Between Mandala and World Stage: A Historiographical Study of a Public Space

Cities change. A sudden natural disaster may destroy a city. Spaces that were once important for the citizens and political life may be lost to development. Spaces that survive hold the quirks of history, culture, and society. This article develops a historical account of urban public space that explores the changing relationship between space, political order, identity, and memory. Using Tundikhel, the largest public open space of national significance in Kathmandu, Nepal, the article takes a journey from the ancient era to medieval times, and right through to the modern period to decipher the ways in which the public space has been historically formed, construed, and interpreted. The main body of the paper explores Tundikhel’s evolution through four thematic phases: (1) abstraction, folklore, and mysticism (300–1200 AD); (2) art, mandala and mercantalism (1201–1767 AD); (3) power, visibility, and modernity (1768–1989 AD) and; (4) breaking barriers and emancipation (1990 onwards). The article argues that a postmodern, hybrid nature of the public space today does more to capture the nature of the city’s change as a complex, multi-layered shift in which the history cannot be simply erased, but returns to disrupt contemporary narratives of the national space.

On being moderate and peaceful: Why Islamic political moderateness promotes outgroup tolerance and reconciliation

Islamic moderateness is said to be one of the key factors that contribute to the promotion of peace in Muslim societies. We present an empirical study conducted in Indonesia ( N = 299) that assessed Islamic political moderateness and examined its role in explaining Muslims’ tolerance towards non-Muslims, as well as the first group’s support for making reconciliation with the latter group. We found as hypothesised that Islamic political moderateness was a positive predictor of outgroup tolerance, because of the role it had in positively predicting the sense of national identity as a higher order identity vis-à-vis Islamic identity (i.e. higher order nested identity). Outgroup tolerance positively predicted and, in turn, fully mediated the positive association between Islamic political moderateness and Muslims’ reconciliatory tendencies, including feelings of collective guilt and shame, intergroup trust and perspective-taking, intergroup cooperation, willingness to apologise, as well as support for intergroup empowerment and reparative actions. These findings suggest the benefit of Islamic political moderateness to drive Muslims to appreciate the existence of non-Muslims. We discuss these empirical findings in terms of theoretical implications, research limitations and practical implications.

C’era una volta e poi? Un’altra storia

A retired professor of chemistry with his nephropathy that led him to attend a pre-dialysis clinic writes to his doctor, in a cross-section of Italian life from the post-war period to today, some truly wise and important concepts: – in every field, for the existence of a good functioning of the whole supply chain, order, identity of views and wisdom are needed – the true professional, even if he knows about medicine, should not give a patient a medicine or recommend a therapy only because a “machine” told him that a parameter of his analysis is altered, but he must speak with the patients, knowing their medical history well, to know more about them, such as the life they live, the profession they exercise, the culture, the family in which they live, all things that contribute to make the weak point of the disease more evident – the most important gift that a teacher must possess, but above all a doctor and a health worker, is to be able to inspire confidence as it is ultimately the thing that helps and that leads to hope for the future. (narrative nephrology)

A note on spinor form of Lovelock differential identity

The paper is devoted to 2-spinor calculus methods in general relativity. New spinor form of the Lovelock differential identity is suggested. This identity is second-order identity for the Riemann curvature tensor. We provide an example that our spinorial treatment of Lovelock identity is effective for the description of solutions of Einstein–Maxwell equations. It is shown that the covariant divergence of Lipkin’s zilch tensor for the free Maxwell field vanishes on the solutions of Einstein–Maxwell equations if and only if the energy–momentum tensor of the electromagnetic field is Weyl-compatible.

Modified Eshelby tensor for an anisotropic matrix with interfacial damage

We derive a simple tensor algebraic expression of the modified Eshelby tensor for a spherical inclusion embedded in an arbitrarily anisotropic matrix in terms of three tensor quantities (the fourth-order identity tensor, the elastic stiffness tensor, and the Eshelby tensor) and two scalar quantities (the inclusion radius and interfacial spring constant), when the interfacial damage is modelled as a linear-spring layer of vanishing thickness. We validate the expression for a triclinic crystal involving 21 independent elastic constants against finite element analysis.

Creating a Textual Identity? Pastoralia and Models of Tertiary Life

The canonical framework for tertiary orders had been established and given official recognition by the early fifteenth century. Nevertheless, this does not seem to have had an effect on how non-monastic women perceived themselves. While there is evidence that the number of houses that professed a rule associated with an order increased at this time, as was made clear earlier in this study, the popularity of the rule cannot be equated with the spread of an order. This chapter gives particular attention to the many discrepancies in what is often thought of as order identity. It focuses specifically on the inconsistencies between Observant ‘master narratives’, or prescriptive texts, and pastoralia. It also looks at the concept of identity and discusses how this is established.

The Interaction of Control Systems and Stakeholder Networks in Shaping the Identities of Self-Managed Teams

Team identity has received little research attention even though an increasing number of firms are moving to team-based organizations and there is evidence that teams form identities. We explore the extent to which team identity can be institutionalized as a central organizing principle of team-based firms. We argue that managerial and stakeholder interventions shape the self-construction of team identity as well as the team’s commitment to specific work objectives. We also suggest that team identity becomes isomorphic to organizational identity because of pressures related to: (1) the presence of a dense network of managers and stakeholders, which orients teams towards a focus on certain aspects of the higher-order identity; (2) the use of team routines and regular feedback loops, which force alignment with the organizational identity; and (3) the use of coordinating roles aimed at promoting, ratifying and reinforcing the convergence of identity within the team. We analyse multiple cases from a major multinational corporation in the telecommunications industry, which we examine through the lens of a multi-level model of controls involving the micro, meso and macro organizational levels. We expand and refine the model in the process.