‘Between Slavery and Freedom’: the expulsion and enslavement of free women of colour in the US South before the Civil War

For free black women in the pre-Civil War American South, the status offered by ‘freedom’ was uncertain and malleable. The conceptualization of bondage and freedom as two diametrically opposed conditions therefore fails to make sense of the complexities of life for these women. Instead, notions of enslavement and freedom are better framed as a spectrum. This article develops this idea by exploring two of the ways in which some black women negotiated their status before the law—namely though petitioning for residency or for enslavement. While these petitions are atypical numerically, and often offer tantalizingly scant evidence, when used in conjunction with evidence from the US census, it becomes clear that these women were highly pragmatic. Prioritizing their spousal and broader familial affective relationships above their legal status, they rejected the often theoretical distinction between slavery and liberation. As such, the petitions can be used to reach broader conclusions about the attitudes of women who have left little written testimony.     

Expectations of government’s response to disaster

Citizens’ expectations about what government is capable of doing and what policies government officials intend to pursue can influence their decisions. After a disaster, for instance, expectations of government’s intent and capacity to assist in the rebuilding process will influence the rebuilding strategies that affected citizens adopt. This article develops a typology that categorizes citizens’ expectations of government response to disaster. We then deploy this typology to identify expectation patterns among residents and other private actors in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward communities who have returned following Katrina and explain how these expectations shape their preferred rebuilding strategy.     

Adolescent Sleep Barriers: Profiles within a Diverse Sample of Urban Youth

Most adolescents face numerous obstacles to good sleep, which may undermine healthy development. In this study, we used latent class analysis and identified four categories of sleep barriers in a diverse sample of 553 urban youth (57% female). The majority profile, School/Screens Barriers, reported the most homework and extracurricular barriers, along with high screen time. The Home/Screens Barriers class (i.e., high environmental noise, light, screen use) and the High/Social Barriers class (i.e., high barriers across domains, particularly social) reported the poorest sleep quality and highest depressive/anxiety symptoms. The Minimal Barriers class—predominately male, with low depressive/anxiety symptoms—reported more sleep per night. We discuss implications of our findings for targeting interventions to address poor adolescent sleep among specific clusters of students.     

Beheading the Hydra: Counterinsurgent Violence and Insurgent Attacks in Iraq

We evaluate the effectiveness of anti-insurgent violence as a means to suppress insurgency with micro-level data from the Iraq War. Our findings suggest that while violence against insurgents increases the incidence of future insurgent attacks, the intensity of this violence can significantly influence the outcome. Rather than shifting monotonically, the effect is actually curvilinear, first rising, and then contracting. We argue that at low to moderate levels, violence against insurgents creates opportunities for these groups to signal strength and resolve, which enables them to build momentum, heighten civilian cooperation, and diminish political support for counterinsurgency efforts in these forces’ home countries. The result is an escalation in insurgent attacks. However, at higher levels, this effect should plateau and taper off as insurgent attrition rises, and as civilian fears over personal safety displace grievances that might otherwise provoke counter-mobilization. Our empirical tests on data from the Iraq War, 2004–2009, demonstrate robust support for this argument.     

Urbanization,education, and the politics of space on the Tibetan Plateau

This article provides an introduction to a special collection of five articles showcasing the work of rising scholars in the geography and anthropology of Tibetan regions in China (Eveline Washul, Andrew Grant, Tsering Bum, Huatse Gyal and Duojie Zhaxi, published in Critical Asian Studies 50: 4 and Critical Asian Studies 51: 1). It contextualizes the authors’ contributions in the recent promotion of planned urbanization in Tibetan regions as the key to achieving the “Chinese Dream” under President Xi Jinping. The paper calls attention to these authors’ focus on Tibetan experiences of new urbanization policies and practices, as well as their less-appreciated entanglement with shifting education priorities. Providing brief summaries of each author’s case study and arguments, it points to the ways in which all five articles address the relationship between space and subjectivity, as well as the issue of constrained agency (versus simple notions of “choice”), in statist urbanization processes.     

Incarceration in the Household: Academic Outcomes of Adolescents with an Incarcerated Household Member

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, yet there is relatively little information on how the removal of these adults from households impacts the youth who are left behind. This study used a child-centered lens to examine the impact of incarceration on the school outcomes of youth who resided with a family member or family associate who was incarcerated prior to the youth’s 18th birthday. We used data from 11 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: Child and Young Adult (n?=?3,338, 53?% female). Initial analyses indicated that youth who experienced a household members’ incarceration evidenced more socioeconomic challenges, more frequent home adversities, and lower cognitive skills relative to youth who did not experience a household members’ incarceration. Results also revealed that youth who had experienced a household member’s incarceration were more likely to report extended absence from school and were less likely to graduate from high school relative to those youth who did not experience a household members’ incarceration. Counter to our hypotheses, results revealed the incarceration of an extended family member being in the household was the only relation significantly associated with worse school outcomes. Plausibly, families who allow non-immediate criminally involved individuals to reside in the household are experiencing a more pervasive chaotic home environment than those with a parent or sibling incarcerated. Our study suggests that efforts to address the needs of children with incarcerated parents need to be widened to those who experience the loss of any household member due to incarceration.     

Sustainable Colonization: Tar Sands as Resource Colonialism

Canada is one of the world’s largest petrostates, owing to large shale oil deposits, also known as tar sands, which can be found within its borders. In recent decades, as the price of crude oil has increased dramatically, corporations and the Canadian state have worked together to open the oil deposits in Northern Canada for extraction and transportation. Despite a stated commitment to environmental sustainability by the United States and Canadian governments, both have endorsed tar sands extraction and transport. Government and corporate entities have tried to reframe tar sands as “ethical oil,” yet all steps in the process involved pose tremendous ecological, social, economic, and cultural threats to First Nations communities in Canada, landowners in the Midwest and Texas, local ecosystems, and the global climate. This practice is part of a long-standing pattern of appropriating and using public and First Nations land for economic development. We argue that tar sands production on First Nations land is a practice of resource colonialism: the theft and appropriation of land belonging to indigenous people in order to access natural resources. By branding tar sands as “ethical oil” and labeling production companies as “sustainable,” the public and private sectors bound up in the extractive economy claim to provide an essential public service while misdirecting attention away from acts of colonialism that make these resources available. In this article, we examine the ways in which corporate and state entities use the discourse of sustainability as a cover for continued resource colonialism.     

Population drug use in Australia: a wastewater analysis

Accurate information on drug use in communities is essential if health, social and economic harms associated with illicit drug use are to be addressed efficiently. In most countries population drug use is estimated indirectly via surveys, medical presentations and police and custom seizures. All of these methods have at least some problems due to bias, small samples and/or long time delays between collecting the information and analysing the results. Recently the direct quantification of drug residues in wastewater has shown promise as a means of monitoring drug use in defined geographical areas. In this study we measured 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), methamphetamine and benzoylecgonine in sewage inflows in metropolitan and regional areas of Australia and compared these data with published European data. Cocaine use was small compared to European cities (p<0.001) but was compensated for by much greater consumption of methamphetamine (p<0.001) and MDMA (p<0.05). MDMA was more popular in regional areas (p<0.05) whereas methamphetamine and cocaine were mainly consumed in the city (p<0.05). Greater than 5-fold increases in MDMA use were detected on weekends (p<0.001). This approach has the potential to improve our understanding of drug use in populations and should be further developed to improve prevention and treatment programs.