Pluralistic Approach Research Articles

PLURALISTIC APPROACHES: NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION AND BODY LANGUAGE IN FRENCH COURSES

A pluralistic approach to languages and cultures is important in foreign language teaching. A major priority of a pluralistic approach to languages and cultures is to support expressive learning among learners. Therefore, learning body language and non-verbal communication in intercultural communication is as important as knowing other elements of communication. Teaching body language and non-verbal communication in a cross-cultural environment is to ensure effective and correct communication in the language. Thus, in foreign language lessons, the transfer of body language characteristics that may be specific to the cultures of the people who speak that language plays an important role in the effective acquisition of the language.

Braiding frameworks for collaborative stewardship scholarship

Human-environment relationships are most frequently viewed from evolutionary perspectives, despite the vast body of literature which highlights how many Indigenous peoples engage with and understand place, plants, and animals as kinship relations. My goals in this essay are twofold: first, to suggest we adopt the phrase stewardship to recognize and uphold notions of respect, reciprocity, and relationships that are common within many Indigenous worldviews, and secondly, to advocate for the use of pluralistic approaches to our collaborative scholarship. I offer examples from my own experiences in reconstructing stewardship histories across people, plants, and places in the Pacific Northwest.

Stories that trap us and stories that save us.

The prevalence of the medical model in the field of mental health care has undoubtedly contributed to significant scientific progress. However, it is important to recognize that it may not represent the sole perspective for comprehending mental distress. Rather than endorsing particular paradigms, I advocate for a pluralistic approach that empowers individuals to discover their unique narratives, the stories that may save them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

EDI in academic–policy engagement: lived experience of university based knowledge brokers and marginalised academics

Background: Discourse surrounding Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) has received significant attention within the UK academy and knowledge brokerage contexts, and more recently within academic–policy engagement spaces (Walker et al, 2019a; Fawcett, 2021; GOV.UK, 2021; Morris et al, 2021). Key players in this space identify the need for diversifying academic participation, as well as diversifying knowledges (GOV.UK, 2021; UK Parliament, 2018; UKRI, 2023). However, conceptual and practical insight on embedding EDI principles (and what they mean in this context) within academic–policy engagement processes is missing. Aims and objectives: Underpinned by feminist and decolonial epistemological concepts, this article addresses this gap by outlining strategies, and surfacing ways in which EDI within academic–policy engagement is experienced, conceptualised, understood and considered. Methods: Two parallel qualitative studies, with a total of 20 semi-structured narrative and realist interviews conducted with marginalised researchers (n=10, Study A) and university based knowledge brokers (n=10, Study B), and a rapid literature review. The analysis used a narrative and thematic framework. Findings and discussion: We found a want for EDI to go beyond just diversity of people and representation, towards fostering foundational principles of epistemic justice, equitable access, value-driven engagement and plurality. Academics and knowledge brokers reported both negative and positive experiences within this space that related to known EDI issues. We conclude that EDI cannot be standardised across higher education contexts, and emphasise the need for holistic, relational and plural approaches to EDI across academic–policy engagement systems through a value-led, equitable and ethical lens.

Memory, Freedom, and Identity: Challenges to “Virtual Consciousness”

This comprehensive text explores the intricate interplay of memory, virtuality, consciousness, and personhood in shaping the human experience. Memory is depicted as a core process integral to identity formation, transcending mere recollection to become a reflective exercise in self-discovery. The advent of the digital age raises concerns about the impact of virtual connections on authentic encounters and the preservation of individual autonomy amid algorithmic homogenizations. In examining consciousness and experience, the inseparability of life and consciousness is emphasized, alongside the significance of corporeality in self-awareness. Abduction is proposed as a mode of creative reasoning that expands our comprehension of the human mind and its relationship with the universe. Furthermore, the text delves into the notion of personhood, highlighting the complexity of identity formation through interaction with the world, others, and history. Through a reflective and pluralistic approach, traditional conceptions of being are challenged, inviting a deeper understanding of the multifaceted human condition.

The reliability of evidential pluralism in drug regulation

The aim of this paper is to shed light on and critically evaluate the potential impact of evidential pluralism in the realm of pharmaceutical regulation. In the complex landscape of drug evaluation and approval, the role of evidence is pivotal. Firstly, we delve into the role of evidence of mechanisms within drug regulation, with a particular focus on the Accelerated Approval pathway administered by the US Food and Drug Administration. Our analysis reveals that this program, in practice, closely resembles a pluralistic approach to evidence. Secondly, we undertake a thorough examination of the reliability of evidential pluralism within the context of drug regulation. We dissect and discuss the open-cases approach recently put forth by Sung and Holman. While acknowledging its potential merits, we also identify and articulate significant limitations inherent in this approach. Finally, we propose an alternative empirical approach that centres on the real-world outcomes of regulatory programs.

Curriculum as ‘folding’ democratic practice: Integrating Deleuzian and Deweyan philosophies with the lived experiences of English teachers

AbstractThis article advocates the revision of the English as an Additional Language (EAL) Curriculum in Australia into a “curriculum as ‘folding’ democratic practice”, a concept deeply informed by the lived experiences of sixteen teachers of English from multilingual backgrounds. Using hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative inquiry, this study explores how these educators leverage their personal and professional lived experiences to transcend the limitations of a curriculum dominated by Australian Standard English. These narratives highlight the adaptation of the curriculum through ethical engagements with learners’ diverse needs, embodying democratic and pluralistic approaches. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s (1993) concepts of the “fold” and “molecular possibilities” and John Dewey’s “democratic education” (1916), the research illustrates the potential of a responsive and inclusive curriculum that fosters intercultural capabilities in superdiverse classrooms. This study advocates an EAL curriculum that not only imparts linguistic skills but also prepares learners for meaningful participation in a globally interconnected society, extending the scope of English language education and teacher capabilities in Australia and beyond. The research highlights broader implications for other subject-related curricula, suggesting principles that could foster inclusivity and intercultural understanding.

Diverse sources of normativity in open science and their implications for ethical governance.

Over the past decade, open science (OS) has emerged as a global science policy and research initiative with implications for most aspects of research, including planning, funding, publishing, evaluation, data sharing and access. As OS has gained increasing prominence, it has also faced substantial criticism. Whether it is the worries about the equality of access associated with open-access publishing or the more recent allegations of OS benefitting those who act in the private interest without giving back to OS, there are, indeed, many potential as well as actual harms that can be linked to the practice of OS. These criticisms often revolve around ethical challenges and fairness concerns, prompting the question of whether a comprehensive ethical governance framework is needed for OS. This commentary contends that owing to the heterogeneous nature of the normative foundations of OS and the inherent diversity within scientific practices, a pluralistic and deliberative approach to governance is needed.

Teleosemantics, Structural Resemblance and Predictive Processing

AbstractWe propose a pluralist account of content for predictive processing systems. Our pluralism combines Millikan’s teleosemantics with existing structural resemblance accounts. The paper has two goals. First, we outline how a teleosemantic treatment of signal passing in predictive processing systems would work, and how it integrates with structural resemblance accounts. We show that the core explanatory motivations and conceptual machinery of teleosemantics and predictive processing mesh together well. Second, we argue this pluralist approach expands the range of empirical cases to which the predictive processing framework might be successfully applied. This is because our pluralism is practice-oriented. A range of different notions of content are used in the cognitive sciences to explain behaviour, and some of these cases look to employ teleosemantic notions. As a result, our pluralism gives predictive processing the scope to cover these cases.

Are Mass Shootings in the U.S. Increasing? Understanding How Differing Definitions of Politically Charged Events Impact People's Perceptions of Expected Trends in Visualizations.

Visualizations of mass shooting incidents in the United States appearing in the media can influence people's beliefs and attitudes. However, different data sources each use their own definition of mass shootings, resulting in varying counts and trends of these incidents across the sources. To investigate the effects of these varying definitions on public perceptions, we conducted a crowdsourced study using data from four sources-Mother Jones, Mass Shooter Database, Everytown for Gun Safety, and The Washington Post. We used one or more line plots, with or without explicitly providing the definition, to see how these variations affect viewers' understanding of a 10-year trend in mass shooting frequency. We found that, depending on the data shown, participants' perceptions of the trend changed in both directions (i.e., more or less increasing) compared to their prestudy perceptions. We discuss how data from a single source can influence people's perceptions, and how visualizing data from multiple sources (e.g., superimposed line graphs) can enable more transparent communication. Our work has implications for other media and public visualizations, highlighting the importance of embracing pluralistic approaches to enquiry, especially when dealing with data of significant importance and consequence.

Are all emotions social? Embracing a pluralistic understanding of social emotions

While the importance of social emotions is widely recognized, the question whether all emotions are social and what this would mean for the category ‘social emotions’ is yet to be addressed systematically. Emotion theorists and researchers so far have proposed different candidates for social emotions. These include non-basic emotions, self-conscious emotions, higher-cognitive emotions, and defining social emotions via their social functions. This paper looks at these different candidates for social emotions and briefly discusses their issues. Discussing the candidates and their issues motivates embracing a pluralistic approach to social emotions. In a further step, the paper will look at approaches exploring how social factors impact emotions in general. This serves as a basis for explaining what it would mean to propose that all emotions are social. After reviewing different candidates for social emotions and looking at the impact of social factors on emotions in general, the paper will propose that a pluralistic understanding of social emotions is needed to embrace the different ways in which social emotions may function. Embracing a pluralistic understanding of social emotions does not mean, however, that all emotions are social emotions.

Corporate power and global value chains: current approaches for conceptualizing the power of multinationals

The influential position of multinational corporations in the global economy of the twenty-first century is a particularly controversial and timely subject. This paper aims to improve our understanding of this phenomenon by focusing on one particular aspect of it: corporate power. To this end, it first puts forth a number of conceptual clarifications that help to distinguish different kinds of power and the distinct analytical levels at which power is executed. It then focuses on corporate power and studies it against the backdrop of the development of global value chains. The aim of this analysis is twofold: firstly, to review the variety of analytical tools and ontological perspectives that coin current research on corporate power, and secondly, to discuss the causes and practical consequences of asymmetrical power constellations among corporations and between corporations and other actors. This discussion is meant to facilitate a better alignment of applied research on corporate power with pluralist approaches towards rethinking economics.

Emotionality in Transboundary Water: A Case Study of Helmand River.

While a substantial body of literature perceives rationality as the only path for negotiations over the use of the transboundary shared watercourse, recent scholarship has unveiled the role of emotion in decision-making processes over the use of the shared water. This research aims to challenge the conventional approach-rationality-by exploring affective dynamics of the riparian nations of the Helmand River (shared between upstream Afghanistan and downstream Iran) and how decisions over the use of the shared Helmand River are ingrained in the emotional dispositions of the riparian nations. Taking an integrated approach combining emotional political ecology and neoclassical realism, this research unravels the intricate emotional dynamics of the riparian nations to the flow of the Helmand River. The staggering increase in water withdrawal-both surface and groundwater resources- coupled with the population growth, and adverse effects of climate changes has stimulated the negative emotional dispositions of the borderland communities- the sufferings of farming communities due to lack of access to water-resulting in water conflict escalation in the Helmand River Basin. Finally, it is asserted that negotiations over the use of Helmand River are considered to be ill-equipped unless emotionality and rationality-a pluralistic approach- are equally weighed or gauged in water allocation and utilization by the co-riparian nations.

How agricultural extension responds to amplified agrarian transitions in mainland Southeast Asia: experts’ reflections

AbstractRecent decades have witnessed widespread agrarian transitions in mainland Southeast Asia. This paper examines how agrarian transitions are shaped by multiple drivers of change, and how these interwoven processes have triggered shifts in agricultural extension practices in three countries in the Lower Mekong Basin: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Drawing on interviews with experts working on the fields of agrarian studies and rural development, this paper argues that agrarian transitions not only put a strain on agricultural extension systems in responding to evolving needs, but they also stimulate the co-production of innovative agricultural extension models to address gaps left by the limited presence of extensionists. The study gains insight into challenges faced by extensionists, including a lack of resources, skills, and capacities to meet growing needs, which simultaneously urged them to excel in their work performance. The paper highlights the proactive role of ‘champions’ in orchestrating collective efforts towards the co-production of innovative agricultural extension models (e.g. Metkasekor), and the formulation of pluralistic extension platforms in enabling such ‘co-learning-to-act’ practices. By translating these insights into the broader contexts of agricultural and rural development in the Mekong region and beyond, this paper aims to make a two-fold contribution. First, it will assert how the ‘business-as-usual’ extension model has failed to adequately address emerging needs as a result of agrarian transitions. Second, it will provide pathways for the recognition and legitimisation of the pluralistic extension approach that fosters stakeholders’ co-learning and productive engagement in extension practices.

Lived-through Experience, Multi-perspective Methodology, Contentious Polysemy: Challenges in the Study of Vulnerability

The article concludes the special section on vulnerability. By reflecting on the arguments in and the convergences between the contributions to the preceding trialogue, it outlines three key challenges in vulnerability research. Across disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological boundaries, the contributions agree in their criticism of negative, individualistic, and/or essentialist conceptualizations of vulnerability; instead, they call for a non-dualist, pluralist, and participative approach to vulnerability that takes the lived-through experience of individuals as its starting point. Based on this decision, the challenges arise of (1) how to conceptualize and identify the structures of lived-through experiences of vulnerability and of (2) how the experiences of individuals and groups in different social positions can be collected, understood, and interpreted. The trialogue texts, we argue, provide important impulses for the development of a multi-perspective methodology, which permits to analyze vulnerability in a way that is theoretically, ethically, and methodologically appropriate. Finally, by taking lived-through experience as a starting point, the articles in this special section (3) contribute to a better understanding of the contentious polysemy of the term vulnerability. By analyzing the constitutive ambivalence and ambiguity of experiences of vulnerability as well as the difficulties of intersubjective communicability, the contributions help to understand why articulations of vulnerability are often vague and why vulnerability can be politically instrumentalized. In this way, the comprehensive understanding of vulnerability (e.g., as positive and negative, enabling and inhibiting), promoted in the trialogue, also becomes a means of moral and political criticism.

Toward a Pluralist Approach to Vulnerability: A Contribution to an Interdisciplinary Trialogue on Vulnerability

Toward a Pluralist Approach to Vulnerability: A Contribution to an Interdisciplinary Trialogue on Vulnerability

An inconvenient reflection on human rights: Comments on Choi-Fitzpatrick’s article, “Disruption and Emergence”

In response to Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick’s essay on the impending critical juncture for human rights, this essay contends that we are already experiencing this transformative moment. It critiques the current state of human rights scholarship for its shortsighted focus on present abuses, neglecting future challenges. The essay reframes his characterization of existential threats in terms of democratic backsliding, nonhuman rights, and emerging technologies, driven by unmet human rights promises, environmental harms, and technological advancements. It argues for a broader, pluralistic, and anti-anthropocentric approach to rights, encompassing humans and nonhumans alike. The essay challenges traditional human rights theory’s neglect of foundational questions about rights bearers, advocating for an inclusive, system-oriented perspective that decouples human supremacy from moral consideration. It calls for radically rethinking human rights scholarship to ensure its relevance and effectiveness in addressing 21st-century challenges.

Beyond job‐search theory: A value pluralist approach to conditionality in Australian employment services

AbstractThis article examines the contested impact of financial sanctions on Australian employment services, with government evaluation relying on job‐search theory to justify sanctions while research from sociological and psychological perspectives suggests they exacerbate labour market disadvantages and poverty. The division in perspectives reflects both methodological differences and ethical stances within scholarship. Welfare conditionality scholars propose value pluralism as an approach to reach consensus on shared policy goals across disciplines. This article engages in a simulation of the value plural approach to identify evidence gaps in the research and evaluation of sanctions and conditionality in employment services. The article identifies a research and evaluation agenda for conditionality policy, emphasising the importance of reaching a consensus to advance ethically robust policy.

Philosophy of psychiatry: theoretical advances and clinical implications.

Work at the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry has an extensive and influential history, and has received increased attention recently, with the emergence of professional associations and a growing literature. In this paper, we review key advances in work on philosophy and psychiatry, and their related clinical implications. First, in understanding and categorizing mental disorder, both naturalist and normativist considerations are now viewed as important - psychiatric constructs necessitate a consideration of both facts and values. At a conceptual level, this integrative view encourages moving away from strict scientism to soft naturalism, while in clinical practice this facilitates both evidence-based and values-based mental health care. Second, in considering the nature of psychiatric science, there is now increasing emphasis on a pluralist approach, including ontological, explanatory and value pluralism. Conceptually, a pluralist approach acknowledges the multi-level causal interactions that give rise to psychopathology, while clinically it emphasizes the importance of a broad range of "difference-makers", as well as a consideration of "lived experience" in both research and practice. Third, in considering a range of questions about the brain-mind, and how both somatic and psychic factors contribute to the development and maintenance of mental disorders, conceptual and empirical work on embodied cognition provides an increasingly valuable approach. Viewing the brain-mind as embodied, embedded and enactive offers a conceptual approach to the mind-body problem that facilitates the clinical integration of advances in both cognitive-affective neuroscience and phenomenological psychopathology.

A survey of congruences and quotients of partially ordered sets

A quotient of a poset P is a partial order obtained on the equivalence classes of an equivalence relation \theta on P ; \theta is then called a congruence if it satisfies certain conditions, which vary according to different theories. The literature on congruences and quotients of partially ordered sets contains a large and proliferating array of approaches, but little in the way of systematic exposition and examination of the subject. We seek to rectify this by surveying the different theories in the literature and providing philosophical discussion on requirements for notions of congruences of posets. We advocate a pluralist approach which recognises that different types of congruence arise naturally in different mathematical situations. There are some notions of congruence which are very general, whilst others capture specific structure which often appears in examples. Indeed, we finish by giving several examples where quotients of posets appear naturally in mathematics.