Working hard on the outside: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of The Biggest Loser Australia

The Biggest Loser (TBL) is a reality television weight-loss programme that positions itself as a response to the so-called “obesity crisis”. Research on TBL has thus far focussed on audience responses and its effect on viewers’ beliefs about weight loss. This article focuses instead on how meaning is constructed in TBL. We conducted a multimodal critical discourse analysis of a key episode of TBL (the 2012 Australian season finale) to examine how the textual, visual and auditory elements combine to construct meanings beyond the ostensible health messages. Although the overt message is that all contestants have worked hard, turned their lives around and been “successful”, examination of editing choices, lighting and colour, clothing and time spent on contestants allows us to see that the programme constructs varying degrees of success between contestants and provides accounts for these differences in outcomes. In this way the programme is able to present itself as a putative celebration of all contestants while prescribing narrow limits around what constitutes success. TBL reinforces an ideology in which “success” is a direct result of “the work” of weight loss (both physical and emotional), which can apparently be read straightforwardly off the body. TBL’s “celebration” of weight loss thus reproduces and strengthens the widespread view of fat bodies as physical manifestations of individual (ir)responsibility and psychological dysfunction, and contributes to the ongoing stigmatisation of obesity.     

侦查现代化论纲

侦查现代化是一个传统型侦查制度向现代型侦查制度转型和进化的历史过程,其根本精神要旨在于侦查程序制度的理性化。作为法制现代化研究的一个特定领域,侦查现代化研究通常有类型学、西方化、多元化三种范式。侦查现代化评价标准的导出语境是现代性理论有关理性精神的探索,作为现代性精神枢纽的三种理性历史范型,工具理性、价值理性、交往理性分别从不同的层面和角度对侦查现代化的评价标准提出了各自的实证性标准要求。结合社会进化所提出的以目的为取向的回应型法律发展目标,侦查现代化的基本趋向将是一条回应社会、以实现社会秩序、安全和自由为方向的进化路径。     

俄罗斯经济安全状况的动态分析——以两次世界金融危机的影响为例

在国际金融危机的影响下,转型国家的经济往往处于"不安全"的状态。如何保障转型国家的经济安全成为国内外理论界关注的热点。对俄罗斯国家经济安全状况进行动态分析:解析俄罗斯国家"经济安全临界值"指标体系,研究2009年5月出台的俄罗斯《新国家安全战略》的特点,对1998年、2008年两次国际金融危机中的俄罗斯经济安全状况进行实证分析与比较,探索俄罗斯国家经济安全的动态趋势,认真总结其经验与教训,为经济转型国家提供借鉴。     

新自由主义与世界经济危机

2008-2010年世界经济金融危机,并不单纯是由美国次贷市场的崩溃所引发的,其根源深植于新自由主义的资本主义。目前现存的国际制度体系与其说有助于全球秩序,不如说催生了全球混乱。应该从根本上重建日益相互依存的世界经济所赖以运行的制度架构。未来世界的经济,即相互关联的全球经济,需要的是能够进行包括政治在内的全球协调的制度。     

法律适用中的时间要素 中日东海争端关键日期和时际法问题考察

中日东海争端中真正的法律问题指向的是大陆架权利制度。这一制度在过去大半个世纪中发生了很大变化,在法律适用时必须考虑时间要素。时间要素中的关键日期、時际法和现行法分别解决的是何时为止的法律关系需要判断、法律关系建构及形成于前法和后法的整个过程时适用哪一个法律,以及法律关系仅形成于后法之后时适用哪一个法律这三个问题,其中关键日期和時际法是中日东海争端的焦点。考虑这两点后的适用法律仍然是1969年北海大陆架案所确定的自然延伸原则。     

Critical election and a new party system: Italy after the 2015 regional election

Although party system change has been widely explored, it is less so for the regional level. The article provides the first systematic attempt to discuss party system change at the regional level in Italy. Through a comprehensive overview of the five 1995–2015 regional elections, indicators of party system change, based on an original database, are explored. It will be showed that in the 2013–15 election cycle while party system fragmentation, volatility and recomposition reached their maximum high – parallel to what happened in 1995 – the level of bipolarism, one of the main features of Italian party system since the mid-1990s, dramatically dropped replaced by a three-pole configuration. These results, and their consistency with the relevant junctures at the national level in 1994 and 2013, may allow to state that a party system change at the regional level occurred and thus to consider 2013–15 elections as critical.     

Transforming Bloom’s Taxonomy into Classroom Practice: A Practical Yet Comprehensive Approach to Promote Critical Reading and Student Participation

This article presents the Critical Reading Topics approach, a pedagogical method employed to promote deep thinking in a variety of politics courses. Derived from principles articulated in active learning, critical thinking, backward design, and flipped classroom literature, this method utilizes Bloom’s Taxonomy as the scaffolding for students to create and evaluate pointed and relevant discussion topics written by themselves and their peers. By utilizing this method, faculty can increase students’ contemplation of the course texts, enhance students’ classroom contributions and quickly gauge the extent to which students understand the readings’ main ideas. This approach also enables students to gain authorship of the material, and it gives them additional in-class time to process the complex information they encounter. Evidence collected from six different political science courses is provided to document the approach’s effectiveness. Key findings include an improvement in the quality of relevant and focused discussion topics, a high percentage of students completing reading assignments with corresponding high quiz grades, and significant participation and recognition for all students, even those who are traditionally quiet in class.     

Teaching Students to Engage with Evidence: An Evaluation of Structured Writing and Classroom Discussion Strategies

In their transition to college, students often struggle to identify and make connections between the main arguments, evidence, and empirical findings of articles from academic journals commonly assigned on political science syllabi. Which active learning techniques are most effective for teaching students to recognize and evaluate social science evidence? To address this question, we conducted an experiment with students from two first-year writing seminars in political science. Students were randomly assigned to either an in-class writing activity or a group discussion, both of which required them to summarize an article’s use of evidence. We find limited evidence that group discussions are more effective for teaching students to engage with evidence.     

The rough guide to love: romance,history and sexualization in gendered relationship advice

Sexualization is changing the way we think about romantic love. According to recent research, young people are increasingly confronted by narrowing ideals of sexual attractiveness making romantic intimacy increasingly difficult forcing a choice between ‘raunch or romance’. This article investigates the alleged distinction between romance and sexualization, in the process challenging claims that the current crisis of sexualization is a product of societal change in late modernity. Responding to a call to consider sexualization from a hitherto neglected historical perspective, the paper employs critical discourse analysis to identify the formation of gendered meanings and practices in How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter, a late medieval advice text for young women, and twenty-first-century advice from the MyBliss website. Focusing on sexualized clothing, contact with others, reputation and social status, the paper argues that in both medieval and modern advice, discourses of romantic love and sexualization are mutually dependent. In addition, similarities between medieval and modern advice reveal that our current sexualization crisis is not solely a product of modern life, but is part of a longer pattern of gender normativity and inequality.