bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Of Lords and (Cyber)Serfs: eGovernment and Poststructuralism in a Neomedieval Europe
Authors: Gallemore Caleb
Published: March 2008

The decentralisation and despatialisation of governmental architectures within the European Union (EU) that will result from the development of eGovernment under the Lisbon Strategy could have a crucial impact on political structures and identity in Europe. eGovernment projects at the European and member state levels are professed to expand citizens' access to political institutions, increase social inclusion and enhance the efficiency of pan-European government. This essay examines the possible implications of long-term digitisation of government in the EU given the current trajectory of eGovernment discourse and its place within the broader Information Society goals. It argues that eGovernment will reconfigure several political relationships within the EU, fostering the development of a neomedieval polity similar to that first described by Hedley Bull, where government is multi-layered and overlapping and mobility among certain individuals is very high. To make the neomedieval perspective more appropriate for this digital analysis, the essay draws upon poststructuralist ideas concerning political forms and the construction of knowledge and subjectivity.
Tradition as Invention: The `Traditions Tradition' and the History of Ideas in International Relations
Authors: Jeffery Renée
Published: March 2008

Although they have been a central feature of the disciplinary history of International Relations, little attention has been paid to the historical and epistemological implications of designating certain sets of writers and their ideas as belonging to particular `traditions of thought'. In light of this, this article is concerned with the theoretical conceptualisation of the term `tradition', its historical connotations, and its specific application to the history of IR scholarship. Relying heavily on Michael Oakeshott's philosophy of history, it argues not only that traditions are inherently `invented' phenomena but that the purposes for which they are invented — that is, whether they are historical or practical in orientation — is central to the analysis of their contents. Having established a theoretical understanding of `tradition', the article discusses the works of John G. Gunnell and Brian C. Schmidt as providing a number of useful ways in which traditions, thus conceived, might be analysed before demonstrating how this might be done in IR scholarship using the works of Martin Wight and Hedley Bull as a pertinent example. In doing so, the article also seeks to make a more general claim about the need for greater historical awareness in contemporary IR scholarship.
`Biomania' and US Foreign Policy
Authors: Loeppky Rodney
Published: March 2008

This paper considers the increasing prominence of bioterror as a national security threat in the United States. It highlights the powerful discursive strategies surrounding bioterror — resident in academic and policymaking circles — and relates them to corresponding US practices across the domestic-foreign policy continuum. In this regard, both US multilateral action concerning biological weapons and national public `preparedness' programmes are premised on a powerful threat discourse which is at once highly problematic and conducive to a narrow band of US social interests. Not only does the current quest for `protection' from bioterror form part of a general discursive strategy that demarcates a civilised American way of life from a foreign and deadly intersection of `envy' and `pathology', but it also supplies a material foil with which the state furthers its now well developed social role in bolstering innovation-driven US economic clout.
International Relations and the `Problem of History'
Authors: Vaughan-Williams Nick
Published: March 2008

The recent emergence of the discourse of the `historical turn' in International Relations (IR) suggests that the discipline shows greater sensitivity to history. However, despite the ubiquity of more historically informed research, mainstream IR has failed to take account of the `problem of history' as highlighted by on-going debates between traditional historians and critical historiographers. According to Jacques Derrida the `problem of history' is not problematic in the conventional sense: rather it is precisely because we can never arrive at a closed historical interpretation that there is historicity in the first place. Therefore, with its continued refusal of the `problem of history', the extent to which IR has turned historical must be questioned. This article draws on Derrida's work in order to argue for an alternative approach to the way we look at the past: one that embraces rather than side-steps the radical indeterminacy of historical meaning in order to bring historicity into analyses of world politics.
Eurocentrism and Neorealism in the `Fall of Mann': Will the Real Mann Please Stand Up?
Authors: Hobson John M.
Published: March 2008

Michael Mann's pioneering work provides insights not just into world history and historical sociology but also promises much for the discipline of International Relations (IR). However, I argue that Mann's theory suffers from a number of internal inconsistencies which, in turn, threaten the integrity of his overall model. Specifically, I claim that importing various neorealist insights into his work threatens Mann's commitment to historical sociology on the one hand and the viability of his multi-causal IEMP model on the other. Moreover, in producing a Eurocentric theory of the rise of the West, Mann simultaneously jeopardises one of his most fundamental of claims: that societies are not bounded but promiscuous entities — that is they are shaped by manifold influences emanating from both within and beyond them. Accordingly, I argue that if Mann can produce a non-realist theory of the international and a non-Eurocentric theory of social and economic change, he will be able to improve on his theoretical approach and maintain the spirit of the enterprise for which he has become justly famous.
The Uses of Legitimacy in International Relations
Authors: Mulligan Shane P.
Published: March 2008

The concept of legitimacy has long held a central place in political thought, but only in recent years have scholars started to look closely at questions of legitimacy in international affairs. Yet the literature now abounds with enquiries into the legitimacy of particular regimes, of humanitarian intervention and other forms of violence, and of various international institutions, including international law itself. These questions take many forms, as it is not simply the criteria, but also the very meaning of legitimacy that is contested—yet through these various meanings, certain continuities of use can be seen. As an application of Wittgenstein's analyses of `language games', a conceptual history of legitimacy can help to show the forms of these continuities, and also help us to understand the range of conceptual affiliates the term has picked up along the way, from legality to popular approval to moral appropriateness. Looking at contemporary uses of the term in IR, we can see how these ambiguous associations often intrude on one another, such that the concept evokes a significance greater than that which is claimed for it. This conceptual encroachment contributes to specific effects of the use of legitimacy, in terms of the way international politics can be represented and perceived. This leads to a recommendation that, if the concept of legitimacy is to become as relevant to global politics as it is in theories of the state, it is vital that IR theorists be more attentive to these practical implications of their conceptual (re)constructions.
NGOs and Monitoring Genocide: The Benefits and Limits to Human Rights Panopticism
Authors: Steele Brent J. , Amoureux Jacque L.
Published: March 2008

In this paper we use the concept of a global Panopticon to interpret the promotion and protection of Western-informed human rights. We use the Panopticon as a metaphor to illustrate how a system of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can work in concert with hegemonic states to decrease future occurrences of serious human rights abuses. Like previous authors who use the concept of the Panopticon in this context, we see the current global human rights regime connected to, and benefiting, current hegemonic power structures. But unlike previous authors we find normative benefits to this Panoptic surveillance, even if such benefits result, and thus cannot be separated from, the power structures in which they develop. We consider why hegemons would promote the activity of NGOs when the latter are often critical of the former's foreign policy practices. We then look at two humanitarian crises as case studies to determine the role NGOs played in their outcomes.
Sublime Diplomacy: Byzantine, Early Modern, Contemporary
Authors: Neumann Iver B.
Published: March 2008

There are three main periods when the sublime has been theorised: antiquity, the eighteenth century, and the present. Using exemplary texts from each period as a baseline, the article investigates to what extent we may say that diplomacy is sublime by the lights of its own contemporary standards. The first main part reads Byzantine diplomacy as sublime in the sense discussed by Longinus in Peri hupsous. The key was to sublimate barbarian envoys to the glory of the Empire and, ultimately, God by stimulating and if possible overwhelming all their senses. The second part reads early modern diplomacy against Edmund Burke's On the Sublime and Beautiful. This diplomacy was sublime in that it kept imminent terror away. The third part draws on Jean-François Lyotard's work to argue that contemporary diplomacy is not sublime in the narrow sense given by Lyotard, which is that it may produce something qualitatively new, but that it is sublime in the weaker sense that its task emerges as seemingly infinite. I conclude that different epistemes produce compatible theories of the sublime and diplomatic practices, and that contemporary diplomacy's claim to being sublime is increased by its lingering ability to produce sublime effects in the Byzantine and Burkean senses.
Liberal Barbarism and the Oriental Sublime: The European Destruction of the Emperor's Summer Palace
Authors: Ringmar Erik
Published: March 2008

In 1860, a combined A nglo-French army looted and burned the Yuanmingyuan, a vast compound of palaces, temples, pagodas and gardens belonging to the Chinese emperor. This act of barbarism, they a rgued, was necessary in order to bring civilisation to China. This article explains this event as an expression of European' confrontation with the `Oriental sublime', a fiction created by them as an exotic counterpart to the liberal and rationalistic social order they themselves represented. The desire for sublime experiences is still strong in modern societies and it still leads Europeans — and North Americans — to commit atrocities in the name of liberal values.
The Sublime Today: Re-partitioning the Global Sensible
Authors: Shapiro Michael J.
Published: March 2008

Inspired by Immanuel Kant's analytic of the sublime and Jacques Rancière's Kant-influenced politics of aesthetics, this article focuses on a reading of the film Dirty Pretty Things, directed by Stephen Frears. In parallel with this reading, the article analyses the way politics can be construed, not on the basis of Kant's politics but in terms of how it can be thought as a result of the insights in his Critique of Judgment. The article concludes with the suggestion that two registers of a reoriented politics, both of which are exemplified in Dirty Pretty Things, may be derived from the subject-in-disarray that emerges from the Kantian sublime encounter. The first register bears on the partitions within the subject and the second on the wider issue of the global partitioning of political subjects.
An Aesthetics of Fear: The 7/7 London Bombings, the Sublime, and Werenotafraid.com
Authors: Weber Cynthia
Published: March 2008

How are the aesthetics of fear politically mobilised and politically mobilising? This article directs this question to a specific series of events beginning with the bombing of the London transportation system on 7/7, the near repeat performance of this event on 7/21, and the `Shoot to Kill to Protect' policy's first application which resulted in the killing of electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on 7/22. In particular, it addresses itself to one specific aestheticisation of fear, the images posted on the website Werenotafraid.com and the incessant circulation and discussion of these images since 7/7. The article a rgues that the asetheticisation of the London bombings through this specific website illustrates the often overlooked second movement in the Kantian sublime: the movement from rupture to a restoration of o rder and of closure. What interests me are the aesthetic strategies by which Werenotafraid.com effects a restoration of order and gives c losure to the breakdown of the British imagination, of not only national security but also unity. This article first traces the reliance of these aesthetic strategies on a Kantian morality. It then explains how these Kantian-inflected strategies repair the breakdown of the British imagination of security through a very specific `panhuman' restoration of British unity. Finally, it analyses the failures of the Werenotafraid.com project, politically and morally.
In-Between War and Peace: Identities, Boundaries and Change after Violent Conflict
Authors: Buckley-Zistel Susanne
Published: March 2008

The construction of enemies in discourse and language has been subject of a number of post-positivist studies in International Relations in recent years. This article seeks to move the debate one step further by asking how conflicts are unmade discursively. To this end it draws on the notion of hermeneutics to conceptualise the processes of post-conflict transition. Hermeneutics translates `interpretation' or `understanding' and, in the tradition of the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, depicts how identities are constituted in a circular process between past, present and future as well as the experience of otherness. Its focus on memory and remembering enables us to understand how societies change in the encounter with another, such as an adversary. Moreover, as central to the debates about hermeneutics, it alerts us to potential risks of postconflict transitions such as introducing a sense of closure which might provoke new conflicts. Based on these ideas, the article concludes with more practical research questions for assessing the transition from conflict to peace.
Liberal Enmity: The Figure of the Foe in the Political Ontology of Liberalism
Authors: Prozorov Sergei
Published: March 2008

The article ventures a deconstruction of the contemporary liberal `politics of enmity'. Against the attribution to Carl Schmitt of the valorisation of the extreme relation of political enmity, we argue that the asymmetrical `ultra-politics', in which the `just enemy', existentially equal to the Self, is supplanted by the image of a morally reprehensible `foe' is decidedly un-Schmittian and rather characterises the liberal mode of enmity. Our deconstruction of this `ultra-politics of the foe' proceeds through the elucidation of the paradoxes of the political ontology of liberalism, which permit the exclusion of the `enemy of liberalism' as an inhuman being, whose existence is `contrary to nature'. The article concludes by elucidating the contemporary relevance of the figure of the foe, a being excluded from both nature and humanity, in the context of the struggle against international terrorism.
Superfluous Humanity: An Arendtian Perspective on the Political Evil of Global Poverty
Authors: Hayden Patrick
Published: March 2008

This article seeks to move the debate about political evil within normative international theory into the realm of global poverty, through the work of Hannah Arendt. To that end, the article employs Arendt's conceptions of `superfluousness' and `banality of evil' to highlight how the international agenda reflects a narrow concern with one particular type of political evil, namely with gross violations of civil and political human rights, rather than gross violations of socio-economic rights. This bias is challenged on the basis that the severe and widespread wrongs arising from extreme global poverty are a form of political evil as well, insofar as these make vast segments of humanity superfluous. Further, it is argued that we have become desensitised to the banal, thoughtless, `ordinary' origins of pervasive economic rights violations, as these have become normalised in the global politico-economic order. In the end, the contemporary confrontation with political evil is unjustifiably and tragically selective.
Critical International Theory and Meta-Dialectics
Authors: Roach Steven C.
Published: March 2008

During the 1990s, IR scholars began to debate the merits of the dialectic as a method of IR theory. Much of the debate focused on Christian Heine's and Benno Teschke's efforts to situate dialectics in IR theory. Heine and Teschke, for instance, argued that dialectics had remained an overlooked social scientific (holistic) method of international relations theory. Despite their insights into its methodological value, dialectics has yet to evolve into an IR research programme. Part of the problem, I claim, is that critical IR theorists have yet to `structure' adequately a dialectical theory of international relations. The central aim of this article is to position dialectics in IR theory by formulating a meta-dialectical theory that counterposes negative dialectics to positive dialectics. The main argument in the article is that while negative dialectics remain in many respects a non-redemptive method, it does constitute an important functional (and reflexive) limit of a meta-dialectical theory of IR. It is this limit, I claim, that is essential to understanding meta-dialectics as an alternative critical IR theory research programme.
`The International' as Governmentality
Authors: Neumann Iver B. , Sending Ole Jacob
Published: March 2008

In traditional power analysis, `the international' is a characteristic of the states system — an anarchic realm, qualitatively different from the domestic. To traditional norms analysis, the international is increasingly a realm of shared value allocation, akin to other political realms. Given this bifurcation in the literature, privileging power incurs the cost of not being able to study systemic change of the international, whereas privileging norms incurs the cost of not being able to study power. We argue that extant conceptualisations of the international hail from Weber via Morgenthau, for whom international politics was an ideal type applied to the realm between states. Building on Mike Williams's work, we perform a new reading of these two scholars. We find that Morgenthau's identification of the political as an ideal-typical sphere has room for social theoretical insights as found in constructivist theory. Indeed, by his own Weberian lights, Morgenthau's specific ideal type of international politics is in need of updating. We try to rise to the challenge by drawing on Michel Foucault's work in order to forge an understanding of the international as governmentality. The result is a conceptualisation of the international as a socially embedded realm of governmentality. It is a structure (defined by relations of power) that generates different and changing practices of political rule (defined as governmental rationality) and agencies (for example, polities).
Hollow Hegemony: Theorising the Shift from Interest-Based to Value-Based International Policy-Making
Authors: Chandler David
Published: March 2008

Today, attempts to explain the post-Cold War shift away from interest-based to value-based policy-making are increasingly caught in a cleft stick between Post-Realist (e.g. neo-Gramscian and post-structuralist) revelations of hegemonic power relations and Post-Liberal (essentially Constructivist) assertions of the transformative power of ideas, communicative networks and emerging international norms. This paper suggests that neither Post-Realist nor Post-Liberal approaches are able to tell us much about the interrelationship between interests and ideas in the current historical conjuncture. This is because neither framework can easily countenance a disjunction between material `interests' and the discursive forms in which power is projected internationally. Using the ontological focus and epistemological framework adopted in Karl Marx's study of the crisis of political subjectivity, and the consequential retreat into idealism, of the German Ideology, this paper argues that a materialist grounding of ethical declarations of value-based policy does not necessarily lead back to the direct, or even indirect, interests of hegemonic powers. Rather, it indicates an era of `hollow hegemony' marked by the lack of instrumental policy-making and the inability to construct a clear political project cohering values, frameworks and strategic interests.
Political Sociology and the Problem of the International
Authors: Bigo Didier , Walker R.B.J.
Published: March 2008

This paper revisits the multiple theoretical antagonisms mobilised by a claimed opposition between the international and the global/local so as to elaborate the stakes of working through traditions of political sociology that have been marginalised in most forms of international relations theory. The paper especially addresses the contribution of recent work on the social production of limits and borders and the re-articulation of practices of exception. Resisting conventions of international theory predicated on Schmittian accounts of limits in territory and law, the paper assesses recent claims about sovereignty, security and liberty informed by a reflection about the way concepts of field and dispositif may be used in an analysis of the boundaries of contemporary politics. To this end, the paper draws attention to the topology of a moebius ribbon as an especially suggestive comparison with topologies affirming clear distinctions between internal and external sites of sociopolitical life.
Re-thinking the “inter” in International Politics
Authors: Kratochwil Friedrich
Published: March 2008

This article examines the politics that emerge from three different conceptions of the “inter”: exchange, interest and identity.

It argues that the classical focus on “distributive justice” in political analysis is too narrow since it excludes important issues such as non-cognitive factors (loyalty) and inter-generational questions that are of particular importance to politics. It thus draws attention to the “particular” and (historically) contingent as defining characteristics of politics which have been marginalised by the contemporary emphasis on the “universal” in both epistemology and (analytical) ethics.
Friends, There Are No Friends? An Intimate Reframing of the International
Authors: Berenskoetter Felix
Published: March 2008

This article offers an attempt to insert `friendship' into the reading of international relations, a conception which has so far remained outside the analytical focus of IR theorists. It suggests that a major reason for this omission is the common assumption of survival and the state as an autonomy-seeking entity, and it is argued that a conceptualisation of friendship as an intimate relationship must be rooted in an understanding of the human condition different from Hobbes. The article puts forward such an alternative through Heidegger's notion of anxiety and shows that the paradigm most sympathetic to this assumption, constructivism, has failed to account for the friend as the `significant other' capable of controlling anxiety. Against this backdrop, the argument is made that in their attempt to combine the desire for moral authenticity with the desire for belonging/recognition, individuals seek intimate relations. The importance of friendship is substantiated by drawing on Aristotle, highlighting equality and a unique logic of reciprocity as key features of friendship. The conceptual insights are applied to IR through a discussion suggesting that intimate relations are nevertheless political as they contain significant power potentials.
The Role of Rights in the Social Construction of Wars: From the Crusades to Humanitarian Interventions
Authors: Alkopher Tal Dingott
Published: March 2008

How did rights become something that people are fighting for, and are willing to die for, in the international arena? This article seeks to answer this question through the lens of social constructivism, by exploring the constitutive impact of intersubjective ideas and norms— concepts of rights—on the social construction of wars. By doing so the article challenges realists' main focus on `Power' in interpreting human conflict, as well as the English School's writing on war and the use of force which is preoccupied with articulating normative theories rather than treating `normative structures' as scientific analytical tools in order to explain why and how norms (of a Hobbesian nature included) matter. To illustrate the theoretical claim, the article examines two distinct historical epochs: the medieval epoch, characterized by conceptions of divine rights and by institutionalized practices of crusade, and the late twentieth century, which witnessed the rise and institutionalization of human rights as an international norm along with the emergence of a new practice of humanitarian wars.
Comparing Apples and Oranges? Leading and Misleading Uses of Historical Analogies
Authors: Kornprobst Markus
Published: March 2008

Which uses of historical analogies help us compose an intelligible picture of international relations and which ones mislead us? This paper deals with this question on three levels. First, my epistemological argument makes a case for a rhetorical-pragmatist stance on historical analogies. I contend that critical discussion and adjudication make it possible to extract leads for a better understanding of the world from historical analogies. Second, my methodological argument proposes a frame of guiding questions for such discussions. These address the repertoire from which we select historical interpretations for analogies, the manner in which we interpret them, the similarities and differences between the past and present phenomena that the analogy compares, and the new insights that this comparison generates. Third, I employ these questions to put under scrutiny the historical analogies that the protagonists of the American Empire use to make their case for the supposedly benign American imperialism.
Traveling in Paradox: Edward Said and Critical International Relations
Authors: Duvall Raymond , Varadarajan Latha
Published: March 2008

In this article, we argue that those who aspire to `critical' international relations would be well served by importing inspiration from Edward Said's work, particularly in drawing examples from his negotiation of intellectual paradoxes and tensions. While several scholars are sharply critical of Said for adopting apparently contradictory theoretical positions, we suggest, by contrast, that his negotiation of those apparent contradictions is one of the lasting contributions of his work, not least as a model that might productively `travel' to critical international relations. Specifically, we develop two features of his treatment of paradox. First is his `hermeneutic of “worldliness”', a spirit of `secular' criticism that is socially, politically, morally situated, self-ironic, free from service to any `God', any universal singularity, but expressive of a moral-political community. Second is an uncommon articulation of the postcolonial and the global, a suturing together of a global moment of humanism and a postcolonial moment of listening to and hearing—contrapuntally reading—the voices of/from alternative loci of enunciation. These should be constitutive principles for critical international relations, which currently often fails to acknowledge their importance.
Edward Said and Contrapuntal Reading: Implications for Critical Interventions in International Relations
Authors: Chowdhry Geeta
Published: March 2008

Notwithstanding the prominence accorded to Edward Said in the fields of history, anthropology, cultural studies, literary criticism, women's studies, and other disciplines, he remains a rather neglected figure in the field of international relations (IR) with the notable exception of postcolonial and some critical scholarship. This article seeks to attend to this neglect and highlights the work of Edward Said and its implications for the field of IR. I discuss two overlapping categories in the work of Edward Said that have implications for interrogating received knowledge in IR - Culture, Identity and Representation, and Nation and Memory. The essay concludes with Said's discussion of intellectual responsibility and what it means for scholars in the field of IR. The concepts of contrapuntality and fugue, which Said borrows from Western classical music, weave through his arguments and are central to his unique articulation and development of the categories listed above. Arguably, a contrapuntal analysis has significant implications for `responsible scholarship' and teaching in IR.
Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist
Authors: Biswas Shampa
Published: March 2008

This essay begins by expressing a concern with the much-too-easy retrieval of empire in the writings of many commentators across the political spectrum. I suggest, via a reading of Edward Said as an International Relations theorist, that part of our failing, as scholars of the global, to prevent such a resurrection lies in a discipline too focused on depoliticized `technocratic expertise' and overly `nationalistic' in its orientation. What Edward Said has to offer IR scholars, I argue, is a `global intellectual posture' — a sensibility that involves a critical but hospitable awareness of an inhabited and co-habited world and an intellectual approach that provides a rigorous and more complete approach to `the global'. Said's thoughts on humanism help situate the most marginal and underrepresented bodies firmly and concretely into the center of an IR that that has been mostly `greatpower' focused in the questions and issues it attends to. Said's discussions of `contrapuntality' provides a method that enables the study of simultaneous and mutually constitutive (of East and West, North and South) histories against the linear, developmentalist (from Westphalia to Globalization) historical narratives inherited by most IR scholars. Understanding our contemporary international relations as a product of a history of cultural encounters (in which colonialism played a key part) would make it possible, for students and scholars of IR, to articulate a global imaginary that is sensitive to both power and difference.
Said's Exile: Strategic Insights for Postcolonial Feminists
Authors: Ling L.H.M.
Published: March 2008

Exile for Edward Said was a painful yet enriching condition. Indeed, exile accounted for his extraordinary productivity in theorising about and strategising for social justice for the displaced, the marginalised, the silenced. He spoke specifically on the exile of Palestinians from their historic homes but his insights apply to all subjects and subjectivities suffering from hegemonic oppression and stultification. Drawing on his volume, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (2001), this article extends upon Said's understandings of exile to devise strategies for a postcolonial-feminist emancipatory agenda.
Rethinking scale as a geographical category: from analysis to practice
Authors: Moore Adam
Published: March 2008

In the past two decades human geographers have intensely theorized scale, and extended claims that it is a foundational element of geographic theory. Yet attendant with this move has been a growing concern that scale has become an unwieldy concept laden with multiple, contradictory and problematic meanings. I share that concern, and argue that a similar debate about the usefulness of `identity' as a conceptual category in social science offers instructive insights. Paralleling recent critiques of identity categories such as nation and race, I view the conceptual confusion surrounding scale — and scale politics — as, in part, the consequence of failing to make a clear distinction between scale as a category of practice and category of analysis. In adopting scale as a category of analysis geographers tend to reify it as a fundamental ontological entity, thereby treating a social category employed in the practice of sociospatial politics as a central theoretical tool. I argue that this analytical manoeuvre is neither helpful nor necessary, and outline its consequences in analyses of the politics of scale. Finally, I sketch the altered contours of a research programme for the politics of scale if we take this injunction seriously — both in terms of how we theorize scale as a category of practice and what becomes the focus of scale politics research.
On Cognition as Dynamical Coupling: An Analysis of Behavioral Attractor Dynamics
Authors: Montebelli Alberto , Herrera Carlos , Ziemke Tom
Published: March 2008

The interaction of brain, body, and environment can result in complex behavior with rich dynamics, even for relatively simple agents. Such dynamics are, however, often difficult to analyze. In this article, we explore the case of a simple simulated robotic agent, equipped with a reactive neurocontroller and an energy level, which the agent has been evolved to recharge. A dynamical systems analysis shows that a non-neural internal state (energy level), despite its simplicity, dynamically modulates the behavioral attractors of the agent—environment system, such that the robot's behavioral repertoire is continually adapted to its current situation and energy level. What emerges is a dynamic, non-deterministic, and highly self-organized action selection mechanism, originating from the dynamical coupling of four systems (non-neural internal states, neurocontroller, body, and environment) operating at very different timescales.
Perception for Action: Dynamic Spatiotemporal Patterns Applied on a Roving Robot
Authors: Arena Paolo , Fortuna Luigi , Lombardo Davide , Patané Luca
Published: March 2008

In this article, we apply a bio-inspired control architecture to a roving robot performing different tasks. The key of the control system is the perceptual core, where heterogeneous information coming from sensors is merged to build an internal portrait representing the current situation of the environment. The internal representation triggers an action as the response to the current stimuli, closing the loop between the agent and the external world. The robot's internal state is implemented through a nonlinear lattice of neuron cells, allowing the generation of a large amount of emergent steady-state solutions in the form of Turing patterns. These are incrementally shaped, through learning, so as to constitute a “mirror” of the environmental conditions. Reaction—diffusion cellular nonlinear networks were chosen to generate Turing patterns as internal representations of the robot surroundings. The associations between incoming sensations and the perceptual core, and between Turing patterns and actions to be performed, are driven by two reward-based learning mechanisms. We report on simulation results and experiments on a roving robot to show the suitability of the approach.
Enactive Robot Vision
Authors: Suzuki Mototaka , Floreano Dario
Published: March 2008

Enactivism claims that sensory-motor activity and embodiment are crucial in perceiving the environment and that machine vision could be a much simpler business if considered in this context. However, computational models of enactive vision are very rare and often rely on handcrafted control systems. In this article, we argue that the apparent complexity of the environment and of the robot brain can be significantly simplified if perception, behavior, and learning are allowed to co-develop on the same timescale. In doing so, robots become sensitive to, and actively exploit, characteristics of the environment that they can tackle within their own computational and physical constraints. We describe the application of this methodology in three sets of experiments: shape discrimination, car driving, and wheeled robot navigation. A further set of experiments, where the visual system can develop the receptive fields by means of unsupervised Hebbian learning, demonstrates that the receptive fields are consistently and significantly affected by the behavior of the system and differ from those predicted by most computational models of the visual cortex. Finally, we show that our robots can also replicate the performance deficiencies observed in experiments of motor deprivation with kittens.
Partisanship and Policy Choice
Authors: Kingstone Peter , Young Joseph
Published: March 2008

Leftists seem to be on the rise in Latin America, but it is unclear to what extent this impacts policy. Thus, a crucial question hangs over this apparent “shift” in regional preferences: does the left have any real options to offer? Or in Latin America in an age of globalization, “what's left for the left?” The contending perspectives are compared, and then the evidence is evaluated using a series of econometric models. In sum, no discernible policy differences between the left and the rest were found. In the conclusion, the implications of this result for Latin American democracy are discussed.
How Collaborative Is Structural Family Therapy?
Authors: Hammond Ryan T. , Nichols Michael P.
Published: March 2008

In response to the charge by “collaborative” therapies, such as solution focused and narrative, that structural family therapy is an aggressive, confrontational, and impositional approach, this investigation examines the role of therapist empathy in creating a collaborative partnership in structural family therapy. Twenty-four videotaped therapy sessions were used to correlate therapists' empathic response to family members and in-session change in the family's core problem dynamic. Findings suggest that empathy is not only evident in structural family therapy, but may be an essential ingredient in establishing a collaborative relationship and facilitating within-session change.
Sexual Violence in Relationships: Implications for Multicultural Counseling
Authors: Phiri-Alleman Walinda , Alleman John B.
Published: March 2008

Intimate partner sexual assault is a prevalent form of violence against women and outnumbers both stranger and acquaintance sexual assault. However, very little information is available on intimate partner sexual assault, let alone the experience and perception of different ethnicities in sexually violent relationships. To be effective, it is necessary for multiculturally competent counselors to understand the unique cultural, social, and economic experience of each couple to implement appropriate interventions.
The Development and Validation of the Inventory of Family Protective Factors: A Brief Assessment for Family Counseling
Authors: Gardner Deborah L. , Huber Charles H. , Steiner Robert , Vazquez Luis A. , Savage Todd A.
Published: March 2008

This article describes the three-stage protocol employed in development and validation of the Inventory of Family Protective Factors (IFPF), a brief-form formal instrument intended to assess the primary protective factors that contribute to family resilience. Following construction of the instrument, data collections and analyses of a total sample of 410 participants were conducted for the purpose of establishing validity and reliability and conducting a factor analysis. In each, the four scales composing the IFPF were compared to established measures, each scale and measure assessing one of the primary family protective factors composing the IFPF. The third stage was a field trial to establish the practical value of the IFPF as a clinical assessment for discerning differences between a clinical and a nonclinical group of 102 clients presenting for counseling relative to their perceptions of the primary protective factors present in their family milieu.
Jinn, Psychiatry and Contested Notions of Misfortune among East London Bangladeshis
Authors: Dein Simon , Alexander Malcolm , Napier A. David
Published: March 2008

This study examines understandings of misfortune among east London Bangladeshis, particularly with respect to the role of jinn spirits. It reports on the findings of ethnographic interviews among 40 members of this community. Appeal to jinn explanations is commonplace at times of psychological disturbance and unexplained physical symptoms. Resort to traditional healers is frequent. These explanations are contested by different groups in the community. The findings are examined within the context of a discourse on tradition and modernity with particular emphasis on Islam and modernity.
Anxious Bliss: A Case Study of Dissociation in a Mexican Nun
Authors: Lester Rebecca J.
Published: March 2008

This is a case study of Celeste, postulant in a Roman Catholic convent in Mexico who experienced frequent episodes of leaving her body to commune with God. During these experiences, Celeste felt immersed in an `incredibly beautiful profound silence' where `time and space were broken.' But as much as Celeste craved these experiences, they also alarmed her; she was acutely aware that they might be indicative of psychological or neurological dysfunction. This article chronicles Celeste's struggles to make sense of her experiences in light of competing explanatory models. Her ultimate resolution suggests intriguing new directions for transcultural psychiatric research.
Paraprofessional Counselling within Asylum Seekers' Groups in the Netherlands: Transferring an Approach for a Non-western Context to a European Setting
Authors: Kieft Barbara , Jordans Mark J.D. , de Jong Joop T.V.M. , Kamperman Astrid M.
Published: March 2008

This article presents the application of a psychosocial care approach, which has been developed for and in a non-western context, within an asylum seekers' setting in the Netherlands. The project aimed to increase access to basic psychosocial care to a target population that experiences difficulties in entering mental healthcare services, by a group of trained peer asylum seekers and refugees. The development of an informal paraprofessional support system makes better use of existing resources, provides secondary benefits for the participants and helps to overcome the treatment gap between perceived needs and the formal mental healthcare system. The article describes the key components of such an approach, the Dutch context, the project implementation and finishes with a discussion on outcomes, strengths and weaknesses, risks and recommendations. In summary, we found this community approach to be applicable and relevant within an asylum seekers' centre, as it incorporates an additional easy-access level of psychosocial care and social agency, which seemed to empower participants and help prevent psychosocial problems from becoming more severe.
Culturally Responsive Health Promotion in Puerto Rican Communities: A Structuralist Approach
Authors: Idalí Torres María , Marquez David X. , Carbone Elena T. , Stacciarini Jeanne-Marie R. , Foster Jennifer W.
Published: March 2008

This literature review discusses the value of the structuralist approach as an integrated theoretical and methodological framework for participatory cultural assessments designed to capture the cultural dynamics of those affected by health disparities. Drawing from principles of the Lévi-Straussian strand of structural anthropology found in contemporary cultural studies, and using the Puerto Rican cultural experience as an example, the authors present the distinction between deep and surface structures of cultural knowledge and meaning and highlight information-processing and behavioral systems influenced by the complexity of cognitive and social representations of cultural structures. To understand and address the deeply rooted web of ideology, norms, and practices that influence health decision making and behavioral responses, the authors show the need for ethnographic narrative inquiry beyond surface manifestations of culture. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of the structuralist approach for culturally responsive health education and other health promotion interventions.
Defining Elements of Success: A Critical Pathway of Coalition Development
Authors: Downey Laura M. , Ireson Carol L. , Slavova Svetla , McKee Genia
Published: March 2008

In recent decades, coalitions have been established to address many public health problems, including injury prevention. A partnership among the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center and four injury prevention coalitions has documented the developmental stages of successful coalitions. This developmental process was constructed through the analysis of participating coalition documents, such as each coalition's mission statement, bylaws or rules of operation, the use of committees within the organization, frequency of meetings, and additional historical documents. Themes from this analysis guided researchers in designing a critical pathway model that describes milestones in coalition formation. Critical components in coalition formation include a clear definition of the coalition structure, coalition enhancement, funding, community support, leadership, education and outreach to the community, membership, partnerships, data and evaluation, and publicity. These findings are applicable to public health professionals who work with community-based coalitions and citizens who participate in local coalitions.
Applying Health Education Theory to Patient Safety Programs: Three Case Studies
Authors: Gilkey Melissa B. , Earp Jo Anne L. , French Elizabeth A.
Published: March 2008

Program planning for patient safety is challenging because intervention-oriented surveillance data are not yet widely available to those working in this nascent field. Even so, health educators are uniquely positioned to contribute to patient safety intervention efforts because their theoretical training provides them with a guide for designing and implementing prevention programs. This article demonstrates the utility of applying health education concepts from three prominent patient safety campaigns, including the concepts of risk perception, community participation, and social marketing. The application of these theoretical concepts to patient safety programs suggests that health educators possess a knowledge base and skill set highly relevant to patient safety and that their perspective should be increasingly brought to bear on the design and evaluation of interventions that aim to protect patients from preventable medical error.
Abnormal Mammogram Follow-Up: Do Community Lay Health Advocates Make a Difference?
Authors: Crump Sherry R. , Shipp Michèle P.-L. , McCray Gail G. , Morris Selma J. , Okoli Joel A. , Caplan Lee S. , Thorne Stacy L. , Blumenthal Daniel S.
Published: March 2008

This pilot study evaluates a community lay health advocate (CLHA) intervention in promoting follow-up for abnormal mammograms among African American women. A controlled trial was implemented at an urban hospital in Atlanta, with 48 women in a CLHA intervention group and 35 in a usual care group. Participants were 25 or older and had an abnormal mammogram between March 25, 2002, and May 2, 2003. Intervention group women received CLHA support including encouragement of timely abnormal mammogram follow-up, reminders of follow-up appointments, identification and removal of barriers to follow-up, and accompaniment to follow-up appointments. Women in the intervention group were significantly more likely to keep their first abnormal mammogram follow-up appointment, all of their scheduled follow-up appointments, and their biopsy or fine needle aspiration appointment. CLHAs are effective in promoting abnormal mammogram followup among African American women and may be an important resource in reducing racial disparities in breast cancer mortality.