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In evaluating the making of the language provisions of the Indian Constitution, this paper tries to argue that the idea of Constitutional parity of languages in the Indian polity of a secular nation was overlooked, in contrast to the Constitution's ethos of recognizing and respecting the diverse religions of the land. The Constitution has failed to consider languages as yet another cultural artefact, like religion. By proposing a mono-linguistic model of 'official language', the provisions actually gave way for a 'national' language in disguise, while also valuing and promoting Hindi's Sanskritic roots, thereby assuring Sanskrit a role and visibility in the future of the modern, new-born nation. Finally, the paper tries to propose that the lack of linguistic parity in the legal realm, in terms of state's recognition and patronage, impact the growth and expansion of languages negatively, by exploring the specific case of Bhojpuri language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is to situate the recent attempts devoted to the study of the phenomena of knowledge management in a larger epistemological context. More precisely, I intend to ascertain the enre affair from the perspective of the philosophy of the humanities. This involves understanding it as an endeavor concerned with the search for regularities. As a result, key notions figuring in the repertoire of this kind of undertaking, primarily those of notes and notebooks, are scrutinized for the purpose of revealing their theoretical function. This points towards some ontological issues, such as the idea of taking notes as cultural kinds, namely something analogous to the idea of natural kinds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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There are enduring inequalities in usage of social media, relating both to the demographic patterning of users and to differences in the kinds of use people make of these platforms. This paper presents a content analysis of representations of Twitter in three British newspapers from 2007 to 2014 aimed at exploring the potential contribution that differing journalistic practices make to sustaining the inequalities in uptake and use of social media platforms. The newspapers were selected for the contrasting composition of their readership, allowing for comparison of the portrayals of Twitter to distinct socio-demographic groups. The portrayal of Twitter was found to differ between the three newspapers analysed, with the readers of the tabloid and mid-range newspaper being presented a depiction of Twitter as a site for elite and celebrity voices and for fandom rather than a site for their own active participation or political content creation, to a greater extent than the readers of the quality paper. These results suggest that the journalistic practices distinctive to these diverse newspapers may have significant implications for the extent to which their readership are encouraged to see themselves as able to have a voice on social media: the tabloid style risks depoliticising Twitter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political shifts in the Middle Eastern and North African countries from 2010, generally referred to as Arab Spring, can be seen as resulting from a long drawn presence of resentment among the people, and it was triggered by, alongside other aspects, a consistent flow of cultural artefacts. That is, fiction, poems, memoirs, cartoons, graffiti, media campaigns arts, banners, posters, Facebook and Twitter hashtags acted as vehicles as well as locations of resistance providing the necessary impetus to the flowering of the revolution. Among the novels that attempted to capture the different shades of resentment of Arabs, Chewing Gum written by Mansour Bushnaf arguably stands out distinctly as a novel that exploits the convenience of fiction to articulate dissidence. This paper attempts to analyse how Chewing Gum can be read as a 'resistance narrative' that attempts to critique, dissent and probably destabilise in a covert way the hegemonic regime of Gaddafi, thereby contributing to the factors that led to the Arab Spring in Libya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of sustainability is not only associated with the environment, but includes cultural aspects. Whereby cultural artefacts help in the sustainability of any culture or cultural practice. Thus, cultural artefacts are believed to be the identity of a culture. On the other hand, cultural artefacts have become a mediator in developing common practices in diverse cultures. However, in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country like Malaysia, the plural and the autonomous cultural systems are seen as an obstacle in various common forms. As such this study aims to identify the commonly used cultural artefacts and the reasons for their preferences. The nominal group technique (NGT) was used in this study to identify the commonly used cultural artefacts. NGT is a qualitative data collection technique based on discussions among various categories of stakeholders and multi-ethnic group members. The study has justified the existence of common elements in multi-cultural practices which could reduce ethnocentrism and promote social integrity and unity among Malaysia's multiethnic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to address the teaching and learning processes in schools from a Vygotskian perspective based on the notion of identity artefacts (IAs) which, for our purposes, consist of documents created by the learners about themselves, in which they try to capture all the things that make sense and are meaningful to them and which, subsequently, can be used by teachers to work on curricular and pedagogical content. We conceptualise the notion of the identity artefact from the broader notions of mediation and cultural artefacts. We also provide a critical analysis of some examples of IAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article was to describe the task design and implementation of cultural artefacts in a mathematics lesson based on the integration of modelling and conjecturing perspectives. The conceived process of integrating a soccer ball into mathematics lessons via modelling- and conjecturing-based instruction was first detailed. Next, the paper analysed six students' participation behaviours as they created mathematical problems, definitions, terms, representations and arguments during modelling and conjecturing activities. Findings suggested students effectively engaged in the search for soccer ball models and solutions to posed questions, especially the reason manufacturers prefer soccer balls constructed from regular pentagons and regular hexagons to other types of regular polygons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]