Silencing youth sexuality in Senegal: intersections of medicine and morality

This article reports on recent research funded by international development actors which explored how Senegalese youth acted as ‘active citizens’ and claimed their education and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) rights. Our analysis is framed by a review of contemporary international development discourses that seem to offer fertile possibilities for more plural understandings of sexuality. After describing the research methodology and methods, we draw on post-structural theory to analyse the discourses youth deployed to talk about sex and their sexualities. Rather than a source of pleasure, youth’s talk of sex and sexuality was dominated by discourses of morality and medicine, in ways that sustained a heteronormative gender regime permeated by entrenched hegemonic masculinities. We conclude that rather than the fertile possibilities identified in our opening review, the SRH lens re-inscribed a negative framing of sexuality which was compounded by both family and religious norms

Neighborhood Factors that Contribute to Alcohol Use and Loneliness in HIV Positive Patients

Background: Neighborhood factors contribute to substance abuse and increased health risk behavior. Alcohol use has adverse consequences as it may interfere with antiretroviral medication adherence. In addition, studies have shown that those who are HIV positive have decreased social network size, limited social support, and social isolation as well as decreased treatment adherence. It is hypothesized that participants with high neighborhood density of alcohol outlets combined with increased feelings of loneliness will be more likely to drink. Methods: Participants included 85 patients from an HIV treatment clinic in Jacksonville. Interviewer-administered measures included the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and UCLA Loneliness Scale. Geographical Information Systems was used to map participant residential area and surrounding neighborhood factors. This study collected cross-sectional, retrospective data. Multi-linear regression using UCLA scores and geographic alcohol outlets availability were used as predictors of drinking behavior. Results: UCLA scores (β = 0.088, p = .012) and number of alcohol outlets (β = 0.040, p = .028) were significant predictors of AUDIT scores. UCLA scores and number of alcohol outlets accounted for 10.4% (R2 = .104) of variance of AUDIT scores. Conclusion: There was co-occurrence of alcohol use and self-reported loneliness among patients currently in treatment for HIV. There also appears to be a relationship with neighborhood factors, alcohol use, and loneliness but further research is needed

Beyond the modern: Muslim youth imaginaries of nation in Northern Nigeria

The rise of different nationalisms in an increasingly unequal and neoliberal world make predictions about the dawn of a post-national, global society seem both incongruous and fraught with Eurocentric occlusions. In response, we present a postcolonial analysis of research into Muslim youth narratives of nation in Northern Nigeria. This highlights the continued significance of nation for youth as well as the historical fractures - both internal and external - that infused their identity narratives. We further show the entanglement of nation and religion in youth imaginaries, and their anti-colonial ambivalences, notably with respect to gender reforms. Our analysis calls for a sociology of nation that goes beyond a modern framing and instead attends to the agonistic affective relations through which national imaginaries are constructed; the historical sutures that were intrinsic to the creation of postcolonial nations and their enduring persistence as points of fracture

Sustaining Economic Exploitation of Complex Ecosystems in Computational Models of Coupled Human-Natural Networks

Understanding ecological complexity has stymied scientists for decades. Recent elucidation of the famously coined "devious strategies for stability in enduring natural systems" has opened up a new field of computational analyses of complex ecological networks where the nonlinear dynamics of many interacting species can be more realistically mod-eled and understood. Here, we describe the first extension of this field to include coupled human-natural systems. This extension elucidates new strategies for sustaining extraction of biomass (e.g., fish, forests, fiber) from ecosystems that account for ecological complexity and can pursue multiple goals such as maximizing economic profit, employment and carbon sequestration by ecosystems. Our more realistic modeling of ecosystems helps explain why simpler "maxi-mum sustainable yield" bioeconomic models underpinning much natural resource extraction policy leads to less profit, biomass, and biodiversity than predicted by those simple models. Current research directions of this integrated natu-ral and social science include applying artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and multiplayer online games

Muslim youth as global citizens

Dominant understandings of global or cosmopolitanism citizenship align it with the ‘modern’ and the ‘secular’, in ways that construct religious belongings as irrational, or indeed ‘pre-modern’. Assumptions of superiority embedded in claims to cosmopolitanism are all the more powerful for being constructed as a ‘universal’, in ways that erase and occlude the local social relations and particularities of the spaces and positions from which these very claims emanate. Resisting such understandings, this paper engages with research into Muslim youth identities with respect to nation, religion and gender in four nation-states of the Global South. It explores how Muslim youth’s strong affective commitments to the religious community of the ‘global Ummah’ can be understood as a distinctive form of global, cosmopolitan citizenship, in ways that are similar to, but also sharply differentiated from modern (secular) understandings of cosmopolitanism. We suggest that appeals to any ‘universal’ cosmopolitan project can work to silence local social relations (such as ethnic, gender, religious or class differentiations), and how all claims to cosmopolitanism are intrinsically sutured to youth’s struggles for positioning within their nation. We stress therefore the importance of attending to local social dynamics throughout our analysis of youth identity constructions and their constitutive others, and take this up throughout the following papers of this special edition

Introduction: pluralising Muslim youth identities: intersections of nation, religion and gender

The introductory paper to this special edition provides an overview of the multi-country research project on Muslim youth identities upon which all the papers draw. It includes outlines of its methodological and theoretical frameworks and its rationale. Using a case study approach, the research explored the identity narratives of Muslim youth in the four socio-political contexts of Pakistan, Senegal, Nigeria and Lebanon, each of which have distinctive post-colonial histories. In each context we explored how youth performed and constructed their identities with reference to intersecting discourses of nation, religion and gender. The data was collected with the support of local researchers through female and male focus group discussions which sought to privilege youth voices. Our analysis drew upon feminist, poststructural and postcolonial theorists (e.g. Butler, Foucault, Hall, Said), who understand identities to be constituted through difference. Taking up this theoretical stance, we highlight the axes of difference that were integral to youth identity formations, discussing these with reference to internal and external ‘others’. By attending to youth voices and their shifting discourses of allegiance and difference, the research provides a counter to the stigmatisation and misrepresentation of Muslim youth within much Western media. Our analyses emphasise the ways that youth identities are constructed within their particular socio-historical, postcolonial contexts and the contingencies of their local social relations, while also acknowledging the interpenetration of the global and the local. The introductory paper concludes with an overview of six articles which provide cross-case analyses that address key themes emerging from our data

Production of latex agglutination reagents for pneumococcal serotyping

BACKGROUND: The current ‘gold standard’ for serotyping pneumococci is the Quellung test. This technique is laborious and requires a certain level of training to correctly perform. Commercial pneumococcal latex agglutination serotyping reagents are available, but these are expensive. In-house production of latex agglutination reagents can be a cost-effective alternative to using commercially available reagents. This paper describes a method for the production and quality control (QC) of latex reagents, including problem solving recommendations, for pneumococcal serotyping. RESULTS: Here we describe a method for the production of latex agglutination reagents based on the passive adsorption of antibodies to latex particles. Sixty-five latex agglutination reagents were made using the PneuCarriage Project (PCP) method, of which 35 passed QC. The other 30 reagents failed QC due to auto-agglutination (n=2), no reactivity with target serotypes (n=8) or cross-reactivity with non-target serotypes (n=20). Dilution of antisera resulted in a further 27 reagents passing QC. The remaining three reagents passed QC when prepared without centrifugation and wash steps. Protein estimates indicated that latex reagents that failed QC when prepared using the PCP method passed when made with antiserum containing ≤ 500 μg/ml of protein. Sixty-one nasopharyngeal isolates were serotyped with our in-house latex agglutination reagents, with the results showing complete concordance with the Quellung reaction. CONCLUSIONS: The method described here to produce latex agglutination reagents allows simple and efficient serotyping of pneumococci and may be applicable to latex agglutination reagents for typing or identification of other microorganisms. We recommend diluting antisera or removing centrifugation and wash steps for any latex reagents that fail QC. Our latex reagents are cost-effective, technically undemanding to prepare and remain stable for long periods of time, making them ideal for use in low-income countries

Understanding agency differently: female youth’s Muslim identities

This paper draws on our recent research into Muslim youth identities to consider theoretical and methodological issues with respect to gender and Muslim women's agency. Western constructions of Muslim women often portray them in essentialised ways as subordinated and without agency. We take up alternative theoretical frameworks that illuminate the limitations of modern understandings of the self and agency, and in particular their problematic association of agency with autonomy. These alternative frameworks also alert us to the possibilities of a different ‘ethics of the self' in which cultivation of Islamic values and submission to the will of God can involve agonistic work on the self which is not without agency. They prompt us to consider the methodological limitations of our research approach, in particular how this agonistic work on the self could readily be flattened and rendered invisible within a focus group discussion. We reflect on the kinds of research spaces which could have been more productive for a richer portrayal of Muslim women's agency. We then turn to our data to explore the complex entanglements of our participants' submission and agency, indicating the different ways female youth assumed, negotiated, and contested ‘subordinated’ identities

Exploring the Contribution of Parental Perceptions to Childhood Anxiety

Parental rearing practices such as over-involvement are associated with childhood anxiety; however, little is known about the contribution of parental perceptions to child anxiety. This study explores the relationship between maternal and paternal perceptions of parenting and childhood anxiety. The perceived rearing behaviors and parental sense of competence (i.e., satisfaction and efficacy) of the parents of anxious children (n = 59) were compared with those of a non-clinical control sample (n = 44). In line with the findings from the literature that addresses externalizing disorders, parental sense of competence was significantly associated with childhood outcomes. Logistical regression suggested that paternal efficacy beliefs, acceptance, and maternal satisfaction were associated with an absence of clinical anxiety and lower levels of anxiety symptoms in children. Parental perceptions may thus provide an important area for understanding childhood anxiety

Gender symbolism and the expression of post-colonial national and religious identities

This paper traces the symbolic importance of gender to the assertion of national and religious identities drawing on case study data with youth from Senegal, Pakistan, Nigeria and Lebanon. We start with a brief overview of the theoretical and methodological approach to the research. We then illustrate the gender assumptions within youth identity narratives and the ways these produce masculinist and patriarchal national imaginaries that instantiate a heteronormative hierarchy and gender polarity. Intersecting with this, we explore the ways that particular claims to Islam also legitimise and depend on the surveillance and regulation of women. We further show how gender remains a significant dimension of national othering and a site of explicit postcolonial resistance that strengthens and stabilises heteronormative gender hierarchies and associated inequalities. Nevertheless, youth’s imaginaries are of a modernising religious nation, which are articulated in contra-distinction to the secular imaginaries of former colonising nations of the West. Provoked by this opposition, we show how religion is central in the production of nation states, colonial and post-colonial, and the ways that gender is inscribed in both. We point to the gender continuities of the post-colonial and former colonising states. Both sustain the continued surveillance and regulation of women and their bodies are used to inscribe power regimes and define difference. Finally we question the adequacy of liberal understandings of gender equality for disrupting the powerful gender symbolism embedded in youth’s national and religious imaginaries as well as the material conditions that emanate from these