Contentious 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.

The moderating effect of place attachment on visitors’ trust and support for recreational fees in national parks

The success of fee programs on public lands hinges on visitors' perceptions and reactions towards recreational fees, emphasizing the importance of understanding visitor dynamics in park management decisions. Using Indiana Dunes National Park in the U.S. as the study context, this study investigates the role of trust and place attachment in shaping visitors' support for national park entrance fees. Informed by social judgment theory, we hypothesize that place identity (socio-emotional attachment) will strengthen the relationship between trust and fee support, while place dependence (functional attachment) will weaken it. Our sample included 900 park visitors. The findings showed that as visitors’ place dependence increased, trust in the park agency became less critical in fee support. However, place identity did not significantly impact the trust-fee support relationship. These results underscore the importance of building trust and fostering place dependence among visitors to increase support for fee-related decisions by park managers. This study extends the environmental psychology literature and the recreation fee literature by furthering our understanding of the interplay among trust, place attachment, and fee support in the context of protected area management, providing insights for policymakers and park managers grappling with the contentious discourse surrounding park fees.

Sustaining altitude pastures in mountain landscapes–a fuzzy cognitive model approach

Similarly to other European mountain areas, in Serra da Estrela the grazing pressure has been reducing due to social and economic drivers that have pushed shepherds and sheep to the foothill, or plainly out of the sector. Shrub encroachment on commons and other previously grazed land is one of the most tangible effects of pastoral abandonment in Serra de Estrela. The impacts of the resulting increase in landscape continuity and biomass availability were made clear in the severe fires of 2017 and 2022. As fire risk is likely to increase with climate change, it becomes urgent to understand what strategies can be deployed to keep fragmentation in these landscapes. Key actors such as shepherds should be involved in this discussion to understand their perceptions, points of view and reasons for abandoning upland pastures. In this study, we use fuzzy cognitive mapping to identify the key variables and mechanisms affecting the pastoral system according to local shepherds. In our study, we developed with local stakeholders a framework outlining the local pastoral system. Based on that, we carried out the fuzzy cognitive mapping collecting 14 questionnaires. We found that shepherds' income is a central issue, but that it is highly dependent on many factors. Increasing the Common Agricultural Policy payments alone is not enough to incentivise the use of upland pastures. More targeted strategies, such as more support for shrub clearing, and direct payments conditional to transhumance are more impactful. Despite a contentious discourse between conservation and shepherding values in Serra da Estrela, we find that shepherd's values are aligned with biodiversity conservation and a potential nature-based solution for minimizing fire risk through woody fuel management. This opens up possibilities for new governance strategies, that put Serra da Estrela's social, environmental and cultural values at its core.

Navigating the Microfinance Conundrum: Assessing the Impact of Commercialization on Financial Sustainability and Inclusion of the Poor in Developing Countries: A Review Literature

Aims: Following the inception of commercialization shifts in microfinance institutions (MFIs), financial inclusion of the poor has remained an open question. Moreover, the existing research results on this issue provide mixed findings. Thus, this study aims to analyze the effects of commercialization in MFIs on financial sustainability and inclusion of the poor. 
 The Study Design: The design of this study is literature review.
 Methodology: The study collected related literatures from different database such as google scholar, web of science, research gate, and general google search. More related scholarly published literatures were selected depending on clearly defined inclusion and exclusion criteria.
 Results: The finding of the study reveals a contentious discourse among scholars, with some asserting that commercialization leads to mission drift and a tradeoff between financial performance and depth of outreach, while others argue it offers opportunities for MFIs to achieve financial self-sustainability without compromising their original social goals.
 Conclusion: Empirical evidence suggests existence of tradeoff, as MFIs, driven by the need for financial viability, shift from serving the very poor to better-off customers, potentially neglecting their social mission. Policy recommendations call for a balanced approach, acknowledging the need for financial sustainability while emphasizing the importance of continued social outreach to alleviate poverty.
 Significance: The current study provides recent updates on existing debates and enriches knowledge.

The Body and Gender in Perspective

The concept of body and gender brought contentious discourses in ethnomusicological studies and analysis over the centuries and has become a central issue for consideration in the 21st century. This discourse is based on gender and bodies’ evolvement in ethnomusicology and how relevant these issues are to 21st-century ethnomusicologists. The paper employed existing literature to discuss theories and conceptual analysis of bodies, gender, and ethnomusicology from different societies, status, sexual orientation, and value divergence. The findings reiterated that ethnomusicological discourse presently sees the physical body and social body as a connecting process to multiple types of power relations such as social control and gender formation. Most importantly, cultural identity, gender, and sexuality in cross-cultural enclaves such as homosexuality and transgender in Africa pose an ideological, cultural, and legitimacy quandary to ethnomusicologists in the 21st century. Therefore, ethnomusicological discourse must have a comprehensive method for resolving ethical dilemmas in cross-cultural and social phenomena.

The Relationship Between Argumentative Speaking and Writing among EFL Students

This study looks at the connection between argumentative writing and speaking among sixth-semester EFL students at Moulay Ismail University in Morocco’s English Studies department. In order to achieve this objective, a total of 80 undergraduate students who were learning English as a foreign language (EFL) were selected as participants. Participants were then given both speaking and writing examinations to assess their argumentation skills in these two areas. Regression and correlation analyses were performed in SPSS on the study’s data. The findings show a substantial difference between speaking and writing in contentious discourse, in addition to a high positive association. Argumentative speaking was statistically proven to predict a great proportion of argumentative writing. The findings suggest integrating argumentative speaking and writing in teaching and assessment practices in a balanced way. The two skills can be taught along with each other to facilitate correspondences between the two modalities in argumentative genre. As the study concludes, it offers valuable insights into the implications of these findings, highlights the research limitations encountered during the research process, and provides recommendations for future endeavors in the realm of language pedagogy and assessment. This study not only contributes to our understanding of the interplay between argumentative writing and speaking but also paves the way for more comprehensive and integrated language instruction practices in EFL contexts.

Tugging at the Veil: Critical Race Methods for Analyzing Educational Gag Orders

Key educational and political players have been publicly engaged in contentious discourse regarding policies that restrict discourse on race, gender, and topics like meritocracy. This article critically analyzes four educational gag orders, with a distinct emphasis on the falsification of critical race theory (CRT) present. Whiteness as Property and Racial Realism provide analytic frameworks for calling attention to how our contemporary political climate reflects historical trends of continued epistemic oppression and injustice that seek protection for the collective White American consciousness. Concluding discussions advocate for the explicit utility of counterstories for tugging at the veil of majoritarian narratives of racial justice and equity.

Affinity through Vulnerability​: The Politics of Positionality in Child Welfare

Child welfare is a challenging space for professionals, parents, and most of all children. The labour of care within this space is an intersection of personal histories and ongoing narratives that synthesise self, family, medicine, and the state. I explore how encounters with children in care brought me into this nexus and redefined my position as a researcher. Competing perspectives on the role of experience in shaping affinity reveal a contentious discourse about what it means to be a foster child. In this Position Piece I find that sharing vulnerability through the traumatic experience of family estrangement is one path to mutual understanding that may transcend cultural boundaries. Further, mobilising and reflecting on the vulnerability of estrangement demonstrates the social embeddedness of mental health and healing.

A mixed methods study exploring requests for unproven COVID therapies such as ivermectin and healthcare distrust in the rural South

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to contentious discourse regarding unproven COVID-19 therapies (UCTs),(e.g. ivermectin). Despite recommendations against it, ivermectin remains, in some areas, highly demanded. The goal of this study is to understand patient and provider perspectives about UCTs (e.g., ivermectin) and how responses to requests for UCTs impact healthcare distrust. This mixed methods observational study was conducted in a rural healthcare system in the Southern United States. Adults (n = 26) with a history of COVID-19 or clinicians (n = 8) from the same system were interviewed using questionnaires assessing healthcare distrust and qualitatively interviewed exploring perceptions about UCTs. Patient themes were: 1) Importance of anecdotal stories for decision-making; 2) Use of haphazard approaches to ‘research’; 3) Strong distrust of government and healthcare organizations; 4) Inherent trust in local healthcare; 5) Decision-making as weighing pros/cons; and 6) Feeling a right to try medications. High survey medians indicated high distrust with differences of 8.5 points for those who requested/used ivermectin versus those who did not (p = 0.027). Clinician themes were: 1) Frustration when patients trust social media over clinicians; 2) Acceptance of community beliefs about UCTs; 3) Distrust originating outside of the healthcare system; 4) Feeling torn about prescribing UCTs to build trust; and 5) Variable educational strategies. When clinicians are perceived as aligned with government, this may void patients’ trust of clinicians. Clinicians should leverage trust in local healthcare and distance themselves from distrusted information sources. Ethical questions arise regarding appropriateness of acquiescing to patient requests for ivermectin for building trust.

571: REQUESTS FOR IVERMECTIN AND HEALTHCARE DISTRUST IN THE RURAL SOUTH

Introduction: The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to contentious discourse around issues related to vaccines and unproven COVID-19 therapies (UCTs), such as ivermectin. Despite recommendations against its use, ivermectin remains heavily used, and in some areas, highly demanded. We explored perceptions of patients living in the rural South about UCTs and healthcare distrust. Methods: This mixed methods study was conducted from 2021-2022 in Moultrie, Georgia. Adult patients with a history of COVID-19 were recruited from inpatient and outpatient settings of a healthcare system. Validated phone questionnaires assessing healthcare distrust and a 30-minute qualitative interview exploring healthcare trust, perceptions of UCTs, and evidence-based therapies (eg monoclonal antibodies and vaccines) were conducted. Thematic analysis was applied to transcripts. Nonparametric independent samples Mann-Whitney U tests used conducted to compare survey means (95% CI). Results: We recruited 26 patients (62% female, 85% white). Eight themes emerged: 1) Anecdotal stories and personal experiences influence decision-making about COVID-19; 2) Use of a haphazard approach to ‘research’; 3) Strong distrust of national government and healthcare organizations; 4) Strong trust in local doctors and the local health system; 5) Decision-making is viewed as weighing pros and cons; 6) Lack of consistency in COVID-19 related medication decisions (eg ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, remdesivir); and 7) Patients value autonomous decisions about their healthcare and feel they have a right to try medications (knowing possible risks). High survey means indicated high distrust; healthcare distrust mean scores of those who requested/used ivermectin versus those who did not had a mean difference of 7.1 points (p=0.027). Conclusions: Although trust of healthcare and government was low, trust in local physicians was high. Patients value the right to try ivermectin, this desire was fueled by distrust of government. If clinicians are perceived as aligned with the government, such alignment may void trust of clinicians. Health messages should invoke patient autonomy and be framed as presenting options (including pros/cons) and should balance patient autonomy with clinicians’ ethical parameters around unproven medical treatments.

Framing Post-2011 Syria in the Translation of Samar Yazbek’s Bawa:ba:t ard alʿadam: The Crossing My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria

Drawing on narrative theory and theories of paratext, this article examines the translation of Samar Yazbek’s 2014 Bawa:ba:t ard alʿadam into English, paying close attention to how this text is translated, packaged and circulated for the consumption of Anglophone literary market. It argues that the translation and packaging of Yazbek’s text becomes a means of foregrounding or suppressing certain narratives and of positioning and enacting agency. Considering the metamorphosis of a once peaceful, secular revolution into radicalised insurgency hijacked by Daesh and other extremist groups, this article argues that translatorial agents demonstrate a proclivity to feed entrenched stereotypes and public narratives about the protagonists of the Syrian civil conflict through translation and translation peritexts. Through the use of various textual, contextual, and peritextual framing strategies, the translation appears to be entangled with pre-existing and ideologically-motivated public narratives circulating in the West. These narratives include Orientalist depictions of the Arab World and contentious discourses on veiling, oppression, and terrorism, which are reflected in how the highly politicised narratives of the source text are translated, and the way peritextual materials are designed and packaged by the publisher. These effects have ultimately produced the text for the Anglophone readership both familiar and exotic. .

Naturism as an experience through oral history

ABSTRACT With this study we intend to explore the impact of naturism on the Valencian anarcho-syndicalist power base in the 1920s and 1930s. The methodology used in this article has been oral history, since we consider this as the most useful to access the ways of understanding reality, as represented by historical actors. In fact, we have analysed unpublished oral sources to examine the processes of reappropriation of spaces and their uses developed by libertarian militants. Through the collective practices associated with naturism, the libertarian militant structured new contentious discourses that influenced the return to nature as an essential phase of the revolution. These experiences would engender the basis upon which to construct an anarcho-naturist identity, along with a whole set of new meanings and representative universe, which varied according to the experiences of each militant. In short, with this work we interrogate the different representations and subjective experiences of the libertarian militancy around naturism and its practices, which will thus improve the understanding of the weight of naturist collective practices in the imaginary, and in the process of constructing the identity of libertarian militant.

Responses to health risk and suffering: ‘China’ in the Italian media discourses during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic

Italy was one of the first European countries affected by the Covid-19 pandemic after the beginning of the outbreak in China in January 2020. Applying critical discourse analysis and theories of the mediation of suffering, this article explores the discursive strategies used by the Italian media to represent China and Chinese people in relation to the outbreak in the early stage of the pandemic. Employing the theoretical frameworks of Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and other thinkers on biopolitics, racism, and emergency, the results bring to light the persistent ideologies behind the media representations of an imagined Other, which reflect existing discourses toward the Chinese community in Italy. In this study, the contentious discourses around China and the Chinese amidst the pandemic reveal the role of the Italian media in presenting risks, mediating suffering as a distant event and, later, as a national concern.

Whose money matters in public education: A “public” good that parents purchase

Instead of asking whether money matters, this paper questions whose money matters in public education. Previous literature on education funding uses an aggregate expenditure per pupil to measure the relationship between education funding and academic performance. Federalism creates mainly three levels of funding sources: federal, state, and local governments. Examining New York State school districts, most equitably funded across school districts among the 50 states, this paper shows that neither federal nor state funds are positively correlated with graduation rates. Only local revenues for school districts indicate a strong positive impact. Parents’ money matters. This finding contributes to a contentious discourse on education funding policy in the governments, courts, and academia with respect to education funding and inequality in American public schools.

Key issues in the field of macro‐sociolinguistics of the Maghreb: Societal debates and contentious discourse

AbstractSociolinguistic debates and controversies in the Maghreb can be explained as a function of the complexity of the linguistic facts on the ground, their stereotypical representations and their essentialization in political, everyday and also academic discourses. This contribution aims to produce a critical synthesis of the important issues linked to the status of the official languages, namely institutional Arabic and school Tamazight, which some social actors oppose to the first languages of the people of the Maghreb, namely Maghrebi Arabic and Berber languages. Current debates also concern the question of the replacement of French by English in academia, English being defended by the Arabist elite in order to reduce the field of influence of the francophone elite.

Reflective inquiry in teacher education: interanimating authoritative and internally persuasive discourses

ABSTRACT Teachers often find themselves in the midst of developing their own ideologies while facing authoritative demands on classroom instruction. Internally persuasive discourses shaping these ideologies come from education theories, methods instruction, professional workshops, and teachers’ own research. This narrative inquiry follows four graduate students and the teacher researcher in a graduate education course as they discover ways to improve their classroom practices while finding authoritative voices for themselves. Narrated by the teacher researcher, participants’ stories illustrate authoritative discourses in teaching contexts, internally persuasive discourses framing ideologies about teaching, and the reflective inquiry interanimating the two. Using reflective inquiry to mediate authoritative and internally persuasive discourses, participants navigated tensions caused by these two conflicting discourses while experiencing ideological becoming. Findings indicate that multimodal/multigenre inquiry projects provided access, legitimacy, competence, and values. Further, next steps suggest the importance of using reflective inquiry to mitigate contentious discourses in education.

Visions of Peace Amidst a Human Rights Crisis: War on Drugs in Colombia and the Philippines

AbstractPeace is one of most widely used yet highly contested concepts in contemporary politics. What constitutes peace? That broad analytic inquiry motivates this article, which focuses on the contentious discourses of peace within a society besieged by widespread trafficking and use of illegal drugs. Focusing on the illegal drug problem in Colombia and the Philippines, the central puzzle of this paper constitutes two fundamental questions: How do state leaders justify their respective “war on drugs”? How do they construct and discursively articulate ideals of peace in the context of the illegal drug problem? This paper compares the post-9/11 Colombian war on drugs (2002–2010) vis-à-vis the Philippine war on drugs under the Duterte administration (2016–2019), particularly in terms of how their presidential administrations articulate “peace” in the context of resolving the drug problem. The paper examines the varying discourses of peace, investigates how those local discourses relate to global discourses on peace and illegal drugs, and underscores how and under which conditions those peace discourses portray the material distributive conflicts in those societies. The core argument states that the Uribe and Duterte administrations primarily deployed the notion of peace as a justificatory discourse for increased state repression, intensified criminalization of the drug problem, and the reluctance of the state in embracing a public health approach to the proliferation of illegal drugs.

Conflict Over Peace? The United States’ and Russia’s Diverging Conceptual Approaches to Peace and Conflict Settlement

Peace remains a highly contested analytical and political concept. Yet scholarly engagement with the empirical diversity of how states understand peace is strikingly rare. Following the constructivist view of peace as a subjective ontology, we investigate the peace conceptualisations of Russia and the United States as reflected in the contentious discourses at the United Nations Security Council. We seek to reveal whether the political debates reflect the plurality of analytical approaches to peace and study the conflict potentials that arise from clashes between conceptual subject positions. We find substantive divergence in the states’ basic understandings of peace and argue that the investigation of their respective conceptions opens an additional and much-needed perspective on the political discord between the two veto powers.

Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices by Catherine Russell (review)

Reviewed by: Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices by Catherine Russell Joshua Wiebe Catherine Russell. Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices. Duke University Press, 2018. 280 pages. $26.95 There are two constitutive problems at the heart of Catherine Russell's 2018 book. Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices. The first is a definitional one, motivating Russell to return again and again to declarative statements intended to articulate just what 'archiveology' is and how it functions. For Russell, "archiveology is above all a means of returning to the images of the past that were produced to entertain, or produced for more serious purposes of documentary recording, and reviewing them for new ways of making history come alive in new forms."1 She explains: "Etymologically, archiveology might mean the study of archives, but the Greek suffix '-ology' actually refers to someone who speaks in a certain manner. When applied to film practice, it refers to the use of the image archive as a language."2 "Archiveology names the process by which the image bank in its fundamental contingency and instability becomes a means by which history can speak back to the present."3 The second concern centers around the work of German philosopher Walter Benjamin, and the conceptual applicability his work on collecting, criticism, translation, memory, and aesthetics has for the extensive practices of archival/found footage filmmaking. Synthesizing the two interests, Russell contends that "archiveology as a cultural practice is a crucial point of convergence of many of Benjamin's central ideas," an argument which directly addresses film studies' thirty-year love affair with Benjamin.4 Drawing the neologism from a brief piece from 1991 by Joel Katz entitled "From Archive to Archiveology," Russell performs the very function she analyzes, re-purposing Katz's work to new, unpredictable ends. Conspicuously, the lineage of archiveology from Katz's essay is established through a single reference without direct quotation: Russell cites Katz in the first chapter and then he disappears. This mindful attention to the force of citational practices (demonstrated by omission, in this case) shows an affinity with Benjamin that goes beyond the instrumental. Russell's re-purposing of Katz's notion exemplifies her methodological attraction to Benjamin's style of citation. "Quotations in [Benjamin's] work are like wayside robbers who leap out, armed, and relieve the idle stroller of [their] conviction."5 We might think of Katz in Archiveology as another kind of thief, trussed up and disarmed, left by the side of the road having been relieved of his weapons. In the case of Katz, 'archiveology' was intended to introduce an approach "more archaeological than historiographic," reflexively interrogating the "archival film […] as representation of history within particular economic, social and cultural constructs, and not as pure History itself."6 Russell here pushes further, insisting that images "are constitutive of historical experience and not merely a representation of it."7 Where Katz confines archiveology to "those who attempt to interrogate the archive in its own terms," Russell regards it as the very language of the archive itself.8 Interrogation being only one mode of enunciation, Russell's expanded terminology (though not so inclusive as to become what Derrida proposes-- "archiviology, […] designat[ing] a general and interdisciplinary science of the archive"9) enables her [End Page 10] to more attentively work through a larger filmography with broadened concerns informed by the vast and contentious discourse surrounding the archive. The most obvious reference point for Russell's work is Benjamin's never-ending opus, The Arcades Project, which sought to introduce "the principle of montage into history" by way of an immense network of references and criticism.10 Already a privileged element in theories of the cinematic, Benjamin's montage is elevated to that exclusive filmic means by which "the work of art" is produced.11 Following Benjamin's conjoining a theory of the cinematic to a theory of history, Russell closes the circuit by returning to the cinematic with all the benefits of having been steeped in Benjamin's historical analysis. In the famous "Work of Art" essay, Benjamin states: The finished film is the exact antithesis of a work created at a single stroke. It is...

Policy Feedback and the Racialization of Affirmative Action, 1961-1980

ABSTRACT Since the 1960s, U.S. lawmakers have used affirmative action policies to promote equal opportunity. Although these policies have played an important role in redressing historical discrimination by helping women, racial and ethnic minorities, citizens with disabilities, and veterans to make progress in employment and education, their effects for racial equity in higher educational access have come to dominate popular perceptions of affirmative action and drive the often contentious political discourse surrounding it. How did popular understandings of affirmative action policy become so racialized, and what are the implications of this racialization for its capacity to redress past wrongs? This paper examines the early political development of affirmative action policy in the U.S. from its emergence in 1961 through 1980. Historical analysis suggests that the contentious race-centered politics of affirmative action that emerged after the landmark Regents v. Bakke case is a matter of policy feedback effects.