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This paper argues for an increased volume of references to Gabriel Tarde and Georg Simmel in the field of organization sociology. The text emphasizes the importance of these two sociologists in understanding the role of imperfection in organizing and the phenomena of fashion and imitation in contemporary organizations. Tarde’s theory challenged the antinomy between continuity and discontinuity, considering finite entities as cases of infinite processes and stable situations as transitory. Simmel’s theory of fashion explores the democratic and democratizing nature of fashion, which satisfies the demand for social adaptation and differentiation. They both saw fashion as a selection mechanism for organizational forms and managerial practices. Furthermore, referring to Tarde and Simmel can help counter the overemphasis on identity construction and the neglect of alterity in social sciences. The construction of identity often overlooks the inevitability of difference and alterity, which are essential aspects of collective projects. Lastly, this paper discusses Simmel’s concept of the stranger and its relevance in analyzing the experiences of foreigners and their potential advantages as “double strangers” in academia and society. The conclusion is that Tarde and Simmel’s contributions offer valuable insights for understanding the dynamics of management, organizing, and social interactions in contemporary organizations.

The narrow purpose of this article is to review de Fremery’s (2024) book about the bibliographic foundations of information science. The broader purpose is to consider the actual as well as the potential relevance of the field(s) of bibliography for information science besides the book under review.

This review essay examines the arguments put forward by de Fremery (2024), introduces concepts and traditional lore from the study of bibliography and presents internal conflicts or paradigms in the field of bibliography. It relates this information to foundational issues in information science.

De Fremery’s basic ambition of basing information science in the field of bibliography is important, and so is the attempt to consider bibliography in relation to contemporary information technologies such as machine learning and data science. The book under review fails, however, to describe the relations between different positions in bibliography, such as enumerative, analytical, descriptive, critical and historical bibliography in relation to information science. It rather tends to make problematic claims, for example, that scientific experiments are based on bibliographical methods, and to describe the relation of bibliography to information science on the basis of such interpretations. Nonetheless, the book is a serious attempt to consider the field of bibliography and thereby support the focus on documents in information science.

Information science often suffers because of ambiguities in the concept of information. When information science is understood as the study of literature-based answering, much else falls into place. The field of bibliography is a core concept for this understanding and re-orientation of information science, for example, by establishing the core relation between bibliography, information searching and knowledge organization.

The article examines the differences in the reception of international and Indigenous students to understand the challenges faced by the first students who identified as Indigenous, and to improve understanding of the 1950s, a pivotal decade in the development of university culture.

Drawing on archival sources and contemporary student magazines and newspapers, this article contrasts the attitudes towards international and Indigenous students at the University of Melbourne during the 1950s. It uses these populations to show that the idea of friendship specific to the populations of students and staff in the 20th century could both include and exclude groups within society.

The article shows that while students embraced the cultures of countries in Asia, and made friends with students who came to Australia to study, Indigenous students were less well received. This issue is explored in the context of the ongoing, earnest fundraising for scholarships for Indigenous students, and both the support and the backlash this engendered.

The article focuses on the University of Melbourne, which established the Aboriginal Scholarships committee, and where the first Indigenous student graduated, but more work is needed to understand parallels elsewhere.

The article has implications for understanding the way in which university communities embrace outsiders and adapt to foreign cultures. It also sheds light on intolerance, informing approaches to respond to these issues today.

The article reveals the many challenges faced by the first Indigenous students during the 1950s, the time when university education first became a priority. In this it helps to understand that the slow increase of numbers was not only caused by external factors but also originated within the academy.

This article makes a contribution to understanding the differences between the increasing acceptance in Australian universities of international students from Asia and the persistent resistance to accepting Indigenous Australian students.

Heterogeneous and micro-structured materials have been the object of multiscale and homogenization techniques aimed at recognizing the elastic properties of the equivalent continuum. The proposed investigation deals with the mechanical characterization of the heterogeneous material structured metamaterials through analyzing the ultimate strength using the limit analysis of the Representative Volume Element (RVE). To get the desired material strength, a novel finite element formulation based on the derivation of self-equilibrated solutions through the finite elements devoted to calculating the lower bound theorem has been implemented together with the limit analysis in Melàn’s formulation.

The finite element formulation is based on discrete mapping of Volterra dislocations in the structure using isoparametric representation. Using standard finite element techniques, the linear operator V, which relates the self-equilibrated internal solicitation to displacement-like nodal parameters, has been built through finite element discretization of displacement and strain.

The proposed work presented an elastic homogenization of the mechanical properties of an elementary cell with a geometry known in the literature, the isotropic truss. The matrix of elastic constants was calculated by subjecting the RVE to numerical load tests, simulated with a commercial FEM calculation code. This step showed the dependence of the isotropy properties, verified with Zener theory, on the density of the RVE. The isotropy condition of the material is only achieved for certain section ratios between body-centered cubic (BCC) and face-centered cubic (FCC), neglecting flexural effects at the nodes. The density that satisfies Zener’s conditions represents the isotropic geomatics of the isotropic truss.

For the isotropic case, the VFEM procedure was used to evaluate the isotropy of the limit domain and was compared with the Mises–Schleicher limit domain. The evaluation of residual ductility and dissipation energy allowed a measurement parameter for the limit anisotropy to be defined. The novelty of the proposal consisted in the formulation of both the linearized and the nonlinear limit locus of the material; hence, it furnished the starting point for further limit analysis of the structures whose elementary volume has been described through the proposed approach.