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21 – 30 of 184Fiona Measham, Karenza Moore, Russell Newcombe and Zoë Zoë (née Smith)
Significant changes in British recreational drug use were seen throughout 2009, with the emergence and rapid growth in the availability and use of substituted cathinones or…
Abstract
Significant changes in British recreational drug use were seen throughout 2009, with the emergence and rapid growth in the availability and use of substituted cathinones or ‘M‐Cats’ (most notably mephedrone and methylone), a group of psychoactive drugs not currently controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (HM Government, 1971), with similar effects to ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines. The reasons for the appearance and appeal of this group of so‐called ‘legal highs’ are explored here in relation to availability, purity, legality and convenience. The authors argue that a reduction in the availability (and thus purity) of illegal drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine and resultant disillusionment among users was a key motivation for displacement to substituted cathinones, conveniently and legally purchased online. Finally, we explore policy considerations around the likely criminalisation of substituted cathinones and the challenge of providing rapid yet considered harm reduction responses to emergent drug trends in the face of a minimal scientific evidence base and eager press demonisation.
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Gabrielle Civil, a Black feminist performance artist and professor, discusses developing and teaching her “Pleasure Syllabus,” a three-lecture module for a mandatory first-year…
Abstract
Gabrielle Civil, a Black feminist performance artist and professor, discusses developing and teaching her “Pleasure Syllabus,” a three-lecture module for a mandatory first-year undergraduate writing course. Grounded in Black feminism, especially adrienne maree brown's call for “pleasure activism” and Audre Lorde's embrace of the erotic, this syllabus aimed to consider and activate embodied knowledge. Contemplating pleasure (“what does and does not feel good”) also became a way to confront rape culture. With this module, Civil hoped to intervene in the rampant sexual violence happening on college campuses. She acknowledges the challenges of negotiating trauma and gender-based violence in the classroom. (Teaching about desire, sexuality, violation, and consent on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic was especially tough.) She shares specific strategies that supported her pedagogy and offers some suggestions for curricular planning while emphasizing that no one-size-fits-all approach exists to trauma-informed teaching. Her curriculum included visual art, music, graphics, and movement exercises along with critical/creative writing. Civil includes her actual “Pleasure Syllabus” and her module's signature assignment.
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Climate change is recognised as a severe threat to human and planetary wellbeing. Many children and young people around the world have chosen resistance as their form of…
Abstract
Climate change is recognised as a severe threat to human and planetary wellbeing. Many children and young people around the world have chosen resistance as their form of resilience in the face of the climate and biodiversity crises that threaten their current and future wellbeing. Their activism has widened the discourse pertaining to the climate emergency from a narrow focus on technical and scientific sources, bringing the discussion into broader public consciousness. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), the context for youth climate activism also reflects commitments to Māori, the Indigenous people, and to Pacific Peoples, given the ongoing impacts of histories of colonisation. This chapter draws from a range of focus group interviews with young Aotearoa (New Zealand) high school climate activists, and Māori and Pacific children and young people ranging in age from 10 into their 20s. Data were gathered during a recent small-scale project to develop a wellbeing guide which accompanies a climate change education programme for schools. It identifies the collective, collaborative leadership exhibited by these young people of diverse backgrounds, as well as their sophisticated analysis and advocacy for urgent remedies to address the climate crisis. It is argued that, instead of focussing on the blinkered continuation of restrictive assessment-driven pedagogies, teachers need to meet the moment of the current convergence of inter-related crises which include, along with the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, pandemic related exacerbation of socio-economic inequities, global conflict, and the unsustainable agenda of current global neoliberal economics. This can be done by supporting children and young people with knowledge and skills for climate action as they seek hope through active participation in endeavours to reshape their potential futures.
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Stephanie Gabrielle Moffett, Laura Bradley, Alison Hampton and Pauric McGowan
This research aims to better understand the Zillennial Generation within the workplace, specifically using the perspectives of Business Stakeholders within the context of Northern…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to better understand the Zillennial Generation within the workplace, specifically using the perspectives of Business Stakeholders within the context of Northern Ireland. Understanding the perceptions of Zillennials in the workplace is important due to their growing numbers and subsequent impact on the future of work.
Design/Methodology/Approach
A case study approach is used to gain a deeper understanding of stakeholder opinions and experiences of Zillennials. The authors draw on extant research and use semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences and views of stakeholders within three case firms employing Zillennials.
Findings
The study concludes that discrepancies can be seen between Zillennial performance and behaviour, compared with Business Stakeholder workplace expectations. Findings suggest that according to Business Stakeholders observations, Zillennials display some, but not all, attributes of Generation Z and Millennials. Business Stakeholders observations also reveal that Zillennials demonstrate some, but not all, entrepreneurial behaviours and competencies.
Originality/Value
While many studies focus on both Generation Z and Millennials, research focused on unique cusp generations is limited. No research has been conducted that investigates the perception of Zillennials within the context of Northern Ireland.
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The racial makeup of the United States' elementary school population is in flux. While much discussion addresses the shrinking White population and the growing Latinx population…
Abstract
The racial makeup of the United States' elementary school population is in flux. While much discussion addresses the shrinking White population and the growing Latinx population, less highlighted is the growing number of individuals who identify as belonging to two or more races. This group of individuals currently constitutes the youngest, fastest growing racial subgroup. According to the US Census' projections, the two or more races population will grow by 226% between 2014 and 2060, almost double the Asian population, the next fastest growing subgroup. Though individuals with multiplicity to their racial backgrounds have existed in the United States since its inception, only recently has the government provided the option for individuals to quantify their self-reported belonging to multiple races. The resulting statistics alert educators to the fact that individuals identifying as biracial and multiracial are going to be an increasingly sizable group of students requiring, as all children do, individualized care and support within school walls. In this chapter, I draw upon Black-White biracial women's elementary school recounts to help educational practitioners understand lived experiences that inform young girls' navigations of the intersections of their Blackness and Whiteness in schooling spaces.
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It was nearly twenty years ago that Howard Zehr (1990) wrote the first book about Restorative Justice (Changing Lenses), John Braithwaite (1989) wrote about “Crime, Shame and…
Abstract
It was nearly twenty years ago that Howard Zehr (1990) wrote the first book about Restorative Justice (Changing Lenses), John Braithwaite (1989) wrote about “Crime, Shame and Reintegration” and New Zealand introduced the family group conference – a restorative process for resolving matters when children and young people became involved in offending.11Family group conferences are also used in the child welfare system when options are being considered for children thought to be in need of care or protection. These events marked the transition from a theoretical debate about alternatives to Western models of criminal justice to the recognition of a new theory, a new set of values and a new practical alternative to the Western-style court system. Since then, theory has evolved and many other jurisdictions have experimented with various processes for delivering restorative justice (Johnstone & Van Ness, 2007). Perhaps the most common form, especially for young people has been the use of the restorative conference in youth justice. From its beginnings in New Zealand, it has spread to Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Ireland, Macao, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Tonga, Thailand and the United States of America. Many different forms of restorative family conferencing for young people who have offended have emerged in these different states, provinces and countries for many different types of offences and for people from many different cultures. In this chapter, I want to briefly review what has been learnt about the transferability of the process. In particular, what are the questions that have been largely resolved and what issues still remain unresolved? And what are the key conditions which must be met for the process to work in different jurisdictions and among different peoples and what aspects of the process tend to vary to reflect the diversity of cultures and customs within and between peoples in various areas?
This article’s principle aim is the investigation into the underdeveloped field of lesbian audience research. It theorises the relationship between the text of Xena Warrior…
Abstract
This article’s principle aim is the investigation into the underdeveloped field of lesbian audience research. It theorises the relationship between the text of Xena Warrior Princess a television programme and a fanclub called Xenasubtexttalk that evolved on the Internet. The researcher has drawn on evidence from a case study and participant observation over a twelve month period, the gathering of postings from bulletin boards and continuing interviews lasting between one and two hours conducted over the Internet. This has revealed some of the practices and rituals of two self‐identified lesbians who participated in this fanclub. Informed by a postmodernist feminist framework several issues of methodology are discussed. The main theme in this study’s findings is that these fans have produced through the appropriation of this particular text, biographies that represent a “coming out narrative”.
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Rebecca C. Den Hoed and Charlene Elliott
Despite their responsibility for mitigating the influence of commercial culture on children, parents' views of fun food marketing aimed at children remain largely unexplored. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite their responsibility for mitigating the influence of commercial culture on children, parents' views of fun food marketing aimed at children remain largely unexplored. This article aims to probe parents' views of supermarket fun foods and the packaging used to promote them to children.
Design/methodology/approach
In total 60 in‐depth interviews were conducted with parents from different educational backgrounds, living in three different Canadian cities. Interview responses were analyzed and coded thematically using an iterative process in keeping with grounded theory.
Findings
Parents generally discussed the promotion of supermarket fun foods to children as either an issue of the nutritional quality of foods promoted to children and/or in light of the communication quality of marketing aimed at children. Parents were also divided along education lines: parents with higher educational backgrounds were more likely to oppose fun foods and praise more pastoral ideals food production and consumption, while those with less education more often praised fun foods.
Research limitations/implications
These findings cannot be generalized to other parents or parents in other countries. The findings, however, suggest that a more nuanced consideration of differences within and across parents' views is warranted in debates about responsible marketing to children.
Originality/value
This article provides a qualitatively rich snapshot of the views of 60 Canadian parents regarding child‐targeted food marketing, and raises important questions about how to incorporate parents' views into discussions about responsible marketing, rather than presuming they are all of one mindset.
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Over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the popularity of tattooing in the UK, and a subsequent increase in tattooed female bodies. As explored by Walter (2010)…
Abstract
Over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the popularity of tattooing in the UK, and a subsequent increase in tattooed female bodies. As explored by Walter (2010), key for the women of today is that they have a choice, to conform to stereotypical constructions of femininity, or resist them. However, tension lies in the ways that these choices are already constrained by socially imposed boundaries. In exploring constructions of tattooed female bodies, a stratified sample of 14 tattooed women were interviewed, with the transcripts being analysed using a discursive–narrative approach. Reflexivity forms a key part of the analysis, as I research a tattooed woman, with some of the insider–outsider intersections informing the analysis. Here, the discourse of unwritten rules and social norms is explored, with a specific focus on how tattooed women construct ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ choices in respect to the tattoos they and others get, the expectation and the normalisation of the pain of getting and having a tattoo, and finally, the generational difference in respect to how tattoos are accepted and understood.
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While a number of scholars have observed that the contemporary self has to negotiate a “push and pull” between autonomy and a desire for community (Austin & Gagne, 2008; Bauman…
Abstract
Purpose
While a number of scholars have observed that the contemporary self has to negotiate a “push and pull” between autonomy and a desire for community (Austin & Gagne, 2008; Bauman, 2001a, p. 60; Coles, 2008; Giddens, 2003, p. 46, the struggle between the “self” and “others” that is at the heart of symbolic interactionist (SI) understandings of the self is often missing from sociological discussion on the “making of the self” (Coles, 2008, p. 21; Holstein & Gubrium, 2000), and the current chapter contributes to this literature.
Design/methodology/approach
To gain insight into “the making of the self,” in-depth life history interviews were conducted with 23 former members of new religious movements (NRMs) specific to their construction of self. Interview data was analyzed for variations in the ways in which individuals describe their construction of self. To make sense of these variations, SI understandings of the self are applied.
Findings
Analysis indicates that the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction is a continuum. From an SI perspective the self is conceptualized as to varying degrees informed by both the personal and the social. These two “domains” of the self are interrelated or connected through an ongoing process of reflexivity that links internal experiences and external feedback. From this perspective, “healthy” selves reflexively balance a sense of personal uniqueness against a sense of belonging and social connectedness. While a reflexive balance between the “self” and “others” is optimal, not everyone negotiates this balance successfully, and the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction varies and can be conceptualized as on a continuum between autonomy and social connectedness. The current findings suggest that where individuals are positioned on this continuum is dependent on the availability of cultural and personal resources from which individuals can construct selves, in particular in childhood. Those participants who described themselves as highly dependent on others report childhood histories of control, whereas those who described themselves as disconnected from others report histories of abuse and neglect.
Research limitations
The problems of relying on retrospective accounts of former members should be noted as such accounts are interpretive and influenced by the respondents’ present situation. However, despite their retrospective and constructionist nature, life history narratives provide meaningful insights into the actual process of self and identity construction. The analysis of retrospective accounts is a commonly recommended and chosen method for the study of the self (Davidman & Greil, 2007; Diniz-Pereira, 2008).
Social implications/originality/value
The current findings suggest that significant differences may exist in the way in which individuals construct and narrate their sense of self, in particular in regards to the way in which they experience and negotiate contemporary tensions between social connectedness and individuality. In particular, the findings highlight the importance of childhood environments for the construction of “healthy” selves that can negotiate contemporary demands of autonomy as well as social connectedness.
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