Going global (again): Gratitude and service learning in post-pandemic times

This analysis employs the concept of gratitude to trace key 'moments' in students' global service learning placements. We problematise the uncritical promotion of interculturality as an outcome of such placements. We analyse common narratives of gratitude that emerge from students before, during and after international placements in the Global South. Through focusing on the lifecycle of service learning placement we examine how expressions and recipients of gratitude shift over time, often belying a truly reciprocal exchange assumed to be inherent in service learning. We employ Critical Discourse Analysis to unearth power inequities that emerge from the broader societal relations in which these placements occur. We conclude by looking back to inform how we move forward in a post COVID-19 era in which further punctuation of global inequities will require intensified care to build meaningful and reciprocal service learning activities abroad and at home. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Between Empirical Data and Anti-Blackness: A Critical Perspective on Anti-Asian Hate Crimes and Hate Incidents

While women are more likely to report a hate incident to the StopAAPIHate reporting site, multiple sources of data show that men are as likely or more likely to experience a hate incident than women. [...]Asian Critical Theory (or AsianCrit) allows us to examine how race and racism affect the lives of Asian Americans within US society.5 Through this theoretical lens, we can better understand our unique racialization as Asian Americans;this racialization positions us as both model minorities and perpetual outsiders to US society. [...]even if not always dominant, the interspersal of images of Black-on-Asian-crime in coverage of anti-Asian violence tends to emphasize physical assaults by Black individuals, thereby playing on commonly accepted racist stereotypes of Black criminality.10 And while we may recognize that dominant discourses of safety and its antithesis (e.g., with regard to anti-Asian violence) are rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness (Jenkins 2021), most critiques of anti-Asian violence rarely examine the interconnections between them.11 For this reason, a large part of our paper calls for a critical racial analysis of widely circulating narratives around racist incidents against Asian Americans and their racialization as non-Black people of color. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND NARRATIVE CONTEXT In January and February of 2020, the first cases of COVID-19 in the United States were detected by public health agencies.12 The source of the virus was likely China (ibid), but the World Health Organization advised media organizations not to "attach locations or ethnicity" to the disease to avoid stigmatizing ethnic groups.

Ambivalent thinking amid pandemic biopolitics

This review article surveys recent work in political theory that has brought together biopolitics and the COVID-19 pandemic. Centered on 2021 books by Giorgio Agamben and Benjamin Bratton, the essay outlines prominent visions of "negative" (Agamben) and "positive" (Bratton) biopolitical responses to the pandemic, engages public reactions to these approaches, and reassesses the position of biopolitical thinking in light of these. In doing so, the article recalls the foundations and original interventions of biopolitical theory, calling for a renewed engagement with the perspectives afforded by biopolitics that pushes past the negative/positive binary. Ultimately, the essay gathers together major developments in biopolitical thinking today, counters moves to discard the theoretical approach despite the limitations of recent examples, and repositions biopolitics as an ambivalent tool for political thought and practice going forward.

"You're not my nanny!” Responses to racialized women leaders during COVID-19

In the early days of the pandemic, public health officials and politicians across the globe relied on Twitter to rapidly communicate COVID-19 information. Although the majority of these authority figures continue to be privileged white men, the number of women and racialized leaders is increasing. We analyze how users responded to public health tweets by Canada's top public health official Dr. Theresa Tam and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. Examining responses to these two racialized women through a critical discourse analysis, we uncover a pattern of users mobilizing gendered and racialized discourses to undermine the message, sow public distrust, and challenge the authority of Tam and Lujan Grisham. This paper documents hostility in the digital public square that, we argue, constitutes intersectional harassing backlash which could have implications for the efficacy of public health messaging on and offline.

Social Work in the Time of a Pandemic: COVID-19 and the Need for Resilience-Critical Thinking

The early effects of COVID-19 are already showing an increase of social inequality and social injustice. If we assume that the social being of humankind is inherent in social work, it should continue to work despite the shock and fundamental changes brought about by COVID-19. Our aim in this chapter is to outline the importance of working with critical assumptions and practices in social work, especially in crisis situations. We base our findings on critical resilience, critical theory, and post-modernism. Our chapter is grounded in the incidents of social work during COVID-19, both in the Global South and Global North. We critically analyze the implementation of social work from the top during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting difficulties for social workers and the clients. We conclude that social work needs to be carried out continuously, even in times of crisis. To achieve social transformation, we call for social work that is visibly connected internationally in solidarity and is implemented at the local level. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

The Day the World Stopped Working: Jacques Derrida, Jeremy Rifkin, and the Theology of Work

The title of this essay refers not, as one might have imagined, to that moment in the spring of 2020 near the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when tens of millions of people across the world were suddenly laid off or furloughed or told to work from home and a worldwide economic slowdown began. Despite the echoes of this most recent crisis, the title refers instead to all the discourses regarding the "end of work";that have cropped up periodically since the end of the nineteenth century and that drew widespread public attention back in the 1990s, due in large part to Jeremy Rifkin's book The End of Work. In that now classic work of 1995, Rifkin, the well-known economic and social theorist, predicted the end of work as we know it, as more and more jobs once performed by human beings in the agricultural, manufacturing, and even the service sector become automated and taken over by machines, robots, and computers.

From ‘Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings'

Inscribing what Levinas might call ‘espace vital' (the space we can survive), ‘Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings', (written/composed by Adeena Karasick and visualized/designed by Warren Lehrer), is an ecstatically wrought, never quite post-COVID-19 celebration/exploration of openings. It tracks the pain of openings read through socio-economic, geographic and bodily space. Employing fragmentation, layered language and sonic wordplay, these excerpts explore a range of intralingual etymologies of the word ‘opening', laced with post-consumerist ironic and erotic language, theoretical discourse, philosophical and Kabbalistic aphorisms, ‘Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings' foregrounds language as a material, physical organ-ism of hope – highlighting the concept of opening as an ever-swirling palimpsest of spectral voices, textures, whispers and codes transporting us through passion, politics and pleasure as we negotiate loss and light. The full volume is forthcoming from Lavender Ink Press, Spring 2023. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Poetry. English language.

I politici e l'immigrazione su Facebook: come si (de)legittima il discorso migratorio durante l'emergenza sanitaria

In this article we analyse how the immigration issue is narrated during the Covid-19 outbreak by several Italian political actors. We select Facebook as the main digital arena of political communication in the Italian public sphere. Quantitative analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis have been applied to politicians' posts aiming at identifying the linguistic strategies that contribute to instrumentalizing the emergency and aim to reinforce the politicization of the issue. Findings suggest that the main discursive strategies used by politicians do not only include migrants as a danger for the spread of the virus, but the migratory narration is systematically organized on negative campaigning blaming political opponents. The contribution helps to reveal how the anti-migration discourse is reproduced during the Covid-19 outbreak and how the politicization of the migration serves as a context for the normalization of migrant's exclusion.

Critical Theory and Universal Basic Income

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified interest in alternatives to neoliberalism. One proposal that has been increasingly discussed by both academics and activists is the implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This would typically see all citizens awarded a regular cash payment, without conditionality attached. While UBI thus deserves considerable attention from sociologists, as yet critical theorists have not offered an extended engagement with the proposal. In this paper, I provide exactly such a critical theoretical perspective on UBI, subjecting the approach to an extended critique. When viewed through the perspective of critical theory, UBI emerges as a more problematic approach to social change, failing to offer what its most enthusiastic progressive proponents promise: ‘a capitalist road to communism'. Rather, in this article, I argue that, when viewed through the lens of critical theory, UBI appears likely to further entrench, rather than disturb, the neoliberal social formation. © The Author(s) 2023.

Overtourism in Indonesia after the COVID-19 Pandemic: Social Psychology Perspective

La industria del turismo sufrió una pérdida significativa por la pandemia de COVID-19. Sin embargo, en línea con la disminución de los impactos de COVID-19, el comportamiento turístico reciente puede ser la causa de un fenómeno llamado sobreturismo. El objetivo de este estudio fue investigar los fenómenos únicos del sobreturismo en Indonesia después de la pandemia de COVID-19 a través de un enfoque psicológico social. Mediante un análisis crítico del discurso, este estudio encuentra que una emoción negativa generada por la pandemia de COVID-19 ha llevado al "turismo de venganza" provocado por dos años de aislamiento. Después de que el efecto de transmisión de COVID-19 está disminuyendo, las personas que experimentan un colapso psicológico ventilan sus intereses turísticos simultáneamente, lo que a su vez provoca un exceso de turismo. Desde la perspectiva de la psicología, la emoción negativa acumulada durante el confinamiento puede ser la razón del exceso de turismo. Mientras tanto, el exceso de turismo también tiene un impacto social negativo. Desde la perspectiva de la psicología social, el apego al lugar es una de las necesidades básicas de todo ser humano. Cuando se interrumpe el control sobre su entorno, esto puede generar muchos problemas. El exceso de turismo descontrolado provoca daños ambientales y reduce la calidad del turismo. Por lo tanto, este estudio sugiere que el gobierno y las partes interesadas colaboren para mitigar los desastres turísticos para prevenir la amenaza del turismo excesivo a la sostenibilidad del turismo.Alternate abstract:The tourism industry suffered a significant loss from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in line with decreasing the COVID-19 impacts, recent tourism behavior may be the cause of a phenomenon called as overtourism. The aim of this study was to investigate the unique phenomena of overtourism in Indonesia after the COVID-19 pandemic through a social pyschological approach. By using a critical discourse analysis, this study finds that a negative emotion generated by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to "revenge tourism" caused by two years of isolation. After the transmission effect of COVID-19 is decreasing, people who experience psychological breakdown, vent their tourism interests simultaneously, which in turn causing overtourism. In the perspective of psychology, negative emotion that has been piled up during lockdown may be the reason of overtourism. Meanwhile, overtourism also has negative social impact. From social-psychology perspective, place attachment is one of the basic needs in all human. When the control over their environment was disrupted, this may lead to many problems. Uncontrolled overtourism causes environmental damage and reducing the quality of tourism. Thus, this study suggests that the government and stakeholders collaborate to mitigate tourism disasters to prevent the threat of overtourism to tourism sustainability.

Frailty goes viral: a critical discourse analysis of COVID-19 national clinical guidelines in the United Kingdom

This paper explores how the rationing of medical care for older people by frailty score was justified and operationalised in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 was expected to overwhelm the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. In March 2020, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published the ‘COVID-19 rapid guideline: critical care in adults', which advised that clinicians use the Clinical Frailty Score (CFS) to inform decisions about which patients over the age of 65 should be offered ventilatory support. We present a Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis of this guidance and the supporting online resources. Analysis shows how the guidance merchandises the CFS as a quick and easy-to-use technology that reduces social and physical complexity into a clinical score. This stratifies older people by frailty score and permits the allocation of resources along these lines. We show how this is justified through epidemiological discourses of risk, which are merged with the language of individual mortality prediction. We discuss the proceduralisation of the CFS alongside a growing body of research that problematises its application in resource allocation. We argue that the pandemic has increased the use of the concept of frailty and that this effectively obfuscates the concept's limitations and ambiguities;the ageism implicit in the response to COVID-19 in the UK;and the relative resource scarcity facing the UK's NHS.

ESTUDOS CRÍTICOS DO DISCURSO E 'TEMPOS DE CRISE': UMA PROPOSTA PARA REEXISTÊNCIAS A PARTIR DA AQUILOMBAGEM CRÍTICA E DAS REDES PRAGMÁTICAS

A proposta desta reflexão é contribuir para o debate sobre os Estudos Críticos do Discurso, por meio da apresentação de possibilidades teórico-metodológicas originais de natureza anticolonial, atentas e comprometidas com a luta cidadã. Para tanto, como cenário de reflexão e de potencial aplicação epistemológica e metodológica de natureza intervencional, o conceito da Aquilombagem Crítica –AC –(SANTOS, 2019;2021;2022) está descrito e aplicado em intersecção com o das Redes Pragmáticas –RP –(SANTOS, 2017;2019), a partir da análise ilustrativa do'discurso da crise' (localizado no contexto da pandemia da Covid-19). No texto, portanto, estão desenvolvidos entendimentos teórico-metodológicos relacionados a discurso, bem como ao trabalho crítico discursivo (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003;2010;RESENDE, 2019) orientado à consolidação de movimentos de reexistência (SOUZA, 2009;2011). Desse modo, apresentamos cenários de reflexão e de potencial aplicação do empreendimento epistemológico-metodológico-ontológico AC-RP, abordados a partir da problematização do termo 'crise'. Enfim, entendemos que o termo em questão tem sido estrategicamente utilizado por detentores de poder simbólico e material para operar o esvaziamento existencial do Povo Preto, o que definimos por inexistenciação (isto é, sofisticados movimentos discursivos nos quais existências são afetadas e apagadas, em detrimento de outras –as quais, há séculos, permanecem manipulando a relação entre linguagem e sociedade para manter lugares de privilégio e prestígio sociais): por outro lado, defendemos que o usocrítico-reflexivo dos textos pode apontar para novos modos de resistência.Alternate :The purpose of this reflection is to contribute to the debate on Critical Discourse Studies, through the presentation of original theoretical-methodological possibilities of anti-colonial nature, attentive and committed to the citizen struggle. Therefore, as a scenario of reflection and potential epistemological and methodological application, the concept of Critical Aquilombage –CA –(SANTOS, 2019;2021;2022) is described and applied in intersection with the concept of Pragmatic Networks –PR –(SANTOS, 2017;2019);the 'discourse of crisis' (located in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil) is used as illustration for the analysis. In the text, theoretical-methodological understandings related to discourse are developed, as well as the critical discourse analysis (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003;2010;RESENDE, 2019) oriented to the consolidation of reexistence movements (SOUZA, 2009;2011). In this way, a critical reflection and potential application of the epistemological-methodological-ontological enterprise CA-PR are presented, approaching them to the problematization of the term 'crisis'. Finally, it is possible to argue that the term 'crisis' has been strategically used by social representants of symbolic and material power to operate the existential emptiness of Black People, operating the non-existence process (thatis, sophisticated discursive movements in which existences are affected and erased, to the detriment of few others –which ones, for centuries, have continued to manipulate language and society in order to maintain places of social privilege and prestige): on the other hand, the critical-reflective use of texts can point to new modes of resistance.Alternate :El propósito de esta reflexión es contribuir al debate sobre los Estudios Críticos del Discurso, a través de la presentación de posibilidades teórico-metodológicas originales de carácter anticolonial, atentas y comprometidas con la lucha ciudadana. Por tanto, como escenario de reflexión y potencial aplicación epistemológica y metodológica de carácter intervencionista, se describe y aplica el conceptode Aquilombaje Crítico –AC –(SANTOS, 2019;2021;2022) en intersección con el concepto de Redes Pragmáticas –RP –(SANTOS, 2017;2019), a partir del análisis del 'discurso de la crisis' (en el contexto de la pandemia l Covid-19 en Brasil). En el texto, se desarrollan comprensiones teórico-metodológicas relacionadas con el discurso, así como acerca del trabajo de análisis crítico del discurso (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003;2010;RESENDE, 2019) orientado a la consolidación de movimientos de reexistencia (SOUZA, 2009;2011). De esta forma, presentamos escenarios de reflexión y potencial aplicación del emprendimiento epistemológico-metodológico-ontológico AC-RP, abordado desde la problematización del término 'crisis'. Finalmente, entendemos que el término en cuestión ha sido utilizado estratégicamente por los detentadores de poder simbólico y material para operar el vaciamiento existencial de las Personas Negras, en el proceso de la inexistenciación (es decir, sofisticados movimientos discursivos en los que se afectan y borran existencias, en contraposición a otras –que, durante siglos, han seguido manipulando la relación entre lengua y sociedad para mantener lugares de privilegio y prestigio social): por otra parte, el uso crítico-reflexivo de los textos puede señalarnuevos modos de resistencia.

Understanding the Impact of (Anti-)Racism on Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation Decision-Making

This article uses critical discourse analysis to interrogate Covid-19 vaccine allocation frameworks created by Johns Hopkins and the National Academies to understand how the authors of these frameworks conceptualized the problem of vaccine hesitancy among people of colour. This article argues these frameworks represent an institutional discourse about vaccine-hesitant racialized people that casts people of colour as mistrustful, conspiracy-prone and unwilling to engage with public health efforts and that this stereotyping undermined the anti-racist potential of these frameworks to address vaccine hesitancy among racialized people by failing to consider how vaccine hesitancy in people of colour can be an attempt to mitigate the untrustworthy nature of US public health institutions. There will undoubtedly be another situation in the future where there are not enough critical health resources for all, and priorities will have to be set. Public health officials need to learn from the Covid-19 experience and will need a far better understanding of the issue of vaccine hesitancy among people of colour.

All We Need Is One Mic: A Call for Anti-Racist Solidarity to Deconstruct Anti-Black Racism in Educational Leadership

In this article, we outline some of the vital measurements of racism and anti-blackness as a macro system in education. We contend that principal preparation programs have not explicitly prioritized anti-racist school leadership, while often resisting the possibilities of solidarity or "one mic" of knowledge to increase anti-racist dispositions. Considering the lexicon of whiteness as an assemblage, a racial discourse should be "supported by material practices and institutions," that prepare educational leaders to examine anti-blackness curriculum that have been embedded as a standard method. We also posit that theoretical understanding of racism as global whiteness from a post-oppositional lens and decoloniality that will challenge the way racism is currently referenced in educational leadership scholarship. Moreover, current global and decolonial research gives way for a new vision of solidarity by humanizing scholarly resistance that cultivates a vision of community that regards differences of knowledge across groups and investigates racist policies and practices in educational leadership programs.

District Leaders' Concerns about Mental Health and Political Polarization in Schools: Selected Findings from the Fourth American School District Panel Survey. Data Note: Insights from the American Educator Panels. Research Report. RR-A956-8

Policymakers had hoped that the 2021-2022 school year would be a chance to recover from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic--related disruptions to schooling. Instead, media reports of staff shortages, heated or even violent school board meetings, increased student misbehavior, low student and teacher attendance, and enrollment declines suggest increased -- rather than decreased -- problems during this third pandemic school year. To learn about the prevalence of these challenges nationwide, RAND researchers surveyed 359 district and charter network leaders in the American School District Panel between October 25, 2021, and December 10, 2021. Survey results suggest that districts are confronting serious challenges in the 2021-2022 school year that might be getting in the way of student learning. Although some challenges, such as student and staff mental health, are nearly universal across districts, other challenges are more localized. Historically marginalized districts are confronting extra challenges this school year, such as getting students back in school and low teacher attendance, while a higher percentage of historically advantaged districts are encountering political polarization about COVID-19. [For the companion report "Flux in the Educator Labor Market: Acute Staff Shortages and Projected Superintendent Departures. Selected Findings from the Fourth American School District Panel Survey. Data Note: Insights from the American Educator Panels. Research Report. RR-A956-9," see ED617372.]

Spaces and Prospects for Student Empowerment in the Debt-Ridden Greek Education System. Future Possibilities for Change According to Student's Views

This paper presents a research project that was conducted in Athens, Greece in 2018 and 2019. The main objective of this project was to address students' views on Greek society and education in the context of the socio-economic crisis, their prospects, and their aspirations for educational and social transformation. The paper concentrates on students' views on education and discusses the role of schools in creating democratic societies. It provides a closer insight into possible ways of thinking about education, and food for thought for any attempts to deconstruct or initiate radical change in the education system. It looks at the potentialities and possibilities of deploying critical pedagogy as a mode of resistance for transformative and empowering education within the Greek education system. It concludes that during times of multiple crises, critical pedagogy is clearly relevant and has a responsibility to rethink its views and practices, build active resistance and engage in fostering educational and social change that can lead to a more just, equal and fair society.

Critical Race Pedagogy: A Taxonomy of Academic Activities to Craft a Critical Race Praxis in Higher Education

The authors present a taxonomy of pedagogical activities that can be used by teacher educators to foster a critical race praxis. The target audience is college- and university-level faculty committed to advancing equity in education. They first review the extant literature about critical consciousness in education. Next, they describe seven activities for more equitable teaching: fishbowl discussion, discussion of race vs. ethnicity, values continuum, discussion and writing communities, analysis of race in education policy, critical race journal, and racial autobiography. Additionally, the authors explain how these activities can be implemented in virtual classrooms in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Funding Open Educational Resources in Higher Education: A South African Public Policy Perspective

The direct crediting of book allowances to student accounts was, among other reasons, underpinned by the belief that students would be able to substitute prescribed study material with online content. The article attempts to understand if the local open educational resources (OER) funding policy environment was prepared for this significant transformation. The paper applied a critical theory paradigm and a documentary research strategy to identify policy-level documents on OER funding in the South African higher education sector. Content analysis was then applied to review what they said about OER funding. These outcomes were then measured against the National Policy Development Framework 2020, which also dominated the study's conceptual framework. The study's significant findings were that the OER funding policy did not meet the policymaking principles of the framework, and this exposed Higher Education to a poorly funded OER environment. The study recommended hastening the finalization of OER policy and the flexible application of current policy terms to include OER as a fundable higher education cause.

Ambivalent thinking amid pandemic biopolitics

This review article surveys recent work in political theory that has brought together biopolitics and the COVID-19 pandemic. Centered on 2021 books by Giorgio Agamben and Benjamin Bratton, the essay outlines prominent visions of "negative” (Agamben) and "positive” (Bratton) biopolitical responses to the pandemic, engages public reactions to these approaches, and reassesses the position of biopolitical thinking in light of these. In doing so, the article recalls the foundations and original interventions of biopolitical theory, calling for a renewed engagement with the perspectives afforded by biopolitics that pushes past the negative/positive binary. Ultimately, the essay gathers together major developments in biopolitical thinking today, counters moves to discard the theoretical approach despite the limitations of recent examples, and repositions biopolitics as an ambivalent tool for political thought and practice going forward. © The Author(s) 2022.