Partnership Discourse Research Articles

Contested Discursive Framing of a Bank’s Cooptative Joint CSR Model

There is a dearth of critical ethnographic research that focuses on the semiotic-discursive features of corporate social responsibility (CSR) framing in business and nonprofit (BUS-NPO) partnerships. This article contributes to CSR scholarship by combining ethnographic methods (participant observation, in-depth interviews, and textual materials) and semiotic analysis to demonstrate how a bank-NPO partnership is discursively framed in the context of agonistic interactions and its implications in terms of cooptation.
 This article crystallizes two arguments. First, the bank’s joint CSR initiatives represent a discursively framed and validated model of CSR as a commodity aiming at advancing bank interests at the cost of avoiding substantive and sustained social responsibility. Second, the joint CSR model, discursively framed as a cooptative partnership discourse, is effectively realized through the practices of the cooptative relationship between the bank and the NPOs.

Guardians of Jewish tradition: from crisis to rehabilitation in the Shas party, 2019-21

ABSTRACT The big drama of Israel’s four closely spaced national elections in 2019–21 was accompanied by another, smaller, drama: the country’s plunge into political chaos gave the Shas party an opportunity for electoral, organisational, and political revitalisation. The four election campaigns transformed Shas from a Mizrahi-Haredi party in decline, barely able to pass the minimum vote threshold, into a stable party practicing a tightly focused politics – living proof that Haredi politicians were again occupying positions of power and influence. Not only did Shas do outstanding organisational and political work; it also demonstrated an impressive ability to align with the Israeli right’s core national-political agenda: the connection between security and tradition. The language of the Shas message evolved from one election campaign to another: what started as a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) discourse of cultural partnership with a religious-lite or masorti (traditionalist) public turned into a Zionist discourse of national partnership with a ‘right-lite’ voting public (Likud).

Coloniality and othering in DFID’s development partnership with South Africa

ABSTRACT Development aid discourses have been criticised for perpetuating othering and coloniality. They have been argued to produce and reproduce conceptual creations of a distinguishable ‘us’ and ‘them’ and uphold hierarchies where former colonial powers remain preeminent and subjugate the ‘Global South’. The turn of the century, however, saw the emergence of ‘development partnerships’ to rebalance asymmetrical relationships between donor and recipient. Developing a critical discourse analysis framework from decolonial scholarship and applying it to the United Kingdom Department for International Development’s development partnership with South Africa between 2014 and 2018, the article reveals clear examples of othering and coloniality. The suggestion of mutuality therefore appears to be just a façade, and the development partnership discourse is rather emphasising difference and justifying colonial hierarchies, contradicting its purported values. Recommendations include increased scrutiny of dehistoricised and decontextualised development narratives, and clearly stating national and political interests in bilateral partnerships.

What Makes an Ideal Partner? African Libraries and Neoliberal Discourses in International Development

Abstract This study investigates ‘partnership’ as a key discursive tool for extending neoliberalism in the field of international development. As a case study, it examines the language-in-use among development organizations when discussing public libraries as potential partners in Africa. Critical discourse analysis of 20 interviews with development practitioners via Fairclough’s three-part framework and keyword analysis illuminates how libraries are discursively constructed as partners. Findings reveal discourses centered around competition, visibility, and growth which uphold market logic and responsibilize potential partners, reproducing colonial power imbalances between Global North and South. As other institutions such as universities and NGOs grapple with similar dynamics, we must be attendant to the power asymmetries that are obscured by discourses of partnership in order to navigate the tension between increasing access to funding and advancing economic justice. We suggest measures for organizations to resist neoliberalism through self-conscious effort and investment toward more equitable partnerships.

CHINA’S ENGAGEMENT WITH MENA REGION UNDER XI JINPING

China has had historical relations with MENA region, though selective and limited to economic needs and interests. China’s foreign policy and economic diplomacy activism under Xi Jinping has ushered a new era of multidirectional engagement. China’s rise has made it a major actor of the international politics that has now global interests and role. This newly founded engagement in the MENA is mainly based on the Chinese compulsions of maintaining stability in the region. It includes ensuring the undisrupted supplies of energy vital for Chinese economic growth, desire of the regional partner for more financial and developmental investment. This paper endeavours to explore the recent engagement of China in the MENA region. It defines its new partnership discourse and initiatives under the Xi Jinping rule. It explains the nature, dynamics and Challenges to the Chinese ambitions and interests in the region. It concludes that China under Xi has a vision and policy to comprehensively establish relationship with the regional states on bilateral and multilateral levels but challenges to its role in the region loom large. Unless until it manages these challenges, there would be a question mark on the fulfilment of MENA dream

Election or selection? School autonomy reform, governance and the politics of school councils

ABSTRACT Neoliberal policies promoting school autonomy reform in Australia and internationally have, over three decades, appropriated earlier social democratic discourses of parental participation and partnership in school governance. Recent school autonomy reforms have repositioned school council/boards within a narrow frame of accountability and management operating in marketized systems of education. This paper considers the perceptions of 12 stakeholders in public education across four Australian states of how the latest school autonomy reform policies, including Independent Public Schools, supports corporatized and seemingly depoliticised repositioning of school councils. This data indicates there is a shift from elected parental representation to principal selection of ‘skill-based’ community members, with the greatest implications for those schools in disadvantaged communities experiencing difficulties gaining voluntary parental participation. We offer new theoretical insights into the links between school autonomy, governance, the role and composition of school boards and social justice informed by Nancy Fraser’s theorising of social justice. We identify an emerging tension between first, parent movements as counterpublics claiming participatory parity in decision-making in school councils; and secondly, principal selection of self-interested and politically influential actors onto school councils, potentially politicising school councils.

Family school partnership discourse: Inconsistencies, misrepresentation, and counter narratives

Fostering families' connectedness to their children's learning has become a focus for schools, based on growing evidence that family engagement positively influences student learning outcomes. This paper highlights ways in which teachers' family engagement practices can be adversely impacted by limiting and ambiguous terms of reference for family school partnerships. The experiences of four primary school teachers, working within a low socio-economic and culturally and linguistically diverse school community in Melbourne, Australia are the focus of this small-scale study. Teacher participants undertook a two-cycle process of Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR), where they examined school family engagement practices to identify opportunities to rethink and ultimately improve practice. The theory of practice architectures provided a scaffold for critical reflection, where the teachers' ways of understanding (sayings), facilitating (doings) and connecting (relatings) with students and their families were critically examined. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, transcripts of reflective practice meetings and reflective practice tools utilised throughout the CPAR cycles. Data analysis was underpinned by a practice architectures framework of cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements to allow for consideration of factors which enable and hinder practice. The study found that the teachers' self-described family engagement strategies initially stemmed from a parent involvement discourse that situated school as the central learning platform, with family and community contexts seen as peripheral. Throughout the CPAR cycles, facilitated reflective practice meetings supported the teacher participants to be able to differentiate family engagement from parent involvement. Teacher participants adapted their homework practices to provide opportunities for informal learning, occurring within family homes and community contexts, with the aim to connect with school curriculum. This study highlights opportunities for teachers to enhance family school partnerships through distinguishing and reconsidering parent involvement and parent engagement practices.

“We take responsibility!”: Governing the neighborhood—governing the self

This ethnographic study of a neighborhood association focuses on the process of organizing residents to collective action. Situated in the post-industrial city of Buffalo, New York, the Urban Community Collaborative (UCC) employs two main governing techniques: (1) “taking responsibility” and (2)“working collaboratively” that emphasizes the rationality of “active citizenship” and the formation of horizontally linked collaborative partnerships to address perceived urban social problems. Similar to previous studies, we view this political rationality as a discursive constitution that shapes the actions of the members of the UCC (Atkinson, 1999; Schofield, 20002). This political rationality invokes neoliberal discourses of individual responsibility, entrepreneurship, and community partnership in place of a dependency on the government. We find residents utilizing moral techniques of responsibilization which entails calling on their neighbors to “take responsibility” and to “work collaboratively” with one another and paradoxically, with the government itself in revitalization efforts.

Our secret stick-it-to-the-man group: Negotiating whose “support group” within a partnership

This article articulates specific tensions in discourse between Teacher Educator Researchers (TERs) and Teacher Researchers (TRs) while negotiating shared purpose within a research partnership. We focus on two discursive markers of tension that occured during a community conversation focused on developing shared understanding of partnership work: the use of "we" by TERs and TRs and the use of storytelling by TRs. Having provided a detailed description of these tensions, we yield some considerations to better understand how to navigate the tensions as they are constructed in real time partnership discourse.

Kualanamu International Airport: Current Development toward Aerotropolis

Nowadays, an airport is no only a place for passengers to come and go, but it plays a significant role in developing and driving the local economy. Realize or not, there will be urban areas that offer connectivity at the airport (aerotropolis), and each airport has different aerotropolis potential. This study aims to analyze changes occurring around Kualanamu International Airport during the pre-construction and post-construction of the airport in 2007 and 2013. Six of the seven criteria of the establishment of aerotropolis show positive results, including air traffic, connectivity, sustainable development, economic income, government support, and Demographics. Significant growth was seen in the added value of the industry, the size of the industrial area, and the increase in GDP per capita. The added value of the industry has an average growth of 99.72% per year from the previous only 1.4% per year, the total area of the industry increased to 780 hectares from the previous only 200 hectares, and the GRDP also more than doubled. The only criterion that has not shown a positive potential is the status of ownership and management by the private sector because until now there has been no partnership in managing Kualanamu International Airport. To realize the development of the concept of aerotropolis in this region, the role of government and stakeholders is needed, both for policies related to aerotopolis development, public-private partnership discourse, the form of partnership, the concession period, and its contribution to the area around the airport.

BEGINNING TEACHER LEARNING IN SCHOOL - UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS: UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF DEVELOPING BEGINNING-TEACHER KNOWLEDGE IN A PARTNERSHIP SETTING

Developing beginning-teacher knowledge in a school-university partnership is both complex and messy. This arises from the debates about (1) what beginning teachers should know and relates to the balance between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge and (2) where that knowledge should be developed. In considering what type of knowledge beginning teachers should acquire and by reviewing partnership discourse particularly from a sociocultural perspective, suggestions are made for supporting effective beginning-teacher learning.

Norwegian PhD students' discourses about practice-relevant research in the field of health and social work.

AimThe aim of this study was to explore the discourses of PhD students concerning the performance of practice‐relevant research in health and social work.DesignAn explorative, qualitative design and a discourse analytical approach were used to collect data.MethodsParticipants were recruited from a national research school for practice‐relevant research in Norway. Group interviews with ten PhD students (five health and five social work professionals) with extensive, wide‐ranging work experience as practitioners were used to collect data. The data were analysed by discourse analysis.ResultsThe analysis revealed three discourses: (a) the professional knowledge discourse; (b) the promoting partnership discourse; and (c) the using research knowledge discourse. The discourses are explicit concerning how systematically formed practice‐relevant research in health and social work is linked to dominant discourses about knowledge in the scientific field. Professional knowledge, promoting partnership and using research knowledge are fundamental features of practice‐relevant research.

Forging alliances: Coffee grower and chain leader partnerships to improve productivity and coffee quality in Papua New Guinea

Partnership discourse is making advances in development dialogue as a means to improve the livelihoods of the agrarian populace. In Papua New Guinea, productive partnerships flourished during the early growth of the coffee industry. After the demise of plantations and rural mills in the lead up to political independence, the support services that plantations used to provide to smallholders, including centralised processing, have ceased as have price incentives for quality. Consequently, smallholders began to produce coffee of inconsistent quality and their productivity has also declined. However, coffee value chain partnerships have the potential to reverse the present decline of coffee production and increase the productivity of coffee farmers and address the inconsistency and the supply of low‐grade coffee. Using two case studies of farmer cooperatives, we investigate collective action and also assess partnerships among present value chain actors. The case studies were supported with interviews of value chain actors to gain further insights into partnerships with farmer groups. This paper illustrates that through collective action and partnerships, coffee farmers can improve coffee production and quality, enhance governance systems in grower groups, attract community development services and diversify into other entrepreneurial activities.

Dominant discourses of workplace curriculum in Iranian organizations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze the dominant discourses of the workplace curriculum in Iranian organizations.Design/methodology/approachThe research data were collected through in-depth interviews with 30 professionals working in the field of workplace curriculum in three groups of consultants, managers and experts who were selected purposefully and with a theoretical sampling strategy. To analyze the data, thematic analysis method was used. The themes are extracted and categorized into three phases, namely, descriptive coding, interpretive coding and determination of overarching theme. To validate the data, collaborative research technique, member checking and researcher review and, to make sure of findings’ reliability, reliability index between two coders were used.FindingsBased on the findings, the kind of planner’s look at the workplace curriculum commonplaces will shape the nature of the curriculum and in terms of this look define and redefine the workplace curriculum discourses. Therefore, based on perceptions and attitudes in these areas, 11 different discourses are recognizable from the workplace curriculum. These include suppression discourse, justification discourse, ceremonial/ formality discourse, administrative discourse, engineering discourse, economical discourse, psychological discourse, partnership discourse, research discourse, developmental discourse and, finally, multi-cultural discourse.Practical implicationsThe common goal of all learning professionals in the workplace is to play the role of a strategic partner, or at least be a good partner for the organization. One of the main challenges of learning and development professionals in the workplace is increase in integration and alignment between learning programs and developmental opportunities with business organization strategies. Achieving this important goal is possible when we have a proper understanding of the current situation and condition. Various situations and conditions are identified and described in the form of 11 discourses. If the authors do not look at the context and proper understanding of the main concepts – The main concepts of each discourse are put into a quill – in which any discourse that was created, the authors will not be able to make the appropriate strategies. A good doctor will hear and understand well before the first thing.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few studies that offer a variety of discourses for the workplace curriculum.

Lomé et la coopération industrielle CEE-ACP en 1975: entre Nouvel ordre économique international et poursuite des intérêts industriels européens

In 1975, the Lomé Convention, which manages relations between the EEC and the countries of the ACP (Africa Caribbean Pacific) group, introduces a chapter on "industrial cooperation". This new policy aims to develop production sectors (industry, agriculture, mining and tourism) in the ACP countries, and embodies the egalitarian partnership discourse specific to the New International Economic Order. Using unpublished archives from the European Commission, the ACP Secretariat, the Centre for Industrial Development and interviews with the administrators in charge in the 1970s, we study the complexity of the networks of internal and external actors at DG- VIII responsible for setting up EEC-ACP industrial cooperation in Brussels. In doing so, we show that industrial cooperation is created out of the political will to rethink relations between European countries and previous African colonies in the framework of the NIEO; we also show the persistence of interests from private European economic circles, which remain close to the European Commission.

‘Locations of Possibility’: Critical perspectives on partnership

This article offers critical perspectives on collaborative partnerships and feminist teaching that revise paradigms of power, prioritize student agency, enrich curriculum and scholarship, and sustain empowered communities of learning that challenge institutional compartmentalization. The authors reflect on how co-created curriculum can catalyze new professional partnerships that in turn contribute to refreshed learning experiences and communities. This article presents evidence of how a partnership orientation effectively encompasses an ethic and practice of feminist teaching, posits a framework of feminist pedagogy and praxis into the discourse of partnership, and exemplifies possibilities of these practices as important steps towards a (re)vision of liberatory learning.

Philanthropy and the nation-state in global health: The Gates Foundation in India

ABSTRACTIn recent years, philanthropic actors such as the Gates Foundation have been understood as commanding sweeping influence in global health. They have been associated with the outsourcing of public health services, shifting of policy priorities, and the eventual sidelining of national governments. This article makes a different argument about the impact of global philanthropic actors. It focuses on the work of the Gates Foundation in India over the last decade and a half, tracing how the foundation initially circumvented the national government but then moved on to a discourse of partnership. Ironically, after an early discounting of the role of the government, the foundation later sought to transition its programmes to the state. The foundation's evolving trajectory reflects its experiences on the ground and also the difficulties of realising its original ambitions. While the foundation's work in India is marked by ebbs and flows, the state's institutions remain constant. The article argues that there is not always a straightforward marginalisation of the government vis-à-vis global philanthropic actors. Actors such as the Gates Foundation, perceived as enormously powerful in global health institutions in Geneva and New York, may have a far more qualified impact in large developing countries such as India.

Introduction to the Forums

Introduction to the Forums Chih-ming Wang (bio) and Yu-Fang Cho (bio) Contributors to these forums come from a wide range of positions and concerns, but all attempt to engage and reorient American studies through the intertwined vectors of the Chinese factor and the transpacific. Though the first forum is oriented toward the question of transpacific methodology and the second forum focuses more on the historical and contemporary US–China dynamics, they do intersect and complement each other to consider how to reframe the global in American studies: by linking sites seemingly detached and far away from each other, undoing the diplomatic discourses of friendship and partnership, deconstructing our ways of knowing and desiring, and building a transpacific perspective into the remaking of America and the world. As a whole, they articulate American studies into transpacific alliances of knowledge and politics, and urge us to carry on antiimperialist and anticapitalist work from spaces of solidarity. [End Page 469] Chih-ming Wang Chih-ming Wang Chihming Wang is visiting research fellow at China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China, and associate research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. He is the author of Transpacific Articulations: Student Migration and the Remaking of Asian America (University of Hawai’i Press, 2013); coeditor of Precarious Belongings: Affect and Nationalism in Asia (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017); and guest editor of the “Asian American Studies in Asia” special issue for InterAsia Cultural Studies (June 2012). His research focuses on Asian American literature and cultural studies in transpacific and inter-Asian contexts. His articles have appeared in American Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, Cultural Studies, positions, and Chinese America: History and Perspectives. Yu-Fang Cho Yu-Fang Cho Yu-Fang Cho is associate professor of English and a core faculty member of the Department of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University. She is the author of Uncoupling American Empire: Cultural Politics of Deviance and Unequal Difference, 1890–1910 (State University of New York Press, 2013) and articles in American Quarterly, Transnational American Studies, Amerasia Journal, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, among others. She has received fellowships from the Bancroft Library, the Huntington Library, the Pacific Rim Research Program at the University of California, the Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, and the National Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences in Taiwan. Her current book project investigates the relationship between race, reproductive justice, and nuclearism in America’s Asia Pacific. Copyright © 2017 The American Studies Association

The Discourse of Partnership and the Reality of Reform: Interrogating the Recent Reform Agenda at Initial Teacher Education and Induction Levels in Ireland

Over the last decade, teacher education in Ireland has experienced radical reconceptualization and restructuring at both initial teacher education [ITE] and induction levels, with reform of continuous professional development now in the planning phase. The establishment of the Teaching Council (2006) as a statutory, regulatory body, with a role in the review and accreditation of teacher education, increased the visibility of and policy focus on teacher education. Significant reform of initial teacher education was announced in 2011 that included both an extension of the duration of programmes and, most notably, the period the student teachers were to be engaged in school-based professional development. This increased period has been accompanied by a shift in the understanding of what is involved in practicum and implies a redefinition of the respective roles of the university and the school, and the development of a new form of partnership between both agencies. The period of induction and probation has also become an area of reform with an emphasis on school-based coaching and the evaluation of newly qualified teachers, which devolves decisions on teachers’ full recognition and membership of the profession, to principals and colleagues.This shift, which changes the established approach to induction for primary level teachers, has resulted in the withdrawal of cooperation with this policy by the main teacher union and to the implementation process being stymied. Both policy developments bring the concept of partnership within Irish education into sharp focus: a partnership between schools and universities in ITE, but also partnership in policy development and implementation in the case of induction.

Re-engaging with community work as a method of practice in social work: A view from Northern Ireland

Summary This article investigates community work as a method in social work in Northern Ireland. It traces the processes that have led to the marginalisation of community work within social work practices and the complex relationship between community development and social work. Nonetheless, the welfare state is undergoing change, wherein new agendas of personalisation, service user involvement, community engagement and partnership are emerging, which are changing the occupational space of social work. We argue that this change can be an opportunity through which social work can and must re-engage with community development, particularly within the existing political arrangements and sectarian context of Northern Ireland. However, social work’s engagement in the community presents risks given its current relationship with the state and loss of trust within the Northern Irish community. We discuss these risks and further possibilities. Findings The article draws from contemporary literature on the current context of community development and service provision in Northern Ireland social work’s involvement. The possibilities for community social work are explored through recent policy initiatives and the current situation of the community sector. Risks that stem from social work’s relationship with the state, and with community organisations as well as the contradiction between discourses of partnership in service delivery and the ground reality are considered. Applications Our analysis suggests the need for (a) collective action by social workers through collective representation, (b) a new conceptualisation of professionalism that incorporates partnerships with other workers in the care sector and (c) education that has contemporary resonance.