Liberal Space Research Articles

Women Empowerment in the Digital Age : Significance of New Media

The worldwide scene was totally altered by the technological revolution brought about by new media, the internet, blogs, and social networking sites and influenced the fundamental framework of societies, fostering more conversations, arguments, and intellectual production while enhancing the democratic capacity of governments. It is widely believed that new media can be an effective tool for women's development and empowerment, moreover gives women a voice and a forum to communicate their thoughts and concerns without fear of prejudice or retaliation. Women make up a large portion of the global population, and as science and technology advance, so too does the status of women, which is changing quickly. However, we cannot deny that there is a world in which women face numerous forms of discrimination, marginalization, and oppression, new media provides innovative spaces and platforms to address and effectively overcome such discrimination. These are being developed as spaces that are democratic in nature, embodying freedom and equality, while enabling a liberal space for women to speak out. It is relevant that other spaces do not have the same potential and capacity as the new media to become women's media, even if sometimes gender inequalities exist. This paper also examines the ways in which new social media spaces are the cause of women's advancement and the challenges they face.

We need bigger mirrors: the importance of fat fiction for young readers

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate how narrative is constructed to create connections with fat readers, how books function to envision spaces of fat liberation for young readers and to highlight the incredible importance of providing bigger mirrors (Bishop, 1990) for fat representation in children’s literature.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyzes and reflects on two texts that contain counternarratives of fatness: The (Other) F Word: A celebration of the fat and fierce edited by Angie Manfredi (2019) and Big by Vashti Harrison (2023) to interrogate how these two narratives intentionally disrupt anti-fat bias.FindingsBody size and fatness are identities that need to be included in diversity efforts within education. Books like The (Other) F Word: A celebration of the fat and fierce (Manfredi, 2019) and Big (Harrison, 2023) offer positive representations of fatness, disrupt biases around body size and provide spaces that allow fat students to find joy, hope, connection and, more than anything, imagine a way toward liberation.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper highlights the need to include more narratives of positive fat representation within children’s literature and calls for educators to interrogate their own anti-fat biases and practices.Originality/valueThere is a lack of research on fat representation specifically within children and young adult literature. This paper provides an analysis of two pieces of literature with fat representation that brings attention to the need for this type of future research.

美国左翼文学中的儿童教育叙事

Tillie Olsen was one of the famous left-wing female writers in the United States in the 1930s. Her novel Yonnondio: From the Thirties focuses on the marginalized group of coal miner families, especially young girls, and examines the impact of the lower-class cultural life on their growth. This work holds significant social significance. The novel showcases the influence of cultural activities such as school education, public libraries, and movies on the development of children, revealing the negative effects of the capitalist education system on working-class girls in terms of class and gender. On the other hand, popular cultural forms like movies provide a certain liberating space. The protagonist in the novel gradually grows under the complex influence of various ideologies and begins to independently choose cultural forms that align with her own interests, reflecting the author’s affirmation of the subjectivity and agency of children from working-class families.

El fracaso de las biopolíticas posmodernas: algunos apuntes sobre las tecnologías y prácticas de embellecimiento travestis

Abstract Based on the ethnographic work I conducted with a group of Brazilian travesti sex workers in Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona, this article aims to analyze how they adopt technologies to transform and beautify their bodies that question the biomedical model of our society: their bodies are not read as “docile”, “healthy”, or “productive” since they do not “fit into”, nor pretend to fit into the dominant sexual binary. On the other hand, beauty - as a political and transformative field - is one of the main elements that travestis have to find their place in the world through their (trans)national displacements: they are self-constructing as social subjects who claim some intelligibility while they become beautiful travestis. Therefore, travestis believe that beauty is a (transitory) space of liberation that, ultimately, reveals how certain biopolitical technologies have failed to produce undisciplined bodies and beautiful travestis who - through their survival - rebel against a heteronormative power that considers that their bodies are not worthy of mourning and, consequently, “deserve to die”.

The failure of postmodern biopolitics: some notes on travesti beautification technologies and practices.

Based on the ethnographic work I conducted with a group of Brazilian travesti sex workers in Rio de Janeiro and Barcelona, this article aims to analyze how they adopt technologies to transform and beautify their bodies that question the biomedical model of our society: their bodies are not read as "docile", "healthy", or "productive" since they do not "fit into", nor pretend to fit into the dominant sexual binary. On the other hand, beauty - as a political and transformative field - is one of the main elements that travestis have to find their place in the world through their (trans)national displacements: they are self-constructing as social subjects who claim some intelligibility while they become beautiful travestis. Therefore, travestis believe that beauty is a (transitory) space of liberation that, ultimately, reveals how certain biopolitical technologies have failed to produce undisciplined bodies and beautiful travestis who - through their survival - rebel against a heteronormative power that considers that their bodies are not worthy of mourning and, consequently, "deserve to die".

이승만의 농지개혁과 교육개혁

Although it is receiving mixed evaluations according to the camp's logic, it is undeniable that Lee Seung-man has succeeded and failed at almost every juncture of modernization in Korea. He himself was one of the chaotic modernization of his country. However, Rhee Syng-man is still an ill-fated leader whose credits are covered and only his mistakes are highlighted. Rhee Syng-man gave us a great gift of liberal democracy along with the importance of economic equality in a space of liberation from severe confrontation. His achievements were often distorted or overlooked due to excessive ideological debates.
 However, we can meet the decisive moments of Rhee Syng-man in the process of the birth of the Republic of Korea, ranging from the Manmin Community to farmland reform, the signing of the Korea-U.S. mutual defense treaty, and education reform, which led to the first step toward a democratic republic. Recently, the evaluation of the first President Rhee Syng-man has been newly made. The mood is to properly evaluate such contributions as the Korea-U.S. alliance and farmland reform. There is no doubt that the Korea-U.S. alliance is the number one contributor to preventing communization across the Korean Peninsula. Farmland reform is generally evaluated as an opportunity to transform society as a whole from modern to modern. If you add one more to this, it is a ball that laid the foundation for Korea's physical and human infrastructure. Rhee Syng-man made efforts to expand infrastructure despite the poverty of relying on aid.
 The present Republic of Korea is called the era of the most abundance in its half-million-year history. This era of abundance was not created all of a sudden one day. It is the product of more than 70 years of accumulation since the establishment of the Korean government. The secret to its success lies in making liberal democracy and a market economy the foundation of the state. Based on this, it succeeded in reforming farmland and prevented North Korea's invasion. The mutual defense treaty with the United States also played a major role. This credit cannot but be attributed to Rhee Syng-man more than anyone else.
 Based on this awareness of the problem, this paper will examine Rhee Syng-man's track record leading up to the enactment of the Constitution and conduct a constitutional evaluation of land reform and education reform.

Behind the Poetics of the Female Asian Cyborg: A Techno-Orientalist Other

In 1985, Donna Haraway conceived a political myth of the cyborg, a cybernetic organism, hybrid of machine and organism, that refuses to be attributed to existing definitions used to explain the human body. Over the years, Haraways cyborg has continued to find itself in the center of academic and creative discourse. Given the prominence of Haraways model, in this paper, I will examine the cyborg poetics of two contemporary female Asian poets, Franny Choi and Sally Wen Mao, under the framework of Haraways cyborg. Both liken their self to cyborgs. Both take the perspective of cyborgs. Both are equally drawn to Haraways cybernetic dream. I will explain how Haraways cyborg is a fitting metaphor for the female identity and a relevant conduit for its expression, and how it facilitates the reckoning and rejection of the historically constituted female body. Finally, I will interrogate applicability of Haraways cyborg to the female Asian body by cross-referencing the cyborg with orientalism and techno-orientalism. I will argue for the exclusive nature of Haraways cyborg and its inadequacy in constituting a liberating space for the female Asian body.

Beletristická rekonštrukcia portrétu Štefana Krčméryho z posledných rokov života (Anton Baláž, Povedz slovo čisté, 2017)

The novel’s portrayal of an unknown part of the life of Štefan Krčméry (1892 – 1955), his stay in a psychiatric asylum (1949–1955), belongs to the category of rare topics in contemporary Slovak fiction. In the novel Povedz slovo čisté, Anton Baláž gradually uncovers Krčméry’s complex, dramatic internal life through depictions of the onset and overcoming of apathetic states in the narrative, which also contains a series of diary entries by Júlia Orlovská, Krčméry’s attending physician. These entries record his lasting commitment to such values as the nation, religious faith, creative freedom, and the liberating space of literature. Carefully revealing his thoughts, attitudes and desires, Baláž completes the image of Krčméry as that of an artist, scientist, and preacher, who tries to hold on to these values even at the end of his life journey. Karol Matulay, the director of the treatment center in Pezinok, who is closely monitored by the new totalitarian regime, perceives him as a person with a „liberated imagination” or creative freedom, which can serve as a model for the „crouched imagination of Bratislava’s literati”. While the image of the final stage of Krčméry’s life seems more static, the fictitious character of Jakub Daňo, an ambitious student interested the world of literature, appears as a more dynamic and emotionally active character. According to the author, Krčméry confronts himself with the emotional experience of situations in time and space contained in his memory, with the time against which he is powerless and deprived of human dignity, due to his illness, but free. As a historical and sociological document, Baláž’s novel Povedz slovo čisté (2017) did not generate the „hero/heroes” of the current chaotic digital age; instead, the motivation behind his characters’ actions and behavior is timeless, while its empirical and epistemological value for the present-day reader is indisputable.

Inspiring, Supporting, and Propelling Urban Educators: Understanding the Effectiveness of a University-Based Induction Support Program

This research focuses on understanding the effectiveness of a university-based induction support program (ISP) instituted to support the graduates of an urban university who completed their preparation during the COVID-19 pandemic. We framed the evaluation of our ISP as participatory action research (PAR) and chose a critical theoretical perspective of adult learning and development as our theoretical lens because of the close alignment with this perspective to our college’s conceptual framework on social justice and equity. Primary data sources consisted of individual interviews with 15 key informants identified by the ISP research team. Data analyses occurred through a recursive and generative process moving between open coding using Nvivo and reflection on the literature related to critical adult learning theory and research on effective induction and coaching models. Findings included (a) the ISP as a liberating space to engage with other educators, (b) the ISP’s role as a university-based program for urban educators, (c) the ISP program’s impact on stakeholders’ professional identity, and (d) the ISP and the concept of criticality. The study also underscored the advantages of using PAR designs for program evaluation and/or accreditation inquiries focusing on continuous improvement.

분단 전후(1945~1953) 위령제의 재편과 위령 의례의 변화

The eight years before and after the division were the turbulent times of liberation, division, and war. This period required cultural planning to create members of a new era and group. During this period, the memorial was a major plan to secure the legitimacy of the group and form the identity of internal members through the meaning of death and the hierarchy of death. To this end, a memorial ceremony was held for the death of various ethnic groups from the past to the present immediately after liberation. The left and right sides each selected the object of the memorial ceremony and held a memorial ceremony to secure public support. However, as the political landscape of the liberation space changed, the memorial system began to be reorganized. Throughout the division, many memorial systems were forgotten in public space. However, the importance of the memorial ceremony for the soldiers and police who died was further emphasized. Through the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident and the battle on the 38th parallel, the status of the memorial ceremony for war dead was strengthened, while the scale of the implementation of the memorial ceremony was expanded. Throughout the war, the date of the three-gun joint memorial ceremony began to be regularized for the first time. In addition, on the day of the memorial service, the Republic of Korea requested the voluntary participation of the people through public action guidelines such as prohibition of drinking and dancing, silence, and self-reflection. However, as can be seen from the issue of the support of bereaved families, the gap between the state and the people regarding the decree still existed. Nevertheless, the three-gun joint memorial system was regularized on a nationwide scale under the leadership of the state, and became a representative memorial ceremony in Korea.

Diaconia and Identity: Agency of the Marginalised

The question under investigation relates to the agency of the marginalised as a model for taking responsibility for care and progress. This complex phenomenon of existence outside of the centre will be critically evaluated. Two notions of imago Dei—Wentzel’s image of God and Kelsey’s images of Christ—indicate the debates around the positioning of the marginalised. These debates are becoming an emerging field of interest within the development and diaconia fields of research. A growing interest is in the escalation and unprecedented poverty that some parts of the world are experiencing. The division amongst and between nations is growing rapidly, never seen in modern history. The interest of this contribution lies specifically within the intersections of identity and agency. I seek to explore Christian anthropology within and concerning the rest of God’s creation. Questions such as the absolute doctrinal formulation of what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God, how the doctrine relates to contemporary challenges such as the destructiveness of the created order by human beings, the oppressive and exploitative political and economic systems; and the continuation of the doctrine with situations of poverty will be considered. Using a post-colonial approach to Christian anthropology, I will argue that the marginalised as part of the creation of God has the call and gifts to take responsibility, the right and the dignity for care and development. Such an approach redefines marginalisation as a space of liberation. The positioning of the marginalised in relation to the centre and the agency of the poor will be correlated with Radford Ruether’s dialectical approach to what it means to be the church. Radford Ruether’s approach forms the basis for Dietrich’s view of the positioning of the marginalized within the diaconal perspective.

The Humanitarian Theater in the Mediterranean and the Threat of Violence in the Balkans

ABSTRACT This article compares the Mediterranean and the Balkan routes of migration into the European Union, exploring the (in)visibility and (un)knowability of the management of European borderlands. It offers a historical overview of the hotspot approach in the Mediterranean, where securitarian concerns merged with humanitarian affects, making certain practices and subjectivities possible, but foreclosing others. Lampedusa, Italy, has been turned into a stage where “humanitarian theater” performed for European audiences has become a crucial aspect of border management. The strategy of EU border management has been different in the Balkans, where the use of violence has been concealed with a veil of official denial. Instead of a humanitarian theater, in the Balkans we can find stories of border terror, official denial of such violence, and competing claims to knowledge about it. This official denial has kept “Europe” as a political community simultaneously implicated in and innocent of the use of violence in border management. Despite their differences, the key functions of the EU border regime have been the same in these two regions. The comparative perspective illustrates the different strategies the European border regime uses to manage the perceived “crisis” of migration, while simultaneously keeping the liberal space of Europe “safe.”

Hyphenated Performance On-Site

This article contextualises and explores participatory site-specific walking performances created for the ‘hyphenated’ area between Tel Aviv and Jaffa in Israel – nowadays a space of trade and recreation, and which before the 1948 war was Manshiya, the northern quarter of Jaffa. In correlation with geopolitical hyphenation implemented through annexation and control, we suggest the concept of hyphenated performance. The performance embodies the urban and territorial connection while expressing a critical consciousness regarding the colonial paradigm of hyphenation. The reframed hyphen resides in composing present and past into a traumatic post-memory site; and in the tension – defined as ‘will-powering’ – between voluntary movement and its control in liberal space. Within this framework we discuss two performances: Miriam Schickler’s audio-walk Echoing Yafa (2014), which explicitly triggers the critical events in Manshiya through collective and subjective enacted stories; and Rabia Salfiti’s The Walk (2017), in which a small group of blindfolded participants were tied to one another and led by the artist along the un-told site.

Liberal spaces in an illiberal regime: environmental NGOs, state sovereignty and the struggle for nature

ABSTRACT In the post-Soviet period, Russian environmental activists, supported by transnational networks, have contested the Russian government’s environmental policies. Invoking international norms and rules and advocating for the public's, Russian environmentalists in effect have struggled with the state over sovereignty. Transnational discourses, resources and collaborations have promoted a liberal model of environmental governance. However, the Russian political context has grown increasingly illiberal and exclusionary. Based on qualitative fieldwork and analysis of state documents and data, we examine this struggle in periods of constructing and transforming networks that span the global–local interplay where struggles over the non-human world take place.

Contents and Writer’s Consciousness in Hong Eurn’s Sijo based The Liberation Space

Contents and Writer’s Consciousness in Hong Eurn’s Sijo based The Liberation Space

An Alternative Macanese Public Sphere: Discussing Portuguese Macau’s Problems in British Hong Kong

ABSTRACT The first Macanese diaspora to Hong Kong in the 1840s saw not only the movement of Macau’s Luso-Asians to British territory, but also the unfolding of decades of discussion regarding the repressive rule of the Portuguese colonial administration over Macau. From establishing Portuguese-language newspapers to writing to Hong Kong’s English-language newspapers, the Macanese found a relatively liberal space in British Hong Kong to address Macau’s social and political issues and criticise the Portuguese colonial administration and Portugal away from the Portuguese empire’s strict press censorship. Through exploring the ways Macanese newspaper editors and contributors challenged Portuguese policies and maladministration on British soil, this study aims to first, analyse the experience of Hong Kong within the wider context of British press control in its Asian colonies and second, show how trans-border interaction came to be facilitated between Hong Kong and Macau by the movement and activities of a multiracial diasporic community.

Bamenda Grassland Elites in the Race for Titles within the Multiparty Liberal Space in Cameroon

The decade spanning from the 1990s inaugurated the Cameroon Political outfit with trans-mutations and opportunities under the New Deal Regime that commands special attention. Each of these new adjustments warranted alternative positioning by the emerging political elites who had been circumstantially trapped within the threshold of so many opportunities that this liberal landscape was brandishing. One interesting outgrowth in this changing atmosphere was the fact that; traditional titles plus modern credentials turned out to be one of the key elements required for positioning and lobbying by these opportunistic elites. This article combines evidence combed from primary and secondary sources to answer key questions patterning to the tussle for titles by grassland elites in the guise of positioning themselves in the hub of opportunities that the somewhat liberal phase of the Cameroon New Deal era offered as from the 1990s. It particularly seeks to situate (a) The special climate that engineered these paradigmatic shifts by those presumed to be sufficiently savvy of tradition (b) the different categories of titles these elites raced for as well the reasons behind such a mad rush (c) the methods plus raison d’être of title conferment as well as (d) the impact of such deals in political positioning. Away from the positions/opportunities that were gained and lost by elites of this niche in this title drama, the paper proffer that the race to own titles and the politics around it played a big role in washing away the authority /command that titled men carried before this time not only within the grasslands but largely everywhere in Cameroon where such gimmicks became part of the game for gaining space in the realm of power. In all, it submits that this game rather polarized the elites against each other since each title holders proofed to be so ready to play or perform any mean deal so as to get appointed or other forms of compensations that mattered in the realm of opportunities. It opines therefore that such moves disgracefully eclipsed other genuine methods of getting the right people into the power trail on the basis of merit thereby, ruining the political space with wrong people from hence and any time after.

“Women in an Alien Land”- Nuances of Diasporic Identity and Survival in Bharati Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters

Bharati Mukherjee, an Indian Born, Canadian/ American novelist has made a deep impression on the literary canvass. The prime premise of her works is the issues encountered by women in the foreign atmosphere. As a diasporic author most of her characters are ‘displaced’ and ‘alienated’ from the land of origin to USA where they are ‘simultaneously invisible’ as an individual and ‘overexposed’ as a racial minority. Focusing on Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters, first of the trilogy including The Tree Bride and Miss New India, the present paper attempts to analyze the complexities of diasporic identity and the process of re-birth and re-invention of Indian women immigrants to adapt in the new world. A story of three sisters- Padma, Parvati and Tara, the novel showcases the problems of identity of Indian immigrant women in an alien society as they suffer from ‘no greater visibility but great marginality’. The problem with these sisters is not only that are immigrants but what makes their condition worse is their gender as well. Being with the label of ‘second sex’, these women are often confronted by a double quest- quest for identity as a woman first and second as a displaced human being in an alien world. The diasporic situation in fact entangles the sisters into a maze- standing between two worlds-with complex realities of unequal cultural dynamics of the traditional homeland and liberal spaces of host land- they tend to experience conflicting subjectivities of freedom and subjugation, yet they do find a way for self-exploration and deliberation to conceive new identities and move beyond the fixed definitions of diasporic Indian women. So, my paper will be a modest attempt to unravel the nuances of diasporic identity which is always a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’ and to highlight the extremely individualistic ways of survival of the three immigrant sisters in an apparently alien culture.

Legitimacy, power, and aesthetics, in the International Baccalaureate

ABSTRACT This paper explores the facilitation of the emancipatory in an International Baccalaureate (IB) context of privilege. It aligns with the idea that capitalism, even in welfare state democracies or ‘do good’ corporations, maintains the interests of the owners of capital. It is by nature unjust and exploitative and must conceal this injustice by securing a (spurious) legitimacy for itself. This makes a rare methodological contribution as the article provides critical ‘meta-analysis’ of IB research literature by prioritising work that affords insight into the lived reality within the IB-Sphere. It then triangulates this analysis through the work of German Social Philosopher Jürgen Habermas. This work provides a significant and timely contribution to ‘franchised education’ in the twenty-first Century, and will be of essential reading to scholars, policymakers and leadership whether involved in the IB, or active in the Neo Liberal spaces of education more generally: such as Multi Trust Academies, Free Schools, or Charter Schools. This is thanks to the lessons learned over nearly 60 years of educational franchise in a diverse and globalising sphere as presented here from IB research through critical analysis.

Linguistic landscape, critical language awareness and critical thinking: promoting learner agency in discourses about language

in English There is now increased awareness of the need to challenge ‘common sense’ ideologies of language in education, turning language classrooms into spaces of analysis and liberation. Key to achieving this goal is equipping students with the skills needed to navigate diverse, complex discourses about language (critical thinking), as well as fostering an agentive disposition among them (critical language awareness). This article reports on research which examined how these qualities can be developed by involving language learners in analysis of public signs (linguistic landscape). 33 undergraduate students at a public university in Bhutan were recruited to participate in an extra-curricular activity in which they were asked to independently collect examples of public signs from the capital Thimphu and engage in guided analysis and discussion of the linguistic and visual features of the signs. Analysis of video recordings of learner interaction as well as of the textual data produced during and after the activity indicated that critical thinking processes were activated with relative regularity. In combination with pre- and post-activity interviews, these data also indicated that activating critical thinking through the activity also allowed several of the learners to take up a more agentive position in discourses about language in Bhutan.