bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Protective effect of febuxostat in sepsis-induced liver and kidney injuries after cecal ligation and puncture with the impact of xanthine oxidase, interleukin 1β, and c-Jun N-terminal kinases
Authors: Ibrahim YF , Fadl RR , Ibrahim SAE , Gayyed MF , Bayoumi AMA , Refaie MMM
Published: February 2020

Sepsis is one of the most common causes of death among hospitalized patients. Activity of xanthine oxidase (XO), a reactive oxygen species-producing enzyme, is known to be elevated in septic patients. Our aim was to investigate the possible protective role of XO inhibitor, febuxostat (FEB), in a rat model of sepsis-induced liver and kidney injures. Adult male albino rats were divided into four groups ( n = 12 each): sham control, sham + FEB, cecal ligation and puncture (CLP), and CLP + FEB groups. FEB (10 mg/kg per os (p.o.)) was given once daily for 2 days and 30 min prior to laparotomy with CLP. CLP was associated with a high mortality rate accompanied by significant liver and kidney injuries indicated by elevated serum alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, urea, and creatinine levels and confirmed by histopathological tissue injury. Moreover, there was an increase in neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin, uric acid, malondialdehyde, and nitric oxide levels and with decreased superoxide dismutase activity and total antioxidant capacity. In addition, CLP caused increased expression of the inflammatory markers tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 1beta protein levels, and nuclear factor kappa B immunoexpression. Finally, CLP operated rats exhibited an upregulation in the apoptotic mediators, caspase 3, and P-C-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNK) proteins. FEB treatment of CLP rats caused a significant improvement and normalization in all measured parameters. Moreover, FEB amerliorates degenerative histopathological changes and improves the overall survival rate. In conclusion, FEB exhibited a protective effect in sepsis-induced liver and kidney injuries most probably through its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antiapoptotic properties and attenuating JNK signaling pathway secondary to its XO enzyme inhibitory activity.
Waterpipe Tobacco Chemical Content, Microbial Contamination, and Genotoxic Effects: A Systematic Review
Authors: Aljadani Rawabi H. , Algabbani Aljoharah M. , Alamir Jumanah A. , Alqahtani Amani S. , BinDhim Nasser F.
Published: February 2020

The spread of tobacco smoking has increased over time at the global and national levels. One of the widely spread tobacco products is waterpipe. Recent studies showed that waterpipe tobacco smoke contains toxic substances, including carbon monoxide and nicotine. Some of them are genotoxic carcinogen, such as formaldehyde. This study aims to provide comprehensive insight into the types and depth of the scientific literature on waterpipe tobacco smoke chemical content, its genotoxic effects, and waterpipe device microbial contamination. We conducted a systematic comprehensive review of articles published between 1986 and December 2018. Primary research articles focusing on the content of waterpipe smoke, including chemical, genotoxic, and microbial contaminants, were eligible for inclusion. Of the 1,286 studies generated, 22 studies were included. Twenty-three chemical families were extracted from waterpipe smoke. Aldehydes were the most identified chemical family in 6 studies, and next is polycyclic hydrocarbons, found in 5 studies. About 206 chemical compounds were identified. Flavobacterium, Pseudomonas, coagulase-negative Staphylococci, and Streptococcus were the most abundant pathogen contaminants. Waterpipe smoke had elevated levels of many DNA damage markers (8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine and cytochrome P450 1A1) and inhibited levels of many DNA repair genes ( OGG1 and XRCC1) in waterpipe smokers. Waterpipe smoke is associated with the genotoxic effect, which elevates the levels of many DNA damage markers and inhibits the levels of many DNA repair genes. In addition, waterpipe smoking can expose smokers to a range of pathogenic bacteria.
What Gets Measured Gets Done: Can Self-Tracking Technologies Enhance Advice Compliance?
Authors: Wittkowski Kristina , Klein Jan F. , Falk Tomas , Schepers Jeroen J. L. , Aspara Jaakko , Bergner Kai N.
Published: February 2020

Self-tracking technologies (STTs) in the form of smart devices and mobile applications enable consumers to monitor, analyze, and interpret personal performance data on health and physical or financial well-being. As a result of self-tracking, consumers are not only expected to check their personal performance more actively but also to implement service professionals’ advice to improve their well-being more accurately. Despite the growing popularity of STTs, empirical evidence on the extent to which STT use enhances advice compliance remains scant. A field experiment with 538 participants in a health-care setting suggests that STT use does not increase advice compliance per se. Rather, the effectiveness of STTs depends on consumers’ self-efficacy. For consumers low in self-efficacy, STT use can even undermine advice compliance. A lab experiment with 831 participants replicates and generalizes the findings to a nonmedical professional service (i.e., fitness training). As assessments of self-efficacy might be difficult in practice, service providers in health care can use consumers’ body mass index as an easy-to-measure proxy to predict STT effectiveness. Finally, the lab experiment also identifies perceived empowerment and personalization as psychological mechanisms mediating the influence of STT use on advice compliance.
Cultural studies: Crossing borders, defending distinctions
Authors: Fornäs Johan
Published: February 2020

To identify a set of defining traits and goals of the cultural studies field is the task of this intervention. It begins by investigating how leading actors in this field today define it: the Association for Cultural Studies and the journals Cultural Studies, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Inter-Asian Cultural Studies. Three main tropes are identified: diversity, contextualization and critique. Each of them has partly succeeded but other aims remain unfulfilled. Two central tasks are formulated. First, cultural studies needs a reinforced critical reflexivity to explain what it is and why it is needed as a driving force for interactive diversity, contextualizing meaning making and communicative critique. Second, the field needs to be on high alert, stepping forward and responding fast and loud to the current totalitarian threats against sustainable and resilient academic knowledge production.
On cultural studies, again
Authors: Ang Ien
Published: February 2020

This article reflects on the state of cultural studies today. It asks to what extent cultural studies can move with the times, now that we live in a radically altered world dominated by global challenges such as climate change, the rise of China, and technological transformation. It points to the importance of focusing on cultural studies’ institutional and material conditions of possibility if it is to continue to exist as a distinct intellectual field.
A variational Bayesian neural network for structural health monitoring and cost-informed decision-making in miter gates
Authors: Vega Manuel A , Todd Michael D
Published: February 2020

Many physics-based and surrogate models used in structural health monitoring are affected by different sources of uncertainty such as model approximations and simplified assumptions. Optimal structural health monitoring and prognostics are only possible with uncertainty quantification that leads to an informed course of action. In this article, a Bayesian neural network using variational inference is applied to learn a damage feature from a high-fidelity finite element model. Bayesian neural networks can learn from small and noisy data sets and are more robust to overfitting than artificial neural networks, which make it very suitable for applications such as structural health monitoring. Also, uncertainty estimates obtained from a trained Bayesian neural network model are used to build a cost-informed decision-making process. To demonstrate the applicability of Bayesian neural networks, an example of this approach applied to miter gates is presented. In this example, a degradation model based on real inspection data is used to simulate the damage evolution.
Using GPS and GIS to Enrich the Walk-along Method
Authors: Martini Natalia
Published: February 2020

This article demonstrates what may be gained from combining the walk-along method with the global positioning system (GPS) and geographical information system (GIS) when exploring the social and physical aspects of locally situated daily lives. It focuses on the premise and application of the spatial transcript technique, which allows for an integration of qualitative and GPS data generated while walking, and its subsequent visualization and analysis within GIS. It suggests that incorporating geospatial technologies into the walk-along method might serve as means to operationalize particular spatial sensitivity afforded by this mode of inquiry and effectively advance its utility for yielding spatially sensitive insights.
Examination of industrial robot performance parameters utilizing machine tool diagnostic methods
Authors: Kuric Ivan , Tlach Vladimír , Císar Miroslav , Ságová Zuzana , Zajačko Ivan
Published: February 2020

The article discusses the possibility to identify changes in robot accuracy based on deformation of the circular path measured by the Renishaw Ballbar system. The research method utilizes correlation between industrial robot accuracy and precision of method used for the so-called calibration process. The presented experiments consist of two basic parts. The first is positional analysis with a simulation model of the robot in Creo Parametric 4.0. The second part describe practical measurements using the Renishaw Ballbar QC20-W and the Renishaw XL-80 laser interferometer. The results of the experiments confirm that Renishaw Ballbar can be used to quickly and simply identify occurrence of changes in the condition of an industrial robot.
The Therapeutic Waiting Room: Therapist and Service User Perspectives on the Psychologically Supportive Dimensions of Architectural Space
Authors: Liddicoat Stephanie
Published: February 2020

Background:

Waiting areas in healthcare settings play an important role in reassuring or potentially further distressing service users. The effects of the designed environment on mental health service users specifically are regarded by health professionals as having a considerable influence on treatment outcomes, experiences, and perceptions of care.

Purpose:

The purpose of this article is to explore service user and practicing therapist perspectives of waiting areas in mental health service settings and how the design of these spaces affects anxiety levels, comfort, therapeutic relationships, outcomes, and perceptions of care.

Methods:

The methodology for this exploratory phenomenological study was developed in order to preserve the integrity of participant voices in the essences of experiences, during explorations of their encounters with therapeutic waiting areas. Fieldwork undertaken by the author involved a series of focused in-depth interviews with service users of mental health services and practicing therapists, counselors, and psychologists.

Results:

Key themes identified through data analysis include (1) space acting as symbolism, (2) interpersonal relations which are threatening, and (3) sensory modulation. Design implications in relation to each theme are presented.

Conclusions:

This study uncovered a set of findings in relation to symbolic content inferred by spatial design aspects and the ways in which design can afford, or mitigate, development of interpersonal agencies, psychological safety, and negative stigmas. Future transdisciplinary research directions are suggested, including (1) examination of other relationships, beyond the service user–therapist dyad, which may influence waiting area experiences and (2) examination of the applicability of design suggestions to different contexts.
Brazil's Experience with Agrarian Reform, 1995–2006: Challenges for Agrarian Geography
Authors: Fernandes Bernardo Mançano , Welch Cliff
Published: February 2020

This paper analyses one of the challenges facing agrarian geographers of Brazil: explaining land-tenure systems in light of persistently high levels of land occupations by landless peasants, the implementation of agrarian reform projects by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002) and Luís Lula Inácio da Silva (2003-present) presidential administrations and the expansion of agribusiness. It examines the actions of families organized in the Landless Workers Movement (MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra) and territorialization / deterritorialization processes from 1995 to 2006. We discuss how large land-holding have long determined who holds political power in Brazil and how a “rural block” continues to thwart attempts to resolve Brazil's agrarian question. Consequently, the article concludes, conflictuality is a part of Brazilian rural life that is unlikely to go away.
Hegemonic Geographies of the Mexican Neoliberal State
Authors: Kohout Michal
Published: February 2020

I use Gramsci's notion of hegemony to analyze how Mexican governments have reproduced the neoliberal state over the past twenty-five years. Hegemony is a spatially-contingent process of consensus and coercion that explains how dominant economic and political policies take shape. In the case of Mexico, I examine the rise of new political elites (technocrats), their attempts at reshaping the corporatist consensus through social pacts, and their use of a regional economic model as national archetype for economic development. More specifically, this analysis employs labor politics to illustrate how the government uses consensus and coercion to maintain the state as the privileged space for shaping the hegemonic geographies of economic development in Mexico.
Class Relations, Material Conditions, and Spaces of Class Struggle in Rural India
Authors: Das Raju J
Published: February 2020

For historical-geographical materialists, making history and geography means that existing conditions of life are not acceptable because they are exploitative and oppressive, and that new and better conditions of life can, and must, be created through political struggles against the class/classes responsible for the existing conditions. The act of making history (and geography) in a class-society is class struggle. This paper is about class and class struggle in the historical-geographical context of post-colonial India. It discusses how relations of class as well as caste- and gender-based social oppression have created extremely difficult conditions of living for workers and peasants in rural and tribal areas, which the post-colonial capitalist-landlord state has, more or less, failed to significantly mitigate. The conjunctural combination of unjust conditions of living and state failure has created a historical-geographical situation ripe for class struggle, one instance of which is the Naxalite movement, a part of the worldwide Maoist movement. Its growth and spatial spread are examined. Also discussed is the extent to which the Naxalites provide some immediate relief to poor people. Although this is a movement which has much appeal among the rural poor in many areas, it is not without some serious problems. The paper, therefore, discusses some of the major limitations of the Naxalite movement that partly grow out of (a specific interpretation of) the same historical-geographical conditions that have prompted it in the first place. In particular, the paper is critical of the Maoists underplaying society's capitalist character and of the use of violent method by some Naxalite groups as a means of class struggle.
On Primitive Accumulation and its Shadowy Twin, Subsumption
Authors: Buck Daniel
Published: February 2020

Primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession significantly strengthen our analyses of neo-liberalism, globalization, and capitalism in general. But processes that appear to be primitive accumulation are often better characterized as the subsumption of labor to capital. More than terminology is at stake in making this distinction: subsumption as opposed to primitive accumulation can highlight different sources of change, and different sites of possible contestation. It is time for a re-appraisal and broader conceptualization of subsumption and its relationship to primitive accumulation.
Positioning the Egyptian Revolution
Authors: Waked Mohamed
Published: February 2020

On January 25th Egyptians launched a formidable uprising that managed, in 18 days, to oust President Mubarak and his close associates, the junta that ruled the country for the previous three decades. Their success came a month after their Tunisian brethrens had managed to oust President Ben Ali. The fall of Mubarak earned the name, “revolution,” and hence became the fastest “revolution” ever. The nature and implications of this fast “revolution” quickly captured wide attention. However, it was the speed with which the regime managed to contain the “revolution” that obsessed the minds and souls of the activists. As a result, the Egyptian political imaginary has become shaped by a painful standoff between “revolution” and “counter revolution.” This article examines how this standoff worked itself out. More concretely, it tries to lay out terms for qualifying activities as “counter-revolutionary” or otherwise. This analysis is meant to provide the criteria needed for assessing post-revolutionary developments in Egypt, a project which I plan to take up in a subsequent article.
From ‘Criminality’ to Marginality: Rioting against a Broken State
Authors: Slater Tom
Published: February 2020

This article offers an analysis and critique of the political response to the 2011 urban riots in England. A brief account of the riots is advanced, where I connect the eruptions to the rise of advanced marginality and class/territorial stigmatisation in English cities, not only in terms of material deprivation but to the denial of dignity it implies. The article then re-places the swift deployment of punitive action and the ‘broken society’ discourse in response to the riots within the broader re-engineering of the state according to a neoliberal blueprint that articulates (inter alia) social welfare reduction and penal expansion at the bottom of the class structure, in contrast to a laissez-faire attitude at the top. By paying closer attention to the changing relationship between information and power (and in particular, the role of conservative think tanks), what Paul Gilroy calls a “poverty of the imagination” in addressing urban problems is exposed and challenged, revealing that the main issue to be addressed is not a broken society but a broken state.
Potentiality of the Present: Exploring Speculative Realism VIA Spatial Theory
Authors: Baumgartner Brad D.
Published: February 2020

In this essay, I propose a new alliance between speculative realism and spatial theory. Whether interpreted as an avant-garde movement or simply as part of an evolution in human thought, the Speculative Turn in continental philosophy has an important link to spatial studies, a field replete with the study of imaginative and speculative texts. By applying various spatial theories to this unique philosophical movement, and thereby implicating ourselves within a space where we become linked in spatial being, we can endeavor to think the absolute from a place of ‘radical contingency’ and spatiality. This analysis, then, historicizes the movement via its academic and para-academic manifestations, as it asserts a mode of remembering that invokes the loss of cultural amnesia. Thus, it demonstrates that speculative realism is a good candidate for further critical inquiry, but also that spatial studies, with its interdisciplinary lens often informing and creating the cultural worlds we inhabit, is a good candidate for speculative realism to cast its exploratory vision.
Cree Ethnogeography
Authors: Eades Gwilym Lucas
Published: February 2020

This paper explores the nature of Wemindji Cree territorial identity. It uses a mixed methods approach combining qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) and ethnography. GIS was used to categorize a database of Wemindji Cree place names within local and traditional naming systems. The resulting maps produce a picture of Wemindji Cree life as a ‘view from nowhere’ disconnected from lived life on the ground. Participant observation of life in Wemindji, especially amongst tallymen (trapline bosses), over two seasons provided an ethnography of Cree life both in town and on the land. The situated perspective ‘on the ground’ offers specifics of daily life that revolve around maps. Inscriptions such as maps have been incorporated into the everyday lives of tallymen, who are respected leaders in Wemindji. Rundstrom's categories of inscribing (written) versus incorporating (oral) cultures were found to elude mutual exclusivity. Wemindji Cree are a residually oral culture with a dependence on maps necessitated by the tracking and discussion of incursions from state-industrial interests in trapline territories and by the need to commemorate traditional life on the land. Maps are thus necessary but not sufficient for explaining Wemindji Cree territorial identity. Ethnographic depth was included to round out strictly inscribed accounts of identities demonstrated to revolve to a great extent around the leadership of the tallymen. A balance of inscribed (through GIS maps) and embodied (through ethnography) accounts of Wemindji Cree life as lived through movement, wayfaring and the business of life both in town and on the land, helped produce the resulting ethnogeographic account of Wemindji Cree life and territorial identity.
“Muting” Neoliberalism? Class and Colonial Legacies in Australia
Authors: Gibson Chris
Published: February 2020

Australian governments of left and right persuasions have seemingly embraced elements of the neoliberal agenda, as in many other parts of the world; but exactly how deeply these have been enacted, and how transformative they have been, must be understood in relation to key colonial, geographical and cultural inheritances. These inheritances include the hegemony of central government stewardship of the economy (essential in a colonized, sparsely populated continent of almost unmanageable scale), a long tradition of social democratic regulation, and cultural expectations of socio-spatial equality. Neoliberal policy projects have been “muted” by on-going equality claims, and some progressive “wins” in the social democratic mould have been forthcoming, even while governments have espoused the ascendancy of the market. Nevertheless, neoliberal policy moves have been most starkly felt in worsening income inequalities – where the evidence is unambiguous of a direct threat to the Australian egalitarian ethos.
Geography, China's Path and State-Society Relations: Redressing Western Misinterpretations
Authors: Parenti Fabio Massimo
Published: February 2020

The complexity of China's state-society relations is often underestimated, or completely neglected, by Western commentators, journalists, politicians and, at times, academics. There especially seems to be a lack of theoretical ideas and systematic analysis in geographical studies. The overall outcome of said underestimation is the proliferation of misinterpretations on the meaning-sense of evolving relational configurations between power, people and places in China. Hence the Western ability (institutions and common people) to understand and judge, as objectively as possible, ongoing socio-economic and political trends in China, its hybrid experimental path and general development trajectory, is concretely invalidated.

Starting from this standpoint and drawing from different sources, this paper first suggests that the changing characteristics of the current Chinese multi-scalar politico-socio-economic processes cannot be simply reduced to “capitalism.” Secondly, to get a better understanding of China in a comparative perspective — by analyzing the country's direction of development and governance — I summarize some instructive traits of state-society relations, arguing that the nature and significance of these differ, when they are not quite the reverse, from the prevailing (mis) interpretations by Western agents. I specifically refer to the need to (re)interpret two points from a comparative standpoint: a) the state's popular legitimacy and socio-economic dynamism, and b) the variegated modes of conflict resolution and financial governance.
Deproletarianization in the Peri-Urban Interface: Transforming Labor Relations in Polokwane, South Africa
Authors: Smith Jennifer L.
Published: February 2020

High unemployment rates and the search for job opportunities are defining characteristics of the modern day South African economy. As apartheid era labor and land controls continue to break down, many households find themselves searching for work in an economy characterized by surplus labor. Examining high unemployment rates through the theoretical lens of deproletarianization provides an explanation of persistent unemployment and poverty more complex and complete than others. Research conducted in Polokwane, South Africa demonstrates increasing peri-urbanization as a physical manifestation of these changing labor relations. 1In an era dominated by global capitalism, theoretical engagements help explain household poverty, the failure of South Africa's economy to absorb excess labor, and how persistent unemployment contributes to a recon-figuration of space in South Africa's urban and peri-urban areas. The research team used a combination of qualitative semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys to gain insight into household livelihoods and individual experiences. The deproletarianization argument applied here asserts that labor has become unfree in South Africa and represents a new form of labor discipline. Through the deproletarianization thesis, the labor market can be better understood to inform future unemployment and poverty research in South Africa.
Narratives of Life and Violence along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline
Authors: Murrey Amber
Published: February 2020

This article further develops a critical geographical theory of structural violence. It does so by considering the ways people in Nanga-Eboko and Kribi, two communities in Cameroon, report feeling and experiencing structural violence along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline. For people living within spaces (re)produced through structurally violent processes, projects, and extractions, a triad of intersecting experiences emerge: structural violence is felt as (i) tangible through the body (senses of loss, the belly, the body, and nourishment), or described through gendered narratives of hunger, illness, and the experiences of land dispossession; (ii) historically compounded, or characterized by a rootedness in the colonial and racist structures of the past alongside expectations that present-day structural violence threatens future generations; and (iii) spatially compounded, or experienced through a concurrent spatial overlapping (or compounding) as multiple forms of structural violence converge within the same landscapes and lifescapes, effecting displacement in-place. Each of these, felt simultaneously, has the effect of rendering structural violence acutely visible, tangible as it is in the restructurings of landscapes and lifescapes, despite discursive attempts to cloak, bury, and efface by powerful actors. Looking toward the narratives that people use to critique and engage with such violence provides conceptual tools for wider resistance practices against structural violence.
Squatting, the 15-M Movement, and Struggles for Housing in the Context of the Spanish Social Crisis
Authors: Díaz-Parra Ibán , Mena José Candón
Published: February 2020

The last few decades have seen the rise to predominance of social movements emphasizing ideological aspects of mobilisation. This new tendency invites a re-evaluation of the material aspects of social mobilisation. Since the onset of the last economic crisis, the housing issue, and mobilizations around it, have assumed increasing significance. Occupations of vacant housing in Spain by people in need have escalated rapidly. This research describes the housing movement in Spain, and occupation as a solution. Before the economic crisis, occupation was fundamentally linked with the squatting movement. Now it is linked more with struggles against eviction. This article examines the specific cases of Seville, and the Corralas movement.
Hope as a Critical Resource for Small Scale Farmers in Mpumalanga
Authors: Goldin Jacqueline
Published: February 2020

I contrast formal institutional structures that are part of water resources management policy and practice with more fluid ‘outside’ spaces that I claim are more apt for participatory engagement around food production. I link these ideas to a discussion on hope. I make three distinct contributions. First the paper expands on the theoretical concerns of the Capability Approach by bringing to the fore the linkages between subjective well-being and emotions. The paper thus connects the Capability Approach and discourses of affect and emotions explicit. The Capability Approach (CA) is a helpful entry point into the idea of hope in particular and emotions in general. Second, I claim that emotions are of public concern and that they are embedded structurally. In these spaces the dimension of power is crucial in determining the nature of the emotions that are experienced, and there is a connection between hope and power. I argue that emotions mediate and inform social action and are a function of social processes. Third, I affirm that in the essentially technical and masculinised world of water, rural women farmers are more likely to experience positive feelings, such as self-esteem, hope, pride and dignity, in informal ‘outside’ spaces. Within the context of an ethics of care, the idea of ‘particularism’ places value on concrete circumstances and individual experience and the incorporation of emotions and compassion into a social justice discourse. I propose that hope be considered amongst a range of mental states contributing to valuable and complex social functionings that are relevant for assessing poverty and human development. Looking at emotional life might help answer the question: what makes people do what they do – and whether and in what ways they take on (or do not take on) board opportunities that present themselves? The article concludes that hope is a mental state that helps command commodities and helps achieve functionings. As such hope is an input as important as seeds and fertilizer for small-scale farming.
Managing the Unmanageable? Understanding Europe's Response to the Migration ‘Crisis’
Authors: Crawley Heaven
Published: February 2020

More than 1 million people have crossed the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas since January 2015, arriving on the beaches of Southern Europe in dinghies and rickety boats, having paid a smuggler to facilitate their journey. Most are refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and Somalia who are fleeing conflict and violence. Others are migrants from West and Central Africa, seeking a livelihood and a future for themselves and their families. This paper will unpack the evolution of the European policy response, arguing that the migration ‘crisis’ is not a reflection of numbers – which pale into insignificance relative to the number of refugees in other countries outside Europe or to those moving in and out of Europe on tourist, student and work visas – but rather a crisis of political solidarity. After five emergency summits to agree a common response, EU politicians are still struggling to come to terms with the dynamics of migration to Europe, the complexity of motivations driving people forward, the role of different institutions, including governments, international organizations, NGOs and civil society, in facilitating the journey, and the ways in which social media is providing individuals and families with information about the options and possibilities that are, or are not, available to them. I suggest that the unwillingness of politicians and policymakers to engage with research evidence on the dynamics of migration and to harness their combined resources to address the consequences of conflict and underdevelopment elsewhere, speaks more strongly to the current state of the European Union than it does to the realities of contemporary migration.
‘They Won't Let us Come, They Won't Let us Stay, They Won't Let us Leave’. Liminality in the Aegean Borderscape: The Case of Irregular Migrants, Volunteers and Locals on Lesvos
Authors: Tsoni Ioanna
Published: February 2020

This paper draws on ethnographic observations along the south-eastern Mediterranean informal migration route through the Aegean Sea. I focus on the Greek border island of Lesvos as the central stage where the European crisis of asylum has been recently unfolding. In the absence of coherent national and European asylum policies, newly arrived migrants, refugees, and receiving communities (comprised mainly of local residents and volunteers from mainland Greece and Europe) are left to cope with and against each other, leading to multiple personal and collective passages. In this interstitial transit space, subjectivities are made and remade through their participation and resistance to the ongoing production of EU borders. I suggest that liminality provides a useful lens through which to understand the perplexing ‘time-spaces’ and interactions between multiple actors involved in the teetering asylum system on the margins of Europe. I argue that, through various actors’ experiences on Lesvos as a complex social site, liminality emerges as a form of sustained social marginality and exclusion that extends beyond Lesvos itself. The protracted and broadened crisis context in which asylum-seekers and receiving communities of locals and volunteers on Lesvos find themselves provides a salient example of the gradual socio-spatial and temporal ‘stretching’ of liminality from a transitional phase towards a condition of permanent and portable liminality experienced at both the individual and the collective level, and both at and away from borders.
Tourism, Class and Crisis
Authors: Eisenschitz Aram
Published: February 2020

The academic literature on tourism is focused on its problems – its lack of sustainability, its lack of responsibility, its poor treatment of its workers, its contribution to climate change, terrorism, its environmental impacts, its responsibility for evicting people from their land. It is assumed that these are discrete problems that are soluble – that mass tourism with a responsible face is a possibility. This approach tackles each problem separately and argues that with cooperation, goodwill, a stronger state and an educated public, solutions are possible. In this paper we start with the profits crisis of the early to mid seventies and argue that a range of counter tendencies developed that was able to resist the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Tourism expanded rapidly with the rise of that neo-liberal class settlement in the eighties because it embodied many of those counter tendencies. It was not, however, just a reflection of neo-liberalism which emerged as the way to restore the rate of profit, but helped to lay the groundwork for it. Tourism's natural features, its use of space, the relatively small workplace, the use of unskilled labour, are all counter tendencies. In the article it is argued that they are essentially about intensifying class relations and at that stage in the economic cycle they were successful. However the problems that now plague tourism are a result of those trends. The second part of the article looks at how these counter tendencies also have negative effects – that is they are internally contradictory. Class relations in particular are now causing problems. These problems are so severe that it is arguable that the sector is coming up against the limits of accumulation because of the way that it expanded. If one looks at it from capital's perspective the sector may indeed not be viable, because the externalities that it ignores involves the state in remedial work. Ultimately capital pays those costs but indirectly. Possibly this is an early sign that neo-liberalism itself is reaching the limits to its accumulation.
Darly and Her Battle with the Sand-Mining Mafia: Tracing a Feminist Geopolitics of Fear in the Production of Nature
Authors: Binoy Parvathy
Published: February 2020

This paper draws on the testimonials and writings of Darly and other environmental activists based in the South Indian state of Kerala to illuminate the workings of the sand mining industry in contemporary India. Darly is a 65-year-old woman from Olathani, a village located along the Neyyar River in Southern Kerala, who has voiced her opposition to the operations of the sand mining industry for several years. Due to her actions, she endured several years of physical and psychological abuse from local authorities and individuals affiliated with the industry, which had taken a serious toll on her mental and physical health.

I draw upon Darly's testimonial and writings on the effects of sand mining in the Neyyar, along with the work of Anitha Sharma, an environmentalist based in Kerala, to argue for the need to understand uneven development, and the production of nature, as conceptualized by Neil Smith (2010) in the context of contemporary India through lived, embodied articulations and experiences of fear wrought by this process. Darly's own work I argue, illuminates the ways in which the production of nature as an abstract concept is actually experienced, lived and struggled with through an everyday emotional geopolitics of fear; an emotional geopolitics that is not only reflective of the crucial affective dimensions of the production of nature facilitated by capitalist accumulation, but also reflective of struggles and practices that claim ecological citizenship. Here I draw on Tolia-Kelly's (2008) concept of ecological citizenship to contextualize from Darly's practices and lived experiences of trying to fight and stand in opposition entities involved in the sand-mining business in Olathani.
Alternative to What? Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, and Cuba's Agricultural Revolution
Authors: Machado Mario Reinaldo
Published: February 2020

In Cuba, the transition from industrial agriculture towards agroecology since the Special Period of the early 1990s has provided both an incredible example for alternative, sustainable food systems elsewhere as well as its own suite of challenges and struggles. This paper reviews recent literature on the Cuban agroecological transition, especially as this work situates Cuban agroecology in practice alongside the increasingly popular political framework of food sovereignty. In particular, this paper highlights the unique synergies between agroecology and food sovereignty, as well as the unique tensions that arise in applying these frameworks to the Cuban context. By probing the question as to what the Cuban agroecological experience represents an “alternative,” a more inclusive definition of food sovereignty is developed to better accommodate not only Cuban agroecology, but alternative food systems more broadly. Rather than simply an alternative to capitalist food systems or the globalized corporate food regime, agroecology, food sovereignty and other alternatives instead represent a more fundamental critique of industrialization and modernity. Building off of the specific contours of agroecological practice within Cuban Socialism, it is argued that food sovereignty in Cuba is an expression of what James Ferguson has recently termed “distributive political economy.” By applying this distributive political economic framework to the Cuban agroecological experience, the author aims not only to address some of the underlying tensions with traditional definitions of food sovereignty, but also to provide an actionable agenda for future research in Cuba and beyond.
Hemingway's Cuban Landscape
Authors: Steinberg Michael K.
Published: February 2020

Hemingway tourism in Cuba represents an evocative geographical landscape of inquiry for two primary reasons. First, Hemingway tourism, and tourism in general in Cuba, exists side by side with the larger socialist economy and political system that limits local interactions with the very things and places foreigners desire and visit. Thus contrasting messages are presented in the “text” of the landscape. And second, Hemingway was an American, yet his landscape and image in Cuba is vigorously preserved and promoted, often as one of their own. The Cuban government packages Hemingway for foreign tourists who wish to visit authentic Hemingway memorials and landscapes. Packaging heritage landscapes, literary or other, is not limited to Cuba and Hemingway, but instead a common landscape phenomena. Again though, the political dimensions and economic inconsistencies of Hemingway promotion in Cuba make it especially interesting. This essay discusses three locations in the literary landscape of writer Ernest Hemingway in Cuba; Finca Vigía, his long time home located 12 miles outside Havana; his favorite bar El Floridita, found in the heart of old Havana; and the Marina Hemingway, located just outside Havana. This paper is interested in what these landmarks tell us about Hemingway's image and meanings within Cuba, and how the public, broadly speaking, views the landmarks and Hemingway.
Disconnecting from Technology on Hare Krishna Farms
Authors: Lestar Tamas
Published: February 2020

This paper is part of a comprehensive study made on three Hare Krishna farms in the context of climate change and sustainability transitions. The overall purpose was to identify enabling and disabling factors for the wider diffusion of sustainable Krishna practices. This work reports only on one aspect of the research, namely de-technologizing tendencies, and their reasons, in Hare Krishna communities.

Ethnographic research was carried out on three Hare Krishna eco-farms — Scotland, England and Hungary. Apart from observations and participatory action, twenty-nine interviews were conducted to tease out details of Hare Krishna practices such as land cultivation, cow protection, eating and food sharing. The tenets of a ‘New Economics’ or ‘postgrowth’ literature were applied to analyse the community's de-technologizing practices.

Findings reveal that first: a radical de-technologizing characterises the lived experience of community members on Hare Krishna eco-farms. Second: Krishna practices harmonise with a New Economics concept which promotes simplification and demand-side resource reduction as a precondition for transitioning to a sustainable future.

Academic publications studying the Hare Krishna community have largely focused on the group's religiosity, but this paper positions it as an environmental movement. To date, the connection between Hare Krishna lifestyle practices and sustainability transitions has not been presented. Connecting the believers’ lived experience to the tenets of the New Economics notion is a unique contribution to the sustainability transitions literature and related fields.
International Development Projects of India's Hindu NGOs
Authors: Haigh Martin J.
Published: February 2020

While the ideas and objectives of Western, often religious, agricultural and development organisations in international development are well documented, those of Hindu NGOs operating, internationally, outside India are not. This paper explores the approaches of some of the key players. These include Gandhian Sarvodaya (especially in Sri Lanka), the Ananda Marg's Progressive Utilisation Theory (PROUT) (especially in Venezuela), ISKCON — the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (especially its model farms in Europe), the Ramakrishna Order and, briefly, the “ Bhumi Project”, the Hindu contribution to the UNDP/ARC's multi-faith sustainability initiative “ Many Heavens, One Earth”. Each initiative emphasises different aspects of the Hindu worldview. Gandhian Sarvodaya emphasises self-reliance, non-harming ( ahimsa), and personal ethics ( dharma), while P.R. Sarkar's Ananda Marg, emphasises cooperative enterprise and the institution of a new more spiritually-socialist social order. ISKCON emphasises devotional service ( bhakti yoga) within a model for a self-sufficient, self-sustainable, post-hydrocarbon future, while Swami Vivekananda's Sri Ramakrishna Order emphasises service and holistic development. Finally, the Bhumi Project, a product of the emerging self-awareness of the global Hindu diaspora, aims to unite the work of a range of Hindu organisations. These movements share a development agenda that emphasises self-sustainability, a low ecological footprint, social justice (variously defined), and the development of spiritual rather than economic capital.
Mindful Opportunity to Reflect on Experience: Interdisciplinary Mind–Body Medicine Skills Training for Health-care Professionals
Authors: Barnhill Jessica L , Gerkin Jonathan S , Moura Vera L , Weil Amy B
Published: February 2020

Interventions that support employee wellness and resilience hold potential to improve patient care, increase staff engagement, and decrease burnout. This repeat-measures study evaluated whether an abbreviated version of mind–body medicine skills training could decrease stress and improve mindfulness among an interdisciplinary cohort of health-care professionals. The study also assessed whether participants incorporated the mind–body medicine skills into their personal and professional lives. Aggregate results from this unpaired cohort showed decreased stress and increased mindfulness. Postcourse surveys demonstrated increased personal and professional use of mind–body medicine skills. There was high favorability among participants. These preliminary results suggest that a modest investment of time and resources to learn mind–body medicine skills may positively affect employee wellness among health-care professionals. In addition, skills learned could translate into improved patient care and increased staff engagement. Further study with larger cohorts and a paired design is needed.
Associations Between Off-line Social Functioning and Online Social Network Interactions Among Emerging Adults
Authors: Ross Alexandra C. , Moss Ilana K. , Schwartz David , Luo Tana , Mali Luiza V. , Yau Joanna C. , Negriff Sonya
Published: February 2020

Communication through social networking platforms is central to the social experience of today’s emerging adults. In this study, we examined associations between emerging adults’ off-line social functioning (i.e., social skills and social anxiety) and online interactions on the social networking platform Facebook. A novel Facebook application was developed to systematically capture Facebook interactions of 92 students (59% female; Mage = 18.57 years). Trained coders rated online language for content related to social interactivity and emotional valence. Self-report questionnaires measured social skills and social anxiety. Endorsement of higher social skills was associated with posts more frequently referencing existing off-line relationships, initiating interactions specific to an online context, and referencing both oneself and others positively. Ratings of higher social anxiety were associated with posts more frequently initiating interactions online and posts praising/supporting other users. Study methodology highlights the feasibility of capitalizing on novel technology to better understand links between off-line and online interactions.