Community‐Based Participatory Research as a Tool for Policy Change: A Case Study of the Southern California Environmental Justice Collaborative

In 2000, a regional rule governing maximum individual cancer risk from stationary facilities in Southern California was dramatically altered, reducing allowable risk levels by 75%. This article uses a case study approach to explore the role of a community‐based participatory research (CBPR) partnership, the Southern California Environmental Justice Collaborative, in producing research and helping spearhead policy advocacy leading to this policy change. It also highlights the role of the collaborative in helping to change the framing of the issue from individual to cumulative risk assessment, so that the regulatory agencies began to reflect this broader thinking in their policymaking. The collaborative's structure and methodology, regional focus, relationships with key decision makers, and its reputation as an important source of both credible science and “people power” were seen as contributing to its effectiveness. The role of contextual factors including a recovering and more regulation‐friendly economy also is highlighted, as are key barriers faced. Implications for other community–academic partnerships working to address regional and statewide public policy are discussed.     

Initial Development of a New Measure of Minor Stress for Adolescents: The Adolescent Minor Stress Inventory

The primary aim of this study was to develop, standardize, and establish initial reliability and validity for the Adolescent Minor Stress Inventory (AMSI), a new measure of minor stress for adolescents. The AMSI improves upon existing adolescent stress measures in a number of important ways in that it does not emphasize school or classroom-based stressors, and includes a method of adjusting for the over- and underreporting of stress. In this investigation, the AMSI was mailed to 1865 adolescents aged 13–17 from which we obtained 720 (39%) usable surveys. Standardized scoring was developed and the results provide initial data supporting the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the AMSI. The AMSI has potential application both in clinical and research settings, particularly during times when school is not in session or with adolescents who do not regularly attend school.Assistant Professor, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida. Received PhD in Clinical Psychology from Louisiana State University in 1999. Research interests include psychological stress and nicotine dependence treatment in adolescents and young adults.Professor Emeritus, Division of Biostatistics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester MN. Received MS in Statistics from Iowa State University in 1971. Research interests include survey research, nicotine dependence treatment, and biostatistics.Data Analyst, Division of Biostatistics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Received BS in Applied Statistics from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2000. Research interests include nicotine dependence and survey methods.Associate Professor, Nicotine Dependence Program, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Received PhD in Clinical Psychology from University of California, San Diego in 1996. Research interests include nicotine dependence in adolescents.Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Received PhD in Clinical Psychology from University of North Dakota in 1980. Research interests include impact of trauma.Statistician, Division of Biostatistics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Received MS in Applied Mathmatics from University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1999. Research interests include nicotine dependence.Professor, Nicotine Dependence Center, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Received MD from University of Louisville in 1970. Research interest in area of tobacco dependence.     

The burden of (homo)sexual identity in Singapore

This article explores issues that arise out of the confluence of homosexual rights as human rights in the context of the Southeast Asian city‐state of Singapore. The refusal of the Government of Singapore in 1997 to register the nascent, indigenous, gay, lesbian and bisexual group ‘People Like Us’, underscores the position Singapore has taken in relation to the wider public discourse about the difference between Singaporean (Asian) values and those held by the West. The battle of values as explicated by the Peoples Action Party,¹ has relied heavily on a reverse ‘orientalism’, indeed an ‘occidentalism’, which, laden with references to the colonialism, perceived relative economic and moral decline and imperialism of the West in contrast to the majestic rise of the material success of post‐colonial Singapore, has deployed the issue of homosexuality as a defining aspect of Western culture and society, thereby sustaining an imagined state where the purity of family life is entrenched and safe. Homosexual activity, although not persecuted endemically, and despite its social and cultural presence, is illegal in Singapore, carefully monitored and contained. Homosexual identity, particularly in terms of the gay or lesbian identified person, is also perceived to be a Western construct and import, and is officially demonized to assist in the formation of a barrier between the so‐called East and West. In this sense, homosexuality is part of an imagined border where cultural and social mores are specifically defined and positioned in terms of difference.     

Community,identity, orientation: sexuality,gender and rights in ASEAN

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) escalated its community building project significantly over the last decade, culminating in the launch of a reformed and substantially integrated ASEAN Community at the end of 2015. This article considers what might follow from this newly reformed and rhetorically people-focused version of ASEAN for matters of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE). In claiming to be people-oriented and people-centred, and by developing a regional rights regime, ASEAN opens itself to standards by which it can be measured and held to account. We critically review ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together, and consider civil society's response, focusing on the critique offered by the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus, the peak civil society organisation for ASEAN SOGIE matters. We focus on three themes: identity, visibility politics, and rights. We argue that while ASEAN falls short of its own rhetorical standards, these same standards support a politics which keeps rights in contestation, enabling civil society to push for accountability to international standards, and a more democratic politics.     

Who Needs [Sex] When You Can Have [Gender]? Conflicting Discourses on Gender at Beijing

‘Gender’, understood as the social construction of sex, is a key concept for feminists working at the interface of theory and policy. This article examines challenges to the concept which emerged from different groups at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, September 1995, an important arena for struggles over feminist public policies. The first half of the article explores contradictory uses of the concept in the field of gender and development. Viewpoints from some southern activist women at the NGO Forum of the Beijing Conference are presented. Some of them argued that the way ‘gender’ has been deployed in development institutions has led to a depoliticization of the term, where feminist policy ambitions are sacrificed to the imperative of ease of institutionalization. ‘Gender’ becomes a synonym for ‘women’, rather than a form of shorthand for gender difference and conflict and the project of transformation in gender relations. ‘Gender sensitivity’ can be interpreted by non-feminists as encouragement to use gender-disaggregated statistics for development planning, but without consideration of relational aspects of gender, of power and ideology, and of how patterns of subordination are reproduced. A completely different attack on ‘gender’ came from right-wing groups and was battled out over the text of the Platform for Action agreed at the official conference. Six months prior to the conference, conservative groups had tried to bracket for possible removal the term ‘gender’ in this document, out of opposition to the notion of socially constructed, and hence mutable, gender identity. Conservative views on gender as the ‘deconstruction of woman’ are discussed here. The article points out certain contradictions and inconsistencies in feminist thinking on gender which are raised by the conservative backlash attack on feminism and the term ‘gender’.