scholarly journals Hear my screams: An auto-ethnographic account of the police

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 205979911988427
Author(s):  
Aliraza Javaid

Other writers, notably police researchers, infrequently discuss the problems and difficulties that they encounter in and outside of fieldwork when doing research on the police. In this article, I piece together some critical and personal reflections of researching the police to provide nuanced information that can help other writers to learn from my own experiences of researching the police and also help them to navigate their own experiences of working with the police for research purposes. These reflections of mine emanate from fieldwork notes and my research diary. I use Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness as a lens to theorise and make sense of such experiences, understanding how my presence gets in the way of the happiness of others because of my affiliation to sexual violence work. By naming a problem, rape as a problem, I became the problem. The article outlines some of the chief ethical, personal and pragmatic issues that can surface when researching the police. For example, I frequently encountered interrogative questions whereby officers questioned my sexuality, asking ‘are you gay?’ I became a nuisance for the police, a problem by highlighting the issue of male rape as a problem given that it challenges the status quo of normative heterosexuality. I argue that, doing research on the police, which can involve sensitive and challenging work that affects one emotionally, socially and physically, impacts not only the officers being interviewed, but also the researchers themselves. The latter group should be identified much more readily than seems to be the case in the social sciences.

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Michael Mumisa

The 20th century has been witness to great developments in theology, philosophy of language and the social sciences. Postmodernism has emerged as an influential philosophical thought. All of these 20th century phenomena have influenced how people approach sacred texts and how they comprehend and interpret them. Muslims have not been immune to these developments, and accordingly there has been a realisation among Muslim theorists that the existing interpretations of the Qur'an and Sunnah (imitado Muhammadi) may be limited and not able to suffice the needs of a changing world. The Islamic world has also been rapidly expanding to incorporate races, cultures and environments of various kinds. Consequently, racial and cultural problems have emerged causing a great need among progressive Muslims, particularly the youth, women, people of colour, and other concerned Muslims for a re-reading of the sacred texts so that they become existentially meaningful in the here and now. Such a reading will have to take into consideration differences of perspective and social location. Although this article proposes an African Qur'anic hermeneutics within the liberative discourse, it is not necessarily proposing an African Muslim perspective of liberation since there can be no such a thing as an ‘African perspective’, ‘feminist perspective’ or even ‘Christian perspective’ of liberation. By confirming the ‘us’ versus ‘them’, or dominant versus ‘other’ in the liberation process, it serves to confirm the status quo which we seek to change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 160940692090993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Morse

When examining the changes in society and the concomitant changes in research methods in the last century, unquestionably qualitative inquiry has been superseded by quantitative methods and had to work to find its niche in the social sciences. Here, I explore the push factors that have made space for the establishment and legitimization of qualitative inquiry. I discuss what we are doing well in qualitative methods, then examine the status quo—present worries, concerns, and future trends. I present three major problems that need attention, critique, and resolution in qualitative methods to further strengthen our foothold as we move forward. Methodological development is one of the primary purposes of the International Institute of Qualitative Methods (IIQM). In closing, I examine the role of the IIQM in the global development of qualitative methods.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 253-274

The article centers on the rhetoric of Thorstein Veblen, who combined economic, sociological and anthropological approaches in an organic way. The paper emphasizes the importance and heuristic significance of Veblen’s use of the trope of irony. An ironic stance buttresses his critique of the status quo and promotes an understanding of the socio-economic structure as complex, controversial and sometimes absurd. The article highlights the examples and themes that Veblen described with recourse to irony. Irony accompanies his criticism of the status quo, and it appears in his account of such phenomena as the leisure class, business culture, higher education, modern Western civilization as epitomized by America, and in his exposure of the postulates and hidden ideologies of mainstream economics.The author shows that Veblen’s followers took his irony as an idiosyncrasy typical for someone descended from Norwegian farmers, while the tropes themselves were usually unfavorably contrasted with serious research, i.e. that side of his heritage was regarded as a caprice that interfered with later recognition of Veblen’s merit. The article intends to demonstrate exactly the opposite by calling attention to irony in the social sciences and showing its significance for them. Irony as a negative and multifaceted characterization of reality better reflects the phenomena themselves with their inherent paradoxes and complexity. Irony assists us in keeping a proper distance from the intensity of a description and in revealing socio-economic processes with all their dynamics and contradictions. It is the ironic that makes Veblen’s heritage relevant after all.


Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson

Alvin Toffler’s writings encapsulated many of the tensions of futurism: the way that futurology and futures studies oscillated between forms of utopianism and technocracy with global ambitions, and between new forms of activism, on the one hand, and emerging forms of consultancy and paid advice on the other. Paradoxically, in their desire to create new images of the future capable of providing exits from the status quo of the Cold War world, futurists reinvented the technologies of prediction that they had initially rejected, and put them at the basis of a new activity of futures advice. Consultancy was central to the field of futures studies from its inception. For futurists, consultancy was a form of militancy—a potentially world altering expertise that could bypass politics and also escaped the boring halls of academia.


Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.


Author(s):  
Tahir Abbas

This article situates the debate on the United Kingdom’s Prevent policy in the broader framework of the global paradigm for countering violent extremism (CVE), which appeared at the end of 2015. It argues that omission of a nuanced focus on the social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics of radicalised people has led to a tendency to introduce blanket measures which, inadvertently and indirectly, have had harmful results. Moreover, although Prevent has been the fundamental element of the British government’s counterterrorist strategy since 2006, it confuses legitimate political resistance of young British Muslims with signs of violent extremism, thus giving credence to the argument that Prevent is a form of social engineering which, in the last instance, pacifies resistance by reaffirming the status quo in the country’s domestic and foreign policy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Yifan Wang

 Against the backdrop of growing national strength and rapid economic development, the government has placed more emphasis on education. In recent years, remarkable achievements have been registered in terms of education in China, which lays a solid foundation for cultivating comprehensive professionally-trained personnel in the new era. However, the current education system is ridden with many setbacks and problems. This paper conducts an analysis of the specific conditions of education both at home and abroad, status quo of education in China, makes some reflections on the direction and measures of China's education reform based on the practical reality of education in China. Measures should be taken to inject personalities into the traditional, exam-oriented education system, which keeps pace with the new era. As is known to all, it's important to strike a balance between public education and non-government funded education in a scientific and reasonable manner. The overhauling of traditional education policies will pave the way for China's educational renaissance and realize the great blueprint of the Chinese dream. 


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Jacek Wiewiorowski

THE NATURAL SCIENCES IN THE SERVICE OF PLEADINGS IN CASES INVOLVING MINORS: REMARKS ON CTH 2.4.1 [A. 318/319] = C. 5.4.20)SummaryThe subject of this article is the status of juvenile persons in Roman law, as exemplified by one of the constitutions of Constantine the Great, CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2, fragments of which are preserved in Theodosius’ Code of 438, and in an abridged version in Justinian’s Code of 534. In the first part of the article the author analyses the extremely controversial issue of the identity of the constitution’s addressee. In the second part he discusses the content of this constitution and the premises for its issue in the light of the Constantinian legislation on family matters and the way it was later interpreted. The article’s third part is an attempt to apply the natural and social sciences to the question of minors and their personality, and the examination of this issue as regards CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2. The author takes into consideration the basic data on the status of minors in Roman law, in the subsequent history of European law, and in non-European cultures. He concludes by making a series of observations on the potential for the application of the natural sciences in the study of Roman law, which could serve to confirm the timeless and universal nature of some of the solutions it prescribed.


1986 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Virginia Suave

Language enables us to make meaning together, and at the same time, limits those meanings we can attempt to communicate to each other. ESL/EFL programs must have as their central intent the enabling of people to make meaning in English. Such programs occur within a context of culture, time, and a sociopolitical web of circumstance, and within. notions as to the meaning of education, of language and of culture. This overall context grounds the curriculum. Yet, as educators, we are also called with the learner to envision a better reality. What occurs in our classrooms does so within the tension between context and vision. Our decisions, or lack thereof, determine whether our curriculum is to reinforce injustices inherent in the status quo or to enable people to create more just, more joyful ways of being together within this country and within our world. This paper explores some of the dimensions of context and vision and the tensions which may exist between them; it endeavours to point the way to curriculum as human praxis.


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