Space For Dialogue Research Articles

THE MIGRANT OUTLOOK IN COLONIZED AFRICA THROUGH THE NARRATIVE OF ABDULRAZAK GURNAH

As a representation of the currents of change in the world, the migrant inhabits a dialogic space created on the clash of cultures. They are in constant movement as they assemble their own narratives outside well-established national identities. The present study aims to analyse the construction of such character in Paradise (1994) and Afterlives (2020), published by Abdulrazak Gurnah, a writer recognised by his portrayal of the refugee and the migrants in-between the African and European continents. Both novels were set during the period of the German colonization of Africa (end of the 19th and beginning of 20th century) and depict the relationship between the German colonial troops (the schutztruppe) and their native recruits. The relations of power and the contradictory nature of the schutztruppe reflect on the search for belonging in which Yusuf and Hamza, main characters of above mentioned novels, find themselves.

Towards developing an atmospheric space for inter-religious dialogue in Africa

The practice of religions and spirituality is common in Africa. In many ways, religion may be considered as a routine of life, living and practising it either as inherited or borrowed. Religious pluralism is a reality in Africa, dating back to the 1st century up to the 19th century when Africa became a bedrock of traders and colonisers both from Europe and Asia. The paper explores plural religiosity with a view to developing a conducive atmosphere that may promote a suitable inter-religious dialogue in Africa. Largely, the most pronounced and practised religions are Christianity symbolised by the cross, Islam symbolised by the crescent, and African indigenous religion that does not have a common symbol nor sacred scriptures. We note that, for generations, religions have caused division among communities, but have in the recent years developed the quest to create good relations and dialogue with each other. Because of the diverse nature of insecurity in Africa, it is hoped that inter-religious dialogue may cause community cohesion, integration, inclusivity, and co-existence. In the wake of different types of inter-religious dialogue that are globally being researched, this paper suggests a specific inter-religious dialogue that Africans can exercise: ‘dialogue for life’.Contribution: Inter-religious dialogue for life is contextual in that, it touches upon the life situations of ordinary people in society. The author argues that, by embracing it religiously, inter-religious dialogue for life shall address crucial issues such as poverty, radicalisation, terrorism, climate change, bad governance, and human trafficking that adversely affect African society.

ASEAN and the Major Powers in the South China Sea: the Role of Law, Diplomacy, and Deterrence in Moderating Sovereignty Claims

Abstract This article focuses on the rising strategic significance of the South China Sea for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the major powers. It traces the origins of the South China Sea (SCS) dispute, and the claimants that are directly involved (China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei). It then examines why balance of power considerations have influenced and continue to influence the role of regional states as well as the major external powers (China, United States, India, and Japan, together with other interested middle powers such as Australia and Canada). It argues that the SCS is an international maritime regime (global commons), and therefore subject to the principles and practice of International Law, specifically United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Any attempt at nationalisation of the SCS will be rejected under international law, as evidenced by the 2016 decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), with respect to the submission in 2013 by the Philippines on its dispute with China, for compulsory arbitration by the The Hague Court. It notes the lack of unity in ASEAN over how to deal with China’s assertive conduct in the SCS. It suggests that only a dynamic balance of power approach, which includes external power engagement with regional interests, will create the necessary space for diplomacy and dialogue by upholding the primacy of the rule of law, freedom of the open seas, and the legitimate rights and interests of all claimant states. It concludes that law, politics, diplomacy, and deterrence are interactive variables requiring strategic management to promote shared interests, stability and security in the South China Sea.

The Making of Imperial Public Sphere on Portuguese Colonialism

This article explores the concept of the Imperial Public Sphere (IPS) in the Portuguese empire as a space for confrontation and negotiation within the framework of nineteenth and twentieth-century European colonial empires. In order to demonstrate the origin of political and ideological power, the emergence of IPS is characterized and its fundamental structures identified. The protagonists of IPS are revealed as the ‘imperial’ and ‘colonial’ elites. It concludes with the IPS hypothesis that the press and journalism are structures, institutions and mechanisms of political, social and cultural power that are essential for understanding colonial empires.

The Negative Investment List Policy in Indonesia: A Review of Free Trade and the Conservation of Endangered Fish Species

This study examines and analyzes the problems arising from the interaction between Indonesian investment measures and compliance with the international trade regime. This study uses a normative legal research method. The collected legal material is then qualitatively analyzed to describe the problem and answer the study objectives. The results show that Indonesia has successfully justified the alignment of its Negative Investment List policy regarding endangered fish species, listed in Appendix I of CITES juncto Article XX of the GATT 1994. On another note, the Dispute Settlement Body may issue rulings with differing considerations. Nonetheless, the WTO Agreement and CITES are provisions established to provide adequate negotiation space for all their members. Thus, CITES and WTO member states should refrain from raising disputes over Indonesia’s investment measures if it restricts their economic interests and market access within Indonesia. Therefore, it is recommended that the WTO and CITES members recognize and appreciate the Negative Investment List policy in maintaining a balance between investment development and the protection of endangered fish species. Furthermore, stakeholders are urged to delve deeper into the principles and objectives of the WTO and CITES Agreements. Additionally, the members of the relevant organizations must collaborate in a spirit of solidarity and environmental awareness, prioritizing dialogue, consultation, and negotiation over dispute legal action that could complicate the situation. In this context, multilateral dialogue can serve as an effective platform for mediating diverse interests and seeking sustainable solutions that benefit the economy and the conservation of endangered fish species.

Pelatihan Praktis Menggunakan Aplikasi Spreadsheet untuk Pembuatan dan Pengelolaan Nilai Raport

Training on optimizing number processing applications for creating and inputting report cards at Bina Madina Denpasar Vocational School is an initiative aimed at improving teachers' skills in effectively utilizing spreadsheet applications. This training began with socialization activities which included presenting the training objectives, opening a space for dialogue to evaluate participants' expectations, and conveying the training schedule and materials. The training process includes presentation sessions, demonstrations and practical exercises, focusing on optimizing the use of number processing applications to compile and manage report cards efficiently. Evaluation is carried out to measure participants' understanding, involving written exams, reflection sessions, and satisfaction questionnaires. Monitoring is carried out post-training to monitor the application of participants' skills in daily activities, with analysis of report card results, online monitoring sessions, and ongoing evaluation. This training aims to create a modern and efficient learning environment, ensure that teachers can provide report cards accurately and effectively, and stimulate innovation in managing grades in the educational environment.

Monchique’s Innovation Laboratory—A Space for Dialogue and Knowledge Sharing to Foster Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction

BRIDGE (bridging science and local communities for wildfire risk reduction) is an action–research project developing a community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR) process which is being fostered through a collaborative innovation laboratory (InnoLab). BRIDGE integrates different forms of knowledge and action, linking science and local communities to reduce their vulnerability and to enhance strategies for forest fire risk reduction. Applied in Monchique, a forest-fire-prone municipality in Portugal, the InnoLab creates a space for dialogue and knowledge sharing between multiple actors that, directly or indirectly, manage forest territories. BRIDGE attempts to facilitate social learning about forest fire risks, strengthen collaborative networks and enhance adaptive capacities (socially and institutionally) for forest fire prevention. This paper shares results of the InnoLab activities, which include (i) school community activities on wildfire risk perception; (ii) participatory mapping of Monchique’s vulnerabilities and risks; (iii) participatory sessions to create the community visioning for Monchique’s territory, to define priorities and capacities to be improved, and to identify functions and responsibilities to act upon; and (iv) workshop on CBDRR strategies for action. Lessons are shared on how InnoLab can represent an innovative participatory approach to promote CBDRR processes in forest-fire-prone territories by both contributing to the recognition of local knowledge systems and encouraging the active role of forest communities through strengthened local networks for a more lasting commitment to forest fire risk reduction policy.

Formative Performance Assessment in the Process of Developing Translation Sub-competences

This research paper pertains to the method of student performance evaluation applied to the process of online collaborative learning. The model of evaluation is intended for the developing translation sub-competences and involves the analysis of the team members’ discourse in the process of negotiating meanings, in compliance with Gery Stahl’s claim that discourse constitutes interpretation (2004: 22). The devised individual assessment form encompasses the study of performance of collaborating team members in two dialogic spaces, the content space and the relational space of collaboration (Janssen and Bodemer 2013). The assessment procedure comprises the analysis of the students’ individual achievements as well as their contribution to the team expert knowledge building. The main goal of this research paper is to highlight the regulatory function of the formative performance assessment method for team learning and to indicate the interdependences between the collaborative learning, formative performance assessment as well as the communicative approach to learning, the latter constituting the theoretical framework for this research.

School youth and sexuality: between paths and mishaps for sex education in the Brazilian school context

Purpose: This article aims to analyze whether and how Brazilian school youths have access to the topic of sexuality, seeking to identify the main approaches adopted and difficulties with regard to sex education. Research Methods/Approach: A qualitative approach was chosen, grounded in a bibliographic review with a descriptive-exploratory character. For data analysis, the content analysis technique was used, involving data coding and categorization process. The research results were presented in the form of a narrative synthesis. Findings: It was observed that school youths have different ways of accessing and discussing sexuality. In some studies, young people are presented as active subjects in the construction of their knowledge on the subject and the school is seen as an important space for dialogue and the exchange of information. Conversely, other studies indicate that youths often encounter challenges in openly and candidly addressing sexuality, whether due to lack of opportunities within schools or due to cultural and religious factors. Implications: The examined studies underline the necessity of adopting a comprehensive and integrated approach to sexual education, encompassing not only biological and physiological aspects but also cultural, social, and emotional dimensions. The importance of promoting sex education that respects gender diversity and sexual orientation is also highlighted. It was also possible to identify some factors that influence the approach to sexuality at school, such as teacher training and the cultural values ​​present in the society in which the school is inserted.

Creative pedagogies in digital STEAM practices: natural, technological and cultural entanglements for powerful learning and activism

This paper delves deeply into the creative pedagogies which support cutting edge digital STEAM practice across primary and secondary school settings. It contextualises the research within current STEAM agendas including transdisciplinarity, and STEAM and technology and goes on to offer insight from the novel context of ocean learning to develop and extend a theorisation of creative pedagogies as entwining both creative teaching and teaching for creativity as embodied, democratic, dialogic and material processes. Intra-action between theory, praxis, nature, culture, the digital and humans enables an emergent perspective about changing the dynamics of power to develop ocean or environmental learning and related activism. Derived from research into an ocean education project, which aimed to develop students’ ocean literacy through the combined educative principles of creative pedagogies and digital technologies (Augmented and Virtual Realities), the research draws on data from six projects across primary and secondary school settings in Denmark, Spain and England. It used a ‘diffractive’ analytic technique, inspired by new materialist theory, to explore the messy mixtures of natural, cultural and technological environments that were being learned through. This involved the development of four material-dialogic assemblages each including diffractive switches. Each is presented first through a ‘piece’ which demonstrates each assemblage’s connection to the core question, followed by ‘ripples’, which briefly articulate the new learning and questions arising from that assemblage. The four assemblages cover the irresistibility of making kin, the relationships between lively bodies and virtual environments, the importance of spacetimematter in environmental edu-activism and trajectories between transience, stability and dialogic space. The paper leaves the reader/engager with a selection of prompts to highlight the research’s contribution to current STEAM agendas related to changing power dynamics, and to provoke reader/engagers’ own practices. These can include new pedagogies and activisms, as well as theoretical developments to the combined educative principles of creative pedagogies and digital technologies within STEAM education.

A post-colonial political theology of care and praxis in Ethiopia’s era of identity politics

This book is a revised version of the author’s PhD thesis that was submitted to Denver University and the Iliff School of Theology. In the introductory section, the author discusses how her social location motivated her to research the topic of identity politics in Ethiopia. She argues that identity politics has been a major factor in Ethiopia’s political instability and violence. Ethiopia experiences frequent identity-based violence. Molla indicates that identity politics has divided Ethiopian society and eliminated in-between spaces where people can coexist in equality, solidarity, and justice. She proposes a post-colonial political theology of care and practice to reframe hegemonic and fragmented identities and create new in-between spaces for dialogue and cooperation. She contends that post-colonial discourse and the praxis of in between pastoral care can disrupt and challenge hegemonic definitions of culture, identity, home, and subjectivity.

Perspectives of Youth on Religious Education in the Philippines

The study explores the potential of participative pedagogy as it solicits young people’s perspectives and opens a space for dialogue to clarify how best they can benefit from religious education. Over 300 young students from a Catholic higher education institution in the Philippines have been interviewed to articulate their experiences, expectations, and needs to foster holistic educational engagements among the youth. The data generated from the surveys showed favorable results with some nuances. Informed by these outcomes, religious education curricula may be revised and enhanced for more dynamic, engaging, and challenging faith formation grounded in the students’ lived experiences.

Building Spaces for Dialogues to Rethink Evaluator Competencies: Lessons from the Webinars Organized by the Evaluation Centre for Complex Health Interventions

Background: There is a need to rethink evaluator competencies given the harsh and paralyzing realities of COVID. The pandemic was a time where there was a need to balance diverse perspectives given the limited scientific evidence that existed when faced with a genuinely unprecedented time. In the Fall of 2021 (September to October), the Evaluation Centre for Complex Health Interventions in partnership with the Asia Pacific Evaluation Association organized a three-part webinar series in response to the multiple issues that surfaced during COVID-19, and specifically, the implications of the pandemic for rethinking evaluator competencies and evaluator training. The presenters were from multiple countries including India, Canada, USA, UK, and South Africa.
 Purpose: The presenters pushed for more responsive evaluation approaches to address inequities and sustainability and for a decolonized approach to knowledge building. The webinar raised a number of themes that have potential implications for future discussions on evaluator competencies including: enhancing evaluation contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the need to rethink evaluation criteria, the need to embrace and address varieties of uncertainties, focus on diversity and heterogeneity; understanding the role of contexts in complex programs and policies; the need to reconceptualize sustainability; being more explicit about inequities and vulnerabilities; and the need to pay attention to systems and system dynamics.
 Setting: The webinars were organized by the Evaluation Centre and the Asia Pacific Evaluation Association on a Zoom platform.
 Intervention: Not applicable.
 Research Design: Not applicable.
 Data Collection and Analysis: Not applicable.
 Findings: Not applicable.

Listening for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Sonic geography and the making of extinction knowledge.

If an apparently extinct bird calls in a forest, and there are people there to hear it-to record it, even-is it still extinct? The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was last 'officially' seen in the United States in 1944, but its extinction continues to be a subject of intense debate between conservation authorities, scientists, and grassroots activists. Tensions peaked around 2005, when scientists from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology announced their rediscovery of the species. However, their evidence received significant challenge from other ornithologists, and this apparent rediscovery has since been generally dismissed. In 2021, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service recommended the ivorybill be declared officially extinct. Still, many people continue to trawl the Southeastern forests in search of ivorybills. In this article, I investigate the methods, debates, and results of efforts to locate this species, with a focus on sound. In doing so, I explore the interconnected roles of sound and space in the making of extinction knowledge. Sonic search methods of listening, sounding, and translating are core ways that searchers attempt to attune to, communicate with, and establish evidence of ivorybills. Additionally, sonic search practices are critical spaces of negotiation and contestation between different searchers, between searchers and ivorybills, and between searchers and skeptics. Ultimately, this article argues that sonic geographies affect the production of extinction knowledge, and vice versa-extinction knowledge making practices produce distinct sonic geographies.

HARMONI KEBERAGAMAAN: ANALISIS KEBERAGAMAAN INKLUSIF DALAM BHAGAWADGĪTĀ DAN IMPLIKASINYA PADA KEHIDUPAN MANUSIA DALAM KONTEKS GLOBAL

This research is a literature study or library research. The method of data analysis uses a hermeneutical approach conducted reflectively through philosophy. This study articulates that inclusive religiosity is crucial in the current global era to create a peaceful, secure, and harmonious life. Inclusive religiosity views all religions as having the same position, truth, and purpose, originating from the Supreme God. Plurality is a necessity as different paths to reach the same truth, as each seeker of truth has unique characteristics. Based on the research findings, it is revealed that inclusive religiosity in the Bhagavadgītā has at least three implications: first, it opens up a space for interreligious dialogue grounded in awareness of the Nirguṇa and Saguṇa Brahman dimensions. The consciousness between these two opens up an inclusive space with a shared understanding that each religion has its own characteristics and conceptualizations that cannot be forced into uniformity, but rather the substance of truth in each religion is eternal (directed towards the One God). Second, it builds a shared consciousness (global ethics) through collective ethical awareness of love and non-violence, crucially established to address the current crises of justice and peace. Third, it strengthens unity among humans through brotherhood irrespective of race and religion, as a unity of the family of the universe.

Thailand’s policy vacuum: Land use planning as sites of negotiation and contestation

Drawing on the case of Thailand, this paper provides a fresh critical perspective on the purpose and practice of land use planning in the Global South. Thailand is going through a period of rapid urbanisation. Significantly such urban change is occurring most intensely in locations in which land use plans are several years out of date. From urban planning theory, the strategic zoning of land for different uses is widely acknowledged as the cornerstone of urban governance. Yet how such planning takes place, and the economic and political role and value that land itself plays is often overlooked. Through analyses of institutional structures and functions and key land use policy documents, supported with case studies of land contestation, the paper argues that the practice of land use planning opens grey space for negotiation and speculation and thereby accumulation of political power. In practice, the complicated process of planning and approval creates a vacuum period through which implementation is shaped by discretionary powers. The use of discretionary power is increasingly routinised, creating new arenas of negotiation and power. However, such formalised discretionary systems in planning and decision-making reaffirm the symbolic authority of planning agencies who produce plans that are not implemented, or necessarily intended to be implemented.

Interreligious Dialogue and Gender Justice in Brazil

AbstractThis article reflects on the context and experiences of the project Advocacy for Gender Justice in Facing Fundamentalism, which has been developed in the ACT Brazil Ecumenical Forum (Fórum Ecumênico ACT Brasil: FEACT Brazil) since 2021. The article discusses the reality of growing violence, feminicide, and religious fundamentalism in Brazil, underlining the importance of analyzing the root causes and effects of religious racism. Seeing through an intersectional lens, the article reflects on key dimensions of gender justice and proposes strategies to confront domestic violence as well as other forms of violence. Finally, it reflects on the history of five “Ecumenical and Interreligious Journeys” as an important space of dialogue, collaboration, and networking.

Protecting children from unhealthy food marketing: a comparative policy analysis in Australia, Fiji and Thailand.

Restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children is a globally recommended policy measure to improve diets and health. The aim of the analysis was to identify opportunities to enable policy learning and shift beliefs of relevant actors, to engender policy progress on restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods to children. We drew on the Advocacy Coalition Framework to thematically analyse data from qualitative policy interviews conducted Australia (n = 24), Fiji (n = 10) and Thailand (n = 20). In all three countries two clear and opposing advocacy coalitions were evident within the policy subsystem related to regulation of unhealthy food marketing, which we termed the 'strengthen regulation' and 'minimal/self regulation' coalitions. Contributors to policy stasis on this issue were identified as tensions between public health and economic objectives of government, and limited formal and informal spaces for productive dialogue. The analysis also identified opportunities for policy learning that could enable policy progress on restrictions on marketing of unhealthy foods to children as: taking an incremental approach to policy change, defining permitted (rather than restricted) foods, investing in new public health expertise related to emerging marketing approaches and scaling up of monitoring of impacts. The insights from this study are likely to be relevant to many countries seeking to strengthen regulation of marketing to children, in response to recent global recommendations.

Affected Mexico human papillomavirus vaccine: a proposal for collective health care

The objective of this article is to analyze the process of formation of Afectadas México Vacuna Virus del Papiloma Humano, a group of mothers organized from the health affectations of their daughters attributed to the immunization against this virus, as a space of collective care. The qualitative research, with in-depth interviews and an analysis from the sociocultural perspective of emotions and crossed by gender, has focused on reflecting on the causes that have led these mothers, as primary caregivers in the process of care and attention to the health of the affected daughters, to build alternative spaces of visibility, mutual support, dialogue and collective denunciation, taking as main tool the use of social networks and digitality, as these are the most used means of mass contact at present, with projection to different social spheres. From this study it has been concluded that the competent contexts to the health-disease-care process are not alien to social responses that take shape in organizations of denunciation, rejection and protest, even from a non-physical and conventional mobilization. The post-vaccine effect has served to make it clear that health is also a matter of social and political competition, in which emotions are the binding element that strengthens the union. The experience with the loss of the daughters' health links the expressions of feeling in action, interaction and politicization of women from their own material and ideological resources.

Gendering Parliamentary Diplomacy: The case of EU27-UK Relations

Abstract Parliamentary diplomacy (PD) is a contemporary feature of modern parliamentarism but remains, thus far, underexplored from a gender lens. PD incorporates the relationships that parliamentarians or parliaments as institutions have with other parliaments, parliamentarians, and nonstate actors to foster peace, democracy, understanding, dialogue, legitimacy, and scrutiny of governments. Parliaments are spaces of parliamentary and international negotiation and communication, practiced through rules, practices, and symbols. This article draws on a single case study of the European Parliament (EP) and of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) gendered PD, at the time of Brexit—a period when international agreements and relationships were shaped and how gendered PD was culturally legitimized. It is based on a unique qualitative dataset of 140 interviews and ethnographic research (2018–2020) generated at the time of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom’s MEPs from the EP. Based on this analysis, it further considers what a feminist PD might look like.