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Public Role (public + role)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Hatred of Democracy ... and of the Public Role of Education?

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 5-6 2010
Introduction to the Special Issue on Jacques Rancière
Abstract The article presents an introduction to the Special Issue on the French philosopher Jacques Rancière who raises a provocative voice in the current public debate on democracy, equality and education. Instead of merely criticizing current practices and discourses, the attractiveness of Rancière's work is that he does try to formulate in a positive way what democracy is about, how equality can be a pedagogic or educational (instead of policy) concern, and what the public and democratic role of education is. His work opens up a space to rethink and to study, as well as to ,re-practice', what democracy and equality in education are about. He questions the current neutralisation of politics that is motivated by a hatred of democracy. This questioning is for Rancière also a struggle over words. Against the old philosophical dream of defining the meaning of words, Rancière underlines the need for the struggle over their meaning. The aim of the article is to clarify how and why education, equality, and democracy are a major concern throughout his work and to offer an introduction to the articles collected in the Special Issue. [source]

Public Roles for the Medical Profession in the United States: Beyond Theories of Decline and Fall

THE MILBANK QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2001
Rosemary A. Stevens
The future role of national medical organizations as a moral voice in health policymaking in the United States deserves attention from both scholarly and strategic perspectives. Arguments for strengthening the public roles of organized professionalism include its long (if neglected) history of public service. Scholarship of the past 40 years has emphasized the decline of a profession imbued with self-interest, together with associated hteories of organizational conflict. Through new concepts and language, a different version of organized medicine from that of the past might be invented for the future,one that draws on multiple medical organizations, encourages more effective cooperation with other health care groups, and builds on traditional professional agendas through adaptation and extension. [source]

Assembling Histories: J. G. A. Pocock, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the British World

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2009
Terry Austrin
J. G. A. Pocock's work has made major contributions to the two fields of history and political science. In this article, we investigate the significance of his contributions to a wider field of social science and, in particular, to the discipline of sociology. Pocock's attention to the question of sovereignty and its constant reconfiguration throughout the British world is brought together with the concerns of authors writing in an actor network tradition. Pocock's British world, a world that moves between and connects different archipelagos, is an assemblage, one composed of political arrangements that travel but also have to be stabilised. This process is only ever provisional but is played out, Pocock claims, in a unique way in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Arguing against the claimed certainties of postcolonial historiography he suggests that the Aotearoa/New Zealand case is composed of a range of different futures involving the securing of and/or loss of sovereignty. These are currently being renarrated by its historians. This process of renarration necessarily involves a public role for the historian and has led Pocock, as commentator from a distance, into making critical interventions in what he refers to as the debate over sovereignty in Aotearoa/New Zealand. [source]

Understanding the Rise of Consumer Ethnography: Branding Technomethodologies in the New Economy

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2009
Timothy de Waal Malefyt
ABSTRACT In this article, I aim to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the changing public role of anthropology by exploring the rise of branded ethnographic practices in consumer research. I argue that a juncture in the "New Economy",the conjoining of corporate interest in branding, technology, and consumers, with vast social changes,may explain the rapid growth of ethnography for consumer research and predict its future direction. An analysis of branded propaganda from ethnographic vendors that claim their technology-enhanced methods innovate "classic" anthropological practices discloses the way corporations employ technologically mediated means to focus on the reflexive self in consumer research. In this analysis, I reveal that technological methodologies are central to the production of branded ethnographic practices, as forms of branding and technology legitimate consumer,corporate flows of interaction. The conclusion raises awareness to the ways in which modern branding practices reconstruct anthropology in public discourse. [Keywords: branding, consumer research, ethnography, reflexivity, technology] [source]

,Child sacrifice' in Uganda?

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 2 2010
The BBC, anthropologists (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate), witch doctors'
This article discusses both several recent BBC broadcasts on allegations of ,child sacrifice' in Uganda and criticisms of the programmes by a number of British anthropologists. It pursues the idea that both the broadcasts and the criticisms raise two sets of crucial questions: the first is in regard to the interpretation of alleged ritual killings in contemporary Africa and the effects of their representation on lay audiences, both non-African and African; the second concerns media representations of Africa and public anthropology. Anthropologists (and indeed scholars from other disciplines such as history) have a lot of expertise to offer in terms of understanding the occult in many societies, including contextualising this realm in terms of historical processes and material concerns and suggesting links between apparently disparate issues. In this way, they can they can sometimes go beyond surface manifestations, offer alternative explanations and show that things are not always the way they first seem. However, in order to play an effective public role in this regard, anthropologists need to be willing to grapple pro-actively with such matters of public concern, not least by engaging constructively with the media. [source]