Search results for: virile politics

Authors: Tomas Macsotay

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If monument removal and monument effacement may call to mind a Nietzschean proposal for vitalist disregard of conventional morality, it remains the case that it is often only by a willingness to go “beyond good and evil” in inherited monument politics that truthful, be it unexpected aspects of our co-existence with monuments can finally start to rise into fuller consciousness. A series of urgent questions press themselves in the panorama created by the affirmative idea that we can, as a community, make crucial decisions with regard to monumental preservation or discontinuation. Memorials are not the core concern for decolonial and racial dignity movements like Black Lives Matter (BLM), which have repeatedly shown they regard these actions as a welcome, albeit complementary, part of a reckoning with a past of racial violence and injustice, slavery, and colonial subaltern existence. As such, the iconoclastic issue of “rights and prohibitions of images” only tangentially touches on a cultural movement that seems rather question dominant ideas of history, pertinence, and the long life of the class, gender, and racial conflict through ossified memorial cultures. In the recent monument insurrection, we face a rare case of a new negotiation of rights of existence for this particular tract of material culture. This engenders a debate on how and why we accord rights to objects in public dominion ― indeed, how such rights impinge upon the rights of subjects who inhabit the public sphere. Incidentally, the possibility of taking away from monuments such imagined or adjoined rights has made it possible to tease open a sphere of emotionality that could not be expressed in patrimonial thinking: the reality of atmospheres as settings, often dependent on pseudo-objects and half-conscious situations, that situate individuals involuntarily in a pathic aesthetics. In this way, the unique moment we now witness ― full of the possibility of going “beyond good and evil” of monument preservation ― starts to look more like a moment of involuntary awaking: an awakening to the encrypted gaze of the monument and the enigma that the same monument or memorial site can carry day-to-day habits of life for some bystanders, while racialized and disenfranchised communities experience discomfort and erosion of subjective life in the same sites.

Keywords: monument, memorial, atmosphere, racial justice, decolonialism

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Authors: Suaka Yaro

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This article provides an alternative examination of the causes and the ramifications of the Ivorian political conflict from 2002 to 2009. The researcher employed a constructivist epistemology and qualitative study based upon fieldwork in different African cities interviewing Ivorians outside and within Ivory Coast. A purposive sampling of fourteen participants was selected. A purposive sampling was used to select fourteen respondents. The respondents were selected based on their involvement in Ivorian conflict. Their experiences on the causes and effects of the conflict were tapped for analysis. Qualitative methodology was used for the study. The data collection instruments were semi-structured interview questions, open-ended semi-structured questionnaire, and documentary analysis. The perceptions of these participants on the causes, effects and the possible solution to the endemic conflict in their homeland hold key perspectives that have hitherto been ignored in the whole debate about the Ivorian political conflict and its legacies. Finally, from the synthesized findings of the investigation, the researcher concluded that the analysed data revealed that the causes of the conflict were competition for scarce resources, bad governance, media incitement, xenophobia, incessant political power struggle and the proliferation of small firearms entering the country. The effects experienced during the conflict were the human rights violation, destruction of property including UN premises and displaced people both internally and externally. Some recommendations made include: Efforts should be made by the government to strengthen good relationship among different ethnic groups and help them adapt to new challenges that confront democratic developments in the country. The government should organise the South African style of Truth and Reconciliation Commission to revisit the horrors of the past in order to heal wounds and prevent future occurrence of the conflict. Employment opportunities and other income generating ventures for Ivorian should be created by the government by attracting local and foreign investors. The numerous rebels should be given special skills training in other for them to be able to live among the communities in Ivory Coast. Government of national unity should be encouraged in situation like this.

Keywords: displaced, federalism, pluralism, identity politics, grievance, eligibility, greed

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Authors: Fayomi Oluyemi, Ajayi Lady

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This article raises the question of political leadership in the context of womens' roles and responsibilities in Nigeria. The leadership question in Nigeria is disquieting to both academics and policy actors. In a democratic society like Nigeria, the parameters for a well-deserved leadership position is characterised by variables of equity, competence, transparency, accountability, selflessness, and commitment to the tenets of democracy, but the failure of leadership is pervasive in all spheres of socio-political sectors in Nigeria. The paper appraises the activities of Nigerian women in the socio-political arena in Nigeria. It traces their leadership roles from pre-colonial through post-colonial eras with emphasis on 1914 till date. It is argued in the paper that gender imbalance in leadership is a bane to peaceful co-existence and development in Nigeria. It is a truism that gender-blind and gender biased political agendas can distort leadership activities. The extent of their contributions of the few outstanding women’s relative tranquility is highlighted in the theoretical discourse. The methodology adopted for this study is an exploratory study employing the extended case method (ECM). The study was carried out among some selected Nigerian women politicians and academics. Because of ECM's robustness as a qualitative research design, it has helped this study in identifying the challenges of these women thematically and also in constructing valid and reliable measures of the constructs. The study made use of ethnography and triangulation, the latter of which is used by qualitative researchers to check and establish validity in their studies by analyzing a research question from multiple perspectives, specifically Investigator triangulation which involves using several different investigators in the analysis process. Typically, this manifests as the evaluation team consisting of colleagues within a field of study wherein each investigator examines the question of political leadership with the same qualitative method (interview, observation, case study, or focus groups). In addition, data was collated through documentary sources like journals, books, magazines, newspapers, and internet materials. The arguments of this paper center on gender equity of both sexes in socio-political representation and effective participation. The paper concludes with the need to effectively maintain gender balance in leadership in order to enhance lasting peace and unity in Nigeria.

Keywords: gender, politics, leadership, women

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Authors: Gezahegn Bekele Welldgiyorgise

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It is obvious that the economics, politics and social conditions of a country are determined by the quality and standard of its education. Indeed, education plays a vital role in changing the consciousness and awareness of society and transforming it on a large scale. Moreover, education contributes a lot to the advancement of science and technology, information and communication, and above all, it speeds up its progress in no time if it focuses mainly on the qualitative approach to education. Education brings about universal change and transformation and lightens mankind in all dimensions. It creates an educated, enlightened and brightened generation in society. The generation will be sharped, sharpened and well-oriented if it gets modern, sophisticated and standardized education in its field of study. The main goal of education is to produce well-qualified, well-trained and disciplined young offers in a given community. If the youth is well trained and well-mannered, he will certainly be enlightened, problem solvers and solution seekers, researchers, and innovators. In this respect, we have to provide the youth with modern education, a teaching-learning process led by active learning and a participatory approach with a new curriculum preparation for the age of children supported by modern facilities (ICT).In addition to that, the curriculum should have to give attention to mathematics and science lessons that include international experience in a comfortable school and classrooms. Therefore, the generation that will be created through such kinds of the guided education system will make the students active participants, self-confident, researchers and problem solvers, besides that result in changed life standards and a developed country. Similarly, our country, Ethiopia, has aimed to get such change in youth (generation) through modern education, designing a new educational policy and curriculum which was implemented for many years, although the goal of education has not reached the required level. To get the main idea of the article, I should have answered the question of why our country's educational goal had not reached the desired level because it is necessary to lay the foundation for research in finding out problems seen through students learning performance, the first task is selecting primary-school as a sample. Therefore, we selected “Dilla primary school (5-8)” which is a workplace for a teacher and gives me a chance to recognize students’ learning performance to recognize their learning grades (internal and external) and measure performance (achievement) of students easily’.

Keywords: curriculum, performance, innovation, learning

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Authors: Bheki R. Mngomezulu

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The present paper cogently and systematically traces the history of Umkhonto Wesizwe (MK) and identifies its important role in shaping South Africa’s post-apartheid foreign policy and international relations under black leadership. It provides the political and historical contexts within which we can interpret and better understand South Africa’s controversial ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ approach to Zimbabwe’s endemic political and economic crises, which have dragged for too long. On 16 December 1961, the African National Congress (ANC) officially launched the MK as its military wing. The main aim was to train liberation fighters outside South Africa who would return into the country to topple the apartheid regime. Subsequently, the ANC established links with various countries across Africa and the globe in order to solicit arms, financial resources and military training for its recruits into the MK. Drawing from archival research and empirical data obtained through oral interviews that were conducted with some of the former MK cadres, this paper demonstrates how the ANC forged relations with a number of countries that were like-minded in order to ensure that its dream of removing the apartheid government became a reality. The findings reveal that South Africa’s foreign policy posture and international relations after the demise of apartheid in 1994 built on these relations. As such, even former and current socialist countries that were frowned upon by the Western world became post-apartheid South Africa’s international partners. These include countries such as Cuba and China, among others. Even countries that were not recognized by the Western world as independent states received good reception in post-apartheid South Africa’s foreign policy agenda. One of these countries is Palestine. Within Africa, countries with questionable human rights records such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe were accommodated in South Africa’s foreign policy agenda after 1994. Drawing from this history, the paper concludes that it would be difficult to fully understand and appreciate South Africa’s foreign policy direction and international relations after 1994 without bringing the history and the politics of the MK into the equation. Therefore, the paper proposes that the utilitarian role of history should never be undermined in the analysis of a country’s foreign policy direction and international relations. Umkhonto Wesizwe and South Africa are used as examples to demonstrate how such a link could be drawn through archival and empirical evidence.

Keywords: African National Congress, apartheid, foreign policy, international relations

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Authors: Sraman Sree Mattananda

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This present article is an analytical research on ‘Buddhism and Innovative Sustainable Development.' The main purpose of researching is to the better understanding of many social science theories both in politics and in economics. And the understanding of both Buddhism and science is complementary in order to enable any individual to live a full and meaningful human life. How people can avoid conflict, socially, economically, politically and spiritually using Buddhist teachings for a sustainable development. The aim of studying is also to comprehend every human to be aware that peoples’ happiness and sorrow depends on the choices that they had taken to do what was perceptional right and wrong. Everything that happens does have a reason. This study will be supported by the supply of environmental knowledge, philosophy, and experience. Within the domestic and international cultures, this knowledge might provide a significant basis for the contemporary and the future world. Happiness and unsatisfactoriness of mind depend on the consequences of what we had already done. This is to give deep sense to adjust the nature of all that exists and desire not to attach to them and to liberate oneself leaving the reality as it is. An implicit of references will be drawn from the primary sources, secondary sources, internet sources, and other Scholar’s diamond writings, to prove the investigation of philosophical and theoretical analysis. After the investigation of philosophical and theoretical analysis, the article will demonstrate about, what Buddha advised the follows to stop over-exploitation and how to eradicate conflicts to gain a peaceful society. This will be a lively awareness in the approach to the understanding of the Buddhist view of reality and adopt with middle path. The last part of the article will concern with the Buddhist Challenge of sustaining the society and how Buddhist contemporary scholars interpret sustainable development issues. Mahatma Gandhi’s emphasize to use Buddhist Non-Violence will be demonstrating to gain peace, freedom, and security. Twelve things that concern us when we want to explore the issues of sustainability, demonstrated by A Little Book of Hope will be cleared. How individual hearts can implicate to the contemporary globe will be demonstrated to obtain healthy and practical environment. Finally, generating new awareness and care by minimizing the negative impact on earth resources will reduce the degradation of the planet which would pose a challenge to sustain Development.

Keywords: Buddhism, economic, sustainable development, Buddhist ethics

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Authors: Helena Maragou

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Introducing Toni Morrison’s fiction to a classroom overseas entails a significant pedagogical investment, from monitoring students’ uncertain journey through Morrison’s shifty semantics to filling in the gaps of cultural knowledge and understanding for the students to be able to relate text to context. A rewarding process, as Morrison’s works present a tremendous opportunity for transnational dialogue, an opportunity that hinges upon Toni Morrison’s bringing to the fore the untold and unspeakable lives of racial ‘Others’, but also, crucially, upon her broader critique of Western ideological hegemony. This critique is a fundamental aspect of Toni Morrison’s politics and one that appeals to young readers of Toni Morrison in Greece at a time when the questioning of institutions and ideological traditions is precipitated by regional and global change. It is more or less self-evident that to help a class of international students get aboard a Morrison novel, an instructor should begin by providing them with cultural context. These days, students’ exposure to Hollywood representations of the African American past and present, as well as the use of documentaries, photography, music videos, etc., as supplementary class material, provide a starting point, a workable historical and cultural framework for textual comprehension. The true challenge, however, lies ahead: it is one thing for students to intellectually grasp the historical hardships and traumas of Morrison’s characters and to even engage in aesthetic appreciation of Morrison’s writing; quite another to relate to her works as articulations of experiences akin to their own. The great challenge, then, is in facilitating students’ discovery of the universal Morrison, the author who speaks across cultures while voicing the untold tales of her own people; this process of discovery entails, on a pedagogical level, that students be guided through the works’ historical context, to plunge into the intricacies of Morrison’s discourse, itself an elaborate linguistic booby trap, so as to be finally brought to reconsider their own historical experiences using the lens of Morrison’s fiction. The paper will be based on experience of teaching a Toni Morrison seminar to a class of Greek students at the American College of Greece and will draw from students’ exposure and responses to Toni Morrison’s “Nobel Prize Lecture,” as well as her novels Song of Solomon and Home.

Keywords: toni morrison, international classroom, pedagogy, African American literature

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Authors: Khairil Ahmad, Jenny Gryzelius, Mohd Helmi Mohd Sobri

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With the waning support for centrist ‘third-way’ politics across the Western world, there has been an increase in political parties and individual candidates relying on populist political discourse and rhetoric in order to capitalize on the sense of frustration apparent within the electorate. What is of note is the divergence in the discourses employed. On the one hand, there is a polarization between a growing wave of populist right-wing parties and politicians, employing a mixture of economic populism with divisive nationalistic ideals such as restricted immigration, for example, the UK’s UKIP and Donald Trump in the US. On the other hand, there are resurgent, often grassroots-led, left-wing movements and politicians, such as Podemos in Spain and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, focusing on anti-austerity measures and inclusive policies. In general, the concept of populism is often ascribed in a pejorative way. This is despite the success of populist left-wing governments across Latin America in recent times, especially in terms of reducing poverty. Nonetheless, recently, scholars such as Ernesto Laclau have tried to rethink populism as a social scientific concept which is essential in helping us make sense of contemporary political articulations. Using Laclau’s framework, this paper seeks to analyze poverty reduction policies in different iterations in the context of the tenures of three Prime Ministers of Malaysia. The first is Abdul Razak Hussein’s New Economic Policy, which focused on uplifting the economic position of Malaysia’s majority Malay population. The second is Mahathir Mohamad’s state-led neo-liberalization of the Malaysian economy, which focused on the creation of a core group of crony elites in order to spearhead economic development. The third is current Prime Minister Najib Razak’s targeted poverty eradication strategy through a focused program which directly provides benefits to recipients such as through direct cash transfers. The paper employs a discursive approach to trace elements of populism in these cases and highlight instances of how their strategies are articulated in ways that seek to appeal towards particular visions of national unity.

Keywords: discourse analysis, Malaysia, populism, poverty eradication

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Authors: George Bocean

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In the mainstream academic spheres of thought, there is a tendency to associate the writings of Russian Marxists as being constantly against the practice of religion itself. Such arguments mainly stem from how the attitude of the Russian Marxists, specifically the Bolsheviks, towards the concept of religion supposedly originates from its own Marxist ideology. Although Marxism is critical of religion as an institution, the approach that Marxism would have on the question of religion is not as clear. Such aspect is specifically observed in the use of language of major leading Russian Marxist figures, such as Lenin and Trotsky, throughout the early 20th century, where the use of religious metaphors was widely used in their philosophical writings and speeches, as well as in propaganda posters of general left-wing movements in Russia as a whole. The methodology of the research will consist of a sociolinguistic and sociology of language approach within a sociohistorical framework of late Tsarist and early Soviet Russia, 1905-1926. The purpose of such approaches are not simply to point out the religious metaphors used in the writings and speeches of Marxists in Russia, but rather in order to analyse how the use of such metaphors represent an important socio-political connection with the context of Russia at the time. In other words, the use of religious metaphors was not only more akin to Russian culture at the time, but this also resonated and was more familiar with the conditions of the working class and peasantry. An example in this study can be observed in the writings of Lenin, where the theme of chudo (miracle) is often mentioned in his writings, and such a word is commonly associated with an idealist philosophy rather than a materialist one, which represents a common theme in Russian culture in regards to the principle of hope for a better life. A further and even more obvious example is Trotsky’s writings about how the revolution of 1905 “would be revived”, which not only resonates with the theme of resurrection, but also prophesises the “second coming” of a future revolution. Such metaphors are important in the writings of such authors, as they simultaneously contain Marxist ideas, as well as religious themes. In doing this research, this paper will demonstrate two aspects. Firstly, the paper will analyse the use of the metaphors by Russian Marxists as a whole in regards to a socio-political and ideological perspectives akin to those of Marxism. Secondly, it will also demonstrate the role that such metaphors have in regards to their impact on the left-wing movements within Russia itself, as well as their relation to the working class and peasantry of Russia within the historical context.

Keywords: language and politics, Marxism, Russian history, social history, sociology of language

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Authors: Norbert W. Paul

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In 1988, parts of the scientific community still heralded findings to support that AIDS was likely to remain largely a ‘gay disease’. The value-ladden terminology of some of the articles suggested that rectum and fragile urethra are not sufficiently robust to provide a barrier against infectious fluids, especially body fluids contaminated with HIV while the female vagina, would provide natural protection against injuries and trauma facilitating HIV-infection. Anal sexual intercourse was constituted not only as dangerous but also as unnatural practice, while penile-vaginal intercourse would follow natural design and thus be relatively safe practice minimizing the risk of HIV. Statements like the latter were not uncommon in the early times of HIV/AIDS and contributed to captious certainties and an underestimation of heterosexual risks. Pseudo-scientific discourses on the origin of HIV were linked to local and global health politics in the 1980ies. The pathways of infection were related to normative concepts like deviant, subcultural behavior, cultural otherness, and guilt used to target, tag and separate specific groups at risk from the ‘normal’ population. Controlling populations at risk became the top item on the agenda rather than controlling modes of transmission and the virus. Hence, the Thai strategy to cope with HIV/AIDS by acknowledging social and sexual practices as they were – not as they were imagined – has become a role model for successful prevention in the highly scandalized realm of sexually transmitted disease. By accepting the globalized character of local HIV-risk and projecting the risk onto populations which are neither particularly vocal groups nor vested with the means to strive for health and justice Thailand managed to culturally implement knowledge-based tools of prevention. This paper argues, that pertinent cultural collisions regarding our strategies to cope with HIV/AIDS are deeply rooted in misconceptions, misreadings and scandalizations brought about in the early history of HIV in the 1980ties. The Thai strategy is used to demonstrate how local values can be balanced against globalized health risk and used to effectuated prevention by which knowledge and norms are translated into local practices. Issues of global health and injustice will be addressed in the final part of the paper dealing with the achievability of health as a human right.

Keywords: bioethics, HIV, global health, justice

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Authors: Hala Barakat

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Architecture plays a crucial role in the colonization and organization of spaces, as well as the preservation of cultures and history. As a result of 70 years of occupation, Palestinian land, culture, and history are endangered today. The government of Israel has used architecture to strangulate Palestinians out and seize their land. The occupation has managed to fragment the West Bank and cause sensible scars on the landscape by creating obstacles, barriers, watchtowers, checkpoints, walls, apartheid roads, border devices, and illegal settlements to unjustly claim land from its indigenous population. The apartheid architecture has divided the Palestinian social and urban fabric into pieces, similarly to the Bantustans. The architectural techniques and methods used by the occupation are evidence of prejudice, and while the illegal settlements remain to be condemned by the United Nations, little is being done to officially end this apartheid. Illegal settlements range in scale from individual units to established cities and house more than 60,000 Israeli settlers that immigrated from all over Europe and the United States. Often architecture by Israel is being directed towards expressing ideologies and serving as evidence of its political agenda. More than 78% of what was granted to Palestine after the development of the Green Line in 1948 is under Israeli occupation today. This project aims to map the illegal architecture as a criticism of governmental agendas in the West Bank and Historic Palestinian land. The paper will also discuss the resistance to the newly developed plan for the last Arab village in Jerusalem, Lifta. The illegal architecture has isolated Palestinians from each other and installed obstacles to control their movement. The architecture of occupation has no ethical or humane logic but rather entirely political, administrative, and it should not be left for the silenced architecture to tell the story. Architecture is not being used as a connecting device but rather a way to implement political injustice and spatial oppression. By narrating stories of the architecture of occupation, we can highlight the spatial injustice of the complex apartheid infrastructure. The Israeli government has managed to intoxicate architecture to serve as a divider between cultural groups, allowing the unlawful and unethical architecture to define its culture and values. As architects and designers, the roles we play in the development of illegal settlements must align with the spatial ethics we practice. Most importantly, our profession is not performing architecturally when we design a house with a particular roof color to ensure it would not be mistaken with a Palestinian house and be attacked accidentally.

Keywords: apartheid, illegal architecture, occupation, politics

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Authors: Oris Tom-Lawyer, Michael Thomas

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This paper seeks to analyse the hegemony of the English language in Western Africa through the lens of educational policies and the socio-economic functions of the language. It is based on the premise that there is a positive link between the English language and development contexts. The study aims to fill a gap in the research literature by examining the usefulness of hegemony as a concept to explain the role of English language in the region, thus countering the negative connotations that often accompany it. The study identified four main research questions: i. What are the socio-economic functions of English in Francophone/lusophone countries? ii. What factors promote the hegemony of English in anglophone countries? iii. To what extent is the hegemony of English in West Africa? iv. What are the implications of the non-hegemony of English in Western Africa? Based on a meta-analysis of the research literature between 2003 and 2018, the findings of the study revealed that in francophone/lusophone countries, English functions in the following socio-economic domains; they are peace keeping missions, regional organisations, commercial and industrial sectors, as an unofficial international language and as a foreign language. The factors that promote linguistic hegemony of English in anglophone countries are English as an official language, a medium of instruction, lingua franca, cultural language, language of politics, language of commerce, channel of development and English for media and entertainment. In addition, the extent of the hegemony of English in West Africa can be viewed from the factors that contribute to the non-hegemony of English in the region; they are French language, Portuguese language, the French culture, neo-colonialism, level of poverty, and economic ties of French to its former colonies. Finally, the implications of the non-hegemony of English language in West Africa are industrial backwardness, poverty rate, lack of social mobility, drop out of school rate, growing interest in English, access to limited internet information and lack of extensive career opportunities. The paper concludes that the hegemony of English has resulted in the development of anglophone countries in Western Africa, while in the francophone/lusophone regions of the continent, industrial backwardness and low literacy rates have been consequences of English language marginalisation. In conclusion, the paper makes several recommendations, including the need for the early introduction of English into French curricula as part of a potential solution.

Keywords: developmental tool, English language, linguistic hegemony, West Africa

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Authors: Xiaoli Tian

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The recent growing interest in and use of complementary and alternative medicine is a global phenomenon. In many regions, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), an important type of complementary and alternative medicine, has been formally integrated into the healthcare system. Consequently, today’s doctors face increasing requests and questions from patients regarding TCM. However, studies of TCM focus either on patients’ approaches to TCM and Western medicine (WM) or on the politics involved in the institutionalization of TCM. To our knowledge, sociological studies on doctors’ attitudes toward TCM are rare. This paper compares the receptivity of WM-trained Chinese doctors to TCM in Hong Kong and mainland China, in order to evaluate the interplay between professional training and dominant medical paradigms, on the one hand, and institutional legitimacy and government and client pressures to accept TCM, on the other. Based on survey and in-depth interviews with Western-medicine doctors in Hong Kong and mainland China, this research finds that: there is major difference between Western-medicine doctors’ attitude toward traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in Hong Kong and mainland China. Doctors in Hong Kong are still suspicious toward TCM, no matter if they have exposure to TCM or not. Even some doctors who have much knowledge about TCM, such as got a diploma or certificate in TCM or tried TCM themselves, are still suspicious. This is because they hold up to the ideal of 'evidence-based medicine' and emphasize the kind of evidence based on randomized controlled trial (RCT). To Western medicine doctors in Hong Kong, this is the most reliable type of evidence for any medical practice, but it is lacking in TCM. This is the major reason why they do not trust TCM and would not refer patients to TCM in clinical practices. In contrast, western medicine doctors in mainland China also know about randomized controlled trial (RCT) and believe that’s the most reliable evidence, but they tend to think experience-based evidence is also reliable. On this basis, they think TCM also has clinical effectiveness. Research findings reveal that legitimacy based on institutional arrangements is a relevant factor, but how doctors understand their professional boundaries also play an important role. Doctors in Hong Kong are more serious about a strict professional boundary between Western medicine and TCM because they benefited from it, such as a very prestigious status and high income. Doctors in mainland China tend to be flexible about professional boundaries because they never benefited from a well-defined strict professional boundary. This is related to a long history of the lack of professionalism in China but is also aggravated by the increasing state support of TCM.

Keywords: evidence-based decision-making, institutional legitimacy, professional behavior, traditional Chinese medicine

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Authors: Swati Arun

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The present paper argues that Balance of Power (BOP) needs to conjugate with certain contingencies like geography. It is evident that sea powers (‘insular’ for better clarity) are not balanced (if at all) in the same way as land powers. Its apparent that artificial insularity that the US has achieved reduces the chances of balancing (constant) and helps it maintain preponderance (variable). But how precise is this approach in assessing the dynamics between China’s rise and reaction of other powers and US. The ‘evolved’ theory can be validated by putting China and US in the equation. Systemic Relation between the nations was explained through the Balance of Power theory much before the systems theory was propounded. The BOP is the crux of functionality of ‘power relation’ dynamics which has played its role in the most astounding ways leading to situations of war and peace. Whimsical; but true that, the BOP has remained a complicated and indefinable concepts since Hans. Morganthau to Kenneth Waltz. A challenge of the BOP, however remains; “ that it has too many meanings”. In the recent times it has become evident that the myriad of expectations generated by BOP has not met the practicality of the current world politics. It is for this reason; the BoP has been replaced by Preponderance Theory (PT) to explain prevailing power situation. PT does provide an empirical reasoning for the success of this theory but fails in a abstract logical reasoning required for making a theory universal. Unipolarity clarifies the current system as one where balance of power has become redundant. It seems to reach beyond the contours of BoP, where a superpower does what it must to remain one. The centrality of this arguments pivots around - an exception, every time BOP fails to operate, preponderance of power emerges. PT does not sit well with the primary logic of a theory because it works on an exception. The evolution of such a pattern and system where BOP fails and preponderance emerges is absent. The puzzle here is- if BOP really has become redundant or it needs polishing. The international power structure changed from multipolar to bipolar to unipolar. BOP was looked at to provide inevitable logic behind such changes and answer the dilemma we see today- why US is unchecked, unbalanced? But why was Britain unchecked in 19th century and why China was unbalanced in 13th century? It is the insularity of the state that makes BOP reproduce “imbalance of power”, going a level up from off-shore balancer. This luxury of a state to maintain imbalance in the region of competition or threat is the causal relation between BOP’s and geography. America has applied imbalancing- meaning disequilibrium (in its favor) to maintain the regional balance so that over time the weaker does not get stronger and pose a competition. It could do that due to the significant parity present between the US and the rest.

Keywords: balance of power, china, preponderance of power, US

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Authors: Jovana Vukcevic, Sanja Pekovic, Djurdjica Perovic, Tatjana Stanovcic

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This paper presents a critical inquiry into the role of uncomfortable heritage in nation branding with the particular focus on the specificities of the politics of memory, forgetting and revisionism in the post-communist post-Yugoslavia. It addresses legacies of unwanted, ambivalent or unacknowledged past and different strategies employed by the former-Yugoslav states and private actors in “rebranding” their heritage, ensuring its preservation, but re-contextualizing the narrative of the past through contemporary tourism practices. It questions the interplay between nostalgia, heritage and market, and the role of heritage in polishing the history of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in the Balkans. It argues that in post-socialist Yugoslavia, the necessity to limit correlations with former ideology and the use of the commercial brush in shaping a marketable version of the past instigated the emergence of the profit-oriented heritage practices. Building on that argument, the paper addresses these issues as “commodification” and “disneyfication” of Balkans’ ambivalent heritage, contributing to the analysis of changing forms of memorialisation and heritagization practices in Europe. It questions the process of ‘coming to terms with the past’ through marketable forms of heritage tourism, fetching the boundary between market-driven nostalgia and state-imposed heritage policies. In order to analyse plurality of ways of dealing with controversial, ambivalent and unwanted heritage of dictatorships in the Balkans, the paper considers two prominent examples of heritage commodification in Serbia and Montenegro, and the re-appropriations of those narratives for the nation branding purposes. The first one is the story of the Tito’s Blue Train, the landmark of the socialist past and the symbol of Yugoslavia which has nowadays being used for birthday parties and marriage celebrations, while the second emphasises the unusual business arrangement turning the fortress Mamula, former concentration camp through the Second World War, into a luxurious Mediterranean resort. Questioning how the ‘uneasy’ past was acknowledged and embedded into the official heritage institutions and tourism practices, study examines the changing relation towards the legacies of dictatorships, inviting us to rethink the economic models of the things past. Analysis of these processes should contribute to better understanding of the new mnemonics strategies and (converging?) ways of ‘doing’ past in Europe.

Keywords: commodification, heritage tourism, totalitarianism, Serbia, Montenegro

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Authors: Fernando Nobre Cavalcante

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In Brazil, and more recently in the city of Fortaleza, there is a new form of entrepreneurship that is focused on the information and communication technology service sector and that draws the attention of young people, investors, governments, authors and media companies: it is known as the start-up movement. Today, it is considered to be a driving force behind the creative economy. Rooted on progressive discourse, the words enterprise and innovation seduce new economic agents motivated by success stories from Silicon Valley in America along with increasing commercial activity for digital goods and services. This article assesses, from a sociological point of view, the new productive wave problematized by the light of Manuel Castells’ informational capitalism. Considering the skeptical as well as the optimistic opinions about the impact of this new entrepreneurial rearrangement, the following question is asked: How Brazilian entrepreneurs evaluate public policy incentives for startups Brazilian Federal Government? The raised hypotheses are based on employability factors as well as cultural, economical, and political matters related to innovation and technology. This study has produced a nationwide quantitative assessment with a special focus on the reality of these Ceará firms; as well as comparative qualitative interviews on Brazilian experiences lived by identified agents. This article outlines the public incentive policy of the federal government, the Start-up Brasil Program, from the perspective of these companies and provides details as to the discipline methods of the new enterprising way born in the United States. The startups are very young companies that are headed towards the economic sustainment of the productive sector services. These companies are dropping the seeds that will produce the re-enchantment of young people and bring them back to participation in political debate; they provide relief and reheats the job market; and they produce a democratization of the entrepreneurial ‘Do-It-Yourself’ culture. They capitalize the pivot of the wall street wolves and of agents being charged for new masks. There are developmental logic’s prophylaxis in the face of dreadful innovation stagnation. The lack of continuity in Brazilian governmental politics and cultural nuances related to entrepreneurship are barring the desired regional success of this ecosystem.

Keywords: creative economy, entrepreneurship, informationalism, innovation, startups, start-up brasil program

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Authors: Moufida Benmoussa

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Since the escalation of the Syrian conflict in 2011, 6.9 million Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries, and 6.7 have remained displaced in Syria. Out of the 6.9 who fled Syria, over one million have crossed the Mediterranean Sea and become refugees and asylum seekers in various European countries. As a European and a member country of the EU, the Republic of Ireland was not an exception. In response to the refugee crisis caused mainly by the Syrian displacement, Ireland established the Syrian Humanitarian Admission Programme (SHAM) in 2014 and the Irish Refugee Protection Programme (IRPP) in 2015, followed by its second phase in 2019. In light of these events, Irish print media played a significant role in covering the Irish government’s decisions, political stance, and public opinion on the debate on taking Syrian refugees into Ireland. Considering the tremendous impact of media on politics and public opinion, my research examined how The Irish Times and Irish Independent framed Syrian migration to Ireland. I adopted a qualitative framing analysis to identify the prominent framings in these two newspapers. The collection of newspaper articles focused on three periods. The first period is from the first of January 2014 to the end of December 2014. During this period, the media covered the launch of the Syrian Humanitarian Admission Programme (SHAP) and stories about the first arrival of the Syrian refugees to Ireland. The second period is the year 2015. During this year, various events gained the attention of the Irish media. These events include Ireland’s establishment of the Irish Refugee Protection Programme, the Paris attacks, and the publishing of Aylan Kurdi’s Photograph. The third period is from the first of December 2019 to the thirtieth of January 2020. In this period, the media covered the convention of Ireland with the UNHCR and the European Union to provide sanctuary to 2900 refugees in the years 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. The primary findings of my study indicate that The Irish Times and Irish Independent’s framing of Syrian migration to Ireland was various. My research findings indicate that The Irish Times and Irish Independent’s framing of Syrian migration to Ireland was varied and asymmetrical. The dominant frames used by these two newspapers are humanitarian, responsibility, contribution, burden, intruder, and threat. The former three frames positively perceive Syrian migration to Ireland and support the Irish government’s decisions to welcome more Syrian refugees. On the other hand, the last three frames perceive Syrian migration and refugees negatively and stand for the principle that Ireland should not take Syrian refugees.

Keywords: framing, Syrian migration, Ireland, newspaper

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Authors: Randall E. Osborne

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In a course on International Psychology, 8 theoretical perspectives (Critical Psychology, Liberation Psychology, Post-Modernism, Social Constructivism, Social Identity Theory, Social Reduction Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory) are used as a framework for getting students to understand the concept of and need for Globalization. One of critical psychology's main criticisms of conventional psychology is that it fails to consider or deliberately ignores the way power differences between social classes and groups can impact the mental and physical well-being of individuals or groups of people. Liberation psychology, also known as liberation social psychology or psicología social de la liberación, is an approach to psychological science that aims to understand the psychology of oppressed and impoverished communities by addressing the oppressive sociopolitical structure in which they exist. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. It stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. Lev Vygotsky argued that all cognitive functions originate in, and must therefore be explained as products of social interactions and that learning was not simply the assimilation and accommodation of new knowledge by learners. Social Identity Theory discusses the implications of social identity for human interactions with and assumptions about other people. Social Identification Theory suggests people: (1) categorize—people find it helpful (humans might be perceived as having a need) to place people and objects into categories, (2) identify—people align themselves with groups and gain identity and self-esteem from it, and (3) compare—people compare self to others. Social reductionism argues that all behavior and experiences can be explained simply by the affect of groups on the individual. Symbolic interaction theory focuses attention on the way that people interact through symbols: words, gestures, rules, and roles. Meaning evolves from human their interactions in their environment and with people. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of human learning describes learning as a social process and the origination of human intelligence in society or culture. The major theme of Vygotsky’s theoretical framework is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. This presentation will discuss how these theoretical perspectives are incorporated into a course on International Psychology, a course on the Politics of Hate, and a course on the Psychology of Prejudice, Discrimination and Hate to promote student thinking in a more ‘global’ manner.

Keywords: globalization, international psychology, society and culture, teaching interculturally

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Authors: Erin Hea-Jin Kim

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This study aims to investigate scholarly communication patterns in Korean studies, which focuses on all aspects of Korea, including history, culture, literature, politics, society, economics, religion, and so on. It is called ‘national study or home study’ as the subject of the study is itself, whereas it is called ‘area study’ as the subject of the study is others, i.e., outside of Korea. Understanding of the structure of scholarly communication in Korean studies is important since the motivations, procedures, results, or outcomes of individual studies may be affected by the cooperative relationships that appear in the communication structure. To this end, we collected 1,798 articles with the (author or index) keyword ‘Korean’ published in 2018 from the Scopus database and extracted the institution and country of the authors using a text mining technique. A total of 96 countries, including South Korea, was identified. Then we constructed a co-authorship network based on the countries identified. The indicators of social network analysis (SNA), co-occurrences, and cluster analysis were used to measure the activity and connectivity of participation in collaboration in Korean studies. As a result, the highest frequency of collaboration appears in the following order: S. Korea with the United States (603), S. Korea with Japan (146), S. Korea with China (131), S. Korea with the United Kingdom (83), and China with the United States (65). This means that the most active participants are S. Korea as well as the USA. The highest rank in the role of mediator measured by betweenness centrality appears in the following order: United States (0.165), United Kingdom (0.045), China (0.043), Japan (0.037), Australia (0.026), and South Africa (0.023). These results show that these countries contribute to connecting in Korean studies. We found two major communities among the co-authorship network. Asian countries and America belong to the same community, and the United Kingdom and European countries belong to the other community. Korean studies have a long history, and the study has emerged since Japanese colonization. However, Korean studies have never been investigated by digital content analysis. The contributions of this study are an analysis of co-authorship in Korean studies with a global perspective based on digital content, which has not attempted so far to our knowledge, and to suggest ideas on how to analyze the humanities disciplines such as history, literature, or Korean studies by text mining. The limitation of this study is that the scholarly data we collected did not cover all domestic journals because we only gathered scholarly data from Scopus. There are thousands of domestic journals not indexed in Scopus that we can consider in terms of national studies, but are not possible to collect.

Keywords: co-authorship network, Korean studies, Koreanology, scholarly communication

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Authors: Elizabeth Owusu Asiamah

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The Ghanaian news media play a crucial role in shaping people's thinking patterns through the nature of the coverage they give to issues, events and personalities. Since the media do not work in a vacuum but within a broader spectrum, which is society, whatever stories they cover and the nature of frames used to narrate such stories go a long way to influence how citizens perceive issues in the country. Consequently, the National Media Commission and the National Communications Authority were instituted to monitor and direct the activities of the media to ensure professionalism that prioritizes society's interest over commercial interest. As the two media regulators go about their routine task of monitoring the operations of the media, they receive coverage from various media outlets (newspapers, radio, television and online). Some people believe that the kind of approach the regulators adopt depends on the nature of coverage the media give them in their reportage. This situation demands an investigation into how the media, regulated by these regulatory bodies, are representing the regulators in the public's eye and the issues arising from such coverage. Extant literature indicates that studies on media framing have centered on politics, environmental issues, public health issues, conflict and wars, etc. However, there appear to be no studies on media framing of media regulators, especially in the Ghanaian context. Since online newspapers have assumed more mainstream positions in the Ghanaian media and have attracted more audiences in recent times, this study investigates the nature of coverage given to media regulators by four purposively sampled online newspapers in Ghana. 96 news articles are extracted from the websites of the Daily Graphic, Ghanaian Times, Daily Guide and Chronicle newspapers within a five-year period to identify the prominence given to stories about the two media regulators and the frames used to narrate stories about them. Data collected are thematically analyzed through the lens of agenda-setting and media-framing theories. The findings of the study revealed that the two regulators were not given much coverage by way of frequency; however, much prominence was given to them in terms of enhancements such as images. The study further disclosed that most of the news articles framed the regulators as weak and incompetent, which is likely to affect how the public also views the regulators. The study concludes that since frames around the supportive nature of the regulators to issues of the media were not hammered by the online newspapers, the public will not perceive the regulators as playing their roles effectively. Thus, a need for more positive frames to be used to narrate stories about the National Media Commission and the National Communication Authority to promote a cordial relationship between the two institutions and a good image to the public.

Keywords: agenda setting, media framing, media regulators, online newspapers

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Authors: Oya Isik, Filiz Yurtal, Kubilay Vursavus, Muge K. Davran, Metehan Celik, Munire Akgul, Olcay Karacan

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In this study, to discuss the causes and problems of women by bringing together different disciplines engaged in women's studies were aimed. Also, to solve these problems, to share information and experiences in different disciplines about women, and to reach the task areas and decision mechanisms in practice were other objectives. For this purpose, proceedings presented at the Second Congress of Women's Studies held in Adana, Turkey, on 28-30 November 2018 was evaluated. The document analysis model, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the evaluation of the congress proceedings. A total of 86 papers were presented in the congress and the topic distributions of the papers were determined. At the evaluation stage, the papers were classified according to their subjects and descriptive analyses were made on the papers. According to the analysis results of the papers presented in the congress, 64 % of the total 86 papers presented in the Congress were review-based and 36 % were research-based studies. When the distribution of these reports was examined based on subject, the biggest share with the rate of 34.9% (13 reviews and 17 research-based papers) has been studied on women's issues through sociology, psychology and philosophy. This was followed by the economy, employment, organization, and non-governmental organizations with 20.9% (9 reviews and nine research-based papers), arts and literature with 17.4% (15 reviews based papers) and law with 12.8% (11 reviews based papers). The lowest share of the congress was presented in politics with one review based paper (1.2%), health with two research-based paper (2.3%), history with two reviews based papers (2.3%), religion with two reviews and one research-based papers (3.5%) and media-communication with two compilations and two researches based papers (4.7%). In the papers categorized under main headings, women were examined in terms of gender and gender roles. According to the results, it was determined that discrimination against women continued, changes in-laws were not put into practice sufficiently, education and economic independence levels of women were insufficient, and violence against women continued increasingly. To eliminate all these problems and to make the society conscious, it was decided that scientific studies should be supported. Furthermore, support policies should be realized jointly for women and men to make women visible in public life, tolerance or mitigation should not be put forward for any reason or in any group in cases of harassment and assault against women. However, it has been determined that women in Turkey should be in a better position in the social, cultural, psychological, economic and educational areas, and future studies should be carried out to improve women's rights and to create a positive perspective.

Keywords: gender, gender roles, sociology, psychology and philosophy, women studies

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Authors: M. Joris, O. Agirdag

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For over two decades, calls for citizenship education (CE) have been rising to the top of educational policy agendas in Europe. The main motive for the current treatment of CE as a key topic is a sense of crisis: social and political threats that go beyond the reach of nations and require action at the international and European level. On the one hand, this context has triggered abundant attention to the promotion of citizenship through education. On the other hand, the ubiquity of citizenship and education in policy language is paired with a self-evident manner of using the concepts: the more we call for citizenship in and through education, the less the concepts seem to be made explicit or be defined. Research and reflection on the normativity of the concepts of citizenship and CE in Europe are scarce. Departing from the idea that policies are always normative, this study, therefore, investigates the normativity of the current concepts of citizenship and education, in ’key’ European CE policy texts. The study consists of a content analysis of these texts, based on a normative framework developed around the different dimensions of citizenship as status, identity, virtues and agency. The framework also describes the purposes of education and its learning processes, content and practices, based on the assumption that good education always includes, next to qualification and socialisation, a purpose of emancipation: of helping young people become autonomous and independent subjects. The analysis shows how contemporary European citizenship is conceptualised around the dimension of competences. This focus on competences is also visible in the normative framing of education and its relationship to citizenship in the texts: CE should help young people learn how to become good citizens by acquiring a toolkit of competences, consisting of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that can be predetermined, measured and evaluated. This ideal of citizenship-as-competence entails a focus on the educational purposes of socialisation and qualification. Current policy texts thus seem to leave out the educational purpose of emancipating young people, allowing them to take on citizenship as something to which they can determine their own relation and position. It is, however, this purpose of CE that seems increasingly important in our current context. Young people are stepping out of school and onto the streets by the thousands in Belgium and throughout Europe, protesting for more and better environmental policies. They are making use of existing modes of citizenship, exactly to indicate to policymakers how these are falling short and are claiming their right and entitlement to a future that established practices of politics are putting at risk. The importance of citizenship education might then lie, now more than ever, not in the fact that it would prepare young people for competent citizenship, but in offering them a possibility, an emancipatory experience of being able to do something new. It seems that this is what we might want to expect from the school if we want it to educate our truly future citizens.

Keywords: citizenship education, normativity, policy, purposes of education

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Authors: Cetin Balanuye

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The present study aims to accomplish two tasks: First, it critically reinterprets the actual relationship between democracy and the modern state in order to show that it is responsible for most of our current political problems and dilemmas. Second, it is argued that this relationship can be reimagined for better, and Spinozistic notions such as ‘conatus’, ‘power’ and ‘virtue’ are crucial in this pursuit. The significance of the present study lies in several interrelated observations: The world has never been a more heterogeneous place than today. People from different religious, cultural and historical backgrounds do equally have 'good reasons' to hold that their world views are the best ones. We have almost no authority to be respected equally by all these different world views. We no longer have gods at once we had in our ancient times. We have three big monotheistic religions, yet the God of which is significantly different from each other. The worse is that the believers of these religions do not seem eager to perform a duet, but rather tend to fight a duel with each other. Thanks to post-modernism, neither reason nor science is any longer seen as universally value-neutral guide to be employed in our search for a common ground. In sum, the question 'how should I live?' has never generated this much diversity before in terms of answers and the answers have never been this much away from a fairly objective evaluation. Our so-called liberal democracies are supposed to perform against this heterogenous, antagonistic and self-sustained web of discursive background. It is argued that our conception of 'State' with a weak emphasis on democracy is not a solution, if not itself the source of this topsy-turvy. Weak emphasis on democracy should be understood here as a kind of liberal democracy which operates in a partisan State, one which takes sides among rivals either for this or against that world view. This conception of State rests on a misleading understanding of the concept of power, and it is argued that it can only be corrected by means of a Spinoza-informed ontology of politics. The role of State in such an ontology is no longer a partisanship of any kind, nor is it representative of all-encompassing authority to favor any world view. State in this Spinozistic ontology equally encourages world views and their discursive practices to let them increase the power of acting and have more power to affect rules and regulations. World views can enhance every medium -in the sense of nonviolence ethology- to increase their power of acting. The more active a world view is, the more powerful and the more virtuous it is in terms of its effective power on the State. Though Spinoza has provided us with a limited guideline to understand what kind of democracy, he actually had in his mind, his ontology developed in Ethics is rich enough to imagine and inspire a better democratic practice to help us sustain the modern State in our extremely pluralistic contemporary societies.

Keywords: democracy, Islam, power, Spinoza

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Authors: Raya Sulaiman

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Critical discourse analysis investigates how discourse is used to abuse power relationships. Political debates constitute discourses which mirror aspects of ideologies. The Arab world has been one of the most unsettled zones in the world and has dominated global politics due to the Arab revolutions which started in 2010. This study aimed at uncovering the ideological intentions in the formulation and circulation of hegemonic political ideology in the TV political debates of the 2011 to 2012 Yemen revolution, how ideology was used as a tool of hegemony. The study specifically examined the ideologies associated with the use of protesters as a social actor. Data of the study consisted of four debates (17350 words) from four live debate programs: The Opposite Direction, In Depth, Behind the News and the Revolution Talk that were staged at Al Jazeera TV channel between 2011 and 2012. Data was readily transcribed by Al Jazeera online. Al Jazeera was selected for the study because it is the most popular TV network in the Arab world and has a strong presence, especially during the Arab revolutions. Al Jazeera has also been accused of inciting protests across the Arab region. Two debate sites were identified in the data: government and anti-government. The government side represented the president Ali Abdullah Saleh and his regime while the anti-government side represented the gathering squares who demanded the president to ‘step down’. The study analysed verbal discourse aspects of the debates using critical discourse analysis: aspects from the Social Actor Network model of van Leeuwen. This framework provides a step-by-step analysis model, and analyses discourse from specific grammatical processes into broader semantic issues. It also provides representative findings since it considers discourse as representative and reconstructed in social practice. Study findings indicated that Al Jazeera and the anti-government had similarities in terms of the ideological intentions related to the protesters. Al Jazeera victimized and incited the protesters which were similar to the anti-government. Al Jazeera used assimilation, nominalization, and active role allocation as the linguistic aspects in order to reach its ideological intentions related to the protesters. Government speakers did not share the same ideological intentions with Al Jazeera. Study findings indicated that Al Jazeera had excluded the government from its debates causing a violation to its slogan, the opinion, and the other opinion. This study implies the powerful role of discourse in shaping ideological media intentions and influencing the media audience.

Keywords: Al Jazeera network, critical discourse analysis, ideology, Yemeni revolution

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Authors: Sunaina Sunaina

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The emergence of Thailand as a modern nation was amalgamation of several minority groups. Eventually, the nation tried to mitigate these diversities in the name of nationalism in the backdrop of colonial powers presence in neighboring nations. However, the continued imposition of modern nation building processes (which is a western concept) in the post-colonial era deepen the feelings of alienation among the minority groups and leads to separatist conflicts. It is significant that whatever form these conflicts take, will impact the security of nation as well as the region of Southeast Asia. This paper tries to explore the possible factors behind the state policies adopted by the government of Thailand to manage the insurgency in Southern provinces in the south. The protracted insurgency in the South has historical roots as Pattani kingdom had glorious period whether it was trade or commerce or education and its assimilation was never accepted by the leaders of these areas. But after assimilation of southern provinces in the state, it has been the state policy as an important factor in promoting or mitigating the insurgency. Initial protests from the elite class of southern provinces inflated into a more organized and violent uprising after Second World War. It was only the decade of 1990s that a relative peace could prevail for some time. The violence reemerged in 2004 with more intensity and till today this area is suffering with violence. Period of different Prime Ministers dealt this insurgency in different ways sometimes very hard line approach had been adopted especially under Primeminstership of Thaksin Shinawatra. Recently, the peace talks which were started during the period of Yinglunck Shinawatra and were carried forward by Junta government also halted. And again, the region stays in a very volatile state. Violence in these provinces not only questions the capability of government to provide political solution to the problem, but also emerges as a major threat to the internal security of the state. The current era where global terrorism is spreading fast, such vulnerable areas may work as a new ground for its proliferation in Southeast Asia. The paper attempts to understand how Thailand’s historical experience of security determines a different approach to national unity which limits the prospects for autonomy in the South. In conjunction with this experience it is nature of national politics and leadership that influences the nature of policies on the ground in Southern Thailand. The paper also tries to bring out conflict between state sovereignty and self-determination as demanded by many in the southern provinces.

Keywords: insurgency, southern Thailand, security, nation building

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Authors: Chineduum Okpala

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Nigeria, since her independence, has been engulfed in financial crimes of different forms. From embezzlement and conversion of public funds by public servants to stealing, contract inflation, and money laundering. Money laundering in Nigeria, particularly by political exposed persons, has been an issue of concern since independence. Corruption has been endemic, and Nigeria needs to integrate pro-active measures to show to the international community that it is ready to move against this vice. This paper discusses the negative effect of corruption and its effect on prosecutorial discretion. It also takes cognisance of the policy and aims of the anti-money laundering (AML) policy as enacted in Nigeria. It also takes as valid the assumption that the effective application of the rule of law will improve the efficacy of the Nigerian regime. In this regard, the perspective is internal to the Nigerian regime and its internal policy discourse which also reflect its policy discourse at international level. This paper takes notice of the typology of money laundering (ML) offences that most affect Nigeria, which hinges on corruption and abuse of office by a specific type of person, politically exposed persons (PEP). This typology of money laundering offence appears to be the most prevalent in developing nations like Nigeria. The application of essential principles of law provides an opportunity for the internalisation of the rule of law in the anti-money laundering regime in Nigeria, which could aid the successful prosecution of politically exposed persons on money laundering offences. The rule of law and how well the Nigerian legal system manages to deal with the interface between high level politics and the criminal justice system in Nigeria cannot be understood from internal sources but must be developed as a genuine but critical account informed by perspectives external to the Nigerian regime. If the efficacy of the regime is to be assessed in view of notorious failures of the regime, an external assessment is needed. Hence the paper discusses the need to integrate the essential principles of law in the application of prosecutorial discretion in the anti-money laundering regime in Nigeria, particularly with politically exposed persons. The paper highlights jurisdiction where prosecutorial discretion is integrated into the anti-money laundering regime in accordance to the rule of law which forms a basis for comparative analysis of the success of the anti-money laundering regime in Nigeria. This paper discusses why the application of prosecutorial discretion should not be used as a tool to extricate or avail the rich and powerful in the society from justice. The paper aims to argue that the successful prosecution of politically exposed persons, will raise the confidence of the citizens and the international community in the anti-money laundering regime in Nigeria.

Keywords: money laundering, politically exposed persons, corruption, Nigeria

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Authors: Ioannis Souris

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In this paper, we would like to present how we taught German through playwriting and analyze the usefulness of this method for teaching languages and cultivating a sense of political agency in students and teachers alike. Last academic year, we worked at the German Saturday School in Greenwich, London. This school offers Saturday German lessons to children whose parents are German, living in London. The lessons are two hours long, and the children’s level of German varies according to how often or how much German is spoken at home or how often the families visit Germany (as well as other factors which will be discussed in more detail in the paper). The directors of the school provide teachers with learning material and course books, but they strongly encourage individual input on lesson structure and methods of teaching German. The class we taught consisted of six eight-to-nine-year-olds. Midway into the academic year, we ran out of teaching material, and we, therefore, decided to write a play. In the paper, we would like to explore the process we followed in creating or writing this play and how this encouraged the children to collaborate and exercise their skills in writing, storytelling, speaking, and opinion-sharing. We want to examine the impact this project had on the children who wrote and performed the play, the wider community of the Saturday school, and the development of our language teaching practice. We found, for instance, that some students, who were quiet or shy, became very open and outspoken in the process of writing and performing the play. They took the initiative and led the process, putting us, their teachers, in the role of simple observers or facilitators. When we showed the play in front of the school, the other children and teachers, as audience members, also became part of the process as they commented on the plot, language, and characters and gave feedback on further development. In the paper, we will discuss how this teaching project fits into recent developments in the research of creativity and the teaching of languages and how engagement with creative approaches to teaching has the potential to question and subvert traditional notions of ‘lesson’, ‘teacher’, and ‘student’. From the moment a questioning of norms takes place, we inadvertently raise questions about politics, agency, and resistance. We will conclude the paper with a definition of what we mean by ‘political agency’ within the context of our teaching project and education, in general, and why inspiring creativity and imagination within teaching can be considered a political act. Finally, our aim in this paper will be to propose the possibility of analyzing teaching languages through creativity and political agency theories.

Keywords: innovation in language teaching and learning, language acquisition and learning, language curriculum development, language education

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Authors: Wisdom Robert Duruji, Moses Kanayochukwu Ifoh, Efeoghene Edward Esiemunobo

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This study examines the impact of natural and artificial disasters, lackadaisical and semantic approach in risk management, and mitigation implication for sustainable development goals in Nigeria, from 2009 to 2022. The study utilizes a range of research methods to achieve its objectives. These include literature review, website knowledge, Google search, news media information, academic journals, field-work and on-site observations. These diverse methods allow for a comprehensive analysis on the impact and the implications being study. The study finds that paradigm shift from remediating seismic, flooding, environmental pollution and degradation natural disasters by Nigeria Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), to political and charity organization; has plunged risk reduction strategies to embezzling opportunities. However, this lackadaisical and semantic approach in natural disaster mitigation, invariably replicates artificial disasters in Nigeria through: Boko Haram terrorist organization, Fulani herdsmen and farmers conflicts, political violence, kidnapping for ransom, ethnic conflicts, Religious dichotomy, insurgency, secession protagonists, unknown-gun-men, and banditry. This study also, finds that some Africans still engage in self-imposed slavery through human trafficking, by nefariously stow-away to Europe; through Libya, Sahara desert and Mediterranean sea; in search for job opportunities, due to ineptitude in governance by their leaders; a perilous journey that enhanced artificial disasters in Nigeria. That artificial disaster fatality in Nigeria increased from about 5,655 in 2009 to 114,318 in 2018; and to 157,643 in 2022. However, financial and material loss of about $9.29 billion was incurred in Nigeria due to natural disaster, while about $70.59 billion was accrued due to artificial disaster; from 2009 to 2018. Although disaster risk mitigation and politics can synergistically support sustainable development goals; however, they are different entities, and need for distinct separations in Nigeria, as in reality and perception. This study concluded that referendum should be conducted in Nigeria, to ascertain its current status as a nation. Therefore it is recommended that Nigerian governments should refine its naturally endowed crude oil locally; to end fuel subsidy scam, corruption and poverty in Nigeria!

Keywords: corruption, crude oil, environmental risk analysis, Nigeria, referendum, terrorism

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Authors: Radwa Saad

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The Sahara is normatively treated as a barrier separating “two Africas"; one to the North with closer affinity to the Arab world, and one to the South that encompasses a diverse range of racial, ethnic and religious groups, commonly referred to as "Sub-Saharan Africa". This dichotomy however was challenged by many anticolonial leaders and intellectuals seeking to advance counter-hegemonic narratives that treat the Sahara as a bridge facilitating a long history of exchange, collaboration, and fusion between different civilizations on the continent. This paper reexamines the discourses governing the geographic distinction between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that demarcating the African continent along the lines of the Sahara is part-and-parcel of a Euro-centric spatial imaginary that has served to enshrine a racialized global hierarchy of power. By drawing on Edward Said’s concept of ‘imagined geography’ and Charles Mill’s notion of “the racial contract”, it demonstrates how spatial boundaries often coincide with racial epistemologies to reinforce certain geopolitical imaginaries, whilst silencing others. It further draws on the works of two notable post-colonial figures - Gamal Abdel Nasser and Leopold Senghor - to explore alternative spatial imaginaries while highlighting some of the tensions embedded in advancing a trans-Saharan political project. Firstly, it deconstructs some of the normative claims used to justify the distinction between North and “sub-Saharan” Africa across political, literary and disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, it draws parallels between Said’s and Mills’ work to demonstrate how geographical boundaries and demarcations have been constructed to create racialized subjects and reinforce a hierarchy of color that favors European standpoints and epistemologies. Third, it draw on Leopard Senghor’s The Foundations of Africanité and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s The Philosophy of the Egyptian Revolution to examine some of the competing strands of unity that emerged out of the Saharan discourse. In these texts, one can identify a number of convergences and divergences in how post-colonial African elites attempts to reclaim and rearticulate the function of the Sahara along different epistemic, political and cultural premises. It concludes with reflections on some of the policy challenges that emerge from reinforcing the Saharan divide, particularly in the realm of peace and security.

Keywords: regional integration, politics of knowledge production, arab-african relations, african solutions to african problems

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Authors: Anu Krishna

Abstract:

Cardamom Hills geographically falls into the Western Ghat region in the state of Kerala (India). The fame of these hills dates back to antiquity as the abode of various indigenous communities and treasure house of spices like cardamom. With the colonial conquest over the region, the evergreen forests got converted into zones of mono-cropping with commercial crops such as coffee, tea, cardamom etc. on plantation basis; a process which has been further accentuated with the migration of settlers during the post-independent times. Curiously, when Cardamom Hills are better known today as the plantation belt of the country or as one of the most fostering grounds of agrarian capitalism producing the lion share of Indian cardamom, the indigenous communities of the place such as the Mannans got alienated of their ancestral lands, became inter-generational proletariats and got reduced into ‘segmented spaces’ called the settlements. While dispossession of land for plantations has dislocated the economic life of the Mannans, the migration of the settlers has resulted into a complete social, cultural, political and demographic dominion over them. This has not only relegated their existential relations, history, culture and association with the place but also condensed them as the ‘Other’ in their own territories. Therefore inquisitively, violation of rights of the communities like Mannans, encroachment of their lands, negation towards their very existence and distortion of their history gets defined as the ‘Manifest Destiny’ of the people and place whereby its inevitability gets manufactured. This paper is an attempt to elicit the ways in which the formation of Mannan settlements are interconnected to the historical reality and contemporary opulence of the plantation industry in the place. The arguments put forth by this study is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in various Mannan settlements in the cardamom hills. The study basically dwells on to the methodological premises of multi-sited ethnography wherein information was gathered from different sites such as settlements, plantations and other interactive spaces wherein the Mannans from the settlements engages in socio-economic, cultural and political relations. Such an attempt was made to understand in depth the associations and interactions that people in the settlements have among themselves and others. The study equally uses the method of oral history to understand the alternative history, the socio-cultural and economic life of the people before the importation of plantations to the place. The paper gauges into the ways in which settlements imprisons generations of Mannans into plantation work and acts as moulds for subservient, hardworking plantation labourers.

Keywords: Cardamom Hills, plantations, labourers, Mannans, segmented spaces, settlements

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