3659 research outputs found
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Seeing differently: Understanding Pākehā construction of mountain landscapes in Aotearoa
Mountains are central to how New Zealanders see themselves as a nation and the image that they project to the world. At the same time, Māori have been engaged in a long-running campaign seeking acknowledgement of the mana of their maunga, the return of their tūpuna names and new partnership models for conservation management. This article explores elements of the past that have made this struggle necessary, in particular the role of mountain imagery created by Pākehā during the nineteenth century, when Aotearoa’s mountains were used to construct a vision of a ‘new’ country in the minds of those ‘at home’. Colonists represented the mountains as untrodden and uninhabited, and set about renaming and mapping them. By the 1870s, the appropriation of mountains as a cultural landscape for tourism saw a proliferation of images that promoted European ways of seeing mountains, while Māori relationships to their maunga were often framed as quaint or romantic myths and legends. Tracing this history helps to better understand the present need for cultural resress and highlights the need for public history that better acknowledges and communicates colonial constructions of mountains and their legacy.
 
Guest Editorial : Urban Youth - Engaging young people and their futures in African cities
The twin reality of Africa as the world’s demographically youngest and most rapidly urbanising continent should, by default, make it a hotspot for youth-centred urban research. And yet, the voices of young Africans remain grossly absent in public discourse, policy debates and mainstream research on issues that directly affect them. This lacuna propelled the conceptualisation of this themed volume, entitled Urban Youth – Engaging young people and their futures in African cities. Showcasing submissions that not only push the envelope in terms of conceptual debates but also reflect in unconventional ways on experimental methods of co-production, this volume contributes to contemporary youth scholarship in three ways: firstly, by bringing together empirically rich, theoretically profound and collaborative scholarship from Africa; secondly, by showcasing cities in general and African cities in particular as productive, epistemological and relevant socio- political settings; and thirdly, by highlighting the importance of collaborative, multimodal research with youth that takes seriously their agency, aspirations and lived experiences, as much as the everyday structural challenges they face. To situate the volume, we first look briefly at common representations of young people, and particularly young Africans, within global media and policy discourses. To outline the broader knowledge project this volume connects to, we then discuss a few basic epistemological overlaps between the emerging fields of Global South Youth Studies and Southern urbanism. Introducing the rich array of creative, rigorous, experimental and propositional practices and research- based contributions that make up this themed volume constitutes the heart of this editorial. In conclusion, we argue that to secure our common urban future, it is pivotal to centre the voices of Africa’s youth. For this, creative multimedia approaches to knowledge co- production and representation will be needed, as will robust, multimodal Afro-centric partnerships
Supporting local councillors: learnings from post-election interviews in New South Wales, Australia
This article summarises information collected from interviews with outgoing and newly elected councillors before and after the elections in December 2021 and across four municipalities in Sydney, New South Wales. Councillors expressed the challenges and difficulties they faced during their term on council, and many were ill-prepared and needed more guidance. The aim was to harness the information to shape and direct the support that new councillors need in order to fulfil their roles. The article describes an approach in which various players within the council work in a collaborative way to support the decision-making role of the governing body, so that individual councillors are equipped to work on a common agenda with camaraderie and consensus to achieve strong and effective civic leadership
Deconstructing Gangsterism in South Africa: Uncovering the Need for Gender-Sensitive Policies
Although the dawn of democracy promised a new beginning in South Africa, lingering effects of Apartheid remained, including the struggle to address gang violence and gender-based violence amidst the backdrop of widespread organised crime and corruption, social inequality, a sluggish economy, and poor service delivery. The last policy - National Anti-Gangsterism Strategy (2017) - required implementation at provincial level. This study examines the Western Cape policy content and deconstructs the concept of gangsterism. The paper shows that sustained anti-gang strategies and interventions demand structural obstacles and inequality are addressed in the context of the spill-over from the Apartheid era. Notably, it will be concluded that there are long-term benefits of reframing the problem of gangsterism in the Western Cape as ‘a youth-at-risk-crisis’ with specific attention gender-sensitivity to contribute to local peacebuilding by focusing on youth to exert agency and become empowered in pursuit of individual and community resilience and active citizenry
Conceptualising a Framework for Construction Sector Capacity
Understanding construction sector capacity allows stakeholders to assess the ability to deliver construction projects critically. However, the capacity concept in the construction sector is dynamic, and interrelationships of capacity at different levels have not been explored thoroughly. Accordingly, this paper reviewed studies on capacity at different levels: sector, organisational, and individual to (1) identify attributes of capacity at each level; (2) map relationships of the capacities in the construction sector; and (3) develop a conceptual framework of project capacity in the construction sector and propose future research directions. This study used an integrative literature review approach to synthesise literature from various domains to describe different levels of the construction sector’s capacity. The findings of the literature review conceptualised a construction sector capacity framework at four levels: sector, organisational, individual, and project. The detailed descriptions of the relevant attributes at each level advance our understanding of capacity within the construction sector and are fundamental to developing capacity assessment tools for the construction sector. The relationships formed in the proposed framework help explain how the capacity at each level affects the system. Findings also serve to identify areas for future research, including investigating interrelationships of attributes in the capacity framework
Public History: The Future of Teaching the Past in China
The traditional history education in China has been challenged ever since the dawn of the twenty first century. This article argues that public history, as an emergent and reflective practice, constitutes an effective intervention into the traditional history education in three significant ways. These three aspects are learnable, but are not easily teachable through mere cosmetic reform of the current historical curriculum; the real changes should come from outside of the established frame of reference, i.e. history teachers with public history knowledge and skills. With an in-depth analysis of three national public history faculty training programs (2014-2019), the article further suggests that public history provides new direction in teaching the past in China
Think Tanks and Democratisation in South Africa
As policy and research institutes, think tanks have advisory and monitoring mandates that could be channelled towards consolidating democracy. Yet, although South Africa has some well-established think tanks (WETT), their presence has not translated into enhancing race relations and living conditions. There is therefore the need to explore why these institutions have been unable to sufficiently influence policy and practice, mainly in the area of social cohesion and socio-economic welfare. It is against this backdrop that the paper looks at the evolving nature and works of two WETTs. The paper considers their capacities and challenges in strengthening race relations and social protection. Proposing a persuasive argument for the creation of an enabling environment, the paper draws from political theories in suggesting ways of enhancing a vibrant think thank sector in contemporary South Africa.
 
The Principles of Islamic Law and the Deradicalization of Convicted Terrorists
In dealing with terrorism cases in Indonesia, the government must develop a strategy to eradicate terrorism, be it the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or other terrorism ideologies through awareness of the importance of human rights and deepening of the values of the Indonesian nation. This study uses a legal norms approach, namely identifying the applicable laws and regulations. The values of maqashid al-shari’a can be used as a rehabilitation concept through the changing the thinking of convicted terrorists. The maqashid al-shari’a approach will provide an understanding of Islamic Law that is more practical, realistic, flexible, and humanist. The values that can be applied in the rehabilitation process method adhere to the current maqashid values formulated by Jasser Auda, which are the development of the classical maqashid al-shari’a values developed by al-Syatibi
“Sana All”: Netizens’ Perception of Government Responses to COVID-19
Netizens posted views that contradicted the results released by research agencies about the Philippine government\u27s responses to COVID-19. In this study, Twitter, which is a key communication channels, was the main source of data to explore the public’s perception of the Philippine government’s performance to the pandemic response. To limit tweets to be studied, sana all, a language phenomenon mostly used at the time of community lockdowns, was observed and utilized as a code identify relevant tweets. Between March and August 2020, 257 tweets were collected and researchers used presuppositions to extract socio-political context and truths implied in tweets. Then, the data underwent a 6-level thematic analysis and eleven categories were formed. The prevalent language intention emerging from the tweets is empathy. This paper will discuss how empathy associates the sound dissatisfaction of the netizens with the responses made by the current administration to combat the COVID-19 multi-effects
‘Egmont, Who Was He?’: The Debate Over Restoration of the Name of Taranaki Maunga
As part of Aotearoa New Zealand’s process of settling historical Treaty of Waitangi claims, a settlement is expected to be completed soon in relation to the maunga (mountain) known to Māori as Taranaki. In addition to recognising the maunga as a legal person, the settlement will reportedly make Taranaki Maunga the landmark’s sole official name. More than 250 years after Captain Cook imposed the name Mount Egmont on the landscape, that name will finally disappear from the map. Few people today are likely to mourn the loss of this name, but things were very different 35 years ago. In 1986, ‘Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont’ was recognised as the official name of the maunga. The path to that compromise, in which Māori and European names sat side by side, was bitterly contested by many Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent) who feared the removal of a name they saw as tied to their sense of identity. For Taranaki Māori, who had patiently campaigned for restoration of the Māori name, the decision was another step towards recognition of their deep connections with their sacred maunga. This article provides an account of the debate over the name of the maunga that took place in 1985-86 and looks at how identity, history, race relations and democracy were discussed in the debate. It also reflects on the reasons why there was such intense contestation over the name, and the debate’s relevance to the new Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum