bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Political Narratives and Political Regimes in Global Perspective
Authors: Uğur-Çinar Meral
Published: October 2024

This chapter broaden the focus of the research to discuss the role of narratives in other contexts and to further the possibilities of future research on political narratives. It first briefly discusses how political narratives influence institutions and policies, which is relevant to the prospects of not only the characteristics of the political regime, but also to the future of the citizenship and identity policies of the countries. It then moves on to the discussion of illustrative examples in the rise of political narratives that aim to justify exclusionary and authoritarian institutions and policies, and even politically motivated violence. It particularly focuses on the most popular far-right narrative, especially in the West, namely the political narrative called ‘The Great Replacement Theory’. The remainder of the section lays outdebates with regards to how to best tackle such narratives and the role narratives can play in this struggle. In showing how political narratives can be used in understanding political dynamics not limited to the Turkish case, it particularly focuses on the discussion of the crucial role political narratives can play in countering populism and the way studies of democratic backsliding can incorporate the study of political narratives.
Conclusion: Narratives of Memory, Patriarchy and Economy in Turkey and Beyond
Authors: Uğur-Çinar Meral
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses the main findings of the book and their academic and political implications. It concludes by discussing potential directions for further research that could further the scholarly agenda of this work. Topic discussed include: Narratives and the prospects of coming to terms with the past, narratives and ethics, narratives and regimes.
Perfectionism and the Conversation of Justice: Austen and Cavell
Authors: Greer Erin Elizabeth
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the function of conversation in moral perfectionism, arguing that both Stanley Cavell and Jane Austen suggest linking perfectionist conversation to a practice Cavell terms the 'conversation of justice.' Departing from existing pairings of Austen and Cavell that focus on their treatments of conversation, ethics and marriage, the chapter shows that Persuasion also uses conversation to demonstrate the challenge of establishing common ground across class divisions. It traces striking parallels between Cavell's perfectionist critique of John Rawls's liberal theory of justice, and Austen's depiction of a flawed encounter between Persuasion's protagonist, Anne Elliot, and an impoverished friend. Reading this encounter as an instance of failed perfectionist conversation, the chapter shows that Cavell's work on moral perfectionism shines new light on this pivotal but critically neglected conversation, and that Persuasion, in turn, helps illuminate a productive tension in Cavell's uses of literary examples to elucidate his vision of the 'conversation' required for justice.
Afterword
Authors: Greer Erin Elizabeth
Published: October 2024

The afterword offers closing reflections on the political and ethical stakes of conversational criticism, recovering themes from the introduction and reframing them in relation to the chapters' refining of the conversational outlook. It positions conversational criticism in relation to the 'methods wars' characterizing early 21st century literary studies, and it makes a modest argument for the political importance of 'conversational' literary studies today.
Ce genre qui n’en est pas un
Authors: Scheie Timothy
Published: October 2024

The opening chapter surveys how the discourses of film genre theory and of French national cinema inscribe a constitutive dissonance between “French” and “western.” It includes a critical examination of the discursive gestures of both Anglo-American and French theorists that have, historically, thwarted the emergence of “The French western” as a recognized category of film.
The language of stars on the francophone frontier
Authors: Scheie Timothy
Published: October 2024

The “star system” is often associated with studio-era Hollywood, and, like film genres, stardom in France may be considered both derivative of and distinct from its American counterpart. In both industries, a distinct manipulation of language is a crucial constituent of a star performer’s persona and, because it is often lost in translation (dubbing, subtitling), it divides the global audience’s perceptions of the “star image.” In two post-World-War II Western-themed star vehicles, Sérénade au Texas and Dynamite Jack, the exigencies of stardom (of Luis Mariano and Fernandel) compete with those of genre, resulting in the spectacle of a francophone frontier straining under the weight of this contest.
Epilogue
Authors: Scheie Timothy
Published: October 2024

This epilogue traces how the encounter of the western genre and of a French cinematic referent continues both to provoke and to generate cinematic possibilities into the twenty-first century. The films surveyed include live-action pictures inspired by the Franco-Belgian bande dessinée (graphic novel) albums (Lucky Luke and Blueberry) as well as more recent releases (The Sisters Brothers / Les Frères Sisters,Savage State / L’État sauvage). This concluding reflection positions the French western film not as a marginal curiosity, but as a revealing zone of contact that exposes the constitutive instability of both film genres and of national cinematic assertions.
Engendering Justice in a Gendered World: The Case of Thucydides’ Athenians
Authors: Evans Jessica Penny
Published: October 2024

Jessica Evans explores the relationship between masculinities and justice in Thucydides' history, arguing that competing masculinities produce toxic forms of justice, by erasing others' claims to manhood. In the Melian Dialogue, the Athenians, citing their superior power, reject the Melians' appeal not only to justice but to manhood. A gendered analysis of Thucydides reveals how norms of masculinity shape constructions of human nature in the Melian Dialogue, which is a precursor of political realism.
Toxic Masculinity in Petronius’ Satyrica
Authors: Mitchell Jordan D. G.
Published: October 2024

Jordan Mitchell argues that Petronius subverted traditional social and literary norms in order to show their impracticality and absurdity when applied to ‘lived experience’. In the Satyricon, subordinate and marginalized individuals and groups of men engage in compensatory manhood acts and displays of exaggerated masculinity in order to emulate the most dominant form of masculinity in society. One result of this is the continual re-establishment of gender stereotypes as policing mechanisms and the re-affirmation of the subordination of women.
Toxic Masculinity in Xenophon’s Account of the Trial of Sphodrias
Authors: Heydon Kendell
Published: October 2024

Kendell Heydon analyses Xenophon’s account of the trial of Sphodrias in accordance with the understanding of toxic masculinity. Xenophon’s treatment of the pederastic relationship shows the educational function of quasi-institutionalised Spartan pederasty being manipulated for the circumvention of justice. Xenophon also represents Agesilaus as deploying discourse rooted in the ideology of individual masculine excellence to secure an unjust aim. Undercutting both elements of the episode is the ethos of competitive masculine achievement, which is portrayed as providing a justification to excuse personal failings. The episode illuminates several ways in which Spartan masculine values, and the practices and institutions which promote them, prove detrimental to both individual Spartan men and Spartan society as a whole.
Remake, Sequel, Reboot, Requel
Authors: Jones Steve
Published: October 2024

Chapter 8 considers the metamodern potentials of slasher 'requels' (remake-reboot-sequels), which occupy ambiguous positions in relation to their host series. Requels can revamp narrative pasts and legacies by selectively retaining, revising, or erasing a series' core facets, and abandoning or transforming established storylines. This approach can liberate sequels from their antecedents' constraints. Scream (2022) is first considered as a counterexample: its adherence to the series' past and its characteristic postmodern sensibility impedes the film’s ability to move forward. Halloween (2018), in contrast, jettisons most of its series' canonical story in favour of a spirit of renewal, optimism in the face of tragedy, and a desire to innovate rather than destroy. The chapter concludes by recasting Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) as a proto-metamodern slasher film, spotlighting how it overhauls canonical lore and how it exposes why the series had to end. Metamodern slasher requels counter the prevailing perception that sequels are 'lesser' works, thereby also redeeming the slasher subgenre, which has become synonymous with sequelisation.
Diseased Cinema
Authors: Alpert Robert , Eisenberg Merle , Mordechai Lee
Published: October 2024

The book discusses how the depiction of diseases in movies has changed over the last century and what these changes reveal about American culture.
American movies about infectious diseases have reflected and driven the dominant cultural narratives during the past century. These movies – both stories about realistic pandemics and imagined zombie outbreaks – have become wildly popular since the beginning of the 21st century. They have shifted from featuring a contained outbreak to an imagined containment of a known disease to a globalized, uncontainable pandemic of unknown origin. Their narratives have changed from identifying and solving social problems to a hopeless acceptance of America’s failure to fulfil its historic social contract.
Disease movies reflect the developments in an American capitalism that has spread globally and increasingly champions individuals and their families over communities and the public good. Disease movies today minimize human differences and envisage a utopian new world order to advance the needs of contemporary American capitalism. These movie narratives helped shape reactions to the outbreak of Covid, identifying individual responsibility as the means for ending the pandemic.
Early Disease Movies: American Norms and Containment
Authors: Alpert Robert , Eisenberg Merle , Mordechai Lee
Published: October 2024

This chapter investigates key mid-century disease movies that sustained American ideals typically through the identification of norms and the punishment of those who either transgressed those norms or were not members of the American community. While these early films sometimes depicted individuals who violated norms or critiqued society as problematic, these films were committed to shared values and the public good and offered a vision of a better world, even if that world was not always immediately obtainable or available to everyone. Disease could be cured and pandemics contained through science and medicine. These early films are, therefore, optimistic in the ability to maintain or improve upon American norms. While capitalism underlies the socio-economic structure of these films, it remains in the background and is rarely critiqued. Among the films this chapter examines are Panic in the Streets (1950) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).
Movie Myths: The COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Alpert Robert , Eisenberg Merle , Mordechai Lee
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines the role of film during the COVID pandemic, focusing on its early months. It reveals how fictional stories from movies about disease offered Americans answers both to what the future might look like and how to act in the “new normal” of COVID. Recent film stories also helped stoke fears that COVID would lead to a demographic collapse or economic breakdown. Interest in disease movies peaked in early 2020 and faded from public consciousness by mid-spring 2020. The chapter shows how, once Americans realized that the recent pandemic movie myths of societal collapse would not happen, individuals and groups responded to COVID according to their pre-COVID beliefs and values. Life did not conform to either Hollywood’s happy ending or its zombie apocalypse.
Gangsters and Unofficial Justice Fighters: Realist Lunlipian versus Action-Adventure Films
Authors: Van den Troost Kristof
Published: October 2024

Set against the generic landscape of late 1940s to late 1960s Hong Kong cinema, this chapter deals with films focused on a criminal protagonist: gangster films and “unofficial justice fighter films”. Alongside an overview of these two (sub)genres, it also identifies two ‘strange attractors’ in the generic landscape of this period: melodrama and pulp fiction-derived action-adventure. It is mainly in melodramas (or lunlipian) that the criminal realism of this period can be located. Pulp fiction-derived action-adventure was no less significant, however, as it prefigured later Hong Kong action cinema. The modern Hong Kong crime film and the criminal realism of the 1970s can be considered as a fusing of these two forms.
From antagonism to alienation
Authors: Helander Sofia Anceau
Published: October 2024

The introduction presents the main content of the book, namely how to address the problem of alienation in an open and radical way within democratic theory. It argues that as alienation grows increasingly widespread through processes of precarization and deprofessionalization, we want people to address their grievances and to do so in a democratic way. Radical democratic theory, it suggests, should be particularly apt at addressing this problem - yet it cannot. In its turn towards the political, radical democracy has become too ‘socially weightless’ – unable to address real social suffering. For radical democracy to be able to include the alienated, it needs to reconsider its underlying conception of the subject.
From the social to the political: The emergence and disappearance of the concept of alienation
Authors: Helander Sofia Anceau
Published: October 2024

The chapter examines the emergence and disappearance of the concept of alienation by tracing the democratic turn of the left from ‘the economic’ and ‘the social’ to ‘the political’. Here, it follows a well-established discourse in critical theory, represented with particular clarity in the work of Axel Honneth. Going beyond this, however, it shows that in the turn from the social to the political, a shift happened that has not been examined to the same extent: a shift in focus from alienation to antagonism. With the radical democratic turn from the social to the political, the concept of alienation was increasingly questioned, and, eventually, largely replaced by that of antagonism.
Scottish Society in the Second World War
Authors: Moffat Michelle
Published: October 2024

Surprisingly little is known about Scottish experiences of the Second World War. Scottish Society in the Second World War addresses this oversight by providing a pioneering account of society and culture in wartime Scotland. While significantly illuminating a pivotal episode in Scottish history, this book also charts the uncertainties that permeated Scottish society at that time: relating to nationhood, to cultural identity, to Scotland’s place within the Union, and towards the country’s future. Using recently discovered archives, this text examines key aspects of wartime life, including work, leisure, morale, and religion. It also explores the underlying tension between conformity and resistance, and the ways that social fissures shaped Scottish responses to war. Further, in taking a national approach to the British home front, it draws out areas of cultural difference between Scotland and established scholarship on other nations and regions of Britain.
‘Scotland’s Fighting Fields’: The Transformation of Rural Scotland
Authors: Moffat Michelle
Published: October 2024

Chapter Seven examines the response of rural Scotland to the (figurative) call to arms, and uncovers the ways war changed both farming practices and rural society. The chapter begins with an analysis of war’s effect on the agricultural sector. It covers themes of state intervention, mechanisation, adaptation and resistance. Following this, the chapter examines the ways war reshaped rural populations, bringing a wave of migrant workers. Case studies include: Irish labourers; female workers in the Scottish Women’s Land Army and Scottish Women’s Timber Corps; lumberjacks from Newfoundland, Canada, and British Honduras (now Belize); and prisoners of war from Italy and Germany. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the effect of war on the Scottish rural sector. It also explores the ways war reopened conversations around Highland regeneration and forestry planning, and strategies for Scotland’s post-war prosperity.
Introduction: Multiple Lenses to Macedonian Burials
Authors: Salminen Elina M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter introduces the main goals of the book, including an attempt to move away from few exceptional graves to a broader subsection of Macedonian society. It also defines core terms used in the monograph and outlines the history of scholarship on the topic. Finally, it lays out the structure and main arguments of the ensuing chapters.
Macedonian Mortuary Behaviour
Authors: Salminen Elina M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter focuses on the common patterns seen in burials across the period and area of study. It begins by defining the area included in the research and introduces key sites in the region. After that, it summarises common trends seen across multiple variables: spatial organisation of graves, burial types, body treatment, common artefact types, and finally the evidence we have for commemoration of the dead.
Phialai and Family Feeling: Women
Authors: Salminen Elina M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter centres around the second ‘social persona’: the woman. Historical sources on Macedonian women are discussed, followed by an analysis of multiple lines of archaeological evidence. This evidence includes osteological data, grave types and groupings, and items we would expect are associated with women based on literary sources – objects related to beauty or religious practice. One section, in contrast, focuses on evidence that implies that women inhabited a realm broader than religion and personal adornment: objects alluding to symposia, vase-painting depicting a range of non-domestic scenes, and weapons. It’s suggested that status and gender interacted, with wealthier women’s burials more similar to men’s than poor women’s. Finally, case-studies are discussed to nuance the broad patterns observed.
Psychic Connection and the Twentieth-Century British Novel
Authors: Taylor Mark
Published: October 2024

Criticism of the novel routinely starts with the assumption that characters must think, develop and strive for self-fulfilment as individuals. This book challenges the paradigm that individualism is innate to the novel as a medium. It describes how major writers throughout the twentieth century – many convinced by the supposed findings of parapsychology, especially telepathy – rejected the idea of the discrete, psychologically separate character. Treating the self as porous, they offered novels structured around the development of communities and ideas rather than individuals. By focusing on D. H. Lawrence, Olaf Stapledon, Aldous Huxley and Doris Lessing, this book demonstrates the need to broaden our approach to character when addressing the novel of the twentieth century and beyond. It offers an alternative account of twentieth-century literature in which novels of collectivity and connection are central, albeit obscured previously by our established cultural and critical apparatus.
D. H. Lawrence and the Novel of Connected Individuals
Authors: Taylor Mark
Published: October 2024

This chapter reconsiders the emphasis in D. H. Lawrence’s work on attaining ‘true individuality’ in light of his expressed belief in psychic connection. It contends that while Lawrence lauds individuality, it is particularity rather than separateness which is, for him, the making of the individual. It traces how the idea of psychic connection informs Lawrence’s experiments in novelistic form and in characterization across his career, as he seeks to model the effect on the individual of impersonal psychic forces. It associates ambiguities in narrative voice (as thoughts and feelings are experienced between characters) with this project, as well as his embrace of chance in the composition of his work. The chapter emphasises Lawrence’s engagement with theories of collective consciousness and impersonal sentience, in particular the ideas advanced by Henri Bergson. It reads Lawrence’s ideas in contrast with May Sinclair and Evelyn Underhill, in whose work psychic connection is associated with another plane of existence, where self and individuality explode as concepts.
South: Visitors from the Maghreb
Authors: Eldem Edhem
Published: October 2024

The chapter is devoted to Maghrebi visitors of the Alhambra, mostly Moroccan, some early examples of whom were known through their rihla or travel accounts. In the nineteenth century, the visitors’ book documents about 150 such travellers, most of them members of Moroccan diplomatic missions. However, with little more than names and dates available, one has to resort to the local press to flesh out these visits. The Moroccan embassy of 1885 is a case in point, which was much publicised and commented in the local press, with ample descriptions of the emotion engendered by the sight of the ancestral remains. Yet, there is a risk that these feelings and reactions may in fact have had more to do with the expectations of the Spanish public, always eager to see the ‘Moors’ sigh and lament over their lost heritage. Similarly, many ‘Maurophile’ visitors, especially Spanish, appear to have signed the book in broken Arabic, to express their admiration for the site and the civilisation that built it. Most striking in the genre is the poetic inscription by a mysterious Malek Salem from Tetuan, in all likelihood a fake visitor entry planted to promote Spanish colonial ambitions in Morocco.
The Evolution of Robinson Crusoe’s World-Ecological Consciousness
Authors: McAuley Louis Kirk
Published: October 2024

Chapter 1 reads Robinson Crusoe as a novel that complicates the so-called borderline between nature and culture. Focusing upon the all-important footprint scene, as well as the natural-historical-geopolitical significance of the Juan Fernández archipelago (including the island upon which the so-called real Robinson Crusoe, Scottish naval officer Alexander Selkirk, lived as a castaway from 1704 to 1709), this Chapter argues that Defoe’s novel presents us with a unique opportunity to both debunk the myth of isolated island space and explore human history’s implication in natural history. A close ecocritical examination of the passages leading up to and surrounding Crusoe’s discovery of the footprint, including those highlighting the peculiar natures of barley, goats, rats, and cats, suggests ways in which Defoe’s immensely popular novel invites us to think about various formations of humanity-in-nature / nature-in-humanity, as well as the heterarchical nature of empire building. Crusoe’s ecological awakening, as it were, precipitated by the barley’s so-called miraculous growth, reflects what María M. Portuondo describes as Early Modern efforts to develop a new framework, including “new ways of collecting knowledge about nature,” through which to explain the reality of the New World.
Restlessness Transformed: Revisiting the Metaphor of Tuberculosis in Katherine Mansfield’s Notebooks and Letters
Authors: Shieh Wen-Shan
Published: October 2024

Part one of this paper builds on Sontag’s notion that TB patients are seen as ‘restless’ and on Mary Burgan’s view that the sense of urgency in Katherine Mansfield’s writing comes from a ‘a conscious defense against fragmentation’. Part two argues that the detailed descriptions in her letters and journals of her symptoms and her far-flung search for a suitable treatment manifest Mansfield’s restlessness, and contrast this with Sontag’s view that Mansfield regarded TB as ‘a disease of the soul’ intractable to conventional medical treatment. Part three draws on Clark Lawlor’s argument that ‘narratives of consumption were still performing certain important discursive functions in society’ and Katherine Byrne’s observation that in the twentieth century TB was transformed from a private disease into a ‘public experience’ involving medical intervention, and explores the role played by the metaphor of TB in Mansfield’s writing.
The Spectacle of Cultural Difference: The Tourist Gaze and the Exotic Gaze
Authors: Berghahn Daniela
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines the close affinities between the tourist and the exotic gaze. The discussion of mainstream Western films Eat Pray Love, Hector and the Search for Happiness, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel illustrates those manifestations of exoticism in contemporary (transnational) cinema that have contributed to the concept’s tarnished reputation. Issues such as white privilege, the relics of imperial protocols of vision and the commodification and spectacularisation of cultural difference emerge as central to the ideological contestations surrounding these films. A discussion of the global arthouse films Hotel Salvation and To the Ends of the Earth and the Bollywood films Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara probes the limits of the exotic and the tourist gaze. Although it is often claimed that Bollywood films about Indians abroad exoticise Europe, Berghahn argues that the exotic gaze is irreversible.
Radical collaborations: ‘anti-psychiatry’ on-screen
Authors: Snelson Tim , Macauley William R. , Kirby David A.
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the circulation of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in British film and television during the long 1960s, focusing on the controversial BBC television play In Two Minds (1967) and its cinema remake Family Life (1971). These films were inspired by R.D. Laing’s ideas on the aetiology of schizophrenia, and were understood as uniting the personal and political motivations of progressive filmmakers (Ken Loach, Tony Garnett) and progressive psychiatrists (Laing, David Cooper, Aaron Esterson). It contests previous scholarship on the popular circulation of anti-psychiatry, and the movement’s perceived polarisation from mainstream British psychiatry. On the whole, the psychiatric field welcomed the films’ contributions to mental health awareness and used the publicity to counter the idea of a ‘battle’ within the profession.
Bergson in Britain
Authors: de Mille Charlotte
Published: October 2024

The artist exists ‘to see and make us see what we do not naturally perceive.’ Bergson in Britain illuminates the pivotal role of Bergson’s philosophy for UK artists and art critics before 1914. Its interdisciplinary approach integrates philosophy, art criticism and art history, offering new avenues for investigation. An Epilogue considers the proximity of Bergson’s thought on temporality, perception, intuition, and subjectivity to art history, from Alois Riegl and Aby Warburg, to practitioners today.
Metaphysics of Non-Representation: Bloomsbury’s Bergson
Authors: de Mille Charlotte
Published: October 2024

In Bergson’s process philosophy all is transformative, relational, multiple. Perception is understood as ‘to translate or to picture the states of our (moving) nervous system’.9 Intuitive perception is embodied, but non-self-serving, disinterested. Identifying this intensely empathic vision as the crux of intuitive perception, I trace the convergence in sentiment between the philosophy, aesthetics and writing of Bergson and Fry’s circle to renegotiate a role for an experiential, sensation based method of art history which in its lack of self-interest nevertheless retains those prizes of disinterest and objectivity.
Rhythmist (E-)Utopias: Fergusson’s Bergson and the Evolution of Creation
Authors: de Mille Charlotte
Published: October 2024

Focusing solely on the Bergsonian content of the joural Rhythm, this chapter identifies an intuitive, immanent conception of art from early experiments in durational portraiture to works that explore visions of a vitalist utopia. As a result, the chapter situates the journal in relation to its Scottish heritage as well as its French competitors, particularly Les Tendances Nouvelles and the Abbaye de Créteil.
Islamic Modernities in World Society
Authors: Jung Dietrich
Published: October 2024

How is one “authentically” modern? Substantively drawing on contemporary social theory, this book investigates the multiplicity of answers that Muslims have given to this question since the end of the nineteenth century. Through six historical and thematic case studies, the author examines the historical evolution of multiple modernities within Islam. The book argues that we can observe the rise and spread of a relatively hegemonic idea according to which the relation to Islamic traditions bestows projects of Muslim modernities with cultural authenticity. At the same time, it provides an interpretation of this specifically Islamic discourse of modernity as an inherent part of global modernity in conceptual terms understood as the emergence of world society.
Diverging Directions: “Islamist” and “Secularist” Projects of Muslim Modernities
Authors: Jung Dietrich
Published: October 2024

What is the legitimate social order for a Muslim state? In the twentieth century, Muslim projects of modern state formation responded to this question with a broad spectrum of answers, ranging from secularist to Islamist state ideologies. In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk conducted an iconoclast revolution in establishing the laicist Turkish Republic in 1923 while the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood propagated the idea of an Islamic state. This chapter compares the modern political projects of the Kemalist national movement and of the Muslim Brotherhood. It argues that the diametrically opposed projects of the two political movements nevertheless were following a similar and globally relevant model of a modernist social order.
Boundary Negotiations between Islam and Economics: Islamic Finance, Halal Markets, and the Muslim Entrepreneur
Authors: Jung Dietrich
Published: October 2024

How did Caviar turn out to be halal? This question was posed by the author of a short article on a ruling by Ayatollah Khomeini that marked a decisive break with the Shiite tradition. Since the rise of Islamic modernism, Muslim intellectuals have been struggling with the structural imperatives of global capitalism. Does Islamic economics represent a morally grounded alternative to modern capitalism? This chapter will argue that it does not. It shows the various ways in which the Islamic discourse of modernity has been fused with elements of consumerism, capitalist entrepreneurship, and global market structures, in fields such as banking, entertainment, fashion, food production, real estate, and tourism, providing pious Muslims with an ever-increasing variety of halal (morally accepted) products.
Gender, Wealth and the Rhetoric of Ethical Consumption
Authors: Janssen Flore
Published: October 2024

The introduction to this book explains the concept of consumer guilt, which the book presents as central to the development of the Consumers’ Leagues and their campaign strategies. It shows how consumer activists turned on its head the notion that their purchasing power caused active harm and sought to harness this power for active good. One central aim of these consumer activists was to combat sweating practices by seeking to assure better wages and working conditions for the producers of luxury goods such as clothing.
PENETAPAN KADAR RUTIN PADA EKSTRAK ETANOL DAUN PIDADA MERAH (Sonneratia caseolaris) DENGAN KLT DENSITOMETER
Authors: Lestari Dwi , Syamsul Eka Siswanto , Mentari Ika Ayu
Published: October 2024

Red pidada leaves (Sonneratia caseolaris L) which is a species of mangrove plant that can grow in rivers and has been widely used as a natural medicine. Red Pidada leaves are often used by the people of East Kalimantan as a cold powder and wound remover. This study aims to determine the routine content of red pidada leaf extract. The research included extraction by maceration, routine assay using a TLC densitometer, phytochemical screening and validation of methods determined by parameters including: linearity and precision. A mixture of butanol-ethyl acetate-formic acid-asor (5:5:2:1) was chosen as the mobile phase. The results of this research for the maximum routine wavelength are 265 nm. The linearity test obtained from the regression function is y = 151.6 + 80.88x with a correlation coefficient (r) and Vxo of 0.97566 and 0.842% respectively. The concentration of routine in the extract was 1.9215±0.028%
Exploring the Self-efficacy and Its Influencing Factors of University Nursing Students in Taiwan during the Clinical Practicum
Authors: PAN I-Ju , YEN Pin-Cheng , Liu Yi-Hui
Published: October 2024

Aim: This study aims to investigate the self-efficacy of nursing students during their clinical practicum and identify the factors influencing their self-efficacy.

Methods: A cross-sectional research design was employed using convenience sampling and a questionnaire survey. The 264 nursing students consisted of 144 third-year and 120 fourth-year nursing students from a university in southern Taiwan. Data were collected using the "Self-Efficacy Scale" from Liang et al. [1] and analyzed using SPSS software. Descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, and ANOVA were utilized to examine the differences in self efficacy based on various demographic and experiential factors.

Results: The study achieved a 100% response rate. The findings indicated that nursing students generally exhibited high levels of self efficacy, with a mean score of 44.19 out of 60. Significant differences in self-efficacy were observed based on enjoyment of clinical practice (t=5.45, p<.001), taking care of sick family members (t=2.02, p=.04), satisfaction with self-performance during practicum (F=6.81, p<.001), and intention to pursue clinical work after graduation (F=13.12, p<.001). Students who enjoyed their clinical practicum and those with higher satisfaction in their practicum performance demonstrated higher self-efficacy.

Conclusion: The study highlights the importance of enhancing self efficacy in nursing students through supportive clinical environments, effective communication, and reflective practices. Improving self efficacy can increase students' clinical confidence and motivation to pursue a career in nursing. Future research should include larger and more diverse samples to generalize the findings across different educational contexts.

Keywords: Nursing education, clinical practice, self-efficacy, nursing students, professional development
Antifungal susceptibility, molecular epidemiology, and clinical risk factors of Candida glabrata in intensive care unit in a Chinese Tertiary Hospital
Authors: Huang Si-Jia , Lv Geng , Song Yi-Hui , Zhao Jun-Tao , Liu Jin-Yan , Wang Lu-Ling , Xiang Ming-Jie
Published: October 2024

Background

The increasing incidence and high mortality rate of Candida glabrata infection in ICU patients is an important issue. Therefore, it is imperative to investigate the antifungal susceptibility profiles and epidemiological characteristics in local regions.

Methods

Herein, antifungal susceptibility testing was conducted to determine the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of eight antifungal drugs. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was used to study the strain genotype, geographical distribution, and susceptibility to antifungal agents among C. glabrata isolates. The mechanism of echinocandin resistance was explored by sequencing the FKS1 and FKS2 genes (encoding 1,3-β-D-glucan synthases) of echinocandin-resistant C. glabrata strains. Moreover, we further investigated the clinical manifestations and the various risk factors of patients infected with C. glabrata in the ICU.

Results

We selected 234 C. glabrata isolates from 234 patients in the ICU randomly for the follow-up study. Cross-resistance was found among the ICU C. glabrata isolates. Analysis using MLST showed that the genetic diversity among the C. glabrata isolates was low. Furthermore, sequence type showed no correlation with the antifungal resistance profiles, but was associated with geographical distribution. We also revealed novel mutations in FKS1 (S629P) and FKS2 (W1497stop) that mediated high-level echinocandin resistance (MIC >8 µg/mL). More than 14 days’ stay in ICU (P=0.007), Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE-II) score (P=0.024), prior antifungal exposure (P=0.039) and lung disease (P=0.036) were significantly associated with antifungal resistant/non-wild-type C. glabrata infection.

Conclusion

Our study shed light on the antifungal susceptibility, molecular epidemiology, and clinical risk factors of C. glabrata in the ICU of a Chinese Tertiary Hospital. Importantly, we revealed the molecular mechanism of echinocandin resistance. These results highlight the significance of continued surveillance in ICUs and provide data support for the treatment of C. glabrata in clinics.
Strong contribution from sensible heat to global precipitation increase in climate models is not supported by observational based data
Authors: Myhre Gunnar , Jouan Caroline , Stjern Camilla Weum , Hodnebrog Øivind
Published: October 2024

It has previously been shown that trends in sensible heat from climate models have had a substantial contribution to global precipitation changes. We illustrate that this is the case also in the most recent Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). However, we find that over the period since 1980 reanalyses do not support the reduction in sensible heat from the CMIP6 models and rather estimate a global increase in sensible heat which would contribute to a precipitation reduction. Satellite data over a period of two decades over global ocean generally show an opposite sign of the sensible heat trend to the CMIP6 models, similarly to the reanalyses.
Building alliances and consensus around social-ecological rewilding in Chile
Authors: Root-Bernstein Meredith , Guerrero-Gatica Matías
Published: October 2024

We provide a case study of how we position our rewilding project in central Chile in order to find scientific and social support and build alliances, collaborations, and consensus. Our core vision focuses on reintroducing guanacos (Lama guanicoe) to central Chile in order to provide natural restoration and ecosystem processes in espinal woodlands dominated by the native tree Vachellia [Acacia] caven. We envision a scenario of “social-ecological rewilding” with widespread guanaco browsing in woodlands and guanaco migration across the region, coexisting with multiple human uses of the landscape. Guanacos would ideally be managed by regional collectives who could benefit from guanaco tourism, sustainable harvest of their fiber (wool), and regulated hunting. Our wider vision for reintroductions and integrated conservation management extends to a set of other species that may have coexisted with guanacos and V. caven at various points in the past, but more research is necessary to establish and gain support for evidence-based baselines. Our strategy is to inspire actors with greater resources (land, money, influence) to share our vision and implement it, in collaboration with the NGO that we have formed to support our projects. Over ten years, circulating alternate interpretations and a novel imaginary of how central Chile was in the past and could be in the future, along with developing and testing scientific hypotheses, has moved our vision from an idea shared by two people to one that a wide variety of actors publicly embrace.
Investigating the impact of climate and land use changes on soil erosion in the Anning River basin in China
Authors: Luo Chuan , Pu Shanshan , Yu Guo
Published: October 2024

Understanding the impact of climate and land use change on soil erosion is particularly important to the development and management of ecosystems. The purpose of this research was to differentiate the impacts of climate and land use alterations on soil erosion by using the InVEST model in the Anning River basin. The findings indicated a rise in average soil erosion from 42.78 t ha−1·a−1 to 49.84 t ha−1·a−1 over the decade from 2010 to 2020, with climate change accounting for 99.71% of the increase and land use change contributing 0.28%. The findings also indicated that the process of urbanization and the implementation of the Returning Grain to Forestry and Grass (RGFG) strategy were effective in decreasing soil erosion by 1.29 t ha−1·a−1 and 6.60 t ha−1·a−1, respectively. Four management measures were developed based on our results. The results of this study are not only of great significance for the environmental protection of a specific region, but also provide references for the mitigation of soil erosion in other regions of the world.
Study on failure mechanism of cracked coal rock and law of gas migration
Authors: Du Feng , Liang Bing , Ren Yixing , Liao Xingchuan , Pei Lingjun , Fan Zuoyuan , Liu Wei
Published: October 2024

China possesses abundant coal resources and has extensive potential for exploitation. Nevertheless, the coal rock exhibits low strength, and the coal seam fractures due to mining activities, leading to an increased rate of gas emission from the coal seam. This poses significant obstacles to the exploration and development of the coal seam. This paper focuses on studying the failure mechanism of fractured coal rock by conducting uniaxial and triaxial compression experiments on the coal rock found at the Wangpo coal mine site. Simultaneously, in conjunction with the findings from the field experiment, a gas migration model of the mining fracture field is constructed to elucidate the pattern of coal seam gas distribution during mining-induced disturbances. The study structure reveals that coal rock exhibits three distinct failure modes: tensile failure, shear failure, and tension-shear failure. The intricate fissure in the rock layer will intensify the unpredictability of rock collapse patterns. The compressive strength of coal rock diminishes as the confining pressure drops. The coal rock in the working face area will collapse as a result of the lack of confining pressure. In the rock strata above the mining fracture zone, the gas pressure is first higher and then significantly falls with time. After 100 days of ventilation, the low gas pressure area changes little, so to ensure the safety of the project, the ventilation time of the fully mechanized mining surface is at least 100 days. The research results will help to establish the core technology system of coal seam development and improve the competitiveness of coal seam resources in China.
Validity of the multidimensional reputation perception scale in private universities
Authors: Amado-Mateus Marelby , Guzmán Rincón Alfredo , Juarez Fernando , Ramos Irene
Published: October 2024

University reputation is the result of the assessments that the stakeholders make of the university, especially the user of the education service, the student. The literature has shown an important impact of reputation on the student’s perception of the university, and it has been related to success, competitiveness, sustainability, stakeholder decision-making and the differential of the value offer. Therefore, its evaluation has been the subject of several studies that seek to measure and assess reputation in higher education to understand how to manage it. This article evaluates the psychometric properties of the reputation scale in students at private universities in Colombia. The methodology used included an adaptation of the scale to the Spanish language, content validity analysis, reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed the validity and reliability of the scale and, through the analyses carried out, provided evidence of the scale’s robustness.
The clinical and genetic aspects of six individuals with GH1 variants and isolated growth hormone deficiency type II
Authors: Huang Xiaozhen , Chen Hong , Shangguan Huakun , Wu Wenyong , Ai Zhuanzhuan , Chen Zhifeng , Chen Ruimin
Published: October 2024

Background

Isolated growth hormone deficiency type II (IGHD II) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by a GH1 gene variant resulting in a significant reduction in growth hormone (GH) secretion and a subsequent decrease of plasma insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) levels and eventual growth impairment.

Objective

This study aimed to identify causative variants in six Chinese families with IGHD II, exploring both clinical and genetic characteristics.

Methods

Detailed clinical data, including clinical presentations, physical charateristics, medical and family histories, as well as genetic test results, were systematically examined.

Results

Six children, comprising four males and two females, with a mean age of 4.64 ± 1.15 years, exhibited short stature with a mean height of -3.95 ± 1.41 SDS. Four of them had a family history of short stature, while one patient presented with pulmonary hypertension. All children demonstrated GH deficiency in growth hormone stimulation tests (mean peak GH value: 2.83 ± 2.46 ng/mL). Exome sequencing for the six patients and targeted gene sequencing for their family members revealed heterozygous variants in the GH1 gene, including Exon2-5del, c.334T>C, c.291 + 1G>A, c.291 + 2T>A, 1.5 kb deletion, and 1.7 kb deletion, with four variants being novel. Four patients underwent human recombinant growth hormone (rhGH) replacement therapy, initiating treatment at a mean age of 4.6 ± 0.7 years. The mean height increase in patients was 1.21 ± 0.3 SDS in the first six months of treatment and 1.79 ± 0.15 SDS in the first year.

Conclusion

Our findings contribute to expanding the genotypic and phenotypic spectra of individuals with IGHD II.
A disulfidptosis-related lncRNA signature for analyzing tumor microenvironment and clinical prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma
Authors: Zheng Haishui , Cheng Jigan , Zhuang Ziyun , Li Duguang , Yang Jing , Yuan Fan , Fan Xiaoxiao , Liu Xiaolong
Published: October 2024

Introduction

Disulfidptosis is a recently identified form of non-apoptotic programmed cell death which distinguishes itself from classical cell death pathways. However, the prognostic implications of disulfidptosis-related long non-coding RNAs (DRLs) and their underlying mechanisms in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain largely unexplored.

Methods

In this study, we leveraged RNA-sequencing data and clinical information of HCC patients from the TCGA database. Through expression correlation and prognostic correlation analyses, we identified a set of top-performing long non-coding RNAs. Subsequently, a 5-DRLs predictive signature was established by conducting a Lasso regression analysis.

Results

This signature effectively stratified patients into high- and low-risk groups, revealing notable differences in survival outcomes. Further validation through univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses confirmed that the risk score derived from our signature independently predicted the prognosis of HCC patients. Moreover, we observed significant disparities in immune cell infiltration and tumor mutation burden (TMB) between the two risk groups, shedding light on the potential connection between immune-related mechanisms and disulfidptosis. Notably, the signature also exhibited predictive value in the context of chemotherapeutic drug sensitivity and immunotherapy efficacy for HCC patients. Finally, we performed experimental validation at both cellular and patient levels and successfully induced a disulfidptosis phenotype in HCC cells.

Discussion

In general, this multifaceted approach provides a comprehensive overview of DRLs profiles in HCC, culminating in the establishment of a novel risk signature that holds promise for predicting prognosis and therapy outcomes of HCC patients.