1,720,992 research outputs found
Stories of Change. Religious Leaders and LGBTIQ Inclusion in East Africa
No full textWith the passing of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill (2023) and the debates on the Family Protection Bill in Kenya, undertaking research on sexuality, especially non-conforming sexuality, has become extremely difficult in these two East African countries and critical voices struggle to find space in public and academic publications. Quite uniquely, and not without challenges, the authors of this book through a community-based approach were able to give voice to many Christian and Muslim religious leaders offering critical insights into their personal, theological and social sacrifices that they face in everyday realities dominated by conservative religious interpretations and theologies. In so doing, the authors also identify common strategies religious leaders develop to respond to these challenges while keeping true to their mission. Through in-depth biographical interviews, against a backdrop of conservative religious expressions in the Ugandan and Kenyan public sphere, this book uniquely shows how religious leaders in East African countries can be agents of progressive social change
Religious Leaders as Agents of Lgbtiq Inclusion in East Africa
Full text linkReligious leaders are often associated with the politics of homo- and transphobia in Africa and other parts of the world. However, the picture is more complex than that and more nuanced analyses are required. This briefing article draws attention to the emergence of efforts to engage with and understand African religious leaders also as agents of LGBTIQ inclusion, specifically in East Africa. We highlight several initiatives in this field, identify key actors involved, and outline approaches and strategies that have been developed in Kenya and Uganda. We discuss this recent shift with reference to broader debates regarding religious leaders as agents of progressive social change, and to the development strategies in which such efforts are embedded. Overall, this briefing article will showcase creative and dynamic strategies, tactics, and networks that start to challenge dominant narratives around religion and sexuality in East Africa
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Local government party politics and ANC councillor representation: the dynamics of council decision-making in South Africa
Full text linkCouncillors serving as elected representatives of the African National Congress (ANC) in South
Africa have increasingly gained a poor public reputation and decline in electoral support since
2006. Community perception surveys produced by research organisations have pointed to
corruption, patronage, rent-seeking, gatekeeping and factions as the main contributors of ANC
councillors’ failures to represent the development interests of the electorate. Moreover, the
escalating protest action against the ‘lack of service delivery’ playing out in the public domain,
have led scholars such as Atkinson (2007) and Southall (2007) to conclude that local government
resembles a ‘dysfunctional’ South African state that is in a ‘crisis’.
Apart from this analysis and conclusion, however, we know little about the decision-making
practices and experiences of councillors representing the ANC ruling party. The contribution
made by this thesis is that it offers an alternative approach to the study of local government by
using organisational ethnography to examine the everyday practices and dynamics of
representation from the perspective of ANC councillors. The thesis draws primarily on
observations of Kalahari Municipality council and its executive committee; shadowing of the
mayor; informal discussions and interviews with ANC ward councillors and committee
chairpersons, senior managers, municipal union members, and ANC regional and branch party
officials.
Through the observation of councillors exercising their representational role in council and
executive committee decision-making structures, this research will reveal that there are tensions
between representing the interests of the ANC regional party, national government priorities and
communities. The demands made by the ANC regional party at times constrain the power and
autonomy of ANC councillors’ from representing the developmental interests of communities and
the national government’s agenda of ‘building a capable and developmental state’(NDP,
2012:414-478). The ANC regional party’s dominating presence at local government level, is
embedded within the practices of conflating the ANC party with the state (Booysen, 2015;
Southall, 2013). Although the blurring of the party and state at local government level elucidates
features of neopatrimonialism, however the complex power struggles of cooperation and
resistance against patronage practices and gatekeeping amongst state actors needs to be
understood within the partisan bureaucratic system which local government functions under.
The conflict ridden relationship between ANC councillors and their ANC regional party structures
explored in this thesis, demonstrates the ways in which ANC councillors are able to adopt
strategies such as internal opposition to resist and challenge the manifestation of ‘state capture’ by
the ANC regional party, which is propelled by particularistic interests, corruption and patronage.
The shifting loyalties and defiance against towing party lines in the ANC caucus reproduce
uneven terrains of ANC party cohesion and subordination in council decision-making. The
organisational ethnographic in this thesis brings to light the short comings of the patronage
analytical framework that has been used to homogenise local government, which often obscures
the understanding of the heterogeneous practices of ANC councillors in local government
decision-making.
The thesis argues that beneath the surface of ANC patronage politics, corruption and popular
protests against lack of local government’s capacity to deliver services brought forward by
scholars and commentators who view local government as a homogenous entity; lays deeper and
systematic tensions and contradictions of representative local democracy that needs to be
understood from councillors’ perspective. As suggested by Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan
(2014:14), the state should be seen not as an entity but a bundle of practices and processes in a
field of complex powers. Practices which seek to strengthen and weaken the development of the
state do coexist (ibid) and they vary in their intensity in their local context. Therefore, councillors’
representational autonomy and powers in practice should be understood within the politics of
multiple state actors and the ANC’s struggle for control over local government
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
