Zero Feet Away: The Digital Geography of Gay Social Media

ABSTRACT

For this contribution to the “Cartographies” section of the special issue on “Mapping Queer Bioethics,” the author focuses on the terrains of digital media, geosocial networking, and sexually based social media in LGBT communities. Addressing the communal potentials and ethical complications of geosocial connections made possible by such sexually based social media, the author asks whether digital forms of cartography via applications such as Grindr and Scruff simplify, complicate, or merely expose historically longstanding notions of queer interconnectivity.     

Réseaux épistémiques : formaliser la cognition distribuée

Knowledge-based communities bring together persons who collaborate and interact in order to produce knowledge. The tasks involved in this production are usually described in terms of “epistemic communities”: groups of individuals working on shared topics in pursuit of a common goal of knowledge production. Focus is thus placed on the formation, evolution and interactions of these communities – in general, on processes of collaboration. The objective is twofold: on one hand, describe how epistemic communities emerge and overlap at various hierarchical levels and, on the other, expose the determinants of collaboration between members of these communities. In an attempt to formalize the analysis of distributed cognition, an epistemic community is defined as the largest set of agents sharing and, working on, the same set of concepts. This formal definition helps us describe the distributed structure of knowledge production; understand the impact of this structure on the perception and arrangement of activities related to distributed cognition and appraise dynamically the stability over time of the distribution of tasks within the network, in spite of a continuous turnover among members. An empirical study of a community of embryologists illustrates this approach.     

Knowing,Participative Thinking,Emoting

In this paper, I refer to two notions which are basic to the theory of Cognitive Pluralism. First, there are multiple semiotic means. Language is a primary one, but it is not the only one. Second, semiotic means are based on cultural practices. In the theory of Cognitive Pluralism, as in other pluralistic theories, musical and mathematical notation systems, diagrams, maps, and other semiotic means are examined. The use of diverse cognitive approaches is illustrated by the accounts of experienced thinkers. I discuss analytical and analogue cognitive styles in mathematics in relation to historically shifting emphases in the discipline. The developmental and cultural implications of this theory are illustrated with analyses of narratives as they are retold by children. In closing, a contrast between Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences and the theory of Cognitive Pluralism is presented.     

MEAD AND THE ART OF TRASH TALKING: I GOT YOUR GESTURE RIGHT HERE

ABSTRACT

Trash talking has rarely been studied within sociology at a time when the behavior itself has been flourishing in amateur and professional sports. George Herbert Mead's ideas on gestures, symbols, and language, in conjunction with the overarching transcendency of the community aid in understanding the development of self and the subsequent behaviors that emanate from and within trash talking in college athletics. Here a Meadian perspective is used to explain the act of trash talking at both macro- and micro-levels. Three areas were identified where Meadian philosophy applies: (1) the game and the role of the generalized other; (2) play and significant communication; and (3) self-development.     

Parental Conflict During Divorce as an Indicator of Adjustment and Future Relationships: A Retrospective Sibling Study

We assessed parental conflict during divorce and divorce stories, quality of relationship among siblings during divorce, and attitudes about romantic relationships later in life. Thirty-two undergraduate female participants (18–23 years old) whose parents divorced during the 7 to 13 year old age range completed the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire and an adapted version of the Adult Divorce and Sibling Relationship Interview. Older sibling participants endorsed higher levels of dominance toward younger siblings, more caretaking behavior, and higher levels of parental conflict than younger siblings. Analyses revealed overt conflict exposure related to less confidence in relationship sustainability as young adults. Content analysis demonstrated relationship formation problems and trust in partners.     

Solidarity and Responsibility,Ontologically (Categorically)

Vygotsky proposed that schools have an essential role to play in the socialization of scientific or academic concepts. The aim of this article is to expand and revise Vygotsky's proposal using Grice's work on the informal logic underlying everyday conversations. We argue that both academic and everyday conversations rely on Grice's Cooperative Principle and his maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. These two types of conversations do differ, however, in terms of the degree and type of accountability to which the participants are subjected. For example, even among familiar interlocutors, mathematics explanations must exhibit informativeness, logical coherence, veridicality, relevance, and clarity. One teacher's requesting and revoicing strategies (types of conversational metamessages) are examined to illustrate the contributions of a Gricean perspective to our understanding of the socialization of the mathematics register.     

Reading Activity,Consciousness, Personality Dialectically: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and the Centrality of Society

Whereas cultural-historical activity theory has proven to be fruitful, providing a framework to those scholars interested in understanding human knowing and learning from a more holistic perspective, essential aspects of the original theory either have not been taken up or have been transformed in the take up. In part, the problems arise from the difficulties of translating Leont'ev—as the work of Marx on which the theory is built—into English, where several originally distinct pairs of (Russian, German) categories and concepts are conflated into one (English). The purpose of this article is to bring into the foreground some of the fundamental aspects of cultural-historical activity theory that have disappeared during translation and uptake into Anglo-Saxon scholarship.