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Narrative in Hellenistic civic decisions: persuasion, legitimacy and ‘cultural democracy’
No full textThis contribution explores the narrative dimensions of the public decisions (‘decrees’) and laws of ancient Greek city-states. Its focus is on the Hellenistic period (c. 323–31 BC), after the death of Alexander the Great, when Greek-speaking city-states across the eastern Mediterranean had to manoeuvre to preserve autonomy within, and in the gaps between, the large empires governed by Alexander’s successors and, eventually, the Romans. Greek city-states had evolved complex, institutionalised procedures for making public decisions. By the Hellenistic period, the most common issuing body was a democratic assembly open to all male citizens, which debated proposals (often originating from a smaller and sometimes more selective council) and then made a formal decision. The resulting decision was often inscribed on stone, to publicise and reinforce it.
These civic decisions have traditionally been studied as legal and political documents: a source for studying institutions and procedures and reconstructing a political and diplomatic narrative. In recent years, however, scholars have been paying increasing attention to these documents’ ideological and rhetorical qualities: reading them as complex texts, products of public oratory and negotiation, addressed to a wide contemporary and later audience. As I explore in this chapter, the civic decisions of the Hellenistic period are particularly fruitful for this approach, with their often complex, sometimes flamboyant style in language and argument. These decrees included careful reflections about the ethics and politics of individual and collective life in a polis in constant negotiation with larger powers, especially monarchies
Digital Piracy
No full textThe internet has long been a space of copyright violation. But there are many different types of piracy that range from home piracy practices, through to an elite competitive scene of illicit file trading. This chapter sets out the ways in which these everyday practices are underpinned by an entire pyramid of different types of piracies
The gift of survivor stories: recognizing the political promise of sexual violence narratives
No full textStories of sexual violence have become highly significant in contemporary public cultures, especially since the global explosion of testimony inspired by #MeToo in 2017. These are quintessentially bad stories, of violence and trauma, put to good ends – educating society about the reality of sexual violence and seeking to galvanize prevention efforts and support for survivors. While these narratives remain subject to political contestation, and survivors continue to face shame and stigma, in societies such as the UK, the necessity of survivors telling their stories has come to be largely taken for granted. They are understood as a boon to other victims of violence, and to society, and particularly women, in general
Modality-level obstacles and initiatives to improve representation in fetal, infant, and toddler neuroimaging research samples
Get PDFFetal, infant, and toddler (FIT) neuroimaging researchers study early brain development to gain insights into neurodevelopmental processes and identify early markers of neurobiological vulnerabilities to target for intervention. However, the field has historically excluded people from global majority countries and from marginalized communities in FIT neuroimaging research. Inclusive and representative samples are essential for generalizing findings across neuroimaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, and cranial ultrasonography. These FIT neuroimaging techniques pose unique and overlapping challenges to equitable representation in research through sampling bias, technical constraints, limited accessibility, and insufficient resources. The present article adds to the conversation around the need to improve inclusivity by highlighting modality-specific historical and current obstacles and ongoing initiatives. We conclude by discussing tangible solutions that transcend individual modalities, ultimately providing recommendations to promote equitable FIT neuroscience
The fNIRS glossary project: a consensus-based resource for functional near-infrared spectroscopy terminology
Get PDFSignificance: A shared understanding of terminology is essential for clear scientific communication and minimizing misconceptions. This is particularly challenging in rapidly expanding, interdisciplinary domains that utilize functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), where researchers come from diverse backgrounds and apply their expertise in fields such as engineering, neuroscience, and psychology.
Aim: The fNIRS Glossary Project was established to develop a community-sourced glossary covering key fNIRS terms, including those related to the continuous-wave (CW), frequency-domain (FD), and time-domain (TD) NIRS techniques.
Approach: The glossary was collaboratively developed by a diverse group of 76 fNIRS researchers, representing a wide range of career stages (from PhD students to experts) and disciplines. This collaborative process, structured across five phases, ensured the glossary’s depth and comprehensiveness.
Results: The glossary features over 300 terms categorized into six key domains: analysis, experimental design, hardware, neuroscience, mathematics, and physics. It also includes abbreviations, symbols, synonyms, references, alternative definitions, and figures where relevant.
Conclusions: The fNIRS glossary provides a community-sourced resource that facilitates education and effective scientific communication within the fNIRS community and related fields. By lowering barriers to learning and engaging with fNIRS, the glossary is poised to benefit a broad spectrum of researchers, including those with limited access to educational resources
Goal-setting versus goal-scoring: the role of clubs’ media exposure in prioritizing revenue and sports performance
Get PDFThis paper examines the transition to a new media-dependent business model for professional sport. The empirical analysis studies to what extent the media exposure of football clubs affects their priorities and shapes this entertainment industry. The debate on the clubs’ objectives is discussed based on a media visibility index. This proxy variable jointly captures sporting talent and the ability of players to attract the interest of fans and the media. Our empirical strategy involves estimating several regression models with a different dependent variable, all against the same set of explanatory variables. This simple method allows us to postulate a conciliatory approach between football clubs’ objectives by disentangle them in various ways. Specifically, the different dependent variables, corresponding to the alleged objectives of the clubs, are: (a) maximize profits; (b) maximize sporting achievements; or (c) maximize a combination of both. Furthermore, the revenue-to-wage ratio is disentangled in two elements: (i) revenue productivity per league point; and (ii) sporting-achievements (efficiency) per unit of talent. Our empirical results reconcile two opposing traditional views, suggesting that clubs prioritizing revenue maximize their sporting achievements. Finally, the paper highlights managerial implications that suggest reviewing how competition bodies organize and regulate certain aspects
Aimer Walter Benjamin : à propos des gestes profanes et de la crypte de la poésie
No full textBook synopsis: Forced into exile in March 1933, and taking refuge primarily in Paris, Walter Benjamin nonetheless relentlessly pursued a radical struggle against fascism until his suicide in Portbou in September 1940. The contributions gathered here, the fruit of several conferences, seek to trace, through his friendships, his readings, his spaces for publication and controversy, as well as through the constant re-evaluation of his research, the vital ellipse constructed by the German Jewish philosopher in exile from "Experience and Poverty" to the theses On the Concept of History
The Billaud Conjecture for alphabet size 4
Get PDFThe Billaud Conjecture, first stated in 1993, is a fundamental problem on finite words and their heirs, i.e., the words obtained by a projection deleting a single letter. The conjecture states that every morphically primitive word, i.e., a word that is not a fixed point of any non-identity morphism, has at least one morphically primitive heir. The correctness of the conjecture has so far been established in a few special cases, which mainly restrict the alphabet size. In this paper we give a proof for the next such case, i.e., for alphabet size 4
Separation and definability in fragments of two-variable first-order logic with counting
Get PDFFor fragments L of first-order logic (FO) with counting quantifiers, we consider the definability problem, which asks whether a given L-formula can be equivalently expressed by a formula in some fragment of L without counting, and the more general separation problem asking whether two mutually exclusive L-formulas can be separated in some counting-free fragment of L. We show that separation is undecidable for the two-variable fragment of FO extended with counting quantifiers and for the graded modal logic with inverse, nominals and universal modality. On the other hand, if inverse or nominals are dropped, separation becomes coNExpTime- or 2ExpTime-complete, depending on whether the universal modality is present. In contrast, definability can often be reduced in polynomial time to validity in L. We also consider uniform separation and show that it often behaves similarly to definability
Gendering pan-African trade: exploring the transformational potential of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement
Get PDFInternational trade agreements are increasingly concerned with gender inequality and the gendered structures and impacts of trade. This ‘gendering’ of trade reflects the emergence of new trade policy norms and raises questions about whether this represents a transformational turn. This article explores these questions through a focus on women engaged in informal cross border trade
(ICBT) in Africa and their inclusion in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). It argues that a comprehensive approach to understanding the gendered structures of trade and the transformational potential of gender-sensitive trade agreements, needs to be located within a multi-scalar
and relational analysis that centers gendered, racialized and classed inequalities within specific geographic, social, and historic contexts. For AfCFTA, this requires rethinking how international trade is conceptualized and operates, particularly through the colonial, gendered and liminal spaces of national borders and the informal economy. It argues that while recent trade agreements
embrace commitments to gender equality, they serve to embed free trade orthodoxy and reproduce rather than resolve inequality. This not only questions the remit of AfCFTA’s gender provisions, but also the transformational potential of Pan-Africanist integration
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