Search results for: metaphor; corpus; ideology; conflict

Authors: Mirad Böhm, Diede De Kok

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It goes without saying that for many NGOs a high level of safety and security are crucial issues, which often necessitates the support of military personnel to varying degrees. The relationship between military and NGO personnel is usually a difficult one and while there has been progress, clashes naturally still occur owing to different interpretations of mission objectives amongst many other challenges. NGOs tend to view safety and security as necessary steps towards their goal instead of fundamental pillars of their core ‘business’. The military perspective, however, considers them primary objectives; thus, frequently creating a different vision of how joint operations should be conducted. This paper will argue that internalizing safety and security into the NGO organizational culture is compelling in order to ensure a more effective cooperation with military partners and, ultimately, to achieve their goals. This can be accomplished through a change in perception of safety and security concepts as a fixed and major point on the everyday agenda. Nowadays, there are several training programmes on offer addressing such issues but they primarily focus on the individual level. True internalization of these concepts should reach further by encompassing a wide range of NGO activities, beginning with daily proceedings in office facilities far from conflict zones including logistical and administrative tasks such as budgeting, and leading all the way to actual and potentially hazardous missions in the field. In order to effectuate this change, a tool is required to help NGOs realize, firstly, how they perceive and define safety and security, and secondly, how they can adjust this perception to their benefit. The ‘safety culture ladder’ is a concept that suggests what organizations can and should do to advance their safety. While usually applied to private industrial scenarios, this work will present the concept as a useful instrument to visualize and facilitate the internalization process NGOs ought to go through. The ‘ladder’ allows them to become more aware of the level of their safety and security measures, and moreover, cautions them to take these measures proactively rather than reactively. This in turn will contribute to a rapprochement between military and NGO priority setting in regard to what constitutes a safe working environment.

Keywords: NGO-military cooperation, organisational culture, safety and security awareness, safety culture ladder

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Authors: Melanie Kerschner

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Language is our main means of social interaction. News journalism, especially opinion discourse, holds a powerful position in this context. Editorials can be regarded as encounters of different, partially contradictory relationships between discourse participants constructed through the editorial voice. Their primary goal is to shape public opinion by commenting on events already addressed by other journalistic genres in the given newspaper. In doing so, the author tries to establish a consensus over the negotiated matter (i.e. the news event) with the reader. At the same time, he/she claims authority over the “correct” description and evaluation of an event. Yet, how can the relationship and the interaction between the discourse participants, i.e. the journalist, the reader and the news actors represented in the editorial, be best visualized and studied from a cross-cultural perspective? The present research project attempts to give insights into the role of (media) culture in British, Italian and German editorials. For this purpose the presenter will propose a basic framework: the so called “pyramid of discourse participants”, comprising the author, the reader, two types of news actors and the semantic macro-structure (as meta-level of analysis). Based on this framework, the following questions will be addressed: • Which strategies does the author employ to persuade the reader and to prompt him to give his opinion (in the comment section)? • In which ways (and with which linguistic tools) is editorial opinion expressed? • Does the author use adjectives, adverbials and modal verbs to evaluate news actors, their actions and the current state of affairs or does he/she prefer nominal labels? • Which influence do language choice and the related media culture have on the representation of news events in editorials? • In how far does the social context of a given media culture influence the amount of criticism and the way it is mediated so that it is still culturally-acceptable? The following culture-contrastive study shall examine 45 editorials (i.e. 15 per media culture) from six national quality papers that are similar in distribution, importance and the kind of envisaged readership to make valuable conclusions about culturally-motivated similarities and differences in the coverage and assessment of news events. The thematic orientation of the editorials will be the NSA scandal and the reactions of various countries, as this topic was and still is relevant to each of the three media cultures. Starting out from the “pyramid of discourse participants” as underlying framework, eight different criteria will be assigned to the individual discourse participants in the micro-analysis of the editorials. For the purpose of illustration, a single criterion, referring to the salience of authorial opinion, will be selected to demonstrate how the pyramid of discourse participants can be applied as a basis for empirical analysis. Extracts from the corpus shall furthermore enhance the understanding.

Keywords: Micro-analysis of editorials, culture-contrastive research, media culture, interaction between discourse participants, evaluation

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Authors: Ishrat Zakia Sultana

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The solution to the Rohingya crisis has become complicated than it was anticipated. Because of consistent persecution, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against the Rohingya in Burma, four major influxes of the Rohingya people took place to the neighboring country Bangladesh. After the latest influx of October 2016 and August 2017, the total number of Rohingya in Bangladesh stands somewhere between 900,000 to over one million, placing Bangladesh much ahead with the number of refugees compared to Dadaab and Kakuma in Kenya, Bidibidi in Uganda, and Zaatari in Jordan. While Bangladesh received recognition and appreciation for receiving such a large number of Rohingya, eventually finding a solution to the Rohingya crisis has become a serious problem. The host country and the Rohingya themselves long for repatriation, the most desired solution to the crisis. But going back to their own country is now almost an impossible matter due to the unwillingness of the Myanmar government. The other two options to the solution to Rohingya crisis – reintegration in the host country and third country resettlement – have drawn little attention until now. On the one hand, the geopolitical factors have been making the Rohingya crisis complex. On the other, the war and conflict between Russia-Ukraine and Palestine-Israel have lessening the importance of the Rohingya issue and been diverting the world’s attention from the Rohingya crisis. Clearly, without the support of international community, Bangladesh finds no sustainable way to repatriate 1.1 million Rohingya. Yet, possibilities of a third country resettlement remain unexplored. In the past few years, some countries have expressed interest in accepting the Rohingya as part of third country resettlement but the number they wanted to take is like a drop in the ocean. This paper examines the roadblocks for third country resettlement of the Rohingya. It aims to look at the underlying reasons for which international community is less interested in accepting the Rohingya as refugees. Is it the racial and religious identity of the Rohingya that are considered problematic to the resettlement process? In what ways geopolitical complexities affecting the resettlement issue? How do the Rohingya view third country resettlement? This paper looks for the answers to these questions. The paper is based on qualitative study conducted from 2016-2018 and 2021-2023 in Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The camp management authority, the Rohingya themselves, and the NGOs working in the camp participated in the study.

Keywords: rohingya, refugee, resettlement, bangladesh

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Authors: Stefanie M. Vanneste, Stijn Goeminne

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This paper studies the effect of political characteristics of 308 Flemish municipalities on their budget balance in the period 1995-2011. All local governments experience the same economic and financial setting, however some governments have high budget balances, while others have low budget balances. The aim of this paper is to explain the differences in municipal budget balances by a number of economic, socio-demographic and political variables. The economic and socio-demographic variables will be used as control variables, while the focus of this paper will be on the political variables. We test four hypotheses resulting from the literature, namely (i) the partisan hypothesis tests if left wing governments have lower budget balances, (ii) the fragmentation hypothesis stating that more fragmented governments have lower budget balances, (iii) the hypothesis regarding the power of the government, higher powered governments would resolve in higher budget balances, and (iv) the opportunistic budget cycle to test whether politicians manipulate the economic situation before elections in order to maximize their reelection possibilities and therefore have lower budget balances before elections. The contributions of our paper to the existing literature are multiple. First, we use the whole array of political variables and not just a selection of them. Second, we are dealing with a homogeneous database with the same budget and election rules, making it easier to focus on the political factors without having to control for the impact of differences in the political systems. Third, our research extends the existing literature on Flemish municipalities as this is the first dynamic research on local budget balances. We use a dynamic panel data model. Because of the two lagged dependent variables as explanatory variables, we employ the system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) estimator. This is the best possible estimator as we are dealing with political panel data that is rather persistent. Our empirical results show that the effect of the ideological position and the power of the coalition are of less importance to explain the budget balance. The political fragmentation of the government on the other hand has a negative and significant effect on the budget balance. The more parties in a coalition the worse the budget balance is ceteris paribus. Our results also provide evidence of an opportunistic budget cycle, the budget balances are lower in pre-election years relative to the other years to try and increase the incumbents reelection possibilities. An additional finding is that the incremental effect of the budget balance is very important and should not be ignored like is being done in a lot of empirical research. The coefficients of the lagged dependent variables are always positive and very significant. This proves that the budget balance is subject to incrementalism. It is not possible to change the entire policy from one year to another so the actions taken in recent past years still have an impact on the current budget balance. Only a relatively small amount of research concerning the budget balance takes this considerable incremental effect into account. Our findings survive several robustness checks.

Keywords: budget balance, fragmentation, ideology, incrementalism, municipalities, opportunistic budget cycle, panel data, political characteristics, power, system GMM

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Authors: Elen Gasparyan, Naira Hakobyan

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One of the leading factors determining the effectiveness of work in a modern organization is the motivation of its employees. In the scientific psychological literature, this phenomenon is understood mainly as constructive forms of motivation and the search for ways to increase it. At the same time, the motivation of employees can sometimes lead to a decrease in the productivity of the organization, i.e., destructive motivation is usually not considered from the point of view of various motivational theories. This article provides an analysis of various forms of destructive motivation of employees. These forms include formalism in labor behavior, inadequate assessment of the work done, and an imbalance of personal and organizational interests. The destructive motivation of personnel has certain negative consequences both for the employees themselves and for the entire organization - it leads to a decrease in the rate of production and the quality of products or services, increased conflict in the behavior of employees, etc. Currently, there is an increase in scientific interest in the study of destructive motivation. The subject of psychological research is not only modern socio-psychological processes but also the achievements of scientific thought in the field of theories of motivation and management. This article examines the theoretical approaches of J. S. Adams and Porter-Lawler, provides an analysis of theoretical concepts, and emphasizes the main characteristics of the destructiveness of motivation. Destructive work motivation is presented at the macro, meso, and micro levels. These levels express various directions of development of motivation stimuli, such as social, organizational, and personal ones. At the macro level, the most important characteristics of destructive motivation are the high-income gap between employers and employees, а high degree of unemployment, weak social protection of workers, non-compliance by employers with labor legislation, and emergencies. At the organizational level, the main characteristics are decreasing the diversity of work and insufficient work conditions. At the personal level, the main characteristic of destructive motivation is a discrepancy between personal and organizational interests. A comparative analysis of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of motivation makes it possible to identify not only the main characteristics of destructive motivation but also to determine the contours of psychological counseling to reduce destructiveness in the behavior of employees.

Keywords: destructive, motivation, organization, behavior

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Authors: Nourah Almulhim

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This paper takes a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to investigate discourse and ideology in political blogs, focusing in particular on the Conservative Home blog from the UK’s current governing party. The Conservative party member’s discourse strategies as the blogger, alongside the discourse used by members of the public who reply to the blog in the below-the-lines comments, will be examined. The blog discourse reflects the writer's political identity and authorial voice. The analysis of the below-the-lines comments enables members of the public to engage in creating adversative positions, introducing different language users who bring their own individual and collective identities. These language users can play the role of news reporters, political analysts, protesters or supporters of a specific agenda and current socio-political topics or events. This study takes a qualitative approach to analyze the discriminatory context towards Islam/Muslims in ' The Conservative Home' blog. A cognitive approach is adopted and an analysis of dominant discourses in the blog text and the below-the-line comments is used. The focus of the study is, firstly, on the construction of self/ collective national identity in comparison to Muslim identity, highlighting the in-group and out-group construction. Second, the type of attitudes, whether feelings or judgments, related to these social actors as they are explicated to draw on the social values. Third, the role of discursive strategies in justifying and legitimizing those Islamophobic discriminatory practices. Therefore, the analysis is based on the systematic analysis of social actors drawing on actors, actions, and arguments to explicate identity construction and its development in the different discourses. A socio-semantic categorization of social actors is implemented to draw on the discursive strategies in addition to using literature to understand these strategies. An appraisal analysis is further used to classify attitudes and elaborate on core values in both genres. Finally, the grammar of othering is applied to explain how discriminatory dichotomies of 'Us' Vs. ''Them' actions are carried in discourse. Some of the key findings of the analysis can be summarized in two main points. First, the discursive practice used to represent Muslims/Islam as different from ‘Us’ are different in both genres as the blogger uses a covert voice while the commenters generally use an overt voice. This is to say that the blogger uses a mitigated strategy to represent the Muslim identity, for example, using the noun phrase ‘British Muslim’ but then representing them as ‘radical’ and ‘terrorists'. Contrary to this is in below the lines comments, where a direct strategy with an active declarative voice is used to negatively represent the Muslim identity as ‘oppressors’ and ‘terrorists’ with no inclusion of the noun phrase ‘British Muslims’. Second, the negotiation of the ‘British’ identity and values, such as culture and democracy, are prominent in the comment section as being unique and under threat by Muslims, while in the article, these standpoints are not represented.

Keywords: xenophobia, blogs, identity, critical discourse analysis

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Authors: Victoria C. Valdebenito

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Located within the context of accelerating globalization in the 21^st-century knowledge society, this paper focuses on one selected university in Chile at which radical curriculum policy changes have been taking place, diverging from the traditional curriculum in Chile at the undergraduate level as a section of a larger investigation. Using a ‘policy trajectory’ framework, and guided by the interpretivist approach to research, interview transcripts and institutional documents were analyzed in relation to the meso (university administration) and the micro (academics) level. Inside the case study, participants from the university administration and academic levels were selected both via snow-ball technique and purposive selection, thus they had different levels of seniority, with some participating actively in the curriculum reform processes. Guided by an interpretivist approach to research, documents and interview transcripts were analyzed to reveal major themes emerging from the data. A further ‘bigger picture’ analysis guided by critical theory was then undertaken, involving interrogation of underlying ideologies and how political and economic interests influence the cultural production of policy. The case-study university was selected because it represents a traditional and old case of university setting in the country, undergoing curriculum changes based on international trends such as the competency model and the liberal arts. Also, it is representative of a particular socioeconomic sector of the country. Access to the university was gained through email contact. Qualitative research methods were used, namely interviews and analysis of institutional documents. In all, 18 people were interviewed. The number was defined by when the saturation criterion was met. Semi-structured interview schedules were based on the four research questions about influences, policy texts, policy enactment and longer-term outcomes. Triangulation of information was used for the analysis. While there was no intention to generalize the specific findings of the case study, the results of the research were used as a focus for engagement with broader themes, often evident in global higher education policy developments. The research results were organized around major themes in three of the four contexts of the ‘policy trajectory’. Regarding the context of influences and the context of policy text production, themes relate to hegemony exercised by first world countries’ universities in the higher education field, its associated neoliberal ideology, with accountability and the discourse of continuous improvement, the local responses to those pressures, and the value of interdisciplinarity. Finally, regarding the context of policy practices and effects (enactment), themes emerged around the impacts of the curriculum changes on university staff, students, and resistance amongst academics. The research concluded with a few recommendations that potentially provide ‘food for thought’ beyond the localized settings of this study, as well as possibilities for further research.

Keywords: curriculum, global-local dynamics, higher education, policy, sociology of education

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Authors: Raja Lahiani

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This study is concerned with scrutinising translations into English and French of references to locations in the desert of pre-Islamic Arabia. These references are used in the Source Text (ST) within a poetic image. Reference is made to the names of three different mountains in Arabia, namely Qatan, Sitar, and Yadhbul. As these mountains are referred to in the context of the poet’s description of the density and expansion of the clouds, it is crucial to know that while Sitar and Yadhbul are close to each other, Qatan is far away from them. This distance was functional for the poet to describe the expansion of the clouds. This reflects the spacious place (desert) he handled, and the fact that it was possible for him to physically see what he described. The purpose of this image is for the poet to communicate the vastness of the space he managed to see as he was in a moment of contemplation. Thus, knowledge of this characteristic about the setting is capital for the receiver to understand the communicative function of the verse. A corpus of eighteen translations is gathered. These vary between verse and prose renderings. The methodology adopted in this research work is comparative. Comparison is conducted at both the synchronic and diachronic levels; every translation shall be compared to the ST and then to previous translations. The comparative work will prove at the end that the translators who target historical facts do not necessarily succeed in preserving the image of the ST. It also proves that the more recent the translation is, the deeper the translator’s awareness is the link between imagery, setting, and point of view. Since the late eighteenth century and until nowadays, pre-Islamic poetry has been translated into Western languages. Translators differ as to motives, sources, priorities and intellectual backgrounds. A translator's skopoi undoubtedly affect the way s/he handles aspects of the ST. When it comes to culture-specific aspects and details related to setting, the problem is even more complex. Setting is a very important factor that reveals a great deal of the culture of pre-Islamic Arabia as this is remote in place, historical framework and literary tradition from its translators. History is present in pre-Islamic poetry, which justifies the important literature that has been written to extract information and data from it. These are imbedded not only by signalling given facts, events, and meditations but also by means of references to specific locations and landmarks that used to exist at the time. Spatial setting is an integral part of a literary text as it places it within its historical context. The importance of the translator’s awareness of spatial anthropological data before indulging in the process of translation is tested. This is also crucial in measuring the effect of setting loss and setting gain in translation. The findings of this research would ultimately evaluate the extent to which a comparative methodology is reliable in investigating the role of spatial setting awareness in translation.

Keywords: historical context, translation, comparative literature, spatial setting

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Authors: Noury Bakrim

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Translatability is one of Walter Benjamin’s most influential notions, it is somehow representing the philosophy of language and history of what we might call and what we indeed coined as ‘the other German Speaking Modernity’ which could be shaped as a parallel thought form to the Marxian-Hegelian philosophy of history, the one represented by the school of Frankfurt. On the other hand, we should consider the influence of the plural German speaking identity and the Nietzschian and Goethean heritage, this last being focused on a positive will of power: the humanised human being. Having in perspective the benjaminian notion of translatability (Übersetzbarkeit), to be defined as an internal permanent hermeneutical possibility as well as a phenomenological potential of a translation relation, we are in fact touching this very double limit of both historical and linguistic reason. By life component, we mean the changing conditions of genetic and neurolinguistic post-partum functions, to be grasped as an individuation beyond the historical determinism and teleology of an event. It is, so to speak, the retrospective/introspective canettian auto-fiction, the benjaminian crystallization of the language experience in the now-time of writing/transmission. Furthermore, it raises various questioning points when it comes to translatability, they are basically related to psycholinguistic separate poles, the fatherly ladino Spanish and the motherly Vienna German, but relating more in particular to the permanent ontological quest of a world loss/belonging. Another level of this quest would be the status of Veza Canetti-Taubner Calderón, german speaking Author, Canetti’s ‘literary wife’, writer’s love, his inverted logos, protective and yet controversial ‘official private life partner’, the permanence of the jewish experience in the exiled german language. It sheds light on a traumatic relation of an inadequate/possible language facing the reconstruction of an oral life, the unconscious split of the signifier and above all on the frustrating status of writing in Canetti’s work : Using a suffering/suffered written German to save his remembered acquisition of his tongue/mother tongue by saving the vanishing spoken multilingual experience. While Canetti’s only novel ‘Die Blendung’ designates that fictional referential dynamics focusing on the nazi worldless horizon: the figure of Kien is an onomastic signifier, the anti-Canetti figure, the misunderstood legacy of Kant, the system without thought. Our postulate would be the double translatability of his auto-fiction inventing the bios oral signifier basing on the new praxemes created by Canetti’s german as observed in the English, French translations of his memory corpus. We aim at conceptualizing life component and translatability as two major features of a german speaking modernity.

Keywords: translatability, language biography, presentification, bioeme, life Order

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Authors: Chien Yang Erdem

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This paper takes up the proliferating historical dramas and children’s programs featuring the Ottoman-Islamic legacy on Turkish television as a locus where the processes of subjectification take place. A critical analysis of this emergent cultural phenomenon reveals an alliance of neoliberal and neoconservative political rationalities based on which the Turkish media is restructured to transform society. The existing debates have focused on how the Ottoman historical dramas manifest the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) neo-Ottomanist ideology and foreign policy. However, this approach tends to overlook the more complex relationship between the media, government, and society. Employing Michel Foucault’s notion of 'technologies of the self,' this paper aims to examine the governing practices that are deployed to regulate the media and to transform individual citizens into governable subjects in contemporary Turkey. First, through a brief discussion of recent development of the Turkish media towards an authoritarian model, the paper suggests that the relation between the Ottoman television drama and the political subject in question cannot be adequately examined without taking into account the force of the market. Second, by focusing on the managerial restructuring of the Turkish Television and Radio Corporation (Türkiye Radyo ve Televizyon Kurumu), the paper aims to illustrate the rationale and process through which the Turkish media sector is transformed into an integral part of the free market where the government becomes a key actor. The paper contends that this new sphere of free market is organized in a way that enables direct interference of the government and divides media practitioners and consumers into opposing categories through their own participation in the media market. On the one hand, a 'free subject' is constituted based on the premise that the market is a sphere where individuals are obliged to exercise their right to freedom (of choice, lifestyle, and expression). On the other hand, this 'free subject' is increasingly subjugated to such disciplinary practices as censorship for being on the wrong side of the government. Finally, the paper examines the relation between the restructured Turkish media market and the proliferation of Ottoman television drama in the 2010s. The study maintains that the reorganization of the media market has produced a condition where private sector is encouraged to take an active role in reviving Turkey’s Ottoman-Islamic cultural heritage and promulgating moral-religious values. Paying specific attention to the controversial case of Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl) in contrast with TRT’s Ottoman historical drama and children’s programs, the paper aims to identify the ways in which individual citizens are directed to conduct themselves as a virtuous citizenry. It is through the double movement between the governing practices associated with the media market and those concerning the making of a 'conservative generation' that a subject of citizenry of new Turkey is constituted.

Keywords: neoconservatism, neoliberalism, ottoman historical drama, technologies of the self, Turkish television

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Authors: Ling Yu Debbie Tsoi

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After China has just exceeded the USA as the top Hollywood film market in 2018, Hollywood studios have been adapting the taste, preference, casting and even film title translation to resonate with the Chinese audience. Due to the huge foreign demands, Hollywood film directors are paying closer attention to the translation of their products, as film titles are entry gates to the film and serve advertising, informative, aesthetic functions. Other than film directors and studios, comments over quality film title translation also appear on various online clip viewing platforms, online media, and magazines. In particular, netizens in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan seems to defend film titles in their own region while despising the other two regions. In view of the endless debates and lack of systematic analysis on film title translation in Greater China, the study aims at investigating the translation of Hollywood film titles (from English to Chinese) across Greater China based on Venuti’s (1991; 1995; 1998; 2001) concept of domestication and foreignization. To offer a comparison over time, a mini-corpus was built comprised of the top 70 most popular Hollywood film titles in 1987- 1988, 1997- 1998, 2007- 2008 and 2017- 2018 of Greater China respectively. Altogether, 560 source texts and 1680 target texts of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were compared against each other. The three regions are found to have a distinctive style and patterns of translation. For instance, a sizable number of film titles are foreignized in mainland China by adopting literal translation and transliteration, whereas Hong Kong and Taiwan prefer domestication. Hong Kong tends to adopt a more vulgar style by using colloquial Cantonese slangs and even swear words, associating characters with negative connotations. Also, English is used as a form of domestication in Hong Kong from 1987 till 2018. Use of English as a strategy of domestication was never found in mainland nor Taiwan. On the contrary, Taiwanese target texts tend to adopt a cute and child-like style by using repetitive words and positive connotations. Even if English was used, it was used as foreignization. As film titles represent cultural products of popular culture, it is suspected that Hongkongers would like to develop cultural identity via adopting style distinctive from mainland China by vulgarization and negativity. Hongkongers also identify themselves as international cosmopolitan, leading to their identification with English. It is also suspected that due to former colonial rule of Japan, Taiwan adopts a popular culture similar to Japan, with cute and childlike expressions.

Keywords: cultural identification, ethnic identification, Greater China, film title translation

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Authors: Akalework Mengesha

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The adoption of improved agricultural technologies has been connected with higher earnings and lower poverty, enhanced nutritional status, lower staple food prices, and increased employment opportunities for landless laborers. The adoption and extension of the technologies are vastly crucial in that it enables the countries to achieve the millennium development goals (MDG) of reducing extreme poverty and hunger. There are efforts which directed to the enlargement and provision of modern crop varieties in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 30 years. Nevertheless, by and large, the adoption and expansion of rates for improved technologies have insulated behind other regions. This research aims to assess social and economic barriers in the adoption and expansion of agricultural technologies by local communities living around a private agricultural farm in Woliatta Zone, Southern Ethiopia. The study has been carried out among rural households which are located in the three localities selected for the study in the Woliatta zone. Across sectional mixed method, the design was used to address the study objective. The qualitative method was employed (in-depth interview, key informant, and focus group discussion) involving a total of 42 in-depth informants, 17 key-informant interviews, 2 focus group discussions comprising of 10 individuals in each group through purposive sampling techniques. The survey method was mainly used in the study to examine the impact of attitudinal, demographic, and socioeconomic variables on farmers’ adoption of agricultural technologies for quantitative data. The finding of the study revealed that Amibara commercial farm has not made a resolute and well-organized effort to extend agricultural technology to the surrounding local community. A comprehensive agricultural technology transfer scheme hasn’t been put in place by the commercial farm ever since it commenced operating in the study area. Besides, there is an ongoing conflict of interest between the farm and the community, which has kept on widening through time, bounds to be irreversible.

Keywords: adoption, technology transfer, agriculture, barriers

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Authors: Simon Shibru, Karen Vancampenhout, Jozef Deckers, Herwig Leirs

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We investigated the population size of the endemic and endangered Swayne’s Hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus swaynei) in Nech Sar National Park from 2012 to 2014 and document the major threats why the species is on the verge of local extinction. The park was once known for its abundant density of Swayne’s Hartebeest. We used direct total count methods for a census. We administered semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires with senior scouts who are the member of the local communities. Historical records were obtained to evaluate the population trends of the animals since 1974. The density of the animal decreased from 65 in 1974 to 1 individual per 100 km2 in 2014 with a decline of 98.5% in the past 40 years. The respondents agreed that the conservation status of the park was in its worst condition ever now with only 2 Swayne’s Hartebeest left, with a rapid decline from 4 individuals in 2012 and 12 individuals in 2009. Mainly hunting and habitat loss, but also the unsuitable season of reproduction and shortage of forage as minor factors were identified as threats for a local extinction of the Swayne’s Hartebeests. On the other hand, predation, fire, disease, and ticks were not considered a cause for the declining trend. Hunting happens mostly out of some kind of revenge since the local community thought that they were pushed out from the land because of the presence of Swayne's Hartebeest in the area. Respondents agreed that the revenge action of the local communities was in response to their unwillingness to be displaced from the park in 1982/3. This conflict situation is resulting from the exclusionary wildlife management policy of the country. We conclude that the human interventions in general and illegal hunting, in particular, pushed the Swayne’s Hartebeest to a point of local extinction. Therefore, we recommend inclusive wildlife management approach for continuing existence of the park together with its natural resources so that sustainable use of the resources is in place.

Keywords: hunting, habitat destruction, local extinction, Nech Sar National Park, Swayne’s Hartebeest

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Authors: Lars Andersen

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The development of design and engineering in large construction projects are characterized by an increased degree of flattening out of formal structures, extended use of parallel and integrated processes (‘Integrated Concurrent Engineering’) and an increased number of expert disciplines. The integration process is based on ongoing collaborations, dialogues, intercommunication and comments on each other’s work (iterations). This process based on reciprocal communication between actors and disciplines triggers value creation. However, communication between equals is not in itself sufficient to create effective decision making. The complexity of the process and time pressure contribute to an increased risk of a deficit of decisions and loss of process control. The paper refers to a study that aims at developing a resilient decision-making system that does not come in conflict with communication processes based on equality between the disciplines in the process. The study includes the construction of a hospital, following the phases design, engineering and physical building. The Research method is a combination of formative process research, process tracking and phenomenological analyses. The study tracked challenges and problems in the building process to the projection substrates (drawing and models) and further to the organization of the engineering and design phase. A comparative analysis of traditional and new ways of organizing the projecting made it possible to uncover an implicit material order or structure in the process. This uncovering implied a development of a material process perspective. According to this perspective the complexity of the process is rooted in material-functional differentiation. This differentiation presupposes a structuring material (the skeleton of the building) that coordinates the other types of material. Each expert discipline´s competence is related to one or a set of materials. The architect, consulting engineer construction etc. have their competencies related to structuring material, and inherent in this; coordination competence. When dialogues between the disciplines concerning the coordination between them do not result in agreement, the disciplines with responsibility for the structuring material decide the interface issues. Based on these premises, this paper develops a self-organized expert-driven interdisciplinary decision-making system.

Keywords: collaboration, complexity, design, engineering, materiality

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Authors: Ankita Shanker, Angus Nurse

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The notion of animal rights is an emerging trend in various spaces, including judicial and societal discourse. But one of the key purposes of recognizing the fundamental rights of anyone is their de-objectification. Animals are a prime example of a group that has rights that are neither recognized nor protected in any meaningful way, and anything that purports differently fails to ameliorate this because it still objectifies animals. Animals are currently treated by law and society as commodities with primarily (though not exclusively) instrumental value to some other rights-holder, such as humans or nature. So most protections that are afforded to them are done so in furtherance of the interests that they allegedly further, be it social morality or environmental protection. Animal rights are thus often seen as an application or extension of the rights of humans or, more commonly, the rights of nature. What this means is that animal rights are not always protected or even recognized in their own regard, but as stemming from some other reason, or worse, instrumentally as means to some other ends. This has two identifiable effects from a legal perspective: animal rights are not seen as inherently justified and are not seen as inherently valuable. Which in turn means that there can be no fundamental protection of animal rights. In other words, judicial protection does not always entail protection of animal ‘rights’ qua animal rights, which is needed for any meaningful protections to be afforded to animals. But the effects of this legal paradigm do not end at the legal status of animals. Because this status, in turn, affects how persons and the societies of which they form part see animals as a part of the rights of others, such as humans or nature, or as valuable only insofar as they further these rights, as opposed to as individuals with inherent worth and value deserving of protection regardless of their instrumental usefulness to these other objectives. This does nothing to truly de-objectify animals. Because even though most people would agree that animals are not objects, they continue to treat them as such wherever it serves them. For individuals and society to resolve, this inconsistency between stance and actions is for them to believe that animals are more than objects on a psychological and societal level. In this paper, we examine the implications of this perception of animals and their rights on the legal protections afforded to them and on the minds of individuals and civil society. We also argue that a change in the legal and societal status of animals can be brought about only through judicial, psychological, and sociological acknowledgment that animals have inherent value and deserve protection on this basis. Animal rights derived in such a way would not need to place reliance on other justifications and would not be subject to subjugation to other rights should a conflict arise.

Keywords: animal rights law, animal protection laws, psycho-socio-legal studies, animal rights, human rights, rights of nature

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Authors: Hengameh Hosseini

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Design of large healthcare facilities – such as hospitals, multi-service line clinics, and nursing facilities - that can accommodate patients with wide-ranging disabilities is a challenging endeavor and one that is poorly understood among healthcare facility managers, administrators, and executives. An even less-understood extension of this problem is the implications of weakly or insufficiently accommodative design of facilities for healthcare workers in physically-intensive jobs who may also suffer from a range of disabilities and who are therefore at increased risk of workplace accident and injury. Combine this reality with the vast range of facility types, ages, and designs, and the problem of universal accommodation becomes even more daunting and complex. In this study, we focus on the implication of facility design for healthcare workers suffering with low vision who also have physically active jobs. The points of difficulty are myriad and could span health service infrastructure, the equipment used in health facilities, and transport to and from appointments and other services can all pose a barrier to health care if they are inaccessible, less accessible, or even simply less comfortable for people with various disabilities. We conduct a series of surveys and interviews with employees and administrators of 7 facilities of a range of sizes and ownership models in the Northeastern United States and combine that corpus with in-facility observations and data collection to identify five major points of failure common to all the facilities that we concluded could pose safety threats to employees with vision impairments, ranging from very minor to severe. We determine that lack of design empathy is a major commonality among facility management and ownership. We subsequently propose three methods for remedying this lack of empathy-informed design, to remedy the dangers posed to employees: the use of an existing open-sourced Augmented Reality application to simulate the low-vision experience for designers and managers; the use of a machine learning model we develop to automatically infer facility shortcomings from large datasets of recorded patient and employee reviews and feedback; and the use of a computer vision model fine tuned on images of each facility to infer and predict facility features, locations, and workflows, that could again pose meaningful dangers to visually impaired employees of each facility. After conducting a series of real-world comparative experiments with each of these approaches, we conclude that each of these are viable solutions under particular sets of conditions, and finally characterize the range of facility types, workforce composition profiles, and work conditions under which each of these methods would be most apt and successful.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, healthcare workers, facility design, disability, visually impaired, workplace safety

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Authors: Guillaume P. Fernandez

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Individual language use is a matter of choice in particular interactions. The paper proposes a conceptual and theoretical framework with methodological consideration to develop how language produced in dyadic relations is to be considered and situated in the larger social configuration the interaction is embedded within. An integrated and comprehensive view is taken: social interactions are expected to be ruled by a normative context, defined by the chain of interdependences that structures the personal network. In this approach, the determinants of discursive practices are not only constrained by the moment of production and isolated from broader influences. Instead, the position the individual and the dyad have in the personal network influences the discursive practices in a twofold manner: on the one hand, the network limits the access to linguistic resources available within it, and, on the other hand, the structure of the network influences the agency of the individual, by the social control inherent to particular network characteristics. Concretely, we investigate how and to what extent consistent ego is from one interaction to another in his or her use of adverbs. To do so, social network analysis (SNA) methods are mobilized. Participants (N=130) are college students recruited in the french speaking part of Switzerland. The personal network of significant ones of each individual is created using name generators and edge interpreters, with a focus on social support and conflict. For the linguistic parts, respondents were asked to record themselves with five of their close relations. From the recordings, we computed an average similarity score based on the adverb used across interactions. In terms of analyses, two are envisaged: First, OLS regressions including network-level measures, such as density and reciprocity, and individual-level measures, such as centralities, are performed to understand the tenets of linguistic similarity from one interaction to another. The second analysis considers each social tie as nested within ego networks. Multilevel models are performed to investigate how the different types of ties may influence the likelihood to use adverbs, by controlling structural properties of the personal network. Primary results suggest that the more cohesive the network, the less likely is the individual to change his or her manner of speaking, and social support increases the use of adverbs in interactions. While promising results emerge, further research should consider a longitudinal approach to able the claim of causality.

Keywords: personal network, adverbs, interactions, social influence

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Authors: Luiz Nolasco Jr. Rezende, Antonio Villar M. Sá, Claudia Marcia L. Pato

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The increasing urban violence in Brazil involves more and more infractions committed by children and youths. The challenges faced by the institutional environments responsible for the education and resocialization of adolescents in conflict with the law are enormous, especially of those deprived of their liberty. These institutions have an inadequate educational structure. They are characterized by a dirty and unhealthy environment without the minimum basic conditions for their activities, by frequent practices of degradation, humiliation, and the physical and psychological punishment of inmates. This mixed-method study investigated the personal values of adolescents with restriction of freedom in a socio-educational institutional environment aiming to contribute to the development of their morality through an educational process. For that, we used a survey and transdisciplinary play workshops involving thirty-two boys aged between 15 and 19 years old and at least two years out of school. To evaluate the survey the reduced version of the Portrait Questionnaire—PQ21—was used. The workshops happened once a week, lasting 80 minutes each, totaling twelve meetings. By using the game of chess and its metaphors, participants produced texts and engaged in critical brainstorming about their lives. The survey results pointed out that these young people showed a predominance of values of openness to change and self-transcendence, dissatisfaction with one's own reality and surroundings, not considering the consequences of their actions on themselves and others, difficulties in speaking and writing, and desire for changes in their lives. After the pedagogical interventions, these adolescents demonstrated an understanding of the implications of their actions for themselves, for their families, especially for the mothers, with whom they demonstrated stronger bonds. It was possible to observe evidence of improvement in the capacity of linguistic expression, more autonomy and critical vision, including about themselves and their respective contexts. These results demonstrated the educational potential of lively, symbolic, dynamic and playful activities that favor the mediation and identification of these adolescents with their lives, and contribute to the projection of dreams.

Keywords: adolescents arrested, human values, moral development, playful workshops

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Authors: Masooma Al-Balushi, Tamer Mohamed Atef

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The Sultanate of Oman is located on the South-eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea and has borders with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Arabic is the official language. Islam is the official religion. Islam has a great impact on most Omanis, Shari’a law is the law of Oman. The tribal structure plays an essential role in the lives of Omanis. Most people in the Gulf States bear a tribal name rather than a family name. Religion, tribe, and family are highly influential in shaping individuals’ values and behaviors, and have a very noticeable influence on a person’s career choices. Tourism development has been given special attention by the Sultanate of Oman’s government aspiring that the industry would assist in creating direct job opportunities as well as boost the economy through provision of hard currency to improve the balance of payments. This study aims to assess the impact of socio-cultural and religious factors on Omanis employment in the hotel sector. The socio-cultural and religious factors have serious impacts on Omani employment in the hotel sector. Some employees are concerned about the source of income because of the idea that since the hotel business is based on activities such as serving alcohol and pork, gambling, and accommodating unmarried couples, their source of income would be questionable religion wise. For females, the designated job uniform and the interaction with males are major concerns. Ability to fulfil family obligations for married Omanis, and marriage opportunity for singles were other raised concerns. Whilst the future prosperity of the hotel industry depends on the quality of its people, in Oman, the hospitality industry has failed, for a number of reasons, to project an image that could generate interest amongst Omanis. Furthermore, the characteristics and the very nature of the hotel sector are in direct conflict with Islamic doctrines which are embedded in Omani life and society.

Keywords: culture, society, hotel, hospitality, Islam, Oman

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Authors: Emma Roberts

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The Rome II Regulation has established a uniform regime of conflict of law rules across the European Union (except for Denmark) which determines the law applicable in non-contractual obligations disputes. It marks a significant development towards the Europeanization of private international law and aims to provide the most appropriate connecting factors to achieve both legal certainty and justice in individual cases. Many non-contractual obligations are recognised to present such distinct factors that, to achieve these aims, a special rule is provided for determining the applicable law in cases in respect of product liability and environmental torts, for example. Throughout the legislative process, the European Parliament sought to establish a separate rule for road traffic accidents, recognising that these cases too present such novel situations that a blanket application of a lex loci damni approach would not provide an appropriate answer. Such attempts were rejected and, as a result, cases arising out of road traffic accidents are subject to the Regulation’s general lex loci damni rule along with its escape clause and limited exception. This paper offers a critique of the Regulation’s response to cross-border road traffic accident cases. In England and Wales, there have been few cases that have applied the Regulation’s provisions to date, but significantly the majority of such cases are in respect of road traffic accidents. This paper examines the decisions in those cases and challenges the legislators’ decision not to provide a special rule for such incidences. Owing to the diversity in compensation systems globally, applying the Regulation’s general rule to cases of road traffic accidents – given the breadth of matters that are to be subject to the lex cause – cannot ensure an outcome that provides ‘justice in individual cases’ as is assured by the Regulation's recitals. Not only does this paper suggest that the absence of a special rule for road traffic accidents means that the Regulation fails to achieve one of its principal aims, but it further makes out a compelling case for the legislative body of the European Union to implement a corrective instrument.

Keywords: accidents abroad, applicable law, cross-border torts, non-contractual obligations, road traffic accidents

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Authors: Natasha Yasmin Felles, Gerard Riley

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Background and Aims: Relationship breakdown is typical when one partner lives with an acquired brain injury caused by issues like a stroke. Research has found that the perception of relationship satisfaction decreases following such an injury among non-injured partners. Non-injured partners also are found to experience caregiver stress/burden as they immediately have to take the role of a caregiver along with being a partner of the injured. Research has also found that the perception of a continuous relationship, i.e. the perception of the relationship to be essentially the same as it was before the injury, also changes among those caregiving partners. However, there is a lack of available intervention strategies that can help those partners with both individual and relationship difficulties. The aim of this case study was to conduct a pilot test of an intervention aimed to explore whether it is possible to support a partner to experience greater continuity within the relationship poststroke, and what benefits such a change might have. Method: A couple, where one partner experienced an acquired brain injury poststroke were provided with Integrated Behavioural Couples Therapy for 3-months. The intervention addressed goals identified as necessary by the couple and by the formulation of their individual and relationship difficulties, alongside the goal of promoting relationship continuity. Before and after measures were taken using a battery of six questionnaires to evaluate changes in perceptions of continuity, stress, and other aspects of the relationship. Results: Both quantitative and qualitative data showed that relationship continuity was improved after the therapy, as were the measures of stress and other aspects of the relationship. The stress felt by the person with the acquired brain injury also showed some evidence of improvement. Conclusion: The study found that perceptions of relationship continuity can be improved by therapy and that improving these might have a beneficial impact on the stress felt by the carer, their satisfaction with the relationship and overall levels of conflict and closeness within the relationship. The study suggested the value of further research on enhancing perceptions of continuity in the relationship after an acquired brain injury. Currently, the findings of the study have been used to develop a pilot feasibility study to collect substantive evidence on the impact of the intervention on the couples and assess its feasibility and acceptability, which will help in further developing a specific generalized relationship continuity intervention, that will be beneficial in preventing relationship breakdown in the future.

Keywords: acquired brain injury, couples therapy, relationship continuity, stroke

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Authors: Muhammad Zafar Khan, Babar Khan, Muhammad Saeed Awan, Farida Begum

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Livestock depredation has greater significance in pastoral societies like Himalaya-Karakoram-Hindu Kush mountain ranges. The dynamics of depredation by large predators (snow leopard and wolf) and its implications for conservation and livelihoods of local people was investigated by household surveys in Hushey valley of Central Karakoram National Park, Pakistan. We found that, during five years (2008-12) 90% of the households in the valley had lost their livestock to snow leopard and wolf, accounting for 4.3% of the total livestock holding per year. On average each household had to bear a loss of 0.8 livestock head per year, equivalent to Pak Rupees 9,853 (US$ 101), or 10% of the average annual cash income. Majority of the predation incidences occurred during late summer in alpine pastures, mostly at night when animals were not penned properly. The prey animals in most of the cases were females or young ones. Of the total predation incidences, 60% were attributed to snow leopard, 37% to wolf, while in 3% the predator was unknown. The fear of snow leopard is greater than that of wolf. As immediate response on predation, majority of the local people (64%, n=99) preferred to report the case to their village conservation committee, 32% had no response while only 1% tended to kill the predator. The perceived causes of predation were: poor guarding practices (77%); reduction in wild prey (13%) and livestock being the favourite food of predators (10%). The most preferred strategies for predator management, according to the respondents were improved and enhanced guarding of livestock (72%), followed by increasing wild prey (18%) and lethal control (10%). To strike a balance between predator populations and pastoral livelihoods, better animal husbandry practices should be promoted including: improved guarding through collective hiring of skilled shepherds; corral improvement and use of guard dogs.

Keywords: Panthera unica, Canis lupus, Karakoram, human-carnivore conflict, predation

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Authors: Melissa R. Quispe-Zuniga, Daniel Callo-Concha, Christian Borgemeister, Klaus Greve

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The Peruvian Andes have a high potential for mining, but many of the mining areas overlay with campesino community lands, being these key actors for agriculture and livestock production. Lead by economic incentives, some communities are renting their lands to mining companies for exploration or exploitation. However, a growing number of campesino communities, usually social and economically marginalized, have developed resistance, alluding consequences, such as water pollution, land-use change, insufficient economic compensation, etc. what eventually end up in Socio-Environmental Conflicts (SEC). It is hypothesized that disclosing the information on environmental pollution and enhance the involvement of communities in the decision-making process may contribute to prevent SEC. To assess whether such complains are grounded on the environmental impact of mining activities, we measured the heavy metals concentration in 24 indicative samples from rivers that run across mining exploitations and farming community lands. Samples were taken during the 2016 dry season and analyzed by inductively-coupled-plasma-atomic-emission-spectroscopy. The results were contrasted against the standards of monitoring government institutions (i.e., OEFA). Furthermore, we investigated the water/environmental complains related to mining in the neighboring 14 communities. We explored the relationship between communities and mining companies, via open-ended interviews with community authorities and non-participatory observations of community assemblies. We found that the concentrations of cadmium (0.023 mg/L), arsenic (0.562 mg/L) and copper (0.07 mg/L), surpass the national water quality standards for Andean rivers (0.00025 mg/L of cadmium, 0.15 mg/L of arsenic and 0.01 mg/L of copper). 57% of communities have posed environmental complains, but 21% of the total number of communities were receiving an annual economic benefit from mining projects. However, 87.5% of the communities who had posed complains have high concentration of heavy metals in their water streams. The evidence shows that mining activities tend to relate to the affectation and vulnerability of campesino community water streams, what justify the environmental complains and eventually the occurrence of a SEC.

Keywords: mining companies, campesino community, water, socio-environmental conflict

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Authors: Vrajesh Rawal

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India's economic landscape has witnessed significant transformations over the past decades, characterized by shifts from agrarian to service-oriented economies. Recently, there has been a growing emphasis on transitioning towards a manufacturing-led growth model driven by factors such as demographic changes, technological advancements, and evolving global trade dynamics. These changes reflect broader efforts to enhance industrialization, boost employment opportunities, and diversify the economic base beyond traditional sectors. Within this context, this research focuses on understanding the specific drivers and dynamics behind India's shift from a predominantly service-based economy to one centered on manufacturing. It seeks to explore how political ideologies influence economic policies and shape sectoral priorities, with a particular focus on contrasting approaches between the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Additionally, the study evaluates the alignment of IMF policy recommendations with India's economic goals and priorities within the theoretical frameworks of neoliberalism and political economy theory. Despite the extensive literature on India's economic reforms and political economy, there remains a gap in understanding how political ideology influences sectoral shifts and economic policy outcomes, particularly in the context of IMF recommendations. Existing studies often focus narrowly on either political ideologies or economic reforms without fully integrating both perspectives. This research aims to bridge this gap by providing a comprehensive analysis that integrates political economy theories with empirical evidence from political speeches, government documents, and IMF reports. Through qualitative content analysis of speeches by political leaders, document analysis of key governmental documents, and scrutiny of party manifestos, this research demonstrates how political ideologies translate into distinct economic strategies and developmental agendas. It highlights the extent to which IMF policy prescriptions align with India's economic objectives and how these interactions shape broader socio-economic outcomes. The theoretical framework of neoliberalism and political economy theory provides a lens to interpret these findings, offering insights into the complex interplay between economic policies, political ideologies, and institutional frameworks in India. The findings of this study are expected to provide valuable insights for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners involved in economic governance and development planning in India. By understanding the factors driving sectoral shifts and the influence of political ideologies on economic policies, policymakers can make informed decisions to foster sustainable economic growth and development. Implementation of these insights could contribute to refining policy frameworks, enhancing alignment with national development priorities, and optimizing engagement with international financial institutions like the IMF to better meet India's socio-economic challenges and opportunities in the evolving global context.

Keywords: political economy, international politics, social science, policy analysis

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Authors: Mikyung Bak

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The dokkaebi, a beloved icon of Korean culture, is represented as an elf, goblin, monster, dwarf, or any similar creature in different media, such as animated shows, comics, soap operas, and movies. It is often described as a mythical creature with a horn or horns and long teeth, wearing tiger-skin pants or a grass skirt, and carrying a magic stick. Many Korean researchers agree on the similarity of the image of the Korean dokkaebi with that of the Japanese oni, a view that is regard as negative from an anti-colonial or nationalistic standpoint. They cite such similarity between the two mythical creatures as evidence that Japanese colonialism persists in Korea. The debate on the originality of dokkaebi’s visual representation is an issue that must be addressed urgently. This research demonstrates through a diagram the plurality of interpretations of dokkaebi’s visual representations in what are considered ‘authentic’ images of dokkaebi in Korean art and culture. This diagram presents the opinions of four major groups in the debate, namely, the scholars of Korean literature and folklore, art historians, authors, and artists. It also shows the creation of new dokkaebi visual representations in popular media, including those influenced by the debate. The diagram further proves that dokkaebi’s representations varied, which include the typical persons or invisible characters found in Korean literature, original Korean folk characters in traditional art, and even universal spirit characters. They are also visually represented by completely new creatures as well as oni-based mythical beings and the actual oni itself. The earlier dokkaebi representations were driven by the creation of a national ideology or national cultural paradigm and, thus, were more uniform and protected. In contrast, the more recent representations are influenced by the Korean industrial strategy of ‘cultural economics,’ which is concerned with the international rather than the domestic market. This recent Korean cultural strategy emphasizes diversity and commonality with the global culture rather than originality and locality. It employs traditional cultural resources to construct a global image. Consequently, dokkaebi’s recent representations have become more common and diverse, thereby incorporating even oni’s characteristics. This argument has rendered the grounds of the debate irrelevant. The dokkaebi has been used recently for tourist marketing purposes, particularly in revitalizing interest in regions considered the cradle of various traditional dokkaebi tales. These campaign strategies include the Jeju-do Dokkaebi Park, Koksung Dokkaebi Land, as well as the Taebaek and Sokri-san Dokkaebi Festivals. Almost dokkaebi characters are identical to the Japanese oni in tourist marketing. However, the pursuit for dokkaebi’s authentic visual representation is less interesting and fruitful than the appreciation of the entire spectrum of dokkaebi images that have been created. Thus, scholars and stakeholders must not exclude the possibilities for a variety of potentials within the visual culture. The same sentiment applies to traditional art and craft. This study aims to contribute to a new visualization of the dokkaebi that embraces the possibilities of both folk craft and art, which continue to be uncovered by diverse and careful researchers in a still-developing field.

Keywords: Dokkaebi, post-colonial period, representation, tourist marketing

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Authors: Josee Charette

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The academic and educational success of migrant students is a current issue in education, especially in western societies such in the province of Quebec, in Canada. For people who immigrate with school-age children, the success of the family’s migratory project is often measured by the benefits drawn by children from the educational institutions of their host society. In order to support the academic achievement of their children, migrant parents try to develop practices that derive from their representations of school and related challenges inspired by the socio-cultural context of their country of origin. These findings lead us to the following question: How does strategies implemented by migrant parents to manage the representational distance between school of their country of origin and school of their host society support or not the academic and educational success of their child? In the context of a qualitative exploratory approach, we have made interviews in the French , English and Spanish languages with 32 newly immigrated parents and 10 of their children. Parents were invited to complete a network of free associations about «School in Quebec» as a premise for the interview. The objective of this paper is to present strategies implemented by migrant parents to manage the distance between their representations of schools in their country of origin and in the host society, and to explore the influence of this management on their child’s academic and educational trajectories. Data analysis led us to develop various types of strategies, such as continuity, adaptation, resources mobilization, compensation and "return to basics" strategies. These strategies seem to be part of a continuum from oppositional-conflict scenario, in which parental strategies act as a risk factor, to conciliator-integrator scenario, in which parental strategies act as a protective factor for migrant students’ academic and educational success. In conclusion, we believe that our research helps in highlighting strategies implemented by migrant parents to support their child’s academic and educational success in the host society and also helps in providing a more efficient support to migrant parents and contributes to develop a wider portrait of migrant students’ academic achievement.

Keywords: academic and educational achievement of immigrant students, family’s migratory project, immigrants parental strategies, representational distance between school of origin and school of host society

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Authors: R. M. W. Rajapakshe

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Sri Lanka, which is officially called the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island nation situated near India. It is a multi-lingual, multi- religious and multi – ethnic country, where Sinhalese form the majority and the Tamils form the largest ethnic minority. The composition of the population (ethnic basis) in Sri Lanka is as follows: Sinhalese: 74.5%, Tamil (Sri Lankan): 12.6%, Muslim: 7.5 %, Tamil (Indian): 5.5%, Malay: 0.3%, Burgher: 0.3 %, other: 0.2 %. The Tamil people use the Tamil language as their mother tongue and the Sinhala people use the Sinhala language as their mother tongue. A very few people in both communities use English as their mother tongue and however, a large number of people use English as a second language. The Sinhala Language was declared the only official language in Sri Lanka in 1959. However, it was not acceptable to Tamil politicians as well as to the common Tamil people and it was the beginning of long standing ethnic crisis which later became a military war where a lot of blood was shed. As a solution to the above ethnic crisis the thirteenth amendment to the constitution of Sri Lanka was introduced in 1987 and according to it both Sinhala and Tamil were declared official languages and English as the link language in Sri Lanka. Thus, a new programme namely, second language teaching programme under which Sinhala was taught to Tamil students and Tamil was taught to Sinhala students, was introduced at government schools. Language teaching includes knowledge of the culture of the target language. As all cultures are mixed and have common features students have reduced their enmity about the other community and learned to respect the other culture. On the other hand as all languages are mixed, students came to the understanding that there are no pure languages. Thus, they learned to respect the other language. In the case of Sri Lanka the Sinhala language is mixed with the Tamil language and vice versa. Thus, the development of second language teaching is the prominent way to solve the above ethnic problem and this study clearly shows it. However, the above programme suffers with lack of trained second language teachers, infrastructure facilities and insufficient funds and, they can be considered as the main obstacles to develop the second language teaching programme. Yet, there are no satisfactory answers to those problems. The data were collected from relevant books, articles and other documents based on research and forty five recordings, each with one hour duration, of natural conversations covering all factions of the Sinhala community.

Keywords: ethnic crisis, official language, second language teaching, Sinhala, Tami

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Authors: Weixiao Wei, Chris Shei

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This paper describes Mandate of Heaven as a source of justification for the ruling regime from ancient China approximately three thousand years ago. Initially, the kings of Shang dynasty simply nominated themselves as the sons of Heaven sent to Earth to rule the common people. As the last generation of the kings became corrupted and ruled withbrutal force and crueltywhich directly caused their destruction, the successive kings of Zhou dynasty realised the importance of virtue and the provision of goods to the people. Legitimacy of the ruling regimes became rested not entirely on random allocation of the throne by an unknown supernatural force but on a foundation comprising morality and the ability to provide goods. The latter composite was picked up by the current ruling regime, the Chinese Communist Party, and became the cornerstone of its political legitimacy, also known as ‘performance legitimacy’ where economic development accounts for the satisfaction of the people in place of election and other democratic means of providing legal-rational legitimacy. Under this circumstance, it becomes important as well for the ruling party to use political rhetoric to convince people of the good performance of the government in the economy, morality, and foreign policy. Thus, we see a lot of propaganda materials in both government policy statements and international press conference announcements. The former consists mainly of important speeches made by prominent figures in Party conferences which are not only made publicly available on the government websites but also become obligatory reading materials for university entrance examinations. The later consists of announcements about foreign policies and strategies and actions taken by the government regarding foreign affairsmade in international conferences and offered in Chinese-English bilingual versions on official websites. This documentation strategy creates an impressive image of the Chinese Communist Party that is domestically competent and international strong, taking care of the people it governs in terms of economic needs and defending the country against any foreign interference and global adversities. This political discourse system comprising reading materials fully extractable from government websites also becomes excellent repertoire for teaching and researching in contemporary Chinese language, discourse and rhetoric, Chinese culture and tradition, Chinese political ideology, and Chinese-English translation. This paper aims to provide a detailed and comprehensive description of the current Chinese political discourse system, arguing about its lineage from the rhetorical convention of Mandate of Heaven in ancient China and its current concentration on serving the people in place of election, human rights, and freedom of speech. The paper will also provide guidelines as to how this discourse system and the manifestation of official documents created under this system can become excellent research and teaching materials in applied linguistics.

Keywords: mandate of heaven, Chinese communist party, performance legitimacy, serving the people, political discourse

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Authors: Baljit Soroya

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Transnational communities are as a consequence of greater mobility of people, globalization and digitization have had a major impact on international relations and diasporas in the context of external conflicts. To a significant extent conflicts are becoming deterritorialised and informed by both internal (state politics) and external (foreign policy) players such as in Iraq and Syria leading to forced migration of unprecedented levels within the last two decades. The situation of forced migrants has, it is suggested, worsened as a consequence of the neo-liberal policies and requirements of organizations such as the European Bank. A case example of this being that of Greece, and the exacerbation of insecurity for Greek nationals and the demonization of refugees seeking sanctuary. This has been as a consequence, in part, of the neoliberal dogma of the European Bank. The article analyses the complex intersection of the real and perceived threats of international terrorism and the manner in which UK migration policy and Practice is unfolding. The policy and practice developments are explored in the context of the shift in politics in both the UK and wider Europe to the far right and the drift of main stream political parties to the right. In many cases, the mainstream political groupings, have co-opted the fears as presented by far right organization for political their own political gains, such as in the UK and France In its analysis it will be argued that, whilst international terrorism is an issue of concern, however in the context of the UK it is not of the same scale as the effects of climate change or indeed domestic violence. Given that, the question has to be asked why the threat of international terrorism is having such an impact on UK migration policy and practice and, specifically refugees. Furthermore, it is argued that this policy and practice are being formulated within a narrative that portrays migrants as the problem both in relation to terrorism and the disenfranchisement of ‘ordinary white communities’. The intersectionality of social, economic inequalities, fear of international terrorism, increase in conflicts and the political climate have contributed to a lack of trust of political establishments that have in turn sought to impress the public with their anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy agendas. The article ends by suggesting that whilst politics and political affiliations have become fractured there are nevertheless spaces for collective action, particularly in relation to issues of refugees.

Keywords: international terrorism, migration policy, conflict, media, community, politics

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Authors: Burak Oksuzoglu, Savas Yildirim, Ferhat Kutlu

Abstract:

Opinion mining (OM) is one of the natural language processing (NLP) problems to determine the polarity of opinions, mostly represented on a positive-neutral-negative axis. The data for OM is usually collected from various social media platforms. In an era where social media has considerable control over companies’ futures, it’s worth understanding social media and taking actions accordingly. OM comes to the fore here as the scale of the discussion about companies increases, and it becomes unfeasible to gauge opinion on individual levels. Thus, the companies opt to automize this process by applying machine learning (ML) approaches to their data. For the last two decades, OM or sentiment analysis (SA) has been mainly performed by applying ML classification algorithms such as support vector machines (SVM) and Naïve Bayes to a bag of n-gram representations of textual data. With the advent of deep learning and its apparent success in NLP, traditional methods have become obsolete. Transfer learning paradigm that has been commonly used in computer vision (CV) problems started to shape NLP approaches and language models (LM) lately. This gave a sudden rise to the usage of the pretrained language model (PTM), which contains language representations that are obtained by training it on the large datasets using self-supervised learning objectives. The PTMs are further fine-tuned by a specialized downstream task dataset to produce efficient models for various NLP tasks such as OM, NER (Named-Entity Recognition), Question Answering (QA), and so forth. In this study, the traditional and modern NLP approaches have been evaluated for OM by using a sizable corpus belonging to a large private company containing about 76,000 comments in Turkish: SVM with a bag of n-grams, and two chosen pre-trained models, multilingual universal sentence encoder (MUSE) and bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT). The MUSE model is a multilingual model that supports 16 languages, including Turkish, and it is based on convolutional neural networks. The BERT is a monolingual model in our case and transformers-based neural networks. It uses a masked language model and next sentence prediction tasks that allow the bidirectional training of the transformers. During the training phase of the architecture, pre-processing operations such as morphological parsing, stemming, and spelling correction was not used since the experiments showed that their contribution to the model performance was found insignificant even though Turkish is a highly agglutinative and inflective language. The results show that usage of deep learning methods with pre-trained models and fine-tuning achieve about 11% improvement over SVM for OM. The BERT model achieved around 94% prediction accuracy while the MUSE model achieved around 88% and SVM did around 83%. The MUSE multilingual model shows better results than SVM, but it still performs worse than the monolingual BERT model.

Keywords: BERT, MUSE, opinion mining, pretrained language model, SVM, Turkish

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