110 research outputs found
Globalizing resistance against war? : a critical analysis of the theoretical debate through a case study of the "new" anti-war movement in Britain
No full textThe study engages with a controversial theoretical debate on ‘global resistance’ in the context of the anti-war movement. Through an empirical case study of four anti-war organizations in Britain, the thesis critically evaluates dominant globalist theoretical discourses and their state-centric critiques from the perspective of ‘critical theory in political practice’ and seeks to develop the theoretical debate further. Acting as a critical mediator in between the metatheories and micropolitics of resistance, the author examines how the theoretical discourses ‘resonate’ with the premises of the current anti-war movement; what the theories fail to consider in terms of political practice; and to which extent the values and normative visions embedded in their broader political projects relate to the movement.
The research demonstrates that the connection between the theories and the political practice is not only inadequate but also problematic in many regards. The divergences between the globalist frameworks and the premises of the movement are particularly substantial; convergence with the state-centric approach is found more often. Although it also succeeds in illustrating serious problems in the globalist frameworks, the thesis argues that the state-centric approach is not without problems either. All three theoretical approaches have a problematic tendency to resort to a dualistic ‘either-or’ logic in conceptualizing power, effective strategies and the primary context of resistance which represents a clear diversion from the understandings held within the movement where analyses and conceptions are overlapping and mixed, echoing often a ‘both-and’ approach. The globalist frameworks are problemactic also because in conceptualizing the multitude and global civil society as consensual global political collectives, they fail to take into account political conflicts and power struggles within the movement. The study shows that below the surface there are many political conflicts and struggles going on. Transforming the movement into something more permanent and global is an extremely challenging endeavor, one that cannot be established ‘from above’.
Instead of defining their political projects of resistance in a way which enables their conceptualizations to be detached from practice and their normative visions and suggestions to diverge from the premises of the movement, the theories must closely engage with the movement in order to establish an emancipatory dialogue in the true sense of critical theory. The study contributes insights for developing the theoretical debate further, suggesting that a ‘both-and’ approach instead of an ‘either-or’ would not only reflect more accurately how the relationship between the local and global – and many other concepts as well – are conceived within the movement, but would also provide a more productive and comprehensive perspective for conceptualizing power and resistance in the context of social movements generally. While revealing many ongoing political conflicts and power struggles between the organizations studied, the thesis brings forward problems and tensions also within the movement and suggests it would benefit from a more open discussion about the complex relationship between unity and diversity.ei tietoa saavutettavuudest
Bonds of Empire: The Formation of the National Federation of Canadian University Students, 1922–1929
No full textThe origins of the National Federation of Canadian University Students (NFCUS), Canada’s first secular, student council-based national student organization, are explored. The NFCUS originated in the internationalizing context of the Confédération internationale des étudiants and British concern for redefining and strengthening Dominion relations. The following events are examined: the 1924 Imperial Conference of Students, held in England; the 1926 imperial debating tour that promoted national student organizing; the 1926 Conference of Representatives; and the First Annual NFCUS Conference, held in 1927. The formative in- fluences on the NFCUS of the Student Christian Movement and pro-British Canadian university authorities are also examined. The NFCUS leaders held a narrow conception of the student interest and, moreover, were united by a pervasive and paradoxical imperial ideology that stressed both loyalty to the British Empire and a desire for Canadian national independence and identity. As such, the NFCUS was a highly political organization aligned with the university authorities, themselves associates of the British-Canadian elite.
Résumé
Cet article explore les origines de la Fédération nationale des étudiants universitaires canadiens (NFCUS), première organisation étudiante nationale et laïque au Canada. La NFCUS a vu le jour dans un contexte marqué par l’internationalisation de la Confédération internationale des étudiants et la volonté de la Grande-Bretagne de redéfinir et de renforcer les relations avec le Dominion. Parmi les événements ayant marqué la formation de la fédération, nous examinons : la conférence impériale des étudiants tenue en Angleterre en 1924; la tournée des débats impériaux de 1926 faisant la promotion de l’organisation nationale des étudiants; laConference of Representatives de 1926; ainsi que la première conférence annuelle de la NFCUS tenue en 1927. Nous explorons également de quelle manière le Student Christian Movement et les autorités universitaires britanniques canadiennes probritanniques ont influencé la formation NFCUS. Développant une conception étroite de l’intérêt des étudiants, les dirigeants de la NFCUS partageaient une idéologie impérialiste omniprésente et paradoxale qui insistait à la fois sur la loyauté envers l’Empire britannique et sur le sentiment d’indépendance et d’identité nationale canadienne. Ce faisant, la NFCUS était une organisation politique alignée sur les autorités universitaires, elles-mêmes associées à l’élite anglo-canadienne
Canadian Student Movements on the Cold War Battlefield, 1944–1954
No full textInternational student organizations were a strategic site of struggle in the cultural
Cold War, as can be illustrated by an examination of the international activities of
the National Federation of Canadian University Students (NFCUS) from 1944 to
1954. At its conferences immediately following the war, the NFCUS grappled with
defining its role in international development and with questions of participation in
the communist-oriented International Union of Students. Canadian students were
involved with the International Union of Students (established in 1945), the International
Student Conference (established in 1950 with assistance of the CIA to counteract
the influence of the IUS), and the US National Student Association (whose
leaders were often inducted into the CIA). However, despite the intervention of
covert state agents, university administrators, Catholic clergy, and other communist
and anti-communist social forces, the NFCUS remained a relatively autonomous
subject that acted in accordance with its own cultural orientations and values.Les organisations étudiantes internationales ont été un champ de bataille stratégique
durant la Guerre froide culturelle, comme l’illustre un examen des activités internationales
de la Fédération nationale des étudiants des universités canadiennes
(FNEUC) de 1944 à 1954. Lors des conférences qu’elle a tenues tout de suite après
la guerre, la FNEUC a cherché à définir son rôle et s’est penchée sur la question de
son engagement international. Les étudiants canadiens entretenaient des liens avec
l’Union internationale des étudiants (fortement sympathique à la cause communiste),
la Conférence internationale des étudiants (créée pour contrer l’influence de
l’UIE) et la National Student Association des États-Unis (dont les chefs de file
recevaient souvent un laissez-passer pour la CIA). Cependant, malgré l’intervention
d’agents secrets de l’État, d’administrateurs universitaires, du clergé catholique et
d’autres forces sociales communistes ou anti-communistes, la FNEUC est demeurée
relativement autonome, fidèle à ses propres orientations et valeurs culturelles
A Conservative Student Assault on the Canadian Federation of Students in the Mid-1980s
No full textStudent newspapers, conference documents and delegate reports offer insight into how the executive of the University of Alberta Students’ Union, affiliated with the youth wing of the Progressive Conservative Party, tried to establish the Canadian University Students’ Executive Council (CUSEC) in the mid-1980s. CUSEC organizers envisioned creating a narrowly focused, low-cost, easy-to-join, national student organization exclusively for student union presidents from Canada’s largest universities to undermine the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS). CUSEC organizers were unable to effectively challenge the legitimacy of the CFS, a relatively well-established, social-democratic, national-level student organization that arose in the 1970s and 1980s after the collapse of the Canadian Union of Students in 1969. Leadership attrition, shifting organization tactics, and a general lack of interest outside the large universities in Western Canada (and McGill University in Quebec) led CUSEC to dissolve in 1988, but it was successfully revived under different organization names in the 1990s.Les journaux étudiants, les documents de conférence et les rapports des délégués donnent un aperçu de la manière dont la direction du syndicat étudiant de l’Université de l’Alberta, affilié à la branche jeunesse du Parti progressiste-conservateur, a tenté de créer le Canadian University Students’ Executive Council (CUSEC) au milieu des années 1980. Les organisateurs du CUSEC envisageaient de créer une organisation étudiante nationale à vocation étroitement ciblée, peu coûteuse et facile d’accès, réservée exclusivement aux présidents des associations étudiantes des plus grandes universités canadiennes, afin de saper la Fédération canadienne des étudiantes et étudiants (FCÉÉ). Les organisateurs du CUSEC n’ont pas réussi à remettre en cause efficacement la légitimité de la FCÉÉ, une organisation étudiante nationale relativement bien établie, sociale-démocrate, qui a vu le jour dans les années 1970 et 1980 après l’effondrement de l’Union canadienne des étudiants en 1969. L’attrition des dirigeants, l’évolution des stratégies organisationnelles et un désintérêt général à l’extérieur des grandes universités de l’Ouest canadien (et de l’Université McGill au Québec) ont conduit à la dissolution du CUSEC en 1988, mais celui-ci a été relancé avec succès sous différents noms dans les années 1990
Establishing Precedents: Women’s Student Activism and Social Change in the (Canadian) National Union of Students, 1972-1979
No full textI provide an account of young women’s activism in the (Canadian) National Union of Students from the time that the national student organization reformed in 1972 to the signing of the National Union of Students’ (NUS) Declaration of the Rights of the Woman Student in 1979. I focus on the problems NUS women faced, the solutions and organization structures they devised and how they helped shape and transform the social organization of NUS. Through the lens of social action theory, I identify the social agency of women students in student movements, the knowledge of which has implications for understanding women’s movements and social change processes more generally. By uncovering the social activism of women students, this work makes an important contribution to the historiography of 1970s Canadian women’s movements, which so far has ignored young women’s contributions to the demarginalization of women and the production of society
Establishing Precedents: Women’s Student Activism and Social Change in the (Canadian) National Union of Students, 1972-1979
No full textI provide an account of young women’s activism in the (Canadian) National Union of Students from the time that the national student organization reformed in 1972 to the signing of the National Union of Students’ (NUS) Declaration of the Rights of the Woman Student in 1979. I focus on the problems NUS women faced, the solutions and organization structures they devised and how they helped shape and transform the social organization of NUS. Through the lens of social action theory, I identify the social agency of women students in student movements, the knowledge of which has implications for understanding women’s movements and social change processes more generally. By uncovering the social activism of women students, this work makes an important contribution to the historiography of 1970s Canadian women’s movements, which so far has ignored young women’s contributions to the demarginalization of women and the production of society
Mobility and the Return to Education: Testing a Roy Model with Multiple Markets
No full textSelf-selected migration presents one potential explanation for why observed returns to a college education in local labor markets vary widely even though U.S. workers are highly mobile. To assess the impact of self-selection on estimated returns, this paper first develops a Roy model of mobility and earnings where workers choose in which of the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) to live and work. Available estimation methods are either infeasible for a selection model with so many alternatives or place potentially severe restrictions on earnings and the selection process. This paper develops an alternative econometric methodology which combines Lee's (1983) parametric maximum order statistic approach to reduce the dimensionality of the error terms with more recent work on semiparametric estimation of selection models (e.g., Ahn and Powell, 1993). The resulting semiparametric correction is easy to implement and can be adapted to a variety of other polychotomous choice problems. The empirical work, which uses 1990 U.S. Census data, confirms the role of comparative advantage in mobility decisions. The results suggest that self-selection of higher educated individuals to states with higher returns to education generally leads to upward biases in OLS estimates of the returns to education in state-specific labor markets. While the estimated returns to a college education are significantly biased, correcting for the bias does not narrow the range of returns across states. Consistent with the finding that the corrected return to a college education differs across the U.S., the relative state-to-state migration flows of college- versus high school-educated individuals respond strongly to differences in the return to education and amenities across states.Selection Bias, Polychotomous Choice, Roy Model, Return to Education, Migration
Modes of association and differentiation in Mauritius : an account of identity in a situation of socio-cultural heterogeneity
No full textThis Thesis details the anthropological investigation of socio-cultural heterogeneity in Mauritius, a small island republic in the Indian Ocean. I introduce the island, its population, climate and other salient features in the Introduction, where I also reveal something of the author's intentions, interests and ideology.
Although Mauritius has been relatively infrequently written about by anthropologists or other social scientists, when Mauritian social diversity has been discussed it has been conducted on the presumption that difference is synonymous with division. Consequently, in Chapter 1, I develop a critique of this assumption, which has found its way into the texts and discourses of both sociologists and state bureaucrats. I collapse these two categories' products into one, by drawing upon Foucault's notion of 'governmentality', and critique widespread views of Multiculturalism as being founded on the alleged coevalness of difference and division. I also introduce my three main analytical tools: intersubjectivity, transcendence and creolization.
Chapter 2 portrays individuals' identity, agreeing that at times those Mauritians that I met did draw divisions between one another, but that this was far from predictable, nor universally practised. Chapter 3 continues this project, by focusing on specific forms of the expression of division, but again I highlight the unanticipated nature of division and difference. Chapter 4 further clouds the picture by noting that even where individuals might be thought to be unproblematically employing ethnic - or caste - based strategies in, for example, the workplace, the use of such tools was again unforseeable, and not always successful. Even where they were successful in securing advantage, there are wider costs not previously noted in the ethnographic record.
Chapter 5 is the culmination of my argument. Through a fine-grained portrayal of a number of ethnographic moments, I point up the unifying and shared practices which have hitherto been excerpted from ethnographic accounts of Mauritius (or other 'plural' societies). These unifying features are as relevant to my understanding of Mauritian society as divisions, I claim, and I reflect on the contrast between 'banal' unities and governmental notions of Multiculturalism.
The Conclusion draws together the threads of the Thesis and charts where it fits in terms of wider anthropological and political trends
Fortune and desire in Guillaume de Machaut
No full textThere is a pervasive tendency, in Machaut scholarship, to read his poetry as having
value only insofar as it speaks to our postmodern age: either it is fragmented and
riven with ambiguities, or it celebrates eroticism and the things of this world for their
own sake; in any case, it resists religious and moral orthodoxy. Such readings, while
often valuable in themselves, fail to take sufficient account of the influence which
Boethian and Neoplatonic ideas had upon Machaut, and thus misunderstand his work
on a fundamental level. By paying attention to the Boethian content in the narrative
dits, and by analysing Machaut's verse more thoroughly than has been done before,
my thesis demonstrates not only this author's moral orthodoxy, but also his extremely
sophisticated didactic methods. I begin with the Confort d'ami, Machaut's most
overtly moral work. The Confort engages with the supposed 'worldly' perspective of
its imprisoned addressee, adapting biblical and classical exempla in order to coax
Charles of Navarre towards a deeper understanding of worldly fortune. In Chapter 2 I
show how, in the Prologue and the Dit du vergier, the ambiguity so beloved of critics
can serve as a moral commentary on the carnality and self-absorption of the erotic
and artistic points of view. Having established, in the preceding chapters, that this
author's approach to his subject is ambiguous and critical, in Chapter 3 I explore the
extremes of his pessimism, and show how his love poetry can incorporate
sophisticated philosophical ideas, through my analysis of the Jugement du roy de
Behaigne. The thesis culminates in a detailed reading of the Remede de Fortune.
Through his deliberately idealised statements about education, through his application
of these views to the art of courtly love, through his composition (and setting to
music) of a sequence of virtuoso lyrics, and through his explicit invocations of and
borrowings from Boethius, Machaut develops an empathic but ultimately, as I argue,
deeply sceptical vision of earthly love
The quality in qualitative methods
No full textQuality concerns play a central role throughout all steps of the research process in qualitative methods, from the inception of a research question and data collection, to the analysis and interpretation of research findings. For instance, the type of instrument or procedure to collect data may be evaluated in relation to quality criteria, and these may be different from those which are used to judge the data obtained from such instruments or procedures. All these may yet again be different from quality criteria that may apply to the qualitative analyses of data. A national resource center for qualitative methods can contribute to the establishment and maintenance of certain quality standards. In this article, we will explore some of these quality criteria and how they can be established and maintained by a national resource center for qualitative methods.
URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs050234
- …
