THE MEXICAN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY: A U.S. PERSPECTIVE

International Relations/Trade,

Learning to live together: struggles for citizenship and human rights education

Citizenship education engages with living together in diverse societies where democracy provides a framework for lively struggles against discrimination by gender, ethnicity, class or sexuality. Drawing lessons from historic struggles against racist structures and ideologies, I note that leaders such as Mandela, King and Malcolm X invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to invite solidarity, linking local and global communities in common citizenship. I examine some pedagogical challenges raised by earlier attempts to challenge narrowly nationalist perspectives. Education for cosmopolitan citizenship provides expression for multiple voices and promotes common standards that both include and transcend so-called fundamental British values

Classroom counternarratives as transformative multicultural citizenship education

This paper examines pedagogical responses to James Banks’s concept of failed citizenship, namely the structural factors that inhibit migrants and minorities from accessing fully functioning citizenship and their human rights. Banks commissioned and published 16 case studies of social studies teachers in different national contexts to illustrate and exemplify transformative civic education. These illustrate his theories of failed citizenship and transformative citizenship education. Analysing this dataset through the lenses of failed citizenship, human rights and counternarratives, the paper provides empirical evidence to support and illustrate the theories. These minority teachers working in hostile cultural environments are very aware of the dangers of failed citizenship for their students. They use pedagogical strategies that have been theorized in critical race theory and human rights education including countering homogenizing national official narratives and promoting students’ counternarratives asserting the value of their heritage languages and cultures and asserting their rights to freedom of expression

Multimedia journalism: A comparative study of six news web sites in China and the UK.

China and the United Kingdom are countries which differ greatly, not least in traditional and new media. This paper will consider a number of structural and content issues around the output of mainstream multimedia journalism in these two very different news markets. Through a detailed comparative textual analysis of three major news web sites in each of the two countries, it will examine ways in which contemporary information technology and recently-evolved epistemological, linguistic and aesthetic conventions in communicating news and current affairs narratives affect multimedia reporting on mainstream online news websites. The paper presents the latest results of a detailed content analysis of interactive multimedia reporting in China and the UK on three randomly-chosen days over a period of two months. The data set was derived from a range of different media organisations exhibiting sufficient commonalities of objective and perspective to allow relevant comparisons to be made between practices in multimedia news journalism in the two countries. In China, Xinhua Wang is a state news agency whose main public presence is online, while Nandu Wang and Renming Wang are newspapers with identifiably left-leaning and right-leaning tendencies respectively in their political outlook. In the UK, the BBC is a public service broadcaster operating nonetheless at some distance from government, but which makes extensive use of its online presence to post journalistic content on domestic and international news web sites, while The Guardian and The Telegraph are both newspapers that are situated on the left and right of UK politics respectively

Species Limits and Phylogeography of North American Cricket Frogs (Acris: Hylidae)

Cricket frogs are widely distributed across the eastern United States and two species, the northern cricket frog (Acris crepitans) and the southern cricket frog (A. gryllus) are currently recognized. We generated a phylogenetic hypothesis for Acris using fragments of nuclear and mitochondrial genes in separate and combined phylogenetic analyses. We also used distance methods and fixation indices to evaluate species limits within the genus and the validity of currently recognized subspecies of A. crepitans. The distributions of existing A. crepitans subspecies, defined by morphology and call types, do not match the distributions of evolutionary lineages recovered using our genetic data. We discuss a scenario of call evolution to explain this disparity. We also recovered distinct phylogeographic groups within A. crepitans and A. gryllus that are congruent with other codistributed taxa. Under a lineage-based species concept, we recognize Acris blanchardi as a distinct species. The importance of this revised taxonomy is discussed in light of the dramatic declines in A. blanchardi across the northern and western portions of its range

Education, values, and schools: the role of international organisations [Éducation, valeurs, école: le rôle des organisations internationales]

Writing in 1995, the author was broadly optimistic about the influence of international organisations in promoting human rights and peace. The current article recognises that progress towards a universal culture of human rights is not linear. On the one hand, international organisations such as the UN, its organs UNESCO and UNICEF, and regional institutions such as the Council of Europe have retained and developed their policies on human rights education to include awareness of the climate emergency. However, this is challenged by political realities such as the spread of authoritarian governments and neoliberal economics as promoted by the OECD. The implementation of education based on values has become a site of struggle between prioritising skills for competitiveness and encouraging cosmopolitan perspectives based on social justice and human rights. [Si, en 1995, l’auteur se montrait globalement optimiste quant à la capacité des organisations internationales à promouvoir les droits de l’homme et la paix, le présent article reconnaît que les progrès accomplis vers une culture universelle des droits de l’homme ne relèvent pas d’un processus linéaire. Certes les organisations internationales et des institutions régionales ont développé leurs politiques en matière d’éducation aux droits de l’homme afin d’inclure la conscience de l’urgence climatique. Ces évolutions sont toutefois mises à l’épreuve par certaines réalités politiques, l’expansion des gouvernements autoritaires et les politiques économiques néolibérales encouragées par l’OCDE. La mise en place d’une éducation fondée sur des valeurs voit désormais s’affronter ceux qui, au nom de la compétitivité, érigent les compétences au rang de priorité et les partisans de visions universalistes fondées sur la justice sociale et les droits de l’homme.

Group 2 Innate Lymphoid Cells Are Redundant in Experimental Renal Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) can be fatal and is a well-defined risk factor for the development of chronic kidney disease. Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are innate producers of type-2 cytokines and are critical regulators of homeostasis in peripheral organs. However, our knowledge of their function in the kidney is relatively limited. Recent evidence suggests that increasing ILC2 numbers by systemic administration of recombinant interleukin (IL)-25 or IL-33 protects against renal injury. Whilst ILC2s can be induced to protect against ischemic- or chemical-induced AKI, the impact of ILC2 deficiency or depletion on the severity of renal injury is unknown. Firstly, the phenotype and location of ILC2s in the kidney was assessed under homeostatic conditions. Kidney ILC2s constitutively expressed high levels of IL-5 and were located in close proximity to the renal vasculature. To test the functional role of ILC2s in the kidney, an experimental model of renal ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) was used and the severity of injury was assessed in wild-type, ILC2-reduced, ILC2-deficient, and ILC2-depleted mice. Surprisingly, there were no differences in histopathology, collagen deposition or mRNA expression of injury-associated (Lcn2), inflammatory (Cxcl1, Cxcl2, and Tnf) or extracellular matrix (Col1a1, Fn1) factors following IRI in the absence of ILC2s. These data suggest the absence of ILC2s does not alter the severity of renal injury, suggesting possible redundancy. Therefore, other mechanisms of type 2-mediated immune cell activation likely compensate in the absence of ILC2s. Hence, a loss of ILC2s is unlikely to increase susceptibility to, or severity of AKI