In his commentary on the Light Verse (Q. 24:35), the Andalusian mystic and Qurʾān exegete Abū al-Ḥakam Ibn Barrajān (d. 1141) presents the blessed tree (al-shajara al-mubāraka) not simply as a terrestrial olive tree in Syria or even as a mystical allegory, but as the ultimate locus of divine disclosure and the highest metaphysical entity in the cosmos that subsumes the world of creation. This article assesses the originality of Ibn Barrajān’s contribution to the heavenly tree motif by examining his (...) unique mystical and exegetical theories informing his ontological reading of the blessed tree, including the concept of the ‘reality upon which creation is created’ and the ‘universal servant’. In addition to analysing the internal logic of Ibn Barrajān’s discourse, this article explores the larger interpretive themes recurrent across exoteric, Sufi, and philosophical interpretations of the Light Verse up to the twelfth century that the author may have had access to in al-Andalus, including the treatises of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-ṣafā) and Biblical sources. Finally, this article highlights how Ibn Barrajān weaves the Qurʾānic good tree (al-shajara al-ṭayyiba) and the lote tree of the furthest boundary (sidrat al-muntahā) into his overarching understanding of the blessed tree. It also considers how his reading may have contributed to later readings by Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240) and some of his intellectual heirs. (shrink)

Resumen: En este artículo se estudia la dimensión estética de prácticas denominadas artísticas, que no fueron concebidas dentro de los cánones clásicos europeos del “Arte”. Nos centramos en el problema disciplinar que se genera al separar las prácticas estéticas -es decir todas aquellas manifestaciones sensibles- de culturas no-europeas de aquellas que sí pertenecen a los cánones académicos o institucionales de tradición europea; las primeras perteneciendo al ámbito de la antropología y arqueología y las segundas al arte y la estética. Sostenemos (...) que estas divisiones epistemológicas se fundamentan en parte en los prejuicios civilizatorios que tomaron fuerza con el evolucionismo social y que dividieron como categorías separadas lo “civilizado” de lo “primitivo”, relegando sobre todo esta última al ámbito de estudio científico. Sin embargo, se resaltan en este artículo aquellas vertientes de pensamiento que, desde las humanidades de tradición europea, se pueden entretejer con las agencias y significados que yacen detrás de las prácticas estéticas transculturales. Abstract: This article studies the aesthetic dimension of so-called artistic practices, which were not conceived within the classical European canons of “Art”. We focus on the disciplinary problem generated by separating aesthetic practices -that is, all those sensitive manifestations- of non-European cultures from those that do belong to the academic or institutional canons of European tradition; the former belonging to the field of anthropology and archaeology and the latter to art and aesthetics. We argue that these epistemological divisions are based in part on the civilizational prejudices that gained strength with social evolutionism and that divided the “civilized” from the “primitive” as separate categories, relegating the latter mainly to the realm of scientific study. However, this paper highlights those strands of thought that, from the humanities of European tradition, can be interwoven with the agencies and meanings that lie behind transcultural aesthetic practices. (shrink)

As the federal government continues to expand upon and improve its data sharing policies over the past 20 years, complex challenges remain. Our interviews with U.S. academic genetic researchers (n=23) found that the burden, translation, industry limitations, and consent structure of data sharing remain major governance challenges.

Perception is not an independent, in‐the‐moment event. Instead, perceiving involves integrating prior expectations with current observations. How does this ability develop from infancy through adulthood? We examined how prior visual experience shapes visual perception in infants, children, and adults. Using an identical task across age groups, we exposed participants to pairs of colorful stimuli and implicitly measured their ability to discriminate relative saturation levels. Results showed that adult participants were biased by previously experienced exemplars, and exhibited weakened in‐the‐moment discrimination between (...) different levels of saturation. In contrast, infants and children showed less influence of memory in their perception, and they actually outperformed adults in discriminating between current levels of saturation. Our findings suggest that as humans develop, their perception relies more on prior experience and less on current observation. (shrink)

This paper develops ‘primitive accumulation’ prior to and then in Karl Marx’s œuvre. By exploring the concept in Adam Smith and Sir James Steuart the paper highlights early influences on Marx’s evolving constructions. Marx’s construction in the Grundrisse begins with a logical determination much like Smith’s and moves, by drawing on Steuart, towards a socio-historical determination of a transitional violence. In Capital, ‘primitive accumulation’ still retains its transitional structure and delimited history, but it also points to the oppressive afterlife of (...) the processes of primitive accumulation. The political key to ‘primitive accumulation’ in Capital flows from determining primitive accumulation as temporally bounded, but having an afterlife in the oppressive social reproduction of capitalist societies. Against deriving political stakes through extended readings of ‘primitive accumulation’, this paper shows that an ‘originating’ view is textually accurate in a way that centres rather than sidelines the social reproduction of oppressions in capitalist societies. (shrink)

Adorno’s ‘addendum’ names the experience by which socially constrained agents are jolted into resistance against their suffering. The impulse to action is simultaneously intra-mental and somatic, and thus forms the locus of a jointly conscious and bodily impetus to confronting the ideological and material forces that produce contemporary unfreedom. In this way the ‘addendum’ is a historically developing, indeterminate, yet inexhaustible glimmer of hope for both agents and theorists who make social suffering central to their critical analysis. This article explores (...) the structure of the addendum by unpacking its presentation first in Negative Dialectics and then by way of the one-sided and cautionary illustrations of Buridan’s ass and Hamlet in the History and Freedom lectures. While aesthetic, ideal, affect-centered and Freudian interpretations of the addendum have been developed, appreciating the somatic or bodily, the intra-mental or conscious, and the historicized accounts of nature and reason that Adorno weaves together to explain ever-present possibilities of resistance requires instead a non-reductive materialist and dialectical lens. (shrink)

This article critically re-reads György Márkus’s seminal Marxism and Anthropology in light of its recent reissue with an introduction by Hans Joas and Axel Honneth. Joas and Honneth problematically identify the normative source of Márkus’s position as an a-historical and extra-natural account of the human. In fact, when the human essence is thought as natural while also historical, developing new powers and needs through changing strategies of socially organized work, Marx’s materialist conception of history can be used to generate a (...) critique of social organizations, relations, and structures that constrain rather than promote such development. Such constraint on developing powers can be read as ‘alienation’ from the human essence. Márkus’s work develops this reading of Marx in a textually sensitive way, but his analysis of alienation in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 focuses on the individual when such analysis could in fact be profitably extended to apply to groups and the species as whole. (shrink)

Dantuluri examines the ongoing prescription stimulant shortage driven by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s quota restrictions and an ineffective and fragmented system of drug governance. We extend this analysis to carceral health systems, which operate under similar logics of control in managing risks, diversion, and liability around medications for opioid use disorder. In drawing these parallels, we explore how perceptions of risk, suspicion, and restrictive oversight can produce scarcity, reinforce stigma, and elicit judgments around “deservingness” that may ultimately widen treatment gaps. (...) We conclude with actionable recommendations that align with public health ethics to promote equitable access to evidence-based treatment. (shrink)

Arendt uses the exemplary validity of Socrates to think and value the possibilities of joint philosophical and political orientations in our present juncture. In this way Arendt’s ‘Socrates’ is not a mythic, historic, or dramatic individual, but offers an example of the best of the human condition. Unfortunately, because Arendt held the social conditioning and constraining of Socrates’ possibilities at arm’s length, his status as an exemplar is problematic and he ends up referring to a historical rather than contemporary possibilities. (...) While Arendt had resources in her notion of the ‘world’ to better ground her simultaneously analytic and normative construction of ‘Socrates’, the lack of a social grounding makes ‘Socrates’ a significantly unmoored and shifting signifier. After showing the vacillations of ‘Socrates’ in Arendt, I supplement her normatively laden account with a Weberian grounding. With this firmer social grounding, ‘Socrates’ can refer to the possibilities of joint philosophical and political orientations in ancient Athens and thereby highlight how our world makes a contemporary version unlikely or impossible. Yet, this Weberian grounding comes at a cost. The normative dimension essential in Arendt’s ‘Socrates’ is lost due to Weberian value-neutrality. ‘Socrates’ can name a contemporary unlikelihood or impossibility, but if the enveloping social order does not value what it renders impossible, Weberian ideal-types on their own are incapable of offering normative resources for critique. I conclude by blending a Weberian social mooring with Arendt’s value-laden framework for social analysis and thereby recuperate the missing normative dimension. In short, by accepting the relational, necessarily plural, and dynamic root of human action we can, much like Arendt’s intended use of ‘Socrates’, value orientations that best express these norms, and criticize contemporary conditions that constrain their realization. (shrink)

This article explores the role of the Deaf child as peer educator. In schools where sign languages were banned, Deaf children became the educators of their Deaf peers in a number of contexts worldwide. This paper analyses how this peer education of sign language worked in context by drawing on two examples from boarding schools for the deaf in Nicaragua and Thailand. The argument is advanced that these practices constituted a child-led oppositional pedagogy. A connection is drawn to Freire’s (1972) (...) theory of critical pedagogy. Deaf children’s actions as peer educators are framed as an act of resistance towards the oppression of their language and culture. A contrast is drawn between oralist pedagogy that is historically associated with punitive practices and didactic methods and the experiential and dialogic interaction that characterised peer learning of sign languages. The argument is made that the peer teaching and learning processes enabled the self-actualisation of the Deaf children whereas the oralist methods were based on a deficit model that focused on modifying deaf children according to the norms of hearing society. The implications of this for current policy and practice are inferred to be about access to sign languages and the importance of Deaf communities in deaf children’s education. The argument is made that space needs to be created for deaf children to engage in peer learning. (shrink)

It may be unethical to deny children with cystic fibrosis access to ethically approved clinical trials from which they might benefitDespite advances in nutritional management, aggressive antibiotic usage, and physiotherapy, cystic fibrosis remains a life limiting illness with high morbidity that imposes considerable burdens on children and families.1 Although survival to 40 years is predicted for children born in 1990s, the median age of death in 2003 was 24.2 years.The pathophysiological features of CF are produced by a defective gene on (...) chromosome 7, resulting in the defective production of a protein that regulates cellular ion transport. Defective ion transport is thought to lead to increased mucus viscosity, with poor airway clearance, recurrent bacterial infection, lung damage, and death.Gene therapy, the insertion of a normally functioning gene into deficient host cells using a suitable vector, is a potential treatment or cure for diseases produced by single gene defects—for example, CF. Gene therapy does, however, have potential or actual risks, leading many to suggest that evidence of efficacy in adults should be demonstrated before trials are conducted in children. Many serious diseases in adults such as CF have their onset in childhood. If early treatment provides greater hopes of benefit, children may be more appropriate targets for GT in CF than adults. It may be unethical to deny them access to properly constructed, ethically approved clinical trials from which they might benefit.Since research in children should be scientifically valid, in the child’s best interests, and the subject of valid consent, this article will consider these parameters in relation to trials of GT in children with CF. Because of the importance of consumer participation in the design of research we present the results of a questionnaire about GT trials delivered …. (shrink)

This volume offers a collection of nine case studies from clinical social workers in K-12 schools, each from a phenomenological perspective, with the objective of educating Master of Social Work students and early career social work clinicians. Each chapter is framed with pre-reading prompts, reading comprehension questions, and writing assignments. This casebook provides a resource for understanding the range of practice in school social work as well as some of the challenges that school social workers face in today's complex world. (...) Using a phenomenological perspective the contributors stay close to the lived experience of students, teachers, parents, and social workers, revealing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the genesis and treatment of students' problems in school. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of the link between Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. It does so by articulating a Kantian account of moral psychology by way of aesthetic reflective judgements of sublimity. Since judgements of sublimity enrich the picture of a Kantian subject by forcefully revealing the unbounded power of the faculty of reason, I investigate the possibility that judgements of this kind could serve as a basis for moral motivation. The paper first shows how judgements of sublimity help (...) a subject recognize reason's unbounded nature, and proceeds to analyse the practical effects of a subject judging itself sublime. When judgements of sublimity have as their object the unbounded and unsythesizable power of reason, they may thereby serve as the basis for both the recognition of our moral vocation, and the grounds for determining the will to act from respect for it. Since a judgement of sublimity produces for Kant the experience of an enlivening emotion and an outflowing of vital forces, the paper then develops Kant's concept of “life” motivated by a recognition of its practical orientation. In this way sublimity rather than beauty can be interpreted as symbolic hypotyposis of morality. The paper then takes up less favourable interpretations of the practical effects of self-predicated judgements of sublimity, and constructs critical responses to such positions. I conclude, following Adorno, by stressing the historical and social dimension of the capacities for both making sublime judgements, and being morally enlivened by them. (shrink)

This commentary addresses the complexities of representation in sociolinguistic transcripts, considering the meaning potentials of different representational choices at the level of both ideology and identity. It considers the kinds of authenticity and evidence that are indexed by simplified versus more detailed transcripts, suggesting that a simplified transcript may give more direct access to elements of the original speaker's voice. Second, it discusses the role of transcripts as scholarly texts, and questions their use as sociolinguistic records suitable for reinterpretation by (...) scholars who do not have access to the original recordings. Third, it emphasizes that the use of non-standard orthographies is an unreliable source of data on sociolinguistic variation, because few authors use non-standard forms in consistent and principled ways. Fourth, it proposes that translations may take different forms depending on whether they are efforts to be `faithful' to `authentic' speech in the target versus the source language. Finally, it reflects on the act of transcription as part of professional practice and identity among linguists. (shrink)

In Subversive Voices, Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber investigates the intersection of identity and culture as manifested in the novels of William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan as well as on various cultural studies theories, Schreiber offers provocative new insights into these two writers and what their work reveals about the possibilities of social change. Schreiber considers how blacks and women, through their “subversive voices” and articulation of difference, produce change despite the psychic and (...) cultural structures that would determine identity. The author begins her examination of these marginalized voices by analyzing the patriarchal structure depicted in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. She goes on to trace the subversive voices of women in the Snopes trilogy before considering the emergent voices of blacks in Faulkner’s work generally, as well as specifically in Intruder in the Dust. In the second half of the book, Schreiber analyzes the articulation of difference that Morrison presents through the black and female characters of The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Paradise. In Faulkner’s work, Schreiber argues, nostalgia provides a screen that preserves the power of patriarchal structures and serves to “eroticize the other” for the dominant culture by using marginalized others to fulfill the desire for an imagined wholeness. Yet, in spite of this screen, agency—or empowerment—does emerge for these marginalized voices in Faulkner. In Morrison’s novels, the absence of a nostalgic screen highlights these subversive voices: the dominant culture’s eroticized, imagined other becomes a threatening entity and gains agency. Schreiber suggests that meaningful action and change can occur through encounters with what Lacan calls the “real,” an awareness of the nothingness at the core of identity. Recognition of this “nothingness” allows the reality of the other to manifest itself and have agency in the social world. The works of both Faulkner and Morrison reveal—whether obliquely or directly—how subversive voices emerge to expose this lack. Such exposure then creates a form of self-awareness that can lead to cultural transformation. The Author: Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University. Her articles have appeared in the Faulkner Journal, Style, Mississippi Quarterly, and other publications. (shrink)

While there have been many studies of the ethical behavior ofmanagers, little research investigated the ethical beliefs andideologies of consumers. Moreover, even less is known about therelationship between consumer beliefs and ideology and purchasingbehavior. The present study investigates the extent to whichconsumers punish or reward what they perceive as either a firm'sethical or unethical behavior. The research model was tested onsamples of Israeli and Turkish respondents. The results indicatethat personal economic benefit, ideology (idealism versusrelativism), economic cost to others and locus (...) of control explainconsumer reaction to ethical, purchasing dilemmas. Moralexpectations did not influence whether a consumer would purchasein a store offering an unethical proposition. Apparently,material gain, if large enough, outweighs one's moralpredisposition. Idealists were found to be less likely topurchase in an unethical store situation. The Turkish respondentswere more concerned with economic cost to others than the Israelirespondents, apparently owing to cultural differences between thetwo groups. Finally, those respondents having higher internallocus of control were found to be more ethical. (shrink)

This article engages with current discussions on the politics of aesthetics to theorize the role of popular art in reproducing or contesting urban orders. Specifically, we engage with scholars who have taken up the work of Jacques Rancière to understand how power structures are normalized through ‘the distribution of the sensible’. Building on and critically engaging with debates on the ‘post-political city’, we suggest that all too often scholars fall back on a binary, state-centric approach that depicts non-state popular aesthetics (...) as either revolutionary and disruptive, or as indicative of an alternative form of oppression. Drawing on our work in Kingston, Jamaica, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we argue that sensorial-political, art-based urban struggles shape multiple urban orders that are distinct but not necessarily antagonistic. Applying Stuart Hall’s work on popular culture to contexts of criminal governance, we show how art is often simultaneously supportive and disruptive of urban orders. (shrink)

Abstract:S. N. Balagangadhara, Sarika Rao, Jakob De Roover, and Marianne Keppens One of the best-known aspects of Indian society is its "rigid caste system" and the "evil practices of untouchability." It is a truism today to say that Indian society is divided into four castes, which are not allowed to mix. Many Indian texts are brought forward as evidence of this understanding of Indian society. The ancient Indian text Mānavadharmaśāstra or "Laws of Manu" takes a central place in such accounts. (...) This is especially the case for its verses on varṇasankara, translated as "mixing of social classes" or "intermixture of castes." Given the important role these verses play in the understanding of Indian culture, society, and policymaking, it is crucial to translate them accurately. Using one verse in one text, this article focuses on the standard translation and deals both critically and constructively with the received view. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the links between liberal political theory and the evaluative nature of medical classification, arguing for stronger recognition of those links in a liberal model of medical practice. All judgments of medical or psychiatric "dysfunction," I argue, are fundamentally evaluative, reflecting our collective willingness or reluctance to tolerate and/or accommodate the conditions in question. Illness, then, is "socially constructed." But the relativist worries that this loaded phrase evokes are unfounded; patients, doctors, and communities will agree in (...) the vast majority of cases about what counts as illness. Where they cannot come to agreement, however, we are faced with precisely the sort of dispute about values and ways of life that the institutions of the liberal state are designed to accommodate. I accordingly sketch a model of medical practice, based loosely on Jürgen Habermas's political theories, designed to maximize both our awareness and our understanding of these disputes. (shrink)

The civilizational turn in sociological theory is best understood as an attempt to do full justice to the autonomy of culture (against all versions of structural-functional theory) without conceding the issue to cultural determinism. Civilizational formations are based on combinations of cultural visions of the world with regulative frameworks of social life, but the relationship between the two levels is open to conflicting interpretations and strategic uses of them. Axial age civilizations open up new structural and historical dimensions of interaction (...) between cultural and social patterns, and are therefore central to the agenda of civilizational analysis. Among the later breakthroughs which draw on Axial sources, the emergence of modernity stands out as particularly important; the cultural and political program of modernity may be seen as a new and distinctive civilization, but it remains open to more or less formative influences from older civilizational legacies. (shrink)

Individual semiotic systems interpreting their environment are not well understood from the externalist approach typical of the scientific method. Science constructs probabilities describing large populations of systems, not individuals. The Umwelt, as the individually experienced/created aspects of the habitat aspect of its population’s ecological niche, is given an internalist understanding within the framework of the compositional hierarchy. Vagueness is an important aspect of the internalist condition. It is selectively reduced momentarily by creative choices that can have a Peircean semiotic formulation, (...) and which are often unpredictable externally, thereby appearing to be chance events. (shrink)

A connection between Aristotle's syllogistic and the calculus of relations is investigated. Aristotle's and Gergonne's syllogistics are considered as some algebraic structures. It is proved that Gergonne's syllogistic is isomorphic to closed elements algebra of a proper approximation relation algebra. This isomorphism permits to evaluate Gergonne's syllogisms and also Aristotle's syllogisms, laws of conversion and relations in the "square of oppositions" by means of regular computations with Boolean matrices.

Drawing on various historical documents, the article uses process tracing methods and analytic narratives to establish a relationship between historical contractual practices and state formation in nineteenth-century East Africa. I trace the process through which local political leaders historically sought to secure monopolistic deals over trade with foreign entrepreneurs through incomplete contracts for tangible economic goods and intangible political goods or services. By showcasing agents’ bargaining strategies in contractual agreements, the article sheds light on notions of sovereignty and independence articulated (...) through public contracting in Africa’s political development. Historical understandings of notions of independence and sovereignty by procurement practitioners in East Africa provide seeds for thought in controversial debates about government outsourcing today. Is outsourced sovereignty always threatening? Can we outsource sovereignty and remain independent? These are perhaps the most important conceptual queries that make East Africa’s historical contractual experience pertinent today as new public-private partnerships for development, including government outsourcing, increasingly call for the use of private means to solve public problems in the developing countries. (shrink)

Background Despite major shifts in U.S. federal government data sharing requirements, their impact, and relation to researcher choice of database, are underexplored. This study surveyed genetic researchers regarding trends, priorities, perceptions of quality, impact on research outcomes, and genomic data sharing and use across government, consortium, and private databases.Methods As part of an exploratory sequential mixed methods project, we surveyed 294 U.S.-based genomic academic researchers.Results Genetic researchers generally have a choice between databases, which allows them to prioritize data quality. This (...) might explain recent trends toward the use of government and consortium databases away from private ones. Respondents reported several significant differences in the requirements that different data stewards place on them, which impact their work. Private data stewards generally had the most restrictions and were the least likely to allow users to release the full dataset at completion, despite over 50% of respondents reporting the use of federal funds for such research. Our findings indicate that upstream benefits (i.e., access, database features) are more impactful on researchers’ choice in databases than downstream publication limitations (e.g., co-authorship, limited data release). Respondents also reported the time necessary to share data as the biggest barrier to contributing to government databases and non-comprehensiveness as the biggest challenge to using existing government data.Conclusions The federal government can leverage these findings about researcher priorities to continue attracting researchers, to push forward goals related to open science and enabling advances for patients underrepresented in genetic research, and to found new genomic data sharing policy moving forward. (shrink)