Book review of 'Our word is our bond: How legal speech acts' by Marianne Constable
Since the 1990s Higher Education has had a critical role in the process of integration of transformative pedagogies to promote interdisciplinary competences for sustainable development. In spite of the wide recognition of the impact of these transformative pedagogies, their integration in traditional learning programmes is often neglected. This paper focuses on an advanced training on Energy Efficiency in Historic Heritage, as a part of an Erasmus+ programme Strategic Partnership project, funded by the European Commission which was implemented between 2014 and 2016, involving five European Countries. The scope of this project was to investigate on complex interactions between social and physical science concerning the integrated project about urban sustainability and preservation. An experimental approach founded on the combined use of cognitive mapping technique and meaningful learning activities in an interdisciplinary context was adopted. Two experiences, for trainers and learners, were carried out in orde…
Why is resistance a pervasive feature of organisations? We seek to add to the established ways of understanding resistance by arguing that it may emerge due to the rationality and irrationality, order and disorder that imbues organisations. We explore how such conditions create ambivalent situations that can generate resistance which is ambivalent itself as it can both facilitate and hinder the operation of organisations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in a manufacturing organisation, we introduce the concept of pragmatic resistance as a means to grasp the everyday resistance that emerges through and reflects cracks in the rational model of organisations. Rather than being anti-work, we demonstrate how pragmatic resistance is bound up with organisational disorder/irrationality, competing work demands and the prioritisation of what is interpreted as 'real-work'. Overall, the concept of pragmatic resistance indicates that resistance may be far more pervasive and organisations more fragile and vulner…
Inequality has been increasing for decades in both rich and developing countries and the academic literature addressing it struggles to provide explanations, let alone solutions. This paper is concerned with a relatively underexplored area, the relationship between macro-level inequality and organizational inequality. The core focus of the article is the recognition that the two phenomena are closely bound up one with the other. This is made possible by adopting Rousseau’s notion of inequality as hierarchy and willingness to accept subordination to authority and disparity of treatment. In doing so we highlight similarities and dissimilarities between Rousseau and Marx. Inequality remains an issue of hierarchy at both the macro and organizational levels. As it was for Rousseau, so it is today but it’s much more layered than in Rousseau’s day: inequality in society is the accepted degree of hierarchy among its members, inequality in the economy and at work is the extent to which, accepted or not, there is an im…
Between 1712 and 1715, the Convocation of the Church of England attempted to replace the existing informal orders used for the consecration of churches, chapels and churchyards with a single uniform rite. While these efforts have been associated with the erection of the Fifty New Churches to provide for the populous and expanding suburbs of London and Westminster, the discussions actually arose out of the political divisions between the bishops and the lower house of convocation. The efforts to establish an official order of consecration was also a response to the changed ecclesiastical climate that followed the Toleration Act of 1689, which allowed for the registration of Dissenter chapels. The Established Church found its religious hegemony threatened and the particular status of their places of worship, achieved through consecration, challenged. The Church responded to the criticism of their existing forms of consecration by reforming the liturgy as well as demonstrating the historical and legal basis for …
Knowledge of obstetric and environmental influences on Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) helps provide increased understanding of the mechanisms underlying the disorder. However, the literature to date has not adequately examined the obstetric and environmental risk factors for DCD in a population-based sample. The current study was therefore conducted to explore the prenatal, perinatal, neonatal, and family environmental risk factors for DCD. A total of 2185 children aged 3-10 years from a national representative sample in China were included; the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 was used to assess motor function, and a questionnaire was completed by parents. DCD was identified in 156 children according to the DSM-5 criteria. Multilevel logistic regression was used, and comparisons were made between the DCD and non-DCD group. The results confirmed that male sex, BMI score, preterm birth, and some prenatal conditions are significant risk factors for DCD. Parents’ education level and one-chil…
Brain computer interface (BCI) is the current trend in technology expansion as it provides an easy interface between human brain and machine. The demand for BCI based applications is growing tremendously and efforts are in progress to deploy BCI devices for real world applications. One of the widely known applications of BCI technology is rehabilitation in which BCI devices can provide various types of assistance to specially-abled persons. In this paper the effect of hand actions on objects is analyzed for motor related mental task. The proposed approach analysis electroencephalogram (EEG) based brain activity which was captured for images shown with different gripping actions on objects. The EEG recordings are first pre-processed, followed by extraction of epochs and frequency bands using discrete wavelet transform (DWT), afterwards feature extraction followed by training and classification steps are performed for classifying the grip action into congruent (correct) and incongruent (incorrect) grip categori…
This chapter focuses on the differing approaches of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Caribbean Court of Justice towards the interpretation of the independence Constitutions of the Commonwealth Caribbean. Critiquing the lack of autochthony and the lack of meaningful public participation in the drafting of the region’s independence Constitutions, a number of influential Caribbean constitutional scholars have advocated a much more judicially creative approach to the interpretation of the region’s constitutions than the more conservative approach that has dominated the JCPC’s more recent jurisprudence. I call the approach advocated by these scholars the holistic approach because it treats the constitution as a whole as greater than the sum of its parts. The Caribbean Court of Justice in two recent judgments on appeals from Barbados and Guyana respectively has now adopted this approach. Notwithstanding its undoubted attraction in terms of resolving some of the deficiencies and flaws in the regio…
Background: The presence of an extra sex chromosome is associated with an increased rate of neurodevelopmental difficulties involving language. The 'double hit' hypothesis proposes that the adverse impact of the extra sex chromosome is amplified when genes that are expressed from the sex chromosomes interact with autosomal variants that usually have only mild effects. We predicted that the impact of an additional sex chromosome on neurodevelopment would depend on common autosomal variants involved in synaptic functions. Methods: We analysed data from 130 children with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs: 42 girls with trisomy X, 43 boys with Klinefelter syndrome, and 45 boys with XYY). Two comparison groups were formed from 370 children from a twin study. Three indicators of phenotype were: (i) Standard score on a test of nonword repetition; (ii). A language factor score derived from a test battery; (iii) A general scale of neurodevelopmental challenges based on all available information. Preselected regions of t…
In this essay, we trace the symbolic conundrums of belonging, and of the reconciliation of identities, in the context of Catalan and Scottish sport and politics. Our discussion will commence with a necessarily concise consideration of past academic contentions regarding the national ‘psyches’ which have been argued to shape contemporary notions of identity and politics in Catalonia and Scotland, before turning our attention to the specific role of sport vis-à-vis these ‘psyches’ and the growing clamour for greater political autonomy for each of these stateless nations. Based on evidence drawn from the interaction between sport and politics in the two nations, we argue that secessionism is a liminal field of transformation as it includes what is seen as mutually exclusive sets of relationships (Catalans vs. Spaniards; Scottish vs. British, secessionists vs. unionists/centralists), which at the same time allows subjects to pass from one state to another and occupy them non-exclusively.