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1 – 10 of 810Purpose – This chapter reflects upon my experiences as a PhD researcher examining the portrayal of multiculturalism in contemporary Welsh- and English-language fiction about…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter reflects upon my experiences as a PhD researcher examining the portrayal of multiculturalism in contemporary Welsh- and English-language fiction about Wales. It discusses my emotions regarding my identities as a second-language Welsh speaker and as an early career researcher, and how they affected my participation in this field.
Methodology/Approach – The chapter draws on my PhD research, which examined how different cultural groups were portrayed in fiction as ‘others’ due to Wales’s complex linguistic and cultural position. This involved analysing contextual research about multiculturalism in Wales to explore discourses of belonging and alienation. This chapter reflects upon my emotional responses to the field as a Welsh speaker and new academic, and how this in turn affected my research.
Findings – Embracing my changing relationship with my Welsh-speaking identity, I reflect on how my research touched upon contradictory feelings I had about the Welsh language and Welshness. I discuss the effects my changing feelings over time about linguistic hybridity, and my growing confidence as a young academic, had on my engagement with different texts and writers. This is discussed in light of the relationships I was able to form with some creative authors and academics in Wales’s close-knit literary and scholarly society.
Originality/Value – This chapter argues that confronting their own emotional engagements with their research topics enables researchers to better understand why certain subjects are so contested. It can also prepare researchers to communicate their ideas effectively in the difficult debates that arise around such subjects.
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Robyn Pinder, Lisa Edwards and Alun Hardman
In this chapter, we explore gender equity issues in relation to the governance of sport in Wales. Our focus is primarily on Sport Wales (SW), the national agency responsible for…
Abstract
In this chapter, we explore gender equity issues in relation to the governance of sport in Wales. Our focus is primarily on Sport Wales (SW), the national agency responsible for developing and promoting sport and physical activity in Wales and for distributing National Lottery and Welsh Government funding. As a public authority, SW has a statutory responsibility to promote equality and eliminate direct and indirect discrimination. Their recent policy commitments express a desire to advance equality and promote inclusion and diversity within sports organisations in Wales. They also set the agenda for National Governing Bodies (NGBs) in Wales, in terms of providing a policy framework for understanding and pursuing gender equity in sport and sport governance. In this chapter, we present a snapshot of the governance and leadership policy landscape for Welsh sport, with a specific focus on gender equity. We present data collected from publicly available online policy documents relating to SW, and their NGB partners, relevant to gender equity provision. Based on the data, we suggest that there is evidence of progress in terms of the numbers of women on boards in Wales as well as the creation of gender equity policies within NGBs in Wales. We argue, however, that progress is inconsistent across the different NGBs in Wales, and it is less clear whether sport governing bodies can implement policies to effectively challenge organisational culture and ethos. We concluded by suggesting future Wales specific research priorities on this topic.
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This chapter considers how far political devolution has enabled the government in Wales to develop a distinctive approach to student funding. It examines in particular claims that…
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This chapter considers how far political devolution has enabled the government in Wales to develop a distinctive approach to student funding. It examines in particular claims that policy choices in Wales on student funding reflect a commitment to ‘progressive universalism’, a term sometimes used by policy-makers in Wales and elsewhere to describe combining means-tested and non-means-tested benefits. The chapter also explores the growing use of income-contingent loans, arguing that such loans complicate debates about targeting and universalism.
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Women's movements played a significant role in the recent campaigns for constitutional reform in the UK. Their aim was to overturn the prevailing male domination in politics. This…
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Women's movements played a significant role in the recent campaigns for constitutional reform in the UK. Their aim was to overturn the prevailing male domination in politics. This article explores this process in Wales, a polity where the women's movement was comparatively weak and fragmented. In contrast to more familiar patterns of mass mobilization, “strategic women” used elite advocacy and “insider strategies” to engender the process of constitutional reform. Thus, this case study tests three widely held theoretical assumptions: that engendering state restructuring must be combined with broader activism; that insider strategies are more effective in influencing state actions; and, that the elite nature of such strategies means they can be neither democratic nor inclusive. The research findings detail the ensuing rise of state feminism and gains in women's representation and provide evidence of a paradox whereby elite action may translate into greater democratization in contexts where women's movements are comparatively underdeveloped.
Patrick Lo, Robert Sutherland, Wei-En Hsu and Russ Girsberger
Here we examine some of the contemporary challenges facing Plaid Cymru — the Party of Wales, the principal nationalist political party and one of the mainstays of the nationalist…
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Here we examine some of the contemporary challenges facing Plaid Cymru — the Party of Wales, the principal nationalist political party and one of the mainstays of the nationalist movement in Wales. Against the backdrop of the establishment of the first directly-elected national government forum in Wales for 600 years, we present new research and explore how the party's response to the ‘inclusive’ politics of the mid-1990s was central to Plaid Cymru's recent dramatic electoral breakthrough into the political mainstream and how it will be crucial to hopes for its future advancement. We contextualise this as part of this nationalist party's overall transformation during the last 75 years. This has been a journey from espousing an exclusive to purportedly inclusive nationalist ideology. Such development has been shaped along a number of non-discrete axes that include: the geographical spread of the party's organisational structures and electoral support, its readiness to embark upon co-working with other parties and groups, its evolving policy agenda, its stance on the Welsh language and, latterly, its response to ‘inclusive’ politics and constitutional reform. We test what Plaid's former leader has described as, the ‘inclusive philosophy’ underpinning Plaid Cymru's ‘civic nationalism’ against the party's record of engagement with some of the most marginalised groups in Welsh society: women, disabled people and people from an ethnic minority. These groups must be engaged if Plaid's claims of inclusiveness are to be meaningful and it's growing influence in Welsh, U.K. and European politics consolidated. We base our discussion and findings on the analysis of published interviews and documents together with transcriptions of 280 semi-structured interviews undertaken between May 1999 and September 2000. We have interviewed over a third of the Assembly Members of the National Assembly for Wales, key officials, members of Plaid Cymru, managers of ninety membership organisations and over 150 key individuals and practitioners associated with the marginalised groups under study.
National parks are selected as places of national importance, with national meaning. At the same time, the political process that shapes park management is often a local one. This…
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National parks are selected as places of national importance, with national meaning. At the same time, the political process that shapes park management is often a local one. This biases park interpretation away from national concerns and toward local ones. The National Park Service's corporate interests and decision-making processes often reinforce the role of local interests except in the rare cases of congressional intervention. A close look at the political environment of Fort Davis National Historic Site, Texas, illustrates these points. Congress mandated the site to interpret westward expansion and its impact on American Indians. It became instead a program of park interpretation based on westward expansion and the role of African-American “Buffalo Soldiers” within it. As a result, Indians have effectively been written out of the story of this “Indian fort.” Interestingly, Native American issues reappear in commercial establishments, both the gift shop in the park and businesses in the town of Fort Davis outside the park. If businesses perceive a demand for information about Native Americans among tourists, presumably there is a similar, unmet demand among the same tourists as they visit the historic site. Given the role of local concerns in park interpretation, national intervention will probably be necessary to provide political support for reinterpreting the site.