Reimagining U.S. Federal Land Management through Decolonization and Indigenous Value Systems

U.S. Federal Land Management Areas (FLMAs) are grounded in settler colonialism, including Indigenous land dispossessions and violations of Tribal treaties. This critical thought-piece is written by Indigenous scholars to reimagine FLMAs (especially recreation areas) through decolonization and the Indigenous value systems embedded within the “four Rs”: relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, and redistribution. We reweave conceptions about parks and protected areas, reimagine park management, and reconfigure management foci to reflect Indigenous value systems shared by Indigenous peoples. We emphasize a need for Tribal comanagement of FLMAs, the inclusion of Tribal land management practices across ecosystems, and the restoration of Indigenous land use and management rights. Land and recreation managers can use this paper to 1) decolonize park management practices, 2) understand how Indigenous value systems can inform park management foci, and 3) build a decolonized and reciprocal relationship with Tribes and their ancestral landscapes.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Far from Colorblind. Reflections on Racialization in Contemporary Europe

European history is to a significant extent also a history about racialization and racism. Since the colonizers of past centuries defined boundaries between “civilized” and “savages” by applying value standards in which the notions of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion were interwoven and imposed on human beings perceived as fundamentally different from themselves, racialization became deeply inherent in how (white) Europeans viewed the world, themselves, and others. In this Special Issue, we assume that colonialist racialization constitutes the base of a persistent and often unreflective and indirect racism. Implicit value systems according to which white people are automatically considered as more competent, more desirable, preferable in general terms, and more “European” translate into patterns of everyday racism affecting the self-image and life chances of white and non-white Europeans. In this introductory article, which defines the conceptual framework for the special issue, we contest the idea of a “post-racial” condition and discuss the consequences of ethno-racial differentiation and stigmatization for racialized groups such as Black Europeans, European Roma, and non-white migrants in general. Finally, we argue for the need to further problematize and critically examine whiteness.

Are the Chinese in Africa more innovative than the Africans ? Comparing Chinese and Nigerian entrepreneurial migrants‘ Cultures of Innovation

ABSTRACt & RÉSUMÉ : The remarkable influx of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs in West Africa has been met with growing resistance from established African entrepreneurs. Whether the Chinese have a competitive edge over Africans because of distinctive sociocultural traits or whether the Chineseʹs supposed effectiveness is just a characteristic feature of any trading diaspora is open to question. This comparative exploratory study of Chinese and Nigerian entrepreneurial migrants in Ghana and Benin provides initial answers to these questions. Apparently, the cultural stimuli for migrant drivers of change are not restricted to inherited value systems and religions, such as a Protestant ethic or Confucianism. Rather, they are continually adapted and invented anew by transnational migration networks in a globalized world. There is no evidence of the supposed superiority of the innovative culture of Chinese entrepreneurial migrants versus that of African entrepreneurial migrants. Instead, there exist trading diasporas which have a generally enhanced innovative capacity vis-àvis local entrepreneurs, regardless of the national culture in which they are embedded. In addition, the rivalry of Chinese and Nigerian migrant entrepreneurs in African markets does not necessarily lead to the often suspected cut-throat competition. Often the actions of each group are complementary and mutual benefiting to those of the other. Under certain conditions they even contribute to poverty alleviation in the host country. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RÉSUMÉ: [Les Chinois en Afrique sont-ils plus innovants que les Africains? Comparaison des cultures d'innovation des migrants entrepreneurs chinois et nigérians] L'afflux remarquable des entrepreneurs migrants chinois en Afrique de l'Ouest a été heurté à la résistance croissante de la part des entrepreneurs africains établis. Que les premiers ont un avantage concurrentiel sur ce dernier en raison des traits culturelles distinctifs ou que la prétendue efficacité des Chinois est simplement une caractéristique de toute diaspora commercial est ouvert à la question. Cette étude comparative exploratoire de migrants entrepreneuriales chinois et nigérians au Ghana et au Bénin offre des premières réponses à cette question. Apparemment, les stimuli culturels des migrants pilotes du changement ne sont pas limités à des systèmes des valeurs hérité ou à des valeurs religieuses, comme l’éthique protestante (Max Weber) ou le confucianisme. Plutôt, ils sont continuellement adaptés et inventés de nouveau par les réseaux de la migration transnationale dans un monde globalisé. Il n'y a aucune preuve de la prétendue supériorité de la culture d'innovation des migrants chinois par rapport à celle des migrants africains entrepreneurials. Plutôt, il existe des diasporas commerciaux qui ont une capacité d'innovation renforcée en générale vis-à-vis des entrepreneurs locaux, indépendamment de la culture nationale dans laquelle ils sont intégrés. En outre, la rivalité des entrepreneurs migrants chinois et nigérians dans les marchés africains ne conduit pas nécessairement à la concurrence coupe-gorge souvent soupçonnée. Souvent, les actions de chaque groupe sont complémentaires créant un bénéfice mutuel. Sous certaines conditions, cette situation peut même contribuer à une réduction de la pauvreté dans le pays d'accueil.

Sexing the Archive

Despite being a widely consumed genre of visual culture, pornography remains a touchy subject in contemporary queer historiography. Queer archives overflow with it, but queer histories don’t. Historically associated with low culture and distrusted by value systems that have tended to privilege the “high” faculties of reason to the detriment of the “base” materiality of the body, its affects and appetites, porn is too rarely approached as a legitimate source with which to think cultural, affective, intellectual, and sexual histories. This article draws from porn studies and queer historiographies to draw some methodological considerations about the value, benefits, and challenges posed by porn archives to the writing of queer subcultural histories. Rather than trying to solve porn’s double ontological status as both documentary and fantasy, the authors locate in that defining feature of the genre porn’s value as a historical source. Simultaneously a document of sex cultures and of the edges of morality, and a historically and culturally situated speculation on what bodies and sex may become, porn offers both cultural critics and historians a rich archive for deepening their knowledge of the intersections of culture, morality, pleasure, community, embodiment, and the politics of belonging.

How Ethics in Public Health Administration Leadership Leverages Connectedness in the age of COVID 19

Ethics is critical in emergency response to public health and patient care in ways that create a variety of challenging dilemmas and decisions. Understanding ethical codes around medical care, especially during the emergence of COVID 19, has made leadership's role in perpetuating ethical organizational cultures in healthcare vital. Ethical leadership and ethical organizational cultures transform and unite social systems around everyday purposes of ethical decision-making, leveraging organizational connectedness. Leadership value systems mitigate subjectivity constituting ethical themes of moral character and virtues to advance organizational trust. Leadership value systems reduce subjectivity, forming ethical issues of moral character and virtues to promote organizational confidence and moral organizational decision-making. This paper employs the use of content analysis from the literature to take disjointed approaches and combine them into a cohesive understanding of leadership dynamics on organizational ethics in healthcare.

Religion and International Relations Theory: The Case of “New” Historiography of Human Rights

International relations theory (IRT) often ignores or has difficulty accounting for religion. Thus, the choice of “new” historians of human rights to focus on religious actors in the lead-up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a noteworthy development. One important finding of this stream of scholarship is the crucial role played by Christian personalists in the cultivation of “human rights” discourse in the 1930s and 1940s. However, new school historiography carries assumptions consistent with IRT liberalism that weaken its analysis of religion in the origins of human rights. Most problematic is its dichotomous framework that pits liberal secularism against reactionary religion, which tends to minimize interpretive possibilities. By contrast, IRT constructivism is attuned to the emergence and socialization of norms as different cultures, religious traditions, and value systems interact. Various actors and social networks create, inter-subjectively, pragmatic consensus from positions of fundamental ideological difference. As such, this paper, following a constructivist impulse, uses the case of new school historiography of human rights to better understand the weakness and the promise of IRT in explaining the role of religion in international relations.

Yes, science dial is extremely costly, but...

Those who believe in the simplistic trust model between politics and science unintentionally (or intentionally) omit the fact that there exists something called cultural value systems and norms, which govern the formation, growth and demise of a group. These elements are so critical that by setting them aside, we risk entering total disagreements whenever difficult problems arise. One such serious problem is the climate crisis and the need for building the eleventh cultural value as proposed by Vuong [7]. And this value will complement the progressive value system suggested by Harrison [8]. It is safe to say that besides hard-core sciences, resolving global problems posing existential threats to humankind will certainly require us to deploy our best weapons, and many must come from the social sciences and humanities [9]. Therefore, the future solution to global change problems will have to show us its social heart.

You Pray for Him a Bit More”: Young Adults’ Positive Aspects of Caregiving (PAC) Towards Parental Cancer

Young adult caregivers are growing in number, yet there is a paucity of literature on their role in informal family caregiving. The Positive Aspects of Caregiving (PAC) framework has been developed within Dementia carers to indicate positive outcomes of the caring experience. The current study specifically explored the narratives of four young adult carers’ lived experience of caring towards their parents with cancer, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) through the lens of PAC. Main themes developed from this study were unfolding the child-parent dyad, character building and affirmation of value systems, time reframed, and sustaining caregiving continuity with subthemes surrounding responsibility, appreciation beyond the role reversal, acceptance and sources of comfort. This small-scaled study contributes towards a new understanding of the young adult population, their perception of caregiving and briefly informs the PAC beyond a dementia population.

Difference, Intersectionality, and Organizing

In organizational scholarship, difference is broadly conceptualized as the ways in which individuals differ from each other along the lines of socially significant identities and characteristics. As such, difference encompasses social identities related to gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and national origin. In addition to social identities, difference also encompasses individual characteristics, such as education level, family type, and health conditions. Organizational scholarship increasingly considers difference to be a constitutive feature of organizing. As such, difference is not merely one aspect of organizing that is only relevant in some circumstances, but a defining feature of organizing processes to which it is always important to attend because dominant discourses and value systems privilege certain differences over others. Central to difference scholarship is the concept of intersectionality, which holds that various identities intersect with each other to shape social and organizational experiences in ways that are intertwined with privilege and/or disadvantage. Scholarship on difference, intersectionality, and organizing has drawn from multiple critical theoretical frameworks, such as critical race theory, standpoint feminism, postmodern feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial theory. A growing amount of scholarship on difference, intersectionality, and organizing is also empirical and sheds light on how overlapping, intersectional identities matter in organizational settings and how they are embedded in power relations.