Worldwide, church membership is decreasing. A decline in the number of young adults that attend church services is also evident. The purpose of the research was to determine whether the application of a well-established body of knowledge of marketing theories and principles could be used by churches to encourage young adults to return to the church. The application of services marketing to the church as a non-profit organisation is discussed by focussing on non-physical and physical atmospheric cues in the church's (...) servicescape that could enhance church attendance. A quantitative approach was used by testing the opinions of 200 church service attendees of different denominations. The findings indicated that certain elements in the servicescape of a church may be useful in attracting young adults. It was found that music is a strong determinant of whether young adults attend church services, followed by layout and design of the church and then by the signs and symbols used in the church. Females reported significantly higher levels of positive perceptions concerning the layout and design. Although the research showed that some marketing elements, such as a positive servicescape, could improve church attendance, other personal elements such as forming personal relationships with fellow Christians and God need to be further explored. (shrink)

Learning about a scientific concept often occurs in the context of unfamiliar examples. Mutual alignment analogy ? a type of analogical comparison in which the analogues are only partially understood ? has been shown to facilitate learning from unfamiliar examples . In the present study, we examined the role of mutual alignment analogy in the abstraction and transfer of a complex scientific concept from examples presented in expository texts. Our results provide evidence that (a) promoting comparison between two examples and (...) (b) orienting the learner toward relational commonalities result in greater abstraction and transfer. These findings suggest that mutual alignment analogy is an effective means of promoting abstraction and transfer of complex scientific concepts, and may thus be used in the classroom to promote learning from unfamiliar examples. (shrink)

Heralded as revolutionary in their potential to improve efficiency, transparency, and sustainability, blockchain technologies promise new forms of large-scale coordination between actors that do not necessarily trust each other. This paper examines blockchain imaginaries and associated metaphors. Our analysis focuses on bitcoin and ethereum, today’s most prominent blockchains that use the proof-of-work consensus mechanism. We identify three principles that organise blockchain imaginaries: substantial, morphological, and structural. These principles position blockchain as an enabler of economic, political and epistemological practices, respectively. Blockchain (...) infrastructure and protocols rely on substantial metaphors (e.g. gold, gas) to govern resource allocation, morphological metaphors (e.g. work, trust) to generate consensus and structural metaphors (e.g. chain, transaction) to establish shared knowledge. Those imaginaries rely on metaphorical displacements of meaning that make blockchain technology relevant and intelligible while simultaneously shaping the direction of technological development and positing these technologies as new forms of economic, political and epistemological organisation. They are not merely descriptive but performative. We conclude by showing how these principles partially overlap with three symbolically generalized media: money, power and truth. Money organises scarcity within the economic system, power organises consensus within the political system, and truth organises knowledge within the science system. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractBy combining phylogeography and zooarchaeology, the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics within species lineages can be reconstructed. Both approaches should be used with four rat species (black, Asian house, Pacific, and brown) to understand the minimum dates of commensalism, urbanization dynamics, and connections among human societies. More details can be found in article number 1900160 by Emily E. Puckett et al.

Phylogeography and zooarchaeology are largely separate disciplines, yet each interrogates relationships between humans and commensal species. Knowledge gained about human history from studies of four commensal rats (Rattus rattus, R. tanezumi, R. exulans, and R. norvegicus) is outlined, and open questions about their spread alongside humans are identified. Limitations of phylogeographic and zooarchaeological studies are highlighted, then how integration would increase understanding of species’ demographic histories and resultant inferences about human societies is discussed. How rat expansions have informed the understanding (...) of human migration, urban settlements, trade networks, and intra‐ and interspecific competition is reviewed. Since each rat species is associated with different human societies, they identify unique ecological and historical/cultural conditions that influenced their expansion. Finally, priority research areas including nuclear genome based phylogeographies are identified using archaeological evidence to understand R. norvegicus expansion across China, multi‐wave colonization of R. rattus across Europe, and competition between R. rattus and R. norvegicus. (shrink)

This article considers the case for a theory of the queer object that focuses on its pliability – an object which operates queerly to amplify and elaborate the context in which it appears. It looks at the case of the altered book covers that Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton circulated through the Islington Public Library, activities for which the men were convicted and incarcerated. It considers their activities as versions of “trolling” and of otaku database fixation. It argues that (...) rather than simply disrupt the circulation of library books the men introduced queer objects to the library that facilitated and fostered new and more engaged understandings of the library’s collection of book objects. It reads the covers for the ways in which they connect otherwise disparate and neglected instances of texts with a virtual database of images and concepts that foster new readings of them and advance a new meaning for queer engagement with archives, libraries, and databases. (shrink)

This paper is a brief introduction to and interpretation of the work of Joe Orton, an English playwright of the 1960s who achieved notoriety through the violent and obscene content of his plays, his scandalous homosexual lifestyle and brutal death at the hands of his lover. Orton’s work is presented as a dramatic exemplification of distinctive themes pertaining to a radically materialistic strain in philosophy anticipated in Machiavelli and Spinoza but finding its fullest expression in Deleuze’s thought : (...) the radical immanence of the political, the critique of self-identity and clinical concepts of madness, and the anarchic and impersonal force of sexual desire. Orton achieves this aim through comic experimentation with language and a radicalisation of farce that serve to produce a laughter that is both destructive and affirmative : destructive of the boundaries artificially erected by reason , and affirmative of this process of destruction and the pre-subjective desire through which it is accomplished. (shrink)

Today, DIY -- do-it-yourself -- describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways and to repurpose corporate content in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and "critical making" that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting (...) and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on "doing" and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. _Contributors_Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl. (shrink)

It is not intended as some sort of revelation on my part that Greenberg's cultural theory was originally Marxist in its stresses and, indeed in its attitude to what constituted explanation in such matters. I point out the Marxist and historical mode of proceeding as emphatically as I do partly because it may make my own procedure later in this paper seem a little less arbitrary. For I shall fall to arguing in the end with these essay's Marxism and their (...) history, and I want it understood that I think that to do so is to take issue with their strengths and their main drift.But I have to admit there are difficulties here. The essays in question ["Avant-Garde and Kitsch" and "Towards a Newer Lacoön"] are quite brief. They are, I think, extremely well written: it was not for nothing the Partisan Review described Clement Greenberg, when he first contributed to the journal early in 1939, as "a young writer who works in the New York customs house"—fine, redolent avant-garde pedigree, that! The language of these articles is forceful and easy, always straightforward, blessedly free from Marxist conundrums. Yet the price paid for such lucidity, here as so often, is a degree of inexplicitness—certain amount of elegant skirting round the difficult issues, where one might otherwise be obliged to call out the ponderous armory of Marx's concepts and somewhat spoil the low of the prose from one firm statement to another. The Marxism, in other words, is quite largely implicit; it is stated on occasion, with brittle and pugnacious finality, as the essay's frame of reference, but it remains to the reader to determine just how it works in the history and theory presented—what that history and theory depend on, in the way of Marxist assumptions about class and capital or even abase and superstructure. That is what I intend to do in this paper: to interpret and extrapolate from the texts, even at the risk of making their Marxism declare itself more stridently than the "young writer" seems to have wished. And I should admit straight away that there are several point in what follows where I am genuinely uncertain as to whether I am diverging from Greenberg's argument or explaining it more fully. This does not worry me overmuch, as long as we are alerted to the special danger in this case, dealing with such transparent yet guarded prose, and as long as we can agree that the project in general—pressing home a Marxist reading of texts which situate themselves within the Marxist tradition—is a reasonable one.22. This carelessness distinguishes the present paper from two recent studies of Greenberg's early writings, Serge Guilbaut's "The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America," October 15 , and Fred Orton and Griselda Pollock's "Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed," Art History 3 I am indebted to both these essays and am sure that their strictures on the superficiality—not to say the opportunism–of Greenberg's Marxism are largely right. But I am nonetheless interested in the challenge offered to most Marxist, and non-Marxist, accounts of modern history by what I take to be a justified though extreme, pessimism as t the nature of established culture since 1870. That pessimism is characteristic, I suppose, of what Marxists call an ultraleftist point of view. I believe, as I say, that a version of some such view is correct and would therefore with to treat Greenberg's theory as if it were a decently elaborated Marxism of an ultraleftist kind, on which issues in certain mistaken views but which need not so issue and which might still provide, cleansed of those errors, a good vantage for a history of our culture.T. J. Clark, professor of fine arts at Harvard University, is the author of The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. His book on impressionist painting and Paris is forthcoming. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Peter McGehee and the Erotics of Gay Self-RepresentationRaymond-Jean Frontain (bio)Novelist Peter McGehee was a beautiful man who—at the height of what Brad Gooch terms “the Golden Age of Promiscuity”—knew he was a beautiful man.1 Coming of age in the early 1970s when American gay men consciously set about refashioning their image, Peter’s dress was always striking, whether he was playing the slut or the dandy. Members of his close (...) circle of friends, dubbed “the Quinlan Family,” regularly twitted him for preening in the mirror, and one close friend reports that Peter could not pass a reflective surface without stopping to examine his image.2 Peter’s narcissism was further empowered by his talent as a photographer. He began taking pictures while in high school when his mother, an English teacher who advised both the school newspaper and yearbook, recruited him to serve as the staff photographer for both publications. And he continued taking photos—in particular, making self-portraits—until at least his early thirties (see Illustration 1).3 Click for larger view View full resolution1.Self-portrait by Peter McGehee. The hairstyle is identical to the one in the portrait that appears on the cover of the Stubblejumper Press edition of Beyond Happiness, suggesting that this photo was taken around 1985 when Peter was twenty-nine or thirty years old. Courtesy of the Estate of Peter McGehee.[End Page 115] Click for larger view View full resolution2.Self-portrait by Peter McGehee in mascara and woman’s top, circa 1981. Courtesy of Fiji Robinson.It should not come as a surprise that McGehee’s life and career are characterized by an ongoing and extraordinarily rich experimentation with modes of self-presentation. Peter was adept at making wacky collages that employ photographs and images culled from newspapers or magazines to serve as invitations, announcements to friends, and handbills for his performance activities. Under carefully controlled circumstances, Peter and his male friends donned female drag with Peter fashioning for himself a persona, “Princess Marie,” and signing himself as the same in letters to friends written in the royal first-person plural (see Illustration 2). When performing as the only male with two female partners in the Quinlan Sisters, a musical revue that he founded and for which he wrote the songs, he was generally identified in the program as “Marie Quinlan, the Sister with the Difference” (see Illustration 3).Peter experimented with personae even in his journals, where one might expect to find a less theatricalized self. Beginning in 1986, however, numerous entries are composed as letters that begin “Dear Winsome” (a word defined by the American Heritage College Dictionary as “charming, often in a childlike or naive way”—a manner that Peter liked to adopt), “Dear Winnie” (which is most likely a familiarization of the former), “Dear Timmy” (a name synonymous with naive wholesomeness for American baby boomers who were raised watching the television drama Lassie on Sunday evenings), and the matronly and delightfully dowdy “Dear Mrs. Hackensack.”4 Like Joe Orton, McGehee apparently even wrote letters to the local newspaper under a matronly female pseudonym in which he commented wryly on public matters that concerned him.5 [End Page 116] Click for larger view View full resolution3.Publicity photograph of Peter with Wendy Coad and Fiji Robinson as the Quinlan Sisters, circa 1982. Courtesy of Fiji Robinson.But clearly it was his fiction that offered McGehee the most satisfying opportunity for creative self-fashioning. It is the first rule of the creative writing class that a writer must write from, and of, what he knows if his writing is to have authority. But in his blurring of the line between fiction and autobiography Peter followed the lead established by Christopher Isherwood in The Berlin Stories (1935–39) and, more importantly, Christopher and His Kind (1976)—and pursued by Peter’s senior contemporaries Edmund White and Felice Picano—in which the autobiographer writes of himself in the third person in order to study himself with an almost brutal detachment, or in which the fictional protagonist is a barely disguised version of the writer’s self to the point of... (shrink)

How social media and DIY communities have enabled new forms of political participation that emphasize doing and making rather than passive consumption. Today, DIY—do-it-yourself—describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways and to repurpose corporate content in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and “critical making” that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists (...) in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on “doing” and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. Contributors Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl. (shrink)