Jacobson finds two distinct meanings of “dignity” in the literature on dignity and health: intrinsic human dignity and social dignity constituted through interactions with caregivers. Especially the latter has been central in empirical health research and warrants further exploration. This article focuses on the social dignity of people marginalized by mental illness, substance abuse and comparable conditions in extramural settings. 35 studies published between 2007 and 2017 have addressed this issue, most of them identifying norms for social dignity: civilized (...) interactions, non-stigmatizing treatment, treatment as unique individuals, being taken seriously, maintaining a positive identity, experiencing independence, relating to others, and participating in daily life. We argue that these norms belong to ideal theory, whereas we agree with Robeyns and others that improving practice is better served by non-ideal theory. Towards this end, we derive from the literature four building blocks for a non-ideal theory of dignity: avoid violations of dignity rather than seeking to promote it; dignity is not a goal to be reached; it requires ongoing effort; promoting dignity is a balancing act; contradictory norms can make it impossible to realize; and dignity can be undermined by organizational and discursive constraints. (shrink)

Scientific advances in health care have been disproportionately distributed across social strata. Disease burden is also disproportionately distributed, with marginalized groups having the highest risk of poor health outcomes. Social determinants are thought to influence health care delivery and the management of chronic diseases among marginalized groups, but the current conceptualization of social determinants lacks a critical focus on the experiences of people within their environment. The purpose of this article was to integrate the literature on marginalization and situate (...) the concept in the framework of social determinants of health. We demonstrate that social position links marginalization and social determinants of health. This perspective provides a critical lens to assess the societal power dynamics that influence the construction of the socio‐environmental factors affecting health. Linking marginalization with social determinants of health can improve our understanding of the inequities in health care delivery and the disparities in chronic disease burden among vulnerable groups. (shrink)

This paper highlights a number of ethical dilemmas encountered in a pilot study with a hard-to-reach group of research participants with harmful childhood histories. Drawing on a project exploring black teenage mothers' understandings of their own childhood experiences of abuse, it is argued that in asking young mothers to talk about such an emotionally sensitive topic as their own harmful childhood, a number of challenges are posed about how to deal with number of key ethical principles. The paper begins by (...) outlining the context of the pilot study, including the research literature on this subject. It then discusses three key ethical principles that were considered during the process of the research: issues of gaining consent; and when the principle of confidentiality ought to be breached when a duty of care prerogative emerges. The paper explores these tensions in operationalising these principles when dealing with the competing needs and rights of gatekeepers, the young women and their carers, using occasional extracts from research findings to illustrate these tensions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethical challenges in accessing marginal voices in social research. (shrink)

I comment on Amartya Sen's study of the relations between the analysis of freedom and the theory of social choice. Two of his themes are analysed with regard to their contribution to an analytic understanding of the issues. These are: (1) the multiple interpretations of the concept of ‘preferences’ as a foundation for the formal conceptualizations of social choice and freedom; and (2) some issues in the formalization of freedom as a value to be compared with outcomes. Under (2), I (...) mainly point out some difficulties in the existing analyses and mildly support a ‘flexibility’ interpretation of freedom that I have advanced earlier. I conclude with some observations drawn from history and literature which complicate the value bien-pensant thinkers are prone to place on freedom. (Published Online February 16 2006). (shrink)

The proliferation of diasporas has influenced the nature of internationalization in many higher education (HE) systems and institutions, especially in terms of academic and student mobility/migration. Through a systematic review of the academic literature, I critically analyze the widespread uses of and approaches to ‘diaspora’ in HE research and its relationship to internationalization. I identify two major areas of studies and corresponding approaches to diaspora: one which frames diaspora as human capital and focusses on the role of the state; (...) and the other which frames diaspora as marginalized other and social construct. I argue that ‘diaspora’ in HE studies tends to be ambiguous, under-defined, under-theorized, and fragmented. I further argue that it is loosely connected to internationalization discourses, despite its clear connections. I posit that this is because ‘internationalization’ is associated with humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism, global citizenship and the de-centering of states, nations, ethnicities, religions, and particularistic identities. Diaspora is often associated with these latter categories and thus, is shunned. I conclude by suggesting that the blending of (often conflictual) ideas, intentions, values and identities is precisely what diaspora engages in and that the conditions of our increasingly mobile and (inter)connected world necessitate a (re)thinking of diaspora in HE scholarship. (shrink)

In recent years, the concept of social capital – broadly defined as co-operative networks based on regular, personal contact and trust – has been widely applied within cross-disciplinary human science research, primarily by economists, political scientists and sociologists. In this article, I argue why and how fieldwork anthropologists should fill a gap in the social capital literature by highlighting how social capital is being built in situ. I suggest that the recent inventions of “bridging” and “bonding” social capital, e.g., (...) inclusive and exclusive types of social capital, are fruitful concepts to apply in an anthropological fieldwork setting. Thus, my case study on the relationship between local people and newcomers in the rural Danish marginal municipality of Ravnsborg seeks to reveal processes of bridging/bonding social capital building. Such a case study at the micro level has general policy implications for a cultural clash between two different groups by demonstrating the complexity of a social capital mix where bonding social capital strongly prevails. This ultimately leads to a “social trap” (Rothstein 2005), implying widespread distrust and serious social and economic costs for a whole population. (shrink)

Like Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, an extraordinarily moving and engaging look at loss and death. Eve Joseph is an award-winning poet who worked for twenty years as a palliative care counselor in a hospice. When she was a young girl, she lost a much older brother, and her experience as a grown woman helping others face death, dying, and grief opens the path for her to recollect and understand his loss in a way she could not as (...) a child. In the Slender Margin is an insider's look at an experience that awaits us all, and that is at once deeply fascinating, frightening, and in modern society shunned. The book is an intimate invitation to consider death and our response to it without fear or morbidity, but rather with wonder and a curious mind. Writing with a poet's precise language and in short meditative chapters leavened with insight, warmth, and occasional humor, Joseph cites her hospice experience as well as the writings of others across generations--from the realms of mythology, psychology, science, religion, history, and literature--to illuminate the many facets of dying and death. Offering examples from cultural traditions, practices, and beliefs from around the world, her book is at once an exploration of the unknowable and a very humane journey through the land of grief. (shrink)

A major part of Ordinary Aesthetics has been to include the traditionally marginalized aesthetic categories excluded when studying beauty, truth, and goodness. These “negative aesthetics” are implicated in the construction, presentation, and sustenance of marginalized identities. For the purposes of my article, I will be focusing on the effort to incorporate the aforementioned in the study of aesthetics, essentially arguing for them to be inherently valuable and not for the sake of producing a “positive.” To this end and keeping up (...) with the thrust to include other traditions within aesthetics, my article will explore certain strands of Sufi poetry, namely the tradition of Qalandariyat, which present marginalized social identities to our awareness and not for the sake of changing or improving them. I will present some samples from the Persian poetry of Hafez and Rumi, as well as Punjabi couplets of Bulleh Shah and Shah Hussain, for a hermeneutic study that grounds the aesthetics of their Qalandari-themed literature in the usage of “negative” aesthetic categories. This exercise contains the promise of expanding the horizons for our field of sensibilities, by engaging with those social identities that have remained outside them and that too on their own terms. (shrink)

Social justice has been identified as a foundational moral commitment for global health research ethics. Yet what a commitment to social justice means for community engagement in such research has not been critically examined. This paper draws on the rich social justice literature from political philosophy to explore the normative question: What should the ethical goals of community engagement be if it is to help connect global health research to social justice? Five ethical goals for community engagement are proposed (...) that promote well-being, agency, and self-development, particularly for those considered disadvantaged and marginalized. The paper also considers how key terms used in the proposed goals should be defined using existing theories of health and social justice. This analysis is done to give global health researchers and their partners a better idea of what the ethical goals mean. Patterns of convergence amongst different theories are identified that support relying on particular definitions of key terms. (shrink)

In patriarchy women are frequently perceived as “the other” and as such they are subject to discrimination and marginalization. The androcentric character of patriarchy inherently confines women to the fringes of society. Undeniably, this was the case in Western culture throughout most of the twentieth century, before the social transformation triggered by the feminist movement enabled women to access spheres previously unavailable to them. Feminist science fiction of the 1970s, like feminism, attempted to challenge the patriarchal status quo in which (...) gender-based discrimination against women was the norm. Thus, authors expressed, in a fictionalized form, the same issues that constituted the primary concerns of feminism in its second wave. As feminist science fiction is an imaginative genre, the critique of the abuses of the twentieth-century patriarchy is usually developed in defamiliarized, unreal settings. Consequently, current problems are recontextualized, a technique which is meant to give the reader a new perspective on certain aspects of life they might otherwise take for granted, such as the inadequacies of patriarchy and women’s marginality in society. Yet there are authors who consider the real world dystopian enough to be used as a setting for their novels. This is the case with Woman on theEdge of Time by Marge Piercy and The Female Man by Joanna Russ. Both texts split the narrative into a science fictional and a realistic strand so as to contrast the contemporary world with utopian and dystopian alternatives. Both texts are largely politicized as they expose and challenge the marginalized status of women in the American society of the 1970s. They explore the process of constructing marginalized identities, as well as the forms that marginalization takes in the society. Most importantly, they indicate the necessity of decisive steps being taken to improve the situation. (shrink)

The corporate social responsibility literature has increasingly explored relationships between civil society and social movements, including non-governmental organizations, and corporations, as well as the role of NGOs in multi-stakeholder governance processes. This paper addresses the challenge of including a plurality of civil society voices and perspectives in business–NGO relations, and in CSR as a process of governance. The paper contributes to CSR scholarship by bringing insights from feminist literature to bear on CSR as a process of governance, and (...) engaging with leaders of women’s NGOs, a group of actors rarely included in CSR research. The issues raised inform contributions to the CSR literature relating to the role of women’s NGOs with regard to the gender equality practices and impacts of corporations, and with respect to defining the meaning and practice of CSR. The paper frames marginalized NGOs as important actors which can contribute to pluralism, inclusion and legitimacy in CSR as a process of governance. It identifies several key barriers to the participation of women’s NGOs in CSR, and concludes by making suggestions for future research, as well as practice. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, which derive from the conference 'Alienation and Alterity: Otherness in Modern and Contemporary Francophone Contexts', held at the University of Exeter in September 2007, explore various aspects of this ...

While the benefits of including local communities in multi-stakeholder initiatives have been acknowledged, their successful involvement remains a challenging process. Research has shown that large business interests are regularly over-represented and that local communities remain marginalized in the process. Additionally, little is known about how procedural fairness and inclusion can be managed and maintained during multi-stakeholder initiatives. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate how marginalized stakeholders, and local communities in particular, can be successfully involved during the course (...) of a multi-stakeholder initiative. An action research approach was adopted where the first author collaborated with a social housing association on an initiative to involve the local community in the design and implementation of circular economy approaches in a low-income neighbourhood. This study contributes to the multi-stakeholder initiative literature by showing that the successful involvement of marginalized stakeholders requires the initiators to continuously manage a balance between uncertainty–certainty, disagreement–agreement and consensus- and domination-based management strategies. Furthermore, our study highlights that factors which are regularly treated as challenges, including uncertainty and disagreement, can actually play a beneficial role in multi-stakeholder initiatives, emphasizing the need to take a temporally sensitive approach. This study also contributes to the circular economy literature by showing how communities can play a bigger role than merely being consumers, leading to the inclusion of a socially oriented perspective which has not been recognized in the previous literature. (shrink)

Professionals in environmental fields engage with complex problems that involve stakeholders with different values, different forms of knowledge, and contentious decisions. There is increasing recognition of the need to train graduate students in interdisciplinary environmental science programs in these issues, which we refer to as “social ethics.” A literature review revealed topics and skills that should be included in such training, as well as potential challenges and barriers. From this review, we developed an online survey, which we administered to (...) faculty from 81 United States colleges and universities offering IESPs. Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that IESPs should address values in applying science to policy and management decisions. They also agreed that programs should engage students with issues related to norms of scientific practice. Agreement was slightly less strong that IESPs should train students in skills related to managing value conflicts among different stakeholders. The primary challenges to incorporating social ethics into the curriculum were related to the lack of materials and expertise for delivery, though challenges such as ethics being marginalized in relation to environmental science content were also prominent. Challenges related to students’ interest in ethics were considered less problematic. Respondents believed that social ethics are most effectively delivered when incorporated into existing courses, and they preferred case studies or problem-based learning for delivery. Student competence is generally not assessed, and respondents recognized a need for both curricular materials and assessment tools. (shrink)

In recent years social financiers have been increasingly investing in alternative food systems to improve sustainability outcomes. However, social finance for alternative food systems remains small and marginalized. This article seeks to understand why this approach is not yet making a larger impact towards food system transformation. It does so by investigating a specific application of social finance through the case of Slow Money to get answers as to why social finance occupies a niche role in food system transformation. These (...) answers provide helpful lessons for Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) seeking to transform food systems towards greater sustainability. This study tracks the intended impacts of these initiatives and provides insights about the potential role of social finance for promoting AFNs. Key themes emerged regarding the ability of social financing initiatives to support AFNs and transform the food system for greater sustainability. These themes resonate with the literature on AFNs in meaningful ways, but also highlight an important contradiction between systemic change and individual action. The findings show that the Slow Money model contains some useful elements for radical transformation but is ultimately limited in its ability to support deeper, transformative change. The conclusion advances recommendations for ways of enhancing the transformative potential of community financing initiatives in light of the findings, emphasizing the role of public investments. (shrink)

Introduction: Adorno and Barthes on the question of the right (di)stance -- The pathos of distances in "a world of banished people" -- George Orwell's critique of sincerity and the obligation of tactlessness -- The inferno of saviors: notes in the margin of Elias Canetti's lifework -- A socialism of distances, or on the difficulties of wise love: Iris Murdoch's secular community -- "The world in me": the distantiality of everyday life -- In search of a whole self: Benjamin's childhood (...) fragments -- Annie Ernaux's diaries of the outside -- Gunter Grass's century -- Damon Galgut on emptying oneself for sleep -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Within stakeholder literature, much attention has been given to which stakeholders "really count." This article strives to explain why organizational theorists should abandon the pursuit of "Who and What Really Counts" to challenge the assumption of a managerial perspective that defines stakeholder legitimacy. Reflecting on the paucity of employee rights and protections in marginalized work environments, I argue that as organizational researchers, we must recognize and take responsibility for the impact of our research models and visions. By confronting and (...) rethinking the foundational assumptions of stakeholder theory, business and society scholars can identify and pursue research questions that more effectively address contemporary social challenges. (shrink)

In the final scene of Michel Tournier’s postcolonial novel La Goutte d’or, the protagonist, Idriss, shatters the glass of a Cristobal & Co. storefront window while operating a jackhammer in the working-class Parisian neighbourhood on the Rue de la Goutte d’or. Glass fragments fly everywhere as the Parisian police arrive. In La Goutte d’or, Tournier explores the identity construction of Idriss through a discussion of the role that visual images play in the development of a twentieth-century consciousness of the “Other.” (...) At the beginning of the novel, a French tourist takes a photograph of Idriss during her visit to the Sahara. The boy’s quest to reclaim his stolen image leads him from the Sahara to Marseille, and finally to the Rue de la Goutte d’or in Paris. The Rue de la Goutte d’or remains one the most cosmopolitan neighbourhoods of the city. In Tournier’s novel, the goutte d’or also corresponds to a symbolic object: a Berber jewel. It is the jewel that Idriss brings with him, but which he also subsequently loses upon his arrival in Marseille. From the very moment that the French tourist photographs him, a marginalization of Idriss’s identity occurs. Marginality, quite literally, refers to the spatial property of a location in which something is situated. Figuratively speaking, marginality suggests something that is on the edges or at the outer limits of social acceptability. In this essay, I explore the construction of the marginalized postcolonial self through an examination of the function of visual representation in the development of a postcolonial identity in La Goutte d’or. In the end, I conclude that the construction of a postcolonial identity is based upon fragmentation and marginalization, which ultimately leads its subject to create an identity based upon false constructions. (shrink)

Purpose Much prior literature has discussed bioethics from a Confucian perspective in biomedical research, but little has applied Confucianism in examining ethics in social and behavioral research involving human subjects. This paper aims to reexamine the Belmont principles in social and behavioral research from a Confucian perspective to discuss their applicability and limitations and propose implications for revising or extending them potentially in the future. Design/methodology/approach A comparison is conducted on bioethics and social and behavioral research ethics. Afterward, a (...) critical analysis is conducted on the Belmont principles of respect for persons, beneficence and justice from a Confucian perspective regarding their application in social and behavioral research. Findings From a Confucian perspective, the Belmont principles are necessary but may not be sufficient to cover the width and depth of ethical issues in social and behavioral research, such as those in crowd work-based research. This paper proposes that ethical guidelines for social and behavioral research may need to be updated from the Belmont principles adopting or incorporating certain Confucian ethics. Originality/value Social and behavioral research ethics have been relatively marginal compared to the bioethics deliberation in the existing literature. Unlike Beauchamp and Childress’s continued efforts in refining ethical guidelines for biomedical research specifically, little similar work has been done in this area since the Belmont report’s publication in 1979. This paper sheds light on building more refined and specific ethical guidelines to navigate the ever-growing numbers and diversities of nonmedical research topics, methodologies and contexts. (shrink)

Is celebration of culturally marginalized people by the dominant culture actually benefitting those who are oppressed? Whose stakes are served in such a celebration and how are existing power relations altered? These are some of the questions John Champagne asks in this original and timely critique, which moves gay studies beyond identity politics and the "rights" discourse within which much of contemporary gay studies is positioned. Champagne argues that in the modern West, culturally marginalized people such as gays are not (...) allowed to define and legitimate their own existence outside the framework established for them by the dominant group. To illustrate his premise, Champagne analyzes a number of recent films, including "Paris is Burning", "Looking for Langston" and Marlon Riggs' 1989 video "Tongues Untied" along with gay pornography, using the work of such critics of difference as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Spivak. He calls for the marginalized individual to elaborate a practice of critical self-conduct, working to understand his or her own group as having been produced as an entity along a variety of different registers, only some of which might be said to be marginalized. "The Ethics of Marginality" situates itself at the intersection of English, cultural studies, film studies and gay and lesbian studies. It offers a powerful critique of contemporary approaches to studies of the "other" while promising to establish a ground-breaking and controversial new theoretical model for such studies. (shrink)

The U.S. agricultural sector relies heavily on agricultural migrant workers, and Florida has a history of (im)migrant labor. However, this system is historically rooted in colonization, and its systems of oppression remain. Currently, migrant workers operate in various systems of oppression, including social, health, and environmental inequities, all of which have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature regarding decoloniality, muted group theory, and decolonial intersectionality has a strong history of uncovering how multiple oppressions overlap for vulnerable and (...) marginalized groups in the US. We draw on this literature to ask: 1) how can examining participants’ stories through decolonial intersectionality help explore structural and institutional racism and the dominance of muting? and 2) how can participants recount how they resist oppression and/or unmute in telling their stories? To answer these questions, literary portraits were co-created with farmworkers and community liaisons about participants’ experiences. The authors used decoloniality, muted group theory, and decolonial intersectionality to analyze participants’ creative non-fiction stories. Farmworkers recounted through their stories that they were often devalued, had their humanity questioned, and negotiated their survival, especially during COVID-19. However, they were able to resist the oppressions of coloniality through their families, faith, pride, and love. Recommendations include using storytelling techniques to align with farmworkers’ wants in research as well as assist in communicating about issues regarding health and safety. Non-profit organizations, centers of faith, and universities can assist in serving the needs of agricultural migrant workers related to childcare, food security, and worksite and home safety issues. (shrink)

Pamela Sue Anderson’s project about vulnerability and the silencing of the female speaker began with her realization of the female philosopher’s position within academia. Exposing the disavowal of the female “knower,” Anderson lays bare the mechanisms of excluding women from intellectual, artistic and religious discourse. Moving beyond the negative configuration of vulnerability associated with an openness to violence, Anderson refigures it as an openness to affection. The denial of thus refigured vulnerability has led to the literal and discursive oppression of (...) women through the “wilful ignorance” of their intellectual, emotional and sexual needs. In this article Filipczak analyses manifestations of this oppression exposed by female writers who illustrate the predicament discussed by Anderson in their fiction. Starting with Anderson’s refiguring of Antigone as a figure of dissent and marginality in her early work, Filipczak discusses Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, Morag Gunn from The Diviners by Margaret Laurence and Mary Magdalene from The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Michèle Roberts. What connects these characters is the fact that they are disavowed as knowers in intellectual, artistic or theological endeavours by male figures of authority who deny vulnerability as an openness to affection, and rely on social collusion with such denial. The analysis also refers to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Aritha van Herk’s Places Far From Ellesmere. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the extent to which information communication technologies have worked as instruments of perpetuating social exclusion in developing countries.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses theoretical and conceptual analysis method based on an extensive survey of literature. It greatly draws from the theoretical and empirical insights of social policy sub disciplines of social inclusion/exclusion and social aspects of ICTs.FindingsThe paper finds that ICTs in developing countries work to further social marginalization and exclusion. The argument is that (...) developing countries already experience high levels of social exclusion and as a result, ICTs deepen this exclusion.Originality/valueTheoretically, the paper contributes to the development of literature on the impacts of ICTs in developing countries which are in most cases only assumed. The paper is also pivotal for policy analysis purposes as it informs policy makers on appropriate interventions that can ensure sustainable integration of the socially excluded groups in developing countries. In addition, this paper creates a research sub area for further empirical analysis. (shrink)

The interest shown in marginal groups is explained by a diversity of factors. On the threshold of the modern era appeared an abundant literature devoted to a description of the world of delinquency. More particularly, these were treatises on the mysteries of the forbidden quarters of the cities of the time and on the behavior and way of life of social groups living by swindling or fraud. This being drawn to the exotic and the unusual in society, which was (...) not unrelated to an awakening of ethnological curiosity, was also seen in the flowering of a type of literature which could be called “picaresque.” It had already appeared in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, but it came into full bloom only in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish picaresque novel, because of its literary brilliance and its wide acceptance by the reading public, left in the shade a multitude of similar works coming from other European countries, from the English “rogue pamphlets” to the “rogue” literature of Germany and Holland to the tales of Polish and Czech vagabonds. These literary works are closely related to treatises which claimed to be based on eye-witness accounts or which claimed to report authentic events. In reality, they were all taken from fiction and demand comparison with documentary evidence. But the abundance of this type of literature and the success it enjoyed also indicate an early awareness by modern society of the growing importance of social groups living in contradiction to the norms, manners and customs in force at the time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fear and Loathing in Academe:Gonzo Scholarship and the War Against TourismDaniel StempelIWhen I retired in 1985 I chose as my mantra an academic version of a famous general's farewell to his troops: "Old scholars never die—they just fade away into the stacks." Now that I am an octogenarian, I have faded away into total invisibility, but, like Tithonus, I am not inaudible. I hope my voice will be strident (...) enough to disturb the utopian dreams of a new generation, although I doubt that it will wake them from their dogmatic slumbers. My decision to return to the wars of intellect was occasioned by a chance discovery as I haunted the periodical stacks. I noted the name of an old friend in the title of an article and was surprised to find him pilloried as both a "liberal white Protestant" and a "white supremacist," terms which do not, in my experience, necessarily go together.The article, "Pacific Scholarship, Literary Criticism, and Touristic Desire: The Specter of A. Grove Day," written by Paul Lyons, a member of the University of Hawai'i English department's Cultural Studies group, uses bell, book, and candle of the new postcolonial faith in a rite of exorcism to dispel the evil influences of commercial tourism.1 As every exorcist knows, the rite demands that a demon must be called by his name and Lyons has chosen to demonize a deceased member of the English department. Grove Day came to Hawaii in 1944 and retired in 1969. He served as chairman from 1948 to 1953 and taught the course in Literature of the Pacific until his retirement in 1969. He began as a freelance writer long before he decided to enter graduate school at [End Page 95] Stanford and continued to publish more than fifty books on Hawaii and the Pacific. In 1979 he received the State Award for Literature. He died in 1994 in a plunge from an upper floor of a retirement home. Paul Lyons, by his own admission, came to Hawaii in 1990 knowing nothing of its history and culture but soon became a self-appointed authority on Hawaii, its colonial past and present, and its postcolonial future, eagerly embracing the ideas disseminated by the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the university.His article begins with a pretentious elaboration of the method he plans to use to raze the Potemkin village of tourism. Invoking the authority of Hegel on appearance and reality in a passage he has found cited by Žižek, he follows Dean MacCannell, who has adapted Erving Goffman's distinction between dramatic front and back: the entertaining scene presented to the tourist public contrasts with the backstage machinery of the stagehands who put it all together to deceive gullible visitors.2 He combines this with a quotation he has found in a book by William V. Spanos, the founder and former editor of Boundary 2, taken from a journalist's view of the Vietnam War, complaining that they had all been "deeply backgrounded." These are enlisted in the service of MacCannell's quest for "authenticity" as the touchstone of all encounters with other cultures, including the tourist experience.Had Lyons, instead of accepting MacCannell's interpretation of Goffman's early work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), taken a closer look at this witty and ironic study of social behavior in a small community in the Shetland Islands, he would have found that Goffman makes no judgment on the comparative authenticity of either front or back. He utilizes what may be called the J. Alfred Prufrock theory of interaction between individuals and the groups in which they find themselves: "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet...." MacCannell, in contrast, sees the tourist as a Tennysonian Ulysses in pursuit of a horizon of authenticity that recedes into infinity, "whose margin fades / Forever and forever as I move."Of course, the front/back and foreground/background binary oppositions and the insistence on authenticity are commonplaces rooted in the ubiquitous literary and philosophical tradition of "All the world's a stage" and require no... (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility in developing countries has recently received increasing attention, and scholars have pointed to the strong contextuality of CSR in the respective regions. Regarding the latter, however, sub-Saharan Africa has been scrutinized only marginally by academia. Moreover, empirical research on the impact of the institutional context has been scant, despite its attributed importance for CSR. Our article seeks to fill a part of this research gap by investigating CSR website reporting of 211 companies in seven sub-Saharan countries. The (...) study’s aim is twofold: First, we identify to what extent sub-Saharan companies report on CSR and which contents they disclose. Second, by building on institutional theory, we investigate how the socio-economic and political environments influence CSR reporting. For this purpose, we examine the impact of country-level and company-level determinants. We find that the sample African companies’ CSR efforts focus strongly on local philanthropy and therefore differ substantially from Western CSR approaches. Furthermore, we evidence that GDP and level of governance standard positively affect CSR reporting. Our study contributes to the literature by empirically evidencing the contextuality of CSR in Africa and by explaining how specific country- and company-level determinants contribute to or hamper the development of CSR in developing countries. (shrink)

Undoubtedly, Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) is one of the most important subjects affecting the development of Islamic thought for about thirteen centuries. Not only Islamic law; however, with his fundamental contributions to the doctrine, he continues to influence a very large environment in the Islamic geography today. In fact, this effect has been attractive enough to create a depth that permeates the daily lives of societies from economics to law, from education to health, beyond these mere theoretical and practical dimensions (...) of religion. Essentially, the interpretation of Islam systematized by Abū Ḥanīfa in the context of a religious philosophy and method has been the subject of a heated discussion and evaluation under different Islamic paradigms since the very first time. Today, the issue has gained a different dimension in parallel with the increasing tensions in all aspects of the Islamic world. Apart from the interest shown to him in the context of organized religion, Abū Ḥanīfa has been a means of reaction to the Arab religion and politics attitude on the one hand, and on the other hand he has been made the object of conflict, harmony and incompatibilities in the context of modernization. The research is limited to studies conducted in Turkey between 2000 and 2020 years on Abū Ḥanīfa. The research is based on the assumption that these studies dealt with Abū Ḥanīfa almost completely detached from her sociological and historical personality and confronted with a theoretical problem. In the study, a theoretical analysis of the mentioned literature has been made and a theoretical proposal has been made for the studies in the field. With the research, it is aimed to make a theoretical contribution to the Abū Ḥanīfa literature. For this purpose, the general theoretical view of these studies is tried to be understood by scanning the books, articles and symposium papers covering these years. In this framework, some semantic packages that manifest themselves widely in the studies are determined, and thus the unchanging concrete reflections of the phenomenon problematized in the research are tried to be understood. The data in the study are evaluated in the context of phenomenological sociology of knowledge. From the earliest times to today, Abū Ḥanīfa is not only about the theological perception of people; besides, he has drawn an image surrounded by the limitations drawn by their socioeconomic, cultural, political and ideological circles. On the other hand, it can easily be seen that the approaches reflected in the literature about Abū Ḥanīfa, whether they come from the Hanafi school or have matured within another tradition of thought, are almost entirely shaped in a macro-theological, suprahistorical, universalist and nomothetic perspective. It can also be said that these studies have not attempted to open themselves up to new discussions in theoretical terms. In the years that were the subject of the research, Abū Ḥanīfa was the subject of periodicals and symposiums conducted within a program rather than copyrighted works. The literature, which is clearly observed to be confronted with a theological contraction, is progressing with a more doctrine debate today. It is understood that relatively less practical areas of discussion have emerged with the motive of responding to developments in the Islamic world and on a global scale, ignoring Abū Ḥanīfa 's sociological background. Handing over to Abū Ḥanīfa, disciplinary populism, sectarian marginalization, romanticization and ideological commodification are important meaning packages reflected in the literature. The main concern of all this semantic reality is to build an order based on the knowledge stock in the tradition against the breaks and traumas in the social structure. However, this approach to explain Abū Ḥanīfa has revealed some theoretical problems. In another respect, the perspectives that dominated the literature made such generalizing attitudes inevitable. As a result, with this theoretical point of view, Abū Ḥanīfa has been turned into a historical problem in related studies in general. Finally, in this study, a historical, idiographic perspective emphasizing the specificity to the social event is proposed for the literature of Abū Ḥanīfa. In this context, the article draws attention to the phenomenological sociology of knowledge that takes the understanding of each event in its own reality as opposed to macro approaches. (shrink)

This paper shows the state of the art regarding the possibilities of intervention for the economic and social inclusion of young people Not engaged in Employment, Education, or Training through Massive Open Online Courses in the countries of the European Union, in order to identify and compare good practices and didactic models aimed to contrast the social and economic vulnerabilities of young people. The systematic review, carried out on both generalist and more properly educational databases, has revealed the poor relationship (...) between the two topics in literature, each one moreover only recently made the subject of articulated research. The field of study is therefore open and invites further reflection on its possible developments. Matching NEETs’ needs and business companies’ requirements, students’ motivation during the learning path, keeping balance between e-learning and face-to-face lectures, tutors’ involvement along the course, and relationships with stakeholders remain the main issues identified in the various papers reviewed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Believing in Yesterday while Living for TodayJudith P. HallettLee T. Pearcy's meditation on the past and prospects of classical education in the United States, The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (Baylor University Press, Waco, Tex. 2005), embarks from an assessment by the German émigré-scholar Werner Jaeger in his Scripta Minora, published in Rome in 1961, a year before Jaeger died. Jaeger's exact words merit full quotation: (...) "Without the continuing prestige of the ancient idea of humanity in human culture, classical scholarship is just a waste of time. Whoever does not see this ought to come to America and let himself learn from the way classical studies have developed there." Arguing "that Jaeger was right," Pearcy contends that "Classics, the study of ancient Greece and Rome, has never developed, as other academic subjects and disciplines have, a distinctly American form in response to American social and cultural conditions." Instead, "classics in this country has imitated European models and patterned itself after forms of education and scholarship developed in a cultural context where, as Jaeger saw, the prestige of Humanism guaranteed the cultural value of classical study" (Foreword, x).The Grammar of Our Civility not only offers a thoughtful response to Jaeger's criticism of how classical studies have developed in this alien environment; it also considers how they might, at long last, become truly American. In faulting classics in this country for merely emulating inapposite European models, Pearcy investigates the genesis of these models in Renaissance Italy and nineteenth-century England and Germany, and traces the evolution of American classics in higher and secondary education from colonial to contemporary times. He maintains that the inability of classics "to negotiate successfully the transition at the end of the nineteenth century," moving from the curricular configurations that have been called the "Old College" to the modern American university, has left it uniquely marginalized among professionalized disciplines. Yet he also evocatively imagines, in the mode of another illustrious European settler on our shores, John Lennon: "the contours of a distinctive form of classical education grounded in American personal and social reality [End Page 589] as firmly as European classical studies were grounded in the society they served" (Foreword, ix–x).Pearcy insists that this "pragmatic" American form of classical education needs to resemble its European predecessor by remaining "a way of becoming human and humane." Nevertheless, he envisions that it will adopt patterns of education and scholarship that draw on the "progressive, democratic strain" in the practice of a few American classicists, "avoid[ing] the temptations of some postmodern theories that deny language and literature any possibility of interacting with the human world and make them instruments of power rather than the creators of the powerful." He visualizes a discipline that emerges from and reacts to what he terms the "American cultural self... indeterminate and various." At the same time, he stipulates that this new form of classics must respond to "Jaeger's provocative challenge... by refusing to depend on the 'ancient idea of humanity in human culture'" (118–19).Jaeger's "ancient idea," responsible for the form of classical education that prevailed from approximately the Renaissance to World War I, is the "grammar" of Pearcy's title. Pearcy deploys the term "grammar" in an inventive, subtle analogy between the mastery of an individual language and the study of the entire classical world. As he observes, much as those who acquire the fundamentals of a language through exposure to abstract accounts of its workings become capable of comprehending and actively transforming the culture that this language describes and sustains, so those who once absorbed the messages emanating from that old-time, Old World classical education came to possess the "tastes, values and attitudes of the governing class," and be deemed "civilized" (2–5).Pearcy ponders the form that this "civility" of yore—informed, humane interactions of the mind—might assume in American society today. He similarly considers how a new, culturally rooted and authentic kind of grammar—formal intellectual engagement with the ancient Greco-Roman world in the halls of learning—might foster that civility. Not surprisingly, he assumes that those acquiring this grammar "will begin... (shrink)

In the 1990s, have long been into the "limbo" of literary criticism and ethics scholars quietly occupied the United States. In the post-modern context, the literary criticism of the ethical shift is not a simple return to tradition, but was given a new meaning and carry a new mission. Engaged in literary criticism of the construction of ethical theorists because of their different starting points and strategies basically two camps: the new humanism and deconstruction were sent, who together constitute a (...) post-modern context of the ethical criticism of American literature the landscape. Ethic criticism dominated American literary criticism once again in 1990's, though for a long time it was marginized. However, the ethics turn of literary criticism in the post modern context is not simply a returning to tradition, instead, it was endowed with new connotation therefore equipped with new missions. Varied in starting points and strategies, critics devoted to ethic criticism could roughly be divided into two parts: that of ness humanism and of deconstruction. The work together and form a postmodern brilliant ethic landscape in American criticism. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to identify early and recent Pentecostal studies in the West and to highlight the main difference between them. Today there are more than 250 million Pentecostals in the world, and together with the charismatic movement there are more than 500 million. Having begun to spread in the 20th century, the movement claims to be the fastest growing religious phenomenon in human history. In attempts to interpret the phenomenon of the movement's growth, there have been (...) several gradually emerging approaches: explaining the origin of the movement as supernaturally "coming from heaven"; searching for the origins of Pentecostalism in other Christian movements; presenting the emergence of the movement as the result of social and psychological factors such as poverty, marginalization, and the desire to escape from modern society; and the multicultural approach. The paper analyzes the works of Western historians and theologians of Pentecostalism since the second half of the 20th century. The result shows a turning point between early and late studies, namely that late studies aim to revise the history and include participants in the movement around the world, not just in North America, explore the contribution to the development of the movement of local ministers who have long remained in the shadow of Western missionaries, emphasize the diversity of ideologies and social influences that have shaped the movement. It also highlights three major contemporary areas of research: historical, characterized by studies of Pentecostalism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; theological, focusing on the development and shaping of theoretical theology as a result of the movement's institutionalization; and religious studies, practiced primarily from the perspective of the sociology of religion. (shrink)

Drawing on interdisciplinary, feminist insights, we encourage social psychologists to embrace the active participation of marginalized groups in social disparities research. We explain how the absence of marginalized groups' perspectives in research presents a serious challenge to understanding intergroup dynamics and concomitant disparities, and how their inclusion could assuage some of social psychology's “fatal flaws.”.

Social pressure on companies is leading to a growing concern about the corporate relationship with the community. On the other hand, the progressive reduction on governments' grants leads nonprofits to diversify their sources of revenue and to turn to companies for funds. However, there has been a change in this relationship. Their margin for cooperation is now broader, and the level of involvement is deeper. This results in the formation of alliances between them. Based on the literature and the (...) results of a series of interviews with marketing managers at nonprofits and companies, this paper analyses the opportunities and risks associated to this type of partnerships, with a special emphasis in the nonprofits' needs and mission. Secondly, we describe how Spanish nonprofits are hedging the risks. Finally, guidelines and information sources are provided in order to reduce the uncertainty contingent to this type of alliances. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:666 Feminist Studies 44, no. 3. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Lana Dee Povitz To See and Be Seen: In Conversation with JEB August 12, 2017; a hot, bright morning. Ariel and I disembark at the train station in Takoma, DC, and head toward the waiting car. In the driver’s seat is one of the most important photographers of lesbian lives in the United States, Joan E. Biren, (...) popularly known as JEB. Decades before social media made images of nearly anything accessible to nearly anyone with a web connection, JEB published Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians in 1979—in her words, “The first lesbian [photography] book that was going to say LESBIAN on the cover and have real people with real faces and first names on the inside.”1 A videographer later in her career, JEB made her mark traveling around the country in the late 1970s and early 1980s with her Dyke Show.2 Formally titled Lesbian Images in Photograph : 1850–the present, this constantly evolving visual and audio performance featured between three hundred and four hundred slides of lesbians or lesbian-like women from 1850 to the present.3 At the crest 1. Joan E. Biren, phone interview with Ariel Goldberg, October 10, 2017. Transcript in author’s possession. 2. JEB toured with the Dyke Show in the United States and Canada from 1979 to 1985. See Sophie Hackett, “Queer Looking,” Aperture 218 (Spring 2015): 40–45. 3. Ibid. On “lesbian-like” women and finding lesbians throughout history before the consolidation of the identity category, see Judith M. Bennett, “‘Lesbian-Like’ and the Social History of Lesbianisms,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, nos. 1–2 (January–April 2000): 1–24; David M. Halperin, “The First Homosexuality?” in his How to Do the History of Homosexuality Lana Dee Povitz 667 of the women’s liberation movement, audiences crowded together wherever they could to see the show—in living rooms, garages, church basements, community centers, and feminist bookstores—sitting rapt on the ground or on folding chairs. For many in these all-women spaces, JEB’s slides were the first images of women like them they’d ever seen. It’s Ariel who has arranged today’s interview, doing research for the book they’re writing about the influence of the twentieth century’s LGBTQ photographers on contemporary mainstream image culture. Ariel Goldberg is a photographer and poet who crisscrosses New York City working as an adjunct on different college campuses. The more they tell me about JEB in the weeks leading up to this meeting, the more I sense something genealogical afoot. Each representing the white, Jewish, middle -class,antiracist-lesbian-grassroots activism of their respective eras, both JEB and Ariel are self-taught, collaborative, and accountable to their circles of activist/artist friends. They pursue projects with or without (usually without) institutional support and brim with interests that hover between marginal and hot. As for me, I’m a historian, tagging along for the ride. I know little about photography, its practitioners, or its technologies, but I’m dipping into a new research project about the impact of social-movement participation on activist lives. And, aware of JEB’s role as a documentarian of (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002): 48–80; Leila Rupp, Sapphistries : A Global History of Love Between Women (New York: New York University Press, 2011); Valerie Traub, Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). See also Cait McKinney, “‘Finding the Lines to My People’: Media History of Queer Bibliographic Encounter,” GLQ: Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 24, no. 1 (January 2018): 55–83. For a discussion of queer desire for belonging based in literature, see Christopher Nealon, Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion Before Stonewall (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).  Ariel Goldberg, by Lana Dee Povitz. 668 Lana Dee Povitz social justice movements, including women’s and gay liberation, as well as her theoretical contributions to the early lesbian-separatist collective known as the Furies Collective, I am curious what this veteran activist life looks like now. Ariel and I speculated about JEB on the ride down from New York. We know she... (shrink)

From social media to search engines to Wikipedia, the internet is thoroughly embedded in how we produce, locate, and share knowledge around the world. Who Should We Be Online? provides an account of online knowledge that takes seriously the role of sexist, racist, transphobic, colonial, and capitalist forms of oppression. Frost-Arnold argues against analyzing internet users as a collection of identical generic people with smartphones. The novel epistemology developed in this book recognizes that we are differently embodied beings interacting within (...) systems of dominance. Our social identities and global inequalities shape who we are, who we can be online, and what we know. Tackling problems of online content moderation, fake news, and hoaxes, Frost-Arnold shows that oppressive online structures and practices help fuel ignorance. But she also reveals how the internet provides opportunities for marginalized people and activists to share knowledge online. Drawing on feminist accounts of objectivity, veritistic social epistemology, epistemologies of ignorance, virtue epistemology, and the epistemic injustice literature, this book argues for a social epistemology that values truth and objectivity, while recognizing that inequalities shape our collective ability to attain these goals. Timely and interdisciplinary, Who Should We Be Online? weaves together internet studies scholarship from across the humanities, social sciences, and computer science. Presenting case studies of moderators, imposters, tricksters, fakers, and lurkers, this book both explains the problems with our current internet ecosystem and imagines liberatory online futures. (shrink)

This article addresses the underresearched issue of exclusion of a social group that consists of people experiencing involuntary childlessness, which has not been thoroughly researched in this perspective yet. Apart from the available literature on this subject, there were also used conclusions from research that represent only a small part of the author’s unpublished doctoral dissertation Niepłodność w narracjach małżeństw jako indywidualne i wspólne strategie uczenia się egzystencjalnego [Infertility in the accounts of married couples as individual and joint strategies (...) of existential learning]. The author argues that the marginalization of childless people is a consequence of receiving no external support from state organs and institutions (mostly from the educational and medical sector) that would make it possible to prevent infertility or, if it is diagnosed, to make available all possible ways to overcome it. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the Laozi offers a variety of cosmogenic accounts, including the one expressed by means of the artisan metaphors of “uncarved wood,” “vessels,” and “cutting.” These metaphors and the images related to them often appeared in the given context in ancient Chinese literature depicting the physical emergence of the world as a process of progressive differentiation out of the original state of “chaos.” Thus, this account ultimately served as a cosmic justification for the establishment (...) of distinctions and hierarchy within human society. However, as used in the Laozi, the artisan metaphors promulgate a type of social hierarchy that is characteristically informed by the values of ziran and wuwei. My argumentation goes against the common tendency of Western scholars to regard the notions of craft appearing in the Laozi as relating exclusively to human activities, connoting “artifice,” that is, as detrimental to the “natural” run of the Way. By referring to the most prominent traditional commentaries of the work, I argue that this view was supported only marginally, if at all, in early China and that its emergence appears to be a reaction to and a rejection of the initial Western interpretation of the same terms, one that was heavily influenced by the Christian worldview. (shrink)

<I>Women and Social Transformation brings three women from different countries together into dialogue. Judith Butler is the most referenced author in current feminist literature, and we find the latest developments of her work in this book; Lidia Puigvert has recently reached international relevance with her contribution about the -other women-, who have not yet had a voice in feminism; and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim complements this debate with her work about immigrant women. The authors argue the need to open feminism to (...) the plurality of all women's voices, especially those who are in the margins. <I>Women and Social Transformation is a debate, and speaks about transforming gender relations, taking a distance from postmodern stances, and insisting on the need for egalitarian dialogue among women. This book gives back the meaning of the feminist struggle.". (shrink)

Borders are essentially imaginary structures, but their effects are very real. This volume explores both geopolitical and conceptual borders through an interdisciplinary lens, bridging the disciplines of philosophy and literature. With contributions from scholars around the world, this collection closely examines the concepts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the paradoxical ambiguities inherent in these seemingly solid binary oppositions, while critiquing structures of power that produce and police these borders. As a political paradigm, liminality may (...) be embraced by marginal subjects and communities, further blurring the boundaries between oppressive distinctions and categories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Citizenship and Culture in Early Modern EuropePeter N. MillerCharlotte Wells, Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), xviii, 198p.Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1994), xviii, 449p.Steven Shapin, The Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, (...) 1994), xxiv, 483p.Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1775 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), xv, 395p.Lawrence Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, U.K., 1994), xiii, 217p.Daniel Gordon, Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–1789 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), viii, 270p.Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), xiii, 338p.E. J. Hundert, The Enlightenment’s “Fable”: Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xii, 284p.The pre-modern political world was broken and remade in the two centuries that separate Montaigne from Jefferson. The long agony of the mixed constitution that began in the civil wars which raged in Iberia, France, the Low Countries, and England and seemed settled by the widespread adoption of the maxims of reason of state, revived at the end of the period, with revolution in Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Geneva, and, more famously, [End Page 725] British North America and France. The problem, classically, turned on the location of sovereignty, or supreme authority, in political systems designed to balance and diffuse rather than concentrate power. When budget deficits and fratricidal culture wars raised the cry of “necessity”—with the knowledge, of course, that necessity knew no law—estates and kings across Europe found themselves at daggers drawn. The claim that the ruler, who naturally was wholly committed to the common good, had therefore the ability to take emergency action was used both by those accustomed to rule and those newly attained to it by force. The pursuit of an “interest” that was identified with the nation’s effectively marginalized discussions of right and law while still serving an essentially constitutional, justificatory role in political debate. But if unchecked authority was necessary in order to meet the challenge of a world characterized by change and chance and thus had to reside somewhere, was there anything that made its exercise by one body more appropriate than another? This was the question that lay behind the late eighteenth-century repudiation of the reason of state “solution” to the problem of the mixed constitution. The answer, which clearly underpinned the establishment in fact of what had first been theorized already a century earlier, was that only consent could legitimate the exercise of sovereignty in time of necessity.1Representation, in one form or another, was the acknowledged solution to the problem formulated by Hobbes: “the name of Tyranny, signifieth nothing more, nor less, than the name of Sovereignty, be it in one, or many men, saving that they that use the former word are understood to be angry with them they call Tyrants.” But representation also acknowledged the reality behind the charged category of “citizenship”: most people in most places could not be said to live the life of the active citizen celebrated in Roman republican literature. Hence Hobbes’s attack on recourse to classical exempla in general, and the Libertas of Lucca in particular. The idea of civis as law-abiding subject was as radical a redrawing of the terms of debate as the identification of human nature with unsociability. Insofar as politics, classically, justified itself as the means for individual self-perfection, the practice of the ancient citizen could be conceived of as the practice of that best life speculated upon by philosophers. For the represented citizen, however, politics necessarily occupied a more subsidiary position. What, then, defined the best life to which he could aspire?There is no simple answer to this question, and the early modern ambivalence has persisted into our own time... (shrink)

Non-heterosexual men have long existed on the social and cultural margins. Gay and bisexual male characters in literature, too, have done so for many generations. This essay explores the construction of gay masculinity in the short story “Brokeback Mountain” in relation to the “imaginative leap” that its author, Annie Proulx, undertook in order to conceptualize and represent this noteworthy form of marginalized otherness. It demonstrates that, despite the story’s various refreshing elements, “Brokeback Mountain” ultimately relies far too extensively on (...) the logic of melodrama when telling the tale of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who fall in love in 1963 and continue their sexual relationship over the course of two decades. As a result, this story ends up positioning its two queer protagonists as enemies of the patriarchal social order and the larger society within which it so comfortably exists, implicitly perpetuating both heterosexism and homophobia as it does its cultural work. (shrink)

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) typically prioritizes community needs in the research process, attempting to link ethical and rigorous investigation with social action. However, balancing community needs and research goals can be challenging when working with marginalized communities in times of crisis. Strategies for engaging immigrant communities in CBPR is also underexplored in academic literature. This paper examines some of these challenges by focusing on a research project with immigrant homecare workers in Manitoba, Canada, who were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, (...) yet largely excluded from government pandemic policy responses. The project aimed to explore these workers’ experiences and to contribute to migrant justice organizing through the research process. In this article, we present three interrelated tensions in our shifting research process: reflexive navigation of our research team members’ lived experiences and positionalities; community versus academic ethics; and timely responsiveness to shifting community priorities. We contribute to literature on CBPR with immigrant communities by articulating a reflexive migrant justice research approach amidst a crisis. This approach is developed through subversive relationship-building and intersectional solidarity with social justice community partners that disrupt dominant academic research processes. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on technology-induced ‘conceptual disruption’ has spotlighted the notion of a conceptual gap. Conceptual gaps have also been discussed in scholarship on epistemic injustice, yet up until now these bodies of work have remained disconnected. This article shows that ‘gaps’ of interest to both bodies of literature are closely related, and argues that a joint examination of conceptual disruption and epistemic injustice is fruitful for both fields. I argue that hermeneutical marginalization—a skewed division of hermeneutical resources, which serves (...) to diminish the experiences of marginalized folk—does not only transpire because of conceptual gaps, but also because of two other kinds of conceptual disruption: conceptual overlaps and conceptual misalignments. Hence, there are multiple kinds of conceptual disruption that can be usefully studied through the normative lens of epistemic injustice. Technology can play different roles vis-a-vis epistemic injustices, both as a causal trigger of conceptual disruption, but also as a mediator of hermeneutical resources. Its role is normatively significant, in particular because socially disruptive technologies can have different epistemic implications for different groups: they may amplify the epistemic resources of some groups, while diminishing those of others. (shrink)

In this original book, I use a poststructuralist perspective to chart explicit and tacit assumptions about the working class in general and the working-class woman, specifically in the classical texts of prominent political philosophers and social critics, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Rousseau, Marx, Weber, and Bourdieu. Drawing on Michel Foucault, I argue that philosophical discourses that construct these categories as the Other function as disciplinary practices that aim at keeping working-class women either out of or at the margins of academic (...) institutions. I analyze interviews with women from various ethnic origins in New York City’s elite academic institutions, who identified their backgrounds as working class. My analysis foregrounds how these women resist gender, class, and ethnic disciplinary practices in academia. The book contributes to political-theory literature on social injustice and marginalization in academia and challenges and reconfigures the meanings of women and the working class. (shrink)