Democracy Minus Disagreement, Civic Skills Minus Politics, Blank “Reflections”

Author(s):  
Nina Eliasoph

This chapter opens with a passionate dream of many organizers: to encourage youth volunteers to care about politics and “the big picture.” Doing so would require discussion and possibly lead to conflict, which most organizers consider depressing and difficult, not inspiring and easy. Yet there is hardly enough time for reflective discussions anyway. As such, the youth programs all merely conduct projects with which no humane person can disagree—gathering mittens and cans of tuna for the poor, but not asking why there is hunger, for example—thus severing any connection between civic volunteering and political engagement, and tending to breed, paradoxically, hopelessness about finding any solutions beyond one mitten at a time.

Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Oldmixon

Churches are at the fulcrum of religious politics, and as church leaders, religious elites have an important role to play in the political milieu. They possess many of the resources associated with potent activism, but more importantly their job is to provide guidance to participants in a vast voluntary network. They can engage in agenda setting, encourage the faithful to apply their religious values to political engagement, and create opportunities to learn civic skills. Even so, religious leaders are subject to influence even as they try to exercise influence. In the foreground, religious leaders have a predictable set of goals, the substance of which varies by race, ethnicity, gender, and social theology. In the background, religious leaders pursue their goals in different sociodemographic and institutional contexts. The political behavior of religious leaders, then, is the product of background and foreground balancing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  

International students are often overlooked in the typical civic engagement activities of colleges and universities. However, including international students in such activities adds significant value to an institution’s efforts to increase students’ civic, electoral, and political engagement. At New York Institute of Technology, international students make up 25% of the total student population, bringing a richness to the college’s civic culture. This article discusses how international students have created and strengthened institutional initiatives designed to serve the public good. These initiatives include community service centers, Consultants for the Public Good, employee citizenship, voter registration and education, and Campus Conversations. The author also explores how these initiatives connect with A Crucible Moment, the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement’s 2012 call to action to “reclaim higher education’s civic mission” through its framework for developing 21st-century civic skills and civic agency.


Author(s):  
Wairagala Wakabi

Numerous researchers have found a correlation between citizens' use of social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook and their likelihood for eParticipation. However, SNS use does not have the same effect on all citizens' political engagement. In authoritarian countries, Facebook offers a platform for citizens to challenge the power of the state, provide alternative narratives and mobilise for political change. This chapter examines how using Facebook affects the participative behaviours of Ugandans and concludes that in low internet use, authoritarian contexts, the Civic Voluntarism Model's postulation of the factors that explain political participation, and the benefits Facebook brings to participation in Western democracies, are upended. Overwhelming detachment from politics, low belief in citizens' online actions influencing change and fear of reprisals for criticising an authoritarian president in power for 30 years, severely dulled the appetite for eParticipation. Hence, Facebook was growing citizens' civic skills but hardly increasing online participation.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1143-1165
Author(s):  
Wairagala Wakabi

Numerous researchers have found a correlation between citizens' use of social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook and their likelihood for eParticipation. However, SNS use does not have the same effect on all citizens' political engagement. In authoritarian countries, Facebook offers a platform for citizens to challenge the power of the state, provide alternative narratives and mobilise for political change. This chapter examines how using Facebook affects the participative behaviours of Ugandans and concludes that in low internet use, authoritarian contexts, the Civic Voluntarism Model's postulation of the factors that explain political participation, and the benefits Facebook brings to participation in Western democracies, are upended. Overwhelming detachment from politics, low belief in citizens' online actions influencing change and fear of reprisals for criticising an authoritarian president in power for 30 years, severely dulled the appetite for eParticipation. Hence, Facebook was growing citizens' civic skills but hardly increasing online participation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (05) ◽  
pp. 54-58
Author(s):  
Frank N.L. ◽  

Divestiture and constrained partition of a segment of individuals from the methods for creation are inseparably connected with state-drove financial turn of events. In an acquired post-frontier improvement worldview, a 'big picture perspective' continued in India barred individuals living at the lower part of the financial stepping stool as equivalent accomplices who regarding rising 'standard' material assumptions experience 'divestiture' by removal. Extremism dependent on this ground reality, an outcome of lopsided improvement across friendly and monetary classes and across locales, turns into a result that worries both the state and the common society. Maybe than pulling out from the framework that advanced and got broken over the long haul, the paper thinks, the state needs to assume a critical part being developed the start and base of which must be to take into certainty the minimized areas of the general public like the ancestral individuals, the discouraged, and the poor as noble and equivalent accomplices.


Author(s):  
M. Osumi ◽  
N. Yamada ◽  
T. Nagatani

Even though many early workers had suggested the use of lower voltages to increase topographic contrast and to reduce specimen charging and beam damage, we did not usually operate in the conventional scanning electron microscope at low voltage because of the poor resolution, especially of bioligical specimens. However, the development of the “in-lens” field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) has led to marked inprovement in resolution, especially in the range of 1-5 kV, within the past year. The probe size has been cumulated to be 0.7nm in diameter at 30kV and about 3nm at 1kV. We have been trying to develop techniques to use this in-lens FESEM at low voltage (LVSEM) for direct observation of totally uncoated biological specimens and have developed the LVSEM method for the biological field.


Author(s):  
Patrick Echlin

A number of papers have appeared recently which purport to have carried out x-ray microanalysis on fully frozen hydrated samples. It is important to establish reliable criteria to be certain that a sample is in a fully hydrated state. The morphological appearance of the sample is an obvious parameter because fully hydrated samples lack the detailed structure seen in their freeze dried counterparts. The electron scattering by ice within a frozen-hydrated section and from the surface of a frozen-hydrated fracture face obscures cellular detail. (Fig. 1G and 1H.) However, the morphological appearance alone can be quite deceptive for as Figures 1E and 1F show, parts of frozen-dried samples may also have the poor morphology normally associated with fully hydrated samples. It is only when one examines the x-ray spectra that an assurance can be given that the sample is fully hydrated.


1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 420-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dorman ◽  
Ingrid Cedar ◽  
Maureen Hannley ◽  
Marjorie Leek ◽  
Julie Mapes Lindholm

Computer synthesized vowels of 50- and 300-ms duration were presented to normal-hearing listeners at a moderate and high sound pressure level (SPL). Presentation at the high SPL resulted in poor recognition accuracy for vowels of a duration (50 ms) shorter than the latency of the acoustic stapedial reflex. Presentation level had no effect on recognition accuracy for vowels of sufficient duration (300 ms) to elicit the reflex. The poor recognition accuracy for the brief, high intensity vowels was significantly improved when the reflex was preactivated. These results demonstrate the importance of the acoustic reflex in extending the dynamic range of the auditory system for speech recognition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 113-114
Author(s):  
Nidhi Garg ◽  
Muralidhara Krishna ◽  
Madhumati S. Vaishnav ◽  
Vasanthi Nath ◽  
S. Chandraprabha ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Long Jusko
Keyword(s):  

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