Search Results (16)

V. S. Naipaul’s 1975 novel Guerrillas is the earliest example of Caribbean fiction that purports to provide a realistic depiction of Trinidad’s brief but historically significant Black Power movement. Naipaul was an Indo-Trinidadian expatriate who immigrated to the U.K. in 1950 and remained there until his death in 2018. He was famously Anglophilic; and given his notorious insistence that culturally the West Indies are derivative, not creative, it is unsurprising that Naipaul depicts Black Power as an empty form that Trinidad and Great Britain import to their detriment from the U.S. In its fictionalization of the story of a real-life figure on the periphery of Black Power, Guerrillas presents Black Power’s presence in Trinidad and the UK as a failure and a sham. My article traces Naipaul’s transformation of what was originally a journalistic account into his novel Guerrillas in order to highlight the tendentiousness of his representation of Trinidadian Black Power. The plot of the novel repurposes the crux of Naipaul’s essay “The Killings in Trinidad” in which he reports how a Trinidadian Black Power poseur known as “Michael X” conspired in the January 1972 murder of a white woman named Gale Ann Benson. Crucial to Naipaul’s dismissal of Black Power as a derivative fiction, this article argues, is the fraudulent Michael X, himself a mimic man par excellence in his embodiment of Black Power as an empty and parodic form devoid of original content. I demonstrate how Naipaul’s marginalization of Caribbean Black Power depends on formal mimicry and on his selection of this marginal player/mimic man as representative of the movement in Trinidad. Full article

This paper introduces a bio-inspired meta-heuristic algorithm, the Besiege and Conquer Algorithm (BCA), developed to tackle complex and high-dimensional optimization problems. Drawing inspiration from the concept of symmetry and guerrilla warfare strategies, the BCA incorporates four core components: besiege, conquer, balance, and feedback. The besiege strategy strengthens exploration, while the conquer strategy enhances exploitation. Balance and feedback mechanisms maintain a dynamic equilibrium between these capabilities, ensuring robust optimization performance. The algorithm’s effectiveness is validated through benchmark test functions, demonstrating superior results in comparison with existing methods, supported by Friedman rankings and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Beyond theoretical and experimental validation, the BCA showcases its real-world relevance through applications in engineering design and classification problems, addressing practical challenges. These results underline the algorithm’s strong exploration, exploitation, and convergence capabilities and its potential to contribute meaningfully to diverse real-world domains. Full article

This article examines the personalist leadership style of Fabio Vásquez, a founding member of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), the Colombian guerrilla group. Personalism, as a theoretical framework for understanding Latin American leaders, has primarily focused on traditional political practices, emphasizing the tensions and conflicts among formal institutions, political parties, and personalist politicians. While these studies provide valuable insights, they overlook leaders who operate outside conventional political structures who also rely on personalist strategies to attract and retain followers. This article seeks to bridge this gap by presenting a case study of Vásquez’s leadership style. In an era marked by the resurgence of populism and renewed interest in the effects of personalism on conventional politics, this article argues that examining personalist leadership within revolutionary insurgent groups that reject conventional party politics is necessary for a thorough understanding of the phenomenon. In particular, it offers a comprehensive overview of how Vásquez’s personalist strategies shaped the ELN’s early insurgency, ultimately revealing the strengths and vulnerabilities of such leadership within revolutionary movements. Full article

As religious folk practice is regarded as a radical departure from Marxist atheism, the abnormal existence of ghost marriages under the Chinese socialist regime has attracted wide scholarly attention in anthropology and sociology. However, few scholars have focused on how Chinese courts treat religious folk practices, such as ghost marriages, despite the official socialist ideology. Based on the typological analysis and case study involving 260 ghost marriage cases, the authors argue about the judicial activism of Chinese courts towards atheist ideology in religious folk practices. The findings of this study are twofold. First, the Chinese courts’ attitudes toward ghost marriage cases are pluralistic, reflecting the Chinese legal system’s selective obedience to the socialist ideology. Through the application of different legal interpretations of relevant laws, Chinese courts have shown three attitudes towards ghost marriages: encouragement, tolerance, and suppression. The first two attitudes can be regarded as supportive supervision of religious folk practice. Three factors tended to affect the courts’ attitudes towards ghost marriages: courts’ hierarchical level, parties’ claims, and whether ghost marriage rituals are performed. Second, further analysis suggests that RPC’s guerrilla-style governance strategy in the Chinese legal system allows it to deal with ghost marriage with more flexibility, even overriding its fundamentalist ideology. The guerrilla-style tactic is often used by the Chinese courts to handle matters of religious folk practices in a pluralistic manner. Overall, the courts’ pluralistic attitudes towards ghost marriage is that of modest tolerance and cooperation of religious folk practices based on the RPC’s model of governance. Full article

The threatened mint Florida skullcap (Scutellaria floridana) is endemic to four counties in the Florida panhandle. Because development and habitat modification extirpated several historical occurrences, only 19 remain to date. To inform conservation management and delisting decisions, a comprehensive investigation of the genetic diversity and relatedness, population structure, and clonal diversity was conducted using SNP data generated by ddRAD. Compared with other Lamiaceae, we detected low genetic diversity (H_E = 0.125–0.145), low to moderate evidence of inbreeding (F_IS = −0.02–0.555), and moderate divergence (F_ST = 0.05–0.15). We identified eight populations with most of the genetic diversity, which should be protected in situ, and four populations with low genetic diversity and high clonality. Clonal reproduction in our circular plots and in 92% of the sites examined was substantial, with average clonal richness of 0.07 and 0.59, respectively. Scutellaria floridana appears to have experienced a continued decline in the number of extant populations since its listing under the Endangered Species Act; still, the combination of sexual and asexual reproduction may be advantageous for maintaining the viability of extant populations. However, the species will likely require ongoing monitoring, management, and increased public awareness to ensure its survival and effectively conserve its genetic diversity. Full article

The reconciliation of societies in negotiated transitions from civil war to peace represents a practical challenge. While the political dimension concerns the construction of socio-political relations, the interpersonal dimension focuses on intergroup relationships. Empirical evidence shows that reconciliation should not assign primacy to one dimension over another; rather, it should address the interaction between them. However, research on this topic is scarce. There is a need to develop an instrument to assess the political and interpersonal dimensions of reconciliation in peacebuilding contexts. This study developed the Political and Interpersonal Reconciliation Scale (PIRS) and assessed its psychometric properties based on a sample of Colombian population after the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group. The results show the validity of a factorial structure for two components as well as an acceptable Cronbach’s alpha. Concerning external validity, in line with the existing literature, the scale under study was positively related to confidence in the peace agreement, trust in the ex-combatants, willingness to share with the adversary and community identification. This study provides evidence that the Political and Interpersonal Reconciliation Scale is a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating reconciliation in peacebuilding contexts. Full article

This article opens an analytical window into the creation of multilingual guerrilla translations by participants in a preservice language teacher program at a public university in the United States. As an intervention responding to the prevalence of English monolingual signage on this highly diverse university campus, the college students invited a public audience into a joint critical interrogation of implicit institutional language policies, as their signage offered a necessarily incomplete and intentionally makeshift alternative to the official English displays. Inspired by the three-phase model of critical pedagogy, this grassroots endeavor embraced Freire’s notion of transformative praxis defined by the symbiotic relation of action and reflection. A closer examination of the scaffolding, which guided the planning and implementation, lends insight into activity design with the potential to nurture an activist aptitude among students. Comments from participants suggest that the conceptual stepping stones towards students’ collective critical engagement had a positive influence on their perception of language (teacher) advocacy and activism. Full article

(1) Background: A central subject in clonal plant ecology is to elucidate the mechanism by which clones forage resources in heterogeneous environments. Compared with studies conducted in laboratories or experimental gardens, studies on light foraging of forest woody clonal plants in their natural habitats are limited. (2) Methods: We investigated wild populations of an evergreen clonal understory shrub, Japanese pachysandra (Pachysandra terminalis Siebold & Zucc.), in two cool-temperate forests in Japan. (3) Results: Similar to the results of herbaceous clonal species, this species formed a dense stand in a relatively well-lit place, and a sparse stand in a shaded place. Higher specific rhizome length (i.e., length per unit mass) in shade resulted in lower ramet population density in shade. The individual leaf area, whole-ramet leaf area, or ramet height did not increase with increased light availability. The number of flower buds per flowering ramet increased as the canopy openness or population density increased. (4) Conclusions: Our results provide the first empirical evidence of shade avoidance and light foraging with morphological plasticity for a clonal woody species. Full article

Superblocks are currently being introduced in Barcelona to respond to the city’s scarcity of green spaces and high levels of air pollution, traffic injuries, and sedentariness. The aim is to calm the streets by reducing the number of square meters dedicated to private vehicles and to reclaim part of this public space for people. Salut als Carrers (Health in the Streets) is a project to evaluate the potential environmental and health effects of the superblock model with an equity perspective in Barcelona. This study aims to explain the various interventions implemented in different neighborhoods in Barcelona and the methods that will be used to evaluate them in a quasi-experimental and health impact assessment (HIA) approaches. Given the complexity of the intervention evaluated, the project employs mixed methodologies. Quantitative methods include: (a) a pre–post health survey of 1200 people randomly selected from the municipal register asked about self-perceived health and quality of life, social support, mental health, mobility, physical activity, neighborhood characteristics, and housing; (b) pre–post environmental measurements, mainly of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), particulate matter of less than 10 µm (PM₁₀), and particulate matter of less than 2.5 µm (PM_2.5) and black carbon; (c) pre–post environmental walkability measures using the Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes (MAPS) tool; (d) use of public space and physical activity levels using the System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC), a validated observation tool; (e) pre–post traffic injury measures with a comparison group; and (f) the comparison and integration of pre–post assessment with previous HIAs and the improvement of future HIAs. Qualitative studies will be performed to analyze residents’ perception of these effects by using: (a) various focus groups according to different participant characteristics who are more or less likely to use the superblocks; and (b) a guerrilla ethnography, which is a method that combines ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews. This study, which evaluates the impact of an ambitious urban-renewal program on health, will help to assess the effectiveness of public policy in terms of health and health inequalities. Full article

In Colombia, right-wing leadership returned to power after winning the presidential elections in 2018 in a campaign in which they opposed the previous government, primarily because of the negotiations and peacemaking with the FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo ‘Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia—People’s Army’), Colombia’s largest guerrilla organization. Globally, there is a vibrant academic debate about how to characterize the current rise of right-wing populism or authoritarianism, but more profound insights from each country’s situation and its political economy implications are needed. The victory in Colombia was due to numerous factors, including the support from some rural elites who have historically obstructed the enforcement of redistributive land policies. However, the populist aspirations of the right-wing government have been persistently frustrated not only by social unrest and political mobilization but also because of the enforcement of institutions previously incorporated into the country’s political scenario. Specifically, in terms of agrarian political economy, two sets of human rights-oriented institutional changes are relevant regarding this matter: (a) the Land Restitution Law enacted in 2011 and (b) the Comprehensive Rural Reform contained in the Agrarian Chapter of the Peace Agreement between the national government and the FARC-EP in 2016. The purpose of this paper is to ground the ongoing theoretical and political debate about the rise of different forms of populism and right-wing authoritarianism in the current Colombian political context, and its implications on the countryside. The analytical contribution of this paper is twofold: On the one hand, I propose an alternative for explaining the nature of the current political regime in Colombia as right-wing authoritarianism; on the other hand, I analyze some features of such regimes in terms of its disputes with the enforcement of human rights-oriented institutions, that are in force as the result of political processes triggered by peasants’ mobilization. Full article

In 1980, after decades of violent war, the apartheid regime came to an end, Zimbabwe was declared an independent state, and Robert Mugabe’s party the Zimbabwean African Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ascended to power. While black leaders concentrated on the struggle against the tyranny of racial segregation, independence did not challenge gender hierarchies or minimize patriarchal privilege. Women soldiers who participated in the guerrillas were excluded from the spheres of power and relegated to poverty and invisibility. Here, I analyze how Dangaremba’s novel Nervous Conditions unveils women’s response to multiple forms of violence that target their bodies and minds. Although Dangaremba does not refer explicitly to the Chimurenga, also known as the bush war, in the novel, the sadness, bitterness, and sentiment of betrayal subsume women’s feeling about their absence in the construction of a new nation. For women writers, the representation of violence, through a feminine and postcolonial perspective, opens up creative ways to pursue textual liberation, thus defying literary genre and literary forms often very connected to systems of power. In this sense, her narrative instills in the reader the sentiment which evolves from women’s condition in the novel. Full article

The damage caused by localized heavy rains has been increasing in recent years, but it is difficult to find ways to protect people and property through existing rainfall measuring devices. This study applied energy harvesting technology through water movement as a sensor technology to monitor instantaneous water bombing phenomenon such as guerrilla storm concentrated in a small area. Water motion active transducer (WMAT) is an energy harvesting device that uses an electric double layer formed when water and a specific polymer are in contact with each other. Transient electron transfer between electrodes formed under the polymer is a main cause of AC peak formation. Measuring the AC peak formed when a raindrop drops onto the surface of the sensor can be used to measure the number of raindrop drops per second. Full article

This article focuses on the political activism of the Peace Mothers in Turkey, a group of Kurdish mothers whose children were either Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) guerrillas or political dissidents during the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK. The peace activism of the Mothers is a distinctive case that speaks to the tension between the domains of the familial and the political—a tension that appears in everyday discussions as well as in feminist literature. In this article, I suggest that the Peace Mothers’ struggle to bridge national and local peace-making ideals is a subtle effort to resolve that tension and to transform the realms of family and politics. The mobilization around “motherhood” aims at peace on the national scale, but has led to an unexpected form of activism in the Kurdish community, where the Mothers now mediate local family conflicts in the wake of war. While the Mothers’ activism has not been successful in achieving its main goal of securing a national peace settlement, I argue that it transforms both the political and the familial spheres to a significant extent. The Mothers conceive of motherhood broadly: as the state of being an agent with the capacity to connect to the All via a sense of loss and care. In engaging with feminist debates on motherhood, activism, and care, this article presents a novel framework for understanding the persistent boundary between the political and the familial and calls attention to the role of gendered politics and maternal activism in understudied local settings. Full article

This essay argues that William Gibson’s 2003 novel, Pattern Recognition, rejects the stylistic and formal trappings of cyberpunk that he himself helped create in the 1980s in order to reformulate the movement’s aesthetics of participation for the 21st Century. This participatory aesthetic is structured by a set of temporal concerns: A past made ever more available through information technology and yet ever more materially irrecoverable, a present subject to increasingly rapid change and therefore briefer and more difficult to interpret, and a bleak future of inevitable capitalist commodification. Within this temporal vortex, Gibson’s protagonist finds compensatory solace in her ability to see patterns and thus develop strategies by which to value objects and people in new ways. She learns how to care, and what to care for. From this analysis of Pattern Recognition, the essay tracks this aesthetic into Guerrilla Games’ 2017 Horizon: Zero Dawn—a popular entry in a medium that promises participatory involvement on a new scale. Full article

Regarding the notion of putative “best” practices in social neuroscience and science in general, we contend that following established procedures has advantages, but prescriptive uniformity in methodology can obscure flaws, bias thinking, stifle creativity, and restrict exploration. Generating hypotheses is at least as important as testing hypotheses. To illustrate this process, we describe the following exploratory study. Psychiatric patients have difficulties with social functioning that affect their quality of life adversely. To investigate these impediments, we compared the performances of patients with schizophrenia and those with bipolar disorder to healthy controls on a task that involved matching photographs of facial expressions to a faceless protagonist in each of a series of drawn cartoon emotion-related situations. These scenarios involved either a single character (Nonsocial) or multiple characters (Social). The Social scenarios were also Congruent, with everyone in the cartoon displaying the same emotion, or Noncongruent (with everyone displaying a different emotion than the protagonist should). In this preliminary study, both patient groups produced lower scores than controls (p < 0.001), but did not perform differently from each other. All groups performed best on the social-congruent items and worst on the social-noncongruent items (p < 0.001). Performance varied inversely with illness duration, but not symptom severity. Complete emotional, social, cognitive, or perceptual inability is unlikely because these patient groups could still do this task. Nevertheless, the differences we saw could be meaningful functionally and clinically significant and deserve further exploration. Therefore, we stress the need to continue developing novel, alternative ways to explore social cognition in patients with psychiatric disorders and to clarify which elements of the multidimensional process contribute to difficulties in daily functioning. Full article