Citizen aid,social media and brokerage after disaster

Abstract

In a crisis, aid providers deliver humanitarian relief across a hierarchy of organisations where influence and capacity map to their scale of operations. On the front lines of crises, ‘citizen aid’ is what small, local and informal groups offer to fellow citizens. These citizen aid groups are well-networked in place and tend to work through longstanding personal relationships. In the Philippines, citizen aid groups frequently support their activities by documenting their work with photos of beneficiaries to solicit donations from within the country and around the world across social media platforms. This paper builds on recent debates on brokerage through a case study of citizen aid in the relief effort after Typhoon Haiyan (2013–2017). Using this case-study approach, we demonstrate how social media has produced novel forms of brokerage shaped by circulating images online. This new kind of brokerage involves a layered network of brokers that both shapes citizen aid efforts and creates new channels for localising aid, enhancing the control of citizen groups in the Global South over aid.     

Introduction: International Perspectives on Health Policy

This special issue of Law & Policy examines legal, bioethical, and social science perspectives on the critical problems and choices arising from the rapid changes in the health care systems throughout the industrialized world. Advances in medical technology, the rising costs of health care, and the aging of the industrial populations have made health care a crucible for many of the broader policy concerns facing the world in the new millennium. The purpose of the special issue was for these issues to be addressed in a multidisciplinary forum, to add to the broader spectrum of socio–legal scholarship. Scholars from diverse countries examined a variety of issues from ethical, social science, and clinical perspectives.     

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN SAME‐GENDER RELATIONSHIPS

Physical violence occurs in 11–12% of same‐gender couples, which suggests that domestic violence is an abuse of power that can happen in any type of intimate relationship, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Although incidents of violence occur at the same rate in same‐gender couples and cross‐gender couples, the violence appears to be milder in same‐gender couples and it is unclear what percentage of same‐gender violence should be characterized as abuse or intimate terrorism. Same‐gender victims also suffer from the additional stress of severe isolation and the abuser's threats to expose the victim's sexual orientation in a hostile manner.     

The Statecraft Effect: Assessment,Attitudes, and Academic Honesty

Abstract

This article uses a multimethod research design to compare Statecraft to non-Statecraft assignments and courses along three dimensions: student engagement, political attitudes, and academic honesty. The results indicate that Statecraft increased student engagement and academic honesty. In terms of political attitudes, students generally remained on the left side of the political spectrum, but shifted toward the right and became more hawkish by the end of a semester. Changes in attitude are more strongly associated not with playing Statecraft, but taking a political science class by the coauthor, or some other external variable. Statecraft, however, did reduce support for pacifism.     

Bolivia's soy complex: the development of ‘productive exclusion’

A significant transition is underway in Bolivia where both domestic and foreign capital are monopolizing commercial agriculture and leading a highly mechanized, capital-intensive production model which has considerably diminished the need for labour. This paper explores mechanisms and processes of ‘productive exclusion’ in the soy-producing zones of Santa Cruz in relation to the expansion, concentration and mechanization of the ‘soy complex’. We provide an analysis of how the agrarian structure has developed since soy was adopted – from ‘putting land into production’ to ‘expanding the agricultural frontier’ and ‘controlling the agro-industrial chain’. We explore how and the extent to which the penetration of new capital is leading to new processes of agrarian change which exclude the rural majority from accessing the means of production. While a process of ‘foreignization’ of land began to take shape in the early 1990s, new processes of capital accumulation are eroding the ability of small farmers to engage in productive activity, potentially leading to ‘surplus’ populations no longer needed for capital accumulation.     

The political economy of sugarcane flexing: initial insights from Brazil,Southern Africa and Cambodia

In the context of rising resource demand, agricultural crops such as sugarcane are being promoted for their multiple uses in different commodity markets and as alternatives to fossil fuel equivalents (i.e. as a source of biofuel, bioelectricity and bioplastic). These commodities are also produced on an increasingly flexible basis, as sugarcane mills respond to price signals and switch between different crop uses. This paper offers a preliminary exploration into the politics of this latest development in the capitalist industrialization of agriculture. It does so by focusing primarily on flexing in Brazil and highlighting the role of the state in both creating markets for non-food products that sugarcane mills can now switch between and managing the tensions that arise from this. These tensions have concerned consumer prices for fuel, control of distribution infrastructure and conditions of land conversion, each prompting political interventions by the state. The paper then suggests how this same process is taking place, albeit shaped by different contexts, in Southern Africa and Cambodia. It concludes with some key questions for further research: is flexing eroding the distinction between crop regimes? How do primary processors decide what their product mix will be? And on what basis do state actors support flexing between agricultural products and investments in so-called bio-refineries?     

The Dynamics of Euphemisation in Legal Language: An Analysis of Legal Terms Referring to People with Disabilities Used in Poland and Spain

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - Socio-political developments can result in a change of perception of people with disabilities...