'All Yorkshiremen are from Yorkshire, but some are more "Yorkshire" than others': British Asians and the myths of Yorkshire cricket

This article explores the contemporary relationship between Yorkshire cricket and South Asian communities through oral testimonies with white and British Asian cricketers within the region. The article documents how the myths and invented traditions surrounding Yorkshire as an insular county have extended to all levels of Yorkshire cricket culture. Evidence is presented to argue that, despite the growing representation of British Asians within the Yorkshire leagues and within the structure of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, cultural and institutionalized forms of racism continue to be intrinsic to the sport. The article presents evidence to suggest that, regardless of being committed to Yorkshire and their 'Yorkshireness', white Yorkshire people may never fully accept British Asians as 'one of us'. Finally, Yorkshire cricket's (alleged) commitment to 'colour blindness' is deconstructed by presenting evidence that British Asians continue to feel marginalized by, and on the fringes of, mainstream cricket culture in Yorkshire. © 2012 Taylor & Francis

What do we mean when we talk about “safe space”? A philosophical exploration of a contentious metaphor in education

Educators have described their classes and institutions as “safe spaces” with increasing frequency and certainty since the 1990s. However, philosophers of education such as Eamon Callan, Cris Mayo, and Sigal Ben-Porath have found “safe space” to be conceptually and pedagogically lacking when interpreted from intersectional positionalities operating within the hegemonic white, masculine, and consumerist discourses permeating a modern educational system that strives for greater equity, diversity, and inclusion. This work operationalizes “safe space” by recognizing it as what linguists Max Black, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and philosopher Paul Ricoeur would term a conceptual metaphor, which structures thinking about education. Critical pedagogues such as Michael Apple, Raymond Callahan, Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Kliebard, and Peter McLaren have argued how this type of structured thinking can influence pedagogical practices; but to date, no in-depth philosophical analysis of “safe space” exists in the literature. Interrogating modern debates about the nature of “space” inherited from Isaac Newton (who viewed it as an absolute container filled with independent subjects/objects), and Gottfried Leibniz (who viewed space as an infinite set of relations between subjects/objects), the implications for any educationally worthwhile understanding and practice of “safety” or “safe space” are shown to be suspect due to the Newtonian inheritances. Ultimately, I posit that “safe space” is unavoidably Newtonian – assumed to be capable of formulation a priori such that students are entitled to a guarantee that a class space will be safe in some sense that can be unambiguously stated, irrespective of who is taking the class, what the class is about, and what is going on in the world. This a priori safe space is then one that institutions feel responsible for guaranteeing, teachers feel responsible for creating and maintaining, with students feeling no responsibility other than reaping its benefits. Linking this work’s conceptual analysis of the Leibnizian inheritances to “space” and “safety” (understood as infinitely relational) to that of critical pedagogues such as bell hooks, I argue for a more philosophically grounded and educationally worthwhile understanding of “safe space”

What do we mean when we talk about “safe space”?: a philosophical exploration of a contentious metaphor in education

Educators have described their classes and institutions as “safe spaces” with increasing frequency and certainty since the 1990s. However, philosophers of education such as Eamon Callan, Cris Mayo, and Sigal Ben-Porath have found “safe space” to be conceptually and pedagogically lacking when interpreted from intersectional positionalities operating within the hegemonic white, masculine, and consumerist discourses permeating a modern educational system that strives for greater equity, diversity, and inclusion. This work operationalizes “safe space” by recognizing it as what linguists Max Black, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and philosopher Paul Ricoeur would term a conceptual metaphor, which structures thinking about education. Critical pedagogues such as Michael Apple, Raymond Callahan, Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Kliebard, and Peter McLaren have argued how this type of structured thinking can influence pedagogical practices; but to date, no in-depth philosophical analysis of “safe space” exists in the literature. Interrogating modern debates about the nature of “space” inherited from Isaac Newton (who viewed it as an absolute container filled with independent subjects/objects), and Gottfried Leibniz (who viewed space as an infinite set of relations between subjects/objects), the implications for any educationally worthwhile understanding and practice of “safety” or “safe space” are shown to be suspect due to the Newtonian inheritances. Ultimately, I posit that “safe space” is unavoidably Newtonian – assumed to be capable of formulation a priori such that students are entitled to a guarantee that a class space will be safe in some sense that can be unambiguously stated, irrespective of who is taking the class, what the class is about, and what is going on in the world. This a priori safe space is then one that institutions feel responsible for guaranteeing, teachers feel responsible for creating and maintaining, with students feeling no responsibility other than reaping its benefits. Linking this work’s conceptual analysis of the Leibnizian inheritances to “space” and “safety” (understood as infinitely relational) to that of critical pedagogues such as bell hooks, I argue for a more philosophically grounded and educationally worthwhile understanding of “safe space”.Safe Space; Philosophy of Education; Paul Ricoeur; Isaac Newton; Gottfried Leibniz, bell hooks; Conceptual Metaphor; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI

Boundary-work that does not work : social inequalities and the non-performativity of scientific boundary-work

Although the STS literature on boundary-work recognizes that such work unfolds within a “terrain of uneven advantage” vis-à-vis gender, race, and other inequalities, reflection about that uneven advantage has been strikingly underdeveloped. This article calls for a retheorizing of boundary-work that engages more actively with feminist, critical race, and postcolonial scholarship and examines more systematically the relation between scientific boundary-work, broader structures of sociopolitical inequality, and boundary-workers’ (embodied) positionality. To demonstrate the need for this retheorization, I analyze ethnographic and interview data on scientific boundary-work in the natural and social sciences in Portugal, showing that scholars’ gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nationality affect the success of their boundary-work. I suggest, therefore, that in unequal societies where credibility is unevenly distributed, the conditions are not in place for some scholars’ boundary-work to work. I draw on Sara Ahmed (and J. L. Austin) to argue that we must conceptualize scientific boundary-work as always potentially performative, but not always successfully so, and explicitly interrogate the actual conditions of performativity. Recognizing the links between inequality, embodiment, and non-performativity in scientific boundary-work will enable STS to better understand, and hopefully transform, the relations between contingent struggles over scientificity and entrenched structures of power

Soft power, hard news:How journalists at state-funded transnational media legitimize their work

How do journalists working for different state-funded international news organizations legitimize their relationship to the governments which support them? In what circumstances might such journalists resist the diplomatic strategies of their funding states? We address these questions through a comparative study of journalists working for international news organizations funded by the Chinese, US, UK and Qatari governments. Using 52 interviews with journalists covering humanitarian issues, we explain how they minimized tensions between their diplomatic role and dominant norms of journalistic autonomy by drawing on three – broadly shared – legitimizing narratives, involving different kinds of boundary-work. In, the first ‘exclusionary’ narrative, journalists differentiated their ‘truthful’ news reporting from the ‘false’ state ‘propaganda’ of a common Other, the Russian-funded network, RT. In the second ‘fuzzifying’ narrative, journalists deployed the ambiguous notion of ‘soft power’ as an ambivalent ‘boundary concept’, to defuse conflicts between journalistic and diplomatic agendas. In the final ‘inversion’ narrative, journalists argued that, paradoxically, their dependence on funding states gave them greater ‘operational autonomy’. Even when journalists did resist their funding states, this was hidden or partial, and prompted less by journalists’ concerns about the political effects of their work, than by serious threats to their personal cultural capital

Researching Across Two Cultures: Shifting Positionality

Embodied and creative research methods provoke honesty, emotion, and vulnerability in participants, which add to the richness of the stories they tell and are willing to share. The positionality of the researcher is less of “interviewer” and more “co-producer” or participant in a dialogue. Visual and creative approaches invite participants to share in ways in which they are not able or willing through words alone. The data and outputs they produce, with film, art, or objects, can in turn affect those who see it more than written text and need to be analysed and disseminated along with more traditional transcripts, articles, and presentations. In the context of investigating sensitive issues such as those around embodied identity, these methods, which use embodied methods to explore embodied research questions, may feel the most appropriate. These approaches lie along the boundary of therapy and research, asking much of researchers who are unlikely to have received therapeutic training or ongoing support. Due to this deficit, the researched may find that their experience is not held or contained in a way that the content would demand. Similarly, the data themselves lie on the boundary of art and research, in that they can be seen as more than a tool to facilitate reflection, but as artifacts in their own right. What are the implications in this scenario? Where should we position ourselves and our work along these boundaries? Who holds the space for the researcher and the researched if both are made vulnerable

The Interconnectivity of Trust and Appreciative Advising

Academic advisors can harness the interconnectivity of trust-building frameworks and Appreciative Advising to build relationships with students. This article proposes the integration of two trust-building frameworks within the Appreciative Advising Theory-to-Practice Framework (Bloom et al., 2008). Utilizing findings and insights from Frei and Morriss’ (2020) research on trust, the authors discuss ways that authenticity, logic, and empathy support the practice of Appreciative Advising. Exploring research from Brown (2019), the article reviews the roles of boundaries, reliability, accountability, the vault, integrity, non-judgment, and generosity in each of the six phases of Appreciative Advising. A matrix displays the intersections of trust-building actions and the Appreciative Advising phases, and the article presents examples of the impact of trust in an advising context

Being a Korean Studying Koreans in an American School: Reflections on Culture, Power, and Ideology

Recent debates on situated knowledge highlight the issue of the researcher’s position in the research process, challenging the traditional assumption of the insider/outsider dichotomy. Drawing on my fieldwork among Korean immigrant parents in an American school, I describe my shifting positions in negotiation and scrutinize the ways my reflexivity intersects with culture, power relations, and political ideologies in the research process. This self-analysis highlights partial and situated knowledge claims, questioning the author’s value-neutral, authoritative voice in texts. I argue that the researcher should critically reflect on her location in the field and articulate how this position influences the research

Ostrich or eagle? Protection and professionalism in sport science and coaching

In this presentation I examine the processes of professionalisation and mutual development within and between two occupational groups in the UK - sport and exercise scientists and sports coaches. At the outset I acknowledge the ‘cultural turn’ in science and use my own positionality, based on 30 years of experience within both communities, to inform the analysis. The main questions addressed here are whether these two interdependent groups have found a satisfactory professional relationship and how they have adjusted to the destabilising forces of late modernity. The issue of child protection in sport is used as a case study through which to examine these questions. The readiness of the two groups to acknowledge and embrace associated ethical and professional practices differs considerably. It is argued that sports coaching has addressed protection issues much more readily and effectively than has sport science. It is also suggested that the preoccupation of sport science with scholarly activity undermines the realisation of its aspiration for professional and chartered status. The emphasis of both occupational groups on ‘performance enhancement’, both scholarly and/or athletic, has led them to suffer from diminished social and political perspectives which benefit neither. The paper concludes with some reflections on the potential for both occupations to learn from attending to wider external reference points