312 research outputs found

    Beheading Canada’s History: The Desecration of Sir John A. Macdonald’s image in the Canadian National Memory

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    The image of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, has rapidly deteriorated. In the 1950s, Macdonald was regarded as one of Canada’s greatest statesmen, where both historiographical and public esteem for him was at its peak. However, in the 1970s the desecration of his image began both in the public square and in contemporary debates about his stature in historiography. No figure in Canadian history has seen as drastic and unforgiving of a decline as Macdonald. Fuelled by growing trends of revisionism, presentism, and “wokeism,” Macdonald’s legacy is being destroyed as Canadian history is increasingly studied through the lens of morality, condemning imperfections and ignoring historical context. As a result, the grievances of contemporary Canada are placed on Macdonald as a way to help Canadians come to terms with the elements of Canada’s foundation that do not fit into the narratives of “progressivism,” “tolerance,” and “multiculturalism.” Macdonald’s image has been inaccurately distorted, questioned, and actively diminished, rendering him guilty of committing many of the injustices in Canada’s history. Today’s Macdonald is often viewed as a racist, genocidal tyrant, reduced to a caricature of his shortcomings and diminished as a drunk. However, movements to reclaim the accurate image of Macdonald are being undertaken. This thesis explores the current debate surrounding Macdonald’s legacy and examines how his image has changed throughout Canada’s history. I ultimately argue that to properly understand Macdonald, the two images that dominate contemporary historiography, one of him as a heroic nation builder and the other of him as a genocidal tyrant, must be examined in historical context and in tandem with one another. While the new, distorted image of Macdonald is loudly and viciously proclaimed, it is not welcomed by many

    The mad manifesto

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    The “mad manifesto” project is a multidisciplinary mediated investigation into the circumstances by which mad (mentally ill, neurodivergent) or disabled (disclosed, undisclosed) students faced far more precarious circumstances with inadequate support models while attending North American universities during the pandemic teaching era (2020-2023). Using a combination of “emergency remote teaching” archival materials such as national student datasets, universal design for learning (UDL) training models, digital classroom teaching experiments, university budgetary releases, educational technology coursewares, and lived experience expertise, this dissertation carefully retells the story of “accessibility” as it transpired in disabling classroom containers trapped within intentionally underprepared crisis superstructures. Using rhetorical models derived from critical disability studies, mad studies, social work practice, and health humanities, it then suggests radically collaborative UDL teaching practices that may better pre-empt the dynamic needs of dis/abled students whose needs remain direly underserviced. The manifesto leaves the reader with discrete calls to action that foster more critical performances of intersectionally inclusive UDL classrooms for North American mad students, which it calls “mad-positive” facilitation techniques: 1. Seek to untie the bond that regards the digital divide and access as synonyms. 2. UDL practice requires an environment shift that prioritizes change potential. 3. Advocate against the usage of UDL as a for-all keystone of accessibility. 4. Refuse or reduce the use of technologies whose primary mandate is dataveillance. 5. Remind students and allies that university space is a non-neutral affective container. 6. Operationalize the tracking of student suicides on your home campus. 7. Seek out physical & affectual ways that your campus is harming social capital potential. 8. Revise policies and practices that are ability-adjacent imaginings of access. 9. Eliminate sanist and neuroscientific languaging from how you speak about students. 10. Vigilantly interrogate how “normal” and “belong” are socially constructed. 11. Treat lived experience expertise as a gift, not a resource to mine and to spend. 12. Create non-psychiatric routes of receiving accommodation requests in your classroom. 13. Seek out uncomfortable stories of mad exclusion and consider carceral logic’s role in it. 14. Center madness in inclusive methodologies designed to explicitly resist carceral logics. 15. Create counteraffectual classrooms that anticipate and interrupt kairotic spatial power. 16. Strive to refuse comfort and immediate intelligibility as mandatory classroom presences. 17. Create pathways that empower cozy space understandings of classroom practice. 18. Vector students wherever possible as dynamic ability constellations in assessment

    The manifestation and potential of constructive journalism in South African digital news

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    This study aimed to establish the manifestation of constructive journalism, and the perceptions and attitudes of journalists and editors towards the form, in South African digital news. A qualitative content analysis was applied to a sample of 134 articles on “evictions” (written during SA's first Covid lockdown in 2020) from three online news-outlets varying in editorial approach. Semi-structured interviews with a purposively selected sample of journalists and editors followed. Findings showed that the most distinctive principles of constructive journalism were largely absent in the articles. Yet, interviewees recognised a role for the form to be introduced alongside watchdog journalism. Views ranged from supporting constructive journalism as a necessary and valuable approach that would strengthen watchdog journalism, to seeing constructive journalism as a “nice to have” in the overall news cycle. In some of the outlets, constructive journalism has recently been included in output, even if not labelled as such. The contrast between the two dataset's findings indicates a shift in how some journalists have started thinking about the information needs of audiences and ways to address those. Journalists showed acute awareness of the effects of relentless negative news on audiences. Findings revealed that industry pressures posed significant challenges to the implementation of constructive journalism, but that certain of those challenges are also opportunities. One proposition was that newsrooms collaborate to tackle big-issue projects through creating joint investigative/constructive teams. Some journalists had difficulty with a clear conception of constructive journalism but found it noteworthy to see constructive journalism as an additional step in the overall news cycle not replacing their monitorial role. Interviewees wanted to learn more about expanded interviewing techniques proposed in constructive journalism to add complexity to conflict reporting. The study enriches understanding of the applicability of constructive journalism in developing democracies and shows that the form can add nuance and complexity to current practices of watchdog journalism dominating South African news-reporting. The risks of constructive journalism being misinterpreted or manipulated by partisan media requires of journalists to adhere to rigorous journalistic norms proposed in constructive journalism

    WHAT HAPPENED WITHIN THE POLICE SERVICE WHEN THE GOVERNMENT CREATED THE OFFENCE OF “CORRUPT OR IMPROPER PRACTICE” IN SECTION 26 OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND COURTS ACT 2015?

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    Title. What happened within the police service when the government created the offence of “Corrupt or Improper Practice” in section 26 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015? Author Brendan P. Brookshaw Purpose. This PhD thesis offers explanations for the way in which the offence of Corrupt or Improper Practice by police officers was implemented within the service and is analysed through a framework of the psychology, ethics, and management of implementation. Using autoethnographic data as policing parables, it explores stories of police misconduct and suggests theoretical underpinnings for the drivers of corruption and how the police may react to it. Design/methodology/approach. This research is an autoethnographic examination of the author’s last two years as a serving police officer leading the Professional Standards Department of a large rural UK police force. The data consists of reflections on the emotional and philosophical impact on the author created by day-to-day interactions with police officers recorded in personal journals. Findings. The paper offers the new concepts of The Honest Cop Belief, the Ethical Trihedral, and Hyper-Procedural Pseudo-Compliance which are presented through an encompassing model of policing implementation named the Triangle of Kakistocracy. This model is offered as an original theoretical lens for other researchers to consider when examining the workings of the police. It discusses organisational and personal arrogance arising from the psychological impact on officers of ingrained cultural icons such as the Blue Wall of Silence. The Ethical Trihedral is presented as a model for analysing ethical incompetence in the police which is the suggested outcome of tension arising from conflicting philosophical paradigms. The impact of neoliberal managerialism in liquid modernity is examined to offer explanations for perceived moral cowardice in police managerial decision making which takes the form of hyper-procedural pseudo-compliance. Originality/value. Autoethnographic insider-research on police corruption is rare in the literature. Public trust and consent are vital to the British policing model, so divining esoteric police attitudes towards the harms perpetrated by abuses of their power is increasingly valuable in understanding police/public relationships. Keywords. Autoethnography, corruption, police, implementation, culture, ethics, management Paper type. PhD Thesi

    Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective

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    Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective examines how conspiracy theories and related forms of misinformation and disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic have circulated widely around the world. Covid conspiracy theories have attracted considerable attention from researchers, journalists, and politicians, not least because conspiracy beliefs have the potential to negatively affect adherence to public health measures. While most of this focus has been on the United States and Western Europe, this collection provides a unique global perspective on the emergence and development of conspiracy theories through a series of case studies. The chapters have been commissioned by recognized experts on area studies and conspiracy theories. The chapters present case studies on how Covid conspiracism has played out (some focused on a single country, others on regions), using a range of methods from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including history, politics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Collectively, the authors reveal that, although there are many narratives that have spread virally, they have been adapted for different uses and take on different meanings in local contexts. This volume makes an important contribution to the rapidly expanding field of academic conspiracy theory studies, as well as being of interest to those working in the media, regulatory agencies, and civil society organizations, who seek to better understand the problem of how and why conspiracy theories spread

    Transitioning From Soldier to Student: A Phenomenological Study of Military Service Member and Veteran Students at an Oregon Community College

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    Due to drastic reductions in deployment and an increase in the number of individuals taking advantage of educational benefits under the post-9/11 GI Bill of 2009, the number of military students on today’s college campuses continues to increase, year after year. Meeting the needs of military service member and veteran students requires specialized training and an understanding of the unique challenges they face during the transition from the military to civilian life. This study looked at the experiences of military students in transition at a community college in order to share their lived experience and to determine whether higher education is meeting their needs. By considering the experiences of these students, this study was able to examine how andragogy, college environments and processes, and the structure of college classrooms can be adapted to meet the needs of today’s military student

    Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development

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    In October 2019, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer jointly won the 51st Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." But what is the exact scope of their experimental method, known as randomized control trials (RCTs)? Which sorts of questions are RCTs able to address and which do they fail to answer? This book provides answers to these questions, explaining how RCTs work, what they can achieve, why they sometimes fail, how they can be improved and why other methods are both useful and necessary. Chapters contributed by leading specialists in the field present a full and coherent picture of the main strengths and weaknesses of RCTs in the field of development. Looking beyond the epistemological, political, and ethical differences underlying many of the disagreements surrounding RCTs, it explores the implementation of RCTs on the ground, outside of their ideal theoretical conditions and reveals some unsuspected uses and effects, their disruptive potential, but also their political uses. The contributions uncover the implicit worldview that many RCTs draw on and disseminate, and probe the gap between the method's narrow scope and its success, while also proposing improvements and alternatives. This book warns against the potential dangers of their excessive use, arguing that the best use for RCTs is not necessarily that which immediately springs to mind, and offering opportunity to come to an informed and reasoned judgement on RCTs and what they can bring to development
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