Worst Fears Research Articles

Ketamine: A Neuroanesthesiologist's Friend or Foe?

AbstractKetamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, introduced into clinical practice six decades ago, has often been the worst fear of a neuroanesthesiologist due to its concerns of causing a rise in intracranial pressure and increasing cerebral blood volume. However, the recent literature clarifies that it may have a beneficial role, even in neurosurgical patients, because of its propensity to cause neuroprotection through antiglutamatergic action on the NMDA receptors in the ischemic brain. Apart from having an anticonvulsive role in refractory status epilepticus, its inherent property of increasing blood flow to the ischemic areas offers protection to the penumbral zone, thus preventing secondary brain injuries. Also, it has been widely used as an analgesic at subanesthetic doses post spine surgeries. Recently, enough scientific evidence has been published in favor of ketamine establishing the fact that it does not cause a rise in intracranial pressure when the patient is mechanically ventilated and normocarbia is maintained. It has also been used during evoked potential monitoring as it amplifies signals even under general anesthesia and proves to be quite effective during neuromonitoring. However, its adverse effects of increasing muscle tone, excessive salivation, emergence delirium, agitation, and “out of body” experiences with long-term psychomimetic effects and potential to cause addiction have precluded its widespread use.This review on ketamine summarizes the benefits of using it in neurosurgical anesthesia with the aim of removing the fears we had in the past, which did not seem to be evidence based.

Model Risk Management in AI, Machine Learning & Deep Learning (Presentation Slides)

The European Parliament Think Tank's Research Policy document 'Should we fear artificial intelligence?' reflects ongoing mainstream debate between Utopian and Dystopian aspects of AI and Machine Learning. Powerful AIs can in principle be given nearly any goal, which is a source of both risk and opportunity. There are myriad possible malicious uses of AI and many ways in which it might be used in a harmful manner unintentionally, such as with algorithmic bias. Perhaps most fundamentally, control will have to be addressed – that is, we will need to learn how to ensure that AI systems achieve goals we want them to without causing harm during their learning process, misinterpreting what is desired of them, or resisting human control. Third in series of Princeton Presentations on AI and Machine Learning Risk Management & Control Systems, current presentation develops fundamental guidance on design, development, and implementation of AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning Models and Methods. The 2018 Princeton presentation will focus on the control problem which is a critical prerequisite for AI systems to have positive impacts by further developing upon my prior two presentations that pioneered Cyber-Finance-Trust™ Model Risk Management & Model Risk Arbitrage™ practices at prior Princeton Quant Trading Conferences. Starting with first technical report on Bitcoin Blockchain Cryptographic Proof of Work; spanning latest developments in AI, Machine, Learning, Deep Learning, and, Generative Adversarial Networks; and, hedge fund algorithmic trading, presentation generates interesting insights about most critical role of risk management controls. Such role of risk management controls is most critical in not only getting best out of AI, but also ensuring that worst fears about AI do not really come true.

Factor analysis and validation of a self-report measure of impaired fear inhibition

ABSTRACTDifficulties with inhibiting fear have been associated with the emergence of anxiety problems and poor response to cognitive–behavioural treatment. Fear inhibition problems measured using experimental paradigms involving aversive stimuli may be inappropriate for vulnerable samples and may not capture fear inhibition problems evident in everyday life. We present the Fear Inhibition Questionnaire (FIQ), a self-report measure of fear inhibition abilities. We assess the FIQ’s factor structure across two cultures and how well it correlates with fear inhibition indices derived experimentally. Adolescent participants from Hong Kong and England completed the FIQ, with the English participants also completing a conditioning and extinction task to assess fear inhibition problems. Across both cultures, the FIQ showed a single factor structure and low FIQ scores, or worse fear inhibition problems, were associated with self-reports of heightened anxiety. Correlation of FIQ scores with experimental indices, whilst controlling for anxious symptoms, suggests that the FIQ represents a valid and unique measure of fear inhibition abilities. The FIQ might be used to assess more ecologically valid fear inhibition problems particularly amongst people who have or who are at risk of anxiety diagnoses.

Beyond Hindu–Muslim unity: Gandhi, the Parsis and the Prince of Wales Riots of 1921

Between 17 and 20 November 1921, Bombay was convulsed by the Prince of Wales Riots, which coincided with the arrival of the future King Edward VIII in the city. The riots constituted an extremely important moment in the Non-Cooperation Movement, the political transformation of Bombay and the development of M.K. Gandhi’s political thought. Additionally, the riots upturned familiar notions of communalism: angry at repeated violations of a hartal Gandhi declared for the day of the Prince’s arrival, Muslim and Hindu supporters of the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movements joined together to attack supposedly loyalist minorities, especially Parsis. Herein lay the riots’ broader significance. During the Non-Cooperation Movement, Gandhi had been keen to recruit the active support of the Parsi community. He was well aware of their financial and political clout and their leadership roles in liberal nationalist circles. Most Parsis, however, expressed strong reservations about Gandhi’s tactics, believing that a mass political movement under the banner of ‘Hindu–Muslim unity’ would be injurious to smaller minority communities. The riots, therefore, confirmed Parsis’ worst fears about Gandhi’s politics and their majoritarian implications. Gandhi, for his part, worked tirelessly to repair his relationships with the Parsis and reassure them of the Congress’ commitments towards minority rights. He reconsidered how smaller communities fit into India’s communal dynamics. By December 1921, Gandhi even unfurled a new slogan that was used towards the end of the Non-Cooperation Movement: ‘Hindu–Muslim–Sikh–Parsi–Christian–Jew unity’.

El mito del caníbal, mímesis y crítica social en Como era gostoso o meu francês (1971)

Dirigida por el paulista Nelson Pereira dos Santos y estrenada en 1971, Como era gostoso o meu francés es una película brasileña que adapta viejas crónicas de exploradores europeos en cautiverio durante la conquista del Brasil, en el siglo XVI, y aborda temas como el canibalismo, la atracción de la vida “salvaje” para el sujeto “civilizado”, y el carácter performativo de los rituales sacrificiales, entre otros temas. En este artículo, se parte de las diferencias existentes entre las fuentes históricas o proto-históricas que inspiran este filme. Como resultado, se postula que es precisamente en esas diferencias y en la elección consciente de aspectos en los que el texto fílmico difiera del texto “original” que Pereira dos Santos demuestra su voluntad de crear una obra que, lejos de limitarse a ilustrar un pasado ficticio (el del canibalismo en las Américas no conquistadas), más bien constituya una sátira política dirigida al Brasil de la última dictadura, así como un comentario sobre la diferencia colonial y sobre las estrategias del colonizado de burlarse del colonizador por medio de la performance de sus miedos más íntimos con respecto al Otro.

“She is the beauty of this place”: Elizabeth Velora Elwell and the Role of Prisoner Participation and Deviance at Eastern State Penitentiary

Elizabeth Elwell represented nineteenth-century reformers’ worst fears: a woman fallen from grace who maintained an exceptional understanding of social norms and an ability to manipulate those norms to meet her needs. While imprisoned at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Elwell documented the extensive web of relationships she managed within the prison. Incarcerated during a transformative period in United States history—the Civil War—Elwell maintained a romantic relationship with a black inmate, in direct opposition to the racial prejudices of the era. Elwell’s experience demonstrates that, though often abused and neglected, women used their lower position in nineteenth-century prisons to undermine the system that sought to control them.

North by North

[Extract] Seven centuries of cartographic convention has placed north at the top of maps, and by logical extension at the top of the world. This convention has been closely aligned with another, known as the Mercator projection. Devised by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1659, this system of map-making has been uncritically handed down through the centuries to the present time and continues to be the cartographic standard in many parts of the world. Mercator’s projection not only points northward but exaggerates northern landmasses at the expense of the south. For example, it magnifies Greenland to be approximately the same size as Africa, which is actually fourteen times larger. The Greenland example is one of many northern amplifications and conceits that belittle the south. The specific contrast with Africa was presented with deadpan humour and devastating effect in a 2012 episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Cartographers for Social Equity lobby President Bartlet’s White House to withdraw all Mercator maps from US schools and replace them with Gall-Peters maps. The Gall-Peters projection represents with greater fidelity and accuracy the relative proportions of the world’s landmasses. The Cartographers for Social Equity fail in their representation but, coincidental or not, five years after the screening of The West Wing episode Gall-Peters maps began to be phased in at schools in two American states. North and south are cardinal directions and polar opposites that refer to exact locations at either end of the globe. Within ice-bound regions, the North Pole defines the Arctic, an old term derived from Latin and Greek to mean north. By contrast, its antithesis—the Antarctic—is a negative term that means opposite to north. It is defined by the South Pole. This linguistic preference suggests that north is the one while south is the other.

Urban Upheaval and the Enduring Appeal of Law and Order

Urban Upheaval and the Enduring Appeal of Law and Order

An insight into the patient's response to a diagnosis of urological cancer

A cancer diagnosis and the patient's response to the news pertains to all types of cancer, however, in this article, the focus is on urological cancer. Intrinsic to the management of this patient group is the urology multidisciplinary team, in which the role of the cancer nurse specialist (CNS) is pivotal. For most people, a cancer diagnosis is arguably their worst fear. It is therefore prudent that a holistic approach is used when determining care and ensuring that appropriate support is forthcoming. This necessitates an assessment of the physical, psychological/emotional, psycho-social, spiritual and cultural components of the individual's healthcare needs, and accordingly, devising a plan of care to secure the best outcomes. This article concentrates on the psychological/emotional component. It outlines a case study of a patient's response to the consultant's question in the joint consultation clinic, examines the CNS's interpretation and understanding of the events, and her perspective on whether factors such as fear, anxiety and distress influence the individual's response to the diagnosis, their comprehension of information and the messages relayed, and consequently, their ability to manage the ensuing issues. It also looks at the support available to cancer patients following the receipt of a cancer diagnosis and its efficacy in addressing their concerns. Integral to this is effective communication, specifically the timely provision of information by health professionals.

Drug-resistant malaria advances in Mekong.

Dangerous strain has spread to Vietnam, but experts sharply dispute its risk to the world.

The Bestial Feminine in Finnegans Wake

Female characters frequently appear as animals in the unstable universe of James Joyce’s a Finnegans Wake. What Kimberly Devlin terms “the male tendency to reduce women to the level of the beast” is manifest in Finnegans Wake on a large scale. From the hen pecking at a dung heap which we suppose is a manifestation of matriarch Anna Livia Plurabelle, to the often lascivious pig imagery (reminiscent of Bloom’s experience with brothel-keeper Bella in the “Circe” episode of Ulysses) associated with juvenile seductress Issy, the lines between animal and human are frequently blurred when it comes to representing the feminine in the Wake. As scholars such as Devlin have highlighted, such constellations of images have their roots in blatantly misogynistic iconographies. Indeed, the reinscription of female characters into bestial roles in the Wake echoes a religious history of the dehumanisation of women. Yet, while this gendered representational tendency has been noted in Joycean and, more recently, wider modernist studies, its deployment and impact as a cultural and literary trope has not yet been interpreted according to the sociohistorical and cultural contexts which shaped the composition of Finnegans Wake. In particular, the culturally-specific sexual politics of Free State Ireland (1922–1937), against which Joyce arguably pushes throughout the entirety of the Wake, offer a suggestive lens through which to view the text’s interconnected representations of the feminine and the bestial. This article suggests that, in Finnegans Wake, the nonhuman is a mode through which Joyce explores the fraught sexual politics of early twentieth-century Ireland. Specifically, the bestial feminine becomes an avenue to inspect, expose, and satirise prevalent contemporary fears over female sexual licentiousness and national moral decline. Historicising the text’s grappling with themes of carnality and baseness, the article discusses the ways in which the woman-as-animal is deployed in Finnegans Wake as a grotesque symbol of an unbridled and threatening female sexuality—an extreme embodiment of 1920s and 1930s Ireland’s worst fears surrounding the perceived degeneration of Irish women’s modesty. Unearthing the Wake’s social contexts in order to interpret its sexual politics, this article ultimately asks whether the trope of the woman-as-animal stages a complete resistance against the conservatism of early twentieth-century Ireland’s sexual politics, or whether Joyce’s invocation of a historically misogynistic and patriarchal construction risks reinforcing the dehumanisation of women, moving the text’s sexual politics further away from the liberatory.

NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: The Future: A Very Short Introduction, by Jennifer M. Gidley

A shining utopia or our worst fears realised – what does the future have in store for us? From the beginning of time, humans have been driven by both a fear of the unknown and a curiosity to know. We have always yearned to know what lies ahead, whether threat or safety, scarcity or abundance. Throughout human history, our forebears tried to create certainty in the unknown, by seeking to influence outcomes with sacrifices to gods, preparing for the unexpected with advice from oracles, and by reading the stars through astrology. As scientific methods improve and computer technology develops we become ever more confident of our capacity to predict and quantify the future by accumulating and interpreting patterns form the past, yet the truth is there is still no certainty to be had. In this Very Short Introduction Jennifer Gidley considers some of our most burning questions: What is "the future "? Is the future a time yet to come, or is it a utopian place? Does the future have a history? Is there only one future or are there many possible futures? She asks if the future can ever be truly predicted or if we create our own futures - both hoped for and feared - by our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and concludes by analysing how we can learn to study the future. Jennifer Gidley has extensive experience in the futures studies field, combining scholarly research, academic teaching, and leadership of the World Futures Studies Federation (UNESCO Partner). She was re-elected as President in 2013 for a second four-year term to lead 300 expert futures researchers, teachers and professional practitioners from over 60 countries. Jennifer has held academic positions in Australia at Southern Cross (1995-2001); Swinburne (2003-2006); and RMIT (2008-2012); and holds visiting academic posts in Europe. Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. Publication Date: 23rd March 2017 | 9780198735281 | Paperback | £7.99 For more information about this title please contact Katie Stileman (E: Katherine.Stileman@oup.com, T: 01865 353344)

Influenza Encyclopedia: The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918–1919; A Digital Encyclopedia

In recent years, as a succession of epidemic scares have grabbed headlines, panicking politicians and the public alike, historians of medicine have found themselves in unusual demand within policy-making circles. For no group is this more true than for historians of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, which, according to the latest estimates, killed some 50 million people worldwide—550,000 in the United States alone. Largely ignored at the time—partly because the mortality was overshadowed by World War I—this pandemic has become a template for the public health community's worst fears of a potential viral Armageddon—hence, the interest in studying the “forgotten” pandemic to draw lessons for the management of future pandemic threats. Thus it was that in 2006—worried about the spread of bird flu from Southeast Asia and cognizant that producing a viable vaccine would take at least six months—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the University of Michigan's Center for the History of Medicine to examine whether school closures and other nonpharmaceutical measures had made an appreciable difference to the spread of flu in 1918. After a yearlong study of the records of forty-three U.S. metropolises, the Michigan group was able to report that the American cities that embraced social distancing and other public health measures early tended to suffer lower average death rates than those that did not. That could well have been the end of the exercise, but, to its credit, the University of Michigan realized that it was sitting on an historical treasure trove that included important insights into the political, social, and cultural responses to the flu.

Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape by Kelly Oliver

Reviewed by: Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape by Kelly Oliver Christine N. Stamper (bio) Kelly Oliver. Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape. New York: Columbia UP, 2016. Print. Kelly Oliver's study of how society views sexual assault takes a two-pronged approach by examining both real life scenarios from college campuses and youth media portrayals of violence against girls and young women in books and films such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight. Throughout Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape, Oliver "consider[s] the contradictory ways in which social media is changing our attitudes toward sexual assault and the reporting of rape" (8). Throughout the book she compares the strong, "hunting girls" of fiction to the hunted girls at universities in order to investigate the ways media might be shaping how campuses discuss and handle sexual assault for real women. In addressing fiction, Hunting Girls analyzes several protagonists who are generally considered strong female characters. In doing this, Oliver also looks at the way these books and movies continue to perpetuate rape and assault culture, despite their focus on women who "give as good as they get" (27). For instance, in her discussion of the film adaptation of Veronica Roth's young adult novel Divergent, Oliver points out a scene in which protagonist Tris, in a drug induced hallucination showing her worst fears, is attacked by her boyfriend. Here Tris "is afraid that her boyfriend might rape her. This is not a fear of rape in general, or a fear of men, but rather a fear of 'date rape.' . . . [T]he scene makes manifest a deep-seated fear that hits close to home—namely, that like Tris, girls are at risk of being drugged, incapacitated, and raped by those closest to them" (40). Comparing protagonists to the classic tale of Sleeping Beauty and the Greek goddess Artemis, Oliver also includes Katniss from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Disney's Maleficent, Bella from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, and Ana from E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey to show how these "strong" women are still sexual prey to the men around them. Wondering what this depiction does for younger viewers, Oliver contests that these young female protagonists are "[n]ot your grandma's princesses: rather than passively waiting, these strong girls fight and kill like men, and sometimes they ask for kinky sex. Perhaps this signals some kind of progress" (25). However, this empowered portrayal becomes complicated when viewing the violence through the context of "fraternity brothers [who] are marching around Yale openly chanting, 'No means yes, yes means anal,' [meaning] it is crucial to ask whether this type of progress actually benefits girls and women" (25). In her examination of current events on university campuses, Oliver not only offers statistics that show how much rape and sexual assault affects young women, particularly those in college, but also demonstrates how technology is changing how rape cases are prosecuted. Relying heavily on Kirby Dick's [End Page 282] 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, Oliver discusses how universities have cultivated serial rapists, not only because victims are hesitant to report but also because administrations tend to keep cases in-house and do not expel students, particularly athletes, for rape cases. However, where the text truly adds to conversations about rape culture is in its demonstration of how technology is changing the ways sexual assault is documented, and therefore how seriously authorities treat victims' claims. Oliver discusses the prevalence of "creepshots" or voyeuristic photos and videos taken of unaware or unconscious women. Photographing or filming rape and assault has become a new and disturbing norm, and Oliver makes a compelling case for how this trend actually allows for the conviction of more rapists: now that there is hard proof that an assault occurred, cases do not depend on conflicting reports from the people involved. She also discusses consent phone apps, which record videos of partners consenting prior to their sexual encounter. However, these apps seem to protect men from future rape charges more than ensuring consent, as they treat consent as a blanket statement...

Fearless?: Peter Weir, The Sage, and the Fragility of Goodness

Rafael Yglesias's Fearless , adapted for film by Peter Weir, stages a striking ethical reflection on the nature of the best human life. Section 1 looks at the film's portrayal of Max Klein, an ordinary man who becomes fearless after conquering his worst fear. Max exhibits a profile of supererogatory virtues recalling those of the classical sage, yet section 2 argues that Fearless as a whole presents a powerful criticism of such a fearless life. Echoing criticisms of the invulnerability of the sage in Michel de Montaigne and Martha Nussbaum, Fearless 's true hero is its less ostentatious heroine: Max's wife, Laura.

Child King

Child King Heather Snell For all his strongman rhetoric, a President Trump would be much more likely to function as a figurehead. He’s simply unequipped—intellectually and temperamentally—to be anything more. He has no clue how governance actually works, no interest in policy and no attention span. He doesn’t even have ideas. He has, at most, impulses. The notion that Trump would play any serious role in formulating policy objectives or seeking to shepherd them through the legislative process is absurd. . . . If he does make it to the White House, Trump will assume the role of a child king, allowed to dress up for state dinners, issue decrees and ogle the wives of foreign leaders. . . . Ultimately, Trump represents the most perilous qualities one can imagine in a potential leader: sloth, grandiosity, ignorance and a towering arrogance that allows him to indulge in childish cruelties. –Steve Almond, “Worse Than Your Worse Fears: Donald Trump Won’t Be a Tyrant—He’ll Be a Child King, Which is Far More Frightening” In a Salon article published six days before the election of the forty-fifth president of the United States, Steve Almond warned that Donald Trump will be a “child king” if elected, a prospect he suggests is far more frightening than our worst imaginings about a Trump presidency. The hyperbole speaks volumes about how the figure of the child is constructed in American culture. Not only is the child here constructed as immature, clueless, impulsive, and sexually perverse but also as a subject that cannot maintain complete [End Page 1] control over his life: Trump will only be allowed to dress up, issue decrees, and ogle the wives of foreign leaders; likewise, “[s]ome poor lawyer would have to explain to Trump, gently, that he couldn’t actually do” the things he has declared he will do should he be elected—setting off nuclear weapons, for example, or “stealing oil from sovereign nations and forcing NATO countries to pay the U.S. protection money” (Almond). The problem, of course, is that as president Trump could do many of the things he has promised, a fact conspicuously absent from Almond’s article and yet one that might make the spectre of Trump as child king truly horrifying. Ramping up the terror of this spectre is Trump’s own confidence in his intelligence: his brain is one that “knows more than the generals” (Almond). Almond’s use of the child-king trope paints a picture of Trump as a lazy, grandiose, ignorant, arrogant, and overconfident dictator who will “indulge in childish cruelties” as president. This image of Trump recalls the teenage king of HBO’s Game of Thrones: Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson; see fig. 1) does whatever he wants to whomever he wants, no matter the consequences, but, paradoxically perhaps, given his own vulnerability as an adolescent ruler, he reserves his worst cruelties for those even more vulnerable than him, especially young, unmarried women. If he is “childish,” it is because he carries many of the markers we associate with white male childhood in North America, the same markers that Almond attributes to Trump: he neither knows nor cares how governance actually works; he has a short attention span; and he is impulsive and overindulged, not to mention lazy, ignorant, and arrogant. From his first appearance in season 1 until his untimely death in season 4, Joffrey remains—to borrow Almond’s words about Trump—a “blustering adolescent, incapable of moral reasoning, of discerning between his feelings and the facts.” Will Trump, as Almond warns us, be a real-life Joffrey, all the more frightening because he resembles the child? Is it really Trump’s childishness that makes the prospect of him as president so frightening to his detractors? Does likening Trump to a “child king” highlight the danger of a Trump presidency in important ways? What do we gain by supplementing “king” with “child”? Why rely on the construct of child at all in our efforts to show that a man who has become known for his xenophobia is unfit to be a world leader? I want to tell a second story in my own post-US election attempt...

Renovating Democracy and Salvaging Globalization

The worst fears of the American Founding fathers were realized in the 2016 presidential election when the democratic ballot box unleashed some of the darkest forces in the body politic. While it remains to be seen what his administration accomplishes, Donald Trump showed that a campaign of outright lies and invective against the world outside and perceived enemies within delivered over the latest direct access technology—Twitter—was the path to the top of the world's most powerful nation.

Where is my puppy? Retrieving lost dogs by facial features

A pet that goes missing is among many people's worst fears: a moment of distraction is enough for a dog or a cat wandering off from home. Some measures help matching lost animals to their owners; but automated visual recognition is one that -- although convenient, highly available, and low-cost -- is surprisingly overlooked. In this paper, we inaugurate that promising avenue by pursuing face recognition for dogs. We contrast four ready-to-use human facial recognizers (EigenFaces, FisherFaces, LBPH, and a Sparse method) to two original solutions based upon convolutional neural networks: BARK (inspired in architecture-optimized networks employed for human facial recognition) and WOOF (based upon off-the-shelf OverFeat features). Human facial recognizers perform poorly for dogs (up to 60.5 % accuracy), showing that dog facial recognition is not a trivial extension of human facial recognition. The convolutional network solutions work much better, with BARK attaining up to 81.1 % accuracy, and WOOF, 89.4 %. The tests were conducted in two datasets: Flickr-dog, with 42 dogs of two breeds (pugs and huskies); and Snoopybook, with 18 mongrel dogs.

“I Have the Worst Fear of Teachers”: Moments of Inclusion and Exclusion in Family/School Relationships among Indigenous Families in Southern Ontario

Student success is facilitated by strong bonds between families and schools, including a shared sense of purpose and mutual trust. However, for Indigenous peoples these relationships are often broken, undermined by the legacy of residential schooling and assimilative educational practices. Drawing on interviews with 50 Indigenous (mainly Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Métis) and non-Indigenous parents and educators, this paper examines the ways in which issues of class and race shape interactions between teachers and Indigenous parents. The interviews reveal that legacies of racial discrimination against Indigenous peoples in schooling affect family/school relations among middle-class (MC) and lower-class (LC) parents in different ways. MC parents intensify relations with the school while, in comparison, LC parents tend to disengage as a consequence of their negative schooling experiences. Les relations étroites entre les familles et les écoles, et notamment leurs buts communs et leur confiance partagée, facilitent la réussite des étudiants. Toutefois, au sein des populations autochtones, ces liens sont pour la plupart rompus en raison des conséquences des pensionnats scolaires et des pratiques éducatives d'assimilation. Cette étude s'appuie sur des entretiens avec 50parents et éducateurs issus de populations autochtones (principalement celles d'Haudenosaunee, d'Anishinaabe et de Métis) et non autochtones pour étudier la manière dont les questions de classe et de race affectent les interactions entre les enseignants et les parents issus de populations autochtones. Ces entretiens montrent que le passé discriminatoire des écoles envers les peuples autochtones a eu des répercussions différentes sur les relations famille/école, selon qu'il s'agisse de parents issus de la classe moyenne ou de parents issus d'un milieu pauvre. Les parents issus de la classe moyenne ont renforcé leurs liens avec l'école alors que les parents des classes inférieures tendent à se désengager du fait de leur expérience scolaire négative.

WAITING FOR FARLAM: Marikana, social inequality and the relative autonomy of the police

Although the Farlam Commission of Inquiry is yet to report, it has been widely assumed in the blogosphere, across large sections of the traditional media, and in some preliminary academic analyses too, that the shootings at Marikana on 16 August 2012 are symptomatic of a police force in thrall to a political elite intimately connected to international capital and increasingly corporatised and unrepresentative trade unions. Against this background, this article looks to the notion of ‘relative autonomy’, considered in a classic discussion of ‘the concept of policing in critical theories of criminal justice’ by Otwin Marenin, to suggest that critics of the SAPS should not be surprised if, in moments of crisis, the police act as the agents of ‘specific domination’ rather than as guarantors of a ‘general order’. It will go on to argue that, even if their worst fears are confirmed by Farlam, their conclusion about the nature of the relationship between the SAPS and a political elite may be too sweeping. Using insights from recent studies of everyday policing, it will suggest that the way in which the police respond to strikes, service delivery protests and other politically charged incidents may tell us surprisingly little about what officers actually do, and why they do it, in the course of their everyday interactions with individual citizens and interest groups less politically well-connected than the main protagonists at Marikana. In conclusion it is argued that, in the absence of significant social change to remedy the structural inequalities bequeathed by apartheid, the SAPS has not been able to transcend its colonial inheritance, leaving the business of police reform begun over 20 years ago unfinished.