‘Feeling the range’: Emotional geographies of sound in prisons

Sound, as a modality of emotion, is central to the everyday constitution of space. For an increasing population in Canada, however, incarceration forms the basis of everyday life. This paper explores the connections between sound and emotion as they play out in the under-researched context of prisons. I use a participant’s term, “feeling the range,” to identify the atmospheric, haptic, and emotive potential of sound as a vital tool of spatial knowledge. These conceptualisations inform three findings that highlight the enabling and constraining complexities of aurality. First, sound and listening are epistemological practices that offer important tools for spatial orientation in otherwise restrictive environments; yet some materialities of sound, like reverberation, also cause great disorientation. Secondly, the extensive capacities of sound enable connection with other beings and contexts during imprisonment; at the same time, sonic practices also disconnect, particularly through sonic techniques that carve out individualised auditory spaces. Finally, sound plays a crucial role in the enactment of power through resistance, and is used to reclaim dignity in undignified settings. This paper demonstrates that soundworlds can be as inclusive as they are exclusive, as convivial as they are hostile, and as therapeutic as they are torturous.     

Cognitive profile of adolescents with math disabilities: are the profiles different from those with reading disabilities?

Adolescents (ages 14-17) with math disabilities (MD, n=12), reading disabilities (RD, n=19), math+reading disabilities (MD+RD, n=12), and average achievers (n=15) were compared on measures of visual-spatial processing, random generation (inhibition), writing speed, short-term memory (STM), and working memory (WM). Adolescents with MD performed significantly lower than adolescents with RD on measures of visual-spatial processing and visual WM. Adolescents with MD outperformed adolescents with RD +MD on measures of random generation and motor speed. Performance of all three low-achieving groups was inferior to average achievers on measures of random generation, motor speed, and verbal WM. The results were interpreted within a multicomponent model that attributed deficits related to MD in adolescents to deficits related the visual-spatial sketchpad of WM.     

What are the values of young people and how are these different from the values of older generations in Georgia?

This article examines the basic values of young people (aged 18 to 25) and analyses how, if at all, these are different from the values of older generations in Georgia. Based on Shalom H. Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Values (2012), the study uses quantitative (secondary analysis of the World Values Survey [WVS]) and qualitative (40 in-depth interviews) research methods to explore basic values, perceptions and attitudes, as well as tolerance towards different minority groups in Georgia. The research findings reveal that Schwartz’s higher-ordered values ‘conservation’ (including ‘conformity’ and ‘tradition’) and ‘self-transcendence’ (including ‘benevolence’ and ‘universalism’) are very important for all age groups in Georgia. In contrast, the values of ‘openness to change’ and ‘self-enhancement’ are assessed quite dissimilarly by young and older generations. In addition, the youth turned out to be more tolerant towards different minority groups, such as people of a different religion and race, immigrants and sexual minorities.     

“Taking another route”: Daily survival narratives from mothers who are homeless

Homelessness among families has become a growing social problem for communities, yet little is known about the types of daily survival strategies such families employ. This paper presents results of a qualitative study of the coping narratives of 64 mothers living in temporary emergency shelters with their children. The women reported using a variety of coping responses to daily stressful events. These included the use of direct actions and more palliative strategies. Results suggest that stress and coping theory may be useful for understanding homelessness. Implications for program development and future research are discussed.     

“One is what one does”: from pragmatic to performative disclosure of the who

Continental Philosophy Review - After taking into consideration the most relevant criticisms questioning the capacity of the thinking “I” to grasp itself in a transparent and...     

Involuntary autobiographical memories in and outside the laboratory: How different are they from voluntary autobiographical memories?

In two studies, we compared the characteristics and retrieval times of involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memory under controlled laboratory conditions. A new laboratory task of involuntary autobiographical memories involved detecting vertical lines in a stream of stimuli with horizontal lines (an undemanding vigilance task) and recording any involuntary memories during the session. The majority of these memories were reported as being triggered by irrelevant cue phrases presented on the screen. Voluntary autobiographical memories were sampled via a standard word-cue method in Session 2. The results showed that involuntary memories were more specific and were retrieved significantly faster than voluntary memories. They were also more likely to be triggered by negative cues, whereas cue valence did not have any effect on the number of voluntary memories. Furthermore, laboratory involuntary memories did not differ from naturalistic involuntary memories recorded in a diary by the same participants (Study 2). Taken together, these results have important implications for current theories of autobiographical memory, and they open up interesting avenues for future research.     

“I will bless those who bless you”: Christian Zionism,Fetishism, and Unleashing the Blessings of God

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of ‘blessing’ Israel that has become common among contemporary American Christian Zionists. After introducing a theological scheme that has dominated discussions of contemporary Christian Zionism, the article critically examines one of the emerging narratives concerning the (re)discovery of Christian Zionists’ Jewish roots and the way the Jewish contribution to Christianity is framed. Following this, the article considers the way Israel and Jews are understood to hold a distinct place in the network of world redemption and how contemporary Israel acts as a marker—what is referred to as a ‘signifier of stability’—that helps Christian Zionists locate God’s ongoing work in the world. Finally, the article discusses how Christian Zionists ‘bless’ Israel in practical ways as a form of submission to God, a reminder of their relationship with God, and a way to locate themselves in the redemptive process.     

The “Feeling of Movement”: Notes on the Rorschach Human Movement Response

Human movement responses (M) on the Rorschach have been traditionally viewed as lying neither completely in the inkblot (external reality) nor within the subject's mind (inner world). The authors contend that M is not reducible to the “body that I have” but to the “body that I am,” which is a higher level organization of bottom-up and top-down brain networks, integrating body implicit awareness, psychological functioning, and social cognition. Two sources of evidence suggest the close relationship among M, psychological functions, and brain mechanisms. One comes from meta-analytical evidence supporting the close association between M and higher level cognitive functioning or empathy. The second comes from some preliminary studies showing that M activates brain circuits included in the mirror neuron system (MNS). Two conclusions can be drawn: (a) M is related to the effective use of the mentalization function; and (b) future neuroscientific investigations could lead to an understanding of the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying Rorschach responses and variables.     

How are inflectional affixes organized in the mental lexicon?: evidence from the investigation of agreement errors in agrammatic aphasics

Recent psycholinguistic studies have provided evidence that regularly inflected words are decomposed into stems and affixes, both of which have their own representations in the mental lexicon. Specific models of the lexical organization of inflectional affixes have, however, only rarely been investigated in psycho- or neurolinguistic work. We test two recently proposed theoretical models: a representation of affixes (i) in default inheritance trees (Corbett and Fraser, 1993) and (ii) in underspecified paradigms (Wunderlich, 1996). Based on an analysis of agreement errors in elicited speech-production data of German agrammatic aphasics, we argue that affixes are organized with respect to the morphosyntactic features they encode. Specifically, our data indicate that inflectional affixes are best captured within an underspecified paradigm.     

“The ripples are big”: Storying the impact of doping in sport beyond the sanctioned athlete

ObjectiveThe purpose of this paper was to extend current doping research efforts by shifting the focus away from a doping-user perspective to examine the experiences of elite athletes that have been personally affected by other athletes' doping behaviours.DesignThis research works within the interpretive paradigm, adopting relativist ontology and transactional/subjectivist epistemology.MethodConversational interviews were conducted with ‘competitive’ (N = 2) and ‘retired’ (N = 2) elite Track and Field athletes from multiple countries. In order to communicate the findings in a way that captures the complexity of the issue, whilst also appealing to the athletes this issue affects, creative non-fiction stories were used to present the findings.ResultsTwo stories were created; one incorporating the ‘competitive’ athletes' experiences and one presenting the ‘retired’ athletes' accounts. The stories detail financial, emotional, and relational implications stemming from others' use of performance enhancing drugs. Critically, the impact is not ephemeral; the retired athletes detailed the long-term implications of their experiences. Meanwhile, the competitive athletes suggest that given the current state of sport, they regularly have to defend their status as ‘clean athletes’. Thus, the ripples of doping in sport appear to be far reaching and enduring.ConclusionsIncorporating a novel mode of knowledge production within the doping literature, the stories presented here demonstrate elite athletes' candid accounts of being impacted by others’ doping behaviours in sport. This study also emphasises the value of adopting novel and creative approaches to data collection and representation within the field of doping research.     

“I have a headache tonight”: Function of pain in marriage

This paper explores, primarily through literature review and case illustrations, the function of pain in marriage. The fact that pain is analogically used is evident in the title of this paper. Clinical exploration of this important phenomenon reveals a wide variety of meanings and purposes pain has in the context of marital relationships. These clinical observations need to be molded into testable hypotheses and subjected to systematic research. Despite the obvious lack of research, marital therapy based on an understanding of the function of pain in marriage appears to have substantial merit.     

“Feeling Good in Your Own Skin” Part I: Primary Levels of Mental Organization

This two-part article (the first part published here and the second part will be published in the March 2011 Issue of the AJP), deals with the relation between a certain type of idiomatic expression, which we call somatic idioms, and what we recognize as the primary levels of mental organization. The article raises the following questions: What do we actually know about the primary levels of mental organization? What is the language's way to connect with the primary levels of mental organization? The first part of the article addresses the issue of how to describe and conceptualize the individual's earliest experiences, and how they continue to exist throughout one's adult life. The second part of the article focuses on the accessibility of the primary levels to language. Whereas most of the theories identify the primary levels as being outside of the linguistic realm, we suggest that some idiomatic expressions are the language's way to get in touch or connect with the primary levels. Therefore, the goals of the present article are to (1) characterize the primary levels of mental organization differently from the ways in which other psychoanalytic schools have done up until now; (2) reveal how language manages to find a way to connect with these primary levels, which are not outside of the linguistic realm, as has been previously suggested; and (3) exemplify the frequency and wide range of mental states—not only those which are pathological or extreme—in which the primary levels can be identified.     

Orientation specificity in spatial memory: what makes a path different from a map of the path?

Three studies investigated the factors that lead spatial information to be stored in an orientation-specific versus orientation-free manner. In Experiment 1, we replicated the findings of Presson and Hazelrigg (1984) that learning paths from a small map versus learning the paths directly from viewing a world leads to different functional characteristics of spatial memory. Whether the route display was presented as the path itself or as a large map of the path did not affect how the information was stored. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of size of stimulus display, size of world, and scale transformations on how spatial information in maps is stored and available for use in later judgments. In Experiment 3, we examined the effect of size on the orientation specificity of the spatial coding of paths that are viewed directly. The major determinant of whether spatial information was stored and used in an orientation-specific or an orientation-free manner was the size of the display. Small displays were coded in an orientation-specific way, whereas very large displays were coded in a more orientation-free manner. These data support the view that there are distinct spatial representations, one more perceptual and episodic and one more integrated and model-like, that have developed to meet different demands faced by mobile organisms.     

Why are we fighting? A view of the “great war” from across the ocean

This article examines the dispute concerning the meaning of World War I among leading American intellectuals in the period 1915–1918. Taking center stage here are the views of one of the founding fathers of American pragmatism, John Dewey (1859–1952), on the causes of the “Great War,” its higher meaning and goals which led to America’s entry into the War and also its influence on the social reconstruction of American society and the post-War world order. The final section of the article is devoted to a critique of Dewey’s position towards American participation in the War by another famous American intellectual, Randolph Bourne (1886–1918), who laid the foundations for a tradition of social criticism in the U.S. in the twentieth century.     

“Spirits are like microbes”: Islamic revival and the definition of morality in Moroccan exorcism

This article analyses the revitalisation of Islamic exorcism in Morocco since the 1990s and how its practitioners legitimise it as a ritual largely adapted to theological orthodoxy. The rhetoric of these exorcists on spirit possession defines certain afflictions as an intromission of the genies (jnun) into the body by physical mechanisms, comparable to the processes undertaken by microbes. From interviews and observation of ritual exorcism of Moroccan faqihs in Tetuan and Barcelona, I analyse their techniques and the way they legitimise them. I conclude that the moral intervention of religious specialists through Koranic recitation becomes effective throughout a dynamic worldview that reinforces old basic assumptions about a physical intercourse between jnun and humans. At the same time, with the revitalisation of the ritual, many Koranic exorcists incorporate new rhetorics to demonstrate scientifically the materiality of the jnun and their effects on the possessed bodies. But Moroccan Koranic healers not only rework definitions of affliction and legitimise the physical agency of the jnun, they also contribute to define gendered experiences of the body as far as women are conceived as the favorite and weakest victims of the genies.     

“All things are already complete in my body”: An explanation of the views of the Taizhou School on the human body

By means of a theoretical analysis from the point of view of phenomenology of the body, this essay tries to explain the views of Taizhou School on the body so as to apprehend the essence of Confucian thought, which is a philosophy that seeks to “establish oneself” and “cultivate oneself” rather than a “philosophy of consciousness.”