The Formal Systems Response to Violence Against Women in India: A Cultural Lens

Violence against women (VAW) has become an increasingly salient issue in India, with women at risk for different forms of gendered violence. While there may be universal elements in the international phenomenon of violence against women, it is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon that takes shape in a particular sociocultural context. The current study employs a narrative framework to systematically examine how culture is expressed in the formal systems response and women's help‐seeking in two metropolitan cities in India. Specifically, we sought to understand, among formal system responders (a) what characterizes the dominant cultural narratives on violence against women in India; and (b) how these are reflected in community narratives of formal responders. Interviews were conducted with formal responders working in different types of local agencies (e.g., police, health centers, and non‐governmental agencies). The paper illustrates the major themes that emerged from participants’ narratives describing the multilevel influences that shape the formal system response to violence against women and women's help‐seeking efforts. The implications of these findings for effective response and directions for future research are summarized.     

Contextualizing the Psychosocial Well‐being of Military Members and Their Partners: The Importance of Community and Relationship Provisions

Evidence of the impact of communities has been documented for a variety of individual and relational outcomes, including mental and physical health as well as the quality of romantic and parent–child relationships. The military represents a rather unique work context; in that, it is generally considered a lifestyle with a distinct culture and community. Yet, military families are also members of their broader, comprehensive community. Drawing from the social organizational theory of action and change (SOC) (Mancini & Bowen, 2013), and relationship provisions theory (Weiss, 1969) and utilizing a sample of 266 active duty military families, this study examined connectedness with the military community and the broader, comprehensive community. A dyadic model was evaluated whereby each partner's perspective of their comprehensive and military community was hypothesized to influence their own psychosocial well‐being as well as their partner's psychosocial well‐being. The role of relationship provisions (that is, having relationship needs met) as a mechanism linking community connections to psychosocial well‐being was also examined. Overall, the findings supported the hypothesized model, particularly for intra‐individual effects and military members. Findings emphasize the importance of considering what is gained from connections within a community rather than a focus solely on the connections themselves.     

Rival Methodologies in Emergence Theory: A Non-Dual Approach

Jason Roberts proposes that Karl Rahner's theology of nature serves as an appropriate dialogue partner for natural scientists like Terrence Deacon in his naturalistic approach to the emergence of higher-order levels of existence and activity within the natural sciences. Yet Rahner and Deacon employ different understandings of formal causality in their respective approaches to evolutionary theory: for Rahner, causal agency vis-à-vis constituents; for Deacon, objective constraint on the agency of constituents. Yet a compromise position may be available based on a modest revision of the relationship between societies and their constituent actual entities in A.N. Whitehead's cosmology.     

Development and validation of the organisational cooperation questionnaire

IntroductionCooperation is an essential framework for the functioning of organisations and society. The limitations of current measures of organisational cooperation led us to construct the measure herein presented.ObjectiveThe paper aims to describe the development and psychometric validation of an organisational cooperation measure based on how the cooperating members view and experience the cooperation process.MethodBased on relevant literature, the items were built and submitted to a panel of experts and fine-tuning procedures. The instrument (31 items) was applied to 1354 employees in local authorities. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were performed (2 sub-samples), as well as validation procedures through Pearson correlation with the Knowledge Management Questionnaire.ResultsResults showed good statistical indicators of a 22-items three-factor structure: principles of cooperative relationship; formal regulation of cooperation; and cooperation focused on organisational mission. The factors are interpreted theoretically and present high internal consistency. The validation process suggests the suitability of the instrument for the population studied.ConclusionThis instrument can be used as a starting point for organisational intervention when cooperation-intensive processes are relevant. It can be useful to characterize the existing cooperation in organisations and to foster cooperation in organisations, especially in the intended dimensions. Future studies can apply the instrument to various sectors of activity. It will also be worth studying cooperation in its relationship with other organisational variables, namely those concerning cooperation-intensive processes.     

Philosophy of science in Hungary

The report gives a survey of the Hungarian philosophy of science after 1973. The report throws some light on the history of Hungarian philosophy in the context of the political circumstances of the late sixties and seventies. It starts with the not so well-known history of persecution of philosophers in 1973. Then it treats the emergence of the philosophy of science focussing on the most significant representatives of this branch of philosophy, which was up to that time almost unknown in Hungary. Due to the fact that the important results in Hungarian philosophy of science run parallel with the reception and translation of the significant products of Western philosophy, such as Wittgenstein's, Popper's, Kuhn's, or Polanyi's works, the report gives relatively significant room to treat these achievements. The last part of the report presents a survey of the younger generation of the philosophers of science, concentrating on the most important insights.It is the sad duty of the editor to inform readers that Dr. Gabriella Ujlaki died shortly after finishing this Report.     

Formal operations and postformal reasoning: A replication

The relationship between formal operations and postformal reasoning was examined by using the Shayer (1978) chemicals problem to assess formal operations and the Commons, et al. (1982) four-story problem to measure postformal reasoning. The subjects were 35 undergraduate social science and humanities students. None of the subjects who were classified as concrete operational or transitional on the chemicals task showed postformal reasoning. The hypothesis that full format operations are a necessary condition of post-formal reasoning and the expectation that subjects showing full formal operations are more likely than others to exhibit postformal reasoning was not supported.     

双语(或多语)是否有利抵御老年痴呆症？

近50年来的语言神经科学研究确认了双(多)语经验的认知效应。就10年来双(多)语经验抵御老年痴呆症(特别是阿尔茨海默症, AD)的研究成果进行了深入探讨, 并基于认知储备(cognitive reserve)理论, 从功能和结构两方面探讨了双语(多语)经验抵御AD的神经机制。从外语的类型、熟悉程度、开始习得年龄, 以及研究方法等角度提出了要解决的问题, 旨在推动外语学习和教学, 并为老年化疾病和跨学科语言学研究提供新的思路。     

医学语言学的两种界定

对医学语言学目前存在两种界定的方法,于是就形成了研究范围和功能任务完全不同的两种学科.它们同名称,但分别属于医学软科学和应用语言学,前者是研究语言的医学现象,后者是研究医学的语言现象,学科特点有很大的区别.但是,两门学科都是未来医学发展中应用价值很高的学科.     

Protégés’ and mentors’ reactions to participating in formal mentoring programs: A qualitative investigation

Mentors and protégés from two formal mentoring programs were interviewed about the benefits associated with program participation, problems encountered in the program, and recommendations for program improvements. The most commonly reported benefits for protégés included learning, coaching, career planning, and psychosocial support. Mentors most frequently reported learning, developing a personal relationship, personal gratification, and enhanced managerial skills. Both groups identified a range of problems including mentor-protégé mismatches, scheduling difficulties, and geographic distance. Unique problems were also identified, including mentor neglect (by protégés), unmet expectations (by protégés), structural separation from the mentor (by protégés), and feelings of personal inadequacy (by mentors). Finally, suggestions for program improvement were identified such as clearer communication of program objectives, better matching, targeted participation in the program, and better program monitoring. Findings are discussed in terms of what we currently know about informal mentoring and implications for mentoring theory. Suggestions for mentoring practice are also discussed.     

The three bases for the enthymeme: A dialogical theory

In traditional logic, an enthymeme is said to be an argument, or chain of argumentation, with one or more missing (implicit) premises or conclusions. In this paper a new theory of enthymemes, based on recent developments in argumentation technology including argumentation schemes, argument visualization tools and formal dialogue systems, is put forward. The dialogical theory hypothesizes three bases for the enthymeme in a formal dialogue system CBVK: (1) the participants' commitment sets, (2) sets of argumentation schemes (especially including presumptive schemes) shared by both participants, and (3) a set of propositions representing common knowledge shared by both participants. The formal dialogue system CBVK is the backbone of the theory of enthymemes into which these three components are built. Three examples of enthymemes of a kind commonly found in everyday conversational argumentation are used to show how the theory applies.