Month: January 2025

Geopolitics and Counterterrorism

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Abstract

As it enters a new era of strategic competition, the United States and its network of allies faces a diversifying array of terrorism threats—from new far-right actors to longstanding Salafi-jihadist networks and groups. Moreover, state adversaries will likely eagerly exploit these non-state actors in advancing their own geopolitical goals. Accordingly, the United States finds itself in a counterterrorism dilemma, managing a three-front counterterrorism struggle at precisely the moment it wishes to reallocate resources to the Indo-Pacific. It would be well-served leaning into competitive advantages developed during the War on Terror, building on successes from the counterterrorism fight to better prepare to confront strategic rivals.

Connecting Texts and Thoughts: How Translanguaging and Multilingual Writings Reflect Hybrid Identities in Colonial Times

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Abstract

Indonesian multilingualism has been affected by outside factors including colonialism and globalization. During the Dutch colonial period in the early 1900s, Indonesian intellectuals wrote mainly in Dutch, and occasionally English and other regional languages. A hybrid identity was embraced as these speakers moved from one language to another in their speech. This study seeks to examine the manner in which a multilingual writer constructs his self-identity while expressing his opinions through newspaper columns, as well as the influence of colonialism on the writer’s self-identification. Using qualitative analysis of textual data taken from Indonesian newspapers published in the 1930s and 1970s, this study demonstrates that the multilingual writer recognized his hybrid self-identity since he could utilize a different language in different contexts. A hybrid identity was developed by the multilingual writer when he created a meaning-making system, shaped experience, and acquired understanding or knowledge using various languages in his repertoire. Despite the different identities, he remained loyal to one primary identity.

A Preliminary Report: Examining Pre-service Teacher Education, Teaching Practices, and Linguistic Diversity in the Indonesian Context

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Abstract

Covering an area of approximately 1.8 million square kilometers, and including a vast number of ethnic and linguistic groups, encompassing approximately 700 indigenous and minority languages, from varying cultural backgrounds, Indonesia presents a unique opportunity to examine how its education system addresses such a variety of needs across such a diverse context. Any second language education including English presents unique challenges in such a linguistically diverse landscape. Examining how such an education system addresses these challenges would be useful for policy makers, administrators, teacher educators, and teachers throughout the region as these stakeholders are faced with similar challenges in other Asian countries and beyond. In order to investigate how the Indonesian educational system prepares and responds to such a complex environment, participants for the current ongoing research project are drawn from four groups: Current preservice language educators, teacher educators, graduated/practicing teachers, and institutional leaders (principles, headmasters, etc.). In-depth individual or group interviews were conducted with members of each of the four groups. Classroom observations were also conducted with practicing teachers and are used to confirm information gathered through interviews as to actual practice in the language-learning classroom. The results of such research could be instrumental in providing a better understanding of the current situation of English language teacher education and teaching practice in Indonesia, as well as how to plan for future curricular developments. The results could also not only be valuable to policymakers and planners in Indonesia and across the Asian region but beyond in other contexts where learners represent a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Continuous Pasts

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Abstract

 In this chapter, we focus on speculative reasoning that makes the past a provisional site for new inquiry and productive possibilities. It opens the past to reveal hidden realities that shape current-day realities or offer new possibilities for the present or future. Such speculations are offered here as modes of inquiry in design research. We discuss speculative practices in feminism, Afrofuturism, more-than-human epistemologies, disability studies, and decolonization as they relate to design and technologies. Like the previous chapters, we examine the workings of speculative reasoning through the framework of leaps of imagination, diverse epistemologies, ethical reflexivity, and experiential alternatives. We also argue that similar considerations of the past and speculative reasoning have been important to design research and design more broadly through discussions of design games in participatory design, ethnomethodology, critical literature reviews, and analytical accounts of pasts related to HCI.

Why Speculate?

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Abstract

In this introduction, we make the case that speculation has a central role in research. By speculation, we mean creating propositions about the world with incomplete knowledge. Our aim is to approach speculation as expansively as possible and, in doing so, explore how design can draw even more from it. We introduce three ways in which design can draw from speculation. First, we unpack the value of speculation in how it can help construct propositional knowledge and actions within the limits of what is known at the time through leaps of imagination. Second, speculation holds even more value in countering accepted knowledge or dominant worldviews to generate new forms of knowledge, in what we call diverse epistemologies. Third, speculation creates space to examine and assess the limits, consequences, and ethics of the pursuits of technological practices through ethical reflexivity. Additionally, we offer the term experiential alternatives: the methodology that enables the three other parts of our framework, which in design is material and done through creation. We end the chapter with an outline of the book, which is comprised of an introduction, a conclusion and three chapters that are organized by our framework.

A Climate Change Outlook on the 2023 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct: Which Contribution from the Practice of the NCPs?

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Abstract

The present contribution discusses the most relevant amendments to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in respect of climate change, as included in the 2023 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct. Starting from the fact that, even though the 2011 edition of the OECD Guidelines did not specifically address climate change, NCPs have however often confronted with climate issues related to this phenomenon, the analysis is undertaken considering the climate change-related NCP complaints brought to date and the NCPs’ determinations. The ultimate goal is to verify whether and, if so, to what extent the practice of the NCPs has influenced and is reflected in the relevant 2023 OECD Guidelines. To do so, after analysing the recommendations about climate change included in the recently updated version of the OECD Guidelines, the present contribution will undertake a thorough analysis of the relevant complaints, paying particular attention to those which best reflect the trend to use the 2011 OECD Guidelines also with regard to climate change-related issues.