Applying radical empathy to Women's March documentation efforts: a reflection exercise

The Women’s March was a global phenomenon, with close to 5 million people participating worldwide. With a protest this complex, it is easy to see that its related records will have historical value. Indeed, many repositories have called for ephemera and stories from the event. But is documenting the event itself enough? The March was criticised for its lack of intersectionality and inclusion: are these criticisms not crucial to future understandings? This article follows the work of bell hooks, Verne Harris, Jarrett Drake and others in the call for social justice in archival work. The work of Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor on radical empathy is particularly well poised to answer these questions, because of its emphasis on prioritising people over records. Central to radical empathy are an archivist’s relationships with four constituents: the creator, the subject, the user and the community. Considering the roles of these stakeholders represent a departure in traditional archival theory, one that the author believes will make archives more equitable. Using these perspectives, this article will explore what it means to document the Women’s March in a pluralistic way and suggest pathways to do the same elsewhere.     

Mapping violence,naming life: a history of anti-Black oppression in the higher education system

Abstract

The article will provide a historical overview of anti-Black violence in the higher education system across three time periods: Colonial Era, Post-Civil War, and the mid-to-late twentieth century. Mapping violence demands a focus on how higher education historically has practiced anti-Black oppression coupled with how Black people have practiced resistance and life-making. Both the terms education violence (how systems of schooling limit and kill Black lives) and life-making (how Black people engage in alternative self-definition and self-care) are introduced to name pivotal moments in this history. Defining violence at structural, cultural, and direct levels, the paper accounts for how higher education has been an engine and reflection of racial hierarchy. The article ends with the implications history has for issues of anti-Blackness and movements for Black life-making in the higher education system today.     

The battle hymn of the activist teacher: Taiwanese school teachers’ resistance to curriculum changes

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the simplistic and reductive image of Taiwanese schoolteachers, and reveals their actions of resistance during the turmoil of the recent curriculum reform controversy. Despite the fact that teachers are not usually portrayed as progressive and revolutionary agents, in the face of the disputed curriculum revision in 2014, some Taiwanese teachers came forward to oppose its implementation through demonstrations, hunger strikes, and litigation. The wider public's attention to this issue and ensuing student movement can be attributed to these teachers’ pioneering activism. By means of interviewing 12 teachers, this article explores activist teachers’ political self-efficacy, the creation of their pressure groups, and their apprehension about fighting against the authorities. The recording of this teacher-initiated social movement demonstrates ‘teachers as activists’, and hopefully will inspire educators not to limit their influence solely to the classroom.     

What is protest? Feminism,psychoanalysis and methods of social change

ABSTRACT

Despite the fact that feminism has recognised psychoanalysis to be a theory with direct application to the understanding of sexism for over 50 years, the application of psychoanalytic thinking to feminist activism has yet to be significantly realised. Using the work of Julia Kristeva, sexism is described as a symptom of an intolerable situation and overt forms of activism, such as street protest, that are critiqued as making demands on their subject. The third-wave tendency for deconstruction is examined as having direct implications to a concept of psychoanalytically informed activism.     

Back-ups for the future: archival practices for data activism

Literature on activist archiving theorises the power of recordkeeping to give voice to marginalised communities. However, missing from this archival literature are analyses about the political practice of preserving data as an act of grassroots resistance. Simultaneously, existing scholarly literature on grassroots data activism analyses the creation of new statistical representations to challenge official ones. This literature has largely ignored what will happen to this data over the long term, nor has it treated data archiving as an activist project in its own right. This theoretical article seeks to close the gap between literature on archival activism and literature on data activism, in hopes that both sets of research can draw productively from each other. There are clear affinities between activist archives and data activism: both address the failure by mainstream institutions to account for marginal voices, both have the power to make issues visible and legitimate within the public sphere, and both experiment with traditional forms of memory and statistical evidence. The authors believe that these two powerful forms of activity have much to learn from each other, particularly as the need to steward data over the long term will only grow.     

Beyond individual behaviour change: the role of power,knowledge and strategy in tackling climate change

Individual behaviour change is fast becoming a kind of ‘holy grail’ to tackle climate change, in environmental policy, the environmental movement and academic literature. This is contested by those who claim that social structures are the main problem and who advocate collective social action. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to better understand why environmentally concerned citizens choose one of these two types of engagement. Our focus is on the role of experiences of and/or convictions about power in shaping this choice. Within the framework of an explorative qualitative study, we engaged in in-depth interviews with 12 young environmentally concerned citizens. On this basis, five main findings are elaborated. Firstly, powerlessness is shown to be a crucial experience, whatever the respondents’ engagement. Secondly, ‘strategy scepticism’ seems to be a more important obstacle for engagement than ‘climate scepticism’. Thirdly, many respondents express significant resistance towards being ‘conditioned’ by awareness-raising campaigns. Fourthly, a ‘gap’ is observed between respondents’ analysis and their strategy proposals. Finally, we underscore another important gap between concrete and abstract levels in respondents’ discourses. All these findings disclose paradoxical aspects of the role of power in shaping the concerned citizens’ engaged choices.     

Building Political Support for Your Library Through Surfacing

Abstract

This column describes “surfacing”—a technique commonly used in political campaigns to raise awareness about a candidate or cause long before election day—and explores ways in which it applies to campaigns for library funding or initiatives. Surfacing is most effective during the earliest phase of a campaign to ensure that a candidate or cause is viable and has the resources needed to move the political agenda forward. EveryLibrary, a national organization dedicated to building voter support for libraries, has used the surfacing approach successfully, helping public libraries across the U.S. gather the resources they need to win or successfully move an initiative forward.     

Fight the power: situated learning and conscientisation in a gendered community of practice

In this paper, I employ situated learning theory to explore gendered processes of marginalisation and conscientisation in a social movement organisation. Using a student activist organisation as a case study, I explain women's awareness of and resistance to masculine performances of leadership and decision-making through the concept of gendered communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation. I explore how gender inequality is performed in a community of practice, and how it both impedes and facilitates learning and resistance through legitimate peripheral participation. I attempt to bridge situated learning and conscientisation to better theorise the learning and resistance that occur when people are marginalised within communities of practice.     

论预防司法的法理及其系统保障

预防司法要求司法追求纠纷解决的彻底性并积极发挥规则形成功能,立法应促进和便利人民使用公证制度,拓展其运行空间。中国司法实践中调解优先的司法政策为预防司法的生动体现。调解在解决纠纷的彻底性和修复当事人受损关系以抑制潜在纠纷方面具有制度优势,高度契和预防司法的追求。     

司法能动与司法克制——以法官解释权为视角

法官解释权在司法实践中发挥着重要的作用。法官对法律解释坚持什么样的司法哲学将直接影响着法律适用的效果。我国的特殊国情无疑使这一问题更加复杂化。其实,司法能动与司法克制并不是一个非此即彼的问题,而是法官在进行自由裁量时享有多大的自由或者受到多大的限制的程度问题。二者在和谐社会和法治建设中发挥的功能各有千秋,法官有责任通过法律解释活动在司法能动与司法克制之间维持一种有益的平衡。