Border collapse and boundary maintenance: militarisation and the micro-geographies of violence in Israel–Palestine

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Drawing upon subaltern geopolitics and feminist geography, this article explores how militarisation shapes micro-geographies of violence and occupation in Israel–Palestine. While accounts of spectacular and large-scale political violence dominate popular imaginaries and academic analyses in/of the region, a shift to the micro-scale foregrounds the relationship between power, politics and space at the level of everyday life. In the context of Israel–Palestine, micro-geographies have revealed dynamic strategies for ‘getting by’ or ‘dealing with’ the occupation, as practiced by Palestinian populations in the face of spatialised violence. However, this article considers how Jewish Israelis actively shape the spatial micro-politics of power within and along the borders of the Israeli state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem during 2010–2011, an analysis of everyday narratives illustrates how relations of violence, occupation and domination rely upon gendered dynamics of border collapse and boundary maintenance. Here, the borders between home front and battlefield break down at the same time as communal boundaries are reproduced, generating conditions of ‘total militarism’ wherein military interests and agendas are both actively and passively diffused. Through gendering the militarised micro-geographies of violence among Jewish Israelis, this article reveals how individuals construct, navigate and regulate the everyday spaces of occupation, detailing more precisely how macro political power endures.This work was supported by the SOAS, University of London; University of London Central Research Fund

An integrative view of obesity1234

Obesity is the result of the accumulation of excess body fat and not simply excess weight that can be muscle or fat. Adipocytes function in the adaptation to starvation, in exercise energetics, and in the immune defense against pathogens. Sustained positive energy balance results in excessive accumulation of adipocytes, which, in the abdomen, leads to chronic inflammation. Although informative studies have been performed with cultured adipocytes, an integrative approach to the regulation of abdominal adipose tissue involves feedback from autocrine and paracrine effectors secreted by adipocytes, the immune system, and blood flow through adipose tissue. Numerous adipokines, chemokines, and cytokines feed back to other bodily systems to regulate both energy balance and immune function. Studies of the interactions of the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system, as well as psychophysiological considerations of reward circuitry in the central nervous system, have shown a general adaptation to starvation that is opposed to those strategies being proposed for the prevention and treatment of obesity, ie, food restriction and increased physical activity. The obesogenic environment of highly palatable foods with hidden fats and sugars can promote metabolic syndrome and obesity, whereas fruit and vegetables with antiinflammatory phytochemicals can counteract metabolic syndrome. Therefore, a plant-based diet and the seamless integration of increased physical activity and social support to alter modern diets and lifestyles hold out the greatest hope for the solution of the obesity epidemic. Both public health and medical nutrition approaches can benefit from this integrative view of obesity