bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Precarious Work after Apartheid: Experimenting with Alternative Forms of Representation in the Informal Sector
Authors: Forrest Kally
Published: January 2024

Chapter 2 explores alternative forms of representation among precarious workers. Two South African case studies – COSATU’s Vulnerable Workers Task Team (VWTT) and the Organisation of Informal Traders – suggest that experimentation on the periphery of the labour movement is building significant agency and power. Both studies demonstrate the complex nature of precarious work, illustrated by the VWTT’s key demand that own-account workers be able to earn a living income rather than a living wage. There is a danger, however, that established unions will only defend the interests of permanent workers. Established labour needs to acknowledge that the world of work has irrevocably changed, and that adopting an experimental approach to representation and bargaining is the only way in which it can secure a future.
Global Capital, Global Labour: The Possibilities of Transnational Activism
Authors: Ludwig Carmen
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines a private for-profit corporation, Bridge International Academy (BIA), that presents itself as providing a solution for the educational needs of low-income families in Kenya and Uganda through digital technology. However, with the assistance of their GUF Education International (EI), local unions found that digital technology was being used to de-professionalise teachers and to cut costs drastically. BIA achieves this goal by replacing qualified teachers with low-paid and under-qualified individuals who transmit scripted instructions to pupils through ‘teacher-computers’. By openly advancing this form of low-fee, for-profit provision as an alternative to public schools, BIA represents a direct challenge to public education. Long neglected, we argue that global unions are emerging as players in this contest, helping to build counter power at both the local and global levels. Through their intermediary coordinating role at the supranational level, global unions constitute an important source of power.
Gender Blindness for At-risk Girls in Rural Communities
Authors: Terry April N. , Williams L. Susan , Edwards Mari-Esther , Grant Kelli
Published: January 2024

Most studies of gender-based violence (GBV) remain outside mainstream scholarship and focus on overt cases of physical and sexual violence in urban areas. This study centres on a form of indirect GBV that has received almost no attention: the systemic invisibility of at-risk girls residing in rural communities without services or support, often propelling them into a juvenile justice system. We refer to gender blindness as active avoidance of gender as relevant, illuminating a continuum of GBV, including covert cases often unacknowledged. Relying on observation and personal interviews with more than 100 stakeholders, our research provides insider knowledge of rural communities in a Midwestern US state. Data identify mechanisms that contribute to indirect GBV, including: almost total disregard of gender-specific issues; active denial of gender inequities that disadvantage girls; and practices that perpetuate outsider status for ‘bad girls’ while normalising boys’ deviance. Such issues are most evident in, and exacerbated by, characteristics common to nonmetropolitan communities, such as high density of informal ties, strong patriarchal traditions, and lack of diversity and adequate resources. Practitioner-oriented suggestions are provided and draw attention to the need for gender-responsive data-driven decisions in all places, including rural communities.
Gender-based Violence Against New Immigrants
Authors: McPeak Carly E. , Sprout Valerie K.
Published: January 2024

Victims of gender-based violence (GBV) who are non-citizens of the United States face unique challenges when seeking support from family and service providers. These challenges may be due to their sociolegal status in relation to their abusers and concerns regarding family ostracism and fear of deportation. In this chapter, the authors provided a detailed overview of pathways to obtain lawful residency in the United States and how they intersect with disadvantages when seeking services and legal support. The discussion also addresses victimisation experiences by non-citizens in rural areas and the challenges and barriers when considering rurality. Legal policy has been discussed to propose a better immigration relief process to support immigrants who experience GBV in the United States.
Understanding Gender-based Violence and Rurality: Conclusion and Future Implications
Authors: Qi Ziwei , Terry April N. , Lynn Tamara J.
Published: January 2024

Gender-based violence (GBV) takes many forms, including direct physical, psychological, emotional and economic abuse, and indirect abuses such as intentional gender blindness. These actions, or inactions, can have detrimental effects across generations and cultures. The triangulation of GBV, rurality and rural culture has become a challenging, yet essential, topic. The discussion on rural crime is also timely and urgent when considering most criminological theories in the Western world focus on urban settings. Since the definition of rural and rurality differs worldwide, the study of the phenomena of violence and rurality needs innovative, sophisticated and up-to-date methodologies. In this text, readers explore the most current research about GBV in the United States with implications that can be applied internationally, with chapters utilising qualitative and quantitative methods. Chapters are rich and diverse in topics, focused on oppressed groups such as immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual and ally plus (LGBTQIA+), by exploring new theories on the patterns of violence with a spotlight on patriarchy. Chapters examine best practices to positively affect the lives of survivors – moving from policy review into actionable change. The text collects a series of research and agency reports that provide a holistic view of GBV in rural communities. The text also emphasises insights on the prevention and education of GBV from youth to college-aged adults. The text introduces interdisciplinary approaches (such as community justice and non-profit victim advocacy work) to tackle intersectional issues of GBV in rural areas.
Global Neoliberalism and What It Means
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Chapter 2, Global Neoliberalism and What It Means, defines modern capitalism, contrasting Weberian and Marxist approaches. The ambiguities in the understanding of ‘neoliberal capitalism’ and its diversity in the practice of modern economies are outlined. On the basis of the writings of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, neoliberalism is defined. Contemporary neoliberalism enlarges the 20th-century version of liberalism to include a social economy, financialisation of social relations and a propensity to expansion on a global level. Neoliberalism is considered to be a comprehensive theory of how economy and society should be ordered, and its psychological, political, economic and social dimensions are discussed. A contrast is made between the collectivist views of Emile Durkheim and Francis Fukuyama’s neoliberal approach. Contradictory features of neoliberalism are discussed with particular reference to the contradiction between bureaucratic regulation and free market exchange.
The State Socialist Challenge and Its Market Socialist Critics
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

State socialism, as it appeared in the East European socialist bloc and China after the Second World War, was a hierarchical state-administered publicly-owned planned economy. The communist party state was hegemonic. State socialism is considered the first comprehensive form of state-led industrialisation, ensuring not only economic growth but a transformation of the social structure that prioritised economic growth, relatively low income differentials and a comprehensive welfare state. By the 1960s, state socialism was an effective form of welfare state industrialisation. However, as economic growth declined and real income fell, public aspirations for higher living standards were not fulfilled. State socialism was challenged ideologically by reformers who advocated market socialism and participatory electoral democracy. Criticisms of the planning system mirrored those of the neoliberal economists. The state socialist system is appraised as an effective but imperfect alternative to liberal market capitalism. Two alternatives to the difficulties of Soviet planning are outlined and discussed: market socialism as proposed by Oskar Lange and participatory socialist planning as advocated by Ernest Mandel.
The Conversion of Social Democracy to the ‘Third Way’
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Chapter 7, The Conversion of Social democracy to the ‘Third Way’, considers how traditional social democratic parties responded to Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal alternative. Continual electoral failure precipitated the rise of a left-wing type of liberalism, defined in terms of individual rights, diversity promotion and equality of opportunity, a system of values compatible with neoliberalism. Left-wing marginalised class analysis and focussed on the duality of hierarchy and democracy. The chapter turns to an analysis of identity, diversity – which defined the liberal new left, and class – which no longer appealed to the socialist left. The chapter relates how changes in the social structure prompted a shift from class rights to social rights (of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, rights to abortion). A new post-capitalist society had arrived and a convergence took place between right-wing and left-wing forms of neoliberalism. The chapter outlines discussion in academia and the media where the fundamental causes and remedies were identified, and in the Party which focused on the policies and images which would further victory at the ballot box. In place of the dualism between capitalism and socialism, the political antithesis was now defined as being between ‘democracy’ and ‘authoritarianism’. The chapter details how New Labour policy was put into effect by the Party’s leadership under Tony Blair. It concludes with the fall of New Labour and poses the question of whether the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn presages a return to socialist policies.
The Changing Global Class Structure and the Challenge of the Semi-Core
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Chapter 10, The Changing Global Class Structure and the Challenge of the Semi-Core, considers the significant shift from national to international economies and the rise and composition of a transnational political class. Governments of nation states lose powers to international organisations and to uncontrollable globalisation processes. States retain important political powers, notably over defining citizenship, raising taxes, and over military matters, including declaration of war. State sovereignty is reconstituted in the context of economics being global whereas electoral politics is focussed at the state level. The dominant classes are global, leading to the formation of a transnational social class significantly different from national capitalist classes. Changes in the economic capacity of states in the international system are illustrated by graphs showing the growth of transnational corporations (TNCs) and the increasing importance of the semi-core countries. The core capitalist states are considered to be no longer hegemonic but challenged by an ascendant semi-core led by China. Sanctions imposed on Russia and China lead to deglobalisation and to the formation of competitive regional blocs between core and semi-core. The current challenge of China presages a power transition.
Self-destructing Propensities of Global Capitalism
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Chapter 11, The Self-destructing Propensities of Global Capitalism, considers contradictions in the development of global capitalism which have precipitated the formation of a new ascendant class predicated on information technology, economic abundance and collaborative production. A metamorphosis is occurring leading to a new superior social formation, post-capitalism, which can take various forms. The claim, that contemporary capitalism is driven by ascendant forces, the creatariat, leading to a new form of production, based on a network society and the creative industries, is evaluated and found to be inadequate. A future ‘automated luxury communism’ consequent on increased productivity is questioned and found to be over optimistic. Other critics consider that the state is undermining capitalism. Disillusion with previous forms of social democratic electoral politics and with the ‘vanguard party’ leads to the rejection of organisational forms of leadership as means to attain political power. The author examines the call, by various writers, for autonomous spontaneous action to create cooperative social forms of economy and social life to replace global capitalism. It is contended that such views are over optimistic as a means to overcome the dominant transnational corporations (TNCs) and hegemonic capitalist states.
Social Democratic and Socialist Perspectives
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Chapter 14, Social Democratic and Socialist Perspectives, outlines the views of those who regard capitalist globalisation as a positive economic development, but consider it necessary to democratise or regulate it. Others propose a form of socialist globalisation. Such proposals curb current globalisation policies, give states more powers and effectively move to internationalisation. The reformist social democratic approach proposes to make global organisations more democratic and responsive to societal interests, to strengthening the state and weakening the processes of globalisation. Social democratic parties in power, however, are found to pursue policies within the context of global capitalism. Some, including the Chinese, advocate socialist policies that reshape globalisation by giving states greater rights – a return to internationalisation. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) relying on obligations to stakeholders, is outlined as another mechanism for modifying global capitalist interests. A more radical socialist approach proposes a different form of globalisation – here the institutions of capitalism are dismantled, globalisation remains. Capitalist globalisation becomes socialist globalisation, which pursues objectives based on human needs.
Regulated Market Socialism
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Chapter 16, Regulated Market Socialism, summarises the major alternatives discussed in the book. The chapter then outlines the preferences of the author: regulated market socialism - a hybrid economy predicated on public and private ownership, markets and an economic plan. A ‘social state’ is envisaged as a post-capitalist socialist political and moral order – without losing the satisfactions of a pluralist consumer society. Economic surplus, made available from public ownership, is allocated through a state plan. Socialist planning is revisited in the context of computerised planning. In the private sector, economic coordination functions through markets. The justification for public ownership is that it will perform more efficiently and effectively than private ownership and is proposed for major economic corporations, and for those that fail, or lack public responsibility. Socialism develops in a democratic pluralist society with a competitive electoral political system. Self-motivating individualism is retained and political democracy is extended to include economic democracy. Regulated market socialism is presented as a realistic alternative capable of transcending neoliberal capitalist globalisation.
Shifting Boundaries between Insurance and Finance
Authors: van der Heide Arjen
Published: January 2024

Chapter 3 examines changes in life insurance arrangements in the 1970s and 80s, focusing especially on the emergence of newly established life insurers who sought to challenge the dominant position of the long-established incumbents by selling unit-linked insurance. The chapter examines how proponents of unit-linked insurance envisioned a model for life insurance arrangements that would reduce reliance on actuarial discretion and enable life insurance to be seen primarily as an investment product. The chapter concludes by arguing that the competitive challenge from unit-linked insurance led to the emergence of hybrid forms of insurance, combining elements from traditional forms of with-profits insurance and unit-linked insurance, as the dominant mode of insurance provisioning. This would set the stage for the dramatic demise of the Equitable Life Assurance Society described in chapter 5.
‘Authors of Their Own Misfortune’
Authors: van der Heide Arjen
Published: January 2024

Chapter 5 builds on the two preceding chapters and examines how many of the questions about financial risk and actuarial discretion continued to surface throughout the 1980s and ’90s. The chapter first describes how the continuous decline of interest rates put pressure on the capital base of insurance firms. One company in particular ended up with serious difficulties: the Equitable Life Assurance Society, a mutual company whose practices exemplified in extremis the problems in British life insurance more generally. I suggest in this chapter that the dramatic collapse of Equitable Life in 2000 gave rise to the perception that actuarial expertise had failed to keep up with the realities of financial capitalism. The chapter ends by describing how this crisis of actuarial expertise in turn provided a window of opportunity for proponents of modern finance theory to push for reforms in the calculative machinery of life insurance, drawing on the core models of modern finance theory and the derivatives departments of investment banks. The downfall of Equitable Life prepared the way for life insurers’ evaluation machinery to be overhauled more generally
‘Taking Account of What the Market Has to Say’
Authors: van der Heide Arjen
Published: January 2024

Chapter 6 describes how – once it became clear that UK regulators required life insurers to use models from modern finance theory to calculate their balance sheets – insurers sought to adapt these models to the specificities of insurance contracts. The chapter first examines the specificities of the models of modern finance theory (and the derivatives departments of investment banks) and how they differ from traditional actuarial modelling. The chapter proceeds with an examination of how these models were appropriated in the context of life insurance and reviews the key decisions that were made around the appropriate extension of modern finance theory to the context of insurance. Finally, the chapter asks to what extent we can speak of insurers’ appropriation of modern finance theory and the concomitant transition towards market-consistent modelling as a process of cultural change.
Introduction: Once Upon a Time
Authors: Muir Robyn
Published: January 2024

This chapter introduces the Disney Princesses, defining them as a phenomenon and as inherently political. It outlines a new way of analysing the Disney Princesses through facet methodology.
‘Active Leaders’: Transgressive Princesses
Authors: Muir Robyn
Published: January 2024

This chapter introduces the third wave of the Disney Princess Phenomenon: Pocahontas, Mulan, and Kida. Their films are situated within their cultural context, before the dominant images of femininity in the wave are introduced and discussed: assertiveness, communication and negotiation, leadership, and desiring a romantic relationship, with the chapter identifying them as ‘active leaders’.
Introduction to Climate Fixes versus System Change: What’s the Problem?
Authors: Levidow Les
Published: January 2024

The slogan ‘System Change Not Climate Change’ has sharpened public debate about the societal changes that are necessary to avoid climate disaster in ways creating an environmentally sustainable, socially just future. The demand for ‘system change’ directs attention at profit-driven, high-carbon production systems which cause climate change, other environmental harms, resource plunder and social injustices, along with policies which perpetuate them. Protest has generated low-carbon, socially just alternatives, but these have often lacked an effective social agency for replacing harmful high-carbon systems. Meanwhile neoliberal techno-market fixes have emphasized market-based incentives for techno-solutions. This policy framework underlies the UN Climate Convention and the European Union, whose false solutions have maintained system continuity, contrary to their environmental pretensions. Such fixes have sometimes provoked public controversy, as an extra opportunity to promote alternatives. This book presents a big picture of their strategies and potential, as steps towards system change.
EU Biofuels Fix: Prioritizing an Investment Climate
Authors: Levidow Les
Published: January 2024

In 2009 the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive set a statutory mandate for renewable energy in transport fuel, citing the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This mandate expanded biofuels from edible feedstock, thus provoking controversy over multiple harms. The obligatory market incentivized land-use changes in the global South, in turn restricting resource access for local food production, while disguising various harms through sustainability criteria. As a key rationale, the EU mandate would help stimulate the EU’s Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE): technoscientific progress would bring ‘advanced biofuels’ using only non-edible feedstock. Meanwhile this future promise served to perpetuate conventional biofuels. Even before the Directive’s enactment, critics provoked opposition over several issues, for example, the EU’s resource plunder, significant harms beyond the sustainability criteria, lax standards for vehicle emissions, and a delay in electric vehicles as replacements. Despite such opposition, the mandate continued to permit the most harmful feedstock for at least another decade after the 2009 Directive. This outcome resulted from prioritizing an ‘investment climate’ for the KBBE rather than GHG reductions.
Introduction
Authors: Varriale Simone
Published: January 2024

The Introduction situates the book’s argument, contribution and methodology within academic debates about neoliberal meritocracy and intra-EU migrations, reframing these debates through key concepts from postcolonial sociology, decolonial theory and the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Furthermore, the Introduction situates the book’s argument vis-à-vis relevant debates about Italian emigration, postcolonial Italy, and class, racial inequalities and gender inequalities in post-2008 Europe and Italy.
The Coloniality of Meritocracy: From the Anglosphere to Post-Austerity Europe
Authors: Varriale Simone
Published: January 2024

Chapter 1 situates the rise of neoliberal meritocracy within a wider historical and geographical context, highlighting its influence over Southern and Eastern European peripheries. The chapter connects scholarship on meritocracy with decolonial theory, arguing that the latter provides a more expansive theoretical and historical understanding of the links between meritocracy, neoliberalism and processes of racialization. The chapter’s second part situates Italy, and post-2008 Italian emigration, within wider histories of European whiteness, nation-building and colonialism, and within more recent histories of neoliberalism and austerity. The chapter concludes by outlining the theoretical framework of the following chapters, which focus on Italians’ unequal migrations. It elaborates on the ideas of meritocracy/coloniality, meritocracy as a doxa, and meritocracy as a category of practice, advocating for a theoretical synergy between decolonial theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory.
What Could Have Been? Disaster Impact Analysis of Haiyan in Region VIII
Authors: Julian Shiely Anne O. , Loja Francine Blaise M.
Published: January 2024

Every year, typhoons in the Philippines wreak havoc on the lives of many people and on local economies. Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) caused 6,300 deaths and direct economic losses in 2013, much of it in Region VIII amounting to PHP68.7 billion. Equally important, albeit harder to estimate, are the subsequent economic losses resulting from the typhoon’s current damages to productive physical and human capital. The difficulty follows from the lack of a counterfactual—that is, the economic welfare in the affected areas that would have been realized sans typhoon Haiyan—to compare with the actual economic welfare post-Haiyan to assess the typhoon’s true impact. This is important especially since Region VIII’s economy appeared already on the downswing following a major fire in 2012. However, the economic slide may have been slowed down by the government and international organizations’ massive relief operations and rehabilitation programs in the affected areas. A counterfactual approach is important to determine the subsequent economic losses resulting from the typhoon’s current damages to productive physical and human capital. This, however, presents a challenging task owing to the lack of a counterfactual to compare with the actual economic welfare post-Haiyan to assess the typhoon’s true impact.
Climate Change and Applied Theater as Post-Disaster Response
Authors: Gupa Dennis D.
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides a narrative inquiry on the practice of applied theater that aims to recenter grassroots participation as a post-disaster recovery program. Through auto-ethonograpy, the author reflects, complicates, and envisions ethical methodology of co-producing and co-creating community-based theater that deals with the impact of climate crises in local communities. A thematic centering on the renewal of creativity in the aftermath of disaster, the author asserts that collective creation in community-based theater performances underscores an attentiveness in agentic representation of social trauma brought by climate crises. He also argues that empowerment in post-disaster work is always a shared responsibility. Using the processes of applied theater, the author foregrounds the multivalent possibilities of mobilizing creativity, relationality, and solidarity.
Conclusion (For Now): Post-Haiyan Philippines and Beyond
Authors: Bonifacio Glenda Tibe , Epe Roxanna Balbido
Published: January 2024

This is the concluding section of the book which synthesizes the themes and chapters and implications beyond the Philippines.
Mapping the Legal Landscape in Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand and its Applications in the Digital Age
Authors: Capuano Angelo
Published: January 2024

This chapter maps the legal landscape in Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand, to investigate whether and the extent to which the law in each country prohibits discrimination based on class and/or social background. It finds that whilst ‘class’ and ‘social background’ are not explicitly listed in legislation as grounds of discrimination, the law in each of these jurisdictions lists other grounds of discrimination which include, or reflect, class and/or factors that go to social background. This chapter analyses the law and legal framework in a number of jurisdictions, including: Australia concerning adverse action and termination of employment based on ‘social origin’, and, discrimination based on ‘social origin’; South Africa concerning discrimination based on ‘social origin’; Quebec, New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories concerning discrimination based on ‘social condition’; Canada and various Canadian provinces concerning discrimination based on ‘family status’; and New Zealand concerning discrimination based on ‘family status’.
Introduction: Southern and Postcolonial Perspectives on Policing, Security and Social Order
Authors: Squires Peter , Pessoa Cavalcanti Roxana , Waseem Zoha
Published: January 2024

The chapter introduces the volume, sketches the broad outlines of the 16 substantive chapters which follow and sets out the issues and concerns which underpin the approach taken by the collection. The discussion engages, albeit briefly, with the work of a range of Southern and postcolonial commentators who have drawn attention to Southern differences and the postcolonial intersectionalities of race, gender and class. The chapter also introduces the notion of ‘boomerang’ (or ‘blowback’) effects as violence and forms of criminalization and securitization, which were first deployed by imperial nations across their empires, find their way back home and into in the modern governance systems of Northern neoliberal societies. At the same time, processes of transnational governance, even disarmament, peace and human rights initiatives, replicate the many of imperial relations they were meant to ameliorate or replace.
From Overseer to Officer: A Brief History of British Policing through Afro-Diasporic Music Culture
Authors: Fatsis Lambros
Published: January 2024

Policing and music are rarely thought together in mainstream criminological literature, yet this chapter, by tracing the origins of British policing to its colonial roots, demonstrates how colonial militias were formed to police the music of the enslaved as a sign of rebellion, insurrection and disorder. Drawing on Afro-diasporic music – as an indicative case study – policing and racism will be contextualized as concurrent, constitutive and dependent on each other; exposing the historical mission and function of policing as a force of racial violence. By rethinking police racism through Afro-diasporic music(s), this chapter encourages a (Southern) decolonial approach to police scholarship – to reintroduce the police as guardians of a social and political order that is marked by racial hierarchies, whose roots lie in the imperial ideology that created racism, ‘race’ and policing.
Rioting Struggles in Brazil: Prison Gangs, Staff and Criminal Justice Hegemony
Authors: Dieter Vitor
Published: January 2024

The literature on prison riots offers a variety of explanations for the disruption of prison order. In the global South researchers have argued that riots are related to the precariousness of the prison system, leading to the take-over by ‘criminal organizations’. Explanations, however, rarely address the larger criminal justice policies and the group interests of the subjects within the system which seek prison reforms or organizational changes. The research reported here, informed by interviews, participant observation, court documents and media data from Paraná, a southern Brazilian state, demonstrates how collective interests representing both prison staff and inmates are needed to reproduce prison order yet can also provoke uncontrolled rioting in the prison system. The case studies here detail a series of collective conflicts that became of crucial significance to the balance of hegemonic power within prisons in the region.
Introduction
Authors: Roberson Tara , Orthia Lindy A.
Published: January 2024

Queer people face specific issues in the world of science and have unique contributions to make to science communication, so bringing ‘queer’ and ‘science communication’ together in dedicated events, products, and networks is an important part of queer protest, liberation, and visibility. Yet an examination of the science communication research literature reveals that little has been published on the intersection between queerness and science communication over the past thirty years or more. This introduction provides the foundations of a book on queering science communication. It covers the structure of the book and describes how contributors approached queering science communication in different domains.
Practice Spotlight: All We Need Is … The Endosymbiotic Love Calendar
Authors: Alifuoco Annalaura , Beveridge Natalie E.R. , Kumordzi Yasmine , Jung Hwa Young
Published: January 2024

This spotlight reflects on Endosymbiotic Love Calendar 2021, an art-meets-science project supported by Arts Council England and the Microbiological Society and completed in 2020. The project combined scientific experimentation, art-making, post-human ecology, and queer approaches through the format of a familiar domestic object: a wall calendar for 2021. The project reframed symbiotic microorganisms as radically queer beings. They literally brought this queer-science-art discourse into people’s kitchens in the form of a calendar. The objective was to explore identity, performativity, and social justice through a queer ecology that reimagined aesthetically these symbiotic relationships.
Practice Spotlight: GENDERS: Shaping and Breaking the Binary, an Exhibition at Science Gallery London
Authors: Kaplinsky Helen , Krish Jessie
Published: January 2024

This spotlight is drawn from an exhibition on themes of queer ecology, gender expression, roleplay, and reproduction at the Science Gallery London entitled ‘GENDERS: Shaping and Breaking the Binary’. The exhibition included 18 contemporary artworks. Existing historical work was displayed alongside new commissions involving collaboration with researchers at King’s College London and activists working locally. The programme engaged a multidisciplinary entanglement of social and biological research. This exhibition foregrounded queer agency through artists’ reappropriation of scientific resources in their works.
Queering Science Museums, Science Centres, and Other Public Science Institutions
Authors: Armstrong Eleanor S. , Lock Simon J.
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses approaches to queering public science institutions including science museums, science centres, zoos, and maker-spaces. It examines queering processes from two perspectives: the institutions’ public spaces (‘frontstage’) and behind the scenes organization and activities (‘backstage’). This chapter highlights the tensions of queer identities between performative and structural changes in the institution and implications of performative actions highlighting the exceptionality of queer identities in turn reinforcing norms around acceptable lives and pathways in the process.
Practice Spotlight: Science Queers: Overacted Representation in Science Communication
Authors: Aznar-Alemany Òscar
Published: January 2024

This spotlight reviews the ‘Science Queers’ programme led by drag queen, Lana Vuli. Science Queers is a YouTube channel with the double mission to communicate science and draw attention to queer identities. Camp sci-comm allows acknowledging the existence of queer scientists and taking science to all sorts of queer events, serving as a two-way tool. Science Queers produces live and online activities featuring drag and science communication, and this spotlight recounts its successes changing hearts and minds and also its struggles with continuing queerphobia.
Practice Spotlight: Science is a Drag! Online Events
Authors: Suciu Carla , Pearlstone Brynley , Langford Sam
Published: January 2024

Science is a Drag! is a live-streamed drag and science communication event, which has built a worldwide cast of performers whose brief was to have fun, be themselves and provide science entertainment. From particle physics to climate science, drag queens to pole dancers, it has platformed over 30 LGBTQIA+ performers and attracted audiences from five continents. This spotlight reflects on the challenges and opportunities of the Science is a Drag! event. As the spotlight shows, Science is a Drag! platforms queer people and adopts queer art forms to elevate science.
Queer Characters in Science-themed Fiction
Authors: Orthia Lindy A. , Visser Leo P.
Published: January 2024

Media representations of scientists have been a mainstay topic of science communication research for decades. This chapter presents a science communication analysis of how queer characters, especially scientists, are represented in science-themed fiction. The chapter discusses the inherent ambiguity in interpreting characters’ gender, sexuality, and sex characteristics. It reflects on how a queer audience’s interpretations of such representations can grant unique insights that science communicators should take seriously to more fully understand how people process fiction media.
Practice Spotlight: Queer Science Blogs: Public Communication Before the Age of Social Media
Authors: Buckmire Ron , Roca Alberto I.
Published: January 2024

Blogs dominated how any individual could communicate online to the public in the 2000s. The personal narratives, comments, and mutual cross-linking formed a community among STEM bloggers and their readers. Under the ‘Diversity in Science’ blog carnival series, Jeremy Yoder hosted the first carnival celebrating LGBT science and scientists. Early STEM queer-related blogs of this era included The Mad Professah Lectures, Son of Timatollah, and Denim and Tweed. This spotlight reflects on the public impact of an early STEM queer-related blog, The Mad Professah Lectures. The blog proudly furthered queer visibility in science and sought a broad audience for events of significance in Black gay circles, and complex issues related to HIV/AIDS.
Malayang Paglaladlad para sa Mapagpalayang Paglalahad : Coming Out and Queering Science Communication in Contested Spaces
Authors: Viaña John Noel , Severo Mario Carlo , Barretto-Garcia Miguel , Magtaan Paul James , Liwag Jason Tan , Bueno Roemel Jeusep , Silva Christer de , Panela Ruby Shaira
Published: January 2024

In countries where LGBTQIA+ people still experience discrimination, what role can queering both science and science communication play in promoting equity and societal change? In the Philippines, the queer and colonized remain subjugated and dispossessed by social, economic, and cultural conditions. This chapter discusses queer people’s experiences working in diverse science communication domains to examine how queering those spaces contributes to broader societal liberation. The chapter explores what queering science communication means in countries where homophobia, unequal rights for LGBTQIA+ individuals, and stereotyping queer representations remain rampant.
Practice Spotlight: 500 Queer Scientists at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
Authors: Motion Alice , Sauquet Hervé
Published: January 2024

500 Queer Scientists is a visibility campaign launched in 2018 in San Francisco, inspired by a study showing 40% of LGBTQIA+ scientists were not out to their colleagues. This spotlight discusses an annual 500 Queer Scientists event held during the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Australia to celebrate queer scientists and their research. The spotlight discusses the rarity of science-related activities within queer festivals and how this event has enabled some LGBTIQA+ people to finally find their place within Mardi Gras.
Practice Spotlight: Outer Edge: Queer(y)ing STEM Collections – A Community Workshop
Authors: Armstrong Eleanor S. , Gerber Sophie
Published: January 2024

This spotlight on a community workshop conducted in 2020 represents a best practice case study for queering the relationship between science communication theory and practice in museums. The spotlight offers a series of reflective questions for readers who wish to organize LGBTIQA+ inclusive events. The questions and insights can be adapted to suit different approaches to queer science communication community building.
The Fusion Approach to Mental Capacity Law in Northern Ireland: Possibilities and Challenges
Authors: Davidson Gavin , Daly Martin , Harper Moira , McIlroy Danielle , Montgomery Lorna
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on the development and implementation of capacity-based law in Northern Ireland. The Mental Capacity Act (Northern Ireland) 2016, when it is fully implemented, will provide a capacity-based framework for decision making and will replace the current mental health law for everyone aged 16 and over. The chapter explores aspects of the Northern Ireland context that may have contributed to this approach being taken. It considers how participation and values influenced and informed the development of the Act and how they are promoted in the contents of the Act. The chapter also identifies some of the ongoing debates about this new approach, including the exclusion of those aged under 16 and some of the complex interfaces with criminal justice issues. The need to evaluate whether the new Act is effective in achieving its aim of more effectively promoting and protecting the rights of everyone whose ability to make decisions may be impaired is also highlighted.
Judging Values in a Time of Transition: An Irish Perspective
Authors: Donnelly Mary
Published: January 2024

In December 2015, the President of Ireland signed the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 into law. This Act may be regarded as broadly progressive; underpinned by empowerment/​participative values and informed by the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, the substantive aspects of this Act have not yet come into force (although they are expected to do so in 2023). In the period between enactment and commencement, the applicable legislation has continued to be the Lunacy Regulation (Ireland) Act 1871, which provides for the wardship jurisdiction. This chapter explores how judicial responses to capacity impairments have developed during this time of transition. The chapter shows the potential for evolution in judicial values even within a system as restrictive as wardship. This exploration also reveals some of the aspects of judging needed for a successful transition to the new legislative regime.
Theorizing Capitalism and its Demise
Authors: Gerhardt Hannes
Published: January 2024

Chapter 1 lays out the theoretical foundation on which the rest of the book relies, presenting a capitalism that is turning increasingly to ‘engineered scarcity’ to ensure profits. The chapter then turns to the question of possible systemic change. The compeerist framework is here shown to be aligned with, but also distinct from, the peer production approach associated with scholars of the P2P Foundation. Divergence from this ‘P2P approach’ is largely based on compeerism’s adoption of autonomists’ theorizing of capitalism and its coopting power. As such, the prototypical compeerist outlook presented both embraces Hardt and Negri’s call for a bottom-up ‘exodus’ out of capital, while also recognizing the need to engage ‘the market’ and ‘the state’ if capital is ever to be fully overcome. The role of digital technologies is presented here as an important tool that nonetheless only affords certain possibilities; nothing is predetermined.
The Promise of ‘Design Global, Manufacture Local’
Authors: Gerhardt Hannes
Published: January 2024

Chapter 5 continues the consideration of the material economy by looking at the organization of manufacturing. The focus here falls on the ‘design global, manufacture local’ (DG-ML) model espoused by P2P theorists as a way to achieve a greater democratization of the means of production. The blossoming of open-source design, open-hardware, and versatile makerspaces and fab labs are taken up first as short-term, localized forms of exit. The analysis then moves on to the challenges and potentials inherent in a larger scaled, integrated network of community oriented, democratized small-scale factories. Possible management arrangements for such commons-oriented facilities are then assessed and compared, ranging from state-run to various cooperative/collaborative forms of organization. The limits of localization in manufacturing are explored and the argument is made that greater inter-commons solidarity (boundary commoning) and more conducive state policies are essential if a commons-oriented DG-ML model is ever to get a foothold.
Reinventing Money’s Role in the Economy
Authors: Gerhardt Hannes
Published: January 2024

Chapter 8 focuses on the broader compeerist task of fully replacing the current organization of money creation and distribution. The need for such a move is highlighted by the fact that the banks’ control over the issuing of debt-based money has led to the funnelling of investments into exploitative and unsustainable commercial endeavours, while governments are left unable to address the increasing dysfunctions precipitated by their economies. Utilizing unorthodox approaches to monetary theory, the argument is made for the state to reclaim its sovereign position as money creator and distributor. Such a shift, especially if combined with the adoption of commons-friendly policies, would be a major coup for the compeerist project. However, given the continued marriage between the state and capital, the chapter ends by also considering commons-based mobilizations aimed at creating crypto-based monies as a way to help establish sizable, autonomous, non-capitalist economies.
Introduction
Authors: Boyer Kate , Eaves LaToya E. , Fluri Jennifer
Published: January 2024

This chapter introduces readers to the key themes in the book, discusses where the idea for the book came from, how it extends into existing literature, and provides an outlines for the chapters.
Women Weaving Critical Geographies
Authors: Geógrafas GeoBrujas-Comunidad de , Juárez Frida Itzel Rivera , Fenner-Sánchez Gabriela Mariana , Velázquez Karla Helena Guzmán , Ysunza Valeria , Tlemoyotl Tlazol , Hernández Esperanza González , Cruz Karina Flores
Published: January 2024

The collective actions of organized women in Mexico and Latin America have become a guide and seedbed for the development of a feminist approach in Latin American geographic thought. Through this text, we want to share the theoretical-methodological production that has germinated from our space, in the collective walk of a community of geographers in Mexico, GeoBrujas; where collaborative mapping, popular education, the arts, and critical geographies have led us to seek ways to subvert cartographies to weave with various social organizations and communities, new narratives about dispossession, violence, pain, and hopes that inhabit our territories, landscapes and bodies.
LGBT+ Activism and Morality Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Understanding the Dynamic Equilibrium in Czechia from a Broader Transnational Perspective
Authors: Pitoňák Michal
Published: January 2024

In this chapter, I focus on providing a perspective through which we may understand the current conditions and challenges of LGBT+ activism in Czechia and the other countries that are part of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). By zooming out from the current Czech context, I will show how are broader transnational contexts influenced by overlooked specific developments. Departing from clumsy discourses of ‘belatedness’, and ‘immaturity’ of the regional LGBT+ rights, I will also detour from representations of the situation as mere stagnation. Instead, by discussing the research on so-called ‘anti-gender movements’, I will represent the current situation as dynamic equilibrium, or an active stalemate caused by the simultaneous vibrancy of activists’ efforts and particularly vocal political opposition. Instead of focusing on their further description, I will attempt to understand these novel challenges as an opportunity to notice a vast set of relatively overlooked or underestimated issues. Building on previous work, I suggest that ontological insecurity may represent one such overlooked phenomenon or a type of resource, that is being aroused by populist politicians who exploit morality politics. Finally, I will focus on our NGO Queer Geography, in which we seek to employ strategies that may help buffer Czech society against efforts of moral entrepreneurs.