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Minnesota’s rural communities are becoming increasingly more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse. The state shares territory with 11 Sovereign Nations and one in five Minnesotans identifies as Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) today, compared with just 1% in 1960. In collaboration with communities, University of Minnesota’s Extension Department of Community Development works to develop leadership capacity for residents to address inclusiveness, belonging, community climate and culture. The Welcoming and Inclusive Communities Program (WICP) focuses on measurement of community readiness within seven sectors combined with an educational stakeholder cohort experience leading to identification of challenges and best practices happening across a community. Curriculum includes exploring concepts of race and intersectionality and emphasizes the growth of leadership as participants work to promote equity and inclusion. Growing Local, another program in our community toolkit, is an intentional cohort series for BIPOC growth into leadership, more specifically, into decision-making arenas and positions of leadership, like their town/city/county committees, boards, and commissions. From learning the language of the oppressor (e.g., Robert’s Rules of Order) to understanding the dynamics and nuances of power-mapping and social capital, participants address the barriers facing BIPOC. This chapter highlights program design elements, assessments and evaluation, and lessons learned from program implementation to date. Scholars, researchers, practitioners, and leaders will find globally relevant and replicable tools to support the development of leaders who can shape their communities through the lens of inclusive leadership, increase and strengthen capacity to lead, build networks, and facilitate community-owned change.

Action films have traditionally been included in a category of popular cinema that enhanced and celebrated male heroes as the epitome of masculinity. Classical representations of men in this genre included notorious characters such as Indiana Jones, John Rambo or John McClane, to name just a few, who were conceived as characteristic of heteronormative and male-based aesthetics. The films in which these characters appeared reaffirmed a model of masculinity that perceived women as just an accessory that complemented men's attributes, but there were other examples within the genre that offered more complex views in the treatment of gender roles. Therefore, this chapter will focus on the evolution of the roles played by men and women in the Mad Max action film series, and will discuss how the representation of gender is determined in the franchise by the mediation of space in the generation of male and female roles.

The different representations of The Wasteland in Mad Max have contributed to locate characters in positions that have traditionally been associated with either men or women, such as cars, roads, wilderness or domestic environments. However, the evolution experienced by director George Miller's gender awareness, from the representation of the original Max Rockatansky in the first Mad Max film to his relegation to a supporting role in the latest production, in favour of iconic Imperator Furiosa, has provided a description of how the resignification of these spaces has been fundamental in presenting female characters as autonomous, independent and performative subjects, and male characters as active yet not intrusive participants in the empowerment of women and in dismantling male privilege.

This study consists of an examination of productivity growth following three major technological breakthroughs: the steam power revolution, electrification and the ICT revolution. The distinction between sectors producing and sectors using the new technology is emphasized. A major finding for all breakthroughs is that there is a long lag from the time of the original invention until a substantial increase in the rate of productivity growth can be observed. There is also strong evidence of rapid price decreases for steam engines, electricity, electric motors and ICT products. However, there is no persuasive direct evidence that the steam engine producing industry and electric machinery had particularly high productivity growth rates. For the ICT revolution the highest productivity growth rates are found in the ICT-producing industries. We suggest that one explanation could be that hedonic price indexes are not used for the steam engine and the electric motor. Still, it is likely that the rate of technological development has been much more rapid during the ICT revolution compared to any of the previous breakthroughs.