Search results for "Agency"
showing 10 items of 578 documents
Shifting perspectives. Representations of the Maya in modern Mexican and Guatemalan narrative
2020
The aim of this article is to examine the dominant literary tendencies in the 20 th and 21 st century Mexican and Guatemalan narrative, which depict the Maya in their social and cultural environment. From indigenismo , through a hybrid genre known as testimonio , to indigenous literature, the Maya have been present over the last century in literary production, in which several important changes in narrative voice and perspective can be observed. Initially represented by the paternalistic indigenista narrative, which is compliant with the government-endorsed ideology, the Maya have gradually regained their own unmediated literary voice, which enables them to speak for themselves rather than …
‘Culture’ as a discursive resource in newspaper articles from Le Monde about secularism : constructing ‘us’ through strategic oppositions with religi…
2017
Building on research highlighting the complex webs of relations between secularism, culture, and religion, this study investigates how the concept of culture was utilized in discourses of laïcité from the newspaper le Monde. Articles (N = 76) published between 2011 and 2014 were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results revealed the agency associated with the use of culture as it was strategically – rather than systematically – used in opposition to religion. Overall, culture – and the practices it defined – tended to be represented as normal and invisible. On the other hand, religion tended to be constructed as a disruption to secularism and the corresponding cultural reality. T…
Regional industrial restructuring resulting from individual and system agency
2018
The article discusses mechanisms and policy that stimulate regional economic restructuring. Economic restructuring is conceptualised through the notion of path development. The article distinguishe...
“You are special”: othering in biographies of “GDR children from Namibia”
2017
ABSTRACTThe article analyses a historical case of politically induced flight. The so-called German Democratic Republic (GDR) children from Namibia are about 430 people brought to the GDR between 1979 and 1989. They came from Namibian refugee camps and were part of a solidarity project between South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and the GDR. They were educated to become the Namibian elite once the country had been liberated. Their stay was to be temporary, with the children identified as Namibian by SWAPO and GDR. The article reconstructs culturalist and biological-racist forms of othering as characteristic biographical experience of the young people which deny them belonging to…
Email from Nancy Nutsucker
2006
This article addresses the representational conventions and gendered forms of address in online pornography through analysis of 366 unsolicited email (spam) messages advertising porn websites. Combining content description with close reading, it considers the terminology, imagery, narrative elements and points of view employed in advertising commercial heterosexual pornography. The spam advertisements create excessive displays of gender difference. It seems that limited female agency is central, especially in messages advertising reality sites structured by gendered relations of control. Arguing that such displays of control should not be automatically translated as displays of power, this…
Depression : The differing Narratives of Couples in Couple Therapy
2014
Introduction When a person becomes depressed, partnership can either be a source of strength, advancing recovery, or a source of further suffering, harming the health of both partners (Cordova & Gee, 2001). Also, depression in one spouse can create feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in both spouses (Cordova & Gee). These are some of the reasons why couple therapy has been used with persons diagnosed with depression and their spouses. Yet, according to Denton and Burwell's (2006) experience, which is similar to our own, the spouses of depressed patients often are not part of the treatment in psychiatric outpatient care, and hence feel unsupported, uninformed, isolated, confused, and f…
Enhancing the Endogenous Potential of Agricultural Landscapes: Strategies and Projects for a Inland Rural Region of Sicily
2018
This paper focuses on the potential of the rural landscape of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, taking into particular account the critical need to deal with the problem of depopulation of the small inner areas by leveraging the “integrated exploitation” of local resources. The rural landscape is considered to be capable of playing an essential role in many fields: ecology, production, culture and tourism. In this regard, guidelines are set by the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the EU guidelines and the experience from Italy’s Rural Development Plans, the latter of which aim at achieving the much sought-after multi-functionality of agriculture. This …
Exploring the Affordances of SimReal for Learning Mathematics in Teacher Education: A Socio-Cultural Perspective
2020
SimReal is an innovative technology that emerged the last few years in mathematics education. It provides new potentialities for mathematical learning by means of dynamic and interactive visualizations of mathematical concepts. This paper uses SimReal in the context of teacher education to explore the affordances and constraints of the tool for the learning of mathematics. It presents a framework that combines Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, the role of mediation, and the notion of affordance at a technological, pedagogical, and socio-cultural level. The aim of the article is to explore the extent to which SimReal as a mediating artifact affords students’ mathematical learning in teacher …
Indirect Discrimination and School Segregation of Roma Children in the Czech Republic
2018
In DH v. Czech Republic (2007), the Czech government argued that Roma parents consented to the assignment of their children to ‘special’ schools. According to the government, parental consent undermined the claim that the disproportionate assignment of Roma children to inferior schools amounted to discrimination. The court rejected the argument, finding as a matter of law that parents could not choose to subject their children to discriminatory education, and as a matter of fact that the parents’ consent was not informed. Since the judgment, the Czech government continues to disproportionately assign Roma children to inferior schools, but it has revised the procedure they use to obtain pare…
Coordinated Interpersonal Behaviour in Collective Dance Improvisation: The Aesthetics of Kinaesthetic Togetherness
2018
International audience; Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a participatory, relational and embodied art form which eschews standard concepts in aesthetics. We present our ongoing research into the mechanisms underlying the lived experience of "togetherness" associated with such practices. Togetherness in collective dance improvisation is kinaesthetic (based on movement and its perception), and so can be simultaneously addressed from the perspective of the performers and the spectators, and be measured. We utilise these multiple levels of description: the first-person, phenomenological level of personal experiences, the third-perso…