Representing Race in Graphs: W.E.B. Du Bois, Corporate Bureaucrats, and Visualization Strategies for Change

In this paper, I draw together W. E. B. Du Bois and corporate bureaucrats to compare the graphical representation of race across three distinct racial epochs: the Progressive, Civil Rights, and post-1980s neoliberal era. I illustrate how, through visual and rhetorical strategies, corporate bureaucrats extend a Du Boisian legacy in constructing popular knowledge of race and racism. I show how they do this by making whiteness visible through data visualizations and rhetorically bundling them to liberal American values of equal opportunity. In examining them as epistemic and semiotic objects, I argue that graphical representations of race compel the enactment of meaningful strategies seen to challenge racial inequalities in the workplace. Yet, insofar as these are employed to equate racism with the absence of equal opportunity in capitalist firms, I argue, they also mask whiteness and reproduce systemic racism. The graphical representation of race, in effect, reveals how the practices of knowledge production and processes of signification are entangled in everyday corporate bureaucracies. Thus, I suggest that we need to reject analytical binaries that pose a bounded distinction between “business” and “social justice” to extend research into the cultural production and productive enactment of racial materiality.

Challenging Institutional Racism in International Relations and Our Profession: Reflections, Experiences, and Strategies

Attempts to create a more inclusive discipline and profession have been commended by many and derided by some. While these attempts have pushed for change, particularly with regards to more equal representation of gender and race among faculty, policies aimed at creating a more inclusive environment are often tokenistic, administrative and bureaucratic, and fail to address structural and institutional practices and norms. Moreover, the administrative and bureaucratic policies put into place are generally targeted at a single categorical group, failing to take into account the manner in which identities are intersecting and overlapping. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion often gets driven by Human Resources and Marketing rather than owned by the wider university. This forum draws from a variety of contributions that focus on describing the lived realities of institutional racism, its intersections with other forms of discrimination, and strategies for change. In putting together this forum, we do not aim to create a checklist of practical steps. Instead, we hope to signpost and make visible the successes and failures of previous challenges and future possibilities that must be taken by both faculty and administrations.

Neurally-constrained modeling of human gaze strategies in a change blindness task

Despite possessing the capacity for selective attention, we often fail to notice the obvious. We investigated participants’ (n = 39) failures to detect salient changes in a change blindness experiment. Surprisingly, change detection success varied by over two-fold across participants. These variations could not be readily explained by differences in scan paths or fixated visual features. Yet, two simple gaze metrics–mean duration of fixations and the variance of saccade amplitudes–systematically predicted change detection success. We explored the mechanistic underpinnings of these results with a neurally-constrained model based on the Bayesian framework of sequential probability ratio testing, with a posterior odds-ratio rule for shifting gaze. The model’s gaze strategies and success rates closely mimicked human data. Moreover, the model outperformed a state-of-the-art deep neural network (DeepGaze II) with predicting human gaze patterns in this change blindness task. Our mechanistic model reveals putative rational observer search strategies for change detection during change blindness, with critical real-world implications.

Political change: a conceptual approach and explanatory factors

The research discusses a conceptual approach and explanatory factors for political change, as political change, especially in the Arab case, is a concept that is still shrouded in a lot of ambiguity, through a descriptive and analytical methodology for this concept, due to its overlap with many concepts at the level of understanding and practice. In terms of the transformations that the political structures in society may undergo, or the nature of political processes and interactions between political forces, with a desire for partial change (reform), or comprehensive change of the whole system, So that the power and influence are redistributed within the state, and the transition from an authoritarian situation to a democratic one, where the concept of political change is determined based on the characteristic of this change, and this concept has also been linked to synonymous concepts such as political modernization and reform. Moreover, political change requires a set of foundations, rules and factors that the forces of change seek, in addition to employing change approaches that often come as a natural product of the thinking and principles of the forces seeking change, strategies for change, and the nature of the conditions of the stage in managing this process, that the intellectual awareness that forms the basis of the process Change at the level of the existing reality, and the alternative reality towards changing political structures in a way that will affect the centers of power in society, which requires harmony with the heritage background and cultural structure of the society, which necessitates the formation of a unified identity for the majority of citizens, meaning reaching a common vision that includes the largest possible number of supporters within the society.

Transitions from Twenty-first-century Capitalism

In modern history, social movements change the living conditions that influence well-being. Successful movements require a shared diagnosis, vision, and strategies for the transition. Today’s capitalism that values profit and corporate well-being over human and planetary health is the problem. A world where the food, education, health care, and other basic necessities are available to all and easier to find than their health-damaging alternatives is the vision, consistent with available human knowledge but not with the current distribution of power and wealth. To forge strategies for the transition, advocates can learn from current social movements — from climate and labor to Black, women’s and global justice — that are moving in this direction. The Green New Deal, worker cooperatives, and responses to the Covid-19 pandemic show how movements can make capitalism the target of change, use health as a unifying theme, and extract strategies for change from current practice.

The Intentional Compassion Framework for school communities

Objective: This article offers a framework to guide schools in developing a compassionate culture. Using a social constructionist/critical perspective, five spheres of work are identified to help schools achieve this goal. Framing death, dying and bereavement from a health promoting perspective, they involve challenging current cultural perceptions, creating a culture of support, creating a grief-informed culture, establishing a culture of reflection and reflexivity, and developing a whole school plan. Setting: Eight rural primary school communities in central Victoria, Australia. Method: Constructivist grounded theory with interviews and analysis occurring concurrently, allowing categories to develop alongside new questions to explore participants’ thinking and priorities. Results: Participants’ insights, knowledge and priorities fostered understanding and led to the five strategies for change that underpin this framework. Conclusion: Study participants’ desire for a societal, cultural shift in how to understand death, dying and bereavement issues in school communities serves as an important foundation for change.

Digital transformation of retail business: trends and technologies

Digital transformation penetrates into all spheres and industries, starting with finance, banking, media, education, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. Transition to digital technologies covers such aspects as organization of processes within a company, work with personnel, external communication. The term «digital transformation» in retail encompasses a range of business opportunities that go beyond mere focus on one technology or hidden strategy such as e-commerce or click-and-pick. Retail digital transformation strategy refers to the trend of creating new and innovative business models that blur the physical and digital worlds by retailers. Traditionally retailing has been among the leading industries in the field of innovation. The pandemic has accelerated the transformation process. Companies with scalable digital capabilities and infrastructure have adapted relatively well to the existing situation, while those who did not have them are forced to try not only to take immediate action, but also to develop their strategies for change. The pandemic has forced retailers to rethink their models digitally. The purpose of the research is to study the features of digital transformation of retail trade, to analyze its main trends. The article discusses current trends in retail digitalization, its key drivers and main problems. The technologies used have been analyzed: data analytics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things; examples of their application have been given. Possible ways of introducing digital processes in retail trade enterprises have been proposed.