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We present a year‐long case study that documents the interactions between a teacher–research–mentor (TRM) and two 11th grade students working in their school laboratory on an extended inquiry project that is part of reformed mandatory requirements for advanced‐level matriculation in physics. Both the students (females) and the TRM (male) are Arab citizens of Israel, and the school is a public Arab school in Israel. Data were collected through videotaped participant observation of authentic working sessions and interviews with the TRM and the students. The analysis combines an ethnographic account with discourse analysis informed by a sociolinguistic approach that aims to answer the following research questions: (1) how are a teacher's identity‐narratives reified in teacher–student discourse in authentic sessions of mentoring students' inquiry? (2) how do they shape students' learning? and (3) how do they emerge from social–historical contexts? The findings problematize the challenges involved in engaging students from nondominant communities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning. The analysis articulates the complexity of this challenge by showing how teachers' identity narratives shape the social construction of student–teacher discourse, generate tensions that undermine successful implementations of reformed learning experiences, and how this vicious cycle is profoundly influenced by the embedding social and historical contexts. The implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of numerical cognition provides a fairly clear picture of the processes through which we learn basic arithmetical facts. This scientific picture, however, is rarely taken as providing a response to a much‐debated philosophical question, namely, the question of how we obtain number knowledge, since numbers are usually thought to be abstract entities located outside of space and time. In this paper, I take the scientific evidence on how we learn arithmetic as providing a response to the philosophical question of how we obtain number knowledge. I reject the view that numbers are abstract entities located outside of space and time and, alternatively, derive from the scientific evidence a novel account of the nature of numbers. In this account, numbers are reifications of the counting procedure and arithmetic statements are seen as describing the functioning of counting and calculation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clustering is indispensable in the quest for robust vegetation classification schemes that aim to partition, summarise and communicate patterns. However, clustering solutions are sensitive to methods and data and are therefore unstable, a feature that is usually attributed to noise. Viewed through a central‐tendency lens, noise is defined as the degree of departure from type, which is problematic since vegetation types are abstractions of continua, and so noise can only be quantified relative to the particular solution at hand. Graph theory models the structure of vegetation data based on the interconnectivity of samples. Through a graph‐theoretic lens, the causes of instability can be quantified in absolute terms via the degree of connectivity among objects. We simulated incremental increases in sampling intensity in a dataset over five iterations and assessed classification stability across successive solutions derived using algorithms implementing, respectively, models of central‐tendency and interconnectivity. We used logistic regression to model the likelihood of a sample changing groups between iterations as a function of distance to the centroid and degree of interconnectivity. Our results show that the degree to which samples are interconnected is a more powerful predictor of instability than the degree to which they deviate from their nearest centroid. The removal of weakly interconnected samples resulted in more stable classifications, although solutions with many clusters were apparently inherently less stable than those with few clusters, and improvements in stability flowing from the removal of outliers declined as the number of clusters increased. Our results reinforce the fact that clusters abstracted from continuous data are inherently unstable and that the quest for stable, fine‐scale classifications from large regional datasets is illusory. Nevertheless, our results show that using models better suited to the analysis of continuous data may yield more stable classifications of the available data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare and contrast two theoretical perspectives on adaptive evolution—the orthodox Modern Synthesis perspective, and the nascent Agential Perspective. To do so, we develop the idea from Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther of a 'countermap', as a means for comparing the respective ontologies of different scientific perspectives. We conclude that the modern Synthesis perspective achieves an impressively comprehensive view of a universal set of dynamical properties of populations, but at the considerable cost of radically distorting the nature of the biological processes that contribute to evolution. For its part, the Agential Perspective offers the prospect of representing the biological processes of evolution with much greater fidelity, but at the expense of generality. Trade‐offs of this sort are endemic to science, and inevitable. Recognizing them helps us to avoid the pitfalls of 'illicit reification', i.e. the mistake of interpreting a feature of a scientific perspective as a feature of the non‐perspectival world. We argue that much of the traditional Modern Synthesis representation of the biology of evolution commits this illicit reification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the front end of innovation, teams embody abstract meanings into product concepts. The literature on Innovation of Meaning suggests that focusing on a single product‐user interaction supports this process. This Moment of Meaning facilitates the development of shared meaning and knowledge. We explore how the Moment of Meaning acts as a Boundary Object to support the innovation process. We study six Innovation of Meaning projects in different companies to explore how the Moment of Meaning supports the transition from abstract meaning to a concrete solution. Attending company meetings and workshops, we collected extensive qualitative data on the usage of the Moment of Meaning. We identify four uses of the Moment of Meaning. Depending on its degree of abstraction and perspective, it represents a Metaphor, a Product Vision, a Core Feature or an Experience Concept. Our study sheds light on the reification of meanings in early stages of innovation. Also, we highlight the potential evolution of Boundary Objects over time. To managers, we provide actionable knowledge on how a simple boundary object could ease the transition from an innovation strategy to a concrete product concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptually, it is not clear whether placental pathology represents a discrete, separable "risk factor" for adverse birth outcomes, or whether placental pathology arises as part of the same underlying (likely cardiovascular) aetiologic process as preeclampsia or preterm birth. Abnormal placentation - the complex process by which embryonic cells differentiate, implant into the endometrium, and remodel the uterine spiral arteries to increase blood flow to the developing embryo - is implicated in several disease processes. [Extracted from the article]

The increasing visibility of sexualities beyond heterosexual, gay/lesbian, and bisexual is often associated with progressive politics and the questioning of heteronormativity. Yet non‐majoritarian sexualities can also include self‐identifications premised upon an opposition to LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion, including those who identify as "ex‐gay." Drawing on fieldwork with evangelical Christian activists in London, UK, this paper uses a court case in which the "legality" of ex‐gay sexuality was contested to discuss the law's simultaneous desire and inability to render contested identities legally legible. In seeking recognition as a sexual minority, self‐described ex‐gay evangelicals reveal the inadequacy of modern law's efforts to regulate difference as either "innate" or "chosen," thus upsetting the terms of the hetero‐secular legal gaze even as they embrace heterosexual supremacy. As such, this activism, which is typically analyzed in terms of evangelicalism's commitment to heteronormativity, works to denaturalize the concept of sexual orientation(s)—including, I argue, the heterosexuality ex‐gay Christians pursue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aron Gurwitsch's four‐domain model of consciousness is placed in political‐economic context to theorize how social forces influence perception. Along with clarifying key concepts in cognitive sociology like "relevance" and "the taken‐for‐granted," the model explains the processes through which social structures—despite being vaguely understood, ignored, or unknown by the typical subject on a typical day—condition thematization and what items are considered relevant or irrelevant to the given theme. A capitalist "social horizon" influences attention by structurally imposing themes on consciousness as well as filters what items are considered relevant to the given theme through hegemonic frames—which select theme‐relevant items conducive to encouraging actors to consensually reproduce the status quo—and reificatory processes, or discursive and material practices that constitute items as fixed and inalterable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of brain size of children classified with ADHD appear to reveal smaller brains when compared to 'normal' children. Yet, what does this mean? Even with the use of rigorously screened case and control groups, these studies show only small, average group differences between children with and without an ADHD classification. However, academic textbooks used in the Netherlands often portray individual children with an ADHD classification as having a different, malfunctioning brain that necessitates medical intervention. This conceptualisation of ADHD might serve professional interests, but not necessarily the interests of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the idea of philosopher Axel Honneth on the reification of nature. It examines how Honneth overlooks key insights developed by his Frankfurt School forebears, including philosopher Theodor Adorno who asserted that reification always concerns nature. Honneth countered that reification refers to treating the self and others as instrumentalizable objects. Also discussed is the theory of value developed by philosopher Karl Marx.

The article focuses on professor of philosophy Axel Honneth's theory of reification by considering the metaphysical assumptions about the human behavior and nature. It states that Honneth's reification theory revolves around the topic of mutual recognition and explains the term as a socially determined interruption. The theory is used for the improvement of psychological pathology.

The aim of this article is to add to the literature on the sociology of oral health and dentistry by presenting the relevance of status passage to the study of complete tooth loss. The article reports on an analysis of data taken from participants residing in the Nelson region of New Zealand. In total the data include interviews from 20 participants, all of whom had their remaining natural teeth removed before 1960. In total, 12 women and eight men were interviewed. All were from a European background with an age range of 71 to 101 years. Following a narrative approach, participants were interviewed on the nature of the social factors that resulted in complete tooth loss by starting with their family history and then focusing on the factors and events leading up to their total tooth loss. Data were analysed using the methods and techniques of grounded theory. This article provides an outline of the importance of scheduling, prescribing, social factors, 'compound awareness contexts' and reversibility to the status passage into complete tooth loss. We conclude by arguing that the theory of status passage may enable a detailed analysis of the 'time-space extensionality' of trajectories into complete tooth loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nina Coltart's freedom in addressing delicate areas such as spirituality and Buddhism within a psychoanalytic framework has opened borders between different psychoanalytic communities. This paper sets out to identify a deep-rooted philosophical tension that runs through several aspects of Coltart's work starting from her 'Slouching towards Bethlehem … or, thinking the unthinkable in psychoanalysis'. In exploring this central topic in depth psychology, of the distinction between thinkable and unthinkable contents, the author argues that it is not a fundamental distinction in Coltart's work but is rather a particular example of a more fundamental structural dichotomy which pervades her approach and which manifests in several different guises. It is the breadth and sincerity of Coltart's writings which make this a useful exercise, not only for understanding the structure of her work but also in illuminating some structural tensions which permeate depth-psychological pursuits in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is not uncommon to ask a race and gender-based question of a philosopher of race, only to hear 'I do race, not gender'. To the ears of many Black feminists, this sounds, to be frank, utterly foolish. Here, I identify three metaphilosophical assumptions, i.e. the disaggregation, fundamentality and transcendental assumptions, that aid in underwriting the ability to use the statement, 'I do race, not gender', as a means for avoiding gender-based questions in 'race talks'. Then, I gesture to a reason to reject the fundamentality and transcendental assumptions, i.e. the promotion of intellectual slumming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The completion of the first draft of the Human Genome Map in 2000 was widely heralded as the promise and future of genetics-based medicines and therapies - so much so that pundits began referring to the new century as 'The Century of Genetics'. Moreover, definitive assertions about the overwhelming similarities of all humans' DNA (99.9 percent) by the leaders of the Human Genome Project were trumpeted as the end of racial thinking about racial taxonomies of human genetic differences. But the first decade of the new century brought un welcomed surprises. First, gene therapies turned out to be far more complicated than any had anticipated - and instead the pharmaceutical industry turned to a focus on drugs that might be 'related' to population differences based upon genetic markers. While the language of 'personalized medicine' dominated this frame, research on racially and ethnically designated populations differential responsiveness to drugs dominated the empirical work in the field. Ancestry testing and 'admixture research' would play an important role in a new kind of molecular reification of racial categories. Moreover, the capacity of the super-computer to map differences reverberated into personal identification that would affect both the criminal justice system and forensic science, and generate new levels of concern about personal privacy. Social scientists in general, and sociologists in particular, have been caught short by these developments - relying mainly on assertions that racial categories are socially constructed, regionally and historically contingent, and politically arbitrary. While these assertions are true, the imprimatur of scientific legitimacy has shifted the burden, since now 'admixture research' can claim that its results get at the 'reality' of human differentiation, not the admittedly flawed social constructions of racial categories. Yet what was missing from this framing of the problem: 'admixture research' is itself based upon socially constructed categories of race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship between punk and violence. Topics covered include the history of the punk movement reached its zenith in 1978 and became known as a widespread popular subculture, the processes of reification and Utopianism, in relation to punk production, and the link between violence and punk aesthetics.

The article discusses a particular approach to the reification idea, summarizing and exploring the three different senses of reification, iconic, indexical and intellective for appropriate elucidation of a sense of iconic reification. According to the author, although the significance of indexical is the ease required in submitting to it, one can be fascinated by how indexical dimension, as a reflective human being, can relate to the realm of one's own iconic experiences.

I present a theory of alienation that accounts for the cognitive processes involved with moral thinking and political behavior in modern societies. On my account, alienation can be understood as a particular kind of atrophy of moral concepts and moral thinking that affect the ways individuals cognize and legitimate the social world and their place within it. Central to my argument is the thesis that modern forms of social integration-shaped by highly institutionalized, rationalized and hierarchical forms of social life-serve to constrain the moral- cognitive powers of subjects leading to a condition of alienation as moral atrophy. This state results from the withering of the subject's internal powers of moral reflection and an overriding predisposition to rely on external value schemas to make sense of moral and political problems. I then present an analysis of alienated moral consciousness and its implications for modern social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the ontological status of social wholes has been formative to the development of key positions and debates within modern social theory. Intrinsic to this is the contested meaning of the concept of emergence and the idea that the collective whole is in some way more than the sum of its parts. This claim, in its contemporary form, gives exaggerated importance to a simple truism of re-description that concerns all wholes. In this paper I argue that a better way to test the ontological status of wholes is to ask whether their causal properties can be reduced to the qualities of their parts. If reduction is possible the ontological status of emergent wholes is diminished. A close analysis of William Wimsatt's definition, conceptualisation, and characterisation of emergent phenomena provides an understanding of the relationship between wholes and their parts and suggests, also, that the properties of collective phenomena of a social kind reduce to the activities of people. Social wholes and their parts reside in the same mode (or level) of organisation. This paper concludes by employing Jaegwon Kim's method of 'functional reduction' to demonstrate how to reduce the qualities of wholes to those of their parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern societies are shaped to a significant extent by socially rational institutions, arrangements, and technologies. A purely functional understanding of these rationalized structures eliminates the element of meaning from social life. Ellul, Heidegger and the Frankfurt School focused on this impoverishment and associate it with the spread of technology. But recent technology studies offer a different perspective which can be joined to the formulation of the social critique in the writings of Herbert Marcuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The typology of knowledge communities and knowledge collectivities has aimed to enhance the analytical clarity of the communities of practice concept (CoPs). This is achieved by outlining key differences in the knowing unfolding in CoPs and in less 'homogeneous' collectives such as multi-disciplinary project teams. This paper argues that the typology offers an account which denies any significant role to agency within CoPs. Additionally, it explicates the knowledge processes CoPs engage with, by reference to their internal constitution and in isolation from the broader contexts in which they are embedded. To address this limitation the paper employs a relational perspective of agency and context interplay. It reports data from two case studies of CoPs operating within the context of a merger in the UK brewing sector. The evidence reaffirms the significance of agency in CoPs. It also illustrates how the exercise of agency is mediated by performative expectations derived from the positioning of work practices within broader relations of production. The interplay of agency and context poses limitations to the reification of the characteristics of knowing-in terms of the types of knowledge drawn upon and the outcomes of such a process-in different groups. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maori individuals and groups in New Zealand have been active for many years claiming rights to property and resources guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi 1840. An important contemporary case, Wai 262, extends the scope of these claims to include ownership of Maori culture and its products. The tendency in this claim to reify culture, and to assert indigenous ownership of it, is common. However, New Zealand's approach to the issue of cultural rights is unique. The state has established a quasi-judicial forum, the Waitangi Tribunal, to hear claims about violations of Maori Treaty rights. In this particular instance the Treaty - Tribunal framework has shaped indigenous claims in ways that paint the claimants into a corner. Their position at the hearings’ closings comes into conflict with the kind of liberal democratic values that provide Maori iwi (tribes) opportunities to make their case. It is therefore unlikely that Wai 262 will afford a solution to the problems of cultural appropriation and marginalization that exist in contemporary New Zealand. As such, this long-running case leaves the claimants, and those sympathetic to their plight, with some unfinished business. It also provides an important new window into the contradictions facing indigenous peoples who seek redress through law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the metaphor of adaptive radiation as biological continua. It stresses that adaptive radiation has gained significance in the study of evolutionary biology or phylogenetic levels. It notes that the term adaptive radiation has been vague due to the emergence of novel techniques to quantify adaptive radiation variables. It adds that it is necessary to define first the adaptive radiation in the adaptive radiation studies.

This paper discusses the potential of the notions of reification and consensualization as developed by the theory of social representations as analytical tools for addressing the communication between the lay and scientific spheres. Social Representations Theory started by offering an over-sharp distinction between the reified and the consensual universes of which science and common sense, respectively, were presented as paradigmatic. This paper, however, suggests that the notions of consensual and reified can be considered as describing two distinct communicative formats: reification implying the use of arguments which establish prescriptions for representations and action, and consensualization relying on arguments which recognize the heterogeneity of representation and action. We illustrate this proposal through the analysis of a case in which the expert and the lay spheres of a Lisbon neighborhood opposed each other regarding the new laws of public participation in community matters. This analysis showed how reification and consensualization can be used as discursive formats by both spheres. The implications of the use of reification and consensualization and how they may depend on several power resources and have different impacts on social change are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calvin's integration of the christological features of the eucharistic controversy with soteriological questions in his refutation of Andreas Osiander marks a critical development in Reformed theology. In this article, that development is extended further in reconsideration of the nature of imputation as a linguistic action. It is argued that imputation is a soteriological corollary of the christological idea of attribution. Imputation thus conceived clarifies not only how it is located within the doctrine of union with Christ, but how that union and imputation provide clarity in ongoing discussions about reification of sin and righteousness as well as the nature of justification as a declarative word. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the reification and problemization of 'race' in Psychological research in both influential studies in the field and in my empirical work. The main argument is that we need to examine how representations of 'race' are assumed, produced and contested in research practice. This argument is made by (a) showing how research in the area adopts everyday representations of 'race' as essentialized and (b) with an illustration of the construction of 'race' within my study. This study explores how children in a predominantly white setting accept and contest representations that race. twenty two children from a range of cultural backgrounds volunteered to discuss their views and experiences of 'race' and racism in a naturalistic research activity. The analysis reveals that racialized difference is something that is constructed as both 'real' - in that it can be seen, touched and even caught from 'the other' and simultaneously something that is constructed, imposed and damaging. This highlights the possibilities for racialized others to take up positions as agents and not (only) as objects of the racializing and racist gaze, and so presents the case for thinking, debating and researching beyond reifying representations of 'race'. This has important lessons for social psychology: namely, we cannot continue to take racial categorization as a naturalistic or self-evident aspect of the social worlds that our discipline plays an important role in constructing and defending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper selects as its focus the study of relationality in sociolinguistics. Through an emphasis on social relations as these emerge in discursive and communicative praxis I propose a critical revising of some more traditional, positivistic understandings of sociolinguistic research that enshrine a firm divide between a researching subject and an object of this research. This is followed by a relational analysis of empirical data from the Greek Albanian communities of modern Greece. Many threads of my discussion of relationality in sociolinguistics dovetail with the newly emerging field of Linguistic Ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a response from the editors of the book "Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis" to reviews of the book published in the journal. The article discusses the concept of tension points and the usefulness of phronetic social science. It examines the ideas of mutual understanding and collaboration between social science actors and researchers, the relationship between theory and practice, and past failed efforts to establish a relevancy for phronetic social science. The article also address the concept of spatiality for phronetic social science. The article briefly discusses an amendment passed by the U.S. Senate to legislation known as the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 that concerns National Science Funding.