scholarly journals Beyond Belief

Aries ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Christine Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Imaginative Literature

Abstract Over the last decade, esotericism studies has witnessed a distinct literary turn, as more and more of the field’s primarily religious studies-based researchers have recognized the value, and indeed, centrality, of imaginative literature to the transmission of occult and new religious ideas. Although welcome, this impetus has sometimes taken an anti-aesthetic shape, reducing the texts it incorporates to little more than empirical evidence of authorial belief or practical occult experience. Accompanying this tendency has been a suspicion of the formalist, post-modern, and/or political forms of interpretation common within contemporary literary studies as being ideologically tainted or even wilfully perverse in their resistance to surface meaning. My article uses a case study of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist (1926), a seemingly straightforward example of an emic novel whose author’s spiritualist belief and conversionist intentions are well known, to demonstrate the limitations of such a biographically reductionist hermeneutic, and to call for a greater diversity of approach within literary esotericism studies.

Context Mediated

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Benjamin Pickford
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Ralph Waldo Emerson ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Economic Relation ◽  
Economic Agency

Benjamin Pickford, “Context Mediated: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Political Economy of Plagiarism” (pp. 35–63) Context has long been a critical determiner of methodologies for literary studies, granting scholars the tools to make objective claims about a text’s political or economic relation to the situation of its genesis. This essay argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson anticipatively criticizes our commitment to such practices through his use of plagiarism—a literary mode that exemplifies the denial of the sovereignty of context. I focus on two core principles that underlie Emerson’s conception of literature’s civic role in Essays: Second Series (1844): first, that literature is driven by an impulse to decontextualize; second, that this means that it has a deep affinity with the deterritorializing logic of capital. Provocatively proposing Emerson as a theorist of the relation between literature and economics, I argue that Essays: Second Series shows how the literary text can negotiate its ineluctable culpability with capitalism, but this does not mean that it can presume to possess a privileged point of vantage that might deny such culpability. Given that this is precisely what much historicizing or contextualizing scholarship implies, I contend that Emerson gives us a case study in the limits of literature and criticism’s economic agency.

scholarly journals R–R–T (resistance–resilience–transformation) typology reveals differential conservation approaches across ecosystems and time

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillaume Peterson St-Laurent ◽  
Lauren E. Oakes ◽  
Molly Cross ◽  
Shannon Hagerman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Conservation Practices ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Empirical Assessment ◽  
Transformative Action ◽  
Conservation Actions

AbstractConservation practices during the first decade of the millennium predominantly focused on resisting changes and maintaining historical or current conditions, but ever-increasing impacts from climate change have highlighted the need for transformative action. However, little empirical evidence exists on what kinds of conservation actions aimed specifically at climate change adaptation are being implemented in practice, let alone how transformative these actions are. In response, we propose and trial a novel typology—the R–R–T scale, which improves on existing concepts of Resistance, Resilience, and Transformation—that enables the practical application of contested terms and the empirical assessment of whether and to what extent a shift toward transformative action is occurring. When applying the R–R–T scale to a case study of 104 adaptation projects funded since 2011, we find a trend towards transformation that varies across ecosystems. Our results reveal that perceptions about the acceptance of novel interventions in principle are beginning to be expressed in practice.

scholarly journals Toward a Quantitative Approach to the Specialness of Poetry: Taking Chang Hen Ge and Chang Hen Ge Zhuan as a Case Study

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110299
Author(s):  
Cong Zhang ◽  
Rui Yuan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Quantitative Approach ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Function Words ◽  
New Perspective

The differences of linguistic features between Chang Hen Ge ( Ge) and Chang Hen Ge Zhuan ( Zhuan) have rarely been mentioned in the relevant fields. Nevertheless, these differences can best highlight the specialness of poetry, for the two works were written contemporaneously by two friends on the same subject, in distinct styles. This article employs quantitative methods and indicators to provide empirical evidence for the specialness of Ge through comparisons between the two. The results show that, on the premise of expressing the same subject in different styles, Ge does have certain linguistic characteristics compared with Zhuan. Its particularity is reflected not only in fewer repeat characters and words but also in their richness, as well as in the use of more content words and fewer function words. Moreover, all of these characteristics have had a great influence on Ge’s artistic level and dissemination. Through this study, we hope that our methods provide a new perspective and shed some light on this area.

“Going Virtual Helped Me Learn That I Can Handle Everything”: Campus Magazine Production as a High Impact Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 107769582110232
Author(s):  
Zoe L. Lance ◽  
Chelsea J. Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Course Planning ◽  
Virtual Instruction ◽  
Professional Self ◽  
Working Media ◽  
High Impact Practice

This case study documents a large, 4-year university magazine’s transition to virtual instruction during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using theoretical frameworks from Kuh’s work on high impact practices (HIPs), this analysis offers empirical evidence that virtual student newsrooms may provide impactful learning experiences during crisis situations. Based on interviews, surveys, and newsroom observation, 23 magazine staff members reported improvements in their professional self-efficacy as they overcame logistics challenges and interpersonal hurdles similar to working media professionals. The case study also identifies strengths and weaknesses of crisis pedagogy. Implications for post-pandemic pedagogy and course planning are discussed.

The Limits of Observation for Understanding Mass Violence

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (02) ◽  
pp. 237-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Price ◽  
Patrick Ball
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Statistical Methods ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Observable Data ◽  
Quantitative Analyses

Abstract Quantitative analyses have the potential to contribute to transitional justice mechanisms, via empirical evidence supporting the memory of victims, allocating proportional responsibility among perpetrators, determining legal responsibility, and supporting historical memory and clarity. However, most data available in transitional justice settings are incomplete. Conducting quantitative analyses relying solely on what is observable and knowable leads to not only incomplete but often incorrect analytical results. This can harm rather than contribute to transitional justice mechanisms. This article outlines different types of data, the ways in which observable data, on their own, are insufficient for most quantitative analyses of interest, presents these limitations via a case study from Syria, and introduces statistical methods to overcome these limitations.

beyond syncretism: hybridization of popular religion in contemporary thailand

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
pattana kitiarsa
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

this article challenges the dominant paradigm of ‘inclusive syncretism’ in the study of thai religion. by taking the worship of multi-original deities in the popular spirit-medium cults in contemporary thailand as a case study, it argues that practitioners and specialists working on thai religious studies need to refresh and update their analytical paradigm to incorporate the concept of ‘hybridization’.

scholarly journals Statistical investigations in primary school – the role of contextual expectations for data analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Frischemeier ◽  
Susanne Schnell
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Contextual Knowledge ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Interpretative Analysis ◽  
Young Students

AbstractAs data are ‘numbers with context’ (Cobb & Moore, 1997), contextual knowledge plays a prominent role in dealing with statistics. While insights about a specific context can further the depth of interpreting and evaluating outcomes of data analysis, research shows how it can also hinder relying on data especially if results differ from expectations. In this article, the aim is to investigate how young students informally deal with empirical evidence, which differs from their initial expectations in a specific context. We present a case study with three pairs of students at the age of 9 to 10 who compare groups in survey datasets. The interpretative analysis shows how conjectures of varying degrees of confidence shape the students’ statistical expectations and can play different roles in interpreting results from data analysis.

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