Scalar Context Research Articles

Fixed and in flux: the identity of a hospitality degree program at a Canadian community college

ABSTRACT This paper applies the concept of identity – typically associated with individuals and self-definition – to the study of a degree program, a collective educational enterprise. Faculty members and senior administrators at a community college in Canada with ties to the development of a hospitality degree program were interviewed. This paper examines identity within a different empirical and scalar context (a degree program rather than individuals) and in a manner that is different conceptually (addressing the idea that identity has both enduring and changing features). The competitive academic marketplace has shaped the identity of the hospitality degree program at Niagara College Canada. Commercial pressures, themselves fixed and in flux, have driven the formation of an identity that has attributes that are fixed and in flux. The notion of identity is interwoven with business imperatives and may offer guidance to hospitality degree programs in the context of a post-pandemic economic recovery.

Women, Peace and Security across scales: exclusions and opportunities in Iraq's WPS engagements

Abstract While space, positionality, hierarchy and location have been central undercurrents to understanding women's participation and uptake of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, there has been little conceptual clarity about how these dynamics play out in post-conflict settings, nor on the impact that this has on women's civil society networks in these locations. In turn, this silence depoliticizes, decontextualizes and flattens the complex and diverse uses of the WPS agenda in post-conflict settings, as well as the diverse civil society arrangements underpinning this activity. This article makes the issue of space and its political nature central (captured through the use of the ‘politics of scale’), with reference to Iraq as a context for unpacking these dynamics. I explore how Iraqi women participate across different scalar contexts linked to the WPS agenda, and navigate exclusions and opportunities within and across them. Drawing on interviews, speeches and policy material from Iraqi women's organizations and their international partners, I argue that grasping how hierarchies related to scale, identity, resourcing and positionality are reproduced in local and national contexts is vital to understanding the uptake and rewriting of the WPS agenda in post-conflict settings. Further, I explore how Iraqi women's organizations are responding to openings and attempting to challenge the spatial arrangements within and across the different scales they work and participate in.

Reclaiming authenticity: The spaces and scales of national sincerity

At present, there seems to be somewhat of a paradox between critical academic and more political and popular understandings of authenticity. At one level, the notion of authenticity has become passé, almost a dirty word, for critical social theorists and human geographers: being something that reflects, at best, naïve, or at worst, essentialist and exclusionary ways of thinking. At the same time, we are in the middle of a period during which notions of authenticity have never been as prominent within political and public debate. In this paper, we develop the notion of sincerity as a way of enabling a more progressive interpretation of authenticity. We illustrate the value of this approach through a case study of the identities and cultures promoted within the education system in Wales. We witness here an emphasis on a negotiated sense of Welsh identity and one that is sensitive to difference, in spatial and scalar contexts. We conclude the paper by suggesting that the notion of sincerity might provide critical social scientists with a potential way of developing a more progressive and inclusive understanding of authenticity.

Chord Proximity, Parsimony, and Analysis with Filtered Point-Symmetry

Filtered Point-Symmetry (FiPS) is a tool for modeling relationships between iterated maximally even sets. Common musical relationships can be studied by using FiPS to model chords contained within a specific scalar context (such as C major or the 01-octatonic collection), and by capturing those relationships in a FiPS configuration space. In this work, many FiPS configuration spaces are presented; some are isomorphic to commonly referenced voice-leading spaces like the neo-RiemannianTonnetz, and others show tonal networks that have not previously been explored. A displacement operation is introduced to codify the traversal of a configuration space, and a short music analysis is provided to demonstrate some benefits of the approach.

Mandarin Yě and Scalarity

Abstract This paper examines the use of Mandarin yě ‘also’ in contexts which dōu can be used as well, e.g., in no matter and even contexts. I argue that there is a correlation between the possibility of using yĕ and the presence of a scalar reading as well as a reference to an extremity on the scale in question. The data we present show that yě is invariably associated with scalar readings: yě is always used in scalar contexts, and contexts that are not obviously scalar become so when yě is used. I also argue that a scalar interpretation of wh-elements in no matter contexts can be derived with the aid of negation or modals, thus accounting for the felicitousness of yě in such contexts. The paper ends with a short note on lián, hypothesizing that its function is to introduce the extreme of the scale. I also argue that the licensing condition of the additive/basic yě, i.e., the presence of alternatives in the background, also plays a role in the scalar use of yě.

Struggles over Identity and Territory: Regional Identities in Ethnoreligious Conflict in Northern Nigeria

This article explores how ethnoreligious conflict over boundaries and territoriality involves a politics of scale, that is, how positions and demands are framed by actors according to, for instance, local, regional, and national scales. The analysis focuses on how Muslim actors in a conflict in Kaduna State in Nigeria frame a regional, northern Nigerian identity that varies in content and form depending on the scalar context in which communal conflict is placed with regional and national politics yielding different identifications.

Perceptions of environmental change in Moorea, French Polynesia: the importance of temporal, spatial, and scalar contexts

Pacific Islands are considered among the most vulnerable geographies and societies to the effects of climate change and variability (CCV). This study addresses the mismatch between global climate change narratives and local perceptions of environmental change in Moorea, French Polynesia. This study builds on CCV risk perception and adaptation research by analyzing how temporal and historical socio-economic, cultural, political, and ecological contexts shape local perceptions of environmental change among a sample of environmental stakeholders in Moorea. The data were collected prior to the widespread global narrative and social amplification of climate change risk and its particular impact on islands. As such, they offer an important portrait of environmental perceptions in French Polynesia prior to the influence of a circumscribed climate change narrative, which has since come to shape government and NGO responses to environmental change in the Pacific Island Countries and Territories. The data presented in this paper illustrate that perceptions of drivers and effects of environmental change and risk in Moorea are embedded in larger social processes of political economy and ecology, particularly related to contemporary environmental politics, contextualized within the histories of colonialism and tourism-led economic development. Integrating the complexity of local environmental risk perceptions into CCV policy will help to avoid maladaptation, social movements against CCV planning, and may help maximize government and donor investments.

A space for inflections: following up on JMM’s special issue on mathematical theories of voice leading

Journal of Mathematics and Music's recent special issue 7(2) reveals substantial common ground between mathematical theories of harmony advanced by Tymoczko, Hook, Plotkin, and Douthett. This paper develops a theory of scalar inflection as a kind of voice-leading distance using quantization in voice-leading geometries, which combines the best features of different approaches represented in the special issue: it is grounded in the concrete sense of voice-leading distance promoted by Tymoczko, invokes scalar contexts in a similar way as filtered point-symmetry, and abstracts the circle of fifths like Hook's signature transformations. The paper expands upon Tymoczko's ‘generalized signature transform’ showing the deep significance of generalized circles of fifths to voice-leading properties of all collections. Analysis of Schubert's Notturno for Piano Trio and ‘Nacht und Träume’ demonstrate the musical significance of inflection as a kind of voice leading, and the value of a robust geometrical understanding of it.

Scalar context in musical models

In this paper, we examine relationships between signature transformations, Filtered Point-Symmetry (FiPS), and voice-leading spaces, with a strong emphasis on the role of scalar context in each model. While these models overlap, the differences between them are of substantial analytical importance. We determine how to expand the signature group using FiPS, and map familiar transformational graphs to maximally even coordinate spaces, thereby separating transformational groups from the scalar contexts in which they are most often explained. We also look at differences in the definition and usage of maximal evenness in continuous space, and examine the impact of scalar context on voice-leading distance.

Noncompactness and noncompleteness in isometries of Lipschitz spaces

We solve the following three questions concerning surjective linear isometries between spaces of Lipschitz functions Lip(X,E) and Lip(Y,F), for strictly convex normed spaces E and F and metric spaces X and Y:(i)Characterize those base spaces X and Y for which all isometries are weighted composition maps.(ii)Give a condition independent of base spaces under which all isometries are weighted composition maps.(iii)Provide the general form of an isometry, both when it is a weighted composition map and when it is not. In particular, we prove that requirements of completeness on X and Y are not necessary when E and F are not complete, which is in sharp contrast with results known in the scalar context.

Sharpened forms of a von Neumann inequality for $\rho$-contractions

The purpose of this paper is to give some sharpened forms of the von Neumann inequality for strict $\rho$-contractions which were obtained earlier. Also, some sharpened forms of the Schwarz inequality for strict $\rho$-contractions will be given, and as applications, corresponding inequalities for strict contractions and for uniformly stable operators will be derived. In particular, we recover the results of K. Fan covering the strict contractions, and in the scalar context we find an improved form of the interior Schwarz inequality quoted by R. Osserman .

Spatial Processes in Scalar Context: Development and Security in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper discusses the evolution of the development and security discourse since the waning of the cold war period, and examines how such notions influenced policies pursued by the Brazilian government regarding Amazonian development and national security during the same time period. The theoretical framework presented examines the socio-political construction of security across a nested hierarchy of spatial scales. In general, the paper contends that the development and security agenda served to undermine the security of Amazonia's poor, rural population, which is defined here as the right of individuals to access land necessary for subsistence and improvement of social welfare. In turn, threats to security at this level may directly affect national security if land competition intensifies social tension and mobilization, impacting political stability, and possibly leading to civil unrest. Furthermore, the spatial articulation of land conflict in the Amazon may exacerbate deforestation, thus threatening the environmental security of nation-states as defined by the global community. The paper outlines a conceptual framework illustrating the interaction of local and regional human security with global environmental security concerns, and presents preliminary findings from 292 household surveys and key informant interviews conducted in 12 settlement sites in the south of Pará in the summer of 2006 that support the model's assertions. Este artigo discute a evolução do discurso sobre desenvolvimento e segurança desde o fim da Guerra Fria, e examina como tais noções influenciaram as políticas públicas adotadas pelo governo brasileiro com relação ao desenvolvimento da Amazônia e a segurança nacional durante este mesmo período de tempo. O arcabouço teoríco utilizado examina a construção socio-política da segurança, utilizando para isto, uma hierarquia espacial de escalas. Em geral, este artigo afirma que a agenda de desenvolvimento e segurança serviram para debilitar a segurança da pobre população rural da Amazônia, o qual é definida aqui como, o direito dos indivíduos de ter acesso a terra necessária para a sobrevivência e melhoria do bem-estar social. Por sua vez, ameaças a segurança a este nível pode diretamente afetar a segurança nacional, se a competição por terra intensificar a tensão social e a mobilização, impactando a estabilidade política, e possivelmente levando a uma intranquilidade da sociedade civil. Além disso, a articulação espacial do conflito de terra na Amazônia pode aumentar o desmatamento, e consequentemente, ameaçar a segurança das nações-estados, como definido pela comunidade internacional. Finalmente, o artigo esboça um arcabouço conceitual ilustrando a interação entre a segurança humana local e regional, com as preocupações com a seguranca ambiental global, e apresenta resultados preliminaries de 292 questionários, e entrevistas com informante chaves, conduzidos em 12 assentamentos localizados no Sul do Pará, no verão de 2006, dando suporte ao modelo e as afirmações feitas.

Producing the Capacity to Govern in Global Sydney: A Multiscaled Account

ABSTRACT:Critiques of urban regime theory suggest the need for a more nuanced approach to the tangled scalar geographies that constitute urban governance. This article moves towards such an approach by adopting urban regime theory’s focus on urban politics but conducts its analyses through a multiscalar lens. It demonstrates how processes operating across multiple scales intersect in the production of local governance. The article focuses on the social production of urban governance in Sydney, Australia, specifically examining the city’s changing scalar context and scale politics. It suggests that scale-sensitive regime analyses can make important contributions to theoretical development concerning the multiscalar complexities of governance.

Musical and Temporal Influences on Key Discovery

The intervallic rivalry model of key identification is outlined and evaluated in two experiments that use a completion judgment task. Experiment 1 replicates an earlier experiment by Cuddy and Badertscher (1987), in which the rare-interval hypothesis of the intervallic rivalry model was considered. In the present study, listeners with different levels of musical training rated probe tones in the context of three different melodic patterns: arpeggiated major triads, ascending major scales, and arpeggiated diminished triads. Results of Experiment 1 indicated that in both the C major triadic and the C major scalar contexts, listeners gave higher completion ratings to all three probes that were members of the presented C major triad than to the other probes, with the exception of F, thereby producing a jagged (multipeaked) profile. For the diminished triadic context, listeners rated the single probe C, that which corresponds to the tonal center in major mode for that group of three tones, as the best completion. Experiment 2 tested the temporal-order hypothesis of the intervallic rivalry model by reordering tones in all three contexts. Again jagged tone profiles appeared with major triadic and major scalar contexts, although in the former the tone F, a perfect fifth below the root of the presented C major triad, received the best completion rating. A single-peaked function appeared with probes in the diminished triadic context, where the major-mode tonic garnered the highest rating found in all conditions of both experiments. Data are interpreted as support for both the rare-interval hypothesis and the temporal-order hypothesis derived from the intervallic rivalry model of key discovery. Complementary findings consistent with the tonal hierarchy model are also discussed.

Continuum regularization of quantum field theory: (I). Scalar prototype

This paper, I, is the first in a series of papers in which we present a new, presumably nonperturbative, regularization scheme for continuum quantum field theory. The higher covariant derivative method is designed to respect relevant symmetries, and is expected to provide suitable regularization for any theory of interest. We will discuss gauge theories explicitly in II. This first paper on scalar field theory is designed partly as a pedagogical vehicle to introduce the reader, in the simplest possible context, to the relevant regularized Langevin and regularized Schwinger-Dyson techniques — which extend more or less directly to gauge theory. The scalar context is also the simplest in which to study the curious feature that our scheme is not an action regularization, a fact which is crucial to its success in regulating theories with local symmetries. A renormalization program is checked through one loop, including a computation of the β-function in φ 6 3.