You Know One of Us

**Trigger warning: sexual assault I am afraid of my bed. I am also afraid of heather blue shirts. Men’s voices make me jump. I am constantly scanning crowds, always looking for the closest exit. I sit with my back to the wall. I no longer eat at Servo for lunch or dinner, or walk down a specific pathway as a shortcut home. Instead, I take the long way through the middle of campus to get back to my room. If I see someone with the same haircut or wearing similar clothes, I start to tremble. Unexpected touches from male friends, acquaintances, and strangers make me jump away in fear. [excerpt

One of Us

With this thesis, I reflect on my identity as a Saudi American. I look at how nonverbal communication through gesture and artifact presents the potential for both communication breakdowns, as well as shared understanding. From the lens of Saudi culture, I consider how gender relations and intra-national tribal factions play a role in the division of society, which my work seeks to overcome, at both the national and global levels. My exhibit, One of Us, interrogates one of the most controversial gestures in contemporary society: veiling. As I discuss the notion of camouflage, I review the types of veils available to women, and the reasons why women veil. The abayas featured in my exhibit are constructed from nostalgic patterns, thus producing in the viewer a simultaneous feeling of familiarity and novelty, and in the wearer, of blending in and standing out

She Was One Of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker

{Excerpt} For Eleanor Roosevelt, helping people achieve better lives by taking individual responsibility and then acting collectively to remedy problems was a cornerstone of democracy, in good and bad economic times, during war and peace. She saw these convictions embodied in the labor movement. Labor leaders, including Walter Reuther, the visionary young president of the emerging United Automobile Workers, earned her praise and became her close friends. She criticized leaders who abused their power, but never wavered in her support for the rank and file. One of her adversaries, however, the influential journalist Westbrook Pegler, attacked ER as a dilettante and her labor allies as thugs. ER\u27s core principles of workplace democracy, however, remained her model for democracy in the country and around the world. In 1961 ER told the AFL-CIO convention, The labor movement—and perhaps I can say my movement, too, because I think sometimes I work as hard as any of you do—I feel that it is part of our job to keep alive the ideals that you started with, the ideals of really helping the people to better conditions, to a better way of life which is part of the basis of democracy. The story of how Eleanor Roosevelt became a union member, what it meant then, and why it matters now begins with a most unusual gathering on the shores of the Hudson River

JUST ONE OF US: CONSUMERS PLAYING OLIGOPOLY IN MIXED MARKETS

Consumer cooperatives constitute a highly successful example of democratic forms of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually organized as medium and large-scale ?rms competing with pro?t-maximizing ?rms in retail industries. This paper models such situation as a mixed oligopoly in which consumer cooperatives maximize the utility of consumer-members and distribute them a share of the pro?t equal to the ratio of their individual expenditure to the ?rm total sales. We show that when consumers possess quasilinear preferences over a bundle of symmetrically di¤erentiated goods and ?rms operate with a linear technology, the presence of consumer cooperatives a¤ects all industries output and social welfare positively. The e¤ect of cooperatives on welfare proves more signi?cant when goods are either complements or highly di¤erentiated and when competition is à la Cournot rather than à la Bertrand.Consumer Cooperatives, Pro?t-maximizing Firms, Mixed Oligopoly

'Just one of us': Consumers playing oligopoly in mixed markets

Consumer cooperatives represent a highly successful example of democratic form of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually medium to large-scale companies competing with the profit-maximizing firms in the retail sector. This paper describes this situation as a mixed oligopoly in which consumer cooperatives maximize the utility of consumer-members and, in return, refund them with a share of the profits corresponding to the ratio of their individual spending to the cooperative's total sales. We show that when consumers possess quasi-linear preferences over a bundle of symmetrically differentiated goods, and companies operate using a linear technology, the presence of consumer cooperatives positively affects total industry output, as well as welfare. The effect of cooperatives on welfare proves to be even more significant when goods are either complements or highly differentiated, and when competition is à la Cournot rather than à la Bertrand.Consumer Cooperatives, Profit-maximizing Firms, Mixed Oligopoly

”Other” or “one of us”?: the porn user in public and academic discourse

The consumption of sexually explicit media has long been a matter of public and political concern. It has also been a topic of academic interest. In both these arenas a predominantly behaviourist model of effects and regulation has worked to cast the examination of sexually explicit texts and their consumption as a debate about harm. The broader area of investigation remains extraordinarily undeveloped. Sexually explicit media is a focus of interest for academics because of the way it ‘speaks’ sex and sexuality for its culture. In this paper I examine existing and emerging figures of the porn consumer, their relation to ways of thinking and speaking about pornography, and the implications of these for future work on porn consumption. </p

Animal Rights -‘One-of-Us-ness’: From the Greek Philosophy towards a Modern Stance

Animals, the beautiful creatures of God in the Stoic and especially in Porphyry’s sense, need to be treated as rational. We know that the Stoics ask for justice to all rational beings, but I think there is no significant proclamation from their side that openly talks in favour of animal’s justice. They claim the rationality of animals but do not confer any right to human beings. The later Neo-Platonist philosopher Porphyry magnificently deciphers this idea in his writing On Abstinence from Animal Food. Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus thinks that both animals and humans are made up of same tissues and like a human, animals also have the same way of perception, reasoning and appetites. My next effort would be to decipher how Porphyry illustrates Theophrastus’ perspective not in the way (the technical theory of justice) the Stoics argued. Porphyry’s stance seems more humanistic that looks for the pertinent reasons for treating animal rights from the contention of justice that Aristotle in his early writings defied since the animals can deal with reasons. The paper highlights on how much we could justificatorily demand the empathetic concern for animals from the outlook of the mentioned Greek thinkers and the modern animal rights thinkers as quasi-right of animals, even if my own position undertakes the empathetic ground for animals as an undeserving humanitarian way

Noisy Information, Distance and Law of One Price Dynamics Across US Cities

Using micro price data across US cities, we provide evidence that both the volatility and persistence of deviations from the law of one price (LOP) are positively correlated with the distance between cities. A standard, two-city, equilibrium model with time-varying technology under homogeneous information can predict the relationship between the volatility and distance but not between the persistence and distance. To account for the latter fact, we augment the standard model with noisy signals about the state of nominal aggregate demand that are asymmetric across cities. We further establish that the interaction of imperfect information and sticky prices improves the fit of the model.