Collocative Integrity and Our Many Varied Subjects: What the Metric of Alignment between Classification Scheme and Indexer Tells Us About Langridge’s Theory of Indexing

As the universe of knowledge and subjects change over time, indexing languages like classification schemes, accommodate that change by restructuring. Restructuring indexing languages affects indexer and cataloguer work. Subjects may split or lump together. They may disappear only to reappear later. And new subjects may emerge that were assumed to be already present, but not clearly articulated (Miksa, 1998). In this context we have the complex relationship between the indexing language, the text being described, and the already described collection (Tennis, 2007). It is possible to imagine indexers placing a document into an outdated class, because it is the one they have already used for their collection. However, doing this erases the semantics in the present indexing language. Given this range of choice in the context of indexing language change, the question arises, what does this look like in practice? How often does this occur? Further, what does this phenomenon tell us about subjects in indexing languages? Does the practice we observe in the reaction to indexing language change provide us evidence of conceptual models of subjects and subject creation? If it is incomplete, but gets us close, what evidence do we still require?

Devotional reading and dissolving the self: a critical reading of the late medieval Scottish Legendary using Kristevan theory

The Scottish Legendary is a fourteenth century collection of saints’ lives in Older Scots. The prologue describes the lives as ‘merroure’ (mirror) to readers from which ‘men ma ensample ta’ (people may take example). Thus, the Legendary sets out to reveal how the reader is (mirror) thereby moving her to wish to become how she should be (exemplarity). This dissertation argues that, rather than encouraging devotion to saints along purely dogmatic lines, the Legendary transforms the reader’s selfhood by engaging her affectively, i.e. on an emotional and somatic level. By provoking the reader affectively, the text puts the reader into what Julia Kristeva has described as a ‘semiotic state’ which harks back to the reader’s or listener’s pre-cultural, pre-subjective self (Kristeva, 1984). Thus, the text disrupts the reader’s conception of herself as a complete, hermetic subjectivity, thereby dissolving the boundaries of the reader’s self. The Legendary most powerfully infiltrates the reader’s sense of self along these lines in the moments in which female saints’ bodies are tortured and dismembered. These scenes foreground the permeability of human flesh as well as its powerful influence over selfhood. Such images of abjection are, in Kristeva’s words, ‘opposed to I’; by confronting the reader with the disintegration of subjectivity in abjection, the text incites the reader to likewise experience herself as abject, i.e. disintegrable and permeable (Kristeva 1982). As I shall demonstrate, Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of the formation of the self offers a fruitful framework for understanding the processes of self-knowledge through reading that these saints’ lives inspire.

The Theory of Social Representations in Brazilian Health Researches: a Bibliometric Profile

The study aimed to characterizing the production of national articles on health, the time frame of the past 10 years, available in the database LILACS and MEDLINE Virtual Health Library that used the Theory of Social Representations in its searches, using as descriptors the words: social representations and health. It is a descriptive study, developed in the context of ibliometrics. Of the 158 units found, 122 were considered and analyzed after removal of those that did not include the stablished inclusion criteria: articles in Portuguese,available in full and that mentioned the expression "social representations", either in the title or abstract. The journal that most published researches about the Theory of Social Representations was Science & Public Health; being the largest number of articles published in 2011. The most frequent area of knowledge covering about the Theory of Social Representations was the Public Health, with the participant group most cited health professionals. Among the data collection instruments used, the semi-structured interview was the most frequent and the kind of qualitative analysis the content analysis was the most common. Noteworthy is the growing interest for the theory and the need for greater criteria in the preparation of abstracts, considering its importance in the spread of scientific production.

Feminist Disability Theory: Domestic Violence Against Women with a Disability

Women with a disability continue to experience social oppression and domestic violence as a consequence of gender and disability dimensions. Current explanations of domestic violence and disability inadequately explain several features that lead women who have a disability to experience violent situations. This article incorporates both disability and material feminist theory as an alternative explanation to the dominant approaches (psychological and sociological traditions) of conceptualising domestic violence. This paper is informed by a study which was concerned with examining the nature and perceptions of violence against women with a physical impairment. The emerging analytical framework integrating material feminist interpretations and disability theory provided a basis for exploring gender and disability dimensions. Insight was also provided by the women who identified as having a disability in the study and who explained domestic violence in terms of a gendered and disabling experience. The article argues that material feminist interpretations and disability theory, with their emphasis on gender relations, disablism and poverty, should be used as an alternative tool for exploring the nature and consequences of violence against women with a disability.

Why do so few hold stocks : theory and evidence

This study develops a life-cycle model where investors make investment decisions in a realistic environment. Model results show that personal illiquid projects (housing and children), fixed costs (once-off/per-period participation costs plus variable/fixed transaction costs) and endogenous risky human capital (with permanent, transitory and disastrous shocks) together are able to address both the non-participation puzzle and the age-effects puzzle. Empirical implications of the model are examined using Heckman’s two-step method with the latest five Surveys of Consumer Finance (SCF). Regression results show that liquidity, informational cost and human capital are indeed the major determinants of participation and asset allocation decisions at different stages of an investor’s life.

Linking Theory and Practice: Performing a Reality Check on a Model of IS Success

The issue of ‘rigour vs. relevance’ in IS research has generated an intense, heated debate for over a decade. It is possible to identify, however, only a limited number of contributions on how to increase the relevance of IS research without compromising its rigour. Based on a lifecycle view of IS research, we propose the notion of ‘reality checks’ in order to review IS research outcomes in the light of actual industry demands. We assume that five barriers impact the efficient transfer of IS research outcomes; they are lack of awareness, lack of understandability, lack of relevance, lack of timeliness, and lack of applicability. In seeking to understand the effect of these barriers on the transfer of mature IS research into practice, we used focus groups. We chose DeLone and McLean’s IS success model as our stimulus because it is one of the more widely researched areas of IS.

Building an organizational change communication theory

The difficulty of communicating during organizational change has intensified with the prevalence of continuously changing organizations (Buchanan, Claydon & Doyle, 1999). The difficulty faced by managers is compounded by the lack of studies examining organizational communication within a context of organizational change (Eisenberg, Andrews, Murphy, & Laine-Timmerman, 1999; Lewis & Seibold, 1996). Not surprisingly then, is there a paucity of organizational change theory to guide further research and practitioners. This paper addresses the lack of organizational change communication research and contributes to theoretical development of communication during organizational change. A model of change communication during continuous change is presented from the analysis of two longitudinal empirical studies. Central constructs of the model are the monologic change communication, the dialogic change communication and the background talk of change. Further Van de Ven and Poole's (1995) Process Theories of Change are extended to consider the sequencing of the three constructs. The findings suggest that the sequencing of the dominant change communication approaches is informed by an alignment of individual communication competences and organizational change communication expectations.