Resisting media marginalisation: Black women’s digital content and collectivity

ABSTRACT

Based on analysis of 23 interviews, this paper examines how social media and online content is implicated in the collective, resistant and transnational media experiences of Black women in Britain. It contributes to scholarship concerning race and the virtual marketplace by examining tensions between the countercultural, communal and commercial qualities of Black women’s online experiences. Drawing upon theorising of the oppositional spectator gaze of Black women, and narratives of technology consumption, we unpack how Black women’s digital activity can enable them to navigate the hegemony of US content, their marginalisation in British mass-media, and situate them within a Black experience that transcends Britain’s borders. Our work illustrates how Black women’s online encounters can be a source of resistance, Black digital commentary and community, as well as being subject to corporate co-optation. We conceptualise such online experiences as being shaped by transnational dimensions of the relationship between race, media and markets.     

Of waste facility siting and relational geographies of place: Peri-urban landfills,community resistance and the politics of land control in Ghana

The siting of landfills in peri-urban spaces is seen as both a solution to land scarcity in inner cities and a development opportunity for rural hinterlands. Despite the widespread reliance on landfills for managing urban waste in Ghana, their operation tends to ignite land use conflicts at different scales. However, existing studies on the drivers of these conflicts have mostly failed to situate local resistance within the broader political economy of land control. Drawing on a longstanding landfill conflict in northern Ghana, this contribution shows how under the guise of landfills, the land question in peri-urban spaces is contested. While at face value the landfill struggle appears to be fuelled by the associated poor environmental conditions and health risks of waste from the inner city, our findings reveal the role of diverse incongruities including: (i) the crafty tactics deployed by state institutions in land acquisition for 'public interest', (ii) payment of unrealistic consideration, and (iii) diversion of designated public lands to undeclared uses. Amid these contestations, the notion of territorial belonging by peri-urban communities often runs counter to statutory ordering by the government who hold such hitherto private lands for ‘public interest’. Powerful local actors such as chiefs hide behind community agitations with hopes of controlling land if such contestations materialize. These dynamics have ramifications for the achievement of the New Urban Agenda of Habitat III, which focuses on secondary cities. A sustainable resolution of landfill-related conflicts must therefore begin with addressing the land question in peri-urban spaces.     

Manufacturing Resistance: Rationalizing the Irrationality of Managerial Control on the Shop Floor in a US Medical Electronics Factory

Juravich (1985) asserts that the organization of US industrial manufacturing is irrational as well as appearing chaotic from the workers’ viewpoint because of management’s refusal to integrate the workers’ knowledge into the production process. Because of this, Juravich argues, if and when the workers’ knowledge is integrated into the production system, the workers no longer will experience “chaos on the shop floor.” Extending Devinatz’s (1993) analysis in response to Juravich, this article argues that workers use resistance as a logical strategy for rationalizing what they perceive to be the irrationality of the shop floor. Utilizing Kusterer’s (1978) work, I argue that the use of many, but not all, resistance strategies constitutes a type of “survival knowledge” acquired and used by workers in response to managerial control. I maintain that these strategies constitute a special type of workplace resistance which I refer to as “pure and simple resistance.”     

外资并购国有企业过程中的动阻力分析

在全球经济一体化趋势和中国加入WTO的背景下,外资并购中国国有企业已经成为外商直接投资(FDI)的热点,但外资并购国有企业的过程是一个相当复杂的过程,文章对这一过程进行深入分析,探索了外资并购国有企业过程中复杂性存在的原因,分析了外资并购国有企业过程中存在的动力因素和阻力因素,并提出了基于系统复杂性分析的建议。     

关于山区变电站接地改造工程设计的探讨

文章通过对某变电站接地电阻偏高的原因进行探讨,并对山区变电站在接地上普遍存在的土壤电阻率高、可用场地小、地势险峻、地形复杂等困难因素进行了分析。依据典型变电站在接地改造中取得的成功经验,提出了利用深井接地、电解离子接地体,并添加长效降阻剂降阻等复合降阻措施对山区变电站进行接地设计和降阻改造的方法。     

糖脂消对胰岛素抵抗高血压大鼠基因表达谱的影响

目的:利用基因芯片技术探讨糖脂消对胰岛素抵抗高血压大鼠基因表达谱的变化,研究糖脂消治疗胰岛素抵抗高血压的作用机制。方法:用高果糖饲料诱发SD大鼠胰岛素抵抗模型,给予糖脂消口服后,用基因芯片分别检测高果糖组、治疗组,计算机软件分析后,观察基因表达的变化。结果:治疗组表达差异的基因有95条,新基因有23条,已知基因34条。结论:糖脂消可以改变其基因表达谱,为进一步探讨糖脂消治疗作用创造了条件。     

沿黄高扬程电力提灌泵站水泵焊接式叶轮试验研究

本文为逐步解决沿黄地区大中型高扬程电力提水泵站以24SH-19型单级双吸式离心泵为重点对象,研究其叶轮焊接工艺可行性来解决影响着水泵的扬程、出水量、效率、抗汽蚀与抗磨性等问题所做的一项试验研究。     

Public accountability: reforms and resistance in social housing

The paper illustrates and discusses the changing nature of public accountability relations in public services that are transferred to a mutual organization. The paper contributes to the literature that studies resistance to the neo-liberal restructuring process, highlighting civil society campaigns as important actors. A social housing case study in Britain is developed, combining a critical realist and dialogical influenced analysis. The case study identifies the role of private finance, illustrating tensions between democratic-styled and NGO-styled public accountability relations. A conclusion that housing mutuals are in danger of being apologia for private capitalism is established.     

Dischord and Dissonance in the Leisure Studies Polyphony: A Response to Fox and Klaiber

This study examines females' participation in the male-dominated sport of motorcycling. Group interviews with female motorcyclists explore the meaning of this leisure activity in their lives and various factors that facilitate their participation. A grounded-theory approach reveals five sources of empowerment that women gain by participating in motorcycling. This study demonstrates the role facilitators play in creating and cultivating sources of empowerment. It also exposes how feelings of guilt, vulnerability, and concern about societal images can undermine women's feelings of empowerment. “Girl power” represents women's attempts to redefine femininity in a way that embraces the positive aspects of both femininity and masculinity and resists negative stereotypes that restrict women's choices of leisure pursuits.     

Model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different antibiotics in the management of acute bacterial exacerbations of chronic bronchitis in Germany

Summary

This study investigated the primary cost-drivers and determinants of the cost-effectiveness of antibacterial treatment of acute bacterial exacerbations of chronic bronchitis (ABECB) in Germany. It assessed the health care costs and consequences related to treatment initiated in the community using macrolides, fluoroquinolones, penicillins, and cephalosporins. Patients were categorised according to disease severity. Decision analysis was used to consider the clinical and economic consequences of various treatment options from first-line treatment initiated by a primary care physician in the community until success or failure after third-line treatment in hospital.

The key cost drivers were the clinical success/failure rates of first-line treatment and the cost per day of hospitalisation. Antibiotics with the cheapest purchase price are not necessarily the most cost-effective first-line treatment. In more severe ABECB, drug acquisition costs are only a small proportion of the total healthcare costs because the extra costs associated with treatment failure are much greater than the acquisition costs of the first-line antibiotics. Thus the most cost-effective first-line treatment is one which results in consistently high clinical effectiveness due to its broad spectrum of activity, low rate of bacterial resistance, and high patient compliance. Of the antibiotics considered, none was consistently found to be the most cost-effective treatment across the full range of scenarios investigated. However, the fluoroquinolones and cephalosporins were generally more cost-effective than the macrolides and penicillins.