Why are they named after death? Name giving, name changing and death prevention names in Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Banjal)

This paper advocates the integration of ethnographic information such as anthroponymy in language documentation, by discussing the results of the documentation of personal names among speakers of Gújjolaay Eegimaa. Our study shows that Eegimaa proper names include names that may be termed ‘meaningless names’, because their meanings are virtually impossible to identify, and meaningful names, i.e. names whose meanings are semantically transparent. Two main types of meaningful proper names are identified: those that describe aspects of an individual’s physic or character, and ritual names which are termed death prevention names. Death prevention names include names given to women who undergo the Gaññalen ‘birth ritual’ to help them with pregnancy and birthgiving, and those given to children to fight infant mortality. We provide an analysis of the morphological structures and the meanings of proper names and investigate name changing practices among Eegimaa speakers. Our study shows that, in addition to revealing aspects of individuals’ lives, proper names also reveal important aspects of speakers’ social organisation. As a result, anthroponymy is an area of possible collaborative research with other disciplines including anthropology and philosophy

God Hunt

...God is always calling our names, and we have to learn to develop this intimacy so that we can hear him speak our names. And we will lift our ears. And we will know that it is he, that one who is making that sound. Now let me give you the discipline. Let me take you through the discipline that my husband and I have developed that helps us over the daily points of our lives. To recognize this voice as it speaks, as it communes, as it touches the most inner parts of our soul. And we call this discipline the God Hunt. The God Hunt

What Europe Knows and Thinks About Algorithms Results of a Representative Survey. Bertelsmann Stiftung eupinions February 2019

We live in an algorithmic world. Day by day, each of us is affected by decisions that algorithms make for and about us – generally without us being aware of or consciously perceiving this. Personalized advertisements in social media, the invitation to a job interview, the assessment of our creditworthiness – in all these cases, algorithms already play a significant role – and their importance is growing, day by day. The algorithmic revolution in our daily lives undoubtedly brings with it great opportunities. Algorithms are masters at handling complexity. They can manage huge amounts of data quickly and efficiently, processing it consistently every time. Where humans reach their cognitive limits, find themselves making decisions influenced by the day’s events or feelings, or let themselves be influenced by existing prejudices, algorithmic systems can be used to benefit society. For example, according to a study by the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration, automotive mechatronic engineers with Turkish names must submit about 50 percent more applications than candidates with German names before being invited to an in-person job interview (Schneider, Yemane and Weinmann 2014). If an algorithm were to make this decision, such discrimination could be prevented. However, automated decisions also carry significant risks: Algorithms can reproduce existing societal discrimination and reinforce social inequality, for example, if computers, using historical data as a basis, identify the male gender as a labor-market success factor, and thus systematically discard job applications from woman, as recently took place at Amazon (Nickel 2018)

Policy Issues in Rural Transformation (The Indain Scenerio)

Policy plays a significant role in nation building. This paper attempts to highlight the role of policy issues in bringing about rural transformation. India has its own peculiarities in both demographic and economic terms when we closely observe the urban and rural areas and its associated concerns. These peculiarities need to be kept in mind while formulating policies. If we take a snapshot of our history of the last 60 years since independence, we find that many policy initiatives taken by the government have indeed borne good results, albeit largely benefiting the urban population. The paper also highlights another peculiarity of India i.e. the growing disparity in application and use of technology in our day to day lives. The caution is that this growing ‘digital divide’ is not a healthy sign from sociological perspective. If unchecked, it may lead to social and economic fragmentation of the country. We also bring out few recent policy initiatives of the Government to achieve rural development as also the role played by the corporate sector and NGOs. The political leadership of the country has to rise above the ‘names-in-the-foundation-stone’ culture and ensure continuity of policies and implementation programmes. Only then, we can hope to go beyond paying ‘lip-service’ to rural transformation in our country.Policy,India

Diverse Contributions to the Education System

For my honors project, I wish to touch upon a topic that I have begun to learn about within the education field. Contributions within our field are very broad and diverse. In schools, there are only certain names heard and discussed when educating students. As long as I can remember, most of these famous names belong to white people that have been deemed “very important” people that contributed to our progression and lives as we know them today. However, contributions within the education system do not stop and only come from white men as we have been taught. Many people, who come from different ethnicities and backgrounds, have made groundbreaking discoveries that also contribute to our society and lives. I wish to dig deeper into the education system and the contributions that helped us all get to where we are today. I wish to recognize and give credit to some unspoken names that have been overlooked in the field so that I may continue to give them credit in my future as an educator

Negative Object; Apophatic Gesture

Representing absence without naming or referencing the objects in question brings to mind the example of apophaticism – a tradition in theology that names what the divine is not, exploring the limits of human knowledge through negation. Considering the absent object in an apophatic way can foster attentiveness to the things that populate our lives, revealing that when objects go missing or lose their usefulness there is an indefinite loss - not only of the object itself, but also of worlds and relationships that once existed. It might seem a lofty term for lowly objects – a fur coat, a postcard, a bulldog clip - but it is a vernacular sense of the apophatic I wish to access

The ethics of secondary data analysis: learning from the experience of sharing qualitative data from young people and their families in an international study of childhood poverty

This working paper focuses on secondary analysis, an aspect of research practice that is sometimes assumed to pose few ethical challenges. It draws in particular on the experience of a collaborative research project involving secondary analysis of qualitative data collected as part of an ongoing international longitudinal study, Young Lives (www.younglives.org.uk), and sets this alongside a wider review of regulatory guidance on research ethics and academic debates. Secondary analysis can take many forms, and bring many benefits. But it is more ethically complex than regulatory frameworks may imply. Whether or not data are publicly archived, ethical considerations have to be addressed, including responsibilities to participants and the original researchers, and the need to achieve a contextual understanding of the data by identifying and countering risks of misinterpretation. The considerations raised here are intended to aid ethical research practice by supporting planning and reflection – for primary researchers who are planning to archive their data, as well as for researchers embarking on a qualitative secondary analysis. Not least, our experience highlights the importance of developing and maintaining trusting relationships between primary and secondary researchers