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Author(s): Quassim Cassam [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.7372.1, 0000 0000 8809 1613, University of Warwick, , Coventry, UK Watching news coverage of scores of Afghan civilians running alongside an American [...]

The article evaluates the body of literature on Leonardo da Vinci using for the first time bibliometric and altmetric methods for data processing. The question of whether the literature on Leonardo da Vinci reflects his interdisciplinarity as scientist and artist is addressed. We argue that the medical and material sciences show a high number of citations to the respective publications, and much higher number of citations to publications ratio than the humanities and social sciences fields. We also found that there is no relationship between the number of publications for each research area and the citations (between productivity and quality). The largest category of papers, in terms of citations and in terms of the number of subfields, discussing da Vinci’s contribution to the various sciences, belongs to exact sciences. This finding is surprising as Leonardo da Vinci has become a synonym for the mysterious artist whose paintings consist of many messages that are difficult to explain. Therefore it seems natural that Leonardo the artist would get a lot of research attention. Nevertheless, the bibliometric findings show that the academic community has interest in his contributions to science, no less than in his work of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author looks at ghostwriting in the medical field. The author posits that it is dangerous for medical research papers that endorse specific medications not to note they are ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies. He calls more transparency in medical research, through corporate authors including their names on a paper's byline.

The Agatu "Massacre" is a conflict between pastoralists and farmers in the Agatu area of Benue State, Nigeria. The conflict is significant because of the event's gravity, but no scholarly inquiry that involves thoughtful and reflective methodological and theoretical approaches has been made. This paper investigates how the farmer-herder relations in Agatu became a violent crisis and situates it within relevant literature to fill gaps in farmer-herder conflicts literature in Africa. Existing literature demonstrates the pertinence of moral economies for resource use, spatial pattern, and manifestations of conflicts in developing and developed worlds. However, studies have yet to use the moral economy concept to explore the African farmer-herder conflicts from a political ecology perspective. This paper demonstrates that the Agatu crisis emerged due to reterritorializations in the moral economy of farmers and herders, disrupting their social ties. It further illustrates that the violence in Agatu was caused by the deviation from the traditional approach to addressing the damage done to crops by herding livestock. Nevertheless, the paper argues that this deviation is the consequence of modifications in the moral economy of farmers and herders driven by the aspiration for financial gain rather than the subsistence of agro-pastoral relations. The paper argues that changes in moral economies can disrupt social relations and lead to farmer-herder conflicts, leading to the exclusion of pastoralists from resource access through policy and legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burkina Faso and Mali have been grappling with multiple security threats including jihadist challenge, military coup d'état, violent extremism, and poor governance. These complex security problems have escalated into national conflicts, state failure, internal displacements, and forced migration. This paper examined the changing patterns of the drivers and enablers of these security threats and how these forces feed into the protracted challenges of forced migration and population displacements. Using qualitative methods and documentary evidence, the paper found that poor governance, lack of state-building measures, and socio-economic exclusion of local populations contributed to the worsening crises of forced migration and population displacements in Burkina-Faso and Mali. The paper emphasised the human security perspectives hinged on good governance principles through effective leadership in Burkina-Faso and Mali particularly in the areas of industrialization, employment creation, reduction of poverty, and provision of adequate security for the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether leadership as a research area is becoming an autonomous field. Our main argument is that leadership is emerging as one of the fastest growing academic fields in higher education, demonstrating considerable increases in the number of publications and citations in the field. This growth is not affected by the low percent of funding in this research area. The surge in the number of authors and scholarly contributions ensures the continued development of this field. Furthermore, leadership is becoming institutionalized as a field of study in academia. In light of these findings, we argue that there are positive indications that leadership will become an autonomous research field in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the body of literature on Leonardo da Vinci using bibliometric methods. The questions of whether Leonardo can be called a "sleeping beauty" in science and what "awakened" him for public attention are addressed. We argue that the first paper that "awakened" a large body of citations for Leonardo's work is in physics (optics), published more than 300 years after his death, and until today physics remains the most cited field of Leonardo's interests in science (based on Scopus database), even though da Vinci left an enormous heritage in different fields due to his versatile interests and insatiate curiosity. However, the Google Scholar search engine shows a different result. Whereas the academic world finds more interest in Leonardo as a physician, popular interest focuses on Leonardo as an artist. The holistic approach that da Vinci adhered to in studying the world makes any attempt to define him in specific terms doomed to failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the fragmented discourses in the Indian digital public sphere in a post-truth world. The normative concept of the public sphere by Jürgen Habermas has been brought under critical scrutiny in the era of emotional communication online. The digital world opened democratic and inclusive spaces that are desirable for a picture-perfect public sphere as imagined by Habermas. The low entry barriers and inclusivity of the digital public sphere changed the patterns of political communication worldwide. However, such a change is not an isolated event and must be located within the historical context of a changing political environment. Contemporary society has entered the post-truth era where opinionated, emotional outbursts downplay objective reality. The paper explores explicitly the public comments recorded under an infotainment video on the YouTube platform of a private channel in Kerala, the southernmost state of India. A case study method was adopted to analyze the theme, subtext, and visible structure of the discourse in the digital public sphere, which is a subset of the larger public sphere. Disconcertingly, the findings revealed fragmented discourses in a public sphere, characterized by unidimensional historical narratives, fallacious arguments, political apathy, and emotional or romanticized appeals, all of which are classic symptoms of a post-truth era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much debate centers on the conditions of free speech and academic freedom within higher education. Underlying these debates are what appears to be increasing occurrences of ideologically based censorship battles within academia. This paper examines one aspect of those battles—e.g., how cancel culture has intruded into the academic environment of higher education. In particular, this paper explores how an ideologically based retraction practice may be infringing on academic freedom. The paper also discusses how an overly politicized academia may itself undermine the necessary conditions for academic freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the limitations of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and reviews the national and regional impact of immigration on the labor market and taxes and public services, and successful immigrant assimilation. Argues for reform of immigration policy based on a profamily, progrowth policy. (FMW)

The research of female leaders in politics indicates the important changes in global politics, which started in 1970s and continues slowly. As more women are occupying positions of power, the academic interest in women’s style of leadership grows. Our study, based on bibliometric analysis, reflects the publications development on this issue from 1967 to 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies have examined only the unidirectional impact of cultural diversity on the economic performance of countries, regions, and cities, not the other ways. They have assumed the diversity as given, while it may also grow, due to in-migration of workers and entrepreneurs, with economic growth and may be dependent on it. This paper models diversity and economic growth in a bi-directional causal frame and demonstrates that economic growth has a substantial impact on religious, language, and overall cultural diversities in the major states of India. However, the Granger causality between economic growth to language diversity and overall cultural diversity is found to be stronger and more widespread across the states than the causality from economic growth to religious diversity. The findings of this paper may have significant theoretical and empirical implications, as mainly the unidirectional way the impact of cultural diversity on economic growth has been advocated and the empirical studies have been modelled to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the crisis in day care availability, the economic necessity of working mothers, and government responsibility for child care. Proposes changes that would return responsibility for child care to the family, including federal tax deductions and credits, reduction of state government policing of families, and creation of voluntary sector parent support programs. (FMW)

Argues that the failure of programs for developmentally impaired children lies in the type of programs developed, their mode of delivery, and the organization of the care delivery system itself. Suggests that direct community and family involvement would be more effective than additional funding or expansion of current programs. (FMW)

Discusses the developmental risks to children of extensive day care. Suggests the following federal family policy: (1) parental-leave policies that enable one parent to remain at home during the child's first critical months; (2) parental option to work part time during the child's first year; and (3) greater availability of quality child care. (FMW)

The multiple problems that the planet is currently experiencing—climate crisis, conventional and unconventional wars, planetary disenchantment with political systems, growth of inequality, increase in all kinds of intersectional violence, destructuring of the political economy of morality, etc.—are not a favorable scenario for thinking about hope. This paper nevertheless offers a summary presentation of the sociology of hope, presenting some of its central sources and components as well as a proposed study agenda for the future. This article seeks to foster discussion of what could be the central axes of a sociology of hope. To achieve this purpose, the following argumentative strategy was chosen: (a) the "place" of hope is explored in some classics of sociology, (b) the central components of a sociological investigation of hope are synthesized, and (c) an agenda is presented as a summary for a future development of a sociology of hope. The article seeks to draw attention to the urgency of hope as an important element for the future of sociology and social sciences in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the findings of two recent books on the financial history of the Frankfurt School: Jeanette Erazo-Heufelder, Der argentinische Krösus: Kleine Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Frankfurter Schule, 2017, and Bertus Mulder, Sophie Louisa Kwaak und das Kapital der Unternehmerfamilie Weil. Ein Beitrag zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Frankfurter Schule, 2021 (Dutch original 2015). In contrast to the "court histories" of the school, the two authors tell the story of the money that brought the school to life and secured its existence throughout a turbulent period of history. At the center of the books are individuals who have been sidelined until now or even completely ignored by the literature on the Frankfurt School: on the one hand, Felix Weil, who founded and financed the Institute of Social Research and, on the other hand, Erich A. Nadel and Sophie L. Kwaak, two employees of the holding company who managed the accounts of the Weil family and the Institute's foundations and were responsible for protecting the assets from being seized by Nazis. The books' thick descriptions induced the author of the present paper to consider an alternative perspective on the Frankfurt School by contemplating Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock as playing confidential games with Weil and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased immigration to post-apartheid South Africa of Black African migrants has given rise to widespread xenophobic sentiments and recurrent violence against them. Over the past three decades, migration scholars have extensively studied the phenomenon of xenophobia as a major problem in citizen–migrant relations. However, most migration scholars' predominant focus on xenophobia in South Africa appears to have overlooked positive migrant–citizen relations in some places, though a few scholars have noted the presence of xenophilia in certain communities. Drawing on an auto-ethnographic qualitative approach, this paper reports on my own lived experiences, as a Black African refugee, with xenophilia in my everyday interactions in a multi-cultural urban suburb of Sunnyside, Pretoria. This paper attempts to add nuance to existing scholarship on citizen–non-citizen relations in post-apartheid South Africa. I argue that multi-cultural urban neighborhoods in South Africa, where there are everyday inter-ethnic interactions, friendships, amenities, services, and shared spaces, tend to function as drivers of social cohesion and inter-group conviviality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the proposition that human beings are humor beings, this article probes into Iranian society through the lens of humor. It also strives to open a window to Iranian perspectives on America. Persian online jokes as the mainstream of Iranian humor about America are focused on. The qualitative analysis of several stereotypes of these jokes offers insights into Iranian viewpoints on domestic issues as well as American society. The paper discusses three categories of jokes: "double-barrel shotgun," "American Dream," and "rattlesnake." They are elaborated on against a backdrop of recent developments in Iran, Iran-US geopolitical tensions, and the social functions of humor. Iranian jokes about America chiefly serve as a secure, legitimate venue for Iranians to express their domestic concerns, permitting a discourse of resistance and awareness under the façade of humor. Such humor also reveals the tacit, socio-cultural presuppositions Iranians hold about American society. Thus, the paper can potentially shed light on how Iranian society considers its American counterpart regardless of the media propaganda and the conflicts between the respective governments. This is a notably under-explored area of research to which this article endeavors to contribute new insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]