Challenging the Authority of the Medical Definition of Disability: an analysis of the resistance to the social constructionist paradigm

This article attempts to explain why the social constructionist paradigm has failed to replace the medical model in American disability theory. The social movement led by American disability activists attempted to reframe the definition of disability using a minority group model based on the social constructionist paradigm. This paper argues that the disability movement was unable to successfully advance the social constructionist paradigm because the activists accepted the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990) despite its ideological basis in the medical model of disability, and the social constructionist theory does not adequately account for the importance of structural constraints to redefinition.     

Challenging intolerance

Social identity is multilayered and complex. Schools, communities, and nations can implement structures and approaches that help youth to understand one another and respect differences.     

Challenging local orthodoxies

Race and State in Capitalist Development: Comparative Perspectives by Stanley B. Greenberg     

Challenging a culture of racial equivalence

We live at a time when our understandings and conceptualizations of ‘racism’ are often highly imprecise, broad, and used to describe a wide range of racialized phenomena. In this article, I raise some important questions about how the term racism is used and understood in contemporary British society by drawing on some recent cases of alleged racism in football and politics, many of which have been played out via new media technologies. A broader understanding of racism, through the use of the term ‘racialization’, has been helpful in articulating a more nuanced and complex understanding of racial incidents, especially of people's (often ambivalent) beliefs and behaviours. However, the growing emphasis upon ‘racialization’ has led to a conceptualization of racism which increasingly involves multiple perpetrators, victims, and practices without enough consideration of how and why particular interactions and practices constitute racism as such. The trend toward a growing culture of racial equivalence is worrying, as it denudes the idea of racism of its historical basis, severity and power. These frequent and commonplace assertions of racism in the public sphere paradoxically end up trivializing and homogenizing quite different forms of racialized interactions. I conclude that we need to retain the term ‘racism’, but we need to differentiate more clearly between ‘racism’ (as an historical and structured system of domination) from the broader notion of ‘racialization’.     

Challenging the techno-politics of anonymity: the case of cryptomarket users

Anonymity is treated as a problem of governance that can be subject to technical resolution. We use the example of the darknet to critically examine this approach. We explore the background assumptions that have been made about anonymity as a quality of social life. We conceive of anonymity as a way of engaging and maintaining social relationships in an anonymous mode. We draw on a study of darknet ‘cryptomarket’ users who mainly use the darknet to buy and sell illicit drugs, discuss drug quality and share information on safe and effective use. We identify the personal satisfaction that comes from interacting anonymously online, the challenges this represents for maintaining trusted interactions and how they are overcome, and the combination of technology and action involved in maintaining anonymity. We argue that attempts to promote de-anonymising norms and technology are based on an erroneous understanding of what anonymity is.     

Challenging the Silence of the Mental Health Community on Adoption Issues

As traditional secrecy surrounding adoption has waned, the behavioral sciences, particularly the mental health community, have remained largely silent, particularly on postadoption issues. Reasons for this silence are suggested. Research on adoption is difficult to conduct. The mental health community may desire to see adoption as professional problem-solving and as a favor done to all involved. Problems in adoption thus represent both a failure on the part of those professionals and a favor gone bad. Fear that discussing adoption-related problems will lead to adoption itself being labeled as pathological is also likely operating to support the silence. Privacy issues for the adoptive and birth families are also important. Sexuality and childbirth have long been areas not sufficiently addressed, but with the addition of the illegitimacy common in adoption they are even more controversial. Issues of poverty, powerlessness, social class, and race also are difficult to face, as is the business aspect of adoption. Acknowledging the reasons for the silence may be the first step in addressing it. Other steps, such as continuing education programs and publication of information on postadoption issues are also suggested.     

Challenging the Darwin Skeptics: Examining Proevolutionist Media Persuasion

The socio-religious skirmishes known as the Evolution Wars may have major implications for global religion, education, and popular perceptions of science. These so-called wars have witnessed the rise of several media-vocal proevolutionist organizations, which have sought to challenge Darwin-skeptic ideas and enterprises. Such proevolutionist organizations include the atheistic Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, the religiously neutral National Center for Science Education, and the BioLogos Foundation Christian advocacy group. This study executes a content analysis of media produced by these leading proevolutionist organizations from 2009 to 2011 and gauges the occurrence rates of several persuasive cues associated with the Elaboration Likelihood Model. This exercise reveals ways in which certain persuasive elements are articulated throughout proevolutionist media, and juxtaposes these observations with data previously gathered concerning Darwin-skeptic materials.     

Challenging the international peacebuilding evaluation discourse with qualitative methodologies

Monitoring and evaluating international peacebuilding efforts have become more sophisticated over the past years, but still relies on managerial approaches that often do not capture the complexity of war, peace and the grey areas in between. The article argues that organizations should embrace qualitative approaches more widely and introduces ethnographic vignettes as one example to explain the complexity of post-conflict situations. By understanding the personal dimension, the life- and work-styles of international peacebuilders, the current evaluation discourse can become more meaningful-both for organizational learning and sustainable peace efforts on the ground. The article ends by highlighting some approaches that deserve more attention and that promise to help to critically enhance current and future debates about the evaluation of peacebuilding.     

Teen Mothers and Welfare Reform: Challenging the Boundaries of Risk

A major component of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) included policies directed to encouraging marriage while discouraging nonmarital births. Teen mothers were of particular concern as policymakers argued that there is a link between teenage childbearing and welfare receipt. This paper seeks to reframe the concept of at-risk teen mothers by looking to the socially construction of boundaries—an imagery that brings to the forefront the complex relations between young mothers and welfare reform policy. From this standpoint, we discuss how welfare reform might address the multiple issues facing teen mothers including housing, education and training, child care, transportation, health, healthy relationships and parenting skills.     

Challenging the 3.0 GPA eligibility standard for public relations internships

Analysis of internship grades earned by 132 public relations and communication majors registered for internship credit at a major Northeastern university show that students with a 2.7 grade point average (GPA) predictably do as well as students with a GPA ranging from 3.0 to 3.3.Accordingly, it is recommended that the GPA cutoff point for internship eligibility at this school be lowered from the previous 3.0 standard to 2.7. This case study demonstrates the value of measuring actual performance against idealized standards.In addition to his interest in the internship curriculum, Temple University Associate Professor Michael L. Maynard’s areas of research include mass media analysis, the relationship between mass communication and culture as well as textual and semiotic analyses of Japanese television and print advertising.     

Challenging disenchantment The discreet charm of occult TV

Abstract

Occult imagery is widespread in the contemporary global mediaverse, including in TV programs such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Sightings, and The X-Files. This article considers the popular cultural presence of the otherworldly and the magical in relation to the strand of theorizing, beginning with Max Weber and taking a postmodern turn in Jean Baudrillard, that treats the cultures of Western modernity as disenchanted ones. In particular, it turns to Baudrillard's concept of seduction, which, while generating controversy in cultural theory circles, has had only a limited impact in media studies. The article argues that 'tele-visions of the otherworldly' constitute an enchanting challenge to modernist dis-illusionment, serve as a counterpoint to Baudrillard's 'obscene' media hyperrealism, and promote forms of imagination that, like magic realist literary fiction, undermine certain drives toward mastery associated with the dominant knowledge formations of Western modernity. TV's occult imagery can thus serve as the site of an unsettled and unsettling critical imagination, a skeptical popular subjunctivity.     

Challenging hegemonic masculinity by performance of ethnic habitus

The aim of this article is to examine the effect of ethnic habitus, in a specific setting, on the construction of alternative dominant masculinity and the challenge of hegemonic masculinity. Based on Bourdieu's notion of habitus, the article will show that in a specific ethno‐cultural setting, characterized by ethnic habitus, marginalized groups construct and perform situated dominant masculinity. The study is based on the military, which is a central organization for the construction of masculine identities, and will focus specifically on combat soldiers, who constitute the most significant model of idealized masculinity. Based on semi‐structured interviews, this micro‐level study demonstrates the part of self‐performance in the construction of masculinity and the challenge of hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, illustrating the performance of worthy dominant masculinity by inferior ethnic groups in effect exposes the separation between the social status and the masculine status. Separation between social status and masculine status gives emphasis to masculinity as relational and contextual social practice and enables alternative dominant masculinities to be detected that challenge hegemonic masculinity within different settings.