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Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, in addition to his broad popular appeal. Since his transition from a successful pro-wrestling career to a full-time actor, his onscreen persona has transitioned from one dimensional action hero to more balanced star ‘type’ (Dyer, 1991), alternating action films with more family-friendly fare. Johnson's starring role in the Fast and the Furious franchise has been central to the growth of his career, yet as I will argue, this success is fuelled by his apparent rivalry with other action stars onscreen (Jason Statham) and offscreen (Vin Diesel). As I will show, these rivalries are rooted in the star ‘types’ formulated by Richard Dyer (1991), and this tension is central to the ongoing fan interest in the series.

Johnson's expanding profile has also led to the establishment of his own production company, Seven Bucks, and transition into television series Ballers (2015–2019) and Young Rock (2021–), both of which allowed him to explore autobiographical elements of his early life. As I will demonstrate via a case study of Hobbs and Shaw (2019), Johnson's success as a transnational action star and creative control allowed by Seven Bucks has allowed more explicit on-screen engagement with his Sāmoan heritage. The production history of Hobbs and Shaw illustrates both the successful co-existence of rivalry between action stars as a successful marketing strategy for action franchises, and the evolving action genre which allows a more personal exploration of race and masculine identity.

The prevalence of older people who use drugs is increasing in many countries, with evidence that some women continue or begin illicit substance use in midlife and older age. While research on older people who use drugs is limited, evidence of risk behaviours among older women who use drugs is particularly inadequate. Unsafe drug use and sexual practices that are prolonged and sustained over many years increase the possibilities for poorer health, leading to potentially greater morbidity and early mortality among older drug users. This chapter is a timely contribution to the extant literature and explores our current knowledge of the risk behaviours of older women who use drugs.

Although midlife is viewed as a transition period in the life course, the normative role expectations of midlife and older women run parallel to the stereotypes of women who use drugs. Furthermore, drug-using bodies are politically and culturally shaped through control and containment practices centred around notions of difference and risk. Acknowledging the intersection of age, race and gender, this chapter frames its position around the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘edgework’. Utilising these theoretical concepts, this chapter argues that a shift towards a support-focussed model, rather than control of, older women who use drugs is required. The absence of a focussed, gendered analysis of the lives and experiences of older drug users, and older women who use drugs in particular, limits our understanding. Consequently, the chapter concludes with a call for well-designed studies of this increasing and largely hidden cohort of drug users.

Development needs of a country like India are extremely disparate, and therefore a unifocus of financial and government agencies on investment considering economic returns shall fail to achieve overall development of the country. The gradual trickle of impact investing in India should begin to look beyond the traditional sectors like manufacturing and agriculture towards nontraditional sectors like culture and heritage which involves the affective and cognitive attributes of the community while being a part of its daily chores. If funds are judiciously channelized towards this sector, then a holistic impact on social and environmental growth can be expected along with the economic returns. Tourism and allied industries would be a direct economic beneficiary which would help generate employment, preserve tangible and intangible heritage manifestations and inculcate a sense of pride in the self and social cohesion. The current article presents two conceptual models arguing the higher efficacy of the impact investing model over traditional financing model.

The utterly un-nostalgic person is probably a non-existent being. At both a personal and collective level, we explore how nostalgia is experienced and in demand during times of transition, disjuncture, conflict and uncertainty. This chapter explores the emotion of nostalgia and connects it specifically to the current corona pandemic – the challenges of lockdowns and social distancing measures on interaction, feelings of loneliness and a generalised sense of uncertainty and despair, and also a rise of nostalgia as a possible response to these challenges. The predominant view of nostalgia put forth in this chapter is that nostalgia has the capacity to provide a great deal of benefit (meaning, hope, direction and purpose) to individuals, groups, institutions and societies at large. Indeed, nostalgia can be a tranquil feeling in a fearful world. We relate nostalgia to studies and experiences from the pandemic period and speculate on how the so-called ‘corona crisis’ may impact feelings of nostalgia in the post-pandemic world – perhaps even a nostalgia and longing for the pandemic period itself.

If the corona pandemic has in fact sparked a new (or renewed) interest in nostalgia in contemporary society due to the corona pandemic, it may indeed prove to be a positive thing, particularly if it makes it easier for people to deal with current feelings of adversity and anxiety. We suggest the nostalgia mood that is generated and perpetuated by the continuing twists and turns of the corona pandemic may – in the short and long run – prove useful in coping with and giving meaning to the problems and perplexing circumstances of life, rather than being a regressive phenomenon. Perhaps, something good may, in the end, grow from something bad?

This chapter presents a broad introduction to women’s varied interactions with drugs and drug markets. It provides a brief overview of the international framework of drug control and the ways in which drug policy enforcement differently impacts women and men. It highlights the negative and disproportionate impacts on women of criminalisation-based approaches and how drug policy serves to reinforce existing problems of structural discrimination. This provides context for the contributions to this edited collection, which are summarised in the introduction. The book situates drug policy reform as a crucial and underlooked feminist issue.

While it is generally well known that nonviolent collective action was widely deployed in the US southern civil rights movement, there is still much that we do not know about how that came to be. Drawing on primary data that consist of detailed semistructured interviews with members of the Nashville nonviolent movement during the late 1950s and 1960s, we contribute unique insights about how the nonviolent repertoire was diffused into one movement current that became integral to moving the wider southern movement. Innovating with the concept of serially linked movement schools – locations where the deeply intense work took place, the didactic and dialogical labor of analyzing, experimenting, creatively translating, and resocializing human agents in preparation for dangerous performance – we follow the biographical paths of carriers of the nonviolent Gandhian repertoire as it was learned, debated, transformed, and carried from India to the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and Howard University to Nashville (TN) and then into multiple movement campaigns across the South. Members of the Nashville movement core cadre – products of the Nashville movement workshop schools – were especially important because they served as bridging leaders by serially linking schools and collective action campaigns. In this way, they played critical roles in bridging structural holes (places where the movement had yet to be successfully established) and were central to diffusing the movement throughout the South. Our theoretical and empirical approach contributes to the development of the dialogical perspective on movement diffusion generally and to knowledge about how the nonviolent repertoire became integral to the US civil rights movement in particular.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to analyze how campaigns, movements, new media outlets, and professional journalism organizations interact to produce political discourse in an information environment characterized by new actors and increasingly fragmented audiences.

Design – To do so, this chapter offers a rare inside look at contemporary strategic campaign communications from the perspective of staffers. Twenty-one open-ended and semi-structured interviews were conducted with former staffers, consultants, and vendors to the 2008 Obama campaign.

Findings – During the primaries the Obama campaign worked to create and cultivate ties with activists in the mediated “netroots” movement, what Todd Gitlin has referred to as the “movement wing of the Democratic Party.” The campaign sought to influence the debate among the principals and participants in this movement, given that they play an increasingly central role in the Democratic Party networks that help shape the outcome of contested primaries. During the general election, when the campaign and its movement allies shared the goal of defeating the Republicans, sites in the netroots functioned as important conduits of strategic and often anonymous campaign communications to new specialized journalistic outlets and the professional, general interest press. It is argued that campaigns and movements have extended established and developed new communication tactics to pursue their goals in a networked information environment.

Implications – This chapter's contribution lies in showing how much of what scholars assume to be the communicative content of amateurs is often the result of coordination among organized, and often hybrid, political actors.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.