Previous Theorists Research Articles

Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning Approach to Teaching and Learning Research Philosophies and Paradigms

The paper cogitates on the critical advent of 4th IR focusing on the concept of machine learning (ML) underpinned by natural language processing (NLP) to demonstrate how research philosophies and paradigms can be better taught and learned for students' benefit. A systematic literature review was earmarked for its depth and textual inquiry from scholarly arguments. The main purpose of this paper is to aver a progressive technological approach towards better comprehensive research paradigms and philosophies, which are complex domains with diverse variety in higher education and a cause of discomfort for students at post-graduate levels. Using quantitative algorithm, the natural language processing and machine learning-inspired digital model poses questions that place students in a reflexive mode and draws their articulated responses as inputs that model their worldviews against a host of philosophies in the database. The paper revealed that, discordant with previous scholars who advocated for a single philosophical assumption for a field, subject or researcher, such as the existence of a pure positivist and/ or pure interpretivist, purist philosophical assumptions should be challenged to benefit students and academics. It means that the digital discovery of research philosophies and paradigms extends the work of previous theorists to the technologically inspired discovery of episteme, ontology and axiology. By its nature, the use of NLP becomes an advanced channel on how we know what we know and the nature of the reality and values being displayed. The paper contributes to the evocation of deep learning arising from new philosophies and methods. The inquiry-based teaching approach transforms learning from the generic push-teaching method that assumes universality to the fostering of a reflexive approach that helps resolve the deep ideological approaches that caused the polarisation. The manner in which NLP and ML are able to extract information relevant to knowledge or philosophical discovery paves the way for approaches that can lead to the depolarisation and decolonisation of research philosophies, which can ultimately boost the development of research students.

A Theory of Social Agency for Human-Robot Interaction.

Motivated by inconsistent, underspecified, or otherwise problematic theories and usages of social agency in the HRI literature, and leveraging philosophical work on moral agency, we present a theory of social agency wherein a social agent (a thing with social agency) is any agent capable of social action at some level of abstraction. Like previous theorists, we conceptualize agency as determined by the criteria of interactivity, autonomy, and adaptability. We use the concept of face from politeness theory to define social action as any action that threatens or affirms the face of a social patient. With these definitions in mind, we specify and examine the levels of abstraction most relevant to HRI research, compare notions of social agency and the surrounding concepts at each, and suggest new conventions for discussing social agency in our field.

Dealing with disgust: Street-level bureaucrats as agents of Kafkaesque bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is deeply implicated in the biopolitical regimes that create and render invisible social waste—individuals classified as abnormal, deviant, or useless—in contemporary societies. According to previous theorists, bureaucracy is able to carry out this critical task through moral distance and reliance on technical efficiency. By specifically focusing on street-level bureaucrats, a unique tier of bureaucracy which is often afforded neither moral distance nor clear directions, this article explains the microprocesses of classification, managing and recycling through which social waste management is carried out in contemporary society. In doing so, this article highlights that in addition to official policies, informal factors like social, organizational, and group norms are critical determinants of bureaucratic behavior in front-line organizations and problematize some of the key assumptions of Weberian bureaucracy. Unlike functional interpretations, we argue that, in some instances, the informal factors influencing street-level bureaucrats are more regressive than official public policies and help explain some of the dystopian features of contemporary bureaucracy and its impact on social inequity.

The Theory of Common Morality of Bernard Gert

Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress have been increasingly using a moral theory known as “Theory of Common Morality” as a philosophical basis for their four principle approach to biomedical ethics, currently known as principlism. In the latest edition (2013) of their Principles of Biomedical Ethics, they acknowledge the contribution of some previous theorists of common morality. Bernard Gert, a critic of principlism, is one of them. The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of Gert’s Theory of Common Morality, as developed in his book Common Morality. Deciding What to Do (2004). According to Gert, common morality is a moral system that everyone uses implicitly when making decisions and judgments. This system consists, basically, of moral rules, moral ideals and a two-step procedure used intuitively by every person to decide whether a given violation of a rule or ideal is legitimate. There are ten moral rules, which can be collapsed into two basic ones, Do not cause harm (Do not kill; Do not cause pain; Do not disable; Do not deprive of freedom; Do not deprive of pleasure), and Do not violate the trust (Do not deceive; Keep your promises; Do not cheat; Obey the law; Do your duty). Moral rules apply to moral agents, which are constituted by all humans able to fully understand the moral rules, as well as predict the consequences of their eventual violation. It is our understanding that, despite the highly intuitive appeal of Gert’s approach, as well as of Beauchamp and Childress’s, the Theory of Common Morality has some fundamental flaws which are discussed in the article.

New Wars — Old Ethics

The emergence of “new wars” in the second half of the twentieth century has changed the conventional paradigm for thinking about military conflicts and called into question the relevance of what previous theorists have offered. However, the most useful approach to the analysis of war is based on the widely accepted conceptual framework of the theory of just war, which is itself grounded in analytical ethics. The interpretations of just war theory by Michael Walzer, Nick Fotion, Brian Orend and Jeff McMahan are central to an ethical understanding of war, but they are of only limited value for considering the topic of “new wars,” which meanwhile are in constant flux. Philosophical thinking on these matters is failing keep pace with the transformation of the object it is considering. War is becoming a media phenomenon, a subject for futuristic speculation, and a routine reality for a number of countries and regions. It is losing its clear spatial and temporal contours, and although we are gaining greater control over its management and increasing the variety of forms that military conflicts take, we are losing control over the overall situation. War should be now seen as a complex phenomenon of social reality that demands a revision of the outdated and limited ethical supports that have been provided for this “necessary evil.” Military conflicts are among the images of modernity that must be apprehended in all their complexity.

Eclecticism of Marketing: Strength or Weakness?

Marketing has evolved and emerged as a distinctive field of professional endeavor. Although there has been a considerable growth in its thoughts and theories, it still suffers from a lack of theoretical maturity. Scholars argue that as a young discipline there is still room for future exploration between its theory and practice. In an effort to expand the works of previous theorists and historians, this paper sets out to deepen the epistemology of marketing genealogy. Specifically, the paper offers clearer insights on the multidisciplinary nature of marketing, assesses whether this approach strengthens or weakens the influence of marketing as a field of knowledge, and finally explores the affiliate disciplines that dominate in marketing research studies at the moment. Using a broad review of the literature in the form of a historical survey, we traced cross-disciplinary exchanges of principles, concepts, and theories. The paper argues that the body of knowledge known as marketing evolved and emerged from different but interrelated fields. And it is this eclecticism approach that strengthens the foundation of marketing as a social, behavioral, and managerial field. This paper, therefore, offers strong educational values to inform teaching, enrich, acquaint, and/or update marketing students, theorists, and historians, and serve as a springboard for future debate.

Kant’s Reformulation of the Concept of Ius Naturae

Like previous theorists of natural law, Kant believes in the possibility (and necessity) of a rational theory of ius, but also claims that the very concept of ius naturae and the method of investigation of its principles must be thoroughly reformulated. I will maintain that Kant solves the methodological problem of natural law theories by stating that a rational doctrine of Right concerns pure rational knowledge. Right must be conceived as a metaphysical doctrine in which its principles and laws are determined a priori. By conceiving the idea of a “metaphysics of morals” and linking Right with it, he finds a way both to conserve the notion of ius naturae (i.e., rational and “immutable principles for any giving of positive law” (RL, AA 06: 229)) and to purify it from any empirical or anthropological element.

Definite descriptions and negative existential quantifiers

Previous theorists have claimed that Russell’s theory of definite descriptions gives the wrong truth conditions to sentences in which definite descriptions are embedded under certain other operators; but the other operators used, such as conditionals and propositional attitude verbs, have introduced intensional and hyperintensional complications that might be thought to obscure the point against Russell. This paper shows that the same kind of problem arises when the operator in question (English ‘no’) allows the context to be extensional. It is further argued that presuppositional theories of definite descriptions give intuitively satisfying analyses of the novel data.

Social and Evolutionary Explanations for Face-ism: Facial Prominence in Female Academic Profile Pictures

Face-ism describes a phenomenon in which men are presented with more facial prominence in images than are women. Previous theorists have ascribed this phenomenon to social causes. However, occurrence of face-ism across historical and cultural contexts suggests the possibility of biological influence. The current study aimed to explore face-ism through the intersection of social influence and biological factors via the investigation of photographs of women of different ages and social standing within the context of academia. Results show that graduate students displayed the face less prominently than both tenured and nontenured faculty. Additionally, younger women displayed the face less prominently than older women.

A transdisciplinary and divergent approach to the complex relations found between Latin American human rights and identity art media

A transdisciplinary and divergent approach to the complex relations found between Latin American human rights and identity art media Liliana Gallegos Fernando J. Rosenberg. After Human Rights: Literature, Visual Arts, and Film in Latin America, 1990-2010. Pittsburgh, PA: U of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. 296 pp. ISBN 978-0-8229-6416-2. Fernando J. Rosenberg's work is a 296-page book divided into seven chapters and an epilogue. Within its pages, we do not find 'windows into history', but 'mirror-houses', complex readings and analysis of photographs showing concentrated versions of the uncanny intersections between the rule of law, colonization, the rights of the people of Latin America, and the space in which this takes place. We begin with photography such as one of native American farmers sitting in court titled, Campesinos indígenas en el juzgado, or Campesinos acusados en el juzgado (1929) by Martin Chambi, and move on to a reading of literature and audiovisual media performances that highlight the circumstances and consequences of these unprotected citizens. After Human Rights begins by acknowledging the narrative of human rights popularized in the 1980s and 1990s, which coincided with the end of the Cold War and the 'return to a liberal-democratic ethos' (1) also referred to as "third wave democratization", a policy-making ideological machine that would raise Western European and US American economistic, neo-liberal ideals and plans above the just demised 'monster of socialism'. These individualist and capitalist ideals, with visions of a progress and success that was only attainable through monetary means, and an imagined sector of winners who needed losers (communities unable to become individualistic, consumerist capitalists) to prove their worth, came with what appeared to be an unavoidable 'common sensical' indifference towards moral issues involving the 'other' communities, diversity, respect for nature, and human rights. Fernando J. Rosenberg hits the mark. Ironically, 'the ascent of global capital, was promoted as a 'return to the natural order of things and described, with a mix of celebration and nostalgia, as the end of politics altogether' (1). Which brings us to a place of myth debunking, no longer cynical conspiracy theories, but a very attractive and hip academic approach that is deeply historical, theoretical, political, [End Page 247] cultural, artistic, psychoanalytical at times, as well as critical and elegant. Latin America's liberatory, emancipatory and politically defining strength through the agency of human rights expression, culture and creativity, is now finding itself before a logic and conditions of marketization that intersects with Latin American artistic production, where hybridity becomes an oversimplifying resolution. Yet there are many factors that are revised and analyzed before delving into a logic of coloniality with its so-much-desired resolutions. Such a study forces us to look at the United States and Latin America as a unit (many times forced), whose relationships go beyond cause and effect, beyond immigrants longing for the American Dream, beyond First World and Third World definitions, beyond the violence of the conquerors, the assumed savagery of the conquered and the hierarchy of coloniality, into the give-and-take of a disproportional socio-economic relationship, lawful injustice and turmoil, where Latin Americans are no longer represented and taken as passive silent victims, no longer anthropologically, but who speak, as in conversation, under their own terms and discourse. Rosenberg brings to us the 'Other' side, through underground and local Latin-American media history, that rarely (if ever) makes it into our educational curriculum. He familiarizes us—through critical, cultural analysis—with what is found both in intimacy and the public arena, starting from the realms of visual arts, literature, and films which, in turn, have continuously contested and responded to the experience of marginalization, the enforced and imposed silence of subalternity, and a wrongfully presumed passive and inert victimization. Even though they are not all mentioned or specifically cited for these reasons, Rosenberg's study further branches out, develops and proves the ideas presented by previous theorists and writers like Ramón Grosfoguel in "Hybridity and Mestizaje: Syncretism or Subversive Complicity" (2005), Enrique Dussel's Philosophy of liberation (1985) and Anibal Quijano's Nationalism & capitalism in Peru (1971). The first chapter, 'After Human Rights', gives historical feedback for...

Sexual aggression when power is new: Effects of acute high power on chronically low-power individuals.

Previous theorists have characterized sexually aggressive behavior as an expression of power, yet evidence that power causes sexual aggression is mixed. We hypothesize that power can indeed create opportunities for sexual aggression-but that it is those who chronically experience low power who will choose to exploit such opportunities. Here, low-power men placed in a high-power role showed the most hostility in response to a denied opportunity with an attractive woman (Studies 1 and 2). Chronically low-power men and women given acute power were the most likely to say they would inappropriately pursue an unrequited workplace attraction (Studies 3 and 4). Finally, having power over an attractive woman increased harassment behavior among men with chronic low, but not high, power (Study 5). People who see themselves as chronically denied power appear to have a stronger desire to feel powerful and are more likely to use sexual aggression toward that end. (PsycINFO Database Record

Is Alcohol Addiction Usefully Called a Disease?

Is Alcohol Addiction Usefully Called a Disease? Nick Heather (bio) Keywords Alcoholism, problem drinking, disease concept, public health perspective, treatment, prevention, policy Gabriel Segal presents a defense of the disease concept of alcoholism against criticisms, including some of those by Ian Robertson and me (Heather and Robertson 1997). There is much to admire in this defense and much to agree with. I agree with Segal that some of the alternatives to the disease model that have been offered under the banner of ‘choice models’ of addiction (e.g., Davies 1997; Heyman 2009) fail to confront the baffling nature of addictive behavior or the fact that it is sometimes continued in the face of truly devastating consequences. Regarding the ‘two extreme pictures’ of alcohol addiction Segal sketches in his concluding section—the one where it is simply a matter of bad choices and the other where it is the result of absolutely irresistible urges—we both find ourselves in the middle ground. But that still leaves plenty of room for differences between us and disagreement in particular about one main issue, namely, whether alcoholism or problem drinking (Segal uses these terms interchangeably) is best viewed as a disease. Segal’s own model of alcoholism as a disease is highly idiosyncratic and would surely be disavowed by most proponents of a disease perspective on alcoholism, including, one suspects, the great majority of affiliates of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He strips away from the disease concept almost all the features that have previously been seen as essential to it. Thus, for Segal, it is no longer necessary that problem drinking is chronic, irreversible, or progressive; and alcoholics are not physically dependent on alcohol, can recover without treatment or a recovery program, and can be held legally or morally responsible for their drinking and its consequences. Perhaps most surprisingly, in view of his enthusiasm for Robinson and Berridge’s (1993) incentive sensitization theory of addiction, alcoholism is not a brain disease. (Since the rise of neuroscience, the idea that addiction, including alcohol addiction, is a disease of the brain has been the most powerful, influential, and research-based version of the disease perspective and the incentive sensitization theory is one of the leading expressions of that idea.) The main point here, however, is that, having given up most of the requirements that previous theorists have seen as being entailed in regarding alcoholism a disease and having thereby conceded most of the key arguments of its opponents, one wonders what is meaningfully left and why Segal continues to believe that problem drinking is a disease rather than join those see the limitations of this belief. [End Page 321] One conventional property of a disease that remains in Segal’s account is that alcoholism is allor-none; although among those having the disease it comes in degrees, you either have alcoholism or you do not. This is indeed one of the key points dividing supporters and opponents of the disease concept of alcoholism. In this case, however, Segal’s adherence to the discrete nature of the condition leads him into difficulties. We are told that there exists a large group of heavy drinkers who may drink more than a mild alcoholic, but who are not themselves alcoholics. This is because they do not show what, for Segal, are the key symptoms of the disease of alcoholism: craving, preoccupation with alcohol, and impaired control over drinking, symptoms that can range in severity from mild to severe. The difficulty here is that it is easy to show that these ‘symptoms’ exist on continua throughout the population of regular and heavy drinkers; almost all such individuals would obtain positive scores, for example, on measures of alcohol dependence that assess degrees of desire for and preoccupation with alcohol (e.g., Raistrick et al. 1994) or measures of impaired control over drinking (Heather, Booth and Luce 1998), even those who show no obvious alcohol-related problems. (Ironically, Segal refers to the latter instrument to support his view that impaired control is specific to those suffering from the disease of alcoholism, whereas our recommendation to its users was that it was relevant to all regular drinkers.) To suggest that all...

ESKU-LIBURUAren grafi aldaketak (1802-1821)

Between the first (1802) and the second (1821) editions of the Esku-Liburua (Handbook) by the Bizkaian writer Pedro Antonio de Anibarro, there are many appreciable variations brought about by the author, of which those affecting spelling are particularly systematic and interesting. In general, they address the aspects of Basque spelling which were most hotly debated until the constitutionof the current standard form, and they unfailingly offer new solutions, some ofwhich became widespread years later. The main objective of the changes is to match the spelling with the phono-logical peculiarities of Basque, and, at the same time, to eliminate the incoherences inherited from Spanish spelling, often adopting the positions of the Castilian grammarians themselves. Although a precursor of these practices, Anibarro did no more than receive ideas of previous theorists like Larramendi and Cardaveraz, whom to an extent he went along with. Another close influence, doubtless more surprising and less well-known, is that of Juan Bautista de Erro and, largely through him, Pedro Pablo de Astarloa; it was this influence which gave rise to many of the more daring changes.

The Confirmation and Disconfirmation of Expectancies in Computer-Mediated Communication

This research addresses three important issues regarding interpersonal expectancy effects and communication across various modalities. The phenomena of behavioral confirmation and disconfirmation were tested in an original experiment involving 148 participants using computer-mediated communication (CMC). First, this study tested a boundary condition asserted by previous theorists about whether or not confirmation and disconfirmation could occur in communication channels without nonverbal communication. Secondly, it shed light on an important causal variable of perceived malleability of interpersonal expectancies in a novel, simultaneous test of confirmation and disconfirmation. Lastly, it verified the hyperpersonal model of CMC by demonstrating behavioral confirmation, and extended the model by specifying when disconfirmation occurs online.

Falklands/Malvinas: a re-examination of the relationship between sacralisation and tourism development

The Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas, in Spanish) are an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean, located approximately 250 nautical miles from the coast of mainland South America. This paper examines the relationship of Argentina and the UK with the Falklands as well as the pervasive role played by dominant ideologies in this dispute. In addition, the widely held principles of sacralisation and touristification of places are re-examined in the context of Falkland's tourism development. Previous theorists assumed that the process of sacralisation historically precedes tourism development, enhances attractiveness and generates more tourism demand. The Falkland's case provides counter evidences to such claims. For most Argentines, Malvinas are a sacred symbol of nationalism. Yet, Argentine tourists visiting Malvinas are very few in number.

The Doors of Reception: Commentary on Paper by Stephanie Lewin

This discussion on Stephanie Lewin's “Parallel Identification: A Shield Against the Assault of Traumatic Jealousy” addresses the challenge of introducing new concepts and revising previous conceptual understandings while maintaining a balance between innovation and appreciation of the work of previous theorists. In the course of considering Lewin's notion of parallel identification the subjects of internalization, the nature of internal space and its relation to psychic reality, the role of unconscious models of therapeutic action, and the oscillating tension between the selected fact and the overvalued idea are explored and discussed in terms of their relevance to both development and clinical analysis.

From the octopus to the spider’s web: the transformations of the Sicilian mafia under postfordism

Since 1989, when the Berlin wall fell, criminal organizations have undergone to deep changes. Globalisation has indeed brought about new opportunities for new criminal organizations, as well as creating new illegal markets. For most scholars, the Sicilian mafia, or Cosa Nostra (CN), has suffered the blows of these changes and entered a deep crisis. This article aims to show that CN is not in crisis, but it is rather experiencing the changes from a fordist to a psot-fordist regime of capitalist accumulation. In order to demonstrate this thesis, the author will analyse the flaws of previous mafia theorists, the changes in economy and also in culture.

Vattel's 'Law of Nations ' and the Principle of Non-Intervention

AbstractThe paper attempts to show that Vattel established a duty of sovereigns not to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. Although Vattel did not use the terms 'interference' or 'intervention' in any technical sense of the term, it seems justified to see him as an early proponent of what is called today the principle of non-intervention. This will be evidenced by reviewing how Vattel rejected some of the arguments put forward by previous theorists of just war (Gentili, Grotius) who defended the right of European states to intervene in states of the New World in order to punish gross violations of the law of nature and nations. Arguing that the laws of war ought to be applied in reciprocal manner, Vattel questioned the distinction between 'civilized' and 'barbarian' nations on which these previous theorists relied. For him, the true 'barbarians' were those nations who fought wars without even attempting to publicly justify their behaviour.

Misreading the Literary Evidence in Carol Shields’s Mystery Plots

Misreading the Literary Evidence in Carol Shields’s Mystery Plots Wendy Roy (bio) Carol shields maintained a long-standing interest in the mystery genre, and many of her books echo, reiterate, and revise elements of mystery plots. The book that critics seize on most often in this regard is her clever postmodernist parody of mystery novels and literary academia, Swann (1987). The first publisher, Stoddart, retitled the book Swann: A Mystery without first consulting Shields, and, partly as a result, it won the Arthur Ellis Award for best mystery book in Canada in 1988.1 But contrary to the concession to genre-related codes implied by this award, Swann and Shields’s other books do not follow conventional mystery plots, which usually begin with the disruption of societal order through a murder or other crime, include a second and more central narrative about a [End Page 113] detective who unravels the details of the crime, and end with punishment of the criminal and a return to the established order (see Reddy 6–7 and Todorov 44). Tzvetan Todorov argued in 1966 that mystery literature “has its norms; to ‘develop’ them is also to disappoint them: to Improve upon’ detective fiction is to write literature’” (43). Shields’s fiction during an almost thirty-year period from 1973 to 2002 questions this assumption by repeatedly blurring the boundaries between “literature” and popular mystery fiction. There is no murder, detective, or punishment in these books—or at least, no murder that is being investigated, since the most obvious death, that of Mary Swann, occurs twenty years before the action of Swann. Instead, the books’ mysteries are related to the power granted to and withheld from women through reading, writing, and publication. As such, they fit into a long tradition of literary mysteries by women writers such as Dorothy Sayers (Gaudy Night, 1935) but have the most affinity with postmodernist examples of this tradition such as A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1990) and Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000), which inscribe and parody mystery codes as they unravel women writers’ life stories.2 Shields’s interest in literary mysteries began at least fifteen years before the publication of Swann with her first unpublished novel, which linked poetry to blackmail. At the time, Shields was a published poet (she had published Others in 1972 and had written many of the poems for the 1974 collection Intersect) and was working on a master’s thesis on Susanna Moodie at the University of Ottawa. Shields told Eleanor Wachtel that during 1973 she sent her completed “literary whodunit” successively to McClelland and Stewart, Macmillan, and Oberon, all of whom sent her “nice rejection letters” (27–28). Two versions of this book, called The Vortex—one labeled with the tongue-in-cheek pen name “Polly Pen”—exist in four separate manuscripts among the 142 boxes of material Shields donated before her death to the literary manuscript collection of Library and Archives Canada.3 Although Shields was confident enough about her book that she sent out the manuscript for possible publication, she eventually agreed that it was not publishable and began work on Small Ceremonies (published in 1976). Indeed, the melodramatic plot of The Vortex and its frankly unbelievable proliferation of suspects support this negative assessment. But threads in Shields’s unpublished manuscript can be tied to similar threads in her later books, in particular aspects of [End Page 114] feminist literary mystery evident in Swann but also in Small Ceremonies, The Box Garden (1977), and Unless (2002), as well as in the fragments of a mystery about academia and women’s fertility that she planned with her friend and collaborator, Blanche Howard, but never completed.4 Shields’s first mystery manuscript, while not as finely honed as the later published works, evidences much of the same cleverness and some of the same techniques, including several that have since been identified as postmodernist, and reveals the seeds of her interest in the mystery of women’s relationship with literature. In her book Sisters in Crime, Maureen Reddy nicely summarizes the arguments of a number of previous theorists by suggesting that the detective in a mystery novel “is primarily a...

Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance (review)

Reviewed by: Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance Harvey Young Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance. By Matthew Reason. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; pp. xii + 269. $80.00 cloth. In Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance, Matthew Reason inserts himself into the decades-long (and still ongoing) debate related to the (im)permanence of live performance. Published before the anticipated tenth-anniversary edition of Philip Auslander's Liveness and shortly after a series of journal special issues dedicated to documentary theatre and choreographic notation, Reason's book arrives at a moment of renewed and heightened interest in performance documentation. Is performance, by definition, an activity that disappears or vanishes in the very act of its unfolding? Although the timing of Documentation's release could not have been better, it is Reason's meticulous retracing of the evolution of the performance-as-ephemera debate, coupled with his fresh insights—especially his reading of "performance photography"—that makes his text not only worth reading, but also worthy of adoption within classrooms as a reader-friendly introduction to the anxieties associated with documentation in contemporary performance scholarship. Reason divides Documentation into four parts. The first exists as a literature review on the performanceas disappearance/vanishing/ephemera phenomenon. The second part looks at video recordings of live performances and engages with the formal differences of the two media. The third blurs the two together by examining production photos that were created before the live performance event began rehearsals and, yet, remain as archival documents of the expired event. In a final chapter, Reason offers suggestions on how to write performance reviews that can gesture toward the experience of witnessing a live enactment and relay a sense of the transience of live performance. He suggests that critics should resist the temptation to give an overview of the entire performance and, instead, focus on particular moments that they find meaningful. It is through these moments that the spirit—and the sense of transience—of the performance can be accessed by the reader. Although Reason's careful parsing and methodical representation of past scholarship on the ephemerality of live performance provides an intelligent overview of the disappearance debates and promises to be the part of the book most frequently read and assigned by performance scholars, this first section is the part in which the author's voice is the most muted. Reason chronicles how intimations that the [End Page 316] value of live performance may rest in its disappearing quality were reductively hardened into the equation "performance equals disappearance" without revealing his perspective of the appropriateness of either description. Through his analysis of newspaper reviews, publicity photographs, and video recordings in the second section of the book, Reason demonstrates that "live performance" does not entirely vanish. There are traces of its occurrence and, more importantly, these traces introduce the performance to considerably larger and differently situated audiences than the original event. Despite the presence of these recordings, Reason maintains that the experience of engaging with such documents differs from the experience of witnessing the original, live performance. What, according to Reason, constitutes live performance? After rehearsing a series of defining concepts invoked by previous theorists—from disappearance to vanishing to ephemerality to transience—he asserts that live performance occurs "here and now," and before assembled audiences who share the same here and now. It is not clear, however, whether here and now disappears, vanishes, or fades away. Reason's emphasis on a singular moment—the intersection of temporality and spatiality—within his definition of live performance suggests a kinship with these earlier descriptors, but does not appear to improve upon them. The most interesting and significant contribution that Reason makes to the study of theatre and performance within his book is his investigation into "performance photography." Excusing himself from the performance-as-ephemera debate, the author looks at images created in advance of a production (or rehearsals), usually for publicity purposes. For Reason, the appeal of such images anchors itself in the fact that they are created to represent an event that has yet to occur. The first items associated with a performance to be presented to the public, these...