Stephen J. Scanlan

Gender, development, and HIV/AIDS: Implications for child mortality in less industrialized countries

This article examines child well-being in less industrialized societies through a gender and development perspective. Using a quantitative, cross-national analysis of data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) among other sources, I find that child HIV/AIDS infections and adult female prevalence of the disease increase child mortality while female empowerment and gender equality decrease its prevalence. In addition, an interaction between female empowerment and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the adult population also reduces child mortality, revealing the significance of gender for where the disease is more concentrated. Findings are net of controls for economic development, population pressure, democratization, economic globalization, child health, child hunger, and region. The global realities of HIV/AIDS reveal the need for increasingly undertaking cross-national analysis of the disease and issues of gender, development, and women’s contributions to human security.

COMMUNICATING INJUSTICE?: Framing and online protest against Chinese government land expropriation

This study examines online collective action concerning grievances of farmers whose land was expropriated by the Chinese government for economic development. Such actions have resulted in numerous conflicts between officials and farmers who fear losing their sole survival source without adequate compensation. The authors examine two cases of such grievances: the Wang Shuai and Wu Baoquan Incidents. These cases were initiated by aggrieved ‘netizens’ and reinforced by the news media through the Internet. Data include online material from a sample of seven Chinese websites discussing the cases. Using perspectives on framing and its connection to online activism, the authors examine how protest on behalf of initiators and varied support from the media produced different outcomes. Concise framing and continuous media attention are essential to mobilizing support for successful collective action. These techniques and new technologies are part of an expanding trend in grassroots activism in China.

New Direction and Discovery on the Hunger Front: Toward a Sociology of Food Security/Insecurity

In this paper I examine themes for sociological inquiry on food security/insecurity and the expanded role of sociology in a new discovery of this issue that connects research, teaching, and action. I establish the sociological significance of food security/insecurity through a number of interconnected, specialized thematic clusters including population, environment, and ecology; technology, development, and infrastructure; politics and the global political economy; stratification, poverty, and inequality; and conflict, war, and militarization. It is within these clusters that sociology can strongly influence new directions in research on food security/insecurity while concurrently exploring the issue in the classroom and community. Humanist sociology and social justice perspectives taking a critical perspective on food security/insecurity extend logically to teaching and action. In this regard, the discipline can move toward what a sociology of food security/insecurity should be, including a greater role in addressing threats to the human condition and I offer ideas to implement such practices.

Starving for change: The hunger strike and nonviolent action, 1906–2004

Hunger strikes have a long history in efforts to achieve social change but scholars have made few comparative, empirical, or theoretical contributions to understanding their dynamics and connections in the social movement and nonviolent action literature. We examine hunger strikes from 1906 to 2004 with a comparative perspective, elaborating on its use as a tactic of nonviolent change. Using data assembled from the New York Times, Keesings Worldwide Online, and The Economist we analyze how, when, where, and why hunger strikes occur, and by whom they have been utilized to seek change. In general, findings reveal that hunger strikes over the last century have been widespread phenomena that are typically small, brief, and relatively successful tactics against the state. Several themes emerge regarding hunger strikes including their appeal to the powerless and emergence when few political opportunities exist, their significance for third-party mobilization, and the role of emotions in the protest dynamics. Taken together, the power struggle involving the hunger strike is an important example and extension of “political jiu-jitsu” as presented by Sharp (1973).

The Scarcity Fallacy

For the first time in human history, the world is home to more than one billion hungry people. New data from the United Nations suggest that a higher proportion of the Earths people are hungry now than just a decade ago, the reverse of a long and otherwise positive trend.

Framing fracking: scale-shifting and greenwashing risk in the oil and gas industry

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine corporate environmental communication on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and industry efforts to shape public perception of resource extraction and its impacts on the environment. I look at how the oil and gas industry (OGI) frames fracking to ease public fear by downplaying risk and shifting its scale with rhetoric presenting the benefits of this emergent technology. Contrasting and building on ecological modernisation versus risk society ideas, I use OGI print advertising supplemented by corporate social responsibility statements and other online material to critically evaluate framing in light of the practice of corporate greenwashing. Findings reveal OGI efforts to positively portray fracking in the interest of unfettered resource extraction and profits from energy production. Several themes emerge in OGI framing rhetoric, starting with the establishment of trust through education and claims of transparency and continuing with ideas touting safety and responsibility, scientific progress, economic benefits and jobs, energy security, environmental protection, and sustainability. On the whole, such rhetoric reflects ecological modernisation ideas that shift the perception of risk and its consequences, framing fracking in a way that obscures the negative impacts of dependency on a fossil fuel-based economy.

Plunder: The Crime of Our Time

feminist sisterhood that created and sustained the battered women’s movement. This documentary provides a rich view of one of the groundbreaking programs in domestic violence intervention. However, only more advanced students may be able to appreciate the complex history and controversies presented. Although personal stories are used well to explain the emotional, physical, and social impact of family violence, students in introductory classes may have trouble assimilating the complex conceptual issues related to institutionalized patriarchy, social constructionism, and feminist criticism. The weakest part of the documentary, the presentations of the criticism of “prominent academics,” could lead students to resist giving the feminist model serious consideration. For example, the comments of Straus and Gelles suggest that approaches such as the Duluth Model (1) ignore the violence that is perpetrated by women against other family members and (2) are engaged primarily in advocacy and ideological work, which have no place in designing intervention programs. The responses to these statements are rather brief and simply reiterate the premise that as a primarily feminist project the Duluth Model is attempting to assist victims and generate fundamental social changes. Students who do not have a sufficient background in family violence literature and the history of the battered women’s movement will have difficulty with these debates. Another caution is warranted regarding the need for familiarity with the work of family violence theorists and researchers. The statements included in the documentary present an extremely abbreviated view of these works and a general sense that gender and patriarchy have been deemed irrelevant. Although there is much to debate about the academic analysis presented in this film, the recent work of some of these researchers does not seem to have rejected the connections between gender, power, and control and family violence (Loseke, Gelles, and Cavanaugh 2005; Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz 2006). Students will need to explore this literature to appreciate thoroughly the debates portrayed in this film. Despite these caveats, Power and Control: Domestic Violence in America provides a compelling account of personal experiences with family violence as well as a review of the issues related to intervention. It can serve as a supplemental resource for advanced courses that address gender, feminism, and/or family violence. Rich discussions can be generated around the legal, social, and theoretical controversies regarding the analysis and response to violence in intimate settings. Other important issues regarding the intersection of social movements, advocacy, ideology, and academic research can also be raised for discussion. Instructors who are interested in using the documentary should consult the film’s Web site (http:// www.powerandcontrolfilm.com). More extensive footage and transcripts of the interviews and more details on the Duluth Model and the battered women’s movement are available. Hence, with adequate preparation and background, students and instructors can use this documentary to initiate a thorough and compelling exploration of family violence.

More than just food: food justice and community change

The Modern industrial food system represents a vital social and ecological infrastructure in which ... paradoxical dynamics of abundance and injustice are brought into full relief. And, on account of food’s central role in the lives of everyone across the globe, diverse stakeholder groups ... have come to see the food system as a potentially powerful site through which the fight against unsustainability and inequality might be effectively waged (194–195).

Film Review: The Shrimp

the notion that focusing on the students’ abilities is as important as identifying their disabilities and that there is not one formula to address their challenges. In Original Minds, the lead caseworker categorizes areas of major life functions (i.e., attention, language, motor function) to measure and pinpoint the source of the students’ disabilities. By using these areas as a framework of measuring ability, the caseworker targets both their weakness and their strengths and then focuses on the strengths to improve their other areas of weakness. These categorizations raise sociological concerns about what ought to be measurable as well as the different ways to medicalize disability and why other potential areas of measurements ought to be included, such as creativity, socialization, and artistic ability. Through a sociology/anthropology lens, these films have produced a rich emic framework of the subjects’ experiences as persons with disabilities; however, it is the dominant etic construction of disability via the medical model that continues to characterize what it means to be human. These films provide a strong case to recognize the legitimacy of emic constructions (Reagan 2002). Sarah first gathers emic data via narratives from each family member’s experience and then makes these connections as a collective in another level of analysis (new etic framework). This powerful use of emic/etic constructions of identity allows Sarah to reveal alternative ways of being human. The title, Rɘad Me Differently, reveals ways to examine humanity in alternative emic ways using counternarratives (note the ɘ in the Rɘad). No longer is Sarah being told to live her life by “sucking it up”; she faces her fears and comes to the realization that everyone in her family is simply different and has different needs. She did “not think in a linear way,” and that has been a main catalyst to her struggle. Using the film as her counternarrative, Sarah comes to her own self-discovery about what it means to be human and what it means to be labeled and read as different—neither good nor bad, just different. In essence, these films can contribute in a research methods and sociology/anthropology course as a research tool when examining the methodologies used by Sarah and the five people with disabilities to address their disability, identity, and selfhood. These films may often appear to be slow and lengthy, but they have a purpose: the powerful tool of patience is valued when studying disability carefully.