Search

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the participation experiences of a sample of Chinese teacher trainees and their Finnish teacher trainer on an in-service teacher training program exported from Finland to Beijing, China. Design/Approach/Methods: Six science teachers from Beijing and their Finnish teacher trainer participated in semi-structured interviews. From the ideological perspective of international education, a total of eight semi-structured interviews were analyzed through qualitative content analysis. Findings: The results show that all interviewees were highly motivated to learn from the Other's education system and culture. Some participants benefited from a broader understanding of the Self's and the Other's education systems, while others did not. The interviewees also described some participation challenges, such as language barriers and practices that adapted learner-centered teaching approaches in Beijing schools. Furthermore, the interviewees mentioned future expectations of more in-depth communication between Finland and China. Originality/Value: Some recommendations for better training outcomes, improving the quality of participation experiences, and reaching more mutual understandings were discussed at the end of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bunkerization, a term often associated with military fortifications on 20th-century battlefields or the fallout shelters of the Cold War, can now refer to the building, buying and selling of artificial environments designed to provide protective and defensive responses to the ecological, military, and political threats of the Anthropocene. As places of elite retreat, however, these are not spartan spaces. This article documents how—for some—forms of bunkerization have emerged as privileged reactions or responses to contemporary environmental crises, such as climate change, by considering the case of last-chance tourism and luxury cruising. In 2020, both climate change and COVID-19 became intertwined as global crises emerging from humans' troubling relationships with nature. To examine bunkerization as an individualistic reaction to these converging crises, we first outline the challenges presented by COVID-19 and its connections with human exploitation of animals and the environment. We then turn to the particular uses of the environment—in this case, the oceans—as locations of leisure and retreat, and offer an analysis of the image, operations and impact of the luxury cruise industry. In light of our current path of crisis accumulation, we conclude with an urgent call to adopt a more holistic view of planetary public health—one that includes not only humans but also other species and the natural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the evolving concept of feminist interviewing and its contemporary use, exploring key conceptual moments from the past 40 years of feminist interviewing, and concluding with current implications for feminist researchers interested in using qualitative interviews in social science research. Faced with multiple possibilities for approaching feminist interviewing, this article argues for the importance of cultivating an ecosystem of care, a framework for inviting stories rather than coercively courting headlines. Considering various approaches to feminist methodology and interviewing, this article suggests using the theoretical framing of "feminism for the 99%" to guide the use of feminist interviewing in our current moment to cultivate feminist ecosystems of care and avoid dominating practices in research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new nation-state in 1947, Pakistan's relations with the larger Arab world were fraught with many tensions and contradictions. Ever since, many readjustments have taken place on both sides. These rearrangements derive from such tectonic shifts as the ebbing away of Arab nationalism 1967 onwards, petro-dollar rush in the 1970s, Iranian revolution in 1979, end of Third worldism, Afghan war, unipolarity post–Berlin Wall, 9/11 besides labour migrations, military alliances and domestic imperatives of various states and polities. Presently, Pakistan is tied to the Middle East in a three-pronged manner. Economically, it is dependent on petro-dollar rich Gulf Sheikhdoms. This relationship can be described as pure clientelism. Next, geographical proximity and Cold War compulsions have implied an unavoidable Iranian nexus. Finally, with the rather recent rise of Turkey as a subimperial power in the Middle East, Pakistan has also tilted towards Turkey of late. However, beyond geopolitics and economy, Pakistan's embrace of the larger Muslim world has ideological connotations as well. Imagined as a Muslim Zion, commissars at the helm of ideological state apparatuses in Pakistan have always imagined Pakistan as an integral part of the larger Muslim community, numerous contradictions notwithstanding. Hence, informed by the theories of clientelism and subimperialism, this study argues that Pakistan's relations with the Middle East are anchored in economics, geopolitics and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Videogames can be useful tools for teaching and learning. To plan educational uses, potential benefits and possible problematic aspects of specific titles need to be critically assessed by teachers and school leaders prior to implementation. Theory and Method: Based on game ontological models, we identify salient areas of inquiry in games research and use these to structure a template for evaluation. This way we operationalize foundational games research and put key insights to practical use in the planning and preparation of videogame-based teaching sessions. Aims: We develop a template for the evaluation of videogames as tools for and objects of teaching and learning to facilitate critical uses of these technologies in schools and other educational settings. Results: We present a template for critical evaluation to facilitate the use of videogames for educational endeavors. The template distinguishes between videogames as tools for and objects of teaching and learning and is structured along the game ontological dimensions of 1) sign system, 2) rules and mechanics, 3) materiality and 4) players, and includes aspects of both representation and simulation. This way, we disentangle a complex phenomenon and make its components amendable for critical analysis and constructive intervention. Discussion and Conclusion: We offer illustrating examples for how the template can be used to assess the usability of specific titles in education and discuss advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we suggest steps for implementation and further improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Returning to social life after the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown may increase risk of social anxiety, which is highly co-morbid with depression. However, few studies have reported the association between them. Aims: To explore the complex relationship between social anxiety and depression symptoms in left-behind children after the lifting of the COVID-19 lockdown. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted 6 months after the lockdown removal. A total of 3,107 left-behind children completed the survey with a mean age of 13.33 and a response rate of 87.77%. Depression and social anxiety severity were assessed by the DSM-5 Patient Health Questionnaire for Adolescents and the DSM-5 Social Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire, respectively. The symptom-level association between the two disorders was examined using network analysis. Results: After the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown, the prevalence of depression and social anxiety in left-behind children was 19.57% and 12.36%, respectively, with a co-morbidity rate of 8.98%. Network analysis showed that "Social tension" and "Social avoidance" had the greatest expected influence; "Humiliation" and "Motor" were bridge symptom nodes in the network. The directed acyclic graph indicated that "Social fright" was at the upstream of all symptoms. Conclusion: Attention should be paid to social anxiety symptoms in left-behind children after the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown. Prevention and intervention measures should be taken promptly to reduce the comorbidity of social anxiety and depression symptoms in the left-behind children after the lifting of lockdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the social gradient and inequalities in oral health. They state the International Association for Dental Health has invested in the Global Oral Health Inequalities Research Agenda (IADR-GOHIRA) to help reduce inequalities. They suggest that conditions of daily life and structural determinants are underlying causes of global inequalities in general and oral health. They mention research priorities including developing disease prevention strategies and oral health promotion.

In this article, we draw attention to similarities and synergies between eco-fascist and liberal forms of populationism which encourage reproductive injustices against Indigenous women and women of colour globally, increasingly in the name of climate change mitigation. Calls to intervene in the bodily and social autonomy of racialised women, at best, distract from ecological crisis and, at worst, encourage violent forms of reproductive injustice. We urge instead for an honest reckoning with the root problem of ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) as the system of global extraction, which enacts environmental harm and reproductive injustice. Finally, we call for an anti-imperialist eco-socialist move towards equal exchange on a world scale to end the flow of undervalued resources from the South and to limit the contaminating activities these enable. We also stress that an anti-imperialist eco-socialism needs to be attuned to the teachings of reproductive justice movements and resistant to creeping liberal eugenicism, as much as to the overt eco-fascism which has proved so deadly in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective : A consortium of global cleft professionals, predominantly from low- and middle-income countries, identified adaptations to cleft care protocols during and after COVID-19 as a priority learning area of need. Design : A multidisciplinary international working group met on a videoconferencing platform in a multi-staged process to make consensus recommendations for adaptations to cleft protocols within resource-constrained settings. Feedback was sought from a roundtable discussion forum and global organizations involved in comprehensive cleft care. Results : Foundational principles were agreed to enable recommendations to be globally relevant and two areas of focus within the specified topic were identified. First the safety aspects of cleft surgery protocols were scrutinized and COVID-19 adaptations, specifically in the pre- and perioperative periods, were highlighted. Second, surgical procedures and cleft care services were prioritized according to their relationship to functional outcomes and time-sensitivity. The surgical procedures assigned the highest priority were emergent interventions for breathing and nutritional requirements and primary palatoplasty. The cleft care services assigned the highest priority were new-born assessments, pediatric support for children with syndromes, management of acute dental or auditory infections and speech pathology intervention. Conclusions : A collaborative, interdisciplinary and international working group delivered consensus recommendations to assist with the provision of cleft care in low- and middle-income countries. At a time of global cleft care delays due to COVID-19, a united approach amongst global cleft care providers will be advantageous to advocate for children born with cleft lip and palate in resource-constrained settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a Western citizen, am I responsible for the serious injustices, such as sweatshop labour, characterising our global economy? Benjamin McKean's terrific new book, Disorienting Neoliberalism: Global Justice and the Outer Limit of Freedom, shows why this is a misleading question – one that will not properly orient us in relation to the neoliberal economy. McKean argues that we need to recognise that we are unfree under unjust transnational economic institutions and thus we have a shared interest in resisting neoliberalism. This means that we should become disposed to heed the calls for solidarity by others across the world whose freedom is also impaired by neoliberal institutions. McKean's book offers a powerful and persuasive new account of global (in)justice and solidarity; it is an inspiring call to arms for egalitarian theorists. Although I will raise two friendly critical observations about McKean's argument, I recognise that this book is a major contribution to international political theory and that it sets a superb example of how to combine scholarly rigour with what might be called activist theorising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While geography has traditionally 'looked down' in the search for social justice, a recent trend in the social sciences has argued for thinking through privilege. Taking this call seriously, this paper draws on feminist scholarship and uses intersectionality to demonstrate that reflections about privilege are imperative in the pursuit of social justice. Through laying the groundwork for a theorisation of privilege within and beyond migration geographies, we use transnational circulation, as one of the – unquestioned and taken for granted – characteristics of elites, arguing that an understanding of privilege in migration is critical to understanding and combatting inequalities and injustices. This leads us to argue for the need to explore privilege in relation to its others, such as precarity and vulnerability. We conclude by advancing a research agenda on privilege in (migration) geography that draws upon a feminist ethics of responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Links between cultural diversity and team performance remain unclear despite extensive research. This study critiques essentialist 'Input-Process-Output' logics to focus on team members' sensemaking. Using observation and interview data from an ethnographic study of an Indian-German team over an 18-month high-pressure project, we used thematic analysis and event sequencing to map sensemaking of culture and performance over time. Team members initially constructed a prospective frame linking stereotypes of cultural difference to performance, which plausibly explained problems while protecting identity. This frame proved resistant to updating. While overt conflict was avoided, the failure to confront difficulties closed down alternative explanations and prevented innovation and learning. Team performance was evaluated both positively and negatively reflecting ongoing ambiguity around performance. The role of culture in performance was only challenged post-project after time for reflection. The longitudinal, ethnographic approach enables this research to contribute to sensemaking by demonstrating the importance of prospective framing and highlighting the role of identity and plausibility in resisting updating frames. We argue that essentialist conceptions of the unequivocal positive or negative outcome of cultural diversity as 'double-edged sword' should be reframed to stress agency and the importance of facilitating conditions for learning in multicultural teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Front-line workers, or street-level bureaucrats, who interact directly with clients, have significant discretion over clients' lives. Drawing upon ethnographic observation in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and interviews with aid workers, I argue that front-line workers are not a uniform group. I examine three types of front-line aid workers (international, national, and refugee), who work directly with refugee clients. Workers use day-to-day work practices to structure where, when, and how they interact with refugee clients. Yet, workers at the bottom of the organizational hierarchy are less equipped to use these practices. As a result, they are vulnerable to increased criticism and accusations of corruption from co-workers and are uniquely affected by criticism from the refugee client community. By examining their day-to-day work practices, this paper illuminates how inequalities in power among workers contribute to differences in work practices and vulnerability in workplace interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forcibly displaced people often face restrictive migration policies and stereotypical discourses. Therefore, this study analyzes UNHCR's public communication strategies towards the Syrian and Central African crises. Through a comparative-synchronic multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of UNHCR's (international) press releases (N = 28), news stories (N = 233), photos (N = 462) and videos (N = 50) of 2015, we examined its main representation and argumentation strategies. First, we found that UNHCR primarily represents forcibly displaced people in its press releases and news as victimized and/or voiceless masses, reproducing humanitarian savior and deservingness logics. However, stories, photos, and videos frequently portray them also as empowered individuals. This can be partially explained by media logics and political and private sector discourses and agenda-building opportunities. Moreover, UNHCR mainly voices pity-based and post-humanitarian Self-oriented solidarity discourses, and links protection to states' (perceived) interests. Finally, these discursive strategies respond to dominant migration management paradigms and the increasingly neoliberalized, political realist international refugee regime (IRR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual and reproductive health and justice (SRHJ) is key to gender equality and an important component of any long-term development strategy for countries emerging from conflict and civil war. Girls and women are vulnerable to various sexual and reproductive risks, which are exacerbated in conflict contexts and can have both short- and long-term economic implications for them, their families, and their communities. Yet neoliberalism and patriarchal power structures prevent women's economic well-being from being a priority when postconflict policies are designed. Applying a gender lens to postconflict policies, we illustrate why addressing reproductive justice in postconflict contexts is both a gender justice issue and a macroeconomic imperative, as well as providing concrete policy recommendations, including the imposition of a global arms tax, to fund postconflict SRHJ priorities. JEL Classification : O2, I1, B54 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review I consider the 20 years that have passed since the publication of my book Against Management. I begin by locating it in the context of the expanding business schools of the UK in the 1990s, and the growth of CMS in north western Europe. After positioning the book within its time, and noting that the book is now simultaneously highly cited and irrelevant, I then explore the arguments I made in the final chapter. If the book is of interest for the next two decades, it because it gestures towards the importance of alternative forms of organization, which I continue to maintain are not reducible to 'management'. Given the intensifying crises of climate, ecology, inequality and democracy, developing alternatives must be understood as the historical task of CMS within the business school and I propose a ten-point manifesto in support of that commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a theoretical evaluation of the author's attempts at decolonising a sociology and social theory course in Singapore. It also introduces the notion of 'decolonial reflexivity' as a strategy for refining academic decolonisation. In doing so, this article seeks to overcome both the insufficient introspection about the potential for coloniality to reside within efforts at academic decolonisation, and the tendency to separate theoretical and applied discussions about academic decolonisation. It is argued that the author's attempts to decolonise the curriculum were limited because the course may have inadvertently: (a) sustained exclusion while claiming to be inclusive; (b) maintained the status quo while claiming to be radical; and (c) reinscribed Westerncentrism while claiming to decolonise. This article suggests that although academic decolonisation is a commendable aspiration, academics who wish to decolonise must continually consider the theoretical complexities that are generated by our attempts at academic decolonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues related to victimhood are central to transitional justice and international criminal justice. However, processes of transitional justice do not usually include victims of drug-related violence, despite the fact that in several Latin American countries deaths caused by cartel violence easily meet criteria of civil war. This article's central argument is that distinctions between victims of war and victims of what is often termed conventional crime are of great importance to notions of legitimate victimhood in transitional contexts. Taking Colombia's Victims' Law (2011) as a case study, we argue that the binary distinction between war and crime fails to address the needs of victims of mass drug violence and creates a hierarchy among victims. This has important symbolic, legal and material implications for those who find themselves in the less favoured category. Victims of drug related violence struggle to access justice and to make their voices heard in public discourses about violence. We argue that the current understanding of mass drug violence as 'conventional crime' represents a Northern perspective on violence, which can be counter-productive when used uncritically in Southern contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to expand the concept of energy justice by considering the struggles over coloniality and cultural identity in the Global South and their interactions with the spatial and historical development of energy systems and the ongoing forms of energy transitions. The article argues that the current conceptualizations of energy justice cannot be separated from the politics of incumbency as, without a decolonial critique, they tend to reproduce rather than transform hegemonic power relations. To be transformative, energy justice must be articulated from the politics of actually existing unsustainability. In other words, the starting position for energy justice must be that energy injustices are already embedded in existing energy systems and energy policies. Drawing on Latin-American decolonial thought, and the work of political ecologists around energy, this article advocates looking beyond a universalized conception of justice towards an approach where justice is based on a sense of place and is informed by the community's relationship with the land. Using the concept of energy landscapes, the article puts forth an alternative way of understanding energy systems and conceptualizations of justice in decolonial settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decolonisation of the curriculum in higher education is a radical, transformative process of change that interrogates the enduring Eurocentric and racist narratives surrounding the production of academic 'knowledge'. Our key argument is that it is essential for students of politics to understand the authorities and hierarchies exerted through quantitative data. In this article, we show that (1) quantitative methods and data literacy can be an explicit tool in the endeavour to challenge structures of oppression, and (2) there is a need to apply decolonial principles to the teaching of quantitative methods, prioritising the historical contextualisation and anti-racist critique of the ways in which statistics amplify existing micro and macro power relations. To explain how this can be done, we begin with a commentary on the 'state of decolonisation' in higher education, its relevance to the subdisciplines of politics, and its application to quantitative teaching in the United Kingdom. We then suggest some guiding principles for a decolonial approach to quantitative methods teaching and present substantive examples from political sociology, international political economy, and international development. These suggestions and examples show how a decolonial lens advances critical and emancipatory thinking in undergraduate students of politics when it is used with quantitative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth sport is often prefaced as an accessible social practice facilitating development and wellbeing, yet social controls and inequalities abound along racial, gender, and sexual divisions. In efforts of transformative theoretical manoeuvring, the purpose of the paper is to deploy assemblage thinking as attunement to race, gender, and sexuality in youth sport research. A rationale for assemblage thinking is provided, followed by explanations of what assemblage thinking can do. Assemblage thinking is then deployed, situating race, gender, and sexuality as provisional performative doings. Key considerations are offered as to how youth sport researchers can engage in performative participation, acting as becoming-resources who consider the ever-evolving dynamics of academia and capitalism. Assemblage thinking is positioned as a provincial lens that can instigate more sustainable transformative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article author talks about the book Policing the Borders Within by Ana Aliverti which documented the everyday worlds of the state officers tasked with policing migration in the UK. Topics include considered the book seeks to disentangle the institutional and professional values and norms that shape their actions.

According to one prominent theory of development, a country's wealth is primarily explained by the quality of its institutions. Leaning on that view, several political theorists have defended two normative conclusions. The first is that we have no reason for concern, from the point of view of justice, if some countries have greater natural resource endowments than others. The second is that proposals for redistribution across borders are likely to be superfluous. Advocates of global redistribution have not yet grappled with these momentous arguments, or shown whether, and how, they might be rebuffed. This article does just that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being Between Binary is a visual critical auto-ethnography, combining collage, cartoon, narrative and photomontage in the form of a four-page A2 scrapbook. Conceptually and materially, the design combines map and memoir, placing Massey's concept of power geometry into dialogue with personal experiences of sexuality and gender. The piece explores binaries and geographies of here/there, Global North/South, through a lens of borderlands, boundaries and crossings, modelling dissemination as a fluid space of continuing enquiry. This visual essay first contextualizes the making of the piece as creative fieldwork, matching 'a synthesis of shattered fragments', and then presents images of the work with brief commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected everyday life in Africa, a continent that is known for its high levels of religious belief. Using a corpus of news articles and the social representations research paradigm, this study examines African understandings of the pandemic. It uses installation theory, the wind rose model and the accommodation hypothesis to explore the coexistence between science and belief. The accommodation hypothesis demonstrates that the representations were hierarchical, to elevate God above science. Faith leaders also used the pandemic to enhance faith by blaming sin and urging repentance or blaming science by espousing conspiracy theories about the pandemic being a grand design to draw believers away from God. This paper highlights the great disparity in experience between Africa and the West, initially fuelling conspiracy theories. The findings also reinforce two key conceptual approaches: installation theory on the influence of rules imposed by society on behaviour, and the wind rose model in which representations change over time and in response to social interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article elaborates on Marx's concept of the so-called primitive accumulation of capital by extending it to the field of memory and introducing a new concept of the 'primitive accumulation of memory'. The article argues that this concept gives us an innovative path to understand the relationship between memory and capital. To arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the break-up of Yugoslavia and its thoroughly revised memoryscape, this text combines a politicoeconomic analysis with the evaluation of memory-related ideological shifts that are in fact perceived as long-term mnemonic wars in (post-)Yugoslavia. The article analyses how nationalism and memory revisionism are internally linked to capitalist accumulation. More specifically, the article will observe how an ethnocentric mnemonic war sought to openly negate the socialist and anti-fascist past. Indeed, the creation of an anti-communist, and at times anti-antifascist, orientation was integral to the imagining of new nation-states. Juxtaposed to this creative and generative current of memory revisionism, the primitive accumulation of capital in post-Yugoslavia began with the 'deaccumulation' of social infrastructure and wealth, and with the dispossession of working people. The bigger the dispossession, the larger the nationalist accumulation of memory and displacement of class antagonism. Finally, the article discusses what at first glance seems to be a pacifying discourse of 'national reconciliation', which stoked a thorough revision of the public memory of World War II. This revision reconciled fascist collaborationists and anti-fascist Partisans, and it helped to challenge Yugoslavia's anti-fascist consensus, while also framing the ethnic wars of the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that biopolitical infrastructures have been central features of Turkey's ongoing colonization of Kurdish territories and populations and that the Green Revolution, despite its promise of progress and abundance, needs to be understood as part of this history of racialized state-making. In doing so, it joins recent literature that uncovers the local roots of the Green Revolution in domestic politics and land struggles in the global south, also revealing the entwined histories of accumulation and colonial and racial dispossession with agricultural norms and practices. Drawing on research in the records of the Economic Cooperation Administration, US Agency for International Development, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Turkish parliamentary debates, and contemporaneous journals, I show how the Green Revolution can in fact be retold as an episode in a longer history of struggles over the distribution and use of land, the construction of agricultural infrastructures, and how these questions have been complicated by class, ethnic, racial, gender, and political divisions. The paper thus situates Turkey in a transnational history of agrarian development, while also relating the adoption of high yield seeds, pesticides, and grain cultivation to projects of land consolidation, internal colonialism, and racialized methods of state formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Esports is often described as a growing industry ripe with financial opportunities for young professional, competitive gamers. However, these claims rarely consider how income is distributed amongst players. This study uses prize earnings data from 2005 to 2019 to examine labor market inequality and related social inequalities and social stratifications. Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients show that inequality has increased in the labor market overall and the labor markets for the five top games based on total prizes awarded (Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, League of Legends, StarCraft II). Competitors can expect to earn more today than in 2005, but median incomes have shown sporadic and inconsistent growth compared with top incomes. Moreover, most competitors earn less than the US poverty threshold. Comparing the earnings of the top female players to the whole labor market shows that gender inequalities exist in median incomes and the likelihood of earning more than the poverty threshold. The esports labor market is an engine of inequality that provides opportunities for a few (primarily male) competitors while building a growing class of lowly paid players who support the interests of game designers and event organizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significant of race and ethnicity to African penal regimes, but also their gendered and economic/capitalist dynamics. This scholarship has not only provided a clearer picture of penal ideas and institutions on the African continent but has also offered insights into wider questions on the relationship between punishment, colonialism, and decolonization as well as the global circulation of penal techniques and practices.

JEL Classification : B32, B50 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Craft as a creative industry has received increased public, academic and policy attention in recent years. However, this tends to centre on a Westernised, white, middle-class version of craft practice associated with values of authenticity, the valorisation of the handmade, and 'hipster' culture. At the same time, despite a rich body of work on inequalities in the cultural industries, some of which is published in this journal, little attention has been given to craft. These matters are addressed in this special issue which interrogates the character and workings of the contemporary craft economy and provides much needed insight into experiences of inequality in the sector, drawing on research from the Global North and South. It also includes Cultural Commons contributions from Susan Luckman, Carol Tulloch and Saskia Warren which reflect on various aspects of contemporary craft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalization of commercial exchanges and capital movements reveal new ways of obtaining value in economic activities, and the differences in the tax burden of companies, depending on where they reside, have become threats for countries to exercise the right to tax business profits generated in its jurisdiction. This problem, together with tax competition between countries, causes a transfer of tax bases towards countries with lower tax rates and tax havens. The lack of agreement in the international community on how to find a solution to the problems has caused several countries to choose to establish special taxes for certain activities of multinational companies in their jurisdictions, resulting in inefficient taxes. This paper analyzes the agreement reached in October 2021 in the G20 and in the OECD in which measures are adopted within the BEPS project to prevent the erosion of tax bases in market jurisdictions promoted by multinational companies. After studying different aspects, we found fundamental reasons for not having an optimistic view on the effective solution to the problems above: unrealistic forecasts on the amount of the new estimated tax bases for Pillar 1 and the high administration and compliance costs. In conclusion, it is not foreseeable that the tax bases derived from the provision of digital services will suffer a territorial redistribution. We do not expect that a minimum tax rate of 15% in corporate tax will be carried out effectively or that the benefits that are transferred to tax havens will be significantly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution in this introduction, and in this monograph issue of Current Sociology itself, is to explain how patterns of inequality associated with global capital have been reconfigured in different contexts and have historically produced varied results. The definition of global inequality used here transcends Euro- and US-centric models of linear development and comparisons of national income and its distribution to explain how complex socioeconomic hierarchies, including – but not limited to – class, reinforce inequalities among social groups around the globe. The editors trace contemporary patterns of inequality back to the history of imperial and colonial power so as to reintroduce into the scholarly dialogue on inequality a broader understanding of ascriptive hierarchies of race, gender, caste, and national citizenship and their relationship to colonial conquest, enslavement, and labor migrations as interrelated contexts of the global production and reproduction of inequality patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note seeks to update our understanding of the factors that influence shifts in social movement strategies. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, I assess the role of crisis in whether and how social movements reshape their strategies and perhaps redefine their fight for the right to the city. Though previous research has shown the importance of political opportunities and ideology for social movement strategies, we need to reassess these variables and the direction of change in times of crisis. Using the case of the Union of Housing Movements in São Paulo, I find that though the tactics of the movement responded to a conflictual relationship at the federal level and a need to meet immediate needs of members, the ideology of the movement provided the structure for continuing to engage in inclusionary governance strategies and renewed energy for transformational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Could the everyday affective relationships that we share with our animal companions inspire us to think, write and even care 'differently' in the field of organisation studies? In this paper, I suggest that organisational scholars have plenty to learn from post-qualitative writing and the posthumanist practice of feminist dog-writing. Drawing from literature on posthumanism, humanimal relations and post-qualitative methodology, I first frame feminist dog-writing as a practice that relies on post-qualitative writing and discuss what this framing potentially involves, in concrete terms. Second, I experiment with 'writing with the bitches' to illustrate how this kind of writing 'differently' – in ways in which the entangled co-becoming of the humanimal is highlighted in its multiplicity – could contribute to discussions of humanimal relations in the field of organisation studies and more disruptive, post-qualitative forms of writing in our scholarly field. Despite the many challenges of anthropocentric language and representation, I argue that feminist dog-writing has the capability to creatively confuse, disrupt, and transform more 'conventional', mechanical, and hu man -centred forms of academic writing. Finally, I suggest that feminist dog-writing invites human animals to engage differently with the sensate, more-than-human life-worlds that human-centred accounts of organisational life have typically sentimentalised, trivialised, or overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines interracial gendered care-work through the figure of the ayah (maid) serving white families in India from the late-eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Historical and anthropological scholarships on domestic labor in India remain self-contained fields, and mostly focus on middle-class Indian households. Our comparative study offers insights into the racialized romanticization of the ayah through a trans-temporal approach combining archival work (for British imperial households in the past) with ethnographic research (for Euro-American expatriate households in the present). While exploring the parallels in colonial and contemporary domestic dynamics, and the intertwining of interracial anxieties and sentimentalization, we pay close attention to the subjectivities of Indian ayahs and their changing labor roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-colonial debate challenges the self-certainty of sociology and the suggested universality of its theoretical premises. This has led to calls to provincialize sociological theories and concepts and include perspectives from the South. Thus, we need to ask whether sociological concepts apply globally. Burawoy's notion of a professional 'global sociology' offers a starting point for provincializing sociological concepts without giving up their global applicability. The problems involved in applying the core sociological category of class to Kenya show that classical sociological concepts may be inadequate for analysing societies outside the European and North American context. For the analysis of inequality, we need a more open and empirically founded concept in which the classical notion of class describes just a particular pattern of social structure. For the development of sociological concepts, we always require a broad empirical and intercultural basis in order not to be caught in the trap of Eurocentrism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asylum-seekers nowadays undertake multiple journeys before reaching a country of resettlement. In Southeast Asia, several countries are playing important roles as transit locations. This paper focuses on Thailand, which serves as a major transit point for Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers who hope to move to resettlement countries through irregular channels. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations from 2018 to 2019, this paper examines the Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers' migration experiences in Bangkok, and how they plan their onward migration and utilise connection networks. Moving beyond traditional pull-push approach that standardises reasons to flee, this research uses asylum-seeking habitus as a conceptual lens to explore the interactive process between structure (economic and cultural) and asylum-seekers, and individual/communal interpretations of such structural environment that trigger onward migration aspirations of asylum-seekers in a transit country. In Bangkok, because lived experiences do not meet personal and/or familial expectations, insecurity prevails following news from others in their networks, which then triggers onward migratory disposition among Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers. Asylum-seeking habitus as a conceptual lens provides a useful approach in assisting us in understanding asylum-seekers' vision of autonomy by investigating their changing perceptions of security at different stages of the journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a largely understudied aspect of women's transnational labour migration: how localised frameworks of feminine ideals and subjectivities interact with women's migration. It is based on a mixed-methods field research conducted in 2016 in a village in Central Kerala with a long history of women's labour migration. Analyses revealed the emergence of five local categories of feminine subjectivities: the dutiful daughters, young educated and typically unmarried women who are considered as assets rather than burdens by their families; the responsible mothers, who are responsible for the social reproduction of dutiful daughters; the flying grandmas, commonly older mothers who engage in temporary migration to support the transmigrant women with their domestic responsibilities; the defiant wives, mostly married women whose autonomous migration is perceived as a transgression of the conjugal family ideals even though these families survive on their earnings; and the substitute women, typically older women who take over the role of caregivers when married women migrate leaving behind their husbands and children. The paper concludes by demonstrating how globalising processes like women's international labour migration interact with localised gender, caste and class structures to produce new and unequal categories of femininities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much interest in economic citizenship schemes, yet little attention has been paid to the quotidian impacts of such schemes on local communities, environments and notions of citizenship. This paper responds to this lacuna by reviewing the existing literature on economic citizenship and considering what an 'everyday geographical' lens would add to existing theorisations. 'Everyday geographies' are integral to thinking about how economic citizenship regimes shape local economies, societies and environs, providing insights into the ways in which the lives of 'ordinary citizens' intersect with flows of capital, the growth of an (im)mobile super-rich and shifts in migration management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has focused global attention on disease spread across borders. But how has research on infectious and noncommunicable disease figured into the sociological imagination historically, and to what degree has American medical sociology examined health problems beyond U.S. borders? Our 35-year content analysis of 2,588 presentations in the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Section on Medical Sociology and 922 articles within the section's official journal finds less than 15 percent of total research examined contexts outside the United States. Research on three infectious diseases in the top eight causes of death in low-income countries (diarrheal disease, malaria, and tuberculosis [TB]) and emerging diseases—Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)—was nearly absent, as was research on major noncommunicable diseases. Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) received much more focus, although world regions hit hardest received scant attention. Interviews suggest a number of factors shape geographic foci of research, but this epistemic parochialism may ultimately impoverish sociological understanding of illness and disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Global Qualitative Nursing Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The ongoing expansion of renewable energies entails major spatial reconfigurations with social, environmental, and political dimensions. These emerging geographies are, however, in the process of taking shape, as their early configurations are still open to democratic intervention and contestation. While a recent line of research highlights the prominent role that maps are playing in directing such processes, the potential effects of countermapping on these evolving geographies have not yet been explored. In this article, we present a countermapping initiative promoting a dialogue between critical geography, political ecology, and environmental justice. Our work is the result of an alliance between Geocomunes—a collective of activist cartographers based in Mexico—and the EjAtlas—a global collaborative project tracking cases of grassroots mobilizations against environmental injustices. We take the case of Mexico's low-carbon development strategy to dissect the spatial expansion of wind and solar mega-projects at both national and regional scales. Our project consists of a series of databases and maps aimed to "fill" the spaces and relations otherwise "emptied" by the state's cartographic tools designed to promote investments in the sector. When presenting our results, we highlight how renewable energy projects in Mexico have so far juxtaposed with local territories, peoples, and resources, in ways that trigger instances of environmental injustice on the ground. We close this article by discussing the role of critical cartography and countermapping in building alternative political–economic projects for the energy transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forest bioeconomy in Finland has emerged as a project that seeks to resolve emergent contradictions in the capitalist ecological regime and to reconfigure spatial, temporal, and economic relations. The bioeconomy rose to public consciousness during the 2010s, especially after its adoption as one of the spearhead projects of the 2015–2019 center-right coalition government. The forest industry's bioeconomic plans are also an attempt to hegemonize and depoliticize a particular political view of forests in the era of climate change. In this paper, the politics of the bioeconomy and carbon sinks are scrutinized in the context of the 2019 parliamentary election season, during which forest use was a central political issue due to investments in new biorefineries. A data set of 80 newspaper articles is analyzed through critical discourse analysis. The analysis identifies three key discursive frames that legitimize the political imaginary of the bioeconomy: 1) rural reinvigoration and the defense of the nation's peripheries through spatial populism; 2) a view of forests as high-throughput carbon conveyors that conform to the temporalities of capital; 3) the establishment of the bioeconomy as a high-value accumulation regime that can resolve the profitability crisis of the paper and pulp production model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While sustainability was introduced as a game-changing idea, it has often been criticized for its vagueness and its over-accommodating bent toward powerful, vested interests, economic growth, and profit seeking—or, on the contrary, for not being able to enter mainstream politics. As a result, in the current political climate, sustainability policies seem to be everywhere, but so does the social and ecological critique of these policies. In this article, we articulate the seeds of an emerging cross-sectoral shift away from sustainability and toward social-ecological justice. Coming from a multidisciplinary background, we explore commonalities in the shortcomings of sustainability agendas and identify discursive barriers to change across three critical fields: transport, energy, and urban greening. Within each of these fields, we observe an upswing of scholarly work addressing the pitfalls and trade-offs of sustainability, but we also show how taboos and naturalizations embedded in these fields hinder adequately questioning the economy's role in sustainability thinking and action. To develop our argument that there is an emerging cross-sectoral push away from sustainability agendas and toward social-ecological justice goals, we briefly examine the current state of the wider sustainability discourse together with its critique from a social and ecological justice angle. We then review relevant academic work across the applied fields of transport, energy, and urban greening, focusing on the normative and analytical aspects dealt with, and how they address and conceptualize tensions between the different dimensions of sustainability. In the concluding section, we highlight how a focus on sectoral and local tensions between ecological, economic, and social policy goals uncovers the ways in which injustices or environmental degradation are continually reproduced, despite the sustainability framework. We conclude with suggestions for thinking and acting under the umbrella of social-ecological justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research with survivors of gender-based violence in low- and middle-income countries is important to improve understanding of experiences of violence and the policies that can help combat it. But this research also implies risks for survivors, such as re-traumatization, safety concerns, and feelings of exploitation. These risks are magnified if research is undertaken by researchers from high-income countries, whose positionality produces power inequalities affecting both participants and research partners. This article describes the ethical challenges of international gender-based violence research from the perspective of Kenyan researchers and organizations and identifies recommendations about how to prevent them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I introduce the theory and practice of Design Anthropological Filmmaking as a mode of actively proposing alternative possibilities to the technological solutionist narratives and imaginaries that dominate industry, government and policy narratives about automated futures. I argue for documentary practice that is theoretically and critically aligned with a vision of the world as ongoingly emergent, and unfinished, and contests conventional innovation paradigms. To demonstrate this theory-practice dialogue I draw on my collaborative documentaries Laundry Lives and Smart Homes for Seniors which explore everyday life in the home with digital, emerging and automated technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]