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This paper seeks to understand the socio-political dimension of the political changes in Assam vis-a-vis "regionalism" and its contestations. The Changing contours of regionalism in Assam reflect its distinct character marked by the simultaneous articulation of regional, sub-regional and national identity in a complex socio-ethnic and historical context. The recent political trajectory of Assam bears testimony to the dual challenges facing the forces of regionalism; the presence of sub-regional ethnic identity articulation and the appropriation of regional space and issues by the national parties. Further, the shifting allegiance of ethnic identity-based parties to the national parties is critical to understand the dynamics of regionalism in Assam. Socio-political developments subsequent to the rise of BJP post-2014 provide an interesting landscape to comprehend the complexities inherent in understanding regionalism in contemporary Assam. On a contextual note, the paper also locates the question of regionalism in the ongoing debates of NRC and CAA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that in Patagonia-Aysén (southern Chile) nature discourses and neoliberalism have a close association. The current discourse of "green" development is presented as a capitalist practice, a renewed form of colonization that creates a narrative around the need to protect this pristine environment because it is a "Reserve of Life." To explore these complex processes further, the paper presents fieldwork undertaken from 2017 to 2019 in the municipalities of Tortel and O'Higgins. Through extensive fieldwork that encompassed interviews and analysis of the Land Registry (Conservadores de Bienes Raíces, or CBR) of the region, we investigated the evolution of private property rights in both municipalities over a period of 29 years (1989–2017) in order to illustrate the changes in land ownership that had occurred. The paper puts forward the concept of eco-extractivism, in order to identify green-grabbing processes undertaken by extractivist investors in Patagonia-Aysén. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Critical African Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd 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.)

This paper is an attempt to analyze the trajectories of welfare policy in India since independence. Four overlapping phases are outlined, keeping in mind the transformations in the political and economic contexts. The corresponding welfare discourses are: Paternalistic, Clientelistic, Basic Needs and Responsive. These concepts indicate broad strategies of policy and are not analytical categories. However, one can easily discern a general trend, perhaps a snapshot, of the ideas which shaped welfare policies in India. We assume that the changes are incremental and cumulative. The policy makers' conceptualization of welfare during each time period, the interpretation of these policies in scholarly literature and a critical evaluation are presented. We have suggested that the responsive welfare policy in the recent times is a process of empowering citizens by converting their needs to demands. Democratic representation of the marginalized in the Indian state's policy space is gradually getting recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the central metaphors of curriculum as 'text' and 'discourse' that are adopted as the organizing metaphors for William Pinar's 2006 book Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. Using the works of Michel Foucault, the paper explores relationships between discourse and curriculum as procedures of exclusion. Moving on to genre as a literary form, the paper analyses the pedagogical form of the essay and the rise of the article as one of the most pervasive forms that underlie academic culture. In our postdigital age, however, both the article and journal have significantly changed. This paper shows that a historicizing of the curriculum, understood as an approach to curriculum studies, is a process of denaturalization of commonly accepted assumptions about the curriculum. Therefore, problematizing the concepts of 'discourse', 'genre', and 'text' enables us to understand the historical and constructed notion of the curriculum and to examine its contemporary postdigital forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We thank the authors, Varis and Keskinen, and Nauditt, for their constructive contributions. We endorse their key comments, further referring to recent literature and events, including the UN 2018 High Level Political Forum on sustainable development. Here, we elaborate on the epistemological perspective of the water-energy-food nexus conceptualization, assessment, discourse and operationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which social entrepreneurship knowledge is both propelled and hindered by the socioeconomic circumstances. We examine the existing body of research and identify different conceptualizations and main schools of thought. We then demonstrate how the process of constructing academic representation is shaped by the prevalent public discourses. Our analysis leads to the differentiation between social entrepreneurship as mitigation and social entrepreneurship as transformation. We conclude that a better alignment of the two approaches - broadening research focus from outcome to process - would reveal their complementarity and contribute to the conceptual advancement of the discipline. We propose expanding the existing approaches with the politics of social entrepreneurship studies and stress the importance of increased reflexivity on the plight of the new discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Witchcraft-related violence in Ghana has been the subject of international media attention for decades. In the past few years, increasing interest in the sensational stories of Ghana’s northern witch camps have enthralled readers and elicited furore. While much of this outcry is motivated by concern, it is also greatly misinformed regarding local realities, witchcraft phenomena, and the impact of international interventionism in general, and in Ghana specifically. This paper aims to stress the importance of informed and reflexive engagement with the subject of witchcraft in Ghana and elsewhere. Based in part on my own doctoral research on the subject of witchcraft and witchcraft-related violence in Ghana, this paper stresses the power of language of international actors, looking specifically at the discursive interventions of one non-governmental organization, ActionAid International, that have led the charge against the witch camps in Northern Ghana. This paper concludes that a critical discourse analysis of Action Aid International’s ‘anti-witch camp campaign’ reveals numerous layers of neo-colonial intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is twofold: first, it assesses the current state of collaboration between institutionalist economics and the academic degrowth discourse on the topic of global inequalities. Since a systematic literature review of the current degrowth discourse shows that the level of such collaboration is limited, the second goal of the article is to outline avenues through which institutionalist scholars could contribute to the current academic degrowth discourse. These include the provision of theories of institutional change, a methodological reflection of selected formal models, and substantive insights on the co-evolution of institutions and technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warnings that a breakdown in multilateral trade liberalization would bring about an upsurge in protectionist sentiment, the possible collapse of the multilateral trading system and, in the most doomsday of scenarios, the fragmentation of the global economy have been an intrinsic part of trade negotiations since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was first negotiated. What is seldom acknowledged, however, is the role that this language of crisis and collapse--what might be called a 'crisis discourse' --has had on framing trade negotiations and in maintaining forward momentum in the liberalization process. This discourse has played a role in facilitating the kind of institutional development that the GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO) has undergone--helping to push through bargains among GATT contracting parties and WTO members that have been (and remain) deeply asymmetrical--and driving the trade agenda forward at moments when the institution appears deadlocked; and it has continued to play a role in the current round of negotiations. The aims of the paper are twofold. First, the paper explores the content of the crisis discourse. Second, it examines the way in which the discourse has been deployed as a means of reframing trade negotiations in such a way that the likelihood of their continuation and ultimate conclusion increases. The paper does this by focusing on the collapse and resumption of the negotiations in the wake of the WTO's 2005 Hong Kong ministerial meeting, though the crisis discourse and its intensification at moments of intransigence has been a key feature of trade negotiations since the Allies first sat down to develop a trade architecture in the wartime and early post-war years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the numerous theoretical and empirical gains rendered by research that has attempted to 'bring the State back in' to the study of economic informality, this literature has focused on state regulation and law enforcement while for the most part neglecting the analysis of the state as both an ideological product and a producer of meanings and ideologies. In this paper, we analyze the Mexican state's conceptualizations of economic informality in a period spanning four federal administrations (1988–2012). We examine how Mexican presidents constructed a particular understanding of economic informality and, how they embedded these understandings in broader 'state ideologies'. Despite some continuities, we find that each administration defined economic informality in relation to different 'state ideologies' that in turn legitimized the administration in turn. We also show that despite the relevance of academic theories to understand these phenomena, their focus on regulation and enforcement hampers their explanatory potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the Zeitgeist of resistance in the present moment—the age of empire? This paper examines key contemporary interventions that invoke international norms to temper and rein in intervention and occupation. Even as they signal dissent, the paper concludes that these interventions turn away from the historical, deny ideological conflict and fail a counter-hegemonic politics. They return to an ahistorical domain of international law and humanist ethics that stands outside time and is blind to that privilege. This is a stance that may contribute to the production of legitimacy for empire, even as it seeks to curb its excesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a case for the reconfiguration of the public sphere as discursive space, arguing that such a reconfiguration better enables investigations into public debates on education. The paper focuses on one such investigation, which studied one newspaper's reporting of a review of the school curriculum in Queensland, Australia. It employs Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse the interrelationships between policy discourses and the discourses about the review that were constructed in the print media. The paper shows how the dynamic structure of the public sphere enabled discursive connections to be made across sites in order to privilege a shared public discourse on education policy, schools and teachers. In so doing, it demonstrates the capacity of the public sphere to define educational issues and identities in particular ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of actors, policies and technology in the evolution of a basic urban transport service by investigating a complex range of factors shaping the inception and adaptation of the bike-sharing programme. Media data were analysed in relation to two major programmes, supplemented by further investigation into the broader discourse of the programmes. The findings reveal that an array of actors in the categories of government, citizen, business maker and investor, together with evolving policies and technology, collectively determine the sustainability of the programme. The operator-investor centred unorthodox co-production and delivery of dockless bike-sharing provides an alternative model to urban basic service provision which is currently dominated by the centralised and government-citizen centred co-production models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nightlife settings both facilitate urban sociality and act as sites of social conflict, however little research has focused on experience and encounter in these places. This paper addresses this gap in the context of night-time economic planning and recent research on encounter. The use of mobile methods in nightlife spaces is shown to garner a more nuanced understanding of how forays into planned night-time spaces are experienced and understood by people using those spaces. I argue that emplaced, mobile methods unveil complex narratives of place, revealing prejudices and discourses at play in place. These narratives begin to erode privileged images of the city shaped by increasingly neoliberal governance and other cultural intermediaries, and draw out the potential of these methods to improve the lived inclusivity of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the ways in which terms and categories are deployed in analyses and discussions of differences in educational achievement between social groups whose identity is usually specified in terms of 'race' or 'ethnicity' The first part of the paper is didactic, and discusses problems with the use of 'racial' terms with respect to social, biological and legal discourse. The second part of the paper examines the consequences of categorization for analyses of differences in educational achievement, with particular reference to a paper by Mackintosh & Mascie-Taylor, on which the Swann Committee claims to have relied heavily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to address homelessness in New Zealand are marked by competing discourses that construct it as a housing issue, or more radically, as an issue of social exclusion. This paper presents a case study that illustrates the difficulties of reconciling these discourses when framing homelessness policy. Research was conducted with a national organisation involved in advocating to the New Zealand government on homelessness policy. Members of this group participated in focus groups exploring the meanings of home, homelessness and their advocacy work. The paper traces the challenges presented to the politics of social action by recognising homelessness as an issue of social exclusion, but needing to frame it as an issue of housing to effect policy change. It argues that social activist groups must routinely make pragmatic and strategic compromises that challenge the integrity of their ideological positions and their conceptual understandings, and develop group practices that allow them to resolve the tensions that this can generate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Norwegian government white papers have stated that the Sami population is reluctant to seek help from healthcare services and has traditions of self-help and the use of local networks. Objective: In this article we explore healthcare professionals' discursive constructions of Sami persons with dementia and their families' reluctance to seek and accept help from healthcare services. Design: The article is based on an analysis of focus group interviews with healthcare professionals (n = 18) in four municipalities in Northern Norway with multiethnic populations. A narrative context analysis, which involved an examination of sequences of discourse, was employed. Results: Reluctance to seek and accept help among Sami service users and assumptions about self-support were recurring themes in the focus groups. The reluctance was attributed to macro contexts, such as socio-historical processes and cultural norms, and to micro contexts, such as individual and interpersonal factors including the healthcare professionals' cultural backgrounds and language competence. The healthcare professionals' positioning as insiders or outsiders (Sami or non-Sami) affected their attributions. Conclusions: Local healthcare professionals are at the front line for providing and assessing service users' needs for healthcare services. Consequently, their perceptions of service users' needs are pivotal for achieving equity in healthcare. The established opinion that Sami “take care of their own" and are reluctant to seek and accept help may lead to omissions or neglect. Healthcare professionals' awareness about how present encounters in healthcare settings are framed and shaped by the service users' previous and prevailing experiences of marginalisation and subordination is crucial to avoid omissions or neglect resulting from assumptions about cultural preferences. Discursively shaped boundaries and differences between groups may create the impression that the distance between the groups is too wide to traverse, which in turn may lead to further marginalisation of service users in healthcare encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning existing paradigms regarding religious syncretism in the western provinces of the Roman Empire, this paper addresses the difficulty of reconciling comparative study with historical contingency. It is argued that discourse analysis, as developed in post-colonial discourse theory, both facilitates comparative study of material culture in colonial contexts, and enables radical new readings of Romano-Celtic syncretism. It is further suggested that the discursive relationship between Roman imperialism and Western European imperialism -- the cycle of interaction between ancient and modern colonialisms -- has influenced the study of Romano-Celtic religion in such a way that we not only can compare colonialisms, but must compare them if we wish both to articulate the nature of religious syncretism in the Roman provinces, and to achieve a reflexive understanding of our own discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we aim to contribute to the ‘strategy-as-practice’ (SAP) field by studying organizational politics from an ethnomethodological perspective. We argue that it is important to study not only the ‘politics of sensemaking’, but also the ‘sensemaking of politics’. Existing research has examined how power and politics plays a role in the sensemaking processes involved in strategic action, yet we have little understanding to date about how power and politics are made sense of in accounts and used by members to conduct their practical affairs. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative study of a multinational branded apparel company, we show how politics constitutes a key interpretive method through which organizational reality is constructed and strategic decisions are made. We address two key research questions: How can we study politics as an interpretive procedure rather than a pre-existing entity? What practical actions are achieved through such interpretive procedures? The study reveals how a cross-functional team of senior managers used discourse to collectively co-author a version of the political landscape of the firm during team meeting interactions, with practical implications for how the group sought to undertake strategic change. As such, the paper furthers our understanding of the social construction of politics and strategy and puts forward a new and potentially more insightful form of analysis we call Ethnomethodologically-informed Discourse Analysis (EDA). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper demonstrates the importance for entrepreneurship of historical contexts and processes, and the co-evolution of institutions, practices, discourses and cultural norms. Drawing on discourse and institutional theories, it develops a model of the entrepreneurial field, and applies this in analysing the rise to global prominence of the Indian telecommunications industry. The article uses entrepreneurial life histories to show how various discourses and discursive processes ultimately worked to generate change and the creation of new business opportunities. It suggests that entrepreneurship involves more than individual acts of business creation, but also implies collective endeavours to shape the future direction of the entrepreneurial field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underachievement of boys has been a focus of intense concern in Australia for over 15 years. Historical analyses suggest that male students' poor performance has traditionally been attributed to factors external to boys themselves (methods, teachers, texts), deflecting attention from the relationship between masculinity construction and successful engagement with school. This paper turns the focus back, addressing the ways in which gender itself was constructed within hearings held for the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys' Education. Discursive analysis demonstrates that witnesses to the Inquiry drew upon a series of gender binaries in representing male and female students, and accounting for their relative attainment. These binaries worked to associate masculinity with 'authentic' learning, such that the success of male students was naturalised even in the absence of achievement. Conversely, the association of femininity and 'inauthentic learning' worked to undermine female students' demonstrated success. The role of these binaries in the reproduction of a paradoxical relationship between gender and achievement is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK and elsewhere management has become a root metaphor. Educational practitioners must now acquire competence in management discourse. Yet education and management are different social processes. They interpenetrate since much education occurs in schools, which have to be managed. But teaching is not management. This paper identifies how metaphors of management have been absorbed into political discourse and makes a case for metaphoric re-description in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than any other recent social theorist, constructing a disquisition on Butler’s ideas draws the writer into speculating on the formation of their own intellectual grammar, perhaps to confront the disconcerting truth of how often their own cherished analytical rationality is broken up by glimpses into the imagination of more provocative thinkers. I have come to the conclusion that it is not so much that we self‐consciously assemble all of the resources for the making of research imaginaries as those vivid ideas (and frequently their authors) come to haunt us. Butler’s work has been of this ‘disturbing’ order. The ‘unconscious of intellectual work’ is worthy of more attention than I can offer here but it is important to bear this in mind in the course of the following. In this paper I will describe the concept of ‘performativity’ and its theoretical elaboration in Gender Trouble , Bodies that Matter and subsequent and secondary texts. Performativity conceptualises the paradox of identity as apparently fixed but inherently unstable, revealing (gender) norms requiring continual maintenance. Her works thus contribute a new conceptual grammar in the inter‐related concepts of performativity and citationality to denote a reading of gender not as essence nor socialisation, but as the consequence of the performative (i.e. recurring) ‘citations’ of gender thought as actions that institute ‘girling’, for example. Butler’s insistence on seeing gender as constitutive (as literally making the material of the embodied self) signifies the social and cultural forces that come to sculpt femininity and masculinity as norms on the body and the psyche. In arguing that the Butlerian performative has complicated a reading of the discursive and material conditions of the processes of (gender) identification, I will review my own poststructuralist vocabulary with its focus on the sociality of subjectification as a way to interpret and interrogate the power and limitations of Butler’s ideas. Despite the awkwardness entailed in transposing performativity to embodied practices of classed distinction, her work continues to expand the ethnographic imaginary. My exegesis of performativity also serves another purpose, as a methodological comment about academic praxis, as I simultaneously open up and share in the modes of translation used in coming to appreciate Butler’s important and exhilarating theoretical landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of classroom discourse in supporting children’s learning in Kenyan primary schools. The discourse strategies of 27 teachers teaching English, mathematics and science across the primary phase were intensively studied using discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews. A survey questionnaire (n?=?359) was also used to explore teacher perceptions of classroom discourse practices. The findings revealed the dominance of teacher-led recitation in which rote and repetition dominated the classroom discourse with little attention being paid to securing pupil understanding. The wider implications of the findings for improving the quality of classroom discourse in Kenyan primary schools are considered together with the need for further research into how the wider social order is influencing discourse practices in Kenyan primary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines ethnographic research with discourse analysis to discuss how the protests of women sex workers in downtown Ciudad Juárez also represent protests against a larger urban economy that valorizes the disappearance of women from urban space. In Ciudad Juárez today, these disappearances are taking place as women and girls vanish from the publicity regarding progress in the maquiladora industry. The disappearances occur as more women and girls are kidnapped and murdered, and the disappearances occur as the police remove sex workers from the downtowns of border cities long famous for prostitution. While these different types of disappearances are not equivalent—to be denied access to public space is not the same as to be kidnapped and murdered—they are knit together through a discourse deployed by the city's political and corporate elites that equates the removal of women from public space with urban development and industrial progress. By combining ethnographic research with discourse analysis, and Marxist with feminist critique, I am following the lead of several geographers who regard discourses as “sociospatial circuits” that are productive of urban, economic, and cultural landscapes. This approach allows for an analysis of how the women sex workers' efforts to reappear in public space represents a protest, with potential for creating political alliances with other activists, against those invested in generating value from the disappearance of women across the Ciudad Juarez industrial and urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational outcomes have descended on schools with a ferocity unimaginable a few years ago. We have reached the point where outcomes rhetoric is so deeply embedded in the official discourses of schooling that it appears to be `the only game in town'. This paper outlines the economic rationalist origins of outcomes orientations, and uses an Australian background to expose the pervasive myth about the relationship of outcomes to aspects of leaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been a significant number of published studies in recent years on the British media representation of Muslims. These studies have tended to focus only on the British mainstream media, and to my knowledge, there is no significant research on the discursive construction of British Muslims in alternative media outlets. This paper attempts to fill this gap, focusing on the representations of British Muslims in the British Christian print media. Drawing on empirical data relating to four British Christian print media, Church Times, The Tablet, Evangelicals Now and Evangelical Times, this paper investigates how the questions of being Muslim and being British are dealt with in the British Christian print media, and the extent to which the politics of being Muslim and being British inform us about identity formation and affirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the strategic management field has been outlined in many ‘histories’ in recent years. This article analyses a sample of those histories using a Critical Discourse Analysis framework in order to understand how they are constructed, what common textual features they exhibit and what effects they may have on the future development of the field. Our analysis shows a neglect of historiographic method in the construction of the histories and a tendency to present the field as progressing in a teleological, evolutionary fashion. We suggest that the histories are constructed in order to support the continuing development of the field and to secure its demarcation from other fields, and that this may demonstrate a degree of self-interest on the part of strategy scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many theorists of democratization transition have, either explicitly or implicitly, a teleological concept of political progress, liberalization and reform. For such theorists, countries such as Malaysia are therefore in transition towards substantive 'full' liberal democracy. Taken in this light, the significant advances by opposition political parties in the 2008 federal and state elections in Malaysia represent a major advance towards this end goal. While many have highlighted that Malaysia may in fact be an exception to this rule, this paper contends instead that the Malaysian case study challenges the central tenets of democratic transition more profoundly. Indeed, since independence the Malaysian regime has proved remarkably resilient and resistant to pressures for political liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluating the structural quality of arguments is a skill that is important to students' ability to comprehend the arguments of others and produce their own. The authors examined college and high school students' ability to evaluate the quality of 2-clause (claim-reason) arguments and tested a tutorial to improve this ability. These experiments indicated that college and high school students had difficulty evaluating arguments on the basis of their quality. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that a tutorial explaining skills important to overall argument evaluation increased performance but that immediate feedback during training was necessary for teaching students to evaluate the claim-reason connection. Using a Web-based version of the tutorial, Experiment 3 extended this finding to the performance of high school students. The study suggests that teaching the structure of an argument and teaching students to pay attention to the precise message of the claim can improve argument evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To test whether epistemically unproblematic ways of thinking and talking about science could be transformed during preservice teacher training, we designed a system of learning activities based on a set of heuristics for progressive disciplinary discourse (HPDD). The HPDD outline six design principles of learning environments where the aim is to foster learners' participation in material and discursive activities that characterize the work of scientists. After tracking participants through university coursework where the HPDD was employed and into their teaching practicums, we found that most came to reconceptualize the interrelated roles of models, theory, evidence, and argument. These ideas ultimately supported a shift in their goals for scientific investigation--from “proving” a hypothesis, to testing and revising explanatory models. Preliminary findings from teaching episodes with their own secondary students indicated that some participants took up “epistemically ambitious” classroom practices, pressing learners to develop testable models of natural phenomena and gather evidence to link observations with underlying explanatory processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology & Society is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd 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 "Paulina case" is the story of a 13-year-old girl in Mexico who became pregnant in 1999 after being raped. Although she received permission to obtain a legal abortion, the hospital convinced her mother through misleading information to decline the abortion. This case has become an almost obligatory point of reference when abortion is discussed in Mexico. This paper analyses how the Mexican press portrayed the Paulina case and the social actors who participated in it – Paulina herself, Paulina's allies, the state government, the Catholic Church, members of the political party PAN and the National Human Rights Commission. One of the great breakthroughs of this case was that the denial of an abortion was judged to be a form of negligence. In demanding justice for Paulina, Paulina's allies were given moral authority in the press to denounce those who denied her an abortion. While the government of Baja California state and members of the PAN were held responsible for their role in the case, the Catholic Church, who was also responsible, seemed to escape criticism. It is probable that the large emotional weight of the Paulina case accomplished more in terms of changing public opinion in support of women's right to decide on abortion than any other single event to date. ≪ L'affaire Paulina ≫ est l'histoire d'une adolescente mexicaine de 13 ans, enceinte en 1999 à la suite d'un viol. Bien qu'elle ait été autorisée à avorter légalement, l'hôpital a convaincu sa mère par des informations trompeuses de refuser l'avortement. Cette affaire est devenue une référence obligée lors de tout débat sur l'avortement au Mexique. Cet article analyse comment la presse mexicaine a décrit l'affaire Paulina et les acteurs sociaux y ayant participé – Paulina, ses alliés, les autorités de l'Etat, l'Eglise catholique, les membres du parti politique PAN et la Commission nationale des droits de l'homme. L'un des grands progrès de cette affaire est que le refus d'avortement a été jugé comme une forme de négligence. En demandant justice pour Paulina, ses alliés ont reçu dans la presse l'autorité morale requise pour dénoncer ceux qui lui avaient refusé l'avortement. Alors que les pouvoirs publics de l'Etat de Baja California et les membres du PAN ont été tenus pour responsables de leur rôle dans l'affaire, l'Eglise catholique qui était aussi responsable semble avoir échappée aux critiques. Il est probable que le fort poids émotionnel de l'affaire Paulina aura fait davantage pour modifier l'opinion publique en faveur du droit des femmes à décider si elles veulent avorter que tout autre événement. El "caso Paulina" es la historia de una niña mexicana de 13 años que resultó embarazada en 1999 después de haber sido violada. Aunque recibió permiso para obtener un aborto legal, el personal del hospital convenció a su madre, mediante información distorsionada, de rechazar el aborto. El caso se ha convertido en un punto de referencia obligatorio cuando se habla del aborto en México. Este artı́culo analiza cómo la prensa mexicana representó el caso Paulina y los actores sociales que participaron en él: Paulina, sus aliadas, el gobierno estatal, la Iglesia Católica, los afiliados al Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN), y la Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos. Uno de los hitos más significativos del caso fue que se consideró que la decisión de negarle el aborto a Paulina constituyera una forma de negligencia. Al demandar justicia para Paulina, la prensa atribuyó a sus aliadas la autoridad moral para denunciar a quienes le negaron el aborto. Si bien se responsabilizó al gobierno de Baja California y los miembros del PAN por su papel en el caso, la Iglesia Católica, que era también responsable, parece haberse librado de las crı́ticas. Es probable que el gran peso emocional del caso Paulina haya tenido más impacto sobre la opinión pública a favor del derecho de la mujer de decidir en materia del aborto que cualquier otro acontecimiento hasta la fecha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the paper of Adrian Randall about labour, capital and discourse in relation to the 1806 parliamentary enquiry into the woollen industry in Great Britain. He states that Randall in correct to raise the question of new languages or old. He believes that discourse is a relatively new concept for historians, and its needs refining. He stresses that historians need to evaluate new forms of analysis to see if they can explain historical processes more convincingly. He thinks that the theory of discourse does this when applied to the 1806 parliamentary enquiry into the woollen industry.

This paper examines some of the circumstances and the ways in which the instrumentality of vision has come to dominate our discourse since the Renaissance. Furthermore, it addresses our recent attempts at subjecting architecture to post-structuralist and textual theories only possible in the domain of pure ideality as the result of which the architectural object is read independently of its worldly situation. My intention however, is not only to advocate the experimental aspects of architecture but to argue that the world itself remains always implicated in our discourse. In other words, our readings cannot be abstracted from the world anymore than our experiences can be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key concern in international educational policy during the 21st century has been the impact of teacher professionalism on outcomes of schooling. Sweden makes for an interesting case because of the country's initiatives to improve the quality of education through an academization of the teachers. The aim of this study is to analyse how Swedish state policy of 'education on a scientific foundation' is constructed in a selection of texts and videos presented by the Swedish National Agency of Education, and how these policy texts construct discourses of teacher professionalism. The result shows how the formulation in the Education Act, prescribing that the education shall rest on a scientific foundation, is interpreted into 'policy-as-text' and a policy apparatus consisting of four central concepts. Here, the terms 'research-based way of working' and 'evidence' are added to the terms 'scientific foundation' and 'proven experience' from the Education Act. Furthermore, the result shows three policy discourses of teacher professionalism that are constructed in the analysed texts: the selectively critical and accountable teacher; the positive, flexible, responsible and effective teacher; and the semi-autonomous teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand English is well-known for its heavy borrowing of words from Māori. This lexical component, unique to New Zealand English alone has been studied intensely over the last 50 years, particularly in newspaper media. Current research suggests the use is still increasing today, primarily in Māori-related contexts. Here, we analyse a surprising and unexpected use of Māori loanwords in science digital discourse (neither genre being previously investigated), where we discover a strong presence of Māori borrowings in National Science Challenge website and Twitter content. Using corpus linguistics methods, we argue that the use of Māori loanwords in this genre functions as a national identity building tool, used by various authors to signal that the 'challenges' the country faces are uniquely New Zealand's 'challenges'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent increase in research and commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa has resulted in considerable and understandable interest from farmers, scholars, and practitioners. However, messy situations are often hard to critically engage in from afar, and the recent article published by Braimah et al. [(2017). Debated agronomy: Public discourse and the future of biotechnology policy in Ghana. Global Bioethics. doi:10.1080/11287462.2016.1261604] presents certain claims that further obfuscate - rather than clarify - an already complex landscape. In this commentary I first seek to clarify particular details of the Ghanaian "GMO" (as GM crops are colloquially called in Ghana) story with particular focus on certain actors and their stances. Next, I highlight some methodological shortcomings of Debated Agronomy and correct certain dubious quotations and claims. Finally, I suggest a more ethnographically and discourse-focused methodology to gain much needed insight into how Ghanaians are actively molding, contesting, and questioning GM discourse, funding, and use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on Peters' and Jandrić's previous work on curriculum as 'text' and 'discourse' (Peters, M. A., & Jandrić, P. (2018b). The curious relationships between discourse, genre and curriculum. Open Review of Educational Research, 5(1).), this article seeks to refresh and extend the central metaphor of 'curriculum as text' that is adopted as the organizing metaphor of William Pinar's 2006 book Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. We undertake this analysis by referring to five theoretical notions: Jorge Luis Borges' 'The garden of forking paths' (1941), Roland Barthes' structuralism (1977), Julia Kristeva's intertextuality (1966/1986), Ted Nelson's hypertextuality (1965), and Gilles Deleuze's and Felix Guattari's extratextuality (2004/1980). In conclusion, we show that the text is neither simply an artefact nor is it simply a sequence of uttered sounds. The text does not solely reside within the domain of the reader and cannot be considered as the exclusive domain of the author. Looking at relationships between text, textuality, curriculum, and technology, we show that the metaphor of 'curriculum as text' is inherently postdigital and that it requires development of a new postdigital language of inquiry and new postdigital forms of textual and non-textual expressions of that language in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Māori worldview, humans are linked directly to flora and fauna through whakapapa (ancestry). As such, conservation can be expressed, not in terms of preserving ‘otherness’, but in terms of sustaining ‘us-ness’—our very selfhood, and our relationships and interactions with nature. We investigated the shifting discourse on the use of ‘rāhui’ (prohibition, restriction) and conservation-related words in nineteenth century New Zealand using material from the early Māori newspapers (niupepa). Our search revealed numerous uses of ‘rāhui’ but very few uses of ‘kaitiakitanga’ (guardianship, stewardship) or conservation in discussion of resources. The discourse included concerns around legislation, land alienation and land loss, that all impact rangatiratanga (authority, autonomy, chieftainship) and the kincentric relationship with nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Foucault's theory of discourse this article aims at reformulating the established concept of disability. To this end, the author reconstructs ways in which disabling practices of subjectivation occur in and through public media discourses. The article focuses on the discoursive production of infantile identities in people with cognitive disabilities. The examples demonstrate that this discoursive production occurs in self-representational media formats and in outside media representations. Hence, the author develops a concept of disability as a discoursively produced ordering category, from which follows a reformulation of the disability concept. This reformulated concept, which grasps disability as discourse disability, allows in turn for a perspective on disability as practice and thus as independent from the subject. To conclude, the article discusses implications of such a perspective of disability for pedagogy and the social sciences, ultimately arguing for a broader definition of disability and for making respective benefits a matter of social pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discourse analysis was performed based on an online document under the headline: "What is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD, ADD)?" published by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), USA. Three parts of the document were analysed: (1) The introductory part, as this sets the tone of the whole text. (2) Parts of the text that were specifically addressed to parents. (3) Etiology and pathology of "ADHD" with reference to a number of different symptoms and behaviors. Inattention and hyperactivity are presented in the document as a floating spectrum of symptoms caused by "ADHD." Other factors of importance for children's development, that is, early attachment, close relationships, previous experiences, culture, and contexts are ignored. Children who are perceived as inattentive and hyperactive are portrayed as having inherent difficulties with no reference to their emotions or efforts to communicate. The child is viewed as suffering from a lifelong disorder that might not be cured but controlled by a diagnosis and subsequent medication. Parents are advised to control their child's behavior and to strive for early diagnosis in order to receive treatment provided by experts. Those who are presented as experts rely on a biomedical model, and in the document, detailed descriptions of medication to correct the undesired behaviors are provided. The value of judgment in the assessment of different symptoms and behaviors that signifies "ADHD" is absent, rather taken-for-granted beliefs were identified throughout the document. A heterogeneous set of behaviors is solely described as a disorder and hereafter it is stressed that the same behaviors are caused by the disorder. In this manner, cause and effects of "ADHD" are intertwined through circular argumentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to account for the theoretical contributions of poststructuralism to the issues of social and historical change in international relations. The author argues that despite poststructuralism's contributions, both to the ongoing metatheoretical debates in the field about the reifying and naturalising tendencies of positivism in the study of International Relations and to the understanding of language and discourses in the formation of evolving relations of power, poststructuralism did not manage to escape the pitfalls and lacunas of reification, functionalism and structuralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the mid-2000s a crisis discourse emerged in educational policy-making in the EU and in Sweden. Using the EU and Sweden as empirical references, this article explores how this crisis discourse has been and is employed by politicians and NGOs. Discourse Institutionalism is used as an overall theoretical framework focusing on how the crisis discourse is coordinated among powerful policy actors and communicated to the public, while critical discourse analysis is used for the systematic analysis. The crisis discourse implies that action has to be taken immediately and that there is no option other than to act, and the result shows that this normative discourse is becoming an important and powerful instrument in the hands of both national and transnational actors seeking public legitimacy for extensive reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I want to suggest that it is through the elaboration of the concept of discourse that the differences between Foucault and thinkers like Habermas, Hegel and Marx can best be understood. Foucault progressively develops a conception of discourse as a purely historical category that resists all reference to transcendental principles of unity--whether of substance or form--but sees the emergence of discursive frameworks as precarious and contested assemblages characterized by indeterminacy, complexity, openness, uncertainty and contingency. His approach thus enables a reconciliation of difference and commonality, or the particular and the general, in a distinctive and viable way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking at Brazilian economic discourse, in this article, we look at how mathematization of economics has advanced in the country in the last three decades. For this, we have classified into several categories all articles published in three major Brazilian economic journals (Revista Brasileira de Economia, Estudos Econômicos, and Revista de Economia Política) and the publications of ANPEC meetings from 1981 to 2010, according to the type of argument used. A total of 5,733 articles were analyzed. We attempt to see how mathematization of economic discourse developed, and found that there was an increased use of a formalized language from the mid-1990s onwards. Finally, to confirm our findings, we focus on the process of mathematization through the observation of a quantitative variable: equations per article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do successive CEOs use myths in an organization over time? While studies start to provide us with understanding of the discourse employed by particular organizational actors, we lack studies about the discourse used by successive strategic actors over long periods of time and the precise mechanisms of such use. To address this gap we theorise the components of mythopoetical behaviour of CEOs and apply critical discourse analysis to unpack the discursive mechanisms used by three CEOs at Hewlett Packard over a 27-year period. We offer two contributions: first, we elaborate on the concept of mythopoetical behaviour (mythopoesis) and show how it forms part of the four discursive mechanisms of authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization and mythopoesis that allow incoming CEOs to construct and legitimise their identity as strategic actors. Second, we develop the notion of mythopoetical distance to provide a method to examine how myths developed by CEOs are compared to the institutionalised myths in their firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginnings of the global debate over corporate governance in the early 1990s, academics, practitioners and policymakers have focused on changing boards of directors to improve corporate governance. The financial crisis of 2007–09 arose despite two decades of codification of corporation governance, a process that continues in the light of concern about corporate performance and accountability: codes have not eliminated the problems they set out to address. Analysing the three main versions of the UK code of corporate governance, we see a shifting discourse of ‘structures’ in Cadbury to ‘independence’ under the reforms in 2003, and then in the 2010 iteration towards ‘behaviour’, as the code seeks to improve boards as mechanisms of corporate governance. The evolution in the language and recommendations of the code reveals growing understanding both of the practical challenge of board effectiveness and of the limitations to codification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How does the causality between society and the economy run? After examining this fundamental question from the perspective of Polanyian economics, we conclude that the modern national economy is where bargained exchange is institutionalized by society to pre-exist with the aid of discipline over currency issues. However, this discipline is not provided with a proper institutional defense; and potential fragility of the modern national economy owing to this fact was most vividly revealed by central bankers' conduct in the great liquidity crisis of 2007/8. What are we to do for this? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]