Decolonising the university in 2020

ABSTRACT

We came together as editors of Decolonising the University through a commitment to understanding the university and our place within it; to examine what else might be possible for us, collectively, in the domain of higher education. Although we do not always agree about the university– or, perhaps more specifically, about the possibilities it contains for intervening effectively in the world– we nonetheless coalesced around an idea of ‘decolonising the university’ as an important strategic mode of engagement. Here, we set out the positions that we come from in relation to the broader debates about the university and its political possibilities and offer responses also to the reviews. These are not our final words on the matter, but words shaped by the political possibilities that present themselves at the outset of 2020 and which, we hope, will contribute to the increasingly necessary dialogues on this topic.     

Predicting Maternal Resolution of Preterm Birth at One Month Corrected Age

Early maternal resolution with preterm birth was assessed at one month corrected age (CA), and potential maternal and infant characteristics that may be associated with early resolution were examined. Fifty‐five mothers of preterm infants (≤34 weeks) participated. Data regarding pregnancy, prenatal risk, delivery, infant's medical risk, maternal well‐being status, and infant's early developmental status were collected. Resolution was examined using the Reaction to Diagnosis Interview (RDI). A total of 38.2% of the mothers were classified as resolved. Only completion of antenatal corticosteroids (ACS) treatment and high prenatal risk significantly predicted maternal resolution. Early maternal resolution of preterm birth is associated with early knowledge regarding the preterm birth.     

The performativity of surveys: Teenagers’ meaning-making of the 'Health Behavior in School-aged Children Survey' in Sweden

The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children survey contains scales intended to measure life satisfaction, mental health problems and socioeconomic status. This article takes inspiration from science and technology studies and analyse the survey as performative. It also examines subjective meaning-making through an analysis of interviews with 15-year-old teenagers. It shows how the survey enacts the subject position of an accountable teenager and how teenagers experience the survey as sending a message about how one should live. While some teenagers experience this as positive, others narrate feelings of shame. This could be interpreted as a way for them to be accountable for themselves.     

The majoritarian compromise is majoritarian-optimal and subgame-perfect implementable

It is shown that the Majoritarian Compromise of Sertel (1986) is subgame-perfect implementable on the domain of strict preference profiles, although it fails to be Maskin-monotonic and is hence not implementable in Nash equilibrium. The Majoritarian Compromise is Pareto-optimal and obeys SNIP (strong no imposition power), i.e. never chooses a strict majority's worst candidate. In fact, it is “majoritarian approving” i.e. it always picks “what's good for a majority” (alternatives which some majority regards as among the better “effective” half of the available alternatives). Thus, being Pareto-optimal and majoritarian approving, it is majoritarian-optimal. Finally, the Majoritarian Compromise is measured against various criteria, such as consistency and Condorcet-consistency. Received: 31 January 1995/Accepted: 22 July 1998     

A Parametric Estimation Procedure for Relapse Time Distributions

In a relapse clinical trial patients who have recovered from some recurrent disease (e.g.,ulcer or cancer) are examined at a number of predetermined times. A relapse can be detected either at one of these planned inspections or at a spontaneous visit initiated by the patient because of symptoms. In the first case the observations of the time to relapse, X, is interval-censored by two predetermined time-points. In the second case the upper endpoint of the interval is an observation of the time to symptoms,Y . To model the progression of the disease we use a partially observable Markov process. This approach results in a bivariate phase-type distribution for the joint distribution of (X,Y). It is a flexible model which contains several natural distributions for X, and allows the conditional distributions of the marginals to smoothly depend on each other. To estimate the distributions involved we develop an EM-algorithm. The estimation procedure is evaluated and compared with a non-parametric method in a couple of examples based on simulated data.     

长期外出流动人口的养老境遇:基于停留预期与社保参与状况的分析

流动人口的社会保障问题一直以来备受社会各界的广泛关注。本文运用国家人口计生委2010年实施的106个城市流动人口监测调查数据,对停留在流入城市达10年及以上的流动人口这一最先迈入老龄阶段的群体,就其人口社会特征和停留预期与养老境遇进行重点分析。总体而言,长期外出流动人口显示有长期停留之预期,但社会保险的参与状况却令人堪忧。此外,不同人口社会特征的长期外出流动人口,其长期停留预期和社保参与状况存在一定差别。     

在应对“用工荒”中推动企业转型升级

总结用工荒的基本特征,分析其产生的原因,并提出企业和政府联手应对用工荒的对策。认为企业要通过机械化和自动化降低用工依赖、提高效率和向低成本地区转移来化解用工高成本,变革企业管理减少员工流失。政府要通过加快区域产业布局调整、加强农民工职业技能培训、加快农业现代化建设提高用工供给、推动农民工与市民在住房保障等方面平权、优化农民工就业服务和劳动力市场建设、构建少取多予的财税扶持等措施,帮助企业应对用工荒,实现转型升级。     

Accounts of professional and institutional tension in the context of Swedish elderly care

This article describes need assessment dialogues, the circumstances surrounding care, and the provision of residential care and in-home support for the elderly in Sweden, as seen from a communicative perspective. The purpose was to systematically describe and analyse the accounts of welfare officers concerning elderly care. The research questions were: How is the internal care context perceived and constituted through discourse? How do welfare officers manage the daily demands, expectations, tasks, and dilemmas in the encounter with the individual citizen? What significance do the welfare officers give their work and their professional tasks?Eleven interviews with welfare officers from elderly and handicapped care organisation of three municipalities were held, and a discursive analysis was made from the collected data. Four characteristic discursive phenomena in the welfare officers' accounts were observed: (I) the rights of the elderly, (II) living at home, (III) good relations, and (IV) the complaisance. The study shows that the dialogues with elderly contain communicative dilemmas and mixed loyalties. The welfare officers navigate between different perspectives and double approaches. She/he uses the navigating as a strategy and proficiency in their work. However, these proficiencies remain largely unnoticed and unreflected as techniques, strategies, or tools for attaining favourable care.     

Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare,Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity1

In Punishing the Poor, I show that the ascent of the penal state in the United States and other advanced societies over the past quarter‐century is a response to rising social insecurity, not criminal insecurity; that changes in welfare and justice policies are interlinked, as restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” are coupled into a single organizational contraption to discipline the precarious fractions of the postindustrial working class; and that a diligent carceral system is not a deviation from, but a constituent component of, the neoliberal Leviathan. In this article, I draw out the theoretical implications of this diagnosis of the emerging government of social insecurity. I deploy Bourdieu’s concept of “bureaucratic field” to revise Piven and Cloward’s classic thesis on the regulation of poverty via public assistance, and contrast the model of penalization as technique for the management of urban marginality to Michel Foucault’s vision of the “disciplinary society,” David Garland’s account of the “culture of control,” and David Harvey’s characterization of neoliberal politics. Against the thin economic conception of neoliberalism as market rule, I propose a thick sociological specification entailing supervisory workfare, a proactive penal state, and the cultural trope of “individual responsibility.” This suggests that we must theorize the prison not as a technical implement for law enforcement, but as a core political capacity whose selective and aggressive deployment in the lower regions of social space violates the ideals of democratic citizenship.