Gendering Resistance: Multiple Faces of the Kurdish Women's Struggle

The article explores the Kurdish women's movement in Turkey by bridging two forms of resistance: those of guerrilla women fighters and of activist women. Based on my extensive ethnographic and archival research, I ask how women under conditions of war engage in different modes of resistance. In what ways does the “heroic resistance” of guerrilla women resonate with and/or contradict the everyday, “ordinary” struggles of activist women? The potent image of the Kurdish guerrilla woman that emerged in the early 1990s is constitutive of many other modes of political subjectivities, even among women who do not or cannot become guerrillas. One of those subjectivities is that of the activist woman. My analysis suggests that women's activism opens up a middle ground of action between “heroic” and “ordinary” resistance by reconciling revolutionary politics with everyday activism around gender‐based violence, democracy, and human rights. Although both revolutionary movement participants and scholars of revolutionary resistance often contrast the “ordinary” with the realm of armed resistance, this article challenges this dichotomy. I take the two realms of resistance—the ordinary and the heroic—as the core constituents of revolutionary resistance, and I reconsider the gendered interplay between them.     

Gender,age, and exclusion: a challenge to community organisations in Lima,Peru

This article examines the role of two successful grassroots women's organizations in empowering women in old age in Lima, Peru. These organizations include Comedores Populares (soup kitchens) and the Vaso de Leche (glass of milk) Program. The primary goal of both groups is poverty alleviation, specifically through improved nutrition. Through them, women have lobbied on issues such as provision of education and health services, and campaigned against the guerrilla insurgency of the 1980s and the early 1990s. However, evidence from three low-income settlements on the outskirts of Lima implied that no long-term support is available from these organizations to promote the welfare of elderly people. Also, the contribution that elderly members of households make to the work of the organizations is invisible and undervalued. Thus, these findings clearly suggest that even the most successful New Social Movements in Lima are also passive members of society in need of charity.     

THE OPTIMAL DEFENSE OF NETWORKS OF TARGETS

This paper examines a game‐theoretic model of attack and defense of multiple networks of targets in which there exist intranetwork strategic complementarities among targets. The defender's objective is to successfully defend all the networks and the attacker's objective is to successfully attack at least one network of targets. Although there are multiple equilibria, we characterize correlation structures in the allocations of forces across targets that arise in all equilibria. For example, in all equilibria the attacker utilizes a stochastic “guerrilla warfare” strategy in which a single random network is attacked. (JEL C72, D74)     

Internal communication: Definition,parameters, and the future

As an organizational function, internal communication is gaining in importance, meriting a special issue on the topic. This importance is evident in many recent efforts among practitioners in Europe and the US to seek recognition of this field as an independent domain. Scholarship on internal communication has not kept pace with these initiatives. This introduction to the special issue addresses several key issues related to this topic and presents findings from a Delphi study of the leaders of European associations on internal communication. Results of the study are fuzzy: respondents see internal communication as interdisciplinary management function integrating elements of human resources management, communication and marketing, but at the same time they see it primarily as a part of the organization's communication function that is simultaneously managerial and technical. However, they contend that internal communication is an independent research field.     

Narrating the Past,Enhancing the Present: The Associations Among Genealogical Communication,Family Communication Patterns,and Family Satisfaction

Using the theories of communicated narrative sense-making and family communication patterns as a basis, this study examined (a) the characteristics of family genealogists, (b) dimensions of genealogical communication, and (c) the extent to which such communication predicts both immediate and extended family satisfaction. Data were collected from 423 participants (recruited in classrooms and online) who completed an online survey. Results revealed four genealogical communication behaviors: (a) frequent engagement, (b) coherent perspectives (i.e., regarding family history), (c) personal research, and (d) dark side. Family communication patterns predicted these genealogical communication behaviors, which in turn predicted family satisfaction, with genealogical communication dimensions serving as significant mediators. Among the identified dimensions of genealogical communication, coherent perspectives served as a particularly consistent predictor and mediator regarding extended and immediate family satisfaction.     

Sexual Communication Between Early Adolescents and Their Dating Partners,Parents, and Best Friends

This study assessed early adolescents’ sexual communication with dating partners, parents, and best friends about six sexual health topics: condoms, birth control, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), pregnancy, and abstinence/waiting. Using a school-based sample of 603 youth (ages 12 to 15; 57% female; 46% Caucasian), we examined communication differences across demographic and developmental factors, tested whether communication with parents and best friends was associated with greater communication with partners, and examined associations between communication and condom use. More than half of participants had not discussed any sexual topics with their dating partners (54%), and many had not communicated with parents (29%) or best friends (25%). On average, communication was more frequent among adolescents who were female, African American, older, and sexually active, despite some variation in subgroups across partner, parent, and friend communication. Importantly, communication with parents and friends—and the interaction between parent and friend communication—was associated with increased communication with dating partners. Further, among sexually active youth, increased sexual communication with partners was associated with more frequent condom use. Results highlight the importance of understanding the broader family and peer context surrounding adolescent sexual decision making and suggest a possible need to tailor sexual communication interventions.     

Spousal Communication,Power, and Contraceptive Use in Burkina Faso,West Africa

Abstract

In most developing countries, despite increased knowledge and approval of family planning, contraceptive use is still low. Lack of spousal communication was identified as an important explanatory factor in the low level contraceptive use by spouses. This study describes the pathways of influence between spousal communication, power, and contraceptive use in Burkina Faso, West Africaa high fertility country with low prevalence of contraceptive use. The Burkina Faso society is patriarchal in which husbands have control over sexual and fertility matters and they extend authority over their wives on these issues and, therefore, the power dimension of the spousal communication model needs clarification. The data source for this paper was the 2003 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey. From the individual recode file, married respondents were selected for inclusion in the sample (n = 9,537) and for analysis. The independent variables were spousal communication and relative power. The dependent variables were contraceptive use and the effects of age, education, number of living children, wealth, and marriage types were adjusted for. Results show that education, wealth, place of residence, and religion are some of the correlates of inter-spousal communication about contraceptive use. Additionally, the data have revealed that spousal communication and marital power were important and significant predictors of contraceptive use, with relative marital power being the Stronger predictor of the two.     

Cultivating employee creativity through strategic internal communication: The role of leadership,symmetry, and feedback seeking behaviors

Using a survey of 405 full-time employees, this study examined how organizations’ internal communication influenced by leadership communication at the supervisory- and senior-levels impacts employee creativity and how employees’ feedback-seeking behaviors mediate these relationships. The results suggest that leadership communication at the supervisory and senior levels positively influence symmetrical internal communication system. The analysis also shows that symmetrical internal communication and leadership communication cause employees to seek more feedback from different interpersonal sources including supervisors, coworkers, and peers in other departments, which in turn enhances creativity. This paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for public relations and internal communication.     

Katabasis,adult betrayals and liminal identities in China Keitetsi’s Child Soldier: Fighting for My Life

In Child Soldier, China Keitetsi recounts her experiences as a child and a soldier during Yoweri Museveni’s guerrilla war against then Ugandan president, Milton Obote. Drawing on key debates on literary representations of katabasis, this paper examines Keitetsi’s portrait of adult betrayal and parental abuse of children at home, and as child soldiers. I argue that Child Soldier is a text that lends itself to a katabatic analysis, and that Keitetsi is a katabasist who frames her experiences as a child and a soldier “within the narrative structure of a descent into Hell and return” . I argue that “hellish” elements in the memoir are more than just incidental: they point to a world where tenderness and love have long given way to cruelty and cynicism, and where madness and violence and despair are the order of the day. I also draw on Sigmund Freud and Homi Bhabha’s notions of the unhomely, to suggest that the memoir introduces interesting parallels between the unhomeliness in the home and that brought on by the civil war. Subconsciously, then, examining the memoir under the tropes of katabasis and the unhomely allows us to view her life as floating in-between the child she wishes she should have been and the abused and rejected young woman she becomes.     

Relationship among Willingness to Listen,Receiver Apprehension,Communication Apprehension,Communication Competence,and Dogmatism

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether people vary in their willingness to listen and whether this variable has any relationship to dogmatism, receiver apprehension, Self-Perceived Communication Competence (SPCC), or communication apprehension. A refined version of the Willingness-To-Listen (WTL) instrument was used to test these relationships. The results indicated that the WTL scale is a reliable and valid measure of an individual's habitual propensity to listen. WTL was found to be positively related to communication skills and negatively related to receiver apprehension, sender-based communication apprehension, and dogmatism.     

Why Leadership Matters to Internal Communication: Linking Transformational Leadership,Symmetrical Communication,and Employee Outcomes

This study examines how organizational leadership influences excellent internal communication by building the linkage between transformational leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. The results showed that transformational leadership positively influences the organization's symmetrical communication system and employee–organization relationships. The effects of transformational leadership on employee relational outcomes are partially mediated by symmetrical internal communication. Symmetrical communication demonstrates large positive effect on the quality of employee–organization relationships, which in turn leads to employee advocacy. Effects of symmetrical internal communication on employee advocacy are fully mediated by employee–organization relationships. Significant theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

What's to come is more complicated: feminist visions of peace in Colombia

The years following the Colombian Congress’ 2016 approval of peace accords with the country’s oldest and largest guerrilla army have brought into stark relief Cynthia Enloe’s assertion that “wars don’t simply end, and wars don’t end simply.” As Colombia and the international community grapple with the complexity of constructing a society at peace, it is essential to listen to Colombian feminists’ visions of what a true and lasting peace would look like. While the feminist gains evinced by the accords represent a significant step forward, my research with feminist peace networks during the negotiations points to a still broader vision of peace that has not yet been embodied by the accords or their implementation. I argue that the antimilitarist, antineoliberal and antipatriarchal peace envisioned by feminist activists is more comprehensive, more transformative and more stable than that contained in the accords, and offer predictions of how feminists might pursue their vision in the post-accords reality.     

The Constitutive Relationship of Listening to Hope,Emotional Intelligence,Stress, and Life Satisfaction

Communication scholars conceptualize communication as constitutive of meaning, arguing that we must place communication first as a primary, fundamental explanation, not as a secondary phenomenon to be explained by psychological antecedents (Cooren, 2012; Craig, 1999; Hecht, 1993; Luhmann, 1992; Manning, 2014). The present study uses a constitutive communication approach to model the relationship of listening to the cognitive states of hope, emotional intelligence, stress, and life satisfaction. A path analysis model lends support to the constitutive communication perspective, indicating that listening styles are predictive of hope, emotional intelligence, stress, and life satisfaction.     

Commentary: new technologies,public relations,and democracy

This commentary is based on Hiebert's keynote address given to BledCom 2004, the 11th International Public Relations Research Symposium on “New Concepts and Technologies for Public Relations, Public Affairs, and Corporate Communication,” Bled, Slovenia, July 2, 2004. It suggests that the new communication technologies can save democracy by restoring dialogic and participatory communication in the public sphere, thus preserving a role for public relations as two-way communication rather than propaganda and spin. However, the pathway ahead for public relations is strewn with landmines.     

Insecure Attachment Predicts History of Divorce,Marriage, and Current Relationship Status

The goal of this research was to test the predictive ability of attachment styles and dysfunctional relational communication patterns to predict adults’ relationship status (i.e., single/partnered and ever-married/ever-divorced). Anxious and avoidant attachment styles and dysfunctional relational communication patterns (i.e., criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling) were predictors of relationship status in 413 adults who participated in an online survey. The results indicated that anxious and avoidant attachment styles significantly predicted both history of divorce and single versus partnered relationship status. The dysfunctional communication patterns did not explain a great deal of variance in relationship history and status above and beyond insecure attachment, although dysfunctional communication was significantly and consistently associated with insecure attachment. These results indicate that some of the individual characteristics that generate a risk for divorce might also pose a barrier to repartnering after a divorce.     

The Relations Between Parents' Smoking, General Parenting, Parental Smoking Communication, and Adolescents' Smoking

The present study examined whether the associations between general parenting practices (i.e., support, behavioral control, and psychological control) and parental smoking on the one hand and older and younger siblings' smoking on the other were mediated by parental smoking communication (i.e., frequency and quality of parent–adolescent communication concerning smoking-related issues). The focus of this paper was on examining whether these associations of parental actions and adolescents' smoking were different in older and younger siblings within the family. Participants were 428 Dutch families (mother, father, and their 2 adolescent siblings aged 13–17). The results of parent and adolescent reports indicated that general parenting practices and parental smoking were associated with parental smoking communication, which, in turn, was related with adolescent smoking. The magnitude of the associations between parenting and adolescent smoking did not differ between older and younger siblings. Supportive parents were generally more likely to engage in a high quality communication about smoking with their adolescent children; this was related to a lower likelihood to smoke. Parents who exerted psychological control were more likely to talk more frequently with their adolescents on smoking matters, which in turn, relates to a higher likelihood to smoke. Also, smoking parents were less likely to have high-quality parent–adolescent communication that relates to higher likelihoods to smoke. In general, the findings were similar across reporters. Implications for prevention are addressed.     

Assembly,Rhetoric, and Widespread Community: Mass Communication in Paul of Tarsus

This article claims that Paul of Tarsus is a significant figure in the history and theory of mass communication. Drawing on his letters to the Corinthians and other early groups of Christ-followers, I argue that Paul used eloquent mediated rhetoric to conceptualize local ritual practice in such a way that it could form the basis for widespread solidarity and mass community in a geographically expanding religious sect. This was a form of mass communication centered in dispersed bodily assemblies and radiating outward to encompass ever wider regions of a distended mass society. It hinged on the Body of Christ, which in Paul's letters became a space- and time-binding medium of mass communication that held together a dispersed society of the Christ-proclaiming faithful. Paul was essentially an early medium theorist, and I argue that his bifocal attention to local assembly and distant solidarity is instructive for both the study and social practices of mass communication today.     

Affective capitalism,humanitarianism and extractivism in Colombia: old and new borders for future times

Contemporary Colombian conjuncture encompasses two dynamics. These incorporate social, economic, political and cultural aspects, whose related rationalities are yet to be mapped out and understood in their complex and multi-layered dimensions and registers. On the one hand, as I will explain throughout the text, we have been witness to on-going peace talks between the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia guerrilla group, a whole set of practices of forgiveness, inaugurations of memory museums, the passing of the victims and land restitution law, as well as the recognition of victims and the effervescence of their movements and organizations. These factors have spiralled victims’ demonstrations and fuelled marches all over the country. On the other hand, there are increased rates of foreign investment in those regions that, until as little as a decade ago, were subject to appalling rates of internal displacement, massacres and disappearances, and which now constitute new borders where global capitalism has been able to reconfigure and increase its rates of capital accumulation. In this article, I analyse the processes referred to above and their complex relationships from the vantage point of a cultural studies interrogation of the affective and the popular, focusing on two Colombian regions: Montes de María and Mapiripán. My goal is to understand how different groups and actors are experiencing these processes in their everyday lives. Here, I include victims and their organizations but also government officials and entrepreneurs related to agro-industry initiatives – mentioned below – today refashioned within the new mantra of corporate responsibility. I want to understand the issue of where people are located and what they are doing, facing, consuming, or resisting in terms of these new challenges. Finally, I wish to offer an analytical study that can capture the everyday textures of these processes in a complex and concrete fashion.     

The rise and fall of collective identity in networked movements: communication protocols,Facebook, and the anti-Berlusconi protest

This paper explores the impact of communication protocols on the development of collective identity in networked movements. It focuses primarily on how communication protocols change patterns of interactions and power relationships among the constituents of social movements. The paper suggests that the communication protocols of commercial social networking media lead to organizational centralization and fragmentation in social movements by eroding one of the preconditions of collective identity, namely solidarity. The empirical material presented is part of a PhD dissertation on a political protest movement and their use of Facebook as a core communication and organizational platform. The data gathering is multi-methodological and relies on both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques in the form of a historical analysis of interaction patterns, and a content analysis of online conversations among activists.