Academic literature on the topic 'Socio-material lens'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of how sensemaking occurs as a holistic, processual phenomenon during an organisational change. Design/methodology/approach A longitudinal, qualitative case study was conducted by analysing video-recorded meetings among the staff of two recently merged surgical departments in a university hospital. Sensemaking was approached through the lens of socio-material practices. Findings The analysis revealed that material-discursive practices produce sensemaking in various ways, creating a holistic process and a dynamic agency. Four sensemaking practices were identified through which personnel made sense of the development of ward inpatient rounding: facilitated meetings, a status board, video analysis and humour. Originality/value This paper identifies diverse sensemaking practices, each of which increases understanding of sensemaking as a holistic, processual phenomenon that emerges through socio-material practices. The paper also enhances practical understanding of how sense is made of a working practice, as well as how a working practice is developed and improved during an organisational change.

Purpose This study aims to offer understanding of the parent – child relationship by examining, through a socio-material lens, how one aspect of the new child surveillance technology market, child GPS trackers (CGT), are rejected or adopted by families, highlighting implications for child welfare, privacy and children’s rights policy. Design/methodology/approach The authors gathered netnographic data from a range of online sources (parenting forums, online product reviews, discussion boards) that captured parental views towards the use of CGT and stories of the technology in use and theorize the data through application of a novel combination of neutralisation and affordance theory. Findings The research reveals how critics of CGT highlight the negative affordances of such product use (highlighting the negative agency of the technology). Parental adopters of CGT, in turn, attempt to rationalize their use of the technology as a mediator in the parent – child relation through utilisation of a range of neutralisation mechanisms which re-afford positive product agency. Implications for child welfare and policy are discussed in the light of those findings. Originality/value The paper presents an empirical, qualitative understanding of parents negotiating the emergence of a controversial new child-related technology – CGT – and its impact upon debates in the field of parenting and childhood; develops the theory of parental style towards parental affordances, using a socio-material theoretical lens to augment existing sociological approaches; and contributes to the debates surrounding child welfare, ethics, privacy and human rights in the context of child surveillance GPS technologies.

In this article, we analyze institutionalization as a process of transferring and stabilizing material artifacts and routines in the form of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Although past studies have analyzed institutionalization as structuring around scripts or discourse moves, we emphasize the material role of artifacts and routines as carriers of institutional logics. In addition, insitutionalization is not linear and incremental, but goes through sudden, nonlinear disruptions. To this end, we apply punctuated socio-technical information system change (PSIC) model that draws upon Gersick's model of change to identify and trace moves that are critical during the institutionalization. The model accounts for ERP institutionalization by chronicling complex interactions between socio-technical elements in the implementation system, the work system, and organizational and environmental context which together account for the institutionalization outcome. We use the model to analyze a longitudinal case covering 11 years (1993–2004) of ERP implementation processes in a large Saudi steel firm. Our analysis shows that the proposed material and punctuated lens toward institutionalization offers rich insights how and why ERP systems become institutions and why their institutionalization is difficult and unfolds in unpredictable ways. We conclude that the normally held assumptions of successful linear and incremental adaptation to new institutional patterns logics out by ERP systems do not hold.

In this article, the socio-economic and cultural identity of Chalcis is traced through, and combined with, the story of its material culture and, in particular, of its impressive pottery production and consumption. Through this lens, the historical conditions and daily life over more than ten centuries (from the ninth to the early twentieth century) of this relatively unknown provincial town are closely examined. This makes it possible to detect one field in which local communities reacted to, adjusted to, took advantage of, survived or sometimes succumbed to the wider turmoil of the Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek eras.

Although it is self-evident that today’s groundwater issues have a history that frames both problems and responses, these histories have received scant attention in the socio-hydrogeological literature to date. This paper aims to enrich the field of socio-hydrogeology with a novel, historical perspective on groundwater management whilst simultaneously demonstrating the value to water history of engaging with groundwater. This is achieved by applying hydrogeological, socio-hydrogeological, and historical methods in an interdisciplinary and collaborative research process while analysing a case study of urban groundwater management over a 150-year period. In the German capital Berlin, local aquifers have always been central to its water supply and, being close to the surface, have made for intricate interactions between urban development and groundwater levels. The paper describes oscillations in groundwater levels across Berlin’s turbulent history and the meanings attached to them. It demonstrates the value to socio-hydrogeology of viewing the history of groundwater through a socio-material lens and to urban history of paying greater attention to subsurface water resources. The invisibility and inscrutability associated with groundwater should not discourage attention, but rather incite curiosity into this underexplored realm of the subterranean city, inspiring scholars and practitioners well beyond the confines of hydrogeology.

The paper examines factors that support or obstruct the development of urban community garden projects. It combines a systematic scholarly literature review with empirical research from case studies located in New Zealand and Germany. The findings are discussed against the backdrop of placemaking processes: urban community gardens are valuable platforms to observe space-to-place transformations. Following a social-constructionist approach, literature-informed enablers and barriers for the development of urban community gardens are analysed against perceived notions informed by local interviewees with regard to their biophysical and technical, socio-cultural and economic, and political and administrative dimensions. These dimensions are incorporated into a systematic and comprehensive category system. This approach helps observe how the essential biophysical-material base of the projects is overlaid with socio-cultural factors and shaped by governmental or administrative regulations. Perceptual differences become evident and are discussed through the lens of different actors.

Abstract Since the 1990s diasporic communities have increasingly been recognized as agents of development, with states, citizens, and the global development community keen to harness their knowledge, skills, and economic capital. Approaches to the ‘diaspora option’ tend to be rooted in the discourses, practices, and products of neoliberal globalization. Yet the most recent decade of the 21st century has witnessed a backlash against this cosmopolitanism. This paper pushes for a re-orientation of the diaspora-development nexus that looks to respond to the contemporary realities of (and the backlash against) neoliberal globalization: (re)bordering, European and North American ethnonationalism, nativist politics, and anti-migrant discourses. Thinking through a post-diasporic lens foregrounds the interconnected geographies, the complex temporalities, and the (racialized) inequalities within the diaspora–development nexus. The paper concludes that through a post-diasporic lens the diaspora–development nexus can be centred on everyday social, cultural, material, and political circumstances and experiences and feelings of belonging through multiple locales, re-orienting the nexus to advance the everyday socio-economic, cultural, and political liberation of diasporic communities.

AbstractDespite a growing understanding of market infrastructures—the rules and socio-material arrangements that enable agreements on the properties of goods, and the calculation of value, equivalence and exchange—we know little of what lies beneath the arrangements that underpin and are implicated in exchange. The socio-material lens has done much to explain how specific assemblages circulate information and goods, but has done little to explain how different infrastructures configure relations between dispersed market practices. Using the history of the development of the market for market research we show how knowledge-based infrastructures constitute markets as knowledge objects: new expertise emerged through alliances between academia, government, and private actors form a new occupation embodied in specialist agencies that set themselves up in an infrastructural relation to marketing practices. Our conceptualization of markets as knowledge objects extends extant understandings of markets by showing how: (1) extant knowledge-based infrastructures are drawn on to construct new markets; (2) infrastructural relations emerge between different markets to constitute multiple systems of provision and demand, leading to an increasingly valuable knowledge infrastructure; and (3) organized practices in one market are often heavily reliant on connections to other markets, including knowledge-based infrastructures such as market research services.

Bauls, the rural minstrels who sing songs of transformation, are a socio-economically and politico-religiously marginalized cultural population from rural Bengal (both from eastern and north-eastern, India and from Bangladesh). They identify themselves outside of any organized religion or established caste system in India, and therefore are constituted at the margins of contemporary global South. Voicing through their songs and narratives of emancipation, they interrogate and criticize material and symbolic inequalities and injustices such as discrimination and intolerance (including class and caste hierarchies, and other forms of disparities) perpetuated by hegemonic authorities and religious institutions. Embracing a critical communication lens, this paper pays attention to material and discursive marginalization of Bauls and Fakirs, foregrounding voice as an anchor to communicative interrogation of structural and cultural inequalities. Through voice, Bauls and Fakirs foreground reflexive spiritual and humane practices that raise societal consciousness and cultivate polymorphic possibilities.

In the chapter, Haq talks about socio-economic policy options for Pakistan in 1970s against the backdrop of economic policies of 1960s. The unrelenting emphasis on growth, which was in some ways necessary in 1960s, came at the cost of social justice. The aftermath of the ‘decade of growth’, was the growing regional imbalance. He emphasized that Pakistan’s long run economic planning needs a new development strategy, one that places less emphasis on material goods and services; relies more on self-help than aid; and that gives more autonomy to provinces in economic matters.

Bodies abound in Rimbaud’s poetry in a way that is nearly unprecedented in the nineteenth-century poetic canon: lazy, creative, rule-breaking bodies, queer bodies, marginalized and impoverished bodies, revolting and revolutionary, historical bodies. The question that this book seeks to answer is: what does this sheer, corporeal density mean for reading Rimbaud? What kind of sense are we to make of this omnipresence of the body in the Rimbaldian corpus from the earliest poems celebrating the simple delight of running away from wherever one is and stretching one’s legs out under a table, to the ultimate flight away from poetry itself? In response, it argues that the body appears—often literally—as a kind of gap, breach, or aperture through which Rimbaud’s poems enter into contact with history and a larger body of other texts. Simply put, the body is privileged “lyrical material” for Rimbaud: a figure for human beings in their exposed, finite creatureliness and in their unpredictable agency and interconnectedness. Its presence in the early work allows us not only to contemplate what a strange, sensuous thing it is to be embodied, to be both singular and part of a collective, it also allows the poet to diagnose, and the reader to perceive, a set of seemingly intractable, real socio-economic, political, and symbolic problems. Rimbaud’s bodies are, in other words, utopian bodies: sites where the historical and the lyrical, the ideal and the material, do not so much cancel each other out as become caught up in one another.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

AbstractIn Tanzania, about 90% of the banana-coffee-based farming systems lie in the hands of smallholder farmer families. In these systems, smallholder farmers traditionally add farm waste to crop fields, making soils rich in organic matter (humus) and plant-available nutrients. Correspondingly, soils remained fertile during cultivation for over a century. Since the 1960s, the increasing demand for food and biofuels of a growing population has resulted in an overuse of these farming systems, which has occurred in tandem with deforestation, omitted fallows, declined farm size, and soil erosion. Hence, humus and nutrient contents in soils have decreased and soils gradually degraded. Inadequate use of farm waste has led to a further reduction in soil fertility, as less organic material is added to the soils for nutrient supply than is removed during harvesting. Acknowledging that the traditional use of farm waste successfully built up soil fertility over a century and has been reduced in only a few decades, we argue that traditional composting practices can play a key role in rebuilding soil fertility, if such practices are adapted to face the modern challenges. In this chapter, we discuss two cases in Tanzania: one on the traditional use of compost in the Kagera region (Great African Rift Valley) and another about adapted practices to produce compost manure in the Morogoro region (Uluguru Mountains). Both cases refer to rainfed, smallholder banana-coffee-based farming systems. To conclude, optimised composting practices enable the replenishment of soil nutrients, increase the capacity of soils to store plant-available nutrients and water and thus, enhance soil fertility and food production in degraded banana-coffee-based farming systems. We further conclude that future research is needed on a) nutrient cycling in farms implementing different composting practices and on b) socio-economic analyses of farm households that do not successfully restore soil fertility through composting.

AbstractThe aim of the article (The empirical material leading to the present chapter results from the research effort “MigRom—The Immigration of Romanian Roma to Western Europe: Causes, effects, and future engagement strategies”, a project funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme under the call “Dealing with diversity and cohesion: the case of the Roma in the European Union” (GA319901). I also used the results and experiences of earlier fieldworks starting with 2000 in Bighal (the name of the localities were changed in order to respect the identities of the people) that were financed through Open Society Institute, Visegrad Funds, CERGE-EI through GDN and WIIW, respectively Inclusion 2007 through PHARE 2004. Earlier version of the article was presented at the GLS Conference in Nicosia (Cyprus) in 2017. The article was finalized in the framework of a visiting research programme at TARKI-POLC receiving funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 730998, “InGRID-2—Integrating Research Infrastructure for European expertise on Inclusive Growth from data to policy”.) is to inquire into the interconnectedness of large number of factors that carry the opportunity and possibility of improving school participation of Roma children in Romania.I argue that the inherent deficiencies of the educational system, starting with the structural constraints and ending with the psycho-social context in which Roma (or minoritized, marginalized, vulnerable) children learn, can be and are challenged by initiatives, strategies or processes that fall out of the immediate range of the strict framework of the educational system. Bourdieu used the Maxwell’s demon as a metaphor to illustrate the reproduction of socio-economic inequalities in the framework of school system. But this ‘demon’ might be challenged with more or less success if we step out and look for possible ‘tools’ to counteract this demon. Two such cases are presented in this chapter. One is a project implemented with and by the local Roma community using external financing and the other one is the participation of the members of the communities in international migration and use of remittances. I will emphasize that independently of the type and amount of the mobilized resources the individuals and/or communities are able to create and proactively make good use of path-departing opportunities through mechanisms of redefining and changing contextual constraints thus improvements can be observed in the school participation of the Roma children (PS. PS. The article was written before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. Its effects seems to neutralize the positive impact of the above mentioned processes: the slow steps taken in improving the socio-economic situation of the Roma seems to be stopped; prejudices and ethnic hatred seems to be stronger; access to services for Roma communities get more difficult, including to education: in this context, a further research question is how on-line schooling changed or will change the participation of Roma children?).

This chapter explores the significance of the archive to a reading of avant-garde writing, taking the work of Kathy Acker as a case study. Utilising a framework of genetic criticism, the chapter explores the relation between the avant-texte and an avant-garde politics of materiality. Examining Acker’s original artwork for Blood and Guts in High School (1978) housed in the Kathy Acker Papers at Duke University, the chapter contends that the avant-textes reveal a feminist politics of materiality at work in Acker’s compositions. Through the lens of Johanna Drucker’s work on diagrammatic writing and performative materiality, the chapter argues for the avant-texte as a site of socio-political material resistance. The diagrammatic in Acker’s work demands new reading practices commensurate with this resistance.

This chapter provides information technology (IT) project leaders, call center management, researchers, and educators with an analytical tool to examine current concerns and anticipate future trends related to globalization and information technology. The authors propose to use a multi-lens analysis as a framework for evaluating outsourcing opportunities. This approach offers a valuable and effective full-circle methodology for assessing technological, political, organizational, economic, legal, educational, and cultural considerations that encourage a fuller understanding of the issues, problems, and opportunities that globalization and technological innovation creates. An understanding of these factors related to outsourcing and other technical collaborative projects can avoid costly miscalculations, reduce misunderstandings, and promote mutually beneficial results. Outsourcing is part of a larger socio-political and cultural process, and extends beyond the narrow parameters of economic and technological considerations. The discussion of the various lenses is supported by relevant material from case studies and qualitative interview data collected by the authors in Germany and India from IT experts, call center managers, and call center agents.

The chapter investigates the relationship between urban gardening– as political gesture- and socio-spatial justice. In search for an actually existing just city, gardeners’ everyday initiatives advance a substantive micropolitics of life that point out to less visible and sometimes ignored sides of urban governance and planning; and unveil the articulation of different forms of power, dominance and resistance to the unequal distribution of benefits and burdens in space. The critical analysis proposed specifically revolves around the question of whether (and how) urban gardening practices are able to tackle social and spatial injustices. It outlines the consequences, potentialities and contradictions in the constitution of urban spaces and urbanity; and its capability to mitigate material, political and social exclusions, unfairness and inequalities effects. This is complemented with an overview of the contributions comprised in the book.

The chapter addresses how insights from the social shaping tradition and political process theory may contribute to an understanding of the sociotechnical design and implementation of change. This idea is pursued through the notion of “sociotechnical spaces” and its delineation, with respect to the analysis of two distinct cases, namely, Business Process Reengineering (BPR), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in the light of “film-less” radiological prac-tice, respectively. The chapter elaborates on sociotechnical space as being an occasioning as well as a result of sociotechnical choices and processes, and points to how socio-material and discursive practices may render such spaces open to problematisation and action. It is sug-gested that the notion of sociotechnical spaces helps generate a sensitising guide for research-ers and practitioners, and thus may serve as a constructive means with which to localise poten-tial political concerns in processes of change. The paper tentatively points to some analytical implications and to challenges and possibilities for the “bridging” between spaces, which may otherwise be rendered analytically distinct.

Chapter 2 sets the compass through a work that seems to have little to say about sampling. 4’33” (four thirty-three) by John Cage is based on no (performed) sounds, no flashy pyrotechnics in its execution, nor reverence for the notion of music as a singular, individual creative act, or performance. The chapter considers Cage’s evocation of “silence” as the sampled material that is at stake in this iconic piece. I consider how silence, and silencing work in the context of censorship and social control given that the timeframe for the inception of 4’33” resonates with post-World War II, mid-twentieth-century United States during the Cold War. Engaging with this work can also tell us something about the role of censorship in public arts life half a century later, in the US shortly after the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001. As I argue, when regarded as a material of music, and thereby as a source from which to “sample” silence, 4’33”offers both a sonic and “sound-less” baseline for the four case studies to follow. “Silence” as rendered in Cage’s work, its wider connotations and evocation of the sensation of sound-filled stillness also serve as a signal for instances of domination, of how oppression can take place quietly, without fanfare. Considering silence as a geocultural, socio-musicological matter allows us a moment to retune our ears and minds by encountering the broader (in)audible domains through, and from which sampling practices take place.

This book focuses on the credit dealings of medieval Europe. In medieval Europe, manor courts served as private jurisdictions by the landlords which were attended by the peasants to hear and settle their private lawsuits, many of which were concerned about debts. The long lists of manorial court rolls which were predominantly concerned with debt disputes prove the existence of large numbers of credit relationships within the medieval villages of Europe. Yet, despite the abundance of materials and the recent growth in research on this material, no extensive studies have been conducted on medieval credit relationships. This book is the first extensive and detailed investigation of credit in the countryside of medieval Europe. Rural credit is a subject matter that demands closer attention as it gives a glimpse of the function of credit in an agrarian economy. It also sheds light on the socio-economic conditions of the medieval villages which were predominantly battered by poverty. It also has contemporary relevance as it provides insight on the provision of microcredit as a tool for eradicating, if not alleviating, poverty, and for giving gains to those in less developed countries. Addressed in this book are: who were the people, creditors, and debtors involved in the credit relationships of Europe; and why the debts came about. The book also evaluates the changing availability of village credit in various forms, analyses the role of credit in relations between families and individuals, and tackles the terms and conditions attached to credit transactions.

Human resources development is the process of increasing the knowledge, the skills, and the capacities of all the people in a society. In economic terms, it could be described as the accumulation of human capital and its effective investment in the development of an economy. In political terms, human resources development prepares people for adult participation in political processes, particularly as citizens in a democracy. From the social and cultural points of view, the development of human resources helps people to lead fuller and richer lives, less bound by tradition. In short, the processes of human resources development unlock the door to modernization. Education is essential for all and is fundamental to their all-round development, material and spiritual. Education has continued to evolve, diversify and extend its reach and coverage since the dawn of human history. Even Alfred Marshall emphasized the importance of education as a national investment and in his view the most valuable of all capital is that invested in human beings. Every country develops its system of education to express and promote its unique socio-cultural identity and also to meet the growing challenges with the changing times. In this regard, major initiatives/programmes taken by the Central as well as State governments. This paper deals with the changes in our education structure and system after independence of country like increment of literacy rate, growth of educational institution, enrolment ratio of girls, pupil teacher ratio in educational institutions, government's expenditure on education, structural change of education and vocationalisation of education.

The article analyzes the scientific and critical reception of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Adolescent in German-speaking countries. The review covers the period from the first translations of the novel into German (1886, 1905, 1915, 1921) and the first responses to the work by writers such as Nietzsche, Hesse, Kafka, and Mann, critics, and researchers of the last third of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century (Hofmann, Müller, Natorp, etc.) to the present day (Gerigk, Neuhäuser, Garstka, etc.). The analyzed reviews, essays, prefaces to publications, and numerous reprints of the novel throughout the 20th century, scientific articles, monographs devoted to The Adolescent, indicate a fairly stable interest of German intellectuals in this work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. The available material shows that the recipients were somehow interested in all aspects of the novel, from its themes and problems (socio-political atmosphere in society, problems of generational change, family education, growing up, etc.) to the peculiarities of poetics (plot composition, typology of images, novel polyphony etc.). The analysis and evaluation of the novel are usually carried out in direct connection with the realities of the writer’s life, with his worldview, religious, aesthetic views, taking into account the cultural context of the era. The article shows the differences in the reception of the novel at different times, as well as in connection with ideological and purely individual ones, due to the specific task that each recipient sets himself. The common denominator may be found in the recognition of The Adolescent as one of the most famous novels of Dostoevsky, as it is shown by the fact that it is always considered as one of Dostoevsky’s five great novels, or “Pentateuch”; however, it is also true that The Adolescent presents less value and popularity than Dostoevsky’s other novels, as it is proved by the smaller quantity of research about it. Nevertheless, The Adolescent receives well-deserved recognition to this day not only as a relevant work of the famous Russian author but also for the experimental, modernist nature of its artistic structure, thereby consolidating the canonical significance of the novel in the European literary process of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The article describes the results of the empirical study into sociodemographic correlates and subjective correlates of happiness. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that the modern world places exorbitant, often conflicting requirements (information-driven, need and motive-based, value-oriented, etc.) on the individual. Our study aimed to define the linkage between the happiness of mature Russians and their satisfaction with different aspects of life. We formed the hypothesis of a connection between happiness and satisfaction with the job, material situation, health, proper rest, inter-spousal relations, and relationships with their children and friends. The results revealed that the feelings of happiness are connected with both objective socio-demographic indicators and the level of satisfaction with different life aspects. Happiness positively correlates with the number of children in a family and income, and also with overall life satisfaction. With age, a subjective sense of happiness “fades” a bit, and the respondents estimate happiness slightly lower (it is more characteristic of the female part of the sample). Men and women do not differ in the level of being happy but there exist some peculiarities in the linkage of happiness with such factors as marital status (being married) and the number of children – unlike men, for women these correlations are statistically significant. Also, men, compared to women, are more satisfied with the material situation and inter-spousal relations and less satisfied with their relations with friends. In general, the obtained results complement the data published in academic literature. Thus, it was found that not all factors considered as predictors of happiness in the public mind correlate with the feelings of happiness. For instance, it was revealed that such an essential factor of material wellbeing as homeownership has nothing to do with a sense of happiness: the respondents with and without own homes are equally happy

When it comes to the Gülen movement, scholarly attention is often given to its attitudes towards non-Muslims, its willingness to operate within secular environments, and its rap- prochement with the material achievements of the West, as well as its own network of edu- cational institutions. As a result, less attention is given to its interest in connecting with the larger Muslim community beyond its own internal associations. The Gülen movement is, however, aware of the need to situate itself and publish its ideas within the wider ummah. Hira magazine, a relatively new venture of the Gülen movement (first issue Dec. 2005), is chiefly intra-Muslim in its aims and aspirations. The magazine is published in Arabic and features articles written by both Turkish and Arabic writers; a lead article by Fethullah Gülen opens and sets the tone of each issue. The magazine acts to bring the intellectual outlook of the Gülen movement to the Arab world, serving as a cultural bridge between Turks and Arabs, as a forum in which pressing issues in contemporary Islam can be aired and treated by leading Muslim thinkers, and as a tool for the global Muslim community to consolidate a renewed vision of its relation to the intellectual and socio-political realities of the modern world. This paper recounts the establishment and development of Hira magazine, focusing on the calibre of its themes and contributors, and also its reception in the Arab world as evidenced in local Arab media as well as by the comments of those in charge of the magazine. Finally, a critical assessment is offered of the overall vision of the magazine, its presentation style, material content, and religious perspective, as well as its potential to speak effectively to the global ummah as a leading voice for the future of Islam.

Recently in 2021the 11th office of the Fine Arts Department, Songkhla has reported their annual excavations in Trang Province that archaeologists have found some set of rice while excavation in process namely,1) Khao Kurum Archaeological Site, Huai Yod District and 2) Napala Archaeological Site, Muang District. The artifacts which were found associated with the rice grains on the habitation layer consisted of potsherds, animal bones, grindstone, beads, etc. The grains of rice are short and brown in colour which is examined as carbonized since the beginning at its first left. The primary examination by archaeologists has classified the rice of Napala Archaeological Site as short grain of probably Orysa sativa (Indica or Aus) rice. AMS Radiocarbon dating by Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory shows the AMS standard results and calibration dating of charred material measured radiocarbon age:1440±30BP. Because of their geographical location, both sites are incredibly located on one side of the hill slope, where they were suitable for habitat and plantation, especially tiny paddy fields and farms with sufficient water supply either small stream or well. The found rice, which now still grows uphill, probably called ‘Khao rai’ needs less water or no marsh. Comparative study of ethnographic “Atong” 1 of 12 sub-tribes of the “Garos” Tibeto-Burman in Meghalaya, India which originated slash-and-burnt socio-groups, have shown an interest in growing rice activity. According to their ritual ceremony for planting of paddy, other grain, and seeds takes place. There are many ritualistic offerings of rice such as (1) flattened rice by asking for permission to cultivate the land from the first harvested paddy in May. (2) After the harvesting in September or October, the 1st ceremony of the agricultural year is a thanksgiving ceremony to mark the end of a period of toil in the fields and harvesting of bumper crops, which is probably the most important festival of the Garos locally called “Maidan syla” meant to celebrate the after-harvested festival or burnt rice festival. Their 2nd ceremony is to revive the monsoon clouds. People throw cooked rice on the floor to symbolize hailstones. Noticing the rice, were probably the assemblage of “Khao San Dam” in many activities of these ceremonies, that is the archaeological evidence found in Khao Kurum and Napala Archaeological Sites. In the Southern part of Thailand, once the crops have already cultivated, people celebrate to welcome their outcrops most probably at the end of September to October and mark their end of plantation before the monsoon come. People prepare 4 main rice desserts put together with other necessity stuffs in the “hmrub” special large containers and donate to the ancestors through Buddhist ceremony. Though archaeological evidence shows that southern peninsular was where the migrants from the west especially India origins, who shared same habitat of hillslope, might brought their different traditions through both land trans-peninsular and sea routes then settled down inner western or eastern coast since prehistoric times. The beliefs in animism might belong to some other western migrants and with having “hmrub” is one of their unique cultural characteristic material and tradition remain. Once they settled down then converged to Buddhism, the ritual ceremony may be changed due to religion, but tradition remains the same today, that is, Bun Duean Sib on the 10th of the lunar month or September-October.

Participating in the exemplar landscapes of the Developing and Promoting Market-Based Agroforestry and Forest Rehabilitation Options for Northwest Vietnam project has had positive impacts on ethnic women, such as increasing their networks and decision-making and public speaking skills. However, the rate of female farmers accessing and using project extension material or participating in project nurseries and applying agroforestry techniques was limited. This requires understanding of the real needs and interests grounded in the socio-cultural contexts of the ethnic groups living in the Northern Mountain Region in Viet Nam, who have unique social and cultural norms and values. The case studies show that agricultural activities are highly gendered: men and women play specific roles and have different, particular constraints and interests. Women are highly constrained by gender norms, access to resources, decision-making power and a prevailing positive-feedback loop of time poverty, especially in the Hmong community. A holistic, timesaving approach to addressing women’s daily activities could reduce the effects of time poverty and increase project participation. As women were highly willing to share project information, the project’s impacts would be more successful with increased participation by women through utilizing informal channels of communication and knowledge dissemination. Extension material designed for ethnic women should have less text and more visuals. Access to information is a critical constraint that perpetuates the norm that men are decision-makers, thereby, enhancing their perceived ownership, whereas women have limited access to information and so leave final decisions to men, especially in Hmong families. Older Hmong women have a Vietnamese (Kinh) language barrier, which further prevents them from accessing the project’s material. Further research into an adaptive framework that can be applied in a variety of contexts is recommended. This framework should prioritize time-saving activities for women and include material highlighting key considerations to maintain accountability among the project’s support staff.