Rendering Reliance: Consuming Coloniality in the Global North

In this dissertation, I offer a theoretical lens for understanding how the Global South is imagined by the Global North. The Global South has become a popular cause that for-profit companies use in order to engage in what Samantha King terms cause-marketing. While individuals in the South are certainly helped by these campaigns, they are harmed through Northern consumers being empowered by private companies encouraging them to adopt a colonizing gaze that subjugates those in the South with adhering to stereotypes. I develop three rhetorical devices that fulfill stereotypes long-held about those who are “other.” First, I offer the endangered child, which can be invoked with actual children or through the paternal relationship with the Global North. The device relies on the sympathy of the audience and innocence of children who escape culpability for their plight. Second, I outline the endangered woman, who the North views as a worthy investment because her industriousness will better her community. Not only does the colonizing gaze seek to control her through adherence to standards of femininity, but also through the feminization of the landscape which the North seeks to control. Third, I offer the dangerous man who encourages both an affective divestment from his suffering, while simultaneously mobilizing Northern consumers to protect his victims and become white saviors. These rhetorical devices work together to force a response from the North because of the paternal relationship—cause-marketing campaigns ask that they consume. This strategy also exploits consumers’ need to self-actualize through consumption, according to King. These devices in cause-marketing campaigns harm those in the Global South by offering only a stereotypical view of the people in this space, reifying paternalism, not offering long-term solutions, and capturing them in a cycle of need. The Global North does not escape harm from these campaigns either since they are trapped in a cycle of consumption that is heightened by the white savior narrative. The North-South relationship continues to rely on the subjugation of those who are ostensibly being saved through the very messages that continue to harm them through a fulfillment of colonizers’ fantasies

"No topic is taboo": PETA's post-feminist pivot to human-centric imagery

2014 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.In this thesis I argue that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) perpetuate exclusionary and hurtful images in their "Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom Out of Me" (BWVAKTBOOM) campaign. This campaign focuses on a young couple whose amorous activities leave the young woman, Jessica, with severe injuries. This campaign uses the manipulation of presence and absence to create controversy surrounding Jessica's agency. PETA uses this controversy to help forward a post-feminist ideology. This post-feminist message allows PETA to denigrate women to reassert masculine power and identity. I argue PETA chose to do this because of the "crisis of masculinity" that permeates popular media. The campaign reasserts masculine power through the reproduction of hypermasculinity, heteronormativity, and whiteness. The BWVAKTBOOM campaign reproduces hurtful, hegemonic images to reassert (vegan) masculine identity

Introduction

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Hydro-PE: gridded datasets of historical and future Penman-Monteith potential evaporation for the United Kingdom

We present two new potential evaporation datasets for the United Kingdom: a historical dataset, Hydro-PE HadUKGrid, which is derived from the HadUK-Grid gridded observed meteorology (1969&ndash;2021); and a future dataset, Hydro-PE UKCP18 RCM, which is derived from UKCP18 regional climate projections (1980&ndash;2080). Both datasets are suitable for hydrological modelling, and provide Penman-Monteith potential evapotranspiration parameterised for short grass, with and without a correction for interception on days with rainfall. The potential evapotranspiration calculations have been formulated to closely follow the methodology of the existing Meteorological Office Rainfall and Evaporation Calculation System (MORECS) potential evapotranspiration, which has historically been widely used by hydrological modellers in the United Kingdom. The two datasets have been created using the same methodology, to allow seamless modelling from past to future. Hydro-PE HadUK-Grid shows good agreement with MORECS in much of the United Kingdom, although Hydro-PE HadUK Grid is higher in the mountainous regions of Scotland and Wales. This is due to differences in the underlying meteorology, in particular the wind speed, which are themselves due to the different spatial scales of the data. Hydro-PE HadUK-Grid can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5285/9275ab7e-6e93-42bc-8e72-59c98d409deb (Brown et al., 2022) and Hydro-PE UKCP18 RCM can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5285/eb5d9dc4-13bb-44c7-9bf8-c5980fcf52a4 (Robinson et al., 2021).</p

Use of short-tandem repeat (STR) fingerprinting to validate sample origins in hepatitis C virus molecular epidemiology studies

Sequence analysis is used to define the molecular epidemiology and evolution of the hepatitis C virus. Whilst most studies have shown that individual patients harbour viruses that are derived from a limited number of highly related strains, some recent reports have shown that some patients can be co-infected with very distinct variants whose frequency can fluctuate greatly. Whilst co-infection with highly divergent strains is possible, an alternative explanation is that such data represent contamination or sample mix-up. In this study, we have shown that DNA fingerprinting techniques can accurately assess sample provenance and differentiate between samples that are truly exhibiting mixed infection from those that harbour distinct virus populations due to sample mix-up. We have argued that this approach should be adopted routinely in virus sequence analyses to validate sample provenance

Examining associations between classroom environment and processes and early mathematics performance from pre-kindergarten to kindergarten.

One benefit of the No Child Left Behind legislation (2001) has been the increasing attention on the importance of the skills learned in the pre-kindergarten period for later academic achievement. There is a growing awareness that mathematics skills in kindergarten and beyond are influenced by the formal and informal mathematics skills acquired in the pre-kindergarten classroom. In recent years, a body of research has emerged pointing to the contributions to children’s learning from pre-kindergarten program quality as indexed by structure and process elements in the classroom. Results from this study point to three major findings. First, the growth of mathematics skills from pre-kindergarten to kindergarten for the full sample varied between classes but was not significantly associated with the elements of the classroom environment selected for study. Second, classroom elements were differentially related to growth of mathematics scores depending on children’s scores at pre-kindergarten entry. Third, overall differences between high- and low-performing children at pre-kindergarten entry are evident in their growth through kindergarten