Contemporary Advocacy Research Articles

Achieving Advocacy Success-The International Society for Physical Activity and Health's Long-Term Strategy to Advance Physical Activity as a Priority in Global Health Policy.

In 2011, physical inactivity was described as the Cinderella risk factor for noncommunicable diseases. This metaphor was used to highlight the disjunct between the advancing evidence on physical inactivity as a risk factor for ill health, its high prevalence, and the paucity of global policy response or priority afforded to physical activity. This paper describes the strategic actions of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH) to raise the profile of physical activity as a global public health priority. From 2008, ISPAH coordinated a long-term advocacy strategy to advance the status of physical activity and promote its presence as a priority within global health policy. The society employed an advocacy mix that reflected contemporary advocacy theory and models. Through 6 advocacy deliverables, aligned to the global calendar of United Nations and World Health Organization policy developments, ISPAH seized the opportunity to advance physical activity policy and strategies to inform global noncommunicable disease action planning and align with the Sustainable Development Goals. ISPAH's successful execution of global advocacy for physical activity highlights the importance of leadership, clear objectives, progressive action, timeliness, partnerships, and persistence. As a result of strategic global advocacy since 2008, the field in 2024 is better positioned in relation to global professional mobilization, policy, and technical support for physical activity. However, despite impressive progress across more than 12years, and the innovation of the Global Action Plan on Physical Activity, the work of global advocacy for physical activity is far from complete.

Axes of the contribution of contemporary advocacy discourse to civilizational development

Axes of the contribution of contemporary advocacy discourse to civilizational development

Semantics of the call to Allah for the multiple stating of one Quranic story (The story of the prophet of Allah Lot peace be upon him, as A modal)

Qur'an narration is distinguished by the variety of recurrence; this recurrence is replete with secrets, wisdom, and many more. This is done on several levels, including linguistic, rhetorical, semantic, and exegetic. There is no doubt that one of the greatest of these levels is the advocacy level. Through it, Qur’an narration is exposed in several contexts and positions bearing benefits and advocacy implications. Among these stories was the story of the Prophet of God Lut (Peace Be Upon Him) with his people; it was mentioned in several Surahs in the Holy Qur’an; theses are: (Al-A'raf, Hood, Al-Hijr, Prophets, Poets, Ants, Spider, Safat, Moon, Prohibition), separated in one surah, a briefness in another, and a passing reference in a third. Between detail and brevity come advocacy indications at the level of the preacher, the audience, the subject of the call, the means, and methods. This research is a brief scientific attempt to clarify those advocacy implications behind the multiple occurrences of the story of the Prophet of God Lot (Peace Be Upon Him) in more than one Surah in the Holy Qur’an, provided that these advocacy connotations bear the spirit of the Qur’anic text and the opinions of the scholars of interpretation that came around it, with a simple projection on the contemporary advocacy reality. Thus, the research combines the novelty of the idea, the originality of the material, and the realism of the proposition so that preachers and pretenders can benefit from it in the contemporary advocacy reality. It is my attempt to make the research representative of the building block in the edifice of modern advocacy studies as much as the effort and energy. And Allah the Almighty is behind the intent.

The Regulation, Reclamation, and Resistance of Queer Kinship in Contemporary India.

Since 2014, two legislative actions, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights)Act 2019, and the Draft Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill 2021, have been pivotal in re-inscribing the Indian state’s colonial policing of queer kinship networks. By criminalising relationalities outside the heteropatriarchal conjugal home, the sexual subaltern is exposed to the state’s mechanisms of rescue and rehabilitation. These developments have occurred alongside the constitutional recognition of privacy in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1 and the decriminalisation of the anti-sodomy law in Navtej Johar v. Union of India 2018 (10) SCALE 386 which have been celebrated as victories of self-determination and dignity for queer kinship. These judicial pronouncements, although symbolically pertinent, fail to materially protect queer kinship, and with the contemporary advocacy around queer marriage, the need for legal and cultural recognition has obfuscated the substantive needs of pre-existing queer alliances. Queer communities continue to organise for their own emancipation and despite their vulnerability, queer visibility offers a public counter-narrative of resistance and survival against the brutalities of society and the state.

Messianic hopes at the moral carnival – The [rhetorical] question of advocating for the humanities, for now

Why must the humanities be defended? What is to be said in their name? This inquiry does not seek to make a case for the humanities. It is rather concerned with what happens in contemporary advocacy that contends for the value of the humanities, the myriad arguments that take on the responsibility of speaking for the humanities and expressing the good for which the humanities are thought responsible. In all of this work, in so many efforts to argue the humanities, what remains uncomprehended, and indeed what is regularly set aside as simply incomprehensible, is the work of rhetorical-argument itself, the contingent conditions, dynamics and power of a response, the response-ability on which a comprehension of the humanities may yet depend.

In Memoriam: David P. Schuyler

In Memoriam: David P. Schuyler

الإسهامات الدعویة للفتاوى الإلکترونیة بین ضوابطها الشرعیة وآفاقها المستقبلیة

يهدف هذا البحث إلى : بيان الإسهامات الدعوية للفتاوى الإلکترونية المعاصرة ، ومجالاتها الدعوية ، ودورها في مواجهة الفتاوى الشاذة ، والفکر المتطرف ، وبيان الإسهامات الدعوية لمرکز الأزهر العالمي للفتوى الإلکترونية ، ووضع الضوابط الشرعية والدعوية التي تجعلها أکثر إيجابية وانضباطية، وتأثيرا، وتوافقا مع المستجدات المعاصرة والمستقبلية، مع الترکيز على استشراف الآفاق المستقبلية للفتاوى الإلکترونية ، بتقويمها ، وتقديم تصورات مقترحة لتفعيل دورها في مجال العمل الدعوى المعاصر. وقد وظف الباحث في دراسته لهذا الموضوع المنهج الوصفي ، والتحليلي . بهدف وصف الظاهرة المدروسة من حيث طبيعتها ، ووجودها ، وأبعادها ، وإيجابياتها ، وسلبياتها ، وتقويمها بهدف التعرف على إسهاماتها فى مجال العمل الدعوى، مع الإسقاطات الدعوية على التجربة المصرية بمرکز الأزهر للفتوى الإلکترونية. وفى ضوء المنهج العلمي: تناولت الدراسة : الإسهامات الدعوية للفتاوى الإلکترونية المعاصرة ؛ وبيان دورها الدعوى والثقافي في معالجة القضايا المعاصرة ، وبيان تحدياتها الفکرية کالفتاوى الإلکترونية الشاذة ، وخطرها على المجتمعات ، وسبل مواجهتها ، ووضع الضوابط الشرعية والدعوية لها، ثم استشراف الآفاق المستقبلية للفتاوى الإلکترونية ؛ حتى نؤسس المستقبل الدعوى على ضوابط شرعية ؛ لضمان فاعليته وتأثيره في الحاضر والمستقبل . وتوصلت الدراسة إلى : أهمية وسيلة الفتاوى الإلکترونية فى ميدان العمل الدعوى المعاصر وتنوع الأدوار الدعوية والثقافية لها، وأثبتت الدراسة أن الأصل فى الفتاوى أن تکون منضبطة ، وأن انتشارها حاضرا ، ونجاحها مستقبلا لا يکون إلا بانضباطها الشرعي والدعوى ، لنصدر للعالم إفتاء إلکتروني معاصرا ، مؤثرا ، وفعالا دعويا وثقافيا . وأوصت الدراسة : بضرورة تأسيس الوسائل الدعوية المعاصرة على ضوابط شرعية محکمة ، وربط عنصر الاستقبال فيها بالضابط الشرعي. وأکدت الدراسة على ضرورة إخضاع الفتاوى الإلکترونية لضوابط معرفية، وقياسية، وتقنية؛ لسلامة الفتوى من الاختراق، وضرورة الإشراف والمتابعة والتقويم للفتاوى الإلکترونية قبل تصديرها للمدعوين ، وأوصت الدراسة بضرورة الوصول بالفتاوى الإلکترونية للفئات المهمشة من المدعوين کالنساء ، وذوى الاحتياجات الخاصة ، والقاطنين بعيدا عن مؤسسات ومرجعيات الفتوى الرسمية. This research aims to: Explain the advocacy contributions to contemporary electronic fatwas, their areas of advocacy, and their role in confronting anomalous fatwas, extremist thought, and the advocacy contributions of Al-Azhar International Center for Electronic Fatwa, and lay down legal and advocacy controls that make them more positive, disciplinary, influential, and in line with contemporary and future developments , With a focus on exploring future prospects for electronic fatwas, evaluating them, and submitting proposed scenarios to activate their role in contemporary advocacy work. The researcher has employed in his study of this topic the descriptive and analytical method. With the aim of describing the studied phenomenon in terms of its nature, its existence, its dimensions, its pros and cons, and its evaluation in order to identify its contributions in the field of legal action, with the advocacy projections on the Egyptian experience at Al-Azhar Center for Electronic Fatwa. In light of the scientific method: the study dealt with: Advocacy contributions to contemporary electronic fatwas. Explaining its role in advocacy and culture in addressing contemporary issues, explaining its intellectual challenges such as anomalous electronic fatwas, their danger to societies, and ways to confront them, and setting legal and advocacy controls for them, and then exploring future prospects for electronic fatwas. In order for the future to base the case on Sharia controls; To ensure its effectiveness and impact in the present and in the future. The study concluded: The importance of the electronic fatwa method in the field of contemporary advocacy work and the diversity of its advocacy and cultural roles, and the study has proven that the basis for fatwas is that they are disciplined, and that their spread is present, and their success in the future can only be through their legal discipline and the case, so that we issue to the world a contemporary, effective electronic fatwa. And effective advocacy and cultural. The study recommended: The necessity of establishing contemporary advocacy methods based on tight legal controls, and linking the reception component in them to the Sharia officer. The study emphasized the need to subject electronic fatwas to cognitive, standard and technical controls. For the fatwa's safety from penetration, and the need to supervise, follow up and evaluate electronic fatwas before they are issued to invitees, and the study recommended the necessity of accessing electronic fatwas to marginalized groups of invitees, such as women, people with special needs, and those living far from the institutions and references of the official fatwa.

Modernização da Advocacia: a flexibilização do advogado contemporâneo e a importância das implicações da Lei n. 8.906/94 na preservação do pensamento crítico

O presente artigo possui como objeto analisar a modernização da advocacia através do atual modelo de flexibilização que o advogado contemporâneo tem que adotar para se sustentar na profissão e a importância das implicações da Lei n. 8.906/94 na preservação do pensamento crítico, preceitos morais subjetivos e condutas éticas. A advocacia contemporânea evoluiu em relação ao modelo clássico, sendo fruto de uma transformação social que resultou na necessária adequação à informatização corrente. Por outro lado, o gradativo aumento de profissionais no mercado, pautados justamente pela acessibilidade e informatização, tem induzido uma possível mercantilização da profissão através da publicidade desenfreada de informações e a produção mecanizada dos processos, desestimulando o senso crítico. O método de pesquisa foi o indutivo e o procedimento monográfico. Utilizou-se também a técnica da pesquisa bibliográfica para fundamentação. As Considerações Finais apresentam os aspectos mais relevantes ao tema, comprovando-se, ou não, a hipótese básica.

The Tools of Management

At the same time that workers' rights are generally declining in the United States (US), workplace computing systems gather more data about workers and their activities than ever before. The rise of large scale labor analytics raises questions about how and whether workers could use such data to advocate for their own goals. Here, we analyze the historical development of workplace technology design methods in CSCW to show how mid-20th century labor responses to scientific management can inform directions in contemporary digital labor advocacy. First, we demonstrate how specific methodological tendencies from industrial scientific management were adapted to work in CSCW, and then subsequently altered in crowd work and social computing research to more closely resemble industrial approaches. Next, we show how three tactics used by labor unions to strategically engage with industrial scientific management in the mid-20th century can inform data-driven worker advocacy in platform-mediated work. Finally, we discuss how this history shapes our understanding of worker participation and the implications of using worker data for contemporary advocacy goals.

Advocacy Research on Homophobia in Education: Claims-Making, Trauma Construction and the Politics of Evidence

Sociology has an ambivalent relationship with advocacy research because the benefits of participation and engagement must be balanced with concerns about bias. The current study uses 10 recent research reports on homophobia in British educational settings, written and funded by campaigning charities, as a case study of contemporary advocacy research. Presenting a sociological analysis of these documents and adopting a social problems approach, claims-making processes in the reports are documented and significant methodological and analytical flaws are identified. Instead of objective research, these reports are campaigning documents that seek to gain media coverage and influence policy. Implications for how the reports should be used as resources for research and social policy are examined, and a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to engaging with advocacy research is called for.

A Necessidade de Preparação do Advogado para o Avanço da Mediação no Brasil

As a result of the crisis experienced by the Judiciary System, mediation has increasingly stood out as an appropriate method of conflict resolution. In Brazil, this method called even more attention after important laws that came into force, highlighting its importance for the current concept of access to justice. However, the culture of litigation developed in our country and the law courses focused on adversarial methods became obstacles to the proper training of legal practitioners. Considering the new reality involving contemporary advocacy, it is evident the need to overcome this adversarial culture by changing the mentality and the preparation of these professionals. From this perspective, the present article aims to demonstrate that the development of a lawyer’s collaborative posture is essential for achieving satisfactory results in mediation. Consequently, the possible lack of knowledge, preparation, and specific skills may represent an obstacle to the advancement and diffusion of mediation in Brazil

From Ancient Vegetarianism to Contemporary Advocacy

Abstaining from meat consumption has persistently been a source of debate within religious communities, often functioning as a center pivot around which theological or philosophical orthodoxy and orthopraxy turns. Drawing upon diverse ancient practices, motivations, and textual perspectives in Judaism, Christianity, and Indic traditions along with contemporary religious vegetarians, this essay maps three stages that religious communities have historically grappled with, are presently attempting, and must continue to tackle, as they re/consider eating animals and animal by-products as part of their ethical identities and community meals: (1) critical, deconstructive engagement of textual multiplicity and interpretive authority, (2) robust analysis of human supremacy in light of animal behavioral studies, new materialist science, and empathic experience, and (3) constructing imaginative coalitions beyond species, institutional boundaries, and cultural identities.

Interpreting interfluvial landscape transformations in the pre-Columbian Amazon

Despite evidence for the protracted presence of humans in the Amazon Basin, its vast interfluvial habitats are frequently depicted as having survived until recently as ‘wild’ landscapes with neither human settlement nor substantial human land use. Related research interests of paleoecology and archaeology share parallel histories in the development of explanatory paradigms for understanding processes contributing to neotropical ecology, as both emerged from earlier periods dominated by models based on stability and equilibrium to a contemporary advocacy of dynamic stability and change. Recent paradigms accommodate humans as keystone species and implicate their role in past and present landscape management. This is particularly important in the neotropics where it is argued that an extensive and ancient indigenous agroforestry employed intermediate disturbance in the management of interfluvial landscapes. This is contrasted with a critical discussion of recent paleoecological research in central and western Amazonia, which argues that interfluvial landscapes were devoid of pre-Columbian populations and survived as relatively pristine relic landscapes throughout most of the Anthropocene.

CAISO, CAISO: Negotiating sex rights and nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago

This documentation of the early beginnings of the Trinidad and Tobago-based sexual rights organization CAISO reveals some of the strategies engaged by the organization in weighing local and global tensions in contemporary advocacy work. CAISO co-founder Colin Robinson is interviewed about the group’s approach toward achievement of sexual justice and the author draws on the extensive collection of blog posts members of the group have posted since they first formed.

Principled pursuits of ‘the good citizen’ in health and physical education

Background: Over many years, Health and Physical Education curriculum initiatives have provided a notable site of contestation and debate regarding the optimum approach to educating students for ‘good citizenship’. While similarly motivated, the contributions of a range of stakeholders of varying degrees of proximity to the site of teaching and learning have been made from somewhat diverse positions, with subsequently diverse implications for the content and pedagogical imperatives of the subject. Hunter proposed that these contributions and contestations over the purpose and content of subjects are the inevitable consequence of principled positions cohering around the notion of an ideal formation of the person. Purpose: Drawing on an Australian genealogy of subjectification study and current debates in Australia regarding the constitution of a proposed national (health and) physical education (HPE) curriculum, this paper serves to demonstrate the principled bases for former and contemporary curriculum development contributions, contestations, and critique. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the influence of principled bases for the operations and interactional outcomes of curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy. Implementation: To demonstrate the pervasive presence and influence of two notable principled positions in HPE curriculum development – ‘healthy citizenship’ and ‘sports performer’ – we present findings from a genealogical analysis of curriculum reform in Queensland. The enduring influence of these principled positions is then demonstrated through contemporary advocacy initiatives for a national HPE curriculum in Australia. Conclusion: The concept of principled positions persuades curriculum stakeholders to remove themselves from arguments of right and wrong concerning schools, subjects, curricular principles, and innovations, to understand these elements as strategies which service different principled positions in relation to the same or similar educational projects. Moreover, it promotes a more circumspect and reflexive commentary on HPE and its constitution from the academic community, in the recognition that such contributions are no less shaped by certain principled views.

Integrated services in Australian early childhood education and care: what can we learn from our past?

Recent Australian interest in the integration of early childhood services is largely informed by international research and policy developments, particularly from the United Kingdom. Service integration is widely recognised as an effective means of holistically meeting the needs of children and families and ameliorating disadvantage. What is less well known is that Australia has a history of integrated early childhood services. This paper focuses on three points in 20th century Australia when advocacy for integrated early childhood service provision was evident: post‐World War I when the first Mother and Baby Welfare Clinic was established; during the late 1930s to mid 1940s with the advent of the Lady Gowrie Centres; and in the 1970s when several reports recommended the integration and co‐ordination of early years services. Attending to this history acknowledges this innovative Australian work, and provides potentially valuable, and somewhat cautionary, lessons for contemporary advocacy for integrated early childhood services.

Advocacy 2.0: An Analysis of How Advocacy Groups in the United States Perceive and Use Social Media as Tools for Facilitating Civic Engagement and Collective Action

In light of a thriving interest in social media’s ability to enhance various forms of political and organizational communication, a survey of 169 representatives from 53 national advocacy/activist groups operating in the United States was conducted to assess the extent to which these groups perceive and use social media as tools for facilitating civic engagement and collective action. Quantitative results reveal that all groups are using a variety of social media technologies to communicate with citizens almost every day. Facebook is the outlet of choice, followed closely by Twitter. Email remains popular with some groups emailing 8 million members each week. Qualitative results suggest that groups believe that social media can facilitate civic engagement and collective action by strengthening outreach efforts, enabling engaging feedback loops, increasing speed of communication and by being cost-effective. While some groups raised doubts about social media’s ability to overcome the limitations of weak ties and generational gaps, an overwhelming majority of groups see social media as essential to contemporary advocacy work and social movements, and laud its democratizing function.

From “refugee” to “migrant” in Calais solidarity activism: Re-staging undocumented migration for a future politics of asylum

The framing of issues of migration and clandestine travel in the European Union are tied up with a historically-specific ethos towards the outsider, which, after philosopher Jacques Rancière, I term a “count”. The count shaping the interventions of contemporary advocacy and humanitarian groups derives from conceptions of ethics rooted in political modernity, and – for Rancière – are also responsible for foreclosing disruptive appearances of equality. In practice, postures of compassion towards the refugee convert expressions of vocal dissent into matters for moral sympathy. In this paper I explore the implications of this claim for a future politics of asylum, focussing on moments of interruption to an underlying count. I suggest that the staging of the situation of undocumented migrants in Calais through the figure of the migrant rather than the refugee demonstrates a recasting of activism as a form of political listening rather than political speech – in this sense the interventions of anarchistic network No Borders reflect a call for a continuous “recount” of the situation, over an affirmation of a particular framing of the situation. In some ways this call remains problematic, sometimes reframing the voices of local people and migrants according to an external vision of politics. Nevertheless, I hold that this denaturalisation of compassionate hospitality as the only ethical response to asylum is useful in the broader terrain of political dissent, and points to the importance of embodied habit as a locus for enduring social transformations.

Education for All: where does religion come in?

What roles do religions play in meeting global education challenges? This article explores five potential avenues for action: advocacy, service delivery, pluralism‐focused curricula to further religious literacy, theological training for social justice, and addressing values challenges in education. Despite growing contemporary advocacy by religious institutions – individual as well as interfaith – for global education objectives, the effort is suboptimal. Faith institutions play important but complex and often under‐appreciated roles in overall global education. Poor data and controversy about public and private roles in education can contribute to religion’s exclusion from many influential debates. Outstanding institutions that strive to increase access to education and exemplify quality can better serve as models of excellence. Faith leaders and institutions offer particular advantages in meeting the pivotal challenges of education for marginalised groups and conflict‐ridden societies. Education about religion is a thorny contemporary challenge, yet religious ‘illiteracy’ can be an obstacle to social harmony and enrichment. Religion is very much at issue as explicit and shared values are increasingly seen as critical to democratic societies and to reinforcing social cohesion.

Leadership, personalization and high performance schooling: naming the new totalitarianism

In bringing together two important contemporary preoccupations, namely the development of new approaches to leadership and the push to ‘personalization’, this paper argues against the poverty of much contemporary work on personalization. In its stead it proposes an approach to leadership and management grounded, firstly, on a particular view of how we become persons and, secondly and commensurately, on a particular view of education and human flourishing. It offers a four-fold typology and practical framework severally identifying ‘impersonal’, ‘affective’, ‘high performance’ and ‘person-centred’ approaches to leadership and management. Having considered the first two it goes on to explore the third and most dangerous organizational type, the high performance learning organization, which currently dominates much of contemporary advocacy and practice. It then argues for what it suggests is a more satisfactory alternative, the person-centred learning community. Having acknowledged the dangers of what it calls ‘the soulful turn’ in leadership and management it then sketches out some of the key features of what it takes a person-centred approach to be.