Edward Said and the Margins

Edward Said was the quintessential intellectual of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Commonly celebrated as the founding figure of postcolonialism, his critical oeuvre spans varied terrain. The very strength of his critique lies in these diverse tributaries of thought. Crossing borders and boundaries incessantly, Said’s intellectual project celebrates the culture of resistance while opposing doctrinaire rhetoric. The paper tries to journey along the multifarious “margins” of discourses that crop up in Said. “In-between” spaces have to be investigated for their radical potential, while daring to “transgress” has its own dangers. Said unmasks the unholy nexus between knowledge and power in the mapping of the “Orient” that abetted the colonial enterprise. His contrapuntal readings of literary texts reveal the ubiquitous presence of imperial empire. Consequently, voices from the margins spur counter narratives and “writing back” in the postcolonial condition. Intellectuals in exile tend to be “marginal” and this location helps in looking at the two or even three sides of an issue. Questions of identity, selfhood, nationality, politics, memory, history, representation, geography, homeland, anxieties of influence are dealt with in the paper. The intertwining of the personal and the political occurs in Said. “Memory” is the only hope for resuscitating a “lost world” and battling the accompanying sense of “loss” and “despair” infused in both individuals and communities alike. The paper tries to address how “border crossing” and the “coalescing of margins” create an interdisciplinary breadth in Said, which resist categorization. The “centre/margin” binary is problematized by acknowledging the presence of “many voices,” “polyphony” being a favourite concept of Said. Music gave to him metaphors for human emancipation, while “transgression” was vital. His acknowledgement and assimilation of fellow critics is also mentioned. Beyond enunciating insider-outsider distinctions, Said tried to cultivate knowledge as a bridge between different interests and locations

mLearning: the classroom in your pocket?

This paper reports the findings of a 1 year project which focussed solely on the potential of handheld computers for teacher professional development. The paper considers the fit between theory and practice, viewing the developing literature on mLearning as it might apply to teacher professional development, in the light of research evidence from project teachers using handheld computers. The teachers themselves used the analytical framework for teacher professional knowledge developed by Banks, Leach and Moon to consider their own experiences with the handheld computers. The study finds that handheld digital tools hold a number of pedagogic and pragmatic advantages over laptop or desktop computers for teachers, especially in rural communities; however, further technical development is required to fully orient the devices to classroom rather than office practices

Odious Debt, Odious Credit, Economic Development, and Democratization

When a country signs an international treaty, it is not the government but the state that is bound, and the obligation will stand until a subsequent government formally exits the treaty. Exit is presumed to be costly: a government that repudiates earlier treaty obligations will suffer reputational harm in its international relations. Moreover, this general background norm of international law applies as well to debt: a government can announce that it is renouncing debt, but it will suffer severe reputational harm in the debt marketplace, much as a government that repudiates public international law obligations suffers a reputational harm. Here, Ginsburg and Ulen talks about the odious debt and odious credit in relation to economic development and democratization

Methodological Issues in Measuring Innovation Performance of Spatial Units

Measuring the innovation performance of regions or nations has been repeatedly done in the literature. What is missing in the literature is a discussion of what innovation performance of a region means. How do regions or nations contribute really to the innovation output of firms? And how can this contribution be investigated in an empirically sound way? We argue that while the literature offers many suggestions, their theoretical foundation is often weak and the under- lying assumptions are rarely discussed. In this paper, we systematize various mechanisms by which spatial units influence firms' innovation activities. On the basis of this, common innova- tion performance measures and analyses are discussed and evaluated. It is concluded that there is no general best way of measuring the innovation performance of spatial units. In fact, the most interesting insights can be obtained using a multitude of different approaches at the same time.innovation performance, regional innovativeness, innovation generation, regional innovation system, national innovation system

Regional Factors and Innovativeness - An Empirical Analysis of Four German Industries

A growing body of work emphasizes the importance of regional factors for regional innovativeness. In this paper, about seventy variables approximating the social-economic characteristics of regions are aggregated to twelve regional factors. In four industry-specific set-ups their influence on firms' innovativeness is tested. The study confirms that inter-industrial differences exist in the importance of these factors. In the empirical analyses a log-linear model is compared with a linear approach. While both are theoretically problematic it is shown that the log-linear model performs better in the empirical assessment.regional innovation performance, regional innovativeness, knowledge production function, industry comparison, German regions