Why Did They Leave School? A Self Determination Theory Perspective into Narratives of Finnish Early School Leavers

The present study aims to provide insights into the experiences of early school leavers within the Finnish context. We conducted a narrative inquiry among eleven early school leavers who were in prison when they were interviewed. Self Determination Theory (SDT), more specifically the concept of frustration of the three basic psychological needs of competence, relatedness and autonomy, and the tendency of people to move towards more supporting environments, was used as an interpretative tool, along with contextual information. We identified three pathways out of school, differing in the locus of need thwarting circumstances and the availability of access to transfer into a more satisfying environment. Furthermore, the experienced threat of safety was a shared element in the narrative accounts. Additionally, the findings add information about experienced indifference in the case of the participants, which is a new element in theorising the continuum of perceived need satisfaction within the terms of SDT.

The Organization of Practices for Instituting Economic Processes: Alternative Food Networks in Beijing

Recurrent food safety scandals have prompted Beijing consumers to organize farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs as a way to access organic food. This article draws on practice theory to understand the way in which these networks use the idea of “good food” to reorganize practices of farming, food purchase, cooking, and eating. The article uses the Polanyian concept of “instituted economic processes” to analyze specific modes of orientation and exchange between organic farmers and urban consumers and specific instituted forms of production and consumption. The article illustrates that “good food” became a shared element in practices and the system of provision. Through the qualification of food and associated discourse relating good food to practices and the food system, practices from production to exchange and consumption share an orientation and institute distinctive economic processes.

Going Their Own Way. Protestants’ Specific Models of Joining the Cultural Elite in 19th-century Hungary

The figures and data unanimously demonstrate that Reformed protestants were significantly overrepresented in the Hungarian cultural elite by the last third of the 19th century. Protestants, who had been under a threat of persecution throughout the 18th century and were negatively discriminated against until the mid-19th century, had developed different strategies for producing a new generation of the intellectual elite. We can distinguish three markedly different models here. Although the number of Protestants in Hungary was relatively low, they won outstanding social and cultural advancement thanks to several successful strategies and channels aiding promotion, which ran parallel but were also independent of one another. Perhaps it was the segmentation of the denominations and the power of the opportunities offered by competing alternatives that partly account for the successful process of producing a Protestant elite. However, the question remains how, and why, in all three cases isolation and going their own way could produce such significant results, and whether there are any common traits that made autonomous development so organic in all of the three cultural areas? Such a common characteristic may be a phenomenon of the Pfarrhaus, that is, the development of clerical and professorial dynasties in all three cases. The three communities all strove for endogamy, thereby accumulating, passing on and preserving private cultural and social capital through several generations. Another shared element may be participation in peregrinations, and, finally, demanding that professors to be active in publishing (as scholars, textbook writers, publicists and newspaper editors). It was these criteria and the persistent deliberateness with which they met them that allowed them to go their own way, eventually arriving at the highly significant meeting points of cultural discourse.

The Chemistry of Darkness

The article attempts to elucidate the connection between Deleuze and idealism partly by answering an apparently futile question: What kind of idealist was Deleuze? The author answers it by resorting to a deep (geo)chemistry, which allows him first to discern a parallel between Hegel’s pleas for a new world and Deleuze’s summons to a new earth and then to recognize that Schelling’s Ungrund concept influenced Deleuze’s version of those ambitions as the indifference preceding all difference and hence prior to all synthesis. However, Deleuze’s idealism is also Kantian - Grant sees Kantian “ethico-teleology” in Deleuze and Guattari’s call for a new people. Grant rejects this shared element in their thinking and replaces it with a less anthropocentric approach derived from chemistry through which he arrives at the absolute empiricism of Schelling’s nature-philosophy, which explains the ideal through the real. Schelling maintains that ubiquitous chemical processes explain all sensation and that all chemical processes contain sensation as a component. With the help of this empiricism devoid of things, Grant concludes that the new earth is nothing more than a blind chemical synthesis in which evil is the will of the ungrounded ground. In this chemical philosophy, evil itself - Schelling’s movement towards particularization - becomes material, and the ontology of absolute empiricism becomes the chemistry of darkness.

The Rise of the Sage in Greek and Jewish Antiquity

This article explores the emergence of the sage as an exemplar in Greek and Jewish antiquity. Greek philosophical writings and Jewish literary accounts are analysed, the latter including texts written in both Hebrew and Greek. The Greek and Jewish sources are compared in order to highlight (dis)similarities between them. It will be argued that the conception of the sage as an idealized figure and object of emulation originates from the classical Greek world, but it becomes integrated into the Jewish discourse on wisdom and good life in the later Hellenistic period. In spite of this shared element, the portrayals of the sage vary regarding the amount of concreteness and the discursive strategies in which his exemplarity is constructed.

The extreme insular adaptation of Garganornis ballmanni Meijer, 2014: a giant Anseriformes of the Neogene of the Mediterranean Basin

New skeletal elements of the recently described endemic giant anseriform Garganornis ballmanni Meijer, 2014 are presented, coming from the type-area of the Gargano and from Scontrone, southern and central Italy, respectively. The new remains represent the first bird remains found at Scontrone so far, and another shared element between these two localities, both part of the Apulia-Abruzzi Palaeobioprovince. The presence of a very reduced carpometacarpus confirms its flightlessness, only previously supposed on the basis of the very large size, while the morphologies of tarsometatarsus and posterior phalanges clearly indicate the adaptation of G. ballmanni to a terrestrial, non-aquatic, lifestyle. Its very large body size is similar to that observed in different, heavily modified, insular waterfowl and has been normally interpreted as the response to the absence of terrestrial predators and a protection from the aerial ones. The presence of a carpal knob in the proximal carpometacarpus also indicates a fighting behaviour for this large terrestrial bird species.

Links to Literature: Threading Mathematics into Social Studies

The shared element of the patchwork quilt is the common thread that binds important social studies concepts and contextual mathematics in this month's integrated learning experiences based on quality children's literature. The featured literary selections naturally focus the reader's attention on the literature's historical and cultural aspects; however, the mathematics subtly embedded in the story lines should be actively investigated. The activities arising from these books encourage young children not only to appreciate diverse cultural heritages but also to develop an awareness for ways in which mathematics has played an important role throughout history.