scholarly journals Sociocultural dimensions of mobility transitions to come: introduction to the special issue

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-185
Author(s):  
Marco Sonnberger ◽  
Antonia Graf
Keyword(s):  
2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Pérez-González

While the growing ubiquitousness of translation and interpreting has established these activities more firmly in the public consciousness, the extent of the translators’ and interpreters’ contribution to the continued functioning of cosmopolitan and participatory postmodern societies remains largely misunderstood. This paper argues that the theorisation of translation and interpretation as social phenomena and of translators/interpreters as agents contributing to the stability or subversion of social structures through their capacity to re-define the context in which they mediate constitutes a recent development in the evolution of the discipline. The consequentiality of the mediators’ agency, one of the most significant insights to come out of this new body of research, is particularly evident in situations of social, political and cultural confrontation. It is contended that this conceptualisation of agency opens up the possibility of translation being used not only to resolve conflict and tension, but also to promote them. Through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, the contributing authors to this special issue explore a number of sites of linguistic and cultural mediation across a range of institutional settings and textual/interactional genres, with particular emphasis on the contribution of translation and interpreting to the genealogy of conflict. The papers presented here address a number of overlapping themes, including the dialectics of governmental policy-making and translation, the interface between translation, politics and the media, the impact of the narrative affiliation of translators and interpreters as agents of mediation, the frictional dynamics of interpreter-mediated institutional encounters and the dynamics of identity negotiation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 281-284
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Segal

The June 2016 death of our esteemed colleague, Dr Irving I. Gottesman, was felt as an extreme loss at so many levels by colleagues, students, friends, and family across the globe. Irv's stellar contributions to the field of twin research will continue to be remembered and cited for many years to come. In commemoration of his life and work, I organized a symposium at the 16th meeting of the International Society for Twin Studies, held in Madrid, Spain, November 16–18, 2017. The panelists included mostly former students, as well as colleagues, who presented their scientific research and personal remarks reflecting Irv's profound influence in shaping their lives and careers. A chronology of Irv's academic positions and honors is included in the introduction to this special issue of Twin Research and Human Genetics, followed by brief sketches of the panel participants; their scholarly papers and personal reflections follow.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-376
Author(s):  
Kirk Fiereck ◽  
Neville Hoad ◽  
Danai S. Mupotsa

This introduction outlines the idea of the queer customary and how various African articulations of it engage, contest, and nuance central concerns of queer theory produced in the global North, particularly around ideas of normativity—hetero and homo. It speculates on the customary’s reworking of temporality and what that reworking does to historical time and the problems and possibilities in reading the colonial archive in the search for a useable past for both lived African sexual and gendered experience and the academic study of it. The customary is seen as an iterative containment of ancestral time, a powerful form of self-fashioning in the present, and as an invitation to futurity. Brief framings of how the various essays in the special issue elaborate what we are calling the queer customary follow.


2018 ◽  
Vol 94 (94) ◽  
pp. 4-6
Author(s):  
Filippo Menozzi

Rosa Luxemburg will be honoured, remembered, and celebrated as a figure from the past only when, in a future still to-come, the goals of social justice, peace and equality that she fought for are realised. As long as bitter struggles and widespread suffering continue, she is still living, a living substance that is part of the present and can inspire political engagement. The wider meaning of declaring Rosa Luxemburg our contemporary, then, is that the objectives she struggled for are still to-come, and the forms of violence and oppression she struggled against are still part of the material social conditions of today’s world. This coevalness can be pronounced because many issues at the heart of her thought and activism are still with us: from imperialism and the national question to what Nancy Fraser calls the 'back-stories' of capitalism. This special issue of New Formations aims to contribute to the transmission of this vital legacy by suggesting questions about relevance, memory and resonance: how does Luxemburg speak to us, how do her thoughts echo with our own? How can we prevent the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg from becoming heritage, a thing of the past? The essays and interviews included in this special issue grapple in different ways with the central question of how to assess the contemporaneity of Rosa Luxemburg without turning her into an object of commemoration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 9907
Author(s):  
Raja R. Timilsina ◽  
Yoshinori Nakagawa ◽  
Koji Kotani

There are two approaches to future planning: backcasting and scenario planning. While some studies have attempted to relate and combine these two approaches, a future design (FD) approach has recently been advocated and researched. Given this state of affairs, the paper provides an overview of the FD approach and discusses the potential benefits of linking and incorporating it into backcasting and scenario planning by summarizing the main features of such benefits for future planning for sustainability. A feature of an FD is that it explicitly orients people’s ways of thinking in the current generation to be generative for not only their own future but also generations to come, as well as in designing a plan within a coherent timeframe by demonstrating the characteristics of being prospective and retrospective from the viewpoint of a different generation. Another feature of FD lies in strategy making through some visioning process and in redefining the boundary between what is controllable and what is uncontrollable by considering the perspectives of future generations. We consider this article as a concept paper for the special issue of “Designing Sustainable Future Societies,” building on a literature review and author’s conceptual framework. Thus, our ideas and concepts suggest some potential benefits from incorporating FD into backcasting and scenario planning, further inducing people to be future-oriented and/or sustainable in terms of strategy making. We finally demonstrate some examples of FD practices and illustrative ideas of FD incorporation, remarking on possible avenues for future research.


Author(s):  
David Murphy

<p>About 20 years ago, lost in the midst of my PhD research, I mused over proposed titles. I was pretty pleased with myself to come up with ‘Chaos Rules’ (the implied double meaning was deliberate) or, more completely, <em>Chaos Rules: An Exploration of The Work of Instructional Designers in Distance Education</em>. I used the then emerging theories of chaos and complexity to underpin my analysis. So it was with not just a little excitement that I read the call for contributions to this Special Issue. What follows is a ‘walk through’ my thesis, with an emphasis on the contribution of chaos and complexity theory.</p><p> </p>


Author(s):  
Neeraja Sankaran

The essays in this special issue draw on a bank of diverse primary and secondary sources in different languages, to offer novel perspectives on the different directions that research on or with bacteriophages—bacterial viruses—has evolved over the century since they were first discovered. Looking beyond the established historical accounts of the discovery of the bacteriophages and their role as a tool in founding molecular biology, although these milestones are not ignored, papers in this volume offer insights into other investigative threads and figures that were either previously unknown or under-represented in history. Taken together they show that the bacteriophages have had a far richer and more diverse life in both scientific laboratories and written works than hitherto realized, and that more is yet to come.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-430
Author(s):  
David McCollum

This article offers some reflections on the lessons readers might take from the papers in this special issue. These are framed through consideration of three key themes: Scottishness, nationhood and national identity; the search for belonging, not least in relation to migrants’ emotional responses to Brexit; and the practical questions that Brexit poses for citizenship(s) and ‘settled’ status. In considering these themes, attention is drawn towards three areas which are ripe for further study. Several of the articles bring into focus the notion of Scottish exceptionalism, provoking questions about what impacts this exceptionalism, or perhaps more importantly perceptions of it, may have at policy and attitudinal levels. Questions too, are posed about the heterogeneity of perception, experience and response to Brexit amongst ECE migrants in Scotland. Finally, it can be seen that Brexit has been a protracted process and a source of anxiety and anguish, not least for those who have made Scotland their home. Looking forward, there will be more Brexit related tension to come, a prospect hugely complicated by the impacts of Covid-19.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-83
Author(s):  
Mark Ettenberger ◽  
Joanne V. Loewy

2020 will most certainly be a memorable year. The COVID-19 pandemic has seemingly altered our lives and our perspectives on participating in activities of daily living will likely shift in the years to come. While the pain, struggle and horror of the pandemic has affected so many, our thoughts lie particularly with those who passed away, their families and friends, and carers – both professional and personal – around the globe...


2012 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Helen E. Lees ◽  
Nick Peim
Keyword(s):  

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