title: Editorial: The experience and benefits of game playing

authors: Lorentz, Pascaline

subjects: Social Sciences

abstract: Now that video games have permeated daily life across the globe on computers, consoles and pocket devices, they call for a more comprehensive—and accurate—understanding of their role in society. Psychological research into the impact of games upon players was initiated more than fifteen years ago, with researches devoted to uncovering the alleged negative impact of game playing in response to politically driven moral panics. The focus and dominance of experimental ‘effects’ research has given rise to a need for further research to balance what is sometimes seen as moral crusades associated with causation studies to articulate the more mundane, less contentious existence of games as a significant leisure activity for billions of individuals who repeatedly play them for entertainment and fun.

text: Editorial: The experience and benefits of game playing Now that video games have permeated daily life across the globe on computers, consoles and pocket devices, they call for a more comprehensive—and accurate—understanding of their role in society. Psychological research into the impact of games upon players was initiated more than fifteen years ago, with researches devoted to uncovering the alleged negative impact of game playing in response to politically driven moral panics. The focus and dominance of experimental ‘effects’ research has given rise to a need for further research to balance what is sometimes seen as moral crusades associated with causation studies to articulate the more mundane, less contentious existence of games as a significant leisure activity for billions of individuals who repeatedly play them for entertainment and fun.

year: 2015

title: Governing globalization in South Asia through a legal praxis of human rights, development and democracy

authors: Tittawella, Suranjika Erangani

subjects: Globalization

abstract: ABSTRACT

This doctoral thesis in law seeks to understand, and begin to remedy, the immense and avoidable poverty that disenfranchises at least 30 percent of the world's most populous region. Defining South Asia as Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the study analyses the multidimensional nature, historical origins and modern dynamics of both this material poverty and poverties of human rights, democracy and development. Both critical analysis and creative response are framed within legal history, human rights jurisprudence, constitutional and administrative law, comparative law and public international law, but the author draws extensively on political economy and history, and partially on philosophy, and cultural studies.

Chapter 1 traces the Western evolution of the universal human rights regime, first  globalized  in 1948 by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also traces South Asian sociopolitical and religious articulations of human dignity and limitations on legitimate power through the ages. Mostly contrary to culturally relativist claims, South Asia's human rights needs are found to be well served by a genuinely universalist regime including justiciable economic, social and cultural rights as inseparable from civil and political.

Chapters 2 and 3 survey the historical  globalizations  that have impacted on South Asia. Although globalization is shown to be a neutral phenomenon, the author identifies the insidious contemporary propagation of a particular neo-liberal ideology as being globalization's inevitable and optimal form. The study analyses this propagation by the International Financial Institutions the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, acting through Structural Adjustment Policies and only partially corrective Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Neo-liberalism supposedly unshackles benign market forces from distorting governmental rules to create spontaneous growth that trickles down to the poor; in fact it employs its own rules to privilege the already wealthy, especially Western capital and transnational corporations (TNCs).

The thesis urges South Asia to  govern globalization  pro-actively, seeking the virtuous circle of human rights, plural democracy and equitable development. Positive signs have already included national membership in, and constitutional enshrinement of, universal human rights norms, and certain efforts of civil society and non-governmental organizations, fostered at times by activist judiciaries. 

Chapter 4 nevertheless catalogues overriding failures to internalize plural democracy and the rule of law, leaving rights nominal and democratic structures hollow. Governments have been obsequious to neo-liberal hegemony, insouciant to their underclasses and exploitative of religious schisms in appeal to tyrannous majoritarianism. The South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation is shown as an inadequate response to the region's multidimensional poverties.

Adapting instead the best practices of the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, the African Union, and the British Commonwealth from Chapter 5, Chapter 6 details a  South Asian Union for Human Rights Development and Democracy  to replace SAARC. This new regional response complements global human rights norms and offers South Asia solidarity in confronting neo-liberalism, and holding TNCs, IFIs and especially their own governments accountable to the rule of law, equitable development, deep democracy, wide human rights, and  larger freedom  in peace and security.

text: Governing globalization in South Asia through a legal praxis of human rights, development and democracy ABSTRACT

This doctoral thesis in law seeks to understand, and begin to remedy, the immense and avoidable poverty that disenfranchises at least 30 percent of the world's most populous region. Defining South Asia as Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the study analyses the multidimensional nature, historical origins and modern dynamics of both this material poverty and poverties of human rights, democracy and development. Both critical analysis and creative response are framed within legal history, human rights jurisprudence, constitutional and administrative law, comparative law and public international law, but the author draws extensively on political economy and history, and partially on philosophy, and cultural studies.

Chapter 1 traces the Western evolution of the universal human rights regime, first  globalized  in 1948 by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also traces South Asian sociopolitical and religious articulations of human dignity and limitations on legitimate power through the ages. Mostly contrary to culturally relativist claims, South Asia's human rights needs are found to be well served by a genuinely universalist regime including justiciable economic, social and cultural rights as inseparable from civil and political.

Chapters 2 and 3 survey the historical  globalizations  that have impacted on South Asia. Although globalization is shown to be a neutral phenomenon, the author identifies the insidious contemporary propagation of a particular neo-liberal ideology as being globalization's inevitable and optimal form. The study analyses this propagation by the International Financial Institutions the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, acting through Structural Adjustment Policies and only partially corrective Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Neo-liberalism supposedly unshackles benign market forces from distorting governmental rules to create spontaneous growth that trickles down to the poor; in fact it employs its own rules to privilege the already wealthy, especially Western capital and transnational corporations (TNCs).

The thesis urges South Asia to  govern globalization  pro-actively, seeking the virtuous circle of human rights, plural democracy and equitable development. Positive signs have already included national membership in, and constitutional enshrinement of, universal human rights norms, and certain efforts of civil society and non-governmental organizations, fostered at times by activist judiciaries. 

Chapter 4 nevertheless catalogues overriding failures to internalize plural democracy and the rule of law, leaving rights nominal and democratic structures hollow. Governments have been obsequious to neo-liberal hegemony, insouciant to their underclasses and exploitative of religious schisms in appeal to tyrannous majoritarianism. The South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation is shown as an inadequate response to the region's multidimensional poverties.

Adapting instead the best practices of the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, the African Union, and the British Commonwealth from Chapter 5, Chapter 6 details a  South Asian Union for Human Rights Development and Democracy  to replace SAARC. This new regional response complements global human rights norms and offers South Asia solidarity in confronting neo-liberalism, and holding TNCs, IFIs and especially their own governments accountable to the rule of law, equitable development, deep democracy, wide human rights, and  larger freedom  in peace and security.

year: 2008

title: Education leaders can reduce educational disparities

authors: Bishop, Russell

subjects: education

abstract: This chapter is about how education leaders can act to reduce educational disparities for indigenous and other minoritized peoples through strategic goal setting, supporting effective pedagogies of relations, promoting distributed leadership, enacting inclusivity, using evidence and owning the need for reform. Examples are drawn from a large-scale, theory-based education reform project called Te Kotahitanga which is currently running in 50 secondary schools in New Zealand. Developing a model for effective leadership needs to commence with the understanding that the key to change is teacher action supported by responsive structural reform (Elmore 2004). In our earlier work (Bishop et al. 2003, 2007) we investigated what effective teacher action looks like. This chapter presents a model of what “responsive structural reform” looks like in practice and what leaders need to do to implement and sustain gains made in student performance at the classroom, school and system-wide levels.

text: Education leaders can reduce educational disparities This chapter is about how education leaders can act to reduce educational disparities for indigenous and other minoritized peoples through strategic goal setting, supporting effective pedagogies of relations, promoting distributed leadership, enacting inclusivity, using evidence and owning the need for reform. Examples are drawn from a large-scale, theory-based education reform project called Te Kotahitanga which is currently running in 50 secondary schools in New Zealand. Developing a model for effective leadership needs to commence with the understanding that the key to change is teacher action supported by responsive structural reform (Elmore 2004). In our earlier work (Bishop et al. 2003, 2007) we investigated what effective teacher action looks like. This chapter presents a model of what “responsive structural reform” looks like in practice and what leaders need to do to implement and sustain gains made in student performance at the classroom, school and system-wide levels.

year: 2011