The Myth of (A)typical Development

Over the past decade, the field of psychology has come under increasing fire for the replicability of purported findings, for the transparency of the methods used, and for the generalisability of the claims. In general, these criticisms have focused on the methodological and statistical aspects of published work. Herein, we focus on an underdiscussed issue: we highlight the importance of diversity of both our experimental samples and of our researchers within developmental psychology as a barrier to generalisability. Far beyond being a purely methodological question, e.g., of heterogenous sampling, ignoring the importance of context and environment in development implies risking to comprehend pivotal facets of development. Importantly, we discuss the harms done to community-building and to our own science's theoretical contributions, as a direct result of defining and maintaining misplaced "norms" or "typical" developmental scenarios. Finally, we outline how even small steps by individuals can be impactful, such as ceasing to request unsubstantiated comparisons to the Western "norm" in peer review.

Скандал Ф. Достоевского и М. Бахтина

Scandal of F. Dostoevsky and M. Bakhtin. Article is dedicated to analysis of relations between Dostoevsky’s artistic works, journalism and Bakhtin’s books about Dostoevsky poetics on the basis of frequency of word scandal. Scandal as word of Dostoevsky artistic language (object language), as element of analytical language of Dostoevsky as journalist (autometalanguage) and as notion for analysis of Dostoevsky poetics in the book of Bakhtin (metalanguage) raises methodological question about flexibility of metalanguage in situations where a same word can function simultaneously on all levels of description of research object.

IMAGINING ALTERNATIVE MEDIATED FUTURES? REFLECTIONS ON EXPERIMENTAL WORKSHOPS WITH YOUNG PEOPLE

Imagining alternatives to the thoroughly networked contemporary everyday is not easy. In our research project, we tackled this problem by developing an ‘imagining workshop’ method and applying it in an experimental study with young people. In this paper, we present methodological reflections based on these imagining experiments. Our paper contributes to nascent research that explores and experiments with so-called speculative methods in the field of critical media and infrastructure studies. We are interested in whether the dynamic of hegemony that actualizes in mediated daily practices can be questioned, and alternatives imagined to ‘how things are’. We seek to do this by bringing together perspectives from speculative fiction and critical media infrastructure studies. Our key methodological question is: “how could we as researchers create interventionist methods to spark imagination and inspire (self-)reflective thinking in people about their mediated everyday?” In the paper, we highlight two major observations from the workshops. First, while projecting alternatives to future mediated everyday proved challenging for the participants, it sparked vibrant discussions on the contemporary networked society’s bleak sides. A challenge we observed is that the act of imagining does not necessarily mean that what is co-produced in playful workshop settings are counter-hegemonic narratives of the future. Second, our study highlights that young people have concerns about their mediated everyday life, and these concerns emphasize the need to actively seek alternatives to ‘how things are’. The concerns were related to privacy and dataveillance, and lack of safe online spaces, fairly manufactured devices, and possibilities to disconnect.

Conceptualizing Personhood for Sustainability: A Buddhist Virtue Ethics Perspective

This conceptual paper addresses the role the individual plays in sustainability against the backdrop of the ethical dimensions of sustainability. We discuss the relevance of moral personhood as a basis for sustainability and develop a model of personhood for sustainability. The paper outlines the ethical dimensions of sustainability and discusses the role of individual morality for sustainability from a virtue ethics perspective. We employ a Buddhist virtue ethical approach for conceptualizing a model of the sustainable person that is characterized by sustainability virtues, interdependent personhood, and an inherent concern for the wellbeing of others, nature, and future beings. In contrast to many Western-based conceptions of the individual actor, our model of sustainable personhood conceptualizes and explains a coherent and inherent individual motivation for sustainability. The paper contributes to the methodological question of how to best consider the individual in sustainability research and sustainability approaches and suggests a conceptual basis for integrating individual, institutional, and systemic aspects of sustainability.

Handwritten in Lagos: Selfhood and Textuality in Colonial Petitions

This paper asks a methodological question: In what way can petitions written in the colonial period introduce us to the persona of the writers – that is, as against mainstream interpretation given to them as mere archival sources? Doesn’t the very nature of the petitions introduce us to the selfhood of those “caught up” in the often-mentioned “sophisticated” concepts of nationalism, politics, power, imperialism, urbanity, and colonialism? What, and how, do petitions tell us about the “interior version” of colonial society as seen in the individual? In an attempt at a deeper understanding of colonial Lagos, this paper examines an alternative feature of petitions as entry into the selfhood of colonial subjects rather than mainstream interpretations of the documents as qualitative exposition to “grand” historical phenomena. Selfhood as examined here is presented as it was constructed by petitions written in Lagos between 1940 and 1960 with a particular focus on three. Their deficiencies in “standards of grammar” notwithstanding, the words are also examined to allow for a demonstration of their qualities as texts: their meanings in singular and collaborative contexts, the gaps they exposed, the information they concealed, the disconnections in chronology they indicated, the “ethics” of grammar they “relegated” for more “substantial expose” of the self, the information they privileged the reader to hear, the identity they formed in the personas they constructed and the voice they generated. This paper suggests that these strands analyzed together affirm the textuality of petitions written by everyday people in colonial Lagos and that these point to the potentiality of such documents to further contribute to the substantial comprehension of the inner qualities of self-identity in Lagos and Nigeria’s colonial history.

Lab-Sophistication: Does Repeated Participation in Laboratory Experiments Affect Pro-Social Behaviour?

Experimental social scientists working at research-intensive institutions deal inevitably with subjects who have most likely participated in previous experiments. It is an important methodological question to know whether participants that have acquired a high level of lab-sophistication show altered pro-social behavioural patterns. In this paper, we focus both on the potential effect of the subjects’ lab-sophistication, and on the role of the knowledge about the level of lab-sophistication of the other participants. Our main findings show that while lab-sophistication per se does not significantly affect pro-social behaviour, for sophisticated subjects the knowledge about the counterpart’s level of (un)sophistication may systematically alter their choices. This result should induce caution among experimenters about whether, in their settings, information about lab-sophistication can be inferred by the participants, due to the characteristics of the recruitment mechanisms, the management of the experimental sessions or to other contextual clues.

ROMANTIC NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE “SPIRIT OF ABSOLUTE”

The article deals with the problems of the Romantics’ attitude to Kantian criticism and dogmatic rationalism. The circumstances that actualized the methodological question of the principles of the separation of “idealism” and “realism” (in the Schellingian sense) are analysed. “Action” was considered by Romantics to be a more important moment of philosophizing than the ultimate goal of this process — conditional “knowledge”. It is proved that the fundamental difference of philosophical systems is due to the importance attached to the “absolute”. It is stated that the shift of emphasis from the object to the subject legitimized the new content of the “real”. It is concluded that romantic natural philosophy (“philosophy of life”) on the eve of the publication of Hegelian dialectics became an alternative to any philosophical dogmatism.

Some Recent Work on Nietzsche’s Ethical Thought

An important question in Nietzsche studies is whether Nietzsche has an ethics to offer his readers; whether, that is, he has a concept of the good, or the just, or the virtuous that can serve as some sort of an ethical guide. An additional, methodological question is whether, in search of an answer, one should focus on a specific period in his thinking, study the evolution of his thought, or attempt to extract an over-arching view that draws on texts from different stages of his thinking. The three works reviewed concern themselves with Nietzsche’s ethics by each adopting one of these three approaches, supplying us, accordingly, with different results.

‘We come in as “the nothing”’

In our ethnographic study of palliative care in a UK medical setting, we concerned ourselves with instances when medical staff chose not do something, which we came to call ‘noninterventions’. Such instances raised an obvious question: how does one study something that is not happening? In this Position Piece, we outline three ways in which we have tried to engage with this methodological question, from the initial grant application process to the point we are at now: first, a somewhat positivist approach, which allowed us to delineate the phenomenon of our study; second, a following technique, adopted to understand noninterventions as and when they are conceived by our informants; and third, an approach that tries to trace enactments of ‘not doing’ by mapping the range of different practices and, in so doing, elucidates how ‘not doing’ invariably occurs alongside other forms of doing. We describe what these approaches have taught us so far and reflect on the limits of each. We do so in the hope of providing others with starting points for studying nothings, ‘not doings’, and absences.

Historicity and Religiosity in Heidegger’s Interpretation of the Reality: With an Outlook to Adolf Reinach’s Contribution to Heidegger’s Phenomenological Conception

The question of whether Heidegger’s phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking, is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger’s concept of the history of being in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the ‘turn’; in Heidegger’s thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger’s thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger’s early phenomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological–hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger’s thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger’s theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger’s lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity.