The NGO Moment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
International Organisations ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Global Project ◽  
Insight Into

This book is a study of compassion as a global project from Biafra to Live Aid. Kevin O'Sullivan explains how and why NGOs became the primary conduits of popular concern for the global poor between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s and shows how this shaped the West's relationship with the post-colonial world. Drawing on case studies from Britain, Canada and Ireland, as well as archival material from governments and international organisations, he sheds new light on how the legacies of empire were re-packaged and re-purposed for the post-colonial era, and how a liberal definition of benevolence, rooted in charity, justice, development and rights became the dominant expression of solidarity with the Third World. In doing so, the book provides a unique insight into the social, cultural and ideological foundations of global civil society. It reveals why this period provided such fertile ground for the emergence of NGOs and offers a fresh interpretation of how individuals in the West encountered the outside world.

scholarly journals Constructing the social democratic developmental state in Africa: lessons from the “Global South”

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Klay Kieh
Keyword(s):  
Development Process ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Global South ◽  
The State ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Social

Since the dawn of the post-colonial era in the various regions of the “Global South,” including Africa, the appropriate role of the state in the development process has been a frontier issue. The resulting debate has revolved around two major trajectories: the minimalist state and the maximalist state. The former, shaped by the liberal cum neo-liberal Weltanschauung, posits that the state should have a limited role in socio-economic development—basically the creation of propitious conditions for the private accumulation of capital. Essentially, the suzerainty over the development process should rest with the “market” and its associated forces, particularly businesses. On the other hand, the maximalist state perspective asserts that the state should have a prominent role in the development process, including serving as the engine. Importantly, the debate has gone through various cycles, each dominated by the minimalist state paradigm.In spite of the hegemony of the minimalist state perspective, several states in the “Global South” have experimented with various models of state dirigisme — the “developmental state:” authoritarian (e.g. Singapore and South Korea) and democratic (e.g. Botswana and Mauritius). Against this backdrop, using the lessons learned from the experiences of some of the states in the “Global South” that have experimented with variants of the developmental state model, this article concluded that the social democratic developmental state is the best trajectory for promoting human-centered democracy and development in Africa.

Together in Music

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Level Of Understanding ◽  
Insight Into

Together in music develops insight into the musical ensemble as an intense form of teamwork, as finely coordinated joint action, and as an emotionally and socially rewarding experience that enables positive outcomes for wellbeing and development. By investigating processes related to group music-making at meso-, micro-, and macro-level, it offers a platform for synthesis across disciplinary and methodological approaches, and the definition of a new level of understanding that is holistic and considers interrelationships between levels of analysis. The book combines review chapters that summarize the state of the art with case studies that present research outcomes. While most chapters focus on Western classical or contemporary music, the themes that run through the book have broad relevance, which include the role of embodiment and emergence, relationships between the social and the musical, multi-dimensionality of experiences, and technologies to investigate and support collaboration and interaction in ensembles.

Setting standards and language variation

2002 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy B.M. Tsui ◽  
Stephen J. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Local Varieties ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Philosophical Language ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Or Benchmarks

In recent years, the setting of standards or benchmarks for teachers as well as for learners has been brought into education as one of the key mechanisms for accountability and quality assurance. Language standards setting is one of the top priorities for policy makers. This paper points out that while standards setting in education raises issues that are largely educational and philosophical, language standards setting is often culturally and politically charged. This is particularly so in English standards setting because of the long-standing association between English and colonialism and cultural and economic domination. The domination of English has not diminished in the post-colonial era. The paper outlines a number of complex issues generated by English standard setting, including whether native or non-native varieties of English will be used as the model for determining standards, whether the same standards should be used for first and second language learners, how one determines whether deviations from the standard English model are errors or variations, and the social and political implications for adopting the standard or the local varieties. A brief summary of how each paper in this Special Issue addresses these issues is provided.

Seen, not measured: Relocating drawing within astronomical observations

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-290
Author(s):  
Anna Madeleine Raupach
Keyword(s):  
Light Reflection ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Double Stars ◽  
The Social ◽  
Manual Labour ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Written Descriptions ◽  
Insight Into

This paper presents a practice-based research project that explores archival material documenting data collection in nineteenth-century astronomy and locates drawing as a point of access into the shift from human- to technology-dominated methods of observation and representation. I focus on two works that use drawing in contrasting ways. First, by adopting marks from handwritten logbooks as a form of drawing that is laser-etched onto mirrors to highlight the under-acknowledged work of women ‘star measurers’. This technique of remediating drawn lines references both the scientific discourse and the social framework that structured the women’s work, and I use a technique of light reflection to illuminate the absence of their identity in previous narratives of this history. The second line of inquiry is based on written descriptions of double stars. Using hand-drawn animation, I have forged a connection between human and machine interpretation and description of astronomical phenomena, to investigate the involvement of multiple authors in this process. These works provide material explorations into the shift between manual labour and machine automation to illuminate the human traces of expression that are embedded into technological processes. I propose that drawing in combination with other media can offer insight into this increasingly entangled and complex relationship for both artistic and scientific discourses.

Reconstructing Realities from Biblical Utopias

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Frauke Uhlenbruch
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Type ◽  
Specific Response ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Perceived Reality ◽  
Utopian Theory ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Strict Definition

This article addresses two specific issues in reading the Hebrew Bible drawing on utopian theory: the possibility of reconstructing historical reality by reading a text as a utopia, and the variable of changing audiences throughout time and their impact on utopian readings.
Suvin’s and Roemer’s definitions of utopia are used, but it is acknowledged that no one definition of utopia is necessarily more correct than another. ­Approaching the concept of utopia as a flexible ideal type, rather than with 
a strict definition, is advocated. Utopia is seen as a specific response by the author(s) to a perceived reality; therefore it has been suggested that reading biblical texts as utopia can offer insight into social realities at the time of the text’s creation. This notion is examined critically, drawing on Holquist’s comparison of utopia to the abstraction of chess. While it is possible to make some statements about the social reality at the time of the production of the text by reading the text as a utopian representation, it must always be taken into account that each reconstruction of reality is only one possible interpretation offered by a member of a non-intended audience. A utopia’s relationship to realities is complex, and often aspects of its implied counter-piece, the dystopia, become visible when a transfer of a utopia into reality is attempted.


scholarly journals ) Cues-of-Being-Watched Paradigm Revisited

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 203-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus-Christian Carbon ◽  
Vera M. Hesslinger
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Confounding Variables ◽  
The Social ◽  
Socially Relevant ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Insight Into

Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts (2006 ) provided an intriguing experimental paradigm for investigating the effects of social cues on cooperative behavior in a real-world setting. By placing an image of a pair of eyes on a cupboard door above an “honesty box” for hot beverages, they induced substantially higher amounts of contributions. As this finding has a significant impact on the social sciences and assumptions concerning the meaning of social cues for human behavior, we systematically reanalyzed their procedure and statistical analyses and tried to replicate the results while taking personality factors into account. The overall results of our analysis and replication efforts do not unequivocally support conclusions about the effects of eyes as social cues for cooperative behavior. Problems start with the definition of cooperative behavior, underspecified methods, confounding variables, invalid statistical analyses, and a lack of insight into the factors – including personality factors – that modulate the expected effect. A follow-up experiment with 138 participants showed no effect of eyes on socially relevant concepts and attitudes. Furthermore, none of the personality factors that, according to Bateson et al.’s explanation of reputational concerns, might be a source of effects interacted with any of the measures we used to operationalize these socially relevant concepts and attitudes.

scholarly journals Adichie’s Thematic Construction of a Post-Colonial Nigerian Nation-State in Two Excerpts from Her Purple Hibiscus: An Experiential Meaning Scrutiny

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-90
Author(s):  
Daniel T. Yokossi ◽  
Léonard A. Koussouhon
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
World View ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Verbal Processes ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Experiential Meaning

Abstract This article digs into Adichie’s world view of the post-colonial Nigeria via her use of the English language in two extracts culled from her Purple Hibiscus. To go into details, the study examines how Adichie makes use of particular types of transitivity patterns to weave into her text her thematic construction of Nigeria after independence. To this end, the Experiential Meaning has been used as a theoretical lens given that the exploration of the transitivity properties in/of a text can provide a full insight into how the writer encodes his/her experience of the world therein as advocated by Systemic Functional Linguistics scholars like Halliday (1971/1976), and his followers Hassan (1985/1989), Eggins (2004), and Matthiessen (2004/2006). As a matter of fact, the study offers a linguistic analysis of the selected extracts, a summary of the findings, and the ensuing interpretation. Actually, the interpretation of the findings has revealed that Adichie has encoded tremendous meanings through her outstanding use of such process types as material, mental and verbal processes. The distribution of these key processes in the analyzed extracts per participant has also highlighted both some of the author's key characters and to what extent these latter ones embody her perceptions of the social, religious and political issues that she artistically tries to castigate in her novel under examination. The study ultimately opens up to further explorations embracing such other fields of the Systemic Functional Linguistics as the interpersonal and textual meanings.

scholarly journals Oil Economy and Female Prostitution in Port Harcourt

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 121-132
Author(s):  
C. Poroma ◽  
U.J. David ◽  
Onome Robinson Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Exploration And Exploitation ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Port Harcourt ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dynamic Relations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Manifest Consequence

The research directs attention to the relationship between oil economy and increase in female prostitution. Specifically, we x-ray the historical and dialectical origin of prostitution from the colonial to the post colonial era. We contend that, prostitution is a condition imposed on females from low income background by poverty and that oil exploration and exploitation activities which are a manifest consequence of the expanded reproduction of capital (ERC) accentuate the rate of prostitution particularly in Port Harcourt. It is against this backdrop that, we attempt to demystify the social processes and the dynamic relations that produce prostitution with a view to recommending theoretical and practical measures of curbing prostitution as a social problem.

scholarly journals Grotesque Realism in O.V Vijayan’s The Saga of Dharmapuri

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
Maria Rajan Thaliath
Keyword(s):  
Economic Condition ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Sexual Imagery ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Independent Country

The Saga of Dharmapuri by O.V. Vijayan is a dystopian fantasy set in the imaginary country of Dharmapuri, which could be a depiction of India or any other newly independent country in the post-colonial era. Mikhail Bakhtin in his treatise Rabelais and his World (1965) justifies the use of Grotesque Realism, a literary trope that allows the author to move away from the conventions of propriety and decency to convey messages that are real and powerful nevertheless. Usually exaggeration and hyperbole are key elements of this style. Through the centuries, literature has often been a medium through which contemporary concerns have been transmitted. This paper argues that O.V. Vijayan uses Grotesque Realism in his novel to depict the political, social and economic condition of India of the 1970s- specifically a country that was under emergency. Like all dystopian fables, The Saga of Dharmapuri has been prophetic in anticipating some of the social issues that we face even today. The paper aims at examining how Vijayan uses explicit language and scatological and sexual imagery so as to achieve this sense of realism within his novel.

Arabs as a People and Arabness as an Idea: 750–900 CE

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Webb
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
The World ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Fresh Insight ◽  
Insight Into

The early Abbasid Caliphate marked a climax of Arab ethnogenesis. Urbanization, the centralisation of power, and the mixing of populations in cosmopolitan Iraq cultivated fertile ground for Muslim elites to rally around the banner of Arab identity as a means to maintain their status. This chapter engages models of ethnogenesis to investigate the consolidation of Arab identity under the first Abbasids and provides fresh insight into the significance of the putative Arab-Persian friction (al-shuʿūbiyya). Akin to the formation of ethnic identities elsewhere in the world, the consolidation of an Abbasid-Iraqi Arab identity prompted writers to imagine new origins for their community, forgetting the Arabs’ early Muslim-era ethnogenesis by transplanting their roots into much more ancient pre-Islamic Arabian pasts. This chapter investigates salient aspects of inventing Arab pre-Islamic origins which established paradigms about Arabness that persist to the present day. The chapter closes with investigation of sweeping societal changes in Iraq after AD 800, when a remarkable retreat from Arabness began: Muslims shifted from identifying themselves as ‘Arabs’, fundamentally altering the definition of Arabness in the process.

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