No Country for Muslims? The Invention of an Islam Républicain in France and Its Impact on French Muslims

Since the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October 2020, the call for a fight against the so-called ‘Political Islam’ has been heard once again, not only in France, but all over Europe (EU). The politicization of Islam is held to be responsible for the increasing attacks by radical Islamic actors within European metropoles, and the EU states’ call for action and revenge in response to this ideology and its adherents, in order to guarantee public security and democratic values. Starting from the major terrorist attacks in France in the last few years, this paper seeks to compare the interlinking between domestic policy and religious radicalization and its impact on neighboring states. With regard to the attacks on 13 November 2015 in France, the attackers were traced back to radical networks in Belgium and Germany. Based on selected interviews that have been conducted by the author with female adherents of jihadist milieus within the years 2015 and 2016 in France and social media examples of Muslim reactions on the current French law enforcement, the tension between domestic policy and religious freedom related to Islam in France will be highlighted in this article. Among other reasons, the interview quotations and social media reactions can be seen as a result of a specific religious understanding and practice related to Islam by some actors. In addition, the ongoing othering of Muslims by France and other European societies can be seen to be in sum to be responsible for the increasing interest of young Muslims in radical Islamic thought that led to jihadist attacks within France in the not-so-distant past. With respect to the aforementioned development, this article will conceptualize the problematique of a (politically motivated) category formation related to one religion that is currently practiced in France, as seen from the perspective of a religious studies scholar.

”… and after That Came Me”. Subjective Constructions of Social Hierarchy in Physical Education Classes among Youth with Visual Impairments in Germany

The aim of this study was to reconstruct subjective constructions of experiences in PE and feelings of being valued within PE classes in Germany by students with visual impairment (VI). Two female and two male students (average age: 19.25 years) participated in the study from the upper level. For the reconstruction of experiences of feeling valued, episodic interviews with a semi-structured interview guide were used. The data analysis was conducted with MAXQDA 2020 based on content-related structuring of qualitative text analysis with deductive–inductive category formation. To structure the analysis, the main category, feelings of being valued, was defined by two poles (positive feelings of being valued as opposed to bullying). As a main finding, respondents primarily reported negative feelings and experiences characterized by instances of bullying, discrimination, and physical and social isolation, perpetuated by both their peers and teachers. In search of a deeper understanding, we identified social hierarchy as an underlying structure determining the students’ perceived positioning within the social context and thus directing their feelings of being (de-)valued. It became evident that it is not the setting per se that determined social hierarchy, but that it is more about the concrete manifestation of social hierarchy.

Cross-species parallels in babbling: animals and algorithms

A key feature of vocal ontogeny in a variety of taxa with extensive vocal repertoires is a developmental pattern in which vocal exploration is followed by a period of category formation that results in a mature species-specific repertoire. Vocal development preceding the adult repertoire is often called ‘babbling’, a term used to describe aspects of vocal development in species of vocal-learning birds, some marine mammals, some New World monkeys, some bats and humans. The paper summarizes the results of research on babbling in examples from five taxa and proposes a unifying definition facilitating their comparison. There are notable similarities across these species in the developmental pattern of vocalizations, suggesting that vocal production learning might require babbling. However, the current state of the literature is insufficient to confirm this suggestion. We suggest directions for future research to elucidate this issue, emphasizing the importance of (i) expanding the descriptive data and seeking species with complex mature repertoires where babbling may not occur or may occur only to a minimal extent; (ii) (quasi-)experimental research to tease apart possible mechanisms of acquisition and/or self-organizing development; and (iii) computational modelling as a methodology to test hypotheses about the origins and functions of babbling. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.

Children's use of generic labels, discreteness, and stability to form a novel category

Children hold rich essentialist beliefs about natural and social categories, representing them as discrete (mutually exclusive with sharp boundaries) and stable (with membership remaining constant over an individual’s lifespan). Children use essential categories to make inductive inferences about individuals. How do children determine what categories to consider essential and to use as an inductive base? Although much research has demonstrated children’s use of labels to form categories, here we explore whether children might also use the observed discreteness or stability of a trait to form categories based on that trait. In the present study, we taught children about novel creatures and provided them with a cue (discreteness, stability, labels, or no cue) to form texture categories rather than shape or color categories. Experiment 1 found that children (4–6 years, n = 140) used labels but not discreteness or stability cues to form texture categories more often than at baseline. Experiment 2 (5–6 years, n = 152) found that children who later recognized the stability and discreteness cues used them to form categories more often than those who did not later recognize the cues, but were still overall less likely to use these cues than to use labels cues. Results underscore the unique importance of labels as a cue for category formation and suggest that children do not readily rely on the stability and discreteness of a trait to form animate categories despite readily inferring that such categories are stable and discrete. Implications for natural and social category representations are discussed.

Moral Judgment as Categorization (MJAC)

Observed variability and complexity of judgments of “right” and “wrong” cannot be readily accounted for within extant approaches to understanding moral judgment. In response to this challenge, we present a novel perspective on categorization in moral judgment. Moral judgment as categorization (MJAC) incorporates principles of category formation research while addressing key challenges of existing approaches to moral judgment. People develop skills in making context-relevant categorizations. They learn that various objects (events, behaviors, people, etc.) can be categorized as morally right or wrong. Repetition and rehearsal result in reliable, habitualized categorizations. According to this skill-formation account of moral categorization, the learning and the habitualization of the forming of moral categories occur within goal-directed activity that is sensitive to various contextual influences. By allowing for the complexity of moral judgments, MJAC offers greater explanatory power than existing approaches while also providing opportunities for a diverse range of new research questions.

Emergent Color Categorization in a Neural Network trained for Object Recognition

Color is a prime example of categorical perception, yet it is still unclear why and how color categories emerge. The key questions revolve around to what extent perceptual and linguistic processes shape categories. While prelinguistic infants and animals appear to treat color categorically, several recent attempts to model category formation have successfully utilized communicative concepts to predict color categories. Considering this apparent discrepancy, we take a different approach. Rather than modeling categories directly, we focus on the potential emergence of color categories as the result of acquiring basic visual skills. For this, we investigated whether color is represented categorically in a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained to recognize objects in natural images. We systematically trained novel output layers to the CNN for a color classification task, and found that clear borders arise between novel (non-training) colors that are largely invariant to the training colors. We confirmed these border locations by searching for the optimal border placement using an evolutionary algorithm that relies on the principle of categorical perception. Our findings also extend to stimuli with multiple, colored, words of varying color contrast, as well as colored objects with larger colored surfaces. These results provide strong evidence that color categorization can emerge with the development of object recognition.

Die Schule und ihre Problemkinder. (A)Normalität im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, eine historisch-systematische Analyse

The book deals with the question of categorization and diagnostic processes in the school sys-tem and the therewith linked specification of normality and deviation. The problem is elabo-rated by a historical-systematic approach: On the basis of current discourses on (un-)desirable characteristics and behavior in school, the question of how these categories have developed in the Swiss educational landscape since the establishment of the public elementary school around 1830 until the beginning of the 20th century is analysed. Among others one guiding principle is, that ideas, concepts, their implementation as well as related measures and actor participation have developed upon the connected history, culture and related systems and that these can only be understood and reflected within this context.The problem is elaborated on the basis of various sources from the pedagogical environment in Switzerland in the 19th century. These can be assigned to the context of the professionali-sation and training of teachers from 1830 onwards. On the one hand, there are pedagogical teaching materials and textbooks from the teacher training seminars of the defined research period. On the other hand, there are profession-specific newspapers – such as the “Schweize-rische Lehrerzeitung” – in which discourses of the teaching staff as well as of other actors are explored in order to negotiate the ideas of normality and deviation. By means of the analysis of the source corpus, in conjunction with discourse-analytical approaches and actor-centered institutionalism, key components in relation to the diagnosis of deviant children at school as well as processes of category formation and application are can be illustrated and analysed. The findings are finally discussed and problematised in the context of educational theories.One of the findings is, that in the development and application of categories it becomes apparent that different categories and patterns of differentiation are applied over different thematic epochs. It is interesting to note that this does not involve a replacement of existing attributions, but rather an addition by new categories, and thus an accumulation of the same. The variety of possibilities for classifying the “abnormal” at school thus increases conti-nuously over time. This accumulation again is associated with new measures and institutional changes. The increasing involvement of various actors and the professionalisation processes taking place are main factors therein. For example, it can be seen that teachers – and thus also elementary schools – did not just rely on achievement-based categories or relevant behavioral patterns at school when deciding to exclude children. They also relied on moral concepts and notions of what was considered “ideal”. Around 1900, the focus was increasingly on assessing socio-economic factors and the “bourgeois” status of family constellations. Among others, poverty, working mothers, “immoral” lifestyles, intellectual limitations or alcoholism served as explanations for schoolchildren’s “deviant” behavior or their bad school marks.

The reputation of horticulture – an internal view of the industry

The reputation of an industry represents an important strategic resource and this has already been highlighted in the past for the horticulture sector. However, the heterogeneity of horticulture makes it difficult for the industry to be perceived by society. An online survey was conducted to identify the most important characteristics of horticulture and to identify the reasons for its good or bad reputation. For this purpose, 102 experts – consultants from the horticultural industry – were asked to describe horticulture and the reputation of the industry. An evaluation of the survey, based on a qualitative content analysis using inductive category formation, indicated that horticulture is primarily associated with its diverse activities and various product groups. In terms of the product groups, the focus is on food products. The reputation of the industry is rated as ‘slightly positive’ on a 7-point Likert scale, with an average of 4.4.

What Situation Is This? Shared Frames and Collective Performance

We study agents who distill the complex world around them using cognitive frames. We assume that agents share the same frame and analyze how the frame affects their collective performance. In one-shot and repeated interactions, the frame causes agents to be either better or worse off than if they could perceive the environment in full detail: it creates a fog of cooperation or a fog of conflict. In repeated interactions, the frame is as important as agents’ patience in determining the outcome: for a fixed discount factor, when all agents choose what they perceive as their best play, there remain significant performance differences induced by different frames. A low-performing team conducting a site visit to observe a high-performing team will be mystified, sometimes observing different actions than they expected or being given unexpected reasons for the actions they expected. Finally, we distinguish between incremental versus radical changes in frames, and we develop a model of category formation to analyze challenges faced by a leader who seeks to improve the agents’ collective performance.