Who pays for the next wave? The American welfare state and responsibility for flood risk

In preparing for and responding to natural hazards and disasters, the welfare state establishes a social contract, distributing responsibilities for what will be collectively managed and what will be individually borne. Drawing on archival, interview, and ethnographic data, this article examines the renegotiation of that social contract through the lens of contested efforts to reform the massively indebted US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) from 2011 to 2014. In the face of a morally charged debate about deservingness and individual choice, Congress passed legislation that committed to incorporating need-based considerations to the NFIP for the first time. The result defined “deservingness” in terms of ability to pay for risk exposure, qualifying an individualization of responsibility for addressing the problem of flood loss—a problem that might instead demand broader risk sharing, particularly as climate change worsens the threat of flooding

It's not a lack of information that stops many Americans from adapting to flood risks; it's a lack of cash.

The devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey on the south coast of the US have raised new questions about how Americans deal with flood risk. Drawing on her research on how New York responded to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Rebecca Elliott argues that giving people in flood prone areas more information about flood risk is not enough; policymakers need to ..

The state and the state-of-the-art: prefiguring private insurance for U.S. flood risk

States not only govern markets, but they also create them, often with the intention of expanding or improving the delivery of specific policy objectives. This paper outlines one way they do this: prefiguration. States prefigure markets, and private market actors, when they imagine and instantiate new market products, logics, and practices. I illustrate prefiguration through an analysis of the history of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the federal program that underwrites flood insurance in the United States. From the time of the NFIP’s establishment, policymakers and officials have fashioned and continuously reformed a public program, and an insurance product, in ways that emulate an imagined primary private flood insurer. In doing so, though, they have gradually established the conditions under which private flood insurers can do business. This paper contributes to scholarship on state “marketcraft.” Whereas many scholars have addressed why governments turn to markets in the first place, and the consequences of doing so, this paper offers a closer examination of what takes place in between: the specific activities that governments undertake as they pursue market creation

Changes to the National Flood Insurance Program show the moral and political dimensions of addressing climate change

For more than 50 years, the National Flood Insurance Program has underwritten flood insurance for homes and small businesses in the US. Rebecca Elliott writes that the way the program addresses flood risk is set to change this coming October. This technical and political transformation will see a move from collective to individualized risk assessments potentially atomizing the politics of [...

Generationalism: understanding the difference between what generations are and what they do

Rebecca Elliott (LSE) explores the appearance of generational ideas on Twitter, where users diagnose a breakdown of relations between old and young that has resulted in intergenerational discounting when it comes to dealing with the pandemic and climate change

Examining Gender Differences in a Forensic Sample Using the Personality Assessment Inventory

Rates of female criminality appear to be rising (The Sentencing Project, 2022), and thus more women are likely to present for evaluation in a forensic capacity. A majority of research in the field of criminal behavior has focused exclusively on male populations. A dearth of research examining risk factors among female offenders has led to a lack of empirically validated tools used to assess women. Additionally, research on gender differences within a forensic population representing a wide range of referral questions has not been conducted. Women offenders present with unique and different risk factors than men (Grimbos et al., 2016); thus, gender-responsive assessment is warranted to facilitate the development of informed clinical opinions regarding risk, needs, and recommended treatment. The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is a widely used self-report measure of personality (Morey, 2007) that assists forensic evaluators by offering additional clinical information relevant to psychopathology and treatment. The present quantitative study was designed to examine gender differences in a unique forensic sample using the PAI, providing information about the profiles of males and females referred for forensic evaluation. This study expanded the knowledge base regarding differences and similarities in psychopathology between men and women within a forensic population. These findings highlight the importance of maintaining a gender-responsive approach to forensic assessment that will lead to more valid assessment results and treatment recommendations. The PAI is discussed regarding its utility within gender-responsive assessment in a sample of this kind. Recommendations for forensic evaluators are also offered

The ‘Boomer remover’: intergenerational discounting, the coronavirus, and climate change

Based on an analysis of Twitter data, this article examines the appearance of generational ideas in the ways that people have defined the experience and significance of the coronavirus and climate change, as well as related them to each other. I characterize the narrative frame as one of intergenerational discounting: a description of breakdown in reciprocal obligations of care, giving rise to accusations of hypocrisy, expressions of resentment and rage, and the description of the virus as the ‘Boomer remover’. This frame normatively licenses withdrawal from intergenerational action in pursuit of collective objectives, as well as erases the disproportionate negative effects of crisis conditions on those facing intersecting intragenerational disadvantages. In addition to analysing a strategic but thus far unexplored data source for social problems theory and the sociology of generations – tweets – the article contributes to this scholarship by demonstrating how generational ideas work to morally link different conditions to each other

The over-expression, purification and crystallisation of the alternative oxidase

The alternative oxidase (AOX) is an integral monotopic membrane protein which branches from respiratory chain at the point of the Q-pool in the mitochondria of all flowers, some fungi, and some protists such as the human parasite Trypanosoma brucei. The aim of this project is threefold: to establish an over-expression and purification protocol for recombinant Sauromatum guttatum alternative oxidase (SgrAOX); to use expressed SgrAOX for structural analysis such as crystallography; and finally to use in silico methods to model the alternative oxidase protein. Of these three, only the first and last have been attempted previously, with varying success. The second, namely structural analysis, has never been attempted with SgrAOX. In order to achieve the aims of this project, primarily laboratory-based protein production were used, in conjunction with downstream analysis using structural biology techniques. The in silico modelling was carried out using a wide range of algorithms freely available on the World Wide Web. Results of this project are: the determination of an over-expression system and purification protocols in two E.coli strains, producing enough protein to use for the second objective detailed above. While no crystal structure has been obtained, significant steps toward identifying a protocol for rAOX crystallisation have been made. Results from structural analysis support modelling predictions and give novel insights into the thermostability of the protein. New and detailed homology models have been created and critically evaluated, with a very recent crystal structure from our collaborators providing a unique set of data for model evaluation. The outcome of this project has contributed towards the determination of conditions under which SgrAOX protein may form crystals, and therefore bringing the acquisition of a SgrAOX protein structure closer

Non-genetic therapeutic approaches to Canavan disease

Canavan disease (CD) is a rare leukodystrophy characterized by diffuse spongiform white matter degeneration, dysmyelination and intramyelinic oedema with consequent impairment of psychomotor development and early death. The molecular cause of CD has been identified as being mutations of the gene encoding the enzyme aspartoacylase (ASPA) leading to its functional deficiency. The physiological role of ASPA is to hydrolyse N-acetyl-l-aspartic acid (NAA), producing l-aspartic acid and acetate; as a result, its deficiency leads to abnormally high central nervous system NAA levels. The aim of this article is to review what is currently known regarding the aetiopathogenesis and treatment of CD, with emphasis on the non-genetic therapeutic strategies, both at an experimental and a clinical level, by highlighting: (a) major related hypotheses, (b) the results of the available experimental simulatory approaches, as well as (c) the relevance of the so far examined markers of CD neuropathology. The potential and the limitations of the current non-genetic neuroprotective approaches to the treatment of CD are particularly discussed in the current article, in a context that could be used to direct future experimental and (eventually) clinical work in the field