Epistemologies of Peace: Poetics,Globalization, and the Social Justice Movement

Abstract

Poetics, as an epistemological approach, articulates alternative imaginaries to those proffered by the neoliberal world order. With a long history of drawing upon various sites to further its aims (e.g. the academy, the international studies association, political parties, the state), the neoliberal world order has used its epistemologies to constitute a hegemony emphasizing the state as the primary actor of political life. Feminists and scholars in postcolonial IR, black studies, and ethnic studies have challenged this idea, arguing that there are differential epistemological economies in world politics. Larger questions at stake in these different sites/cites include self and collective knowledge of marginal peoples and the envisioning of alternative, oppositional histories of decolonization, struggle and contestation. Traditional disciplinary boundaries become sites/cites of contestation about the forging and making of alternatives as academics, grassroots organizers, and activists, through poetics, work together to creatively engage questions of economies, power, history, and subject-formations.     

Using our brains to develop better policy

Current governmental practices often use a method called weight of evidence (WoE) to integrate and weigh different sources of information in the process of reaching a decision. Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience have identified WoE-like processes in the brain, and we believe that these advances have the potential to improve current decision-making practices. In this article, we describe five specific areas where knowledge emerging from cognitive neuroscience may be applied to the challenges confronting decisionmakers who manage risks: (1) quantifying evidence, (2) comparing the value of different sources of evidence, (3) reaching a decision, (4) illuminating the role of subjectivity, and (5) adapting to new information. We believe that the brain is an appropriate model for structuring decision-making processes because the brain's network is designed for complex, flexible decision making, and because policy decisions that must ultimately depend on human judgment will be best served by methods that complement human abilities. Future discoveries in cognitive neuroscience will likely bring further applications to decision practice.     

CONVERGENCE: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING IN REPEATED GAMES

Nash equilibrium can be interpreted as a steady state where players hold correct beliefs about the other players’ behavior and act rationally. We experimentally examine the process that leads to this steady state. Our results indicate that some players emerge as teachers—those subjects who, by their actions, try to influence the beliefs of their opponent and lead the way to a more favorable outcome—and that the presence of teachers appears to facilitate convergence to Nash equilibrium. In addition to our experiments, we examine games, with different properties, from other experiments and show that teaching plays an important role in these games. We also report results from treatments in which teaching is made more difficult. In these treatments, convergence rates go down and any convergence that does occur is delayed.     

Lowest Cost May Not Lower Total Cost: Using “Spackling” to Smooth Mass‐Customized Production

Consider a manufacturer who mass customizes variants of a product in make‐to‐order fashion, and also produces standard variants as make‐to‐stock. A traditional manufacturing strategy would be to employ two separate manufacturing facilities: a flexible plant for mass‐customized items and an efficient plant for standard items. We contrast this traditional focus strategy with an alternative that better utilizes capacity by combining production of mass‐customized and standard items in one of two alternate spackling strategies: (1) a pure‐spackling strategy, where the manufacturer produces everything in a (single) flexible plant, first manufacturing custom products as demanded each period, and then filling in the production schedule with make‐to‐stock output of standard products; or (2) a layered‐spackling strategy, which uses an efficient plant to make a portion of its standard items and a separate flexible plant where it spackles. We identify the optimal production strategy considering the tradeoff between the cost premium for flexible (versus efficient) production capacity and the opportunity costs of idle capacity. Spackling amortizes fixed costs of capacity more effectively and thus can increase profits from mass customization vis‐à‐vis a focus strategy, even with higher cost production for the standard goods. We illustrate our framework with data from a messenger bag manufacturer.     

The Use and “Abuse” of Family in Policy Matters

Family as an institution and as rhetoric appears to play an inordinate role in shaping social policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. Its impact affects the work of applied and academic sociologists in multiple ways. Given its importance and the manner in which it operates, I argue that family may be usefully studied as an ideograph. I present a detailed analysis of how family operates rhetorically to shape and constrain policy-related matters. I also illustrate how it affects and delimits consideration of some specific social concerns, and I conclude that social science practitioners should conscientiously take family into account as we do our own work.     

Understanding the experience of moving a loved one to a long-term care facility:family members' perspectives

This project was designed to develop an understanding of family members' experiences of moving a loved one to a long-term care facility and to identify ways in which facilities might help ease this process. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with family members who had recently moved a relative into one of three long-term care facilities in Southern Ontario, Canada. Several factors appeared to contribute to the overall experience of the move to long-term care and either served to impede or facilitate a positive transition for families. These factors included: the experience during the waiting process, preparation for the move, ease of the actual move, control over decisions, communication throughout the process, support from others, and family and resident perceptions and attitudes towards the move. Easing the difficult aspects of moving a loved one to a long-term care setting can be facilitated with better preparation and support from facilities and community services.     

Peers' influence and African-American youth in public housing

Drawing from problem behavior theory (PBT), this study investigates whether the relationship between exposure to delinquent peers and delinquent behavior is moderated by peer influences as well as by generalized self-efficacy and an adolescent's attitudes toward deviance. We also explore how gender may influence these relationships. A sample of 401 African-American adolescents living in public housing developments in two large US cities was recruited for this investigation. The preliminary analyses included t-test and bivariate correlations, while our primary analysis included hierarchical regression analysis. The regression analysis included two-way and three-way interaction terms to assess the moderating effects of peer influences, generalized self-efficacy, and attitudes toward deviance as well as gender, respectively. Results indicate that the effects of exposure to delinquent peers depend on peers' influence over adolescents and other factors. Findings provide partial support for PBT and suggest that the relationship between exposure to delinquent peers and delinquent behavior, with regard to minority youth living in urban public housing, merits further investigation. Results have the potential to guide preventative interventions targeting African-American youth living in urban public housing and also inform future inquiries into the lives of such youth.     

Identifying intraclass correlations necessitating hierarchical modeling

Hierarchical binary outcome data with three levels, such as disease remission for patients nested within physicians, nested within clinics are frequently encountered in practice. One important aspect in such data is the correlation that occurs at each level of the data. In parametric modeling, accounting for these correlations increases the complexity. These models may also yield results that lead to the same conclusions as simpler models. We developed a measure of intraclass correlation at each stage of a three-level nested structure and identified guidelines for determining when the dependencies in hierarchical models need to be taken into account. These guidelines are supported by simulations of hierarchical data sets, as well as the analysis of AIDS knowledge in Bangladesh from the 2011 Demographic Health Survey. We also provide a simple rule of thumb to assist researchers faced with the challenge of choosing an appropriately complex model when analyzing hierarchical binary data.