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The study presents a bibliometric network analysis of the two most recent schools reforms in Norway. Two research questions have been pursued: First, do the government-appointed expert commission use (in Green Papers) the same type of knowledge as 'evidence' for their reviews and recommendations as the Ministry of Education and Research (as reflected in the White Papers)? How has the use of 'evidence' changed over the two reform periods? Second, which body of knowledge amassed by the expert commission has the Ministry of Education and Science actually used for policy formulation? The network analysis shows (i) distinct changes in reference patterns over the two reform periods (e.g., average number of references more than doubled and references to international texts increased significantly), and (ii) an unexpectedly low usage of the 'evidence' presented by the expert commissions. The Ministry of Education and Research only draws on 9.5 percent of the references presented by the expert commissions. Strikingly, almost all of the adopted references are from a commissioned report that locally adapted and translated OECD's Definitions and Selections of Competencies project. The authors suggest 'studying up' and paying more attention to how scientific 'evidence' is actually used, translated, and edited at the political level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Images could be understood as a medium that does not only reflect and represent the socio-political dynamics but diffuses and perpetuates ideas and perceptions. Images, as an integral part of media, play a huge role in this dissemination through their framing, contents, signs, and symbols. In order to comprehend this power of photographs, the paper will look into the frames, as expounded by Judith Butler, which determine the visibility and invisibility of subjects in a photograph. This paper deals with the Assam Movement, which happened in Assam, a northeastern state of India, as a reaction to the migration from neighboring Bangladesh. The paper will also delve into how the newspapers, as a production of the class structure, impress upon the symbolic environment in which peoples' subjectivities are formulated. It is a study of how photographs published in newspapers can lay the foundations for the construction of an identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the intricate relationship between religio-political influence and its impact on social work in contemporary India. The escalating trends of majoritarianism, homogeneity, the instrumentalization of religion for political power, growing inequality, and the prevalence of caste-based violence have contributed to an alarming increase in intolerance among various religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups. These challenges, primarily driven by religio-political factions in India, pose significant obstacles to effective social work practice and intervention. The question arises: Can social work disentangle itself from religion and religio-political influence, or should a new narrative be developed within social work practice to address these concepts? This article underscores the pressing need for a fresh perspective that integrates religion, religiopolitics, and their influence on social work. New narrative can facilitate the development of effective strategies and interventions that mitigate the adverse effects of religio-political factions while promoting social justice and inclusivity. In conclusion, this paper emphasizes the necessity of reimagining the relationship between religion, religio-politics, and social work in India. Thus, social work can play a crucial role in fostering positive societal change, addressing inequality, and countering the rising tide of intolerance fueled by religio-political influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has made the development of a circular economy one of the central ambitions of its Green Deal, in which plastics are a defined priority. Current policies, however, have drawn criticism that the narrow focus on techno-innovation opportunities and economic growth falls short of addressing multifaceted socio-ecological challenges, overlooks trade-offs between proposed solutions, and conceals conflicts of interest among different actors. This paper contributes to opening-up the critical political debate on the circular plastics economy using discourse analysis. Looking at how arguments are framed, which priorities are defined, and how actors take positions, we identify three circular plastics economy discourses in Europe: 'Plastic fantastic' (material-focused), 'Circular economy will fly us to the moon' (plastics economy-focused), and 'Even plastic flowers are dead in this system' (socio-ecological systems-focused). Our paper demonstrates that the circular plastics economy is inherently political and is actively imagined, built, and created through discursive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the flexible boundaries of Early Modern Dutch print media and the practice of Early Modern publishers and collectors who combined printed images and texts to create historical narratives in accordance with their own beliefs. It takes as a case study one seventeenth-century Dutch Sammelband, or composite volume, that conveys an Orangist reading of the past and aspirations for the future through the purposeful arrangement of twenty-one printed images and texts about two statesmen: Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547-1619) and Johan de Witt (1625-72). The printed images, pamphlets, and broadsides contained in the Sammelband were published during two periods of intense political upheaval in the Dutch Republic, in 1618-19 and 1663-64. This article argues that the core of this Sammelband was a ready-made set of prints and pamphlets that Amsterdam printmaker and publisher Claes Jansz. Visscher bundled together in 1619 to capitalize on contemporary political conflicts and to shape viewers’ interpretations about the causes, remedies, and future implications of them. The Sammelband, like Visscher’s readymade bundles of prints and pamphlets, reveals how collections of Early Modern printed images and texts worked to control historical accounts, reinforce partisan points of view, and articulate political aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing policies have become increasingly regionalised but studies at sub-state levels are scarce and most research still focuses on the nation-state as the unit of analysis. This paper aims to address this gap by examining the development of regional housing policies in Spain. From an initial analysis of regional housing laws, three sub-state housing policy models were identified. Then, six case studies were examined to determine influencing factors and the relevance of regional political party positioning along centre-periphery and left-right cleavages. This research adds new information to the literature on the regionalisation of housing policies and provides insight about the role of subnational governments in generating alternatives to neoliberal housing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Density dominates current urban discussions, especially in light of still-developing understandings of Covid-19's impact on urban populations. This paper argues that critical scrutiny of visual representations of urban density is both missing from academic focus and critically important for understanding how perceptions of density are both created and reproduced. The political rhetoric of density shapes public perceptions as much as it responds to them, and scrutiny of visual density politics adds a new lens to critical density debates. This research takes the speculative imagery of imagined future density created for a public ballot referendum in Zurich, Switzerland as the main focus, and compares the verbal and written campaign rhetoric to the visual images produced as tools of public persuasion. By assessing the gap between what the campaigns claim and what the campaign imagery represents, the research finds embedded in conventional rhetoric a deep-seated and self-defeating assumption that the electorate unilaterally fears density and the changes it might bring. As a winning electoral strategy assuming fear of density worked; as a tool of persuasion it failed, and risks amplifying or creating the perception it assumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become common to attribute the growing frequency and severity of floods to climate change. But the factors behind flooding are many, and climate change often disappears from the equation at the local level. This study draws on interviews with key informants and community members and focus group discussions to explore the increasing incidence of flooding in two sub-districts in Eastern Thailand. To our surprise, there was little sense of community anger: flood risk had increased; the causes rooted in maladaptation linked to land conversion were recognised and uncontested; and injustice was palpable. But anger and resistance were muted. The paper seeks to make sense of this situation. Villagers accepted their complicity in creating the conditions for heightened flood risk through their willingness to sell their land for conversion. The disconnection between the identification of causality and the allocation of blame raises questions about how notions of environmental justice play out in places like Ban Thapma and Ban Nhonglalok, where justice and injustice do not fall equally across space and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Olympic Games of 1940 were due to be organized in Tokyo, Japan, but because of the Sino-Japanese war, the event was hastily re-scheduled to be organized in Helsinki, Finland. The Second World War however interrupted the preparations. Instead of 1940, the Games were organized in Helsinki in 1952. It thus became necessary to prepare twice for the same event. During the 12 years that had passed, the political situation had become significantly different, while also views concerning architecture and urban planning had changed. The postponed Helsinki Olympics represent an intriguing case in the history of Olympic Games, that has remained relatively little researched. This paper proposes that this 12-year 'Olympic gap' brings to view on one hand the need to prepare twice, and on the other hand, the processual, slow nature of building and planning, which continued almost uninterrupted. A close reading of period newspaper articles, history of urban planning and architecture, as well as studies of the Olympic Games reveals tensions between architecture, planning, and politics on local, national, and international level, as they unravel in the context of preparing for the Helsinki Olympics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with how Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments navigated the politics of household indebtedness in Turkey and utilized it towards the 2023 elections. It argues that household debt is a political tool with positive and negative consequences for incumbent governments. Households have been able to access debt instruments such as credit cards, consumer credit, car loans, and mortgages in Turkey since the onset of financialisation in the 2000s. AKP governments have benefited from the micro-level household wealth/debt accumulation as well as its macro-level economic implications for the construction-led, credit-dependent economic growth model. On the other hand, household debt has had destructive societal consequences such as bankruptcies, divorces, and suicides that became commonplace in the opposition narratives. Pinpointing the responsibility for indebtedness among households, financial system, regulatory agencies, and government, as well as devising policy solutions, has become a political struggle in the months leading up to the 2023 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The controversial district of Exarcheia in Athens has a long and turbulent history shaped by dissidence, persecution and marginalization that can be traced back to the Greek Civil war of 1946–1949. In this paper I focus on one of Exarcheia's quintessential characteristic, its weekly riots – colloquially referred to as ‘báhala’. Political, media and vernacular discourses have seen the báhala gradually entering the realm of the criminal and the banal, often regarded as apolitical, senseless acts of vandalism. Contributing to the need for a more nuanced study of resistance, this paper takes a de-pathologizing orientation towards street mobilizations in Exarcheia by placing them under a historicizing lens. It argues that despite their loss of vigour or momentum, their frequent demonization or trivialization, their potency remains intact for it is located in their very repetition; a repetition that renders them political performatives that teach participants the partisan logic of the streets and preserve the historical and ethical legacy of the Struggles of the Greek Left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion still has a great potential and perhaps even a monopoly on explaining life in terms of meaning and significance. In this paper, we argue that neither the development of science nor scientism poses a threat to religion. We suggest, however, that the political entanglement of religion may be a threat. In this paper, we discuss the paradoxical situation in which the political harm of religion is inextricably linked to its beneficial potential to give meaning and significance to life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Rush sheds light on the Japanese 'Nordic Turn' in the family policy, including a father-friendly parental leave scheme after the 2000s in his work published in 2015. Despite this and the Japanese Government's apparent desire to encourage fathers to take parental leave, the policy does not seem effective as in Nordic countries. This paper examines what makes Japan's statutory parental leave scheme difficult to work like the ones in Nordic countries by analyzing the process of the amendments of the leave scheme after the 2014 amendment. The study pays particular attention to the views expressed by the various actors involved in the law-making process on the issue of the inconsistency between bonus months, which is a father quota, and the special extension of parental leave in case of no childcare place, and how this was reflected in the final bill. The paper reveals that the process was not confined to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare but was heavily influenced by the work of the Cabinet Office, project teams of the ruling party, and private groups promoting work-life balance measures. Partly because of this, the Japanese parental leave system has diverged significantly from the Nordic and German systems to which it was originally referred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the exercise of the right to petition allows citizens to act politically? This paper looks at the practice of presenting institutional petitions to Moroccan municipalities since the inception of this right. It inquires on the ways in which citizens and associations employ petitions to engage with their local government. By discussing the diverse trajectories of citizens’ exercise of the right to petition, this paper will highlight the interdependence of depoliticization and (re-)politicization at the local level. It is based on extensive qualitative and quantitative research on municipal petitions, the process that led to their presentation and their outcome, conducted over 20-months of presence in the field (February 2020 – December 2021). Reviewing the outputs of the petitions presented in the city of Tangier, this paper shows that the performance of the right to petition entails both dynamics of top-down de-politicization and pathways for re-politicization of citizens’ action. Further, the institutionalization of the right to petition and the limits to initiatives’ implementation curtail the political relevance of engagement through petitions. At the same time, it challenges local power balances by creating a frame that allows for further political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the entanglements of art and terrorist violence in Paul Theroux'sThe Family Arsenaland Doris Lessing'sThe Good Terrorist, each of which responds to anxieties about the political power of the novelist in contradistinction with the terrorist-anxieties that Joseph Conrad raises but never fully settles inThe Secret Agent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses challenges inherent in disputes about the reconstruction of built heritage in Kosova, exploring justifications for approval or denial of permits for reconstruction at archaeological sites in the specific political context. To illustrate how standards and principles of conservation, and specifically, of reconstruction, affect decision-making, we present and discuss three sites. Thus, we contribute, through the Kosova experience, to international debate, both empirically and contextually, about the correlation of international standards and principles of conservation and reconstruction, and their impact and perception in the national context. The experience of Kosova shows that adherence to international cultural heritage principles, conventions and policies, within a highly politicized discourse of heritage, is paramount to ensure impartial heritage protection, especially in the rebuilding of ruins. Attempts to build new structures upon old ruins may potentially ignite political, ethnic and religious discord especially in societies where different communities claim heritage ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent progressive reappraisals of the enlightenment by Jonathan Israel and Rainer Forst, Voltaire figures as almost a reactionary thinker, opposing the radical dimensions of the enlightenment pushing forwards secularisation, democratisation, and toleration. Part 1 examines Israel's and Forst's accounts of Voltaire, showing their striking proximity. Part 2 is divided into the three subheadings of (i) Voltaire's deism, (ii) the pivotal subject of toleration, and (iii) the decisive question of what philosophical radicalism, in the direction of democratising reform, involves. At issue in Israel's and Forst's claims that Voltaire's deism represents a step backwards from Bayle's and Spinoza's more radical conceptions of reason and toleration, we will claim, is a shared, anachronistic failure to duly credit Voltaire's deism's distance from the revealed religions, and the radicalism of Voltaire's anti-clericism. In the key claim of the paper, however, we will argue that the larger issue in Israel's and Forst's positioning of Voltaire as almost reactionary are a deeper set of assumptions about how we should assess philosophical texts which aim to act in the world, and (evoking Feuerbach) to change it (2, iii). Both Israel and Forst, despite the former's extensive labours in contextualisation, read the texts of eighteenth century philosophers for their arguments alone, rather than as rhetorical and political acts and interventions which aimed to reach, entertain, and reform an expanding reading public through esprit, art, satire, and rhetoric, as well as by making argumentative contributions to the controversies of the day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'governance' is one of the most widely applied concepts in education policy and research. Yet its meaning has changed over space and time both analytically and normatively. This history is a complicated one marked by both shifts and continuations in the politics of language and the development of unique intellectual histories and conceptual and empirical turns in the field of education. In this paper we systematically delineate the different meanings ascribed to governance within education with a focus on its polyvalence as a political project, empirical object and research analytic. Specifically, we highlight the various complementarities and tensions flowing from this rich and evolving language. We conclude by calling for more education researchers to reflect on this complicated history and attendant language as part of their framings and interpretations of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected from 36 interviews with the police and their family members, the first author's insider perspective as a former police officer and the second author's lived experience of growing up in a police family, as well as media reports, this paper explores how work-family conflict plays out among rank-and-file police officers in China. We find that, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Chinese rank-and-file officers have been troubled by three dimensions of work-family conflict touching on professional habits, overtime work and working pressure. We argue that while the work-family conflict inflicted by professional encroachment may be common for police officers in all jurisdictions, the time-based and strain-based conflicts share unique political roots of self-sacrifice spirit advocated by the Chinese party-state. This study is not only one of the very first empirical studies on the work-family conflict among police officers in China but it also contributes to comparative policing studies by highlighting how politics in a particular country may affect the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R.W. Connell argues that masculinity is not a unitary phenomenon; rather, that masculinities emerge out of situationally specific choices drawn from a 'cultural repertoire' of so-called masculine behaviour that result in a particular 'configuration of practice'. Ben Lerner's novel The Topeka School (2019) calls attention to this process by focussing on the coding of particular speech-acts as masculine in the context of mid-nineties, small-town Kansas; moreover, he contextualises these particular speech-acts as the cultural precursors to the political rise of the alt-right, leading to Trump's presidency. In The Topeka School, then, speech-acts are not simply gendered but shown to have significant political ramifications. In this paper I argue that while Lerner dissects the genealogy of this particular construction of masculinity, he also presents alternative models of gendered speech-acts that subvert what Hélène Cixous calls the libidinal and cultural masculine economy, and that he explicitly links each of these models to the figure of the mother. Lerner thus suggests a gender-inclusive speaking-back against the dominant masculinist order, with the mother acting as a key locus of political dissent, resistance, and change – he suggests, too, what Connell would call a necessary reconfiguration of masculine practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs Michel Foucault's History of Sexuaity: Confessions of the Flesh to shed light on the perplexing phenomenon of vaccine (mandate) resistance. It argues that vaccine (mandate) resistance, while seemingly irresponsible and selfish, is entangled with the same modes of 'truth-telling' that have been part of the basic structure of modern Western governance for centuries. The paper begins by introducing the problem of vaccinate (mandate) resistance as a pedagogical problem for educators who want to teach social responsibility as informed by sound scientific knowledge and research. It then outlines the triad of knowledge/science, power/governance, and subjectivity/being at the heart of Foucault's research as a necessary frame for understanding the sociopolitical and historical entanglements of science in modern Western governance. Lastly, the paper traces Foucault's study of early Christian writers such as St. Augustine in terms of how they help establish basic practices of truth-telling that still impact how subjects relate to power today. The ultimate goal of the paper is to show how exploration of the social, historical, and political realities of science related issues are vital for understanding issues of collective existence today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Karapapaks were one of the less known native Turkish ethnic groups of the Transcaucasia, who overwhelmingly took refuge in the Ottoman and Qajar Empires in the late 1820s, after the expansion of Tsarist Russia into their homelands. This paper analyses how the literature regarding Karapapak movements and society was overwhelmingly shaped by selective, essentialist, and anachronistic approaches by some historians in Turkey and Iran. While the former determined that they were a loyal pro-Ottoman and pro-Sunni Karapapak society, the latter constructed an opposing pro-Iranian and pro-Shiite narrative. This paper deconstructs both approaches, and asserts that the collective ethnic and sectarian identities of this society played a secondary role in regards to influencing their cross-border movements. This paper argues that the approach of the current literature cannot explain this borderland society's perpetual, multiple and multi-directional cross-border movement. Instead, the Karapapaks often manoeuvred the frontiers of the empires, and defected to another empire when it was necessary to, first and foremost, satisfy the needs of their own society, over those of any imperial allies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated the relationship between Nigeria’s national questions and ethnic identity crises. The study employed a qualitative approach as its method of data gathering and analysis with the adoption of secondary sources. It contended that Nigeria’s political history is riddled with conflicts and instability occasioned by the crisis of identity which has jeopardised the country’s national unity and political integration. The paper concluded that ethnicity as a major sentiment causes social and political quagmires which constitutes serous national questions and further negatively influences development in Nigeria. As a result, this conundrum not only affects Nigerian national integration but also the level of harmony, patriotism and loyalty to the legitimacy of the Nigerian state. The paper recommended that, to stem the tide of ethnicity crises, there is the need to demystify and deconstruct ethnicity, regionalism and promote, through dogged political mobilisation and sensitisation, a sense of belonging among the diverse groups that constitute the Nigerian state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This publication is the executive summary of a white paper that Kansas City Consensus developed on the libraries of metropolitan Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas. The document analyzes the service issues, costs, and political issues that face the KC libraries if and when they consider consolidation or more extensive collaborative arrangements than they now have in place. Librarian readers will find many issues that will face them if they attempt consolidation or more extensive collaboration. The localism that is the basis of so much in public library tradition is examined as a weakness and as a strength. The executive summary of the report is followed by a statement that explains the perspective and work of the Kansas City Consensus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalysis has traditionally overlooked the fact that unsuitable and damaging life conditions, originating in the social milieu, play a part in the pathogenesis of emotional suffering and mental disorders. Nonetheless, the self establishes an object relation with the social system, as well as with the non-human environment. This is expected to act as a container–contained relationship. Whenever the community and its institutions fail to act as a container for individuals and groups, this generates a trauma, which can be compared with the baby's experience of a failure in mothering. Such failures can be classified in several categories. The first is when the social system fails to contain, nurture, care for, and protect individuals, as in the case of the lack of assistance and compassion towards the victims of poverty, disease, natural catastrophe, social turmoil, economic crisis, violence, or war. The second category occurs when there is a blatant attack, on the part of the authorities or privileged social groups, on minorities, or even on the bulk of the population, as in the case of social repression, war—both internal and external—racism, genocide, or persecution. The third is when there is a perversion of the social system, which feigns to uphold current social values and laws while actually breaking them, as in the case of corruption, chicanery, and mendacity on the part of the authorities. One recent example of this is the impeachment process against the Chief of Government of Mexico City. The author approaches this problem by exploring the consequences of such experiences for the development and functioning of personality structure and personal relations, as well as their repercussions for individuals living together in the community and for the necessary relation between them and the authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs an explorative case study methodology, which utilises interviews, historical analysis and observations to identify and analyse the local powers and politics that influence large-scale mining development in developing societies. It uses the Trident Mine Project in Kalumbila in rural North-Western Zambia as a case study. The Trident Project comprises an existing copper mining/processing operation at Sentinel Mine and a nickel mining development project at Enterprise Mine. It is owned by Kalumbila Minerals Ltd, a subsidiary of the Canadian-listed metal and mining company First Quantum Minerals Ltd. Situated on land previously managed under customary tenure, the Trident Project presents a useful case study to explore the tensions and contradictions that arose in this large-scale mining development. The findings reveal how several local actors influence large-scale mining and the nature and direction of the mining-induced socio-economic benefits. This implies that the state is not limited to a duality (civil and customary powers) of the type identified by Mahmood Mamdani. Instead, the paper explores several public and 'private' power poles that often function as a fractured state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories and storytelling about language initiatives are an important political device in constructing and perpetuating language status planning and policies. However, little attention has been given to meta-discursive practices by institutions about Indigenous language revitalization in the U.S. as well as how music can play important roles in storytelling of Indigenous language initiatives by Indigenous storytellers and performers. In this paper, we problematize congressional discursive practices about Indigenous languages and show how "damage-centered" (Tuck, Eve. 2009. "Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities." Harvard Educational Review 79 (3): 409–427.) storytelling attempts to normalize and justify problematic federal language status planning and policies on Indigenous language initiatives. In contrast, we highlight how Indigenous storytellers and performers creatively tell stories about themselves and their languages both with and through music at federal events that concern Indigenous language revitalization. We show how musicking in relation to or as a form of storytelling can help dispel damaging outsider misconceptions, uplift Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies by Indigenizing time and space, and (re)claim self representation. We suggest that storytelling with music can be a possible strategy to affirm Indigenous storytelling sovereignty that can also disrupt damaging language status planning and policies that attempt to govern Indigenous language initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that the Leviathan frontispiece offers a visual summary of the contents of the work is widespread. However, the analysis of the frontispiece often under-explores Leviathan's text or leaves certain iconographic elements aside. In discussions of the Scholastics 'Dilemma' emblem, for instance, the image is commonly reduced to a representation of 'logic' or 'scholasticism', leaving aside the intricate interrelationship between the objects present in the image and their connection with the content of the book. This paper argues that this image helps understanding Hobbes' critique of Scholastic doctrines and their political effects in Leviathan. For Hobbes, these supposedly pure philosophical concepts either in logic (trident of the 'Syllogism') or metaphysics ('Real/Intentional' bident) hide a central part of Scholastic thought: a 'seditious' political conception claiming that the Pope has an indirect right to temporal power in affairs concerning spiritual matters theory ('Spiritual/Temporal' and 'Direct/Indirect' bidents). The Scholastic model made the common people believe that the Pope would have at least as much authority as the Sovereign. When faced with the choice between obeying either the Pope or their Civil Sovereign the subjects would find themselves in a dangerous 'Dilemma'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a critical ethnography of literacy practices experienced by a group of university students, who perceived them as promoting social exclusion in the Colombian educational system. It also gives an account of their views about how this educational system could be more inclusive and contribute to peacebuilding in the country. Inspired by Paulo Freire's understanding of literacy and Hannah Arendt's political theory, the meaning reconstructive analysis of 46 stories reveals a thematic universe composed of three main categories: understandings of social exclusion from schooling experiences, types of social exclusion as lived in schooling, and social exclusion-related factors of literacy practices. Based on two discussion groups, and an analysis in the light of the theory of practice architectures, it is argued and empirically substantiated that ethical literacy, as a way of being-with-others, is a practice that must be at the core of an education for peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the 2022 general elections in Papua New Guinea, covering both electoral quality and election outcomes. Overall, the 2022 elections were very troubled. In parts of the country, serious violence and electoral fraud were major issues. In other parts of the country, polling was less fraught. However, some problems, such as the roll, were serious almost everywhere. In terms of election outcomes, one outcome – only two women won seats – was predictable. However, the election brought puzzling results too: in particular, incumbents were re-elected at the highest rate ever. And the largest party won a larger share of seats than has been the case in any election since 1982. Neither of the latter two results appear to have been a direct product of electoral fraud. Rather, the party outcome stems from a turn-of-the-millennium rule change. High incumbent re-election rates remain a genuine puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the New Year messages delivered by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and his mandate as chief of state (1937–1974) from a paremiological perspective to determine the frequency of use of proverbs in them and establish the characteristics and purpose of these paremiological uses in relation to the principles of the "National Movement," the socio-political framework enforced by the francoist-regime. Although Franco's speeches do not show a strong stylistic awareness, paremias find their way into them, usually as allusions to proverbial wisdom. In relation to this, some recurring items and themes have been found, among which, those with a religious origin or motivation stand out as the most frequent. This is coherent with the ideals that his regime imposed on the Spanish population during his rule and which will be commented on in relation to the paremias used and how they reflect those ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, key findings are presented from an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project that investigated the geographies, mobilities and politics for disabled people who roll powered assisted devices (wheelchairs and mobility scooters). We offer a spatial framework to think about the politics of exclusion/inclusion from public space along three dimensions: as a distributed institutional decision-making process, as personal, and as an event/journey. We recruited 68 disabled people to collaborate in a multi-stage, mixed-method qualitative project from 2020–2022. Four themes emerged from our thematic analysis of everyday power-assisted device practices that offer insights to what enables or constrains access to public space: the desire for social connections and independence, normative assumptions of standing design, the built form when going places (steps, gutters and stairs) alongside the interdependencies of various care and transport networks. We point to the implications for policy, planning and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychotherapy is an art: for many practitioners this claim has considerable appeal. My intention here is not to merely defend the claim, but to see how far it can go. To vaguely endorse it feels apologetic; it also implies a facile polarization between art and science – between a (preferred) subjective, qualitative dimension, and a seemingly objective and quantitative domain. It would be wrong to bring art into the equation without some appreciation of the aesthetic experience. In relation to therapy, this requires developing a better grasp of the craft of therapy – of its imaginative response to the sheer elusiveness of mental distress. aesthetics. Psychotherapy is also a form of political praxis. Some practitioners – myself included – would support that claim. Can psychotherapy become a praxis? Can it be, in other words, linked to action, and as such become a political force in the wider, transformational sense of the term? These are among the questions explored in the second part of the current paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many areas of public health, sexual and reproductive health is concerned with politically contentious matters such as abortion and LGBT+ rights. Global setbacks at the hands of the far right highlight the extent to which the rights and practices underpinning sexual and reproductive health are politically mediated. Yet the political is often occluded in mainstream sexual and reproductive health responses. In this paper, I consider the recent travails of sexual and reproductive health in order to critique technocratic knowledge forms that dominate both sexual and reproductive health and public health responses. Exploring sexual and reproductive health responses across time and space, I identify alternative knowledge forms and approaches relevant to public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on 'diaspora at home', a concept that encapsulates the unique dynamics between Hong Kong and mainland China, as an analytical tool to explore the cross-border experiences of 23 Hong Kong students at 11 universities in mainland China. It empirically ascertains how the made and imposed claims and identifications of these Hong Kong students resulted in inclusion and exclusion as their interactions with their mainland peers and institutions deepened. Specifically, it highlights how their 'diaspora at home' status offered exclusive access to privileged higher education opportunities, preferential treatments and opportunities for upward social mobility. Meanwhile, such a status also resulted in an overwhelming sense of political liability as they unwittingly became 'political tokens' and suspected political subjects amid the increasingly tense political atmosphere between mainland China and Hong Kong. This paper pinpoints the relevance of class and politics in understanding how diasporic groups engage with higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can policy process research help to address policy and policymaking problems? This special edition of the Journal of European Public Policy seeks to address that question by examining the theory and practice of policy analysis. The call for papers sought state of the art articles that conceptualise the politics of policy analysis, and empirical studies that use theoretical insights to analyse and address real world problems. Contributions could draw on mainstream policy theories to explain how policymaking works, and/ or critical approaches that identify and challenge inequalities of power. This introduction shows why such perspectives matter, and how they contribute to a full examination of policy analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role that guilt plays in Australia's construction of its outsiders by focusing on contemporary migrant experience. I build upon Sarah Ahmed's work on the politics of emotion to read migrant interviews in relation to media: films, political speeches, and other discursive structures that facilitate social organization in Australia. In the first part of this paper, I argue that a 'multicultural narrative' positions the nation as a 'happy home,' and examine how this can displace feelings of guilt in the migrant by rendering possible social transgressions positive steps towards attaining a greater social good. In the second section of this paper, I discuss Australia's 'hatred narratives.' I do not define hatred as a necessarily aggressive emotion, but instead, demonstrate the way particular words can be affectively charged because of the histories they invoke, and show how this affect can be mobilized to create outsiders who are not welcome in the national imaginary and Australian society. These narratives however, are not fixed: political parties can appeal to tropes that have accumulated in affective value – such as the 'home' – in order to achieve different political goals, and to organize social groups by aligning individuals with or against affectively charged objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This predominantly conceptual paper explores "uncertainty": it foregrounds students engaged with climate change, in all its socio-political and more-than-human complexity, as political subjects within and beyond the school. It combines conceptual work on Rancièrian political philosophy with empirical work on teaching climate change in a range of schools in the Southeast of England. The paper makes the case for the educational importance of engaging with a Rancièrian logic of politics as a democratic mode of twenty-first century existential engagement. This takes seriously citizenship as a dynamic of schooling, which occurs through momentary rupture that can never be fully pre-determined or foreclosed. The paper applies ideas of a "thing-centred pedagogy" to pay deep attention to the unbounded subject matter of climate change. It explores how such an approach opens the scope of engaging with issues of adapting to, and living with, the ontological uncertainties of human-induced climate change, including the tensions and complexities of how to act within and beyond the school. This includes political subjectification as transformation, by which students (and teachers) take up their freedom to act. The paper integrates interviews with nine teaching staff working with students aged between 4–18 years-of-age, including in local authority controlled schools, academies and the private sector. While the fieldwork was conducted in England, its conceptual emphasis has international relevance, focusing as it does on a politics of schooling for global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the connection between politics and public space at a time when photography and the new media have put the classical distinction between the public and the private into question. My focus is on the body which, according to Hannah Arendt and the classical philosophers, is the most private thing there is. Drawing on the work of Weimar photojournalist Erich Salomon -- who was among the first to infiltrate the spaces where political talks were held and decisions taken -- I argue for an understanding of the body as an aesthetic object and a site where public and private criss-cross and intersect. The body in photography leads me to the final part of the paper where I trace the figuring of the body in the texts of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, and argue that far from being a recent phenomenon, the aestheticisation of politics is already at work in the tradition that celebrates deliberation and the public use of reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although palm oil production and commoditisation has grown tremendously over the years, issues of deforestation, exploitation of locals, limited access to palm oil markets, administrative costs, land rights, and continued loss of natural capital (ecological resources) continue to obscure its contribution to sustainable development in rural areas. Amid these tensions, smallholder farming enterprises have been identified as key to reducing poverty and erosion of natural capital. A key challenge is how to balance the needs of small farmers, palm oil producers, and local communities without compromising ecological resources. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper examined the politics of palm oil and its impact on poverty alleviation efforts in Rumonge District, Burundi. Survey respondents included 100 farmers and 300 stakeholders purposively selected from the local palm oil sector. Findings revealed that farmers' contribution to poverty alleviation and nature conservation efforts is constrained by power relations, land tenure insecurity, inadequate support systems, and limited access to financial and technological resources. The paper contributes to development literature by contextualising the sociopolitical dynamics affecting small farmers' contribution to livelihoods and natural capital. The paper recommends a phased approach to transform and integrate smallholder farming as part of agrarian reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sound has been theorised for its functional role as informative agent in political advocacy and participation in political studies, yet the investigation on the pedagogical potential has been largely absent. This paper examines the pedagogical impact and educational affordances of sound through a case study of the political struggles in post-colonial Hong Kong. Among the series of large-scale disputes, the use of sound is multifaceted and has invited knowledge through different means including social media sonification, practices of sound as protesting tactics, and the alternative position, representation, facilitate understanding and learning of sound within the postcolonial framework. These sonic practices revealed the educational affordances of sound that goes beyond the conventional function to transfer knowledge and information, serving as a catalyst to sustain political resistance and make available the opportunity to learn through participatory studies and reflective practices. Within the postcolonial Hong Kong context, sound extends the political confrontation to the non-physical and affective space, where the listeners can afford to recognise and engage in the actualisation of sound. It also unfolded social discourses that characterised the postcoloniality of Hong Kong and revealed the evolving power relation among citizens and authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Montana has long been known for the big game hunting opportunities it provides both residents and nonresidents. This may change in the future, as the state confronts a number of challenging issues that pose a serious threat to its long-standing hunting culture. This paper examines key changes that have occurred in recent years involving population and technology, landownership and access, and politics and license allocation. The potential impacts of these issues on the hunting experience are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Hannah Arendt's account of the relationship between politics and morality. Many critics have argued that Arendt's conception of political action lacks any moral foundations, while others have tried to focus on her understanding of thinking as a normative source of her ethics. In contrast to these views, I present an alternative explanation and argue that the sources of Arendt's political ethics are located neither in the faculty of thinking nor in extrapolitical moral norms or rules, but in the ontological conditions of action, specifically worldliness, natality and plurality. This interpretation allows us to make sense of Arendt's fragmented, unsystematic accounts of the various virtues and moral dispositions required for authentic politics: courage, responsibility, care, respect, moderation, solidarity and gratitude. In particular, an inquiry into the ontological sources of political ethics provides a solid normative grounding for the two moral dispositions—promise and forgiveness—that form an explicit "moral code" of political action for Arendt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines 59 online articles written about a photograph of Nancy Pelosi standing up in the White House cabinet room and pointing her finger toward Donald Trump. Trump released the photo and tweeted his own interpretation of it; online articles followed discussing descriptions and/or interpretations of the image and the surrounding events. This paper focuses on how the media discourse of this moment reflects views about the expression of power in politics, its tie to emotion and emotionality, and its sometimes subtle connection with gender. Analysis of the articles showed that the media interpreted the nonverbal cues in the photograph as reflective of individual power displays, relative power as enacted through dominance and submissiveness nonverbal cues, and changing relative power through one person's nonverbal cues lowering another's apparent power position. It also reflected an existing cultural belief that emotionality and power are generally inconsistent in politics, with some exemptions for anger displays, and the particular challenges of emotional display for women in politics. In doing so, the media coverage continued its masculinization of the political sphere in less visible ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the larger experience of urbanisation in two villages in Delhi, in particular the changing political and social life of these villages. Based on field research conducted between 2017 and 2019, it aims to explore the associational life of the villages and the ways in which traditional and newer forms of association and governance interact with each other and the state. In the new landscape, where panchayats operate alongside resident welfare associations and youth-led self-help organisations, a multiplicity of 'political' and 'associational' strategies have been adopted, with the invocation of terms such as 'social work' alongside an older invocation of biradari or community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to understand education in light of the complex multiethnic relationships and politics prevailing in the state of Manipur. With the sustained tension between the Nagas, Kukis, and Meiteis over the matter of identity, education in the state remains massively divided along ethnic lines. That said, the Meiteis, as the ethnic majority, have been systematically influential in prioritising their identity and development in education, as its control remains in their purview. The subsequent claim and counterclaim regarding the imposition of the dominant Meitei language and culture in the school curriculum have further worsened the ethnic relationship. Consequently, the perceived sense of alienation by the tribal minorities in this sense has added to their sectarian aspirations and detachment from the state. Thus, through fieldwork and a review of literature, this paper presents the various discourses concerning the complex tussle over the control of resources and governance in the education system of Manipur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether interreligious dialogue (IRD) is employed by state actors that may be perceived as authoritarian as a form of window dressing, or dialogue washing. Two examples are chosen, the King Abdullah International Centre for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue (KAICIID), and Singapore's International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS). It is argued that such examples exemplify IRD as track 1.5 diplomacy, and the context means they veer towards performing dialogue as social cohesion. While criticisms of each are raised, it is argued that the accusation of dialogue-washing is unfounded and that useful IRD, social cohesion, or peacebuilding work emerges from each which accords with the interests of the countries involved and aligns with the nature of IRD under track 1.5 diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corresponding to the party-state's expressed ambition to build a just society, Chinese citizenship education involves educating students for social justice. This paper critically examines the discursive subject of social justice in official citizenship education by analyzing school textbooks and interviewing schoolteachers. It sheds light on the discursive construction of social justice primarily through narratives of justice rather than injustice. Drawing upon the notion that injustice is distinct from and has priority over justice in moral and political philosophy and social theory, this paper argues that the positive discursive construction of social justice enables the party-state to manipulate social consensus and manufacture depoliticized, individualized and authoritarian citizenship. Seeing the lack of opportunity to teach and learn social injustice as epistemic injustice in itself, the paper suggests that education for social justice should be oriented as education against social injustice in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2020 was accompanied by a new apocalyptic zeitgeist. After the COVID-19 pandemic shattered lifeworlds in many societies around the world, it seemed easy to imagine it to be the end of the world. No image was more evocative of this moment than that of the empty city. Due to the various lockdowns implemented in numerous countries, images of empty cities spread across the media. This paper investigates this image by emphasising the political implications of the apocalyptic imagination. By focusing on those who remain in the public space after the city was emptied, this paper questions whether the image of the empty city simply fuels the fantasies of 'urban exploration', as critiques have stated, or if it, rather, paves the way for an open view of the inequalities produced by urban societies today. Therefore, the paper stresses that the remaining people we see in the images of emptied public spaces are mainly those who either have no home to stay inside or work for those who stay inside. Subsequently, it investigates the particular qualities of public spaces pictured during the lockdowns. Imagining cities as empty has been vehemently criticised through the notion of 'ruin porn'. In contrast to this critique, the paper emphasises that the image of the empty city allows us to see the city with 'inhuman' eyes, which leads to a shift in perspective through recognising how little public space is still available when it no longer functions under the imperative of the pre-pandemic status quo. In concluding, the paper reflects on the subversive, or 'emancipatory', potential of witnessing the urban void opened up by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative explication of selected online Zimbabwean comedies as satire. It pursues the revolutionary character of the comedies against an increasingly limiting and impoverishing politico-economic environment. In our rendition, we depart from the general and simplistic thinking that comedy is solely for entertainment's sake to view it as a puissant genre of art that is deployed not only to articulate big national issues but revolutionise consciousness given the danger of pacifying the people that goes along with oppression. The paper pursues the revolutionary agenda in the comedies as the comedians are inadvertently committed to the search for a breakthrough against a limiting and impoverishing politico-economic environment. Emerging out of this elucidation of comedies is that steeped in the comedies, is a sharp sense of resistance against oppression as well as an intense interest in liberating reflection and struggle. The centrepiece of the article is to comparatively engage Pepukai Zvemhari's 'Border phobia' and Prosper Ngomashi's 'Pastor and his wives' against the keen interest in lampooning those in charge of the affairs of the state for breeding trepidation and social phobia among the masses while on their part, life is decorated with profligacy and self-aggrandizement. The two comic skirts perfectly fall into the category of revolutionary art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]