Broader Relevance (broader + relevance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Drifters and the Dancing Mad: The Public School Music Curriculum and the Fabrication of Boundaries for Participation

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2008
RUTH GUSTAFSON
ABSTRACT Recent reforms in the general music curriculum have, for the most part, failed to lessen the attrition rates of African Americans from public school music programs. In this article I assert that an embodied ideal of cultural nobility, exemplified by Auguste Rodin's famous statue, The Thinker, has unconsciously operated as a template for participation. As a model comportment in the Western musical tradition, The Thinker has a broader relevance insofar as other school subjects emerged from similar cultural ideals. Beginning with the early period of public music instruction up to the present, I examine the construction of racial boundaries by linking a specific body comportment hailed as worthy by the music curriculum to historically constructed notions of Whiteness. This issue has been underexplored in research in both music and general education. For that reason, this article examines overlapping systems of reasoning about music, comportment, class, religion, language, nationality, and race in professional and popular texts from the early 1800s to the present. This positions public music instruction as authored, not by pedagogical insight alone, but through changes in musical taste, social practices, strategies of governing populations, and definitions of worthy citizenship. There are three levels of analysis. The first is a personal account of the early manifestations of attrition of African Americans from school music programs. The second level of analysis brings the problem of equity into proximity with the tradition of genteel comportment that permeated the training of the good ear or listener and the fabrication of the bona fide citizen. These, I argue are congruent with the historical construction of Whiteness as a standard mark of worthiness. At the third level of analysis, I take up present-day curriculum designs. This section discusses how the language of the music curriculum continues to draw boundaries for participation through protocols that regulate musical response. Here, I argue that the exclusion of popular genres such as hip-hop should be rethought in light of the evidence that shifting historical definitions for music fabricated an overly restrictive template for comportment, recognizing the prototype of Whiteness as the sole embodiment of merit. [source]


Community-oriented primary care: a multidisciplinary community-oriented approach to primary care?

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2001
Penny Lenihan
Abstract Developing more of a local public health focus, and involving local communities in Great Britain in health care decision-making, are key aspects of the radically changing face of primary care. Community-oriented primary care (COPC) is an international model for innovative primary health care delivery historically applied in developing or deprived communities, but increasingly seen as having broader relevance for a wider range of primary care settings. COPC has a long history of development in deprived communities, it is still however seen as innovative. It fits the current requirements of clinical governance and the ,Modern and Dependable NHS', but does its long history also provide information about it's pitfalls? COPC is promoted as an approach that is applicable to community mental health problems, community psychologists can provide the expertise to facilitate addressing community mental health in COPC programmes. This paper describes the COPC model and highlights the relevance of the COPC philosophy and the problems of its implementation for community psychologists in primary care. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Fighting fiscal corruption: lessons from the Tanzania Revenue Authority

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2003
Odd-Helge Fjeldstad
Over the last decade, several African countries have undertaken comprehensive reforms of their tax administrations to increase revenue and curb corruption. This article examines recent experiences in the fight against corruption in the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA). Two lessons of broader relevance are highlighted. Firstly, even with relatively high wages and good working conditions, corruption may continue to thrive. In a situation where there is high demand for corrupt services, it is unrealistic to provide tax officers with pay rates that can compensate for the amount gained through bribery. Without extensive and effective monitoring, wage increases may produce not only a highly paid, but also a highly corrupt tax administration. Secondly, hiring and firing procedures may lead to more corruption. Corrupt tax officers often operate in networks, which also include external actors. These corruption networks seem to have been strengthened because many of those fired were recruited to the private sector as ,tax experts'. This partly explains why the positive process experienced in the initial phase of the new revenue authority was later reversed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


The Patentability of Computer Programs in Europe: An Improved Interpretation of Articles 52(2) and (3) of the European Patent Convention

THE JOURNAL OF WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Issue 3 2010
Sigrid Sterckx
After the introduction we discuss the European Patent Convention (EPC) provisions that are relevant to the exculsion from patentability of computer programs and the broader relevance of the fact that the European Patent Office's (EPO's) Enlarged Board of Appeal has recently been requested by the EPO President to interpret these provisions. Next, we comment on the relevance of the recent EPC revision, before addressing what a computer program must be taken to mean for the purposes of the exclusion from patentability. After drawing attention to the conflict in case law that has developed in relation to the patentability of the computer programs and briefly summarizing the different approaches the EPO has taken to Article 52 of the EPC, we explain the evolution of these approaches, with particular attention to the EPO's dominant "technical character" approach. Subsequently, we address the questions put to the Enlarged Board and how they might be answered. We set out our proposal for what we believe is the approach the Enlarged Board should adopt. Since this approach might have effects beyond the field of computer programs, we show that the EPO case law outside computer programs would not be altered by our approach. Two alternative approaches are then critically addressed before setting out our conclusion. [source]


Front and Back Covers, Volume 22, Number 2.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 2 2006
April 200
Front and back cover caption, volume 22 issue 2 Front & back cover ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE. The debate around the likelihood of humans encountering extraterrestrial life is based in the broad context of cosmic evolution, which encompasses astronomical, biological and socio-cultural evolution. In this depiction of cosmic evolution from the US National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA), the upper left portion shows the formation of stars, the production of heavy elements and the formation of planetary systems, including our own. On the lower left-hand side prebiotic molecules, RNA and DNA are formed within the first billion years on the primitive Earth. The centre shows the origin and evolution of life leading to increasing complexity, culminating with intelligence, culture, and the astronomers who contemplate the universe on the upper right. The image was created by David DesMarais, Thomas Scattergood and Linda Jahnke at NASA's Ames Research Center in 1986, and reissued in 1997. In this issue Steven J. Dick, Chief Historian at NASA, recounts the history of anthropological involvement in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and discusses SETI's broader relevance to anthropology. Anthropologists are uniquely qualified by knowledge and training to contribute to SETI, since central concerns when and if contact is made will include socio-cultural difference and cross-cultural communication. In turn the extraterrestrial perspective has much to offer anthropology, both in expanding its boundaries, its insights and its tools, and in casting a fresh light on cultures on Earth. Valerie Olson, in her review of the session dedicated to SETI at the 2005 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, argues that the SETI vision of a terrestrial/extraterrestrial dichotomy between human and alien ,others' brings older and more recent anthropological ideas into a new juxtaposition, and that SETI has potential for stimulating the anthropological imagination. [source]