Impact of culture towards disaster risk reduction

Number of natural disasters has risen sharply worldwide making the risk of disasters a global concern. These disasters have created significant losses and damages to humans, economy and society. Despite the losses and damages created by disasters, some individuals and communities do not attached much significance to natural disasters. Risk perception towards a disaster not only depends on the danger it could create but also the behaviour of the communities and individuals that is governed by their culture. Within this context, this study examines the relationship between culture and disaster risk reduction (DRR). A comprehensive literature review is used for the study to evaluate culture, its components and to analyse a series of case studies related to disaster risk. It was evident from the study that in some situations, culture has become a factor for the survival of the communities from disasters where as in some situations culture has acted as a barrier for effective DRR activities. The study suggests community based DRR activities as a mechanism to integrate with culture to effectively manage disaster risk

International Volunteerism and Capacity Development in Nonprofit Organizations of the Global South

Although international volunteerism has been a part of official development assistance for decades, the capacity development (CD) impacts of such programs in nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in the Global South have received scant attention. This paper provides insights into the ways international volunteerism contributes to endogenous CD processes by analysing survey and interview data collected from Australian volunteers and their host organizations in four countries. It shows that volunteers’ contributions can be usefully examined through the lens of Baser and Morgan’s (2008) framework of five core capabilities: to carry out tasks; to relate and attract support; to adapt and renew; to balance diversity and coherence, and to commit and engage. While the voluntary nature of the relationship between host organization and volunteer can make CD impacts less predictable and controllable, it also affords time to explore and negotiate what contributions are most useful to an organization within a specific context

Can deliberate efforts to realise aspirations increase capabilities? A South African case study

This paper takes up Appadurai's suggestion that aspirations could be used as a key to unlock development for people who are economically marginalised, and that their capabilities could be increased by this approach. The notion of “aspirations” is theoretically and conceptually framed, and then Amartya Sen's use of the term capabilities as the space within which development should be assessed is explored. I subsequently describe a five-year programme in which economically marginalised women in Khayelitsha near Cape Town were assisted in voicing and attempting to realise their aspirations, while being assisted with access to some resources. Capability outcomes and constraints are described and analysed, and the question of adaptive preferences is addressed. I conclude that deliberate efforts to realise aspirations, accompanied by some facilitation, can increase capabilities, but that there are also structural constraints to capability expansion for these women that frustrate their aspiration of class mobility.International Bibliography of Social Science

(Dis)comfort, judgement and solidarity: affective politics of academic publishing in development studies

The publication of a controversial article in Third World Quarterly and the consequent unveiling and critical questioning of journal practices continue to engender strong negative feelings for many scholars. At a critical juncture within the publication process of this collection, we faced an ethical dilemma regarding how to maintain political and ethical commitments while manoeuvring within a sometimes hostile academic environment. Here we examine the dilemma and its resolutions to reflect on configurations of power in academia. Through the lenses of (dis)comfort, judgement and solidarity, we examine the affective intensities that shaped our individual and collective decisions. Reflections on the process reveal the need to attend to how affects shape the resolution of shared ethical dilemmas in ways that reinforce structural (dis)advantages. We argue that ‘comfort’, achieved through solidarities, allows for the navigation of the ethical-political in ways open to multiple possibilities. Decolonial practice should attend to affective practices that privilege some claims over others and limit the capacity of future scholars to shape the ethical terrain of development studies

Pharmacy Data for Tuberculosis Surveillance and Assessment of Patient Management

Pharmacy data help locate tuberculosis cases and assess their management

‘I’m a migrant, but I’m the right sort of migrant’:Hegemonic masculinity, whiteness, and intersectional privilege and (dis)advantage in migratory academic careers

Comparatively little attention has been paid to the international careers of many academics, with gender and ethnicity frequently ignored in discussions of migrant academics. Through the lenses of intersectionality, hegemonic masculinity and whiteness, this study explores experiences of migrant academics in Australia and New Zealand, understanding how gender and ethnicity intersect to shape experiences of relative privilege and disadvantage. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 30 academics at various stages of their careers in both Australia and New Zealand. The data reveal the complex patterns of (dis)advantage which characterise the experiences of migrant academics. While some migrant academics may experience disadvantage, for Anglo white male senior academics, considerable privilege is (re)produced through the migration experience. As such, this article suggests migratory experiences can be better understood through the intersectionality of hegemonic masculinity and whiteness to reveal how privilege is maintained

When Policy and Infrastructure Provisions are Exemplary but still Insufficient: Paradoxes Affecting Education for Sustainability (EfS) in a Custom-designed Sustainability School

Schools willing to implement education for sustainability (EfS) commonly find themselves confronted with curricula, school grounds and buildings and teaching practices that do not lend themselves easily to best practice EfS. In this article, we present what we learned about some of the challenges confronted daily by the staff of a purpose-built sustainability primary school situated in a ‘green’ suburb in Western Australia. Over the period of a year, we regularly engaged with the staff of the school through semi-structured, in-depth interviews and classroom observations as part of an interpretive ethnographic study. We identified three key themes—policy infrastructure, physical infrastructure and pedagogical infrastructure—that serve as both affordances and counter-affordances to best practice EfS. Given the paradoxical interplay of the affordances and counter-affordances shaping the school’s implementation of EfS, we suggest that overcoming these paradoxes requires no less than a transformation of school culture

History in the service of politics:Constructing narratives of history during the European refugee “crisis”

It is common for politicians to refer to ‘our proud history of supporting refugees’, yet the historical record regarding responses to refugees is not straightforwardly positive. So how is history drawn upon in political debates regarding refugees? Applying discursive psychology, this article analyses the use of history in five United Kingdom parliamentary debates that took place from September 2015 to January 2016 on the European refugee ‘crisis’. The analysis identifies six ‘functions’ of the use of the history: resonance, continuity, reciprocity, posterity, responsibility and redemption. It shows how reference to historical events create narratives regarding the UK’s history of supporting refugees in order to construct the nation in particular ways, mobilise collective identities and legitimise or criticise political actions. Specifically, references to the UK’s role in providing refuge to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany functions as a hegemonic narrative that reinforces the UK’s ‘heroic’ position, constructs the Syrian conflict as involving an oppressive dictator and innocent refugees in need to help, thereby legitimising support for Syrian refugees. The analysis demonstrates the flexibility of historical narratives, reformulates the distinction between ‘psychological’ and ‘rhetorical’ uses of historical analogies and reflects on the social and political implications of such uses of history

Creativity as development : discourse, ideology and practice

What the new global policy imaginary of "creativity" has amounted to is, on the one hand, a profoundly disintegrated research landscape with a heavy interest in creative “industries” (Cho, Liu, & Ho, 2018) and, on the other hand, an approach to development framed by a somewhat more general and hegemonic global ideology on culture, the arts, and development (Garner, 2016; Stupples, 2014). This “ideology” is mediated by global or UN-level policy and indeed specific to an age in which the neoliberal global economy has established an unprecedented degree of certitude and political consensus across the world on how we develop a prosperous society. Creativity has become a powerful signifier around which a rhetoric of dynamic trade, growth, and opportunity has evolved, and is subject to a broad assessment in this chapter

Wnt signaling in triple-negative breast cancer

Wnt signaling regulates a variety of cellular processes, including cell fate, differentiation, proliferation and stem cell pluripotency. Aberrant Wnt signaling is a hallmark of many cancers. An aggressive subtype of breast cancer, known as triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), demonstrates dysregulation in canonical and non-canonical Wnt signaling. In this review, we summarize regulators of canonical and non-canonical Wnt signaling, as well as Wnt signaling dysfunction that mediates the progression of TNBC. We review the complex molecular nature of TNBC and the emerging therapies that are currently under investigation for the treatment of this disease