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The article focuses on the superhero franchise "Guardians of the Galaxy" within the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and how it has been reimagined to represent behavioral and familial trends among millennials. The author discusses the concept of resilient placemaking and the notion of adoptive families.

Changes in the values and careers of particularly younger employees and changes in organizations, including the reduction of hierarchical levels and greater use of teams and matrix structures--combined with new communication technologies and more social networking--have produced calls for new organization theories for these new realities. Using organizational power and influence as a focus, I argue that fundamental theoretical processes remain largely unchanged in their explanatory power, in part because such phenomena can be linked to survival advantages. The new workers-new work arguments are consistent with the continuing emphasis on novelty and theoretical innovation in the organization sciences, an emphasis that, while promulgated in virtually all the journals, may poorly serve the development of reliable and valid knowledge and hinder our ability to provide useful advice for both organizations a their employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey questionnaires are among the most widely-used research methods in applied linguistics, adopted for everything from large-scale quantitative studies measuring social-psychological variables to qualitative studies that solicit participant views on a range of different topics. Despite the variety of purposes that survey questionnaires are used for, the most common approaches to analysis of the data they yield involve content analysis using descriptive or inferential statistics and/or enumeration of emergent themes. The study reported in this article conceives of questionnaire data in notably different terms: as occasioned (conditionally-relevant responses sequentially-projected by a question), recipient-designed (devised for the research context and researcher), and thus, as thoroughly interactional phenomena (Drew 2006; Sacks 1992). The study examines the identity construction of French as a second language (FSL) teachers on a professional development sojourn in France, drawing on a data-set in part comprised of participants' open-ended responses to a 48-item questionnaire concerning whether their "confidence as French language teachers" increased as a result of their involvement in the sojourn. However, rather than conceiving of participants' answers as revelations of changes in their interior states, the study draws on insights from conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to examine how "confidence" was recruited as a discursive resource to "do being" a particular kind of L2 French teacher. We demonstrate how the presence and problematics of a (French) native-speaker archetype for the FSL teachers was in part formulated through close analytic attention to both the sequential and categorial features of researcher/respondent interactions occasioned by one open-ended response item in the questionnaire. This alternative approach to analyzing questionnaire data offers important insights about L2 teacher identity. It also addresses more fundamental questions concerning the discursive and interactional basis of ostensibly non-interactional research methods like survey questionnaires. Additionally, the insistence on an explicit methodological framing of the research process promotes greater theoretical and methodological consistency, and of particular importance, a significantly expanded conception of and accounting for researcher reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the methodology journalism scholars use when studying significant samples, or "those persons who have attained an unusually pervasive and lasting reputation, regardless of whether that reputation be great or small." Using Simonton's work as the theoretical guide, the study content analyzed a census of articles published in 10 major journalism journals from 2000 to 2014. Results showed that the typical study examining significant samples is psychometric and is also quantitative, nomothetic, longitudinal, singularly focused, and exploratory. In addition, it uses macro units and observes the subject indirectly. The study also found similarities between the study of significant samples and extant work in terms of the preponderance of quantitative methods and the use of content analysis as a data collection method. The ramifications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'An international language belongs to its users, not to the countries whose national languages have become internationalized' (Edge 1992). With an ever increasing number of L2 users it is time we rewrote the description of the place of English among world languages. All types of interactions, more particularly between nations, are through English, for a reason no other than the fact that it is the only language in which non native users can possibly communicate. It is the language of science, technology and business apart from being significant in political or diplomatic dialogues. English Language has come to be owned by all people in the world of work. Saudi Arabia is no exception. Almost a hundred years on Saudi schools, colleges and universities teach English with primary and genuine concern. Still, just like non- native learners in other non-English speaking countries, Saudi learners also confront many problems in their English Language acquisition. This study is a humble effort to bring out the major barriers and problems that Saudi students face while learning English; it proposes remedial measures for the said barriers and problems. In this study, the researcher has tried to focus on the teaching methodologies and learning atmosphere prevalent in Saudi English classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past couple of decades debates on democracy in the Arab world have been bound up with the status of women. The veil has been singled out for keeping women subordinate and therefore preventing society and culture from achieving progress or modernity. This essay will compare representations of the veil in the English works of comprador intellectuals with those found in Arab texts in order to come to an understanding of what these differences mean with respect to the power/knowledge dichotomy of modern-day oculacentric society. In showing that knowledge of Muslim women is not the result of the veil, but rather the effect of Orientalist attitudes and knowledge/power discourses imposed on her, the veil sheds its negative oppressive connotations and is resituated within its proper religious and spiritual context. What was configured as a sign of seclusion, oppression and shame emerges as an opportunity for women to achieve sanctity, privacy and respect free from the demands and impositions of a capitalist consumer society that suffocates women's choices by treating them as objects of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Little attention has been given to the gendering between the world wars of rail-based mobility - 'railing'. In order to meet the competitive threat from motoring, British railway companies marketed railing as a more civilised form of transport. While the train could not match the automobile's freedom of movement, the constraints of track and timetable offered compensations in the form of safety, time savings and comfort. This 'civilised velocity' was construed as being provided by a male workforce and valued by both sexes. However, it was not understood as being equally available to women and men. The railway's male managers and workforce considered men to be the primary consumers of civilised velocity, and male norms framed the ways in which women's railing was marketed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motivations for and outcomes of repatriation are frequently described within post-colonial processes of self-determination and self-representation. In contrast, repatriation is here considered as an expression of kinship and as a means of producing collective memory and identity. This article considers the repatriation process undertaken by the Haida First Nation to return their ancestors' remains from museum collections with a particular focus on the material culture made by Haidas to remember, respect and rebury their ancestors. Joined through shared, embodied experiences of making, using and encountering artefacts, it is argued that the repatriation process has reinforced kinship relations and identity through the production of collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes a specific model when dowries are optimal and not optimal by focusing on intrafamily incentive problem. The model starts with the observation that dowries occur primarily in monogamous virilocal societies, where married daughters leave their parental home and married sons do not. The authors argue that in the monogamous virilocal societies, altruistic parents use dowries and bequests to lessen a free-riding problem between siblings. They also compare their predictions of theory suggesting that dowry contracts should not contain claims on shares of income generated with the bride's family assets with the historical development of dowries, bequests, brideprices and marriage gifts in various civilizations of the past. Lastly, they also compare their theory with the developments of the dowry system in India.

In the past few years, factor analysis has been used with increasing fre quency as a means for simplifying and epitomizing relationships among sociocultural attributes. For the most part, those who have used the factor analytic model have applied it to the search for simple structure-for the discovery of homogeneous and mutually independent subsets of variables.In this paper, one factor analysis of comparative ethnographic data, per formed by Sawyer and LeVine, is transformed (by selective rotation) away from the simple structure mode. The transformation produced a number of perspectives on the data which are different from those elicited in the Sawyer-LeVine factor structure. The present findings in no way con tradict those of Sawyer and LeVine; rather, they provide expansions on, and refinements of, certain points. Most importantly, they demonstrate the utility of taking a more flexible approach than has been traditional to the problem of factor rotations.Some specific results of the present analysis with clear relevance to sociocultural theory include the following: a factor strongly linking food- producing technology to sociopolitical complexity; a partitioning of patri lineal social organization into a general variable, on the one hand, and a specific variant, on the other; and the definition of a general sociopolitical model for smaller-scale, yet politically organized, societies. These results are discussed in the light of theories of culture patterning and cultural evo lution. [Factor analysis; Cross-cultural comparison; Cultural evolution; Culture patterns.] [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Top media organization executives Rupert Murdoch, George R. Hearst and William Block Jr. were round to have given more money to political campaigns and parties after Editor & Publisher Online [...]

Information about TESOL Arabia's Al Ain Chapter first event in United Arab Emirates on October 15, 2011 wherein the theme was titled "Teaching for Reading Success" is presented. Topics discussed include Arabic speaking tertiary learner, the need for students for extensive reading and referred to key principles and the general editorial policies of "Perspectives" journal. The event featured several teachers including Peter McLaren, George Murdoch and Dr. Melanie Gobert.