The end of alternatives? Capitalist transformation,rural activism and the politics of possibility in China†

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the politics of possibility for rural activism in reform era China. By periodizing rural reforms from 1990, we explore the political-economic changes that have coalesced in the reform era, and how these changes condition forms and possibilities of activism. We argue that the current modernization–urbanization drive that emerged around 2008 is foreclosing opportunities for the pro-peasant cooperative forms that New Rural Reconstruction activists imagined earlier in the decade. Instead, as the process of capitalist agrarian change deepens in the countryside, food- and farming-related activism now resembles the state’s focus on markets and consumption, to the detriment of addressing social relations of production. Without a focus on distributional politics and power, this shift has the potential to further entrench existing inequalities within and across rural and urban spaces. The contextual work undertaken in this paper is currently absent from the emerging literature on China’s agrifood transformations.     

Parental Involvement and Adolescent Academic Outcomes: Exploring Differences in Beneficial Strategies across Racial/Ethnic Groups

Gaps in educational outcomes between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups persist in the United States, and parental involvement is often cited as an important avenue for improving outcomes among racially/ethnically diverse adolescents. This study utilized data from the Education Longitudinal Study 2002–2013 (56% female, N?=?4429), which followed 10th-graders through high school and ten years post-high school, to examine the links between parental involvement strategies and academic outcomes (grade point average and educational attainment). Participants included white, African American, and Hispanic/Latino adolescents from low-SES families. This study used recursive partitioning, a novel analytic strategy used for exploring higher-order interactions and non-linear associations among factors (e.g., parental educational involvement strategies) to predict an outcome (e.g., grade point average or educational attainment) through step-wise partitioning. The results showed that the combination of greater academic socialization and school-based involvement was beneficial for all adolescents’ grade point average, whereas the combination of home-based involvement with academic socialization and school-based involvement yielded mixed results. Greater academic socialization and home-based involvement appeared beneficial for educational attainment among African American and Hispanic/Latino adolescents, but not white adolescents. More home-based involvement and less academic socialization were associated with less educational attainment for white adolescents. Overall, the findings showed different combinations of parental educational involvement strategies were beneficial for adolescents across racial/ethnic groups, which may have implications for practice and policy.     

Safe Schools? Transgender Youth’s School Experiences and Perceptions of School Climate

The magnitude of gender identity-related disparities in school-based outcomes is unknown because of a lack of representative studies that include measures of gender identity. By utilizing a representative sample generalizable to a broader population, this study elucidates the size of gender identity-related disparities, independent of sexual orientation, in school experiences associated with school connectedness and perceptions of school climate. Additionally, the inclusion of and comparison to results of a large non-representative sample allows for more direct comparisons to previous studies of the school experiences of transgender youth. The analyses in this study primarily draw on a sample of 31,896 youth representative of the middle and high school population in California who participated in the 2013–2015 California Student Survey (a subsample of the California Healthy Kids Survey, which includes the largest known sample of transgender youth). Over half the sample identified their sex as female (51.3%), and 398 identified as transgender (1.0%). The sample was racially and ethnically diverse: 30.7% identified as multiracial, 33.0% as White, 11.1% as Asian, 7.4% as Black, and 52.9% as Hispanic. Findings from multilevel analyses show that relative to non-transgender youth, transgender youth were more likely to be truant from school, to experience victimization and bias-based bullying, and to report more negative perceptions of school climate, though did not differ in self-reported grades. The findings have implications for improving school policies and practices to create safer and more supportive school climates for all youth.     

Legitimising Victories: Electoral Authoritarian Control in Russia’s Gubernatorial Elections

We explore the evolution of the Kremlin’s election control strategy in response to the reintroduction of gubernatorial elections in 2012. Our analysis focuses on the evolution of four tools used to engineer electoral competition: auxiliary institutions, subnational punishment regimes, ballot construction, and turnout manipulation. We argue that election managers deploy these mechanisms to maximise victories for state-sponsored candidates while minimising the possibility for post-election protest. The analysis demonstrates that electoral manipulation presents conflicting incentives for the Kremlin and its regional officials. It also shows the critical role that Russia’s systemic opposition plays in the electoral management system and regime stability.     

Social entrepreneurship as intervention: Findings from a venture development program for marginalized youth

Leadership and career readiness are important goals for youth development. Entrepreneurship has recently been considered as a potential intervention to support these aims. This study examined a venture development program for low-income youth through participant surveys (n?=?57) and a comparison group (n?=?72). Findings from structural equation modeling indicate relationships between the program and project management skills, which in turn was associated with youth leadership. Findings also showed relationships between the program and financial literacy, which was associated with an increase in future orientation. This study shows early evidence of entrepreneurship and venture creation as mechanisms to support marginalized youth.     

Human Rights in the United States: The Unfinished Story of Political Prisoners and Cointelpro

For many years, black nationalists have tried to reopen the investigation into the FBI's COINTELPRO (COunter-INTELligence PROgram), which served to disrupt and destroy the black liberation movement and other progressive movements in the US. On September 14, 2000 in Washington, DC, Congressional Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) convened a "brain trust" on this subject as part of the Congressional Black Caucus' Legislative Conference, a yearly series of forums and panel discussions on issues of importance to the communities represented by the Caucus. The title of the McKinney panel was "Human Rights in the United States: The Unfinished Story of Political Prisoners/Victims of COINTELPRO." Six panelists presented information on the history of COINTELPRO and its relevance to the cases of the approximately 100 + political prisoners in US custody at this moment. Some of these prisoners have served 30 or more years; all have exceedingly long sentences. While the US government denies that it holds any political prisoners, the facts of the cases—and the connection of many cases to COINTELPRO operations—indicate otherwise. Several current and past political prisoners, most notably Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom) and Dr. Mutulu Shakur, along with released political prisoner Herman Ferguson, have consistently urged that the illegalities committed under COINTELPRO be examined further, and that compensation be made to the victims of these acts. The panel presentations excerpted below all point to the necessity of such an examination—and of releasing all of the US-held political prisoners in order to redress the crimes committed against progressive political movements under the aegis of COINTELPRO and other FBI counterintelligence programs. The significance of this issue to the community was illustrated by the tremendous crowd that gathered and participated in the discussion following the panel.     

Assessment of public attitudes towards sex offenders in an Australian population

Public attitudes towards sex offenders are believed to play a key role in the development of legislation and public policy designed to manage the risks posed by known sex offenders who live in the community. There have, however, been few previous attempts to validate methods by which public attitudes can be measured. The current study aims to address this issue by establishing the factor structure of the Community Attitudes Towards Sex Offenders (CATSO) scale with an Australian community sample and examine the extent to which demographic variables and support for sex offender management policies influence these attitudes. A sample of 552 participants recruited through online social media sites completed the CATSO as well as a number of items developed by the researchers designed to assess individuals' support for specific sex offender policies. Results of an exploratory factor analysis suggested the presence of four distinct factors which were labelled ‘social tendencies’, ‘treatment and punishment’, ‘crime characteristics’ and ‘sexual behaviour’. Individuals with higher levels of educational attainment rated sex offenders less negatively than those with lower educational attainment, while those who reported being supportive of community notification reported more negative attitudes towards sex offenders.     

ASSESSING OFFENDER READINESS TO CHANGE PROBLEMS WITH ANGER

It is widely acknowledged that offender rehabilitation outcomes can be improved by attending to responsivity issues, including the readiness and motivation of offenders to undertake and engage in treatment. The measurement of responsivity, readiness and motivation in offenders, however, has received relatively little research attention. In this paper we focus on anger management programmes and evaluate the utility and psychometric properties of a measure of stages of change in relation to changing anger – the Anger Readiness to Change Questionnaire (ARCQ). Using data from a large sample of offenders undergoing anger management interventions, we investigated the construct validity, convergent validity and predictive validity of the ARCQ. We conclude the ARCQ may have utility as a measure for selecting offenders who are suitable for anger management interventions.     

Considering the Orange legacy: patterns of political participation in the Euromaidan Revolution

The proximity of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004) andEuromaidan Revolution (2014) provides an opportunity to considerwhy some individuals remain active across protest cycles whileothers defect. Many social movement scholars explain differentialparticipation in terms of micro-structural, biographical, or cognitivefactors. Others rely on rational choice theories of collective actionbased on coordination. Testing competing explanations arecomplicated because the variables included in structural andagency-based models are often the same, although the underlyingcausal mechanisms are different. In this article, I argue that thekey to understanding the role of agency and structure in protestparticipation is to relax strong assumptions about the unified natureof society and consider the multiple paths to participation. Thisapproach suggests that both structural and agency-based causalmechanisms can influence political engagement depending onindividual experiences, identities, and perceptions of events.