Visual representations of literacy in the press : report to the Leverhulme Trust February 2001.

This project investigated the ways in which literacy practices are represented in visual images in a range of British newspapers. The aims of the research were: a) to contribute to theoretical understandings of literacy as socio-cultural practice and their implications for educational policy discourses about literacy b) to offer a framework and new data about the construction of visual messages in the media. c) to develop computer-based methodologies for dealing with visual data which are of relevance to social research more generally. The data showed that a mismatch exists between text-based stories and visual representations of literacy practices in the press: whilst text-based stories present a view of literacy as a neutral, technical, cognitive skill or deficit, the visual representations show it to be embedded in everyday social practice and to carry powerful ritual and symbolic as well as functional meanings

Predator empire: the geopolitics of U.S. drone warfare

This paper critically assesses the CIA’s drone program and proposes that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is driving an increasingly paramilitarized U.S. national security strategy. The paper suggests that large-scale ground wars are being eclipsed by fleets of weaponized drones capable of targeted killings across the planet. Evidence for this shift is found in key security documents that mobilize an amorphous war against vaguely defined al-Qa’ida “affiliates”. This is further legitimized by the White House’s presentation of drone warfare as a bureaucratic task managed by a “disposition matrix”. Such abstract narratives are challenged through the voices of people living in the tribal areas of Pakistan. What I call the Predator Empire names the biopolitical power that catalogues and eliminates threatening “patterns of life”. This permanent war is enabled by a topological spatial power that folds the environments of the “affiliate” into the surveillance machinery of the Homeland

Delaying the implementation of Payment by Results in mental health: the application of standardisation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues surrounding a long planned expansion of Payment by Results (PbR) into mental health services and to highlight the factors responsible for the delay. Design/methodology/approach – PbR relies upon “standardisation” of conditions and treatments. This depends upon a scheme of classification that can realistically predict resources required to execute treatment of any one case. Plans to fund NHS mental health services on the basis of tariffs derived in this way have been delayed, and a key reason is the lack of high-quality data. This would require effective “standardisation-to the-average” of both a system of classification and a repertoire of costed treatment pathways. This paper investigated the delay implementation by exploring the difficulties in applying standardisation principles to service provision and tariff calculation. Findings – The paper identified the fundamental difficulty with PbR’s implementation in applying “standardisation” to practice. This is defining the mental disorder that the patient is suffering and designing care pathways at clinical level considering the balance between practical applicability and conceptual/constructional validity. This is necessary to enable the calculation of a national tariff. The conceptual flaws of the Health of the Nation Outcome Scale led to the constructional shortcomings which compromised the credibility and validity of Mental Health Clustering Tool regarding making accurate classification in a standardised way. The validity and credibility of calculating a national tariff thus became contentious on the basis of this inaccurate clinical classification system. Originality/value – This paper explored the driving factors of delay in implementing PbR in mental health through connecting the recent reform with the fundamental assumptions of “standardisation-to the-average”, which provided another perspective to illustrate the current obstacles

The other side of the story - maternal perceptions of safety advice and information: a qualitative approach

Background: A qualitative study of maternal perceptions of home safety advice. The aim was to gain an understanding of maternal perceptions of and possible barriers to the implementation of home safety advice. Methods: Semi-structured interviews with 37 mothers with a child aged less than 5 years of age; 16 were mothers living in an area of socio-economic disadvantage (with a high rate of childhood unintentional injury), 21 were mothers living in an area of relative affluence (with a low rate of childhood unintentional injury). Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results: Although some mothers living in both areas found talking to a health professional about child home safety was helpful, mothers in both areas tended to find talking to other mothers as being more helpful and they preferred this to talking to a professional. Barriers to obtaining safety advice from professionals exist for mothers living in both areas. Mothers living in the advantaged area describe ‘feeling silly’ and that they should ‘know it already’ when talking to professionals. Mothers living in the disadvantaged area are less likely to access home safety advice due to fear of being perceived as an incompetent mother and the fear of social service involvement. Conclusions: Mothers find home safety advice from other parents more useful and prefer this to advice from professionals. This suggests greater use could be made of appropriately trained parents to deliver safety advice and education. Fear and mistrust can limit access to child safety advice in parents living in disadvantaged areas and this may be a potential explanation for differential unintentional injury rates as those who need the advice and support most may be least likely to access it. Further research should explore how professionals can build trust, gain parents’ confidence and provide child safety advice and education that is targeted appropriately to parents living circumstances and their child safety needs

Policing the future city: robotic being-in-the-World

No abstract available

Comparing the effects of different approaches to liberalising world grains markets

The success of the current Doha Round of the WTO negotiations on agriculture will require substantial reform in each of the three areas of market access, export subsidies and domestic support. Substantial improvement in market access for agricultural products will be an essential requirement for achieving a successful outcome. However, the extent of improvement in market access resulting from the current negotiations will largely depend on the form and the approach followed to reduce tariffs and expand tariff rate quotas. In this paper different approaches to expanding market access for grains area analysed using a partial equilibrium model. Simulated scenarios include linear reductions in applied tariffs and expansions in tariff rate quotas, which are contrasted with a scenario representing market access proposals of the Cairns Group of countries in the current WTO agricultural negotiations. The effects of these two trade liberalisation scenarios on world prices and trade are analysed and discussed. Results indicate that to achieve a meaningful gain in market access for grains, WTO members must agree to either directly reduce the current applied tariffs or make large percentage reductions to the WTO bound rates, which lead to effective reductions in the current applied rates.Crop Production/Industries, International Relations/Trade,

The urbanization of drone warfare: policing surplus populations in the dronepolis

This paper explores the urbanization of drone warfare and the securitization of the “surplus population”. Defined as a bloc of humanity rendered as structurally unnecessary to a capital-intensive economy, the surplus population is an emerging target for the post-welfare security state. If we now live in an age of a permanent conflict with uncertain geographies, then it is at least partly fueled by this endemic crisis at the heart of the capitalist world system. Of key significance is the contradictory nature of the surplus population. The “security threat” generated by replacing masses of workers with nonhumans is increasingly managed by policing humans with robots, drones, and other apparatuses. In other words, the surplus population is both the outcome and target of contemporary capitalist technics. The emerging “dronification of state violence” across a post-9∕11 battlespace has seen police drones deployed to the urban spaces of cities in Europe and North America. The drone, with its ability to swarm in the streets of densely packed urban environments, crystallizes a more intimate and invasive form of state power. The project of an atmospheric, dronified form of policing not only embodies the technologization of state security but also entrenches the logic of a permanent, urbanized manhunt. The paper concludes by discussing the rise of the dronepolis: the city of the drone

Scorched atmospheres: the violent geographies of the Vietnam war and the rise of drone warfare

This article explores the violent geographies of the Vietnam War. It argues that the conflict is crucial for understanding the security logics and spatialities of U.S. state violence in the war on terror. An overarching theme is that U.S. national security has inherited and intensified the atmospheric forms of power deployed across Southeast Asia, including ecological violence, the electronic battlefield, counterinsurgency (the Phoenix Program), and drone surveillance. All of these attempted to pacify and capture hostile circulations of life and place them within the secured and rationalized interiors of the U.S. war machine. The article thus expands on the concept of atmospheric warfare. This is defined as a biopolitical project of enclosure to surveil, secure, and destroy humans and nonhumans within a multidimensional warscape. Since modern state power is becoming ever more atmospheric—particularly with the rise of drone warfare—dissecting the origins of that violence in the Vietnam War is a vital task

Chewing up the wood-wide web : selective grazing on ectomycorrhizal fungi by collembola

This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/C507510/1). We thank S. Van der Linde, A. Sim, L. Shivraj, and P. Parkin.Peer reviewedPublisher PD