Pluralist Model Research Articles

Unbundling marriage law

AbstractThis article illuminates the legal regulation of the economic rights of non‐marital partners at separation or death. Current approaches have typically fallen into two categories: one advocating for the separation of legal regimes based on formal status, treating cohabitant partners as strangers, and the other taking a functional approach, treating cohabitation and marriage as substantively identical. However, both approaches fail to offer a coherent alternative for regulating cohabitation. This article proposes a novel third option – the institutional, autonomy‐based, pluralist model. The pluralist model acknowledges the legal commitment between cohabitants while carefully distinguishing the legal regulation of cohabitation from that of marriage. Unlike prevailing models that offer a “package deal,” the pluralist model selectively applies only suitable components of marriage law to non‐marital relationships, considering thoughtful criteria for their applicability and ensuring a nuanced approach. The pluralist model offers a middle ground between treating cohabitants as strangers and treating them as married for purposes of regulating marital property, spousal support, and inheritance. Ultimately, it provides a framework that considers the complexities of non‐married relationships while maintaining a desirable level of legal clarity.

Towards an Epistemic Compass for Online Content Moderation

The internet provides easy access to a wealth of information that can sometimes be false and harmful. This is most apparent on social media platforms. To combat this, platforms have implemented various methods of content moderation to flag or block content that is inaccurate or violates community standards. This approach has limitations – from the epistemic injustices that might occur due to content moderation practices to the concerns about the legitimacy of these for-profit platforms’ epistemic authority. In this paper, I highlight some of the epistemic challenges of online content moderation with a focus on how it harms internet users and moderators. If we are to moderate content effectively and ethically, we must attend to these challenges. Hence, I map out an epistemic compass for online content moderation that looks to attend to these challenges. I argue for a pluralistic model of content moderation that categorises content online and distributes the task of content moderation between human moderators, automated moderators, and community moderators in a way that plays to the strengths of each content moderation model. My compass is beneficial for two reasons: first, it allows room for the internet to realise its potential as a democratising force for knowledge, and second, it helps minimise the epistemic downsides of relying on profit-driven companies as epistemic authorities.

Is exercise therapy the right treatment for rotator cuff-related shoulder pain? Uncertainties, theory, and practice.

Exercise therapy is a popular non-surgical treatment to help manage individuals with rotator cuff-related shoulder pain (RCRSP) and is recommended in all clinical practice guidelines. Due to modest effect sizes, low quality evidence, uncertainty relating to efficacy, and mechanism(s) of benefit, exercise as a therapeutic intervention has been the subject of increasing scrutiny. The aim of this critical review is to lay out where the purported uncertainties of exercise for RCRSP exist by exploring the relevant quantitative and qualitative literature. We conclude by offering theoretical and practical considerations to help reduce the uncertainty of delivering exercise therapy in a clinical environment. Uncertainty underpins much of the theory and practice of delivering exercise therapy for individuals with RCRSP. Nonetheless, exercise is an often-valued treatment by individuals with RCRSP, when provided within an appropriate clinical context. We encourage clinicians to use a shared decision-making paradigm and embrace a pluralistic model when prescribing therapeutic exercise. This may take the form of using exercise experiments to trial different exercise approaches, adjusting, and adapting the exercise type, load, and context based on the individual's symptom irritability, preferences, and goals. We contend that providing exercise therapy should remain a principal treatment option for helping individuals with RCRSP. Limitations notwithstanding, exercise therapy is relatively low cost, accessible, and often valued by individuals with RCRSP. The uncertainty surrounding exercise therapy requires ongoing research and emphasis could be directed towards investigating causal mechanisms to better understand how exercise may benefit an individual with RCRSP.

How do non-Western authoritarian countries respond to disasters? Structural difference from the pluralistic model

Effective coordination, networking, and voluntary civil engagement are crucial for ensuring effective disaster responses. It should be noted, however, that these recommendations are primarily derived from the experiences of Western pluralistic countries. Thus, there has been insufficient consideration given to the applicability of these recommendations to non-pluralistic countries and the ways in which non-Western authoritarian countries navigate the difficulties of coordinating and establishing networks with civil sector organizations. This study broadens the scope of research by examining non-Western authoritarian countries through an analysis of how China responded to the floods of 2020. The results of the study indicate that the Chinese flood response system was primarily government-driven, centralized, and hierarchical. According to the pluralistic model, this arrangement encounters difficulties in integrating resources and information from partners in different sectors and jurisdictions. Consequently, this poses additional challenges to the Chinese disaster response systems. Nevertheless, the study findings reveal that the Chinese system proficiently resolved problems. This was accomplished by flattening the hierarchical structure via innovative interventions and remedying the lack of voluntary civic sector engagement through mass mobilization. Consequently, it would be fallacious to hold that the pluralist model can be effortlessly transplanted to non-Western authoritarian nations without regard for their distinct political, cultural, economic, and social contexts. Points for practitioners To improve disaster response, practitioners should consider adapting hierarchical networks and embracing flexibility. This can be achieved by reducing bureaucratic layers, which enhances effectiveness and encourages innovative interventions for streamlined decision making. It is important to emphasize provincial–local support and mass mobilization, as seen in China, which underscores the need for engaging civil sectors in non-pluralistic contexts. Context-specific approaches are crucial and should consider political, cultural, and social factors. Transforming hierarchical structures into modular networks may improve response.

Interpreting or Reporting? An Analysis of Journalistic Interventionism Across Western European Countries

ABSTRACT The literature comparing journalistic roles around the world highlights different ways of understanding journalistic work across countries. One of the main differences in conceptualising concerns the journalist’s propensity for intervention: where in some contexts it is common practice for journalists to intervene with commentary and interpretation; while in others there is a tendency to adopt a more neutral reporting style. Through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance, this study investigates the performance of the interventionist role within its two analytical sub-dimensions (content-driven interventionism and style-driven interventionism), together with the specific indicators related to each of the two (interpretation, journalist point of view, call to action, qualifying adjectives, and use of the first person) across nine Western European countries. Contrary to expectations, our data show a higher level of interventionism—particularly content-driven—in Central and Northern European countries when compared to those belonging to the polarised pluralist model theorised by Hallin, D. C., and P. Mancini. (2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge University Press). Moreover, in almost all the countries considered, when journalists do intervene with their own voice, they predominantly do so through rhetorical devices of interpretation and by expressing their point of view.

Scripts and Social Cognition

To explain how social cognition normally serves us in real life, we need to ask which factors contribute to specific social interactions. Recent accounts, and mostly pluralistic models, have started incorporating contextual and social factors in explanations of social cognition. In this paper, I further motivate the importance of contextual and identity factors for social cognition. This paper presents scripts as an alternative resource in social cognition that can account for contextual and identity factors. Scripts are normative and context-sensitive knowledge structures that describe behavior in terms of corresponding events, situations, social roles, individuals, or mental state types in a way that guides action. The script approach presented here builds on recent accounts of social cognition but points out important differences and possible advantages it has over them: for example, the script approach focuses even more strongly on context and identity.

Trilling Redux

Abstract This short essay considers the cultural and historical context of Lionel Trilling’s unfinished, unpublished novel in response to Michael Kalisch’s essay for this issue. Written in the 1940s, The Journey Abandoned (editor’s title) reprises Trilling’s preoccupations in The Liberal Imagination with anti-Stalinist liberalism and Cold War modernism and emphasizes the importance of American literature to Trilling at the beginning of his career as both a critic and a novelist. Trilling championed those writers—and created fictional characters—whose thinking affirmed and resisted the status quo. The dynamism of dialectical thinking that enlivened his essays also echoed the pluralist model of consensus liberalism, in which multitude conflicts were in continual negotiation. In concluding, the essay suggests that the unfinished novel, perpetually open to interpretation, is an apt tribute to Trilling’s signature mode of thought.Ambitious and having to make his way professionally (he had just become an assistant professor in 1939), Trilling saw American literature as a vehicle of upward mobility for himself, just as it was for Vincent.

Understanding Trauma in Nandini Sahu’s That Elusive Orgasm of An Incest Victim

Nandini Sahu’s narratorial oeuvre vociferously yet delicately contributes towards the study of the female psyche and the body from a nuanced feminine perspective. That Elusive Orgasm of an Incest Victim, for instance, charts the anatomy of the psychological trauma of the victim, Jhumpa. This paper attempts to course through the inexpressible, unintelligible, and indescribable vestibules of trauma responses evident and resident in the tangible and intangible portions of the female body. It explores the traditional and pluralistic models of trauma that seek to delve into the problematics of the linguistic representation of the experience of the traumatised consciousness. The paper asserts the potential of the voice of Sahu’s Jhumpa as a critical document in pluralistic critical trauma studies given its narrative from a cultural physio-psychoanalytical perspective.

Implementing pluralistic models of scholarly impact in business schools with performance management principles to meet stakeholder expectations

PurposeThis study aims to develop a framework for applying performance management principles to implementing a pluralistic model of scholarly impact in business schools to increase the value and relevance scholarly research to multiple stakeholder groups.Design/methodology/approachPerformance management principles were studied with case study data of scholarly impact that included bibliographic measures and altmetrics. An analytical model was built for a focal business school that provided benchmarks for managing scholarly impact by using data from three peer schools.FindingsBibliographic, scholarly output measures and altmetrics were consistent across the focal school and peer schools, thereby providing a solid foundation for establishing performance benchmarks for annual performance reviews, promotion and tenure decisions and organizational impact goals.Practical implicationsThis paper provides guidance for designing, building and implementing performance management systems to foster scholarly impact.Originality/valueThis paper integrates pluralistic impact models and performance management systems to build faculty expertise and align it with multiple impact domains.

Understanding a Lateral Truth: Paul Ricoeur’s Intercultural Hermeneutics

ABSTRACT Starting from Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic pluralism and its relevance from the point of view of the current intercultural debate, the article aims to elaborate a pluralistic model in which we recognize the need for a hermeneutic virtue, the phronesis as a prerequisite for understanding that each person can only see parts of truth ‘sideways’ and that it is not possible to compare one’s beliefs with those of others by looking at them from the outside, from a sort of superior view from above. Intercultural dialogue can only start from an awareness of the inadequacy and historical-cultural determinacy of different perspectives, avoiding the twin pitfalls of absolutizing singular points of view and falling into naïve relativism. In this way, the article aims to discuss Ricoeur’s conception of a situated and ‘lateral’ truth and, therefore, his original application of a phronetic-hermeneutic model in the dialogue between cultures.

Thai musicology in context: epistemic disparities in Thai and western ways of knowing Thai music

ABSTRACT Relatively little has been published in English about dontri Thai (Thai classical music) and due to the absence of Thai scholars from English language musicological scholarship, most of what has been published was written by non-Thai scholars who have relied upon terms and concepts developed for explaining music with roots in the European tradition. The importation of extrinsic categories conceals indigenous explanatory models and blocks paths connecting Thai musical performance and thought to other areas of Thai culture and social life. This article frames the silence of Thai voices and their ways of knowing as the epistemological dimension of the colonising enterprise, the effects of which have made their way into Thai universities where they have transformed intellectual life and dontri Thai pedagogy. The disciplinary reorientation suggested here aims towards a pluralist model of musicological thought and method. This will open a space for different ways of musical knowing, creating, and theorising to enter from where they may decentre and reshape Western musicological discourse and practice. A rethink of musicology will help align its disciplinary goals with the aims of addressing equality of representation and allow unheard Thai voices to explain their own music in their own terms.

Behaviour and Thoughts: For a Pluralistic Model of Empirically Informed Political Philosophy

Is Political Philosophy Impossible? develops a distinctive and powerful vision of empirically informed political philosophy: one that gives a central role to data about what people do, rather than what they think or say. Here, I offer some critical reflections on this ‘normative behaviourist’ account of how, and why, we should integrate normative theorizing with empirical research. I suggest that normative behaviourism is at once too ambitious and too restrictive concerning the role of social scientific data in political philosophy. On the one hand, it implicates philosophy in complex and contested issues in criminology, and developing the approach to address more fine-grained normative problems would place unrealistic demands on the empirical data. On the other hand, the emphasis on crime and insurrection excludes alternative valuable forms of empirical evidence from normative theorizing. I conclude by defending a more modest and pluralistic picture of data-sensitive political philosophy.

When an A Is NOT an A in Academic Research, or How A-Journal List Metrics Inhibit Exploratory Behaviour in Academia

On account of the leverage that the Academy of Management (AOM) has, via its positioning in the highest tiers of the A-journal lists currently used to adjudicate promotions and tenure evaluations, it is urgent to assess the premises and assumptions upon which the so-called pluralist model of scholarly impact, advocated by academics with executive responsibilities in the AOM, is built. Our findings are that the pluralist model is liable to three crucial problems: ecological bias, specific knowledge and pre-emptive costs. Consistent with extant performance evaluation scholarship, promotions and tenure evaluations must build instead on: (a) a qualitative evaluation of scholarly contributions unencumbered by ordinality assumptions; (b) the narrowing of the span of control of academics, moving supervisory authority away from the line structure and back into the hands of true peers; and (c) muting the incentives that prevent academics from focusing on riskier and long-term horizon outputs, which are pillars in agreement with known accounts of how exploratory behaviour has been successfully managed at IBM, Google, the SAS Institute and Nokia, to name but a few cases. JEL Codes: 123, O31

Applying a neurodiversity affirmative approach to the pluralistic framework

AbstractObjectivesTo date, there has been no research exploring the use of a pluralistic framework when working with neurodivergent (ND) clients. This research addresses the gap between theory and practice and explores therapist perspectives and experiences using the pluralistic framework as an ND therapist and/or when working with ND clients.MethodsEight pluralistic therapists were interviewed using semi‐structured interviews. This study employed interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to capture lived experiences and sense‐making of the participants. The therapists had a range of experiences—some were ND themselves and working with ND clients.ResultsSix key themes emerged from the results: the importance of language; client strengths and cultural resources; collaboration and shared decision‐making; demystifying therapy; learning events within therapy; and flexibility. These results were synthesised into two overarching themes: ND justice and the pluralistic model as a supportive framework for ND affirmative practice. The approaches within the participants' therapeutic interactions modelled a neurodiversity justice approach. There was a belief that the pluralistic framework could have been designed for neurological difference. There was a deep respect for client experience along with hearing the client, giving voice, and respecting choice embedded in the approach. The participants were able to use the model to facilitate client autonomy and normalise them being part of their own processes both in therapy and in life.ConclusionThis study provides insights into the experience of ND, which can be used to improve practice and increase knowledge in the field.

Virtually imagining our biases

ABSTRACT A number of studies have investigated how immersion in a virtual reality environment can affect participants’ implicit biases. These studies presume associationism about implicit bias. Recently philosophers have argued that associationism is inadequate and have made a case for understanding implicit biases propositionally. However, no propositionalist has considered the empirical work on virtual reality and how to integrate it into their theories. I examine this work against a propositionalist background, in particular, looking at the belief and patchy endorsement models. I argue that the results therein can only be accommodated by a model which recognizes structural heterogeneity, that is, one which allows for implicit biases being both associatively and non-associatively structured. My preferred view – that implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings – allows for this, as well as for heterogeneity at the level of content (propositional and imagistic), a feature which also earn its explanatory keep in this context. I conclude that empirical work on virtual reality and implicit bias gives us a reason to prefer a pluralist model of bias, and that my unconscious imagination model, in its recognizing wide-ranging heterogeneity, is uniquely placed to accommodate the results of work on virtual reality and bias mitigation.

The Early Warning Mechanism of Public Health Emergencies Through Whistleblowing: A Perspective Based on Considering the Uncertainty of Risk Perception.

During the early warning period of public health emergencies, the information released by whistleblowers on the risk posed by the given event can reduce uncertainty in the public's risk perception and help governments take timely actions to contain the large-scale dissemination of risk. The purpose of this study is to give full play to whistleblowers and draw attention to the risk events, forming a pluralistic model of the risk governance during the early warning period of public health emergencies. We construct an evolutionary game model of the early warning of public health emergencies through whistleblowing that involves the government, whistleblowers, and the public, discussing the mechanism of interaction between these subjects under the uncertainty of risk perception. Furthermore, we use numerical simulations to analyze the influence of changes in the relevant parameters on the evolutionary trajectory of the subjects' behaviors. The results of the research are obtained by numerical simulation of the evolutionary game model. The results show that the public's cooperation with the government encourages the latter to take a positive guidance strategy. Increasing the reward for whistleblowers within an acceptable cost, strengthening the propaganda of the mechanism and the higher level of risk perception of the government and whistleblowers will promote whistleblowers' vocalization actively. When the government's reward for whistleblowers is lower, the whistleblowers choose negative vocalization with the improvement of the public's risk perception. If there is no mandatory guidance from the government at this point, the public is prone to passively cooperating with the government owing to a lack of risk-related information. Establishing an early warning mechanism through whistleblowing is important for containing risk in the early warning period of public health emergencies. Building the whistleblowing mechanism in daily work can improve the effectiveness of the mechanism and enhance the public's risk perception better when the public health emergencies arise.

Social Welfare for Thailand’s Elderly: Policy Perspectives and Proposals for Co-production

With the increasing number of older adults and the mechanisms driving elderly work in the past, most work is separated. There is a redundancy in the issue of promoting and supporting the welfare of the elderly and redundant space. Many agencies deal with the elderly. As a result, the operation of the elderly is not considered part of the overall welfare provision. The objectives of this study were (1) to study the problem of social welfare provision for the elderly, according to the process of public policy, categorized into policy formulation, policy implementation, and policy evaluation, and (2) to analyze the social welfare provision for the elderly in the areas of health, housing, income, employment, education, recreation, and general social services from the perspective of experts. Qualitative research was conducted on secondary data and data collected using an Ethnographic Delphi Futures Research technique, whereby twenty-five informants were classified into three groups: 1) Nine people with direct or indirect roles and responsibilities in the development of welfare schemes and setting guidelines for the elderly; 2) Ten individuals with roles providing welfare services to the elderly in either provincial or local areas, and 3) Six academics studying welfare provisions for the elderly. In-depth interviews were conducted, and data systems were organized to analyze and classify content. The analysis found that: 1) Public policy is currently inadequate due to the following problems and management conditions: a) A central authority determines policy formulation concerning welfare for the elderly. As a result, welfare provisions cannot respond to the specific problems of the elderly in each area; b) A gap exists between policy formulation and implementation of each welfare policy; and c) While welfare policies do undergo an evaluation process, assessments are low quality and incomprehensive according to standards outlined in Thailand’s Elderly Act; 2) All experts agreed that government mechanisms should provide welfare for the elderly in cooperation with the government, private and public sectors to address insufficient budget allocation and reduce the redundancy of receiving interest. It is proposed that social welfare for the elderly should follow a pluralistic model. Many parties participate in welfare provision utilizing groups or networks of people in the community. Interconnected networks require co-production and joint management to optimize the efficiency and quality of public services.

The Formation of the “United Front” Policy of the Comintern and Soviet Foreign Policy of 1921–1922

The author examines the policies of the Comintern in the context of the Soviet foreign policy in 1921–1922. He demonstrates that the dynamics of the former was not directly tied to the course of the latter and the turn to the NEP in March 1921. The Comintern had its own internal logic of development. With its help the communist leadership could manoeuvre between a more radical probing of the readiness of the capitalist world for a new wave of revolutionary destabilisation or a moderate policy of prolonged “siege” of capitalism, which involved rapprochement with social democracy under the banner of a “united workers' front”. By early 1922, following sharp discussions on the eve and during the Third Congress of the Comintern, its policies were gradually synchronised with the foreign policy course of Soviet Russia, which allowed rapprochement with West European Social Democracy to be exploited in Soviet foreign interests. However, there was little diplomatic gain from this, and after the failure of the Genoa Conference the Comintern continued to pursue a “united front” policy, no longer directly linked to the objectives of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, but as the basis of the Communist strategy for the struggle to ascend to power in Western Europe. At the same time, both in negotiations with the Social Democrats and in planning at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, the Communists prioritised their monopoly on power, regarding the policy of alliances and concessions as tactical and temporary, rejecting the “political NEP” and the pluralist model of multiparty democratic socialism.

Bringing History back into Media Systems Theory. Multiple Modernities and Institutional Legacies in Latin America

Since Hallin and Mancini's (2004) seminal work, many scholars from around the world have proposed different models of media systems for countries and regions outside the Western world. Particular challenges have arisen when conceptualizing the systems in Latin America, where shifting liberal and polarized pluralist models have been proposed, and where media traits like clientelism and collusion remain in spite of political, economic and social changes. We contend that one obstacle to the characterization of the resilience of certain structures and practices in this region is the lack of a historical perspective to account for specific processes of media modernization. Drawing on the multiple modernization paradigm, as well as on post-colonial theories, system differentiation theories of the Global South, and theories of uneven regional development, we understand Latin American modernization processes as the appropriation, adaptation, or rejection of certain elements of Western institutions, ideals and values. In media systems, this might produce: (a) centralization of power, (b) a struggle between elites, (c) state-driven differentiation, and (d) regional or local subsystems. Our historical perspective aims to explain the prevalence of several media structures, and show how institutional legacies yield core media traits, in order to pave the way for further model inference.

State-media relations in post-apartheid South Africa

In 2004, Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini published a landmark work of media theory entitledComparing media systems: three models of media and politics. The theory, like the models itmakes use of, has a high degree of relevance for South African media scholars. Primarily, thetheory investigates the relationship between the state and the media, an interconnection of profoundsignificance in the South African context, yet one that has not been explored sufficiently by scholars.This article, which focuses primarily on South Africa’s print media sector, sets out the parameters,major dimensions and some indicators of the Three Models paradigm. It then presents recentresearch in which the theory is applied to South Africa. It concludes that South Africa’s mediasystem falls largely into the Polarised Pluralist model though it retains strong liberal model traits