Constructing 'the anti-globalisation movement'

This article interrogates the claim that a transnational anti-globalisation social movement has emerged. I draw on constructivist social movement theory, globalisation studies, feminist praxis and activist websites to make two main arguments, mapping on to the two parts of the article. First, a movement has indeed emerged, albeit in a highly contested and complex form with activists, opponents and commentators constructing competing movement identities. This article is itself complicit in such a process – and seeks to further a particular construction of the movement as a site of radical-democratic politics. Second, the movement is not anti-globalisation in any straightforward sense. Focusing their opposition on globalised neoliberalism and corporate power, activists represent their movement either as anti-capitalist or as constructing alternative kinds of globalised relationships. Threading through both my arguments is a normative plea to confront the diverse relations of power involved in both globalisation and movement construction in order that globalised solidarities be truly democratic. This is to challenge hierarchical visions of how best to construct ‘the anti-globalisation movement’

Feminist studies of globalisation : beyond gender, beyond economism?

This article offers a distinctive mapping of the feminist literature on globalisation. Part I sets the 'new wave' of debate in the context of long-standing feminist theorising and organisation around global power and politics, drawing attention to a growing focus on economic processes. Part II explores the marginalisation of feminist arguments within globalisation studies, pointing to the dominance of an economistic model of globalisation as a key factor. It also identifies a parallel feminist tendency to neglect non-feminist efforts to develop non-economistic analyses of globalisation. Part III seeks to pinpoint the originality of the contribution of feminism. Although the most obvious starting point for such an evaluation is an emphasis upon gender, the feminist contribution is not reducible to this. Feminists have integrated gender analyses into accounts of multiple, intersecting relations of global power. They also offer distinctive analyses of the relation between the local and the global and the character of agency and resistance. The article indicates that the feminist response to economism still remains incomplete. Nonetheless, it demonstrates that feminist insights pose a significant challenge to non-feminist accounts of globalisation and to those organising within and against global power relations

Gender and the nuclear weapons state : a feminist critique of the UK government's white paper on Trident

This article enquires into the connections between gender and discourses of the nuclear weapons state. Specifically, we develop an analysis of the ways in which gender operates in the White Paper published by the UK government in 2006 on its plans to renew Trident nuclear weapons (given the go-ahead by the Westminster Parliament in March 2007). We argue that the White Paper mobilizes masculine-coded language and symbols in several ways: firstly, in its mobilization of techno-strategic rationality and axioms; secondly, in its assumptions about security; and, thirdly, in its assumptions about the state as actor. Taken together, these function to construct a masculinized identity for the British nuclear state as a "responsible steward". However, this identity is one that is not yet securely fixed and that, indeed, contains serious internal tensions that opponents of Trident (and of the nuclear state more generally) should be able to exploit

Bridging the activist-academic divide: feminist activism and the teaching of global politics

Our starting point in this article is the widespread belief that academia and activism are separate worlds, driven by contrasting aims and imperatives and governed by different rules. Such a view is based on a series of takenfor-granted and highly problematic ontological dichotomies, including mind/body, theory/practice, reason/emotion, abstract/concrete and ‘ivory tower’/ ‘real world’. Perhaps most fundamentally, these serve to set up thinking and reflecting in opposition to doing or acting. Thus in both activist and academic characterisations of what it is that they do, we find the frequent assumption that academics theorise and write, while for activists ‘action is the life of all and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing’; academics exercise their cognitive skills, while activists are animated by passion; academics are impartial commentators on the world while activists are partisan, polemical advocates; academics work in elite institutions while activists are embedded in the everyday, ‘on the streets’ or at ‘the grassroots’

Feminist scholarship, bridge-building and political affinity

In this short essay we consider, first, the reasons why feminist IR academics should seek to build bridges with each other, with other academics and with those outside the university. Second, we develop some tentative guidelines for how we should go about the task of bridge-building, drawing on our research into feminist activism at the World Social Forum. Our intention in so doing is not to reinforce what we have elsewhere criticised as a false dichotomy between activists and academics, but rather to locate feminist IR scholars within a wider feminist community and their work within a shared political project. This paper could thus be seen as a form of bridge building in and of itself. Along the way, we hope to draw out some of the problems of and boundaries to coalition politics for feminist IR academics, thus contributing to a dialogue on the possible 'limits' of bridge-building from a feminist perspective

Faslane Peace Camp and the political economy of the everyday

In what ways is ‘the everyday’ reproduced and reconfigured at protest camps? In this short piece reflecting on my research into Faslane Peace Camp, I focus particularly on the ways in which this camp entails the critical interrogation of everyday economic norms and practices

Nuclear (in)security in the everyday : peace campers as everyday security practioners

This article extends the emergent focus on ‘the everyday’ in Critical Security Studies to the topic of nuclear (in)security, through an empirical study of anti-nuclear peace activists understood as ‘everyday security practitioners’. In the first part of the article, I elaborate on the notion of everyday security practitioners, drawing particularly on feminist scholarship, while in the second I apply this framework to a case study of Faslane Peace Camp in Scotland. I show that campers emphasise the everyday insecurities of people living close to the state’s nuclear weapons, the blurred boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the inevitability of insecurity in daily life. Moreover, campers’ security practices confront the everyday reproduction of nuclear weapons and prefigure alternative modes of everyday life. In so doing, I argue, they offer a distinctive challenge to dominant deterrence discourse, one that is not only politically significant, but also expands understanding of the everyday in Critical Security Studies

zfit: scalable pythonic fitting

Statistical modeling is a key element in many scientific fields and especially in High-Energy Physics (HEP) analysis. The standard framework to perform this task in HEP is the C++ ROOT/RooFit toolkit; with Python bindings that are only loosely integrated into the scientific Python ecosystem. In this paper, zfit, a new alternative to RooFit written in pure Python, is presented. Most of all, zfit provides a well defined high-level API and workflow for advanced model building and fitting, together with an implementation on top of TensorFlow, allowing a transparent usage of CPUs and GPUs. It is designed to be extendable in a very simple fashion, allowing the usage of cutting-edge developments from the scientific Python ecosystem in a transparent way. The main features of zfit are introduced, and its extension to data analysis, especially in the context of HEP experiments, is discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Editorial: Feminism, women’s movements and women in movement

Introduction to Special Issue that engages with the increasingly important, separate yet interrelated themes of feminism, women’s movements and women in movement in the context of global neoliberalism

The Cognitive Effects of the Polyphenol Resveratrol in Young, Healthy Humans: A Review of Six Balanced Crossover, Placebo Controlled, Double Blind Trials

Background: Resveratrol increases cerebral blood flow (CBF) but concomitant improvements to cognitive performance are elusive and may be due to relatively underpowered analyses. Objective: The current study combines the individual cohorts from x6 individual trials to create one larger, more powerful, sample size to assess a variety of cognitive outcomes. Design: All trials were placebo controlled, balanced crossover, double blind designs. The combined demographics resulted in a sample size of N=166 with 112 Females and 54 Males between the ages of 18-35 years. Results: Bonferroni corrected repeated measures ANCOVAs revealed no significant differences on x4 individual cognitive tasks. Paired samples t-tests also showed no effects following collapsing of sub-measures from these tasks into x5 global cognitive measures (Accuracy of attention, Speed of attention, Working memory, Speed of memory, Episodic memory) and the effect sizes were small for all outcomes. Conclusions: The results of this summary paper definitively confirms that 500 mg resveratrol does not acutely improve a wide range of cognitions in healthy, 18-35 year old humans