The Winding Paths of Russian Imperial Politics: On Die Geburt des russländischen Imperiums: Herrschaftskonzepte und -praktiken im 18. Jahrhundert by Ricarda Vulpius

The article discusses the book Die Geburt des russländischen Imperiums by Ricarda Vulpius, a publication that tracks the emergence of the conceptual background for governing the growing Russian Empire in the eighteenth century, when territorial gains rendered the country increasingly multinational, multi-faith and multicultural. In this paper, the book was treated as an inspiration for examining the relationship between the practices employed by Russia on newly acquired territories in the east and south of Asia, described by Vulpius in the book, and the Russian Empire’s policy towards Poland.

Contemporary Populist Representation and Its Implications for Democracy

This chapter aims to shed light on the connections between populism, democracy, and democratic theory by providing a theoretical assessment of contemporary populism and populist representation as an alternative form of political representation to party government or as a corrective of it. The chapter summarizes the conceptual background relating to democracies, populism, and contextual surroundings. Then, it proceeds to investigate how they relate to each other in present-day politics. The author argues that populism is a strategic political style that exploits the gap between the promise and the actual performance of democracies thus reflects on democratic reality. Hence, it embodies what realist democratic theory has argued for quite some time now about the nature of politics. Namely: voters are irrational, our notions of democracy are delusional and populist politicians seem to have realized it first..

Education and Epistemicide in Africa

Epistemicide is the exclusion or elimination of indigenous knowledge systems at the expense of the imperious, domineering, and colonial knowledge systems. To combat epistemicide in Africa and liberate the minds of the current generation, the authors propose a comprehensive ubuntu based model of education. This model suggests four interrelated strategies of liberation: 1) decolonization, 2) revalorization, 3) revitalization, and 4) construction and creation (DRRC) of knowledge. This chapter examines the contextual and conceptual background of education in Africa through a historical lens, provides a detailed description of the proposed model, and outlines some potential implementation challenges.

What Is Paradoxical Lucidity?

In this presentation, I provide a conceptual background from which the other symposium speakers can describe detailed methods for investigating paradoxical lucidity (PL) in dementia. First, I outline the clinical and ethical significance of studying PL. Second, I describes how PL is understudied and so difficult to measure. A working definition of PL has been formulated from case reports, but aspects of this definition remain vague. I argue that this vagueness challenges the measurement of PL and the generalizability of study results. I conclude by proposing ways to address these problems.

‘And we are Stuck in One Place, Minister.’ A Study of Evasiveness in Replies to Face-Threatening Questions in Slovak Political Interviews on Scandals (A Combined Approach)

The phenomenon of political evasiveness in the genre of a political interview has been the focus of several discourse studies employing conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis and the social psychology approach. Most of the above-mentioned studies focus on a detailed qualitative analysis of political discourse identifying a wide range of communication strategies that permit politicians to ambiguate their agency and at the same time boost their positive face. Since these strategies may change over time and also be subject to a culture specific environment, the aim of this paper is to discover a) which evasive communicative strategies were employed by Slovak politicians in 2012–2016, b) which lexical substitutions were most frequently used by them to avoid negative connotations of face-threatening questions, and finally, c) which cognitive frames formed a frequent conceptual background of their evasive political argumentation. The paper will draw on a combination of quantitative and qualitative approach to the analysis of non-replies devised by Bull and Mayer (1993) and critical discourse analysis in the sample of five Slovak radio interviews aired on the Rádio Express. The selection of interviews was not random- in each interview the politician was asked highly conflictual questions about bribery, embezzlement or disputes in the coalition. Based on qualitative research of Russian-Slovak political discourse (2009) by Dulebová it is hypothesized that a) the evasive strategy of ‘attack’ on the opposition and ‘attack on the interviewer’ would occur in our sample with the highest prominence in the speech of the former Prime Minister Fico, and b) the politicians accused of direct involvement in scandals would be the most evasive ones.

SENNA Inventory for the Assessment of Social and Emotional Skills in Public School Students in Brazil: Measuring Both Identity and Self-Efficacy

Responding to the need for school-based, broadly applicable, low-cost, and brief assessments of socio-emotional skills, we describe the conceptual background and empirical development of the SENNA inventory and provide new psychometric information on its internal structure. Data were obtained through a computerized survey from 50,000 Brazilian students enrolled in public school grades 6 to 12, spread across the entire State of São Paulo. The SENNA inventory was designed to assess 18 particular skills (e.g., empathy, responsibility, tolerance of frustration, and social initiative), each operationalized by nine items that represent three types of items: three positively keyed trait-identity items, three negatively keyed identity items, and three (always positively keyed) self-efficacy items, totaling a set of 162 items. Results show that the 18 skill constructs empirically defined a higher-order structure that we interpret as the social-emotional Big Five, labeled as Engaging with Others, Amity, Self-Management, Emotional Regulation, and Open-Mindedness. The same five factors emerged whether we assessed the 18 skills with items representing (a) a trait-identity approach that emphasizes lived skills (what do I typically do?) or (b) a self-efficacy approach that emphasizes capability (how well can I do that?). Given that its target youth group is as young as 11 years old (grade 6), a population particularly prone to the response bias of acquiescence, SENNA is also equipped to correct for individual differences in acquiescence, which are shown to systematically bias results when not corrected.

The Transforming City: Exploring the Potential for Smart Cities and Urban Agriculture in Africa

As the world becomes more urbanized and poverty and food insecurity rise, it is inevitable that varied forms of urban agriculture (UA) will play an important role in the future of the global food system. Food security presents a global challenge particularly among vulnerable groups and the poor and the great cities of Africa are no exception. This study presents an overview of two African cities and the evolving presence of UA in these cityscapes. It is an attempt to examine and explore the potential of smart cities toward supporting urban agricultural practices in Africa. The 1st part of the study provides a brief conceptual background on smart cities and UA in the African context, while the 2nd part provides an overview of the development of two smart cities, namely, Cape Town (South Africa) and Arusha (Tanzania) specifically.

Walter Benjamin’s communism

What does ‘communism’ mean in Walter Benjamin’s writing? It has been used in some quarters to claim that Benjamin has a quasi-Marxist theory of communist society. This paper will argue instead that Benjamin’s communism is framed by his distinctive conception of experience and that it is understandable only through that conception. Benjamin’s image of ‘communist society’ refers to a specific type of experience (‘collective experience’) rather than a type of social organization. The paper discusses the conceptual background of that image and also points out a number of the difficulties that Benjamin’s conception of collective experience faces given its genesis in a model of individual experience.

SENNA Inventory for the Assessment of Social and Emotional Skills: Technical Manual. São Paulo, Brazil: Instituto Ayrton Senna

Responding to the need for school-based, broadly applicable, low-cost, and brief assessments of socio-emotional skills, we describe the conceptual background and empirical development of the SENNA inventory and provide psychometric information on validity, reliability and norms.