Critical Allies Research Articles

Article: Critical Allies and Core Geopolitics in Minerals Trade: Devising a Strategy for India

The shifting geopolitical landscape and the increased demand for critical minerals in the efforts towards green transition have underscored the need to build predictable and resilient mineral supply chains. With the fundamental idea of strengthening economic resilience and ensuring security of supply, countries are increasingly resorting to reshoring, friend-shoring and nearshoring policies in critical minerals trade. Against this backdrop, this article summarizes WTO rules governing international trade in critical minerals and examines emerging international legal trends shaping trade and supply chains in critical minerals. It offers recommendations for devising India’s strategy for critical minerals taking into account the security of supply, international trade rules and other commercial considerations. critical minerals, supply chains, international trade, WTO, India

Finding Queer Life through Allies: The Geography and Intentions of Mainstream-Oriented, Ostensibly LGBTQ-Supportive Businesses in a Smaller Metropolitan Area of the U.S. South

This article details a study of the geography and intentions of mainstream-oriented businesses that publicly display lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-related symbols and signs. The setting for this study was the four-county Durham–Chapel Hill metropolitan area in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Findings show how the distribution of these businesses mirrors various demographic, political, and policy indicators of where LGBTQ and LGBTQ-friendly populations live in this smaller metropolitan region of the conservative southeastern United States. Employee interviews revealed a typology of critical, performative, and managed allies among these businesses. Critical allies had adopted practices that allow a sexually and gender-diverse, although largely White, segment of LGBTQ people to visibly work and consume on their premises, whereas performative interviewees’ ostensible allyship was more purely about marketing. Other businesses are constrained in their potential to more visibly market to LGBTQ people or be critical allies due to their role as franchisees. Given that a majority of these business’s activism was substantive, and building from Ghaziani’s (2014) concept of anchor institutions, I argue that these businesses show how the material culture of a large segment of LGBTQ people takes on a particular geography within Durham–Chapel Hill. Within limitations, mainstream-oriented businesses displaying LGBTQ symbols and signs offer another means of examining how LGBTQ life and visibility extend beyond gayborhoods.

Engaging Youth as Community Leaders in Outdoor Education Research, Program Design, and Evaluation

When considering community impacts of outdoor education (OE), youth are community members, leaders, and experts who can and should be meaningfully involved in the design and evaluation of OE programs and research that impact them. Ensuring youth have agency in these processes can create opportunities for building community (Brennan, 2008), making connections with diverse audiences (Arunkumar et al., 2019), cultivating youth leadership development (Brennan, 2008), and connecting multiple generations with each other and with the outdoors (D’Amore, 2016; Mannion et al., 2010; Peterson et al., 2019). Additionally, youth are leading movements toward the future they want for themselves and those who will come after them. Adults are critical allies in the success of these movements. Researchers and practitioners of OE have a responsibility to facilitate young people’s meaningful participation in the programs and related research that impact them in order to more fully realize the previously noted community impacts. This paper summarizes select models for youth participation which can be applied specifically in OE contexts and provides suggestions for practice and future research to spark conversations around how OE practitioners and researchers as adult allies can engage youth as community leaders in every phase of program and research design and implementation.

Critically Examining the Person-Environment Relationship and Implications of Intersectionality for Participation in Children's Rehabilitation Services.

Participation of children in rehabilitation services is associated with positive functional and developmental outcomes for children with disabilities. Participation in therapy is at risk when the personal and environmental contexts of a child create barriers to accessing services. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) provides a framework for conceptualizing the personal and environmental factors linked to a child. However, it does not facilitate critical examination of the person–environment relationship and its impact on participation in children's rehabilitation. This perspective study proposes the use of intersectionality theory as a critical framework in complement with the ICF to examine the impact of systemic inequities on the participation in therapy for children with disabilities. Clinicians are called to be critical allies working alongside children and families to advocate for inclusive participation in children's rehabilitation by identifying and transforming systemic inequities in service delivery.

How can men be good allies for women in surgery? #HeForShe.

Men have long been the dominant force in surgery, particularly in cardiothoracic surgery, and this has resulted in a tradition of a masculine culture that is not receptive to women. As a result, cardiothoracic surgery fails to recruit talented female surgeons, and with now over 50% of medical students being women, this means that cardiothoracic surgery potentially loses half of the physician talent pool. When women pursue a career in surgery, they face innumerable challenges and barriers, ranging from outright sexual harassment to daily microaggressions that demonstrate gender biases about perceived competence, work ethic, commitment, and professional ability. Women frequently suffer from unequal opportunities in clinical, academic, or leadership roles, and this can be further represented by disparities in compensation and time to academic promotion. Men have an outsized role in helping to provide a professional environment in surgery that is attractive and welcoming to women, and in supporting a culture that empowers equal opportunity for career success and advancement to both men and women. This important role of men is particularly true in cardiothoracic surgery since over 90% of the workforce are male. First and foremost, men can be critical allies to their female colleagues by actively supporting and promoting the women they work beside every day. Men are also important mentors for women, providing a safe space for frank conversations and career advice, with the sincere best interests of the female colleague at heart. Finally, men are important sponsors for women colleagues as well, talking about them, promoting them, and helping launch them into committee or leadership positions, while opening doors for clinical or academic advancement. The advantage of this work to men is the development of rewarding and lifelong relationships with female colleagues, and the benefit of their own reciprocal mentorship and allyship. Men have as much to gain as women from a modernization of our specialty and mitigation of gender disparities that undermine equal opportunity for career advancement. Men should not stand on the sidelines, and should be engaged and proactive as they work with women for gender equality in surgery. #HeForShe

Critical Allies: On Contemporary Enslavement and Statelessness

N/A

Risk of hypertension following perinatal adversity: IUGR and prematurity

Consistent with the paradigm shifting observations of David Barker and colleagues that revealed a powerful relationship between decreased weight through 2 years of age and adult disease, intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and preterm birth are independent risk factors for the development of subsequent hypertension. Animal models have been indispensable in defining the mechanisms responsible for these associations and the potential targets for therapeutic intervention. Among the modifiable risk factors, micronutrient deficiency, physical immobility, exaggerated stress hormone exposure and deficient trophic hormone production are leading candidates for targeted therapies. With the strong inverse relationship seen between gestational age at delivery and the risk of hypertension in adulthood trumping all other major cardiovascular risk factors, improvements in neonatal care are required. Unfortunately, therapeutic breakthroughs have not kept pace with rapidly improving perinatal survival, and groundbreaking bench-to-bedside studies are urgently needed to mitigate and ultimately prevent the tsunami of prematurity-related adult cardiovascular disease that may be on the horizon. This review highlights our current understanding of the developmental origins of hypertension and draws attention to the importance of increasing the availability of lactation consultants, nutritionists, pharmacists and physical therapists as critical allies in the battle that IUGR or premature infants are waging not just for survival but also for their future cardiometabolic health.

Using two models of workplace facilitation to create conditions for development of a person-centred culture: A participatory action research study.

To examine facilitation in workplace learning where nurses are focused on creating person-centred cultures; to provide a framework for novice and proficient facilitators/practitioners to learn in and from their own workplaces and practices; and to provide the conditions where practitioners can gain an understanding of the culture and context within their own workplace. Evidence suggests that person-centred cultures depend on purposeful, facilitated practice-based learning activities. For person-centredness to become more meaningful to nursing leaders in their daily work, focus must be placed on their acquisition and use of facilitation skills. The facilitation framework "Critical Companionship" remains an exemplar in the development of expert facilitation skills. Two sequential facilitation models were developed as "steps" towards Critical Companionship, as a framework for novice and proficient facilitators and practitioners to learn in and from their own workplaces and practices. This research, situated in a critical social science paradigm, drew on participatory action research to devise, explore and refine two facilitation models: Critical Allies and Critical Friends. The researcher adopted an insider approach to work with five nursing leaders, which was subsequently reported using the EQUATOR guidelines on best practice in reporting of participatory action research. The results show the complexity of enabling facilitation within the workplace. Four themes and twelve subthemes emerged from the data that describe the attributes needed to facilitate workplace learning and reveal that managers can have an active role in enabling person-centred culture development. This research adds to the body of knowledge on developing person-centred culture. It offers practical stepping stones for novice and proficient facilitators to enable embodiment of the skills necessary to facilitate learning in person-centredcultures. The models offer a workplace-friendly pathway with practical methods and further contribute to our understanding of how we create person-centred cultures. Facilitation of practice development and workplace learning remains the most effective methods to develop person-centred cultures. This research introduces a pathway for clinical leaders/managers to become facilitators with their own teams, maximising the impact on the culture where care is delivered.

From Impairment to Empowerment: A Longitudinal Medical School Curriculum on Disabilities.

All physicians will care for individuals with disabilities; however, education about disabilities is lacking at most medical schools. Most of the schools that do include such education exclusively teach the medical model, in which disability is viewed as an impairment to be overcome. Disability advocates contest this approach because it overlooks the social and societal contexts of disability. A collaboration between individuals with disabilities, educators, and physicians to design a medical school curriculum on disabilities could overcome these differences. A curriculum on disabilities for first- and second-year medical students was developed during the 2013-2014 academic year and involved a major collaboration between a medical student, medical educators, disability advocates, and academic disability specialists. The guiding principle of the project was the Disability Rights Movement motto, "Nothing about us without us." Two small-group sessions were created, one for each medical school class. They included discussions about different models of disability, video and in-person narratives of individuals with disabilities, and explorations of concepts central to social perceptions of disability, such as power relationships, naming and stigmatization, and disability as identity. According to evaluations conducted after each session, students reported positive feedback about both sessions. Through this curriculum, first- and second-year medical students learned about the obstacles faced by individuals with disabilities and became better equipped to understand and address the concerns, hopes, and societal challenges of their future patients. This inclusive approach may be used to design additional curricula about disabilities for the clinical and postgraduate years.

Critical allies and feminist praxis: rethinking dis-ease

ABSTRACTIn Australian universities, non-Indigenous educators teaching Indigenous studies and/or Indigenous content must engage critically with anti-colonialism, not simply as lip service to syllabus content, but also, as an ethical consideration whereby consultation and collaboration with Indigenous scholars must necessarily direct praxis. Such an engagement might be referred to as a ‘critical alliance’: an engagement with Others about whom we are speaking that forms the basis for an ethical relationship. A ‘critical alliance’ with Others seeks always to undermine the colonial relations of power that discursively position both Indigenous and non-Indigenous subjects. This paper explores what such an alliance might ‘look like’ as a feminist practice, what will sustain it or give it substance so it can be a productive contribution to a more socially just pedagogy that gives emphasis to Indigenous struggles and Indigenous knowledge.

Hezbollah: a history of the "party of god"

For thirty years, Hezbollah has played a pivotal role in Lebanese and global politics. That visibility has invited Hezbollah's lionization and vilification by outside observers, and at the same time has prevented a clear-eyed view of Hezbollah's place in the history of the Middle East and its future course of action. Dominique Avon and Anais-Trissa Khatchadourian provide here a nonpartisan account which offers insights into Hezbollah that Western media have missed or misunderstood. Now part of the Lebanese government, Hezbollah nevertheless remains in tension with both the transnational Shiite community and a religiously diverse Lebanon. Calling for an Islamic regime would risk losing critical allies at home, but at the same time Hezbollah's leaders cannot say that a liberal regime is the solution for the future. Consequently, they use the ambiguous expression civil but believer state. What happens when an organization founded as a voice of revolution and then resistance occupies a position of power, yet witnesses the collapse of its close ally, Syria? How will Hezbollah's voice evolve as the party struggles to reconcile its regional obligations with its religious beliefs? The authors' analyses of these key questions--buttressed by their clear English translations of foundational documents, including Hezbollah's open letter of 1985 and its 2009 charter, and an in-depth glossary of key theological and political terms used by the party's leaders--make Hezbollah an invaluable resource for all readers interested in the future of this volatile force.

Relacionamentos multilaterais na unipolaridade: uma discussão teórica realista

Examina-se em que medida e em que condições relacionamentos multilaterais podem ser relevantes no contexto de um sistema unipolar e, em particular, em que medida e em que condições esses relacionamentos podem influenciar o comportamento do único pólo do sistema. O artigo começa distinguindo um sistema internacional unipolar de um sistema estritamente hegemônico. A partir daí, identifica como variável-chave do sistema o comportamento de uma Potência Unipolar, e estabelece as bases teóricas desse comportamento, ou seja, sua Grande Estratégia ideal - abstrata, não descritiva -, como parâmetro de avaliação. Em seguida, estabelece as bases teóricas das possibilidades de sustentação dessa Grande Estratégia ideal, ou seja, a Política de Sustentação Grande-Estratégica ideal da Potência Unipolar. Das necessidades intrínsecas de cada uma, decorrem: (a) a análise teórica da utilidade de relacionamentos multilaterais do ponto de vista da Potência Unipolar; (b) a análise teórica do poder de barganha dos demais atores internacionais em face da Potência Unipolar no âmbito desses relacionamentos; (c) a análise teórica da utilidade de aliados críticos, concretos e potenciais para a Potência Unipolar; e (d) a análise teórica do poder de barganha de aliados críticos, concretos e potenciais, em face da Potência Unipolar. Com base nessas quatro análises, estabelecem-se as condições teóricas das variações na relevância desses relacionamentos multilaterais no sistema unipolar, bem como seus limites teóricos. A análise mostrará que, a partir das próprias premissas de alguns autores realistas, e respeitados aqueles limites, relacionamentos multilaterais têm o potencial de serem mais relevantes do que esses autores geralmente consideram, mas não são indispensáveis; desrespeitados aqueles limites, podem se tornar irrelevantes.

Hope Against Hype - Accountability in Biopasts, Presents and Futures

We are today wholly accustomed to being daily bombarded with (often competing) claims about the seemingly limitless potential and promise of transgenics, predictive medicine, reproductive science, bioinformatics and much else besides. Stories of new breakthroughs and advances mesh with ‘our’ culturally embedded sense of the steady march of enlightenment progress. Each announcement seems to index a sequential pulse in the accomplishment of the ‘biotechnology revolution’. In more grounded terms, the talking-up of biotechnology prizes open the accounts of funding agencies and investors, in addition to winning the necessary support of various critical allies (patients, publics, regulators, etc). In equal measure, hyper-expectations feed into and fuel the complex counter concerns of oppositional cultures (new social movements, NGOs, etc). And yet these accounts of revolutionary potentially sit uncomfortably alongside our equally familiar experiences of unfulfilled promises, the awkward absence of future benefits, treatments, rewards and profits. This is not always the case, but more often than not, early hopes are rarely proportionate to actual future results. This paper charts key features in the ‘dynamics of expectations’, documenting the relationships between new hopes and emerging disappointments. It explores the routes of agency in the construction of the present’s future and touches on the possibilities for greater accountability in the political economy of biotechnological expectations.