Dominant Perspective Research Articles

Collective local liberalism: orchestrated local governments and the expansion of the BRI

ABSTRACT What drives the varied performance of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects? Can the central state’s role and the participating nations’ development needs fully account for the success or failure of individual BRI projects? This article challenges the dominant state-centric perspective, suggesting it falls short in elucidating the heterogeneous results of BRI projects. Through a comparative analysis of the Pan-Beibu Gulf Economic Cooperation Zone (PBGECZ) and the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (ILSTC), the study reveals the impact of local government collaboration on the efficacy of China’s foreign policy. By proposing collective local liberalism, we argue that cooperative dynamics, rather than competitive, are crucial for the success of the BRI. This nuanced approach underscores the necessity of a collaborative framework among subnational actors to enhance the execution and outcomes of BRI projects, offering a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese foreign policy.

Revisiting “An Ever Closer Union of Law and Values”. Still Paddling Together?

The ambition of this analysis is to move beyond the dominant perspective of human rights and instead embrace the neglected dimension of the axiology of the supranational integration. The technical question “how” supranational governance must today respond to the changing context of the law of integration and go hand in hand with revisiting the “why”, despite all our differences, we are still ready to live together within the supranational community. Such a shift in the emphasis is necessary given the fact that the law of integration read only through the prism of market has proven ineffective when it comes to counteracting new kinds of legalistic dangers that feed off „the politics of fear”, where the law is used not to empower but to disempower, not to liberate but to oppress, not to bring to the surface, but to hide and manipulate. In these circumstances one of the major scientific and political tasks is thus to improve the understanding of the novel threats on the individual, social and political levels and in this way to develop counter strategies and counter narratives. In other words, supranational governance needs a new conceptual justification that would explain the ethnography and the practice of supranational law of integration when faced with the novel forms of contestation. It is argued that the value discourse associated with supranational legality provides a truly paradigmatic turn in the studies on the supranational governance and design. In this spirit the analysis invites attention and more robust research to the neglected first order questions of belonging and identity in a common legal order where all the actors are being challenged to rethink their allegiances and anchor them firmly within the framework of common values and aspirations. For that to happen, though, a new narrative is needed, one that would provide all the actors of the law of integration with the discursive framework and a point of reference to defend and better explicate transnational democracy and the rule of law, and not just human rights, as the constitutional essentials (“First Principles”) of the supranational legal order.

Learning About Mental Health Lived Experience in Social Work Education

ABSTRACT Lived experience education occupies an increasingly important space in mental health education for social workers. Despite being plagued by practices that continue to be discriminating and exclusionary, the mental health policy and practice context demand robust attention to the meaningful inclusion of service users and their families to achieve genuine partnership, reciprocity, and equality in mental health service provision. For social work educators, lived experience education is now an indispensable component of a critically informed mental health curriculum and pedagogy. Framed within an appeal for epistemic justice, this article reports on qualitative survey data from social work students who experienced teaching from people with lived experience. Findings show that students greatly valued lived experience education, as it created opportunities for authentic and more diverse understandings of mental health that fostered critical reflection. A curriculum that supports epistemic equality and a social justice agenda would help scaffold lived experience expertise for student learning. IMPLICATIONS Mental health lived experience education positively impacts social work students’ values and attitudes towards mental health service users. Lived experience education supports social work students to expand their understandings of mental health and recovery beyond dominant biomedical perspectives. Genuine valuing of lived experience knowledge and expertise in social work education helps address epistemic injustice.

Traditional healing as mental health intervention: Contemporary insights from an American Indian healer.

Contemporary American Indian communities experience a disproportionately high rate of specific mental health concerns, including psychiatric disorders as defined by professional psychology. Although integrating mainstream mental health services and Indigenous traditional healing (ITH) has been presented as a promising approach to addressing these inequities, such integration necessitates in-depth exploration and consideration of ITH. To that effect, this article provides a thematic analysis of an interview with an urban American Indian traditional healer who reflected on more than 4 decades of therapeutic experience. Based on this analysis, we identified two major themes. The first theme, Expansive View of ITH, reflects this healer's conceptualization and understanding of the therapeutic process while the second theme, Guiding Principles of ITH, explicates the foundational commitments that shape and guide this healer's application and practice of ITH. These insights reinforce previous observations made by scholars of Indigenous health and well-being that challenge dominant Euro-American perspectives and call for transformative change in psychology research and practice, advocating for professional consideration of a broader range of therapeutic rationales, traditions, and practices than what is common within the field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Social perspectives on the sustainability challenges within the desalination sector: a Q-method study

Desalination offers options to augment water supplies for growing urban and industrial demand. Yet these facilities and related infrastructure projects have significant impacts on environmental, economic, and social sustainability. However, few studies examine how key actors in the sector understand or incorporate sustainability ideas and practices into the design, construction, and operation of desalination facilities. This study fills this gap by examining stakeholder perspectives on sustainability in the desalination sector using Q-method. We identified three dominant social perspectives on these topics. Factor 1 views desalination as important for the long-term sustainability of water supply. Factor 2 sees the social and environmental impacts of desalination as too big of a sustainability risk when there are other water resources to consider. Factor 3 indicates that the parties pursuing desalination have the responsibility of addressing sustainability concerns through their proposals and project specifications. These perspectives reveal how desalination stakeholders understand sustainability, key challenges, and responsibility for ensuring sustainable desalination projects. The findings provide insight into how desalination stakeholders can improve sustainability processes and outcomes.

Guest editorial: Considering the global-local relationships in education

This special issue of Policy Futures in Education invited authors to consider and re-consider the global-local relationship in education policies. Collectively, the articles in this special issue reflect the dominant perspectives among scholars and practitioners interested in research on globalisation and education, where studies investigated how intertwined worldwide discourses, processes, and institutions affect local educational practices and policies. They underscore both structural and agency processes and the cultural divergences that emerged locally as local institutions and players recontextualise and remake these global policies and discourses. Most articles begin with the narrative of how intergovernmental organisations such as UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank contributed to disseminating worldwide discourses on human capital and lifelong learning for economic development, which are reflected in many national education policy documents. In line with the dominant perspectives on globalisation and education, the authors largely frame globalisation as a realm of reality with agency that interacts with and transforms another realm of existence, the local. They then demonstrate how the local dimension is and can also be agentic in that local governments, institutions, and people did not adopt these global initiatives wholesale; they adapted and transformed these initiatives to suit the local contexts and needs, resulting in various local variations. Overall, the collection of papers highlights how the global-local relationship is a multi-layered process involving diffusion, adoption, and adaptation.

Time Perspective and Perceived Social Isolation: The Role of Social Interaction Anxiety.

Time perspective is a theoretical construct that describes how humans perceive time, which can influence decision-making and subsequent behavior. Research has shown that an individual's dominant time perspective can be linked to increased risk of poor health. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between time perspective and perceived social isolation. Specifically, we examined the role of social interaction anxiety in the relationship between time perspective and perceived social isolation in a normative sample of college-aged individuals. Undergraduates (n = 1780) at a large midwestern university completed an online survey. Results revealed that future-oriented, past-positive, and present-hedonistic time perspectives were significantly negatively associated with perceived social isolation. In contrast, past-negative was positively associated with perceived social isolation, and these relationships were partially explained by social interaction anxiety. Understanding dominant time perspectives can help us to better assess health risk factors and may help to develop interventions to promote healthy behaviors.

The Toll of Exclusion on Immigrants’ Health across the Life Course: Research Advances and Future Directions

Health is an integral feature of immigration, providing not only insight into population health but also a critical lens into immigrant integration and the power structure in receiving countries. The goal of this article is to chart the trajectory of scholarship on immigrants’ health, focusing on the formative shift away from dominant individualistic perspectives focused on cultural and behavioral explanations toward a profoundly structural understanding of immigrants’ health. Focusing primarily on the US context, we synthesize theoretical and empirical advances in structural perspectives of immigrants’ health. We anchor these advances in the concept of exclusion, detailing how it undergirds structuralist perspectives of immigrants’ health. We review common ways in which exclusion has been measured in the empirical literature on immigrants’ health and highlight recent evidence linking exposure to exclusion to immigrants’ health outcomes across the life course. We conclude by discussing key directions and challenges for future research.

Public Health Nurses in an Internal Negotiation Process When There Is Concern About the Child’s Care

The aim of the study was to explore and describe how public health nurses at child health clinics experience and perceive the follow-up of children and families when there is concern about the child’s care. The goal was to contribute to knowledge development to guide health-promoting nursing care for children and their families. Theoretical perspectives included health promotion, child-centered and family-centered care, in addition to nursing care. An exploratory qualitative design informed by a hermeneutic approach was used. Data were collected in 3 focus groups with 16 public health nurses and analyzed using latent content analysis. The findings detail public health nurses’ internal negotiation processes in the follow-up of children and the family, and the ways these negotiation processes were influenced by various prerequisites, the approaches for follow-up, dilemmas that affected public health nurses’ approaches, and prolonged dwellings on past responses to children and families of concern. The lack of routines and goals for follow-up, a dominant parental perspective, and ambiguity related to health promotion and disease prevention, all created challenges for the public health nurses. Based on these findings, a model of public health nurse’s follow-up when there is concern about the child’s care was developed for future research.

University teachers’ perspectives on teaching: The differences among academic disciplines

Numerous studies indicated that perspectives and approaches to teaching of university teachers vary considerably across academic disciplines. However, other research presented contrary results. Regarding such inconsistencies in previous findings, the aim of this research was to examine the representation of five perspectives on teaching and three commitment components (Beliefs, Intentions and Actions) among university teachers of different academic disciplines. The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) which contains 45 items was used on the sample of 342 teachers from the University of Novi Sad. Dominant perspectives indicated that these teachers were more teacher-centred and that there are differences among university teachers from different academic disciplines (technical, social, medical and natural sciences) in terms of how they conceptualise and approach teaching. Differences between teachers from hard and soft sciences were evident only on the Social Reform perspective and on Intention component; hard sciences teachers were more teacher-centred and content-oriented while soft sciences teachers were more student-centred and learning-orientated. Understanding of the teaching process should include knowledge about academic culture and the context in which teaching takes place, which suggest the need to respect different disciplinary cultures when creating pedagogical training programs for university teachers.

An existential challenge to some dominant perspectives in the practice of contemporary counselling psychology

An existential challenge to some dominant perspectives in the practice of contemporary counselling psychology

Young People Learning About Algorithms: Five Profiles Spanning From Ineptitude to Enchantment

This article focuses on young people’s understanding of algorithms and their learning methods. While many younger individuals are deeply familiar with digital media, it is erroneous to assume that this familiarity is equivalent to operational or critical knowledge. Given that algorithm awareness has only recently become a topic of debate, daily life practices and knowledge processes need further study, particularly through the lens of audiences. The analysis is based on 42 interviews carried out as part of a project on young people, news, and digital citizenship in Portugal. From the analysis, we came up with five profiles that include different ways of understanding and learning about algorithms: ethereal, ambivalent, unfamiliar, negative, and positive perspectives. Preliminary findings reveal strategies youth employ to bypass the influence of algorithms, with a dominant perspective of learning through the proximity contexts: alone, with social media (TikTok and Instagram), with peers/family, and few cases mentioning school, that surprisingly, is almost absent as a learning atmosphere. Given the newness of the collective awareness of the power of algorithms, the presented scenario claims that we need for a more structural and institutional learning context and response, which could help prevent recurring scenarios akin to digital “bowling alone.”

Discourse Theory, Nodal Points, and Stereoscopic Optics on Justice

ABSTRACT Specific domains of modern life—social, ecological, legal—involve distinct issues of justice that often lead to a single-focused political-philosophical engagement with justice. Such engagements, argues Marianna Papastephanou, risk turning issues of justice that lie beyond the adopted perspective into discursive injustices (i.e. of silencing the Other’s voice) and condemning them to invisibility. To address this risk, Papastephanou proposes a stereoscopic approach that better illuminates the many facets of justice and, concomitantly, the many instances of injustice that escape the dominant political-philosophical perspectives on justice. In the present article, I discuss Papastephanou’s theory of a stereoscopic approach to justice along with Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory and notion of “nodal points.” I suggest that the synergy between the two approaches enhances their efficacy: Papastephanou’s theorization concretizes the implications of establishing nodal points, which, in turn, reveal how the reduction of justice to one of its facets occurs at the discursive level. Enriched by Papastephanou’s theorization, discourse theory makes more visible how a stereoscopic approach to justice can unveil discursive injustices of selective and partial outlooks on (in)justice.

Latin American female migrants’ negotiation of sex work, international borders and internal barriers in Istanbul

Based on participant observation, numerous informal conversations and ten semi-structured interviews, this paper explores the complexities of Latin American female migrants’ mobility towards Europe via Turkey. By analyzing ethnographic data accounting for their life stories, interactions with ‘traffickers’, experiences in Istanbul, and the difficulties to reach their destinations, it deconstructs dominant perspectives about human trafficking and sex work. Their narratives dislocate mainstream discourses that homogenize international migration under institutional categories, predetermined experiences and subjectivized ontologies. Upon arrival, unforeseen circumstances truncated previous plans, encapsulating them within Turkish borders where finding means to survive and continue moving turned challenging. Meanwhile, they must deal with internal barriers, including gender relations, gender-based violence and sociocultural, linguistic, economic, political and legislative hindrances that exacerbate precarity and risks. These journeys can become entangled with sex work, either induced or independently exercised with the intention of opposing immobilizing border regimes. Despite exposure to violence and abuse, these women continuously negotiate their own subjectivities, while dealing with unfamiliar and hostile settings, demonstrating tenacious expressions of subjective and collective agency that assist them in surviving and pursuing their life projects.

A Disability Studies Analysis of Alcohol Use: Understanding Personal Experiences through Dominant Discourses on Addiction

This paper describes my experiences with coming to understand my own relationship with alcohol dependency and addiction. Disability studies has offered me a lens and guide through which I have critically interrogated discourses about addiction, while examining the ways dominant and counter-narratives have impacted my own recovery process. In this paper, I review historical information about the emergence of culturally accepted recovery ideologies in the United States that have led to a dominant disease model perspective. Then, I explain the disability studies-informed theoretical underpinnings of this paper, which include discourse theory and disability studies as applied to alcohol addiction. Using disability studies and autoethnography as a guide, the body of the paper uses examples from my own journals to elucidate salient themes that emerged about my experiences in early recovery. The paper uncovers the ways I came to understand my own identity related to addiction, how I navigated feelings of stigma and shame, the ways I found recovery spaces that embraced empowering frameworks aligned to a disability studies ethos, and how I discovered community and pride through this experience.

Printing Ochre

The discipline of geology was relatively new at the start of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in the late 1800s, but through the organisation of an efficient government bureau and the voice of its printed page, it became a dominant perspective in the way generations of citizens relate to and view the natural world, human and nonhuman, life and nonlife. I choose to position my press in direct opposition to the maintenance of these dualisms. I will argue the critical role of print in facilitating USGS domination of terrestrial beings in a practical sense, yet beyond the methods and reach of publication, I believe the products of the USGS mediate our understanding of and relation to these beings. Instead, design practices can be directed towards changing attitudes and understanding between humans and nonhumans. Monika Bakke argues for the importance of artistic endeavours in addressing our collective futurity: Drawing on both life’s mineral origins and its key role in shaping mineral species, artists are turning to technoscience in order to develop, outside expert circles, better understanding of physical, chemical, and biological environments, not just of the geological past but also those to come in the future. ... Yet, their methodologies are specific to art which offers creative ontological and ethical contributions to public debate. (2017, p. 43) I am developing a design research paradigm relating to ochre as an epistemic tool for human and nonhuman intersubjectivity and ontological reconciliation or reunification between life and nonlife. I model my practice after a simplification of the USGS: to survey (observe, describe, collect) and to report (archive, document, record), with some critical variance in method and outcomes.

The Influence of Lobbies: Analyzing Group Consensus from a Physics Approach

In this paper, we study the influence of a small group of agents (i.e., a lobby) that is trying to spread a rumor in a population by using the known model proposed by Serge Galam. In particular, lobbies are modeled as subgroups of individuals who strategically choose their seating in the social space in order to protect their opinions and influence others. We consider different social gatherings and simulate, using finite Markovian chains, opinion dynamics by comparing situations with a lobby to those without a lobby. Our results show how the lobby can influence opinion dynamics in terms of the prevailing opinion and the mean time to reach unanimity. The approach that we take overcomes some of the problems that behavioral economics and psychology have recently struggled with in terms of replicability. This approach is related to the methodological revolution that is slowly changing the dominant perspective in psychology.

Reconceptualization of curriculum studies: A brief history and personal memories

The article presents a brief history of the reconceptualization of curriculum studies based on documents and my own memories. Reconceptualization has had a significant impact on understanding the curriculum not only as goals and instructional actions followed by evaluation but as a complicated, interdisciplinary conversation. Reconceptualization originated in the USA in the 1970s, when a new generation of curriculum researchers challenged the dominant Tylerian perspective on curriculum.The first years of reconceptualization were, however, turbulent. Reconceptualists presented critiques of managerial perspectives in curriculum theorizing but, according to critiques, had no clear theory to replace the mainstream. In the 1980s and 1990s, reconceptualist scholars focused on understanding curriculum, presenting extensive pieces of work, such as Pinar’s and his colleagues’ book titled Understanding Curriculum. Also, William Doll made a significant impact on describing the postmodern context for education and curriculum. During the last 20 years, reconceptualization has taken steps towards discourses with the educational practice. This same perspective is also evident in the Finnish research on curriculum studies. In addition to being a complicated conversation, education should focus on promoting autobiographical and identity-related processes. Arts is often proposed as a context for expanding imagination and creativity. Despite the general practical perspectives, reconceptualization is still a critical movement against simplistic, technocratic models in which curriculum is prescribed and measurable learning objectives dominate.

From Dual Roles to Dynamic Equilibrium: An Overview of Theoretical Perspectives Used in Studies Addressing Work-Life Struggles of Working Mothers

There has been much scholarly attention given to the role of women in the labor market throughout the years. While there are plenty of evaluations of ideas and perspectives regarding work-life concepts, there is limited understanding regarding the theoretical foundation of work-life concerns specifically about mothers. This study aims to provide an overview of theories used to investigate the work-life issues of working mothers. The data were collected from the Web of Science database. A total of 63 research studies examining the work-life challenges faced by employed women were evaluated based on theoretical frameworks. It was seen that identity theory and gender perspective are dominant perspectives in the current literature. In addition, the prevailing work-life perspectives adopted in the studies are work-life balance and work-life conflict. The study offers a detailed examination of the various theoretical perspectives employed in understanding the work-life difficulties encountered by employed mothers.

Kāla: Faces of Time in Classical Indian Philosophy

This article discusses the perception of time (kāla) in the Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain schools on the basis of primary Sanskrit sources and critical studies. The study employs an integral methodology – textual-semantic, hermeneutical and comparative – to approach the study. It concludes that the approaches of the schools diverge most prominently on the following questions: is the perception of present possible? Is the sensible present instantaneous, or does it have duration? Is time objective and real, or is it just a subjective construction? It has been revealed that there is no single dominant perspective in the Indian philosophical approaches, with the principal polemic being between the Buddhist and the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika schools. The study concludes that, in Indian philosophy, time is understood not psychologically, but epistemologically, in relation to questions of reliable cognition and the validity of knowledge.