Добірка наукової літератури з теми "Harvard Student Agencies"

Introduction I think the Privacy Act is a huge edifice to protect the minority of things that could go wrong. I’ve got a good example for you, I’m just trying to think … yeah the worst one I’ve ever seen was the Balga Youth Program where we took these students on a reward excursion all the way to Fremantle and suddenly this very alienated kid started to jump under a bus, a moving bus so the kid had to be restrained. The cops from Fremantle arrived because all the very good people in Fremantle were alarmed at these grown-ups manhandling a kid and what had happened is that DCD [Department of Community Development] had dropped him into the program but hadn’t told us that this kid had suicide tendencies. No, it’s just chronically bad. And there were caseworkers involved and … there is some information that we have to have that doesn’t get handed down. Rather than a blanket rule that everything’s confidential coming from them to us, and that was a real live situation, and you imagine how we’re trying to handle it, we had taxis going from Balga to Fremantle to get staff involved and we only had to know what to watch out for and we probably could have … well what you would have done is not gone on the excursion I suppose (School Principal, quoted in Balnaves and Luca 49). These comments are from a school principal in Perth, Western Australia in a school that is concerned with “at-risk” students, and in a context where the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 has imposed limitations on their work. Under this Act it is illegal to pass health, personal or sensitive information concerning an individual on to other people. In the story cited above the Department of Community Development personnel were apparently protecting the student’s “negative right”, that is, “freedom from” interference by others. On the other hand, the principal’s assertion that such information should be shared is potentially a “positive right” because it could cause something to be done in that person’s or society’s interests. Balnaves and Luca noted that positive and negative rights have complex philosophical underpinnings, and they inform much of how we operate in everyday life and of the dilemmas that arise (49). For example, a ban on euthanasia or the “assisted suicide” of a terminally ill person can be a “positive right” because it is considered to be in the best interests of society in general. However, physicians who tacitly approve a patient’s right to end their lives with a lethal dose by legally prescribed dose of medication could be perceived as protecting the patient’s “negative right” as a “freedom from” interference by others. While acknowledging the merits of collaboration between people who are working to improve the wellbeing of students “at-risk”, this paper examines some of the barriers to collaboration. Based on both primary and secondary sources, and particularly on oral testimonies, the paper highlights the tension between privacy as a negative right and collaborative helping as a positive right. It also points to other difficulties and dilemmas within and between the institutions engaged in this joint undertaking. The authors acknowledge Michel Foucault’s contention that discourse is power. The discourse on privacy and the sharing of information in modern societies suggests that privacy is a negative right that gives freedom from bureaucratic interference and protects the individual. However, arguably, collaboration between agencies that are working to support individuals “at-risk” requires a measured relaxation of the requirements of this negative right. Children and young people “at-risk” are a case in point. Towards Collaboration From a series of interviews conducted in 2004, the school authorities at Balga Senior High School and Midvale Primary School, people working for the Western Australian departments of Community Development, Justice, and Education and Training in Western Australia, and academics at the Edith Cowan and Curtin universities, who are working to improve the wellbeing of students “at-risk” as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) project called Smart Communities, have identified students “at-risk” as individuals who have behavioural problems and little motivation, who are alienated and possibly violent or angry, who under-perform in the classroom and have begun to truant. They noted also that students “at-risk” often suffer from poor health, lack of food and medication, are victims of unwanted pregnancies, and are engaged in antisocial and illegal behaviour such as stealing cars and substance abuse. These students are also often subject to domestic violence (parents on drugs or alcohol), family separation, and homelessness. Some are depressed or suicidal. Sometimes cultural factors contribute to students being regarded as “at-risk”. For example, a social worker in the Smart Communities project stated: Cultural factors sometimes come into that as well … like with some Muslim families … they can flog their daughter or their son, usually the daughter … so cultural factors can create a risk. Research elsewhere has revealed that those children between the ages of 11-17 who have been subjected to bullying at school or physical or sexual abuse at home and who have threatened and/or harmed another person or suicidal are “high-risk” youths (Farmer 4). In an attempt to bring about a positive change in these alienated or “at-risk” adolescents, Balga Senior High School has developed several programs such as the Youth Parents Program, Swan Nyunger Sports Education program, Intensive English Centre, and lower secondary mainstream program. The Midvale Primary School has provided services such as counsellors, Aboriginal child protection workers, and Aboriginal police liaison officers for these “at-risk” students. On the other hand, the Department of Community Development (DCD) has provided services to parents and caregivers for children up to 18 years. Academics from Edith Cowan and Curtin universities are engaged in gathering the life stories of these “at-risk” students. One aspect of this research entails the students writing their life stories in a secured web portal that the universities have developed. The researchers believe that by engaging the students in these self-exploration activities, they (the students) would develop a more hopeful outlook on life. Though all agencies and educational institutions involved in this collaborative project are working for the well-being of the children “at-risk”, the Privacy Act forbids the authorities from sharing information about them. A school psychologist expressed concern over the Privacy Act: When the Juvenile Justice Department want to reintroduce a student into a school, we can’t find out anything about this student so we can’t do any preplanning. They want to give the student a fresh start, so there’s always that tension … eventually everyone overcomes [this] because you realise that the student has to come to the school and has to be engaged. Of course, the manner and consequences of a student’s engagement in school cannot be predicted. In the scenario described above students may have been given a fair chance to reform themselves, which is their positive right but if they turn out to be at “high risk” it would appear that the Juvenile Department protected the negative right of the students by supporting “freedom from” interference by others. Likewise, a school health nurse in the project considered confidentiality or the Privacy Act an important factor in the security of the student “at-risk”: I was trying to think about this kid who’s one of the children who has been sexually abused, who’s a client of DCD, and I guess if police got involved there and wanted to know details and DCD didn’t want to give that information out then I’d guess I’d say to the police “Well no, you’ll have to talk to the parents about getting further information.” I guess that way, recognising these students are minor and that they are very vulnerable, their information … where it’s going, where is it leading? Who wants to know? Where will it be stored? What will be the outcomes in the future for this kid? As a 14 year old, if they’re reckless and get into things, you know, do they get a black record against them by the time they’re 19? What will that information be used for if it’s disclosed? So I guess I become an advocate for the student in that way? Thus the nurse considers a sexually abused child should not be identified. It is a positive right in the interest of the person. Once again, though, if the student turns out to be at “high risk” or suicidal, then it would appear that the nurse was protecting the youth’s negative right—“freedom from” interference by others. Since collaboration is a positive right and aims at the students’ welfare, the workable solution to prevent the students from suicide would be to develop inter-agency trust and to share vital information about “high-risk” students. Dilemmas of Collaboration Some recent cases of the deaths of young non-Caucasian girls in Western countries, either because of the implications of the Privacy Act or due to a lack of efficient and effective communication and coordination amongst agencies, have raised debates on effective child protection. For example, the British Laming report (2003) found that Victoria Climbié, a young African girl, was sent by her parents to her aunt in Britain in order to obtain a good education and was murdered by her aunt and aunt’s boyfriend. However, the risk that she could be harmed was widely known. The girl’s problems were known to 6 local authorities, 3 housing authorities, 4 social services, 2 child protection teams, and the police, the local church, and the hospital, but not to the education authorities. According to the Laming Report, her death could have been prevented if there had been inter-agency sharing of information and appropriate evaluation (Balnaves and Luca 49). The agencies had supported the negative rights of the young girl’s “freedom from” interference by others, but at the cost of her life. Perhaps Victoria’s racial background may have contributed to the concealment of information and added to her disadvantaged position. Similarly, in Western Australia, the Gordon Inquiry into the death of Susan Taylor, a 15 year old girl Aboriginal girl at the Swan Nyungah Community, found that in her short life this girl had encountered sexual violation, violence, and the ravages of alcohol and substance abuse. The Gordon Inquiry reported: Although up to thirteen different agencies were involved in providing services to Susan Taylor and her family, the D[epartment] of C[ommunity] D[evelopment] stated they were unaware of “all the services being provided by each agency” and there was a lack of clarity as to a “lead coordinating agency” (Gordon et al. quoted in Scott 45). In this case too, multiple factors—domestic, racial, and the Privacy Act—may have led to Susan Taylor’s tragic end. In the United Kingdom, Harry Ferguson noted that when a child is reported to be “at-risk” from domestic incidents, they can suffer further harm because of their family’s concealment (204). Ferguson’s study showed that in 11 per cent of the 319 case sample, children were known to be re-harmed within a year of initial referral. Sometimes, the parents apply a veil of secrecy around themselves and their children by resisting or avoiding services. In such cases the collaborative efforts of the agencies and education may be thwarted. Lack of cultural education among teachers, youth workers, and agencies could also put the “at-risk” cultural minorities into a high risk category. For example, an “at-risk” Muslim student may not be willing to share personal experiences with the school or agencies because of religious sensitivities. This happened in the UK when Khadji Rouf was abused by her father, a Bangladeshi. Rouf’s mother, a white woman, and her female cousin from Bangladesh, both supported Rouf when she finally disclosed that she had been sexually abused for over eight years. After group therapy, Rouf stated that she was able to accept her identity and to call herself proudly “mixed race”, whereas she rejected the Asian part of herself because it represented her father. Other Asian girls and young women in this study reported that they could not disclose their abuse to white teachers or social workers because of the feeling that they would be “letting down their race or their Muslim culture” (Rouf 113). The marginalisation of many Muslim Australians both in the job market and in society is long standing. For example, in 1996 and again in 2001 the Muslim unemployment rate was three times higher than the national total (Australian Bureau of Statistics). But since the 9/11 tragedy and Bali bombings visible Muslims, such as women wearing hijabs (headscarves), have sometimes been verbally and physically abused and called ‘terrorists’ by some members of the wider community (Dreher 13). The Howard government’s new anti-terrorism legislation and the surveillance hotline ‘Be alert not alarmed’ has further marginalised some Muslims. Some politicians have also linked Muslim asylum seekers with terrorists (Kabir 303), which inevitably has led Muslim “at-risk” refugee students to withdraw from school support such as counselling. Under these circumstances, Muslim “at-risk” students and their parents may prefer to maintain a low profile rather than engage with agencies. In this case, arguably, federal government politics have exacerbated the barriers to collaboration. It appears that unfamiliarity with Muslim culture is not confined to mainstream Australians. For example, an Aboriginal liaison police officer engaged in the Smart Communities project in Western Australia had this to say about Muslim youths “at-risk”: Different laws and stuff from different countries and they’re coming in and sort of thinking that they can bring their own laws and religions and stuff … and when I say religions there’s laws within their religions as well that they don’t seem to understand that with Australia and our laws. Such generalised misperceptions of Muslim youths “at-risk” would further alienate them, thus causing a major hindrance to collaboration. The “at-risk” factors associated with Aboriginal youths have historical connections. Research findings have revealed that indigenous youths aged between 10-16 years constitute a vast majority in all Australian States’ juvenile detention centres. This over-representation is widely recognised as associated with the nature of European colonisation, and is inter-related with poverty, marginalisation and racial discrimination (Watson et al. 404). Like the Muslims, their unemployment rate was three times higher than the national total in 2001 (ABS). However, in 1998 it was estimated that suicide rates among Indigenous peoples were at least 40 per cent higher than national average (National Advisory Council for Youth Suicide Prevention, quoted in Elliot-Farrelly 2). Although the wider community’s unemployment rate is much lower than the Aboriginals and the Muslims, the “at-risk” factors of mainstream Australian youths are often associated with dysfunctional families, high conflict, low-cohesive families, high levels of harsh parental discipline, high levels of victimisation by peers, and high behavioural inhibition (Watson et al. 404). The Macquarie Fields riots in 2005 revealed the existence of “White” underclass and “at-risk” people in Sydney. Macquarie Fields’ unemployment rate was more than twice the national average. Children growing up in this suburb are at greater risk of being involved in crime (The Age). Thus small pockets of mainstream underclass youngsters also require collaborative attention. In Western Australia people working on the Smart Communities project identified that lack of resources can be a hindrance to collaboration for all sectors. As one social worker commented: “government agencies are hierarchical systems and lack resources”. They went on to say that in their department they can not give “at-risk” youngsters financial assistance in times of crisis: We had a petty cash box which has got about 40 bucks in it and sometimes in an emergency we might give a customer a couple of dollars but that’s all we can do, we can’t give them any larger amount. We have bus/metro rail passes, that’s the only thing that we’ve actually got. A youth worker in Smart Communities commented that a lot of uncertainty is involved with young people “at-risk”. They said that there are only a few paid workers in their field who are supported and assisted by “a pool of volunteers”. Because the latter give their time voluntarily they are under no obligation to be constant in their attendance, so the number of available helpers can easily fluctuate. Another youth worker identified a particularly important barrier to collaboration: because of workers’ relatively low remuneration and high levels of work stress, the turnover rates are high. The consequence of this is as follows: The other barrier from my point is that you’re talking to somebody about a student “at-risk”, and within 14 months or 18 months a new person comes in [to that position] then you’ve got to start again. This way you miss a lot of information [which could be beneficial for the youth]. Conclusion The Privacy Act creates a dilemma in that it can be either beneficial or counter-productive for a student’s security. To be blunt, a youth who has suicided might have had their privacy protected, but not their life. Lack of funding can also be a constraint on collaboration by undermining stability and autonomy in the workforce, and blocking inter-agency initiatives. Lack of awareness about cultural differences can also affect unity of action. The deepening inequality between the “haves” and “have-nots” in the Australian society, and the Howard government’s harshness on national security issues, can also pose barriers to collaboration on youth issues. Despite these exigencies and dilemmas, it would seem that collaboration is “the only game” when it comes to helping students “at-risk”. To enhance this collaboration, there needs to be a sensible modification of legal restrictions to information sharing, an increase in government funding and support for inter-agency cooperation and informal information sharing, and an increased awareness about the cultural needs of minority groups and knowledge of the mainstream underclass. Acknowledgments The research is part of a major Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project, Smart Communities. The authors very gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the interviewees, and thank *Donald E. Scott for conducting the interviews. References Australian Bureau of Statistics. 1996 and 2001. Balnaves, Mark, and Joe Luca. “The Impact of Digital Persona on the Future of Learning: A Case Study on Digital Repositories and the Sharing of Information about Children At-Risk in Western Australia”, paper presented at Ascilite, Brisbane (2005): 49-56. 10 April 2006. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/brisbane05/blogs/proceedings/ 06_Balnaves.pdf>. Dreher, Tanya. ‘Targeted’: Experiences of Racism in NSW after September 11, 2001. Sydney: University of Technology, 2005. Elliot-Farrelly, Terri. “Australian Aboriginal Suicide: The Need for an Aboriginal Suicidology”? Australian e-Journal for the Advancement of Mental Health, 3.3 (2004): 1-8. 15 April 2006 http://www.auseinet.com/journal/vol3iss3/elliottfarrelly.pdf>. Farmer, James. A. High-Risk Teenagers: Real Cases and Interception Strategies with Resistant Adolescents. Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas, 1990. Ferguson, Harry. Protecting Children in Time: Child Abuse, Child Protection and the Consequences of Modernity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon et al. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Kabir, Nahid. Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History. London: Kegan Paul, 2005. Rouf, Khadji. “Myself in Echoes. My Voice in Song.” Ed. A. Bannister, et al. Listening to Children. London: Longman, 1990. Scott E. Donald. “Exploring Communication Patterns within and across a School and Associated Agencies to Increase the Effectiveness of Service to At-Risk Individuals.” MS Thesis, Curtin University of Technology, August 2005. The Age. “Investing in People Means Investing in the Future.” The Age 5 March, 2005. 15 April 2006 http://www.theage.com.au>. Watson, Malcolm, et al. “Pathways to Aggression in Children and Adolescents.” Harvard Educational Review, 74.4 (Winter 2004): 404-428. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid, and Mark Balnaves. "Students “at Risk”: Dilemmas of Collaboration." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/04-kabirbalnaves.php>. APA Style Kabir, N., and M. Balnaves. (May 2006) "Students “at Risk”: Dilemmas of Collaboration," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/04-kabirbalnaves.php>.

This article uses a case study of a Melbourne-based youth media project called Youthworx to explore the processes at stake in cultural engagement for marginalised young people. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2010, I identify some ways in which the city is implicated in promoting or preventing access to socially valued spaces of creativity and intended social mobility. The ethnographic material presented here has both empirical and theoretical value. It reveals the important relationships between the experience of place, creativity, and social life, demonstrating potentialities and limits of creativity-focused development interventions for marginalised youth. The articulation of these relationships and processes taking place within a particular city setting has theoretical implications. It opens up an opportunity to consider "suburbs" as enacted by specific forms of access, contingencies, and opportunities for a particular demographic, rather than treating "suburbs" as abstract, analytical constructs. Finally, my empirically grounded discussion draws attention to cultural and social consequences that inhabiting certain social worlds and acts of travelling "to and beyond" them have for young people. Youthworx is a community-based youth media initiative employing pathway-based semi-formal creative practices to re-engage young people who have a history of drug or alcohol abuse or juvenile justice, who have been long disconnected from mainstream education, or who are homeless. The focus on media production allows it to tap into, and in fact leverage, popular creativity, tacit knowledge, and familiar media-based activities that young people bring to bear on their media training and work in this context. Underpinned by social and creative industry policy, Youthworx brings together social service agency The Salvation Army (TSA), educational provider Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT), youth community media organisation SYN Media, and researchers at Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University. Its day-to-day operation is run by contractual, part-time media facilitators, social workers (as part of TSA’s in-kind support), as well as media industry experts who provide casual media training. Youthworx is characterised by the diversity of its young demographic. One can differentiate between at least two groups of participants: those who join Youthworx because of the social opportunities, and those who put more value on its skill-development, or vocational creative industries orientation. This social organisation is, however, far from static. Over the two years of research (2008-2010) we observed evolving ideas about the identity of the program, its key social functions, and how they can be best served. This had proceeded with the construction of what the Youthworx staff term "a community of safe belonging" to a more "serious" media work environment, exemplified by the establishment of a social enterprise (Youthworx Productions) in 2010 that offers paid traineeships to the most capable and determined young creators. To accommodate the diversity of literacy levels, needs, and aspirations of its young participants, the project offers a tailored media education program with a mix of diversionary, educational, and commercial objectives. One-on-one media training sessions, accredited courses in Creative Industries (Media), and industry training within Youthworx Productions are provided to help young people develop a range of skills transferable into a variety of personal, social and professional contexts. Its creative studio, where learning occurs, is located in a former jeans factory warehouse in the heart of an industrial area of Melbourne’s northern inner-city suburb of Brunswick. Young people are referred to Youthworx by a range of social agencies, and they travel to Brunswick from across Melbourne. Some participants are known to spend over three hours commuting from outer suburbs such as Frankston or even regional towns such as King Lake. Unlike community-based creative programs reliant on established community structures within local suburbs (for example, ICE in Western Sydney), Youthworx moved into Tinning Street in Brunswick because its industry partner—The Salvation Army—had existing youth service infrastructure there. The program, however, was not tapping into an existing media “community of practice” (Lane and Wenger); it had to forge its own culture of media participation. In the early days of the program, there were necessary material resources and professional expertise (teachers/social workers/a creative venue), but it took a long while, and a high level of dedication, passion, and practical optimism on the part of the project managers and teaching staff, for young people to genuinely engage in media training and production. Now, Youthworx’s creative space is a “practised place” in de Certeau’s sense. As “the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers” (De Certeau 117), so is the Youthworx space produced by practices of media learning and making by professional creative practitioners and young amateur creators (Raffo; for ideas on institutionalised co-creative practice see Spurgeon et al.). The Brunswick location is where our extensive ethnographic research has taken place, including regular participant observation and qualitative interviews with staff and young participants. The ethnographers frequently travelled with young people to other locations within Melbourne, accompanying them on their trips to youth community radio station SYN Media in the CBD, where they produce a weekly radio show, as well as to film shoots and public social events around the city. As an access learning program for marginalised youth from around Melbourne, Youthworx provides an interesting example to explore how the concerns of material and cultural capital, geographic and cultural distance intersect and shape processes of creative participation and social inclusion. I draw on our ethnographic material to illustrate how these metonymic relationships play out in the ways young participants “travel distance” (Dewson et. al.) on the project and across the city, both figuratively and literally. The idea of “distance travelled” is adapted here from evaluation literature (for other relevant references see Dowmunt et al.; Hayes and Edwards; Holdsworth et al.), and builds on the argument made previously (Podkalicka and Staley 5), to encompass both the geographical mobility and cultural transformation that young people are supported to undergo as an intended outcome of their involvement in Youthworx. This paper also takes inspiration from ethnographic approaches that study a productive and transformative relationship between material culture, spatial geography and processes of identity formation (see Miller). What happens to Youthworx young participants as they travel in a trivial, and at first sight perhaps inconsequential, way between the suburbs they live in, the Youthworx Brunswick location and the city is both experientially real and meaningful. “Suburban space” is then a cultural site that simultaneously refers to concrete, literal places as well as “a state of mind”—that is, identification and connections that are generative of a sense of identity and belonging (Ferber et al.). Youthworx is an intermediary point on these young people’s travels, rather than the final destination (Podkalicka and Staley 5). It provides access to various forms of new spatial, social, and creative experiences and modes of expression. Creating opportunities for highly disenfranchised young people to access and develop new social and creative experiences is an important aspect of Youthworx’s developmental agenda, and is played out at both philosophical and practical levels. On the one hand, a strength-based approach to youth work assumes respect for young people’s potential and knowledges—unlike public discourses that deny them agency due to an assumed lack of life experience (e.g., Poletti). In addition to the material provision of "food and shelter" typical of traditional social work, attention is paid the higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy of human needs, with creativity, self-esteem, and social connectedness at the top of the scale (see also Podkalicka and Campbell; Podkalicka and Thomas). Former Manager of The Salvation Army’s Brunswick Youth Services (BYS)—one of Youthworx’s partners—Craig Campbell argues: Things like truth and beauty are a higher order of dreams for these kids. And by truth I don’t mean the simple lies that can be told to get them out of trouble [but] is there a greater truth to life than a grinding existence in the impoverished neighbourhood, is there something like beauty and aesthetics that wakes us up in the morning and calls a larger life out of us? Most of those kids only faintly dream of such a thing, and this dream is rapidly being extinguished under the weight of drugs and alcohol, abusive family systems, savage interaction with law and justice system, and education as a toxic environment and experience. (Campbell) Campbell's articulate reflection captures the way the Youthworx project has been conceived. It is also a pertinent example of the many reflections on experience and practice at Youthworx that were recorded in my fieldwork, which illustrate the way these kinds of social projects can be understood, interpreted and evaluated. The following personal narrative and contextual description introduce some of the important issues at stake. (The names and other personal details of young people have been changed.) Nineteen-year-old Dave is temporarily staying in an inner-city refuge. Normally, however, like most Youthworx participants, he lives in Broadmeadows, a far northern suburb of Melbourne. To get to Brunswick, where he does his accredited media course three days a week, he either catches a train or waits for a mini-bus to drive him there. The early-morning pick-up for about ten young people is organised by the program’s partner—The Salvation Army. At the Youthworx creative studio, located in the heart of Brunswick, right next to railway tracks, young people produce an array of media products: live and pre-recorded radio programs, digital storytelling, mini-documentaries, and original music. Once at Youthworx, they share the local neighbourhood with other artists who have adapted warehouses into art workshops, studios and galleries. The suburb of Brunswick is well-known for its multicultural profile, a combination of industrial and residential estates, high rates of tertiary students due to its proximity to universities, and its place in the recent history of urban gentrification. However, Youthworx participants don’t seek out or engage with the existing, physically proximate creative base, even within the same street. On a couple of occasions, the opposite has been the case: Youthworx students have been involved in acts of vandalism of local residents’ property, including nearby parked cars. Their connections to the Brunswick neighbourhood remain poor, often reflecting their low social capital as a result of unstable residential situations, isolation, and fraught relationships with family. From Brunswick, they often travel to the city on their own, wander around, sit on the steps of Flinders Street train station—an inner-city hub and popular meeting place for locals and tourists alike. Youthworx plays an important role in these young people’s lives, as an important access point to not only creative digital media-based experiences and skill development, but also to greater and basic geographical mobility and experiences within the city. As one of the students commented: They are giving us chances that we wouldn’t usually get. Every day you’re getting to a place, where it’s pretty damn easy to get into; that’s what’s good about it. There are so many places where you have to do so much to get there and half the time, some people don’t even have the bloody bus ticket to get a [job] interview. But [at Youthworx/BYS], they will pick you up and drive you around if you need it. They are friends. It is reportedly a common practice for many young people at Youthworx and BYS to catch a train or a tram (rather than bus) without paying for a ticket. However, to be caught dodging a fare a few times has legal consequences and young people often face court as a result. The program responds by offering its young participants tickets for public transport, ready for pick-up after afternoon activities, or, if possible, "driving them around"—as some young people told me. The program’s social workers revealed that girls are particularly afraid to travel on their own, especially when catching trains to the outer northern suburbs, for fear of being harassed or attacked. These supported travels are as practical and necessary as they are meaningful for young people’s identity formation, and as such are recognised and built into the project’s design, co-ordination and delivery. At the most basic level, The Salvation Army’s social workers pick young people up from the Broadmeadows area in the mornings. Youthworx creative practitioners assist young people to make trips to SYN Media in the city. For most participants, this is either the first or sporadic experience of travelling to the city, something they enjoy very much but are also somewhat daunted by. Additionally, as part of the curriculum, Youthworx staff make a point of taking young people to inner-city movie theatres or public media events. The following vignette from the fieldwork highlights another important connection between physical journey and creative expression. There is an excitement in Dave’s voice when he talks about his favourite pastime: hanging out around the city. “Why would you walk around the streets?” a curious female friend interjects. Dave replies: “No, it’s not the streets, man. It’s just Federation Square, everywhere … There is just all these young wannabe criminals and shit. People don’t know what goes on; and I want to do a doco on the city, a little doco of the people there, because I know a lot of it.” Dave’s interest in exploring the city may be interpreted as a rather common, mundane routine shared by mildly adventurous adolescents of all walks. And yet, there is much more at stake in his account, and for Youthworx young participants more generally. As mentioned before, for many of these young people, it is the first opportunity to travel to the city. This experience then is crucial in a sense of self-exploration and self-discovery. As they overcome their fear of venturing out into the city on their own, they also learn that they have knowledge which others might lack. This moment of realisation is significant and empowering, and they want to communicate this knowledge to others. Youthworx assists them in learning how to translate this knowledge in a creative and constructive way, through an expression that weaves between the free individual and the social voice constructed to enable a dialogue or understanding (Podkalicka; Podkalicka and Campbell; Podkalicka and Thomas; also Soep and Chavez). For an effective communication to occur, a crafted social voice requires skills and a critical awareness of oneself and an audience, which is very different from the modes of expression that these young people might have accessed previously. Youthworx's young participants draw heavily on their life experiences, geographical locations, the suburbs they come from, and places they visit in the city: their cultural productions often reference their homes, music clubs and hang-out venues, inner city streets, Federation Square, and Youthworx’s immediate physical surroundings, with graffiti-covered narrow alleys and railway tracks. The frequent depiction of Youthworx in young people’s creative outputs is often a token of appreciation of the creative, educational and social opportunities it has offered them. Social and professional connections they make there are found to be very valuable. The existing creative industries literature emphasises the importance of social networks to existing communities of interest and practice for human capacity building. Value is argued to lie not only in specific content produced, but in participatory processes that establish a link between personal growth, individual skills and social and professional networks (Hearn and Bridgestock). In a similar vein, Carlo Raffo uses Granovetter’s concept of “weak ties” to suggest that access to “social relations that go beyond the immediate locality and hence their immediate experiences” can provide marginalised young people with “pathways for authentic and informal learning that go beyond the structuring influences of class, gender and ethnicity and into new and emerging economic experiences” (Raffo 11). But higher levels of confidence or social skills are required to make the most of vocational or professional opportunities beyond the supportive context of Youthworx. Connections between Youthworx participants and other creative practitioners within the creative locality of Brunswick have been absent thus far. Transitions into mainstream education and employment have also proven challenging for this group of heavily marginalised youth. As we found during our ongoing fieldwork, even the most talented students find it hard to get into mainstream education courses, or to get or keep jobs. The project serves as a social basis for young people to develop self-agency and determination so they can start engaging with new opportunities and social networks outside the program (Raffo 15). Indeed, the creative practitioners at Youthworx are key facilitators of connections between young people and the external world. They act as positive role models socially, and illustrate what is possible professionally in terms of media excellence and employment (see also Raffo). There are indications that this very supportive, gradual process of social learning is starting to bear fruit for individual students and the Youthworx community as a whole as they grow more confident with themselves, in interactions with others, and the media work they do. Media projects such as Youthworx are examples of what Leadbeater and Wong call “disruptive innovation,” as they provide new ways of learning for those alienated by formal education. The use of digital hands-on media production makes educational processes relevant and engaging for young people. However, as I demonstrate in this paper, there are tangible, material barriers to releasing creativity, or enhancing self-discovery and sociality. There are, as Leadbeater and Wong observe, persistent links between cultural environment, socio-economic status, corresponding attitudes to learning and educational success in the developed world. In the UK, for example, only small percent of those from the lowest socio-economic background go to university (Leadbeater and Wong 10). Youthworx provides an opportunity and motivation for young people to break a cycle of individual self-destructive behaviour (e.g. getting locked up every 6 months), intergenerational reliance on welfare, or entrenched negative attitudes to learning. At the basic level, it encourages and often insists that young people get up in the morning, with social workers often reporting to have to “knock at people’s houses and get them ready.” The involvement in Youthworx is often an important reason to start delineating between day and night, week and weekend. A couple of students commented: I slept a lot. Yeah, I was always sleeping during the day and out at night; I could have still been doing nothing with my life [were it not for Youthworx]. Now people ask if I want to go out during the week, and I just can’t be bothered. I just want to sleep and then go to [Youthworx] and then weekends are when you go out. It also offers a concrete means to begin exploring the city beyond the constraints of their local suburbs. This literal, geographical mobility is interlocked with potential for a changed perception of opportunities, individual transformation and, consequently, social mobility. Dave, as we have seen, is attracted to the idea of exploring the city but also has creative aspirations, and contemplates professional prospects in the creative industries. It is important to note that the participants are resilient in their negotiation between the suburban, Youthworx and inner city worlds they can inhabit. Accessing learning, despite previous negative schooling experiences, is for many of them very important, and reaffirming of life they aspire to. An opportunity to pursue dreams, creative forms of expression, social networks and education is a vital part of human existence. These aspects of social inclusion are recognised in the current articulation of social policy reconceptualised beyond material, economic equality. Creative industry policy, on the other hand, is concerned with fostering creative outputs and skills to generate engagement and employment opportunities in the knowledge-based economies for wide sections of the population. The value is located in human capacity building, involving basic social as well as vocational skills, and links to social networks. The Youthworx project merges these two policy frameworks of the social and creative to test in practice new collaborative approaches to youth development. The spatial and cultural practices of young people described here serve a basis for proposing a theoretical framework that can help understand the term "suburb" in an intrinsically relational, grounded way. The relationships at stake in cultural and social participation for marginalised young people lead me to suggest that the concept of ‘suburb’ takes on two tightly interwoven meanings. The first refers symbolically to a particular locale for popular creativity (Burgess) or even marginal creativity by a group of young people living at the periphery of the social system. The second meaning refers to the interlocked forms of material and cultural capital (and distance), as theorised in Bourdieu’s work (e.g., Bourdieu). It includes physical, spatial conditions and relations, as well as cultural resources and possibilities made available to young participants by the project (e.g., the instituted, supported travel across the city, or the employment of creative practitioners), and interlinked with everyday dispositions, practices, and status of young people (e.g., taste). This empirically-grounded discussion allows to theorise ‘suburbs’ as perceived and socially enacted by concrete, relational forms of access, contingencies, and opportunities for a particular demographic, rather than analytically pre-conceived, designated spaces within an urban system. The ethnographic material reveals that cultural participation for marginalised youth requires an integrated approach, with a parallel focus on material and creative opportunities made available within creative sites such as Youthworx or even the Brunswick creative area. The important material constraints exemplified in this paper concern socio-economic background, cultural disadvantage and geographical isolation and point to the limits of the creative industries-based interventions to address social inclusion if carried out in isolation. They tap into the very basis of risks for this specific demographic of marginalised youth or "youth at risk." The paper suggests that the productive emphasis on the role of media and communication for (youth) development needs to be contextualised and considered along with the actual realities of everyday existence that often limit young people’s educational and vocational prospects (see Bentley et al.; Leadbeater and Wong). On the other hand, an exclusive focus on material support risks cancelling out the possibilities for positive life transitions, such as those triggered by constructive, non-reductionist engagement with “beauty, aesthetics” (Campbell) and creativity. By exploring how participation in Youthworx engenders both the physical mobility between suburbs and the city, and identity transformation, we are able to gain insights into the nature of social exclusion, its meanings for the youth involved and the project managers and staff. Thinking about Youthworx not just as a hub of creative production but as a cultural site—“a space within a practiced place of identity” (De Certeau 117) in the suburb of Brunswick—opens up a discussion that combines the policy language of opportunity and necessity with concrete creative and material possibilities. Social inclusion objectives aimed at positive youth transitions need to be considered in the light of the connection—or disconnection—between the Youthworx Brunswick site itself, young participants’ suburbs, and, by extension, the trajectory between the inner city and other spaces that young people travel through and inhabit. Acknowledgment I would like to thank all the young participants, staff and industry partners involved in the Youthworx project. I also acknowledge the comments of anonymous peer reviewer which helped to strengthen the argument by foregrounding the value of the empirical material. The paper draws on the larger project funded by the Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation. Youthworx research team includes: Prof Denise Meredyth (CI); Prof Julian Thomas (CI); Ass/Prof David MacKenzie (CI); Ass/Prof Ellie Rennie; Chris Wilson (PhD candidate), and Jon Staley (Youthworx Manager and PhD candidate). References Bentley, Tom, and Kate Oakley. “The Real Deal: What Young People Think about Government, Politics and Social Exclusion.” Demos. 12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.demos.co.uk/files/theRealdeal.pdf›. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1987. Burgess, Jean. “Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling.” Continuum 20.2 (2006): 201–14. Campbell, Craig. Personal Interview. Melbourne, 2009. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. Dewson, Sara, Judith Eccles, Nii Djan Tackey and Annabel Jackson. “Guide to Measuring Soft Outcomes and Distance Travelled.” The Institute for Employment Studies. 12 Jan. 2011‹http:// www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/distance.pdf›. Dowmunt, Tom, Mark Dunford, and N. van Hemert. Inclusion through Media. London: Open Mute, 2007. Ferber, Sarah, Chris Healy, and Chris McAuliffe. Beasts of Suburbia: Reinterpreting Cultures in Australian Suburbs. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1994. Hayes, Alan, Matthew Gray, and Ben Edwards. “Social Inclusion: Origins, Concepts and Key Themes.” Australian Institute of Family Studies, prepared for the Social Inclusion Unit, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 2008.12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.socialinclusion.gov.au/Documents/AIFS_SI_concepts_report_20April09.pdf›. Hearn, Gregory, and Ruth Bridgstock. “Education for the Creative Economy: Innovation, Transdisciplinarity, and Networks. Education in the Creative Economy: Knowledge and Learning in the Age of Innovation. Ed. Daniel Araya and Michael Peters. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. 93–116. Holdsworth, Roger, Murray Lake, Kathleen Stacey, and John Safford. “Doing Positive Things: You Have to Go Out and Do It: Outcomes for Participants in Youth Development Programs.” Australian Youth Research Centre. 12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/5385FE14-A74C-4B24-98EA-D31EEA8447B2/21803/doing_positive_things1.pdf›. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Leadbeater, Charles, and Annika Wong. “Learning from the Extremes.” CISCO. 12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.socialinclusion.gov.au/Documents/AIFS_SI_concepts_report_20April09.pdf›. Miller, Daniel. Stuff. Cambridge: Polity, 2010. Podkalicka, Aneta. “Young Listening: An Ethnography of Youthworx Media's Radio Project." Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23.4 (2009): 561–72. ———, and Jon Staley. “Youthworx Media: Creative Media Engagement for ‘at Risk’ Young People.” 3CM 5 (2009). ———, and Julian Thomas. “The Skilled Social Voice: An Experiment in Creative Economy and Communication Rights.’’ International Communication Gazette 72.4–5 (2010): 395–406. ———, and Craig Campbell. “Understanding Digital Storytelling: Beyond the Politics of Voice in Youth Participation Programs.” seminar.net: Media Technology and Lifelong Learning 6.2 (2010). ‹http://www.seminar.net/index.php/home/75-current-issue/150-understanding-digital-storytelling-individual-voice-and-community-building-in-youth-media-programs›. Poletti, Anna. Intimate Ephemera: Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008. Raffo, Carlo. "Mentoring Disenfranchised Young People: An Action Research Project on the Development of 'Weak Ties' and Social Capital Enhancement." Education and Industry in Partnership 6.3 (2000): 22–42. Soep, Elizabeth, and Vivian Chavez. Drop That Knowledge: Youth Radio Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Spurgeon, Christina, Jean Burgess, Helen Klaebe, Kelly McWilliam, Jo Tacchi, and Mimi Tsai. “Co-Creative Media: Theorising Digital Storytelling as a Platform for Researching and Developing Participatory Culture.” 2009 ANZC Conference Proceedings. 2009. 16 Nov. 2010 ‹http://eprints.qut.edu.au/25811/2/25811.pdf›.

Introduction Despite the emphasis on the theoretical definitions of the concept of “creativity“ and its impact on cities, it is still uncertain, difficult to measure and limited. Creativity and its impacts are difficult to generalise because of the multiplicity of approaches and a lack of comparative analysis. The concept of creativity and its reflection on cities represents a paradigm that brings together academics from different fields, including cultural economists, those working on economic development and innovation, sociologists, economic geographers, and urban planners. The creative economy has been associated with the knowledge economy and innovation since its onset in the 2000s and extends to the creative industries (Caves), the creative class (Florida), and creative cities (Landry; Florida et al.). Given that the term "creative" is still primarily associated with the arts and sciences, Landry points out that two major issues shape our understanding of creativity: first, the power of thoughts and ideas in shaping our mindset, and second, the significance of culture as a creative resource (Landry). Creativity is generally accepted as a critical urban phenomenon, and is viewed as one of the determining factors in the development and growth of cities. For a city to be defined as ‘creative’, it would be characterised by many aspects of ‘cultural cities’ (Scott) and ‘cities of knowledge’ (Yigitcanlar et al.). Creative industries, which provide the foundation for the production of culture and creative products, require a unique environment supported by the public sector to flourish, and they thrive on proximity and strong networks that enable information sharing and exchange. Although accepted as a crucial element of contemporary cities, the use of ‘creativity’ in city development may not be a straightforward task. Globalisation plays an important role in spotlighting creative cities as drivers of global change and innovation. The emphasis on creativity as part of the global city culture incentivises cities to focus on these activities as valuable assets. This view has been reinforced by global initiatives such as the designation of the European Capital of Culture (ECoC). City administrators view innovation and creativity as critical drivers for a more sustainable and inclusive means of urban development. This article lays out how drivers of creative output, design events, and creative industries contribute to local initiatives in the global city of Istanbul: a city that accommodates some of the most long-standing and established craft spaces as well as newly developing creative and design industries. This article provides a critical perspective on cultural frameworks from the perspective of local stakeholders and networks in Istanbul's Tomtom neighbourhood, the most invested district in terms of the city's cultural future, where creative industries are the main focus. Using the Creative Cities Network as a Creative City Identity The creative city concept is used by urban sociologists, geographers, urban planners, and economists to focus on developing a segment of society that is intertwined with the cultural and creative sphere. It represents a crucial and strategic industry for renewing the local economy and sustaining urban growth. Moreover, it has become a robust development paradigm adopted by many urban governments (d’Ovidio). The creative city, according to Costa, is a notion defined by three key elements. The first is the concept of creativity as a toolset for urban development; the second is the concept of the creative city as a collection of creative activities and businesses; the third promotes the concept of the creative city as a human resource capable of attracting creative competencies (Costa et al.). Successful creative cities have some common points, such as visionary individuals, creative organisations, physical and social assets, and a political culture that shares a clear purpose. Leadership was found in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, and it manifested itself in bold public efforts, frequently risky investments, and a web of interrelated undertakings, whether for profit or the common good (Landry). International recognition provides a building ground for attracting attention to local initiatives. UNESCO created the Creative Cities Network (UCCN) in 2004. It was conceived from the very beginning as an interactive process to bridge the possible isolation of cities and their inhabitants as a tool for multi-stakeholder collaboration. In other words, it was a relevant response, analysed in a comprehensive overview of the literature on the problem of urban branding. However, it gradually became clear that a kind of network structure alone was insufficient to combat fragmentation (Rosi). The network's purpose is to foster international cooperation among the selected cities in order to promote "joint development partnerships in line with UNESCO's worldwide priorities of "culture and development" and "sustainable development". A city's participation in the network allows it to communicate with other designated foreign metropoles and to carry out joint projects (Stocker). The 2007 global financial crisis and the ensuing recession led to movements that responded to the commodification of urban public space through applied, community-based activities and independent cultural production. This has resulted in new paths for reorienting the creative city strategy around the concept of "making" (Grodach). Scholars have linked creative placemaking to a long history of arts-based economic growth dating back to the late nineteenth-century City Beautiful movement. However, the reification of "creative placemaking" as a discursive practice guided and enforced by government agencies, funders, and other institutions elevates it above previous forms of arts-based economic development or cultural planning (Zitcer). It seeks to go beyond purely economic motivations and pursue multidimensional outcomes ranging from the economic to bringing "diverse people together to celebrate, inspire and be inspired" (Grodach). Place-selling, or communicating certain features of a place through logos, slogans, advertising campaigns, or public relations exercises, is one of the most prevalent actions carried out under the broad umbrella of place-making and marketing. Physical interventions and communication tactics that pick specific components of local 'identity', 'history', and 'culture' can be used to produce this "forging of associations" between places, their attributes, and specific target audiences (Colomb). This new outlook reflects Landry's emphasis on creative collaboration, but the impetus is on cross-agency partnerships and new funding sources for design and art that foster ‘creative’ cities. Placing Istanbul on the Cultural Map If the world was only one country, Istanbul would be its capital. — Napoleon Bonaparte Istanbul is one of the world's largest metropoles, with approximately 15 million inhabitants. It has served as a crossroads for civilisations, cultures, and international trade throughout its history, leaving behind a multi-layered cultural legacy that inspires new design concepts and is a rich source for traditional arts and crafts. The robust creative economy in Istanbul employs 140,000 people and generates 74.5 percent of Turkey's turnover. As a design hub, Istanbul hosts over 20 globally famous design events each year, including the Istanbul Design Biennial, Design Week Turkey, and Fashion Week Istanbul. In 2016 there were 41 conference centres and 225 art galleries in the city. In the same year, Istanbul's cultural institutions hosted 4,315 events, including international film, music, and theatre festivals, as well as art and design biennials. Events such as Contemporary Istanbul have been important in establishing a network of non-governmental organisations that have also been instrumental in the 2010 designation as the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) and membership in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN). It has also served three times as United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) leader. For previous ECoC cities, national or local governments had nominated their cities for the ECoC program, but in Istanbul non-governmental organisations spearheaded and managed the nomination process (Öner). This has lead to a slow and stunted start for the programs which were greatly diminished due to the difficulties in securing the required funding. ​​After becoming an ECoC in 2010, Istanbul joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2017, joining 246 cities worldwide. UNESCO defines Istanbul as “a geography where craft and craftsmanship have emerged in many different ways in the historical and cultural codes of creative production and everyday life” (UCCN About Us). Because of its cultural heritage, Istanbul can be considered an inspiration for the design sector and promotes its productive capacity. Due to Istanbul’s geographically unique position, there are significant opportunities, experiences, and potentials to reveal new scenarios to promoting a productive future by enhancing innovative approaches for contemporary design. Participating in the UCCN undoubtedly has significant benefits for Istanbul. First of all, it has the opportunity to share its knowledge experience with other cities in the network, and it can have the opportunity to promote its work through networking events organised regularly within Design Cities. In Istanbul, which is the locomotive of the Turkish economy, the vision of the 2014-2023 Regional Plan, prepared by the Istanbul Development Agency, identifies the city as "a city of innovation and culture with its creative and free people; unique Istanbul". Moreover, one of the three essential components of this vision is "a high added value, innovative and creative economy with a voice in the global economy" (ISTKA). This component reveals the importance of innovation and creativity-oriented growth in Istanbul for the gains created in the economic field to bring social development and realise holistic development. Although these frameworks have provided a strong ‘creative’ identity to the city, the lack of specific programs and funding opportunities for ‘creative industries’ that fall under these headings have not allowed these initiatives to be felt at the local scale. Fig. 1: Location of Beyoğlu district. In this article we chose Beyoğlu (fig. 1) as the local case study, due to the existence of cultural/creative industries since the nineteenth century. When we look at previous periods, there were times when Beyoğlu fell out of favour, and different segments gave up coming to Beyoğlu for various reasons. However, Beyoğlu has always recovered and regained its identity as a historical, touristic, and cultural centre (Türkün). Beyoğlu has been the scene of social and spatial changes. Especially a rapid renewal process has been in process since the 1980s. As a result most of the buildings were restored, leading to wide-scale gentrification, and many new buildings were built throughout Istiklal Street, its main avenue. The roads on both sides of the pedestrian street are filled with cafes, art galleries, bookstores, and antique shops, making Beyoğlu a 'Turkish SoHo' (Gül). A Critical Perspective from Tomtom Neighbourhood Tomtom is one of the 45 neighbourhoods of the Beyoğlu district with a historic identity and cultural richness (fig. 2). It has hosted many diplomatic institutions and historical buildings such as the Venetian Palace, the French Palace, the Italian, Russian, Dutch, and French embassies, ​​and continues to house many consulates and foreign schools (Akın). Because it is located in the centre of Galata, Çukurcuma, and Karaköy, since the beginning of the 2000s the Tomtom neighbourhood has become very attractive due to low rental prices in the transformation process in Beyoğlu. With the low-cost renovation practices, the creative class, which has a weak economic accumulation, and has a high artistic quality, has started to open their galleries in this district. In addition to this, cafés, boutique hotels, and entertainment venues opened in succession, and this class transformation attracted the attention of capital owners. The district had to face not only the danger of gentrification caused by this class migration but also the results of the Galataport project, a real estate capital initiative (Kütükoğlu). Fig. 2: Map of the Tomtom neighbourhood and its surroundings. A case study was conducted between September 2018 and August 2021 using secondary data, observation, and in-depth interviews to provide a critical perspective on cultural frameworks from the perspective of local stakeholders and networks in this neighbourhood. In the case study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 design studios and art galleries that have moved to Tomtom in the last decade. These interviews were held in three separate periods: the first was in September 2018, following the start of the Tomtom Designhood Project; the second in August 2019; and the last in June 2021. The Missing Ingredients As mentioned above, some criteria are required to be a booming creative city. As a result of the fieldwork carried out in the Tomtom neighbourhood, Istanbul's trajectory in becoming a creative city has been discussed under three headings: ownership and patronage, financial support, and resilience. The creative cluster in the Tomtom neighbourhood started as a neighbourhood revitalisation effort by a real estate investment firm to create a cultural hub in Istanbul, with the creation and promotion of an annual design event since 2017: Tomtom Designhood, inspired by similar events across Europe. However, this business approach did not suit the cultural businesses moving into the neighbourhood. Relying on the market alone and expecting up-and-coming cultural businesses to ‘invest’ in promoting their neighbourhood has not been a sustainable growth model for Tomtom. Interviews with firms in the area have demonstrated that social networks have been a more reliable means for attracting and maintaining design firms in the area. These networks appear to create a sense of belonging and identity, with a high level of personal investment, trust, and support as the foundation of relationships. The slow-paced relocation of businesses within close social networks has been more promising in establishing the cultural hub. The results show that the creative cluster grew slowly due to the lack of support by local authorities and the limited resources for the businesses relocating into the area. In recent years, multidisciplinary design events have been taking place in this new creative neighbourhood. Tomtom Designhood generally organises these events, some of them with the cooperation of the annual design event Contemporary Istanbul, and invites everyone to explore this creative neighbourhood with pop-up events, food and drink, and art and design exhibitions. In addition to design activities that recur periodically, there are also one-time events such as 'Back to Home', 'Tomtom Designwalks', and 'Portugal Is in Istanbul'. The main goal of these events is accessible art. Moreover, they aim to bring together art galleries, institutions, collectors, art students, and people of all ages who want to learn and know art better, especially young people and art professionals. These design events, which were put forward with the idea of "accessible art for everyone", have lacked patronage and backing from donors or government funding and thus had to be self-sustaining. Furthermore, the Tomtom events have been shifted to ‘money-making’ initiatives which further degraded their acceptance in the local neighbourhood. The design events and festivals in the neighbourhood are not directly connected with the creative community around the UCCN. The case study explores the effects of the large-scale design events on local dynamics and has also touched upon the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and reveals that the most critical factor in the creative industries' resilience in times of crisis has been support by public policies and advocates. The Covid-19 pandemic, which can be described as a global crisis, has affected the creative sectors at Tomtom and tested the resilience of the design firms in the area. Due to the lockdown measures, restrictions on international mobilities, and social distancing measures implemented in this process, some creative sectors could not continue their operations. There were no specific funding support systems for design professionals. Stating that the most significant potential of this area has been foreign tourists, the designers commented that their work has come to a standstill due to the complete stoppage of the tourist flow during the pandemic. On the other hand, it has been determined that some designers explored new business forms by developing new skills, not affected by the pandemic or relatively less affected. In addition, designers who sell products that appeal to higher-income groups also stated that they have not been economically affected by this process. ‘The City of Design’ title was expected to bring some visible changes to Istanbul, especially in an emerging creative neighbourhood like Tomtom, and even in the entire Beyoğlu district. However, unfortunately, it is not possible to see the effects of these even in a crucial creative neighbourhood like Tomtom. A positive step was taken at the last point of the whole place branding process, and Tomtom was included in the "Beyoğlu Culture Road" project carried out by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in June 2022 (fig. 3). In this project, which is defined as "the branding project that transfers the cultural heritage of a city to future generations", many paid and free design events were held for two weeks in crucial creative and touristic areas such as Galataport, Atatürk Cultural Center, and French Street, with the participation of many national and international designers and artists. Many people had the opportunity to get to know Tomtom as a design neighbourhood, thanks to various concerts, workshops, festivals, design product exhibitions, and food and beverage areas held during this event for two weeks. Fig. 3: Posters for the Tomtom Designhood event in 2018 (left) and 2022 (right). (Source: Tomtom Designhood.) From Istanbul's perspective, the reciprocal relationship between creativity and Istanbul results in more creative industries, strengthening Istanbul's position in the global network. This study proves that a successful cultural policy needs to include financial support and local government cooperation for a more sustainable strategy. From an urban policy perspective, social networks seem a crucial player for a better and more sustainable support system that provides answers to the needs of the creative industries. It is hoped that the results of this study will provide new perspectives on understanding the importance of the collaboration of private, public, and civil society actors in order to strengthen cultural industries in creative cities and promote the diversity of cultural expressions. In Tomtom, as Colomb argued and authors focussed on place-making and branding have argued, specific local culture, history, identity, and aesthetics are picked, sanitised, commodified, and promoted to be consumed by target groups such as tourists or high-income locals as part of the place-making process. However, in this local neighbourhood, this process can negatively affect the spaces and social groups involved, particularly with gentrification pressure from its surrounding neighbourhoods, resulting in a loss of authenticity or outright displacement in the future. Acknowledgment The research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the TUBITAK 2214-A International Research Scholarship Program. Sources Maps in fig. 1 and fig. 2 were developed by the authors using mapstyle.withgoogle.com. Posters in fig. 3 are from Tomtom Designhood: https://www.facebook.com/Tomtom-Designhood-363369284116558/. References Akın, Nur. 19. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında Galata ve Pera. No. 24. Literatur, 1998. Caves, Richard E. Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Harvard UP, 2000. Colomb, Claire. Staging the New Berlin: Place Marketing and the Politics of Urban Reinvention Post-1989. Routledge, 2013. D'Ovidio, Marianna. 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BackgroundIn the past twenty years the discourse of the weight-centred health paradigm (WCHP) has attained almost complete dominance in the sphere of public health policy throughout the developed English speaking world. The national governments of Australia and many countries around the world have responded to what is perceived as an ‘epidemic of obesity’ with public health policies and programs explicitly focused on reducing and preventing obesity through so called ‘lifestyle’ behaviour change. Weight-related public health initiatives have been subjected to extensive critique based on ideological, ethical and empirical grounds (Solovay; Oliver; Gaesser; Gard; Monaghan, Colls and Evans; Wright; Rothblum and Solovay; Saguy; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor; Bacon and Aphramor; Brown). Many scholars have raised concerns about the stigmatising and harmful effects of the WCHP (Aphramor; Bacon and Aphramor; O'Dea; Tylka et al.), and in particular the inequitable distribution of such negative impacts on women, people who are poor, and people of colour (Campos). Weight-based stigma is now well recognised as a pervasive and insidious form of stigma (Puhl and Heuer). Weight-based discrimination (a direct result of stigma) in the USA has a similar prevalence rate to race-based discrimination, and discrimination for fatter and younger people in particular is even higher (Puhl, Andreyeva and Brownell). Numerous scholars have highlighted the stigmatising discourse evident in obesity prevention programs and policies (O'Reilly and Sixsmith; Pederson et al.; Nuffield Council on Bioethics; ten Have et al.; MacLean et al.; Carter, Klinner, et al.; Fry; O'Dea; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor). The ‘war on obesity’ can therefore be regarded as a social determinant of poor health (O'Hara and Gregg). Focusing on overweight and obese people is not only damaging to people’s health, but is ineffective in addressing the broader social and economic issues that create health and wellbeing (Cohen, Perales and Steadman; MacLean et al.; Walls et al.). Analyses of the discourses used in weight-related public health initiatives have highlighted oppressive, stigmatizing and discriminatory discourses that position body weight as pathological (O'Reilly; Pederson et al.), anti-social and a threat to the viable future of society (White). There has been limited analysis of discourses in Australian social marketing campaigns focused on body weight (Lupton; Carter, Rychetnik, et al.).Social Marketing CampaignsIn 2006 the Australian, State and Territory Governments funded the Measure Up social marketing campaign (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Measure Up"). As the name suggests Measure Up focuses on the measurement of health through body weight and waist circumference. Campaign resources include brochures, posters, a tape measure, a 12 week planner, a community guide and a television advertisement. Campaign slogans are ‘The more you gain, the more you have to lose’ and ‘How do you measure up?’Tomorrow People is the component of Measure Up designed for Indigenous Australians (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Tomorrow People"). Tomorrow People resources focus on healthy eating and physical activity and include a microsite on the Measure Up website, booklet, posters, print and radio advertisements. The campaign slogan is ‘Tomorrow People starts today. Do it for our kids. Do it for our culture.’ In 2011, phase two of the Measure Up campaign was launched (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Swap It, Don't Stop It"). The central premise of Swap It, Don’t Stop It is that you ‘can lose your belly without losing all the things you love’ by making ‘simple’ swaps of behaviours related to eating and physical activity. The campaign’s central character Eric is made from a balloon, as are all of the other characters and visual items used in the campaign. Eric claims thatover the years my belly has ballooned and ballooned. It’s come time to do something about it — the last thing I want is to end up with some cancers, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. That’s why I’ve become a Swapper! What’s a swapper? It’s simple really. It just means swapping some of the things I’m doing now for healthier choices. That way I can lose my belly, without losing all the things I love. It’s easy! The campaign has produced around 30 branded resource items including brochures, posters, cards, fact sheets, recipes, and print, radio, television and online advertisements. All resources include references to Eric and most also include the image of the tape measure used in the Measure Up campaign. The Swap It, Don’t Stop It campaign also includes resources specifically directed at Indigenous Australians including two posters from the generic campaign with a dot painting motif added to the background. MethodologyThe epistemological position in this project was constructivist (Crotty) and the theoretical perspective was critical theory (Crotty). Multimedia critical discourse analysis (Machin and Mayr) was the methodology used to examine the social marketing campaigns and identify the discourses within them. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) focuses on critiquing text for evidence of power and ideology. CDA is used to reveal the ideas, absences and assumptions, and therefore the power interests buried within texts, in order to bring about social change. As a method, CDA has a structured three dimensional approach involving textual practice analysis (for lexicon) at the core, within the context of discursive practice analysis (for rhetorical and lexical strategies particularly with respect to claims-making), which falls within the context of social practice analysis (Jacobs). Social practice analysis explores the role played by power and ideology in supporting or disturbing the discourse (Jacobs; Machin and Mayr). Multimodal CDA (MCDA) uses a broad definition of text to include words, pictures, symbols, ideas, themes or any message that can be communicated (Machin and Mayr). Analysis of the social marketing campaigns involved examining the vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, visuals and overall structure of the text for textual, discursive and social practices.Results and DiscussionIndividual ResponsibilityThe discourse of individual responsibility is strongly evident in the campaigns. In this discourse, it is ultimately the individual who is held responsible for their body weight and their health. The individual responsibility discourse is signified by the discursive practice of using epistemic (related to the truth or certainty) and deontic (compelling or instructing) modality words, particularly modal verbs and modal adverbs. High modality epistemic words are used to convince the reader of the certainty of statements and to portray the statement-maker as authoritative. High modality deontic words are used to instil power and authority in the instructions.The extensive use of high modality epistemic and deontic words is demonstrated in the following paragraph assembled from various campaign materials: Ultimately (epistemic modality adverb) individuals must take responsibility (deontic modality verb) for their own health, including their and weight. Obesity is caused (epistemic modality verb) by an imbalance in energy intake (from diet) (epistemic modality verb) and expenditure (from activity) (epistemic modality verb). Individually (epistemic modality adverb) we make decisions (epistemic modality verb) about how much we eat (epistemic modality verb) and how much activity we undertake (epistemic modality verb). Each of us can control (epistemic modality) our own weight by controlling (deontic modality) what we eat (deontic modality verb) and how much we exercise (deontic modality verb). To correct (deontic modality verb) the energy imbalance, individuals need to develop (deontic modality verb) a healthy lifestyle by making changes (deontic modality verb) to correct (deontic modality verb) their dietary habits and increase (deontic modality verb) their activity levels. The verbs must, control, correct, develop, change, increase, eat and exercise are deontic modality verbs designed to instruct or compel the reader.These discursive practices result in the clear message that individuals can and must control, correct and change their eating and physical activity, and thereby control their weight and health. The implication of the individualist discourse is that individuals, irrespective of their genes, life-course, social position or environment, are charged with the responsibility of being more self-surveying, self-policing, self-disciplined and self-controlled, and therefore healthier. This is consistent with the individualist orientation of neoliberal ideology, and has been identified in various critiques of obesity prevention public health programs that centralise the self-responsible subject (Murray; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor) and the concept of ‘healthism’, the moral obligation to pursue health through healthy behaviours or healthy lifestyles (Aphramor and Gingras; Mansfield and Rich). The hegemonic Western-centric individualist discourse has also been critiqued for its role in subordinating or silencing other models of health and wellbeing including Aboriginal or indigenous models, that do not place the individual in the centre (McPhail-Bell, Fredericks and Brough).Obesity Causes DiseaseEpistemic modality verbs are used as a discursive practice to portray the certainty or probability of the relationship between obesity and chronic disease. The strength of the epistemic modality verbs is generally moderate, with terms such as ‘linked’, ‘associated’, ‘connected’, ‘related’ and ‘contributes to’ most commonly used to describe the relationship. The use of such verbs may suggest recognition of uncertainty or at least lack of causality in the relationship. However this lowered modality is counterbalanced by the use of verbs with higher epistemic modality such as ‘causes’, ‘leads to’, and ‘is responsible for’. For example:The other type is intra-abdominal fat. This is the fat that coats our organs and causes the most concern. Even though we don’t yet fully understand what links intra-abdominal fat with chronic disease, we do know that even a small deposit of this fat increases the risk of serious health problems’. (Swap It, Don’t Stop It Website; italics added)Thus the prevailing impression is that there is an objective, definitive, causal relationship between obesity and a range of chronic diseases. The obesity-chronic disease discourse is reified through the discursive practice of claims-making, whereby statements related to the problem of obesity and its relationship with chronic disease are attributed to authoritative experts or expert organisations. The textual practice of presupposition is evident with the implied causal relationship between obesity and chronic disease being taken for granted and uncontested. Through the textual practice of lexical absence, there is a complete lack of alternative views about body weight and health. Likewise there is an absence of acknowledgement of the potential harms arising from focusing on body weight, such as increased body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and, paradoxically, weight gain.Shame and BlameBoth Measure Up and Swap It, Don’t Stop It include a combination of written/verbal text and visual images that create a sense of shame and blame. In Measure Up, the central character starts out as young, slim man, and as he ages his waist circumference grows. When he learns that his expanding waistline is associated with an increased risk of chronic disease, his facial expression and body language convey that he is sad, dejected and fearful. In the still images, this character and a female character are positioned looking down at the tape measure as they measure their ‘too large’ waists. This position and the looks on their faces suggest hanging their heads in shame. The male characters in both campaigns specifically express shame about “letting themselves go” by unthinkingly practicing ‘unhealthy’ behaviours. The characters’ clothing also contribute to a sense of shame. Both male and female characters in Measure Up appear in their underwear, which suggests that they are being publicly shamed. The clothing of the Measure Up characters is similar to that worn by contestants in the television program The Biggest Loser, which explicitly uses shame to ‘motivate’ contestants to lose weight. Part of the public shaming of contestants involves their appearance in revealing exercise clothing for weigh-ins, which displays their fatness for all to see (Thomas, Hyde and Komesaroff). The stigmatising effects of this and other aspects of the Biggest Loser television program are well documented (Berry et al.; Domoff et al.; Sender and Sullivan; Thomas, Hyde and Komesaroff; Yoo). The appearance of the Measure Up characters in their underwear combined with their head position and facial expressions conveys a strong, consistent message that the characters both feel shame and are deserving of shame due to their self-inflicted ‘unhealthy’ behaviours. The focus on ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ behaviours contributes to accepted and contested health identities (Fry). The ‘accepted health identity’ is represented as responsible and aspiring to and pursuing good health. The ‘contested health identity’ is represented as unhealthy, consuming too much food, and taking health risks, and this identity is stigmatised by public health programs (Fry). The ‘contested health identity’ represents the application to public health of Goffman’s ‘spoiled identity’ on which much stigmatisation theorising and research has been based (Goffman). As a result of both lexical and visual textual practices, the social marketing campaigns contribute to the construction of the ‘accepted health identity’ through discourses of individual responsibility, choice and healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, they contribute to the construction of the spoiled or ‘contested health identity’ through discourses that people are naturally unhealthy and need to be frightened, guilted and shamed into stopping ‘unhealthy’ behaviours and adopting ‘healthy’ behaviours. The ‘contested health identity’ constructed through these discourses is in turn stigmatised by such discourses. Thus the campaigns not only risk perpetuating stigmatisation through the reinforcement of the health identities, but possibly extend it further by legitimising the stigma associated with such identities. Given that these campaigns are conducted by the Australian Government, the already deeply stigmatising social belief system receives a significant boost in legitimacy by being positioned as a public health belief system perpetrated by the Government. Fear and AlarmIn the Measure Up television advertisement the main male character’s daughter, who has run into the frame, abruptly stops and looks fearful when she hears about his increased risk of disease. Using the discursive practice of claims-making, the authoritative external source informs the man that the more he gains (in terms of his waist circumference), the more he has to lose. The clear implication is that he needs to be fearful of losing his health, his family and even his life if he doesn’t reduce his waist circumference. The visual metaphor of a balloon is used as the central semiotic trope in Swap It, Don’t Stop It. The characters and other items featuring in the visuals are all made from twisting balloons. Balloons themselves may not create fear or alarm, unless one is unfortunate to be afflicted with globophobia (Freed), but the visual metaphor of the balloon in the social marketing campaign had a range of alarmist meanings. At the population level, rates and/or costs of obesity have been described in news items as ‘ballooning’ (Body Ecology; Stipp; AFP; Thien and Begawan) with accompanying visual images of extremely well-rounded bodies or ‘headless fatties’ (Cooper). Rapid or significant weight gain is referred to in everyday language as ‘ballooning weight’. The use of the balloon metaphor as a visual device in Swap It, Don’t Stop It serves to reinforce and extend these alarmist messages. Further, there is no attempt in the campaigns to reduce alarm by including positive or neutral photographs or images of fat people. This visual semiotic absence – a form of cultural imperialism (Young) – contributes to the invisibilisation of ‘real life’ fat people who are not ashamed of themselves. Habermas suggests that society evolves and operationalises through rational communication which includes the capacity to question the validity of claims made within communicative action (Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society). However the communicative action taken by the social marketing campaigns analysed in this study presents claims as uncontested facts and is therefore directorial about the expectations of individuals to take more responsibility for themselves, adopt certain behaviours and reduce or prevent obesity. Habermas argues that the lack or distortion of rational communication erodes relationships at the individual and societal levels (Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society; Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). The communicative actions represented by the social marketing campaigns represents a distortion of rational communication and therefore erodes the wellbeing of individuals (for example through internalised stigma, shame, guilt, body dissatisfaction, weight preoccupation, disordered eating and avoidance of health care), relationships between individuals (for example through increased blame, coercion, stigma, bias, prejudice and discrimination) and society (for example through stigmatisation of groups in the population on the basis of their body size and increased social and health inequity). Habermas proposes that power differentials work to distort rational communication, and that it is these distortions in communication that need to be the focal point for change (Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society; Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: The Critique of Functionalist Reason; Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). Through critical analysis of the discourses used in the social marketing campaigns, we identified that they rely on the power, authority and status of experts to present uncontested representations of body weight and ‘appropriate’ health responses to it. In identifying the discourses present in the social marketing campaigns, we hope to focus attention on and thereby disrupt the distortions in the practical knowledge of the weight-centred health paradigm in order to contribute to systemic reorientation and change.ConclusionThrough the use of textual, discursive and social practices, the social marketing campaigns analysed in this study perpetuate the following concepts: everyone should be alarmed about growing waistlines and ‘ballooning’ rates of ‘obesity’; individuals are to blame for excess body weight, due to ignorance and the practice of ‘unhealthy behaviours’; individuals have a moral, parental, familial and cultural responsibility to monitor their weight and adopt ‘healthy’ eating and physical activity behaviours; such behaviour changes are easy to make and will result in weight loss, which will reduce risk of disease. 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Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.