Comparing international coverage of 9/11 : towards an interdisciplinary explanation of the construction of news

This article presents an interdisciplinary model attempting to explain how news is constructed by relying on the contributions of different fields of study: News Sociology, Political Communications, International Communications, International Relations. It is a first step towards developing a holistic theoretical approach to what shapes the news, which bridges current micro to macro approaches. More precisely the model explains news variation across different media organization and countries by focusing on the different way the sense of newsworthiness of journalists is affected by three main variables: national interest, national journalistic culture, and editorial policy of each media organization. The model is developed on the basis of an investigation into what shaped the media coverage of 9/11 in eight elite newspapers across the US, France, Italy and Pakistan

An International Prospectus for Library & Information Professionals: Development, Leadership and Resources for Evolving Patron Needs

The roles of library and information professionals must change and evolve to: 1. accommodate needs of tech-savvy patrons; 2. thrive in the Commons & Library 2.0; 3. provide integrated, just-in-time services; 4. constantly update and enhance technology; 5. design appropriate library spaces for research and productivity; 6.adapt to new models of scholarly communication and publication, especially: the Open Archives Initiative and digital repositories; 7. remain abreast of national and interanational academic and legislative initiatives affecting the provision of information services and resources. Professionals will need to collaborate in: 1. Formal & informal networks – regional, national, and international; and; 2. Library staff development initiatives – regional, national, international Professionals will need to use libraries as laboratories for ongoing, lifelong training and education of patrons and of all library staff ( internal patrons ): the library is the framework in which Information Research Literacy is the curriculum . Professionals will need to remain aware of trends and challenges in their regions, the EU, the US and North America, of models which might provide inspiration and support: 1. Top Technology Trends; 2. New paradigms of professionalism; 3. Knowledge-creation and knowledge consumption; 4. The shifting balance of the physical library with the virtual-digital librar

(Re)Building a feeling of belonging in complex emergencies : Challenges and opportunities in the education of refugee children through the experiences of Afghans in Pakistan

In an effort to contribute to the development of the emerging field of studies related to complex emergencies, this article seeks to define recent trends in curriculum studies and research methodology in comparative and international education (CIE) and will suggest crucial areas where CIE and curriculum studies contribute to theory building for a qualitative praxis of implementing learning environments in complex emergency contexts. It goes on to test the emerging sense of a critical learning theory for survival against the case study of Afghan refugee education in south-west Pakistan during the Taliban era. This represents an attempt by emergency educationists to move away from solely focusing on the practical aspects of their field towards thinking more strategically and deeply about the nature of the field itself and suggesting early directions that theory development might usefully take. The paper draws on the author’s firsthand experiences of managing refugee education programmes, as well as publicly available policy documents, field reports, and the strong theoretical traditions within curriculum studies, thereby highlighting the need for rigorously developing a deeper understanding of education for survival in complex emergency environments.Afin de contribuer au progrès du champ d’études émergent concernant les situations d’urgence complexes, cet article cherche à faire le tour des récentes tendances en études de programmes scolaires et en méthodes de recherche dans le domaine de l’éducation comparative et internationale (ECI), et à suggérer des domaines vitaux où l’ECI et les recherches en programmes d’études contribuent à la construction d’une praxis de qualité dans la mise en place de milieux d’apprentissage dans des situations d’urgence complexes. On scrute ensuite l’émergence d’une théorie critique de l’apprentissage de survie à partir d’une étude de cas de l’enseignement auprès des réfugiés afghans au sud-ouest du Pakistan à l’époque des Talibans. Cela représente une tentative par les éducateurs en situation d’urgence de s’écarter d’une perspective uniquement centrée sur les aspects pragmatiques de leur pratique vers une approche qui se concentre de façon stratégique et réfléchie sur la nature même de la pratique et qui suggère quelques directions novatrices que pourrait prendre l’évolution de la théorie. Cet article se nourrit des expériences de première main de l’auteure en gestion des programmes visant des réfugiés, ainsi que d’une documentation composée des politiques, des rapports de terrain et des traditions fortes provenant du champ des programmes d’études, le tout permettant de souligner le besoin du développement rigoureux d’une meilleure compréhension des exigences de la survie dans des situations d’urgence complexes

Future directions of postcolonial studies

A discussion of new directions in postcolonial studies mainly with reference to essays in the co-edited volume, Rerouting the Postcolonial ed. Janet Wilson, Sarah Lawson Welsh and Cristine Sandru (Routledge, 2010), which covers terror and the postcolonial (with reference to The Reluctant Fudnamentalist by Mohsin Hamid), the Arab Spring, the turn to the utopian, and global imaginaries. The talk also takes some directions from the expanded categories of the postcolonial found in the second edition of the Postcolonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft et al (Routledge, 2006

Gendering global governance

In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance

International Security, Development, and Human Rights: Policy Conversion or Conflict?

This article uses an institutional network governance approach to explore the overlapping dimension of the policy fields between security, development, and human rights, reflected in the US and German provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan. The past two decades have witnessed a gradually changing paradigm in academic and policy debates regarding the questions of the normative basis of world order and possibilities for tackling imminent threats to security and peace (i.e. intra-state armed conflicts, failed states, terrorism, poverty, and deepening inequality). The introduction of concepts such as “human security” and “the right to humanitarian intervention/responsibility to protect (R2P)” as well as critical examinations of peace-, nation-, and state-building missions (PNSB) have led to a relativist tendency of state sovereignty and a changing attitude regarding how to address the intersection of security, development, and human rights. Despite this shift, the policy commitments to integrating these policy considerations remain puzzling. How have they been redefined, conceptualized, and put into practice? I argue that an integrated conceptual approach has facilitated the redefinition of common policy goals, principles, and the mobilization of resources. At the same time, civil and military cooperation, as demonstrated in the multifunctional work of PRTs, has been Janus-headed—permanently caught in an ongoing tension between the war on terror and short-term stability operation on the one hand and long-term durable peace and development on the other. The misunderstanding of its interim character, the dynamics of Afghan environment, the blurring of policy lines, and the differences between national PRT models have made it difficult to systematically assess the efficiency and legitimacy of each policy frame and program

"the Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism"

Suicide attack is the most virulent and horrifying form of terrorism in the world today. The mere rumor of an impending suicide attack can throw thousands of people into panic. This occurred during a Shi‘a procession in Iraq in late August 2005, causing hundreds of deaths. Although suicide attacks account for a minority of all terrorist acts, they are responsible for a majority of all terrorism-related casualties, and the rate of attacks is rising rapidly across the globe. During 2000–2004, there were 472 suicide attacks in 22 countries, killing more than 7,000 and wounding tens of thousands. Most have been carried out by Islamist groups claiming religious motivation, also known as jihadis. Rand Corp. vice president and terrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman has found that 80 percent of suicide attacks since 1968 occurred after the September 11 attacks, with jihadis representing 31 of the 35 responsible groups. More suicide attacks occurred in 2004 than in any previous year, and 2005 has proven even more deadly, with attacks in Iraq alone averaging more than one per day, according to data gathered by the U.S. military. The July 2005 London and Sinai bombings, a second round of bombings at tourist destinations in Bali in October, coordinated hotel bombings in Jordan in November, the arrival of suicide bombings in Bangladesh in December, a record year of attacks in Afghanistan, and daily bombings in Iraq have spurred renewed interest in suicide terrorism, with recent analyses stressing the strategic logic, organizational structure, and rational calculation involved. Whereas they once primarily consisted of organized campaigns by militarily weak forces aiming to end the perceived occupation of their homeland, as argued by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape in Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, suicide attacks today serve as banner actions for a thoroughly modern, global diaspora inspired by religion and claiming the role of vanguard for a massive, media-driven transnational political awakening. Living mostly in the diaspora and undeterred by the threat of retaliation against original home populations, jihadis, who are frequently middle-class, secularly well educated, but often “born-again” radical Islamists, including converts from Christianity, embrace apocalyptic visions for humanity's violent salvation. In Muslim countries and across western Europe, bright and idealistic Muslim youth, even more than the marginalized and dispossessed, internalize the jihadi story, illustrated on satellite television and the Internet with the ubiquitous images of social injustice and political repression with which much of the Muslim world's bulging immigrant and youth populations intimately identifies. From the suburbs of Paris to the jungles of Indonesia, I have interviewed culturally uprooted and politically restless youth who echo a stunningly simplified and decontextualized message of martyrdom for the sake of global jihad as life's noblest cause. They are increasingly as willing and even eager to die as they are to kill. The policy implications of this change in the motivation, organization, and calculation of suicide terrorism may be as novel as hitherto neglected. Many analysts continue to claim that jihadism caters to the destitute and depraved, the craven and criminal, or those who “hate freedom.” Politicians and pundits have asserted that jihadism is nihilistic and immoral, with no real program or humanity. Yet, jihadism is none of these things. Do we really understand the causes of today's suicide terrorism? Do suicide attacks stem mainly from a political cause, such as military occupation? Do they need a strong organization, such as Al Qaeda? What else could be done to turn the rising tide of martyrdom?Terrorism, Morality, Sacred Values. Limits of Rational Choice, military intelligence

The Bangsamoro: A Search for Autonomy in an Era of Contested Priorities and Global Changes – Implications for Education for All

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an offshoot of Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), was established in the 1970s to struggle for autonomy and self-determination of the Bangsamoro. The Bangsamoro home of the Moro Muslim community in the Southern Philippines achieved its strategic goal of a measure of autonomy through a national plebiscite in December 2019. A transition period of three years is underway, with funding from international and bilateral agencies, to strengthen the Bangsamoro Transitional Authority’s governing framework and for its service provision particularly education for all. Local educational authorities, personnel, and schools over the past five decades have espoused the mujahidin ideology. Communities spread in barangays (villages) along with their children participated in training and combat — jihad; the new political dispensation seeks a harmonised policy inclusive of the whole population, Muslim and non-Muslim. This chapter addresses the question of what the prospects are for education where public, private, and selfgoverning autonomous religious schools — madrassahs — play a mediating and determining role with cognate organs of society to shape values and a vision of the future. It explores and analyses the question in the current socio-political situation and the contested ideological underpinnings shaping educational policies during this difficult transition phase

Social Life of Values

The case of the Danish “cartoon war†was a premonition of things to come: accelerated social construction of inequalities and their accelerated symbolic communication, translation and negotiation. New uses of values in organizing and managing inequalities emerge. Values lead active social life as bourgeois virtues (McCloskey, 2006), their subversive alternatives or translated “memes†of cultural history. Since social life of values went global and online, tracing their hybrid manifestations requires cross-culturally competent domestication (Magala, 2005) as if they were “memes†manipulated for further reengineering. Hopes are linked to emergent concepts of “microstorias†(Boje,2002), bottom-up, participative, open citizenship (Balibar,2004), disruption of stereotypical branding in mass-media (Sennett, 2006). However, Kuhn’s opportunistic deviation from Popperian evolutionary epistemology should fade away with other hidden injuries of Cold War, to free our agenda for the future of social sciences in general and organizational sciences in particular (Fuller, 2000, 2003).Complex Identities;Cross-Cultural Competence;Intersubjective Falsificationism;Managing Inequalities;Political Paradigms;Professional Evolution