Decline and Fall, Growth and Spread, or Resilience? Approaches to Studying How and Why Societies Change

An avid reader of history will be quite familiar with the rich, emotive narratives detailing the tragic decline and ultimate fall of once mighty civilizations; Rome succumbing to barbarian hordes, Alexander of Macedon’s and Chinggis Khan’s spear-won empires splitting into warring factions, and the demise of the great Inca or Maya civilizations are just a few such examples. On the other side of the stacks, similarly grandiose narratives document some group’s incredible growth and spread taking over vast territories and populations. These tell typically of societies coming to dominate a region, often in the face of overwhelming odds and tribulation or through some precocious development of a key technology or strategy that later becomes widespread. Here, I take stock of previous approaches to studying function – from growth and development to crisis and collapse to resilience – and ask what is the most fruitful lens with which to view fluctuations in how societies function and change over time, as this review essay attempts to accomplish.

COMPUTING NUMERICAL IMAGES OF STUDENT WRITING

With the rapid increase in the number of available digital texts in schools, new methodological approaches to studying writing development in education are now emerging. However, with new methodological approaches follow new epistemological challenges. In this article, I examine some of these challenges and discuss how they affect the role of computational linguistics within the field of educational writing research. The article is structured around three main sections. First, I position computational linguistics within the wider field of educational writing research with particular focus on L1 writing and K12 education. Second, I discuss to what extent methods from computational linguistics can provide us with new insights into different aspects of educational writing. Third, I discuss the potential of the concept of affordance to bridge between technology-centered and human-centered methodological approaches, and I relate this idea to recent theoretical developments in the digital humanities. Based on this discussion, I conclude the article with suggestions for possible directions in future writing research.

Managing technological potential process as the factor of sustainable development of industrial enterprises

In the modern economics of industrial production the fundamental trend is the technological potential connected with the period of transition to innovative high technology industrial production. It is an important factor influencing the perspective indicators of development of economics and the entire industrial complex. Management of industrial enterprises requires establishing new approaches to the use of technological potential and its management. For this purpose, the works of scientists in the subject area of the technological potential of industrial enterprises have been studied. The authors consider theoretical approaches to studying technological potential and sustainable development of industrial enterprises. They systematized methodological approaches to studying the concept of ‘technological potential’ and structured the factors influencing it. The fundamental factors include social, international factors, state of economy, economic policy, market factors, factors of governmental influence and institutional factors. To assess the technological potential of an enterprise, a system of KPI is used, which allows taking into account the limitations and desirable levels for a whole range of particular parameters of indicators, indicators, both quantitative and qualitative.

Social Interaction Style in Autism: An Inquiry into Phenomenological Methodology

Autistic difficulties with social interaction have primarily been understood as expressions of underlying impairment of the ability to ‘mindread.’ Although this understanding of autism and social interaction has raised controversy in the phenomenological community for decades, the phenomenological criticism remains largely on a philosophical level. This article helps fill this gap by discussing how phenomenology can contribute to empirical methodologies for studying social interaction in autism. By drawing on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and qualitative data from an ongoing study on social interaction in autism, I discuss how qualitative interviews and participant observation can yield phenomenologically salient data on social interaction. Both, I argue, enjoy their phenomenological promise through facilitating attention to the social-spatial-material fields in and through which social interactions and experiences arise. By developing phenomenologically sound approaches to studying social interaction, this article helps resolve the deficiency of knowledge concerning experiential dimensions of social interaction in autism.

Peculiarities of the logistic approach in the agro-industrial complex

Effective sale of products is one of the main directions of increasing the financial stability of enterprises in the agro-industrial complex. The use of a logistic approach implies a change in the existing situation at the enterprises of the agro-industrial complex, the introduction of new technologies in order to reduce the costs of commodity movement, and the coordination of interaction between participants in the logistics system. It is necessary to take into account the specifics of the food market more fully, consider the logistics system in conditions when a large number of economically independent market entities enter the market. The paper examines theoretical approaches to studying the problem of using the logistic approach in the agro-industrial complex and reveals the basic nodes of the agro-logistics system. Peculiarities of using logistics in the agro-industrial complex are described, basic logistic flows and processes in the given branch are reviewed. Types of distribution of products in the agro-industrial complex are analyzed. Influence of use of logistic methods of management generally and of stocks in particular on production and financial activity of enterprises in the given sphere is estimated.