Rating the revolution: Silicon Valley in normative perspective

Silicon Valley, California – home of Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and so on – is widely regarded as the epicentre of the information revolution. However, it is not just a technical or economic phenomenon; it has also made a social revolution. The article evaluates Silicon Valley from a normative perspective, seeking to identify its real societal impact, negative as well as positive. A select review of significant literature is followed by exposition of primary data, based on in situ face-to-face interviews with Valley occupants; these range from the chief technology officer of a global brand to a homeless, unemployed Vietnam War veteran. The article organises its findings under three headings: the nature of information revolution; iCapitalism as a new technoeconomic synthesis; and the normative crisis of the information society. It concludes with a warning about ongoing attempts to clone Silicon Valley around the world.     

Standing up to complexity: researching moral panics in social work

Moral panics are central to social work policy and practice. Voluntary agencies and statutory bodies (including governments) create and sustain moral panics in order to raise awareness of, and win support for, their own understandings of social issues and problems. This is not a neutral enterprise; on the contrary, moral panics often have consequences that are negative, whether intended or unintended. Far from leading to greater social justice and a more equal society, they may reinforce stereotypes and lead to fearful, risk-averse practice. This paper discusses one such moral panic in 2013 that centred on the story of ‘Maria’, a Bulgarian Roma child living in Greece. The paper explores the meaning and use of the concept of moral panic before unpacking this case-study example in more detail. We argue that the moral panic over ‘Maria’ has much to tell us about ideas of welfare and protection, institutional racism and children and childhood, as well as the connections between ‘private troubles’ and ‘public issues’. We conclude that social work as a profession must stand up to complexity, and in doing so, be aware of its own role in relation to moral panics.     

‘Singing acts’ from the deep North: critical perspectives on northern exotics,contemporary ethnic music and language preservation in Sámi communities

This paper discusses the relationship of northernness and performances of contemporary ethnic popular music, within the context of critical geography and postcolonial theory. The focus is on the Sámi ethnic minorities of northern Finland. The North of Finland, ‘nature-Finland’, is understood here as an imaginative region which over the course of several centuries has been constituted through various forms of stereotyping, mystifying, exoticising and othering of Sámi minorities in accordance with the nationalist endeavours of Southern Finland. While these stereotypes and preconceptions of northernness have delimited northern cultural activity, contemporary ethnic music is conceived here as a strategic tool with which stereotypes of northernness can be contested and the work of the preservation of ethnic heritage put into action. The focus is on the works of Inari Sámi-singing rap musician Amoc, Skolt Sámi-singing heavy rock girl Tiina Sanila and the North Sámi-singing hard rock band SomBy. Their music is approached as ‘singing acts’ that work as tools for the preservation of ethnic culture and minority languages and for the deconstruction of stereotypes directed at northernness. The paper claims that contemporary contexts and genres within which singing in Sámi languages takes place may inspire the audience to ponder and reconsider their own ways of perceiving Sáminess and northernness.     

Fragments of Modernization: Domestic Spaces Indicating Traditional Dialects in a Modern Speech

This article examines the change in Turkish domestic space through modernization and, in particular, the artifact of lace, as a nonchanging object in Turkish home in its relationship with the “traditional” and the “modern” domestic settings. Thereby it investigates how traditional and modern settings are defined in Turkish society and, this leads to a further analysis of the modernization process in Turkey within the scope of Turkish house and its domestic settings. The aim of the article is to analyze lace as an agent, which is an actant of the change in domestic settings, to read the connection between the daily life of people and social lives of artifacts. Therefore, examining the dialogue of lace with traditional and modern domestic settings provides to deconstruct the network of the artifact, the house and the individual during the modernization process that Turkish society has been through. The theoretical perspective of the article relies on a material‐semiotic approach with an emphasis on Latour's Actor‐Network Theory and, the methodology of the article is based on ethnography: It includes observations and semi‐structured interviews conducted with people from different social environments focusing on the meaning and the use of lace in domestic environment.     

‘My Parents told us that they will always Treat my Brother Differently Because he is Autistic’ – Are Siblings of Autistic Children the Forgotten Ones?

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) does not only affect the child alone, but the family unit as well. This qualitative study explored the impacts of ASD on the relationship between parents and their neuro-typical children and how the neuro-typical children cope with the impacts of having an autistic sibling in the family. Utilising principles of the social relations theory, five Singaporean families (n = 10) consisting of five mothers and five neuro-typical children were interviewed. Both the mothers and the neuro-typical children were seen to be equal agents in influencing the interactions with each other, and contributed in maintaining the close relationship through various strategies. Findings revealed that having an autistic child in the family imposed certain constraints and additional responsibilities for the family members. Despite so, the neuro-typical children coped well with such constraints. The in-depth data highlight the value of considering both the agency of mothers and the neuro-typical children and how they bidirectionally influence each other while sharing the caregiving roles for the autistic child in the family. It is strongly recommended for practitioners to incorporate elements of child's agency when expanding their scope of psychosocial intervention work with the neuro-typical children.     

How the Right Usurped the Queer Agenda: Frame Co‐optation in Political Discourse

This article draws on a case study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and queer politics in Vermont to explain the conditions under which radical discourse gains and loses a public voice. In contrast to claims that the marginalization of queer discourse is due to silencing by LGBT rights activists or to litigation strategies, we argue that variation in queer discourse over time is the result of the co‐optation of queer discourse and goals by opponents. Extending the social movement literature on frame variation, we argue that opponents co‐opt discourse when they adopt aspects of the content of a movement's discourse, while subverting its intent. We show that conservative LGBT rights opponents co‐opted queer discourse. As a result, queer positions lost their viability as the discursive field in which those arguments were made was fundamentally altered. Because queer positions became less tenable, we see the withdrawal of queer discourse from the mainstream and alternative LGBT media. Our work both supports and builds on research on frame variation by demonstrating how discourse can change over time in response to the interplay between changing aspects of the political and cultural landscape and the discourse of opponents.     

基于“三性”整合的马克思主义理论教育教学的创新

马克思主义理论教育教学应以创新思想为指导,遵循历史整合性、现实整合性和实践整合性的＂三性＂整合路径。只有这样,马克思主义理论的教育教学效果才能得到质的提高。     

运用归因理论提高地缘劣势院校非英语专业学生英语学习的积极性

本文运用归因理论,从培养学生英语学习的心理素质出发,激发其英语学习的动机,提高英语学习的积极性。     

刑事政策视野下醉驾入刑的正当性论析

从刑事政策的视角看,醉驾入刑是立法机关所作出的一项正确选择。作为一种具有严重社会危害性及应受刑罚处罚性的行为,醉驾具有入刑的必要性。此外,面对日益严重的醉驾现状,原有的处罚已不足以抑止此类违法行为以充分保护公共交通安全,故将其入刑亦符合刑法谦抑原则的要求。然而,具有入刑的正当性,并不代表立法规定本身及实施过程中的完美性,入刑后存在的问题同样值得关注。     

中国大学英文简介的语言图式

中国大学英文简介的语言图式,即语言的背景知识,是通过简介中的语言内容激活并构建的。语言图式的构建,表明图式理论对中国大学英文简介的理解有帮助作用。对英文简介语言图式的研究,具有一定的理论意义和实践价值。