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Regenerative cultural policy: sustainable development, cultural relations, and social learning
Get PDFThis article examines the role of cultural policy in addressing global challenges through a regenerative framework and critiques the absence of a dedicated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for culture, which has marginalised the cultural sector’s potential contribution to sustainable development. It focuses on cultural policies as an aspect of culture that can support a thriving conceptualisation of life within planetary boundaries, contributing to societal, environmental and economic wellbeing of humanity in a caring approach to the more-than-human world. It argues that the current global cultural policy ecosystem, which operates from local to international levels, must evolve to support sustainable and regenerative futures by adopting a more integrated, holistic, and accountable approach. It proposes that the co-creative and reflective values inherent in cultural relations and the dynamic practice of engaging in social learning offer meaningful ways with which to engage in regenerative and reflexive cultural policy design, implementation, and evaluation to lead transformational change
Luxury, Consumer Culture and the Problem of Sustainability
Get PDFFor the greater part of history, luxuries were regarded as dangerous and corruptive and therefore frequently regulated. With the rise of mass consumer culture, it is often suggested there has been a ‘democratization of luxuries’ through the shopping, entertainment and leisure industries, with images of luxuries everywhere. Yet luxury goods and experiences also carry a high price tag and sense of exclusiveness, with super-rich luxury lifestyles and conspicuous consumption highly visible models in the media. Consumer culture is now central to the global economy, providing 60–70% of the GDP of leading nation-states. But there are accumulating problems: overtourism, overconsumption and unsustainability. The planetary consequences of consumption are clear now that the extraction of natural resources has reached a key tipping point. In this context, can luxuries become sustainable? How viable are the strategies offered by the luxury sector and are there alternatives to government regulation? Alternatively, are there ways in which consumers can change their lifestyles to go beyond overconsumption and over-luxury? Historically, there are examples of ways of harnessing the immaterial luxury experience, and a number of these will be discussed.
History suggests that for the vast majority of people, the reality of everyday life has often been one of austerity and frugality with little guarantee that the necessities to sustain life will be available. Religions frequently emphasize the suffering encountered in this world and the need to follow disciplined everyday routines that could deliver salvation in the afterlife. Consequently, luxuries have often been regarded as dangerous and corruptive, as we find in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, the powerful in the upper orders—emperors, kings, aristocrats, nobility and courtiers—were allowed to consume luxuries, whereas ordinary people’s consumption was often regulated by sumptuary laws and confined to ‘little luxuries’. With the rise of global trade, followed by industrial production and mass consumption, the market for luxuries expanded. Now consumer culture is central to the global economy, yet we have been made aware of the planetary consequences of overconsumption through the visibility have been made aware of the planetary consequences of overconsumption through the visibility of global warming, pollution and the destruction of life forms. Luxuries have become prominent in consumer culture, and the central question has become whether it is possible to not only create more sustainable luxuries, but to develop less hedonistic consumer lifestyles
Rethinking educational federalism: Using assemblage theory to analyse policy travel and transformation in Argentina
No full textThe subnational level is significant for understanding how education policies travel, are enacted and reassembled in federal countries. This paper documents how three subnational states in Argentina (Buenos Aires Province, Buenos Aires City and Neuquén Province) responded to, and in some cases sought to influence, federal state policies for compulsory secondary education between 2006 and 2019. Our focus concerns two federal governments of opposite political orientations and conceptions of educational federalism that were elected in Argentina during this period: Frente para la Victoria and Alianza Cambiemos. Using assemblage theory, we draw on evidence collected through document analysis, secondary data and interviews with 46 policymakers and civil servants to explore how various subnational states were active (and successful) in negotiating and revising education policy directives flowing from federal governments. The resulting formations and entanglements, what we term provincial assemblages, point to adapted proposals of educational change and alternative packages of education reform distinct from federal government prescriptions. To assist others in their analyses of education policy in federal and other contexts, we provide a useful typology for distinguishing the actions and orientations of subnational states through their relationship to federal governments: ‘negotiator’, ‘pioneer’ and ‘outsider’
From early communication to bimodal vocabulary acquisition: A longitudinal study of hearing children with deaf mothers from infancy to school-age years
Get PDFEarly language development has rarely been studied in hearing children with deaf parents who are exposed to both a spoken and a signed language (bimodal bilinguals). This study presents longitudinal data of early communication and vocabulary development in a group of 31 hearing infants exposed to British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English, at 6 months, 15 months, 24 months and 7 years, in comparison with monolinguals (exposed to English) and unimodal bilinguals (exposed to two spoken languages). No differences were observed in early communication or vocabulary development between bimodal bilinguals and monolinguals, but greater early communicative skills in infancy were found in bimodal bilinguals compared to unimodal bilinguals. Within the bimodal bilingual group, BSL and English vocabulary sizes were positively related. These data provide a healthy picture of early language acquisition in those learning a spoken and signed language simultaneously from birth
Think outside the search box: A comparative study of visual and form-based query builders
Get PDFKnowledge workers such as healthcare information professionals, legal researchers and librarians need to create and execute search strategies that are comprehensive, transparent and reproducible. The traditional solution is to use proprietary query-building tools provided by literature database vendors. In the majority of cases, these query builders are designed using a form-based paradigm that requires the user to enter keywords and ontology terms on a line-by-line basis and then combine them using Boolean operators. However, recent years have witnessed significant changes in human–computer interaction technologies, and users can now engage with online information systems using a variety of novel data visualisation techniques. In this article, we evaluate a new approach to query building in which users express concepts as objects on a visual canvas and compare this with a traditional form-based query builder in a laboratory-based user study. The results demonstrate the potential of visual interfaces to mitigate some of the shortcomings associated with form-based interfaces and encourage more exploratory search behaviour. They also demonstrate the value of having a temporary ‘scratch’ space in query formulation. In addition, the findings highlight an ongoing need for transparency and reproducibility in professional search and raise further questions about how these properties may best be supported
Evaluation and its politics: trade unions and education reform in Greece
Get PDFThe implementation of global teacher and school evaluation reform has often been contentious, in ways that differ according to national context. Teacher trade unions have frequently been active opponents of reform but their strategies and motivations have been relatively little studied. This article examines evaluation reform in Greece and the role of teacher trade unions in contesting it. It situates current collisions over policy in the context of Greek politico-administrative traditions, of past relations between unions and governments and of the austerity that followed post-2010 structural adjustment programmes. It places education policy change in the broader context of state reformation and contributes to understanding its inherent politics. Working with insights from Nicos Poulantzas, it identifies evaluation reform as a restructuring of the Greek state, where relationships between central authority and political actors such as unions have been reset, weakening the position of the latter. Drawing from interviews with union representatives, it analyses their reading of policy change and the dilemmas that faced them in responding to evaluation policies. In doing so, it points out the political role of teacher trade unions in both historical and contemporary terms while also highlighting the uncertainty of their response to evaluation reform
Arts methods in the Earth crisis: Empowering and learning from youth voice
Get PDFHow can arts methods empower young people to speak up about climate injustice, address eco-anxieties and visualise alternatives? In 2022-2023 the Centre for Arts and Learning and Climate Museum UK worked on a project to develop Participatory Arts Methods for Engaging Young People in Climate Research. The team researched with school groups and undergraduate students, to offer ways of empowering youth and student voice in challenging the Anthropocene, building ecologies in practice. This chapter will discuss findings and recommendations of the CAL-CMUK project, to assist the specific and contextualised interventions of young people, and adult allies, to take action on the Earth crisis
Narcissism of Science Denial
Get PDFAmid historically low societal trust in science, four cross-sectional studies (N = 3856) reveal a link between generic science denial and national narcissism. The findings support the pre-registered hypotheses that (1) national narcissism (a desire for national recognition) and ingroup satisfaction (pride in national value) have opposite unique associations with science denial (rejection of scientific consensus and generalized suspicion toward scientific experts) and (2) opposite indirect associations with specific outcomes of science denial during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond (climate change denial, anti-vaccination attitude, and support for unregulated “alternative” medicine). After their common variance is controlled, national narcissism is positively associated with generic science denial and its outcomes, while national ingroup satisfaction is associated negatively. National narcissism was the strongest predictor of science denial, surpassing other established predictors such as low education and political conservatism. Studies 1 and 2 showed additionally, that vulnerable narcissistic personality was the second strongest predictor of generic science denial, demonstrating for the first time, that the narcissistic need to be recognized as better than others underlies generic science denial
Book Review: Franco “Bifo” Berardi. Quit Everything: Interpreting Depression. London: Repeater Books, 2024. 201 pp.
Get PDFProfessor Pasinetti and the Sraffa Papers
No full textLuigi Lodovico Pasinetti’s relationship with Sraffa’s literary remains (the Sraffa Papers) is unique in that he has both written about and appears within the material. In terms of the former aspect of writing about the Sraffa archive, Pasinetti was among the first Sraffa scholars to reproduce and analyse as early as 2001 important quotations from the Sraffa Papers that indicate Sraffa’s intellectual project, or ‘grand research programme.’ In terms of the latter aspect of appearing within the Sraffa archive, we find an important 16-page first draft (see D3/12/111:282-296) of Pasinetti’s 1966 article on reswitching that was eventually published in the Symposium on Paradoxes in Capital Theory that famously appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. In this article we explore these aspects of Pasinetti’s presence about and within the Sraffa Papers