Book Review: Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory

Review of Gender and Globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method, Practice, Theory, edited by Kathy E. Ferguson and Monique Mironesc

“Ain’t No Real Pimps Out There No More”: Street-involved Women’s Characterizations of Men Who Facilitate Street-based Sex Work

Drawing upon five years of ethnographic research with over 100 Denver, Colorado women involved in street­‐based sex work and drug use, this paper explores what the women\u27s discursive framings of men who facilitate women\u27s sex work activities reveal about the exclusionary social and criminal justice practices that shape their lives

Amino Acid Changes at Arginine 204 of Troponin I Result in Increased Calcium Sensitivity of Force Development.

Mutations in human cardiac troponin I (cTnI) have been associated with restrictive, dilated, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathies. The most commonly occurring residue on cTnI associated with familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHC) is arginine (R), which is also the most common residue at which multiple mutations occur. Two FHC mutations are known to occur at cTnI arginine 204, R204C and R204H, and both are associated with poor clinical prognosis. The R204H mutation has also been associated with restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM). To characterize the effects of different mutations at the same residue (R204) on the physiological function of cTnI, six mutations at R204 (C, G, H, P, Q, W) were investigated in skinned fiber studies. Skinned fiber studies showed that all tested mutations at R204 caused significant increases in Ca2+ sensitivity of force development (ΔpCa50 = 0.22-0.35) when compared to wild-type (WT) cTnI. Investigation of the interactions between the cTnI mutants and WT cardiac troponin C (cTnC) or WT cardiac troponin T (cTnT) showed that all the mutations investigated, except R204G, affected either or both cTnI:cTnT and cTnI:cTnC interactions. The R204H mutation affected both cTnI:cTnT and cTnI:cTnC interactions while the R204C mutation affected only the cTnI:cTnC interaction. These results suggest that different mutations at the same site on cTnI could have varying effects on thin filament interactions. A mutation in fast skeletal TnI (R174Q, homologous to cTnI R204Q) also significantly increased Ca2+ sensitivity of force development (ΔpCa50 = 0.16). Our studies indicate that known cTnI mutations associated with poor prognosis (R204C and R204H) exhibit large increases in Ca2+ sensitivity of force development. Therefore, other R204 mutations that cause similar increases in Ca2+ sensitivity are also likely to have poor prognoses

Between Global Fears and Local Bodies: Toward a Transnational Feminist Analysis of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) knows no borders. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed historically unprecedented levels of violence against non-combatants as well as a concomitant rise in international and local efforts to assist survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. Yet the diversity of cultural contexts in which SGBV occurs challenges us to ask a timely question: what might a transnational feminist analysis of conflict-related sexual violence look like? This is particularly salient because feminist scholar-activists increasingly help shape policy designed to both address sexual violence as a weapon or by-product of war and services to assist its survivors. This article addresses the rise of global and local initiatives and institutions that rely upon the relatively recent emergence of concretized “best practices” recommended as global solutions to what are inevitably local problems. This article demonstrates how such global solutions are recommended for what are inevitably local problems and exemplifies how best practices are couched in human rights discourses that are presumed universally relevant despite their almost exclusive origination and dissemination by individuals in a privileged position vis-à-vis the intended beneficiaries of such discourse’s practice. After analyzing the ethical concerns raised by this reality, this article proposes using non-hegemonic feminist models to develop new strategies for respecting both cultural diversity and the humanitarian responsibility to protect individuals from conflict-related sexual violence

Beyond dichotomies: Exploring responses to tackling the sex industry in Nepal.

The sex industry in Nepal has witnessed a massive resurgence, largely due to the expansion of the entertainment sector in the last decade. It is frequently featured in the national media, often with sensationalistic headlines. However, there is only limited research available on the perceptions of support agencies’ efforts in dealing with sex industry in Nepal. This chapter explores the approaches taken by different agencies in Nepal to intervening in the sex industry. The data for the chapter are derived from semi-structured interviews with donor agencies, government offices, I/NGOs, and other anti-trafficking networks. The findings of the chapter delineate that the rights of women and girls to work in a safe and healthy environment have been largely neglected in Nepal. Despite several attempts to regulate the sex industry, the practices employed by support organisations are often limited to controlling measures (rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration model). Such measures often bound up in the choice/coercion and innocent/savvy dichotomies. The chapter emphasises the importance of looking beyond these dichotomies and addressing the labour exploitation and other human rights violations that women and girls are facing in the Nepalese sex industry

Control creep and the multiple exclusions faced by women in low-autonomy sex industry sectors

his article unites the co-authors’ years of empirical research with women in policed, stigmatized, and low-autonomy sex industry sectors in Brazil, China, Italy, and the United States to identify six prevalent forms of exclusion: economic, intersectional, health, safety, public vilification, and policing. We analyze the distinct manifestations of these exclusionary forces in all four sites to introduce criminal creep as theoretical shorthand for the global seepage of ideological, structural, and interpersonal exclusionary forces into social life, professional practice, and socio-legal procedures that marginalize women in the sex industry as victim- criminals in need of rehabilitation. Uniting and building upon literature on feminist engagement with and critiques of citizenship, conceptual uses of “creep”, carcerality and crimmigration, and critical anti-trafficking studies, we argue that criminal creep facilitates a perfect storm of exclusion that promotes sex workers’ de facto and de jure exclusion from citizenship through a set of wide-ranging set of harms. Furthermore, we identify “control creep” as a factor limiting – even radically – the political organization of and social scientific production regarding the vulnerable populations anti-sex work and anti-trafficking laws are supposedly designed to aid

Women Incarcerated in Rural Southern Prisons in the United States: A Review of Existing Multidisciplinary Literature and Suggestions for Future Directions

Prisons in the Southern United States are a particularly unique kind of rural institutions not only because of their geographic locations, social climates informed by the rural cultures of staff and prisoners, and, for many older Southern prisons, their roots in plantation agriculture. Despite these realities, rural criminology has yet to systematically synthesize and explore what existing research indicates about the everyday lives of over 30,000 women currently serving time in state prisons throughout the Southern United States. The present study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by synthesizing all the available literature on women incarcerated in rural Southern prisons and identifying four prevailing themes in this body of work: regional culture in historical context, relationships and social dynamics, victimization and wellbeing, and journeys through the system from sentencing to reentry.&nbsp

Revitalizing the Study of Self-Directed Adult Learning

Self-directed learning has been an important research area in adult education for the past three decades, and holds much potential for future scholarship. Three areas for possible future inquiry are examined