Attention, Distraction and the Distribution of the Senses: “Slow”, “Reflexive” and “Contemplative” between Cinema and the Museum

A classic definition of attention designates it as “the selective perception of a particular stimulus, sustained by means of concentration and the willing exclusion of interfering sense-data”. In our sense-data rich environments, attention has become a scarce commodity, increasingly valued and sought after, but with the paradoxical consequence that the very pursuit of attention cannot but register as distraction. How do artists confront and art spaces cope with this paradox, and how has the moving image in the museum changed the articulation of time, space and information that is narrative?

Pandemic of Paradoxes: The Indirect Global Health Impacts of COVID-19

The indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on several public health issues will be examined in the context of its impacts on multiple nations around the world. Not all possible health aspects of COVID-19 that are indirectly related to the disease will be examined. The ones chosen are: I. influenza, II. suicide, III. alcohol consumption, IV. fatal automobile accidents and V. birth rates. In each of these cases COVID-19 has had a paradoxical impact. Although COVID-19 is a dangerous respiratory virus, there has not been a synergism with the influenza virus as initially feared by some public health experts. In fact, there has been a global nonappearance of seasonal flu; a good, though indirect, paradoxical consequence of COVID-19. But most other paradoxical health consequences of COVID-19 have been largely negative, these include an increase in suicide but unexpectedly an initial reduction and changes in suicide patterns in many countries, an increase in alcohol consumption but paradoxically a reduction in beer consumption, some evidence of an increase in fatal automobile accidents (at least on a per mile driven basis) and of monumental long term global consequence, a significant decline in births in many major nations.

The stable stranger

Drawing on ethnographic material from Gitanos of Spain and current EU Roma integration policies, we explore the contemporary construction of the Roma ethnic group category as a specific type of “stranger” in the context of the European neoliberal culture complex. Our argument is that this classificatory reconstruction can be seen to work as a cultural prerequisite for the socio-political shaping and management of the Roma as a neoliberal “stable stranger.” This new stranger is based on constructing Roma as a potential unused labor pool and as recent immigrants, in contrast to the Gitanos’ own ideology and locally grounded identity of self-employment and anti-proletarianism. The paradoxical consequence of the integration policies, therefore, is the potential pushing of the Gitanos further away from Spanish mainstream society.

Reducing demand for antibiotic prescriptions: evidence from an online survey of the general public on the interaction between preferences, beliefs and information, United Kingdom, 2015

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a major public health threat, is strongly associated with human antibiotic consumption. Influenza-like illnesses (ILI) account for substantial inappropriate antibiotic use; patient understanding and expectations probably play an important role. Aim: This study aimed to investigate what drives patient expectations of antibiotics for ILI and particularly whether AMR awareness, risk preferences (attitudes to taking risks with health) or time preferences (the extent to which people prioritise good health today over good health in the future) play a role. Methods: In 2015, a representative online panel survey of 2,064 adults in the United Kingdom was asked about antibiotic use and effectiveness for ILI. Explanatory variables in multivariable regression included AMR awareness, risk and time preferences and covariates. Results: The tendency not to prioritise immediate gain over later reward was independently strongly associated with greater awareness that antibiotics are inappropriate for ILI. Independently, believing antibiotics were effective for ILI and low AMR awareness significantly predicted reported antibiotic use. However, 272 (39%) of those with low AMR awareness said that the AMR information we provided would lead them to ask a doctor for antibiotics more often, significantly more than would do so less often, and in contrast to those with high AMR awareness (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Information campaigns to reduce AMR may risk a paradoxical consequence of actually increasing public demand for antibiotics. Public antibiotic stewardship campaigns should be tested on a small scale before wider adoption.

The Origins of Turkey’s “Heterodox” Transition to Neoliberalism: The Özal Decade and Beyond

This article examines the origins of Turkey’s neoliberal transformation in world-historical perspective by highlighting interactions between the crisis of U.S. hegemony, social and political movements in Turkey, and Turgut Özal's political career as the architect of the country’s neoliberal reforms. I argue that Turkey’s neoliberal transition during the “Özal Decade (1980-1989/1993)” was not primarily related to resolving the profitability crisis of the existing national bourgeoisie (Istanbul-based industrial bourgeoisie) or reconstituting class power in favor of this segment of capital. The Turkish neoliberal project was more concerned with establishing a stable political-economic environment that would help Turkey's political society reassert its hegemony over civil society and allow for the penetration of the changing interests of the world-hegemonic power in the region. Because of these social and geopolitical concerns, Turkey's neoliberal reforms (1) contributed to the development of an alternative/rival segment of national bourgeoisie which had the potential to co-opt radicalized Islamic movements, (2) aimed at creating a large middle class society (instead of shrinking it), (3) utilized populist attempts at redistribution to lower segments of society to co-opt the grievances and anger of the masses. As a paradoxical consequence of these dynamics, income inequality decreased during Turkey’s transition to neoliberalism. Neoliberal reforms in the post-Özal period – with similar “heterodox” features – resurrected and further deepened during “the Erdoğan decade” (2002-present) although Erdoğan did not share a single aspect of Özal’s professional career as a neoliberal technocrat.

The false promise of the better argument

Effective argumentation in international politics is widely conceived as a matter of persuasion. In particular, the ‘logic of arguing’ ascribes explanatory power to the ‘better argument’ and promises to illuminate the conditions of legitimate normative change. This article exposes the self-defeating implications of the Habermasian symbiosis between the normative and the empirical force of arguments. Since genuine persuasion is neither observable nor knowable, its analysis critically depends on what scholars consider to be the better argument. Seemingly, objective criteria such as universality only camouflage such moral reification. The paradoxical consequence of an explanatory concept of arguing is that moral discourse is no longer conceptualized as an open-ended process of contestation and normative change, but has recently been recast as a governance mechanism ensuring the compliance of international actors with pre-defined norms. This dilemma can be avoided through a positivist reification of valid norms, as in socialization research, or by adopting a critical and emancipatory focus on the obstacles to true persuasion. Still, both solutions remain dependent on the ‘persuasion vs. coercion’ problem that forestalls an insight into successful justificatory practices other than rational communication. The conclusion therefore pleas for a pragmatic abstention from better arguments and points to the insights to be gained from pragmatist norms research in sociology.

Spectral Secularism: Religion, Politics and Democracy in India

Everyone invokes secularism in India. So the spectrum of secularism is very large. However, it is rather the spectral ideas of “majority” (hindus) and “minorities” (Muslims, Christians) conceived in demographic (rather than political) terms which characterizes the discussion of this question. The insistence of Hindu nationalists on emphasizing that they are the majority tend to blur the difference between Hindu identity and Indian identity, coextensive with the territory of India. This concept, moreover, serves them in their legitimating of the democratic system insofar as the arithmetical rule is a first principle of this political regime. In the name of a secularism founded on the idea of the greater number (and also the supposed ideal of immemorial Hindu tolerance) India must be governed in accordance with demographic fact defined in religious terms. One of the paradoxical consequence of this “majoritarianism” is the development of “majority minority complex” of the Hindus and the increasing hate and violence (against Muslims and Christians). Today, the Hindu nationalism programme effectively dominates public debate. Its partisans has succeeded in discriminating between “friends” and “foes”, those inside and those outside, those whom one holds dear and those whom one pillories on the basis of a real or imaginary menace weighing upon autochthony, culture, religion and race, and the national (state) sovereignty.