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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]

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]

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 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]

The 'smart city' has received growing attention as a concept that could play an essential role in the sustainability of the Arctic. Today, the idea is associated with information and communication technology (ICT) when used in urban areas to improve quality of life, offer more efficient and effective use of cities' infrastructures, foster social inclusion, and mitigate environmental harm. However, the relationship between smart cities and Arctic sustainability remains ambiguous, especially from perspectives beyond those of techno-optimism. Our aim in this paper is to critically discuss the value of smart city concept for Arctic cities, from an urban dynamic perspective. To this end, this paper reflects on how the sustainability of Arctic cities can be challenged by urban dynamics in metrics for (1) smart city development, (2) politics and bureaucratization, and (3) the role of citizens. The paper has several implications for academia, practitioners, and policymakers: for the former, it advances an alternative debate to explore the complex relations between smart city development and Arctic sustainability; for practitioners and policymakers, it indicates the problematic but often hidden side of smart city development, stressing the need to carefully translate the concept and its promises to fit the unique Arctic context. [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]

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]

This paper argues that the proposals for strengthening local political leadership outlined in the 2006 British government White Paper 'Strong and Prosperous Communities' are based on an unconvincing, methodologically flawed analysis of the benefits of strong individual leadership. The extent to which the continued dominance of the party group is inimical to the exercise of executive political leadership is analysed and a number of scenarios that highlight circumstances in which there is a mismatch between the party allegiance of the leader and the composition of the council are then put forward and the implications for 'strong' political leadership discussed. The conclusion emphasises the importance of a continuing role for local parties and party groups in the post-White Paper era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a 2020 disinformation campaign promoting the unsubstantiated claim that the novel coronavirus is the product of a Chinese bioweapons program. Exploiting a vulnerability in open-access scientific publishing, the campaign was based on papers posted to an online preprint repository designed to accelerate the diffusion of scientific knowledge. This provided the campaign with an air of scientific legitimacy, helped it reach millions of Americans, and muddied public discourse over the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This case study offers insights into the tactics and practices of media manipulation, the contested nature of modern epistemic systems, the interplay of technical and social systems, and the vulnerability of open systems to manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as they are to the events themselves, the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics have become central to academic research on the Games and their political, social, and cultural roles. And so the recent string of Olympic Games held in East Asia – two of them under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic – offer the opportunity to think both about region-specific meanings associated with these highly scripted affairs and about the ways they might destabilize broader judgments about the Olympics and their implications. This paper introduces the contributions to this special volume on the Opening Ceremonies at Asia's recent Olympic Games, aiming to draw attention not only to the specific contributions of each paper but also to the themes that they collectively engage. [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]

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]

The paper attempts to look at the factors leading to the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party which have not been taken up by the traditional political analysis. Making an ethnography of the Punjab assembly elections 2022 in the Malwa belt of Punjab, it chronicles the social and cultural impact of the farmer’s movement, particularly its far-reaching impact on changing the mood of the electorate. The paper also focuses on the novel digital election campaign which resulted in new election outcomes from the past trends and a massive victory for the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an analysis of the politics and temporality of infrastructure through a focus on the idea of a project. A project (noun) is an assemblage of expertise, labour, materials and resources. The development of a project to build a port, pipeline, a mine, or a hydropower plant entails the mobilization of ideas, finance, political support and the law, the containment of material forces, as well as the organization of expertise, resources and labour. To project is also a verb; to throw forwards or to imagine, visualize or speculate on a possible future, which may or may not be actualized in practice. Moreover, individual infrastructural projects are often built on the legacy of earlier projects and conceived as contributions to ambitious projections of the future – including modernization, socialism, development and state building. Our analysis of the politics and temporality of projects is both developed and illustrated through an account of infrastructural projects in the Republic of Georgia which are also understood as contributions to a larger project of transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy borrowing and policy travelling are words that are often used to mean the same process to different policy practitioners across the globe. Nevertheless, these ideas are also riddled with both ethical as well as political undertones, such that interchanging them becomes problematic. In reflecting on and responding to some of these debates, this paper begins to raise questions on the grounds upon which such policy moves may be ethically and politically suspect. The paper further notes that the discourse on policy moves, policy transfers and/or policy borrowing can be hegemonic, particularly when such a discourse assumes one party, the developed world, to be the source and originator of knowledge. The paper argues that the bottom line is a normal sharing of ideas and knowledge, the very mark of being human in globalised world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Experiences in the post-partition Indian subcontinent refute the conventional expectation that the ‘possession of citizenship enables the acquisition of documents certifying it’ [Jayal 2013. Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 71]. Instead, identity papers of various types play a vital part in certifying and authenticating claims to citizenship. This is particularly important in a context where the history of state formation, continuous migration flows and the rise of right-wing majoritarian politics has created an uncertain situation for individuals deemed to be on the ‘margins’ of the state. The papers that constitute this special issue bring together a range of disciplinary perspectives in order to investigate the history, politics and materiality of identity documents, and to dismantle citizenship as an absolute and fixed notion, seeking instead to theorise the very mutable ‘hierarchies’ and ‘degrees’ of citizenship. Collectively they offer a valuable lens onto how migrants, refugees and socio-economically marginal individuals negotiate their relationship with the state, both within South Asia and in South Asian diaspora communities. This introduction examines the wider context of the complex intersections between state-issued identity documents and the nature of citizenship and draws out cross-cutting themes across the papers in this collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan famously muddled through the 2020 Summer Olympics – triumphant as a host in that the Games were held, after a year-long delay, despite the global COVID-19 pandemic that had threatened to shutter the event entirely. The successes were qualified, with spectator-less matches and races leading to eerily quiet medals ceremonies, at least compared with normal years of cheering fans, enthusiasts, and tourists. Nowhere was the strangeness of the event more apparent than in the Opening Ceremony, filled with a combination of subdued but technologically adept spectacle, artistic representations of grief and loss, and the an unnervingly empty Olympic Stadium. This paper examines the politics of the Ceremony, and in particular the apparent early plans for a more standard, lightly nationalistic display of local history and culture, and toward a set of acknowledgments of a global crisis that transcended borders. In doing so, it calls attention to the complex political goals on display, as well as the challenges of benefiting politically from an event whose meaning in the midst of loss had been called broadly into question. Drawing from political science and literary theory, the paper emphasizes that while spectacle can matter, it risks, a dense environment of media reflection, being seen as little more than a gimmick. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is foundational to the way we see, feel, read, interpret and 'write' the landscapes; nevertheless, the learning processes behind these actions are not always explicit and subject to scrutiny. This short editorial, while presenting the six papers that compose this special issue on Landscape and Education, underlines the need of combining interdisciplinary viewpoints towards a greater understanding of the issues of power, access, participation and justice that are incorporated in landscape pedagogies. Being in a university context or within collaborative projects addressing citizens and students, as the papers in this issue reveal, the landscape can always be considered as an emancipatory tool and not merely as an object of learning. [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]

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]

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 purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a clarification of how 'education in a postliberal world' differs from the concept of 'postliberal education;' and second, to contribute to an understanding of the backlash against liberalism and liberal education in recent years. The paper is primarily conceptual and only secondarily descriptive in that it prioritizes the importance of clarifying the conceptual haze surrounding the notion of postliberalism and related terms (i.e. illiberalism, anti-liberalism); it is argued that this conceptualization is necessary as these concepts have different educational implications in different political contexts. The paper outlines a number of broad dimensions that are important to explore in future research on the entanglement between postliberalism and education; it also discusses how the concept of postliberalism could be used fruitfully to account for changes in education in ways that take into consideration the recent critiques against liberalism and liberal education. [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]

This article analyses different ways of perceiving sports based on the study of cinematographic documentary of the first Olympic Games. The aim is to explore the political discourses and aesthetic senses transmitted through images, studying footages from the beginning of the twentieth century until Berlin 1936, when the aestheticization process became analogous to the sportization process, as Norbert Elias pointed out. This 'movement-image'—as Gilles Deleuze named it—shows that a set of documentary Olympics footages, especially those produced since Saint Louis Games in 1904, projected meanings about the individual and collective body. The hypothesis is that historic filmed physical activities intended to educate through not only the gaze but also the gaze itself, to form ways of perceiving bodies and practices. The central focus of this paper argues that the informative cinema teaches through the exhibition of educated bodies, but also forms the sensitivity of the viewer perspective. In other words, it not only transmits ways of doing but also forms an ethos, to form ways of perceiving, to form ways of being sensitive. The aim of this study is to explore the political discourses and aesthetic senses transmitted through the Olympic images, which are often loaded with moralism and patriotism. This paper concludes with a conceptual counterpoint between Jacques Rancière and Walter Benjamin about technical reproducibility and political reproduction, considering the aesthetic-political tension that sports put into play. [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 explores why young Black South African men refuse low-wage jobs in a time of mass joblessness. Drawing on in-depth qualitative data from an informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the paper examines the work histories and social aspirations that underpin young men's decision to voluntarily quit low-wage employment. This inquiry is animated by a long history of urban young men rejecting the wage relation in favour of alternative livelihoods. It shows that the refusal of low-wage jobs is sustained by other forms of inequality and is closely entangled with race, gender and citizenship. The paper argues that the refusal of low-wage jobs is at once a critique of precariousness and racialized inequality, and a political demand for social and economic inclusion. In taking this demand seriously, the paper maintains that voluntary quitting is a relatively unrecognized form of worker resistance, with implications for how we understand labour market volatility, and the place of wage labour in South Africa's policy debates and politics. [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]

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]

People have different ways of developing knowledge about their 'selves', what has come to be called 'technologies'. Apart from technologies of production, of sign systems, and of power, the 'technology of the self' enables individuals to effect certain operations on their bodies, thoughts, behaviour, feelings and other ways of being. Such technologies involve the application of certain modes of training by individuals not only for the sake of acquiring skills but also for effecting change in their values, attitudes and beliefs. This paper argues that applied theatre practice involves not only the technology of the self but also of the other. Using the case study of a practice based project that was carried out among disabled students at the University of Zimbabwe, the paper examines how disabled students not only subverted ableist discourses of hopelessness but also acted upon their own bodies to assert their own agency, power and authority. Thus the focus will be specifically on the politics of the disabled body as a site of ableist perceptions that construct the disabled body in terms of lack, incapacity, pathology, deformity and deficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index rankings by the RSF, India ranks 161 out of 180 countries. One of the important indicators that the index bases the ranking on is the level of violence against the journalists and their overall safety. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government cracked down on the press by reprimanding any form of dissent regarding their policies. This has resulted in journalists from various parts of the country being arrested, detained, and harassed. The much-debated Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 and Disaster Management Act, 2005 were implemented to invoke curbs to contain the spread of coronavirus in India. The paper examines the consequences of the infodemic on the safety of journalists in the context of declining press freedom in the country in the context of the aforementioned acts. The analysis of cases focuses on highlighting how the laws introduced to "contain" the spread of the virus has been used as a tool to gatekeep the truth regarding the implementation of coronavirus policies by way of stifling the voice of journalists. The analysis reveals how various legal, political, and economic factors contribute to the lack of safety of journalists in the country. [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]

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]

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This paper draws on two current UK refugee resettlement schemes, the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) and Community Sponsorship, to consider the ways in which they borrow technologies from austerity and innovate "border-work". On the global level, the paper considers how VPRS outsources the UK's border management to UNHCR. On the national level, the paper considers how Community Sponsorship shifts the responsibility for the support of refugees from the state to local communities. Finally, on the local level, the paper discusses how the borrowed technologies between austerity and migration control (outsourcing, categorising, and individualizing responsibility) shape the experiences of social workers and migrants in a northern London borough. The paper contributes to understanding how the governmentalities of austerity and migration engage in shaping and re-shaping public space through the differential regulation of subjects who come to experience shared space in fundamentally different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on over three-years of fieldwork with a grassroots football initiative in inner-city Leeds, this paper highlights the different forms of pleasure experienced by forced migrant men within the space of the football sessions. The paper outlines how football can aid and instigate the experience of bodily, cognitive and social pleasures in spite of lives being heavily controlled by the sprawling nature of the UK border regime. Rather than isolating 'pleasure' as bodily sensation or mental stimulant, this paper moves these embodied feelings towards examining the social (in)significance of pleasures in the context of everyday lives of forced migrants. As a result, this research paper finds that these pleasures – whether bodily, cognitive, cathartic, convivial - act as a counter to the dehumanising effects of the UK asylum process by providing temporary moments of escape from pains from the past, anxieties of the present, and fears for the future. To this end, engaging in pleasure is seen here as a political act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature of fiscal federalism suggests two approaches to explaining the allocation of intergovernmental transfers. First, a normative approach that considers governments as benevolent social planners pursuing normative criteria of efficiency and equity; and second, a public choice approach assuming governments as self-maximizing actors who use intergovernmental transfers to purchase political capital, enhancing their chances of re-election. This paper seeks to test the hypotheses of these two approaches to explain the allocation of discretionary development budget among Afghan provinces during three fiscal years of 2016–17, 2017–18 and 2018–19. Findings indicate Afghanistan's central government's approach does not focus to achieve normative criteria of improved participation, predictability, transparency, and equity. Instead, Its central government considers certain political criteria such as political affiliation – ethnic affiliation and alignment with central government policies – political importance, and strength and weakness of local actors. This paper relies on both quantitative and qualitative data to support its arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the emotional governance of responses to terrorist attacks and examines the extent to which affective pedagogies in civic education may contest the emotional norms that are institutionalised in society. This analysis is important, not only because it makes visible how forms of violence (especially terrorism) have an emotional impact on school life, but also in that it adds a crucial dimension to the struggle against sentimental education as a form of political education that governs youth's affects and emotions. The analysis explores these tensions and theorises how affective pedagogies can elicit creative and productive rather than normative becomings within youth practices in the classroom. In particular, the paper discusses how affective pedagogies in civic education may be reframed to cultivate critical affective skills that resist sentimental responses and challenge superficial interpretations of terrorist events. Re-articulating and re-imagining affective responses to terrorist attacks in the civics classroom will open pedagogical spaces that pay more attention to the kind of emotional governance that takes place in schools, politics and the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's everyday lives are not just social and cultural environments, but also political arenas (Kallio and Häkli. 2011. 'Are there politics in childhood?' (Space & Polity 15 (1): 21–34, 2). A methodological approach is proposed that emphasizes young people's knowledge, while accepting the power and privilege of the researcher. By way of illustration, this paper demonstrates how an approach to co-creation of the method, inspired by the idea of a remix or a bricolage, can provide creative tasks as stimuli for the discussion of politics but also legitimizing mechanisms for young expertise and co-creation in the research site itself as a political arena. Specifically, this paper examines how young participants responded to a digital photography task by subverting the task itself, a process which allowed them to remix the model, making them simultaneously in control of the task and dependent upon it. This complex outcome was constructive as a way to stimulate participants as they explored their everyday lives as political arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the value of silence, located within liminal spaces in Sarnath Banerjee's Doab Dil (2019). Structured as an informal graphic essay, Doab Dil proffers ironic commentaries on nature, culture, cities, the countryside, history, fiction, work, sleep, insomnia, popular culture, and the quest for meaning in life. In the process, Doab Dil combines text and drawing to construct a postmodernist intertextual mural of juxtaposed quotations, descriptions, and metaphysical reflection on the values of contemporary culture. At the points of these juxtapositions, liminal spaces are created that are characterised by a dense silence. The centrality of the liminal in the creative imagination of Doab Dil is evident in the title that signposts the fertile tract of land found at the confluence of two rivers. Recollecting Homi Bhabha on the liminal as a horizon of possibilities, this paper explores the ways in which the poetic representation of liminality constructs political spaces of critique, which draw on the silence between confluent thoughts on diverse themes for critical reflection. Through literary criticism, the paper investigates the poetics and politics of possibilities in Doab Dil positioned within liminal spaces, and the role of silence as a representational strategy for a metaphysical commentary on reality. [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]

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 paper examines the tensions between education policy's attachment to notions such as excellence and inclusion and its investments in managerial tropes of competition, continuous quality improvement, standards and accountability that are at odds with and which undermine its attachments. In order to explore these tensions, I draw on the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy, explained through Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes wide shut. My argument is that while the individual and society are both constituted through unavoidable division, antagonism and opacity, these notions are obscured through the operations of fantasy which holds out the promise of wholeness, harmony and redemption. In particular, education serves as a key site in which these fantasmatic ideals are promoted and pursued, a claim I substantiate via an analysis of the UK government's 2016 White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere. Specifically, I read the White Paper in terms of five fantasies of: control; knowledge and reason; inclusion; productivity; and victimhood. My argument is that while fantasy is an inescapable element that inevitably structures what we take to be 'reality', education policy might strive to inhabit fantasy differently, thereby finding ways of escaping its current mode of seeing education with eyes wide shut. [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]

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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]

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]

This paper critically examines Pakistan's sports policy, from the design, development and delivery phases through to its public evaluation. In doing so, we identify and address the emerging trends and associated challenges facing sports organisations in a large politically unstable developing nation. Ten interviews and an analysis of over 15 policy documents, including annual reports, were conducted over the three-year period 2019–2021. This critical case study documents the sport-politics nexus in Pakistan, including the ongoing impact of the 2011 18th constitutional amendment on sport. The key conclusions from this study are that the development and delivery of sport policy, at both a domestic and international level, was negatively affected by administrative inefficiencies in organisational structures and the devolution of the Pakistan Sports Board. A lack of public and private sector investment and an unjust distribution of funds were also found to have hindered the nation's ability to use sport as a vehicle for socio-economic development and soft power projection. In sum, Pakistan's sports policy and underlying structures fall short of modern international sports requirements, and reform is strongly recommended. [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]