Geographical Morality

Author(s):  
Katherine Clarke

Here, the depth imbued in Herodotus’ landscape is enhanced by the element of human intervention, which lends a moral aspect. Characters in the narrative, particularly the holders of despotic power engaging in monumental projects, are seen to manipulate the natural world in ways that can be viewed positively or negatively. This chapter explores this apparent contradiction in terms of context, contrast, and varied focalizations, which combine to encourage the reader to see similar actions in different lights. Close attention is paid to the ‘voice’ in which judgements are cast, resulting in a subtle interpretative framework. The division between water and land is explored as particularly fertile ground for exploring human interaction with the landscape in Herodotus’ narrative. The crossing of continental divisions introduces the relationship between individual projects and wider imperial aims, and the sequence of transgressive river crossings is explored as precursor to Persia’s campaigns against Greece.

Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Wykowska ◽  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Stefan Kopp

This booklet is a collection of the position statements accepted for the HRI’20 conference workshop “Social Cognition for HRI: Exploring the relationship between mindreading and social attunement in human-robot interaction” (Wykowska, Perez-Osorio & Kopp, 2020). Unfortunately, due to the rapid unfolding of the novel coronavirus at the beginning of the present year, the conference and consequently our workshop, were canceled. On the light of these events, we decided to put together the positions statements accepted for the workshop. The contributions collected in these pages highlight the role of attribution of mental states to artificial agents in human-robot interaction, and precisely the quality and presence of social attunement mechanisms that are known to make human interaction smooth, efficient, and robust. These papers also accentuate the importance of the multidisciplinary approach to advance the understanding of the factors and the consequences of social interactions with artificial agents.


Author(s):  
Peter Coss

Part I of this book is an in-depth examination of the characteristics of the Tuscan aristocracy across the first two and a half centuries of the second millennium, as studied by Italian historians and others working within the Italian tradition: their origins, interests, strategies for survival and exercise of power; the structure and the several levels of aristocracy and how these interrelated; the internal dynamics and perceptions that governed aristocratic life; and the relationship to non-aristocratic sectors of society. It will look at how aristocratic society changed across this period and how far changes were internally generated as opposed to responses from external stimuli. The relationship between the aristocracy and public authority will also be examined. Part II of the book deals with England. The aim here is not a comparative study but to bring insights drawn from Tuscan history and Tuscan historiography into play in understanding the evolution of English society from around the year 1000 to around 1250. This part of the book draws on the breadth of English historiography but is also guided by the Italian experience. The book challenges the interpretative framework within which much English history of this period tends to be written—that is to say the grand narrative which revolves around Magna Carta and English exceptionalism—and seeks to avoid dangers of teleology, of idealism, and of essentialism. By offering a study of the aristocracy across a wide time-frame and with themes drawn from Italian historiography, I hope to obviate these tendencies and to appreciate the aristocracy firmly within its own contexts.


Author(s):  
Gary Totten

This chapter discusses how consumer culture affects the depiction and meaning of the natural world in the work of American realist writers. These writers illuminate the relationship between natural environments and the social expectations of consumer culture and reveal how such expectations transform natural space into what Henri Lefebvre terms “social space” implicated in the processes and power dynamics of production and consumption. The representation of nature as social space in realist works demonstrates the range of consequences such space holds for characters. Such space can both empower and oppress individuals, and rejecting or embracing it can deepen moral resolve, prompt a crisis of self, or result in one’s death. Characters’ attempts to escape social space and consumer culture also provide readers with new strategies for coping with their effects.


Author(s):  
Serghei Musaji ◽  
Julio De Castro

Despite the continuous interest in studying entrepreneurial teams, the relationship between team composition and, particularly, team diversity and performance remains fertile ground for active debate. Taking roots in the knowledge-based view and organizational learning literatures, this chapter argues that performance in entrepreneurial teams is contingent on (a) the overlap between team members’ knowledge/competences and the content of the performed tasks, (b) the duplication of the team members’ knowledge in the areas with that content, (c) the nature of tasks (exploration or exploitation), (d) the team’s flexibility to adapt to changes in the content and nature of those tasks, and (e) the rate of environmental change. Because an important source of ambiguity in the understanding of how team diversity and performance are linked ties to issues of how team diversity is conceptualized and operationalized, the chapter also proposes a new way of looking at diversity in future research.


Author(s):  
Clare Tyrer

AbstractThe gap between how learners interpret and act upon feedback has been widely documented in the research literature. What is less certain is the extent to which the modality and materiality of the feedback influence students’ and teachers’ perceptions. This article explores the semiotic potential of multimodal screen feedback to enhance written feedback. Guided by an “Inquiry Graphics” approach, situated within a semiotic theory of learning edusemiotic conceptual framework, constructions of meaning in relation to screencasting feedback were analysed to determine how and whether it could be incorporated into existing feedback practices. Semi-structured video elicitation interviews with student teachers were used to incorporate both micro and macro levels of analysis. The findings suggested that the relationship between the auditory, visual and textual elements in multimodal screen feedback enriched the feedback process, highlighting the importance of form in addition to content to aid understanding of written feedback. The constitutive role of design and material artefacts in feedback practices in initial teacher training pertinent to these findings is also discussed.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL M. GRIMLEY

Björk’s collaboration with the director Lars von Trier on the film Dancer in the Dark was marked by well-publicized personal and aesthetic differences. Their work nevertheless shares an intense preoccupation with the nature and quality of sound. Björk’s soundtrack systematically explores the boundaries between music and noise, and the title of von Trier’s film itself presupposes a heightened attention to aural detail. This paper proposes a theoretical context for understanding Björk’s music in the light of her work with von Trier. Whereas Björk’s soundtrack responds to the visual and narrative stimuli of von Trier’s film, the use of sound in her album Vespertine thematicizes more familiar Björk subjects: the relationship between music, landscape and the natural world, and Björk’s own (constructed) sense of Nordic musical identity. By placing Vespertine alongside Björk’s music for Dancer in the Dark, the sense of ‘hyperreality’ that defines both also emerges as a primary characteristic of her work.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Finlay

AbstractHow do members of the general public come to regard some uses of violence as legitimate and others as illegitimate? And how do they learn to use widely recognised normative principles in doing so such as those encapsulated in the laws of war and debated by just war theorists? This article argues that popular cinema is likely to be a major source of influence especially through a subgenre that I call ‘Just War Cinema’. Since the 1950s, many films have addressed the moral drama at the centre of contemporary Just War Theory through the figure of the enemy in the Second World War, offering often explicit and sophisticated treatments of the relationship between thejus ad bellumand thejus in bellothat anticipate or echo the arguments of philosophers. But whereas Cold War-era films may have supported Just War Theory’s ambitions to shape public understanding, a strongly revisionary tendency in Just War Cinema since the late 1990s is just as likely to thwart them. The potential of Just War Cinema to vitiate efforts to shape wider attitudes is a matter that both moral philosophers and those concerned with disseminating the law of war ought to pay close attention to.


2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 422-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Longenecker

AbstractThe aphorism 'context is everything' has been a guiding principle in many studies of Jesus' parabolic sayings. This is true, for instance, of studies attempting to recover a parable's significance in relation to the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, or in relation to its literary placement and function, or in relation to its polyvalent potential. It is also true of this study, which examines Jesus' narrative of the Samaritan—usually referred to as the 'parable of the good Samaritan'. It suggests that, when the Samaritan story is placed within a certain contextual configuration, its narrative features align themselves in ways that have either been conspicuously neglected or consciously avoided in the history of the story's interpretation. Rather than neglecting or avoiding the significance of these narrative features, this essay seeks to exploit their interpretative significance in a fresh manner, entertaining possibilities of meaning beyond the Lukan interpretative framework. In particular, consideration is given to the relationship between the Samaritan and the innkeeper as representing an exceptional partnership that testifies to the reign of God in making each party vulnerable to loss while promoting goodness towards others.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiang Bo-wei

Abstract From 1949, Quemoy became the battlefront between the warring Nationalists and Communists as well as the frontline between Cold War nations. Under military rule, social and ideological control suppressed the community power of traditional clans and severed their connection with fellow countrymen living abroad. For 43 long years up until 1992, Quemoy was transformed from an open hometown of the Chinese diaspora into a closed battlefield and forbidden zone. During the war period, most of the Quemoy diasporic Chinese paid close attention to the state of their hometown including the security of their family members and property. In the early 1950s, they tried to keep themselves informed of the situation in Quemoy through any available medium and build up a new channel of remittances. Furthermore, as formal visits of the overseas Chinese were an important symbol of legitimacy for the KMT, Quemoy emigrants had been invited by the military authority to visit their hometown since 1950. This was in fact the only channel for the Chinese diaspora to go home. Using official files, newspapers and records of oral histories, this article analyzes the relationship between the Chinese diaspora and the battlefield, Quemoy, and takes a look at the interactions between family and clan members of the Chinese diaspora during 1949-1960s. It is a discussion of a special intermittence and continuity of local history.


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