Divergent Discourses Research Articles

TVET Contributions Toward Education Policy, Economic Sustainability, Development, and Poverty Abatement in a Globalized Economy

Divergent discourses in education affecting social investment policies are driven by disparate perceptions of education as value, whether societal, individual, or by restructuring definitions of human capital beyond truncated utility measurements. In that context, powerful policy actors are making decisions based on their class cohort experience of what education should be, resulting in distinguishing evaluative properties that design education policy typologies to fit. Tightly framed within Rittel and Webber’s (1973) Wicked Problems and extrapolated across international education policy, are competitive academic performance outcomes, reflected by GDP increases that act as dimensions of national positioning within the global market. Panel regression findings from 14 years of world economic, vocational, and academic enrollment data reveal that academic education alone has no impact on GDP, but academics accompanying Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) does impact powerfully. Findings also reveal that every TVET enrollment proportionately increases overall academic enrollment, but not the inverse; while adoption of academic only investment increases poverty, negatively affecting GDP growth.

Land as material, knowledge and relationships: Resource extraction and subsistence imaginaries in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

This article examines the social, historical and political constitution of land and resource imaginaries in Bristol Bay, Alaska. We compare the dynamics of these different imaginaries in the region within the early permitting debates concerning the proposed Pebble Mine to understand the contemporary politics of defining and constructing ideologies of extractive resource use. We show that the civic epistemologies and ontologies embedded in different social, scientific and political practices help explain environmental actions and outcomes. We demonstrate that the contested fields of social imagination allow for resource exploitation - commodification, extraction and profit - that endangers nature, but also allow for building alternative imaginaries and constructions of land and value as key components of environmental justice and land sovereignty initiatives. Contestations can also highlight problematic and unjust resource practices that disenfranchise and destabilize subordinate industries, poor communities, indigenous lands and subsistence or renewable resource use. These divergent discourses, and the deliberative valuations of alternative futures that they contribute to, are not effectively considered in Alaska's large mine permitting process.

Young children as beings, becomings, having beens: an integrated approach to role-play

ABSTRACTThe new paradigm of early childhood allows for the construction of the child as active agents able to comment on their own lives. Historically children have been constructed using divergent discourses as either beings or becomings. More recently they have been seen as complementary and a further temporal state of having been allows for a richer description of the child. In play and role-play, the three temporal states can be observed and appear to inform the children’s understanding of complex world structures. This paper reports the research that was conducted in two Early Childhood Education and Care settings in England. The research was concerned with young children’s experiences of play and role-play in their early childhood setting. Observations and conferences demonstrate the ways in which the temporal states are established in their play.

Epistemic explanations for divergent evolution in discourses regarding students’ extended historical writing in England

ABSTRACTIn England, two concurrent but largely disconnected discourses have emerged whose representatives have promulgated initiatives relevant to students’ extended historical writing: genre theorists and the history teachers’ ‘extended writing movement’. Despite certain goals held in common, the two discourses have tended to talk past one another resulting in wastage, incoordination and replication in resourcing. One reason for these divergent discourses is that inter-discursive communication is difficult owing to epistemic differences regarding what the curricular goals regarding students’ extended historical writing should be. Using Bernstein’s model for the production of pedagogic knowledge as an interpretative framework, first I explain these discourses’ differing curricular conceptions by characterizing it as a tension between contrasting emphases on ‘recontextualization’ and ‘reproduction’ of academic knowledge. Second, as a representative of the extended writing movement, I offer a theoretical critique of genre theorists’ greater concentration on the field of reproduction. Third, I situate these developments in England in an international context by briefly comparing them to trends in the United States. Finally, I argue that these epistemic tensions regarding curricular goals matter and need to be resolved. Otherwise, the recommendations of the representatives of both discourses are destined to appeal to only limited audiences.

Global Discourses and Local Practices: Teaching Citizenship and Human Rights in Postgenocide Rwanda

In postgenocide Rwanda, education is viewed by the national government as crucial for shaping a new, unified civic identity but also as a tool to address the past genocide. Drawing on Rwanda as a case study, this article analyzes national curriculum documents, school textbooks, and interviews with teachers and students in order to understand the following questions: To what extent does the Rwandan state integrate global rights discourses within the civics curricula and textbooks? How do teachers and student engage with these global discourses in the classroom? I find that while the national civics curriculum intends to inculcate a traditional notion of citizenship, emphasizing patriotism and loyalty to the state, the curriculum also includes global norms oriented toward human rights and global citizenship. However, divergent discourses are evident in the classroom among students and teachers where only some aspects of the global models are embraced. This points to an inherent tension in citizenship education that seeks to address a contentious past by drawing on global models around citizenship and human rights while also promoting national civic values.

Divergent discourse between protests and counter-protests: #BlackLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter.

Since the shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by White police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, the protest hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has amplified critiques of extrajudicial killings of Black Americans. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, other Twitter users have adopted #AllLivesMatter, a counter-protest hashtag whose content argues that equal attention should be given to all lives regardless of race. Through a multi-level analysis of over 860,000 tweets, we study how these protests and counter-protests diverge by quantifying aspects of their discourse. We find that #AllLivesMatter facilitates opposition between #BlackLivesMatter and hashtags such as #PoliceLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter in such a way that historically echoes the tension between Black protesters and law enforcement. In addition, we show that a significant portion of #AllLivesMatter use stems from hijacking by #BlackLivesMatter advocates. Beyond simply injecting #AllLivesMatter with #BlackLivesMatter content, these hijackers use the hashtag to directly confront the counter-protest notion of “All lives matter.” Our findings suggest that Black Lives Matter movement was able to grow, exhibit diverse conversations, and avoid derailment on social media by making discussion of counter-protest opinions a central topic of #AllLivesMatter, rather than the movement itself.

Uncovering Discursive Framings of the Bangladesh Shipbreaking Industry

Shipbreaking in the Chittagong region of Bangladesh supplies metal to meet the needs of the nation’s construction sector. The shipbreaking industry has received international attention for environmental contamination and workers’ insecurity. However, these issues have been framed without considering the actors that produce them and their associated motives. This paper illuminates the conflicting discourses regarding the industry between two divergent groups of actors. On the one hand, national and international NGOs collaborate to enforce a discourse focused on negative localized impacts. On the other hand, yard owners, yard workers, and local community members forge a counter discourse, focused on positive localized impacts and raising doubts about the origin of the environmental pollutants and occupational standards setting. National and international actors have so far missed the conflicting perspective of workers, yard owners, locals and NGOs. We contend that these divergent discourses involve scalar politics, with one discursive frame focused on localized impacts in order to leverage global resources, while the other situates local communities in the global world system; this confounding of scale leads to ineffective policy formulation. This shipbreaking case study provides a valuable lesson on the importance of listening to and including stakeholders at multiple scales when seeking policies to address localized impacts of a globalized industry.

Crise ambiental, consumo e artefatos culturais: provocações ao tempo contemporâneo

O presente artigo trata de uma pesquisa que tem como escopo articular o campo da Educao Ambiental e os estudos da mdia. Ao estudar alguns de seus discursos entende-se que a mdia coloca em operao uma relao de poder ao fabricar verdades, produzir sentidos e constituir sujeitos. Destacamos o forte apelo miditico na constituio de um sujeito contemporneo preocupado com a vida humana no planeta Terra. Diante do cenrio contemporneo, problematizamos especificamente o campo da Educao Ambiental e discutimos fragmentos de discursos miditicos que engendram o sujeito ecolgico. Para este texto tratamos dois discursos profundamente divergentes o da crise ambiental e o da incitao permanente ao consumo. Alm disso, colocamos em suspenso os discursos apocalpticos de fim do mundo devido ao mau uso dos recursos naturais. Como concluso, provoca-se o leitor a pensar atravessamentos de tais ditos em nossas vidas.

The unredeemed nations: the Taiwanese film KANO and its trans-border reception

ABSTRACTTaiwanese film KANO recounts the passage of a mixed-race baseball team to Japan’s Koshien Tournament during the colonial era of the 1930s. Its release evoked in both Taiwan and Japan critical responses in view of its rosy depiction of colonial modernity. Through analysing the film’s text and reviews in both Taiwan and Japan, we identify KANO as a “post-national” cinematic event. Its inviting nostalgic invocation of Japanese colonialism at the civilian level has launched divergent discourses on colonial legacies in the contemporary re/making of national identities, reflecting on the post-colonial socio-cultural conditions facing both Taiwan and Japan. We found that KANO in Taiwan instigated a re-examination of the state’s role in crafting the foundational myth of baseball as a “national” sport. Furthermore, the film brought on schemes of othering in which two national others were distinguished to manifest Taiwan subjectivity: Japanese colonialism versus Chinese nationalism. On the other hand, KANO in Japan was stripped of its colonial connotation. Its honouring of juvenile devotion to baseball was employed as a psychic introjection of Japanese-ness, which many considered losing in the globalizing social milieu.

To Punk, Yield, and Flail

At the intersection of social practice art and queer failure discourse, performativity pulses with possibility. This article tracks this strong performative force that undergirds theorizations of queer failure, social success, and performance. The author examines Julie Tolentino’s community engagement project, The Magical Order (2014), which brings these divergent discourses together. Her collaboration with Larkin Street Youth Services, which serves homeless youth in San Francisco, explored weaker modes of engagement that bring to the fore the sense of force embedded in performativity. Tolentino and her collaborators renegotiate the strong performative impulse by punking, yielding, and flailing. Punking not only reworks genealogies of performance for social practice but also emphasizes mere survival over successful thriving. Yielding renegotiates how the precariat relate to institutions beyond antagonism, as they succumb to institutional forces without losing a sense of self. Flailing nuances failure as the former tracks the unbecoming and temporary nature of punk survival and institutional yielding. These verbs collectively offer a lexicon that directs us to the limits of both social practice and queer aesthetic discourses, highlighting the need to place these two conversations together in order to rework theorizations of performativity and examine the queer possibility of less.

Discourse and Power Relations in Community Tourism

Adopting a mixed method of ethnographic fieldwork approach and critical discourse analysis, we explored the implicit power relations between a private company and local residents in Chongdu Valley, China. Three themes—destination image, development outcomes, and institutions and regulations—were identified within the discourses of the two groups and then examined for their intertextuality and congruence/incongruence. The findings suggested that in spite of congruence on destination image and overall development outcomes, the two groups held conflicting values, theories, and attitudes, and thus divergent discourses toward a range of tourism development issues. We concluded with a series of suggestions on how the power structure of Chongdu Valley should be changed to mitigate the relationship between the community and the private company, and comments regarding the effectiveness of discourse analysis as a research tool in uncovering implicit power relations at the community level.

Discipline, educate and punish

Based on an ethnographic study in a Portuguese youth detention centre (YDC), the article discusses the divergent discourses of law, the judiciary and detention centres, and the way they are put into practice. While the law gives priority to young offenders’ ‘education’, both the sentencing practices of the judiciary and the institutional practices of YDCs adopt and implement primarily a disciplinary stance on youth justice. The article anatomizes how these divergent discourses intermingle, and contrasts the institutional discourses with the inmates’ views of, and reactions to, the disciplinary mode of operation of the centres. It is suggested that the regime of confinement and strategies of reward and punishment of the YDCs induce juveniles to adopt only short-lived changes of conduct, ultimately confining the law’s precept of education to a praxis of behavioural conditioning.

Surrogate mother – praiseworthy or stigmatized: a qualitative study on perceptions of surrogacy in Assam, India

ABSTRACT Background: Surrogacy is a reproductive practice that has been strongly marketed in India as a solution for childless couples. As a result, the number of surrogacy clinics is increasing. Meanwhile, a global discourse on surrogacy, originating from a Western perspective, has characterized surrogacy as being exploitative of women in low-income settings, where poverty drives them to become surrogate mothers. Objective: This study explored perspectives on surrogacy from men and women in Assam, an Indian state known to be a low-income setting. Surrogacy arrangements in Assam are still uncommon. It can be expected that the dominant global discourses on surrogacy will be unfamiliar to the general population, and the objective was also to position the results within the divergent global discourses of surrogacy. Methods: In order to explore local views on surrogacy, we conducted individual interviews and focus group discussions with people from various socioeconomic groups in Assam. Results: Our findings reveal that people in Assam perceive surrogacy as a good option for a childless couple, as it would result in a child who is a ‘blood’ relation – something highly desirable for sociocultural reasons. However, the part played by the surrogate mother complicates local views on surrogacy. Most people consider payment to the surrogate mother contrary to societal norms. A surrogate mother is also often judged in a moral light, either as a ‘bad mother’ for selling her child, or as a ‘noble woman’ who has helped a childless couple and deserves payment for her services. Conclusions: In order to decrease the stigmatization of women, a regulatory policy is needed that will take into account the complex understandings of surrogacy and perceptions of surrogate mothers in Indian society. In policy, the possible effect of the dominant exploitation discourse needs to be modulated by local understandings of this reproduction method.

USING LEXICAL BUNDLES IN DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS WRITTEN BY ARAB AND IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS AND ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERS

Ponte Academic JournalApr 2017, Volume 73, Issue 4 USING LEXICAL BUNDLES IN DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS WRITTEN BY ARAB AND IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS AND ENGLISH NATIVE SPEAKERSAuthor(s): Rasool Hajizadeh ,Rahman Sahragard, Alireza AhmadiJ. Ponte - Apr 2017 - Volume 73 - Issue 4 doi: 10.21506/j.ponte.2017.4.11 Abstract:Conventionally, lexical bundles (LBs), known as formulaic sequences, recreate divergent discourse functions in written research paper investigations. This study investigates the use of four-word LBs in 60 doctoral dissertations written by Arabs, Iranians and English native speakers in applied linguistics. For the identification of lexical bundles a specialized computer software called AntConc 3.4.4 w (Windows) 2014, was used to help identify the potential lexical bundles for each sub-corpus. The results of the study revealed that the total number of 43220 lexical bundles extracted from the three groups of PhD dissertations differed structurally and functionally, and most of the authors of PhD dissertations relied on text-oriented bundles for establishing their written academic discourse. Pedagogically, the list of bundles found could be of considerable use to EAP writing instructors for improving their learner’s writing performance and to syllabus designers for preparing materials. Download full text:Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution Username Password

Mapping stakeholder viewpoints in biodiversity management: an application in Niger using Q methodology

The purpose of this paper is to examine the viewpoints of stakeholders in the management and conservation of farm animal biodiversity in Niger. The research applies Q methodology in order to reveal consensual and divergent discourses. After the development of the set of items on the topic of biodiversity (Q sample), the statements were sorted by the respondents through a 7-grade scale, from −3 to +3. The analysis of Q-sort data with the qmethod package under the R software highlighted three distinct stakeholder viewpoints on the importance of biodiversity in agriculture and animal husbandry, the balance between progress and preservation and the effectiveness of different methods of conservation. The study shows an apparent consensus on the importance of biodiversity that is obviously a promoted topic in the country. Behind the consensus, different discourses are defined that all appear divided by the same dilemma between conservation and economic development. Understanding the different answers and weight attributed to each of the components of the dilemma will guide awareness-raising campaigns and help to pinpoint divergent interests among stakeholders.

Thinking Through Drawing with William Kentridge

Freedom of expression is a foundational concept of Western modernism. It is closely associated with the two-dimensional mediums of painting and, it has become especially clear in the past few decades, drawing. Drawing has now achieved the status of a major medium in contemporary art; yet the social and theoretical implications of this remain unclear. More importantly, the political implications of its association with free expression have not been widely recognized. Drawing’s unique ability to evoke divergent discourses of public and private, expression and control, information and intuition, the personal and the political, deserves exploration in depth. Conceptual artists first expanded the possibilities for drawing in the 1960s, making use of its marginal status to critique the polemical free expression of abstract expressionism. Contemporary practitioners such as South African artist William Kentridge, known for his hand-drawn animations, have taken drawing in a new direction. Making use of the expressive possibilities pioneered in early 20th-century modernism, Kentridge conceptualizes drawing as an expanded social field to question the political contexts that have defined the medium historically and explore its possibilities for registering the complexity of recent events beyond the limited scope of the art world.

Struggles over human rights in local government – the case of access to education for undocumented youth in Malmö, Sweden

ABSTRACTThe present article elaborates on struggles over the inclusion and exclusion of undocumented children and young people in the Swedish school system. Through conducting an in-depth case study on the issue of access to school in the city of Malmö in Sweden, our analysis demonstrates how the right to education for undocumented migrant children is subject to a process of struggle between divergent discourses on children’s human rights. Internal debates at the city level of governance are identified around, for example, whether the police could be denied access to schools or if contradictory messages from various authorities might lead to a legitimacy problem. Other questions are the registration of grades when the children concerned are reluctant to be put into a register due to the risks involved; and if fictitious names could be used on class lists that police officers can request. As the article shows, these local struggles are an expression of tensions between different levels of governance that are also affected by the migration control regime, as regards rights for children who are residing irregularly. In that respect, there is a struggle over the appropriate legalistic discourse – as in, to which level should it make reference. However, actors contesting a restrictive interpretation of the right to education also make substantial use of, what we call here, an ‘experiential’ discourse – that is, drawing upon the everyday experiences and feelings of those whose rights are in question. Struggles at the local governance level also have relevance for exploring substantial parts of the broader political context in which the human rights of undocumented migrants are (de)contested.

Food discourses in Cape Breton: Community, economy, and ecological food practices

This project investigates ecological food practices on Cape Breton Island as legacies of traditional lifestyles and responses to the acceleration of global capitalism. I examine the multifarious discourses that frame ecological food practices such as organic gardening and farmers’ markets in this region. People have many reasons for producing and consuming ecologically. For some, interest in local, organic food arises from health concerns; for others, involvement constitutes active resistance to environmental degradation or corporate control. These varying perspectives give rise to, and are reflected in, divergent discourses that shape people’s values and identities. I explore possibilities and constraints, including economic benefits, social connections, and healthy lifestyles; as well as time and energy demands, modest financial compensation, and environmental factors. The importance of sustainable food practices raises important questions: Who performs this labour and how is it financially compensated? How are products distributed and shared? What kinds of support would make ecological practices more feasible on a broader scale? To address these questions and contextualize my investigations, I interview farmers, consumers, restaurateurs, and policy makers, and analyze archival and policy documents. I situate my observations within broader circumstances to link local initiatives with global developments and illuminate possibilities for enacting change and collaboratively developing sustainable food practices (Starr 2014).

The Dangers of 'Warming and Replenishing' (wenbu ) during the Ming to Qing Epistemic Transition.

Through a case study of Zhao Xianke's One Principle through Medicine (Yiguan ) (1617?) and Xu Dachun's (1693-1771) denouncements of this text, my article zooms in on divergent discourses on the safety and efficacy of medicinal substances and compounds in late imperial China. Although Xu Dachun's fierce attacks on the popular 'warming and replenishing' (wenbu ) therapies can be situated in an epistemic shift from the cosmology of 'Song learning' (songxue ) towards the philology of 'Han learning' (hanxue ) and 'evidential research' (kaozheng ), I argue that more complex issues were at stake as well. Changed political, social, ethical, and economic realities shaped new and multifaceted perceptions of the nature of medicine, the medical profession, and the usage of medicinals in the aftermath of the Ming to Qing transition.

Introduction: The Legacy of Greek Political Thought

© 2015 The Author. This Introduction offers context for the individual papers by examining the intersections and productive tensions between political thought and classical reception studies. While Plato and Aristotle have long been privileged interlocutors for political philosophers, classical reception studies has pluralised both this ancient canon and given rise to a more complex understanding of the modern heirs of ancient political thought. Similarly, the insights of studying the history of political texts and ideas across a longer tradition calls into question the fixity of concepts such as democracy, empire and political freedom. Indeed, we query the very notion of tradition by emphasising how the past has been repeatedly constructed and reconstructed in divergent modern political discourses and conversely how modern political theories and realities have been shaped and reshaped by an idea of antiquity. The Introduction closes with a brief survey of the collected papers.