Big Tent Research Articles

What are the ‘most influential people in accounting’ saying about the ‘most important issues currently facing the accounting profession’?

Drawing on theories of influence derived from social psychology, this article studies Accounting Today’s 2023 list of The Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting (‘the List’). For many reasons the List is controversial, but it is also a window into the profession, providing readers insights into where key players think it is, where it is going, and what it aspires to be. This article analyzes what those on the List consider to be the most important issues currently facing the accounting profession, and what they think the solutions are. A number of core themes emerge as salient, namely: (a) the pipeline problem, (b) the adoption and application of new technologies, (c) the struggle for relevance of (some) accounting work, and (d) the accounting workplace and human capital management. The solutions presented include: (i) accounting needs better branding and marketing, (ii) need to adopt and use new technologies in a range of creative, thoughtful, and compassionate ways, (iii) accounting workplaces and work conditions need to be improved, not least compensation for new entrants. Ultimately, this article’s core thesis is that the key challenges (opportunities) are fundamentally inter-related and inter-connected. Thus, a strategy which involves one group sitting back and hoping that another will fix a stand-alone issue while they watch on is a strategy that seems destined to fail and will cost us dearly. As such, holistic, ‘big tent’, consensus-garnering solutions are required.

Socialism, Democracy, Bureaucracy, and Umbrella Organizations

Abstract Among the dilemmas faced by labor, socialist, and other movements of the subaltern classes striving to change society over the past two centuries, three are discussed here: forms of ownership, bureaucracy and “big tent” formulas for both unity of the working class broadly defined, and alliances with movements of independent owners or undefined class status. Examples are drawn from various countries (France, Italy, Britain, the USA, Brazil, Korea) and from international programmatic discussions. Socialists, notably Marxists, shared the radical republican goal of a true democracy of equals, but differed on the extent of collective ownership (state, local, cooperative) needed in the economy, and the definition of privately owned personal goods that insured an individual’s dignity and independence. The rise and contraction of capitalist states with social services (“welfare states”) complicated the issue. Such movements also accumulated experiences with the growth of experts and/or bureaucrats, and the means to limit their privileges and transformation into a caste-type elite. Three environments which generate such phenomena are identified: social-democratic and big labor, post-capitalist states and, more recently, nongovernmental organizations. Finally, the author discusses alliances with broader social forces which include working-class and non-working-class interests, and the management of cross-class ideologies such as certain varieties of nationalism, feminism, environmentalism, and anti-tax movements.

Competing Visions of Restraint

Abstract At least since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a subset of realists, conservatives, and progressives have called for greater restraint in U.S. grand strategy. Given that restraint is a key position in the grand strategy debate, this article explores the variations within restraint's big tent in greater detail. Drawing on writings by and interviews with advocates of restraint, we identify the underlying beliefs that have led these disparate groups to converge on restraint. We find that there are competing visions of restraint. Realists want to prevent the emergence of regional hegemons without provoking great power war; conservatives seek to preserve what they identify as the American way of life; and progressives are motivated by the desire to combat inequality and injustice at home and abroad. Even within each group, there are a range of underlying beliefs and foreign policy preferences, and more divisions have emerged in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China's rise. We explore how these groups’ positions may evolve in the future as the threat environment continues to change and new policy questions emerge.

Big Tent Talk: The Incalculable

This article memorializes Norman Denzin on the occasion of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) in May 2024. Denzin’s work is overviewed in the context of its relationship to the author’s and the field at large with a focus on the founding and sustaining efforts of his scholarship, field-defining editorial contributions and ICQI.

Explaining Differential Involvement in Cross-Movement Coalitions on Social Media: the #StopHateForProfit Campaign

Social movements form coalitions to gain leverage and achieve mutual goals, however little is known about how coalitions work, especially in the realm of social media. In this paper we examine the 2020 #StopHateForProfit coalition which pressured corporations to pull their advertising spending from Facebook because of its permissive content moderation policies toward disinformation and hate. From the digital traces of the campaign on Twitter, we explain the participation differentials among coalition social movement organisations (SMO) partners and their followers. The findings show that the coalition's centrality to movement agenda, the ideological homogeneity of followership, and the SMO partners and their followership's central positions in the communication network led to the highest and most time persistent participation rates. Our counter-intuitive findings extend the literature on social movements coalitions by suggesting that multi-issues, “big tent” movements with ideological breadth may find invoking the core of their large followership rather challenging despite the ease of participation afforded by social media.

Beyond the big tent: recontextualizing settler colonial studies

ABSTRACT This reflection on the field of Settler Colonial Studies uses the “big tent” metaphor to ask what is seen to be encompassed in the field; who is left out and how attached its practitioners are not just to teleology but to the dialectic logics of colonialism itself. Drawing on Burton's 30 years of work in the field of colonial and imperial history, it queries some of the premises of settler colonial studies' remit asks how attention to gender and sexuality impacts the direction of the field and posits the dialectic alongside telos as a site of critical tension for thinking about approaches to subject and method.

Weathering the Storm

Abstract Over the last two decades, red umbrellas have increasingly appeared in campaigns to end violence against sex workers, oppose harmful legislation, advocate for decriminalization, commemorate lost community members, and broadly express sex worker pride. Originating with the work of the artist/activist Tadej Pogačar and the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art’s contribution to the 2001 Venice Biennale (“The Prostitute Pavilion”), red umbrellas were originally presented as a visual symbol of self-help, organization, and protection for sex workers. Since then the red umbrella has been adopted and adapted to a broader range of meanings related to sex worker activism, including decriminalization, opposition to antitrafficking discourse, and more. The umbrella has also come to convey the “big tent” concept—that all sex workers are together under its canopy, unified as one coalition. But like any symbol, the red umbrella’s use has limitations. The red umbrella risks amplifying negative rhetoric employed by the antitrafficking movement, which casts sex workers as passive victims in need of salvation, or of oversimplifying a complex, multifaceted political movement. The Curated Spaces section of this issue presents a brief history of the red umbrella as a symbol for sex workers’ rights and images that demonstrate its varied uses.

Literary history as bestseller: the life and opinions of a fraudulent philologue

In this article we reveal the publishing ventures of Octav Minar (1886-1967), one of the Romanian authors that was disesteemed by fellow literary historians on account of his counterfeiting acts such as forgery, plagiarism, plastography or trick photography. Related to the book market of interbellum Romania, Minar was frequently branded as the “man-of-the-day” while his publications followed the logic of the “hand-in-glove” ephemerides Notwithstanding the challenges of the term “bestseller,” we turned to it so as to better describe Minar’s cultural products as multiple-layered offers, catering for both low-brow and high-brow readership and seizing signals from both public’s expectations (myth-making, melodrama, sensation, narrative simplicity) and enormous patrimonial gaps (editing the classics, writing the recent authors’ biographies). After a careful examination of Minar’s works, we reached the conclusion that he was an exceptional entrepreneur of letters and, nonetheless, a literary historian endowed with a “melodramatic imagination” as well as with a playwright’s and a genre novelist’s plume. A swift intuition of marketing basics helped him realize, quite rapidly, that historical facts and documents could be merchandized: this is how his impressive collection of Romanian writers’ miscellanea was wrapped as a commodity for the public. If the juridical and moral aspects of his literary ventures were put in between brackets, we would discover an astonishing and ingenious personality who glided between different speech registers, and popularized literary history as a genre belonging to the big tent of mass culture. We should thus take into consideration that the logic of the paraliterary circuit can also be applied to literary history. Boiled down to essentials, counting on citations and on minimal critical comments, spiced with images (facsimile and pictures), Minar’s literary histories had their share in speeding the process of cultural literacy of average Romanian readers and in institutionalizing literary ideas.

Where are race, ethnicity, and culture in personality research?

In recent years personality psychology has re-affirmed its status as what Revelle famously termed “the last refuge of the generalist.” Conceptualizing personality as consisting of traits, characteristic adaptations, and life stories, all of which must be understood in the context of biological and cultural foundations, provides a “big tent” to integrate nearly any aspect of psychology. And yet, this big tent has seemingly had little room for scholarship focused on race, ethnicity, and culture. This paper includes a brief discussion of five reasons why this has been the case: (a) overstating the universality of traits, (b) overstating the genetic basis of personality, (c) hyper-focusing on dispositions, (d) a compromising association with social psychology, and (e) a weak approach to examining group differences. The paper concludes with some ideas for constructing a bigger, more inclusive tent.

Theory and practice of second-order expansions for moments of 100ρ% accelerated sequential stopping times in parametric and nonparametric estimation with arbitrary fractional ρ

Sampling strategies with fractional acceleration 0 < ρ < 1 achieve substantial operational savings compared with purely sequential counterparts. But, acceleration customarily yielded second-order (s.o.) lower and upper bounds for requisite characteristics when ρ − 1 was not an integer. First time in the literature, we have recently designed acceleration with asymptotic s.o. expansions in normal mean problems with ρ − 1 arbitrary. In this article, a general unified theory is now developed leading to asymptotic s.o. expansions for customarily studied characteristics with arbitrary ρ − 1 . That is, the previously known s.o. lower/upper bounds can be replaced with appropriate s.o. expansions in a variety of inference problems with prescribed accuracy. We emphasize the theoretical foundation and ensuing analyses with a series of interesting inference problems from (a) a number of non-normal distributions as well as (b) one- and two-sample distribution-free scenarios. These prove a desirable breadth of coverage under our proposed big tent.

Being big in the big tent: Is fat social justice part of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on college campuses in the United States?

ABSTRACT Fat social justice and fat liberation movements share language, symbols, and strategies with many other movements striving to fight discrimination and stigma, such as movements centered on race, gender, sexuality, and disability. These communities should be natural partners with fat activists in striving for intersectional liberation and in fighting existing structures of privilege. It is less clear, however, the degree to which fat activism and activists are welcome in spaces explicitly constructed to address comprehensive approaches to social justice. To address this question, we examine a setting specifically built to address issues of privilege, oppression, and discrimination: diversity, equity, and inclusion organizations at US colleges and universities. We compile a data set of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at 200 four-year colleges and universities in the US, with stratified samples to ensure inclusion across regions of the US, a broad variety of educational settings from large Research 1 institutions to small liberal arts colleges, and a subset of historically black colleges and universities. We examine whether and to what degree issues of fat social justice and liberation are included in university diversity and inclusion offices, websites, and materials. Findings show fat people, their experiences, and fat social justice issues are generally excluded in DEI spaces. We provide potential explanations for this exclusion and outline possible steps forward for those interested in fat social justice.

К ОПРЕДЕЛЕНИЮ ЦИФРОВОЙ ТЕОЛОГИИ

This article explores the emergence of Digital Theology within the context of Digital Humanities and Digital Religion. It identifies typological similarities in their development, from early instrumental use of digital technologies to the recognition of their unique disciplinary characteristics. The importance of an interdisciplinary “Big Tent” approach is emphasized for understanding the development, specificity, and vocation of Digital Theology. The article also discusses alternative terms, particularly “Cybertheology”, which emerged in the 2000s within the Roman Catholic Church’s discussions about the opportunities and threats posed by digital media and technologies. It suggests that outside the Catholic context, “Cybertheology” did not gain traction due to its association with the early Internet, whereas “digital” is more universal, encompassing a broader range of technologies. The article summarizes four “waves” in the formation of digital theology, from the use of digital methods in education and research to rethinking it as “Theology in the Digital age”, serving as an ethical and value guide for the modern world.

Does the “big tent” include non-academics? Social media content creators conducting critical scholarship

Purpose LeftTube – a loosely connected community of left-leaning content creators on YouTube – includes a subsection of video essayists that conduct scholarly work seemingly adjacent to critical research. Exploring this digital community of critical scholars may precipate opportunities for collaboration and reciprocal learning to better academic qualitative research approaches. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study is to (1) examine if and how this digital community engages in critical scholarship, and (2) initiate a call for academic qualitative scholars to watch this digital space as a potential source of collaboration, an opportunity for co-learning and consideration for inclusion in the qualitative “big tent”.Design/methodology/approach Using an algorithm-based sampling procedure, 143 videos were sampled across 23 Black women content creators. Videos were analyzed for characteristics of critical research using multimodal-ethnographic semiotic analysis.Findings Findings suggest that 11 strategies of critical scholarship were used with themes of knowledge production and ethical framework. Such results indicate that this subsection of LeftTube video essayists are conducting critical scholarship.Originality/value The most significant implication is the expansion of the qualitative “big tent” to include international social media content creators who conduct social science research. This would have many benefits to academic qualitative researchers, including learning how the studied community (1) makes critical scholarship impactful and influential in civil discourse, (2) mobilizes critical language, and (3) resists neoliberal and capitalist systems attempting to marginalize critical research.

Denmark’s big tent includes postdocs

Denmark’s big tent includes postdocs

An expansive learning approach to transforming traditional fitness testing in health and physical education: student voice, feelings and hopes

ABSTRACT Whilst the fitness testing debate has become more nuanced over time, the voice that is often absent from discussions is that of students. Located within the ‘big tent’ of critical pedagogy, and using an expansive learning approach that is grounded in cultural historical activity theory, this paper responds to the following research questions: (i) what are Australian Secondary students’ feelings and thoughts toward current fitness testing practices? and (ii) how would they change those fitness testing practices, and why? Data were collected via focus group interviews (n = 48) that utilised participatory arts-based methods. Students from one Secondary College were invited to consider the purpose, outcomes of, and alternatives for fitness testing within HPE. The findings suggest that fitness testing can be a source of anxiety, fear and overwhelm for some students. Findings also suggest that students have the capacity to discover new approaches to fitness testing that are responsive to the students and teachers in their school.

“Big Tent” Feminism?

Sociological ForumEarly View Book Review “Big Tent” Feminism? Jo Reger, Corresponding Author Jo Reger reger@oakland.edu Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, 48309 USASearch for more papers by this author Jo Reger, Corresponding Author Jo Reger reger@oakland.edu Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, 48309 USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 January 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12876Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

The (Necessary) Expansion of Social Work Knowloge

We focus on the role of journals in producing social work knowledge. We surveyed social work journals internationally, concluding that social work knowledge mostly is conceived of as universal, the inclusion of knowledges being based on an uncritical “big tent” (everyone is included) philosophy. This legitimized knowledge base overlooks alternative subjugated experiences, weakening social work. To avoid professional imperialism and coloniality, social work must expand its knowledge base to reflect diverse knowing.

Different Stakeholders’ Conceptualizations and Perspectives of Regenerative Agriculture Reveals More Consensus Than Discord

A range of content analyses have recently sought to define the term “regenerative agriculture”, which has gained a surge of attention in the last few years. However, these studies have not incorporated the voices of those using the term to define their work: the farmers, private companies, researchers, and NGOs giving energy to the movement. In this study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 19 stakeholders from across the United States. Key points of consensus were that regenerative agriculture moves beyond sustainability, is outcomes-based, and, as such, is context-specific: focusing on outcomes provides opportunities to be adaptive to a specific context and that, depending on one’s context, different practices may be used to achieve target outcomes. We identified three categories of outcomes: climate adaptation and mitigation, socio-economic benefits, and integrated systems. We also found several opportunities within the energy of the movement. First, regenerative agriculture remains a “big tent” that is still accessible to a broad range of farmers. Participants also underscore the need to move toward systems-based research as opposed to reductionist research. Finally, we present participants’ mixed perspectives on the role of government, the private sector, and third parties in moving regenerative agriculture forward.

Weimars Wirkung. Das Nachleben der ersten deutschen Republik ed. by Hanno Hochmuth, Martin Sabrow, and Tilmann Siebenreichner

Reviewed by: Weimars Wirkung. Das Nachleben der ersten deutschen Republik ed. by Hanno Hochmuth, Martin Sabrow, and Tilmann Siebenreichner Jonathan Wipplinger Weimars Wirkung. Das Nachleben der ersten deutschen Republik. Edited by Hanno Hochmuth, Martin Sabrow, and Tilmann Siebenreichner. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020. Pp. 232. Cloth €24.00. ISBN 9783835337817. What remains of the Weimar Republic today? What is the political legacy of Weimar as Germany's first democracy? And what impact has Weimar had on the political history of Germany since 1933? These and other compelling questions motivate this volume of revised lectures originally delivered in 2018/2019 as part of a Ringvorlesung on the same subject. Divided into two sections, essays in the first half contain historical snapshots that radiate centrifugally from the Weimar Republic outward, while the contributions in the second half consider the afterlife of Weimar, demonstrating the centripetal impact of Weimar in the Nazi era and in divided Germany, especially the 1950s and 1960s. The primary purpose of the volume is less a direct exploration of contemporary comparisons to Weimar than an attempt to offer a historical overview of the role Weimar has played in twentieth-century German political history. The volume thus begins with Martin Sabrow's introductory sketch of the collection's core concern: Weimar's political legacy. Sabrow rereads debates about central, [End Page 583] contested political symbols of Weimar (the flag colors, constitution, national anthem and even images like the photograph of Ebert and Noske bathing) and, against their interpretation as indicative of the Weimar coalition's ineptitude in this arena, he interprets these debates as evincing, amongst other things, Weimar politicians' resistance to the pomposity of politics in Wilhelmine Germany. The next five essays, i.e. those that make up the first section, take a Weimar-era historical context and show its later impact. Tilmann Siebeneichner's opening essay discusses the multiple functions of the idea of the emergency situation (Ausnahmezustand) during Weimar and after. Here he usefully distinguishes between competing understandings of the concept as a revolutionary, destabilizing and as a conservative, stabilizing force. Claudia Weber's essay considers Soviet-German relations from the perspective of the joint airline DERULUFT and shows how continuity rather than rupture defined this relationship in the interwar period. Next, Andreas Nachama argues for conceptualizing the Nazi party as a modern big tent party (Volkspartei), in particular by dint of its horizontal organization into suborganizations for specific social groups. Michael Wildt, meanwhile, treats the history of the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft and its uses before, during and, of course, after Weimar. Though initially used by parties of the Weimar coalition to signify the overcoming of political difference, the inherent ambiguity of the word "Volk" could and did lead to racialized acts of exclusion by the Nazis and right-wing groups. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum's essay concludes the first section by building on this idea. She discusses the historical development in antisemitic ideology and political practices on the right during Weimar. She argues that Weimar's antisemitic legacy was interrupted in the post-war era not by the horrors of the Holocaust, but by a top-down change in the social elites, especially the churches. Contributions in the second section approach Weimar from the outside, exploring how different contemporary moments have understood the relevance of Weimar for "today." The first essay by Hanno Hochmuth, unique in its contemporary framework, investigates the popular television series Babylon Berlin as a moment of nostalgia that selectively appropriates motifs from the Weimar era to showcase internationally recognized myths about Berlin, e.g., its "poor but sexy" image. Annette Vowinckel's selection reveals Weimar's impact on German visual culture through the medium of photography. In it, she tracks an important set of Weimar-era innovations and innovators in photography across the twentieth century and into today. Henrik Bispinck's essay shifts from media to pedagogy and after an overview of the many, ultimately unsuccessful attempts at a reform of the education system during Weimar. Bispinck discusses the impact of the reform movement on East and West German education systems in the 1950s and 1960s. The final four essays shift back toward the more narrowly political. While rooted in...

From the Editor

From the Editor Andy Cain This special issue, "Shaping Christian Politics in Late Antiquity," which has been curated by Richard Flower, Meaghan McEvoy, and Robin Whelan, collects seven revised and peer-reviewed papers originally delivered at a conference hosted in June 2019 at the University of Liverpool. As detailed in this issue's Introduction, these superb studies develop innovative approaches to a series of problems relating to Christian politics during Late Antiquity. As a collective, they thus epitomize this journal's robust tradition of showcasing cutting-edge, methodologically sophisticated work by everyone from early-career researchers to more established scholars. This issue also is my tenth and final one as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Late Antiquity. Beginning in January 2023, the chief editorship will be assumed by Professor Sabine Huebner of the University of Basel, who has contributed substantially to the journal's mission as both an author and Review Editor. As of January 1, all article submissions and correspondence should be sent to her at sabine.huebner@unibas.ch. Since the beginning of my five-year term, JLA has published 84 articles which have derived from a total of 235 submissions, with an average acceptance rate of 35.7%. These manuscripts were sent by 164 male and 71 female authors, making the submission population 70% male and 30% female. Of the articles published or accepted, 48 were by male and 36 by female authors, yielding a gender rate of acceptance of 57% male and 43% female. The journal has also published three special issues during my tenure:13.1 "The Muses and Leisure in Sidonius Apollinaris"; 14.1 "Envisioning the Roman Emperor in Speech and Word in Late Antiquity"; and the current issue, 15.2 "Shaping Christian Politics in Late Antiquity." Because most of the papers submitted with these issues' original dossiers were accepted, they artificially inflate the perceived acceptance rate of JLA relative to the rate from open submission. Open and unsolicited submissions to JLA numbered 212, of which 61 were published, bringing the actual acceptance rate from open submission to 28.7%. During its first ten years (2008–17), this journal rapidly became a premier international venue for late antique studies, thanks in no small part to the herculean labors and outstanding stewardship of both Ralph Mathisen (JLA's founding editor) and Noel Lenski. As a marker of its standing within the broader field, JLA has been honored with an impressive number of awards through the years, including most recently in 2019, under my editorship, the prestigious Codex Award, which is bestowed once per year by the Council of [End Page 323] Editors of Learned Journals in recognition of excellence in a journal that covers any subject before 1500 (JLA previously had garnered this award in 2013). JLA's core mission since its founding fifteen years ago is to provide comprehensive, multi-disciplinary coverage of Late Antiquity in all of its topical dimensions: society, culture, politics, religion, literature, art, etc. The past ten issues, like the twenty that preceded them, exemplify this "big tent" approach to the late antique world, and they mirror well the diversified interests of our ever-evolving field. The specialized studies featured in their pages make significant advances in their target research, often formulating novel solutions to long-vexing problems or newly-identified conundra. They represent a rich variety of subdisciplines—from papyrology, epigraphy, textual criticism, numismatics, and archaeology, to the history of society, politics, economics, literature, law, religion, medicine, art, and the environment. They engage critically with written sources that reflect the colorful linguistic palette of the late antique Mediterranean region (Coptic, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, etc.), and they transport us to Africa, the Middle East, the British Isles, Gaul, Hispania, Germania, Italy, the Balkans, and many other locales. Reflecting back on the past half-decade, I am very proud of all of JLA's accomplishments, especially as we forged ahead in the face of a global pandemic which upended life as we all had known it. I am as acutely aware as ever that JLA has flourished, and will continue to flourish, thanks to a corporate effort, and so it is only fitting that I close my...