15 research outputs found
Palm oil not polar bears: climate change and development in Malaysian media
To date, debates about climate change reporting in national media focus largely on Western democracies. We aim to broaden the scope for crossânational comparison by looking at climate change reporting in Malaysia â an emerging economy in the global South facing developmental tensions common to many, specifically an ambitious national climate change agenda in the face of an economy largely reliant on the extraction and export of primary commodities. Our questions are: How is climate change framed in Malaysian media? How do Malaysian narratives compare with those found elsewhere? How do climate change and development narratives interact in a âsecond tierâ emerging economy? And lastly, what do these interacting narratives say about the salience of neoliberal and NorthâSouth perspectives on climate change and development? To answer these questions, we undertook a content analysis of climate action stories published over a threeâyear period (2009â2011) in five Englishâlanguage news sources. In addition to a high proportion of environmentalâframed articles across all the news sources, our findings show that climate change has been framed as both a multiâscalar responsibility and a positive opportunity for two key stakeholders in development, i.e. neoliberal market forces and geopolitical actors keenly interested in restructuring the international political economy along lines reminiscent of the new international economic order (NIEO) demands of the 1970s. We label the key themes emergent from our analysis as climate capitalism and green nationalism (neither of which are unique to Malaysia), while demonstrating that debates about palm oil are particularly illustrative of the interaction of these themes in the Malaysian context. In the final section we suggest thinking of the interacting elements as a singular, structuralist model of green development â one reminiscent of discourses at work in other emerging economies
Exploring masculinities, sexual health and wellbeing across areas of high deprivation in Scotland: the depth of the challenge to improve understandings and practices
Within and across areas of high deprivation, we explored constructions of masculinity in relation to sexual health and wellbeing, in what we believe to be the first UK study to take this approach. Our sample of 116 heterosexual men and women age 18â40 years took part in individual semi-structured interviews (n = 35) and focus group discussions (n = 18), across areas in Scotland. Drawing on a socio-ecological framework, findings revealed experience in places matter, with gender practices rooted in a domestically violent milieu, where localised, socio-cultural influences offered limited opportunities for more egalitarian performances of masculinity. We discuss the depths of the challenge in transforming masculinities in relation to sexual health and wellbeing in such communities
Commodification in multiple registers: Child workers, child consumers, and child labor NGOs in India
Using the term âcommodityâ as an analytic, this chapter considers the persistence of an iconography of victimhood in dominant representations of child labor in India favored by âblanket banâ NGOs. Drawing on a historiography of child labor legislations, dating from nineteenth century Britain, I explore âchild laborâ as an affective commodity based on its victimhood imagery, which is readily recognized and consumed in global humanitarian markets today. In the context of NGOs in India, such affective representations also perform a particular NGO identity, one that delineates the âuncompromisingâ abolitionist stance of blanket ban NGOs, in contrast to the more accommodating stance of the Indian state. The affective logics of âchild laborâ however, do not square well with the desires and aspirations of ârealâ working children who are economic agents and desiring subjects in their own right