‘It is hard for me to live in the city’: local identities and place attachment among young rural Russians

The contemporary youth studies are mostly metrocentric. As a result, rural youth often find themselves outside the focus of researchers' attention being marginalized in comparison with urban youth whose experience and lifestyle are perceived as a normative model. In these conditions, rural space is labeled as illegitimate and structurally depriving for youth. This approach is criticized by researchers who work in the tradition of the cultural geographies of childhood and youth and take into account complex, often contradictory but still unique and autonomous experiences of today's young people living in rural areas. The article is based on 59 biographical interviews and describes how Russian rural youth comprehend belonging to places in three rural localities. The authors single out three types of prerequisites defining the place attachment and local identities among young people: rational choice, biographical rootedness, and community rootedness. Acknowledgments. The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2015-2016. We thank our colleagues from the Centre for Youth Studies at NRU HSE in St. Petersburg who participated in interviewing the respondents and whose excellent and professional work was indispensable for writing this article

Nebuliser therapy in the intensive care unit

The relationship between identity, lived experience, sexual practices and the language through which these are conveyed has been widely debated in sexuality literature. For example, ‘coming out’ has famously been conceptualised as a ‘speech act’ (Sedgwick 1990) and as a collective narrative (Plummer 1995), while a growing concern for individuals’ diverse identifications in relations to their sexual and gender practices has produced interesting research focusing on linguistic practices among LGBT-identified individuals (Leap 1995; Kulick 2000; Cameron and Kulick 2006; Farqhar 2000). While an explicit focus on language remains marginal to literature on sexualities (Kulick 2000), issue of language use and translation are seldom explicitly addressed in the growing literature on intersectionality. Yet intersectional perspectives ‘reject the separability of analytical and identity categories’ (McCall 2005:1771), and therefore have an implicit stake in the ‘vernacular’ language of the researched, in the ‘scientific’ language of the researcher and in the relationship of continuity between the two. Drawing on literature within gay and lesbian/queer studies and cross-cultural studies, this chapter revisits debates on sexuality, language and intersectionality. I argue for the importance of giving careful consideration to the language we choose to use as researchers to collectively define the people whose experiences we try to capture. I also propose that language itself can be investigated as a productive way to foreground how individual and collective identifications are discursively constructed, and to unpack the diversity of lived experience. I address intersectional complexity as a methodological issue, where methodology is understood not only as the methods and practicalities of doing research, but more broadly as ‘a coherent set of ideas about the philosophy, methods and data that underlie the research process and the production of knowledge’ (McCall 2005:1774). My points are illustrated with examples drawn from my ethnographic study on ‘lesbian’ identity in urban Russia, interspersed with insights from existing literature. In particular, I aim to show that an explicit focus on language can be a productive way to explore the intersections between the global, the national and the local in cross-cultural research on sexuality, while also addressing issues of positionality and accountability to the communities researched

The politics of in/visibility: carving out queer space in Ul'yanovsk

<p>In spite of a growing interest within sexualities studies in the concept of queer space (Oswin 2008), existing literature focuses almost exclusively on its most visible and territorialised forms, such as the gay scene, thus privileging Western metropolitan areas as hubs of queer consumer culture (Binnie 2004). While the literature has emphasised the political significance of queer space as a site of resistance to hegemonic gender and sexual norms, it has again predominantly focused on overt claims to public space embodied in Pride events, neglecting other less open forms of resistance.</p><p> This article contributes new insights to current debates about the construction and meaning of queer space by considering how city space is appropriated by an informal queer network in Ul’ianovsk. The group routinely occupied very public locations meeting and socialising on the street or in mainstream cafés in central Ul’ianovsk, although claims to these spaces as queer were mostly contingent, precarious or invisible to outsiders. The article considers how provincial location affects tactics used to carve out communal space, foregrounding the importance of local context and collective agency in shaping specific forms of resistance, and questioning ethnocentric assumptions about the empowering potential of visibility.</p&gt

Measurement invariance of Personal Well-Being Index (PWI-8) across 26 countries

This report examines the measurement invariance of the Personal Well-being Index with 8 items (PWI-8). University students (N = 5731) from 26 countries completed the measure either through paper and pencil or electronic mode. We examined uni-dimensional structure of PWI and performed a Multi-group CFA to assess the measurement invariance across the 26 countries, using conventional approach and the alignment procedure. The findings provide evidence of configural and partial metric invariance, as well as partial scalar invariance across samples. The findings suggest that PWI-8 can be used to examine correlates of life satisfaction across all included countries, however it is impossible to compare raw scores across countries

The Influence of Landscape Farming Systems on the Fertility of Eroded Residual Carbonate Chernozem

The purpose of the work is to study the influence of adaptive landscape farming systems on the fertility indicators of eroded residual carbonate chernozem. The study of carbonate soils is of particular scientific and practical interest, since they are susceptible to easy destruction, accelerated degradation and increased difficulty in restoring fertility; they suffer more from water erosion and deflation. With the integrated use of all elements of adaptive landscape farming systems, primarily including anti-erosion organization of the territory that forms the soil-protective configuration of fields, a system of protective forest plantings, adaptive placement of agricultural crops, a fertilizer system aimed at a deficit-free balance of humus and nutrients, even in extremely difficult soil conditions. -relief conditions of the Krasnogvardeisky test site managed to stop soil erosion losses, which contributed to an increase in their fertility

Intensity and Direction of Dynamics of Soil Fertility Indicators in Landscape Farming

The purpose of the work is to study the dynamics of soil fertility indicators after the development of adaptive landscape farming systems in the most eroded region of the Belgorod region since 1981. Based on 40 years of research at the model object “Turnip Log”, it is shown that the direction and intensity of the soil-forming process is changing. Four stages are distinguished: at the first until 1993 the decrease in humus content and alkalization of the soil environment, characteristic of washed away carbonate soils, continues; at the second stage, the rate of humus loss drops 10 times; the third ten-year period is characterized by a significant increase in organic matter and its stabilization subsequently, which accompanied by a transition in pHsol. to the area of neutral values. The dynamics of mobile forms of macroelements and agronomically valuable cations Ca2+ and Mg2+ indicate the cultivation of soils in general. At the same time, it is emphasized that there are no universal elements in the agricultural system; Along with the creation of an ecological framework of protective plantings, it is necessary to comply with the principles of adaptive placement of agricultural crops and a deficit-free balance of humus and nutrients in crop rotations

Biraite-(Ce), Ce2Fe2+(CO3)(Si2O7), a new mineral from Siberia with a novel structure type

Biraite-(Ce), ideally Ce2Fe2+(CO3)(Si2O7), has been found in the Biraia deposit (Irkutsk district, Russia), associated with cordylite-(Ce) and -(La), aragonite, strontianite, Sr,Fe- bearing dolomite, ancylite-(Ce) and -(La), hydroxyl-bastnäsite-(Ce), daqingshanite-(Ce) and -(La), tremolite, winchite, ferriallanite-(Ce), törnebohmite-(Ce), cerite, chevkinite-(Ce), belkovite, humite, fergusonite-(Ce) and -(Nd), pyrochlore, barite, monazite-(Ce) and other unknown minerals. Biraite-(Ce) occurs as irregular to well-shaped grains from 0.1 to 3 mm in length, has brown colour with a white streak, is semi-transparent with a vitreous luster and brittle. The hardness (Mohs) is 5, and the calculated density is 4.76 g/cm3. Optically, biraite-(Ce) is biaxial (-), with α 1.785(1), β 1.810(2), γ 1.820(1), 2V 66°(1). Electron microprobe and wet chemical analyses gave the following empirical formula based on 10 O+F: (Ce1.01La0.57Nd0.25Pr0.09Sm0.02Ca0.07Na0.02Ba0.01)Σ=2.04 (Fe0.60Mg0.25Mn0.11Ti0.01)Σ=0.97 (CO3)0.99 [Si1.97(O6.87F0.17)Σ=7.04]. The simplified formula is Ce2Fe2+(CO3)(Si2O7). The IR spectrum confirmed the presence of [CO3] groups. The strongest lines of the X-ray powder pattern [d in Å (I) (hkl)] are: 3.30 (5) (021), 2.92 (10) (006, 21-2), 2.65 (5) (202, 12-4), 2.23 (5) (116, 031). Biraite-(Ce) is monoclinic, space group P21/c, with a 6.505(7), b 6.744(2), c 18.561(4) Å, β 108.75(2)°. Its crystal structure was refined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data to R(F) = 0.033. Biraite-(Ce) displays a new structure type, based on polyhedral (001) sheets composed of pairs of edge-sharing [FeO6] octahedra, [Si2O7] groups, and [CO3] triangles. Ce3+ cations in ten-fold coordination provide the linkage between neighbour polyhedral sheets. Both the mineral and its name have been approved by the IMA Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names