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This article sets out the findings of a systematic review on research into career guidance policy in the Nordic countries between 2008 and 2022. In total 60 papers were reviewed from across the Nordic region. They focused on national career guidance systems, career guidance systems for young people, the adult guidance system and career guidance for migrants. The corpus proved to be methodologically diverse with studies utilizing a wide range of different research strategies, although important differences were found between academic and grey literature. Most of the papers reviewed were atheoretical, with the remaining, mainly academic, literature drawing heavily on critical theory. The thematic analysis identified four major themes in the corpus: the context for career guidance policy; career guidance provision and practice; technologies of governance; and beneficiaries and outcomes of career guidance policies. The findings are discussed in relation to the strengths and weakness of the corpus and used to propose a research programme for the next 15 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develop its own philosophy of digital technologies. The first half of this paper turns to Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman's theory of the American agitator as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of fascist projection and paranoia to provide groundwork for this project. Though written in the 1940s, Frankfurt School essays on agitation and projection can be thought of as early indications of the importance of affect in fascist politics, which has only become intensified with the advent of digital media. The paper then proceeds to apply a critical concept of "agitational aesthetics" to chan culture in the present day, highlighting the affective economy of memes in the radicalization process. In conclusion, a series of questions are posed to educators to help them think through the complexities of intervening before, during, and after the online agitation of proto-fascist tendencies in youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for a maritime turn in critical heritage theory. Drawing on recent work on ocean and maritime ontologies, it takes up the idea of the 'ocean in excess' to argue for a maritime imagination that overcomes the separation of land from water, culture from nature. The paper begins by sketching out the terracentric norms that have come to underpin critical theory around cultural heritage. From there, recent insights on ocean ontologies are cited to show how they can open up new ways of thinking about existing strands of critical heritage work. The second half of the paper turns to the issue of ocean governance and the complex politics that arise from competing ontologies. This provides the foundation for a discussion of the transoceanic heritage discourses that are now emerging, as countries seek regional, come global influence in world affairs. Understanding these and other developments requires moving beyond the earthly, such that we more robustly engage with a multivalent heritage politics that operates across air, water and land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores hope as a dominant framing for critical social theory in the era of the Anthropocene. It suggests that with the dissolution of modernist assumptions of human exceptionality, universal causality and temporal progress, critical social theory can be understood as having shifted fields. This shift is from the field of the seen – the field of appearances (i.e. the world of politics, of rational subjects, instrumental rationality and aspirations of progress) – to the field of the unseen (towards approaches which can be understood as working with or drawing upon a world which is beyond or below appearances). It will be argued that the Anthropocene is central to this shift from the centrality of questions of transparency and of politics to those of opacity and hope. This is in part because the Anthropocene is seen to have emerged behind the backs of political reason, unseen and unintended. If the Anthropocene as a condition is the product of taking a narrow reductive approach to the world, as framed in the modern ontology, then access to the unseen world becomes a necessity. The different forms of hope engaged with in this paper articulate distinct understandings of this 'other world' beyond appearances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will briefly introduce the traditional disability studies project through the social model of disability and how its inherent theoretical limitations became the impetus to perpetuate a need to adopt critical disability theory (CDT) to expand the intellectual arsenal of the discipline. Being a reflexive inquiry that resists domination that oppresses people with disabilities, CDT's reach produced work in conversation with other areas of critical social thought and inspired this paper to explore how post-colonial work – particularly Homi Bhabha's hybridity theory – can be incorporated into CDT's paradigmatic views of power. This paper concludes by addressing some of the debates and cultural implications that stem from conceptually merging CDT and post-colonial hybridity theory to frame how it can reimagine the possibilities and trajectories of a global disability movement. Points of interest: This article addresses the two main ideas in disability studies, starting with the social model of disability, which helped put forth critical disability theory. Critical disability theory suggests that people with disabilities are controlled by others using the idea of 'impairment' to justify their power. The article suggests that critical disability theory can benefit from an approach called post-colonial hybridity, which combines global North and South ideas to help represent people with disabilities in the Southern part of the world. The article also concludes by exemplifying how mental health and traditional healing practices are combined to support well-being. The authors encourage people studying disability to listen to different voices worldwide to understand how the world is changing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a qualitative research project examining the dating narratives of single migrant men residing in Sweden and Italy. The study, analyzing 48 interviews with individuals from Syrian, Polish, Bangladeshi and Romanian backgrounds, along with ethnographic observations, employs a theoretical framework rooted in sexual capital theory and critical studies on men and masculinities. The analysis sheds light on the challenges faced by heterosexual single migrant men in their pursuit of intimate partners, attributing these difficulties to lower levels of social, economic and cultural capital, as well as the influence of their specific masculinities, which may be perceived as less attractive within the host societies. The paper argues that the migrant experience can be viewed as a distinctive sexual field wherein individuals encounter unique dynamics and obstacles in the realm of intimate relationships. The implications of these findings extend beyond the personal experiences of migrant men, offering insights into the broader socio-cultural landscape of host societies and the complex interplay between migration, masculinity and intimate relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is facing increasing crises such as climate, inequality and disease, which are set to impact student futures in devastating ways. Without a change in the way citizens think at the ballot box and the supermarket, these crises indicate an intensification of global disaster with very real consequences. This paper deploys critical theory in order to examine the efficacy of Educational Leadership in the 21st Century. It finds that the crises facing the planet are due to a domination of knowledges serving system-interests detrimental to the survival and happiness of the many. Despite such dismal outlooks, educational leadership is potentially highly influential and represents hope. It is ideally placed to facilitate the global mindedness and intersubjectivity required for future citizens to collectively tackle planetary problems. Despite the potential of educators to create change, this paper finds educational leadership thinking to be rooted in the system-world, producing, and demanding strategic action in line with post-Comptian positivism. This advances a focus upon external goods and a blindness toward its own advantage. Educational leadership requires an urgent change in thinking: one that embraces a critical hygiene of intersubjectivity, global mindedness, and communicative action, reimagining educational leadership as social practice in an interdependent world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applied the philosophical theory of critical realism to the problem of evil. Using the method of critical analysis of related literature, the paper discovered, among other things, that existing theodicies that are responses to the problem of evil can broadly be categorized into the compatibility thesis and the incompatibility thesis, respectively; and that the relevance of critical realism for the problem of evil lies in preserving a logical gap between the idea of the nature of 'God as He really is, and how He is conceptualized or described by human theodicies'. The paper argued that whereas the thesis of the non-observability of the nature of God as He really is, independent of human cognition, conforms to critical realism, the non-observability of the omnibus does not. And to accommodate this, the novel concept of critical theism is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe incredible mobilisation to welcome Ukrainian refugees following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 demonstrated how housing is an affective sociomaterial infrastructure. In cruel contrast, such mobilisation also exposed the inherently racist and colonial face of accommodating refugees and migrants, and the structural inequalities that racial capitalism continues to reproduce. Drawing reflections across several geographies and temporalities through illustrative vignettes, this paper begs the questions under what conditions do we accept that some people are housed, others not? What kind of power structures allow certain bodies to be welcomed? This paper borrows from postcolonial, black and critical theory to examine refugee housing through the lens of necropolitical infrastructure. It connects Mbembe’s notion of necropower with Power and Mee’s notion of housing as infrastructure of care, and filters this through reflections across Calais, Brescia and Athens, to illustrate the bio- and necropolitical side of the refugee housing infrastructure in Europe. The paper ultimately argues that refugee housing, because it is an infrastructure and because it is part of the broader extractive and exploitative system of (humanitarian) care, is deeply imbricated in the production of racialised subjects. Specifically, it is complicit with the extraction, (re)incorporation, abandonment and slow death of Black and Brown refugee lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a sceptical look at the treatment of connected practices of commodification and consumption in some exemplary works of mainstream critical social theory that seek to identify cross-contextual historical logics linking economic action to socio-political life. Drawing on situated research from South and southern Africa that helps to complicate our understanding of these links, it argues that many influential claims in the mainstream critical literature remain poorly substantiated and pass silently over vast provinces of complex, situated thought and action. When analysing how markets function, recurrent critical tropes of highly manipulable consumer desire suffer from a tendency to argue by simple fiat, while also abstracting out the historically shifting forms of moral and legal regulation mediating commodification and consumption on most real-world markets. This paper also makes a case for greater scepticism towards categorical associations between market action and the reproduction of socio-political dispositions of power. Consumer behaviour undeniably can shore up distinction and domination, but it has often also been observed to tamper with them by indirect means, while concentrated consumer initiatives in the form of boycotts remain an under-theorised and largely forgotten form of resistance within mainstream critical social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on feminist and critical theories of politics and emotions, this paper attends to the hegemony of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for multiply-marginalized students and explores what exemplary Young Adult (YA) novels can teach scholars, educators, and students about the productive use of anger in the face of injustice. Two acclaimed young adult novels are examined using Critical Content Analysis to illustrate the potential for using such books to critically discuss what anger does in the face of injustice related to race and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of 'feminist' sexual- and gender-based violence (SGBV) policies have produced limited change in southern African SGBV rates. Recent critiques highlight ongoing colonial legacies in such policymaking, arguing that these legacies limit the potential for liberatory change. Further, reflecting on such discourses can highlight reasons behind global public health intervention failure. To promote reflexivity among public health actors who create, reproduce, and implement SGBV policies, this paper presents a critical discourse analysis of how women's empowerment is constructed in foundational global and national health and development policies bearing on SGBV in Zambia. The analysis identifies neoliberal feminist discourses of empowerment: (i) the protection of women, which perpetuates a saviour complex; (ii) the promotion of equality to men, which excludes those deemed unworthy; (iii) the eradication of harmful cultural norms, which challenge the preservation of African values; and (iv) (neoliberal) empowerment through women's attained employment and capital, which empowers women within unequal economic relations rather than liberating women from those relations. The author critiques such neoliberal empowerment discourses for failing to structurally transform the conditions for women's liberation. This paper offers a first step to the dismantling of colonial structures in SGBV policies by unpacking and promoting reflexivity about such discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to theoretically advance critical social marketing (CSM). Our purpose is to advance a guiding ethos for the disparate corpus of CSM scholarship and encourage social marketers to become more critically informed in their research and practice. We introduce a critically reflexive, decolonising, intersectional, and trauma-informed CSM framework for social marketing theory, research, and practice towards emancipatory behaviour and social change. Our framework is applied in the context of the social problem of child labour. We then discuss and offer conclusions of the implications of our CSM framework, provide suggestions for a future research agenda that challenges scholars to engage in critically informed research and practice in social marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a novel take on Chantal Mouffe's appropriation of the late Wittgenstein, arguing that Wittgenstein's philosophy, at the same time, gives rise to and offers a solution to the relativism problem as it can be found in Mouffe's radical political thought. Unlike other vindications of Wittgenstein-inspired political thought, I also show at which point Wittgenstein's support for such an approach comes to an end. I thus acknowledge that the relativism problem -- at least to some extent -- stems from the ambiguity of Wittgensteinian thought itself. After having outlined these challenges, I suggest turning to alternative approaches from the field of critical social philosophy. In particular, Rahel Jaeggi's Frankfurt School account of forms of life highlights what such a non-relativist but still context-sensitive approach may look like. By virtue of this last step, this paper contributes to recent engagements by Critical Theorists with the late Wittgenstein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

González's paper (this issue) strives to deepen the field of psychoanalytic thinking and the growing body of theory bridging psyche and society, by reaching to group theory and fashioning an unconscious internal structure for the social links alive within us. His paper represents an incredibly ambitious, rich, and highly complex synthesis of aspects of classical theory, object relations, relational, neo-Kleinian, Winnicottian, intersectional, feminist, multiple group, link, and critical social psychoanalytic theories. In my discussion I will position González's ideas within the matrix of the Bionian psychic apparatus and field theories; followed by a response to his personal and clinical examples of the collective in the individual in the aftermath of the Trump election, and the challenges before us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of recognition has been pivotal in critical theory in recent years. This paper discusses how two goals of a critical theory of recognition – to explain and to morally evaluate social change – are interrelated. In doing so, this paper draws the limits of the concept of struggles for recognition. It is argued that if a social movement can be deemed illegitimate, this movement can no longer be understood as struggling for recognition. This implies that the two goals of a critical theory of recognition cannot be fulfilled simultaneously: a moral standard that distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate social struggles cannot distinguish between different types of struggles for recognition, but only between struggles for recognition and other types of social struggles. Drawing the limits of the concept of struggles for recognition in this way helps to better distinguish between different types of social struggle and contributes to a more precise understanding of what struggles for recognition entail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of Taiwanese nationalism in the late 1980s and early 1990s that rapidly, radically, but "peacefully" replaced Chinese nationalism to become the hegemonic discourse in two decades is a political "miracle." My paper argues that this compressed political transformation would not have been possible without the help of psychoanalytic discourse mediated by critical theory in the activist and critical intellectual circles. In the context of the (post-) Cold War era, there was a peculiar form of decolonization equated with de-Sinicization. At stake is a translational concept that itself becomes untranslatable: zhu-ti-xing, the Chinese word for subjectivity. By analyzing the conflicts within the Chinese-speaking activists and intellectuals in the United States and in Taiwan, I will demonstrate in this paper the ways in which the Lacanian idea of the subject as having a lack becomes a critical tool for the advocates for the independence of Taiwan to break through the existing discursive inertia and to effectively make Taiwan a nation without essence, a nation of zhu-ti-xing/subjectivity, and to facilitate the fitting of this new hegemony into the ideology of Pax Americana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the 'meaning of work', especially concerning the Global South, is scarce. This paper aims to reduce this scarcity by applying critical realist meta-theory to the work and life history interviews of workers in Sri Lanka. A key discovery is that finding meaning in life through work is a personal emergent power and that, as such, it explains the way that individuals consciously manoeuvre their life-journeys towards a desired end - a modus vivendi - in a dialectic which involves both emergent structural change (morphogenesis) and agency. This paper also reveals that Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, based on interviews with Western individuals, cannot be transferred rigidly to the reflexivity of Global South individuals, and therefore more work on reflexivity within this context is required. This paper therefore makes a theoretical contribution to the existing meaning of work scholarship, and it extends existing understandings of the concepts of reflexivity and emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marxism-feminism is a vital field with diverse voices and different political agendas for social justice, from the defense of land and water to the reorganization of production. The anthology Marxist-Feminist Theories and Struggles Today aims to grasp the originality and relevance of that tradition. The book represents a variety of contributions, defined as Marxist feminist by their authors, who presented papers at the Marxist Feminist Congress in Vienna in 2016. This was the second International Marxist Feminist Conference, the first having been initiated by the feminist section of the Berlin Institute of Critical Theory. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks and practices of Marxist feminism, the edited anthology provides an invitation to converse about our understanding and practice of engaging gendered, racialized heterocapitalism for a better global future. This book symposium and its reviewers demonstrate the richness of the resulting conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an emerging debate in the field as to whether or not Holocaust education is effective in combating antisemitism. This paper aims to provide explanations for the frequently observed ineffectiveness of Holocaust education in reducing antisemitism by examining two cases that are in many ways diametrically opposed: Scotland as a former part of the Allied Forces and Austria as a post-Nazi state. The case studies focus on overlapping, contrasting and conflicting understandings of Holocaust education and the role of antisemitism within it. The perspective is primarily sociological, inspired by Critical Theory. Evidence is based on research papers and basic documents from the field of Holocaust education (curricula, websites of key actors and educational materials). It is interpreted according to the principles of qualitative content analysis. Findings suggest that in both cases opportunities to address and reduce antisemitism are being missed: In the Scottish case, the teaching of the Holocaust tends to downplay the specific Jewish experience and largely fails to address antisemitism, or does so in a very simplistic way. In the Austrian case, antisemitism is talked about, but in the context of widespread secondary antisemitism it risks being explained and understood in ways that are themselves antisemitic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper I attempt to close the gap between the tradition of contemporary radical democracy and that of the ideology critique of Critical Theory which is opened by Larry Alan Busk in his Democracy in Spite of the Demos. I argue that, on the one hand, it is not necessarily the case that the affirmation of the two ontological hypotheses Busk identifies as essential to radical democracy – that of the autonomy of the political and that of the universality of doxa – need generate the ambiguities that his text critiques. On the other hand, I show how Adorno and Marcuse themselves remain committed to democracy, seeing socialization in the practice of the latter as fundamental to the development of critical-reflective consciousness. In the final instance, both radical democracy and Critical Theory can be seen to as committed to the same ideal of human autonomy, and equally useful resources for emancipatory thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Slavoj Žižek, critical marketing scholars have interrogated the ideological fantasies of mainstream marketing, de-romanticising markets and marketing. However, Žižek argues there is no ideology-free subject, so it stands to Žižekean reason that critical marketing scholars are also ideological fantasists. Our paper seeks to de-romanticise critical marketing theory by identifying the fantasy of capitalist corruption. This sustains the ideology of critical marketing theory by disavowing (self-)destructive desires within the human unconscious and suggesting that displacing capitalism will be enough to usher in a postcapitalist utopia. This ideological fantasy has therapeutic, motivational, and institutional benefits, but romanticises the human subject in ways that ultimately frustrate the critical project of societal betterment. By acknowledging the human unconscious as a corrupting influence, we hope to make critical aspirations more likely to be realised. We illustrate our argument via studies of sustainability, a favoured topic of Žižekean, critical, and mainstream scholars alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages centrally with the political impotence of much of critical theory today and suggests how a Lacanian-inflected perspective may offer a possible way out of the present intellectual and political deadlock. Lacanian thought has been central to many post-foundational theorizations of the political, yet the radical implications of a Lacanian-inflected reading of the political remain largely unexplored. Our prime objective is to demonstrate that a Lacanian theorization of 'the political' can help to open up a space for articulating the current deadlock that locks the Left in a state of melancholy, anxiety, depression, and/or impotent acting out. After a brief conceptual introduction to the notion of 'the political', the paper mobilizes and develops the Lacanian theory of the subject. This permits opening up the terrain of psychoanalyisis to the question of the political as that what does not work in the world. The key insights of a Lacanian-inflected political theory are then explored through the work of some of the key critical political theorists: Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the work of predictive analytics in shaping the social worlds in which they thrive, and in particular the world of the first year of Great State University's student success initiative. Specifically, this article investigates the following research paradox: predictive analytics, as driven by a logic premised on predicting the future, lock Great State University into a never-ending present. Through Brian Massumi's concept of a logic of preemption, this paper explores how a quest for proper predictive analytics locked this student success initiative into a hamster wheel of a never-ending present, where the only space and time of action was here and now. It is argued that the function of predictive analytics in higher education is to produce space and time through dividuation and continuous algorithmic variation, freezing both past and future and restricting spacetimes of change to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congealing the Abject: Blood in performance as feminine-feminist meaning-making by Laura Hartnell explores how blood – in three forms, three representations – evokes the abject in three Australian feminist performances. Through a performative exploration of Adena Jacobs' The Bacchae, Olivia Satchell's let bleeding girls lie, and Casey Jenkins' Casting Off My Womb, this paper explores blood as a tool for affectively engaging with women's bodies, grief, rage and trauma. Weaving together critical theory with autoethnographic accounts of being in-audience, written using performative writing, this paper explores how the representation of blood in performance ushers us into the feminine-feminist abject. For Kristeva, the abject is a rejection of blood and other bodily waste and fluids and her reclamation of abjection is a defiant and celebratory journey into all that the masculine Symbolic has deemed too disgusting, horrific, excessive – too bodily – to confront. This paper argues that blood in performance ruptures the Symbolic order, plunging us into the abject and therefore into an affective, bodily state where meaning is primarily made not through language, logic, and reason, but through affective forces that push and pull, slip and slide, glisten and congeal, much like blood. This feminine-feminist, abject form of meaning-making is inherently performative, and the performances explored in this paper demonstrate how blood in performance – forming a spectrum from the literal to the abstracted – opens a space within the masculine Symbolic order in which feminine-feminist meaning-making can emerge. By writing performatively about these performances, this paper aims to affectively evoke the ways in which blood 'congeals' the abject, offering us a place to explore bodily and embodied trauma, grief, rage through a feminine-feminist lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that Honneth's idea of reconstructive critique represents a type of immanent critique. Starting from the objection raised by Rahel Jaeggi, who considers the reconstructive critique to be a genre of internal criticism devoid of any transformative negativity, it seeks to show, on the contrary, that Honneth's notion of "surplus of validity" plays a role of transcendence within the historical reality, which could explain his understanding of reconstructive critique as immanent one. In the second part, the paper displays how Honneth applies this conception of critique to solve the division within Critical Theory, induced by Habermas's use of the idea of rational reconstruction, which would have split off the tasks of founding the normative criteria and discovering immanently elements for the social transformation. In the third part, the category of surplus of validity is investigated in its function of enlightening possibilities of transformation following an "universal-particular dialectic". In its final part, the paper addresses some conceptual difficulties in Honneth's attempt to clarify the systematic value and philosophical meaning of the surplus of validity within the framework of normative reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that we should read Taylor's philosophy as a philosophy of liberation and that it is as a philosopher of liberation that Taylor distinguishes himself as a critical theorist. It begins with a short outline of Taylor's theory of freedom, emphasising the conception it contains of the process of becoming free. It then looks at Taylor's view of the role theory can take in that process. The liberating power of theory isn't something that Taylor often remarks explicitly upon, but from the few remarks he does make it is clear that he sees his own theory as potentially having such a power. The discussion then turns to the tasks of critical theory. After summarising these tasks, the paper considers how Taylor attempts to address them in his own work. The point of the discussion is not just to show the convergence between Taylor's theoretical agenda and that of critical theory, but also to indicate how critical theory can learn from the integration in Taylor's work of the tasks critical theory sets itself. The paper concludes by noting a dilemma that faces critical theorists who aspire to such integration today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Bernstein's educational sociology to illustrate how a language-focused "subversive" pedagogic approach (Martin, 2011) was systematically realised through classroom interactions. While educational inequalities are often addressed at the level of policy and budgets, this paper provides a perspective on inequality and differentiated student outcomes within the classroom. Our research context is Australia, where we have a seemingly intractable gap between mainstream educational outcomes and those of disadvantaged groups. We present a study on how teachers' conscious pedagogic choices worked to support marginalised students. The participatory research focused on a series of science lessons, conducted in a suburban primary school, with a high proportion of students of refugee background. We explain how, in collaboration with teachers, we reframed Bernstein's abstract notions of regulative and instructional discourses into practical, intentional pedagogic strategies. We describe how these strategies were named and implemented, how they became a shared heuristic for the research team, and the empowering effect they had on teachers and students. The study demonstrates the potential of bringing educational and linguistic theories into practice as classroom pedagogic dialogue, with the empowerment of marginalised students in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper backtracks many commentaries on Bhai Vir Singh's master piece novel Sundri, enunciated by scholars of Punjab studies, feminist studies, and critical theory. While contesting that these exegetical commentaries rendered by the scholars of aforesaid domains have displaced and decentered the spirit of the text, the paper presents a fresh lens that endeavors to redeem this important text and its spiritual essence. In doing so, we grapple to decolonize a subaltern voice, that we feel, has been reduced to a feeble murmur in the aura of assertive contestations and many interpretations dissecting the textual body of Sundri. The paper will also be published by Naad Pargaas as an introduction to Bhai Vir Singh's 'Sundri' that was translated from its 16th Punjabi edition by Prof. Puran Singh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the first generation of Critical Theory still relevant to an analysis of the technocentric nature of contemporary society – particularly its digitally based mediums of interaction and communication? This paper will argue that it is. This will be achieved by examining the interdisciplinary methodological framework that guides Critical Theory. This approach offers the researcher fruitful insight. It allows for a broad, yet heuristically rich understanding of society which can extend to the technological and digital domains of the 21st century. Critical Theory's powerful (albeit damning and admittedly over-extensive) critique of first- generation instrumental rationality (as embodied in modern technology) assists the contemporary researcher in their evaluation of the forms of communicative technology that have emerged in the 21st century. This is because such a critique permits one to attain a more nuanced and sensitive understanding of such technologies and the variegated forms they have assumed. It also cautions against technological determinism and cyber-utopianism which has managed to entrench itself in a great deal of modern literature pertaining to this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Over the past half-century global sport governance has, in the face of hyper-commercialisation and globalisation, been found wanting. Key institutions have lurched between scandal and outright failure to address their remit and duty to employees, fans and, perhaps most importantly, participants the world over. Critical sport scholars have investigated and demanded better, yet by and large, these demands have not been met, in part, as we argue, because there has been no solution proffered, beyond principled frameworks. In the spirit of critical proactivism, and drawing from international relations praxis and Critical Theory, the following paper seeks to catalyse discussion around a potential solution. We seek to promote and further elucidate the philosophy of and justification for the establishment of an overarching, morally sustainable, and democratically accountable regulatory and enforcement apparatus for sports' global governance: namely the 'International Council for Sports Governance' (ICSG) as a much-needed credibility inoculation for global sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DisCrit has illuminated the interconnectivity of racism and ableism, though the experiences of undocumented youth and families enrolled in special education are largely unknown. In this paper, we explore the experiences of students at the intersection of disability and migratory status, examining the interplay of fear, schooling, and language use as students pursue college. We use DisCrit to help us understand historical patterns surrounding citizenship and how race, ableism, and documentation status continue to intersect and shape the acknowledgment of which bodies – with which papers – are rendered deserving. Examining interviews with students, researcher memos and fieldnotes, and researcher reflections, we consider the cases of Fernanda, an undocumented high schooler, and Daniel, a 9th grader from a mixed-citizenship status family. We highlight how students at the intersection of migratory status and disability are met with care by teachers and schools, yet remain unsupported in several domains. We also highlight how students experience the movement from entitlement to eligibility in schools, and discuss complications surrounding documentation of disability for disclosure and language. In light of our findings, we suggest implications for research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper problematizes, in the spirit of loving critique, the paucity of global intersectional dis/ability politics in the fields of Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory. In this paper, we attempt to account for a more global and humane, liberatory theoretical positioning of Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) by analyzing the human rights discourses employed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). DisCrit scholars emphasize 'the social construction of race and ability ... which sets one outside of the western cultural norms'. We push DisCrit further to (a) account for the impact of these western cultural norms and ideals in global and local contexts, and (b) problematize how the binary between the Global South-Global North gives impetus for and further reifies the global racist and ableist hegemony of western cultural norms, domination, and violence identified within human rights discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a special issue of the journal Music Education Research titled "Posthuman Perspectives for Music Education." The issue will be edited by Dr. Jessica Pitt and seeks papers that explore posthuman new materialist methodologies and their implications for music education practice and research. Submissions are invited on various topics, including interdisciplinary approaches, cross-artform studies, and early childhood music education.

The term 'critical' has become ubiquitous in academia these days. It is always a term of praise, but, for many in the academic study of religion, being critical also provides a marker that distinguishes the kind of scholarship that belongs in the academy from the non-academic approaches that do not belong there. Over the past few hundred years, however, the term has been used to identify very different virtues. In this paper, I distinguish five broad senses of the term. I explain what is distinctive about each one, and I identify tensions generated between them. I close with my own proposal that one can combine all five senses of critique in a single coherent academic field, and that this integrated vision would be the best approach for the academic study of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a systematic review of the early childhood teacher education (ECTE) literature that explores what teacher educators have been doing to shift the curriculum away from developmental perspectives to more critical approaches. Twenty-three empirical studies were coded and analysed. It was found that most studies were qualitative in nature and focused on the redesign or implementation of content and pedagogy that sought to enhance preservice teachers' (PSTs) intercultural competence. Much of the content and pedagogies discussed in the studies are not necessarily new (e.g. clinical experience, reflection) but reconceptualized to engage PSTs with diversities and difference. Few studies drew on critical theories that address power relations enacted through early childhood practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical practice is often used to create space for the inclusion of knowledge and practice that has been marginalized. In this piece, it is argued that while critical practice can create the space for spiritual knowledge and practice, there may be a spiritual alternative to general critical social work practice. This paper presents Conscious Spiritual Theory/Practice as an alternative practice approach to Critical Theory/Practice for social workers keen to work with human rights and social justice issues from a spiritual perspective. To do this, Conscious Spiritual Theory is explored within an existing critical framework for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper adds to the scholarship of teaching and learning, by explicating the shared experiences of one doctoral student and two full-time faculty members related to liminality as a guiding pedagogy for doctoral social work education. It uses liminality to explore the unique space that first and second year doctoral students occupy as a justification for critical and race-gendered approaches that inform teaching doctoral level contemporary theory and social work practice. Recognizing, acknowledging and supporting beginning doctoral students' liminal identity with critical and race-gendered teaching approaches is in keeping with social work ethics. This pedagogy may ultimately lead to increased doctoral student retention, as well as fostering more liberating approaches to knowledge generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes discourses of everyday racism and colorblind racism on an internet forum. While skin color is invisible online, identities as black, white and shades in between show through participants' perspectives and communicative behavior in discussions about racism. Critical race theory and whiteness studies argue that there is a perception gap between black and white perspectives on racism, linked to positionality in social structures, which influences experiences and shapes perceptions of the world. This paper shows how black participants in online discussions tend to be more conscious of racial issues and skilled at recognizing racism, while whites often reflect a colorblind discourse that denies structural racism and reproduces everyday racism. Starting with critical perspectives of conscious blacks on the forum and drawing on Cultural Discourse Studies and critical race theory, this paper examines power relations and cultural perspectives underlying white participants' claims, perspectives and speech acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practising critically in medically dominated settings has been identified as a radical challenge for social work. While commonly acknowledged that the biomedical model dominates most mental health settings, social workers continue to try to carve out a more distinctive role for our profession that aligns with the values of social justice. This paper explores how social work education (specifically critically reflective pedagogies and methodologies), can support transformative learning that, at least in this case, generated possibilities for critical practice in mental health. It articulates a co-constructed process in which the educator (Author One) and the student (Author Two) use critical reflection to unearth opportunities for mental health social workers to practise critically. This paper discusses the broader implications for social work education and practice, thus generating practice-based evidence that extends current theorising and social work practice in mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to conceptualise urban wildlife photography as so-called intersemiotic translation by reconceptualising the photographer as a translator who acts as “a mediator in an experiential process that allows the recipient (viewer, listener, reader or participant) to re-create the sense […] of the source artefact for him or herself” (Cultural Literacy in Europe, in [Bennett, K. 2019. “Editor’s Introduction. The New Iconicity: Challenges for Translation Theory and Practice.” Translation Matters 1 (2): 1–8], 3).By reframing the focus from an anthropocentric ethic to a biocentric ethic on the loss of place and belonging experienced by non-human animals in urban ecologies, in particular, this paper intends to explore the role of urban wildlife photography as translation of solastalgia in re-evaluating our current human values towards the natural world. Originally defined as “distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment” [Albrecht, G., Sartore, G.-M., Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., Kelly, B., Stain, H., Tonna, A. and Pollard, G. (2007) “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change”, Australasian Psychiatry, 15(1_suppl), pp. S95–S98], solastalgia, it is argued in this paper, should be extended to include the experience of the non-human as well. Photography, it is argued here, is one way in which this experience can be critically depicted and translated to a human audience. By means of an interdisciplinary discussion between Translation Studies and Critical Theory (through Walter Benjamin and Bernard Stiegler), we attempt to provide an ecosemiotic exploration of the conceptual grounding of urban wildlife photography as intersemiotic translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws from the paradigm of Critical Theory (CT) and Decolonial Theory to engage in an introductory discussion on the need for a new methodological paradigm, namely a Critical Decolonial Theory. This is put forward in order to both argue for the imperative of introducing multiple narratives to the philosophical practice of contemporary social critique in South Africa, as well as to provide a cautionary note relating to how the decolonisation narrative itself could become a determinative ideology if it engages in what Lewis Gordon terms "epistemic closure." While operating from within the framework and ideals of traditional CT and Amy Allen's subsequent contribution to decolonising CT, we draw specifically from black practitioners of this critical philosophical tradition, namely Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Frantz Fanon, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Paulin Hountondji, and Achille Mbembe, in order to localise and ground our discussion of the need to problematise (i.e., consider both vindicatory and subversive aspects of) the decolonisation project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disciplinary pressures within academia often produce specialised and one-sided accounts of complex social processes. Convincing accounts of popular education regularly acknowledge the importance of social movements but without theorising them adequately – and vice versa. This one-sidedness is compounded by a widespread tendency to generalise from often highly specific institutional and political contexts, as though all movements learned in the same way across space and time and popular education's role in fostering this learning is simple. Unchecked, this leads to the reification of 'critical' theory and the reduction and flattening of emancipatory practices to methods or even predefined goals. This paper constructs a dialogue between the work of Choudry, Freire and other authors in both fields, aimed at both celebrating and problematising their contribution to learning from our struggles. By developing a conversation between them, we want to explore how their insights might be usefully integrated for contemporary social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As critical posthumanist and (new) materialist scholarship become more established in educational research, a reconsideration of methodological approaches suited to a radical relational onto-epistemology is required. A popular figuration adopted by researchers to help think and do such research is the Deleuze-Guattarian "rhizome." Coming to terms with how rhizomic styled research (rhizo research) is undertaken and what it can yield however, can be challenging. In this paper, a study involving a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Course run at a human pathology museum becomes an animated example of rhizo research. Through it we demonstrate how infusing this research with an "analytic of lines" (derived from Deleuze-Guattarian rhizomatics) provides for a practice of research that has the power to shift the ontological and epistemological positions that continue to define qualitative research in education and bring understudied, ethico-political dimensions of it into view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the developmental implications of being subjected to macro social, cultural, political, and economic systems. Drawing from social and critical theory, the author proposes an object tie to the broader social dimension. When this tie is threatened by harsh social realities, there is an attempt to protect it through the activation of internalized ideological schema. Clinical examples are provided to demonstrate how patients and therapists bring ideology into the treatment room, and how the application of an "ideological lens" may move beyond interpersonal transference dynamics to facilitate the reorganization of "social object" relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OpenStreetMap (OSM) as one of the most successful projects of Volunteered Geographical Information (VGI) has attracted millions of contributors to work together and produces massive open geographical data. However, the co-work does not always run smoothly since mapping can involve conflicted understandings of the reality. In this paper, we investigate behaviors of mapping related to territorial disputes to reveal the characteristics of contributions and examine the contradictions between ground truth as the vision of OSM and the theory of critical cartography. We perform our experiments from the perspectives of entities, changesets, and contributors using the full history data of OSM. The experiments show that territorial-dispute-related contributions have substantially different characteristics from various aspects but they cannot be treated as outliers either, considering that most contributors do not focus on disputed boundaries. Interpreting OSM data as a converging state to ground truth or equally opinions can both be inaccurate. We also find that mapping disputes may not be absolutely negative in a VGI project. We perform quantitative, large-scale (global) analysis of dispute-related mapping. The results show that territorial-dispute-related contributions and contributors are different from contributions and contributors in general. Territorial-dispute-related mapping is not an independent phenomenon for OSM. The contributors make much more disputes-unrelated contributions. Dispute-related entities have more (divergent) versions than normal boundaries, attract more participants, and are more semantically complete, especially for names. Dispute-related changesets generally attract more discussions. The spatial distribution of the dispute-related changesets is consistent with real-world territorial disputes and very different from that of all boundary-related changesets and all changesets. Contributors who participate in dispute-related contributions are generally more active. These users tend to have a special interest in boundaries but most of them do not focus on disputed boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is hard to overstate the growing impact of the works of Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa on contemporary social theory. Given the quality and originality of their intellectual contributions, it is no accident that they can be regarded as two towering figures of contemporary German social theory. The far-reaching significance of their respective approaches is reflected not only in their numerous publications but also in the fast-evolving secondary literature engaging with their writings. All of this should be reason enough to take note of their collaborative work, which, most recently, has culminated in the publication of their co-authored book Spätmoderne in der Krise: Was leistet die Gesellschaftstheorie? (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2021). The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the latest exchange between Reckwitz and Rosa contains valuable insights into recent and ongoing trends in society in general and social theory in particular. The first part comprises an outline of the central matters at stake in, and the core lessons learnt from, the constructive dialogue between Reckwitz's critical analytics and Rosa's critical theory, before moving, in the second part, to an assessment of the most significant limitations of their respective views and propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 50 years have witnessed a growing presence of critical theory within different social science academic departments across the western world. The joint existence of a theory committed to exposing and criticizing various inequalities of the social order within academic institutions based on traditional hierarchies and prestigious arrangements is the starting point of this paper. It is also the viewpoint from which I probe into my own experience as a first-generation student of Middle Eastern background who experienced intensive socialization processes – from undergraduate to PhD studies in Sociology – at two sociology departments both committed to critical theory. Using the method of autoethnography aided by a critical friend, I explain how, within its academic residency, critical theory's normative inclination to 'empower' marginalized subjects such as myself contained sweeping assumptions and inner contradictions that resulted in disenchantment and an overall estrangement from critical theory and academic writing altogether. I argue that selective acceptance and ongoing questioning of this discourse can revive a more constructive relations of first-generation students with their marginalized identities, and even turn them into valuable resources for writing and educational value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) have proved popular as network governance approaches to align business, government, NGOs and other stakeholders in dealing with complex sustainability challenges in the agri-food sector. However, secretariats, members, stakeholders and funders rarely possess good information regarding MSP effectiveness, leaving them in the dark regarding how best to allocate resources and expectations towards different MSPs or MSP activities. This paper explores the feasibility of generating better and more timely evidence of the effectiveness of MSPs as agents of agri-food system transformation. It is based on the findings of action research with two agri-food MSPs: Bonsucro and the Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA), which used a theory-based methodology to understand progress towards intended results. Through critical questioning of their theory of change alongside multiple sources of evidence, the approach generated new insights regarding MSP effectiveness. The findings also offer lessons on three critical challenges in assessing network governance forms like MSPs: causal inference, goal attainment, and the potential for scale. The findings have implications for improving MSPs' own monitoring in order to adaptively manage and improve their effectiveness, and for generating meaningful evidence of MSP contribution to more sustainable food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]