Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Statements in the U. S. Creative Sector: Progress, or More Bullshit?

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Antonio C. Cuyler

This article represents a snapshot and analysis of U. S. service arts organizations’ DEI statements and activities in 2018. At that time, many primarily White-serving U. S. cultural organizations responded defensively to accusations of elitism and a harmful rigged funding system that maintained the status quo by awarding most cultural funding to these organizations while undermining the health and vitality of cultural organizations by and for historically oppressed communities (Sidford, 2011). Furthermore, Helicon Collaborative (2017) found that even with a host of cultural equity, “diversity” projects (Tseng 2016), and public-facing DEI statements, little had changed within six years. Therefore, this study uses directed and summative content analysis to investigate the research question “what do cultural equity and diversity statements communicate about cultural organizations’ positions on DEI?” This study also uses Frankfurt’s (2005) essay On Bullshit and Laing’s (2016) two-prong definition of accountability as a theoretical framework to examine if and how cultural organizations hold themselves accountable for achieving DEI in the creative sector. Lastly, readers should keep in mind that the public murder of Geor-ge Floyd in 2020 has hastened all of the service arts organizations’ access, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) work examined in this study.

Author(s):  
Max Felker-Kantor

The LAPD’s ability to maintain its independent partisan power in the face of procedural reforms and antipolice protest rested on its intelligence operations. Police spying, this chapter shows, targeted groups that challenged the status quo, none more so than anti–police abuse activists and movements for racial justice, using a capacious definition of “disorder.” But these same groups exposed the Public Disorder Intelligence Division’s surveillance operations (previously known as the Red Squad), leading to new regulations on the department’s activities, the end of the PDID, and the establishment of the department’s new intelligence unit, the Anti-Terrorist Division. The reforms, however, did not change the underlying power relations between the police and residents.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Noémi Bíró

"Feminist Interpretations of Action and the Public in Hannah Arendt’s Theory. Arendt’s typology of human activity and her arguments on the precondition of politics allow for a variety in interpretations for contemporary political thought. The feminist reception of Arendt’s work ranges from critical to conciliatory readings that attempt to find the points in which Arendt’s theory might inspire a feminist political project. In this paper I explore the ways in which feminist thought has responded to Arendt’s definition of action, freedom and politics, and whether her theoretical framework can be useful in a feminist rethinking of politics, power and the public realm. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, political action, the Public, the Social, feminism "


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-65
Author(s):  
Mary Varghese ◽  
Kamila Ghazali

Abstract This article seeks to contribute to the existing body of knowledge about the relationship between political discourse and national identity. 1Malaysia, introduced in 2009 by Malaysia’s then newly appointed 6th Prime Minister Najib Razak, was greeted with expectation and concern by various segments of the Malaysian population. For some, it signalled a new inclusiveness that was to change the discourse on belonging. For others, it raised concerns about changes to the status quo of ethnic issues. Given the varying responses of society to the concept of 1Malaysia, an examination of different texts through the critical paradigm of CDA provide useful insights into how the public sphere has attempted to construct this notion. Therefore, this paper critically examines the Prime Minister’s early speeches as well as relevant chapters of the socioeconomic agenda, the 10th Malaysia Plan, to identify the referential and predicational strategies employed in characterising 1Malaysia. The findings suggest a notion of unity that appears to address varying issues.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor G Gates ◽  
Margery C Saunders

Workers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-identified have always been a part of the workplace in the United States, yet there has been a lack of awareness about how to advocate for the needs of these people. This lack of awareness was challenged by Congresswoman Bella Abzug. Abzug’s campaign for creating an equal working environment for sexual minorities initiated gradual changes in the public discourse concerning workplace and other broad equality measures for these communities. To frame these gradual transformations within a historical context, we use Lewin’s force field analysis framework to examine the change efforts of Abzug. Abzug had beginning success in thawing the status quo yet her visions for equality for LGBTQ people have yet to be realized. Using Abzug’s social action as an example, this article concludes that allies must continue to challenge societal oppression, power, and privilege and to demand civil rights protections for LGBTQ individuals.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stacey Wellington

<p>The mechanics of Athenian society in many ways empowered citizen women as essential components of their community. This reality, being at odds with Athens’ pervasive patriarchal ideology, was obscured by men anxious to affirm the status quo, but also by women who sought to represent themselves as ‘ideal’ examples of their sex. Using the votive offerings dedicated by women to Athena on the Athenian Acropolis in the Archaic and Classical periods as a basis, this thesis explores such tensions between the implicit value of Athenian women, which prompted them to engage meaningfully with their wider community, and the ideological edict for their invisibility. This discussion is based primarily on two points: firstly, that the naming of a male family member in votive inscriptions denotes female citizen status, thus articulating citizen women’s independent value and prestige within the polis; and secondly that the ubiquity of working women among the dedicators, and value of the offerings themselves, reveals women as controlling financial resources to a more significant extent than other sources would have us believe. In both cases, the actual value and authority of the female dedicators is concealed as the women aimed for a perception of conspicuous invisibility to legitimise their engagement with the public sphere.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Joelle McCurdy

Dance has recently taken up an increasing presence in major modern art museums as core curatorial programming, occupying galleries throughout exhibition hours. Although time figures prominently in emerging literature addressing this trend, spatial analyses remain fragmentary. Yet, dance is distinctive from other time-based media because of its heightened relationship with space. This raises an important question: how does dance’s newfound presence ‘re-choreograph’ the spaces of modern art museums? Extending the work of Henri Lefebvre, this dissertation adopts an expanded definition of museum space encompassing physical, social and conceptual domains. Dance, an art concerned with the shaping of space, is examined as a transformative force, productively intervening with the galleries, encounters, objects, and historical narratives comprising modern art museum space. In this study, purity and atemporality are identified as the preeminent principles organizing modern art museum space, and dance, an ‘impure’ and process-based art, is theorized as a productive contaminant, catalyzing change. Using this theoretical framework and Using this theoretical framework and evocative descriptions of Boris Charmatz’s 20 Dancers for the XX Century (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 18-20 October 2013), dance’s unique collaboration with modern art museum space is analyzed. Socially, dance’s multisensuality pollutes museum goers’ ocularcentric experiences with art. Conceptually, dance diversifies understandings of objects and the androcentric history they uphold. Physically, dance is carving out new spaces, with performance venues being incorporated into the ‘bones’ of high profile institutions. Interspersed between these analytical chapters, evocative descriptions of Spatial Confessions (On the Question of Instituting the Public) by Bojana Cvejić and collaborators (Tate Modern, London, 21-24 May 2014) introduce observations beyond the analytical scope, opening up the liminal spaces of this document to ongoing inquiry. This dissertation contributes a sustained analysis of dance’s spatial impact on modern art museums. By investigating how dance intervenes with the limitations of the white cube, it critiques this supposedly ‘blank’ space, questioning its continued supremacy within these institutions. Moreover, as dance is ushered into performance venues within the museum’s expanding domain, this dissertation interrogates the modern propensity for specialization and master narratives pervading the spaces of these institutions, despite decades of interventional artistic and curatorial practices.


Author(s):  
Kazuko Yokoyama ◽  
Sarah Louisa Birchley

This research is based on an extended study of Japanese self-initiated expatriate entrepreneurs (SIEEs) in Asia. Since 2015 the authors have explored various factors that influence SIEEs when setting up enterprises overseas, including the ability to take initiative; support and encouragement from family, a well-defined career anchor and exposure to overseas in the exploration stage of one’s career. An emerging trend is the desire to engage in social development activities, which has seen increasing numbers of Japanese leave well-paid companies at home to work in NGOs in developing countries. An extension of this can be seen in Japanese who choose to become self-initiated expatriate social entrepreneurs. This article focuses specifically on cases collected in Cambodia and attempts to explain how and why Japanese decide to become self-initiated expatriate social entrepreneurs in Cambodia using the concept of mindsets; entrepreneurial, social, sustainable and global. Initial research shows that some of these individuals exemplify the definition of sustainable entrepreneurship as they are creative and question the status quo in order to seek new opportunities for societal improvement ( Bornstein, 2007 ) and have multiple mindsets behind their actions. This research paper shares the context, characteristics, and outcomes of Japanese self-initiated expatriate social entrepreneurs in Cambodia and concludes by suggesting how knowledge of these SIEEs can be used in higher education contexts in Japan to improve entrepreneurship education.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Dmitrij Gluscevskij

This article aims at proposing a way to identify humour by means of Greimassian semiotics and to single humour out as a unique object of semiotic analysis. Firstly, the article discusses the fundamental epistemological premises of semiotic text analysis through the analysis of texts by Greimas which were meant to further and legitimize his project of semiotics. Also, the already existing attempts at providing a semiotic definition of humour are critically evaluated while relating their problematic aspects with the implicitly defined field of semiotic interest. Finally, it is demonstrated that a productive semiotic description of a comic text is possible when the status quo epistemological views are revised and the traditional field of semiotic analyses is expanded accordingly.


2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAN SCHNELLENBACH

Abstract:Public entrepreneurship is commonly understood as the outcome of the activities of a Schumpeterian political innovator. However, empirical research suggests that changes to a more efficient economic policy, even if it is known and technically easy to implement, are usually delayed. This is difficult to reconcile with Schumpeterian notions of public entrepreneurship. In this paper, it is argued that the attempt to transfer a Schumpeterian approach to the public sector is fundamentally flawed. Institutional checks and balances that characterize most modern liberal democracies make the strategy of bold leadership an unlikely choice for an incumbent. If change occurs, it occurs normally as a response to the fact that the status quo has become untenable. From a normative point of view, it is argued that if public entrepreneurship nevertheless occurs, it will often be associated with unwanted consequences. A dismantling of formal institutional checks and balances is therefore not reasonable.


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