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Theories used in the Information Systems (IS) field come in large majority from authors based in Western countries, a bias that holds for critical theories as well. Such a bias is made more problematic by the mandate of critical theory, which is meant exactly to illuminate the oppressive conditions of the status quo. Against this backdrop, this paper explores the subalternity theory approach – developed by the Subaltern Studies collective from the early 1980s – as an indigenous theory that, proposing a socially and geographically connotated narration of 'history from below', can play a major role in the effort to decolonise critical IS research. By positioning subaltern theory in the IS field, the paper offers an alternative to the Western hegemony of critical theories, exploring the potential of such an alternative to voice systematically silenced and marginalised perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Becoming Breastfeeding Friendly (BBF) in Great Britain study was conducted during 2017–2019 comprising three country studies: BBF England, Wales and Scotland. It was part of an international project being coordinated during the same period by the Yale School of Public Health across five world regions to inform countries and guide policies to improve the environment for the promotion, protection and support of breastfeeding. This paper reports on the application of the BBF process that is based on an implementation science approach, across the countries that constitute Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland). The process involves assessing 54 benchmarks across eight interlocking gears that drive a country's 'engine' towards a sustainable policy approach to supporting, promoting and protecting breastfeeding. It takes a consensus‐oriented approach to the evaluation of benchmarks and the development of recommendations. This paper provides a critical overview of how the process was conducted, the findings and recommendations that emerged and how these were managed. We draw on critical theory as a theoretical framework for explaining the different outcomes for each country and some considerations for future action. Key messages: Undertaking an international, comparable approach to develop evidence‐based policy recommendations for scaling up the breastfeeding environment can provide useful data on which to draw explanations and conclusions on national variation.The findings from the BBF process across England, Scotland and Wales suggest that improving breastfeeding in Great Britain is dependent on the degree of political will and having a coordinated national breastfeeding strategy in place or not, along with access to robust breastfeeding data.A critical theory lens helps to bring to light some differences in the research and policy process that can explain differences between countries in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like information science more broadly, search engine research has largely been fragmented into two factions: system‐oriented and user‐oriented studies. This limits our capacity for answering some fundamental questions surrounding an integral—often invisible—part of modern life. Given the "search‐ification" of this life, given an oligopolous global market and an information‐wealthy but attention‐poor audience, methods capable of studying search engines, as well as their relationship with users and society are increasingly necessary. This paper proposes critical discourse analysis (CDA) as an effectual, oft‐overlooked method for search engine research, one capable of interrogating both search engines and their use. The paper outlines CDA, provides examples of its application, and highlights its capacity for progressing our critical understanding of search engines. This developing understanding, evidenced by a review of the literature, suggests that challenges brought by search cannot be resolved by critiquing the power of systems alone. Rather, a reclaiming of today's information infrastructure requires we also illuminate the socio‐political environments of search systems, and the metacognitive, invisible processes pivotal to our communication with them. While power‐analyses of search continue, and some have begun to employ CDA, little recognition exists of this theoretical perspective's capacity for supporting both system‐oriented and user‐oriented studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of personal finance has gained research momentum since the financial crisis of 2008, however, only few comprehensive reviews have been conducted to date. This study adopts a systematic review methodology to build a knowledge structure on financial well‐being. By combining bibliometric tools and content analysis, this study aims to capture insights not provided in earlier reviews, such as key authors, important journals, active countries and organisations, highly cited articles, and the prestige of reviewed papers. After reviewing 114 financial well‐being‐related papers, the study strives to highlight the factors associated with financial well‐being, as well as the relationships and critical theories underpinning research in this field. Based on the reviewed literature, research gaps are uncovered, and future research directions are provided to expand the knowledge in the area of financial well‐being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With this paper, we walk out some central ideas about posthumanisms and the ways in which nursing is already deeply entangled with them. At the same time, we point to ways in which nursing might benefit from further entanglement with other ideas emerging from posthumanisms. We first offer up a brief history of posthumanisms, following multiple roots to several points of formation. We then turn to key flavors of posthuman thought to differentiate between them and clarify our collective understanding and use of the terms. This includes considerations of the threads of transhumanism, critical posthumanism, feminist new materialism, and the speculative, affirmative ethics that arise from critical posthumanism and feminist new materialism. These ideas are fruitful for nursing, and already in action in many cases, which is the matter we occupy ourselves with in the final third of the paper. We consider the ways nursing is already posthuman—sometimes even critically so—and the speculative worldbuilding of nursing as praxis. We conclude with visions for a critical posthumanist nursing that attends to humans and other/more/nonhumans, situated and material and embodied and connected, in relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, we are held to live in the Anthropocene, bringing to an end modern binary imaginaries, such as the separation between Human and Nature, and with them Western assumptions of progress, linear causality and human exceptionalism. Much Western critical theory, from new or vital materialism to post‐ and more‐than‐human thinking, unsurprisingly reflects this internal crisis of faith in Eurocentric or Enlightenment reasoning. At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which places the Caribbean at the centre of the development of a new and distinct mode of critical thought. In attempting to grasp the ways in which Caribbean thought and practice have been seen to enable a distinctive alternative non‐Eurocentric imaginary, this paper heuristically sets out a paradigmatic framing of 'abyssal geography'. We emphasize two key points. The first is that abyssal thought is not grounded in abstract and timeless philosophical assumptions but figuratively draws upon aspects of Caribbean practices of resistance and survival, for example, from the Middle Passage, Plantation, carnival, creolization, dance forms and speculative fiction. The second is that abyssal work engages the legacies of modernity and coloniality by explicitly seeking to question the lure of ontology: seeking to disrupt, suspend and to problematize the modern project of the human and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the Occupy movements along with other social movements in 2011 elevated the idea of radically decentralized "leaderless" social movement organizations. We argue that looking at such an alternative, horizontalist form of organizing presents an opportunity to reframe how we understand leadership. This paper illustrates how the coordination of the Occupy London movement was accomplished horizontally in the absence of formal organization, leadership, or authority structures. Using an ethnographic approach, we show how this movement generated a "multimodal" repertoire of protest that included (1) the politically effective occupation of urban space; (2) the ability to deploy symbols as compelling forms of aesthetic questioning; and (3) the creation of politically charged spectacles that allowed the movement to appropriate the news agendas of established broadcast media. The findings of this paper challenge the language of leadership and contribute to understandings of feminist forms of leadership and leaderless organizing by explaining one way that "leadership" occurs in horizontal organizational structures such as social movements. Namely we demonstrate how the modes of space, symbols, and spectacles effectively replace the role of "leader" in the absence of formal organizational structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper presents findings from our collaborative research on the perceptions and preferences of people experiencing homelessness regarding outreach nursing services. Method: We conducted qualitative research using a critical ethnography approach. Sample: A total of 15 participants were interviewed individually (n = 12 people experiencing homelessness) and in focus groups (n = 3 care providers). We also conducted direct observation. Results: This paper focuses on one of the core categories that emerged from the data analysis "Perception of Health Care." This category emerged from the following three subcategories, which we will present in this paper: (1) Conflicting Relationships with Institutional Health Services; (2) Perception of Outreach Services; (3) Recommendations from Mobile Clinic Users. Conclusion: There are a range of perceptions of health services among people experiencing homelessness. Some are satisfied with the care received in the public health system, while many have experienced dehumanizing practices. Overall, outreach services are a promising strategy to reach people who are not served by the traditional modes of care delivery. Based on our findings, we suggest several key practices to personalize and adapt healthcare services and foster inclusive environments to better serve people experiencing homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a list of books on philosophy. 'Conversations With Pragmatism: A Multi-Disciplinary Study,' edited by Paul Custodio Bube and Jeffery Geller; 'Possible Worlds,' by John Divers; 'Singularity and Other Possibilities: Panenmentalist Novelties,' by Amihud Gilead; 'Ricoeur's Critical Theory,' by David M. Kaplan; 'Aging, Death, and Human Longevity: A Philosophical Inquiry,' by Christine Overall.

A call for papers on the critical theory in the study of religion among students in the Religion Senior Seminar at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana is presented.

Thematic relations are traditionally analysed as projecting into derivations of sentence meanings from the lexical content of verbs. Thematic separation, a natural outgrowth of event semantics, proposes an alternative to this tradition: thematic relations are introduced into derivations by verb‐independent elements and are, therefore, grammatically separate from the lexical content of verbs. Although critical to theories of meaning and lexical representation, the evidence for thematic separation has not been reckoned with widely in linguistic theory, and the consequent implications for psycholinguistic theories have not received proper consideration. This is surprising as the representations permitted by thematic separation comport quite well with evidence for pre‐verbal thematic interpretation during real‐time sentence comprehension. Psycholinguistic theories, therefore, stand to benefit from engagement with separationist alternatives to thematic relations, and may, in turn, shed light on the representations semantic theory should provide. After briefly defending the utility of events in semantic representation, this paper motivates thematic separation with evidence from the cumulative interpretations and adnominal modal adverbs; two cases where a semantic operator intervenes between a thematic relation and a verbal predicate. Psycholinguistic results investigating pre‐verbal thematic interpretation then follow, where thematic separation is argued to furnish theories with coherent incremental representations without commitment to specific verbal predicates. The timecourse of verb predictability is also shown to intersect with ongoing debates on the granularity of thematic relations, suggesting further connections between semantic and psycholinguistic theory to be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to Julian Go's Lecture "Thinking against Empire. Anti‐colonial Thought and Social Theory." It proceeds in two parts: I first follow Go's invitation to read and reread Mabel Dove Danquah and Frantz Fanon and explore what their work contributes to our understanding of state‐forms. I then examine the terms of Go's invitation more closely. I contrast Go's juxtaposition of imperial sociology on the one hand and anti‐colonial sociology on the other hand, with the broader range of theoretical traditions and methods, which a practice‐oriented sociology of sociology and an international history of sociology would highlight. I raise the question what "standpoint" adds to the authors Go discusses and the broader range of scholars who have engaged with post‐colonial contexts in their research at this point in time. Calling for consideration of the anti‐colonial standpoint is a particular choice, which has a distinctive heritage in Hegelian‐Marxian projections of the social whole and is in tension with either deep exploration of particular thinkers or the middle‐range theorizing that Go also seems to endorse. Defined at a level of abstraction that is "above" (or underneath) actual conversations in a range of fields and subfields, it can appear as a "test" for scholars who have long engaged with post‐colonial contexts, which can have unintended consequences when coupled with the institutional power and asymmetric insularity of Anglo‐American academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Echoism is a phenomenon observed most often in those who find themselves in repeated relationships with narcissistic partners, or who are recovering from narcissistic parenting. I have, over the course of seven years, carried out work with patients who have come to identify themselves as echoistic, or who have echoistic traits that may predispose them to seeking out, often unconsciously, relationships with narcissists, resulting in what I call an echoistic‐narcissistic complex. I return to the myth of Echo and Narcissus, as it is found in the work of Ovid, and consider the roles and feelings of the character Echo, in much the same way as Näcke and Ellis used the same myth to provide understanding from the presentation of Narcissus, for the condition Narcissismus, which later became widely known as narcissism. This paper questions why the character Echo has been largely ignored in psychoanalytic theory, and discusses how her clinical counterpart the echoist is prone to being missed, silenced and even mistaken for a narcissist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animals are increasingly acknowledged as historical agents. There are calls for more critical approaches that explore how this agency—often shared with humans—is embedded within wider relations of power. This paper responds by employing Critical Theory, particularly the ideas of Jurgen Habermas, to explore how interspecies agency is shaped and constrained by its broader socioeconomic context. Empirical illustrations are drawn from the experiences of Dales ponies and people in the early twentieth century, who found themselves navigating the growing commodification of their shared lifeworld. The findings suggest the outcome of this process of "colonisation" was not inevitable. Rather, just as the demise of the ponies seemed unstoppable, their shared communicative relations re‐emerged powerfully during the harsh winter of 1947. The paper asks what this means for our understanding of the apparently irrevocable decline of horsepower and how we might better understand horses' own experiences of such events and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football players represent the key assets of football clubs, and their value determination is therefore at the heart of clubs' investment and decision‐making processes. Unsurprisingly, the topic of player value has attracted the attention of scholars from various disciplines for decades. Despite this, there is a corpus of academic literature, which, although it works empirically with the relevant data, does not discuss any of the concepts related to the terms 'value' and 'price' in depth. Conversely, there are studies that do so but do not present a unified and coherent concept of the terminologies used. Consequently, no comprehensive definition of the value of football players seems to emerge from the literature. The central aim of this paper is to fill this gap. Based on a critical review of existing literature, we propose a unified framework embedded in subjective value theory, particularly as formulated by the Austrian school of economics. As a result, this work presents a theoretical basis for defining the use value and market value of football players, the comparison of which can improve clubs' decision‐making. In this context, we also discuss the conceptual validity of Transfermarkt values, a widely used crowd‐sourced valuation tool. Overall, we seek to strengthen the link between economic theory and practical management problems in the football industry. Furthermore, our results are not solely limited to football but are also applicable to athlete valuation in other sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing accounts of Kurdish nationalism can be mapped onto the main theories of nationalism, that is, primordialism, ethnosymbolism and modernism. These theories, however, suffer, respectively, from essentialism, circularity and aporia, manifest in their common inability to digest the Janus‐like character of nations, that is, their display of simultaneous modernity and antiquity. This paper develops an alternative account through a critical application of the theory of 'uneven and combined development' (UCD) to the Republic of Kurdistan of 1946. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, we argue that the failure of mainstream theories of nationalism to explain the nation's historical ambiguity lies in their 'internalism'. Second, we show that UCD overcomes internalism through its plural social ontology and enables a retheorising of nations as interactive products of the geopolitical mediation of historical capitalism's expansion through societal multiplicity. Central to this process was the emergence of nationalism as a defensive and emulative ideology of geopolitical self‐preservation. This involved reversing the sociological and political moments of the originary formation of the British imperial nation. We argue that this historical reversal underpins the Janus‐like form of nations, including the Kurdish nation. Third, we substantiate the argument through a brief case study of the Republic of Kurdistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a lack of critical perspective in environmental management has been acknowledged, the frequency of this perspective has not been measured. This was noted in the editorial of Business Strategy and the Environment (BSE) 1998, where Richard Welford called for more critical theory in environmental management. BSE can be seen as a forerunner in the field. Therefore, it could be expected that the most critical and reflective research contributing to sustainable development in companies could be published in the journal. In order to analyse the extent to which critical perspective is present in environmental management, we reviewed the last six years of BSE. We found that the studies undertaken generally follow the positivist paradigm, which almost exclusively echoes marginal adjustments. Papers with a critical perspective are in the minority. Using Jürgen Habermas' work on communicative action and discourse, we conclude that there is a distortion in this scientific discourse. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue that psychological capital is unequally distributed among people from different social classes, ethnic backgrounds and genders. Confronting the limitations of the current, individualistic perspective on psychological capital, we offer a re‐conceptualisation of the construct from a critical, interdisciplinary perspective, placing it at the intersection of sociology and psychology. We discuss the various mechanisms through which social inequalities may cause differential access to psychological capital for members of low‐ and high‐status social groups and show how this differential access to psychological capital results in and exacerbates social inequalities. By doing this, we postulate a recursive theory on psychological capital that both recognises the formative effect of socio‐organisational structures on one's psychology and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Increasing numbers of children are meeting criteria for psychiatric disorders. While diagnoses may be of situational and individual benefit, they also have sustained and significant impacts on children's lives, including what they believe to be true, and how they understand themselves. Psychiatric diagnosis, therefore, has moral implications for children. This paper considers these moral implications, including uncertainty about the accuracy, treatment efficacy and long‐term effects of psychiatric diagnosis for children through a critical lens. Challenges of identifying, diagnosing and treating childhood mental illness are explored, including a discussion of the familial and societal contexts of adversity and understandings of accepted behaviour and responses. Emphasis is sustained on the importance of child agency and rights and how these may conflict with protective discourses about childhood, compounding epistemic injustices for children. The author proposes that there is a need to consider the child voice, while also being conscious of the boundaries of possibility of constructed reality, alongside the development of new ways of speaking about and understanding child distress. Achieving this requires questioning and critique of systems of psychiatric diagnosis applied to children and increased consideration of shared social and political responsibilities to prevent childhood adversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion paper offers a critical provocation to my mental health nursing colleagues. Drawing upon David Graeber's account of bullshit work, work that is increasingly meaningless for workers, I pose the question: Is mental health nursing a bullshit job? Ever‐increasing time spent on record keeping as opposed to direct care appears to represent a Graeberian bullshitisation of mental health nurses' work. In addition, core aspects of the role are not immune from bullshit. Professional rhetoric would have us believe that mental health nursing is a therapeutically beneficent occupation organised around ideals of care and compassion and providing fulfilling work for practitioners. Yet, there are some key characteristics of the experience of mental health nursing work that afford alternative judgements on its value and meaningfulness. Not least of these is the fact that many mental health nurses feel quite existentially unsettled in the practise of their work and many service users do not recognise the professional ideal, especially when compelled into increasingly coercive and restrictive services. In this context, Graeber's thesis is explored for its applicability to mental health nursing with a conclusion that many aspects of mental health nursing work are commensurate with bullshit but that mental health care can possibly be redeemed from bullshitisation by authentically democratising reforms. Engaging with posthumanist ideas, this exploration involves a flexing of aspects of Graeber's theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this conceptual paper, I delve into the urgent necessity of reshaping adult education and advocate for the adoption of critical feminist theory as a foundational framework for the examination of adult education. Based on the theories of adult education and critical feminist theory, I argue that a critical feminist lens could help educators better support adult learners from diverse backgrounds and spark meaningful social change. Building on principles of ideology, consciousness, and standpoint from critical feminist theory, I propose a critical consciousness learning (CCL) model that challenges existing assumptions and inspires innovative research and practice. Ultimately, my objective is to empower adult educators to reimagine the landscape of adult education in a manner that champions principles of equity, inclusivity, and transformative learning, thereby ushering in a new era of adult education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The northern Hikurangi subduction margin hosts slow slip events (SSEs), which are exceptionally shallow (<15 km). The sedimentary sequence on the incoming plate is therefore representative of the shallow fault material where the SSEs will take place once they enter the subduction zone. Knowledge about the frictional behavior of these sediments is required to know which lithologies are capable of hosting SSEs, and what mechanisms are causing them. Frictional behavior is material specific and depends on sliding velocity, but it is unknown how these natural sediments behave at plate‐rate velocities. We performed laboratory shearing experiments testing the major lithologies sampled during International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 375, at velocities ranging from the plate convergence rate at the Hikurangi margin (5 cm/year), up to those characteristics of the shallow SSEs (160 and 530 cm/year), under simulated in‐situ as well as standardized conditions. We find that the calcite‐rich pelagic sediments are relatively strong and display the velocity‐weakening frictional behavior required for slip events, whereas other lithologies are weaker and show velocity‐neutral to velocity‐strengthening friction. We observe spontaneous laboratory SSEs in the calcareous pelagic sediments, which show partial locking in between sliding events, consistent with the interpretation of SSEs within the spectrum of slow to fast earthquakes. For the Hikurangi margin, our results suggest that SSE occurrence requires the stronger carbonate‐rich unit to be incorporated into the plate‐boundary fault zone, which we suggest occurs because the rough incoming plate introduces geometrical complexity into the fault zone. Plain Language Summary: In the Hikurangi subduction zone, located offshore the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand, the movement between the downgoing and overriding tectonic plates can occur as slow slip events (SSEs). During SSEs the two plates move relative to each other, a process in many aspects similar to ordinary earthquakes, except SSEs take weeks instead of seconds and no ground‐shaking can be felt on the surface. SSEs occur in many subduction zones worldwide, but at the Hikurangi margin they occur shallow, relatively often and close to many mostly land‐based GPS stations that track the movement of the two plates, which makes them ideal to study. A recent research expedition (IODP Expedition 375) drilled the stack of sediments going into the subduction zone to learn more about the circumstances that control where and when SSEs occur. In this paper, we test all the major different sediment types going into the subduction fault zone to find out which one of them is responsible for the SSEs. Using a laboratory device that mimics the subduction zone, we find that sediments containing the mineral calcite cause slip events that are similar to the SSEs observed in the Hikurangi margin. Key Points: Spontaneous laboratory slow slip events (SSEs) suggest the shallow Hikurangi SSEs are favored in carbonate‐rich sedimentsRate‐and‐state friction and critical stiffness theory can partly explain SSEs, but they can occur under velocity‐strengthening conditionsSSE generation in Hikurangi is probably related to heterogeneity in the plate‐boundary fault zone [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper opens with first‐hand accounts of critical care medical interventions in which detainees, in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are brought to the emergency department for treatment. This case dramatizes the extent to which the provision of ethical and acceptable nursing care is jeopardized by federal law enforcement paradigms. Drawing on the scholarship of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this paper offers a theoretical account of the power dynamics that inform the health care of patients who find themselves caught in the custodial scaffolding of a vast immigration and detention apparatus. It offers an analysis of the display of sovereign and biopolitical power over the lives (and deaths) of detainees (Foucault), as well as the ways these individuals are reduced to "bare life" under the political pretext of an emergency or "state of exception" (Agamben). Our purpose here is both theoretical and practical: to better understand the often hidden agency or impersonal "will" exercised by the immigrant detention system, but also to equip clinicians in these and cognate facilities (e.g., prisons) with the critical tools by which they might better navigate incommensurable paradigms (i.e., care vs. custody) in order to deliver the best care while upholding their ethical duties as a care provider. This is all the more pressing because hospitals are not sanctuaries and given the incursion of federal law enforcement agents, nurses may find themselves conscripted as de facto agents of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by developing the critical phenomenologies of shame and empathy. It rejects that empathy is the supposed antidote to shame, and rather demonstrates the ways in which they function in parallel. The author contends that both shame and indeed empathy risk objectifying and fetishizing the other who is being shamed or empathized with. This argument and phenomenology about the relationship between shame and empathy is then applied and further developed through a case study of COVID‐19 vaccinations. The author explores whether empathy and shame ever "work" to increase vaccine uptake, and ultimately argues that both affects do and do not depending on the structures of power informing the specific context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the sociopolitical status of nurses in the Philippines is examined. The importance of nursing research in identifying the many elements that contribute to inequality among nurses is critical in the face of these problems. The positivist and interpretivist perspectives, however, have limitations that could potentially perpetuate the many forms of inequality that already exist. The idea of political competency is introduced in this tension. A critical grasp of the elements that contribute to structural inequalities and a commitment to bringing about positive social changes make political competency a potential supplement to the limitations of critical theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the Theory of Critical Distances (TCD) is reformulated to be employed to estimate random vibration fatigue lifetime of notched components. Using the Point Method argument, the response stress at the critical distance from the notch root is taken as the damage parameter and then used to perform the vibration fatigue life analysis in the presence of geometrical features. First, the finite element simulation is conducted to obtain the response Mises stress power spectrum at the critical distance under the load excitation being investigated. Subsequently, the probability density distribution of the stress amplitude at this position is calculated. Finally, fatigue lifetime is predicted via the parent material S–N curve. In order to check the accuracy of the proposed reformulation of the TCD, a series of random vibration fatigue results were generated by testing notched aluminum alloy specimens under load spectra covering the first‐, second‐, and third‐order natural frequencies. The results from the vibration fatigue tests being performed are seen to be in sound agreement with the predicted lifetimes. This strongly support the idea that the TCD is successful also in predicting random vibration fatigue lifetime of notched components. Highlights: The Theory of Critical Distances (TCD) is reformulated for life prediction.The random vibration fatigue lifetime of notched components is estimated.The FEA is conducted to obtain the stress power spectrum under load excitation.The probability density distribution of the stress amplitude is calculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "secular" in the Colonial Australian public instruction acts was always controversial. Recent policy debates seek to draw a connection between its original intent and removing religion from schools, notably Marion Maddox's Taking God to School (2014), and Catherine Byrne's "Free, Compulsory and (Not) Secular" (2013). The issue resurfaced recently in a NSW Teachers' Federation Research Paper (Waight, 2022), and in Gross and Rutland's Special Religious Education in Australia and Its Value to Contemporary Society (2021). I propose that while this is a valid public policy issue, any originalist argument actually relies upon a singular historiographical argument, namely a "Whig" historiography. However, across historians the meaning of "secular" has actually been evaluated through four different historiographies: a "Whig" progress narrative; economic materialism; critical theory; and a religious/nationalist approach. Maddox, Byrne and Waight's approaches can be characterised within a "Whig" approach to Australian education history, originally found in "The Melbourne School" of Austin and Gregory, and the textbooks of Barcan. Its revival presents a good opportunity to survey the topic of education historiography, assess the "Whig" argument, and to propose that religious/nationalist historiography provides a more accurate interpretation of the original intent of the term "secular." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My aim in this paper is to explore an affinity between early critical theory and analytical philosophy. The affinity is in a fairly unexpected area: philosophy of science. I argue that early critical theory embraces a view of science which is a natural if somewhat unfamiliar extension of the pragmatist one defended by Quine. In particular, I argue that Horkheimer has a version of the Quine‐Duhem thesis ("underdetermination of theory choice by the evidence"). How do the Frankfurt and analytical versions of the underdetermination thesis differ? Quine and others have taken the thesis to motivate a form of pragmatism. What this means is that it is certain interests that ultimately determine the choice of theory: chief among them, an interest in simplicity of our theories. However, the Critical Theorists offer us a distinctly historical materialist version of the underdetermination thesis, in which it is the imperatives of the prevailing mode of production, for example, capitalism, which are decisive. The result is an unfamiliar Marxist version of an otherwise familiar thesis from the analytic tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Matthew Cowley advances a theoretical approach toward higher education drawn from critical race theory (CRT) and Black Marxism. After an overview of CRT and Black Marxism, Cowley builds a working understanding of two recent (re)conceptualizations of race and class analysis that draw from both: (1) economies of racism and (2) critical raceclass theory of education. Subsequently, he connects two assumptions of CRT and Black Marxism — whiteness as property and racial capitalism — to expound on an original hypothesis, relate it to relevant issues in higher education, and evaluate it by deploying the economies of racism theoretical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For realists, political theories exhibit an anti‐moralist character when their normativity stems from an appraisal of the value and the specificities of real political practices. While realists agree on such a characterisation of the realist project, they split when it comes to explaining to what extent realist political normativity can provide us with a critical perspective on the status quo. The most recent contributions on this topic are polarised. Some contributors interpret political realism as an approach to politics that leads to an affirmation of the status quo. Others suggest that political realism might lead to radical transformations of the status quo. In this paper, I argue that it is possible to identify a consistent middle ground between these alternative interpretations: the interpretation of political realism as a form of reformist conservatism. Moreover, I defend the reformist‐conservative interpretation of political realism as superior to the extant ones. Contrary to the rival interpretations, I show that the reformist‐conservative interpretation consistently reconciles all the fundamental tenets of political realism. Furthermore, I explain that while the conservatist interpretation risks undermining the normative commitment of realism and the radical interpretation leans towards an irresponsible form of political theorising, the reformist‐conservative reading avoids these pitfalls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A commonly-held belief is that natural disasters do not discriminate. This paper, though, poses the following theoretical question: what does the elision of race, class, and gender in the news media say about disasters in the neoliberal era? It draws on the author's analysis of two prominent newspapers-The New York Times and USA Today-and their coverage of the recovery process after devastating tornadoes in two towns in the United States (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri) in 2011. The study asserts that the narrative of the news media is one with which people are familiar and that it fits into larger 'formula stories'. It utilises theoretical treatments of narrative to demonstrate how differences are erased and how they lead to complicity in hegemonic representations. Critical theory is used to elucidate why this occurs, and the paper sources Goldberg (2002) in suggesting that the news media employs 'fantasies of homogenisation' when representing post-disaster communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowdsourcing practices have generated much discussion on their ethics and fairness, yet these topics have received little scholarly investigation. Some have criticized crowdsourcing for worker exploitation and for undermining workplace regulations. Others have lauded crowdsourcing for enabling workers' autonomy and allowing disadvantaged people to access previously unreachable job markets. In this paper, we examine the ethics in crowdsourcing practices by focusing on three questions: (a) What ethical issues exist in crowdsourcing practices? (b) are ethical norms emerging or are issues emerging that require ethical norms? and, more generally, (c) how can the ethics of crowdsourcing practices be established? We answer these questions by engaging with Jürgen Habermas' discourse ethics theory to interpret findings from a longitudinal field study (from 2013 to 2016) involving key crowdsourcing participants (workers, platform organizers, and requesters) of three crowdsourcing communities. Grounded in this empirical study, we identify ethical concerns and discuss the ones for which ethical norms have emerged as well as others which remain unresolved and problematic in crowdsourcing practices. Furthermore, we provide normative considerations of how ethical concerns can be identified, discussed, and resolved based on the principles of discourse ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent Adorno scholarship has been shaped by the idea that his critical theory cannot account coherently for its own method. Call this the Problem of Adornian Critical Theory (PACT). In this paper, I examine three recent approaches to Adorno—the "ethics of resistance" (associated with Gordon Finlayson and Brian O'Connor), "negative naturalism" (associated with Fabian Freyenhagen), and "inverse theology" (associated with Peter E. Gordon). Individually, I argue, all three approaches are subject to a key limitation that prevents them from being able to solve the PACT. But, by synthesising them, we can see how the scholarship already—effectively—possesses a solution to it. The synthesis that results is characterised in terms of "materialist metaphysics"—a position Adorno can clearly be read as articulating in the "Meditations on Metaphysics" chapter of Negative Dialectics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Women and men of color and White women participate in American engineering education in lower proportions than they represent in the general U.S. population. Much existing engineering education research uses individual‐level (such as psychological) theories to explain this difference. The study reported here instead takes a structural perspective, asking how social relations are coordinated in engineering education. Purpose: This study explores how the intersection of ruling relations, critical race, and feminist theories can investigate how gender and race are built into engineering education's institutional structure. Design/Method: This study used interviews collected from 17 women and men of color and White women who were engineering undergraduate students at U.S. universities. The interviews were drawn from a project that takes as its premise that learning from such small numbers of students facilitates analyzing data intersectionally. The primary analysis used narrative methods through repeated readings. Results: I offer empirically based illustrations of ruling relations in U.S. universities and schools of engineering that unduly impact minoritized populations. These illustrations include discussions of financial aid knowledge, meeting the needs of transfer and Native students, and how schools crafting "the ideal student" as a young, single White male problematically impact minoritized students. The results illustrate how ruling relations structure engineering education in White‐ and male‐dominated ways. Conclusions: This paper offers questions to help readers consider how ruling relations race and gender their own institutions. In addition, it offers an interpretive, emergent method for interrogating institutional structure and ideas for future work using ruling relations in engineering education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of the relations between emotions and personhood, with a view to advancing a critical realist account of the role of emotions in social life. It is argued that the constitution of persons has to be approached from an ontological perspective, and that this raises questions about how sociology has addressed the meaning and role of emotions. Margaret Archer's critical realist perspective on them as commentaries on human concerns is broadly endorsed, but some significant correctives are proposed, especially with respect to the important distinction between primary and secondary emotions. To this end, it is argued that the affect spectrum theory advanced by Warren TenHouten can be fruitfully appended to a critical realist theory of emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing interest in the study of discourses has spread in management research, but so far, it has mostly relied on in‐depth qualitative analyses of textual material. With the increasing availability of large textual data, several challenges arise. This paper offers a mixed‐methods approach to integrate critical discourse analysis with structural topic modeling to turn these challenges into valuable opportunities. We argue that combining both approaches overcomes their limitations and provides great potential for exploring phenomena that matter in our mediatized society. Based on an explanatory sequential mixed‐methods design, we develop a stepwise model that provides practical and theoretical guidance to conduct a critical analysis of large textual data. Our illustrative example focuses on the discursive legitimation struggles around the tobacco industry. We demonstrate how an integrated mixed‐methods approach allows capturing the breadth and depth of discourses used by different actors in the tobacco debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Quantitative researchers have noted the impact of mentoring and support programming for students from underrepresented groups in engineering. Qualitative researchers have also noted the importance of student agency in persistence through marginalization. Nevertheless, challenges and questions remain in identifying practices which are effective in supporting underrepresented students. Purpose: The study applies scholarship from critical theory and narrative as a new resource for approaching and understanding the process of supporting marginalized student agency. Method: A longitudinal interview study with a female undergraduate engineering student, Emilia, developed into a way for her to process marginalizing educational experiences and to develop new narratives that expanded her agency. After an in‐depth member check, Emilia became a co‐author contributing a post hoc account of the impact of these discussions. Results: Our analysis indicates that naming one's own oppression and creating narratives that repurpose and resituate stereotypical stories of oppression was a liberatory act for Emilia. We trace three marginalizing themes of the participant's experience that are subverted and resisted through the student co‐constructed narrative. Conclusions: The paper builds theory for diversity support, suggesting critical theorizing may present a new form of agency not yet represented in the literature. It also points to possible value for student participants from qualitative methodologies exploring student experiences. Finally, it suggests supporting critical theorizing as a potential new orientation for diversity practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Frynas and Stephens (Political corporate social responsibility: reviewing theories and setting new agendas. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17, pp. 483–509, 2015) reviewed the literature on political corporate social responsibility (CSR). They described existing trends and suggested an agenda for future research. They attempted to develop ‘a more inclusive pluralist research agenda in political CSR, which can integrate different perspectives on political CSR in order to account for different phenomena, including global governance changes at macro level, instrumental concerns at organizational level or cognitive dimensions at individual level, in both descriptive and normative terms’. This was an ambitious endeavour, given the rapid growth of the literature and the extensive heterogeneity of the field. There is much to like in Frynas and Stephens’ paper, as it spans a broad range of perspectives and links together discrete research topics. In the present review, however, the author focuses on a number of critical aspects in their argument. Frynas and Stephens failed to define core concepts, to reveal their normative stance on CSR and their paradigmatic position, or to address the inherent conflict of values in political CSR. And they were too optimistic about the possibilities and benefits of ‘integration’. The author suspects that their approach, when adopted in practice, will impede rather than promote social welfare. This paper starts with a brief summary of the field and continues by emphasizing critical issues in Frynas and Stephens’ analysis. It concludes with an alternative agenda for research in political CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic voice is an oft-discussed, yet variably defined concept, and confusion exists over its meaning, evaluation, and interpretation. This paper will explore perspectives on academic voice and counterarguments to the positivist origins of objectivity in academic writing. While many epistemological and methodological perspectives exist, the feminist literature on voice is explored here as the contrary position. From the feminist perspective, voice is a socially constructed concept that cannot be separated from the experiences, emotions, and identity of the writer and, thus, constitutes a reflection of an author's way of knowing. A case study of how author presence can enhance meaning in text is included. Subjective experience is imperative to a practice involving human interaction. Nursing practice, our intimate involvement in patient's lives, and the nature of our research are not value free. A view is presented that a visible presence of an author in academic writing is relevant to the nursing discipline. The continued valuing of an objective, colorless academic voice has consequences for student writers and the faculty who teach them. Thus, a strategically used multivoiced writing style is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, we are held to live in the Anthropocene, bringing to an end modern binary imaginaries, such as the separation between Human and Nature, and with them Western assumptions of progress, linear causality and human exceptionalism. Much Western critical theory, from new or vital materialism to post‐ and more‐than‐human thinking, unsurprisingly reflects this internal crisis of faith in Eurocentric or Enlightenment reasoning. At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which places the Caribbean at the centre of the development of a new and distinct mode of critical thought. In attempting to grasp the ways in which Caribbean thought and practice have been seen to enable a distinctive alternative non‐Eurocentric imaginary, this paper heuristically sets out a paradigmatic framing of 'abyssal geography'. We emphasize two key points. The first is that abyssal thought is not grounded in abstract and timeless philosophical assumptions but figuratively draws upon aspects of Caribbean practices of resistance and survival, for example, from the Middle Passage, Plantation, carnival, creolization, dance forms and speculative fiction. The second is that abyssal work engages the legacies of modernity and coloniality by explicitly seeking to question the lure of ontology: seeking to disrupt, suspend and to problematize the modern project of the human and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses a survey of British academic human geographers enquiring about change and diversification within personal research activities, their nature, motivations and impacts. It argues that this is widespread and a significant aspect of the production of contemporary geographical knowledge. The findings highlight the range of motivations underpinning research change, its impacts and mediation through the institutional context of British human geography. It concludes that despite a more prescriptive institutional context geographers have a degree of autonomy, albeit somewhat fettered, to shape their own research trajectories to some extent. This provides some important capacity with which to engage with imminent challenges facing the discipline in the UK). The paper complements recent critical histories of geography and sociological accounts of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper's task is to outline some foundations of a critical, Marxist‐humanist theory of communication in the age of digital capitalism. It theorises the role of communication in society, communication and alienation, communication in social struggles, social struggles for democratic communication, the contradictions of digital capitalism, and struggles for digital socialist humanism. Marxist humanism is a counter‐narrative, counter‐theory, and counter‐politics to neoliberalism, new authoritarianism, and postmodernism. A critical theory of communication can should draw on this intellectual tradition. Communication and work stand in a dialectical relationship. Communication mediates, organises and is the process of the production of sociality and therefore of the reproduction of society. Society and communication are in class and capitalist societies shaped by the antagonism between instrumental and co‐operative reason. Authoritarianism and humanism are two basic, antagonistic modes of organisation of society and communication. Instrumental reason creates and universalises alienation. Digital capitalism is a dimension of contemporary society where digital technologies such as the computer, the Internet, the mobile phone, tablets, robots, and AI‐driven ("smart") technologies mediate the accumulation of capital, influence, and reputation. A Marxist‐humanist theory of communication aims to inform struggles for a good, commons‐based, public Internet in a good, commons‐based society that has a vivid, democratic public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to clarify alternative approaches to organizational analysis, this paper is concerned to stimulate the debate on how an inquiry into organizational phenomena, in general, and organizational learning, in particular, can be accomplished. Encouraging attention to different aspects of various paradigmatic approaches, the paper focuses on critical theory, postmodernism and social constructionism and how these paradigms have contributed and can contribute to the research in the subject domain of organizational learning. To this end, a paradigmatic review of the literature on organizational learning is offered in this paper. Organizational learning, as the study of learning processes of, and within, organizations, has attracted significant attention in academe since the early 1980s. There is a plethora of studies on organizational learning, which offer rich material for a paradigmatic review. This study highlights the need for further development of the field from alternative paradigmatic perspectives, with a view to generating more insights into the multifaceted, complex and changing nature of learning in contemporary organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Critical state theory is widely accepted for understanding and interpreting the behavior of granular materials such as sandy soils. Recently, motivated by the development of a multiscale analysis method, this paper presents a discrete element investigation on the critical state behavior of granular materials on two scales level, that is, the macroscale and mesoscale. Loops are taken as the basic mesostructures, and the concept of mesoscale critical state is proposed on terms of the local stress and void ratio. Based on series of numerical simulations with varying densities and confining pressures, the characters of critical state lines (CSLs) for each loop type are analyzed. An analytical relationship of the transition from local to global is then obtained for critical state. Besides, the influence of interparticle friction coefficient on CSL is also discussed on both scales. The prominent observation is that each type of loops achieves its own critical state, from which a unique global CSL can be obtained. The CSLs of different loops exhibit same shapes but move upwards with the increasing order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: One emerging approach to diversity and inclusion in engineering is to take an assets‐based view of what students from nondominant communities bring to their education and work experiences. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this review is to understand how community cultural wealth (CCW), an assets‐based framework, has been applied in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education research. We address research questions focused on (a) the characteristics of studies using CCW in STEM education, (b) examples of the six types of capital (aspirational, linguistic, familial, navigational, social, and resistant) in STEM educational settings, and (c) gaps and opportunities in how CCW is being applied in STEM education. Design/Method: We identified 33 dissertations, theses, journal articles, and conference papers using systematic review procedures. To qualify, each study must present empirical data and include at least one type of CCW capital in its results or discussion. We coded study characteristics, such as methods, participant populations, and research setting. We qualitatively analyzed each of the six types of CCW capital. Results: Studies tended to focus on higher education settings, engineering, and qualitative methods, particularly student interviews. We identified several specific engineering‐relevant examples of assets for each type of capital. Future work should collect data from faculty, staff, and family members identified in several studies as important to CCW in addition to foregrounding student voices. Conclusions: In synthesizing existing studies, this review provides insight into how an assets‐based framework is being interpreted and provides a foundation for more assets‐based perspectives in future engineering education work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: It is well known that soil is inherently anisotropic and its mechanical behavior is significantly influenced by its fabric anisotropy. Hypoplasticity is increasingly being accepted in the constitutive modeling for soils, in which many salient features, such as nonlinear stress‐strain relations, dilatancy, and critical state failure, can be described by a single tensorial equation. However, within the framework of hypoplasticity, modeling fabric anisotropy remains challenging, as the fabric and its evolution are often vaguely assumed without a sound basis. This paper presents a hypoplastic constitutive model for granular soils based on the newly developed anisotropic critical state theory, in which the conditions of fabric anisotropy are concurrently satisfied along with the traditional conditions at the critical state. A deviatoric fabric tensor is introduced into the Gudehus‐Bauer hypoplastic model, and a scalar‐valued anisotropic state variable signifying the interplay between the fabric and the stress state is used to characterize its impact on the dilatancy and strength of the soils. In addition, fabric evolution during shearing can explicitly be addressed. Modifications have also been undertaken to improve the performance of the undrained response of the model. The anisotropic hypoplastic model can simulate experimental tests for sand under various combinations of principle stress direction, intermediate principal stress (or mode of shearing), soil densities, and confining pressures, and the associated drastic effect of different principal stress orientations in reference to the material axes of anisotropy can be well captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical consciousness represents the transformation from a passive target of oppression to an active actor with an increased capacity to analyze and negotiate conditions of oppression. It is considered as an antidote for oppression that can liberate people from oppressive ideologies and empower them to resist social injustice. Building on the theory of critical consciousness and the Social Identity Model of Collective Action, this paper examined the liberating and empowering effects of critical reflection on collective action for minority rights. Results of a cross‐sectional study in 1,050 LGBT individuals (Study 1) showed that critical reflection was associated with lower levels of internalized oppression and higher levels of collective efficacy, which in turn were associated with greater intentions to undertake collective action for LGBT rights. Findings from a prospective longitudinal study in 428 cisgender heterosexual individuals (Study 2) indicated that critical reflection was associated with lower levels of internalized domination and heightened levels of efficacious beliefs, which positively predicted actual participation in collective action at a subsequent wave. The findings supported the effects of critical reflection on collective action mobilization and offered leads for future research and praxis on how to orient different sectors of society to work toward social equity. Highlights: We examined the mechanisms underlying critical reflection and collective action for LGBT rights.Study 1 supported the liberating and empowering effects of critical reflection in LGBT individuals.Study 2 corroborated the proposed mechanisms in cisgender heterosexual individuals.Critical reflection is a powerful tool for mobilizing collective action for minority rights.Professionals working with oppressed people should be equipped with critical consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]