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Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, we extend a theory of disorientations to reveal how attempts to fix and control both water and people are disrupting once‐fluid relationships between the Tonle Sap Lake and communities who have lived with‐on the lake for generations. Using ethnographic and participatory mapping methods, we examine the socio‐ecological dynamics that preceded and succeeded in the forced relocation of three floating communities in 2018. We argue that communities' experiences challenge land‐centric and event‐centric understandings of displacement that pathologise fluid lifeways and fail to account for the materiality of water that has shaped floating villages' multi‐generational relationships with their wetland ecology. We develop the concept of disorientations to illuminate villagers' experiences of relocation within a collapsing aquatic ecosystem—a collapse catalysed by state efforts to impose fixity on both hydrological flow and community mobility. The lens of disorientations invites displacement debates to consider materialities of place—whether pulsing water or living, shifting soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security assistance – foreign actors training and equipping security forces in another country – has proliferated in the Mediterranean over the last decades. Now, more than a decade on from the Arab Uprisings, security assistance cannot be considered merely a tool to obtain strategic objectives, but is in itself a site of competition, collusion and potential collision. In this Introduction to the Special Issue, we develop a framework deploying reordering as a lens through which comparative and interdisciplinary explorations can develop comprehensive and critical views of the evolution of security assistance in the Mediterranean. We propose a theoretical framework centred on international practice and socio-material network theory, which brings different types of providers and recipients, as well as the discourse-material structures underpinning them, into a common frame. The framework conceptualizes security assistance as operating at vertical (between provider and recipient), and horizontal (between vertical blocks) levels. It can purposefully be analysed across three dimensions – knowledge, materiality and networks. In so doing, we may be able to observe how, despite the absence of formal institutions, norms or governing mechanisms, security assistance constitutes an international practice and contributes to the ordering, and continuous reordering, of the Mediterranean as a governable geospatial field of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of French Journal of British Studies / Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique is the property of Centre de Recherches et d'Etudes en Civilisation Britannique and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article offers an update on key developments in research related visual literacy, children's reading and children's literature. Beginning with an overview of the field, we chart several distinctive 'turns' or research trajectories: the aesthetic, the intercultural or empathic, and the ethical. We then consider how questions of power, authenticity and representation are visible in three important areas of the field: research with marginalised groups; research that focuses on mediation within the visual reading process; advances in the types of visual texts being used in research. Key emergent ideas include the challenges of adult mediators' expectations on children's visual reading, the potential of texts' material affordances, and new directions in open, more inclusive opportunities to respond to, and with, visual texts. We conclude with a hopeful look forward at emerging directions in policy and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tradition of natural kinds has shaped philosophical debates about scientific classification but has come under growing criticism. Responding to this criticism, Reydon and Ereshefsky present their grounded functionality account as a strategy for updating and defending the tradition of natural kinds. This article argues that grounded functionality does indeed provide a fruitful philosophical approach to scientific classification but does not convince as a general theory of natural kinds. Instead, the strengths and limitations of Reydon and Ereshefsky's account illustrate why it is time to move beyond general definitions of "natural kind" and experiment with new philosophical frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between labour and social policy is at the heart of the social question. Scholars often treat this link as either a causal relation out there or a conceptual connection in policy makers' minds. This article examines its sociotechnical materiality instead. It follows anthropologists who ask how bureaucrats practice policy and scholars of science and technology studies who explore how social and technical aspects are interrelated in knowledge processes. China studies has suggested that the minimum livelihood guarantee (dibao) was originally designed as a market-oriented response to transformations of labour such as mass layoffs, peasant proletarianisation and associated unrest but later revamped to only combat extreme poverty. Ethnographic insights into dibao policy in a village in Sichuan show how its designed links to labour were erased and transformed through different methods of bureaucratic targeting, as well as expectations about the bureaucratic ability to know. For a time, dibao was even integrated into alternative rural development projects aimed at decommodification. Studying social policy as a knowledge process uncovers how its sociotechnical links to labour reconfigure it as an answer to the social question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a more holistic approach to gender in crafts and grounds it in the (post)socialist context. It focuses on traditional crafts, also known as 'folk art', and investigates the shifts in signification that are accomplished by female craftswomen over almost a century of the clay toy production located in Kargopol, a small historical town in a Northern region of Central Russia. The analysis relies on Peirce's pragmatist theory of signification and Keane's notion of semiotic ideology. It reveals the inner controversies of 'tradition' as a type of semiotic ideology and explores four shifts in signification related to the female dimension of the folk art: 1) the emergence of the iconic craftswoman, 2) the materialization of female work ethics and appropriation of symbols, 3) the transformation of craftswomen's bodies from indexes to icons, 4) challenging semiotic ideology through modelling of a modern female character. The paper demonstrates how the feminine constituent of the folk art has been gradually reshaped over time through those shifts, without major disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this themed issue of Paedagogica Historica, editors Pieter Verstraete, Maria Romeiras, and Carlos Manique aim to merge the flourishing fields of disability history and the history of education. Despite past initiatives like the 2005 special issue on disability and education and the 34th ISCHE conference in 2012, these fields have largely remained separate. This issue presents three articles that intersect these domains, capitalising on recent historiographical evolutions. Both fields share activist origins, with the history of education emerging in the 19th century and disability history in the late 20th century. Recent trends in disability history, such as non-Western perspectives and renewed interest in institutional histories, align with the new cultural history of education. The included articles exemplify this synergy by exploring the architecture of French deaf institutions, tactile reading systems in East Asia, and the Perkins Institute for the Blind. This collection underscores the potential of integrating these research fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on understanding the use of space at Aşıklı Höyük in central Turkey through the geochemical analyses of five overlying floors of a quadrangular mudbrick building dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period. The research allows us to follow the process on a micro-scale, from the design and construction of the structure to its abandonment. We aim to perceive the role of plastered floors to gain insights into the producers and users of the building and those who kept it alive and maintained it. We will treat floors as one of the main actors of these spaces and zero in on entangled relationships by addressing a range of other aspects in the building. The analyses enable the identification of use patterns. Based on our results, we attempt to provide suggestions about the location of the roof hatches and hence the main access of the inhabitants to the external world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that operations management needs a commonly understood materiality principle to truly contribute to sustainability. A framework initially developed in international finance is generalized and used to model firms as borrowing resources from a common creditor, the environment, and to establish when a sustainable initiative is material in terms of impact. Our framework also solves the long-standing challenge of measuring impact at the level of an operations unit of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from a public housing area in Copenhagen, this article explores how dwelling, spatiality, materiality, sociality, and the senses interplay and inform different qualities of neighbor relations. Starting from the individual home space and moving to the space of the stair-case shared with other residents who live next door, below, or above, the article argues that neighbor relations constitute a practical embodied experience of the neighborhood. The article describes the condition of dwelling related to home as bestowing a certain embodied dimension to neighborhood relations. Furthermore, the article illustrates near-dwelling, or living near, as one distinctive context for neighbor relations, which involve material and sensorial aspects of neighboring. The article concludes that spatiality and materiality may condition yet not determine the nature of social relations among neighbors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in a paradox perspective, this article investigates the tensions of fluid informal organizing and, using a practice theory lens, explains how micro-level communicative practices deal with those tensions. Through interview and observational data, the study illustrates how tensions of integration/separation, inclusion/exclusion, and autonomy/control intersect with organizational efforts to maintain a public recreation space and are dealt with via social, material, and performative practices of worth signaling, consensus by validation, and social/material nudging. Findings add to theory on organizing tensions by moving beyond discursive and strategic responses to tension, which often focus on altering the meaning of tensions or rely upon conventional organizing elements, to emphasize how materiality and mundane practices are consequential for theory building on tension response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay will explore some of the ambiguous interactions between imaginary spaces and material reality as articulated by Barbie, considering the implications for its understanding of womanhood. First outlining a series of oppositions between fantasy and reality, Barbie and “real women” in the film, I will then highlight the ways in which this binary framework is ultimately undermined. With reference to both media theory and trans theories of embodiment, I will argue that the film resists oppositions between imagination and reality in ways that are generative and progressive, yet which simultaneously serve to enhance the film’s marketability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many aspects of intangible cultural heritage have associated objects of material culture that augment or enable aspects of intangible heritage to be exercised or emphasized. Christmas markets have been publicized as the quintessential event in Germany leading up to Christmas, with the over 2000 locations attracting large numbers of local, domestic, and international visitors. From their origins as mercantile venues during the medieval period, Christmas markets have evolved into multisensory social and experiential events, where the acquisition of Christmas decorations or gifts has been supplanted by the consumption of mulled wine in a social setting. Christmas markets represent intangible cultural heritage staged in ephemeral surroundings. While the abundance of material culture in Christmas markets is widely understood, this focuses on the objects offered for sale at the markets, rather than the objects that characterize a Christmas market and enable its functioning. This paper provides the first comprehensive assessment of the portable material culture associated with the German Christmas markets, covering objects as diverse as payment tokens, lapel pins, special postmarks, beer mats, and commemorative cups issued for the consumption of mulled wine. These objects, as well as numerous other manifestations of material culture, are discussed in the wider framing of the materiality of the markets, examining their ontological qualities within the multiple spheres in which these objects attain meaning (i.e., personal, event, social, and public spheres). It demonstrates that the wide range of alienable material culture associated with German Christmas markets has different manifestations of materiality, depending on the viewpoint of the user (i.e., participant, vendor, organizer), and these manifestations have different expressions of representativeness. On this foundation, this paper examines the various groups of portable and alienable material culture and discusses them in terms of their authenticity and to what extent these are representative of German Christmas markets. While all items have a connection with Christmas markets and function as symbolic shorthand souvenirs, commemorative cups issued for the consumption of hot drinks as well as the deposit tokens associated with these are both genuine and authentic and are also representative of the conceptual, social, and experiential dimensions of the event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the devotional practices presented by The Book of Margery Kempe in connection to late-medieval English image debates. While scholarly consensus holds that Kempe displays an uncritical approach to the popular devotional practices of her time and a strong attachment to effigies, I argue that she espoused a much more nuanced view, deeply influenced by the anxieties raised in the clash between the Church and the iconoclastic Lollards. This article offers a case study of Kempe's approach by analysing a scene in which her desire to experience a miracle of image animation is denied. This is a highly unusual outcome within The Book's literary genre, which can be explained as an active engagement with the issues raised in the image debates. I conclude that the scene should be read as offering guidance on the idolatrous potential of devotional images and how to properly engage with such artefacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critical appreciation of some of Gunther Kress's central (social) semiotic notions: i.e., motivation, materiality, rhetorical aptness and semiotic mode versus medium. These will be discussed in relation to four landmark models of sign-making and semiosis by Saussure, Peirce, Bühler and Jakobson. Based on these comments, the paper identifies the persistent difficulties current multimodality research faces in defining mode and in devising linguistically unbiased grammars of non-verbal modes. Finally, the argument is advanced that multimodal genre and discourse interpretation in particular deserve to be re-developed. The paper critiques Kress's insistence on motivation as a universal principle of sign use and his overemphasis on materiality to the detriment of grammar, while praising his overall (social) semiotic legacy for multimodality research as far-sighted and lastingly influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reassesses and rediscovers the intellectual legacy of French geographer Eric Dardel (1899–1967). First discovered by geographers in the 1970s and 1980s, Dardel's book L'Homme et la Terre was considered as a work predating alternatively humanistic approaches and postmodern critiques of positivism, which justifies why it passed substantially unperceived when it was first published in 1952. Yet, most of these authors have manifestly only read that book despite Dardel's production was much larger, labelling Dardel as a 'phenomenologist' in a quite reductive way. Drawing upon recent literature on material agency and on phenomenology/post-phenomenology in geography, and based on the analysis of Dardel's complete body of work, I argue that the contribution of the French geographer cannot be reduced to matters of phenomenology and subjective perception. To this end, I especially focus on Dardel's references to the 19th-century tradition of Naturphilosophie that argued for a consubstantiality of 'humankind' and 'nature'. Hence, I show how Dardel's willingness to take seriously the materiality and agency of 'the Earth' through his notion of géographicité [geographicity or geographicalness] can give new and original insights to current geographies dealing with materiality, affect, human-nature hybridity and relational ontologies. Questioning dualisms such as humankind/nature, subject/object and nature/culture, early geographical understandings of the planet as a complex living being can foster the relevance of geography for both the 'material turn' advocating for plural agencies and for critical debates denying the principle of human supremacy over the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ezekiel 13:10-16 has long been understood by translating the word ... as "whitewash" or some kind of building material, on the assumption that v. 10 meta-phorizes censured prophecy as building something in a shoddy and deceptive way. It is preferable to read ... in this passage as ... I, meaning something insipid, as a censorious reference to an underlying practice of inscribing prophecy. There are multiple examples of West Semitic inscriptions of divinatory messages, including most notably the Deir 'Alla and Amman Citadel inscriptions. This suggestion aligns the usage of ... clearly with related passages in Ezek 22:28 and Lam 2:14, and with the discussion of censured prophets (...) and their various activities throughout Ezekiel 13. Theories of space and materiality enrich the discussion of the purpose and meaning of inscriptions of prophecy and how they might have functioned in an ancient context underlying Ezekiel 13. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Posthumanist orientations have underlined the need to foster non-hierarchical relations with other-than-human beings to adequately attend to planetary crises and help life to survive and flourish. Since a posthumanist critique towards natural sciences has mostly leaned on questioning the premise of human subjects making sense of objectified nature, little effort has been made to explore if and how scientific research and posthumanist approaches might intersect and co-exist without abandoning their respective aims. In this paper, we analyse a case of ecological citizen science inquiry on urban rats to explore theoretical and practical opportunities for environmental education that arise from bridging the posthumanist call for attentiveness towards multispecies worlds with ecological research endeavor. We reconceptualize ecological inquiry as sharing atmospheres with other animals as well as through its material aspects to articulate conceptual tools to disrupt the subject-object division of knowledge creation between humans and other animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quarried stone has a multitude of uses in the built environment. Often old, abandoned quarries near cities have become enveloped by urban expansion. This paper investigates what becomes of disused quarries, specifically in Cape Town, South Africa. The study is scaffolded by the theoretical underpinnings of urban materiality which, in turn, draws from assemblage theory. It is posited that the urban materialities of quarries, as one-time sites of material extraction, do not cease with closure. The infill, rehabilitation and repurposing of quarries for other uses result in continued contributions of quarries to the urbanscape, in addition to being historical sites of meaning and memory. The location of 77 quarries in Cape Town were mapped using data from various sources. Seventy-one quarries are in a post-extractive state. Thirty-five per cent of disused quarries have not been rehabilitated or altered by human activity after closure. However, they are sites of non-human use. Sixty-five per cent of the post-extractive quarries are sites for housing, commercial and educational activities; for recreational activities; have been infilled; or they store water for agricultural purposes. The reuse of quarries speaks to the creation of new urban materialities and assemblages by humans and non-humans which are worthy of further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the literature that examines the potential, limitations, and consequences of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) in automation and augmentation across various disciplines. It presents key observations and suggestions from the literature review. Firstly, displacement effects from task automation continue to persist. However, one should not assume an unequivocally increasing efficacy of technology in automation or augmentation, especially given the declining productivity growth in high-income countries and some large emerging economies in recent decades. Jobs less likely to be negatively impacted are those that require diverse tasks, physical dexterity, tacit knowledge, or flexibility, or are protected by professional or trade associations. Despite countervailing effects, without policy intervention, automation and augmentation could widen inequality between social groups, labor and capital, and firms. Secondly, AI's promise in task automation and labor augmentation is mixed. AI tools can cause harm, and dissatisfaction and disengagement often arise from their opaqueness, errors, disregard for critical contexts, lack of tacit knowledge, and lack of domain expertise, as well as their demand for extra labor time and resources. The inadequate autonomy to override AI-based assessments further frustrates users who have to use these AI tools at work. Finally, the article calls for sociological research to specify conditions and mechanisms that ameliorate adverse consequences and enhance labor augmentation by embedding the study of automation and augmentation in concrete social and political contexts at multiple levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This afterword discusses common questions and emerging themes from a special issue titled Fluid Dispossession. It focuses on the implications of water movements for economic processes and the redistribution of costs and benefits. The article elaborates how the discussed ethnographies illustrate the situatedness of material flows that channel specific benefits to some groups of people and particular costs to others. It then highlights how wet ethnographies destabilise common economic terms including the commons, frontier, gleaning and real estate. Finally, it discusses the hydrosociality of material flows that are entangled with various political, economic and cultural projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emergence of sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) as an innovative instrument to finance sustainability objectives. SLBs are any type of bond instrument for which the financial characteristics vary depending on whether the issuer achieves predefined sustainability objectives. SLBs were launched in 2019, represent 7% of labeled bonds, and now exceed USD 250 billion. In the context of the growth of sustainable finance and concerns of greenwashing, this paper asks whether SLBs are an effective mechanism to attract sustainable finance. Drawing on a complete revision of the literature and interviews with practitioners, the findings highlight the potential of SLBs to contribute to sustainability financing, especially in hard-to-abate sectors. Recommendations include defining standardized KPIs based on a materiality assessment, requesting SPTs to be supported by science, and tailored step-up mechanisms. The academic literature and experts converge in their description of greenwashing risks posed by SLBs, their signaling effect, and the lack of sophistication in SLB pricing, in particular the optionality represented by step-ups. The literature differs from the practitioners' perception on the existence of an issuance premium. Enhancing the design of SLBs represents an opportunity to add rigor to sustainable finance and better price externalities, where material topics have an explicit impact on the cost of funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism Tribune / Lvyou Xuekan is the property of Tourism Institute of Beijing Union University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using SASB's materiality framework, prior research finds alpha for the portfolio of firms with improving ratings on material ESG issues. We replicate this finding and provide a fundamentals-based perspective on why the materiality portfolio outperforms. Our basic premise is that changes in material ESG issues reflect fundamental firm characteristics. More financially established firms—firms with larger size, lower growth, and higher profitability relative to their sector—are more likely to not only create material strengths but also resolve material weaknesses in their ESG scoring. This fundamental link dictates that one should comprehensively control for fundamental determinants of stock returns before attributing portfolio outperformance to improving material ESG scores. Indeed, we find that the materiality portfolio does not generate alpha after we account for its exposure to profitability and growth factors. Our evidence underscores the issue of correlated omitted fundamental factors in the debate of ESG alpha. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G11; G12; G14; M14; M41; Q51. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Gerontologie und Geriatrie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract Folk contract documents (FCD) are valuable materials for studying social history, and the paper they use reflects the social realities of different eras and social classes. Research and scientific analysis of numerous FCD samples after the fourteenth century are rare. We conducted a study on 96 Tianshui folk contract documents (TFCD, 107 paper samples) from the Tianshui area of Gansu Province, Northwest China, taking into account both the textual content and the materiality of paper carriers, and interpreted the results from multiple lines of evidence and discussion. Physical performance analysis revealed that the paper used by the northern folk exhibits a lower apparent density, which is not conducive to the long-term preservation of paper. The preservation status investigation, curtain pattern analysis, and fiber analysis show that the paper used in the TFCD differs from traditional cultural paper regarding disease types, production precision, and fiber materials, providing a basis for its protection and restoration. The analysis of chemical components indicated that the aging and yellowing of paper can be correlated with the content of sulfur and carbonyl groups. The feasibility of using pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) analysis to quickly identify papermaking fibers in a large number of paper samples was proposed. By utilizing various techniques to inspect the paper of documents, this study helps to enhance the academic understanding of FCD materials. In addition, it expands the knowledge base of Northwest handmade paper.

Many aspects of intangible cultural heritage have associated objects of material culture that augment or enable aspects of intangible heritage to be exercised or emphasized. Christmas markets have been publicized as the quintessential event in Germany leading up to Christmas, with the over 2000 locations attracting large numbers of local, domestic, and international visitors. From their origins as mercantile venues during the medieval period, Christmas markets have evolved into multisensory social and experiential events, where the acquisition of Christmas decorations or gifts has been supplanted by the consumption of mulled wine in a social setting. Christmas markets represent intangible cultural heritage staged in ephemeral surroundings. While the abundance of material culture in Christmas markets is widely understood, this focuses on the objects offered for sale at the markets, rather than the objects that characterize a Christmas market and enable its functioning. This paper provides the first comprehensive assessment of the portable material culture associated with the German Christmas markets, covering objects as diverse as payment tokens, lapel pins, special postmarks, beer mats, and commemorative cups issued for the consumption of mulled wine. These objects, as well as numerous other manifestations of material culture, are discussed in the wider framing of the materiality of the markets, examining their ontological qualities within the multiple spheres in which these objects attain meaning (i.e., personal, event, social, and public spheres). It demonstrates that the wide range of alienable material culture associated with German Christmas markets has different manifestations of materiality, depending on the viewpoint of the user (i.e., participant, vendor, organizer), and these manifestations have different expressions of representativeness. On this foundation, this paper examines the various groups of portable and alienable material culture and discusses them in terms of their authenticity and to what extent these are representative of German Christmas markets. While all items have a connection with Christmas markets and function as symbolic shorthand souvenirs, commemorative cups issued for the consumption of hot drinks as well as the deposit tokens associated with these are both genuine and authentic and are also representative of the conceptual, social, and experiential dimensions of the event.