Contentious Times Research Articles

Best practices: CER with vulnerable populations in contentious political environments

ABSTRACT This article outlines best practices for political scientists to consider when conducting civically engaged research (CER) with vulnerable populations during politically contentious times. Best practices are drawn from several studies or the authors’ experiences with student-led CER, and these best practices are demonstrated in a case illustrating an author’s own CER project with individuals who are incarcerated. However, all of the practices encompass the core tenets of CER (Dobbs, Kirstie Lynn, Douglas R. Hess, Graham Bullock, and Adriano Udani. [2021. “Introduction to the Symposium: Civically Engaged Research and Political Science.” PS: Political Science & Politics 54 (4): 711–715].), underscoring the importance of utilizing this approach so researchers can adapt to and deal with ethical and administrative issues as these are compounded in contentious political environments. We ultimately recommend that researchers who are interested in CER and working with vulnerable populations during these times need to develop strategies to educate collaborators about stereotypes of historically marginalized groups, provide opportunities for and document written consent from research participants, utilize convenience samples but expand recruitment techniques to prevent research fatigue, and adjust institutional practices to adapt to the political environments in which the researcher and research participants are embedded.

Editors' Introduction to Confronting Truth in Contentious Times

Editors' Introduction to Confronting Truth in Contentious Times

“It's a form of psychological warfare against educators”: Protective factors for sustaining social justice education in contentious times

The recent onslaught of divisive concepts legislation in the U.S. threatens the psychological safety of social justice educators in the workplace and the preparation of K-12 students for participation in a diverse democratic society and global community. This study identifies supports that sustain social justice educators' commitment to teaching for justice and how these supports function as protective factors against external opposition. From interviews of 17 justice-oriented teachers and administrators, ethnographic field notes and documents, findings indicate five types of support that function as protective factors in contentious political times: community-oriented, educational/instructional, structural, legal, and declarative.

Teaching in Contentious Times

Teaching in Contentious Times

‘It does happen here’

In predominantly white and affluent communities, it is a common belief that race and racism are irrelevant because there is little to no racial diversity in these communities. Elyse Hambacher and Denise Desrosiers describe how a New Hampshire school district in a mostly white community navigates teaching and leading for social justice despite divisive concepts legislation and acrimonious debates about racism and other forms of injustice. They offer four practices the district employs to continue to promote inclusivity and social justice in contentious times.

On Leadership: Why schools can’t “fail fast”

Business leaders tout the benefits of decision-making processes that disrupt the status quo and enable their companies to “fail fast” and then move on to the next things. As Joshua Starr explains, failing fast isn’t really an option for public school leaders who have to seek public approval for their decisions. And in contentious times, transparency in decision making is as important as ever. Those leaders who’ve taken the time to build relationships and share their decision-making processes with stakeholders will garner trust that will help when they make decisions that don’t work out as planned.

Navigating Contentious Times in Rural Education

In this introductory article to the special issue, the guest editors situate the articles of the issue within the current contentious climate surrounding critical race theory (CRT). They first provide a background and summary of the major tenets of CRT then apply those tenets to current legislation aimed at banning CRT in schools. They then situate the current backlash against CRT within a history of resistance to racial justice efforts in schools. The editors explain their stance on the current issue of CRT and then substantiate their position with evidence from the articles within the special issue. The conclusions they draw are that CRT is a valuable and applicable theoretical tool in schools and education research.

Addressing Contemporary Challenges to Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics encounters three current challenges: by more quantitative orientations, by stances that reject pluralism, and by criticism that the hermeneutic field is elitist and esoteric. The article offers a response through Ricœur. The hermeneutic “choice in favor of meaning” insists upon the ontological value of the human condition. It shows the insufficiency of the quantitative approach, the remaining value of pluralistic consideration of what human meaning entails, and the real world consequences of interpretation. Examples in Ricœur show how a hermeneutic choice in favor of meaning is not passive but instead reads texts with a particular orientation even when the text seems engaged in another project. The article’s final part undertakes an internal critique, raising the adequacy of Ricœur’s emphasis on meaning as an affirmation of “being.” The example of Buddhist insistence on “emptiness” is offered as one counterexample. The article concludes by arguing that in our contentious times hermeneutics confirms its contemporary vitality through its choice in favor of meaning even as it retains pluralistic consideration of what that meaning entails.

Choosing between unions? Unionist opinion and the challenge of brexit

ABSTRACT Support for Brexit in Northern Ireland has been substantially associated with the unionist community, and has evolved against a backdrop of changing patterns of relationships between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, and between Northern Ireland and the Republic. But the shape taken by the Brexit project is such that it also offers an existential threat to the Union. Is the phenomenon of the unionist Brexiteer simply an unexpected conjunctural development, or might it be explained by reference to distinctive features of unionist ideology? This article provides an initial overview of the comparative and historical context in which unionism responded to major political restructuring in the last century. It asks if the very quest to uphold the Union in contentious times leads to strategies that appear to have the opposite effect. It suggests that the phenomenon of the Brexit-supporting unionist may derive from a distinctive strand of Ulster unionist ideology, one which prioritises the symbolic interests of the ‘imagined community’ in Northern Ireland.

Parks and Houses for the People

In Sweden, at the turn of the 20th century, the Social Democrats created a network of radically communal spaces. These deserve new attention as a usable past that can inform our own contentious times, especially as we contend with a pandemic that is upending our daily lives and political landscapes.

Baptists and the Gospel in the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT At the opening of the twentieth century Baptists were largely united in allegiance to a popular form of Free Church Evangelicalism. In the wake of the First World War, however, there was a tendency to theological polarisation, pitting liberals against conservatives. The outcome was a series of Fundamentalist controversies like those in the United States. Forces of moderation made for less contentious times in the middle years of the century, but new divisions broke out in the 1960s, culminating in a Christological debate in 1971-72. New developments in the late twentieth century created greater diversity in the denomination but also something of a common mind about the gospel.

Authenticity and Appropriation

With the curious exception of anything from Louisiana, things southern have scaled the pinnacle of fashion in the world of food. Coastal Carolina dishes, bogs and burgoos, barbecue whether slow smoked or simmered in sauce, its cousin pulled pork, collards and beans, artisanal grits, and dense country hams from the Upper South all have enthusiastic adherents. Most of the southern dishes celebrated today have venerable origins or antecedents, their survival or revival a corollary perhaps of Faulkner’s most famous dictum: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ Southerners share a fraught history, not least on the subject of race, but also in terms of regional identity, class and economic culture. That is why, as Carrie Helms Tippen observes, the contemporary south is ‘a region whose identity is still in the making – or perhaps, more accurately, always in the remaking.’ (Tippen 7) The process of remaking, or more accurately reinvention, in­volves historical redefinition and revision, so the process is bound to entail controversy, even if only as an unintended consequence of good intent and, in these contentious times, nothing is more contentious than attempts to interpret and represent the southern past. The conflict extends far beyond obvious flashpoints like the statuary of the Lost Cause, much of it in reality not legitimate artefacts honouring sacrifice but rather racist markers of subjugation that first appeared on plinths not so long ago.The conflict extends even to the subject of food, and in particular to questions of authenticity and race. The question of what is southern, of what belongs to African Americans, and to a lesser extent to ethnic whites or to particular regions of the south, provokes widespread conflict and anger. This article looks at the 2016 "Collard Green controversy" in the United States drawing an analogy to an episode of British history concerning haggis and the role of food in the creation of Scottish national identity.

Book Review: Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination by Michelle Fine

Book Review: Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination by Michelle Fine

Centering Bodies in Contentious Times: Using Critical Literacy to Foster Institutional Change

This article draws on critical literacy frameworks and action research methodology to consider how two scholar-practitioners – one working in higher education and one in a middle school setting - utilize their embodied knowledge as members of marginalized communities to increase institutional access and create opportunities for critical engagement and humanization among their students. We situate our research within the literature of critical literacy and we draw on discourses of bodies and embodiment in education to detail the ways in which critical literacy theory and practice might be utilized to unearth missing narratives, promote humanizing educational approaches, and foster institutional change. We end by discussing key implications and offering suggestions for future research and practice in the field.

Book Review: Just research in contentious times: Widening the methodological imagination

Book Review: Just research in contentious times: Widening the methodological imagination

Navigating discourses in academia: challenging the status quo

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss the seepage of current national discourses into the fabric of university classrooms. The authors describe their experiences navigating politics and accompanying discourses in their undergraduate and graduate courses at a rural Midwestern university in the USA. Their narrative provides a socio-historical context in response to events related to the 2016 presidential election.Design/methodology/approachThe authors situate their cultural and linguistic identities within a critical race theory framework and unpack discourses of privilege that “other” students and families from nondominant communities. They highlight promising practices that challenge the status quo, creating opportunities for critical teaching and reflection.FindingsTeacher educators are called on to engage pre- and in-service teachers in practice-based pedagogies and inquiries around authentic issues that present possibilities for transformative social change.Originality/valueThis narrative addresses teaching in contentious times and reflects on transformative practice to engender critical hope.

Politics, Bureaucracy, and Employee Retention: Toward an Integrated Framework of Turnover Intent

In today’s politically contentious times where the role of the federal government and career federal workers is continually challenged, it is critical that we understand how the political world affects career choices among federal employees. This study proposes a theoretical framework that integrates the political environment into concepts of turnover intent among public sector employees based on research examining open systems and the administrative presidency. The framework is then explored through interviews with federal employees, former appointees, and lobbyists to understand the impacts of the broad political environment on individuals.

Opening up the Echo Chamber

In recent years, political discussion and social life are increasingly concentrating in face-to-face and online echo chambers composed of individuals with similar world views. This segmentation of civil society has stymied in-depth and respectful communication across ideological difference and in the process contributed to the divisiveness that characterizes political discourse across the globe. In this article, I examine how anthropological learning and teaching can help open up these echo chambers and promote cultural empathy and cross-ideological communication. My discussion focuses on three methodologies I use in my undergraduate-level Culture, Health and Healing course – weekly critical analyses on contemporary health issues, an in-class illness narrative exercise, and a term-long public service announcement project. For each, I describe the pedagogy, present examples of how the assignment or activity plays out in the classroom, and consider how these pedagogies work toward increasing cross-cultural/ideological understanding and communication. I argue that through unsettling students’ default frameworks for thinking, reflexive and emotionally engaged anthropological teaching and learning can play important roles in laying the epistemological, affective, and ethical foundations for future professionals and engaged community members in today’s contentious times.

From Safe Spaces to Resilient Places: A Role for Interfaith Cooperation in Contentious Times

This article builds on theories of safe and brave spaces to demonstrate how to transform higher education institutions to be better able to incorporate multivalent forms of diversity. In particular, the article suggests leveraging the civic-oriented methodology of interfaith cooperation (Patel & Meyer, 2011) in order to encourage people to have positive encounters with others from different identities, while focusing on common action. The article expands the notion of individual resilience to introduce the concept of resilient places, where safety and bravery are supported by a broad, civic commitment to positive outcomes in the face of traumatic encounters.

Curbing protest through elite co-optation? Regional protest mobilization by the Russian systemic opposition during the‘for fair elections’protests 2011–2012

How does co-optation of oppositional party elites influence their protest behavior in times of cross-societal protest mobilization? Rational-Choice theories of authoritarian stability postulate that opposition elites receive material incentives in parliaments that motivate them to demobilize their radical supporters, which leads to increased regime stability. Based on a novel dataset, this article examines the protest behavior of the Russian parliamentary opposition parties (the CPRF, the LDPR and JR) and their activists during the protest wave of 2011/12 as a function of each party's co-optation in the regional parliaments. Co-optation is measured by the number of leadership posts that a party holds in the regional legislature. Protest mobilization is captured by (1) the number of protest events organized by each party and (2) the aggregate number of party activists present at protest events per region. The results show clear differences between the parties: Whereas the protest behavior of the communist CPRF is not influenced by regional elite co-optation, the analysis shows negative correlations for the LDPR and JR. The results suggest that co-optation may indeed be effective in reducing protest in contentious times – but that its effect varies for different actors.