1,720,957 research outputs found
COVID-19 and the Ethics of Care : Revisiting Ubuntu Philosophy
No full textThe effects and management of the COVID-19 pandemic have brought Care ethics and Ubuntu philosophy into academic speculation. With the absence of cure for the pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) promulgated a number of mitigation and containment measures such as social and physical distancing, washing of hands and wearing of masks. At the same time, the devastating effects of this invisible enemy called for the ethics of care. Care ethics is defined by character traits that include care, sympathy, compassion, trust, fidelity, love, and friendliness. These traits resonate well with the philosophy of Ubuntu which is anchored on the maxim ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye’. The maxim emphasizes the pre empinence of collectivism over individualism. It is this collectivism that defines humanness. However, the COVID-19 containment measures such as social and physical distancing, seem to be in apparent conflict with the main tenets of Care Ethics and the philosophy of Ubuntu. The measures do not seem to promote friendliness and collectivism. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the ways of harmonizing the philosophy of Ubuntu and care ethics with the protocols in the management of COVID-19. Data for the paper were gathered mainly through document analysis, that is, published books and newspaper articles as well as interviews, mostly, with people who have been affected, directly or otherwise, by the pandemic with respect to Ubuntu and care ethics. The paper also made use of relevant literature such as newspaper article
Gendered Contestations for Political Leadership : An Analysis of the Masculinization of Power in Zimbabwe’s Main Political Parties 2014-2023
No full textWhile Zimbabwe is one of the countries that are striving towards gender mainstreaming, leadership of political parties is still engulfed in the tentacles of masculinism. This scenario, which is arguably an inheritance from the African traditional leadership styles, has been Africa’s greatest undoing in the continent’s attempts to attain gender parity. The cases of Joyce Mujuru, Grace Mugabe and Thokozani Khupe are a clear testimony. Mujuru’s unceremonious ejection from the Zanu-PF presidium in 2014 after being accused of harbouring presidential ambitions, Grace Mugabe’s disgraceful expulsion from the same party for accusations of state-capture, Thokozani Khupe’s neutralization by Morgan Tsvangirayi through the appointment of two male vice presidents and her controversial loss of party presidency to Nelson Chamisa and later to Douglas Mwonzora are glaring examples of how gendered the Zimbabwean political space has been. The CCC has also operated with a male president, two male vice presidents and a peripheral female vice president. All these developments have led to the absence of a woman in the presidium of some of these political formations and where a woman is part of the presidium, her wings will be so clipped that she remains more of a ceremonial official. This chapter argues that the leadership trajectory of Zimbabwean political parties has taken a very pronounced patriarchal slant. It is an unwritten norm that when it comes to leadership of political parties, women should play second fiddle. This has reinforced the old patriarchal stereotype that women should be seen and not heard. Indeed, these three, once political heavyweights, are now only being seen, very little or nothing is being heard from them
Religion, water and climate change : are theologies of African Initiated churches in Zimbabwe adaptable?
Full text linkDATA AVAILABITY STATEMENT: Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data
were created or analysed in this study.An eco-theological analysis of African Initiated Churches (AICs) has revealed that most of
these churches use water for a myriad of rituals ranging from baptism to consecratory rites.
Their affinity with water even qualifies them to be dubbed water-based churches; yet, the
world is faced with an imminent scarcity of this natural resource. The United Nations echoed
that access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene are the most basic human needs for health and
well-being; but it has observed that unless the water situation improves, by 2030, billions of
people will lack access to these services because of climate change. Given this reality, there is
a genuine need to examine the possibility of having the eco-theologies of AICs adapted to suit
these emerging realities. The paper explores how water is used in the religiosity of the AICs in
an effort to elucidate the possible challenges to be encountered because of climate change. It
then examines the possibility of realigning the water uses to the current climatic trajectory. The
article is largely based on desktop research which utilises secondary sources.
CONTRIBUTION: This article makes a critical contribution to the body of knowledge by making
an analysis of the adaptability of AICs’ conceptualisation and use of water in a climate change
context. An eco-theological analysis is crucial as it enables the nuancing of AICs’ theologies so
that they conform to a world in a climate crisis.https://hts.org.za/index.php/htsScience of Religion and MissiologySDG-04:Quality Educatio
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
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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