Era Of Great Change Research Articles

Libraries and Diminished Patron Privacy During the COVID-19 Health Crisis

The COVID-19 health crisis has ushered in an era of great change in the way individuals and institutions function. With the contagious and deadly nature of COVID-19, libraries geared their efforts to increase access to and use of digital collections. With the introduction of stay-home orders, the option of adopting full virtual services became the go-to solution as a way of protecting library staff and users. Collaboration with third-party vendors that provide online library services heightened like never before. As libraries reopened at a later point in the global pandemic, library staff were asked to conduct health screenings for patrons entering the library and actively monitor whether patrons were socially distanced in the library. The drastic change to library operations due to the pandemic resulted in the increased collection of patrons’ personal information ranging from health information to location data coupled with library records. Much as librarians are traditionally and professionally committed to protecting their patrons’ privacy, undertaking activities like health screening in the absence of data transparency practices can potentially impact library users’ privacy. In this study, we investigated whether the 25 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members with the largest number of titles held developed or modified their privacy policies in response to the increase in data collection during the COVID-19 health crisis. Privacy policies are living documents that should evolve with the times and thus should be updated or modified to reflect the current realities. We also examined whether pre-pandemic privacy policies, if any, of the surveyed 25 ARL member libraries are aligned with the privacy requirements outlined in the American Library Association (ALA) Privacy Toolkit (ALA 2014). Our results show that of the surveyed 25 ARL libraries, none of them developed a new library privacy policy or modified an existing one to reflect their data practices with specific regard to the new realities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. The disregard for such adjustments to their privacy policies violated the principle of data transparency. Our results also show that, at the time of the survey, 4 of the surveyed 25 ARL members did not have library privacy policies.

Energy transformation and sustainable development: enlightenment from China’s energy plan

The world’s energy development is in an era of great change. Since the Industrial Revolution, the large-scale development and utilization of fossil energy has effectively promoted the progress of human civilization, but it has also brought about prominent problems such as resource scarcity, environmental pollution, and climate change. At present, accelerating energy reform and transformation has become an inevitable choice for countries around the world to solve difficulties and achieve sustainable development. As a practitioner of global energy transformation, China is demonstrating its responsibility and leading role and actively contributing to China’s solutions. This article summarizes China’s energy-saving measures, uses cluster analysis to compare China’s energy data with other countries, affirms China’s role in leading the world’s low-carbon wave, and provides suggestions for the energy-saving development of other countries.

The Arndale Property Company and the Transformation of Urban Britain, 1950–2000

AbstractThis article tracks the remarkable role played by a commercial property developer, the Arndale Property Company, in the transformation of urban Britain across the second half of the twentieth century. This was an era of great change in cities, as urban environments were remodeled and urban centers had to adapt to deindustrialization and the rise of a consumer-driven and service-dominated economy. Arndale was at the forefront of these changes, installing dozens of shopping centers in British towns and cities from the 1950s to the 1990s. The company imported American-inspired commercial architectures, furnishing cities with new landscapes of consumption and mass leisure through which the affluent society was encountered and made concrete. Arndale was also a driving force in the growing financialization of urban property development that began in Britain as early as the 1950s and gathered pace as the century wore on. The company's history thus illuminates important shifts in economic activity and cultural life that had far-reaching impacts on British cities and society. It also highlights Arndale's role at the heart of the postwar urban renewal order, showing how far the company's success depended on its status as a favored partner to public planning authorities pursuing town center redevelopment. The centrality of such public-private developmental partnerships, often overlooked, particularly within adjacent urban disciplines, reveals much about the precise contours and political economy of the British postwar settlement.

Research Agenda for Political Science in China in an Era of Great Change

The world order is undergoing tumultuous changes amid the Sino–US trade war and a global pandemic. During these epochal times for political science, The American school of social sciences needs an intellectual revolution and a repositioning of the research agenda for political science. Comparative political studies must shift their focus from their traditional role of comparison of political institutions to that of state governance models, as the former can no longer advance new knowledge in political science while the latter represents a greater challenge for such studies. Likewise, studies of international relations in the traditional sense should take a step further and explore studies of world politics, i.e., studies of international relations and world order as shaped by institutional changes triggered by political trends within certain countries. The research approach of historical political science is indispensable, whether it is comparison of state governance models or of world politics.

Sexuality, nationalism and the other: the Arabic literary canon between Orientalism and the Nahḍa discourse at the fin de siècle

ABSTRACT This article examines the dual and paradoxical conception of the Arabic literary canon in Orientalist and Nahḍa discourses in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—an era of great change and closer mutual cultural awareness between Europe and the Arab world. What Arabic literature had long signified to European scholars since Antoine Galland’s eighteenth-century translation of The Arabian Nights (mysticism, Romanticism and a platform to explore sexual taboos) was very different from how the nationalist-minded Nahḍa intellectuals wanted to reconfigure it as the hallmark of the rational “Golden Age” of Arab civilization. Sexuality became a site of contestation between certain Orientalists who praised Arab literary “frankness” and an anxious class of Arab scholars who wanted to “cleanse” the Arabic literary canon and reconfigure it in line with modern, European standards of “respectability” and “politeness.”

The Most Homophobic Place on Earth? A Look Into the Anti-Homosexuality Culture of Jamaica

This paper was presented in History 3697, fall semester, 2017, a mid-level required writing course designed to link the methods of oral history with the study of issues in the contemporary history of the non-western world. The issue for all of us in this course was social change in recent times. I chose to examine the degree of acceptance of gays in Jamaica, in an era of great change in sexual mores throughout the world. I read the literature; I interviewed Julian, a recent immigrant from Jamaica, and I drew conclusions based on integrating the scholarly material with the interview revelations. The findings were important both for understanding (the lack of) change in sexual attitudes in Jamaica, and the importance of analysis of the individual and the collective together, of the interview and the scholarly data examined together. The individual, at least my interviewee, and the society, are currently resistant to change. The main conclusion: changes in sexual mores in other areas of the world are taking place at rates very different from, and, specifically in Jamaica, at rates much slower than, those in the USA.

Which path the world might take

Owing to its features of economic nationalism, trade protectionism, anti-establishment and white nationalism, Trump’s “America First” policy brought him to the White House but also divided the USA as a nation. The policy was essentially a response to the American populist movement created by the economic and cultural anxiety of the white working class. However, rather than fix the problem, Trump’s philosophy of governance may make the situation even worse and could provide China with a significant opportunity to strengthen itself in an era of great change.

Noor-Eesti ja kunstnikud. Young Estonia’s Artists

In Estonian art history, the beginning of the 20th century is the era of the birth of nationalist art. This is the time when the first artists to study abroad, the brothers Paul and Kristjan Raud, and Ants Laikmaa return home from their studies in Düsseldorf and Munich. In the homeland, these artists’ cultural and political spirit brought them into contact with the Young Estonians, one generation younger than they were, whose overall world-view and artistic views they came to shape. The program of the Young Estonians included the furthering of cultural life as a whole; therefore they participated enthusiastically in discussions about the visual arts, and ways in which to advance art in the homeland. Through the mediation of Ants Laikmaa, they made contact with Nikolai Triik, an artist of their own generation, who in turn engaged his former fellow students from the Stieglitz School of Applied Arts in St. Petersburg – Aleksander Tassa, Jaan Koort, and Konrad Mägi. The interests and travel destinations of writers and artists were similar: they found themselves drawn primarily to Scandinavia, then Paris. Young Estonia’s almanacs and magazines were illustrated and adorned by reproductions of these same artists’ works, and artists contributed their writings on art to the publication. Nikolai Triik was artistic editor for the Young Estonia magazine, thanks to his stronger ties with the homeland and his greater authority. In the years 1909 and 1914 Young Estonia organized art exhibits, in which several artists studying abroad found their first reception among a homeland public. Young Estonia created a new standard in Estonian book design. Discussions began around the question of ”nationalism” in art. The Young Estonia period 1905–1915 was an era of great change in Estonian art, and the artists connected with the movement played a major role in subsequent developments. Together they established the art association ”Pallas” in 1918, and a year later opened a school by the same name in Tartu, which became the seedbed of Estonian national art for the following several decades.

Down syndrome and genetics — a case of linked histories

Down syndrome, the most common genetic cause of intellectual disabilities, was first described in 1866, during an era of great change in our understanding of genetics and evolution. Because of its importance, the history of research on Down syndrome parallels the history of human genetics. In many instances, research on Down syndrome has inspired progress in human genetics. In this article, we describe the interplay between advances in the understanding of genetics and the understanding of Down syndrome from its initial description to the present, and on the basis of this historical perspective, speculate briefly about the future of research on Down syndrome.

The Lynching of Cleo Wright: Federal Protection of Constitutional Rights during World War II

Unlike previous 3,842 lynchings that occurred between 1889 and 1941, that of Cleo Wright in Sikeston, Missouri, early in 1942 drew United States Department of Justice directly into that area of civil rights for first time.' This unprecedented activity marked a turning point in long, unheralded struggle for racial equality that had been fought largely in courts and at times in streets since century began. It also reflected impact of both New Deal ideology and World War II circumstances, which signaled even greater federal support for civil rights enforcement during postwar era. Despite Jim Crow laws and lynchings in South and de facto segregation and riots in North, efforts by National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), liberal lawyers, and federal judges had begun to alter legality of racial discrimination long before death of Cleo Wright. Their counterattack began during Progressive Era, resurrected Civil War amendments, and won cases before United States Supreme Court of Chief Justice Edward Douglass White (1910-1921). Most notably, they succeeded in using Thirteenth and Fifteenth amendments to strike down peonage and grandfather clauses, respectively, and Fourteenth Amendment to point up rights of black citizens affected by residential segregation and separate-but-equal accommodations. Hardly dismantling the legal structure of racism, those victories held out hope and set precedent for fundamental changes that came during Great Depression. An improved and increasingly black-dominated NAACP legal staff, a law profession reconsidering its values in an era of great change, and a Supreme Court whose majority increasingly embraced judicial activism on behalf of minorities brought about a constitutional revolution in civil rights. Their endeavors-which began in early 1930s and took root in 1937 as Hugo L. Black's appointment

Development of Thought and the Birth of Materialist Philosophy at the End of the Western Chou and the Beginning of the Eastern Chou

The Yin-Chou thought discussed above formed the basic premise of philosophical thought in the Ch'un-ch'iu period. What was emulated, inherited, and destroyed by the various schools of philosophers was also what had been left by the Yin and the Chou. Before we begin to discuss the philosophical thought of the Ch'un-ch'iu, however, we must devote ourselves to a discussion of the development of thought at the end of the Western Chou and the beginning of the Eastern Chou. This was a period of transition, which led into the era of great change of the Ch'un-ch'iu. (The so-called "era of great change" obviously refers to the entire situation; this does not exclude the imbalance of the development of the various states during the Ch'un-ch'iu period, nor does it mean that the first year of Duke Yin of Lu can be used as an absolute watershed for the purpose of delineation.) The thought that predominated during this period was still the thought of early Chou. Nevertheless, it was in this period that a strong tendency to shake off the old traditional thought emerged, and the earliest philosophical system (the philosophical thought of Shih Po) came at this time.