This paper considers how the presentation of movement practices in performance contexts blurs the distinction between making and performance, raising questions about the nature of dance ‘works’. I examine the way that practice is foregrounded in the work of UK dance artists Katye Coe and Charlie Morrissey, and American choreographer Deborah Hay, troubling distinctions between the internal and external aspects of performance. In response to this, I examine the applicability of the work–concept, to current dance practices, suggesting that the concept (...) is an open one and refers not solely to stable art objects, but also indicates open-ended entities, which are formed through a confluence of practice and performance. (shrink)

The philosophical analysis of property is an ever-continuing process since the meaning, function and existence of the institution of private property is not constant but dynamic. This article explores four dominant justificatory theories of private property.

The two quotes [see original], from Gabriel A. Almond, one of the founders of comparative politics after World War II, and from Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, William Benton Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Chicago and past president of the American Political Science Association, epitomize a fundamental, threefold tension at the heart of every comparison in social and political studies: the tension between the need of initial and hence necessarily universalized epistemological categories to start with, the (...) risk of epistemological imperialism inherent on such categories and deduced concepts and methods, and the possibilities of indigenous categories, concepts, and maybe even methods. The problematic of this threefold tension manifests again in two kinds of comparative research, namely in intercultural comparison and in historical comparative perspectives. (shrink)

This paper uses abstracts of completed PhDs to generate evidence about what the ‘PhD in design’ is. It considers its history to identify the epistemological assumptions that underlie it. To achieve this, the paper does two things. It starts by reviewing criteria that have been applied to doctoral studies, drawing conclusions about what these criteria indicate about the location of the PhD in Design relative to other areas of study in various parts of the world. It suggests that this disciplinary (...) location to some extent determines what a ‘PhD in Design’ is taken to be because it brings with it assumptions about appropriate ways of going about research that come from closely related areas of study. The paper maps the history of design doctorates in the UK, then reviews PhD abstracts in the ADIT database of UK theses a resource compiled as a tool to help doctoral students and supervisors identify previous relevant work in their field. The review indicates the ways in which these assumptions have played out in the UK, discussing some cases in detail. This discussion has practical use. To properly frame their enquiry, doctoral students need to address previous work – their ‘field of study’. This is where they and their examiners will look for criteria for evaluating their results. Although it might be convenient to identify a unified, homogenous set of characteristics of Design PhDs, this paper proposes that the current and historical reality indicates instead that a particular PhD study always takes its particular place in a rather complex landscape defined by institutional groupings of subjects and the epistemological custom and practice that accompanies them. Each PhD claims its own place in this territory – there is no single ‘PhD in Design’. (shrink)

Increasing numbers of social movement scholars now advocate participatory and collaborative research approaches. These are often premised upon the assertion of a convergence between movement and researcher that implicates the latter in the struggles of the former. Naming this approach “solidarity research”, in this article I identify the components that provide the rationale for its pursuit. As well as affirming movement-researcher solidarity, this rationale also comprises a situated epistemology that asks academics to think reflexively about their research practice, the roles (...) they play, and the interests they serve. This reveals the diverging positionality, of knowledge and interests, that often exists between movements and academics. Such concerns give rise to specific methodological and ethical principles that indicate the importance of negotiating this positionality to successful collaboration. Reflecting on my own experiences trying and sometimes failing to conduct participatory research with transnational agrarian movements, I identify dynamics that enable and constrain the pursuit of such collaborative research within commitments to broader methodological and ethical principles of solidarity. (shrink)

This paper presents some important issues on misidentification of human interlocutors in text-based communication during practical Turing tests. The study here presents transcripts in which human judges succumbed to theconfederate effect, misidentifying hidden human foils for machines. An attempt is made to assess the reasons for this. The practical Turing tests in question were held on 23 June 2012 at Bletchley Park, England. A selection of actual full transcripts from the tests is shown and an analysis is given in each (...) case. As a result of these tests, conclusions are drawn with regard to the sort of strategies which can perhaps lead to erroneous conclusions when one is involved as an interrogator. Such results also serve to indicate conversational directions to avoid for those machine designers who wish to create a conversational entity that performs well on the Turing test. (shrink)

This thesis examines the relationship between the sound of a certain playable sound-sculpture, the bow chime, and the notion of the sublime. Noted by many critics for its power and profundity, the sound of this late 1960s invention perhaps epitomises the idea of a so-called “sublime experience”: it prompts an unnerving moment; a moment that unsettles and overwhelms its listeners; an experience in which words fail and all points of comparison disappear. Drawing upon the ideas of philosophers such as Edmund (...) Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-François Lyotard, this thesis attempts to sketch out a few of the processes through which such feelings of sublimity may arise in the encounter with this sound. The discussion is specifcally centred around three of the author's experiences, each of which focuses on common characteristics of the bow chime's sound. Overall, this thesis will form three proposals as to the nature of the bow chime's sublimity, which concern, respectively, the terror of the sound's intense loudness, the unimaginable nature of its prolonged duration, and the 'strangeness' of its timbre. (shrink)