Central Discourse Research Articles

Challenging A Contentious Discourse and Dismantling the False Divide through Multicultural Literature

Objectives: This study examines ways through which the discourse of the European centrality can be challenged to combat inequality and discrimination against “the other.” The study also aims to demonstrate the positive impact that literature and cinema, with their diverse cultures, can have in teaching students how to question European central thought by understanding the lifestyle and worldview of “the Other,” highlighting their counter-narrative, and fostering empathy and tolerance toward “the other.” Methods: To achieve this purpose, Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy was employed to equip English language students with critical thinking skills to critique facts. Works of multicultural literature and corresponding activities were chosen to enhance the ability to disrupt the discourse of European centrality. Students' responses were recorded and analyzed to track changes in empathy levels. Additionally, through critical and analytical readings of literary texts, the study sheds light on social disparities and criticizes oppressive structures that reinforce discrimination. Results: The study revealed ways to challenge the discourse of European centrality and resist discrimination against “the Other.” It also showed the positive role played by multicultural literary texts and cinema in training students to question European central discourse by exposing them to counter-narratives and the lifestyle of "the Other." The study further confirmed that increased awareness of injustice led to improved levels of empathy and tolerance towards others, inspiring a desire to contribute to social change. Conclusions: The study contributes to expanding knowledge about using multicultural literature and cinema in educating students about discrimination and combating Islamophobia and “the Other.” This is achieved by involving students in the process of liberating their minds through questioning European central discourse and the prevailing narrative of oppression, thereby enhancing their sense of empowerment, empathy, and tolerance.

Managing the new wave of weight loss medication in general practice: A qualitative study.

In early 2023, a new type of weight loss medication, Wegovy (semaglutide), was made available in Denmark. Both subsequent media coverage and public demand were huge. Wegovy is only available by prescription, primarily via general practitioners. However, there is very little knowledge about how healthcare professionals (HCPs) in general practice might deal with the great demand for and attention surrounding a new weight loss drug. The aim of this qualitative study was, therefore, to explore how Wegovy is managed and negotiated in general practice, particularly in terms of prescribing and follow-up. We conducted a focused ethnography study based on direct observation of consultations and both formal and informal interviews with seven doctors and four nurses from three general practices in Denmark. Using discourse analysis, we identified four central discourses revolving around trust in medicine, individual responsibility for health, the cost of weight loss medication, and the importance of shared decision-making. This study shows that the availability of a new, sought-after weight loss medication presents both opportunities and challenges for HCPs in general practice. The management of Wegovy involves numerous factors, including medical, economic, organizational, interpersonal and moral concerns.

Professional Development Among Preschool Teachers: Meta-Conversations About Peer Counseling

This article aims to analyze discourse about professional development in preschool, represented by knowledge movements in meta-conversations about peer counseling. Empirically, this article presents a case study based on audio recordings of focus group discussions on peer counseling. The underlying study highlights findings in the form of various speech acts as markers for central discourse among preschool teachers. Habermas’ theory of communicative action is used as a framework for analyzing the preschool teachers’ statements, showing that the concepts of lifeworld and system are central in their discussions. The study highlights knowledge movements pertaining to learning and becoming part of the community, knowledge movements that threaten professional aspects, and dynamics between the participants’ everyday lives and the system. Peer counseling in groups appears to be a crucial transformative learning activity in the preschool setting studied. The findings presented can contribute to bridging preschool teachers’ everyday lives and the system they function within and can be used to improve the education of preschool teachers.

Lion City Zoopolis: Urban Crittizenship in Biophilic Singapore

ABSTRACT A central theme of Singapore’s “City in Nature” vision is framed through biophilic urbanism, or efforts to harmonize biodiversity and urban development through built, social, and political design. The central discourses of Singapore’s biophilic urbanism have revolved around flora-centric paradigms, including habitat conservation, greening spaces, and access to natural capital. This paper detours from conventions of Singapore’s urban ecological futures and instead explores the governance of fauna co-existence in the city–state through the concept of “urban crittizenship.” Defined as a more-than-human denization framework that interrogates urban wildlife governance, urban crittizenship interrogates the politics of urban wildlife’s rights to the city. Drawing on interviews, publicly accessible data, and ethnographic findings with local governing actors and activists, I show that Singapore’s experience of urban fauna governance is framed through three categories (“resident,” “wildlife,” and “pest”) and that they inform how state and society mediate and manage coexistence with urban wildlife. These experiences are examined through the examples of otters, boars, and pigeons, respectively. In doing so, I present urban crittizenship as an inductive model of analyzing urban wildlife coexistence as primarily secured through infrastructural and political regime configurations that inform their crittizenship statuses. Any real shifts toward new forms of coexistence must therefore begin with actual transformations in these areas. I further iterate that using an urban crittizenship framework refines our understanding and application of biophilic urbanism as socio-political processes that influence already-existing urban wildlife coexistence, complementing existing analyses in urban ecology. In other words, there is a politics of biophilia that warrants a conversation, because biophilia is political.

White Warriors and Weak Women: Identifying Central Discourses of Masculinity in Neo-Nazi Telegram Channels

Building on calls for more analyses of constructions of gender within extremist groups, this study examines Australian neo-Nazis’ construction of hegemonic masculinity on the digital media platform, Telegram. Undertaking a keyword co-occurrence analysis of 3,279 posts and a qualitative analysis of 624 posts from 6 Australian neo-Nazi Telegram Channels, we empirically validate how Australian neo-Nazis use this media platform to idealise a strong, white and combat-ready masculinity. This masculinity is centred on protecting ‘vulnerable’ white women and girls from non-white men and simultaneously casts alternative masculinities, in particular those associated with the LGBTQIA + community, as weak and deviant.

Urban space spatiality in Purwokerto, Jawa Tengah: Case from Gedung Soetedja

This article attempts to trace the spatiality of urban space in Purwokerto using Lefebvian theory. The main urban space in this article is Gedung Soetedja which was previously located on Jalan Gatot Soebroto, Purwokerto Barat. As long as it was an urban space, the central discourse of Gedung Soetedja was underground music which was born from the movements of urban youth in Indonesia in the early 2000s. The method used in this article is descriptive qualitative. The data was obtained through interviews with 2 actors and organizers of underground gigs in early 2000s, 2 actors of a youth collective called Heartcorner Collective, 2 cafe owners who were often used to Heartcorner Collective organize gigs (micro scale underground music concert), and 1 journalist. This data was obtained from May-August 2023. The findings of this article are the efforts of a collective, the Heartcorner Collective, to create urban spatiality through re-reading underground music discourse, placemaking, and spatiality of urban spaces. Furthermore, this article also presents things that caused Gedung Soetedja to lose its inclusiveness when Pemerintah Daerah Kabupaten Banyumas moved it to its new location.

Sīrah Philosophy: A Modern Trajectory for Sīrah Studies

Prophet Muhammad is a central figure in Islam. Systematic exploration of his life and biography as a central discourse for sīrah studies remains timeless and relevant. This has made his life a focal point for study among Muslim and Western scholars for centuries, resulting in the emergence of fresh approaches in modern times. This paper delves into the concept of “sīrah philosophy,” which is vigorously advocated by Fethullah Gülen, a prominent Muslim scholar, as a novel and essential perspective for sīrah studies in modern times. Gülen’s amalgamation of the Prophet’s life and contemporary challenges underscores the enduring significance of sīrah in guiding modern discourse. Sīrah philosophy, at its core, provides a framework rooted in the Prophet’s life to draw inspiration for addressing contemporary issues. The article unpacks the practical application of sīrah philosophy through the Hudaybiya incident, a pivotal moment in the Prophet’s life during his time in Medina. From conflict resolution and peacebuilding to interfaith dialogue, Gülen’s approach leverages sīrah to propose solutions for complex contemporary problems, offering a dynamic way to engage with present-day predicaments. In essence, this article emphasises how sīrah, as envisioned by Muslim scholars like Gülen, transcends historical and contextual boundaries, enriching present-day discourse. As sīrah studies evolve, this pioneering exploration of a modern trajectory fosters a deeper appreciation of the Prophet’s legacy, facilitating comprehensive understanding for diverse audiences. This article argues that this approach is groundbreaking and innovative, paving the way for new perspectives to read and interpret sīrah in a contemporary world for a modern audience.

Less Form, More Meaning: A Case Study of al-Iẖtibāk in the Qur’an Through the Prism of Dependency Grammar

Ellipsis pervades the Qur’anic discourse. One pervasive form of it is al-iẖtibāk (“interchangeable ellipsis”). In terms of the interface between Qur’anic exegesis and Arabic rhetoric, the phenomenon of al-iẖtibāk is far more than a rhetorically heuristic technique for surface-structure analysis. It is a fruitful tool for pragmasemantic inferences of discursive implicatures defined as a fundamental mode of text construction and a logical hermeneutic of text consumption. The veracity of al-iẖtibāk has received little attention in non-Arabic research. Consequently, this article revisits the typology of al-iẖtibāk through the lens of Osborne’s dependency grammar to argue for its relevance to Qur’anic epistemology and axiology. Using a dependency grammar approach to al-iẖtibāk, the article conducts a qualitative content analysis of representative Qur’anic verses to highlight the symbiotic relationship between Qur’anic exegesis and Arabic rhetoric. Al-iẖtibāk is found to be related to givenness and newness of information structure which impact its interpretation and resolution—a finding in line with Winkler’s argument. Al-iẖtibāk proves to be a central discourse marker of interaction between the Qur’an and its recipients who take part in filling the elliptical slots co(n)textually.

Contemporary narrative patterns of career construction: Interlinking the existing literature with Brazilian workers’ narratives

Career pattern is a useful methodological resource to generate portraits of career constructions. This article has two interconnected objectives. Through a literature review, it first aimed to synthesise the main contemporary career patterns. And second, using a qualitative approach, it sought to build contemporary narrative patterns of career construction of 40 Brazilian workers intentionally selected. Differences and similarities between the two proposed taxonomies were examined. The literature describes five career patterns (traditional/professional, flexible, hybrid, transitional, and social role balancing). The present study built nine narrative patterns of career construction described by their central discourse: Enclosure (professional career and occupational career), Nostalgia (organisational career), Possibility (flexible career, entrepreneurial career, and informal career), Hybrid (hybrid careers), and Instrumentality (transitional career and liminal career). We emphasise the need for diversifying samples and research contexts to contextualise theories and concepts and produce situated practices.

Religious tolerance in the Arab Gulf states: Christian organizations, soft power, and the politics of sustaining the “family–state” beyond the rentier model

Abstract The states of the Arabian Gulf present a novel case for the examination of relations between authoritarian governance and Christian organizations. The economic clout of the Gulf states has been central to political stability and legitimacy but they are increasingly seeking to expand and consolidate the soft power and resilience through political and diplomatic initiatives. This article examines how the Christian organizations established in recent decades by large migrant communities are incorporated into this strategy and how they are responding. It argues that religious tolerance has formed a central discourse in governmental policies and narratives that construct the Gulf states as modern progressive nations, despite their unique political systems based mainly on constitutional monarchies with limited political participation. This constructs local Christian communities as a source of soft power, despite their position as a religious minority.

Media discourse on Islamic women jihadists in Indonesia: Islamic radicalism post-Arab Spring

ABSTRACT Following terrorist incidents involving women and increasing numbers of women joining and supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Indonesian media have highlighted this emerging trend and centered discourse around women’s roles in Islamic radicalism. This study examined Indonesian women jihadists and their perception and representation in the media, covering underlying causes and discourse surrounding women combatants, radical movements, and the meaning in which women and jihad are articulated within the socio-political context. Noting limited research within this emerging field, gender-specific jihad in Indonesia, this study analyzed discourse about women’s participation in jihadi movements during a resurgence in Islamic fundamentalism. Recent events have not only opened media space to present and represent gender jihad (the existence of radical women, women terrorist combatants, pledged of allegiance) but have also generated powerful media discourse reinforcing oppression of women, alienation, threat, and submissive ideas. Drawing on media portrayals and news production analysis, this study argued that women jihadists have not only received insufficient coverage from mainstream/commercial media, but that women/feminist perspectives have been silent, complicit, or nonexistent throughout incidences of terrorism involving women.

Busting the Silos of “Global” Scholarship

Busting the Silos of “Global” Scholarship

What makes a good school? Perspectives of students at inclusive secondary schools in Germany

ABSTRACT Despite a vast body of research on inclusive education, students’ perspectives and experiences of inclusive secondary schools have garnered little attention. Yet their perspectives and experiences are central to the development of inclusive schools. To investigate this, we conducted seven group discussions with ninth-year students at German inclusive secondary schools, asking them what makes a school a place where all students can learn well. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we developed three themes (community, justice, and school as a place to live), three cross-thematic areas (limits, teachers, and belonging), and two overarching central discourses (othering and submission to a meritocratic, non-participative school logic). In light of our findings, we argue that inclusive secondary schools still face major challenges vis-a-vis the continuing non-inclusiveness of societies and that students’ views can provide valuable insights into key success factors for inclusive secondary education.

Materteral Consumption Magic

With themes of corporate and civic paternalism, magic, Disney-like fantasy and childcare, this article recovers and analyses the Hay’s rooftop playground, the people who invented it and their motivations for luring generations of children up there. The space is placed in the context of the development of modern playgrounds and department stores. Drawing on consumers’ memories, the playground’s main attractions are revealed. The motivations of energetic and innovative store manager Jim Hay are outlined, including his cultivation of workers and customers according to his corporate paternalist beliefs. James Hay’s creation of ‘Aunt Haysl’ and the woman who successfully became her, Edna Neville, is explained. The roof’s storybook character and benevolent orientalism, Neville’s retirement, the roof’s closure and its afterlife are covered. Overall, I argue that the rooftop playground was an important modern, urban commercial space where public history was both made and nostalgically created as part of Christchurch's cultural heritage. I use the term 'materteral consumption magic' to capture the central discourses in the roof's history, to explain its success, and its potent creation as collective memory.

The Archeologist and Selected Sea Stories by Andreas Karkavitsas

Reviewed by: The Archeologist and Selected Sea Stories by Andreas Karkavitsas Patricia Felisa Barbeito (bio) Andreas Karkavitsas, The Archeologist and Selected Sea Stories. Translated by Johanna Hanink. New York: Penguin Books, 2021. Pp. ix + 220. Paper $17.00. The Archeologist and Selected Sea Stories belatedly but brilliantly brings to an English readership long-overlooked works by Andreas Karkavitsas. One of the most prominent authors of Greece’s generation of the 1880s and a practitioner of ethografia, a form of Greek naturalism focused on the rural experience, Karkavitsas was known for his masterful blend of folk and literary traditions, as well as his keen eye for the texture and tenor of the life and vernaculars of the common folk, all set against the backdrop of the turbulent political and social upheaval that caused Greece and the wider Balkan region to be dubbed the “powder keg” of Europe during this period. Coinciding in its release with the bicentennial of the Greek War of Independence (1821) and the centennial of the outbreak of the second Greco-Turkish war (1921), this volume brings together what can be considered two main axes of Karkavitsas’s reflections on evolving nationalist debates: on the one hand, his final, historically significant [End Page 487] albeit, at the time, negatively reviewed novel, The Archeologist (1904), with its treatment of the territorial aspirations and anxieties prompted by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire; on the other, four of the best-known stories from his celebrated collection Tales from the Prow (1899), with the transnational and transcultural ethos that animates the maritime life they describe. Whether digging up ancient relics from the ground or diving down into the oral traditions of the sea, the works in this volume plumb the potentialities of the modern Greek novel. An allegory-cum-folktale-cum-morality play, The Archeologist presents us with the disparate forces shaping an emergent Greek modernity via the tale of two brothers, their romances, and the homosocial patterns of desire to which those romances attest. The elder brother, Aristodemus, literally succumbs to the cold dead weight of his obsession with antiquity and the fatal romanticizing of the foreign philhellene scholars with whom he consorts. The younger, Dimitrakis, smitten by the peasant vitality of the “bastardized” Elpida, promises, through the anticipated literal and figurative fruitfulness of this union, to hold at bay the encroachments of the Ottoman, Bulgarian, Serb, and Vlach neighbors he is in competition with. Similar themes of fraternal competition, betrayal, and commemoration shape the selections from Tales from the Prow, stories gleaned from the yarns told to Karkavitsas by the salty seafarers he encountered during his time as a ship’s physician; as Johanna Hanink writes in her introduction, they attest to Karkavitsas’s reclamation of “the deep as the literary territory of the modern Greek nation-state” (xxxix) and the inauguration of a rich and lasting tradition of modern Greek maritime writing. Situated on two resonant frontiers of Greek modernity, the volume presents us with worlds within worlds—worlds both central and marginal, modern and ancient, that undergird just as much as they unsettle some of that modernity’s central discourses. Hanink’s training as a classicist and her work focusing on the legacies of antiquity inform a remarkable introduction that contextualizes and frames her translations by means of the two aforementioned axes. In other words, the introduction locates Karkavitsas not only in terms of his national contexts but also in terms of his broader transnational literary and cultural concerns, which range from the role of the distant past in the conception of the modern nation to the evolution of maritime literature. If, as Anthony Burgess famously said, “translation . . . is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture,” the pleasures of reading this volume are very much deepened by a pedagogical positioning that elucidates not only the role of Karkavitsas in the development of the modern Greek novel, but also, in tandem, the intersections and dialogues—from Phil-hellenism to naturalism—that animate global literary cultures. [End Page 488] Of course, no discussion of works in translation ought to overlook the question of language, of language as culture—a point of particular significance to any discussion of these...

The emergence of a political-pedagogical teacher subjectivity: Chilean teachers’ struggle to bring pedagogy back into the political sphere

This paper analyzes the emergence of a dissident subjective position among Chilean teachers as they struggle against a new Teachers Career Policy (TCP). Since the early 1980s, comprehensive neoliberal policies have reshaped Chilean society. During this period, teachers were described as an absent subject. However, in 2014 dissident teachers spontaneously asserted themselves against a new TCP inaugurating the teachers’ spring, which in 2015 involved a 57-days strike, and again 50 days in 2019. Using the Foucauldian notion of subjective limits, I present the results of a study based on a narrative approach to understand the formation of a dissident subjectivity among Chilean teachers. I conducted 35 interviews with ten leaders and eight grassroots teachers of seven different dissident teachers’ organizations. The findings focus on analyzing political-pedagogical dissent as the central discourse mobilized by teachers to disrupt the new TCP. This discourse enables dissident teachers to clarify the current limits of their work, allowing a set of experimental practices to unfold. Finally, I discuss the emergence of a dissident teacher’s subject as a case that evokes and illustrates how new forms of political subjectivities enable us to understand the current crisis of neoliberalism experienced in Chile.

The Absence of Women in the Land of Bliss

In The Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha, the descriptions of “no women” and “transforming the female body” cause criticism and defense among modern researchers. However, “woman” as the central discourse has not been clarified. In the Buddhist gender myth, the fundamental distinction between men and women is the realization of “sexual difference”, which means that the subject orientates its desire and ways to satisfy the desire in the world of the conditioned co-arising. Therefore, what the Land of Bliss negates is more desire itself than women. “No women” eliminates the desire and ego-grasping of male Buddhists, and “transforming the female body” enlightens female Buddhists as to the emptiness of herself and the impossibility of desire. As a result, all sentient beings are liberated from sexuality and practice the act of truth.

US Raciolinguistics Heated Discourses: Can They be Brought to Indonesia?

Raciolinguistics gained its momentum to grow fast when the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement achieved its popularity in the United States. However, although the number of debates regarding raciolinguistic contributions to minimize racism acts among language experts in the United States has been continuously growing, this condition seems to have no significant impact on Indonesian linguistic study. From the library research, it has been found that even though the language racism issues, whether individual, communal and epistemic, are very common to be found in Indonesia, the attempts to bring raciolinguistics and language racism as a central discourse is so little. Indonesia has a multiracial society which makes this situation susceptible to disintegration without proper racism management. A survey published by the Washington Post newspaper puts Indonesia into the 5 most racist countries in the world and mentions 30-39.9 percent of Indonesia's citizens are racist. This survey is an indicator that racism might become a great issue for Indonesia. Based on this reason this article is presented. The article explains the background of the emergence of raciolinguitics, its development in the US, and the urgency of raciolinguistics to be developed in Indonesia. This article also describes some of the challenges that raciolinguitics might face in their efforts to introduce raciolinguitics in Indonesia.

Loss and Return of Ecological View in the Discourse of Political Ecology

Ecological and human health conditions are at stake in today's most pressing issue: balancing the needs of the natural world with the requirements of human society. The long-term repercussions of social and environmental changes can be better understood by studying both ecological and political-economic history. Floodplains are a great place to learn how civilisation and nature interact over time in a region. To keep pace with the developments in both technology and society, wetland conditions and social-ecological phenomena are constantly re-engineered. Different land and access regulations simultaneously affect the management and health of wetlands. Among environmental studies, political ecology is a subfield that focuses on social relations and the co-production of the natural environment and human society. Political economy, post-modernism, and agrarian studies are among the sources of conceptual inspiration. This research attempts to evaluate prominent actors (e.g., government agencies and enterprises) and what is assumed in central discourses about environmental issues. The debate over ecology's place and significance in political ecology rage on. Several political ecology initiatives actively deal with biological sciences, whereas others stay within more human scientific sociological theories, where ecology generally pertains to the environment. Keywords: discourse; ecological view; loss; political ecology; return

British New Left’s Multiple Paradigm Analysis and Theoretical Review of Marxist Cultural Theory

Since the 20th century, culture has gradually become the central discourse, becoming increasingly complex and difficult to understand. The current academic research on Marxist cultural theory is more based on the perspectives of cultural and political philosophy, while the inspection from the perspective of paradigm has not been fully reflected. This paper attempts to sort out the multi-dimensional paradigm analysis of Marxist cultural theory by British New Left and clarify how they solve the cultural crisis by reconstructing cultural concepts. Firstly, by re-exploring the relationship between culture and the base/ superstructure theory model, breaking the shackles of economic determinism and releasing the relative autonomy of culture. Secondly, focus on the materialist view of culture, criticize elitism, and stimulate the political liberation potential of culture. Finally, combine ideology and hegemony theory to solve the cultural structure and subject dilemma. After the transformation of multiple paradigms and theoretical disputes, British New Left has expanded the interpretation space of Marxist cultural theory, but it has also gradually fallen into the whirlpool of postmodernism and has drifted away from historical materialism.