A Decomposition of Socially Constructed Image of Omani Female Professionals: Multidimensional Tension Embedded

The article examines The Good Wife (CBS 2009–), as well as other recent television series with female professionals as protagonists, alongside nineteenth-century novels such as Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and The Law and the Lady, Charles Dickens's Bleak House, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, which, like The Good Wife, place ‘the law’ and ‘the lady’ in direct confrontation. This comparative analysis reveals that current television series, even those that showcase women's professional success, articulate a discourse that valorises domestic stability and motherhood above professional achievements and, therefore, resonate with Victorian ideologies about the conflicted relation between women and the public sphere. Contemporary television series are not so different from Victorian texts that grant their heroines freedom to move outside home-boundaries, while treating women's public ascendancy as a transgression of normative femininity and using a number of strategies devised to guarantee women's return home and/or an appreciation of what they have to sacrifice in order to advance in their careers.

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An Introduction to Uncertain Futures

10.1093/oso/9780198820802.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jens Beckert ◽

Richard Bronk

Keyword(s):

Optimal Strategies ◽

Theoretical Framework ◽

Objective Probability ◽

Political Debate ◽

Probability Functions ◽

Market Economies ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

The Future ◽

Radical Uncertainty ◽

Calculative Practices

This chapter provides a theoretical framework for considering how imaginaries and narratives interact with calculative devices to structure expectations and beliefs in the economy. It analyses the nature of uncertainty in innovative market economies and examines how economic actors use imaginaries, narratives, models, and calculative practices to coordinate and legitimize action, determine value, and establish sufficient conviction to act despite the uncertainty they face. Placing the themes of the volume in the context of broader trends in economics and sociology, the chapter argues that, in conditions of widespread radical uncertainty, there is no uniquely rational set of expectations, and there are no optimal strategies or objective probability functions; instead, expectations are often structured by contingent narratives or socially constructed imaginaries. Moreover, since expectations are not anchored in a pre-existing future reality but have an important role in creating the future, they become legitimate objects of political debate and crucial instruments of power in markets and societies.

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The New Frontier

10.1093/oso/9780199479498.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Marilyn Fernandez

Keyword(s):

Information Technology ◽

Equal Opportunity ◽

Disadvantaged Groups ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

The Social ◽

New Frontier ◽

Equal Opportunity Employer

Does the burgeoning Indian Information Technology (IT) sector represent a deviation from the historical arc of caste inequality or has it become yet another site of discrimination? Those who claim that the sector is caste-free believe that IT is an equal opportunity employer, and that the small Dalit footprint is due to the want of merit. But they fail to consider how caste inequality sneaks in by being layered on socially constructed ‘pure merit’, which favours upper castes and other privileged segments, but handicaps Dalits and other disadvantaged groups. In this book, Fernandez describes how the practice of pure and holistic merit are deeply embedded in the social, cultural, and economic privileges of the dominant castes and classes, and how caste filtering has led to the reproduction of caste hierarchies and consequently the small Dalit footprint in Indian IT.

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Lessons from the Experience of U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Addressing the Democratic Deficit in Global Health Governance

The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics ◽

10.1111/j.1748-720x.2010.00512.x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 38 (3) ◽

pp. 564-579 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Janet E. Lord ◽

David Suozzi ◽

Allyn L. Taylor

Keyword(s):

Global Health ◽

Social Protection ◽

Medical Model ◽

Social Model ◽

Model Framework ◽

Persons With Disabilities ◽

Social Model Of Disability ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

High Commissioner ◽

Traditional Approaches

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the CRPD or the Convention), adopted on December 13, 2006, and entered into force on May 3, 2008, constitutes a key landmark in the emerging field of global health law and a critical milestone in the development of international law on the rights of persons with disabilities. At the time of its adoption, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights heralded the CRPD as a rejection of the understanding of persons with disabilities “as objects of charity, medical treatment and social protection” and an embrace of disabled people as “subjects of rights.”The text of the Convention itself, and the highly participatory process by which it was negotiated, signal a definitive break from previous international approaches that focused on disability within a medical model framework. In contrast to traditional approaches, the CRPD embraces a social model of disability, concentrating the disability experience not in individual deficiency, but in the socially constructed environment and the barriers that impede the participation of persons with disabilities in society.

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Sociolinguistic Markers of Friendship Among Persons With Dementia in Long-Term Care

Innovation in Aging ◽

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1911 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. 575-575

Author(s):

Pamela Saunders

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Long Term Care ◽

Ethnographic Study ◽

Linguistic Features ◽

Term Care ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

Time Period ◽

Pronominal Reference ◽

Field Notes

Abstract Sociolinguistics and discourse analysis provide tools through which to examine how friendship is socially constructed through language and communication. Research on social isolation and loneliness reveals the importance of social interaction on the psychological and physical health of older adults. Given that linguistic, communicative, and functional abilities decline as dementia progresses, it is challenging to identify markers of friendship. The Friendship Project is an ethnographic study of social interaction among persons with dementia living in a long-term care setting. The data are from transcripts and field-notes of social interactions among residents with a range of cognitive impairments over a six-month time period. Results reveal that persons with dementia employ specific linguistic features such as narrative, evaluation, evidentials, and pronominal reference to make meaning and create relationships over time. Practical implications will be discussed.

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The politics of genetic technoscience for conservation: The case of blight-resistant American chestnut

Environment and Planning E Nature and Space ◽

10.1177/25148486211024910 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 251484862110249

Author(s):

Jessica C Barnes ◽

Jason A Delborne

Keyword(s):

Participant Observation ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Plant Biotechnology ◽

American Chestnut ◽

Non Profit ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

Neoliberal Capitalism ◽

Political Outcomes ◽

Genetic Technologies ◽

Genetics And Genomics

Innovations in genetics and genomics have been heavily critiqued as technologies that have widely supported the privatization and commodification of natural resources. However, emerging applications of these tools to ecological restoration challenge narratives that cast genetic technoscience as inevitably enrolled in the enactment and extension of neoliberal capitalism. In this paper, we draw on Langdon Winner’s theory of technological politics to suggest that the context in which genetic technologies are developed and deployed matters for their political outcomes. We describe how genetic approaches to the restoration of functionally extinct American chestnut trees—by non-profit organizations, for the restoration of a wild, heritage forest species, and with unconventional intellectual property protections—are challenging precedents in the political economy of plant biotechnology. Through participant observation, interviews with scientists, and historical analysis, we employ the theoretical lens provided by Karl Polanyi’s double movement to describe how the anticipations and agency of the developers of blight-resistant American chestnut trees, combined with chestnut biology and the context of restoration, have thus far resisted key forms of the genetic privatization and commodification of chestnut germplasm. Still, the politics of blight-resistant American chestnut remain incomplete and undetermined; we thus call upon scholars to use the uneven and socially constructed character of both technologies and neoliberalism to help shape this and other applications of genetic technoscience for conservation.

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What constitutes successful covert action? Evaluating unacknowledged interventionism in foreign affairs

Review of International Studies ◽

10.1017/s0260210521000231 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Rory Cormac ◽

Calder Walton ◽

Damien Van Puyvelde

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

Conceptual Model ◽

Golden Age ◽

Foreign Affairs ◽

Public Understanding ◽

Social Construct ◽

Covert Action ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

State Activity

Abstract Covert action has long been a controversial tool of international relations. However, there is remarkably little public understanding about whether it works and, more fundamentally, about what constitutes success in this shadowy arena of state activity. This article distills competing criteria of success and examines how covert actions become perceived as successes. We develop a conceptual model of covert action success as a social construct and illustrate it through the case of ‘the golden age of CIA operations’. The socially constructed nature of success has important implications not just for evaluating covert actions but also for using, and defending against, them.

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Reversing the gaze on race, social justice, and inclusion in public librarianship

Education for Information ◽

10.3233/efi-211514 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Amber Matthews

Keyword(s):

Critical Race Theory ◽

Public Libraries ◽

Public Library ◽

Structural Racism ◽

The Public ◽

Race And Class ◽

The Gaze ◽

Socially Constructed ◽

Historical Times ◽

Diversity Studies

While contemporary revisionist narratives frame the public library as a benevolent and neutral community resource, it has existed for over two centuries and has a deeply shaded past. Particularly, public libraries played key roles in projects tied to the industrialist mission of states and the education of select social groups during key historical times. In no uncertain terms, these were inherently racist and colonial projects in which libraries helped proffer socially constructed and politically motivated ideas of race and class. This work draws on relevant and important work in anti-oppression studies, Black studies, critical diversity studies, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to trouble contemporary revisionist perspectives in public librarianship to show how they further entrench monocultural normativity and structural racism. It also draws on scholarship in anti-racism studies to reimagine possibilities for public librarianship that genuinely reflect its core values of equity and justice.

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