‘All sorts of wonderful impossibilities’: Tracing the Genesis of John McGahern’s ‘Doorways’

It is well known by now that John McGahern was a scrupulous reviser of his own work, even if this insight into his compositional methods has not been accompanied by a substantial body of research on the archive and the revisions themselves. This essay aims to address this anomaly by focusing on the genetic evolution of McGahern's short story ‘Doorways’. Specifically, it will concentrate on the earliest handwritten drafts when the work is at its most provisional. The consensus view of McGahern's writing practices is of an artist committed to ideals of Flaubertian perfectionism, but implicit in this view is a bias towards the more granular work of late-stage refinement. The approach this essay takes shows McGahern at his most distant from the Flaubertian perfectionist that he is best known as, thus opening up new ways to reconsider how those works achieve their distinctive appearance of refined delicacy and simplicity.

The Alleged ‘Letter Allegedly from Us’: The Parallel Function of ὡς δι’ ἡμῶν in 2 Thessalonians 2.2

The nearly unanimous consensus of modern scholarship is that 2 Thess. 2.2 refers to a letter either written or alleged to have been written by Paul, as captured in the most common rendering of the text, ‘a letter allegedly from/by us’. The thesis of this article is that the relevant phrase, ὡς δι’ ἡμῶν, does not serve to qualify ‘letter’ or the other two substantives that precede (‘a spirit’, ‘a word’), but that it identifies Paul (the implied author) as a medium of information alternative to the other three media, thus posing a contrast between teaching conveyed through Paul and teaching conveyed through not-Paul, in a manner analogous to Gal. 1.8. In addition to the greater probability of this interpretation grammatically, this interpretation is offered as resolving further difficulties concerning 1 Thess. 2.2, as well as its relationship to 2.15. Evidence is also offered that the consensus view does not find unanimous support among ancient interpreters.

הַמַּבּוּל מַיִם, “The Well of Waters”: Yahweh’s Fresh Water Reservoir beneath His Mountain-Palace

The Noahic Deluge is commonly understood to have resulted from the infiltration of chaos waters into the ordered universe from two sources: one situated above the Rāqîaˁ and one underground. This interpretation does not find support in the HB and contradicts the precepts of the cosmological worldview of the ANE. According to Gen 6:17 Yahweh uses one single source of water to flood the land, referred to as הַמַּבּוּל מַיִם, “the well of waters.” There was a common belief in the ANE that there was a vast reservoir of fresh water in the underworld on the eastern horizon, beneath the palace of the sun god. The waters of Life (Ḥayya/Ea) therein, which must be distinguished from the saline primordial waters of chaos, were used for divine judgement. In spite of the consensus view that the chaos waters were permitted to enter the cosmos, not only during the Deluge but every time it rained, it is more likely that Yahweh lifted the waters of the well beneath his mountain-palace to execute justice and restore order to the land.

What is considered deception in experimental economics?

In experimental economics there is a norm against using deception. But precisely what constitutes deception is unclear. While there is a consensus view that providing false information is not permitted, there are also “gray areas” with respect to practices that omit information or are misleading without an explicit lie being told. In this paper, we report the results of a large survey among experimental economists and students concerning various specific gray areas. We find that there is substantial heterogeneity across respondent choices. The data indicate a perception that costs and benefits matter, so that such practices might in fact be appropriate when the topic is important and there is no other way to gather data. Compared to researchers, students have different attitudes about some of the methods in the specific scenarios that we ask about. Few students express awareness of the no-deception policy at their schools. We also briefly discuss some potential alternatives to “gray-area” deception, primarily based on suggestions offered by respondents.

Tajik president breaks with consensus view of Taliban

Headline TAJIKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN: Rahmon takes Taliban to task

The Economic Development Potential of Minority-Owned Businesses

The consensus view that discriminatory barriers limit the size and scope of America’s minority-business community is factually well-grounded. Rarely examined, however, is the question of why these firms are flourishing. The authors examine the scope of this growth and its causes. The process of selectively reducing discriminatory barriers inhibiting minority entrepreneurship’s development began in the 1960s, moved forward in the 1970s, and continues presently. This path-dependent process of lowering barriers has altered the incentive structures, previously making the entrepreneurial choice an unattractive one for most minorities. This, in turn, has drawn into business ownership a younger generation of highly educated and experienced minorities, many of whom have successfully obtained bank loans. Spatially, minority neighborhoods as well have successfully attracted talented, experienced African American and Latino owners and financing for their firms. Those with abundant expertise have driven the substantial gains in numbers of workers employed by minority-owned businesses.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND PILOTING OF AN INSTRUMENT TO MEASURE NATURE OF SCIENCE (NOS) UNDERSTANDING

The study describes the development of an instrument, to measure NOS understandings of science teachers and a subsequent pilot study to test the instrument. The pilot measured NOS understanding of two teachers using a questionnaire that had been developed by the researcher. The objective of the study was to construct a questionnaire that could measure NOS understanding based on the family resemblance approach (FRA). The NOS is a construct that has been defined by various scholars and there exists multiple perspectives. For this study, two schools of thought defining the nature of science: the consensus view (CV) and the reconceptualized family resemblance approach to NOS (RFN) were considered. The CV has been widely accepted for years to represent the NOS through its tenets, and there exists reliable tools to document NOS. Based on the CV researchers developed an instrument, views of nature of science (VNOS), to document NOS understanding. In the past decade, scholars have challenged the CV of NOS and highlighted shortcomings in its tenets. FRA was developed that depicts science in a holistic system with dynamic interactions unlike the CV that represents NOS as independent tenets. From FRA, emerged RFN consisting of social and cultural categories that affect how science is done. The approach of RFN due to its holistic approach will be preferred in this study. The authors of RFN developed a RFN questionnaire to assess views about NOS using a Likert scale. Due to the limitations of the Likert scale, an open-ended approach is preferred in the qualitative analysis of views of NOS as is found in the VNOS form. To collect data on NOS understanding, the researcher compared VNOS and the RFN questionnaire and developed an integrated family VNOS (IFVNOS) questionnaire. The IFVNOS questionnaire was administered in a pilot test followed by interviews to elaborate on responses. The responses were analysed by two coders and triangulated to ensure reliability. The responses were allocated codes to document NOS understanding, on a range from naïve to explicit understanding. The findings revealed that the IFVNOS questionnaire developed can be used as a tool to measure NOS understanding and more testing is required to assess reliability.

Post-Soviet Russian Scholarship on Self-Determination

Chapter 5 covers the post-Soviet Russian scholarship on self-determination and shows how it forms a separate epistemic community, with peculiar features and doctrinal positions having existed already prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the willingness to adjust these positions to official assessments of the Russian government, if necessary. Even before the annexation of Crimea, the discourse on self-determination in Russian scholarship showed some distinctive features, of which most can be explained by a lasting legacy of the former Soviet doctrine of international law, in particular the position that the right to self-determination may in principle also confer a right of secession. In sum, these features stayed however more or less inside the canon of the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’, as Oscar Schachter once famously called it. Only with ‘Crimea’, the company arguably parted again, and once Russia’s actions on the peninsula made it impossible for Russian scholarship to stay within the consensus view without criticizing the Russian government, former consensus was partly replaced by historical-irredentist claims, creative re-readings of self-determination, and attempts in revitalizing the concept of consolidation of historical titles. Moreover, the assessment of ‘Crimea’ in Russian international law scholarship clearly shows that the views expressed in the academic debate by and large correlated with the official positions purported by the Russian government (although criticism was not completely absent, and in particular scholars from the younger generation in Russia were not all ready to accept the official interpretation of the events).

Multicultural History in a Multicultural Taiwan

Chapter 2 focuses on the National Museum of Taiwan History (國立台灣歷史博物館‎) opened in 2011 in the city of Tainan. The first in Taiwan dedicated to telling the story of Taiwan’s development into nationhood, the museum centers its narrative around the tropes of inclusiveness, ethnic diversity, immigration, and political pluralism. In the process, it avoids the excesses of a more radical Taiwanese nativism and presents a “consensus” view of the history of the island that de-emphasizes historical traumas, such as inter-ethnic conflict, the horrendous treatment of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, and the February 28 Incident.