Normative Structure Research Articles

Representation of Vivāha Saṁskāra in the Kalyāṇsundara Sculptures

Saṁskāras, as sacramental practices, have been an integral part of the Indian culture and they concretised the fundamental premises of ancient Indian social organisation as Āshram, Puruṣārtha and Varṇa. Encoded in the Gṛhyasūtras, Saṁskāras were elaborated in Dharmasūtras, Mahākāvya and Purāṇas. The normative structure of ritual prescriptions in Sūtra literature was disseminated through legends and narratives of Purāṇas that assigned them a divine character and enhanced their popularity and relevance for the society. Besides literary references, the Saṁskāras’ pervading influence in socio-cultural life may be surmised through their artistic projections also. This article, in particular, underlines the significance of the Vivāha Saṁskāras as a nuptial ritual that initiated the Gṛhastha Āshram or life of the householder, facilitating the acquisition of both individual and social objectives of human existence. It cites the projection of the divine marriage ceremony of Śiva and Pārvatı̄ represented as Kalyāṇsundara motif in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa art at Elephanta and Ellorā, as epitomising continuity of Saṁskāras tradition for the fulfilment of socio-religious obligations in early medieval Deccan. Further, it implies that such artistic manifestations were instrumental in the process of socialisation and cultural assimilation.

Ryle’s Logical Geography of Perception Verbs

Abstract Gilbert Ryle’s account of perception has not become widely known. Moreover, most of the responses to his account have been critical. Ryle’s method was to analyze our everyday use of perception verbs such as ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’, in order to argue that perception is a skill that we learn by doing. His critics concluded that by focusing on the use of perception verbs, Ryle dodged all central problems of perception. The current article aims to rebut this conclusion, by showing how Ryle’s work on perception builds on his logical-geographical method. That method leads Ryle to the conclusion that perceptual skill is a form of knowing how. Perception recipes, defined as shared criteria for correct use of perception verbs, display the normative structure of this knowledge. Although this analysis raises questions of its own, it shows that Ryle was in fact engaging seriously with core philosophical questions about the nature of perception.

Structure of Spectral Composition and Synchronization in Human Sleep on the Whole Scalp: A Pilot Study.

We used numerical methods to define the normative structure of the different stages of sleep and wake (W) in a pilot study of 19 participants without pathology (18-64 years old) using a double-banana bipolar montage. Artefact-free 120-240 s epoch lengths were visually identified and divided into 1 s windows with a 10% overlap. Differential channels were grouped into frontal, parieto-occipital, and temporal lobes. For every channel, the power spectrum (PS) was calculated via fast Fourier transform and used to compute the areas for the delta (0-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz), and beta (13-30 Hz) bands, which were log-transformed. Furthermore, Pearson's correlation coefficient and coherence by bands were computed. Differences in logPS and synchronization from the whole scalp were observed between the sexes for specific stages. However, these differences vanished when specific lobes were considered. Considering the location and stages, the logPS and synchronization vary highly and specifically in a complex manner. Furthermore, the average spectra for every channel and stage were very well defined, with phase-specific features (e.g., the sigma band during N2 and N3, or the occipital alpha component during wakefulness), although the slow alpha component (8.0-8.5 Hz) persisted during NREM and REM sleep. The average spectra were symmetric between hemispheres. The properties of K-complexes and the sigma band (mainly due to sleep spindles-SSs) were deeply analyzed during the NREM N2 stage. The properties of the sigma band are directly related to the density of SSs. The average frequency of SSs in the frontal lobe was lower than that in the occipital lobe. In approximately 30% of the participants, SSs showed bimodal components in the anterior regions. qEEG can be easily and reliably used to study sleep in healthy participants and patients.

The Function of International Law in Modern International Relations: A Constructivist Perspective

Following World War II, the ongoing process of globalisation led to a proliferation of international conflicts and disputes, prompting an increase in the application and regulation of international law. International law, as a legally binding framework for the rights and responsibilities of sovereign states and other entities with international status, has been crucial in reducing global strife, maintaining peace and promoting cooperation. The post-Cold War era coincided with the rise of constructivist theory, which offers a sociological perspective on world politics, emphasising social normative structures over economic material ones. This perspective underscores the influential role of ideas, norms, and culture in shaping state behaviour constructively. Theoretically, constructivist theories within international relations elucidate the legal function of international law while bolstering its authority and status; thereby further explaining its significance within global affairs. The research encompasses three main components: First, an exploration of the theoretical underpinnings of international law and an analysis of constructivism within the field of international relations will be presented. Secondly, a detailed examination of specific operational mechanisms in modern international relations and their contribution to establishing an orderly framework will be undertaken; and thirdly case analysis to examine how these mechanisms have influenced specific events thus revealing their practical impact. Ultimately concluding that as a normative institutional construct, international law has significantly contributed towards rule-making processes conflict resolution efforts as well as maintaining order within global relations while also highlighting that its construction is an ongoing evolutionary process necessitating continual adjustment within the broader context.

IL CORPO VIVO DELLA LINGUA: ALCUNE CONSIDERAZIONI PRATICO-TEORICHE SULLE LINGUE «SPARGĂ» E «LEOPARDĂ» DI NINA CASSIAN E VIRGIL TEODORESCU

This contribution, starting from the studies of Giorgio Agamben, aims to highlight the peculiarity of two poetic languages invented by Nina Cassian and Virgil Teodorescu: the “spargă” language and the “leopardă” languages. The “spargă” and “leopardă” languages, developed during the surrealist period in Bucharest, embody the intrinsic dynamism of language. On the one hand, they reflect the multiplicity and original complexity of poetic language, where meanings are manifold and semantic closure is not definitive. On the other hand, these two fantastic languages highlight the pulsional heterogeneity underlying culture itself, suggesting that the truth of things does not directly coincide with what is explicitly said, but rather requires an act of translation and interpretation by the subject. Moreover, these two experimental idiolects can also be interpreted as poetic explorations that challenge the normative structures of the symbolic order, introducing elements of the semiotic that materially express the unconscious in art. The connection with Lacan’s “lalangue” is evident in their common focus on the pre-linguistic and affective dimensions of language, which transcend the limitations of ordinary communication.

Structures that tilt: Understanding “toxic” behaviors in online gaming

Destructive or “toxic” behaviors in online gaming have received increased attention in recent years. These are forms of verbal harassment or behavioral misconduct which disrupt another’s experience of the game. While previous explanations have explained toxic behaviors as intentional acts of deviant individuals or a larger online “trickster” culture, this article provides empirical support for a recent “tilt”-based explanation in the literature. Toxic behavior is seen as situated within and emergent from specific social contexts—as a spur-of-the-moment loss of control (associated with the term “tilt”), triggered by contextual factors within the game. Based on interview data on the popular multiplayer game League of Legends, it is shown how weak normative and relational structures within a gaming context can lead to negative emotions in players, prompting toxic behaviors. Avenues for future research and implications for improving online social spaces are discussed.

The problem of alignment

AbstractLarge language models (LLMs) produce sequences learned as statistical patterns from large corpora. Their emergent status as representatives of the advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have led to an increased attention to the possibilities of regulating the automated production of linguistic utterances and interactions with human users in a process that computer scientists refer to as ‘alignment’—a series of technological and political mechanisms to impose a normative model of morality on algorithms and networks behind the model. Alignment, which can be viewed as the superimposition of normative structure onto a statistical model, however, reveals a conflicted and complex history of the conceptualisation of an interrelationship between language, mind and technology. This relationship is shaped by and, in turn, influences theories of language, linguistic practice and subjectivity, which are especially relevant to the current sophistication in artificially produced text. In this paper, we propose a critical evaluation of the concept of alignment, arguing that the theories and practice behind LLMs reveal a more complex social and technological dynamic of output coordination. We examine this dynamic as a two-way interaction between users and models by analysing how ChatGPT4 redacts perceived ‘anomalous’ language in fragments of Joyce’s Ulysses. We then situate this alignment problem historically, revisiting earlier postwar linguistic debates which counterposed two views of meaning: as discrete structures, and as continuous probability distributions. We discuss the largely occluded work of the Moscow Linguistic School, which sought to reconcile this opposition. Our attention to the Moscow School and later related arguments by Searle and Kristeva casts the problem of alignment in a new light: as one involving attention to the social regulation of linguistic practice, including rectification of anomalies that, like the Joycean text, exist in defiance of expressive conventions. The “problem of alignment” that we address here is, therefore, twofold: on one hand, it points to its narrow and normative definition in current technological development and critical research and, on the other hand, to the reality of complex and contradictory relations between subjectivity, technology and language that alignment problems reveal.

Interventions of post-colonial states in the normative structure of world politics: the case of Iran and the norm of democracy

Within Global IR a constructivist-postcolonial literature is emerging which inquires into how postcolonial states intervene into the normative structure of world politics. This research programme has less covered the question how postcolonial states relate to the international norm of democracy, how and in which ways do they contest this norm, and to which effects? This question is important both to study how the ‘postcolonial condition’ can be overcome, as well as to understand which contours and shapes the norm of democracy might be taking in a multiplex world. To study this multifaceted question from a perspective which acknowledges the shadow of the past, as well as the agency of postcolonial states, Wiener’s concept of norm contestation is applied and further developed in three respects: firstly, by staking out various forms of contestation, that is rejection, strategic contestation and the construction of alternative meaning; secondly, by bringing in identity as a mediating device which impacts the forms of contestation; and thirdly, by studying various sites of contestation where actors beyond the state are also taken into account. This framework is then applied to heuristically study the case of Iran which is of particular interest as it intervenes in the global contestation of the norm of democracy on a dual level of external resistance and internal dissent. Studying Iranian contestation at the UN, within Iran and in Iranian-EU engagement, it becomes evident that during times of geopolitical confrontation with the US, the spectre of the past is produced as present and the form of contestation features dialectics of hypocrisy which harm the norm of democracy. At the same time, we also see a strengthening of the norm of democracy through hybridity both in Iranian encounters with the EU, as well as in the contestation of meanings of democracy within Iran itself.

Indian Time, Walking as Mapping, and Decolonial Methodologies in Mixteco Geographies

There has been an emerging shift by Indigenous geographers and non-Indigenous researchers to integrate decolonial methodologies into research protocols to challenge the Western Cartesian production of geographic knowledge across Native and Indigenous geographies. The commitment of geographic research with Indigenous communities must be to engage in a methodology guided by Indigenous temporality and Indigenous autonomous governance structures that allow the emergence of decolonial possibilities. This article extends the use of a decolonial research approach with Indigenous communities by applying it to Oaxaca, Mexico, in an Indigenous Mixteco municipality. I use a series of salient narratives from my field work in the summer of 2022 in a pueblo Mixteco to inform a decolonial method that engages with Indigenous normative governance structure (Altamirano-Jimenez 2020), “Indian time” (Blackwell 2023a) or Indigenous temporality (Curley and Smith 2024), and walking as map-making (Sletto et al. 2021) to suggest a decolonial Mixteco methodology with pueblos Mixtecos of Oaxaca, Mexico. I suggest that it is our responsibility as researchers, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous, to uphold Indigenous governance across these differing temporalities and geographies, even once we leave the “field site” when dependent on Western academic timelines.

Gendering Zoom Diplomacy: Women’s Participation in Digital Diplomacy

Abstract In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent emergence of “Zoom diplomacy,” scholarship on digital diplomacy has shifted attention from the nexus between social media and foreign policy to exploring the use of digital technologies in diplomatic encounters. While these studies have generated important insights on the affordances and limitations of digital diplomacy, we know much less about the impact of digitalization on the gendered hierarchies and power dynamics that characterize diplomatic practices. In what ways does digitalization of diplomacy shape these hierarchical and gendered practices of diplomacy? In taking stock of recent empirical findings on digital diplomacy, the analysis reviews the varied effects of digitalization on women’s diplomatic agency. Focusing on peace diplomacy, it suggests that digitalization of diplomacy produces ambivalent agency where digitalization opens up some opportunities for disrupting gendered diplomatic practices, but within patriarchal gender structures. The analysis highlights the ways in which digital diplomatic agency and competence are shaped by gendered material and normative structures, suggesting that on the borders of what is conventionally regarded as diplomacy, digitalization may be reinforcing diplomacy as a masculine practice.

Identifying Problems of International Investment Law (IIL) and Evaluating the Focus of Reform Initiatives

The normative structure of international investment law is highly asymmetrical. Generally, current IIAs grant investors significant substantive and procedural rights, while States and affected communities often lack equivalent safeguard. In recent years, scholars have critcised and identified many problems including human rights concerns ingrained in the international investment law framework. The States and other stakeholders also raised many concerns regarding international investment agreements and investor-State dispute settlement. Moreover, there’s agreement on the need for comprehensive reform of IIL to make ISDS effective. Yet, issues with ISDS go beyond systemic flaws, also entrenched in substantive deficiencies in existing IIAs. Furthermore, the current legitimacy crisis provides a unique chance to amend the international IIAs comprehensively. However, the WGIII and ICSID reform initiative primarily focuses on procedural aspects of ISDS, avoiding substantive issues raised by various stakeholders. While procedural reforms are essential, resolving substantive issues is equally necessary.

Do institutional environment and corporate governance structures determine Islamic Banks’ sustainability performance? Evidence across key jurisdictions in Islamic finance industry

This study examines the impact of the institutional environment and corporate governance structures on Islamic banks' sustainability performance (SP). It applies a two-step System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to analyze data gathered on a panel of 32 Islamic banks drawn from nine key Islamic finance jurisdictions from 2016 to 2021. To consistently code and quantify the Islamic banks' SP, we use the Specific Standard Disclosures for the Financial Services Sector introduced by the GRI as a framework of reference. Then, we employ the weighted content analysis method on the sustainability and annual reports of the subjected sample. Our findings indicate that the institutional factors specifically, regulatory guidelines (regulatory isomorphism) and the adherence of Islamic banks to the sustainable finance networks' specifications (normative isomorphism) are not currently determinants of their SP. Contrarily, we observe that the establishment of a sustainability committee and a better experience of sustainability disclosure improve Islamic banks' SP. In contrast to agency theory, board activity is identified to have a significantly negative relationship with SP. An important policy implication of our results is that policymakers should closely monitor Islamic banks' regulatory dependency and enhance their SF ecosystem to positively influence their SP. Finally, future research may leverage on more conducive regulatory frameworks to sustainability transition in these key jurisdictions, more effective normative structures, further disclosure of sustainability committee characteristics, the development of appropriate measures of Islamic banks' digitalization levels, and the availability of more material sustainability data to provide further insights and better understand the determinants of Islamic banks’ SP.

Excluded or included – structural preconditions for occupational well-being among blue-collar temporary agency workers within the Swedish manufacturing industry

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to explore structural preconditions for occupational well-being among blue-collar temporary agency workers within the Swedish manufacturing industry based on managers’ views and expectations of the worker. Through 25 interviews, we investigate how blue-collar temporary agency workers are seen by management using critical realism and the concept of ‘norm circles’ to analyse spatial, relational, sociotechnical and normative structures. We show how structures and norm circles possess alienating or dealienating mechanisms that precondition blue-collar temporary agency workers’ occupational well-being. The findings indicate management’s role as an important gatekeeper in determining structural preconditions for blue-collar temporary agency workers’ occupational well-being. By introducing aspects of skill and acquired skill, along with social aspects changing over time, this article contributes to the existing literature on blue-collar temporary agency workers’ occupational well-being.

Black Male Bodies in White Female Spaces: Power, Dominance, and Myth in Social Work Education

ABSTRACT In 2008, the Council for Social Work Education re-envisioned its accreditation framework. The primary intent was to advance more equitable social work educational environments, which required highlighting curriculum content, and the culture of human interchange. Still, little has been provided regarding their intersectional effects on classroom culture, or students’ educational experiences. To respond to this gap, this study explores the realities of 17 African-American male social work students attending predominantly White collegiate institutions. Interpretive phenomenological analysis, social dominance theory, and Foucauldian power were used to explore and contextualize participants’ experiences. Major findings highlight the nuanced ways gender and race intersect with power, curriculum, and pedagogical practices to protect and promote historically normative structures of racial dominance within social work education.

Enacted appreciation and the meta-normative structure of urgency

Abstract Some considerations are urgent and others are not. Sometimes we invite criticism if we neglect the urgency of our situation, even if our action seems adequate to respond to it. Despite this significance, the literature does not offer a satisfactory analysis of the normative structure of urgency. I examine three views of urgency, drawn from philosophical and adjacent literature, which fail to explain the distinctive criticism we face when we neglect the urgency of our reasons. Instead I argue that urgent considerations pre-empt our deliberation about less urgent considerations. Urgency, then, is a meta-normative phenomenon, setting standards for how we handle and respond to first-order considerations, requiring that we close deliberation. In the face of urgency, appropriate action is not enough: commitment is called for. This is how we enact appreciation of our practical reasons, independently of our carrying out the action they call for.

Юридическая конструкция единого консолидированного требования: теоретическая и практическая актуальность

The article is devoted to the study of qualifying features, ways of organizing of a legal structure of a unified consolidated claim and its role in the development of the doctrine of subordination of creditors' claims. Based on the analysis of the properties of complementarity of theoretical, normative and law enforcement structures, a conclusion was made about the multifunctionality of the design of a unified consolidated claim both in a bankruptcy case and during the period of overcoming temporary financial difficulties.

Living in Marooned Island: Growing Old as Gay Men

Growing old is related with all human beings, but for those whose sexualities do not follow the social normative structure of family, growing old is more related to loneliness. This article will refer to such people with a different sexual orientation, in this case, mainly gay men. It will deal with the qualitative queer methodologies used for this particular topic. Queer gerontology has hardly been dealt with anywhere in research in this country; talking about old gay men seems to many that it does not need any methodology to deal with. But when academics try to investigate, interpret and interject many subjects and various areas, it is seen that the ‘queering communications’, ‘queer conversations’ and ’queer(y)ing ethics’ in qualitative methodology are always considered as similar as any social sciences qualitative methodology, or specifically gender qualitative methodology. This article will try to critically analyse how normative gerontology is very different from queer gerontology. This article includes a sample of 50 gay men in five different categories based on age: 30–35, 35–40, 40–45, 45–50 and 50–55 years. The sample includes gay men from different social and cultural backgrounds, various professional fields and several regions and languages, focusing mainly on people, power and place. Beside these, it will also have two broad categories: one who stays single and one who stays with a partner. Being a gay man brings lots of packages along with life—discrimination, violence, rights and privileges as a citizen of India are some of them that this article will also deal with. This article will try to bring the queer methodological structure into focus with the area of growing old gay men in a society where the socio-legal conditions consider them as criminals. The socio-psychological aloofness begins at an early age, and as one grows older, it corrugates the lives of such gay men as lonely, abhorrent human beings in society.

국가과제와 입법, 그리고 법치국가

As the society has undergone structural changes inequality became deeper, the social risks more unpredictable. It causes to weaken the rule of law in state action. This is because it is difficult to specify substantive standards in the legislation and the need to delegate them to administrative legislation has increased. Paradoxically, however, the normative power of the constitution should be restored by newly recognizing and actively constructing the rule of law. Since the 1987 the constitutional court was activated the constitutional court to make the rule of law, particularly its component principle of the proportionality an essential standard in judicial review. However, the rule of law is not exhausted in this function. The constitutional court performs an ex post review of the state action. Although this is an essential part of the rule of law, it has led to neglect the discourse on the behavioral standards as a sufficient condition.
 In order for the rule of law to guide legislation, the following steps are necessary. First, norms with the same or similar tasks must be able to function as an unified whole, complementing and replacing each other's functions. Second, it should be distinguished between essential and non-essential parts of the regulation, reflecting the specificity of legal relations and normative structures in question. In addition, if the possibility to legislate the essential components is limited, one should contemplate the possibility and limit of regulating the scope and content of delegation to administrative regulation. The rule of law centered on substantive law is of limited constitutional utility if the legislative objectives are realized by enforcement or other decisions at a lower level through the reconciliation of specialized understanding of the subject matter and the interests of the parties. Therefore, while stipulating the minimum substantive standards in the parliament act, the scope of matters to be specified at the lower level, and the organization and procedure for determining them, must be clearly stipulated in the law. The fact that a matter concerned is scheduled to be materialized at a lower level does not fulfill the function of the principle of the rule of law.

Oppressive Forms of Life

ABSTRACT Rahel Jaeggi argues that forms of life ought to be the main reference point for a critical theory of society because the internal normative structure of life forms allows for immanent critique. In this article, I extend her model by systematically considering the possibility of oppressive forms of life. Oppressive forms of life are clusters of practices in which subordinated groups are systematically excluded or disabled from participating in the social processes of interpretation through which the values and purposes of those very practices are determined. The possibility of oppressive forms of life poses a challenge to the method of immanent critique because it seems that any such critique must rely on immanent norms that are at least partly constituted by interpretations and that can therefore be distorted by oppression. I argue that Jaeggi’s model of immanent critique can be extended to respond to that challenge, either by recovering a constitutive form of freedom within all forms of life or by consciously adopting a partisan stance in favour of oppressed and marginalised self-understandings.

X Marks Our Spots: Religion and Gender in Transition

Abstract: This article introduces the special section Comparative X: Religious and Gendered Transitions, linking the experiences of religious exes and transgender people through their mutual and different uses of "X" to mark liminal identity and status. Reframing religious disaffiliation through the lens of transition, the article presses on the overlap and intersection of religious and gendered movements to connect these different but related crossings as Xes. Through this crossed and comparative framework, it offers a way of looking at the norming systems of religion and gender together through the movements of those who cross them. Expanding comparative studies in religion through the interfaithless, it introduces comparative ex-religious studies as a new subfield. Drawing on the literature of religious disaffiliation and queer and transgender studies in religion, the article considers how changing the orientation through which we approach religion from its Xes might lead to a better understanding of how the normative structures of "religion" and "gender" shape one another transitively.