Complementary Perspectives as a Means of Understanding Regional Change: Frontier Settlement in the Ecuador Amazon

Illustrated in this paper is a research protocol wherein regional change in the Ecuador Amazon, measured in terms of changing settlement patterns, is explored from three distinct but complementary vantage points—idiographic, context-dependent generalizations, and universally applicable frameworks. All analyses are anchored to the study area itself; the region's ground-level reality plays a prominent role throughout; and the Amazon as a place is the object of study. The more universal the explanation, the less information it provides about the Ecuador Amazon per se; but each conceptualization illuminates a distinct aspect of the Amazon experience. A comprehensive understanding is the end result. The research protocol is situated within current concerns over place, the new regional geography, and related research strategies.

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Collaborating for Our Future

10.1093/oso/9780198782841.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Barbara Gray ◽

Jill Purdy

Keyword(s):

Management Education ◽

Care Delivery ◽

Scale Up ◽

Collaborative Governance ◽

Comprehensive Understanding ◽

Theoretical Understanding ◽

Effect Change ◽

Working Together ◽

Vantage Points ◽

Multistakeholder Partnerships

Organizations turn to multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) to meet challenges they cannot handle alone. By tapping diverse stakeholders’ resources, MSPs develop the capability to address complex issues and problems, such as health care delivery, poverty, human rights, watershed management, education, sustainability, and innovation. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of MSPs, why they are needed, the challenges partners face in working together, and how to design them effectively. Through the process of collaboration partners combine their differing strengths, vantage points, and expertise to craft innovative responses to pressing societal concerns. The book offers valuable advice for leaders about how to design and scale up effective partnerships and how to address potential obstacles partners may face, such as dealing with the conflicts and power issues likely to arise as partners negotiate with each other. Drawing on three comprehensive cases and countless shorter examples from around the world, the book offers practical advice for organizations embarking on an MSP, as well as theoretical understanding of how partnerships function. Using an institutional theory lens, it explains how partnerships can effect change in institutional fields by reducing turbulence and negotiating a common set of norms and routines to govern partners’ future interactions within the field of concern. Topics covered include: the nature of working collaboratively, why partnerships are needed, types of partnerships, guidelines for partnership design, partnerships and field dynamics, how to deal with conflicts among partners, negotiating across power differences, partnerships for sustainability, collaborative governance, working across scale differences, and how partnerships transform fields.

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Flavor perception of wine is unchanged during commercial flight: a comparative field study

F1000Research ◽

10.12688/f1000research.24319.1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

pp. 597

Author(s):

Anders Gram-Hanssen ◽

Cecilie Bøge Paulsen ◽

Jacob Rosenberg

Keyword(s):

Field Study ◽

Experimental Studies ◽

Real Life ◽

Human Perception ◽

Ground Level ◽

Interquartile Range ◽

Validated Questionnaire ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Authentic Environment ◽

Object Of Study

Background: It is generally accepted that the human perception of flavor and odor is altered in low-pressure environments such as airplane cabins. This has been demonstrated in several simulation studies, but never in a field study conducted in an authentic environment, and never using wine as the object of study. Methods: We performed a comparative field study composed of two wine tastings. The first tasting was conducted on board an aircraft flying at standard cruising altitude and the second tasting was conducted at ground level. Subjective taste experience and current mood were evaluated through a validated questionnaire. The study was reported according to the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guideline. Results: The study included 22 participants, none of whom had any special training in wine tasting. No statistically significant difference in experienced flavor intensity was found between the high and low altitude tests, with median aromatic intensities of 5 (interquartile range 3.5-6.0) and 5 (interquartile range 4.0-6.5) respectively, measured on a 9-point hedonic scale. Additionally, there was no detectable difference in several other taste parameters. Conclusions: These findings suggest that even though experimental studies have demonstrated that senses of taste and smell may be suppressed on commercial flights, the subjective wine tasting experience of non-professionals in real life testing may not be affected.

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From archive cultures to ephemeral content, and back: Studying Instagram Stories with digital methods

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/1461444820960071 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 146144482096007

Author(s):

Lucia Bainotti ◽

Alessandro Caliandro ◽

Alessandro Gandini

Keyword(s):

Peculiar Feature ◽

Digital Content ◽

Research Strategies ◽

Narrative Style ◽

Ethical Concerns ◽

Everyday Lives ◽

Digital Methods ◽

Object Of Study

Despite growing interest, there is a shortage of research about the methods and challenges that concern researching ephemeral digital content. To fill this gap, the article discusses two research strategies to study Instagram Stories. These allow users to share moments of their everyday lives in a documentary and narrative style; their peculiar feature is ephemerality, as each Story lasts for 24 hours. The article (a) explores how to bypass the Instagram API closure and (b) engages in an attempt at ‘circumventing the object of study’, taking advantage of how individual users archive Instagram Stories on other platforms (here, YouTube). In so doing, we contribute to the debate that seeks to innovate and ‘repurpose’ digital methods in a post-API environment. Besides the methodological utility, we show the tension between ephemeral content and archive cultures, and raise epistemological and ethical concerns about the collection, analysis and archival of ephemeral content.

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From Bakhtinian theory to a dialogical psychology

Culture & Psychology ◽

10.1177/1354067x11418546 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 17 (4) ◽

pp. 520-533 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Joshua W. Clegg ◽

João Salgado

Keyword(s):

Social Constructionism ◽

Psychotherapy Research ◽

Semiotic Mediation ◽

Relational Self ◽

Special Issue ◽

Research Strategies ◽

Complex Image ◽

Object Of Study ◽

Bakhtinian Theory ◽

Final Synthesis

The analysis of the different articles in this special issue gives a rather promising but complex image of a dialogical approach to psychology. Mikael Leiman proposed utterances as the object of study for psychotherapy research, semiotic mediation as the explanatory principle, and semiotic position as the unit of analysis. Frank Richardson cautioned us about how dialogical proposals can become entrapped by the extreme decentering tendency of social constructionism. James Cresswell, in his turn, claimed that Bakhtin's work is precisely a way of avoiding the unbalanced account of personal vacuity and freedom found in many constructionist accounts: it is precisely because we are bound to social ties that we become ethically involved with others and, indeed, with ourselves. Michèle Grossen and Anne Salazar Orvig claimed that otherness and the institutional, transpersonal dimensions are also present in every dialogical act, something that tends to be overlooked. Moore et al., following this suggestion, pointed to the multiplicity of institutional social frames, adding to the potential tension between the different available ways of interpreting self and context. Following these various contributions, the authors argue that a dialogical conception implies a relational self in constant dialogical and ethical involvement with society. They further argue that to respect the complexity of the whole in each lived situation, we need different, and more conversational, research strategies. In a final synthesis, centrifugal and centripetal movements of the self are conceived as mutually dependent in a fundamentally temporal conception of psychological becoming.

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Four Catholic Congregations in Rural Northumberland 1750–1850

Recusant History ◽

10.1017/s0034193200004416 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 88-119 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

John Bossy

Keyword(s):

Literary History ◽

Single Cells ◽

The Body ◽

Religious Community ◽

Christian Tradition ◽

Comprehensive Understanding ◽

History Of ◽

The Subject ◽

Object Of Study ◽

Point Of Departure

In the following essay I have tried to put into practice some ideas about the investigation of English Catholic communities outlined in a paper which I gave to the recusant history conference in 1965. These were much indebted to the school of sociologie religieuse inaugurated in France by M. Gabriel le Bras; I have tried to adapt its approach and methods for use in the different conditions of an English nonconfortning body. The assumptions made are that the congregation is a major object of study in the history of any Christian tradition; and that congregations, being secial entities, may best be studied by methods, including statistical methods, proper to the study of societies. In applying these assumptions to the history of English Catholicism I do not claim to be doing something different from what historians of the subject have usually done, but to be asking about single cells questions which have traditionally been aimed at the body as a whole. How big was it, and was it getting bigger or smaller? Who belonged to it, and why? Where did its members live? What relations had they with one another, outside religious belief and practice? With how much enthusiasm, with what particular emphases did they believe and practise? How did they get on with the community at large? I have sought here to answer some of these questions for four congregations in rural Northumberland between the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth century: Hesleyside alias Bellingham, Biddlestone, Thropton and Callaly. I chose this period because materials of the sort one needs were available for it; and also because it is a period of peculiar importance in the history of English Catholicism, covering the transition from its ancient to its modem phase, and providing a point of departure for enquiry in either direction. There is little significance in the communities chosen. It is incidental that the region in question should have provided most of the English support and much of the English scenery for the rebellion of 1715, or that Biddlestone should have a small niche in literary history as the original of Osbaldistone Hall in Scott’s Rob Roy. One of the characteristics of this type of investigation is that it does not much matter where one begins. Another is, however, that the value of conclusions drawn depends on. the number of cases studied. I hope to pursue some myself, but should be most happy if others were inspired to do the same. One might, in this way, reach a more intimate and comprehensive understanding of the whole English Catholic community than has so far been achieved or, I suspect, is possible for any other religious community in the country.

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Effects of Vibration on the Preparation of Ultrathin Sections

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s042482010007223x ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 31 ◽

pp. 358-359

Author(s):

Joseph M. Blum ◽

Edward P. Gargiulo ◽

J. R. Sawers

Keyword(s):

Cutting Speed ◽

Ground Level ◽

Environmental Vibration ◽

Block Face ◽

Ultrathin Sections ◽

Embedding Medium ◽

Thickness Variations ◽

Building Walls ◽

Cutting Direction ◽

Diamond Knife

It is now well-known that chatter (Figure 1) is caused by vibration between the microtome arm and the diamond knife. It is usually observed as a cyclical variation in “optical” density of an electron micrograph due to sample thickness variations perpendicular to the cutting direction. This vibration might be induced by using too large a block face, too large a clearance angle, excessive cutting speed, non-uniform embedding medium or microtome vibration. Another prominent cause is environmental vibration caused by inadequate building construction. Microtomes should be installed on firm, solid floors. The best floors are thick, ground-level concrete pads poured over a sand bed and isolated from the building walls. Even when these precautions are followed, we recommend an additional isolation pad placed on the top of a sturdy table.

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