Linda Stein??s ??Fluidity of Gender?? (2009?C2010)

Linda Stein??s recent sculptures are abstracted human figures tightly encased in black leather. Some hang on the wall, some are free standing; all are headless, armless, and have truncated legs. The scavenged leather ??skin?? is old jackets and bags that reveal their original uses in the embossing, zippers, and buckles that Stein uses for textural accents. This paper will survey the new work??s claim, as stated in the exhibition title, to represent the ??Fluidity of Gender.?? The tactile nature of the medium itself prompts certain questions about the role sensuality plays in gendered experience, and how sexuality and power are intertwined. The distressed surfaces of the sculptures suggest the paramount significance of experience as contributing materially to body image. In conclusion, this essay will explore the way representations of bodies whose gender is unfixed may influence the viewer??s body image.     

??Putting on?? Sexiness: A Content Analysis of the Presence of Sexualizing Characteristics in Girls?? Clothing

Objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997) proposes that women from Western cultures are widely portrayed and treated as objects of the male gaze, leading to the development of self-objectification, in which girls and women internalize these societal messages and view their own bodies as objects to be evaluated according to narrow standards of (often sexualized) attractiveness. Prompted by findings from the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (APA 2007), the present study considers girls?? clothing as a possible socializing influence that may contribute to the development of self-objectification in preteen girls. Accordingly, in this content analysis, we examined the frequency and nature of ??sexualizing?? clothing available for girl children (generally sizes 6?C14) on the websites of 15 popular stores in the US. Sexualizing clothing was defined as clothing that revealed or emphasized a sexualized body part, had characteristics associated with sexiness, and/or had sexually suggestive writing. Clothing was also coded for childlike characteristics, such as child-like fabric (e.g., polka dot pattern) or a modest, non-revealing cut. Across all stores and all articles of clothing, 69% of the clothing items were coded as having only childlike characteristics, 4% as having only sexualizing characteristics, 25.4% as having both sexualizing and childlike characteristics, and 1% as having neither sexualizing nor childlike characteristics. ??Tween?? stores like Abercrombie Kids had the highest proportion of sexualizing clothing. The findings are discussed within the framework of the development of self-objectification.     

Various concepts of ??supervenience?? and their relations: A comment on Kim??s theory of supervenience

“Supervenience” was first used by Donald Davidson to describe the dependent and independent relationships between the mental and the physical. Jaegwon Kim presented a more precise definition, distinguishing between three types of supervenience: weak, strong and global. Kim further proved that strong and global supervenience are equivalent. However, three years later, Kim argued that strong supervenience is stronger than global supervenience, while weak supervenience and global supervenience are independent of each other. This paper demonstrates that Kim’s conclusion that weak supervenience and global supervenience are independent of each other is wrong. The strength of strong, weak and global supervenience decreases in turn with the latter entailed by the former. This paper also corrects some defects in Kim’s argument and his formulation of strong and weak supervenience, and then further explores the relationship between the three types of supervenience and their philosophical significance. It also classifies other terms of supervenience such as layered supervenience, macro-micro supervenience, and mereological superveniece as relationships of the strong, weak and global.     

Aussagen ??ber traumatische Erlebnisse

The manner in which traumatic events are processed and recalled remains highly controversial. A central issue in the debate is whether traumatic experiences affect memory differently than other events. In this paper, two lines of research are reviewed: (a) comparisons of characteristics of traumatic and other memories and (b) comparisons of characteristics of traumatic memories of trauma survivors with and without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While PTSD groups reported more intrusive memories than non-PTSD groups, there is no consistent evidence for memory fragmentation neither for traumatic events in general nor for PTSD patients. Implications for credibility assessments are discussed.     

Wellbeing??The Five Essential Elements

This is a review of the book “Wellbeing—The Five Essential Elements”, written by Tom Rath, a workplace researcher and leadership consultant and by Jim Harter chief, scientist for Gallup’s workplace management and wellbeing practices. The book is published in 2010 by GALLUP PRESS, New York, USA. Wellbeing The Five Essential Elements provides the reader, the general audience, academics and wellbeing practitioners alike with a broader view of what contributes to wellbeing over a period of some time. On reading this book, the readers will acquaint themselves with what the authors believe makes life meaningful in the 21st Century and beyond. This will help the broader spectrum of readers to enjoy the journey of daily life, while contributing to the wellbeing of friends, colleagues, community members and family members.     

Mencius?? aesthetics and its position

Mencius’ aesthetics unfolded around the ideal personality in his mind. Such an ideal personality belonged to a great man who was sublime, practical and honorable, and it was presented as the beauty of magnificence or the beauty of masculinity. Mencius put forward many propositions such as “the completed goodness that is brightly displayed is called greatness,” nourishing “one’s grand qi 气 (the great morale personality),” “only after a man is a sage can he completely suits himself to his own form,” “the saints only apprehended before me that of which my mind approves along with other men,” being “conscious of sincerity on self-examination,” and flowing “abroad, above and beneath, like that of Heaven and Earth,” all of which described an ideal personality through the course of its formation and its psychological experience. As a prominent school before the Qin dynasty, Mencius’ aesthetics greatly developed the Confucian teaching of “internal sage.” It shared many similarities with Zhuangzi’s thought and was also an aesthetic mode opposed to the latter. Both kinds of aesthetics were prominent: Mencius’ teaching was like imposingly towering and muscularly overflowing majestic mountains; Zhuangzi’s thought was like gracefully flowing water with an air of femininity. In real life though, Mencius’ teaching has greater practical significance in addressing the unbearable lightness of being, a disease of modernity.     

??Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich??s sein!????Partaking in the Nanoworld

Images from the nanoworld are not at all disorienting or bewildering, as one might expect from contemplating the strange and surprising features that arise where classical physics comes to an end and quantum effects begin to appear. Instead, we see the traces of explorers in a world that appears to be infinitely malleable. The paper shows that the capability to visualize processes and phenomena at the nanoscale is a matter not only of research technologies and the advancement of observational techniques, but also a matter of developing a visual setting that exhibits knowledge and practice, surprise and control. The surface is such a stage and so is the landscape: they invite us to become immersed and move around like someone who goes for a walk. In order to appreciate this pictorial, as well as discursive, setting we turn to “strollology” as a method of reconstructing the world that is experienced in the manner of walking. With the notion of imagescape this method is applied to the modes of partaking in the nanoworld and its specific features. Rather than articulate theoretical or metaphysical presuppositions these nanoscapes serve to validate the very idea of nanotechnology.     

Kant??s view on the parent-child relationship and its problems??Analyses from a temporal perspective as to the creation and rearing of a being endowed with freedom

This article will probe into Kant’s viewpoints about parent-child relationship so as to demonstrate that they are inspiring on the one hand—for example on dealing with the relationship as that pertinent to the thing in itself, but on the other hand, there are many flaws. His strategy on avoiding the difficulty of “creating by man a being endowed with freedom” depends merely on an one-sided comprehension of time, because according to Kant himself, there is a difference as to the time between sensual forms of intuition and expressive form of transcendental imagination. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant gives a profound enunciation with respect to the two and the latter is related to “free causality” and “categorical imperative” in his moral philosophy. Once it refers to the rights of a being endowed with freedom and the time it requires to maintain them, it is problematic to assert that the creation of such beings is not concerned with, in any sense whatsoever, time and the sensual, mortal body. What is more, Kant failed to take into full consideration that parents are also beings endowed with freedom whose rights to the child are not totally dependent on the latter’s inherent rights but on their own inherent basis. Granting parents too few natural rights, Kant on the other hand allocates them too much obligations in that the parent-child relation is unbalanced in his field of view. Thirdly, he gives no consideration as to whether or not the empirical process of rearing children itself can also create some rights, which nevertheless, should be taken into account when temporal elements can be found from the very original parent-child relationship.     

Digital��nye dereven??iki/digital villagers: Russian online projects from the countryside

The rapid growth of the Russian Internet offers great advantages, especially for geographical and cultural peripheries. Nevertheless, the locational inequality in Internet usage within the country has not yet been bridged. Meanwhile, some Russian villagers living in the countryside have started to ??blog back?? to the metropolitan centres. How is the Russian village represented in these accounts by digital??nye dereven??iki? What power relations are characteristic of villagers and townspeople, as they meet in online forums and blogs? The case studies presented in this essay show that, although the traditional dichotomist opposition between centre and periphery has undergone substantial redefinition, the significance of these concepts as value-loaded, culturally coded discursive entities still prevails. The manifestation of hybrid identities, explored in recent research on transnational diasporic communities, has not yet affected the rather static conceptions of core and periphery at work within Russian borders and on the Russian Internet.     

Aboullouz??s the Salafi movements in Morocco (1971?C2004) between theory and practice

This is a review of a recently published book on Salafiyya in Morocco. The author of the book, Abdelhakim Aboullouz, has conducted a socio-anthropological research on two Salafi movements in Marrakech. With my background knowledge of the topic, I have tried to read Aboullouz’s book with a critical perspective: can Salafiyya be defined by only two movements? How far has Aboullouz been loyal to his socio-anthropological approach?     

Peer Processes and Gender Role Development: Changes in Gender Atypicality Related to Negative Peer Treatment and Children??s Friendships

Peer socialization has been proposed to elicit gender norm adherence through: a) rebuke for exhibiting gender nonnormative characteristics and b) engagement in same-sex interactions. However, there is little evidence supporting these assumptions. Accordingly, the current study examined the unique and interactive contributions of negative peer treatment and same-sex and cross-sex friendships to gender conformity over one school year. Children from the upper-Midwest of the USA (196 girls; 170 boys; M _age ?=?9.34?years) participated. Data included peer-ratings of harassment, friendship nominations, and teacher-ratings of gender atypicality. Peer harassment predicted decreased gender atypicality for children with many male friends and increased gender atypicality for boys with many female friends and few male friends. Implications for theories of gender development are discussed.     

寂寂寥寥六十载,心无旁骛读《管子》??美国汉学家李克研究、翻译及推介《管子》始末

作为代表性的先秦著作之一,《管子》在西方国家的研究已经有了上百年的历史。但是,能全面、系统、终其一生来研究、翻译《管子》的,恐怕只有美国汉学家李克一人。李克教授六十余年的学术生涯专注于《管子》的研究、翻译,通过对这一历程的梳理,可以按其不同的研究成果分为三个阶段,分别介绍每一阶段取得的成就及其影响,旨在对李克教授表示敬意,同时唤起更多的专家学者关注《管子》的英译及海外传播情况。     

??Do We Really Need Hepatitis B on the Second Day of Life??? Vaccination Mandates and Shifting Representations of Hepatitis B

In the decade following hepatitis B vaccine's 1981 approval, U.S. health officials issued evolving guidelines on who should receive the vaccine: first, gay men, injection drug users, and healthcare workers; later, hepatitis B-positive women's children; and later still, all newborns. States laws that mandated the vaccine for all children were quietly accepted in the 1990s; in the 2000s, however, popular anti-vaccine sentiment targeted the shot as an emblem of immunization policy excesses. Shifting attitudes toward the vaccine in this period were informed by hepatitis B's changing popular image, legible in textual and visual representations of the infection from the 1980s through the 1990s. Notably, the outbreak of AIDS, the advent of genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, and a Democratic push for health reform shaped and reshaped hepatitis B's public image. Hepatitis B thus became, in turn, an AIDS-like scourge; proof of a new era of pharmaceuticals; a threat from which all American children had a right to be protected; and a cancer-causing infection spread by teenage lifestyles. The metamorphosis of the infection's image was reflected in evolving policy recommendations regarding who should receive the vaccine in the 1980s, and was key to securing broad uptake of the vaccine in the 1990s.