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1 – 10 of 341Nicole Mirra and Debate Liberation League
This paper aims to analyze how a group of middle-school debaters integrated their identities and epistemologies into the traditional literacy practice of debate to advocate for…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze how a group of middle-school debaters integrated their identities and epistemologies into the traditional literacy practice of debate to advocate for more expansive and inclusive forms of academic and civic discussion. The adult and youth co-researchers of the Debate Liberation League (DLL) detail their creation of a critical debate praxis through the use of spoken word and translanguaging and illustrate how they sought to redesign a foundational activity of English Language Arts on their own terms.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon critical race and borderlands theories, the authors use critical ethnographic and participatory action research methods to explore how the DLL deconstructed the boundaries of what counts as public dialogue and offered an alternative model of what intergenerational and multi-voiced democratic discourse could look like in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms and beyond.
Findings
The findings demonstrate how DLL students broke down normative binaries of affirmative/negative and objective/subjective in their debate performances and introduced testimonios as evidence for civic claims to make space for their voices and reimagine deliberation.
Originality/value
This study foregrounds dialogic data generation through a collaborative, intergenerational research approach. It highlights the constructed nature of literacy “rules,” demonstrates youth expertise in reimagining ELA, and offers a pathway toward a more compassionate public sphere.
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During the four years of preliminary meetings that led to the 1977 Protocols Additional I and II governing internal armed conflict, the prohibitions against superfluous injury and…
Abstract
During the four years of preliminary meetings that led to the 1977 Protocols Additional I and II governing internal armed conflict, the prohibitions against superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering – two concepts that gird the regulation and moderation of war and limit the use of certain means and methods of warfare – were invoked as a means of calling into account the actions of imperial states. These meetings took place in the context of the conflicts in Southeast Asia, following the wars of decolonization and national liberation in the 1950s and 1960s. The participants in these meetings were freedom fighters and liberation movements who used this forum, which was open to them for the first time, to push for a wider understanding of the concepts of superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering. Their intention was to hold imperialism and imperial states accountable for suffering and injury beyond that of physical death or wounding and to recognize the violence of colonization and the social and cultural devastation it brought. These interventions were a critical attempt to broaden and deepen the meaning of the laws of war, to make them responsive to more than established sovereign state violence, and to ensure that they reflected the experience of colonization/decolonization. This episode matters because the prohibitions against unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury are two elements that detail the general prohibition first codified in 1907 Hague Convention IV, Article 22, namely that the “the right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.” However, the history and formulation of these two concepts has yet to be fully explored, the meaning of each is debated, and taken together the two are among “the most unclear and controversial rules of warfare.”
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Mudher Abullraheem Abdulhameed
This study aims to deal with the evaluation of institutional development and effectiveness of regional parliaments; it provides a scientific contribution to the development of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to deal with the evaluation of institutional development and effectiveness of regional parliaments; it provides a scientific contribution to the development of the field of parliamentary studies by developing a set of indicators to present a parameter for evaluating regional parliaments with application to the Arab Parliament. The study concluded with the development of a parameter of 35 indicators to measure institutionally, efficiency and effectiveness of the institution, with application to the Arab Parliament, as well as developing an integrated assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in the institutional aspects and organizational efficiency.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is predicated on the principle of institutional approach and the systems analysis. The curriculum is applied to the Arab Parliament as an institution to quantify efficiency and efficacy according to the implementation of a set of proposed practical indicators. The study additionally applies both Huntington’s institutional standards such as Adaptability, Involution, Autonomy and Coherence, as well as the indicators of institutions efficiency according to PrePanti such as Openness, Reception (R), Autonomy (A), Balance (B), Congruence (C), Internal Efficacy (I), Reformulation (R) and Roles (R), which refer to the first seven Latin letters “First RABCIRR”.
Findings
The researcher endeavored to answer the main questions; How to quantify the degree of institutionalization, its impact on the efficiency and efficacy of regional parliaments. The researcher’s approaches and the standards of efficiency and efficacy figured a comprehensive set of indicators that composed an integrated parliamentary standard to assess the degree of institutionalization, efficacy and efficiency of regional parliaments as a scientific contribution based on the Arab Parliament that can be applied to all regional parliaments.
Originality/value
This research is an attempt to create a Parliamentary Index to complement the previous scientific initiatives and efforts in developing such an index, which consists of 35 indicators and its application to the Arab Parliament. This research uses the principles of institutional approach, system analysis methodology and efficiency. The approach is applied to the Arab Parliament as a regional parliament to measure efficiency and effectiveness by applying a set of the proposed indicators.
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This paper explores the relationship between social movement protest, economic sabotage, state capitalism, the “Green Scare,” and public forms of political repression. Through a…
Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between social movement protest, economic sabotage, state capitalism, the “Green Scare,” and public forms of political repression. Through a quantitative analysis of direct action activism highlighting the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, the discourse surrounding mechanisms of social change and their impact on state power and capitalist accumulation will be examined. The analyses examines the earth and animal liberation movements, utilizing a Marxist-anarchist lens to illustrate how these non-state actors provide powerful critiques of capital and the state. Specifically, the discussion examines how state-sanctioned violence against these movements represents a return to Foucauldian Monarchical power. A quantitative-qualitative history will be used to argue that the movements’ actions fail to qualify as “terrorism,” and to examine the performance of power between the radical left and the state. State repression demonstrates not only the capitalist allegiances between government and industry, but also a sense of capital’s desperation hoping to counter a movement that has produced demonstrable victories by the means of bankrupting and isolating corporations. The government is taking such unconstitutional measures as a “talk back” between the revolutionary potential of these movements’ ideology as well as the challenge they present to state capitalism.
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This chapter deconstructs the carefully crafted marketing rollout of the US-based Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1997, which was presented as the biggest launch…
Abstract
This chapter deconstructs the carefully crafted marketing rollout of the US-based Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1997, which was presented as the biggest launch in women's sports history. Through a textual and rhetorical analysis, this chapter argues that the WNBA and its corporate partners – through the bundling of distribution channels, sponsorships, and advertising strategies – created three distinct, and at times ideologically conflicting, images of the league: the WNBA as valid capitalistic enterprise, the WNBA as a masculine validation of female athleticism, and the WNBA as a symbolic moment in the political struggle of women for equality. Yet, while this initial, fractured marketing of the league provided a space for cultivating a challenge to dominant gender politics, this space was ultimately restricted to white, heterosexual conceptions of women as the league's array of marketing strategies were unified in reproducing regressive representations of race and sexuality that animate contemporary US sports. However, in institutionally maintaining this narrow, limited space for challenge and protest against inequality, the WNBA nonetheless sanctioned the league as one where players could still fight against injustice. Ultimately, this space would provide a platform for WNBA athletes to enact pioneering challenges against police brutality and racial injustice that would contradict the league's strategic aims.
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This chapter is an overview of herstorical, political and theatrical developments in South Africa. It provides an overview of the background to the herstory of South Africa from…
Abstract
This chapter is an overview of herstorical, political and theatrical developments in South Africa. It provides an overview of the background to the herstory of South Africa from 1912–1993.
Dates are included which have relevance to the herstory of South African Women; for example, 1912 was the year of the formation of the African National Congress (ANC); in 1913 Charlotte Maxeke led a march against pass laws for African women; the Native Land Act of 1913 stated that natives were no longer able to buy, sell or lease outside the stipulated reserves; the Influx Control and The Natives Urban Act of 1923 and amendments to the Act in 1937 had devastating consequences for African women as it severely restricted their movements from rural to urban areas. The year 1930 is important because this was when white South African women acquired the vote which gave political activists such as Helen Joseph and Helen Suzman a political voice. In 1948 the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) was formed. Political events from the 1970s through to 1993, demonstrate how the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), the African National Congress (ANC), other anti-apartheid organisations and the apartheid government realised the effectiveness of theatre as a political weapon
To explore the experience of a key member of the UK equalities policy‐making elite, interrogating her shift from activist to top‐ranking equalities professional. To focus…
Abstract
Purpose
To explore the experience of a key member of the UK equalities policy‐making elite, interrogating her shift from activist to top‐ranking equalities professional. To focus attention on the under‐explored area of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender equalities work.
Design/methodology/approach
The interview is prefaced with a critical commentary on current UK equalities policy, contextualising the interview discussion, which links personal and collective histories and provides a comparison of equalities work over time.
Findings
Angela Mason, while top‐ranking civil servant, continues to claim the label activist. Like a variety of other equalities workers she uses multiple tactics to appeal to different constituents at different times and in different contexts.
Originality/value
This is an interview with one of the key protagonists in the development of UK equalities policies over the last 30 years. It is unique in its focus on the current overhaul of UK equalities policy from an “insider” and in its timing at the interim point of this reorganisation (October 2006).
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Following the classification in Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave, the women's movement is definitely a representative of post‐industrial society. Yet in Japan, the second wave of…
Abstract
Following the classification in Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave, the women's movement is definitely a representative of post‐industrial society. Yet in Japan, the second wave of industrialisation and the third have come very close together, hitting a society with deep‐rooted sex role traditions. Thus it is natural that the women's movements in Japan differ from those in the West, yet Japanese feminists, too are moving toward the ultimate goal of a society which will maximise choice and freedom for every individual.
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Paul Sturges, Mbenae Katjihingua and Kingo Mchombu
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Namibian liberation struggle, 1966‐1990, as an information war rather than a military conflict, so as to explore the dimensions of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Namibian liberation struggle, 1966‐1990, as an information war rather than a military conflict, so as to explore the dimensions of information activity under conditions of conflict. This builds on the idea, expressed by participants in earlier struggles of this kind, that the contest for “hearts and minds” is more significant than the armed confrontation that accompanies it.
Design/methodology/approach
A model that incorporates information and communication activity by both contestants, at their command centres, in the field and in the media, was elaborated in a previous paper using data from a number of conflicts, mainly in Southern and Central Africa. The present paper focuses on the Namibian struggle so as to examine the capacity of the model to assist in explaining the outcomes of the conflict. Using published sources, printed archive material and oral testimony, the range of information inputs, the incidence of suppression of information and information outputs are set out in the pattern provided by the model. This shows how both sides used covert intelligence gathering, secret communication, propaganda and disinformation accompanied by censorship and the suppression of critical comment by force to further their political/military aims.
Findings
Whilst South Africa and its Namibian military structures were generally successful in armed confrontation with the forces of the chief liberation organisation (SWAPO), they were not able to bring the conflict to a successful military conclusion. This was because SWAPO's attention to the diplomatic war, based on strong and consistent information flows, convinced the United Nations and other allies to press for a negotiated solution. Once this was agreed, the success of the liberation movement's news and education campaigns in attaching the people to the cause of liberation was revealed by SWAPO's overwhelming success in free elections in 1989.
Originality/value
It is important to establish that the war in Namibia was much more a clash of information‐related activities directed at hearts and minds than it was of guns and bombs. When this is demonstrated, we can perhaps learn from the fact that the contestant most effectively committed to waging war by peaceful means was victorious.
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