Category: Opinion

Opinion

The Conference Ends without Closing…

Now that we’ve come to the end, the Compass team would like to say a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to everyone who has participated and made our first virtual conference an overwhelming success. The authors and presenters have been, without exception, engaging and professional to the last. We’d also like to extend a special note of thanks to our virtual attendees, who have kept the discussions alive with insightful commentary, and their openness to explore issues across disciplines. There will be...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Nine (29 Oct, 2009)

Today marked the penultimate day of Wiley-Blackwell’s first Virtual Conference. As I am sure you will all agree, thus far, each day has contained many gems, and today has been no different. Eileen Joy’s (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) keynote lecture: ‘Reading Beowulf in the Ruins of Grozny: Pre/modern, Post/human, and the Question of Being‐Together’ looks at the aftermath of the Russian bombing of Chechnya through the lens of Beowulf. The two final papers of the conference were provided by P....

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Eight (28 Oct, 2009)

By Paula Bowles Day eight of the conference was once again marked by some excellent contributions. The first paper ‘Cultural Sociology and Other Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity in the Cultural Sciences’ by Diane Crane (University of Pennsylvania) suggests that for many scholars ‘disciplinary isolation is the norm.’ However, Crane proposes that by utilising what she describes as ‘free‐floating paradigms’ such barriers can be removed. The second paper of the day by Christine Mallinson, (University of Maryland) entitled ‘Sociolinguistics and Sociology: Current Directions, Future...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Seven (27 Oct, 2009)

The seventh day of the conference has continued with the key themes of ‘breaking down boundaries’ and interdisciplinarity. Roy Baumeister (Florida State University) began the day with his keynote lecture entitled ‘Human Nature and Culture: What is the Human Mind Designed for?’ By utilising the concepts of evolutionary and cultural psychology, Buameister is able to explore the intrinsic significance culture holds for humanity. Two other papers were also presented today. ‘Text as It Happens: Literary Geography’ by Sheila Hones (University...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Six (26 Oct, 2009)

Welcome to the second week of the Wiley-Blackwell Virtual Conference. The first day back has started with a keynote speech from Peter Ludlow (Northwestern University) entitled ‘Virtual Communities, Virtual Cultures, Virtual Governance.’ Conference delegates also had the opportunity to meet Peter at the Second Life Cocktail Bar. There were two other papers on Monday’s session Adam Brown’s (Deakin University): ‘Beyond ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’: Breaking Down Binary Oppositions in Holocaust Representations of ‘Privileged’ Jews’ and ‘A Hybrid Model of Moral Panics:...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Five (23 Oct, 2009)

The first week of the conference has come to an end, and the final day has included two exciting papers, as well as a publishing workshop. The first paper entitled ‘Full Disclosure of the “Raw Data” of Research on Humans: Citizens’ Rights, Product Manufacturer’s Obligations and the Quality of the Scientific Database’ was presented by Dennis Mazur (Oregon Health and Sciences University). In his lecture, Mazur highlights the difficult and contentious issues involved in human testing, particularly the tensions between...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Four (22 Oct, 2009)

The conference today has taken on a distinctly environmental feel. First up was Mark Macklin’s (University of Wales, Aberystwyth) keynote address entitled ‘Floodplain Catastrophes and Climate Change: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Riverine Societies.’ In his paper, Macklin observes that ‘[w]e are not the first society to face the threat of environmental catastrophe,’ although he stresses that the current threat has unique features. Susan Morrison (Texas State University – San Marcos) has taken a highly interdisciplinary approach to...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Three (21 Oct, 2009)

Today’s papers have focused once more on the key motifs of the conference, that of breaking down borders and indisciplinarity. Nancy Naples (University of Connecticut) uses her paper: ‘Borderlands Studies and Border Theory: Linking Activism and Scholarship for Social Justice’ to highlight just some of the difficulties faced when ‘negotiate[ing] different disciplinary frames, methods, and theoretical assumptions in order to move forward toward collaborative problem solving’. The second paper today entitled ‘Theorizing Borders in a ‘Borderless World’: Globalization, Territory and Identity’...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day Two (20 Oct, 2009)

The second day of the conference has been filled with three more interesting and innovative papers. David Crystal’s (University of Bangor) keynote lecture entitled ‘Language Death: A Problem for All’ highlights the troubling statistics that ‘96% of the world’s languages are spoken by just 4% of the people’. Given the interdisciplinary nature, and the methodology of this virtual conference, Crystal’s paper draws attention to the use of language as a way to ‘break down barriers’. The two other papers presented...

Opinion

Virtual Conference Report: Day One (19 Oct, 2009)

Welcome to the first day of the 2009 Compass Interdisciplinary Virtual Conference. Regenia Gagnier (University of Exeter) opened the conference by asking: ‘Why Interdisciplinarity?’ As part of her introductory remarks, Professor Gagnier discusses the definitions of Interdisciplinarity, as well as outlining some of the benefits of interdisciplinary research and praxis. Roger Griffin’s (Oxford Brookes University) keynote paper: ‘The Rainbow Bridge’: Reflections on Interdisciplinarity in the Cybernetic Age’ highlights the opportunities offered by the novel concept of a virtual conference. By...

Opinion

Virtual Conference – 6 days to go

For anyone who has not registered, you can do so for free at https://compassconference.wordpress.com/ and enjoy. – Virtual Delegates Pack – 20% conference discount on EVERY Wiley book! – 60 days free access to over 200 Wiley-Blackwell journals – Win a year’s subscription to a Compass Journal of your choice with post-conference feedback!

Opinion

On the mutual exclusivity of science and religion and other cognitive clashes

Dena T. Smith This week’s Science Times profiled Dr. Francis S. Collins, the recently appointed director of The National Institutes of Health. The article (below) points to clashes between Collins’  belief in God and his identity as a scientist. Collins, who is best known for his involvement in the Human Genome Project, which set out, in the early 1990’s to do just what it sounds like it might – map the human DNA – is also a religious man. Further,...

Opinion

Economics Focus

As many of our readers may have noticed, we have recently enjoyed a series of guest posts from scholars in the field of Economics.  Unfortunately for us, their own site is now ready and they will be posting on Economics Focus from now on. Our interdisciplinary visitors have given us some great content and stimulated some fascinating debate.  I would like to thank them personally for all of the wonderful posts they have given us and hope that, even though...

Opinion

towards theorizing an augmented reality

by nathan jurgenson Tim O’Reilly coined the phrase “Web 2.0”, and while the term has been differently used, I have boiled it down to the recent explosion of user-generated content (thus the focus on prosumption). This past summer, O’Reilly has declared another new era, what he calls “Web Squared”: “There’s […] a qualitative change happening as the Web becomes more closely integrated with the real world via sensor-based smart phone applications. Web Squared is another way of saying “Web meets...

Opinion

Monkey finance

by Koyomiyoshi According to this article , the Obama administration has proposed a pay limit to financial firms which will be saved by government TARP plan.  This plan clearly reflects public outrage towards financial firm‘s practice of paying tremendous bonus to CEOs, which have been saved by taxpayers. Outrage centres around the fact that these bonus are excessively high in comparison to CEOs performance. The article introduces one wall street veteran saying “I could put a monkey in that chair...