Showing papers on "Criticism published in 2011"

The Turn to Affect: A Critique

Abstract: In this essay I plan to discuss the general turn to affect, particularly the turn to the neurosciences of emotion, that has recently taken place in the humanities and social sciences.2 The rise of interest in the emotions among historians has been well documented.3 My concern is somewhat different. I want to consider the turn to the emotions that has been occurring in a broad range of fields, including history, political theory, human geography, urban and environmental studies, architecture, literary studies, art history and criticism, media theory, and cultural studies. The work of Daniel Lord Smail, who has recently inaugurated neurohistory by arguing for the integration of history and the brain sciences, including the sciences of emotion, is a case in point.4 But my inquiry will also consider the claims of those cultural critics and others who, even before historians ventured into this terrain, in such newly designated fields as neuropolitics, neuro-

Silencing Aboriginal Curricular Content and Perspectives Through Multiculturalism: “There Are Other Children Here”

Abstract: Recently I was invited to join a provincial discussion about the high school social science curriculum. One area of contention was whether all students should be required to take a course that woul...

Service‐dominant logic: a necessary step

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to respond to the criticism O'Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy made of service‐dominant logic in EJM, on behalf of both the paper and the worldwide community of scholars that have embraced S‐D logic as historically informed, integrative, transcending and rich in its potential to generate theoretical and practical contributions.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a critical, conceptual analysis of the fallacious arguments that O'Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy developed to argue against the emerging and rapidly developing service‐dominant logic.Findings – The paper shows that, contrary to the claims of O'Shaughnessy and O'Shaughnessy, S‐D logic: is neither regressive nor intended to displace all other marketing perspectives; is not advocating technology at the expense of explanatory theory; and is pre‐theoretic and intended to be soundly grounded in a manner to assist theory construction.Research limitations/implications – Theory advancement is critical to marketing...

Persuasion in Society

Abstract: Persuasion in Society combines contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism with social scientific theory and research to help readers understand and practice more effective persuasion. Features include the presentation of a dual perspective - the persuader and persuadee; integration of ethical issues throughout; application of theory in practical situations; and inclusion of stories and visual components to enhance learning.

The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: Myths, Developments and Challenges

Abstract: This article discusses some of the claims of the earlier and later versions of the Contemporary Theory of Metaphor (CTM) and addresses some of the criticism that has been leveled against it. It is argued that much of this criticism arises from common misconceptions as to the real claims made by the theory. However, CTM is still in need of further exploration and empirical support. In this connection, we identify some areas where research is still needed and supply our own developments. We argue for a more complex classification of metaphor types, which takes into account various complementary taxonomic perspectives, including the nature of source and target and the genericity and complexity of the metaphoric operation. We also explore metaphor in relation to cognitive prominence and conceptual interaction issues. Finally, we deal with the problem of constraints on metaphor and make a proposal for three complementary kinds of constraint.

Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction

Abstract: In its essence, Critical Theory is Western Marxist thought with the emphasis moved from the liberation of the working class to broader issues of individual agency. Critical Theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose-and, if at all possible, cure-the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of famous and less famous representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukacs and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations. Though they shared a Marxist bent, the Frankfurt School's scholars came from a variety of fields-philosophy, economics, psychoanalysis, and even music-and they initially sought not only to do interdisciplinary work but also to combine theory with practice, criticism with empirical data. Forced by the rise of Hitler to flee to the United States, by the late 1930s the Frankfurt School left behind the emphasis on empiricism, beginning instead to specialize in philosophical inquiry into the nature of social control, which combined the work of Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. This VSI is ultimately organized around the cluster of concepts and themes that set critical theory apart from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Bronner explains and discusses concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non-identity and utopia. He argues for the introduction of new categories and perspectives for illuminating the obstacles to progressive change and focusing upon hidden transformative possibilities. Only a critique of critical theory can render it salient for a new age. That is precisely what this very short introduction seeks to provide. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy

Abstract: ∗We have presented and discussed material from this paper in various guises in many situations. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the British Academy for their sponsorship of the workshop Metaphysical Indeterminacy: the state of the art. We owe thanks to everyone —too many to name—who has given valuable comments, criticism and advice. We’d particularly like to thank Ross Cameron, Matti Eklund, Andrew McGonigal, Jason Turner, Rich Woodward, and Dean Zimmerman.

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

Abstract: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Jodi Dean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, 232 pages. $74.95 hbk. $21.95 pbk. Jodi Dean is a multitasker. She teaches political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and is the Erasmus Professor of the Humanities at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is also a critical scholar worthy of the title. Rather than following the well-worn path of criticism directed at the "powers that be," Dean directs her attention toward the infirmities within and among critics and activists on the political left in the United States. At the heart of her critique is her suggestion that the once-sharp edges of social movement vanguards have been dulled by their emersion in a cloud of meaningless and self-serving chatter that merely adds to the flow of digital detritus that she defines as the essence of "communicative capitalism." Despite the fact that most of the analyses that serve as core of her six tightly organized chapters were written before we had much experience with the "postpartisan" and "post-racial" versions of progressive politics as performed by the Obama administration, most readers could fiU in the blanks on what her assessment would likely be. Dean lays the groundwork for her attack on liberal capitulation to a neoliberal hegemony by identifying several core themes in the approach to social policy that achieved dominance during the Clinton years. Of particular significance is her suggestion that the discursive frameworks that supported progressive struggles for the "rights" of various oppressed groups served to reinforce the "position of the victim" at the heart of these movements. She then suggests that it is precisely the character and capacity of communicative capitalism that creates "ideal discursive habitats for the thriving of the victim identity." Although Dean gives a central place of honor to recent work in psychoanalytic theory, the examples, arguments, and illustrations that she provides throughout the book wUl still generate understanding and appreciation among those of us not well grounded in Lacanian Marxism. Dean explicates her take on the nature of communicative capitalism, appropriately enough, in a chapter on technology. In essence, she argues that rather than serving the democratic functions of enlightenment that we expect to find in a Habermasian public sphere, the everexpanding flow of commentary and personal expression exists as Uttle more than circulating content, something akin to a warm bath. For example, she suggests that pointed criticism "doesn't require an answer because it doesn't stick as criticism. It functions as just another opinion offered into the media-stream." Thus, her definition of communicative capitaUsm is "talk without response." In her view, communications technology helps to provide a "fantasy of participation" where taking poUtical action is reduced to an act of talking into the space of flows of which the Internet is the deepest end. …

Climate change in literature and literary criticism

Abstract: This article provides an overview of climate change in literature, focusing on the representation of climate change in Anglophone fiction. It then evaluates the way in which these fictional representations are critiqued in literary studies, and considers the extent to which the methods and tools that are currently employed are adequate to this new critical task. We explore how the complexity of climate change as both scientific and cultural phenomenon demands a corresponding degree of complexity in fictional representation. For example, when authors represent climate change as a global, networked, and controversial phenomenon, they move beyond simply employing the environment as a setting and begin to explore its impact on plot and character, producing unconventional narrative trajectories and innovations in characterization. Then, such creative complexity asks of literary scholars a reassessment of methods and approaches. For one thing, it may require a shift in emphasis from literary fiction to genre fiction. It also particularly demands that environmental criticism, or ecocriticism, moves beyond its long-standing interest in concepts of 'nature' and 'place', to embrace a new understanding of the local in relation to the global. We suggest, too, that there are synergies to be forged between these revisionary moves in ecocriticism and developments in literary critical theory and historicism, as these critical modes begin to deal with climate change and reimagine themselves in turn. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies

Abstract: The plurality and growing number of responses to cultural trauma theory in postcolonial criticism demonstrate the ongoing appeal of trauma theory despite the fact that it is also increasingly critiqued as inadequate to the research agenda of postcolonial studies. In the dialogue between trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies the central question remains whether trauma theory can be effectively “postcolonialized” in the sense of being usefully conjoined with postcolonial theory. This article presents a detailed account of the core concepts and tenets of cultural trauma theory in order to contribute to a clearer understanding of the issues currently at stake in this developing relationship between trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies. It engages with fundamental issues, such as those deriving from trauma theory’s foundation in Freudian psychoanalysis; its Eurocentric orientation; its inherent contradictions, such as its deconstructionist aesthetics of aporia vs notions of therapeutic and...

The Product of Text and ‘Other’ Statements: Discourse analysis and the critical use of Foucault

Abstract: Much has been written on Michel Foucault's reluctance to clearly delineate a research method, particularly with respect to genealogy (Harwood, 2000; Meadmore, Hatcher & McWilliam, 2000; Tamboukou, 1999). Foucault (1994, p. 288) himself disliked prescription stating, ‘I take care not to dictate how things should be’ and wrote provocatively to disrupt equilibrium and certainty, so that ‘all those who speak for others or to others’ no longer know what to do. It is doubtful, however, that Foucault ever intended for researchers to be stricken by that malaise to the point of being unwilling to make an intellectual commitment to methodological possibilities. Taking criticism of ‘Foucauldian’ discourse analysis as a convenient point of departure to discuss the objectives of poststructural analyses of language, this paper develops what might be called a discursive analytic; a methodological plan to approach the analysis of discourses through the location of statements that function with constitutive effects.

Change in maternal criticism and behavior problems in adolescents and adults with autism across a 7-year period.

Abstract: In a previous study, high levels of maternal criticism predicted increased behavior problems in adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) over an 18-month period (Greenberg, Seltzer, Hong, & Orsmond, 2006). The current investigation followed these families over a period of 7 years to examine the longitudinal course of criticism and behavior problems, to assess the association between their trajectories, and to determine the degree to which change in each of these factors predicted levels of criticism and behavior problems at the end of the study period. A sample of 118 mothers coresiding with their adolescent and adult children with ASD provided open-ended narratives about their children and reported on the children's behavior problems at 4 waves. Maternal criticism was derived from expressed emotion ratings of the narratives. Criticism exhibited low but significant stability over the 7-year period, and behavior problems exhibited high stability. Through latent growth curve modeling, (a) criticism was found to have increased over time, but only for the group of families in which the sons or daughters transitioned from high school services during the study period; (b) individual changes in criticism and behavior problems were positively correlated over the 7-year period; and (c) changes in criticism predicted levels of behavior problems at the conclusion of the study. Changes in behavior problems were not predictive of end levels of criticism. Implications for intervention and prevention efforts are discussed.

Criticisms and contradictions of ethnomathematics

Abstract: This article aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the epistemology and philosophy of ethnomathematics, and to debate its educational implications. It begins by identifying in recent literature two categories of criticism of ethnomathematics: epistemological, related with the way ethnomathematics positions itself in terms of mathematical knowledge; and pedagogical, related to the way ethnomathematical ideas are implicated in formal education. After a description of both of these categories, the pedagogical implications of ethnomathematics are considered by means of confronting the criticisms of recent research in the field. Ethnomathematics research conceives its pedagogical implications in different ways, some of them contradictory. Such contradictions are related with the societal role of school, with the idea that we can “transfer” knowledge from one setting to another and the tendency to reduce ethnomathematics to a ready-to-apply “tool” for the school-learning of mathematics. The author discusses the first two criticisms in the light of recent research concerned with the social and political dimensions of mathematics education. Concerning the latter, a typical case of an ethnomathematical research study looking at bringing local knowledge into school in the name of promoting diversity is analyzed. It is the author's contention that ethnomathematical research runs the risk of conveying an idea of culture where the Other is squeezed from its otherness. The article concludes by arguing that a deeper theoretical discussion is needed in the majority of the research currently done in ethnomathematics so that well-intentioned actions do not end up having a result opposite to their aims.

Disciplinary knowledge for all, the secondary history curriculum and history teachers' achievement

Abstract: The history education community's efforts to help pupils distinguish between the discipline of history and rawer forms of collective memory have been beset with problems from inside and outside the education community. From without, teachers face criticism for their supposed failure to foster narrowly celebratory versions of Britain's past; from within, pressure to reduce history to generic ‘skills’ of the ‘new cross-curricularity’, apparently in the interests of relevance, utility or engagement. This article will argue that such genericism is, first, redundant, in that it adds nothing to strong disciplinary practice in fostering thinking, reflection, criticality and motivation; and, second, inadequate: disciplinary knowledge and concepts are necessary in order to reach or challenge claims about the past. The argument is built from history teachers' discourse about their own efforts to find out how to make disciplinary history work at the pedagogic site. The article examines history teacher efforts to add...

Why not everybody loves Hofstede? What are the alternative approaches to study of culture?

Abstract: In these days the Hofstede's work on culture is most quoted in many publications. For scholars and practitioners knowing and having complete understanding of cross cultural dimensions, Hofstede's work plays an important and dynamic role. His observations and analysis gives the full understanding to the readers and as well as authors and scholars. Still such pioneering work faces much criticism by scholars. Some of the scholars appreciated his credible work. Some scholars quote his finding in their research and some ignore it. In our paper, this study concludes all the criticism on hofstede's work. Basically there are two parts of this paper; in first part we discuss the reason why hofstede's work faces criticism and in second part we recommend various other cultural dimensions, which we can use to understand the culture. Research Findings This paper tries to conclude all the dimensions and also suggest the model for understanding the national culture. Key Words Culture, National culture, Hofstede, cross cultural dimension.

Site-writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism

Abstract: In Site-writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism Professor Jane Rendell explores what happens when discussions concerning situatedness and site-specificity enter the writing of art criticism. The sites explored in the book are the material, emotional, political and conceptual settings of the artwork's construction, exhibition and documentation, as well as those remembered, dreamed and imagined. Through five different spatial configurations - both psychic and architectural - "Site-Writing" explores artworks by artists as diverse as Jananne Al-Ani, Elina Brotherus, Nathan Coley, Tracey Emin, Christina Iglesias and Do-Ho Suh, aiming to adapt such psychoanalytic ways of working as free association and conjectural interpretation to art criticism. Works by Al-Ani referred to in the second chapter, Configuration 2 - Back and Forth, include The Visit: Echo and Muse (2004), Untitled (2002) and She Said (2000)

When is enough, enough? Advocacy, evidence and criticism in the field of urban agriculture in South Africa

Abstract: In South Africa, the advocacy of urban agriculture as a means of improving the plight of the urban poor has been a major theme in the literature since the early 1990s. Ironically, the criticism of that advocacy has almost as long a history. To elucidate these two themes, this paper investigates the evidence on which the advocacy is based, outlines the criticism of the advocacy, and analyses the responses to the criticism. It suggests that continued advocacy in the face of disconfirming evidence is misplaced and calls for greater caution. It observes that responses to the criticism have been weak and concludes that continued advocacy and continued criticism, in parallel, hamper debate. Unless there is engagement between the advocates and the critics, not only will the field of urban agriculture suffer, but so will the urban poor.

Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue Between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings

Abstract: In C"ritical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings" Vanessa Joosen broadens the traditional concept of intertextuality to include academic texts. With three key texts from the 1970s at the center of her discussion-Marcia K. Lieberman's "Some Day My Prince Will Come," Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic-Joosen connects the critical views expressed in these feminist and psychoanalytic interpretations with fictional fairy-tale retellings and illustrations that have been published in Dutch, English, and German since the 1970s. While readers may not automatically connect fairy-tale retellings and criticism, Joosen argues that they represent a similar conviction to understand, interpret, criticize, and experiment with the original tale. Moving through her three critical focus texts in chronological order, Joosen addresses fairy-tale retellings in prose, poetry, and pictures, including revisions of "Snow White," "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," "Hansel and Gretel," "Little Red Riding Hood," and "Beauty and the Beast." Authors and illustrators whose work is discussed include Paul Biegel, Anthony Browne, Gillian Cross, Emma Donoghue, Iring Fetscher, Ad?le Geras, Otto Gmelin, Wim Hofman, Anne Provoost, Anne Sexton, Barbara Walker, and Jane Yolen.Joosen argues that retellings and criticism participate in a continuous and dynamic dialogue about the traditional fairy tale, but on different terms." Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales" offers many insights into the workings of fiction and criticism that will appeal to fairy-tale scholars, literature scholars, and general readers interested in intertextuality and fairy tales.

Key Concepts in Crime Fiction

Abstract: General Editors' Preface .- Introductory Essay.- Chronology.- Contexts: History, Politics, Culture.- Literature: Texts, Themes, Issues.- Criticism: Approaches, Theory, Practice.- Index.

Seeing complexity in public education : problems, possibilities, and success for all

Abstract: INTRODUCTION I.1 Problems I.2 Solutions I.3 The Success for All Foundation I.4 The Story I.5 Analytic Framework I.6 Complexity 1. DESIGNING 1.1 Beginnings 1.2 The Organizational Blueprint 1.3 Challenges, Redefined 1.4 Gathering Enthusiasm 1.5 Gathering Criticism 1.6 Questions 2. SUPPORTING 2.1 The Program Adoption Process 2.2 The Replication Process 2.3 Compounding Potential, Compounding Risk 2.4 Program as Classroom 3. SCALING UP 3.1 Emergence and Co-Evolution 3.2 Exploding Growth 3.3 Exploding Risk 3.4 A Perfect Storm 3.5 Recapturing the Program 4. CONTINUOUSLY IMPROVING 4.1 The Development Agenda 4.2 The Development Organization 4.3 The Development Process 4.4 Revolution via Evolution 4.5 New Problems Within, New Problems Beyond 4.6 Living on the Edge 5. SUSTAINING 5.1 Evolving to Evolve 5.2 Seeing and Interpreting 5.3 Strategizing and Adapting 5.4 The More Things ChangeEL 5.5 Time Capsule: Advice and Predictions 6. SEEING 6.1 Reprise 6.2 Reform 6.3 Renewal

The world turned upside down? Human rights and International Relations after 25 years

Abstract: This article revisits the arguments of John Vincent's influential 1986 book, Human rights and International Relations and situates them against the context both of the debates of his own time and the debates of the early twenty-first century. Vincent's arguments are assessed and evaluated in their own terms and compared and contrasted with dominant positions today. The arguments are then assessed in the light of two leading critical perspectives on human rights before considering a final criticism of the possibility and desirability of the current human rights regime in International Relations.

The women's struggle for equality during South Africa's transition to democracy

Abstract: Fifteen years ago, I published the above article in Transformation 30 (1996) in a context where some of the optimism about the prospects for change in South Africa’s transition to democracy had already waned – at least among left wing feminist activists. The question I now ask when I read that article, is what was absent from the thinking that informed it. What and how was I thinking? I recall in the 1970s and 1980s, hot debates within the internal South African left about the relationship between nationalism and socialism. Among feminists, there was a deeper criticism that showed that neither approach would address the critical questions of women’s subordination and women’s oppression. I wondered in reading the piece I wrote, whether through my own enthusiastic and committed involvement in the transition to democracy, in the Women’s National Coalition, whether I had forgotten about the left criticism of nationalist movements and their commitment not to revolutionary transformation so much as to the promotion of a nationalist bourgeoisie. If not forgotten, then placed carefully on the back-burner to simmer away and mature! What did this mean for working class and feminist politics and in particular, for the outcome in terms of fulfilling women’s needs and interests? Left intellectuals had been critical of the idea of the two stage theory of revolution anyway, so why was there such euphoria when the ANC came to power in 1994? Was I naive enough to think that the ANC would be any different in 1992 than it had been in 1982 or earlier, when it attacked any deviation from its ‘line’ and forbad any internal criticism? As a left-leaning feminist intellectual, I had thought much about what it meant to support the struggle for liberation, and I and others on the left, had joined women’s organisations during the 1980s to argue for what we conceived to be a

Mariam Khan and the Legacy of Mughal Women in Early Modern Literature of India

Abstract: In John Dryden’s play, Amboyna, or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants (1673), the Indonesian princess Ysabinda is an almost unidentifiable re-creation of a historical figure named Mariam Khan, wife of the English trader Gabriel Towerson.1 Amboyna is based on the 1623 torture and murder of Towerson by the Dutch and is therefore invested in an accurate if martyrized depiction of Towerson, whose name remains “Gabriel Towerson” in the play. Towerson’s real wife, Mariam Khan, is not transferred similarly but “recast” as Ysabinda and married to the Towerson of Dryden’s text. As contemporary criticism points out, Mariam Khan virtually disappears in the transformation to Ysabinda, and at first glance, the departure appears inconsequential since there is limited information about her.2 Mariam Khan (dates unknown) was a resident of the Mughal Empire in northern India (1526–1858) and the daughter of Mubarak Khan, an influential merchant in the courts of the Mughal emperors Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and Jahangir (r. 1605–27). While Mughal emperors were Muslims, their subjects and associates were of different nationalities and religions, from Persians and Turks to Hindus and Portuguese Catholics. Mubarak Khan and Mariam Khan were Armenian Christians, of which there were large communities throughout early modern India.3