Intersectionality and the politics of knowledge production

Since its coinage in the 1980s, intersectionality has journeyed across borders and disciplines, which is a testament to its resonance. We examine how intersectionality has travelled within political science and the potential impact that this has had on its political project, with particular attention to the politics of knowledge production. The analysis draws on: (1) an original database of articles published in political science journals; (2) descriptive citation analysis; (3) a content analysis of the articles; and (4) an online survey of authors. We find that positionality plays an important role in shaping the field and political project of intersectionality

Affordable Net Zero Housing and Transportation Solutions

Today the built environment expends 43% of US energy. In the past ten years the science community has begun to tackle this issue with research on the concept of net zero buildings, or buildings that combine energy efficiency and on-site renewable energy production to use no net energy from off-site sources (Dannenberg, 2007). This policy brief explores some of the issues related to net zero construction, as well as variation in state policy approaches that support a net zero construction approach. Current issues affecting net zero are the lack of definitional clarity, the broad range of policies needed to construct net zero housing, and the cost of implementation

Do we need to categorize it? Reflections on constituencies and quotas as tools for negotiating difference in the global food sovereignty convergence space

Convergence–as an objective and as a process–designates the coming together of different social actors across strategic, political, ideological, sectoral and geographic divides. In this paper, we analyze the global food sovereignty movement (GFSM) as a convergence space, with a focus on constituencies and quotas as tools to maintain diversity while facilitating convergence. We show how the use of constituencies and quotas has supported two objectives of the GFSM: alliances building and effective direct representation in global policy-making spaces. We conclude by pointing to some convergence challenges the GFSM faces as it expands beyond its agrarian origins.</p

The problem of constitutional legitimation: what the debate on electoral quotas tells us about the legitimacy of decision-making rules in constitutional choice

Proponents of electoral quotas have a ‘dependent interpretation’ of democracy, i.e. they have formed an opinion on which decision-making rules are fair on the basis of their prior approval of the outcomes these rules are likely to generate. The article argues that this position causes an irresolvable problem for constitutional processes that seek to legitimately enact institutional change. While constitutional revision governed by formal equality allows the introduction of electoral quotas, this avenue is normatively untenable for proponents of affirmative action if they are consistent with their claim that formal equality reproduces biases and power asymmetries at all levels of decision-making. Their critique raises a fundamental challenge to the constitutional revision rule itself as equally unfair. Without consensus on the decision-making process by which new post-constitutional rules can be legitimately enacted, procedural fairness becomes an issue impossible to resolve at the stage of constitutional choice. This problem of legitimation affects all instances of constitutional choice in which there are opposing views not only about the desired outcome of the process but also about the decision-making rules that govern constitutional choice

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of Parkinson?s disease

Although over 90 independent risk variants have been identified for Parkinson’s disease using genome-wide association studies, most studies have been performed in just one population at a time. Here we performed a large-scale multi-ancestry meta-analysis of Parkinson’s disease with 49,049 cases, 18,785 proxy cases and 2,458,063 controls including individuals of European, East Asian, Latin American and African ancestry. In a meta-analysis, we identified 78 independent genome-wide significant loci, including 12 potentially novel loci (MTF2, PIK3CA, ADD1, SYBU, IRS2, USP8, PIGL, FASN, MYLK2, USP25, EP300 and PPP6R2) and fine-mapped 6 putative causal variants at 6 known PD loci. By combining our results with publicly available eQTL data, we identified 25 putative risk genes in these novel loci whose expression is associated with PD risk. This work lays the groundwork for future efforts aimed at identifying PD loci in non-European populations

State Power, Religion, and Women\u27s Rights: A Comparative Analysis of Family Law

Examining cross-national variation in family law, we find that many countries have reformed to promote sex equality. Yet a significant group retains older laws that discriminate against women. These variations reflect the diverse institutional legacies of these societies, conforming closely-but not entirely-to inherited legal traditions: civil law, common law, and postsocialist countries are the most egalitarian, while countries applying religious law are the least. Yet change is possible, even in unlikely contexts. Political conjunctures that disarm religious, nationalist, and fundamentalist opponents can open windows of opportunity for liberalizing reform. Human Rights and Legal Systems Across the Global South, Symposium, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana. 9-10 April 2010