The New Frontier

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.

Family Participation in Challenger Baseball: Critical Theory Perspectives

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lupe Castañ ◽  
Claudine Sherrill
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Emotional Support ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Physical Disabilities ◽  
Head Coach ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Field Notes

The purpose was to analyze the social construction of Challenger baseball opportunities in a selected community. Participants were 10 boys and 6 girls with mental and/or physical disabilities (ages 7 to 16 years, M = 11.31), their families, and the head coach. Data were collected through interviews in the homes with all family members, participant observation at practices and games, and field notes. The research design was qualitative, and critical theory guided interpretation. Analytical induction revealed five outcomes that were particularly meaningful as families and coach socially constructed Challenger baseball: (a) fun and enjoyment, (b) positive affect related to equal opportunity and feelings of “normalcy,” (c) social networking/emotional support for families, (d) baseball knowledge and skills, and (e) social interactions with peers.

scholarly journals The Social Construction of Human Rights Legislation: Interpreting Victoria’s Statutes through their Limitations

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Russell Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Constructivist Approach

Interpreting human rights statutes through their objectives encourages their description as empowering instruments with their hortatory language emphasising the potential of each instrument to protect and promote rights. This article examines Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) and Charter of Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) through a different lens and argues that a focus on their limitations and derogations offers a better understanding of the nature and extent of the human rights protection that each purports to provide.These limitations are no mere peripheral encumbrances and help shape the rights protecting functions of each statute. This article adopts a social constructivist approach to explain how, as socially constructed instruments, the operation of the limitations reveals an ambivalent role for each statute. The design and functionality of each statute, with their self-limiting provisions, means that each acts to sustain as well as challenge the existing power relationships and social arrangements.

scholarly journals Placing Camelot: Cultivating leadership and learning in the Kennedy presidency

Leadership ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 174271502110421
Author(s):  
Leo McCann ◽  
Simon Mollan
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Development ◽  
Leadership Styles ◽  
Leadership Style ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
History Of ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Learning Event

The concept of ‘place’ can play a powerful role in understanding how leadership is socially constructed. This article explores the geographic, symbolic and mythic uses of place in the cultivation of a distinct leadership style around the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. It focuses on the history of a social and learning event that today might be called a leadership development programme: the ‘Hickory Hill Seminars’ of 1961-4, named after and mostly held at the specific location of Robert F. Kennedy’s home. These seminars – only lightly touched on in Kennedy-era history and leadership literatures – were semi-formal occasions organized by the historian Arthur Schlesinger that brought eminent public intellectuals of the day to present their work to the assembled group of insiders. The seminars functioned as a network in action, both cultivating and projecting certain cultural formations of leadership. Bounded by the geographic places inhabited by Washington elites, the seminars formed part of the broader construction of the symbolic place of the ‘New Frontier’ and the mythic place of ‘Camelot’. The Hickory Hill seminars were one part of a broad metaphysical canvas upon which a distinct presidential leadership style and ‘legacy’ was created. Building on critical and social constructivist perspectives, we argue that geographic, symbolic and mythic notions of place can be central to the social construction of particular leadership styles and legacies, but that these creations can be deceptive, and remain always vulnerable to critique, co-optation and distortion by opponents and rivals.

scholarly journals Social constructivism in mathematics? The promise and shortcomings of Julian Cole’s institutional account

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Rytilä
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
Social Entities ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Mathematical Reality

AbstractThe core idea of social constructivism in mathematics is that mathematical entities are social constructs that exist in virtue of social practices, similar to more familiar social entities like institutions and money. Julian C. Cole has presented an institutional version of social constructivism about mathematics based on John Searle’s theory of the construction of the social reality. In this paper, I consider what merits social constructivism has and examine how well Cole’s institutional account meets the challenge of accounting for the characteristic features of mathematics, especially objectivity and applicability. I propose that in general social constructivism shows promise as an ontology of mathematics, because the view can agree with mathematical practice and it offers a way of understanding how mathematical entities can be real without conflicting with a scientific picture of reality. However, I argue that Cole’s specific theory does not provide an adequate social constructivist account of mathematics. His institutional account fails to sufficiently explain the objectivity and applicability of mathematics, because the explanations are weakened and limited by the three-level theoretical model underlying Cole’s account of the construction of mathematical reality and by the use of the Searlean institutional framework. The shortcomings of Cole’s theory give reason to suspect that the Searlean framework is not an optimal way to defend the view that mathematical reality is socially constructed.

Information Technology Skills and Labor Market Outcomes for Workers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilal Atasoy ◽  
Rajiv D. Banker ◽  
Paul A. Pavlou
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Developing Economies ◽  
Labor Market Outcomes ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
It Use ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Disadvantaged Groups ◽  
It Training ◽  
It Skills

Job erosion is a major concern globally, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment and low wages remain pressing societal challenges in the wake of increased automation, more so for traditionally disadvantaged groups in the labor market, such as women, minorities, and the elderly. However, workers who possess relevant information technology (IT) skills may have an edge in an increasingly digital economy. In this study, we examine the role of IT skills in labor market outcomes for workers, using a household IT use survey from an emerging economy that captures detailed, individual-level data on IT skills, which are also integrated with data on workers’ wages, occupations, and industries between 2007 and 2015. The results indicate that basic IT skills increase individuals’ employment probability, which is driven by both higher labor force participation and a higher probability of transitioning from unemployment to employment, after accounting for the decision to participate in the workforce. Advanced IT skills do not provide a significant incremental effect on employment probability on top of basic IT skills. However, having advanced IT skills helps workers to earn higher wages while incrementally increasing the probability that they are employed in higher-paid jobs. Interestingly, the effect of basic IT skills on employment is significantly larger for the female and older workforce that typically has a higher preference for flexible work options. These results emphasize the importance of providing necessary IT access and offering basic IT training to traditionally disadvantaged groups to close the IT skills gap and the digital divide. We offer implications for the future of work, education, and public policy for designing IT training policies for workers, students, and organizations to stimulate employment with higher wages, particularly in developing economies and for traditionally disadvantaged segments of the workforce, such as women and the elderly, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Rethinking Financial Reporting: Reinstating the Social License of Limited Liability

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Haslam
Keyword(s):  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Review Paper ◽  
Investment Decision ◽  
Limited Liability ◽  
Reporting Standards ◽  
Financial Reporting Standards ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Investment Decision Making ◽  
Social License ◽  
The Social

AbstractShyam Sunder’s monograph ‘Rethinking Financial Reporting: Standards, Norms and Institutions’ explores the extent to which it is possible to deliver ‘better financial reporting’ so as to support investment decision making and valuation. In this review paper it is argued that a more fundamental and radical challenge is required in a world where financial reporting is politically and socially constructed. The institutions governing financial reporting have pursued a project that has been complicit in undermining the social license granted by limited liability. The priority is to explore how financial reporting might contribute to securing the social license granted by limited liability.

Service innovation as a social construction: The role of boundary objects

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Mele ◽  
Roberta Sebastiani ◽  
Daniela Corsaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Service Innovation ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Boundary Objects ◽  
Resource Integration ◽  
Shared Meanings ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Outcome Perspective

This article advances a conceptualization of service innovation as socially constructed through resource integration and sensemaking. By developing this view, the current study goes beyond an outcome perspective, to include the collective nature of service innovation and the role of the social context in affecting the service innovation process. Actors enact and perform service innovation through two approaches, one that is more concerted and another that emerges in some way. Each approach is characterized by distinct resource integration processes, in which the boundary objects (artifacts, discourses, and places) play specific roles. They act as bridge-makers that connect actors, thereby fostering resource integration and shared meanings.

scholarly journals Female labor applying by the Maritime Ministry of the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-373
Author(s):  
Irina V Sinova
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
The Public ◽  
Russian State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Impact

The article deals with the issues related to the evolution of the use of women in the civil service at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries on the example of the Maritime Ministry on the basis of previously unpublished documents stored in the Russian state archive of the Navy and periodical press materials. The study of gender issues can be of scientific interest on the basis of its documents, as practically not in demand in research related to the women’s issue. As a result of the struggle of the public, there were some concessions on the part of the authorities related to the expansion of women’s access to fill certain positions in a number of areas that experienced a lack of certain qualifications, including public service, in the conditions of intensive bourgeois development. The article analyzes the legal acts regulating the work of women, especially in the public service. it is shown how the changes that took place in the Russian Empire influenced the transformation of the socio-economic situation of women in General, and, also, became a reflection of the social policy of the state. The article reveals the attitude of the heads of departments of the Ministry to the admission of women to the public service, as well as their opinion on the degree of necessity for the service itself in attracting women to it. The article deals with the arguments of men - heads of departments of the Ministry, related to the impact of women’s work on home life, on the family and on itself, which differed largely by philistine assessments, rather than progressive views. In fact, on the part of the authorities, concessions to women were more imaginary and forced than the result of an objective assessment of their equal opportunity to serve in the public system.

scholarly journals The Royal Treatment: Temporality and Technology in The King's Speech

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared S. Richman
Keyword(s):  
Social Stigma ◽  
Communication Disorders ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Moral Failure ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Radio Technology ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Title Character

This essay examines the intersections of class, technology, and disability manifest within The King's Speech. It argues that the film obfuscates modern scientific and critical understanding of communication disorders by rendering stuttering as a moral failure rather than by attempting to understand it as a socially constructed condition contingent upon established societal and temporal norms. The essay identifies the social codes enforcing correct and eloquent speech that create a political and social climate for "compulsory fluency"—the socially imperative verbal facility promoted as necessary to participate in public life. Crucially and somewhat ironically, with its emphasis on the nobility of the title character, the film sublimates an inherent tension between media technology and the lingering social stigma surrounding disability. The King's Speech thus situates compulsory fluency as an essential component of modern kingship. By reading the film's strategic deployment of radio technology alongside its troubled representation of class and his fraught invocation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the essay reads attitudes towards vocal disability within the context of royalty, patriarchy, and national identity. Ultimately, the essay locates The King's Speech as a film whose image of modern kingship grounds itself upon a notion of imperial authority as technologically constructed but ultimately disabled by a national fantasy of historical wholeness in the fabricated kinship between a monarch and his people.

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