State Of Limbo Research Articles

Preparing for a Day that May Never Come: Venturing in Limbo

AbstractThe new venture creation process is a central phenomenon in entrepreneurship research. Typically, scholarship has sought to identify common, linear stages of development in this process in pursuit of a sustained, growing venture. In contrast to this theory, this study reveals dynamic, non‐linear venturing processes that allowed for venture persistence despite failing to ‘progress’ toward traditional outcomes. We generate these insights from qualitative data on Syrian refugee entrepreneurs seeking to create and sustain ventures in Lebanon while living in a state of limbo – a precarious situation where the future is unknown and unknowable. We organize our findings in a model of venturing in limbo, which explains why and how entrepreneurs persist in venture creation practices despite experiencing repeated and significant setbacks that return them ‘to square one’. We reveal dynamic venture creation processes that allow for adaptive responses to erratic environmental shifts by producing entrepreneurial readiness, which consists of behavioural, cognitive, and psychological/emotional capabilities. Entrepreneurial readiness enables persistence of venturing efforts in the face of chronic precarity. Our study contributes to theory on new venture creation in entrepreneurship and organizational liminality.

Two Settlement Pathways for Gross Violations of Human Rights Based on The Dignified Justice Theory

Settlement of gross violations of human rights might be pursued by choosing two “paths” provided. The first “path” is via the Human Rights Court. This route is also called litigation settlement. The second path is an alternative “path”, and has been coined as the out of the Human Rights Court settlement. The problem is the Constitutional Court states that the alternative “path” as referred to in the Explanation of Article 47 of the Law on Human Rights Courts is contrary to the Constitution. As a result of the issuance of the Constitutional Court decision, the alternative “path” seems to be in a state of limbo, and this presupposes a legal issue of the lack of clarity on the meaning of a formulation of the applicable statutory provisions. In this paper, it is argued that Article 47 of the Law on Human Rights Courts still recognizes two “paths” for solving or settling cases of gross violations of human rights in the Pancasila legal system. The research method used in this paper is normative legal research, often known as the pure legal research method. It examined the primary legal materials. The theory used for understanding and explaining the problem is the Dignified Justice theory, the Indonesian Jurisprudence.

Life in a State of Limbo – Narratives of Place, Health, and Integration Among Later Life Female Migrants in Sweden

International migration is a prioritized domain of European aging research. Using a qualitative approach, the author has gathered accounts among Iranian later-life females in the Swedish city of Malmö, suffering from social isolation. The women in this article found themselves in a situation like that of other later-life migrants in Sweden. Several studies have shown how these groups are at risk of ending up in a social isolation which can be hard to break. The situation of the later-life migrant women discussed in this study is characterized by the loss of numerous deep-seated and natural social bonds connected to ethnicity, family, language, and culture. To cope with their exposed situation, the local Iranian-Swedish association provided some self-arranged activities, offering opportunities to social integration. The aim of the study is to demonstrate how the women described their life situation where a local day center made up the key foundation of their social life in a Swedish city in 2000–2008. Typical of that period was that solutions of the alarming situation of some foreign-born elderly citizens were discussed by local authorities, as well as volunteer organizations. Thus, the aim is not to describe the present situation among later life migrants. On the contrary, the perspective is retrospective. The theoretical inspirations used in the article derive from a broader backdrop of social-constructive assumptions that define narratives or accounts as explanations of the reality of everyday life and experiences. In the article the women’s stories are defined as small, local, erratic narratives, nevertheless explaining the reality of everyday life and experiences which in their turn reflect the state of illness, locally specific attachment and social isolation. Three salient themes emerge in the material: place bound experiences, illness and unsuccessful integration. The narratives are defined as small irregular accounts, contrasting larger narratives of later-life migration. The article shows how the women depicted their situation as a borderline between an Iranian life in exile and a Swedish society, leaving them in a state of Limbo. The women expressed ambitions of integrate into a Swedish community of senior citizens, providing privileges and civil rights. Thus, the narratives challenge common generalizing images of later-life migrants and their life conditions.

Institutional quality, economic development, and the sustainable outcomes of PPP projects: An empirical analysis of failed PPP projects in China from 2014 to 2020

The trajectory of China's PPP market since 2014, characterized by rapid expansion and a high failure rate, now plunges into a state of limbo and uncertainty. Through a quantitative analysis of failed PPP projects in China from 2014 to 2020, this study investigates the impact of local government institutional quality, private capital business environment, local economic development, and local fiscal affordability on the development and implementation of PPP projects. The findings reveal that larger government size is associated with a higher likelihood of PPP project failure, while a favorable private capital business environment can mitigate the failure rate of local PPP projects. Furthermore, empirical results demonstrate a positive relationship between local fiscal affordability and the success rate of PPP projects. The analysis underscores the significant influence of the institutional environment on the effectiveness of PPP projects and provides policy recommendations for local governments to enhance the business environment and other key factors contributing to the resilience of PPP projects.

How Great Powers Resist Emerging Norms: The United States and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

According to theories of international order-making, the most powerful states seek to institute global norms that suit their interests. Less appreciated, however, is that powerful states have also sought to undermine certain norms to maintain particular types of order. With their outsized influence in the international system, how do great powers resist emerging norms? This article presents a case illustration of US strategies to resist the reemerging anti-nuclear weapon norm. This norm was institutionalized in July 2017 with the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Though US strategies did not stop the norm from codification within the TPNW, US actions seek to maintain this norm in a state of limbo, whereby the norm does not become fully entrenched within the international system.

‘Ye Shall Do No Injustice in Judgment’—Are Religious Courts to Blame for the Agunah Problem?

Abstract Orthodox Judaism requires women to receive a religious divorce (Get) from their husbands in order to remarry. The ‘Agunah problem’ refers to the phenomenon whereby husbands deny a Get for financial reasons or pure malice, placing women in a state of limbo where they cannot remarry under Jewish law. According to Daniel Greenberg, newly appointed Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and the author of a recent monograph on the topic, the problem is largely the fault of the divorce procedures followed by religious courts, which may also be in violation of criminal and human rights law. This article contends with Greenberg’s claims, concluding that most of them are based on flawed assumptions of fact or misunderstandings of English or Jewish law. Get refusal is attributable to Get refusers, not the religious courts who enjoy a mere supervisory role in the Jewish divorce process. However, the article does recommend that religious courts providing divorce services improve their levels of transparency to prevent further misunderstandings about the way they operate.

IDENTITY THROUGH DIFFERENCE IN BEAT FURRER'S LOTÓFAGOS

AbstractIn Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are on their way home to Ithaca when they land on a remote island inhabited by lotus-eaters. The locals share their indolent-making lotus plants with the Greeks, such that the troops’ homeward journey is disrupted and they find themselves in a state of limbo. Identities, both individual and communal, become entangled and blurred. Beat Furrer takes these sorts of uncertainties of self as inspiration in his Lotófagos (2007) – that is, Lotus-eaters – scored for soprano and double bass, which sets José Ángel Valente's poem of the same name. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's conception of bodies, this article argues that the identity of an elusive but persistent collective subject in Valente's text can be found within the difference between the two performers’ bodies in Furrer's setting. The pair's movements weave in and out of each other, moving through spectres of each other's material, fleetingly suggesting cohesion through tension before jettisoning this for what contextually appears as relief. As such, the series of surreptitious vignettes presents a ‘conatus’ of the piece defined by tension, emulation and transience; Furrer's Lotófagos creates space for Valente's mysterious subject to be presented as the immanence of forces between two performing bodies.

Sisters-in-Waiting: A Case Study of Displaced Syrian Women Fostering New Senses and Memories of Home in Lebanon

Building on variously located Syrian women’s accounts of their day-to-day lives in Lebanon, this article illuminates meaning-making processes in protracted displacement, defined by the UNHCR (2004, p. 1) as a “long-lasting and intractable state of limbo.” We draw on the metaphor of a “constellation of homes” (Brun & Fábos, 2015) to explore various homemaking practices and the interconnected temporal and multi-sensorial dimensions thereof. In so doing, we counter narratives of displaced women as a homogenous collective and problematic assumptions of stasis and passivity associated with protracted displacement. Particular attention is paid to women’s narratives regarding “purposeful work” and, crucially, female friendship, which we argue can be understood as additional nodes in the constellation of homes. We argue that further and different forms of research are required to do justice to the multi-sensorial dimensions of homemaking and the novel concept of “sisters-in-waiting” in the lives of women in protracted displacement.

The divergent legacies of the Yugoslav architectural heritage: The afterlives of “mesna zaednica” in Taftalidže, Skopje

Abstract Ongoing urban developments and contemporary social challenges increase the need for different typologies of new urban and architectural concepts, where the issue of built heritage, specifically in the case of Skopje, has become a vast problem. With the decomposition of the former Yugoslavia states in the 1990s, each of these new states inherited a significant amount of built heritage, including monuments, buildings, landscapes, and infrastructure, constructed according to the prevailing socialist urban-planning and architectural doctrines, and directed within and towards the immediate contexts of the Yugoslav community. Most of this inherited architecture vanished across the ex-Yugoslav space, while a large part of it is still left in a state of limbo. This article aims to show the socialist built heritage's adaptation, or transformation, into new urban scenarios, using the case of Skopje to reveal more about the relationship between the heritage and the local inhabitants. It will closely examine the socialist architecture and its relation with the local memory communities, or the locals’ memories. More precisely, we will focus on one unique construct that has slowly vanished in the modern-day living: the notion of mesna zaednica. In focusing on this notion in the urban district of Taftalidže, Skopje, we will discuss the means of transposing socialist communal features into the new, post-socialist architectural rhetoric and way of life, as well as engage with various discourses about urban heritage emerging in the urban context. Finally, we will argue in favor of several heritage and urban development theses, which can be applied to the particular case study. The article is part of an ongoing research project that presents its results in English for the first time.

Young graduates and economic recession: Lessons from the pandemic to prevent the (re)incidence of mental health symptoms.

Economic conditions affect the youth labour market and can leave deep scars. This exploratory study examines the emotional responses and mental health symptoms of young graduates during their transition into the labour market in the pandemic context. It draws on 42 news articles with statements from 86 graduates from a set of European and non-European countries. The graduates had jobs or internships cancelled, numerous applications unanswered or were dismissed from jobs they had recently started. Young people adopt a variety of coping strategies, which are often invisible and cause deep suffering due to anxiety, disappointment, fear, and depression. Their apprehension and uncertainty leave them in a state of limbo. The specific impacts of the pandemic on young people's lives serve as a warning of the need to protect future generations of graduates. More support is required worldwide to manage the mental health issues that affect young graduates, especially during economic recessions.

Custodians of a resort island: standing by between oblivion and restoration

ABSTRACT This paper explores the experiences of three Bangladeshi migrant workers who are the sole inhabitants and custodians of a former Maldivian island resort. We show how they currently remain in a state of indeterminate standby as the future of the resort remains uncertain, put in this state of limbo by the capacity of the resort’s owners to exploit their disposability and manipulability. We investigate the rich material and sensory qualities of the island, and investigate the everyday practices that characterize how the men live and work there. First, we illustrate how the island remains haunted by the workers and tourists who formerly inhabited this space, since much of the resort infrastructure remains. Second, we explore how the buildings and things on the island are unevenly intact, in a state of partial ruination. Third, we discuss how the inexpert daily maintenance practices undertaken by the three men focus on certain areas but neglect others. Finally, we emphasize that despite their uncertain future, the men endeavour to create a stable, convivial and pleasurable island home.

Feeling the weight of the water: young nonbinary individuals and their strategies for manoeuvring through a binary world

ABSTRACT Studies of transgender individuals often focus on the transgressive nature of their identities and practices or on experiences of transphobia, rejection and violence. Rather than focusing on transgression or marginalization, this paper offers insight into practical knowledge, presenting a feel for the game that young nonbinary individuals develop out of social necessity, as the social world, with its gender binary social structures, remains resistant to nonbinary identities and practices. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 12 nonbinary participants in Slovenia and Bourdieu’s concept of practical knowledge, this paper analyses skilful practical strategies for coping with anticipated and experienced misrecognition. These strategies encompass tactful playing along with the binary rules of the game, pushing the rules into a state of limbo and directly engaging and confronting the rules of the game. Moreover, a differentiated domain of strategies emerges, according to the parameters of safety, anticipation of achieving recognition and affective investment in the relations. Overall, the data show that nonbinary individuals are skilful agents who apply a range of practical strategies to manoeuvre through a gender binary world. The article enables insight into young people as actively engaging with objective conditions that are not of their making.

Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney

Reviewed by: Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox by Caroline E. Janney Kurt Hackemer (bio) Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee’s Army after Appomattox. Caroline E. Janney. University of North Carolina Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-1-4696-7430-8. 344 pp., paper, $22.00. The current generation of Civil War scholarship has done much to blur the artificial boundary between war and peace that is so often represented by the surrender [End Page 96] of Robert E. Lee’s army at Appomattox Court House. An expanding literature makes it clear that the passions, ideological beliefs, and experiences of soldiers and civilians alike, but especially soldiers, played an important role in defining postwar politics, social constructs, race relations, westward expansion, and economics. For many, the war was omnipresent long after its final shots were fired in anger. Acknowledging the fluidity between war and peace is one thing, but it is quite another to demonstrate in some significant way exactly how the transition happened on a personal level for soldiers who were about to become veterans. Caroline Janney’s important new book uses the Army of Northern Virginia’s experience during and after the surrender at Appomattox Court House to do just that, and the end result interjects welcomed nuance into a conversation that has been more generalized up to this point. The surrender at Appomattox was hardly a complete surrender in two important ways, which immediately created ambiguity. First, in an effort to accelerate the reunion process, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant paroled Confederate soldiers so they could more quickly return to civilian life. Second, in the chaos associated with the pursuit and parole of the Army of Northern Virginia, Janney conservatively estimates that twenty thousand or more Confederate soldiers straggled, escaped, or otherwise avoided capture and therefore were never paroled. Paroled Confederate soldiers were still technically prisoners of war. As those soldiers returned home, or tried to return home—in the case of border states that never left the Union—concerns about their status and potential culpability for wartime actions revealed that “many of the legal, social, and political questions that had plagued the war from the beginning” had not, in fact, been resolved by the cessation of hostilities (3). The lack of a peace treaty, which would have required acknowledging the legitimacy of the Confederate States of America, resulted in the inconsistent treatment of parolees by military and government officials. Local officials who recognized there had been no formal end to the war feared what these parolees might do as they passed through communities or tried to restart their lives after reaching their home. They were even more fearful of those veterans who had never been paroled. The absence of an efficient pardon system kept the parolees in a state of limbo and presented resolution of those fears. As a result, local military and government officials often reacted harshly to maintain order and stability, driven by their immediate homegrown concerns rather than a unified national context that simply did not exist. The ambiguity and inconsistency of the parole and pardon process reinforced an emerging Lost Cause ideology built around the idea that the Confederacy had never truly surrendered and that its ideals remained intact. Acceptance of the Lost Cause was even easier for those Army of Northern Virginia veterans who avoided the parole process entirely. While that historical interpretation of the transition to the Lost Cause is nothing new, Janney’s unique contribution is to [End Page 97] better explain the chaos that catalyzed the transition. There was more to the surrender of Lee’s army than a stacking of arms and furling of the colors. The demo-bilization process took place over a much greater time and space than historians have hitherto appreciated. Because it extended well beyond Appomattox Court House, it also involved more than just Lee’s soldiers. Civilians of all types, including Union sympathizers, Confederate sympathizers, former slaves, and citizens who just wanted to be left alone, all found themselves caught up in the ensuing drama. Janney convincingly argues that “in surrender as in battle, the war proved to be as much about those at home as...

Displacement, Dispossession, Trauma, Refugee Crises: The New Middle Passage in Helon Habila’s Travellers

This paper analyses Helon Habila’s Travellers (2019), focusing on its depiction of African migrants experience as the new middle passage. The novel as a diasporic narrative reveals the experiences of immigrants especially of war torn Africa, and the Middle East in Europe. The setting in Europe, revolves around cities like Berlin, Basel, London and Lampedusa lsland, where the unnamed narrator, meets various immigrants who narrate their stories of life in Europe, and their experiences as they travel to Europe. The study conceptualizes the middle passage as a movement symbolic of the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. The concept will be examined in the six titled divisions of the book, to discuss the experiences of displacement, trauma and refugee crises. The study concludes that African migrants yet again encounter challenges, because they are forced to leave their homes and communities due to political and social upheavals and in the course of movement, are traumatized and dispossessed of their homes, families, and identities, leading to profound psychological and emotional suffering. The author argues that the middle passage experience situates African refugees as people who have been robbed of their past and their future, forced to live in a perpetual state of limbo and uncertainty, as a result of power. The narrative discourse thus examines the complex power dynamics that emerge in the context of migration, which are the exploitation of migrants by smugglers and the tensions that arise between different groups of refugees.

Review: Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media, edited by Deniz Bayrakdar and Robert Burgoyne

Review: <i>Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media</i>, edited by Deniz Bayrakdar and Robert Burgoyne

POSTWAR ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE TERRITORY OF THE UKRAINIAN SSR (1944-1947): ORIGINS, MANIFESTATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES

The purpose of the article is a comprehensive analysis of the causes, manifestations, and scale of anti-Semitism in the first post-war years on the territory of Soviet Ukraine and its consequences in consciousness and social life.&#x0D; Methodology. The general scientific and special historical methods (historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic) research applied in the work made it possible to reveal the peculiarities of anti-Semitism in the post-war period, to determine the relationships between the influence of Nazi propaganda on the eve/during the war and Soviet realities in which Jews the role of the "internal enemy" was fixed. Among the methods used in the research is the verbal history method.&#x0D; Scientific novelty. An attempt was made to investigate the peculiarities of Stalin's national policy in the difficult transition period from war to peace (1944-1947) using the example of the so-called "Jewish question" on the basis of various sources – from official documents, memories that appeared in Soviet times, to oral history memories of living contemporaries of the events. The content of the policy and its influence on the formation of persistent anti-Semitic sentiments in Soviet society are outlined. The new attack on Jewry officially began only in 1948, before that this issue was in a state of limbo, which was also facilitated by the foreign political situation. Therefore, it is important to investigate the specifics of the manifestation of anti-Semitism in 1944-1947 and its subsequent impact on the situation of Jews.&#x0D; Conclusions. Having survived the hell of the war, the Jews faced difficulties in relations with the authorities and the population of their own country. Post-war anti-Semitism was caused by post-war devastation, the consequences of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda during the occupation, Stalin's passive and uncertain position on the Jewish question, and the traditional, for a totalitarian system, desire to have an internal enemy. Hatred of the Jews of this period manifested itself in pogroms, problems in returning to work, difficulties in returning one's home and property. However, anti-Semitism became a component of state policy only in 1948.

‘What about it is unclear? I mean I was born here:’ Ungeklärte Staatsangehörigkeit and the (re-)production of de facto statelessness in Germany

ABSTRACT This paper examines the administrative category ‘ungeklärte Staatsangehörigkeit’ (‘unclear nationality’) and its implications for citizenship rights in Germany. An unclear nationality represents a de facto statelessness but does not concede the rights established for de jure stateless people. It impedes naturalization in Germany and complicates access to a travel document and settlement permit. The paper analyses the (re-)production of unclear nationality and traces its effects on the life of a woman born in Germany with an unclear nationality since birth. Her experiences disclose the difficulty of navigating the German bureaucratic system and its discretionary power. Her experiences also reveal how a state of limbo is perpetuated over generations, confining individuals in a territory whose bureaucratic apparatus views them as foreign. Unclear nationality thus functions as a technology of exclusion: by placing the person in a yet-to-be determined nationality, it interpellates them not as subjects of rights but objects of clarification.

Academic Writing Problems in L2 Settings: Realities and Need for Intervention

Building on evidence from prior research, this literature review focuses on academic writing problems in ESL /EFL contexts, bringing to the fore emerging approaches to academic writing and calling for a shift from writing across the curriculum program to writing in specialized centers to propagate the integration of writing rather than some fixed tasks throughout the curriculum. For the study purpose, a theoretical-based descriptive thematic procedure was adopted, while at the same time providing pedagogical implications for automated writing and evaluation. As aside, instituting multimodal composition that fully engages all senses connects the linguistic and non-linguistic (semiotic) dimension of meaning-making. It enhances written fluency and liberates learners from getting bogged down in grammatical flaws and beyond alphabetic literacy. Given the situation in the local Yemeni EFL context, the current review highlights that writing would remain in a state of limbo unless it is coupled with a timely intervention addressing the problems of writing from school to university in light of these refinements. Keywords: Academic Writing (AW), Problems, ESL, EFL, corrective Intervention

Between People and the State: The Ambivalence of Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship in India

The Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship (PMRDF), a flagship programme of the Ministry of Rural Development to facilitate development programme delivery in districts affected by Maoist violence, was introduced in 2011 and suspended in 2014. Though in a state of limbo at present, PMRDF created a complex template where binaries such as state/people, top-down/participatory and security/development were transcended and new ways of belonging generated, so as to make the developmental state an everyday reality in the lives of people. In this potential of PMRDF as a knowledge field to move beyond developmental platitudes, we encounter the limits of academic vocabulary to adequately capture how development matters on the ground. The article draws from critical literature on the postcolonial developmental state, secondary material on the experience of the PMRD Fellows as well as primary sources drawn from the authors’ interaction with a Fellow from Odisha. It is proposed that through PMRDF, the developmental state established its legitimacy by reaching out to people in underdeveloped regions even as it vernacularized its authority and undermined its own bureaucratic institutions. And the Fellows, far from being carriers of state power, and contrary to their representation in available literature, imagined themselves primarily as champions of people in need of development.

Knowledge and Practice of Medical Waste Management in Small, Medium and Large Hospitals in Bayelsa State

The consciousness and practical in-depth knowledge of the nature of medical waste, its public and environmental implications serves as a veritable tool in the effective and efficient management of medical waste in any healthcare institution. Thus, this study considered the knowledge and practice of medical waste in small, medium and large hospital in Bayelsa State, South-south Nigeria. It is aimed at assessing waste management practices with respect to colour coding at the various healthcare institutions within the study area. A descriptive study design was considered and a sample size of 300 obtained using Cochran’s formula. A well-structured questionnaire was used to elicit information from the respondents. Data were analyzed using simple percentage and frequency including graphs and bar chart. Result indicated that the rate of awareness and utilization of colour code for medical waste segregation in the various hospitals was poor except the large hospital (63%). The poor awareness level observed in the Medium and small hospitals in this study could be attributed to paucity of waste management infrastructure in addition to medical waste management deficiency and policy implementation practices. Furthermore, it was discovered that the use of sharp receptacle was high in small hospital (56%) and large hospital (75%) as compared to Medium hospital (43%). Also, knowledge, awareness and practice of medical waste management across the various healthcare institutions revealed that the small hospital (79%), medium hospital 71% and the large hospital 75% are well abreast and thus have good understanding of medical waste management, albeit, proper medical waste management is in a state of limbo at the hospitals at the time of this study. Government at all levels should ensure adequate funding and encourage professional to handle medical waste management whereas staff of the various hospitals should be properly trained on significance of the utilization of colour coding.