Marginal Position (marginal + position)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Consent as Resistance, Resistance as Consent: Re-Reading Part-Time Professionals' Acceptance of Their Marginal Positions

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 6 2006
Penny Dick
The part-time employee has traditionally occupied a marginal position in organizations. The recent increase in the numbers of part-time professionals, however, has been seen as offering potential for the status of the part-time employee to improve. Evidence to date suggests that this improvement has not taken place and that the part-time professional is also marginalized. Interestingly, research suggests that part-time professionals may not experience their subordinate positions as problematic, often believing that the drawbacks of reduced hours working are a legitimate consequence of their ,choice' to work part-time. Such ,choices' are frequently attributed to part-timers' prioritization of non-work activities. In this article, using a Foucauldian approach to identity, we argue that choices need to be understood as both situated in time and space and constituted through discourse. Using these ideas we provide a re-reading of part-timers' consent to their marginalization, arguing that their responses to their positions at work can also be understood as resistance to some of the dominant norms of professionalism. We set out the conditions that might be implicated in translating subjective resistance into more material actions. [source]


Mainstreaming Risk Reduction in Urban Planning and Housing: A Challenge for International Aid Organisations

DISASTERS, Issue 2 2006
Christine Wamsler
Abstract The effects of ,natural' disasters in cities can be worse than in other environments, with poor and marginalised urban communities in the developing world being most at risk. To avoid post-disaster destruction and the forced eviction of these communities, proactive and preventive urban planning, including housing, is required. This paper examines current perceptions and practices within international aid organisations regarding the existing and potential roles of urban planning as a tool for reducing disaster risk. It reveals that urban planning confronts many of the generic challenges to mainstreaming risk reduction in development planning. However, it faces additional barriers. The main reasons for the identified lack of integration of urban planning and risk reduction are, first, the marginal position of both fields within international aid organisations, and second, an incompatibility between the respective professional disciplines. To achieve better integration, a conceptual shift from conventional to non-traditional urban planning is proposed. This paper suggests related operative measures and initiatives to achieve this change. [source]


Consent as Resistance, Resistance as Consent: Re-Reading Part-Time Professionals' Acceptance of Their Marginal Positions

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 6 2006
Penny Dick
The part-time employee has traditionally occupied a marginal position in organizations. The recent increase in the numbers of part-time professionals, however, has been seen as offering potential for the status of the part-time employee to improve. Evidence to date suggests that this improvement has not taken place and that the part-time professional is also marginalized. Interestingly, research suggests that part-time professionals may not experience their subordinate positions as problematic, often believing that the drawbacks of reduced hours working are a legitimate consequence of their ,choice' to work part-time. Such ,choices' are frequently attributed to part-timers' prioritization of non-work activities. In this article, using a Foucauldian approach to identity, we argue that choices need to be understood as both situated in time and space and constituted through discourse. Using these ideas we provide a re-reading of part-timers' consent to their marginalization, arguing that their responses to their positions at work can also be understood as resistance to some of the dominant norms of professionalism. We set out the conditions that might be implicated in translating subjective resistance into more material actions. [source]


Risk attitudes and mitigation among gold miners and others in the Suriname rainforest

NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 4 2003
Marieke Heemskerk
Abstract This article analyses the question: do attitudes towards risk influence participation in small-scale gold mining, a hazardous activity that generates uncertain income? This question is examined by measuring and comparing the risk attitudes of gold miners and non-mining community members in the rainforest of Suriname, South America. The author presents a multivariate model to predict the duration of work in mining areas as a function of risk tolerance, age, education, and household demographics. The results suggest that a greater tolerance to risk increases the duration of a person's mining career. However, attitudes explain only a fraction of the variation in occupational choices. Qualitative data suggest that these choices are primarily shaped by local barriers to human capital development and by national economic volatility. Given their marginal position in society and the multitude of mining risk mitigation strategies, it is questionable whether gold mining exposes Suriname forest peoples to greater risks than other subsistence alternatives. The author argues that sensitivity to local historical and cultural conditions would improve the efficiency of policies aimed at developing a more sustainable mining industry. By zooming in on the daily lives of miners, anthropology can complement macro-scale analyses and contribute to policy interventions in the small-scale mining sector. [source]


Lingual and Educational Policy toward "Homeland Minorities" in Deeply Divided Societies: India and Israel as Case Studies

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 5 2009
AYELET HAREL-SHALEV
In a bilingual or multilingual society, certain sectors may be regarded as disloyal should they speak the language of state enemies or be associated in one way or another with neighboring hostile countries. Within this framework, the present article analyzes how two deeply divided democracies, India and Israel, determined and implemented language and educational policies with respect to two major minority languages, Urdu and Arabic. A comparison is conducted between the policies of secular democratic India, regarding Urdu, a language of its Muslims minority, and of Israel, an ethnic democracy, regarding Arabic, the language of its Arab-Palestinian minority. The findings indicate that both states have consigned the minority language to a marginal position on the public stage. Moreover, albeit that a certain level of autonomy in the educational sphere is given to the minority, the educational status of the minority is markedly low in comparison to the majority. En una sociedad bilingüe o multilingüe, ciertos sectores pueden ser considerados como desleales si hablan el idioma de estados enemigos o fueran asociados de una u otra forma con países vecinos hostiles. Dentro de este marco, el presente artículo analiza como dos democracias sumamente divididas, India e Israel, determinaron e implementaron las políticas lingüisticas y educacionales de los dos más importantes idiomas minoritarios, el Urdu y el Árabe, respectivamente. Se lleva a cabo una comparación entre las políticas de la democracia secular de India, en lo que respecta al Urdu, un idioma de su minoría Musulmana, y de la democracia étnica Israelí, con respecto al Árabe, el idioma de su minoría Árabe-Palestina. Las conclusiones indican que ambos estados han consignado el idioma minoritario a una posición marginal en el escenario de la vida pública. Además, el status educativo de la minoría es considerablemente bajo en comparación con el de la mayoría, aunque un cierto nivel de autonomía en la esfera educacional es dado al idioma. [source]


Rethinking Indigenous Place: Igorot Identity and Locality in the Philippines

THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2006
Deirdre McKay
Spanish and American colonisers ascribed the identity ,Igorot' to the peoples of the northern Philippine mountains, positioning them in the ,tribal slot', somewhere between ordinary peasants and ,backward' primitives. From this marginal position, contemporary Igorot communities have been comparatively successful in formalising their entitlements to land and resources in their dealings with the Philippine State. This success depends on a discourse tying indigenous or ,tribal' culture to particular places. Colonial and, now, local anthropology has been recruited to this process through the mapping of community boundaries. This has allowed groups to secure official status as ,cultural communities' and gain legal recognition of their ancestral domains. Ironically, even as ancestral domains are recognised, the municipalities that hold such domains have ceased to be bounded containers for Igorot localities, if they ever were. Participation in global indigenous networks, circular migration, and ongoing relations with emigrants overseas blur the spatial, temporal, and social boundaries of Igorot communities. Transnational flows of people, information, and value are recruited to support the essentialised versions of indigenous identity necessary for negotiations with the state. Here, I show how the specific history of the Igorot ,tribal slot' enables communities to perform essentialised indigeneity and simultaneously enact highly translocal modes of cultural reproduction. [source]


Eurasian ice-sheet interaction in northwestern Russia throughout the late Quaternary

BOREAS, Issue 3 2006
KURT H. KJæR
Sediment successions from the Kanin Peninsula and Chyoshskaya Bay in northwestern Russia contain information on the marginal behaviour of all major ice sheets centred in Scandinavia, the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea during the Eemian-Weichselian. Extensive luminescence dating of regional lithostratigraphical units, supported by biostratigraphical evidence, identifies four major ice advances at 100,90, 70,65, 55,45 and 20,18 kyr ago interbedded with lacustrine, glaciolacustrine and marine sediments. The widespread occurrence of marine tidal sediments deposited c. 65,60 kyr ago allows a stratigraphical division of the Middle Weichselian Barents Sea and Kara Sea ice sheets into two shelf-based glaciations separated by almost complete deglaciation. The first ice dispersal centre was in the Barents Sea and thereafter in the Kara Sea. It is possible to extract both flow patterns from ice marginal landforms inside the southward termination. Accordingly, it is proposed that the Markhida line and its western continuation are asynchronous and originate from two separate glaciations before and after the marine transgression. The marine sedimentation occurred during a eustatic sea-level rise of up to 20 m/1000 yr, i.e. the Mezen Transgression. We speculate that the rapid eustatic sea-level rise triggered a collapse of the Barents Sea Ice Sheet at the MIS (Marine Isotope Stage) 4 to 3 transition. This is motivated by lack of an early marine highstand, the timing of events, and the marginal position of Arkhangelsk relative to open marine conditions. [source]