Study in blue: trauma,affect, event

As contemporary student activists in the United States embrace a vocabulary of trauma and microaggressions, some critics on the left consider this a depoliticizing move symptomatic of the university’s growing thralldom to neoliberalism. The author argues that such criticism neglects how talk of trauma and microaggressions attempts to affectively manage structural violence’s failure to manifest in the form of discrete, identifiable, and extraordinary events. To illustrate this, she turns to the poetry of Claudia Rankine and the performance art of Emma Sulkowicz as aesthetic treatments of racial microaggression and sexual trauma, respectively. Rankine’s and Sulkowicz’s works belong to an emergent genre the author calls the coincidence report, in which subjects with no proof of structural violence except for their own feelings must cope with what happens when an event doesn’t. Ultimately, both artists sideline attempts to reconstruct the event in favor of redistributing specific affects throughout their respective publics. In both cases, these affects are blue – that is, depressive (Rankine) and obscene (Sulkowicz). Subjects in the blue find themselves ambivalently attached to living politically in the shadow of an event even as they detach from the fantasy that political life is less disappointing, depressing, or deflating than it actually is.     

Andrea Cox: Trapped in a Vice: The Consequences of Confinement for Young People New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017, 4181 pp,Series: Critical issues in crime and society,LCCN: 2017007405

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

Women and power in Ireland: Problems,progress, practice

A major problem confronting Irish feminists centres on how the transition from a first phase of consciousness-raising and more or less separatist analysis and action to a second phase of broad-based mobilisation for policy-change is to be achieved, without losing sight of, or faith in, the long-term goal of a radical transformation of sexual power relations. As part of the necessary reappraisal of our present position, fundamental to the development of new strategies, this paper describes the extent to which women in Ireland are chronically and grossly underrepresented in power élites, and analyses some of the barriers which have precluded—and in large measure continue to preclude—women's equal participation in the decision and policy-making processes. More optimistically, the conclusion briefly indicates the challenge to traditional forms of political organisation represented by the emergence of alternative forms of political activism, initiated and developed by women over the past several years.     

Shifting dynamics in international trade unionism: Agitation,organisation, bureaucracy,diplomacy

This article compares and contrasts international trade unionism in its formative stages with patterns today. It identifies a continuing tension between an ‘agitator’ model (internationalism from below) and a bureaucratic model (internationalism from above). With the construction of an architecture of international institutions, notably the International Labour Organisation, another variant emerged: the labour diplomat. It is argued that none of these models on its own is adequate: the future of effective internationalism requires a synthesis of these often contradictory elements.     

Life Satisfaction in Early Adolescence: Personal,Neighborhood, School,Family, and Peer Influences

Drawing from an ecological assets framework as well as research and theory on positive youth development, this study examined the relationship of early adolescents’ satisfaction with life to trait optimism and assets representing the social contexts in which early adolescents spend most of their time. Self-reports of satisfaction with life, optimism, and ecological assets in the school (school connectedness), neighborhood (perceived neighborhood support), family (perceived parental support), and peer group (positive peer relationships) were assessed in a sample of 1,402 4th to 7th graders (47% female) from 25 public elementary schools. Multilevel modeling (MLM) was conducted to analyze the variability in life satisfaction both at the individual and the school level. As hypothesized, adding optimism and the dimensions representing the ecology of early adolescence to the model significantly reduced the variability in life satisfaction at both levels of analysis. Both personal (optimism) and all of the ecological assets significantly and positively predicted early adolescents’ life satisfaction. The results suggest the theoretical and practical utility of an assets approach for understanding life satisfaction in early adolescence.     

Small farms,smaller plots: land size,fragmentation, and productivity in Ethiopia

African agriculture is often dominated by smallholder farms composed of multiple plots. In policy circles it is often assumed that fragmentation coupled with small farm size is an impediment to increasing yields and thus decreasing poverty and food insecurity. There also exists an influential literature that explores the inverse relationship between farm size and yield. While there are many studies internationally, few have been conducted in Africa. Using an Ethiopian national survey, we explore the relationship between yield, farm size and fragmentation. We find an inverse relationship between farm size and yield, and a positive association between yield and land fragmentation.     

Empire in Question: Reading,Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism,Antoinette Burton

Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, by John L. Idol, Jr. and Melinda M. Ponder. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1999.

Regions of Identity: The Construction of America in Women's Fiction, 1885–1914, by Kate McCullough. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.

Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth‐Century Feminism, by Margaret H. McFadden. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 1999.

Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850–1930, by Martha J. Cutter. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.

Toni Morrison: A Critical Companion, by Missy Dehn Kubitschek. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Contentions Traditions: The Debate On Sati in Colonial India, by Lata Mani. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998.

The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subjects, by Rita S. Kranidis. New York: St. Martin's P, 1999.

Strange Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, by Carole G. Silver. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Performing Gender and Comedy: Theories, Texts and Contexts, edited by Shannon Hengen. Studies in Humor and Gender. 4. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1998.

Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women's Re‐Visions in Literature and Performance, edited by Marianne Novy. New York: St. Martin's P, 1999.

Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800, edited by Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.     

Michaela Soyer: A Dream Denied: Incarceration,Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

Families in multi-problem situations: Backgrounds,characteristics, and care services

The article reviews practical experiences and theoretical reflections from the Dutch child and youth care sector on the provision of care for families with multiple problems. Emphasis is laid upon the complex relations between socioeconomic and psychosocial problems, and subsequent issues that may arise in arranging child and youth care. Furthermore, the current state of discussion in program development for the target group in the Netherlands is introduced. The originally English concept of families with multiple problems has been used only modestly in German-speaking countries. This is remarkable from an international perspective, especially considering the re-emerging prominence of social policies that define families as a site of social work practice in English-speaking countries. We conclude that the themes, as derived from our review open up possibilities for further international comparisons, and can provide valuable reference for the transnational discourse about child and youth care services for families with multiple problems.