Journal articles on the topic 'Youth with social disabilities – united states – case studies'

Optimal child development is supported by services, policies, a social determinants of health (SDOH) frame, and meaningful participation (as defined by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health–Children and Youth [ICF-CY]). This scoping review describes the social determinants that may affect the participation of young children aged 0 to 3 years with developmental disabilities (DD) in the United States. Scoping review of studies including U.S. children with DD aged 0 to 3 years, from 2000 to 2016, were used. 5/979 studies met inclusion criteria. Two researchers independently coded studies to align them with both ICF-CY and SDOH. Studies found determinants of participation stemming from the child (e.g., individual) and multiple contexts: immediate, community, and policy. The emergent literature continues to primarily focus on child determinants but suggests participation of young children with DD is affected by social determinants stemming from the community and policy contexts. The literature underrepresents children from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds.

Summary Numerous research studies have addressed the experiences and outcomes of youth transitioning out of foster care; however, far fewer have addressed how to overcome the challenge of locating and retaining research participants from this population. This article contributes to the field by highlighting effective approaches to staying connected with (i.e., recruiting, relocating, and retaining) youth participants in longitudinal research studies. Two hundred ninety-four youth in the Southeastern United States participated in a longitudinal research study about their experiences as they transitioned out of foster care. Two years later, 80% of eligible participants from the baseline population ( n = 223) chose to participate in the second wave of data collection. Findings Case examples are presented to illustrate the practical applications of youth-centered and person-centered approaches to participant recruitment, relocation, and retention and how engaging with youth on a case by case basis can minimize attrition rates and maintain participant interest in the study. Application We affirm the importance of encouraging youth involvement in all phases of the research process, highlight the methodological approaches used to recruit, relocate, and retain participants, and discuss the value of establishing and maintaining meaningful connections with youth participants involved in longitudinal research.

Excessive school absence is a major educational and social problem in the United States, yet very little is known about its etiology or how to prevent or ameliorate it. This paper reports results from a series of related studies conducted in seven Boston middle schools (grades 6, 7, and 8) to test the hypotheses that (1) health problems and unmet health needs are major characteristics distinguishing excessively absent students from regular attenders and (2) that a health-oriented approach using medically mediated interventions is effective in reducing absences among excessively absent students. There were no significant differences between regular attenders and excessively absent students on multiple measures of student and family health status, health habits, and health service utilization patterns in a casecontrol study. The intervention program was not associated with a significant decrease in absence school-wide or for participating students. We conclude that demographic and educational characteristics of students exert a greater effect on their behavior in regard to absence from school than do health status or receipt of health services and that a health-oriented approach, such as the one used here, will not have a major impact on what remains one of the most profound educational and social problems involving children in the United States today.

Social disability is a process or event that significantly disrupts, paralyzes, or prevents the formation and/or sustaining of interpersonal social relations required for meeting human needs. When prolonged, the ‘disabling’ of essential human interrelationships can have a destructive impact. This is especially true in communities where people are highly interdependent and where individuals living with disabilities rely upon social relationships to prevent isolation and decline in overall wellbeing. Meanwhile, disaster response systems have developed to first rescue or protect individuals’ ‘bare life’ and immediate, bodily needs. We argue that these systems, intended to mitigate disaster, can exacerbate social disability as a kind of collateral damage. We explore this problem as it unfolded amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in two research sites: one located in rural, northern Scotland and another located in rural, Midwestern United States. The Scottish research focuses on experiences, causes and risks of social disability for adults living with disabilities within a small rural community, while the U.S. research focuses on emergence of and resistance to social disability among residents of a continuing care retirement community for 55+ aged adults. We conclude with implications and recommendations for disaster intervention and future research.

This special issue features carefully selected case studies that document and analyze the experiences of Latino youth and young adults as they struggle for inclusion in the United States. Articles draw from qualitative research with Latinos/as who reside in different regions of the United States, hail from or trace their origins to various countries, and embody distinct experiences of incorporation and inclusion. Special emphasis is placed on the 1.5 generation, young people who immigrated to the US as young children but have spent the majority of their lives there—some of whom hold temporary protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. This introduction presents a conceptual framework for analyzing the experiences of Latino youth and young adults. We argue for an approach that centers intersecting social locations of youth and the specificity of place for understanding the dynamics and implications of Latino youth’s struggles for inclusion in the 21st century.

Objective: Youth violence recidivism remains a significant public health crisis in the United States. Violence prevention is a requirement of all trauma centers, yet little is known about the effectiveness of these programs. Therefore, this systematic review summarizes the effectiveness of trauma center–based youth violence prevention programs. Methods: A systematic review of articles from MEDLINE, CINAHL, and PsychINFO databases was performed to identify eligible control trials or observational studies. Included studies were from 1970 to 2013, describing and evaluating an intervention, were trauma center based, and targeted youth injured by violence (tertiary prevention). The social ecological model provided the guiding framework, and findings are summarized qualitatively. Results: Ten studies met eligibility requirements. Case management and brief intervention were the primary strategies, and 90% of the studies showed some improvement in one or more outcome measures. These results held across both social ecological level and setting: both emergency department and inpatient unit settings. Conclusions: Brief intervention and case management are frequent and potentially effective trauma center–based violence prevention interventions. Case management initiated as an inpatient and continued beyond discharge was the most frequently used intervention and was associated with reduced rearrest or reinjury rates. Further research is needed, specifically longitudinal studies using experimental designs with high program fidelity incorporating uniform direct outcome measures. However, this review provides initial evidence that trauma centers can intervene with the highest of risk patients and break the youth violence recidivism cycle.

Background: Summer camps are perhaps the most expansive outdoor experiential education (OEE) context in the United States today; yet, camp participants are overwhelmingly White and able-bodied, with most coming from middle- to upper-income earning families. Purpose: In response to Warren, Roberts, Breunig, and Alvarez’s question “What will it take before OEE programs become genuinely accessible to all who want to participate?” (p. 98), we explore issues of access, equity, and inclusion within the institution of camp. Methodology/Approach: We present a historical review followed by three case studies that demonstrate how some camps address access, equity, and inclusion in the past and today. Findings/Conclusions: Camps in the United States have shaped young people for over a century through powerful socializing factors, but there is much to be done to ensure camps are truly accessible and inclusive for all. Implications: Our case studies demonstrate specific ways camps can address appropriation of Native American culture and ensure inclusion of transgender youth and youth without the resources necessary to attend camp. We also discuss ways to promote equity across social identities and through environmental justice.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of inclusive postmodern visual arts education for students with emotional disabilities (ED) in the area of social interaction development. This research focuses on the ability of students to build art skills and change social interaction skills through constructivist pedagogical approaches. Mixed-methods case studies were implemented over a period of two semesters with three students, three teachers and two high schools in the United States. Pedagogical approaches that emphasized student interaction and personal choice allowed students to effectively interact with peers and led to student engagement. The findings from this study indicate that over time the students in visual arts developed fluency and skills in artmaking, which led to confidence in their work and better peer relationships.

Many localities across the United States are pursuing efforts to improve outcomes for children and youth through place-based, cross-sector collaborations among education, business, government, philanthropy, and social services agencies. In this article, we examine these place-based initiatives, investigating how they attempt to ameliorate educational inequity and how they might reflect the broader sociological vision of James S. Coleman. We draw from publicly available information on a set of 182 cross-sector collaborations across the United States and from in-depth case studies of collaborations in Buffalo, New York; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Portland/Multnomah County, Oregon. We find evidence that in some ways, cross-sector collaborations contribute to improving schools, offer interventions and resources to support families and communities, and attempt to revitalize localities with strong norms and social ties to support education and equity. However, these outcomes are not yet fully formed, widespread, or guaranteed to last over time.

During the early 2010s, undocumented youth activists were leading the charge to gain congressional support for the federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, which sought to provide a pathway to citizenship for eligible undocumented youth in the United States. Led primarily by Latino college students and graduates, this movement became very attentive to and inclusive of the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer members. Drawing on semi-structured interviews of Latino lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer undocumented youth and other documentary evidence, this article demonstrates how activists can deploy intersectionality as a collective action frame that serves multiple purposes. Specifically, intersectionality can function as: (1) a diagnostic frame to help activists make sense of their own multiply-marginalized identities; (2) a motivational frame to inspire action; and (3) a prognostic frame that guides how activists build inclusive organizations and bridge social movements. We show how this frame guided the ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and other undocumented activists interpreted their own life experiences, prompted them to build inclusive organizations, and broadened the scope of their movement. We conclude by arguing that activists have the potential to adopt intersectionality as a master frame that strengthens ties among various movements mobilizing marginalized populations.

Using multilevel modeling, this study sought to understand the factors affecting the behaviour of school students at the age of pre-adolescence. The study included 1977 pre-adolescents (1031 boys, 946 girls) from middle schools (Grades 4–7) in suburban areas of the United States from the Department of Children and Family (DCF) 2014 National Child and Youth Panel Survey database. The individual and environmental effects of significant factors affecting pre-adolescent behavior were studied using multilevel models. Among the characteristics linked to emotional-behavioral difficulties were BMI, study tendency, and socioeconomic status. Emotional-behavioral disorders were linked to connections with teachers, according to more studies. The school, family, friends, community, and media all negatively affect students' conduct. As a result, similar educational institutions should teach students social and emotional skills. This may help reduce student disruption. Individual and environmental factors influence pre-adolescents' emotional-behavioral issues. Preventing emotional-behavioral issues require addressing both the environment in which preadolescents live and their unique traits.

Community psychology originated as a discipline designed to reduce societal inequities and promote social justice. The field’s development, however, coincides with the proliferation of neoliberal policies and ideology that run counter to many of the aims of community psychology. In light of the contemporary socio-political landscape, this paper advances a liberatory ethics of care model as a path forward for community psychologists interested in societal transformation. We illustrate liberatory care as a guide for social change via case studies of two different groups involved in transformation-oriented projects to improve the well-being of their communities (i.e., Latinx youth in the United States involved in an activist art project and women in rural Nicaragua involved in feminist organizing). We specifically illustrate that an ethics of care framework both guides the actions of these groups, and offers an alternative focus for community psychologists interested in promoting transformation towards more healthful and just societies. We aim to contribute to efforts to promote justice-oriented change by explicating the role of care-oriented communal values in promoting liberatory practices.

The alarming rate of suicidal behavior among United States youth constitutes a major public health problem. Since selfdestruction has become an increasingly common method for coping with life's difficulties and the unique stresses of the adolescent years, this nation must stop and ask: “Why are so many youngsters making the statement that life is no longer worth living? Why has the rate of youth suicide skyrocketed to epidemic proportions? What can be done to prevent this tragic and unnecessary waste of human potential?” This article explores one hypothesis, that the increased use, misuse, and abuse of drugs is one of the myriad explanations for the escalation in youth suicidal behavior during the past twenty-five years. Drug abuse may be a form of “slow suicide,” but eventually the drugs fail to deaden the psychic pain, to fulfill the unmet needs, and to combat the conflicting and confusing feelings and emotions long repressed. Clinical case histories and research results are used to exemplify the impact of heightened drug usage as an argument for the upsurge in youth suicide. Substance abuse prevention, along with more effective treatments and referrals for adolescents experiencing alcohol and drug problems, is vital to suicide prevention, intervention, and mental health promotion among youth.

Background The chapter explores the intersection of multimodal and digital literacies and racial identities of Black Caribbean immigrant youth in the United States (U.S.). Drawing on ethnographic research on the ways in which adolescent students embody their identities online, the chapter details some of the tensions that arise when these adolescents attempt to navigate a new home country that racializes their cultural and national identities and literacy practices. Context The chapter offers a meta-analysis of case studies five Black Caribbean immigrant adolescents’ multimodal and digital literacy practices in response to the racialized category “Black.” Looking across four ethnographic case studies, and through the thematic meta-analysis of data, the chapter presents data snapshots of pivotal events that refect issues of race. These events highlight the dialogic ways that these youth make use of literacy practices to understand what it means to be Black and immigrant, and to challenge these dominant, racialized representations that negate their cultural identities. Purpose The purpose of the chapter is to explore the tensions that arise when these adolescents attempt to navigate a new home country that racializes their cultural and national identities and literacy practices. In the case of Black Caribbean immigrant youth, part of this newcomer experience involves negotiating what “race” and “blackness” mean in terms of their academic, social, and personal lives. Thus, the chapter illustrates how young people use their modally and digitally mediated practices to negotiate racialized positionings across physical and virtual spaces, affinity groups, and the school and social contexts of their adopted U.S. homes. Findings As Black Caribbean immigrants, these young persons engage in emotional identity work in their talk about and/or experiences of race. The adolescents’ emotional response to racialized categories was defined by contesting feelings of pride, shame, and resilience. Two salient themes that characterized these tensions are the conflicting sense of 1) national pride versus the racial prejudice, and 2) deficit versus worthy. Their feelings of self-worth were intrinsically connected to racialized identity labels “Black” and “immigrant.” However, the modal tools and spaces they used and created serve as sites of resilience and identity (re)framing. Conclusions Adolescents developed their own personal and/or public voice that allowed them to reevaluate their self-worth, importance of social status, opportunities for advocacy, and their redefinitions of identity labels. Modal spaces and tools offered these adolescents alternative frames of reference within which they could evaluate and reposition Self. The intentional responses of these Black immigrant youth offered positive ways to see and present themselves while challenging deficit narratives of persons of color. Recommendation Explore immigrant adolescents’ use of modal and digital tools and literacies as spaces for socially reconstructing notions of race and identity. Consider modal and virtual digital spaces and tools (e.g., social networks, blogs, photographs/images, talk/stories) as a way to create opportunities for youth to air and share their experiences and ideas, as well as have their stories and positionalities become a part of the broader educational and societal narrative.

The severity of the problem of school shooting (mass attacks in educational institutions with the use of weapons) is due to its viral spread in the countries and the tragic consequences caused. The study of this phenomenon is on the frontier of social, psychological, informational, philosophical, legal studies. This has led to an interdisciplinary approach to its study, combining the possibilities of case-study and digital humanitaristics, applying data analysis described in this paper. The aim of the study is to identify the factors of school shooting promotion in the media and to comprehend the complex of external and internal reasons that trigger it. The object of the study is the episodes of school shootings committed in 2023, including attacks in the United States, Russia and the Czech Republic. The specifics and similarities of the attacks committed in educational institutions are revealed, their media coverage and audience reactions to the crimes are analyzed. A comparative analysis of cases of school shooting as an existential crime-manifestation of personality and the media effect caused by it, which can cause “viral” imitation and dissemination, is presented for the first time. The results of the research can be applied not only in theoretical aspect in philosophical-anthropological, social and media studies, but also in practical sphere for teachers, psychologists, specialists in work with youth.

Homicides in the United States disproportionately affect minorities, and previous research also indicates that increased economic deprivation and social disorganization correlates with increased rates of homicide. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated economic disparities and may have magnified existing disparities in homicide rates. Few studies have examined the incidence of teenage homicides throughout the United States, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a retrospective case review of homicides involving youth between the age group of 13 and 19 years from 2018 to 2021 in the state of Maryland. The aim of this study was to assess COVID-19 affected rates of youth homicide. A total of 230 teenage homicides occurred in Maryland from 2018 to 2021 with 113 cases during the pre-COVID-19 pandemic period (2018/2019) and 117 cases during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020/2021). The majority of teenage homicide victims were African − American male. More than 83% and 79% of victims were African − American in 2018/2019 and 2020/2021, respectively. Victims were also predominantly male (90% in 2018/2019 and 88% in 2020/2021). Maryland has a population of approximately 6 million people and is made up of 23 countries and Baltimore City. Nearly half of the overall incidents of teenage homicide took place in Baltimore City (49.6% pre-COVID-19 and 44.4% during COVID-19, respectively). While the average victim age did not vary considerably between 2018/2019 (17.8 years) and 2020/2021 (17.5 years), the percentage of cases involving victims ages 13–15 years more than doubled from 5.3% of cases in 2018/2019 to 12% of cases in 2020/2021. The majority of teenage homicide cases were due to firearm injuries (91.7%, n = 211), but during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a rise in violence involving sharp objects such as knives. The incidence of teenage homicide did not change considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic, although we did observe a trend toward younger males who were African American.

This study examines the relationship between the education system and international development cooperation in the Thai-Myanmar border region. The uniqueness of the border region stems from the presence of refugees and migrants from Myanmar living near the border within Thai territory, whom the political and social unrest in Myanmar has displaced. Of particular interest is the use of education to cultivate and preserve their ethnicity by the Karen people, who constitute the largest group in the border region. To better understand this, the paper analyzed the overall educational history and process of the Karen people. The research conducted case studies in three representative migrant schools in Mae Sot province, offering a comprehensive curriculum from kindergarten to college preparatory courses. Data from questionnaires and in-depth interviews collected during the fieldwork revealed that migrant schools adopt somewhat different curricula based on their geographical and environmental specificities, which significantly impact their students' academic and career development. The curriculum in these schools is a mix of Karen nationalist perspectives and external (international) influences. In addition, programs to pursue academic continuity, such as taking the GED in Thailand and Myanmar and the GED in the United States, are relatively well organized. However, due to their precarious status as migrants and the lack of career and vocational programs, there are many challenges for migrant youth to find professional jobs and develop career plans accordingly. The paper proposes that International Development Cooperation projects regarding education on the border should consider supporting students in designing their career paths, developing their skills, and promoting their social participation after graduation. In addition, when designing international development cooperation projects related to education, we should not limit their social participation and entry into the workforce to employment. However, we should consider developing curricula that reflect the two countries' contrasting education systems and regional specificities through coordination between various stakeholders.

The World Trade Center Attack or 9/11 tragedy has awakened the international community, particularly the United States (US) to sharpen its foreign policy in facing security threats coming from ‘weak states’. One of the most prominent weak states examples that pose a grave threat to other countries are the Northern Triangle Countries of Central America that referred to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Hence, this paper will discuss the rationale behind US initiatives in dealing with security threats in El Salvador as one of the Northern Triangle Countries. In analyzing the case, the writers will use the weak state concept and national interest concept. The result of this paper finds that El Salvador corresponds to the elements of a weak state and further poses security threats by giving rise to transnational criminal organizations, drug trafficking, and migrant problems in which overcoming those security threats has become US vital national interest. 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Language skills are essential for early childhood, being able to speak clearly and process speech sounds, understand others, express ideas, and interact with others are the building blocks for a child's development. Therefore, this study will examine the effect of the Inside Outside Circle (IOC) instructional strategies with media images on children's language skills. This research is a quasi-experimental design with a posttest only and using a control group. The sample in this study were children in two kindergartens in the village of Banjar Tegal. Data analysis in this study was carried out by quantitative descriptive methods using t-test analysis techniques. The results of this study in kindergarten students in Banjar Tegal Village show that there is an influence of the IOC learning model with picture media on children's language skills (tcount = 6.28> ttable = 2.00). This shows that language skills achieved by groups of children participating in learning with the IOC model with drawing media are better than groups of children who attend learning without the IOC model. The implication is that further research is expected to develop other aspects of child devel- opment through the IOC model. Keywords: Children Language skills, Image media, Inside-Outside Circle Instructional Strategies Reference: Afrida, Ni., & Mahriza, R. (2019). Visual and Cognitive Media : The Language Acquisition of Children With Dyslexia in Aceh. IJLRES - International Journal on Language , Research and Education Studies, 3(1), 112–126. https://doi.org/10.30575/2017/IJLRES-2019010409 Al Otaiba, S., & Fuchs, D. (2006). Who are the young children for whom best practices in reading are ineffective? An experimental and longitudinal study. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 39(5), 414–431. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194060390050401 Asrifan, A. (2015). 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There is a striking lack of studies on the Palestinian diaspora. Undoubtedlythe pioneering work of Edward Said (“Reflections on Exile,” in Out There:Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, eds. Russell Ferguson [TheMIT Press: 1990]) on exile and Rashid Khalidi (Palestinian Identity: TheConstruction of Modern National Consciousness [Columbia UniversityPress: 1997]) both touch on many of the related issues of collective memory,cultural identity, and the relationship between the “center” (the homeland)and the diasporic communities and how these issues manifestedthemselves in the Palestinian case. More recently, Abbas Shiblak (Reflectionson Palestinian Diaspora in Europe [2000]), Sari Hanafi (Here andThere: Analyses of the Relationship between Diaspora and the Centre [2001:in Arabic]), and Helena Schulz and Juliane Hammer (The Palestinian Diaspora:Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland [Routledge: 2003])explore different aspects of the Palestinian diaspora.Juliane Hammer’s new study examines young Palestinian returnees aspart of a larger social, historical, political, and cultural framework (p. 114).She conducted her research in the mid-1990s, a crucial period between twophases: one of peace and hope following the signing of the Declaration ofPrinciples in 1993, and another one that started in 1997 with the deteriorationand breakdown of the peace talks, and, consequently, with the eruption of thesecond Intifada in 2000. For her survey, she chose a sample of two main categoriesof young returnees: those of the Palestinian Authority strata (a`idin)and the children of Palestinian expatriates who live in the West but mainly inthe United States (Amerikans). The interviewees were mainly adolescent oryoung men and women from and around Ramalla and Jerusalem.The return process has been described chronologically, as a series offive steps or stages ranging from the decision to return to plans for the nearfuture. As the study argues, this return entails a process of the returnees’rewriting aspects of their identities. Hammer does not see, however, that thechronological approach is the only way of looking at the process of return.She sees the transformation (what she calls the “rewriting of identities”) alsoby dividing “identity” into different aspects, and then investigating how therespondents remembered these aspects from their childhood and youth in the ...

The essence, main tendencies of asymmetries and disproportions of development of territorial communities are considered. The basic mechanisms of activation of the internal potential of their revival are outlined. The purpose of the study is to substantiate management decisions regarding choice of business model that provides socio-ecological and economic development in its location. As a result of the research the following tasks were solved: 1) determination of social and ecological problems of the territory and the main priority life needs of its population; 2) justification of the mechanism for implementing the goals of entrepreneurship bases on the creative approach activation to innovation management decisions under the condition of balanced development of territories with appropriate motivation of both managers and employees and increasing their potential. The object of the study is the process of managerial decision making by business leaders on an innovation and investment bases. The research was conducted inductively (by collecting and analyzing qualitative data) and deductively (through generalization of theoretical questions based on a systems approach), which was made possible by analyzing of synergetic transformations of nonlinear self-organized dynamical systems such as society, economy and ecology. Measurement of variables was performed on the basis of sociological survey data. In 2013–2017, 15 small and medium-sized businesses in the northern, central and southern regions of Ukraine were surveyed in order to identify factors of their socio-economic development. The cluster sampling method was used to select the settlement. Socio-economic data was collected using verbal socio and psychological methods using unstructured and semi-structured approaches. The great flexibility of the method allows to obtain comprehensive information about the socio-psychological causes of behavior (for example, methods of management, motivation). Studies of the theory and practice of business management, development of social and industrial infrastructure are illustrated from the standpoint of their impact on small businesses and could be implemented in to the educational process and development strategy of the region. It is generally recognized accepted that the key factors for success in business are trend analysis, market research, long-term goals, business modeling, resource management, team building, and marketing planning, subject to appropriate staffing of business processes. The UN's proclaimed strategy for sustainable development outlined seventeen priority goals for the formation of society, which were reflected in the formation of corporate social responsibility of business entities. It needs to coordinate all activities of society with the surrounding space as a whole determine the level of organization of the business structure as components of smart-organization. Ensuring the sustainable development of the organization is based on the concentration of efforts of participants on the practical goals of the organization and the practice of understanding by management and employees of companies of the tasks facing it. People, their activities, enthusiasm and development is the basis of success of the organization. As a result of the introduction of the system of resource exchange, mainly due to the activation of human capital and attraction of innovation and investment potential in the form of technologies generated by individuals for communities, in particular in rural areas, the mechanism of internal institutionalization becomes involved. It is most active now in ancestral homesteads and ancestral settlements, which are founded by initiative educated youth (the average age of initiators of reverse urbanization is 35 years, 82 % of whom have higher education and activate the average investment flow to rural areas in the amount of 4 thousand US dollars annually per hectare). Thus, the entrepreneurial potential of the territory, estimated by the share of national wealth per capita for poor countries is 59 %, its activation through innovation, creativity and creative technologies can increase the share of human capital in national wealth to 80 %. The corresponding increase in human capital due to the development of tribal settlements will encourage an increase in the capitalization of the territory annually (in the case of revival in each region of one settlement with adjacent territories with an average area of 500 hectares, where 250 families will live) by 3.28 million dollars of United States, which is the source of the development of the newly formed united territorial communities.

Sharenting is a habit of using social media to share content that disseminates pictures, videos, information, and parenting styles for their children. The purpose of this article is to describe the sharenting phenomenon that occurs among young parents, and the importance of parenting programs, rather than protecting children's privacy. Writing articles use a qualitative approach as a literature review method that utilizes various scientific articles describing the sharenting phenomenon in various countries. The findings show that sharenting behaviour can create the spread of children's identity openly on social media and tends not to protect children's privacy and even seems to exploit children. Apart from that, sharenting can also create pressure on the children themselves and can even have an impact on online crime. 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OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Stigma has been recognized as a major impediment to accessing mental health care among Vietnamese and Asian Americans (Leong and Lau, 2001; Sadavoy et al., 2004; Wynaden et al., 2005; Fong and Tsuang, 2007). The underutilization of mental health care, and disparities in both access and outcomes have been attributed to a large extent to stigma and cultural characteristics of this population (Wynaden et al., 2005; Jang et al., 2009; Leung et al., 2010; Spencer et al., 2010; Jimenez et al., 2013; Augsberger et al., 2015). People with neurotic or behavioral disorders may be considered “bad” as many Vietnamese people believe it is a consequence of one’s improper behavior in a previous life, for which the person is now being punished (Nguyen, 2003). Mental disorders can also been seen as a sign of weakness, which contributes to ambivalence and avoidance of help-seeking (Fong and Tsuang, 2007). Equally important is the need to protect family reputation; having emotional problems often implies that the person has “bad blood” or is being punished for the sins of his/her ancestors (Herrick and Brown, 1998; Leong and Lau, 2001), which disgraces the entire family (Wynaden et al., 2005). In these cases, public stigma (as opposed to internal stigma) is the primary reason for delays in seeking help (Leong and Lau, 2001). Other research has also highlighted the influences of culture on how a disorder may be labeled in different settings, although the presentation of symptoms might be identical (see Angel and Thoits, 1987). In Vietnamese culture, mental disorders are often labeled điên (literally translated as “madness”). A điên person and his or her family are often severely disgraced; consequently the individuals and their family become reluctant to disclose and seek help for mental health problems for fear of rejection (Sadavoy et al., 2004). Despite the critical role of stigma in accessing mental health care, there has been little work in trying to understand how stigmatizing attitudes towards mental illness among Vietnamese Americans manifest themselves and the influences of acculturation on these attitudes. Some previous work indicated a significant level of mental illness stigma among Vietnamese Americans, and experiences of living in the United States might interact with the way stigma manifests among this population (Do et al., 2014). Stigma is a complex construct that warrants a deeper and more nuanced understanding (Castro et al., 2005). Much of the development of stigma-related concepts was based on the classic work by Goffman (1963); he defined stigma as a process by which an individual internalizes stigmatizing characteristics and develops fears and anxiety about being treated differently from others. Public stigma (defined by Corrigan, 2004) includes the general public’s negative beliefs about specific groups, in this case individuals and families with mental illness concerns, that contribute to discrimination. Public stigma toward mental illness acts not only as a major barrier to care, but can also exacerbate anxiety, depression, and adherence to treatment (Link et al., 1999; Sirey et al., 2001; Britt et al., 2008; Keyes et al., 2010). Link and Phelan (2001) conceptualized public stigma through four major components. The first component, labeling, occurs when people distinguish and label human differences that are socially relevant, for example, skin color. In the second component, stereotyping, cultural beliefs link the labeled persons to undesirable characteristics either in the mind or the body of such persons, for example people who are mentally ill are violent. The third component is separating “us” (the normal people) from “them” (the mentally ill) by the public. Finally, labeled persons experience status loss and discrimination, where they are devalued, rejected and excluded. Link and Phelan (2001) emphasized that stigmatization also depends on access to social, economic, and political power that allows these components to unfold. This study aims to answer the following research questions: (1) how does public stigma related to mental illness manifest among Vietnamese Americans? and (2) in what ways does acculturation influence stigma among this population? We investigate how the 4 components of stigma according to Link and Phelan (2001) operationalized and how they depend on the level of acculturation to the host society. Vietnamese Americans is the key ethnic minority group for this study for several reasons. Vietnamese immigration, which did not start in large numbers until the 1970s, has features that allow for a natural laboratory for comparisons of degree of acculturation. Previous research has shown significant intergenerational differences in the level of acculturation and mental health outcomes (e.g., Shapiro et al., 1999; Chung et al., 2000; Ying and Han, 2007). In this study, we used age group as a proxy indicator of acculturation, assuming that those who were born and raised in the United States (the 18–35 year olds) would be more Americanized than those who were born in Vietnam but spent a significant part of their younger years in the United States (the 36–55 year olds), and those who were born and grew up in Vietnam (the 56–75 year olds) would be most traditional Vietnamese. The language used in focus group discussions (FGDs) reflected some of the acculturation, where all FGDs with the youngest groups were done in English, and all FGDs with the oldest groups were done in Vietnamese. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Data were collected through a set of FGDs and key informant interviews (KIIs) with experts to explore the conceptualization and manifestation of mental illness public stigma among Vietnamese Americans in New Orleans. Six FGDs with a total of 51 participants were conducted. Participants were Vietnamese American men and women ages 18–75. Stratification was used to ensure representation in the following age/immigration pattern categories: (1) individuals age 56–75 who were born and grew up in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States after age 35; (2) individuals age 36–55 who were born in Vietnam but spent a significant part of their youth in the United States; and (3) individuals age 18–35 who were born and grew up in the United States. These groups likely represent different levels of acculturation, assuming that people who migrate at a younger age are more likely to assimilate to the host society than those who do at a later age. Separate FGDs were conducted with men and women. Eleven KIIS were conducted with 6 service providers and 5 community and religious leaders. In this analysis, we focused on mental illness public stigma from the FGD participants’ perspectives. FGDs were conducted in either English or Vietnamese, whichever participants felt more comfortable with, using semistructured interview guides. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and translated into English if conducted in Vietnamese. Data coding and analysis was done using NVivo version 11 (QSR International, 2015). The analysis process utilized a Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) approach, a validated and well-established approach to collecting and analyzing qualitative data. CQR involves gathering textual data through semistructured interviews or focus groups, utilizing a data analysis process that fosters multiple perspectives, a consensus process to arrive at judgments about the meaning of data, an auditor to check the work of the research team, and the development of domains, core-ideas, and cross-analysis (Hill et al., 2005). The study was reviewed and approved by Tulane University’s Internal Review Board. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Components of public stigma related to mental illness. The 4 components of public stigma manifest to different extents within the Vietnamese Americans in New Orleans. Labeling was among the strongest stigma components, while the evidence of the other components was mixed. Across groups of participants, Vietnamese Americans agreed that it was a common belief that people with mental disorders were “crazy,” “acting crazy,” or “madness.” “Not normal,” “sad,” and “depressed” were among other words used to describe the mentally ill. However, there were clear differences between younger and older Vietnamese on how they viewed these conditions. The youngest groups of participants tended to recognize the “craziness” and “madness” as a health condition that one would need to seek help for, whereas the oldest groups often stated that these conditions were short term and likely caused by family or economic problems, such as a divorce, or a bankruptcy. The middle-aged groups were somewhere in between. The evidence supporting the second component, stereotyping, was not strong among Vietnamese Americans. Most FGD participants agreed that although those with mental disorders may act differently, they were not distinguishable. In a few extreme cases, mentally ill individuals were described as petty thefts or being violent towards their family members. Similarly to the lack of strong evidence of stereotyping, there was also no evidence of the public separating the mentally ill (“them”) from “us”. It was nearly uniformly reported that they felt sympathetic to those with mental disorders and their family, and that they all recognized that they needed help, although the type of help was perceived differently across groups. The older participants often saw that emotional and financial support was needed to help individuals and families to pass through a temporary phase, whereas younger participants often reported that professional help was necessary. The last component, status loss and discrimination, had mixed evidence. While nearly no participants reported any explicit discriminatory behaviors observed and practiced towards individuals with mental disorders and their families, words like “discrimination” and “stigma” were used in all FGDs to describe direct social consequences of having a mental disorder. Social exclusion was common. Our older participants said: “They see less of you, when they see a flaw in you they don’t talk to you or care about you. That’s one thing the Vietnamese people are bad at, spreading false rumors and discrimination” (Older women FGD). One’s loss of status seemed certain if their or their loved one’s mental health status was disclosed. Shame, embarrassment, and being “frowned upon” were direct consequences of one’s mental health status disclosure and subsequently gossiped about. Anyone with mental disorders was certain to experience this, and virtually everyone in the community would reportedly do this to such a family. “You get frowned upon. In the Vietnamese culture, that’s [a family identified as one with mental health problems] the big no-no right there. When everybody frowns upon your family and your family name, that’s when it becomes a problem” (Young men FGD). This is tied directly to what our participants described as Vietnamese culture, where pride and family reputation were such a high priority that those with mental disorders needed to go to a great extent to protect—“We all know what saving face means” as reported by our young participants. Even among young participants, despite their awareness of mental illness and the need for professional help, the desire to avoid embarrassment and save face was so strong that one would think twice about seeking help. “No, you just don’t want to get embarrassed. I don’t want to go to the damn doctor and be like ‘Oh yeah, my brother got an issue. You can help him?’ Why would I do that? That’s embarrassing to myself…” (Young men FGD). Our middle-aged participants also reported: “If I go to that clinic [mental health or counseling clinic], I am hoping and praying that I won’t bump into somebody that I know from the community” (Middle-aged women FGD). Vietnamese people were also described as being very competitive among themselves, which led to the fact that if a family was known for having any problem, gossips would start and spread quickly wherever they go, and pretty soon, the family would be looked down by the entire community. “I think for Vietnamese people, they don’t help those that are in need. They know of your situation and laugh about it, see less of you, and distant themselves from you” (Older women FGD). Culture and mental illness stigma, much of the described stigma and discrimination expressed, and consequently the reluctance to seek help, was attributed to the lack of awareness of mental health and of mental health disorders. Many study participants across groups also emphasized a belief that Vietnamese Americans were often known for their perseverance and resilience, overcoming wars and natural disasters on their own. Mental disorders were reportedly seen as conditions that individuals and families needed to overcome on their own, rather than asking for help from outsiders. This aspect of Vietnamese culture is intertwined with the need to protect one’s family’s reputation, being passed on from one generation to the next, reinforcing the beliefs that help for mental disorders should come from within oneself and one’s family only. Consequently persons with mental health problems would be “Keeping it to themselves. Holding it in and believing in the power of their friends” (Middle-aged FGD) instead of seeking help. Another dimension of culture that was apparent from FGDs (as well as KIIs) was the mistrust in Western medicine. Not understanding how counseling or medicines work made one worry about approaching service providers or staying in treatment. The habit of Vietnamese people to only go see a doctor if they are sick with physical symptoms was also a hindrance to acknowledging mental illness and seeking care for it. Challenges, including the lack of vocabulary to express mental illness and symptoms, in the Vietnamese language, exaggerated the problem, even among those who had some understanding of mental disorders. It was said in the young men FGD that: “when you classify depression as an illness, no one wants to be sick,… if you call it an illness, no one wants to have that sort of illness, and it’s not an illness that you can physically see…” (Young men FGD). Another young man summarized so well the influence of culture on mental illness stigma: “Us Southeast Asian, like, from my parents specifically has Vietnam War refugees. I think the reason why they don’t talk about it is because it’s a barrier that they have to overcome themselves, right? As refugees, as people who have been through the war… [omitted]They don’t want to believe that they need help, and so the trauma that they carry when they give birth to us is carried on us as well. But due to the language barrier and also the, like, they say with the whole health care, in Vietnam I know that they don’t really believe in Western and Eurocentric medicine. So, from their understanding of how, like from their experience with colonization or French people, and how medicine works, they don’t believe in it” (Young men FGD). One characteristic of the Vietnamese culture that was also often mentioned by our FGD participants (as well as KIIs) was the lack of sharing and openness between generations, even within a family. Grandparents, parents, and children do not usually share and discuss each other’s problems. Parents and grandparents do not talk about problems because they need to appear strong and good in front of their children; children do not talk about problems because they are supposed to do well in all aspects, particularly in school. The competitiveness of Vietnamese and high expectations of younger generations again come into play here and create a vicious cycle. Young people are expected to do well in school, which put pressure on them and may result in mental health problems, yet, they cannot talk about it with their parents because they are not supposed to feel bad about school, and sharing is not encouraged. The Asian model minority myth and the expectations of parents that their children would do well in school and become doctors and lawyers were cited by many as a cause of mental health problems among young people. “Our parents are refugees, they had nothing and our parents want us to achieve this American Dream…. [omitted] It set expectations and images for us…. It was expected for all the Asians to be in the top 10, and for, like a little quick minute I thought I wasn’t going to make it, I was crying” (Yong men FGD). As a result, the mental health problems get worse. “If you’re feeling bad about something, you don’t feel like you can talk about it with anyone else, especially your family, because it is not something that is encouraged to be talked about anyway, so if you are feeling poorly and you don’t feel like you could talk to anybody, I think that just perpetuates the bad feelings” (Middle-aged women FGD). Acculturation and mental illness stigma Acculturation, the degree of assimilation to the host society, has changed some of the understanding of mental illness and stigmatizing attitudes. Differences across generations expressed in different FGDs indicated differences in perceptions towards mental illness that could be attributed to acculturation. For example, the young generation understood that mental illness was a health problem that was prevalent but less recognized in the Vietnamese community, whereas a prominent theme among the older participants was that mental illness was a temporary condition due to psychological stress, that it was a condition that only Caucasians had. Some of the components of public stigma related to mental illness seemed to vary between generations, for example the youngest participants were less likely to put a label on a person with mental health problems, or to stereotype them, compared to the oldest and middle-aged participants. This was attributed to their education, exposure to the media and information, and to them “being more Americanized.” However, there was no evidence that acculturation played an important role in changing the other components of public stigma, including stereotyping, separating, and status loss and discrimination. For example, the need to protect the family reputation was so important that our young participants shared: “If you damage their image, they will disown you before you damage that image” (Young men FGD). Young people, more likely to recognize mental health problems, were also more likely to share within the family and to seek help, but no more likely than their older counterparts to share outside of the family—“maybe you would go to counseling or go to therapy, but you wouldn’t tell people you’re doing that” (Young women FGD). The youngest participants in our study were facing a dilemma, in which they recognized mental health problems and the need for care, yet were still reluctant to seek care or talk about it publicly because of fears of damaging the family reputation and not living up to the parents’ expectations. Many young participants reported that it actually made it very difficult for them to navigate mental health issues between the 2 cultures, despite the awareness of the resources available. “I think it actually makes it harder. Only because you know to your parents and the culture, and your own people, it’s taboo, and it’s something that you don’t talk about. Just knowing that you have the resources to go seek it… You want advice from your family also, but you can’t connect the appointment to your family because you’re afraid to express that to your parents, you know? So I think that plays a big part, and knowing that you are up and coming, but you don’t want to do something to disappoint your family because they are so traditional” (Young men FGD). Some participants felt more comfortable talking about mental health problems, like depression, if it was their friend who experienced it and confided in them, but they would not necessarily felt open if it was their problem. Subtle cultural differences like this are likely overlooked by Western service providers. One older participant summarized it well “They [the young generation] are more Americanized. They are more open to other things [but] I think that mental health is still a barrier.” DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: This study investigated how different components of public stigma related to mental illness manifest among Vietnamese Americans, a major ethnic group in the United States, and how acculturation may influence such stigma. The findings highlighted important components of public stigma, including labeling and status loss, but did not provide strong evidence of the other components within our study population. Strong cultural beliefs underlined the understanding of mental health and mental illness in general, and how people viewed people with mental illness. Several findings have been highlighted in previous studies with Asian immigrants elsewhere; for example, a study from the perspectives of health care providers in Canada found that the unfamiliarity with Western biomedicine and spiritual beliefs and practices of immigrant women interacted with social stigma in preventing immigrants from accessing care (O’Mahony and Donnelly, 2007). Fancher et al. (2010) reported similar findings regarding stigma, traditional beliefs about medicine, and culture among Vietnamese Americans. Acculturation played a role in changing stigmatizing attitudes as evidenced in intergenerational differences. However, being more Americanized did not equate to being more open, having less stigmatizing attitudes, or being more willing to seek care for mental health issues. Consistent with previous studies (Pedersen and Paves, 2014), we still found some level of stigma among young people aged 18–35, although some components were lessened with an increased level of acculturation. There was also a conflict among the younger generation, in which the need for mental health care was recognized but accessing care was no easier for them than for their parent and grandparent generations. The study’s findings are useful to adapt existing instruments to measure stigma to this population. The findings also have important program implications. One, they can be directly translated into basic supports for local primary and behavioral health care providers. Two, they can also be used to guide and inform the development and evaluation of an intervention and an additional study to validate the findings in other immigrant ethnic groups in the United States. Finally, based on results of the study, we can develop a conceptual framework that describes pathways through which social, cultural, and ecological factors can influence stigma and the ways in which stigma acts as a barrier to accessing mental health care among Vietnamese Americans. The guiding framework then can be validated and applied in future programs aimed to improve mental health care utilization among ethnic minorities.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a dangerous impact on early-childhood education, lost learning in almost all aspects of child development. The house-to-house learning, with the name Moving Home Learning Program (MHLP), is an attractive offer as an emergency remote teaching solution. This study aims to describe the application of MHLP designed by early-childhood education institutions during the learning process at home. This study used a qualitative approach with data collection using interviews, observation, and documentation. The respondents involved in the interview were a kindergarten principal and four teachers. The research data were analyzed using the data content analysis. The Findings show that the MHLP has proven to be sufficiently in line with the learning needs of early childhood during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although, the application of the MHLP learning model has limitations such as the distance from the house that is far away, the number of meetings that are only once a week, the number of food and toy sellers passing by, disturbing children's concentration, and the risk of damage to goods at home. The implication of this research can be the basis for evaluating MHLP as an adaptive strategy that requires the attention of related parties, including policy makers, school principals, and teachers for the development of new, more effective online learning models. Keywords: Moving Home Learning Program (MHLP), Children Remote Teaching References:Abdollahi, E., Haworth-Brockman, M., Keynan, Y., Langley, M. J., & Oghadas, S. M. (2020). Simulating the effect of school closure during COVID-19 outbreaks in Ontario , Canada. BMC Medicine, 1–8. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01705-8 Arends, R. I., & Kilcher, A. (2010). 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In my last editorial I was contemplating living the new and unexpected experience of life with Covid 19. Six months ago, was a time for contemplation. We were all entering into an event of major historical significance. The world has experienced epidemics before, and we had only to turn to the works of writers such as Camus to realise how recurrent human behaviour is. We tend so often to be caught by surprise despite the lessons that are so readily available to us through reference to history. The Spanish ‘flu epidemic of 1919 was the obvious benchmark to which we could turn. Following hot on the heels of the Great War of 1914-1918 it was responsible for more casualties than occurred in the war to end all wars (50 million). It infected 500 million people worldwide. After just over ten months we are a long, long way from those sorts of figures. As of 12th November, 51,975,458 case of infection have been reported. Deaths attributed to the virus number 1,281,309 worldwide. Of course, what makes Covid 19 so significant is not simply that it should have happened, but that it is the first pandemic in this era of globalisation which we have entered only comparatively recently. Some might remember the SARS epidemic which affected mainly people in Asia. As indicated by its name, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2), it was very similar initially in its effects. Yet, after first emerging in 2002, it was eradicated less than two years later. It seems that this was achieved largely by what has been called simple public health measures. This involved “testing people with symptoms (fever and respiratory problems), isolating and quarantining suspected cases, and restricting travel.” These same measures of course have been implemented in most countries following the virus’ spread to Italy early in 2020. However, the fact that different nations have responded differently and also experienced very different outcomes should be of considerable interest as we consider the whole concept of a global threat and global responses. The ten worst affected countries currently are in order: Contry; Confirmed Cases; Deaths United States; 10,460,302; 244,421 India; 8,684,039; 128,165 Brazil; 5,749,007; 163,406 France; 1,865,538; 42,535 Russia; 1,836,960; 31,593 Spain; 1,417,709; 40,105 Argentina; 1,273,343; 34,531 United Kingdom; 1,256,725; 50,365 Colombia; 1,165,326; 33,312 Italy; 1,028,424; 42,953 They are dominated by the advanced economies of the northern hemisphere. The countries who have previously experienced the SARS epidemic in Asia have fared comparatively lightly. Bearing in mind that statistics of this nature may not be strictly comparable given variation in the criteria used and the methods of sourcing and collecting this information, it is still interesting to hypothesise why outcomes can differ so much. Explanations might include reference to the environments in which people live – physical space, climate and availability of sophisticated health care systems to name a few – or they might dwell on the culture of those involved, their willingness to follow instructions imposed upon them, the importance of competing objectives that might make prioritising health and physical wellness less of a priority. Whatever the case, satisfactory explanations are more likely to involve some interactions involving measures of both the individuals and the environments within which they live. Any attempt to explain or understand human behaviour needs to consider a variety of factors and knowing how to take account of them is an important part of the skill base that scholars of international and comparative studies bring with them. Such skills and knowledge are more important in a globalised world than they have ever been. Yet such skills may be becoming harder to achieve, precisely because of some of the effects of processes associated with globalisation. I would recommend to you a recent documentary produced by Netflix and widely available on YouTube. “The Social Dilemma” is an examination of the use of social media and in particular focuses on the relationship between the growing addiction amongst young people to the use of smartphones and, specifically their social media programmes, and the rising levels of concern about deteriorating mental health and wellbeing among the world’s youth. It draws a relationship between the psychological disorder of narcissism and the failure of phone obsessed young people to experience real human to human interaction, with a related increase in aggressive bullying and dysfunctional behaviour. Thus, the results of experiencing interactions and personal validation through the proxy world of social media, rather than face to face, is a dehumanisation of the individual and leads to a distorted experience of the world in simple dichotomies of a single view, right or wrong. So, whatever the continuing effects of the pandemic, as these continue to unfold, it will be important that we continue to build our understanding of other people in their own worlds. We need to avoid the trap of believing that our own world is the only world and the right world. However smart artificial intelligence becomes, a screen is only two dimensional and it is the extra dimensions that enable us to grow as humans and cope with the complexity and challenges of our own unique worlds. One of the less helpful trends of our globalised digitised world, has been the pursuit and glorification of the cult of celebrity. One of the difficulties of that celebrity status is it is frequently awarded on the basis of undeserving and irrelevant characteristics such as, acting ability, physical beauty or sporting reputation. Yet many seem to feel that this status entitles them to pontificate or attempt to influence others in areas that have nothing to do with their expertise. Ricky Gervais, in his chairing of the 2020 golden globes award, brought a refreshing dose of reality in advising the celebrities who were to receive awards: You are in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up accept your little award. Thank your agent and your God and **** off. OK? It is in that spirit of willingness to learn from the work of a range of colleagues working in a range of places and professional situations around the world, I commend to you the contributions to be found in the following pages. To start the ball rolling, we have a report from Hairui Liu, Wei Shen and Peter Hastie on the application of a curriculum model which was developed in the US and has since gained some popularity in a number of settings around the world. The origins of sport education came from a realisation that, in too many situations, physical education had failed to excite the same degree of enthusiasm among school pupils as could often be observed when they involved themselves in sport. The model thus extends the skill/technique focus which is found in many traditional physical education settings, to include more of the dimensions of sport – formal competition, affiliation, festivity experienced over a season. They concluded that, within this Chinese university context, the students achieved a higher level of performance and more enthusiastic engagement when the model was adopted as a basis for their learning. Our second article moves from an education setting to a contemporary sport science framework, the world of professional sport and one of the higher levels of competition in the world – the English Championship. Rhys Carr, Rich Mullen and Morgan Williams monitored the running intensity of players throughout a season. In particular they questioned the demands for high intensity running when playing in a 4-4-2 formation and implementing a high press strategy, such as adopted by Liverpool in their highly successful 2019 English Premiership season. They concluded that, for players in the centre forward and wide midfield positions, the demands created were impossible to maintain for an entire match. They were then able to draw out some practical and tactical implications for managers and their support staff, relating to substitution strategy and the physical match preparation of players in these positions and with these strategic responsibilities. Our third article involves an exploration of the perpetual discomfort many of us feel as educators when we compare the practice of sport against the ideals we hold for it. As professionals in the field, many of us are driven by our belief in what sport can offer. Yet the modern commodification of sport, coupled with the excessive need to win as a motive that exceeds all others, consistently produces behaviours and outcomes which we seek to disassociate from our professional practices. The article by Irantzu Ibanez, Ana Zuazagoitia, Ibon Echeazarra, Luis Maria Zulaika and Iker Ros is set in the context of the Basque region of Spain and explores the values held by students in their pre-service training with regard to the practice of extracurricular sport. The students show an awareness of the mismatch between their ideals of extracurricular sport as an educational experience and the influence on current practices that comes from the way in which sport is conducted in the society at large. The authors conclude with a plea for greater alignment between the practice of sport in schools and teh educational values that should guide it. Our final contribution is from South Africa where Lesego Phetlhe, Heather Morris- Eyton and Alliance Kubayi report on the concerns of football (soccer) coaches in Guateng province. It is clear that these coaches, in common with others around the world, suffer a degree of stress in their chosen occupation. The sources of this stress are to be found in the nature of the complex tasks they are expected to manage, as well as in the always challenging job of managing the players for whom they are responsible. To this can be added the difficult environmental conditions they are faced with, as well as the inevitable concern with having to produce results for the players and their team. Their research has produced some useful guidelines for administrators that can facilitate the jobs of the coaches and lead to benefits in enhanced performances and results. Finally, in our book review, Luiz Uehara evaluates Jorge Knijnik’s thoughtful analysis of the impact of the 2014 world cup on Brazil. From both author and reviewer, it is possible to feel the pride and passion in their nation of birth and its special contribution to the world’s most popular game. It is my privilege to recommend the work of these international scholars to you. I leave you the reader with the hope that in introducing our next volume, I will be able to celebrate with you more positive news about the progress of the pandemic and its implications for international and comparative sport and physical education. John Saunders Brisbane, November 2020

Abstract The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (Guidelines) advises older adults to be as active as possible. Yet, despite the well documented benefits of physical activity just 12.8% of those ages 65 and older meet the Guidelines. To address this, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed a Midcourse Report focused on effective strategies to improve older adult physical activity behaviors. The first step in this process was a systematic literature review. A literature review team was contracted to examine the evidence on key settings and effective behavioral intervention strategies, as well as effective policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) approaches, to improve physical activity among older adults. The PSE search employed an equity-centered framework adapted to researching PSE approaches for improving physical activity outcomes in older adults. Sixteen thousand eight hundred and eighty-three titles and abstracts were screened, and 734 full articles were reviewed for inclusion. Of those, 64 original research articles were included for the final review to answer two questions, one (plus 5 sub-questions) focused on Settings/Strategies literature (46 studies) and one (plus 2 sub-questions) focused on PSE literature (18 studies). The literature review process identified key settings and evidence-based strategies to support older adults in becoming more physically active, and provides a foundation for the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report: Implementation Strategies for Older Adults. More research is needed to address how factors related to equity and psychosocial constructs influence physical activity behaviors among older adults. Key Words Physical activity, policy, older adults, systematic review, Policy-Systems-Environment, aerobic physical activity, muscle strengthening physical activity Introduction The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans (Guidelines) (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 2018) serves as the benchmark and primary, authoritative voice of the federal government for providing science-based guidance on physical activity, fitness, and health for Americans. The most recent edition, released in 2018, provides evidence-based recommendations for Americans ages 3 and older to safely get the physical activity they need to stay healthy (HHS, 2018). In 2013, five years after the release of the first edition of the Guidelines, HHS released a midcourse report (Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report Subcommittee of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition (PAG Midcourse Subcommittee), 2013). This report focused on strategies to increase physical activity among youth and focused on five key areas where youth live, learn, and play – preschool and childcare centers, schools, family and home, community (built environment), and primary care medical settings (PAG Midcourse, 2013). The next midcourse report focused on older adults (ages 65 and older). The benefits of regular physical activity occur throughout life and are essential for healthy aging. Research suggests it is never too late to start being physically active. Despite the many benefits of physical activity, only 12.8% of adults over age 65 meet the aerobic and muscle-strengthening Guidelines (HHS Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), 2022). This rate may be influenced by several factors, as barriers to physical activity differ from individual to individual and are influenced by socioeconomic, cultural, built environment, and other community factors. The Guidelines contains quantitative recommendations for older adults but does not include implementation strategies. Therefore, a literature review was conducted to identify successful interventions to promote increased physical activity and adherence to the key guidelines for older adults and summarized in the Physical Activity and Older Adults Systematic Literature Review (ICF Next, 2023). The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report: Implementation Strategies for Older Adults (Midcourse Report) (HHS, 2023) serves to further the breadth of the Guidelines to facilitate the implementation of proven programs and other strategies that can increase levels of physical activity among older adults. This paper outlines the literature review methodology to support the Midcourse Report. Methods: Literature Review In 2022, HHS contracted with a Literature Review Team to review the evidence on effective strategies to increase physical activity among older adults. This work was supported by the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition (PCSFN) Science Board (Science Board), made up of 11 experts in physical activity and older adult populations. The Literature Review Team used a methodology supported by best practices for systematic literature reviews developed by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Nutrition Evidence Systematic Review (NESR) (USDA NESR Branch, 2023), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (AHRQ, 2014), the Cochrane Collaboration (Higgins et al., 2022), and the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine standards to review, evaluate, and synthesize published, peer-reviewed physical activity research (Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Standards for Systematic Reviews of Comparative Effectiveness Research, 2011). This review process was largely guided by the approach taken to review the literature for the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Scientific Report (2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2018; Torres et al., 2018). Paralleling the 2018 process, this protocol-driven review approach was undertaken to maximize transparency, minimize bias, and ensure the review conducted was timely, relevant, and high quality. There are two major distinctions between this review and that conducted by the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee: 1) the decision to review original articles instead of using a “review of reviews” approach; and 2) to focus on research with physical activity outcomes as opposed to health outcomes. All work completed by the Literature Review Team was under the direction and review of ODPHP, on behalf of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the PCSFN. The Literature Review Team coordinated the literature review process, developed an abstraction tool and accompanying abstraction and triage guides, and implemented training and quality control protocols. Several groups supported the literature review work: Librarians reviewed search strategies and provided guidance as needed. The Triage Team conducted title and abstract triage of articles identified through the literature searches. The Abstraction Team engaged in rigorous training before abstracting data from included articles. A portion of this group also assessed risk of bias on a subset of the included articles. The Science Board identified, aggregated, organized, and analyzed the scientific literature. A six-step process was used to examine the literature: Step 1: Develop systematic review questions Step 2: Develop systematic review strategy Step 3: Search, screen, and select evidence to review for each question Step 4: Abstract data and assess the risk of bias of the research Step 5: Describe the evidence Step 6: Complete evidence portfolios and draft Scientific Report Step 1: Developing Systematic Review Questions Following the cadence of previous editions of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans with an interim Midcourse Report, HHS initiated the process to review the scientific literature focused on effective approaches to promote physical activity among older adults. ODPHP outlined a need to examine intervention strategies and key settings that are effective in promoting movement and achievement of the key guidelines for physical activity for older adults. Additional factors of interest for the literature review included how engagement in physical activity interventions may influence mental health, well-being, social connection, and other related social and emotional factors; as well as how interventions implemented as policy, systems, and environmental approaches to change the context influence physical activity in older adult populations. Solidifying Systematic Review Questions. The Literature Review Team developed research questions focused on the previously specified topics. The research questions and corresponding sub-questions are as follows: Question 1: What are effective intervention strategies to increase physical activity among older adults? Does the mode of delivery (e.g., virtual, in person, phone) impact the effectiveness of interventions? Does the setting impact the effectiveness of the interventions? What barriers exist to engaging or participating in the intervention? What are the retention, attrition, and/or attendance rates? Do personal characteristics (e.g., ability, age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status) or chronic health conditions influence participation? Do interventions assess changes in participant mental health, quality of life, well-being, resilience, or social connection and isolation? Question 2: What are effective policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies to increase physical activity among older adults? Is there a dose-response relation between the scope and reach of the PSE strategy and “success”? Does the “success” of the PSE strategy vary by geographical location or by sociodemographic subgroup? Step 2: Develop Systematic Review Strategy Develop Analytical Frameworks. Analytical frameworks were developed for each research question. Analytical frameworks are graphic representations used to lay the groundwork and initial parameters for each search. The frameworks served as a guide to define key variables, inform the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and develop the literature review strategy. These frameworks were created using the PICO method (population, intervention, comparison, and outcomes) (Higgins et al., 2022) and were modeled on the approach used for the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Scientific Report (2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2018; Torres et al., 2018). The frameworks were constructed during weekly meetings (see supplementary materials). Develop Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria. The Literature Review Team created inclusion and exclusion criteria for each research question. The template used to draft inclusion and exclusion criteria was modeled off the approach used for the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Scientific Report (2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2018), and adapted to meet the needs of this particular review. These templates were used to determine whether studies were eligible to be selected for each respective systematic literature review and whether studies would provide data to support the focal research questions. To promote consistency and relevance, and to account for scope parameters, each template included similar sections (Tables 1 and 2). Table 1. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria for Question 1: What are effective intervention strategies to increase physical activity among older adults? Include Published in English Language English Language Publication Peer-Reviewed Literature Published From 2012 to 2022 Original Research Human Participants Intervention Study (Comparison Required) Must Measure Physical Activity Outcome Older Adults (minimum or mean age of 65 years or older) Designs Include Randomized Controlled Trials, Non-Randomized Controlled Trials, and Quasi-Experimental Studies Exclude Studies of Older Adults in Long-Term, Memory, or Hospice Facilities Studies of Disease-Specific Therapeutic Exercise Delivered in Health/Medical Facility Table 2. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria for Question 2: What are effective policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies to increase physical activity among older adults? Include Published in English Language Peer-Reviewed Literature Published from 2012-2022 Original Research Human Participants Study Conducted in the United States Intervention Study (PSE Intervention) Must Measure Physical Activity Outcome Older Adults, Middle Age (50+ years) and Older Designs Include Non-Randomized Controlled Trials, Prospective Cohort, Retrospective Cohort, Case-Control, Cross-Sectional, Before and After, Geospatial, Environmental, and Surveillance Exclude Studies of Older Adults in Long-Term, Memory, or Hospice Facilities Studies of Disease-Specific Therapeutic Exercise Delivered in Health/Medical Facility Develop Search Strategy. A search strategy was created to identify peer-reviewed original research for each systematic review conducted. Each search strategy included search terms, Boolean logic to join terms, databases used, and key limits relevant to the inclusion criteria (e.g., research type, date of publication, language, study population, and filters specific to databases). The three databases included in each review were PubMed, CINHAL, and PsychINFO. These databases were selected due to the subject matter of articles included within each database. The Literature Review Team developed sets of search terms most relevant to each review. These sets included terms capturing a broad range of articles based on older adult population, intervention study design, comparison approach, and physical activity outcomes. Once these search terms were drafted, library representatives from the literature review contractor and the NIH Library reviewed the search strategies and provided suggestions for updates. Throughout the search strategy development process, draft searches were run to assess the number of articles included in the search and if the collected articles represented the nature of the research questions. In response to these outputs, modifications were made to the search strategies as needed. The final search strategies were shared with the Science Board for review and affirmation. Step 3: Search, Screen, and Select Evidence to Review The searching and screening process was completed to collect a thorough body of original research needed to support each systematic review. Specifically, a primary search was completed within the original literature, and a supplemental search of existing meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews was conducted to support this process. A review of the original research was completed using the previously developed search strategies. Once results were generated, duplicates were removed, and results were triaged based on title and abstract. Triage Training. Once the search strategy was implemented, each title/abstract underwent two rounds of review by members of the triage team. Members of the triage team were provided with thorough training and required to complete a certification process to ensure consistency between reviews prior to initiating triage. This training involved a comprehensive instructional presentation that was supported by a triage training manual that included detailed instructions, definitions, reporting instructions, response options, and example titles/abstracts. In addition to the formal training, members of the leadership team met one-on-one with triagers on an as-needed basis to promote consistency and accuracy. Prior to initiating the triage process, all potential triagers were required to complete a certification process on a subset of abstracts. Triagers who did not display a high level of consistency with the group on the practice assignment were not authorized to participate in the formal abstraction process. Title and Abstract Triage. Triagers were instructed to first review titles to assess eligibility and then move to abstracts if the article appeared to be potentially relevant. Triagers were instructed to then include or exclude articles based on information provided within the abstract. If articles were removed from consideration at the abstract review stage, triagers were required to provide a reason. These reasons differed based on the search, but often included reasons such as ineligible age of participants, no physical activity outcome included, and/or no physical activity component of intervention reported. When conflicts existed in decisions made by screeners, discrepancies were resolved by a member of the triage team. The lists of included and excluded articles were shared with members of the Science Board. Additional Supplemental Search Activities. Additional search activities were undertaken to further fortify the pool of articles collected through the initial search of the original literature. First, using the pre-established search terms, a systematic search was undertaken to identify relevant meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews that could potentially include original research articles relevant to the focal inclusion criteria. In tandem with this, a snowball approach (Wohlin, 2014) was also used to locate any additional meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews that could be deemed relevant. Reference pages and results tables from each of these meta-analyses and systematic literature reviews were hand-reviewed to identify original research articles that should be included within the review. These selected articles were reviewed in full-text and added to the pool if they fit the specified inclusion criteria. Science Board members were encouraged to share additional articles that fit inclusion criteria with the Literature Review Team. These articles were identified through the Science Board’s expertise and familiarity with the subject matter. If an article was identified that met the inclusion criteria, it was reviewed in full text and abstracted by the Abstraction Team. Full Text Review. Full text review for the list of included articles was conducted by members of the Literature Review Team. Two reviewers assessed each full-length article based on the inclusion criteria to determine whether it should be included or excluded from the final pool for review. Further, any articles that were identified as potentially ineligible during the abstraction process were added to the list of excluded articles. Step 4: Abstract Data and Assess Risk of Bias The abstraction process was used to collect and summarize key characteristics of each study that supported the systematic literature review purpose. The goal of abstraction was to (a) document key elements of each study for ease of review, and (b) use this information to present trends across the full body of evidence. Abstraction Training. Abstractors were onboarded, trained, and certified to complete all abstraction activities. Abstraction candidates participated in a thorough and rigorous multi-phased process prior to initiating abstraction. This training involved a multi-hour instructional session. This session was supported by an abstractor training manual that included detailed instructions, definitions, reporting instructions, response options, example abstraction questions, and thoroughly annotated version of articles used in the training. In addition to the formal training, members of the Literature Review Team met with and/or delivered written feedback to the abstractors to ensure consistency and promote recalibration when needed. Prior to initiating the abstraction process, all potential abstractors were required to complete abstraction on practice articles. Abstractors who did not display a high level of consistency with the group during the practice sessions did not participate in the formal abstraction process. Abstraction Process Explanation and Quality Control. Abstractors worked in pairs to independently review articles, abstract articles, and document findings. Abstractors were provided with random assignments of articles from members of the Literature Review Team. When discrepancies in abstraction were identified by the Literature Review Team, abstractors were asked to review and discuss these discrepancies. When discrepancies could not be settled among abstractors, members of the Literature Review Team reviewed the situation/materials and provided input and clarification to settle on a decision. The Literature Review Team conducted quality control and independently conducted a third round of abstraction for 20% of all articles included in each respective review. This quality control process was completed to ensure accuracy, clarity, and consistency in abstraction. Data Documentation. An online database was created, and abstractors entered their data into this system using forms created by the Literature Review Team. All pairings of abstractors independently read and reviewed articles, abstracted key information, and entered it into the online database. After discrepancy resolution and quality control procedures were completed, the abstracted data was edited as needed and used to populate article evidence summary tables and inform trend tables demonstrating overarching themes in the data. Assessing Risk of Bias. Articles were assessed for internal validity, using either the ROBINS-I (Sterne et al., 2016) or ROBINS-E tool (ROBINS-E Development Group, 2022). These tools assess risk of bias in studies that compare the health effects of exposures or interventions across a range of study types (e.g., RCT’s, observational, etc.). These tools are tailored by study design and pose different sets of questions based on whether a study is a randomized controlled trial (RCT), non-randomized controlled trial, or an observational study. The risk of bias assessment for each study was completed by two reviewers (from either the Abstraction Team or the Science Board). When discrepancies arose, the reviewers discussed and resolved discrepancies. Additionally, the Policy, Systems, and Environments review used an equity-centered framework relevant to the research evidence and adapted to researching policy, systems, and environmental approaches for improving physical activity outcomes in older adults (Venkateswaran et al., 2023). The diversity-equity-inclusion frame was applied to studies assessed for risk of bias using ROBINS-E across relevant domains of bias (ROBINS-E Development Group, 2022) (i.e., confounding, selection of participants into the study, classification of exposures, departures from intended exposures, missing data, measurement of outcomes, and selection of reported results, aligned with PICO model). Step 5: Describe the Evidence Evidence Portfolios. To facilitate the analysis of the evidence, the Literature Review Team prepared evidence portfolios for each question (see supplementary materials). The evidence portfolios documented the full process followed for both reviews, including the sources of evidence, conclusions, evidence grades, description of evidence, populations analyzed, individual evidence summary tables, risk of bias and quality assessment charts, search strategies, literature trees, references, and rationales for exclusion of articles during full-text triage. Step 6: Complete Evidence Portfolios and Draft Scientific Report Science Board members reviewed and deliberated on the body of evidence to develop conclusion statements that supported each of the research questions. Conclusion statements were tightly associated with the evidence, focused on general agreement among the studies around the independent variables and outcomes, and acknowledged areas of disagreement or limitations, where they existed. The conclusion statements reflected only the evidence reviewed and not information Science Board members might have known from another source. Along with the evidence portfolios, a rubric was developed to guide the assessment and grading of the strength of the evidence supporting each conclusion statement (Table 3). The rubric was adapted from the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee (2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2018) and the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2020). Grading the strength of the evidence was based on applicability of the populations, exposures, and outcomes studied; generalizability to the population of interest; risk of bias and study limitations; quantity and consistency of findings across studies; and magnitude and precision of effect. Table 3. Physical Activity and Older Adults Systematic Literature Review Grading Criteria Grade Definition Strong The conclusion statement is based on a strong body of evidence as assessed by risk of bias, consistency, directness, precision, and generalizability. The level of certainty in the conclusion is strong, such that if new evidence emerges, modifications to the conclusion are unlikely to be required. Moderate The conclusion statement is based on a moderate body of evidence as assessed by risk of bias, consistency, directness, precision, and generalizability. The level of certainty in the conclusion is moderate, such that if new evidence emerges, modifications to the conclusion may be required. Limited The conclusion statement is based on a limited body of evidence as assessed by risk of bias, consistency, directness, precision, and generalizability. The level of certainty in the conclusion is limited, such that if new evidence emerges, modifications to the conclusion are likely to be required. Grade Not Assignable A conclusion statement cannot be drawn due to either a lack of evidence or evidence that has severe limitations related to risk of bias, consistency, directness, precision, and/or generalizability. Results The Physical Activity and Older Adults Systematic Literature Review (ICF Next, 2023) used a rigorous and systematic methodology. The methodology allowed the Literature Review Team to search, screen, select, abstract, assess the risk of bias, and include considerations of equity in original research related to effective strategies to get older adults moving; and grade the evidence from insufficient to strong. Over nine months, two literature searches were conducted, resulting in 16,883 titles and abstracts screened, and 734 full articles reviewed for inclusion. Of those, 64 original research articles were included for the final review to answer two questions, one focused on Settings and Strategies literature (46 studies) with five sub-questions and one focused on Policy, Systems, and Environments literature (18 studies) with two sub-questions (Figures 1 and 2). The process is documented for each research question in an evidence portfolio (see supplementary materials). Figure 1. Literature Tree Diagram for Question 1: What are effective intervention strategies to increase physical activity among older adults? Figure 2. Literature Tree Diagram for Question 2: What are effective policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies to increase physical activity among older adults? Discussion The Physical Activity and Older Adults Systematic Literature Review (ICF Next, 2023) evaluated the current scientific literature on strategies to increase physical activity among older adults to inform the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Midcourse Report: Implementation Strategies for Older Adults (HHS, 2023). Several strategies emerged across a variety of settings; the most commonly researched were home, health care, and community. Several limitations to the Physical Activity and Older Adults Systematic Literature Review (ICF Next, 2023) and opportunities to strengthen the research base on physical activity interventions for older adults should be noted. While the literature review looked at original research articles rather than systematic reviews or meta-analyses, most included studies did not measure, analyze, or disaggregate findings based on important individual or group characteristics. For the Settings and Strategies question, the team attempted to determine if the personal characteristics (e.g., ability, age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status) influence physical activity participation, but there was insufficient evidence to yield any analysis. For the Policy, Systems, and Environments question, equity considerations were applied, particularly concepts of diversity, inclusion, and access to study samples and intervention contexts to determine inequalities in physical activity outcomes. The samples did not reflect diverse populations and therefore an inability to grade the evidence or provide specific analysis for different subsets of older adults. For example, of the 18 included studies, only three studies examined specific racial/ethnic minority populations; two studies reported findings relative to disability-mobility limitations; and one study reported findings relative to health (multiple sclerosis status). Only two studies compared exposure to urban versus rural community geographies. Most studies of policy, systems, and environmental interventions employed cross-sectional design, examining residential neighborhoods (exposure context) in relation to physical activity outcomes, typically self-reported. Because of the importance of social connection and mental well-being, especially for older adults who are socially isolated or live alone, the review made efforts to examine these concepts in relation to physical activity outcomes and interventions. Unfortunately, most published studies of interventions for improving physical activity in older adults did not include social or mental well-being outcomes, such as social cohesion, quality of life, resilience, or mental health status. Lastly, few studies employed longitudinal designs, assessed long-term maintenance of outcomes, or investigated strategies to improve retention or prevent drop out in interventions to increase physical activity among the diversity of older adults, so physical activity maintenance, population and subpopulation effect remain uncertain. The Physical Activity and Older Adults Systematic Literature Review (ICF Next, 2023) provides a foundation suggesting what strategies work and in which settings to support physical activity in older adults. Several limitations to the literature review can be used as areas to strengthen future research to ensure more diverse populations are recruited, studied, analyzed, and outcomes documented in the scientific literature. Conclusion The Systematic Review (ICF Next, 2023) and Midcourse Report (HHS, 2023) are useful for physical activity researchers; policy makers; exercise and health professionals; clinicians; gerontologists; built environment professionals; local, state, territorial, and Tribal leaders; and others working with older adults. These reports are necessary as a guide to apply evidence-based strategies to support older adults to be more physically activity and to expand the future evidence base to translate Guidelines into practice. Author Contributions Conceptualization: A.V.B. and K.L.P.; Data Curation: D.H.J.; Formal Analysis: D.H.J.; Funding Acquisition: A.V.B. and K.L.P.; Investigation: D.H.J.; Methodology: A.V.B., D.H.J., and K.L.P.; Project Administration: A.V.B. and K.L.P.; Resources: A.V.B. and K.L.P.; Supervision: A.V.B. and K.L.P.; Validation: D.H.J.; Writing – Original Draft: A.V.B., D.H.J., and K.L.P.; Writing – Review & Editing: A.V.B. and K.L.P. Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to the 2022 President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition Science Board for their work on the literature review: Barbara J. Nicklas (Science Board Chair), Susan W. Buchholz, David E. Conroy, Cheryl Der Ananian, Loretta DiPietro, Mark Fenton, Deborah H. John, NiCole R. Keith, David X. Marquez, Jacqueline Osborne, and Dori Rosenberg. Additionally, the authors would like to acknowledge Sarah Caban, Rachel Fisher, Noelle Harada, Carolyn Hinton, and Malorie Polster for their contributions to this project.

The United Nations' Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda ensures and demands the protection and recognition of young people's roles in peace and security. This article focuses on why domestic YPS implementation is needed with the rise of social justice activism by young people in North America. The rise of youth activism and youth leadership in social justice movements has given a space for the global political agenda to challenge traditional approaches to "peace and security" frameworks. This includes challenging pre-conceived notions of YPS - and its policy frameworks - as a 'foreign' agenda by North American and other Western countries. We argue that this global shift in youth social justice activism demonstrates the need for critical domestic implementation and policy priorities for the YPS agenda within traditional donor- or Western- States, using Canada and the United States as case studies.

Cinema, which was included in social life as an art and entertainment tool at the end of the 19th century, gained a mass dimension in a short time. Cinema, which was the most preferred entertainment tool for the middle and lower classes in that period, also caused anxiety and worries in some social segments. Especially conservative social groups claimed that crime, violence, sexuality, alcohol and cigarette consumption were represented in an encouraging way in movies. As these concerns deepened and became widespread, public and non-governmental organizations had to take some steps in this regard. In the United States, between 1929 and 1932, a research series called Motion Pictures and Youth: The Payne Fund Studies was conducted in cooperation with the Motion Picture Research Council and the Payne Research and Experiment Fund, focusing on the effects of cinema on the behavior of children and youth. The results of this research series have been published in twelve reports. According to the results of the research, cinema has turned into an important tool in the formation of attitudes and behaviors of children and young people, and cinema causes behavioral disorders and sleep problems in children. After the reports of the research were published, heavy censorship policies were implemented in the United States of America. This series, which is one of the most comprehensive and influential studies in the history of film studies, has also inspired many researches in the following periods. Our study, which focuses on Payne Fund Studies within the framework of paradigm, method, content and results, is a descriptive study based on literature review and aims to contribute to the sociology of cinema by increasing the visibility of Payne Fund Studies.

Abstract Background The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by the United Nations states that physical activity (PA) is a human right for children and youth with disabilities, and they must experience equal opportunities for this. Nonetheless, compared to the population at large, this group participate less in PA, being 16-62% less likely to meet PA-guidelines. While previous studies, mainly based on identifying facilitators and barriers for PA-participation, showed that promoting PA for children and youth with disabilities is a complex task, requiring multidisciplinary approaches targeting several levels in the individual's life, not much is known about how this is actually handled and realised in. Therefore, this study aimed to assess how practices in local settings influence PA-implementation for children and youth with physical disabilities. Methods The study was designed as a qualitative multiple case study with two danish municipalities. A total of 23 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from different municipal departments were conducted and local policy documents were included. Thematic analysis was performed, based on Winter's integrated implementation model, Lipsky's theory on street-level bureaucrats, and Gittell's theory on relational coordination. Results PA-implementation for children and youth with physical disabilities is a complex challenge, involving many stakeholders and departments. The study found that efficient and sustainable performance can be improved by strengthening intersectoral collaboration, identifying shared goals and ambitions regarding PA for children and youth and, more concretely, supporting the work done by relevant local governmental departments and the schooling system. One of the municipalities had an explicit political focus on parasport and employed a parasport consultant, which had a positive influence on PA promotion across departments. In both municipalities consultants, coordinating cross-sectional processes, seemed to play an essential role. Additionally, the findings supported Michael Lipsky's theory regarding how street-level bureaucratic behaviour influence implementation processes and performances. Conclusions The organisational structure of municipalities challenges performances on PA-implementation for children and youth with disabilities. Hopefully, the findings can inspire and support various stakeholders to strengthen their efforts to install high-performance and collaboration in order to establish quality, sustainable and diversified possibilities for PA participation among children and youth with disabilities.

Equine-assisted services (EAS) are gaining popularity as ways to promote psychological health and social well-being. EAS may show particular promise as culturally appropriate initiatives for at-risk Indigenous youth, as they are thought to align well with Indigenous ways of knowing which place emphasis on relationships between the land and all living beings. We seek to better understand previous uses of EAS as initiatives for at-risk youth populations, including Indigenous populations, and learn about which outcomes have been addressed in the literature with an EAS initiative by conducting a scoping review. The review focused on initiatives targeting at-risk youth aged 10-18 years of age in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. A total of 27 studies were included in the final analysis from all target countries except New Zealand. The target populations were further divided into four subgroups: at-risk youth, youth with mental health disorders and/or learning disabilities, youth survivors of trauma/abuse, and at-risk Indigenous youth. Overall findings of the review suggest EAS are promising approaches for achieving therapeutic and learning goals with the potential to be successful with both Indigenous youth and at-risk youth more broadly.

By ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, states committed themselves to ensure an adequate standard of living and social protection to all persons with disabilities, including children. Yet, prior studies showed that children with disabilities are more likely to grow up poor. Existing research has mainly focused on single-country case studies or comparative analyses for low- and middle-income countries. Due to the lack of good quality data, comparative studies on poverty outcomes, its determinants and the poverty-reducing role of social transfers among children with disabilities in high-income countries are largely missing. This article addresses these gaps using the 2017 EU-SILC cross-sectional survey. The results show great differences across Europe in the prevalence of childhood disability, the poverty outcomes of children with disabilities and the poverty-reducing effectiveness of social transfers for them. In only a third of European countries are children with disabilities more likely to live in poor households than children without disabilities. Countries that perform weakly for children without disabilities also perform weakly for children with disabilities. Moreover, social transfers achieve more for children with disabilities in more than half of European countries. The family’s employment participation and social background have the expected poverty-reducing effects for children with disabilities and children without disabilities, though the strength of some effects differs between the two groups within certain geographical regions. However, the income-based poverty indicator disregards the higher costs families with children with disabilities face which underestimates their poverty risk. More research is needed on which poverty indicator accurately reflects the real living standards of children with disabilities.

Childhood victimization can negatively affect children’s self-perception, a multifaceted developmental asset that can be delineated into Global Self-Worth, Social Competence, and Behavioral Conduct. Despite the importance of self-perception, few studies have examined how strengths-based interventions impact self-perception among youth experiencing victimization. Using a familial case study design, the current study evaluated how a camp-based intervention, known as Camp HOPE, affected self-perception among siblings who experienced childhood victimization. Participants included three siblings and their mother who all identify as Black/African American and reside in the Midsouth, United States. The siblings participated in a week-long, overnight camp with other children exposed to victimization. The family was evaluated across three timepoints: pre-camp, 1 month post-camp, and 4 months post-camp. Participating in Camp HOPE appeared to have differential effects on the siblings’ self-perception. Specifically, all three children endorsed small to medium improvements in perceived Behavioral Conduct, but the camp differentially impacted their Global Self-Worth and Social Competence. Findings suggest that Camp HOPE may enhance self-perception among Black/African American children who have experienced victimization. This intervention may also be more accessible and acceptable, compared to traditional treatment formats.

AbstractOver two-thirds of adolescents living with HIV worldwide reside in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Despite widespread availability and access to evidence-based HIV prevention and treatment, dissemination has been inadequate. This commentary distinguishes between implementation and dissemination, reflecting on the unique barriers to dissemination of evidence-based programs in SSA. We present a seven-strategy blueprint developed by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that emphasizes targeted communication about research findings. Two case studies from the Adolescent HIV Implementation Science Alliance are presented to illustrate the value of planning for dissemination. We propose recommendations to strengthen dissemination recognizing that these may not be possible or appropriate in all situations, including developing a plan early in the process, engaging a dissemination technical team for support, the application of methodological rigor and theory to inform dissemination, active involvement of youth voices and digital tools to maximize message reach, and a keen recognition of evolving contexts and shifting priorities in order to nimbly tailor messages as needed.

Young people are envisioning the future of their communities. The future is theirs. Youth see the challenges our communities are facing today and understand the need to use their creativity to dismantle our problematic systems. As adults, we must support the creative work of youth, cede power where possible, and uplift their visions for the future. To do this, we must understand the immense and expansive impact of creative youth on communities. Through this research initiative, young creative people, their adult allies, and a team of researchers have reviewed literature, data sets, and case studies – comprised of interviews, narratives, and artistic works – to examine the challenges and opportunities that exist at the intersection of arts & culture, community development, and youth development. This field scan seeks to answer the question: What impact do creative youth have on communities? Following an introduction that includes the research design and methods, we provide an outline of the context of this work that emphasizes where the field is now, as addressed by the current literature and the combined crises and insights of 2020. We then present the key findings that seek to expand on our simple answer to the question posed above presented through the perspectives of young creatives. Unabashedly, young creatives believe their projects benefit both people and places and promote more just and thriving communities. In the following two sections, we provide emerging lessons that include both additional learnings from the research and a set of researcher-generated provocations articulating the ideas that young creatives shared about the future of their projects in communities. Upon deep analysis, we conclude that through creative youth & community development projects, creative young people impact their communities in significant ways which too often go unacknowledged. We conclude that in communities where creative youth & community development projects are present, youth see a future where: Youth increase creativity and cultivate greater agency in themselves and others Communities (people and places) are more sustainable and responsive Youth-serving organizations honor personal identity and build collective belonging Places and their populations are healthier, safer, and better able to foster wellbeing Youth and adults catalyze intergenerational cultural continuity Further, we found an increased importance of partnering across sectors and among stakeholders to increase the impacts of creative youth in communities. Creative youth believe their projects benefit from working “in community” with others, meaning strategically investing time, resources, and relationships with other youth, adults, projects, and organizations. By doing so, they believe their projects have a greater impact on people and places. Through our analysis of the full sample of programs, we discovered a significant portion of the field uses youth development and creative placemaking approaches alongside deep engagement with an allied social sector. Creative youth also believe the impact of their projects was enhanced by an intentional mapping of the full range of stakeholders they sought to impact. Finally, we conclude that creative youth believe their projects need new language and measures of success. In order to achieve this, the fields of creative youth development, creative placemaking, and their allied sectors need to evolve their approaches to defining, researching, and measuring success. We believe that young people and adults must work together to define and build these. The intended audiences for this field scan include practitioners and supporters of creative youth & community development projects who work in the arts & culture, youth development, community development, creative youth development, creative placemaking, or allied sectors. Throughout the publication, we have provided tangible models in order to guide practitioners towards application of the ideas within their own work and context. We researched and wrote this scan from June through November 2020, in the midst of several crises impacting communities throughout the United States: the global COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting economic recession, the political uncertainty of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and the community uprisings and racial reckoning resulting from the violence against Black civilians at the hands of police. Our findings reflect these circumstances and are presented with the urgency these events demand. These circumstances – and the resulting actions of young creatives around the United States – are the precise reason why we do this work. The creative contributions of young people to their communities, particularly in times of crisis, exemplifies the urgency and responsibility of their adult allies to support their creative social change pursuits. Now is the time we need this work most.

Introduction Discourses of queer youth suicide regularly represent non-heterosexual young men as vulnerable and as victims who are inherently without strategies for coping with adversity (qv. Rasmussen; Marshall; Driver 3). Alternatively, queer youth are sometimes marked as fundamentally resilient, as avid users of tools of resilience and community such as the internet (Smith & Gray 74; Wexler et al. 566; Hillier & Harrison; Bryson & McIntosh). In the latter approach, protective factors are typically presented as specific to queer youth (e.g., Russell 10), therefore also minoritising and essentialising resilience. Both approaches ignore the diversity of queer young lives and the capacity for a subject to be both vulnerable and resilient—concepts which need to be unpacked if we are to further our understanding of minority lives. Significantly, both approaches also ignore the fact that growing up occurs in a series of transitions, cultural encounters and circumstantial changes. Queer (LGBT) youth are neither all victims and vulnerable, nor are they all self-reliant and resilient. Recent research has indicated that non-heterosexual youth continue to have a higher rate of suicide and self-harm (Cover, Queer Youth Suicide), although this is by no means indicative that vast numbers of LGBTI require support, intervention or preventative measures throughout all aspects of the transition into adult life. This article has two objectives, both of which are best addressed together in order to come at an understanding as how best to frame approaches to queer youth suicide as an ongoing social concern. Firstly, to ask what human, psychological and subjective ‘resilience’ might be said to mean in the context of public discourses of queer youth suicidality, and secondly to ask what a concept of ‘resilience’ does for queer youth identity in terms of relationality. Neither objective, of course, can be met alone in a short article—the purpose here is to open thinking on the topic in ways that question normative assumptions about the conditions of queer youth in the context of liveable lives and the positioning of resilience as reliant on normative accounts of identity. The article begins with a brief overview of the different uses of resilience in the context of broad social representations of queer youth. It goes on to discuss the It Gets Better video site which aimed to produce resilience among predominantly bullied queer youth by ‘imparting hope’. Some remarks on the relationship between identity, sexuality, sociality and resilience will conclude. Resilience and the Queer Youth Subject Developed by Crawford Holling in the 1970s, the concept of resilience was used to describe the capacity of a system to “absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables” (Holling 14). In terms of ecology and the physical sciences, the notion of resilience operates within an assumption that future events will not be known but will be unexpected, thereby requiring a capacity to accommodate those events whatever form they take (21). When later used in the psychological sciences, the term resilience likewise assumes disruption and uncertainty in lived experience, requiring a resilient subject to be capable in both learning and adaptation. In the context of queer youth, resilience, then, can be applied to mean an adaptation to new situations which exacerbate vulnerability to suicidality for those who are positioned to seek escape from intolerable emotional pain or the perception of life as unliveable (Cover, Queer Youth Suicide 10, 148). Resilience in this use presumes that, for example, bullying has a detrimental causal relationship with suicidality when it newly occurs if the subject does not have the capacity to adapt and incorporate it into everyday life. Bullying, however, is generally related to suicide only by virtue of its ongoingness rather than it being a sudden shift in social relations. Striking about much of the discourse of resilience in the psychological sciences is that the concept of resilience presumes a unitary subject who is a subject prior to relationality and sociality (e.g. Leipold & Greve; Singh et al.; Smith & Gray). Resilience is thus seen as a capacity to cope with adversity as if adversity arises prior to the subject rather than being a form of relationality that conditions the subject. In that context, the queer youth subject is understood in essentialist terms, whereby sexual subjectivity is represented simultaneously as both a norm and abnormal, and is a factor of subjectivity that is understood to pre-exist sociality. That is, the queer youth subject is queer before relationality with others, thereby before the kinds of relationalities that might demand resilience. An alternative is to understand queer youth not as vulnerable because they are queer, but as subjects constituted in the (inequitably distributed) precarity of corporeal life in sociality, and thereby already formed in (inequitably distributed) resilience to the sorts of shifts, changes and adversities that shift one from an experience of vulnerability to an experience of a life that is unliveable (Butler, Precarious Life; Frames of War). Approaching queer youth suicide from a perspective not of risk but through the simultaneous fostering and critique of resilience opens the possibility of providing solutions that aid younger persons to resist suicidality as a flight from intolerable pain without articulating the self as inviolable and thereby losing the ethical value of the recognition of vulnerability. The question, then, is whether such critique can be found in sites of resilience discourse in relation to queer youth. Queer Youth and It Gets Better The video blogging site It Gets Better (http://www.itgetsbetter.org) was begun by columnist Dan Savage in response to a spate of reported queer student suicides in September/October 2010 in the United States. The site hosts more than a thousand video contributions, many from queer adults who seek to provide hope for younger persons by showing that queer adulthood is markedly different from the experiences of harassment, bullying, loneliness or surveillance experienced by queer youth in school and family environments. This is among the first widely-available communicative media form to address directly queer youth on issues related to suicide, and the first to draw on lived experiences as a means by which to provide resources for queer youth resilience. The fact that these experiences are related through video-logs (vlogs) provides the texts with a greater sense of authenticity and a framework which often addresses youth directly on the topic of suicidality (Cover, Queer Youth Suicide). Savage’s intention was to produce resilience in queer youth by imparting ‘hope for young people facing harassment’ and to create ‘a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that … it does indeed get better’ (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/). Hope, in this context, is represented as the core attribute of queer youth resilience. The tag-line of the site is: Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/). Hope for the future is frequently presented as hope for an end to school days. In the primary video of the site, Dan Savage’s partner Terry describes his school experiences: My school was pretty miserable … I was picked on mercilessly in school. People were really cruel to me. I was bullied a lot. Beat up, thrown against walls and lockers and windows; stuffed into bathroom stalls. . . . Honestly, things got better the day I left highschool. I didn’t see the bullies every day, I didn’t see the people who harassed me every day, I didn’t have to see the school administrators who would do nothing about it every day. Life instantly got better (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/) Such comments present a picture of school life in which the institutional norms of secondary schools that depend so heavily on surveillance, discriminative norms, economies of secrecy and disclosure permit bullying and ostracisation to flourish and become, then, the site of hopelessness in what to many appears at the time as a period of never-ending permanency. Indeed, teen-aged life has often been figured in geographic terms as a kind of hopeless banishment from the realities that are yet to come: Eve Sedgwick referred to that period as ‘that long Babylonian exile known as queer childhood’ (4). The emphatic focus on the institutional environment of highschool rather than family, rural towns, closetedness, religious discourse or feelings of isolation is remarkably important in changing the contemporary way in which the social situation of queer youth suicide has been depicted. The discourse of the It Gets Better project and contributions makes ‘school’ its object—a site that demands resilience of its queer students as the remedy to the detrimental effects of bullying. Here, however, resilience is not depicted as adaptability but the strength to tolerate and, effectively, ‘wait out’, a bullying environment. The focus on bullying that frames the dialogue on queer youth suicide and youth resilience in the It Gets Better videos is the product of a mid-2000s shift in focus to the effects of bullying on LGBT youth in place of critiques of heterosexism, sexual identity, coming out and physical violence (Fodero), regularly depicting bullying as directly causal of suicide (Kim & Leventhal 151; Espelage & Swearer 157; Hegna & Wichstrøm 35). Bullying, in these representations, is articulated as that which is, on the one hand, preventable through punitive institutional policies and, on the other, as an ineradicable fact of living through school years. It is, in the latter depiction, that experience for which younger LGBT persons must manage their own resistance. In depicting school as the site of anti-queer bullying, the It Gets Better project represents queer youth as losing hope of escape from the intolerable pain of bullying in its persistence and repetition. However, the site’s purpose is to show that escape from the school environment to what is regularly depicted as a neoliberal, white and affluent representation of queer adulthood, founded on conservative coupledom (Cover, “Object(ives) of Desire”), careers, urban living, and relative wealth—depictions somewhat different from the reality of diverse queer lives. The shift from the school-bullying in queer youth to the liberal stability of queer adulthood is figured in the It Gets Better discourse as not only possible but as that which should be anticipated. It is in that anticipation that resilience is articulated in a way which calls upon queer youth to manage their own resiliency by having or performing hopefulness. Representing hope as the performative element in queer youth resilience has precedence as a suicide prevention strategy. Hopelessness is a key factor in much of the contemporary academic discussion of suicide risk in general and is often used as a predictor for recognising suicidal behaviour (Battin 13), although it is also particularly associated with suicidality and queer teenagers. Hopelessness is usually understood as despair or desperateness, the lack of expectation of a situation or goal one desires or feels one should desire. For Holden and colleagues, hopelessness is counter to social desirability, which is understood as the capacity to describe oneself in terms by which society judges a person as legitimate or desirable (Holden, Mendonca & Serin 500). Psychological and psychiatric measurement techniques frequently rely on Aaron T. Beck’s Hopelessness Scale, which utilises a twenty-question true/false survey designed to measure feelings about the future, expectation and self-motivation in adults over the age of seventeen years as a predictor of suicidal behaviour. Beck and colleagues attempted to provide an objective measurement for hopelessness rather than leave it treated as a diffuse and vague state of feeling in patients with depression. The tool asks a series of questions, most about the future, presenting a score on whether or not the answers given were true or false. Questions include: ‘I might as well give up because I can’t make things better for myself’; ‘I can’t imagine what my life would be like in ten years’; ‘My future seems dark to me’; and ‘All I can see ahead of me is unpleasantness rather than pleasantness’. Responding true to these indicates hopelessness. Responding false to some of the following also indicates hopelessness: ‘I can look forward to more good times than bad times’; and ‘When things are going badly, I am helped by knowing they can’t stay that way forever’ (Beck). While these questions and the scale are not used uncritically, the relationship between the discursive construction through the questions of what constitutes hopelessness and the aims of the It Gets Better videos are notably comparable. The objective, then, of the videos is to provide evidence and, perhaps, instil hope that would allow such questions to be answered differently, particularly to be able to give a true response to the last question above. Hallway Allies liaison support group, which operates across university campuses and high schools to prevent bullying, stated in this representative way in the introduction to their video contribution: ‘Remember to keep your head up, highschool doesn’t last forever’ (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/video /entry/5wwozgwyruy/). Or, as Rebecca in the introductory statement of another video contribution put it: You may be feeling like this pain will last forever, like you have no control, it’s dark, oppressive and feels like there is no end. I know – I get it. but I promise … hang in there and you’ll find it … Wait – you’ll see – it gets better! (http://www.itgetsbetter.org/video/entry/wxymqzw3oqy/). As can be seen, such video examples respond to a discourse of hopelessness aligned with the framework exemplified by Beck’s scale, prompting queer youth audiences of these videos to imagine a future for themselves, to understand hope in temporal terms of future wellbeing, and to know that the future does not necessarily hold the same kinds of unpleasantness as experienced in the everyday high school environment. Sexual Identity, Resilience and the Normative Lifecycle In the It Gets Better framework, resilience is produced in the knowledge of a queer life that is linear and patterned through stages in relation to institutional forms of belonging (and non-belonging). That is, a queer life is represented as one which undergoes the hardship of being bullied in school, of leaving that institutional environment for a queer adulthood that is built on a myth of safety, pleasure, success and a distinctive break from the environment of the past (as if the psyche or the self is re-produced anew in a phase of a queer lifecycle). Working within a queer theoretical and cultural understanding of identity, sexual subjectivity can be understood as constituted in social and cultural formations. Overturning the previously-held liberal notion of power as the power which represses sex and sexualities, Foucault’s History of Sexuality provided queer theory with an argument in which power, as deployed through discourse and discursive formations, produces the coherent sexual subject. This occurs historically and only in specific periods. In Foucault’s analysis, homosexual identities become conceivable in the Nineteenth Century as a result of specific juridical, medical and criminal discourses (85). From a Foucauldian perspective, there is no subject driven by an inner psyche or a pre-determined desire (as in psychoanalysis). Instead, such subjectivity occurs in and through the power/knowledge network of discourse as it writes or scripts the subject into subjectivity. Canonical queer theorist Judith Butler has been central in extending Foucault’s analysis in ways which are pragmatic for understanding queer youth in the context of growing up and transitioning into adulthood. Her theory of performativity has usefully complexified the ways in which we can understand sexual identity and allowed us to overcome the core assumption in much queer youth research that heterosexual and homosexual identities are natural, mutually-exclusive and innate; instead, allowing us to focus on how the process of subject formation for youth is implicated in the tensions and pressures of a range of cultural, social, organisational and communicative encounters and engagements. Butler projects the most useful post-structuralist discussion of subjectivity by suggesting that the subject is constituted by repetitive performances in terms of the structure of signification that produces retroactively the illusion of an inner subjective core (Butler, Gender Trouble 143). Queer identity becomes a normative ideal rather than a descriptive feature of experience, and is the resultant effect of regimentary discursive practices (16, 18). The non-heterosexual subject, then, is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are formed as recognisable identity performances in the context, here, of a set of lifecycle expectations built through a vulnerable queer childhood, being bullied, attaining hope, leaving school and fruition in queer adulthood. Resilience, in the It Gets Better discourse, then, is seen to be produced in understanding the stages of a normative queer life. An issue emerges for how queer youth suicide is understood within this particular formation that posits non-heterosexuality as the problematic source of suicidality emerges in the assumption that the vulnerability to suicidal behaviours for queer youth is the result singularly of sexuality, rather than looking to the fact that sexuality is one facet of identity – an important and sometimes fraught one for adolescents in general – located within a complex of other formations of identity and selfhood. This is part of what Diana Fuss has identified as the “synecdochical tendency to see only one part of a subject’s identity (usually the most visible part) and to make that part stand for the whole” (116). This ignores the opportunity to think through the conditions of queer youth in terms of the interaction between different facets of identity (such as gender and ethnicity, but also personal experience), different contexts in which identity is performed and different institutional settings that vary in response and valuation of non-normative aspects of subjectivity, thereby allowing a vulnerability not to be an attribute of being a queer youth, but to be understood as produced across a nuanced and complex array of factors. While the very concept of resilience invokes both an individualisation of the subject and a disciplinary regime of pastoral care (Foucault, Abnormal), queer youth in the It Gets Better discourse of hope are depicted multiply as: Inherently vulnerable and lacking resilience as a result of an essentialist notion of sexual orientation.Constituted in a relationality within a schooling environment that is conditioned by bullying as the primary expression of diverse socialityFinding resilience only through a self-managed and self-articulated expression of ‘hope’ that is to be produced in the knowledge that there is an ‘escape’ from a school environment. What the discourse of that which we might refer to as “resilient hopefulness” does is represent queer youth reductively as inherently non-resilient. It ignores the multiple expressions of sexual identity, the capacity to respond to suicidality through a critique of normative sexual subjectivity, and the capabilities of queer youth to develop meaningful relationships across all sexual possibilities that are, themselves, forms of resilience or at least mitigations of vulnerability. At the same time, “resilient hopefulness” is produced within a context in which a normative sociality of bullying culture is expressed as timeless and unchangeable (rather than historical and institutional), thereby requiring queer younger persons to undertake the task of managing vulnerability, risk, resilience and identity as an individualised responsibility outside of communities of care. Whether the presentation of a normative lifecycle is genuinely a preventative measure for queer youth suicidality is that which suicidologists and practitioners must test, although one might argue at this stage that resilience is better produced through a broader appeal to social diversity rather than the regimentation of a queer life that must ‘wait in hope’ for a liveability that may never come. References Battin, Margaret Pabst. Ethical Issues in Suicide. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995. Beck, Aaron T., Arlene Weissman, Larry Trexler, and David Lester. “The Measurement of Pessimism: The Hopelessness Scale” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42.6 (1974): 861–865. Bryson, Mary K., and Lori B. MacIntosh. “Can We Play ‘Fun Gay’?: Disjuncture and Difference, and the Precarious Mobilities of Millennial Queer Youth Narratives.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 23.1 (2010): 101-124. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London & New York: Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Precarious Life. London: Verso, 2004. Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London and New York: Verso, 2009. Cover, Rob. “Object(ives) of Desire: Romantic Coupledom versus Promiscuity, Subjectivity and Sexual Identity.”Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 24.2 (2010): 251-263. Cover, Rob. Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity: Unliveable Lives? London: Ashgate, 2012. Driver, Susan. “Introducing Queer Youth Cultures.” Queer Youth Cultures. Ed. Susan Driver. Albany, NY: SUNY Press (2008). 1-18. Espelage, Dorothy L., and Susan M. Swearer. “Addressing Research Gaps in the Intersection between Homophobia and Bullying.” School Psychology Review 37.2 (2008): 155–159. Fodero, Lisa. “Teen Violinist Dies after Student Internet Lark.” The Age, 1 Oct. 2010. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/world/>. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1990. Foucault, Michel. Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975. Eds. Valerio Marchetti and Antonella Salmoni. Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Picador, 2004. Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference. New York and London: Routledge, 1989. Hegna, Kristinn, and Lars Wichstrøm. “Suicide Attempts among Norwegian Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youths: General and Specific Risk Factors.” Acta Sociologica 50.1 (2007): 21–37. Hillier, Lynne, and Lyn Harrison. “Building Realities Less Limited than Their Own: Young People Practising Same-Sex Attraction on the Internet.” Sexualities 10.1 (2007): 82-100. Holden, Ronald R., James C. Mendonca and Ralph C. Serin. “Suicide, Hopelessness, and social desirability: A Test of an Interactive Model.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 57.4 (1989): 500–504. Holling, C. S. “Resilience and Stabity of Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4 (1973): 1-23. Kim, Young Shin, and Bennett Leventhal. “Bullying and Suicide. A Review.” International Journal of Adolescent Medical Health 20.2 (2008): 133–154. Leipold, Bernhard, and Werner Greve. “Resilience: A Conceptual Bridge between Coping and Development.” European Psychologist 14.1 (2009): 40-50. Marshall, Daniel. “Popular Culture, the ‘Victim’ Trope and Queer Youth Analytics.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 23.1 (2010): 65-86. Rasmussen, Mary Lou. Becoming Subjects: Sexualities and Secondary Schooling. New York: Routledge, 2006. Russell, Stephen T. “Beyond Risk: Resilience in the Lives of Sexual Minority Youth.” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education 2.3 (2005): 5-18. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Queer Performativity: Henry James’s The Art of the Novel.” GLQ 1.1 (1993): 1–14. Singh, Anneliese A., Danica G. Hays, and Larel S. Watson. “Strength in the Face of Adversity: Resilience Strategies of Transgender Individuals.” Journal of Counseling & Development 89.1 (2011): 20-27. Smith, Mark. S., and Susan W. Gray. “The Courage to Challenge: A New Measure of Hardiness in LGBT Adults.” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 21.1 (2009): 73-89. Wexler, Lisa Marin, Gloria DiFluvio, and Tracey K. Burke. “Resilience and Marginalized Youth: Making a Case for Personal and Collective Meaning-Making as Part of Resilience Research in Public Health.” Social Science & Medicine 69.4 (2009): 565-570.

The debate on the social role of museums trundles along in an age where complex associations between community, collections, and cultural norms are highly contested (Silverman 3–4; Sandell, Inequality 3–23). This article questions whether, in the case of community groups whose aspirations often go unrecognised (in this case people with either blindness or low vision), there is a need to discuss and debate institutionalised approaches that often reinforce social exclusion and impede cultural access. If “access is [indeed] an entry point to experience” (Papalia), then the privileging of visual encounters in museums is clearly a barrier for people who experience sight loss or low vision (Levent and Pursley). In contrast, a multisensory aesthetic to exhibition display respects the gamut of human sensory experience (Dudley 161–63; Drobnick 268–69; Feld 184; James 136; McGlone 41–60) as do discursive gateways including “lectures, symposia, workshops, educational programs, audio guides, and websites” (Cachia). Independent access to information extends beyond Braille on toilet doors.Underpinning this article is an ongoing qualitative case study undertaken by the author involving participant observation, workshops, and interviews with eight adults who experience vision impairment. The primary research site has been the National Museum of Australia. Reflecting on the role of curators as storytellers and the historical development of museums and their practitioners as agents for social development, the article explores the opportunities latent in museum collections as they relate to community members with vision impairment. The outcomes of this investigation offer insights into emerging issues as they relate to the International Council of Museums (ICOM) definitions of the museum program. Curators as Storytellers“The ways in which objects are selected, put together, and written or spoken about have political effects” (Eilean Hooper-Greenhill qtd. in Sandell, Inequality 8). Curators can therefore open or close doors to discrete communities of people. The traditional role of curators has been to collect, care for, research, and interpret collections (Desvallées and Mairesse 68): they are characterised as information specialists with a penchant for research (Belcher 78). While commonly possessing an intimate knowledge of their institution’s collection, their mode of knowledge production results from a culturally mediated process which ensures that resulting products, such as cultural significance assessments and provenance determinations (Russell and Winkworth), privilege the knowing systems of dominant social groups (Fleming 213). Such ways of seeing can obstruct the access prospects of underserved audiences.When it comes to exhibition display—arguably the most public of work by museums—curators conventionally collaborate within a constellation of other practitioners (Belcher 78–79). Curators liaise with museum directors, converse with conservators, negotiate with exhibition designers, consult with graphics designers, confer with marketing boffins, seek advice from security, chat with editors, and engage with external contractors. I question the extent that curators engage with community groups who may harbour aspirations to participate in the exhibition experience—a sticking point soon to be addressed. Despite the team based ethos of exhibition design, it is nonetheless the content knowledge of curators on public display. The art of curatorial interpretation sets out not to instruct audiences but, in part, to provoke a response with narratives designed to reveal meanings and relationships (Freeman Tilden qtd. in Alexander and Alexander 258). Recognised within the institution as experts (Sandell, Inclusion 53), curators have agency—they decide upon the stories told. In a recent television campaign by the National Museum of Australia, a voiceover announces: a storyteller holds incredible power to connect and to heal, because stories bring us together (emphasis added). (National Museum of Australia 2015)Storytelling in the space of the museum often shares the histories, perspectives, and experiences of people past as well as living cultures—and these stories are situated in space and time. If that physical space is not fit-for-purpose—that is, it does not accommodate an individual’s physical, intellectual, psychiatric, sensory, or neurological needs (Disability Discrimination Act 1992, Cwlth)—then the story reaches only long-established patrons. The museum’s opportunity to contribute to social development, and thus the curator’s as the primary storyteller, will have been missed. A Latin-American PerspectiveICOM’s commitment to social development could be interpreted merely as a pledge to make use of collections to benefit the public through scholarship, learning, and pleasure (ICOM 15). If this interpretation is accepted, however, then any museum’s contribution to social development is somewhat paltry. To accept such a limited and limiting role for museums is to overlook the historical efforts by advocates to change the very nature of museums. The ascendancy of the social potential of museums first blossomed during the late 1960s at a time where, globally, overlapping social movements espoused civil rights and the recognition of minority groups (Silverman 12; de Varine 3). Simultaneously but independently, neighbourhood museums arose in the United States, ecomuseums in France and Quebec, and the integral museum in Latin America, notably in Mexico (Hauenschild; Silverman 12–13). The Latin-American commitment to the ideals of the integral museum developed out of the 1972 round table of Santiago, Chile, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Giménez-Cassina 25–26). The Latin-American signatories urged the local and regional museums of their respective countries to collaborate with their communities to resolve issues of social inequality (Round Table Santiago 13–21). The influence of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire should be acknowledged. In 1970, Freire ushered in the concept of conscientization, defined by Catherine Campbell and Sandra Jovchelovitch as:the process whereby critical thinking develops … [and results in a] … thinker [who] feels empowered to think and to act on the conditions that shape her living. (259–260)This model for empowerment lent inspiration to the ideals of the Santiago signatories in realising their sociopolitical goal of the integral museum (Assunção dos Santos 20). Reframing the museum as an institution in the service of society, the champions of the integral museum sought to redefine the thinking and practices of museums and their practitioners (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 37–39). The signatories successfully lobbied ICOM to introduce an explicitly social purpose to the work of museums (Assunção dos Santos 6). In 1974, in the wake of the Santiago round table, ICOM modified their definition of a museum to “a permanent non-profit institution, open to the public, in the service of society and its development” (emphasis added) (Hauenschild). Museums had been transformed into “problem solvers” (Judite Primo qtd. in Giménez-Cassina 26). With that spirit in mind, museum practitioners, including curators, can develop opportunities for reciprocity with the many faces of the public (Guarini). Response to Social Development InitiativesStarting in the 1970s, the “second museum revolution” (van Mensch 6–7) saw the transition away from: traditional roles of museums [of] collecting, conservation, curatorship, research and communication … [and toward the] … potential role of museums in society, in education and cultural action. (van Mensch 6–7)Arguably, this potential remains a work in progress some 50 years later. Writing in the tradition of museums as agents of social development, Mariana Lamas states:when we talk about “in the service of society and its development”, it’s quite different. It is like the drunk uncle at the Christmas party that the family pretends is not there, because if they pretend long enough, he might pass out on the couch. (Lamas 47–48)That is not to say that museums have neglected to initiate services and programs that acknowledge the aspirations of people with disabilities (refer to Cachia and Krantz as examples). Without discounting such efforts, but with the refreshing analogy of the drunken uncle still fresh in memory, Lamas answers her own rhetorical question:how can traditional museums promote community development? At first the word “development” may seem too much for the museum to do, but there are several ways a museum can promote community development. (Lamas 52) Legitimising CommunitiesThe first way that museums can foster community or social development is to:help the community to over come [sic] a problem, coming up with different solutions, putting things into a new perspective; providing confidence to the community and legitimizing it. (Lamas 52)As a response, my doctoral investigation legitimises the right of people with vision impairment to participate in the social and cultural aspects of publicly funded museums. The Australian Government upheld this right in 2008 by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (and Optional Protocol), which enshrines the right of people with disability to participate in the cultural life of the nation (United Nations).At least 840,700 people in Australia (a minimum of four per cent of the population) experiences either blindness or low vision (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2009). For every one person in the Australian community who is blind, nearly five other people experience low vision. The medical model of disability identifies the impairment as the key feature of a person and seeks out a corrective intervention. In contrast, the social model of disability strives to remove the attitudinal, social, and physical barriers enacted by people or institutions (Landman, Fishburn, and Tonkin 14). Therein lies the opportunity and challenge for museums—modifying layouts and practices that privilege the visual. Consequently, there is scope for museums to partner with people with vision impairment to identify their aspirations rather than respond as a problem to be fixed. Common fixes in the museums for people with disabilities include physical alterations such as ramps and, less often, special tours (Cachia). I posit that curators, as co-creators and major contributors to exhibitions, can be part of a far wider discussion. In the course of doctoral research, I accompanied adults with a wide array of sight impairments into exhibitions at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, the Australian War Memorial, and the National Museum of Australia. Within the space of the exhibition, the most commonly identified barrier has been the omission of access opportunities to interpreted materials: that is, information about objects on display as well as the wider narratives driving exhibitions. Often, the participant has had to work backwards, from the object itself, to understand the wider topic of the exhibition. If aesthetics is “the way we communicate through the senses” (Thrift 291), then the vast majority of exhibits have been inaccessible from a sensory perspective. For people with low vision (that is, they retain some degree of functioning sight), objects’ labels have often been too small to be read or, at times, poorly contrasted or positioned. Objects have often been set too deep into display cabinets or too far behind safety barriers. If individuals must use personal magnifiers to read text or look in vain at objects, then that is an indicator that there are issues with exhibition design. For people who experience blindness (that is, they cannot see), neither the vast majority of exhibits nor their interpretations have been made accessible. There has been minimal access across all museums to accessioned objects, handling collections, or replicas to tease out exhibits and their stories. Object labels must be read by family or friends—a tiring experience. Without motivated peers, the stories told by curators are silenced by a dearth of alternative options.Rather than presume to know what works for people with disabilities, my research ethos respects the “nothing about us without us” (Charlton 2000; Werner 1997) maxim of disability advocates. To paraphrase Lamas, we have collaborated to come up with different solutions by putting things into new perspectives. In turn, “person-centred” practices based on rapport, warmth, and respect (Arigho 206–07) provide confidence to a diverse community of people by legitimising their right to participate in the museum space. Incentivising Communities Museums can also nurture social or community development by providing incentives to “the community to take action to improve its quality of life” (Lamas 52). It typically falls to (enthusiastic) public education and community outreach teams to engage underserved communities through targeted programs. This approach continues the trend of curators as advocates for the collection, and educators as advocates for the public (Kaitavouri xi). If the exhibition briefs normally written by curators (Belcher 83) reinforced the importance of access, then exhibition designers would be compelled to offer fit-for-purpose solutions. Better still, if curators (and other exhibition team members) regularly met with community based organisations (perhaps in the form of a disability reference group), then museums would be better positioned to accommodate a wider spectrum of community members. The National Standards for Australian Museums and Galleries already encourages museums to collaborate with disability organisations (40). Such initiatives offer a way forward for improving a community’s sense of itself and its quality of life. The World Health Organization defines health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. While I am not using quality of life indicators for my doctoral study, the value of facilitating social and cultural opportunities for my target audience is evident in participant statements. At the conclusion of one sensory based workshop, Mara, a female participant who experiences low vision in one eye and blindness in the other, stated:I think it was interesting in that we could talk together about what we were experiencing and that really is the social aspect of it. I mean if I was left to go to a whole lot of museums on my own, I probably wouldn’t. You know, I like going with kids or a friend visiting from interstate—that sort of thing. And so this group, in a way, replicates that experience in that you’ve got someone else to talk about your impressions with—much better than going on your own or doing this alone.Mara’s statement was in response to one of two workshops I held with the support of the Learning Services team at the National Museum of Australia in May 2015. Selected objects from the museum’s accessioned collection and handling collection were explored, as well as replicas in the form of 3D printed objects. For example, participants gazed upon and handled a tuckerbox, smelt and tasted macadamia nuts in wattle seed syrup, and listened to a genesis story about the more-ish nut recorded by the Butchulla people—the traditional owners of Fraser Island. We sat around a table while I, as the workshop mediator, sought to facilitate free-flowing discussions about their experiences and, in turn, mused on the capacity of objects to spark social connection and opportunities for cultural access. While the workshop provided the opportunity for reciprocal exchanges amongst participants as well as between participants and me, what was highly valued by most participants was the direct contact with members of the museum’s Learning Services team. I observed that participants welcomed the opportunity to talk with real museum workers. Their experience of museum practitioners, to date, had been largely confined to the welcome desk of respective institutions or through special events or tours where they were talked at. The opportunity to communicate directly with the museum allowed some participants to share their thoughts and feelings about the services that museums provide. I suggest that curators open themselves up to such exchanges on a more frequent basis—it may result in reciprocal benefits for all stakeholders. Fortifying IdentityA third way museums can contribute to social or community development is by:fortify[ing] the bonds between the members of the community and reaffirm their identities making them feel more secure about who they are; and give them a chance to tell their own version of their history to “outsiders” which empowers them. (Lamas 52)Identity informs us and others of who we are and where we belong in the world (Silverman 54). However, the process of identity marking and making can be fraught: “some communities are ours by choice … [and] … some are ours because of the ways that others see us” (Watson 4). Communities are formed by identifying who is in and who is out (Francois Dubet qtd. in Bessant and Watts 260). In other words, the construction of collective identity is reinforced through means of social inclusion and social exclusion. The participants of my study, as members or clients of the Royal Society for the Blind | Canberra Blind Society, clearly value participating in events with empathetic peers. People with vision impairment are not a homogenous group, however. Reinforcing the cultural influences on the formation of identity, Fiona Candlin asserts that “to state the obvious but often ignored fact, blind people … [come] … from all social classes, all cultural, racial, religious and educational backgrounds” (101). Irrespective of whether blindness or low vision arises congenitally, adventitiously, or through unexpected illness, injury, or trauma, the end result is an assortment of individuals with differing perceptual characteristics who construct meaning in often divergent ways (De Coster and Loots 326–34). They also hold differing world views. Therefore, “participation [at the museum] is not an end in itself. It is a means for creating a better world” (Assunção dos Santos 9). According to the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, a better world is: a society for all, in which every individual has an active role to play. Such a society is based on fundamental values of equity, equality, social justice, and human rights and freedoms, as well as on the principles of tolerance and embracing diversity. (Triggs)Publicly funded museums can play a fundamental role in the cultural lives of societies. For example, the Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences) in Sydney partnered with Vision Australia to host an exhibition in 2010 titled Living in a Sensory World: it offered “visitors an understanding of the world of the blindness and low vision community and celebrates their achievements” (Powerhouse Museum). With similar intent, my doctoral research seeks to validate the world of my participants by inviting museums to appreciate their aspirations as a distinct but diverse community of people. ConclusionIn conclusion, the challenge for museum curators and other museum practitioners is balancing what Richard Sennett (qtd. in Bessant and Watts 265) identifies as opportunities for enhancing social cohesion and a sense of belonging while mitigating parochialism and community divisiveness. Therefore, curators, as the primary focus of this article, are indeed challenged when asked to contribute to serving the public through social development—a public which is anything but homogenous. Mindful of cultural and social differences in an ever-changing world, museums are called to respect the cultural and natural heritage of the communities they serve and collaborate with (ICOM 10). It is a position I wholeheartedly support. This is not to say that museums or indeed curators are capable of solving the ills of society. However, inviting people who are frequently excluded from social and cultural events to multisensory encounters with museum collections acknowledges their cultural rights. I suggest that this would be a seismic shift from the current experiences of adults with blindness or low vision at most museums.ReferencesAlexander, Edward, and Mary Alexander. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. 2nd ed. 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When we think of disability today in the Western world, Christopher Reeve most likely comes to mind. A film star who captured people’s imagination as Superman, Reeve was already a celebrity before he took the fall that would lead to his new position in the fame game: the role of super-crip. As a person with acquired quadriplegia, Christopher Reeve has become both the epitome of disability in Western culture — the powerful cultural myth of disability as tragedy and catastrophe — and, in an intimately related way, the icon for the high-technology quest for cure. The case of Reeve is fascinating, yet critical discussion of Christopher Reeve in terms of fame, celebrity and his performance of disability is conspicuously lacking (for a rare exception see McRuer). To some extent this reflects the comparative lack of engagement of media and cultural studies with disability (Goggin). To redress this lacuna, we draw upon theories of celebrity (Dyer; Marshall; Turner, Bonner, & Marshall; Turner) to explore the production of Reeve as celebrity, as well as bringing accounts of celebrity into dialogue with critical disability studies. Reeve is a cultural icon, not just because of the economy, industrial processes, semiotics, and contemporary consumption of celebrity, outlined in Turner’s 2004 framework. Fame and celebrity are crucial systems in the construction of disability; and the circulation of Reeve-as-celebrity only makes sense if we understand the centrality of disability to culture and media. Reeve plays an enormously important (if ambiguous) function in the social relations of disability, at the heart of the discursive underpinning of the otherness of disability and the construction of normal sexed and gendered bodies (the normate) in everyday life. What is distinctive and especially powerful about this instance of fame and disability is how authenticity plays through the body of the celebrity Reeve; how his saintly numinosity is received by fans and admirers with passion, pathos, pleasure; and how this process places people with disabilities in an oppressive social system, so making them subject(s). An Accidental Star Born September 25, 1952, Christopher Reeve became famous for his roles in the 1978 movie Superman, and the subsequent three sequels (Superman II, III, IV), as well as his role in other films such as Monsignor. As well as becoming a well-known actor, Reeve gained a profile for his activism on human rights, solidarity, environmental, and other issues. In May 1995 Reeve acquired a disability in a riding accident. In the ensuing months, Reeve’s situation attracted a great deal of international attention. He spent six months in the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey, and there gave a high-rating interview on US television personality Barbara Walters’ 20/20 program. In 1996, Reeve appeared at the Academy Awards, was a host at the 1996 Paralympic Games, and was invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention. In the same year Reeve narrated a film about the lives of people living with disabilities (Mierendorf). In 1998 his memoir Still Me was published, followed in 2002 by another book Nothing Is Impossible. Reeve’s active fashioning of an image and ‘new life’ (to use his phrase) stands in stark contrast with most people with disabilities, who find it difficult to enter into the industry and system of celebrity, because they are most often taken to be the opposite of glamorous or important. They are objects of pity, or freaks to be stared at (Mitchell & Synder; Thomson), rather than assuming other attributes of stars. Reeve became famous for his disability, indeed very early on he was acclaimed as the pre-eminent American with disability — as in the phrase ‘President of Disability’, an appellation he attracted. Reeve was quickly positioned in the celebrity industry, not least because his example, image, and texts were avidly consumed by viewers and readers. For millions of people — as evident in the letters compiled in the 1999 book Care Packages by his wife, Dana Reeve — Christopher Reeve is a hero, renowned for his courage in doing battle with his disability and his quest for a cure. Part of the creation of Reeve as celebrity has been a conscious fashioning of his life as an instructive fable. A number of biographies have now been published (Havill; Hughes; Oleksy; Wren). Variations on a theme, these tend to the hagiographic: Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy (Alter). Those interested in Reeve’s life and work can turn also to fan websites. Most tellingly perhaps is the number of books, fables really, aimed at children, again, on a characteristic theme: Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve (Kosek; see also Abraham; Howard). The construction, but especially the consumption, of Reeve as disabled celebrity, is consonant with powerful cultural myths and tropes of disability. In many Western cultures, disability is predominantly understood a tragedy, something that comes from the defects and lack of our bodies, whether through accidents of birth or life. Those ‘suffering’ with disability, according to this cultural myth, need to come to terms with this bitter tragedy, and show courage in heroically overcoming their lot while they bide their time for the cure that will come. The protagonist for this this script is typically the ‘brave’ person with disability; or, as this figure is colloquially known in critical disability studies and the disability movement — the super-crip. This discourse of disability exerts a strong force today, and is known as the ‘medical’ model. It interacts with a prior, but still active charity discourse of disability (Fulcher). There is a deep cultural history of disability being seen as something that needs to be dealt with by charity. In late modernity, charity is very big business indeed, and celebrities play an important role in representing the good works bestowed on people with disabilities by rich donors. Those managing celebrities often suggest that the star finds a charity to gain favourable publicity, a routine for which people with disabilities are generally the pathetic but handy extras. Charity dinners and events do not just reinforce the tragedy of disability, but they also leave unexamined the structural nature of disability, and its associated disadvantage. Those critiquing the medical and charitable discourses of disability, and the oppressive power relations of disability that it represents, point to the social and cultural shaping of disability, most famously in the British ‘social’ model of disability — but also from a range of other perspectives (Corker and Thomas). Those formulating these critiques point to the crucial function that the trope of the super-crip plays in the policing of people with disabilities in contemporary culture and society. Indeed how the figure of the super-crip is also very much bound up with the construction of the ‘normal’ body, a general economy of representation that affects everyone. Superman Flies Again The celebrity of Christopher Reeve and what it reveals for an understanding of fame and disability can be seen with great clarity in his 2002 visit to Australia. In 2002 there had been a heated national debate on the ethics of use of embryonic stem cells for research. In an analysis of three months of the print media coverage of these debates, we have suggested that disability was repeatedly, almost obsessively, invoked in these debates (‘Uniting the Nation’). Yet the dominant representation of disability here was the cultural myth of disability as tragedy, requiring cure at all cost, and that this trope was central to the way that biotechnology was constructed as requiring an urgent, united national response. Significantly, in these debates, people with disabilities were often talked about but very rarely licensed to speak. Only one person with disability was, and remains, a central figure in these Australian stem cell and biotechnology policy conversations: Christopher Reeve. As an outspoken advocate of research on embryonic stem-cells in the quest for a cure for spinal injuries, as well as other diseases, Reeve’s support was enlisted by various protagonists. The current affairs show Sixty Minutes (modelled after its American counterpart) presented Reeve in debate with Australian critics: PRESENTER: Stem cell research is leading to perhaps the greatest medical breakthroughs of all time… Imagine a world where paraplegics could walk or the blind could see … But it’s a breakthrough some passionately oppose. A breakthrough that’s caused a fierce personal debate between those like actor Christopher Reeve, who sees this technology as a miracle, and those who regard it as murder. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) Sixty Minutes starkly portrays the debate in Manichean terms: lunatics standing in the way of technological progress versus Christopher Reeve flying again tomorrow. Christopher presents the debate in utilitarian terms: CHRISTOPHER REEVE: The purpose of government, really in a free society, is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And that question should always be in the forefront of legislators’ minds. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) No criticism of Reeve’s position was offered, despite the fierce debate over the implications of such utilitarian rhetoric for minorities such as people with disabilities (including himself!). Yet this utilitarian stance on disability has been elaborated by philosopher Peter Singer, and trenchantly critiqued by the international disability rights movement. Later in 2002, the Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, invited Reeve to visit Australia to participate in the New South Wales Spinal Cord Forum. A journalist by training, and skilled media practitioner, Carr had been the most outspoken Australian state premier urging the Federal government to permit the use of embryonic stem cells for research. Carr’s reasons were as much as industrial as benevolent, boosting the stocks of biotechnology as a clean, green, boom industry. Carr cleverly and repeated enlisted stereotypes of disability in the service of his cause. Christopher Reeve was flown into Australia on a specially modified Boeing 747, free of charge courtesy of an Australian airline, and was paid a hefty appearance fee. Not only did Reeve’s fee hugely contrast with meagre disability support pensions many Australians with disabilities live on, he was literally the only voice and image of disability given any publicity. Consuming Celebrity, Contesting Crips As our analysis of Reeve’s antipodean career suggests, if disability were a republic, and Reeve its leader, its polity would look more plutocracy than democracy; as befits modern celebrity with its constitutive tensions between the demotic and democratic (Turner). For his part, Reeve has criticised the treatment of people with disabilities, and how they are stereotyped, not least the narrow concept of the ‘normal’ in mainstream films. This is something that has directly effected his career, which has become limited to narration or certain types of television and film work. Reeve’s reprise on his culture’s notion of disability comes with his starring role in an ironic, high-tech 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (Bleckner), a movie that in the original featured a photojournalist injured and temporarily using a wheelchair. Reeve has also been a strong advocate, lobbyist, and force in the politics of disability. His activism, however, has been far more strongly focussed on finding a cure for people with spinal injuries — rather than seeking to redress inequality and discrimination of all people with disabilities. Yet Reeve’s success in the notoriously fickle star system that allows disability to be understood and mapped in popular culture is mostly an unexplored paradox. As we note above, the construction of Reeve as celebrity, celebrating his individual resilience and resourcefulness, and his authenticity, functions precisely to sustain the ‘truth’ and the power relations of disability. Reeve’s celebrity plays an ideological role, knitting together a set of discourses: individualism; consumerism; democratic capitalism; and the primacy of the able body (Marshall; Turner). The nature of this cultural function of Reeve’s celebrity is revealed in the largely unpublicised contests over his fame. At the same time Reeve was gaining fame with his traditional approach to disability and reinforcement of the continuing catastrophe of his life, he was attracting an infamy within certain sections of the international disability rights movement. In a 1996 US debate disability scholar David T Mitchell put it this way: ‘He’s [Reeve] the good guy — the supercrip, the Superman, and those of us who can live with who we are with our disabilities, but who cannot live with, and in fact, protest and retaliate against the oppression we confront every second of our lives are the bad guys’ (Mitchell, quoted in Brown). Many feel, like Mitchell, that Reeve’s focus on a cure ignores the unmet needs of people with disabilities for daily access to support services and for the ending of their brutal, dehumanising, daily experience as other (Goggin & Newell, Disability in Australia). In her book Make Them Go Away Mary Johnson points to the conservative forces that Christopher Reeve is associated with and the way in which these forces have been working to oppose the acceptance of disability rights. Johnson documents the way in which fame can work in a variety of ways to claw back the rights of Americans with disabilities granted in the Americans with Disabilities Act, documenting the association of Reeve and, in a different fashion, Clint Eastwood as stars who have actively worked to limit the applicability of civil rights legislation to people with disabilities. Like other successful celebrities, Reeve has been assiduous in managing his image, through the use of celebrity professionals including public relations professionals. In his Australian encounters, for example, Reeve gave a variety of media interviews to Australian journalists and yet the editor of the Australian disability rights magazine Link was unable to obtain an interview. Despite this, critiques of the super-crip celebrity function of Reeve by people with disabilities did circulate at the margins of mainstream media during his Australian visit, not least in disability media and the Internet (Leipoldt, Newell, and Corcoran, 2003). Infamous Disability Like the lives of saints, it is deeply offensive to many to criticise Christopher Reeve. So deeply engrained are the cultural myths of the catastrophe of disability and the creation of Reeve as icon that any critique runs the risk of being received as sacrilege, as one rare iconoclastic website provocatively prefigures (Maddox). In this highly charged context, we wish to acknowledge his contribution in highlighting some aspects of contemporary disability, and emphasise our desire not to play Reeve the person — rather to explore the cultural and media dimensions of fame and disability. In Christopher Reeve we find a remarkable exception as someone with disability who is celebrated in our culture. We welcome a wider debate over what is at stake in this celebrity and how Reeve’s renown differs from other disabled stars, as, for example, in Robert McRuer reflection that: ... at the beginning of the last century the most famous person with disabilities in the world, despite her participation in an ‘overcoming’ narrative, was a socialist who understood that disability disproportionately impacted workers and the power[less]; Helen Keller knew that blindness and deafness, for instance, often resulted from industrial accidents. At the beginning of this century, the most famous person with disabilities in the world is allowing his image to be used in commercials … (McRuer 230) For our part, we think Reeve’s celebrity plays an important contemporary role because it binds together a constellation of economic, political, and social institutions and discourses — namely science, biotechnology, and national competitiveness. In the second half of 2004, the stem cell debate is once again prominent in American debates as a presidential election issue. Reeve figures disability in national culture in his own country and internationally, as the case of the currency of his celebrity in Australia demonstrates. In this light, we have only just begun to register, let alone explore and debate, what is entailed for us all in the production of this disabled fame and infamy. Epilogue to “Fame and Disability” Christopher Reeve died on Sunday 10 October 2004, shortly after this article was accepted for publication. His death occasioned an outpouring of condolences, mourning, and reflection. We share that sense of loss. How Reeve will be remembered is still unfolding. The early weeks of public mourning have emphasised his celebrity as the very embodiment and exemplar of disabled identity: ‘The death of Christopher Reeve leaves embryonic-stem-cell activism without one of its star generals’ (Newsweek); ‘He Never Gave Up: What actor and activist Christopher Reeve taught scientists about the treatment of spinal-cord injury’ (Time); ‘Incredible Journey: Facing tragedy, Christopher Reeve inspired the world with hope and a lesson in courage’ (People); ‘Superman’s Legacy’ (The Express); ‘Reeve, the Real Superman’ (Hindustani Times). In his tribute New South Wales Premier Bob Carr called Reeve the ‘most impressive person I have ever met’, and lamented ‘Humankind has lost an advocate and friend’ (Carr). The figure of Reeve remains central to how disability is represented. In our culture, death is often closely entwined with disability (as in the saying ‘better dead than disabled’), something Reeve reflected upon himself often. How Reeve’s ‘global mourning’ partakes and shapes in this dense knots of associations, and how it transforms his celebrity, is something that requires further work (Ang et. al.). The political and analytical engagement with Reeve’s celebrity and mourning at this time serves to underscore our exploration of fame and disability in this article. Already there is his posthumous enlistment in the United States Presidential elections, where disability is both central and yet marginal, people with disability talked about rather than listened to. The ethics of stem cell research was an election issue before Reeve’s untimely passing, with Democratic presidential contender John Kerry sharply marking his difference on this issue with President Bush. After Reeve’s death his widow Dana joined the podium on the Kerry campaign in Columbus, Ohio, to put the case herself; for his part, Kerry compared Bush’s opposition to stem cell research as akin to favouring the candle lobby over electricity. As we write, the US polls are a week away, but the cultural representation of disability — and the intensely political role celebrity plays in it — appears even more palpably implicated in the government of society itself. References Abraham, Philip. Christopher Reeve. New York: Children’s Press, 2002. Alter, Judy. Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy. Danbury, Conn.: Franklin Watts, 2000. Ang, Ien, Ruth Barcan, Helen Grace, Elaine Lally, Justine Lloyd, and Zoe Sofoulis (eds.) Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning. Sydney: Research Centre in Intercommunal Studies, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997. Bleckner, Jeff, dir. Rear Window. 1998. Brown, Steven E. “Super Duper? The (Unfortunate) Ascendancy of Christopher Reeve.” Mainstream: Magazine of the Able-Disabled, October 1996. Repr. 10 Aug. 2004 http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/brown96c.html>. Carr, Bob. “A Class Act of Grace and Courage.” Sydney Morning Herald. 12 Oct. 2004: 14. Corker, Mairian and Carol Thomas. “A Journey around the Social Model.” Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Ed. Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. Donner, Richard, dir. Superman. 1978. Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: BFI Macmillan, 1986. Fulcher, Gillian. Disabling Policies? London: Falmer Press, 1989. Furie, Sidney J., dir. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. 1987. Finn, Margaret L. Christopher Reeve. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1997. Gilmer, Tim. “The Missionary Reeve.” New Mobility. November 2002. 13 Aug. 2004 http://www.newmobility.com/>. Goggin, Gerard. “Media Studies’ Disability.” Media International Australia 108 (Aug. 2003): 157-68. Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005. —. “Uniting the Nation?: Disability, Stem Cells, and the Australian Media.” Disability & Society 19 (2004): 47-60. Havill, Adrian. Man of Steel: The Career and Courage of Christopher Reeve. New York, N.Y.: Signet, 1996. Howard, Megan. Christopher Reeve. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1999. Hughes, Libby. Christopher Reeve. Parsippany, NJ.: Dillon Press, 1998. Johnson, Mary. Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and the Case Against Disability Rights. Louisville : Advocado Press, 2003. Kosek, Jane Kelly. Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve. 1st ed. New York : PowerKids Press, 1999. Leipoldt, Erik, Christopher Newell, and Maurice Corcoran. “Christopher Reeve and Bob Carr Dehumanise Disability — Stem Cell Research Not the Best Solution.” Online Opinion 27 Jan. 2003. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=510>. Lester, Richard (dir.) Superman II. 1980. —. Superman III. 1983. Maddox. “Christopher Reeve Is an Asshole.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=creeve>. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Mierendorf, Michael, dir. Without Pity: A Film about Abilities. Narr. Christopher Reeve. 1996. “Miracle or Murder?” Sixty Minutes. Channel 9, Australia. March 17, 2002. 15 June 2002 http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2002_03_17/story_532.asp>. Mitchell, David, and Synder, Sharon, eds. The Body and Physical Difference. Ann Arbor, U of Michigan, 1997. McRuer, Robert. “Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies.” Journal of Medical Humanities 23 (2002): 221-37. Oleksy, Walter G. Christopher Reeve. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 2000. Reeve, Christopher. Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2002. —. Still Me. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1998. Reeve, Dana, comp. Care Packages: Letters to Christopher Reeve from Strangers and Other Friends. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1999. Reeve, Matthew (dir.) Christopher Reeve: Courageous Steps. Television documentary, 2002. Thomson, Rosemary Garland, ed. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York UP, 1996. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. Thousands Oak, CA: Sage, 2004. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and David P Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2000. Wren, Laura Lee. Christopher Reeve: Hollywood’s Man of Courage. Berkeley Heights, NJ : Enslow, 1999. Younis, Steve. “Christopher Reeve Homepage.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/greatsleep/1023/main.html>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard & Newell, Christopher. "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. & Newell, C. (Nov. 2004) "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.php>.

Previous studies contend that Philippines is still a ‘collectivist’ society (Cf. Hofstede Center; Cukur et al. 2004:613-634). In this collectivist or community-oriented society, individualism is not something that is highly valued. Being ‘individualistic’ is often associated to being narcissistic, loner, asocial, selfish, etc. However, one may ask whether the youth in the Philippines are not spared from this insidious culture of individualism, notwithstanding the seemingly dominant collective and communitarian character of the society. Although the overwhelming poverty is still the main problem in the Philippines, where according to Wostyn (2010:26) “only the wonderland of movies gives some respite to their consciousness of suffering and oppression”, the Filipino youth of today are also exposed to the consumeristic values of the ‘city’ and are not spared from the contradictions and insecurities posed by the pluralistic society. They are citizens of an increasing social and cultural pluralism characteristic of many liberal societies. Is it possible that individualism may also exist within this culture, especially among the younger generation? Is individualism slowly creeping in as caused by their exposure and easy access to modern technology, to higher education, mobility, interactions with other cultures, etc. Would this individualistic tendency have any influence on their religious beliefs, especially their belief on salvation? What would be the implications and challenges of these findings to the families in the Philippines? These are the questions we wish to answer in this study. This paper is structured in four parts: first, we will discuss the theoretical framework of individualism and salvation; second, we will examine the empirical attitudes on individualism and salvation; third, we will explore the relationship between individualism and salvation; and finally, we will draw some pastoral implication especially in relation to the document “Lineamenta - The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the church and Contemporary Word” (henceforth, Lineamenta). References Atkins, P. (2004). Memory and Liturgy. The Place of Memory in the Composition and Practice of Liturgy. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing. Bauman, Z. (1993). Postmodern Ethics. Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society. London: Sage Publications. Bellah, R. N. , Madsen, R., Sullivan, W., Swidler, A., Tipton, S. (1985). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Berger, P. (1970). 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Introduction The highly contagious COVID-19 virus has presented particularly difficult public policy challenges. The relatively late emergence of an effective treatments and vaccines, the structural stresses on health care systems, the lockdowns and the economic dislocations, the evident structural inequalities in effected societies, as well as the difficulty of prevention have tested social and political cohesion. Moreover, the intrusive nature of many prophylactic measures have led to individual liberty and human rights concerns. As noted by the Victorian (Australia) Ombudsman Report on the COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne, we may be tempted, during a crisis, to view human rights as expendable in the pursuit of saving human lives. This thinking can lead to dangerous territory. It is not unlawful to curtail fundamental rights and freedoms when there are compelling reasons for doing so; human rights are inherently and inseparably a consideration of human lives. (5) These difficulties have raised issues about the importance of social or community capital in fighting the pandemic. This article discusses the impacts of social and community capital and other factors on the governmental efforts to combat the spread of infectious disease through the maintenance of social distancing and household ‘bubbles’. It argues that the beneficial effects of social and community capital towards fighting the pandemic, such as mutual respect and empathy, which underpins such public health measures as social distancing, the use of personal protective equipment, and lockdowns in the USA, have been undermined as preventive measures because they have been transmogrified to become a salient aspect of the “culture wars” (Peters). In contrast, states that have relatively lower social capital such a China have been able to more effectively arrest transmission of the disease because the government was been able to generate and personify a nationalist response to the virus and thus generate a more robust social consensus regarding the efforts to combat the disease. Social Capital and Culture Wars The response to COVID-19 required individuals, families, communities, and other types of groups to refrain from extensive interaction – to stay in their bubble. In these situations, especially given the asymptomatic nature of many COVID-19 infections and the serious imposition lockdowns and social distancing and isolation, the temptation for individuals to breach public health rules in high. From the perspective of policymakers, the response to fighting COVID-19 is a collective action problem. In studying collective action problems, scholars have paid much attention on the role of social and community capital (Ostrom and Ahn 17-35). Ostrom and Ahn comment that social capital “provides a synthesizing approach to how cultural, social, and institutional aspects of communities of various sizes jointly affect their capacity of dealing with collective-action problems” (24). Social capital is regarded as an evolving social type of cultural trait (Fukuyama; Guiso et al.). Adger argues that social capital “captures the nature of social relations” and “provides an explanation for how individuals use their relationships to other actors in societies for their own and for the collective good” (387). The most frequently used definition of social capital is the one proffered by Putnam who regards it as “features of social organization, such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam, “Bowling Alone” 65). All these studies suggest that social and community capital has at least two elements: “objective associations” and subjective ties among individuals. Objective associations, or social networks, refer to both formal and informal associations that are formed and engaged in on a voluntary basis by individuals and social groups. Subjective ties or norms, on the other hand, primarily stand for trust and reciprocity (Paxton). High levels of social capital have generally been associated with democratic politics and civil societies whose institutional performance benefits from the coordinated actions and civic culture that has been facilitated by high levels of social capital (Putnam, Democracy 167-9). Alternatively, a “good and fair” state and impartial institutions are important factors in generating and preserving high levels of social capital (Offe 42-87). Yet social capital is not limited to democratic civil societies and research is mixed on whether rising social capital manifests itself in a more vigorous civil society that in turn leads to democratising impulses. Castillo argues that various trust levels for institutions that reinforce submission, hierarchy, and cultural conservatism can be high in authoritarian governments, indicating that high levels of social capital do not necessarily lead to democratic civic societies (Castillo et al.). Roßteutscher concludes after a survey of social capita indicators in authoritarian states that social capital has little effect of democratisation and may in fact reinforce authoritarian rule: in nondemocratic contexts, however, it appears to throw a spanner in the works of democratization. Trust increases the stability of nondemocratic leaderships by generating popular support, by suppressing regime threatening forms of protest activity, and by nourishing undemocratic ideals concerning governance (752). In China, there has been ongoing debate concerning the presence of civil society and the level of social capital found across Chinese society. If one defines civil society as an intermediate associational realm between the state and the family, populated by autonomous organisations which are separate from the state that are formed voluntarily by members of society to protect or extend their interests or values, it is arguable that the PRC had a significant civil society or social capital in the first few decades after its establishment (White). However, most scholars agree that nascent civil society as well as a more salient social and community capital has emerged in China’s reform era. This was evident after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, where the government welcomed community organising and community-driven donation campaigns for a limited period of time, giving the NGO sector and bottom-up social activism a boost, as evidenced in various policy areas such as disaster relief and rural community development (F. Wu 126; Xu 9). Nevertheless, the CCP and the Chinese state have been effective in maintaining significant control over civil society and autonomous groups without attempting to completely eliminate their autonomy or existence. The dramatic economic and social changes that have occurred since the 1978 Opening have unsurprisingly engendered numerous conflicts across the society. In response, the CCP and State have adjusted political economic policies to meet the changing demands of workers, migrants, the unemployed, minorities, farmers, local artisans, entrepreneurs, and the growing middle class. Often the demands arising from these groups have resulted in policy changes, including compensation. In other circumstances, where these groups remain dissatisfied, the government will tolerate them (ignore them but allow them to continue in the advocacy), or, when the need arises, supress the disaffected groups (F. Wu 2). At the same time, social organisations and other groups in civil society have often “refrained from open and broad contestation against the regime”, thereby gaining the space and autonomy to achieve the objectives (F. Wu 2). Studies of Chinese social or community capital suggest that a form of modern social capital has gradually emerged as Chinese society has become increasingly modernised and liberalised (despite being non-democratic), and that this social capital has begun to play an important role in shaping social and economic lives at the local level. However, this more modern form of social capital, arising from developmental and social changes, competes with traditional social values and social capital, which stresses parochial and particularistic feelings among known individuals while modern social capital emphasises general trust and reciprocal feelings among both known and unknown individuals. The objective element of these traditional values are those government-sanctioned, formal mass organisations such as Communist Youth and the All-China Federation of Women's Associations, where members are obliged to obey the organisation leadership. The predominant subjective values are parochial and particularistic feelings among individuals who know one another, such as guanxi and zongzu (Chen and Lu, 426). The concept of social capital emphasises that the underlying cooperative values found in individuals and groups within a culture are an important factor in solving collective problems. In contrast, the notion of “culture war” focusses on those values and differences that divide social and cultural groups. Barry defines culture wars as increases in volatility, expansion of polarisation, and conflict between those who are passionate about religiously motivated politics, traditional morality, and anti-intellectualism, and…those who embrace progressive politics, cultural openness, and scientific and modernist orientations. (90) The contemporary culture wars across the world manifest opposition by various groups in society who hold divergent worldviews and ideological positions. Proponents of culture war understand various issues as part of a broader set of religious, political, and moral/normative positions invoked in opposition to “elite”, “liberal”, or “left” ideologies. Within this Manichean universe opposition to such issues as climate change, Black Lives Matter, same sex rights, prison reform, gun control, and immigration becomes framed in binary terms, and infused with a moral sensibility (Chapman 8-10). In many disputes, the culture war often devolves into an epistemological dispute about the efficacy of scientific knowledge and authority, or a dispute between “practical” and theoretical knowledge. In this environment, even facts can become partisan narratives. For these “cultural” disputes are often how electoral prospects (generally right-wing) are advanced; “not through policies or promises of a better life, but by fostering a sense of threat, a fantasy that something profoundly pure … is constantly at risk of extinction” (Malik). This “zero-sum” social and policy environment that makes it difficult to compromise and has serious consequences for social stability or government policy, especially in a liberal democratic society. Of course, from the perspective of cultural materialism such a reductionist approach to culture and political and social values is not unexpected. “Culture” is one of the many arenas in which dominant social groups seek to express and reproduce their interests and preferences. “Culture” from this sense is “material” and is ultimately connected to the distribution of power, wealth, and resources in society. As such, the various policy areas that are understood as part of the “culture wars” are another domain where various dominant and subordinate groups and interests engaged in conflict express their values and goals. Yet it is unexpected that despite the pervasiveness of information available to individuals the pool of information consumed by individuals who view the “culture wars” as a touchstone for political behaviour and a narrative to categorise events and facts is relatively closed. This lack of balance has been magnified by social media algorithms, conspiracy-laced talk radio, and a media ecosystem that frames and discusses issues in a manner that elides into an easily understood “culture war” narrative. From this perspective, the groups (generally right-wing or traditionalist) exist within an information bubble that reinforces political, social, and cultural predilections. American and Chinese Reponses to COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic first broke out in Wuhan in December 2019. Initially unprepared and unwilling to accept the seriousness of the infection, the Chinese government regrouped from early mistakes and essentially controlled transmission in about three months. This positive outcome has been messaged as an exposition of the superiority of the Chinese governmental system and society both domestically and internationally; a positive, even heroic performance that evidences the populist credentials of the Chinese political leadership and demonstrates national excellence. The recently published White Paper entitled “Fighting COVID-19: China in Action” also summarises China’s “strategic achievement” in the simple language of numbers: in a month, the rising spread was contained; in two months, the daily case increase fell to single digits; and in three months, a “decisive victory” was secured in Wuhan City and Hubei Province (Xinhua). This clear articulation of the positive results has rallied political support. Indeed, a recent survey shows that 89 percent of citizens are satisfied with the government’s information dissemination during the pandemic (C Wu). As part of the effort, the government extensively promoted the provision of “political goods”, such as law and order, national unity and pride, and shared values. For example, severe publishments were introduced for violence against medical professionals and police, producing and selling counterfeit medications, raising commodity prices, spreading ‘rumours’, and being uncooperative with quarantine measures (Xu). Additionally, as an extension the popular anti-corruption campaign, many local political leaders were disciplined or received criminal charges for inappropriate behaviour, abuse of power, and corruption during the pandemic (People.cn, 2 Feb. 2020). Chinese state media also described fighting the virus as a global “competition”. In this competition a nation’s “material power” as well as “mental strength”, that calls for the highest level of nation unity and patriotism, is put to the test. This discourse recalled the global competition in light of the national mythology related to the formation of Chinese nation, the historical “hardship”, and the “heroic Chinese people” (People.cn, 7 Apr. 2020). Moreover, as the threat of infection receded, it was emphasised that China “won this competition” and the Chinese people have demonstrated the “great spirit of China” to the world: a result built upon the “heroism of the whole Party, Army, and Chinese people from all ethnic groups” (People.cn, 7 Apr. 2020). In contrast to the Chinese approach of emphasising national public goods as a justification for fighting the virus, the U.S. Trump Administration used nationalism, deflection, and “culture war” discourse to undermine health responses — an unprecedented response in American public health policy. The seriousness of the disease as well as the statistical evidence of its course through the American population was disputed. The President and various supporters raged against the COVID-19 “hoax”, social distancing, and lockdowns, disparaged public health institutions and advice, and encouraged protesters to “liberate” locked-down states (Russonello). “Our federal overlords say ‘no singing’ and ‘no shouting’ on Thanksgiving”, Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican of Arizona, wrote as he retweeted a Centers for Disease Control list of Thanksgiving safety tips (Weiner). People were encouraged, by way of the White House and Republican leadership, to ignore health regulations and not to comply with social distancing measures and the wearing of masks (Tracy). This encouragement led to threats against proponents of face masks such as Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s foremost experts on infectious diseases, who required bodyguards because of the many threats on his life. Fauci’s critics — including President Trump — countered Fauci’s promotion of mask wearing by stating accusingly that he once said mask-wearing was not necessary for ordinary people (Kelly). Conspiracy theories as to the safety of vaccinations also grew across the course of the year. As the 2020 election approached, the Administration ramped up efforts to downplay the serious of the virus by identifying it with “the media” and illegitimate “partisan” efforts to undermine the Trump presidency. It also ramped up its criticism of China as the source of the infection. This political self-centeredness undermined state and federal efforts to slow transmission (Shear et al.). At the same time, Trump chided health officials for moving too slowly on vaccine approvals, repeated charges that high infection rates were due to increased testing, and argued that COVID-19 deaths were exaggerated by medical providers for political and financial reasons. These claims were amplified by various conservative media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham of Fox News. The result of this “COVID-19 Denialism” and the alternative narrative of COVID-19 policy told through the lens of culture war has resulted in the United States having the highest number of COVID-19 cases, and the highest number of COVID-19 deaths. At the same time, the underlying social consensus and social capital that have historically assisted in generating positive public health outcomes has been significantly eroded. According to the Pew Research Center, the share of U.S. adults who say public health officials such as those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are doing an excellent or good job responding to the outbreak decreased from 79% in March to 63% in August, with an especially sharp decrease among Republicans (Pew Research Center 2020). Social Capital and COVID-19 From the perspective of social or community capital, it could be expected that the American response to the Pandemic would be more effective than the Chinese response. Historically, the United States has had high levels of social capital, a highly developed public health system, and strong governmental capacity. In contrast, China has a relatively high level of governmental and public health capacity, but the level of social capital has been lower and there is a significant presence of traditional values which emphasise parochial and particularistic values. Moreover, the antecedent institutions of social capital, such as weak and inefficient formal institutions (Batjargal et al.), environmental turbulence and resource scarcity along with the transactional nature of guanxi (gift-giving and information exchange and relationship dependence) militate against finding a more effective social and community response to the public health emergency. Yet China’s response has been significantly more successful than the Unites States’. Paradoxically, the American response under the Trump Administration and the Chinese response both relied on an externalisation of the both the threat and the justifications for their particular response. In the American case, President Trump, while downplaying the seriousness of the virus, consistently called it the “China virus” in an effort to deflect responsibly as well as a means to avert attention away from the public health impacts. As recently as 3 January 2021, Trump tweeted that the number of “China Virus” cases and deaths in the U.S. were “far exaggerated”, while critically citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's methodology: “When in doubt, call it COVID-19. Fake News!” (Bacon). The Chinese Government, meanwhile, has pursued a more aggressive foreign policy across the South China Sea, on the frontier in the Indian sub-continent, and against states such as Australia who have criticised the initial Chinese response to COVID-19. To this international criticism, the government reiterated its sovereign rights and emphasised its “victimhood” in the face of “anti-China” foreign forces. Chinese state media also highlighted China as “victim” of the coronavirus, but also as a target of Western “political manoeuvres” when investigating the beginning stages of the pandemic. The major difference, however, is that public health policy in the United States was superimposed on other more fundamental political and cultural cleavages, and part of this externalisation process included the assignation of “otherness” and demonisation of internal political opponents or characterising political opponents as bent on destroying the United States. This assignation of “otherness” to various internal groups is a crucial element in the culture wars. While this may have been inevitable given the increasingly frayed nature of American society post-2008, such a characterisation has been activity pushed by local, state, and national leadership in the Republican Party and the Trump Administration (Vogel et al.). In such circumstances, minimising health risks and highlighting civil rights concerns due to public health measures, along with assigning blame to the democratic opposition and foreign states such as China, can have a major impact of public health responses. The result has been that social trust beyond the bubble of one’s immediate circle or those who share similar beliefs is seriously compromised — and the collective action problem presented by COVID-19 remains unsolved. Daniel Aldrich’s study of disasters in Japan, India, and US demonstrates that pre-existing high levels of social capital would lead to stronger resilience and better recovery (Aldrich). Social capital helps coordinate resources and facilitate the reconstruction collectively and therefore would lead to better recovery (Alesch et al.). Yet there has not been much research on how the pool of social capital first came about and how a disaster may affect the creation and store of social capital. Rebecca Solnit has examined five major disasters and describes that after these events, survivors would reach out and work together to confront the challenges they face, therefore increasing the social capital in the community (Solnit). However, there are studies that have concluded that major disasters can damage the social fabric in local communities (Peacock et al.). The COVID-19 epidemic does not have the intensity and suddenness of other disasters but has had significant knock-on effects in increasing or decreasing social capital, depending on the institutional and social responses to the pandemic. In China, it appears that the positive social capital effects have been partially subsumed into a more generalised patriotic or nationalist affirmation of the government’s policy response. Unlike civil society responses to earlier crises, such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, there is less evidence of widespread community organisation and response to combat the epidemic at its initial stages. This suggests better institutional responses to the crisis by the government, but also a high degree of porosity between civil society and a national “imagined community” represented by the national state. The result has been an increased legitimacy for the Chinese government. Alternatively, in the United States the transformation of COVID-19 public health policy into a culture war issue has seriously impeded efforts to combat the epidemic in the short term by undermining the social consensus and social capital necessary to fight such a pandemic. Trust in American institutions is historically low, and President Trump’s untrue contention that President Biden’s election was due to “fraud” has further undermined the legitimacy of the American government, as evidenced by the attacks directed at Congress in the U.S. capital on 6 January 2021. As such, the lingering effects the pandemic will have on social, economic, and political institutions will likely reinforce the deep cultural and political cleavages and weaken interpersonal networks in American society. Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated global public health and impacted deeply on the world economy. Unsurprisingly, given the serious economic, social, and political consequences, different government responses have been highly politicised. Various quarantine and infection case tracking methods have caused concern over state power intruding into private spheres. The usage of face masks, social distancing rules, and intra-state travel restrictions have aroused passionate debate over public health restrictions, individual liberty, and human rights. Yet underlying public health responses grounded in higher levels of social capital enhance the effectiveness of public health measures. In China, a country that has generally been associated with lower social capital, it is likely that the relatively strong policy response to COVID-19 will both enhance feelings of nationalism and Chinese exceptionalism and help create and increase the store of social capital. 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Critique of Ability In July 2008, we could be on the eve of an enormously important shift in disability in Australia. One sign of change is the entry into force on 3 May 2008 of the United Nations convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which will now be adopted by the Rudd Labor government. Through this, and other proposed measures, the Rudd government has indicated its desire for a seachange in the area of disability. Bill Shorten MP, the new Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services has been at pains to underline his commitment to a rights-based approach to disability. In this inaugural speech to Parliament, Senator Shorten declared: I believe the challenge for government is not to fit people with disabilities around programs but for programs to fit the lives, needs and ambitions of people with disabilities. The challenge for all of us is to abolish once and for all the second-class status that too often accompanies Australians living with disabilities. (Shorten, “Address in reply”; see also Shorten, ”Speaking up”) Yet if we listen to the voices of people with disability, we face fundamental issues of justice, democracy, equality and how we understand the deepest aspects of ourselves and our community. This is a situation that remains dire and palpably unjust, as many people with disabilities have attested. Elsewhere I have argued (Goggin and Newell) that disability constitutes a systemic form of exclusion and othering tantamount to a “social apartheid” . While there have been improvements and small gains since then, the system that reigns in Australia is still fundamentally oppressive. Nonetheless, I would suggest that through the rise of the many stranded movements of disability, the demographic, economic and social changes concerning impairment, we are seeing significant changes in how we understand impairment and ability (Barnes, Oliver and Barton; Goggin and Newell, Disability in Australia; Snyder, Brueggemann, and Garland-Thomson; Shakespeare; Stiker). There is now considerable, if still incomplete, recognition of disability as a category that is constituted through social, cultural, and political logics, as well as through complex facets of impairment, bodies (Corker and Shakespeare), experiences, discourses (Fulcher), and modes of materiality and subjectivity (Butler), identity and government (Tremain). Also there is growing awareness of the imbrication of disability and other categories such as sex and gender (Fine and Asch; Thomas), race, age, culture, class and distribution of wealth (Carrier; Cole; Davis, Bending over Backwards, and Enforcing Normalcy; Oliver; Rosenblum and Travis), ecology and war (Bourke; Gerber; Muir). There are rich and wide-ranging debates that offer fundamental challenges to the suffocating grip of the dominant biomedical model of disability (that conceives disability as individual deficit — for early critiques see: Borsay; Walker), as well as the still influential and important (if at times limiting) social model of disability (Oliver; Barnes and Mercer; Shakespeare). All in all,there have been many efforts to transform the social and political relations of disability. If disability has been subject to considerable examination, there has not yet been an extended, concomitant critique of ability. Nor have we witnessed a thoroughgoing recognition of unmarked, yet powerful operations of ability in our lives and thought, and the potential implications of challenging these. Certainly there have been important attempts to reframe the relationship between “ability” and “disability” (for example, see Jones and Mark). And we are all familiar with the mocking response to some neologisms that seek to capture this, such as the awkward yet pointed “differently-abled.” Despite such efforts we lack still a profound critique of ability, an exploration of “able”, the topic that this special issue invites us to consider. If we think of the impact and significance of “whiteness”, as a way to open up space for how to critically think about and change concepts of race; or of “masculinity” as a project for thinking about gender and sexuality — we can see that this interrogation of the unmarked category of “able” and “ability” is much needed (for one such attempt, see White). In this paper I would like to make a small contribution to such a critique of ability, by considering what the concept of innovation and its contemporary rhetorics have to offer for reframing disability. Innovation is an important discourse in contemporary life. It offers interesting possibilities for rethinking ability — and indeed disability. And it is this relatively unexplored prospect that this paper seeks to explore. Beyond Access, Equity & Diversity In this scene of disability, there is attention being given to making long over-due reforms. Yet the framing of many of these reforms, such as the strengthening of national and international legal frameworks, for instance, also carry with them considerable problems. Disability is too often still seen as something in need of remediation, or special treatment. Access, equity, and anti-discrimination frameworks offer important resources for challenging this “special” treatment, so too do the diversity approaches which have supplemented or supplanted them (Goggin and Newell, “Diversity as if Disability Mattered”). In what new ways can we approach disability and policies relevant to it? In a surprisingly wide range of areas, innovation has featured as a new, cross-sectoral approach. Innovation has been a long-standing topic in science, technology and economics. However, its emergence as master-theme comes from its ability to straddle and yoke together previously diverse fields. Current discussions of innovation bring together and extend work on the information society, the knowledge economy, and the relationships between science and technology. We are now familiar for instance with arguments about how digital networked information and communications technologies and their consumption are creating new forms of innovation (Benkler; McPherson; Passiante, Elia, and Massari). Innovation discourse has extended to many other unfamiliar realms too, notably the area of social and community development, where a new concept of social innovation is now proposed (Mulgan), often aligned with new ideas of social entrepreneurship that go beyond earlier accounts of corporate social responsibility. We can see the importance of innovation in the ‘creative industries’ discourses and initiatives which have emerged since the 1990s. Here previously distinct endeavours of arts and culture have become reframed in a way that puts their central achievement of creativity to the fore, and recognises its importance across all sorts of service and manufacturing industries, in particular. More recently, theorists of creative industries, such as Cunningham, have begun to talk about “social network markets,” as a way to understand the new hybrid of creativity, innovation, digital technology, and new economic logics now being constituted (Cunningham and Potts). Innovation is being regarded as a cardinal priority for societies and their governments. Accordingly, the Australian government has commissioned a Review of The National Innovation System, led by Dr Terry Cutler, due to report in the second half of 2008. The Cutler review is especially focussed upon gaps and weaknesses in the Australian innovation system. Disability has the potential to figure very strongly in this innovation talk, however there has been little discussion of disability in the innovation discourse to date. The significance of disability in relation to innovation was touched upon some years ago, in a report on Disablism from the UK Demos Foundation (Miller, Parker and Gillinson). In a chapter entitled “The engine of difference: disability, innovation and creativity,” the authors discuss the area of inclusive design, and make the argument for the “involvement of disabled people to create a stronger model of user design”:Disabled people represented a market of 8.6 million customers at the last count and their experiences aren’t yet feeding through into processes of innovation. But the role of disabled people as innovators can and should be more active; we should include disabled people in the design process because they are good at it. (57) There are two reasons given for this expertise of disabled people in design. Firstly, “disabled people are often outstanding problem solvers because they have to be … life for disabled people at the moment is a series of challenges to be overcome” (57). Secondly, “innovative ideas are more likely to come from those who have a new or different angle on old problems” (57). The paradox in this argument is that as life becomes more equitable for people with disabilities, then these ‘advantages’ should disappear” (58). Accordingly, Miller et al. make a qualified argument, namely that “greater participation of disabled people in innovation in the short term may just be the necessary trigger for creating an altogether different, and better, system of innovation for everyone in the future” (58). The Demos Disablism report was written at a time when rhetorics of innovation were just beginning to become more generalized and mainstream. This was also at a time in the UK, when there was hope that new critical approaches to disability would see it become embraced as a part of the diverse society that Blair’s New Labor Britain had been indicating. The argument Disablism offers about disability and innovation is in some ways a more formalized version of vernacular theory (McLaughlin, 1996). In the disability movement we often hear, with good reason, that people with disability, by dint of their experience and knowledge are well positioned to develop and offer particular kinds of expertise. However, Miller et al. also gesture towards a more generalized account of disability and innovation, one that would intersect with the emerging frameworks around innovation. It is this possibility that I wish to take up and briefly explore here. I want to consider the prospects for a fully-fledged encounter between disability and innovation. I would like to have a better sense of whether this is worth pursuing, and what it would add to our understanding of both disability and innovation? Would the disability perspective be integrated as a long-term part of our systems of innovation rather than, as Miller et al. imply, deployed temporarily to develop better innovation systems? What pitfalls might be bound up with, or indeed be the conditions of, such a union between disability and innovation? The All-Too-Able User A leading area where disability figures profoundly in innovation is in the field of technology — especially digital technology. There is now a considerable literature and body of practice on disability and digital technology (Annable, Goggin, and Stienstra; Goggin and Newell, Digital Disability; National Council on Disability), however for my purposes here I would like to focus upon the user, the abilities ascribed to various kinds of users, and the user with disability in particular. Digital technologies are replete with challenges and opportunities; they are multi-layered, multi-media, and global in their manifestation and function. In Australia, Britain, Canada, the US, and Europe, there have been some significant digital technology initiatives which have resulted in improved accessibility for many users and populations (Annable, Goggin, and Stienstra; National Council on Disability) . There are a range of examples of ways in which users with disability are intervening and making a difference in design. There is also a substantial body of literature that clarifies why we need to include the perspective of the disabled if we are to be truly innovative in our design practices (Annable, Goggin and Stienstra; Goggin and Newell, “Disability, Identity and Interdependence”). I want to propose, however, that there is merit in going beyond recognition of the role of people with disability in technology design (vital and overlooked as it remains), to consider how disability can enrich contemporary discourses on innovation. There is a very desirable cross-over to be promoted between the emphasis on the user-as-expert in the sphere of disability and technology, and on the integral role of disability groups in the design process, on the one hand, and the rise of the user in digital culture generally, on the other. Surprisingly, such connections are nowhere near as widespread and systematic as they should be. It may be that contemporary debates about the user, and about the user as co-creator, or producer, of technology (Haddon et al.; von Hippel) actually reinstate particular notions of ability, and the able user, understood with reference to notions of disability. The current emphasis on the productive user, based as it is on changing understandings of ability and disability, provides rich material for critical revision of the field and those assumptions surrounding ability. It opens up possibilities for engaging more fully with disability and incorporating disability into the new forms and relations of digital technology that celebrate the user (Goggin and Newell, Digital Disability). While a more detailed consideration of these possibilities require more time than this essay allows, let us consider for a moment the idea of a genuine encounter between the activated user springing from the disability movement, and the much feted user in contemporary digital culture and theories of innovation. People with disability are using these technologies in innovative ways, so have much to contribute to wider discussions of digital technology (Annable, Goggin and Stienstra). The Innovation Turn Innovation policy, the argument goes, is important because it stands to increase productivity, which in turn leads to greater international competitiveness and economic benefit. Especially with the emergence of capitalism (Gleeson), productivity has strong links to particular notions of which types of production and produce are valued. Productivity is also strongly conditioned by how we understand ability and, last in a long chain of strong associations, how we as a society understand and value those kinds of people and bodies believed to contain and exercise the ordained and rewarded types of ability, produce, and productivity. Disability is often seen as antithetical to productivity (a revealing text on the contradictions of disability and productivity is the 2004 Productivity Commission Review of the Disability Discrimination Act). When we think about the history of disability, we quickly realize that productivity, and by extension, innovation, are strongly ideological. Ideological, that is, in the sense that these fields of human endeavour and our understanding of them are shaped by power relations, and are built upon implicit ‘ableist’ assumptions about productivity. In this case, the power relations of disability go right to the heart of the matter, highlighting who and what are perceived to be of value, contributing economically and in other ways to society, and who and what are considered as liabilities, as less valued and uneconomical. A stark recent example of this is the Howard government workplace and welfare reforms, which further disenfranchised, controlled, and impoverished people with disability. If we need to rethink our ideas of productivity and ability in the light of new notions of disability, then so too do we need to rethink our ideas about innovation and disability. Here the new discourses of innovation may actually be useful, but also contain limited formulations and assumptions about ability and disability that need to be challenged. The existing problems of a fresh approach to disability and innovation can be clearly observed in the touchstones of national science and technology “success.” Beyond One-Sided Innovation Disability does actually feature quite prominently in the annals of innovation. Take, for instance, the celebrated case of the so-called “bionic ear” (or cochlear implant) hailed as one of Australia’s great scientific inventions of the past few decades. This is something we can find on display in the Powerhouse Museum of Technology and Design, in Sydney. Yet the politics of the cochlear implant are highly controversial, not least as it is seen by many (for instance, large parts of the Deaf community) as not involving people with disabilities, nor being informed by their desires (Campbell, also see “Social and Ethical Aspects of Cochlear Implants”). A key problem with the cochlear implant and many other technologies is that they are premised on the abolition or overcoming of disability — rather than being shaped as technology that acknowledges and is informed by disabled users in their diverse guises. The failure to learn the lessons of the cochlear implant for disability and innovation can be seen in the fact that we are being urged now to band together to support the design of a “bionic eye” by the year 2020, as a mark of distinction of achieving a great nation (2020 Summit Initial Report). Again, there is no doubting the innovation and achievement in these artefacts and their technological systems. But their development has been marked by a distinct lack of consultation and engagement with people with disabilities; or rather the involvement has been limited to a framework that positions them as passive users of technology, rather than as “producer/users”. Further, what notions of disability and ability are inscribed in these technological systems, and what do they represent and symbolize in the wider political and social field? Unfortunately, such technologies have the effect of reproducing an ableist framework, “enforcing normalcy” (Davis), rather than building in, creating and contributing to new modes of living, which embrace difference and diversity. I would argue that this represents a one-sided logic of innovation. A two-sided logic of innovation, indeed what we might call a double helix (at least) of innovation would be the sustained, genuine interaction between different users, different notions of ability, disability and impairment, and the processes of design. If such a two-sided (or indeed many-sided logic) is to emerge there is good reason to think it could more easily do so in the field of digital cultures and technologies, than say, biotechnology. The reason for this is the emphasis in digital communication technologies on decentralized, participatory, user-determined governance and design, coming from many sources. Certainly this productive, democratic, participatory conception of the user is prevalent in Internet cultures. Innovation here is being reshaped to harness the contribution and knowledge of users, and could easily be extended to embrace pioneering efforts in disability. Innovating with Disability In this paper I have tried to indicate why it is productive for discourses of innovation to consider disability; the relationship between disability and innovation is rich and complex, deserving careful elaboration and interrogation. In suggesting this, I am aware that there are also fundamental problems that innovation raises in its new policy forms. There are the issues of what is at stake when the state is redefining its traditional obligations towards citizens through innovation frameworks and discourses. And there is the troubling question of whether particular forms of activity are normatively judged to be innovative — whereas other less valued forms are not seen as innovative. By way of conclusion, however, I would note that there are now quite basic, and increasingly accepted ways, to embed innovation in design frameworks, and while they certainly have been adopted in the disability and technology area, there is much greater scope for this. However, a few things do need to change before this potential for disability to enrich innovation is adequately realized. Firstly, we need further research and theorization to clarify the contribution of disability to innovation, work that should be undertaken and directed by people with disability themselves. Secondly, there is a lack of resources for supporting disability and technology organisations, and the development of training and expertise in this area (especially to provide viable career paths for experts with disability to enter the field and sustain their work). If this is addressed, the economic benefits stand to be considerable, not to mention the implications for innovation and productivity. Thirdly, we need to think about how we can intensify existing systems of participatory design, or, better still, introduce new user-driven approaches into strategically important places in the design processes of ICTs (and indeed in the national innovation system). Finally, there is an opportunity for new approaches to governance in ICTs at a general level, informed by disability. New modes of organising, networking, and governance associated with digital technology have attracted much attention, also featuring recently in the Australia 2020 Summit. Less well recognised are new ideas about governance that come from the disability community, such as the work of Queensland Advocacy Incorporated, Rhonda Galbally’s Our Community, disability theorists such as Christopher Newell (Newell), or the Canadian DIS-IT alliance (see, for instance, Stienstra). The combination of new ideas in governance from digital culture, new ideas from the disability movement and disability studies, and new approaches to innovation could be a very powerful cocktail indeed.Dedication This paper is dedicated to my beloved friend and collaborator, Professor Christopher Newell AM (1964-2008), whose extraordinary legacy will inspire us all to continue exploring and questioning the idea of able. 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Introduction This year, 2008, marks the tenth anniversary of the portable MP3 player. MPMan F10, the first such device to utilise the MP3-encoding format, was launched in March 1998 (Smith). However it was not until April 2003 when Apple Inc launched the iPod that the market began the massive growth that has made the devices almost ubiquitous in everyday life. In 2006 iPods were rated as more popular than beer amongst college students in the United States, according to Student Monitor. Beer had only previously surpassed in popularity once before, in 1997, by the Internet (Zeff). This year will also see the launch in Australia of the latest offering in this line of products – the iPhone – which incorporates the popular MP3 player in an advanced mobile phone. The iPhone features a touch-sensitive flat screen that serves as the interface for its operating system. While the design is striking, it also generates accessibility problems. There are obvious implications for those with vision impairments when there are no physical markers to point towards the phone’s functions (Crichton). This article critically examines the promise of Internet-based digital technology to open up the world to people with disabilities, and the parallel danger that the social construction of disability in the digital environment will simply come to mirror pre-existing analogue discrimination. This paper explores how technologies and innovations designed to improve access by the disabled actually enhance access for all users. The first part of the paper focuses on ‘Web 2.0’ and digital access for people with disability, particularly those with vision impairment. The online software that drives the iPod and iPhone and exclusively delivers content to these devices is iTunes. While iTunes seems on the surface to provide enormous opportunity for the vision impaired to access a broad selection of audio content, its design actually works to inhibit access to the platform for this group. Apple promotes the use of iTunes in educational settings through the iTunes U channel, and this potentially excludes those who have difficulty with access to the technology. Critically, it is these excluded people who, potentially, could benefit the most from the new technology. We consider the difficulty experienced by users of screen readers and braille tablets in relation to iTunes and highlight the potential problems for universities who seek to utilise iTunes U. In the second part of the paper we reframe disability accessibility as a principle of universal access and design and outline how changes made to assist users with disability can enhance the learning experience of all students using the Lectopia lecture recording and distribution system as an example. The third section of the paper situates these digital developments within the continuum of disability theory deploying Finkelstein’s three stages of disability development. The focus then shifts to the potential of online virtual worlds such as Second Life to act as a place where the promise of technology to mediate for disability might be realised. Goggin and Newell suggest that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. This article argues that accessibility must be addressed through the context of design and shared open standards for digital platforms. Web 2.0 and Accessibility The World Wide Web based its successful development on a set of common standards that worked across different software and operating systems. This interoperability held out great opportunity for the implementation of enabling software for those with disability, particularly sight and hearing impairments. The increasing sophistication and diversification of online content has confounded this initial promise. Websites have become more complex, particularly with the rise of ‘Web 2.0’ and the associated trends in coding and website design. This has aggravated attempts to mediate this content for a disabled audience through software (Zajicek). As Wood notes, ‘these days many computers are used principally to access the Internet – and there is no telling what a blind person will encounter there’. As the content requiring translation – either from text into audio or onto a braille tablet, or from audio into text captions – become less standardised and more complex, it becomes both harder for software to act as a translator, and harder to navigate this media once translated. This is particularly the case when links are generated ‘on the fly’ for each view of a website and where images replace words as hyperlinks. These problems can trace their origin to before the development of the World Wide Web. Reihing, addressing another Apple product in 1987 notes: The Apple Macintosh is particularly hard to use because it depends heavily on graphics. Some word processors ‘paint’ pictures of letters on the screen instead of using standard computer codes, and speech or braille devices can’t cope (in Goggin and Newell). Web 2.0 sites loaded with Ajax and other forms of Java scripting present a particular challenge for translation software (Zajicek). iTunes, an iconic Web 2.0 application, is a further step away from easily translated content as proprietary software that while operating though the Internet, does not conform to Web standards. Many translation software packages are unable to read the iTunes software at all or are limited and only able to read part of the page, but not enough of it to use the program (Furendal). As websites utilising ‘Web 2.0’ technology increase in popularity they become less attractive to users who are visually impaired, particularly because the dynamic elements can not be accessed using screen readers provided with the operating system (Bigham, Prince and Ladner). While at one level this presents an inability for a user with a disability to engage with the popular software, it also meant that universities seeking to use iTunes U to deliver content were excluding these students. To Apple’s credit they have taken some of these access concerns on board with the recent release of both the Apple operating system and iTunes, to better enable Apple’s own access software to translate the iTunes screen for blind users. However this also illustrates the problems with this type of software operating outside of nominated standards as there are still serious problems with access to iTunes on Microsoft’s dominant Windows operating system (Furendal). While Widows provides its own integrated screen reading software, the company acknowledges that this is not sufficiently powerful for regular use by disabled users who will need to use more specialised programs (Wood). The recent upgrade of the standard Windows operating system from XP to Vista seems to have abandoned the previous stipulation that there was a keyboard shortcut for each operation the system performed – a key requirement for those unable to use a visual interface on the screen to ‘point and click’ with a mouse (Wood). Other factors, such as the push towards iTunes U, explored in the next section, explain the importance of digital accessibility for everyone, not just the disabled as this technology becomes ubiquitous. The use of Lectopia in higher education demonstrates the value of flexibility of delivery to the whole student population, inclusive of the disabled. iPods and Higher Education iTunes is the enabling software supporting the iPod and iPhone. As well as commercial content, iTunes also acts as a distribution medium for other content that is free to use. It allows individuals or organisations to record and publish audio and video files – podcasts and vodcasts – that can be automatically downloaded from the Internet and onto individual computers and iPods as they become available. Significantly this technology has provided opportunities for educational use. iTunes U has been developed by Apple to facilitate the delivery of content from universities through the service. While Apple has acknowledged that this is, in part, a deliberate effort to drive the uptake of iTunes (Udell), there are particular opportunities for the distribution of information through this channel afforded by the technology. Duke University in the United States was an early adopter, distributing iPods to each of its first-year students for educational use as early as 2004 (Dean). A recent study of students at The University of Western Australia (UWA) by Williams and Fardon found that students who listen to lectures through portable media players such as iPods (the ‘Pod’ in iPod stands for ‘portable on demand’) have a higher attendance rate at lectures than those who do not. In 1998, the same year that the first portable MP3 player was being launched, the Lectopia (or iLecture) lecture recording and distribution system was introduced in Australia at UWA to enable students with disabilities better access to lecture materials. While there have been significant criticisms of this platform (Brabazon), the broad uptake and popularity of this technology, both at UWA and at many universities across Australia, demonstrates how changes made to assist disability can potentially help the broader community. This underpins the concept of ‘universal design’ where consideration given to people with disability also improves the lives of people without disability. A report by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, examined the accessibility of digital technology. Disability issues, such as access to digital content, were reframed as universal design issues: Disability accessibility issues are more accurately perceived in many cases as universal access issues, such that appropriate design for access by people with disabilities will improve accessibility and usability for … the community more generally. The idea of universal access was integral to Tim Berners-Lee’s original conception of the Web – however the platform has developed into a more complex and less ordered environment that can stray from agreed standards (Edwards, "Stop"). iTunes comes with its own accessibility issues. Furendal demonstrated that its design has added utility for some impairments notably dyslexia and colour blindness. However, as noted above, iTunes is highly problematic for those with other vision impairment particularly the blind. It is an example of the condition noted by Regan: There exists a false perception among designers that accessibility represents a restriction on creativity. There are few examples that exist in the world that can dissuade designers of this notion. While there are no technical reasons for this division between accessibility and design, the notion exists just the same. The invisibility of this issue confirms that while an awareness of differing abilities can assist all users, this blinkered approach to diverse visual acuities is not only blocking social justice imperatives but future marketing opportunities. The iPhone is notable for problems associated with use by people with disabilities, particularly people with hearing (Keizer) and vision impairments (Crichton). In colder climates the fact that the screen would not be activated by a gloved hand has also been a problem, its design reflects bias against not just the physically impaired. Design decisions reflect the socially constructed nature of disability where disability is related to how humans have chosen to construct the world (Finkelstein ,"To Deny"). Disability Theory and Technology Nora Groce conducted an anthropological study of Martha’s Vineyard in the United States. During the nineteenth century the island had an unusually high incidence of deafness. In response to this everyone on the island was able to communicate in sign language, regardless of the hearing capability, as a standard mode of communication. As a result the impairment of deafness did not become a disability in relation to communication. Society on the island was constructed to be inclusive without regard to a person’s hearing ability. Finkelstein (Attitudes) identified three stages of disability ‘creation’ to suggest disability (as it is defined socially) can be eradicated through technology. He is confident that the third phase, which he argues has been occurring in conjunction with the information age, will offset many of the prejudicial attitudes established during the second phase that he characterised as the industrial era. Digital technologies are often presented as a way to eradicate disability as it is socially constructed. Discussions around the Web and the benefits for people with disability usually centre on accessibility and social interaction. Digital documents on the Internet enable people with disability greater access than physical spaces, such as libraries, especially for the visually impaired who are able to make use of screen readers. There are more than 38 million blind people who utilise screen reading technology to access the Web (Bigham, Prince and Ladner). A visually impaired person is able to access digital texts whereas traditional, analogue, books remain inaccessible. The Web also allows people with disability to interact with others in a way that is not usually possible in general society. In a similar fashion to arguments that the Web is both gender and race neutral, people with disability need not identify as disabled in online spaces and can instead be judged on their personality first. In this way disability is not always a factor in the social encounter. These arguments however fail to address several factors integral to the social construction of disability. While the idea that a visually impaired person can access books electronically, in conjunction with a screen reader, sounds like a disability-free utopia, this is not always the case as ‘digital’ does not always mean ‘accessible’. Often digital documents will be in an image format that cannot be read by the user’s screen reader and will need to be converted and corrected by a sighted person. Sapey found that people with disabilities are excluded from informational occupations. Computer programming positions were fourth least likely of the 58 occupations examined to employ disabled people. As Rehing observed in 1987, it is a fantasy to think that accessibility for blind people simply means turning on a computer (Rehing in Goggin and Newell). Although it may sound empowering for people with disability to interact in an environment where they can live out an identity different from the rhythm of their daily patterns, the reality serves to decrease the visibility of disability in society. Further, the Internet may not be accessible for people with disability as a social environment in the first place. AbilityNet’s State of the eNation Web Accessibility Report: Social Networking Sites found a number of social networking sites including the popular MySpace and Facebook are inaccessible to users with a number of different disabilities, particularly those with a visual impairment such as blindness or a cognitive disability like dyslexia. This study noted the use of ‘Captcha’ – ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’ – technology designed to differentiate between a person signing up for an account and an automated computer process. This system presents an image of a word deliberately blurred and disfigured so that it cannot be readily identified by a computer, which can only be translated by a human user. This presents an obstacle to people with a visual impairment, particularly those relying on transcription software that will, by design, not be able to read the image, as well as those with dyslexia who may also have trouble translating the image on the screen. Virtual Worlds and New Possibilities The development of complex online virtual worlds such as Second Life presents their own set of challenges for access, for example, the use of Captcha. However they also afford opportunity. With over a million residents, there is a diversity of creativity. People are using Second Life to try on different identities or campaign for causes relevant in the real world. For example, Simon Stevens (Simon Walsh in SL), runs the nightclub Wheelies in the virtual world and continues to use a wheelchair and helmet in SL – similar to his real-life self: I personally changed Second Life’s attitude toward disability when I set up ‘Wheelies’, its first disability nightclub. This was one of those daft ideas which grew and grew and… has remained a central point for disability issues within Second Life. Many new Disabled users make contact with me for advice and wheelies has helped some of them ‘come out’ and use a wheelchair (Carter). Able-bodied people are also becoming involved in raising disability awareness through Second Life, for example Fez Richardson is developing applications for use in Second Life so that the non-disabled can experience the effects of impairment in this virtual realm (Cassidy) Tertiary Institutions are embracing the potential of Second Life, utilising the world as a virtual classroom. Bates argues that Second Life provides a learning environment free of physical barriers that has the potential to provide an enriched learning experience for all students regardless of whether they have a disability. While Second Life might be a good environment for those with mobility impairment there are still potential access problems for the vision and hearing impaired. However, Second Life has recently become open source and is actively making changes to aid accessibility for the visually impaired including an audible system where leaves rustle to denote a tree is nearby, and text to speech software (Sierra). Conclusion Goggin and Newell observe that new technology is a prominent component of social, cultural and political changes with the potential to mitigate for disability. The uneven interface of the virtual and the analogue, as demonstrated by the implementation and operation of iTunes, indicates that this mitigation is far from an inevitable consequence of this development. However James Edwards, author of the Brothercake blog, is optimistic that technology does have an important role in decreasing disability in wider society, in line with Finkelstein’s third phase: Technology is the last, best hope for accessibility. It's not like the physical world, where there are good, tangible reasons why some things can never be accessible. A person who's blind will never be able to drive a car manually; someone in a wheelchair will never be able to climb the steps of an ancient stone cathedral. Technology is not like the physical world – technology can take any shape. Technology is our slave, and we can make it do what we want. With technology there are no good reasons, only excuses (Edwards, "Technology"). Internet-based technologies have the potential to open up the world to people with disabilities, and are often presented as a way to eradicate disability as it is socially constructed. While Finkelstein believes new technologies characteristic of the information age will offset many of the prejudicial attitudes established during the industrial revolution, where technology was established around able-bodied norms, the examples of the iPhone and Captcha illustrate that digital technology is often constructed in the same social world that people with disability are routinely disabled by. The Lectopia system on the other hand enables students with disabilities to access lecture materials and highlights the concept of universal access, the original ideology underpinning design of the Web. Lectopia has been widely utilised by many different types of students, not just the disabled, who are seeking flexibility. While we should be optimistic, we must also be aware as noted by Goggin and Newell the Internet cannot be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. Accessibility is a universal design issue that potentially benefits both those with a disability and the wider community. References AbilityNet Web Accessibility Team. State of the eNation Web Accessibility Reports: Social Networking Sites. AbilityNet. January 2008. 12 Apr. 2008 ‹http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/docs/enation/2008SocialNetworkingSites.pdf›. Bates, Jacqueline. "Disability and Access in Virtual Worlds." 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This single and critical case study evaluated a faith-based natural family planning program's salient features using a framework on implementation fidelity. Multiple focus group discussions were conducted, with three groups of stakeholders (n=100), to gather qualitative data on their knowledge and experience of the program. Overall, the findings showed that the program primarily adhered to the essential elements of implementation fidelity, such as content, frequency, duration, and coverage prescribed by its designers. Three lessons were drawn to address some issues that have influenced the degree of fidelity in which the program was implemented. The first is the need to secure adequate and sustained human and financial resources. The second is the need to strengthen its partnership with government and non-government organizations that have provided them with much-needed assistance. Finally, there is also the need to provide extensive training, materials, and support to its service providers to preserve their morale and interest. Other faith-based organizations may hold this case as an indicator of how and why an NFP program works and the extent to which the need for family planning can be met adapted to their local conditions and needs. References Arbuckle, Gerald A. Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership. Quezon City: Claretian Publications. 1993. Arevalo, Marcos. "Expanding the Availability and improving the delivery of natural family planning services and fertility awareness education: providers' perspectives. Adv Contracept. Jun-Sep 1997; 13(2-3):275-81. Arévalo, Marcos, Victoria Jennings, and Irit Sinai. "Efficacy of a new method of family planning: the Standard Days Method." Contraception 65, no. 5 (2002): 333-338.Arévalo, Marcos, Irit Sinai, and Victoria Jennings. 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Gomez, Fausto, B., OP. “The Role of Priests in Natural Family Planning." Boletin Ecclesiastico de Filipinas, LXXII, (1996): 163. Gribble, James N. "The standard days' method of family planning: a response to Cairo." International family planning perspectives 29, no. 4 (2003): 188-191. Guida, Maurizio, Giovanni A. Tommaselli, Massimiliano Pellicano, Stefano Palomba, and Carmine Nappi. "An overview on the effectiveness of natural family planning." Gynecological Endocrinology 11, no. 3 (1997): 203-219.Hasson, Henna. "Systematic evaluation of implementation fidelity of complex interventions in health and social care." Implementation Science 5, no. 1 (2010): 67. Infantado, R. B. "Main-streaming NFP into the Philippines' Department of Health: opportunities and challenges." Advances in Contraception 13, no. 2-3 (1997): 249-254. Institute for Reproductive Health. Faith-based organizations as partners in family planning: Working together to improve family well-being. Washington, DC: Georgetown University. (2011). Accessed February 11, 2019, from http://www.ccih.org/FBOs_as_Partners_in_FP_Report.pdf. Ledesma, Antonio. J. “All-NFP: A Way Forward.” Philippine Daily Inquirer (2012). Accessed August 04, 2019, from https://opinion.inquirer.net/35848/all-nfp-a-way-forward#ixzz5zAroo0oo Ledesma, Antonio. J. “Al-Natural Family Planning: Going beyond the RH Bill.” Accessed April 15, 2019, from https://archcdo.wordpress.com/ Lundgren, Rebecka, Jeannette Cachan, and Victoria Jennings. "Engaging men in family planning services delivery: experiences introducing the Standard Days Method® in four countries." World health & population 14, no. 1 (2012): 44. Lundgren, Rebecka I., Mihira V. Karra, and Eileen A. Yam. "The role of the Standard Days Method in modern family planning services in developing countries." The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care 17, no. 4 (2012): 254-259.Mikolajczyk, Rafael T., Joseph B. Stanford, and Martina Rauchfuss. "Factors influencing the choice to use modern natural family planning." Contraception 67, no. 4 (2003): 253-258. Orbeta, Aniceto., Jr. “Poverty, Fertility Preferences, and Family Planning Practice in the Philippines.” Philippine Journal of Development, 129. (2006). Accessed October 25, 2019, from https://ideas.repec.org/p/phd/dpaper/dp_2005-22.html.July Orbeta, Aniceto Jr. “Poverty, vulnerability, and family size: evidence from the Philippines (No. 68). (2005). Asian Development Bank. Orbeta Jr, Aniceto, and Ernesto M. Pernia. Population Growth and Economic Development in the Philippines: What Has Been the Experience and What Must Be Done? No. 1999-22. PIDS Discussion Paper Series, 1999. Rufo, Aries. “The church pays lip service to natural family planning.” Rappler (2011). Accessed October 01, 2019, from https://news.abs-cbn.com/-depth/12/04/11/church-pays-lip-service-natural-family-planning. Schivone, Gillian B., and Paul D. Blumenthal. "Contraception in the developing world: special considerations." In Seminars in reproductive medicine, vol. 34, no. 03, pp. 168-174. Thieme Medical Publishers, 2016. Seidman, M. "Requirements for NFP service delivery: an overview." Advances in Contraception 13, no. 2-3 (1997): 241-247. Selak, Anne. “What the Church Owes Families.” La Croix International (2020) Accessed October 24, 2020, from https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/what-church-owes-families. Sinai, Irit, Rebecka Lundgren, Marcos Arévalo, and Victoria Jennings. "Fertility awareness-based methods of family planning: predictors of correct use." International family planning perspectives (2006): 94-100. Smoley, Brian A., and Christa M. Robinson. "Natural family planning." American family physician 86, no. 10 (2012): 924-928. Stanford, Joseph B., Janis C. Lemaire, and Poppy B. Thurman. "Women's interest in natural family planning." Journal of Family Practice 46 (1998): 65-72. Tommaselli, G. A., M. Guida, S. Palomba, M. 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For the past twenty years, academics and other social commentators have, by and large, shared the view that the phase of modernity through which we are currently passing is defined by two interrelated catalysts of change: the physical movement of people and the virtual movement of information around the globe. As we enter the second decade of the new millennium, it is certainly a timely moment to reflect upon the ways in which the prognoses of the scholars and scientists writing in the late twentieth century have come to pass, especially since—during the time this special issue has been in press—the revolutions that are gathering pace in the Arab world appear to be realising the theoretical prediction that the ever-increasing “flows” of people and information would ultimately bring about the end of the nation-state and herald an era of transnationalism (Appadurai, Urry). For writers like Arjun Appadurai, moreover, the concept of diaspora was key to grasping how this new world order would take shape, and how it would operate: Diasporic public spheres, diverse amongst themselves, are the crucibles of a postnational political order. The engines of their discourse are mass media (both interactive and expressive) and the movement of refugees, activists, students, laborers. It may be that the emergent postnational order proves not to be a system of homogeneous units (as with the current system of nation-states) but a system based on relations between heterogeneous units (some social movements, some interest groups, some professional bodies, some non-governmental organizations, some armed constabularies, some judicial bodies) ... In the short run, as we can see already, it is likely to be a world of increased incivility and violence. In the longer run, free from the constraints of the nation form, we may find that cultural freedom and sustainable justice in the world do not presuppose the uniform and general existence of the nation-state. This unsettling possibility could be the most exciting dividend of living in modernity at large. (23) In this editorial, we would like to return to the “here and now” of the late 1990s in which theorists like Arjun Appaduri, Ulrich Beck, John Urry, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Robertson and others were “imagining” the consequences of both globalisation and glocalisation for the twenty-first century in order that we may better assess what is, indeed, coming to pass. While most of their prognoses for this “second modernity” have proven remarkably accurate, it is their—self-confessed—inability to forecast either the nature or the extent of the digital revolution that most vividly captures the distance between the mid-1990s and now; and it is precisely the consequences of this extraordinary technological revolution on the twin concepts of “glocality” and “diaspora” that the research featured in this special issue seeks to capture. Glocal Imaginaries Appadurai’s endeavours to show how globalisation was rapidly making itself felt as a “structure of feeling” (Williams in Appadurai 189) as well as a material “fact” was also implicit in our conceptualisation of the conference, “Glocal Imaginaries: Writing/Migration/Place,” which gave rise to this special issue. This conference, which was the culmination of the AHRC-funded project “Moving Manchester: Literature/Migration/Place (2006-10)”, constituted a unique opportunity to gain an international, cross-disciplinary perspective on urgent and topical debates concerning mobility and migration in the early twenty-first century and the strand “Networked Diasporas” was one of the best represented on the program. Attracting papers on broadcast media as well as the new digital technologies, the strand was strikingly international in terms of the speakers’ countries of origin, as is this special issue which brings together research from six European countries, Australia and the Indian subcontinent. The “case-studies” represented in these articles may therefore be seen to constitute something of a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of how Appadurai’s “glocal imaginary” is being lived out across the globe in the early years of the twenty-first century. In this respect, the collection proves that his hunch with regards to the signal importance of the “mass-media” in redefining our spatial and temporal coordinates of being and belonging was correct: The third and final factor to be addressed here is the role of the mass-media, especially in its electronic forms, in creating new sorts of disjuncture between spatial and virtual neighborhoods. This disjuncture has both utopian and dystopian potentials, and there is no easy way to tell how these may play themselves out in the future of the production of locality. (194) The articles collected here certainly do serve as testament to the “bewildering plethora of changes in ... media environments” (195) that Appadurai envisaged, and yet it can clearly also be argued that this agent of glocalisation has not yet brought about the demise of the nation-state in the way (or at the speed) that many commentators predicted. Digital Diasporas in a Transnational World Reviewing the work of the leading social science theorists working in the field during the late 1990s, it quickly becomes evident that: (a) the belief that globalisation presented a threat to the nation-state was widely held; and (b) that the “jury” was undecided as to whether this would prove a good or bad thing in the years to come. While the commentators concerned did their best to complexify both their analysis of the present and their view of the future, it is interesting to observe, in retrospect, how the rhetoric of both utopia and dystopia invaded their discourse in almost equal measure. We have already seen how Appadurai, in his 1996 publication, Modernity at Large, looks beyond the “increased incivility and violence” of the “short term” to a world “free from the constraints of the nation form,” while Roger Bromley, following Agamben and Deleuze as well as Appadurai, typifies a generation of literary and cultural critics who have paid tribute to the way in which the arts (and, in particular, storytelling) have enabled subjects to break free from their national (af)filiations (Pearce, Devolving 17) and discover new “de-territorialised” (Deleuze and Guattari) modes of being and belonging. Alongside this “hope,” however, the forces and agents of globalisation were also regarded with a good deal of suspicion and fear, as is evidenced in Ulrich Beck’s What is Globalization? In his overview of the theorists who were then perceived to be leading the debate, Beck draws distinctions between what was perceived to be the “engine” of globalisation (31), but is clearly most exercised by the manner in which the transformation has taken shape: Without a revolution, without even any change in laws or constitutions, an attack has been launched “in the normal course of business”, as it were, upon the material lifelines of modern national societies. First, the transnational corporations are to export jobs to parts of the world where labour costs and workplace obligations are lowest. Second, the computer-generation of worldwide proximity enables them to break down and disperse goods and services, and produce them through a division of labour in different parts of the world, so that national and corporate labels inevitably become illusory. (3; italics in the original) Beck’s concern is clearly that all these changes have taken place without the nation-states of the world being directly involved in any way: transnational corporations began to take advantage of the new “mobility” available to them without having to secure the agreement of any government (“Companies can produce in one country, pay taxes in another and demand state infrastructural spending in yet another”; 4-5); the export of the labour market through the use of digital communications (stereotypically, call centres in India) was similarly unregulated; and the world economy, as a consequence, was in the process of becoming detached from the processes of either production or consumption (“capitalism without labour”; 5-7). Vis-à-vis the dystopian endgame of this effective “bypassing” of the nation-state, Beck is especially troubled about the fate of the human rights legislation that nation-states around the world have developed, with immense effort and over time (e.g. employment law, trade unions, universal welfare provision) and cites Zygmunt Bauman’s caution that globalisation will, at worst, result in widespread “global wealth” and “local poverty” (31). Further, he ends his book with a fully apocalyptic vision, “the Brazilianization of Europe” (161-3), which unapologetically calls upon the conventions of science fiction to imagine a worst-case scenario for a Europe without nations. While fourteen or fifteen years is evidently not enough time to put Beck’s prognosis to the test, most readers would probably agree that we are still some way away from such a Europe. Although the material wealth and presence of the transnational corporations strikes a chord, especially if we include the world banks and finance organisations in their number, the financial crisis that has rocked the world for the past three years, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ascendancy of Al-Qaida (all things yet to happen when Beck was writing in 1997), has arguably resulted in the nations of Europe reinforcing their (respective and collective) legal, fiscal, and political might through rigorous new policing of their physical borders and regulation of their citizens through “austerity measures” of an order not seen since World War Two. In other words, while the processes of globalisation have clearly been instrumental in creating the financial crisis that Europe is presently grappling with and does, indeed, expose the extent to which the world economy now operates outside the control of the nation-state, the nation-state still exists very palpably for all its citizens (whether permanent or migrant) as an agent of control, welfare, and social justice. This may, indeed, cause us to conclude that Bauman’s vision of a world in which globalisation would make itself felt very differently for some groups than others came closest to what is taking shape: true, the transnationals have seized significant political and economic power from the nation-state, but this has not meant the end of the nation-state; rather, the change is being experienced as a re-trenching of whatever power the nation-state still has (and this, of course, is considerable) over its citizens in their “local”, everyday lives (Bauman 55). If we now turn to the portrait of Europe painted by the articles that constitute this special issue, we see further evidence of transglobal processes and practices operating in a realm oblivious to local (including national) concerns. While our authors are generally more concerned with the flows of information and “identity” than business or finance (Appaduri’s “ethnoscapes,” “technoscapes,” and “ideoscapes”: 33-7), there is the same impression that this “circulation” (Latour) is effectively bypassing the state at one level (the virtual), whilst remaining very materially bound by it at another. In other words, and following Bauman, we would suggest that it is quite possible for contemporary subjects to be both the agents and subjects of globalisation: a paradox that, as we shall go on to demonstrate, is given particularly vivid expression in the case of diasporic and/or migrant peoples who may be able to bypass the state in the manufacture of their “virtual” identities/communities) but who (Cohen) remain very much its subjects (or, indeed, “non-subjects”) when attempting movement in the material realm. Two of the articles in the collection (Leurs & Ponzanesi and Marcheva) deal directly with the exponential growth of “digital diasporas” (sometimes referred to as “e-diasporas”) since the inception of Facebook in 2004, and both provide specific illustrations of the way in which the nation-state both has, and has not, been transcended. First, it quickly becomes clear that for the (largely) “youthful” (Leurs & Ponzanesi) participants of nationally inscribed networking sites (e.g. “discovernikkei” (Japan), “Hyves” (Netherlands), “Bulgarians in the UK” (Bulgaria)), shared national identity is a means and not an end. In other words, although the participants of these sites might share in and actively produce a fond and nostalgic image of their “homeland” (Marcheva), they are rarely concerned with it as a material or political entity and an expression of their national identities is rapidly supplemented by the sharing of other (global) identity markers. Leurs & Ponzanesi invoke Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the “rhizome” to describe the way in which social networkers “weave” a “rhizomatic path” to identity, gradually accumulating a hybrid set of affiliations. Indeed, the extent to which the “nation” disappears on such sites can be remarkable as was also observed in our investigation of the digital storytelling site, “Capture Wales” (BBC) (Pearce, "Writing"). Although this BBC site was set up to capture the voices of the Welsh nation in the early twenty-first century through a collection of (largely) autobiographical stories, very few of the participants mention either Wales or their “Welshness” in the stories that they tell. Further, where the “home” nation is (re)imagined, it is generally in an idealised, or highly personalised, form (e.g. stories about one’s own family) or through a sharing of (perceived and actual) cultural idiosyncrasies (Marcheva on “You know you’re a Bulgarian when …”) rather than an engagement with the nation-state per se. As Leurs & Ponzanesi observe: “We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets obscured as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties initiate subcultures and offer resistance to mainstream cultural forms.” Both the articles just discussed also note the shading of the “national” into the “transnational” on the social networking sites they discuss, and “transnationalism”—in the sense of many different nations and their diasporas being united through a common interest or cause—is also a focus of Pikner’s article on “collective actions” in Europe (notably, “EuroMayDay” and “My Estonia”) and Harb’s highly topical account of the role of both broadcast media (principally, Al-Jazeera) and social media in the revolutions and uprisings currently sweeping through the Arab world (spring 2011). On this point, it should be noted that Harb identifies this as the moment when Facebook’s erstwhile predominantly social function was displaced by a manifestly political one. From this we must conclude that both transnationalism and social media sites can be put to very different ends: while young people in relatively privileged democratic countries might embrace transnationalism as an expression of their desire to “rise above” national politics, the youth of the Arab world have engaged it as a means of generating solidarity for nationalist insurgency and liberation. Another instance of “g/local” digital solidarity exceeding national borders is to be found in Johanna Sumiala’s article on the circulatory power of the Internet in the Kauhajoki school shooting which took place Finland in 2008. As well as using the Internet to “stage manage” his rampage, the Kauhajoki shooter (whose name the author chose to withhold for ethical reasons) was subsequently found to have been a member of numerous Web-based “hate groups”, many of them originating in the United States and, as a consequence, may be understood to have committed his crime on behalf of a transnational community: what Sumiala has defined as a “networked community of destruction.” It must also be noted, however, that the school shootings were experienced as a very local tragedy in Finland itself and, although the shooter may have been psychically located in a transnational hyper-reality when he undertook the killings, it is his nation-state that has had to deal with the trauma and shame in the long term. Woodward and Brown & Rutherford, meanwhile, show that it remains the tendency of public broadcast media to uphold the raison d’être of the nation-state at the same time as embracing change. Woodward’s feature article (which reports on the AHRC-sponsored “Tuning In” project which has researched the BBC World Service) shows how the representation of national and diasporic “voices” from around the world, either in opposition to or in dialogue with the BBC’s own reporting, is key to the way in which the Commission has changed and modernised in recent times; however, she is also clear that many of the objectives that defined the service in its early days—such as its commitment to a distinctly “English” brand of education—still remain. Similarly, Brown & Rutherford’s article on the innovative Australian ABC children’s television series, My Place (which has combined traditional broadcasting with online, interactive websites) may be seen to be positively promoting the Australian nation by making visible its commitment to multiculturalism. Both articles nevertheless reveal the extent to which these public service broadcasters have recognised the need to respond to their nations’ changing demographics and, in particular, the fact that “diaspora” is a concept that refers not only to their English and Australian audiences abroad but also to their now manifestly multicultural audiences at home. When it comes to commercial satellite television, however, the relationship between broadcasting and national and global politics is rather harder to pin down. Subramanian exposes a complex interplay of national and global interests through her analysis of the Malayalee “reality television” series, Idea Star Singer. Exported globally to the Indian diaspora, the show is shamelessly exploitative in the way in which it combines residual and emergent ideologies (i.e. nostalgia for a traditional Keralayan way of life vs aspirational “western lifestyles”) in pursuit of its (massive) audience ratings. Further, while the ISS series is ostensibly a g/local phenomenon (the export of Kerala to the rest of the world rather than “India” per se), Subramanian passionately laments all the progressive national initiatives (most notably, the campaign for “women’s rights”) that the show is happy to ignore: an illustration of one of the negative consequences of globalisation predicted by Beck (31) noted at the start of this editorial. Harb, meanwhile, reflects upon a rather different set of political concerns with regards to commercial satellite broadcasting in her account of the role of Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya in the recent (2011) Arab revolutions. Despite Al-Jazeera’s reputation for “two-sided” news coverage, recent events have exposed its complicity with the Qatari government; further, the uprisings have revealed the speed with which social media—in particular Facebook and Twitter—are replacing broadcast media. It is now possible for “the people” to bypass both governments and news corporations (public and private) in relaying the news. Taken together, then, what our articles would seem to indicate is that, while the power of the nation-state has notionally been transcended via a range of new networking practices, this has yet to undermine its material power in any guaranteed way (witness recent counter-insurgencies in Libya, Bahrain, and Syria).True, the Internet may be used to facilitate transnational “actions” against the nation-state (individual or collective) through a variety of non-violent or violent actions, but nation-states around the world, and especially in Western Europe, are currently wielding immense power over their subjects through aggressive “austerity measures” which have the capacity to severely compromise the freedom and agency of the citizens concerned through widespread unemployment and cuts in social welfare provision. This said, several of our articles provide evidence that Appadurai’s more utopian prognoses are also taking shape. Alongside the troubling possibility that globalisation, and the technologies that support it, is effectively eroding “difference” (be this national or individual), there are the ever-increasing (and widely reported) instances of how digital technology is actively supporting local communities and actions around the world in ways that bypass the state. These range from the relatively modest collective action, “My Estonia”, featured in Pikner’s article, to the ways in which the Libyan diaspora in Manchester have made use of social media to publicise and support public protests in Tripoli (Harb). In other words, there is compelling material evidence that the heterogeneity that Appadurai predicted and hoped for has come to pass through the people’s active participation in (and partial ownership of) media practices. Citizens are now able to “interfere” in the representation of their lives as never before and, through the digital revolution, communicate with one another in ways that circumvent state-controlled broadcasting. We are therefore pleased to present the articles that follow as a lively, interdisciplinary and international “state-of-the-art” commentary on how the ongoing revolution in media and communication is responding to, and bringing into being, the processes and practices of globalisation predicted by Appadurai, Beck, Bauman, and others in the 1990s. The articles also speak to the changing nature of the world’s “diasporas” during this fifteen year time frame (1996-2011) and, we trust, will activate further debate (following Cohen) on the conceptual tensions that now manifestly exist between “virtual” and “material” diasporas and also between the “transnational” diasporas whose objective is to transcend the nation-state altogether and those that deploy social media for specifically local or national/ist ends. Acknowledgements With thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) for their generous funding of the “Moving Manchester” project (2006-10). Special thanks to Dr Kate Horsley (Lancaster University) for her invaluable assistance as ‘Web Editor’ in the production of this special issue (we could not have managed without you!) and also to Gail Ferguson (our copy-editor) for her expertise in the preparation of the final typescript. References Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization. Cambridge: Polity, 1998. Beck, Ulrich. What is Globalization? Trans. Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity, 2000 (1997). Bromley, Roger. Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Pearce, Lynne, ed. Devolving Identities: Feminist Readings in Home and Belonging. London: Ashgate, 2000. Pearce, Lynne. “‘Writing’ and ‘Region’ in the Twenty-First Century: Epistemological Reflections on Regionally Located Art and Literature in the Wake of the Digital Revolution.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 13.1 (2010): 27-41. Robertson, Robert. Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992. Urry, John. Sociology beyond Societies. London: Routledge, 1999. Williams, Raymond. Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982.

It is now almost 15 years since the world witnessed one of modern history’s most devastating terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. Despite all its promises, the so called ‘War on Terror’ failed to combat a growing tide of violent extremism. 11 years after the US led offensive on Iraq in 2003, the rise of terrorism by non-state actors in the Arab world presents a significant concern to international security and world peace. Since 2001 Australian Muslims have consistently been called upon to openly reject terrorism committed by a minority of Muslims who adhere to an extreme interpretation of Islamic doctrine that justifies attacks on civilians both in the Arab world and abroad.The responsibility placed on Australian Muslims to actively reject terrorism comes from both official channels through government funded programs under the banner of counter terrorism and countering violent extremism and the public through the popular media. Yet, Muslims in Australia who do speak out against religiously motivated non-state terrorism find themselves in an impossible bind. They are expected to speak out as representatives of a fragmented, heterogeneous and diverse mix of communities and ideologies. Often, when they do speak out, they are viewed with suspicion and presumed to be ‘apologists for Islam’ whose claim to tolerance and the peaceful nature of Islamic doctrine purposefully ignores its true nature. Such responses render these spokespersons illegitimate- both as representatives of Muslim communities and as Australian citizens. The question “Why don’t moderate Muslims speak out against terrorism?” is often raised in the popular media in response to attacks against Western interests by jihadi groups. On 15 August 2014 an article in the Daily Telegraph by well-known conservative journalist Piers Akerman raised the question in relation to the Australian government’s announcement of increased powers for law enforcement agencies to deal with the issue of returned foreign fighters who had joined the Islamic State’s conflict in Iraq and Syria. The article, titled “It’s Time for Muslim Leaders to Speak Up” reiterated much of the construction of the silent Muslim majority that has pervaded the Australian popular media since 2001. Akerman states: “They [the Australian government] should be making it clear to Australian Muslims that they expect their leaders to speak out more vehemently against those who groom terrorists from the among the young and stupidly impressionable in their communities”. While he continues by acknowledging that Muslims in Australia are diverse in ethnicity and religious views and that the vast majority of Muslims do not support terrorism, he concludes by stating that “the few are costing the majority of Australians millions in security and those who enjoy leadership titles must accept that some responsibility attaches to their position or they should abdicate in favour of individuals who are prepared to consent to the obligations inherent in their station” (Piers Akerman). The same sentiments were expressed by Pia Ackerman in the Australian who wrote that “AUSTRALIA’S Muslim leaders need to speak out against Islamic State terrorists or risk losing their credibility and ability to reach young men attracted to the extremists’ cause” (Pia Akerman).Other responses in the popular media present a different argument. In an article titled “The Moderate Muslims Are Talking If Only You Will Listen”, David Penberthy of the Herald Sun cites examples of Muslim Australians who are speaking out including the case of prominent Sydney GP Jamal Rifi whose condemnation of terrorist activities in the Arab world has earned him death threats from members of the Islamic State (Penberthy). Yet, as Penberthy rightly acknowledges the questions “where are the moderates? Where are the decent Muslims? Are there any? Why aren’t they speaking out?” are still the most salient questions being asked of Muslims in the public sphere. For Australian Muslims at least, they are questions that pervade their everyday lives. It is these questions for example that leads Muslim women who wear the tradition head covering or hijab to challenge media representations of themselves as complicit actors in terrorism by acting as alternative sources of truth for curious co-workers and members of the broader community (see Aly, A Study).Muslim women who do not wear the hijab can face even more barriers to speaking out because they do not pass the test of ‘legitimate’ Muslims: those who fit the stereotype of the angry bearded male and the oppressed female shrouded in black. This author, who has in the past written about extremist interpretations of Islam, has faced condemnation from anti- Islamic groups who questioned her authenticity as a Muslim. By speaking out as a Muslim against the violent actions of some Muslims in other parts of the world, I was being accused of misinformed. Ironically, those who are vehemently anti- Islamic espouse the very same ideological world view and interpretations of Islamic doctrine as those Muslims they claim to oppose. Both groups rely on an extreme and minority version of Islam that de-legitimises more mainstream, nuanced interpretations and both groups claim legitimacy to the truth that Islam can only ever be violent, aggressive and oppositional.It is not just in the public and media discourses that Muslims who speak out against terrorism face being branded illegitimate. The policy response to home-grown terrorism — acts of violence carried out by Australian citizens within Australia — has, albeit inadvertently, created the conditions through which Muslims must verify their legitimate claims to being Australian by participating in the governments’ program of counter terrorism.In the wake of the 2005 London bombings, the Prime Minister met with selected representatives from Muslim communities to discuss the development of a Muslim Community Reference Group. The Group was charged with assisting the Australian Government by acting as an advisory group and by working with Muslim communities “promote harmony, mutual understanding and Australian values and to challenge violence, ignorance and rigid thinking”. This was iterated through a Statement of Principles that committed members of Muslim communities to pursue “moderate’ Islam (Prime Minister, “Meeting”). The very need for a Muslim summit and for the development of a Statement of Principles (later endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments, COAG), sends a lucid message to the Australian public that not only are Australian Muslims responsible for terrorism but that they also have the capacity to prevent or minimise the threat of an attack in Australia.In 2005, the policy response to terrorism took its first step towards linking the social harmony agenda to the securitisation of the state in the form of the National Action Plan to Build Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security. The stated purpose of the National Action Plan (NAP) notably conflated national security with social cohesion and harmony and clearly indicated an understanding that violent extremism could be addressed through programs designed to reinforce Australian values, social harmony, interfaith understanding and tolerance: “The purpose of this National Action Plan (NAP) is to reinforce social cohesion, harmony and support the national security imperative in Australia by addressing extremism, the promotion of violence and intolerance…”(Commonwealth of Australia, National Action Plan).Between 2005 and 2010, the National Action Plan provided funding for 83 community based projects deemed to meet the Plan’s criteria of addressing extremism and the promotion of violence. Of the 83 projects funded, 33 were undertaken by associations that identified as Muslim or Islamic (some applicants received funding for more than one project or in more than one round). The remaining 50 organisations funded included universities and vocational training organisations (4), multicultural social services or migrant resource centres (14), interfaith groups (3), local councils (4), ethnic organisations (specifically African, East African, Afghan, Hazara, Arabic and Pakistani), sporting clubs (4) and miscellaneous social clubs and service providers. The kinds of projects that were funded were predominantly aimed at Muslim communities, most notably youth and women, and the provision of services, programs, education, information and dialogue. Sixty five of the projects funded were explicitly aimed at Muslim communities and identified their target groups variously as: ‘African Muslim’; ‘Muslim youth’; ‘Muslim women’; ‘at risk Muslims’; ‘young Muslims’; ‘Iraqi Muslims’; ‘Lebanese Muslims’ and ‘young Muslim men from Arabic speaking backgrounds’. Seven projects were described as involving ‘interfaith’ elements, though a further 13 projects described some form of interaction between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and groups through activities such as sport, dialogue, fashion parades, workshops, art and craft programs, music workshops. 29 projects involved some form of leadership training for Muslims: youth, women and young men. Overall, the range of projects funded under the National Action Plan in the five years of its operation reflect a policy approach that specifically identifies Muslim communities (including ethno specific and new and emerging Muslim communities) as the primary target of Australia’s broader security strategy.The National Action Plan was succeeded by the Building Community Resilience (BCR) Program. Despite the positive steps taken in attempting to move the BCR program away from the social harmony policy agenda, it continued to reflect an underlying preoccupation with the assumptions of its predecessor. Between 2011- 2013 it funded 51 community based projects. Of these, 7 projects were undertaken by Islamic or Muslim associations. Ten of the projects specifically target Muslims or Muslim communities, with 6 of these being Muslim youth leadership and/or mentoring programs. The remaining 4 Muslim focussed projects include a project designed to encourage Muslim youth to build positive connections with the broader community, the development of a Common Curriculum Framework for teaching Islamic Studies in Australian Islamic primary and secondary schools, a project to address misconceptions about Islam and promote cultural understanding and the production of a DVD for schools to address misperceptions about Muslims. Notably, only one project specifically targets white supremacist violent extremism. The Australian governments’ progressive policy approach to countering violent extremism at home has disproportionately focussed on the Australian Muslim communities. In an environment where Muslims are viewed with suspicion and as having the primary responsibility as both perpetrators and gatekeepers of terroristic ideologies, Muslims in diaspora communities have been forced to make legitimate claims to their innocence. In order to do this they are required to reaffirm their commitment to Australian values, not just by speaking out against terrorism but also by participating in programs that are based on false assumptions about the nature of Muslim citizenship in Australia and the premise that Muslim Australians are, both individually and collectively, opposed to such values by virtue of their religious affiliation. In 2014 and in response to growing concerns about the number of Australians travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State, the government made a bold move by declaring its intention to overhaul existing terror laws. The new laws would reverse the onus of proof on those who travelled to certain countries deemed to be terrorist hotspots to prove that they were not partaking in armed conflict or terrorist training. They would also give more powers to law enforcement and surveillance agencies by lowering the threshold of arrest without a warrant. The announcement of the new laws by the Prime Minister coincided with the news that the Government would abandon its controversial plans to drop section 18c from the Racial Discrimination Act which makes it unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people" because of their race or ethnicity" (Aston). The announcement was made under the guise of a press conference on terror laws and inferred that the back down on the Racial Discrimination Act reforms were a measure to win over the Muslim communities cooperation on the new terror laws. Referring to a somewhat curious notion of “team Australia”, the Prime Minister stated “I want to work with the communities of our country as team Australia here” (Aston). “Team Australia” has since become the Government’s narrative frame for garnering public support for its proposed new terrorism laws. Echoing his predecessor John Howard, whose narrative of Australian values pervaded much of the political discourse during his term in office, Prime Minister Abbott stated in a radio interview that "everyone has got to put this country, its interests, its values and its people first, and you don't migrate to this country unless you want to join our team". He followed this statement by emphasising that "What we need to do is to encourage the moderate mainstream to speak out" (Cox).Shortly after the release of a horrific image on social media showing Australian jihadists proudly flaunting the severed heads of their victims, the Australian government reacted with an even bolder move to introduce legislation that would see the government cancelling the welfare payments of persons “identified by national security agencies as being involved in extremist conduct.” According to the Government the reforms would “enable the Department of Human Services to cancel a person’s welfare payment if it receives advice that a person has been assessed as a serious threat to Australia’s national security.”(Prime Minister of Australia) The move was criticised by several groups including academics who argued that it would not only alienate the already disenfranchised Muslim communities, but could also result in greater radicalisation (Ireland). In response to the raft of new measures perceived to be targeting Muslim communities, Australian Muslims took measured steps to voice their opposition through written statements and media releases stating that, among other things: These proposals come in the same style as those which have preceded [sic] since the Howard era. An alleged threat is blown out of all proportion as the pretext, further "tightening" of the laws is claimed necessary and rushed through, without proper national debate or community consultation. The reality of the alleged threat is also exposed by the lack of correspondence between the official 'terror threat' level, which has remained the same since 2001, and the hysterical rhetoric from government ministers. (ABC News, "Australian Muslims")Australian Muslim leaders also boycotted government meetings including a planned meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss the new laws. The Prime Minister promptly branded the boycott “foolish” (ABC News, "Tony Abbott") yet refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the claims made in the media statements and messages by Muslim organisations that prompted the boycotts. As Australian Muslims continue to grapple with ways to legitimize their claims to citizenship, the developing discourse on national security and terrorism continues to define them as the objects of terror. Notably, the media discourse is showing some signs of accommodating the views of Muslim Australians who have found some space in the public sphere. Recent media reporting on terror activities in the Middle East has given some consideration to the voices of Muslim leaders who openly oppose violent extremism. Yet Muslims in Australia are still battling for legitimacy. Those who speak out against the hijacking of their religion by a minority who espouse a rigid and uncompromising ideology in order to justify violence often find themselves the subjects of intense scrutiny. From within their communities they are seen to be mouth pieces for an unfair and unjust government agenda that targets Muslims as objects of fear. From outside their communities they are seen to be apologists for Islam whose authenticity should be questioned if not denied. Attempts by Muslim Australians to have their voices heard through political practices that define the very nature of democracy including peaceful demonstrations, boycotts and written statements have not been taken seriously. As a result, Muslim voices in Australia are deemed illegitimate regardless of the forms or platforms through which they seek to be heard. ReferencesABC News. “Australian Muslims Denounce Proposed 'Anti-Terror' Laws”. ABC Religion and Ethics, 21 Aug. 2014. 23 Aug. 2014 .ABC News. “Tony Abbott Says Muslim Leaders 'Foolishly Boycotted' Counterterrorism Law Meeting.” 22 Aug. 2014. 24 Aug. 2014 .Akerman, Pia. “Muslim Leaders Must Speak Out against Extremists, Academic Warns.” The Australian 13 Aug. 13 2014. 20 Aug. 2014 . Akerman, Piers. “It's Time for Muslim Leaders to Speak Up.” Daily Telegraph 15 Aug. 2014. 20 Aug. 2014 .Alynne, A. A Study of Audience Responses to the Media Discourse about the ‘Other’: The Fear of Terrorism between Australian Muslims and the Broader Community. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2010.Aly, Anne. “Media Hegemony, Activism and Identity: Muslim Women Re-Presenting Muslim Women.” Beyond the Hijab Debates: New Conversations on Gender, Race and Religion, eds. T. Dreher and C. Ho. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009.Aly, Anne, and Mark Balnaves. “The Atmosfear of Terror: Affective Modulation and the War on Terror.” M/C Journal 8.6 (2005).Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen.” M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). 13 April 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/08aly-green.php›.Aston, H. “Tony Abbott Dumps Controversial Changes to 18C Racial Discrimination Laws.” Sydney Morning Herald 5 Aug. 2014. 24 Aug. 2014 .Australian Government, Attorney General's Department. Building Community Resilience Grants Program. n.d. 24 July 2014 . Commonwealth of Australia. Transnational Terrorism White Paper: The Threat to Australia. Canberra: Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2004. . Commonwealth of Australia. National Action Plan to Build Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2006. .Commonwealth of Australia. Counter Terrorism White Paper: Securing Australia, Protecting our Community. Canberra: Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2010. 19 Nov. 2011 .Cox, L. “'You Don't Migrate to This Country unless You Want to Join Our Team': Tony Abbott Renews Push on National Security Laws.” Sydney Morning Herald 18 Aug. 2014. 24 Aug. 2014 . Ireland, J. “Extremism Warning on Coalition's Move to Cut Welfare Payments.” Sydney Morning Herald 19 Aug. 2014. 24 Aug. 2014 .Penberthy, D. “The Moderate Muslims Are Talking If Only You Will Listen. Herald Sun 17 Aug. 2014 .Prime Minister of Australia. “New Counter-Terrorism Measures for a Safer Australia - Cancelling Welfare Payments to Extremists”. 16 Aug. 2014. 23 Aug. 2014 .Prime Minister of Australia. “Meeting with Islamic Community Leaders, Statement of Principles.” 23 Aug. 2005. July 2008 .

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash ABSTRACT Medical futility judgments for patients in prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC) frequently lead to withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment (LST), which is the leading cause of death for patients with traumatic brain injuries. The field of disorders of consciousness is pervaded by much uncertainty due to limitations on our current diagnostic tools, treatments, and outcome measures. In contrast, futility judgments are made in empirically tenuous confidence in the patient’s inability to survive or recover meaningfully. Despite emerging empirical evidence of PDOC patients’ potential for long-term recovery, an increasing sense of clinical nihilism leads to earlier and more frequent withdrawal of LST. In this paper, I argue against two kinds of futility judgments that may be used to justify the withdrawal of LST for PDOC patients: overly pessimistic predictions about the patient’s likelihood for meaningful recovery and rationing decisions that redirect hospital resources to patients who are more likely to recover. INTRODUCTION Brain injury is one of the leading causes of death and disability among children, young adults, and adults over the age of 75 years in the United States.[1] Yet we remain far from successfully diagnosing and treating brain injury patients who stay in states of prolonged disorders of consciousness. For this paper, the term “prolonged disorders of consciousness” means a vegetative state or a minimally conscious state, characterized by minimal to no signs of awareness up to and potentially exceeding five years.[2] Inadequate outcome measures and lack of empirical data for accurately predicting prolonged disorders of consciousness often force clinicians to assess patients based on their medical experience, knowledge of the medical literature, and clinical intuitions.[3] Futility judgments are clinical judgments made by healthcare providers about their patient’s health that can lead them to discontinue life-sustaining treatment. Dan Brock describes two different types of futility judgments. The first is a “true” futility judgment due to the perceived lack of expected benefit in treating the patient. The second is a hidden rationing decision in which the minor or unlikely benefit of treatment for the patient is not worth the cost in scarce hospital resources.[4] In this paper, I will critique the use of either kind of futility judgments to support the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness. l. Futility Judgments about Likelihood Futility judgments reflect pessimism about the likelihood of a patient’s survival or recovery of consciousness. One of the most common reasons for withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from traumatic brain injury patients is the medical team’s perception of the patient’s poor chance of survival.[5] However, in a field characterized by much uncertainty, it seems imprudent to make futility judgments that project certainty or make the patient’s prospects of recovery or survival seem impossible. The unreliability of current bedside methods to determine consciousness and the inconsistent clinical trajectory of prolonged disorders of consciousness create considerable room for error in making predictions about the patient’s course of recovery. Despite such uncertainty, clinicians often end patients’ lives based on empirically tenuous beliefs regarding the patient’s inability to recover.[6] The grounds for futility judgments are further undermined by emerging data about the likelihood of long-term functional recovery in many patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness. For example, a recent study demonstrated that patients who failed to emerge from traumatic disorders of consciousness within 28 days, the minimum standard timeframe for prolonged disorders of consciousness, could still recover various target behaviors underpinning functional independence after four weeks.[7] The potential for patients to recover beyond this limited timeframe should motivate clinicians to sustain their patients’ lives to better understand the entire course of prolonged disorders of consciousness as it evolves. Even if clinicians remain unconvinced by the empirical evidence, prevailing judgments about futility can lead to increasingly premature withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness. For example, one multicenter study on level one trauma centers in Canada found that 70 percent of traumatic brain injury deaths were attributable to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, and more than half of them occurred within the first 72 hours of injury.[8] When clinicians use futility to justify decisions to withdraw life-sustaining treatment, they risk ending the lives of individuals who may have survived and recovered. This, in turn, inflates mortality rates for prolonged disorders of consciousness and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that reinforces the notion of very low odds of recovery.[9] Clinicians do not remove life-sustaining treatment without any evidence. But futility is not absolute. For example, suppose it is defined too broadly and includes cases where survival rates are low, but survival is possible. In that case, futility should not justify the removal of life-sustaining treatment. In those cases, other ethical justifications would be necessary. ll. Futility Judgments about Benefit Futility judgments also arise from pessimism about the actual benefit of the potential treatments. Another common reason for withdrawing life-sustaining treatment for traumatic brain injury patients is the clinical team’s belief in a poor long-term prognosis.[10] Based on their experience and data, clinicians who harbor pessimistic thoughts about the prognosis for patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness may inform the family members that the patients would not achieve meaningful recovery. They argue that continuing life-sustaining treatment would bring about no benefit to their wellbeing. However, these beliefs can be predicated on prejudiced perceptions about the quality of life of individuals with disabilities or chronic illnesses, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the disability paradox.[11] The paradox describes the discrepancy between patients with disabilities who report a quality of life much higher than non-disabled individuals would predict their ratings. Therefore, withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from populations with prolonged disorders of consciousness based on unjustified perceptions about what their quality of life might look like perpetuates ableist assumptions about what outcomes are acceptable to them. Some clinicians might respond that if they simply defer to the patient’s perspectives on being kept in a state of prolonged disorders of consciousness, perhaps through prior consultations with the patient or a family member’s knowledge, they can satisfy the patient’s subjective notion of wellbeing. In cases where the patient’s wishes are documented, the clinician’s judgment about the benefits (or lack thereof) of life-sustaining treatment would not matter as much. The decision can be based on the patient’s expressed preferences. However, studies demonstrate that a significant proportion of people who initially rated prolonged disorders of consciousness as a fate “worse than death” also wanted to receive life-sustaining treatment. After a discussion with a researcher about this contradiction, they increased their health rating of prolonged disorders of consciousness.[12] This change demonstrates a psychological discordance between people’s pessimistic perception of prolonged disorders of consciousness versus their preferences for being kept alive despite this perception. Clinicians should conscientiously navigate this discrepancy rather than act upon their initial prejudices against prolonged disorders of consciousness. By being mindful of their ableist biases and their patients, physicians can prevent pessimism from influencing their judgments about the benefits of continuing life-sustaining treatments. Discussions would ensure that patients are well informed when they create health directives or assign proxies for their care. In addition, the patient’s values and advance care decisions should be reassessed over time in conversation with the family, if possible, to ensure that treatment decisions reflect a more accurate and up-to-date understanding of the prognostic outcomes. lll. Hidden Rationing Decisions Some judgments about futility are hidden rationing decisions. “True” futility judgments evaluate the prospective benefit of treating a patient regardless of the resource costs, while rationing decisions evaluate treatments in the context of limited resources for other patients. A physician who determines the futility of continuing life-sustaining treatment might decide that the treatment would not be worth the cost to other patients who are more likely to benefit from the same resources. If healthcare resources ought to be distributed to maximize health utility for the highest number of patients, futility judgments for prolonged disorders of consciousness patients are justified. Life-sustaining treatments would be “wasted” on those patients compared to healthier patients.[13] However, prioritizing treatment for patients with a greater likelihood of survival based on the principle of utility maximization creates a healthcare system that is unwilling to take necessary risks to advance future therapies and build medical knowledge. Medical progress cannot be made if we pursue only treatments for those with the highest chances of survival or recovery. By providing life-sustaining treatment to facilitate the entire clinical course for prolonged disorders of consciousness, we can devote resources to improving the care, rehabilitation, and outcomes for those patients. Therefore, resource allocation is morally justified by its potential to benefit future populations of patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness, even if many individual cases will not result in a successful recovery.[14] Some physicians may respond that their role requires them to make clinical decisions that account for other patients since they must work within the practical reality of limited resources. They might argue that the physician’s duties are not bound to a single patient but to a network of societal constraints that require them to consider elements of distributive justice in their clinical care. Almost every medical decision is performed within the context of contractual obligations to a democratic society that expects a just distribution of healthcare resources.[15] Withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness to direct those resources to other patients may be morally justified and obligatory for physicians to fulfill their societal duties properly. Although the physician’s obligations might extend to such societal duties, simply allocating resources to those most likely to benefit from treatment seems contrary to the principles of justice that undergird democratic society. We protect the most vulnerable members of our community, such as older adults and children, based on a principle of social solidarity that demands respect for all persons regardless of their weaknesses or dependence.[16] Withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness based on beliefs about their lack of deservedness of medical treatment violates the respect we ought to accord them as vulnerable persons in need of social assistance. The principle of non-abandonment should apply. Rationing decisions do not justify “futility” judgments for prolonged disorders of consciousness patients since they contravene principles of social justice and impede medical progress for patient populations with lower rates of recovery. CONCLUSION Futility judgments presume a lack of likely benefit of treatment. They lead to frequent and premature withdrawals of life-sustaining treatment. The prevalence of prognostic uncertainty in the case of prolonged disorders of consciousness should incentivize clinicians to sustain rather than end their patients’ lives. By doing so, they can prevent a self-fulfilling prophecy from inflating mortality rates. Clinicians’ pessimism about the patients’ quality of life can also distort how they communicate the “benefits” of treatment to the patient, and they ought to conscientiously mitigate ableist biases. In addition, hidden rationing decisions disguised as futility judgments can fail to recognize the protections we grant to the most vulnerable members of society. Although physicians should be mindful of their societal obligations for resource allocation, those obligations should not displace their primary duty to their patients. Timothy Quill’s defense of the patient’s right to medical non-abandonment demonstrates “a world of difference between facing an uncertain future alone and facing it with a committed, caring, knowledgeable partner who will not shy away from difficult decisions when the path is unclear.”[17] As such, by advocating for their patients’ rights to life-sustaining treatment and refraining from making hasty futility judgments, clinicians can honor their enduring commitment to each patient’s wellbeing as they navigate the uncertain terrain of prolonged disorders of consciousness together. - [1] “Report to Congress: Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States | Concussion | Traumatic Brain Injury | CDC Injury Center.” 2019. January 31, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/pubs/tbi_report_to_congress.html. [2] Foster, Charles. 2019. “It Is Never Lawful or Ethical to Withdraw Life-Sustaining Treatment from Patients with Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness.” Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (4): 265–70. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2018-105250. [3] Hemphill, J. Claude, and Douglas B. White. 2009. “Clinical Nihilism in Neuro-Emergencies.” Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America 27 (1): 27–viii. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emc.2008.08.009. [4] Brock, Dan. 2021. “Health Care Resource Prioritization and Rationing: Why Is It So Difficult?,” 25. [5] Turgeon, Alexis F., François Lauzier, Jean-François Simard, Damon C. Scales, Karen E.A. Burns, Lynne Moore, David A. Zygun, et al. 2011. “Mortality Associated with Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy for Patients with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Canadian Multicentre Cohort Study.” CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal 183 (14): 1581–88. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.101786. [6] Schneiderman, Lawrence J. 1990. “Medical Futility: Its Meaning and Ethical Implications.” Annals of Internal Medicine 112 (12): 949. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-112-12-949. [7] Giacino, Joseph T., Mark Sherer, Andrea Christoforou, Petra Maurer-Karattup, Flora M. Hammond, David Long, and Emilia Bagiella. 2020. “Behavioral Recovery and Early Decision Making in Patients with Prolonged Disturbance in Consciousness after Traumatic Brain Injury.” Journal of Neurotrauma 37 (2): 357–65. https://doi.org/10.1089/neu.2019.6429. [8] Turgeon, Alexis F., François Lauzier, Jean-François Simard, Damon C. Scales, Karen E.A. Burns, Lynne Moore, David A. Zygun, et al. 2011. “Mortality Associated with Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy for Patients with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Canadian Multicentre Cohort Study.” CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal 183 (14): 1581–88. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.101786. [9] Hemphill, J. Claude, and Douglas B. White. 2009. “Clinical Nihilism in Neuro-Emergencies.” Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America 27 (1): 27–viii. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emc.2008.08.009. [10] Turgeon, Alexis F., François Lauzier, Jean-François Simard, Damon C. Scales, Karen E.A. Burns, Lynne Moore, David A. Zygun, et al. 2011. “Mortality Associated with Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy for Patients with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Canadian Multicentre Cohort Study.” CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal 183 (14): 1581–88. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.101786. [11] Albrecht, G. L., and P. J. Devlieger. 1999. “The Disability Paradox: High Quality of Life against All Odds.” Social Science & Medicine (1982) 48 (8): 977–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0277-9536(98)00411-0. [12] Golan, Ofra G., and Esther-Lee Marcus. 2012. “Should We Provide Life-Sustaining Treatments to Patients with Permanent Loss of Cognitive Capacities?” Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal 3 (3): e0018. https://doi.org/10.5041/RMMJ.10081. [13] Brock, Dan. 2021. “Health Care Resource Prioritization and Rationing: Why Is It So Difficult?25. [14] Giacino, Joseph T., Yelena G. Bodien, David Zuckerman, Jaimie Henderson, Nicholas D. Schiff, and Joseph J. Fins. 2021. “Empiricism and Rights Justify the Allocation of Health Care Resources to Persons with Disorders of Consciousness.” AJOB Neuroscience 12 (2–3): 169–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2021.1904055. [15] Misak, Cheryl J., Douglas B. White, and Robert D. Truog. 2014. “Medical Futility.” Chest 146 (6): 1667–72. https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.14-0513. [16] Golan, Ofra G., and Esther-Lee Marcus. 2012. “Should We Provide Life-Sustaining Treatments to Patients with Permanent Loss of Cognitive Capacities?” Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal 3 (3): e0018. https://doi.org/10.5041/RMMJ.10081. [17] Quill, Timothy E., Christine K. Cassel, and Ann Intern Med. 1995. “Nonabandonment: A Central Obligation for Physicians.” Annals of Internal Medicine, 368–74.

Introduction Most developed countries, including Australia, have a strong focus on national, state and local strategies for emergency management and response in the face of disasters and crises. This framework can include coping with catastrophic dislocation, service disruption, injury or loss of life in the face of natural disasters such as major fires, floods, earthquakes or other large-impact natural events, as well as dealing with similar catastrophes resulting from human actions such as bombs, biological agents, cyber-attacks targeting essential services such as communications networks, or other crises affecting large populations. Emergency management frameworks for crisis and disaster response are distinguished by their focus on the domestic context for such events; that is, how to manage and assist the ways in which civilian populations, who are for the most part inexperienced and untrained in dealing with crises and disasters, are able to respond and behave in such situations so as to minimise the impacts of a catastrophic event. Even in countries like Australia that demonstrate a strong public commitment to cultural pluralism and social cohesion, ethno-cultural diversity can be seen as a risk or threat to national security and values at times of political, natural, economic and/or social tensions and crises. Australian government policymakers have recently focused, with increasing intensity, on “community resilience” as a key element in countering extremism and enhancing emergency preparedness and response. In some sense, this is the result of a tacit acknowledgement by government agencies that there are limits to what they can do for domestic communities should such a catastrophic event occur, and accordingly, the focus in recent times has shifted to how governments can best help people to help themselves in such situations, a key element of the contemporary “resilience” approach. Yet despite the robustly multicultural nature of Australian society, explicit engagement with Australia’s cultural diversity flickers only fleetingly on this agenda, which continues to pursue approaches to community resilience in the absence of understandings about how these terms and formations may themselves need to be diversified to maximise engagement by all citizens in a multicultural polity. There have been some recent efforts in Australia to move in this direction, for example the Australian Emergency Management Institute (AEMI)’s recent suite of projects with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities (2006-2010) and the current Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee-supported project on “Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism” (Grossman and Tahiri), which I discuss in a longer forthcoming version of this essay (Grossman). Yet the understanding of ethno-cultural identity and difference that underlies much policy thinking on resilience remains problematic for the way in which it invests in a view of the cultural dimensions of community resilience as relic rather than resource – valorising the preservation of and respect for cultural norms and traditions, but silent on what different ethno-cultural communities might contribute toward expanded definitions of both “community” and “resilience” by virtue of the transformative potential and existing cultural capital they bring with them into new national and also translocal settings. For example, a primary conclusion of the joint program between AEMI and the Australian Multicultural Commission is that CALD communities are largely “vulnerable” in the context of disasters and emergency management and need to be better integrated into majority-culture models of theorising and embedding community resilience. This focus on stronger national integration and the “vulnerability” of culturally diverse ethno-cultural communities in the Australian context echoes the work of scholars beyond Australia such as McGhee, Mouritsen (Reflections, Citizenship) and Joppke. They argue that the “civic turn” in debates around resurgent contemporary nationalism and multicultural immigration policies privileges civic integration over genuine two-way multiculturalism. This approach sidesteps the transculturational (Ortiz; Welsch; Mignolo; Bennesaieh; Robins; Stein) aspects of contemporary social identities and exchange by paying lip-service to cultural diversity while affirming a neo-liberal construct of civic values and principles as a universalising goal of Western democratic states within a global market economy. It also suggests a superficial tribute to cultural diversity that does not embed diversity comprehensively at the levels of either conceptualising or resourcing different elements of Australian transcultural communities within the generalised framework of “community resilience.” And by emphasising cultural difference as vulnerability rather than as resource or asset, it fails to acknowledge the varieties of resilience capital that many culturally diverse individuals and communities may bring with them when they resettle in new environments, by ignoring the question of what “resilience” actually means to those from culturally diverse communities. In so doing, it also avoids the critical task of incorporating intercultural definitional diversity around the concepts of both “community” and “resilience” used to promote social cohesion and the capacity to recover from disasters and crises. How we might do differently in thinking about the broader challenges for multiculturalism itself as a resilient transnational concept and practice? The Concept of Resilience The meanings of resilience vary by disciplinary perspective. While there is no universally accepted definition of the concept, it is widely acknowledged that resilience refers to the capacity of an individual to do well in spite of exposure to acute trauma or sustained adversity (Liebenberg 219). Originating in the Latin word resilio, meaning ‘to jump back’, there is general consensus that resilience pertains to an individual’s, community’s or system’s ability to adapt to and ‘bounce back’ from a disruptive event (Mohaupt 63, Longstaff et al. 3). Over the past decade there has been a dramatic rise in interest in the clinical, community and family sciences concerning resilience to a broad range of adversities (Weine 62). While debate continues over which discipline can be credited with first employing resilience as a concept, Mohaupt argues that most of the literature on resilience cites social psychology and psychiatry as the origin for the concept beginning in the mid-20th century. The pioneer researchers of what became known as resilience research studied the impact on children living in dysfunctional families. For example, the findings of work by Garmezy, Werner and Smith and Rutter showed that about one third of children in these studies were coping very well despite considerable adversities and traumas. In asking what it was that prevented the children in their research from being negatively influenced by their home environments, such research provided the basis for future research on resilience. Such work was also ground-breaking for identifying the so-called ‘protective factors’ or resources that individuals can operationalise when dealing with adversity. In essence, protective factors are those conditions in the individual that protect them from the risk of dysfunction and enable recovery from trauma. They mitigate the effects of stressors or risk factors, that is, those conditions that predispose one to harm (Hajek 15). Protective factors include the inborn traits or qualities within an individual, those defining an individual’s environment, and also the interaction between the two. Together, these factors give people the strength, skills and motivation to cope in difficult situations and re-establish (a version of) ‘normal’ life (Gunnestad). Identifying protective factors is important in terms of understanding the particular resources a given sociocultural group has at its disposal, but it is also vital to consider the interconnections between various protective mechanisms, how they might influence each other, and to what degree. An individual, for instance, might display resilience or adaptive functioning in a particular domain (e.g. emotional functioning) but experience significant deficits in another (e.g. academic achievement) (Hunter 2). It is also essential to scrutinise how the interaction between protective factors and risk factors creates patterns of resilience. Finally, a comprehensive understanding of the interrelated nature of protective mechanisms and risk factors is imperative for designing effective interventions and tailored preventive strategies (Weine 65). In short, contemporary thinking about resilience suggests it is neither entirely personal nor strictly social, but an interactive and iterative combination of the two. It is a quality of the environment as much as the individual. For Ungar, resilience is the complex entanglements between “individuals and their social ecologies [that] will determine the degree of positive outcomes experienced” (3). Thinking about resilience as context-dependent is important because research that is too trait-based or actor-centred risks ignoring any structural or institutional forces. A more ecological interpretation of resilience, one that takes into a person’s context and environment into account, is vital in order to avoid blaming the victim for any hardships they face, or relieving state and institutional structures from their responsibilities in addressing social adversity, which can “emphasise self-help in line with a neo-conservative agenda instead of stimulating state responsibility” (Mohaupt 67). Nevertheless, Ungar posits that a coherent definition of resilience has yet to be developed that adequately ‘captures the dual focus of the individual and the individual’s social ecology and how the two must both be accounted for when determining the criteria for judging outcomes and discerning processes associated with resilience’ (7). Recent resilience research has consequently prompted a shift away from vulnerability towards protective processes — a shift that highlights the sustained capabilities of individuals and communities under threat or at risk. Locating ‘Culture’ in the Literature on Resilience However, an understanding of the role of culture has remained elusive or marginalised within this trend; there has been comparatively little sustained investigation into the applicability of resilience constructs to non-western cultures, or how the resources available for survival might differ from those accessible to western populations (Ungar 4). As such, a growing body of researchers is calling for more rigorous inquiry into culturally determined outcomes that might be associated with resilience in non-western or multicultural cultures and contexts, for example where Indigenous and minority immigrant communities live side by side with their ‘mainstream’ neighbours in western settings (Ungar 2). ‘Cultural resilience’ considers the role that cultural background plays in determining the ability of individuals and communities to be resilient in the face of adversity. For Clauss-Ehlers, the term describes the degree to which the strengths of one’s culture promote the development of coping (198). Culturally-focused resilience suggests that people can manage and overcome stress and trauma based not on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of broader sociocultural factors (culture, cultural values, language, customs, norms) (Clauss-Ehlers 324). The innate cultural strengths of a culture may or may not differ from the strengths of other cultures; the emphasis here is not so much comparatively inter-cultural as intensively intra-cultural (VanBreda 215). A culturally focused resilience model thus involves “a dynamic, interactive process in which the individual negotiates stress through a combination of character traits, cultural background, cultural values, and facilitating factors in the sociocultural environment” (Clauss-Ehlers 199). In understanding ways of ‘coping and hoping, surviving and thriving’, it is thus crucial to consider how culturally and linguistically diverse minorities navigate the cultural understandings and assumptions of both their countries of origin and those of their current domicile (Ungar 12). Gunnestad claims that people who master the rules and norms of their new culture without abandoning their own language, values and social support are more resilient than those who tenaciously maintain their own culture at the expense of adjusting to their new environment. They are also more resilient than those who forego their own culture and assimilate with the host society (14). Accordingly, if the combination of both valuing one’s culture as well as learning about the culture of the new system produces greater resilience and adaptive capacities, serious problems can arise when a majority tries to acculturate a minority to the mainstream by taking away or not recognising important parts of the minority culture. In terms of resilience, if cultural factors are denied or diminished in accounting for and strengthening resilience – in other words, if people are stripped of what they possess by way of resilience built through cultural knowledge, disposition and networks – they do in fact become vulnerable, because ‘they do not automatically gain those cultural strengths that the majority has acquired over generations’ (Gunnestad 14). Mobilising ‘Culture’ in Australian Approaches to Community Resilience The realpolitik of how concepts of resilience and culture are mobilised is highly relevant here. As noted above, when ethnocultural difference is positioned as a risk or a threat to national identity, security and values, this is precisely the moment when vigorously, even aggressively, nationalised definitions of ‘community’ and ‘identity’ that minoritise or disavow cultural diversities come to the fore in public discourse. The Australian evocation of nationalism and national identity, particularly in the way it has framed policy discussion on managing national responses to disasters and threats, has arguably been more muted than some of the European hysteria witnessed recently around cultural diversity and national life. Yet we still struggle with the idea that newcomers to Australia might fall on the surplus rather than the deficit side of the ledger when it comes to identifying and harnessing resilience capital. A brief example of this trend is explored here. From 2006 to 2010, the Australian Emergency Management Institute embarked on an ambitious government-funded four-year program devoted to strengthening community resilience in relation to disasters with specific reference to engaging CALD communities across Australia. The program, Inclusive Emergency Management with CALD Communities, was part of a wider Australian National Action Plan to Build Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security in the wake of the London terrorist bombings in July 2005. Involving CALD community organisations as well as various emergency and disaster management agencies, the program ran various workshops and agency-community partnership pilots, developed national school education resources, and commissioned an evaluation of the program’s effectiveness (Farrow et al.). While my critique here is certainly not aimed at emergency management or disaster response agencies and personnel themselves – dedicated professionals who often achieve remarkable results in emergency and disaster response under extraordinarily difficult circumstances – it is nevertheless important to highlight how the assumptions underlying elements of AEMI’s experience and outcomes reflect the persistent ways in which ethnocultural diversity is rendered as a problem to be surmounted or a liability to be redressed, rather than as an asset to be built upon or a resource to be valued and mobilised. AEMI’s explicit effort to engage with CALD communities in building overall community resilience was important in its tacit acknowledgement that emergency and disaster services were (and often remain) under-resourced and under-prepared in dealing with the complexities of cultural diversity in emergency situations. Despite these good intentions, however, while the program produced some positive outcomes and contributed to crucial relationship building between CALD communities and emergency services within various jurisdictions, it also continued to frame the challenge of working with cultural diversity as a problem of increased vulnerability during disasters for recently arrived and refugee background CALD individuals and communities. This highlights a common feature in community resilience-building initiatives, which is to focus on those who are already ‘robust’ versus those who are ‘vulnerable’ in relation to resilience indicators, and whose needs may require different or additional resources in order to be met. At one level, this is a pragmatic resourcing issue: national agencies understandably want to put their people, energy and dollars where they are most needed in pursuit of a steady-state unified national response at times of crisis. Nor should it be argued that at least some CALD groups, particularly those from new arrival and refugee communities, are not vulnerable in at least some of the ways and for some of the reasons suggested in the program evaluation. However, the consistent focus on CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘in need’ is problematic, as well as partial. It casts members of these communities as structurally and inherently less able and less resilient in the context of disasters and emergencies: in some sense, as those who, already ‘victims’ of chronic social deficits such as low English proficiency, social isolation and a mysterious unidentified set of ‘cultural factors’, can become doubly victimised in acute crisis and disaster scenarios. In what is by now a familiar trope, the description of CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ precludes asking questions about what they do have, what they do know, and what they do or can contribute to how we respond to disaster and emergency events in our communities. A more profound problem in this sphere revolves around working out how best to engage CALD communities and individuals within existing approaches to disaster and emergency preparedness and response. This reflects a fundamental but unavoidable limitation of disaster preparedness models: they are innately spatially and geographically bounded, and consequently understand ‘communities’ in these terms, rather than expanding definitions of ‘community’ to include the dimensions of community-as-social-relations. While some good engagement outcomes were achieved locally around cross-cultural knowledge for emergency services workers, the AEMI program fell short of asking some of the harder questions about how emergency and disaster service scaffolding and resilience-building approaches might themselves need to change or transform, using a cross-cutting model of ‘communities’ as both geographic places and multicultural spaces (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan) in order to be more effective in national scenarios in which cultural diversity should be taken for granted. Toward Acknowledgement of Resilience Capital Most significantly, the AEMI program did not produce any recognition of the ways in which CALD communities already possess resilience capital, or consider how this might be drawn on in formulating stronger community initiatives around disaster and threats preparedness for the future. Of course, not all individuals within such communities, nor all communities across varying circumstances, will demonstrate resilience, and we need to be careful of either overgeneralising or romanticising the kinds and degrees of ‘resilience capital’ that may exist within them. Nevertheless, at least some have developed ways of withstanding crises and adapting to new conditions of living. This is particularly so in connection with individual and group behaviours around resource sharing, care-giving and social responsibility under adverse circumstances (Grossman and Tahiri) – all of which are directly relevant to emergency and disaster response. While some of these resilient behaviours may have been nurtured or enhanced by particular experiences and environments, they can, as the discussion of recent literature above suggests, also be rooted more deeply in cultural norms, habits and beliefs. Whatever their origins, for culturally diverse societies to achieve genuine resilience in the face of both natural and human-made disasters, it is critical to call on the ‘social memory’ (Folke et al.) of communities faced with responding to emergencies and crises. Such wellsprings of social memory ‘come from the diversity of individuals and institutions that draw on reservoirs of practices, knowledge, values, and worldviews and is crucial for preparing the system for change, building resilience, and for coping with surprise’ (Adger et al.). Consequently, if we accept the challenge of mapping an approach to cultural diversity as resource rather than relic into our thinking around strengthening community resilience, there are significant gains to be made. For a whole range of reasons, no diversity-sensitive model or measure of resilience should invest in static understandings of ethnicities and cultures; all around the world, ethnocultural identities and communities are in a constant and sometimes accelerated state of dynamism, reconfiguration and flux. But to ignore the resilience capital and potential protective factors that ethnocultural diversity can offer to the strengthening of community resilience more broadly is to miss important opportunities that can help suture the existing disconnects between proactive approaches to intercultural connectedness and social inclusion on the one hand, and reactive approaches to threats, national security and disaster response on the other, undermining the effort to advance effectively on either front. This means that dominant social institutions and structures must be willing to contemplate their own transformation as the result of transcultural engagement, rather than merely insisting, as is often the case, that ‘other’ cultures and communities conform to existing hegemonic paradigms of being and of living. In many ways, this is the most critical step of all. A resilience model and strategy that questions its own culturally informed yet taken-for-granted assumptions and premises, goes out into communities to test and refine these, and returns to redesign its approach based on the new knowledge it acquires, would reflect genuine progress toward an effective transculturational approach to community resilience in culturally diverse contexts.References Adger, W. Neil, Terry P. Hughes, Carl Folke, Stephen R. Carpenter and Johan Rockström. “Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters.” Science 309.5737 (2005): 1036-1039. ‹http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5737/1036.full> Bartowiak-Théron, Isabelle, and Anna Corbo Crehan. “The Changing Nature of Communities: Implications for Police and Community Policing.” Community Policing in Australia: Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) Reports, Research and Policy Series 111 (2010): 8-15. Benessaieh, Afef. “Multiculturalism, Interculturality, Transculturality.” Ed. A. Benessaieh. Transcultural Americas/Ameriques Transculturelles. Ottawa: U of Ottawa Press/Les Presses de l’Unversite d’Ottawa, 2010. 11-38. Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline S. “Sociocultural Factors, Resilience and Coping: Support for a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Resilience.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 29 (2008): 197-212. Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline S. “Cultural Resilience.” Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology. Ed. C. S. Clauss-Ehlers. 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Diversifying Australian Approaches to Community Resilience and Cultural Difference”. Global Perspectives on Multiculturalism in the 21st Century. Eds. B. E. de B’beri and F. Mansouri. London: Routledge, 2014. Grossman, Michele, and Hussein Tahiri. Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism. Canberra: Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee, forthcoming 2014. Grossman, Michele. “Cultural Resilience and Strengthening Communities”. Safeguarding Australia Summit, Canberra. 23 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.safeguardingaustraliasummit.org.au/uploader/resources/Michele_Grossman.pdf>. Gunnestad, Arve. “Resilience in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: How Resilience Is Generated in Different Cultures.” Journal of Intercultural Communication 11 (2006). ‹http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr11/gunnestad.htm>. Hajek, Lisa J. “Belonging and Resilience: A Phenomenological Study.” Unpublished Master of Science thesis, U of Wisconsin-Stout. 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Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton U P, 2000. Mohaupt, Sarah. “Review Article: Resilience and Social Exclusion.” Social Policy and Society 8 (2009): 63-71.Mouritsen, Per. "The Culture of Citizenship: A Reflection on Civic Integration in Europe." Ed. R. Zapata-Barrero. Citizenship Policies in the Age of Diversity: Europe at the Crossroad." Barcelona: CIDOB Foundation, 2009: 23-35. Mouritsen, Per. “Political Responses to Cultural Conflict: Reflections on the Ambiguities of the Civic Turn.” Ed. P. Mouritsen and K.E. Jørgensen. Constituting Communities. Political Solutions to Cultural Conflict, London: Palgrave, 2008. 1-30. Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Trans. Harriet de Onís. Intr. Fernando Coronil and Bronislaw Malinowski. Durham, NC: Duke U P, 1995 [1940]. Robins, Kevin. The Challenge of Transcultural Diversities: Final Report on the Transversal Study on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity. Culture and Cultural Heritage Department. Strasbourg: Council of European Publishing, 2006. Rutter, Michael. “Protective Factors in Children’s Responses to Stress and Disadvantage.” Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore 8 (1979): 324-38. Stein, Mark. “The Location of Transculture.” Transcultural English Studies: Fictions, Theories, Realities. Eds. F. Schulze-Engler and S. Helff. Cross/Cultures 102/ANSEL Papers 12. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009. 251-266. Ungar, Michael. “Resilience across Cultures.” British Journal of Social Work 38.2 (2008): 218-235. First published online 2006: 1-18. In-text references refer to the online Advance Access edition ‹http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2006/10/18/bjsw.bcl343.full.pdf>. VanBreda, Adrian DuPlessis. Resilience Theory: A Literature Review. Erasmuskloof: South African Military Health Service, Military Psychological Institute, Social Work Research & Development, 2001. Weine, Stevan. “Building Resilience to Violent Extremism in Muslim Diaspora Communities in the United States.” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 5.1 (2012): 60-73. Welsch, Wolfgang. “Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today.” Spaces of Culture: City, Nation World. Eds. M. Featherstone and S. Lash. London: Sage, 1999. 194-213. Werner, Emmy E., and Ruth S. Smith. Vulnerable But Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of\ Resilience and Youth. New York: McGraw Hill, 1982. NotesThe concept of ‘resilience capital’ I offer here is in line with one strand of contemporary theorising around resilience – that of resilience as social or socio-ecological capital – but moves beyond the idea of enhancing general social connectedness and community cohesion by emphasising the ways in which culturally diverse communities may already be robustly networked and resourceful within micro-communal settings, with new resources and knowledge both to draw on and to offer other communities or the ‘national community’ at large. In effect, ‘resilience capital’ speaks to the importance of finding ‘the communities within the community’ (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan 11) and recognising their capacity to contribute to broad-scale resilience and recovery.I am indebted for the discussion of the literature on resilience here to Dr Peta Stephenson, Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, Victoria University, who is working on a related project (M. Grossman and H. Tahiri, Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism, forthcoming 2014).

Introduction Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this sentiment, arguing that, "despite widespread speculation about the impact of documentaries, the topic has received relatively little systematic attention" ("Evolving"). And earlier this year, the introduction to a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on documentary film stated, "documentary film, despite its growing influence and many impacts, has mostly been overlooked by social scientists studying the media and communication" (Nisbet and Aufderheide 451). Film has been studied extensively as entertainment, as narrative, and as cultural event, but the study of film as an agent of social change is still in its infancy. This paper introduces a systematic approach to measuring the social impact of documentary film aiming to: (1) discuss the context of documentary film and its potential impact; and (2) argue for a social science approach, discussing key issues about conducting such research. Changes in Documentary Practice Documentary film has been used as a tool for promoting social change throughout its history. John Grierson, who coined the term "documentary" in 1926, believed it could be used to influence the ideas and actions of people in ways once reserved for church and school. He presented his thoughts on this emerging genre in his 1932 essay, First Principles of Documentary, saying, "We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form" (97). Richard Barsam further specified the definition of documentary, distinguishing it from non-fiction film, such that all documentaries are non-fiction films but not all non-fiction films are documentaries. He distinguishes documentary from other forms of non-fiction film (i.e. travel films, educational films, newsreels) by its purpose; it is a film with an opinion and a specific message that aims to persuade or influence the audience. And Bill Nichols writes that the definition of documentary may even expand beyond the film itself, defining it as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" (12). Documentary film has undergone many significant changes since its inception, from the heavily staged romanticism movement of the 1920s to the propagandist tradition of governments using film to persuade individuals to support national agendas to the introduction of cinéma vérité in the 1960s and historical documentary in the 1980s (cf. Barnouw). However, the recent upsurge in popularity of documentary media, combined with technological advances of internet and computers have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for film to serve as both art and agent for social change. One such opportunity is in the creation of film-based social action campaigns. Over the past decade, filmmakers have taken a more active role in promoting social change by coordinating film releases with action campaigns. Companies such as Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc., etc.) now create "specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films" (Participant Media). In addition, a new sector of "social media" consultants are now offering services, including "consultation, strategic planning for alternative distribution, website and social media development, and complete campaign management services to filmmakers to ensure the content of nonfiction media truly meets the intention for change" (Working Films). The emergence of new forms of media and technology are changing our conceptions of both documentary film and social action. Technologies such as podcasts, video blogs, internet radio, social media and network applications, and collaborative web editing "both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of 'documentary' as a practice and as an idea" (Ellsworth). In the past decade, we have seen new forms of documentary creation, distribution, marketing, and engagement. Likewise, film campaigns are utilizing a broad array of strategies to engage audience members, including "action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels" that often turn into "ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows" (Participant Media). This move towards multi-media documentary film is becoming not only commonplace, but expected as a part of filmmaking. NYU film professor and documentary film pioneer George Stoney recently noted, "50 percent of the documentary filmmaker's job is making the movie, and 50 percent is figuring out what its impact can be and how it can move audiences to action" (qtd. in Nisbet, "Gasland"). In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, coined the term "transmedia storytelling", which he later defined as "a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" ("Transmedia"). When applied to documentary film, it is the elements of the "issue" raised by the film that get dispersed across these channels, coordinating, not just an entertainment experience, but a social action campaign. Dimensions of Evaluation It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films want look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. Although we "feel" like films make a difference to the individuals who also see them in the broader cultures in which they are embedded, measurement and empirical analysis of this impact are vitally important for both providing feedback to filmmakers and funders as well as informing future efforts attempting to leverage film for social change. This type of systematic assessment, or program evaluation, is often discussed in terms of two primary goals—formative (or process) and summative (or impact) evaluation (cf. Muraskin; Trochim and Donnelly). Formative evaluation studies program materials and activities to strengthen a program, and summative evaluation examines program outcomes. In terms of documentary film, these two goals can be described as follows: Formative Evaluation: Informing the Process As programs (broadly defined as an intentional set of activities with the aim of having some specific impact), the people who interact with them, and the cultures they are situated in are constantly changing, program development and evaluation is an ongoing learning cycle. Film campaigns, which are an intentional set of activities with the aim of impacting individual viewers and broader cultures, fit squarely within this purview. Without formulating hypotheses about the relationships between program activities and goals and then collecting and analyzing data during implementation to test them, it is difficult to learn ways to improve programs (or continue doing what works best in the most efficient manner). Attention to this process enables those involved to learn more about, not only what works, but how and why it works and even gain insights about how program outcomes may be affected by changes to resource availability, potential audiences, or infrastructure. Filmmakers are constantly learning and honing their craft and realizing the impact of their practice can help the artistic process. Often faced with tight budgets and timelines, they are forced to confront tradeoffs all the time, in the writing, production and post-production process. Understanding where they are having impact can improve their decision-making, which can help both the individual project and the overall field. Summative Evaluation: Quantifying Impacts Evaluation is used in many different fields to determine whether programs are achieving their intended goals and objectives. It became popular in the 1960s as a way of understanding the impact of the Great Society programs and has continued to grow since that time (Madaus and Stufflebeam). A recent White House memo stated that "rigorous, independent program evaluations can be a key resource in determining whether government programs are achieving their intended outcomes as well as possible and at the lowest possible cost" and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched an initiative to increase the practice of "impact evaluations, or evaluations aimed at determining the causal effects of programs" (Orszag 1). Documentary films, like government programs, generally target a national audience, aim to serve a social purpose, and often do not provide a return on their investment. Participant Media, the most visible and arguably most successful documentary production company in the film industry, made recent headlines for its difficulty in making a profit during its seven-year history (Cieply). Owner and founder Jeff Skoll reported investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company and CEO James Berk added that the company sometimes measures success, not by profit, but by "whether Mr. Skoll could have exerted more impact simply by spending his money philanthropically" (Cieply). Because of this, documentary projects often rely on grant funding, and are starting to approach funders beyond traditional arts and media sources. "Filmmakers are finding new fiscal and non-fiscal partners, in constituencies that would not traditionally be considered—or consider themselves—media funders or partners" (BRITDOC 6). And funders increasingly expect tangible data about their return on investment. Says Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford Foundation, which recently launched the Just Films Initiative: In these times of global economic uncertainty, with increasing demand for limited philanthropic dollars, assessing our effectiveness is more important than ever. Today, staying on the frontlines of social change means gauging, with thoughtfulness and rigor, the immediate and distant outcomes of our funding. Establishing the need for evaluation is not enough—attention to methodology is also critical. Valid research methodology is a critical component of understanding around the role entertainment can play in impacting social and environmental issues. The following issues are vital to measuring impact. Defining the Project Though this may seem like an obvious step, it is essential to determine the nature of the project so one can create research questions and hypotheses based on a complete understanding of the "treatment". One organization that provides a great example of the integration of documentary film imbedded into a larger campaign or movement is Invisible Children. Founded in 2005, Invisible Children is both a media-based organization as well as an economic development NGO with the goal of raising awareness and meeting the needs of child soldiers and other youth suffering as a result of the ongoing war in northern Uganda. Although Invisible Children began as a documentary film, it has grown into a large non-profit organization with an operating budget of over $8 million and a staff of over a hundred employees and interns throughout the year as well as volunteers in all 50 states and several countries. Invisible Children programming includes films, events, fundraising campaigns, contests, social media platforms, blogs, videos, two national "tours" per year, merchandise, and even a 650-person three-day youth summit in August 2011 called The Fourth Estate. Individually, each of these components might lead to specific outcomes; collectively, they might lead to others. In order to properly assess impacts of the film "project", it is important to take all of these components into consideration and think about who they may impact and how. This informs the research questions, hypotheses, and methods used in evaluation. Film campaigns may even include partnerships with existing social movements and non-profit organizations targeting social change. The American University Center for Social Media concluded in a case study of three issue-based documentary film campaigns: Digital technologies do not replace, but are closely entwined with, longstanding on-the-ground activities of stakeholders and citizens working for social change. Projects like these forge new tools, pipelines, and circuits of circulation in a multiplatform media environment. They help to create sustainable network infrastructures for participatory public media that extend from local communities to transnational circuits and from grassroots communities to policy makers. (Abrash) Expanding the Focus of Impact beyond the Individual A recent focus has shifted the dialogue on film impact. Whiteman ("Theaters") argues that traditional metrics of film "success" tend to focus on studio economic indicators that are far more relevant to large budget films. Current efforts focused on box office receipts and audience size, the author claims, are really measures of successful film marketing or promotion, missing the mark when it comes to understanding social impact. He instead stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive model. His "coalition model" broadens the range and types of impact of film beyond traditional metrics to include the entire filmmaking process, from production to distribution. Whiteman (“Theaters”) argues that a narrow focus on the size of the audience for a film, its box office receipts, and viewers' attitudes does not incorporate the potential reach of a documentary film. Impacts within the coalition model include both individual and policy levels. Individual impacts (with an emphasis on activist groups) include educating members, mobilizing for action, and raising group status; policy includes altering both agenda for and the substance of policy deliberations. The Fledgling Fund (Barrett and Leddy) expanded on this concept and identified five distinct impacts of documentary film campaigns. These potential impacts expand from individual viewers to groups, movements, and eventually to what they call the "ultimate goal" of social change. Each is introduced briefly below. Quality Film. The film itself can be presented as a quality film or media project, creating enjoyment or evoking emotion in the part of audiences. "By this we mean a film that has a compelling narrative that draws viewers in and can engage them in the issue and illustrate complex problems in ways that statistics cannot" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Awareness. Film can increase public awareness by bringing light to issues and stories that may have otherwise been unknown or not often thought about. This is the level of impact that has received the most attention, as films are often discussed in terms of their "educational" value. "A project's ability to raise awareness around a particular issue, since awareness is a critical building block for both individual change and broader social change" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Engagement. Impact, however, need not stop at simply raising public awareness. Engagement "indicates a shift from simply being aware of an issue to acting on this awareness. Were a film and its outreach campaign able to provide an answer to the question 'What can I do?' and more importantly mobilize that individual to act?" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This is where an associated film campaign becomes increasingly important, as transmedia outlets such as Facebook, websites, blogs, etc. can build off the interest and awareness developed through watching a film and provide outlets for viewers channel their constructive efforts. Social Movement. In addition to impacts on individuals, films can also serve to mobilize groups focused on a particular problem. The filmmaker can create a campaign around the film to promote its goals and/or work with existing groups focused on a particular issue, so that the film can be used as a tool for mobilization and collaboration. "Moving beyond measures of impact as they relate to individual awareness and engagement, we look at the project's impact as it relates to the broader social movement … if a project can strengthen the work of key advocacy organizations that have strong commitment to the issues raised in the film" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). Social Change. The final level of impact and "ultimate goal" of an issue-based film is long-term and systemic social change. "While we understand that realizing social change is often a long and complex process, we do believe it is possible and that for some projects and issues there are key indicators of success" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This can take the form of policy or legislative change, passed through film-based lobbying efforts, or shifts in public dialogue and behavior. Legislative change typically takes place beyond the social movement stage, when there is enough support to pressure legislators to change or create policy. Film-inspired activism has been seen in issues ranging from environmental causes such as agriculture (Food Inc.) and toxic products (Blue Vinyl) to social causes such as foreign conflict (Invisible Children) and education (Waiting for Superman). Documentary films can also have a strong influence as media agenda-setters, as films provide dramatic "news pegs" for journalists seeking to either sustain or generation new coverage of an issue (Nisbet "Introduction" 5), such as the media coverage of climate change in conjunction with An Inconvenient Truth. Barrett and Leddy, however, note that not all films target all five impacts and that different films may lead to different impacts. "In some cases we could look to key legislative or policy changes that were driven by, or at least supported by the project... In other cases, we can point to shifts in public dialogue and how issues are framed and discussed" (7). It is possible that specific film and/or campaign characteristics may lead to different impacts; this is a nascent area for research and one with great promise for both practical and theoretical utility. Innovations in Tools and Methods Finally, the selection of tools is a vital component for assessing impact and the new media landscape is enabling innovations in the methods and strategies for program evaluation. Whereas the traditional domain of film impact measurement included box office statistics, focus groups, and exit surveys, innovations in data collection and analysis have expanded the reach of what questions we can ask and how we are able to answer them. For example, press coverage can assist in understanding and measuring the increase in awareness about an issue post-release. Looking directly at web-traffic changes "enables the creation of an information-seeking curve that can define the parameters of a teachable moment" (Hart and Leiserowitz 360). Audience reception can be measured, not only via interviews and focus groups, but also through content and sentiment analysis of web content and online analytics. "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden" (Manyika et al. 5). These new tools are significantly changing evaluation, expanding what we can learn about the social impacts of film through triangulation of self-report data with measurement of actual behavior in virtual environments. Conclusion The changing media landscape both allows and impels evaluation of film impacts on individual viewers and the broader culture in which they are imbedded. Although such analysis may have previously been limited to box office numbers, critics' reviews, and theater exit surveys, the rise of new media provides both the ability to connect filmmakers, activists, and viewers in new ways and the data in which to study the process. This capability, combined with significant growth in the documentary landscape, suggests a great potential for documentary film to contribute to some of our most pressing social and environmental needs. A social scientific approach, that combines empirical analysis with theory applied from basic science, ensures that impact can be measured and leveraged in a way that is useful for both filmmakers as well as funders. In the end, this attention to impact ensures a continued thriving marketplace for issue-based documentary films in our social landscape. References Abrash, Barbara. "Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement." American University Center for Social Media 21 Apr. 2010. 26 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/›. Aufderheide, Patricia. "The Changing Documentary Marketplace." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 24-28. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Barrett, Diana and Sheila Leddy. "Assessing Creative Media's Social Impact." The Fledgling Fund, Dec. 2008. 15 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.thefledglingfund.org/media/research.html›. Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1992. BRITDOC Foundation. The End of the Line: A Social Impact Evaluation. London: Channel 4, 2011. 12 Oct. 2011 ‹http://britdoc.org/news_details/the_social_impact_of_the_end_of_the_line/›. Cieply, Michael. "Uneven Growth for Film Studio with a Message." New York Times 5 Jun. 2011: B1. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Emerging Media and Documentary Practice." The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. Aug. 2008. 22 Sep. 2011. ‹http://www.gpia.info/node/911›. Grierson, John. "First Principles of Documentary (1932)." Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. Eds. Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 97-102. Hart, Philip Solomon and Anthony Leiserowitz. "Finding the Teachable Moment: An Analysis of Information-Seeking Behavior on Global Warming Related Websites during the Release of The Day After Tomorrow." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 3.3 (2009): 355-66. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. ———. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Confessions of an Aca-Fan. The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 Mar. 2007. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html›. Madaus, George, and Daniel Stufflebeam. "Program Evaluation: A Historical Overview." Evaluation in Education and Human Services 49.1 (2002): 3-18. Manyika, James, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Brad Brown, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, and Angela Hung Byers. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. May 2011 ‹http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/big_data/›. Muraskin, Lana. Understanding Evaluation: The Way to Better Prevention Programs. Washington: U.S. Department of Education, 1993. 8 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www2.ed.gov/PDFDocs/handbook.pdf›. Nichols, Bill. "Foreword." Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Eds. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997. 11-13. Nisbet, Matthew. "Gasland and Dirty Business: Documentary Films Shape Debate on Energy Policy." Big Think, 9 May 2011. 1 Oct. 2011 ‹http://bigthink.com/ideas/38345›. ———. "Introduction: Understanding the Social Impact of a Documentary Film." Documentaries on a Mission: How Nonprofits Are Making Movies for Public Engagement. Ed. Karen Hirsch, Center for Social Media. Mar. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://aladinrc.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/4634/1/docs_on_a_mission.pdf›. Nisbet, Matthew, and Patricia Aufderheide. "Documentary Film: Towards a Research Agenda on Forms, Functions, and Impacts." Mass Communication and Society 12.4 (2011): 450-56. Orszag, Peter. Increased Emphasis on Program Evaluation. Washington: Office of Management and Budget. 7 Oct. 2009. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-01.pdf›. Participant Media. "Our Mission." 2011. 2 Apr. 2011 ‹http://www.participantmedia.com/company/about_us.php.›. Plantinga, Carl. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Trochim, William, and James Donnelly. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 3rd ed. Mason: Atomic Dogs, 2007. Ubiñas, Luis. "President's Message." 2009 Annual Report. Ford Foundation, Sep. 2010. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/2009-annual-report/presidents-message›. Vladica, Florin, and Charles Davis. "Business Innovation and New Media Practices in Documentary Film Production and Distribution: Conceptual Framework and Review of Evidence." The Media as a Driver of the Information Society. Eds. Ed Albarran, Paulo Faustino, and R. Santos. Lisbon, Portugal: Media XXI / Formal, 2009. 299-319. Whiteman, David. "Out of the Theaters and into the Streets: A Coalition Model of the Political Impact of Documentary Film and Video." Political Communication 21.1 (2004): 51-69. ———. "The Evolving Impact of Documentary Film: Sacrifice and the Rise of Issue-Centered Outreach." Post Script 22 Jun. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/movies-sound-recording/5517496-1.html›. Winston, Brian. Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: British Film Institute, 1995. Working Films. "Nonprofits: Working Films." Foundation Source Access 31 May 2011. 5 Oct. 2011 ‹http://access.foundationsource.com/nonprofit/working-films/›.

As the use of social networks becomes increasingly commonplace, scholars have observed that associated requirements arise relating to how one’s digital self is practised, worked on, and disseminated (Cover; Miller; Papacharissi). Since the earliest forms of online interaction, scholars have tracked the importance of the question of “realness” in identity and social groupings (Burkhalter; Donath; O’Brien). More recently, as people become more connected, connect-able and subject to peer (as well as corporate and government surveillance) (van Zoonen), digital media cultures have increasingly demanded the performance of authenticity as part of the work of belonging online (Banet-Weiser; Keller). Drawing on Banet-Weiser’s and Keller’s work in particular, “authenticity” is defined here as the quality of being considered consistently “true to oneself” in a way which is socially legitimated. I suggest, online, that this demand for authenticity is manifested through two poles of authenticity: authentic individuality and authentic belonging. In this paper, I discuss the interplay between authentic individuality and authentic belonging in (postfeminist) digital cultures, by using the case study of a set of meme blogs narrating youthful femininity on blogging social network Tumblr. This meme set, based on Tumblr blog “WhatShouldWeCallMe” (WSWCM), sets out a self-representative affective account of quotidian feminine experiences. In a set of six blogs of this meme set, including the “founder”, I consider the production of authenticities where the simultaneous importance of connection and imitative differentiation is foregrounded, tracking the way authenticity is practised in the founder and follower meme blogs. I contend that the WSWCM founder claims authentic individuality, producing itself through claims to originality, and pre-existing “best girlfriendship”. I then suggest that the follower meme blogs foreground authentic digital belonging, by exhibiting certain affective cultural literacies that demonstrate insider status in this intimate digital feminine public (Berlant). I surmise these strategies are used to manage the demands of tension between proving one’s true and individual self and the need to be recognised as belonging through commonality. The Authentic Self Brand and the Authentic Insider I suggest that one expression of authentic individuality can be found in the increasingly prevalent practice of self-branding in digital cultures on social network sites (Banet-Weiser). In what Banet-Weiser calls “the authentic self-brand”, one sets up a simultaneous relationship to oneself, and a relationship between oneself and one’s audience. This double relationship is one of “innovation, production, and consumption [of the self], charged with ideally producing a unique, ‘authentic’ self” (73) for others. The self-social relationship offered by the authentic self-brand dovetails with what scholars identify as a postfeminist media landscape in the West (Gill; McRobbie; Negra). Postfeminist narratives promote highly commercial paradigms of self-surveillance, self-regulation and self-improvement, particularly for young women (Gill, McRobbie), whereby one’s body, social practices and relationships are evaluated as part of the marketability of one’s self-brand (Banet-Weiser, Winch). In this marketised recasting of social relationships, one must treat oneself as a product to be invested in, and remain vigilantly aware of how one is perceived by an audience of potential “buyers”. Notably, postfeminism relies on the idea of a deep, inhering individuality to justify the injunction to marketise oneself (Gill). Following this logic, gendered practices which may improve one’s feminine “self-brand” such as attention to beauty practices and body shape, must be cast as for “oneself” and part of one’s “true desires”. This occurs in a landscape where it is widely presumed that feminism has done its work, and women are now “free” to perform femininity however they wish (Gill). In postfeminist digital cultures, proving one’s acts are done for one’s true self, not for others becomes crucial in demonstrating one’s feminine authenticity (Dobson, Individuality; Performative), even as one is aware of the social value of one’s profile or digital brand (Banet-Weiser, Ringrose and Barajas). Drawing on this body of work, I suggest that authentic individuality, performed through imperviousness to social influence, is the way in which these contradictions of the postfeminist self-brand are justified. At the same time, digital cultures can also be argued to offer “remix” spaces (Lessig) where the borrowing, imitation and adaptation of existing cultural artefacts demonstrates personally felt connections to wider social meanings. One common manifestation of this is the Internet “meme”, a unit of culture which relies on imitative adaptation and differentiation in its circulation (Shifman), which I discuss further in this article. Shifman illustrates the meme as a mode of interpretive connection with the example of YouTube meme “Leave Britney Alone”, which began with the founder meme video by actor Chris Crocker making an emotional plea that society leave singer Britney Spears in peace. Memes signal dominant social understandings of the original cultural unit: Shifman notes that with the “Leave Britney Alone” meme, the follower memes tended to mock Crocker’s perceived effeminacy, sexuality and excessiveness in their re-enactments of Crocker’s founder video. Authenticity in these forms of digital production might be argued to signify more about desires for legitimate or authentic belonging within digital publics as insiders, rather than proving a fundamental individuality. WhatShouldWeCallMe and Tumblr Remix Culture Tumblr is a relatively under-researched but rapidly growing blogging social network, documented at the end of 2014 as the social platform with the most growth in user numbers (Lunden). Tumblr is known as a promising hub of burgeoning visual youth cultures (Third and Hart), possibly due to its norms of anonymity and significant pop culture content of posts. Images are a dominant form of communication on the site, and most content on Tumblr is public. Notably, 70% of Tumblr traffic occurs internally through the repurposing and reblogging of posts in the “dashboard” area (the equivalent being the “newsfeed’ for Facebook), rather than from external sources (Walker). Tumblr users are able to follow each other, and like and reblog each other’s posts. However, direct comments on posts are not an available feature, unlike most “first wave” (Miller and Fink) blogging sites; if a user wishes to comment on a post, they can only do so when reblogging the post, which is then featured on their own blog. According to Tumblr founder David Karp, this feature discourages overly negative comments and flame wars because “if you’re going to be a jerk, you’re looking like a jerk in your own space” (Walker). These structures set up Tumblr as an ideal site for the production of memes as part of its remix culture, whilst still adhering to certain connective features of other social networks. To provide some context, the founder WSWCM blog boasted 50,000 new Tumblr followers in the month following its creation in 2012, with independent traffic reports logging the number of page views as one to two million per day (Casserly). Each post on the founder WSWCM is on average liked and reblogged by hundreds of other Tumblr users, but its significance, which I consider here, lies in the way that it has been taken up in a prolific variety of follower meme blogs. Interestingly, unlike “Leave Britney Alone”, the form of imitative differentiation here is keyed at speaking at a more self-representative level, rather than making a comment on or satirising the founder, suggesting a level of personal connection. Like “Leave Britney Alone”, the WSWCM meme set can be understood as a founder-based meme (Shifman), with one originating, successful meme text which then inspires many follower memes, which are usually less successful. The follower memes I consider here adapt the GIF-reaction format which is used to narrate everyday experiences of youthful femininity. Blog posts are produced by matching a GIF image to situations such as “when my boyfriend forgets to DVR the Voice” or “when I hear my frenemy got dumped by her boyfriend”. GIFs are moving photo files excerpting about three seconds of movement from popular culture ranging from film, television and YouTube videos. It must be stressed that the term “follower” does not necessarily connote a lack of originality. The imitation of the follower blogs is strategic: a deliberate, slight differentiation, which operates to set them apart, but still locates them within a youthful feminine public. The emergence of the WSWCM follower blogs is a dynamic one which, I suggest, has catalysed the founder to intensify its claims to legitimacy through authentic originality even as its funny and creative followers throw its uniqueness into question. The Founder Meme Blog: Best Friendship as Authenticity Practice One key way that the WSWCM founder makes claims to authenticity is through a “best girlfriendship”, which is also explicitly articulated as the driving force for the maintenance of the blog, rather than Tumblr followers or outside audiences. Whilst ads are hosted on the founder blog, it is explained that these are almost ancillary—“to pay the bills” of purchasing material to create the GIFs, pay for the site design, web-hosting fees, and other costs. The almost romantic figure of the female “best friend” features significantly, fitting with Winch’s claim that the female best friend becomes a new “soul mate”, beyond one’s (heterosexual) partner in postfeminist girlfriend culture. In this way, we see how certain social relationships become recognisable as authentic. The founder bloggers state in their FAQs: We are two best friends who met in college and now live on opposite coasts (of the United States). We used to send each other funny .gifs as a way of staying in touch, and decided to start a tumblr that both of us could check during the day. We thought we were just posting inside jokes, but are thrilled that other people find them as funny as we do. We never really intended for anyone else to see it. Whilst now, with potentially hundreds of thousands of followers, it is difficult to maintain that the blog is maintained solely as a means of keeping in contact, this long distance girlfriendship can be drawn on to establish the authenticity and social capital for the blog. The best friend is a productive space through which one can express one’s true, individual desires, free of others’ wishes and outside constraints. Many moments expressed in the original blog centre on (very funny) moments that are only shared with the best friend where one can really be “oneself”, such as “when my best friend and I stay in” (for a night in), or “when my best friend and I are DGAF in public” (“don’t give a fuck”). In the blog, the very exclusivity of the female best friend compared to other ambivalent relations with “other girls” and “guys”, can also be understood as a mechanism for carving out a space of feminine individuality. I suggest that this best girlfriendship should be understood as a permutation of the authentic self-brand, practised to achieve a form of authentic individuality. In Winch’s conception, postfeminist girlfriendship is about strategy rather than solidarity; girlfriendship becomes an “investment in the individual” as it is “essential in enabling feminine normativity” (2). This may be reflected in the way best friendship is mobilised as a brand for WSWCM. At its inception, WSWCM only used the “Minimalist” theme for its layout, a free theme offered by Tumblr, which is still visible in the formats of some of the meme blogs. Fig. 1A: “Screenshot of Minimalist Theme in follower blog.” Twodumbgirls.tumblr.com, 16 Feb. 2015.Fig. 1B: “Screenshot of Minimalist Theme in follower blog.” Whatshouldwecollegeme.tumblr.com, 16 Feb. 2015. However, in early 2014 the bloggers changed to a different header to distinguish their site. I suggest this can be understood as a response to establish originality and authenticity through a best friendship brand, in opposition to the other meme blogs, which had also adopted the founder theme. The WSWCM header features cartoonish depictions of the two bloggers, one in New York with the silhouette of skyscrapers behind her, and one on a beach with an open laptop, the blog visible on her screen. Fig. 2: “WhatShouldWeCallMe Header.” Whatshouldwecallme.tumblr.com, 17 Feb. 2015. This header clearly alludes to the fact that the bloggers are separated, in different places, but links them by depicting them as virtually identical. Somewhat similar to “Bratz” dolls, they are both represented with oversized heads, tiny bodies, long hair, and large eyes, with the only differences being that one is blonde with pale skin and blue eyes, the other brunette with tanned skin and green eyes. I suggest that what is striking about this cartoonish image is the way it fits into a commercial genre of representation of “girlfriends”. Further, whilst girlfriends are often positioned as differing, their differences are often positioned as complementary, to strengthen a united co-brand (Winch). The differences here are noticeably nominal, skin-deep—the slight variation in hair, eye and skin colour hint at “‘tantalising differences within a normative paradigm” (Winch 46). I am not suggesting here that the best friendship of the bloggers is artificial or purely commercial, but rather, that this production of digital best friendship coincides with strategies to achieve authentic individuality recognisable in postfeminist digital cultures. The best friend is thus crucial to the performance of authenticity in the original blog. It is important to note, however, that these practices exceed postfeminist self-branding in certain ways. Given that WSWCM has indeed inspired follower memes keyed in a self-representative register, this suggests possibilities of broader connection and a sense of intimacy through recognisability of shared femininity. From one form of insider practice—the WSWCM best girlfriendship—to another, other Tumblr bloggers through follower meme texts have also signalled their insider status, as young women able to narrate forms of feminine experience held out as representative and legitimate. The Follower Meme Blogs: Connective Differentiation In contrast to the founder’s production of authenticity through claims to originality, and through a relationship, which is held out as distinct from the desires to gain Internet followers, authenticity is practised differently in the follower memes. Authentic individuality is decentred; rather, the follower blogs appear to foreground the importance of authentic belonging. This becomes clear in the followers’ imitation of the founder in their positioning as similar, but slightly different. For example, in the blog WhatShouldBetchesCallMe, the blogging subject still narrates quotidian feminine trials and tribulations, but is much more knowingly confident and sassy; in WhatShouldWeCollegeMe, the blog focuses more on the experience of being at university than the founder meme. Shifman foregrounds the process of repackaging and imitation in the adaptation of memes; I suggest that what also must be considered in this meme set is connective differentiation, which repositions this repackaging as simultaneously a form of distancing and connection. Here, the connective differentiation of the follower blogs is a way of citing one’s knowledge and understanding of youthful feminine experience. By creating a self-representative, knowingly derivative but different follower blog in this meme set, this subsequent variation demonstrates one’s legitimate belonging in the feminine public sphere of WSWCM readership. I suggest Berlant’s conceptualisation of intimate publics is useful here in explaining how slight variations on an original theme play out in a culture in which authenticity is held up as essential. Berlant argues that women’s culture in the West, centrally shaped by relations to commodities, creates expectations of both normativity and commonality whereby the market claims to offer texts and objects which are true to women’s “particular core interests and desires” (5). This provides a “generic-but-unique” femininity (6) through which women can expect to be recognisable in this public. Arguably, what the memes opt into—through being recognised as derivative—is a form of recognition in an intimate feminine public. Thus, the follower memes adhere to these rules of recognisability in order to be seen. Recognition as belonging in this intimate public through social knowledge becomes more useful for the follower memes, which cannot rely on the status of originality of the founder meme. What this practice of discerning, connective differentiation may signal is a configuration of authenticity which manages the tension in demands of digital culture— signalling one’s individuality yet demonstrating one’s social embeddedness. As O’Brien (1998) notes in relation to early online social interaction, if one wants to be recognised and recognisable, one must draw on established social, cultural codes. Notably, many of the situations which are put forward in blog posts of the follower memes are not necessarily easily distinguishable in genre or content from the blog posts of the founder memes. Though the founder meme text places particular emphasis on best friendship, other forms of youthful, feminine (middle class) experience are recycled and re-adapted for circulation. Many of the situations which are put forward in the meme set, while creatively assembled, are ultimately generic so that they can be circulated on Tumblr to connect with others. Consequently, posts abound about social rituals of excessive drinking, struggling through university, and inadequacies in flirting technique. However, I note that these generic posts are still specific at the same time, requiring a highly discerning ability to capture and narrativise affective moments from diverse, miscellaneous pop culture material. The well-chosen GIF articulating one’s despondency as a single girl demonstrates a level of cultural and affective awareness of the semiotic intelligibility of the GIF, and the recognisable trials and tribulations of youthful feminine experience. Fig. 3: “When I’m depressed and have too much to drink.” 2ndhand-embarrassment.tumblr.com, 11 Feb. 2015. Thus, showing one’s specific knowledge of shared experience demonstrates an affective authenticity of connection and belonging. This authenticity works to prove one’s digital authority to micro-broadcast one’s life in a youthful feminine public, through showing one’s knowledge of the recognisable pitfalls, idiosyncrasies and experiences of being a young woman. I emphasise that it is this situated knowingness that comes through in the meme set in general, particularly in the follower memes. Given the generic nature of the content of posts across the meme set, the importance of “true” emotion is decentred—rather, what is vital is knowing which affective situations have the capacity to connect and be recognisable. Whilst the revelation of inner emotional truths have otherwise been considered key in the practice of authenticity in celebrity culture (Biressi and Nunn; Hesmondalgh and Baker), I propose that in the context in which this meme set is situated, this is not necessarily the most useful form of social currency. In these remix digital cultures, I suggest the interpretive premise of the digital audience is not that these products of remix literally speak to one’s experiences. Rather, remix cultures provide a means of demonstrating insider knowledge, which connects other insiders—a form of authentic belonging. Conclusion This paper has traced differing practices of feminine authenticity visible in the intersection of social network and remix cultures on Tumblr by examining the WSWCM meme set. I have suggested that the founder meme employs particular strategies of maintaining authentic individuality, such as resorting to the performance of an exclusive, “original” best girlfriendship brand. In contrast, the follower memes perform cultural and affective knowingness of youthful femininity, to assert their digital insider status—and right to belong. This meme set presents some productive questions through which to think through authenticity in digital cultures. Could striving for authentic belonging constitute one strategy of responding to a media-saturated culture, where authentic individuality is constantly elevated yet (perhaps) harder to achieve? These blogs demonstrate how the significance and practice of authenticity transforms in managing different configurations of social desires to belong, or be recognised as individual and original in (postfeminist) digital cultures. References Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Authentic TM. New York, NY: New York UP, 2012. Beer, David, and Roger Burrows. “Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data.” Theory, Culture & Society 30.4 (2013): 47–71. Berlant, Lauren Gail. The Female Complaint. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. Burkhalter, Byron. "Reading Race Online: Discovering Racial Identity in Usenet Discussions." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 59–74. Casserly, Meghan. “#Whatshouldwecallme Revealed: The 24-Year Old Law Students behind the New Tumblr Darling.” Forbes 29 Mar 2012: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/03/29/whatshouldwecallme-revealed-24-year-old-law-students-tumblr-darling/›. Cover, Rob. “Performing and Undoing Identity Online: Social Networking, Identity Theories and the Incompatibility of Online Profiles and Friendship Regimes.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 18.2 (2012): 177–93. Dobson, Amy Shields. “Performative Shamelessness on Young Women's Social Network Sites: Shielding the Self and Resisting Gender Melancholia.” Feminism & Psychology 24.1 (2013): 97–114. Dobson, Amy Shields. “'Individuality is Everything': 'Autonomous Femininity' in Myspace Mottos and Self–Descriptions.” Continuum 26.3 (2012): 371–83. Donath, Judith. "Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 27–57. Fink, Marty, and Quinn Miller. “Trans Media Moments: Tumblr, 2011–2013.” Television & New Media 15.7 (2013): 611–26. Gill, Rosalind. Gender and the Media. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007. Hesmondhalgh, David, and Sarah Baker. Creative Labour. London: Routledge, 2011. Keller, Jessalynn Marie. “Fiercely Real?: Tyra Banks and the Making of New Media Celebrity.” Feminist Media Studies 14.1 (2012): 147–64. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix. New York: Penguin P, 2008. Lunden, Ingrid. “Tumblr Overtakes Instagram as Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is the Fastest-Growing App.” TechCrunch 25 Nov. 2014: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/tumblr-overtakes-instagram-as-fastest-growing-social-platform-snapchat-is-the-fastest-growing-app/›. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Miller, Vincent. Understanding Digital Culture. London: SAGE Publications, 2011. Negra, Diane. What a Girl Wants? Fantasising the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. London: Routledge, 2009. Nunn, Heather, and Anita Biressi. “'A Trust Betrayed': Celebrity and the Work Of Emotion.” Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 49–64. O’Brien, Jodi. "Writing in the Body: Gender (Re)production in Online Interaction." Communities in Cyberspace. Eds. Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge, 1999. 75–103. Papacharissi, Zizi. A Networked Self. New York: Routledge, 2011. Ringrose, Jessica, and Katarina Eriksson Barajas. “Gendered Risks and Opportunities? Exploring Teen Girls’ Digitized Sexual Identities in Postfeminist Media Contexts.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 7.2 (2011): 121–38. Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2014. Van Doorn, Niels, Sally Wyatt, and Liesbet van Zoonen. “A Body of Text.” Feminist Media Studies 8.4 (2008): 357–74. Van Zoonen, Liesbet. “From Identity to Identification: Fixating the Fragmented Self.” Media, Culture & Society 35.1 (2013): 44­–51. Walker, Rob. “Can Tumblr’s™ David Karp Embrace Ads without Selling Out?” New York Times 12 July 2012: n.p. 23 Dec. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/can-tumblrs-david-karp-embrace-ads-without-selling-out.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0›. Winch, Alison. Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

There are many ways to construct, shape and frame a history of popular music. From a focus on performers to a stress on cities, from theories of modernity to reveling in ‘the post,’ innovative music has been matched by evocative writing about it. One arc of analysis in popular music studies focuses on the record label. Much has been written about Sun, Motown, Factory and Apple, but there are many labels that have not reached this level of notoriety and fame but offer much to our contemporary understanding of music, identity and capitalism. The aim of this article is to capture an underwritten history of 21st century music, capturing and tracking moments of collaboration, movement and contact. Through investigating a specific record label, we explore the interconnectiveness of electronica and city-based creative industries’ initiatives. While urban dance culture is still pathologised through drug scares and law and order concerns, clubbing studies and emerging theories of sonic media and auditory cultures offer a significant trigger and frame for this current research. The focus on Off World Sounds (OWS) traces a meta-independent label that summons, critiques, reinscribes and provokes the conventional narratives of capitalism in music. We show how OWS has remade and remixed the collaborations of punk to forge innovative ways of thinking about creativity, policy and popular culture. While commencing with a review of the origin, ideology and intent of OWS, the final part of the paper shows where the experiment went wrong and what can be learnt from this sonic label laboratory. Moving Off World Popular cultural studies evoke and explore discursive formations and texts that activate dissent, conflict and struggle. This strategy is particularly potent when exploring how immigration narratives fray the borders of the nation state. At its most direct, this analysis provides a case study to assess and answer some of Nabeel Zuberi’s questions about sonic topography that he raises in Sounds English. I’m concerned less with music as a reflection of national history and geography than how the practices of popular music culture themselves construct the spaces of the local, national, and transnational. How does the music imagine the past and place? How does it function as a memory-machine, a technology for the production of subjective and collective versions of location and identity? How do the techniques of sounds, images, and activities centered on popular music create landscapes with figures? (3) Dance music is mashed between creativity, consumerism and capitalism. Picking up on Zuberi’s challenge, the story of OWS is also a history of what happens to English migrants who travel to Australia, and how they negotiate the boundaries of the Australian nation. Immigration is important to any understanding of contemporary music. The two proprietors of OWS are Pete Carroll and, one of the two writers of this current article, Stephen Mallinder. Both English proprietors immigrated to Perth in Australia. They used their contacts to sign electronica performers from beyond this single city. They encouraged the tracks to move freely through lymphatic digital networks for remixing—‘lymphatic’ signalling a secondary pathway for commerce and creativity where new musical relationships were being formed outside the influence of major record companies. Performers signed to OWS form independent networks with other performers. This mobility of sound has operated in parallel with the immigration policies of the Howard government that have encouraged insularity and xenophobia. In other eras of racial inequality and discrimination, the independent record label has been not only an integral part of the music industry, but a springboard for political dissent. The histories of jazz and rhythm and blues capture a pivotal moment of independent entrepreneurialism that transformed new and strange sounds/noises into popular music. In monitoring and researching this complex process of musical movement and translation, the independent label has remained the home of the peripheral, the misunderstood, and the uncompromising. Soul music in the United States of America is an example of a sonic form that sustained independence while corporate labels made a profit. Labels like Atlantic Records became synonymous with the success of black vocal music in the 1960s and 1970s, while the smaller independent labels like Chess and Invicta constructed a brand identity. While the division between the majors and the independents increasingly dissolves, particularly at the level of distribution, the independent label remains significant as innovator and instigator. It retains its status and pedagogic function in teaching an audience about new sounds and developing aural literacies. OWS inked its well from an idealistic and collaborative period of label evolution. The punk aesthetic of the late 1970s not only triggered wide-ranging implications for youth culture, but also opened spaces for alternative record labels and label identity. Rough Trade was instrumental in imbuing a spirit of cooperation and a benign mode of competition. A shift in the distribution of records and associated merchandizing to strengthen product association—such as magazines, fanzines and T-Shirts—enabled Rough Trade to deal directly with pivotal stores and outlets and then later establish cartels with stores to provide market security and a workable infrastructure. Links were built with ancillary agents such as concert promoters, press, booking agents, record producers and sleeve designers, to create a national, then European and international, network to produce an (under the counter) culture. Such methods can also be traced in the history of Postcard Records from Edinburgh, Zoo Records from Liverpool, Warp in Sheffield, Pork Recordings in Hull, Hospital Records in London, and both Grand Central and Factory in Manchester. From the ashes of the post-1976 punk blitzkrieg, independent labels bloomed with varying impact, effect and success, but they held an economic and political agenda. The desire was to create a strong brand identity by forming a tight collaboration between artists and distributors. Perceptions of a label’s size and significance was enhanced and enlarged through this collaborative relationship. OWS acknowledged and rewrote this history of the independent label. There was a desire to fuse the branding of the label with the artists signed, released and distributed. No long term obligations on behalf of the artists were required. A 50/50 split after costs was shared. While such an ‘agreement’ appeared anachronistic, it was also a respectful nod to the initial label/artist split offered by Rough Trade. Collaboration with artists throughout the process offered clear statements of intent, with idealism undercut by pragmatism. From track selection, sleeve design, promotion strategy and interview schedule, the level of communication created a sense of joint ownership and dialogue between label and artist. This reinscription of independent record history is complex because OWS’ stable of performers and producers is an amalgamation of dub, trance, hip hop, soul and house genres. Much of trans-localism of OWS was encouraged by its base in Perth. Metaphorically ‘off world’, Perth is a pad for international music to land, be remixed, recut and re-released. Just as Wellington is the capital of Tolkien’s Middle Earth as well as New Zealand, Perth is a remix capital for Paris or New York-based performers. The brand name ‘Off World Sounds’ was designed to emphasise isolation: to capture the negativity of isolation but rewrite separation and distinctiveness with a positive inflection. The title was poached from Ridley Scott’s 1980s film Bladerunner, which was in turn based on Philip K. Dick’s story, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Affirming this isolation summoned an ironic commentary on Perth’s geographical location, while also mocking the 1980s discourses of modernity and the near future. The key was to align punk’s history of collaboration with this narrative of isolation and independence, to explore mobility, collaboration, and immigration. Spaces in the Music Discussions of place dictate a particular methodology to researching music. Dreams of escape and, concurrently, intense desires for home pepper the history of popular music. What makes OWS important to theories of musical collaboration is that not only was there a global spread of musicians, producers and designers, but they worked together in a series of strategic trans-localisms. There were precedents for disconnecting place and label, although not of the scale instigated by OWS. Fast Products, although based in Glasgow, signed The Human League from Sheffield and Gang of Four from Leeds. OWS was unique in signing artists disconnected on a global scale, with the goal of building collaborations in remixing and design. Gripper, from the north east of England, Little Egypt from New York, The Bone Idle from Vienna, Hull and Los Angeles, Looped for Pleasure from Sheffield, Barney Mullhouse from Australia and the United Kingdom, Ooblo from Manchester, Attache from Adelaide, Crackpot from Melbourne and DB Chills from Sydney are also joined by artists resident in Perth, such as Soundlab, the Ku-Ling Bros and Blue Jay. Compact Disc mastering is completed in Sydney, London, and Perth. The artwork for vinyl and CD sleeves, alongside flyers, press advertising and posters, is derived from Manchester, England. These movements in the music flattened geographical hierarchies, where European and American tracks were implicitly valued over Australian-derived material. Through pop music history, the primary music markets of the United Kingdom and United States made success for Australian artists difficult. Off World emphasised that the product was not licensed. It was previously unreleased material specifically recorded for the label and an exclusive Australian first territory release. Importantly, this licensing agreement also broadened definitions and interpretations of ‘Australian music’. Such a critique and initiative was important. For example, Paul Bodlovich, Director of the West Australian Music Industry (WAM), believed he was extending the brief of his organisation during his tenure. Once more though, rock was the framework, structure and genre of interest. Explaining the difference from his predecessor, he stated that: [James Nagy] very much saw the music industry as being only bands who were playing all original music—to him they were the only people who actually constituted the music industry. I have a much broader view on that, that all those other people who are around the band—the manager, the promoters, the labels, the audio guys, the whole shebang—that they are part of the music industry too. (33) Much was absent from his ‘whole shebang,’ including the fans who actually buy the music and attend the pubs and clubs. A diversity of genres was also not acknowledged. If hip hop, and urban music generally, is added to his list of new interests, then clubs, graf galleries, dance instructors and fashion and jewelry designers could extend the network of musical collaborations. A parody of corporate culture and a pastiche of the post-punk aesthetic, OWS networked and franchised itself into existence. It was a cottage industry superimposed onto a corporate infrastructure. Attempting to make inroads into an insular Perth arts community and build creative industries’ networks without state government policy support, Off World offered an optimistic perspective on the city’s status and value in a national and global electronic market. Yet in commercial terms, OWS failed. What OWS captures through its failures conveys more about music policy in Australia than any success. The label has been able to catalogue the lack of changes to Perth’s music policy. The proprietors, performers and designers were not approached in 2002 by the Western Australian Contemporary Music Taskforce to offer comment. Yet Matthew Benson and Poppy Wise, researchers for that report, stated that “the solution lies in the industry becoming more outwardly focused, and to do this, it must seek the input of successful professionals who have proven track records in the marketing of music nationally and globally” (9). The resultant document argued that the industry needed to the look to Sydney and Melbourne for knowledge of “international” markets. Yet Paul Bodlovich, the Director of WAM, singled out the insularity of ‘England,’ not Britain, and ‘America’ in comparison to the ‘outward’ Perth music industry: To us, they’re all centre of the universe, but they don’t look past their walls, they don’t have a clue what goes in other parts of the world … All they see say in England is English TV, or in America it’s American TV. Whereas we sit in a very isolated part of the world and we absorb culture from everywhere because we think we have to just to be on an equal arc with everyone else. We think we have to absorb stuff from other cultures because unless we do then we really are isolated … It’s a similar belief to the ongoing issue of women in the workplace, where there’s a belief that to be seen on equal footing you have to be better. (33) This knight’s move affiliation of Perth’s musicians with women in the workplace is bizarre and inappropriate. This unfortunate connection is made worse when recognizing that Perth’s music institutions and organisations, such as WAM, are dominated by white, Australian-born men. To promote the outwardness of Perth culture while not mentioning the role and function of immigration is not addressing how mobility, creativity and commerce is activated. To unify ‘England’ and ‘America,’ without recognizing the crucial differences between Manchester and Bristol, New York and New Orleans, is conservative, arrogant, and wrong. National models of music, administered by Australian-born white men and funded through grants-oriented peer review models rather than creative industries’ infrastructural initiatives, still punctuate Western Australian music. Off World Sounds has been caught in non-collaborative, nationalist models for organising culture and economics. It is always easy to affirm the specialness and difference of a city’s sound or music. While affirming the nation and rock, outsiders appear threatening to the social order. When pondering cities and electronica, collaboration, movement and meaning dance through the margins. References Benson, Matthew, and Poppy Wise. A Study into the Current State of the Western Australian Contemporary Music Industry and Its Potential for Economic Growth. Department of Culture and the Arts, Government of Western Australia, December 2002. Bodlovich, Paul. “Director’s Report.” X-Press 940 (17 Feb. 2005): 33. Zuberi, Nabeel. Sounds English: Transnational Popular Music. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2001. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brabazon, Tara, and Stephen Mallinder. "Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/13-brabazonmallinder.php>. APA Style Brabazon, T., and S. Mallinder. (May 2006) "Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/13-brabazonmallinder.php>.

From the mid-twentieth century, state and public conceptions of deviance and crime control have turned increasingly punitive (Hallett 115; Hutchinson 138). In a Western context, criminal justice has long been retributive, prioritising punishment over rehabilitation (Wenzel et al. 26). Within that context, there has been an increase in punitiveness—understood here as a measure of a punishment’s severity—the intention of which has been to help restore the moral imbalance created by offending while also deterring future crime (Wenzel et al. 26). Entangled with the global spread of neoliberal capitalism, punitiveness has become internationally pervasive to a near-hegemonic degree (Sparks qtd. in Jennings et al. 463; Unnever and Cullen 100).The punitive turn has troubling characteristics. Punitive policies can be expensive, and increased incarceration stresses the criminal justice system and leads to prison overcrowding (Hutchinson 135). Further, punitiveness is not only applied unequally across categories such as class, race, and age (Unnever and Cullen 105-06; Wacquant 212) but the effectiveness of punitive policy relative to its costs is contested (Bouffard et al. 466, 477; Hutchinson 139). Despite this, evidence suggests public demand is driving punitive policymaking, but that demand is only weakly related to crime rates (Jennings et al. 463).While discussion of punitiveness in the public sphere often focuses on measures such as boot camps for young offenders, increased incarceration, and longer prison sentences, punitiveness also has a darker side. Our research analysing discussion taking place on a large, regional, crime-focused online forum reveals a startling degree and intensity of violence directed at offenders and related groups. Members of the discussion forum do propose unsurprising measures such as incarceration and boot camps, but also an array of violent alternatives, including beating, shooting, dismemberment, and conversion into animal food. This article draws on our research to explore why discussion of punitiveness can be so intensely violent.Our research applies thematic analysis to seven discussion threads posted to a large regional online forum focused on crime, made between September and November 2017. One discussion thread per week of the study period was purposively sampled based on relevance to the topic of punitiveness, ultimately yielding 1200 individual comments. Those comments were coded, and the data and codes were reiteratively analysed to produce categories, then basic, organising, and global themes. We intended to uncover themes in group discussion most salient to punitiveness to gain insight into how punitive social interactions unfold and how those who demand punitiveness understand their interactions and experiences of crime. We argue that, in this online forum, the global theme—the most salient concept related to punitiveness—is a “subaltern citizenship”. Here, a clear division emerges from the data, where the group members perceive themselves as “us”—legitimate citizens with all attendant rights—in opposition to an external “them”, a besieging group of diverse, marginalised Others who have illegitimately usurped certain rights and who victimise citizens. Group members often deride the state as too weak and untrustworthy to stop this victimisation. Ironically, the external Others perceived by the group to hold power are themselves genuinely marginalised, though the group does not recognise or see that form of marginalisation as legitimate. In this essay, to preserve the anonymity of the forum and its members, we refer to them only as “the Forum”, located in “the City”, and refrain from direct quotes except for commonly used words or phrases that do not identify individuals.It is also important to note that the research described here deliberately focused on a specific group in a specific space who were concerned about specific groups of offenders. Findings and discussion, and the views on punitiveness described, cannot be generalised to the broader community. Nor do we suggest these views can be considered representative of all Forum members as we present here only a limited analysis of some violent discourse emerging from our research. Likewise, while our discussion often centres on youth and other marginalised groups in the context of offending, we do not intend to imply that offending is a characteristic of these groups.Legitimate CitizenshipCommonly, citizenship is seen as a conferred status denoting full and equal community membership and the rights and responsibilities dictated by community values and norms (Lister 28-29). Western citizenship norms are informed by neoliberal capitalist values: individual responsibility, an obligation to be in paid employment, participation in economic consumption, the sanctity of ownership, and that the principal role of government is to defend the conditions under which these norms can freely thrive (Walsh 861-62). While norms are shaped by laws and policy frameworks, they are not imposed coercively or always deployed consciously. These norms exist as shared behavioural expectations reproduced through social interaction and embodied as “common sense” (Kotzian 59). As much as Western democracies tend to a universalist representation of one, undifferentiated citizenship, it is clear that gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and migrant status all exist in different relationships to citizenship as an identity category. Glass ceilings, stolen generations, same-sex marriage debates, and Australian Government proposals to strip citizenship from certain types of criminal offender all demonstrate that the lived experience of norms surrounding citizenship is profoundly unequal for some (Staeheli et al. 629-30). An individual’s citizenship status, therefore, more accurately exists on a spectrum between legitimacy—full community membership, possessing all rights and living up to all associated responsibilities—and illegitimacy—diminished membership, with contested rights and questionable fulfilment of associated responsibilities—depending on the extent of their deviation from societal norms.Discussing punitiveness, Forum members position themselves as “us”, that is, legitimate citizens. Words such as “we” and “us” are used as synonyms for society and for those whose behaviours are “normal” or “acceptable”. Groups associated with offending are described as “they”, “them”, and their behaviours are “not normal”, “disgusting”, “feral”, and merit the removal of “them” from civilisation, usually to “the middle of nowhere” or “the Outback”. Possession of legitimate citizenship is implicit in assuming authority over what is normal and who should be exiled for failing the standard.Another implicit assumption discernible in the data is that Forum members perceive the “normal we” as good neoliberal citizens. “We” work hard, own homes and cars, and take individual responsibility. There is a strong imputation of welfare dependency among offenders, the poor, and other suspect groups. Offending is presented as something curable by stripping offenders or their parents of welfare payments. Members earn their status as legitimate citizens by adhering to the norms of neoliberal citizenship in opposition to potential offenders to whom the benefits of citizenship are simply doled out.Forum members also frame their citizenship as legitimate by asserting ownership over community spaces and resources. This can be seen in their talking as if they, their sympathetic audience, and “the City” are the same (for example, declaring that “the City” demands harsher punishments for juvenile offenders). There are also calls to “take back” the streets, the City, and Australia from groups associated with offending. That a space can and should be “taken back” implies a pre-existing state of control interrupted by those who have no right to ownership. At its most extreme, the assertion of ownership extends to a conviction that members have the right to position offenders as enemies of the state and request that the army, the ultimate tool of legitimate state violence, be turned against them if governments and the criminal justice system are too “weak” or “soft” to constrain them.The Illegitimate OtherThroughout the data, perceived offenders are spoken of with scorn and hatred. “Perceived offenders” may include offenders and their family, youths, Indigenous people, and people of low socioeconomic status, and these marginalised groups are referenced so interchangeably it can be difficult to determine which is being discussed.Commenting on four “atsi [sic] kids” who assaulted an elderly man, group members asserted “they” should be shot like dogs. The original text gives no antecedents to indicate whether “they” is meant to indicate youths, Indigenous youths, or offenders in general. However, Australia has a colonial history of conflating crime and indigeneity and shooting Indigenous people to preserve white social order (Hill and Dawes 310, 312), a consequence of the tendency of white people to imagine criminals as black (Unnever and Cullen 106). It must be noted that the racial identity of individual Forum members is unknown. This does constitute a limitation in the original study, as identity categories such as race and class intersect and manifest in social interactions in complex ways. However, that does not prevent analysis of the text itself.In the Forum’s discursive space, “they” is used to denote offenders, Indigenous youths, youths, or the poor interchangeably, as if they were all a homogeneous, mutually synonymous “Other”. Collectively, these groups are represented as so generally hopeless that they are imagined as choosing to offend so they will be sentenced to the comforts of “holiday camp” prisons where they can access luxuries otherwise beyond their reach: freedom from addicted parents, medical care, food, television, and computers. A common argument, that crime is an individual choice, is often based on the idea that prison is a better option for the poor than going home. As a result, offending by marginalised offenders is reconstructed as a rational choice or a failure of individual responsibility rather than a consequence of structural inequality.Further, parents of those in suspect populations are blamed for intergenerational maintenance of criminality. They are described as too drunk or drugged to care, too unskilled in parenting due to their presumed dreadful upbringing, or too busy enjoying their welfare payments to meet their responsibility to control their children or teach them the values and skills of citizenship. Comments imply parents probably participated in their children’s crimes even when no evidence suggests that possibility and that some groups simply cannot be trusted to raise disciplined children owing to their inherent moral and economic dissipation. That is, not just offenders but entire groups are deemed illegitimate, willing to enjoy benefits of citizenship such as welfare payments but unwilling or unable to earn them by engaging with the associated responsibilities. This is a frequent argument for why they deserve severely punitive punishment for deviance.However, the construction of the Other as illegitimate in Forum discussions reaches far beyond imagining them as lacking normative skills and values. The violence present on the Forum is startling in its intensity. Prevalent within the data is the reduction of people to insulting nicknames. Terms used to describe people range from the sarcastic— “little darlings”—through standard abusive language such as “bastards”, “shits”, “dickheads”, “lowlifes”, to dehumanising epithets such as “maggots”, “scum”, and “subhuman arsewipes”. Individually and collectively, “they” are relentlessly framed as less than human and even less than animals. They are “mongrels” and “vermin”. In groups, they are “packs”, and they deserve to be “hunted” or just shot from helicopters. They are unworthy of life. “Oxygen thieves” is a repeated epithet, as is the idea that they should be dropped out at sea to drown. Other suggestions for punishment include firing squads, lethal injections, and feeding them to animals.It is difficult to imagine a more definitive denial of legitimacy than discursively stripping individuals and groups of their humanity (their most fundamental status) and their right to existence (their most fundamental right as living beings). The Forum comes perilously close to casting the Other as Agamben’s homo sacer, humans who live in a “state of exception”, subject to the state’s power but excluded from the law’s protection and able to be killed without consequence (Lechte and Newman 524). While it would be hyperbole to push this comparison too far—given Agamben had concentration camps in mind—the state of exception as a means of both excluding a group from society and exercising control over its life does resonate here.Themes Underlying PunitivenessOur findings indicate the theme most salient to punitive discussion is citizenship, rooted in persistent concerns over who is perceived to have it, who is not, and what should be done about those Others whose deviance renders their citizenship less legitimate. Citizenship norms—real or aspirational—of society’s dominant groups constitute the standards by which Forum members judge their experiences of and with crime, perceived offenders, the criminal justice system, and the state. However, Forum members do not claim a straightforward belonging to and sharing in the maintenance of the polity. Analysis of the data suggests Forum members consider their legitimate citizenship tainted by external forces such as politics, untrustworthy authorities and institutions, and the unconstrained excess of the illegitimate Other. That is, they perceive their citizenship to be simultaneously legitimate and undeservedly subaltern.According to Gramsci, subaltern populations are subordinate to dominant groups in political and civil society, lulled by hegemonic norms to cooperate in their own oppression (Green 2). Civil society supports the authority of political society and, in return, political society uses the law and criminal justice system to safeguard civil society’s interests against unruly subalterns (Green 7). Rights and responsibilities of citizenship reside within the mutual relationship between political and civil society. Subalternity, by definition, exists outside this relationship, or with limited access to it.Forum members position themselves as citizens within civil society. They lay emphatic claim to fulfilling their responsibilities as neoliberal citizens. However, they perceive themselves to be denied the commensurate rights: they cannot rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from the illegitimate Other. The courts are “soft”, and prisons are “camps” with “revolving doors”. Authorities pamper offenders while doing nothing to stop them from hurting their victims. Human rights are viewed as an imposition by the UN or as policy flowing from a political sphere lacking integrity and dominated by “do gooders”. Rights are reserved only for offenders. Legitimate citizens no longer even have the right to defend themselves. The perceived result is a transfer of rights from legitimate to illegitimate, from deserving to undeserving. This process elides from view the actual subalterns of Australian society—here, most particularly Indigenous people and the socioeconomically vulnerable—and reconstructs them as oppressors of the dominant group, who are reframed as legitimate citizens unjustly made subaltern.The Violence in PunitivenessOn the Forum, as in the broader world, a sense of “white victimisation”—the view, unsupported by history or evidence, that whites are an oppressed people within a structure systematically doling out advantage to minorities (King 89)—is a recurrent legitimising argument for punitiveness and vigilantism. Amid the shrinking social safety nets and employment precarity of neoliberal capitalism, competitiveness increases, and white identity forms around perceived threats to power and status incurred by “losing out” to minorities (Sacks and Lindholm 131). One 2011 study finds a majority of white US citizens believe themselves subject to more racism than black people (King 89). However, these assumptions of whiteness tend to be spared critical examination because, in white-dominated societies, whiteness is the common-sense norm in opposition to which other racial categories are defined (Petray and Collin 2). When whiteness is made the focus of critical questioning, white identities gain salience and imaginings of the “dark other” and besieged white virtues intensify (Bonilla-Silva et al. 232).With respect to feelings of punitiveness, Unnever and Cullen (118-19) find that the social cause for punitiveness in the United States is hostility towards other races, that harsh punishments, including the death penalty, are demanded and accepted by the dominant group because they are perceived to mostly injure “people they do not like” (Unnever and Cullen 119). Moreover, perception that a racial group is inherently criminal amplifies more generalised prejudices against them and diminishes the capacity of the dominant group to feel empathy for suffering inflicted upon them by the criminal justice system (Unnever and Cullen 120).While our analysis of the Forum supports these findings where they touch on crimes committed by Indigenous people, they invite a question. Why, where race is not a factor, do youths and the socioeconomically disadvantaged also inspire intensely violent punitiveness as described above? We argue that the answer relates to status. From this perspective, race becomes one of several categories of differentiation from legitimate citizenship through an ascription of low status.Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron (29) contend punitiveness, with respect to specific offences, varies according to the symbolic meaning the offence holds for the observer. Crimes understood as a transgression against status or power inspire a need for “revenge, punishment, and stigmatisation” (Wenzel et al. 41) and justify an increase in the punitiveness required (Wenzel et al. 29, 34). This is particularly true where an offence is deemed to make someone unfit for community membership, such that severe punishment serves as a symbolic marker of exile and a reaffirmation for the community of the violated values and norms (Wenzel et al. 41). Indeed, as noted, Forum posts regularly call for offenders to be removed from society, exiled to the outback, or shipped beyond Australia’s territorial waters.Further, Forum members’ perception of subaltern citizenship, with its assumption of legitimate citizenship as being threatened by undeserving Others, makes them view crime as implicitly a matter of status transgression. This is intensified by perception that the political sphere and criminal justice system are failing legitimate citizens, refusing even to let them defend themselves. Virulent name-calling and comparisons to animals can be understood as attempts by the group to symbolically curtail the undeservedly higher status granted to offenders by weak governments and courts. More violent demands for punishment symbolically remove offenders from citizenship, reaffirm citizen values, and vent anger at a political and criminal justice system deemed complicit, through weakness, in reducing legitimate citizens to subaltern citizens.ConclusionsIn this essay, we highlight the extreme violence we found in our analysis of an extensive online crime forum in a regional Australian city. We explore some explanations for violent public punitiveness, highlighting how members identify themselves as subaltern citizens in a battle against undeserving Others, with no support from a weak state. This analysis centres community norms and a problematic conception of citizenship as drivers of both public punitiveness and dissatisfaction with crime control policy and the criminal justice system. We highlight a real dissonance between community needs and public policy that may undermine effective policymaking. That is, evidence-based crime control policies, successful crime prevention initiatives, and falling crime rates may not increase public satisfaction with how crime is dealt with if policymakers pursue those measures without regard for how citizens experience the process.While studies such as that by Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron identify differences in status between legitimate citizens and offenders as amplifiers of punitiveness, we suggest the amplification may be mediated by the status relationship between legitimate citizens and authority figures within legitimate society. The offender and their crime may not contribute as much to the public’s outrage as commonly assumed. Instead, public punitiveness may predominantly arise from the perception that the political sphere, media, and criminal justice system respond to citizens’ experience of crime in ways that devalue the status of legitimate citizens. At least in the context of this regional city, this points to something other than successful crime control being integral to building more effective and satisfactory crime control policy: in this case, the need to rebuild trust between citizens and authority groups.ReferencesBonilla-Silva, Eduardo, Carla Goar, and David G. 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