Digital Commons Network^™

Fall Of Mosul To Isis: Jostle Of Narratives Between Conspiracy Theory And Betrayal, Hamied Al Hashimi, Moh Arak Alzghwabi

Journal of Terrorism Studies

This article examines the rise and conflict of narratives about the fall of the Iraqi city of Mosul to the Islamic State (ISIS), which marks its tenth anniversary this year (2024). ISIS occupied parts of Iraq from 2014 to 2017, and its defeat required Iraqi mobilization and international support from the international coalition. This article attempts to trace the narratives and their conflicts about the main cause of Mosul’s fall to ISIS. The fall of Mosul was like a snowball that rolled and grew, as it spread to a large area of Northwestern Iraq. It has been shown that several …

Jean Langdon: Transformations And Perspectives From Half A Century Of Research About Shamanism, Isabel Santana De Rose

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This text reviews some of Jean Langdon’s most important classical and contemporary writings about shamanism, highlighting her key contributions to the area, as well as her relevance to the anthropology of health and Indigenous health policies. The paper also reflects on Langdon’s influence in the discussions surrounding gender and female agency in ethnographies of lowland South America. Jean Langdon was one of the pioneers in the revival of the research on shamanism in the 1980s. During a period when male anthropologists largely dominated studies on this topic, she highlighted the complexity and diversity of Indigenous shamanisms, proposing that they should …

Unmasking The 'New Normal' And The 'Vernacular Of The Veracious' During A Pandemic, Aurelio S. Agcaoili

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

This paper argues that the deployment of a figurative language like the phrase “new normal” and many other verbal formulations during a pandemic is a form of power and control by political leaders. This deployment is calculated and calculating as it is meant to condition the minds of the masses that depend on the ruling political class for clarity, guidance, and some form of redemption. These “weaponized” words are presented as expressions of the veracious—essentially a vernacular of power—by persons of authority for a semblance of credibility. There are at least two versions of the veracious that are at play …

Second Chances, David K. Leff

Appalachia

A young boy drags his father, a distracted professional, back to the mountains, changing them both.

The Contributors, Contributors Contributors

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

The Contributors

Relational Egalitarianism And The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jacqueline Marie J. Tolentino

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

The current COVID-19 pandemic has called for unprecedented measures to contain it and, as such, has reinforced and produced complex and intertwining health and non-health inequalities. I take the perspective of relational egalitarianism and argue that these inequalities are not only issues of public health and economics but also of social justice. I thus aim to construct a relational egalitarian framework to examine how and why the inequalities of COVID-19 are unjust and to work out what structural changes and processes might be required to justly respond to these inequalities.

Digging For Literature On Tailoring Cultural Offers With And For Older People From Ethnic Minority Groups: A Scoping Review, Stephanie Tierney, Jordan Gorenberg, Marta Santillo, Debra Westlake, Geoffrey Wong, Kerryn Husk, Sofia Vougioukalou, Ruthanne Baxter, Shoba Dawson, Nia Roberts, Caroline Potter, Harriet Warburton, Beth Mcdougall, Johannah Latchem, Kamal R Mahtani

Peninsula Medical School

INTRODUCTION: Social prescribing addresses non-medical issues (e.g., loneliness, financial worries, housing problems) affecting physical and/or mental health. It involves connecting people to external support or services, including 'cultural offers'-events, groups and activities run within or by cultural organisations. Such offers need to be acceptable and accessible to diverse populations if forming part of a social prescription.

METHODS: A scoping review was conducted to identify what existing literature, conducted in the United Kingdom, tells us about tailoring cultural offers for older people (aged 60+ years) from ethnic minority groups. Relevant literature was searched for on electronic databases, through Google, via a …

Mortalidad Por Cirrosis En Guatemala 2018: Patrones E Inequidades, Cristian Ramírez, Luis Pablo Méndez-Alburez, María Fernanda Piedrasanta, Alejandro Cerón

Anthropology: Faculty Scholarship

El presente estudio busca analizar la mortalidad por cirrosis en Guatemala. El propósito es identificar posibles criterios epidemiológicos que orienten la priorización de acciones de salud pública. El riesgo de morir por cirrosis en Guatemala muestra marcadas desigualdades por departamento, las cuales son mayores al comparar por municipio. El riesgo de morir es también más alto en hombres, en personas mestizas o ladinas, en niveles educativos bajos, y en personas que se dedican a ocupaciones elementales. Las medidas de salud pública orientadas a los municipios y grupos en mayor riesgo son de suma importancia para la prevención de muerte por …

Harmony In Progress: Exploring Motivation’S Role In My Piano Learning And Practice Journey, Junyu Tao, Jane Southcott, Renee Crawford

The Qualitative Report

This autoethnography explores the role of motivation in the piano learning and practice journey of the first author. The study is underpinned by understandings of how motivation evolves from extrinsic influences, such as parental support, teachers’ guidance, and peer influence, to intrinsic motivation that drives personal growth. Using a reflective and collaborative approach incorporating narratives, we examine key moments and emotional landscapes as the first author reveals the transformative power of motivation in shaping her piano learning experience. Our findings highlight the critical role of self-determination in fostering sustained engagement and success on the path of piano learning and practice. …

Framing The Immigrant In Labor Unions And The Military In The United States, Sofya Aptekar, Shannon Gleeson

Publications and Research

We present a comparative study of organizational discourses on immigrants in two cornerstone US institutions: labor unions and the US military, both powerful players in setting the terms of immigration debates and policies in the United States. How do unions and the military frame the role of immigrants within their institutions and in US society? We draw on qualitative content analysis of materials produced by AFL-CIO and the US military between 2000 and 2020. Despite significant differences in these institutions, we find that they share the following three core themes in their framing of immigrants: (1) immigrants as potential threats, …

The What’S What And The Who’S Who Of Psychobiography, Ronald Chenail

The Qualitative Report

Joseph G. Ponterotto’s 2025 book, The Psychobiographer's Handbook: A Practical Guide to Research and Ethics, not only serves as an excellent introduction and practical methodological guide to psychobiography, but it also introduces readers to the leading psychobiographers from around the world via the 22 captivating profiles distributed throughout the book. Starting with his self-reflective introduction Ponterotto brings us inside the psychobiography craft by combining technical design and data management skills along with a relational awareness of the researcher to the historic subject. Lastly, the structure of this book can also serve as a template for anyone wanting to create …

“It’S Not Because They’Re Gypsy”: Practitioners Perspectives Of Gypsies, Travellers And Crime And Justice, Raegan Booth, Kirsty Koral, Kitty Lymperopoulou

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

In dominant public, political and media narratives of Gypsy and Traveller communities, they have often been associated with criminality, deviance, violence, idleness and reluctance to assimilate into settled society. A discourse of othering predicated on negative stereotypes further affect their marginalisation and social exclusion. This empirical article critically examines reflections on, and responses to, these dominant narratives among practitioners who have engaged with Gypsy and Travellers operationally and strategically, in relation to crime and criminal justice. We find evidence of compliance with dominant narratives which include perceptions that deny and minimise experiences of victimisation and racism, while also suggesting a …

Towards Graph Foundation Models: Learning Generalities Across Graphs Via Task-Trees

Defensive Publications Series

Foundation models aim to create general, cross-task, and cross-domain machine learning models by pretraining on large-scale datasets to capture shared patterns or concepts (generalities), such as contours, colors, textures, and edges in images, or tokens, words, and sentences in text. However, discovering generalities across graphs remains challenging, which has hindered the development of graph foundation models. To tackle this challenge, in this paper, we propose a novel approach to learn generalities across graphs via task-trees. Specifically, we first define the basic learning instances in graphs as task-trees and assume that the generalities shared across graphs are, at least partially, preserved …

Is Graph Convolution Always Beneficial For Every Feature?

Defensive Publications Series

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have demonstrated strong capabilities in processing structured data. While traditional GNNs typically treat each feature dimension equally during graph convolution, we raise an important question: \textit{Is the graph convolution operation equally beneficial for each feature?} If not, the convolution operation on certain feature dimensions can possibly lead to harmful effects, even worse than the convolution-free models. In prior studies, to assess the impacts of graph convolution on features, people proposed metrics based on feature homophily to measure feature consistency with the graph topology. However, these metrics have shown unsatisfactory alignment with GNN performance and have not …

Dungeons & Dragons In Times Of Transmedia, Nazario Robles Bastida, Ricardo Victoria Uribe

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

This paper explores the current state of transmedia storytelling, that is, the art of developing a cohesive narrative through a variety of media. Using Dungeons & Dragons as a case study, this study explores the complex nature of current forms of transmedia storytelling, as well as the complex relationships between media producers and consumers that have arisen due to this narrative technique. Focusing in three specific examples within the franchise: Drizzt Do'Urden, the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon series and the 2023 film Honor among Thieves, our analysis illustrate the fact that current media franchises are constituted by a …

Raising Heterosexual Consciousness And Engagingwith Our Privileged Identities, Andrew Mcgeehan

MAGIS: Student Development Journal

This piece details an interview the author did with a fellow graduate student at Seattle University. In the interview, the author interviews the student about her experiences as a heterosexual woman, using question commonly asked of LGBT folks. Through this interview experience, she was able to more clearly identify and examine her privilege as a heterosexual and became more conscious of how it plays out in her daily life.

Spiritual Development For The Non-Spiritual:Supporting Atheist Students’ Exploration Formeaning And Purpose, Adam Serafin

MAGIS: Student Development Journal

The renewed focus on the inner development of college students (Love & Talbot, 1999) has the potential to isolate and alienate non-religious students if we fail to approach spiritual development holistically and support all students as they search for purpose and meaning. Twenty five percent of traditional college age students (ages 18-29) identify as religiously unaffiliated, 3% of which identify as atheist (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2008). Atheists are the least trusted segment of the American population, largely attributed to the American connotation between religion and morality (Edgell et al., 2006). Atheophobia is present on college campuses, further marginalizing, isolating, and …

Exploring The Lived Experience Of Former Special Educators In The Greater Toronto Area And Their Perceptions Of Work Conditions In The Special Education Classroom, Michael J. Daniels

Doctor of Education Program Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative interpretive phenomenological analysis was (a) to explore the lived experiences of public Kindergarten–Grade 8 (K–8) special educators in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) who left the field of special education and (b) to understand challenges caused by their work conditions. The research questions were (a) “How do former public K–8 special educators in the GTA describe their lived experience within their special education classroom and the role of work their conditions in their decision to leave the field?” (b) “How do former public K–8 special educators in the GTA in the field of special education …

The Life Of Roscoe Pound (Paul Sayre, 1948), Manning J. Dauer

Florida Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Contributors, Contributors Contributors

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

The Contributors

Japanese Philosophy Of Moral Education: From Watsuji Tetsurô To Mori Akira, Anton Sevilla-Liu

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

This article builds on the ethics of Watsuji Tetsurô (1889 1960) through a comparison with Mori Akira’s (1915–1976) the philosophy of education to show how Watsuji’s “ethics of emptiness” can be concretely manifested in human formation. While keeping Watsuji’s ethics in view, this article examines Mori Akira’s early philosophy of moral education in the 1950s, which can be found in his philosophy book, his teacher’s manual, and his moral education student textbooks. This article begins with Watsuji’s idea of “human existence” and its similarities with Mori Akira’s idea of “human becoming,” which adds a developmental angle to Watsuji’s tensional view …

A Crisis Of The Humanities? Reflections On The Role Of The Humanities In The Global University, Scott Doidge, John Doyle, Rhonda Siu

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Since John Harold Plumb’s declaration of “a crisis of the humanities” in 1964, the role of the humanities in the modern university has been the subject of heated debate. Due to ongoing neoliberal educational reform, the modern university has departed from the values of self-cultivation, critical thinking, and democratic citizenship that characterized the traditional university. Discourse surrounding the fate of the humanities in this changed academic environment has highlighted two key challenges: a crisis of confidence and a crisis of relevance. By drawing on Max Weber’s concept of “disenchantment,” this article first examines the origins and progression of this crisis …

Google Earth: A Discussion On Colonial Inscriptions And The Role Of Digital Technology Experts In Development, Veronica Marie M. Araneta

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Google Earth: A Discussion on Colonial Inscriptions and the Role of Digital Technology Experts in Development

Cutting Across The Waves Of The Web: The "Care Of The Self" As An Ethical Response To Post-Truth Politics In Social Media, Roberto Paolo T. Sangil

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Uttering “facts are passé” captures the spirit of post-truth. However, it often leads to addressing facts rather than why they pass off as passé. “Post-truth” was dubbed the 2016 Word of the Year due to its increased usage during the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election in the same year. The issue presses at least twenty-six countries, including the Philippines, as they face widespread disinformation and misinformation. This paper offers an overview of the social media manipulation from Samantha Bradshaw and Philip Howard, and networked disinformation in the Philippines from Jonathan Corpus Ong and Jason Vincent Cabañes. This paper …

Circum-Navigating The World Island, Among Enemies, John T. Giordano

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Everyday our vision travels across time and space. We see images in the media about atrocities, disruptions, crises, famine, and wars. And in each case, our sense of injustice is awakened. We feel outrage and indignation based upon our ideals and value systems, which were formed through our traditions and religions. But in this age where the power of media and information is so powerful, what we see is often manufactured to appeal to our values. While these values circulate among the images we see in cyberspace, these manipulations are rooted in certain realities: geography, natural resources, and power relationships. …

The Meatpacking Industry Needs Stronger Worker Protections And Enhanced Oversight, India Luxton, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern

Center for Policy Research

Meatpacking plants are hazardous workplaces with high injury rates and poor working conditions, negatively impacting the health of the industry’s predominately immigrant and refugee workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated ongoing concerns in the industry, including the problems associated with consolidation and concentration, worker safety, and poor public health outcomes. This brief summarizes findings from a study that used data from 39 interviews with local, state, and federal officials and bureaucrats, worker advocates, and workers to analyze meatpacking policymaking and oversight during COVID-19. The authors find that a lack of industry oversight and decreased regulation contribute to unsafe environments, and injustices …

India’S Pride Marches Are Important Calls For Justice But Elitist – They Must Be Democratised, Swarupa Deb, Aniket Nandan

Popular Media

Dalit, non-English speaking, disabled and Indigenous queer people are still sidelined at these LGBTQIA+ events. This must change.

2024-11-27 Dishing With New College Of Arts And Sciences Dean Casper, Tristan Scott

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

2024-11-27 Little Shop Hops: Indian Summer, Keagen Brooks-Torres

The Spectator Online

No abstract provided.

Ang Maganda Sa Teolohiya, José De Mesa, Estela P. Padilla, Levy L. Lanaria, Rebecca G. Cacho, Yuri D. Cipriano, George N. Capaque, Timoteo D. Gener, V. Fullente Suarez

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Ang Maganda sa Teolohiya, José de Mesa, Estela P. Padilla, Levy L. Lanaria, Rebecca G. Cacho, Yuri D. Cipriano, George N. Capaque, Timoteo D. Gener