Search results

Illegitimacy is widely identified as a cause of revolution and other forms of transformative political change, yet when and how it affects these processes is ambiguous. We examine when and how illegitimacy affects the stability of political regimes through a historical analysis of South Africa's National Party (NP) and its apartheid regime, which lasted from 1948 to 1994. Many scholars of South Africa identify the regime's illegitimacy as a catalyst for the end of apartheid. Yet, consistent with assertions that illegitimacy does not result in political instability, the NP maintained power for decades despite a domestic crisis of legitimacy and a global movement that decried the apartheid regime's illegitimacy. Interrogating this contradiction, we detail how the regime's illegitimacy contributed to the negotiated revolution in South Africa when it resulted in unacceptable costs for the allies that the government depended on for survival, motivating those allies to withdraw support. Building on our findings, we detail how turning attention to the ways that illegitimacy affects relationships with allies – rather than particular outcomes, such as revolution or state failure – allows us to account for variation in both when and how illegitimacy matters.

Inspired by the debates on participatory methods and drawing from research on “digital childhoods” in Portugal, this chapter aims to address the methodological innovations and challenges in collecting visual and digital data with children at their homes. As one of the stages of a research project on internet use, children were asked to take photos of their favorite objects at home and to collect screenshots of their most used webpages, followed by a conversation with the researcher. The use of photography allowed children greater expression and autonomy and gave researchers access to the children’s own perspectives on their home environment. It also provided unique information about the arrangement of digital objects at home and their different appropriations by girls and boys. Screenshots showed creative uses of the internet by children and gender differences. Ethical concerns were raised, due to the specific nature of working with children and with visual material (anonymization and dissemination). Entering the domestic setting provided a privileged access to children’s private sphere and to the in situ observation of their use of technology. However, the home is not a neutral place for a researcher and crossing the border into the private domain involves risks. These findings, illustrated by empirical examples from the research field, stress the importance of reflecting on and discussing the potentials, limitations, and ethical considerations of different methodologies, as well as their suitability to specific research objects, subjects, and contexts.

Over the past ten years, geographers have contributed to the growing body of interdisciplinary research developing new ways of undertaking research with children. Traditional research methods which do not directly involve working with children, such as the large scale observation of children, have been criticised for carrying out research on rather than with children. Instead, drawing upon the increasingly important children’s rights movement, researchers have been developing inclusive and participatory children centred methodologies, which place the voices of children, as social actors, at the centre of the research process. In this paper, we draw upon two ongoing postgraduate geographical research projects with children to reflect upon our own experiences of adopting children centred research methodologies. We also critically evaluate our own use of different innovative children centred research techniques, such as photographs, diaries, in‐depth interviews and surveys.We also highlight the importance of considering the impact of the spaces in which we conduct our research.

Responsible tourism is a current theme in the line of work on sustainable development alternatives, both ecological and economical and social and societal. The concept has received very little attention from researchers in emerging countries and even less when exploring the weight and role of children in understanding, adopting and initiating attitudinal change toward sustainable tourism. First, this chapter examines the knowledge of the dimensions of responsible tourism and their integration into a process of child empowerment. The qualitative study results with 19 children aged between 6 and 15 years show a lack of understanding of the components and scope of the concept among younger children, while recognition of ecological considerations among older children is relatively high. Nevertheless, children of all ages show a willingness to become active agents of change in their immediate environment if supported by the community. The results also show that children's reflexivity can be strengthened through education for sustainable development (ESD) while allowing them to occupy the space and place necessary for their empowerment regarding ecology and tourism.

The purpose of this paper is a micro-level examination of the role and function of cooperative research centers (CRCs) in entrepreneurial universities from a principal investigator (PI) perspective.

This study uses a qualitative research design and is based on 38 semi-structured interviews with PIs who are publicly funded at the Centre for Research in Medical Devices (CÚRAM) based in Ireland. CÚRAM has a multiple mission focus of supporting scientific excellence, industry engagement, educational and public engagement that supports the Irish medical device sector.

The findings reveal that CRCs’ role and function at the micro level constitute a necessary and functional organization architecture that supports PIs who are required to meet multiple scientific, commercialization, educational and public engagement objectives. Specifically, from the micro-level PI perspective, the role and function of CRCs focus on research quality enhancement, brokerage, networks and collaborations, addressing research impact and resource enhancement and appropriation.

This research emphasizes the importance and necessity for the creation of CRCs as part of the entrepreneurial architecture of entrepreneurial universities that provides the necessary appropriate local environmental conditions and enhanced supports to enable micro-level actors to fulfill multiple mission objectives with respect to research excellence, industry, educational and public engagement and impact.

This study contributes to the limited literature on new institutional configurations that support entrepreneurship and addresses recent calls for further research. In taking a micro-level focus, the authors identify the role and function of CRCs from a PI perspective in an entrepreneurial university setting.

Organizational crises are complex events for researchers to assess. However, research in this domain remains fragmented, and advanced empirical techniques remain underutilized. In this chapter, we offer an integrated approach to assessing crises. We first specify a behavioral process model of crisis management comprised of three stages: interpretations, responses, and outcomes. Within each stage, we identify areas of opportunity and provide methodological recommendations that enhance our understanding of crises and crisis management. We also provide recommendations that could be applied across stages of the model. Taken together, we present a framework by which researchers can more effectively measure and analyze critical crisis dimensions.

As more and more people decide to commit their lives to print, autobiographies constitute a significant resource to explore stories of harm, violence and crime. Published autobiography, however, presents a unique form of storytelling, unavoidably entailing the accumulation and (re)telling of a mass of stories; about oneself, others, contexts and cultures. Relatedly, paratexts – or the elements that surround the central text, such as covers, introductions and prologues – demonstrate how these texts are both individually and collectively shaped. Taking the co-constructed nature of all narratives, including self-narratives, as its starting point, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how terrorists who have authored autobiographies understand the world and their actions within it. In doing so, this chapter provides a practical demonstration of how insight derived from literary criticism can profitably be brought to bear in systematically breaking down and analysing an autobiography – that of a notable American jihadist, Omar Hammami – including its paratextual elements. In particular, I argue that considerations of genre, the inclusion of different types of events and stories collected from others all provide valuable strategies for the ‘doing’ of narrative criminology using autobiographies.