Urban civic pride and the new localism

Civic pride relates to how places promote and defend local identity and autonomy. It is often championed as a key value and aspiration of local government. This paper argues that civic pride has been under‐examined in geography, and in particular the emotional meanings of pride need to be better understood. In response, I present an emotional analysis of civic pride and discuss its role in British cities, particularly in the context of urban regeneration and the UK's new localism agenda. In the latter part of the paper I provide a case study of Nottingham in England, where I employ a discourse analysis of recent urban policy and local media to examine how civic pride is being mobilised and contested in the city. Examining civic pride is important because it shapes and reflects the political values that local governments stand for and provides a basis for thinking about how emotions are used strategically (and problematically) in urban policy. This paper complements and challenges existing literature on cities by showing how civic pride shapes, but also obscures, the ideological politics of local government and how, as geographers, we might consider more seriously the ways forms of power, identity and inequality are reproduced and contested through emotions such as pride

Emerging Implications of Open and Linked Data for Knowledge Sharing in Development

Movements towards open data involve the publication of datasets (from metadata on publications, to research, to operational project statistics) online in standard formats and without restrictions on reuse. A number of open datasets are published as linked data, creating a web of connected datasets. Governments, companies and non?governmental organisations (NGOs) across the world are increasingly exploring how the publication and use of open and linked data can have impacts on governance, economic growth and the delivery of services. This article outlines the historical, social and technical trajectories that have led to current interest in, and practices around, open data. Drawing on three example cases of working with open and linked data it takes a critical look at issues that development sector knowledge intermediaries may need to engage with to ensure the socio?technical innovations of open and linked data work in the interests of greater diversity and better development practice

Governing software: networks, databases and algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education

This article examines the emergence of ‘digital governance’ in public education in England. Drawing on and combining concepts from software studies, policy and political studies, it identifies some specific approaches to digital governance facilitated by network-based communications and database-driven information processing software that are being discursively promoted in education by cross-sectoral intermediary organizations. Such intermediaries, including National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Demos, the Innovation Unit, the Education Foundation and the Nominet Trust, are increasingly seeking to participate in new digitally mediated forms of educational governance. Through their promotion of network-based pedagogies and database-driven analytics software, these organizations are seeking to delegate educational decision-making to socio-algorithmic forms of power that have the capacity to predict, govern and activate learners' capacities and subjectivities

Effect of slight crosslinking on the mechanical relaxation behavior of poly(2-ethoxyethyl methacrylate) chains

The synthesis, thermal and mechanical characterizations of uncrosslinked and lightly crosslinked poly(2-ethoxyethyl methacrylate) are reported. The uncrosslinked poly(2-ethoxyethyl methacrylate) exhibits in the glassy state two relaxations called in increasing order of temperature, the gamma and beta processes respectively. These are followed by a prominent glass rubber or alpha relaxation. By decreasing the chains mobility by a small amount of crosslinking, the beta relaxation disappears and the peak maximum associated with the alpha relaxation is shifted from 268 K to 278 K, at 1 Hz. An investigation of the storage relaxation modulus of the crosslinked polymer indicates two inflexion points that presumably are related to segmental motions of dangling chains of the crosslinked networks and to cooperative motions of the chains between crosslinking points. Nanodomains formed by side-groups flanked by the backbone give rise to a Maxwell Wagner Sillars relaxation in the dielectric spectra that have no incidence in the mechanical relaxation spectra.We thank Dr. J. Guzman (Madrid) for providing us with the CEOEMA sample. This work was financially supported by the DGCYT and CAM through the Grant MAT2008-06725-C03 and MAT2012-33483. In memoriam of Professor Emeritus Evaristo Riande in recognition of his contribution to Polymer Science.Carsí Rosique, M.; Sanchis Sánchez, MJ.; Díaz Calleja, R.; Riande, E.; Nugent, MJD. (2013). Effect of slight crosslinking on the mechanical relaxation behavior of poly(2-ethoxyethyl methacrylate) chains. European Polymer Journal. 49(6):1495-1502. doi:10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2012.12.012S1495150249

Multiculturalism and moderate secularism

What is sometimes talked about as the ‘post-secular’ or a ‘crisis of secularism’ is, in Western Europe, quite crucially to do with the reality of multiculturalism. By which I mean not just the fact of new ethno-religious diversity but the presence of a multiculturalist approach to this diversity, namely: the idea that equality must be extended from uniformity of treatment to include respect for difference; recognition of public/private interdependence rather than dichotomized as in classical liberalism; the public recognition and institutional accommodation of minorities; the reversal of marginalisation and a remaking of national citizenship so that all can have a sense of belonging to it. I think that equality requires that this ethno-cultural multiculturalism should be extended to include state-religion connexions in Western Europe, which I characterise as ‘moderate secularism’, based on the idea that political authority should not be subordinated to religious authority yet religion can be a public good which the state should assist in realising or utilising. I discuss here three multiculturalist approaches that contend this multiculturalising of moderate secularism is not the way forward. One excludes religious groups and secularism from the scope of multiculturalism (Kymlicka); another largely limits itself to opposing the ‘othering’ of groups such as Jews and Muslims (Jansen); and the third argues that moderate secularism is the problem not the solution (Bhargava)

Religious pluralism in the United States and Britain

This article provides a historically informed analysis of the contemporary incorporation of Islam and Muslims into an idea of common – national – membership in the United States and Britain. It shows that there is a current movement towards synthesis between religious and national identities by Muslims themselves, and explores the ways in which this synthesis is occurring within rich and dynamic public spheres in societies that have historically included and incorporated other religious groups. The authors argue that both countries are wrestling with the extent to which they accommodate Muslims in ways that allow them to reconcile their faith and citizenship commitments, and that the British ‘establishment’ is no less successful at achieving this than secular republicanism in the US