This article explores the activity of writing in higher education as a mediational means for student meaning making. From a dialogic perspective, writing is not about learning and applying formulas and making fixed kinds of texts, but about ways of working and ways of acting that brings writers, readers, resources and contexts into trajectories. The argument is that processes of writing enhance student meaning making and that these processes are formed by complex interaction. Contextual interpretation and use of mediational means (...) is constituted in social systems of activities that depend on and promote particular kinds of texts. We need insights in contextual trajectories to understand the relationship between writing and student meaning making . Empirically, I draw on a study investigating portfolio writing as a pedagogical tool in a nursing program in Norway. The rationale of the study was an identified need for information about how processes of writing develop, how texts come into being and how institutional tasks of writing are being unpacked. The aim of the paper is to explore a dialogical approach to the activity of writing and to discuss possible methodological implications from the theoretical framework. The empirical study is used as an illustration. (shrink)

The research question addressed in this paper is: How do the activities of writing mediate knowledge of writing, disciplinary knowledge, and professional knowledge as intertwined sites of learning? To conceptualise the role that writing can take in these complex processes, we apply an analytical framework comprising two core concepts; mediation and learning trajectories. We draw on an empirical study from the context of initial teacher education in Norway. From our analysis, we identify three qualities of writing as important. First, the (...) writing process should in- clude responding to and sharing drafts. Other important qualities include high teacher expectations and continuous reflection. From the perspective adopted here, learning is understood to be distributed and situated. In particular, in situated cultural contexts, collaborative writing can become a significant mediational tool for learning. Initial teacher education seeks to prepare the student teacher for a highly complex professional competency, developing both professionally and in individual subjects. To do so, students must transform social structures and the tools embedded in practices into psychological tools. We contend that writing is one significant tool in moving through complex trajectories of learning towards becoming professional teachers. (shrink)

Spontaneous mirror self-recognition is achieved by only a limited number of species, suggesting a sharp “cognitive Rubicon” that only few can pass. But is the demarcation line that sharp? In studies on monkeys, who do not recognize themselves in a mirror, animals can make a difference between their mirror image and an unknown conspecific. This evidence speaks for a gradualist view of mirror self-recognition. We hypothesize that such a gradual process possibly consists of at least two independent aptitudes, the (...) ability to detect synchronicity between self- and foreign movement and the cognitive understanding that the mirror reflection is oneself. Pigeons are known to achieve the first but fail at the second aptitude. We therefore expected them to treat their mirror image differently from an unknown pigeon, without being able to understand that the mirror reflects their own image. We tested pigeons in a task where they either approached a mirror or a Plexiglas barrier to feed. Behind the Plexiglas an unknown pigeon walked at the same time toward the food bowl. Thus, we pitched a condition with a mirror-self and a foreign bird against each other, with both of them walking close toward the food bowl. By a detailed analysis of a whole suit of behavioral details, our results make it likely that the foreign pigeon was treated as a competitor while the mirror image caused hesitation as if being an uncanny conspecific. Our results are akin to those with monkeys and show that pigeons do not equal their mirror reflection with a conspecific, although being unable to recognize themselves in the mirror. (shrink)

Mathematicians appear to have quite high standards for when they will rely on testimony. Many mathematicians require that a number of experts testify that they have checked the proof of a result p before they will rely on p in their own proofs without checking the proof of p. We examine why this is. We argue that for each expert who testifies that she has checked the proof of p and found no errors, the likelihood that the proof contains no (...) substantial errors increases because different experts will validate the proof in different ways depending on their background knowledge and individual preferences. If this is correct, there is much to be gained for a mathematician from requiring that a number of experts have checked the proof of p before she will rely on p in her own proofs without checking the proof of p. In this way a mathematician can protect her own work and the work of others from errors. Our argument thus provides an explanation for mathematicians’ attitude towards relying on testimony. (shrink)

The study of traumatic experiences led Freud to investigate what he termed a compulsion to repeat. The present paper takes up the idea of a tendency to repeat something that reinforces psychic pain and asks which kind of agency is possible in the light of traumatic repetitions. First, the experiential roots of repetitive doings induced by trauma are investigated. Might a compulsion to repeat belong to the sphere of the kind of tendencies which Husserl terms “generally unconscious”? And if so, (...) does this sphere bring us to the limit of phenomenology where we might need to cooperate with psychoanalysis to make sense of the manifestations of such an unconscious sphere? This is proposed in section two. In section three, Freud’s notion of the compulsion to repeat is discussed. At this point, the repetitive activity of the mind is investigated as the traumatized person’s ongoing struggle to survive with the trauma and as a struggle to understand what survival in this case even means. In section four, an attempt is made to describe the kind of agency involved in the repetitive activity of the mind. The paper concludes that weak agency is possible in traumatic repetition when understood as the person’s ongoing attempt to compose a future for what has been lost. (shrink)

Introduction to the problem of ngimurok -- Research objectives, theories and methodologies -- Definitions for study -- A phenomenological description of Turkana religious specialists -- Specific observed and described rituals and ritual objects of the ngimurok -- What Turkana ngimurok say about Christians and what Turkana Christians say about ngimurok : ngimurok statements and a Turkana Christian survey -- Conclusions : toward a new approach to Turkana religious specialists today.

A modern critique of modernity -- Popular sovereignty and the general will -- Political legitimacy and applied politics -- Morality and education -- Metaphysics and religion -- Economic philosophy -- War and peace -- After Rousseau.

In this exploratory study, we present findings from semi-structured interviews with 11 self-identified lesbian and gay (LG) humanitarian aid workers of Doctors without Borders (MSF). We investigate their perceptions of workplace inclusion in terms of perceived satisfaction of their needs for authenticity and belonging within two organizational settings, namely office and field. Through our combined deductive and inductive approach, based on grounded theory, we find that perceptions of their colleagues’ and supervisors’ attitudes and behaviors, as well as organizational inclusiveness practices (...) play a role in LGs’ perceived authenticity, but not belonging, in the workplace. However, these organization-level characteristics do not account for between-participant differences in perceived authenticity. Therefore, we inductively construct a typology of three groups, which we coined conscious first-missioners, authentic realists, and idealistic activists, based on how LG humanitarian aid workers assess and deal with not being able to be their authentic selves when they are in the field, because homosexuality is illegal in many project countries. Conscious first-missioners are separated from the other two groups based on having gone to the field once, whereby they felt in control over the decision on how to manage their sexuality. Alternatively, authentic realists and idealistic activists alike felt they did not really have a choice in how to manage their sexuality, but handled that differently. We find the importance of one’s sexuality as well as adherence to the overarching organizational mission relevant individual-level factors herein. Furthermore, we find disclosure of sexual identity to be strongly context-dependent, as participants are ‘out of the closet’ in the office, but go back into the closet when they enter the field, with different country contexts even leading to different decisions concerning self-disclosure, thus demonstrating the importance of careful sexual identity management. This so-called disclosure dilemma, we find, may not be merely an individual choice, but rather a shared dilemma involving multiple stakeholders, such as the organization and fellow team members. We discuss the findings’ contributions to existing literature on LGs’ workplace experiences and implications for future research on inclusion of sexual and other invisible minorities in the workplace. (shrink)

Mathematicians often intentionally leave gaps in their proofs. Based on interviews with mathematicians about their refereeing practices, this paper examines the character of intentional gaps in published proofs. We observe that mathematicians’ refereeing practices limit the number of certain intentional gaps in published proofs. The results provide some new perspectives on the traditional philosophical questions of the nature of proof and of what grounds mathematical knowledge.

This paper investigates the relationships between organizational change and trust in management. It is argued that organizational change represents a critical episode for the production and destruction of trust in management. Although trust in management is seen as a semi stable psychological state, changes in organizations make trust issues salient and organizational members attend to and process trust relevant information resulting in a reassessment of their trust in management. The direction and magnitude of change in trust is dependent on a (...) set of change dimensions that reflect trust relevant experiences and information. We distinguish between dimensions related to trust relevant consequences of the change and trust relevant aspects of how the change process is performed. Empirical results indicate that increases in post change emotional stress and the use of referential accounts for justifying change are both negatively related to post change trust in management. The use of ideological accounts and participation were found to be positively related to post change trust in management, so was perceived decision quality. Findings also indicate that the effects of change on trust are negatively moderated by tenure. (shrink)

We present a taxonomy of errors in the scientific literature and an account of how the errors are distributed over the categories. We have developed the taxonomy by studying substantial errors in the scientific literature as described in retraction notices published in the journal Science over the past 35 years. We then examine how the sorts of errors that lead to retracted papers can be prevented and detected, considering the perspective of collaborating scientists, journal editors and referees, and readers of (...) the published articles. (shrink)

The authorship policies of scientific journals often assume that in order to be able to properly place credit and responsibility for the content of a collaborative paper we should be able to distinguish the contributions of the various individuals involved. Hence, many journals have introduced a requirement for author contribution statements aimed at making it easier to place credit and responsibility on individual scientists. We argue that from a purely descriptive point of view the practices of collaborating scientists are at (...) odds with the requirement for author contribution statements. We also argue that from a normative point of view the authorship policies may be unnecessary. Our arguments draw on an examination of 35 years of retraction notices in the journal Science. (shrink)

Malgré son ambition, la philosophie politique n'est jamais parvenue à prouver qu'il est rationnel (bon, avantageux pour l'individu autant que pour la collectivité) d'être juste. Ce livre entend évoquer les " personnages conceptuels " ou les " figures " théâtrales mises en scène par les philosophes eux-mêmes afin de mettre à l'épreuve leur théorie de la justice : de tels personnages viennent contredire le discours rationnel du philosophe, et souvent l'accuser d'idéalisme. Cette thèse philosophique s'accompagne d'une thèse sur le présent (...) : la théorie politique contemporaine dominante tend depuis les années 1970 à réduire la figure du " mal " politique, en l'assimilant, sous couvert de théorie du choix rationnel, au " passager clandestin ", qui ne contribue pas à la coopération sociale à la mesure de ce qu'il profite. Or un tel choix est pour le moins contestable, dans la mesure où il laisse dans l'ombre des figures plus " extrêmes " du mal politique : le nazi, le criminel de guerre, le terroriste. A cet égard, la philosophie politique moderne, quoique décidément rationaliste, a mieux cerné le risque que fait courir à la philosophie elle-même l'" Insensé " ou le " raisonneur violent ". Face au risque d'irénisme encouru par la théorie politique, sociale et morale contemporaine, dont le monde semble parfois peuplé de " zombies raisonnables ", il nous faut restituer le rôle de l'expérience tragique au coeur de la philosophie politique. (shrink)

We present a case study of how mathematicians write for mathematicians. We have conducted interviews with two research mathematicians, the talented PhD student Adam and his experienced supervisor Thomas, about a research paper they wrote together. Over the course of 2 years, Adam and Thomas revised Adam’s very detailed first draft. At the beginning of this collaboration, Adam was very knowledgeable about the subject of the paper and had good presentational skills but, as a new PhD student, did not yet (...) have experience writing research papers for mathematicians. Thus, one main purpose of revising the paper was to make it take into account the intended audience. For this reason, the changes made to the initial draft and the authors’ purpose in making them provide a window for viewing how mathematicians write for mathematicians. We examined how their paper attracts the interest of the reader and prepares their proofs for validation by the reader. Among other findings, we found that their paper prepares the proofs for two types of validation that the reader can easily switch between. (shrink)

Peter Goldie’s account of grief as a narrative process that unfolds over time allow us to address the structure of self-understanding in the experience of loss. Taking up the Goldie’s idea that narrativity plays a crucial role in grief, I will argue that the experience of desynchronization and an altered relation to language disrupt even of our ability to compose narratives and to think narratively. Further, I will argue that Goldie’s account of grief as a narratively structured process focus on (...) the process having come to an end. By contrast, I will propose the idea that grief can be understood as an open-ended rehearsal of our capacity to be alone in the company of an absent other. This makes grief a relational activity that differs from composing narratives about one’s past and about one’s process of grieving. Thus, grief is not primarily a process of recollecting our past narratively; rather, it can be seen as a dedicational activity which involves a future-oriented and open-ended rehearsal of relatedness despite irrevocable absence. (shrink)

An action is typically carried out over time, unified by an intention that is known to the agent under some description. In some of our habitual doings, however, we are often not aware of what or why we do as we do. Not knowing this, we must ask what kind of agency is at stake in these habitual doings, if any. This paper aims to show how habitual doings can still be considered actions of a subject even while they involve (...) a sense of involuntariness and there is a temporal displacement in the self-understanding they afford. It turns out that in some forms of habitual agency, we do not have the relevant intentional description at hand when we are engaged in the process of doing what we so typically do; on the contrary, such a description can only be appropriated with effort and subsequent to the time of the action. I will focus on two approaches to habits, broadly construed; a phenomenological and an action theoretic one, and I will suggest that both approaches focus too narrowly on a synchronic relation between habitual action and self-understanding. I will suggest that we need a diachronic account of the potential for self-understanding required for agency that allows us to explain the experience of diminished control and alienation involved in certain of our habitual actions. The suggested perspective enables us to explain how some habits can be experienced as both momentarily involuntary and unconscious while at the same time they play a significant role for self-understanding. (shrink)

This article explores variation in how immigrant Muslim women in Oslo, Norway, interpret and practice gender relations within the framework of Islam. Religion, family, and work are important sites for the formation, negotiation, and change of gender relations. The article therefore discusses the views and experiences of immigrant Muslim women concerning wife-husband relations and participation in the labor market. Four analytical types of views toward gender relations are introduced, and the variation in gender practices and views found among Muslim women (...) in Oslo is discussed in relation to these types. The analysis suggests that immigrant Muslim women use Islam as a flexible resource for interpreting gender relations. It also shows that while women generally uphold a religious ideal of complementary gender roles, their actual practice often contradicts with and contests this ideal. (shrink)

In phenomenology the body is often referred to as the lived body which makes the world familiar to me. In this paper, however, I discuss bodily self-consciousness in terms of self-distance. Self-distance is the suggestion that bodily self-consciousness consist in a reflective stance where you conceive of your body as a physical thing, an object in the world as well as the subject of bodily experiences. I argue that we are bodily self-conscious because we experience our own body in more (...) than one way and that these ways are not derivative of one another or hierarchically ordered. This latter claim conflicts with certain phenomenological readings of how the body is experienced, one of which I will refer to and discuss as the Familiarity Objection to my idea of self-distance. I end the paper with a discussion of why we need the conception of experienced objectification that is entailed in the notion of self-distance to account for both pathological and non-pathological bodily self-experiences. The notion of self-distance improves our understanding of how the body plays a central role in psychosis for the experience of distorted inter-subjective relations. (shrink)

In recent years, questions regarding the ontological status of the human have been raised with renewed interest and imagination within various fields of critical thought. In the face of biotechnological findings and increasingly advanced technologies that connect as well as disturb settled boundaries, whether geographical or bodily, not to mention philosophical questionings of traditional western humanism, the boundaries of the human subject have been contested. The human body, traditionally imagined as closed and autonomous, has been opened up to a world (...) of forces and agencies that are strange, other and often deeply disturbing when viewed from an anthropocentric standpoint. Rather than close down anxieties concerning such boundary transgressions and ontological uncertainties, scholars – not least within areas such as feminist, posthumanist and queer theory – have argued that here lie possibilities as well as an ethical urgency to rethink the human subject, its world(s) and its others. Indeed, what might it mean to view the world from positions that do not take the pure and autonomous human form as its starting point? And what ethical considerations does such a viewpoint demand of us? (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this comment, I argue that transformative experiences such as experiences of grief often imply a break in one's coherent, non-fictional and biographical narratives and practical identities. The nature of these breaks is of a certain kind, as they interrupt even the process of narration. To insist that the process of narration as well as the narratives themselves belong to one and the same process of adjustment in transformative experiences such as grief might overlook the importance of such breaks, (...) namely that the contain a moment of refusal and revolting against mourning. The tension involved in such breaks might not allow to be circumscribed into narratives nor do they fit into the process of narration as a destabilizing moment; the breaks insist on the incomprehensibility of each loss and they remain part of what it means to survive and to undergo transformative experiences. (shrink)

In what sense can bodily manifestations in psychopathology be conceived of as modes of speaking? In which ways can a patient be listened to and responded to? In this paper, we consider these questions in the framework both of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. On the one hand, a phenomenological approach helps considering the body as expressive, but, we argue, more refinement is needed, and in particular, expression ought to be differentiated from communication, in the aim of better capturing the phenomenon of (...) body language. On the other hand, a psychoanalytic approach helps considering the clinical strength of an encounter where the only vehicle is the speech one addresses another, but, we argue, this should not... (shrink)

It has been a common belief among scientists, including mathematicians, that young scientists are especially good at bringing about scientific change. A number of studies suggest, however, that older scientists are not more resistant to change than young scientists are. It is nonetheless worth examining why a scientist’s or mathematician’s outsider status – due to age, educational background, or something else – can sometimes be effective in enabling scientific change. This paper focuses on the case of the solving of the (...) Four Color Problem by Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel. Building on Donald MacKenzie’s paper ‘Slaying the kraken: The sociohistory of a mathematical proof’, I argue that Haken’s outsider status is central to understanding his success with the problem. On this basis, I offer an argument against Margaret Gilbert’s account of why a scientist’s outsider status can be effective in enabling scientific change. (shrink)

A phenomenological insight in the debate on empathy is that it is possible to directly perceive other people’s emotions in their expressive bodily behaviour. Contrary to what is suggested by many phenomenologists, namely that this perceptual skill is immediately available if one has vision, this paper argues that the perceptual skill for empathy is acquired. Such a skill requires that we have undergone certain emotional experiences ourselves and that we have had the experience of seeing the world differently, which is (...) a form of pretence. By investigating how we retain knowledge of what is real while pretending, that is, how we anchor the experience of pretence in something that is not pretended, the paper argues that we split our experiential perspective into a double perspective, which differs from the cognitive act of understanding what a perspective is. With this notion in hand, we can return to the debate on empathy. It is argued that in order to have the capacity for direct empathic perception, one must have undergone experiences involving a double perspective. (shrink)

We are grateful to René Rosfort for his comment on our target paper Clinical Response to Bodily Symptoms in Psychopathology. Rosfort’s remarks lead us here to specify an important point which our initial proposal may have left too implicit. Within the realm of clinical practice in psychopathology, we argue that bodily manifestations can be offered an expressive space and that they can be listened to in the clinical encounter as being part of the patient’s speech whereby she, by way of (...) her bodily symptoms, addresses a demand to be attended to as a subject of communication. We detail the circumstances under which bodily manifestations may or may not be addressed to a person who is expected to respond, especially in a... (shrink)

Nurses have an important role in preventing and responding to child abuse and neglect. This paper reports on nurses' perceptions of how organisational systems and hierarchies shaped their capacity to respond to child abuse and neglect. This is one of four key themes identified through an inductive analysis of data from a broader qualitative study that explored nurses' perceptions and experiences of keeping children safe. The study was guided by social constructionist theory, and data were collected through in‐depth interviews with (...) nurses working with children in Australia (n = 21). Key findings showed that nurses experienced many challenges to responding to child abuse, including difficulties sharing information, fear of making mistakes and inflexible systems of care. This was underpinned by an organisational ‘rule‐centred’ culture of following policies at the expense of maintaining an explicit focus on children's needs. These findings demonstrate first the importance of creative and flexible thinking from individual professionals, so policies are enacted with a clear child focus. Second, they highlight the need for leadership to enact organisational and systemic cultural change that maintains a genuinely child‐centred approach. (shrink)

This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light of current discourses on citizenship, gender and migration. It discusses how various processes in the mosques can be interpreted as contradictory and complex by sometimes increasing the participation of women and promoting liberation, while at other times constraining women'ss activities through various forms of discipline and control. Women are vital for the building of religious institutions among Muslim immigrant communities, and they are slowly achieving more (...) space in such institutions. They are also being included in new forms of participation in some mosques. Recently, some Muslim women in Norway have made public calls for the reinterpretation of the Qur'an in ways that are more inclusive towards women. Despite pressures from both within and outside the mosques, however, Muslim congregations in Norway can still be described as patriarchal gender regimes where the participation and citi- zenship of women depends on the willingness of men to include them. (shrink)

What happened to the theories of Europe developed by the Enlightenment? Following a pluridisciplinary perspective, this book examines the way in which the projects conceived in the 18th century were reinvested both in the founding texts of the European Union and in contemporary political theory.

Cette anthologie critique vise à établir une archéologie de la théorie de limage contemporaine, en particulier dans son versant germanophone, celui de la 'science de l'image' ou Bildwissenschaft. Pour des raisons diverses (obstacle de la langue, hermétisme des débats, dispersion des positions), cette discipline reste encore peu connue dans la sphère francophone. Pourtant, le développement exponentiel de la théorie de l'image depuis les années 1990 appelle une nouvelle cartographie des études visuelles ainsi qu'une redéfinition philosophique de l'image et de l'expérience (...) qui en découle."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This essay considers the way and manner in which a musician and music educator approaches his or her work. It is suggested that anthropomorphic conceptions of music have endured in music education practice in the West. It is proposed that our view of the ‘processes’ of music making, music reception and music learning can be challenged and reconsidered. Heidegger's theory of art is used as a way of rethinking these processes, and of reconsidering our relational dimension with music. The unfolding (...) of music in music‐events occurs as people ‘work‐with’ music and interact with its dimensions in a way that is culturally and dialogically vibrant. Music education can thus become more responsive to changing ‘modes of beings’ in the moment. (shrink)