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Media Commentators (media + commentator)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences75%

Selected Abstracts

Teasing, rejection, and violence: Case studies of the school shootings

AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR, Issue 3 2003
Mark R. Leary
Abstract Media commentators have suggested that recent school shootings were precipitated by social rejection, but no empirical research has examined this claim. Case studies were conducted of 15 school shootings between 1995 and 2001 to examine the possible role of social rejection in school violence. Acute or chronic rejection,in the form of ostracism, bullying, and/or romantic rejection,was present in all but two of the incidents. In addition, the shooters tended to be characterized by one or more of three other risk factors,an interest in firearms or bombs, a fascination with death or Satanism, or psychological problems involving depression, impulse control, or sadistic tendencies. Implications for understanding and preventing school violence are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 29:202,214, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

The Breakthrough of Another West European Populist Radical Right Party?

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 4 2010
The Case of the True Finns
The True Finn Party (PS), which gained virtually 10 per cent of the national vote at the 2009 European Parliament election, lacks a place in the comparative party literature and also defies ready classification. It has been perceived by its supporters as the most left-wing of the non-socialist parties; by Finnish media commentators as a case of right-wing populism; and by researchers as a distinctive centred-based populist party when viewed in a wider European perspective. Based on a careful study of its programmatic output since its inception in 1995, this article seeks to characterize the PS by reference to its core ideological features. It argues that it is in fact a populist radical right party , with national identity or Finnishness as its pivotal concept , albeit without the xenophobic extremism of such continental counterparts as the Danish People's Party or Austrian Freedom Party. [source]

Shamans versus Pirates in the Amazonian Treasure Chest

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2002
Beth A. Conklin
This article explores how the recent rise of shamans as political representatives in Brazil addresses tensions and contradictions associated with the internationalization of indigenous rights movements. Identity politics and transnational organizational alliances concerning issues of environmentalism and human rights have greatly expanded the political leverage and influence of indigenous activism. However, some transnational environmentalist discourses collide with Brazilian discourses of national sovereignty, and the 1990s witnessed a nationalist backlash against Indians, whom politicians, military leaders, and media commentators have frequently portrayed as pawns of foreign imperialists. Opponents of indigenous rights also seized on apparent contradictions between rhetoric and action to discredit indigenous claims to environmental resources. The analysis examines how the shift to redefine knowledge as the core of indigenous identity circumvents some of these liabilities by shifting the basis for indigenous rights claims from environmental practices to environmental knowledge. As shamans mobilize and speak out against the threat of biopiracy, they blunt the nationalist backlash, repositioning indigenous peoples as defenders of the national patrimony and solid citizens of the Brazilian nationstate. [Keywords: Brazil, indigenous peoples, identity politics, shamans, biopiracy] [source]

Appropriating Identity or Cultivating Capital?

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 1 2005
Global English in Offshoring Service Industries
Abstract In the popular media, much has been made of the adoption of American identities by Indian nationals working in call centers in urban India. In the transactions between call center workers in India and their American customers, language is often the only conveyor of cultural identity. The implications of this linguistic globalization are drawn out by examining the historical trajectory of the politics of global English in India. I argue that the indigenization of English that has occurred in India represents a shift in the political and cultural contestation over language from the global to the local, so that today the politics of language in India primarily involve contestation between elites and subalterns within India rather than between Indians and a global power. I conclude that the appropriation of American identities by Indian call center workers is mainly for the purpose of cultivating linguistic capital within the Indian context, and does not entail a loss of authenticity or reveal cultural insecurity. More likely, the American customers and media commentators who worry about being duped by Indians faking American accents are the ones who are culturally insecure. [source]