Identity policies of education: struggles for inclusion and exclusion in Peru and Colombia

ABSTRACT

Policy initiatives that seek to account for ethno-cultural differences in education and schooling have become increasingly popular over the past few decades. These include affirmative action measures and bilingual education models. The rationale for the implementation of these policies focuses on their potential to rectify historical discrimination by both levelling horizontal inequalities and granting equal value to different cultures and languages in the schooling process. In this framework, however, ethnic communities are often treated as discrete and static social aggregates, and social heterogeneity and spillover effects between groups are disregarded. This paper draws on empirical case studies from Colombia and Peru to show how identity policies of education can increase inter-ethnic competition, leading to protracted social conflicts. These outcomes, beyond negatively impacting local communities, raise important dilemmas surrounding the theoretical and operational foundations of these popular policy measures.     

Dating in the time of “relational filter bubbles”: exploring imaginaries,perceptions and tactics of Italian dating app users

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we address algorithmic imaginary, perception and tactics of Italian dating apps users. Little attention has hitherto been devoted to the ways in which the algorithms employed by mobile dating platforms (to rate users, to manage user visibility, to arrange results) might contrast, or enhance, people’s homophily. Our goal is to explore whether and how mobile dating algorithms modify the perception of what we define as “relational filter bubbles”; and whether, and how, users believe dating algorithms reshape (extend or limit) the heterogeneity of their intimate interactions. The paper builds on literature addressing online dating, the datafication of society, the rise of the so-called quantified self, and of the algorithmic culture. We organized 4 focus groups involving Italian dating apps users, who reported a variety of sexual orientations and of dating apps usage. Overall, while dating apps’ algorithms operate in an opaque way, participants developed an “algorithmic imaginary”. Moreover, they appreciate the role of mobile dating apps in reinforcing their relational homophily (their tendency to like people that are “similar” to them), whilst, at the same time, mainly using these apps for increasing the diversity of their intimate interactions in terms of extending their preexisting networks.     

Surveying the roofs of Rome

This study is aimed at investigating a portion of the city of Rome by means of remotely sensed Multispectral Infrared And Visible Imaging Spectrometer (MIVIS) data. A particular attention was devoted to building roofs described not only as the last defining touch given to a building, the aesthetic conclusion to a whole construction process, but also as expression and sign of a society's level of civilisation, culture and technical skill. Through the classification of objects and materials, we propose to combine history and science as different ways of interpreting a city, in this case Rome, and to implement an image processing technique as an effective tool in urban planning.