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Ethnoracial categories and classifications can change over time, sometimes leading to increased social mobility for marginalized groups or nonelites. These ethnoracial changes are often attributed to emulation, where nonelites adopt the elite's social, cultural, and political characteristics and values. In some cases, however, nonelites experience ethnoracial shifts and upward mobility without emulating elites, which events can help explain. I argue that the type of event, whether endogenous or exogenous, affects the ability of elites to enforce their preferred ethnoracial hierarchy because it will determine the strategy – either insulation or absorption – they can pursue to maintain their power. I examine this phenomenon by comparing the cases of Irish social mobility in 17th-century Barbados and Montserrat. Findings suggest that endogenous events allow elites to reinforce their preferred ethnoracial hierarchy through insulation, whereas exogenous events constrain elites to employ absorption, which maintains their power but results in hierarchical shifts. Events are thus critical factors in ethnoracial shifts.

In this chapter, we review the historical development of elite theory, and then we propose a way forward beyond it. Elite theory emerged as a critique of democracy in the late 19th century. Although it used historical materials illustratively, it tended to be ahistorical theoretically because its primary aim was to demonstrate the perdurance of elites even in conditions of mass suffrage. Lachmann was the first scholar to develop elite theory as a truly historical and explanatory framework by combining it with elements of Marxism. Even Lachmann's theory, however, remained inadequate because it did not rest on a fully articulated theory of power. In this introduction, we suggest a “relational power theory” as a remedy to this situation, and we use it to formulate a general heuristic for the study of elites, nonelites, and their interrelationships. To illustrate its utility, we show how it can illuminate the chapters in this volume (though they were not necessarily written for these purposes).

The Children's Hearings System is a Scottish welfare-based tribunal-based system in which decisions are made about the care and protection of children in conflict with the law and/or in need of additional care and protection. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the rapid implementation of a virtual Children's Hearings System. This system, which operated as the sole mechanism through which decisions were made between March and July 2020, continued to be used alongside in-person and hybrid Hearing formats for the duration of the pandemic. Early research into the use of virtual Hearings identified that their use presented significant barriers to participation, particularly in relation to the impacts of digital literacy and digital poverty. However, much of this research focused upon the experiences of adult participants in Hearings and failed to capture the experiences of children. In this chapter, we present findings from a qualitative study designed to explore the impact of virtual Hearings upon the participation and rights of children. In doing so, we demonstrate that virtual Hearings acted as both a barrier and facilitator of children's participation.

This study aims to examine the influence of workplace phubbing on employee deviant behavior and negligence, while also investigating the mediating role of coworker conflict. Additionally, the study explores the moderating effect of workplace mindfulness on the relationship between workplace phubbing, the mediators and employee deviant behavior and negligence.

Data were gathered from employees in the service sector in the UAE using an online survey questionnaire. A total of 374 participants submitted complete responses. The study’s hypotheses were tested through regression-based moderated path analysis, incorporating conditional process modeling and nonlinear bootstrapping.

The study indicates that experiencing “phubbing” at work contributes to feelings of coworker conflict, which subsequently leads to increased interpersonal deviance and employee negligence. Moreover, workplace mindfulness weakens the positive influence of being phubbed on coworker conflict, interpersonal deviance and employee negligence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have examined the negative impact of being “phubbed” at the individual employee level within the service industry. This study aims to contribute to both theory and practice by elucidating the mediating mechanism of coworker conflict and exploring the moderating effects of workplace mindfulness.

This study aims to examine the construction of feminine beauty by onnagata kabuki actors in Japan’s history, with a focus on their narratives in modern advertorials about beauty products. The objective is to identify emerging themes in their narratives and to analyze the symbolism and rhetoric used to persuade the audience to enhance traditional feminine “beauty” by using the specific brand in the wake of Japan’s modernization and Westernization.

The study primarily employs semiotic analysis of advertorials in the newspaper and in the kabuki theatre’s program. They are supplemented with images from premodern prints. Visual content is described and analyzed as well.

The narration of the onnagata in the advertorial is the process of “truth-telling,” where the primary concern of the storyteller is persuasion about truth, such as belief in the new method of makeup with the advertised brand, and falsehood, such as belief in the old method of skincare. Four themes and binary oppositions of values emerged from the data: (1) Identity: selves vs others; (2) Material objects, cosmetics: scientific vs primitive; (3) Practice: competent vs incompetent, and (4) Transformations: intentional vs incidental.

The research shows that Japan’s onnagata transvestism tradition and its influences on women’s beauty practice have existed since the premodern period, preceding contemporary cross-gender beauty practices observed in social media.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) offers a level playing field to all ethnic entrepreneurs (EE’s) operating from within it. The purpose of this qualitative research case study is to explore the reasons underpinning the relatively greater success that Indian-origin EE’s in the UAE have been enjoying for sustained periods – and across diverse industries – relative to their counterparts belonging to several other nations.

Qualitative research case study that draws from data gathered through 30 interviews of participants identified through expert sampling.

Whereas the UAE treats all its ethnic entrepreneurs (EE’s) alike and provides them with a level platform to operate from, the EE’s from India have consistently been outperforming those from all other nations, particularly within the context of the UAE’s large businesses spanning diverse industries. Three features seem to explain their success: their high tolerance for ambiguity; thriftiness; and intercultural competence.

Two key limitations were faced: firstly, the negligible research literature on ethnic entrepreneurship in the UAE, and related official statistics such as details (by ethnicity/nationality) of EE-owned businesses, and secondly, the industry-wise break down of such businesses and their performance, as available in other developed nations hosting EE’s. Resultantly, alternate sources of data have been used to complete this research.

Given the UAE’s national-level institutionalised efforts to promote entrepreneurship amongst its citizens and wider populace, there are many implications that this study holds for existing and future entrepreneurs.

While on the one hand, the UAE and the wider Gulf Cooperation Council region have been witnessing frenetic ethnic entrepreneurial activity in the past decade, the research literature on the regions’ ethnic entrepreneurship is extremely patchy. This case study serves to significantly bridge this gap, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work, that extensively explores the entrepreneurial trajectory of Indian EE’s in the UAE, and the factors driving their success.

The nature of policework is uniquely challenging to officers’ mental health, producing detrimental outcomes such as higher rates of suicide, substance abuse and divorce compared to other occupations. This is especially true in small and rural police departments, where officers often have broader responsibilities and cover a larger geographic area than their counterparts who work in large urban departments. Given the limited resources available to small and rural police, the purpose of this study is to explore the mental health services available to officers in small and rural police departments.

We used a mixed methods approach. First, we surveyed 349 small and rural Pennsylvania police chiefs about the mental health services in their department. Of these chiefs, 53 participated in subsequent in-depth qualitative interviews about officer awareness of the mental health services available to them, what resources they thought would be helpful to officers and what barriers exist to prevent officers from seeking help.

Quantitative results indicated that 22% of small and rural police departments had no mental health programs available to officers; Critical Incident Stress Management and Employee Assistance Programs were most commonly available. Budget size and the presence of a union influenced whether a department had mental health programs available to officers. Qualitative interviews found that although most departments provided some mental health services, officers were unlikely to use them. Chiefs expressed a need for improved services that officers might be more likely to use.

Given the lack of resources available in small and rural police departments and the lack of adoption of some resources, we recommend peer assistance, general wellness programs and telehealth as feasible options for officer mental health.

Small and rural police comprise the bulk of policing in the USA, yet remain understudied. This study focuses on small and rural police.

Turbulent times include economic crises, recessions, health pandemics, war situations, including the recent COVID-19 crisis which had significant economic and social ramifications. Turbulence impacts the economy, businesses, and societies as whole. Crises impact the education industry not only in terms of teaching and learning but also the next level of learning outcome as job opportunities and career growth of the stakeholders. University systems play a major role in handling turbulence and generating resilience methods to ensure the least possible impact on the sector. The entrepreneurial mindset of the universities encourages them towards risk-taking, becoming initial movers, and being innovators in their approaches (Etzkowitz et al., 1998). This chapter provides a broader understanding of different types of turbulence, as well as the intensity of impact on the higher education sector. It also discusses how these turbulent times come with opportunities which can be leveraged by institutions. With an extensive literature review and understanding, it proposes a conceptual multilayered model to support entrepreneurial development. This study employs desk research methods to understand, review, and propose methods and methodology to encourage and adapt universities handling turbulence and crises. Lack of research in handling crises and turbulence in the case of higher education makes this study imperative. The outcome extends the conceptual understanding of turbulent situations and will help the universities to self-introspect and understand the ways for reacting to these changes, crises, and turbulences. Discussion on National Education Policy enhances the understanding for educators and universities to utilize added opportunities.

To elaborate the nature of fact-checking in the domain of political information by examining how fact-checkers assess the validity of claims concerning the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and how they support their assessments by drawing on evidence acquired from diverse sources of information.

Descriptive quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 128 reports written by the fact-checkers of Snopes – an established fact-checking organisation – during the period of 24 February 2022 – 28 June, 2023. For the analysis, nine evaluation grounds were identified, most of them inductively from the empirical material. It was examined how the fact-checkers employed such grounds while assessing the validity of claims and how the assessments were bolstered by evidence acquired from information sources such as newspapers.

Of the 128 reports, the share of assessments indicative of the invalidity of the claims was 54.7%, while the share of positive ratings was 26.7%. The share of mixed assessments was 15.6%. In the fact-checking, two evaluation grounds, that is, the correctness of information and verifiability of an event presented in a claim formed the basis for the assessment. Depending on the topic of the claim, grounds such as temporal and spatial compatibility, as well as comparison by similarity and difference occupied a central role. Most popular sources of information offering evidence for the assessments include statements of government representatives, videos and photographs shared in social media, newspapers and television programmes.

As the study concentrated on fact-checking dealing with political information about a specific issue, the findings cannot be extended to concern the fact-checking practices in other contexts.

The study is among the first to characterise how fact-checkers employ evaluation grounds of diverse kind while assessing the validity of political information.