The ‘right time’ – negotiating the timing of interviews with vulnerable young people

Participant retention is a key factor in determining the success of longitudinal research. Challenges in re-locating and retaining participants over the long term are major issues for researchers working with young people who face adversity and experience frequent changes in circumstances. This article reports on a study of vulnerable young people and their transition into adulthood. Rather than the more conventional schedule-based approach to locating and re-interviewing young people, a relational process, the ‘right time’ framework, was used to facilitate young people's involvement in the study. Embedded in the ‘right time’ framework is recognition of the diverse and fluctuating circumstances that shape young people's availability for interviews. Several case examples are considered which amplify the way that the ‘right time’ framework allowed the research to navigate around these circumstances. The case examples highlight the value young people attached to being involved in the research, the influence on the ‘right time’ of wider relational tensions for young people and the need to negotiate researcher status as a different sort of adult. The ‘right time’ framework contributed to a high retention rate in the study generating a more representative sample and enhancing the subsequent data analysis by providing valuable insights into the lives of these vulnerable young people.     

The ‘affective security curriculum’: breeding JBs through the marriage of the academic and the jingoistic

How does the US recruit its citizen spies used to maintain and proliferate coercive power? I use an interdisciplinary approach and a framework of affect theory to argue that there is an ‘affective security curriculum’ (ASC) that assists in explaining the tendencies towards jingoism used in the recruitment and indoctrination of students – as future security workers – in certain academic disciplines. The ASC is precisely the phenomenon that works to construct this expert class and is produced by order words, the most crucial of which is ‘terrorism’, as well as larger cultural norms linked to neoliberalism that have achieved near total dominance since the 1980s. The ASC works by intensifying the (in)ability to act for those in its domain. The necessity of linguistically proficient security workers to the US’ hegemonic project makes this a question of considerable political importance. The ASC is a different approach to answering questions of how US hegemony is maintained. Whereas positivist research agendas, such as content analysis, and postpositivist approaches, such as critical discourse analysis, certainly have their uses (and to which my notion of ASC is indebted), paradigms such as these fail to focus on the engendering processes at work vis-à-vis the expert class, without which the discursive frames such methodologies analyse would simply dissipate. My overarching purpose in this paper is to develop the concept of the ASC, its quiddity, and to present at least an incipient methodology for analysing its critical duties. As my primary intent is to introduce and conceptualize the theoretical framework of the affective security curriculum, the applied segment of this endeavour will be relatively brief – and is designed as a primer for further research.     

Smooth tail-index estimation

The two parametric distribution functions appearing in the extreme-value theory – the generalized extreme-value distribution and the generalized Pareto distribution – have log-concave densities if the extreme-value index γ∈[?1, 0]. Replacing the order statistics in tail-index estimators by their corresponding quantiles from the distribution function that is based on the estimated log-concave density ? f _n leads to novel smooth quantile and tail-index estimators. These new estimators aim at estimating the tail index especially in small samples. Acting as a smoother of the empirical distribution function, the log-concave distribution function estimator reduces estimation variability to a much greater extent than it introduces bias. As a consequence, Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that the smoothed version of the estimators are well superior to their non-smoothed counterparts, in terms of mean-squared error.     

The ‘Bakul Gendong’ as a communication strategy to reject the construction of a cement factory in Central Java

Since 2006, one of Indonesia’s biggest corporations operating in the cement industry has been trying to build a factory at Sukolilo village in Central Java, Indonesia. The potential for of environmental damage caused by mining and the construction of this new factory is the main source of conflict between the public and the giant corporation.The focus of this research was the communication strategy adopted by women in the community to reject the construction of the cement factory in Pati, Central Java, Indonesia. This research used a qualitative method through a case study approach. Interviews, observations, and literature studies were used as data collection techniques for in this research.We found that the practices of the “Bakul Gendong” communication strategy were effective in developing women’s awareness of environmental issues based on the values they believe in. Through the women peddlers, women’s awareness of the risk of environmental damage caused by the cement factories was successfully developed. They also created female farmers’ group named “Simbar Wareh” to strengthen cooperation between them and to better-organize their resistance. The women’s movement to resist the cement factory was also conducted by building a network, meeting authorities, demonstrating, displaying traditional symbols during celebrations such as the “Agustusan” (independence day celebration) and Kartinian (women’s day) as their sites of resistance. The local government and PT. Semen Gresik tended to use technical and economical communicative approaches, while the people mainly refer to local know how PT. Semen Gresik did not use the right communication strategy to understand the conflict that arose and how to handle it, until after 10 years of trying to build a factory in Sukolilo.     

Mapping movement landscapes in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The concept of a movement landscape is used to analyse continuities and changes in popular mobilization since the end of formal apartheid. Focusing on four different episodes of protest since 1997, the article examines their relationship to the ANC movement and traditions, and their organizational forms. It finds a general theme of fluid and ephemeral organization, and a distrust of formal hierarchal organization, that is relatively new in South Africa. The Marikana strikes produced the most far-reaching organizational realignments, while the student struggles generated the most innovative re-imaginings of political forms and discourses. It concludes that although there have been critiques of and challenges to the ANC tradition, and experiments with new forms of organizing, they have not produced alternatives that have lasted or dislodged the dominant approaches defined and popularized by the ANC movement.     

‘Queen of the world’: experiences of ‘at-risk’ young people participating in equine-assisted learning/therapy

There is a significant body of research into the benefits of animal-assisted therapy (AAT) but less into the fields known as equine-assisted learning and therapy (EAL/EAT) where horses are incorporated in therapeutic and learning interventions. This paper explores the experiences of seven ‘at-risk’ young people who participated in a therapeutic horsemanship (TH) programme. The study followed a practice-near approach seeking to capture the young people's experiences within a participative ethnography. Themes related to the risk and resilience literature such as self-confidence, self-esteem, self-efficacy and a sense of mastery, empathy and the opening of positive opportunities are explored in this paper.     

‘The Rule of Men Entirely Great’: Republicanism,Ritual, and Richelieu in Melville’s ‘The Two Temples’

Abstract

This article explores the complex and multifarious reasons behind Herman Melville’s decision to refer to the English playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1839 work Richelieu, or The Conspiracy in his 1854 diptych ‘The Two Temples’. It responds to a critical consensus that has seen the reference merely as a sarcastic attack on William Macready (whose rivalry with the American actor Edwin Forrest was the nominal cause of the bloody 1849 Astor Place Riot in New York), by contextualizing the play within traditions of antebellum American Anglophilia. By using a combination of new critical work on Anglo-Americanism and anthropological ritual theory, I show how Bulwer-Lytton’s play was significant to Melville’s artistic development. In particular, I demonstrate how the play influenced his increasing engagement with republican and theatrical forms of expression that emphasized the importance of filial relationships between America and Britain in a period of increasing hostility between the two nations.     

Measuring the health patterns of the ‘mixed/multiple’ ethnic group in Britain: data quality problems,reporting issues,and implications for policy

The ‘mixed’ group, officially recognised in the 2001 Census, is one of the most rapidly growing ethnic groups in Britain. Although ‘mixed’ categorisation was added to ethnic coding in NHS datasets, our knowledge of health patterns for this population is meagre. Data quality problems remain a key obstacle, including poor reproducibility of the data and constraints on reporting due to sparse data bias. The consequent minimal and indicative evidence base has focused mainly on risky health behaviours, mental health and generic measures of self-rated health, as it has in the U.S.A. and Canada. There is negligible information on the main underlying causes of death, such as neoplasms, heart disease and stroke. Consideration should be given to pooling data across multiple years of health and general purpose surveys to enable reporting for the four ‘mixed’ categories and adjustment for mediating factors and relevant confounders, such as measures of socio-economic status.     

Life and labor on the internal colonial edge: Political economy of kolberi in Rojhelat

Through the investigation of kolberi (cross-border labor), this paper sheds light on the state’s policy of de-development (or internal colonialization) of the Kurdish region (known as Rojhelat) in Iran. While the most dangerous form of labor, kolberi has become a dominant employment opportunity for Rojhelat Kurds in the last decade. There are no Iranian state laws criminalizing kolberi, and yet those laborers die on a regular basis—being shot or thrown off mountain cliffs by the state forces, stepping into minefields, and so forth. Nevertheless, there is not a single scholarly paper on this subject. Using the mixed methods research approach, our study analyzes the existing data along with in-depth interviews with 20 people who are currently engaged in kolberi to contextualize this understudied phenomenon. Our finding demonstrates that kolberi is a direct outcome of a uni-ethno-religious policies of development and part and parcel of the state's Perso-Shi‘ification strategy in Kurdistan. Therefore, kolberi is more of a political phenomenon than an economic one.     

Initial teacher training: understanding ‘race,’ diversity and inclusion

There is little research which has explored how students on Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses understand and conceptualise discourses of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion. This article will focus on student understandings of racialised identities; it will explore the discourses by which students understand what it means to be White and what it means to be Black, within the context of ITT. The article will examine the different facets and themes of identity within the context of belonging and exclusion which exist within higher education in the cultural and social contexts of English universities. The findings indicate that students’ understandings of ‘race’, diversity and inclusion on ITT courses are complex and multifaceted. The article argues that greater training is needed in relation to the practical assistance that student teachers require in terms of increasing their understanding of diversity and dealing with racism in the classroom.