‘The Muslim woman activist’: solidarity across difference in the movement against the ‘War on Terror’

Feminist scholars have widely noted the centrality of gendered discourses to the ‘War on Terror’. This article shows how gendered narratives also shaped the collective identities of those opposing the ‘War on Terror’. Using interview data and analysis of newspaper editorials from movement leaders alongside focus groups with grassroots Muslim women activists, this article demonstrates how, in responding to the cynical use of women’s rights to justify war, participants in the anti-‘War on Terror’ movement offered an alternative story. Movement activists deployed representations of Muslim women’s agency to challenge the trope of the ‘oppressed Muslim woman’. I argue that these representations went beyond strategic counternarratives and offered an emotional basis for solidarity. Yet, respondents in the focus groups illustrated the challenges of seeking agency through an ascribed identity; in that they simultaneously refused and relied upon dominant terms of the debate about Muslim women

Contesting Global Norms: Politics of Identity in Japanese Pro-Whaling Countermobilization

Why are anti- and pro-whaling coalitions still engaged in morally heated confrontations over whales tracing back to the 1970s? Revisiting the global whaling controversy, this article applies insights from the political sociology of social movements to highlight the importance of the politics of identity embedded in an elite-driven pro-whaling countermovement in Japan. As is well documented, Japan has proven a most difficult context for the emerging "global" anti-whaling norm. Rather than simply reflecting material interests or cultural values, however, this sustained resistance should be approached from a processual and symbolic interactionist perspective as the construction of a pro-whaling moral universe integrated around strong and inflexible claims of collective identity. Empirically, the article analyzes the major discursive master frames constituting this pro-whaling identity. Arguing for the centrality of symbolic-moral framing, it further suggests three competing normative frameworks for making sense of the controversy in the wider context of global environmental norms-in-the-making. (c) 2008 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The association of depressive symptoms with survival in a Dutch cohort of patients with end-stage renal disease

Methods. In a prospective fashion, symptoms of depression were evaluated in ESRD patients on RRT using the depression subscore of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Fatal and non-fatal clinical events were determined during a 1-year follow-up. Results. Of 101 patients with ESRD, 42% showed manifest depressive symptoms, defined as a HADS-D score >= 7. No association was found between depressive symptoms and severity of somatic disease. During follow-up, all-cause mortality was significantly higher in patients with depressive symptoms above threshold (n = 42, mortality: 26%) compared to patients with depressive symptoms below threshold (n = 59, mortality 8%), (crude HR 3.3, CI 1.2-9.6, P = 0.02). The excess in mortality was mainly caused by a higher incidence of septicaemia (0 versus 12%, P = 0.01). After adjustment for clinical parameters, this association between depressive symptoms and mortality became even stronger. There was no significant difference observed in the incidence of cardiovascular events. Conclusions. Patients with ESRD treated with dialysis show a high level of depressive symptoms that is independently associated with poor survival. Future research should address appropriate therapeutic regimens.Clinical epidemiolog