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The Journal of Critical Realism has issued a call for papers for a special issue on Morphogenetic Régulation (MR). MR is a theoretical and methodological framework that examines complex systemic transformations within contemporary capitalism. It builds on the Immanent Causality Morphogenetic Approach (ICMA) introduced by Knio in 2018, which combines Margaret Archer's Morphogenetic Analysis with Spinoza's concept of immanent causality. The call for papers invites contributions that apply MR to various themes and disciplines in the social sciences. The submission deadline for full papers is September 31, 2024, and all papers will undergo peer review. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides a keyword in context analysis of three editorials published in London-based papers regarding the events of 16 August 1819 in Manchester: one daily paper, The Courier, and two weeklies, Sherwin's Political Register and The Examiner. It aims to offer lexical evidence of the struggle for the cultural-political appropriation and representation of Peterloo 'in public consciousness'. To this end, insights from critical discourse analysis, specifically social actor theory, are used, and elements of rhetorical and argumentative analysis are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Appearances: A Philosophy of Display and Prestige: by Barbara Carnevali, translated by Zakiya Hanafi, New York, Columbia University Press, 2020, xx + 278 pp., $28.00/£22.00 (paper) This work takes a large step in making that tradition more accessible through Carnevali's skillful use of Plessner, as well as Georg Simmel and others. Second, Carnevali's work also provides a link with an overlooked tradition, begun by Max Scheler and carried out by Helmut Plessner and Arnold Gehlen, on the topic of philosophical anthropology. [Extracted from the article]

Professor Nigel Dodd was a long-standing and much-loved member of the Editorial Board of Economy and Society. He sadly passed away in August 2022. In this short piece, we express our heartfelt gratitude for Nigel's contributions to the journal and briefly introduce a virtual collection of four papers assembled to register our appreciation. The papers are free to access from the Collections section of our website throughout 2023, and include Nigel's 'Reinventing monies in Europe', published in Economy and Society in 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frédéric Vandenberghe's paper in this edition describes critical realism as a 'scientific, social and spiritual movement that wants to change not only our conception of sciences, but also the world, starting with ourselves'. In September 2021, Rhodes University's Environmental Learning Research Centre, together with WITS's Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL), hosted The 24 SP th sp annual International Association of Critical Realism conference online. Reciprocally, Vandenberghe highlights the role that critical realism plays in bringing hermeneutics "back into the world" by giving it a referent (Vandenberghe [8], this issue). Another significant challenge to Bhaskar's critical realism offered by Vandenberghe is in the relationship between the transitive and intransitive specifically in the social sciences. [Extracted from the article]

This article introduces a special issue on consociationalism and the state, specifically focusing on Lebanon and Iraq. It explores the use of consociational power sharing as a means of conflict resolution in post-conflict societies. The article acknowledges the ongoing debate surrounding the effectiveness of consociationalism and the tension between normative and analytical goals. The special issue aims to contribute to this debate by examining the relationship between consociational theory, the state, and political settlements in Lebanon and Iraq. The papers in the issue explore various aspects of consociationalism, including its impact on state formation, state stability, and social identity. The authors emphasize the need for a more coherent theory of the state in understanding the dynamics of consociationalism in these countries. The article also discusses the political settlements in Lebanon and Iraq, highlighting the challenges faced by each country's consociational system. It concludes by calling for further comparative study and innovative debates on the postcolonial state in the Middle East. [Extracted from the article]

Together with Bart Wilson, Vernon has shown that providing a third-stage punishment option for investors in an investment trust game reduces reciprocity between the participants (Smith and Wilson [19]). In terms of individual decision-making and risk, Vernon has examined individual rationality versus market rationality (e.g., Knez, Smith, and Williams [8]). This I Journal of Behavioral Finance i issue is dedicated to Vernon Lomax Smith on the occasion of his 95th Birthday. In the classic paper by Cox, Roberson, and Smith ([4]), "Theory and behavior of single object auctions", auction theory predicts the outcomes of the first price sealed bid auction and Dutch clock auction should be identical. [Extracted from the article]

In certain domains, the actionable predictions of ML systems not only inform human decision-making but replace it entirely (Borch and Min [7]). Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren and Alexander Paulsson, in their paper 'From senses to sensors: autonomous cars and probing what machine learning does to mobilities studies', investigate the use of ML-powered sensors in autonomous vehicles. The proliferation of machine learning (ML) systems, which are algorithmic assemblages designed to extract patterns from data and make predictions, is visibly transforming society and everyday life. They either reconsider established notions to comprehend ML or analyze the implications of ML for specific theoretical traditions. [Extracted from the article]

The authors introduce their interesting and thoughtful piece with a personal anecdote that serves as an origin story to the argument within the paper itself and to the issues they have been wrestling with for some time. This work has changed my perception of archaeology in profound ways, and I continue to wrestle with many issues that are raised by the authors in their paper. For example, the authors quote Bhambra and Holmwood ([1]), but they seemingly fail to engage with the key message of this book, which argues that crucial elements of social theoretical thought were themselves fundamentally shaped by the influence of European colonialism. [Extracted from the article]

This paper discusses the role of the menhu in the protection of Wushu Intangible Cultural Heritage (WICH) and the possibility of developing it as part of WICH community, based on the analysis of the concepts of community in sociological theory, community in the Convention of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Menhu members master skills and enact their inheritance and reproduction for a long time and have a stable and continuous sense of identity in their inherited skills and cultural identity, thus constructing them as a cultural community. Menhu members always actively participate in the recognition, protection, and inheritance of WICH. However, due to the unclear identification of community entities and the criticism of the menhu as a negative culture in folk martial arts, its status and value have not been recognised in the protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), and the identity of its community entity has not been clarified. This paper argues that respecting the complexity of folk martial arts cultures, and establishing a community recognition system that aligns with the realities of WICH, expressing approval and emphasising the subjectivity of the menhu is of practical significance for ensuring the continuous inheritance and dissemination of WICH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Michel Serres's caution with figures of the limit, border, and boundary which philosophy and social theory put into play, his work can fruitfully be read as a proposal to rethink limits for a social and natural contract. By following up on the intimate connection between limits and law in his work, this paper shines a light on Serres's argument for a parallelism of limits and laws; and particularly highlights the partially underacknowledged role of entropy for this matter. First, attention will be drawn to the role of topological boundaries for Serres's structural consideration of a natural contract in a number of his works (e.g., The Natural Contract, Atlas, Hominescence), in order to demonstrate the indispensable connection between topological boundaries, a topologically conceived ethics, and a topological approach to law. This grounds the argument for a second step, which will focus on the role of entropy and entropic difference for his understanding of processes of social organization as well as a proposal of a "new natural contract." Similarly, this will emphasize the linkages between entropic figures of the limit and respective conceptions of a contract. This "new natural contract," as Serres calls it, not only goes a long way in connecting themes around thermodynamic and informational entropy of the early Hermès series to his later employments of entropy in social theory, but also integrates different criticisms of his earlier natural contract and critiques of a Western-centric form of naturalism. The aim of this paper is to show that Serres's approach to entropy engenders a reconsideration of a natural contract that not only thoroughly integrates his own non-essentialist and non-dualistic understanding of nature, but that opens up a horizon of resonances with feminist and postcolonial critiques of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Native residents are indispensable participants in developing and conserving the natural environment. Specifying the factors that lead to responsible behavior among the local people can help increase sustainability. This paper aims to investigate the pro-environmental behavior among the local residents of the Kashmir region defined by the components of Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Value Belief Norm (VBN) Theory. To analyze the data, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) has been used as research methods. The results reveal that the three components of TPB (general environmental attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control) have a positive and significant impact on the pro-environmental behavior of residents. Moreover, the findings also demonstrate that the factors of VBN (altruistic, egoistic and biospheric values) significantly influence the general environmental attitude which in turn impacts the pro-environmental behavior of local residents. The paper seeks to contribute to the existing literature by adding local community insights based on the explanations given by socio-psychological theories within the context of natural environment. The study will help policymakers to understand better the residents' intentions and pro-environmental behavior so that they can develop strategies to manage and combat the environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article outlines how this special issue contributes to existing scholarship that calls for a rethinking and re-evaluation of common assumptions about early modern philosophy. One way of challenging existing narratives is by questioning what role systems or systematicity play during this period. Another way of rethinking early modern philosophy is by considering assumptions about the role of philosophy itself and how philosophy can effect change in those who form philosophical beliefs or engage in philosophical argumentation. A further way of advancing early modern scholarship is by examining the tight links between early modern views on metaphysics and epistemology, on the one hand, and moral, social, and political philosophy, on the other hand. Moreover, there are ongoing debates whether and how the traditional distinction between rationalism and empiricism, which has been questioned for several reasons, should be replaced. It has been proposed to replace it with a distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy, but this distinction cannot easily accommodate early modern debates concerning moral, social, and political philosophy. In addition to highlighting several ways how early modern philosophy has and can be rethought, we summarize how the papers in this special issue contribute to these ongoing efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather, we are interested in movement itself and how any movement, whether in a sport, fitness, dance or educational setting, does things that come with reciprocal effects across the entirety of its respective movement landscape. This has led to the rise of competing perspectives concerning talent identification and ability in sport and dance as well as debates over what constitutes a functional or useless movement pattern in fitness or exercise settings. For example, in their review of the socio-cultural-history of the moving body Kerr and Espiner ([5]) expounded on the "normative structures that influence sport and movement ... [whereby] ... the techniques, styles and types of sporting movements are rarely stable" (p. 170). In addition, they pointed to the ways in which any movement practice, whether it be in sport, dance or fitness, needs to be analyzed as part of a larger system that includes rules and organizational bureaucracy that come together to "value, celebrate and reward particular types of movements" (p. 171). [Extracted from the article]

In order to trouble the rhetoric of caring spaces like home that are taken for granted in schools, I consider how the western neoliberal subject remains tethered to normalcy in ways that sustain practices of conditional inclusion. I My aim is to persist in questioning normalcy, while also endeavouring to reimagine distinctly different relational encounters amidst embodied differences. The first part of this paper will consider how current inclusionary school practices sustain normalcy by both refusing to confront, while also concealing, the ways public education was shaped by the eugenics movement. The second part will explore the works of Michalko [2002. The Difference That Disability Makes. Philadelphia: Temple University Press] and Yergeau [2018. Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Fordham: Duke University Press] and the ways narratives situated within disability have sought to resist the hegemony of normalcy while also provoking the possibilities of reimagining our human relations both within and against western colonial logics. The last section of this paper will consider how narratives told and embodied through disability, might pursue foregrounding disorienting intersubjective encounters as a necessary move intended to amplify the possibilities of displacing normalcy while reimagining what it means to be human with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is offered as a thought piece rather than an academic paper. It will summarise some key points from the previous piece written jointly with Andrew Tyson in 2010, reflect on some of the specific assertions in that paper, and introduce a range of broader musings that seem relevant developed since that time. To put these in context, after a short note on terminology, I begin by summarising my work in social care and other roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a novel take on Chantal Mouffe's appropriation of the late Wittgenstein, arguing that Wittgenstein's philosophy, at the same time, gives rise to and offers a solution to the relativism problem as it can be found in Mouffe's radical political thought. Unlike other vindications of Wittgenstein-inspired political thought, I also show at which point Wittgenstein's support for such an approach comes to an end. I thus acknowledge that the relativism problem -- at least to some extent -- stems from the ambiguity of Wittgensteinian thought itself. After having outlined these challenges, I suggest turning to alternative approaches from the field of critical social philosophy. In particular, Rahel Jaeggi's Frankfurt School account of forms of life highlights what such a non-relativist but still context-sensitive approach may look like. By virtue of this last step, this paper contributes to recent engagements by Critical Theorists with the late Wittgenstein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to extend research on children's Theory of Mind (ToM) within moral development, researchers have proposed a novel area of research, Morally Relevant ToM. It has been argued to better account for the moral and social considerations that children are required to make when using their ToM abilities in real life situations. To further the research in this area, the Social Domain Theory can be used to provide a theoretical framework and new insight into children's developing Morally Relevant ToM. The current paper reviews the existing literature on Morally Relevant ToM, and applies the Social Domain Theory to this literature in order to conceptualize current findings. Finally, the current paper presents how the Social Domain Theory can be used to extend the current research through future studies. Considering this new and innovative research within a Social Domain framework will expand upon our understanding of Theory of Mind development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between Hicks and Strachey is important, since it illustrates the international conversation among communist activists and intellectuals determined to translate Marxism into something meaningful to white-collar workers.[16] Hicks and Strachey had already been in communication by 1936. If any period seemed the hour of the American worker, it was the 1930s. 19 Anouar Majid, " I Granville Hicks and the Dilemma of American Radicalism i ", PhD. Diss., Syracuse University, 1991, 77. 20 Nathaniel Foster to Granville Hicks, December 8, 1938, Granville Hicks Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University. [Extracted from the article]

Research necessarily entails the close interrelation of concepts and arguments, including solutions to a range of meta-questions, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. Despite this, few detailed accounts currently exist that support researchers to develop their complex conceptual architectures, especially in critical realist spheres. Indeed, many published accounts often omit much of this 'messiness' that sits behind, yet is foundational to, research projects. Those accounts that do seek to portray how/why researchers have made decisions (e.g. about connections between research philosophy, methodology, methods, theory and empirical evidence) tend to focus on one set of meta-questions, or occasionally on the relationships between two sets, at a time. Therefore, this paper presents a flexible framework – supported by specific examples from studies – that we hope will be useful in supporting researchers from all traditions, but especially critical realists, to carefully think through and develop more holistic connections in their conceptual architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corresponding to the party-state's expressed ambition to build a just society, Chinese citizenship education involves educating students for social justice. This paper critically examines the discursive subject of social justice in official citizenship education by analyzing school textbooks and interviewing schoolteachers. It sheds light on the discursive construction of social justice primarily through narratives of justice rather than injustice. Drawing upon the notion that injustice is distinct from and has priority over justice in moral and political philosophy and social theory, this paper argues that the positive discursive construction of social justice enables the party-state to manipulate social consensus and manufacture depoliticized, individualized and authoritarian citizenship. Seeing the lack of opportunity to teach and learn social injustice as epistemic injustice in itself, the paper suggests that education for social justice should be oriented as education against social injustice in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study of the aesthetics of the free-form improvisational dance practice Gaga as an example of contemporary neo-spirituality. The study is based on aesthetic data collected in recreational Gaga classes at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv. The study shows that the aesthetics of practices are relational and depend on a variety of heterogeneous factors; collective and shared aesthetics persist despite individualization. The paper develops assemblage thinking as a theoretical and practical framework for approaching aesthetics. It combines the specific analytical approach of aesthetic analysis with the theoretical concept of assemblage and applies it to an example of neo-spirituality. It evolves the concept of "aesthetic assemblage" to address the challenges of studying practices that focus on movement, body, and experience. It demonstrates that studying aesthetic assemblages of neo-spiritual practices helps to foster an understanding of social and cultural dynamics in the context of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Recently Feminist New Materialism has emerged as a field that questions the capability of critique to offer substantive change and calls for more affirmative forms of criticality which add to, rather than subtract from, alternate ways of living in the world. This 'affirmative turn' is an emerging influence in social work where it is taken up to disrupt human-centred notions of agency and engage with the non-human and more-than-human relations that make up the material-social world. This paper adds to this work, utilizing Karen Barad's concept and method of diffraction to critically engage with trauma-informed practice, a current popular approach in social work that draws on neuroscience and social theory. Specifically, diffraction is used to put neuro-trauma theory into conversation with Extended Emotion theory, and through reading the insights they offer, re-configure trauma-informed social work as situated, embodied, relational practices for making differences that matter in the world. This example also suggests what diffraction makes possible for social work as an onto-ethical mode of affirmative critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only too often critical realist contributions to understanding and explaining social phenomena fall into one of two discrete categories: exercises in philosophy or social theory, or empirical research that strikes as more or less atheoretical. This paper continues a long-term project to build bridges between abstruse issues of philosophy and theory and attempts to grasp the 'how' and 'why' of actual social events. The topic selected is elite professional rugby union and the principal theme is its emergence as an extreme sport and the risk of serious injury. It is argued that the injurious nature of elite rugby has its causal genesis in the professionalization of the sport and that a critical realist-oriented sociology has an important contribution to make in framing and gasping how and why this is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to argue for the concept of social communication that we identified with the idea of innovation and almost always to technological innovation. The starting point is the hypothesis that innovation is a valuable tool in the service of the greater good. The paper has four sections. First, it briefly reviews concepts and methods in Actor Network Theory, a social theory that is useful in framing the (theoretical) approach and implications of e-service (e-care, e-health, etc ...). Second, it examines the implication of social innovation and e-service and discusses the prime agents involved in its creation. Third, it assesses the role of social communication and initiative's benefits and risks to society. Finally, the paper concludes by exploring the broad implications of e-service for evolution of national-state conventional communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations are rapidly deploying artificial intelligence (AI) systems to manage their workers. However, AI has been found at times to be unfair to workers. Unfairness toward workers has been associated with decreased worker effort and increased worker turnover. To avoid such problems, AI systems must be designed to support fairness and redress instances of unfairness. Despite the attention related to AI unfairness, there has not been a theoretical and systematic approach to developing a design agenda. This paper addresses the issue in three ways. First, we introduce the organizational justice theory, three different fairness types (distributive, procedural, interactional), and the frameworks for redressing instances of unfairness (retributive justice, restorative justice). Second, we review the design literature that specifically focuses on issues of AI fairness in organizations. Third, we propose a design agenda for AI fairness in organizations that applies each of the fairness types to organizational scenarios. Then, the paper concludes with implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay places Paulo Freire in dialogue with a Black Radical Tradition (BRT) in three distinct yet interrelated ways. First, the paper situates the significance of Cedric's Robinson's articulation of a BRT while exploring how contemporary scholars are troubling his disputatious relationship with Marxist social thought. Second, the paper foregrounds Freire's modest contributions to a BRT in his anticolonial literacy campaigns in Guinea Bissau, Africa. Extending the principles of 'dialogical cultural action' in the context of African struggle that Freire documented in the letters compiled in Pedagogy in Process, a robust theorization of solidarity comes into sharper view. Third, the paper calls for further reinvention of Freire pointing to the ways his cogent analysis can be augmented by other racialized groups and radical traditions in solidarity with Black struggle to more explicitly confront the inherent racism and anti-Blackness fundamental to global capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a framework for understanding interactive documentary. It examines Adrian Miles's work in this area, where he uses ANT as a way of conceptualising interactive documentary as socio-technical media assemblages and consequently to question the relationship between human and non-human agency as understood within the field. After introducing ANT and reviewing Miles's position, the paper engages in a detailed discussion of ANT's key concepts in the context of specific interactive documentaries showing how these concepts operate and examining the insights they provide. This discussion supports and extends Miles's position while also broadening and deepening interactive documentary's engagement with ANT through a more detailed and systematic engagement with its concepts than has been attempted previously. The paper concludes by raising issues concerning the adaption of ANT's concepts to the field, including the question of whether they offer a complete theoretical framework for understanding interactive documentary and by suggesting future lines of enquiry to address these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the concept of social affordances in relation to social theory. Our point of departure is the growing literature which posits, in one way or another, that affordances may be seen as social, or cultural or similar. Across the literature on social affordances, it is thus emphasized how perception is shaped within human econiches, how it is fundamentally social, historical, and cultural, but limited direct engagement with decades of scholarship within the social sciences on many of these same topics. This paper thus discusses three key themes for theories of social affordances, exploring sociological perspectives on meaning, place and power, arguing that there may be a difficult, yet fruitful, potential for not just an ecological psychology, but an ecological social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disciplinary pressures within academia often produce specialised and one-sided accounts of complex social processes. Convincing accounts of popular education regularly acknowledge the importance of social movements but without theorising them adequately – and vice versa. This one-sidedness is compounded by a widespread tendency to generalise from often highly specific institutional and political contexts, as though all movements learned in the same way across space and time and popular education's role in fostering this learning is simple. Unchecked, this leads to the reification of 'critical' theory and the reduction and flattening of emancipatory practices to methods or even predefined goals. This paper constructs a dialogue between the work of Choudry, Freire and other authors in both fields, aimed at both celebrating and problematising their contribution to learning from our struggles. By developing a conversation between them, we want to explore how their insights might be usefully integrated for contemporary social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical physiotherapy has been a rapidly expanding field over the last decade and could now justifiably be called a professional sub-discipline. In this paper we define three different but somewhat interconnected critical positions that have emerged over the last decade that share a critique of physiotherapy’s historical approach to health and illness, while also diverging in the possibilities for new forms of practice and thinking. These three positions broadly align with three distinctive philosophies: approaches that emphasize lived experience, social theory, and a range of philosophies increasingly referred to as the “posts”. In this paper we discuss the origins of these approaches, exploring the ways they critique contemporary physiotherapy thinking and practice. We offer an overview of the key principles of each approach and, for each in turn, suggest readings from key authors. We conclude each section by discussing the limits of these various approaches, but also indicate ways in which they might inform future thinking and practice. We end the paper by arguing that the various approaches that now fall under the rubric of critical physiotherapy represent some of the most exciting and opportune ways we might (re)think the future for the physiotherapy profession and the physical therapies more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking beyond the legal approach of child rights governance (CRG) in the European Union (EU), this study contextualises a society-centric understanding of CRG concerning the sociological theory of childhood and new modes of governance as applied in the children's rights sphere. By referring to the shortcomings and gaps in the legal perspective on CRG (e.g. tokenistic political participation by children, the dominant discourse on the protection of children versus empowerment, the legal fact that the EU cannot ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the implementation gap), the paper shows the subjective aspects of CRG while problematising children's participation rights. Building on intersecting themes such as children's lived citizenship and youthful political agency, the paper asks what theoretical references are needed for society-centric solutions to the shortcomings of the legal perspective addressed earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the critical shift in geographical knowledge production under the increasingly authoritarian political regime in Turkey, particularly in the aftermath of the unsuccessful 2016 coup attempt. In this context, semi-structured interviews were conducted with sixteen young geographers who experienced the authoritarian shift in the political regime during their graduate studies. The narratives of the interviewees indicate that the young geographers have undergone a critical transformation with two significant aspects: firstly, they reject the traditional style of geographical knowledge production and instead embrace approaches integrated with social theory, drawing from the extensive portfolio of contemporary geography. Secondly, they approach socio-spatial phenomena in a libertarian and critical manner, distinct from the lenses of the authoritarian system. However, due to their legitimate concerns, they often refrain from presenting such research on academic platforms. In this regard, under an authoritarian regime, the critical transformation consists of two dimensions: the arena where geographical products are shared, and the underground, where geographical ‘black boxes’ are held and kept hidden from public view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we understand the concept of utopia when looking at a religious social utopia in practice? To unpack this question, the article retraces the motif of the 'Christian Town' or 'Salem' in the Apenkwa congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana through more than a century of narratives and practices. Drawing on historical and ethnographic data, the article demonstrates how the utopian religious ideal can function as a powerful symbol for the self-identification of a religious group in practice. It shows how this motif is perpetuated by actors across different cultural and religious backgrounds and over several generations. Most significantly, it shows that all this is quite independent of the 'success' or 'failure' of the utopian social project itself. Based on these observations, the paper proposes to theorize utopia, in the case of lived social utopias, as both a vision and a process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of climate change, social theory has been subject to a surge of new materialist and posthuman approaches that reconfigure ontology and politics beyond the modern nature/culture binary which the Anthropocene has rendered untenable. But their (re-)turn to ontological speculation brackets the socio-epistemic situatedness and productivity of the way we think nature and its relationship to society. This paper reads Niklas Luhmann's systems theory as a posthuman perspective that can address the epistemological blind spot of materialist-ecological thought. Luhmann's ecology aligns with the former on the posthuman framing of shaping power, the productivity of an environmental outside that remains unknown, and the call for political modesty which follows. On the other hand, Luhmann's theory poses a critical challenge to materialist-ecological thought: the society/environment binary is here constitutively necessary, and its mapping onto a nature/culture binary functionally advantageous for subjects and social systems because it offers opportunities for complexity-reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to make further use of and develop the idea of deliberative communication (Englund, [20], [21], [22], [23], [26], [29], [30]) as crucial for creating sustainable democratic societies and educated citizens living educationally (cf. This means that the formation of school subjects and curriculum content rests on a deliberative understanding of education and curriculum (Englund, [18], [19], [29], cf. As I have developed in the earlier text I Towards a deliberative curriculum i from 2015, I mean that it is a bit problematic to, as a curriculum theoretician, look too close at school subjects as, e.g., Zongyi Deng does, namely "that a school subject is a distinctive purpose-built enterprise" (Englund, [29], p. 48) which comes close to a systematic curriculum view which is the dominant one today and that this package of knowledge in one way or another has to be delivered to the students. 9 This paper is based on, slightly revised and enlarged from an 10-pages-outline, The educated, deliberative citizen: A crucial curriculum question presented at NERA Curriculum Research Network, Symposium on "Who is the educated citizen in a knowledge society?". [Extracted from the article]

This paper considers the evaluation of social media performance from a user's perspective using the expectation confirmation theory as the theoretical framework. The interplay between initial expectations and subsequent evaluations of social media performance, in particular, forms the basis of the evaluation. The research focuses on the influence that the performance of brand-related user-generated content is able to exert on a user's brand attitude, self-image, and the development of their personal brand. This conceptual paper develops three propositions suggesting that the social media performance of brand-related user-generated content is able to influence one's brand attitude, self-image, and personal brand respectively. A typology of four different social media user types is developed through an evaluation of the disconfirmation experienced as a result of the interplay between initial expectations and the actual evaluation of the performance of brand-related, user-generated content. The concept of social media performance is proposed, which considers the subjective evaluation of the performance of a brand-related post shared on social media platforms. In addition, the research expands the expectation confirmation theory to a new context in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of an existing yet under researched phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An estimated 2.3 million individuals were incarcerated in the U.S. in 2018. This paper displays how The Tadros Theory of Change can be utilized to work with incarcerated individuals and their families. The Tadros Theory is an integrative family therapy theory comprised of a structural conceptualization of rules, roles, boundaries, and structure with narrative methods of empowerment, solution-focused goal-orientation, cultural humility, and a strengths-based approach. The Tadros Theory empowers and aids in identifying clients' positive strengths and resiliency factors. This paper adds to the literature on this theory by introducing the consideration of trauma and substance use which are both extremely prevalent when working with this population. A case application showcases that this theory can be used with an incarcerated father and his non-incarcerated partner. Barriers, clinical implications, and future directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the challenges facing Special Educational Needs (SEN)/Additional Support Needs (ASN).

In this paper, we employ John Dewey's notion of the situation as an analytic lens for observing and theorizing machine learning. Based on two ethnographic case studies in art and science, we account for machine learning as practice and examine the dynamics of the situations it gives rise to. Following Dewey, our observations focus on the transformation of situations from an initial state of indeterminacy through to problematizations and their resolution. Rethinking machine learning through the situation, we analyze how cooperating machine learners, both human and non-human, resolve situations and thereby refine their mutual attunement. With Dewey, we first explain how machine learners train through disruption and adaptation as they identify and solve problems. Second, we show that these problems concern issues of latency and addressability in efforts of cooperation between heterogeneous machine learners. Third, we discuss how machine learning practices cultivate situations that feature careful calibrations of problems that allow for their productive transformation. Our empirically grounded approach offers a pragmatist account of machine learning as a continually indeterminate and dynamic situated practice. As a contribution to ongoing discussions in social theory, we reframe existing characterizations of machine learning as issues of latency and addressability in cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates the notion of the Powers developed by Walter Wink with a quantum social theory posited by Alexander Wendt. While Wink argues the Powers are manifestations of social structures with an interior spirituality, resembling creatures, his picture lacks explanatory depth and is addressed by Wendt's quantum social theory which argues agents and social structures co-emerge into a holographic (super)organism. At the same time, Wendt's model, lacking an objective basis for evaluating the purposes of social structures, is addressed by Wink's theology in that the purposes of social structures are understood as responses to God's calling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facebook community leaders play a significant role in creating and maintaining social environments, and they characteristically exhibit several qualities and skills, such as the ability to generate involvement in the groups. However, their identities and motivations have yet to be investigated in depth. Using the theoretical framework of the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), this paper addresses this gap by exploring the motivations of leaders to lead a Facebook online group. Leaders of online parents groups were surveyed for this study. A survey was administered electronically to 160 Facebook community leaders to gather data on the relationship between the community leaders' motivation and the following variables: personality traits (narcissism, altruism, grit), sense of community (immersion, sense of belonging, influence), management features, and demographics. A hierarchical regression indicates that higher narcissism, self-control, immersion, and lower consistency of interest (grit factor) can explain Facebook community leaders' motivations to lead online groups of parents. The results are discussed in the context of the leaders' influential role in social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Histories of events can be told from multiple perspectives, and there is rarely just one linear narrative or a single interpretation of the past. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to explain how the concept of shared authority in public history can be applied to transmedia storytelling, in the context of media studies, to address conflicting narratives on historical events. Transmedia narratives allow for more opportunities to target different audiences and offer alternatives, and perhaps conflicting interpretations, to official mainstream interpretations of historical events. This is achieved through three primary methods of public participation in the development of conflicting narratives which can be presented through a variety of different media. The theoretical challenges in sharing authority of transmedia narrative creation with different publics ranges from strong to little control (i.e. radical trust). Thus, we discuss a series of methodologies that can be strategically used in future research projects that wish to share authority with different publics in the development of historical transmedia narratives with conflicting interpretations. This approach can be particularly relevant in contexts of segregation, discrimination, identity, political changes or cultural wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An unedited conference by Michel Foucault] in Architecture, Movement, Continuité [Architecture, Mobility, Continuity] 5: 46 - 49. 12 Foucault, Michel. This set of papers, by authors from Japan, Europe, the US and Canada, originated from a panel entitled "Heterotopia in Post-Growth Rural Japan: Negotiating Difference in Local Communities" at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Jose, California, 2018. In "Of Other Spaces", Foucault begins by thinking of a mirror as the locus of both real and virtual space: "...it renders this place that I occupy at the moment I look at myself...[as] absolutely real...and [in that moment also] absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived [my image and the surroundings] ha[ve] to pass through the virtual point which is over there" (Foucault in Dehaene and De Cauter [4], 17). [Extracted from the article]

This paper argues that the sociology of education would benefit from greater integration with social scientific research focused on morality. This body of research offers a rich set of resources that can illuminate and extend many of the sociology of education's intellectual concerns. In support of this argument, the paper draws on data from Millennium Cohort Study in the UK to empirically examine how a wide range of socio-demographic characteristics are related to young people's moral attitudes. The analysis focuses on the extent to which adolescents state that a range of actions are wrong. In doing so, the paper makes an important contribution to studying the moral lives of young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers in this Special Issue demonstrate three persistent, global challenges to urban housing policy: that it is difficult to mass produce housing well; that community-based upgrading programmes often fail to benefit the worst off; and that ultimately, housing policy is a political problem that often fails to consider the diversity of populations at the expense of the least powerful. Importantly, some of the papers problematise what many consider the two most successful areas of housing policy in these regions: the community-based land sharing programmes for redevelopment in south-east Asia and the finance-driven social housing programmes in Latin America. The collection of scholarship, which spans cases in nine countries and touches on mass housing production programmes, incremental development processes, community-based urban upgrading, the legal structure of condominiums, and land-sharing policies, also highlights challenges to policy learning across contexts. In addition to synthesising the major research findings in the component articles in pairs, this editorial introduction reframes the idea of innovation in housing policy and argues that scholars should expand the topics and focus of housing policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]