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1 – 10 of over 4000Technical education in the twentieth century played an important role in the cultural life of Australia in ways are that routinely overlooked or forgotten. As all education is…
Abstract
Purpose
Technical education in the twentieth century played an important role in the cultural life of Australia in ways are that routinely overlooked or forgotten. As all education is central to the cultural life of any nation this article traces the relationship between technical education and the national social imaginary. Specifically, the article focuses on the connection between art and technical education and does so by considering changing cultural representations of Australia.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon materials, that include school archives, an unpublished autobiography monograph, art catalogues and documentary film, the article details the lives and works of two artists, from different eras of twentieth century Australia. Utilising social memory as theorised by Connerton (1989, 2009, 2011), the article reflects on the lives of two Australian artists as examples of, and a way into appreciating, the enduring relationship between technical education and art.
Findings
The two artists, William Wallace Anderson and Carol Jerrems both products of, and teachers in, technical schools produced their own art that offered different insights into changes in Australia's national imaginary. By exploring their lives and work, the connections between technical education and art represent a social memory made material in the works of the artists and their representations of Australia's changing national imaginary.
Originality/value
This article features two artist teachers from technical schools as examples of the centrality of art to technical education. Through the teacher-artists lives and works the article highlights a shift in the Australian cultural imaginary at the same time as remembering the centrality of art to technical education. Through the twentieth century the relationship between art and technical education persisted, revealing the sensibilities of the times.
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This paper aims to examine the antagonistic coexistence of different tourism imaginaries in global post-viral social landscapes. Such antagonisms may be resolved at the expense of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the antagonistic coexistence of different tourism imaginaries in global post-viral social landscapes. Such antagonisms may be resolved at the expense of the ethics of tourism mobility, if not adjudicated by post-human reflexivity. Currently, unreflexive behaviours involve the refusal to conform to lifesaving “stay-at-home” policies, the tendency to book holidays and the public inspection of death zones.
Design/methodology/approach
Each of the consumption styles explored in this paper to discuss post-COVID-19 tourism recovery corresponds to at least one tourist imaginary, antagonistically placed against social imaginaries of moral betterment, solidarity, scientific advancement, national security and labour equality. A multi-modal collection of audio-visual and textual data, gathered through social media and the digital press, is categorised and analysed via critical discourse analysis.
Findings
Data in the public domain suggest a split between pessimistic and optimistic attitudes that forge different tourism futures. These attitudes inform different imaginaries with different temporal orientations and consumption styles.
Social implications
COVID-has exposed the limits of the capacity to efficiently address threats to both human and environmental ecosystems. As once popular tourist locales/destinations are turned by COVID-2019s spread into risk zones with morbid biographical records their identities alter and their imaginaries of suffering become anthropocentric.
Originality/value
Using Castoriadis’ differentiation between social and radical imaginaries, Foucault’s biopolitical analysis, Sorokin’s work on mentalities and Sorel’s reflections on violence, the author argue that this paper has entered a new phase in the governance and experience of tourism, which subsumes the idealistic basis of tourist imaginaries as cosmopolitan representational frameworks under the techno-cultural imperatives of risk, individualistic growth through the adventure (“edgework”) and heritage preservation. This paper also needs to reconsider the contribution of technology (not technocracy) to sustainable post-COVID-19 scenarios of tourism recovery.
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Philip Vaughter and Steve Alsop
This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assumptions on what sustainability entails held by stakeholders – set within a large suburban…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assumptions on what sustainability entails held by stakeholders – set within a large suburban Canadian university. The study aims to expand the field of research into imaginaries by focusing on imaginaries within an institution as opposed to a societal or national level.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon empirical tools, such as collaborative thematic coding of interviews of university community members, to illustrate emergent imaginaries around sustainability at the institution.
Findings
This paper identifies four core sustainability imaginaries in an analysis of the interview data: sustainability as performance, sustainability as governance, sustainability as techno-efficiency and sustainability as community organizing. The paper then uses these imaginaries to analyse two recent university-wide events: the establishment of a high-level sustainability council and an energy management program.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the institutional focus of this study, the research may lack generalizability to other institutions. Thus, researchers are encouraged to explore what other imaginaries may exist at other institutions.
Practical implications
This paper includes implications for how universities can manage conflicting expectations and definitions in relation to new sustainability initiatives on campus.
Originality/value
This paper offers reflections on the concept of sustainability imaginaries and what they might offer the field of sustainability in higher education.
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This paper aims to unravel how the formation of Hong Kong citizenship intertwines with controversies over global citizenship, national identities and local identity in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to unravel how the formation of Hong Kong citizenship intertwines with controversies over global citizenship, national identities and local identity in post-handover Hong Kong. It aims to engage the case study of Hong Kong to the academic dialogue surrounding global citizenship, especially its contested compatibility with national identities and various political communities.
Design/methodology/approach
The data of this paper came from the territory-wide survey data conducted by the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong (HKUPOP). The study cleans the survey data from 2008 to 2018, performs various regression models and concludes the findings based on longitudinal analyses of the dataset.
Findings
Drawing upon the survey data from 2008 to 2018, this study shows that the identities of Hong Kong people, Chinese in general, ethnic Chinese and citizen of Chinese regime demonstrate varying compatibility to the identity of Global citizen. Such discrepancies are more pronounced when the data are broken down into the youth (aged 18-29) and the adults, and a temporal comparison was exercised before and after the Umbrella Movement in 2014. The identity of Global citizen is compatible to the local identity of Hong Kong people when comparing with its congruence with national identities. On the contrary, the statist national identity (citizen of People’s Republic of China) indicates the least level of compatibility with the notion of Global citizen in Hong Kong.
Originality/value
This paper unravels that the identity of global citizen could be more compatible with local identities at sub-national level than the national identities in Hong Kong. While scholarly deliberation of global citizenship contemplates on the moral and political responsibility beyond national interest, the case study of Hong Kong illustrates the multi-facets of national identities, and the local identity at sub-national level could have different compatibilities with the identity of global citizen. The findings could bring research implication to the studies of global citizenship.
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Eveline Dürr, Raúl Acosta and Barbara Vodopivec
The purpose of this paper is to point to the significance of temporally charged imaginaries of neglected places and their residents in the context of slum tourism research. It…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to point to the significance of temporally charged imaginaries of neglected places and their residents in the context of slum tourism research. It examines the way in which tour guides draw on specific temporalities to recast the poverty and stigma of the Mexico City barrio of Tepito and thus design narratives to alter long-held imaginaries of this neighbourhood.
Design/methodology/approach
Two tours are analysed through an anthropological lens using ethnographic methods. Authors took part in the tours, registering the guides’ discourse and interventions, as well as the places and situations observed. The insights of this paper stem from the empirical evidence and reveal how diverse imaginaries are enacted through tour guiding.
Findings
Without necessarily following a single, coherent narrative, tour guides link different moments in time to simultaneously generate and contest slum tour imaginaries. The guides in this case study not only challenge existing stereotypes, but also critically engage political neglect while showcasing Tepito’s potentiality. Even so, the analysed tours seek to recast the barrio as integral to Mexico City’s history and future.
Originality/value
Until now, the importance of temporalities in the generation of imaginaries in slum tourism research has gained only little attention. The case study presented here show how alternative forms of tourism are offering unconventional readings of urban neighbourhoods. These processes, the authors argue, help not only re-imagine disadvantaged districts, such as Tepito, but also to re-think the city as a whole in terms of its past, present and future.
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This paper aims to study the origin story of Harvard Business School’s involvement with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad to study the reasons for the spread of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the origin story of Harvard Business School’s involvement with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad to study the reasons for the spread of American management education. It introduces both the explicit influence of Cold War politics and Indian development imaginaries to the export of American management thought in the early 1960s.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper relies on archival research for its primary source material, drawing upon rich archives of documents found at the Baker Library of Harvard Business School.
Findings
Harvard’s role in Ahmedabad was explicitly influenced by the Cold War anti-communist foreign policy of the USA, but did so opportunistically and contrary to the Ford Foundation’s (FF) original plans. Vikram Sarabhai, who was a key player in the Indian national imaginary of development, invited Harvard on his own initiative and forced the foundation to follow his interests rather than being a mere “subaltern.”
Research limitations/implications
This paper could additionally add to the historical debate about the scope and periodization of the Cold War and the role of non-state actors.
Originality/value
This paper covers new ground in exploring the early connection between the Indian development imaginary and business education. It concludes that the export of hegemonic US management education was not successful during Cold War, and the FF was not as dominant as it was made out to be.
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Charlotte Kroløkke, Thomas Søbirk Petersen, Janne Rothmar Herrmann, Anna Sofie Bach, Stine Willum Adrian, Rune Klingenberg and Michael Nebeling Petersen
Several countries in South Asia face the challenge of ineffective educational reforms manifest in increasing rates of school failure and poor learning outcomes after embarking…
Abstract
Several countries in South Asia face the challenge of ineffective educational reforms manifest in increasing rates of school failure and poor learning outcomes after embarking along education for all. Critical voices from the South have questioned the relevance and appropriateness of ideas that have shaped these reforms. Narratives from the region tell us that importation of educational concepts and policy orientations have led to the dismantling of existing structures and processes of education, creating new forms of inequities and disadvantage. The sheer scale and diversity of populations within the region poses formidable challenges and opportunities for contextual innovation. The construction of national imaginaries in the diverse societies of South Asia has the potential to provide new discourses to educational reform; going beyond the abstract goals set by disconnected international experts and the institutional processes they represent. This chapter deliberates on the need to establish a persuasive critical perspective that can influence and shape the trajectories of policy and practice, research and theorization, within the field of comparative education in South Asia, and the global south.
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