French Economic and Monetary Policies in Francophone Africa:

Since granting independence to her former colonies (especially the countries in the West and Central Africa subregions), France has maintained tight economic, political, and to a great extent, social control over their internal and external affairs. These continued ties with France have become the subject of contentious debates (previously considered taboo) among scholars in recent times, evidenced in the development of activism in Africa and continental Europe where the former has been sensitized or radicalized about France’s exploitative approach to economic partnership. The economies of these African nations have suffered stagnation and retrogression in contrast to their non-French-influenced neighbors. This essay employs a literature review to assess the impact of French hegemony over these former colonies, therefore providing a cogent argument for the abolition of the monetary agreement in favor of a local currency, and cessation of political dependencies that also carry a negative stigma. Intellectuals and politicians have argued that the continued use of the CFA franc currency (a relic of colonialism with a different twist) is exploitative; recognized even by French politicians who have appealed to their government to employ moral and ethical considerations to desist from the persistent exploitation of Africa. Social movements have developed today in demanding that African nations still using this currency should withdraw from the agreements due to the severe negative effects on economic development.

Psychological Compassion as Portrayed in Dorothea in Eliot’s Middlemarch and Louisa in Dickens’ Hard Times

This article has a cogent argument to investigate the similarities and differences between Eliot and Dickens’ techniques in revealing the insight natural expressions of compassion by analyzing the heroines’ characteristics portrayed in the common theme of their selected novels. This article adopts the Seven-Stage Model of Maslow’s (1970) Motivation Theory to analyze Dorothea in Eliot’s Middlemarch and Louisa in Dickens’ Hard Times. According to Maslow, individuals should satisfy the models’ conceptual expressions completely to reach an ultimate level, which is self-actualization needs. In this regard, Maslow maintained that those who have reached the pyramid’s peak are capable of love. The findings of this study indicate that Eliot shines by enhancing many prominent feminine touches, emotional and aesthetic concepts, and passionate experiences in her heroines’ personalities much more than Dickens who ignores them. For instance, Dorothea in Eliot’s Middlemarch satisfies all the conceptual expressions of the model’s self-actualization needs perfectly, while Louisa in Dickens’ Hard Times has many problems, particularly in getting love, esteem, as well as cognitive, aesthetic, and self-actualization needs. So, Eliot’s excellence suggests a powerful contribution by refuting and criticizing the Victorian masculine stereotypical mottos that women could not express more than half of life and they could not feel a passion.

Proserpina Unbound: John Ruskin, Maria La Touche, and Victorian Floriculture

Filled with caustic statements on artificial plant breeding and florist flowers, John Ruskin's botanical essay collection, Proserpina (1875–86), advances a cogent argument against commercial floriculture and, by extension, the commodification of vegetal life. However, the eco-political stakes of this text have received limited attention. Past studies have primarily interpreted Proserpina as a testament to Ruskin's disquiet about Darwinism and as a memorial to his late love, Rose La Touche. In this article, I argue that beneath these scientific and personal imperatives, Proserpina urges readers to resist the consumption of floral commodities engineered by Victorian nurserymen and florists. My reading draws together the history of nineteenth-century flower breeding with recent inquiries from the field of critical plant studies in order to illuminate how Ruskin's botanical prose dovetails with present-day debates on vegetal ethics. Flower-breeding motifs figure prominently in a series of letters written for Proserpina by Rose's mother, Maria La Touche, whose contributions to this book have long been overlooked. Analyzing Proserpina's floricultural subtext will not only recover La Touche's letters from the shadow of Ruskin's love life but also underscore an unexplored facet of Ruskin's antipathy toward Darwin, who celebrated florist flowers in his own botanical writings.

Writing, Arguing, Contributing - A Cogent Argumentation Framework for Identifying, Specifying, and Evaluating Research Contribution

The predominant means by which research becomes visible and accessible to the research community is through publication. Generally, publication requires careful framing of the research in relation to existing knowledge. As a contribution to knowledge cannot be self-evident, authors must persuade, through argumentation, the editors, reviewers, and the research community that their work offers a contribution. In Information Systems, the discussion of argumentation is often limited to the logic dimensions of argumentation, namely deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning. In this paper, we demonstrate that argumentation requires the consideration of three additional dimensions of argumentation: rhetoric, dialectic, and social-institutional. Kuhn’s concept of the disciplinary matrix is introduced as the background toward which a cogent argument is directed and against which contribution is evaluated. We then illustrate the role of argumentation through the example of the seminal paper by Orlikowski and Iacono on the role of IT in Information Systems research. Understanding the importance of argumentation in framing one’s research contribution is critical to authors, editors, and reviewers alike within and beyond Information Systems and its reference disciplines.

Incommensurability in ethics

In ethics and neighbouring subjects, incommensurability has been attributed to at least three different kinds of entities, namely moral theories or traditions, abstract values, and particular bearers of value. Even when confined to a given kind of entity, ‘incommensurable’ and its cognates are used in several different senses. Moral theories or traditions have been judged incommensurable in the sense that rational agreement or disagreement between their proponents is impossible. Incommensurability of abstract values may mean that any bearer of a particular value is better than any bearer of some other value, or that all or some bearers of one value are incomparable in value to all or some bearers of another value. In either case, incommensurability of abstract values reduces to incommensurability of value bearers. Applied to value bearers, there is one usage of ‘incommensurable’ according to which items are incommensurable if they cannot be measured on a common cardinal, i.e. interval or ratio, scale. Another usage identifies incommensurability with incomparability. Since there are competing understandings of incomparability, this usage gives rise to different notions of incommensurability. Finally, incommensurability of value bearers may be understood in terms of vagueness in the betterness relation. Many arguments for incommensurability, understood primarily as incomparability of value bearers, have been given. Often such arguments appeal to the apparent diversity of values, or to the alleged fact that value is not amenable to ‘calculation’. The latter consideration is not, however, a cogent argument for incomparability. Two further influential arguments for incomparability are the ‘minor improvement’ argument, and the argument from ‘constitutive incommensurability’. A further question concerns the consequences of incommensurability for ethical theory and practice. Incommensurability of moral theories or traditions appears to yield far-reaching theoretical consequences. Incommensurability of value bearers may affect the cogency of certain moral theories, as well as theories of the good. Furthermore, the possibility of incommensurable value bearers is often thought to impinge on the scope of practical rationality.

Epilogue

This concluding chapter likewise contains a eulogy from the other editors of this book, as well as a commentary on the publication history of Barrett's posthumous manuscript. Through discussing the aims of compiling Barrett's work into a “clear, cogent argument” and the emotional forces that had shaped the creation of this volume, the chapter turns to the effects of a lack of closure for Barrett's untimely death. It briefly details the circumstances thereof, while also noting a disturbing trend of several other murders of prominent gay black intellectuals in recent years. The chapter ends on an uplifting note, however, as it closes with some hopeful remarks from the editors on continuing with Barrett's legacy to a tradition of black intellectual engagement.

Green Chemistry Pedagogy

This chapter attempts to show how the practice of chemistry teaching and learning is enriched by the incorporation of green chemistry (GC) into lectures and labs. To support this viewpoint, evidence from a wide range of published papers serve as a cogent argument that GC attracts and engages both science and nonscience students, enhances chemistry content knowledge, and improves the image of the field, while preparing the world for a sustainable future. Published pedagogy associated with green and sustainable chemistry is critically reviewed and discussed.

Teacher Professional Development as a Scientific Problem in Comparative Pedagogics

Cogent argument for better understanding of the take-up of teacher professional development through understanding the definition itself has been presented. The main constituents of the definition with reference to different sources of information in psychology, philosophy and pedagogics have been analyzed. To make the research more logical, the definitions “personality development”, “professional development” and “teacher professional development” have been studied in consecutive order. The literature review, which is based on Ukrainian and foreign documents observation, shows different approaches to defining the notion studied: a process-based approach and a system-based approach, as well as their conditional character and appropriateness. In authors’ view, teacher education is a key issue in basic development sectors of any country of the world. Teachers’ professional activities must not focus on individual content only but bear in mind students’ intellectual, spiritual, physical, moral, social and cultural well being. Teacher professional development is a powerful and effective premise for sustained improvement of student outcomes. On the whole, teacher professional development can be defined as a long-term complex process of qualitative changes in teaching aimed at teacher performance improvement in the classroom and ensuring students’ success. According to the study, this process can be compulsory or so called optional. The effectiveness of professional development is structured: leadership, knowledge, available recourses, high level of collaboration, appropriate evaluation and sustainability.