Issues in Theory Construction

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Neal M. Krause

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss key steps in the theory construction process that have not received sufficient attention in the literature. Four issues are explored: (1) a brief history of the prevailing approaches to theory construction is presented; (2) an in-depth discussion is provided on how the core study model was developed—a special emphasis is placed on specifying a generic strategy for how to practice one’s own research craft; (3) a concise discussion on how to weave preliminary theoretical specifications into a viable midrange theory is described; and (4) a discussion involving how to write for an academic audience is provided.

Author(s):  
Elena N. NARKHOVA ◽  
Dmitry Yu. NARKHOV

This article analyzes the degree of demand for works of art (films and television films and series, literary and musical works, works of monumental art) associated with the history of the Great Patriotic War among contemporary students. This research is based on the combination of two theories, which study the dynamics and statics of culture in the society — the theory of the nucleus and periphery by Yu. M. Lotman and the theory of actual culture by L. N. Kogan. The four waves of research (2005, 2010, 2015, 2020) by the Russian Society of Socio¬logists (ROS) have revealed a series of works in various genres on this topic in the core structure and on the periphery of the current student culture; this has also allowed tracing the dynamics of demand and the “movement” of these works in the sociocultural space. The authors introduce the concept of the archetype of the echo of war. The high student recognition of works of all historical periods (from wartime to the present day) is shown. A significant complex of works has been identified, forming two contours of the periphery. Attention is drawn to the artistic work of contemporary students as a way to preserve the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War. This article explains the necessity of preserving the layer of national culture in order to reproduce the national identity in the conditions of informational and ideological pluralism of the post-Soviet period. The authors note the differentiation of youth due to the conditions and specifics of socialization in the polysemantic sociocultural space.


Author(s):  
Hideko Abe

This article discusses how the intersection of grammatical gender and social gender, entwined in the core structure of language, can be analyzed to understand the dynamic status of selfhood. After reviewing a history of scholarship that demonstrates this claim, the discussion analyzes the language practices of transgender individuals in Japan, where transgender identity is currently understood in terms of sei-dōitsusei-shōgai (gender identity disorder). Based on fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2017, the analysis reveals how individuals identifying with sei-dōitsusei-shōgai negotiate subject positions by manipulating the specific indexical meanings attached to grammatical structures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-347
Author(s):  
Jean Francesco A.L. Gomes

Abstract The aim of this article is to investigate how Abraham Kuyper and some late neo-Calvinists have addressed the doctrine of creation in light of the challenges posed by evolutionary scientific theory. I argue that most neo-Calvinists today, particularly scholars from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), continue Kuyper’s legacy by holding the core principles of a creationist worldview. Yet, they have taken a new direction by explaining the natural history of the earth in evolutionary terms. In my analysis, Kuyper’s heirs at the VU today offer judicious parameters to guide Christians in conversation with evolutionary science, precisely because of their high appreciation of good science and awareness of the nonnegotiable elements that make up the orthodox Christian narrative.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Л. Ю. Логунова ◽  
Е. А. Маженина

The article presents the results of a long-term study of protest as a cultural phenomenon, the transformation of values, realized in the activities of the best people of the planet and their followers. These values have absorbed the experience of many generations and the behavior of people defending the rights of an individual to dignity, equality before the law, fair attitude, freedom of thought. In the history of the development of political thought, values have formed that constitute the core of civil culture. The genesis of the birth of the nucleus of civil culture from the thinkers of Antiquity, ideologists of nonviolent resistance, leaders of the French bourgeois revolution, activists of the “new left” movement to the protests of our time is shown. The basis for updating the protection of these values is the socio-political situation, characterized by the divergence of interests of civil society and ruling political groups. The values of the core of civil culture (freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, human rights) acquire an acute urgency in situations of power crisis. This is the time of the birth of new values that will mobilize new generations of protesters. Protest, as an act of protecting the values of the individual, is a measure of the level of development of political culture in the state. The protest — it's not just a mass exit of dissent on the area. This is an indicator of the level of self-awareness of citizens and the development of the political culture of society. The symbols of political protest actions are a special text that expresses the meanings of values. The authors present the results of a sociological study, which used comparative, value-semantic, interpretive approaches, studied the meanings and values of political protests of the 20th — early 19th centuries, analyzed visual and publicistic evidence of protest actions: photo and video materials, publications in the press.


October ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
Jenny Nachtigall ◽  
Kerstin Stakemeier

Abstract This article presents an introduction to four texts that the German feminist-materialist art historian Lu Märten (1879–1970) published between 1903 and 1928. It outlines some of the major concepts of and contexts for this unduly neglected thinker. Her writings covered a wide terrain that spanned studies on the labor conditions of female artists, polemics against “proletarian art,” and a monist, rather than dialectical, view on film, art, and what she called the “full life-work of a human.” At the core of her multiple endeavors was the demand for remaking the history of art as a history of form that is more capacious than art's institutionalized Western field. Situating Märten's work in historical debates (e.g., on Marxist aesthetics in the 1930s), the introduction also points to the new legibility that her nonaligned materialism gains with the material turn in the humanities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ling Ding ◽  
Di Cao ◽  
Taohua Ouyang ◽  
Jin-xi Wu

This paper aims to take the longitudinal development history of the Lenovo Cross-border complex nested R&D organization as the research object, to explore the development rules of enterprise niche. Strategic positioning is the core issue of enterprise management, and enterprise niche is the core issue of strategic positioning. This study elaborates on the three stages of enterprise R&D organizational ambidexterity promoting enterprise niche evolution, discusses the process model of space development, and reveals the life cycle of enterprise niche. It reveals the deep reason for promoting enterprise niche to develop—the ambidexterity of complex nested organization. The conclusion helps to promote the successful space development of enterprise niches through Cross-border merger and acquisition, and to enhance global sustainable development for the companies from emerging markets such as China.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (9) ◽  
pp. 917-931
Author(s):  
Jafar Arkani-Hamed

The core dynamos of Mars and the Moon have distinctly different histories. Mars had no core dynamo at the end of accretion. It took ∼100 Myr for the core to create a strong dynamo that magnetized the martian crust. Giant impacts during 4.2–4.0 Ga crippled the core dynamo intermittently until a thick stagnant lithosphere developed on the surface and reduced the heat flux at the core–mantle boundary, killing the dynamo at ∼3.8 Ga. On the other hand, the Moon had a strong core dynamo at the end of accretion that lasted ∼100 Myr and magnetized its primordial crust. Either precession of the core or thermochemical convection in the mantle or chemical convection in the core created a strong core dynamo that magnetized the sources of the isolated magnetic anomalies in later times. Mars and the Moon indicate dynamo reversals and true polar wander. The polar wander of the Moon is easier to explain compared to that of Mars. It was initiated by the mass deficiency at South Pole Aitken basin, which moved the basin southward by ∼68° relative to the dipole axis of the core field. The formation of mascon maria at later times introduced positive mass anomalies at the surface, forcing the Moon to make an additional ∼52° degree polar wander. Interaction of multiple impact shock waves with the dynamo, the abrupt angular momentum transfer to the mantle by the impactors, and the global overturn of the core after each impact were probably the factors causing the dynamo reversal.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 637-647
Author(s):  
Rebecca Lemov

This article traces the rise of “predictive” attitudes to crime prevention. After a brief summary of the current spread of predictive policing based on person-centered and place-centered mathematical models, an episode in the scientific study of future crime is examined. At UCLA between 1969 and 1973, a well-funded “violence center” occasioned great hopes that the quotient of human “dangerousness”—potential violence against other humans—could be quantified and thereby controlled. At the core of the center, under the direction of interrogation expert and psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West, was a project to gather unprecedented amounts of behavioral data and centrally store it to identify emergent crime. Protesters correctly seized on the violence center as a potential site of racially targeted experimentation in psychosurgery and an example of iatrogenic science. Yet the eventual spectacular failure of the center belies an ultimate success: its data-driven vision itself predicted the Philip K. Dick–style PreCrime policing now emerging. The UCLA violence center thus offers an alternative genealogy to predictive policing. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Histories of Data and the Database edited by Soraya de Chadarevian and Theodore M. Porter.


2019 ◽  
Vol 66 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 89-93
Author(s):  
Jotham Ziffer-Berger ◽  
Alexandra Keren-Keiserman ◽  
Adi Doron-Faigenboim ◽  
Klaus Mummenhoff ◽  
Oz Barazani

Molecular tools provide new insights into phylogenetic relationships of plant species, and by relating phylogenetic groups to their geographical distribution, we can cast light upon the evolution history of plant clades. In the current study, we evaluated the phylogenetic position of the Sinai endemic Brassica deserti (Brassicaceae), later renamed as Erucastrum deserti, based on morphological data and 5.8S rDNA and ITS (Internal Transcribed Spacer) regions. Our results indicate that B. deserti belongs to an East-Mediterranean – Saharo Arabian clade and was not assigned to the core Brassica and Erucastrum clades, respectively, which evolved in the West Mediterranean area. We tentatively conclude that Brassica deserti evolved independently of core Brassica and Erucastrum.


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