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Thailand has seen waves of youth-led protests over the past three years. Pro-democracy youth activists have vociferously criticised authority figures: teachers, parents and political leaders, especially the king. Drawing on vignettes assembled over a 14-year ethnographic work with young people in Thailand, as well as on current research on youth (online and offline) activism in Bangkok, I examine the multi-layered meaning of kinship in Thai society. The chapter reveals the political nature of childhood and parenthood as entangled modes of governance that come into being with other, both local and international cultural entities. I argue that Thai youth activists are attempting to rework dominant tropes that sustain “age-patriarchy” in the Buddhist kingdom. Their “engaged siblinghood” aims to reframe Thailand's generational order, refuting the moral principles that establish citizens' political subordination to monarchical paternalism and, relatedly, children's unquestionable respect to parents. As I show, Thai youth activists are doing so by engaging creatively with transnational discourses such as “democracy” and “children's rights,” while simultaneously drawing on K-pop icons, Japanese manga and Buddhist astrology. In articulating their dissent, these youths are thus bearers of a “bottom-up cosmopolitanism” that channels culturally hybrid, and politically subversive notions of childhood and citizenship in Southeast Asia's cyberspace and beyond. Whatever the outcome of their commitment, Thai youth activism signals the cultural disarticulation of the mytheme of the Father in Thailand, as well as the growing political influence of younger generations in the region.

The Japanese legal system has several significant, deep-rooted and widely recognised flaws, one of which has been a history of weak support for the needs of victims of sexual violence. This structure of prosecutorial apathy has meant that female victims, and wider society, have been insufficiently protected from all but the most extreme cases of abuse and assault. However, a growing political interest in gender equality and the nascent development of a Japanese #MeToo movement has brought more pressure for reforms, with 2017 seeing the first significant change of Japan's sex crime laws in 110 years. Despite this, many serious flaws remain to be addressed, including: concerns over the statute of limitations for sexual crimes, the manner in which vague legal definitions can prevent the law from being effectively applied, the lack of support for victims, and the often arbitrary standards for prosecution and the settlement system that allows the wealthy to avoid more than cursory punishment. This chapter examines the efforts to introduce reforms and the extent to which such changes are likely to have a positive impact on the well-being, safety and legal rights of Japanese women.

Through the lens of critical drugs theory, which sees drug policy as an oppressive framework that seeks to de-legitimise and stigmatise behaviour that threatens dominant social, cultural and gender norms, this contribution focusses on drug policy participation and governance. It focusses on the different ways women and drug-using women engage with drug policy debates and policy development in the case study of Scotland, and the activism that has enabled their recognition as legitimate participants in the policy process. The contribution calls attention to the generic challenges of civil society engagement in drug policy design, monitoring and evaluation; the particular silencing and marginalisation of drug user’s voices in national and international drug policy processes; and the multiple impediments but also opportunities for women to create stakeholder spaces.

The paper aims to expand on the works well documented by Joy Boulamwini and Ruha Benjamin by expanding their critique to the African continent. The research aims to assess if algorithmic biases are prevalent in DALL-E 2 and Starry AI. The aim is to help inform better artificial intelligence (AI) systems for future use.

The paper utilised a desktop study for literature and gathered data from Open AI’s DALL-E 2 text-to-image generator and StarryAI text-to-image generator.

The DALL-E 2 significantly underperformed when it was tasked with generating images of “An African Family” as opposed to images of a “Family”. The pictures lacked any conceivable detail as compared to the latter of this comparison. The StarryAI significantly outperformed the DALL-E 2 and rendered visible faces. However, the accuracy of the culture portrayed was poor.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further. The implications, however, are that more inclusion is warranted to help address the issue of cultural inaccuracies noted in a few of the paper’s experiments.

The paper is useful for advocates who advocate for algorithmic equality and fairness by highlighting evidence of the implications of systemic-induced algorithmic bias.

The reduction in offensive racism and more socially appropriate AI can be a better product for commercialisation and general use. If AI is trained on diversity, it can lead to better applications in contemporary society.

The paper’s use of DALL-E 2 and Starry AI is an under-researched area, and future studies on this matter are welcome.

While research on digital dangers has been growing, studies on their respective solutions and justice responses have not kept pace. The agathokakological nature of technology demands that we pay attention to not only harms associated with interconnectivity, but also the potential for technology to counter offenses and “do good.” This chapter discusses technology as both a weapon and a shield when it comes to violence against women and girls in public spaces and private places. First, we review the complex and varied manifestations of technological gender violence, ranging from the use of technology to exploit, harass, stalk, and otherwise harm women and girls in communal spaces, to offenses that occur behind closed doors. Second, we discuss justice-related responses, underscoring how women and girls have “flipped the script” when their needs are not met. By developing innovative ways to respond to the wrongs committed against them and creating alternate systems that offer a voice, victims/survivors have repurposed technology to redress harms and unite in solidarity with others in an ongoing quest for justice.

While a growing body of literature reveals the prevalence of men's harassment and abuse of women online, scant research has been conducted into women's attacks on each other in digital networked environments. This chapter responds to this research gap by analyzing data obtained from qualitative interviews with Australian women who have received at times extremely savage cyberhate they know or strongly suspect was sent by other women. Drawing on scholarly literature on historical intra-feminism schisms – specifically what have been dubbed the “mommy wars” and the “sex wars” – this chapter argues that the conceptual lenses of internalized misogyny and lateral violence are useful in their framing of internecine conflict within marginalized groups as diagnostic of broader, systemic oppression rather than being solely the fault of individual actors. These lenses, however, require multiple caveats and have many limitations. In conclusion, I canvas the possibility that the pressure women may feel to present a united front in the interests of feminist politics could itself be considered an outcome of patriarchal oppression (even if performing solidarity is politically expedient and/or essential). As such, there might come a time when openly renouncing discourses of sisterhood and feeling free to disagree with, and even dislike, other women might be considered markers of liberation.

This chapter focusses on the ethical issues raised by different types of surveillance and the varied ways in which surveillance can be covert. Three case studies are presented which highlight different types of surveillance and different ethical concerns. The first case concerns the use of undercover police to infiltrate political activist groups over a 40-year period in the UK. The second case study examines a joint operation by US and Australian law enforcement agencies: the FBI’s operation Trojan Shield and the AFP’s Operation Ironside. This involved distributing encrypted phone handsets to serious criminal organisations which included a ‘backdoor’ secretly sending encrypted copies of all messages to law enforcement. The third case study analyses the use of emotional artificial intelligence systems in educational digital learning platforms for children where technology companies collect, store and use intrusive personal data in an opaque manner. The authors discuss similarities and differences in the ethical questions raised by these cases, for example, the involvement of the state versus private corporations, the kinds of information gathered and how it is used.

This paper aims at contributing to our understanding of how self-settled Syrian refugees (registered and non-registered) use informal practices to forge their non-political agency and how this agency could be considered as political acts.

This paper was conducted per the qualitative data analysis (in-depth interviews and participant observation), attributed to the critical ethnographic approach, through which refugees’ everyday struggle is explored, additionally, that was incorporated with the analysis of Syrians’ Facebook groups and formal sources.

The research paper concluded that everyday struggle strategies are considered as political acts by acquiring rights that many self-settled Syrian refugees are stripped of by international humanitarian agencies and host government. Hence, registered and unregistered refugees equally forge what is called “informal citizenship” through their presence via a blend of agency forms ranging from hidden agency to explicit one and via their incorporating into the informal contexts, leading them to carve a position of semi-legality that help them to circumvent the formal structural hardship.

This paper endeavors to study how urban refugees as change agents can convert their illegal presence to “probably refugeeness” to unsettle the prominent recognition of them as illegal non-citizens in southern cities.

South Africa attained democracy over 24 years ago. The changes in South Africa's Constitution allowed for protection for all citizens. Despite these freedoms and the promise of change, the country is plagued by violence, corruption and crime. These crimes affect the LGBTQ+ people of the South African population. These citizens have been protected by the Constitution; however, they continue to live their lives in a paradox, between protection and prejudice. LGBTQ+ people experience high levels of hate crimes which extend to violence, assault, bullying and cyberbullying. This chapter focuses on the legal protection and challenges experienced by South African LGBTQ+ people.