Potential Solutions to Public Deliberation Problems: Structured Deliberations and Polarization Cascades

Some deliberative theorists advocate for increased public participation to improve the health and vitality of democracy, but skeptics warn that public deliberation may fall prey to multiple decision-making pathologies. We describe a research program based on structured public deliberations about science and technology policies that was designed to explore the validity of critics' worst fears. In this research, we specifically test the complaint that group deliberations often bias toward the original majority preferences because of cognitive and affective errors in decision making, such as deference to the numerical majority opinion held within a group. Our results, based on data collected from a set of small-group public deliberations about nanotechnology, offer weak support to the polarization hypothesis. We explain this finding as the likely consequence of manipulating two key variables of deliberations: task facilitation and the quality of the argument pool. As a result, we argue that it is possible to structure public deliberations about policy to mitigate known decision-making problems. We conclude by also warning scholars of the dangers in assuming that opinion change consistent with polarization effects is inherently the result of undesirable decision-making qualities.     

The Artifice of Conviction,or, An Internal Geography of Responsibility

This essay addresses one of the defining characteristics of debates within human geography and across the social sciences during the last ten years: the encounter between traditional and postmodern discourses. It is argued that at least one issue has been unduly neglected: the material fact of groundless arguments. Alternatively portrayed as the father of all evils or celebrated as the liberation of scientific creativity, the groundlessness of arguments has to happen before it can be interpreted. The essay discusses examples of texts that accept the groundless happening of their claims head on. Through these examples, it is argued that possible lessons from the encounter with the so-called “postmodern challenge” include reconsidered notions of both scientific responsibility and argumentative materiality.     

The psychiatric works of Emil Kraepelin: a many-faceted story of modern medicine

A new English language edition of some of the major works of Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), the famous German psychiatrist, appeared in 2002. This essay has been written to mark the occasion. Kraepelin is famous for his psychiatric nosology, specifically the demarcation of dementia praecox (schizophrenia) and manic-depressive insanity (bi-polar disorder). This essay deals not only with these topics but with many other aspects of Kraepelin's psychiatry: his talents as a writer and teacher; his unusual and intense concern with volition; his lack of psychological empathy with his patients, on the one hand, and on the other, his humane care for their physical well-being; his tangled involvement with psychoanalysis; his war on alcohol; his tradition-bound treatment of hysteria; his reflective attempt to understand paranoia; some criticisms of his work; the debate over the role played by his famous diagnostic cards (Z?hlkarten); his misuse of his psychiatric beliefs in the public arena. A conclusion addresses both his shortcomings and his assets.     

Multiply vulnerable populations: mobilising a politics of compassion from the ‘capacity to hurt’

This paper reflects on the concept of insecurity defined as ‘the capacity to hurt’. It begins by considering asylum seekers and refugees as hyper-precarious groups that have experienced bodily, material and psychological ‘hurt’ in the UK. At the same time, the paper considers how these hyper-precarious groups are perceived to have the capacity to hurt (bodily, materially, psychologically and spatially) the majority population. Having drawn out two understandings of the capacity to hurt—both the ability to be or feel hurt and the act of hurting others, we argue that a shared recognition of what it means to feel hurt (co-suffering or suffering together)—albeit to very different extremes and with very different consequences—and an understanding of the processes which drive this might be mobilised politically to challenge the act of hurting others. In doing so, we argue for a group politics of compassion to respond to increasingly insecure times.     

Polycarp's Cup: Imitatio in the Martyrdom of Polycarp

While imitatio Christi has widely been recognised as a narrative element of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, other possible literary allusions have been under‐explored. This article examines the presence of allusions to the death of Socrates in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. Socrates was often used in Christian apologetic contexts, thus its possible presence in Martyrdom of Polycarp is not surprising. This article seeks to understand the narrative function of Socratic allusions, especially relating to the text's construction of martyrdom and its Christology. It posits that imitatio Christi and imitatio Socratis function together apologetically to demonstrate the reasonableness of Christian worship of Jesus.     

From Frontier to Border Along the Iroquois Southern Door

The Upper Susquehanna drainage in New York assumed increasingly greater prominence as a borderland during the eighteenth century. Contrary to the idea that geopolitical boundaries were Colonial impositions, the creation of this borderland ensued from long-term strategies on the part of Native American as well as Euro-American powers. Reacting to Colonial encroachments from south and east, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) populated the valley with multi-ethnic towns consisting of both refugee tribes from the Atlantic seaboard and Iroquois representatives. These actions created a distinctive zone of creolized communities, and reflected the Haudenosaunee ability to play off English notions of demarcating the landscape.     

Balancing the Trade: Roman Cargo Shipments to India

There has been a continuing debate about the extent to which the Roman Empire suffered an economic imbalance in its trade with India (and more broadly the East), that is to say whether in volume or value the Roman Empire imported more than it exported. This imbalance is often thought to be manifested in the export of Roman gold and silver to India and the connected notion that other goods from the Roman Empire were seen as merely items of ballast. It is the intention of this article to place this debate in a practical context by demonstrating not only the physical need for mixed cargoes on ships sailing to India, but also the negligible amount of space taken up by the gold and silver. It is argued that in terms of volume (if not value) goods in kind were far more significant.     

ATTENTION AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL POLITICS OF LANDSCAPE

This article argues that the inherent directedness of attention is a central and pervasive condition of politics across a wide range of social fields. The subfield of landscape geography serves as an occasion to illustrate what can be gained by attending to attention. The argument begins by reflexively placing the problematic of attention within a brief genealogy of constructions of modern perception. Within this frame, the article takes a closer look at the ambivalent and hesitant response to the problem of attention in phenomenology. This field is best positioned to give a foundational account of the political character of attention and to explain the sense in which its relevance transcends the era in which it was first clearly formulated. However, a strong upsurge of phenomenological interest in attention has only appeared in recent years. A review of this work, particularly in the writings of Bernhard Waldenfels, shows how attending to attention can deepen critical analyses of capitalism and spectacle offered by Benjamin, Debord, Rancière and Beller. The final section of the article illustrates key points by staging an imaginary trip through the corporate agricultural landscapes of California.