Teaching Solidarity: Popular Education in Grassroots U.S. Social Movements

Fifty years after he wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s work is as relevant as ever. But while many of Freire’s ideas are well known in the United States, there is limited research on their application in social movement settings, a practice commonly known as popular education. This comparative case study draws on Freire’s theory of popular education to analyze two U.S.-based grassroots education programs, one with low-income residents in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco and one with front-line hospital and public school employees on the East Coast. Through six months of participant observation and over 50 interviews with facilitators and participants, the study finds that the two programs carved out spaces that were relatively independent from union and non-profit hierarchies, which enabled them to apply popular education’s radically democratic principles within their organizing work and larger social struggles. These findings point to the possibility that popular education can offer participants not only knowledge and skills but also–and perhaps more importantly–strengthened connections across divisions, confidence that they can make change, and the courage to organize. The dissertation also expands on commonly understood meanings of “critical consciousness,” arguing that what moves people to action may be not only their intellectual understanding of power, but also an increased solidarity that gives them an awareness of their collective historical agency. Finally, the study identifies tensions in the programs, for example related to funding constraints, that at times interfered with facilitators’ abilities to apply the radical principles of popular education. These findings speak to the value of a reflective practice on the part of practitioners, and highlight the ongoing significance of Freirean popular education in U.S. social movement contexts

Trading on Preconceptions: Why World War I Was Not a Failure of Economic Interdependence

World War I is generally viewed by both advocates and critics of commercial liberal theory as the quintessential example of a failure of economic integration to maintain peace. Yet this consensus relies on both methodologically flawed inference and an incomplete accounting of the antecedents to the war. Crucially, World War I began in a weakly integrated portion of Europe with which highly integrated powers were entangled through the alliance system. Crises among the highly interdependent European powers in the decades leading up to the war were generally resolved without bloodshed. Among the less interdependent powers in Eastern Europe, however, crises regularly escalated to militarized violence. Moreover, the crises leading to the war created increased incentives for the integrated powers to strengthen commitments to their less interdependent partners. In attempting to make these alliances more credible, Western powers shifted foreign policy discretion to the very states that lacked strong economic disincentives to fight. Had globalization pervaded Eastern Europe, or if the rest of Europe had been less locked into events in the east, Europe might have avoided a “Great War.” </jats:p

Optical turbulence simulations at Mt Graham using the Meso-NH mode

The mesoscale model Meso-NH is used to simulate the optical turbulence at Mt Graham (Arizona, USA), site of the Large Binocular Telescope. Measurements of the CN2-profiles obtained with a generalized scidar from 41 nights are used to calibrate and quantify the model's ability to reconstruct the optical turbulence. The measurements are distributed over different periods of the year, permitting us to study the model's performance in different seasons. A statistical analysis of the simulations is performed for all the most important astroclimatic parameters: the CN2-profiles, the seeing {\epsilon}, the isoplanatic angle {\theta}0 and the wavefront coherence time {\tau}0. The model shows a general good ability in reconstructing the morphology of the optical turbulence (the shape of the vertical distribution of CN2) as well as the strength of all the integrated astroclimatic parameters. The relative error (with respect to measurements) of the averaged seeing on the whole atmosphere for the whole sample of 41 nights is within 9.0 %. The median value of the relative error night by night is equal to 18.7 %, so that the model still maintains very good performances. Comparable percentages are observed in partial vertical slabs (free atmosphere and boundary layer) and in different seasons (summer and winter). We prove that the most urgent problem, at present, is to increase the ability of the model in reconstructing very weak and very strong turbulence conditions in the high atmosphere. This mainly affects the model's performances for the isoplanatic angle predictions, for which the median value of the relative error night by night is equal to 35.1 %. No major problems are observed for the other astroclimatic parameters. A variant to the standard calibration method is tested but we find that it does not provide better results, confirming the solid base of the standard method.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures. The definitive version can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.18097.x/abstrac

Wind speed vertical distribution at Mt. Graham

The characterization of the wind speed vertical distribution V(h) is fundamental for an astronomical site for many different reasons: (1) the wind speed shear contributes to trigger optical turbulence in the whole troposphere, (2) a few of the astroclimatic parameters such as the wavefront coherence time (tau_0) depends directly on V(h), (3) the equivalent velocity V_0, controlling the frequency at which the adaptive optics systems have to run to work properly, depends on the vertical distribution of the wind speed and optical turbulence. Also, a too strong wind speed near the ground can introduce vibrations in the telescope structures. The wind speed at a precise pressure (200 hPa) has frequently been used to retrieve indications concerning the tau_0 and the frequency limits imposed to all instrumentation based on adaptive optics systems, but more recently it has been proved that V_200 (wind speed at 200 hPa) alone is not sufficient to provide exhaustive elements concerning this topic and that the vertical distribution of the wind speed is necessary. In this paper a complete characterization of the vertical distribution of wind speed strength is done above Mt.Graham (Arizona, US), site of the Large Binocular Telescope. We provide a climatological study extended over 10 years using the operational analyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), we prove that this is representative of the wind speed vertical distribution at Mt. Graham with exception of the boundary layer and we prove that a mesoscale model can provide reliable nightly estimates of V(h) above this astronomical site from the ground up to the top of the atmosphere (~ 20 km).Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures (whereof 3 colour), accepted by MNRAS May 27, 201

Le mentorat, symbole de l'individualisation des politiques publiques

Parce que le mentorat est un dispositif multi-sectoriel, que l’on retrouve dans le champ des politiques jeunesses, mais aussi celui des politiques éducatives et celui des politiques sociales, nous avons demandé à trois chercheurs spécialistes de ces différents domaines, de situer, chacun dans leur champ, l’émergence de ce type d’accompagnement et d’analyser les enjeux que son déploiement soulève. Cet article restitue nos échanges et croise les regards de nos trois enquêtés.Méthode Les entret..

The Saharan heat low and moisture transport pathways in the central Sahara-multiaircraft observations and Africa-LAM evaluation

We present a characterization of the Saharan heat low (SHL) based on dropsonde observations made on 22 June 2011 by two simultaneously flying aircraft during the Fennec project. The observations are used to identify moisture transport pathways and to validate the UK Met Office limited area model for northern Africa (Africa-LAM). The observations capture the SHL, harmattan, and monsoon surge. The SHL has a northeast-southwest orientated elongated shape centered over northern Mauritania. The SHL core is associated with a 950 hPa temperature minimum (36.4°C) in the morning caused by the monsoon surge and a maximum (42.6°C) in the afternoon. The monsoon surge east of the SHL core splits into two transport pathways: (a) curving around the SHL core in the north, especially pronounced in a morning near-surface layer, and (b) northeastward transport within the ~2km deep monsoon surge (afternoon observations only). In the morning the model forecasts the harmattan, monsoon surge, and the SHL geographic location and northeast-southwest orientation well but the model represents the SHL flatter and more spatially extended and overestimates the convective boundary layer (CBL) by up to ~0.3 km. The simulated afternoon SHL location appears shifted westward by up to ~1°. The model overestimates the shallow afternoon monsoon surge CBL depth of ~1.8km by >2kmresulting in southwestward transport of vertically mixed moisture above ~2.5km contrasting observed northeastward-only transport at lower levels. This moisture distribution model error is likely to have consequences for simulations of Saharan thermodynamics and dust emissions caused by convection-driven cold pools

Export of Asian pollution during two cold front episodes of the TRACE-P experiment

Two cold front episodes were sampled during the two flights out of Yokota, Japan, during the Transport and Chemical Evolution Over the Pacific (TRACE-P) experiment during March 2001. The data from these two flights are examined using a mesoscale three-dimensional model. We show how these cyclonic systems have impacted the export of pollution out of the Asian continent. We contrast the relative role of convection and ascent in the warm conveyor belts associated with the cyclone during these two episodes. Although the necessary meteorological conditions for an efficient export of pollution are met during flight 13 (i.e., the occurrences of the warm conveyor belt near the source regions), no significant pollution is simulated in the mid-Pacific in the lower and middle troposphere. The efficient ventilation of the WCB by convection near the coast, the advection by the anticyclonical flow above 700 hPa, and the downward motion associated with the Pacific high in the remote ocean significantly prevent any long-range transport of undiluted pollution in the WCB. During flight 15 the conveyor belts have already moved to the remote ocean. The polluted plume is split by the rising air in the warm conveyor belt which transports CO-poor air northward and by the oceanic convection which transports clean air masses upward. These mechanisms lead to the dilution of Asian pollution in WCB en route to North America and add to the episodic nature of the Asian outflow by fragmenting the pollution plume

Development of Intelligent Interface to Input and Edit Meteorological Data

The paper presents the method of development of user interface for the hydrometeorological data acquisition system. This research includes some basic principles of creating hydrometeorological messages according to code KN-01 SYNOP. This code allows creating messages as a set of code groups. Every group keeps values of definite meteorological properties. The result of studies was implemented in creating of the user interface for the software that allows working with hydrometeorological data. The KN-01 code defines the class hierarchy of this software. The studies have shown that this method of software development is especially effective for visualization of the meteorological telegrams on devices with small display