The victorious English language: hegemonic practices in the management academy

This study explores hegemonic linguistic processes, that is, the dominant and unreflective use of the English language in the production of textual knowledge accounts. The authors see the production of management knowledge as situated in central or peripheral locations, which they examine from an English language perspective. Their inquiry is based on an empirical study based on the perspectives of 33 management academics (not English language speakers) in (semi) peripheral locations, who have to generate and disseminate knowledge in and through the English language. Although the hegemony of the center in the knowledge production process has long been acknowledged, the specific contribution of this study is to explore how the English language operates as part of the “ideological complex” that produces and maintains this hegemony, as well as how this hegemony is manifested at the local level of publication practices in peripherally located business and management schools

The role of ecolabeling in fisheries management and conservation

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Blackwell for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Conservation Biology 20 (2006): 392-398, doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00319.x.The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) regulate the ecolabeling of products from fisheries with the aim of promoting sustainable fishery practices. To date 11 fisheries have attained full certification and a further 7 are under review. Together these fisheries offer 220 ecolabeled marine products to consumers. Despite great potential to encourage sustainable fisheries, and thereby bring conservation benefits to marine systems, there are a range of issues that may serve to limit the wider uptake of MSC ecolabeled products. These include a general lack of consumer concern for marine fish and sustainable fisheries, an absence of guaranteed continued financial benefits to participating fishers and difficulties of quality assurance which are related to the complexities in monitoring compliance of marine fisheries. In addition, it is apparent that property-rights over the fishery seem to be an essential prerequisite for engagement in MSC and this is one major impediment to wider uptake of the scheme in current marine fisheries, which tend to be open access. Some modifications to the current scheme may be needed if wider participation of marine fishers is to be achieved. These may include a tiered approach to certification, certification of fishers rather than fisheries, governmental facilitation to assist the latter, and greater engagement with retailers and buyers rather than individual consumers. None of these changes will occur without constructive engagement of Government, retailers and the fishing industry.MJK was part funded through a Marine Policy Center Senior Research Fellowship

Thinking about Later Life: Insights from the Capability Approach

A major criticism of mainstream gerontological frameworks is the inability of such frameworks to appreciate and incorporate issues of diversity and difference in engaging with experiences of aging. Given the prevailing socially structured nature of inequalities, such differences matter greatly in shaping experiences, as well as social constructions, of aging. I argue that Amartya Sen’s capability approach (2009) potentially offers gerontological scholars a broad conceptual framework that places at its core consideration of human beings (their values) and centrality of human diversity. As well as identifying these key features of the capability approach, I discuss and demonstrate their relevance to thinking about old age and aging. I maintain that in the context of complex and emerging identities in later life that shape and are shaped by shifting people-place and people-people relationships, Sen’s capability approach offers significant possibilities for gerontological research

Education and older adults at the University of the Third Age

This article reports a critical analysis of older adult education in Malta. In educational gerontology, a critical perspective demands the exposure of how relations of power and inequality, in their myriad forms, combinations, and complexities, are manifest in late-life learning initiatives. Fieldwork conducted at the University of the Third Age (UTA) in Malta uncovered the political nature of elder-learning, especially with respect to three intersecting lines of inequality - namely, positive aging, elitism, and gender. A cautionary note is, therefore, warranted at the dominant positive interpretations of UTAs since late-life learning, as any other education activity, is not politically neutral.peer-reviewe

Finland

Peer reviewe

Microscopic chaos from Brownian motion in a one-dimensional anharmonic oscillator chain

The problem of relating microscopic chaos to macroscopic behavior in a many-degrees-of-freedom system is numerically investigated by analyzing statistical properties associated to the position and momentum of a heavy impurity embedded in a chain of nearest-neighbor anharmonic Fermi-Pasta-Ulam oscillators. For this model we have found that the behavior of the relaxation time of the momentum autocorrelation function of the impurity is different depending on the dynamical regime (either regular or chaotic) of the lattice.Comment: 5 pages REVTeX, 6 eps figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

‘You’re just chopped off at the end’: Retired servicemen’s identity work struggles in the military to civilian transition

Promoting positive transition to retirement and cultural adaption for ex-service personnel has been identified as a priority for both social-science research and for public health policy in the UK. The Royal British Legion (RBL) aims to provide support to service and retired service personnel, but to date the transition to retirement experiences of older (60-plus) ex- service personnel remain under-researched. In this article, we employ a symbolic interactionist theoretical framework to examine older servicemen’s experiences and identity challenges post-retirement from the British armed forces. Data were collected primarily through semi-structured, focus-group interviews with 20 former servicemen. Here, we focus specifically upon the challenges encountered by these ex-servicemen in the retirement transition from military to civilian life, a time of identity flux of sociological interest. To navigate this period of identity change and challenge, many participants constructed a ‘modified military self’ through involvement with the RBL as a key social support network. For many retired personnel the RBL offered a form of identification and group identity that resonated strongly with earlier experiences of comradeship in the military

Native-English-Speaking Teachers:Disconnections Between Theory, Research, and Practice

Native-English-speaking teachers (NESTs) have long been in demand for perceived benefits of the skills they bring to the classroom. However, the notion that native speakers provide the best models of the target language and thus make the best teachers of the language has been criticised in the literature. This article reports on the disconnection between academic literature on NESTs and the realities they report. Drawing on data from an investigation into NEST schemes globally, the article suggests that lived classroom experiences of NESTs are complex, They are also often bilingual, experienced, and qualified, and regard local English teachers (LETs) they work with as experts and in control of how English is practised in the classroom. These characteristics contrast with much of the academic literature, which explores the concept of native speakerism, which tends to view NESTs negatively. The article proposes that one reason for the disconnection between theory and practice is the parallel lives of researchers and teachers, whether NESTs or LETs. Thus, each group’s realities and concerns are not always understood by the other. The article suggests that a substantial group of bilingual and bicultural NESTs consider the country where work home, so future theorisations of NESTs and native speakerism should take account of these teachers