Ideal Vision Research Articles

Toward a synergistic framework of investment and motivation: Bridging imagined identities and English learning of Chinese university students

AbstractImagined identity, which opens up a variety of future possibilities for language learners, has been theorized from seemingly incompatible psychological and sociological perspectives in applied linguistics. Researchers have thus appealed for a transdisciplinary theoretical combination of these perspectives for a more nuanced understanding of language learning in context. This article makes the case for a synergistic theoretical framework of investment and motivation to theorize the idiosyncratic relationship between individuals’ imagined identity and language learning behavior. Empirical findings from a multiple‐case study conducted in Yunnan, in the south‐western corner of China, are presented to demonstrate how this framework enables a nuanced analysis of individuals’ language learning. Findings suggest that the interconnectedness of imagined identity, motivation, and investment is informed by both learner agency and contexts. This paper proposes that learners’ development of imagined identities and ways of investing in learning could be individually different, even under similar circumstances, which indicates the need for personalized teaching to improve learning outcomes. This synergistic framework thus provides implications for pedagogical practices and a need for personalized teaching.

Shared Ideals, But Persistent Barriers: Improving Tribal‐University Research Engagement to Strengthen Native Nation Building and Rural Development☆

AbstractResearch partnerships between Tribal Nations and rural colleges and universities can support rural development and strengthen Tribal Nation building through reclamation of economic, political, cultural, and social affairs. However, Tribal Nation–University relationships have received little attention in rural sociology. While scholars identify best practices for research engagement in light of colonial harms, the ideal visions that Tribally and university‐affiliated people have for research partnerships and the barriers to achieving those ideals are poorly understood. Without identifying these visions and barriers, we risk making wrong assumptions about each party's needs and cannot implement appropriate policies. Semi‐structured interviews with Tribally‐affiliated (n = 20) and university‐affiliated (n = 20) people in rural southeastern Idaho suggest, contrary to literature on best practices for collaborative research, that participants in both groups viewed what we term “Tribally‐responsive research engagement” as ideal, though few projects met this goal. Tribally‐responsive research directly addressed Tribal priorities but did not necessarily involve close collaboration. The University's failure to acknowledge past or colonial harms, university‐affiliated researchers' historicization of those harms, and negative Native student experiences reinforced distrust, limiting desired research engagement. In sum, Tribally‐responsive research engagement could strengthen Native Nation building, but requires universities to acknowledge harms, create more welcoming campus environments, and prioritize Tribal benefits in research.

Pragmatic utopianism in the union cooperative movement: (Dis)Organizing transformative social change

ABSTRACT This paper adopts a critical pragmatist perspective to investigate how the union cooperative movement promotes transformative change. The study describes how 1worker1vote.org network leaders enact “pragmatic utopianism” by articulating an ambitious counter-narrative to extractive capitalism grounded in worker ownership, sustainability, and solidarity. This project expands the concept of pragmatic utopian organizing, describing how the movement mobilizes realistic hope for this idealistic vision by creating “plausibility structures.” First, leaders’ dialectical framing of perceived values-viability tensions rooted in the status quo contributed to innovations that served as reasons to believe. Second, advocates engaged improvisational strategic capacity building to manage doubts resulting from ongoing disorganizing forces. The conclusion discusses the implications for critical theorizing, alternative economy organizing, and transformative change from below.

Towards coordination of spatial relations: Understanding Chinese mega-regionalization from a secondary city perspective

Mega-regional planning in China is expected to tackle intra-regional unevenness, namely the development gap between regional core cities and the surrounding secondary cities. However, mega-regionalization processes seem to further increase the centrality of cores and push secondary cities towards greater polarization and peripheralization, as they lose socioeconomic vitality, industrial capacity, and political voice. To reflect on why mega-regions are not fulfilling their role of rebalancing regional urban systems, we conceptualize mega-regionalization as a mechanism to coordinate spatial relations within a territory and build a novel framework to analyze the relations between core and secondary cities. First, we show that visions of mega-regional planning regarding core-secondary relations pursue goals of morphological polycentricity, flow multi-directionality, and functional complementarity. Then, we use thematic analysis to evaluate the policy orientations of mega-regional planning to achieve these goals and extract three policy themes governing core-secondary spatial relations - coexistence, connectivity, and cooperation. These can systematically redefine mega-regional planning mechanisms by giving a central role to the spatial relations between core and secondary cities. Emphasizing spatial relations to conceptualize mega-regional governance allows a novel reflection on the challenges of unevenness grounded in the perspective of secondary cities. This deepens our understanding of governance mismatches that keep ideal visions and policy orientations misaligned when seen from secondary cities. Place, priority, and actor mismatches limit the potential of mega-regionalization to respond to their challenges. This research provides a relational understanding of mega-regions, calling for more attention to secondary cities, and the development of more balanced and sustainable mega-regions.

Situating love and loss: making a film, re-making a world

ABSTRACT The title of the author’s film ‘HOW PERFECT IS THIS HOW BLESSED ARE WE’ (HD video, 22 min and 11 s) is taken from the inscription on a bench on the top of a hill, at the highest point in the landscape of Compton Verney, designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in his ideal vision of the British country house. By appropriating this statement of contentment as a critical tool to inquire how perfect it really is and who is the ‘we’ that is so blessed, Suleman inserted their body into the landscape as a reminder of historical absences and erasure, and the legacy of colonialism and queer-phobia. The film is narrated, however, in the register of an address to an absent lover. A personal history and a lover’s yearning doubles as a critique of violent and exclusive histories.

Architectures and Spaces for Care: Recent Contributions to Spanish Postmodern Architectural Culture Led by Women Architects

Nowadays we observe how many of our cities and other inhabited spaces have been conceived by and for a subject that represents an androcentric model that focusses on the productive, with the result that aspects of architecture such as assistance and care have been underestimated. Faced with this neglect of issues that are considered by society as feminine, a series of feminist struggles have, over the course of decades, been demanding more equitable, inclusive spaces and cities that take into consideration tasks relating to care and reproduction in architectural practice. With regard to the Spanish architectural scene, since the end of the 20th century it has been possible to observe the emergence of a series of professional practices led by women architects that have used the concept of femininity as a creative argument in an effort to approach the profession from different perspectives and open up new areas of activity and debate within which they are free to develop their professional careers. These are based around a critique of modern architectural positions associated with an idealistic vision of society that takes as a reference a neutral gender far from all complexity and excludes the differences between people to establish a paradigm shift from and with feminisms. In this regard, this article aims to present a series of recent professional practices led by Spanish women architects during the period 1978-2008 who, from architecture and urban planning, as well as other peripheral positions such as the arts and social action, have worked around women’s experiences and lent prominence to day-to-day life and care. Its purpose is to determine some of the singular aspects of the contributions made by women to Spanish postmodern architectural culture. This study will allow us to observe how many of these contributions take shape in a series of actions, attitudes and ways of working that envisage the beginning of a shift in how the profession is practised; a shift that departs from the predominant canon to define new strategies and ways of approaching architectural practice that are more in line with the needs of women and non-normative subjects.

Reassembling Marseille’s mosaic: urban planning in service of a post-World War II imagined identity

ABSTRACT Socio-spatial divisions between districts in the North and South have marked the port-city of Marseille since the post-World War II urban reconstruction period. This article analyses the decades spanning the 1940s to the 1960s Vieux Port area as well as the HLM (Habitation à Loyer Modéré, or rent controlled properties) building projects in the North of the city. This reveals a dual strategy deployed by urban planners as well as municipal and national government officials in response to an increasing immigrant workforce involving relocation into HLMs and (re-)designing public spaces. City planners, architects, and officials aimed to reconfigure the neighbourhoods in which people were to be housed and to strengthen the narrative of Marseille as a Mediterranean gateway, attracting investors and tourists, a process which also helped the city to gain a favourable reputation in Europe. The way in which urban planning, social housing initiatives, and public space designs unfolded in post-World War II Marseille has played a pivotal role in shaping the city’s present-day social and geographical divisions.

An Idealistic Vision and Loss of Policy Objectives: A Critical Analysis for the Development of the “Master Plan for the Promotion of Lifelong Education”

An Idealistic Vision and Loss of Policy Objectives: A Critical Analysis for the Development of the “Master Plan for the Promotion of Lifelong Education”

Do Information Technology and Human Resources Create Business Performance? The Role of Consumer Preferences

AbstractInformation technology is now a key pillar in an organization's business strategy to achieve optimal profits. Consumer changes and preferences play a central role in the development and adjustment of information technology to meet fluctuating market demands. The success of achieving the company's vision and mission is highly dependent on human resources who excel in the IT field. This research aims to review the importance of IT and HR in achieving the ideal vision and mission that has been planned. This research focuses on descriptive qualitative research that explores previous studies on IT, HR, consumer change, preferences, and business performance. Relevant data surrounding these variables were collected, summarized, and analyzed. The results confirmed that IT and HR play a crucial role in improving business performance. These factors must be combined holistically to achieve competitive advantage and sustainable long-term business performance, especially in the face of dynamic consumer changes and preferences. Keywords: IT, HR, business performance, consumer preferences

Language investment and identity construction trajectory amongst ethnic minority preparatory undergraduates in China: a narrative inquiry

ABSTRACT China has adopted preferential policies, such as the Ethnic Preparatory Education Program, to promote the opportunities of ethnic minority students from underdeveloped regions to receive high-quality education, which has caused great tension in the identity construction of these students. This study adopted a qualitative narrative inquiry approach to investigate the investments and identity construction of three ethnic minority preparatory undergraduates (EMPUs) throughout their language learning process in the preparatory stage. The findings indicate that these participants have shown varying types and degrees of investment in language learning and constructed dynamic identity as a trajectory influenced by their language learning experiences in various contexts. Their language investment and identity construction have an impact on one another and are shaped by their aspiration to participate in an imagined community and realise an imagined identity.

How – and How Much? An Analysis of Major Conflict Lines Regarding the Transformation of German Animal Farming

Based on the concept of a 'future workshop', this paper contributes to the understanding of major conflict lines and future pathways for animal farming in Germany. Participants in the future workshop were tasked with outlining their ideal vision of the future of animal farming, focusing on both its mode and quantity. We found three different types of visions differing in their motivation, farming methods, and the scale of envisioned animal farming: ‘Higher Standards’ (V1), ‘System Change and Reduction’ (V2), ‘Alternatives to Animal Farming’ (V3). V1 seeks to secure the quantities of supply and demand of animal products in Germany with minor adjustments towards improved animal welfare and investments in resource-efficiency and climate friendliness. V2 advocates for comprehensive social and environmental systemic changes throughout the agri-food sector, with substantially fewer animals involved. V3 aims to replace animal farming, with plant-based and other alternatives, whenever and wherever possible. Our findings suggest that there is little ground for a societal consensus on a single future mode and scale of animal farming. Stakeholder dialogues and policy initiatives should therefore allow for different pathways while focusing on compromises in the near future. Short-term solutions may be acceptable to supporters of all three visions, however, achieving this requires reframing the debate from ‘securing the future of animal farming’ to ‘guiding the future of animal farming’, acknowledging the potential – albeit partly – replacement of animal farming by suitable alternatives.

Investments, identities, and Chinese learning experience of an Irish adult: the role of context, capital, and agency

Abstract This case study aims to explore the foreign language (FL) investments of a highly motivated young Irish adult in learning Chinese across different contexts, encompassing classroom settings and daily life, both in Ireland and abroad. By analysing the interview data through the lens of Darvin and Norton’s model of investment, this study shows that the participant’s investments at different stages of her learning journey appear to be intricately intertwined with her identities and are mediated by the perceived likelihood of achieving her imagined identity. This study highlights the importance of present identity and linguistic capital in shaping and consolidating native English speakers’ FL-related identities.It provides insights into how FL learning investment and FL-related identitiesare influenced by learners’ first language (L1) in the era of globalisation. As powerrelations among individuals with different L1s are often unequal in the globallinguistic marketplace, learners’ L1 can be valuable capital that influences the return of foreign language learners’ investment.

Amoralism in theHanfeizi

AbstractThis article surveys three possible ways to assess morality in theHanfeizi. The first is the “traditional” outlook, according to which Han Fei disregards all moral considerations in politics. The second acknowledges the presence of moral questions in the text but maintains that it ultimately promotes amoralism as an essential feature of the Legalist state. A (less common) third way is to say that there is a moral core to Han Fei's political philosophy. I will defend the third way, which shifts the perception of theHanfeizifrom a mere manual of political manipulation to a comprehensive ideal vision for the world. This interpretation necessitates a recognition of how political morality can coherently exist alongside an apparent divide between private ethics and political action. This is something that those seeking more systematic forms of ethics in theHanfeizimight overlook.

From the rotting soil grows the poison ivy: The Supreme Court and the legitimation of Herrenvolk democracy

AbstractIn recent years, the Court has swung sharply to the right but has thus far declined to support the most antidemocratic and radically authoritarian agendas of the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party. While scholars and concerned Americans have focused on the visible things the Court is dismantling and fretted about its potential for enhancing constitutional rot, this article sketches out what the Court is building. It illustrates that this constructive process is distinctive not just in its political and partisan orientation but also in the Court's capacity to achieve it. Considering the emerging product of its recent jurisprudence suggests an embrace of a narrowed form of democracy that empowers a subset of political actors to build their idealized visions of the state, primarily at the subnational level.

Glorious in Spring, Exhilarating in Winter: Advertising Mount Buffalo in Walkabout Magazine, 1934–1939

This article examines advertisements for Mount Buffalo National Park, published in the Australian National Travel Association (ANTA)’s Walkabout magazine in the mid- to late 1930s. Situating these texts in the wider context of ANTA’s documentary archive, I argue that they reveal how ANTA both intuited and sought to shape middle-class settler Australians’ identification and interaction with nature and the nation. Furthermore, ANTA’s estimation of what kinds of experiences middle-class tourists wanted demonstrates mid-century ideas around harnessing nature for development through mass recreation. These advertisements also evoked an idealised vision of Australian nature as an egalitarian and classless playground, where youthful and healthy settlers enjoyed the nation’s great outdoors. The extent to which this vision was ANTA’s alone and the extent to which ANTA produced it according to its perception of the values and aspirations of Walkabout’s middle-class audience is a key consideration of this article.

Beliefs & Investment of Undergraduate Students Learning Turkish as a Foreign Language

Considering the global and economic need for foreign language interactions, various educational institutes have incorporated foreign language teaching (FLT) into the curriculum. The languages offered include German, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish (recently). To reconnoiter different aspects of Chinese language learning in Pakistan, research has been conducted in the context (see for example, Khan et al, 2023 and Aftab et al, 2022). However, the topical surge in learning Turkish as a foreign language (TFL) resulting from the cultural exchange programs, scholarship opportunities, Turkish dramas broadcast in Pakistan, and most significantly the strong Pak-Turk relationships have led education institutions to offer TFL at the undergraduate level. To explore the beliefs, imagined identity, and investment (Norton, 2001) of undergraduate students for TFL, a qualitative study was conducted. Since, the study probed into the beliefs, imagined identities, and investment of the students, narrative inquiries fit the objectives of the research. 4 participants volunteered to retell their experiences cogitating the temporality, sociality, and spatiality of the experience. The findings show that learners enrolled in the TFL course believed and imagined getting a better job and business opportunities, acting as a translator and diplomat with proficiency in foreign language. The learners imagined exploring educational opportunities for scholarships and higher studies in the future. Additionally, TFL learners foresee the Turkish language as a means of cultural and social identity, learning for tourism, and socialization with natives. The participants manifested these beliefs to invest in their imagined identities as TFL for professional identity, multilingual identity, and social identity. TFL beliefs and investment provide insights into learners’ perspectives and their future imagined identity in the broader scope of shifting foreign language education policy.

"Encumbered with useless graces": Ornamentation and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-century Scottish Music

Throughout the eighteenth century, a steady stream of Italian musicians travelled to Scotland, in search of artistic and commercial success. Inspired by the enterprise of their Scottish counterparts, many published collections of “Scots Tunes,” such that by the end of the century a rich body of repertoire had emerged. Italians and Scots alike valued this repertoire for various reasons: for some, these tunes represented an idealised vision of pastoral simplicity; for others, a fossilised record of the music of past generations; for others still, these tunes were a vehicle for the expression of nationalistic sentiment. This repertoire presents a challenge to Early Music practitioners today, who must contend with the fact that this music has been transmitted through textual sources and oral tradition. To this end, many musicians engage with elements of Scottish Traditional performance practice – a practice that often diverges from, and is at times incompatible with, dominant understandings of eighteenth-century performance practice. In this thesis, I summarise some of the ornamentation techniques employed by Scottish Traditional musicians, investigating their possible influence on Italian Scots Tunes sources. I contend that comparative analysis of these sources can inform performances of this repertoire, by revealing implicit relationships between notation, performance practice and aesthetic judgements. Further, I survey current trends in the historical performance practice of Scots Tunes, interrogating the ways in which this repertoire is framed by modern conceptions of “folk” music. I observe that this repertoire continues to be valued within a variety of aesthetic frameworks, which are themselves revealed, upheld, and reproduced through performance practice.

The microadventure: a new or renewed kind of sports tourism?

This article examines microadventuring in light of existing sports tourism research. The methodology used was qualitative, and ten semi-structured interviews were conducted. Results show the microadventure to be a marketing concept in sync with the changes currently happening to nature sports in today’s society, a fluidity that means it cannot be considered a new phenomenon. It is part of the changing relationship that humans have with nature, and how they use it for sporting purposes, and is rather an updating or revisiting of older forms of leisure in a contemporary context. Microadventurers have an idealised vision of nature, seeing it as a training ground filled with positive values, thus perpetuating representations. The self-organisation aspect and participant stances on ecology and image reflect how microadventuring aligns with the values and motivations of the most affluent sectors of the population.

A Review of Science Diplomacy: Theoretical Evolution to a Post-Naïve Approach and Its Relevance for the Czech Republic

The paper critically reviews the evolution of the concept of science diplomacy and sheds light on the lack of theoretical reflection on the role of science diplomacy in the Czech context. The idealistic vision of science diplomacy presented by the AAAS and the Royal Society in 2010 has recently been replaced by a more constructivist vision that acknowledges the vulnerability of science and emphasises the political and international implications of S&T diplomacy by pointing to clashes between national interests and those of scientific communities. This post-naive vision relies on the growing strategic value of science and technology, which may lead to the acceptance of new policies regulating the inputs and outputs of scientific systems. The paper briefly outlines the current strategy of the Czech Republic within the EU, highlighting its geostrategic dimension and identifying relevant challenges for the future agenda.

Theorizing Transnational Language Teacher (Educator) Identities: An Autoethnographic Study of a Border Dweller

This autoethnographic narrative inquiry explores the lived experiences and identities of a transnational English language teacher (educator). The aim of this research was to gain insight into my own transnationality, in order both to better inform my beliefs and practices as an educator, and to highlight the value of exploring transnationality as an important dimension in language teacher identity (LTI) construction. Drawing on autobiographical writing and art work as data sources, constant comparison and line-by-line analysis were employed to identify themes in the data, which were synthesized with relevant literature to further make sense of and theorize (my) transnational LTIs. Featuring theme-focused experiences from my life, findings are organized in a past-present-future structure, looking back at how my past identities can inform my present identities, and how these past and present identities are informing my future imagined identities. Major insights gained from this research into transnational LTI include: (a) social categorization, whether conferring high or low status, is a form of objectification, closely linked to the concept of (un)desire; (b) viewing emotions as signals of sites of growth can help to free us from emotional overwhelm; and (c) identifying and acknowledging our strengths can emancipate us from unjust power dynamics and empower others to do the same. Implications for language teacher education are discussed.