Both democratic and undemocratic regimes consult the elite class, which shapes the government’s practices to ensure legitimacy. This study examines whether elite consultation contributes to civil society participation in Africa by analyzing panel data for 48 African countries from 2005 to 2023 and employing panel regression, fixed effects specifications, panel quantile regression, robustness checks, and Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel Granger non-causality tests. The article analyzes civil society participation (CSP) as the dependent variable and elite consultation (EC), political and social integration (PSI), and engaged society (ES) as explanatory variables established through a hybrid theoretical framework that combines elite theory and pluralist theory. Elite theory explains how politically, economically, and socially influential actors shape governance agendas, while pluralist theory explains the role of organized societal groups in widening participation and accountability. The findings show that EC is positively and significantly associated with CSP across the lower, median, and upper quantiles of participation. ES also shows a consistent positive relationship with CSP across the distribution. PSI has a weaker effect and becomes statistically significant mainly at higher levels of civil society participation. The Granger test further suggests that EC can predict future CSP, while PSI does not show similar evidence. The study argues that elite consultation should not be treated only as elite capture or manipulation. Under conditions of openness, accountability, and societal engagement, consultation with influential actors can support the expansion of civic space and democratic participation.
Research on stigma faced by obese women is prevalent but less is known about the stigmatizing experiences and coping strategies of obese men. The role of gender in both the experiences and adaptations to stigma for men is understudied. This interview study reveals that self-identified obese men frequently experience sizeism and feel stigmatized as a result of their weight. The men’s narratives reveal (1) their desires to be considered appropriately masculine, (2) the ways in which their bodies and the stigma they experience challenge their masculinity, and (3) how dominant conceptions of gender shape their coping strategies. Obese men in our sample were strategic in the ways they chose to cope. The men indicated that losing weight was the most effective strategy for reducing stigma, seeing that they embraced dominant ideals for male bodies and did not have the social power to fight stigmatization. When weight loss was not a feasible option, all of the men avoided situations where they might experience prejudice and discrimination that would further damage their masculinity.
Artificial intelligence now lets the living send the voices of the dead into public life, whether through a courtroom recording or a political campaign. A grieving family or an advocacy group rebuilds a dead speaker and assigns the words the recreated voice will carry. Debates on griefbots and digital immortality have mapped the ethical strains yet leave unexamined the mechanism by which the living lend a posthumous voice public authority. This article introduces anticipatory selection, the operation by which the living fix the wording and the scene of a reconstructed voice before any word is heard. Large language models and simpler cloning tools generate speech under conditions arranged in advance, so the dead arrive already cast in a chosen role. Because authority for the speaker gathers across many separate hands, no lone author answers for the result, and the figure named can no longer reply. The governing issue is one of jurisdiction, of the terms that settle which of the dead may speak in public. Authenticity has ceased to be the point. Because the living now hold those terms, the public that receives the return may fairly demand that whoever composed the voice account for the choice.
This study investigates societal participation in the governance of fourth-generation science and technology parks (STPs), focusing on how society is represented, where its presence manifests itself, which actors it interacts with, and how the quality of this participation is characterized. Methodologically, it adopts a qualitative multiple-case approach in which secondary data are used to map fourth-generation STPs in Latin America and identify analytically relevant cases, while primary data support an in-depth and contextually grounded analysis of the selected cases, HIDS—International Hub for Sustainable Development and distritotec. The analysis examines societal participation at the institutional, processual, and actions-and-outcomes levels, considering the economic, sociocultural, environmental, and knowledge dimensions. The findings show that, among the 91 STP cases mapped in Latin America, only five approximate the fourth-generation conception and, even among these, none presents society across all levels of governance. The in-depth analysis of HIDS and distritotec identified local citizens, non-governmental organizations, and the creative class as the main representations of society. However, this presence does not occur across all STP dimensions and is broader in distritotec than in HIDS. Interactions occur mainly with universities and governments, while relations with firms remain limited. In terms of quality, participation is predominantly characterized as consultation, with occasional instances of limited participation and co-creation in distritotec. Thus, the results challenge normative interpretations that assume the incorporation of society to be sufficient without problematizing its conceptual foundations and operationalization.
The contemporary literature and film (CLF) frequently use non-linear narration, disconnections, symbolism, imagery, and various perspectives of narration to increase the engagement of the audience and to convey complex social issues. In this paper, the audience-adisting, emotional-adisting, understanding, immersion, interactivity, and social awareness aspects of the relationship between techniques of narration and aesthetics in contemporary literature and film are examined. A structured questionnaire was employed for a quantitative survey, which was conducted among 421 professionals from the literature and film sectors, such as directors, screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, and authors. The positive associations were between non-linear narrative structure (NNS) (β = 0.262), narrative perspective (NP) (β = 0.266) and emotional engagement (EE), symbolism and imagery (SI) with understanding (UN) (β = 0.294), fragmented storytelling (FS) with immersion and interactivity (II) (β = 0.285), with a significance level of p < 0.001, and well-crafted narratives (WN) and social awareness (SA) (β = 0.209, p < 0.05). The other constructs mediating were also found to be significant for contemporary literature and film (CLF), namely understanding (UN) (β = 0.202), emotional engagement (EE) (β = 0.195), social awareness (SA) (β = 0.163), and immersion and interactivity (II) (β = 0.104). The results show that current storytelling methods are positively correlated with engagement, emotional connection, understanding, immersion, interactivity, and social awareness among the respondents. The findings support the concept of innovative storytelling strategies in audience experience formation in the context of modern literature and film.
