Critical Scholarship Research Articles

Tamás Turán. Ignaz Goldziher as a Jewish Orientalist: Traditional Learning, Critical Scholarship, and Personal Piety. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023

Tamás Turán. Ignaz Goldziher as a Jewish Orientalist: Traditional Learning, Critical Scholarship, and Personal Piety. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023

(Un)Noticing Yemen: The Forgotten War in Yemen and Critical Genocide Studies

ABSTRACT The war in Yemen, which began in late 2014, has received relatively little attention from genocide scholars, despite the hundreds of thousands of victims it has claimed. In this article, we examine the war through the lens of Critical Genocide Studies (CGS), as a case study of how and why a mass atrocity that leads to the destruction of a substantial part of a distinct group becomes “forgotten” or “hidden.” At the same time, we problematize previous attempts to come to terms with Yemen by critical genocide scholars. Our aim is to sharpen the challenges and conundrums that emerge when attempting to include in the study of genocide cases that are outside the “hegemonic” concept of genocide and the common “genocidal imagination.”

The Song of Songs: Focalising Love and the PublicPersonal Poetics in Remi Raji’s Poetry

Much of the existing critical scholarship on Remi Raji’s poetry appraised the poet’s portrayal of his angst against oppression and the  oppressors of the people. His poetry has often been read within the poetics of rage and social discountenance. Sule’s projection of Remi  Raji as an angry poet has enjoyed the dominant estimation by which Raji’s poetic oeuvre is engaged. This study examines four of Raji’s  collections of poetry— A Harvest of Laughters, Lovesong for my Wasteland, Sea of my Mind, Webs of Remembrance and Gather my blood  Rivers of Song, exploring the poet’s loveworld, with a view to underscoring how a focus on the tropes of rage, discontentment and  disillusionment in the collections mask the poet’s dominant presentations of lovesongs for the land, a mistress, nature, and others. While  it is right to say that Raji’s poetry is overtly political, it is more accurate to relate that there is more to his poetry than the political theme. We see in Raji’s poetic oeuvre a fine balance between the poet’s preoccupation with the sociopolitical realities of the nation state and the representations of his loveworld, extolling that all-too-human other side of life. This study calls for a broadened conception of Remi Raji’s  poetry, beyond the aesthetics of rage, angst and disillusionment to the poet’s depiction of the capacity of love to herald hope, and  ultimately right the wrongs in the postcolony. 

‘To be human is to bury the enemy dead’: migrant deaths, posthumous citizenship, and the ‘soldier-migrant analogy’ in the refugee crisis

ABSTRACT While states increasingly govern migration through the administration and distribution of death, they occasionally invest considerable resources in recovering, identifying, and burying dead migrants. How to explain this paradox? A forceful argument in the critical scholarship on migration and citizenship maintains that death sometimes compels states to acknowledge the humanity of the migrants and grant them some degree of posthumous citizenship. In this article, we advance a view that is both different and complementary. We suggest that burying dead migrants is a way for the state and its host population to affirm and celebrate their own humanity. This perspective rests on three arguments: to be human is to bury; the ultimate act of humanity is not burying the loved ones but the enemies; burying dead migrants can be compared to burying dead enemy soldiers. The article sheds further light on the still underexplored phenomenon of ‘caring for dead migrants’ and assesses how these practices of care challenge but also reinforce dominant exclusionary understandings of citizenship.

Speaking Bitterly, Desirably and Queerly: The Jinxing Show as Queer Chinese TV

ABSTRACT This article examines one of the most sensational (and controversial) Chinese talk shows of the post-2010 years, The Jinxing Show (TJS; 2015–2017), known for its host, Jin Xing, China’s first transgender woman celebrity. I explore how the transculturally situated aesthetics, talk themes and presentation styles of TJS contributed to Jin’s on-screen presence as a form of ‘uneventful queer’ (McCarthy 2001) TV culture in a supposedly LGBTQ-censoring China. My televisual-discourse analyses of TJS reveal a ‘post-trans’, cosmopolitan-neoliberal rhetoric through which Jin promoted ‘proper’ Chinese womanhood and ‘desirable’ Chinese cultural citizenship in her unique ‘bitter-speaking’ style on the show. Meanwhile, I demonstrate that TJS crystalised certain queer-promising transcultural flows and encounters which were often endorsed by (or in fact dovetailed with) the government’s nationalistic-patriotic self-imaginary in an age of globalisation. Diverging from the scholarly criticism of Jin’s public persona as epitomic of Chinese-specific neoliberal tenets, this study emphasises the dual ‘post-trans’ and queer subjectivities generated through TJS and sheds light on the ‘Chinese-specific’ queer presences, desires, lives and possibilities that have been paradoxically enlarged and publicised through Jin’s on-TV advocacy for the state’s ideological-political projects.

Concrete freedom at work: Hegel’s normative conception of freedom and its relevance to organization studies

In organization studies, the prevailing understanding of freedom has revolved around a specific concept of autonomy. However, we propose an alternative and normative concept of freedom, drawing inspiration from the philosophy of Hegel and a reinterpretation of his ideas by Robert Brandom. We begin by diagnosing the liberal conceptions of freedom as opportunity and autonomy that shape the predominant understanding of freedom at work within organization studies. We then follow Hegel and conceive freedom as the expansive realization of oneself through the commitment to meaningful constraints. In contrast to the dominant liberal notions of freedom, Hegel allows us to understand professional commitments and communal obligations at work as the medium of freedom. We argue that concrete freedom at work requires that workers a) see their work as intrinsically valuable and b) that neither they nor their employers are unconditionally free to define norms for how work is to be organized and pursued. We then demonstrate the theoretical implications of shifting from the liberal conceptions of freedom prevalent in organization studies to a Hegelian conception of freedom. The Hegelian theory leads to a more nuanced understanding of worker decision-discretion, motivation, and the meaningfulness of work. Additionally, it has implications for research on bureaucracy and institutional logics. We end by considering the limits of the empirical applicability of our Hegelian theory, and by highlighting its normative value for practitioners and critical management scholars.

More-than-food tourism

Food tourism researchers are increasingly seeking to question why tourists eat animals, and the ethical dimensions of such encounters. The tourist experience has largely been taken as the starting point in this research, influenced by the anthropological origins of this research field. In effect, human-animal relations, for the most part, remain absent from such interrogations. In this paper we seek to engage with critical tourist scholars who are increasingly turning to post-humanist and more-than-human framings, to move beyond a fixation with human agency in understanding how and why we eat animals in tourism settings. Multi author participant observation is utilised to examine a touristic encounter with smalahove, a traditional Norwegian dish of smoked and boiled sheep’s head. Through this case study we argue that future food tourism research ought to shift focus beyond the tourist experience, so as to fully understand the processes through which animals become eaten. In exploring the ways that human-smalahove entanglements provoke consideration for how humans and animals might be-together-otherwise, we call on food tourism researchers to consider what sorts of other food tourism encounters might prompt reflection and how such ethical reflections might be leveraged in food tourism ventures.

Deliberative ideals and hegemonic practices – political CSR in extractive industries

Purpose Political Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), based on ideas about deliberative democracy, have been criticised for increasing corporate power and democratic deficits. Yet, deliberative ideals are flourishing in the corporate world in the form of dialogues with a broad set of stakeholders and engagement in wider societal issues. Extractive industry areas, with extensive corporate interventions in weak regulatory environments, are particularly vulnerable to asymmetrical power relations when businesses engage with society. This paper aims to illustrate in what way deliberative CSR practices in such contexts risk enhancing corporate power at the expense of community interests. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on a retrospective qualitative study of a Canadian oil company, operating in an Albanian oilfield between 2009 and 2016. Through a study of three different deliberative CSR practices – market-based land acquisition, a grievance redress mechanism and dialogue groups – it highlights how these practices in various ways enforced corporate interests and prevented further community mobilisation. Findings By applying Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, the analysis highlights how deliberative CSR activities isolated and silenced community demands, moved some community members into the corporate alliance and prevented alternative visions of the area to be articulated. In particular, the close connection between deliberative practices and monetary compensation flows is underlined in this dynamic. Originality/value The paper contributes to critical scholarship on political CSR by highlighting in what way deliberative practices, linked to monetary compensation schemes, enforce corporate hegemony by moving community members over to the corporate alliance.

Formatted Sound

Locating the Format What is format radio? At a glance, the answer might seem simple. In common parlance, the concept is often presented as a pejorative counterpart to non-commercial broadcasting. However, to render the concept synonymous with commercial broadcasting neglects its historical specificity. Previous research has demonstrated the nuanced factors at stake in the selection of music at specific broadcasting stations (Ahlkvist and Fisher 301-325). Beyond economic structures and conditions, however, remains the matter of whether we can posit an aesthetic expression that epitomises format radio. Previous research has focussed predominantly on semantic source materials and theoretical propositions to hone in on the question. However, my wager is that the signal content itself can help us reveal something about the nature of formats. To pursue such a task, the Swedish case offers a promising possibility. Swedish media archives provide the opportunity to study how, and if, formatting tendencies can be detected beyond the realm of commercial broadcasting. Unlike many of its global counterparts, Sweden maintained a public service radio monopoly until the late twentieth century. Throughout the 1980s, experiments were done with regional radio, and by 1993 full commercial licencing was permitted. The result is a rare situation where the entire flow of daily Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) can be studied from the 1980s onwards, which in turn allows for large-scale analysis of the relationship between organisation structure and content stylistics before and after the introduction of commercial broadcasting. Broadcasting in Sweden was during this time maintained by the company Sveriges Radio (SR), and had been in more or less the same form since the early 1920s. The organisation was not directly owned by the state, but financed through the so-called broadcasting licence, which in turn depended upon governmentally decided goals. The overall ambition was similar to the usual PSB objectives: the guiding documents for broadcasting would thus be inclined to emphasise values like objectivity and diversity – yet little is said about aesthetics (Banerjee and Seneviratne 10). This arrangement was the setting for regular conflicts throughout Swedish radio history, in which the demand of the audience squared off with the ideals of broadcasters. Yet in the last decade of the century, the media environment was about to change in a precedented way. During these years, conceptual and economic tension between commercial and public service radio reached new heights, in turn forcing the matter of formats on the agenda. Research by Stjernstedt and Forsman, while not exclusively focussed on radio formats, addresses the theme within the broader framework of commercial Swedish radio. Their findings, along with those of Hedman and Jauert, suggest the influence of commercial formats on Swedish radio prior to the formal introduction of commercial broadcasting. This allows for an interesting epistemic possibly: if their propositions are correct, it would allow us to study the character of radio formats, without being intermixed with the scope of commercial broadcasting. The following analysis thus attempts to track the actual changes in the content, which could reveal the influence of format radio on PSB. For critics like David Hendy and Wolfgang Hagen, the format comes down to a question of self-similarity, “Programmierung von Selbstverständlichkeit” as Hagen critically dubs it (333), supposedly induces a certain superficial uniqueness of music stations, despite a fundamental sameness in their content. For this reason, the analysis is focussed on repeated similarities in the musical content. Methodological Approach Given the significant role ascribed to music in the theorisation of radio formatting, this aspect appears to be a potentially apt focus for constructing an experimental analysis. This is also practical as it allows for the translation and application of established spectral analysis methods from the realm of music analysis. In the context of audio data, spectral analysis refers to a process where the frequency components of a sound signal are decomposed and examined as numerical values. This method is crucial in audio engineering to understand the underlying structure and composition of sound and can assist in identifying specific patterns or anomalies in audio data. The analysis uses a sampling approach, concentrating on full-day broadcasts from music channels P2 and P3 in order to capture the general channel characteristics. These were the two formal music channels of SR during the time, with P3, the popular music channel, being directed at a younger audience, and P2 offering a more diverse mixture of classic and world music. The data, selected randomly from five weekdays across each of the years 1988, 1991, 1994, and 1999, are examined for indicators of self-similarity and format structuring. The hypothesis guiding this study suggests that format radio, shaped by technical standards and theoretical principles, exhibits a degree of radiophonic self-similarity. This proposition is explored quantitatively, applying statistical methods to the spectral data to assess similarities. The analysis itself is executed in combining a set of Python libraries. Initially, a segmentation model from The National Audiovisual Institute of France is used to isolate the musical content from the broadcasts. Then, the audio analysis library librosa converts these segments into spectral data, providing insights into timbre, key, and tempo. The results are presented using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) visualisations. These visualisations employ dimension reduction to represent the relationships between audio segments in a Euclidean space, with the proximity of nodes indicating similarity between data points. Even though the PCA method has limitations, well-discussed in the methodological literature, it grants certain insight into the structure of the dataset (Jolliffe and Cadima). In essence the method uses two-dimensional space to plot the relationship between n-dimensional data objects. The implication is that the distance between each entry entails something about the general similarity between the features of these data points. Critical scholarship, like that of Johanna Drucker, has brought attention to the epistemological tendencies inherent in these standardised statistical methods. The PCA method was also at the centre of discussions concerning the general credibility of computational literary studies in 2019, and I here follow Andrew Piper’s conclusion that the limitations are less a reason to abandon ship, and more an encouragement to remain “skeptical” (11). Thus, it is a call for complementary and comparative approaches. In order to do this, my analysis also employs audio recognition tools to compare the feature elements of the data set. By comparing both these different levels of analysis, across yearly samples from the decade, the study traces the evolution of musical styles and formats, potentially relating them to wider technological, cultural, or sociopolitical shifts. Results Fig. 1: The distribution of observations from the years 1988, 1991, 1994, and 1999, arranged from the top right to the bottom left. For each year, around 1,000 songs from each channel were studied. Data from 1988 indicate that the popular music channel P3 had a somewhat broader distribution spectrum in its content than its more eclectic counterpart. Initially, this may seem counterintuitive, as one might expect the expanding range of classic and world music of P2 to exhibit greater sonic variety than a channel playing mainstream and popular music. A possible explanation for these results can be found in prior research. Musicologist Alf Björnberg has provided a detailed account of the musical content of Sveriges Radio. His narrative emphasises that P3 underwent a significant content shift during the 1980s. Throughout this decade, the channel began to accommodate artists and genres that had been marginalised in the expanding landscape of broadcast media for decades (320). While P2 was not without variation during this era, P3 experienced a more notable change, moving towards avant-garde rock and experimental electronic music. This shift reflects a broader trend in the radio landscape, where traditional boundaries of genre and style were increasingly blurred, allowing for more diverse and experimental sounds to emerge in mainstream channels. The visualisation of these data not only highlights these historical shifts but also provides a quantitative basis for understanding the evolution of musical trends and preferences within the radio broadcasting domain. Björnberg’s study, predominantly centred on playlists and textual documents, mainly focusses on the period up to the end of the 1980s. Shortly summarising the 1990s, Björnberg concludes that 'the effects of commercial competition were most noticeable for P3' (326), especially during the early years of this competition. The data reveal a surprising trend in this regard too. At first glance, it might appear that P3 is reducing its musical variety, which could be interpreted as a response to the new, more rigidly formatted radio landscape. However, this perception is an illusion created by the rescaling of graphs to accommodate P2's possibly drastic content expansion. When calculating the average distance between points in P3's data, it becomes evident that the variation remains within the same range, with a fluctuation of only 0.4. This figure contrasts with P2's distance, which increases from 34.2 to 46.7 between 1988 and 1994. Instead of P3 reducing its musical variety, it is P2 that broadens its musical offerings. This can be seen as a response to the identified issue. Sveriges Radio addressed the new competitive situation with two seemingly contradictory initiatives: seeking a unique sonic identity while emphasising "diversity with a quality signifier" (Björnberg). The developments in P2's data can be viewed as a concrete expression of this ambition to counter the entry of format radio with increased variation. These findings underscore the complexities and adaptive strategies in the broadcasting landscape, demonstrating how public broadcasters like Sveriges Radio navigated the challenges posed by commercial competition. By expanding and diversifying their musical content, channels like P2 showed a commitment to maintaining their relevance and appeal in a rapidly changing media environment. This study not only sheds light on the historical trajectory of Swedish radio but also offers broader insights into the dynamics of cultural adaptation and change within the media industry. However, it is crucial to understand what the analysis actually signifies – it is not an absolute statement about the variation in music, but rather an analysis based on a number of specific measures. The assessment of the musical content, as mentioned earlier, is based on the combined factors of tempo, key, and a simplified measure of timbre. These metrics are analytically recognised methods for categorising musical content and have been used in previous research to address genre variation (Bogdanov et al.). However, this does not necessarily mean that they provide a comprehensive understanding of how the music actually sounded. In the graphs above, the timbre data is represented by a median value. To more accurately capture the variation in the sound profile, it might be more appropriate to analyse a broader spectrum of frequency values. In the following graphs, values are compared over time across 13 different frequency bands, based on the first 30 seconds of each song. This refined approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of the sonic domain. By examining a wider range of frequency values, the analysis can potentially reveal subtler shifts in the musical characteristics of the radio channels over time. This method acknowledges that while tempo, key, and timbre are significant, they are only part of a more complex auditory picture. By broadening the scope of analysis to include more detailed frequency data, a richer and more textured picture of the evolution of musical content on these radio stations emerges. This approach offers deeper insights into the intricate ways in which radio programming responds to and reflects broader musical trends and listener preferences. Fig. 2: The distribution of observations from 1988, 1991, 1994, and 1999, from the top right to the bottom left. This approach to measuring audio content results in a less dramatic visualisation, with no longer a clear dominance in the pace of development; instead, both channels undergo a similar process of differentiation. What we observe here is a form of channel profiling, where both channels progressively establish a more distinct sound profile. According to the definition by Hendy and Hagen, this type of channel characterisation can be considered in terms of formatting. What is revealed is an increase in channel self-similarity. However, this empirical examination of audio material suggests a nuanced understanding of formatting. On one hand, both channels, particularly P2, expand certain aspects of their music. Simultaneously, the sound profile becomes more distinctly framed for each channel. Understanding this stylistic evolution compels us to reflect on what self-similarity means on a perceptual level. While self-similarity as a mathematical concept does not require comparative data points from another source, this value means little for the listener's perceptual experience. The content coherence of a channel, in terms of experience, depends on a contrasting example. This contrast is precisely what the two music channels within Sveriges Radio offered during this period. Their musical profiles became clearer by sonically contrasting with each other. Under this broader channel similarity, certain characteristics, such as tempo and key, appear to have been able to vary more freely. Nonetheless, this profiling represents a type of complexity reduction – an increased predictability within the format's constraints. These conclusions offer an indication on how radio channels adapt and refine their identities over time, responding to both internal objectives and external competitive pressures. It underscores the dynamic nature of radio broadcasting, where channels continually evolve their formats to maintain relevance and listener engagement. The nuanced understanding of formatting and self-similarity provides valuable insights into the strategic decisions made by broadcasters in shaping their auditory content. Björnberg echoes Hagen and Hendy’s tendency to primarily criticise the lack of creativity in radio formats. However, his focus is specifically on a certain format – the 'adult contemporary' (Björnberg). Against this backdrop, a comparative study of the audio content of commercial alternatives would indeed be interesting. Unfortunately, due to the scarcity of preserved material, compiling a proportionate dataset for such a study is challenging. However, we can still contemplate the general content of 'adult contemporary' music. One speculative approach to addressing this question is to examine the instruments used in the music to see if they align with specific format descriptions. Such an analysis could provide further insight into how the PSB style is changing under the stakes of commercial competition. Fig. 3: Percentage distribution of instruments in sub-segments from the music content of P2 and P3 in the sample data from 1988. The results offer a potential explanation for the questions raised by the initial graphs in this study. While P2 shows some variation, there remains a, perhaps expected, focus on string instruments and the piano. P3, on the other hand, displays a wide mix of content. Notably, there is a relatively high presence of the accordion – an instrument that is as lauded as it is loved within the Swedish context. The instrument belongs to a longer tradition of popular music, encapsulating both certain folk music traditions, as well as ‘dansband’ tunes. Already by the onset of broadcasting, the accordion split the audiences right down the middle (Hadenius 76), and by the late 1960s, it was proclaimed a “dead” instrument (Björnberg  257). Here, my results highlight a certain perseverance of the instrument, speaking to the resilience of this sound. While the accordion may seem peripheral to the 1990s debates about radio formats, this example serves both as a reminder of the persistence of stylistic questions and their emotional charge. Therefore, it is instructive to study the instrument distribution in the final year of the sample data. Fig. 4: Percentage distribution of instruments in sub-segments from the music content of P2 and P3 in the sample data from 1999. The historical development has several interesting tendencies. Whilst the general distribution of instruments on P2 remains similar, P3 has witnessed significant changes. The previous sample displayed a wide variety of sounds with high distribution, albeit with guitar at the top. The data from 1999 have developed in a more guitar-centred direction. While this provides certain analytical depth to the previous stages of analysis, it might also give a clue into the more general question of format radio. The results demonstrate a tendency towards a clearer channel identity, with a more unified sound. Extending the interpretation, we can also consider the results in a scope of international research. Eric Weisbard, alongside other researchers like Saesha Senger, has extensively mapped the content of the top charts during the final decades of the twentieth century, revealing a clear direction towards synth music and guitar-driven rock during the 80s and 90s. Since we cannot study the actual content of commercial broadcasting in Sweden during this time, such historical references remain a promising second-degree comparison. In this perspective, P3 partly mirrors global trends, illustrating the station's responsiveness to changing listener preferences and the dynamic nature of music consumption. We are here engaged in classical historical work, piecing together fragments of data from different types of sources. Nevertheless, the results indicate how old traditions and global trends intermingle in the construction of a national format: a soundscape where accordions and guitars reverberate in parallel. Summary The investigation into SR’s channels P2 and P3 during the 1980s and 1990s reveals a nuanced understanding of radio formatting and its implications. Both channels exhibit idiosyncratic approaches that blend various musical styles to develop distinct channel identities within the context of format radio. While the channels have moved towards more predictable and structured formats, reminiscent of commercial radio, this has not led to an overall homogenisation of content. Instead, each channel has developed a unique version of formatting, and maintained its distinct identity while incorporating elements of structure and predictability. Finally, this matter runs up against an epistemological question which has fascinated sound scholars for some time. To create format radio is to create a sound in time that feels uniform. Philosophers and psychologists have long debated whether sounds can at all be understood as continuous perceptual phenomena, and what it means for a sound to be 'the same' over time (for example, Moles). If sonic uniformity is a scientific challenge already on the time scale of the second, then radiophonic flows introduce whole new complications and questions. Here it is no longer the similarity between two tones in flow, but day-long broadcast products to be understood under the same channel identity. This requires a shaping of sound at completely different scale. The empirical study of such challenges has only begun.

Unravelling the deficit ideologies in English language education in Pakistan: A decolonial perspective

AbstractIn this study the author combines translingualism and raciolinguistic perspectives to analyze the language ideologies and idealized listening/reading subject positions that undergird discourses on English language teaching in Pakistan. Drawing on data from national policy documents, the national curriculum for English, and English proficiency assessment reports, he shows how discourses on English as a medium of instruction, the English language curriculum, and assessment in Pakistan are fraught with deficit ideologies that emphasize a particular view of English proficiency that serves as an imaginary line of demarcation between proficient and deficient English teachers and reinforce linguistic and socioeconomic hierarchies. Instead of reified, Anglo‐normative orientations to English proficiency, the author proposes a translingual orientation that places students' multilingual identities at the center of English language teaching (ELT) practices. He concludes with a call for ELT practitioners and critical language scholars to develop organic links between classroom translingualism and political activism in order to dismantle socioeconomic hierarchies.

Divorcing ‘Global Health’ from ‘global health’: Theories for the future of a social organization and an idea

As conversations and thinking concerning changing the field that calls itself “global health” have proliferated over the past three years, a key predicament has emerged. While almost all in the field agree that something must change, for the vast majority a world without this complex, massive project and apparatus is still unimaginable and undesirable. Arguing that the vagueness yet moral encasing of the field created a situation in which efforts of change must end at preserving the field, I argue that ‘Global Health’ is not ‘global health,’ and understanding this leads to greater possibilities of what the field could be and how to change it. Engaging with a wide range of critical scholarship, I divorce Global Health—a loosely configured global apparatus—from global health—a utopian idea—I show how both this social system and this idea are constructed and exist in plurality. Through then denaturalizing widely accepted and embedded myths of the field’s necessity and moral transcendence to the world, I map the possibilities of what efforts of changing Global Health could be when these myths are rejected and reorient focus on how critical public health scholarship can be used to aid these efforts.

Zionism and the war(s) on terror: extinction phobias, anti-Muslim racism, and critical scholarship

ABSTRACT This article traces the genealogy of 21 st century “terrorism” discourse to mid-to-late 20th century neoconservative thought and Israeli propaganda, arguing that Zionism is the disavowed rhetorical, political, and affective centre of the Global War on Terror (GWOT). The paper further analyzes Zionism and the “terrorism” discourse to which it gives rise as extinction phobias, or moralised narratives of existential threat that explain the voluminous, horrific violence unleashed by the GWOT, the persistence of the GWOT’s signature racisms (anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian racism), and the world-destroying violence unleashed by Israel on the Gaza Strip most spectacularly in 2023–24. The article concludes by explaining the implications of this genealogy for efforts to classify white supremacist violence as terrorism and scholarly accounts of terrorism in the fields of TS and CTS.

Are our voices now heard? Reflections on Indigenous tourism research

More than a decade ago, Nielsen and Wilson (2012) developed the ‘Critical Typology of Indigenous Tourism Research’ in this very publication, the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management. They argued that Indigenous voices are rarely heard in tourism research that is dominated by White, western academics. Critical tourism scholars are still echoing this sentiment today, calling attention to the need for Indigenous tourism research to be led by Indigenous peoples. This research commentary rethinks and reframes the typology, presenting an Indigenised model, the ‘Spectrum of Indigenous Engagement’. This contemporary model presents four approaches: blind, superficial, collaborative and Indigenist, illustrated by recent examples of Indigenous tourism research. The paper draws attention to scholars who are effectively implementing innovation and inclusive methods of Indigenous engagement, and identifies barriers to the widespread adoption of Indigenist research approaches. Above all, this paper seeks to provoke increased reflexivity and critical dialogue within the Indigenous tourism research community.

Teaching and Learning a Joyful Citation Praxis: Affective Relations for Fostering Community Through Our Compositions

Many of us learned to cite sources to avoid plagiarism or to give credit. Yet there are many more generative reasons to teach and learn citation. This essay offers a teacher’s perspective and a student’s perspective on our personal journeys toward viewing and practicing citation as a way of joyfully generating community with others. We describe our individual struggles, how anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and critical feminist scholars have shaped our thinking, and what we do within the classroom to practice a joyful, generative way of citing. We offer suggestions for how to hold ourselves and students accountable to more inclusive and community-oriented ways of citing by infusing reflective practice throughout the semester in college writing-intensive courses.

On occupying the silent parenthetical: Thinking-feeling after the Ends/ings (Part 1/2)

ABSTRACT To speak of “the End” as a cataclysmic future event, as depicted in popular apocalyptic genres, oversimplifies the prolonged, multiplicitous character of the End Times as they unfold unevenly across different scales, speeds, populations, and intensities. As many rhetoricians and other critical scholars have noted, an interrelated series of Ends and Endings mark the contemporary conjuncture, disrupting disciplinary traditions and the prevailing epistemic terrain: the End of Speech, Debate, the University, Time, the Individual, Politics, The Greeks, Whiteness, the Canon, Capitalism, Colonialism, Patriarchy, Prisons, Discipline, Man—in short, and in the spirit of Frantz Fanon, The End of the World. In Part 1 of this two-part essay, I begin to speculate on what it might mean to think otherwise from these unfolding and overlapping Ends and Endings, call attention to the limits of criticism-as-usual, and raise a number of questions for rhetorical scholars committed to studying social change and enabling different possible futures and worlds. I consider the im/possibilities of realizing a transformative rhetorical studies rooted in pluriversality, the undercommonsense, experimental writing, and the “radical rhetorics” (Aswad) of communities born in struggle.

Rethinking Enclosed Neighbourhoods: Vital Infrastructure for Design Innovation, Civic Engagement, and Biopower in Urban China

Capitalist processes of urbanization and privatization have produced a growing number of enclosed neighbourhoods across the world. Critical scholarship often frames these neighbourhoods as products of an overextended neoliberalism and symbols of the fragmentation, segregation, and hierarchization of both space and society. This paper expands on these theoretical explanations with a focus on China. As neither neoliberal globalization nor tradition can adequately explain various types of China's enclosed neighbourhoods, a differentiated account suggests that they have evolved in different temporal, sociocultural, and political-economic contexts. Nevertheless, they have commonly played vital roles in (re)shaping everyday environments, driving economic restructuring, transforming governance systems, and facilitating normative transformations in China. China's experiences show that enclosed neighbourhoods have been, and will remain, the everyday environments that shape citizens' behaviours, values, and social relations. They have also served, and will continue to serve, as the vital infrastructure that enables both civic engagement and biopolitical control – an irony that remains to be resolved. Lessons from China suggest that future research and practice on enclosed neighbourhoods in different parts of the world can embrace the heterogeneity, adaptability, and practicability of neighbourhood transformations to inspire design and development innovation, enhance social cohesion, and empower citizens.

Positioning action research as a critical means of understanding coaching: considerations from the field

ABSTRACT This paper shines light upon the methodological value of action research as a critical means of studying coaching practice. Described as an opportunity for bridging the gap between practice and research, the application of action research to sports coaching aims to explicitly and intentionally advance practice. However, far from the enduring depictions of action research as a linear cyclical process, contemporary action research has begun to appreciate its ambiguity; much like the problematic nature of sports coaching itself. Despite this ambiguity, we contend that action research can better harness the messy realities and complexities that coaches encounter within their everyday practice. Through the provision of critical reflections the overarching aim of the paper was not only to make the case for action research as a means of cultivating critical scholarship in sports coaching but to go further, problematising some complex realities of life as an action researcher.

Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and Nationalism: On Motivations and Violence

In discourse that normalizes and propagates Israeli settler colonial conquest and domination, analytical attention is given to the supposed nationalist nature of the Zionist project painting Zionism as a liberatory project for persecuted Jewish peoples in Europe and beyond. To counter this discourse and its erasure of the colonized, many critical scholars have emphasized that Zionism is both nationalist and settler colonial. However, to present a decolonial alternative to the exclusive focus on Zionism as a nationalist project, critical analysis must insist that state nationalism is but one of the elements that scholars can analyze within, not alongside, the larger framework of settler colonial sovereignty. This article argues that we must examine the effects of the Zionist project and give the Palestinian experience its proper analytical weight at the forefront of the analysis, not as that which can illuminate the ‘unintended consequences’ of Zionism, but as that which reveals the very logic and nature of Zionism and the Zionist project.

The promises and pitfalls of disaster aid platforms: a case study of Lebanon’s 3RF

PurposeUsing critical disaster studies and state theory, we assess the disaster aid platform named Lebanon Reconstruction, Reform and Recovery Framework (3RF) that was put in place by international donors in the aftermath of the Beirut Port Blast in August 2020, in order to examine the effectiveness of its inclusive decision-making architecture, as well as its institutional building and legislative reform efforts.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses the case study approaach and relies on two original data sets compiled by authors, using desk reviews of academic literature and secondary data, in addition to 24 semi-structured expert interviews and participant observation for two years.FindingsThe aid platform appears innovative, participatory and effectively functioning toward recovery and reform. However, in practice, the government dismisses CSOs, undermines reforms and dodges state building, whereas the 3RF is structured in incoherent ways and operates according to conflicting logics, generating inertia and pitfalls that hinder effective participatory governance, prevent institutional building, and delay the making of projects.Research limitations/implicationsThe research contributes to critical scholarship as it addresses an important research gap concerning disaster aid platforms’ institutional design and governance that are under-studied in critical disaster studies and political studies. It also highlights the need for critical disaster studies to engage with state theory and vice-versa.Practical implicationsThe research contributes to evaluations of disaster recovery processes and outcomes. It highlights the limits of disaster aid platforms’ claims for participatory decision-making, institutional-building and reforms.Originality/valueThe paper amplifies critical disaster studies, through the reflexive analysis of a case-study of an aid platform.

WORLD LITERARY STUDIES AS A FIELD OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE: TRADITIONS AND TRENDS

Literature and art are continuously in search of new means of expression, and communication. In the process of renewal, artistic culture acquires new aesthetic principles, an artistic fusion of the objective and the subjective. The idea of a work in a realistic narrative sounds gradually, naturally. The plot develops around a fact that reveals the meaning of the work. The aesthetic assimilation of reality proceeds in several directions, in different genres of prose and poetry, drama and journalism, in a diverse creative manner, which is unique for each author of a work of art. The relevance of this article lies in the fact that it traces the evolution of the basic concepts of world literary criticism, which has its own scientific principles, systems of methods and terminology. Literary criticism and critical thought create a special associative field, confirming the importance of the transition in the literary process from ideology to issues of personal existence. Domestic and world literary studies are included in the research field of the humanities, but there are frequent attempts to absorb them into intensively developing interdisciplinary research. The scientific novelty of this research is seen in the generalization of the theoretical views on modern world literary criticism of major literary scholars and critics in Europe, the USA, the CIS countries, authors of sections of collective monographs of the Auezov Institute of Literature and Art «The latest foreign literature», «The world literary process of the 21st century», «Kazakh-American literary connections: current state and prospects», the textbook «The world literary process: content, directions, trends». The basis for the research is the scientific concepts of literary text analysis, theories of critical discourse analysis of literary works, existential criticism and others. Based on the analysis, review of the current state of the leading theoretical schools of world literary criticism (with cultural studies, literary criticism, structural poetics, the concept of semiosphere, theory of cultural transfer and others). It has been established that the science of literature has its own object of study, a special essence, which distinguishes it from the exact and natural sciences.