Search results

Contrasting the Madisonian model of democracy with Westminster style arrangements, this chapter examines how American political scientists and policymakers expressed second thoughts about the constitutional settlement of 1787 and looked towards the British political system for possible reforms to their own. In particular, it details the arguments offered by Thomas Finletter, James MacGregor Burns, and others, from the 1940s through to the early 1960s that the United States might adopt certain features of the Westminster model. The chapter analyzes their proposals and the – essentially negative – reception that they received. It concludes by addressing the failure of these proposals and the endurance of fragmented government within the United States.

The combination of previously unassociated terms in a metaphor can helpfully illustrate particular characteristics of a person, phenomenon or practice. However, it can also obfuscate because the focus on some elements may come at the expense of others. The metaphor of the landscape is somewhat ubiquitous in academic literature, and this paper is specifically interested in the ‘higher education landscape’, which is widely used in scholarly – as well as media and policy – writing. By applying thematic analysis to a sample of publications which invoke the term, this paper comprises what Haslanger calls a descriptive and ameliorative approach to investigate both how and why this metaphor is used. By considering these publications cumulatively, we can identify that the higher education landscape enables scholars to simultaneously acknowledge higher education's temporal, social and political positioning, its state of what can feel like permanent and wide-ranging flux, and its diverse cast of interrelated actors. In this way, it serves as a useful and evocative container metaphor for higher education's activities and constituents and the interrelationships and tensions between them. At the same time, its somewhat indiscriminate and indeterminate use can conflate and mask the detail and nature of these dynamics, and it is possible to discern in its application a collective sense of nervousness and uncertainty about higher education more generally.

In this paper, the author advocates recognizing, developing, and promoting “critical interactionism” as a legitimate and pragmatically useful scholarly project. The author argues that critical interactionism includes different interactionist traditions, critical approaches, methodological styles, and sensitizing concepts – as long as they tell us something about how power and inequality operate. I review two fundamental elements of this project that constitute its past and likely future: (1) theoretical interventions that excavate critical insights, diversify founders, integrate critical theories, and promote interactionism's usefulness for critical inquiry and (2) empirically grounded conceptual interventions that shed light on generic processes of inequality reproduction. Although the larger discipline of sociology continues to marginalize interactionism yet selectively adopt its principles, critical interactionism has the potential to break through what David Maines called the fault line of consciousness. The promise of critical interactionism is that it can simultaneously make interactionism more relevant to our discipline and make our discipline more relevant to the social world.

Amid the Israel-Hamas conflict in October 2023, social media platforms such as Instagram, have emerged as crucial platforms for millions seeking real-time insights, as well as those disseminating information about the conflict. Trending search terms on Instagram, such as “graphic Israel footage”, “live stream in Israel right now,” or #FreePalestine and #SaveSheikhJarrah, revealed a collective thirst for unfiltered frontline perspectives by users. Interestingly, individuals actively posting about the conflict experienced shifts in follower engagement, exemplified by the suspension of activist, Shaun King, whose 6-million followership Instagram account was disabled in December 2023.¹ Digital platforms play critical roles in escalating tensions, exposing governmental cruelty, and rallying international support (Burum, 2016; David, 2014). The case of Palestine and Israel underscores online media’s role in constructing narratives and mobilizing resistance. This study seeks to illuminate the connection between visual storytelling, youth activism, and social media dynamics during conflict (Abushbak et al., 2020; Burum, 2016; David, 2014; Pruchnic, & Ceraso, 2020). This chapter examines textual and visual content by applying Textual-Visual Thematic Analysis to content posted on Instagram. This is done to understand Instagram users’ discourse in October 2023 on Instagram. It analyzes how content shapes narratives and seeks to identify any patterns in the narratives shared by selected Instagram users. As such, this study aims to offer insights into the role that social media, particularly Instagram, plays in influencing narratives, fostering youth activism, and shaping public discourse during conflict.

The ambition of human rights-based research is to generate an evidence base aligned to specific rights and rights holders. This chapter addresses the question ‘How does the ethical communication of research evidence support the achievement of this ambition?’ It outlines a Communication of Evidence For Impact (CEFI) approach that is focused on the realisation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). CEFI proposes that human rights-based communication is: a public good; a legal imperative in States that have ratified CRPD, and a moral imperative in States yet to sign or ratify; a core research competency and ethical requirement; participatory; and grounded in a culture of inclusion, intersectionality, and allyship. This chapter explores how five actors – States, research ethics committees, researchers, funders, and publishers – can each contribute to ethical communication. Recommendations are made for including and futureproofing CEFI in a disability research ethics framework.

The impact of diet quality on mental health has gained strong ground. However, most studies on this relationship were performed before COVID-19, a pandemic that was accompanied by high levels of psychological stress. Stress disturbs normal physiology, which makes studying diet quality and mental health under high stress a necessity. In addition, COVID-19 has been associated with disturbances in sleep and has increased the prevalence of mental health issues in women more than in men. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess food group consumption and sleep during different stages of the pandemic in relation to mental distress among men and women. Secondary data collected from adults 18 years or older between September 2018 and November 2021 was analysed. Temporal stages were divided into pre-COVID-19 (as a baseline), during the lockdown, and after the ease of restriction (two periods of different psychological stress levels). Regression analyses using a Difference-in-Difference (DID) event study or a Dynamic DID modelling were used. COVID-19 seemed to have a modulatory effect on food groups and mental health. The pandemic appeared to have either magnified the negative impact of certain food groups or changed the tolerance threshold for the beneficial ones. Across the board, women’s moods exhibited higher sensitivity to several food groups. COVID-19, a period of high psychological stress, differentially altered the impact of food on the mood of men and women; which proposes the need to further evaluate diet quality and mood under stressful conditions.

The governance of our towns and cities requires an approach that connects people with nature and places. Digital technology can be the glue that does this, if it serves the needs of the various stakeholders, including urban communities. It means identifying the potential connections across people, digital, and place themes, examining successful approaches, and exploring some of the current practice (or lack of it) in spatial planning and smart cities. This can be considered using a range of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies with other methodologies which combine the use of socioeconomic and environmental data about the urban environment. This ambient domain sensing can provide the ecological and other data to show how digital connectivity is addressing the placemaking challenges alongside providing implications for urban governance and communities.

This study examined the factors militating against walking as a form of active mobility in Akure, Nigeria. For questionnaire administration, from the 548,315 population of Akure, two hundred and seventy-four (274) household heads representing 0.05% of the entire population of Akure were sampled with the aid of a structured and self-administered questionnaire using a systematic sampling technique. The elicited data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. From the analysis, the major impediments to walking were the socio-cultural belief that anybody walking was poor, followed by accessibility to motorised transport, and inadequate pedestrian facilities. These situations have significantly deterred people from seeing walking as an active form of mobility in the study area. Thus, the study recommends a strong sensitisation and awareness programme to robustly enlighten people on the need to embrace walking as a form of urban mobility. Also, the government should adequately and sustainably invest more in pedestrian facilities that will promote the culture of walking among people and/or road users in Akure, Nigeria. More importantly, for inclusiveness in urban planning, road infrastructure should be designed alongside other road elements to ensure seamless negotiations between pedestrians and vehicles without any form of conflict.