Accountability and datafication in francophone contexts: A reinforcing cognitive state still challenged by local actors

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
Christian Maroy ◽  
Vincent Dupriez ◽  
Xavier Pons
Keyword(s):  
GeroPsych ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 145-151
Author(s):  
Mahshid Foroughan ◽  
Zahra Jafari ◽  
Ida Ghaemmagham Farahani ◽  
Vahid Rashedi

Abstract. This study examines the psychometric properties of the IQCODE and its applicability in the Iranian elderly population. A group of 95 elderly patients with at least 4 years of formal education who fulfilled the criteria of DSM-IV-TR for dementia were examined by the MMSE and the AMTs. The Farsi version of the IQCODE was subsequently administered to their primary caregivers. Results showed a significant correlation ( p = .01) between the score of the questionnaire and the results of the MMSE ( r = −0.647) and AMTs ( r = −0.641). A high internal reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α = 0.927) and test-retest reliability by correlation coefficient ( r = 0.81). This study found that the IQCODE has acceptable psychometric properties and can be used for evaluating the cognitive state in the elderly population of Iran.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Setsuko Matsuzawa

This article explores the relations between a foreign aid donor and local actors in the context of the dissemination of development discourses and practices in an authoritarian context. It addresses the question “To what extent may the local dynamics alter the original goals of a donor and lead to unintended consequences?” Based on archival research, interviews, and secondary literature, this case study examines the Yunnan Uplands Management Project (YUM) in 1990–95, the Ford Foundation's first grant program on rural poverty alleviation in China. While the Foundation did not attain its main goal of making YUM a national model for poverty alleviation, the local actors were able to use YUM to develop individual capacities and to build roles for themselves as development actors in the form of associations and nongovernmental organizations, resulting in further support from the Foundation. The study contributes to our understanding of donor-local actor dynamics by highlighting the gaps between the original goals of a donor and the perspectives and motivations of local actors. The study suggests that local dynamics may influence the goals of donors and the ways they seek to disseminate development discourses and practices to local actors, despite the common conception of donors as hegemonic or culturally imperialistic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-125
Author(s):  
Petr Janda

This report presents current research on aboriginal activity centers in Taidong County, Taiwan, primarily in the townships of Chishang and Yanping with over 30% of the population being of aboriginal ancestry. Taidong County is the region with the most distinctive aboriginal communities in Taiwan. The research attempts to identify the actors behind the operation of such centers and their significance for aboriginal communities. The research investigates the process of selecting suitable location for the facilities, the specific features of such centers, the potential religious significance of the locations including the role of traditional beliefs in predominantly Christian aboriginal communities, the symbolic value of structures built in the traditional style for construction of ethnicity and financing that enables the construction of the facilities and the organization of the festivities held in them. The principle research method used was interviews with local actors including local representatives, organizers of festivities, as well as members of local communities. The research began in 2017.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Luke Mathew Peterson

The following study envisions the modern history of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict through the application of previously underutilized theoretical frames. Beginning with the unprecedented political and social upheaval wrought upon the Middle East after the end of World War I, the article unfolds in three distinct sections. The first section provides an historical introduction to the global, transnational forces that guided the developing infrastructure of political conflict within the region. The second section articulates the ideological parameters of the international political and economic forces (“neoliberalism”) that connect the past and present of political conflict in the region as well as the local (state and non-state) and non-local actors involved in its contemporary manifestation. The third and final section reconceptualizes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict not exclusively as a territorial dispute or as a nebulous clash of cultures, but rather as a deliberate, operational casualty enduring in the service of an aggressive, transnational, and indeed historical force whose trajectory spans the length of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: neoliberalism. In each sphere in which the neoliberal ideal has been applied – one, an historical fait accompli, another, a contemporary situation en cours – an important, connective element persists: the distinctly non-local origin of both the historical forces and the contemporary economic manifestations under examination.


Author(s):  
Reynaldo Morales Cardenas

This paper examines the functioning of and underlying assumptions about digital media in collaborative curriculum design processes in public science and environmental education, and community-designed action research learning programs. The article discusses teaching practices in US rural Northeast Wisconsin among Native Youth learning processes, from the complementation and articulation of formal and informal education to meaningful engagement and participation in science. The focus on the transformative use of digital media in science community education is intended to serve two interrelated purposes: First, it helps to address cultural-historical relations around the production of knowledge and relevant curriculums and pedagogies for rural tribal youth. Second, it intersects with the opportunities for the transferability of activity systems and action research centered around the production of mediational artifacts designed for the collective negotiation between First Nations Tribal communities and western modeled schools, institutions, workplaces, and societal roles. The transferability of this model envisions the incorporation of local actors and institutions in a deep artifact-based dialogue around epistemologies of self-determination and sustainability for Peoples who are fighting for their survival. These propositions take a new level when the transformative power of digital media shifts representations of power in historically marginalized communities, serving a larger activity of reorganizing ecologies of learning in education for culturally distinctive communities of practice.


Author(s):  
J. Christopher Maloney

Rosenthal's rendition of representationalism denies intentionalism. His higher order theory instead asserts that a perceptual state's phenomenal character is set by that state's being related to, because represented by, another, but higher order, cognitive state. The theory arises from the doubtful supposition of unconscious perception and mistakenly construes intrinsic phenomenal character extrinsically, as one state's serving as the content of another. Yet it remains mysterious how and why a higher order state might be so potent as to determine phenomenal character at all. Better to resist higher order theory’s embrace of dubious unconscious perceptual states and account for states so-called simply in terms of humdrum mnemonic malfeasance. Moreover, since the suspect theory allows higher order misrepresentation, it implies sufferance of impossible phenomenal character. Equally problematic, representationalism pitched at the higher order entails the existence of bogus phenomenal character when upstairs states represent downstairs nonperceptual states.


Author(s):  
Isabela Mares ◽  
Lauren E. Young

In many recent democracies, candidates compete for office using illegal strategies to influence voters. In Hungary and Romania, local actors including mayors and bureaucrats offer access to social policy benefits to voters who offer to support their preferred candidates, and they threaten others with the loss of a range of policy and private benefits for voting the “wrong” way. These quid pro quo exchanges are often called clientelism. How can politicians and their accomplices get away with such illegal campaigning in otherwise democratic, competitive elections? When do they rely on the worst forms of clientelism that involve threatening voters and manipulating public benefits? This book uses a mixed method approach to understand how illegal forms of campaigning including vote buying and electoral coercion persist in two democratic countries in the European Union. It argues that clientelistic strategies must be disaggregated based on whether they use public or private resources, and whether they involve positive promises or negative threats and coercion. The authors document that the type of clientelistic strategies that candidates and brokers use varies systematically across localities based on their underlying social coalitions, and also show that voters assess and sanction different forms of clientelism in different ways. Voters glean information about politicians’ personal characteristics and their policy preferences from the clientelistic strategies these candidates deploy. Most voters judge candidates who use clientelism harshly. So how does clientelism, including its most odious coercive forms, persist in democratic systems? This book suggests that politicians can get away with clientelism by using forms of it that are in line with the policy preferences of constituencies whose votes they need. Clientelistic and programmatic strategies are not as distinct as previous studies have argued.


Author(s):  
Charlotte de Castelnau-l’Estoile

This chapter analyzes the Jesuit missionary tradition of studying local customs and languages, which is known as “Jesuit anthropology.” By looking into some of the foundational Jesuit texts, the goal is to show how knowledge of non-Christian peoples had been constructed around the metaphor of “living books”: a “stranger” was a book, which the missionaries needed to decipher. From the information, observation, and expertise developed informally in all missionary fields, some Jesuits produced texts—some published but mostly remaining in manuscript—that were and still are considered important pieces in the European library of knowledge. The need and desire to know others was, of course, linked to religious goals: translating Christian message, administering sacraments, fulfilling divine will. From Francis Xavier to Michel de Certeau, the chapter addresses a set of Jesuit perspectives on alterity. They document the richness of interactions between the Jesuits and the local actors, but they always have to be read in light of the Jesuit project of religious conversion.


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