Deeper Struggle Research Articles

Thematic representations of economy and environment in Nigerian newspapers’ reports of pipeline vandalism

ABSTRACT Nigeria’s heavy reliance on oil for national survival, the frequency of pipeline vandalism and the attendant losses make the subject of vandalism attractive to newspapers. Reports on this subject become media sites of deep struggle to separate national economy from the ecosystem relationships. Relying on insights from van Dijk’s Theory of Thematic Structure and Stibbe’s notions of salience and erasure, the study examined the reportage of pipeline vandalism and the attendant losses, with a view to exploring how economy and environment are thematically projected. Twenty reports from four newspapers published between 2015 and 2019 were purposively sampled. The thematic projections showed that, while economic loss is foregrounded using the discourse strategies of number game and topicalisation, environmental loss is erased at different levels using the discourse strategies of euphemisation and generalisation. This suggests that there is subtle interest in economic growth to the detriment of the ecological systems which sustain the economy and humanity. Unless there is a deliberate effort to clearly highlight the ecological harm occasioned by pipeline vandalism, the effects of pipeline vandalism may not be obvious to citizens and curtailing the menace may not be prioritised.

Migration for school choice: urbanisation and rural social stratification in China

ABSTRACT The peidu trend has become prevalent in rural China in the last decade, with many rural children seen studying in urban schools accompanied by their adult family members in county capitals. Essentially, peidu is a practice of migration for school choice. However, unlike in the international context, this school choice phenomenon in rural China is not driven by marketisation reform, but by a strategy of the local government to achieve urbanisation. Based on questionnaires and interviews, this study reveals that peidu is stratified by family socioeconomic status. As the rural middle and top strata migrate out of the countryside by choosing urban schools for their children, rural schools further deteriorate and children of the most disadvantaged families are left behind in deeper struggles. Similar to school choice effects in other countries, peidu reinforces the rural-urban educational disparities and calls into question the urbanisation strategy in China.

Nature and lineages in the novel LeMas Théotime of Henri Bosco

The novel _Le Mas Théotime _is characteristic of Henri Bosco’s style marked by a syncretic mysticism mixing Pagan and Christian symbols. The pastoral writing illustrates a deep struggle between unknown drives. The hypothesis of this article is that these spiritual forces are linked to old alliances between families. To some extent, the pastoral narrative activates ethnic links between characters that are not always conscious about the power of these relations. By referring to the dream analysis proposed by Carl Gustav Jung, it is possible to read the pastoral in _Le Mas Théotime _as an ancestral tragedy where old alliances can be betrayed and questioned.

Negotiations of language(s) and inequalities in transnational family biographies

Families that live in a new environment after having fled or migrated go through transformation processes that are connected to various challenges and possibilities. The focus of this paper is on negotiations of language policies in family biographies and family language practices, comparing cases of migrant families who arrived to Switzerland in different legal contexts of migration. The article addresses how these transnational families negotiate the meaning of (family) languages against the background of hegemonic language and migration policies. Questions of how these policies are experienced and dealt with and in what ways they do enable or disable possibilities for action are addressed using a qualitative analysis of narrative family interviews and participant observations in transnational families that now live in German-speaking Switzerland. On the basis of the analyses of interview transcriptions and field notes, I show how families deal with experiences of social and educational inequalities in the context of transnational pathways of education and how these are negotiated in the families. Language learning appears not only as an (un)available possibility, but it also requires one to return to the status of a student. At the same time, it is accompanied by a deep struggle for identity and belonging.

Transparency in governance: A comparative study of right-to-information legislation in India, Indonesia and Nigeria

This article discusses how the Right to Information Act in India, Nigeria and Indonesia can have an influence on ensuring transparency and accountability in the government system. The acts pertaining to the right to information in these three countries were implemented after long proceedings and deep struggles. The article looks at the legislation on the right to information in these three countries, the factors that motivated each of them to adopt the legislation, the implementation of the Right to Information Act, the challenges faced during the passage of the Act, the scope of coverage of the provisions of the Acts of all three countries, exceptions to the information disclosed to the public and problems faced during implementation from the government's side and the user's side. The article concludes with a summary of the arguments and key policy recommendations.

Blended Diplomacy: The Entanglement and Contestation of Digital Technologies in Everyday Diplomatic Practice

This article develops a new theoretical approach to digitalisation in diplomacy, resituating conventional understandings of the relationship between diplomacy and technological transformation. Challenging the conception that ‘traditional’ diplomacy is being supplemented or challenged by new forms of ‘digital diplomacy’, we show how the ubiquity of digital devices and technologies makes disentangling analogue from digital diplomatic practices practically impossible today. The argument is developed through ethnographic observations of everyday diplomatic work in the European Union (EU) multilateral setting in Brussels as well as interviews with ambassadors, attachés, seconded diplomats, spokespersons and interpreters. To understand the place of digital technologies in diplomatic work, we develop the concept of blended diplomacy by which we mean the dual process of the entanglement of technical and social doings and the contestation regarding how this entanglement impacts professional diplomatic imaginaries and relations. Drawing on insights from practice theory and the sociology of science, technology and professions, we show how diplomatic actors demarcate their professional territory and protect their positions through boundary work. They draw horizontal boundaries between what they see as ‘real’ diplomatic work and distractions and vertical boundaries between themselves and other diplomatic actors, ranking people around status and skills. Overall, digital technologies are implicated in deeper struggles regarding what it means to be a diplomat. A focus on the blended character of diplomatic practice opens new avenues for research on how digitalisation, in contradictory and uneven ways, shapes norms, identities, and social relations and how it – through reflexivity, anxieties and contestation – may shape international politics.

A deeper struggle for the soul of economics

ABSTRACT Kevin Hoover explores retroduction as a means of theorizing in macro-economics, rather than exclusive reliance on deductivism or inductivism. Retroduction is discussed as involving conceptualization with respect to empirical evidence as a means of identifying causal mechanisms as the basis for theory in the form of mathematical models. It is put forward as a preferred alternative to more fundamental reform of macro-economics, whose justification Hoover dismisses as being ‘ideological’. Yet ideology refers to a position on metaphysics such as Hoover himself sets out in terms of open systems, which would significantly extend the scope for retroduction.

Decolonizing the Responsibility to Protect: On pervasive Eurocentrism, Southern agency and struggles over universals

Many postcolonial or critical scholars are rather sceptical of the Responsibility to Protect principle. In most of the critical literature, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is presented as a product from the West, whose liberal ideal relies on a perception of Southern states being potentially dysfunctional, which in turn justifies an interventionist discourse with neocolonial overtones. The problem with this interpretation of R2P is that it essentially ignores non-Western, particularly Southern, inputs on the concept, falling precisely into the trap that, many authors claim, vitiates Responsibility to Protect: its West-centrism. Building upon a mix of critical, decolonial, postcolonial and Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship, this article proposes a number of additional steps to decolonize R2P in an effort to avoid what Pinar Bilgin describes as ‘conflating the critiques of the particularity of universals with critiques of the idea of having universals’. What successive decolonizing layers expose is a negotiation process in which the agency of states from the global South in shaping the – still controversial – principle has proved particularly obvious. Decolonizing Responsibility to Protect, this article argues, requires critical scholars to engage in a contrapuntal analysis in order to acknowledge the concept’s mutual constitution by the West and the ‘rest’ and the deeper struggles over universals hiding underneath.

HERO WITH ZEROES?: Tensions of Using an Anti-Discrimination Framework and an Impact Case Approach for Disability Rights Advocacy in China

In 2014, a blind massage therapist named Li Jinsheng took the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) in Braille, the first to do so in China. To everyone's surprise, he turned in blank answer sheets for two of the four subjects, which generated strong criticisms from the general public and blind communities. This article examines the conditions, process, and aftermaths of this event to consider what it means to use an anti-discrimination framework and an impact case approach for disability rights advocacy. Data comes from observation of media representations and discussions, interviews with key actors and stakeholders, and a focus group with blind college students.Our analysis of Li's case shows that in China, anti-discrimination actions often take the form of using individual cases to attack single, identifiable policy barriers, and they are typically carried out by people who are not directly impacted by the state's paternalistic biobureaucracy or the vulnerabilities it generates. As such, these cases might not sufficiently represent the desires and struggles of most people with disabilities, and the individualistic approach might further alienate the disabled communities. While effective in dismantling the particular policy barrier, such anti-discrimination actions may fall short of addressing more systemic, structural issues. This article ends with reflections on the tensions in using anti-discrimination impact cases in China and beyond, and on how to work on deeper struggles and build broader alliances in disability rights advocacy.

Dr. Mladen Vranic-A Legend in Diabetes Research: 1930-2019.

Mladen Vranic, MD, DSc, FRSC, FRCP(C), FCAHS, was an early pioneer in the field of diabetes, greatly advancing our understanding of diabetes physiology. Over the course of his scientific career, Dr. Vranic changed the landscape of diabetes research in North America and internationally through his groundbreaking work in glucose metabolism, exercise, stress, and hypoglycemia. It is noteworthy that he trained as the last postdoctoral fellow of Dr. Charles Best, a codiscoverer of insulin, at the University of Toronto. Dr. Vranic’s interest in diabetes research started during his early life, as did his determination to thrive despite deep struggles. He was born 30 April 1930 to Vladamir and Ana Vranic in Zagreb, Croatia. His father was a professor at the Faculty of Economics, Engineering, and Sciences and dean at the School of Economics and Engineering at the University of Zagreb. His teaching specialty was mathematics. Mladen was an only child, of Jewish heritage, and a Holocaust survivor. He and his family narrowly escaped capture by the Nazis multiple times during World War II. As a young boy he, his parents, and his grandmother sought refuge in Italy, managing to flee just ahead of their would-be captors. Despite their efforts, they were eventually caught and sent to a concentration camp when Mladen was 11. He attributed his survival there to his and his family’s undeterred tenacity to endure and escape. Mladen Vranic Upon completing medical school at the University of Zagreb, Mladen pursued graduate studies in physiology, with a focus on diabetes, the only specialty available in the department at the time. Concomitantly, his father developed type 2 diabetes. Mladen said about the field that was to become his life’s work and passion, “I have never regretted for one instant my commitment to a life in medical research and education” and “diabetes …

‘An African Representative’: Canada, the Third World, and South African Apartheid, 1984–1990

ABSTRACT South African apartheid served as a battleground between East and West, and North and South, but it was also an issue that gave coherence to an often disparate Third World political project. And, though it has rarely been appreciated by historians, apartheid exposed and deepened fault lines between allies. This article addresses this oversight by exploring why, during the mid 1980s, Canada became so engaged on a file that was seemingly peripheral to its national interests. Drawing on recently declassified Canadian, British, and South African documents, and on interviews with former policymakers, officials, and activists, it shows how Canada became a diplomatic battleground in the fight for legitimacy between Pretoria and the opponents of apartheid. These entanglements shaped public discourses and, in turn, informed Canadian policy towards apartheid. For Canada, the issue was not solely about the East–West conflict but a deeper struggle to maintain the credibility of the liberal world order. This paper thus offers an ‘outside-in’ vantage point to the international history of the Commonwealth and a window to understand global dynamics, priorities, and norms beyond the Cold War paradigm.

Remaking “Community” Mental Health: Contested Institutional Logics and Organizational Change

ABSTRACTNeo-institutional studies of institutional entrepreneurship identify the important role that individuals play as drivers of institutional change. Institutional entrepreneurs leverage resources to create new institutions or to transform existing ones. Recent scholarship complicates the depiction of institutional entrepreneurship as merely creative, examining its disruptive effects on established logics and practices. This article uses ethnographic methods to investigate how institutional entrepreneurship functioned in one community mental health organization, and extends neo-institutional theory by demonstrating how street-level workers contested its advancement. It theorizes the entrepreneurial nature of Quality Assurance (QA) staff, who promoted the managerial logic and developed performance measures to recouple frontline practice to public demands for efficiency, standardization, and accountability. Street-level workers used the community logic of the clubhouse to order their therapeutic identities, strategies, and goals. When these competing logics came into contact, multiplicity produced deep contradiction, epistemic distress, and ongoing struggle. This article finds that new managerialism forced a reworking of the community logic, and weighs the implications of this transformation for human services rooted in the community logic.

Moveable feasts: reflections on Shanghai’s street food

Shanghai’s officials and urban planners often equate development with “cleaning up the streets.” The snacks (xiao chi 小吃) that are sold from the small shops and mobile stands—dumplings steamed in wooden baskets, nighttime barbeques, carts selling stir-fried noodles—are seen to belong to a past that must be overcome. This paper reflects on the changing fate of Shanghai’s street food in order to analyze tensions between a regulated, formal commercial sector and a much more anarchic informal economy as it plays out in the making of the future city. It argues that the informal is not simply a temporary phenomenon, and that the evolutionary conception of economic growth in which a “backward” black market progresses to a more “advanced” formal sphere masks a deep (and sometimes violent) struggle. Shanghai’s importance as a model for twenty-first century urbanism rests not only on its high-speed trains and super-tall skyscrapers, but also, just as vitally, on its street food, street markets and street life.

Das Ende der Postdemokratie, den Pessimismus überwinden.

In recent years, political and social conditions have changed dramatically. Many analyses help to capture these dynamics. However, they produce political pessimism: on the one hand there is the image of regression and on the other, a direct link is made between socio-economic decline and the rise of the far-right. To counter these aspects, this article argues that current political events are to be understood less as ‘regression’ but rather as a moment of movement and the return of deep political struggles. Referring to Jacques Ranciere’s political thought, the current conditions can be captured as the ‘end of post-democracy’. This approach changes the perspective on current social dynamics in a productive way. It allows for an emphasis on movement and the recognition of the windows of opportunity for emancipatory struggles.

Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785–1850 by John R. Van Atta (review)

Securing West: Politics, Public Lands, and Fate of Old Republic, 1785-1850. By John R. Van Atta. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. 312. Cloth, $54.95.)Reviewed by Daniel FellerEvery generation or so, someone rediscovers importance of public land issue in early republic. Nearly a century ago, Fr ederick Jackson Turner and his students pegged political interplay of sections and regions as main determinant of federal land policy for seven new western states that entered Union between 1803 and 1821. Historians of New Deal generation, led by Paul W. Gates, accepted Jacksonian class rhetoric more or less at face value and traced a struggle for lands between poor but virtuous settler (the frontier incarnation of common man) and rapacious moneyed speculator. Challenging this view, later studies (including my own) questioned depth of societal disagreement over land policy, seeing more shared assumptions than fundamental oppositions in various policy proposals, more smoke than fire in heated rhetoric that surrounded them, and more creeping evolution than revolutionary overthrow in changes that ensued.John Van Atta's Securing West creatively engages this long-running discussion. He depicts a deep struggle, extending from first days of republic to eve of Civil War, between two starkly divergent visions of western development, which we might label an ordered control model and a democratic libertarian one. The contest between them was fundamental. It exposed intense ideological conflict and momentous class and cultural tensions (3); was a clash of rival economic beliefs and world views (141). In its early versions control model was frankly elitist, featuring land sold in large units and at high prices in order to preclude individual venturing. The idea was to guard frontier from becoming a place where refugee offscourings from civilized society could run riot in savage debauchery. Over years, however, popular pressures waiped system, so that by 1840s government was vending land in small parcels for nearly nominal sums. Instead of evicting and prosecuting trespassers, it now promised them first grab at whatever tracts they wanted. In offing lay Homestead Act of 1862, offering free land to any citizen who would live on it. And as system and order in opening public domain gave way to rule of pell-mell, public image of frontiersmen transmuted from barbarian hordes feared by Revolutionary elites to honest, industrious actual settlers extolled by Jacksonian senator Thomas Hart Benton.The great latter-day exponent of control model was Henry Clay, himself a product of an older West, who modernized elitist precepts to fit a democratized environment. Clay's land policy matched his larger Whig vision-indeed, it was heart of that vision. He did not oppose frontier settlement; but he wanted a measured, ordered opening of public domain that would balance agriculture with industry and commerce, with lands sold to responsible purchasers for what they were really worth and proceeds steered to fund broad programs of national improvement and uplift.Compelling as this vision was to both Clay and Van Atta, it ultimately failed, defeated by the aversion to central authority, assertive individualism, and leveling tendencies of nineteenth-century democracy. …

Forum: At the Gates of Heaven

Since the Hong Kong SAR handover to China the region has experienced perenni-al protests, culminating in the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ in September 2014. The ma-jority of observers, reporters and analysts have tended to frame the events as a war between democratic and communist forces. Overlooked is a deeper struggle be-tween two visions of social order, with Hong Kong protesters advocating individu-al freedoms and the Mainland insisting on ‘unity’ under the framework of a ‘harmonious society’ spanning greater China. At the heart of the protests are the mistrusts laden in the rhetoric each party uses to make its case. The following dis-cussion examines some of the contradictions embedded in Hong Kong’s Basic Law and proceeds to highlight the repository of shared Chinese cultural norms, collectively spanning both Hong Kong and Mainland China, which could poten-tially function as tools of reconciliation.

Pharmacy in Turkey: past, present, and future.

Pharmacy in Turkey underwent a radical change within the last decade. Introduction of the Health Transformation Program in 2003 has had a significant impact on Turkey's pharmacy system in accordance with objectives of the program to establish new pricing regulations for pharmaceuticals based on reference prices, and to develop better computer based health information/record systems. In this context, Pharmaceutical Tracking (Track-and-Trace) System using two dimensional matrix barcodes was initiated to prevent not only drug counterfeiting, but also fraud against the medical insurance system and off-record transactions within the pharmaceutical sector; and the process of recording prescriptions in an electronic format was launched. Some other improvements have also been made with respect to pharmacy education, law and practice. In contrast with all these positive outcomes, Turkish pharmacy sector is currently in a deep financial struggle. This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the recent developments in Turkish pharmacy system and to discuss future roles and challenges of the profession.

Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, and the First Amendment Right of Association

This article develops a provocative approach for thinking about the role of race in democratic politics. I identify the Supreme Court's descriptive and normative struggles with racial identity, which have led many on the Court to question the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. I rely upon the social identity literature in social psychology, as well as the race and politics literature in political science, to demonstrate empirically the relationship between racial and political identity. I then use the right of assciation, particularly as developed by the Supreme Court in the party and ballot access cases, to argue that the First Amendment protects the right of votes of color to associate as voters of color where race and political identity are correlated. In so doing, I characterize the Court's attempt to grasp the proper role of race in democratic politics as a deeper struggle between equality and liberty values. I conclude by suggesting a framework for balancing liberty and equality concerns in the design of electoral institutions.

Yunus Emre ve Mevlâna’nin Eserlerinde Insan ve Tekâmülü

Two big sufistic poets Yunus Emre and Rumi who lived in the same period of time but in different region had an important role for the social and religious life of Anatolian civilazation. Because of the period people in the region had to struggle against some problems. The Mongol Invasion, Babai Rebellion and throne struggtle are the main ones. Alongside variety of deep struggles and disorders, people had to face psychological, social and faith problems along with economical problems. Because of being a prosperous and having political stability Anatolia was a preferable place to move, but at the same time social and demografic structure of the region changed. Particles of socialization which were not part of problems during the good time caused problems after economic plight and political instability. In that period Yunus Emre and Rumi who inspire oneness, unity and tolerance rather than separation and collision advised people to be patient and meritorious. Two sufistic characters made important remindings and cursings for people’s social and religious lives through the mediation of their didactic works. As a result Yunus and Rumi enlightned people for happiness in both wordly and the next wordly lives by takin into consideration their humanitarian sctructures their times.

Modeling the Post-9/11 Meaning-Laden Paradox: From Deep Connection and Deep Struggle to Posttraumatic Stress and Growth

The prospective study follows college students after the 9/11 attacks. Based on evidence and trauma-related theories, and guided by reports on positive and negative reactions and meaning-related actions among Americans after 9/11, we explored the seemingly contradictory, yet meaning-related pathways to posttraumatic growth (PTG) and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTGD), indicating the sense of deep interconnectedness and deep conflict. The final model showed that 9/11 emotional turmoil triggered processes of assimilation, as indicated in pathways between prayer coping and perceived spiritual and social support, and of accommodation, as indicated in the pathway of spiritual struggle. Both pathways were directly associated with PTG in the follow-up. Perceived spiritual and social support contributed to lower levels of PTSD symptoms, whereas spiritual struggle had an opposite impact on symptoms; both effects were mediated through optimism but in opposite directions. The study suggests the interplay of complex crisis-related phenomena following meaning-laden collective trauma that presented existential challenges, involving coping, optimism, deep conflict, and deep interconnectedness.