Search results
1 – 10 of 13This chapter explores the concept of allyship in social justice struggles. It provides a road map for self-reflection as well as acquisition of skills necessary for effective…
Abstract
This chapter explores the concept of allyship in social justice struggles. It provides a road map for self-reflection as well as acquisition of skills necessary for effective allyship. It describes appropriate roles for allies in dismantling systems and structures that protect the privilege of the majority in various contexts – privilege often unseen, unacknowledged and/or actively denied. This chapter will examine unique roles of allies in exposing, challenging, and dismantling privilege and white supremacy. Concrete examples of benefits that have accrued to white Americans through privilege – both conscious and unconscious, are assessed. The reader will be encouraged to explore personal areas of privilege and marginalization and acknowledge multidimensional identities (race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, etc.) of individuals and unique lived experiences. Those seeking authentic positions of allyship are challenged to root out embedded privilege/white supremacy through direct action.
Details
Keywords
Saqib Sheikh, Anne J. Gilliland, Philipp Kothe and James Lowry
This article delineates the pilot implementation of the Rohingya Archive (R-Archive). The R-Archive seeks to both confront and exploit the roles of documentation and recordkeeping…
Abstract
Purpose
This article delineates the pilot implementation of the Rohingya Archive (R-Archive). The R-Archive seeks to both confront and exploit the roles of documentation and recordkeeping in forced displacement of Rohingya people through targeted physical and bureaucratic violence in Myanmar. This grassroots activist intervention is located at the intersection of technology, rights, records, jurisdictions and economics. Using Arweave's blockweave, the R-Archive secures copies of records, such as identity documentation, land deeds and personal papers, carried into diaspora by Rohingya refugees against unauthorised alteration, deletion and loss, providing a trust infrastructure for accumulating available evidence in support of rights claims and cultural preservation.
Design/methodology/approach
Iterative development of functional requirements, data collection processes and identification of a technological solution for the community-based, post-custodial, blockchain-inspired R-Archive; design and testing of the R-Archive pilot; and analysis of trust and economic concerns arising.
Findings
A complex set of interconnecting considerations is raised by this use of emerging technologies in service to a vulnerable and diasporic community. Hostile governments and volatile cryptocurrencies are both threats to the distributed post-custodial R-Archive. However, the strength of the community bonds that form the archive and articulated in its records speak to the possibility of perdurance for a global Rohingya archive, and working through the challenges surfaced by its development offers the possibility to serve as a model that might be adaptable for other grassroots archival activist projects initiated by oppressed, marginalised and diasporic communities.
Research limitations/implications
Personal and community safety and accessibility concerns, especially in refugee camps and under Covid-19 restrictions, presented particular challenges to carrying out the research and development that are addressed in the research design and future research plans.
Practical implications
The goal of this pilot was to collect and store examples of a range of documents that demonstrate different aspects of Rohingya culture and links to the homeland as well as those that record formal evidentiary relationships between members of the Rohingya community now in diaspora and the Burmese state (e.g. acknowledgements of citizenship). The pilot was intended to demonstrate the viability of using a blockchain-inspired decentralised archival system combined with a community-driven approach to data collection and then to evaluate the results for potential to scale.
Social implications
The R-Archive is a community-centred and driven effort to identify and preserve, under as secure and trusted conditions as possible, digital copies of documents that are of juridical, cultural and personal value to the Rohingya people and also of significance as primary documentary evidence that might be used by international legal institutions in investigating genocide taking place in Burma and by academic researchers studying the history of Burma.
Originality/value
The R-Archive is novel in terms of its technological application (Arweave), the economic concerns of a vulnerable stateless population it is trying to address, and its functional complexity, in that its goal is simultaneously to serve both legal evidentiary and community archive functions. The R-Archive is also an important addition to other notable efforts in the diasporic Rohingya community that have attempted to employ the tools of technology for cultural preservation.
Details
Keywords
Tony Zitti, Abdouramane Coulibaly, Idriss Ali Zakaria Gali-Gali, Valery Ridde and Anne-Marie Turcotte-Tremblay
This article compares the processes of community verification (CV) and user satisfaction surveys during the implementation of performance-based financing (PBF) in Mali and Burkina…
Abstract
Purpose
This article compares the processes of community verification (CV) and user satisfaction surveys during the implementation of performance-based financing (PBF) in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted a qualitative approach based on a multiple-case study design. Data were collected from August 10 to 25, 2017, in Mali, and from January to May 2016 in Burkina Faso. In Mali, 191 semi-structured interviews were conducted with investigators (people who collect information from health centre users in the communities, using survey tools), users, users' relatives, and health workers in three of the 10 health districts in the Koulikoro region. In Burkina Faso, 241 non-participatory observation sessions were recorded in a research diary, and 92 semi-structured interviews and informal discussions were conducted with investigators, community verifiers, users, PBF support staff at the national level, and administrative staff in one of the 15 health districts involved in PBF. The data were analysed inductively.
Findings
In both Mali and Burkina Faso, the delayed availability of survey forms led to a delay in starting the surveys. In Mali, to get off to a quick start, some investigators went to health centres to conduct the sampling with their supervisors. In both countries, investigators reported difficulties in finding certain users in the community due to incorrect spelling of names, lack of telephone details, incomplete information on the forms, common or similar sounding names within the community, and user mobility. There was little interference from health workers during user selection and surveys in both countries. In both countries, many surveys were conducted in the presence of the user's family (husband, father-in-law, brother, uncle, etc.) and the person accompanying the investigator. Also in both countries, some investigators filled in forms without investigating. They justified this data fabrication by the inadequate time available for the survey and the difficulty or impossibility of finding certain users. In both countries, the results were not communicated to health centre staff or users in either country.
Research limitations/implications
CV and user satisfaction surveys are important components of PBF implementation. However, their implementation and evaluation remain complex. The instruments for CV and user satisfaction surveys for PBF need to be adapted and simplified to the local context. Emphasis should be placed on data analysis and the use of CV results.
Originality/value
There are similarities and differences in the CV process and user satisfaction surveys in Mali and Burkina Faso. In Mali, the data from the user satisfaction survey was not analyzed, while in Burkina Faso, the analysis did not allow for feedback. The local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that carried out the CV were pre-financed for 50% of the amount in Mali. In Burkina Faso, community-based organisations (CBOs) were not pre-financed. The lack of financing negatively impacted the conduction of the surveys. In Mali, fraudulent completion of survey forms by interviewers was more common in urban than in rural areas. In Burkina Faso, the frauds concerned consultations for children under five years of age. In Burkina Faso, the survey form was not adapted to collect data on the level of satisfaction of the indigent.
Key messages
There were similarities and differences in the community verification (CV) processes in Mali and Burkina Faso.
In both Mali and Burkina Faso, tracing users within their community was difficult for several reasons, including incorrect or incomplete information on forms, common or similar names, and user mobility.
In both countries, there was no feedback on the results of the CV process to health centre staff or users.
Survey forms were falsified by investigators in both countries. In Mali, falsification was more common in urban than in rural areas. In Burkina Faso, falsification was more often observed for consultations for children under five years of age.
There were similarities and differences in the community verification (CV) processes in Mali and Burkina Faso.
In both Mali and Burkina Faso, tracing users within their community was difficult for several reasons, including incorrect or incomplete information on forms, common or similar names, and user mobility.
In both countries, there was no feedback on the results of the CV process to health centre staff or users.
Survey forms were falsified by investigators in both countries. In Mali, falsification was more common in urban than in rural areas. In Burkina Faso, falsification was more often observed for consultations for children under five years of age.
Details
Keywords
Fernando Pinto, Marie Anne Macadar and Gabriela Viale Pereira
This research was conducted to understand how vulnerable communities used social media (SM) tools to face the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Affected by the lack of information…
Abstract
Purpose
This research was conducted to understand how vulnerable communities used social media (SM) tools to face the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Affected by the lack of information and the absence of effective public policies, residents from slums in the city of Rio de Janeiro displayed new and unexpected uses to SM tools to tackle the health and socio-economic impacts of the pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The research methodology consisted of a qualitative, exploratory study, combining a series of in-depth interviews with the analysis of various posts, containing videos and texts, extracted from SM during the first six months of the pandemic. The data were collected in the context of 10 different communities in Rio de Janeiro city.
Findings
In the context of the pandemic, people combined different uses of SM not only to inform themselves and communicate with others but also to articulate and execute fundraising and food donation strategies within vulnerable communities. Accordingly, this SM use is characterized by improvisation, learning by doing and building resilience, which are all constructs related to the concept of bricolage. Users had no specific SM knowledge, and adjusted these technological tools to emergent new activities in practice, which is characteristic of sociomaterial process. In addition to emphasizing the importance of context for the emergence of the phenomenon, this work also highlights reliability, validity and authority as characteristics related to the citizen-led participation approach that was observed.
Research limitations/implications
Future research can develop approaches based on pandemic sociomaterial bricolage (PSB) aspects, which could guide governments and practitioners on building innovative solutions for the use of SM by the population, especially in emergency situations.
Originality/value
This study proposes a framework, termed PSB, to represent SM usage promoted by the pandemic context, which emerged from the triangulation of empirical data and an analysis based on the concepts of bricolage and sociomateriality.
Details
Keywords
Tanya Jurado, Alexei Tretiakov and Jo Bensemann
The authors aim to contribute to the understanding of the enduring underrepresentation of women in the IT industry by analysing media discourse triggered by a campaign intended to…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors aim to contribute to the understanding of the enduring underrepresentation of women in the IT industry by analysing media discourse triggered by a campaign intended to encourage women to join the IT industry.
Design/methodology/approach
Internet media coverage of the Little Miss Geek campaign in the UK was analysed as qualitative data to reveal systematic and coherent patterns contributing to the social construction of the role of women with respect to the IT industry and IT employment.
Findings
While ostensibly supporting women's empowerment, the discourse framed women's participation in the IT industry as difficult to achieve, focused on women's presumed “feminine” essential features (thus, effectively implying that they are less suitable for IT employment than men), and tasked women with overcoming the barrier via individual efforts (thus, implicitly blaming them for the imbalance). In these ways, the discourse worked against the broader aims of the campaign.
Social implications
Campaigns and organisations that promote women's participation should work to establish new frames, rather than allowing the discourse to be shaped by the established frames.
Originality/value
The authors interpret the framing in the discourse using Bourdieu's perspective on symbolic power: the symbolic power behind the existing patriarchal order expressed itself via framing, thus contributing to the maintenance of that order. By demonstrating the relevance of Bourdieu's symbolic power, the authors offer a novel understanding of how underrepresentation of women in the IT sector is produced and maintained.
Details
Keywords
Alex G. Gillett and Kevin D. Tennent
This chapter focusses on entrepreneurship and policies of public services in England, specifically leisure centre provision in the UK during the late twentieth century. The…
Abstract
This chapter focusses on entrepreneurship and policies of public services in England, specifically leisure centre provision in the UK during the late twentieth century. The central role played by local authorities in sport provision was complimented by an increasing cadre of leisure sector professionals and with increasing architectural interest in the provision of leisure. The institutional context was framed by the Sports Development Council (SDC) after 1965 together with the broader action of local authorities who aimed to provide their ratepayers with access to improved sport and leisure services. The resulting leisure centres were perhaps a way to signal the prestige of local authorities but were expensive investments. The capability of local authorities was boosted by the local government reforms of the 1970s, which merged districts, pooling their resources. The possibility of support from private capital and after 1973 from the European Economic Community (EEC) also provided new opportunities for the organizational form. Eventually, there was a shift in emphasis from the provision of organized sport to that of more individualized and commercialized “leisure” as a product. Whether or not this achieved the long-term aims of central government, to improve access to sport and to tackle urban challenges, remains questionable. However, the story of leisure provision in the UK remains one of remarkable public sector entrepreneurship within an institutional context.
Details
Keywords
Michael L. Tidwell and Ellis S. Logan
The purpose of this paper is to understand demographic group (race, first-generation college graduate, gender, age) differences among perceived family and faculty social and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand demographic group (race, first-generation college graduate, gender, age) differences among perceived family and faculty social and family financial support within the US graduate school admissions pipeline in the social sciences.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from a cross-sectional convenience sample survey (N = 99), this paper looks at ordinal social support variables (faculty member support, family social support and family financial support) by demographic groups. This paper uses a Mann–Whitney U test to compare first-generation status, race and gender and a Kruskal–Wallis H test to compare age groups.
Findings
This paper finds that applicants over 27 years old had significantly less faculty support in the graduate admissions pipeline compared to other age groups; differences in faculty support across race were marginally significant (p = 0.057). Regarding family social support, this paper finds first-generation applicants, male applicants and applicants over 27 years old report lower levels of support. Finally, this paper finds first-generation applicants and applicants over 27 years old report lower levels of familial financial support.
Originality/value
Previous literature on graduate admissions – published in this journal (Pieper and Krsmanovic, 2022) and others – does not consider experiences up to and before applicants hit the “submit” button on graduate applicants, which the authors term the graduate admissions pipeline. Instead, most previous literatures focus on faculty committees and validity of required application materials. Thus, this study begins to answer Posselt and Grodsky’s (2017) call to develop an understanding of applicant experiences and support within the graduate admissions pipeline.
Details
Keywords
This study aims to provide a social accounting of early women's football as a form of consciousness raising, and to provide a platform to raise questions about the path of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to provide a social accounting of early women's football as a form of consciousness raising, and to provide a platform to raise questions about the path of the future of the women's game.
Design/methodology/approach
Newspaper archival materials supplemented by books and journal articles.
Findings
British woman's football was repressed for 50 years by the football association.
Research limitations/implications
This is a discussion paper, rather than a full academic manuscript.
Practical implications
This paper is designed to enable questions to be raised about equality, and what that means in 2022.
Social implications
There is an opportunity to reconsider a “feminine” version of the field of football.
Originality/value
There is an opportunity to use feminist theories to consider the past and future of women's football.
Details
Keywords
Kenneth Lawani, Luis Alfredo Arias Abad, Nigel Craig, Billy Hare and Iain Cameron
Emotional intelligence (EI) and conflict management (CM) are essential skills for construction managers towards achieving organisational effectiveness. It is believed that an…
Abstract
Purpose
Emotional intelligence (EI) and conflict management (CM) are essential skills for construction managers towards achieving organisational effectiveness. It is believed that an individual’s EI level (EIL) is a predictor of the preferred CM styles (CMS). This study aims to explore the relationships between EIL, preferred CMS and demographic factors in the construction sector of the Dominican Republic (DR).
Design/methodology/approach
The EIL and CMS of a sample of civil engineers in managerial positions were evaluated using the emotional intelligence appraisal and Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II self-assessment tools.
Findings
There was a strong positive correlation between the rated EIL and the scores of collaboration and compromise styles, i.e. participants with higher EIL have stronger fit within the collaboration and compromise styles of managing conflicts. For participants with lower EIL, collaboration and compromise styles were also top preferences, but with no statistical significance. Significant relationships existed between gender, collaboration and compromise styles and between work experience and collaboration style. No significant relationship between demographics and EIL.
Practical implications
The construction industry needs innovative construction managers whose CMS and EIL are compatible with the culture and overall organisational objectives.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study appraising the EI and CMS of civil engineers working in DR construction industry.
Details