Popular Literature Research Articles

The structuring of a (semi) agile-based organization: product orientation in a state agency

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to analyze how a change towards product orientation based on an agile approach challenges, contrasts and/or coexists with other principles of organization and grouping, such as development projects, the existing hierarchical line structure and process management. Design/methodology/approach This is a case study of one organization, based on an explorative appoach. Findings Taking the competing dimension of coordination and principles of grouping as the starting point, this study identify, describe and analyze the tensions that result from the introduction of product organization. The product initiative has met many obstacles and tensions along four dimensions: Process, line, information technology units and development projects. For each of these dimensions a number of challenges have been identified, that contribute to increased complexity in the organization. Research limitations/implications A limitation of the study is that the findings cannot be generalized to other organizations. Practical implications A practical implication of the study is that product organization triggers tensions with other principles of organizations and grouping. Originality/value This study mainly contributes to the knowledge of agile management and agile organization, identifying and theorizing challenges that have been neglected and/or poorly understood both in the popular literature and in organizational research. This is particularly the case in the public sector. This study is also relevant to the domain of multidimensional structures, adding an understanding of the novel opportunities and challenges of product- and agile-based grouping of activities in an organization.

A home without secrets or lies on family & writing poems of childhood sexual assault

ABSTRACT In this short memoir, the author uses personal narrative, research, and popular literature to analyze her first book of poetry on childhood sexual assault and the social consequences of choosing to write a trauma narrative. As the author shows, writing her first book was an intuitive experiment of poetic therapy as well as an intellectual engagement with an artistic medium that becomes, through its production and publication, an example of the psychological benefits of writing these narratives while also inspiring negative familial responses. Drawing from the voices of other writers, this memoir argues that survivors of assault should write their experiences despite negative social responses, contending that the emotional and psychological benefits of doing so well outweigh social invalidation. Shame is examined as an inevitable consequence of assault that can be confronted through the act of writing, and memory as an unreliable resource the writer must choose to trust.

Deviance or Devotion: Women Dressed as Men in Late Medieval England

On the 18th September 1417, Matilda Burgin and Margaret Usshar were brought before the ecclesiastical court of the Bishop of Durham for attempting to enter Durham Cathedral in order to approach the shrine of St Cuthbert from which women were banned. So to enter, they put on masculine clothing and for these crimes they were punished with the public humiliation of wearing the offending clothing in full view of their community. This article will first examine the case of Matilda and Margaret, their arrest in Durham Cathedral and the social, spiritual and sartorial consequences of their very public punishment. It will then compare their experience with that of other medieval women and gender non-conforming people who were arrested in masculine dress. Finally, this article will examine the possible influence the popular religious literature of cross-dressing saints may have had on Matilda and Margaret. This article will ask whether Matilda and Margaret’s own personal devotion to St Cuthbert drove them to put on masculine clothing to see his shrine? Or was it a disdain for the gendered segregation upheld by the Bishop of Durham and a disobedience of the command of St Cuthbert? Or something else entirely.

Gravity’s eastern voyage: the introduction, transmission, and impact of Newtonian mechanics in late imperial China (1727–1912)

This study traces the intricate journey of Newtonian mechanics in Qing China from 1727 to 1912, elucidating the complex interplay of science, religion and politics in cross-cultural knowledge exchange. Initially introduced by Jesuit missionaries through lunar theory in calendrical reform, followed by cometary and heliocentric concepts, the dissemination of Newtonian mechanics gained momentum after the Opium Wars (1839–1842). Subsequently, Protestant missionaries and Chinese scholars collaborated to translate and propagate Newton’s laws of gravitation and motion, often contextualized within natural theology, through Western texts, popular science literature, and periodicals. This process culminated in the integration of Newtonian principles into national educational curricula in the early twentieth century. Significantly, Newtonian mechanics transcended its scientific realm, infiltrating political discourse as reformist thinkers leveraged mechanical terminology to advocate for sociopolitical change. This historical episode illustrates how the assimilation of Newtonian mechanics was influenced by missionary approaches, indigenous intellectual traditions, pragmatic national interests, and the tumultuous political landscape of Late Qing. By challenging Eurocentric narratives and highlighting Chinese agency in adapting Western knowledge, this study contributes to a more inclusive history of Newtonian science, offering a nuanced perspective on global scientific circulation.

Taming a wild new term: exploring the concept of quiet quitting as a coping response

Purpose“Quiet quitting” emerged as a term in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic and has since gained immense popularity worldwide, working its way into common usage. However, disagreement exists over the term’s meaning and utility. Our paper critically considers the value of the construct of quiet quitting, proposing an initial operationalization of its properties.Design/methodology/approachWe develop hypotheses related to the antecedents, characteristics and consequences of quiet quitting through a literature review and subsequent survey. The questionnaire was distributed to working professionals in Europe and assessed through multiple partial least squares analyses.FindingsWe propose quiet quitting as a coping strategy involving a combination of reduced effort, disengagement, disassociation and boundary-setting. 108 responses obtained through a survey of knowledge workers provide some support that these existing concepts indeed form a second-order construct with emergent properties not found when assessed individually. However, we suggest that the utility of quiet quitting as a distinct coping strategy is questionable and that generally, it is more useful to discuss its subcomponents separately.Research limitations/implicationsWhile limited by its cross-sectional nature, this work raises several potentially fruitful future lines of research and offers a first step in evaluating a relatively new term that is of substantial relevance to management scholarship and practice.Originality/valueNew concepts stemming from popular literature can be problematic, grounded in untested folk theory and riddled with ambiguity. At the same time, they can stretch our thinking and drive research in new directions if they can be sufficiently refined. We offer a new conceptualization of quiet quitting but question its usefulness.

The Tehran discussions, formal and informal

A comparative study of memoirs and documentary sources pertaining to the Tehran Conference allows the author to challenge and correct some of the prevalent positions held within both historiography and popular literature on the subject. In contrast with the pervasive assumption regarding the stance of the “Big Three” on the matter of the Second Front (Stalin and Roosevelt were proponents of an expeditious invasion of Normandy, in contrast to Churchill’s ‘Mediterranean-Balkan’ strategy), he demonstrates that the US President, ostensibly under the influence of his military advisers, was initially amenable to supporting British plans. It was only through the persistent efforts of Soviet diplomacy that the American leader was persuaded to join Stalin in prioritising Operation Overlord. The real breakthrough on the Second Front issue occurred during and after an informal dinner hosted by Roosevelt after the first session of the conference on 28 November 1943, which was earlier than had previously been asserted. In the course of these informal discussions, which have been largely overlooked in previous historiography, the Soviets proposed several important projects for a post-war settlement in Europe. These proposals were largely agreed upon by Western representatives. A consensus was reached on the issue of changing the Soviet-Polish and Polish-German borders, which was subsequently updated and ratified at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Additionally, the article addresses other matters pertaining to the Tehran Conference, including discussions on German war criminals, the role of interpreters, and other pertinent topics.

The Prevalence of Positive Affirmations as Clinical Intervention among Mental Health Practitioners: A Brief Survey

Positive self-affirmations are, by both anecdote and demonstrable presence in popular and academic literature, an accepted therapeutic intervention. Yet little to no literature exists exploring the number of practicing mental health clinicians employing the technique with their patients. This paper briefly explores the psychological theory underlying the use of affirming statements in a clinical context (self-affirmation theory) as well as the place of the practice within both academic and popular writing. Finally, the paper shares the result of a limited survey among mental health practitioners to assess how prevalent the intervention actually is. Positive affirmations are shown to be very prevalent within the surveyed population indicating a high desirability for further study in this regard.

Handbook of the circular economy: Transitions and transformation : Book review

[Alexander, A., Pascucci, S. & Charnley, F. (eds., 2023). Handbook of the circular economy: Transitions and transformation. De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston. 504 pp. ISBN 978-3-11-072322-9] Since the term “circular economy” emerged in the economic and environ-mental literature at the beginning of the 2010’s, an ever-growing number of articles, papers, reports and books have been published on this new concept that aims at the ending of the so-called linear economy and ushering into a new economic paradigm. The circular economy’s foundations lay on several schools of thought of the past almost sixty years which pro-mote closed-loop systems and nature-inspired metabolisms in the econ-omy, starting from Boulding’s seminal work “The Economics of the Com-ing Spaceship Earth” (1966) through Stahel’s “Product-Life Factor” (1982) and Pearce and Turner’s “Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment” (1994), until McDonough and Braungart’s „Cradle to Cradle” (2002) or Gradel and Allenby’s “Industrial Ecology” (2003) – just to name a few. Since the term “circular economy” was born in the past dec-ade, this concept has been a popular subject of the economic, business, environmental, technical and even popular literature (Freed & Ritchie, 2021).

Popular science books in Russian libraries: Status, problems and prospects

The authors discuss the findings of the study “Popular science books in Russian libraries”. The purpose of the study was to get data on the existence, quantity and relevancy of these publications in the libraries. The authors cite the results of the survey and provide their conclusions on the libraries’ managing their popular science collections and related user services. The digital survey was based on Yandex Forms service and comprised quantitative data acquisition and analysis. The authors conclude that with the government’s focusing on science popularization among the population, the libraries act proactively, promote popular science literature and hold various events. However, further system organizational and methodological support is needed to build the unified system of straight interdepartmental control of popular science literature publishing and relevancy, and to improve libraries performance in this area. The authors specify several problems, in particular, lacking the common approach to publishing and using of popular science literature. The solutions lie in new approaches toward typological classification of this targeted publications and target user audience.

'These Chicks are Damaged Goods': The Abject Female Body in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Warner's The Sopranos

The female body as a disruptive force was a dominant topic in the popular culture and literature of the 1990s, as well as in debates of the postfeminist theorists of the decade. As culture began to constantly scrutinise women’s bodies and obsessively fixate on unhealthy thinness and perpetual youth, an idealistic model of the female body was conceptualised: self-contained, perfectly smooth, with no biological functions or needs (vide McRobbie 57-8). Due to the impossibility of meeting these voyeuristic standards, the uncomfortable biological reality of womanhood has been perceived as deserving of societal degradation and unyielding control. This essay will examine the nature of Kristevan's abjection of female bodies in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1997) and Alan Warner’s The Sopranos (1999). I shall follow the thesis of Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price, which delineates the relationship between the physicality of the female body and the negative perception of women, outlined as such: ‘the body has a propensity to leak, to overflow the proper distinctions between self and other, to contaminate and engulf. Thus, women themselves are, in the conventional masculinist imagination, not simply inferior beings whose civil and social subordination is both inevitable and justified, but objects of fear and repulsion’ (3). I will argue that the female protagonists of these novels are unwilling to reject their corporeality despite its negative connotations; however, due to the all-encompassing nature of their patriarchal environments, they are unable to liberate themselves from the oppressive demarcations of female abjection.

Chartism’s Critical Carbon Theology: What Fossil Power’s Nineteenth-Century Demonizers Contribute to the Ethics of Energy Justice Today

Recent scholarship on religion and energy highlights the religious attachments some groups of people form with fossil fuels that have served to facilitate their extraction and use in building socially and economically stratified worlds. This scholarship foregrounds the business owners, managers, scientists, inventors, industrial spokespersons, and other panegyrists of the beneficent, civilizing power of coal and oil. However, little research to date has examined the religious attachments formed with fossil fuels by those who mined them, labored with machines powered by them, and lived in places that were diminished to extract, burn, and waste them. This article builds on the work of Andreas Malm and Terra Schwerin Rowe to examine these “critical carbon theologies”. It focuses in particular on the theological themes in popular literature produced by the nineteenth-century British Chartist movement—the first great social movement led by those who experienced in their bodies, communities, and environments the traumas that accompanied the introduction of fossil fuels as a motive power. These Chartist activist-theologians condemned coal power as a demonic force in history and envisioned a way to exorcize an industrializing society of its demons. This article uncovers and evaluates the largely overlooked theological dimensions of this movement and applies them toward a consideration of the ethics of energy transition today.

As authentic as a Christian hipster: navigating authenticity within Emerging Christianity and Western culture

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the current pejorative understanding and usage of the term ‘Christian hipster’ within the context of Emerging Christianity through a case study of a Dutch emerging project: PopUp Kerk. The (Christian) hipster is approached as a linguistic ideal type within a broader Western cultural discourse, in both popular culture and literature on Emerging Christianity, regarding the paradox of authenticity. I argue that, in contemporary and academic ‘hipster bashing’, the Christian hipster becomes both the stereotypical embodiment and the scapegoat of a paradox inherent in a Western culture focused on authenticity. In the second part of the article, I introduce an ideal typology to conceptualize the type of authenticity sought in hipster Emerging Christianity. I argue that taking the Christian hipster seriously can provide insights into the way the Zeitgeist is influencing the ways in which Western evangelical Protestantism more broadly understands and seeks authenticity. Finally, the article explores what theological insights the Christian hipster may offer regarding (in)authenticity and faith.

The unpopular (manosphere) men of popular feminism

ABSTRACT This article draws from Stuart Hall and Sarah Banet-Weiser to examine how ‘orthodox’ and ‘dissident’ popular feminist literature cite the manosphere to reflect and (re)produce cultural norms about men, masculinity and, politically pressingly, the possible relations men can have with feminism. While orthodox feminism represents men as patriarchal threats to the realization of a feminist social order, dissident feminism represents men as natural threats to women and criticizes other feminists for refusing to accept the ‘reality’ that men and women are ‘naturally’ different. Despite this difference, each contributes to a feminist culture in which it is both ‘popular’ to extract insights about man as a general social category by making use of the manosphere, and in which the idea that men and feminism are necessarily antagonistic is central. Each participates, in other words, in a representational project wherein ‘man’ poses a fundamental threat to ‘woman’.

Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs’ Paths to Freedom Between Journalism and Popular Fiction in the Novel "Anā Ḥurra" (I Am Free)

Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs (1919-1990) is one of the best-known journalists in the history of Egyptian political journalism. He began his career at Rūz al-Yūsuf magazine, founded by his mother, the celebrated actress and journalist who named the journal after herself. He was also a famed author of popular fiction, which was serialised in Egyptian mainstream weeklies from the late forties through the eighties. His name is associated with mass readership and sentimental novels and short stories whose protagonists often are young women struggling for freedom in a traditional and patriarchal society. In this article we will analyse his first success, the novel Anā Ḥurra (I Am Free), which was written a year after the 1952 Egyptian revolution. The aim of this study is to re-evaluate the underrated field of popular and middlebrow Arabic literature. We will focus on the relation between female liberation and politics in the novel, in particular how the story of the young protagonist’s search for freedom reflects the failures of the 1952 revolution. Keywords: Iḥsān ʿAbd al-Quddūs, Rūz al-Yūsuf, Anā Ḥurra, Journalism, Popular literature, Rebellion, Freedom.

Australia at an educational crossroads: special schools and inclusive education

The ongoing debate surrounding special schools and inclusive education in Australia has come to the forefront since the recommendations of the 2023 Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, where the Commissioners were split on the implementation of full educational inclusion and the elimination of special schools. The authors discuss the controversy surrounding segregated special education classes and schools, particularly considering the push for full inclusion. The concept of inclusion is examined through a brief review of national and international policies and academic and popular literature, including how the inclusion continuum is conceptualized by policymakers, academics, and families. Stakeholder perspectives on the complexities and challenges of implementing full inclusion in mainstream school settings offer differing experiences and opinions on what is possible. Lastly, by examining the nuances of the special school controversy, the authors provide recommendations on how best to meet the educational needs of all students, across the spectrum of abilities.

OTHERNESS REPRESENTATION: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF TARZAN OF THE APES

This paper investigates the question of representation in Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes. It probes into the representation of otherness, with focus on the signification of race, religion, and gender. Written against the backdrop of postcolonialism, the paper contends that the construction of the black other, religious discrimination, and female inferiority by western imperialists and patriarchy prefigure persistent domination in the new world order. In this qualitative descriptive study that is based on textual analysis as a research method, the primary data were collected from the novel Tarzan of the Apes. Concerning secondary data, articles and books pertinent to postcolonial studies and popular literature were consulted. It was discovered that blacks are represented as the ‘unorthodox’ religious other embodying evil, darkness, ignorance, and primitive sensualism. Moreover, the black woman is pushed to the periphery and represented as a subject of barbarous polygamy, uncontrolled birth, and toys to satisfy men’s desires. Furthermore, blacks are represented as hairless apes that are incapable of civilization. Finally, we discovered that, the issue of the black other in particular, was not a mistake by imperialists, but a well-planned scheme to concretize all the different forms of domination listed above, including the colonial agenda.

The Motion of the Mutable and the Constant: An Analytical Study of the Temporal Rotation in the Poetry of Khaled Al-Faisal

This research is based on the conviction that dialect literature carries a cultural and artistic value that demands attention. Categorizing this literature as “popular” or “colloquial,” has been adopted to distinguish it from formal Arabic-language literature, but this research intentionally stays away from these two names, since their implications detract from the value of popular literature and considers it simple and spontaneous consequently, addressing the commoners, based solely on its use of colloquial dialects in direct expression. Surely, oral circulation does not diminish the ability of language to express, nor does it exclude poetry from acquiring the elements of high literature. One of the best representatives of the innovative leap in Nabati dialect poetry is Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, whose tireless effort to activate the mind, and to expand the circle of knowledge, manages successfully to merge the inherited modes of poetic traditions with the vibrant exploration of new patterns of thinking. This paper studies the concept of time in Khaled Al-Faisal’s poetry and his deep reflections on the meaning of the dynamic changes in the cycles of transformation of history. The relationship with the past is one of consolidation and rooting that anticipates the future and prepares for it: every epoch consists of units that interact in a rotational movement: it does not follow a straight linear system of progress from back to front, but rather tends toward the natural cosmic upward spiral movement, whose successive cycles activate the process of filling and emptying, possessing and abandoning, youthfulness and decaying, living and dying. The importance of researching the poetics of time in Khaled Al-Faisal’s poems lies in the fact that such an approach applies a modern and different critical method which traces the philosophy of time in poetry as a new key to reveal the cognitive system which drives the general pattern of his poetic experience. This reading opens up an intellectual and contemplative horizon for us to deal with the essence of time and its paradoxes as manifested in present existence, past retrieval, and futuristic anticipation, three different movements in time that cannot be isolated from the stability of their continuous sequences.

The Image of the Negative Man in the Folk Tale (Qalat Hamida & Qalat Ajibiya) is a Model A Study According to the Descriptive Analytical Approach

The folk tale or Popular tale, as a popular prose art, is transmitted orally from one generation to another. Therefore, the folk tale has occupied a prominent place among other literary genres, due to its characteristics and features that have made it present to various nations and peoples. It expresses the hopes and dreams of those peoples who have taken It is a way to have fun...and get rid of the harsh reality. These folk tales included different images of that life, as they represented the image of the negative man, and the traits of betrayal and weakness that characterized him. The folk tale is one of the means that preserve cultural heritage and consolidate cultural identity. It is one of the most important forms of expression. It is a summary of the experiences of generations, formulated in an interesting narrative form, full of lessons and noble values. It is a creation of the imagination in which the wisdom of society is revealed. It is a reflective mirror of the society in which it grew, so that the story is considered Folklore is one of the genres of popular literature that is beloved by adults and children, due to the elements it contains that attract, excite, and enrich the imagination, in addition to the positive values it contains. It is the ancient, common art of spontaneous speech, passed down from generation to generation, linked to customs and traditions. The story is the backbone of popular heritage, and it is what we metaphorically call popular literature. Among the studies of the folktale in which the researcher invested the importance of the folktale is a study by M. Furqan Abdel Kadhim Katyou Hammadi, tagged with (the popular story in the book of Qalat Ajibiya, Tihami Myths, Structure and Function).

When the Dead Cry: Crime, Population, and Popular Literature in Early Modern Southwark

Drawing on parish registers, records from the assizes, and an anonymous ballad, this article reconstructs the events surrounding the murder of John Clarke by his own master, silk weaver Richard Price. Price, it turns out, had killed before, and in many respects fits what we would today call a serial killer. The article thus examines the way parish registers might usefully be supplemented by legal and literary texts to get at not only the births, marriages, and deaths of parishioners in the aggregate but also their lived experience, how they responded to tragedy not on the nearby stage but in their neighborhood. The article thus argues for the importance of careful examination of the archives to understand the lives of ordinary people in the early modern period, and the article further suggests a symbiotic relationship between “big data” and microhistory.

The Schnorrer in Israel Zangwill's Work

Abstract This article charts the historical and literary origins of the schnorrer, a Yiddish term for ‘proud beggar’ and a character of Eastern European Jewish culture. It aims to shed light on the schnorrer's entrance as a protagonist in British popular literature in the work of Israel Zangwill, and to show its originality. To do so, it focuses mainly on the novella The King of Schnorrers (1894), in which the schnorrer holds the leading role, and on Children of the Ghetto (1892), in which the schnorrer is a secondary and yet essential character. By locating the schnorrer outside of the Ashkenazi ethno-social context, Zangwill carries out a refashioning of this figure and grounds him in a wider social and literary lineage. He turns him into a literary character who challenges Western capitalist societies, thanks to a multi-layered identity, conflicting contexts and plural literary genres.