Contributed research papers presented at a National Seminar organized under the joint auspices of Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, Tirupati and Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi from 27th to 29th March 2004 at R.S. Vidyapeeth, Tirupati.

This introduction to the Journal of Business Research special issue on anti-consumption briefly defines and highlights the importance of anticonsumption research, provides an overview of the latest studies in the area, and suggests an agenda for future research on anti-consumption.

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of adult-level (...) household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

Die Wissenschaftspsychologie wird als ein Gebiet interdisziplinärer Forschungen an der Grenze zwischen Psychologie und allgemeiner Theorie und Geschichte der Wissenschaft erörtert und ihr Verhältnis zu den anderen Richtungen der Wissenschaftsforschung, insbesondere zur Logik der Wissenschaftsentwicklung und zur Wissenschaftssoziologie dargestellt. Dabei heben die Autoren hervor, daß die Ausarbeitung jeder dieser Disziplinen eine Umgestaltung ihrer Ausgangsbegriffe und -methoden voraussetzt, was der Natur der Wissenschaft als spezifischen Systems und als besonderer sich historisch entwickelnder Tätigkeitsform entspricht. Als Grundprobleme werden u.a. behandelt: Kreativität, Motivation und (...) Schaffensdynamik des Wissenschaftlers, das Verhältnis von Persönlichkeit und Kollektiv in der modernen Wissenschaft und das Funktionieren "kleiner Gruppen". (shrink)

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated drastic changes to undergraduate medical training at the University of Botswana (UB). To save the academic year when campus was locked down, the Department of Medical Education conducted a needs assessment to determine the readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) of the Faculty of Medicine, UB. Objectives. To report on the findings of needs assessment surveys to assess learner and teaching staff preparedness for fair and just ERT, as defined by philosopher John Rawls. Methods. Needs (...) assessment surveys were conducted using Office 365 Forms distributed via WhatsApp, targeting medical students and teaching staff during the 5 undergraduate years. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results. Ninety-two percent (266/289) of students and 73.5% (62/84) of teaching staff responded. Surveys revealed a high penetration of smartphones among students, but poor internet accessibility and affordability in homes. Some teaching staff also reported internet and device insufficiencies. Only WhatsApp was accessible to students and teaching staff. Conclusions. For equitable access to ERT in the future, the surveys revealed infrastructural improvement needs, including wider, stronger, affordable WiFi coverage within Botswana and enhanced digital infrastructures in educational institutions, with increased support for students. (shrink)

Este volume resume as palestras apresentadas durante o simpósio comemorativo dos "100 Anos da Física Quântica", realizado no Instituto de Física da USP. Para avaliar o significado dessa comemoração, basta lembrar que a Física no século XIX parecia estar completa. Os textos agrupados neste volume tratam de aspectos históricos associados à emergência inicial da teoria quântica, de desenvolvimentos relacionados com algumas das suas mais notórias conseqüências, e de aplicações abrangendo fenômenos desde a escala sub-atômica, atômica e molecular, até as dimensões (...) do universo como um todo. (shrink)

For economists, sustainability and environmental valuation are connected in two ways. At the micro level, proper environmental valuation is required if projects are to be approved and rejected consistently with sustainability requirements. This is cost benefit analysis. At the macro level, many take the view that sustainability requires that national income measurement be modified so as to account for environmental damage. Such natural resource accounting is possible only if environmental damage is valued for incorporation into the economic accounts. The paper (...) reviews the techniques that economists have developed for environmental valuation. In regard to cost benefit analysis and sustainability, it is noted that the technique on which most interest focuses, the Contingent Valuation Method, involves the extension of the domain of consumer demand analysis to include the natural environment. Contributions questioning the appropriateness of this are reviewed, and it is argued that they merit more attention from economists than they have received to date. In regard to natural resource accounting, it is argued that while there is little prospect of it achieving what its proponents claim for it, the modelling that it necessarily implies has the potential to both clarify valuation issues and play an important role in informing the policy process. (shrink)

The purpose is to identify common and distinctive features of concepts and methodology of the problem of subject within different discourses, implicitly or explicitly relevant to the definition of "clinical" mode of human existence. The research methodology combines techniques of discourse analysis and basic principles of historical and philosophical studies. Originality of the research lies in definition of the clinical philosophical discourse as a special communicative process, where utterances not only focus on disease syndromes, and reveal phenomenology of inner experience (...) of a pathological self, but also structure a certain type of sociality. Clinical discourse represents the space where the patient is treated not as a subject but as an object of disease. Ontology of clinical discourse prevails over ontology of disease, since its structures determine the notion of disease as such. Categorization of the disease, the idea of disease as a phenomenon subdued to professional authority leads to the idea of the need for patient’s isolation from the natural environment and removing him to special social institutions. The clinicist doctrines share the intention to reduce the patient’s self to its bodily dimension, while ignoring social determinants of psychological deviations. Conclusions of the study are summarized in the following positions: the current clinical discourse is based on the positivist-biological trend in humanitarian knowledge and it is the basis for the production and reproduction of medical and pharmaceutical repressive ideology; criticism of philosophical clinical discourse opens the possibility of overcoming the dominance of purely clinicist discourse; such a transformation is possible only after a paradigm shift in understanding the category of subject. (shrink)

Reference is a central topic in philosophy of language, and has been the main focus of discussion about how language relates to the world. R. M. Sainsbury sets out a new approach to the concept, which promises to bring to an end some long-standing debates in semantic theory.There is a single category of referring expressions, all of which deserve essentially the same kind of semantic treatment. Included in this category are both singular and plural referring expressions, complex and non-complex referring (...) expressions, and empty and non-empty referring expressions. Referring expressions are to be described semantically by a reference condition, rather than by being associated with a referent. In arguing for these theses, Sainsbury's book promises to end the fruitless oscillation between Millian and descriptivist views. Millian views insist that every name has a referent, and find it hard to give a good account of names which appear not to have referents, or at least are not known to do so, like ones introduced through error, ones where it is disputed whether they have a bearer and ones used in fiction. Descriptivist theories require that each name be associated with some body of information. These theories fly in the face of the fact names are useful precisely because there is often no overlap of information among speakers and hearers. The alternative position for which the book argues is firmly non-descriptivist, though it also does not require a referent. A much broader view can be taken of which expressions are referring expressions: not just names and pronouns used demonstratively, but also some complex expressions and some anaphoric uses of pronouns.Sainsbury's approach brings reference into line with truth: no one would think that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth value, but it is commonly held that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth condition, a condition which an arbitrary state of the world would have to satisfy in order to make the sentence true. The right analogy is that a semantic theory should associate a referring expression with a reference condition, a condition which an arbitrary object would have to satisfy in order to be the expression's referent.Lucid and accessible, and written with a minimum of technicality, Sainsbury's book also includes a useful historical survey. It will be of interest to those working in logic, mind, and metaphysics as well as essential reading for philosophers of language. (shrink)

This book undertakes a multifaceted and integrated examination of biometric identification, including the current state of the technology, how it is being used, the key ethical issues, and the implications for law and regulation. The five chapters examine the main forms of contemporary biometrics–fingerprint recognition, facial recognition and DNA identification– as well the integration of biometric data with other forms of personal data, analyses key ethical concepts in play, including privacy, individual autonomy, collective responsibility, and joint ownership rights, and proposes (...) a raft of principles to guide the regulation of biometrics in liberal democracies. Biometric identification technology is developing rapidly and being implemented more widely, along with other forms of information technology. As products, services and communication moves online, digital identity and security is becoming more important. Biometric identification facilitates this transition. Citizens now use biometrics to access a smartphone or obtain a passport; law enforcement agencies use biometrics in association with CCTV to identify a terrorist in a crowd, or identify a suspect via their fingerprints or DNA; and companies use biometrics to identify their customers and employees. In some cases the use of biometrics is governed by law, in others the technology has developed and been implemented so quickly that, perhaps because it has been viewed as a valuable security enhancement, laws regulating its use have often not been updated to reflect new applications. However, the technology associated with biometrics raises significant ethical problems, including in relation to individual privacy, ownership of biometric data, dual use and, more generally, as is illustrated by the increasing use of biometrics in authoritarian states such as China, the potential for unregulated biometrics to undermine fundamental principles of liberal democracy. Resolving these ethical problems is a vital step towards more effective regulation. (shrink)

Heuristics of evolutionary biology dictate that phylogenetically older processes are inherently more stable and resilient to disruption than younger processes. On the grounds that non-declarative behaviour emerged long before declarative behaviour, Reber argues that implicit learning is supported by neural processes that are evolutionarily older than those supporting explicit learning. Reber suggested that implicit learning thus leads to performance that is more robust than explicit learning. Applying this evolutionary framework to motor performance, we examined whether implicit motor learning, relative to (...) explicit motor learning, conferred motor output that was resilient to physiological fatigue and durable over time. In Part One of the study a fatigued state was induced by a double Wingate Anaerobic test protocol. Fatigue had no affect on performance of participants in the implicit condition; whereas, performance of participants in the explicit condition deteriorated significantly. In Part Two of the study a convenience sample of participants was recalled following a one-year hiatus. In both the implicit and the explicit condition retention of performance was seen and, contrary to the findings in Part One, so was resilience to fatigue. The resilient performance in the explicit condition after one year may have resulted from forgetting or from consolidation of declarative knowledge as implicit memories. In either case, implicit processes were left to more effectively support motor performance. (shrink)

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.