Teaching geographies of small and large, near and far : multi-scalar identities in the Seychelles geography classroom

Seychelles is a small and relatively remote nation, with a hybrid legacy of European colonialism and Cuban-inspired socialism that is now fused with present-day convolutions of global capitalism. This Indian Ocean archipelago provides a unique site for the study of multiscalarity. Extending from the individual to the global, this paper uses a multi-scalar lens to critically examine the forces that have shaped (and continue to shape) Seychelles’ education, making particular reference to the geography curriculum. By linking local stories to national and international narratives, the intricacies of geography curriculum-making help to unpack the forces that shape education in small states. The multi-scalar politics of language, culture and power are shown to disrupt the geography classroom, challenging Seychellois teachers’ and students’ sense of place and Kreol identity. Generally, the paper provides an important example of the way small-scale education systems can be both resilient and vulnerable to the powers of the global economy.peer-reviewe

The glocalised telenovela as a space for possible identifications for diaspora girls in Northern Belgium: an audience cum content analysis of Sara

Because research on glocalised telenovelas in Western Europe is absent in literature and telenovelas seem highly popular among diaspora girls from Moroccan descents living in Northern Belgium, this paper studies the embedded themes and identification possibilities of telenovelas and explores its thematic interest and meanings for diaspora girls. By means of an audience cum content analysis on the case study Sara, text and audience are combined. Sara is predominantly a ‘Cinderella story’ with a clear ‘love’ and ‘class and social mobility’ discourse where emotional identification is triggered through different parameters. Belgian girls from Moroccan descent mainly watch the Sara for reasons of entertainment and escapism. They negotiate between lived and telenovela-created experiences and consequently formulate aspirations and dreams for future partners, gender roles, careers and (family) life

Globalisation of HR at Function Level: Exploring the Issues Through International Recruitment, Selection and Assessment Processes

Much of the debate around convergence-divergence is based around comparative analysis of HR systems. However, we need now to combine these insights with work in the field of IHRM on firm-level motivations to optimise, standardise and export HR models abroad. A series of the changes are being wrought on a range of IHRM functions – recruitment, global staffing, management development and careers, and rewards - by the process of globalisation highlighting the difference between globally standardised, optimised or localised HR processes. This paper reports on a study of firm-level developments in international recruitment, selection and assessment, drawing upon an analysis of four case studies each conducted in a different context. Organisations are building IHRM functions that are shifting from the management of expatriation towards supplementary services to the business aimed at facilitating the globalisation process, and this involves capitalising upon the fragmentation of international employees. As HR realigns itself in response to this process of within-function globalisation (building new alliances with other functions such as marketing and IS) the new activity streams that are being developed and the new roles and skills of the HR function carry important implications for the study of convergence and divergence of IHRM practice. Globalisation at firm level revolves around complexity, and this is evidenced in two ways: first, the range of theory that we have to draw upon, and the competing issues that surface depending on the level of analysis that is adopted; and second, the different picture that might emerge depending upon the level of analysis that is adopted. This paper shows that although the field of IHRM has traditionally drawn upon core theories such as the resource-based view of the firm, relational and social capital, and institutional theory, once the full range of resourcing options now open to IHRM functions are considered, it is evident that we need to incorporate both more micro theory, as well as insights from contingent fields in order to explain some of the new practices that are emerging

Literacy and educational fundamentalism: an interview with Allan Luke

An interview on literacy at McGill University, 2003

Language motivation in a reconfigured Europe: access, identity, autonomy

In this paper, I propose that we need to develop an appropriate set of conceptual tools for examining motivational issues pertaining to linguistic diversity, mobility and social integration in a rapidly changing and expanding Europe. I begin by drawing on research that has begun to reframe the concept of integrative motivation in the context of theories of self and identity. Expanding the notion of identity, I discuss the contribution of the Council of Europe's European Language Portfolio in promoting a view of motivation as the development of a plurilingual European identity and the enabling of access and mobility across a multilingual Europe. Next, I critically examine the assumption that the individual pursuit of a plurilingual identity is unproblematic, by highlighting the social context in which motivation and identity are constructed and embedded. To illuminate the role of this social context, I explore three inter-related theoretical frameworks: poststructuralist perspectives on language motivation as 'investment'; sociocultural theory; and theories of autonomy in language education. I conclude with the key message that, as with autonomy, language motivation today has an inescapably political dimension of which we need to take greater account in our research and pedagogical practice

Traveling Yellow Peril: Race, Gender, and Empire in Japan's English Teaching Industry

Contemporary U.S. white migrants working in Japan long-term as English teachers find themselves in an increasingly precarious labor market. When reacting to industry flexibilization, the U.S. men I interviewed during two years of fieldwork in Nagoya regularly invoked Filipina competition as an impending threat to their livelihoods. Anxieties coalesced around the question of whether racialized postcolonial subjects can fully inhabit the category of "native English teacher." This essay combines Asian American, postcolonial, and transnational American Studies perspectives to situate these "nativist" logics within an historical trajectory of anti-Asian labor backlash in the United States and "benevolent assimilation" policies in the Philippines. These histories reappear within Japan's neoliberal labor regimes to position Filipina migrants as a feminized "yellow peril" menace to hegemonic white masculinities abroad. Extending Homi Bhabha's theories, the essay demonstrates how Filipina "colonial mimicry" undermines the embodied, linguistic authority of white "native" English teachers and becomes a discursive conduit for the transplantation into Japan of the "white male victim" figure commonly seen in domestic U.S. culture wars

Rearticulating the case for minority language rights

While advocacy of minority language rights (MLR) has become well established in sociolinguistics, language policy and planning and the wider human rights literature, it has also come under increased criticism in recent times for a number of key limitations. In this paper, I address directly three current key criticisms of the MLR movement. The first is a perceived tendency towards essentialism in articulations of language rights. The second is the apparent utopianism and artificiality of 'reversing language shift' in the face of wider social and political 'realities'. And the third is that the individual mobility of minority-language speakers is far better served by shifting to a majority language. While acknowledging the perspicacity of some of these arguments, I aim to rearticulate a defence of minority language rights that effectively addresses these key concerns. This requires, however, a sociohistorical/sociopolitical rather than a biological/ecological analysis of MLR. In addition, I will argue that a sociohistorical/sociopolitical defence of MLR can problematise the positions often adopted by minority language rights' critics themselves, particularly those who defend majoritarian forms of linguistic essentialism and those who sever the instrumental/identity aspects of language. Implications for language policy and planning will also be discussed

Multiple modernities : the transnationalisation of cultures ; paper presented at the Conference Transcultural English Studies, annual conference of the Association for the Study of the New Literatures in English (ASNEL/GNEL) at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt May 19-23, 2004

During the past decade, processes associated with what is popularly though perhaps misleadingly known as globalization have come within the purview of anthropology. Migration and mobility ‐ and the footloose or even rootless social groups that they produce ‐ as well as the worldwide diffusion of commodities, media images, political ideas and practices, technologies and scientific knowledge today are on anthropology's research agenda. As a consequence, received notions about the ways in which culture relates to territory have been abandoned. The term transnationalisation captures cultural processes that stream across the borders of nation states. Anthropologists have been forced to revise the notion that transnationalisation would inevitably bring about a culturally homogenized world. Instead, we are witnessing a surge of greatly increasing cultural diversity. New cultural forms grow out of historically situated articulations of the local and the global. Rather than left-over relics from traditional orders, these are decidedly modern, yet far from uniform. The essay engages the idea of the pluralization of modernities, explores its potential for interdisciplinary research agendas, and also inquires into problematic assumptions underlying this new theoretical concept