bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Quantitative Realism Is Mathematical and Abstract
Authors: Lawson B.T.
Published: January 2024

Quantitative realism is not just a scientific and mathematical belief system, it is also an abstract one. This chapter explores this abstraction by mapping out the life of ‘one billion items of PPE’ – a figure communicated by politicians in the early stages of the pandemic. It argues that we need to see these large figures through the concept of ‘hugeness’ – where the mathematical basis of ‘million’ and ‘billions’ is combined with a recognition that they involve an abstract notion of scale too. To think of a billion is to consider mathematical syntax (the adding of zeros to increase scale) and a feeling of largeness that can never be fully grasped through our senses. Working with this idea of hugeness, we can see how politicians use such a figure rhetorically to deflect criticism away from their failings – clearly outlined in the way ‘one billion items of PPE’ was used to erase the failings surrounding personal protective equipment.
Desire for Data Bounds Underpins Quantitative Realism
Authors: Lawson B.T.
Published: January 2024

Quantitative realism does underpin data bounds. But the desire for data bounds to be established can often underpin a strategic need for quantitative realism in the first place. In other words, the tail can wag the dog. This chapter explores this idea by tracing the life of two figures concerning people’s belief in misinformation: how The Plandemic was viewed ‘more than eight million times’ and how ‘7% of Britons think there is no hard evidence that coronavirus exists’. Both figures point to a key take-home message: using simplistic quantitative data to make definitive conclusions about people’s beliefs in misinformation can be read as a strategic ploy by the news media. The chapter argues that journalists ignored the questionable empirical grounds of misinformation because they needed to emphasize its threat to construct their own identity as trustworthy gatekeepers of information. In other words, the news media needed the data bound of misinformation to be underpinned by quantitative realism.
Conclusion
Authors: Furnari Ellen , Janzen Randy
Published: January 2024

This chapter offers a summary of the book and suggests priorities for future scholarship in UCP/A.
Researching Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma
Authors: Gray Paul , Jump Deborah , Smithson Hannah
Published: January 2024

Chapter 3 introduces the bespoke ACEs assessment tool that was developed for the research, along with a discussion of how it was delivered and why. This is followed by description of how the research team trained a sample of youth justice workers to undertake narrative interviews with the young people on their caseload using the McAdams Life Story Approach. The final section in the chapter details the approach that was adopted to undertake participatory creative workshops with justice-involved young people. The workshops, delivered in partnership with creative therapists and a professional sports coach, used Dent-Brown and Wang’s 6-Part Story Method to elicit data from the young people. The chapter finishes with a visual depiction of the six-part stories that were created during the participatory workshops.
Adverse Childhood Experiences
Authors: Gray Paul , Jump Deborah , Smithson Hannah
Published: January 2024

Chapter 5 starts by outlining the high prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) evident in the case study cohort. The most commonly identified ACEs are discussed, in particular the co-morbidity of some (such as, for example, being a victim of physical abuse and witnessing domestic violence). The chapter also contains a discussion of the role of poverty and deprivation in serious youth violence, before finishing with youth justice workers’ views of the assessment tool that was developed to measure the prevalence of ACEs.
Trauma-informed Practice
Authors: Gray Paul , Jump Deborah , Smithson Hannah
Published: January 2024

Chapter 7 discusses the challenges and barriers to delivering trauma-informed practice with justice-involved young people. These include, for example, a young person refusing to talk about their adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), or being unable or unwilling to recognize any relationship between their ACEs and their violent behaviour. Added to this is the sheer time it can take for a youth justice worker to build a relationship with a young person trusted enough that the young person might consider disclosing their ACEs, and how this process is constrained by short criminal justice sentences. The chapter then goes on to highlight the training and support needs of youth justice workers who are expected to work in a more trauma-informed way: not only the skills needed to work more therapeutically, but also the need for clinical supervision to be readily available for workers who might struggle with vicarious trauma. The chapter finishes with a discussion of some of the wider barriers facing the implementation of trauma-informed practice within a youth justice context.
Shifting the Focus from the West
Authors: McClendon Jamison v.
Published: January 2024

This chapter challenges the normative historical narrative of the West as it manifests in the U.S. to support White cultural hegemony. It introduces the foundations for the creation of Indigenous, African Diasporic, Asian Diasporic, and Latine rhetoric through an exploration of the multiple interlocking systems of oppression that led to each group’s marginalization. The chapter then illustrates how White cultural hegemony informs the nomos and guides legal reasoning and analytic processes to produce unjust results. It concludes with an example of how the lived experiences of minoritized people might move these processes toward inclusion and equity.
Multicultural Rhetorics
Authors: Berenguer Elizabeth , Jewel Lucy , McMurtry-Chubb Teri A.
Published: January 2024

Legal rhetoric operates to inculcate White cultural hegemony into our reasoning and analytic processes for resolving legal problems—how we “do” law. It makes its racialized tools normative and renders them neutral through its failure to acknowledge their origins in Western epistemologies and ontologies that idolize and protect imperialism, capitalism, White supremacy, and patriarchy. The lens through which legal rhetoric views the landscape of legal conflict is focused on White racial and cultural experiences. These experiences become synonymous with White cultural hegemony. This singular focus renders historic and contemporaneous cultural experiences blurry and unformed when, in fact, Indigenous, Black, Latine, and Asian communities have forged formal rhetorical traditions imbued with their culture and experiences in the U.S. that are more than adequate to widen that lens. These rhetorical traditions can be contained under the banner of what critical rhetorician Aaron David Gresson III describes as “recovery rhetorics.”
Introduction
Authors: Hutchinson Yvette , Ochoa Artemio Arturo Cortez , Paulson Julia , Tikly Leon
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter sets out the background to the book. It locates the volume in relation to contemporary debates about sustainable futures and decolonizing education and to existing initiatives, including sustainable development goals and the UNESCO Futures of Education initiative. The chapter presents the aims of the collection and provides an overview of each section in the book, including a summary of the key ideas and arguments that will be developed by the chapter authors.
Learning to Become With the World: Education for Future Survival
Authors: Common Worlds Research Collective
Published: January 2024

In the face of the multiple existential threats that we have brought upon ourselves, this chapter calls for education to be reimagined and reconfigured around the future survival of the planet. To this end, we offer seven visionary declarations of what education could look like in 2050 and beyond. These declarations proceed from three premises. First, human and planetary sustainability is one and the same thing. Second, any attempts to achieve sustainable futures that continue to separate humans from the rest of the world are delusional and futile. And third, education needs to play a pivotal role in radically reconfiguring our place and agency within this interdependent world. This requires a complete paradigm shift: from learning about the world in order to act upon it to learning to become with the world around us. Our future survival depends on our capacity to make this shift.
Inclusion Is More Than an Invitation: Shifting Science Communication in a Science Museum
Authors: Liu C. James , Mohabir Priya , Bennett Dorothy
Published: January 2024

In this chapter, the authors’ share an ongoing shift in broadening science communication at a US-based science museum through incorporating museum staff’s beliefs, perspectives, and personal relationships with science. The goal is to highlight how science communication is influenced, challenged, and defined by the members of the community, and to invite educators, researchers, and stakeholders to rethink and question their approach to inclusion and diversity in science education. In particular, we present examples from our youth museum educators – known as Explainers – their trainers, and the programme director. These examples illustrate the different paths and perspectives that people in different roles take while communicating science, and how their identity, culture, and experiences influence their choices and the way they engage with science learning and communication. By creating an Explainer training programme that supports reflection and agency, we gradually changed the ways we conduct educational practices on the museum floors, such as demonstrations and facilitation, and as a result organically expanded the inclusiveness of our learning environment. The strategies that helped create this shift are also discussed, including institutional efforts, such as reshaping leadership style and cross-departmental collaboration, and individual training, such as developing Explainer habits of mind. These examples and strategies will help other informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning institutions and future studies to establish a more inclusive science learning and communication environment.
Decolonising Initiatives in Action: From Theory to Practice at the Museum of Us
Authors: Macdonald Brandie , Parzen Micah
Published: January 2024

The Museum of Us (formerly the San Diego Museum of Man), located on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Kumeyaay Nation in San Diego’s Balboa Park, is ten years into its journey towards becoming a more decolonial organisation. What started as a theoretical effort to move the organisation towards decolonisation as an endpoint gradually transformed into a practical effort involving a constant process of implementing an ever-growing set of decolonising initiatives. This chapter, co-authored by Brandie Macdonald (Choctaw/Chickasaw), former Senior Director of Decolonising Initiatives, and Micah Parzen, Chief Executive Officer, at the Museum of Us, makes the case that, at its core, decolonising requires an unyielding commitment to continuous action in a forward-moving process of reckoning with the ever-present traumatic legacy of colonialism. Specifically, the chapter describes several decolonising initiatives in action, which go well beyond the museum’s cultural resources stewardship practices to include everything from its interpretive, programmatic, governance, branding/marketing, human resources, and even fundraising practices. Each decolonising initiative has brought new learning to the organisation, which seeks to engage in a constant process of doing better as it knows better. The authors hope that readers of this chapter will emerge with a renewed sense of how they may develop and implement decolonising initiatives within their own institutional contexts and unique colonial histories.
African Challenges and Opportunities for Decolonised Research-Led Innovation and Communication for Societal Transformation
Authors: Odon Akanimo
Published: January 2024

In an era where there is a crucial need to identify long-term solutions to sustainable development, global change, and challenges across the world, there is a strategic lead that science, technology, and innovation-focused organisations in Africa (including government, universities, and research and development departments of industries) can take to develop homegrown policies and initiatives to allow Africans themselves to provide solutions to their own particular needs and challenges. The communication of science using language constructs and systems that cut across the triple helix of academia, industry, and government is a fundamental component of that transformational and decolonised landscape for public engagement. However, there is an underlying pressure on researchers in Africa to communicate science in specific ways that align with the expectations and frameworks set by research funders and proponents of internationalisation in the Global North. This opens up a conversation that justifies the need for the decolonisation of the research and science communication agenda, especially if it must attend to local challenges and create developmental opportunities across the African region. Pressure to communicate science according to expectations and institutional priorities set by the Global North – which is often linked to research career promotion – restricts the use of science communication for local benefit. There is no arguing that there are huge gaps between scientific research and industry in many regions of the Global South, particularly in Africa. There is thus an urgent need to design policy tools, knowledge transfer programmes, and pathway-to-impact models that ensure a new era of impact-oriented and decolonised research and innovation in African countries and to communicate these innovations effectively for uptake without Eurocentric shackles. At the heart of this imperative is the need for capacity building, equitable strategic partnerships, and systemic re-orientation of science communication for societal transformation.
Introduction: The Battle for Britain and Conjunctural Thinking
Authors: Clarke John
Published: January 2024

This introduction establishes the key concerns and approaches of the book. It introduces the ‘Battle for Britain’, noting that different accounts of, and time frames for, the conflicts involved exist. The Introduction argues instead for an approach through conjunctural analysis, treating a conjuncture as a distinctive configuration of time and space in which multiple contradictions, conflicts and crises are condensed. The Introduction briefly traces the significance of this approach in Cultural Studies and my own relationship to it. It then provides a summary outline of the ten chapters of the book.
Nations, Nationalisms and the Conjuncture
Authors: Clarke John
Published: January 2024

Brexit exemplified the ways in which the national question became central to contemporary political movements; yet it needs to be revisited in the space between ‘methodological nationalism’ and ‘methodological globalism’. My exploration of the spatial aspects of the spatio-temporal formation of the conjuncture starts from conceiving places as the nodes of multiple spatial relationships (following Doreen Massey). Concretely, this is developed through an examination of the transnational relationships that dominate the formation of Britain (exemplified in the figures of America, Empire and Europe). These are difficult, ambivalent and contested relationships as the recent struggles over Europe indicate. At the same time, the unstable formation of the ‘United Kingdom’ has become increasingly unsettled by Brexit and its aftermath. Internal and external relationships have been recast by the rise of a distinctive variant of English Nationalism.
Building Blocs: Towards a Politics of Articulation
Authors: Clarke John
Published: January 2024

Developing the previous chapter’s understanding of social forces, this chapter draws on Stuart Hall’s concept of articulation to argue for a view of political mobilisation as accomplished through selective and contingent articulations. Rather than claims about decisive shifts in the political-cultural landscape, the chapter suggests that contemporary populisms and nationalisms have involved a distinctive practice of ‘vernacular ventriloquism’ as they imagine and project distinctions between the ‘people’ and their ‘enemies’. The Leave campaigns for Brexit developed a distinctive British populism (entwined with English nationalism) that assembled a particular bloc for the referendum, articulating many forms of loss, grievance and frustration. Stabilising this bloc has proved challenging: its coherence was challenged by the Corbyn-led Labour Party in the 2017 general election which voiced different popular anxieties and desires. It was, however, reassembled in the ‘Boris bloc’ of 2019, although, by 2022, this was coming apart, partly because of its internal contradictions and partly because of the proliferating crises that the Conservative government had to confront.
Diversity Work and Queer Value: Putting Queer Differences to Work in the LGBTQ-friendly Corporation
Authors: Burchiellaro Olimpia
Published: January 2024

This chapter traces the ways in which diversity is ‘put to work’ in supposedly LGBTQ+ inclusive corporations, asking when this labour turns into a direct resource for labourers and/or for the corporation, and how and when it does not. I build my arguments by drawing from ethnographic interview encounters with employees in engaging in diversity work in supposedly inclusive workplace contexts. Focusing on the ways in which diversity work is experienced, negotiated and engaged, I problematize managerial readings of inclusivity by showing how doing diversity work comes with expectations about how differences are supposed to be laboriously performed and put to work in ways which are valuable to the corporation. I also problematize critical readings of inclusivity by arguing that queer subjects are not merely subordinate to diversity management but actively, creatively, strategically, exhaustingly and reluctantly engaging the politics of LGBTQ+ diversity in order to become included. Here distinctions between the cultural recognition of diverse gender/sexual subjects (inclusion) and economic matters of workplace redistribution (labour relations) are collapsed, exposing how managerial control in inclusive contexts is at once cultural and economic, operating through the labour involved in reproducing ‘queer value’.
As Soon as this Pub Closes: The Temporalities of Gentrification and Other Queer Utopias
Authors: Burchiellaro Olimpia
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the temporalities of gentrification, arguing that promises of inclusion can work to keep us hooked to a version of the present that actually forecloses an alternative vision of the future. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and reflections collected after the redevelopment project’s ultimate approval, the chapter mobilizes temporality as a conceptual framework to focus on the active construction of multiple temporalities and the political work these do in (un)tying the past, present and future of the pub in the service of the normalization of dominant social relations. At the same time, I also argue that the kinds of socialities, relationships and friendships developed in trying to survive a violent present can lead to the creation of alternative queer utopias. These do not emerge from seeking inclusion within the dominant institutions and processes of capital accumulation, but from daring to imagine a queer future that overcomes the limits of the past and the up-beat, optimistic futures offered by gentrification.
Conclusion
Authors: Burchiellaro Olimpia
Published: January 2024

This chapter builds on the findings presented in the previous chapters to argue in favour of an approach to the politics of diversity that reconciles contemporary corporate investments in queer inclusion with redistributive demands. Drawing from Samuel Delany’s (1999) distinction between ‘networking’ and ‘contact’ in the city, I suggest that diversity politics, in its current neoliberal formulation, works against spaces of queer interclass contact in favour of more sterile queer networking spaces. I also argue that queer activists should care about the disappearance of queer spaces not simply as memories of a riotous past but as spaces of queerness and interclass contact for the future, rejecting claims that doing so is either backwards-looking or mere nostalgia. While the book is critical and pessimistic of diversity politics in its current neoliberal formulation, the stories of the participants featured in the project also reveal that queer subjects remain engaged in various struggles to make their lives more liveable and to acquire resources that enable the successful performance – and, sporadically, resistance to – the various norms and normativities underpinning promises of inclusion.
The Digiqueer Fight Against Algorithmic Governance
Authors: Ellis Justin R.
Published: January 2024

The hybrid media ecosystem of older and newer digital media logics has amplified the pre-digital fault lines of anti-LGBTQ stigma, reinforcing aspects of hierarchical human value. This chapter further details the range of algorithmic representational harms confronting the digiqueer citizen – a consequence of sorting populations into measurable types for security and profit through digital surveillance technologies. Underscoring this algorithmic governance are opaque and often unlawful decision-making processes. The chapter analyses the ethical issues surrounding the pervasiveness of platform biometrics such as facial and gait recognition software, and the stigmatic imaginaries of the criminalization and medical pathologization of same-sex attraction. Integrating research into surveillance capitalism and algorithmic governance, the chapter situates the digiqueer citizen within the the historical, legal, technical and economic forces mediating new forms of identity practices.
Power, Consumption, Disorder and Protest in Inner-City Centres
Authors: Di Ronco Anna
Published: January 2024

Drawing from urban studies, critical and cultural criminology, Chapter Two focuses on the governance of neoliberal inner-city areas and discusses how their engrained emphasis on consumption shapes individual behaviour as well as dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the urban space. In one of its core sections, this chapter outlines some of the key ways in which vulnerable people have progressively been excluded from inner-city areas in an effort to secure and promote consumption by those better off. The chapter then turns to protesting and critically analyses some recent policies and practices that restrict the right to protest in consumption-focused inner-city areas. To these ends, it mainly draws on this book’s case study as well as on recent examples taken from Europe and beyond, where protesting has increasingly been understood as a hindrance to business and the post-pandemic economic recovery, and limited via bans and stricter regulations.
Introduction
Authors: Jaramillo-Marín Jefferson , López-Lizarazo Luz Mery , Ruiz-Galvan Adriel , Bishop Matthew Louis , Díaz-Arévalo Juan Mario , Kanai Juan Miguel , Lombard Melanie , Rushton Simon , Shesterinina Anastasia , Shesterinina Anastasia , Turton Helen Louise
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides an introduction to contemporary Colombia and a brief history of the conflict, as well as an initial overview of diálogos socio-territoriales (socio-territorial dialogues; DST), which form the conceptual centrepiece of the book. The outline of the book is described and its key contributions explained.
Conceptualizing Reluctance
Authors: Destradi Sandra
Published: January 2024

This chapter takes a concept-building approach to introduce ‘reluctance’ into the fields of International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). It conceptualizes reluctance as entailing the two constitutive dimensions of hesitation and recalcitrance, which will serve as analytical categories for the analysis that follows. It also provides a detailed operationalization of those categories.
Theorizing Reluctance in World Politics
Authors: Destradi Sandra
Published: January 2024

Chapter 3 develops a theory of reluctance in world politics. The theory combines approaches from International Relations (IR), Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), Social Psychology and related fields. It argues that reluctance emerges if states face competing international expectations and are unable to form clear domestic preferences on foreign policy due to political weakness, limited capacity, cognitive problems or normative struggles.
Implications and Developments
Authors: Easterbrook-Smith Gwyn , Easterbrook-Smith Gwyn
Published: January 2024

This chapter summarises and synthesises the dominant themes in media discourse about sex work and COVID-19 during 2020 and 2021. First, it explores the way that sex work was treated during a national public health crisis is explored, addressing how stigmatising narratives of the sex worker as a disease vector were deployed, and which parts of the sex industry these focused on. Second, the ways that sex workers were made vulnerable are analysed, including economic vulnerabilities. These are considered with reference to which parts of the sex industry are especially exposed to this precarity – notably workers who experienced intersectional oppressions. Third, the chapter addresses how sex workers made use of media coverage to assist with the project of destigmatisation, offering counternarratives, and rendering themselves as part of the broader community. Within this, sex workers’ use of humour to convey key messages about their jobs are explored. Finally, the chapter considers how New Zealand’s model of decriminalisation functioned under stress, and what strengths of this legislative approach are apparent from the research.
Conclusion
Authors: Easterbrook-Smith Gwyn , Easterbrook-Smith Gwyn
Published: January 2024

This Conclusion highlights the ways that experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic were mediated and influenced by socio-economic position, and how a microcosm of this can be seen within the sex work community. Some questions about the experiences of sex workers cannot be answered by analysing media texts, and this chapter highlights areas for future study: in particular, the experiences of workers who are beneficiaries, and workers who live with a disability or chronic illness. Finally, the chapter offers a summary of changes and progress that can be seen when comparing this corpus of media coverage to coverage from the previous decade. There are subtle but important shifts in how sex work is discussed more frequently as a job and the language used to describe it, but the position of sex workers who are affected by intersectional oppressions remains fraught.
National Income, Human Development and Inequality
Authors: Shome Parthasarathi , Shome Parthasarathi
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the trajectory of income and wealth inequality in India. There has been secularly rising inequality. From the ‘bottom’ 50 per cent of the above-20 working age, and even the next 40 per cent, that is, all but the top 10 per cent, increase in income inequality is clearly observed using data from 1980–81.
Though all income groups in India experienced real income growth, the rate went up more rapidly for higher income groups. China experienced even more rapid overall growth but suffered from the same challenge of growing inequality. Available analysis reveals that inequality increased within Indian states, between rural and urban areas, and within urban areas. Wealth inequality also increased as it did in China and Russia. The top 1 per cent experienced higher wealth growth.
India’s Human Development Index (HDI) rank remained unchanged between 2015–19 while China improved by five and Brazil worsened by five. India made progress in components of the HDI, Multi-dimensional Poverty Index that imposes further conditions on deprivation, and Severe MDP, but cross-country comparisons reveal it has fallen behind comparable countries. It has to catch up if it were to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ‘leaving no one behind’ by 2030.
Racism, Colonialism and Slavery as International Practices
Authors: Shome Parthasarathi , Shome Parthasarathi
Published: January 2024

This chapter addresses the role of racism, slavery and colonialism in the genesis of poverty and inequality. It hypothesizes a sequence of exclusion, isolation and domination of one population over another through unfounded premises such as race differences, laziness or less intelligence, and extraction by the former from the latter that culminate in poverty and inequality. It discusses instances from Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United States and Yugoslavia. It elaborates on the Black experience in the US and its links to poverty and inequality through statistical evidence.
Emerging admissions of historical injustices by a few ex-colonial powers short of genuine apology are found to be inadequate in both financial and non-pecuniary terms. The chapter concludes by pointing to the insufficiency of compensation offered as well as recent cutbacks in international aid budgets by countries including Britain.
An Appendix to the chapter provides evidence of prevailing inequality in the United States.
Blueprint for Addressing Poverty and Inequality
Authors: Shome Parthasarathi , Shome Parthasarathi
Published: January 2024

Policies are proposed as ‘radical humanism’ to eradicate poverty and redress inequality while vanquishing caste and untouchability. On the economic policy side, the chapter recommends intensification of cash and assets transfers and tax policy reform to reduce inequality through higher income tax progressivity, wealth, gift and inheritance taxes, increased taxes on luxuries, use of earmarked taxes for their intended purposes of education and health and tax administration reform to counter tax evasion.
It recommends cutting back bureaucratic hurdles, expanding private-public partnership in the provision of socio-economic services such as hospitals, and encouragement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for services to the very poor.
It recommends perceptible step-up of women’s rights through proportional representation and children’s condition including health and education. It proposes a youth task force to implement compulsory social service by youth in rural and urban sectors following existing global and prior domestic experience, and proposes a framework for services by sector. It urges political reform while pointing out that caste-based politics is unlikely to serve the nation in the long run.
It traces the ongoing work at the United Nations to draw attention to financial transfers of the colonial era and strongly suggests international financial reparations to counter the ramifications of global colonialism.
The Path to Refuge: Ethnicity, Politics, Religion, and Global Order
Authors: Ullah AKM Ahsan , Chattoraj Diotima
Published: January 2024

The history of Rohingya refugees is examined in this section. Muslim Rohingyas have been persecuted and subjected to regular brutal treatment in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar for decades. Their lack of citizenship stems from a 1948 law that the Burmese government has refused to amend. Since most Rohingyas are not legal residents, they have trouble getting jobs and accessing education and healthcare, and it’s tough for them to travel around the country. This chapter explores race, politics, religion, and international relations as they relate to the book’s major themes. The chapter describes the Rohingyas’ escape to safety and offers an explanation for the international community’s relative indifference to the problem up until this point.
Alternative Proteins: Bio-Mimicry, Structuring the New Protein Industry, ‘Promissory Narratives’, and ‘Substitutionism 40’
Authors: Goodman David
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the specificities of the diffusion processes of precision agriculture PA technologies in the US and Western Europe, and the contested issues these reveal. These specificities are seen in the context of structural agrarian change over the last 30 years, with its distinctive ‘divides’ and inequalities. Digitalisation and decision support tools are imbuing farms with certain features of digital control centres, and the spatial nature of farm work is changing as screen time becomes increasingly important in managing farmscapes. The chapter explores the implications of these changes for farmer autonomy and the politics of knowledge production, and refers to the ‘right to repair’ controversy as an expression of farmer disempowerment. PA technologies are transforming farmers’ experiential knowledge into newly commoditised inputs, transferring power to corporate service platforms and prescriptive software packages. Farmers’ equivocal engagement with these technologies is analysed using the concept of ‘re-scripting’. The chapter concludes with some reflections on ‘Appropriationism 4.0’.
Parenting Behind Bars
Authors: Benedict Regina White
Published: January 2024

This chapter is the first of three in the book to report study findings. It brings to light accounts of parenting from prison. Twenty-seven of the 29 women interviewed were mothers; the majority were mothers of adult children living on their own. They described rather different relationships with their children, captured as four types of mothers: the remorseful mother, the contented mother, the uneasy mother, and the abandoned mother. Most remained optimistic about family life, including grandparenting, when they returned home.
Ageing in Their Own Words: Peace of Mind, Body, and Circumstances
Authors: Benedict Regina White
Published: January 2024

This chapter describes what the women shared about ageing in prison as well as the connections they drew between ageing and acceptance. The older women suffered health problems exacerbated by imprisonment, and psychological difficulties including staff disrespect and a felt shame of ageing in prison. Acceptance was achieved on three levels: acceptance of incarceration, acceptance of responsibility, and acceptance of self.
IR Moral Realism as a Universal Theory
Authors: Xuetong Yan
Published: January 2024

International relations (IR) moral realism has been mistakenly affiliated with the ‘Chinese School’ and accused of sharing the same defects of that school. Theorists of IR moral realism oppose the idea of constructing an IR theory with a national or cultural identity because they believe IR theories should have universal applicability. The motivation of constructing moral realism is to enrich modern IR theory academically rather than to legitimize Chinese foreign policy politically. IR moral realism is not a theory of Chinese exceptionalism because it explains the strategic preferences of leaders of major powers, both Chinese and foreign; meanwhile, it never asserts that China will provide a global leadership more moral than those of other major powers. The theory is constructed by hybridizing Chinese traditional thought with modern IR theories and it is not affected by Sino-centrism. It is tested by the current changes in international order like all other IR theories.
‘Asia’s Liberal Leader’ and Human Insecurity
Authors: Black Lindsay
Published: January 2024

Chapter 2 challenges the literature that has designated Japan as ‘Asia’s liberal leader’. This literature emphasizes Japan’s contribution to trade deals and side-lines both the Japanese government’s supposed commitment to a ‘value-based diplomacy’ and the historical context of Japan’s engagement with the East Asian region. The chapter sketches these historical developments to demonstrate how the end of the Cold War culminated in critiques of Japan’s contribution to the liberal international order requiring a rethink of Japan’s international security and developmental policies. By the early 21st century, the concept of human security had achieved a prominent place in Japan’s foreign policy lexicon, denoting a human-centric approach to Japan’s international security and developmental contributions. It is upon this discursive foundation that Japanese foreign policy makers have developed their interpretation of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific and contemporary regional vision as ‘Asia’s liberal leader’. The chapter concludes by examining the inconsistencies and contradictions inherent to the discourse of Japan as ‘Asia’s liberal leader’, setting up the focus of the remaining chapters which unpacks this discourse in the context of contemporary Japan–Myanmar relations.
Japan as a ‘Bridge’: Facilitating Myanmar’s Transition to a ‘Disciplined Democracy’
Authors: Black Lindsay
Published: January 2024

Chapter 3 explores the construction of Japanese foreign policy narratives concerning the evolving democratization process in Myanmar. The chapter argues that Japanese policy makers have consistently sought to distinguish their relations with Myanmar from other states in the international community by depicting Japan’s relationship with Myanmar in terms of bridging (kakehashi). The notion of Japan acting in this kakehashi role can be observed in the statements of various policy makers who imagine the Japanese state as a go-between the international community and Myanmar, seeking to entice Myanmar into the liberal international order through ‘positive linkage’, namely Japan’s offer of Official Development Assistance to the Myanmar government in return for steps towards democratization, such as the freeing of political prisoners. By democratizing, these Japanese policy makers argued, Myanmar could shed its ‘pariah’ status, enabling the West to lower economic sanctions and recognize it as a legitimate member of the international community. This chapter traces Japan’s responses to the evolution of Myanmar’s democracy in the post-Cold War period with a particular emphasis on events after the Saffron Revolution and Cyclone Nargis through to the election of the National League for Democracy in the November 2015 general election.
Japan and Special Economic Zones in Myanmar
Authors: Black Lindsay
Published: January 2024

The human cost of economic development is the subject of Chapter 4. The primary incentive of both the Japanese government and businesses in encouraging Myanmar’s democratization process was to exploit the human and natural resources of the country and construct economic corridors across the Mekong region to facilitate trade. The Japanese government’s support for Japanese business ventures in Myanmar was encapsulated in its sponsoring, through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), of the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Though the Thilawa SEZ should have been developed in accordance with JICA’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) guidelines, the land of the Thilawa residents was coercively appropriated, the residents were inadequately compensated and moved to an inappropriate relocation site where the quality of housing was poor and the conditions for life were unsanitary. Japan’s support for the construction of the Dawei SEZ witnessed similar land grabs at the expense of the local population. The Thilawa and Dawei cases highlight a major discrepancy between Japanese policy makers’ rhetorical commitment to human security and the reality of neoliberal imperatives in Myanmar.
Conclusion: The Chimera of Progress
Authors: Black Lindsay
Published: January 2024

The Conclusion details Japan’s response to the 1 February 2021 coup in Myanmar in light of its decade-long support for Myanmar’s transition to a ‘disciplined democracy’. Myanmar’s military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government and brutally suppressed supporters who took to the streets in protest. Still eager to be seen as a ‘bridge’ between Myanmar and the international community, the Japanese government emphasized its ability to steer Myanmar’s military leaders back to the path of democratization. The Japanese government’s futile efforts at mediation marked an end to the illiberal tragedy of Japan’s engagement with Myanmar’s transition to a ‘disciplined democracy’. The chapter ends by detailing the discursive foundations of Japan’s policy towards Myanmar and the inherent contradictions and exclusions within this discourse. Reflecting on Japan’s foreign policy discourse opens up alternative courses of action. Nonetheless, the Conclusion remains pessimistic that a brighter and more prosperous future awaits Myanmar’s people.
Urban Cultural Movements and Anti-Creative Struggles
Authors: Hollands Robert G.
Published: January 2024

This chapter builds upon critiques of the creative city paradigm and the potential of alternative creative spaces to work collectively and liaise with other urban social movements to envisage an alternative urban future. The first section provides some background on urban collective action by introducing the work of Manuel Castells and his concept of ‘urban social movements’. The second section develops the related concept of urban cultural movements. In doing so, it looks at some case study examples of creative resistance from Milan, Singapore and Berlin. It explores the potential of anti-creative city struggles as well as the pitfalls urban cultural movements face in making links with wider social and political contestations in the neoliberal city.
Beyond the Neoliberal Creative City
Authors: Hollands Robert G.
Published: January 2024

The final chapter of the book brings together criticism of the neoliberal creative city with the pressing need to envision a different kind of urban scenario. The first part briefly reviews the main limits of the neoliberal creative city. It then summarizes some of the common characteristics of alternative practices in the different fields of the urban cultural economy. This is followed by three further sections concerned with going beyond the neoliberal creative city. They include resetting art and culture within a foundational economy, pursuing creative justice and striving for cultural sustainability. A final section concludes by focusing more broadly on the issues of decommodification, the commons, urban justice and sustainability. In doing so there is not only an emphasis on what needs to change but how we might best think of moving towards a more truly creative, just and sustainable future.
Introduction
Authors: Kaufmann Mareile
Published: January 2024

Nothing about data is a given. Data, from Latin “datum”, translates into a “thing given”. We need to reconsider this given-ness of data. If anything, data are given to us by something or someone. Data are given into an emergent situation. They are not fixed, pre-existing entities. This book, however, is not just about data. The vernacular use of data refers to digital or analogue datasets that are generated, collected, assembled, and used for creating facts. I employ the term information instead, because it includes data, but refers to more overarching notions of communication and knowledge and their imbrication with processes of shaping and giving form. Giving form is a material process. Indeed, the etymology of matter, going back to the word “mater” meaning “origin, source, mother”, adds to this book’s understanding of information. Not only is information given to us by someone or something (mother), but it is material. What is more, giving form and shaping indicate processes of being in-formation. In short, the term information already summarizes this book’s basic argument: Information is not a standalone. It is given to us by humans and things. It actively changes and is changed in processes of making, shaping, and giving form. Information is material and it matters.
Conversion
Authors: Kaufmann Mareile
Published: January 2024

Hacker Kate90r13 summarizes the upsurge of associative information practices. He observes powerful routines in analysing, revealing, and disclosing insights based on digital information and in engineering these insights into new products and socio-technical procedures. Kate90r13 is not the only one who watches these developments with a growing unease. Self-critical journalism problematizes our role as consumers in this development as our clicks, swipes, and likes are analysed by those with the privileged overview (New Scientist, 2018). The vocabulary of the ‘frightful five’ (referring to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft; coined by Manjoo 2017) or worries about China’s ‘digital authoritarianism’ (Erixon and Lee-Makiyama, 2011) were early indicators of a rising awareness about the consequences of sharing information online. By today, countless reports, citizen and legal initiatives as well as entire research programs address how public and commercial actors practice the collecting, storing, curating, and processing of information. Policies for opting out of digital services (Burgess, 2018), personal choices of ‘un-facebooking’ (Evans, 2014) and ‘digital detox’ (Syvertsen, 2020), as well as ‘non-participation’ (Casemajor et al, 2015) are attempts to answer these trends. Yet, not everyone agrees with such radical reactions: "Pulling the plug is not an option”, says hacker jE2EE. He prefers to engage critically with the rise of association without abandoning the Internet as such. An opt-out of online services is almost impossible as it produces social, financial and utility costs that are hard to afford (Brunton and Nissenbaum, 2011, 2016; Morozov, 2017).
Overcoming Obstacles to Citizenship: Imagining Post-Conflict Gender Equality
Authors: Weber Sanne
Published: January 2024

This chapter describes women’s hopes for the future and the importance of education, work and organizational processes among women to achieve these goals. It contrasts women’s dreams with their stark realities, in which the ‘baby boom’ among former FARC guerrillas and the spike in adolescent mothers in former IDP communities have meant that motherhood and oppressive masculinities remain key obstacles to a stronger practice of active citizenship for women. It zooms in on the importance of organization as a crucial element for enabling reparations and reintegration to be more effective at transforming gender inequality and promoting women’s citizenship. Practices of active citizenship could make women less dependent on their husbands or on projects provided by the state or international organizations. Economic and political independence could in turn help to transform gender inequality in a more sustainable way.
Introduction
Authors: Kuntsman Adi , Martin Sam , Miyake Esperanza
Published: January 2024

In 2020, the world experienced an unprecedented global crisis that destabilized existing social, cultural, legal, economic, ethical, medical and digital structures in different contexts and countries. In tandem, the world saw a rapidly increased use of digital technologies across various spheres in science, technology and society: from public health, to education, politics, work and everyday life. In many instances, the newly introduced technologies were compulsory, or seen as necessary and unavoidable. Introduced as temporary measures, they often remained even after the initial ‘need’ had gone away. This book is an invitation to reflect on these developments, by asking how can we understand – and be critical of – new forms and practices of digital technologies and networked communications? How might they challenge, reinforce and/or maintain existing, normative inequalities, injustices and infringements to human and data rights around the world? What new dilemmas were created by shifting much of work, education and everyday interactions into online environments? What new data grabs have emerged or become normalized? And finally, what spaces and possibilities are there to resist encroaching digitality? What is the place of digital refusal in the fabric of pandemic and post-pandemic life?