Notion Of Diversity Research Articles

BATEPÁ: UM PASSADO ASSOMBRADO? FANTASMAS, MEMÓRIA E IDENTIDADE NAS REPRESENTAÇÕES LITERÁRIAS DO “MASSACRE DE 1953” EM SÃO TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE

O presente artigo propõe-se pensar as interseções entre a memória e a identidade nas representações do «Massacre de Batepá» pelas poetas Alda Espírito Santo e Conceição Lima. A partir do conceito de fantasmagoria de Avery Gordon e da sociologia das ausências e das emergências de Boaventura de Sousa Santos, concluí que, por motivos geracionais, os fantasmas que habitam os seus textos são muito distintos, manifestando conceções diferentes daquela que será a identidade cultural santomense.

Aesthetic labor and visible diversity: The role in retailing service encounters

This study endeavors to investigate the role of the appearance of customer service staff in forming customer perceptions. It also aims to fill the gap in existing knowledge by exploring the notion of visible diversity, for example, ethnicity, age, gender and perceived sexual orientation of store staff in service encounter from the customers’ perspective. The study adopted a qualitative, inductive approach in data collection using a sample of 30 customers from leading Australian fashion retailers. This study identifies three themes explaining customer perceptions of staff's aesthetic labor, namely mirroring appearance, matching appearance, and charming appearance, which can be explained by the social identity theory, role theory and aesthetic capital. It is found that staff appearance might affect customers’ intention to revisit but does not guarantee sales. In addition, based on signaling theory, the results show that age, ethnicity, gender and perceived sexual orientation of the retail store staff are meaningful factors in determining customers’ attitudes and behavior. This study is one of the first that takes aspects of visible diversity into account along with aesthetic labor and customer experience in a retail setting.

Diversity as an EU cultural policy driver: Neutrality vs affirmativity in the construction of a European cultural space

Abstract This article endeavours to contribute to the debate on how notions of diversity in European politics serve to consolidate socio-economic inequality and ethno-nationalism. Starting from the premise that immigrant minorities are a key dimension of European cultural diversity, the article explores the notion of diversity in EU cultural policy. It examines the incorporation of the ‘immigrant minorities’ dimension into the formulation of primary and secondary EU legislation in force since 2000. Qualitative content analysis of legal and policy documents serves to analyse two axes of inclusion: (1) the recognition of immigrant minorities in the definition of a European cultural diversity and (2) the identification of inequality and discrimination as salient factors of socio-economic exclusion. The assessment of the evolution of the notion of diversity shows that despite the increase in immigrants’ socio-economic exclusion and of ethno-nationalism, EU cultural policy uses a neutral notion of cultural diversity. It is argued that this condition of neutrality favours the diversity-inequality tension and the hegemonic position of the nation state dimension in the articulation of a European cultural space.

Beyond the Spectrum: Rethinking Autism

The "spectrum" has become the dominant metaphor for conceptualizing autism, with fundamental consequences for notions of disability, diversity, and normality. In this article, we draw on ethnographic research with autistic communities to explore how the notion of the autism spectrum has become a focus of explicit identification, reflection, and contestation. To further this inquiry, we place these debates into conversation with earlier debates regarding another spectrum—the Kinsey Scale, a "spectrum" for conceptualizing sexual orientation that first appeared in 1948 but has been critiqued since the 1970s. How might responses to the Kinsey Scale (like the Klein Grid) contribute to rethinking the autism spectrum? This is a question about the cultural and political implications of metaphors and conceptual models. It is of broad importance because the spectrum metaphor is being extended to a range of conditions beyond autism itself. Our goal is thus to build on insights from sexuality studies as well as the insights of autistic persons, advocates, and researchers who wish to forestall the naturalization of "the spectrum." In doing so, we seek to contribute to a discussion of what alternative frameworks might bring to questions of social justice, ability, and human flourishing.

Designing Better Playlists with Monte Carlo Tree Search

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the study of automated playlist generation — music recommender systems that focus on modeling preferences over song sequences rather than on individual songs in isolation. This paper addresses this problem by learning personalized models on the fly of both song and transition preferences, uniquely tailored to each user’s musical tastes. Playlist recommender systems typically include two main components: i) a preferencelearning component, and ii) a planning component for selecting the next song in the playlist sequence. While there has been much work on the former, very little work has been devoted to the latter. This paper bridges this gap by focusing on the planning aspect of playlist generation within the context of DJ-MC, our playlist recommendation application. This paper also introduces a new variant of playlist recommendation, which incorporates the notion of diversity and novelty directly into the reward model. We empirically demonstrate that the proposed planning approach significantly improves performance compared to the DJ-MC baseline in two playlist recommendation settings, increasing the usability of the framework in real world settings.

(Re)mixing Foucault and Deleuze

The purpose of this article is to explore further and through other examples what happens when a Foucauldian conception of power is remixed with “the theoretical toolbox of Deleuze” to address diverse notions of power in critical qualitative science inquiry. The article experiments with Foucauldian power/knowledge and the Deleuzian machine by using the metaphor of capoeira to argue that critical qualitative science can maintain its social justice focus as well as align conceptions of power with a postmodern framework. The authors illustrate how capoeira can function as a conceptual frame for shifting the onto-epistemologies of critical qualitative science inquiry.

Sacred Ecology of Plants

With developments in the botanical sciences regarding signaling and behavior, the idea of plant sensitivity becomes an increasingly real possibility. In conjunction with empirically argued principles of percipience, intelligence, and memory in the plant world, the vegetative soul takes on a new signilcance. Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and other Western commentators delineated between the ensoulment of plants, animals, and humans. They regarded the vegetative soul as the incomplete basis for the emergence of animal and human life. The vegetative soul resonates deeply in the cosmologies of Aboriginal Australian people who regard plants as spiritually imbued participants in creation stories, or the Dreaming. Circumventing a hierarchical typology of ensoulment, the Australian poet Les Murray invokes these diverse notions of soul in his botanical poetry. Shaped by the convergence of Christian beliefs and traditional Australian indigenous conceptions of mora, Murray’s verse positions plants within a sacred ecology as ensouled beings with intelligent capacities proper to their modes of existence.

Algorithmic and subjective measures of lexical diversity in bilingual written corpora: a discussion

Lexical development plays an important role in L2 acquisition/learning and has therefore been widely investigated, especially with regard to the lexical diversity of texts produced by L2 learners; as a result, several indices have been created to measure this feature. Nevertheless, L2 learner production, especially when children are concerned, is frequently relatively limited in scope, an aspect that makes it difficult to measure their lexical diversity. The aim of the study presented in this article is to discuss the applicability of several measures of lexical diversity on small texts samples (two algorithmic measures [HD-D and MTLD] as well as subjective ratings by untrained raters). The corpus comprises written productions from 105 sixth-grade Portuguese immigrants in the French and German-speaking parts of Switzerland. The results enable a deeper understanding of the very notion of lexical diversity and ways of measuring it.

Doha’s cultural armature on display: a response to Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums put the Nation and the World on Display

ABSTRACTAfter a brief discussion of the rapidly changing international museum world in Doha, this response piece engages with Peggy Levitt’s arguments around cultural armature and the role of museums in managing a city’s diversity, focusing on Doha, Qatar. Given the dominant migrant foreign population (88 per cent) and the careful protection of national citizenship in Qatar, the role of museums in managing diversity presents a situation that contrasts with older nation states: rather than encouraging inclusion, the museums in Qatar and the Arabian Peninsula states play a role in constructing and protecting a pure concept of national identity on behalf of a minority citizen population that deliberately fails to embrace any notion of diversity. This piece uses brief case studies to illustrate this process of exclusion, expanding Levitt’s original argument.

The development of morphological complexity: A cross-linguistic study of L2 French and English

Studies in second language acquisition (SLA) increasingly rely on measures of linguistic complexity to assess second language (L2) proficiency and development. While an important number of studies have risen to the call of studying a broader range of complexity related constructs (Bulté and Housen, 2012; Norris and Ortega, 2009), few have examined morphological complexity, instead focusing on syntax and lexis. The use of morphology measures is especially warranted in light of complexity trade-offs believed to occur both in language development – when growth in one linguistic domain (e.g. syntax) is temporarily prioritized over growth in another (e.g. morphology) – as well as crosslinguistically, in the form of balancing effects between different domains of the linguistic system. From both a cross-linguistic and developmental perspective, then, the current emphasis in SLA research on measures of syntactic complexity does not comprehensively gauge overall (grammatical) complexity in learner data. This study focuses on the development of morphological complexity using three previously proposed measures based on the notion of morphological diversity, with special attention to the verbal inflectional system (Horst and Collins, 2006; Malvern et al., 2004; Pallotti, 2015). Not only does the verbal system pose significant challenges to language learners, it is also the locus of important differences between inflectionally richer languages, like French, and inflectionally poorer languages, like English. The study investigates cross-linguistic differences in the development of morphological complexity and the effectiveness of the three morphological complexity measures as indicators of proficiency. The analyses were carried out on a multilingual corpus of 100 L2 French and 100 L2 English oral narratives, representing four different proficiency levels in both languages. Results indicate a more continuous increase of morphological complexity in L2 French than in L2 English and underline the importance of morphology as an essential component of a multidimensional view of linguistic complexity in SLA.

Rethinking board diversity with the behavioural theory of corporate governance: opportunities and challenges for advances in theorising

In this study, a cross-theoretical hybridization between diversity archetypes and the behavioural theory of corporate governance is proposed. Within an integrative theoretical framework, I discuss three variants of the board’s social setting: diversity as variety; separation; and disparity. Their influence on the mechanisms of the socially-situated and socially-constituted agency, and in consequence the socially-constructed boardroom reality, is considered. The model stipulates what kind of impact individual agency perception, associated with each diversity archetype, can be expected to have on board task effectiveness (monitoring/control, resource-provision, and strategy-making/consulting). There are altogether six theoretical propositions made in this paper. The study represents an application of the behavioural theory of corporate governance in the theory-building paper. I utilise the notion of diversity and the theory of subgroups from existing group effectiveness literature. The proposed theoretical framework strongly benefits from recent taxonomically-systematizing efforts in the area of diversity research. The proposed model also allows for due consideration of behavioural patterns in the boardroom. This framework scores high on its generalisability to a wider population and realism of context, but low on its precision of measurement. A discussion of the model’s limitations unfolds in the wider context of the challenges and paradoxes/conundrums with which the community of corporate governance scholars is invariably confronted. The model suffers from a limited translatability of findings into actionable managerial implications and recommendations of the regulator, as expressed in corporate governance codes.

Weighted Discounting On Group Diversity, Time-Inconsistency, and Consequences for Investment

This paper studies groups whose members disagree about the method of discounting. In particular, we provide a comprehensive treatment of discount functions that are given by the weighted average of the group members’ discount functions. This class of “weighted discount functions” admits a natural notion of group diversity, which has consequences for behavior. We show that more diverse groups discount less heavily and make more patient decisions. Within a real options framework, for example, greater group diversity leads to delayed investment. Finally, we show that well-known behavioral discount functions can be written as a weighted discount function. Therefore, all results in this paper find a correspondence in a single agent setting with non-standard, behavioral time preferences. In particular, we provide an equilibrium optimal stopping result for individuals who are aware of their time-inconsistency, but lack commitment.

Ecopedagogy as an element of citizenship education: The dialectic of global/local spheres of citizenship and critical environmental pedagogies

Emerging from popular education movements in Latin America, ecopedagogy is a critical environmental pedagogy which focuses on understanding the connections between social conflict and environmentally harmful acts carried out by humans. These connections are often politically hidden in education. Ecopedagogy, while being pluralistic, is in its essence defined as a critical, transformative environmental pedagogy centred on increasing social and environmental justice. Its ultimate aim is to find a sustainable balance between the conflicting goals of diverse notions of human progress and environmental wellbeing. This article is based on two comparative research projects. The first was a qualitative study on ecopedagogical models involving 31 expert ecopedagogues in Argentina, Brazil and the Appalachian region of the United States. They were asked for their perspectives on how successful ecopedagogy can be defined within the contexts in which they taught and conducted research. The second study analysed how 18 international expert scholars of citizenship and/or environmental pedagogy from six world continents regarded the ways in which citizenship intersects with environmental issues and the pedagogies of both in an increasingly globalised world, with specific focus on Global Citizenship Education. Results from the first study indicate the following two needs for effective environmental pedagogies: (1) for there to be an ecopedagogical paradigm shift in environmental teaching and research; and (2) for ecopedagogy to be an essential element of citizenship education (and vice versa). This article examines how conflicting processes of globalisation both help and hinder in achieving such a paradigm shift by decentring traditional nation-state citizenship. Results from the second study indicate how critical teaching within and between different spheres of citizenship (e.g. local, national, global, and planetary citizenship) is essential for ecopedagogy (and the ecopedagogical element).

MISCIGENANDO O CÍRCULO DO PODER: AÇÕES AFIRMATIVAS, DIVERSIDADE RACIAL E SOCIEDADE DEMOCRÁTICA

Este artigo defende a constitucionalidade de cotas raciais em concursos públicos a partir da reconstrução de um argumento comumente utilizado por muitos de seus opositores. Muitos deles afirmam que ações afirmativas são inerentemente problemáticas por causa da miscigenação do povo brasileiro, um claro empecilho à identificação de seus beneficiários. Segundo esses atores sociais, nosso amalgamento racial e cultural permitiu a construção de uma moralidade pública responsável pela formação de relações harmônicas entre negros e brancos. Embora este trabalho reconheça a relevância do pluralismo racial na formação da identidade nacional brasileira, ele afirma que ações afirmativas em concursos públicos são cabíveis porque o grupo que controla quase todas as instituições públicas e privadas brasileiras é racialmente homogêneo. Tal fato é produto de processos sistemáticos de exclusão social que afetam brasileiros cujos fenótipos denotam origem africana ou ameríndia, a mesma razão pela qual oportunidades profissionais estão concentradas nas mãos dos membros do grupo racial dominante. Com o intuito de contribuir para a transformação dessa situação, este ensaio faz uso do conceito substantivo de diversidade e de certos princípios da Administração Pública para advogar a miscigenação dos círculos do poder por meio de ações afirmativas. Pensamos que isso deve ser visto como um requisito essencial para o avanço da democratização da sociedade brasileira.

A complicated passport: racialized realities and lessons from visible minority women teachers

This article presents key findings derived from the experiences of visible minority woman as teachers in Canada, whose lived realities reveal myriad instances of compromise. The ethnic, cultural and racial diversity among teachers is an area that has garnered attention as it pertains to equitable work environments, teacher–student relations, and multicultural education. The challenges and responsibility of representing one’s racialized identity, ethnicity, culture, and religion while finding oneself marginalized within mainstream populace is critically examined through their narratives and reflexivity. In instances of blatant discrimination, bridging the public and private sphere, to moments of fulfillment, the resilience of these women is a defining factor of their success within adversity. Through their experiences there is opportunity to inform and advance the notions of diversity, representation, and distinctiveness of teachers in educational settings and the impact this has on an intercontinental symbol of society values in education.

Locally Diverse Constellations From the Special Orthogonal Group

To optimize rotated multidimensional constellations over a single-input single-output Rayleigh fading channel, a family of rotation matrices is constructed for all dimensions which are a power of 2. This family is a one-parameter subgroup of the group of rotation matrices, and is located using a gradient descent scheme on this Lie group. The parameter defining the family is chosen to optimize the cutoff rate of the constellation. The optimal rotation parameter is computed explicitly for low signal-to-noise ratios. These rotations outperform full-diversity algebraic rotations in terms of cutoff rate at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit error rate at high SNR in dimension $n = 4$ . However, a quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation rotated by such a matrix lacks full diversity, in contrast with the conventional wisdom that good signal sets exhibit full diversity. A new notion of diversity, referred to as local diversity, is introduced to attempt to account for this behavior. Roughly, a locally fully diverse constellation is fully diverse only in small neighborhoods. A local variant of the minimum product distance is also introduced and is shown experimentally to be a superior predictor of constellation performance than the minimum product distance in dimension $n = 4$ .

The 3-D Interconnect Technology Landscape

This overview article sheds light into the diverse notions and terms associated with 3-D circuits. It categorizes and classifies the various technologies/techniques and helps the experienced researcher as well as a newcomer to find an orientation in the complex 3-D landscape.

Network Diversity: A Security Metric for Evaluating the Resilience of Networks Against Zero-Day Attacks

Diversity has long been regarded as a security mechanism for improving the resilience of software and networks against various attacks. More recently, diversity has found new applications in cloud computing security, moving target defense, and improving the robustness of network routing. However, most existing efforts rely on intuitive and imprecise notions of diversity, and the few existing models of diversity are mostly designed for a single system running diverse software replicas or variants. At a higher abstraction level, as a global property of the entire network, diversity and its effect on security have received limited attention. In this paper, we take the first step toward formally modeling network diversity as a security metric by designing and evaluating a series of diversity metrics. In particular, we first devise a biodiversity-inspired metric based on the effective number of distinct resources. We then propose two complementary diversity metrics, based on the least and the average attacking efforts, respectively. We provide guidelines for instantiating the proposed metrics and present a case study on estimating software diversity. Finally, we evaluate the proposed metrics through simulation.

A study of alliance dynamics, accounting and trust-as-practice

Adapting Callon's three-phased model of translation, this paper investigates the formation and development of an outsourcing alliance. It also maps the changing connections between trust and accounting. Instead of theorising trust as a noun, the paper defines trust as situated practice: an accomplishment constructed through the actions and routinized practices of multiple actors, both human and non-human. Trust/trustworthiness was observed to be not one thing but many - diverse notions emerging from the ‘doing’ of routines enacted in the name of trust. Accounting was centrally entangled in the birth of the alliance, its structuring and in the routines to find and select trustworthy suppliers, to monitor them regularly in order to justify ongoing trusting, and to repair growing distrust. Finally, the origins of the alliance crucially affected its subsequent trajectory - earlier investment in finding trustworthy suppliers meant that later poor performance not only generated strong disappointment but came to be seen as a breach of trust and a failure to honour promises.

Cosmopolitan Berkeley and the Concept of Cultural Diversity in an American University

The argument that cultural and other forms of diversity enhance the educational experience of all students is generally associated with post-1960 efforts to expand the presence of disadvantaged groups on the campuses of America’s universities and colleges. In the case of the University of California-Berkeley, arguments on the merits of cultural diversity have much earlier roots in the historical enrollment of international students. Debates in the late 1800s and early twentieth century revolved around the appropriateness of enrolling foreign students, particularly those from Asia. The result was an important intellectual discussion on the merits of diversity and the ideals of a cosmopolitan university that was eventually reframed to focus largely on underrepresented domestic students. In this essay, I discuss how the notion of diversity, and its educational benefits, first emerged as a value at Berkeley. I then briefly discuss the significant increase of international students at Berkeley and other public universities. Thus far, the primary impetus of this increase has been mostly financial—Berkeley has faced significant public disinvestment, seeks new revenue sources, and can charge international students tuition rates similar to elite private colleges and universities. By targeting 20 percent of all undergraduates as international or out-of-state (US-resident non-Californians)—the majority international—the Berkeley campus is essentially diversifying its student body. How does having a more globally inclusive enrollment fit into our contemporary ideas of diversity? I attempt a brief discussion of this question and the policy challenges generated by the dramatic increase in international students at the undergraduate level at Berkeley and other UC campuses.