Editors Discuss Women's Publications

IT was only about ten years ago that there were only a few of newspapers and periodicals about women in China. But China has seen a rapid development of newspapers and periodicals on women since it began the policy of reform and opening to the outside world. Today the All-China Women's Federation and local women's federations sponsor and publish 47 different publications about women and children, some of which have a circulation of more than one million. These colorful, influential women's newspapers and periodicals are now some of the most interesting publications in China. Why have these publications been so successful? Recently our staff reporter interviewed several women chief editors about their work. The following interviews are in their own words.     

Editors’ letter: New research and opportunities in public relations and visual communication

We are proud to present four articles exploring the intersections of public relations and visual communication as a way to move both fields forward, together and separately. The articles focus on health communication, crisis communication, social media, and corporate social responsibility, and the editors end with concrete suggestions for future research, including expanding theory and methodological applications.     

Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue — Bion: Here,There, and In Between

ABSTRACT

We introduce this special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, “Bion: Here, There, and In Between.”     

Significance of protesters’ words during Gezi Park protests: finding implicit meanings in sticky notes and tweets

Based on archival and qualitative field research, this paper describes how the philanthropic investments of the Max L. Rosenberg Foundation contributed to the emergence of the historic California Farm Worker Movement. The author argues that foundations do not always have articulated or clear-cut political agendas to dilute organizing campaigns; instead moments of agreement (and antagonism) emerge and are fluidly negotiated as points of convergence appear and disappear. This paper reveals the three critical periods in which the Max L. Rosenberg Foundation invested in farmworker organizations in California's Central Valley: the dustbowl migrant education period of the 1930–1940s, the self-help housing projects of the 1950s, and the early leadership training campaigns of the Farm Worker Movement of the 1960s. This paper makes a significant contribution to resource mobilization theory by showing how private funding of a particular social movement (and therefore perhaps others if examined) was most aligned with the goals of the movement at the open-ended idealist beginnings. This alignment ruptured during the heat of the late 1960s when demands were made on picket lines and through international boycotts and became most problematic in the wake of significant defeats when movement organizations reshaped and professionalized themselves around foundation grants and ceased to represent their original constituents.     

The new ‘sustainable communitarian’ logging schemes and their critique inside multiple-use conservation areas in the Brazilian Amazon: preliminary notes

Deforestation has risen sharply in Brazil since 2012, and conservation areas are facing increased pressure. This article studies the rise of so-called ‘sustainable’, ‘communitarian’, and/or ‘cooperative’ logging schemes inside multiple-use conservation areas in the Amazon. The findings, based on fresh field research in Acre and Pará, reveal conflicts, problems, and risks associated with logging schemes, although they are portrayed in the international timber trade as certified and socio-environmentally sustainable solutions that help conservation. However, the expansion of logging presents a danger for curtailing forest degradation, fires, and corruption that is linked to the fast returns from sale of timber, especially inside conservation areas that have been mostly intact until now. There is an urgent need to change the strategy of promoting logging as a key source of income for forest-dwellers, and a need to change the policies allowing the expansion of ‘sustainable logging’.     

‘If a leaf falls,they blame the tree’: scattered notes on Gezi resistances,contention, and space

On 31 May 2013, violent police intervention against the activists at Gezi Park, Istanbul, resisting against the unlawful demolition of trees at the park, led to a popular uprising throughout Turkey. It was unexpected and unprecedented. The resistances were, and still are, multifaceted and multilayered. Taken as an episode of contention, it is hard to argue that this has come to an end, and the falling leaf can hardly be blamed on the tree. This paper is an attempt to understand this episode, borrowing from the DOC (dynamics of contention) program, emphasizing the importance of space in the Lefebvrian sense, with respect to the changing socio-spatial order of the cities.