On reappearance and complexity in musical calling

Music is especially valued in human societies, but music-like behavior in the form of song also occurs in a variety of other animal groups including primates. The calling of our primate ancestors may well have evolved into the music of modern humans via multiple selective scenarios. But efforts to uncover these influences have been hindered by the challenge of precisely defining musical behavior in a way that could be more generally applied across species. We propose an acoustic focused reconsideration of “musicality” that could help enable independent inquiry into potential ecological pressures on the evolutionary emergence of such behavior. Using published spectrographic images (n = 832 vocalizations) from the primate vocalization literature, we developed a quantitative formulation that could be used to help recognize signatures of human-like musicality in the acoustic displays of other species. We visually scored each spectrogram along six structural features from human music—tone, interval, transposition, repetition, rhythm, and syllabic variation—and reduced this multivariate assessment into a concise measure of musical patterning, as informed by principal components analysis. The resulting acoustic reappearance diversity index (ARDI) estimates the number of different reappearing syllables within a call type. ARDI is in concordance with traditional measures of bird song complexity yet more readily identifies shorter, more subtly melodic primate vocalizations. We demonstrate the potential utility of this index by using it to corroborate several origins scenarios. When comparing ARDI scores with ecological features, our data suggest that vocalizations with diversely reappearing elements have a pronounced association with both social and environmental factors. Musical calls were moderately associated with wooded habitats and arboreal foraging, providing partial support for the acoustic adaptation hypothesis. But musical calling was most strongly associated with social monogamy, suggestive of selection for constituents of small family-sized groups by neighboring conspecifics. In sum, ARDI helps construe musical behavior along a continuum, accommodates non-human musicality, and enables gradualistic co-evolutionary paths between primate taxa—ranging from the more inhibited locational calls of archaic primates to the more exhibitional displays of modern apes.

A Study on the “SFL”Model of College English Blended Teaching in Smokeless Campus in the Post-epidemic Era

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has changed the teaching mode of colleges and universities, leading to the transformation of teaching philosophy and innovation of teaching technology. Based on this, the paper constructs the “SFL” model of college English blended teaching, namely “Spoc + Flipped classroom + Live broadcast”. Guided by New Constructivism, the model is characterized by independent inquiry, cooperative learning, teacher guidance and live broadcast interaction, breaking the traditional ways of teaching. The paper analyzes and discusses the experimental process and results of the first round of integrated English course under the model of “SFL”, in order to explore the effective ways of college English blended teaching under the good environment required by the public health of post-epidemic era, namely, smokeless campus, and provide reference for other colleges and universities.

The Existence of Arguments in Classical Islamic Thought: Reply to Hannah Erlwein

In recent years, there has been notable interest in Islamic philosophy and theology from an analytic and not merely historical perspective. One important area of research that has garnered a great deal of research is the arguments for the existence of God. Recent work by Hannah Erlwein seeks to argue that this research has been in vain, for there are no arguments for the existence of God in classical Islamic thought. This paper analyzes Erlwein’s strategies in justifying this position, revealing that her research ignores an enormous amount of evidence that runs contrary to her thesis, in addition to demonstrating many of the errors and shortcomings in her work. Most disturbingly, the book seeks to present the Islamic philosophical tradition as fideistic and unintellectual based on a series of contrived interpretations of rather clear texts. In response, this paper demonstrates the importance of independent inquiry in the Islamic tradition by looking at a wide range of different relevant texts.

Promoting a safer Church? A critical discourse analysis of the Church of England’s safeguarding policy document

This article examines, by using principles of critical discourse analysis, the safeguarding policy of the Church of England as presented in the policy document Promoting a Safer Church. Overall, the document provides a succinct and comprehensive outline of the Church of England’s safeguarding policy, setting out a broad and whole-church approach to safeguarding that encompasses activities from prevention through to response and taking seriously the concerns of those who have been abused within the institution of the Church. However, the analysis also reveals some weaknesses of definition and accountability and an ongoing need, as highlighted by the recent Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse report, for a change in culture and behaviour within the Church.

Obstacles in the Process of Dealing With Child Sexual Abuse–Reports From Survivors Interviewed by the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany

Obstacles in dealing with child sexual abuse (CSA) can hinder survivors in the process of coming to terms with their experiences. The present study aims to identify and analyze factors that may pose obstacles in the long-term process of dealing with CSA. It is part of a larger research consortium “Auf-Wirkung,” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and was conducted in cooperation with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Germany (IICSAG). The IICSAG was appointed by the Independent Commissioner for Child Sexual Abuse Issues and the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth in 2016. To determine responsibilities, recognize injustice, and further acknowledge the survivors of CSA in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Independent Inquiry has held 1,303 private sessions with survivors of CSA by Oct. 17th, 2020. The present study focuses on exploring reoccurring problematic experiences reported by survivors in private sessions regarding the long-term process of dealing with experiences of CSA. A total of 30 transcripts of private sessions, conducted by members and appointees of the IICSAG between September 2016 and June 2019, were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Attendants of private sessions described a variety of obstacles, including negative social reactions to disclosure, institutions' unwillingness to elucidate occurrences of CSA within their midst, as well as general financial difficulties, and those linked to redress claims. Manipulative grooming by perpetrators and limited access to adequate psychotherapy were perceived as obstructive by survivors dealing with CSA. In the context of criminal proceedings, survivors reported long durations of court proceedings and negative experiences in connection to credibility assessment. Results will be discussed to better support survivors of CSA in the process of dealing with their experiences in the future.

Interactions of shame: violence against children in residential care

Within their chapter Marie Demant and Friederike Lorenz discuss the role of shame in the context of violence against children in residential care. Their work is based on two empirical projects and includes reports of survivors of sexual violence, who reported their experiences in hearings conducted by the German ‘Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’, which started its work in 2016. It furthermore includes empirical material from a research project on systematic violence by a team of professionals in a residential care home for children with disabilities. Both perspectives indicate how young people experience shame and humiliation as part of the institutional setting. Furthermore, it shows the negative impact these practices have on children and adolescents in situations of dependency, seeking help, and disclosure. It points out practices of humiliation as a part of the violence and shows to which extent shame can affect the possibilities for young people in these situations to be heard and to get help.

1. Political Research

This text provides readers with the analytic skills and resources they need to evaluate research findings in political research, as well as the practical skills for conducting their own independent inquiry. It shows that empirical research and normative research are not independent of each other and explains the distinction between positivism and interpretivism, and between quantitative and qualitative research. Part 1 of this edition discusses key issues in the philosophy of social science, while Part 2 presents a ‘nuts and bolts’ or ‘how to’ guide to research design, such as how to find and formulate a research question. Part 3 evaluates different methods of data collection and analysis that can be used to answer research questions, along with the variety of considerations and decisions that researchers must confront when using different methods.

Some Rules of Engagement Legacies of the 1999 Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (unamir) has gone down in history as one of the worst failures in the history of the United Nations. The shortcomings of the mission were the focus of several reports. In this paper, Rob McLaughlin analyses some of the key findings of the various reports, with an emphasis on the rules of engagement framework and how it was interpreted at various points throughout the mission.

Stuart Hall as a criminological theorist-activist

What is the legacy of Stuart Hall for criminology, beyond just Policing the Crisis? In this article I highlight two other engagements by Hall in race and policing one in the 1980s through an independent inquiry, the other in the 1990s through a major public inquiry. Beyond bringing this work to light, this article shows how these engagements reveal Hall’s unique style of theorizing the concrete politics of the present through his stress upon conjunctures and context, and via the concept of articulation. Hall’s interventions in these two cases underscore an analytical and theoretical stance in public forums that made him more than a ‘scholar-activist’ but rather a ‘theorist-activist’ who drew on theory for strategic and ‘applied’ purposes. The ways in which he did this can, I suggest, point to different ways of ‘doing race’ in a critical criminology.