A visual ethnographic approach to Islamic lifestyles : the case of Başakşehir

Ankara : The Department of Communication and Design, İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University, 2014.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2014.Includes bibliographical references leaves 155-162.This study, adopting the visual ethnography as a methodology by asking the participants to take photographs and comment on them, explores Islamic lifestyles that belong to different socio economic groups in Başakşehir 1. Etap (district) and 4.Etap. Başakşehir, as a gated community, is a place where the religious residents can freely lead their Islamic lifestyles with other religious people like themselves and enjoy many opportunities it has to offer. However, the class distinction between 1.Etap and 4.Etap creates a controversy in between. Especially their different lifestyles which manifest themselves most clearly in their consumption patterns lead a hostile relationship between two Etaps. While the most crucial factor of the differences in their lifestyles is the class distinction the others are the different interpretations of Islam and the modernity concern of Başakşehir 4.Etap residents with a higher economic level. This study provides an insight of these Islamic lifestyles differentiation depending on the socio-economic status by the help of the photographs that Başakşehir residents have takenGürgün, SelinM.S

A comparative analysis of reunification discourses in selected Cameroonian history textbooks.

Masters Degree, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.More than five decades after the (re)unification on October 1st 1961 of the former UNO trusteeship territories of French and British Southern Cameroons, to form a single nation-state, the phenomenon remains a hotly contentious and controversial discourse in both public and academic space of the Cameroonian society. Most often than not, the tensions around discourses on reunification have resulted in activities that have threatened the fabric of peaceful coexistence and social harmony between the Anglophone and Francophone communities of reunified Cameroon. Remnants of Anglo-French colonial heritage in the form of language, legal and educational systems, curricula and textbooks amongst others have most often been at the heart of the contention. In an era where textbooks in general and history textbooks in particular have been recognised to go beyond their core pedagogic purposes to also serve ideological and political functions, the need for their content to be constantly analysed with regard to their depiction of contentious phenomenon such as reunification has become a matter of absolute necessity. Against this backdrop, this study adopted a qualitative research approach and an interpretive paradigm to analyse six school history textbooks purposively selected from the Anglophone and Francophone sub-systems of education in Cameroon – three each from each of the sub systems. Making use of a bricolage of tenets of the qualitative content analyses methodology, nuanced with the discursive postcolonial theoretical framework, the analysis of the historical genre and historical knowledge types of the texts revealed certain dominant and supporting consistent and conflicting discourses on the nature of representation of reunification in Cameroonian history textbooks. These discourses include: an uncritical nature of school history and textbooks as it relates to reunification; an adoption of old styled school history characterised by substantive rather than procedural form of historical genre and knowledge; Cameroon as an imagined state; presence of single and master symbols/narratives; identity and nationalism discourse; big men historiography, male chauvinism; and exclusion. In explaining the reasons for the presence of these discourses, the analysis revealed the following notions: the nature of school history and textbooks as a colonial legacy performing the same ideological function in Cameroon as during the different periods of German, British and French colonisation; the complex nature of reunification as a phenomenon with a similar context of the reunification controversy in Germany; the ideological nature of history textbooks at the disposal of government authorities with examples such as the presence of vi master symbols in apartheid and post-apartheid South African school textbooks and the ideological use of history textbooks in the defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR) of post-WWII Germany. The postcolonial theoretical explanations of the discourse were linked to the notions of the postcolonial voiceless subaltern; the challenges of textbooks and author hybridity; and internal colonisation. The study recommends a harmonisation of the textbooks’ content, a more robust system of checks and balances in selection of history textbooks for use in schools, a review of the history syllabus and curriculum to be more inclusive of the contributions of women and ordinary Cameroonians in significant historical developments of Cameroon, to ensure a more critical curriculum that incorporates critical enquiry skills and multiperspectivity from learners and discards rote learning of history, and finally that both trainee and in-service history teachers be workshopped on these curricula improvements for history education in Cameroon schools.Only available in English

Poetic Parameters of the Polylogue of Ukrainian Lyrics of Late Modernism With the Antique Heritage

A polylogue with the antique heritage is a prominent feature of Ukrainian lyrics of late modernism. It is realized through symbolistic, neoclassical and neoromantic models of artistic transformation. The specifics of symbolistic model were determined in research of P. Tychyna and D. Zagul’s works with implicit and explicit antiquity. The motives connected with ideas of cosmism and kalokagathia are domineering. Demythologisation and myth creation tendencies are clearly manifested in works with Prometheus mytheme by P. Tychyna. The neoclassical interpretation is presented by two variants: “Kyiv” neoclassics with aesthetic dominant; and “Prague”, represented by E. Malaniuk lyrics with historiosophical dominant. The complexity of the dialogical model of neoromantic poetry (O. Vlyzko, M. Bajan, E. Pluzhnyk) is caused by noticeable influence of the avant-garde aesthetics and poetics on the one hand, and emerging canon of socialistic realism, on the other. The neoromantic model is characterized by the paradigm of heroic type characters; but also by a distinct inclination for demythologization of precedent images and motives, their “turning inside out”, parody, ironic comprehension

“Be a Pattern for the World”: The Development of a Dark Patterns Detection Tool to Prevent Online User Loss

Dark Patterns are designed to trick users into sharing more information or spending more money than they had intended to do, by configuring online interactions to confuse or add pressure to the users. They are highly varied in their form, and are therefore difficult to classify and detect. Therefore, this research is designed to develop a framework for the automated detection of potential instances of web-based dark patterns, and from there to develop a software tool that will provide a highly useful defensive tool that helps detect and highlight these patterns

Technical Debt is an Ethical Issue

We introduce the problem of technical debt, with particular focus on critical infrastructure, and put forward our view that this is a digital ethics issue. We propose that the software engineering process must adapt its current notion of technical debt – focusing on technical costs – to include the potential cost to society if the technical debt is not addressed, and the cost of analysing, modelling and understanding this ethical debt. Finally, we provide an overview of the development of educational material – based on a collection of technical debt case studies - in order to teach about technical debt and its ethical implication

Minding the Gap: Computing Ethics and the Political Economy of Big Tech

In 1988 Michael Mahoney wrote that “[w]hat is truly revolutionary about the computer will become clear only when computing acquires a proper history, one that ties it to other technologies and thus uncovers the precedents that make its innovations significant” (Mahoney, 1988). Today, over thirty years after this quote was written, we are living right in the middle of the information age and computing technology is constantly transforming modern living in revolutionary ways and in such a high degree that is giving rise to many ethical considerations, dilemmas, and social disruption. To explore the myriad of issues associated with the ethical challenges of computers using the lens of political economy it is important to explore the history and development of computer technology

Intelligence Oversight In Times of Transnational Impunity: Who Will Watch the Watchers?

This book adopts a critical lens to look at the workings of Western intelligence and intelligence oversight over time and space. Largely confined to the sub-field of intelligence studies, scholarly engagements with intelligence oversight have typically downplayed the violence carried out by secretive agencies. These studies have often served to justify weak oversight structures and promoted only marginal adaptations of policy frameworks in the wake of intelligence scandals. The essays gathered in this volume challenge the prevailing doxa in the academic field, adopting a critical lens to look at the workings of intelligence oversight in Europe and North America. Through chapters spanning across multiple disciplines–political sociology, history, and law–the book aims to recast intelligence oversight as acting in symbiosis with the legitimisation of the state’s secret violence and the enactment of impunity, showing how intelligence actors practically navigate the legal and political constraints created by oversight frameworks and practices, for instance by developing transnational networks of interdependence. The book also explores inventive legal steps and human rights mechanisms aimed at bridging some of the most serious gaps in existing frameworks, drawing inspiration from recent policy developments in the international struggle against torture. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, sociology, security studies, and international relations

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