Scholarly Dialogue Research Articles

Academic Integrity and Audiobooks

Abstract Audiobooks offer increased accessibility and new ways of engaging with scholarly texts. Although the development of academic audiobooks is in a relatively early stage, one significant issue that is yet to receive appropriate attention is the presentation of referenced materials in audio form. Presently, this is approached on a case-by-case basis with no centralized industry standards, and so protocols are either set by individual publishers or negotiated between rights-holders and narrators. Narrators usually adopt one of four options for dealing with notes or other referencing tools: complete omission; addition of audio effects to differentiate the reading of references from the primary narrative; reading the reference notes at the end of a chapter or the book; or including with the audiobook files an optional PDF download with reference details. These options give consideration to aesthetic issues, but it is uncertain whether they do justice to questions of academic integrity. The purpose of this article is to encourage scholarly dialogue and a conversation between the audio publishing industry and academia on this issue, and to begin working towards a ‘best practice’ framework that satisfies questions of both aesthetic experience and academic integrity.

Fear and loathing in monuments: Rethinking the politics and practices of monumentality and monumentalization

Monuments—and the function and import of monumentality and practices of monumentalization—are currently under incredible scrutiny. Should historical statues of racist figures and pasts be left as they are or removed and destroyed? Should they be rehomed in statue parks intended as final resting places for disgraced statues? Or should they be left but with additional monuments and memorials added to their surroundings to provide further context? At the root of these debates is a fundamental inquiry about not just what monuments are but, more importantly, what monuments are intended to do for and within a body politic. In scholarly dialogue with Doss, Santino, Savage, Young, and others, I assert that we need to reorient and expand our thinking about monuments. I argue that monuments function as speech acts, and although they rarely speak for an entire body politic, monuments play a critical role in shaping historical narratives and cultural reckoning with racist, brutally violent pasts and their lived afterlives. Moreover, while in many respects backward-facing, monuments are also profoundly future-facing in the values and narratives they symbolize and articulate and the kinds of spaces and community practices they have the potential to cultivate. I analyze two different monument projects: Aida Šehović’s transnational nomadic monument to the Srebrenica genocide, ŠTO TE NEMA, and Landmarked, Ada Pinkston’s embodied replacement and reimagining of spaces where Confederate and slavery monuments used to be in the Eastern United States. These monument projects, I argue, challenge us to revisit the politics and practices of monumentality and monumentalization in relation to unworked-through racist pasts and, in this incredible moment of reckoning and crisis, suggest new possibilities for how we understand—and cultivate—monuments moving forward.

Beyond resilience: Resistance in the lives of LGBTQ youth

AbstractResilience has come to define a wide breadth of impactful research on marginalized groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. This resilience framework shifted the deficit “at‐risk” model of research on marginalized populations to a more nuanced strengths‐based perspective. In this critical review article, we examine this research trend to understand how the shift to resilience has shaped patterns of LGBTQ youth research. In doing so, this piece calls for a more sophisticated engagement with operationalizing resilience–which is vaguely defined and often upholds dominant relations in society, such as capitalistic, heteronormative values of success and happiness. We show how a shift to understanding resistance, joy, and pleasure in LGBTQ youth's lives promotes a more dynamic and complicated look at how marginalized groups navigate their social worlds and exert power in shaping these worlds. Acknowledging and uplifting LGBTQ youth's resistance and power are necessary in pushing scholarly dialogue and the possible interventions informed by research towards a more fully transformative framework in changing and dismantling oppressive societal structures.

Editorial – The Launch of a New Intellectual Journey in Spine Care

On behalf of the editorial board, I am pleased to announce the launch of the official journal of the Saudi Spine Society, the Journal of Spine Practice (JSP), an international peer-reviewed, open access, academic, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary journal that encompasses every aspect of spine care and research.
 Our goal is to see JSP grow into a space for multidisciplinary scholarly dialogue among spine practitioners to showcase their clinical research, basic science research, health services research, economic analysis, health professionals education, as well as evidence-based statements and guidelines. JSP aims to promote excellence in spine care and produce a significant academic contribution to the field.
 To read the full text, please download the PDF or view the article HTML.

Forum: Conflict Delegation in Civil Wars

AbstractThis forum provides an outlet for an assessment of research on the delegation of war to non-state armed groups in civil wars. Given the significant growth of studies concerned with this phenomenon over the last decade, this forum critically engages with the present state of the field. First, we canvass some of the most important theoretical developments to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the debate. Second, we expand on the theme of complexity and investigate its multiple facets as a window into pushing the debate forward. Third, we draw the contours of a future research agenda by highlighting some contemporary problems, puzzles, and challenges to empirical data collection. In essence, we seek to connect two main literatures that have been talking past each other: external support in civil wars and proxy warfare. The forum bridges this gap at a critical juncture in this new and emerging scholarship by offering space for scholarly dialogue across conceptual labels.

Considering Indigenous Research Methodologies: Bicultural Accountability and the Protection of Community Held Knowledge

As part of a continuing conversation related to Indigenous methodologies in Western academic contexts, this manuscript includes a summary of the scholarly dialogue by providing background information and situatedness to an exchange that is positioned in the academy and Indigenous community simultaneously. The dialogue thus far includes a keynote presentation and a series of manuscripts that collectively help explain Indigenous research methodologies (IRMs) and delineates important considerations for practitioners and communities who relate to Indigenous research. The authors share where they agree, and where they diverge as well as their rationale for continuing the discourse in an academic forum. The paper concludes with an alternative method for dissemination (a winter count), that reimagines epistemological pluralism and knowledge protection through bicultural accountability. We consider the repatriation of Indigenous knowledge to be paramount in this process.

Green Dialogues and Digital Collaboration on Nonfiction Children’s Literature

Contemporary children’s literature has developed a growing interest in the interconnectedness between humans and the environment and in the ongoing exchange and negotiation of ways to be in the world. These new directions in children’s literature consequently challenge teachers of children’s literature in higher education. The study of contemporary children’s literature needs not only to be informed by new theoretical perspectives like ecocriticism, posthumanism and new materialism, but also to revisit, develop and explore the methodological tools and teaching practices necessary to prepare students to address these demanding issues. The aim of the article is to present and discuss the research question: How is it possible to secure scholarly dialogue and practical collaboration in an academic course on nonfiction children’s literature and environmental issues? Building on a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework consisting of theory of nonfiction, ecocriticism, dialogic teaching, environmental architecture and place-based teaching, the study reports on a pilot course which took place in the summer of 2020. Due to the pandemic situation the course became digital. Hence the digital challenges and possibilities turned out to be a critical aspect of the planned practical collaboration between students, teachers and students and teachers. The main goal of the course was to help motivate students to engage in and negotiate about nonfiction children’s literature and sustainability, to enhance their aesthetic experiences and to foster their environmental consciousness through children’s literature. The course was characterized by its alternating blending of lectures and hands-on experiences with theoretical and methodological tools as well as nature or culture specific places.

Three phases of COVID-19: theoretical thinking on epidemic prevention and control

The response to the COVID-19 outbreak was evaluated by analyzing the literature published after the outbreak. By reviewing and summarizing the different stages, nodes and measures during the occurrence and development of COVID-19, other countries can draw on their experience and reference for the fight against COVID-19 in China. In December 2019, the COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China, and then the whole world continued to pay close attention to the development of the COVID-19 in China. Until now, the outbreak and development of the COVID-19 has lasted for more than a year. Looking back on the process of the COVID-19, several key stages and events have had a profound impact on the development of the COVID-19. We divided the evolution of the outbreak since its origin into different phases. The policy changes of the Chinese government in different periods of the COVID-19 pandemic were evaluated, and the transformation nodes of the policies and differences in each stage were determined. We divided the evolution of the outbreak into three stages of the outbreak are initial outbreak stage, the carrying of the virus (people or goods) stage, and the non-direct contact transmission (goods transmission) stage. This paper reviews the three stages of the evolution of responses by the Chinese government to COVID-19 using a phase analysis method to examine different policy starting points, changes to policy, and reasons for policy change. The study provides a resource for COVID-19 policy review and includes image of the three-phase shift in policy as the epidemic progressed. By summarizing and describing the policy changes in the three phases of the response to COVID-19 in China, this paper provides a resource for others in formulating their response to the pandemic. The commentary is also designed to provoke scholarly dialog among the readers of the journal.

The New Testament in Comparison: Validity, Method, and Purpose in Comparing Traditions

The New Testament in Comparison: Validity, Method, and Purpose in Comparing Traditions

THE PUZZLE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN CUBA, 1980s–2010s

AbstractContrasting perspectives on racism and racial inequality collide in contemporary Cuba. On the one hand, government officials argue that Cuba is a racially egalitarian country; though vestiges of historical racism subsist, systematic discrimination does not. On the other hand, social movement actors and organizations denounce that racism and discrimination are systemic and affect large sectors of the Afro-Cuban population. To draw these visions into scholarly dialogue, our analytic strategy consists in the comparative examination of both narratives as well as the empirical bases that sustain them. Using data from the 1981, 2002, and 2012 Cuban Censuses for the first time, as well as various non-census evidentiary sources, both quantitative and qualitative, we examine how racial inequality has evolved in Cuba during the last decades. Our analyses of census data suggest that racial stratification has a limited impact on areas such as education, health care, occupation, and positions of leadership. We find, nonetheless, that an expanding and strikingly racialized private sector is fueling dramatic income inequality by skin color beyond the reach of official census data. Our analysis sheds light on how different data can convey profoundly different pictures of racial inequality in a given context. Moreover, we highlight that significant contradictions can coexist in the lived experiences of racism and racial inequality within a single country context.

Meravigliosi ragni danzanti. Interpretazioni del tarantismo nel Seicento ed. by Manuel de Carli

Reviewed by: Meravigliosi ragni danzanti. Interpretazioni del tarantismo nel Seicento ed. by Manuel de Carli Claudio Petrillo Italy, tarantism, spiders, psychogenic illness, occult, dance, music, rituality manuel de carli, ED. Meravigliosi ragni danzanti. Interpretazioni del tarantismo nel Seicento. Calimera: Kurumuny Edizioni, 2020. Pp. 244. The rich and encompassing approach of this book aims to shed light on the multifaceted phenomenon of tarantism, a mass psychogenic illness causing fits of dancing, through considerations of the debates which arose around it in the seventeenth century. This is an historical overview of the thought of several personalities regarding the question of tarantism, across the scientific and humanistic community of the 1600s. In the process, the book investigates the common grounds and ontological roots uniting various disciplines, such as medicine, philosophy, literature, astrology, and alchemy. The core topic of Meravigliosi ragni danzanti is the evidence of an interdisciplinary tradition—spanning history, sociology, ethnology, anthropology, and philosophy—within which the history and interpretations of one of the more sensational phenomena both in the Italian collective consciousness and in the cultural folklore of the country were debated. Tarantism likely assumed its unique features thanks to its climatic and geographical setting, broadly speaking the whole of southern Europe, but certainly manifested most dramatically in Apulia. This work is organized into seven chapters, each dedicated to one European scholar of the seventeenth century. These scholars of tarantism are presented and examined by experts: Giovanni Battista della Porta (1535–1615) by Donato Verardi, Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) by Maurizio Cambi, Epifanio Ferdinando (1569–1638) by Adele Spedicati, Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) by Silvia Parigi, Wolferd Senguerd (1646–1724) by Manuel De Carli, Antonio [End Page 451] Muscettola (1628–1679) by Marco Leone, and Giorgio Baglivi (1668–1707) by Gabriella Sava. Collectively, they form the cornerstones of an international network of scholarly dialogue and research, conceptual and empirical knowledge. The connections between these scholars were established in private libraries, where texts were passed around and ideas were confronted, interacting with each other. While the spatial and temporal details of the debate provide important context in these studies, perhaps more important are the key concepts and patterns presented throughout the collected papers. One of the shared conceptual motifs in this work is the opposition between the occult and the manifest, especially in the studies of Della Porta (17–45), Campanella (47–81), Ferdinando (85–118), Kircher (121–64), and Senguerd (149–81). This dichotomy refers to the account of the occult by the Peripatetic school, still very much trending in the seventeenth century, to which were ascribed those qualities susceptible neither to the senses nor to the human intellect. This was a common but not universal framework used for the analysis of tarantism. While some natural historians, such as Senguerd and Baglivi (221–28), relied on philosophico-scientific axioms of mechanistic-corpuscular inspiration (closer to Descartes and Bacon) and therefore saw no use in the category of the occult, the physician Epifanio Ferdinando, on the other hand, accepted the theorization of occult matters from an Aristotelian-Galenian perspective. In addition to the question of "mechanism," this dichotomy between the occult and the manifest could be found in the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical work on hypothetical cures for the condition. A question that is particularly central in the book regards the interpretation of the therapeutic tools against tarantism as operational within either the realm of magical rituality or of scientific practice. A paramount example of this is the supposed therapeutic power of music. In essence, the idea that the symptoms were expressed in the agitated bodily movements and stimulated by the external agent (spider's venom) became a central subject of discussion in many fields. Initially, the connection between the body and the spirit was debated, including the question of how spider venom could come to affect the victim's animus. Later, immaterial links between the spirit of the animal and the spirit of the victim were hypothesized, in ways that might depend on certain circumstances, periods of time, climatic variables, or the patient's feelings. The symptoms were eventually understood with the help a broader social analysis of the phenomenon, and were particularly attributed to the lower classes in the society...

From soft power to sharp power: China’s media image in Hong Kong’s health crises from 2003 to 2020

This article examines China’s media image in Hong Kong’s health crises of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 and the coronavirus disease-19 in 2020. Both diseases were allegedly transmitted from mainland China to Hong Kong, which triggered extensive media coverage and intensive debates over China’s role in epidemic control, reaction, and its trust in Hong Kong and the world. In 2003, China established a relatively positive and constructive media image in Hong Kong during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis, particularly when Chinese state leaders made themselves visible to the people. However, in the wake of coronavirus disease-19, media and public discourses have speculated about China’s failure to contain the pandemic, questioning China’s informational credibility. Theoretically, we argue that the comparison of China’s media image in Hong Kong during the health crises of severe acute respiratory syndrome and coronavirus disease-19 indicates that China’s international image has shifted from a soft power to a sharp power. While Hong Kong is under Chinese sovereignty as a Special Administrative Region of China and a global financial and business hub, its media discourses continue to indicate how overseas opinion perceives the rise of China and its performance as a global citizen. Our findings show that the scholarly dialogues on soft power and sharp power were manifested in the news frames of severe acute respiratory syndrome and coronavirus disease-19 in Hong Kong. We will conceptualize the shifting media image by revisiting the concepts of soft power, sharp power, and the international debate on the rise of China in recent decades.

Toward Understanding Movement-evoked Pain (MEP) and its Measurement: A Scoping Review.

Individuals with chronic pain conditions often report movement as exacerbating pain. An increasing number of researchers and clinicians have recognized the importance of measuring and distinguishing between movement-evoked pain (MEP) and pain at rest as an outcome. This scoping review maps the literature and describes MEP measurement techniques. The scoping review utilized 6 databases to identify original studies that targeted pain or movement-related outcomes. Our search returned 7322 articles that were screened by title and abstract by 2 reviewers. The inclusion criteria focused on the measurement of MEP before, during, and after movement tasks in adults with chronic pain. Studies of children below 18 years of age or with nonhuman animals, case studies, qualitative studies, book chapters, cancer-related pain, non-English language, and abstracts with no full publish text were excluded from the study. Results from 38 studies revealed great variation in the measurement of MEP, while almost all of the studies did not provide an explicit conceptual or operational definition for MEP. In addition, studies collectively illuminated differences in MEP compared with rest pain, movement provocation methods, and pain intensity as the primary outcome. These results have clinically significant and research implications. To advance the study of MEP, we offer that consistent terminology, standardized measurement (appropriate for pain type/population), and clear methodological processes be provided in research publications. On the basis of the findings, we have put forth a preliminary definition of MEP that may benefit from the continued scholarly dialog.

Intellectual structure of consumer complaining behavior (CCB) research: A bibliometric analysis

Consumer complaining behavior (CCB) is an important field of research and practice, as it links the streams of service failure and service recovery. Despite extensive work, gaps persist in the understanding of CCB, for its intricate multi-dimensional nature. In this paper, we present a bibliometric analysis of CCB research published since 2000. Specifically, we analyze 729 articles containing 46,134 references, using citation and co-citation analysis. Our study reveals influential works in the CCB domain and identifies their clustering pattern. We supplement the exercise with social network analysis to decipher the centrality features of CCB research. We clarify the scholarly dialogue prevalent in the domain by interpreting the results through the process, valence, and actor perspective. Our review adds to theory by delineating the intellectual structure of CCB research and identifying future research potential. We contribute to practice by suggesting a four-pronged prescriptive approach toward CCB.

Jurnal Penjaminan Mutu Corpus Thematic Analysis : Trends In Quality And Quality Assurance Research

Research as a component of quality assurance serves as a venue to provide spaces for scholarly dialog among experts in bridging together aspects and elements that call for inquiry and debate. This study employs documentary analysis to effectively address the need of the research. Articles accepted and published in the Journal of Quality Assurance are downloaded, revisited, and analysed. Based on available online data, this study includes articles published from year 2018, covering publication issues after it was included in the list of the Asean Citation Index (ACI). In-depth scrutiny of data revealed three main arguments pertaining to inquiries of articles accepted and published in the journal: Quality Assurance in Education in Bountiful Quantity, From the Inner Psyche to the Social Systems of Humankind, and The Roles of Employers and Employees. The thrust of the journal in championing research works related to ‘quality assurance’ has been instrumental in contextualizing the concept of quality as applied in diverse fields of studies. The journal has served as a niche for scholars in advocating a community of practice where knowledge production is evident and scholarly approaches to research inquiries are manifested.

Writing a letter to the editor: tips for success

Writing a letter to the editor: tips for success

Beyond Whigs and Democrats: historians, historiography, and the paths toward a new synthesis for the Jacksonian era

ABSTRACT This article reviews 30 years of synthetic works on Jacksonian America and argues that while most are still political narratives, the elements of a new synthesis are emerging. Recent scholarship suggests three broad areas from which a newer, more relevant synthesis might come: slavery, race, and gender; political culture; and the new history of capitalism. Furthermore, some key building blocks of a new synthesis have been emerging in the scholarly dialogue prompted by recent research trends and publications.

Editorial

Contention has now reached its eighth volume and fifteenth issue, and we have been delighted to see the journal move from attainment to attainment over the past eight years. Contention has developed a reputation for publishing high-quality research, articles, and analyses in the fields of social protest, collective action, and contentious politics, soliciting contributions from world-leading scholars and early career academics alike. Its articles are strongly interdisciplinary and global in nature, with the journal offering a platform for research that crosses old-fashioned national and theoretical boundaries. We were delighted to see such merits recognized by the recent inclusion of Contention in the SCOPUS database. Together with the European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences, where the journal is already indexed, the inclusion of Contention in SCOPUS will bring further visibility to the scholarly work we publish, facilitating its diffusion by providing an even stronger opportunity to contribute to international scholarly dialogue.

Errant Exceptionalism

Should LGBT-rights advocates analogize to race when wedding vendors seek religious exemptions from state public accommodation laws so that they may refuse service to same-sex couples? These wedding vendors concede that courts would reject their religious exemption claim when asserted to refuse serving a different-sex African-American couple. Should the analysis and outcome be the same for religious exemptions sought to refuse serving a same-sex couple? Both the ideological left and ideological right contest the use of the race analogy in these cases, although for largely different reasons. On the ideological right, today’s exemptions seekers bristle at the comparison to the vendors of the 1960s who sought to justify racial discrimination based on religious beliefs. They contend that the vendors of the 1960s were actually racists using religion as a cover for their bigotry. In contrast, today’s wedding vendors contend that they are asserting honorable and sincerely held religious beliefs that justify sexual orientation discrimination. On the ideological left, scholars contend that the race analogy is detrimental to coalition building among marginalized communities, that it leads to essentialism, and that it unduly constricts both the vision of civil rights and the agenda of the LGBT movement. This article tackles the opposition from both the ideological left and the right and makes the argument that LGBT-rights advocates should deploy the race analogy in the wedding vendor cases. In doing so, it adds to the scholarly dialogue about the propriety of the race analogy and contributes to that body of scholarship a taxonomy of the race analogy in the LGBT-rights movement. The race analogy in today’s wedding vendor cases is tantalizing to LGBT-rights advocates because the Court has — in the 1960s case of Piggie Park v. Newman — rejected a religious exemption claim in the context of racial discrimination. The analogy thus played a prominent role in the advocacy surrounding Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court left open the merits questions concerning religious exemptions. It also left unanswered the ancillary question of whether it will accept or reject the race analogy in these cases — an analogy that, if accepted by the Court, would have significant (if not dispositive) weight in resolving these cases against the wedding vendors. As the Court prepares to take up another religious exemption case in its October 2020 Term, the race analogy will again be raised, litigated, and debated. The article adds a new layer of scholarly dialogue to the race analogy debate by contending that its use in these cases is a constructive method of making legible the intersecting interests of marginalized groups in the marketplace as well as revealing the errant exceptionalism — the lack of doctrinal coherence — if the Court were to permit a religious exemption for one protected class (sexual orientation) but not another (race).

Does Spiritual Intelligence (SI) Exist? A Theoretical Investigation of a Tool Useful for Finding the Meaning of Life

For years, spirituality and finding the meaning of life have been considered essential phenomena in the context of human existence. Zohar introduced the term spiritual intelligence (SI) in 1997, and since that time researchers have been seeking to clarify the concept. Emmons (The psychology of ultimate concerns. Guilford Press, New York, 1999) suggested that SI serves as a potentially significant construct to expand our understanding of the psychological determinants of human functioning. In recent years, several efforts to conceptualize and measure this construct have joined the body of related literature, of which King (Brighter paths to wellbeing: an integrative model of human intelligence and health. Trent University Centre for Health Studies Showcase, pp 12–13, 2008) serves as one notable example. Following, evaluating, and summarizing the theoretical debate regarding the validity of a concept, as it is presented in the literature, has long been understood as a helpful way of extending scholarly dialogue. In this project, I review psychological literature relevant to the debate on the validity of SI as a psychological construct. The literature offers many examples that demonstrate a relation between SI and other phenomena that are important for human functioning—well-being in this. Results of the analysis support theoretical considerations for viewing SI as facilitating the ability to search for the meaning of life and provide directions for future study.