A feminist ethos for caring knowledge production in transdisciplinary sustainability science

Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science has emerged as a viable answer to current sustainability crises with the aim to strengthen collaborative knowledge production. To expand its transformative potential, we argue that Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science needs to thoroughly engage with questions of unequal power relations and hierarchical scientific constructs. Drawing on the work of the feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine a feminist ethos of care which might provide useful guidance for sustainability researchers who are interested in generating critical-emancipatory knowledge. A feminist ethos of care is constituted by three interrelated modes of knowledge production: (1) thinking-with, (2) dissenting-within and (3) thinking-for. These modes of thinking and knowing enrich knowledge co-production in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science by (i) embracing relational ontologies, (ii) relating to the ‘other than human’, (iii) cultivating caring academic cultures, (iv) taking care of non-academic research partners, (v) engaging with conflict and difference, (vi) interrogating positionalities and power relations through reflexivity, (vii) building upon marginalised knowledges via feminist standpoints and (viii) countering epistemic violence within and beyond academia. With our paper, we aim to make a specific feminist contribution to the field of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science and emphasise its potentials to advance this field.

The use of questions posed by professors in English and Montenegrin academic lectures

Although questions are considered as important linguistic devices employed by lecturers to communicate facts and ideas to students and facilitate the learning process, they have not been a topic of extensive research. With that in mind, this paper explores the types and functions of questions asked by British and Montenegrin lecturers. It examines similarities and differences between two corpora – standard British academic corpora and a specially created corpus of Montenegrin lectures. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies were used to conduct a contrastive analysis of lecturers’ questions. The results demonstrate that the differences in frequency, forms and functions of questions prevail over the similarities, which could be the impact of two different linguistic backgrounds and national academic cultures. The findings of this study could be useful in designing lecture-listening and note-taking courses for students in which they can get familiar with the forms and purpose of questions posed by professors. Research findings could be applied in training courses for novice lecturers and might also be useful to professors who give lectures to students with diverse linguistic backgrounds.

‘Already Given Over’: Activism in Inquiry and in the World

This is the second of two part-issues on qualitative inquiry as activism. The first focused upon activism and/in the academy (academic work, academic cultures, academic practices, etc.), and this second focuses upon activism in the processes of research itself and activism beyond the academy, in the world. Drawing upon Butler’s claim that we are always already, from the outset, ‘given over’ to the human, non-human and more-than-human other, we argue for qualitative research to do what it can to make the future different, better, more ethical.

Let’s Get Loud: Intersectionally Studying the Super Bowl’s Halftime Show

The study of popular culture has always been closely related to the study of class, gender, race, and sexuality. An increasing number of authors have called for an intersectional approach. However, the contradictory, fluid meanings articulated in popular culture render such an approach difficult, and many ignore the call for intersectional analysis. We will not. We will try to engage with an intersectional analysis of popular culture, using Shakira and Jennifer Lopez’s performance at the 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show as a case to study the intersections of identity markers. We aim to bridge the different meanings attributed to their performance and to understand them as different elements in the intersectional configuration. A discourse analysis of the performance, and of reviews thereof, was performed to unravel five elements highlighted in the discourse: the quality of the show, Shakira and Lopez’s empowered performances, the incorporation of Latinidad elements, the performers’ sexiness, and perceived political messages. Our aim to understand how the contradictory discourses about these elements arose urges the reader to use listening to grapple with the complexity of intersectional analysis. Truly listening includes putting effort into opening up academic cultures, finding other voices. It is important to recognize global gender inequity, but we need to start investing far more to understand the politics of media representations as a transnational affair that causes multiple conceptions of gender (and other related) concepts to clash, mesh, and integrate.

A Decolonial Approach to the Discipline of Journalism Theory in Brazil

Although Brazil has its tradition of journalistic thinking, this essay shows that the discipline of journalism theory has, in this country, an intellectual nucleus based in the United States and Europe. It is true that both academic cultures provide foundations, but they do not claim to provide explanations about the society in which Brazilian journalism developed. This argument is corroborated by the analysis of the bibliographic references used by Brazilian courses. Considering that the impetus for the de-Westernization must come from scholars in emerging countries, this essay argues that the curriculum could be a key element to incite this transformation.

Admitting otherwise: Diversity work, contextuality and the future of anthropology

The difficult work of decolonizing UK anthropology teaches us important lessons about our field. Rethinking the curriculum may be the easy part. Making university admissions fairer is a harder task. The biggest challenge of all is transforming the institutional cultures and demographic profile of anthropology’s students and faculty. The Covid-19 pandemic showed that rapid change is possible: its aftermath is an opportunity for more radical rethinking of this diversity work in anthropology. Many UK universities currently use ‘contextual’ information about undergraduate applicants to make admissions ‘fairer’. Would a more self-reflective understanding of ‘contextuality’ include the institutional contexts of universities themselves? Most social anthropology departments are found in ‘Russell group’ and ‘Sutton-30’ universities. Their student populations are more likely to be able-bodied, white, female and middle class than those in other universities: these students have a disproportionate opportunity to access PhD research funding. The growth in postgraduate education also exacerbates these differences. This paper combines institutional history and student data to reconceputalise and broaden debates around ‘contextual admissions’. Acknowledging the institutional racism within UK universities, a more encompassing definition of ‘contextuality’ would allow a critical attention to the academic cultures that create barriers to widening participation, retention and progression to postgraduate study.

Academic Cultures: Psychology of Education Perspective

This work contributes to a wider range of research, the main objective of which is to investigate models of thought and behaviour that result from belonging to a given academic culture. The academic culture that will be examined is that within the university system, and this research will look at how this culture can take different forms. According to (Bourdieu, 1984), university professors hold an institutionalised form of cultural capital that places them in a dominant position within a field of power. The university system is immersed in a specific culture, and it expresses a given culture and understanding this culture will allow one to understand the system itself (Anolli, 2014). Cultural models are the result of a process of signification, which is understood as the ability of a group or community to elaborate a shared symbolic dimension around an object or symbol at a given historical moment. The cultural models that underlie the professional context orient social and organizational behaviour, which contributes to the construction, on a symbolic level, of identity.

Conclusion-

Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize.1 —CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE In Chapter 1 we examined the encounter that Errol Morris dubbed Thomas Kuhn’s “ashtray argument.” Morris’s memoir reveals much more than an alleged assault. His book aims to discredit Kuhn’s ideas and to question their legacy in both popular and academic cultures. He considers Kuhn’s ...

Gender Differences in Athletic and Academic Cultures on a University Campus

In order to explore the differences between a student’s academic life and a scholar-athlete’s sports life, we investigated the organizational cultures of a university’s academic departments and sports teams by surveying 259 students and 230 student-athletes. We found the academic cultures to be more clannish (family oriented) and the sports cultures more market (performance and results) driven. For the female athletes, we found a negative relationship between clan culture and satisfaction with their sports team, while for everyone else (male and female students and male athletes) clan culture was positively related to satisfaction with academic department or sports team. Relatedly, for the female athletes, the relationship between market culture and satisfaction with their sports team was positive, while for everyone else (male and female students and male athletes) market culture was negatively related to satisfaction with academic department or sports team. This suggests that there are important differences between the experiences of male and female student-athletes. We also found the participants in the business school to be less clannish than those in the other schools and colleges. We discuss the practical implications of these results for coaches of male and female athletes and for campus leaders of academic departments.