The Social Oikos

In one of the foundational articles of persona studies, Marshall and Barbour (2015) look to Hannah Arendt for development of a key concept within the larger persona framework: “Arendt saw the need to construct clear and separate public and private identities. What can be discerned from this understanding of the public and the private is a nuanced sense of the significance of persona: the presentation of the self for public comportment and expression” (2015, p. 3). But as far back as the ancient world from which Arendt draws her insights, the affordance of persona was not evenly distributed. As Gines (2014) argues, the realm of the household, oikos, was a space of subjugation of those who were forced to be “private,” tending to the necessities of life, while others were privileged with life in the public at their expense. To demonstrate the core points of this essay, I use textual analysis of a YouTube family vlog, featuring a Black mother in the United States, whose persona rapidly changed after she and her White husband divorced. By critically examining Arendt’s concepts around public, private, and social, a more nuanced understanding of how personas are formed in unjust cultures can help us theorize persona studies in more egalitarian and robust ways.

An Effective Clustering Algorithm Using Adaptive Neighborhood and Border Peeling Method

Traditional clustering methods often cannot avoid the problem of selecting neighborhood parameters and the number of clusters, and the optimal selection of these parameters varies among different shapes of data, which requires prior knowledge. To address the above parameter selection problem, we propose an effective clustering algorithm based on adaptive neighborhood, which can obtain satisfactory clustering results without setting the neighborhood parameters and the number of clusters. The core idea of the algorithm is to first iterate adaptively to a logarithmic stable state and obtain neighborhood information according to the distribution characteristics of the dataset, and then mark and peel the boundary points according to this neighborhood information, and finally cluster the data clusters with the core points as the centers. We have conducted extensive comparative experiments on datasets of different sizes and different distributions and achieved satisfactory experimental results.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis Using R

A comprehensive introduction and teaching resource for state-of-the-art Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) using R software. This guide facilitates the efficient teaching, independent learning, and use of QCA with the best available software, reducing the time and effort required when encountering not just the logic of a new method, but also new software. With its applied and practical focus, the book offers a genuinely simple and intuitive resource for implementing the most complete protocol of QCA. To make the lives of students, teachers, researchers, and practitioners as easy as possible, the book includes learning goals, core points, empirical examples, and tips for good practices. The freely available online material provides a rich body of additional resources to aid users in their learning process. Beyond performing core analyses with the R package QCA, the book also facilitates a close integration with the R package SetMethods allowing for a host of additional protocols for building a more solid and well-rounded QCA.

Children’s interactive storytelling in Virtual Reality

This article reports on one stage of a project that considered twenty 8–12-years-olds use of Virtual Reality (VR) for entertainment. The entire project considered this in relation to interaction and engagement, health and safety and how VR play fitted into children’s everyday home lives. The specific focus of this article is solely on children’s interaction and engagement with a range of VR content on both a low-end and high-end head mounted display (HMD). The data were analysed using novel multimodal methods that included stop-motion animation and graphic narratives to develop multimodal means for analysis within the context of VR. The data highlighted core design elements in VR content that promoted or inhibited children’s storytelling in virtual worlds. These are visual style, movement and sound which are described in relation to three core points of the user’s journey through the virtual story; (1) entering the virtual environment, (2) being in the virtual story world, and (3) affecting the story through interactive objects. The findings offer research-based design implications for the improvement of virtual content for children, specifically in relation to creating content that promotes creativity and storytelling, thereby extending the benefits that have previously been highlighted in the field of interactive storytelling with other digital media.

Legal Project Management: Projectifying the Legal Profession

Post-Global Financial Crisis, global law firms and in-house departments have started to take up ‘Legal Project Management’ (LPM). LPM adopts and adapts project management methods for the law context as a means of streamlining, planning and costing legal work. This article examines LPM as an aspiring driver of managerialist change within the legal profession. In its reframing of all legal matters as ‘projects’, LPM is also an example of a more specific type of managerialist change, ‘projectification’: the process by which work activities, and our activities generally, are being organised and shaped as projects or temporary endeavours. Though we know managerialism is occurring, our understanding of how it manifests in, and is promoted by, specific practices and discourses within the workplace organisation is under-developed in the law context. It may be tempting to read managerialism as sullying traditional professionalism. But an extensive body of literature has documented the interactions of professional and managerial imperatives that result in what has been described as a hybridisation of different logics or belief systems. This article adds vital detail to the existing literature about managerialism within the legal profession by looking closely at LPM as projectification. To do so, it utilises Mirko Noordegraaf’s three dimensions of professionalism that represent core points of distinction: coordination of work, authority or the grounds for legitimacy, and values at stake. Through these facets, it analyses LPM’s somewhat contradictory aspects, illustrating the schismatic nature of projectification as both exciting and empowering, and ethically risky and dehumanising.

Theories and models: What they are, what they are for, and what they are about

In Fried (this issue), I argue that a lot of work in the social sciences generally—and in psychology specifically—reads like an exercise in statistical model fitting, and falls short of theory building and testing in three ways. First, theories are absent, which fosters conflating statistical models with theoretical models. Second, theories are latent, i.e. implied but not explicated. Third, theories are weak, i.e. ambiguous and impossible to test or reject because they fit any data. I focus on psychometric factor and network models and their applications to cognitive, personality, and clinical psychology, showing that selecting statistical models that impose assumptions consistent with the theories they are supposed to corroborate is necessary for bringing data to bear on these theories. Seven commentaries agree with some of the core challenges the field faces. They raise some important criticisms of the target article, and provide extensions by identifying further problems and potential solutions. Here, I aim to integrate some of the core points and criticism raised, and provide a brief primer on theory formation, structured into three sections: 1) what are theories; 2) what are theories for; 3) and what are theories about. This is followed by a section dedicated to the question 4) how to develop theories. I conclude with 5) specific obstacles to theory formation psychological scientists face, and how they can be overcome.

Theories and models: What they are, what they are for, and what they are about

In Fried (this issue), I argue that a lot of work in the social sciences generally—and in psychology specifically—reads like an exercise in statistical model fitting, and falls short of theory building and testing in three ways. First, theories are absent, which fosters conflating statistical models with theoretical models. Second, theories are latent, i.e. implied but not explicated. Third, theories are weak, i.e. ambiguous and impossible to test or reject because they fit any data. I focus on psychometric factor and network models and their applications to cognitive, personality, and clinical psychology, showing that selecting statistical models that impose assumptions consistent with the theories they are supposed to corroborate is necessary for bringing data to bear on these theories. Seven commentaries agree with some of the core challenges the field faces. They raise some important criticisms of the target article, and provide extensions by identifying further problems and potential solutions. Here, I aim to integrate some of the core points and criticism raised, and provide a brief primer on theory formation, structured into three sections: 1) what are theories; 2) what are theories for; 3) and what are theories about. This is followed by a section dedicated to the question 4) how to develop theories. I conclude with 5) specific obstacles to theory formation psychological scientists face, and how they can be overcome.

Conclusions

This chapter summarizes the mains findings of the book: diversity matters and affects peacekeeping effectiveness. These results have important policy implications and can be clustered around two core points. First, diversity of Blue Helmets and diversity of top leadership may increase peacekeeping effectiveness. Second, and at the same time, the effects of diversity are contextual and contingent. In fact, looking at the relation between peacekeepers and Force Commanders, proximity between them is generally associated with better performances. Further, homogeneity between local populations and peacekeepers, or low distance between them, is also related to low levels of hostility and casualties. The chapter reflects upon the policy implications, particularly the need to manage diversity to minimize instances of coordination problems and misunderstandings. It finally outlines avenues for future research.