1,722,261 research outputs found
Matthew Thomas Bonson, MLA
No full textMatthew Thomas Bonson, ALP, MLA member for Millner.Protocol, Department of the Chief Minister.Date:200
Nonlinear airfoil-wake interaction in large amplitude unsteady flow
No full textThesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1987.Bibliography: leaves 73-74.by Matthew Thomas Scott.M.S
SiGe virtual substrate engineering for integration of III-V materials, microelectromechanical systems, and strained silicon MOSFETs with silicon
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-191).by Matthew Thomas Currie.Ph.D
Applying the Theory : Sources of Harm in Aboriginal Australian Communities
No full textOne of the most contentious public policy discussions in recent years has concerned harm within Aboriginal Australian communities. The argument has been that purported widespread social pathologies associated with welfare dependency — such as alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse and general fecklessness — have coalesced to foster an environment which impedes the well-being of Aboriginal people (see Pearson 1999; 2000). Although often exaggerated or misrepresented for political effect (see McCallum and Waller 2012), the problems that do exist are serious. There is grinding poverty and massive inequality both within and between groups (see Austin-Broos 2010, 140–141). Explanations for the sources of harm have differed. Some have said that, in certain ways, Aboriginal culture is itself the obstacle to well-being (see Austin-Broos 2010; Dodson and Smith 2003, 8; Sutton 2009, 85; Toohey 2008, 7; cf. Cronin 2003). Others, such as Noel Pearson (e.g. 2005; 2007b; also, in parts, Langton 2002) have argued that passive welfarism is the ‘poison’ by which Aboriginal people have been excluded and reduced to frivolity, with engagement in the productive, ‘real economy’ required to make ‘serious’ Aboriginal life (see esp. Pearson 2009b, 8–11). Others still have argued that measures taken to manage people’s lives, through such measures as the Northern Territory Intervention of 2007, are an extension of colonial history, misrepresenting people’s interests and extending the reach of neo-liberal government reforms which fail adequately to acknowledge the vast array of productive activities undertaken by Aboriginal people (see Altman and Hinkson 2012; Coghlan 2012; Hinkson 2012; Lattas and Morris 2010; Maddison 2009, 74–82; Tout 2012)
Needs, Goods and Self-Actualization
No full textThe aim of this chapter is to begin to advance a response to the ‘Bongo-Bongo’ objection to universal accounts of well-being. Building upon Gray’s broad-brush treatment of the notion of well-being, I wish to circumvent the empirical rejection of universalism by advancing apparently intrinsic, immanent human goods. The nature of this approach, which will extend into the next chapter, is to distinguish between immanent, fundamental or first-order goods, of which we may be unconscious, and experientially acquired derivative desires, of which we are always conscious (Adler 2006, 11; see also Kenrick et al. 2010, 295). So long as we hold that humans are fallible in their recognition of the good and its various constituents, cultural acknowledgment or consensus is unnecessary — failure to acknowledge the good or to promote that good in valuable forms may, though, be indicative of a cultural deficit. For the purposes of this project, I require a ‘thick vague’ account of the good which identifies core features of human well-being without constraining, through ethnocentric or ideological bias, the forms in which that good is realized. The approach I wish to advance is a eudaimonic fundamental goods view of well-being grounded in the Aristotelian relationship between doing and being. To this end, I set aside theistic conceptions of the good which concern an afterlife on the grounds that they are unfalsifiable
What Is Culture? What Does It Do? What Should It Do?
No full textThe concept of culture is deeply contested. Between 1920 and 1950 alone, at least one-hundred-and-fifty- seven definitions were presented (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952, 149). Having undergone dramatic transformation over the course of at least two centuries, the notion of culture is ubiquitous in political discourse yet conceptually elusive. Core debates revolve around the content of culture, its relationship to society and civilization as well as its function and role in the human condition. Having deliberately dealt vaguely with the term thus far, the aim of this chapter is to examine three related questions: Of what does culture consist? What does culture do? and What should culture do? Using eudaimonia and the normative account of social goods developed so far as reference points, I examine symbolic, functionalist and structurationalist approaches to culture in order to develop an account suitable for present analytical purposes. The account I develop is fairly sweeping and the examination of the field somewhat cursory. However, consideration of the relationship between the content of culture, its purpose, its association with society and the wholeness of ‘cultures’ suffices to open up key concerns about its current treatment by culturalists, in particular. The conclusions I draw are that: talk of ‘cultures’ should be replaced by talk of ‘culture’, with recognition of the mass of complexities which enter into our cultural lives; culture should serve particular ends; the culture of relevance to political discussion is that which shapes basic institutions and that these institutions should be guided by three core values. In essence, I defend a normative functionalist account in which culture should serve certain ends. I begin by examining the history of the concept of culture
The Case Against Cultural Evaluation : Relativism, Culturalism and Romanticism
No full textIn order to develop a universal account of enduring, immanent human interests upon which to mount a case against cultural sources of injury, it is necessary to overcome a series of ‘relativist’ claims regarding the nature of the human condition. My aim in this chapter is to unpack these claims and, by examining elements of the work of John Gray, to suggest means by which to overcome them. To do this, I outline, first, the empirical case against universalism and, second, the epistemological and methodological basis of the anti-universalist paradigms — social constructivism. I then identify three different, and to varying degrees incompatible, schematic claims. The first, anti-foundationalist, schema holds that there can be no objective basis for any form of evaluation as all matrices are pure, subjective constructs. The second, culturalist approach, departs normatively, if not analytically, from this position, arguing that matrices of evaluation do have validity but only within particular cultural-linguistic spheres. The third, romantic form is not relativistic at all, holding that the interests of humans lie in pre-modern societies with close ties to nature, and employing relativism instrumentally to check the advance of Western, industrial culture. Having detailed these positions, I then provide brief exegesis of one possible means of responding to their challenges — elements of the thought of John Gray. Gray’s pluralist perfectionist defence of objective, universal values and categories of well-being together with deployment of circumstance as an evaluative parameter, serve as a bridge to the remaining chapters of the book, in which I examine more fully ideas to which Gray refers only cursorily. I begin by discussing the historical development of contemporary, anthropological invocations of relativism
Circumstance, Materialism and Possibilism
No full textIn the modern, multimedia world it is common to think about ways of life as entirely voluntary innovations — as Mill (1998, 71) put it, ‘experiments in living’. Cultural diversity is often considered in a rather superficial manner — the ‘“sari, samosa and steelband” variety of multiculturalism’, detailed and derided by Alibhai-Brown (2004, 231) — in which choice of lifestyle is dependent only upon personal preference, perception and taste. In Sen and Nussbaum, the obstacles to the free development and expression of preferences seem primarily to be social, rather than natural. Relativist or social constructivist approaches — such as those of Edwards et al. (1995) — have rejected realist accounts of the physical environment and suggested that our constraints in this world are imposed by the meanings which guide our perception
Conclusion
No full textI began the substantive content of this book with a discussion of the obstacles to evaluation. I think that there are good reasons to believe that a eudaimonic approach can serve seriously to challenge the notion that there are no goods independent of cultural construction and the belief that people’s interests lie solely in their living in accordance with a particular, authentic way of life. Put simply, although we are nothing of meaning without culture, culture itself can fail fully to promote our interests as human beings. The distinctive aspect of the approach I have presented is that it is aimed, on this basis, at evaluating culture, rather than social conditions or well-being, establishing the performance of institutions within given circumstances. This has advantages over approaches, such as those of Sen and Nussbaum, which evaluate opportunities for well-being of individuals within a particular society, but which fail to assess the broader functioning of culture in dealing with a variety of circumstantial pressures. The aim of my approach is to identify and trace dysfunctions through various cultural program to their source. This explanatory work is essential to establishing the necessity of, say, capability constraints and, where the constraints are unnecessary, to developing means of promoting well-being
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