bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Results of Antegrade Intramedullary Elastic Wires for Severely Displaced Distal Radial Fractures in Children
Authors:   Trauma and Orthopaedics Hospital, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India., Gadegone Piyush , Gadegone Wasudeo ,   Trauma and Orthopaedics Hospital, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India., Lokhande Vijayanand ,   Trauma and Orthopaedics Hospital, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India.
Published: January 2024

Objective: The objective of this study is to present a new method of Antegrade elastic wires, which is a minimally invasive surgical approach to treat displaced fractures in the distal radial metaphyseal and dia-metaphyseal fractures in children. Materials and Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of 18 patients who received antegrade elastic wires treatment for distal radial fractures from January 2019 to January 2023. The surgical indications encompassed closed, significantly displaced, and unstable fractures located in the metaphysis or diaphyseo-metaphyseal region of the radius. The fractures were stabilized using two prebent short elastic nails that were introduced from the diaphysis to the metaphysis. In instances when an ulnar fracture was present, a traditional anterograde nailing procedure was also carried out. A long or short arm plaster cast was administered for a duration of 3 weeks. Results: The group consisted of 15 boys and 3 girls, with an average age of 10.8 years (ranging from 7 to 16 years). The right hand was implicated in 12 instances, whereas the left hand was implicated in 6 instances. The mean duration of follow-up was 7.8 months, with a range of 4 to 28 months. Out of the 18 patients, 2 individuals experienced skin irritations, which were resolved after the removal of the radial nails. All patients had complete restoration of their range of motion and experienced successful bone healing without any problems. Conclusions: An antegrade elastic wire fixation is a very efficient, secure, and readily replicable technique for treating unstable fractures of the distal radius, while also preventing harm to the physeal plate. It successfully attains favorable functional and radiological outcomes and allows early mobilization. Keywords: Distal radius, Metaphyseal fracture, dia-metaphyseal fractures, Elastic wires, Antegrade.
Civil-Military Relationship in a Democratic Pakistan
Authors: Khan Muhammad Yunas , Jaffari Mubashar H.
Published: January 2024

The paper explores the futuristic calibration of Pakistan’s constitutional development and its interpretation through precedents in the face of multiple sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and legal challenges. In particular, it analyzes the essential normative characteristics of constitutional legal framework based on separation of powers between pillars of the state vis-à-vis civil-military relationship. The article attempts to assess the constitutional direction from a broader legal and jurisprudential perspective meant to provide an avenue of progress and prosperity through its compatibility with sociopolitical norms. The main inquiry of the article is whether the constitutional evolution of Pakistan as a democratic state would be able to withstand the burden of contemporary socioeconomic, sociopolitical, and geopolitical challenges in creating a balance of power between civil and military institutions or would lead to more blurred boundaries instigating institutional conflicts and interventionist models. The paper through legal lens draws upon theories of legal positivism and its critique to understand the constitutional legitimacy of military interventions in democratic and political system. It covers the literature gap in analyzing jurisprudential approach of Pakistan’s judiciary as custodian of constitutional and democratic norms vis-à-vis constitutional scheme of civil-military relations, and its institutionalization in comparison with other international models suggesting pragmatic civilian control. In the end, the paper recommends a comprehensive institutional framework carved out of domestic realities as well as internationally-recognized constitutional schemes.
The Child-Parent Caregiving Relationship in Later Life
Authors: Morgan Brett Bethany
Published: January 2024

This book presents a poignant and sensitive account of the challenges faced by adult children when making decisions about care for and with their ageing parents. It offers new insights into the practical, emotional and psychical effects the witnessing of increasing agedness and loss of parents has on adult children, and how child–parent relationships are negotiated during this phase of the life course. A psychosocial approach highlights the emotional complexity of the experience, from the practicalities of moving into a care home to the ambiguous feelings that these decisions evoke.
Final reflections
Authors: Brett Bethany Morgan
Published: January 2024

This chapter draws together the discussions throughout the book, arguing that supporting families to care for older parents, whether at home or by continuing their role to some extent within a care setting, is the cornerstone to improving older adult care. Demystifying the ageing process and recognising the emotional struggles that caregivers face when caring for older parents are important steps in making these changes. The book concludes that social care can be significantly improved through enabling a more active, participatory, and supportive role for relatives. By doing so it can make caring for or visiting parents in a care home far more enjoyable and gives the adult child the confidence that their relationship, although changed, can still flourish and be fulfilling.
The Liberal Arts Paradox in Higher Education
Authors: Telling Kathryn
Published: January 2024

The liberal arts approach to higher education is a growing trend globally. We are told that the mental dexterity and independent, questioning spirit cultivated by such interdisciplinary degrees are the best preparation for the as-yet-unknown executive jobs of tomorrow. For critics of the marketisation of higher education or those that denounce its retrenchment to elitist values, such a move may well be taken as symptomatic of the broader mess in which we find ourselves. But does such a critique capture the complexity of educational initiatives like this? This study of the significant recent growth of liberal arts degrees in England argues otherwise. Each chapter of the book takes one key issue for higher education today (innovation, interdisciplinarity, specialisation, employability, student identities and elitism) and uses talk about the liberal arts (taken from institutions’ promotional websites and interviews with students and academics) as a case study to bring to the fore the complex, plural values that animate educational endeavours. Rather than argue that one of these principles (for instance, meritocracy, egalitarianism, competition or elitism) is the fundamental truth of the situation, it instead attends to the ways that students and staff themselves try to disentangle this mess of values and seek to question which value is appropriate to which context. The sociology of higher education should, then, pay attention to these attempts to grapple with complexity, especially as they come from students, to get to a full account of what is happening in higher education today.
Introduction and background to unpaid care in the UK
Authors: Lloyd Liz
Published: January 2024

This chapter sets out the aims of the book. It poses key questions about the place of care within the social and cultural contexts of the UK. It highlights the gap between the rhetoric and realities of policies and strategies to support unpaid carers since the 1990s and points to the way in which this will be examined in subsequent chapters. The historical approach is explained and the chapter provides an overview of the policy background to policies on unpaid care and carers, drawing attention to the impact on unpaid care of deinstitutionalisation and the introduction of care in the community on unpaid care in 1990. An overview of each chapter is provided to guide the reader to the organisation of the content.
Introduction
Authors: Davies Ceryl Teleri
Published: January 2024

This chapter introduces the book and provides an outline of the discussion ahead.
The nature of online abuse
Authors: Davies Ceryl Teleri
Published: January 2024

The influence of social media or ‘online’ relationships has changed the nature of communication in relationships and is integral in shaping the landscape of young people’s peer and intimate relationships. Chapter 5 focuses on exploring how the nature of interpersonal communication has shifted, due to the widespread use of the internet and mobile phones, and so has the possibility for emotional abuse, specifically, the ability to remotely monitor movements. The dilemma of the internet, with its ability to perpetuate abuse by functioning as a platform to facilitate bullying behaviour, grooming and the non-consensual circulation of sensitive sexual images, can equally function as a supportive tool with vast information privately at young women’s fingertips, and this will be a central discussion point of this chapter.
Promoting healthy relationships: a whole-community approach
Authors: Davies Ceryl Teleri
Published: January 2024

The focus of this chapter is on promoting the need to develop a policy on ‘healthy relationship’ education that concentrates on a ‘whole-community approach’ that includes an emphasis on tackling gender norms as its foundation. The focus of this policy should go beyond the school setting in order to incorporate key multi-agency stakeholders, parents/carers and the wider community as a whole. Young women continue to face challenges when negotiating their feminine identity. Prevention programmes geared towards empowering young women should focus on promoting their confidence and individual agency. This re-evaluation will assist young women to construct their position in a manner that reduces the likelihood that any form of negotiation and power comes at a cost. This cost, seen within their narratives, was the emotion work of the management of this power imbalance and the requirement to ‘subtly’ perform their expected girlfriend role, due to the lack of negotiating space within their intimate relationships. The gaps between young women’s attitudes, their desires, expectations and their ‘everyday’ experiences draw attention to the complex dilemma for young women when performing their role in relationships.
Conclusions: Taxation in a social policy context
Authors: Lymer Andy , May Margaret , Sinfield Adrian
Published: January 2024

This concluding chapter reflects on the overarching themes that run throughout the book and the issues they raise. It highlights the value of scrutinising taxation and social policy in tandem, the complex myriad ways in which they intertwine and the role of taxation as an instrument of social policy. It also points to the consequences of not examining the two in tandem and the multiple intersecting inequities and inequalities that stem from a disconnected approach. Taking up the related cross-cutting themes the chapter then considers the many factors that inhibit debate including the limitations of the available data, the opacity of tax-making policy, the way taxation is framed in public discourse with little reference to its hidden wiring and resultant inequities. Pulling together and winding up the text, it focuses on ways of moving forward, particularly the need to challenge the negative rhetoric around taxation, open up research on further domains and issues, and develop a wider view of the operation and impact of taxes and their interaction with social policies. In a context where the UK faces an unprecedented conjuncture of pressures, the text makes clear the value of social-policy-based analyses of taxation.
Canadian social work and the Sixties Scoop: reflections on the past, lessons for today
Authors: Duarte Filipe , Selmi Patrick
Published: January 2024

This chapter sheds light on social work’s troubled past with Indigenous peoples in Canada. It aims to discuss ‘troubled histories’ of complicity, oppression and assimilation in an ongoing process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and preservation of social work memory. Social work’s troubled past with Indigenous Peoples in Canada is one of the profession’s darkest moments in the 20th century, starting with the residential schools created to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian society, and pursued through the Sixties Scoop, comprising policies and practices to remove Indigenous children from their communities and place them in foster care or adoption by White families. In the early 19th century, when colonial settlement in Canada intensified, Indigenous peoples were subjugated to British colonial rule through the imposition of a policy called the Indian Act that aimed to ‘protect’ Indigenous people from European settlers. Such policy and practices were intended primarily to ‘civilise the Indians’ in the name of Christianisation, and involved imposing assimilation strategies and practices, supported by the ideological biases of politicians, administrators and wider society. Such practices of settler colonialism towards Indigenous peoples used child welfare as an approach to solving the ‘Indian Problem’. By the late 1940s the social work profession was already playing a direct role in the child welfare system concerning Indigenous children. Social workers became directly involved in the removal of Indigenous children from Indigenous families and communities.
Reconciling systemic abuse of children and young women with social work’s commitment to a human rights, transformative practice
Authors: Noble Carolyn
Published: January 2024

Forced removal of children, child migration and child adoptions have a long history in Australia. The systematic removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nation) children into state and religious institutional care, the forced migration of British children to Australia and the involuntary adoption of young unwed women’s children are features of the welfare landscape for more than 250 years of colonial rule. Known as the ‘forgotten ones’, ‘lost innocents’ or ‘stolen children’, these children experienced lifelong trauma and serious mental ill-health, leaving a trail of hurt rippling through the generations. The current forced, indefinite detention of children and their families in refugee camps is a punitive aspect of Australia’s current Immigration Detention policy. Children being held in these detention centres will experience the same long-term health and welfare impact of those before them. What is distressing about this legacy is that these atrocities are still occurring with the over-representation of First Nation children in the criminal justice system and the continued detention of children in detention camps with little or no attention from social work’s professional body. These past and current atrocities present social work with the challenge of how to deal with the consequences of these policies and institutional failings. An important step to tackle this issue is for the Australian Association for Social Workers and the international professional bodies to offer some form of acknowledgement, recompense and reflection on past hurts to protect clients from further harm and build trust in their work.
Social work in times of political violence: dictatorships and acts of resistance from the Southern Cone
Authors: Muñoz-Arce Gianinna , Campana-Alabarce Melisa
Published: January 2024

The profession of social work developed in Latin America through crises and upheaval after the beginning of 20th century. A wave of dictatorships affecting Latin American countries in the 1970s and 1980s severely impacted on social work education and practice, having consequences in professional and political terms that are still being observed. This chapter aims to contextualise and revisit the period of dictatorships in the Southern Cone, the geographic and cultural region composed of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay – the southernmost area of South America. These three countries experienced dictatorships during overlapping periods, starting in the mid-1970s, and dictators had close reciprocal links, as the Plan Condor and the exile of so many people have demonstrated over the decades. Despite the fact that these countries have diverse experiences in terms of the politics of memory and reparation, a public agenda for recognition of the recent past and its atrocities has already been established. It is precisely that agenda which has also permitted the observation of practices of resistance, abandoning the idea of victims of dictatorship and recognising the capacity of many people, some of them social workers, to contest, subvert and resist the hegemonic order imposed under political violence.
Introduction
Authors: Tam Henry
Published: January 2024

This chapter sets out how inadequate political understanding has made it easier for democracy to be undermined by fallacious claims being accepted and dubious policies going unchallenged. It warns against the growing proliferation of anti-democratic practices, which, in the name of impartiality, set out to prevent people from raising their level of political literacy and becoming more informed in their engagement with public policy issues. It makes the case for better political education by highlighting the current barriers, pointing to techniques that can be applied to secure improvement, and indicating what research findings can be drawn on to develop educational approaches that will have positive long-term impact. It serves as an introduction to the detailed exposition provided in each of the subsequent chapters of the book.
Classroom conflict, ‘divisive concepts’ and educating for democracy
Authors: Smith Barrett , Stitzlein Sarah M.
Published: January 2024

This chapter looks at the challenge posed by ‘divisive concepts’ and how they have been invoked by some politicians to prevent certain issues from being taught or discussed at school. It points to policies being taken forward in the US, and argues that, instead of allowing partisan legislators to impose their preferences regarding what should or should not be taught, teachers should be given the support and protection to engage their students in considering issues, arguments and perspectives that need to be addressed in a civil and constructive manner. It warns of the danger that teachers may retreat further from political education out of fear of prosecution, and sets out why democracy needs citizens to learn about building strong relations that would enable them to engage with controversial matters and become, not more polarised, but more connected through shared understanding even when they disagree.
Citizenship education: building for the future
Authors: Jerome Lee , Moorse Liz
Published: January 2024

This chapter draws on the authors’ extensive review of citizenship education practices to identify what should be done to prepare young people more effectively to act as democratic citizens. They consider the impact of different school-based experiments and the feedback from experienced subject specialist teachers, and set out recommendations that include: raising political literacy through better understanding of and working with public bodies and politicians; learning more about the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, improving media and digital literacy, and increasing awareness of how to check public claims and assess the legitimacy of information sources; recognising problems of inequality and exploring how to pursue social justice; being alert to extremist rhetoric and propaganda, and working with others to tackle the spread of extremism; and engaging with the threats posed by climate change, and collaborating with others to advance sustainability.
Conclusion
Authors: Tam Henry
Published: January 2024

This chapter sums up the challenges and opportunities for political education. It highlights the tactics used by some politicians to reduce even further the influence of citizens who are economically disadvantaged, socially marginalised and/or discriminated against by prevailing institutional attitudes and practices. It draws on the findings of the preceding chapters to identify three core areas that should be addressed by effective political education: learning to appreciate and build civic togetherness; understand the basis of and engage in maintaining civic objectivity; and cultivate and apply civic efficacy in shaping public affairs. It concludes by proposing reforms that should be taken forward to improve educational practices, electoral arrangements, engagement processes and epistemic institutions, so as to secure a higher level of civic competence and democratic participation.
Work and Social Justice
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

For those who care about social justice for workers, this book provides the tools Economics offers us a far too narrow perspective on the role that paid work plays in our lives, as individuals and as a society. By borrowing approaches to paid work from academics working in other disciplines, such as labour historians, psychologists, medical scientists, sociologists, political scientists and feminist scholars, this book explores the ways in which economics can broaden its scope on this topic. A second thread running through the book explores the historical battle for workers’ rights and juxtaposes that period with the last four decades of regressive neoliberalism. By combining the perspectives of other disciplines with the lessons learned from this historical analysis, this book explores possible ways forwards.
Equity, social justice and the ‘efficient economy’
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

Economists often like to say that there is a trade-off between caring for social equity and maintaining an efficient economy. Economic theory, however, tells us otherwise. This chapter debunks the enduring myth of this trade-off by exploring the true implications of economic theory. Central to this rethinking is the work of Tony Atkinson, the notable Oxford University economist. Whether talking about an individual, a household or a nation, Atkinson argues that we can’t define efficient use of economic resources without first identifying the ultimate goals behind the use of those resources. The opposite is also true: if a society that upholds values of equity and social justice does not employ some of its economic resources to those ends, it fails to be a truly efficient user of its resources.
From the ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ to the welfare state
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

Progressive legislation passed by the British Parliament during the 19th century radically altered workplace conditions for the better, paving the way for the collective protections embedded in the modern welfare state. Central to these efforts was a campaign led by social reformers like Robert Owen and Edwin Chadwick. During this period, similar reforms were also introduced by other major European countries. The historical overview in this chapter provides the backdrop for a discussion in Chapter 7 of the radical decline in the quality of work conditions witnessed since the late 1970s.
Human rights and democracy in the workplace
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

Chapter 12 introduces a body of literature that emphasises the rights afforded to workers in the workplace. The first set of rights is afforded to all individuals by dint of their membership in a civil society, assuming it has embraced the principles of democracy. The democratic rights of workers in this sense extend beyond their right to political power – they extend to their ability to exercise control over the design of their jobs, particularly in terms of how the job impacts their wellbeing. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), applying human rights principles to the workplace involves eliminating all discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity or religion and the right to dignity while at work.
Confronting climate change and the AI revolution
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

The dire predictions of job losses resulting from the digital revolution could arguably be a blessing in disguise. Hospitals, nursing homes and schools are all crying out for more staff, as are the industries addressing climate change. A shift like this would require major manpower retraining programs, like those employed in Sweden to address changes in employment patterns. It would be a mistake, however, to address the challenges of the digital revolution solely with a Universal Basic Income scheme. This would only produce an even more extreme scale of income and wealth inequality. Instead, automation provides the perfect opportunity to reduce the length of both the working day and the working week, while maintaining full employment.
Moving on Up: Researching the Lives and Careers of Young Graduates
Authors: Ingram Nicola , Bathmaker Ann-Marie , Abrahams Jessie , Bentley Laura , Bradley Harriet , Hoare Tony , Papafilippou Vanda , Waller Richard , Friedman Sam
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides an overview of the project design and an explanation of the methods that were employed. It provides demographic details about the participants, including social class, university attended and gender. The chapter discusses measures of social class, the limitations of definitions of gender and the operationalization of the concepts of ‘race’ and ethnicity. This includes a discussion of whiteness and an acknowledgement of the racially skewed nature of the sample. The chapter ends with an outline of the methodological approach.
‘There’s No Place Like Home’: Graduate Mobilities and Spatial Belonging
Authors: Ingram Nicola , Bathmaker Ann-Marie , Abrahams Jessie , Bentley Laura , Bradley Harriet , Hoare Tony , Papafilippou Vanda , Waller Richard , Friedman Sam , Ingram Nicola , Bathmaker Ann-Marie , Abrahams Jessie , Bentley Laura , Bradley Harriet , Hoare Tony , Papafilippou Vanda , Waller Richard , Friedman Sam
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the significance of ‘home’ for graduate mobility. It considers the ways in which home contributes to capacities to navigate graduate futures and explores the legitimation of certain forms of geographical navigation over others. For young people who participate in higher education in England, the dominant narrative is one of leaving behind the family home and becoming geographically mobile in terms of both the ‘student experience’ and graduate life. The chapter problematizes the way in which geographical mobility – leaving the home place – is recognized as success by exploring both the cost of mobility and the value of choosing to stay, with a focus on working-class and middle-class capitals and orientations to home. The chapter questions the legitimization of ‘being geographically mobile’ as a valued form of capital and, in doing so, shows the significance of home and locality as a potential form of valuable but misrecognized social and cultural capital for working-class graduates.
The Digital Health Self
Authors: Kent Rachael
Published: January 2024

This book provides a unique contribution to the expanding literature on self-tracking technologies and social media through its long-term analysis of users’ practices of using these technologies to self-represent ‘health’ identities and how such performances under the online communities’ gaze affected their ‘health’ behaviours and practices offline. What this book calls for and presents through this empirical data is for a reconceptualisation of what digital health practically means in individuals’ everyday lives. In this vein, this book examines how following an influencer’s lifestyle guidance can also be considered a component of one’s digital health practices today, as much as their daily Fitbit tracking. In addition, how these self-tracking, self-monitoring and scrolling practices might become a part of an individuals’ daily tech habits and in turn their ‘addictive’ or compulsive nature must also be included as a part of one’s ‘digital health’. From adjusting your physical movements, to capture more step counts on your Fitbit, to being unable to stop scrolling social media accounts can all now be considered as part of the arsenal of digital economy practices that impact one’s health, mentally or physically – and in many instances both! Digital health, this book illustrates, is both a concept of health management and a daily practice for citizens of the digital society. It is a tool for self-analysis for consumers, a medical framework for health insights, advocated by public and private healthcare policy, by governments to outsource healthcare to individuals, as well as for technology, health, and wellness industries to be capitalised upon. Digital health is now a way of life under the economics of surveillance and platform capitalism, as we all increasingly become autonomous managers of our healthcare via technology, which has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Surveillance Cultures of the Digital Health Self
Authors: Kent Rachael
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the role of surveillance when health is managed by and performed with the use of self-tracking and social media technologies in everyday life. By sharing health-related content on social media, users become representative of a community of like-minded ‘health’-orientated individuals, which they – even when nothing is being personally achieved – feel a part of. This chapter also addresses shifts in sharing practices under considerations of self and community surveillance; for example, when individuals experience stress or trauma in their personal lives, this often leads to concealment of ‘unhealthy’ behaviours to avoid the negative judgement of others online. This also relieves users from being the object of the communities’ gaze and judging their own lives through comparing lifestyles represented and surveilled on social media. This chapter highlights how the accumulative and collaborative information produced through these platforms changes users’ behaviours and understandings of their bodies and health, which are reinforced by the (lack of) feedback received from their social media communities. Surveillance and privacy issues are analysed within the context of digital performativity and management of the ‘digital health self’.
Beauty, Breasts, and Meaning after Mastectomy
Authors: Sledge Piper
Published: January 2024

Currently, a wide array of government and nonprofit programs provide resources and support to cisgender women as they recover from breast cancer with an implicit focus on restoring the appearance of conventional femininity after treatment. Cisgender women who “live flat” (ie, choose not to have breast reconstruction) often experience deep aesthetic concerns after mastectomy yet typically have no place in these programs. This chapter explores their discussions of vanity, aesthetics, and appearance in relation to their perceptions of themselves, their interactions with others, and the meaning of breasts and attention to appearance in contemporary social life.
“You Are Not the Body”: (Re)Interpreting the Body in and through Integral Yoga
Authors: Johnston Erin F.
Published: January 2024

Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and enactive immersion, the author argues in this chapter that “becoming” an Integral Yoga practitioner is intimately bound up with a cognitive and perceptual reframing of the body—one marked by the cultivation of a sense of separation or “bodily detachment.” In the findings, the author highlights several key areas in which bodily detachment is cultivated. In doing so, this chapter attends closely to both the somatic/practical and the symbolic/discursive realms, tracing the dynamic interplay between them. It highlights the importance, in particular, of looking at talk and discourse in situ in order to better understand how religious practices and discourses become personally meaningful.
Introduction
Authors: Londoño Catalina Montoya
Published: January 2024

The introduction of the book explains where the idea of the book came from. It also offers a context to the Colombian conflict and its costs. A subsequent section explains the questions guiding the book: how key international organizations and countries promoted geographically targeted peacebuilding efforts in Colombia between November 2016 and February 2019 through online subsidies, to what extent differing frames regarding space transformation and peacebuilding reflected consensus, complementarity, dissent or dispersion, in the background of two Colombian governments opposed on the peace process, and the implications for consolidating the peacebuilding initiatives of the former government of Juan Manuel Santos. Then, the introduction offers some context to international cooperation for peacebuilding in Colombia and justifies the actors chosen, as well as the relevance of the study from a practical and theoretical perspective. The final sections describe the methodological approach, organization of the book and its key limitations and contributions.
Peacebuilding Efforts in Colombia: Bilateral and Multilateral Cooperation
Authors: Londoño Catalina Montoya
Published: January 2024

Chapter 4 summarizes how the USA, Canada, Sweden, United Kingdom, United Nations, European Union, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and MAPP/OEA have been involved in peacebuilding efforts in Colombia, drawing from official reports and documentation. The chapter describes the cooperation agendas in Colombia of the countries under evaluation (USA, Canada, Sweden and UK), and then summarizes multilateral efforts made through the post-conflict multi-trust funds set up to aid the transition to peace. In addition, the chapter explains the role of the MAPP/OEA to monitor and provide support to the peace process. The chapter points to relevant antecedents in international actors’ cooperation agendas and outlines their priorities and agendas during the period studied. Furthermore, the chapter reflects on how each actor privileged a particular approach regarding liberal peacebuilding.
Introduction: Interpretive Sociology and the Semiotic Imagination
Authors: Cossu Andrea , Fontdevila Jorge
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter begins by reflecting on the historically troubled encounters between semiotics and sociology, their multiple beginnings, abrupt separations, and fights over boundaries. On one hand, when going social, semiotics seems more interested in analyses of social artifacts or texts than social life processes in their sociality and not just textuality. On the other, when going semiotic, sociology tends to appropriate formal understandings of structure, only to realize that structuralist efforts are impractical for complex explanations of social life. To overcome these challenges, the chapter proposes integrating two main traditions of meaning-making from the outset: Saussure’s and Peirce’s semiotics. Thus, to lay solid foundation to sociocultural explanation we need a sophisticated theory of signification in social life. A theory where signs—vehicles of meaning—signify via self-referential differentials but also via reflexive indexicalities that anchor them at multiple social levels. Expanding on these themes, the chapter turns to three open problems at the crossroads of semiotics and sociology, namely indexicality and context-making, habituation and power, and culture and cognition. Finally, the contributions are outlined. From different perspectives, each contribution attempts to provide elements to answer: Is there a space for semiotics in an agenda that pushes interpretive sociology forward?
Marked and Unmarked: A Semiotic Distinction for Concept-driven Interpretive Sociology
Authors: Brekhus Wayne H.
Published: January 2024

A unifying theme in the chapters in this volume is that semiotics offers important analytic tools for understanding the creation and reproduction of contextual meaning in social life (see Introduction). Consistent with this theme, my research program has centered on the semiotic distinction between the socially marked and the socially unmarked. I have employed these sensitizing analytic concepts to examine a range of issues, including sexual identity (Brekhus, 1996), theoretical attention in sociology (Brekhus, 1998, 2000), cognition (Brekhus, 2015; Brekhus and Ignatow, 2019), risk (Brekhus, 2018), and identity (Brekhus, 2020). Broadly speaking, I focus on identity, difference, cognition, and representation, with a particular interest in the ways that intersecting dimensions of markedness and unmarkedness shape cultural perception, worldviews, cognition, and the reproduction of social inequalities. The semiotic distinction between the marked and the unmarked was first introduced in the 1930s by linguists Trubetzkoy and Jakobson (see Jakobson, 1972; Trubetzkoy and Jakobson, 1975: 162). Linguist Linda Waugh (1982), in her article “Marked and Unmarked: A Choice between Unequals in Semiotic Structure,” developed the marked/unmarked distinction into a broader semiotic framework featuring semiotic pairs such as blackness/whiteness and homosexuality/heterosexuality, across different semiotic systems (see also Zerubavel, 2018, p. 2). Following the lead of Waugh, who argued that the same logic of the actively accented (marked) and the passively unacknowledged (unmarked) that applied to linguistic contrasts also applies to social contrasts, I have helped to import these concepts into the social sciences. In my own work, inspired by Waugh’s analysis, I first applied a semiotic markedness/unmarkedness analysis to sexual identity construction in the US (Brekhus, 1996), wherein I noted that some sexual behaviors and identities are marked as “deviant” and given special labels, while others remain unmarked, unaccented, and even unlabeled.
Cultural Syntax and the Rules of Meaning-making: A New Paradigm for the Interpretation of Culture
Authors: Madigan Todd
Published: January 2024

While the interpretive social sciences have been focused almost entirely on the analysis of meaning and structure, my claim is that a third level of analysis is warranted. Just as Saussure argues that a sign’s signifier and signified are joined arbitrarily, so too do syntactic rules arbitrarily dictate the ways in which meaningful phenomena may or may not be conjoined. The rules of cultural syntax thereby enable and constrain the cultural structures we experience every day throughout the social world. That is, these rules determine the limits of how we are able to combine signs and symbols within those cultural structures. For this reason, having a theoretical model with the vision to identify these rules enriches the descriptive and explanatory powers of any semiotic approach to culture.
Memory, Cultural Systems, and Anticipation
Authors: Cossu Andrea
Published: January 2024

The past, the present, and the future are different tonalities of temporality, and in order to study their interaction, a processual look at the analytic and concrete level is a much required move for memory studies. The chapter argues that the future is a real territory for memory studies, which can be approached most effectively in terms of a semiotic, cultural sociology. The framework proposed here is grounded on a network-based formalization of cultural systems to depict an autonomous role of cultural encyclopedias and scripts in the micro-level orientation to future action. As it is framed in the chapter, memory work is a building block for a theory of cultural mechanisms (that link the macro level of culture and the micro level of situations), which elucidates how different aspects of culture at the cognitive and pragmatic level are translated mutually within cultural systems and how they transfer into consideration of possible courses of action. The chapter contributes to a theory of memory that is less concerned with the remembrance of the past and more with the working logic of culture and its pragmatic implications.
War, Technology and the State
Authors: Chin Warren
Published: January 2024

This book reassesses the relationship between technology, war and the state. It builds on key debates that have shaped our understanding of how these elements have impacted on the evolution of the Western world in the past and the present. While recognizing the limitations of relying on technology as the principal driver of change, the central pillar of the study is based on the belief that we are on the precipice of a technological revolution which will challenge existing assumptions about war and politics. This study extends the debate on this subject in four ways. First, while accepting the validity of arguments posed that challenge the role of technology as a source of change, the central argument is that the fourth industrial revolution makes it necessary to reassess this debate, especially in the domain of war. As such, the book makes the case for technological determinism. Second, it assesses current technological trends and how they will impact on contemporary warfare. Third, but connected to the previous point, is the need to expand the technological lens and look more closely at how technology is changing politics and society and to reflect on what this means for the conduct of war. Finally, the book speculates on how current technological trends will shape war and politics in the future and what impact this will have on the war–state relationship. Will it endure or are we going to see radically different military and political architecture emerge in the future?
The Nuclear Revolution and the Rise of Postmodern War
Authors: Chin Warren
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on the advent of the nuclear age and the changes it precipitated in the organization and conduct of war. Most important here is what impact the nuclear revolution had on the war–state relationship. The existing literature perceives a significant decline in this connection as the incidence of war reduced in frequency in the Western world. This chapter challenges this view in several ways. First, it revisits our understanding of war and what constituted an act of war against the broader background of a possible Armageddon. Most important here is how technology fits into this new strategic paradigm. Precisely, how did the military use it in this more constrained setting, and what were the implications of this for the war–state relationship? This is a particularly interesting moment in history because of the hugely significant role played by military, scientific research, which for a short time became the vanguard of the technological revolution that swept through society starting in the 1980s.
Global Imaginaries of Knowledge Governance
Authors: Erkkilä Tero , Chou Meng-Hsuan , Kauppi Niilo
Published: January 2024

This chapter turns to the scripts and imaginaries of knowledge governance. To become effective, numerical knowledge needs to be narrated and communicated. We see actors referring to different imaginaries of knowledge governance that are linked to grand narratives of global megatrends, pointing to intensifying global economic competition through digitalization and innovation, as well as the implications for those countries, institutions or individuals left behind. The ranking producers have also identified automation as one of their observed megatrends, discussing it as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or ‘second machine age’, where digitalization and automation ultimately affect global competitiveness, innovation and knowledge governance. Moreover, innovation and knowledge creation are tightly linked to cities as innovation hubs, reflecting the global trend of urbanization as part of the broader modernization movement. ‘Talents’ are important in this storyline and the chapter argues that transnational knowledge governance operates on the perceptions of futures.
Strategies and Policies for the Global Talent Competition
Authors: Erkkilä Tero , Chou Meng-Hsuan , Kauppi Niilo
Published: January 2024

This chapter describes how policy makers and decision-makers developed and implemented strategies and policies based on the ‘talent’ imaginary and bring knowledge alchemy to life. By reviewing how the presuppositions revolving around the global competition for talent became integrated in higher education and university policies, migration policies, university recruitment practices and more, we show how the processes of globalization, internationalization and competition unfold across multiple policy sectors, institutions and governance levels. Here, policy makers and decision-makers use the notion of interdependence to describe the state of existence, but also to identify policy problems and solutions. To unpack how interdependence is interpreted and used, we organized this chapter to revolve around several case studies that span multiple governance levels: the macro-regional, the national and transregional, and at the city level. Our case selections are meant to be illustrative and not comprehensive, involving cities, countries and regions in the ‘West’ as well as the ‘East’. What our cases have in common is the centrality of the ‘talent’ competition imaginary, articulated through the competition narrative, driving knowledge governance.
Taxing Democracy
Authors: Manning Carrie
Published: January 2024

This book is about the relationship between taxes and democracy. Specifically, it shows how policies to limit local revenue generation at state and local levels in the US have direct and lasting consequences for equity, equality, and fairness. This occurs not simply through shrinking budgets for public goods and services. Tax structures also embed and reproduce an implicit social contract between government and citizens, creating path-dependent outcomes that reach into the future and create unintended consequences that are rarely traced back to revenue models.The book begins by showing how legal limitations on taxing decisions by local jurisdictions have led to increasing use of new models for revenue generation that weaken transparency and fiscal accountability, and that subsequently undermine equity. These limits include constitutional and statutory limits on new taxes or rate increases at state and local levels, as well as the use of state powers of preemption to prevent local jurisdictions from increasing revenues using traditional taxes. This has led to a reliance on fines and fees to fund even the most essential public services.The book describes how greater reliance on these less transparent ‘taxes’ undermines fiscal accountability, places unfair burdens on certain groups of citizens, and weakens the connection between governments and citizens. These practices obscure a social contract in which revenue and legitimacy for the state are exchanged for public services offered to all citizens.
Taxing Democracy: Conclusions
Authors: Manning Carrie
Published: January 2024

Chapter 6 pulls together the threads of the argument developed over the course of the first five chapters. Contemporary policies are not linked solely to new fiscal exigencies or present-day partisan politics. Rather, they reflect the broad outlines of a social contract whose basic parameters have endured since the time of state formation. And these parameters endure because tax policy embeds and carries forward notions about who is a citizen, what citizens owe and can expect from the state, and what states can properly demand of citizens.