Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Environmental Labour Studies may benefit from incorporating the perspective of environmental justice. We offer a theorization of working-class ecology as the place where working-class communities live and work, being typically affected by environmental injustice, and of working-class environmentalism as those forms of activism that link labour and environmental struggles around the primacy of reproduction. The paper’s theoretical section draws on a social ethnography of working-class ecology in the case of Taranto, a mono-industrial town in southern Italy, which is experiencing a severe environmental and public-health crisis. We show how environmental justice activism since the early 2000s has allowed the re-framing of union politics along new ways of politicizing the local economy. We conclude by offering a conceptual topology of working-class ecology, which situates different labour organizations (confederal, social/community, and rank-and-file unions) according to their positioning in respect to environmental justice.     

海明威文学小说的悲剧特色和死亡意识

从古希腊悲剧开始,不管哪个时期的悲剧文本,虽然有各自的形式,有诸多差异,但最终殊途同归,都有着相同的结局。悲剧意识几乎成为了文学作品的共同特征,值得一提的是,悲剧特色往往会与死亡意识相结合,让文学作品散发出较强的生命意识。海明威的文学小说作品凝聚了悲剧性和死亡性两大要素,让小说本身充满了对于生命和人性的拷问。     

Affective machines or the inner self? Drawing the boundaries of the female body in the socialist romantic imagination

This article explores two conflicting aesthetics of the female body in post-Stalinist Soviet science fiction. One represented women of the communist future as explorers of the space frontier in assemblages with machines, testing the cultural border between the female and the technological. Another appealed to the mysterious female nature as the Other of human culture, pushing forward the understanding of socialist progress as a masculine project. This article argues that both aesthetics grew within the cultural phenomenon of socialist Romanticism, which emerged in the mid-1950s as a reaction to Stalin-era quasi-Enlightenment rationality and its dominant style of socialist realism.     

Apps-olutely Perfect! Apps to Support Common Core in the History/Social Studies Classroom

The inclusion of technology in the classroom is an increasingly important feature of effective instruction. The implementation of Common Core Standards in many states also requires teachers to consider new pedagogical strategies to support meaningful learning. This article explores the intersection between technology demands and curricular change by examining apps that can be used to support Common Core State Standards instruction in history/social studies. Specifically, the authors highlight several apps that they presented at a professional development workshop for six to twelve history/social studies teachers and discuss the teachers' feedback regarding the strengths and limitations of apps to support their instruction. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations for history/social studies teachers using apps in the classroom are provided.     

The sexual in Chinese sociology: homosexuality studies in contemporary China

Through a meta‐literature review, this paper examines the changing contours of Chinese sociology of homosexuality in contemporary China. It unfolds the different theoretical orientations and methodologies that construct the modern male homosexual subject under major socio‐economic and political changes. Chinese sociology of homosexuality started in the reform era and has been dominated by Western knowledge production and the political ideology of the communist party‐state. Fused with the bio‐medical model and the state's modernization project in the 1980s–1990s, the sociological study adopted a functionalist and positivistic approach with survey‐based methodology in the main which focused on the etiology of homosexuality. A new transnational knowledge production of sociology of homosexuality has formed since the 2000s which has shifted towards a constructivist/ post‐structuralist approach and reflexive qualitative methodology. The new sociological study examines the rise of male (as well as female) homosexual identity in China, questions the hetero/homosexual binary and discusses how an individual makes sense of homosexual identity to form same‐sex intimate relationships. By tracing the epistemology of homosexuality in contemporary China, this paper rethinks the dominance of the Western construction and the role of the state in shaping the knowledge of homosexuality and proposes alternative spaces for theorizing Chinese sexual identities, desires and practices.     

Cyborg Writing as a Political Act: Reading Donna Haraway in Organization Studies

Extending the works of scholars who have elucidated writing as the quintessential site for social transformation, the aim of this article is to locate the myriad possibilities for actualizing Donna Haraway's concept of cyborg writing in the field of organization studies. I contend that cyborg writing functions as a discursive mechanism by which to disrupt Enlightenment ideals of Cartesian duality, objectivity and rationality. These ideals inform the very structure of masculine privilege that emerge from having a society that is organized along androcentric values. Situating the scholarship of Jo Brewis, a contemporary scholar in the field, I illuminate how cyborg writing can be practised effectively, whereby greater richness is imparted into conceptualizations of, and theorizing on, organizational and management phenomena. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of cyborg writing, and with the identification of two trajectories that scholars can pursue in future studies. Progress along these two paths will move towards actualizing the feminist project for gender egalitarianism.     

‘We swam before we breathed or walked’: able-bodied belonging in popular stories of evolutionary biology

This article introduces the concept of ‘able-bodied belonging,’ and pays particular attention to the cultural mechanisms in which ableism intertwines with the forms of belonging. Taking a cultural studies viewpoint, the article focuses on present evolutionary biological accounts, and explores the ableist and speciesist assumptions that frame evolutionary biology. The article investigates how these accounts invoke a feeling of belonging to the animal world in ways which reinforce the idea that only a particular kind of body is species-typical of humans. First, the article explores how the cultural stories that emphasize the connection between human beings and non-human species eventually distance particular bodies from humanity. Second, the article shows how humans’ connection to the animal world could emerge in a way that contests the exceptionality of able-bodied humanity.     

Distress or disability? Could a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies be a way forward when trying to understand experiences of oppression on the grounds of mental distress?

This article explores whether it is possible to use a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies to understand experiences of social oppression on the grounds of mental distress. Thomas’ extended social relational theoretisation of disablism was used in a PhD project concerned with experiences of mental distress. The tentative conclusion was that Thomas’ conceptualisation of disablism and impairment could offer a way of improving understanding of mental distress and oppression on the grounds of mental distress. However, Thomas and Reeve’s theorisation of the different forms of disablism was not readily transferred to the field of mental distress. Thus, tentative definitions of the different forms of disablism in relation to the field of mental distress were created. Perceived impairment type and disablism appear to be interconnected, and one has to acknowledge what kind of perceived impairment type one is focusing on when theorising disability and the different types of disablism.     

What ‘works’ when retracing sample members in a qualitative longitudinal study?

Attrition represents a significant obstacle to overcome in any longitudinal research project. It is, perhaps, most keenly felt when the data collected are from a qualitative study, since, unlike quantitative longitudinal research, weighting factors cannot be applied to ‘correct’ for any biases in the achieved sample and even a small number of ‘lost’ respondents can equate to a large percentage of the original sample. It is perhaps because of qualitative longitudinal research’s (QLR) reliance on, generally speaking, smaller samples that few have been able to shed much light on which re-contacting procedures are associated with achieving higher rates of retention. In this article, using data from a fifth sweep of a larger but particularly challenging cohort of 199 former probationers, we explore the strategies which helped us maintain high levels of retention in a QLR study. The article contains many practical suggestions which others planning or undertaking similar studies may find useful.