Beyond subject-making: Conflicting humanisms, class analysis, and the “dark side” of Gramscian political ecology

This article examines conflicting conceptualizations of the human subject in political ecology and geography: Foucauldian views of “subject-making” and Gramscian views of “the person”. While Foucauldian work holds that the more complete exertion of power, the more coherent subject-making, Gramscian historical–geographical perspectives counter that, the more complete exertion of power, the more incoherent persons and their class-based collectivities. Outlining incongruities between these approaches, I argue that the “dark side” of Gramscian political ecology—with its emphasis on incoherence and fracture–allows geographers new nuance in understanding the human subject, although not without challenges to the actual writing of such scholarship.

Respiratory disorders of Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, mainly affecting people over 60 years of age. Patients develop both classic symptoms (tremors, muscle rigidity, bradykinesia and postural instability) and nonclassical symptoms (orthostatic hypotension, neuropsychiatric deficiency, sleep disturbances and respiratory disorders). Thus, patients with PD can have a significantly impaired quality of life, especially when they do not have multi-modality therapeutic follow-up. The respiratory alterations associated with this syndrome are the main cause of mortality in PD. They can be classified as peripheral when caused by disorders of the upper airways or muscles involved in breathing and as central when triggered by functional deficits of important neurons located in the brainstem and involved in respiratory control. Currently, there is little research describing these disorders, and therefore, there is no well-established knowledge about the subject, making the treatment of patients with respiratory symptoms difficult. In this review, the history of the pathology and data about the respiratory changes in PD obtained thus far will be addressed.

“We Are Not Foreigners”: Constructing Migrant Subjects through Korean Chinese Migrants’ Claims-Making in South Korea

In this paper, we approach citizenship as a claims-making process consisting of social construction practices that emerge from ongoing negotiations and contestations. We examine the migrant subject-making process of Korean Chinese migrants in South Korea. We draw on the voices of migrants to discuss how Korean Chinese construct their migrant subjectivity by mobilizing a collective understanding of ethnonational belonging and thereby deploy distinctive strategies to support their claims. Our analysis of the data gathered from ethnographic observations and interviews with Korean Chinese migrant workers, activists, South Korean bureaucrats, and policymakers show that Korean Chinese migrants have called upon blood ties and ethnic affinity, continued allegiance, economic contributions, and human rights to construct themselves as legitimate candidates for citizenship in South Korea. By shifting our analytical focus from the state to the migrant subjectivity that emerges through day-to-day negotiations, we aim to unpack the complicated dynamics of social constructions of citizenship.

Work Passion e Identidade: reflexões de uma meta-síntese

O presente estudo tem como objetivo analisar como a Work Passion afeta na Identidade dos indivíduos em suas atividades, aos quais foram analisados estudos de caso a partir da metodologia de meta-síntese proposta por Hoon (2013). Considerando esses dois conceitos, ressalta-se que para Vallarand et al., (2003) a paixão pelo trabalho existe quando as pessoas julgam importantes ou investem tempo e energia na atividade. Nesse sentido, as atividades de valor passam a ser internalizadas na identidade da pessoa. Para alcançar os resultados foram feitas buscas em quatro bases de dados: Web of Science, Scielo, Spell e Scopus, em que os termos utilizados para busca foram “Work Passion*” AND “Identity” AND “Study Case”. A síntese realizada neste estudo contribuiu para o avanço da literatura em Work Passion e Identidade ao propor um conjunto básico de características presentes nos artigos analisados aos quais chama-se atenção para o tema e suas variáveis, avançando principalmente no estudo da literatura do tema tornando-se útil para futuros estudos. ABSTRACTThe present study aims to analyze how Work Passion affects the Identity of individuals in their activities, to which case studies were analyzed from the meta-synthesis methodology proposed by Hoon (2013). Considering these two concepts, it is noteworthy that for Vallarand et al. (2003) the passion for work exists when people consider it important or invest time and energy in the activity. In this sense, the valuable activities become internalized in the person's identity. To reach the results, searches were made in four databases: Web of Science, Scielo, Spell and Scopus, in which the terms used for the search were "Work Passion*" AND "Identity" AND "Study Case". The synthesis performed in this study contributed to the advancement of the literature on Work Passion and Identity by proposing a basic set of characteristics present in the analyzed articles to which attention is drawn to the theme and its variables, advancing mainly the study of the literature on the subject, making it useful for future studies.

A Novel Knowledge Distillation-Based Feature Selection for the Classification of ADHD

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a brain disorder with characteristics such as lack of concentration, excessive fidgeting, outbursts of emotions, lack of patience, difficulty in organizing tasks, increased forgetfulness, and interrupting conversation, and it is affecting millions of people worldwide. There is, until now, not a gold standard test using which an ADHD expert can differentiate between an individual with ADHD and a healthy subject, making accurate diagnosis of ADHD a challenging task. We are proposing a Knowledge Distillation-based approach to search for discriminating features between the ADHD and healthy subjects. Learned embeddings from a large neural network, trained on the functional connectivity features, were fed to one hidden layer Autoencoder for reproduction of the embeddings using the same connectivity features. Finally, a forward feature selection algorithm was used to select a combination of most discriminating features between the ADHD and the Healthy Controls. We achieved promising classification results for each of the five individual sites. A combined accuracy of 81% in KKI, 60% Peking, 56% in NYU, 64% NI, and 56% OHSU and individual site wise accuracy of 72% in KKI, 60% Peking, 73% in NYU, 70% NI, and 71% OHSU were obtained using our extracted features. Our results also outperformed state-of-the-art methods in literature which validates the efficacy of our proposed approach.

“Still a bit uncomfortable, to be an arm of the state”: Making sense and subjects of counter-extremism in the UK and Morocco

Countering violent extremism (CVE) policies infiltrate every corner of public life, travelling across the Global North and South. However, scholars have under-analysed the perspective of those charged with CVE’s implementation, and have treated CVE in a spatial binary, implying that its operationalisations in the Global North and South are conceptually distinct. This article presents a comparative political ethnography of CVE projects framed as care provision in the field of education in Morocco and the UK. It asks, how is CVE rationalised for and by non-traditional security actors in education, such as university and NGO administrators, and how is it integrated into the ordinary across the North and the South? In both contexts, implementation does not “just” enrol those involved with care duties at their institution into the government of the “dangerous other.” It also shapes the self-governance of those transformed into hesitant security actors. This paper argues that implementers leverage the ‘normal politics’ of institutional care to implement the global counter-extremist agenda. CVE enters spaces of education globally through camouflage – it blends itself into existing understandings and practices of institutional care, whatever they may be. By working across the North and the South through similar mechanisms of sense and subject-making, CVE recruits implementers for the co-production of an expansive global geography of exclusion that locates marginalised young Muslims as global outsiders within.

Hospital Sketches

In November 1862, Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) signed up as a volunteer nurse for the Sanitary Commission charged with caring for the Civil War’s mounting casualties. From 13 December 1862 until 21 January 1863, Miss Alcott served at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown in the District of Columbia, where she ultimately contracted typhoid and pneumonia and very nearly died. This book is her account of her journey south from Concord and her six weeks in the nation’s wartime capital. Styling herself by the fanciful name “Tribulation Periwinkle,” she brought humor as well as pathos to her subject, making this first-hand account of the absolute horrors of a 19th-century war hospital seem less shocking and more appreciative of the sacrifices being made by the wounded warriors and their families.

‘In the Meantime’: Ordinary Life in Continuous Medical Testing for Lung Cancer

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Danes undergoing CT scans as part of follow-up testing for potential lung cancer, we explore how access to technologies generates diagnostic uncertainty and trends of continuous testing. Our research is set in the context of a welfare state that has cultivated forms of government whose public health branches focus on early diagnosis and cancer control. Many studies on biotechnologies emphasise subject-making and power relations. Inspired by the work of Veena Das, we adopt an approach that focuses on the entanglement of diagnostic investigations with everyday life. We argue that being followed establishes a mode of being which we call ‘in the meantime’. Life in the meantime is equally characterised by a dramatic mode of being—that is, waiting for death—and an ambiguous mode of being: feeling quite well. As with any life crisis, it involves some sense of agency. We show in this paper how life in the meantime informs an ordinary ethics that encourages three ethical concerns in everyday life: firstly, how to inhabit life in the meantime? Secondly, what good is the testing for? And finally, what is a good death?

Teaching at Holocaust memorial sites: Swedish teachers’ understanding of the educational values of visiting Holocaust memorial sites

The present article focuses on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Sweden, conducted as study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, this study is the first to examine these Swedish study trips. Since there are no centralised systems for arranging these study trips, this study regards dedicated teachers as the main stakeholders. By deploying critical discourse analysis of transcripts of nine in-depth interviews with teachers, the study terms the discursive order of the teachers’ talk about the study trips ritual democratic catharsis. The teachers’ two main purposes are the use of the study trips as a vehicle for the social dynamics in the group to evolve in order to promote personal growth among the students, and the students’ learning about democracy and human rights. Their overarching didactic strategy of focusing on the suffering of the victims is meant to evoke empathy among the students, but lacks an explanatory aim. The study critically points out the teachers’ unreflected relationship to historiographic Holocaust content as a subject, making their teaching vulnerable to contemporary political influences, jeopardising the democratic purpose of these trips.