Sacred (re)Collections

This article discusses how state-organized, memory-cultural production drawing on religious signifiers contributes to a sacralization of Turkish public memory institutions and public space. This reinforces an Islamic-nationalist imagination of contemporary Turkey. The article explores state-led, disciplinary interventions in museal space (the Sacred Trusts exhibition of relics at Topkapı Palace Museum) and commemorative ritual in public space, display and education (the rise, fall and recalibration of Holy Birth Week (Kutlu Doğum Haftası). Drawing on theories of symbolic politics, nationalism, memory and space, the article elucidates the sacralization of Turkish memory production as a contesting yet malleable negotiation of nationalism. Innovative Islamic memory practice and ritualization requires careful discursive and disciplinary boundary drawing, catering to theological sensitivities and Sunni-orthodox mores. Then again, the spatial boundaries between various memory-cultural domains are becoming less distinct. Today, Islamic-nationalist imaginaries surface in the interstices of public memory institutions, public education and everyday public space.

Teachers’ Disciplinary Boundedness in the Implementation of Integrated Computational Modeling in Physics

This study explored teachers’ conceptualizations of integrated computational modeling in secondary physics by exposing twelve experienced physics teachers to programming and then analyzing interview responses. Responses revealed that teachers fell along a spectrum of disciplinary boundary–stretching mentalities. This paper presents a preliminary conceptual framework for exploring both horizontal (interdisciplinary) and vertical (intradisciplinary) boundary stretching, as well as for identifying bounded mentalities as teachers consider integration. Horizontal boundary stretchers envisioned opportunities to use computational modeling to shift their curriculum or pedagogical approaches in physics to help students enhance skills underlying multiple fields, while vertical boundary stretchers considered how computing might allow students to explore physics concepts more deeply. Teachers with more boundary-stretching indicators at the outset of an integrated curriculum development workshop were more likely to persist in the implementation of computational modeling–integrated materials in their physics classrooms than those who expressed more bounded thinking. These findings emphasize the importance of considering teachers’ perceptions about how their own science discipline is connected to similar fields and provide implications about how to identify potential adopters of innovative teaching approaches.

THE EMERGENCE OF GEOGRAPHICAL ECONOMICS: AT THE CONTESTED BOUNDARIES OF ECONOMICS, GEOGRAPHY, AND REGIONAL SCIENCE

We explore disciplinary boundary-making in geographical economics or “the new economic geography” with attention to the approaches taken by, and attempts at communication among, scholars with primary affiliations in economics, geography, and regional science. The Dixit-Stiglitz general equilibrium approach to monopolistic competition and increasing returns was applied to agglomeration and location by Paul Krugman, who had previously pioneered the “new trade theory” building on the Dixit-Stiglitz model, and, independently and slightly earlier, by Masahisa Fujita and his student Heshem Abdel-Rahman, starting from regional science, a tradition with its own departments, doctorates, conferences, and journals distinct from economics and geography. Economic geography, as studied by geographers, had already taken a quantitative and theoretical turn in the 1960s, reviving an earlier tradition of German location theory overshadowed within geography after World War II by areal differentiation. Another strand of economic geography pursued by geographers was influenced by economic theory but by non-neoclassical Marxian and Sraffian economics. Debates between these scholars raised questions whether these analyses were multidisciplinary, drawing on distinct disciplines, or crossed disciplinary boundaries (as when geographical economics in the style of economists is undertaken in geography departments) or transcends disciplinary boundaries, or involved the emergence of a new discipline.

THE EMERGENCE OF GEOGRAPHICAL ECONOMICS: AT THE CONTESTED BOUNDARIES OF ECONOMICS, GEOGRAPHY AND REGIONAL SCIENCE

We explore disciplinary boundary-making in geographical economics or “the new economic geography” with attention to the approaches taken by, and attempts at communication between, scholars with primary affiliations in economics, geography and regional science. The Dixit-Stiglitz general equilibrium approach to monopolistic competition and increasing returns was applied to agglomeration and location by Paul Krugman, who had previously pioneered the “new trade theory” building on the Dixit-Stiglitz model, and, independently and slightly earlier, by Masahisa Fujita and his student Heshem Abdel-Rahman starting from regional science, a tradition with its own departments, doctorates, conferences and journals distinct from economics and geography. Economic geography, as studied by geographers, had already taken a quantitative and theoretical turn in the 1960s, reviving an earlier tradition of German location theory overshadowed within geography after World War II by areal differentiation. Another strand of economic geography pursued by geographers was influenced by economic theory, but by non-neoclassical Marxian and Sraffian economics. Debates between these scholars raised questions whether these analyses were multidisciplinary, drawing on distinct disciplines, or crossed disciplinary boundaries (as when geographical economics in the style of economists is undertaken in geography departments) or transcends disciplinary boundaries, or involved the emergence of a new discipline.

Populism and Global Politics

The rise of populist movements and parties the world over in recent years has spurred much academic interest in the subject. Waves of rising insurgent parties and movements across Europe and Asia, the association of the Brexit vote with populism, and the election of Donald Trump as US president on an anti-establishment ticket have all raised the salience of populism in the discipline. While populism was often (but not always) considered a matter for scholars of domestic political processes, the seemingly coordinated rise of such movements in recent years, the extent of engagement between self-declared populist actors across borders, and the observance of a number of commonalities in the foreign policy positions of populist leaders and parties—most notably among populist radical right parties—has led to a greater interest in the topic by scholars of international and global politics. Scholars are increasingly motivated to ask about the international sources of rising populism, the reach of populist actors outside a country’s borders, the transnational linkages between populist parties, and the implications of populism for the future of the liberal international order. The time seems ripe, then, to offer an overview of populism in global politics as a field of study. This bibliography showcases works on populism (and allied concepts) that have an explicitly international angle, including those on the global determinants of populism, comparisons between movements, the foreign policies of populist parties, and transnational engagement between populist actors. Brexit and Donald Trump are considered also given their prominence in the debate on populism, but generally speaking individual cases are not the subject of this resource. The bibliography draws on literature from within political science, principally from the sub-disciplines of comparative politics and international relations, and from related fields of study. The study of populism and global politics lies astride this important disciplinary boundary, and many of the works contained herein discuss the reasons for this divide, and the problems associated with it. Only recently have sustained efforts been made to bridge this disciplinary divide, and the study of populism and global politics is thus continually evolving.

How Behavioural Economics Relates to Psychology - Some Bibliographic Evidence

Whether behavioural economics has a fundamental influence on economics is debated by behavioural and heterodox economists as well as by methodologists and historians of economics. At the core of this debate is the question whether behavioural economics is shaped by large-scale content imports from psychology, or whether these transfers have been too selective to challenge dominant approaches in economics. This study contributes to the debate in analysing a variety of bibliographic data from the disciplinary boundary between economics and psychology. Two datasets from the boundary of behavioural economics and psychology are compared to sets of economic and psychology publications in quantifying the use of mathematics, the share of empirical contributions, the authors’ academic background, and their cross-citations via network analysis. In contrast to proposals made by some methodologists and behavioural economists, the statistical results confirm content transfers from psychology via behavioural economics only to a limited extend. The observed level of interaction provides evidence for a selective import of specific psychological findings by a small number of established investigators in behavioural economics. These findings were then intensively debated as divergences from rationality within the growing, but econ-centered community of behavioural economists.

Concerning curatorial practice in ethnological museums: an epistemology of postcolonial debates

Based on our experience as editors of a debate on ethnographic museums in a German journal, we analyse the conditions and limits of the current debate on the ‘decolonisation’ of ethnographic museums in the German-speaking context. Strictly speaking, the German debate lags behind a bit in relation to the Anglophone debate, but in the face of the re-organisation of the Berlin ethnographic museum as ‘Humboldt-Forum’ it provides crucial insights into the epistemology of unfolding postcolonial debates. We diagnose certain pitfalls of this discussion, e.g. a tendency towards antagonisms and dichotomisation, an overemphasis on the topic of representation and on deconstructionist approaches, an underestimation of anthropology’s critical and self-reflexive potential and too narrow a focus on ethnographic collections. From our point of view, decolonisation must be a joint effort of all kinds of museum types - ethnographic museums, art museums and (natural) history museums as well as city museums, a museum genre being discussed with increased intensity these days. As a consequence, we suggest a more thorough reflection upon the positionality of speakers, but also upon the format, genre and media that facilitate or impede mutual understanding. Secondly, a multi-disciplinary effort to decolonise museum modes of collecting, ordering, interpreting and displaying is needed, i.e. an effort, which cross-cuts different museum types and genres. Thirdly, curators working towards this direction will inevitably have to deal with the problems of disciplinary boundary work and the underlying institutional and cultural-political logics. They eventually will have to work in cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional ways, in order to reassemble disparate collections and critically interrogate notions of ‘communities’ as entities with clear-cut boundaries. After all, in an environment of debate, an exhibition cannot any longer be understood as a means of conveying and popularising knowledge, but rather as a way of making an argument in 3D.

Synoptic Vision: Metatheory, Conceptualisation, and Critical Realism

This paper takes recent sociological debate about “transdisciplinarity” (Carroll 2012; Puddephatt and McLaughlin 2015; Mišina 2015) as a springboard for elaborating on the sociological relevance of meta-theoretical engagement, particularly with critical realism. Sociologists need to more forcefully acknowledge the importance of engaging with metatheory if they are to think more productively and creatively about how the philosophical assumptions that have shaped the production of theories, research design, research practice, and the organisation of our field facilitate and delimit the production of insights about the multifaceted nature of sociological objects and practice. As meta-theorising promotes the neglected procedure of conceptualisation (as opposed to operationalisation) and because it is transdisciplinary (promoting the shedding of disciplinary boundary maintenance while remaining rigorous and methodical), it should be routinely engaged by social scientists to yield conceptual synthesis and fuller, more adequate forms of explanation of their particular objects of investigation.