Normative Image Research Articles

ANDI – The Australian normative and dementia imaging collaborative network: Software tools for large databases

ANDI – The Australian normative and dementia imaging collaborative network: Software tools for large databases

Refiguring the human

In this commentary on Weinstein and Broda’s paper, I consider their promising claims for the liberatory potential of the grotesque in biology/science education. In response to their analysis of four “specimen” examples, I address the question of confronting the limits of pedagogical representations of the grotesque and the abject. I offer suggestions to enrich their project with critical use of historical undercurrents informing normative images of the body. I propose that the functioning of a contemporary epistemic convergence of the grotesque and the sublime opens up the space for a continual reimaging and refiguring of bodies.

The Interpretational Implications of Progressive Muslims' Qur'an and Sunna Manhaj in Relation to their Formulation of a Normative Muslima Construct1

This article presents a discussion on the interpretational implications of the delineating features of the Qur'an–Sunna hermeneutic of what we here term ‘progressive Muslims’ on the construction of a ‘normative Muslima’. In the first section, the article broadly defines progressive Muslims and their approach to conceptualizing, engaging and interpreting the Islamic tradition (turāth). In the second part, the criteria developed by classical scholarship for constructing the distinct religious identity of a Muslima are outlined. In the third section, the delineating features of progressive Muslims' Qur'an–Sunna model of interpretation (manhaj) are sketched out. In the fourth and final part, the interpretational implications of this manhaj are analysed on the basis of relevant Qur'an and Hadith textual evidence in relation to the construction of a normative Muslima image according to the progressive Muslim manhaj. It will be argued that the classical construct of a normative Muslima image is entirely rejected by the progressive Muslim approach. Instead, it will be contended that, on the basis of their contextualist, thematico-holistic and ethico-values- or objectives-based approach to interpretation of Qur'an and Sunna, progressive Muslims subscribe to the concept of a ‘normative’ Muslima representation which does not impose any social or spatial regulatory mechanisms. Furthermore, it will be proposed that progressive Muslims consider women as fully autonomous human beings, inherently equal to men, whose humanity is judged by their level of taqwā (God consciousness and righteous conduct).

The Personal and Normative Image of God: The Role of Religious Culture and Mental Health

This article focuses on the difference between the personal God image and the God image that people perceive as normative, that is to say, the God image they believe they should have according to religious culture. A sample of 544 Dutch respondents, of which 244 received psychotherapy, completed the Dutch Questionnaire of God Images (QGI). In general, there appeared to be a discrepancy between the personal and the normative God image. Whether discrepancies were experienced as conflictive was related to religious denomination and mental health. Conflictive feelings were associated with lower religious saliency and higher educational level. Moreover, they were associated with mental health per se and the interaction between mental health and denomination, with patients reporting more conflicts than normals except in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox-Reformed group, where patients and non-patients hardly differed in the experience of conflict.

Transnacionalinis identitetas ir paveldas: lietuviškumas diasporoje

Manipuliavimas bet kuriuo ir bet kurio paveldo – ypač tautinio – aspektu vyksta ne tik ir ne tiek tautinės valstybės viduje, bet nė kiek nemažiau ir už jos ribų. Emigrantus, pabėgėlius, deportuotuosius ir kitus persikėlusius ar perkeltuosius sieja ne tik socialinė atmintis apie „namų šalį“, bet ir transplantuoti, reprodukuojami bei sumeistraujami tautiniai paveldai. Šio rašinio tikslas – nubrėžti kai kurių socialinių strategijų, socialinių tinklų, įvaizdžių ir diskursų kontūrus, bendrais bruožais aptarti su konkrečiu etniškumu/nacionalumu sukibusio tapatumo kultūrines praktikas, kitaip sakant lietuviškumą – kaip savitą lietuviškos kultūros ir paveldo formą; t. y. kaip „lietuviškumą“ įsivaizdavo ir įsivaizduoja, konstravo ir tebekonstruoja bei/ar siekia užginčyti skirtingos Amerikos lietuvių bangos ir kartos. Remiuosi 2000–2002 m. JAV Vidurio Vakarų valstijose atliktų antropologinių lauko tyrimų duomenimis. Didžiausias dėmesys skirtas Rytų ir Pietų Ilinojaus (įskaitant Westville, Collinsville, West-Frankfort ir Herrin) bei Misurio (St. Louis miesto rytinės dalies) valstijų buvusių angliakasių bendruomenių likučiams bei lietuvių gyvenamiesiems rajonams Èikagoje (įskaitant Brighten Park ir Marquette Park).

Sport, Gender and Ethnicity: Practises of Symbolic Inclusion/Exclusion

In this paper symbolic inclusion/exclusion processes in sport with respect to gender and ethnicity among adolescents (n = 1025) are analyzed from a social-critical perspective. It was found that sport participation preferences of young people are still influenced by dominant normative gendered and racial/ethnic images. Sport can serve not only as an agent of integration among youth, but is also used to differentiate and discriminate. On one hand sport participation is less predictable with respect to gender, due for example to interactions with ethnicity. Although ethnic minority girls participate the least in sport, ‘black,’ traditional ‘masculine‘ sports such as soccer and fighting/self-defense are valued relative highly. On the other hand, the data show that especially the male adolescents symbolically exclude girls from ‘masculine’ sports such as soccer; in addition for both ethnic minority and majority boys the fear of being labelled as a ‘sissy’ works as a strong mechanism of self-exclusion from participation in traditional ‘feminine’ sports. However, stereotypical normative images are not only confirmed through sport (participation), but also continually challenged.

Scientific personae in American psychology: three case studies

This paper studies the constellations of attitudes––sentimental, moral, epistemological, and social––that three leading psychologists active in turn-of-the-twentieth-century America took to be essential to the production of scientific knowledge. William James, G. Stanley Hall, and Edward Titchener located the virtues and traits proper to the scientific frame of mind, and combined them into normative images of the man of science, or, ‘scientific personae’ as I use the term here. I argue that their competing formulations of the scientific ethos informed their psychological practice and epistemological commitments. James, Hall, and Titchener mobilized their representations of the man of science in order to reconfigure the field of psychology and redefine its boundaries, as well as to promote forms of sociability and define the proper role of scientists both within the academy and in the wider polity.

Presenting and creating home: The influence of popular and building trade print media in the construction of home

In this paper we examine the ways New Zealanders connect with global and local discourses about the home, and in turn interpret and create their houses and homes, by engaging with print media such as lifestyle magazines and associated building trade literature. The paper is influenced by recent calls for more finely grained and nuanced interpretations of the interplay between the global and the local in the constitution of the everyday lived experiences of urban dwellers. In this meta-theoretical context, house and home are central sites for the construction of identity and meaning. Our argument is that New Zealanders' sense of home is constructed in a dialectic between household members, who negotiate the meaning, creation and use of houses amongst themselves, and the media, comprising image- and taste-makers, who draw on local and global frameworks to both reflect and shape taste and thus create normative images and ideals about what constitutes a 'home'. The paper begins by situating the study in a discussion of the media as a shaper of taste and consumption patterns. This is followed by an analysis of data drawn from a survey of house and home related print media and intensive interviews of a sample of householders in Christchurch, New Zealand. The results of the analysis are presented around a set of key themes which include: product choice, functionality, aesthetics and identity; technology and simplicity of design; rooms and other indoor/outdoor spaces; and gender. The final section examines the links between the media and the ways people interpret and create their homes. The study shows that home-making is an ongoing and contingent activity in which both local and global influences are present but they are mediated through the lives and experiences of the homemakers.

White matter hyperintensities and neuropsychological outcome following carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning may result in white matter hyperintensities (WMH) and neurocognitive impairments. To assess in a prospective study WMH in CO-poisoned patients and their relationship to cognitive functioning. Seventy-three consecutive CO-poisoned patients were studied. MR scans and neurocognitive tests were administered on day 1 (within 36 hours after CO poisoning), 2 weeks, and 6 months. Age- and sex-matched control subjects for white matter analyses only were obtained from the authors' normative imaging database. MR scans were rated for WMH in the periventricular and centrum semiovale regions, using a 4-point rating scale. Two independent raters rated the scans, and a consensus was reached. Thirty percent of CO-poisoned patients had cognitive sequelae. Twelve percent of the CO-poisoned patients had WMH, with significantly more periventricular, but not centrum semiovale, WMH than control subjects. The WMH in CO-poisoned patients did not change from day 1 to 6 months. Centrum semiovale hyperintensities were related to worse cognitive performance. Duration of loss of consciousness correlated with cognitive impairment at all three times. Initial carboxyhemoglobin levels correlated with loss of consciousness but not with WMH or cognitive sequelae. CO poisoning can result in brain injury manifested by WMH and cognitive sequelae. The WMH were not related to CO poisoning severity. The WMH occurred in both the periventricular and the centrum semiovale regions; however, only those in the centrum semiovale were significantly associated with cognitive impairments.

Rethinking the Approach to Beauty in Medicine

IN 1907 A SURGEON NAMED CHARLES C. MILLER DESCRIBED WHAT HE SAW as a growing preoccupation with physical beauty in society. “For years,” he warned, “the newspapers and magazines have been devoting many pages to ‘Beauty Chats,’ . . . and the people have gradually developed a desire for knowledge of those means which will enable them to appear to the best advantage.” While his colleagues ridiculed patients seeking correction of cosmetic defects, Miller was anxious for them to be seen by responsible surgeons: “Every practitioner who laughs at the patient who questions him regarding an operation, takes the chance of seeing that patient return . . . disfigured for life.” Nearly a century later, the American public is arguably just as concerned about physical attractiveness as it was in the early days of cosmetic surgery. In a recent survey asking whether “physical beauty” or “inner beauty” “counts more in the real world,” for example, more than a third of participants over the age of 18 said that they thought physical beauty “counts” more. Nearly a quarter of women said they considered maintaining an attractive physical appearance “essential,” and more than half of women said that they considered it at least “important.” At the same time, public demand for more diverse and sophisticated ways of enhancing appearance continues to arouse conflicting feelings in the medical profession. On the one hand, clinicians specializing in fields such as dermatology, plastic and reconstructive surgery, and cosmetic dentistry have seen an explosion in the demand for their services. According to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, the number of cosmetic procedures performed annually in the United States has more than tripled in the past decade. On the other hand, clinicians from all medical fields may worry that patients’ concerns about their appearance may distract them from issues that are more critical to their health. While it is clear that a person’s appearance can affect his or her social and economic success, it is not obvious that beauty is “medically necessary” for well-being. Furthermore, psychiatric conditions associated with body image distress point to ways in which patients’ anxieties about their appearance can cause them to adopt behaviors damaging to their health. This issue of MSJAMA examines themes surrounding cosmesis in medicine. Is it possible to distinguish between normative and pathological body image distress? Can clinicians use patients’ dissatisfaction with their appearance to motivate them to change their behavior? How has the medical profession helped to shape stereotypes about beauty? Can physicians, patients, and insurers agree on what distinguishes “cosmetic” and “therapeutic” procedures? Today, concerns about appearance and concerns about health continue to overlap.

The Politics of Sectional Memory: Theodore Parker and the "Massachusetts Quarterly Review", 1847-1850

On December 22, 1845, Rev. Theodore Parker of West Roxbury went to Plymouth, Massachusetts, to observe Forefathers' Day, a day-long public celebration that commemorated Pilgrims' landing in North America in 1620. Beyond feasts and parades that were traditional on these occasions, Parker took special pains to hear orators Edward Everett and Rufus Choate expound upon virtues, sufferings and sacrifices of New England's founding generation. By time he reached his West Roxbury home that evening, though, joy of occasion had worn off, and sober reflections inspired his nightly journal entry. It was joyous, he wrote, yet sad in recollection. Troubling his thoughts that night were recent political events surrounding annexation of Texas and growing power of southern slave interest in national government. Even more than these incidents themselves, however, Parker was disturbed by lack of any discussion of them in day's ceremonial pageantry. hate to judge men by one thing, he complained, in all day there was but one allusion, I think, to Freezing lessons of history into attractive but meaningless tableaus, brilliant but conservative orators at Plymouth threatened to sever moral link between New England's past glory and its present responsibilities in nation's crisis. Such a detachment of culture from life robbed New Englanders of their most important wellsprings of action, and Parker ultimately felt compelled to conclude that the Spirit of Pilgrims rests no longer in sons.2 Less than two years later, Parker joined Ralph Waldo Emerson and several other Massachusetts scholars, reformers, and politicians in founding Massachusetts Quarterly Review, a journal devoted to literature, politics, religion and humanity. Though initially sharing editorial duties with Emerson and James E. Cabot, Parker took sole custody of journal within a year and became dominant architect of its message. During his three years as editor, Parker used Review both to reinvigorate and to reinvent politics and culture of New England as larger nation struggled with issues of war, expansion, and slavery. Beyond his role as editor, Parker was also journal's most important contributor, and he used it as a platform from which to contest dominance of older, established Massachusetts periodicals whose political and cultural conservatism he saw as dangerous in context of a national crisis. Without fully embracing radical abolitionist ideology, he attempted to reestablish a bridge between his understanding of New England's place in America's republican past, and its crucial role in transforming American present. Reworking old symbols of Puritanism and Revolution, Parker also derived new sectional meaning from materials as diverse as abolitionism, Free Soil politics, and life of John Quincy Adams. Both selective and strikingly opportunistic in his use of sectional history, Parker clung tenaciously to New England's past while confidently rearranging it in search of present meaning. Groping toward more democratic modes of expression and appealing to broadly held sectional values, moreover, Parker also hoped to establish a New England antislavery culture that would transcend movement's ideological divisions.3 As an avenue for expression of New England's special place in American life, Massachusetts Quarterly Review was certainly not alone. Over past several decades, students of New England history have amply documented extraordinary sense of sectional pride and uniqueness that swept across region during early national and antebellum periods. By attending public festivals, creating historical societies, erecting monuments, and consecrating cemeteries, New Englanders not only reinforced a sense of corporate identity, but they also constructed a distinctive and normative image of their history and traditions. …

Perkembangan. Ilmu Hukum dalam Perspektif Perkembangan Sains Global

The impact of global science on the development of legal science has been the normative reduction or positivization of law. This leads to streng the ning the normative image of law, narrowing the appearance of law, sparating law from the social facts, etc. The seimply that a new theory capable of deliberating of law from its normative of image issuch urgent that the theory is capable of describing the truth about law. There fore, Critical Legal Studies should begiven a conducive room to deveiop in order to enlighten the legal science.

On talcott parsons'The Social System

At times, as I read this book, I am tempted to regard it as the greatest theoretical work since Weber. Generally, however, my assessment is that it falls well short of that standard. In many ways, Parsons does in The Social System what C. Wright Mills and I intended in our chapter on institutions in Character and Social Struc ture, to elaborate a general view of institutions and social structures and how they are related to persons.1 He does so mainly by constructing ty pologies that echo the analytical features of T?ennies's distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, further subdividing each into "diffuseness vs. specificity," "status vs. contract," "particularistic vs. universalist," and so forth. By cross tabulating these categories, Parsons finds all sorts of big ger and better typological opportunities. At a theoretical level, this is all well and good and even somewhat im pressive as a display of conceptual virtuosity. When Parsons risks touching upon empirical reality, however, his points are frequently unconvincing and even mistaken, and his arguments take on an unreal quality. For example, in Parsons' view of the world, unearned income does not exist; rentier income from land disappears into his murky conception of a "reward structure"; and Marx's industrial reserve army as well as the issues, so prominent in the 1930s, of "technological unemployment" and the "dole" (another form of unearned income) also vanish in favor of a simple and naive "liberal theory model" through which the Chamber of Commerce's normative image of capi talism is transformed into a Parsonian ideal type. Or consider Parsons's dis missal of group prejudice, scapegoating, and class conflicts as mere symptoms of "strain" produced by technological change?and therefore "not to be ac cepted literally without discount"2?rather than as the result of inherent con flicts of interest. Such a perspective can tell us little about, say, the race riots

Normative Images of Communication Media Mass and Interpersonal Channels in the New Media Environment.

This study is an extension of earlier uses and gratifications research that identified normative images of mass media. The article considers how well 12 different mass and interpersonal communication channels fill 11 communication needs. A sample of 649 adults completed self-administered questionnaires, the responses of which were submitted to cluster analysis, which identified five channel clusters: Video, Interpersonal, Print, Computer, and Audio. In general, the Interpersonal cluster (conversation and telephone) was rated the most useful at filling various needs, with Computer rated the least useful. Consistent with previous research, clusters that were most useful at filling personal needs were rated highest in social presence. The discussion relates this study's findings to previous research and notes implications for research on the newer communication technologies.

Politics and Equity in Policy-Making for the Medically Uninsured

A sizable number of Americans (many of low income) lack health insurance, and their ranks grew over the 1980s. One might expect to find vigorous political efforts to redress this inequity. In fact, conflicting normative and practical images of equity have blunted the sense of urgency of the problem, inhibited agreement on the proper division of labor between the market and government, and blocked consensus on strategic models for public policy for the uninsured.

The Perspective on Secondary Socialization in E. H. Erikson

E. H. Erikson's theory of life cycle has been often quated from the view of the secondary socialization after childhood. His theory expands the scope of developmental psychology into the whole human life cycle, including adolescent and adulthood.In this paper, I examine the basic character of his theory and show how his theory of life cycle presupposes certain “normative image of man” which corresponds to his view on the contemporary American society. It seems that Erikson takes some ambivalent atittude toward the American society. For although he sees the American society essentially as pluralistic and democratic, he also critisizes an ethnocentric attitude (in his term, “cultural pseudospeciation”) in the American whites. Then he emphasizes the “wider identity” that is based on more universal perspectives. For Erikson, the “generative man” who has his wider identity is the goal of the secondary socializations.I also examine how this normative image of man has been developed in the “psychohistory”, that is Erikson's study of life histories about historical leaders. Especially Erikson shows in his study of Gandhi how the generative man establishes the “mutuality” in his socalization. Accoding to Erikson, because Gandhi confronted younger generations with the wider identity, he succeeded in organizing them. Through organizing and directing younger generations, Gandhi himself had been socialized as a historical leader. Socilization depends on such a mutuality or interaction between different generations.Through these reviews on Erikson's theory, I have made an effort to find a cue for constructing the framework of the studies in the secondary socialization.

Cultural and Class Values In Family Process

Based on the sociological research of Kohn (1977), several clinical and theoretical perspectives on the family are criticized for paying insufficient attention to class and cultural distinctions both in constructing normative images of the family and in conceptualizing therapeutic intervention. It is suggested that the “democratic” model of healthy family interaction is, to some degree, class‐ and culture‐specific so that sociologically undifferentiated views of the family are likely to prove ethnocentric. Family therapists are therefore urged to be attentive to sociodynamic as well as psychodynamic factors present within both family and therapeutic interactions.

Super Undies, Buff Bodies and Body Facism: Normative Gay Identity and the Politics of Regulation

fab Magazine, a bi-weekly based in Toronto, is an example of a gay tabloid press that claims to provide an alternative to the traditional discourses of gay identity. Providing local coverage of Toronto’s gay community, the magazine also contains featured columnists, music and restaurant reviews, and a classified section that focuses on gay businesses and services. However the magazine’s representation of the gay community embraces and glorifies the normative images of the gay body that articulate the stereotypical conception of gay consumer identity. This creates a contradiction at the centre of the magazine: it is a text that seeks to be understood as a “for us, by us text” publication yet it deploys a normative construction of gayness in the vast majority of its image-based representations.