A sublimed experience of the rhetoric of Plato’s Republic

This article argues that Plato’s Republic promotes a public memory characterized by a sublimed experience of reason. The standard understanding of the meaning and value of the Republic is a product of processes of sublimation rather than a necessary conclusion drawn from the text’s propositional content. Key moments of the text illustrate this pattern of sublimation. The particular strand of arguments from the Republic addressed in this article invite readers to justify the use of deception, to forget the ethical implications of achieving and maintaining justice through deceit, and to identify with the ruling and deceiving class. Critical attention to this line of arguments offers an understanding of the symbiotic, rather than antagonistic, relationship between philosophy and rhetoric while allowing us to recognize the danger inherent in our willingness to rationalize the unethical foundation of the kallipolis.     

Internet and Mobile Phone Text Messaging Intervention for College Smokers

Objective: The authors developed a smoking cessation program using mobile phone text messaging to provide tailored and stage-specific messages to college smokers. Participants and Methods: The authors recruited 31 daily smokers who desired to quit from a college campus and asked them to use an Internet and mobile phone text messaging program to quit smoking. Results: Six weeks after program initiation, 45% reported abstinence with 42% abstinent based on cotinine verification. Continued smokers reported significantly reduced smoking rates and dependence. Overall, participants accepted the text messages. Conclusions: These results replicate findings from an earlier study and indicate that mobile phone text messaging is a potentially efficacious and easily disseminated method for providing cessation interventions to young adult smokers.     

Call Me Text,Just Text*

This text introduces and discusses the MOVIMENTO HO (HO MOVEMENT), a collective action conceived by Brazilian performance artist Eleonora Fabião and realized November 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Performed by 4,700 bricks, 3 books, a group of 7 artists-collaborators, gallery visitors, the cultural center’s staff, a truck and moving workers, among others, the action started at Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica (Municipal Art Center Hélio Oiticica, located in downtown Rio) and ended in front of the Casa das Mulheres da Maré (Women’s House at Maré, located in one of the city’s major conglomerates of slums). During 7 days people, bricks, books, and truck, among others, moved one another through varied spaces, tangible and affective matters, and performative dimensions.     

Gandhian fictions: rereading Satyagraha in South Africa

From 1923–24, Mahatma Gandhi wrote his recollections of South Africa from a prison cell in India. This text, Satyagraha in South Africa, was intended to be ‘helpful in our present struggle’ to liberate India, as well as ‘a guide to any regular historian who may arise in the future.’ An emphatically transnational text, Satyagraha in South Africa relies upon the mode of allegory to place South Africa and India in relation to each other. As it encourages comparison, however, it discourages common cause. Gandhi places Africans as the anterior sign in a larger system of signification: South African politics prefigures Indian anti-colonial victory to come, but the African native also represents the innocent natives of India writ large.

Without the political didactics of Hind Swaraj, the journalistic interventions of Indian Opinion or even the philosophical aspirations of My Experiments with Truth, this fictionalised history has rarely been the centre of attention. Satyagraha in South Africa, however, reveals Gandhi’s understanding of imperial geography, as he places South Africa and India in a single frame but fails to imagine them as inhabiting the same historical present. This understanding is reflected in his political decisions, as he fails to connect Indian anti-colonial agitation with struggles elsewhere.     

INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND THE COMPOSITION OF LABOR MARKET TURNOVER

The composition of labor market turnover is shown to influence patterns of international trade. Job and worker turnover have opposing marginal effects on industry export intensity, highlighting the importance of relative turnover shares on either side of the labor market, as opposed to total volumes of labor mobility, in shaping economic outcomes. Industries with relatively greater shares of worker turnover export more of total production, and those with higher job turnover export less. Furthermore, relatively high job turnover hinders industry adjustment following trade liberalization. These predictions receive support for U.S. manufacturing industries using turnover data in the Quarterly Workforce Indicators available from the U.S. Census Bureau. (JEL F16)     

Marital Aspirations,Sexual Behaviors,and HIV/AIDS in Rural Malawi

We explore how marital aspirations are related to the sexual behaviors of adolescents and young adults in Malawi, where HIV/AIDS prevalence among adults exceeds 10%. We also consider whether the specter of AIDS is shaping ideals about marriage. By combining survey data (N = 1,087) and in‐depth interviews (N = 133) with young Malawians from the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project, we show that looking for and finding a suitable spouse are linked to sexual behaviors and, thus, HIV risks. Moreover, concerns about contracting HIV are closely tied to the ideal characteristics of a future spouse. Our findings draw long‐overdue attention to the importance of marital aspirations in understanding adolescent sexual behaviors and risks in the era of AIDS.     

The Social Construction of Marital Commitment

This paper articulates a theoretical framework for understanding how individuals orient themselves toward marital commitment. Using a life history interview methodology and interpretive framework, it examines the orientations toward marital commitment for a sample of women and men, single and married, between the ages of 28 and 35 (N = 75). Specifically, it elaborates a multidimensional view of marital commitment with attention to two multifaceted components, one value rational and the other practical. Borrowing concepts from exchange and identity models of commitment, it analyzes interpretive processes involved in their construction. Some preliminary comments on the role social position plays in shaping constructions of marital commitment are articulated and the implications of this model discussed.     

Mobile MyPlate: A Pilot Study Using Text Messaging to Provide Nutrition Education and Promote Better Dietary Choices in College Students

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the acceptance and effectiveness of repetitive nutrition-related text messages on college students’ nutrition knowledge and fruit and vegetable consumption. Participants: One hundred fifty undergraduate (18–24 years old) non–health major students with a texting mobile phone. Methods: The intervention group received biweekly text messages of the MyPlate icon and the United States Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines (DGs) for 7 weeks. The control group received the same information in a mailed brochure. A pre and post online survey assessed the students’ knowledge and behavior. Results: The intervention resulted in greater MyPlate food group recognition (p <.05) compared with control and a trend toward improved knowledge of the DGs. In the intervention group, fruit consumption was elevated (p <.05) and a trend toward elevated vegetable consumption was determined. No gender differences in intervention effectiveness exist. Conclusion: Texting repeated messages appears to be an acceptable and effective way to increase nutrition knowledge and promote positive diet-related behaviors in college students.     

Parting words: Trauma,silence and survival

Abstract

This article examines an enigma at the heart of Freud's work on trauma: the surprising emergence, from within the theory of the death drive, of the drive to life, a form of survival that both witnesses and turns away from the trauma in which it originates. I analyse in particular the striking juxtaposition, in Freud's founding work Beyond the Pleasure Principle, of his two primary examples of trauma: the repetitive nightmares of battle suffered by the soldiers of World War I, and the game of the child, faced with the loss of its mother, who plays fort and da (there and here) with his spool. My own understanding of Freud's insight did not emerge, however, simply through a reading of his text but began, in fact, in my encounter with a real child in Atlanta, a child whose best friend was murdered in the street and who is interviewed by the friend's mother. I thus read together the language of the nightmare and the language of the child in Freud's text, and then attempt to understand how Freud's text and the language of the real child shed light upon each other.     

José Ortega y Gasset (1934), Ibn Khaldūn Reveals the Secret to Us (thoughts on Africa Minor) translated from Spanish by Cynthia Scheopner

José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) was puzzled how Melilla remained a Spanish enclave on the North African coast. By 1927, Spain had solidified its hold on Northern Morocco and several books on the history and culture of “Africa minor” had been published; in one Ortega encountered Ibn Khaldūn. Ortega read the Prolegomena to History in the French translation by William MacGuckin de Slane. He found a key to understanding Spain that he explored in this essay, first published in El Espectador journal of Madrid in 1934. It introduced Ibn Khaldun to European audiences as the first philosopher of history three decades before an English translation of his work. Ortega, then, knew of Ibn Khaldun's theory of generations at the time he was developing his own. Ortega noted page numbers in parentheses in the text where he quoted from De Slane. The end notes are from the text as well, documenting Ortega's secondary sources for his impressions of Ibn Khaldūn, Islam, and North African culture.     

The Role of Religion in Adolescence for Family Formation in Young Adulthood

This paper examines the role of religion in adolescence for shaping subsequent family formation. Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 13,895). We explored the role of three dimensions of religious life—affiliation, attendance, and religious fervor—both singly and in combination for the transition to either marriage or cohabitation. Although each dimension predicted subsequent union formation, it was the particular combination of these dimensions that was important for understanding the likelihood of cohabiting. We also found evidence that patterns of religious identity, attendance, and fervor in adolescence were associated with the length of cohabitation, the likelihood of the cohabitation ending in marriage, and beliefs about the purpose of cohabitation.     

Real men, real husbands: Caregiving and masculinities in later life

Drawing on data from in-depth personal interviews with a sample of fifty-three older men caring for their impaired wives, authors report findings on these men's caregiving experience, specifically on the way they see themselves as men within such role. Through analytic methods based upon content analysis and open coding, authors found that when describing their gendered understanding of themselves participants evidenced several negotiations with the dominant masculine ideology in order to maintain their sense of masculinity and legitimate their presence in a feminine role. This was accomplished by reframing their definition of a man and reinforcing that of a husband and by retaining varying degrees of power over the caregiving relationship. The social visibility of the role within particular gendered community-based social networks was found to be important in shaping these older men's masculinities.     

Justice and Tyranny: Bringing “Rural” Back into the Sociology of Food and Agriculture

In the current polarizing political climate, what constitutes just has become increasingly questioned and debated in the public arena. Tyrants seem everywhere to shape people's understanding of who belongs in communities and nation-states and, therefore, who should be given a voice and what should be valued. This paper unpacks the mechanisms of tyranny and the pursuit of justice in the global agri-food system. The first section discusses justice and tyranny as sociological concepts and practice, followed by the second section that examins two types of tyrannies in the globalized agri-food system: neoliberal capitalism and community. I argue that neoliberal capitalism and community are the logics for organizing social relations and the sites of enacting tyrannies and justice. Third, I argue that in the tension between capitalism and community in achieving justice, rural becomes critical both theoretically and empirically for understanding the current transformations and the future challenges for transforming agri-food systems. Finally, the paper concludes with possible contributions of rural sociological imaginations to shaping the discourse of justice and explore the process of justice.     

The epigenomic self in personalized medicine: between responsibility and empowerment

This paper focuses on two areas of innovation currently articulating the agenda of personalized medicine (PM): the discourse of empowerment in health-care reforms and the rise of molecular epigenomics. We align these two developments as discursive and technical resources, focusing on their nascent interplay in shaping alternative sociotechnical imaginaries of PM. Our work aims at inaugurating an intellectual programme on the distinct futures of policy- and identity-making that are being catalysed around epigenomic technoscience, as well as to provide an operational map of its potential synergies with pre-existing socio-political discourses of empowerment in PM. This roadmap advances our understanding of how the intersection of epigenomics with dominant policy discourses becomes a resource to shape roles and obligations of citizens, patients and health-care actors in the emergence of PM.     

‘We are not Victims,we are Protagonists of this History’

This article centers on the Mexican and Argentinean ‘Dirty Wars’, examining the limitations inherent in human rights and women's human rights responses to these epochs of violence. I situate Argentina's report on the dictatorship, Nunca más (1984), in conversation with Elena Poniatowska's text on the 1968 Mexico City massacre, La noche de Tlatelolco (1971), to trace the rise of a global human rights discourse that has become the dominant manner of conceptualizing human rights violations and gender violence in the latter half of the twentieth century. While feminist critiques of human rights have centered on the lack of gender-specific focus of violence committed against women, this article questions whether the women's human rights discourse disengages the historical, economic and geopolitical realities from which these violations were committed and instead focuses on women's sexual violations to garner international condemnation of gender violence. By turning to these texts, this article centers on the possibilities and limitations of women's human rights discourse and the impact this has on the shaping of women's political agency. This article calls for a critical feminist approach to women's human rights in order to document narratives of women survivors of human rights abuses without obfuscating their political subjectivities.     

《古兰经》文本探究

《古兰经》文本像《圣经》一样经历了自身的正典化过程,作为这个过程结晶的奥斯曼本呈现出一些显著的文本特征和线索。把握《古兰经》的这些特征和线索,不仅有助于人们判断经章降示的顺序和主题,而且有助于从学理上纠正某些代表性的西方学者所谓《古兰经》文本存在缺陷的偏见。     

Children’s Autonomy and Responsibility: An Analysis of Childrearing Advice

Employing qualitative content analysis of 300 childrearing advice articles from Parents magazine, this paper maps historical changes in the depiction of parental authority and children’s autonomy. This popular text reveals increased autonomy for children in their private self-expression, especially in regard to activities of daily living, personal appearance, and defiance of parents. However, the magazine also portrays children’s diminished public autonomy as revealed through increasingly restricted freedom of movement and substantially delayed acceptance of meaningful responsibilities. An appreciation of popular childrearing advice as a measure of individualistic cultural values thus requires an understanding of larger social changes that shift attention from public participation toward private self-expression.     

LOCATING CULTURE IN THE US AND CENTRAL EUROPE - A TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE ON CULTURAL STUDIES

This article attempts a comparative critique of interdisciplinary cultural analysis in the US and Central Europe. It tries to sketch out the different points of departure and methodological approaches used in American and British cultural studies on the side, and in German Kulturwissenschaften (cultural sciences) on the other side. Furthermore it is asked in which ways the critical political impetus of cultural studies can be made productive for the further advancement of Kulturwissenschaften, and how they could perform an innovative role for the understanding of problems posed by the current political and social situation in Central Europe.     

Determinants of Women's Decision-Making Authority in Nigeria: The Ethnic Dimension

Using data from a 1991 survey of five ethnic groups in Nigeria, we look at the determinants of wife's decision-making authority. Our analysis shows that ethnicity plays a very important role in shaping wife's decision-making authority and is even more important than wife's individual-level characteristics as a determinant of authority. The ethnic effect occurs both by shaping the levels of resources that women achieve and by shaping the relationships of wife's achieved characteristics to family decision-making. To the extent that characteristics other than ethnicity make a difference for authority, we find that wife's contributions to household expenditures are important. That factor significantly increases wife's authority, as does wife's formal education, age, and work for pay outside the home. The findings underscore the importance of looking at ethnic social differentiation in the African context and advancing educational and employment opportunities for women.