The effect of different playing surfaces on soccer skill performance

Football (soccer) is traditionally played on natural grass but artificial surfaces are becoming an increasing popular alternative. Understanding how different surfaces affect a player's skill performance has not been examined. This study sought to compare soccer skill performance, using a validated test, on natural grass, third generation (3G) artificial turf, and indoor sprung wooden floor. Following familiarisation, 14 male players (12.7 ± 0.5 years-old, with 6.21 years playing experience) performed the Loughborough Soccer Passing Test (LSPT) on three different surfaces in the following order: indoor, grass and artificial turf. Players were given two practise attempts before the best of two trials were recorded. Movement time was faster on artificial turf (45.1 ± 1.3 s) than natural grass (46.2 ± 1.8 s; p = 0.045), but there was no difference in overall LSPT performance between grass (54.1 ± 4.2 s) and artificial turf (54.0 ± 4.7 s; p = 0.92). Overall LSPT performance was better on indoor surface (50.9 ± 4.6 s) than grass (p = 0.02) and artificial turf (p = 0.02) due to reduced penalty time on the indoor surface (5.5 ± 3.3 s) than grass (7.9 ± 2.9 s; p = 0.001) and artificial turf (8.9 ± 3.9 s; p = 0.003). There is no difference in soccer skill performance between grass and 3G artificial turf. Skill performance on an indoor surface was ∼6% better than both grass and 3G artificial turf due to better ball control and/or accuracy of passing. Our findings will enable comparison of studies using the LSPT on indoor and outdoor (grass or artificial) surfaces.

ENGLISH IN THE CHURCHSCAPE: EXPLORING A RELIGIOUS LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE IN THE PHILIPPINES

As one of the official languages of the Philippines, English predominantly figures in thedomains of education, government, and the judiciary. This reality has always put English at the top of the linguistic ladder, relegating local languages to lower ranks. This scenario appears to be evident also in the domain of the church. In this paper, I investigate signs posted within the compound of a major Catholic church located in the Philippines in terms of types and language use. Informed by linguistic landscape concepts pioneered by Landry and Bourhis (1997), Spolsky and Cooper (1991), and Ben-Rafael (2009), I analyzed over a hundred signs in the religious linguistic landscape, which I call ‘churchscape’. Findings show that English dominates in the churchscape as a language of communication and language of tourism while local languages such as Filipino and Pangasinan assume a secondary role in the churchscape. This study affords us an interesting view and alternative understanding of multilingualism as a phenomenon through the churchscape in question.

Ethnic Identity and the Archaeology of the aduentus Saxonum

For centuries, archaeologists have excavated the soils of Britain to uncover finds from the early medieval past. These finds have been used to reconstruct the alleged communities, migration patterns, and expressions of identity of coherent groups who can be regarded as ethnic 'Anglo-Saxons'. Even in the modern day, when social constructionism has been largely accepted by scholars, this paradigm still persists. <br><br>This book challenges the ethnic paradigm. As the first historiographical study of approaches to ethnic identity in modern 'Anglo-Saxon' archaeology, it reveals these approaches to be incompatible with current scholarly understandings of ethnicity. Drawing upon post-structuralist approaches to self and community, it highlights the empirical difficulties the archaeology of ethnicity in early medieval Britain faces, and proposes steps toward an alternative understanding of the role played by the communities of lowland Britain - both migrants from across the North Sea and those already present - in transforming the Roman world.

Militarismens ontologi

The Ontology of Militarism: War and Peace as Conditions of Existence in Frida Stéenhoff ’s Stridbar ungdom and Elin Wägner’s Släkten Jerneploogs framgång This article claims that Western culture is tinged by an idea of an ontology of militarism. By analyzing how bodies are militarized because of this presumption, and how resistance against that very same presumption is carried out in Frida Stéenhoff ’s Stridbar ungdom (1906) and Elin Wägner’s Släkten Jerneploogs framgång (1916), this article presents an alternative understanding of the relationship between militarism and peace. Both works problematize and challenge the idea of militarism as a pre-condition for the human being. Finally, utopia, rather than militarism, emerges as indispensable to human beings.

Experiments and egalitarianism

In this paper, I reflect on the implications that ultimatum and dictator game experiments might have for public policy and for the debates over egalitarianism. Experiments suggest that people are more inclined to redistribute when outcomes are influenced by luck than effort. This can create difficulties for public policy when people hold contrasting views over whether luck or effort determine outcomes. The results also appear to play into forms of luck egalitarianism. However, they may also be consistent with an alternative understanding of egalitarianism as the impulse to have rules that treat people equally.

Ethnic Identity and the Archaeology of the Aduentus Saxonum

For centuries, archaeologists have excavated the soils of Britain to uncover finds from the early medieval past. These finds have been used to reconstruct the alleged communities, migration patterns, and expressions of identity of coherent groups who can be regarded as ethnic ‘Anglo-Saxons’. Even in the modern day, when social constructionism has been largely accepted by scholars, this paradigm still persists. This book challenges the ethnic paradigm. As the first historiographical study of approaches to ethnic identity in modern ‘Anglo-Saxon’ archaeology, it reveals these approaches to be incompatible with current scholarly understandings of ethnicity. Drawing upon post-structuralist approaches to self and community, it highlights the empirical difficulties the archaeology of ethnicity in early medieval Britain faces, and proposes steps toward an alternative understanding of the role played by the communities of lowland Britain – both migrants from across the North Sea and those already present – in transforming the Roman world.

Is Indian sedition law colonial? J. F. Stephen and the jurisprudence on free speech

This article critically evaluates the characterisation of sedition law as colonial by analysing the arguments made by J. F. Stephen in opposing such a claim. While Stephen obfuscated the close links between the sedition law and the requirements of colonial governance, he made a persuasive case for how the sedition law was completely consistent with British ideas of liberty, utility, and the rule of law. Stephen’s arguments about legitimate limits to political liberties, particularly his critique of J. S. Mill in this regard, offer us an opportunity to question the presumed antithesis between colonial and metropolitan jurisprudence and trace their shared origins in British political thought. To that end, with Stephen as an interlocutor, this article critically analyses themes such as the defence of empire, colonialism, and the idea of improvement within a wider set of writings by British political philosophers, to arrive at an alternative understanding of British political liberalism. My article concludes that rather than ‘colonial difference’, the constitutive relation between sedition law and liberal jurisprudence better explains the prevalence of similar authoritarian laws within democratic regimes across the globe.

Organizational Rhetoric as Subjectification

Given arguments that organizational rhetoric is disconnected from contemporary and useful trends in rhetorical theory writ-large, we build a case for rethinking organizational rhetoric’s founding concept of identification through recent innovations in rhetorical theory. Drawing from theories of psychoanalysis, racialization, and coloniality, we argue for an alternative understanding of organizational rhetoric premised on subjectification, where subjectification is the process through which a subject is brought into being on the basis of shifting contexts, relations, and imbrication in forces of power. We highlight three facets of organizational subjectification that can contribute to innovative organizational rhetorical research: differential relations, dependence on Otherness, and uneven mutuality. These facets, we argue, highlight how processes of coloniality and racialization are fundamental to our very being and becoming, providing a means of understanding organizational rhetoric as inherently political.

Sandwiched in the Workplace

According to Ronald Robinson’s ‘theory of collaboration,’ non-European mediating elites helped regulate and maintain imperialism. This chapter argues that not all collaborators were crucial to the rise and decline of colonies. A peek into the circumstances of Macanese employment in Hong Kong shows a more practical aspect of how early colonial establishments were built through the services of migrant workers, who toiled in lower- and middle-ranking administrative positions in the public and private offices. Reassessing existing claims that Macanese workers were victims of racial prejudice, the careers of three Macanese men reveal the normative reasons behind their stagnant careers, as well as an alternative understanding of the terms of collaboration between colonial governments and their subjects from the migrant perspective.

“Mystery” in the Wisdom of Solomon and 4QInstruction

Similar ideas and tropes found in the Wisdom of Solomon and 4QInstruction (4Q415–418, 423; 1Q26) have considerable significance for the study of early Jewish sapiential literature. One feature shared by both compositions is teaching about “mysteries.” Previous studies on these two wisdom writings conclude that there are distinct differences in what these mysteries are and how they function in the thought world of each composition. This article argues for an alternative understanding of mysteries in 4QInstruction to those presented in previous comparative studies. In light of this reassessment of mysteries, the Wisdom of Solomon and 4QInstruction are seen to participate within an intellectual space much closer to one another than previously perceived.