Review Essay Research Articles

Review essay: Trans bodies, trans selves: A resource by and for transgender communities, edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth (2nd edition)

Tiffany Sostar reviews Trans bodies, trans selves: A resource by and for transgender communities, edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth (2022, 2nd edition). Oxford University Press. 728pp. ISBN 9780190092726.

Impact of Ownership Structure on Financial Performance of Listed Companies on the Hanoi Stock Exchange

This essay reviews studies on the types and levels of fragmentation in firm ownership, focusing on how ownership structure impacts firm performance. Using a property rights framework, the essay integrates sociological, organizational, legal, and economic research that explores the relationship between ownership organization and firm performance. Agency theorists typically assume that shareholders are uniform in nature, and that their impact on firm performance correlates directly with their equity stakes. However, empirical studies based on this assumption have not produced clear evidence. Class analysis perspectives view these mixed results as evidence that firms, regardless of ownership structure, primarily serve the capitalist class. An alternative view suggests that shareholders are not homogeneous, and certain types of shareholders use their formal authority, social influence, and expertise to capture property rights, thereby exerting significant influence on firm performance. The impact of various owners may vary based on industry characteristics, and the essay reviews literature supporting a contingency theory of ownership structure.

Bibliographical foundations of information science: a review essay

PurposeThe narrow purpose of this article is to review de Fremery’s (2024) book about the bibliographic foundations of information science. The broader purpose is to consider the actual as well as the potential relevance of the field(s) of bibliography for information science besides the book under review.Design/methodology/approachThis review essay examines the arguments put forward by de Fremery (2024), introduces concepts and traditional lore from the study of bibliography and presents internal conflicts or paradigms in the field of bibliography. It relates this information to foundational issues in information science.FindingsDe Fremery’s basic ambition of basing information science in the field of bibliography is important, and so is the attempt to consider bibliography in relation to contemporary information technologies such as machine learning and data science. The book under review fails, however, to describe the relations between different positions in bibliography, such as enumerative, analytical, descriptive, critical and historical bibliography in relation to information science. It rather tends to make problematic claims, for example, that scientific experiments are based on bibliographical methods, and to describe the relation of bibliography to information science on the basis of such interpretations. Nonetheless, the book is a serious attempt to consider the field of bibliography and thereby support the focus on documents in information science.Originality/valueInformation science often suffers because of ambiguities in the concept of information. When information science is understood as the study of literature-based answering, much else falls into place. The field of bibliography is a core concept for this understanding and re-orientation of information science, for example, by establishing the core relation between bibliography, information searching and knowledge organization.

Essential Steps and Strategic Considerations for Successfully Launching a Small-Scale Business

To achieve a successful launch of a small-scale firm, one must carefully navigate through many crucial procedures and strategic considerations. This review essay thoroughly analysed the fundamental activities and techniques required for a successful company’s commencement. Essential elements include completing comprehensive market research to find possibilities and comprehend competition, formulating a comprehensive business plan that delineates objectives, strategies, financial forecasts, and operational plans, and obtaining sufficient finance. The research highlighted the significance of robust financial management methods, including budgeting, cash flow management, and financial forecasting, to guarantee stability and facilitate development. Efficient allocation of resources, adaptation to market changes, and harnessing technology were important strategic considerations for overcoming common difficulties and attaining lasting success. The essay consolidated the latest research and optimal methodologies, offering practical insights for entrepreneurs to improve their company performance and overcome frequent challenges. Suggestions included consulting with specialists, being attentive to market fluctuations, and enhancing the availability of financial resources and support networks. This exhaustive analysis provided a beneficial structure for small-scale enterprises seeking to develop a robust basis for expansion and long-term sustainability. Keywords: Small-scale business, Business launch, Market research, Business plan, Financial management.

The state and radicalization: Overlooked perspectives for internationalist far-right scholarship

The purpose of this review essay is to examine four monographs that study the far-right and discuss their approaches as is relevant to the international level of analysis. This essay argues that these monographs engage with international analysis but do so in a way that has generally not been covered by the mainstream political science approaches to the far-right. This essay will first cover the mainstream political science approaches and international approaches of the far-right. Then this article will explore two overlooked approaches: (1) The statist approach to the far-right explores the transnational and domestic development of far-right ideology in specific states. (2) The radicalization approach focuses on the space and place of the far-right. This review essay will consider the international implications of these approaches and highlight key themes and methodologies that may prove useful to international far-right scholarship. This article concludes with the place of these monographs in the international far-right literature and the scope of this article.

Review Essay: Where have all the gay bars gone?

Review Essay: Where have all the gay bars gone?

Towards grounding differences: review essay on South Asian comparative constitutional studies

Towards grounding differences: review essay on South Asian comparative constitutional studies

Three dimensions of time: An approach for reconciling the discrepancies between experienced time and modern physics

This essay reviews the discrepancies between the phenomenal experience of time and the characterization of time as it is currently conceptualized by modern physics. Three aspects of the subjective quality of time are identified: (1) the present is privileged and distinct from the past and future in that it is the exclusive time at which observers experience events as happening; (2) time flows from one moment to the next; and (3) the future is open and presents itself with genuine alternative possibilities. Strikingly, however, modern physics claims that these essential aspects of the experience of time are illusory products of consciousness. We argue that physics has dismissed aspects of experience that are sufficiently self-evident that they can reasonably be taken as axioms, and thus new frameworks that incorporate these elements should be considered. Towards this end, a framework is presented that characterizes the observer as a window moving through information space with three dimensions of time: objective time—corresponding to clock time; subjective time—the experience of the passage of time; and alternative time—the branching genuine possibilities presented by the future. This roughhewn framework illustrates the type of approach that could enable our scientific understanding of time to be brought into greater alignment with the essential ways in which we experience it.

Short takes on disjointed times: literary form and social thought in Graham K. Riach’s The Short Story After Apartheid

This essay reviews Graham K. Riach’s recently published monograph The Short Story After Apartheid: Thinking With Form in South African Literature (2023) against the background of a growing preoccupation with temporality, in recent years, in South African writing and criticism. The mode of political formalism Riach espouses in this significant new contribution to the field of South African literature threads together aesthetic and social concerns to propose the post-apartheid short story as a critical vector for making sense of our disjunctive times. Through close readings of stories by Nadine Gordimer, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Phaswane Mpe and Henrietta Rose-Innes, Riach opens important new discursive terrain in our apprehension of the social in South Africa, while at the same time advancing our understanding of, and appreciation for the short fiction of these important writers.

Suffering without Remedy: The Medically Unexplained Symptoms of Fibromyalgia Syndrome and Long COVID

The term “Medically Unexplained Symptoms” (MUS) describes chronic symptoms for which medical investigations fail to reveal a specific pathology or biomarker. Even as MUS are among the most prevalent chronic health problems in the global north, patients who experience them reside in a nebulous space. Such nebulousness is heightened for women patients. Moreover, women report MUS at higher rates than men. In this review essay, we analyze the medicalization and feminization processes vis-à-vis MUS by focusing on two particular syndromes: Fibromyalgia (FMS) and Long COVID (LC). FMS and LC present clear parallels that allow us to trace an unhappy marriage of women and MUS. We demonstrate how the medical constructions of these two syndromes as knowledge categories are representations of medical uncertainty vis-a-vis women patients. We then scrutinize the resulting gendered consequences of these categories for the illness experience. We conclude our review by calling for a cultural reorientation in our thinking about MUS that centers a recognition that the origins and manifestations of a great deal of human suffering reside outside of medicine’s ways of knowing. In so doing, we connect to foundational claims in medical anthropology and sociology; namely, that illness is more than disease, and health cannot be achieved primarily via biomedical means.

The art, science and technology studies movement: An essay review.

This is a review essay based primarily on the 2021 Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies, edited by Hannah Star Rogers, Megan K. Halpern, Dehlia Hannah, and Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone. It focuses particularly on the use of art for public engagement with science and technology and it also draws upon the following books: Dialogues Between Artistic Research and Science and Technology Studies (2023), edited by Henk Borgdorff, Peter Peters, and Trevor Pinch, Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture (2020) by Patrick McCray, and Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge (2022), by Hannah Star Rogers.

Review Essay: Jandhyala B. G. Tilak (Ed.), Education in India: Policy and Practice

Jandhyala B. G. Tilak (Ed.), Education in India: Policy and Practice, Sage Publications, 2021, 364 pp., ₹1350, ISBN: 978-93-5388-742-1 (Hardbound).

Dark intelligence: When the possibility of 1984 becomes reality

This essay reviews a concept that is too rarely dealt with, if at all, in the literature on human intelligence, namely, dark intelligence. I argue that dark intelligence is the possession and, as relevant, deployment of creative, analytical, and practical abilities and attitudes that, in particular tasks confronted in particular situations, can be, and are used for negative, harmful, and, sometimes, malign purposes. Dark intelligence is extremely common, and the world is the worse for it. Yet intelligence research continues to focus largely on solving test-like problems that do not speak to how intelligence is deployed on particular tasks in particular situations, either for good or for evil purposes. The world is facing severe crises, such as climate change, weapons of mass destruction, violence, and enormous income disparities. Creativity researchers, recognizing these problems, have developed a thriving field of “dark creativity.” Intelligence researchers have been largely absent, however, largely ignoring the dark side of intelligence. Yet dark intelligence can be and is being used to cause harm. The world is at increasing peril from its intended and unintended consequences; understanding dark intelligence may help to mitigate some of that peril.

Other Things Said

The common view in legal education and practice has been that obiter dicta or ‘the things said in passing’ are not part of the corpus of legal reasoning that is binding, which then begs the question, ‘If so, what is their value?’ This review essay offers a detailed overview of Neil Duxbury’s The Intricacies of Dicta and Dissent, highlighting the significance of Duxbury’s contribution to the literature on this important subject. Against a backdrop of few book-length treatments of these commonly deemed ‘subsidiary’ forms of legal reasoning, Duxbury offers a comprehensive historical account of dicta and dissent in adjudication, and of their varied impacts on legal development. Though falling short of advancing a normative account, Duxbury’s book nevertheless provides a nuanced and balanced description of the natures of dicta and dissent, engaging with the complexities of judicial reasoning beyond a conventional black-and-white approach. In so doing, this book sets the groundwork for any normative analysis of the role dicta and dissent can play in shaping common law principles. It is anticipated that this book will remain an invaluable contribution to the field of judicial interpretation, especially as a necessary, vital resource upon which future scholarship may build.

Review Essay: The Literature of the Sages – A Re-visioning

Review Essay: The Literature of the Sages – A Re-visioning

Progressive Originalism and the New Canon Wars

Abstract This essay responds to Geoffrey Kirsch’s review essay “What’s Past is Prologue: Democracy in the Age of Originalism” by evaluating how the three texts Kirsch reviews—Kermit Roosevelt, III’s The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story (2022), Cass R. Sunstein’s How to Interpret the Constitution (2023), and D. Berton Emerson and Gregory Laski’s edited collection Democracies in America: Keywords for the Nineteenth Century and Today (2023)—engage with progressive originalism. Drawing inspiration from civil rights activists including Frederick Douglass, progressive originalists seek to recast an ostensibly conservative method of constitutional interpretation grounded in what the “founding fathers” or a historical public thought or intended. Roosevelt’s and Sunstein’s books reveal the potential and limits of both progressive originalism and insular disciplinary conversations about constitutional interpretation. Contrastingly, the multidisciplinary Democracies in America has a more expansive conception of whose voices should matter when interpreting the Constitution through a progressive originalist lens. A comparative analysis of the three books also demonstrates the value of literature and literary historians in an age characterized by the ascendancy of historical approaches to constitutional interpretation and a revival of the “canon wars.”

Yes, There Is a “Quare”/Queer South!: A Review Essay

Yes, There Is a “Quare”/Queer South!: A Review Essay

“Every Single Word Is Now a Tempest of Gestures”: Luigi Ballerini's and Beppe Cavatorta's Anthology of Italian Poetry Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies

Abstract This essay is a long review of the anthology of Italian poetry Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies. Beginning with a brief discussion of the editor's extensive introduction and an evaluation and explanation of the overall anthology project, the review essay goes on to explore, in some depth, a selection of the numerous poets who appear in this 2,116-page volume. Among the many poets discussed are Pier Paolo Pasolini, Francesco Leonetti, Alfredo Giuliani, Elio Pagliarani, Antonio Porta, Edoardo Cacciatore, Corrado Costa, Antonio Delfini, Mario Diacono, Amelia Rosselli, Emilio Villa, Andrea Zanzotto, and numerous others. Specific poems are analyzed and contextualized within the larger context of contemporary Italian “Research” poetry.

What’s Past is Prologue: Democracy in the Age of Originalism

Abstract This essay reviews three recent books grappling with the history and meaning of US constitutional democracy, written in a time when an originalist, conservative Supreme Court serves as the Constitution’s final arbiter. Democracies in America: Keywords for the Nineteenth Century and Today, edited by D. Berton Emerson and Gregory Laski, and The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America’s Story, by Kermit Roosevelt III, strive to appropriate originalist methods toward progressive ends. By contrast, Cass R. Sunstein’s How to Interpret the Constitution evinces a pragmatic skepticism of any such historically bound modes of interpretation. The tension between these approaches, I suggest, has shaped US constitutional discourse since the nineteenth century.

Consuming Consumption

Abstract This essay reviews four recent works examining the cultural politics of consumption. It explores the methodological and theoretical distinctions and commonalities between three works which share an historical focus. It notes the different emphases suggested by historians, sociologists, and literary critics but emphasises their shared concern with understanding the complex agency of consumption as it is can be found specifically in cultural representations. The essay also notes the persistence of the theoretical divide between these historical studies, which identify consumption as a site of ambivalent possibility and even resistance, and contemporary accounts that regard it as a site of commodification and expropriation of the self.