‘They Called Them Communists Then … What D'You Call ‘Em Now? … Insurgents?’. Narratives of British Military Expatriates in the Context of the New Imperialism

This paper addresses the question of the extent to which the colonial past provides material for contemporary actors' understanding of difference. The research from which the paper is drawn involved interview and ethnographic work in three largely white working-class estates in an English provincial city. For this paper we focus on ten life-history interviews with older participants who had spent some time abroad in the British military. Our analysis adopts a postcolonial framework because research participants' current constructions of an amorphous 'Other' (labelled variously as black people, immigrants, foreigners, asylum-seekers or Muslims) reveal strong continuities with discourses deployed by the same individuals to narrate their past experiences of living and working as either military expatriates or spouses during British colonial rule. Theoretically, the paper engages with the work of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. In keeping with a postcolonial approach, we work against essentialised notions of identity based on 'race' or class. Although we establish continuity between white working-class military emigration in the past and contemporary racialised discourses, we argue that the latter are not class-specific, being as much the creations of the middle-class media and political elite

Drinking to ease the burden: a cross-sectional study on trauma, alcohol abuse and psychopathology in a post-conflict context

Ertl V, Saile R, Neuner F, Catani C. Drinking to ease the burden: a cross-sectional study on trauma, alcohol abuse and psychopathology in a post-conflict context. BMC Psychiatry. 2016;16(1): 202.Background It is likely that alcohol use and abuse increase during and after violent conflicts. The most prominent explanation of this phenomenon has been referred to as self-medication hypothesis. It predicts that psychotropic substances are consumed to deal with conflict-related psychic strains and trauma. In northern Uganda, a region that has been affected by a devastating civil war and is characterized by high levels of alcohol abuse we examined the associations between war-trauma, childhood maltreatment and problems related to alcohol use. Deducing from the self-medication hypothesis we assumed alcohol consumption moderates the relationship between trauma-exposure and psychopathology. Methods A cross-sectional epidemiological survey targeting war-affected families in post-conflict northern Uganda included data of male (n = 304) and female (n = 365) guardians. We used standardized questionnaires in an interview format to collect data on the guardians’ socio-demography, trauma-exposure, alcohol consumption and symptoms of alcohol abuse, PTSD and depression. Results Symptoms of current alcohol use disorders were present in 46 % of the male and 1 % of the female respondents. A multiple regression model revealed the unique contributions of emotional abuse in the families of origin and trauma experienced outside the family-context in the prediction of men’s alcohol-related symptoms. We found that alcohol consumption moderated the dose-effect relationship between trauma-exposure and symptoms of depression and PTSD. Significant interactions indicated that men who reported more alcohol-related problems experienced less increase in symptoms of PTSD and depression with increasing trauma-exposure. Conclusions The gradual attenuation of the dose-effect the more alcohol-related problems were reported is consistent with the self-medication hypothesis. Hence, the functionality of alcohol consumption has to be considered when designing and implementing addiction treatment in post-conflict contexts

Location‐Routing with Conflicting Objectives: Coordinating eBeam Phytosanitary Treatment and Distribution of Mexican Import Commodities

We study a generalized location-routing problem in which the key decisions are made by supply chain partners with conflicting objectives. The context of our problem is the irradiation by electron beam (eBeam) of fresh produce imported from Mexico to reduce the threat of insects and pests to the U.S. agriculture. Because too few irradiation facilities exist to serve the current demand, we focus on two parties to be coordinated: the eBeam Services Provider, who will choose the facilities' locations and capacities, and the Distributor, who will determine routes for transporting fruits from Mexico to commercial hubs in the United States via these facilities. We demonstrate the value of cooperation and how that cooperation can be achieved and enforced for a supply chain that must coordinate the independent companies by the strategic decisions of facility location and capacity construction, as opposed to the more common coordination by capacity allocation or pricing. The parties' interactions are modeled as a sequential game with perfect information. Specifically, we formulate the sequential and cooperative decision-making problems as mixed-integer programs, analyze the computational complexity of the problems, and conduct extensive computational experiments. Additionally, we detail three schemes by which the parties can engage in profitable and enforceable cooperation. These methods progressively increase each party's commitment as trust is built and profits rise. Total cooperation increases overall profit by an average of 8.6%. Further, a stochastic program that uses sample average approximation is applied to demonstrate the results' robustness to nature's supply variations while maximizing the supply chain's overall profit.12 month embargo; published online: 10 February 2020This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]