Your Search Results(showing 10)

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      May 2025

      The politics of Unbelonging

      Understanding and challenging racialisation of Roma in Europe and beyond

      by Andreja Zevnik, Andrew Russell

      This book offers a comprehensive study of racialisation of Romani communities in Europe (and beyond). Drawing on the idea of unbelonging it demonstrates how Romani communities are placed in a position of visceral visibility by local, national and international institutions as well as public media discourses. It shows how such positionality impacts the ability of Roma to self-represent politically and build capacity for change. From the position of unbelonging the book offers an account of Romani agency which both challenges the mainstream representations of Roma but also develops an alternative none-nation-state sense of belonging. In doing so the book outlines an account of Romani alternative expressions in order to take control of their relationship with their own history, future, knowledge, and identity, and the rest of the society.

    • Trusted Partner
      Humanities & Social Sciences
      July 2020

      Race talk

      Languages of racism and resistance in Neapolitan street markets

      by Antonia Lucia Dawes

      This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Race talk is about language use as an anti-racist practice in multicultural city spaces. The book contends that attention to talk reveals the relations of domination and subordination in heterogeneous, ethnically diverse and multilingual contexts, while also helping us to understand how transcultural solidarity might be expressed. Drawing on original ethnographic research conducted on licensed and unlicensed market stalls in in heterogeneous, ethnically diverse and multilingual contexts, this book examines the centrality of multilingual talk to everyday struggles about difference, positionality and entitlement. In these street markets, Neapolitan street vendors work alongside documented and undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, China, Guinea Conakry, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal as part of an ambivalent, cooperative and unequal quest to survive and prosper. As austerity, anti-immigration politics and urban regeneration projects encroached upon the possibilities of street vending, talk across linguistic, cultural, national and religious boundaries underpinned the collective action of street vendors struggling to keep their markets open. The edginess of their multilingual organisation offered useful insights into the kinds of imaginaries that will be needed to overcome the politics of borders, nationalism and radical incommunicability.

    • Education

      Rocking Your World: The Emotional Journey into Critical Discourses

      The Emotional Journey Into Critical Discourses

      by Churchill, A. H.

      Rocking Your World: The Emotional Journey into Critical Discourses is an introductory text that emerged from the belief that we often learn best through personal narrative and story. This collection of real stories connects critical theory and critical pedagogy with personal transformation. It is an experiential primer in how to navigate a developing appreciation of how silent (and sometimes not so silent) machinations of power align themselves along axes of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and global position (amongst others) to both conceal and perpetuate injustice and oppression. In this book, twelve authors share personal reflections of how various critical discourse communities have impacted their lives. They explore a range of professional, family and social barriers to personal growth as teachers, professional researchers and everyday people; they give us glimpses into the impact of positionality, the balance between activism and intellectual rigor, the obstacles to teaching critically, and more. This book would be an ideal complement to traditional texts and would provide countless opportunities to generate the kind of personal introspection and dialogue that can make studying critical pedagogy and other critical discourses a transformative experience. It is a must read for any teacher or student interested in the power of critical theories to transform how we see the world in which we live.

    • Education

      Identity Construction and Science Education Research

      Learning, Teaching, and Being in Multiple Contexts

      by Varelas, M.

      In this edited volume, science education scholars engage with the constructs of identity and identity construction of learners, teachers, and practitioners of science. Reports on empirical studies and commentaries serve to extend theoretical understandings related to identity and identity development vis-à-vis science education, link them to empirical evidence derived from a range of participants, educational settings, and analytic foci, examine methodological issues in identity studies, and project fruitful directions for research in this area. Using anthropological, sociological, and socio-cultural perspectives, chapter authors depict and discuss the complexity, messiness, but also potential of identity work in science education, and show how critical constructs–such as power, privilege, and dominant views; access and participation; positionality; agency-structure dialectic; and inequities–are integrally intertwined with identity construction and trajectories. Chapter authors examine issues of identity with participants ranging from first graders to pre-service and in-service teachers, to physics doctoral students, to show ways in which identity work is a vital (albeit still underemphasized) dimension of learning and participating in science in, and out of, academic institutions. Moreover, the research presented in this book mostly concerns students or teachers with racial, ethno-linguistic, class, academic status, and gender affiliations that have been long excluded from, or underrepresented in, scientific practice, science fields, and science-related professions, and linked with science achievement gaps. This book contributes to the growing scholarship that seeks to problematize various dominant views regarding, for example, what counts as science and scientific competence, who does science, and what resources can be fruitful for doing science.

    • Education

      Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States

      by Blumenfeld, W. J.

      Today, the United States stands as the most religiously diverse country in the world. This diversity poses great challenges as well as opportunities. Christian denominations and their cultural manifestations, however, often function to marginalize, exclude, and deny members and institutions of other religions and non-believers the privileges and access that accompany a Christian affiliation. Christianity is the privileged religious perspective in the United States since Christian groups, people, and organizations often have the power to define normalcy. Christian privilege comprises a large array of benefits that are often invisible, unearned, and unacknowledged by Christians. At times overt while at other times more subtle as Christian religious practice and beliefs have entered the public square, the clearly religious meanings, symbolism, positionality, and antecedents of these practices and beliefs betray claims to mere secularism. The effect of the so-called “secularization” of Christian religious practices and beliefs not only fortifies, but strengthens Christian privilege by perpetuating Christian influence in such a way as to avoid detection as religion or circumvent violating the constitutional requirements for the separation of religion and government. Christian dominance, therefore, is maintained often by its relative invisibility. With this invisibility, privilege is neither analyzed nor scrutinized, neither interrogated nor confronted. Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States addresses Christian privilege as well as religious oppression since the two are in symbiotic relationship: oppression toward non-Christians gives rise to Christian privilege in the United States, and Christian privilege maintains oppression toward non-Christian individuals and faith communities. This anthology also provides historical and contemporary cases exposing Christian privilege and religious oppression on the societal, institutional, and personal/interpersonal levels. A number of chapters include sections suggesting change strategies, and in particular, ways to achieve the national goal of religious pluralism in the United States.

    • December 2021

      Queering Chinese Kinship

      Queer Public Culture in Globalizing China

      by Lin Song

      What does it mean to be queer in a Confucian society in which kinship roles, ties, and ideologies are of such great importance? This book makes sense of queer cultures in China—a country with one of the largest queer populations in the world—and offers an alternative to Euro-American blueprints of queer individual identity. This book contends that kinship relations must be understood as central to any expression of queer selfhood and culture in contemporary cultural production in China. Using a critical approach—“queering Chinese kinship”—Lin Song scrutinizes the relationship between queerness and family relations, and questions Eurocentric queer culture’s frequent assumption of the separation of queerness from blood family. Offering five case studies of queer representations across a range of media genres, this book also challenges the tendency in current scholarship on Chinese and East Asian queerness to understand queer cultures as predominantly counter-mainstream, marginal, and underground. Shedding light on the representations of queerness and kinship in independent and subcultural as well as commercial and popular cultural products, the book presents a more comprehensive picture of queerness and kinship in flux and highlights queer politics as an integral part of contemporary Chinese public culture.

    • January 2024

      Studying for your Master’s Degree in Social Work

      by Bottomley, Jane

      An essential book to support students from diverse backgrounds as they embark on a Master’s degree in social work.

    • September 2021

      Enabling Critical Pedagogy in Higher Education

      by Seal, Mike

      An essential introduction to critical pedagogy for all those working within higher education, re-examining the concept and exploring its practical application at an institutional level, within the curriculum, within assessment, through learning and teaching, and in the spaces in-between.

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