THE EDUCATIONAL MEANING OF COMMUNAL LAUGHTER: ON THE EXPERIENCE OF CORPOREAL DEMOCRACY

In this article Joris Vlieghe, Maarten Simons, and Jan Masschelein attempt to articulate a new way of dealing with the public character of education. Instead of discussing laughter as an instrument that one could use to facilitate established educational goals, the authors provide an extensive analysis of the phenomenon of laughter as a specific form of corporeal behavior. Their analysis demonstrates that when we laugh, we give an answer to a disorienting situation, but this answer is not the product of intentional agency. Instead, it consists in the uncontrollable spasmodic contraction of our diaphragm and other impersonal and automatic corporeal reactions. We are thus exposed to an ultimate loss of self‐control. The authors argue further that communal laughter—that is, when the lack of mastery over our own lives becomes a shared experience—results in what they call a “democracy of the flesh.” In this state, it is no longer possible to stick to well‐defined positions, nor is it tenable to defend any hierarchical ordering, including the strict hierarchy we typically find in the context of schooling and education. Common laughter makes equals out of us and grants the possibility of an unforeseen and unimaginable future. For precisely this reason, the authors conclude, communal laughter might be considered as an educational event itself.     

In search of good citizenship education: A normative analysis of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS)

In the last two decades, calls to place citizenship education (CE) at the top of national and European educational policy and research agendas have been gaining in prominence. Large‐scale comparative studies, such as the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), are often considered the main evidence base for setting these agendas and improving CE policies and practices. This article therefore considers the ICCS study as an inherent part of the process of translating general, educational aims into curricular policies and practices of CE. However, while critical voices about comparative educational studies have become paramount, a detailed analysis of their contents, of what and how they measure and what they promote as the aims of education is often lacking. This article aims to fill this gap by analysing the main research documents, design and items of the 2009 ICCS study. To find out what ICCS promotes as the goals of citizenship education, we examined its normative assumptions in terms of qualification, socialisation and/or subjectification. Our analysis shows that the qualification and socialisation functions are dominantly validated in all aspects of the study, whilst there is only marginal attention to subjectification. This implies that ICCS misses an important potential to document and/or promote pupils becoming autonomous and critical democratic citizens, whilst this is often considered a central aim of citizenship education by policymakers, practitioners and teachers.     

Laughter as Immanent Life-Affirmation: Reconsidering the educational value of laughter through a Bakhtinian lens

Abstract

In this article I try to conceive a new approach towards laughter in the context of formal schooling. I focus on laughter in so far as it is a bodily response during which we are entirely delivered to uncontrollable, spasmodic reactions. To see the educational relevance of this particular kind of laughter, as well as to understand why laughter is often dealt with in a very negative way in pedagogical contexts, this phenomenon should be carefully distinguished from humor or amusement. I build my argument for a smaller part on the basis of conceptual analysis, and to a greater extent on Bakhtin’s work on the transition from Medieval folk culture to Modern civilized culture, in which he claims that a reduction from laughing as a strongly physical experience to mere forms of amusement or humor actually implies that laughter no longer possesses its inherent equalizing and communizing potential. In a sense, laughter forms a threat to any organization of social existence according to similarities and differences in identity and position, and this explains why we usually try to suppress it, or why we try to render it functional in view of the continuation of a societal regime or pedagogical order. More positively formulated, laughter may be said to have an intrinsic educational meaning, because it allows a significant transformation of individual and collective existence.     

Determining The Presence of Photocatalytic Titanium White Pigments via Embedded Paint Sample Staining: A Proof of Principle

ABSTRACT

Twentieth century paints often contain titanium dioxide and zinc oxide based white pigments that can range from photostable to highly photocatalytic. Photocatalytic pigments can cause the degradation of paint upon UV exposure, whereas photostable pigments may be benign or can protect paintings from degradation. Hence, knowing whether or not a pigment is photocatalytic is of high importance for risk assessment and the subsequent decision making process concerning storage and exposure conditions of objects. Here we present a proof of principle, focused on titanium white paints, for an easy-to-use and low-tech application of a commercial photocatalytic activity indicator ink (PAII) on embedded paint samples or cross sections. This test determines, qualitatively, if a photocatalytic pigment is present in a white paint sample. The PAII paint sample staining application shows an obvious color change, within five minutes of UV irradiation, for paint samples containing photocatalytic pigments. A microscope with a camera and a UV source are the only necessary equipment for the application of this method. A quantitative image processing protocol is also proposed as an extension of the staining method by applying open source software analysis to measure the color change using photographs. The test was evaluated on reference paints with well-characterized pigments and applied on samples from modern paintings by Piet Mondriaan, Robert Ryman, and Lucebert, indicating the presence of harmful photocatalytic pigments in these cases. The novel application of a commercial ink on paint samples offers a simple test, not just for assessment of photocatalytic activity of titanium white pigments, but which may in future be applied for the detection of photoactive forms of zinc white and other potentially harmful semiconductor pigments in art objects.     

A profound mutation: The advent of professional rugby in France

Amateur before 1995, professional thereafter, French rugby has changed considerably. However, to focus the entire analysis on the most manifest transformations can lead to certain pitfalls of which the main effect consists in only understanding rugby through the notion of change, built for the circumstances into a veritable rhetoric capable of explaining by itself all that goes on and is played out. It is not a case of stating that nothing has changed but rather to show that the rhetoric of change in effect says little about French professional rugby, from a sociological point of view. In the case in point, this rhetoric masks on the one hand what has not or has hardly changed, notably the relationships between players and directors; on the other hand what has effectively changed but which is hardly talked about, in particular the players' working conditions and the possible regulation regarding employers and club directors.     

Online partitioning method for decentralized control of linear switching large-scale systems

A novel partitioning approach for linear switching large-scale systems is presented. We assume that the modes of the switching system are unknown a priori but can be detected. We propose an online partitioning scheme that can partition the system when the mode switches, thus adapting the partition to the mode. Moreover, after the system has been partitioned, we apply a decentralized state-feedback control scheme to stabilize the system. We also apply a dwell time stability scheme to prove that the closed-loop system remains stable even after both the mode and partition changes. The proposed approach is illustrated by means of an automatic generation control problem related to frequency deviation regulation in a large-scale power network.     

Examining the effectiveness of anti-scalping laws in a United States market

The secondary ticket market has existed for decades. Historically, this industry has been dominated by street scalpers located outside of venues and by local and regional ticket brokers. These individuals often took advantage of uninformed consumers and charged extremely high prices or sold fraudulent or misrepresented tickets. Subsequently, state governments created laws protecting consumers from such behavior. More recently, however, this industry has grown as the Internet has facilitated transactions in a safe and secure environment which has led to the increased legitimacy of the industry. Despite this growth in size and sophistication, existing anti-scalping laws remain. Given the significantly altered form of the industry, it is important to examine the appropriateness of these laws and their effect on current industry practices. The findings of the current study suggest that these laws do little to accomplish what they were originally set out to do: protect consumers. Instead, they serve as minor inconveniences for those engaging in ticket resale and major frustrations for those attempting to enforce the laws as written.     

The effects of fantasy football participation on NFL consumption: A qualitative analysis

The growth of fantasy sports into a multi-billion dollar industry has made it an important component of the sports industry. Sport leagues must acknowledge the impact fantasy sports have on the way its participants consume their sport. This study examines the impact of fantasy football on the consumption of NFL-related products and services using an adapted version of the attitude/behavior model developed [Fazio, R. H., Powell, M. C., & Herr, P. M. (1983). Toward a process model of the attitude–behavior relation: Accessing one's attitude upon mere observation of the attitude object. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(4), 723–735]. Using qualitative methods, the data indicate that fantasy football participants utilized various media sources, specifically the Internet, television, cellular telephones, and a variety of print media, at much higher levels as a result of their interest and participation in fantasy football. Further, contrary to previous literature on fan loyalty, team and player outcomes were found to alter perceptions towards a favorite team or a fantasy team.     

Tapping into existing information flows: The transformation to compliance by design in business-to-government information exchange

Transforming Business-to-Government (B2G) information exchange is a next frontier for reducing government spending while improving performance. This paper examines two different B2G information exchange architectures that reflect continuing transformations that empower some government agencies to do better compliance monitoring tasks with fewer resources. The win for the reporting companies is the lower cost of compliance. Instead of focusing on collecting compliance information from individual companies, the government agencies in this study focus on collecting information on the supply chain level, allowing for automated data reconciliation. Our findings reveal that pushing controls (automated checks) upstream (in company software and data sources) results in more efficiency, higher information quality and reduces redundant controls. The examined architectures exhibit high levels of compliance by design, meaning that many control objectives are by default encompassed in the design. This requires a well-aligned combination of data standardization (using shared syntax and semantics) and automated information processing (using an intelligent gateway between businesses and government agencies). However, achieving such an alignment is a difficult challenge; especially when taking into account that such transformations require solid governance, trust and high initial investments — prerequisites that are rare in many public-private partnerships.