Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of U.S. Consumer Identity

For most people in the United States, war is almost always elsewhere. Since the Civil War, declared wars have been engaged on terrains at a distance from the continental space of the nation. Until the attacks on the World Trade towers and the Pentagon in September 2001, many people in the United States perceived war to be conflicts between the standing armies of nation-states conducted at least a border—if not oceans and continents—away. Even the attacks of September 11 were localized in such a way as to feel as remote as they were immediate—watching cable news from elsewhere in the country, most U.S. residents were brought close to scenes of destruction and death by the media rather than by direct experience. Thus, in the United States, we could be said to be "consumers" of war, since our gaze is almost always fixed on representations of war that come from places perceived to be remote from the heartland

Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of Everyday Life

This article explores the militarization of everyday life through the emergence of a dual-use technology, the Global Positioning System (GPS), in the 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century. It was launched in April 2010 as a Web-based multimedia piece funded by a Digital Innovation Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. During the fellowship year and for several years afterward, author Caren Kaplan worked with programmer/designer Erik Loyer to produce a piece that would address the multiple social and political valences of GPS in a graphically dramatic but academically substantial manner. Ezra Claytan Daniels provided the artwork that illustrates Erik Loyer’s innovative digital “cube” design. Loyer and Kaplan developed the six storylines for the piece, and Kaplan wrote the text (see www.precisiontargets.com)

Development and Evaluation of the Family Asset Builder: A New Child Protective Services Intervention to Address Chronic Neglect

Over the past 20 years, neglect has been the most pervasive form of child maltreatment in the United States, affecting more than half a million children annually. Further, neglect is more likely than other forms of maltreatment to occur repeatedly within child welfare-involved families. Children experiencing neglect, especially early in childhood and with regularity, face long-term deleterious effects on their physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. Despite the ubiquity of neglect throughout child welfare and the potentially devastating consequences, interventions designed to target families chronically reported to Child Protective Services (CPS) for neglect are scant. The Family Asset Builder intervention asserts that a strengths-based, supportive model of service delivery is essential to break the cycle of neglect early along the continuum of CPS involvement for families. Informed by current theory and practice, the solution-focused intervention offers intensive case management services (including more frequent contact and extended service delivery duration) to families with a history of neglect. Early in 2011, the Family Asset Builder intervention was piloted in two Minnesota counties; this study evaluates the development of the model, lessons learned from implementation, and early findings from the intervention, all of which set the stage for replication of the model and expansion of practice knowledge around chronic neglect

The pregnant man: race, difference and subjectivity in Alan Paton’s Kalahari writing

In South African imaginative writing and scholarly research, there is currently an extensive and wide-ranging interest in the ‘Bushman’, either as a tragic figure of colonial history, as a contested site of misrepresentation, or even as an exemplary model of environmental consciousness. Writing and research about ‘Bushmen’ has not only become pervasive in the academy, but also a site of controversy and theoretical contestation. It is in this context that this paper investigates the meaning and significance of ‘Bushmen’ for Alan Paton, one of South Africa’s most well-known writers. Paton’s writing is not usually associated with ‘Bushman’ studies, yet this article shows that the ‘Bushman’ became a highly charged and ambivalent figure in his imagination. Paton’s problematic ideas are contextualised more carefully by looking at the broader context of South African letters. The article initially analyses Paton’s representation of ‘Bushmen’ in his Lost City of the Kalahari travel narrative (1956, published in 2005. Pietermaritzburg: KZN Press), and also discusses unpublished archival photographs. A study of the figure of the ‘Bushman’ throughout the entire corpus of his writing, ranging from early journalism to late autobiography, allows us to trace the shift of his views, enabling us to reflect not only on Paton’s thinking about racial otherness, but also gauge the extent to which his encounter with the Kalahari Bushmen destabilised his sense of self, finally also preventing the publication of the travelogueDepartment of HE and Training approved lis

Domesticity at War: Bringing the War Home in Martha Rosler's "House Beautiful" Wartime Photomontages

The uneven, sometimes violent relationship between “here” and “elsewhere” is evoked powerfully in Martha Rosler’s House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home—two linked sets of photomontages that engage the gender and racial politics of domesticity in the US as well as the geopolitics of empire. Troubling mythologies of warfare and documentary realism with dazzling wit and critical fury, these works refer materially and specifically to places and times of war in solidarity with protest movements while also raising questions of historical linkages and political accountability. Suturing their times and spaces into discontinuous contact, the two series bring together seemingly incommensurate elements—exquisite domestic interiors, glamorous consumer commodities often associated with conventional femininity, and the landscapes and bodies damaged and destroyed by warfare--to produce images of great immediacy and visceral power. Across the long arc of the wars waged by the US from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, Rosler has shown us how the modernist aestheticization of US domesticity in the affluent post-World War II era promised personal empowerment and hopeful futures yet, emerging from warfare itself, only brought about more war

Mobility and war: the cosmic view of US ‘air power’

Air power was a contested military strategy during the first half of the 20th century. During World War 2, the doctrine of air power became a dominant part of US national defence contributing to the nationalisation of air space. In this paper I raise parallels between the rise of the doctrine of air power in the US during World War 2 and the concerns about national security following the attacks on September 11, 2001. The visual and spatial logics of air power generate a ‘cosmic view’ that unifies and fixes targets from the air. Yet, this articulation of nationalism is challenged by the current practices and conditions of warfare.

Por uma prática feminista transnacional contra a guerra

http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-026X200100020000

Por uma prática feminista transnacional contra a guerra

http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-026X200100020000