Notion Of Threat Research Articles

China as a Threat and Balancing Behavior in the Realm of Emerging Technologies

In the last years, China and the United States of America (US) have engaged in unprecedented competition in emerging technologies (ETs), in a context of China’s growing presence and shifting position in the international system. Drawing on data between 2017 and 2023 and strategic decisions, such as bans and export controls directed at China’s companies and the changing alignment posture of Western states, we employ the Balance of Threat (BoT) theory to examine China’s changing aggregate power, offensive capabilities and aggressive intentions, while also establishing the vanishing importance of the geographic dimension. We then turn to the behavior of the US and Western states by drawing on the BoT theory, which suggests balancing as a prime strategy to counter the threat and identify instances of the formation of a balancing coalition against China. We demonstrate how the notion of threat in ETs can be approached and conclude with a characterization of balancing in the domain of ETs that resonates with the notion of “gradual balancing”, in addition to outlining suggestions for future studies.

Pain neuroscience education : a practice in motion

Chronic pain is poorly explained by the pathological biomechanical model. Pain neuroscience education (PNE) aims to help patients reconceptualize their pain by understanding its physiology and dissociating it from the notion of threat. It must be combined with functional re-education. Catastrophism and kinesiophobia exacerbate the perception of pain and are an obstacle to movement. Gradual exposure to movement, whether virtual or real, is a tool for managing pain more effectively and regaining optimum functionality. According to the literature, PNE reduces pain intensity, catastrophizing, kinesiophobia, disability and improves functionality.

Cotton, Whiteness, and Other Poisons

AbstractThis article examines how racial capitalism has shaped the ecological and technological dynamics of cotton production in the United States South. Cotton’s destructive dependence on chemicals and on the extraction of lives and resources was animated and enabled by anti-Blackness, which sanctioned a systematic hostility to life that encoded environmental violence in plantation landscapes from the seed to the root. Agrotechnological notions of scientific progress and development conceived places, plants, and Black people as interchangeable parts. Tracing these trajectories during slavery and after abolition, the article focuses on two dynamics: the use of chemicals to augment soil fertility and manage cotton’s ecologies, and the deployment of chemicals to protect cotton monocultures. In both instances, the manipulations of cotton’s ecologies and biophysical properties helped maintain plantation profitability and dominance in the face of conjoined crises of political-ecological and racial control. Racialized conceptions of chemical-scientific “innovation,” relations of indebtedness, and notions of threat also siphoned capital gains from Black workers and communities. By converting waste products into fertilizers and poisons, planters and industrialists continued to render Black communities, their labor, and their land as fungible but necessary components in the industrialization of racial capitalism.

Expert views about missing AI narratives: is there an AI story crisis?

Stories are an important indicator of our vision of the future. In the case of artificial intelligence (AI), dominant stories are polarized between notions of threat and myopic solutionism. The central storytellers—big tech, popular media, and authors of science fiction—represent particular demographics and motivations. Many stories, and storytellers, are missing. This paper details the accounts of missing AI narratives by leading scholars from a range of disciplines interested in AI Futures. Participants focused on the gaps between dominant narratives and the untold stories of the capabilities, issues, and everyday realities of the technology. One participant proposed a “story crisis” in which these narratives compete to shape the public discourse on AI. Our findings indicate that dominant narratives distract and mislead public understandings and conceptions of AI. This suggests a need to pay closer attention to missing AI narratives. It is not simply about telling new stories, it is about listening to existing stories and asking what is wanted from AI. We call for realistic, nuanced, and inclusive stories, working with and for diverse voices, which consider (1) story-teller; (2) genre, and (3) communicative purpose. Such stories can then inspire the next generation of thinkers, technologists, and storytellers.

Elaborating the concept of threat in contingency theory: An integration with moral outrage and situational crisis communication theory

The notion of threat is central to contingency theory in general and its specific applications to crisis communication. Contingency theory researchers have noted how the concept of threat needs to be developed in more depth. This paper integrates moral outrage into the threat appraisal model by refining and reusing the threat level variable. We advance an explanation of extreme threat level crises based upon moral outrage and articulate a series of propositions about their effects on the threat appraisal process. Specifically, this manuscript incorporates research related to extreme crises and moral outrage to advance the new conceptualization of threat appraisal that features the role of emotions in crisis communication theory and practice. We believe enhancing threat assessment improves the application of contingency theory to crisis communication and may be a factor to consider more generally for how threat is conceptualized within contingency theory.

THE CONCEPT OF THREAT IN THE CRIMINAL LEGISLATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

In the Criminal Code of the Republic of Moldova, the concept of threat designates not a socially dangerous phenomenon, but a socially dangerous act. From this perspective, the content of the concept of threat is disclosed in this article. In the Criminal Code, the notion of threat designates the prejudicial action, committed with intent, which is one of the types of mental violence, which involves the exercise of an informational influence on the victim, which has the effect of intimidating it, which assumes that the victim is provided with information about causing her harm, which involves partial or full impairment of the victim’s ability to make decisions and express opinions. The notion of threat must be defined in Chapter XIII of the general part of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Moldova. This definition must be abstracted from details concerning concrete crime components. This would contribute to the interpretation and application of liability for the threat in strict accordance with the principle of legality.

The Notion of Threat in Linguistic and Legal Expert Understanding and in Belarusians’ Naïve Linguistic Picture of the World

In our research we perform a comparative analysis of the category of threat in the scientific and naïve pictures of the world. In the former case we treat threat as an object of research in modern linguistic text evaluation, in the latter – as a concept reflected in the naïve language consciousness. The analysis is based on the characteristics of the parametric forensic linguistic model of threat as defined in article 186 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus, namely offences committed verbally, and on the survey data collected from individuals residing in Vitebsk Region (100 respondents). The methodological basis of our study comprises methods of parameterization, a survey, the comparative method as well as statistical tools for preparing and processing the resultant survey information. As a result, the research provides a detailed description of identification parameters of threat as they are defined by the Belarusian national legislation: 1) type of offensive action; 2) subjectivity of action; 3) targetness; 4) temporal markedness. The attempt to construct a parametric model of threat as a phenomenon of everyday language consciousness is based on the results gathered from the survey conducted on residents of Vitebsk Region (60 female respondents: 40 – urban residents, 20 – rural residents; 40 – male respondents: 30 – urban residents, 10 – rural residents). The comparative analysis shows that there is a noticeable gap between the scientific and naïve perceptions of threat. Unlike the forensic linguistic model of threat, its perception by Belarusian individuals does not have identifiable features for markedness and is recognized at the intuitive level; the parameter that the naïve picture of the world regards as important is a harmful action. It also appears worthwhile to note that though there are no gender or age peculiarities in everyday perception of threat as an illegal action, it features distinct local specificity.

Intersections of Forced Migration and Gender in Physical Education.

Rising refugee movements have affected global society in general and the social system of sports in particular. The main structures and discourses of the sports system are also reflected in physical education (PE) at schools, which can, therefore, be regarded as an integral part of it. PE can play a significant role in the sports biographies of young people from refugee backgrounds. It is the only organizational framework of sports that all children and adolescents experience, and for many young people from refugee backgrounds it is the first and sometimes the only context in which they come into contact with sports in the host country. Consequently, PE teachers have a special opportunity to support students from refugee backgrounds in discovering their sports-related interests and to encourage them to deepen these interests outside school. Research suggests that teachers interact with learners from refugee backgrounds with stereotypical expectations for how they should behave and act. These expectations are structured along gender-specific logics, with male persons from refugee backgrounds often being classified as violent and threatening and female individuals from refugee backgrounds as fragile and oppressed. Against this background, through an interview study with 31 PE teachers from schools in Germany, we investigate teachers' perspectives on young people from refugee backgrounds. Specifically, we examine which intertwined gendered and racialized patterns of perception and interpretation become apparent when PE teachers talk about this group of students. Constructivist, intersectional, and postcolonial approaches are used to analyze the interviews and answer the research questions. The analytical screening of the interviews reveals that gendered and racialized perceptions of threat and vulnerability dominate the teachers' mindsets. Four main patterns that follow these gendered and racialized thoughts can be detected in the data material: victimization and vulnerabilization, notions of threat and impulsivity, claims for assimilation and normalization, and demands for discipline. These perceptions can influence the developmental opportunities of students from refugee backgrounds and reduce their participation and involvement in school sports and out-of-school sports contexts. Based on these results, we discuss strategies that might support (future) teachers in breaking stereotypes and overcoming narrow perceptions of young people from refugee backgrounds.

Airport Security and Visibility: Security as Visualization and Its In-Place Performance

Based on field research at Václav Havel Airport Prague and building on Actor-Network Theory, the article inquires the role of visibility in production of the contemporary form of airport security. Visualization is understood as the acquisition of comprehensive information about a limited set of characteristics in sparse time. The article explores how the mode of vision opted for—the chosen set of characteristics—is found accountable for shaping the notions of threat and security. The article identifies the security and social consequences of particular mode of vision employment and inquires the limits of visibility.

Conflicting Imaginaries of the Border: The Construction of African Asylum Seekers in the Israeli Political Discourse

ABSTRACTBetween 2005 and 2013, around 50,000 migrants from Sudan and Eritrea crossed the Egyptian border to seek refuge in Israel. While some of them were originally perceived as survivors of genocide entitled to claim asylum, border crossing has quickly become an object of concern and technologies obstructing it have been deployed (including a 250 kilometer-long fence, detention centers, and criminalization of unauthorized border crossing). Against this backdrop, this article analyzes the competing political narratives that have underpinned these policies of containment and bordering towards African migrants and asylum seekers. Based on the study of political debates, political speeches, and several months of fieldwork, it investigates the discursive construction of these newcomers’ entry into the territory, focusing on the role of the border in this construction. The article shows that the dominant political narrative has resorted to securitizing discursive strategies involving the notions of threat, flood, and crime which have enabled the formulation of exclusionary policies framed as tools of border and boundaries control and protection. The analysis further reveals that a more marginal counter-narrative has attempted to challenge the dominant securitizing strategies but has failed to articulate an effective alternative discourse.

Threatening the patriarchy: teaching as performance

This article brings into conversation theories of performance and performativity to argue that the analogy of a teacher as a performer is a very complex discourse that both empowers and disempowers women teachers. As the field of teachers is increasingly comprised of women and the education policy and administrative leadership fields is increasingly comprised of men, there is an equally disturbing increase in the amount of disciplining, standardisation, and evaluation of teachers’ practices within schools in recent decades. The author argues that the perceived feminisation of the teaching field produces a situation in which teachers’ performance is threatening to the patriarchal institutions, causing further surveillance upon women and their role. Yet, in contrast, an analogy of performance also can allow teachers to subvert hegemonic patriarchal practices. Central to this discussion are notions of threat, corporeality, and temporality. The author concludes with examples of how teachers and researchers have successfully subverted and re-appropriated the teaching as performance analogy for the betterment of teachers, despite the complexity of this discourse.

The Digital Book (R)evolution

Digital media have been rapidly changing book writing and reading. Digital discourses are often framed by notions of threat to, and contrast with, print, which obscure the complex relations between older and newer forms of the book. Digital forms both remediate print and are shaped by digital affordances and conventions from a myriad other digital media. This article proposes new ways of looking at the continuity between print and digital books (and digital storytelling more widely) and begins to sketch a typology that also takes into consideration hybridization and the influence of other digital media forms.

How to communicate on pests and invasive alien plants? Conclusions of the EPPO/CoE/IUCN‐ ISSG/DGAV/UC/ESAC Workshop

How to communicate on pests and invasive alien plants? Conclusions of the EPPO/CoE/IUCN‐ ISSG/DGAV/UC/ESAC Workshop

“Catnip for Cranks”: Depictions of Canadian Threat in US Conservative News Commentary

This article examines how conservative television news commentary in the United States portrayed Canada in the years following 9/11. It draws on Richard Hofstadter’s formulation of the paranoid style in American politics for insight into the rhetoric used by these commentators. Adopting a critical geopolitics perspective to shed new light on Canadian–American relations, the article explores how conservative pundits framed Canada in the context of the global war on terror and portrayed the country as a threat to US security. It examines how this threatening version of Canada was enabled by a complementary set of depictions that scripted the country as having embraced an extreme and dangerous form of liberalism. It concludes by showing how the intertwining of these notions of threat and liberalism in Canada provided pundits with an accessible script for discrediting liberal perspectives in the US and championing a “return” to a conservative American identity as essential for winning the war on terror.

The Threat of Space: A Discussion between Bashir Makhoul and Gordon Hon

Bashir Makhoul and Gordon Hon are the artist and curator, respectively, of the installation Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost. Many of the ideas behind the work were developed in discussions between them and here they have formalized this process in a transcribed discussion conducted after the first manifestation of the piece in Beijing. They have also just completed work on a co-authored book on contemporary Palestinian art and they discuss the context of Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost specifically as a Palestinian artwork in China. They raise many of the issues that were discussed during its production, such as surveillance and the merging of virtual and real space in modern military and colonial conflict. They explore the notion of threat of space as manifested by surveillance, military training and colonial occupation.

Intelligence, Threat, Risk and the Challenge of Oversight

Intelligence studies has traditionally talked in terms of ‘threats’ though the idea of ‘risk’ has now entered its language, as it has so many other areas of policy. The key distinction remains the notion of threat of intentional action to cause harm: this is the central preoccupation of intelligence agencies that would not normally consider risks that might arise from, say, the unintended outcomes of accidents or interrupted supplies of resources. Another distinction is that intelligence is normally preoccupied with increasing knowledge in conditions of ignorance or uncertainty, while risk analysis is more likely to be quantifiable. The perception of a ‘new terrorism’ has led to the importation of the ‘precautionary principle’ to intelligence with potentially dangerous consequences for democracy. This requires enhanced thinking and practice with respect to the oversight of intelligence activities, especially in developing security networks.

Living in the Making of History! Two Victorian Female Travellers’ Representations of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War

At the beginning of the twentieth century a quarter of the Earth’s surface was under British rule. Set in exotic places and recounting terrifying adventures with strange peoples, travel books enjoyed great popularity in the Victorian era and contributed to the culture of the imperial years. In 1877 the Zulu kingdom remained a major obstacle to Lord Carnarvon’s scheme to federate Natal and the Cape Colony with the Boer Republics. Two years later it was invaded and eventually annexed to Natal in 1887. In the late 1870s and early 1880s two courageous women travelled to South Africa: Mrs Louisa Hutchinson, married to an army officer, who wrote In Tents in the Transvaal (1879) and Lady Florence Douglas Dixie—the first female war correspondent—who published In The Land of Misfortune (1882). Admittedly, Hutchinson’s and Dixie’s journeys were an expression of protest and power. If the Zulus were being erased from history, their narratives, recording their experiences on the controversial terrain in South Africa, tried to prevent them from being erased by history. Evolving around the notion of threat that is at the heart of war, the unjustifiable nature of the conflict is ingeniously conveyed in its displacement and complexification.

U.S. National Security Discourse and the Political Construction of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

ABSTRACT The controversy concerning oil development in the federally protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska is constituted by actors with multiple perspectives on security. Development of the region is often claimed by the Bush Administration as a national security imperative, necessary to alleviate U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Other participants in the debate, including environmentalists, oil companies, the Alaskan state government, organized labor, and Alaskans, perceive different threats and hold conflicting perspectives on security. This article adds to research on the “social construction of nature” by exploring the constitutive effects of the invocation of national security discourse on the refuge, both as a place and as the subject of national debate. It combines perspectives on “social nature” and “critical geopolitics” to explore how this invocation helps construct notions of threat and identity within the debate. This is accomplished via textual analysis of articles of public argumentation, including congressional testimony, press releases, and both environmental and antienvironmental web sites.

Taking Fathers Seriously

This article explores contemporary developments in men's lives in relation to fathering. It explores ‘changing’ family structures and the attendant consequences for the lives and identities of fathers. It identifies key initiatives that have been developed by the post‐1997 Labour administration in relation to fathers and explores the thinking behind such initiatives, as well as more general initiatives in relation to supporting families. It identifies an important theme promoted by the administration—fathers are actual or potential resources for their children. It then goes on to look at how fathers appear to be constructed within child protection social work where notions of threat appear more dominant as a theme in relation to men generally. The article goes on to explore the possibilities within the current climate for practices in relation to fathers that are more attuned to the complexities of their lives.

The Violence in Our Schools: What Can a Psychoanalytically Informed Approach Contribute?

In the first part of the overview the author draws on the papers in this issue to support the argument that school violence is but one form of social violence with which modern life confronts us. Without ‘modeling’ from the top down, it is hard to imagine how viable programs for violence prevention in schools can be developed and implemented. Coercion is the rule within most social systems, with the exception of families where secure attachments dominate. In secure organizations social influence is exercised in a framework dominated by an awareness of the mental states, concerns, thoughts, and feelings of individuals within the system—that is, a capacity for mentalization. The creation of a peaceful learning environment requires enhancement of the child's consciousness of his or her own awareness of others' awareness of him/her. In the second part of the overview the author questions whether all violence is understandable in these ways or in any way at all. He suggests for reconsideration the classical psychoanalytic notion of threat as a manifestation of a destructive drive. He speculates that violence may occur in two ways and for two reasons which are often conflated and confused. A psychoanalytic theory of this second type of violence is briefly outlined.