Gender as Site of Power Enactment in The Power of Um and The Reign of Wazobia

This study discusses how Liking(1996)in The Power of Um and Onwueme(1992)in The Reign of Wazobia anchor complex negotiations of public and private identities on gender as a site of enactments of power.Through experimentation with dramatic techniques,the selected Cameroonian and Nigerian women playwrights emphasize the centrality of gender as a site for a sustained critique of the larger social formations.The paper hypothesizes that Liking’s and Onwueme’s plays are thematically ambitious and stylistically experimental demonstrating a dynamic process through which the dramatists integrate concrete experiences into their creative consciousness in gender-conscious ways.In that respect,gender stands out as the performance space of struggle between the performance of power to maintain hegemony and the power of performance for social change.For scientific vigour,the study uses the gender relations approach to demonstrate how the playwrights appropriate the dynamics of performance to translate,interpret and challenge deeply ingrained patriarchal paradigms and also to explain,theorize and account for the complex realities of African women’s lives.

The Stigma of Epilepsy among Outpatients in a Tertiary Hospital in South-East Nigeria

Background: The stigma of epilepsy is pervasive in developing country contexts and negatively affects the psychological and social wellbeing of its sufferers. The experience of stigma varies across settings and probably relate to disease severity and social characteristics. This study sought to describe the extent and correlates of perceived and enacted stigma among outpatients with epilepsy. Methods: The participants were consecutively presenting epilepsy outpatients in a tertiary facility that attended clinic regularly and had no overt medical or psychiatric co-morbidities. The patients were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire. Results: There were 93 participants with a mean age of 30.2 ± 10.3 years and 57.0% were males. The experience of stigma was reported by 46.2% and 67.7% of the participants for perceived and enacted stigma, respectively. Over one-third of the patients had suffered burns or a similar injury in the past. The correlates of perceived stigma were rural residence, lower levels of education, and longer duration of illness. Gender, age and frequency of seizures were not statistically significant determinants. The correlates of enacted stigma were being single, older age, rural residence, and longer duration of epilepsy. A past history of burns and disclosure of epilepsy to individuals outside the family added to the likelihood of experiencing stigma. Conclusion: The burden of epilepsy related social stigma is high in Nigeria. Cultural stereotypes and misconception add to this. There is need for appropriate culture-congruent educational interventions to provide the right information about epilepsy and debunk the misconceptions and myths associated with the condition. This will need to be coupled with astute clinical management of cases and active case finding. Both qualitative and longitudinal quantitative studies would be required to deepen our understanding of the lived reality of grappling with stigma in our setting.

From Enaction to Emersion:A body perception by awareness of living body

Body perception has analysed by motor activity. This is largely the result of Le Boulch’s work on psychokinetics and psychomotor education,which made new levels available for the description of body schema activity beyond that of conscious movements. Reflex movements,involuntary gestures,and emotions are all evidence of the pre-attentional activation and preparation for motor actions. Body perception is built from the interaction between the body and the world. With this in mind,we would like to draw attention to the current paradoxical gap in the literature that exists between the living and the perceived body. We then propose a means of overcoming this gap through a description of the activation of the living body and its emersion at the level of perception. Enaction,in Francisco Varela’s groundbreaking work,explains how neurodynamics bring emergences from our living body to our consciousness by awakening and activating our potential capacities. In this sense enaction is a neurodynamics,while emersion ensures the bottom-up transition of implicit information from the living body(Leib) to consciousness and to the attentive perception of the lived body(Korper).

Smart Development Process Enactment Based on Context Sensitive Sequence Prediction

Actual software development processes define the different steps developers have to perform during a development project. Usually these development steps are not described independently from each other—a more or less formal flow of development step is an essential part of the development process definition. In practice, we observe that often the process definitions are hardly used and very seldom “lived”. One reason is that the predefined general process flow does not reflect the specific constraints of the individual project. For that reasons we claim to get rid of the process flow definition as part of the development process. Instead we describe in this paper an approach to smartly assist developers in software process execution. The approach observes the developer’s actions and predicts his next development step based on the project process history. Therefore we apply machine learning resp. sequence learning approaches based on a general rule based process model and its semantics. Finally we show two evaluations of the presented approach: The data of the first is derived from a synthetic scenario. The second evaluation is based on real project data of an industrial enterprise.

xSPIDER_ML:Proposal of a Software Processes Enactment Language Compliant with SPEM 2.0

SPEM (Software Process Engineering Metamodel Specification) is the software processes modeling standard defined by OMG (Object Management Group). However, the process enactment support provided by this standard has many deficiencies. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to propose a language for software process enactment based upon SPEM 2.0 concepts. First, we will present a critical analysis of the SPEM standard approach for enactment. Then, we will present xSPIDER_ML, an enactment language, and describe its structure, components and associated rules. In order to evaluate the proposed language, a case study is performed through a RUP (Rational Unified Process) process instantiation. The language presented in this paper is part of a support set of tools for flexible software process enactment. Additionally, this set of tools is in compliance with software process quality models.

Techniques in John Donne's Love Poetry

John Donne's love poetry,with his wit,challenges one's habit of thought.This thesis,therefore,is an attempt to study Donne's poetic techniques by analyzing some of his love poems.Based on a close study of conceits,arguments and dramatic enactments Donne employs in his poems,the author of the paper concludes that Donne's ingenuity in dealing with poetry makes him perfectly combine passion and thought.

Brain mechanisms of mental processing:from evoked and spontaneous brain activities to enactive brain activity

Within the context of the computer metaphor,evoked brain activity acts as a primary carrier for the brain mechanisms of mental processing.However,many studies have found that evoked brain activity is not the major part of brain activity.Instead,spontaneous brain activity exhibits greater intensity and coevolves with evoked brain activity through continuous interaction.Spontaneous and evoked brain activities are similar but not identical.They are not separate parts,but always dynamically interact with each other.Therefore,the enactive cognition theory further states that the brain is characterized by unified and active patterns of activity.The brain adjusts its activity pattern by minimizing the error between expectation and stimulation,adapting to the ever-changing environment.Therefore,the dynamic regulation of brain activity in response to task situations is the core brain mechanism of mental processing.Beyond the evoked brain activity and spontaneous brain activity,the enactive brain activity provides a novel framework to completely describe brain activities during mental processing.It is necessary for upcoming researchers to introduce innovative indicators and paradigms for investigating enactive brain activity during mental processing.

Regulating Private Tutoring in China:Uniform Policies,Diverse Responses

Purpose:This article examines responses from the tutoring sector to Chinese national and local government regulations on private supplementary tutoring.It adds to the literature on policy enactment,showing the importance of context and noting the diversity of tutoring providers compared with schools.Design/Approach/Methods:The article draws on semi-structured and informal interviews with 11 tutors,15 managers of tutoring enterprises,5 members and managers of professional organizations,5 government officials,5 school managers,5 teachers,and 20 parents.Data from interviewees were triangulated with observations,news reports,blogs written by tutoring analysts,and ad hoc research by industrial observers.Findings:Policy enactment in the tutoring sector is even more complex than that for schooling.Standardized policies do not necessarily achieve the aspired goals.Originality/Value:The article adds to the literature not only in China but also internationally.It highlights the importance of distinguishing between aspirations and realities in this domain.It also proposes conceptual considerations for regulating tutoring,given its diverse and fluid nature.

The Rise of Supplementary Education in Sweden:Arguments,Thought Styles,and Policy Enactment

Purpose:This article focuses on the development of supplementary education,evolving under the label“homework support,”in Sweden between 2006 and 2018.Particular attention is paid to the significance of the private market for national policy.Design/Approach/Methods:Through a theoretical model on policy enactment,the interaction between national policy and local practice is highlighted.By analyzing how the local practice appears in documents related to state-regulated decision-making,the study gains further insights in the development of homework support in Sweden.Findings:This article argues that when private companies,offering supplementary tutoring,were established on the outskirts of the educational landscape in Sweden,the political educational discourse changed.Even though homework support became a given part of the political discussion about the school,the situation became difficult for private companies.Originality/Value:The article adds to the international field of shadow education.It describes the establishment of the private tutoring market’s entry into the Swedish educational landscape,which in the long term has provided a basis for a further Scandinavian development.Furthermore,the article contributes to theory development by a model that focuses on the interaction between policy formulation and local enactment.

Chinese Culture and Cognitive Science

In the civilizations of the axial age,Chinese and Western cultures gave birth to different scientific traditions—the image sciences and the natural sciences—within the knowledge frameworks of the union of man and nature and of the subject–object dichotomy respectively.Therefore,there are inevitably insurmountable barriers to explaining the differences between Chinese and Western cultures in terms of a natural science concerned with“things.”However,human nature is universal,and it is possible to make direct comparisons and interpretations of the differences between Chinese and Western cultures in terms of the cognitive sciences dealing with the mind.One important way to compare and interpret Chinese culture and cognitive science is the mutual interpretation of Chinese and Western cultures.In view of this,we have integrated enactive cognition(the frontier of cognitive science)and the free energy principle to propose the predictive mind model of enactive cognition and have used this mutual interpretation to study the two cultures using this model of cognitive science as a truly unified cross-cultural paradigm for cognitive science.First,the theory of enaction embedded in Chinese culture is actually closely related to enactive cognition,the frontier of Western cognitive science.Laozi’s theory of universal enaction(cosmology)shows that Chinese culture has an ancient theory of enaction.He firmly planted in the minds of Chinese people a way of thinking dealing with union of man and nature.Western enactive cognition,as a modern theory,advocates continuity of life and mind and emphasizes that life is both autopoietic and cognitive,which is actually a scientific cognitive expression of the Chinese cultural idea of the harmony of man and nature.This is actually a scientific cognitive expression of Chinese culture’s idea of the harmony of man and nature.Second,the qi in Chinese culture is similar to the free energy in Western cognitive science.In terms of concept definition,qi is a mixture of matter,function and principles(information),while free energy is the synthesis of energy and information.From the point of view of the mode of operation,qi is the contradictory harmony between yin and yang,while free energy is the unity of top-down and bottom-up approaches.In terms of kinetic purpose,the kinetic purpose of qi is the doctrine of benevolence,while the kinetic purpose of free energy has gradually changed from representation of nature to construction of meaning.Through comparison and interpretation,we find that enactive cognition is closely related to Chinese culture on the cognitive science route,in what will be a practical path for the rejuvenation of Chinese culture.In addition,through the association of qi in Chinese culture and free energy in Western cognitive science,Chinese and Western cultures can be expected to be truly connected through cognitive science.

Organization-based agent-oriented programming： model, mechanisms, and language

An increasing number of social computational systems consist of a great amount of autonomous entities and operate in highly dynamic and unpredictable environments. To construct such systems needs to seek high-level abstrac- tion to manage the complexity of the systems and novel mechanism to support their characteristics, i.e., dynamism and flexibility. Agent-oriented programming （AOP） is con- sidered as a potential paradigm for developing such systems by exhibiting a number of characteristics, such as autonomy, flexibility, social ability, etc. However, current researches on AOP mainly focus on the construction of multi-agent system （MAS） with theory and language facilities inspired from arti- ficial intelligence （AI） and distributed AI, seldom considering and integrating the proven principles and practices of pro- gramming and software engineering. Moreover, abstractions and mechanism based on AI are inadequate for developing dynamic and flexible MAS in open environment. This paper proposes a novel AOP approach, namely Oragent, for con- structing and implementing dynamic and flexible systems. From a software engineering perspective, Oragent integrates organizational concepts and mechanism into AOP language, and support the dynamism and flexibility with explicit prim- itives. The proposed approach consists of a programming model and a corresponding programming language. This paper presents the syntax and formal operational semanticsof Oragent language, and studies a case to demonstrate our approach.

＂Scar＂： A Social Metaphor for Working Through Revolution Trauma

This article examines the social and psychological function of the ＂scar＂ metaphor at the turn from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. We propose that the widely employed scar metaphor, which was first created in the scar literature movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, enabled Chinese readers to ＂work through＂ the blend of psychological and ideological disquietude that lingered after the Cultural Revolution. We will first clarify how the scar metaphor facilitated this process of ＂working through,＂ using as an example Lu Xinhua＇s ＂The Scar＂ （Shanghen）. We will then describe how the scar metaphor became dispersed throughout Chinese popular culture and enabled a broad spectrum of Chinese readers to participate in a similar process. At both levels of analysis, we will argue that the scar metaphor simultaneously provides a literary space for working through personal trauma and related anxieties about the ideological transition during this socio-political change.