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2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80
Author(s):  
Rafhael R. Cunha ◽  
Jomi Fred Hübner ◽  
Maiquel De Brito

{In multi-agent systems, artificial institutions connect institutional concepts, belonging to the institutional reality, to the concrete elements that compose the system. The institutional reality is composed of a set of institutional concepts, called Status-Functions. Current works on artificial institutions focus on identifying the status-functions and connecting them to the concrete elements. However, the functions associated with the status-functions are implicit. As a consequence, the agents cannot reason about the functions provided by the elements that carry the status-functions and, thus, cannot exploit these functions to satisfy their goals. Considering this problem, this paper proposes a model to express the functions -- or the purposes -- associated with the status-functions. Examples illustrate the application of the model in a practical scenario, showing how the agents can use purposes to reason about the satisfaction of their goals in institutional contexts.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Karol Morales Muñoz ◽  
Alejandra Dinegro Martinez

Abstract Recently in Latin America, numerous mobilizations of workers against the precariousness of work in delivery platforms have been developed. In this study, we argue that consolidation into strong organizations for defending platform workers’ interests is strongly related to the socio-political and institutional contexts they are involved in. Drawn upon the understanding of solidarity among workers as a phenomenon rooted in the labor process, as well as the relevance of socio-political and institutional context for the organizing processes among precarious workers, this study addresses the cases of self-organization of platforms deliverers in Chile and Peru. Based on ethnographic research, the results show common characteristics of workers’ self-organization, which are related to similar labor processes in delivery platforms. In addition, results shed light on the relevance of the socio-political and institutional context in providing resources for the consolidation of grassroots organizations, especially after platform counter-actions.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Williams ◽  
Becky Shaw ◽  
Anthony Schrag

The following text explores performative art works commissioned within a specific “arts and health” cultural setting, namely that of a medical school within a British university. It examines the degree to which the professional autonomy of the artists (and curator) was “instrumentalized” and diminished as a result of having to fit into normative frames set by institutional agendas (in this case, that of “the neoliberal university”). We ask to what extent do such “entanglements,” feel more like “enstranglements,” suffocating the artist’s capacity to envision the world afresh or any differently? What kinds of pressures allow for certain kinds of “evidence” to be read and made visible, (and not others)? Are You Feeling Better? was a 2016 programme curated by Frances Williams, challenging simplistic expectations that the arts hold any automatic power of their own to make “things better” in healthcare. It included two performative projects – The Secret Society of Imperfect Nurses, by Anthony Schrag with student nurses at Kings College London, and Hiding in Plain Sight by Becky Shaw (plus film with Rose Butler) with doctoral researchers in nursing and midwifery. These projects were situated in a climate of United Kingdom National Health Service cuts and austerity measures where the advancement of social prescribing looks dangerously like the government abnegating responsibility and offering art as amelioration. The text therefore examines the critical “stage” on which these arts-health projects were performed and the extent to which critical reflection is welcomed within institutional contexts, how learning is framed, expressed aesthetically, as well as understood as art practice (as much as “education” or “learning”). It further examines how artistic projects might offer sites of resistance, rejection and mechanisms of support against constricting institutional norms and practices that seek to instrumentalise artistic works to their own ends.


Author(s):  
Jen-Yi Wu ◽  
Sibel Erduran

Abstract In this paper, we use the “Family Resemblance Approach” (FRA) as a framework to characterize how scientists view the nature of science (NOS). FRA presents NOS as a “system” that includes clusters or categories of ideas about the cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional aspects of science. For example, the cognitive-epistemic aspects include aims and values such as objectivity and scientific methods such as hypothesis testing. Social-institutional aspects refer to a range of components including social values such as honesty about evidence and institutional contexts of science such as research institutions. Characterized as such, NOS is thus a system of interacting components. The initial account of FRA was proposed by philosophers of science and subsequently adapted and extended for science education including through empirical studies. Yet, there is little understanding of the extent to which FRA coheres with scientists’ own depictions about NOS. Hence, an empirical study was conducted with scientists to investigate their views about FRA as well as their views of NOS using the FRA framework. In so doing, the research sought to explore the utility of FRA from scientists’ point of view. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of 17 Taiwanese scientists’ responses to a set of written questions indicates that scientists are in agreement with the FRA account of NOS, and they detail all aspects in their reference to NOS, although the social-institutional aspects are underrepresented in their depiction. Implications for further studies and science education are discussed.


Author(s):  
James Higham ◽  
Debbie Hopkins ◽  
Caroline Orchiston

AbstractAcademics are part of a small minority that are responsible for disproportionate air travel emissions. Responding to high aviation emissions requires that the complexities of academic air travel practices are understood in specific geographical and institutional contexts. This chapter addresses the work-sociology of academic aeromobility in the context of the global periphery. We report on a programme of interviews conducted prior to COVID-19 with academics at the University of Otago (Aotearoa/New Zealand), where the aeromobility practices of academics are uniquely shaped by extreme geographical distance. Our empirical contribution is presented in the four themes that emerged from our analysis: complex drivers; selective substitution; ‘Don’t weaken me!’ and assorted scalar accountabilities. We then discuss aspects of resistance to change but also avenues of opportunity to reimagine academic air travel practices, which have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We specifically address the emergence of a post-COVID ‘new normal’ and conclude with the urgent need for collective action that is coordinated among individual academics, institutions, disciplinary associations and conference organisers. Entrenching the ‘new normal’ will be critical to resolving the unsustainable aeromobilities of academics and institutions that are globally distant.


Author(s):  
Hannah Franz ◽  
Anne Charity Hudley ◽  
Rachael Scarborough King ◽  
Kendra Calhoun ◽  
deandre miles-hercules ◽  
...  

Abstract The authors present a lab-based research model that engages graduate students in undergraduate research mentorship positions that are mutually beneficial for graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty. They show how this model can be scaled up and adapted across the range of English disciplines. The authors share examples of the different types of research that they have engaged in for linguistics, literary archival studies, creative writing, and writing pedagogy. These examples illustrate how undergraduate research mentorship can prepare graduate students to teach and mentor students using effective methods in various institutional contexts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 262-277
Author(s):  
Candy Gunther Brown

This chapter examines yoga as a spiritual and a social practice. It considers three institutional contexts for interpreting yoga spirituality: religion, law, and education. Social institutions such as public schools and courts of law must arbitrate interpretive contests by formulating and applying definitions for the purposes of educational policy and legal precedent. In making such determinations, it would be naive to accept all assertions of identity and meaning as full disclosures. Sometimes the same people describe the same practice as “spiritual” or “secular,” depending upon whether the legal context is First Amendment religious free exercise clause protection or establishment clause restriction. Decisions about how to categorize practices rest in large part on pragmatic concerns. This case study invites scholars of spirituality to pay closer attention to how legal and social contexts shape how people think and talk about practices in relation to the interpretive categories of “spirituality,” “religion,” and “secularity.”


2021 ◽  
pp. 314-332
Author(s):  
Jaime Kucinskas

When spirituality moves—from one religion to another, from religious to secular fields, or from private to public spheres—it can change in many ways, based on who is sending and who is receiving the practices, and the local and broader institutional contexts in which practitioners abide. Yet scholarship seldom interrogates how strongly different cultural and structural layers of social settings impact spiritual practitioners’ experiences, and the pluralistic forms of spirituality that result. To show how peer and institutional cultures can shape spirituality in their own likeness and to serve their own needs, I provide illustrative examples of how, in order to resonate with new audiences, spirituality changes. These examples reveal how deeply socially situated American spirituality is in broader social and institutional fields, in contrast to common perceptions among the public and scholars that describe spiritual practices as typically individualistic private means of transcending social life.


2021 ◽  
pp. 128-153
Author(s):  
Alyssa N. Rockenbach

This study draws on an original national and longitudinal survey to examine patterns and predictors of change in religious and spiritual self-perceptions among over seven thousand college students in their first year on campus. The chapter identifies the personal characteristics, institutional contexts, and collegiate experiences that shaped students’ perceptions of themselves in relation to religion and spirituality. Twenty-eight percent of first-year students changed their self-perception in the first year of college; a switch to “spiritual but not religious” was the most common type of change. The study illuminates parallel reactions to religious and spiritual descriptors among certain groups. For example, both atheists and evangelical Christians were less likely than mainline Protestants to adopt the “religious but not spiritual” and “spiritual but not religious” labels. Lived experiences in the first year of college made a notable impact on students’ self-perceptions of spirituality.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Foley

AbstractHow will ocean governance actors and institutions handle a future where the abundance and spatial distribution of marine life changes rapidly and variably? The answer, this paper argues, will be influenced by inherited and changing ocean proximity politics, whereby institutions and actors use spatial proximity or adjacency to legitimize particular forms of resource control, conservation and use. Focusing on United Nations and Canadian institutional contexts and recognizing state and non-state actors as agents of policy change, the paper documents and examines why and how spatial proximity has been invoked (i) as a principle for claiming, defining and implementing use rights, privileges and responsibilities for not just nation-states but also for other entities such as coastal communities and small-scale fisheries; (ii) to justify and legitimize rights, privileges and responsibilities for their interest and benefit; and (iii) to inform and challenge global and local discussions about principles such as conservation, sustainability and distributive equity. The future practical use of spatial closeness/distance for guiding policies of access and exclusion under conditions of change will likely be influenced by challenges associated with applying multiple and conflicting governance principles, accommodating diverse interests and interpretations of principle definition and application, and multiple forms of biophysical and social mobilities. The conclusion highlights four areas of further research and policy engagement for the study of ocean proximity politics.


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