Phenomenon Sui Generis Research Articles

Making Room for the Solution: A Critical and Applied Phenomenology of Conflict Space

ABSTRACT This essay discusses the normative significance of the spatial dimension of conflict events. Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with political actors – politicians, officials, and activists – and on Heidegger’s account of spatiality in Being and Time, I will argue that the experience of conflict space is co-constituted by the respective conflict participants, as well as the location where the conflict unfolds. Location and conflict parties’ (self-)understandings ‘open up’ a space that enables and constrains ways of seeing and acting. Yet, a purely transcendental phenomenology will remain oblivious to the quasi-transcendental, societal structures of power that shape a person’s conflict experience. To illuminate these facets of the phenomenon, phenomenology has to join forces with critical theory. Introducing Garland-Thomson’s feminist distinction of fit/misfit, I will illustrate how power shapes conflict space in manifold ways. The essay thereby fills a gap in the philosophical literature that rarely analyses political conflict as a phenomenon sui generis.

Oscillation and Oscillating Structures in Syntax

SummaryLinguistic expressions are very often indeterminate and have several possible readings. Syntactic indeterminacy may result from different underlying structures, from polysemous elements, or from so-called oscillation. Unlike the former two, oscillation cannot be reduced to one or more discrete interpretations in a given context, it is fundamentally non-resolvable. While oscillating structures do not hamper successful communication, they present a problem for linguistic analyses and categorizations. The relevant literature does not address oscillation systematically; if anything, it is treated in connection with problems of categorization. In this paper, oscillation is perceived as a phenomenonsui generis. We first give a definition of oscillation against the backdrop of other indeterminate structures and outline their relevance for a proper understanding of older and less formal varieties. Then we propose a tentative typology of oscillating structures and their potential triggers in selected Slavic languages.

The Representation of Racial and Ethnic Conflict in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah”

The relevance of the research undertaken is connected with the current tendency of multiculturalism in fiction, which has been developing and transforming with the appearance of new writers, to be non-static. Many contemporary authors have already become impossible to be correlated with a specific national literature since they have had the experience of living in more than one country and have been the bearers of several cultural codes due to their encounter with diverse mentalities as well as the formation of their own identity in the situation of cultural interaction. Ipso facto, it is possible to dwell on a new turn in the development of multicultural fiction to date. Suchlike state of affairs provides an opportunity to claim the necessity of scholarly comprehension of the works by the new multicultural authors’ generation. One of them is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977), an African American female writer, whose creativity can be characterized as a sui generis phenomenon formed by the ‘fusion’ of African, British and American literary traditions. Her novel Americanah (2013) serves as the material for the study, the purpose of which is to consider the most significant peculiarities in the representation of racial and ethnic conflict in the text of contemporary multicultural fiction. Basing on the complex of historical and literary and social and cultural methods, the paper analyses the specifics of artistic embodiment of racial and ethnic and, consequently, cultural clash that influences on the main heroine’s self-identification process. The fact that the image of the central female character, a Nigerian immigrant to the US, is autobiographical substantiates the relevancy of biographical research method having been involved. The results obtained allow concluding that the only way out for the character, whose position mirrors the one of the writer herself, is hybridization, which allows including the experience of existence in American reality as well as self-realization as a part and parcel of the heroine’s native history, nation, tradition and culture.

Suspicious Surfaces and Affective Mistrust in the South Caucasus

This article builds on ethnographic vignettes of mistrust, with the material stemming from the South Caucasus. Although mistrust has recently gained attention as a phenomenonsui generis, the impact of objects on the stirring of mistrust has been largely overlooked. The present article intends to fill this lacuna by investigating how certain objects are met with mistrust because their (material or discursive) surfaces and their contents seem inconsistent. The affective response to this perceived mismatch may be articulated in frustration or anger, but also in humor or longing. With respect to longing, I elaborate how this emotion stimulates searches for hidden truths that can be found in the realm of conspiracy theory.

The Production of Salafi Spaces in Computer-mediated Environments: A Social Theory Perspective on ‘Digital Religion’

Abstract The concept or notion of ‘digital religion’ has gained traction in recent years in the study of the intersection of media and religion. In this paper, I argue that this concept tends to reify ‘religion’ as a unique, sui generis phenomenon, disregarding decades-long debates about the idea of ‘religion’ in the study of religion. After deconstructing the notion of ‘digital religion’, as put forward in an essay by Stewart Hoover and Nabil Echchaibi (2014), I propose a social theory perspective of (digital) space, drawing mainly from the sociology of space and taking into account affordances and the citational nature of signifying practices. In the final section, I apply this approach to data I gathered during fieldwork online and offline among Salafi Muslims in the Netherlands and Germany from 2008 until 2015; this will showcase the potential not only for abstaining from ‘religionizing’ social phenomena but also of a social theory approach to the production of digital spaces.

El Movimiento 5 Estrellas: utopía digital y populismo sin adjetivos

The irruption of the Five Star Movement (M5S) has deeply transformed the Italian party system. In an unprecedented phenomenon, a protest movement constituted around an internet blog has managed to move, in only eight years, from the virtual space of the Internet to the Italian government, alternately reaching agreements with formations located on the right and the left of the ideological spectrum. In order to clarify the political nature of this sui generis phenomenon, this case study relies on primary and secondary sources to analyze the ideology, organizational structure, programmatic measures and the profile of the M5S’s voters. The analysis concludes that the M5S constitutes a rare case of «pure populism», able to discursively integrate elements of conflicting ideologies and to connect with a widespread anti-political sentiment among Italian voters, thus maximizing its electoral performance.

Legal Regime of the Choice of Law Agreement Form

Based on the analysis of the views on the legal regime in the domestic jurisprudence of the form of an agreement on the choice-of-law, arguments are put forward in support of the liberal standard, according to which such an agreement is not bound by the form requirements traditionally presented to transactions. The thesis is substantiated that the agreement on the choice of law constitutes a sui generis phenomenon and cannot be qualified as a transaction in the sense that article 153 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation puts into it. According to the author, this agreement, in terms of its form and content, is fully regulated by the special lex fori rule, which empowers parties to private law relations with a foreign element to choose the applicable law (in the Russian Federation, article 1210 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). Moreover, by virtue of the recognition of not only directly expressed, but also “implied” agreements on the choice of law, the very concept of “form” has a conditional character in this case.

Legal Nature of the Embryo in Vitro

The paper is an attempt of scientific understanding of the legal nature of the embryo in vitro, undertaken on the basis of the regulations governing their legal regime, as well as the practice of their application and doctrinal research. Embryos in vitro, being human embryos conceived and developing outside the mother’s body, because of their autonomous existence have raised questions about their legal nature. Without such determination, it is impossible to decide the fate of embryos in the event of the divorce of the persons who expressed the will to create them, in the event of the death of one or both of them (the so-called «orphan» embryos), in the event of the refusal of one or both of them to continue the reproductive assistance program. The paper examines the main points of view on the nature of the embryo in vitro, established in the doctrine, namely whether it is a subject of law, the object of law or is a special legal phenomenon, sui generis. The author comes to the conclusion that the embryo can not be attributed to the category of things, as well as to a broader category of property due to the lack of value equivalent and the inadmissibility of attempts to determine it, as otherwise contrary to the principles of morality. The embryo does not have legal capacity under the provisions of the current civil law, and granting it such a capacity may entail certain problems and conflicts of interest outlined in the paper. The most optimal is the consideration of the embryo as a special legal phenomenon (sui generis) with the definition of its place in the system of elements of legal relationship or an independent object of civil rights with a special legal regime, as the basis of which the author proposes to lay the principle of respect for human life at any stage of its development and the principle of preservation of human life.

Религиоведческое наследие Жака Ваарденбурга: критический анализ

The article discusses the legacy of a Dutch scholar of religion J. Waardenburg. Waardenburg criticizes the classical phenomenology of religion for its theological orientation, its idea of religion as sui generis phenomenon, its construction of a system of religious phenomena, its departure from the principles of philosophical phenomenology. The project of Waardenburg’s Neophenomenology is based on social and anthropological studies of religion with special emphasis on the cultural anthropology of C. Geertz. The methodology proposed by Waardenburg is rooted in the philosophy of M. Heidegger and hermeneutics of H-G. Gadamer. Waardenburg proposes to return to the apparatus of philosophical phenomenology, focusing on the process of intention. It seems that the main problem of the neophenomenological project is its applicability. In the writings of Waardenburg we see a lot of criticism of classical phenomenology, much less guidance on the principles of neophenomenological research and lack of specific research program. Waardenburg uses the same empathy, because religious scholar should reconstruct the intention of believers with the help of his own imagination. It seems that such a path is much more subjective than the project of classical phenomenology of religion, since the declared intentionality rests not even on the intuition and personal religious experience, as it was in classical phenomenology, but in the practice of actor’s game. The article also examines his book “Religion and religion...”, in which the principles of the new project ought to be shown, but on the contrary, religion is defined there as separate and independent sphere and universal phenomenon with a set of essential characteristics.

Towards an intellectual history of the Croatian Modernist movement at the turn of the 20th century: state of research and research problems

The Croatian Modernist movement (also called the Youth Movement) has not been the subject of extensive historiographic research. There is no monograph dealing exclusively with this topic. It was mostly included in broader research and featured in overviews of political history, which narrowed the focus to political and social aspects of the movement. On the other hand, literary and art history for the most part focused on literary, artistic, or more broadly cultural aspects of the movement. This was reflected in the terminological discrepancies, as well as a clear disciplinary segregation which obscured the historical significance of the movement as a phenomenon sui generis. In this paper, several theoretical and methodological problems which arise in dealing with the problem of the fin de siecle Croatian Modernist movement are explored. They are viewed from the standpoint of intellectual history as a rendezvous discipline in an attempt to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives and approaches. The first problem is concerned with the definition of the research object itself, i.e. the question whether the Youth Movement was a formal and homogeneous movement, or an informal and heterogeneous intellectual and cultural current. Closely related to this is the second problem of the chronological and spatial dimensions of the movement, which brings forth the transnational aspect of the phenomenon and also the necessary comparisons with other fin de siecle European Modernist movements. Thirdly, the question of the movement’s internal division is explored, touching mostly on the aforementioned disciplinary segregation of research on the topic. Following that is a brief discussion of the various sources that are at our disposal for the investigation of the Croatian Modernist movement. Finally, two more closely theoretical and methodological questions are elaborated: the concept of ‘influence’ and its critique within contemporary debates in intellectual history, and the methodological problem of teleology when dealing with fin de siecle phenomena in their relationship to 20th century developments.

Georges Guerwich is the forerunner of the foundation of a sociological school at the Dnipro University

The role and place of Georges Guerwich in the foundation of a sociological school at the University of Dnipro. It was found out that at the beginning of his academic career, Georges Guerwich, a coryphae of the Paris School of Sociology, worked for some time at the University of Katerynoslav, thus having laid, at least implicitly, the seeds of sociological education in the Pridneprovsky region. The course of events preceding the opening of the classical university in Katerynoslav is described. It is also noted that when opening the Faculty of Law of the named above, special attention was paid to ensuring the sociological component of the training of future lawyers. Relying on the experience of Western European and especially American universities, it was proposed at the opening of the Faculty of Law in Katerynoslav to establish a department of sociology. For this mission to the University of Katerynoslav, a talented graduate of the Petrograd University George George Gurvich was invited, who is a pupil of intellectual leaders of the Russian law school L. Petrazhitsky, P. Novgorodtsev, F. Taranovsky. While working at the Department of Encyclopedia, History of Philosophy of Law, he laid the foundations of sociological culture at this institution of higher education. It is proved that his general sociological views have a phenomenological basis. G. Gurvich determined that the object of sociology is sui generis phenomena, which are neither reduced to physical nor chemical, biological or psychological phenomena, and the explanation of their main attributes is the main task of sociology. In this case, the main attributes of social phenomena may be in agreement or in conflict. Characterized by the sociological views of Georges Gurvich, it was noted that his sociology is distinguished by the principal attention to theoretical and methodological issues, the phenomenological angle of considering social problems, the elucidation of the historical and genetic foundations of social processes. It was emphasized that it is precisely this focus of the problem’s consideration that is inherent in a sociological school formed at the Dnipro University. Georges Guerwich’s intellectual heritage, academic and scientific-organizational activities are of great importance for the development of world sociology. He co-operated with P. Sorokin, N. Timashev, F. Stepun, P. Struve, and maintained friendly relations with L. Brunswick, L. Lévy-Bruhl, M. Mouss, M. Halbwachs, T. Parsons, R. Merton and others luminaries of modern sociological science. His lectures were attended by J.-P. Sartre and J. Lacan.

Radical right politics in East and West: Distinctive yet equivalent

AbstractParticularly in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in “the West,” radical right politics established itself in the mainstream and continues to challenge liberal democracy from within. While there is broad consensus that radical right politics in both regions constitute an exclusionary, anti‐pluralist counter‐reaction against societal modernization, the discussion continues whether the radical right in the East remains a contextually distinctive phenomenon sui generis, or rather becomes increasingly similar and “functionally equivalent” to the West.This review synthesizes extant findings on radical right politics from a comparative East–West perspective. Pursuing a “middle path” approach based on the framing perspective, it discusses conceptual synergies behind contextually distinctive and functionally equivalent aspects of radical right politics, expanding these comparative observations towards narrative strategies, mainstreaming mechanisms, and its impact on societies, party systems, policies, and liberal democracy as such.The discussion demonstrates the potential of the framing approach for comparative East–West study of radical right politics. It further shows that not only can concepts developed for WE cases be adapted to inform studies on CEE. Concurrently, contextualized insights from Central and Eastern Europe can provide broader lessons relevant to the study of radical right politics across Europe and in “the West.”

Counterfactual claims about fictional characters: philosophical and literary perspectives

AbstractThe problems of making and evaluating counterfactual claims about fictional characters cannot be adequately handled without taking into account the practices of literary criticism, interpretation, and re-creation. The direct-reference theory of names explains only a subset of the phenomena of fiction and explains away the rest as irrelevant or pseudo-problems, whereas some criticisms of that theory bring in metaphysical concepts that may obscure the issue. This paper suggests that the indeterminacy of fictions and the conventions of the aforementioned practices are sufficient basis for explaining and assessing such counterfactual claims. In this view, fiction ceases to be understood as a phenomenonsui generis; it is instead an institutionalized use of the stipulative or computational aspects of language that are at work in other areas as well. Thus, these results can be brought into line with recent ideas in the fields of the philosophy of mathematics, relevance theory, and cognitive studies.

"Do not draw attention to yourself" - Is the integration of migrants important, and for whom is it important? Gorani people in Belgrade

In this paper, I discuss the question of the process of integration of the Gorani people who moved to Belgrade during or immediately after 1999, or during the war in Kosovo. I consider the process of integration of members of the Gorani community particularly important because it is a relatively small community not officially recognized as a minority in Serbia. Members of the Gorani community were turned into a category of internally displaced persons because they came from a territory that constituted a part of the same state (FR Yugoslavia). Integration is often referred to as a complex and multi-dimensional postmigration process. In this paper, I proceed from the fact that the integration process does not represent a sui generis phenomenon. In that sense, I support the critical attitude towards understanding this process. This has partly contributed to the fact that in the research I focused on the perception of the integration process resulting from the experience of the migrants themselves. Through analysis of narrative discourse, I present the specificities of the process of integration of members of the Gorani community in Belgrade. At the same time, I point out to the shortcomings of the integration policy implemented by the state.

THE CHACOAN COURT KIVA

There is great interest in the development and expansion of the great houses of the Chaco culture as a sui generis phenomenon. The study of the internal space of the great houses has lagged behind: rectangualar and circular rooms are distinguished, but with little consideration of additional details and of the integration of architectural components. The lack of detailed studies is owed in part to the costs of excavation (time, money, and social conflicts) and in a change of focus to detailed studies of artifacts. In this essay I support our understanding the functioning of the great houses of the Chaco culture by means of a study of a key architectural element, kivas (ceremonial rooms) in courtyards. The essay provides a new definition of couryard kivas and examines the role of such kivas in the great houses and communities of the Chaco culture. It is important to examine the large Chaco-style kivas, and the essay is based on a large number of such kivas in order to illuminate their characteristics and their importance in the Chaco culture.

The emerging and emergent present: a view on the indeterminate nature of mathematics lessons

The notion of emergence has considerable currency in mathematics education. However, the notion tends to be used in a descriptive way rather than being theorized and developed as a phenomenon sui generis. The purpose of this article is to contribute to building a theory of emergence. After providing an exemplifying description and analysis of an episode from a second-grade mathematics classroom studying three-dimensional geometry, we discuss implications for theoretical and classroom praxis in mathematics education, especially for the curriculum planning and the preparation, training, and enhancement of teachers of mathematics.

Un-Ringing the Bell: Mcgowan on Oppressive Speech and The Asymmetric Pliability of Conversations

In recent work Mary Kate McGowan presents an account of oppressive speech inspired by David Lewis's analysis of conversational kinematics. Speech can effect identity-based oppression, she argues, by altering ‘the conversational score’—which is to say, roughly, that it can introduce presuppositions and expectations into a conversation, and thus determine what sort of subsequent conversational ‘moves’ are apt, correct, felicitous, etc.—in a manner that oppresses members of a certain group (e.g. because the suppositions and expectations derogate or demean members of that group). In keeping with the Lewisian picture, McGowan stresses the asymmetric pliability of conversational scores. She argues that it is easier to introduce (for example) sexist presuppositions and expectations into a conversation than it is to remove them. Responding to a sexist remark, she thus suggests, is like trying to ‘unring a bell’. I begin by situating McGowan's work in the wider literature on speech and social hierarchy, and explaining how her account of oppressive speech improves upon the work of others in its explication of the relationship between individuals' verbal conduct and structurally oppressive social arrangements. I then propose an explanation and supportive elaboration of McGowan's claims about the asymmetric pliability of conversations involving identity-oppressive speech. Rather than regarding such asymmetry as a sui generis phenomenon, I show how we can understand it as a consequence of a more general asymmetry between making things salient and un-salient in speech, and I show how this asymmetry also operates in various cases that interested Lewis.

Expert groups in the European Union: A sui generis phenomenon?

This paper challenges the assumption that the European Union's (EU) unique multi-level governance system leads to distinct policy advisory structures. It focuses on the expert groups that advise the European Commission and examines how they are used in the policy process. Theoretically the relationship between the European Commission and its expert groups is conceptualised as determined by resource dependencies: the EU Commission uses expert groups to acquire expertise, political support and consensus. The assumption that the EU Commission uses its expert groups for multiple purposes beyond the technocratic acquisition of advice is confirmed by a quantitative analysis of their development over time and a qualitative analysis of their use in legislative drafting. These findings reflect those from studies undertaken at other levels of government, which indicates that the role of expert groups in the EU policy process is not a phenomenon sui generis.

Selective flows of knowledge in technoscientific interaction: information control in genome research

In recent years, the selective flow of knowledge has emerged as an important topic in historical and social studies of science. Related questions about the production of ignorance have also captured attention under the rubric of agnotology. This paper focuses on information control in interaction, examining how actors seek to control the flow of scientific knowledge as they interact with others, either in face-to-face encounters or in modes of communication involving circulating documents, data, materials and other entities containing knowledge. The analysis uses an ethnographic approach to study how actors work to control which knowledge becomes available to whom, when, under what terms and conditions, and with what residual encumbrances. Secrecy, for example, is not framed as an isolated, sui generis phenomenon, nor as one side of a secrecy/openness dichotomy, nor even as a pole on a secrecy/openness continuum. Instead, the analysis explores how actors manage a dialectic of revelation and concealment through which knowledge is selectively made available and unavailable to others, often in the same act. The emphasis on selective revelation highlights partial transfers of knowledge, targeted distribution, matters of timing, and the rights and encumbrances that attach to knowledge at different points in its transit. Examples are drawn from genome research, a field marked by ongoing disputes about modes of information control.

Alucinações táteis: aspectos conceituais e históricos

Uma breve análise histórica do conceito geral de alucinação é apresentada e sugere-se que ela surgiu como a generalização injustificada de um modelo perceptual que estava destinado a ser aplicado apenas para a visão e os "sentidos de distância". Neste contexto, considera-se a evolução das alucinações táteis e explora-se sua interação com a teoria psicológica vigente no século XIX. Conclui-se que as alucinações táteis são fenômenos sui generis que não se encaixam no modelo convencional e que a identificação de seu quadro clínico baseia-se, até o momento, em critérios pouco claros. Apresenta-se uma breve revisão da sua taxonomia e utilidade diagnóstica. Algumas implicações mais amplas são delineadas, as quais podem ser relevantes para a concepção geral da alucinação.