Theorizing black (African) transnational masculinities

Just as masculinity is crucial in the construction of nationhood, masculinity is also significant in the making and unmaking of transnational communities. This article focuses on how black African men negotiate and perform respectable masculinity in transnational settings such as the workplace, community and family. Moving away from conceptualizations of black transnational forms of masculinities as in perpetual crisis and drawing on qualitative data collected from members of the new African diaspora in London, the article explores the diverse ways notions of masculinity and gender identities are being challenged, re-affirmed and reconfigured. The article argues that men experience a loss of status as breadwinners and a rupture of their sense of masculine identity in the reconstruction of life in the diaspora. Conditions in the hostland, in particular, women's breadwinner status and the changing gender relations, threaten men’s ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and consequently force men to negotiate respectable forms of masculinity

Assessment of Yellow Fever Epidemic Risk: An Original Multi-criteria Modeling Approach

This article describes the use of an original modeling approach to assess the risk of yellow fever (YF) epidemics. YF is a viral hemorrhagic fever responsible in past centuries for devastating outbreaks. Since the 1930s, a vaccine has been available that protects the individual for at least 10 years, if not for life. However, immunization of populations in African countries was gradually discontinued after the 1960s. With the decrease in immunity against YF in African populations the disease reemerged in the 1980s. In 2005, WHO, UNICEF, and the GAVI Alliance decided to support preventive vaccination of at-risk populations in West African endemic countries in order to tackle the reemergence of YF and reduce the risk of urban YF outbreaks. Financial resources were made available to scale up a global YF vaccine stockpile and to support countries with limited resources in the management of preventive vaccination campaigns. This article describes the process we used to determine the most at-risk populations using a mathematical model to prioritize targeted immunization campaigns. We believe that this approach could be useful for other diseases for which decision making process is difficult because of limited data availability, complex risk variables, and a need for rapid decisions and implementation

Is social norms marketing effective? A case study in domestic electricity consumption

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present details of a large-scale experiment that evaluated the impact of communicating two types of feedback to householders regarding their domestic electricity consumption: feedback on their own consumption and feedback of both their own consumption and that of others in their locality. Design/methodology/approach: Digital technologies were used to automatically measure and communicate the electricity consumption of 316 UK residents for a period of 16 weeks. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: one involving no feedback; one involving feedback about a household's own usage, and one involving a household's own usage plus social norms feedback (the average consumption of others in the locality). At the end of the study, a selection of participants took part in interviews or focus groups. Findings: Both types of feedback (individual and individual-plus-social-norms) led to reductions in consumption of about 3 per cent. Those receiving social norms feedback were significantly more likely to engage with the information provided. However, the social norms information had no additional impact on consumption. Survey and interview data confirmed that participants from both conditions had been encouraged to adopt new energy-saving practices. The study concludes that near real-time individual feedback can be sufficient for usage reduction if it is provided in a historical format. It also suggests that the impact of social norms information may previously have been confounded with that of individual feedback. Originality/value: This is the first time that a controlled experiment in the field of domestic electricity consumption has compared the impact of real-time social norm information with that of information that only contains individual household usage. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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Interim report 2011Final Report April 201