Recent Criticism Research Articles

Asymmetric impact of microfinance on economic growth: Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina

This study explores the correlation between microfinance loans (MFL) and economic growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia). It utilizes the non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) method to examine cointegration and short-run dynamics by analyzing quarterly data spanning from 2010 to 2022. The findings underscore the link between MFL shocks and long-term economic growth. The study unveils the unique effects of both positive and negative MFL shocks on growth, suggesting a non-linear relationship between microfinance loans and economic growth in Bosnia. However, the study concludes that the impact of MFL on Bosnia's GDP is adverse. Short-term fluctuations in MFL show no substantial influence on Bosnian economic growth. The coefficient of the error correction model is both negative and significant indicating the stability of the long-term relationship. This implies a rapid correction, with 46.4 % of the previous quarter's imbalance rectified within the current quarter. While our results are based on a single country, they align with recent criticisms of microfinance practices. Furthermore, our study offers a novel approach as it represents the first examination of the asymmetric relationship between MFL and GDP in Bosnia, providing valuable policy recommendations.

Sustainability and Net Zero climate agreements – a transatlantic antitrust perspective

The climate crisis requires a transition to a Net Zero economy. Such a transition is possible only through concerted public and private action. While a number of financial institutions and insurance companies had agreed to align their activities with Net Zero targets, reconsidering support for new coal and fossil fuel projects, these initiatives have come under attack from political groups in the US, who have labelled such agreements ‘collective boycotts’. Such accusations feed a collective action problem, and thus hinder private sector cooperation. This article discusses the background to Net Zero Agreements, and the recent antitrust criticisms, under US, EU and UK antitrust law and precedent. Net Zero Agreements can alleviate market failures, resolve collective action problems, and improve consumer welfare by lowering the potentially huge costs to consumers of an unmitigated climate crisis. Under a rule of reason, antitrust authorities and courts in the US, EU, and UK can and should give room for private sector cooperation between companies pursuing an effective transition to a clean economy, where these agreements correct market failures and resolve collective action problems.

Population Age Structure and the Vulnerability of States to Coups d’État

Abstract This essay responds to recent critiques of the U.S. State Department’s inconsistent application of congressionally mandated foreign-aid restrictions following several successful coups d’état in countries receiving USAID foreign assistance. This demographic analysis, which conforms to an age-structural modeling and forecasting protocol that was originally developed for U.S. strategic intelligence efforts, finds: (1.) a disproportionately high level of coup vulnerability (the probability of experiencing a successful coup) among youthful countries (median age equal to or less than 25.5 years), particularly among states in the early-youthful segment of this phase (median age equal to or less than 20.5 years); and (2.) a dramatic one-time decline in coup vulnerability among all phases of the age-structural transition following the end of the Cold War. This essay’s two-decade forecast of an expected gradual decline in coups is consistent with the slow and halting pace of age-structural change that is currently projected by the 2022 revision of the UN Population Division’s medium scenario for countries along the equatorial midriff of Africa, and in parts of the Middle East and southcentral Asia. These findings support an alternative criticism – not of the U.S. State Department’s reluctance to restrict foreign assistance to coup perpetrators, but of currently mandated restrictions that neglect to exempt USAID programs known to advance the age-structural transition (i.e. those that extend girls’ educational attainment, improve access to family planning and other reproductive health services, or expand women’s autonomy and rights).

Extractive Labor: A Lethal Legacy of Racialized Colonial Rule

How and why does colonial domination kill off the very labor it depends on? While settler colonial studies provide one of the only theorizations of the systemic elimination of populations, they see it as antithetical to labor exploitation, and thus cannot answer this question. I therefore build on recent critiques of settler colonial studies to develop the concept of racialized extractive labor regimes: race marking labor as disposable, as realizing value through expending workers’ lives. I then articulate these dynamics through a comparison of the highly divergent cases of early colonialism in Peru and what is now the United States, first across initial settlement and then as they shifted to racialization decades later. While settler colonial studies emphasize land acquisition as colonialism’s defining feature, my comparison reveals that elites’ drive for indelible inequality actually shapes colonial projects. And in order to maintain their vaunted positions, elites ultimately construct racialized extractive labor regimes that predicate their domination on the regularized elimination of racialized Others. This analysis therein provides new insights into the elitist nature of colonialism and the logics of elimination and racialization through which it runs.

UK Net Zero policy design and deep uncertainty – The need for an alternative approach

The majority of global emissions scenarios compatible with holding global warming to less than 2 °C depend on the large-scale use of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) technologies. Recent critiques have highlighted the concerns of building long-term climate policy on such speculative technological scenarios emerging from orthodox modelling approaches – including integrated assessment modelling prominently assessed by the IPCC. Through a stakeholder consultation process with the UK modelling and policy community, we critically examine the integration of GGR technologies into UK Net Zero scenarios and the decision-making philosophy underlying the use of orthodox modelling to inform UK climate policy. We identify a number of features of orthodox modelling approaches which are unable to manage the pervasive extent of deep uncertainty in possible UK climate and energy futures. We further argue that a more fundamental issue lies in the way that the models are used by UK climate policy makers: that the handling of uncertainties which pervade the integration of GGR into Net Zero policy are resulting in substantial distortions in net-zero policy design and associated decision-making. Drawing on the principles of decision-making under deep uncertainty techniques, exemplified by Robust Decision Making, we recommend an alternative approach that explicitly embraces uncertainty, multiple values and diversity among stakeholders and viewpoints, and in which modelling exists in an iterative exchange with policy development rather than separate from it. We advocate that such an approach would provide more relevant and robust information to near-term policymaking and enable an inclusive societal dialogue about the appropriate role of GGR within UK climate policy.

Emilia Pardo Bazán, folletinista and ‘noveladora moral’: La dama joven and Mujer

This article seeks to understand how Emilia Pardo Bazán engaged with and utilized two iterations of creative writing - the folletín and the didactic novel - repudiated by her male peers in Spain's Restoration literary scene. It does so by engaging closely with La dama joven through publication history and close reading of the novella itself. It does likewise with the later novella, Mujer, while situating the discussion with a broad field of recent criticism on both the period and Pardo Bazán herself.

Knowing and the Known: A Philosophical and Pedagogical Critique on the Concept of ‘Powerful Knowledge’

It is remarkable how the popularity of the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has increased during the last decade in academic circles and among politicians, too. This is especially the case when the issue of the place and function of knowledge in the curriculum is addressed. A strong impetus for the increased attention paid to this concept of knowledge came from the writings of Michael Young and Johan Muller. Based on his own critical-hermeneutical-pragmatist-and-(neo-)Vygotskian-inspired philosophy of education and philosophy of science as his ‘Vorverständnis’ (Gadamer), but also based on the recent criticism articulated by the philosophers of education John White and Ingrid Carlgren and educational theorist Gert Biesta, the author shows the philosophical, pedagogical and didactical inadequacy of this concept. The author is criticizing the philosophical and pedagogical presuppositions of Young and Muller’s stance in propagating their core concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ as it is grounded in a social realist view and the way this concept has been used in educational studies by others. It is the author’s conviction that the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ and the underlying social realist paradigm are incompatible and even incommensurable (in a Kuhnian sense of the terms) with sociocultural and pragmatist paradigms. It is, in his view, theoretically and conceptually confusing when authors who work along the lines of these paradigms are trying to complement these with the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ along the lines of social realism as outlined by Young and Muller. Let us stick to knowing and the known as a theoretical conceptualization of ‘knowledge’.

A Journey without Maps

Abstract The challenge of finding a Protestant public theology appropriate for a pluralist, newly independent, Muslim majority nation was taken up initially by a mixed group of lay and ordained theologians, among them T. B. Simatupang, a recently retired lieutenant-general, still in his late thirties. This study links Simatupang’s experience as a soldier-diplomat and strategic planner in Indonesia’s struggle for independence to the objectives and values he promoted and endeavoured to safeguard in his second career as an ecumenical strategist and mentor. Some attention is given to more recent criticism and the argument that a less confrontational Christian stance toward politically active Islam is called for in today’s era of interfaith conversations.

The Political Limits and Possibilities of the Eucharist: A Theatrical Intervention

In this article I build on recent critiques of theological accounts of the eucharistic which overextend the practice's potential to form a Christian ethic and alternative polis. In analysing these critiques, often drawing on historical and contemporary cases of Christian malformation and its basis in liturgical practice, I suggest a greater distinction is needed between the practice's ability to raise political consciousness and the necessity of separate material political action. I approach this reconfiguration through appeal to debates on the political efficacy and responsibility of art, focusing in particular on contemporary German theatre director, Thomas Ostermeier and his influential production of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Ostermeier distinguishes theatrical performance from material politics, while still demonstrating how theatre might enact a repoliticisation, provoking audiences to think beyond the story on stage to the world beyond where they live and try to act. Connecting the theological critiques with Ostermeier's work, I offer three areas in which a reconfiguration of the relationship between the Eucharist and Christian ethics might focus: depristinising in practice, disrupting catharsis, and being sent. These theatrical interventions allow for clearer recognition of the practice's ethical and political limits and potential.

Recalibrating Data on Farm Productivity: Why We Need Small Farms for Food Security

In 2009, the ETC Group estimated that some 70% of the food that people globally consume originates in the ‘peasant food web’. This figure has been both embraced and critiqued, and more recent critiques have focussed on analysing farm productivity to offer some more precise estimates. Several analyses suggest that the proportion of small farms’ contributions to total food production is closer to one-third, arguing that the role of small food producers in food security are grossly exaggerated. We challenge this argument by re-tabulating the available farm productivity data to demonstrate that smaller farms continue to provide a significant proportion of food and are consistently more productive than their larger counterparts. We further posit that even our own interpretation falls short of estimating the full extent of small farms’ contributions, including non-monetary ones, like ecosystem services and community life, many of which run counter to the productivist model that drives large-scale industrial agriculture. We conclude that policies that support small farms are a global necessity for food security, as well as for transitions to more sustainable and more equitable food systems.

Are Turkish doctors in deep water? The role of professional ethics and factors affecting the medical brain drain: A qualitative study from Turkey.

With the increased rate of the Turkish medical brain drain (MDB) in recent years, there is a need for more comprehensive studies to elucidate its vague migratory factors. The aim of this paper is to try to narrow that gap by analyzing present impacts of the MDB in Turkey and to evaluate if these aspects were driven by professional ethical values, and if so, what ethical principles they were based on. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 doctors from various backgrounds, followed by a thematic analysis. The MDB in Turkey demonstrated a multifactorial structure, with prominent push factors that are intertwined at macro-meso-micro levels. The effort to maintain the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, and protecting professional autonomy were the most important in the context of professional ethics. Only deep-rooted regulations might ensure the prevention of the MDB in Turkey and the prospect of doctors returning in the future. Conclusively, the recent criticisms the MDB has been garnering may inspire improvements in deteriorating human and health rights in Turkey.

Community Health Center 340B Program: A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of Patients with Diabetes.

Background: The 340B Drug Pricing Program provides discounted drug prices to safety-net entities which help stretch scarce resources to expand comprehensive services and treat more vulnerable patients. The program has received criticism questioning whether the original intentions are being accomplished. Objective: This qualitative study aimed to understand lived experiences of patients accessing high-cost injectable diabetes medication(s) through a 340B Prescription Cash Discount Program (PCDP) provided at a community health center. Methods: This qualitative study utilized semi-structured individual interviews. We invited patients ≥18 years old with diabetes for >1year who utilized the 340B PCDP to fill an injectable diabetes medication at least twice between 3/1/2020-3/1/2021 to participate. Trained personnel interviewed ten participants in 11/2021-2/2022 and completed thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews. Results: Themes included 340B feedback, benefits of 340B, consequences of being without 340B, community pharmacy experience, and use of other services. Participants deemed the 340B program as a "lifesaver." Perceived benefits of the program included improved diabetes control and savings that made their prescriptions more affordable. Consequences of being without the program include that medication was too expensive to take as prescribed and rationing/skipping doses. Participants were pleased with the accessibility of the network of contract pharmacies and described benefiting from services supported by 340B savings. Conclusions: Recent criticisms question whether the 340B program accomplishes its original intentions of stretching scarce federal resources to help safety-net entities expand services and treat more patients. This study provides insight into the personal impact of the 340B program on underserved patients with chronic disease accessing high-cost medication(s). Findings highlight crucial strengths of the program from the patient perspective, which policymakers and other stakeholders should consider to provide support for the continuation of these services.

Idealizing Abolition

The United States system of policing is in drastic need of change. Some recent critics have encouraged that we avoid trying to repair the system—and abolish it altogether. In advancing this position, they often invoke ideas of “dreams,” “speculative imagination,” and “horizons” to guide efforts at fixing the problems of policing. In this essay, I caution against the overuse of this sort of idealized discourse in debates about policing. Specifically, I show how idealizations risk being counterproductive with respect to abolitionists’ activist goals, in that they suggest that if abolition is desirable, approximating abolition is also desirable; fail to clarify what the conditions of application of their view are; and operate without the feasibility-sensitivity that one should expect from a non-evaluative position. My goal is not to suggest that our system of policing is fine as is. Nor is it to diminish the importance of having a long-term revolutionary vision. By pointing out the ways in which the idealizations invoked are inconsistent with abolitionists’ activist agenda, I hope to help clarify the merits of police abolition as a guiding strategy for change and caution against the use of certain forms of idealized thinking in our efforts at police reform.

Parodying The Prelude: The Autobiography of John Cowper Powys

This essay reads the 1934 prose Autobiography of the twentieth-century British novelist John Cowper Powys as a parody of Wordsworth’s Prelude. It argues that Powys revises Wordsworth’s trajectory of emotional growth, loss and recovery in ways that sometimes endorse and more often satirise the poet’s youthful love of nature and his adult transcendental imaginings. In doing so, Powys anticipates the revisionary readings of recent critics who have interpreted Wordsworth’s ‘language of the sense’ in materialist terms. Powys represents Wordsworth as a poet of physical – and sexual – sensation, registering The Prelude’s openness to physiology-focused interpretation. Powys self-mockingly rewrites the story of the growth of Wordsworth’s mind, debunking The Prelude’s climactic encounters with transcendence. Ultimately however, for Powys as for Wordsworth, nature leads him beyond nature. Powys’s Autobiography thus helps to suggest the limits of approaches focused on what Powys calls ‘the physical quality of Wordsworth’s flesh and blood’.

물질문화와 맥베스의 스툴

The study of material culture has influenced a wide range of humanities disciplines, and has been the subject of inquiry by archaeologists and social anthropologists, while the study of objects has also been the focus of critical attention in history and literature. Many of these methods have been developed in relation to contemporary materiality, and work on objects from the past has also been shaped by this. In early modern England, objects were seen as marvels that were useful, thought-provoking, wondrous, entertaining, and generated meaning in their own modest ways. Even relatively inexpensive and simply made objects had ingenuity and a clear understanding of how objects performed emotions, so they were not just ideas about things, but meaningful ways of communicating in everyday life. Much of the work on early modern materiality has been done through Shakespeare’s plays, and this article therefore aims to outline the different ways in which recent criticism has related Shakespeare’s plays to early modern material culture, to explore how objects are mediated between the theatrical text and the wider culture through Shakespeare’s plays, and to suggest and explore future scholarly directions in this area through the study of material culture and the construction of identity, production and consumption as part of the early modern period. It argues that greater scholarly attention to forms of material culture, namely early modern objects and the processes associated with them, may offer fruitful new avenues for understanding the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays work with audiences.

Authentic Leadership’s Impact on Follower Psychological Capital and Performance Through Organizational Identification and Role Clarity

ABSTRACT Scholars have criticized positive leadership styles, such as authentic leadership, as being limited to influencing follower performance through relations-oriented behaviors without necessarily providing more task-oriented direction. Applying this behavioral leadership theory dichotomy, we extend authentic leadership theory and research by proposing and testing how authentic leadership influences followers’ psychological capital (PsyCap) and subsequent performance through both relations- (organizational identification) and task-oriented (role clarity) pathways. The results of a three-wave field study, multiple experiments, and a time-lagged, multi-source field study support that authentic leadership influences follower psychological resources and performance through both organizational identification and role clarity. Moreover, our results hold when controlling for other leadership constructs (ethical and transformational leadership) and other potential mediators that have been the focus of prior authentic leadership research (leader trustworthiness, leader identification, and LMX). We discuss the implications of our findings for expanding work on authentic leadership by examining a more task-oriented focus in future research, including how this research sheds light on several recent critiques of authentic leadership theory.

Doing racialized masculinities in Finnish schools: subjectivation and de/humanization

This paper focuses on Judith Butler’s theorisation of the performative subject and contemporary critiques to consider its relevance to the doing of racialized masculinities in Finnish schools. Recent postcolonial critique has indicated that, early work on performativity and subjectivation implicitly assumes a white and western, enlightenment subject and does not take the aftermath of slavery into account. While Butler’s work since then theorises inequalities including racism, it leaves untheorized the de/subjectivation of Black people and those from other minoritised ethnic groups as well as how racialisation and abjection is a systematic part of the subjectivation of white people. This paper draws on a study of the narratives of Finnish 12–15-year-olds in order to shed light on processes of subjectivation they do while doing racialized masculinities. The findings point to the need to extend Butler’s theory of subjectivation to take power-knowledge-affect-relations and de/humanization on board in ways that account for Black as well as white people’s performative subjectivation.

THE DEMOCRATIC BOUNDARY PROBLEM RECONSIDERED

Who should have a right to take part in which decisions in democratic decision making? This “boundary problem” is a central issue for democracy and is of both practical and theoretical import. If nothing else, all different notions of democracy have one thing in common: a reference to a community of individuals, “a people”, who takes decision in a democratic fashion. However, that a decision is made with a democratic decision method by a certain group of people doesn’t suffice for making the decision democratic or satisfactory from a democratic perspective. The group also has to be the right one. But what makes a group the right one? The criteria by which to identify the members of the people entitled to participate in collective decisions have been surprisingly difficult to pin down. In this paper, I shall revisit some of the problems discussed in my 2005 paper in light of some recent criticism and discussion of my position in the literature, and address a number of new issues.

Mental health clinical exams’ evident adherence to industry standards for testing

The developers of clinical exams for US mental health licensure have faced significant recent criticism and calls for their exams to be paused or discontinued. Critics cite concerns over exams lacking evidence of validity, while they demonstrate strong evidence of racial and ethnic bias. Developers, in turn, argue that their exams are developed using accepted methods that conform with industry standards, specifically, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.3 This manuscript challenges that assertion. Based on external research as well as developers’ own statements and publications, clinical exams for US mental health care licensure appear to deviate in important ways from both the letter and the spirit of the Standards. Clinical exams should be paused unless and until they are shown to be fair, equitable, valid, and more fully consistent with industry norms.

Kanon und Klassiker der Frühen Neuzeit?

Abstract The aim of this article is to outline several aspects of a canon of early modern German literature as they had been discussed by a volume Klassiker der Frühen Neuzeit (ed. Regina Toepfer) in 2022. In the light of recent criticism of any conception of canon as an outcome of hegemonial thinking as well as considering the increasing disregard of early modern literature even in universities, it is foremost the Early Modern Literature Studies who are urged to discuss the question of whether there are sufficient reasons for upholding a literary canon at least to a certain degree and whether texts of the early modern period can or must be part of such a canon.