bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ethnopraxis in action
Authors: Seal Mike , Harris Pete
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents a practical example of an active youth worker’s research-based practice with young people involved in violence, thereby providing a tangible case study of the activity we call ethnopraxis.
A philosophical criminology
Authors: Millie Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides an introduction to the book arguing that philosophy is essential to criminology, as philosophers have been questioning how and why people get on with each other, and more importantly for this book, what happens when we do not get on. These questions are at the heart of criminological concerns. This chapter moves on to provide a distinction between continental (the study of subjective experience) and analytic (emphasis on objective science and knowledge) philosophy and highlights that although there are differences between the two traditions, there is some crossover with philosophers drawing on ideas from both. Philosophy is perhaps at its best when different ideas are drawn together, rather than being backed into one theoretical corner.
Conclusions
Authors: Millie Andrew
Published: May 2017

In this chapter the place of a philosophical criminology is considered. Criminology is an inter-disciplinary enterprise and, as such, it makes sense for criminologists to engage with other disciplines such as philosophy that have for centuries attempted to answer questions of importance to criminology. By engaging with philosophy, this book has demonstrated that textbook histories of criminological thought only present a partial picture of ideas central to criminological understanding. This concluding chapter reflects on the previous seven chapters and assesses the usefulness of a philosophical approach to criminology. There is particular emphasis on Kantian philosophy, especially regarding human dignity. Relatedly, the book has drawn on ideas concerning the Golden Rule and Paul Ricoeur’s (1990) work on Christian theology and an ‘economy of gift.’ Building on the common theme of dignity, respect and the economy of gift, the previous chapters consider the possibility of an empathetic criminology. This chapter concludes by reflecting on these chapter individually and on the merits of a philosophical criminology.
Emotions and identity transformation
Authors: Hamilton Paula
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the role of emotions in identity transformation and desistance. The author begins by critically exploring the relative neglect of the emotional realm in both mainstream criminological and desistance literatures, before going on to consider how and in what ways emotions are seen to be implicated in processes of change in the relatively few existing desistance studies which consider this dimension. She then goes on to draw on her own doctoral research to highlight the ways in which emotions were heavily implicated in the stories her cohort of men told – both in stories of their onset/persistence in offending and of their eventual desistance.
Lived desistance: understanding how women experience giving up offending
Authors: Goodwin Sarah
Published: May 2017

This chapter extends the analysis of gender, in this instance exploring the lived experiences of women in a period of change. While women’s experiences are similar to men’s in many respects, the author’s discussions over a period of time with a sample of women attending a day centre, reveal some intriguing differences. She highlights the significance of living in long-term abusive relationships for confidence and self-perception. Additionally, she questions assumptions about desistance necessarily involving a ‘replacement identity’; aspects of self may be reworked and, on occasions, the process is more akin to finding a ‘lost’ self after ending a violent relationship or seeking drug use. For the women in this study, identities were often precarious, reflecting the early and fragile nature of their desistance. Being or becoming a caregiver – a more socially available role for women than for men – was often a key element in the women’s accounts of change.
The role of civil society organisations in emancipating Portuguese Roma women
Authors: Rego Raquel
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the ways in which Portuguese Roma women have found opportunities for their emancipation through participating in Roma associations. Portugal generally falls within the framework of the southern European pattern in terms of social participation, citizenship and voluntary association affiliations. This pattern often correlates with a history of dictatorship, low levels of education and a tradition of informal participation rooted in the Catholic religion. Nevertheless, the Portuguese Roma display very different behaviours concerning their emancipation through participation in associations, and cannot be categorised as fitting within this pattern. The authors’ research suggests that although Portuguese Roma associations have been founded in recent decades they did not get beyond the first stage in their life cycles. In fact, their development seems to run counter to more traditional Roma forms of organisation. Nevertheless, for some Roma women their engagement in these associations seems to prove particularly successful.
Organising for emancipation/emancipating organisations?
Authors: Onyx Jenny , Schwabenland Christina , Lange Chris , Nakagawa Sachiko
Published: May 2017

In this chapter the authors highlight the extraordinary diversity of events, perspectives and strategies across the globe demonstrated by the writers of these chapters and the organisations they describe. The authors summarise some of the issues and lessons raised in these various case studies, and, drawing on Fraser’s (2013) framework, they explore the multiple sites and forms of domination and the different forms of resistance these organisational actors have identified. The authors also highlight the respective challenges of working inside as well as attacking from outside those institutions. They specifically focus on the role of civil society organisations and return to the challenging question of whether CSOs are maintaining or challenging the status quo.
Urban renewal: fencing the cities
Authors: Lund Brian
Published: May 2017

This chapter begins with an examination of 19th century public health politics exploring why Edwin Chadwick’s explanation of differential mortality rates was politically acceptable whilst an alternative explanation was rejected. It then investigates the slum and overcrowding issues relating action to alleviate the problem to the idea of externalities, the eugenics movement and the vested interests involved in property. The Conservative Party’s sanitary solution and Labour’s suburban answer to the housing question are explored. The 1950s and 1960s slum clearance drive is related to Green Belts and the politics involved in containing urban Britain. Area based policies are reviewed as are policy switches between property and people based initiatives. The Coalition government’s abandonment of specific area-based initiatives in favour of a whole city approach is examined.
A property-owning democracy?
Authors: Lund Brian
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the political fortunes of the Conservative Party’s quest to create a property-owning democracy. It examines Stanley Baldwin’s support for the owner-occupation dimension of Noel Skelton’s property-owning democracy idea to win the votes of the working class elite and how this was reflected in building society endorsement and suburban values. The politics of homeownership are charted with particular reference to Labour party leadership’s endorsement of homeownership and internal party divisions on the role of tax relief on mortgage interest in supporting owner-occupation. The politics of boom/bust house price fluctuations are charted. Right to Buy politics are examined as are the attempts of the Coalition government and the 2015 Conservative to revive homeownership as private landlordism continued to grow.
Introduction
Authors: Whitehead Philip
Published: May 2017

The first edition of this book was published in 2010 and included an analysis of the years from the election of new labour in 1997 to 2009. This second edition has been extended to include 1997 – 2015. The author introduces his expertise and experience within the field of probation service, with which he has been involved for nearly forty years. The author then gives brief examples of critical events or hinge moments that have occurred to both probation and criminal justice services in general throughout that time. The chapter concludes by giving an outline of the content of the remainder of the book.
The religious and personalist tradition: or, reflections on the moral economy of criminal justice
Authors: Whitehead Philip
Published: May 2017

When excavating probation and criminal justice since 1997, it is not possible to remain content with the bodies of theoretical resources established in chapter 2. This is precisely because there is a distinctive religious and personalist tradition of considerable longevity that must be factored into this analysis. Furthermore, the perspective advanced in this chapter is developed by refining the conceptual device of moral economy. Not only does moral economy critique the recent history within the criminal justice domain, it also provides the intellectual resources to reconstruct the moral dynamics of what is a people-facing organisation. Moral economy constructs an original perspective that can be applied to probation, criminal justice, and penal policy with illuminating effects.
Putting theories and moral sensibilities to work
Authors: Whitehead Philip
Published: May 2017

This chapter puts bodies of social theory assembled in chapter 2, and a history of moral sensibilities in chapter 3, to work within the interrelated fields of probation, criminal justice, and penal policy. The argument advanced is that disparate bodies of social theory, in addition to a remaining vestige of religion, personalism, and ethico-humanitarian impulses, combine to excavate to provide an explanatory account of the political dynamics of modernisation and transformation. This is the central academic task of this chapter that puts to work a nuanced and multi-textured theoretical grid.
Modernisation and cultural change under New Labour: views of solicitors, clerks, magistrates, barristers and judges
Authors: Whitehead Philip
Published: May 2017

There is a paucity of empirical research on solicitors, court clerks, magistrates, barristers and judges conducted within the criminal justice system in England and Wales. Even though the research conducted for this chapter is now several years old, it is included and retained because of the valuable insights provided into the era of modernisation. Importantly, it provides insights into what criminal justice professionals perceived of probation during a period of critical change under new labour. Accordingly, this chapter constitutes a slice of criminal justice history, in North-East England, that can be accessed and utilised by other criminal justice researchers. In doing so it is intended to compensate for empirical paucity in this specific domain of interest.
Modernising monstrosities and transformational traumas: social theory, criminal justice and morality
Authors: Whitehead Philip
Published: May 2017

The final chapter draws together the theoretical and empirical insights advanced in this book. The author justifies the claim that the probation service, criminal justice system, and penal policy, have been subjected to systematic political incursions since 1997 that constitute modernising monstrosities and transformational traumas. In fact, criminal justice reflects and reproduces the organisational logic of neoliberal capitalism, supported by the new public management. These monstrosities and traumas have serious implications for probation staff and their practices, the 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies, community supervision, the prison system that continues to expand, and the moral foundations of criminal justice. This theoretical and empirical excavation of criminal justice from 1997 to 2015 is a detailed case study of politico-economic, ideological and material reconfiguration under the harsh realities of the neoliberal order.
Randomised controlled trials
Authors: John Peter
Published: May 2017

The author reflects on the growing use of and acclaim for RCTs as a method for policy discovery. The chapter outlines the social science thinking behind the tool, provide some examples of its use and then discuss its strengths and weaknesses.
Cluster analysis in policy studies
Authors: Li Jinjing
Published: May 2017

The author explores how cluster analysis could be used to a greater degree by policy makers. The origins of these techniques will be explored plus some examples of their practice, along with a discussion of the scope and limitations of their use.
Citizen social science and policy making
Authors: Richardson Liz
Published: May 2017

The author argues that there is a growing capacity in the social sciences to include people not as subjects but as active participants in research. This approach has a complex history in the social sciences that needs to be understood, but it is emerging in a modern from as a viable technique for discovery, especially among hard-to-reach groups. Examples of citizen science will be presented and the strengths and weaknesses of the technique explored.
Intersecting inequalities
Authors: Adamson Elizabeth
Published: May 2017

This chapter builds on Chapter 4 by analysing the intersection between childcare and migration policy. It illustrates how emphasis on a single policy area has implications for intersecting issues of gender, income/class and race/migration. These intersecting issues of gender, income/class and race/migration are experienced by families (mothers, parents and children) and by care workers. The analysis examines how policies addressing inequalities experienced by one social group can, in practice, have negative implications for other social groups involved. For example, policies designed to increase mothers’ workforce participation to address gender equality in the workplace often overshadow the working conditions and inequities experienced by women performing the care work. This issue is exacerbated for in-home childcare, as workers are often subject to few regulations and their work is largely invisible, in the private and informal domain.
Did NHS productivity increase under the Coalition government?
Authors: Bojke Chris , Castelli Adriana , Grašič Katja , Howdon Daniel , Street Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter introduces the political focus on the productivity of the NHS. Productivity is a conceptually simple construct, relating the amount of output produced to the amount of inputs used in the production process. Productivity growth can also be calculated by comparing the change in outputs produced to the change in inputs utilised from one period to the next. Political interest is focused primarily on productivity growth. However, assessing productivity or efficiency is somewhat problematic in the context of a free-at-the-point-of-use health system service such as the NHS. The authors discuss some of the issues they face in attempting such an evaluation. With these issues in mind, the authors describe the growth in outputs, inputs and productivity between 2004/05 and 2013/14. The chapter concludes by discussing whether or not the key political measures highlighted in the first section appear to have had an influence on NHS productivity growth.
Coercion and Women Co-Offenders
Authors: Barlow Charlotte
Published: May 2017

This publication explores the legal, media and social constructions of coercion as a pathway into crime for some co-offending women. Coercion has been increasingly acknowledged as a pathway into crime for female offenders, particularly those whose relationship with their male partner/ co-offender is characterised by abuse, control and/or obsession (Barlow, 2015; Jones, 2008; Richie, 1996; Welle & Falkin, 2000). However, the construction of such women within the law and media and the consequential ways in which they are understood is often limited to over-simplistic explanations and dichotomies, which are usually rooted in gendered assumptions and expectations. Informed by newspaper articles and materials accessed via case and court files, this publication will analyse four cases of co-accused women, all of which utilised the notion of ‘coercion’ (by their male partner/ accomplice/s), albeit to differing levels, as part of their defence. These case studies are used as a tool to understand how media and legal institutions and society more broadly attempt to make sense of coerced women. The alternative, feminist conceptual framework of a ‘continuum of coercion’ is also introduced, to develop a more nuanced conceptual and theoretical framework of coercion as a pathway into crime. The publication also considers the extent to which criminology currently contributes to this discussion and more specifically, what it fails to say about coerced women.
The Troubled Families Programme: in, for and against the state?
Authors: Crossley Stephen
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the ways in which the Troubled Families Programme has been positioned by central government and by local authorities and practitioners. The reality of the programme is rather different from the runaway success story presented by government, positive outcomes often owing much to local officers’ negotiation and subversion of the programme. Discretion built into the programme has allowed subversion and resistance to occur, these transgressions occur under the radar and do little to trouble the national narrative of an assertive central government policy working successfully with troublesome families. This is significant, as the programme is considered by the Conservatives as a key example of how a smaller, smarter state might function.
What counts as ‘counter-conduct’? A governmental analysis of resistance in the face of compulsory community care
Authors: Jobling Hannah
Published: May 2017

In this chapter the findings of an ethnographic study of Community treatment orders (CTOs) in action are reported on, focusing on how individuals made subject to CTOs perceive the role the CTO has in their lives, and their subsequent responses to its imposition. Individuals’ conceptions of self in relation to disciplinary policy interventions can lead to complex, ambiguous and perhaps unexpected responses to compulsion, which are not easily categorised into binary forms of compliance and resistance. The analysis of CTOs underlines the value of a governmentality perspective that eschews simple linear understandings of how ‘target’ groups will respond to policy interventions.
Impacts of online and offline Islamophobia
Authors: Zempi Irene , Awan Imran
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the implications of online/offline Islamophobia for victims including increased feelings of vulnerability, fear and insecurity. Participants also suffered a range of psychological and emotional responses such as low confidence, depression and anxiety. Additionally, participants highlighted the relationship between online and offline Islamophobia, and described living in fear because of the possibility of online threats materialising in the ‘real world’. Many participants reported taking steps to become less ‘visible’ for example by taking the headscarf or face veil off for women and shaving their beards for men.
Tim McLaurin: Universality from Rural North Carolina
Authors: Spangler bes Stark
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the life and work of Timothy Reese McLaurin, who, as a Rough South writer, portrays, in the ordinary lives of North Carolinians, universal human stories. Born on December 14, 1953, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, McLaurin spent his childhood in Beard, a small community on the outskirts of Fayetteville. These childhood explorations imbued McLaurin with a lifetime love of nature. Fascinated by the creatures he encountered while exploring, McLaurin became adept at handling snakes, a skill he would continue to cultivate. His sense of himself as part of the southern working class, with family and emotional roots in eastern North Carolina, firmly established itself during his childhood and adolescence and would last until the end of his relatively short life. This chapter considers some of McLaurin's novels, including The Acorn Plan, Woodrow's Trumpet, Cured by Fire, The Last Great Snake Show, and Another Son of Man, plus two memoirs: Keeper of the Moon: A Southern Boyhood and The River Less Run.
Larry Brown: A Firefighter Finds His Voice
Authors: Starnes Joe Samuel
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the life and work of Larry Brown. Born in 1951, Brown grew up in rural Lafayette County, Mississippi, the land on which William Faulkner based his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. His father, a World War II veteran haunted by memories of combat, worked as a sharecropper, the original occupation shared by Faulkner's Snopes family, notorious for burning barns and other “white trash” transgressions. When Brown was three, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. The family returned to Mississippi when Brown was in his early teens, and his father died a few years later. Working-class characters stand at the center of Brown's fiction, and in works dating from the beginning of his career, they frequently speak in the first-person. This is evident in his first collection, Facing the Music (1988), and in his first novel, Dirty Work (1989). Brown's other works include Joe (1991), Father and Son (1996), Fay (2000), The Rabbit Factory (2003), and the posthumously published A Miracle of Catfish (2007).
The Rough South of Ron Rash
Authors: Bjerre Thomas Ærvold
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the fiction of Ron Rash, who sets almost all of his work—poems, short stories, and novels—in the Carolinas and focuses on the people who live or have lived there. Rash was born in Chester, South Carolina, in 1953, and grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. While not a direct heir to the “Southern Redneck and White Trash” tradition, Rash fills his work with characters firmly embedded in the Rough South—mostly lower-class whites from Appalachian North and South Carolina. Rash's work illustrates his concern with working-class characters and their struggles, with poor whites and their violent conflicts. His interest in the working class reflects his own family background. Rash published his first collection of poetry, Eureka Mill, in 1998. He also wrote novels that depict violence, such as One Foot in Eden, The World Made Straight, and Serena.
Education Is Everything: Chris Offutt’s Eastern Kentucky
Authors: Farris Peter
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Chris Offutt's work, which reveals a theme paramount to all others: education is everything. In late 1965, when Offutt was just seven years old, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) descended upon his native Rowan County in eastern Kentucky and encountered a stark reality there: staggering illiteracy, soaring birth rates, desperately inadequate infrastructure, steady flight of the region's best and brightest, and a coal industry gone bust, leaving in its wake an undereducated work force and a population largely dependent on government relief. Decades later, this same third-world scenario would inform much of Offutt's writing. Mistrust of education persists in Offutt's work, including his only novel, The Good Brother (1997). Offutt also wrote a short story collection, Kentucky Straight (1992), and two memoirs, The Same River Twice: A Memoir (1993) and No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home (2002).
Latina/o Local Knowledge about Diabetes: Emotional Triggers, Plant Treatments, and Food Symbolism
Authors: Jones Michael Owen
Published: May 2017

Local knowledge and folk customs, in particular, play a significant role in shaping communal dietary practices and approaches to treating ailments and disease, sometimes in defiance of “official” medical knowledge and direction. In chapter 4, “Latino/a Local Knowledge About Diabetes: Emotional Triggers, Plant Treatments, and Food Symbolism,” Michael Owen Jones explores several areas of Latino/a local knowledge and belief about diabetes collected around Los Angeles, California. Here again, informant narratives powerfully reflect the critical intersection of folk culture and institutional authority. Charting explanatory models regarding causes and the course of illness or disease, the folk use of plants and botanicals to lower blood glucose levels, awareness of non-nutritional meanings and uses of food—rituals, symbols, and sources of identity—regularly ignored by dieticians, self-reported “barriers” to maintaining a recommended dietary regimen, and perceptions of the social and psychological dimensions of illness that all too rarely are considered by medical personnel, Jones sheds light into how clinical and public health officials must develop culturally sensitive treatment plans that more accurately recognize and respond to local exigencies and the preponderance of emotional and environmental stress in treating diabetes within Latino/a communities.
Interpreting and Treating Autism in Javanese Indonesia: Listening to Folk Perspectives on Developmental Difference and Inclusion
Authors: Tucker Annie
Published: May 2017

In chapter 5, “Interpreting and Treating Autism in Javanese Indonesia: Listening to Folk Perspectives on Developmental Difference and Inclusion,” Annie Tucker shifts our discussion focus from diabetes to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Following a year and a half of ethnographic fieldwork in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, Indonesia, Tucker observes that while the concept of “autism” remains comparatively new to the region, there are, in fact, operant models of developmental difference in Javanese Indonesia, and a robust repertory of available responses to ASD. While weighing the benefits and challenges of adopting and mobilizing a globalized paradigm of developmental difference, Tucker illustrates how looking at meaningful embodied folk practices of inclusion might identify potentially powerful local interventions that could be disseminated, specifically describing the work of a Yogyakarta gamelan group that uses traditional music towards individually and socially therapeutic ends.
Deranged Psychopaths and Victims Who Go Insane: Visibility and Invisibility in the Depiction of Mental Health and Illness in Contemporary Legend
Authors: Goldstein Diane E.
Published: May 2017

In chapter 7, “Deranged Psychopaths and Victims Who Go Insane: Visibility and Invisibility in the Depiction of Mental Health and Illness in Contemporary Legend,” Diane E. Goldstein analyzes the portrayal of mental illness in contemporary legends, focusing on the values inherent in depictions of demented killers, quietly “mad” neighbors, and psychologically damaged victims. Taken as a group and read as parallel texts, Goldstein argues that these narratives construct and present a complex of images of mental health and illness set in changing historical and cultural contexts. Together, she asserts, the narratives create explanatory categories for mental illness and convey popular understandings of “madness”; they equate insanity with visibility of difference; they explore the gendered associations of male aggression and female passivity, and they pinpoint areas of socially tolerable and intolerable deviance.
Tales from the Operating Theater: Medical Fetishism and the Taboo Performative Power of Erotic Medical Play
Authors: Brickley London
Published: May 2017

In chapter 9, “Tales from the Operating Theater: Medical Fetishism and the Taboo Performative Power of Erotic Medical Play,” London Brickley invites readers into a fetishist community revolving around medical practices and disability where participating individuals are acutely aware of the stigmas, boundaries, and taboos of the physically disabled and mentally ill. With special consideration placed upon the relationship between the subset of individuals who have experienced disability (and/or those that yearn to), with the nuances of their physical and erotic conditions, Brickley demonstrates that fetishes are not simply deviated sexual practices, but complex constructs of identity and chosen experience. By drawing attention to perceptions of what is sexually attractive, she also points out the bias that the disabled body is unattractive, demonstrating that this ability to either see beyond the disability or find it arousing is the primary reason for the label of deviant sexual behavior.
“She Loves the Blood of the Young”
Authors: Metzger Sabine
Published: May 2017

This chapter situates “The Story of Chūgōrō” within the context of both Hearn’s escape from Western civilization and a growing fascination in America with Japanese art and culture. Hearn’s age witnessed not only a flourishing of Gothic and vampire literature but also, in the wake of the opening of Yokohama, the crescendo of Japonisme. In his re-writing of the old Japanese tale, Hearn circumvents Transylvanian terminology and references to the Gothic. Instead, he foregrounds the story’s Japanese-ness. What is “startling” and “strange” for Hearn’s turn-of-the-century readers is not necessarily that the protagonist of his story falls prey to a blood-loving seductress, but rather Japan itself, considered to be the exotic per se. With her similarity to the Western vampire, the bloodthirsty female proves to be a familiar figure in the midst of the unfamiliar—a figure mediating between East and West, partaking of what could be called a form of the “transcultural supernatural.”
The Reanimation of Yellow-Peril Anxieties in Max Brooks’s World War Z
Authors: Fox Timothy R.
Published: May 2017

Max Brooks made publishing history with his World War Z, bringing bestseller status to a zombie-themed novel for the first time. Well-researched, entertaining, and massive in scope, the novel spoke to the American fascination with apocalypse and the anxious suspicion of readers still reeling from the horrors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks—the feeling that anything can happen, and probably will. But the appeal of World War Z for American readers may also have something to do with the echo throughout the novel of a nationalistic and even racist paranoia that has been a part of the American cultural psyche for over a century: the fear of Asian invasion, or “yellow peril anxiety.” This chapter reads Brooks’ novel for instances of yellow peril anxiety, which can be most easily recognized in the portrayal of China’s rulers as the source of the worldwide zombie plague.
Undead Avatars
Authors: Kirkland Ewan
Published: May 2017

In contrast to other forms of popular culture, zombies have a historically consistent presence within digital games. Extending research which explores self-reflexivity across the horror genre, this chapter examines ways in which videogame zombies comment upon the nature of the digital form and its player relationship. Central to this analysis is an argument that the videogame avatar, the figure which players control, is itself zombie-like, a dead thing given life through the cybernetic interface of the player. Successful play entails the user becoming machine-like in their engagement with the videogame’s digital apparatus. Exploring games such as Quake, Resident Evil and Forbidden Siren, it is argued that zombies within horror videogames function as a metaphor for uncanny processes at work within the videogame medium itself.
“I Felt Like I Was Part of the Troop”: Satire, Feminist Narratology, and Community
Authors: Manning Brandon
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues for the need of developing a “black feminist narratology” in order to understand the complex role of the racialized narrator in Post-Soul fiction. Building off of the work of feminist narratology, this chapter applies the black feminist narratology – with its dual focus on race and gender – to ZZ Packer’s recent story “Brownies.” Packer’s satire works to emphasize the need for marginalized peoples to foster positive approaches to community identification, while also suggesting the need to develop such communal identification between reader and writer.
Dissimulating Blackness: The Degenerative Satires of Paul Beatty and Percival Everett
Authors: Schmidt Christian
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides a reading of three novels – Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle and Slumberland and Percival Everett’s A History of the African American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond as Told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid – that engage in degenerative satire, which complicates the mimetic representation of satiric texts. This chapter argues that these novels satirize not only clichéd tropes of blackness but also the presumption that blackness can or should be represented. Ultimately, this chapter shows how these novels destabilize the very notion of blackness.
“It’s a Black Thang Maybe”: Satirical Blackness in Percival Everett’s Erasure and Adam Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy
Authors: Morgan Danielle Fuentes
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the representations of black masculinity in two novels, Percival Everett’s Erasure and Adam Mansbach’s Angry Black White Boy. By reading these particular texts side by side, this chapter demonstrates that even in the absence of signifiers, the stereotype of the black male criminal is pervasive. Similarly, this chapter explores how Mansbach makes whiteness visible, highlighting its attendant racialization and unspoken privilege.
How a Mama on the Couch Evolves into a Black Man with Watermelon: George C. Wolfe, Suzan-Lori Parks, and the Theatre of “Colored Contradictions”
Authors: Larson Jennifer
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the plays of George C. Wolfe, whose work reclaims and reopens the literary and cultural past, and Suzan-Lori Parks, whose work furthers this project. Both playwrights take as the subjects of their satire the well-worn narratives and even revered texts of the African American canon, and present common stereotypes in order to highlight the racialized past. In so doing, these plays highlight the contradictions of black identity, and ask their audiences to embrace these contradictions
“Slaves? With Lines?”: Trickster Aesthetic and Satirical Strategies in Two Plays by Lynn Nottage
Authors: Zygmonski Aimee
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that Lynn Nottage employs the trickster figure in her plays to destabilize African American stereotypes. In her plays Fabulation and By the Way, Meet Very Stark, Nottage also provides metacommentary in order to directly provoke the audience. Ultimately, these plays point to a future that rejects these stereotypes.
Television Satire in the Black Americas: Transnational Border Crossings in Chappelle’s Show and The Ity and Fancy Cat Show
Authors: Vásquez Sam
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides a comparative analysis of two popular television shows, Chappelle’s Show and The Ity and Fancy Cat Show (a popular Jamaican sketch comedy show). Both programs explore how racism is indebted to long-standing institutional paradigms. However, the latter show ultimately includes a more communal identity for its audience as an antidote to institutional racism.
The Locals
Authors: Pfeffer Miki
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the local women who played key roles during the Cotton Centennial Exposition. Among them was Caroline Merrick (1825–1908) who singlehandedly managed her brother's plantation in 1862. All the men were at war that year, and her husband had secreted their slaves to another parish. Merrick wrote that, at Myrtle Grove, she was responsible for the welfare of family members and all the slaves as well as for clothing and crops. Merrick learned stratagems as she managed the plantation, for she also dealt with both Union and Confederate armies that regularly took what they needed as they trooped between Baton Rouge and Port Gibson. Another was Caroline Gratia Williams Walmsley (1832?–1905) who was one of the organizers of the Christian Woman's Exchange in 1881 and the group's president for more than two decades, from 1882 until the year before her death in 1905.
Thimbles and a Teapot
Authors: Pfeffer Miki
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the challenges faced by the women involved in running the Women's Department at the Cotton Centennial Exposition. On December 18, 1884, two days after the grand opening ceremony, a core of disconsolate Lady Commissioners and workers met in Julia Ward Howe's private parlor at the Hotel Royal to discuss hiring policies, the placement of exhibits, and the finances of the department. Management had promised fifty thousand dollars to cover women's expenses, but there were no funds. All monies had been spent on buildings and transportation and landscaping—and expenses off the books. Because of these early discouragements, Howe would have to immediately summon her strengths. She refused to be daunted and even local women found in adversity an opportunity to shine. To the women gathered in her parlor, Howe gave the rallying remark that ladies had already built churches “with no better instruments than thimbles and a teapot”!
Great Expectations
Authors: Pfeffer Miki
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the preparation of exhibits and spaces in the Woman's Department. Although exhibits would vary in quality, together they were a reflection of the real spectrum of women's daily lives. Lady Commissioners gathered up whatever was available as “woman's work” in 1884. Perhaps no woman had greater expectations of the department than Catharine Cole of the Picayune. She predicted that viewers could find “food for thought” that would awaken “new ambitions amongst women.” Although the display of fancywork was lovely, Cole wrote, women should apply the “test of comparison.” They should compete and evaluate publicly. Perhaps this counsel was new to ladies. However, as weeks passed into January 1885, the demand grew louder for a date when the Exposition would announce itself “complete and in readiness for visitors”.
Caribbean Migrant Writers and the Politics of Return
Authors: Nixon Angelique V.
Published: May 2017

Chapter two focuses on well-known Afro-Caribbean women writers, Jamaica Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat, who reside in the United States and make a significant contribution to “resistance culture.” Through narratives of return, Kincaid and Danticat challenge exploitative consumption and tourism in their literary works by exposing and utilizing the power that lies in the production of history. They do this by using their mobility and prominence in North American literary markets to inform potential tourists and fellow Caribbeans abroad of the injustices of the tourist industry that are rooted in the history of slavery and colonialism. Kincaid directly confronts and criticizes the tourist industry in her satirical essay/memoir A Small Place; while Danticat participates in and critiques the tourist industry with her travel guide/memoir After the Dance. They produce alternative travel narratives that resist the travel guide genre, which has historically defined “natives” (the other) outside of history, modernity, and humanity.
Black Female Travel: Diasporic Connections and Revolutionary Desire
Authors: Nixon Angelique V.
Published: May 2017

The Caribbean American writers examined in chapter three, Paule Marshall and Audre Lorde, seek a spiritual home in the Caribbean, the home of their parents and ancestors. More specifically, they write and thereby claim multiple homes in transnational spaces through the Caribbean and an African diasporic identity. Both Marshall and Lorde directly challenge neocolonial discourse and tourism by creating alternative Black female travel narratives that represent diasporic travel, identity, and multiple homespaces. They both introduce new forms of tourism and possibilities for resistance to neocolonialism, while uncovering the strong continuities between the racial, sexual, and gender dynamics of colonialism (and slavery) and neocolonialism (and tourism).
Pengelolaan Hutan Kota di Jakarta (Studi Kasus Hutan Kota Srengseng di Jakarta Barat)
Authors: Kurniastuti Agustina Emmi
Published: May 2017

Pembangunan lingkungan hidup di Indonesia, terutama Jakarta, selalu diabaikan sehingga kualitaslingkungannya semakin menurun. Upaya perbaikan lingkungan Kota Jakarta dapat dilakukan, salahsatunya dengan pengelolaan RTH yang baik, terutama dalam bentuk hutan kota yang memiliki fungsiekologi dan sosial yang tinggi. Secara kasat mata, penampilan hutan kota di Jakarta tidak tampakmenarik, tidak terkecuali Hutan Kota Srengseng (HKS). Adapun penelitian ini dilakukan denganpendekatan kualitatif. Di satu sisi, pengelolaan HKS dapat dikatakan baik. Namun di sisi lain, HKS inibelum dikelola dengan cukup baik, yang terlihat dari respons sebagian besar masyarakat yangmengeluhkan kondisi HKS yang kurang baik. Namun demikian, masyarakat menunjukkan dukunganyang sangat positif akan keberadaan HKS serta pengelolaannya. Oleh karenanya, kualitas HKS perluditingkatkan dengan memperbaiki beberapa aspek dalam pengelolaan hutan kota, yaitu ketersediaandata yang lengkap dan akurat mengenai isi hutan kota, ketersediaan peraturan teknis yang memadaiterkait pengelolaan hutan kota, ketersediaan perencanaan jangka panjang sebagai pedoman untukpemeliharaan hutan kota secara berkelanjutan, peningkatan pengetahuan dan keterampilan pengeloladi bidang hutan kota, serta kerjasama yang baik antara pengelola dengan berbagai pihak terkait.Kata kunci: hutan kota, pengelolaan
Leucobryum aduncum var. scalare (Leucobryaceae: Bryophyta) - new to the Eastern Ghats
Authors: Biju P. M. , Daniels Albert Ebenezer Dulip
Published: May 2017

Leucobryum aduncum var. scalare, so far known from the Northeast and the Western Ghats for India, is added here to the moss flora of the Eastern Ghats. A detailed description with figures substantiated by a photo plate and a key to distinguish the species of Leucobryum Hampe from the region.
Uniqueness of weak solutions to a prion equation with polymer joining
Authors: Leis Elena , Walker Christoph
Published: May 2017

We consider a model for prion proliferation that includes prion polymerization, polymer splitting, and polymer joining. The model consists of an ordinary differential equation for the prion monomers and a hyperbolic nonlinear differential equation with integral terms for the prion polymers and was shown to possess global weak solutions for unbounded reaction rates [11]. Here we prove the uniqueness of weak solutions.
In silico study of the structure and function of Streptococcus mutans plasmidic proteins
Authors: Caprari Silvia , Minervini Giovanni , Brandi Valentina , Polticelli Fabio
Published: May 2017

The Gram-positive bacterium Streptococcus mutans is the principal causative agent of human tooth decay, an oral disease that affects the majority of the world’s population. Although the complete S. mutans genome is known, approximately 700 proteins are still annotated as hypothetical proteins, as no three-dimensional structure or homology with known proteins exists for them. Thus, the significant portion of genomic sequences coding for unknown-function proteins makes the knowledge of pathogenicity and survival mechanisms of S. mutans still incomplete. Plasmids are found in virtually every species of Streptococcus, and some of these mediate resistance to antibiotics and pathogenesis. However, there are strains of S. mutans that contain plasmids, such as LM7 and UA140, to which no function has been assigned yet. In this work, we describe an in silico study of the structure and function of all the S. mutans proteins encoded by pLM7 and pUA140 plasmids to gain insight into their biological function. A combination of different structural bioinformatics methodologies led to the identification of plasmidic proteins potentially required for the bacterial survival and pathogenicity. The structural information obtained on these proteins can be used to select novel targets for the design of innovative therapeutic agents towards S. mutans.
Estimating the New Keynesian Phillips Curve for the UK: evidence from the inflation-indexed bonds market
Authors: Marfatia Hardik A.
Published: May 2017

This paper utilizes the information in the inflation-indexed bonds market to estimate the New Keynesian Phillips Curve for the UK using an unobserved component approach. The main advantage of this approach comes from using the Kalman filter to explicitly estimate the unobserved expected inflation from the observed break-even inflation rates – the yield difference between the inflation-indexed bonds and the nominal bonds. Our results show that the expected inflation estimated from the unobserved component model plays a significant role in explaining the inflation dynamics in the UK. The evidence also suggests that the estimated inflation expectations are better able to capture the evolution of actual inflation process as compared to the break-even inflation rate as a proxy for expected inflation.
Estimation of Genetic Effects Controlling Different Plant Traits in Cotton (Gossypium Hirsutum L.) Under Clcuv Epidemic Condition
Authors: Khan A.M. , Fiaz S. , Bashir I. , Ali S. , Afzal M. , Kettener K. , Mahmood N. , Manzoor M.
Published: May 2017

Nine cotton genotypes, comprised of four non Bt males (CIM-1100, CIM-506, FH-942 and FH-900), five Bt female genotypes (FH-113, FH-114, MNH- 886, AA-703 and IR-3701) and their 20 crosses were screened in order to evaluate their response to Cotton leaf curl virus symptoms through epidemiology in the field and greenhouse. The 20 crosses among their nine parents were sown in two replications under randomized complete block design, during 2013 and 2014. The mean squares were significant for all traits indicating that both additive and non-additive genes control the characters, but non-additive genes were more important because, variance of dominant genes were higher than additive genes. In our test, FH-900 showed the best performance against CLCuV, number of lobes per boll and seed yield. The CIM- 1100 genotype performed well in boll weight, fiber strength and fiber fineness, whereas CIM-506 was good for plant height, number of sympodial branches and ginning. Maximum boll number, seed index and fiber length were shown by FH-942. Among lines, MNH886, FH-113, IR-3701 and FH-114 exhibited the best general combination for many traits. Hence, parents were preferred for hybridization program to improve the majority of characters. Hybrids FH-113 × FH-942, MNH-886 × CIM-1100, MNH-886 × FH-942, IR-3701 × CIM-506, AA-703 × CIM-1100, FH-114 × FH-942, FH-114 × CIM-1100 and MNH-886 × FH- 900 was best in specific combinations for different traits, especially against CLCuV. The results indicated that to increase resistance against CLCuV, hybrids should be exploited to develop CLCuV resistance.