Urban ecosystems and ecosystem services in megacity Dhaka: mapping and inventory analysis

Urban Ecosystems - Urban ecosystems and ecosystem services have received little research attention in South Asian countries where rapid urban development is currently problematic. We developed a...     

Urban and peri-urban aquaculture as an immediate source of food fish: Perspectives of Dhaka City,Bangladesh

This paper describes the present status of aquaculture activities in Dhaka City and its surrounding areas including the system of fish marketing and distribution and environmental and socioeconomic issues. Dhaka City contains over 10 million people and is expanding day by day. Demand of fish in the last 10 years has increased as a result of increases in population and income levels. The annual per capita consumption of fish is reported to drop by 0.5 kg since 1985. The reason for this decline is increased prices and decreased supply of fish. Fish supply to the city comes from catch in the rivers-estuaries and floodlands of Dhaka district, neighboring districts, imports from other areas and aquaculture in surrounding areas of the city. Considerable quantities of fish are imported from India, Myanmar and Thailand. Seasonal patterns are common both in supply and consumption of fish. Along with traditional rural household aquaculture, in recent years, urban and peri-urban aquaculture has also been popular. Three broad types of aquaculture activities are found in and around Dhaka City; these are polyculture of carp in ponds, monoculture of catfishs in ponds, and pen and cage aquaculture in open waters. The carp includes both Indian major carp and Chinese carp and some minor carp. The catfish group includes mainly Thai pangas (Pangasius sutchi). Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) is also widely popular among the farmers. The technology used for aquaculture is improved extensive to semi-intensive. Increasing demand for fish in the city markets has encouraged the expansion of peri-urban aquaculture with a corresponding increase in the proportion of farmed fish in the markets.     

Yearning for faraway places: the construction of migration desires among young and educated Bangladeshis in Dhaka

These days, the imagined destinations of ever more people, particularly in the ‘global South’, are not where they were born but elsewhere. Using a case study of educated (lower) middle-class youth in Dhaka, this paper attempts to demonstrate that for many ‘aspiring migrants’, the yearning for leaving is a metaphor for disappointment and disengagement rather than the first step towards transnational migration. Economic growth, rapid urbanisation and the increasing investment in education infest the emerging urban (lower) middle-class youth with new ‘modern’ lifestyle desires that cannot be fulfilled in their home country and generate a sense of disengagement with Bangladesh. The paper focuses in particular on how the – culturally embedded – imaginations of foreign places link up to personal (re-)evaluations of local lives. Nearly all informants explained how local socio-economic, political and existential insecurities made them yearn for ‘safe’ places where their dreams could be fulfilled.     

The production of space in the negotiation of water and electricity supply in a bosti of Dhaka

Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DWASA) and Dhaka Electricity Supply Company (DESCO) do not provide any direct utility supply in the informal settlements of Dhaka where more than one third of the total city population live. Large numbers of the population thus access utilities from local vendors who maintain relationships with administrative staff of the authorities concerned, political leaders and influential community leaders, thus making the supply available in the settlement and continuing their informal utility business. Access to these utilities is negotiated in the continuously changing arrangements of a complex hybrid institutional sphere and under informal regulation. In this process, the changing nature of the state and urban groups and the complicated and dynamic relationship between and within urban groups indicate that urban governance operates in a ‘third space’ of constant negotiation and contestation. Against this background this paper presents the informal practice of water and electricity supply by a local association, the regulations in place, and the inter-linkage between different forms of regulatory space whose presence is a necessary condition for the continuation of the informal practice.     

Bihari Muharram processions in Dhaka city: religious performance as a means of territorialising urban public space by a disenfranchised ethnic minority

The Biharis in Bangladesh are a heavily persecuted ethnic minority confined to slum like camps for nearly five decades. Using data from ethnographic research carried out in a Bihari camp and its surrounding areas in Dhaka city, this visual essay examines the ways in which the Biharis use religious processions to claim visibility, assert community identity and territorialise urban public space in a city that systematically denies them access to citizen rights.     

Conditional Families and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, and Queer Youth Homelessness: Gender,Sexuality, Family Instability,and Rejection

Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle‐class families. In this 18‐month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the conditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth's experiences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.     

Religion,Spirituality, and Thriving: Transcendent Narrative,Virtue, and Telos

A theory is proposed to explain how religion/spirituality (R/S) is related to positive youth development and thriving. The concept of telos is employed to define thriving as continued growth through strength‐based living that leads to contributing to one's communities and living out one's ethical ideals. Virtue development is proposed as a primary process by which R/S promotes thriving. Virtues are defined as hybrid personality units emerging when characteristic adaptations are given meaning by a transcendent narrative identity. R/S contributes to virtue formation through the ideological, social, and transcendent contexts embedded within religion by providing opportunities to grow both the characteristic adaptations and transcendent narrative identities necessary for virtue formation in youth and, ultimately, thriving. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Myth,Romance, Philosophizing,and Irony,and the Social Studies Curriculum

Sixth-grade students are challenged in understanding social studies content relevant to particular contexts, then connecting the content and context to their contemporary lives while communicating new knowledge to peers and teachers. Using political cartoons published after September 11, 2001, one sixth-grade social studies teacher designed probing questions and developed meaningful learning experiences relating historical events to current concerns of the students supplementing their curriculum and textbook. Through verbal and written interactions, the students demonstrated in-depth understanding of September 11, 2001, and consequential global ramifications. Subsequently, this teacher used the same strategy to engage learners in additional historical events effectively integrating social studies and literacy to introduce conflict analysis, increase critical thinking, expand text connections, and enhance literacy skills.     

Digitization,the Internet,and the Arts: eBay,Napster, SAG,and e-Books

Via four case studies we explore the extent to which digitization is transforming how people access and engage with the arts. The first case study is the online auction house eBay. We focus on a unique system whereby millions of users rate each other's integrity and reputations in a digital venue via a transparent system open to all users and visitors alike. The second case study examines the Screen Actors Guild strike against the advertising industry, which drew attention to the potential for and limitation of the replacement of human actors by digitized replicas. Third, we focus on e-books in the context of the prediction that most books, music and film entertainment will eventually be distributed electronically to the average household. The fourth case study analyzes the Napster debate over file sharing and duplication of online music. We focus on the ability of Napster to create a huge community of users sharing their own copies of digital music. From this point of view Napster represented a uniquely efficient and large-scale dream, a modern form of the cooperation and sharing of property envisaged by classical anarchist philosophers of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, and as always in anarchistic uprisings, another class claimed proprietary ownership in the material being shared and saw in Napster mostly collective theft on the part of ordinary citizens. Three of these four case studies centrally involve ordinary people using the digital media in creative and innovative ways. We conclude by arguing, against those who are skeptical about the transforming power of digitization, that even in the short time that it has been widely available digitization has so increased people's ability to interact creatively with products that this amounts to a qualitative change which, over the next few decades, is likely to develop so far as to justify the label revolution.     

Lesbian,gay, bisexual,and transgender families and health

Research consistently demonstrates that family relationships are key determinants of health, but most research on health and families focuses on a heterosexual and cisgender context. Sexual and gender identities often are overlooked or erased in family and health research. We present an overview of the current state of research on LGBT families and health, using a life course approach and pointing to the ways that LGBT people's experiences of families occur within a broader social structural context, with implications for their health and the health of their family members. We focus on parenthood, parent–child ties, intimate relationships, and caregiving. We also identify two theoretical obstacles for studies of LGBT families and health as well as important research areas for moving forward, such as the inclusion of non‐binary and queer identities in our studies of family and health. Incorporation of LGBT and other queer families and family forms into our health research interrogates assumptions within family and health research and offers insight into how to move the field forward.     

Science,Critique, Authority,and Accountability

This essay is written in response to Fujimura and Holmes’s piece “Staying the Course,” published in the December 2019 special issue of Sociological Forum—Resistance in the Twenty-First Century     

Health,wellness, and workplace experiences of lesbian,gay, and bisexual social workers

Abstract

Using data from an online survey of 6,112 licensed social workers in 13?U.S. states, rates of reported behavioral health problems and service utilization, physical health problems, adverse childhood experiences, workplace stress, and compassion satisfaction were compared between heterosexual male, heterosexual female, gay/bisexual male, and lesbian/bisexual female respondents. Sexual minority workers reported far higher rates of mental health problems and service utilization, higher rates of physical problems, more frequent reporting of adverse childhood experiences, with no differences found between groups regarding workplace stress and compassion satisfaction. Minority stress theory and historical trauma are used as frameworks to conceptualize the findings.