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.     

统计指数体系理论的若干问题

研究统计指数理论发展的历史,可以发现这样一个问题:东西方统计指数理论都在不同程度上强调数量指标指数和质量指标指数的联系关系,突出指数体系的地位和作用。怎样看待这个问题,如何认识编制指数与指数体系之间的关系,是指数方法论上值得引起重视的问题。 利用经济现象动态之间的联系关系,可以更有效地发挥编制指数的作用,但是,从方法角度考虑,要否严格保持数量指标指数和质量指标指数之间的衔接,建立指数体系关系,却是值得探讨的。有关编制指数和指数体系的关系,能否以指数体系为基点来考虑指数式的应用,或是以指数体系表现的优劣来评价指数式的是非得失,以及指数体系本身的作用,它担负着怎样的分析任务,应该怎样加以合理应用,本文想就这些问题,提出一些看法。     

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     

Gendering the Organization of Home‐based Work in Turkey: Classical versus Familial Patriarchy

This article examines the link between industrial homework and family dynamics in Turkey by asking how and why varied patterns emerge in the organization of industrial homework. I develop a framework for the analysis of gendered organization of industrial homework by comparing labour practices in extended family and nuclear family households. In extended family households, subcontracts are made between industrial enterprises and male family members. Women carry out piece‐rated work at home under the supervision of male family members and have very little contact with people outside their family. In nuclear family households, subcontracts are made between women homeworkers and industrial enterprises or middle persons. Women work at residential streets and neighbourhood homework stores, as well as at home. They have control over their income as well as their working hours. To explain the divergent practices of industrial homework, I show that enterprises incorporate distinct patterns of patriarchy into the subcontracting arrangements through gendered organization of industrial homework.     

Modernity as Masquerade: Representations of Modernity and Identity in Turkish Humour Magazines

This article aims at an alternative analysis of Turkish “modernity” by analysing the representations in a popular humour magazine. This study departs from the idea that representations in “low” discourses in Turkey can provide us with a text other than those of the official-dominant discourses in order to see how the certainty and positivity attributed to the modern identity in the dominant ideology is elaborated, demystified, and subverted as well as contained. Essentially, in the magazine, one of the main sources of humour derives from the clash of two main identities, between those who are modern, civil, urban, and effeminate and those who are traditional, uncivil, rural, and super-masculine. In the modern urban space, the modern and traditional become a stake in the power struggles between groups. This struggle operates through tastes, styles, and the body, which are at the same time means of identity construction as well as marks of identity. This duality and the concomitant dualities have come to structure all significatory practices to such an extent that everything gets symbolically overloaded by these series of dualities. In this struggle, the essence and appearance duality is the main framework within which Turkey's modernity and identity are represented. “Modernity” is signified as a masquerade, a play of appearances and a stake in the power struggles among groups rather than as a measure of progress. Bodies, sexuality, and masculinity become the nodal points of the expression of identity struggles, not only of social groups but also of the Turkish nation.     

Loneliness and Life Satisfaction in Turkish Early Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Self Esteem and Social Support

This study aimed to measure whether self-esteem and social support are mediators in the relationship between loneliness and life satisfaction. The study includes early teenagers from the 6th, 7th and 8th grades aged between 11 and 15 (M = 13.31, SD = 1.09). The study group consisted of 431 secondary school students from large and medium sized cities in Turkey, of which 196 (44.5 %) were girls and 235 (54.5 %) were boys. The study examined students’ responses to life satisfaction, loneliness, self-esteem and social support scales. Data were separated into parcels of instruments within the framework of structural equation modeling. It was determined that both self-esteem and social support were partial mediators between loneliness and life satisfaction. These results are discussed within the scope of the literature.     

“There is a Massacre of Women”: Violence Against Women,Feminist Activism,and Hashtags in Turkey

Abstract

In academic and popular debates about sexualisation, the “mainstreaming of sex in the West” is a common catchphrase. As noted by post-colonial and critical race scholars, categories such as “the West” remain powerful discursive ideas shaping how both researchers and researched border and construct race, difference, and sexuality. However, there is very little research that employs a post-colonial analysis of young people’s negotiations of sexualised media, most particularly studies that elucidate how the oppositional frameworks of colonial discourse sets up normative and “othered” subjectivities. In order to address this gap, I turn to Stuart Hall’s classic paper The West and the Rest to reflect on a project undertaken in South Australia with young people from a broad range of cultural backgrounds. In a fascinating set of reflections, the young people present a powerful set of challenges to the binary of the West and the Rest through their narratives on sexualised media. Taken together, these complex and sometimes contradictory narratives remind us of the problems associated with talking in generalised and universalising ways about “sexualisation in the West.”