This article explores the challenges local youth workers face at the intersection of providing social care and detecting violent extremism. Extremism and other radical ideologies are often assumed to be a harbinger of terrorism. Even though both are still a rare phenomenon among adolescents, European states have become highly concerned with being alert to early signs of radicalisation processes. As a result, youth workers as well as other local professionals have been confronted with the task of detecting these early signs. However, despite training and increased knowledge, the question remains whether youth workers are sufficiently equipped to assess potential risks in youth who show no concrete plans for criminal action. In these cases, prevention targets ideas rather than violent behaviour. This article details qualitative results of a case study among Dutch youth workers and suggests that no clear framework exists for detection of radicalisation processes into (violent) extremism. This has two main causes. Firstly, the concepts of radicalisation and (violent) extremism are in practice difficult to distinguish. Secondly, the youth worker's judgement often relies more on individual perceptions rather than evidence-based criteria to identify potential ‘risky’ persons. This situation may lead to undesired side effects such as executive arbitrariness, prejudice or stigmatisation.
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In recent years, the fight against (violent) extremism has focused more on anticipating the threats that they pose. Therefore, early detection of undemocratic ideas by local professionals has become an important part of the preventive approach in counter terrorism radicalisation. Frontline workers who operate in the arteries of society are encouraged to identify processes toward violent behaviour at an early stage. To date, however, little is known about how these professionals take on this screening task at their own discretion. The analysis of 55 interviews with youth workers, municipality civil servants, and community police officers, show that they tended to be insufficiently equipped in general to detect radicalisation towards (violent) extremism at the local level in the Netherlands. Firstly, this is due to varying contents and qualities of training courses which are not suited to building up solid expertise. Secondly, and most importantly, the recognising of deviant behaviour is presumably carried out with a one-sided focus on personal norms and values rather than structured judgements about pathways towards risky behaviour. Various value systems seem to influence the norm for early detection, which means that there is, in practice, a lack of clear indicators.
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This article will briefly discuss the implications of the recognition of ecological justice in relation to environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). It is argued that the present conception of environment taught through EE and ESD negates the subjectivity of non-human species and ignores the ethical imperatives of ecological justice. Evocating environmental ethics, major directions integrating ecological justice into EE and ESD are proposed. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in "Chinese Journal of Population, Resources and Environment" on 09/23/14, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/10042857.2014.933498 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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In this chapter we elaborate a hermeneutical perspective on professionalism and professional development in the wide range of professions and vocational trainings, which fall under the concern of a University of Applied Sciences (UAS). In a joint research programme of the HU UAS and Utrecht University we aim to unveil and make visible that professionals are continuously making interpretations simply by doing their jobs. Unavoidably, with these interpretations, subjectivity and normativity comes along, setting a moral agenda in the respective professional fields. We show how the more conceptual and philosophical reflections in the humanities at the Academia, is brought in interaction with professional development, vocational education and practice-oriented research at UAS. After this we walk through a number of recently completed or still ongoing research projects in the wide range of professionals in religious education (RE) via general and vocational education to non-educational professions. We end up with six developments or ‘movements’ that are taking place and that can be useful for a better understanding of complexity in vocational education and professions as such, and the imperative for change that is given by this.
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In the face of a global ecological crisis, culturally dominant framings of subjective experience as separate from living ecologies are no longer sufficient. Games might offer ways to break down these divisions. Alenda Chang has proposed bringing game ecologies to life. To complement her position, in this paper, we aim to inspire game designers and researchers to explore ways in which video games can remodel the perceived player subject as a pathway to ecological entanglement. We investigate four strategies for decentering and deconstructing the subject. These are: (1) deconstructing the subject to foreground internal sources of entanglement; (2) dismantling, distorting, ignoring, and/or invading the visual perspective; (3) conceptual deconstruction and reframing of a sense of self; and (4) decentering the subject through shifting contexts. For each of these, we introduce relevant examples of narrative and gameplay design in existing video games and suggest steps for further development in each direction.
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A model for programmatic assessment in action is proposed that optimizes assessment for learning as well as decision making on learner progress. It is based on a set of assessment principles that are interpreted from empirical research. The model specifies cycles of training, assessment and learner support activities that are completed by intermediate and final moments of evaluation on aggregated data-points. Essential is that individual data-points are maximized for their learning and feedback value, whereas high stake decisions are based on the aggregation of many data-points. Expert judgment plays an important role in the program. Fundamental is the notion of sampling and bias reduction for dealing with subjectivity. Bias reduction is sought in procedural assessment strategies that are derived from qualitative research criteria. A number of challenges and opportunities are discussed around the proposed model. One of the virtues would be to move beyond the dominating psychometric discourse around individual instruments towards a systems approach of assessment design based on empirically grounded theory.
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Presentation at the 35th Annual Q Conference for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity (Q2019), University of Naples Federico II & Associazione Scientifica Centro di Portici, Naples 18-21 September
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This article is about the Virtual Reality-Head Mounted Display (VR-HMD) as a model for contemporary ways of disciplining. The VR-HMD makes the observer discipline herself through the triggering of performance. Through specific strategies the VR-HMD addresses the body of the observer to perform in the mixed reality that is constructed in the interaction between the body and the VR-HMD. These strategies consist of approaches by the hardware developers and content creators to manage the subjectivity and visuality of the observer. Today’s body is not disciplined through formatted technics of the VR-HMD, but through self-disciplining of the observer’s active performance. This article will unravel the strategies within the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR on the Playstation VR that are used to control the visuality and subjectivity. Through her interaction in the game the observer also becomes aware of her body and the ways that it is disciplined in. In the end, this article will argue that the VR-HMD should not only be understood as a strategic device that can discipline a neoliberal subject, but that the VR-HMD is a supercomplex intervention that could help us to become more corporeal literate of our bodies in the age of digital media.
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Through a correspondence between two scholars, this paper explores and critiques various ways in which scholars working in ethnography and cultural analysis frame and construct their methodology and object of study. Through the close reading of theoretical accounts of methodology in ethnography and cultural analysis, we examine how these accounts construct the relationship between the scholar and her object of study.We read these scholarly practices as protocols, referring to the ways in which accounts of methodology may be understood as rules/guidelines by which scholars in these fields conduct research. Protocol etymologically refers to protos (first) and kolla (glue). Through the figure of the protocol, we delineate how scholars in ethnography and cultural analysis themselves become implicated in giving accounts of their research methodologies. Somatechnics presents a thoroughly multi-disciplinary scholarship on the body, providing a space for research that critically engages with the ethico-political implications of a wide range of practices and techniques. The term ‘somatechnics’ indicates an approach to corporeality which considers it as always already bound up with a variety of technologies, techniques and technics, thus enabling an examination of the lived experiences engendered within a given context, and the effects that technologies, technés and techniques have on embodiment, subjectivity and sociality.
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This article discusses the viability of a feminist constructivist approach of knowledge through the careful reading of the work of the feminist scholar and historian of science and technology, Donna Haraway. Haraway proposes an interpretation of objectivity in terms of "situated knowledges". Both the subject and the object of knowledge are endowed with the status of material-semiotic actors. By blurring the epistemological boundary between subject and object, Haraway's narratives about scientific discourse become populated with hybrid subjects/objects. The author argues that the ethics of these hybrid subjects consists of an uneasy mixture of a Nietzschean and a socialist-Christian ethic. The article concludes by setting out why Haraway's project constitutes an interesting effort to fuse postmodern insights and feminist commitments.
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