WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

The Science Question in Feminism

While standardization efforts for XML query languages have been progressing, researchers and users increasingly focus on the database technology that has to deliver on the new challenges that the abundance of XML documents poses to data management: validation, performance evaluation and optimization of XML query processors are the upcoming issues. Following a long tradition in database research, we provide a framework to assess the abilities of an XML database to cope with a broad range of different query types typically encountered in real-world scenarios. The benchmark can help both implementors and users to compare XML databases in a standardized application scenario. To this end, we offer a set of queries where each query is intended to challenge a particular aspect of the query processor. The overall workload we propose consists of a scalable document database and a concise, yet comprehensive set of queries which covers the major aspects of XML query processing ranging from textual features to data analysis queries and ad hoc queries. We complement our research with results we obtained from running the benchmark on several XML database platforms. These results are intended to give a first baseline and illustrate the state of the art.

/pdf/xmark-a-benchmark-for-xml-data-management-1poftzlfoc.pdf

XMark: a benchmark for XML data management

It represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use.

/pdf/computational-thinking-ji-suan-lun-de-si-kao-3qvv34ha3s.pdf

Computational Thinking 計算論的思考

With the proliferation of entertainment games, supported by heavy investment in the underlying technologies, educators are now examining the educational values of gaming and attempting to incorporate games into their teaching. In Singapore, the game sector is worth many million Singapore dollars (SGDs), and gaming is an engaging activity of the young. Using a survey, this study examined the use of games and simulations in schools. The study was designed to shed light on the use of gaming activities in learning, perception of adoption and use, and problems encountered in teachers' attempts to adopt games. Factors related to teaching level, experience, and subject were also analyzed for possible influence on teachers' perceptions of game-related learning.

Teacher Perceptions of Games in Singapore Schools

If XML is to play the critical role of the lingua franca for Internet data interchange that many predict, it is necessary to start designing and adopting benchmarks allowing the comparative performance analysis of the tools being developed and proposed. The effectiveness of existing XML query languages has been studied by many, with a focus on the comparison of linguistic features, implicitly reflecting the fact that most XML tools exist only on paper. In this paper, with a focus on efficiency and concreteness, we propose a pragmatic first step toward the systematic benchmarking of XML query processing platforms with an initial focus on the data (versus document) point of view. We propose XOO7, an XML version of the OO7 benchmark. We discuss the applicability of XOO7, its strengths, limitations and the extensions we are considering. We illustrate its use by presenting and discussing the performance comparison against XOO7 of three different query processing platforms for XML.

/pdf/xoo7-applying-oo7-benchmark-to-xml-query-processing-tool-3zc56pt0u5.pdf

XOO7: applying OO7 benchmark to XML query processing tool

With the increasing spread and pervasiveness of technologies, the role of gender in the design of these technologies is a topic of growing importance. Several conference panels and journal issues have focused on the contributions feminism, gender theory, and queer theory can make to HCI. This paper discusses the key developments in the sub-field of Gender HCI over the past five years. We discuss, in particular, how recent approaches to gender in HCI move past questions of how men and women interact differently with technologies. Scholars are focusing on activist, intersectional, and reflexive approaches to gender and identity in design that focus on inclusion and accountability in terms of who technologies are designed for and in what ways. This scholarship draws on a wide variety of theoretical approaches to gender not integrated or well-known in the general literature or education in HCI or computing. We recommend the implementation of a Gender 101 general education module for all computing students to provide fluency in gender theory as a way to promote discussion, inclusivity, and accountability in interaction design and computing practices and organizations.

Exploring Nuanced Gender Perspectives within the HCI Community

UML is a widely used notation, and formalizing its semantics is an important issue. Here, we concentrate on formalizing UML state machines, used to express the dynamic behaviour of software systems. We propose a formal operational semantics covering all features of the latest version (2.4.1) of UML state machines specification. We use labelled transition systems as the semantic model, so as to use automatic verification techniques like model checking. Furthermore, our proposed semantics includes synchronous and asynchronous communications between state machines. We implement our approach in USM2C, a model checker supporting editing, simulation and automatic verification of UML state machines. Experiments show the effectiveness of our approach.

/pdf/a-formal-semantics-for-complete-uml-state-machines-with-29kw0v8jh0.pdf

A Formal Semantics for Complete UML State Machines with Communications

Many countries that recognise the importance of Computational Thinking (CT) skills are implementing curriculum changes to integrate the development of these skills and to introduce programming into formal school education. In countries such as the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Finland, Korea and Japan, initiatives and policies are made to introduce the development of CT skills and programming in the schools. This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of policies of CT in the education of one particular country, namely Singapore. We review Singapore’s approach to its implementation of CT education by first describing various initiatives in Singapore for Preschool, Primary and Secondary schools. Unlike several countries that have decided to implement computing as compulsory education, Singapore has taken a route of creating interest amongst children in computing in age-appropriate ways. Singapore’s pragmatic approach of relying on an ecosystem is characterised by allowing schools the choice to opt-in, nurturing students’ interest in computing, upskilling teachers in computing and a multi-agency approach.

/pdf/educational-policy-and-implementation-of-computational-2udw6bogc6.pdf

Bimlesh Wadhwa

Papers

Teacher Perceptions of Games in Singapore Schools

XOO7: applying OO7 benchmark to XML query processing tool

Exploring Nuanced Gender Perspectives within the HCI Community

A Formal Semantics for Complete UML State Machines with Communications

Educational Policy and Implementation of Computational Thinking and Programming: Case Study of Singapore