The vocational potential of anthropology: teaching organisational research through practitioner archives

In this article we posit the potential utility of a practitioner archive as data for teaching those studying anthropology to understand and perhaps also to practice organisational research and consultancy ethnographically. We address both the value and challenges of taking a purposively ethnographic approach to organisational work, as these both reflect and may also inform the values and challenges of teaching ethnographically more generally within anthropology programmes. The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is a not-for-profit social science research and organisational consultancy of charitable status, based in London and in formal operation since 1947. Drawing on archived historical projects of the Institute, we illustrate and explore how a distinctively ethnographic approach to action-orientated research (research undertaken in and with client organisations, which is put into action by implementing changes which are designed to address the organisation’s needs) was achieved in a context of market and other constraints.

The Equality Pillar

This chapter elaborates on the second foundational pillar of CEF—the “Equality Pillar” as a crystallization of the subsidiary version of the better law approach. First, through exposition of the Equality Pillar’s three constituents (Innate Equality, Barbarism, and State Equality), it provides normative meaning to better law as a subsidiary rule, and as such sets out substantive limits on the formal operation of choice-of-law rules. Secondly, it returns to the challenges that have been mounted against all versions of better law and shows how CEF’s vision of better law is immune to those challenges. Finally, it suggests drawing a parallel between the subsidiary version of better law and such notions as the “evil laws” phenomenon and public policy doctrine.

Regularity of Iterative Hairpin Completions of Crossing (2, 2)-Words

Hairpin completion is a formal operation inspired from DNA biochemistry. It is known that the (one step) hairpin completion of a regular language is linear context-free, but not regular in general. Further, it is decidable whether the (one step) hairpin completion of a regular language is regular. However, it is an open question whether the iterated hairpin completion of a regular language is regular, even if it is a singleton. If the word is a non-crossing α-word, there are results, but for crossing words there are no results. In this paper, we give necessary and sufficient conditions that the iterated hairpin completion of a given crossing (2, 2)-α-word in [Formula: see text] is regular.

Representaciones multimodales de metáforas y metonimias en las etiquetas de vino de la D.O. ca. Rioja

In this paper, we will try to offer an analysis of multimodal representations in a sample of Riojan wine labels. Basic formal operation such as cueing has allowed us to present metonymic and metaphoric relations existing between brand names, their origins, Riojan culture as well as viticultural aspects. We present four models of pictorial metaphors and a model of blended space. The role of these conceptual mappings in meaning derivation is relevant in multimodal genre as well as in the communicative functions of wine labels. In this study we have considered ontological metonymies (Kövecses & Radden, 1998), formal and content cognitive operations (Ruiz de Mendoza, 2001, 2011) as well as multimodal representations (Forceville, 2005, 2009).

Brief Report: The Evolution With Age of Probabilistic, Intuitively Based Misconceptions

The purpose of this research was to investigate the evolution, with age, of probabilistic, intuitively based misconceptions. We hypothesized, on the basis of previous research with infinity concepts, that these misconceptions would stabilize during the emergence of the formal operation period. The responses to probability problems of students in Grades 5, 7, 9, and 11 and of prospective teachers indicated, contrary to our hypothesis, that some misconceptions grew stronger with age, whereas others grew weaker. Only one misconception investigated was stable across ages. An attempt was made to find a theoretical explanation for this rather strange and complex situation.

The Brain and Behavior: Casting Light into the “Black-Box”

Historically psychology could be criticized for taking a “black-box approach” in that environmental inputs and organism outputs (or observable behavior) were sufficient for some early practitioners to speculate about internal states, motivations, or the formal operation and structure of the box (brain) itself. Recent experiments in neuroanatomy, psychophysiology, and neural-behavioral science are providing a much needed link between the brain and behavior. Current research suggests that synaptic pathways in the brain which are developmentally determined are also predisposed to learning and can be altered by experience. This observation is discussed in relation to learning-disabled children and the opinion advanced that contemporary brain research offers new paradigms for psychology.

One Year's Experience with a Regional Hormone Assay Service

To provide a service in England and Wales for specialised assays, clinical chemists envisaged a multi-tier system with area, regional, and supraregional laboratories. The Department of Clinical Biochemistry at Addenbrooke's Hospital was established as a regional centre for hormone assays and formal operation started in June 1975. The assays which seemed most suitable for regional development in East Anglia were those for investigating the pituitary-gonad and pituitary-thyroid axes. Most of these were introduced in the first year of operation. A specialised laboratory was not set up: instead, endocrine assays were integrated into a large service laboratory and little expenditure was needed for specialised facilities or staff. The work load of endocrine assays increased markedly during the first year of operation, but the main source of requests was local rather than regional. This lack of use by a region has implications for all three tiers of the specialised service. It suggests that effective centralisation of specialised assays is impracticable unless a dictatorial approach to the problem of rationalisation is made at regional and area level.