Social Justice Goals Research Articles

Lessons in Self-Defense: Gender Violence, Racial Criminalization, and Anticarceral Feminism

Lessons in Self-Defense:Gender Violence, Racial Criminalization, and Anticarceral Feminism Emily Thuma (bio) In August 1980 more than a hundred activists gathered in Washington, DC, for the National Conference on Third World Women and Violence. Organized by the DC Rape Crisis Center, the conference marked the first time that black, Latina, Asian, and Native American women working in rape crisis centers (RCCs) and battered women’s shelters in the U.S. convened both nationally and autonomously. The coordinators explicitly named “concerns of isolation, alienation, and racism” within these organizations as a key rationale for the gathering and their larger goal of cultivating a new national network of women and men of color engaged in antiviolence activism.1 The DC center was uniquely poised to host such a conference, as it was the only African American–led RCC in the country at the time. Conference participants culled lessons from their experiences as anti-violence organizers in communities of color and as people of color working in largely majority-white RCCs and battered women’s shelters. While racism within these institutions was one catalyst for the meeting, collective concern about their increasing involvement with the criminal justice state was another closely related impetus. Feminist activists had founded upwards of five hundred RCCs and shelters around the country during the previous decade, making these institutions two of the most prolific and widespread organizational forms of the larger women’s movement. Most offered some combination of counseling, support groups, hotlines, and shelter, and many included community education initiatives in their repertoires as well. Activists’ need for funding to sustain these programs, as well as their desire to confront the hostility and dismissiveness that law enforcement [End Page 52] and the courts showed rape survivors and battered women, had brought them into growing contact and collaboration with criminal justice agencies (Bevacqua 2000; Schechter 1982). As scholars have shown, this “alliance with the state” reflected, as well as inadvertently fueled, the ascendancy of a law-and-order agenda under the auspices of a highly racialized “war on crime” (Bumiller 2007; Gottschalk 2006; Kim 2014; Richie 2012). The increasing focus on criminalization invariably constrained the transformative social justice goals of the antiviolence movement but also its organizational cultures; as sociologist Nancy Matthews puts it, many antiviolence programs gradually appeared and functioned more like “social service agencies than social movement organizations” (1994, xiii). What is less often acknowledged in the academic literature is that the question of whether, how, and to what end feminist antiviolence activists should accept criminal justice funding and prioritize criminal legal reforms was vociferously debated within individual agencies, at regional and national conferences, and through independent media. In one sense, the National Conference on Third World Women and Violence could be construed as a meeting of the proverbial margins of the U.S. feminist antiviolence movement. Yet the attendees’ manifold political affiliations meant that the conference represented a distinctive center emerging from the interface of multiple social movements: U.S. third world feminism, black feminism, indigenous decolonization, and prisoners’ rights, among others. The slate of workshops and panel discussions ranged from “Medical Abuses: Sterilization” and “Feminism and Third World Women” to “Working with Men Committing Violence” and “Lesbianism: Third World Perspective.”2 Members of the “International Panel” provided a discussion of state-sponsored violence against women in Angola, South Africa, Chile, and Nicaragua and inspired passage of a formal, conference-wide resolution to demonstrate support for the South African Anti-Apartheid movement (Dejanikus 1980). Indeed, the name chosen for the conference signaled the organizers’ desire to reconfigure so-called “minority women” as part of a “Third World majority” of women whose lived experiences required an intersectional analysis of patriarchy and gender violence. Many in attendance questioned what “more prisons, longer sentences, and increased convictions” accomplished aside from “penaliz[ing] the most disadvantaged of offenders” and bolstering the legitimacy of an expanding prison system.3 Over the course of the two days, presenters [End Page 53] lifted up the recent cases of Joan Little, Inez García, Yvonne Wanrow (Swan), and Dessie Woods, four women of color who each killed her (or her child’s) sexual assailant and became the subject of a broad...

A Capabilities-based Gender Equality Policy for Higher Education: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations

The complex transformative intent of policy goals is often marginalized in favour of tangible, measurable outcomes. Such a pattern is evident in the tracking of global social justice goals, such as gender equality, where sole reliance on numerical parity data to track progress has led to the simplification of the concept for the sake of measurement. This intensifies the need to focus both on conceptual and methodological considerations in policy development and evaluation to enhance human development and promote the transformation of inequalities towards social justice. Through reporting on a mixed-methods process to inform and develop a capabilities-based gender equality policy at a South African university, the paper asks what gender equality should look like conceptually, and identifies empirically valued functionings and capabilities which could act as transformative policy evaluation indicators. The paper reports on diverse student data from 57 qualitative interviews and 843 survey respondents, which indicate differences between what social groups value and where interventions are needed. The paper suggests that the capabilities approach could be an important evidence-based policy driver in higher education, with the possibility to combine both a rich conceptual approach and methodological considerations in operationalization so that social justice goals and outcomes result.

Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo, by Annika A. Culver

Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo, by Annika A. Culver. Vancouver & Toronto, University of British Columbia Press, 2013. xii, 268 pp. $90.00 Cdn (cloth), $32.95 Cdn (paper). Japan's wars of imperial expansion in the 1930s and 1940s not only involved military combat, but made a strong use of ideology and culture both domestically and in the battlefield. Annika Culver expands on work done by previous scholars such as Louise Young and Barak Kushner about Japanese state-building techniques in its client state of Manchukuo in what is now the northeastern part of the People's Republic of China. She explains how the Japanese militarist regime used propaganda and cultural industries both in Japan and in Manchukuo to mobilize ideological support for its new state and its new vision of a new order in East Asia. Culver contributes to this scholarship by focussing on the actions and lives of specific artists and authors involved in cultural endeavours supporting the Japanese government's projects in Manchukuo. Culver particularly focusses on those who were associated with left-wing or proletarian politics and who had been associated with modern trends in art such as surrealism. The Japanese militarist regime pursued a relentless crackdown on left-wing thought and culture during the 1930s and many left-wing activists, intellectuals, and cultural producers formally renounced their ideology in a process known as tenko, or conversion. This conversion not only involved rejecting one's former ideology, but also embracing the militarists' project of domestic national unity and Japan's mission to expand its influence and establish a new order in East Asia. Many of these artists, intellectuals, and authors contributed their skills by producing propaganda in support of the regime's aims. For some, this was a way of dispelling suspicion because of their pasts. For others, the conversion was genuine, but often the goal of social justice, proletarian empowerment, and the pursuit of a utopian society was still conserved, albeit in a new framework. Although Manchukuo was technically autonomous, the chief influences on its government were the Japanese Kwantung Army and the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway. Japanese settlers, experts, and culture were encouraged in Manchukuo and its government actively recruited experts and artists to come, observe, report, and contribute to the building of a state that was linked to Japan. Ironically, the Manchukuo government was more open than the Japanese government in engaging with those that had tainted ideological pasts, so many former left-wing experts, intellectuals, and artists found new opportunities and more freedom in their pursuits in the new Manchukuo than in Japan itself. The arts of literature, painting, drawing, photography, and cultural theory are represented in these personal stories. …

What do we Need to be Part of Dialogue? From Discursive Ethics to Critical Social Justice

The main goal of critical social justice is to ensure the agency of citizens, which enables them to take part, not only in public discussions about how resources are distributed, but also about matters such as what should be produced, how to do it and through what kind of production, among others. Critical social justice can be best formulated within the foundation programme of discursive ethics, in particular within Apel's version specified in his principle of co-responsibility. This principle establishes a telos that operates as a normative guide to formulate the constructive question about which the necessary conditions are for someone to be able to become a subject of dialogue. Answering this question leads, on the one hand, to the development of some constitutive elements of critical social justice and, on the other hand, to the identification of the social relations and structures that undermine the possibilities of a person to effectively participate in the discussion of the topics they consider relevant. As its constitutive elements, I propose reciprocal recognition autonomy, the metric of capabilities and a sufficientarian principle of justice, which work together with the well-known difference principle. These elements constitute a normative net that allows contemporary societies to be criticized from the perspective of justice.

Climbing Down the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racial Injustice Through Community Health

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Most of us know these famous words by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, some of us even referenced them in our applications to graduate school. They stirred within us a call for action and allowed us to connect our fascinations with the human body, epidemiology, and biostatistics to a movement bigger than ourselves. For us, medicine and public health represented a means to an end – tools we would use to work towards our social justice goals as we sought to improve public health and reform the health care system from within.

Human Rights and Public Interest Litigation in East Africa: A Bird's Eye View

Despite the growing use of public interest litigation (PIL) as a mechanism for pursuing the goals of social justice and enhanced democratic constitutionalism, there is scant comparative analysis of the phenomenon among the three East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. In tandem with the regional East African Court of Justice (EACJ) to which all three countries are members, PIL is growing at a significant pace and has the potential to impact the structures of governance, accountability, and equality in the region. This Article analyzes the manner in which this type of litigation has grown, and assesses the extent to which it has affected socioeconomic and political conditions in the region. Using the analogy of cement and its unique properties, the examination is conducted against the backdrop of the constitutional developments that have taken place in East Africa over the last twenty years, starting with the promulgation of a new constitution for Uganda in 1995 (aging cement), considering the 2010 ‘transformative constitution’ in Kenya (setting cement), and engaging with the current debate over the introduction of a new constitutional instrument in Tanzania, where the cement is undergoing a ‘remixing.’ Does PIL offer a serious and sustainable antidote to the three countries’ experiences of authoritarian rule, judicial lethargy, and community marginalization?

Self-Study as a Means for Urban Teachers to Transform Academics

Our self-study has two main purposes: (1) to understand the value of self-study for credential program graduates to confront in transformative ways the pedagogical challenges of urban schools, and (2) to add to an exploration of self-study for non-teacher educators and strengthen our preparation of candidates to enact such inquiry. To answer these questions, we orchestrated a dialogic exchange with three Master's students who used self-study to research and improve their teaching in urban elementary schools. We analyzed their papers both to see how consistent they were with the characteristics of self-study and to determine the nature of lessons learned in relation to our social justice goals. In addition, in the following year we gathered and analyzed information about their post-study reactions to self-study and its continuing influence. In their self-studies all three examined assumptions guiding their teaching by analyzing pertinent data and functioning as critical friends for each other; their work was consistent with self-study requirements. Written reflections and interviews all mentioned the transformative influence of self-study on their thinking and practice. We also discovered that we should strengthen our guidance with regard to the specifics of self-study methodology, as in the need to look for disconfirming evidence. Although their commitment to the process was maintained, we need to explore whether and how self-study might be engaged more informally. Overall, we found that self-study invites teachers to question discriminatory categories with empirical evidence and empowers them to redefine their profession and question regressive policies.

Towards a more expansive understanding of equitable forms of organisation

Over the past three decades, we have witnessed a growing interest in understanding and responding to inequitable mathematical experiences. The engagement is often aligned with a concern for students with ‘‘outsider’’ status—those students who are bracketed out from the mainstream student experience of mathematics. As many are aware, the interest has arisen, in part, by observations of the changing nature of our mathematics classrooms that increasingly cater for diverse groups of learners. Reflections on student cultural and linguistic diversity and rising socioeconomic differentials have put advocacy for students who are located on the ‘‘wrong’’ side of the social divide high on the agenda. As a result, the social justice goal to enhance student inclusion and to halt systemic underachievement amongst specific groups has sparked new kinds of research projects and initiated a wide range of student-centred interventions. But surely the social justice project is not simply confined to an investigation of students’ experiences. In the spirit of a more expansive understanding about equitable arrangements within mathematics education, we might interrogate the conditions, experienced by prospective, novice and experienced teachers which appear to deny them any sense of agency while working within institutional hierarchies. Like it or not, some mathematics teachers, irrespective of level of experience, confront challenges and problems, simply from being caught up in changes within the wider educational apparatus. An analysis of these contexts is timely. Such an analysis would represent a broader form of social critique. It would signal a commitment to engage in political struggle over the meaning of mathematics teaching and mathematics teacher education itself. An interrogation, like this, might ask, for example, what are the tensions experienced by teachers when focused on understanding and implementing new policy directives but without the benefit of support from senior mathematics teachers or from professional learning opportunities? Or we might ask: how do teachers negotiate contradictory advice

A Case for Reservation in Favour of Religious Minorities

India is a country with many religions — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism etc. All those who profess a religion other than Hindu are considered minorities. The policy of “Reservation” is adopted by Indian Government to offset the historical cumulative deprivation experienced by lower castes on the basis of caste-structure among Hindu community. Before independence British had granted communal reservation but after independence, the deprived strata among minority communities were denied these benefits on the basis of religion. As an outcome, Muslims have become more backward than Dalits (Scheduled Castes) and the community exhibits “deficits and deprivation” practically in all fields of development. The controversial report of the Sachar Committee has revealed the widespread abysmal economic, social and educational backward status of Muslim community in India: their constantly marginalized political representation; their nominal access to education; their appalling representation in the public jobs resulting into their ghettoization and estrangement from the nationwide socio-economic mainstream. Regardless of the fact that reservation is a means of bringing the ostracized sections into the political and social mainstream, the Muslims and Christian minority communities are still being discriminated against on the basis of the religion by denying them to provide with the benefits of this policy. Dearth of such positive discrimination measures for Muslims and Christians is a cause of perpetuation of poverty among them. Moreover, the real backwardness at the present time stems from the poverty but not from the rigid caste-structure of the populace in India. The poor do not have any societal standing. They have no access to education for improving their circumstances and over the years, they perpetually become socially and educationally more backward. Employment in services on the basis of merit for them is a distant cry. Consequently, the economic, social and educational backwardness of the poor people among this category (Muslims and Christians) again creates a vicious circle of grinding poverty which cannot be busted but only through economic or other special benefits/assistance provided from the Government side in their favour. So, it is suggested that the criteria for reservation should be economic backwardness and not religion or caste as has been indicated and observed by the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities in its report dated May 10, 2007 under which 10% reservation in favor of Muslims in the Government services was recommended. No doubt, the judiciary has pronounced a number of landmark and concrete judgments protecting the rights of the Muslims, Christians and other minority communities in India on the basis of their fundamental right to equality. However, as far as issues involving benefits of the law and policy of reservation to be provided in favor of the minority religious communities through their inclusion in the category of the Backward Classes of citizens are concerned, it is still going along with the lines of Government, instead of moving away from the State-centered law. The objective of this paper is to explore the adequacy and need of the precincts of economic criteria rather than castes’ in India for providing benefits of reservation law and policy in favor of poverty ridden Backward Classes of people belonging to the religious minorities by clearly reflecting their awful status in the society. Therefore, in order to achieve the Constitutional goals of forming a caste-less and class-less society in India as well as to ensure inclusive growth fulfilling the goals of social justice incorporated in the directive Principles, the indispensable and significant initiatives such as; adopting the policy of reservation on the basis of the economic criteria irrespective of caste and religion; establishing the Equal Opportunity Commission; providing diverse educational facilities to the minority communities, giving them the benefits of subsidized loans and ‘after job training’ which are required to be taken by the Government, are highlighted and recommended. In addition to it, the issuance of concrete guidelines by the judiciary in this respect is also suggested. The present works depend heavily on United Nations Reports, International Norms and Conventions, provisions of Indian Constitution and other statutory enactments, Reports of Backward Classes and Minority Commissions, Sachar Committee Report, NGO reports and important works by modern jurists who contributed a lot towards advancing the condition and rank of minorities in India.

Civic Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract Education for sustainable development (ESD) often fails to consider the political dimension. To address this gap, this paper focuses on a specific political approach to ESD. The model presented is derived from the four sustainable growth targets of German Development Policy. Instead of relying on a neo-classical or neo-liberal economic paradigm, however, the goals of social justice, environmental sustainability, economic productivity and good governance are interpreted using a sustainability model. This model is anchored in a steady-state economy that has overcome the myth of unlimited material growth and seeks to stay within the limits of the planet's resources. The preconditions of good governance are outlined, and it is described how the state and civil society can contribute to this normative goal. In addition to social, ecological, economic and political components, the presented model for civic education for sustainability considers conflicts between different development components and the need for horizontal and vertical coherence. In conclusion, the paper shows that civic education for sustainability must aim to produce informed and empowered global citizens. Citizens should have the ability to employ their knowledge and skills responsibly through local and global civic involvement while also remaining aware of their own interests. Furthermore, it falls to educational policy makers to create national as well as international organisational structures that facilitate civic ESD.

Planning a Gender Fair as a Semester-Long Final Project

Courses: Gender and Communication; Feminist Rhetorical Theory/Criticism; Gender, Sexuality and the MediaObjectives: This semester-long activity for a Gender Fair project helps undergraduate students gain an appreciation of gender as a social, historical, and cultural construction that is constituted intersectionally (with race-class-sexuality, at minimum) and fundamentally through communication practices. Specifically, upon completing this project, students will be able to: (1) conduct and synthesize critical/qualitative research relevant to gendered expectations and experiences; (2) design creative and relevant messages aimed at explicating hegemonic understandings of gender; (3) communicate challenging scholarship with diverse audiences, through various media, including public presentations, visual displays, and interactive activities; (4) develop effective content aimed at encouraging specific social justice goals.

Unexpected Alliances: Independent Filmmakers, the State, and the Film Industry in Postauthoritarian South Korea by Young-a Park (review)

Reviewed by: Unexpected Alliances: Independent Filmmakers, the State, and the Film Industry in Postauthoritarian South Korea by Young-a Park Jiyeon Kang (bio) Unexpected Alliances: Independent Filmmakers, the State, and the Film Industry in Postauthoritarian South Korea, by Young-a Park. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. 224pages, notes, bibliography, filmography, index. $39.95 cloth. Young-a Park’s Unexpected Alliances is a rich ethnographic study exploring how formerly radical film activists during South Korea’s authoritarian era turned into “independent filmmakers” after democratization—taken up as symbols of political legitimacy and cultural capital in a democratic, market-driven, globalizing Korea. The “unexpected alliances” that these filmmakers forged with new civilian governments, the growing cultural industry, and a middle-class audience illuminate the complex and intimate texture of the political and cultural transformation of radical activism in the post-authoritarian era. For film scholars, this work offers the sociohistorical formation of the Korean “independent film” (dongnip yongìhwa) in the 1990s and describes the fascinating connection between the radical movement tradition and the emergence of a Korean cinema of diverse content and style, which later constituted an important wing of the global hallyu (Korean wave). More broadly, scholars of contemporary Korea will find an insightful analysis of the reform era (Kim Dae-Jung, 1998–2003, and Roh Moo-hyun, 2003–8) and the lasting influence of democratic struggle in the postauthoritarian culture and politics of Korea. Methodologically, Park follows a collective of activist filmmakers, KIFA, from 2000 to 2013, and in doing so she zooms in on a number of individuals, historical junctures, and spaces. The reader is invited to observe KIFA members who continue to pursue social justice goals, other members who turned into independent auteurs, and yet others who joined the collective later not for activism but for the resources and network necessary to enter the film industry. She studies the organizational dynamics and tensions between these individuals and the collective by examining important scenes of cultural politics, including the 1990s screen-quota movement, feminist filmmakers in the collective, and the fervor over international film festivals. The introduction situates the project in the historical context of the reform era. Challenging the popular notion that the former activists of “Generation 386” were “co-opted” in postauthoritarian Korea, Park instead proposes a complex interplay with the civilian governments that sought legitimacy through expanding the boundaries of expression, with the corporate conglomerates that seized the new film industry, and with an expanding middle class searching for taste and culture. The first two chapters focus on the transformation of activist film during the authoritarian era into “independent film” after democratization [End Page 111] in 1987. Chapter 1, “Film Activism,” analyzes the politics and aesthetics of film activism as a wing of the radical anti-authoritarian struggle—a homogeneous community of producers and viewers who shared the experience of state oppression. Chapter 2, “Independent Film,” illuminates the sociopolitical changes that reconfigured these dissident film activists into a new type of cultural producer. The civilian state not only relaxed censorship but rallied filmmakers both as programmers of newly installed film festivals and as high-ranking officials in government institutions. At the same time, corporate conglomerates sponsored the booming film industry of the 1990s and invited filmmakers into new art centers that catered to viewers in the expanding middle class. These changing conditions explain the establishment of the uniquely Korean “independent film,” which cannot be described as simply a traditional art-house film. This chapter offers a social account of how Korean independent film came about, positioning filmmakers as power brokers in negotiations with the state, as new contributors of capital, and as purveyors of elite cultural venues. Chapter 3, “Beating Titanic,” follows up on this by showing how independent filmmakers became a symbol of cultural nationalism against Hollywood. During late-1990s protests over American pressure to open up the Korean film market, KIFA mobilized its social movement network and style in concert with the old agenda of nationalism. Chapter 4 offers a fascinating picture of the complex cultural power of the independent film collective. Here, Park follows two female filmmakers who joined KIFA to acquire the social capital to survive in the rigidly hierarchical and...

Women’s Economic Empowerment and Social Change from a Culture-Psychological Perspective

Since the beginning of the 1990ies, gender mainstreaming and related women`s economic empowerment programs became an integral part of development programs and global disaster management. Gender―or more generally speaking social―justice is defined as its end goal, that is a condition in which diverse needs and interests are acknowledged and shared power relations are existent. Albeit the goal of social justice appears to be clear, subjective ideals may be diverse and contradictory, depending on personal stances, religious affiliations as well as on sociocultural contexts. How do theoretical approaches developed in western countries aid analysis of, and development of interventions for social problems within non-western contexts? In this article, I address this question by investigating which gender relations are endorsed by a disaster-stricken village community in Southeast Asia. The community helps to clarify what is possible when a group of several Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) works together on issues of social justice and gender issues using livelihood programs and micro-credit schemes. On the background of the empirical findings, I discuss shortcomings of western approaches.

From Rights to Dignity: Lessons from the Movements for Physician-Assisted Death and Reproductive Rights

In Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court identified the abortion right as “inherently, and primarily, a medical decision” to be decided between doctors and their patients. Early abortion case law closely linked the right to the doctor-patient relationship and situated abortion within the context of healthcare. Over the last forty years, however, the abortion right has come to be viewed almost exclusively as a constitutional right of decision-making or “choice.” Under the Court’s current analysis, the abortion right is cabined exclusively as a constitutional right to decide to terminate a pregnancy and, as a result, the Court has upheld significant restrictions on access to abortion-related healthcare. The aid in dying (AID) movement has experienced the opposite trajectory between framings of healthcare and a constitutional right of decsionmaking. Originally identified as a “right to die” by advocates such as Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the movement has since transitioned to a right framed as healthcare. Dr. Timothy Quill’s call for “death with dignity” helped to reframe the AID movement from a narrow focus on decision-making at death to transforming the process of dying more generally. The transition to death with dignity coincided with an expanded public discourse about how poverty, disability, social and family support, and healthcare access impact end-of-life decision-making. At the same time, the goals of the movement expanded from court-won rights to changing healthcare practices, and increasing healthcare access, legal rights and social support for people facing the end of life. It is a critical time to study and draw lessons from these two movements as they are accelerating in opposite directions: Last year pro-AID legislation was passed in California and was pending in twenty-five states, and cases were filed in California and New York. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this term in a Texas case on regulatory restrictions of abortion clinics. Further, more state abortion restrictions were enacted between 2011 and 2013 than in the entire previous decade. While other scholarship has compared AID and the abortion right to consider their doctrinal, moral and ethical similarities, this Article is the first to identify that these two movements arc in opposite directions between framings of healthcare and rights, with vastly different efficacy for the rights holder. I draw upon this comparison to consider how the history and discursive development of these two movements offers the possibility of framing healthcare more broadly within the context of dignity to achieve social justice goals beyond narrow constitutional rights status. The transformation of AID from a constitutional rights frame to a healthcare frame highlights the importance of developing a healthcare model related to dignity that is undergirded by social support, legal rights and healthcare access. However, the history of the abortion right cautions against narrowly identifying healthcare within the confines of the individual doctor-patient relationship because it risks subordinating the decisional autonomy of patients to the decision-making of their doctors. Taken together, these movements gesture toward situating rights within a healthcare framing that considers how social, political and economic systems and relationships come to bear upon decision-making. I conclude that while constitutional rights status is important for anchoring a minimum protection of the right of patient decisional autonomy, a healthcare-as-dignity frame brings with it the possibility of addressing underlying conditions that deprive individuals of meaningful choice in these contexts.

Whose 'Loss and Damage'? In Defence of the Agency of Beneficiary States

The discussions on loss and damage associated with climate change that opened up within the unfccc in recent years constitute the latest attempt of developing states to obtain something akin to compensation from major greenhouse gas emitters for the adverse social impacts of climate change. These discussions generally contemplate a mechanism financed by developed states that would provide direct support to individuals, corporations, and governments in developing countries (‘vertical’ approach), for instance, through insurance. This article argues that, for practical as well as normative reasons, a loss-and-damage mechanism should instead support vulnerable developing states, in a states-to-states ‘horizontal’ approach. Accordingly, financial support would be provided to developing states that incorporate vulnerable populations and are responsible for protecting them. Three sets of arguments are developed in support of this proposition. First, attributing loss and damage at the individual level is particularly challenging, whereas horizontal approaches allow consideration of probabilistic harm and compensation through bundle payments. Second, horizontal approaches are more suitable for pursuing goals such as economic efficiency, the reduction of loss and damage, the creation of an incentive for climate change mitigation, and broader goals of social justice. Third, vertical approaches go against prevailing principles of international law and involve unjustified interference in the domestic affairs of developing states.

Arrested Solidarity: Obstacles to Intermovement Support for LGBT Rights in Malawi

Arrested Solidarity:Obstacles to Intermovement Support for LGBT Rights in Malawi Ashley Currier (bio) Gender and sexual diversity organizing is on the rise throughout Africa. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activist organizations contest social, political, and religious opprobrium toward homosexuality and gender nonconformity in different African nations (Epprecht 2013), including but not limited to Cameroon (Awondo 2010), Kenya (Dearham 2013), Namibia (Currier 2012), Nigeria (Obadare 2013), South Africa (Currier 2012), and Uganda (Ssebaggala 2011). LGBT activist organizations in some African nations operate independently of other minority rights movements. As political homophobia intensifies in some countries, LGBT activist organizations may depend more on solidarity partnerships with sympathizers. Partnerships can provide LGBT activist organizations with financial assistance, moral support, and contacts for additional supporters. Although some feminist theorists extol solidarity partnerships as having the potential to actualize social justice goals (Mohanty 2003), in reality, solidarity partnerships between activist organizations can be messy and unpredictable (Hodžić 2014). LGBT rights defenders in countries like Malawi might need allies, but potential partners may be unable to extend this support for different reasons. Despite the apparent political symmetry between HIV/AIDS, human rights, LGBT, and feminist movements, activists’ concerns do not align so neatly, making Malawi an excellent case study for analyzing the fragile process that produces intermovement solidarity. In this essay, I outline obstacles that interrupt or block intermovement solidarity for LGBT rights in Malawi to demonstrate how activists work to craft solidarity and how they understand obstructions to solidarity [End Page 146] for LGBT rights. Understanding solidarity as a process is especially important as observers around the world propose ways to halt political homophobia. Cultural and political antipathy toward gender and sexual dissidence in different African countries renders isolated organizations that defend LGBT rights vulnerable to criticism and persecution (Currier 2012). In response, organizations that defend LGBT rights may forge solidarity partnerships with friendly, local social movements and transnational NGOs that pressure social, political, and religious actors to respect gender and sexual dissidents and LGBT rights. Although organizations may concurrently cultivate horizontal solidarity partnerships with local social movements and vertical solidarity partnerships with foreign donors and transnational NGOs, these partnerships yield different outcomes for LGBT rights organizations. Local social movements may not be able to offer the financial assistance foreign donors and transnational NGOs can, but they can lend nonmaterial support and mobilize their activist networks to advance LGBT rights. Activists’ personal prejudices can also generate obstacles for organizations’ support for LGBT rights. Foreign donors and transnational NGOs may expect their investments in organizations that defend LGBT rights to achieve certain outcomes, such as measurable progress on LGBT rights. The collaborative solidarity on which Malawian LGBT rights defenders depend is not guaranteed. In this essay, I explore the contours of LGBT rights solidarity in Malawi, a country in which political homophobia coalesced in 2010 when the government prosecuted Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a transgender woman, and Steven Monjeza, a cisgender man, for violating antisodomy statutes (Somanje 2009). Since 2010, homophobia has saturated national politics. In this environment, some HIV/AIDS, human rights, and feminist activists limited the support they expressed publicly for LGBT rights. To understand obstacles to intermovement solidarity for LGBT rights, I first discuss the codification of heteronormativity in the transition from British colonial rule to postcolonial sovereignty and the emergence of political homophobia in Malawi. The recent deployment of political homophobia generated high costs for HIV/AIDS, human rights, and feminist activists who were pondering whether, when, and how to show their support for LGBT rights. Then, I draw on thirty-six interviews I conducted in June and July 2012 in Blantyre and Lilongwe, Malawi, with Malawian [End Page 147] HIV/AIDS, human rights, LGBT rights, and feminist activists. Solidarity for LGBT rights in Malawi was not automatic. Some activists calculated whether they could be seen promulgating LGBT rights and defending same-sex sexualities in contemporary Malawi. Using these interviews, I describe barriers to activist solidarity for LGBT rights in Malawi to complicate assumptions about how solidarity between movements unfolds. Examining LGBT rights solidarity in Malawi offers feminist and queer scholars important lessons in movement building around LGBT rights and the local obstacles complicating burgeoning solidarity concerning these rights. Prior research...

The Moral Imperative of Social Justice Leadership: A Critical Component of Effective Practice

This study examined how four principals in urban middle and senior high schools with a social justice orientation responded to hypothetical scenarios involving teacher prejudice. The principals in this study did not reference their leadership preparation programs in describing the evolution of their equity-focused leadership philosophies, nor did they reference theory. Rather, the principals were predisposed to support the goals of equity and fairness because they believed they had a moral obligation to do so. The research suggests that school leaders who enter the position with a predisposition for equity and fighting injustice may be better equipped to handle scenarios involving prejudice in ways that advance the overall goals of social justice.

Embracing American Indian Ways of Educating: Restoring Culturally Embedded Practices While Building Pathways Towards Student Success

American Indian cultural traditions and practices are presented for their merit in promoting student learning within the K-12 educational system. Spe-cific culturally imbedded practices are provided as examples by which student learning can be enhanced while honoring First Nation’s teaching and learn-ing practices. Five developmental theorists noted in this concept paper speak to pedagogical practices that are in alignment with American Indian cultural orientations and that support their inherent value for application in the classroom. This paper asserts that by valuing and promoting American Indian culture and practices in the K-12 curriculum, that the United States would make greater strides in not only affect-ing the achievement gap, but in taking steps toward equity and achieving social justice goals.

Political Posters for the Twenty-First Century: A Spotlight on the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative

Political Posters for the Twenty-First Century: A Spotlight on the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative

Community Informatics Studio: Designing Experiential Learning to Support Teaching, Research, and Practice

IntroductionThis paper introduces a model of experiential to support teaching, research, and practice in library and science (LIS). concept we call (Cl) Studio uses studio-based (SBL) to support enculturation into the field of Community Informatics (Campbell & Eubanks, 2004; Gurstein, 2003; Keeble & Loader, 2001; Stoecker, 2005; Williams & Durrance, 2009). SBL approach is rooted in the apprenticeship model of in which students study with master designers or artists to learn their craft. This pedagogical technique is closely related to John Dewey's inquiry-based (Lackney, 1999). In this paper, we argue that the Cl Studio provides a novel research approach for examining LIS-led engagement by modeling actual environments where future LIS professionals can develop meaningful Cl projects.The paper begins with a review of the community and studiobased learning literature to provide a foundation for our research. We then briefly consider the research sub-questions, methodological approaches and findings from our three mini-case studies of the Cl Studio course offered over three semesters. study presents and discusses three related investigations that emerged from our overarching research question: How can the Cl Studio be understood as a model of experiential to support LIS teaching, research, and practice? goal of the paper was to provide an instructional model that can prepare future LIS-professionals to lead meaningful and civic engagement projects.This study is significant because federal agencies and foundations have recently called for public libraries to address needs by leading engagement efforts. The Promise of Libraries Transforming (Institute for Museum and Library Services, 2012), IMLS & MacArthur Foundation's Learning Labs (Institute for Museum and Library Services, 2011), and Knight Foundation's (2009) Needs of Communities in a Democracy are three recent examples recognizing the unique abilities that public, academic and school libraries offer to advance local and civic engagement. In this paper, we argue that the Cl Studio can provide LIS teachers, researchers and practitioners with a theoretical and methodological framework for advancing LIS-led engagement initiatives.Theoretical FrameworkWe begin the paper by introducing the CI and SBL literature as the foundation upon which we suggest a model for coupling these practices as a useful approach for advancing LIS teaching, research and practice with members.Community InformaticsCommunity examines how people in geographic locations interact with and communication technology (Williams & Durrance, 2009) and its application to enable and empower processes (Gurstein, 2007). researchers view informatics as the digitization of society, particularly as people's lives move online from physical to virtual spaces. O'Neil (2002) argued that theories for measuring the impacts of Cl projects fall into five key areas, including strong democracy, social capital, individual empowerment, sense of and economic development opportunities (pp. 78-79). Other scholars have argued that Cl can help support organizing projects and social justice goals. For instance, one area of study for Cl, which served as a project focus for each of the case studies in this paper, looks at the ways institutions such as public libraries, centers, social service agencies and churches can utilize public computing centers (PCCs) and media literacy workshops as interventions for addressing the digital divide, or the gap between the information haves and have-nots (National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 1999, p. …