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The Unsustainability of the Neoliberal Public University: Towards an Ethnography of Precarity in Academia
Get PDFSpurred by our concern for the university institution and its increasing dependence on unstable employment contracts, we present possible approaches for future analyses of precarity in the academic world. We emphasise the most invisible aspects of precarity that materialise in the neoliberal practices to which we adhere in our daily lives. Such practices render us—and academia—vulnerable, while transforming academic work into an individual and competitive endeavour. Our goal is to seek other imaginaries for both academia and the university institution, reclaiming its public quality as a common project and questioning its nature
IALS@70: the growth of IALS Library and its development of digital initiatives for the UK legal community
Get PDFAs a way of placing the launch of IALS Digital into context, David Gee (Deputy Librarian, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies) outlines the growth of IALS Library over the past 70 years and its development of a wide range of digital initiatives over the past 30 years
Metacognition and Abstract Concepts
Get PDFThe problem of how concepts can refer to or be about the non‐mental world is
particularly puzzling for abstract concepts. There is growing evidence that many
characteristics beyond the perceptual are involved in grounding different kinds of
abstract concept. A resource that has been suggested, but little explored, is
introspection. This paper develops that suggestion by focusing specifically on
metacognition—on the thoughts and feelings that thinkers have about a concept. One
example of metacognition about concepts is the judgement that we should defer to
others in how a given concept is used. Another example is our internal assessment of
which concepts are dependable and useful, and which less so. Metacognition of this
kind may be especially important for grounding abstract concepts
Is there a safe haven? Experiences of female Ezidi refugees in Fidanlık refugee camp
Get PDFOn 3 August 2014 the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) attacked the Ezidi religious minority in Sinjar, northern Iraq, resulting in the displacement of the overwhelming majority of the community. The study considers whether the reasons for the displacement of Ezidi women from Sinjar (who, by December 2016, were living in Fidanlık Camp, Diyarbakır, Turkey), are consistent with International Refugee Law (IRL) principles. It also lays down their experiences as refugee women, trying to offer an insight into the gendered aspect of their day-to-day lives. To this end, interviews with Ezidi women living in one of the refugee camps, and local service providers, form the basis of this study. It also briefly reviews the evolution of a dominant interpretation of IRL and its critics, while examining the extension of the refugee regime’s ability to provide protection to women claiming asylum, offer solutions to the problems they face, and provide information about the local legal framework and practices
Dethroning historical reputations: Universities, museums and the commemoration of benefactors
Get PDFThe campaigns in universities across the world to reject, rename and remove historic benefactions have brought the present into collision with the past. In Britain the attempt to remove a statue of one of Oxford’s most famous benefactors, the imperialist Cecil Rhodes, has spread to other universities and their benefactors, and now also affects civic monuments and statues in towns and cities across the country. In the United States, memorials to leaders of the Confederacy in the American Civil War and to other slaveholders have been the subject of intense dispute. Should we continue to honour benefactors and historic figures whose actions are now deemed ethically unacceptable? How can we reconcile the views held by our ancestors with those we now hold today? Should we even try, acknowledging, in the words of the novelist L. P. Hartley, that ‘the past is another country; they do things differently there’?
The essays in this interdisciplinary collection are drawn from a conference at the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London. Historians, fundraisers, a sociologist and a museum director examine these current issues from different perspectives, with an introductory essay by Sir David Cannadine, president of the British Academy. Together they explore an emerging conflict between the past and present, history and ideology, and benefactors and their critics
Learning Rapidly about the Relevance of Visual Cues Requires Conscious Awareness
No full textHumans have been shown capable of performing many cognitive tasks using information of which they are not consciously aware. This raises questions about what role consciousness actually plays in cognition. Here, we explored whether participants can learn cue-target contingencies in an attentional learning task when the cues were presented below the level of conscious awareness, and how this differs from learning about conscious cues. Participants’ manual (Experiment 1) and saccadic (Experiment 2) response speeds were influenced by both conscious and unconscious cues. However, participants were only able to adapt to reversals of the cue-target contingencies (Experiment 1) or changes in the reliability of the cues (Experiment 2) when consciously aware of the cues. Therefore, although visual cues can be processed unconsciously, learning about cues over a few trials requires conscious awareness of them. Finally, we discuss implications for cognitive theories of consciousness
Review of Before the Middle Passage: Translated Portuguese Manuscripts of Atlantic Slave Trading from West Africa to Iberian Territories, 1513–26, Ed. by Trevor P. Hall. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
Get PDFViolent Governance, Identity and the Production of Legitimacy: Autodefensas in Latin America
Get PDFThis article examines the intersections of violence, governance, identity and legitimacy in relation to autodefensas (self-defence groups) in Latin America, focusing on Mexico and Colombia. By shifting focus from the question of where legitimacy lies to how it is produced and contested by a range of groups, we challenge the often presumed link between the state and legitimacy. We develop the idea of a field of negotiation and contestation, firstly, to discuss and critique the concept of state failure as not merely a Western hegemonic claim but also a strategic means of producing legitimacy by autodefensas. Secondly, we employ and enrich the notion of violent pluralism to discuss the pervasiveness of violence and the role of neoliberalism, and to address the question of non-violent practices of governance. We argue that the idea of a field of contestation and negotiation helps to understand the complexity of relationships that encompass the production of legitimacy and identity through (non)violent governance, whereby lines between (non)state, (non)violence, and (il)legitimacy blur and transform. Yet, we do not simply dismiss (binary) distinctions as these continue to be employed by groups in their efforts to produce, justify, challenge, contest and negotiate their own and others’ legitimacy and identity
The langues de France and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: keeping ratification at bay through disinformation – 2014-2015
Get PDFThe political deliberations in France surrounding the potential ratification of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (from January 2014 to October 2015) resulted in a national debate unheard of since 1999, providing new insight into resistance towards promoting these languages in the public space. Despite a recent survey claiming that ‘the ideological barriers on this issue have almost disappeared’ (Ifop 2015), scare-mongering rhetoric ultimately prevailed at the Sénat against ratification. Drawing on Roger & De Bres 2017, I review here the ideological strategies and fallacious arguments used by elected representatives in order to maintain the status quo and the supremacy of French in France
Launching IALS Digital: Connections and Collaboration
No full textDuring its 70th Anniversary celebrations the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London launched IALS Digital - a new name for established and evolving online services at IALS, bringing together resources, opportunities for new legal information initiatives, research projects and partnerships, and delivering support for digital legal scholarship. This paper, developed from presentations at the launch in November 2017, reports on the event and describes what the Institute plans to achieve through IALS Digital – explaining what it is, how it has developed and how it fits well with the IALS national role in the promotion and facilitation of legal research