urban manufacturing's heterogeneity. We define urban manufacturing as manufacturing sectors located in proximity to housing. Urban manufacturing is analyzed based on sectoral (company data classified by NACE codes into 13 types of material industry) and spatial data, considering the distance to priority roads, supply areas, and land-use categories. The methodology is applied to Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, and Herne in the Ruhr area, utilizing 2018 data to identify material industry locations. We highlight differences between central and accessible, and more dispersed sectors in three groups. Group I, including other consumer goods, food products, clothing goods, and repair services, is predominantly located in central and mixed-use locations, suggesting these types could be preserved or developed by urban planners under the Productive City framework. However, there is a clear need for commercial and industrial spaces for emitting industries (Group II) to fully realize this concept. Construction industries (Group III) are often found in residential areas due to off-site activities. Challenges arise in historical industrial cities especially in integrated areas where existing zoning regulations and grandfathering rights restrict changes in manufacturing types or expansions near residential zones.

Determining directions for improving the legal regulation of technology transfer forms

The object of this study is the existing regulatory approaches to determining the forms of technology transfer in the legal systems of economically developed countries of the world, international treaties, and agreements. During the research and generalization of existing concepts, it was established that they are not unified and differ significantly from each other. It has been proven that this does not meet the needs of technology transfer participants and significantly destabilizes the technology transfer process. The expediency of improving the existing normative concept of determining the forms of technology transfer by fixing their single list has been substantiated. Recommendations on the list of the main forms of technology transfer have been formed based on a systematic analysis of legal acts that determine the peculiarities of the essence of technology. A classification of the main forms of technology transfer was proposed. Four main forms of technology transfer were identified as the transfer of rights to technology during its creation, within the framework of joint cooperation, within the framework of cooperation based on corporate and/or proprietary commercial principles. The expediency of dividing each form of transfer into separate subtypes was also substantiated. The need to make changes to the provisions of such international treaties and agreements as the World Trade Organization Agreements, the Recommendations of the World Organization for the Protection of Intellectual Property, the Oslo Guidelines, the UNCTAD Recommendations, and the framework program "Horizon Europe" has been proven. The study is aimed at forming general theoretical foundations for improving the essence of regulatory techniques for identifying forms of technology transfer. The research results could be used in the formation of international normative acts, recommendations of international institutions, acts of national legislation, and serve as a basis for further scientific research into these issues

Legal Gaps and their Logical Forms

Abstract The concept of legal gap is tackled from a number of logical perspectives and semantic methods. After presenting our own goal (Section 1), a first introduction into legal logic refers to Bobbio’s works and his formalization of legal statements (Sections 2 and 3). Then Woleński’s contribution to the area is taken into account through his reference to the distinction between two juridical systems (viz. Common Law vs Civil Law) and the notion of conditional norms (Section 4). The notion of reason is also highlighted in the case of Raz’s legal logic, thereby leading to a future connection with von Wright’s logic of truth and an analogy made with an anti-realist reading of truth-values and norms (Section 5). Our personal contribution is introduced through a reflection on how logic should deal with the logical form of norms (Section 6), before entering a number of crucial definitions and distinctions for the concepts of norm, legal statement, and promulgation (Section 7). The final point is a proposed semantics for legal statements, which is both many-valued and gap-friendly (Section 8). A distinction between a number of requirements for permission and forbiddance leads to a set of non-classical juridical systems in which non-permission and forbiddance are not equivalent with each other any more; this does justice to Woleński’s former distinction between Common Law and Civil Law, also leading ultimately to a non-classical square of legal oppositions in which several legal operators may collapse into other ones (Section 9).

In Defense of a Normative Concept of Argument

In Defense of a Normative Concept of Argument

Algorithmic Thinking for the Legal Writing: The Case of Italian Election Law

We examine the Italian election law as a case study to illustrate how the algorithmic thinking can productively interoperate with the legal language to increase the transparency of the legal text, and to enable better reasoning about the procedural content of the law. The effort to rephrase the text of the law in algorithmic terms revealed that the election procedure is under-specified, so that the allocation of seats between constituencies may differ depending on the actual sequence of ballot operations performed by the scrutineers. This may lead to legal uncertainty in a critical section of the election law that one would expect to be fully determined. We then discuss the difference between algorithm and software in the legal context, illustrating how the algorithmic language acts as an interface between the textual description of a legal procedure and its mathematical or computational formalization. Hence we put forward the concept of algorithmic normativity, that is the power of the algorithmic language (different from software’s code) to legally express procedures at an appropriate abstraction level, balancing transparency with scientific precision.

Concrete freedom at work: Hegel’s normative conception of freedom and its relevance to organization studies

In organization studies, the prevailing understanding of freedom has revolved around a specific concept of autonomy. However, we propose an alternative and normative concept of freedom, drawing inspiration from the philosophy of Hegel and a reinterpretation of his ideas by Robert Brandom. We begin by diagnosing the liberal conceptions of freedom as opportunity and autonomy that shape the predominant understanding of freedom at work within organization studies. We then follow Hegel and conceive freedom as the expansive realization of oneself through the commitment to meaningful constraints. In contrast to the dominant liberal notions of freedom, Hegel allows us to understand professional commitments and communal obligations at work as the medium of freedom. We argue that concrete freedom at work requires that workers a) see their work as intrinsically valuable and b) that neither they nor their employers are unconditionally free to define norms for how work is to be organized and pursued. We then demonstrate the theoretical implications of shifting from the liberal conceptions of freedom prevalent in organization studies to a Hegelian conception of freedom. The Hegelian theory leads to a more nuanced understanding of worker decision-discretion, motivation, and the meaningfulness of work. Additionally, it has implications for research on bureaucracy and institutional logics. We end by considering the limits of the empirical applicability of our Hegelian theory, and by highlighting its normative value for practitioners and critical management scholars.

Normative power at its unlikeliest: EU democratic norms and security service reform in Ukraine

This article traces the effects of European Union (EU) normative power on security sector reform in Ukraine. We argue that to get a better grasp of how normative power works in practice, we need to scrutinize more closely the domestic journey of EU norms. This local lens allows us to uncover the inherent contestation involved in the transnational travel of norms, emphasizing the importance of local agency and local conceptions of normativity. We reveal the internal struggle between liberal democratic norms and deeply ingrained attitudes, institutions and behaviours linked to the Soviet legacy. We show how EU democratic norms gradually empower domestic constituencies and overcome domestic structural resistance to change, leading to democratic advances in a sector least likely to reform.

Three pathways for standardisation and ethical disclosure by default under the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act

Under its proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (‘AIA’), the European Union seeks to develop harmonised standards involving abstract normative concepts such transparency, fairness, and accountability. Applying such concepts inevitably requires answering hard normative questions. Considering this challenge, we argue that there are three possible pathways for future standardisation under the AIA. First, European standard-setting organisations (‘SSOs’) could answer hard normative questions themselves. This approach would raise concerns about its democratic legitimacy. Standardisation is a technical discourse and tends to exclude non-expert stakeholders and the public at large. Second, instead of passing their own normative judgments, SSOs could track the normative consensus they find available. By analysing the standard-setting history of one major SSO, we show that such consensus tracking has historically been its pathway of choice. If standardisation under the AIA took the same route, we demonstrate how this would lead to a false sense of safety as the process is not infallible. Consensus tracking would furthermore push the need to solve unavoidable normative problems down the line. Instead of regulators, AI developers and/or users could define what, for example, fairness requires. By the institutional design of its AIA, the European Commission would have essentially kicked the ‘AI Ethics’ can down the road. We thus suggest a third pathway which aims to avoid the pitfalls of the previous two: SSOs should create standards which require “ethical disclosure by default.” These standards will specify minimum technical testing, documentation, and public reporting requirements to shift ethical decision-making to local stakeholders and limit provider discretion in answering hard normative questions in the development of AI products and services. Our proposed pathway is about putting the right information in the hands of the people with the legitimacy to make complex normative decisions at a local, context-sensitive level.

Environmentally driven migration in EU discourse: norms, policies and realities.

For decades, the European Union (EU) has been addressing issues related to climate change and ecological degradation as a self-proclaimed pro-environmental and human rights-oriented actor. Correspondingly, the topic of the so-called environmentally driven migration entered the EU discourse at the dawn of the new millennium. Considering the EU's interest in the human rights and environmental/climate issue areas, I argue it is important to ask what the Union's approach to this matter has been. Thus, this article assesses the European Union discourse related to the topic of environmental migration over the past 20-year period. Through the theoretical lens of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies and the normative power EU conception, this paper critically analyses the EU's securitisation of climate change in relation to persons referred to as environmental migrants. Based on a qualitative discourse analysis, the preliminary results imply that the topic has been receding into the background of the EU agenda. In line, environmental migrants have been pushed aside by a multiplicity of other subjects threatened by climate change, thus receiving lesser attention in the EU climate change and migration management policies. Overall, the findings show a shift from an alarmist discourse to more pragmatism on the EU's behalf and a larger focus on adaptation and resilience in most affected areas. With this in mind, this article questions the normative standard the EU sets for itself when it comes to the case of environmental migrant protection.

Critical whiteness theory and social work education: turning the lens inward

ABSTRACT The social work profession adheres to the values of social justice and equity, yet extensive literature suggests that anti-racism education in social work has room for growth. Research demonstrates that social work practitioners and educators often fail to recognize (1) how structural oppression creates racial inequities and (2) how social workers maintain and reproduce hegemonic power structures. Critical whiteness theory (CWT) seeks to reveal the invisible role of whiteness in constructing racial inequities. As a subject area, critical whiteness studies emerged in the late 1990s as an expansion of critical race theory. A variety of disciplines have incorporated critical whiteness studies as a framework for anti-racism education; however, CWT remains relatively absent from the social work literature. This paper proposes the incorporation of CWT in social work education as a tool to facilitate critical self-reflexivity and combat structural racism within the profession. Engaging with the concepts of white normativity, white ignorance, and white complicity allows social work educators and students to acknowledge and interrogate the formative ways in which social work pedagogy maintains and reproduces white supremacy.

Socio-legal study of technology: A norms and values approach to hacking and encryption law and policy

In light of the dissolution of the traditional boundaries separating the fields of law, technology and society, this article puts forward an interdisciplinary norms and values approach to the study of technology law. It explains the core concepts of norms and values and their significance to legal research and other disciplines. The article further sets out the qualitative, inductive and interpretivist methodology and methods necessitated by this socio-legal approach. It then applies the norms and values approach to the cases of hacking and encryption to illustrate its substantial benefits and contributions to the development of technology law and policy.

(Political) political liberalism and the constitutional project

Abstract This review essay follows Alessandro Ferrara and Frank Michelman’s dialogic journey into the legitimation-by-constitution idea, which they submit as the institutional expression of political liberalism in Legitimation by Constitution: A Dialogue on Political Liberalism, to illustrate the challenges for contemporary philosophy of political liberalism in its transposition to the constitutional project. It argues that Ferrara and Michelman’s liberal endeavor to answer the fundamental questions surrounding political liberalism rests on a normative conception of identity, which eventually leads them to a dilemma: the project of constitutional democracy they defend and justify is sustained by a liberal ethos, while it is tasked to accommodate those who do not value the liberal form of life. Instead of choosing between the project of constitutional democracy and their liberal soul, Ferrara and Michelman eventually offer a thin constitutional account of political liberalism resembling the international legal order amidst the retrenchment of the liberal ethos. It contends that what liberal democracies need from political liberalism in battling antiliberal forces is not more political philosophy but rather something akin to what Jeremy Waldron calls “political political theory.” It is suggested that political liberalism take a political turn to confront antiliberal forces with an enriched rather than diluted constitutional project.

Procedural Norms and Institutions in the Structure of Constitutional Law of Russia

The article analyzes the opinions of scholars and concludes that the “broad” interpretation of the concept of procedural norms, which actually identifies them with procedural norms, is the most reasonable for constitutional law. On the basis of the studied opinions of constitutional scholars, the author’s definition of the concept of procedural norms of constitutional law is proposed. The idea that the procedural component of constitutional law is the result of legal differentiation, as the completeness of legal regulation of dynamic social relations requires the creation of norms that enshrine the mechanism of their realization. The specific features of procedural norms of constitutional law are identified and analyzed, which include: special purpose, features of the external form of expression, determining character for procedural norms of other branches, implementation by a variety of subjects of procedural relations, focus on ensuring the unity of the system of legal regulation. It is concluded that the institutes of constitutional law have substantive and procedural character.

Artificial language creation as a tool for assessing children’s metalinguistic abilities

The author aims to analyse two projects of the artificial language Uniling. They were created by students of years 5 to 11 within the linguistic framework of the "Formula de Integreco" training camp in June 2017 and January 2018. The research methods included structural analysis of the artificial language, as well as its creation process in comparison with Russian, i. e. the native language for all participants in the experiment. Research results: the specific conditions for artificial language development enable us to trace the stages of its accelerated "evolution" and complexity buildup at all levels. The latter becomes possible by shifting the initial focus away from observing the economy principle in language and raising randomly occurring exceptions to the status of a rule. Such rules are further extrapolated to other same-level units of the artificial language. This indicates that children attach importance to the concept of linguistic norm, as well as the possibility of clear grammatical differentiation when the grammatical meaning is secondary relative to the lexical-conceptual one. Children give no less significance to the inner form of words, which makes it possible to create lexemes employing the means of the artificial language itself without relying on the material of natural substrate languages. Moreover, the inner form helps to outline the systemic connections within the thematic groups. However, the hypernym/hyponym relations are obviously weak as generic concepts are not found in the Uniling lexis. At the same time, the aesthetics and euphony notions often come to the fore, which is reflected in the expression plane of artificial language lexemes and in the idea of the pragmatic potential of the language. This is most clearly seen at the syntax level due to the introduction of particular semantic role markers not typical of the Russian language (benefactives and malefactives). Conclusions: artificial language analysis enables us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of children’s metalinguistic representations, which can be considered in the process of teaching Russian at school.

From Earning to Learning: Reasoning and Participation in Youth Co-design of Digital Badges

Youth co-design has the possibility to reframe learning and participation, repositioning and remediating youth roles. However, youth co-design processes can also unintentionally reproduce normative forms of power and learning. This paper describes how co-design processes can position youth as having full agency for the design of a digital badge system, yet their participation and design are still guided by existing normative concepts of learning. We asked: How do youth roles, positioning, activity structures, and materials shape youth agentic participation in co-design and the disruption of traditional hierarchical design processes? This paper documents the youth co-design of a digital badge system that represented participation in a program at an aquarium where youth volunteers interpret exhibits for aquarium patrons. In coordination with faculty at a local university, the badge system culminated in college credit for qualifying high school youth. During the co-design process, youth initially imported school-based frames of learning and participation that constrained definitions of the who, what, and how of learning. However, with the support of new physical and conceptual resources, the design team expanded how they framed learning and participation, while still maintaining some school-based products and processes. This paper contributes to literature on including youth in design processes, indicating the importance of scaffolding for agency and participation.

Book review: Aleš Novak and Marijan Pavčnik (eds.), SODNIŠKO PRAVO (eng. Judge-made law), Lexpera, GV Založba, Ljubljana, 2023

The concept of legal normativity is inherently ambiguous. What qualifies as law, and by which criterion do we define it? The ongoing debate has for a long time revolved around its typologies. Yet, delving into the intricacies of the various players, their roles, and content creation within the legal game remains a formidable undertaking. Despite the consideration of various perspectives by the contemporary legal theory, the discourse sometimes remains superficial. Why does a segment of legal scholarship continue to assert that laws enacted by the legislature are the only convincingly viable source of legal norms? This paradigm, which one could connect with the allure of legal sentences as general and abstract norms contained within a legal code, may have a deeper and more complex epistemic origin than we imagine. There is something peculiar about our European-Continental legal culture, it seems. “Oh, a rule we shall follow? Write it down, pass it as law and I might consider it.” The persistent preoccupation with an abstract, all-encompassing system of knowledge highlights the serious attention given to this form of legal normativity. Despite the vast efficacy of such an approach, however, there will always be at least one critical step separating it from completely seizing our reality. As the numerous Slovenian authors of the here reviewed and recently published work Judge-made law have convincingly argued: It is none other than the judge whom the privilege of this very step belongs to. With the arising complexity of our social orders and various predicaments regarding applicable law, only the judge both can and must intervene in the equilibrium-establishing process, framed by the ever so persistent proliferation of legal regulation on one front while effectively resolving a (legal) dispute on the other.

El disco es cultura: Sonic artifacts and Latinx Chicago

AbstractIn music production, a sonic artifact refers to sonic material that is accidental or unwanted, typically the result of the manipulation of sound. This understanding connotes both physical and figurative meanings: artifact as material alteration and as subjectively defined auditory disturbance. Both meanings attune the act of listening to noise—the perception of which relies on normative conceptions of rationality. This article takes up the sonic artifact as an aesthetic figure to listen to Latinx Chicago with attention to vinyl records (or discos) as literal material artifacts and asks: how do discos broadcast—in embodied and symbolic ways—the racialized politics of urban territory, and in turn amplify forms of spatial entitlement? Chicago's racial geography relies on the social reproduction of valuable forms of inequality that render Latinx communities displaceable, or unheard. What place‐making strategies emerge given such profound and intersecting dispossessions, and how are they amplified within the aural public sphere? El disco es cultura provides one answer. As curatorial practice, it embodies a phonoaesthetic assemblage of transcultural and transhemispheric sounds and connections that avails sonic artifacts as layered auditory experiences forged within the politics of displacement, pointing us toward the materiality of Latinx place‐making aesthetics and auditory fields of social recognition.

“PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL COMMUNICATION BETWEEN A DOCTOR AND A PATIENT” AS AN ELECTIVE COURSE IN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS

Abstract. The article presents a detailed analysis of the elective discipline “Professional Medical Communication between a Doctor and a Patient”. The curriculum for the discipline is prepared for students studying at I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine under the educational program “Medical Care” of the second (master’s) level of higher education in the branch of knowledge 22 “Healthcare”, specialty 222 “Medicine”. “Professional Medical Communication between a Doctor and a Patient” is taught to third-year students. The following topics are studied: 1. The concept of norms and language education of a doctor. 2. Language skills of a doctor. 3. Communicative characteristics of the Ukrainian literary language as parameters for assessing the professional communication of a medical professional with a patient. 4. Dynamic lexical and semantic processes in the modern Ukrainian medical terminology. 5. Functional potential of medical terminology units. 6. Medical jargon of the doctor. 7. Word-formation identity of modern Ukrainian medical terms. 8. Grammatical features of the organization of medical communication. 9. Typical language errors in  professional communication between a doctor and a patient. 10. Reference medical text.
 The purpose of studying the discipline is: to form systematic knowledge and understanding of the conceptual foundations of the study of the professional Ukrainian language of a physician with the prospect of its further use in professional activities; to provide students with communication needs in the educational, professional and educational-scientific spheres; to form language competence, communication skills of future specialists; to achieve exemplary language skills of a medical professional when communicating with a patient; in-depth study of lexical and semantic potential, word-formation identity of medical terminology and organization of perfect medical education.