COVID-19 and the Interruption of Sister Cities Activities: Lexington, Kentucky and Its Four "Sister” Thoroughbred Raising/Racing Cities

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly and negatively influenced human organizations and activities at global scales. The impacts are evident in not only the cancelation of events, but also in the postponement of events for a year or more. Countries, cities, economies and voluntary organizations have been affected by these events and activities at local, regional and international scales. One major international non-governmental organization with multiple global networks is Sister Cities International (SCI) which links businesses, schools, and community groups. Groups interested in recreation/tourism, sports, art, culture, health care, human empowerment and more are among the networks evident at all scales. This study looks specifically at the linkages of five sister cities with strong Thoroughbred racing and raising economies and how COVID-19 affected the events planned for 2020 and 2021. The specific focus is on Lexington, Kentucky, the center of the Thoroughbred industry in the U.S. Details reveal that while a few events and activities were canceled, many more were rescheduled for 2021, including the Sister Cities International conference which was held virtually in July 2021. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Gender and class in the imagined educational spaces in Pakistani primary school textbooks: a challenge for inclusivity agenda

Post-COVID educational planning demands an urgent re-evaluation of the inclusivity of our educational systems, now that almost 24 million learners, a majority of these girls and the poor in developing countries, are at the risk of dropping out. This paper explores the discursive inclusivity of some primary level textbooks used in government and low-fee private schools in Pakistan. An analysis of the intersection of gender and class in 38 ‘imagined' educational spaces (classrooms/schools and related contexts) appearing in the textbooks revealed that the discourse strongly excluded and legitimized the absence of working class females, while marginalizing those from middle class. Education appears to be largely irrelevant to the lives of females across classes, just as they themselves appear to be knowledge construction. The normalized presence in education is that of middle-class males, with some peripheral space for those from working-class males. Foucault's theoretical framework reveals exclusionary techniques of: a) spatial exclusion b) exclusivity of the right to speak what counts as knowledge;c) construction of differential enabling possibilities. Although transgressive at times, the discourse never challenges the dominant norms, highlighting a worrisome aspect in textbooks that need to be addressed by policy makers and educationists. © 2022 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.