Quiet Revolution Research Articles

A Quiet Revolution in Arts Education: The Rise of blaxTARLINES Kumasi

May 03 2021 A Quiet Revolution in Arts Education: The Rise of blaxTARLINES Kumasi Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu kwaku boafo kissiedu (castro) is a cofounder and the administrative director of blaxTARLINES, Kumasi. He is a senior lecturer at the famed Fine Art Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana where, together with other colleagues, he has pioneered revolutionary changes in fine art pedagogy, turning out emerging artists who are making waves worldwide. kwakukiss@yahoo.com Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Ruth Simbao Ruth Simbao ruth simbao is the DSI/NRF Research Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa and a professor in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University. She founded the Arts of Africa and Global Souths postgraduate research program at Rhodes, and is a researcher with the international Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (Rhodes University, Moi University, University of Lagos, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo and Bayreuth University). r.simbao@ru.ac.za Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu kwaku boafo kissiedu (castro) is a cofounder and the administrative director of blaxTARLINES, Kumasi. He is a senior lecturer at the famed Fine Art Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana where, together with other colleagues, he has pioneered revolutionary changes in fine art pedagogy, turning out emerging artists who are making waves worldwide. kwakukiss@yahoo.com Ruth Simbao ruth simbao is the DSI/NRF Research Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa and a professor in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University. She founded the Arts of Africa and Global Souths postgraduate research program at Rhodes, and is a researcher with the international Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (Rhodes University, Moi University, University of Lagos, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo and Bayreuth University). r.simbao@ru.ac.za Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California African Arts (2021) 54 (2): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00575 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Search Site Citation Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu, Ruth Simbao; A Quiet Revolution in Arts Education: The Rise of blaxTARLINES Kumasi. African Arts 2021; 54 (2): 1–5. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00575 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search A quiet revolution has steadily been rising in Kumasi, Ghana. The fluid, experimental network known as blaxTARLINES is a mutable and transgenerational community of artists, curators and writers that is based in, but extends beyond, the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).1 This special issue on blaxTARLINES, edited by Ruth Simbao and Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Castro), brings together five articles authored by twenty blaxTARLINES affiliates who, in their own words, trace the rise of the creative and intellectual network that was sparked by the work of kąrî’kạchä seid'ou, affectionately known as the godfather of this revolution. Kissiedu and Simbao first met at the African Tertiary Arts Education (ATAE) meeting organized by the African Arts Institute (AFAI) and the Goethe-Institut South Africa in 2015.2... © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California You do not currently have access to this content.

Do We Really Need Another Journal?

A new Journal sees dawn – but didn't we already have too many journals and too many articles published to go to oblivion rapidly? Publishers take advantage of the move towards open access. The need to attract an audience and select papers for high-quality decreases with the move towards business models where journals charge article processing fees to cover expenses and create margins. The Journal of Global Neurosurgery (JGNS) is not a business project: it is far more altruistic and intends to fill a real need. The long-term prospects will not depend on revenue but on the sustainability of the publication model, which by necessity must be low cost and non-profit – other ways, the new journal will not be able to fill the need.
 "Global Neurosurgery" is becoming increasingly vogue. Individual neurosurgeons and the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies have fostered projects to develop our specialty in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), where single neurosurgeons have catered to many millions of patients. We see a worldwide quiet revolution of expanding surgical infrastructure and dissemination of knowledge in countries previously deprived. The stakeholders of this revolution have soon identified a veritable glass ceiling when it comes to publication. Submissions have frequently been seen as relevant or generalizable for the audiences of existing journals. Clinical neuroscience in LMICs is, much to the surprise of many practitioners and editors in previously established structures, different. Fundamental issues such as study population and external validity were rediscovered when population data, research findings, and practice guidelines from affluent, relatively elderly western people with access to smooth infrastructure and exquisitely equipped hospitals were applied with little meaning in LMICs with different demographics and epidemiology. Yet, many clinical studies from LMICs were adapted to previous literature's format and style, without detecting the unique qualities, "the cracks in the wall" of existing paradigms, that would bring the progress of knowledge and change. I believe that a research community with a thorough understanding of the specific qualities of infrastructure and epidemiology in LMICs is being established, and it needs dedicated platforms. A journal is one such platform that can serve to define and direct the subspecialty.

Nationalism, Secularism, and Ethno-Cultural Diversity in Quebec

An ongoing debate over the intersections between secularism and ethno-cultural diversity is taking place in contemporary societies. For example, in just over a decade, Quebec has witnessed multiple attempts to reframe its approach to issues of nationalism in the context of secularism and the regulation of ethno-cultural diversity. This qualitative and historically minded article studies the relationship among nationalism, secularism, and the regulation of diversity, through three stages of analysis. First, it explores the Catholic history of Quebec and the secularization dimensions of its nationalism since the Quiet Revolution and the ongoing debate within the province about religious accommodation and the integration of immigrants. Second, it lays the stage for examining the political and historical rise of the recently passed Bill 21 An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State in Quebec, through analysis of the failed, yet pivotal, proposal for a “Quebec Charter of Values” during the leadership of Parti Québécois (PQ) Premier Pauline Marois (2012–14). Throughout this article, the content of the charter under the PQ and the successful Act under the Coalition Avenir Québec are discussed in light of policy transfer from France to Quebec regarding secularism and the public display of religious symbols, as well as Quebec’s unique context within the Canadian federation. Finally, it turns to recent political and policy developments in Quebec, including the passing of the new Act, as they relate to the changing relationship among nationalism, secularism, and diversity.

Local Tales of Sufism in Quebec: Secular Politics of Moderation and the Production of Charismatic Muslims

Through exploring the representations and political participation of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi order of Montreal, this article analyses the relationship between Sufism, secularity, and political authority in Quebec in ongoing debates around religious “moderation” and State neutrality laws post-9/11. I offer an in-depth but necessarily bounded ethnographic account of this Sufi group in an attempt to expose a process of localisation and instrumentalisation of a particular Muslim identity in Quebec reflecting local pressures of religious reformation. I will argue that the charisma attached to the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi order, as articulated by politicians as well as non-Muslim Montrealers, is one that has emerged most particularly in the past 15 years and is embodied in the current local leader of the community, Shaykh Omar Koné. Yet, this charisma operates within centuries-old Orientalist discourses about Sufism and Islam, and most notably is validated in Quebec through recent secular politics of “moderation” and State neutrality bills as heritage of the 1960 Quiet Revolution. Writing as a French-Canadian, in this article, I will offer an insight into the construction of a Sufi consciousness in Quebec, a tale that I trace through multiple accounts, though primarily through my interactions at the Montreal Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi Centre and with their imam, Shaykh Omar Koné from 2014 to 2017.

A quiet revolution? Village head elections and the democratization of rural Indonesia

ABSTRACT While democratization is regularly associated with elite renewal, established elites often succeed in maintaining their dominance after the fall of the authoritarian regime that fostered them. This constitutes a relatively understudied challenge facing democratization processes: when and how do democratic reforms succeed in fostering the emergence of new elites? This paper addresses this question through a study of village head elections in three rural districts around Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Comparing older studies of village head elections with ten in-depth studies of recent village head elections as well as assessments of the backgrounds of eighty village heads (kepala desa), this paper shows that a remarkable change has taken place. Whereas up to ten years ago many villages were still ruled by leaders from established families with a quasi-hereditary grip on power, in recent years such leaders are rapidly being replaced by village heads with more modest family backgrounds and a different style of leadership. This important change has resulted from a combination of democratic reforms, the diversification of rural economies, and the particularly competitive character of village head elections. Elite renewal is possible when open and information-dense elections coincide with a process of economic diversification undercutting the economic dominance of established elites.

The 'Quiet Revolution' and the Cesarean Section in the United States

This paper estimates how changes in family structure and women’s labor market attachment during the last fifty years have affected the incidence of cesarean delivery in the United States. Both sets of factors are strongly related to cesarean utilization, and have generally changed so as to increase the rate of cesarean delivery over time. Altogether, changes in these factors, complemented by demographic changes, raised the U.S. cesarean section rate by 8-12 percentage points since 1978, one-half to two-thirds of the increase over that period. Today’s elevated cesarean section rate is, to a substantial degree, a social phenomenon.

Comprendre la condition handicapée: Réalité et dépassement by Henri-Jacques Stiker

Reviewed by: Comprendre la condition handicapée: Réalité et dépassement by Henri-Jacques Stiker Sally M. Kessler Henri-Jacques Stiker. Comprendre la condition handicapée: Réalité et dépassement. Toulouse: Érès, 2021. Pp. 128. 16 €. Expanding on his La condition handicapée (2017), as well as numerous other publications, Henri-Jacques Stiker clarifies disability as a condition in existentialist terms and locates its significance in current social justice concerns. Drawing extensively on personal narratives and methodologies from philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, sociology, and anthropology, Stiker meticulously defines and evaluates the stakes of this conversation. Stiker qualifies the disabled condition as a stigmatized experience that is the Other to 'normal' embodiment but shared among diverse groups of individuals. In Chapter One, Stiker relies on Pap Ndiaye's studies of black identities to define disability as a prescribed identity that may become self-appropriated. The firsthand narratives he employs in Chapters Two and Three describe the importance of the disabling event that fractures disabled lived experience. In Chapter 4, he concludes that this simultaneous remembered past, current struggle, and imagined future is experienced as a haunted life, a palimpsest. In Chapter 5, Stiker recounts the history of the gradually expanding legal definitions of "handicapé," a term with which he and his sources struggle. He considers various terms for "disabled," landing ultimately on the Québécois term, "personnes avec des incapacités," which implies other capacities. In Chapter 6, he affirms that a cultural shift needs to be made to focus on individuals' capabilities. Despite its current stigmatized status, Stiker notes that people living with la condition handicapée overwhelmingly reject pity, categorization, commodification or a socially prescribed identity. In Chapter 7, he instead explores the value of knowledge production based on the narratives of disabled people or their loved ones. As a methodology, critical disability studies can be a useful lens for any scholar, disabled or not, with an inclusive "attitude d'esprit" (78). Nonetheless, the disabled condition is marginalized, requiring a movement towards social inclusion that Stiker asks in Chapter 8 his readers to begin immediately. He argues that it is a grave injustice that disabled people are effectively denied full citizenship and participation in society. All members of society must be recognized as unique and equal, with identities that cannot be broken down into bodies, minds or other fragmented pieces. What Stiker is calling for is thus nothing less than a paradigm shift, philosophically and socially, in mainstream conceptions of humanity and justice. His call for this "Quiet Revolution" seems especially significant in the context of COVID-19, due to the virus's heightened threat to some disabled individuals and many individuals' deepened understanding of isolation and lack of economic productivity. At stake is not only the integration of marginalized members of society but the recognition of everyone's individual humanity, outside of their seeming productive value. Stiker's short work approaches the borderline between activism and scholarship. Given the evident urgency of addressing social injustice, his work will interest scholars interested in questions of identity, social justice, and the interdisciplinarity of critical disability studies. Sally M. Kessler University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Copyright © 2021 L'Esprit Créateur

Why is Trust Lower in Quebec? A Cultural Explanation

In this article, we provide a cultural explanation of a long-standing trust puzzle in Canada—Quebecers trust much less than their fellow Canadians. Specifically, we develop a novel approach to empirically assess the historical influence of the Catholic Church, using the Quiet Revolution (a period of abrupt modernization in Quebec) as a natural experiment. We find that older cohorts socialized prior to the Quiet Revolution are significantly less trusting—a distinctive trend that is most pronounced among Catholics. Conversely, in the rest of Canada older cohorts are more trusting, following the trend commonly found in other countries. Furthermore, measures of both religious beliefs and modernization account for a large part of the birth cohort trust gap in Quebec. The findings suggest that low trust in Quebec is rooted in the province’s Catholic cultural heritage, but that the legacy of the Quiet Revolution is gradually changing the trust culture.

“Tak vy zhivaya istoriya?”: sovetskiy chelovek na fone tikhoy arkhivnoy revolyutsii pozdnego sotsializma

The article focuses on the changes that occurred in archiving practices after Stalin. Based on the analysis of publications in professional journals for archivists and in popular press — as well as the personal archival collection of Perm activist and local historian Valentina Sokolova — we argue that, as a result of the democratic and humanistic turn in Soviet society after Stalin’s death, late socialism saw a shift in the understanding of who is worthy of having their documents preserved in an archive. Whereas previously only “remarkable” individuals had the right for a private archival collection, now some members of the archivist community began a campaign to collect documents of “ordinary” citizens. The archivists found allies not only among specialists but also among elderly members of the Soviet intelligentsia — participants in the building of socialism, who had no prior connection to historical studies. This shift that we call the “quiet archival revolution” became an integral part of the late Soviet commemorative turn. With the help of the archivists — enthusiasts of the “quiet archival revolution,” elderly activist came to realize their own historical significance and the value of their documents, some of which later made it to the state archival depositories.

A quiet revolution: how pharmacist prescribers are reshaping parts of the NHS

Pharmacists have had the opportunity to become independent prescribers for 15 years, but it is only in the past few years that their contribution to the health service has taken off. When it was announced in 2006, this extension of prescribing powers was hailed by Keith Ridge, chief pharmaceutical officer for England, as “the dawn […]

Judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada of February 28, 2020, on Nevsun v. Araya: a “quiet revolution” in the assessment of the status of corporations under public international law?

The article analyses the Judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada on the Nevsun v. Araya case, which deals with the severe violations of human rights, including slavery and forced labor with respect of the workers of Eritrean mines owned by a Canadian company “Nevsun”. By a 5 to 4 majority, the court concluded that litigants can seek compensation for the violations of international customs committed by a company. This decision is underpinned by the tenets that international customs form a part of Canadian common law, companies can bear responsibility for violations of International Human Rights Law, and under ubi jus ibi remedium principle plaintiffs have a right to receive compensation under national law. Being a commentary to this judgment the article focuses its analysis on an issue that is of a key character for Public International Law, namely on the tenet that international customs impose obligations to respect human rights on companies and they can be called for responsibility for these violations. This conclusion is revolutionary in the part in which it shifts the perception of the companies’ legal status under International Law. The court’s approach is critically assessed against its well-groundness and correspondence to the current stage of International law. In particular, the authors discuss, whether the legal stance on the Supreme Court of Canada, under which companies can bear responsibility for violations of International Human Rights Law is a justified necessity or a head start.

Structure of Slovak Families and Womans Attitudes towards Its Impact on Their Employment

Research background: The disadvantaged position of women in the labor market is a well-known fact. However, there are also differences between women themselves, which put certain groups in an even more disadvantaged position compared to others. Women entered the paid workforce after centuries of “quiet revolution” (McManus and Johnson, 2020) and still they remain more likely to be in insecure employment, work varying hours or short hours, and dominate in particular sectors (Wilson, 2019). Purpose of the article: Our study aimed at the analysis of the link between structure of family (household) Slovak woman live in and their attitudes towards its impact on their employment. Methods: The Chi-square statistic as a non-parametric test to analyze group differences was used on the attained questionnaire and a Cramer’s V as the most common strength test was used to test the association between the data after the significant Chi-square results has been obtained. Findings & Value added: Recently, the interest of researchers worldwide is aimed at the disadvantaged position of woman on the labor market compared to man. They focus mainly on the wage gap and other inequalities, since most of these studies has quantitative character with the focus of post hoc status description. Our article aimed at the similar topic but is based on the attitudes of the women themselves and their expectations in relation to this issue. We are therefore trying to quantify qualitatively based research, which is unique both in Slovakia and abroad.

Ending Deference?: Why Some State Supreme Courts have Chosen to Reject Deference and Others Have Not

In my article The End of Deference: How States (and Territories and Tribes) Are Leading a (Sometimes Quiet) Revolution Against Administrative Deference Doctrines, I conducted a survey or all 50 states to look at how state deference doctrines had developed over the past several years. I found a striking trend away from deference and towards either a wholesale or partial rejection of deference. At the end of that survey, I outlined several additional areas for research and exploration on the topic of state deference. In particular, I suggested the need for additional research into how the justifications for deference at the state and federal level differ and whether this difference in rationale has an impact on why deference is either embraced or rejected. In this article, I catalog and highlight arguments against deference at both the federal and state level. Because there is a lack of scholarly focus on state deference, I also briefly catalog and highlight some arguments made in favor of deference. Ultimately, there are a few unique arguments that are made at the state level, in particular a focus on the unique separation of powers demands of various state constitutions. But overall, what is most striking is how closely the arguments at the state level parallel and expand on those made on the federal level. The arguments in favor of deference are similar arguments that would not be out of place in federal opinions. There is accordingly still a whole range of arguments both for and against deference at the state level that have not yet been carefully examined by the judiciary.

Chronicles and the Politics of Davidic Restoration: A Quiet Revolution, written by David Janzen

Chronicles and the Politics of Davidic Restoration: A Quiet Revolution, written by David Janzen

LANGUAGE SITUATION AND LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE CANADIAN PROVINCE OF QUEBEC

The article analyzes the language situation and language policy in the Canadian province of Quebec. The Federal and provincial laws on the language adopted in the second half of the XX century are analyzed and the situation in which the French language was in the province of Quebec is indicated. The sixties of the last century in Quebec is called the "quiet revolution", it was a period of profound social and political changes. The quiet revolution was peaceful, evolutionary, but it involved the entire population of the province. The "revolution" was accompanied by a change in the ethnic imbalance in the society, in which the both political and economic powers were in the hands of the English-speaking minority. Another important aspect was the modernization and secularization of the Franco-Canadian community and the rise of its standard of living up to the average level of Anglo-Canadians one. French-speaking Canadians who were at a lower stage of economic development, was on the edge of loosing their native language, which caused a strong rise of the nationalist movement in Quebec, which was directed by provincial authorities to rescue the Quebec version of the French language and improving socio-economic situation of the French speaking community.

A Quiet Revolution in State Lobbying: Government Growth and Interest Populations

What explains contemporary numbers of interest groups in America? To answer this question and help address conflicting narratives in research, I examine the rise of interest groups in the states. Assembling an original dataset based on archival and secondary sources, I find that relatively few groups lobbied legislators prior to the 1960s or 1970s. During those decades, numbers of interest groups began to grow rapidly. I find that increases in lawmaking activities present inconsistent effects on the political mobilization of groups but increases in spending are strongly correlated with mobilization. In additional tests, I find that the effects of spending on group numbers vary by state and are not discernible in most states. In general, a historic transformation of state governments helps to account for the growth of state lobbying. Interest groups have remained active in state capitols ever since.

Integrating Palliative Care by Virtue of Diplomacy; A Cross-sectional Group Interview Study of the Roles and Attitudes of Palliative Care Professionals to Further Integrate Palliative Care in Europe.

Background: Palliative care involves the care for patients with severe and advanced diseases with a focus on quality of life and symptom management. Integration of palliative care with curative and/or chronic care is expected to lead to better results in terms of quality of life and reduced costs. Although initiatives in different countries in Europe choose different structures to integrate care, they face similar challenges when it comes to creating trust and aligning visions, cultures and professional values. This paper sets out to answer the following research question: what roles and attitudes do palliative care professionals need to adopt to further integrate palliative care in Europe? Methods: As part of the European Union (EU)-funded research project InSup-C (Integrated Supportive and Palliative Care). (2012-2016), 19 semi-structured group interviews with 136 (palliative) care professionals in 5 European countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary) were conducted. A thematic analysis was conducted. Results: Integration of palliative care calls for diplomatic professionals that can bring a cultural shift: to get palliative care, with its particular focus on the four dimensions (physical, psychological, social, spiritual), integrated into historically established medical procedures and guidelines. This requires (a) to find an entrance (for telling a normative story), and (b) to maintain and deepen relationships (in order to build trust). It means using the appropriate words and sending a univocal team message to patients and being grateful, modest, and aiming for a quiet revolution with curation oriented healthcare professionals. Conclusion: Diplomacy appears to be essential to palliative care providers for realizing trust and what can be defined as normative integration between palliative and curative and/or chronic medicine. It requires a practical wisdom about the culture and goals of regular care, as well as keeping a middle road between assimilating with values in regular medicine and standing up for the basic values central to palliative care.

A Quiet Revolution: Central Banks, Financial Regulators, and Climate Finance

If the free market cannot deliver a low carbon financial revolution, what sort of interventions in financial markets might be necessary to do so? Using interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and applying regulatory theory, this article argues for (i) cross cutting mechanisms designed to curb short-termism, to leverage the social license of financial institutions and to expand corporate conceptions of fiduciary duty to embrace climate change; and (ii) approaches tailored to the characteristics of each individual industry sector. Institutional investors and banks are used as case studies to highlight the importance of third-party benchmarking, expanding rights to litigate, requiring pension funds to address climate risks when making investment decisions, and disincentivizing high carbon investments by bank clients. Finally, it shows that a multi-instrumental approach can create a web of regulation that is more resilient and effective than its individual constituents. Its principal contribution is to show how Central Banks and Financial Regulators (CBFRs) might best fast-track a low-carbon financial transition.

Automated decision support technologies and the legal profession

A quiet revolution is afoot in the field of law. Technical systems employing algorithms are shaping and displacing professional decision making, and they are disrupting and restructuring relationships between law firms, lawyers, and clients. Decision-support systems marketed to legal professionals to support e-discovery — generally referred to as “technology-assisted review” (TAR) — increasingly rely on “predictive coding,” machine-learning techniques to classify and predict which of the voluminous electronic documents subject to litigation should be withheld or produced to the opposing side. These systems and the companies offering them are reshaping relationships between lawyers and clients, introducing new kinds of professionals into legal practice, altering the discovery process, and shaping how lawyers construct knowledge about their cases and professional obligations. In the midst of these shifting relationships — and the ways in which these systems are shaping the construction and presentation of knowledge — lawyers are grappling with their professional obligations, ethical duties, and what it means for the future of legal practice. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews of experts in this space — the technology company representatives who develop and sell such systems to law firms and the legal professionals who decide whether and how to use them in practice — we shed light on the organizational structures, professional rules and norms, and technical system properties that are shaping and being reshaped by predictive coding systems. Our findings show that AI-supported decision systems such as these are reconfiguring professional work practices. In particular, they highlight concerns about potential loss of professional agency and skill, limited understanding and thereby both over- and under-reliance on decision-support systems, and confusion about responsibility and accountability as new kinds of technical professionals and technologies are brought into legal practice. The introduction of predictive coding systems and the new professional and organizational arrangements they are ushering into legal practice compound general concerns over the opacity of technical systems with specific concerns about encroachments on the construction of expert knowledge, liability frameworks, and the potential (mis-)alignment of machine reasoning with professional logics and ethics. Based on our findings, we conclude that predictive coding tools — and likely other algorithmic systems lawyers use to construct knowledge and reason about legal practice — challenge the current model for evaluating whether and how tools are appropriate for legal practice. As tools become both more complex, and more consequential, it is unreasonable to rely solely on legal professionals — judges, law firms, and lawyers — to determine which technologies are appropriate for use. The legal professionals we interviewed report relying on the evaluation and judgement of a range of new technical experts within law firms and, increasingly, third-party vendors and their technical experts. This system for choosing technical systems upon which lawyers rely to make professional decisions — e.g., whether documents are responsive, whether the standard of proportionality has been met — is no longer sufficient. As the tools of medicine are reviewed by appropriate experts before they are put out for consideration and adoption by medical professionals, we argue that the legal profession must develop new processes for determining which algorithmic tools are fit to support lawyers’ decision making. Relatedly, because predictive coding systems are used to produce lawyers’ professional judgment, we argue they must be designed for contestability — providing greater transparency, interaction, and configurability around embedded choices to ensure decisions about how to embed core professional judgments, such as relevance and proportionality remain salient and demand engagement from lawyers, not just their technical experts.

Emerging Medium-Scale Tenant Farming, Gig Economies, and the COVID-19 Disruption: The Case of Commercial Vegetable Clusters in Ethiopia.

Driven by the fast spread of private irrigation pumps, there has been a rapid expansion of intensive vegetable cultivation in the central Rift Valley in Ethiopia, making it the most important commercial vegetable production cluster in the country. Supporting that “quiet revolution” has been an inflow of migrant laborers—paid through daily, monthly, or piecemeal contracts, with few employment benefits attached to them—and a gig economy as widely used contractors organize, among others, mechanized land preparation, the digging of wells and ponds, seedling propagation, and loading of trucks. Almost 60% of the irrigated area is cultivated by medium-scale tenant farmers relying on short-term rental contracts. It seems that gig economies characterized by flexible contract arrangements implemented by outside contractors, which are increasingly fueling sophisticated sectors in developed countries, are important in these commercial agrarian settings in Africa as well. We further find that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant disruptions of this model, as seen by more limited access to services and the unavailability or high price increases in factor markets, especially for labor, and large but heterogenous price changes in output markets.