Architectures of contemporary digital platforms in education: analysis of exclusion processes

The Internet is a wide, open and dynamic ecosystem of digital platforms where people and technologies contribute to the creation and consumption of digital information. The convergence of the Internet and the accelerated change of technological innovation have been the engines of society and its development, and all this has caused transformations in the social, economic and educational context. In this context, this work analyzes contemporary digital platform architectures and their influence on the processes of educational exclusion. To meet the objectives, the crucial changes brought about by digitally mediated life are studied; the conceptual and technological aspects that characterize contemporary digital platform architectures; and its influence on exclusion processes. This research is supported by qualitative research methodologies; the analysis and synthesis methods, the PRISMA model, and a meta-analysis of data extracted from the Scopus databases and the Web of Science-WOS is also carried out. The work shows changes in the social and educational context given the consolidation of the Internet through contemporary digital platform architectures and its influence on the processes of social, digital and educational exclusion. The need to promote equal opportunities, active participation and the capacity for professional insertion between women and men is visualized.

Investigating fundamentalist trends in the Orthodox Church of Greece: Balancing between traditionalism and fundamentalism

The purpose of this article is to investigate trends and variations of fundamentalism in the Orthodox Church of Greece. In order to achieve this, the article analyses discourses and practices of the Orthodox Church of Greece since the restoration of democracy in 1974. The main argument is that the church, as an institution, produces public discourses and adopts practices with regard to modernity, more specifically on social, political, moral and scientific issues, using both modernity and tradition in order to strengthen its place in Greek society. The church, also, tries to establish an official response to the gradual marginalisation of religion both at the political and social levels, through moral dualism and strict behavioural requirements; perceiving sacred texts in an absolute and inerrant way; and creating sharp boundaries between Greek Orthodoxy and other religious communities, non-religious groups and the West, leading this way to the establishment of an elect membership through superiority. The main outcome is that the Orthodox Church of Greece is primarily a traditionalist institution, but it also meets a great number of the fundamentalist characteristics responding this way to the privatisation and marginalisation of religion in Greek society.

Refusal as Radical Care? Moving Beyond Modern Industrial Agriculture

In this contribution we approach the refusal of modern industrial agriculture, as an act of radical care. We begin by recognizing the unprecedented crises of biodiversity losses and climate disruptions, amidst widespread inequality in a global pandemic, which are linked with modern agricultural development. This development is underpinned by the objectification of 'nature' that is designed into strategies and technologies of extraction and control like chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, hybrid seeds, genetic engineering and digitalization. Refusal of strategies and technologies of modern objectification, we argue, is an act of radical care that is geared towards nurturing alternatives grounded in the Earth's pluriverse.

The construction of contemporary nursing identity from narrative accounts of practice and professional life

OBJECTIVE

To explore the contemporary narrative of nursing identity in Spain.

METHOD

This qualitative study was conducted between 2018 and 2020. Eleven registered nurses were interviewed. The conversations were recorded in audio, were semistructured, and held in a mental health clinic affiliated with a Catholic institution. Narrative analysis of the data was carried out.

FINDINGS

Two themes were identified: How do I construct my professional life?, with the subthemes 'Training and initiation in care practice', 'Ways of living the professional care experience', 'The sculpting of care' and 'Self-image and future projection'; and What do I know about my practice?, with the subthemes 'Nursing experience: shift, days, years', 'Strategy in the field of nursing care', 'Some foundations of caregiving practice', 'The specificity of the gesture of care' and 'Voice and recognition of nursing within the institution'.

CONCLUSION

Contemporary nursing identity is built in reflections on the epistemology of care, confronting the weight of tradition and breaking into new modes of self-image where the profession is legitimized and projected from historical consciousness. This claim can be used to support reflective practice in academic and healthcare settings as well as to promote a paradigm shift.

The construction of contemporary nursing identity from narrative accounts of practice and professional life

OBJECTIVE

To explore the contemporary narrative of nursing identity in Spain.

METHOD

This qualitative study was conducted between 2018 and 2020. Eleven registered nurses were interviewed. The conversations were recorded in audio, were semistructured, and held in a mental health clinic affiliated with a Catholic institution. Narrative analysis of the data was carried out.

FINDINGS

Two themes were identified: How do I construct my professional life?, with the subthemes 'Training and initiation in care practice', 'Ways of living the professional care experience', 'The sculpting of care' and 'Self-image and future projection'; and What do I know about my practice?, with the subthemes 'Nursing experience: shift, days, years', 'Strategy in the field of nursing care', 'Some foundations of caregiving practice', 'The specificity of the gesture of care' and 'Voice and recognition of nursing within the institution'.

CONCLUSION

Contemporary nursing identity is built in reflections on the epistemology of care, confronting the weight of tradition and breaking into new modes of self-image where the profession is legitimized and projected from historical consciousness. This claim can be used to support reflective practice in academic and healthcare settings as well as to promote a paradigm shift.

Development through vocational education. The lived experiences of young people at a vocational education, training restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia

In Cambodia, approximately half the population experience multidimensional poverty. The youthful population provides a demographic opportunity to achieve sustained and diversified economic growth in support of increased well-being of the population, however, skill shortages amongst youth significantly limit Cambodia's ambitions. This paper explores whether vocational education is a constructive development initiative to redress gaps in education in Cambodia, and progress social and economic outcomes for the future. The dataset that underpins this article includes empirical research that was conducted on-site over two months in a Non-Government Organization (NGO) vocational hospitality school strategically located in the tourist district of Siem Reap, Cambodia. In addition to hospitality skills training, the NGO supported the human development of the students through a capabilities approach. The rights based, participatory research enquires into the lived experiences of one cohort of students who migrated to Siem Reap from poor rural communities to find employment and escape poverty and hunger. Results conclude that students faced competing demands between their gendered, traditional cultural values and the experiences of equity and empowerment provided in their hospitality training. Conclusions drawn through the student's narratives facilitate a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of impoverished migrant youth in Siem Reap and contribute to a better understanding of the human development impact of vocational training through a capabilities approach. These findings are pertinent for other communities navigating through development based, vocational education programs.

The history of "modern" anesthesia technology - A critical reappraisal: Part I: Key criteria of "modern" anesthesia: Technology and professionalism definitions, backgrounds and a short introduction to a changing evidence-base

This paper is the first in a series of publications. These investigate, whether important elements of the historiography of anesthesia require a critical reappraisal. A systematic, combined presentation, contextualization and assessment of recent European research is provided. This includes the author's own findings. These emanate from two extensive projects. They combine very recent findings with results of earlier research, conducted by the author and numerous collaborators over the last 18 years. The findings represent an ever increasing and ever more robust body of evidence. They add an important new element to our international historiography. As an introduction, several definitions will be given for criteria, which designate "modern" anesthesia and its technology. On one of these criteria, the history of professionalization and specialization, a short overview will be given. This will be followed by an overview of general contexts, key features and early achievements of anesthesia-related technology. All results will be compared with a currently dominating narrative: This alleges "dominance" of US-American and British pioneers and developments. Apparent biases and inconsistencies are identified. These suggest that our current, international historiography of anesthesia may require a critical reassessment. Three subsequent articles will focus on specific aspects of anesthesia technique and technology. Their results likewise suggest a history of internationalism and trans-disciplinary reciprocity, rather than of national dominances. Further investigations will aim to ascertain the nature and extent of potential interactions, which may nowadays be underrecognized.

Reflections on Death in Philosophical/Existential Context

Is death larger than life and does it annihilate life altogether? This is the basic question discussed in this essay, within a philosophical/existential context. The central argument is that the concept of death is problematic and, following Levinas, the author holds that death cannot lead to nothingness. This accords with the teaching of all religious traditions, which hold that there is life beyond death, and Plato's and Aristotle's theories about the immortality of the soul. In modernity, since the Enlightenment, God and religion have been placed in the margin or rejected in rational discourse. Consequently, the anthropocentric promethean view of man has been stressed and the reality of the limits placed on humans by death deemphasised or ignored. Yet, death remains at the centre of nature and human life, and its reality and threat become evident in the spread of a single virus. So, death always remains a mystery, relating to life and morality.

State of the field: Latin American decolonial philosophies of science

Today, new histories of science are producing skeptical questions about the supposedly international philosophies of science that prevail in the North. The conceptual resources of such philosophies seem inadequate to enable them to interact effectively with how sciences and their philosophies do, could, and should function in today's economic, political, social and cultural, local and global contexts. How international, or universal, are these philosophies of science in reality? Here the focus will be on just one strain of these challenges. This one has emerged from Latin Americans who are creating anti-colonial histories and philosophies of knowledge production. They have named it modernity/coloniality/decolonial theory (MCD). They intend to develop a philosophy of science adequate for its own, Latin American needs. In the process, they transform typical Northern assumptions about modernity, its origins and its effects on Northern philosophies of science, as these are understood in both Latin America and around the globe. Five aspects of the MCD accounts will be discussed here. The first is historical differences between the worlds of the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas in the sixteenth century and of the worlds of the mostly British colonization of India and Africa in the 'long nineteenth century'. Second is feminist and anti-racist issues in these Latin American histories. Third is the neglect of these histories in the North. Fourth is the continuing effects of the rise and fall of a positivist philosophy of science in Latin America. The fifth is two progressive post-positivist tensions for Northern philosophy of science produced in this work.

Demographic aging and biopower

The aging of the world's population is an unprecedented recent phenomenon in human history, as for millennia - at least from the Neolithic to the mid-18th century - the age structures of human populations have changed little. The question posed by this anthropological perspective seems at first sight quite simple: how did this aging come to be? We will see that from a demographic point of view, the answer seems trivial: a basic shift in population structure is at the origin. However, we will go further by exploring the historical and political conditions of this transition by mobilizing the Foucauldian notion of biopower. We argue that this notion has the heuristic advantage of linking several core processes at work in the demographic transition. Although our analysis focuses on France to illustrate the notion of biopower in Foucault's work, we also discuss several non-western societies to explain why demographic aging is inevitable across the globe due to biopower strategies and "dispositifs". This article also constitutes a reflexive analysis on our practices as gerontologists and on the widespread "successful aging" concept.

"Just do your job": technology, bureaucracy, and the eclipse of conscience in contemporary medicine

Market metaphors have come to dominate discourse on medical practice. In this essay, we revisit Peter Berger and colleagues' analysis of modernization in their book The Homeless Mind and place that analysis in conversation with Max Weber's 1917 lecture "Science as a Vocation" to argue that the rise of market metaphors betokens the carry-over to medical practice of various features from the institutions of technological production and bureaucratic administration. We refer to this carry-over as the product presumption. The product presumption foregrounds accidental features of medicine while hiding its essential features. It thereby confounds the public understanding of medicine and impedes the professional achievement of the excellences most central to medical practice. In demonstrating this pattern, we focus on a recent article, "Physicians, Not Conscripts-Conscientious Objection in Health Care," in which Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emanuel decry conscientious refusals by medical practitioners. We demonstrate that Stahl and Emanuel's argument depends on the product presumption, ignoring and undermining central features of good medicine. We conclude by encouraging conscientious resistance to the product presumption and the language it engenders.

Waste picker livelihoods and inclusive neoliberal municipal solid waste management policies: The case of the La Chureca garbage dump site in Managua, Nicaragua

The modernization (i.e. mechanization, formalization, and capital intensification) and enclosure of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) systems threaten waste picker livelihoods. From 2009 to 2013, a major development project, embodying traditional neoliberal policies with inclusive social policies, transformed the Managua, Nicaragua, municipal solid waste site from an open-air dump where as many as 2,000 informal waste pickers toiled to a sanitary landfill. To investigate waste pickers' social and economic condition, including labor characteristics, household income, and poverty incidence, after the project's completion, 146 semi-structured survey questionnaires were administered to four communities adjacent to the landfill and 45 semi-structured interviews were completed with key stakeholders. Findings indicate that hundreds of waste pickers were displaced by the project, employment benefits from the project were unevenly distributed by neighborhood, and informal waste picking endures due to persistent impoverishment, thereby contributing to continued social and economic marginalization and environmental degradation. The findings highlight the limitations of inclusive neoliberal development efforts to transform MSWM in a low-income country.

[Side Effects of Modernity : Dam Building, Health Care, and the Construction of Power in the Context of the Control of Schistosomiasis in Egypt in the 1960s and early 1970s]

This article analyzes the modernization campaigns in Egypt in the 1960s and early 1970s. The regulation of the Nile by the Aswan High Dam and the resulting irrigation projects caused the rate of schistosomiasis infestation in the population to rise. The result was a discourse between experts from the global north and Egyptian elites about modernization, development aid, dam building and health care. The fight against schistosomiasis was like a cipher, which combined different power-laden concepts and arguments. This article will decode the cipher and allow a deeper look into the contemporary dimensions of power bound to this subject. The text is conceived around three thematic axes. The first deals with the discursive interplay of modernization, health and development aid in and for Egypt. The second focuses on far-reaching and long-standing arguments within an international expert discourse about these concepts. Finally, the third presents an exemplary case study of West German health and development aid for fighting schistosomiasis in the Egyptian Fayoum oasis.

Vaccine Rejecting Parents' Engagement With Expert Systems That Inform Vaccination Programs

In attempting to provide protection to individuals and communities, childhood immunization has benefits that far outweigh disease risks. However, some parents decide not to immunize their children with some or all vaccines for reasons including lack of trust in governments, health professionals, and vaccine manufacturers. This article employs a theoretical analysis of trust and distrust to explore how twenty-seven parents with a history of vaccine rejection in two Australian cities view the expert systems central to vaccination policy and practice. Our data show how perceptions of the profit motive generate distrust in the expert systems pertaining to vaccination. Our participants perceived that pharmaceutical companies had a pernicious influence over the systems driving vaccination: research, health professionals, and government. Accordingly, they saw vaccine recommendations in conflict with the interests of their child and "the system" underscored by malign intent, even if individual representatives of this system were not equally tainted. This perspective was common to parents who declined all vaccines and those who accepted some. We regard the differences between these parents-and indeed the differences between vaccine decliners and those whose Western medical epistemology informs reflexive trust-as arising from the internalization of countering views, which facilitates nuance.

Busman's stomach and the embodiment of modernity

This paper examines the relationship between the gastric illness, 'busman's stomach' and the Coronation bus strike of May 1937 in which 27,000 London busworkers walked out for better working conditions and a seven-and-half-hour day. It explores the way in which new patterns of somatisation, gastroenterological techniques, psychological theories and competing understandings of time worked together to create new political institutions and new forms of political action in inter-war Britain.

Personal suffering and social criticism in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and A. Ginsberg's Howl: Implications for social psychiatry

BACKGROUND

T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and A. Ginsberg's Howl are two landmark poems of the 20th century which have a unique way of dealing with emotional suffering.

AIMS

(a) To explore the interplay between emotional suffering, conflicting relationships and societal perceptions; (b) to show the therapeutic effect of the writing process; (c) to analyse the portrayal of 'madness'; and (d) to discuss, in contemporary psychiatric terms, the 'solutions' offered by the poets.

METHOD

Qualitative research with a narrative, hermeneutic approach.

RESULTS

Against the background of wartime/genocide and postwar disillusionment, close relationships are projected onto societal perceptions. Concepts of (self-)control, compassion, empowerment and self-efficacy are offered as solutions to overcome feelings of despair.

CONCLUSION

In a time of perceived societal and environmental crises, both poems help us understand people's fears and how to counteract them. Besides biological approaches, the narrative approach to the suffering human being has not lost its significance.

Exhaustion and the Pathologization of Modernity

This essay analyses six case studies of theories of exhaustion-related conditions from the early eighteenth century to the present day. It explores the ways in which George Cheyne, George Beard, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sigmund Freud, Alain Ehrenberg and Jonathan Crary use medical ideas about exhaustion as a starting point for more wide-ranging cultural critiques related to specific social and technological transformations. In these accounts, physical and psychological symptoms are associated with particular external developments, which are thus not just construed as pathology-generators but also pathologized. The essay challenges some of the persistently repeated claims about exhaustion and its unhappy relationship with modernity.

Crazy for Ya Ba: methamphetamine use among northern Thai youth

BACKGROUND

Since the mid-1990s, Thailand has been one of the largest per capita consumers of methamphetamine pills (ya ba - "crazy drug") in the world and one of the leading consumers of methamphetamine in Southeast Asia, with its youth comprising the majority of users. This article examines the socio-cultural context of methamphetamine use among young Thai in order to understand its widespread appeal.

METHODS

The study is based on 18 months of ethnographic research in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, between 2002 and 2006 and a follow-up field trip in 2011. In-depth interviews were carried out with 211 young people aged between 15 and 25 in institutional and non-institutional settings. Many of the findings derive from participant observation and informal interviews with a small sample of 20 people.

RESULTS

Chiang Mai youth have transformed methamphetamine from a labourers' drug centred on economic utility to a multi-purpose youth drug primarily consumed for pleasure and performance. Ya ba appeals to many young Thai due to its positive image as a modern and fashionable consumer commodity, with confidence in these synthetic pills drawing on and mirroring a broader faith in modern (western) medicine.

CONCLUSION

The growing demand for ya ba in northern Thailand is in part a reflection of the changing social values that have accompanied rapid urbanisation and modernisation in Thailand. In their overwhelming aspiration to be modern, young Thai are consuming ya ba not to rebel against the dominant culture, but to keep up with the demands and expectations of a modern capitalist society.

Psychoanalysis and politics: historicising subjectivity

In this paper, I compare three different views of the relation between subjectivity and modernity: one proposed by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, a second by theorists of institutionalised individualisation, and a third by writers in the Foucaultian tradition of studies of the history of governmentalities. The theorists were chosen because they represent very different understandings of the relation between contemporary history and subjectivity. My purpose is to ground psychoanalytic theory about what humans need in history and so to question what it means to talk ahistorically about what humans need in order to thrive psychologically. Only in so doing can one assess the relation between psychoanalysis and progressive politics. I conclude that while psychoanalysis is a discourse of its time, it can also function as a counter-discourse and can help us understand the effects on subjectivity of a more than thirty year history in the West of repudiating dependency needs and denying interdependence.

Visual objects and universal meanings: AIDS posters and the politics of globalisation and history

Drawing on recent visual and spatial turns in history writing, this paper considers AIDS posters from the perspective of their museum 'afterlife' as collected material objects. Museum spaces serve changing political and epistemological projects, and the visual objects they house are not immune from them. A recent globally themed exhibition of AIDS posters at an arts and crafts museum in Hamburg is cited in illustration. The exhibition also serves to draw attention to institutional continuities in collecting agendas. Revealed, contrary to postmodernist expectations, is how today's application of aesthetic display for the purpose of making 'global connections' does not radically break with the virtues and morals attached to the visual at the end of the nineteenth century. The historicisation of such objects needs to take into account this complicated mix of change and continuity in aesthetic concepts and political inscriptions. Otherwise, historians fall prey to seductive aesthetics without being aware of the politics of them. This article submits that aesthetics is politics.