Various Dimensions Of Time Research Articles

Literacy Entanglements and Relationality, Time, Place, Space and Identity

Tawaw, or welcome, to this special digital edition of the Language and Literacy journal. This issue is a direct result of the scholarship shared by participants and the development and management of the 18th annual, but first digital, Language and Literacy Researchers of Canada (LLRC/ACCLL) pre-conference by the co-chairs[1] (Jing Jin, Lara Polak, Velvalee Georges, and Yina Liu). The theme, Literacy Entanglements & Relationality: Time, Space, Place, and Identity, aspires to engage researchers in moving beyond entanglement toward evolving relationality through and in the various dimensions of time, space, place, and identity. This theme was intended to create opportunities for researchers to attend to the complexities inherent in broadening and strengthening our understandings of language and literacy entanglement. We anticipated thoughtful conversation about how humans engage with literacy and language at various stages of relations, from superficial acknowledgment to exploring how our messages are transformed by identity, time, space, and place. We wondered how the course of literacy and language research might become more robust by attending to all dimensions, particularly as we move from face-to-face to virtual contexts and digital means.

Jewish Agents of Memory in Linda Grant’s Still Here: A Transgenerational and Intersectional Feminist Reading

ABSTRACT By drawing on Jewish feminist scholarship along with intersectional feminism, the aim of this article is to explore whether the construction of the female protagonist and gender relations in Linda Grant’s novel Still Here (2002) offer fruitful models for reshaping Jewish memories and identities. I examine the way memory in the novel becomes multidirectional and palimpsestic by fusing various dimensions of time and space. Set in Liverpool and Dresden, with their very different histories, the novel traces how the two middle-aged Jewish protagonists, Alix Rebick and Joseph Shields, discover each other’s personal as well as disturbing family memories. The multidirectional and transgenerational bonds that connect them lead to their falling in love; and their relationship is shown to develop as a result of their ability to overcome their traumatic experiences and to open their own selves to feel empathic towards each other’s pain. The issues and questions raised in the novel are examined from the perspective of Jewish and intersectional feminism so as to fully explore Alix’s agency in coming to terms with her inherited past and troubled Jewish female identity.

O tempo e a memória na narrativa sveviana

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar o tempo e a memória na narrativa de Svevo, concentrando-se em seu primeiro romance Uma Vida e no conto “Curta Viagem Sentimental” (Corto Viaggio Sentimentale), os quais manifestam um olhar sobre a centralidade do tempo, não só na constituição dos horizontes de compreensão do real propriamente humano, mas também ao apresentar uma noção mais precisa do vínculo indissolúvel que existe entre temporalidade, memória e escrita literária. O desdobrar de várias categorias conceituais relacionadas a várias dimensões do tempo parece apontar para a manutenção da validade do ponto de vista sobre a relação literatura e sociedade.

Digital prosumption labour on social media in the context of the capitalist regime of time

So-called social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Weibo and LinkedIn are an expression of changing regimes of time in capitalist society. This paper discusses how corporate social media are related to the capitalist organization of time and the changes this organization is undergoing. It uses social theory for conceptualizing changes of society and its time regime and how these changes shape social media. These changes have been described with notions such as prosumption, consumption labour, play labour (playbour) and digital labour. The paper contextualizes digital labour on social media with the help of a model of society that distinguishes three subsystems (the economy, politics, culture) and three forms of power (economic, political, culture). In modern society, these systems are based on the logic of the accumulation of power and the acceleration of accumulation. The paper discusses the role of various dimensions of time in capitalism with the help of a model that is grounded in Karl Marx’s works. It points out the importance of the category of time for a labour theory of value and a digital labour theory of value. Social media are expressions of the changing time regimes that modern society has been undergoing, especially in relation to the blurring of leisure and labour time (play labour), production and consumption time (prosumption), new forms of absolute and relative surplus value production, the acceleration of consumption with the help of targeted online advertising and the creation of speculative, future-oriented forms of fictitious capital.

Multiculturalism and time in Trieste: place-marketing images and residents' perceptions of a multicultural city

This paper discusses how people encounter marketed images of places in order to explore whether place-marketing images are always seen as misrepresentations. As part of this, I question whether people always ‘read’ into place-marketing images the meanings inscribed by marketers, and I attend to the various dimensions of time that people draw on when articulating their views of their place's marketed identity. Using Trieste as a case study, I consider how a group of thirty-one residents perceived their city's ‘multicultural character’ as it was advertised during the bid for the 2008 World Expo and show that while the respondents did not read into Trieste's marketed multicultural image the meanings that the marketers intended, the interviewees largely supported Trieste's advertised image. I discuss how the evocation of specific temporalities (historical past, present and ‘timeless’) affected how the respondents articulated their views about Trieste's multiculturalism. I also explain why Trieste's marketed multicultural image captured the imaginations of the majority of the respondents.

Confounding in Air Pollution Epidemiology

Recent research appropriately suggests that caution is warranted when interpreting long-term trends of improving air quality and trends in reduced mortality rates as causal because of concerns about confounding. The use of long-term time trends as the primary source of exposure variability, however, has been avoided in most air pollution epidemiology studies. Multiple studies, using different study designs that exploit various temporal and spatial dimensions of exposure variability, have observed reasonably consistent and coherent associations between particulate air pollution and cardiopulmonary health. It's possible that these air pollution studies have experienced "epidemiological bad luck" with multiple confounders that are inadequately controlled for and coincidentally cause spurious correlations that are coherent across the different study designs. To be consistent with the overall epidemiologic results, these confounders must correlate with pollution across various dimensions of time and space and be stronger risk factors for cardiopulmonary disease than for other disease. The more likely explanation of recent air pollution epidemiology is that air pollution, especially fine particulate and related pollution, has measurable effects on cardiopulmonary health.

Managing Knowledge, Learning, and Time in Relationships Between Western and African Organizations

ABSTRACT Time as a strategic variable has gained a great deal of attention in recent literature, but little has been reported on how to effectively manage time between strategic partners in a global context. In addition, there has been virtually no attention paid to time as a critical strategic variable when doing business in African countries. This paper examines the importance of time in developing effective operating relationships between Western and African countries. We posit the concept of strategic timescapes to provide managers with a way of visualizing the various dimensions of time that could vary from one culture to another. In addition, a means to effectively manage knowledge and learning between Western and African organizations is presented using the concept of “virtual” organizations to serve as the coordinating vehicle.

Il “tempo ultimo”: strutture della temporalità nell’opera di Italo Svevo

This essay follows the development of the theme of time in Italo Svevo’s narrative work, through the three novels and the short texts of the last period. The Triestine writer shows an ever increasing awareness, not only of the centrality of time in the constitution of specifically human horizons of comprehension of reality, but also a more and more precise notion of the inextricable connection between temporality and literary writing. The deployment of conceptual categories linked to various dimensions of time highlights the interest and enduring validity of Svevo’s points of view concerning the nexus life-literature.