Popular Responses Research Articles

Do mercenaries perform better than states? Evaluating the Wagner group’s impact on Central African Republic

ABSTRACT Do mercenaries perform better than democratic state armies? This study examines the efficacy of mercenary groups compared to state military interventions, using the Wagner Group’s operations in the Central African Republic as a case study. By comparing the French Operation Sangaris (2013–2016) with Wagner’s involvement (2021–2023), the research evaluates their relative effectiveness across counterinsurgency measures, military success, and popular responses. Utilizing data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, the analysis reveals that the Wagner Group outperformed the French intervention in most metrics, including territorial gains, geographical spread of operations, and reduction of civil unrest. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions about mercenaries’ ineffectiveness. The study suggests that the Wagner Group’s perceived effectiveness, despite its controversial reputation and association to human rights violations, explains its appeal to African governments seeking security solutions. This research contributes to ongoing debates about the role of private military companies in conflict zones and has implications for understanding the changing dynamics of security provision in Africa and beyond.

State of Reciprocity: The “Looping Effect” in the Circular Production of Colonial Knowledge, Social Customs, and Tax Policy in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Indonesia

Abstract This article traces Hacking's “looping effect” in colonial policies and practices of taxation, coerced labour, and governance in Indonesia. It argues that knowledge production for the purpose of taxation was a two-way, interactive process which was in particular influenced by complexes of local indigenous social organization, institutions, mentalities, and behaviour as expressed through adat (Indonesian systems of political-social norms and customary law). Such patterns and systems, the article reveals, were internalized into and started working reciprocally with colonial policy, knowledge production, and administrative practices. Taxation made up and changed people, but underlying strategies to categorize and “make known” subjects were also recognized and actively used, evaded, or influenced by these subjects and by local intermediaries. Consequently, colonial knowledge created an institutional framework that reoriented the self-perception of these subjects and intermediaries, which then changed and reconditioned popular responses to the colonial state. Systems of colonial knowledge were thus modified to eventually fit the realities they were supposed to describe, influence, and legitimize, creating a looping effect between colonial, “made up,” and actual social realities.

The First German in Space: Sigmund Jähn and East Germany

abstract: In August 1978, Sigmund Jähn became East Germany's first—and only—cosmonaut when he flew aboard the Soviet Union's Soyuz 31 mission. After the initial celebrations, the SED and East German state media quickly turned to attributing meaning to the person and the mission. They defined Jähn and his spaceflight in terms of the allegiance with the Soviet Union, growing GDR accomplishments at home, and the continuing competition with the FRG. The Jähn mission—one of the standout events in GDR history—shows the SED's varied modes of self-presentation in the late 1970s and popular responses to them.

Looking back to move forward: re-examining “alternative” certification as a site for teacher learning

ABSTRACT Alternative teacher certification programs (ATCPs) are popular policy responses to the growing US teacher shortage problem, yet debates around these programs often fail to recognise the unique experiences of beginning teachers in this licensure pathway. In this essay, I draw on Dewey’s (1904) essay ‘The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education’ to clarify the meaning and implications of so-called ‘alternative’ programs. I argue that by analysing the time, placement, and methods of practice work reveals how ATCP teachers are both under-supported and closely surveilled. I conclude with a call for ATCP designs to intentionally prepare teachers for this reality.

Gujranwala, 14 April 1919: Terror from air and airmindedness in late colonial India

This article revisits one of the earliest instances of British colonial aerial aggression in an urban milieu in South Asia to better understand the normative conceptions of airmindedness, the popular appreciation of aviation. A day after the massacre of unarmed civilians in Jalianwala Bagh, Amritsar, in 1919, three Royal Air Force airplanes armed with bombs and machine guns flew out from Lahore toward Gujranwala in Punjab. The event unleashed a whirlwind of rumours that spread from Lahore to Rangoon, which spoke of the collective fears of aerial violence. If the scant evidence presented by the pilots to the official inquiry into the unrest in Punjab served only to whitewash the record, a peoples’ report that marshalled witness testimonies indicted the colonial state's proclivity for violence. By assembling photographic evidence and crafting a cartographic triangulation of the sites of bombing from their testimonies, the colonial subjects challenged the statist narrative. The asymmetry of vertical violence in Gujranwala was also excavated as political commentary in a novel published in New York by an Indian author. By piecing together these disparate discursive fragments, my article attempts to make a composite sketch of the popular responses to trace a non-Western perspective on airmindedness.

Keeping Corporations in the Courts: A Framework for Addressing Jurisdiction over Corporate Defendants in Class Action Litigation

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has made it significantly more difficult for plaintiffs to seek legal redress against corporations by limiting the power of courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over corporate defendants. Beginning in 2011, the Supreme Court limited the inquiry around where a corporation might be subject to general, all-purpose jurisdiction for claims against it. Then, in 2017, in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court of California (“BMS”), the Court constrained the ability of plaintiffs to join together to sue a corporation when those plaintiffs were harmed by the corporation in different states. Importantly, these decisions left open whether these jurisdictional constraints apply to class actions. This Note argues that because of the important role that class actions play in corporate accountability, it is essential that these limitations not be extended to the class action form. In summary, if the Rule 23 class action certification criteria are met and if the court has jurisdiction over the defendant with respect to class representatives’ claims under current personal jurisdiction doctrine, then the court should impute jurisdiction over that defendant with respect to the claims of class members. Part II of the Note details the scope of the aforementioned string of cases and discusses the scholarly, judicial, and popular responses to the potential applicability of BMS to class actions. Part III identifies the problems with applying BMS to class actions, focusing on the importance of private enforcement in maintaining corporate accountability and the essential role that the class action form plays in that process. Finally, Part IV considers the legal, policy, and normative considerations associated with limiting the scope of BMS and proposes solutions for how to limit BMS in the class action context.

Laughter in the Time of Coronavirus: Epidemic Humor and Satire in Chinese Women's Digital Diaries

This paper is a study of humorous and satirical image-texts found in eleven Chinese women’s online diaries composed between 2020 and 2022 during the time of COVID-19, including three from Wuhan, one from Xi’an, two from Chongqing, one from Chengdu, one composed by a Shanghainese, and three by New Yorkers. The diarists’ intersectional positionings as social worker, medical practitioner, interactive designer, unemployed grassroots organizer, overseas student, filmmaker, teacher, journalists, writers, and mothers from different cities in China and the United States inform their individual articulations of concerns about sociopolitical changes, pandemic situations, everyday life, as well as gender and class issues.Epidemic humor and satire in these lockdown narratives will be introduced in light of multidisciplinary methods, including sociological studies, political philosophy, psychological theory, and literary criticism. These feminine expressions of comic feelings point to communal laughter as a strategy for survival, subversion, and nonviolent resistance against unprecedented state surveillance and interventions in everyday life. As Sinophone literature continues to go global together with the spread of the disease, the Chinese diaries tend to be more politically satiric, as seen in Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary and its English, German, and Japanese renditions, while the American–Chinese journals are rather humorous in terms of recording life, such as daily diet and necessities during the quarantine. This is due to cultural and situational differences, yet they have all exhibited their feminine sensitivity and sensibilities and formed a structure of feeling representing popular responses to the official discourse among digital citizens in the time of coronavirus.

Everyday Ethnicity and Popular Responses to Nation-Building Projects in Moldova After 1989

Abstract This introductory article highlights the main developments in the Republic of Moldova from the breakup of the Soviet Union to the present from the perspective of national sentiment and manifestations. Using Mark Beissinger’s concept of “tides of nationalism”, the article examines the bottom-up ethnic mobilisation between the “quiet” and the “noisy” phases of national projects in Moldova. With the persistence of the “quiet” phase of nationalism, in the last three decades, Moldova’s population transitioned from identification based on ethnicity to one focused on civic coexistence. However, Russia’s attack on Ukraine risks disrupting this balance, while contributing to the resurgence of ethnic sentiment at the expense of civic cohesion. Following an analysis of the literature in the field of “everyday nationalism”, the authors present the contributions to this thematic section, highlighting the relevance of the Republic of Moldova’s case within the regional and international context.

Vape Gods, Vape Lords, and Fiends: The Language of Vaping

Little attention has been devoted to understanding the language surrounding e-cigarette use. Researchers employ terms such as users of e-cigarettes or ENDS, but language employed outside scholarly writing is relatively unexamined. Thus, this study examined the language used by college students to refer to people who use e-cigarettes. College students (N = 1037; Mage= 20.67, SD = 3.81; 72.1% female; 69.6% White) at a southern U.S. university responded to the open-ended question: “What do you call a person who uses e-cigarettes?” Of 1086 responses, e-cigarette users’ (n = 591) and nonusers’ (n = 495) responses were examined separately. Although users and nonusers had the same two top terms (“vaper” and “smoker”), a clearer consensus existed among users where “vaper” was most common (51.3%) followed by “smoker” (21.0%). These same terms were endorsed by 37.0% and 31.5% of nonusers, respectively. The third most popular responses of users related to addiction (e.g., “addict”, “fiend”; 8.46%), whereas nonusers’ responses indicated they did not know what to call an e-cigarette user (e.g., “I don’t know”; 7.1%). Users were equally likely to use positive (e.g., “Vape God”) and negative (e.g., “fool”) terms, whereas nonusers were nearly six times more likely to use negative terms. Therefore, it may be useful to capitalize on these language trends in health campaigns as well as develop separate messaging for users vs. nonusers.

The ability of artificial intelligence tools to formulate orthopaedic clinical decisions in comparison to human clinicians: An analysis of ChatGPT 3.5, ChatGPT 4, and Bard

BackgroundRecent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have sparked interest in its integration into clinical medicine and education. This study evaluates the performance of three AI tools compared to human clinicians in addressing complex orthopaedic decisions in real-world clinical cases. Questions/purposesTo evaluate the ability of commonly used AI tools to formulate orthopaedic clinical decisions in comparison to human clinicians. Patients and methodsThe study used OrthoBullets Cases, a publicly available clinical cases collaboration platform where surgeons from around the world choose treatment options based on peer-reviewed standardised treatment polls. The clinical cases cover various orthopaedic categories. Three AI tools, (ChatGPT 3.5, ChatGPT 4, and Bard), were evaluated. Uniform prompts were used to input case information including questions relating to the case, and the AI tools' responses were analysed for alignment with the most popular response, within 10%, and within 20% of the most popular human responses. ResultsIn total, 8 clinical categories comprising of 97 questions were analysed. ChatGPT 4 demonstrated the highest proportion of most popular responses (proportion of most popular response: ChatGPT 4 68.0%, ChatGPT 3.5 40.2%, Bard 45.4%, P value < 0.001), outperforming other AI tools. AI tools performed poorer in questions that were considered controversial (where disagreement occurred in human responses). Inter-tool agreement, as evaluated using Cohen's kappa coefficient, ranged from 0.201 (ChatGPT 4 vs. Bard) to 0.634 (ChatGPT 3.5 vs. Bard). However, AI tool responses varied widely, reflecting a need for consistency in real-world clinical applications. ConclusionsWhile AI tools demonstrated potential use in educational contexts, their integration into clinical decision-making requires caution due to inconsistent responses and deviations from peer consensus. Future research should focus on specialised clinical AI tool development to maximise utility in clinical decision-making. Level of evidenceIV.

Analysing the Causes and Implications of the Privacy Paradox: Consumer Surveillance and Online Data Collection

Have you ever been bothered by wordy pages of the Terms of Agreement and directly selected agree without looking? With the advent of AI technology and its involvement in social media platforms on the internet, the 21st century is considered a relatively transparent (digital) era where personal information, preference, and behaviours are shared, studied, and manipulated online. Controversies lie in the extent to which the information is shared and whether they are leaked or legally authorised to be extracted. Although polls and surveys may suggest people care about their privacy, many still do not take measures to protect their privacy, and this inconsistency in attitudes is referred to as the ‘privacy paradox.’ Not only does this essay reveal the causes of privacy paradox and potential vulnerability faced by users, but it also investigates how these issues are reflected in reality, offers privacy regulation suggestions for businesses and policymakers in China, and captures a gender difference trend in terms of self-privacy regulations through surveying a selected sample of respondents and evaluating popular online responses on Chinese social media.

Exploring barriers to the use of trust translation services by pharmacy staff

Abstract Introduction 4.1 million people in England and Wales do not speak English as a first language.1 Whilst representing only 7.1% of the population, data suggests this cohort face greater barriers to effective healthcare than native English speakers. One study found they experience twice the rate of medication errors.2 One solution is the use of translation services in healthcare settings. However, national evidence shows service underutilisation.2 Research cites long waiting times, loss of phone connection and translator lack of familiarity with National Health Service (NHS) as contributors.3 Anecdotal data suggests underutilisation of services at Oxford Road Campus (ORC) of Manchester University Foundation Trust (MFT). 18% of ORC patients are not native English speakers, meaning there is a potential risk to patient outcomes if translation services are underutilised. Aim To explore the barriers pharmacy staff at ORC of MFT face when accessing the local translation service for patients; where its use would be appropriate and/or beneficial. Methods A literature search was conducted regarding use of translation services by healthcare staff and existing barriers to use. An interview proforma was formulated using the literature findings, existing questionnaires, discussions with a University of Manchester research Pharmacist and the group’s aims and objectives. The questions were formulated into the Qualtrics XMTM software. Data was collected using structured interviews to increase capture of qualitative data. The target audience was Trust pharmacy staff with patient contact. The sampling technique was opportunistic and captured 45 respondents. Quantitative data was analysed through Microsoft Excel, whilst qualitative data was analysed using thematic grouping. No ethical approval was required as this was a service evaluation. Results 97.8% of respondents had encountered at least one patient without English as a first language. Of these, 100% were aware of trust translation services, despite only 7% of staff having received training. Only 25% of participants reported the trust translation service was their primary method for translation. Preferred methods of overcoming language barriers were use of relatives/next of kin or a multilingual staff member. The most reported barriers in order of frequency were time, ease of access and preferring alternative methods. Some participants who had never used the service reported concerns over the accuracy of translation and high costs of the service. 78% of respondents indicated that they would use the service if barriers were rectified. When asked about features of an ideal service, exact waiting times, use without a PIN and dedicated ward phones were the most popular responses. Discussion/Conclusion Results obtained show numerous barriers to service use and accessibility. Of note, several staff who reported barriers had never used the service. These perceived barriers often related to factually incorrect views of the service such as cost and accuracy of translation. Thus, training for staff in conjunction with improvements to the service would increase utilisation of the translation service and therefore patient safety. One imitation of our project was that no data exists on number of patient facing staff so it is not possible to quantify the percentage of staff captured.

Loathsome Hui parasites: Islamophobia, ethnic chauvinism, and popular responses to the 2020 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak

ABSTRACT On 31 January 2020 in the midst of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China the city’s Party Secretary, Ma Guoqiang admitted in a televised interview to feeling “guilty and remorseful,” about the city government’s failures to contain the virus. In response, netizens on Weibo directed visceral abuse at Ma, an ethnic Hui Muslim, about his faith and loyalty to the party. The attacks came just months after the publication of leaked documents from national party officials calling Islam a “virus” and vowing to stop its “contagion.” Using discourse analysis of posts regarding Ma from January and February 2020, this paper examines how online discussion of Ma exemplifies Islamophobic attitudes of netizens and illuminate the exclusory ethnic politics that unfold in the process of national boundary setting in China. These findings will also illuminate how Muslims become scapegoats for crisis in non-Muslim countries, particularly those under authoritarian governance.

Introduction: Salt, Protest and Public Health in Modern India

Salt played a vital role in social, political, economic and cultural life in South Asia. This special issue brings together multiple perspectives on salt, highlighting its place in shaping state policies as well as popular responses in modern India. The present article introduces these perspectives in conversation with existing literature on salt. It attempts to view myriad ways in which colonialism manifested itself and was experienced through the lens of salt, a simple edible substance. In doing so it explores the entangled histories of colonial state-making, economic policies, individual ambitions, legal entanglements, protest and public health in modern India.

Editorial

We write this editorial in mid-February 2023 as the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine fast approaches. The war has so far led to over eight million people fleeing Ukraine to seek refuge across neighboring countries, 1 an unprecedented situation in Europe since the end of WWII. While the hospitality and solidarity extended to Ukrainian refugees was widely commended from the onset, commentators, including the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Tendayi Achiume, have widely denounced and critiqued the racist and orientalist double standards and “racial tiering” inherent in popular and political responses to displacement from Ukraine (OHCHR 2022; Bayoumi 2022; Jackson Sow 2022; Ray 2022). Ukrainian refugees were welcomed with open borders and “open arms” while racialized third nationals fleeing from the same conflict, including 76,000 students from diverse African countries studying in Ukraine, were forcibly prevented from crossing the same borders, as an extension of institutionalized discriminatory policies which continue to frame migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East through the lens of hostility and suspicion (Zaru 2022; Banerjee 2023). Indeed, while Ukrainians have been welcomed across Europe, often explicitly because they have been racialized as white and Christian, people fleeing other conflicts, including wars in which European governments have played an active part, notably Afghanistan, have been met with soldiers and push-backs, in violation of international and regional rights frameworks, including the European Convention on Human Rights, in some cases at the very same borders, notably those of Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania (see Sanderson 2022).

Cats, Commerce, and Cemeteries: The Mummified Felines of Beni Hasan

In February 1890, the remains of around 180,000 mummified cats, weighing about 19.5 tons, were sent from Alexandria to Liverpool and sold at auction to be used as agricultural fertiliser. The mummies originated from a cemetery at Beni Hasan in Egypt. Analysis of contemporary reports in the British press allows this event to be examined in some detail, from the initial discovery of the cemetery and its commercial exploitation locally and internationally, to the popular and academic responses to it. The episode can also be linked to the wider commercial exploitation of mummified remains from ancient Egypt, including as tourist souvenirs, items in private collections, and their acquisition by public museums. Press reports reflected contemporary European attitudes to ancient and modern Egypt, but also domestic concerns with agricultural productivity. [Formula: see text]

After the fall, where?: Relocating the Colston statue in Bristol, from 2020 to imaginary futures

Drawing on analysis of press reporting, museum display and a large-scale survey undertaken in Bristol in the aftermath of the 2020 toppling of the Colston statue, this article examines the shifting meanings given to the statue across a range of material and imagined sites. It works with two ways that history and geography intersect: the history of the sites/aftersites of this statue, and the materiality of histories in the sites/aftersites of this statue. Rather than the toppling of the Colston statue being a simple story of iconoclasm, a more complex historical geography was – and is – at play. As they imagined future aftersites for the Colston statue, people in the city saw this as an opportunity for some form of return of the statue – metaphorically if not materially – to one of its previous longer or shorter-lived homes. These former sites were seen to offer very different framings of the statue, as well as radically different ways of thinking about history. It is not simply historical geographers who are aware of the power of place in attributing meaning to statues. This can also be seen in popular responses to the afterlives, and aftersites, of the recent wave of fallen statues.

Choice of medical speciality: a cross-sectional study of medical students and comparison with existing practice

Abstract Objective The objectives of this study were to determine specialty choices, influencing factors, and migration intent among medical students, and to compare this with current specialist practitioners in Trinidad and Tobago (TT). Methods A Cross-sectional study using an online survey was conducted at the School of Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, TT. Descriptive statistics were presented for choice of specialty, its predictors, and comparisons with specialists in practice were done. Results Overall, 273 (response rate 21.36%) students responded with 73.6% females and an average age of 22.5(SD3.3) The ten most popular responses for specialty of first choice were unsure (9.5%), cardiothoracic surgery (8.7%), general paediatrics (8.7%), general surgery (7.5%), neurosurgery (7.5%), obstetrics and gynaecology (6.7%), cardiology (4.8%), emergency medicine (4.4%), family medicine (4.4%) and orthopaedics (4.4%). The top three factors influencing their choices were, general interest in the field (95.9%), job security (81.3%) and job availability (70.3%), Most respondents (72%) expressed intent to migrate to specialize. Compared to specialist practitioners, significantly more students aspired to do cardiothoracic surgery, neurosurgery, pediatric surgery, and cardiology, while significantly less students chose internal medicine, anaesthesia and critical care, and ophthalmology. (P&lt; 0.05 for all) Conclusion A minority of students was uncertain about speciality choice, however most intended to migrate to specialize. A mismatch between student aspirations and current practice was also found. These findings warrant student sensitization to specialties for which there is a need and workplace planning, if we are to retain locally trained doctors. Keywords: Medical student, specialization, cross-sectional study, postgraduate, Trinidad and Tobago.

Peter J Katz. Reading Bodies in Victorian Fiction: Associationism, Empathy and Literary Authority

In 2015, in an interview with the novelist Marilynne Robinson, Barack Obama claimed that the most important things he had learned about citizenship, ‘setting aside being president’, he had learned from novels. ‘It has to do with empathy’, he explained (18). Obama’s easy elision of empathy, moral improvement, and novel reading might well elicit a scornful curl of the lip from some contemporary literary critics, but as Peter J. Katz shows in this engaging monograph, it would have been entirely familiar to many mid-Victorian readers and writers, who held ‘a philosophy of fiction in which literary value depends on a text’s capacity to cultivate empathy through feeling’ (2). Katz argues that this philosophy was most vigorously propounded and interrogated in the fiction of the great mid-Victorian sensationalists, Dickens, Collins, and Braddon, all of whom positioned empathy as central to the experience of reading, an idea that was at the time strongly associated with popular fiction, and is now associated instead with popular responses to ‘serious’ literature. As Katz shows, the debate about whether and how reading fiction was (or was not) morally improving, and who got to decide, was as heatedly political then as now, with popular fiction and ‘common readers’ pitted against ‘classic’ literature and professional authority. In the mid-Victorian era, however, it was also a fraught philosophical and scientific argument, in which competing theories of language and ethics were invoked to judge both the significance of novels and the competence of their readers.

Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History

Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History