The Ebb and Flow of Environmentalism

This essay examines the pattern of ebb and flow in the environmental movement in the United States. Although the movement has experienced periods of expansion and contraction over the last century, environmentalism has sustained significant mobilization with the evolution of its organizational forms and tactics. Mass demonstrations and other forms of public protest defined the emergence of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s and early 1970s, and grassroots action remains important, particularly in response to the urgency of climate change. However, the movement has also relied increasingly on institutionalized organizational forms and conventional tactics such as litigation and lobbying. Some critics argue that decentralized networks and disruptive tactics are essential for inspiring a new era of impassioned environmental activism, while others contend that the complexity of current environmental problems requires more formalized structures and focused legislative advocacy. We conclude that the diversity of organizational forms and activities in the environmental movement has maintained the movement over many decades, and that this diversity can aid in effecting comprehensive change.     

(Dis)locating nations in the World Cup: football fandom and the global geopolitics of affect

The World Cup, as a tournament that pits national teams against one another, initially seems to be a site where support for sports is tied to nations. However, situating this sporting event at the intersection of discourses of globalization, transnational circulation of capital and populations, and theories of fandom, our examination of diasporic populations found that the choice is not a simple one between ‘origin nation’ and ‘residence nation.’ Instead, the decision of which team to support relies much more on an attenuated, complex notion that we call transnational affinity. We examine this concept in relation to the context of transnational flow of players, media, spectators, and capital, contending that locating nations or national preference in the World Cup requires understanding the contemporary de- or trans-nationalization of not only sports but identity itself beyond the binary of national and global.     

Tinder and humanitarian hook-ups: the erotics of social media racism

In March 2014, at the height of the popularity of the hook-up application Tinder, The Guardian published the “Seven Shades of Cliché” of user profiles claiming that Humanitarians of Tinder are the “creepiest ticket yet to laidsville.” Humanitarians of Tinder are Tinder users (a hook-up application) who have selected to present images of themselves in humanitarian or volunteer settings outside of the West (or Global North, developed world). With a Tumblr devoted to this subgroup of Tinder users, and mainstream media outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, and the feminist blog Jezebel following this story, Humanitarians of Tinder evoke dialogue about the intersections of sexiness and racialized benevolence. This article takes seriously Humanitarians of Tinder to think through the connections between social media hook-ups, racial affect, feminist studies humanitarianism, and racisms in development. It asks: why do people use humanitarian photos to generate hook-ups on social media? How does holding an African baby make someone “hot”?     

An empirical assessment of writing and research proficiency in HBCU social work students

ABSTRACT

Lack of proficiency in writing and research among social work students has increasingly concerned social work educators and practitioners. Given the significance of written communication with clients and emphasis on evidence-based practice in the field of social work, it is critical to assess students’ competence in both writing and research. However, deficit-based approaches to assessing writing and research competence have disadvantaged students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This pilot study aims to assess writing and research proficiency of HBCU master’s of social work (MSW) students through empirical analysis of their capstone papers and surveys from educators to provide implications for developing a writing and research manual for social work programs at HBCUs. Ten capstone papers were randomly selected and qualitatively analyzed; nine faculty and one field supervisor completed the survey, and their respondents were analyzed using cross-case analysis. Analyses of the capstone papers identified two themes for writing and research domains, respectively: (1) weakness in developing statements and lack of knowledge of writing style and (2) plagiarism and lack of understanding of research structure. Moreover, analyses of the surveys revealed four themes regarding assessment of writing and research skills among students struggling with basic writing mechanics, indicating that HBCU MSW students may have potential and capacity for learning, as evidenced by their ideas and critical thinking skills. These findings suggest both teaching- and research-oriented programs could employ the proposed writing and research assessment manual, as well as a writing and research lab/center for improving writing and research skills among their students.     

A Population‐Based Study of Alcohol Use in Same‐Sex and Different‐Sex Unions

The present study advances research on union status and health by providing a first look at alcohol use differentials among different‐sex and same‐sex married and cohabiting individuals using nationally representative population‐based data (National Health Interview Surveys 1997–2011, N = 181,581). The results showed that both same‐sex and different‐sex married groups reported lower alcohol use than both same‐sex and different‐sex cohabiting groups. The results further revealed that same‐sex and different‐sex married individuals reported similar levels of alcohol use, whereas same‐sex and different‐sex cohabiting individuals reported similar levels of alcohol use. Drawing on marital advantage and minority stress approaches, the findings suggest that it is cohabitation status—not same‐sex status—that is associated with elevated alcohol rates.     

Curating the Soul: Foucault's concept of hupomnemata and the digital technology of self-care

This paper explores how online actions such as the practice of digital self-writing shape our offline identity. We start with an examination of the concept of hupomnemata – a practice of self-writing in which notes are kept as a ‘material record of things read, heard, or thought’ in the intent of shaping the self [Foucault (1997). Self writing. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics, subjectivity and truth. The essential works of Foucault, 1954–1984. Volume 1 (pp. 207–222). New York, NY: The New Press p. 209] – before arguing that the practice of digital content curation can be understood as a modern-day variant of the Greco-Roman hupomnemata. Although the work of the digital curator is conducted online, this paper positions contemporary curatorial practices as acts of self-exploration, self-cultivation, and self-care, which nourish offline identity and which ultimately work to shape the offline, corporeal self.     

Power of the First Hour

Abstract

In 2012, the NGO Save the Children launched its No Child Born to Die campaign with the tagline, “Breastfeeding Saves Lives.” The press release explains that in the first hours and days after a baby is born, their mother produces colostrum, a substance known to improve immunity, which must be delivered to infants in the first sixty minutes of life; this is referred to as “the power of the first hour.” Invoking a sense of urgency and a crisis of infant mortality, which breastfeeding is positioned to resolve, the campaign cites staggering medical statistics of infant deaths in the campaign targets of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and also Northern Indigenous and Inuit reserves in Canada. More than misrepresenting racialized women in the developed world as uneducated on infant health, childcare and child rearing and as lacking agency and empowerment, the campaign mobilizes the erroneous conflation of medical science, morality, capitalism and public health – a linkage typically mobilized by the development industry to the detriment of globally marginalized women. In order to understand how this conflation is mobilized to manufacture crisis at the expense of examining the root causes of infant mortality globally, we collect theories of crisis temporalities to develop a “feminist politics of crisis.”     

Detection of structurally homogeneous subsets in graphs

The analysis of complex networks is a rapidly growing topic with many applications in different domains. The analysis of large graphs is often made via unsupervised classification of vertices of the graph. Community detection is the main way to divide a large graph into smaller ones that can be studied separately. However another definition of a cluster is possible, which is based on the structural distance between vertices. This definition includes the case of community clusters but is more general in the sense that two vertices may be in the same group even if they are not connected. Methods for detecting communities in undirected graphs have been recently reviewed by Fortunato. In this paper we expand Fortunato’s work and make a review of methods and algorithms for detecting essentially structurally homogeneous subsets of vertices in binary or weighted and directed and undirected graphs.