Utilitarian Discourse Research Articles

What Drives SE’ Cognitive Legitimacy: Implications from Consumers’ Legitimacy Judgement

Social enterprises, increasingly seen as an important player in delivering social and public services around the world, however, are still newcomers and legitimacy-deficient in the market. Consumers are a key audience group in enabling social enterprises’ cognitive legitimacy. Unfortunately, extant research on social enterprises has only begun to study organizational legitimacy and ignored the role of consumers as the cognitive legitimacy conferrers. This paper seeks to fill in the “legitimacy-consumer” gap and answer the research question: What are the drivers of social enterprises’ cognitive legitimacy assessment by consumers? We draw on the literature of cognitive legitimacy as the theoretical foundation. We adopt novel text mining approaches and performed two-layer analyses on 1692 consumer reviews on social enterprise restaurants. Our finding highlights four major types of discourses from social enterprise consumers’ legitimacy judgements - utilitarian discourse, social discourse, ecological discourse and social relation discourse. Additionally, utilitarian discourse is significantly associated with higher cognitive legitimacy. The findings add insight not only for social enterprise practitioners to develop strategies to build legitimacy, but also for social entrepreneurship research to open up a new direction using computational techniques and bringing consumers into the research field.

What about Knowledgefied Discourse in Artistic Research?

Considering the implicit and embodied character of knowledge in the performing arts, the insistent knowledgefication of discourse in these areas, including music of course, is striking. It is important to note that Brazilian universities are increasingly developing artistic research in the sense described by Borgordff (2012), and the adoption of concepts such as 'production of artistic knowledge', 'embodied knowledge', 'musical knowledge, has been increasing since the end of the last century. Perhaps, that obeys contemporary dynamics of a knowledge economy, but could also be seen as a strategy that would make artistic research visible by responding to the contemporary association of knowledge and power. Our main objective is an invitation to reflect on whether this knowledgefication of artistic practice in Brazilian academic discourse is a complicit accommodation of the utilitarian discourse of educational policies led by financial interests or whether it is a strategy of critical survival of artists within the academy to guarantee resources and the continuity of research against the managerialist and utilitarian ideology that dominates the education policy in the country.

The Evolution of the Right to Property in India before the Drafting of the Constitution

The Fundamental Right to Property enjoys the unique distinction of not only being the second most contentious provision in the drafting of the Indian Constitution, but also the most amended provision, and the only fundamental right to be ultimately abolished. The debate over property rights began early in the Constituent Assembly even while the terms of independence were being worked out and the controversy was more prolonged and acute than that over any subject, except that of official languages. The contentious origins of the right to property in the Constitution had a tremendous impact not only on India’s socio-political and legal history, but also within the commonwealth. Existing scholarly literature has described the history of the fundamental right to property as a tussle between progressive legislatures, that were trying to bring about much needed land reform in India, and reactionary courts, that impeded such reform efforts by protecting the property rights of rich zamindars. I have argued elsewhere that this narrative is simplistic, and therefore somewhat misleading both as to the real issues at stake in the contentious history of the right to property, but also the learnings we can take from that history for political and constitutional reform in India and other constitutional democracies that are also developing countries. In this paper, I trace the intellectual currents, and political and social movements, that framed the contours of the contentious debates surrounding the adoption of the fundamental right to property and restrictions on this right, during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. I show that there were two broad discourses underpinning the debates on the right to property. The first was the “rights” discourse, with its sub-discourses on “civil and political rights” and “social and economic rights”. The second was the “development” discourse with its concomitant focus on “land reform” and “industrialisation and capital formation”. Both were enabling discourses, but grounded in different premises. While the Development discourse was a utilitarian discourse premised on the philosophy of the “greatest good of the greatest number”, the Rights discourse was a dignitarian discourse, premised on the dignity of individuals and their right to realise their full potential as human beings and equal citizens of newly independent India. The contention over the inclusion of the right to property in the Constitution was a contention between the Rights discourse that sought to empower the disempowered and respect individual rights, and the Development discourse which sought to give the state, as representatives of the people, power to take measures to bring about development according to a utilitarian calculus that fundamentally contradicted rights of individual citizens, including, but not limited to, the right to property.

The Constituent Assembly Debates on Property: Unravelling the Property Paradox

The Fundamental Right to Property enjoys the unique distinction of not only being the second most contentious provision in the drafting of the Indian Constitution, but also the most amended provision, and the only fundamental right to be ultimately abolished. The debate over property began early in the Constituent Assembly even while the terms of independence were being worked out and the controversy was more prolonged and acute than that over any subject, except that of official languages. In this paper, I outline key debates on the inclusion, content, and judicial enforcement of the right to property within the Assembly. My aim is to present a snapshot of the deliberative process that transmuted abstract policy goals of the founders into guaranteed fundamental of Indians, especially pertaining to the right to property. I show that there were two broad discourses underpinning the debates on the right to property. The first was the “rights” discourse, with its sub-discourses on “civil and political rights” and “social and economic rights”. The second was the “development” discourse with its concomitant focus on “land reform” and “industrialisation and capital formation”. Both were enabling discourses, but grounded in different premises. While the discourse was a utilitarian discourse premised on the philosophy of the “greatest good of the greatest number”, the rights discourse was a dignitarian discourse, premised on the dignity of individuals and their right to realise their full potential as human beings and equal citizens of newly independent India. The contention over the inclusion of the right to property in the Constitution was a contention between the rights discourse that sought to empower the disempowered and respect individual rights, and the discourse which sought to give the state, as representatives of the people, power to take measures to bring about development according to a utilitarian calculus that fundamentally contradicted of individual citizens, including, but not limited to, the right to property. Existing scholarly literature has described the history of the fundamental right to property as a tussle between progressive legislatures, that were trying to bring about much needed land reform in India, and reactionary courts, that impeded such reform efforts by protecting the property of rich zamindars. I have argued elsewhere that this narrative is simplistic, and therefore somewhat misleading both as to the real issues at stake in the contentious history of the right to property, but also the learnings we can take from that history for political and constitutional reform in India and other constitutional democracies that are also developing countries. Through this paper, I hope to reveal that the final unwieldy draft of the provisions relating to constitutional property adopted by the Constituent Assembly reflected an uneasy compromise between competing interests represented within the Assembly. But this compromise failed to please any of the constituencies entirely and resolved nothing. At best, it postponed the resolution of these issues to a future time and foreshadowed the conflicts that emerged in the courts. It is clear that the Constituent Assembly expected resistance from traditional elites on the abolition of the zamindari system, but it seems to have either wilfully ignored or underestimated the extent of resistance it would face on the issue to reach a resolution that would enable the Assembly to have a fundamental chapter, or perhaps to even have a Constitution in the first place.

Organizing careers for work – The curriculum vitae (CV) in Prussia’s technical bureaucracy, c. 1770-1830

ABSTRACT This paper explores the history of the curriculum vitae (CV) as a medium of job application in the Prussian technical bureaucracy around 1800. A document that so far has not received much attention in historiographical works, appeared as a major tool for bureaucratic innovation at the end of the eighteenth century. Drawing on primary archival sources, this paper will raise three major points. First, the curriculum vitae facilitated the depiction of ‘careers’: linear sequences of professional formation pointing toward certain positions. It helped applicants stylize their education and employment history as a time of continuous progress and merit, i.e. a veritable career. Second, the CV enabled the organization and control of personnel in a large-scale administrative body. Administrators used the CV as a tool to familiarize themselves with unknown persons and place them to positions according to their past professional trajectory. Finally, the lives recounted in CVs did not correspond to the contemporary concept of self-reflexive Bildung but were embedded in a utilitarian discourse of usefulness. In this vein, only those biographical events mattered for a CV that were useful for the state and pertained to the professional formation of the subject.

Teaching English in the shadow: identity construction of private English language tutors in China

ABSTRACT The global spread of private tutoring of English (PTE) has become a driving force of the global marketisation of English. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this study explores how tutors in the PTE sector, an under-researched group of teachers, construct their professional identities in the market-oriented educational, institutional, and socioeconomic settings. Findings show that they have constructed a range of hybrid identities, that is, tutors as exam experts, tutors as salespeople, and tutors as underdogs. These identities reflect multiple overlapping discourse in private supplementary tutoring (PST) underlined by the utilitarian discourse underlying exam-oriented education and the neoliberal discourse promoting the market logic of competition and profit-making. The instability and vulnerability of their identities have led to the tutors’ deprofessionalisation and identity crisis. This paper also offers discussions on the space of shadow education and recommendations on policy making.

The uses of useful knowledge and the languages of vernacular science: Perspectives from southwest India.

In the first half of the eleventh century, a group of scholars in southwest India did something new. They began composing systematic texts about everyday life in a register of language sometimes called New Kannada. While looking back toward earlier texts composed in Sanskrit - and even translating portions of them - these scholars centered their poetic ability and their personal experiences as opposed to prior authoritative texts. They described themselves as authoring "worldly sciences" that were "useful to the people of the world," and they provided extensive reflections on the systematics of knowledge. Epistemic, linguistic, and political concerns were significantly renegotiated in this moment as local context was turned into a virtue for the production of technical treatises. This article uses this moment to interrogate recent discussions of useful knowledge and vernacular science. Usefulness can mean different things at different times and vernacular sciences change according to their language. This article argues for a usage of both terms that is more attuned to historical particulars. A history of useful knowledge from a place that now appears under the double effacement of the non-modern and non-West offers an opportunity to think through central concepts of the history of science without relying on economic or utilitarian discourses. This paper presents one possible example of what a more global history of useful knowledge might look like.

Stethoscope of the 21st century: dominant discourses of ultrasound in medical education

In recent years, point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has become a widely used clinical tool in a number of clinical specialties. In response, POCUS has been incorporated into medical curricula across the learning continuum, bolstered by enthusiastic appraisals of the technology's benefits for learners, clinicians and patients. In this project, we have sought to identify and understand the effects of dominant discourses influencing the integration of POCUS into medical education. We conducted a Foucauldian critical discourse analysis (CDA) to identify and analyse discourses that legitimise and privilege the use of POCUS in medical education. We assembled an archive of 473 texts published between 1980 and 2017. Each article in the archive was analysed to identify frequently occurring truth statements (expressing concepts whose truths are unquestioned within particular discourses) that we used to characterise the major discourses that construct representations of POCUS in medical education. We identified three dominant discourses: (i) a visuo-centric discourse prioritising the visual information as truth over other clinical data; (ii) a utilitarian discourse emphasising improvements in patient care; and (iii) a modernist discourse highlighting the current and future needs of clinicians in our technological world. These discourses overlap and converge; the core discursive effect makes the further elevation of POCUS in medical education, and the resulting attenuation of other curricular priorities, appear inevitable. The three dominant discourses identified in this paper engender ideal conditions for the proliferation of POCUS in medical education through curricular guidelines, surveys of adherence to these guidelines and authoritative position statements. By identifying and analysing these dominant discourses, we can ask questions that do not take for granted the assumed truths underpinning the discourses, highlight potential pitfalls of proposed curricular changes and ensure these changes truly improve medical education.

Everything Flows: A Pragmatist Perspective of Trade-Offs and Value in Ethical Consumption

The debate around ethical consumption is often characterised by discussion of its numerous failures arising from complexity in perceived trade-offs. In response, this paper advances a pragmatist understanding of the role and nature of trade-offs in ethical consumption. In doing so, it draws on the central roles of values and value in consumption and pragmatist philosophical thought, and proposes a critique of the ethical consumer as rational maximiser and the cognitive and utilitarian discourse of individual trade-offs to understand how sustainable consumption practices are established and maintained. An in-depth qualitative study is conducted employing phenomenological interviews and hermeneutic analysis to explore the consumption stories of a group of ethically minded consumers. The research uncovers the location of value within a fluid, yet habitual, plurality of patterns, preferences, morals, identities and relationships. Its contribution is to propose that consumer perception of value in moral judgements is represented by an overall form of aggregate personal advantage, which lacks conscious reflection and delivers a phenomenological form of value rooted in habits, reflecting a pragmatist representation of value unified as a ‘consummatory experience’.

Bolstering graduates’ success through working as student ambassadors in university widening participation programs

ABSTRACTSince 2010, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) has provided funding for Australian universities to ‘raise aspiration’ among under-represented groups. Underpinned by utilitarian discourses of human capital and individual capacitation, these resources have transformed the ways that universities seek to engage prospective students. This paper turns to an overlooked cohort that is integral to widening participation initiatives, but has rarely been the focus of research. These are the student ambassadors – university students who work within HEPPP programs. This paper reports findings from the alumni component of a mixed-method study which examines how widening participation programs, which are ostensibly directed at future university enrolments, might also help university students who work as student ambassadors to become successful professionals and citizens once they graduate from university. Alumni accounts of their experiences and self-reported impact of their ambassador work advocate a more holistic view of graduate success and how activities beyond mandatory coursework can contribute to success beyond university graduation. Evidence from student ambassador alumni suggests that these positive impacts are broad and long-lasting, contributing to students’ professional successes and personal lives.

Literatura e formação: notas sobre o lugar do literário nas instituições de ensino

RESUMO: Este ensaio propõe-se a discutir o lugar formativo da literatura num momento em que sua presença institucional se vê precarizada por discursos utilitários característicos da cultura de mercado. Para tanto, o argumento divide-se em dois momentos: primeiro, são discutidos alguns dos abalos teóricos sofridos pela literatura no último século e que fragilizaram os dispositivos que antes justificavam sua presença no âmbito formativo; a seguir, o ensaio indica a necessidade de revisitar as categorias de “obra”, “leitor” e “tradição” como modo de estabelecer um funcionamento de fato “formativo” para o espaço institucional da literatura. Se o nosso tempo se caracteriza pela aceleração dos objetos, as noções de “obra”, “leitor” e “tradição” podem operar como contrapontos capazes de interromper o fluxo contínuo das coisas, ditando uma outra temporalidade para os estudos literários.

Waiting in the wings: Power, narratives of transition, and self-reflexivity

With the aim of bridging the gap between the understanding of individual agency and that of structural constraint, this article deals with the ways in which autobiographical research can provide insight into how individuals negotiate the social contexts in which they are located. Despite the strong utilitarian discourse about the centrality of English for social and economic advancement in Hong Kong, there has been insufficient attention paid to the affective and social aspects of different study and work experiences in which differing linguistic and cultural capitals are valued. With this neglect in mind, this reported study explores how two individuals engage in self-identification and self-scrutiny in the education, legal and media fields. This is a matter of interest with regard to the power of narration in organising and representing social reality, and the relevance of self-reflexivity to the development of agency and educational capital as recorded in narratives of transition. Writing autobiographical reflections on their experiences in institutions and social relationships gave the individuals a therapeutic opportunity to formulate clearer versions of their personal history and identity in their transition to work.

One ring to rule them all: Master discourses of enlightenment—and racism—from colonial to contemporary New Zealand

AbstractWe interrogated historical continuity and change in discourses of enlightenment and racism through the analysis of 160 years of New Zealand Speeches from the Throne (1854–2014, 163 speeches). Enlightenment discourses of benevolence and perfectibility were prevalent in all periods, much more so than racism. ‘Old‐fashioned’ racism took the form of an assumed civilizational superiority (including accusations of ‘barbarism’) during colonization, with ‘modern’ racism taking forms like blaming Māori for not ‘productively’ using the land. Both declined to almost zero by the 20th century, undermining the idea of ‘old‐fashioned’ versus ‘modern’ racism. Utilitarian discourses peaked in the late 19th to early 20th centuries as justification for Māori land alienation. ‘Master discourses of enlightenment’ consisted of a central core of social representations that changed at the periphery, with a gradual expansion of symbolic inclusion of Māori in discourses of national identity to the point where biculturalism is the dominant discourse for elites today.

Acuerdo cerrado - (des)construindo o discurso utilitarista sobre a aprendizagem da língua espanhola

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar o discurso utilitarista sobre a aprendizagem da língua espanhola veiculado no texto Acuerdo cerrado, publicado em TAM nas Nuvens, revista de bordo da companhia aérea TAM. Os resultados da análise apontam para, basicamente, dois pré-construídos que parecem ancorar esse discurso utilitarista - a valorização da temporada no exterior como a melhor opção para acelerar o aprendizado do idioma e a suposta facilidade para aprender espanhol. Deste nosso ponto de vista, problematizar esse discurso utilitarista se torna imprescindível, já que este parece apenas (re)produzir práticas pedagógicas anacrônicas e pouco efetivas.

Marginalia: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Urban Wastelands

Wastelands are a characteristic feature of many urban and industrial landscapes. Although the term wasteland has become widely subsumed within various utilitarian discourses concerning the redevelopment of ostensibly empty or unproductive spaces, the idea encompasses a multiplicity of meanings, material origins, and ecological characteristics. This article considers these anomalous spaces of urban nature as an interdisciplinary terrain that extends from renewed interest in urban biodiversity to alternative conceptions of landscape authenticity. It is suggested that a more theoretically nuanced and historically grounded conception of the intersections between critical cultural discourses and recent advances in urban ecology might provide a useful counterpoint to narrowly utilitarian approaches to urban nature.

Are We All on the Same Page? A Discourse Analysis of Interprofessional Collaboration

Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) has become a dominant idea in both medical education and clinical care as reflected in its incorporation into competency-based educational frameworks and hospital accreditation models. This study examined the published literature to explore whether a shared IPC discourse underpins these current efforts. Using a critical discourse analysis methodology informed by Michel Foucault's approach, the authors analyzed an archive of 188 texts published from 1960 through 2011. The authors identified the texts through a search of PubMed and CINAHL. The authors identified two major discourses in IPC: utilitarian and emancipatory. The utilitarian discourse is characterized by a positivist, experimental approach to the question of whether IPC is useful in patient care and, if so, what features best promote successful outcomes. This discourse uses the language of "evidence" and "validity." The emancipatory discourse is characterized by a constructivist approach concerned primarily with equalizing power relations among health practitioners; its language includes "power" and "dominance." This study suggests that IPC is not a single, coherent idea in medical education and health care. At least two different IPC discourses exist, each with its own distinctive truths, objects, and language. The extent to which educators and health care practitioners may tacitly align with one discourse or the other may explain the tensions that have accompanied the conceptualization, implementation, and assessment of IPC. Explicit acknowledgment of and attention to these discourses could improve the coherence and impact of IPC efforts in educational and clinical settings.

Health and productivity? On the development of an "economic" analytics of the relationship between work and health (Argentina, 1900-1955).

This article seeks to demonstrate that the economic rationalization in health that characterizes the present, although possessing unique features, is inscribed within a longer historical process. Between 1900 and 1955, an "economic analytics" of the relationship between health and work was developed in Argentina, structured around the following focal points: reflections on the "price of a man"; thought that framed social medicine within the "human economy" program; the discourse of healthful and efficient living; the calculations of factory doctors and the conformation of an economic and utilitarian discourse within occupational medicine; and, finally, debates on productivity. These five central concepts define the emergence of a particular problematization regarding worker health and, in turn, raise questions about the relationship between capitalism, liberalism and biopower in occidental societies.

Health and productivity? On the development of an "economic" analytics of the relationship between work and health (Argentina, 1900-1955)

This article seeks to demonstrate that the economic rationalization in health that characterizes the present, although possessing unique features, is inscribed within a longer historical process. Between 1900 and 1955, an "economic analytics" of the relationship between health and work was developed in Argentina, structured around the following focal points: reflections on the "price of a man"; thought that framed social medicine within the "human economy" program; the discourse of healthful and efficient living; the calculations of factory doctors and the conformation of an economic and utilitarian discourse within occupational medicine; and, finally, debates on productivity. These five central concepts define the emergence of a particular problematization regarding worker health and, in turn, raise questions about the relationship between capitalism, liberalism and biopower in occidental societies.

Percepções e conhecimentos de moradores de Urutaí-GO sobre o Córrego Palmital

Currently the water resources have been extensively degraded due to unsustainable human activities. Thus, many studies have investigated aspects of environmental perception of the population, to better planning and understanding of the vision of the population about the environment and its problems. This study aimed to analyze the perceptions and knowledge of residents in the municipality from Urutaí, GO about the Palmital stream, watercourse of great ecological and economic importance to the region, but nowadays has been the target of several degradative processes. Data collection was conducted through a structured questionnaire for objective questions and discursive, being interviewed a total of 420 people living in different areas of the urban zon of Urutaí. The results show the existence of perceptions and knowledge that recognition of the importance of the mixed Palmital stream (this being related almost exclusively to a utilitarian discourse) and absence of specific knowledge about its current environmental situation. In addition, there was a tenuous community participation in conservation and preservation of the appeal, though they demonstrated great interest in it, and only a portion of the population recognizes its responsibility to the Palmital stream. Thus, highlights the need to develop actions aimed at social and environmental awareness of people about its importance in the maintenance and preservation of natural resources and the construction of values and behavioral changes in favor of the region's water resources, especially Palmital stream.

An analysis of ethical considerations in programme design practice

Ethical considerations are inherent to programme design decision-making, but not normally explicit. Nonetheless, they influence whose interests are served in a programme and who benefits from it. This paper presents an analysis of ethical considerations made by programme design practitioners in the context of a polytechnic in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It explores the nature of these considerations and explains how they draw on a complex interplay of utilitarian and communitarian discourses. Through this complexity the discourses not only reinforce each other, but also hide the necessity of debate about ethical considerations. The findings from this study offer educators a framework to analyse and become explicit about their own ethical considerations in programme design and the discourses they draw on. This knowledge can help them to improve their practices, as it offers them clarity about what is ‘the right thing to do’ as well as a language with which to engage in debates with others.