‘Race’, Space and Place

Rural village communities in England are commonly portrayed as being neighbourly and close-knit, with villagers perceived as having a deep-seated sense of local identity complemented by strong feelings of belonging. This narrow view obscures, and marginalizes, the experiences of minority ethnic residents who can often feel excluded from village life. This article assesses whether the process of ‘othering’ that works to ostracize minority ethnic households is similar to that experienced by all ‘outsiders’ who are newcomers to rural living. It is argued that the conflation of rurality with notions of Englishness and ‘whiteness’ serves to reinforce this marginalization. Indeed, the scattered distribution of minority ethnic populations in the rural means that any understanding of these ‘communities’ needs to recognize that they are not ‘communities of place’ but instead are ‘communities of shared risk’, as it is the risk of racist harassment that provides commonality, kinship and shared experience amongst these diverse populations

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Abiraterone for Prostate Cancer Not Previously Treated with Hormone Therapy

BACKGROUND Abiraterone acetate plus prednisolone improves survival in men with relapsed prostate cancer. We assessed the effect of this combination in men starting long-term androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT), using a multigroup, multistage trial design. METHODS We randomly assigned patients in a 1:1 ratio to receive ADT alone or ADT plus abiraterone acetate (1000 mg daily) and prednisolone (5 mg daily) (combination therapy). Local radiotherapy was mandated for patients with node-negative, nonmetastatic disease and encouraged for those with positive nodes. For patients with nonmetastatic disease with no radiotherapy planned and for patients with metastatic disease, treatment continued until radiologic, clinical, or prostate-specific antigen (PSA) progression; otherwise, treatment was to continue for 2 years or until any type of progression, whichever came first. The primary outcome measure was overall survival. The intermediate primary outcome was failure-free survival (treatment failure was defined as radiologic, clinical, or PSA progression or death from prostate cancer). RESULTS A total of 1917 patients underwent randomization from November 2011 through January 2014. The median age was 67 years, and the median PSA level was 53 ng per milliliter. A total of 52% of the patients had metastatic disease, 20% had node-positive or node-indeterminate nonmetastatic disease, and 28% had node-negative, nonmetastatic disease; 95% had newly diagnosed disease. The median follow-up was 40 months. There were 184 deaths in the combination group as compared with 262 in the ADT-alone group (hazard ratio, 0.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.52 to 0.76; P<0.001); the hazard ratio was 0.75 in patients with nonmetastatic disease and 0.61 in those with metastatic disease. There were 248 treatment-failure events in the combination group as compared with 535 in the ADT-alone group (hazard ratio, 0.29; 95% CI, 0.25 to 0.34; P<0.001); the hazard ratio was 0.21 in patients with nonmetastatic disease and 0.31 in those with metastatic disease. Grade 3 to 5 adverse events occurred in 47% of the patients in the combination group (with nine grade 5 events) and in 33% of the patients in the ADT-alone group (with three grade 5 events). CONCLUSIONS Among men with locally advanced or metastatic prostate cancer, ADT plus abiraterone and prednisolone was associated with significantly higher rates of overall and failure-free survival than ADT alone. (Funded by Cancer Research U.K. and others; STAMPEDE ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00268476, and Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN78818544.

'Warm Beer and Invincible Green Suburbs'? Examining the Realities of Rurality for Minority Ethnic Households

Popular constructions of rural England have perpetuated images of idyllic, problem free environments which have tended to mask the exclusionary processes that marginalise particular groups of rural 'others'. This includes minority ethnic 'others' whose experiences of rural life have been largely overlooked by academic studies. Previous research into 'race'-related issues has focused almost exclusively on the more urbanised areas of the country which typically contain larger minority ethnic populations, but such a focus has to some extent overshadowed the difficulties facing minority ethnic households living in rural areas where communities are traditionally less transient and feelings of isolation and alienation may be at a premium. The research upon which the thesis is based is drawn from predominantly qualitative material elicited from studies of rural towns and villages based in three English counties, and has been used to examine a range of issues relating to rural racism. The perceptions of minority ethnic groups are examined to identify their feelings about rural life, fear of racist harassment and experiences of victimisation, while the attitudes of established white rural communities are also assessed in an analysis of notions of community, identity and 'otherness' in a rural context. In addition, the thesis considers the way in which statutory and voluntary agencies respond to the needs of minority ethnic rural households and to problems of racist victimisation. The research findings illustrate the disturbing nature, extent and impact of racist victimisation in rural environments, and it is suggested that the 'invisibility' of the problem is compounded by weaknesses in agency responses and by the enduring appeal of idyllicised constructions of rurality. Romanticised notions of rural homogeneity, and the corresponding demonisation of the 'other', will inevitably have implications for minority ethnic households whose visible or cultural differences immediately set them apart from the prevailing norm of rural 'sameness'. At the same time though, the status of the 'other' may not be a permanent affiliation for all rural minority ethnic households, but instead is likely to be a more transient condition contingent to some extent upon individual circumstances and particular environments. Consequently, the thesis contends that the significance of racialised 'othering' in the rural will only be fully appreciated through a more nuanced conceptual understanding of the rural 'othering' process, and through a more holistic research agenda that takes account of the increasing diversification of rural space

Re-Thinking Hate Crime : Fresh Challenges for Policy and Practice.

Hate crime has become an increasingly familiar term in recent times as the harms associated with acts of bigotry and prejudice continue to pose complex challenges for societies across the world. However, despite the greater recognition now afforded to hate crimes by scholars, policy makers and law enforcers, uncertainty continues to cloud the scope and legitimacy of existing policy frameworks. This article draws from an emerging body of inter-disciplinary scholarship and empirical research to highlight a series of important realities about hate crime victimization and perpetration that tend to remain peripheral to the process of policy formation. It suggests that the focus on particular strands of victims and particular sets of motivations has overshadowed a range of significant issues, including the experiences of "marginal" groups of victims, and the way in which identity characteristics intersect with one another-and with other situational factors and context-to leave some targets of hate crime especially vulnerable. The article calls for a more fluid and multi-layered approach to policy formation, which engages with these realities, and which maximizes the real-life value of hate crime discourse

Mind the Gap! Making Stronger Connections between Hate Crime Policy and Scholarship

With hostility and prejudice continuing to pose complex challenges for societies across the world, developments in hate crime scholarship and policy have facilitated a greater prioritization, improved understanding and collective action amongst a range of different actors, including law-makers and enforcers, non-governmental organisations, activists and ‘ordinary’ citizens. Despite this progress however, our collective responses to hate crime have been undermined by a disconnected approach to scholarship and policy. This article focuses on a series of problems which are created and reinforced through such an approach. This includes the limited reach of hate crime scholarship, and specifically the perception that academic theorising is often too detached from the everyday realities confronting those who respond to – or live with – the consequences of hate crime in the ‘real world’. Equally problematic is policy which is not empirically-driven or linked to academic knowledge, or which is based on tokenistic, cynical or ‘tick-box’ foundations. The article draws from these faultlines to underline the symbiotic relationship between hate crime scholarship and policy-formation: one where policyformation needs academic substance to be fit for purpose; and where scholarship needs to inform policy to have any lasting ‘real-world’ value to responses to hate crime

The nature and extent of crime committed against petrol service stations in the UK

Includes bibliographical referencesSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:6224. 065(no 18) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Rural Racism

xiv,210hal.;23c