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Vernacular and modern architecture have mostly been seen as antitheses, impossible to reconcile, especially in Africa. They appear to belong to different ages, utilize different materials and methods, and encourage or support different lifestyles. This paper aims at seeking points where a merging of principles may be attempted between the two positions.

The study is based on a survey on the traditional architecture of the Yoruba people of West Africa. The decline in popular use of this building tradition and its rejection by design practitioners raises some physical and psychological issues which are examined in this paper. These include: spatial layout, use and quality, ecology and economy, concepts, meaning and perception. The fate of Yoruba traditional built culture depends on a conscious attempt to reconcile it with people's contemporary needs, lifestyles and world views.

Therefore, a brief introduction on the importance of Yoruba architecture and its preservation will be followed by a general definition of its features and characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Finally, the problems posed by the architecture's modern trends in Yoruba land will be examined. It is hoped that such works may assist in the development of a truly responsive and sustainable architecture for the Yoruba people. The proposed solutions may be applied in other parts of Africa, or in regions with similar cultural or geographical concerns.

Purpose: The paper makes use of Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” to explain Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) as a normal scientific tradition. The paper intends to show how a previously marginalized research tradition has now started solidifying its paradigmatic boundaries, and what implications this holds for aspiring CCT scholars.

Method/approach: The paper makes use of literature from the Journal of Consumer Research and Marketing Theory to point out the methodological and practical issues in the discipline that have been pointed out by CCT proponents. These criticisms are discussed as scientific “anomalies.” Furthermore, the paper critically analyzes immigrant acculturation literature produced by CCT researchers in the past 30 years through a Kuhnian lens to show proponents of the fields implicitly addressing different “anomalies,” explaining the tradition to be a normal scientific one.

Findings: An in-depth analysis of immigrant acculturation literature within CCT shows every successive project within the field has addressed “anomalies” by pointing out research gaps, providing a rationale for their respective methodology, and, in turn, adding precision to theoretical frameworks, depicting a normal scientific tradition.

Originality and value: The paper adds value by discussing the probable consequences of this boundary solidification. On one hand, aspiring scholars will have scientific assumptions with which to enter the laboratory (consumer world) and guidelines that can be used toward publishing. On the other, this can also lead to a possible dogmatization of an emerging consumer research paradigm, making it difficult for new scholars to be creative.

A review essay on Postmodernism, Economics and Knowledge. Edited by Stephen Cullenberg, Jack Amariglio and David F. Ruccio. London: Routledge, 2001. p. 495. Most economists agree that economic knowledge has gradually increased as more facts and data have been accumulated to support (or reject) theories. That is, economic knowledge and progress of the discipline have benefited from the scientific method. While not disputing this modernist conception of historical progress in economics, the articles in the volume consistently urge a broader discourse in economics, suggesting that without an expanded discourse economics will, as Hutchison (1979) argues, be “destined for a somewhat ambiguous and problematic place in the spectrum of knowledge” (p. 4). This edited volume discusses and seeks to discover what the postmodernist movement can add to broad economic discourse.

Professional cataloguers working in ten university libraries in Jordan, Malaysia, and United Arab Emirates were interviewed with the aim of investigating their perceptions on the new Library of Congress classification's Subclass KBP for Islamic law (IL).

Specific aspects investigated were accessibility and user satisfaction, clarity of terms, ease of use, inclusiveness and comprehensiveness, modernism and innovation, and systematic arrangement and relationships.

Three aspects received positive feedbacks from respondents. It is also evident that cataloguers’ familiarity with and skills in applying the Subclass KBP should be improved to ensure effective use of the scheme.

The decision on whether or not to apply the new KBP schedule represents a great challenge for those libraries around the world especially those in the Arab/Islamic countries. In the light of the decision of the LC to apply the newly developed Subclass KBP for IL, libraries are now facing a new challenge and have to decide on the implementation of the new schedule.

Deals with issues that need to be more clearly understood in the West.

This chapter reviews postcolonialism praxis. Based on the examination of postcolonialism practices, this chapter details why postcolonialism offers nothing different than colonialism despite administrative and bureaucratic changes when colonizers left the colonized territories physically.

In the Book of Revelation, the “whore of Babylon” is a metaphor for Satan. In applying this religious analogy to the current state and status of marketing thought, deliberately takes an anti‐positivist and an anti‐modernist stance, metaphorically replacing modernism and positivism with “The Mother of Prostitutes” (Rev. 17:5). Evaluates the applicability of the eschatological metaphor within the context of the current modernist/postmodernist debate. In using the analogy of the religious (essentially Christian) perspective of the end of the world, the analysis which follows utilizes biblical text and Christian concepts to illuminate and enhance the discussion.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the contours of futures studies that override the ethnocentric epistemological limitations of present studies, which are mono‐civilizational and extrapolations from Western experience.

The paper shows by empirical and conceptual means the inadequacy of present futures studies – based partly on alleged American exceptionalism – which limit the imagination of futurists. The paper then uses a different philosophical base, namely Buddhist process philosophy, which puts change at its inner core to develop a new perspective.

The paper finds that the alleged American exceptionalism is based on founding myths and ground realities not necessarily present in other countries. Huntington and others evoked the role of civilizations before the rise of Asia was being fully noticed. Current US dominance is illustrated to some extent by “everywhere is America”, but in a reverse direction “everywhere is in America” as the world implodes back on the USA through migration and through globalization.

The approach suggested in the paper will provide a more penetrating epistemology for future studies than hitherto ad hoc approaches.

The nature of narrative is important, and with the development of awareness of knowledge processes, it becoming more important. In particular its notions can be enhanced by examining it in terms of antenarrative. Ultimately the paper aims to explore the relationship between narrative and antenarrative.

The objectives of the paper are achieved by seating the notions of narrative and antenarrative into the models of knowledge cybernetics (in particular social viable systems – SVS and social cybernetics) to enable an exploration of the consequences of their interaction. If narrative and antenarrative are seen as together forming an autonomous system, then their relationship may be explored in terms of SVS. This is effectively a social geometry that enables complex conceptual relationships to be explored graphically.

While normally one might think that narrative and antenarrative are incommensurable, the theory explains how through enantiomer dynamics, patterns of narrative can be related to un‐patterned arbitrary antenarratives. Under the right circumstances narrative and antenarrative can form a joint alliance that enables the two forms to merge into a story. This means that a story is told in a way that enables narrative structures to be intermingled with antenarrative thereby forming a thematic story event that has potential to engage more dynamically with the listener.

The paper is fundamentally theoretical, and a useful development would be to apply this to real case scenarios, thereby exploring quantitively the interconnection between narrative and antenarrative, and some of its implications.

It must be realised that there is a tacit knowledge dimension that connects the narrative/antenarrative situation with a story acquirer. The ability of the acquirer to recognise whether a situation has narrative or antenarrative is a function of that acquirer's own pattern of knowledge, and this embodies subjectivity. This is bound up within the notion of third cybernetics. The interconnectedness of narrative and antenarrative is relevant to actual processes of social communication, and demonstrates a parallel coexistence of modernist and postmodernist paradigms.

The paper applies a new theory, that of knowledge cybernetics, to a difficult conceptual area of study. While this results in the need to understand the conceptual basis of knowledge cybernetics, it does provide a frame of reference that enables relatively simple approaches in knowledge and knowledge processes to be graphically represented, thereby providing the potential for new insights. The value of the paper is that these graphical techniques are illustrated, and they would likely be useful to those who work in the knowledge or knowledge management field.

Marketing academics have recently been exhorted to embrace postmodernism, the so‐called “new perspective on life and the human condition that is sweeping across the globe”. Using postmodernism′s own tools of playfulness, paradox and irreverence – in the shape of the multiplex cinema as a metaphor for marketing – attempts to clarify some of the confusion surrounding postmodernism. Argues that much of what passes for postmodern marketing, is not, and draws attention to several shortcomings in the postmodernist position. Concludes that, although the concept has much to contribute to marketing discourse, the adoption of postmodern perspectives is not without penalty.

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct a growing area in marketing theory. It aims to critically examine the principles of relationship marketing as found in the literature and suggest opportunities for future conceptual maturation.

The conceptual discussion aims to assist future progress of relationship marketing and, more generally, marketing theory. While focusing on specific areas of departures and inadequacies in past and current research in the area, the discussion notes seminal philosophical questions which underpin current marketing sensibilities and which inform the nature of relational discourses.

It is argued that, in spite of recent developments in and maturation of relational discourses, some research in the field remains rather non‐contingent, theoretical and not observation‐informed. Importantly, it is biased towards the discussion of positive aspects of relationships. Matters of consequence to practice and research such as power and disciplining remain under‐researched.

By deconstructing and reconstructing current relationship marketing theory – partly by using a study of power and disciplining in situations of consumer dissatisfaction – ways of confronting shortcomings of relational research are illustrated. A more balanced and nuanced approach to marketing research and practice is proposed.

This is one of the few papers in marketing research, and relationship‐marketing research in particular, conceptually intrigued by the peculiarities of current thinking of relationships and exchanges. The contribution centres on three observations and a number of suggestions for future relational analysis. The discussion aims to help promote a fuller, deeper understanding of exchanges. It has been designed as a sketchy guide to future relationship marketing research.