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Locality, spatiality and contingency In East London: an interview with Michael Keith
Get PDFResearching Muslim-Jewish encounters always risks the reification of the two categories “Muslim” and “Jewish”, and by foregrounding faith-based identities over other – for instance, ethnic, sectarian or class – identities. The “diversity turn” in ethnic and racial scholarship provides one way to address this, by highlighting multiple and intersecting lines of identity, but, as argued in this interview, risks erasing the dynamic role of the power geometries of racialisation and of the state in shaping emic identifications. The interview is with urban scholar Michael Keith, focusing on his research in the municipal borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, a site conventionally narrated as the point of arrival for Eastern European Jewish and later South Asian Muslim migration to the UK, and now represented in some sensationalist media and pseudo-scholarly discourses as an “Islamised” area and “no-go zone” for Jews, an example of the “lachrymose” narrative of Jewish-Muslim encounter described in the introduction above. In the interview, Keith argues that a rigorous commitment to the empirical, granular attention to the productivity of space, and openness to the fragility and contingency of all categories of identity can help us avoid such lachrymose caricatures as well as de-politicised versions of the “diversity” frame.
Book synopsis: This Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion contributes cases of encounters, diversities and distances to an emerging Jewish-Muslim Studies field. The scholarly essays address both discourses about and lived experiences of minorities in contemporary French, German and UK cities. The authors explore how particular modes of governance and secularism shape individual and collective identities while new technologies re-make interfaith encounters. This volume shows that Middle Eastern and North African pasts and presents weigh on European realities, examines how the pull of Jewish intellectual history is felt by a new generation of Muslim scholars and activists, and uncovers how Orthodox communities negotiate living side by side.
Book synopsis: This Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion contributes cases of encounters, diversities and distances to an emerging Jewish-Muslim Studies field. The scholarly essays address both discourses about and lived experiences of minorities in contemporary French, German and UK cities. The authors explore how particular modes of governance and secularism shape individual and collective identities while new technologies re-make interfaith encounters. This volume shows that Middle Eastern and North African pasts and presents weigh on European realities, examines how the pull of Jewish intellectual history is felt by a new generation of Muslim scholars and activists, and uncovers how Orthodox communities negotiate living side by side
The effects of reading narrative fiction on social and moral cognition: two experiments following a multi-method approach
Get PDFWe present two experiments examining the effects of reading narrative fiction (vs. narrative non-fiction vs. expository non-fiction) on social and moral cognition, using a battery of self-report, explicit and implicit indicators. Experiment 1 (N=340) implemented a pre-registered, randomized between-groups design, and assessed multiple outcomes after a short reading assignment. Results failed to reveal any differences between the three reading conditions on either social or moral cognition. Experiment 2 employed a longitudinal design. N=104 participants were randomly assigned to read an entire book over seven days. Outcome variables were assessed before and after the reading assignment as well as at a one-week follow-up. Results did not show any differential development between the three reading conditions over time. The present results do not support the claim that reading narrative fiction is apt to improve our general social and moral cognition
The role of microtransactions in Internet Gaming Disorder and Gambling Disorder: a preregistered systematic review
Get PDFRecently there has been increased interest in understanding the relationship between microtransactions, gaming, and gambling. This review aimed to synthesise the evidence on the relationship between microtransactions, ‘Internet Gaming Disorder’ (IGD), and Gambling Disorder in order to report on the: psychometric assessments used, sampling and demographic information, study design and sampling methods, relationships between microtransactions and both IGD and gambling disorder. Inclusion criteria included: refereed studies quantifying microtransactions and/or loot boxes examining their relationship with IGD and/or gambling disorder that were published between 2013 and 2021. Electronic databases were searched and the results were synthesised qualitatively. 14 studies were included. The quality of the evidence was ‘Good’ and clear positive relationships between microtransactions and both IGD and gambling disorder were identified. These relationships apply more to loot boxes than other microtransactions, and risky loot box use was identified as a possible mediator of these relationships. Additionally, microtransaction expenditure increased with the risk of gambling disorder. There is some evidence that adolescents who purchase loot boxes may be more at risk of developing gambling disorder. External validity is limited due to the cross-sectional nature of the evidence, the use of convenience sampling, and the predominantly Western samples resulting in non-representative samples. Prevalence rates of IGD and gambling disorder varied significantly across studies and were different to general prevalence rates. We conclude that there is a need to develop consistent methods for assessing IGD and microtransaction engagement in future research. Implications for policy-makers and future research are discussed
Warez? The Infrastructures and Aesthetics of Piracy
No full textA talk about the online piracy "Scene
AI based decision making: combining strategies to improve operational performance
Get PDFThis study investigates the strategic alignment between marketing and information technology (IT) strategies and provides production and operations decision makers a model for improving operational performance. Based on a comprehensive literature review, the combined strategies were used to develop a novel decision-making framework. The hypothesised relationships of an SEM model are validated with data collected from 242 managers from various industries. An artificial intelligence (AI)–based method is developed using artificial neural networks (ANN) feeding into a decision-making framework which explores the optimality of the combined strategies. The results indicate that (a) IT strategy is positively mediated by marketing strategy on performance and (b) the organisational structure moderates the mediation of marketing strategy on performance. The analysis confirms that the extracted strategies based on the proposed framework have superior performance compared to existing strategies. This paper contributes to the literature by conceptualising and empirically testing the mediation role of marketing strategy on IT strategy, performance and operational decision-making. The use of a novel three-phase decision-making framework which uses AI processes improves operational efficiency, increases insights and enhances the decision accuracy of complex problems at the strategic level in industries such as manufacturing. It could help operations executives to apply effective decisions
Civic and counter-civic cosmopolitanism: Diodorus, Strabo and the later Hellenistic polis
No full textThis chapter explores the dialogue between civic rhetoric and literary texts, especially works of history and geography, in the later Hellenistic world. It argues for complex processes of mutual exchange and influence between the particularist civic ideology preserved in poleis’ inscribed decrees and the cosmopolitan ideas and projects of intellectuals. Citizens of some later Hellenistic poleis, such as Priene, strove to reconcile particularist and universalist perspectives, taking account of the cosmopolitan arguments and language of Hellenistic philosophers and other intellectuals. At the same time, later Hellenistic literary authors drew on, and reimagined, local civic ideals and institutions in order to give more concrete form to the abstract cosmopolitan ideals developed earlier in the Hellenistic period. The two main authors studied here, Diodorus and Strabo, were both deeply imbued with the values and forms of thought characteristic of the later Hellenistic poleis, which left their imprint even on those thinkers’ contrasting moves to transcend the small-scale polis and advocate more expansive forms of literary and political community. Whereas Diodorus strove to preserve aspects of the civic ideal within his cosmopolitanism, Strabo’s cosmopolitanism was more of a reaction against polis particularism – which remained, nonetheless, a foundational point of reference for him
Assessing the effects of a deliberate policy mix: the case of technology and innovation advisory services and innovation vouchers
Get PDFWhile innovation policy mixes combining several policy instruments have been advocated as a response to complex problems, there is very little evidence of their effectiveness compared to that of individual instruments. By considering a set of Italian regional policy programmes implemented in 2011-2014, we analysed a policy mix composed of: (i) technology and innovation advisory services, the aim of which is to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to gain a better awareness of their innovation needs and of how to address them; and (ii) innovation vouchers, which are used to subsidise SME purchases of knowledge-intensive services. To draw causal inferences on their differential effectiveness, we adopted a propensity-score-matching approach extended to multiple treatment levels.
We found that advisory services are more effective than innovation vouchers and as effective as policy mixes in increasing SME propensity to innovate and engage in R&D collaborations. Conversely, policy mixes are more effective than each individual instrument in increasing productivity. Hence, merely providing SMEs with technology and innovation advice is not sufficient to elicit productivity improvements; SMEs also need to act on such advice by working with external providers of knowledge-intensive services in order to implement efficiency-producing changes
The impact of national legislation on psychosocial risks on organisational action plans, psychosocial working conditions, and employee work-related stress in Europe
Get PDFWork-related psychosocial hazards are recognised as a key priority in the future of work. Even though European Union (EU) legislation requires employers to assess and manage all types of risks to workers’ health and safety associated with all types of hazards in the work environment, it does not include clear reference to psychosocial risks and work-related stress. In several EU member states, there is now more specific legislation on psychosocial risks that clarifies employer responsibilities. The aim of this study is to explore whether the introduction of specific legislation on psychosocial risks and/or work-related stress is related to organisations implementing action plans to prevent work-related stress, and in turn, better psychosocial working conditions (job demands and resources), and less reported work-related stress in the workforce. It does so by comparing EU member states and candidate countries that have introduced more specific legislation to those that have not, conducting multilevel modelling analysis by linking two representative European-level datasets, the 2014 employer European Survey of Enterprises on New & Emerging Risks and the 2015 employee European Working Conditions Survey. Findings indicate that the presence of specific national stress legislation is associated with more enterprises having a work-related stress action plan. The existence of action plans was found to be associated with increased job resources but not decreased job demands. Furthermore, only in those countries with specific national legislation on stress, job resources were found to be associated with less reported stress through the existence of organisational action plans. Findings lend support to the argument for more specific legislation on psychosocial risks/work-related stress in the EU. However, they also raise questions on whether current interventions implemented at organisational level to deal with work-related stress may be geared more towards the development of individual resources and less towards better work organisation and job design
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