Sedimentary Ways

This paper is a thought experiment to attune to the geo-physical and geo-political materialities of sediment, a terra-aqueous substance produced when the earth's continental surfaces intra-act with the atmosphere and are chemically transformed by it. The paper is framed by questions of how to engage more closely with the dynamics of earth systems and of how social and political agency emerges alongside earth forces. Sediment is important to such questions because it is the mechanism by which the earth recycles itself and is thick with the climatological and geological histories that have conditioned the possibility of life on the planet. While acknowledging the import of Deleuze and Guattari's metaphysics to such questions, the paper takes a material approach to them. It is based on field work in Bangladesh, but also traverses a range of scientific, historical and theoretical literature. It is arranged in four sections that loosely correspond to the sedimentary cycle. It follows sediment from chemical processes on rock surfaces in the Himalayas, to its lively travels in monsoonal rivers across flood plains to its eventual deposition and subterranean diagenesis. In each section, the paper discusses the material processes at work, their socio-political enmeshments and the theoretical implications of these intra-actions. The paper concludes that sediment serves as a reminder not only of close entanglements of geo-physical and geo-political becomings, but also of the profound indifference of earth systems to human affairs, and asks what this might mean for the re-imagination of politics

“That Looks Like Me or Something i Can Do”: Affordances and Constraints in the Online Identity Work of US LGBTQ+ Millennials

This article examines how search engines and social networking sites enable and constrain the identity-related information practices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,and queer (LGBTQ+) millennials in the United States

Understanding changing disability-related employment gaps in Britain 1998–2011

A large and enduring employment gap attaches to impairment and disability. Nevertheless, disability remains a neglected area of research in both labour economics and sociology of work when compared to other protected groups. The government has looked to health professionals (Dame Carol Black, and Sir Michael Marmot), rather than to social scientists, for policy advice, including in relation to the workplace. The Black Review charts an improvement in employment prospects for those reporting disability (1998–2007), a reversal of a prior trend. The purpose of this study is to uncover and disentangle the drivers of employment growth for those reporting disability. The effects of changes in group characteristics, some of which may be linked to an increase in the rate of ill health reporting, are considered; and also the effects of changes in the employment structure towards flexible working, the public sector and non-manual jobs. The analysis extends to 2011 to capture the effects of the recession