Scholars In Disciplines Research Articles

Anthropocene

‘The Anthropocene’ is a term that is increasingly used to define a new planetary epoch: one in which humans have become the dominant force shaping Earth’s bio-geophysical composition and processes. Although it originated in the Earth Sciences, it has since been widely adopted across academia and the public sphere as a catch-all description for the overwhelming impact of human activity on the planet. This entry examines how anthropologists have engaged with the Anthropocene, both as a set of phenomena (e.g. climate change, mass extinction) and as a politically and morally loaded concept. It identifies four main anthropological approaches to the Anthropocene, those that: 1) take the Anthropocene as a context for or backdrop to ethnographic inquiry; 2) interrogate ‘the Anthropocene’ as a socially and politically constructed idea; 3) treat the Anthropocene as an opportunity for creativity and hopeful speculation; and 4) view the Anthropocene as the outcome of long-standing global political and socio-economic inequalities. Such approaches entail distinct methods, analytical frameworks, concepts, and ethico-political programmes. Collectively, they form a large and still-evolving body of work that destabilises divisions between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ and ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans’, as well as the scholarly disciplines traditionally built around them. In this capacity, they are also pushing anthropologists to ask what distinctive methodological, analytical, and ethico-political contributions their discipline can make to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of Anthropocene studies.

Hope in Medicine: Applying Multidisciplinary Insights.

Hope is a crucial aspect of human life and has been a topic of interest in many scholarly disciplines. The medical literature, however, has-with a few exceptions-failed to take account of conceptions of hope across other scholarly disciplines. Before exploring what makes hope a distinctive and important phenomenon in medical contexts, this article reviews prominent views on hope from philosophy, anthropology, theology, and psychology. To synthesize these different conceptions, the authors propose an integrative approach aimed at improving the understanding of hope in medicine. The authors use a modes-of-hoping framework to explain different phenomena related to hope in medicine, such as hope in the face of a dismal prognosis, in the disclosure of diagnostic information, and in the initiation of new treatments. Based on this tentative framework, possible directions for future empirical research are discussed. Beside further qualitative research into the patients' and physicians' understanding and experiences of hope, the authors urge a quantitative examination of the impact of hope (while recognizing that a quantitative approach might not able to capture hope's many intricacies). Finally, they discuss clinical and ethical implications with respect to a balance between physicians being honest and acknowledging patients' hope.

Publication, Compensation, and the Public Affairs Discount: Does Gender Play a Role?

This paper presents on three new styled facts: first, schools of public affairs hire many economists; second, those economists are disproportionately female; and third, salaries in schools of public affairs are, on average, lower than salaries in mainline departments of economics. We seek to understand the linkage, if any, among these facts. We assembled a unique database of over 2,150 faculty salary profiles from the top 50 Schools of Public Affairs in the United States as well as the corresponding Economics and Political Science departments. For each faculty member we obtained salary data to analyze the relationship between scholarly discipline, department placement, gender, and annual salary compensation. We found substantial pay differences based on departmental affiliation, significant differences in citation records between male and female faculty in schools of public affairs, and no evidence that the public affairs discount could be explained by compositional differences with respect to gender, experience or scholarly citations.

Secrets of the Dirt: Uncovering the Ancient People of Gault by Mary S. Black

Reviewed by: Secrets of the Dirt: Uncovering the Ancient People of Gault by Mary S. Black Mariah Wade Secrets of the Dirt: Uncovering the Ancient People of Gault. By Mary S. Black. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019. Pp. 132. Illustrations, bibliography, index.) This is a lovely book. The word “lovely” is seldom coupled with archaeology, but the informal narrative here disguises some of the achievements of the work. Secrets in the Dirt tells the meandering and motley story of the Gault Site in Central Texas and is intended for a wide audience fascinated by archaeology and willing to learn. In a down-to-earth tone, the author uses Gault to speak of a dynasty of important researchers, many from Texas, and links them to the present array of professional and avocational archaeologists as well as to the large number of volunteers who have worked on the site. At the same time that it highlights the professional [End Page 240] genealogy of those researchers and their work, the book traces important Texas sites, connecting the geographic dots among them to clarify where we have been and where we are now in understanding the material culture that the first Americans left behind. Importantly, study at Gault, in its various phases, has been masterminded by Mike Collins, chair of the Gault School of Archaeological Research and research associate with the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. Along with this mapping of people and sites, the author subtly reveals the vitality of archaeological studies that are a result of the intersection of researchers from other scholarly disciplines with the intense curiosity and ingenuity of crafts people. It is good and necessary that people such as E. H. Sellars, J. E. Pearce, Glen Evans, Ernest Lundelius, and Don Crabtree, among others, are acknowledged for their impact on archaeology in Texas and in general. Although the author smooths the edges of many archaeological conundrums regarding the modes of arrival and dispersion of the first Americans on the continent, the questioning reader will find that some of the researchers mentioned in the book, then and now, continue to grapple with those questions. Archaeology is about hypotheses and research, not certainties. Conversely, landowners’ prevalent practice of allowing pot-robbers to dig for a fee is not smoothed over, but neither is it stressed. Not unlike many other sites in Texas and around the world, Gault’s exploration had its beginning with those the author calls hobbyists, but this reviewer has issues with that description: having “a little fun in the dirt” (4) is also destruction, and one should not glamorize it. All archaeological sites are important, but the Gault Site spans about 16,000 years of human occupation and is unquestionably one of the most important archaeological sites in the Americas. Gault has provided important clues about the behavior of the peoples who inhabited the site during Clovis time (about 12,000–10,000 years before present), although the more recent archaeological evidence (since about 8,000 CE) has been churned up by those so-called hobbyists. As Clovis-age sites go, Gault is not unique; there are others, but Gault is among a selected few sites that produced pre-Clovis material culture. The Clovis-era materials at Gault have helped define the Clovis tool-kit and the pre-Clovis materials there have added some fascinating wrinkles to a complex picture. In fact, the pre-Clovis diversity is fascinating when considering the Clovis quasi uniformity followed by the heterogeneity of late Paleo tool traditions. Although Secrets of the Dirt is unnecessarily fanciful at times, one hopes it and the example and importance of the Gault Site will convince some Texas landowners, and others elsewhere, that the preservation of cultural heritage is a better badge of honor than the few dollars to be gained from would-be treasure hunters. This is a battle many archeologists have long fought. Native Americans would certainly be gratified to have their history [End Page 241] properly documented and not subsumed under a framed collection of projectile points hanging on a wall. Mariah Wade University of Texas at Austin Copyright © 2019 The Texas State Historical Association...

Society, Ethnicity, People: Dialectics of COMMUNICATION. Results of scientific research

In the article the problem of the interconnection of social philosophy and social psychology is considered. The dialectic of their relationship is analyzed. Based on the work of domestic philosophers and psychologists, the author reveals the methodological nature of the principles of social philosophy to determine the essence of social psychology. The importance of the researches of G. Steintal, M. Lazar, V. Wundt, G. Lebon and G. Tarde for the development of social psychology as a scholar discipline is investigated. It is emphasized that social philosophy and social psychology are complementary. Social philosophy is based on the theoretical and methodological principles of analysis, and social psychology is the concrete factual material of individual and super-individual being, since empirical research methods occupy a significant place in social psychology, the role of which is much less in social philosophy. Social philosophy uses the theoretical and methodological principles of analysis, and social psychology is distinguished by the concrete factual material of individual and super-individual being. Empirical research methods occupy a significant place in social psychology, their role is much less in social philosophy.

Investigating Intersections of Corporate Governance & Compliance

In April 2019, Notre Dame Law in London hosted a conference entitled “Investigating Intersections of Corporate Governance & Compliance” with scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, and Ireland participating. The goal of the conference was to facilitate dialogue within and amongst legal scholarly disciplines regarding the ways in which governance and compliance intersect. The effort was a resounding success, and The University of Chicago Law Review Online graciously agreed to publish the six papers presented at the conference. This is the introduction to the symposium.

Merging Comparative Law and Legal History: Towards an Integrated Discipline

This Article argues that legal history and comparative law ought to merge into one discipline. The two disciplines are both products of the same period, the late nineteenth century, when they were formed as the fruit of the rising positivist legal scholarship. They are, to be sure, opposite sides of the coin. Mainstream legal history was, from early on, a humble servant of positivism, whereas comparative law formed as an antithesis to it. Nevertheless, neither of the twin disciplines would exist as such were it not for the emergence of national legal positivism on both sides of the Atlantic. National legal histories developed as the dominant paradigm of the nineteenth century and for the most part of the twentieth. Legal historians provided an important slice of the nationalistic narrative, explaining how history had led national states to the particular situations in law they found themselves in. Comparative law started early in the nineteenth century as a response to practical legislative needs, as “comparative legislation.” Some of the internationally minded German scholars also reacted against the national emphasis of Savigny’s Historical School. Comparative legal scholarship acquired more academic overtones as the century wore on, and many scholars optimistically expected that comparative scholarship would unify and civilize the world’s legal orders. After World War II, mainstream comparative law had little hope left in its possibilities of civilizing the world. The discipline declined into a “country and western” style of scholarship. The largest obstacle in the way of merging the twin disciplines is the fact that they, as all scholarly disciplines, are also social communities. Most scholars still like to identify themselves as “comparatists” or “legal historians.” The new combined discipline would do away with outdated ways of doing scholarship in both mother disciplines. It would marginalize the kind of legal history that seems unconscious of the world outside national boundaries and of international contexts, and it would supplant the kind of comparative law that is made without reference to the historical paths that have led to the present situation.

Recent Scholarship in the Field of kalām

Abstract This article reviews recent scholarship on kalām-theology and attempts to briefly describe some tendencies that appear to be promising for opening new perspective for future work. Scholarship has made significant attempts to transcend previous limitations of the field along the confines of religious communities and scholarly disciplines (theology vs. philosophy) and has extended the geographical scope and timeframe of investigation.

LINGUISTIC AND CONCEPTUAL CENTRES OF PHRASEOLOGIZATION

The article focuses on cognitive and linguoculturological approaches to concept investigation not only as an operational unit of consciousness, but also as a vividly exposed connotation, rendered by phraseologisms. Their description is based on the statement, declaring the availability of close interconnection of language and culture, in which phraseology is a reflection of peculiar national heritage of people. Nowadays the majority of scholars view concept as a part of information, verbally expressed, while an implified constituent is realized in a human mind only with with mental representations in the form of images, pictures, schemes, etc. Therefore the attention of the majority of researches today is concentrated, above all, on the verbally expressed concept, the exponent of which is a language sign, rendering its contents in the most adequate form. Simultaneously the ways of appealing to different concepts are taken into account. A conclusion is made that the notion of cultural connotation is determinant for linguoculturology – a new scholarly discipline, studying ways and means of implementing culture and mentality in a living material language. The proposed by the authors stratum phraseologism interpretation gives a chance to see in which concrete forms of different languages culturally determined concepts may be manifested and how communicants realize and use them. A conclusion is drawn that the research of conceptual and language world models cannot be complete without including phraseological and language stock in their studies

Conquering Relevance: Entrepreneurship Research's Grand Challenge

Entrepreneurship research has grown rapidly in its scope, rigor, and impact. By every measure, our field now enjoys considerable academic acceptance and legitimacy as a scholarly discipline. However, several forces around the globe are demanding greater attention to (and perhaps redefinition of) relevance. We discuss what relevance means, how the field can achieve it, and how to best communicate it to the diverse stakeholders of our field.

Merited, (Un)Appreciated, (Un)Remembered: Women in Educational and Social Policy Sciences as a Scholarly Discipline in Poland, 1900–39

The first four decades of the twentieth century saw an intense development in the Polish lands of educational sciences and social policy sciences. A role of importance in the development of the underlying theory for these scientific domains and in the pursuit of pioneering empirical studies fell to a group of women who combined their intellectual interests and scientific research with activities in the fields of education and social work. This article seeks to outline their scholarly achievements (until 1939) and point to the specificity of their effort: none of them pursued a ‘classical’ academic career comprehended in terms of getting employed and promoted by a university. Their formative experience consisted in studying abroad and obtaining their doctoral degrees there. Migrations and membership in (or contribution to) international scientific organisations enabled them to deepen their knowledge and present their theories in the international forum whilst also making them acquainted with the academic models functioning in West European countries in the context of female participation. The personal histories of Polish female scholars researching into education and social history show the ‘typical’ experience of reluctance and arbitrariness of the academic circles, male-dominated as they were at that time when gender weighed high on career-seeking in science. This implied search for strategies and areas of activity which enabled to participate in the world of science. Pursuance of research, in selected areas, and publication of scholarly texts was enabled through the cooperation with organisations which welcomed female experts such as those employed (for example) with ministries; the Polish Society for Social Policy was one such organisation. In spite of multiple hindrances and restrictions, those female scholars who got employed on a full-time basis with academies which were ‘alternative’ to the traditional universities – the Institute of Special Pedagogy, the State Institute of Teachers, and primarily, the Free Polish University – enjoyed the most favourable conditions of work.

Undergraduate geoscience education research: Evolution of an emerging field of discipline‐based education research

AbstractDiscipline‐based education research (DBER) conducted by faculty within geoscience departments can address identified needs in undergraduate geoscience education. This study explores the evolution of undergraduate geoscience education research (GER) from 1985 to 2016, primarily in terms of the types of published research and secondarily in terms of the insights this literature offers on the evolution of GER as a scholarly discipline. Stokes’ (1997) quadrant model of research types is used as a theoretical framework for the former and Kuhn's (1970) model of disciplinary paradigm for the latter. An exploratory sequential mixed‐methods approach to a systematic literature review of 1,760 articles is utilized. The period 1985–2000 is characterized by proto‐research as evidenced by the abundance of instructive and informational education articles rather than research articles. From 2000 to 2011, GER underwent a growth period characterized by the presence of applied, use‐inspired, and pure basic research. The period 2011–2016 appears to be a period of relative steady‐state conditions in the normalized number of GER publications per year. Existing gaps in knowledge about geoscience education, the evident unfamiliarity with education and social science research methodologies among authors of GER articles, and efforts to build consensus about what GER is and how to conduct it suggest that GER is preparadigmatic or at a low paradigm state. That is, GER is an immature discipline as far as the evolution of a discipline goes. A path forward is proposed for the continued evolutionary growth of GER. This study provides new perspectives on the emergence of GER as a discipline that can be used as a basis for studies on cross‐disciplinary DBER comparisons.

Photographs as documents/photographs as objects: photo archives, art history and the material approach

PurposeThis paper aims at demonstrating how the material approach questions conventional hierarchies of photographic value, showing a way to deal with large quantities of photographs accumulated by scientific and scholarly disciplines in their archives.Design/methodology/approachFor generations, these photographs have been considered as pure documentations of the objects represented in them (from artworks in museums to snowflakes under a microscope). Documentary photographs have been understood as mere working tools that can now be easily replaced by digital duplicates. Overcoming the long-established reduction of photographs to their visual content, the material approach shifts attention to masses of anonymous photographs that are often disregarded within institutions because they do not match museum systems of value based on uniqueness and authorship.FindingsFocussing on photographic and archival practices in art history, this paper aims at demonstrating how conceptual and methodological tools such as “agency” and “materiality” can be made fruitful for theory and practice of photo archives able to explore their epistemological potential. A case study from the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz allows an insight into historical and contemporary dynamics and practices of photographic archives.Originality/valueWith its interwoven strands of archival practice and academic research, the Photothek unboxes itself as a laboratory for the international, cross-disciplinary debate on the role and function of photographs and photographic archives in scholarship, suggesting a methodological path for the entire field. In conclusion, the paper shows that the first necessary step for a long-term conservation of photo archives is promoting research on the photographic objects.

Universal Art Studies: Theory and Practice

The centuries-long tradition of disciplines connected with artistic culture has always been directed towards the differentiated perception of each of the branches of art studies. Presently there are various approaches beginning to take shape towards the formation of an overall (universal) discipline of art studies as a discipline aspiring towards an allapproaching sweep of a multiple-point areal of basic facts, names, phenomena and tendencies of world artistic culture. The formation of this meta-discipline corresponds to the processes of human consciousness, which continue to acquire greater relevance. The author asserts that the multi-disciplinary approach requires in the most emphatic way the usage of cluster technology, which in this case presumes the integration of resources of the various branches of art studies for an integrated mastery of artistic space in all its diversity. At the same time, it is necessary to make use of the method of artistic analysis with which the conception-based foundation of the musical compositions becomes pivotal. All of this leads to the perspective of transferal beyond the boundaries of a special scholarly discipline towards the horizons of a generally valid picture of the world. By perceiving the art of music as a testimony of the epoch that generated it, by evaluating it as a peculiar instrument of cognition, and by bringing to light its capabilities in the plan of modeling the image of the world and man, we acquire the most abundant albeit still little researched resources of a colorific and multidimensional historical memory making it possible to expand significantly and enrich our perceptions. In the educational milieu the formation of a renewed world-perception realized with the participation of universal art studies would make it possible to realize in the best possible way the basic subject of “world artistic culture.” For the sake of elaborating on the expounded concept, the “Center for Integrated Research” has been founded at the Saratov Conservatory, being the only such center in Russian institutions for higher education. The director of the center is Doctor of Arts, Professor Alexander Demchenko. Keywords: general art studies, a multi-disciplinary approach, the artistic picture of the world, the Saratov Conservatory, the center for integrated artistic research.

The Role of Crowdfunding in Entrepreneurial Finance

The authors provide a broad overview of our knowledge on crowdfunding, particularly bridging two important issues in contemporary crowdfunding research: the ‘problem of riches’, that is, crowdfunding has been popular across scholarly disciplines and knowledge is embedded in disciplinary silos; and the ‘dearth of evidence’ in crowdfunding research, that is, although there exist thousands of platforms, most studies analyse funding patterns using data from a single platform.

Scholarly Correspondence and the History of Philology: A Case Study of the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands

AbstractThis article offers some reflections on the use of correspondence for the history of scholarly disciplines. These reflections are based on a case study of two prominent philologists from the Netherlands: the historian and archivist Hendrik van Wijn (1740–1831) and the literary scholar and cultural historian Allard Pierson (1831–1896). After a short overview of the development of the object of research, methodology and professionalization of nineteenth-century philology, the article points out three aspects that make letters written by philologists a valuable source for the history of the discipline: their function as a carrier of knowledge and insights, the information they provide about the ethnology of knowledge, and the fact that they were used as a medium for confidential expression.

How to Accurately Account for Astrology’s Marginalization in the History of Science and Culture: The Central Importance of an Interpretive Framework

Abstract Astrology is a complex, multifold and long-lived subject that has been approached from many different perspectives in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. In order to understand its many roles within the history of science, theology, and culture, one needs a well-articulated historically and conceptually sound interpretive framework. In this article, a framework is proposed based on the curricular structures at medieval universities by which fundamental conceptual patterns and practices were passed down from generation to generation. It is argued that this will be helpful both for framing answerable questions, and for approaching their solutions. This goes particularly for the complex long-term patterns of astrology’s marginalization from the domain of legitimate knowledge and practice during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Review of 60 years' development of Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery in West China Hospital of Sichuan University

Burn medicine of China started in 1958. Over the past 60 years, through the efforts of numerous burn discipline scholars, China's burn clinical and scientific research have reached the world's advanced level. Department of Burns and Plastics Surgery of West China Hospital of Sichuan University was founded in 1963. Department of Burns of our hospital was established earlier in China. In the past 60 years, professor Yu Baoliang, Ren Linsen, and Cen Ying had been working hard for the development of our department. Department of Burns and Plastic Surgery in West China Hospital of Sichuan University has developed from a pure therapeutic specialty group into one of the burn centers with strong technical force, first-class medical level, advanced instruments and equipment, rich scientific research achievements, and integrated medicine, teaching, and research in southwestern China, which enjoys high prestige at home and abroad.

Towards the History of Ideas in Ethnomusicology: Theory and Methods between the Late 18th and the Early 20th Century

The history of ethnomusicology is the history of ideas and concepts of why and how to deal with expressive practices in social formations which are usually located outside the researcher’s primary cultural experience. Ideas in ethnomusicology (comparative musicology, anthropology of music, folk music research, folkloristics) are interlinked with other scholarly disciplines and academic fields. The history of the field is sometimes described as a shift from either a more philologically oriented study of “national” folk music or “armchair anthropology” to a modern anthropological concept expressed in context-oriented, sociological, and performer-centered research, as well as in urban ethnomusicology. However, a great deal of issues frequently associated with English-speaking mainstream ethnomusicology of the last five decades (the “ethnographic turn”) appeared in the intellectual folk music discourses as early as the late 18th and the 19th century. In a similar way, the history of comparative musicology as a scholarly concept can be traced back at least to the Age of Enlightenment. This article traces the emergence and early history of motivations, theoretical paradigms and research methods by discussing the following key issues and conceptual oppositions: Comparative study of musical cultures; Fieldwork experience; Aesthetic appreciation vs. value-free textual analysis; Relativism of expressive cultures: "our" and "their" concepts (emic/etic issues); The paradigm of orality vs. Kunstlieder im Volksmunde; “Living antiquities” vs. the sociology of folklore; Cultural homogeneity vs. performer-centered research; Studying songs vs. studying singing; Music in its cultural context—“uses and functions”; Standards of notation and documentation; Rural vs. urban research; ‘Cultural purity' vs. intercultural exchange.

Where Arab social science and humanities scholars choose to publish: Falling in the predatory journals trap

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study of publishing behaviour among a group of Arab scholars in social science and humanities disciplines. The paper also investigated the number of Arab scholars who are publishing in predatory journals and the reasons that drive them to select these journals to share their scholarly findings. The study adopted a mixed methods approach. Eighteen journals that were categorized as predatory journals were scanned to find the number of Arab scholars who published in them. Then, a questionnaire was sent to Egyptian and Saudi scholars as they were found to be the top Arab contributors in these journals. The questionnaire was followed by semi‐structured interviews to gain an in‐depth understanding of the publishing behaviour. The data showed that many Arab scholars prefer publishing in predatory journals as these journals are easier and faster. The results also indicate that there is a need to raise the awareness of the harm that predatory journals can cause to the scholars and how they can avoid these journals. This study was conducted with social science and humanities scholars in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The publishing behaviour may differ in other scholarly disciplines and other Arabic countries.