Olive Model Research Articles

“I longed to cherish mirrored reflections”: Mirroring and Black Female Subjectivity in Carrie Mae Weems's Art against Shame

Through staged photographs in which she herself is often the lead actor or through appropriation of historical photographs, contemporary African American artist Carrie Mae Weems deconstructs the shaming of the black female body in American visual culture and offers counter‐hegemonic images of black female beauty. The mirror has been foundational in Western theories of subjectivity and discussions of beauty. In the artworks I analyze in this article, Weems tactically employs the mirror to engage the topos of shame in order to reject it as a way of seeing the self and to offer a new way of lovingly seeing the self. I use the work of Kelly Oliver, Helen Block Lewis, and bell hooks to articulate the relationships among the mirror, shame, and black female subjectivity in Weems's work. Weems's subjects often reckon with what Oliver calls “social melancholy” as they experience shame while standing before the mirror. However, Weems also shows that by looking again—a critical strategy I explain using Oliver's model of “the loving eye”—her subjects can use the mirror as a corrective to the social shaming gaze and make it a stage for establishing black female subjectivity, a gaze of self‐love, and beauty.

A study of the effects of pavement ageing on binder deterioration

This paper discusses the ageing of asphalt binder of long-term pavement performance (LTPP) sites in Southeast Queensland. The effects of pavement age on binder deterioration were examined by performing ‘Shell’ sliding plate micro-viscometer laboratory tests in accordance with Australian and New Zealand Standard AS/NZS 2341.5: 1997. The tests were carried out on bituminous core samples obtained from the LTPP sites to determine the apparent viscosity of the asphalt binder. A binder deterioration model (BDM) was developed by establishing a relationship between the apparent viscosities of the binder with pavement age. The apparent viscosity data generated using the BDM were compared with that computed using the bitumen hardening model developed by Oliver (2003). The two models show a consistent trend in the binder deterioration, and the results were analysed statistically using regression analysis, Root Mean Square Error and t-test methods. The t-test shows that the data generated by the BDM have no significant deviation from the prediction by Oliver's model.

Reflecting on perceived deinstitutionalization of gender‐biased employment practices in accountancy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the changes in gender‐biased employment practices that it is perceived have occurred in New Zealand accountancy workplaces over the last 30 years, using Oliver's model of deinstitutionalization.Design/methodology/approachSequential interviewing was carried out with 69 experienced chartered accountants and three human resource managers, and at a later date with nine young female accountants.FindingsEvidence is presented of perceived political, functional and social pressures cumulatively contributing to deinstitutionalization of overt gender‐biased employment practices, with social and legislative changes being the most influential. Deinstitutionalization appears incomplete as some more subtle gender‐biased practices still remain in New Zealand's accountancy workplaces, relating particularly to senior‐level positions.Research limitations/implicationsThis study adds to understanding of how professions evolve. The purposeful bias in the sample selection, the small size of two of the interviewee groups, and the diversity in the interviewees' workplaces are recognized limitations.Practical implicationsIdentification of further cultural change is required to deinstitutionalize the more subtle gender‐biased practices in accountancy organizations. This could help to avoid a serious deficiency of senior chartered accountants in practice in the future.Originality/valueThis paper represents one of a limited number of empirical applications of the deinstitutionalization model to organizational change and is the first to address the issue of gender‐biased practices in a profession. The use of sequential interviewing of different age groups, in order to identify and corroborate perceptions of organizational change is a novel approach.

Responding to the Shadows: Reimagining Subjectivity in Tadjo's L'Ombre d'Imana

Véronique Tadjo wrote L'Ombre d'Imana (2000) in response to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, for which social narratives that divide an us from a them were partly responsible. Tadjo's text appears to mirror the social fragmentation: the narration is divided between an autobiographical narrator, witnesses' testimonials, and a third-person omniscient narrator recounting fable-like stories. The combined presence of these three narrative voices seems to undermine the conventional authority of each. However, read through the lens of Kelly Oliver's model of subjectivity based on witnessing, the text illustrates a new method of listening to others without reducing their narratives to fit in pre-existing categories. On one level, the narrator demonstrates the practice of hearing witness testimony beyond recognition; on another level, the text calls on the reader to repeat the practice in order to hear the author's account of her experience, communicated by all three narrative voices.

A comparison of the lower transition height obtained with a theoretical model and with IRI

The ionospheric low transition height obtained from a theoretical model is compared to the IRI model using the standard ion composition option and the Danilov and Yaichinikov model option, and to Oliver's model. It is found that 1) the three models agree rather well by day except in summer for low solar activity, while large differences exist by night; 2) the day-night difference of the transition height by the IRI standard option is much smaller in summer and in winter, but is larger in equinox seasons in low solar activity, while the Danilov and Yaichnikov model always yields a rather small difference; 3) increasing solar activity leads to higher theoretical levels particularly by night, while IRI shows an opposite trend. 4) due to transport by wind the simulation gives a transition height depending on local time, while both IRI options take the solar zenith angle for variable. As for the ion composition above 150 km, the distributions of the relative percentage of O + as well as NO + at noon in summer and winter under low solar activity predicted by the theoretical model are approximately consistent with those of the Danilov and Yaichnikov model.