Intellectual Inquiry Research Articles

Ethnic proximity, mobility and (non)-belonging: middle-class Singaporean migrants in China

New global multi-directional migration flows are decentering extant analyses of White expatriate migration. As migration becomes more diversified, new lines of intellectual inquiry are surfacing about the experiences of middle-class non-white expatriates. This paper uses the case study of China, which with the rise in immigration, has an increasingly diverse ‘expatriate’ population. While the visibility of White expatriates in non-white-majority host countries may compel them to adopt lifestyles segregated from the local population, expatriates of Chinese heritage in China have the (dis)advantage of blending in with the local population. This paper examines the experiences of Singaporean-Chinese migrants in China where their ethnic proximity to the Chinese can be both a boon and a bane. We present our findings in three sections addressing: first, how ethnic proximity can enable mobilities including motility and a mobile sense of belonging; second, how mobilities can condition ethnic proximity as experiences of privilege but also reminders of non-belonging; and third, how participants’ change in life phases i.e. temporalities shift meanings of proximity, mobility and mobile belonging. Through highlighting the multidimensional nature of mobilities – proximity, motility, temporalities – this paper contributes to studies of middling migration, (ethnic) proximity and mobilities.

The Catholic university’s integral purpose: A multi-dimensional perspective

This study examines how contemporary frameworks of corporate purpose can inform the purpose of Catholic universities. It defines corporate purpose as a central objective that provides meaning to members and contributes to societal value, delineating inside-out and outside-in perspectives, and head, heart, and hands dimensions. Applying these frameworks to Catholic institutions, the paper discusses the importance of aligning purpose with Catholic beliefs, fostering intellectual inquiry, moral formation, and engagement with societal challenges. Then, it delves into how Catholic universities integrate organizational purpose with individual purposes both in Catholic and non-Catholic members. It examines the concepts of purpose fluidity and synergy, which enhance alignment between personal and organizational purposes. Strategies for promoting these concepts, such as clear communication and consistent management, are discussed. Ultimately, integrating these frameworks enhances our understanding of the multifaceted role of Catholic universities’ purpose in contemporary society.

What is ‘indigenising the academy’ and why attempt it?

We will share some thoughts on what ‘indigenising the academy’ might mean, and why we might attempt it. We come at these questions from our different yet intertwined identities, experiences and lines of intellectual inquiry. Te Kawehau is of Ngāti Hau and Ngāpuhi tribal groups. Her indigenous ancestors arrived in Aotearoa about 1000 years ago. Alison is a Pākehāl her English settler ancestors came as colonists in the 1850s.

Legislating Against Misinformation: Lessons from Australia’s Misinformation Bill

Abstract Misinformation is decried in today’s discourse. Governments have been tempted to attempt to restrict or outlaw it. This may not be possible where there are Constitutional protections for free speech. However, many countries lack rigorous protections. Australia shows us an approach where there are limited protections. It is a cautionary tale, exacerbating ‘agency conflicts’ both at the political and regulatory level and at the corporate level. The Australian government has attempted to curtail ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ through the proposed ‘Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023’. But, in so doing, the proposed bill casts a wide net, has unintended consequences, and unnecessarily chills free speech and intellectual inquiry. Ironically, the Bill also exempts the government’s own communications from attempts to curtail misinformation. The Bill would also incentivize corporate overreach by penalizing firms for inadvertently allowing ‘misinformation’, but not penalizing them for suppressing true information. The corporate governance literature gives additional insights into the value destruction that such a Bill could cause. The Bill’s failures provide lessons for any government that seeks to legislate against misinformation.

Does Antitakeover Provision Harm Shareholders? Indexing for Antitakeover Provisions in China

Abstract Does antitakeover harm shareholders? Encumbered by a multitude of theoretical perspectives, the legality of antitakeover remains a shared intellectual inquiry that the A-share market has yet to fully address. This paper constructs a governance index for the A-share market based on a manually collected and hand-coded research dataset (C-index). This dataset, comprising 4251 historical firm-level profiles of Antitakeover Provisions (ATPs), is meticulously sampled from companies listed in China from 2001 to 2017. The study investigates the logical correlation between antitakeover strength, financial performance, and the governance attributes of the company by leveraging the index’s economic utility. Additionally, this paper explores the firm-level factors that prompt corporate directors to integrate ATPs. From an empirical standpoint, it provides evidence that the governance index of firm-level strength of ATPs is positively correlated with share liquidity, institutional shareholding, private ownership, and the company’s commitment to achieving specific financial performance.

Domenico Losurdo’s Perspective on Real Socialism

ABSTRACT The seminal contributions of the esteemed Italian Marxist scholar, Domenico Losurdo, have significantly enriched the theoretical and methodological landscape surrounding the study and practical application of historical-dialectical materialism. This article elucidates Losurdo’s principal perspectives on the intricate challenges inherent in the construction of socialist societies. In stark departure from prevalent Western Marxist paradigms, Losurdo’s analyses of revolutionary historical praxes are imbued with a rigorous self-critical lens, eschewing adherence to revisionist or liquidationist doctrines that characterized the prevalent trend of anti-communist pseudo-Marxism fashionable within some academic circles. This discourse systematically unpacks the salient themes of this intellectual inquiry, meticulously assessing Losurdo’s oeuvre as a distinctive and invaluable contribution to the nuanced exploration of the complexities and prospects entailed in the development of authentic socialist experiences.

The Wind Is Always Blowing: Generative Crosscurrents of Ethnographic Dialogue in Australia

ABSTRACTLive conversations and writing play an important role in ethnographic research that seeks to develop understanding across cultural differences. Both forms of communication need not remain distinct: written dialogue can develop critical thought while foregrounding the shared contexts and relational impetuses of communication across cultures. Set against the background of recent styles in ethnographic writing about and with Yolŋu people, this article extends from conversations about wata (wind), exploring collaborative practices (music performance and teaching) and approaches to writing ethnography that respond to a core quality of wind as a medium that connects. Wata is a significant theme within manikay (public ceremonial song) that connects Wägilak with their ancestral lands, even as it blows through the country of other groups, allowing new relationships and understandings to be formed. Giving rise to concerns of connection, difference, and movement, wata is a significant theme for considering the ways narrative traditions can shape relationality and give impetus to intellectual inquiry.

Hipopotam w błocie. Zbigniewa Herberta kłopoty z katolicyzmem

This article discusses Zbigniew Herbert’s attitude to Catholicism during the 1940s. The fledgling poet was then in a period of intense intellectual and religious enquiry. He began collaborating with Catholic magazines, attempting to publish his poetic and journalistic texts. In his correspondence he discussed with various other authors the ideaological attractiveness of preconciliar Catholicism, at the time the most serious counterproposal to the Marxist ideology.

Book Review: Has China Won? By Kishore Madhubani

The rise of China in last the three decades has started the debate as to whether the primacy of America can be sustained or will it be replaced by another superpower (Brooks & Wohlforth, 2016; Jervis ,1991). If the United States were to be replaced, the key question arises: who would assume its role? The author of the book under consideration is extensively engaged in the exploration of a pivotal narrative in the 21st century, centred on the enduring competition between the United States and China. This discourse has evolved into a prominent arena of intellectual inquiry for scholars globally, and Kishore Mahbubani is no different in this regard. His book titled Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy discusses a wide range of issues which has engulfed both America and China. The book consists of nine chapters, with an additional condensed article by Stephen M. Walt in the appendix. This article delves into the prevalent myths surrounding American supremacy.

Reason and Faith: A Conflict through the History of Philosophy

The relationship between faith and reason has been a subject of profound philosophical inquiry throughout history. Philosophers from different periods and traditions have grappled with the tension between religious belief and rational inquiry, shaping our understanding of the complex relationship between faith and reason. In ancient times, thinkers explored the nature of knowledge and the role of reason in uncovering truth. While reason played a central role, faith in divine beings also had significance. During the medieval period, theologians sought to reconcile faith and reason, considering them as complementary faculties for attaining truth. Throughout history, the exploration of the relationship between faith and reason has shaped philosophical discourse and provided insights into knowledge, belief, and the human condition. The ongoing dialogue continues to stimulate intellectual inquiry and offers different perspectives on the nature of truth and the meaning of existence.

Models of knowledge

Art practice has an unusual history inside the university sector. Often originating from specialized academies, as disciplines they usually began life through a focus on practical work. This gave rise to small institutions that have been subsumed into larger ones, becoming colleges or schools within universities rather than continuing their independent lives. The advantages of this are clear: structural, financial and cultural opportunities that come with the status of university subjects. What this article argues is that there has been a considerable price to pay in being so accommodated. Creative practice subjects in a qualifications framework, and to some extent in exercises like the Research Excellence Framework, have been required to adopt intellectual enquiry processes in order to burnish their claims to knowledge. Mostly, these come from the humanities. This article examines the impact of this on creative practice, on acceptance of the research elements of it and on distinguishing the difference between arts-based enquiry and humanities models of interpretation and analysis. That these are increasingly incompatible requires rethinking of the relationship between arts and humanities that is so taken for granted.

An Ethical Approach to Creating Gardens Inspired by Qurʾānic Narratives

Abstract Much of the literature on “Islamic gardens” focuses on artistic and architectural features or religious symbolism attributed to the influence of Islamic beliefs and civilization. This study seeks to expand the scope of intellectual inquiry beyond traditional motifs and recurrent features to investigate the potential influence of Islamic ethical values on creating gardens. Following a brief overview of the history of “Islamic gardens” and a short survey of Qurʾānic terms denoting earthly and paradisiacal gardens, this research highlights theological and ethical principles derived from four Qurʾānic narratives featuring earthly gardens, natural landscapes and non-human creation. These principles are, then, incorporated into a holistic ethical framework for creating gardens that harmonizes theocentric, anthropocentric, and ecocentric priorities. This framework prioritizes faithfulness to God while upholding both serving humanity and safeguarding natural habitats and ecosystems as ethical imperatives and mutually reinforcing investments with spiritual consequences in this life and the hereafter. This study also presents several garden models (particularly botanic gardens and community gardens) considered suitable for adopting and applying the proposed tripartite framework. The last section of this study explores how Islamic institutions, including mosques and charitable organizations, can utilize the tripartite framework to create gardens and green spaces that contribute to fulfilling a range of spiritual, social and environmental objectives.

“Unlinked lives”: Elaboration of a concept and its significance for the life course

This article introduces the concept of “unlinked lives” and illustrates its significance for scholarship on the life course. There are many lessons to be learned about human interdependence by focusing not on relationships that are formed and then maintained, but instead on relationships that are lost or ended by choice or circumstance, such as through changes in institutional affiliations, social status and positions or places. Unlinked lives carry important social meanings, are embedded in complex social processes, and bring consequences for the wellbeing of individuals, families, and societies. To develop this concept, we put forward nine key propositions related to when and how unlinkings happen as processes, as well as some of the consequences of being unlinked as a status or outcome. The coupling of “unlinked lives” with “linked lives” offers a crucial avenue for advancing life course theories and research, integrating scholarship across multiple life periods and transitions, and bridging the two now-distinct traditions of intellectual inquiry on the life course and on social networks.

Stretchy and Tense: A Diffractive Auto/Ethnography of Privilege With Yoga Pants

The contemporary yoga industry is entangled in many contradictions. While yoga is intended to be an inclusive, liberatory practice, its contemporary iterations enact exclusion through an industry that often privileges able-bodied, affluent, white women. As a yoga scholar-practitioner who embodies these identities, I am troubled by how my teaching and studies of yoga further replicate power imbalances. In this article, I interrogate privilege and power as they emerge with yoga pants. I draw upon Barad’s cutting together-apart in a diffractive auto/ethnography. I make literal cuts through the fabric of my yoga pants, as reflections, reactions, and interview transcripts make figurative cuts through self-image, body-image, and feminine norms. I consider how this methodology materializes an entanglement of affective forces, power, and critical feminist academia that is useful in exploring possibilities for change. This inquiry does not conclude, but rather acknowledges an imperfect and ever-evolving interrogation of embodied power as it shapes intellectual inquiry, and spaces of yoga practice.

Retelling education in emergencies through the black radical tradition: on racial capitalism, critical race theory and fugitivity

ABSTRACT This article asserts that the Black Radical Tradition (BRT), grounded in historical and structural inquiry, offers tools to reinterpret EiE radically—the BRT encompasses a tradition rooted in diverse African intellectual and activist inquiries, providing a multifaceted theoretical framework. Relevant to humanitarian scholarship, the BRT challenges omissions of colonisation, capitalism, and enslavement histories in forced migration and aid, shedding light on their roles in perpetuating ‘white saviours’. The paper, adopting my roles as a scholar and aid practitioner, critically examines the EiE sector through three BRT lenses: racial capitalism, critical race theory, and fugitivity. It employs case studies, aligning with the BRT's interconnected focus, revealing the pervasive influence of educational aid, racial injustice, and structural inequalities. These lenses collectively illuminate the potential of Black radical thought to transform the EiE landscape. By tracing EiE's genealogies through Black radical historiography, the article advocates for sector-wide introspection, emphasising power redistribution, centring marginalised voices, and challenging prevailing hierarchies in humanitarian contexts.

Picturing Herself in Africa

Abstract This essay explores the relationship between imaging, archival cataloging, and African diasporic belonging through the developed and undeveloped photography of Haitian anthropologist Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain. Using her family correspondences and research on folklore to contextualize her image-based archive on Haiti, the Belgian Congo, and Nigeria, the author proposes that Comhaire-Sylvain’s visual catalog is rendered legible through her undeveloped images taken in Africa. Tracing Comhaire-Sylvain’s contortions in front of and behind the camera, the author shows that her undeveloped and unpublished imaging practices of play and experimentation exemplify a medium of scholarly and personal reflexivity that troubled the authority of her professional research practice and enlivened the range of her diasporic expression. With particular attention given to photos taken during her time in the Belgian Congo between 1943 and 1945 and her long-stay return to Haiti in 1957, the author argues that Comhaire-Sylvain’s imaging catalog is most provocatively read as an assemblage bound by her use of folklore as a unique technology for crafting meaning between overlapping sites of diasporic belonging and intellectual inquiry.

Academic work from the perspectives of aspiring academics: a study of doctoral candidates and recent graduates

Several studies have highlighted the changing nature and forms of work in the academic profession, but few have examined the perspectives of aspiring academics who may contribute to shaping the future academic profession. What types of activities do aspiring academics consider academic work, and what are the implications for academic training and the future of the academic profession? This paper addresses these questions by drawing on qualitative interviews with a group of doctoral candidates and recent doctoral candidates at a research-intensive university in Australia. Building on Ernst Boyer’s scholarship typology, the paper proposes a conceptualisation of academic work domains based on how the outcomes of intellectual inquiry can be communicated. Conceptualising academic work from a communication perspective allows for a language to speak of and recognise the diversity of academic work. The paper also raises questions about how doctoral training could prepare aspiring academics for work areas beyond research, particularly engagement, and how institutional structure could accommodate and recognise this diversity.

Rise and Fall of the Undergraduate Research Project

A project carried out as an independent piece of work, either by an individual student or a very small group, is often included in Business and Management degrees as a capstone activity. At undergraduate level historically the expectation in the British system is that some form of independent study is an essential part of an honours degree although typically this is not formally stated in university regulations. Historically such a project, even at undergraduate level, would have included an element of research and provided an opportunity for students to carry out their own inquiry into an area which had caught their interest. This provided students with research skills which could be adapted to carrying out some form of useful intellectual inquiry in their subsequent careers and gives them an opportunity to focus on particular areas where they have interests. Some students report finding the project a valuable source of material for subsequent job interviews. In recent years there has been a tangible move away from expecting students to do a project at undergraduate level. An effective project needs one-to-one supervision which often places a strain on faculty resources. It is hard to define exactly what would count as an acceptable level of independent scholarship for an undergraduate. It is very hard to ensure a consistently good student experience given a large group of supervisors and a wide range of subjects. Students frequently struggle to see the relevance of research methods to their intended careers. At its worst the project can appear to students as a time when they are left to their own devices with very little support and unclear expectations of what is required of them. Drawing on experiences from a UK business school with a large undergraduate cohort, where the policy up to now has been to retain an independent project in some form within students’ final year, this paper discusses the challenges associated with the move away from independent projects and some ways in which they can be met.

Higher education as the frontline of democracy: The case against Florida House Bill 233, the anti-shielding/intellectual viewpoint diversity/student recording legislative act

In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed House Bill 233. The bill has three provisions: 1) it mandates an “intellectual viewpoint diversity” survey that asks students, faculty, and other employees at Florida’s public colleges and universities to report on their levels of comfort to express their ideological and political opinions; 2) it forbids instructors from “shielding” students from “access to, or observation of, ideas and opinions that they may find uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive”; 3) it deputizes students as vigilantes to record instructor lectures without the instructor’s consent “as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.” By narrating my involvement as a plaintiff in litigation against this bill, I discuss how the protections of intellectual inquiry are being struggled over in the context of state overreach and growing authoritarianism and how this threatens the roots of democratic culture.

THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF THE PERSONALITY IN THE WORKS OF MODERN DOMESTIC PHILOSOPHERS

The article is devoted to the problem of spirituality of the individual. Based on the identification of certain of its characteristics, which, according to modern researchers, determine its meaning, a certain general idea is formed about its multifacetedness, an intellectual inquiry regarding its structural analysis. An attempt at such an analysis is made on the basis of reference to the works of prominent domestic philosophers who created certain theoretical foundations for its further study. The author refers to the works of S.B. Krymskyi, M.V. Popovych, I.D. Bekha, V.O. Lozovoy in order to identify the general structure of the spirituality of the individual. The composition of such a structure as a spiritual basis includes the Valuable-Semantic Universe and various forms of spiritual irradiation and spiritual influence. Such an understanding of the spiritual world of the individual requires the implementation of a cultural and activity approach in spiritual education.