Stance In Relation Research Articles

Why Does Mary Weep? Emotion and Gender in Advent Lines 164\u2013213 (Advent Lyric VII)

This article re-reads Lyric VII of the poem Advent, the dialogue of Mary and Joseph. The division of speeches in this lyric has been debated, largely on grounds of the plausibility of the emotions that are apparently expressed by the characters, but there are in fact clear pragmatic grounds for seeing only three speeches in the poem. The emotional expression in these speeches should not be seen in terms of character psychology, but rather the establishment and negotiation of relational stances. In her first speech, Mary expresses bitter grief and draws attention to her weeping, which is because of the insults and gossip she is suffering; the accent on shame and reputation is a distinctive emphasis in the poet’s treatment of the material. Her display of grief elicits Joseph’s response and paves the way to resolution in Mary’s final speech. Mary’s tears are gendered, but not so much because tears are inherently feminine as because they are associated with petition and dependence, and reflect Mary’s social subordination to her betrothed spouse. Lyric VII prompts its audience to a partial identification with Mary and reflection on their need for God and his mercy; such identification would work differently for female and male readers.

Equivalence, Justice, Injustice - Health and Social Care Decision Making in Relation to Prison Populations.

Prisons represent sites of singular healthcare need–characterized by high levels of distress and disorder. In many jurisdictions, practitioners are ethically charged with delivering healthcare that is “equivalent” to that available in the wider community. This claim has been much debated–yet the emergence of a global coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the arguments in a particularly stark manner. In the following conceptual analysis, we explore the emergent discourse of the coronavirus and consider its particular significance for prison healthcare decision making and the concept of equivalence. For example, both the coronavirus pandemic and practice of prison incarceration induce a sense of varied temporality: The discourse of prison is replete in this area–such as the concept of “hard time.” Alongside this, the discourse in relation to coronavirus has highlighted two competing modes of temporal understanding: The political–where the pandemic is conceptualized as has having a discrete “beginning and end”, and the scientific–where the “new normal” reflects the incorporation of the “novel” coronavirus into the wider ecology. The impact of these disparate understandings on the prison population is complex: “Locking down” prisoners–to safeguard the vulnerable against infection–is relatively simple, yet it has traumatic repercussions with respect to liberty and psychosocial health. Easing lockdown, by contrast, is a difficult endeavor and risks collision between the temporalities of prison–where “hard time” is accentuated by separation from the “real world”–the political and the scientific. Whither then the concept of equivalence in relation to a field that is definitively non-equivalent? How can practitioners and policy makers maintain a just ethical stance in relation to the allocation of resources when it comes to a politically marginalized yet manifestly vulnerable population? We argue that further debate and consideration are required in this field–and propose a framework for such discussion.

Efficacy of a novel walking assist device with auxiliary laser illuminator in stroke Patients~ a randomized control trial

Task-oriented functional walking is important in stroke patients. We aimed to investigate effects of a quad-cane with auxiliary laser illuminator (laser-cane) among stroke patients. This was a randomized-prospective study. Patients in the experimental group (EG) received 15-min of walking training with laser-cane and 15-min of traditional physical therapy. Patients in the control group (CG) received the same rehabilitation without laser-cane. The rehabilitation lasted for 4 weeks, twice per week. Primary outcome were gait parameters. Secondary outcomes were Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Timed Up and Go Test (TUG), and Barthel index (BI). Outcomes were measured at baseline, at the end of the rehabilitation (visit-1), and 4 weeks later (visit-2). Both the groups (both n=15) showed improvement of cadence, relative stance and swing phase duration of non-paretic side, BBS, and TUG at both visits. In the intragroup comparison, the EG additionally improved at stride length, relative stance and swing phase duration of paretic side, and gait speed at both visits; temporal swing symmetry, and toe-off angle of non-paretic side at the visit-2. Intergroup comparing for changing of outcomes with the CG, stride length and gait speed increased, relative stance phase duration of the non-paretic site decreased, and the temporal swing symmetry improved at the visit-1; relative stance phase duration of the paretic side decreased and the temporal stance symmetry improved at the visit-2 in the EG. Rehabilitation with laser-cane improved the balance, activity of daily living, gait symmetry and gait parameters of stroke patients.

Narratives of Catholic women against ‘Gender ideology’ in Italian schools: defending childhood, struggling with pluralism

ABSTRACT The role of the Vatican in the mobilization against the so-called gender ideology is structural and well established in the public arena, in Italy as in Europe. However, signs of a growing ambivalence in its attitude towards the protest have lately emerged, for example in relation to the visibility of far-right movements and aggressively right-wing parties within the movement. The paper investigates the same ambivalence among Italian Catholics groups and networks involved in the anti-gender fight. The analysis is based on 17 interviews with Catholic mothers and/or teachers who attended anti-gender conferences in 2015 and expressed their willingness to engage in school surveillance in order to prevent allegedly pro-gender activities. Results show a broad convergence towards the idea that the ‘ideology of gender’ exists and represents a serious danger for children. At the same time, interviewees express different political and cultural stances in relation to their protest. The dissimilarity detected in anti-gender narratives shed some lights on the different ways Italian Catholic activists try to oppose, manage, or solve issues related to state secularization and sexual pluralism.

Racial and Sexual Minority Scholar Positionality: Advancing Health Status and Life Opportunity Among Sexual Minority Men of Color.

Black and Latino sexual minority men (BLSMM) scholars are well positioned to draw on their unique perspectives and expertise to address the health status and life opportunities (HSLO) of BLSMM. Increasingly, research related to the positionality of scholars of color suggests that the scholar's stance in relation to the community being researched has important implications for the research. Despite growing recognition of the importance of scholar positionality, limited attention has been paid to the relationship between scholar-of-color positionality and improving HSLO trajectories of BLSMM. Furthermore, extant literature fails to specify the mechanisms by which scholar-of-color positionality can improve HSLO among BLSMM. This article seeks to fill this gap in research by arguing that an inadequate consideration of scholar positionality in health and life opportunity research has important implications for the HSLO of BLSMM. A multilevel, mediational model addressing factors at the micro-level (i.e., intrapersonal resources)-BLSMM scholars' personal commitments to BLSMM communities, cultural knowledge and expertise, and shared life experiences; meso-level (i.e., scholar and affected community interactions)-historical membership, mutual interdependency and trust, and community and organizational gatekeeping; and macro-level (i.e., national policies and priorities regarding BLSMM)-national priorities regarding the health and social welfare of BLSMM, allocation of BLSMM research and program funding, societal sentiment, and national investment in the workforce development of BLSMM scholars and clinicians are detailed. In conclusion, we identify recommendations and strategies for advancing scientific, programmatic, and policy efforts, aimed at improving HSLO among communities of BLSMM.

Education as an Evolutionary Phenomenon: Huxley, Waddington, and the Foundational Importance of Ethics

This essay sheds light on the “father of epigenetics,” Conrad Hal Waddington’s (1905–1975) tacit critique of one of the most prominent biologists of the twentieth century, Julian Huxley’s (1887–1975) theses concerning the evolutionary meaning and importance of learning and education for the human species. This topic has great significance today when it comes to educators both recognizing and being able to orient themselves in relation to the profound biological and evolutionary aspects of their role and purpose, and in determining their own ethos and modes of activity therein. Here, I highlight Waddington’s stance in relation to Julian Huxley’s thesis that education comprises humanity’s new “psycho-social,” or alternatively, “socio-genetic,” mode of biological inheritance parallel to, yet beyond, the “rawer” biological struggle for existence that most other living organisms are engaged in, namely, that involving natural selection acting on genes or genomes and the exigency of adapting successfully to the environment. According to Huxley, the gradual, yet cumulative, transmission of the knowledge and attainments of one generation to the next, over evolutionary time, via various modes of learning and education, has enabled the human species to have surpassed the capacities of all other organisms on the planet, such that it has become super-dominant. Waddington was in general agreement with Huxley’s thesis regarding the evolutionary significance of humanity’s learning and education here, as well as the latter’s notion that education is an epigenetic phenomenon, namely, comprising a distinct, yet interrelated inheritance system beyond that of genetic inheritance. However, Waddington tacitly disagreed with Huxley’s assertions that in light of such realizations, going forward: (1) humanity should exert the power of its selective agencies so as to take control of the biological processes of all life-forms on the planet; (2) formal education should be reformed into a function of evolutionary humanist ideology, eugenics, and transhumanism; (3) humanity ought to attempt to transcend its current capacities, as though there were a linear progression to some higher stage of biological development that is mechanistically calculable in advance. Waddington’s chief argument against Huxley is that this “socio-genetic” and/or epigenetic system of inheritance has part of its foundation in ethics and in the moral conduct of teacher and learner, and that Huxley’s inert vision of the future of education and of the role and conduct of educators therein are unethical. As such, for Waddington, Huxley’s view can be said to undermine the very inheritance system that has enabled humanity to reach its privileged place, rendering it unsustainable. From a Waddingtonian standpoint, Huxley’s stance is “biologically unwise” in that it undermines the teacher-learner relationship, given that it treats learners mechanistically, namely, as means only to the ends of evolutionary humanist and transhumanist ideology, rather than organismically, meaning as having selective agency and intrinsic worth (a notion that is grounded in the notion that living organisms are bearers of intrinsic purposiveness, as evidenced by the homeostatic, chronobiological, and autopoietic processes belonging to them which enable persistence in the face of entropy). On the contrary, Waddington calls for the cultivation of “biological wisdom” surrounding formal education (e.g., in relation to the aims of such education, its content, its curricula, the behaviour of educators, and the educational activities to be engaged in by learners), that would serve to strengthen the foundations of education qua humanity’s “psycho-social” inheritance system rather than to diminish or undermine it. Last, I associate the Waddingtonian notion of “biological wisdom” with the evolutionary-environmental ethic of “critical pan-selectionism.”

Recognising Freedom of Thought in Irish Constitutional Law

Abstract Recent technological advances have made clear that the law needs to take a stance in relation to freedom of thought. Although there is no formal recognition of freedom of thought in the text of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, I will argue that such a right does exist in Irish law on the basis of both implicit and initial explicit recognition for freedom of thought in the decisions of the superior courts. Part 2 lays out the ways in which freedom of thought is implicitly recognised in the Irish legal system, both through the protection of other constitutional rights and through the place of international law in the Irish legal order. Part 3 takes the analysis a step further, using the doctrine of unenumerated rights (a peculiarity of Irish constitutional law) to spotlight an overlooked Supreme Court judgment in which the right to freedom of thought has been judicially recognised in the absence of a textual mandate in the Constitution. It then proceeds to shore up arguments in favour of such recognition, arguing that protecting freedom of thought is a good thing, because it honours human freedom and human dignity.

Perspectival truth: Michael Haneke’s «The castle» and the fragmentation of the real

With his 1997 TV adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Das Schlos (The Castle), the Austrian director Michael Haneke explores what he calls «Kafka’s fragmentary, ambiguous perception of reality». Defying TV audience expectations, The Castle develops a specific strategy contrasting with the rapid and overwhelming deluge of information transmission that Haneke points out to be the standard for «electronic media». But more specifically, The Castle’s fragmented style appears to put into question a metaphysical construal of ‘Truth’ and ‘Values’ as self-sufficient dimensions existing, unaffected, behind the sensible world of appearances. This must not lead to a relativistic stance. Rather, such a style brings to light the essential perspectival structure of our experience, calling for an approach to reality that forestalls the dichotomies of true vs. false, essence vs. appearance, or fact vs. interpretation.

Short communication: Claw block application improves locomotion and weight-bearing characteristics in cattle with foot diseases

In cattle with foot diseases, application of a block on the healthy partner claw is a common method of pain relief. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of wooden claw blocks on locomotion characteristics and weight distribution in healthy (group C; n = 17) versus lame (group L; n = 17) cattle. Group L was further subdivided into group L1 (lameness score ≤3; n = 7) and group L2 (lameness score >3; n = 10). We performed lameness scoring using a numeric rating system and measured locomotion characteristics using 2 accelerometers (400 Hz; kinematic outcome = stance phase duration; kinetic outcomes = foot load and toe-off) and a 4-scale weighing platform (difference of mean weight distribution across the limbs; ∆weight) before and after application of a claw block. We applied claw blocks to a randomly assigned lateral or medial claw of the fore or hindlimb in group C cows, and on the healthy partner claw in group L cows. Variables were expressed as differences across limbs. We used 1-way ANOVA to determine the differences between groups C and L and between groups L1 and L2 for ∆weight after application of the claw block. We performed paired t tests to compare variables before and after application of the claw block in groups C and L. Group L scored higher on the numeric rating system than group C (mean ± SD, 3.40 ± 0.62 vs. 1.87 ± 0.28) and showed greater differences in relative stance phase duration (16.34 ± 10.78% vs. 2.13 ± 1.94%), foot load (9.68 ± 8.06 g vs. 3.26 ± 3.69 g), toe-off (3.91 ± 3.14 g vs. 0.78 ± 0.66 g), and ∆weight (53.62 ± 28.85% vs. 8.52 ± 6.19%). In group C, we observed an increase of 12.17 percentage points in ∆weight after block application, from 8.52 ± 6.19% to 20.69 ± 17.01%. Compared with the baseline, group L showed a decrease in numeric rating system score (2.88 ± 0.49 vs. 3.40 ± 0.62) and a decrease in differences between the limbs in relative stance phase duration (7.66 ± 9.96% vs. 16.34 ± 10.78%) and foot load (4.26 ± 4.14 g vs. 9.68 ± 8.06 g) after application of a claw block. Group L2 showed smaller ∆weight after application of a claw block than group L1 (-7.8 ± 8.7% vs. 10.4 ± 7.6%). After block application in group L, we observed smaller differences across the limbs in variables measured to describe gait-cycle characteristics while walking, but no significant improvement while standing. We concluded that application of a claw block must be combined with other methods of pain relief, such as analgesic medication.

Inventario para el desarrollo de prácticas colaborativas en Trabajo Social con Familias en situación de especial dificultad. Análisis factorial exploratorio

Introducción. Se presenta un instrumento que recoge diferentes posturas relacionales, habilidades y actitudes relacionadas con las prácticas colaborativas, que los/las trabajadores/as sociales pueden poner en práctica en el proceso de intervención con familias en situación de especial dificultad. Metodología. A partir del nivel de importancia otorgado a cada criterio del inventario (muestra de 121 trabajadores/as sociales), se realiza un análisis factorial exploratorio. Resultados. El análisis factorial de componentes principales de seis factores explica el 46.88% de la varianza total acumulada. Se obtiene la consistencia interna mediante el coeficiente alfa de Cronbach. Discusión. El inventario contiene criterios de intervención que han demostrado su eficacia en otras investigaciones, y los análisis demuestran la confiabilidad y validez del instrumento presentado. Conclusiones. Los resultados muestran que este instrumento puede ser una opción para medir el nivel de valoración que otorgan los/as profesionales al enfoque colaborativo con familias en situación de especial dificultad.

The impact of complex and unwanted feelings evoked in foster carers by traumatised children in long-term placements

When looked after children who have been exposed to substantial trauma enter foster care, the manner in which they present can be extremely challenging for the carers and can persist for a substantial period of time. In response, foster carers may attempt to create a nurturing environment for the children. However, the way the children behave can evoke powerful and unwelcome feelings in carers, such as rage and hatred towards those they look after. The manner in which the children present and the frightening feelings this may trigger can overwhelm the foster carers’ capacity to sustain a nurturing stance in relation to the children and jeopardise the placement. In this article, two case studies chart such a dynamic and show that if carers are able to reflect upon the painful and unwanted feelings evoked in them, and acknowledge and take responsibility for what has become enacted in the placement, there may be an opportunity for this harmful dynamic to be processed and repaired. Moreover, there may be a change in the nature of the relationship between carers and children, creating a renewed hope for the life of the placement. The child, too, may benefit from an experience where the frightening, hated aspects of him- or herself are finally felt to be understood and are less overwhelming, enabling them to tolerate these perceptions and contain their enactment in the placement, so increasing their trust and belief in the nurture offered.

Developing a Poverty-Aware Pedagogy: From Paradigm to Reflexive Practice in Post-Academic Social Work Education

Abstract Social work scholars have argued that poverty reminds us of the necessary commitment to educate professional social workers. Being inspired by a conceptual framework that captures how poverty-awareness can be the subject of teaching in social work programmes, this article offers a qualitative analysis of the reflections being made by a cohort of students about their learning process in a post-academic course. Five common themes are discussed: (i) from recognising micro-aggressions to tackling macro-aggressions; (ii) poverty is an instance of social injustice and requires collective indignation; (iii) notions of commitment and solidarity are ambiguous; (iv) poverty is an instance of social inequality rather than merely social exclusion; and (v) from being heroic agents to social change ‘from within’. Based on these findings, we raise the lessons learned for social work educators. First, they should invite students to reinvigorate the social justice aspirations of social work practices and take a stance in relation to their environment and the wider historical and socio-political circumstances. Secondly, a poverty-aware pedagogy requires collective and long-lasting supervision at the frontline individual, organisational and societal/social policy level. Collective critical reflection and supervision might open up avenues to collectively challenge and change socially unjust rhetoric and practice.

The philosophical bases of counselling psychology

The aim of this essay is to critically examine the philosophical bases of counselling psychology. The essay will start by exploring the philosophical traditions of counselling psychology. The essay will then attempt to reflect on the values of the profession, as well as its stance in relation to the scientist-practitioner and reflective-practitioner models. Finally, the author will reflect on her own personal philosophy.

Afropolitanism

African discourse has been dominated for almost a century by three politico-intellectual paradigms: anticolonial nationalism, various reinterpretations of Marxism, and a Pan-African sphere of influence that gave special place to two types of solidarity—a racial and transnational solidarity, and an international and anti-imperialist solidarity. In addressing the question, “Who is African and who is not?,” the author reminds readers that traces of Africa cover the face of the capitalist and Islamic worlds. The precolonial history of African societies is a history of colliding cultures and can hardly be understood outside the paradigm of itinerancy, mobility, and displacement. In addition to the forced migrations of the previous centuries, there have also been migrations driven by colonization. Today, millions of people of African origin are citizens of various countries of the world—a historical phenomenon he calls worlds in movement. Awareness of the interweaving of the here and there; embracing, with full knowledge of the facts, strangeness, foreignness, and remoteness; the ability to recognize one’s face in that of a foreigner and to make the most of the traces of remoteness in closeness; to domesticate the unfamiliar; to work with what seem to be opposites—it is this cultural, historical, and aesthetic sensitivity that underlies the term Afropolitanism—a political and cultural stance in relation to the nation, to race, and to the issue of difference in general. Today, many Africans live outside Africa or live on the continent but not necessarily in their countries of birth. They have had the opportunity to experience several worlds. They are developing a transnational culture the author calls “Afropolitan.”

Erotic Power Futures/Relations That Matter

New materialist and posthumanist studies lack accounting of colonial impact on how we think about who is and is not human. In this essay, I posit questions of what is real, who is human, and who we are in relation to each other. These questions, which are key to inquiry and posthuman relationalities, must be thought with Tiffany Lethabo King's “decolonial refusal,” a relational stance offering radical possibilities. In example, I turn to Audre Lorde's “erotic power” thought with adrienne maree brown's “pleasure activism” focusing not only on how we do research, but also on how we feel in relations of research. This move opens potentials for engaging in research relations that matter.

TRANSIVITY ON ELON MUSK’S ONLINE BIOGRAPHY:A SOCIAL ACTORS DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

This research’s content is the analysis of biography texts about Elon Musk taken from four websites by combining SFL’s transitivity and Leeuwen’s social actor representation approach. The aims of this research are (1) to find the portrayal patterns of the social actor using social actor approach, (2) to find the linguistic evidences of the patterns using transitivity, (3) to explain the portrayal of the social actor based on the patterns found, and (4) to compare the results with the context and genre of biography. This research is categorized as a descriptive-qualitative research by using transitivity and Leeuwen’s social actor approach. Spradely’s method of domain, taxonomy, componential, and cultural context analysis is used to collect and analyze the data. The data sources for this research are four biography texts about Elon Musk taken from Britannica, BBC, Business Insider, and Investopedia. The research produced several results as follows: (1) various social actor representation patterns are used by the writer to convey their intention and stance in relation with the social actor, (2) the processes contained in the texts are identified by using transitivity, thus providing linguistic evidences, (3) representation patterns that are the most consistently occurring are: activation, passivation (subjection and beneficialization), determination, nomination, functionalisation, and instrumentalisation. These patterns can be deduced as the obligatory patterns in biography texts, and (4) the texts analyzed are relevant with the qualities of a biography text.

Lung Kong’s Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow : the 1967 riots and the politics of cultural production in the Hong Kong film industry

Commercial Hong Kong films produced between the 1960s to early 1970s were generally politically neutral, or politically neutered, in thematic content. This muting of overt political ideologies in Hong Kong cinema was encouraged by the colonial authorities to decrease the dangers brought by the Cold War to the colonial government’s precarious grasp on power in the colony. The ideological war between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hong Kong during this period, which began in the late 1940s, reflected intense Cold War ideologies that pitted the ‘free world’ against the communist bloc.1 The organizational structures of Hong Kong film studios were politicized in this environment, with most holding allegiance to either the KMT or CCP.2 Filmmakers in Hong Kong, however, were induced to ensure their film content was apolitical by the strict censorship systems, operating not only in Hong Kong but also in the essential foreign markets of Taiwan and various Southeast Asian countries. There was a consequent dilution of any strong political stance in relation to the nation-state. Support or condemnation of neighbouring political ideologies or governments was prohibited, resulting in the disappearance of direct references to political entities in Hong Kong films of this period.3

Social welfare versus transnational social protection regimes: the changing roles of church and state

ABSTRACTIn this article we argue that transnational social protection (TSP) is becoming the norm in the context of globalisation, heightened mobility and neoliberalism, but cannot be understood without addressing its religious components. TSP differs significantly from national welfare state regimes, which place the responsibility for providing social support firmly on the shoulders of the state. In contrast, TSP regimes involve multiple actors and opportunities in origin and receiving states and place most of the onus for social protection on individuals and families. This article investigates church and state interaction in the development of TSP across the Italian, Mexican and Filipino contexts. It advances scholarship in three key ways: first, it showcases how TSP is replacing state social welfare arrangements and brings to light those shifting church-state entanglements that are central to this shift; second, it highlights the historically rooted trajectories of church-state entanglements that these three cases have in common; and third, it shows that as TSP becomes a state tool in governing non-resident citizens, the church's critical stance in relation to state provisioning is central to TSP as a mode of migration government.

International law debates in China: traditional issues and emerging fields

There have been many academic debates in the Chinese academic circle of international law during the past few decades. Both positive and negative attitudes were presented on the functioning of international law within the world order, while different understandings were provided on China’s dealings with international law and various views were expressed on frontier issues of international law. The debates were also reflected in and through China’s diplomatic position and discourse, and have influenced China’s stance and concepts in relation to international affairs.

Monitoring stance towards vaccination in twitter messages

BackgroundWe developed a system to automatically classify stance towards vaccination in Twitter messages, with a focus on messages with a negative stance. Such a system makes it possible to monitor the ongoing stream of messages on social media, offering actionable insights into public hesitance with respect to vaccination. At the moment, such monitoring is done by means of regular sentiment analysis with a poor performance on detecting negative stance towards vaccination. For Dutch Twitter messages that mention vaccination-related key terms, we annotated their stance and feeling in relation to vaccination (provided that they referred to this topic). Subsequently, we used these coded data to train and test different machine learning set-ups. With the aim to best identify messages with a negative stance towards vaccination, we compared set-ups at an increasing dataset size and decreasing reliability, at an increasing number of categories to distinguish, and with different classification algorithms.ResultsWe found that Support Vector Machines trained on a combination of strictly and laxly labeled data with a more fine-grained labeling yielded the best result, at an F1-score of 0.36 and an Area under the ROC curve of 0.66, considerably outperforming the currently used sentiment analysis that yielded an F1-score of 0.25 and an Area under the ROC curve of 0.57. We also show that the recall of our system could be optimized to 0.60 at little loss of precision.ConclusionThe outcomes of our study indicate that stance prediction by a computerized system only is a challenging task. Nonetheless, the model showed sufficient recall on identifying negative tweets so as to reduce the manual effort of reviewing messages. Our analysis of the data and behavior of our system suggests that an approach is needed in which the use of a larger training dataset is combined with a setting in which a human-in-the-loop provides the system with feedback on its predictions.