Hi-Tech-Oriented National Service: The Free Choice of Religious Women Recruits and the De-Monopolization of the Israeli Military

In recent years, Israel has witnessed two significant processes that challenge the dominant republican discourse that prioritizes military over national-civic service (known as The Israeli national-civilian service—NCS)in terms of contributing the constitution of citizenship and of the material and symbolic convertibility offered to service candidates. The first is related to the expanding range of roles offered in the NCS. The second, related process, which is our current focus, occurs among young religious women from the urban upper-middle class who respond to this expansion by seeking to serve in technological roles, given their high qualifications. Combined, these processes transform the status of the NCS and accelerate the de-monopolization of military service. To examine the contribution of religious young women to the change in the status of service in Israel, we conducted a narrative analysis of interviews with service candidates. Our analysis revealed their strategic use of four different discourses: the neo-liberal economic discourse, the liberal rights and self-realization discourse, the ethnonational discourse, and the religious gender discourse. The way the participants negotiated the four discourses to justify their selection of either military or national-civic service structured their agency as actors transforming the power equation between the two types of service.

Hotspot Analysis of Structure Fires in Urban Agglomeration: A Case of Nagpur City, India

Fire Service is the fundamental civic service to protect citizens from irrecoverable, heavy losses of lives and property. Hotspot analysis of structure fires is essential to estimate people and property at risk. Hotspot analysis for the peak period of last decade, using a GIS-based spatial analyst and statistical techniques through the Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) and Getis-Ord Gi* with Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) interpolation is performed, revealing fire risk zones at the city ward micro level. Using remote sensing, outputs of hotspot analysis are integrated with the built environment of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) to quantify the accurate built-up areas and population density of identified fire risk zones. KDE delineates 34 wards as hotspots, while Getis-Ord Gi* delineates 17 wards within the KDE hotspot, the central core areas having the highest built-up and population density. A temporal analysis reveals the maximum fires on Thursday during the hot afternoon hours from 12 noon to 5 p.m. The study outputs help decision makers for effective fire prevention and protection by deploying immediate resource allocations and proactive planning reassuring sustainable urban development. Furthermore, updating the requirement of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to build urban resilient infrastructure in accord with the Smart City Mission.

A French Prerogative

In contrast to Nigeria, there had not been any real planning for the creation of national armed forces in Côte d’Ivoire in the late 1950s. Houphouët-Boigny relied on the protection of the French-led Community army, and de Gaulle continued to expect Ivorian contributions in manpower. The situation changed, however, in the wake of the abrupt end of the Community and Houphouët-Boigny’s sudden march towards independence. Despite Franco-Ivorian frictions during the transfer of power, however, the Ivorian leader expected and could eventually count on French military assistance. But France’s exclusive military assistance role nevertheless came to be challenged from unexpected quarters, with the Ivorian civic service being built up with Israeli assistance. But even though the French were at the time probably the Israelis’ closest Western security partners, and retained control of the purely military assistance to the Ivorian armed forces, they actively and successively sought to reduce Israel’s involvement.

Marginalized Knowledges

Marginalized knowledges are the intergenerational knowledges and skills from communities worldwide that hegemonic forces have pushed to the margins of society. These include facts, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, and competencies. Marginalized knowledges are part of the human capital that materially poor rural and urban peoples have developed over time—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. These knowledges are situated and contextualized in a given time and locality, and have evolved to fulfill economic, social, environmental, spiritual, or cultural needs. School systems worldwide in the 19th and 20th centuries adopted an official, hegemonic curriculum that ignored and displaced these vital knowledges at a great loss to poor communities. Fortunately, different pedagogies exist today (e.g., pedagogy of place; funds of knowledge; civic service) that seek to bring these knowledges to the center of school life and provide a complementary, parallel role to that of the school’s official curriculum.