In this paper we provide a reflexive account of fieldwork in out of school clubs in a range of localities across England and Wales. By reflecting upon our personal experiences of researching with children aged between 5 and 12 years, we examine the impact of the positionality of the researcher on the research encounter, and highlight the ways in which relationships between adult researchers and child subjects are gendered. Finally, we identify a number of issues for researchers to consider when (...) working with children in the field. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a reflexive account of fieldwork in out of school clubs in a range of localities across England and Wales. By reflecting upon our personal experiences of researching with c...

The ancient science of harmonics investigates the arrangements of pitched sounds which form the basis of musical melody, and the principles which govern them. It was the most important branch of Greek musical theory, studied by philosophers, mathematicians and astronomers as well as by musical specialists. This 2007 book examines its development during the period when its central ideas and rival schools of thought were established, laying the foundations for the speculations of later antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (...) It concentrates particularly on the theorists' methods and purposes and the controversies that their various approaches to the subject provoked. It also seeks to locate the discipline within the broader cultural environment of the period; and it investigates, sometimes with surprising results, the ways in which the theorists' work draws on and in some cases influences that of philosophers and other intellectuals. (shrink)

Feminist economists have demonstrated that interrogating hierarchies based on gender, ethnicity, class and nation results in an economics that is biased and more faithful to empirical evidence than are mainstream accounts. This rigorous and comprehensive book examines many of the central philosophical questions and themes in feminist economics including: · History of economics · Feminist science studies · Identity and agency · Caring labor · Postcolonialism and postmodernism With contributions from such leading figures as Nancy Folbre, Julie Nelson and Sandra (...) Harding, Toward a Feminist Theory of Economics looks set to become the book on feminist economics for some time to come and will be greatly appreciated by all those interested in gender studies, economic methodology and social theory. (shrink)

In the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment Kant argues that organisms have inner purposiveness. He introduces inner purposiveness in contrast to relative purposiveness. I examine Kant’s discussion of relative purposiveness in §63. I then argue that Kant establishes three theses in §63 that he subsequently modifies in §64 and further refines in §65. In my view, his discussion of relative purposiveness serves a broader purpose than just to present a contrast from which to consider inner purposiveness. The discussion (...) of relative purposiveness establishes a framework for a sustained thread of argument from §63 through §65, culminating in Kant’s often discussed claim that we must judge organisms to be natural ends. My interpretation exposes a more significant argumentative role for relative purposiveness than is typically recognized. (shrink)

The longest remarks in the section of the Tractatus devoted to science (6.3 ff.) introduce the net metaphor in a discussion of Newtonian mechanics. These sections of the Tractatus are generally believed to be inconsistent with the rest of the book. After a brief description of these difficulties and some relevant historical background I suggest a re-interpretation of the net metaphor in terms of contemporary debates about mechanics. This interpretation shows that the account of science in the Tractatus is an (...) application of the picture theory and eliminates a long standing inconsistency in the reading of Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Hanna Pitkin explains that Arendt’s defense of collective political action tends to reify and mystify an opposing concept Arendt calls ‘the Social’. Was Arendt actually right about the rise of ‘the Social’? Does the deep-set global mass entertainment culture tend to sap action even when it purportedly celebrates it? And what can viewing publics and counter-publics tell us about the meaning and reception of ‘the Social’, especially in this massively online era? This article surveys different ways of thinking about the (...) basic problem presented by American popular action cinema, and especially big-budget Hollywood action films, through an Arendtian lens. In presenting this overview, the article looks to reorient traditional philosophical concerns about screen violence and its censorship, and to offer a holistic reappraisal of ‘the Social’ and ‘action’ by placing democratic theory in closer dialogue with film studies. (shrink)

The three main approaches in statistical inference—classical statistics, Bayesian and likelihood—are in current use in phylogeny research. The three approaches are discussed and compared, with particular emphasis on theoretical properties illustrated by simple thought-experiments. The methods are problematic on axiomatic grounds, extra-mathematical grounds relating to the use of a prior or practical grounds. This essay aims to increase understanding of these limits among those with an interest in phylogeny.

Editors and translators have found this paragraph troublesome. Though its general tenor is fairly clear it is not easy to interpret in detail, and the task is complicated by three points of uncertainty about the text, Bury conjectured that in 5 is misplaced, and should stand in 3 after. After in 5, the second hand of Ven. 189 adds modern editors have often accepted this addition, In 6, has been thought incomprehensible: Badham offered instead, and this suggestion too has found (...) some favour. (shrink)

Editors and translators have found this paragraph troublesome. Though its general tenor is fairly clear it is not easy to interpret in detail, and the task is complicated by three points of uncertainty about the text, Bury conjectured that in 5 is misplaced, and should stand in 3 after . After in 5, the second hand of Ven. 189 adds modern editors have often accepted this addition, In 6, has been thought incomprehensible: Badham offered instead, and this suggestion too has (...) found some favour. (shrink)

Athenaeus records these lines from the dithyramb Hymenaios, along with a number of other snippets of poetry, in the course of an inconclusive discussion about the characteristics of the instrument called the magadis. Athenaeus had good reasons for being puzzled; the word first appeared in Greek, so far as we know, in the seventh century b.c., and its sense was already a matter of some doubt in the fourth. As to this particular fragment, even Telestes' original audience might be forgiven (...) some bafflement in the face of the third line, on which I shall initially focus here. What can be meant by ‘the five-rodded joining of the strings’? (shrink)

J. S. Mill is typically thought of as a liberal utilitarian disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and in other readings as a modern Socratic or even a modern Epicurean. Mill and the Epicureans are alike in several respects: they theorize personal freedom and active character versus determinism and passivity, they oppose excessive love and praise friendship, and they are critical of traditional religiosity. In spite of these similarities, Mill and the Epicureans have a different conception of active character and citizenship, stemming (...) from a difference in first principles. Mill's philosopher does not share the Epicurean aim of untroubledness (ataraxia), and Mill accepts the demanding task of educating and regenerating a mass democratic society. Below, I assess Mill's troubled hedonism, that is, his acceptance of often intense and long-term mental perturbations, justified by a decidedly non-Epicurean social reform project. (shrink)

In a recent article entitled, ‘The Logic of Cause’ Scriven has presented a series of formidable arguments against the possibility of explicating the concept of cause in terms of the concepts of sufficient condition and necessary condition. Some of his main arguments center on the difficulties of capturing the asymmetry of cause and effect and of handling a certain kind of over-determination he calls linked overdetermination. Scriven's contention that there is no way to capture the asymmetry of cause and effect (...) will be countered by constructing a definition of the concept of causal priority in terms of the concepts of sufficient condition and necessary condition. Scriven's contention that the existence of linked overdetermination undermines the necessary condition feature of the definition will be countered by distinguishing two senses of necessary conditionship. My rebuttal of Scriven's arguments, if successful, indicates that the ‘common sense’ view of the cause as a necessary and sufficient condition of its effects may yet prove to be at least roughly accurate. (shrink)

Digital media seem to be marked by process. The digital image itself is produced by software processes and the constant flux of code. Further this, interaction with digital systems involves a constant process by which a so-called 'user' comes into contact with various machinic occasions. It seems that in light of these processes it is impossible to maintain an aesthetic or media theory that pictures a self-contained and psychologised subject interacting with a static and inert object. How then can we (...) begin to think about digital aesthetics through a process philosophy rather than the traditional and reductive subject/object distinction found in so much aesthetic theory? This paper seeks to address this problem by enacting Alfred Whitehead's process philosophy, informed by Gilles Deleuze, Isabelle Stengers and Steve Shaviro and work it through several examples of recent manifestations of interactive media art, including work by Martin Wattenberg, Dennis Del Favero, Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel. I work Whitehead's process philosophy through these artworks to illustrate the performative nature of software processes and the manner in which these processes affect the aesthetics of interaction. I also use these works to illustrate a concept of interaction that privileges process and events rather than a concept that focuses upon an individual human user. In this paper I propose to view the 'user' as a set of occasions – as a particular condition that is produced by various user-initiated actions – rather than an enduring subject that is able to distance herself from the object of aesthetic contemplation. By doing this I move toward a theory in which user-occasions, machine-occasions and their interpenetration actualise the aesthetics of media art. Whitehead allows me to think outside of the binary oppositions that divide the world into knower/known or subject/object relationships. Throughout the argument I unpack Whiteheadian concepts such as actual entities, the unison of immediate becoming and, in general, the primacy of the event, bringing these concepts to bear on individual case studies of interactive media art. Whitehead's general thesis is that materiality and permanence are created by a continual process. Viewing the digital encounter through this theoretical framework I position the aesthetic experience of interaction as that which emerges from the fluctuations of process. The event of interaction is a necessarily hybrid process in which human occasions become supplemented by technology and the aesthetic event becomes innately coupled to the processes of the machine. In this paper I am not interested in any notion of consciousness or a psychologised human 'user', rather I am interested in a particular condition that takes place as user-initiated processes work with machine-initiated processes. This is because, for Whitehead, process comes before consciousness; it is the process of actual entities that prompt the consciousness into being. In this paper I thus propose interaction with digital systems as the commingling of contemporary actual occasions, shifting emphasis from a conscious human user and instead focusing on the process of the encounter that precedes this conscious experience. (shrink)

_Disorientation_ is the first publication in English of the second volume of _Technics and Time_, in which French philosopher Bernard Stiegler engages in a close dialogue with Husserl, Derrida, and other philosophers who have devoted their energies to technics, such as Heidegger and Simondon.The author's broad intent is to respond to Western philosophy's historical exclusion of technics and techniques from its metaphysical questionings, and in so doing to rescue critical and philosophical thinking. For many years, Stiegler has explored the origins (...) and philosophical, ethical, and political stakes of a global process he calls "the industrial temporalization of consciousness." Here, demonstrating that technology—including alphabetical writing—is memory, he argues that through new technologies of retention and inscription we have come to live in a world where time devours space, a disoriented world in which we have lost our bearings. Immersed in the multimedia of an over-connected world, with time and space as we know them abolished, we no longer find "cardinal points" to guide us and may even be led where we do not wish to go. We must therefore prepare to confront new spheres of ideological control and discover new possibilities in the digital environment. (shrink)

This book explores the puzzling phenomenon of new veiling practices among lower middle class women in Cairo, Egypt. Although these women are part of a modernizing middle class, they also voluntarily adopt a traditional symbol of female subordination. How can this paradox be explained? An explanation emerges which reconceptualizes what appears to be reactionary behavior as a new style of political struggle--as accommodating protest. These women, most of them clerical workers in the large government bureaucracy, are ambivalent about working outside (...) the home, considering it a change which brings new burdens as well as some important benefits. At the same time they realize that leaving home and family is creating an intolerable situation of the erosion of their social status and the loss of their traditional identity. The new veiling expresses women's protest against this. MacLeod argues that the symbolism of the new veiling emerges from this tense subcultural dilemma, involving elements of both resistance and acquiescence. (shrink)

The conflict of ideologies.--The breakdown of democracy.--The social background of recent political changes.--The corporative state.--Philosophy and politics.--The teaching of politics.--Maitland as a sociologist.

Since Epigonus spent most of his life in Sicyon, it seems likely that Lysander was himself one of the associates of Epigonus that the passage mentions. This would place him in the latter part of the sixth century. But we have no further information about Lysander, and nothing of what is known of Epigonus is any help in the interpretation of the present account. Some innovations in kithara-playing are being credited to Lysander, but what they are is far from clear.

Since Epigonus spent most of his life in Sicyon, it seems likely that Lysander was himself one of the associates of Epigonus that the passage mentions. This would place him in the latter part of the sixth century. But we have no further information about Lysander, and nothing of what is known of Epigonus is any help in the interpretation of the present account. Some innovations in kithara-playing are being credited to Lysander, but what they are is far from clear.

This hard-hitting expose; discusses the erosion of standards and values in the media world of newspapers, TV, and radio over the past 20 years—in particular those of integrity, independence, thought, and accuracy. The general public is becoming increasingly aware of the unsatisfactory state of affairs in media journalism, which is highlighted by the periodic distortions caused by the political ambitions of chief executives and tycoons, misleading headlines, and its extraordinary obsession with celebrity culture. This study is essential reading for the (...) majority of us who care about the destructive effects of spin, misrepresentation, deception, social and international prejudice, the purveying of half-truths in relation to crucial issues that affect our future, and the failure to report fully and accurately on matters that have a bearing on freedom and democracy. (shrink)