Trusting and its Tribulations -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1 Unfixed Trust -- 2 Witchcraft -- 3 Trusting the Untrustworthy -- 4 The Puzzle of the Animal Witch -- 5 'Sharing Secrets' -- 6 Eddies of Distrust -- 7 Intimate Documents -- 8 Trustworthy Bodies -- 9 Habitus of Trust -- 10 'You Can Tell the Company We Done Quit' -- Index.

The digital era in which we live has led to countless online social movements, all driven by emotions. This paper builds on fieldwork that stretched over 2 years, starting March 2020 as Norway went into lockdown due to COVID‐19. Emotions as experienced online seem to differ from those that are materially embodied or physically present among the studies' 25 young adults. Through two young women, this paper explores reflections on slow writing, holding a letter in their hands, in juxtaposition to (...) fast scrolling on their phones, receiving and sending messages and pictures. In the meetings between their hands and paper, their hands, and their phone screens, they sense time and experience emotions through touch and imaginaries. Amelia and Embla connect mind, body, and senses, as they share their understanding of touching what others have made by hand, imagining the thought behind the embodied materiality. (shrink)

Background Equal access to healthcare is a core principle in Norway’s public healthcare system. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged healthcare systems in the early phase – in particular, related to testing and hospital capacity. There is little knowledge on how older people experienced being infected with an unfamiliar and severe disease, and how they experienced the need for healthcare early in the pandemic Aim To explore the experiences of older people infected by COVID-19 and their need for testing and hospitalisation. Research (...) design An explorative and descriptive approach, with qualitative interviews conducted in October 2020. Participants and research context Seventeen participants above 60 years of age hospitalised due to COVID-19 during spring 2020 were recruited 6 months after discharge. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was granted by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics in South-Eastern Norway (155425). Findings The main finding was that the informants experienced vulnerability and arbitrariness. This finding was supported by three sub-themes: experiences with a severe and unfamiliar disease, the strict criteria and the importance of someone advocating needs. Discussion Participants described varying access to healthcare. Those who did not meet the national criteria to be tested or hospitalised struggled against the system. Findings reveal arbitrary access to healthcare, in contrast to Norway’s ethical principle of fair and just access to health services. Moreover, to access and receive necessary healthcare, informants were dependent on their next-of-kin’s advocacy. Conclusion Even when dealing with an unfamiliar disease, health professionals’ assessments of symptoms must be performed with an ethical obligation to applicate competent appraisal and the exercise of discernment; this is in line with care ethics and ethical standards for nurses. These perspectives are a significant part of caring and the intension of doing good. (shrink)

Through an extended ethnography of a sports team of boys growing from 7 to 11 years old, I explore Norwegian parents' anxieties about the digital world encroaching on their children's lives. I compare parents' monitoring of their children's (non)digital leisure activities with how kids interact (non)digitally. On the surface, as parents observe how their children's bodies move from screens to sports, they see their kids' attentive hands shifting focus from electronic gaming and screen swiping to a more welcomed ballplaying and (...) high‐fiving with nonelectronic teammates. However, close inspection reveals that my interlocutors never completely enter or leave the digital, but dwell within both worlds simultaneously. The result shows the meaning of children sports as changed by the digital, how the digital appears in the foreground or the background of our interactions, and how an emphasis on attentive hands can help unearth how the digital passes through us to constitute our lifeworlds. (shrink)

This article explores the contribution of the virtue of integrity to the concept of mature care. The virtue of integrity is understood as both a personal and a social virtue. The argument is that the virtue of integrity is a necessary condition for providing mature care. An example from a psychiatric acute ward illustrates that a nurse acting with the virtue of integrity displays clear self‐boundaries and self‐respect as well as respect towards the inherent integrity of the patient. The article (...) also addresses some problems related to lack of the virtue of integrity by discussing the problems connected to detachment and rigidity. (shrink)

The letters convey a picture of Broch’s political discussions with Kahler. Other topics covered in the letters include the intentions of his novels and his theory of mass hysteria as well as the cultural-historical essay “Hofmannsthal and his Time”. The letters also reveal personal details ‑ old Austrian retrospectives as well as current friendships with women and the efforts of his sponsors to promote his fame.

The English word digital (from the Latin, digitus) etymologically connects both fingers and technologies. In this special issue, we honor this dual meaning of the digital by foregrounding how living in a digital era both challenges and actualizes our senses, particularly our sense of touch. Ethnographically, the articles gathered offer intimate accounts of tactile experiences that intertwine with the digital in both direct and indirect ways. Despite ongoing—and often legitimate—anxieties about the disappearance of touch from our increasingly digitized world, our (...) special issue shows that human engagements with digital technologies are more complex. We theorize touch through a phenomenological and relational lens and as a sensory experience that is deeply shaped and reconfigured by local, sociotechnical and political-economic concerns. This special issue illuminates how attention to hands, fingers, or touch can help us understand the relationship between bodies, ethical life, social relations, selves, and subjectivities through a new lens. (shrink)

Hermann Broch achieved international recognition for his brilliant use of innovative literary techniques to present the entire range of human experience, from the biological to the metaphysical. Concerned with the problem of ethical responsibility in a world with no unified system of values, he turned to literature as the appropriate form for considering those human problems not subject to rational treatment. Late in life, Broch began questioning his artistic pursuits and turned from literature to devote himself to political (...) theory. While he is well known and highly regarded throughout the world as a novelist, he was equally accomplished as an essayist. These six essays give us a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the twentieth century's most original thinkers. (shrink)

Cet article s’inscrit dans le champ de la psychologie transculturelle du bébé et du jeune enfant. Lorsque la pathologie s’invite dans la vie de la jeune mère martiniquaise, cette dernière se trouve confrontée à la fois au discours médico-social (médecine visible) et au discours populaire (médecine invisible), mobilisant alors le double ancrage de sa propre parentalité. L’inscription ancestrale de la parentalité est façonnée par le personnage emblématique du doktè fey (guérisseur). Ceci sera illustré par l’étude de cas d’un bébé de (...) 20 mois face à une mère dépressive, qui est dans un rapport ambivalent avec sa propre mère. Il s’agit de trouver des points d’accordage entre les deux représentations du soin au bébé, car ces visions qui ont le même but, porter la jeune mère afin de la rendre plus compétente auprès de son enfant, concerneraient deux niveaux différents pour devenir mère, le niveau traditionnel et le niveau médico-social. (shrink)

As stated by previous researchers, in an increasingly competitive environment, organizations need to develop successful innovations to compete and survive in the long term. Furthermore, sustainability and social issues are gaining increasing importance, to the extent that they are now a matter of high concern for firms and for society. Therefore, organizations cannot improve their results at any price and must be responsible for the consequences of their activities, including innovation. In these conditions, a growing demand for new leadership styles (...) and behaviors arises to face this complex context. Stewardship is a leadership behavior that shows great concern for the impact of the organization’s activity on society. A quantitative study has been conducted with the purpose of providing empirical evidence of the relationship between leaders’ stewardship behavior and innovation success, using radical innovation as an explanatory variable. To confirm the hypotheses, structural equations were used on a dataset from a sample of 300 questionnaires from Spanish companies. The study empirically validates the proposed conceptual model. Results show how radical innovation fully mediates the relationship between leaders’ stewardship behavior and innovation success. (shrink)

Regulation of the subcellular localization of certain proteins is a mechanism for the regulation of their biological activities. FGF‐2 can be produced as distinct isoforms by alternative initiation of translation on a single mRNA and the isoforms are differently sorted in cells. High molecular weight FGF‐2 isoforms are not secreted from the cell, but are transported to the nucleus where they regulate cell growth or behavior in an intracrine fashion. 18 kDa FGF‐2 can be secreted to the extracellular medium where (...) it acts as a conventional growth factor by binding to and activation of cell‐surface receptors. Furthermore, following receptor‐mediated endocytosis, the exogenous FGF‐2 can be transported to the nuclei of target cells, and this is of importance for the transmittance of a mitogenic signal. The growth factor is able to interact with several intracellular proteins. Here, the mode of action and biological role of intracellular FGF‐2 are discussed. BioEssays 28: 504–514, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Regulation of the subcellular localization of certain proteins is a mechanism for the regulation of their biological activities. FGF‐2 can be produced as distinct isoforms by alternative initiation of translation on a single mRNA and the isoforms are differently sorted in cells. High molecular weight FGF‐2 isoforms are not secreted from the cell, but are transported to the nucleus where they regulate cell growth or behavior in an intracrine fashion. 18 kDa FGF‐2 can be secreted to the extracellular medium where (...) it acts as a conventional growth factor by binding to and activation of cell‐surface receptors. Furthermore, following receptor‐mediated endocytosis, the exogenous FGF‐2 can be transported to the nuclei of target cells, and this is of importance for the transmittance of a mitogenic signal. The growth factor is able to interact with several intracellular proteins. Here, the mode of action and biological role of intracellular FGF‐2 are discussed. BioEssays 28: 504–514, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Exploratory experiments are widely characterized as experiments that do not test hypotheses. Experiments that do test hypotheses are characterized as confirmatory experiments. Philosophers have pointed out that research programmes can be both confirmatory and exploratory. However, these definitions preclude single experiments being characterized as both exploratory and confirmatory; how can an experiment test and not test a hypothesis? Given the intuition that some experiments are exploratory, some are confirmatory, and some are both, a recharacterization of the relationship between exploratory and (...) confirmatory experimentation is needed. I discuss ‘phase IV’ trials to show what this recharacterization could look like. Phase IV trials can be exploratory and confirmatory insofar as they concurrently test hypotheses and explore for unforeseen phenomena. Even if it is uncontroversial that a single experiment can have multiple aims, the recharacterization of the relationship between exploratory and confirmatory experimentation is still required for these aims to be held together coherently. I offer an alternative characterization of the relationship between exploratory and confirmatory experimentation where the former remains a distinct kind of experimentation but is not characterized as non-hypothesis-testing. (shrink)

This book provides a clear and concise introduction to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. It analyses his key theoretical concepts, such as difference and the body without organs, and covers all the different areas of his thought, including metaphysics, the history of philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory, the philosophy of the social sciences and aesthetics. As the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of Deleuze's writings, it reveals both the internal coherence of his philosophy and its development through a series (...) of distinct phases. Reidar Due offers an entirely new interpretation of Deleuze's philosophy, centred around the notion of thought as a capacity to form relations. These relations are embodied in nature, in language and in the unconscious; in art, science and social practice. With this concept of embodied thought, Deleuze challenges our most entrenched beliefs about the self and about signs whether linguistic or social. He develops an original theory of power and social systems and presents a method for understanding any signifying practice, from language and ritual to the unconscious, including cinema, literature and painting. Due analyses the different strands in this theoretical edifice and shows its implications for a wide range of human sciences, from history and psychology to political theory and cultural studies. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a nominalist ethics of intersubjectivity based on the principle of a discourse transcendent reality of the Other within an intersubjective relationship. Through a discussion of the authors Foucault, Sartre, and Hegel, and the film Drive My Car, the article presents a phenomenology of the appearance of one’s own body and of the body of the Other, according, either, to evaluative criteria or to existential criteria not accessible to discursive handling. The argument is nominalist in its (...) denial of a discursive purchase on the Other. It is realist in its exploration of the discourse transcendent reality of the Other. The argument moves between different orders of scale. (shrink)

This essay raises some questions concerning the method and conceptual structure of Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Three substantially different types of interpretation of this text have been put forward. One of the main issues separating the three interpretative strategies is the relationship that they each establish between Sartre's three fundamental concepts: consciousness, nothingness and freedom—each of which can be seen to play the fundamental role in the argument. It therefore seems crucial for any interpretation of Being and Nothingness to determine (...) the exact relationship between these terms. However, Being and Nothingness presents a hybrid argument that interweaves metaphysical deduction, phenomenological description and moral-existential argument in a way that makes it almost impossible to decide which of the strands of the argument should be seen to dominate the others. It is therefore perhaps equally difficult to ascertain which of its principal concepts has the most central place in the system. One could therefore argue that a reading of Being and Nothingness should aim to account for (rather than dismiss) the hybridity of the argument and then seek to assign relative functions to its different strands. The following remarks are intended as a step in that direction. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 207-240.

L’article propose une analyse de la gestion politique de la pandémie, élaborant un concept de domination nouvelle qui, du côté de l’Etat comme du côté du citoyen, et des attitudes normatives que l’on attend de lui, aurait été caractérisé par un type de réflexion rationnelle à échelle temporelle brève. L’article analyse les implications temporelles et politiques de ce lien de domination nouveau en comparant la raison d’Etat des gouvernements occidentaux durant la pandémie à des conceptions du pouvoir défini en termes (...) d’idéologie ou de “biopolitique”. Ensuite, il cherche à déterminer la nature du citoyen-sujet qui entre dans cette nouvelle forme de domination par comparaison avec trois formes de subjectivité canoniques : le sujet kantien, l’individu sociologique et la subjectivité contingente et éthique théorisée par Hannah Arendt. Par ce biais, il définit la singularité du citoyen-sujet nouveau par sa réactivité. (shrink)

Fiona Allon writes that “ home, now more than ever, is seen as firmly connected to the world of politics and economics, as actively shaped and defined by the public sphere rather than existing simply as a refuge from it.” 1 From this perspective, claims to home as they are located in a relationship to claims of both national and local belonging are often a contested site within Australia, where notions of who is seen to be at home in Australia (...) are constantly being challenged and reworked. Structured around the desire amongst white people to retain Australia as a “white nation,” claims to home may be seen as operating in complex ways in regards to the rights that arise from the ongoing existence of Indigenous sovereignties, and the politics surrounding levels of immigration from groups of people perceived as belonging to minority racial groups. In this context, the notion of home is frequently drawn upon in relation to both how people perceive the way in which they, and others, belong in a country, and this raises questions surrounding who is legitimately able to call Australia home. Such discourses of home evoke feelings of ownership in people who feel that they have a legitimate claim to a country for reasons primarily of race or location of birth. In Australia, despite the powerful presence and voice of Indigenous peoples, popular perceptions of the country tend to place such homely rights firmly in the laps of white people, who, through images of white nuclear families in front of white picket fences, perceive themselves as already and rightfully at home in Australia. Yet such conceptions of Australia are not accepted without struggle. Notions of home are very much contested, especially in terms of Indigenous sovereignty and non-white immigration, both of which question the legitimacy of a normatively white Australia. Such ideas of home as being a contested space in which issues of national belonging are played out in Australia were seen quite clearly in relation to the 2005 Cronulla riots, in which thousands of white Australians gathered around Cronulla beach, shouting at and threatening those located as “Lebanese Muslim” people. The people involved in the riots made it quite clear that whilst Australia was a home for them, it ought not to be home to people who were identified as Lebanese Muslims. Such racist opinions exemplified the fact that Australia is seen to be a white country, and therefore as a legitimate home to white people rather than to non-white minority groups or even to Indigenous Australians. This is discussed in more detail later in this paper. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides a reassessment of the question of sexual difference, taking into account important shifts in feminist thought, post-humanist theories, and queer studies. The contributors offer new and refreshing insights into the complex question of sexual difference from a post-feminist perspective, and how it is reformulated in various related areas of study, such as ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, biology, technology, and mass-media.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper seeks to present a kind of skeptical, and, in an indirect way, Wittgensteinian perspective upon purpose and meaning in architecture. The argument presented here revolves around the two notions that, first, there are different categories, which we have available for making architecture seem intelligible to us, and, second, that there are distinct historical discourses in which architecture has been made intelligible in specific ways.

This book presents a thorough study and an up to date anthology of Plato’s Protagoras. International authors' papers contribute to the task of understanding how Plato introduced and negotiated a new type of intellectual practice – called philosophy – and the strategies that this involved. They explore Plato’s dialogue, looking at questions of how philosophy and sophistry relate, both on a methodological and on a thematic level.