Conceptualising the emancipatory potential of populism: A typology and analysis

A central claim common to all populist movements is that they are committed to giving voice and power to those who have been forgotten, maligned, or marginalised by the status quo. However, consensus holds that they rarely – if ever –fulfil this commitment. And yet, there is a gap in our understanding of why. This article provides an original conceptual distinction between vanguardist and devolutionary populism. While the former is concerned with accessing and wielding power within the existing spaces of politics, the latter is concerned with provoking and enabling popular reimaginings of the very spaces in which politics is constituted. Using the case of South Africa, we demonstrate how our novel method can help determine where a movement might sit on the continuum between vanguardist and devolutionary populism. We make a populist campaign legible by combining detailed archival work to understand the movement's background with cutting edge cartographic techniques to map its spread and reception in digital spaces. Our conceptual distinction and methods create space to consider whether, and in what circumstances, populists might reinvigorate politics or, alternatively, compound the cynicism, divisions and tensions manifest within contemporary global politics

Food activities and identity maintenance in old age: a systematic review and meta-synthesis

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Objectives: Services provided to older people should be developed based on active ageing policies. Nutrition is one aspect of active ageing, but little is known about how food activities contribute to psychological well-being in later life. This is a systematic review of qualitative and quantitative research that answers the question ‘What is known about the relationship between food activities and the maintenance of identities in old age?’

Choreography, controversy and child sex abuse: Theoretical reflections on a cultural criminological analysis of dance in a pop music video

This article was inspired by the controversy over claims of ‘pedophilia!!!!’ undertones and the ‘triggering’ of memories of childhood sexual abuse in some viewers by the dance performance featured in the music video for Sia’s ‘Elastic Heart’ (2015). The case is presented for acknowledging the hidden and/or overlooked presence of dance in social scientific theory and cultural studies and how these can enhance and advance cultural criminological research. Examples of how these insights have been used within other disciplinary frameworks to analyse and address child sex crime and sexual trauma are provided, and the argument is made that popular cultural texts such as dance in pop music videos should be regarded as significant in analysing and tracing public perceptions and epistemologies of crimes such as child sex abuse

Beyond Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Care: Care Experiences of Patients Aged 25-39 Years Old in the UK National Health Service.

AimsAdolescents and young adults aged 15-39 years with cancer face unique medical, practical and psychosocial issues. In the UK, principal treatment centres and programmes have been designed to care for teenage and young adult patients aged 13-24 years in an age-appropriate manner. However, for young adults (YAs) aged 25-39 years with cancer, little access to age-specific support is available. The aim of this study was to examine this possible gap by qualitatively exploring YA care experiences, involving patients as research partners in the analysis to ensure robust results.Materials and methodsWe conducted a phenomenological qualitative study with YAs diagnosed with any cancer type between ages 25 and 39 years old in the last 5 years. Participants took part in interviews or focus groups and data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Results were shaped in an iterative process with the initial coders and four YA patients who did not participate in the study to improve the rigor of the results.ResultsSixty-five YAs with a range of tumour types participated. We identified seven themes and 13 subthemes. YAs found navigating the healthcare system difficult and commonly experienced prolonged diagnostic pathways. Participants felt under-informed about clinical details and the long-term implications of side-effects on daily life. YAs found online resources overwhelming but also a source of information and treatment support. Some patients regretted not discussing fertility before cancer treatment or felt uninformed or rushed when making fertility preservation decisions. A lack of age-tailored content or age-specific groups deterred YAs from accessing psychological support and rehabilitation services.ConclusionsYAs with cancer may miss some benefits provided to teenagers and young adults in age-tailored cancer services. Improving services for YAs in adult settings should focus on provision of age-specific information and access to existing relevant support

Hand gesture-based interactive puppetry system to assist storytelling for children

© 2016 The Author(s)Digital techniques have been used to assist narrative and storytelling, especially in many pedagogical practices. With the rapid development of HCI techniques, saturated with digital media in their daily lives, young children, demands more interactive learning methods and meaningful immersive learning experiences. In this paper, we propose a novel hand gesture-based puppetry storytelling system which provides a more intuitive and natural human computer interaction method for young children to develop narrative ability in virtual story world. Depth motion sensing and hand gestures control technology is utilized in the implementation of user-friendly interaction. Young players could intuitively use hand gestures to manipulate virtual puppet to perform story and interact with different items in virtual environment to assist narration. Based on the result of the evaluation, this novel digital storytelling system shows positive pedagogical functions on children’s narrating ability as well as the competencies of cognitive and motor coordination. The usability of the system is preliminary examined in our test, and the results which showed that young children can benefit from playing with Puppet Narrator

Buddhist Vegetarian Restaurants and the Changing Meanings of Meat in Urban China

This article charts the changing meanings of meat in contemporary urban China and explores the role played by Buddhist vegetarian restaurants in shaping these changes. In Kunming, meat has long been a sign of prosperity and status. Its accessibility marked the successes of the economic reforms. Yet Kunmingers were increasingly concerned about excessive meat consumption and about the safety and quality of the meat supply. Buddhist vegetarian restaurants provided spaces where people could share meat-free meals and discuss and develop their concerns about meat-eating. While similar to and influenced by secular, Western vegetarianisms, the central role of Buddhism was reflected in discourses on karmic retribution for taking life and in a non-confrontational approach that sought to accommodate these discourses with the importance of meat in Chinese social life. Finally, the vegetarian restaurants spoke to middle-class projects of self-cultivation, and by doing so potentially challenged associations between meat-eating and social status

Dietary advice for muscularity, leanness and weight control in Men's Health magazine: a content analysis

Background: The dietary content of advice in men’s lifestyle magazines has not been closely scrutinised. Methods: We carried out an analysis of such content in all 2009 issues (n = 11) of Men’s Health (MH) focusing on muscularity, leanness and weight control. Results: Promotion of a mesomorphic body image underpinned advice to affect muscle building and control weight. Diet advice was underpinned by a strong pseudo-scientific discourse, with citation of expert sources widely used to legitimise the information. Frequently multiple dietary components were advocated within one article e.g. fat, omega-3 fatty acids, thiamine, zinc and high-glycaemic index foods. Furthermore advice would cover numerous nutritional effects, e.g. strengthening bones, reducing stress and boosting testosterone, with little contextualisation. The emphasis on attainment of a mesomorphic body image permitted promotion of slimming diets. Advice to increase calorie and protein intake to augment muscle mass was frequent (183 and 262 references, respectively). Such an anabolic diet was advised in various ways, including consumption of traditional protein foods (217 references) and sports foods (107 references), thereby replicating muscle magazines’ support for nutritional supplements. Although advice to increase consumption of red meat was common (52 references), fish and non-flesh sources of protein (eggs, nuts & pulses, and soy products) together exceeded red meat in number of recommendations (206 references). Advice widely asserted micronutrients and phytochemicals from plant food (161 references) as being important in muscle building. This emphasis diverges from stereotypical gender-based food consumption patterns. Dietary advice for control of body weight largely replicated that of muscularity, with strong endorsement to consume fruits and vegetables (59 references), diets rich in nuts and pulses and fish (66 references), as well as specific micronutrients and phytochemicals (62 references). Notably there was emphasis on fat-burning, good fats and consumption of single foods, with relatively little mention of dietary restriction. Conclusions: Despite the widespread use of scientific information to endorse dietary advice, the content, format and scientific basis of dietary content of MH leaves much to be desired. The dietary advice as provided may not be conducive to public health

Self-prioritization and perceptual matching: The effects of temporal construal.

Recent research has revealed that self-referential processing enhances perceptual judgments - the so-called self-prioritization effect. The extent and origin of this effect remains unknown, however. Noting the multifaceted nature of the self, here we hypothesized that temporal influences on self-construal (i.e., past/future-self continuity) may serve as an important determinant of stimulus prioritization. Specifically, as representations of the self increase in abstraction as a function of temporal distance (i.e., distance from now), self-prioritization may only emerge when stimuli are associated with the current self. The results of three experiments supported this prediction. Self-relevance only enhanced performance in a standard perceptual-matching task when stimuli (i.e., geometric shapes) were connected with the current self; representations of the self in the future (Expts. 1 & 2) and past (Expt. 3) failed to facilitate decision making. To identify the processes underlying task performance, data were interrogated using a hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) approach. Results of these analyses revealed that self-prioritization was underpinned by a stimulus bias (i.e., rate of information uptake). Collectively, these findings elucidate when and how self-relevance influences decisional processing