Northern philosophies and professional neocolonialism in occupational therapy: a historical review and critique

ABSTRACT In this article, the authors conduct a historical review of recent philosophies influencing the Occupational Therapy profession in the United States (analytic philosophy and Continental varieties such as neopragmatism). Four philosophical categories are explored: epistemology, axiology, ontology, and praxis. The dominant strand of analytic philosophy is characterized by reductionist views of knowledge and reality, with little sustained attention to ethics and practical action. Competing but lesser recognized Continentally-inspired philosophies offer a critical and more phenomenological approach which values human subjectivities, narratives, and social agency. The authors argue that the dominance of analytic philosophy has created the intellectual foundations for neoliberalism to thrive and permeate the profession of Occupational Therapy in its curricula, practice models, reimbursement systems, and research agenda. As this Northern (United States) version of Occupational Therapy expands globally, the danger exists for professional neocolonialism to occur which can negatively influence or contradict more local ways of knowing and doing. The article concludes by offering strategies to unmask, disentangle, and dismantle Occupational Therapy from its Northern roots towards wider acceptance of Southern epistemologies, ethics, and collective action.

Human Machine Integrated Interactions and Internet of Things

More applications are being developed for the Internet of Things (IoT) these days. What resources are available to help with the software design phase, particularly for those programs that emphasize interplay? The incorporation of cognitive approach can aid in the understanding of people and the application of these discoveries in the design phase. The goal of this article is to introduce the idea of blending and the architecture of Integrated Interactions, and to apply those principles to the IoT. This article evaluates the intellectual foundations of conceptual integration and the layering process. After that, this article describes the Integrated Interaction framework and shows an Affinity Table in intervention. This paper also evaluates the fundamentals of the Internet of Things and how it can be used in various industries. According to the findings, this application offers a distinct blend.

Complexity Should Not Be in the Eye of the Beholder: How Representative Complexity Measures Respond to the Commonly-Held Beliefs of the Literature

In an increasingly interconnected & cyber-physical world, the ability to coherently measure and manage complexity is vital for the engineering design and systems engineering community. To this end, numerous measures have been promulgated in the literature, yet these measures differ in terms of their intellectual foundations and perspectives, with limited cross-validation among them. In this paper, we propose a framework for benchmarking the status quo of existing complexity measurement approaches in terms of their alignment with the commonly-held beliefs in the literature. We discover that the literature broadly suggests an understanding of complexity based on a system’s size, number of interconnections, and architectural structure. We adopt a design of experiments approach and synthetically create system architectures to mimic the variation across these dimensions. We then use these architectures as a shared test-bed to document the response of four complexity measures that are representative of the predominant perspectives of the literature. We do this by evaluating the change in measurement of a complexity measure as we incrementally varied the levels of one system architecture property believed to affect complexity while keeping the others constant. We find that none of the measures fully satisfy the commonly-held beliefs of the literature and provide a discussion on the underlying factors that lead to these discrepancies. We note that multiple independent discussions coexist in the literature, with little cohesion and communication across the groups, suggesting that further research is required to understand the interactions and influences among these communities. For this purpose, our rigorous, structured, and grounded in literature benchmarking approach can serve as a testbed for development and verification of future architectural assessment tools and measures.

Benchmarking is a method for developing educational institutions: المقارنة المرجعية أسلوب لتطوير المؤسسات التعليمية

The study aimed to highlight the theoretical and intellectual foundations of the importance of benchmarking as a new entry point for the development of educational institutions through taking advantage of competing partners in the educational field. The study used the documentary descriptive approach leading to a set of results, including: The diversity of benchmarking patterns provides an opportunity to benefit from them in educational institutions, and determining the requirements for the application of benchmarking in each institution based on its specific need which differs from one institution to another, in addition to many benefits that are greatly beneficial to educational institutions that apply benchmarking with quality and professionalism. The study provided a set of recommendations; Most notably: building partnerships based on development and improvement through the application of benchmarking as it is an effective tool to gain benefit from distinguished institutions locally and internationally. It is also possible to employ (classification and academic accreditation) obtained by educational institutions to reach the comparative partner easily and in accessible way.

Science Diplomacy in Latin America and the Caribbean: Current Landscape, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Science, technology, and innovation are taking center stage in international affairs and increasingly influencing the geopolitical dynamics and a country's standing on the global stage. New scientific and technological advancements are acquiring greater strategic relevance to ensure competitive advantages in the twenty-first century global order. At the same time, international scientific collaboration contributes to generating and democratizing knowledge and improving relations between countries as a “soft power” tool to coordinate science-based solutions to transboundary problems, and to build bridges between countries with tense diplomatic relations. Science diplomacy is not a new concept, but most of its intellectual foundations and practical applications have emerged in the Global North. This article describes the diverse approaches, policies and practices adopted by Latin American and Caribbean countries at the national, sub-national, and regional levels. It analyzes their successes and challenges and identifies opportunities to guide the region toward a common science diplomacy strategy to achieve sustainable development through incorporating science as a permanent element in the foreign policy toolkit of Latin American nations. By documenting and illuminating best practices in the region, this article also seeks to balance the emphasis that has so far been largely concentrated on the regions of Europe and North America and contribute to future efforts and strategies for the development of sustainable science diplomacy mechanisms at the national, regional, North-South and South-South levels.

The Sharing Economy: Rhetoric and Reality

The sharing economy is transforming economies around the world, entering markets for lodging, ride hailing, home services, and other sectors that previously lacked robust person-to-person alternatives. Its expansion has been contentious and its meanings polysemic. It launched with a utopian discourse promising economic, social, and environmental benefits, which critics have questioned. In this review, we discuss its origins and intellectual foundations, internal tensions, and appeal for users. We then turn to impacts, focusing on efforts to generate user trust through digital means, tendency to reconfigure and exacerbate class and racial inequalities, and failure to reduce carbon footprints. Though the transformative potential of the sharing economy has been limited by commercialization and more recently by the pandemic, its kernel insight—that digital technology can support logics of reciprocity—retains its relevance even now. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 47 is July 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Perennial Philosophy in the Intellectual Foundations of Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Titus Burckhardt

Perennial philosophy holds that there is something hidden in all transcendent matters that does not belong to a particular period of history and to a particular geographical location. Rather, it exists at all times and is transferred from one period to another as a tradition. Therefore, the term tradition in Perennial philosophy is the same as the sacred intellect that lies in the institution of all these transcendent affairs. Among the thinkers who sought to discover the foundations of Perennial philosophy were Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Titus Burckhardt. Perennial philosophy and traditionalist views have always formed the main and deep theories of these two thinkers. It can also be argued that the traditionalist view of the world has influenced all of Nasr and Burckhardt’s scientific theories. What has been studied in this article is the study and analysis of the views and opinions of Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Titus Burckhardt about Perennial philosophy, and the purpose of this research is to extract the basics of Perennial philosophy based on the views of these two thinkers among their works.