Material Stakes Research Articles

Napalm’s University: Abolitionist Visions from the Anti-War Movement

Abstract: This essay reflects on the history of napalm and the US anti-war movement to examine the university as both a site of research and development for chemical and biological warfare during the Cold War, as well as a site of abolitionist intervention and struggle. On one hand, napalm represented how war structured the fabric of everyday life in the United States, a condition of total war that overtook institutions of knowledge production within universities, corporations, and laboratories across the nation. On the other hand, napalm was viewed as exceptionally inhumane compared to other tactics of war, prompting movements for outlawing the chemical from military use. This dissonance between organizing against war itself as a perpetual structure of violence and against napalm as an individual technology of war invites consideration of the material stakes of anti-war organizing in an abolitionist vision. As the military–industrial complex only strengthens the entanglements between the university, corporate capitalism, and military expansion, this essay asks: how might we grapple with our place as abolitionist and anti-militarist scholars to interrogate our relationship to knowledge production and the university itself?

Enrolling the body as active agent in cancer treatment: Tracing immunotherapy metaphors and materialities.

Immunotherapy is heralded as the 'fifth pillar' of cancer therapy, after surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and genomic medicine. It involves 'harnessing' patients' own immune system T-cells to treat cancer. In this article, I draw on qualitative interviews with practitioners working in oncology and patients in the UK, to trace metaphorical and discursive framing around immunotherapy. Immunotherapy aims to restore the functioning of the immune system to detect cancer (non-self), working with the self/non-self model that pervades immunology discourse more widely. Practitioners draw on metaphors that cement this self/non-self model, and that tend to depict the relationship between cancer and the immune system as an internal battle. Yet the discursive framing around immunotherapy also involves shifts that emphasize the body's own capacity to heal, where it is framed as 'gentle' or 'tolerable' on the body. Through this discursive shift, immunotherapy refigures the antagonism associated with the self/non-self model in the context of cancer. Analysing patients' embodied experiences of treatment, this article attends to the material realities and tensions provoked by this shift in discursive framing. This article contributes to feminist STS analyses of immunology discourse, and extends this literature by arguing that it is critical to address the material stakes of these discursive shifts by paying attention to patients' day-to-day experiences of treatment. The discursive framing of immunotherapy brings into being new forms of embodied patienthood in the context of cancer.

Symbolic Conflict Resolution and Ingroup Favoritism

What are the domestic consequences of symbolic conflict resolution? We isolate the effect of symbolic conflict by looking into a dispute with no material stakes (for one side), but high symbolic ones: the Prespa Agreement, which ended the dispute on the name of FYROM, thenceforth named North Macedonia. Greeks opposed this name because the ancient Macedonian heritage is central to their national identity. Based on social identity theory, we expect this threat to the group’s distinctiveness to increase nationalist sentiment. Using an original dataset of flags displayed in the façade of buildings in Athens and Thessaloniki, which we compare to Lisbon, we find an increase in national flags in the Greek cities after the Agreement. The effect is stronger in Thessaloniki, Greek Macedonia’s capital, where the identity threat was more pronounced. We also find that the treaty shifted voters to the right, especially those residing in the region of Macedonia.

Trans-Love, Cinematic Bodies, and Optical Desire Reimagined

Trans-Love, Cinematic Bodies, and Optical Desire Reimagined

Toward Praxis

Toward Praxis

Stakeholder Participation in Policy Making: Evidence from Medicare Fee Schedule Revisions

To what extent do the material stakes of specific policies motivate political participation by affected interests? We address this question by examining physician participation in the annual proces...

De briques et de tôles

De nos jours, les édifices catholiques sont souvent signalés dans les guides de voyage comme des lieux remarquables dans les villes africaines. À l’époque missionnaire pourtant, la construction des infrastructures chrétiennes répond plus à des impératifs prosaïques qu’à des enjeux esthétiques. La valeur patrimoniale des bâtiments est jugée secondaire par des missionnaires avant tout préoccupés par des questions financières et prosélytes. Ainsi les Pères Blancs qui opèrent en Haute-Volta et en Gold Coast intègrent-ils ces lieux dans leurs stratégies apostoliques pour donner de la visibilité à leurs activités sans pour autant grever leur budget de trop lourdes dépenses. C’est l’appropriation, par la suite, des lieux catholiques par les communautés de fidèles qui a donné un contenu identitaire aux édifices religieux. Devenus « géosymboles » de la chrétienté, plusieurs infrastructures missionnaires prennent une valeur symbolique et mémorielle à mesure que l’Église locale cherche à définir des espaces d’appartenance communs. Cet article s’appuie sur les cas de la Haute-Volta (devenue Burkina Faso) et de la Gold Coast (Ghana) pour interroger la patrimonialisation polysémique des bâtiments missionnaires aux époques coloniales et postcoloniales.

The moral psychology of continuation decisions: A recipe for moral disengagement

To what extent are decision-makers willing to impose costs on others as they pursue their goals? The current investigation tested the hypothesis that the answer depends on whether the decision is an initial decision (whether to start) or a reassessment (whether to continue or switch from a chosen path). Decision-makers should be more likely to experience moral disengagement—to perceive lower moral standards—when contemplating continuing an option relative to choosing that option initially. They will therefore be more willing to impose costs on others for the former than for the latter. In five experiments, which tested hypothetical decisions and real decisions with material stakes, participants were more likely to impose costs on others—and believed ignoring those costs would be more morally acceptable—if they were a side effect of continuation. These results indicate that the moral psychology of continuation is marked by moral disengagement.

Conditions for socialization in international organizations: comparing committees of permanent representatives in the EU and NATO

Cooperation in international organizations (IOs) is sustained by the socialization of state agents and their internalization of the organizations’ norms and identity. This article builds on a structured comparison of the scope conditions for socialization among permanent representatives in two organs of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—the Political and Security Committee (PSC) and the North Atlantic Council (NAC). In this study, we present some unexpected findings: First, the NAC is experiencing greater internalization (stronger socialization) than the PSC, normally held as a critical case of international socialization. Second, unambiguous norms favour socialization to a larger degree than ambiguous norms, refuting a widely held assumption about the pro-internalization effect of diffuse norms. Given that member states seem to grant their representatives larger “room for manoeuvre” when the norms of the IO have material stakes, the socialization effect of an IO’s norms is dependent on the perceived utility of the organization’s mission.

Materials Take Centre Stage

Another successful Engineering Materials Live event was held in May, with visitors able to access some hugely valuable information to aid them in their materials selection.

Us Colonial Governance of Superstition and Fanaticism in the Philippines

AbstractThis article examines howuscolonial officials understood and utilized the categories of superstition, fanaticism, and religion during the occupation of the Philippines in the early twentieth century. I adapt Jason Josephson-Storm’s model of the trinary to explore the colonial politics of these categories. I focus on ideas about Filipino supernatural charms, typically referred to asanting anting. Civil administrators like ethnologist Dean Worcester and officers of the Philippine Constabulary blamed these charms for superstitious credulity and fanatical resistance againstusrule. As such, beliefs, practices, and communities categorized as superstitious or fanatical were targeted strategically for reformation or elimination. I argue that ideas about superstition, religion, and fanaticism were key parts ofuswar and policy, often serving racial projects of governance. Pursuing this line of inquiry allows scholars to see the material stakes of the category of religion and its proximate others.

Norms of Cooperation and Temptations to Defect in an Evolutionary Model of Economic Development

This paper studies the co-evolution of a society’s level of economic development and the strength of its social norms of cooperation. It is widely recognized that behavioral norms can influence a country’s economic development. Arrow (1972, p. 357) argues, for instance, that “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust...It can be plausibly argued that much of the economic backwardness in the world can be explained by the lack of mutual confidence.” Simultaneously, economic development can change the extent to which people choose to adhere to norms of cooperation. Much of the recent behavioral economics literature has asserted (and shown empirical evidence) that people’s actions are governed both by material incentives and by psychological and social factors. One factor that has been identified as influential in people’s choices of whether to act in their own material self-interest or to act on the basis of psycho-social motivations is the size of the material payoffs at stake. As economic growth changes the material stakes involved in economic interactions, it may therefore alter the extent to which people choose to conform to norms of cooperation. Norms of cooperation and economic development are thus jointly determined.

Formations of United States Colonialism

Alyosha Goldstein (ed.), Formations of United States Colonialism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. 432 pages. ISBN 978-0-82235810-7. $27.95 USD paperback.Formations of United States Colonialism is an excellent collection of state-of-the-art essays that critically examine US colonial discourse and grapple with complexities of cultural decolonization.The front doors of Royal Ontario Museum, not far from where I work, have since 1933 borne proud inscriptions RECORD OF NATURE THROUGH COUNTLESS AGES and ARTS OF MAN THROUGH ALL THE YEARS. All of time and space, all of human history, are subordinated to what Arnold Itwaru, in 1994 book Closed Entrances: Canadian Culture and Imperialism, calls 'imperializing eye'. Having subordinated all of nature and humanity to itself, imperializing eye then performs a double gesture: it defines value and meaning of all things through this imperializing relation; and it defines itself as neutral, natural, objective: not a record, but record.The essays in Formations of United States Colonialism do a wonderful job of disrupting this naturalization. Every chapter draws on critical cultural theory, but core of each chapter is a detailed empirical examination of process by which a particular moment in colonial discourse has been constructed, and how it could have been constructed otherwise.This potential alterity is important because, as Vicente L. Rafael points out in volume's final chapter, it takes more than armies and bureaucracies to establish empires. It takes cultural hegemony: that colonization of imagination which makes it painfully difficult to think outside of existing social order. Colonial discourse doesn't just make specific truth-claims; it constructs basic categories of thought within which truth claims are made, debated, and judged. Disrupting these categories requires retracing process of their formation.The emphasis on discourse does not entail an exclusion of practical and material stakes of social struggles. On contrary, essays in this volume connect formation of discourse to historical or contemporary struggles for resources, rights, and self-determination. Each chapter is a history, but a 'history of present' in which even wild and forgotten rumours and infamous colonial forgeries bear tellingly on terms of current politics.The chapters in this volume range broadly in time and space, from Indian slaveholding in Antebellum south to translators in presentday Iraq and professional football recruitment in Samoa. Some identities appear in more than one chapter, viewed in terms of more than one struggle: Hawai'i appears as an object of apology and of multiculturalism; Navajo Nation appears as a site of 19,h-century colonial mapping and of 20,h-century gender politics; two very different trajectories of Hispanic nationalism are discussed. One chapter stands out from others as a critical examination of international law and grounds it provides for Indigenous self-determination. Alyosha Goldstein's introduction ties it all together, noting that the United States encompasses a historically variable and uneven constellation, not a smooth Euclidean but a rhizome.Each case study attends carefully to complexities, contradictions, and incoherence of events. If dominant narrative of colonizers constructs a binary opposition between emancipatory progress and oppressive tradition with colonizers on side of progress and Indigenous groups on side of tradition, a thorough decolonization of imagination does more than simply flipping who is on which side of divide: it disrupts dichotomy altogether. …

Group support for political violence: The role of emotions and expressive choice in creating conflict or providing peace

This paper provides a rationale for group support for political violence which does not provide a material benefit. Rabin’s (1993) theory of fairness is adopted to demonstrate that although group violence may not be a Nash equilibrium it may be a fairness equilibrium in a game containing psychological payoffs. For this to happen the material stakes must be perceived as low and psychological payoffs are expressive. Although the material stakes are actually high, members of each group may choose expressively to support the use of violence because the probability of being decisive is low. The paper also considers the possibility of peace emerging as a fairness equilibrium. This can only happen if each group perceives the other as making some sacrifice in choosing peace.

Gay Neighborhoods and the Rights of the Vicarious Citizen

Drawing on a combination of qualitative methods using data collected from gay neighborhoods in Chicago and Washington, DC, this article develops the notion of vicarious citizenship—the exercise of rights and claims–making by nonresidential stakeholders who personally identify politically, economically, or socio–culturally with a local community. Vicarious citizens include a diversity of self–identified community members, some of whom were former or displaced residents of the neighborhood, who draw on a variety of socio–territorial practices to mobilize against perceived normative and political threats to their visions of authentic community. At times, vicarious citizens may hold differing and even conflicting perspectives on the functions of community, challenging the claims of local residents and those with more material stakes in the local area. I argue the notion of vicarious citizenship can expand our understanding of how gay neighborhoods remain relevant among certain LGBT populations who, for a variety of reasons, select into neighborhoods outside established gay areas. Vicarious citizenship can also be found in other nonresident communities.

Googling the WTO: What Search-Engine Data Tell Us About the Political Economy of Institutions

AbstractHow does international law affect state behavior? Existing models addressing this issue rest on individual preferences and voter behavior, yet these assumptions are rarely questioned. Do citizens truly react to their governments being taken to court over purported violations? I propose a novel approach to test the premise behind models of international treaty-making, using web-search data. Such data are widely used in epidemiology; in this article I claim that they are also well suited to applications in political economy. Web searches provide a unique proxy for a fundamental political activity that we otherwise have little sense of: information seeking. Information seeking by constituents can be usefully examined as an instance of political mobilization. Applying web-search data to international trade disputes, I provide evidence for the belief that US citizens are concerned about their country being branded a violator of international law, even when they have no direct material stake in the case at hand. This article constitutes a first attempt at utilizing web-search data to test the building blocks of political economy theory.

PENGEMBANGAN MATERIAL PASAK ENDODONTIK Ti/40HA DENGAN MENGGUNAKAN KONSEP FUNCTIONALLY GRADIENT MATERIAL

Commercial endodontic pegs have a homogeneous composition and strength so that the transmission voltage of pegs to dentin often result in damage to the tooth root. The concept of functionally gradient material (FGM) is expected to overcome these problems by adjusting the mechanical properties of each peg to the nature of the teeth. This study aims to develop a material stake with the concept of FGM from Ti/40HA material that is composed of five layers with concentrations of HA from 0% - 40% wt through the process of uni-axial pressing followed by sintering at 1200oC and 1400oC in argon gas. Then performed on each layer characterization by SEM / EDX, the optimum sintering temperature was determined by test-t (p <0,05). Morphological Testing showed that the composite of Ti/40HA still porous, while EDX shows the composition of Ca and P increase as an indication of increment in the concentration of HA as the decrement in concentration of the layer-1 (100% Ti) up to layer-5 (60% Ti-40% HA). In conclusion, Ti/40HA200 and Ti/40HA200 composite materials can be produced by decreasing its roughness as the rising concentrations of HA in each section.

Cosmopolitanism and Indigenism: The Uses of Cultural Authenticity in an Age of Flows

In an age of vibrant flows and border crossings, the notion of inauthenticity seems essential to conceptualizing the cultural production of our time. This paper examines two models of literary praxis that underscore the important role of inheritance in literary/cultural production, namely Taiwanese cosmopolitanism and indigenism. Though seemingly opposed to each other, the two paradigms operate with a great emphasis on the notion of cultural authenticity. They ask difficult questions, such as “What does it mean to identify oneself as an heir to a cultural tradition that is considered oppressive and overpowering to one’s native culture?”; “What constitutes ‘cultural authenticity’ in an age of ceaseless change and border-crossings?”; “What material stakes may be involved in the evocation of the notion of authenticity in literary praxis?” These two paradigms, as illustrated by two prominent writers from Taiwan—Yang Mu and Sayman Rapongan, demonstrate how the untimely question of authenticity may help shed light on some of the critical issues in global literary and cultural studies.

The Rough Politics Of Reforming Health CarePower, Politics, and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle By Altman Stuart Shachtman David Amherst (NY) : Prometheus Books , 2011 429 pp.; $26.00

The Rough Politics Of Reforming Health CarePower, Politics, and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle By Altman Stuart Shachtman David Amherst (NY) : Prometheus Books , 2011 429 pp.; $26.00

Googling the WTO: What Search Engine Data Tell Us About the Political Economy of Institutions

How does international law affect state behavior? Existing models addressing this issue rest on individual preferences and voter behavior, yet these assumptions are rarely questioned. Do citizens truly react to their governments being taken to court over purported violations? This article proposes a novel approach to testing the premise behind models of international treaty-making, using web search data. Such data are widely used in epidemiology; here I claim that they are at least as well-suited to applications in political economy. Web searches provide a unique proxy for a fundamental political activity which we otherwise have little sense of: the seeking of information. This article purports that information-seeking by constituents can be usefully examined as an instance of political mobilization. Applying web search data to international trade disputes, I provide evidence for the belief that U.S. citizens are concerned about their country being branded a violator of international law, even when they have no direct material stake in the case at hand. This paper constitutes a first attempt at utilizing web search data to test the building blocks of political economy theory.