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1 – 10 of over 2000Silvio Moreira, David S. Batista, Paula Carvalho, Francisco M. Couto and Mario J. Silva
POWER is an ontology of political processes and entities. It is designed for tracking politicians, political organizations and elections, both in mainstream and social media. The…
Abstract
Purpose
POWER is an ontology of political processes and entities. It is designed for tracking politicians, political organizations and elections, both in mainstream and social media. The aim of this paper is to propose a data model to describe political agents and their relations over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose a data model to describe political agents (politicans, political instutions and political associations) and their relations over time. The model is formalized as an ontology using the RDF format and the population is performed in two steps. First, a bootstrap process loads data collected from authoritative sources. Then, the ontology is enriched with alternative media names extracted from the web.
Findings
The ontology is published as a public resource following the guidelines of linked data and semantic web standards can be accessed via SPARQL endpoint.
Originality/value
The authors have developed an ontology for the political domain tailored to aid in the tasks of named entity recognition and resolution. It represents the complexity and dynamic nature of relations between political agents (politicians, political associations and political institutions) over time.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics involved in local struggles against forestry extractivism. The forestry sector is dependent on vast areas of land for tree…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics involved in local struggles against forestry extractivism. The forestry sector is dependent on vast areas of land for tree plantations. This creates deep-rooted conflicts between global corporations that seek access to natural resources and locals whose way of life requires the use of the same land.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on a political ontology frame of reference and storytelling methodology to build on testimonies of three small-scale farmers who actively seek to resist forestry plantations next to their land in rural Uruguay. The stories reveal the impossibilities they face when raising claims in the public political sphere and how they lack the means to organise strong collective resistance.
Findings
One of the testimonies reveals how the farmers engage in a form of “politics of place” (Escobar, 2001, 2008) to counter the power of the proponents of forestry and the further expansion of plantations. This form of politics strengthens and politicises the ontological difference between extractive and non-extractive worlds. The farmers seek to build new imaginations of rural living and sustainable futures without the presence of extractive corporations. They fulfil this aim by designing community projects that aim to revitalise ancient indigenous legends, set up agro-ecological farms, and teach schoolchildren about the environment.
Originality/value
The struggles of the farmers indicate the territorial transformations involved in (un)making (non)extractive places and the need to expand the analysis of the politics involved in struggles against extractivism beyond social struggles.
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Although political economy of the Islamic system is as old as the Quran, the renewed interest in the study of Islamic Political Economy (IPE) among the muslim and non‐muslim…
Abstract
Although political economy of the Islamic system is as old as the Quran, the renewed interest in the study of Islamic Political Economy (IPE) among the muslim and non‐muslim scholars is of comparatively recent origin. As an emerging discipline and operational system, IPE needs to demarcate clearly its methodological boundary. What is the ontology of IPE? What is its scope and subject matter? These are some of the questions which are briefly addressed in this paper.
Jean Claude Mutiganda and Janne T. Järvinen
Research was conducted to investigate whether, and how, political accountability might stabilise when agents are faced with profound changes in external structures such as…
Abstract
Purpose
Research was conducted to investigate whether, and how, political accountability might stabilise when agents are faced with profound changes in external structures such as competition laws and austerity policies.
Design/methodology/approach
We performed a field study from 2007 to 2015 in a regional hub in Finland and worked with data from document analysis, interviews and meeting observations. We have used embedded research design, where we apply methodological bracketing as well as composite sequence analysis for field research.
Findings
Accountability declined when irresistible external structures were the dominant influence on the unreflective actions of agents-in-focus. With time, however, the agents started acting critically by drawing on structures that could facilitate strategic actions to stabilise political accountability.
Research limitations/implications
The field research and interpretation of the data were limited to the organisation analysed; however, the theoretical arguments allow for analytical generalisations.
Practical implications
The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible change in external structures.
Social implications
The research demonstrates how public officials and political decision-makers can eventually adopt a strategic approach when faced with irresistible changes in external structures.
Originality/value
The study locates political accountability in the context of strong structuration theory and discusses how it is redefined by external structures.
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Camilla Zanon Bussular, Cecília Gerhardt Burtet and Cláudia Simone Antonello
The actor-network theory (ANT) has been understood as a method, as a way of engaging in the social world and also transform it. The purpose of this paper is to show the ANT…
Abstract
Purpose
The actor-network theory (ANT) has been understood as a method, as a way of engaging in the social world and also transform it. The purpose of this paper is to show the ANT methodological aspects, provide an empirical demonstration of this approach as a method, and promote a debate about the implications and importance of understanding it as a method and not just as a theory.
Design/methodology/approach
By analyzing the criticisms of ANT seminal concepts and its repercussions, the authors have offered an understanding of its methodological aspects and its implications for the practice of research. An empirical study conducted in Brazil is presented to exemplify the use of ANT as a method.
Findings
The methodological reflection of this approach starts from the recognition that the methods are part of the social world that they research; they are totally imbued with theoretical representations of this world; they are social because they also help to constitute this social world. As a method, ANT seeks to understand the process of stabilizing practices, negotiations and controversies that are established when such practices are in the process of being. In that sense, following the relational disputes that build a practice before their stabilization is the task to be accomplished for the researcher in the field.
Research limitations/implications
The paper offers relevant contributions to the understanding of ANT as a method. The authors encourage other researchers to venture into the development of this approach in future studies that further explore its methodological character.
Originality/value
There are not many studies on ANT as a method. If ANT is also a method, can we apply it to any research? The authors hope to bring this matter to discussion, understanding and questioning the use of this theoretical-methodological approach in the research fields.
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The purpose of this paper is to contrast actor-network theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) as two contemporary approaches to critical accounting research and advance a critique…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contrast actor-network theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) as two contemporary approaches to critical accounting research and advance a critique centred on the neglect of social structures in the former perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper based on a critical reading of ANT inspired by CR.
Findings
Although the author does not question the ability of ANT to be imbued with critical intent per se, the author is critical of its tendency to downplay the significance of pre-existing, social structures and the concomitant neglect of enduring and ubiquitous states of structural stability as an ontological possibility. This may lead to an overly optimistic view that naively valorises agency as a largely unfettered engine of emancipation. By contrast, CR offers a deeper and more nuanced ontological conception of how social structures constrain as well as enable emancipation. In contrast to the highly empiricist epistemology of ANT, it also provides an epistemological rationale for going beyond empirical descriptions of how social structures work to advance theoretically informed, explanatory critiques that are better suited for realising less easily observable opportunities for emancipation.
Research limitations/implications
The paper advances the debate about how social structures should be examined in critical accounting research and the relative merits of doing so in advancing emancipatory projects.
Originality/value
The paper is an attempt to contrast ANT and CR as two distinct approaches to critical accounting research and thus extends the debate about what such research is and could be.
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Like the quixotic character that never knew that he was speaking all through his life in pure and simple prose, Gandhi never realized that what he was preaching and practicing…
Abstract
Like the quixotic character that never knew that he was speaking all through his life in pure and simple prose, Gandhi never realized that what he was preaching and practicing throughout his life was in fact the basic principles and theories that could be subsumed under the contemporary discipline of political economy (PE). Gandhian political economy (GPE) is replete with many of the characteristics of classical and Marxian political economy and these are mentioned at relevant places throughout this work. It also assimilates some of the major features of contemporary heterodox political economy, in particular, the class analysis of Neo‐Marxism; gender, ethnicity and class analysis of Feminist political economy; the analysis of justice, ethics and institutional trust of social political economy; the analysis of the significance of institutions and institutional change of the institutional‐evolutionary political economy; and the importance of the interdisciplinary focus on contemporary issues like development and international political economy.
Bernardo Bignetti, Ana Clara Aparecida Alves de Souza and Maira Petrini
This study demonstrates a practical use of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), showing methodological, predictive and unforeseen issues that emerged during the data collection and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study demonstrates a practical use of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), showing methodological, predictive and unforeseen issues that emerged during the data collection and analysis phases and how they were addressed during the development of this research.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the research of reapplication of a “tecnologia social” (TS) of entrepreneurial education, this article explores the author’s reflections on the adoption of ANT as a theoretical-methodological approach, highlighting the practical implications of a social material theory during fieldwork.
Findings
The adoption of ANT places the researcher in front of methodological issues not always foreseen in the research design. Four moments to a practical path through the engagement of ANT agency are highlighted: the network of actors, monitoring of actors, interpretation of data collected and writing results. These moments correspond to methodological issues that the authors faced during the practical journey of the research. At each moment, the challenge aroused is discussed and the methodological choice chosen to address the issue is presented.
Originality/value
The engagement with ANT has enormous potential in the study of management and organizations phenomenon, but its methodological implications in practice are still challenging. The authors seek to share this investigation and engagement in ANT so that other researchers have a reference and a starting point to employ and engage in this theoretical-methodological lens. Thus, it may be possible to anticipate certain difficulties in future research designs and to glimpse at potential developments and paths that the research may lead.
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Political economy belongs to that borderland of economics which opens on political science. It provides economic interpretations of political phenomena, and political…
Abstract
Political economy belongs to that borderland of economics which opens on political science. It provides economic interpretations of political phenomena, and political interpretations of economic phenomena. Political economy studies social phenomena through their relational perspectives. Since all social phenomena and epiphenomena are manifestations of political and economic entities and their interactions, political economy can be conceived of as the study of interactive, discursive and integrative processes.
EJ Renold and Gabrielle Ivinson
This paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist new materialist praxis that decentres the human and re-centres matter.
Design/methodology/approach
Posthuman co-production gives prominence to crafting “dartaphacts” (Renold, 2018); creative research artefacts, carrying “what matters” and enacting change that can be mapped across time and multiple “problem spaces” (Lury, 2020), as an expansive, post-qualitative praxis of slow, co-production.
Findings
The paper stories this praxis across three “fugal figurations” providing glimpses into the post-qualitative journeys of assembled dartaphacts in the policy and practice field of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Wales. Each fugue hints at the polytical, resourceful and living potential of dartaphacts in the making and their mattering over a period of six years. Collectively, they chart a rhizomatic journey that re-configures co-production as a response-able, becoming-with what matters.
Originality/value
As more-than-human forces for change, dartaphacts continue to surface “the cries of what matters” (Stengers 2019) for children and young people well beyond the periods of funded research and engagement, giving new meaning to the sustainability and material legacies of research impact.
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