What is Flint? Place,storytelling, and social media narrative reclamation during the Flint water crisis

ABSTRACT

The Flint Water Crisis became a national news story in January of 2016, when major publishers such as The New York Times began covering the story. In the same month, an influx of social media activism occurred in response to the crisis, with citizens developing hashtag campaigns such as #FlintFwd in order to disseminate news and stories from a citizen’s perspective; these campaigns often positioned Flint positively ? as a recovering community ? rather than a city in the middle of a public health crisis, and often addressed not a national public but a local audience. This paper considers Flint-based social media activity to investigate the emergence of place-based activism within the ostensibly global network of social media. In doing so, it identifies three key themes; 1) leveraging social media to forward a critique of deficient journalistic storytelling; 2) using the affective process of storytelling via social media to claim authority over their own material offline existence, and 3) using place-based storytelling to implicate others as witnesses via the global network of social media. These themes coalesce around a distinctly critical logic of connectivity. This logic extends the notion of connectivity articulated by Van Dijck and Poell [2013. Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14.] and the strategies of platform activism explored by Tufekci [2017. Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven: Yale University Press.] to explain how social media works to expose discrepancies between the public story of the water crisis and material, lived conditions of Flint, rendering visible a discursive identity of Flint thus far unrecognized.     

Toward a sociology of global comparative placemaking

I call for a globally informed sociology of comparative placemaking that integrates historical and contemporary processes and includes the ephemeral, institutional, and personal. By placemaking, I am referring to the explicit or tacit cooperation among people to create, maintain, and give meaning to places in space through bodily occupation given differential resources and constraints. I review select place, space, and community-based literature about urban, Black, migrant, LGBTQ, and international populations to think about how we can build upon and integrate multiple theoretical, methodological, and epistemological insights to form an explicit placemaking research agenda. A US focus on neighborhoods contrasts with a comparative examination of global urban networks, social polarization, and transformation of the built environment in the interdisciplinary field of global urban studies (Ren, 2018). I argue for a placemaking research agenda that bridges insight from US Urban Sociology with Global Urban Studies to consider how various structures and actors constrain and facilitate place projects. With a globally reaching and comparatively informed sociology of placemaking, we can illuminate our multi-structured story of place and agency in context. We can answer questions about how and why we co-create and are simultaneously disciplined by the process of creation.     

蒙古族“风水宝地出英雄”母题之历史文化渊源

“风水宝地出英雄”,这是蒙古族地名传说的主要母题之一。本文立足于蒙古族地名传说中的英雄与故乡之间的关系,通过对其传统文化渊源、社会历史根源等诸层面的分析,认为该母题是在科尔沁特殊的社会历史条件下产生的,是蒙古人故乡崇拜与英雄崇拜相结合的产物。     

贾岛为僧及还俗时间地点考

贾岛出家及还俗的时间地点问题是贾岛生平仕历研究的一个重要问题。通过对现有史料记载以及贾岛等人诗文的考证分析,可知贾岛贞元九年(793)在北岳恒山出家为僧,时年15岁。后曾住洛阳石楼及嵩山一带。贞元十七年(801)在石楼与韩愈初次相识。元和六年(811)春在洛阳又遇到时任河南县令的韩愈,同年秋跟随韩愈赴长安准备应进士举,但并未马上还俗。冬十一月返回家乡范阳,处理僧俗事务。至迟于次年即元和七年(812)春还俗并参加进士考试,时年34岁。     

Person, Perception, and Place: What Matters to Health and Quality of Life

Interest in understanding how characteristics associated with where people live, in addition to the characteristics of the people themselves, affect health outcomes has risen sharply in recent years. While much of the research examining this question focus on teasing apart effects of place and individual on outcomes, less attention has been paid to examining how individuals’ perceptions of where they live may provide some clues to better understanding the influence of place on outcomes. We present findings from analysis undertaken that incorporate the subjective responses of individuals, residing in three socially contrasting neighbourhoods, to their local environment. Our first question addressed whether perceptions related to neighbourhood and city of residence matter to self rated health and quality of life independent of individual characteristics, while the second question examined whether the perceptions and individual characteristics are modified by the neighbourhood socio-economic context. Our results show that perceived neighbourhood characteristics, in addition to individual sociodemographic factors, are significant correlates of self rated health and quality of life. Moreover, we show that the type of perceived neighbourhood characteristics and the magnitude of their influence on self rated health and quality of life vary depending on whether they live in high- versus low-socioeconomic status neighbourhoods.

大江健三郎的文学“返乡”原因初探

故乡是大江健三郎在几十年文学生涯中不断书写的对象.故乡是想象力的源泉,是自卑情结的宿命之地,是大江打开文学新局面的必然选择.     

苏州地名源流考

苏州古称勾吴,亦称工吴、句吴、攻吴、姑苏。约公元前11世纪,泰伯、仲雍自陕西“南奔”,建立勾吴,其后裔被周武王封为吴伯。其南奔路线,最有可能取“商於古道”,奔至今江苏晋江市一带筑城族居,后与古越部落融合,创造了文明程度不亚于中原文化且具地域特色的“湖熟文化”。吴国建都后,不断向东南迁徙,最终定都于姑苏（今苏州古城）。姑苏之“苏”,极可能为越语城邑台、宫地名。秦置会稽郡,治吴县,后有吴州、苏州之称,皆有历史文化渊源可考。     

西部山区农民易地扶贫搬迁意愿的影响因素

从现在到2020年是打赢脱贫攻坚战的关键时期,从农民自身角度研究搬迁意愿,对加快实施易地扶贫移民搬迁具有重要意义。研究依据西方微观人口迁移理论：地方效用理论、计划行为理论和效价[CD*2]期望理论,整合构建了中国国情下由政府引导的易地扶贫搬迁意愿的理论分析框架。以陕南移民搬迁为例,在验证性因子分析的基础上,运用有序Logit模型和最优尺度模型对理论假设进行检验。结果显示：①心理因素、政策和预期因素、环境因素对搬迁意愿具有显著影响 ②控制变量中家庭人口数、非农劳动力比例、家庭成员求学婚姻等控制变量与搬迁意愿显著相关;③没有搬迁的主要的顾虑是搬迁后找不到工作、城镇生活成本高、搬迁成本高、搬迁后的适应等问题。研究建议政府部门在搬迁补助、就业安置、搬迁后适应等方面加大支持力度,增强搬迁的信心。     

Young Children as Wayfarers: Learning about Place by Moving Through It

This article describes the walking and moving of young children around places. It is based on an ethnographic study of children aged between 24 and 36 months visiting a museum. Drawing on Ingold's (2007) concept of wayfaring, the author argues movement through place creates embodied, tacit ways of knowing and experiencing the world. This embodied and tacit knowledge is not well‐accounted for in dominant models of how young children learn. In this study, wayfaring both enabled the children to learn about places and routes, and led to the development of traditions, in which collective meanings and actions were attached to particular locations.     

Place attachment among children in a street situation in Pelotas,Brazil

This article explores the processes which affect street children and youths’ relationships with the place called the ‘streets’. The street as a place to live is violent and hostile. However, street dwellers aspire to see the street environment positively. In fact, being able to establish a positive relationship with the street, to become attached to it, is crucial for coping within it. In this research, longitudinal qualitative data concentrating on processes were produced time-geographically with 19 street children and youths in the Brazilian town of Pelotas. The analyses of this research reveal that attachment changes over time instead of remaining static. Examples from the streets demonstrate how the human–environment relationship is shaped by constantly changing encounters of physical, social and mental (f)actors. This article stresses the importance of individual life experiences and goals for the attachment processes and for what positively affects the attachment.