The Nubians of Kenya and the emancipatory potential of collective recognition

The Nubians in Kenya, a community who have in the past been considered stateless, have recently begun to emerge from their marginal status in the country. Over the past two years, as individuals Nubians have had improved access to ID cards and as a group they received a code in the 2009 census. However these political gains are only part of a greater struggle on the part of the community to be fully recognized as a tribe of Kenya. Identity politics and claims for recognition dominate social politics in many African countries, however the normative underpinnings of these complex and often challenging claims are yet to be fully explored in the African context. Drawing on seven months of qualitative fieldwork, this article explores the emancipatory potential of collective recognition. By articulating a positive vision of the moral and political value of ethnic community, the article makes a critical contribution to theory of the politics of recognition in the African context.

A just judgement? Considerations on Ronald Srigley’s Camus’ Critique of Modernity

This paper responds critically to Ronald Srigley’s groundbreaking 2011 study Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity. Srigley’s book reasserts Camus’ credentials as a deeply serious thinker, whose literary and philosophical oeuvre was dedicated to rethinking modernity on the basis of critical reassessments of theWest’s entire premodern heritage. Yet we challenge whether Camus was ever, even in his final writings, so uncompromisingly anti-modern as Srigley contends. Srigley’s attempt to present Camus as committed to a return to the Greeks, on the basis of a total critique of modernity as deleteriously post-Christian, forces him to occlude important distinctions in Camus’ thought: those between unity and totality, rebellion and revolution. By contrast, we compare Camus’ defence of modern rebellion with Blumenberg’s argument in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: finding justification for this rebellion in the deep problem faced by Christian theology of resolving the ‘problem of evil’. Finally, we suggest that Srigley overplays the extent of Camus’ ‘Hellenic’ critique of the Christian heritage (notably its ethical commitment to protecting the weak), in contrast to Christian theodicy and eschatology, which serve to rationalize avoidable suffering.

Statelessness, identity cards and citizenship as status in the case of the Nubians of Kenya

Statelessness as a legal and political problem has attracted increasing attention from scholars and international advocacy organisations in recent years. This attention has predominantly focussed on the legal aspects of statelessness, and has generally held the acquisition of citizenship documentation as the primary goal in remedying citizenship deprivation. This article explores the merits of this focus through a case study of the Nubians of Kenya, widely considered stateless until recently. The article connects the focus on citizenship as documented status to a liberal conception of citizenship. The article identifies the ways in which this approach is helpful, that is, as a means of pursuing legal status and possession of individual rights. It then goes on to identify more important ways in which a liberal conception of citizenship falls short of accounting for the Nubians’ citizenship problems by neglecting the more collective dimensions of citizenship practice and recognition.

Found Found Found

Through time-lapse and pixilated animation, recorded on the run through Serbia, Europe, international air travel through Australasia, and including recordings at the 2013 Christmas Markets in Dusseldorf, this short roaming personal narrative contemplates our current pre-occupation with mobile technologies and the concomitant reshaping of everyday life and public space. It features one extreme response to technological and political change: Alex Jones’ Infowars radio program. The film suggests surveillance, metamorphosed from avant-garde and minimalist cinema, as the ‘new norm’, and witnesses the new stasis that hypermobility institutes globally and the florid thinking it elicits.

The Psychometric Equivalence of the Personal Wellbeing Index for Normally Functioning and Homeostatically Defeated Australian Adults

Understanding subjective wellbeing (SWB) at the population level has major implications for governments and policy makers concerned with enhancing the life quality of citizens. The Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) is a measure of SWB with theoretical and empirical credentials. Homeostasis theory offers an explanation for the nature of SWB data, including the distribution of scores, maintenance and change over time. According to this theory, under normal conditions, the dominant constituent of SWB is Homeostatically Protected Mood (HPMood), which is held within a genetically determined range of values around a set-point. However, in extreme circumstances (e.g., financial hardship, chronic illness), HPMood may dissociate from SWB, as cognitive/emotional reactions to the cause of homeostatic challenge assume control over SWB. This study investigates two groups as people scoring in the positive range for SWB and people who are likely to be experiencing homeostatic defeat/challenge. We test whether the reduced influence of HPMood on SWB due to homeostatic defeat has implications for the validity of SWB measurement. Participants were 45,192 adults (52 % female), with a mean age of 48.88 years (SD = 17.35 years), who participated in the first 23 surveys of the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index over the years 2001–2010. Multiple regression analysis, multiple group confirmatory factor analysis, and Rasch modelling techniques were used to evaluate the psychometric performance of the PWI across the two groups. Results show that while the PWI functioned as intended for the normal group, SWB in the challenged group was lower across all PWI domains, more variable, and the domain scores lacked the strength of inter-correlation observed in the normal, comparison group. These changes are consistent with predictions based on homeostasis theory and one major implication of the findings is that SWB measures may not function equivalently across the entire spectrum of possible domain satisfaction scores.

A low overhead scaled equalized harmonic-based voice authentication system

With the increasing trends of mobile interactions, voice authentication applications are in a higher demand, giving rise to new rounds of research activities. Authentication is an important security mechanism that requires the intended communication parties to present valid credentials to the communication network. In a stronger sense, all the involved parties are required to be authenticated to one another (mutual authentication). In the voice authentication technique described in this paper, the voice characteristics of an intended individual wishing to take part in a communication channel will be classified and processed. This involves a low overhead voice authentication scheme, which features equalization and scaling of the voice frequency harmonics. The performance of this system is discussed in a Labview 8.5 visual development environment, following a complete security analysis. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Celebrity and public persona

Research on celebrity and public persona derives from fundamentally interdisciplinary sources. Although at its core, the study of public personality has been the object of investigations by those more closely associated with media and communication, the key disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, political science, social psychology, and even anthropology and history have been part of its analysis. Celebrity identifies the “extra-textual” dimensions of the famous, in which the lives of the renowned are followed, read, and reported. It is a public celebration of individuality that is (but not exclusively) connected to consumer culture and democratic capitalism. Through these larger cultural tropes celebrity has had its strongest affiliations with the contemporary entertainment industries, particularly in terms of how they are covered by the media and the press for further value beyond the cultural forms that are often the origins of stardom—the public individual’s performances in fields such as film, television, sport, and popular music. Celebrity is a site of celebration and derogation in any culture: these public individuals are truly exalted and given a status beyond others, but they are also ridiculed for their believed-to-be unearned credentials for having such a public platform and voice. Moreover, the study of celebrity and public persona is also an investigation into the connection between the populace and these public personalities, where parasocial relations most evident in fandom identify how celebrities embody audiences with an affective connection that is truly powerful in contemporary culture. That power of embodiment and connection that celebrities possess is subsequently exploited by the media industries to promote and sell new connected cultural products. Identifying celebrities as part of a spectrum of public personas links the study of celebrity to the investigation of the celebrated and famed in a variety of professions and fields well beyond entertainment. Thus, the term persona is used in these studies of public personalities to acknowledge the mask that is deployed to present a public version of the self for this external consumption and reading by an audience, a collective, a network, a nation, a citizenry, or a community. Research into public personas has led to related studies of political leadership, self-branding, notoriety in business, and reputation management, and research delves into the presentation of the public self by greater portions of the populace in online cultures. Celebrity and public persona is a field in which research aims to investigate the significance and meaning of various versions of the public self in both contemporary culture and historically.

Legal pluralism and progressive constitutionalism: An introduction to the South African challenge for post-national governace

The aim of this article is to contribute to the current academic debate on pluralistmechanisms of post-national governance as a particular type of ‘stateless law’. Moreprecisely, this article is conceived as an introduction to aid further research on the shape(and extent) that post-national governance may eventually assume (and reach) in SouthAfrica. Attention is, therefore, paid to legal pluralism as a key factor of pluralist settings ofpost-national government. An overview of the essence and features of post-nationalgovernance is provided, and a brief comparison is made between hard hierarchical andsoft-networked forms of governance. In pursuing the suggested roadmap, reference is madeto the current European landscape on post-national governance, which is ontologicallyinevitable in discussing the essence, structure, aims, challenges and limitations ofpost-national governance. Moreover, the necessity of adopting a comparative modusinvestigandi is due to the circumstance that although South Africa and the EuropeanUnion (EU) share important elements (e.g., legal pluralism, financial instability andfuture common challenges), South Africa has an extremely progressive constitution — aresult that the EU has been unable to achieve formally. Thus, while explaining whySouth Africa may represent fertile ground for such an architecture of governance, this articlediscusses why the South African Constitution may be a ‘value add’ that may help post-national governance avoid the difficulties thus far encountered on the Europeancontinent.

Simmel, the police form and the limits of democratic policing

© 2015 The Author. I argue that the social theory of Georg Simmel can be used to illustrate certain limitations to the potential of democratic policing. Simmel makes a number of claims about trust, secrecy and accountability that are shown to have immediate relevance to my empirical case study of police-public consultation forums in Edinburgh, Scotland. Two particular aspects of the 'form' of the police-public relationship-the police's command of non-negotiable force and inequality in the reciprocity of information-play a key role in limiting some of the principal aspirations of democratic policing theory. There are permanent barriers to improving the democratic credentials of the police I argue, yet positive and progressive change is still achievable.

Socioeconomic inequalities in fruit and vegetable intakes

Socioeconomic position (SEP) refers to an individual’s social and economicranking within society based on access to resources (such asmaterial and social assets, including income, wealth, and educational credentials)and prestige (ie, an individual’s status in a social hierarchy, linkedfor instance to their occupation, income, or education level) (Krieger et al.,1997). Individual SEP can be measured using a variety of indicators whichcommonly include education, occupation, and income (Galobardes et al.,2006). Composite measures are frequently used when examining neighborhoodlevel measures of SEP and are commonly created by combining censusdata on a range of indicators.

Addressing obesity in the management of knee and hip osteoarthritis - weighing in from an economic perspective

BACKGROUND: Obesity is one of the only modifiable risk factors for both incidence and progression of Osteoarthritis (OA). So there is increasing interest from a public health perspective in addressing obesity in the management of OA. While evidence of the efficacy of intereventions designed to address obesity in OA populations continues to grow, little is known about their economic credentials. The aim of this study is to conduct a scoping review of: (i) the published economic evidence assessing the economic impact of obesity in OA populations; (ii) economic evaluations of interventions designed to explicitly address obesity in the prevention and management of OA in order to determine which represent value for money. Besides describing the current state of the literature, the study highlights research gaps and identifies future research priorities.

METHODS: In July 2014, a search of the peer reviewed literature, published in English, was undertaken for the period January 1975 - July 2014 using Medline Complete (Ebscohost), Embase, Econlit, Global Health, Health Economics Evaluation Database (HEED), all Cochrane Library databases as well as the grey literature using Google and reference lists of relevant studies. A combination of key search terms was used to identify papers assessing the economic impact of obesity in OA or economic evaluations conducted to assess the efficiency of obesity interventions for the prevention or management of OA.

RESULTS: 14 studes were identified; 13 were cost burden studies assessing the impact of obesity as a predictor for higher costs in Total Joint Arthroplasty (TJA) patients and one a cost-effectiveness study of an intervention designed to address obesity in the managment of mild to moderate OA patients.

CONCLUSION: The majority of the economic studies conducted are cost burden studies. While there is some evidence of the association between severe obesity and excess hospital costs for TJA patients, heterogeneity in studies precludes definitive statements about the strength of the association. With only one economic evaluation to inform policy and practice, there is a need for future research into the cost-effectiveness of obesity interventions designed both for prevention or management of OA along the disease spectrum and over the life course.

Europe and its (tragic) statelessness fantasy: the lure of European private law, post-national governance and political order

This book presents the first comparative and multi-disciplinary investigation into what is the process to Create a supra-national entity in which it is the classic forms of law and politics. In arguing that the post-modern phase of the 'Europeanization of Europe' is the continental paradigm of the doctrine, the concept of the "depoliticization" and "dejuridification" of the world, Siliquini Cinelli explains why its statelessness is profoundly linked to the Global '(a-) spatial turn' that is legal and sociopolitical theories are undergoing. (Noun, masculine) (Auch: the European Union, the European Union, the European Union, the European Union, the European Union) A banking union. Later, Siliquini Cinelli's comparative and inter-disciplinary approach for a thorough reconsideration of this project through an inquiry into (1) the lure of European private law as a particular type of 'stateless law'; (2) the several pluralist channels of soft-networked post-national governance. And (3) the challenges of the political order within the EU's boundaries.

Digital credentialing: does it offer a meaningful response to initial teacher education reform?

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight key features of the disruptive technological innovation identified as digital credentialing and also known as digital badging or Open Badges. The chapter discusses the current policy reform landscape in Australia for the initial teacher education (1TB) context and then offers the possibility of how digital credentialing may create opportunities to meaningfully address policy recommendations, particularly in relation to the concepts of graduates being 'classroom ready'. While not an extensive review of the literature about digital credentialing, the chapter discusses the disruptive innovation and emerging understandings and design frameworks that can support new ways of approaching initial teacher education.