What is planning without property? Relational practices of being and belonging

What is planning without property? This question was recently posed to me following a conference presentation. In this paper, I argue that taking this question seriously reveals unchallenged assumptions about the relationship between planning and property. Focusing on Canada as a settler colonial liberal democracy, I respond to this question by looking at the Indian Act which has supported colonial dispossession and assimilation in Canada for almost 200 years and rely on Brenna Bhandar’s conceptualization of “racial regimes of property” as a means of examining how racial subjects and private property are co-produced. I then look to the practices reflected in the creation of Nadia Myre's artwork Indian Act to show how Indigenous epistemologies can aid in the conceptualization of planning without property. I argue that planning without property would be an approach to planning that would be focused on identifying, making, and strengthening the human and more-than-human relationships the flourishing of life requires. Thus, planning without property would support practices of being and belonging rather than practices of exclusion and domination.

Intellectual disability – towards the modification of theoretical contexts

n this article, I deal with the contemporary contexts of the analysis of the intellectual disability phenomenon and the alternative proposals for theorizing presented by disability studies. I ask the question: what /who the dominant views and non-scientific alliances are for. I question the tendency to favour the medical approach in special pedagogy, which is the starting point as well as the reference point for the educational, rehabilitation, care and support practices it develops. I am not going to decide on the legitimacy of various approaches, I am aware of their historical and systemic conditions. However, I dare to ask a question about – as Miłosz Markiewicz (2017) described it – the limits of the definition of a Human. In view of the experienced diversity of human conditions, like the above-mentioned author, today I have a “problem with using the category of disability too easily” (Markiewicz, 2017, p. 23), and in particular, not often considered in relation to the methods of scientific analysis and theoretical contexts, the category of intellectual disability.

Applying Critical Discourse Analysis in the Classroom

In this conceptual article, we provide a guide for educators to use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in classrooms to: (1) critically examine their teaching and behavioral support practices, (2) guide future interactions with students and families, and (3) use with students to empower them to critically analyze texts, media, and society. We rely on the CDA frameworks provided by Rebecca Rogers (2011), James Paul Gee (1999), and Norman Fairclough (1989). CDA is a tool that can disrupt cycles of power and oppression in classrooms and schools; it gives us a way to make oppressive systems and the way they replicate visible, so we can intentionally interrogate and dismantle them rather than unintentionally reproduce them in educational spaces.

Governmentality and Grand Strategy

This chapter explores the implications of Michel Foucault’s concept of “governmentality” for grand strategy. It argues that debates on governmentality and grand strategy share an interest in wider conditions and practices of government that extend beyond strategic decision-making. They also mirror each other in analyzing the rational frameworks that accompany and support practices of government and strategy. The chapter reflects on the work of Sir Basil Liddell Hart in this light, particularly his focus on conditions of strategic success beyond war fighting. The argument is that governmentality offers a way to critically engage with grand-strategic discourses and their historically situated assumptions about the nature and scope of government. The chapter concludes with a brief case study on the relationship between foreign development aid, grand strategy, and governmentality.

Getting Better? Hegemonic, Negotiated and Oppositional Uses of Instagram for Mental Health Support

By analysing 600 Instagram posts that use mental health related hashtags, this article investigates how mental health communication and support practices are enacted on Instagram, and how such practices relate to the perceptible affordances and hegemonic uses of the service. The article demonstrates how Instagram tends to privilege casual snapshots of individual recovery, in line with broader discourses of positive thinking and individual responsibility. Whereas this hegemonic way of using the service may be functional for many users, three examples of negotiated and oppositional use are also discussed in the article: motivational picture quotes, text-rich posts, and non-recovery oriented posts. It is suggested that different ways of imagining and approaching the affordances of the service engender different patterns of support practices.