Cosmopolitical encounters: Prototyping at the National Zoo in Santiago,Chile

This article presents an empirical reflection on how the prototyping of an environmental enrichment device for chimpanzees at the National Zoo of Chile precipitates a cosmopolitical encounter. Using material produced by design students, zookeepers and the chimps Judy and Gombe, we describe how prototyping iterations establish open processes of dialogue and encounters among humans and nonhumans. The case will demonstrate how prototyping can go further than the generation of models of an original. On the contrary, the cosmopolitical encounter emerging from the prototyping process makes evident a truly ontological vocation, acknowledging humans and other-than-human beings as singular entities. Its provisional and malleable nature turns this device into a privileged locus for the exploration of interspecies entanglement. Although zoos are scientifically organized institutions, in this case we observe how its anthropocentric hierarchy was performatively reshuffled at certain moments of the prototyping process. The cosmopolitical qualities of the prototyping process analyzed derive from its capacity to deploy an ethics of attention and care between the agencies at play, that is, for unfold gestures of mutual vulnerability. Finally, we propose prototyping as a device for moving from cosmopolitics as a way of understanding the world to cosmopolitics as a matter of design.     

The public response to innovative strategies for the control of biodeterioration in archaeological hypogea

Between April and September 2003, 1500 visitors of the Catacomb of St. Callistus participated to a scientific research by filling in a questionnaire to express their opinion about a new illumination system experimentally set up in the Ocean’s Cubiculum. Their answers were statistically evaluated and represented the first public opinions on this archaeological site, including their knowledge of conservation problems and their positive attitude towards the use of new strategies for the preservation of this monument.     

The Construction of Brownness: Latino/a and South Asian Bloggers' Responses to SB 1070

The vernacular discourses of Latino/a and South Asian American bloggers in the context of SB 1070, legislation recently passed in Arizona, illustrate how their shared experiences of discrimination (re-)articulate “brownness” as a complex racial formation aligned with constructions of “illegal” immigrants. Bloggers' differentiation of their subjective experiences of alien citizenship and racialized belonging from white or black citizenship problematizes the rigidity of their “middling” positionality within the U.S. racial structure, encouraging a more contextualized approach. I consider the bloggers' varied constructions of brownness, its distinctive positionality within racial structures, and their contestations of the discourses that racialize brown identities.     

Back in the bazaar: taking Pierre Bourdieu to a trading room

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of aesthetic judgment, this text offers an inductive account of financial reasoning inside a trading room. Driven to maximise bank profits, trading room operators do not find ‘one best way’. Rather they choose among several possible winning strategies: mathematical arbitrage, economic analysis, chartist analysis. These strategies differ sharply from one another in their conception of the market, method, proximity to scholarly knowledge, and legitimacy. We show that the choice of one method depends on a system of tastes and distastes that are both historical – depending on individuals’ social and educational background – and relational – depending on the individual's relative position within the trading room viewed as a field.     

The value of a good reputation online: an application to art auctions

Using a unique dataset of art auctions on eBay, we conduct an empirical analysis of the value of a seller’s online reputation. Several aspects distinguish our work from most existing research. We analyze a heterogeneous panel data consisting of a large number of observations over a large period of time, including significant variation in reputation across and within sellers. The panel structure of our dataset allows us to employ fixed effects techniques to control for observed and unobserved differences across auctions. Our results point to a highly significant, and sizable, impact of a negative reputation on the behavior of market participants and on market outcomes. Negative feedback is associated with a significant reduction in the number of bidders and a reduction in the probability of sale; negative feedback is also associated with a significant reduction in sale price. Consistent with previous research, the impact of additional positive feedback on market outcomes for the seasoned sellers in our sample is not statistically significant.     

Situating Oneself in a Racialized World: Understanding Student Reactions to Crash through Standpoint Theory and Context-Positionality Frames

Abstract

Through a thematic analysis of 136 student reactions to the movie Crash, this study examines how individuals situate themselves in terms of race, racism, and race relations in the film and how their racial locations inform this situatedness. We utilize principles of standpoint theories as the theoretical framework for the analysis. We first describe this situatedness in terms of six emergent genres of responses that varied across positionality and contextual focus. Then, we discuss how the patterns of responses may be explained through standpoint theories and conversely how the emergent organizing framework may complement standpoint theories.     

"许仙"原是山里娃

认识周子清的人会说,“喏,他就是那个《白蛇传》里的许仙呀!”周子清的荣誉大都来自婺剧,他的名衔很多:国家一级演员、中国戏剧家协会会员、浙江省导演学会会员、金华市曲艺家协会主席、金华艺术学校副校长等等,但他时刻未敢忘记自己是土生土长的浦江人,一个地道的山里娃”。今