Urban Space,Representation, and Artifice

This article offers a semiotic approach to modes of representation and organization of urban space. With point of departure in the art historian Donald Preziosi’s account of art history as episteme of modernity, the aim is to characterise codes that regulate the representations of urban space in a development from modernity towards a post- or hypermodern condition. In order to understand especially developments in aesthetic representation, Roman Jakobson’s semiotic mode of “artifice” is reintroduced. It seems that the application of this semiotic mode is highly relevant to the understanding of aesthetic representation in general but also and especially to the understanding of the aesthetics of three-dimensional artefacts. The article concludes with a tentative matrix of urban spatial trends and a perspective to the impact of changes in communications technology on the developments of urban space. Although the article has a theoretical scope, it refers to a number of examples from and observations in the urban environment.

Beyond Art and Beauty: In Search of the Object of Philosophical Aesthetics

This article deals with the ambigous situation of philosophical aesthetics, which now seems to have lost its proper object. Moreover, Arthur C. Danto has popularized talk of an end of art, in which he ties that end to the end of any aesthetic master narrative. Comparing modern and medieval approaches to art, this paper tries to reformulate the question of philosophical aesthetics, which has to be understood in a hermeneutical way. Taken in a heuristic manner 'art' and 'beauty' remain the principal aesthetic categories able to keep the understanding of what belongs to aesthetics open to different historical approaches.     

Aesthetics and Affect: Engaging Energy Communities

ABSTRACT

Engaging publics in participatory events has become a central means to introducing lay people's voices into processes of technoscientific innovation and governance. However, little attention has been paid to the role of aesthetics, especially in terms of opening up potential ways of critically and creatively engaging with technoscientific matters of concern. The terms semblamatic and matters of potentially are proposed as addressing this dimension of aesthetics. Drawing on practice-based design research, a probe workshop with members of energy communities was implemented. Three probe exercises served to open up potential re-articulations of such core themes as energy, communities and futures. Our goals were to examine the whether such probes enabled semblamatic responses and the emergence of matters of potentiality. Findings were mixed. The continued retention of standard meanings of these core themes suggested that such events can be anaesthetic, blunting access to the semblamatic aspects of engagement. Conversely, there was some opening up in which the core themes were creatively re-articulated. The present perspective, with its three novel terms - semblamatic, matters of potentiality, and anaesthetic - might prove useful in alerting scholars to the complex role of aesthetics in the methodological and analytic practices entailed in engagement with publics.     

Designing Urban Experiences. The Case of Zuidas,Amsterdam

Zuidas is a new city centre, which is emerging in the outskirts of Amsterdam. The ambitious project of developing a new international city centre has been carefully planned as the Netherlands has a strong and meticulous tradition for urban planning. The planning has however not only encompassed traditional urban planning aspects such as infrastructure, environmental factors and aesthetics, but has also dealt with the design of urban experiences. Through an introduction of the framework of the structure of experiences, this article examines how urban experiences can be understood and analysed, and deals with how urban experiences can be designed through careful consideration of how experiences are constituted. Taking the psychological structure of experiences into account when designing urbanity is not only interesting, but also highly relevant as Zuidas is competing with other international venues such as La Défense, the Docklands and Potsdamer Platz.     

Me,Myself, and Mobility: The Relevance of Region for Young Adults' Identity Development

As residential mobility is a common life event that particularly affects young adults, regional identity may be relevant for young adults. We therefore extended the three‐dimensional identity model to the regional domain. The development of regional identity was studied using a prospective design over six months with a sample of 1,795 post‐secondary graduates (71% female, mean age of 24.54 years), containing both movers and non‐movers. Latent profile analyses and latent profile transition analyses revealed three main findings: First, solutions with four regional identity statuses—moratorium, searching moratorium, closure, and achievement—were found to be most interpretable. Second, the emergent statuses differed substantially in terms of Big Five personality traits and life satisfaction, as well as with moving experience. Third, the stability of identity status membership across a period of six months was highest for the non‐movers group. Comparatively less stability across time was found for the movers, underscoring the relevance of transitions for identity development. Taken together, these findings show that even in a mobile world, region matters in identity development. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Collaboration with Urban Community Stakeholders: Refining Paraprofessional‐led Services to Promote Positive Parenting

This paper describes the process of a community–academic partnership to navigate implementation challenges for a school‐based service model led by paraprofessionals to promote positive parenting in high poverty urban communities. We describe the process by which we (a) identified implementation challenges, (b) sustained a university–community collaboration to redesign the paraprofessional service model, and (c) assessed the feasibility of the new model involving four social service agencies in 16 schools with over 600 families. The structure and process of the collaboration and refinement are described with attention to who was best positioned to engage in the collaboration and how the partnership worked to balance scientific rigor with responsiveness to paraprofessional workforce strengths. Feasibility data indicated that the revised model was successfully implemented by paraprofessional staff; 92.2% of possible staff monthly reports were completed and discussion of key goals was incorporated into 94.2% of interactions. Continual monitoring provided critical feedback from stakeholders as we drew on and interpreted these various sources of information to build and refine the service model. We suggest that these processes are critical steps to bridge the research‐to‐practice gap, by promoting practices that are aligned with the needs of children and families, and the staff who serve them.     

Religion,Poverty, and Development

This article serves two purposes. First, it introduces the forum that follows in this issue on religion and development. Second, it serves as a review of the small but quickly growing literature on how religion interacts with efforts by (often religious) people and organizations to ameliorate poverty worldwide. We address the need to define both “religion” and “development” with clarity and precision. We also call for further research in this area by sociologists, particularly at a time when the landscape of development practice is shifting, from changes in funding sources and priorities to competition between religious and secular organizations.     

Achievement motivation among urban adolescents: Work hope, autonomy support, and achievement-related beliefs

Drawing upon expectancy value, hope, and self-determination theories, this study explores the contributions of work-based beliefs and autonomy support as predictors of adaptive achievement-related beliefs. Two hundred and one urban high school students who were enrolled in a work-based learning program completed measures of work hope, autonomy support, and achievement beliefs. Results from the full canonical correlation model revealed that work hope, career planning, and autonomy support shared 37.5% of the variance with achievement-related beliefs. Moreover, work hope and teacher autonomy support further contributed unique variance in explaining these beliefs. The findings contribute to the theoretical knowledge base concerning the value of work-based learning in fostering academic motivation among adolescents.     

Aesthetics,information and meaning

Aesthetics has been defined relative to objective and subjective values; its historical and cultural world views are referenced. The author's view of beauty as communication is also introduced, where chance and necessity, the two antithetical realities produce the informa‐tion processes of modern time. That is, “difference” is associated with chance, the irrational, the spontaneous and the individual aspect of reality as opposed to necessity, the rational, the formal, and the universal aspects of things. Information is introduced as, the origin, as well as essence, of life. It is what produces information and is the only agent which produces both matter and psyche. Order and disorder, and the laws of “opposites” are considered building blocks of identity and difference and information. Information and Communication as an interconnecting agent are also considered a bridge between Eastern and Western philosophy, i.e., in its deconstruction of the particular into a web or field of energies in the West, and in Eastern thought in its becoming one with Nirvana or Brahman, the Sufi or the Tao, the ultimate one and all. Because goodness and truth under the influence of reason and science had failed, Eastern philosophy as an alternative to Western models is recommended. It is suggested that all that is left objectively is beauty, thus reason as basic is giving way to rules of beauty. And its principles are capable of describing man's evolution and his culture, as well as his aesthetic experience, which is nothing but information processes and communication. In conclusion, design as aesthetic communication is introduced as a model to reflect the above principles.     

Wittgenstein,Aesthetics and Philosophy

Books reviewed: Peter B. Lewis (ed.), Wittgenstein, Aesthetics and Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 255 pp., price £49.50.
Reviewed by Ole Martin Skilleås, University of Bergen, Norway
Department of Philosophy
University of Bergen
Sydnesplassen 7
NO‐5007 Bergen
Ole.skilleas@fil.uib.no     

Behavioral Self‐Regulation,Early Academic Achievement,and the Effectiveness of Urban Schools for Low‐Income Ethnic Minority Children

The independent and joint associations between child behavioral self‐regulation ability and school effectiveness in relation to academic achievement were examined in a sample of low‐income African American (n = 132) and Latino (n = 198) children attending kindergarten and first grade across a large metropolitan area. Child behavioral self‐regulation and school effectiveness were positively associated with both reading and mathematics performance. School effectiveness moderated the effect of behavioral self‐regulation on reading but not math achievement. Lower child behavioral self‐regulation during early elementary school was associated with lower reading achievement the following year but only among children attending less effective schools. Behavioral self‐regulation was not related to reading achievement among children attending more effective schools. Implications of these findings for policies addressing disparities in early academic achievement are discussed.     

Development,Ethics, and the Ethics of Development

This article investigates three things: (1) what development might be, (2) how development and ethics might be related, and (3) what an ethics of development might look like. First, I show how if we move away from an essentialist metaphysics of being to a possibilist-functionalist metaphysics of becoming in our understanding of development, we can reconceptualize ethics as self-directed ontogeny. Thus, ethics turns out to be a part of development. Secondly, I sketch out the possibility of an ethics of development, showing how it should be based on three desiderata: (1) sustainability, promoting the long-term existence of the maximum human and non-human biodiversity, (2) democracy, promoting human-human relationships that are bidirectional and, to the extent possible, non-imposing, and (3) non-ethnocentrism, promoting true modernity; a modernity not predicated on a non-existent abstract universality but on concrete syncretism. The ultimate aim of this ethics of development is the optimization of individual and collective subjectivity and agency across time.     

Perspectivity,Intersubjectivity, Normativity: On Malpas’s Place and Experience

ABSTRACT

The publication of the revised edition of Jeff Malpas’s Place and Experience in 2018 gives the opportunity to reconsider this book (originally published in 1999) and the debates that it originally sparked. In this article, I focus on Malpas’s characterization of space as subjective, allocentric, and objective and I approach them in conjunction with other notions and considerations that, I suggest, are useful to expand and complement Malpas’s central theses. I approach the concept of subjective space in conjunction with the notion of coenaesthesis and with Heidegger’s notion of mineness (Jemeinigkeit); the concept of allocentric space by addressing Malpas’s critique of Nagel’s notion of detachment; and the concept of objective space through a discussion of the issue of perspective in light of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Leibniz’s notion of ‘géométral’ (geometrized projection). These analyses pave the way for a discussion of some possible normative implications of the conception of place and subjectivity that emerges from Malpas’s Place and Experience against the background of Heidegger’s thought, and particularly in relation to Heidegger’s notion of dwelling (Wohnen).     

发展:从“硬道理”、“第一要务”到“科学发展”

改革开放的三十年所取得的成功的经验之一,就是找到一个适合中国国情的发展观,即从“发展是硬道理”到“发展是第一要务”从而确立了科学发展观。“发展是硬道理”向我们表明,在发展过程中,“软道理”要服从“硬道理”,无论在何种情况下,我们都是坚持马克思主义历史观,把经济发展看作是社会发展的基础,同时在经济发展中兼顾其他各个方面的发展。