Sociology after the postcolonial: Response to Julian Go's ‘thinking against empire’

Julian Go's ‘Thinking Against Empire’ identifies the corpus of ‘anticolonial thought’ as being instructive for a wider rethinking of how sociology might rally its key conceptualisations of social relations. He insightfully identifies the marginalisation of such thinking from Sociology as an institutionalised discipline. In our response we take up some of the warnings Go provides in the closing sections of his essay—which concern the expanse of intellectual engagement being currently bracketed under or connected to the ‘anti-colonial’, not least vis-à-vis the ‘decolonising/decolonial’ turn—to further unpack how the ‘anti-colonial’ might be adapted for thinking through contemporary socio-political dynamics. Offering, first, a precis of some particularities of British Sociology vis-a-vis the contributions of anticolonial social theory, this article then expands upon the dilemmas arising when anticolonial theory contemporaneous to the pre-decolonisation era is transposed to contingencies of the present 21^st century. Namely, whilst the anticolonial archive has proved invaluable to upending the omissions but also complicities of European social theory canons, allowing for a much more expansive sense of how the modern world and its violences were conjured and how we might accordingly escape its miseries, it is also clear that much of the postcolonial world has undergone sufficient shifts to warrant an adapted sense of how we consider the anti-colonial for our current politics. We suggest that the important deviations which anti-colonial theorisations might heed include the dangers of conflating the anticolonial with an affirmation of Global South, non-white nativist identity; the need to recognise some key conjunctural premises by which the anticolonial is no longer geographically indexed to a straightforward Global North-Global South distinction; and the need to acknowledge that, at its most radical, anticolonial thought is itself still invested in traversing both the dreams but also corruptions of those dreams as intrinsic to modernity.     

The HOPE Family Project: A Family-Based Group Intervention to Reduce the Impact of Homelessness on HIV/STI and Drug Risk Behaviors

The HOPE Family Project (HIV Prevention for Parents and Early Adolescents) is an eight- session, family-based group intervention modeled on three evidence-based curricula targeting HIV/AIDS and alcohol and drug abuse prevention. The design and implementation of the HOPE Family Project was carried out by an established community collaborative board. The project aims to educate and provide tailored support to families and their youth (ages 11–14), residing in homeless shelters, regarding HIV and alcohol abuse prevention. The group model proved successful in offering an informal social support network for families living in homeless shelters and improving family functioning and youth mental health outcomes.     

The gendered experiences of local volunteers in conflicts and emergencies

ABSTRACT

This article explores the gendered experiences of local volunteers operating in conflicts and emergencies. Despite decades of progress to integrate gender issues into development and humanitarian research, policy, and practice, the gendered dynamics of volunteering are still little understood. To redress this, this article draws on data collected as part of the Volunteers in Conflicts and Emergencies (ViCE) Initiative, a collaboration between the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement led by the Swedish Red Cross, and the Centre for International Development at Northumbria University. Contributing original empirical findings on the intersection of gender, volunteering, and emergencies, this article offers new ways of thinking about how gender equality and women’s empowerment can be advanced in humanitarian crises, as seen through the experiences of local volunteers.     

Overcoming fieldwork challenges in urban health research in developing countries: a research note

With rapid growth in the global urban population over the next two decades, health will increasingly have an urban bias. The picture of public health is particularly complex in African cities, where rates of urbanisation, poverty and inequity are high. This paper identifies the main data collection problems encountered within a panel study in low‐income areas of Johannesburg, with special emphasis on sampling, access and partnerships. The paper will be of relevance to anyone considering research in the cities of developing countries, especially in Africa.     

Rethinking empirical approaches to racial segregation

Within empirical approaches to racial residential segregation, there has been a tendency to draw on the work of or influenced by Robert E. Park and his ecological hypothesis to explore social and spatial relations between members of different ethnic and racial groups, thus framing research within a race relations paradigm. This has promoted an analysis which naturalizes racial differences but which also sidelines structural considerations. In turn this approach has also fed into political discourses on segregation, at times supporting more reactionary positions. This paper seeks to address this debate by considering whether emphasis on minority ethnic concentration sidelines the more pertinent issue of concentration in deprived areas, suggesting that neighbourhood deprivation as a measure can be more easily aligned with structural conditions which have influenced the settlement and historical experience of many ethnic minority communities. Specifically, I consider the extent to which a measure of neighbourhood deprivation is more important than the ethnic composition of an area for thinking about the distribution of inequalities in unemployment (as one example of socio‐economic inequality). Using multilevel logistic regression I find neighbourhood income deprivation to be more important than levels of co‐ethnic concentration for explaining ethnic differences in unemployment. The findings imply that neighbourhood deprivation is significantly more important for considering inequalities in unemployment for ethnic minorities than the ethnic composition of an area.     

Disjunctive total domination in graphs

Let \(G\) be a graph with no isolated vertex. In this paper, we study a parameter that is a relaxation of arguably the most important domination parameter, namely the total domination number, \(\gamma _t(G)\). A set \(S\) of vertices in \(G\) is a disjunctive total dominating set of \(G\) if every vertex is adjacent to a vertex of \(S\) or has at least two vertices in \(S\) at distance \(2\) from it. The disjunctive total domination number, \(\gamma ^d_t(G)\), is the minimum cardinality of such a set. We observe that \(\gamma ^d_t(G) \le \gamma _t(G)\). We prove that if \(G\) is a connected graph of order \(n \ge 8\), then \(\gamma ^d_t(G) \le 2(n-1)/3\) and we characterize the extremal graphs. It is known that if \(G\) is a connected claw-free graph of order \(n\), then \(\gamma _t(G) \le 2n/3\) and this upper bound is tight for arbitrarily large \(n\). We show this upper bound can be improved significantly for the disjunctive total domination number. We show that if \(G\) is a connected claw-free graph of order \(n > 14\), then \(\gamma ^d_t(G) \le 4n/7\) and we characterize the graphs achieving equality in this bound.     

Understanding workplace deviant behavior in nonprofit organizations

Workplace deviant behavior has traditionally been studied with respect to business or for‐profit organizations. In this article, we argue that nonprofit organizations also experience deviance, and due to their unique characteristics, they deserve special attention for extending the understanding of workplace deviant behavior to other types of organizations. Based on a review of the literature on deviance, we develop a general model of workplace deviance that we apply to nonprofit organizations. Based on the integrative conceptual framework, we advance relevant propositions for understanding and explaining deviance in nonprofit organizations.     

Physical needs of Aboriginal foster parents

Aboriginal foster parents were surveyed about their physical needs. Each was asked ‘What do you need physically to be a good foster parent?’ A total of 39 unique responses were made. They were grouped together by participants and the grouping data were analysed using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. Five concepts resulted from the analysis. The concepts included physical, financial and emotional resources, supplies and equipment, community, fitness and wellness. Results were compared and contrasted with the fostering literature.     

Emotional needs of Aboriginal foster parents

Aboriginal children are overrepresented in care. Aboriginal foster parents are underrepresented. There is a need to recruit and retain Aboriginal foster parents. In the study, Aboriginal foster parents were asked: “What do you need emotionally to be a good foster parent?” The results were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis, leading to eight concepts, including: awareness, contentment, self‐assurance, appreciation, resolve, space, caring, and commitment to one's values. These results were compared with the existing foster parent literature. Similarities and differences were described.