Dangerous Class Research Articles

FDA finds deadly risks linked to botanicalkratom

Consumers should avoid using kratom, a plant native to Southeast Asia, to self-treat serious medical conditions such as pain, anxiety, and depression, the U.S. FDA warns in a public health advisory issued on Nov. 14. The agency claims that kratom acts similarly to opioids and has “similar risks of abuse, addiction, and in some cases, death.” Last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration proposed to temporarily classify two chemicals found in kratom—mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine—as Schedule I controlled substances, the most dangerous class of drugs. But patient groups and some members of Congress pushed back, citing the benefits of kratom as an alternative to opioids. DEA withdrew its proposal and asked FDA to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the safety and medical effectiveness of the two chemicals in kratom. FDA says data clearly show harmful effects of kratom, including increased calls to poison control centers and 36 deaths associated with its

Принципи фітотоксикологічної класифікації металів та рослин в умовах природних екосистем

Actuality. Metals excessive concentrations reduce biomass of plants in ecosystem. Trace elements effect on biotic systems as biochemical agents, breaking the ultrastructure of cells, physiological processes and metabolism of plants, affect the species composition, reproduction and recovery processes, productivity and resistance to pathogens. As the plants mainly define the environment of ecosystem, the determination of phytotoxicological risk plays an important role in ecosystem assessment. In large cities, natural ecosystems are confined to park areas. Goloseyevsko-Feofanivska and Koncha-Zaspivska green parks are very popular in Kyiv. Phytotoxicological assessment of the metals behavior risk in natural ecosystems is based primarily on classification principles. The phytotoxicological classification should be considered in two aspects. The first aspect concerns the metals toxicity for plants. The second aspect concerns the plants reaction to metals concentration in phytomass. Analysis of recent research and publications. According to the opinion of many scientists, species and families of plants differ in chemistry, and only due to the lack of research in this direction have to be limited in the classification of their morphological features. There are no classifications of metals and plants according to concentration in phytomass. Studies concerning the phytotoxicity of metals or the sensitivity (or the opposite of resistance) of certain types of plants to metallic pollution are non-systemic and relate solely to physiological aspects. The purpose of the study was to rank metals and plants by metals concentration in the phytomass in natural ecosystems of Goloseevo-Feofanivska and Koncha-Zaspivska green zones of Kyiv. Materials and methods of research . Goloseyevsky-Feofanivska and Koncha-Zaspivska green areas of Kyiv are part of the landscape of elevated hilly-sloping plains on the Paleogene-neogene basis, composed of forest sanded loams. Thanks to convex relief and loamy soils, studied areas have intensive removing of elements, in particular, anthropogenic pollutants. Both studied parks are located at the junction of the Right-bank Polissya and the Forest-Steppe zones of Ukraine in warm medium-tempered agro-climatic zone. The content of Cd, Co, Cu, Pb, Ni, Pb in the phytomass was analyzed in: Gagea lutea L., Tussilago farfara L., Anemone ranunculoides L., Ficaria verna Huds., Pulmonaria obscura Dum., Stellaria holostea L., Convallaria majalis L., Hypericum perforatum L.. The photosynthetic fraction of the phytomasses of the first and second tier of the trees was analyzed in: Quercus robur L., Carpinus betulus L., Salix caprea L., Tilia cordata Mill., Acer platanoids L.; Trees of the third tier: Sambucus nigra L., Prunus padus L.. Results and discution . The phytotoxicological classification of metals (Cd, Pb, Ni, Co, Zn, Cu) was developed for their concentration in phytomass. According to the Stargess equation, the metals were ranged in four dangerous classes. The middle arithmetic mean of each metal concentration in plants was used for calculation the scope of the metal’s dangerous class. The highest level of phytomass concentration in plants had copper, the lowest concentration in plants had cadmium and cobalt. Zinc as a physiologically important trace elements, and lead, whose physiological role is not thoroughly investigated, are both were in the middle phytotoxicological class. The middle arithmetic mean of metals concentration in each plant was used for calculation the scope plant class. Plants with low and moderate metals concentration in phytomass were: Carpinus betulus L. , Acer platanoides L. , Quercus robur L ., Prunus padus L. , Salix caprea L ., Tilia cordata Mill. , Sambucus nigra L. . Plants with high metals concentration in phytomass were: Tussilago farfara L ., Anemone ranunculoides L. . Highest metal concentration among the trees was in Goloseevka green park area near Goloseevsky Avenue. In our researches we tried to zoning the studied area according to metals concentration in trees. With helps of Fisher’s criteria the difference between trees concentration in different zones of studied areas was highlighted. The Ghoryhuvatska locality was characterized as most polluted zone than others in studied area. More pollution obviously could be explained by proximity to highway Goloseevsky Avenue. Conclusions and perspectives . The phytotoxicological classification of metals and phytotoxicological classification of plants were proposed for metals risk assessment in nature ecosystems. For the first time the algorithm of the metals ranking for the four danger classes according to metals concentration in phytomass was proposed. There were ranged all studied plants due to metals concentration in their phytomass. Assignment the metals and plants to phytotoxicological classes will allow not just only to characterize the hazard of metals for plants, but to detect the reaction of plants to metals influence in nature ecosystems.

Pizza and Housos: Neoliberalism, the Discursive Construction of the Underclass and Its Representation

ABSTRACTThere is limited scholarship about Paul Fenech’s television comedy series and films. What there is tends to focus on Pizza (2000–2007) and place it, and its spin-off film, Fat Pizza (2003), within what has been called the wogsploitation cycle that includes most prominently The Wog Boy (2000). In this article I discuss two of Fenech’s television series, Pizza and Housos (2011–2013), in the context of representations of the underclass. I argue that the discourse of the underclass has evolved as the Other of neoliberalism in a similar way that the dangerous class, what Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, was constructed as the Other of industrial capitalism. The characters in Pizza, with their pitiful below-minimum-wage earnings, exist on the borderline of the underclass, while the characters in Housos are immersed in the underclass existence. The film Housos v Authority (2012) is a populist exploration of Australian underclass life.

Szanse życiowe młodych Polaków – problem sprawstwa

Entering adulthood is a process which for many people becomes a source of disappointment and frustration. If young people aren’t prepared for the encounters with difficulties which can be met while searching for their own place in life during their school education, they become helpless and have a “cracked” reflectivity, as noted by Margaret S. Archer. At the same time one cannot ignore the gradual emergence of a new social class – the precariat – a dangerous class, as we are warned by Guy Standing. This group consists predominantly of young adults who are often seeking work far from home without any guarantee of employment. The role played by the sense of agency is indisputable. Life chances depend on whether one acts with his/her free will. The only hope for proper social functioning is community building because, according to Charles Taylor, individualism, the predominance of instrumental rationality, and the lack of active citizenship constitute a kind of contemporary threat.

Contradictions in the political economy and the dangerous youth precariat class in Nigeria : the imperative of a multi-stakeholder intervention - focus on Nigeria

Contradictions in the political economy and the dangerous youth precariat class in Nigeria : the imperative of a multi-stakeholder intervention - focus on Nigeria

Akademinin Prekaryası: 50/D’li Araştırma Görevlileri

The focus of this study is to delineate the precarious experiences of research assistants employed under the contract defined by article 50/d of Turkish Law of Higher Education. This study considers 50/d cadres as “precariats” of Turkish academy as explained by Guy Standing in his book named as Precariat; New Dangerous Class. According to Standing, the process of precariatisation results in future insecurity, anxiety, worthlessness, loss of productivity, alienation, exclusion from the system, hopelessness, loss of status, the tendency of obedience and inability of organized action. In this study, it is aimed to explore the modes of precariatisation that research assistants working under 50/d contract facing with. The analysis is held through a qualitative research methodology. Semistructured interviews are held with 24 research assistants working in the institutes of sciences, social sciences, medical and educational sciences working under 50/d contract in a randomly picked Turkish state university. The findings of this study are that interviewers displayed symptoms of precariatisation such as psychological problems and decrease in productivity due to job insecurity and future uncertainty. Additionally; in the study, it has been revealed that the lack of organization is the cause and consequence of job insecurity. As a result, this study has revealed that research assistants which are 50/d cadres can be defined as precariats

Классовые схемы постиндустриального общества в западной социологии

This article presents the main types of class schemes of modem society in Western sociology. Class compatibility with society individualization is shown, to which a variety of sociologists addresses to deny the concept of classes. Authors of class schemes rehabilitate the concept “class” and state the class polarization in society. There are three class schemes: dual, plural and mixed. Some of the authors’ ideas of class schemes are objectionable. This concerns understanding of the precariat as a class. Critics of this approach help clarify the class concept and class structure outlines of modern Western society. Class analysis in modern Western sociology is not limited to economic explanation of class formation and introduces the possession of non-economic forms of capital as an important criterion of class divisions. The authors of class schemes show the changing nature of upper and lower social classes. In the upper class, the role of owners of non-economic forms of capital increases, while the lower class consists of people who are either in unstable situation in the employment system or excluded from the economically active population. Precariat and underclass appearance shows the weakening of social integration mechanisms and the strengthening of social differentiation processes. Misbalance between both types of social and structural processes threatens the stability of society. Loss of confidence in the future creates in people a sense of “uncertainty”, turning into resentment, because of which G. Standing’s “new dangerous class” is formed. Comparative analysis of class schemes indicates the growth of the class structure dysfunction of modern society.

Analytical model of lap-joint adhesive with embedded piezoelectric transducer for weak bond detection

In recent years, the aerospace and automotive industries experienced a growing interest in the implementation of structural members’ bonding using adhesive films. Adhesive joints contribute to manufacturing savings and are advantageous from a structural prospective as they provide a relatively uniform stress distribution at the bonded region, hence reducing local stress concentration. Regretfully, the adhesive bonds’ strength is vulnerable to the presence of defects which limits their use for structural purposes. A particularly dangerous class of defects—generically referred to as “kissing bond”—consists of localized imperfections that do not provide adequate bonding between the adherent and the adhesive yet maintaining the two surfaces in contact. Past attempts at detecting kissing bonds using ultrasonics were only marginally successful stressing the need to search for more reliable methods. This article describes a novel, in situ, impedance-based method for bond-line degradation detection during the service life of a structure. The method relies on piezoelectric transducers embedded within the adhesive bond-line and actuated by a low-voltage harmonic signal. The article focuses on deriving an approximate analytical model describing the dynamic behavior of the actuator embedded in the homogeneous bond-line. A study describing the sensitivity of the electro-mechanical response of the transducer to the changes in various bond-line properties and adhesion conditions is also presented.

Jakarta’s Precarious Workers: Are they a “New Dangerous Class”?

ABSTRACTIn his 2011 book, The Precariat, Guy Standing claims that the precariat is “a new dangerous class.” This article seeks to revisit this claim and assess it using the case of young workers engaged in urban situations in Jakarta that fit the definition of precarious work. It will particularly focus on young workers who are often identified as potentially “dangerous” because they join vigilante groups. It is argued that these precarious workers share characteristics with the broader working class, and the claim that they constitute a new class in a developing country such as Indonesia is challenged. It is found that membership in vigilante groups is important for providing social bonds that support these young precarious workers in dealing with labour-related insecurities. The social bonds also moderate their anger, anxiety, anomie and alienation, and act to integrate them within society. It is also suggested that where these young precarious workers may be considered “dangerous,” it is a characteristic common to the lumpenproletariat. This shapes their class consciousness and affects their ambiguous relations with the rest of the working class.

Towards a Precarity Agenda

It is widely acknowledged that the closing decades of the twentieth century, and the early decades of the twenty-first century, have been marked by growing economic insecurity across the globe. But how we understand this process is highly contested. What are the sources of economic insecurity? To what extent do contemporary forms of economic and political organisation mark a break from the past? What analytical tools do we need to make sense of the current moment? Are new concepts needed, or will well-established concepts suffice? What are the implications of growing economic insecurity for questions of agency, solidarity, class struggle and social change? How does economic insecurity relate to various forms of collective organisation such as trade unions, political parties and community-based organisations? Guy Standing has been one of the most prolific and visible contributors to these debates. Standing was an economist and director of various projects at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) from 1975 to 2006. Since then he has held various academic positions at Monash University (Australia), University of Bath (UK) and University of London. He is perhaps best-known for his analysis of the “precariat”, which he develops over the course of three books: Work After Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (2009), The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011), and A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (2014). The third instalment is distinct from the previous two in that it develops twenty-nine proposals – a Precariat Charter – for how to improve the conditions of the precariat. The proposals are wide-ranging. They call for:

Comentario a John Irwin: "The Warehouse Prison. Disposal of the new dangerous class"

John Irwin (1929-2010) ha sido uno de los sociologos del encarcelamiento norteamericano mas influyentes desde la segunda mitad del Siglo XX. Autor de varios textos fundamentales en la materia, no obstante, su obra no se encuentra traducida al espanol. El libro que aqui se comenta, ultima publicacion de importancia seis anos antes de su fallecimiento, describe microsociologicamente el funcionamiento de los establecimientos penitenciarios norteamericanos surgidos a partir del auge del encarcelamiento desde finales de la decada de 1970: supermax prisons (prisiones de maxima seguridad) y, con mayor profundidad, warehouse prisons (prisiones deposito). Analiza los regimenes penitenciarios aplicados en ellos, y los efectos que causan en la subjetividad de las personas que lo sufren. Tambien ensaya, desde una vision externa, los vinculos de esta transformacion punitiva con la reconfiguracion de la estructura social y economica posfordista. John Irwin se convirtio en un autor de referencia en la sociologia del encarcelamiento al publicar, junto a su maestro Donald Cressey, un articulo clave para el estudio de las sociedades carcelarias: “Thieves, Convicts and the Inmate Culture”1. Hasta entonces, su biografia se encontraba bastante alejada de los claustros academicos. Luego de cumplir una pena de cinco anos de prision por delitos contra la propiedad y abuso de drogas en Soledad –el primer establecimiento penitenciario californiano habilitado una vez finalizada la II Guerra Mundialingreso a UCLA

КРЕАТИВНЫЙ КЛАСС – КРЕАТИВНЫЙ ГОРОД: РЕАЛЬНАЯ ПЕРСПЕКТИВА ИЛИ УТОПИЯ ДЛЯ ИЗБРАННЫХ?

The world experience explicitly shows that popular concepts of urban development in post-industrial societies coming from the ideology of creativeness are inapplicable not only universally to any urban entity in the world, but also to most of cities in the respective societies. This is due to: a) historical non-simultaneity of mankind’s development, when different societies solve distinctive problems of survival, accelerated modernizations, adaptation to post-industrialism, creative self-actualization, etc.; b) capitalist world system asymmetries that increase the class-based, economical and geographical polarization; c) narrowness of the world post-industrial economy segment and of the post-material values space; d) dependence of cities on networks and peripheries beyond agglomerations, regions, states. As a result, such concepts and proposed drivers of urban development as "urban city" (S. Sassen), "creative city" (Ch. Landry), "creative class" (R. Florida), "creative economy" (J. Howkins), "smart city" (A. Townsend, R. Hollands et al.), "gentrification" (D. Ley), "urban networked communities" (M. Castells), "symbolic positioning" and "cities branding" (by D. Vizgalov, K. Kiselev, M. Nazukina and other) uncover their nature as limited social utopias. Even in places where the level of urban economy capitalization enables to use potential drivers of development suggested by creative theories, their impact is usually in favour of distinct privileged urban minorities. Without any significant multiplicative economic effect, these theories use neoliberal rhetoric which helps to legitimate the decrease of social state, spatial segregation and reinforcement of different inequalities within a city. Thus they deprive urban dwellers of the conventional right to the city. As a result, creative city politics turns out to accumulate tensions and problems, and the creative class shows its accursed part – the precariat – as vulnerable at the labor market and politically dangerous class.

Britain’s Archipelago of Camps: Labor and Detention in a Liberal Empire, 1871–1903

Britain’s Archipelago of CampsLabor and Detention in a Liberal Empire, 1871–1903 Aidan Forth (bio) Camps suggest an Enlightenment project derailed. Associated most often and perhaps most appropriately with Hitler’s Germany and the Soviet Gulag under Lenin, Stalin, and their successors, the barbed-wire aesthetic of the camp and the skeletal profile of overworked and undernourished inmates stand as stark reminders of the ideological excesses of an “age of extremes.” They are emblems of modern terror. Yet camps are by no means unique to the despotic powers of a short 20th century. Indeed, Britain presided over a considerable empire of labor and detention camps in a long and ostensibly liberal 19th century. Camps segregated and immobilized populations deemed vagrant, criminal, or otherwise socially or politically dangerous. In contrast to prisons and other disciplinary sites, camps were instruments of collective detention that operated outside normal judicial procedures, often in the context of a perceived emergency. As an integral tool of multiple polities in the 19th and 20th centuries, they enforced heavy labor and penal rations under dire economic restraints, often in the name of controlling and rehabilitating “problem populations.” In Britain, camps concentrated an undesirable “dangerous class” in the metropole. But it was the British Empire that offered an especially ripe environment for the development of camps. Directed at a racial and cultural “other” and detached, at times, from public scrutiny, the authoritarian nature of imperial rule motivated officials to assemble many of the physical and psychological prerequisites for the coercive encampment of suspect groups. Although labor, concentration, and extermination camps became infamous in the 20th century, Britain and other colonial powers in the 19th century assembled many of the cultural, material, and political preconditions of forced encampment. Given their global profile at the turn of the 19th century, British camps may have suggested a direct and conscious model for the early camps of [End Page 651] the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. But more than this, British rule helped foster the structural and conceptual preconditions for the development and management of camps. Imperial administration generated a sophisticated logistical and bureaucratic apparatus aimed at the organization and control of unfamiliar and potentially dangerous populations. Furthermore, it incubated a mental framework (shared across the Western world) that at times demanded the exclusion and incarceration of groups deemed socially or racially suspect. As instruments of the modern “gardening state,” moreover, camps embodied an Enlightenment impulse to classify and rationalize large populations on a macro scale, rooting out potential “weeds” in the name of order, prosperity, and social purity.1 The products of coercion and suspicion, British camps were also justified by discourses of social welfare, humanitarian uplift, and sanitary reform—the justifying imperatives of European rule—that were always preached but only imperfectly practiced. British camps were often the expedient products of emergencies: famine, disease, and war. Although contingent on circumstance, they help reveal the deeper structures of Western culture that gave rise to extrajudicial detention. As artifacts of social and political modernity assembled by the world’s first “modern” state, British camps offer insight into an archaeology of violence shared by states across the ideological spectrum. By confining in a preemptive manner populations deemed “potentially dangerous” but not convicted of any crime, British camps conformed to a more general typology of concentration camps in the modern world.2 Checked by liberal ideology and an open public sphere, Britain never assembled anything so brutal as the Soviet Gulag, let alone the Nazi extermination camp. On the contrary, relief and rehabilitation often proved the dominant stated motive. But British camps stemmed nonetheless from new mindsets and government rationalities that sought to organize potentially dangerous segments of the population on a mass scale. While attending to the specific characteristics of camp regimes in liberal and authoritarian states, an examination of Britain’s “archipelago of camps” reveals that the coercive and extrajudicial use of camps was by no means the exclusive prerogative of [End Page 652] “evil” and “illiberal” empires. Indeed, the term “concentration camp” was first coined to describe British practices in South Africa, even if this was not the first campaign to concentrate or resettle populations in fortified enclosures.3 Connected...

Guy Standing (2009) Work after Globalization. Building Occupational Citizenship. Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA, USA. Edgar Elgar. 366 pp. / Guy Standing (2011) The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class. New York and London. Bloomsbury Academic, 198 pp.

Guy Standing (2009) Work after Globalization. Building Occupational Citizenship. Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA, USA. Edgar Elgar. 366 pp. Guy Standing (2011) The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class. New York and London. Bloomsbury Academic, 198 pp.Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath in the UK. He worked from 1975 to 2006 as a senior official in the International Labour Organization (ILO) within different positions: Director of labor market policies, coordinator of labor market research, Director of Central and Eastern European departments, and Director of the Socio-Economic Security Program.Few books on labor and working class issues have in recent years got more attention and caused more critical debate, than Guy Standing's The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class (2011). There has even been a book review symposium in August 2012 and a series of lectures around the world by Standing. It is interesting to note that Standing's former book Work after Globalization. Building Occupational Citizenship (2009) with more or less the same concepts, analysis, and conclusions, but more academically, theoretically, and empirically grounded, without the provocative title and descriptions, did not meet the same interest. Do authors need to use provocative language and smart new words and concepts to get attention today? Standing uses a series of creative neologisms like precariat for precarious workers, denizens for workers and others denied citizenship and labor rights, salariat for a class of salaried workers, proficians for technicians and professional workers, Chindia for China's and India's combined (pool of workers), and several other creations. On the other hand, Standing takes conceptual distinctions most seriously, critically discussing fundamental concepts of work, labor, occupation, and citizenship, and at the same time presenting a radical vision of after As Standing discusses theoretical and conceptual problems to a fuller extent in his 2009 book, the review starts with this and continues discussing The Precariat afterward.Work after Globalization goes back in labor history, before and during industrial labor regulation and welfare capitalism. Standing is especially critical of the ILO era during neoliberal globalization. Social democratic laborism and the tripartite industrial relation system, which was good in establishing national industrial citizenship, that is, labor rights for the core working class, leftinformal and precarious workers without these rights. Because of neoliberal globalization, offshoring, outsourcing, and privatization, millions of workers also lose formerly established rights. Standing makes a theoretical and empirical comprehensive and radical analysis of work during decades of neoliberal globalization with focus on occupational rights, going beyond industrial citizenship, in an attempt to reviving occupation in full freedom (chapter 9) and building basic economic security for all (chapter 10).Standing takes inspiration from Polanyi's Great Transformation (1944) and agrees with the need for socially embedding the destructive capitalist markets (2009, chapter 1). Polanyi argues theoretically for decommodification as the logical future outcome due to the need for a growing public sector and for embedded capitalist markets after the depression in the 1930s and WWII. Pressure would come from civil society to stabilize crisis-ridden capitalist market by public sector expansion and decommodification. Decommodification of labor (reproduction) is situations when persons can sustain their livelihood without reliance on the market. In 1944 Polanyi sees growing decommodification as socioeconomic progress, giving labor more job security and democratic rights by the welfare-state model. Standing finds Polanyi's view of the future market economy in Great Transformation too optimistic and points critically to the Global Transformation, as a second great transformation, which he describes as the neoliberal countermovement and end of the welfare-state capitalism (2009, chapter 3). …

Prekarijat kao nova društvena grupa u globalnom društvu

The instability of social and labor relations has attained enormous proportions in both modern developed countries and in developing societies. This phenomenon has led to the creation of a new social group in the structure of modern societies, which is called the precariat, and is characterized by the unstable situation in the labor market and by social insecurity. Instability in employment leads to emotional, psychological and social instability, which causes latent social conflict and rebellious behavior of individuals, and therefore this social group, in Western Europe, the U.S. and Japan, is considered to be a 'dangerous class'.

From the precariat to the multitude

This paper situates Guy Standing’s recent work on ‘the precariat’ within a broader body of literature exploring processes of ‘precarisation’, at work and across the social field. It sets out the differential distribution of ‘precarity’ (including on the basis of gender, geography, status and sector) resulting from transformations in labour and the political economy, the rollback of social democracy and of ‘industrial citizenship’ (where these existed), as well as from processes of globalisation. The paper argues that, like many other works, Standing’s book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, de-couples its discussion of precarious, neoliberal labour and life from the explicitly utopian agenda of radical reform it ultimately proposes. Drawing on Kathi Weeks’ engagement with Ernst Bloch’s work, the paper suggest Standing’s utopianism remains abstract, detached from an analysis of the social forces, movements and struggles that might bring it into being. It makes use of Antonio Negri’s distinctive, heterodox interpretation of V.I. Lenin to provide a framework for theorising how concrete utopian projects of radical political transformation – which is to say, ‘realist’ or materialist ones – are extrapolated out of spontaneous struggles; the predominant ‘will’, ethics and structures of which are always largely determined by the social, political and economic context from which they emerge. It is shown how, on the basis of this approach, Negri (in his collaboration with Michael Hardt) has constructed the notion of ‘multitude’ as a potential model for political organisation today – apposite to the precarious reality described by Standing and others. They draw on Baruch Spinoza’s political philosophy – often counterposing it to that of Thomas Hobbes – to affirm the capacity for common political action and decision despite heterogeneity, and to ground political organisation in social conflict rather than contract. Finally, drawing on Alain Badiou’s distinction between ‘immediate’ and ‘historical uprisings’, the paper explores the degree to which a number of contemporary movements and struggles might have tentatively achieved what he calls ‘qualitative extension’ – establishing connections and a ground for common action across social spaces and strata – potentially setting in motion enduring projects of political organisation and constitution that resemble the multitude model.

Overcoming prejudices in emancipatory education: the remaining group

The Remnant Group was one of working parties of the project "Phoenix: Challenge in the rebirth of subjective citizenship". The group consisted of young people who integrated a government educational institution, current called assistant philanthropic institution, in which they could not be members after their 18th birthday. Consequently, they had to return to the streets. Participating research was the methodology employed and interventions with these young people aimed at re-signifying their experiences which had been shaken by self-aggressive identifications. Debates tried to de-mystify biases linked to their social condition of poverty. The young people repeated in their activities the danger labels that society imposed upon them. The mediation of the dangerous social class concepts, accusation category and the internalization of social violence was undertaken. They became aware of the necessity of protecting themselves from society and the State apparatus. In our dialogues it was agreed that the manifestation of detailed intimate feelings was not allowed. Different procedures were used and the repeated themes consisted of social violence in its most diverse nuances. The most important difficulty comprised the management of the intensity of the consolidation of social stigmas internalized by the young people to whom were attributed the connotations of dangerousness and evilness.

Structural basis for recognition of synaptic vesicle protein 2C by botulinum neurotoxin A

Botulinum neurotoxin A (BoNT/A) belongs to the most dangerous class of bioweapons. Despite this, BoNT/A is used to treat a wide range of common medical conditions such as migraines and a variety of ocular motility and movement disorders. BoNT/A is probably best known for its use as an antiwrinkle agent in cosmetic applications (including Botox and Dysport). BoNT/A application causes long-lasting flaccid paralysis of muscles through inhibiting the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine by cleaving synaptosomal-associated protein 25 (SNAP-25) within presynaptic nerve terminals. Two types of BoNT/A receptor have been identified, both of which are required for BoNT/A toxicity and are therefore likely to cooperate with each other: gangliosides and members of the synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2 (SV2) family, which are putative transporter proteins that are predicted to have 12 transmembrane domains, associate with the receptor-binding domain of the toxin. Recently, fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) has also been reported to be a potential BoNT/A receptor. In SV2 proteins, the BoNT/A-binding site has been mapped to the luminal domain, but the molecular details of the interaction between BoNT/A and SV2 are unknown. Here we determined the high-resolution crystal structure of the BoNT/A receptor-binding domain (BoNT/A-RBD) in complex with the SV2C luminal domain (SV2C-LD). SV2C-LD consists of a right-handed, quadrilateral β-helix that associates with BoNT/A-RBD mainly through backbone-to-backbone interactions at open β-strand edges, in a manner that resembles the inter-strand interactions in amyloid structures. Competition experiments identified a peptide that inhibits the formation of the complex. Our findings provide a strong platform for the development of novel antitoxin agents and for the rational design of BoNT/A variants with improved therapeutic properties.

Insecure lives: questioning ‘The Precariat’

In this edition of cjm we examine precarious living in modern conditions. Guy Standing's work on The Precariat provides a reference point in relation to this theme. Standing's book is subtitled ‘the new dangerous class’: this immediately pitches the idea into a maelstrom of inter-disciplinary concerns. Historically, notions of the ‘dangerous class’ take us straight back to the seething combinations of criminality, pauperism and vice in the nineteenth century and the worlds that modernity, democracy and the welfare state had presumed to have left behind. Culturally, the idea brings to mind the supposedly demoralised ‘underclass’; their feckless offspring, the needy and the risky, of welfare citizenship and an indulgent nanny state. Sociologically, this dangerous class poses questions about inequalities, divisions, social exclusion and the forms of advanced marginality becoming characteristic of late modernity. Politically, the idea raises the spectre of a revolutionary vanguard, of militant resistance, protesters, rioters or ‘enemies within’ and, drawing these ideas together, where marginality manifests itself as ‘radicalisation’, of ‘suspect communities’, threat profiles, aliens and enemies. It follows that, above all, ‘The Precariat’ is a fertile ground for criminology.

Beyond ‘infernos’ or ‘paradises’: the politics of precariousness

In The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011), Guy Standing contends that the commodification of politics and the collapse of working class engagement with mainstream political parties has resul...