Language as a Contested Site of Belonging

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Reiko Shindo
Keyword(s):  
Migration Studies ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Japanese Case ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Migrant Activism ◽  
Do So

This chapter explains how the research on language in the context of migrant activism can advance one's understanding of belonging, of what it means to be a legitimate member of a community. To do so, it broadly sketches the relationship between language and community and discusses how the focus on linguistic interactions between citizens and noncitizens offers a productive yet unexplored site of investigation in migration studies. The relationship between language and community has a dual nature. Language solidifies the boundary of community, and separates citizens inside the community from foreigners outside. And yet, it can also obscure the line between the two, exposing fluidity of belonging, and in doing so, imagining community as a dissolving entity. The chapter then provides the specific context in which migrant activism takes place in Japan, and explains how the Japanese case study is helpful for examining citizenship and belonging in relation to language.

Interactive acculturation of Turkish-Belgian parents and children in Flanders: A case study of Beringen

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-428
Author(s):  
Özgün Ünver ◽  
Ides Nicaise
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Maternal Employment ◽  
Domain Specificity ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Education And Care ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Town

This article tackles the relationship between Turkish-Belgian families with the Flemish society, within the specific context of their experiences with early childhood education and care (ECEC) system in Flanders. Our findings are based on a focus group with mothers in the town of Beringen. The intercultural dimension of the relationships between these families and ECEC services is discussed using the Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM). The acculturation patterns are discussed under three main headlines: language acquisition, social interaction and maternal employment. Within the context of IAM, our findings point to some degree of separationism of Turkish-Belgian families, while they perceive the Flemish majority to have an assimilationist attitude. This combination suggests a conflictual type of interaction. However, both parties also display some traits of integrationism, which points to the domain-specificity of interactive acculturation.

scholarly journals Local industrial strategy and skills policy in England: Assessing the linkages and limitations – a case study of the Sheffield City Deal

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 857-872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sissons ◽  
Katy Jones
Keyword(s):  
Local Economic Development ◽  
Innovation Policy ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Local Growth ◽  
Potential Growth ◽  
Economic Development Policy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

This paper examines changes in local economic development policy which occurred between 2010 and 2015, with a focus on the relationship between industrial strategy and skills policy. Under the Coalition Government, Local Enterprise Partnerships were established and tasked with facilitating local growth, and to do so many identified a set of (potential) growth sectors for industrial strategy to support. These sectors tended to be drawn from a relatively narrow range of industries which therefore often excluded a large proportion of the local economy. An important focus of the support for growth sectors for many has been through an ambition to influence the local skills system. Skills policy more broadly has been an important dimension of devolution, and a number of City Deals have included elements of skills policy. Echoing previous national policy however, the focus of local concerns with skills under devolution has been framed largely with reference to skills gaps and shortages. While specific skills gaps and shortages can be identified, this paper questions whether this default position is reflected widely, and as such, if a narrow focus on skills supply is a sufficient approach. It is argued that to support local growth across a broad base, greater attention needs to be paid to stimulating employer demand for skills through better integrating industrial and innovation policy with skills policymaking across a wider section of the local economy. To support these arguments we present a case study of the Sheffield City Deal.

scholarly journals Drawing Out by Drawing Into: Representation and Partnership in a Design-Science Collaboration

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Pablo Schyfter
Keyword(s):  
Design Science ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
Structural Growth ◽  
Science Collaboration ◽  
Interdisciplinary Partnership ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Joint Representation ◽  
Do So

“Synthetic Aesthetics” was a two-year experimental, interdisciplinary project that supported six partnerships between synthetic biologists and artists and designers. Each group sought to accomplish two tasks: build an interdisciplinary partnership and construct a joint representation. In this article, I explore the relationship between partnering and representing in one of the six partnerships: a collaboration between an architect and a synthetic biologist. I describe David Benjamin and Fernan Federici’s work on the self-organization and structural growth of xylem cells, and their pursuit of graphical and mathematical representations of so-called biological “logic.” I analyze the case study using two frameworks in unison. The first, from research in STS, explains representation as a social accomplishment with ontological consequences. The second, by pragmatist John Dewey, describes representation as drawing out and drawing into: selecting and extracting out of the world, and molding and installing into human artifice. I study Benjamin and Federici’s work as two acts of drawing out by drawing into: constructing and representing “logic” by forming a partnership to do so; and building a partnership by jointly forming a commitment to the existence of that “logic.” Doing so also involved ontological labor: making biological “logic” and rendering cells intelligible as products of rational mechanisms (as logical cells). Thus, representing and partnering are mutually enabling, mutually dependent and capable of ontological accomplishments. The lesson is useful to STS, a field increasingly concerned with art and design as topics of study and potential partners in work.

scholarly journals The interdependency of online and offline activism: A case study of Fridays For Future-Barcelona in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown

Hipertext.net ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 105-114
Author(s):  
Roger Soler i Martí ◽  
Mariona Ferrer-Fons ◽  
Ludovic Terren
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Level Of Activity ◽  
Twitter Account ◽  
Online Activism ◽  
Twitter Activity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The lockdown imposed in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak as well as the resulting surge in the use of digital technologies and social media for activism or social life all represent a unique opportunity to study the relationship between online and offline activism. To do so, we focus on the Barcelona branch of Fridays For Future, the recent and global youth climate movement that expanded through social networks and organised several large-scale global protests. Based on data from Fridays For Future-Barcelona’s Twitter account, the analysis looks at and compares the level of activity and interactions during normal times and during the lockdown. The results suggest a close and mutually-reinforcing relationship between offline and online activism, with peaks of Twitter activity and interactions usually revolving around offline protest actions. They also show that the lockdown period was characterised by an increase in the number of tweets but a decrease in the number of interactions and thus in the repercussion of the movement on social networks.

scholarly journals Scaffolding Self-direction with the ACRL Framework: A Reflection-Based Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Research Mission ◽  
Concordia University ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

This case study reports on the information literacy component of a pilot first-yearexperience course, U1X, at Concordia University. Based on the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, the information literacy component of U1X was designed to encourage self-direction. Through exploring the university’s larger research mission, the module aimed to shift the emphasis from “how to do research correctly” to viewing research as a personal endeavour in which the researcher cultivates the skills necessary to make a meaningful contribution. It encouraged students to reflect on what they could contribute and the skills they would need to do so. The design of this module aligned with the U1X syllabus, which included as learning outcomes that students gain an understanding “of the University’s research mission at its highest level” and “of the relationship between research and citizenship.” The module took a similarly “big picture” approach, while also looking at students’ personal development through reflection. This paper will explore the challenges and opportunities of this approach.    

scholarly journals Autoritetens anatomi

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tormod Kleiven
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
Charismatic Authority ◽  
Local Congregations ◽  
Leadership Competence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Material

The anatomy of authority: How legitimate and legitimized power is exercised in collegial and church committee meetings in church context This article is titled ‘the anatomy of authority’ and poses the following question: What are the characteristics when legitimated authority (meaning authority given from above) and legitimized power (meaning authority given from below) is exercised in collegial and church committee meetings in local congregations in the Norwegian Lutheran Church. The empirical material is a case study from two congregations. Theory about authority as a term and a phenomenon and about the relation between leadership and authority is the basis for an analytical discussion of the case study. The analysis highlights issues such as the relationship between authority and roles of leadership, competence, charisma and vulnerability as an authoritative expression. I claim that every participant has the possibility to exercise endorsed authority depending on a position of earned trust in the context. Formal leaders represent the legitimated authority. Nevertheless, this source of authority still appears insufficient because earned trust also for these leaders is the key to exercising authority. Findings emphasized in the conclusion are: – Authority in this context is primarily based on legitimized authority through earned trust. This kind of charismatic authority is rooted in the ability to create a confidencebuilding dialogue – Authority based on legal premises has to be legitimized by including all participants in the processual work of clarification and decision-making. – Competence is valued, but it has to be linked with the ability to reflect the limitations of this competence in the specific context by approving the relevance of others’ competence. – Exposing one’s own vulnerability in an honest way may increase rather than decrease authority. However, it may also be used as a manipulative tool to mask or prevent disagreements and tensions in relationships.

scholarly journals Militarized masculinity and the paradox of restraint: mechanisms of social control under modern authoritarianism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tapscott
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Arbitrary Power ◽  
Social Discipline ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

Abstract The twenty-first century is marked by the rise of new forms of authoritarianism, many of which are characterized by the ‘paradox of restraint', in which reforms compliant with the rule of law are used to unshackle the ruler's arbitrary power. Despite a proliferation of scholarly studies on this topic, we still have limited understanding of how national-level authoritarian power reaches ordinary citizens in these contexts. This article identifies the performance of militarized masculinities as an understudied mechanism that does so. It offers two main contributions: first, it highlights how performances of militarized masculinities enact the paradox of restraint through gendered idioms, thereby magnifying the ambiguities of modern authoritarianism and diffusing them at a local level. Second, it recasts the conceptual utility of militarized masculinities, showing that the concept's inherent tensions between ordered discipline and unaccountable violence produce and project authoritarian power, giving militarized masculinities special potency as a mode of social discipline in these contexts. The article draws on feminist International Relations, employing grounded ethnographic research to illustrate how national-level power circulates locally. To do so, it first illustrates the relationship between the paradox of restraint and militarized masculinities using the cases of Putin's Russia and Duterte's Philippines. It then turns to an in-depth case study of a local dispute between soldiers and civilians in Museveni's Uganda to trace how gendered local encounters facilitate the transmission of national-level authoritarian power into the lives of ordinary people.

scholarly journals Why Superman Will Not Save the World: Theorizing the Relationship Between Suffering and DC Comics Superman

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-137
Author(s):  
Kwasu Tembo
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
The World ◽  
Pure Altruism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The hypothesis that there is an inextricable link between comic book superheroes and suffering would, to anyone with a cursory knowledge of superhero characters found in DC, Marvel, Image, Wildstorm and other houses, and their histories, ostensibly seem valid. This validity depends on which character one is applying said hypothesis to; the psychological and physical suffering of a Batman being more acceptable as such than that of a Plastic Man, for example. However, using DC Comics character Superman as a case study, this paper explores the inextricable link between Otherness, power, and suffering within the remit of the character's mythos. In order to do so, this paper refers to psychoanalytic concepts elaborated by Sigmund Freud in his text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1922) as a way of demonstrating that despite the character's conventional appraisal as a positivist humanistic symbol of pure altruism, an insuperable, unimpeachable symbol of selflessness and good morality, there is in fact a fundamental link between Superman's 'tridentity' of selves (Clark Kent/Kal-El/Superman), the character's own suffering, and human suffering on a terrestrial scale, as represented within the numerous realities of the DC Comics Multiverse.

A Mathematical Formulation of the Dual Nature of Unproductive Labor

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 716-738
Author(s):  
Hyun Woong Park ◽  
Dong-Min Rieu
Keyword(s):  
Labor Supply ◽  
Mathematical Formulation ◽  
Optimal Size ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Exploitation Rate ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Novel Model ◽  
Value Creation Process ◽  
Do So

In this paper, we present a novel model that explicitly formalizes the dual nature of unproductive labor and derives the optimal size of the unproductive sector. Two sets of results emerge regarding the relationship between the unproductive sector and the profitability and accumulation of capital. First, when the unproductive sector does not make any contribution to improving the efficiency of productive labor’s value creation process, the unproductive sector will cease to exist. In this case, when the labor supply is flexible, profit continues to be produced although it is smaller than otherwise, as long as the exploitation rate is positive; in contrast, if the labor supply is fixed, the absence of the unproductive sector necessarily squeezes the exploitation rate to zero, consequently yielding zero profit. Second, when the labor supply is flexible, an economy can always rely on improving the efficiency of the unproductive sector to prevent economic stagnation and to enhance growth performance; however, when the labor supply is fixed, an economy can do so only when the wage rate is sufficiently high relative to the labor productivity conditions in the productive sector.

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