Theoretical Tendencies Research Articles

Politicians’ Theories of Voting Behavior

While political scientists regularly engage in spirited theoretical debates about elections and voting behavior, few have noticed that elected politicians also have theories of elections and voting. Here, we investigate politicians’ positions on eight central theoretical debates in the area of elections and voting behavior and compare politicians’ theories to those held by ordinary citizens. Using data from face-to-face interviews with nearly one thousand politicians in 11 countries, together with corresponding surveys of more than twelve thousand citizens, we show that politicians overwhelmingly hold thin, minimalist, “democratic realist” theories of voting, while citizens’ theories are more optimistic and policy oriented. Politicians’ theoretical tendencies—along with their theoretical misalignment from citizens—are remarkably consistent across countries. These theories are likely to have important consequences for how politicians campaign, communicate with the public, think about public policy, and represent their constituents.

Applying Antconc in Regex Search on BBC News Text

The software AntConc has become a freeware and multi-platform tool used in corpus-based linguistic research. Corpus linguistics itself is identified as a methodology consisting of various related methods that can be used by scholars with different theoretical tendencies. This research aims to determine the formulas used in searching regular expressions in news articles. The news data was collected from a known media source called BBC News. The research results indicate that Regex in Antconc can be performed in various ways, including: (1) To find words starting with 'sp,' the formula ^sp[a-z] can be used, (2) To find words starting with 'st' and ending with 'ed,' the formula ^st[a-z]*ed can be used, (3) To find words ending with '-ing,' the formula [a-z]*ing can be used, (4) To find a phrase containing two words, with the first word starting with the letter 's' and the second word starting with the letter 't,' the formula ^s[a-z] ^t[a-z] can be used.

Savaş Sonrası Amerikan Estetik Kuramında Gestalt’tan Örüntüye Geçiş: Rudolf Arnheim ve György Kepes’in Çalışmaları

The following article is an inquiry into the aesthetic valences of the concept of pattern as informed both by Gestalt theory and information theoretical tendencies toward quantification. In the trail of its object, it evokes the historical context of the second half of the 20th century American artistic and technological culture and offers critical engagements with texts by its main interlocutors Rudolf Arnheim and György Kepes. While Arnheim is a second-generation Gestalt theorist whose responses to the rise of a digital paradigm are instructive, Kepes stands out for the way he seeks a rapprochement between science and art through visuality. The article demonstrates that both theorists grapple with the challenges issued by advances in computation and the epistemological implications of visions of data processing (even machine learning research) ascendant in their time. The article has a philosophical orientation in paying particular attention to matters of abstraction underlying patterns, the contrasts between analog and digital coding, quality and quantity, the temporality of pattern formation, and the dimension of subjectivity. Finally, in its departure from the interface Kepes’ work offers between science and art, the article contextualizes the question of pattern with reference to the history of science, by putting it in contact with influential treatments of objectivity in the discourse of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, but more critically, in the work of Donna Haraway.

Audience as constructivism discourses: Rethinking on the Media Audience Study

This article aims to analyze and interpret the following two basic contents. Firstly, we would examine the theoretical viewpoints on the use and gratification of Herta Herzog and Elihu Katz together with encoding/decoding theses of Stuart Hall, which are recognized by the scholastic world as the researches that paved ways for the study of Media Audience. The views of those theorists have led to the discourses on behavioral psychology and meaning construction of the audience in the interactions with the media. The mid-20th century findings have yielded the two research paradigms that focus on the public activism, as opposed to the assumptions of their passivity in the theoretical perspective of the effects study tradition. We evaluate these discourses in the context of the cold war, the Leftist movements, and the ideological innovations of the neo-Marxist school. Secondly, by assessing the two public discourses’ contributions, we will further consider the view of public ethnography and especially the trend of media constructionism. These are two theoretical tendencies in media public research that have taken place from the 1980s to the present. On the basis of the assessment of the strengths as well as the limitations of these tendencies, especially constructionism- a theoretical trend with the ambition to study the public in relation to the media production world, we will yield new claims about the Media Audience study theory.

The Private Sphere in Citizenship Education for Deliberative Democracy: The Liberal and Feminist Arguments against Public-Private Dualism

One of the challenges in substantiating deliberative democracy as a normative theory is the educational challenge of how to cultivate civic virtue, especially mutual respect and civility, in children. The cultivation of civic virtue is not limited to school education, but is also an activity related to family education. However, liberal theorists who advocate the theory of deliberative democracy, based on the dualism of public and private, have limited their discussions to the issue of civic development in the field of public education. This article proposes to understand and compare the many competing theories on public-private dualism, particularly in liberal and feminist spaces. Beginning with an analysis of the work of liberal theorists such as David Archard as well as Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, and moving on to that of feminist theorists such as Susan Okin, this article examines competing theories on education in school and in the family, to whom the responsibility of education belongs, and where feminist and liberal thought enlighten these debates. This article will clarify the theoretical tendencies and principles of liberal arguments aimed at overcoming the public-private dualism in education, and present a strategy for overcoming the challenges that this theory encompasses by seeking reference points in feminist thought, especially with attention to conception of relational autonomy.

The Independence of the Judiciary: Meaning and Threats

What an ‘independent’ judiciary means in a democratic society is a complex question, bringing in such elements as the governing of high courts, recruitment of judges, and their susceptibility to disciplinary action. Those subjects are not isolated items but components of a wider system, with its functioning ruled by political principles. Therefore, it is essential to identify the ideological conceptions beneath the diverse theses offered. The paper examines recent events in Poland and Spain that offer valuable data to illustrate the problem. In synthesis, two broad theoretical tendencies emerge: on one side, judges ought to be controlled by politicians, at least to a certain extent, in aims of safeguarding the democratic foundations of the Constitutional legal frame; on the other side, the emphasis is on judicial self-government as a means of preserving courts from corruption associated with pressure exerted by political, economic, or social lobbies. The paper presents a proposed solution to the controversy, involving characterisation of the minimum standards for a free judiciary in a democratic legal order, and for detecting the risks inherent to both politicisation and corporatism. The model is constructed by means of legal methodology that entails comparison among legal systems of different sorts in light of international documents, among them reports by the Council of Europe. A particularly significant contrast is visible in the distance between Continental and Common Law traditions, illuminated via consideration also of the United States.

Modernist Women’s Writing and the Gift of Literature

In Returning the Gift: Modernism and the Thought of Exchange, Rebecca Colesworthy shows how modernist women writers placed the concept of the gift at the center of their aesthetic projects and used it to interrogate the social possibilities of life under capitalist conditions. Countering widespread critical and theoretical tendencies to overlook women’s contributions to gift discourse and to essentialize generosity as an inherently “ feminine” gift, Colesworthy places literary studies and sociology in productive dialogue that achieves an effective balance between historicization and theoretical rigor. Throughout the book’s five chapters, she examines a diversity of texts, including novels, memoirs, and sociological treatises, with a particular focus on Marcel Mauss’s The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Jean Rhys’s After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Gertrude Stein’s Ida A Novel, and H.D.’s The Gift.

Mapping paradigm shifts in the geography of innovation

Abstract The study quantifies important theoretical tendencies in the geography of innovation in a historical view based on a novel big-data approach. It shows that the field was “born” only in the nineteen eighties after long periods (i.e. the first half of the 20th century) of analysing economic growth and regional development without endogenising the production process of innovation. The paper presents important shifts in the basic assumptions of models with the increasing use of the terms “economic instability” or “asymmetric information” instead of “economic equilibrium” and “perfect information”. These mean a deviation from traditional neoclassical regional economics, which is reflected in the fact that “geography of innovation” gained the same level of popularity in the 2000s as “industrial geography”. The paper shows that although the decline of the Marshallian term “industrial district” stopped in parallel with the work of Becattini, a new innovation systems theory took over the relative frequency of mention of the industrial district by the turn of the new millennium.

Mapping the Pains of Neo-Colonialism: A Critical Elaboration of Southern Criminology

Abstract Recent appeals to decolonize criminology argue for a radical reorientation of the subject towards Global South relevant research agendas, theories and scholars. This paper begins by problematizing the current theoretical tendencies in Southern criminology’s view of coloniality and the vision for decolonization. First, Southern criminology has not directly engaged in investigating ‘empire’ in its current form; second, decolonization is viewed as primarily epistemological (transforming systems of knowledge production is seen as the central mode for decolonization); and, third, there is a tendency to reify Southern institutional responses to crime as preferable to Northern crime control. Launching from this critique, we argue that a successful Southern criminology should take seriously the continuing importance of structures of neo-colonialization: the Global system of accumulation founded on various matrixes of inequality, facilitating dispossession, appropriation and exploitation. We develop three criminological analyses of contemporary neo-colonization in Global South contexts: state-corporate ‘regimes of permission’, political economies of gender violence and racialization through criminalization regimes.

Hopes and fears in a sample of trainees: Considerations and perspectives

This paper investigates hopes and fears connected with work as an analytic psychotherapist, in a sample of trainees attending the Italian Training School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (SPP). Candidates were asked to complete a questionnaire with open-ended questions. In the first analysis, we found trainees to be interested in learning an effective therapeutic method to treat patients. Their wish was for a serious, demanding, but nonjudgmental training, which could support the development of both a thoughtful way of using their thinking process and a rigorous clinical method, while respecting their individuality and personality. We asked our candidates whether theoretical concepts and issues related to the analytic method effectively helped them transform difficulties in perspectives. Theoretical tendencies and authors considered to be useful in modern clinical areas such as Internet addiction disorders, Hikikomori (severe social and relational retirement in adolescence), children's school problems, and problems connected with dimensions of parenthood (e.g. LGBT parenting) were explored. A sense of inadequacy when first dealing with difficult clinical situations, and fears about the realistic difficulties of psychotherapy as a trade, today, in Italy, were found. Considerations on the psychoanalytic educational program and on the importance of workgroups were proposed.

Trabalho social cubano e tendências teóricas atuais

Este artigo tem por objetivo abordar as tendências teóricas do trabalho social cubano a partir do início da transição socialista na Ilha (janeiro de 1959). Para tanto, recupera aspectos da história mais recente deste país e situa a importância do movimento 26 de julho (M-26-7) que lutou contra a ditadura de Fulgencio Batista que culminou como a transição socialista e a reestruturação do trabalho social em Cuba. Destaca, ainda, as principais inspirações teórico-políticas que têm orientado o sentido do trabalho social cubano nos últimos 25 anos, suas diversas tendências, seus elementos constituintes, suas teses centrais. Analisa, por fim, com base nesse estudo, os limites e as potencialidades para consolidar uma formação universitária profissional crítica na Ilha, fiel à tradição socialista nela construída e caudatária de suas experiências militantes e progressistas.

Mención cualificadora en inteligencia emocional del Grado de Magisterio en Educación Infantil

The social framework in which we operate today reflects continuous changes in different areas of human development (labor, economic, political, technological…), requires constant efforts of personal adaptation and involves significant differences from previous periods in the ways of relating to others and ourselves. From different theoretical tendencies, confirms the relevance of socio-emotional skills in order to face these unstable life situations effectively. And education has echoed this need. In a context of increasing national and international interest in emotional intelligence, we opted (in our Teacher Training Center Virgen de Europa - attached to the University of Cádiz) for an initial training that offers the possibility of analyzing and promoting the socio-emotional development of children and the teacher himself. We organize teaching around three subjects (theoretical and practical) that affect in a complementary way the field of emotional intelligence of future teachers.

Evidence on Animals in the Middle Ages in the Framework of Culture-Historical Paradigm

The paper investigates the relationship between archaeological paradigm, fieldwork practice and archaeological records generated in Serbia after the World War II. The issue is the need to revalorize “old” archaeological records in the context of the current theoretical changes and of adaptation of the existing evidence to new research perspectives. These general issues are discussed on the example of culture-historical or traditional approach in Medieval archaeology in the Serbian context.
 From the point of view of postprocessual archaeology, the paradigmatic position entirely determines the evidence generated during excavations. Consequently, it may be expected that the excavations conducted under the culture-historical school of thought may only answer the questions posed from the culture-historical viewpoint. Therefore, the limitations are great of reinterpretation of the evidence generated in the culture-historical framework. Additionally, the problems of reinterpretation are raised by inaccessibility or non-existence of complete field documentation or unsatisfactory archiving. In other words, the data at our disposal are far removed from the complexity of archaeological record necessary for new insights and a better understanding of the past. The problem is further influenced by the specific character of archaeological knowledge and the issue of non-replicability that differs archaeology from other experimentally grounded research areas. Consequently, a string of problems raises in the process of reinterpretation of the “old” evidence, but it can still be treated as useful in interpretation, provided that it is adequately contextualized.
 The key points of the changed approach to archaeological research today may be defined as the overcoming of the notion of paradigm and the dualistic mode of thinking, with an emphasized importance of post-humanist philosophy and new materialism. One of the aspects of the post-humanist approach is the consideration of animals in archaeological record as companions to people of the past. This case-study considers specific issues of human-animal relations and “animal turn” on the grounds of the archaeological records interpreted as Mediaeval in the framework of the culture-historical paradigm. The new positioning of the “old” evidence stems from the theoretical tendencies linked to the “ontological turn” in social anthropology and archaeology, and the social epistemology of L. Fleck.

Theories, tensions and convergence of sports development

The purpose of this article is to describe the theoretical tendencies, analyze the emerging tensions and propose the points of convergence of the theories of sports development. From an exploratory analysis of the various theoretical approaches described sports development, the emphasis of political tensions, ideological and market were analyzed. Finally, the points of convergence of sports development theories are proposed. It is concluded that sports development adopts different emphases in response to political situations and ideologies and shows its main theoretical advances in the management of elite sport, however, the most extensive evidence focuses on the influence of sport on the processes of social change.

Loucura e Historicidade: Perspectivas Bioéticas

O presente artigo examina, sob o enfoque da Bioética, o tema da loucura. Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar filosoficamente a historicidade da concepção da loucura, os consequentes tratamentos tradicionalmente utilizados para seu enfrentamento e os elementos constituintes do conceito de normalidade. Para isso, com a ajuda de uma revisão de literatura, é traçado um breve percurso histórico de como a loucura foi definida e tratada desde a Idade Média até a atualidade. Assim, a perspectiva religiosa medieval é considerada, bem como as modernas tendências racionalistas e empiristas sobre o tema. Seguindo tal percurso, chega-se à contemporaneidade com suas duas principais concepções sobre a loucura: doença ou fenômeno cultural. Destarte, indicando tendências teóricas acerca do fenômeno da loucura, busca-se auxiliar sua melhor compreensão, diagnóstico e correspondente tomada de decisão terapêutica, contribuindo para tornar a prática clínica mais eficaz em seu propósito de aliviar ou curar distúrbios e promover saúde psíquica aos que a ela recorrem.

El relato de la historia que nadie conocía: programa de medicina familiar para la transformación social

Objetivo: conocer el desarrollo del programa de medicina familiar de la Fundación Universitaria de Ciencias de la Salud (FUCS) de Bogotá DC, Colombia, diez años [2007- 2017] Método: mediante la sistematización de experiencias se compilaron las voces de quienes han hecho parte en la formación y evolución del programa, como egresados, docentes y personal administrativo. Resultados: se logró develar los momentos históricos más relevantes en la estructuración y organización, identificando los enfoques epistémicoclínico y comunitario que durante años han matizado la formación de residentes, los procesos administrativos, los convenios institucionales, así como los aciertos, desaciertos y tensiones. Discusión: el programa de ha estado permeado por los cambios en las tendencias teóricas dadas por el ámbito internacional. También ha demostrado su valioso aporte a la medicina familiar como disciplina dentro del contexto colombiano. Conclusión: el programa ha logrado consolidarse a nivel nacional y ha mantenido un espíritu innovador, buscando siempre ser el primero en implementar nuevas estrategias y formas de aplicar la medicina familiar.

ASEAN-2025 Economic Community Program as a New Stage of Integration Development

The article considers theoretical and practical tendencies of the development of the integration organization of the ASEAN. The reasons and conditions that contribute to the expansion of the regulatory framework of the Association are considered. The current difficult situation is complicated by the existing financial crisis. Still, it is this state of affairs that determines the importance of positions held by countries in the process of redistribution of wealth. Given the existing circumstances, even developed countries have to unite in various international organizations to achieve their goals. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations today is the largest political and economic union in the southeast. It is obvious that many participants in this organization are very different from each other both in terms of the degree of economic progress and the level of development of the domestic economy. The similarity of understanding of the legal aspects of regulating social relations is also not absolute. The study of the specifics of the functioning of such a subject of international law as ASEAN can have a significant impact on the understanding of many integration processes in the modern world.

URBANISTIKOS PROFESINIO DISKURSO RAIDA SPECIALIZUOTOJE SPAUDOJE TARPUKARIO LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKOJE (1918–1940) / EVOLUTION OF THE PROFESSIONAL DISCOURSE OF URBAN PLANNING IN THE SPECIALIZED PRESS IN THE INTERWAR LITHUANIAN REPUBLIC (1918–1940)

Urban planning in the interwar Lithuanian republic is still lacking a wider research. National school of the discipline was developing in difficult conditions, without most of the needed resources. A theoretical and critical basis was developing parallelly, which was in search of it’s own ideal model of urban planning. Article looks at the genesis of theoretical aspect of urban planning in the interwar specialized periodical press, reviews different periods of it’s development and tries to find the main problems it faced and the ideals it favored. Throughout the research the development of urban planning theory is split into four distinct chronological periods, that correlated with physical processes. The big break was the new generation of those interested in urban planning – the 30’s saw emergence of criticism of chaotic development processes that were taking place in Lithuanian cities and also the new ideas that were reminiscence of theoretical tendencies of contemporary Europe. A wider form of theoretical discourse has formed until the start of occupations, that could be seen as a rudimentary polemic field of national school of urban planning. The idea of garden city can be seen as a constant of the whole interwar period, which, while varied from author to author, nevertheless always included the main, simplified elements of the simplified concept.

Reading the Affective Contours of the Río de la Plata: Aira, Levrero, Strafacce, and Umpi

Reading the Affective Contours of the Río de la Plata:Aira, Levrero, Strafacce, and Umpi Matthew Bush What are affects and what do they do? These two seemingly straightforward questions have spawned a proliferating number of works of social and aesthetic critique over the last twenty years. If indeed we may speak of a generalized recognition in critical theory of the presence of affect in our everyday interactions and as a mediating factor in our perception of the social, the ramifications of that affect, its potentialities, its limitations, and its relation to a broader emotional experience are analyzed in widely differing ways by scholars from a host of fields. Collaborative volumes such as The Affective Turn (2007) edited by Patricia Ticineto Clough or The Affect Theory Reader (2010) edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth offer a glimpse of the variety extant in Affect Studies, and this only within a primarily Anglophone academic setting. The rhizomatic flows of affect make any attempt to delimit its study a frustrating exercise, though we may be able to track broad theoretical tendencies that aid in mapping the general contours of affect theory. In their aforementioned study, Seigworth and Gregg outline eight different trajectories of the study of affect that display points of contact among themselves, spanning political, psychological, scientific, and cultural analysis (6–8). More succinctly, Brian L. Ott condenses a multiplicity of approaches into two primary lines of affect theory: 1) that influenced by the philosophies of Baruch Spinoza, later revisited in the works of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Brian Massumi; and 2) the [End Page 411] psychologically-based analyses of Silvan Tomkins and their adaptations in the works of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Teresa Brennan (1–8).1 The first of these two approaches, based in Spinoza's consideration of the body's capacity to affect and to be affected, regards affect as an intensity that mediates between bodies as they come into contact; such a comprehension of affect is also patent in Massumi's reading of Deleuze (Parables 27, 32–34).2 The second formulation understands affect as a set of responses, recognizable cognitive states that, differing from Freud's conceptualization of drives, appear as reactions to external stimuli. Tomkins proposed eight such states that while not directly acting as feelings per se, may be recognized in the outward manifestation of emotion; Brennan, for example, regards feelings "as sensations that have found the right match in words" (5). From this brief distillation of a vast theoretical field, we may ask what these distinct approaches to affect offer by way of aesthetic analysis? What does affect provide as a hermeneutic tool to examine text? If, as Sedgwick writes, "Affects can be, and are, attached to things, people, ideas, sensations, relations, activities, ambitions, institutions, and any number of other things, including other affects" (19), how can these gaseous intensities be engaged to sharpen our modes of reading? A fortuitous example of affective reading may be found in Sianne Ngai's understanding of the "tone" of a given work, taken as a "cultural artifact's feeling tone: its global or organizing affect, its general disposition or orientation toward its audience and the world"; such a category renders "affective values meaningful with regard to how one understands the text as a totality within an equally holistic matrix of social relations" (28).3 In this way, we come to better understand [End Page 412] how aesthetic objects, and specifically the written word, may be read as sites of the confluence of codified affects—"archives of feelings" to borrow from Anne Cvetkovich's terminology—and of an intensity that passes through that object, thus placing the work of art in contact with the body.4 Following Massumi's Deleuzian designation of affect as a "prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body's capacity to act" (Notes xvii), I would propose here a bridge between the Spinoza and Tomkins paradigms of affect to consider the text as a space where latent intensities are activated through readerly interaction with the text.5 An affective transaction occurs when the...

Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Liberalism

In the first part of this text, the author exposes the main features of the liberal or civic state, because both communitarians and multiculturalists tend to criticize that type of state. Their critique of the liberal state and the liberal self as an unencumbered self is “culturalist” by its character. However, it is an expression of conceptual confusion, i.e. of their incomprehension of an essential difference between two conceptual levels: one that belongs to the purely normative rights-justifying perspective and the other that refers to the ontological perspective. Consequently, both of them reject the central liberal thesis according to which the right is prior to the good.The author agrees with an assessment of Richard Robson that multiculturalism is only a form of communitarianism. Contrary to communitarians and multiculturalists, he additionally argues that collective rights are incompatible with the civic state in its pure form because there are structural differences between civic and specific minority rights.Further, the author attempts to show that communitarianism and multiculturalism are forms of postmodernism. Namely, brought to their ultimate logical consequences, the mentioned orientations can be connected to the postmodern notion of radical, irreducible difference.In the conclusive part of the text, he summarizes the common points of communitarianism and multiculturalism and emphasizes the importance of these contemporary theoretical tendencies.