25,847 research outputs found

    Integrating Diplomacy and Social Media: A Report of the First Annual Aspen Institute Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology

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    This report is a result of the first annual Aspen Institute Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology, or what we call ADDTech. The concept for this Dialogue originated with longtime communications executive and Aspen Institute Trustee Marc Nathanson. Since his tenure as Chairman of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Nathanson has been concerned with how American diplomacy could more rapidly embrace the changing world of social media and other technologies. He is also a graduate of the University of Denver where former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's father, Josef Korbel, namesake of the Josef Korbel School of International Relations there, was his professor. Thus, Albright, another Institute Trustee, was a natural partner to create the first Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology. The cast is ably supplemented with Korbel School Dean and former U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill and Aspen Institute President Walter Isaacson, who himself was also recently the chair of the BBG.The topic for this inaugural dialogue is how the diplomatic realm could better utilize new communications technologies. The group focused particularly on social media, but needed to differentiate among the various diplomacies in play in the current world, viz., formal state diplomacy, public diplomacy, citizen diplomacy and business diplomacy. Each presents its own array of opportunities as well as problems. In this first Dialogue, much of the time necessarily had to be used to define our terms and learn how technologies are currently being used in each case. To help us in that endeavor, we focused on the Middle East. While the resulting recommendations are therefore rather modest, they set up the series of dialogues to come in the years ahead

    Intersectionality in Finnish adult education research: insights from the journal Aikuiskasvatus 2010 - 2016

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    The article studies intersectionality in Finnish research on adult education. Specifically, we investigate the kinds of discussions on differences and their relations that are going on in such research. To this end we seek to identify intersectional approaches in the articles published in the journal Aikuiskasvatus between 2010 and 2016, a period marked by an increase in multiculturalism and social division as well as in gendered and sexual diversity in Finnish society. We understand intersectional differences as performative processes, not stable essences. Our study indicates that only few articles analysed intersectional differences explicitly. Implicitly recognised differences were mostly seen as givens. Categories such as ethnicity and race were found to be lacking in the data, but age, gender, social class, education, occupation and learning difficulties were discussed. (DIPF/Orig.

    Urban history and modernity in Central Europe

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    This historiographical review discusses recent literature on cities in modern Central Europe – mainly on Berlin and Vienna – which reflects the great variety of approaches to urban history and underlines the importance of urban history for the study of modernity. The history of urbanisation was a central event in the history of modernity. Especially in the Central European capitals of Berlin and Vienna, where modernisation and urban growth started later and then advanced quicker than in West European cities, all aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural modernity and its consequences can be observed in detail

    Political geographies of the object

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    This paper examines the role of objects in the constitution and exercise of state power, drawing on a close reading of the acclaimed HBO television series The Wire, an unconventional crime drama set and shot in Baltimore, Maryland. While political geography increasingly recognizes the prosaic and intimate practices of stateness, we argue that objects themselves are central to the production, organization, and performance of state power. Specifically, we analyze how three prominent objects on The Wire—wiretaps, cameras, and standardized tests—arrange and produce the conditions we understand as ‘stateness’. Drawing on object-oriented philosophy, we offer a methodology of power that suggests it is generalized force relations rather than specifically social relations that police a population—without, of course, ever being able to fully capture it. We conclude by suggesting The Wire itself is an object of force, and explore the implications of an object-oriented approach for understanding the nature of power, and for political geography more broadly

    A review of concepts from policy studies relevant for the analysis of EFA in developing countries

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    This paper aims to give an introduction to the central concepts and the literature of Policy Studies in education. The first part of the paper addresses the questions of what policy is. How is it made and why is it relevant? It looks in particular at the role of the state and the Policy cycle framework which is an analytical tool that helps to analyse how policy is made and later implemented. The second part then focuses on the central concepts. The two main paradigms of education policy studies relate directly to these central themes. On the one hand a series of policy concepts cluster around social justice, inclusion and the fight against discrimination on the basis of race, gender and disability. On the other lie the debates raging around efficiency, effectiveness and quality of education. These include the issues of accountability and measurement of pupil achievement. The role of the market is discussed and a short section on globalisation explains how the nature of education policy is changing in light of globalisation. The last part of the paper four studies were chosen to look at how the concepts elaborated in the earlier part have been used in studies relating to EFA. The works chosen are: Myron Weiner’s The Child and the State in India (1991), Operation Blackboard, Policy Implementation in Indian Elementary Education by Caroline Dyer (2000), Michael Sanderson’s Education, Economic change and Society in England 1780-1870 (1991) and Social Origins of Educational Systems by Margaret Archer (1984). The paper concludes that the transferability of the concepts discussed above and their related debates to the context of EFA in developing countries require a re-contextualisation which takes into account the EFA priorities of equity and access. The basic question remains of how governments will manage to reconcile expanding the educations system and creating a true EFA system, while maintaining high levels of quality. The role of education policy analysis is key in looking at this debate from a different vantage point. v

    Towards a quasi-Lamarckian theory of institutional change.

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    The paper emphasises two flaws in mainstream economics: the failure to understand human behaviour and the belittling of transaction costs. By stressing the role of knowledge, institutions and path dependence, new institutional economics has provided a powerful answer to these shortcomings. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain open. In particular, path dependence is far from being a continuous process. Its dynamics and its irregularities are by and large unexplained. Hence, a strong need for a convincing evolutionary theory of environmental change. This paper does not deny the validity of the Darwinian view applied to the theory of the firm and of competition in a free-market economy. It is however maintained that the natural-selection process that characterises the Darwinian approach is ill suited to describe economic evolutionary processes. It is shown that a combination of functional analysis and natural selection may indeed be a better solution, for it solves some of the puzzles raised by the public choice school without violating the fundamental tenets of the neo-institutional approach. Still, although this combined view may well explain why the institutional features are retained by the system, it does not clarify why they are introduced in the first place. A third possibility is thus put forward in the second part of the paper, where a new evolutionary theory is suggested. Within this framework, agents are assumed to behave according to their preferences within the existing rules of the game. At the same time, new ideas and sometimes new ideologies may influence their behavioural patterns. The combination between needs and ideologies generates environmental change, especially if so-called "ideological entrepreneurs" are able to transform latent and shared beliefs into an institutional project and enforce it.

    Editorial: Feminism, women’s movements and women in movement

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    Introduction to Special Issue that engages with the increasingly important, separate yet interrelated themes of feminism, women’s movements and women in movement in the context of global neoliberalism

    The Importance of Using Manipulatives in Teaching Math Today

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    This paper explores the research and use of mathematics manipulatives in the teaching of mathematics today during an age of technology and standardized testing. It looks at the drawbacks and cautions educators as they use math manipulatives in their instruction. It also explores some cognitive concerns as a teacher goes about teaching with math manipulatives. The paper shares many commonly used math manipulatives used in today’s classrooms and matches them up to some of the Common Core Math Standards that are taught today in classrooms in the USA and around the world
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