Women and Smoking Stigma in South Korea

Generally speaking, fewer women smoke than men. There are however, cultural and regional variations and greater gender differences are found in South Korea, Indonesia, and China, compared to Europe and the United States. South Korea, for instance, has the highest male smoking rate and the lowest female smoking rate of all (OECD) countries (Park et al., 2014). The World Health Organization (2017) estimates that 40% to 50% of men and 4% to 8% of women in Korea smoke; according to the OECD (2015) it is 31.3& of males and 3.4% of females (Gunter et al., 2020). Gender is a factor.

Women may encounter negative social attitudes toward women's smoking. This stigma can have an impact on their smoking cessation motivation and concealment (David et al., 2024). Korean women, for instance, underreport their smoking activity because of the stigmatisation. This stigma may prevent many Korean woman from smoking (Woo, 2018). Using biological indicators (urinary cotitine concentration), others come to the conclusion that the "actual female smoking rate is significantly highere than official records state" and that the social desirability bias produces results that underestimate the number of female smokers (Park et al., 2014).

This study shows that the actual female smoking rate is significantly higher than that reported officially, but also that the gap is decreasing steadily. Females exhibited a higher rate of false responses, which resulted in an underestimation of the female smoking rate. (Park et al., 2014)

Concealment is not really surprising given harsh reactions might be possible as the following two anecdotes imply:

"I was a bit tipsy and felt like a puff. After I lit the cigarette, a random middle-aged man came up to me and started shouting as if I had done something very bad. He said, ‘I will slap your face if you don't throw your cigarette away right now.' He called me ‘dirty little woman.'" (Kim, 26)

"When I was smoking outside, an old man shouted at me how dare I, a female, smoke there. People say the social atmosphere about female smoking has changed but this kind of thing still happens. Men cannot understand how scared women get in those situations." (Lee, 33)

In South Korea, women use heated tobacco products for different reasons than men do, i.e., to avoid the stimga associated with female smoking while men use them to avoid family members putting pressure on them to stop smoking (Kwanwook et al., 2020)

As has been well-established by previous studies, the smell of cigarettes was the main reason for using HTP for both male and female users. Nevertheless, there was a gender difference in the cause for concern about the smell of cigarettes, especially regarding the person(s) to whom participants thought the smell was an issue. Males tended to identify smell as a problem when it came to their familial responsibilities with their wives and children. Many participants felt guilty for using cigarettes due to their harmfulness to health and exposing their family members to secondhand smoke. For these participants, these feelings, usually recognised, and revived by the very smell of tobacco, could be reduced through the use of HTPs with a relatively low odour. Therefore, males were more concerned with the ‘physical’ characteristics of the cigarette smell as a reminder of the harmfulness of tobacco. 

‘When I got married, my wife knew that I was a smoker and did not care too much. But when she got pregnant, she kept telling me, “Your body smells of cigarettes. Don’t come near, it’s bad for a child”. She told me a lot to stop smoking. So, I thought about various ways, and finally bought IQOS which was easily available. I think it would be better to choose one that doesn’t smell to my family.’ (Male, 39 years) 

Unlike the male participants, female participants were more interested in the ‘socio-cultural’ rather than physical characteristics of the tobacco smell. In other words, women were conscious that their tobacco smell would expose their smoking habit in a patriarchal society where female smoking is still a highly stigmatised activity, particularly in the workplace. Therefore, unlike men, they were reluctant to disclose their smoking habit. In particular, women with children were extremely vigilant about concealing such socially unacceptable behaviour as smoking, when among other parents and their children’s teachers, because of the perception that they should be a morally upright ‘agi-eomma’ (a baby’s mother). For these reasons, women chose HTPs to maintain their social status as a righteous working woman or mother.  

‘I should not let my colleagues in the company notice the smell from my smoking. Since my sister introduced me to “lil”, I have used it while working and smoked CCs at home.’ (Female, 22 years)  

‘For me, [the] IQOS has solved every interpersonal problem caused by the smelly cigarette. Now I have been able to avoid uncomfortable gazes, [I am] liberated from the smell, and [I have] improved interpersonal relationships with my children’s teachers or other parents. I used to be unable to smoke openly because I was given kind of a name tag called “agi-eomma” (a baby’s mother).’ (Female, 42 years) (Kwanwook et al., 2020)

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- David, J.-C., Fonte, D., Sutter-Dallary, A.-L., Auriacombe, M., Serre, F., Rascle, N. & Loyal, D. (2024). The stigma of smoking among women: A systematic review. Social Sciene & Medicine, 340, 116-491. Korean Journal of Family Medicine, 41(3)
- Gunter, R., Szeto, E., Jeong, S.-H., Suh, S. & Waters, A. J. (2020). Cigarette Smoking in South Korea: A Narrative Review. 
-  Kwanwook Kim, Jinyoung Kim, Hong-Jun Cho (2020). Gendered factors for heated tobacco product use: Focus group interviews with Korean adults. Tobacco Induced Diseases, 18(43), link
- Myung Bae Park, Chun-Bae Kim,corresponding author Eun Woo Nam & Kyeong Soo Hong (2014). Does South Korea have hidden female smokers: discrepancies in smoking rates between self-reports and urinary cotinine level. BMC Womens Health, 14(156), link
- Woo, C. (2018). Gendered Stigma Management among Young Adult Women Smokers in South Korea. Sociological Perspectives, 61(3), link
- photograph by Nina Ahn via

A Matter of Dignity: How Minnesota is Failing the Disabled

In 2016, Chris Serres, Glenn Howatt and David Joles interviewed dozens of people for their project "A Matter of Dignity". The five-part series on Minnesota's treatment of people with disabilities started as an inquiry into maltreatment and turned into a six-month investigation exposing systematic segregation and neglect of vulnerable adults with disabilities, people who are denied dignity in housing, at the workplace, in gonvernment services, in romance, and intimacy. The project makes these people visible, humans such as an adult with Down syndrome at a garbage dump collecting trash for two dollars an hour (see photograph), workers with brain injuries scrubbing toilets for half the minimum wage, or a woman with bipolar disorder escaping from her group home and throwing herself in front of a speeding car (via).

A Matter of Dignity: How Minnesota is Failing the Disabled
by Chris Serres and Glenn Howat, 2016 (excerpts):

In a field on the outskirts of town, a man with Down syndrome is spending another day picking up garbage. He wears faded pants, heavy gloves, a bright yellow vest, and a name tag that says “Scott Rhude.” His job is futile. Prairie winds blow debris from a landfill nearby faster than he and his coworkers can collect it. In the gray sky overhead, a turkey vulture circles in wide loops. 

Rhude, thirty-three, earns $2 an hour. He longs for more rewarding work—maybe at Best Buy, he says, or a library. But that would require personalized training, a job counselor, and other services that aren’t available. 

“He is stuck, stuck, stuck,” said his mother, Mary Rhude. “Every day that he works at the landfill is a day that he goes backward.” 

Rhude is one of thousands of Minnesotans with disabilities who are employed by facilities known as sheltered workshops. They stuff envelopes, package candy, or scrub toilets for just scraps of pay, with little hope of building better, more dignified lives. Many states, inspired by a new civil rights movement to integrate the disabled into mainstream life, are shuttering places like this. Not Minnesota. It still subsidizes nearly 300 sheltered workshops and is now among the most segregated states in the nation for working people with intellectual disabilities. 

The workshops are part of a larger patchwork of state policies that are stranding legions of disabled Minnesotans on grim margins of society. More than a decade after the US Supreme Court ruled that Americans with disabilities have a right to live in the mainstream, many disabled Minnesotans and their families say they still feel forsaken—mired in profoundly isolating and sometimes dangerous environments they didn’t choose and can’t escape. 

(...) Minnesota pours $220 million annually into the sheltered workshop industry, consigning more than 12,000 adults to isolating and often mindnumbing work. It also relies more than any other state on group homes to house the disabled— often in remote locations where residents are far from their loved ones and vulnerable to abuse and neglect. And when Minnesotans with disabilities seek state assistance to lead more independent lives, many languish for months—even years—on a waiting list that is now one of the longest in the nation. (...)

Other states are far ahead of Minnesota. Vermont has abolished sheltered workshops and moved most of their employees into other jobs. States across New England place nearly three times as many disabled adults in integrated jobs as Minnesota. Washington offers disabled workers nine months of vocational training and career counselors. (...)

The segregation starts early. As a boy in special education classes, Scott Rhude showed talent with computers and photography. But once he graduated from high school, his mother says, he bounced from one segregated workplace to another, never quite escaping a system that has sometimes amounted to little more than what she calls “babysitting.” 

Away from his job, Rhude has built an independent life. He pays his own rent and shares a house with three friends in Willmar, a town of 19,600 west of the Twin Cities. He sings karaoke, goes on double dates, and started his own book club. His bedroom is packed with trophies from Special Olympics events. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he joked recently, flexing his biceps under a poster of a professional wrestler in his bedroom.

But Rhude’s pursuit of independence ends each morning when the city bus drops him off at West Central Industries, a sheltered workshop on the edge of town. From here, a van takes him to the Kandiyohi County landfill, where he spends the next five hours collecting trash on a hillside as big as two football fields. 

Mary Rhude says she and her son hoped the roving work detail would broaden Scott Rhude’s skills and give him exposure to other employers in Willmar. Instead, she says, it has become a “suffocating” experience that keeps her son isolated from the community. Kristine Yost, a job placement specialist for people with disabilities, calls this system “the conveyor belt.” 

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said, “but time and again, young people get pigeonholed as destined for a sheltered workshop, and then they can’t get out.”

In 1999, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling, known as Olmstead, that prohibits states from unnecessarily confining people with disabilities in special homes or workplaces. In a broad reading of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the court said that fairness demands not just access to buses and buildings, but to a life of dignity and respect. People with a wide range of disabilities —including Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and autism—call it their “Brown vs. Board of Education.” 

In the ruling’s aftermath, many governors closed state institutions for the disabled and the US Justice Department sued Oregon and Rhode Island to close sheltered workshops. But, sixteen years later, the movement has yet to take hold in Minnesota. 

Under sustained pressure from a federal judge, Minnesota this fall became one of the last states in the country to adopt a blueprint—known as an Olmstead plan—to expand housing and work options for people with disabilities. County officials and social workers have begun consulting disabled clients about their goals and interests. By 2019 the state expects counties to complete detailed, individualized plans spelling out work and housing options for thousands of disabled adults. 

Yet even if it is executed successfully, the state’s plan calls for only modest increases in the number of disabled adults living and working in the community. It makes no mention of phasing out segregated workshops and group homes. Its employment targets, Hoopes said, are “woefully inadequate” and a “lost opportunity.” (...)

Sheltered workshops were designed after World War II to prepare people with disabilities for traditional employment. They caught on in Minnesota, and between 1970 and 1984 the sheltered workforce increased from 700 to 6,000 workers, including thousands of people who needed daily activities after the closing of state mental hospitals. Today, state policy perpetuates the segregation. (...)

From a taxpayer’s perspective, the workshop model is highly inefficient. It costs roughly $52,000 to create a sheltered workshop job that pays at least minimum wage, state records show. That’s nearly ten times the $5,300 it costs to help a disabled worker get a job in the community, according to a 2010 survey by the Department of Human Services. (...)

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photograph via

Calling the Birds Home. By Cheryle St. Onge.

My mother and I have lived side by side on the same farm for decades. Our love was mutual and constant. She developed vascular dementia, and so began the flushing away of her emotions and her memory. At first I stopped making pictures with her, then I stopped making pictures at all. 

Perhaps as a counterbalance to her conversations of why she wanted to die, of how she imagined she could die. And because I needed some happiness, some light in the afternoon, these portraits of my mother began. At first made with any camera within reach, phone-camera, or 8” x 10” view camera. Made in the moment, as a distraction from watching her fade away. I would make a picture of her, then share that picture of her with others I love. Sharing the act of being in the moment, sharing the ephemeral nature of my looking and her seeing.

x

Now, when I leave our home, when I leave my mother behind, people find me. They want to tell me their stories and they want to hear mine. It's a beautiful back and forth, much like a true portrait.. Because of the dementia, we have no conversations. But we do still have this profound exchange - the making of a portrait. 

She must recall our history and the process of picture making. Because she brightens up and is always up for what my children would refer to as the long effort with the long camera. That best describes sitting before an 8” x 10” view camera, on top of a tripod with its bellows extended out. My mother does her best and I do mine. And then in turn, I give the picture away to anyone who will look. It is an excruciating form of emotional currency.

Cheryle St. Onge

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photographs by Cheryle St. Onge via

Substance Use: Men vs Women

The American Addiction Centers point out some gender differences in connection with the consumption of illegal drugs. For instance, men are more likely to die of overdose and misuse of prescription than women. Women are more susceptible to craving and relapse. Women are also less likely to inject heroin than men and show the tendency to use smaller amounts in shorter intervals. Those women who do inject heroin, however, are more likely to additionally use prescrption drugs than men and are more at risk of dying from heroin overdose. Women also seem to begin using cocaine sooner and in larger amounts than men. 

Similarly, women start methamphetamine use earlier than men and become comparably more dependent on the substance. Fewer women than men die from prescription opioid overdoses, a trend that seems to be changing since death rates for women increased rapidly. Men are less likely to misuse prescription opioids to self-treat for reasons such as anxiety or stress while women are more likely to take them without a prescription to cope with pain. Generally, the risk of developing a substance use disorder is the same for both genders (via).

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photograph (Man in drug den, Durban, 1985) by Omar Badsha via

Mapping an Emotional Landscape: Urban Anxiety in Johannesburg

The following excerpts are taken from an interview - on urban life in Johannesburg, anxieties, how apartheid shaped the city and on marginalised groups - with Cobus van Staden (CVS) and Nicky Falkof (NF), both based in Johannesburg.

NF: Why anxiety? Well, you can't analyze a political system without considering people's emotions to some extent. What are people afraid of? What do they desire? What identities are they imposing on themselves and on others? Who do they want to be close to? Who do they want to be far from? Emotion structures how we shop, which structures our economies. It underpins the physical ways in which cities are built. But we don't often think about Global South cities in these terms. We don't often grant people the agency and the inner life that we grant people in the Global North. 

If you consider media, cultural production, and literature, you might think about the kind of films that are made about a city like New York, where you have your deep, internal, canonical pieces of text that are all about how someone feels. And then you think of a city like Joburg, where you have films about Apartheid, films about post-Apartheid, films about violence, but never anything about people’s inner lives.

CVS: This is one of the reasons why we focus on anxiety rather than on fear, because anxiety is free-floating. We quote a prominent South African psychologist who calls anxiety "objectless." So you can be anxious about a particular issue, but you can also be anxious, very anxious, about not something specific at all—just a lot of different things—and some are defined and some are not. It is this anxious hum that underlies the experience of living in Joburg.
Because South Africa underwent apartheid, and Johannesburg was built according to apartheid ideas, there are buffer zones, highways, and empty stretches keeping people apart. The history of the city is written on its landscape. But the emotions that result from that history are not as well mapped. Mapping an emotional landscape ended up being our contribution to previous physical mappings done in Joburg.

CVS: Crime is a major reality in Johannesburg. It is a major structuring principle in how the city is built, how people build their houses, how they act in public. But the fear of crime is almost something different than the actual crime problem. When looking at crime statistics in South Africa, one realizes that poor people suffer disproportionately from crime. Crime for poor people is a daily, lived, physical experience. Whereas for more affluent people, the discourse around crime is huge, but they don't have as much of a daily experience of crime.

NF: From an intersectional perspective, crime is a huge issue in terms of gender. South African rates of gender-based violence (GBV) are off the scale. There are horrific stories weekly of women murdered, both by intimate partners and strangers. 

In the book, there are stories written by a young Black woman who traverses Johannesburg in highly precarious ways using public, mini bus taxis. These are dangerous, and young women are often seen as fair game by the drivers and to other men. Crime is, particularly for women, one of the most significant features of life in Johannesburg, because you are constantly hypervigilant. For working-class women much more so than middle-class women, and for women who take public transport much more so than for women who have private transport.

NF: For women, physically being on the streets feels quite dangerous. In Johannesburg, you hear stories of women sexually harassed or even assaulted at taxi ranks or other public spaces, and often it's “because their skirts are too short.”
It’s not just a case of women being easier targets, so it's easier to steal their handbags, or of stereotypes of ravaging sexuality. It's about discipline. There's something in the way that gendered crime manifests in the streets of Johannesburg that is about telling women where they belong and where they don't belong.
Some argue that part of this has to do with the disenfranchisement of a generation of South Africans who were left out of the supposed promises of apartheid when South Africa turned into a neoliberal state. Who do you take your frustration out on? Who's always at the bottom of the pack? It's Black women. I do think that is an oversimplification, but there is something significant in the way in which Black women are consistently disciplined.
We have a huge homelessness problem in the city, and there's a lot of begging. But the majority of these people are men. Where are all the destitute women? Why are they not on the streets? How are they surviving? A lot of women, particularly migrants, end up in very low-level, extremely low-paying prostitution jobs because they're not permitted to survive in other sectors of the city.

CVS: With regard to the LGBTQ community, many transgender migrants come to South Africa because it has constitutional protection for sexual minorities, which other African countries do not. In some ways, South Africa is a kind of promised land for LGTBQ people on the continent. And when one goes to Johannesburg Pride, in particular to Soweto Pride, you really feel that. You can really feel people who come from everywhere, from all of these rural places, and a lot of other countries, to make it to Joburg and you really do feel giddiness in terms of self-expression.
But of course, self-expression also makes one visible in public space, so it becomes a difficult trade-off. For trans people, many of them try and get to Cape Town, because Cape Town has an image of being more LGBTQ-friendly than Johannesburg. But frequently, these migrants end up falling victim to attempts by the South African state to stop migrants from coming to South Africa. The government can't legally stop people from applying for asylum, but it makes the asylum process as difficult as possible, including by forcing LGBTQ migrants already in Joburg to stay in the city.

NF: In South Africa, race talk and crime talk intersect, but race talk is also often quite overt. People are capable sometimes of speaking about race in quite straightforward ways because it is difficult to hide from it. Sara Ahmed makes this point when she talks about the way that scholars in the North write about the “invisibility” of whiteness. She argues, "Well, it might be invisible for you guys, but it's not invisible for us. Because we live with it every day." And because of the racial demographics in this country, it is a lot harder for white people to casually pretend that we’re benign.
In South Africa, the white middle class, although they do use crime as the placeholder for race, are potentially more cognizant of racial issues. That does leave some space for social change because people may be able to acknowledge the inherently racialized nature of their fears, which does not seem to be the case in the United States.

::: full interview: LINK

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photograph (taken in South Africa) by Paul Weinberg via

Age Limits for Blood Donation

The World Health Organization suggests the ideal donor be aged 18 to 65 (via). The American Association of Blood Banks used to bar peope aged over 65 (without written consent from a doctor) from donating blood. The rule was eliminated in 1978; now older people donate blood as long as they wish to and are well (via and via). In other words, healthy older people can - just like healthy younger people - "continue to safely donate and make a significant contribution to the blood supply past arbitrary age limits" (Goldman et al., 2019).

Back in 1996, Janetzko et al. examined blood donation in elderly donors and came to the conclusion that "blood donation in otherwise healthy persons aged over 65 years should be accepted". At the request of the UK Blood Services Forum, Stainsby and Butler (2008) prepared recommendations for the removal of the upper age limit based on an evaluation of available evidence of the safety of accepting blood donors beyond the age of 70. The authors concluded that "donors of whole blood and blood components can safely continue to donate beyond the age of 70, with no absolute upper age limit" if they meet the criteria needed.

In the past, there were concerns about the safety of blood donation for older donors, with upper age limits commonly applied. However, a recent comparative study using data from four countries and comparing deferral and vasovagal rates for whole-blood donation between donors aged 24-70 and 70+ concluded that age-based exclusions from donation based on safety concerns were not warranted [7]. At present, the upper age limit for blood donation differs among blood collection agencies (BCAs) worldwide. (Goldman et al., 2019)

The Bavarian Red Cross no longer has an upper age limit. Both those donating for the first time and those aged over 60 will be tested if they are suitable donators (via). The UK legislation on age limits for donors obliges regular donors to retire on reaching their 70th birthday and component donors on their 66th means discrimination. Stainsby and Butler (2008) point out that an arbitrary upper age limit is hard to justify. In fact, the National Blood Service received written complaints. Between April 2005 and March 2006, 107 complaints were received, including one from a Member of Parliament. The NHS does not accept any first-time donors over 66 and (since 1998) returning donors until they turn 70 but adds that one may continue after the age of 70 as long as one is in good health and has made at least one full donation in the past two years. On their website, the NHS points out that a review of date "suggests that it would be safe to allow older donors to continue past their seventieth birthday" (via). Still, in Italy you can only donate until the age 65 (via), in Japan until 69 (via). The Austrian Red Cross still has a general upper age limit of 70 and 60 for those donating for the first time (via). In the Netherelands, the upper age limit for blood donation was raised from 69 to 79 in 2018 (Quee et al., 2024).

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- Goldman, M., Germain, M., Grégoire, Y., Vassallo, R. (2019). Safety of blood donation by individuals over age 70 and their contribution to the blood supply in five developed countries: a BEST Collaborative group study: SAFETY OF DONATION, OLDER DONORS. Transfusion, 59(4)
- Janetzko, K., Böcher, R., Klotz, K. F., Kirchner, H. & Klüger, H. (1996). Blood donation after reaching 65 years of age. Beitr Infusionsther Transfusionsme, link
- Quee, F. A., Zeinali Lathori, A., Sijstsma, B., Brujns, S. & van den Hurk, K. (2024). Increasing the upper age limit for blood donation: Perspectives from older donors. Vox Sang., link to interesting abstract
- Stainsby, D. & Butler, M. (208). Recommendations for removal of the upper age limit for regular whole blood and component donors. 
- photograph (of Eggleston's grandmother Minnie Maude Mae at her home in Mississippi, 1970-1973) by William Eggleston via

Belgium, Country of Hair Cut Equality

According to a poll (UK, 2020), women pay more than twice as much for their haircuts than men. Some women tried to make savings by going to a male barbers but were turned away. 40% of men pay between £10 and 14.99 for their hair cut, 29% between £5 and 9.99, 15% between £15 and 19.99. The price range for women is much wider. The most common range is £20 to 24.99, paid by only 13% of women. The proportions for the ranges £10 to 14.99 and £30 to 34.99 are similar. While only 15% of men pay £15 or more, 78% of women do so. The average price for men is £12.17, the average price for women is £31.99 (via). Belgium has a wonderful idea to solve this problem ...

... by ignoring gender and looking at the time the hair cut consumes.

The country’s hairdressing federation, Febelhair, is advising its members to charge €1.30 (£1.10) a minute, regardless of the customer’s gender. “A distinction between prices for men and women should no longer persist in 2024,” said a Febelhair spokesperson, Charles-Antoine Huybrechts, on Belgian radio.

Charlotte Jacob, the owner of the Brussels salon De Wakko Kapper, is a fan: “We need 40 minutes for people who want a completely new cut. But whether you’re a man or a woman, you pay the same.” (via)

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photograph by William Eggleston via

Generational Narratives about Climate Change Concerns

Young people are concerned about the anthropogenic climate change; a "Generation Climate" is created on one side with older people as antagonists on the other side resulting in the perpetuation of the myth of a generational divide with young climate heroes and old climate villains. The perception of a generation gap "is further strengthened by young climate activists capturing the media's and public's attention" (Poortinga, 2023). In fact, a "fake generational war over the climate crisis has distorted public thinking" promoting the idea "that young people are ecowarriors, battling against selfish older generations" - an idea that is now well established in the environment movement and has "crept into so many discussions about climate concerns that it's become an accepted truth" (via).

For their analysis, Poortinga et al. (2023) used data from three representative surveys conducted in the UK in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The authors studied climate-related beliefs, risks perceptions and emotions and came to the conclusion that there were no generational differences in climate-related beliefs and that generational differences were rather found in climate-related emotions. In addition, a diminishing generational gap from 2020 to 2021 and 2022 was found. Older generations were also more likely to believe that we are already feeling the effects of climate change. 

There are however questions regarding the nature and the size of the generation gap, as effects have not been observed consistently. Age-related differences have been found in beliefs about the reality, causes, and impacts of climate change, with older individuals being more likely to express climate sceptical views than younger ones3,10–12; and there is evidence that younger people are more concerned about the environment in general13,14 and climate change in particular2,15. Furthermore, younger age groups may be more likely to experience climate-related emotions, such as worry, anger and guilt16, as well as climate-related anxiety4. However, other research only found small or absent age differences17. For example, Shi and colleagues (2016) report that age was not significant in explaining climate concern in five out of six countries; and a meta-analysis of research published between 1970 and 2010 concluded that age effects for environmental concern, values and commitment were negligible18.

The differentiation between the constructs beliefs, risk perceptions and emotions is important when studying generational patterns as ...

(...) there is a hierarchical relationship between climate-related beliefs, risk perceptions and emotions. The lower components of the model are a necessary but insufficient condition for the higher components. While someone can recognise the reality of anthropogenic climate change, the person may not perceive it as a threat or experience any climate related emotions. On the other hand, in order to experience climate-related emotions, one has to believe that anthropogenic climate change is real and poses a threat. As such, it is important to clearly distinguish between the different components, as generational differences may exist for some but not for others.

In other words, age is of no relevance for climate change scepticism but plays a role when it comes to threat perceptions, worry and emotions. Similarly, the survey carried out by Duffy (2021) in the UK also shows that the generational divide is a myth. According to the findings, older people are more likely than younger ones to feel that acting in environmentally conscious ways will make a difference. Younger generations feel more fatalistice about the impact on actions taken. One third of "gen Z" (under 24) and "millennials" (25-40) say there was no point changing their behaviour since it will not make any difference anyway, while only 22% of "gen X" (41-56) and 19% of "baby boomers" (57-75) express this view. Twice as many "baby boomers" than "gen Z" had boycotted a company in the past twelve months for environmental reasons.

Another survey, carried out by RestLess in the UK among people aged 50 and over, found that about two-thirds want ministers "to move faster on climate initiatives" accepting that products and services would be more expensive over time or more difficult to access. One of the conclusions was that "midlifers feel a huge sense of responsibility for the health of the planet and their role in reducing climate change". Only a minority of older people is unconcerned about the climate crisis (via). Nevertheless, younger people keep underestimating how worried older people are about climate change. 

In 2021, a project started in Ireland, the results were published this year. According to the study, the generational myths do have a negative impact as they make "young people more worried about climate change, without any corresponding increase in willingness to engage in climate action". A sample (n = 500) of people aged 16 zo 24 read a text about climate change. Half of the participants read a text that emphasised generational differences (causes of climate change, exposure to its effects), the other half a text that was neutral in terms of generational aspects. Afterwards, participants answered questions about their perceptions and their willingness to engage in climate action. When young people were provided with accurate information on how worried older people (here defined above 40) in fact were, their attitudes changed. Their belief in older people's willingness to show climate action increased and so did their own willingness (via). And collective action is exactly what we need now.

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- Duffy, B. (2021). Who cares about climate change? Attitudes across the generations. New Scientist
- Poortinga, W., Demski, C. & Steentjes, K. (2023). Generational differences in climate-related risk perceptions and emotions in the UK. communications. earth & environment, 1-8.
- photograph by William Eggleston via

Township Billboards. By Santu Mofokeng.

"(I should preface by saying the work in this show is seminal. It is the beginning of my investigation of the visual history of township billboards.) 

Perhaps the title should read Township and Billboard. Billboards have been the medium of communication between the rulers and the denizens of townships since the beginning of the township. The billboard is a fact and feature of township landscape. It is a relic from the times when Africans were subjects of power and the township was a restricted area; subject to laws, municipality by-laws and ordinances regulating people's movements and governing who may or may not enter the township. It is without irony when I say that billboards can be used as reference points when plotting the history and development of the township. Billboards capture and encapsulate ideology, the social, economic and political climate at any given time. They retain their appeal for social engineering.

Apartheid billboards were very austere, and were chiefly concerned with the 'sanitation syndrome'. The economic boom of the sixties introduced American style highway advertising billboards thus rendering Apartheid ideology anonymous and opaque. In the politically turbulent period of the '70s and '80 the overtly political billboards made their return. This time the struggle was for the hearts and minds of the populace. Recently, with the liberalization of politics the billboard is chiefly used to address the rising consumer culture and the anxiety caused by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This last is a campaign partly financed by government.

 
I read somewhere that ads create a sense of participating in the utopia of beauty: Life as it should be. A drive from the city into Soweto will quickly dispel this notion as misguided. Billboards line the freeway on both sides. In the name of freedom of speech one's cultural sensibility is assaulted by textual and visual messages. The trip can hardly be described as boring. Nobody ever complains of the visual pollution. At the high speed of a minibus taxi, the billboards roll by like flipping pages in a book. The retina registers arcane and inane messages about sex and cell-phones, mostly sex and cell-phones. Perhaps this is a coincidence. I wonder."

Santu Mofokeng

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photographs by Santu Mofokeng via 

Dancing between Spectacular and Ordinary. By Paul Weinberg.

I remember a seminal moment during the turbulent 1980s, when David Goldblatt confided in me. At the time, I was part of a collective of photographers, called Afrapix, that I had co-founded. Without trying, we were at the center of the storm: We photographed the ongoing violence against ordinary black South Africans, who had prepared themselves for continued resistance to the apartheid state. We called ourselves the “Taking Sides” generation and were unashamedly partisan as we recorded the aberrations of South African society and the events as they unfolded.

David’s disclosure was simple and to the point: despite his considerable reputation as a photographer, he felt his work—at that point in history—was meaningless and of no value. He thought our photographs, on the frontline of political struggle, were more important than his work, which he felt was peripheral. At the time, photojournalism had a particular gravitas. Images were circulated into the national and international news media and, in our case, mainly the alternative press. Njabulo Ndebele, one of South Africa’s finest writers, described David’s paradigm somewhat differently; he saw an evolving tension between the spectacular and the ordinary. The pervasiveness of apartheid, in all its ugly and grotesque manifestations, consumed us. Ndebele pleaded for preserving the sanctity of ordinary people caught up in historical events—who had names, hopes, and dreams—rather than simply reducing them to statistics, lost in the amorphous atrocity.

This ambivalence was not unfamiliar to me. While the frontline was where the camera gravitated, as lines of battle were demarcated in a time of civil war, I was a reluctant war photographer. Like my colleagues in Afrapix, I believed that every image that revealed what was happening was a victory against the system, against myopia, and against national amnesia.

Ndebele alluded to the invisible landscape that ran through the country. David, a self-described “failed newspaper photographer,” had dedicated his photography to working beyond the headlines, to explore and elevate the lives of ordinary people. David’s confession was also part of my existential dilemna; I too was drawn to this invisible world. As a young photographer, I had spent many years walking the streets of Johannesburg, visiting townships, and celebrating the ordinary. The camera was a way to understand my country and to learn about the world around me, which was cut off by the visible and invisible divides of apartheid. Some of my pursuits crisscrossed, unknowingly, with David’s. We both had photographed in Fietas, a mainly Indian community in the center of Johannesburg that faced displacement because of the Group Areas Act. At first my connection with Fietas was not photographic. I was part of cricket team based there, in a non-racially-specific league. I watched with alarm as my teammates and families lost their houses and were relocated thirty kilometers from the center of the city. I shot photographs and made a documentary film about what was happening. Nearly forty years later, my work sits alongside David’s concerted and thorough work in the Museum in Action, established by Salma Patel in Fietas for the memory of the community.

Ironically, my journey into the invisible landscape continued at the height of the struggle against apartheid. I worked in rural areas for human-rights organizations that were doing their best to find legal loopholes to stave off displacements and to support communities. My camera took me to places like Mogopa, two hundred kilometers from Johannesburg, where I witnessed the drama of a once-vibrant farming community, documenting its desperate attempts to stay, its removal to a desolate homeland, and then its post-apartheid return.

When I began working with Africa’s first people, the San, I was working against the tide. The San, despite centuries of genocide and dispossession, were presented as people living in some kind of stone-age bliss, in “primitive affluence,” as if time had stood still. Films like The Gods Must be Crazy, numerous advertisements and commercials, and feature stories in magazines perpetuated what renowned the filmmaker John Marshall called “Death by Myth.” The truth was that the San were marginalized and badly treated by white and black farmers alike; even more catastrophic and disruptive was that they had been drafted into the South African army and the Namibian civil war. For thirty years I journeyed with communities throughout southern Africa who struggled to hold onto their lands and a hunter-gatherer way of life, in the rare circumstances in which they could.

The dawn of the new South Africa, liberated from the manacles of apartheid, elicited new ways of seeing. I reveled in the new freedom to travel, to make visible the invisible landscape: to tell muted, hidden, and personal stories. I spent a decade on a project called Moving Spirit. In a time of national healing, I explored diverse practices of spirituality. I wrote in the project’s book: “I, too, with or without my camera, am part of a country trying to heal. In this journey I join millions of South Africans continuously on a pilgrimage beyond politics and platitudes…in search of the transcendent spirit.”

I composed a series of images that had been buried in my archive; Travelling Light; a celebration of earlier photographs that I excavated from the past, that I had put to the side during the dark days of apartheid, when the spectacular overwhelmed the ordinary. Apartheid shadowed me on all these journeys; it was always there, whether I was conscious of it or not. But between the cracks, life continued, with its pain and joy. The ordinary was mirrored in the lines of people’s faces or in the fascist bravado of military parades. I watched how people reflected themselves, how I absorbed their reflections, how they danced with reality, how they made light in a dark space, and how they embraced each other at great risk.

As we gear up to celebrate twenty-five years of our new democracy, there is much to reflect on, for photographers and for society as a whole. The ordinary continues to be the metaphor for the country’s soul. Apartheid has officially disappeared, but its aftereffects and those of the colonial past, remain. Our liberation-movement government has failed and forsaken its people. It is a far cry from the moment of joy and optimism that I experienced when I photographed Nelson Mandela as he voted for the first time, in 1994. Now, thirty percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and many estimate that forty percent is unemployed. We watch one commission after another reveal unbounded corruption, nepotism, and national neglect. But, to guide us in this difficult time, we should hold onto David Goldblatt’s words, from an interview we shared, on a project called Then and Now, reflecting on our work during and after apartheid. They are as relevant and inspirational now as they were during the turbulent 1980s, when he made his confession to me: “During the apartheid years, my primary concern was with values: what our values were, how we had arrived at them, and particularly how we expressed them. And once you start with that line of thinking, there is no break: there is a continuation. I am still concerned with what our values are and how we are expressing them.”

Paul Weinberg

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photographs by Paul Weinberg via and via and via and via

"Early in the morning, there's tolerance and later in the day it disappears." On Stress and Stigma.

Abstract: Stress is a challenge among non-specialist health workers worldwide, particularly in low-resource settings. Understanding and targeting stress is critical for supporting non-specialists and their patients, as stress negatively affects patient care. Further, stigma toward mental health and substance use conditions also impacts patient care. However, there is little information on the intersection of these factors. This sub-analysis aims to explore how substance use and mental health stigma intersect with provider stress and resource constraints to influence the care of people with HIV/TB. 

We conducted semi-structured interviews (N=30) with patients (n=15) and providers (n=15, non-specialist health workers) within a low-resource community in Cape Town, South Africa. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Three key themes were identified: (1) resource constraints negatively affect patient care and contribute to non-specialist stress; (2) in the context of stress, non-specialists are hesitant to work with patients with mental health or substance use concerns, who they view as more demanding and (3) stress contributes to provider stigma, which negatively impacts patient care. Findings highlight the need for multilevel interventions targeting both provider stress and stigma toward people with mental health and substance use concerns, especially within the context of non-specialist-delivered mental health services in low-resource settings. (Hines et al., 2024)

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- Hines, A. C., Rose, A. L., Regenauer, K. S., Brown, I., Johnson, K., Bonumwezi, J., Ndamase, S., Ciya, N., Magidson, J. F. & Myers, B. (2024). "Early in the morning, there's tolerance and lter in the day it disappears" - The intersection of resource scarcity, stress and stigma in mental health and substance use care in South Africa. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, link

- photograph by Santu Mofokeng via

The Tradwife Persona

For a great many women, tradwife is an identity. Tradwives are women who believe in what is considered as traditional gender roles usually including "hetereosexual marriage with masculine dominance and feminine subservience, child-rearing, homeschooling,  and right-wing political ideals". In his article, Proctor examines three well-known online tradwife persona: Alena Kate Pettitt (The Darling Academy), Caitlin Huber (Mrs. Midwest), and Ayla Stewart (Wife with a Purpose). 

His focus is on how forms of racism and sexism manifest in their performances to "1) establish tradwifery as a legitimate practice and form of identification, 2) illustrate how a person should act/talk/live to be considered a tradwife, and 3) establish themselves as part of a community of tradwives". 

Tradwifery is inherently sexist and explicitly anti-feminist since women are portrayed as subservient to men and feminism is attacked calling for a return to so-called traditional feminine gender roles. Many tradwives call their ideology and lifestyle "choice feminism". In other words, as the choices are made by women they are automatically declared to be feminist choices.

The decisions to stay at home “may be presented as entirely personal. However, they are inseparable from the profound crisis of both work and care under neoliberal capitalism” (Rottenberg & Orgad 2020). So those women who choose to not work are exercising a privilege to embody a traditional version of feminine gender roles, as these traditions are often “frozen moments in history arbitrarily chosen from the cultural repertoire as “the’ authentic expression of the national collective” (Christou 2020). Indeed, very likely these arbitrary historic traditions themselves are complete inventions (Hobsbawm 1992). For instance, it is a myth that women in the far past didn’t work. They were wives and mothers, but also worked the fields, brewed mead, sold and bartered goods, spun wool, and very often worked alongside guildsmen to learn a trade (Shahar 2003). By framing the woman’s role in the home as ‘traditional’, tradwives continue a long project of delegitimizing women’s contributions in the workforce as separate and less valid than the formalized economy of male labour (Milkman 2016).

While sexism is quite obvious, the link between tradwifery and racism is comparably more subtle. The movement promotes white, western heteronormative ideals of gender roles taken from white middle-class US-Americans in the 1950s. The construction of the fragile woman was something white women had access to, not Black women, as the distribution of labour was different among the Black population. The tradwife movement is not explicitly racist or extremist. However, tradwife culture is useful to white supremacists.

In 2018, Ayla Stewart (censored several times) described her site as "an online forum which brings together people interested in God's plan for happy families and wives dedicated to traditional homemaking. It also serves youth interested in an alternative to feminism and liberal ideology". While Stewart is vocal on issues of feminism and ethnicity, Caitlin Huber and Alena Kate Pettit shy away from overt statements and focus more on institutional and corporate aspects of their personas and making money.

Huber has a ‘Shop’ tab on her blog that links out to allow purchase of her “favourite things”. She does not produce these items, but in the site’s frequently asked questions, she explains: “I get ad money from YouTube from my videos, and when I do a sponsorship, I will negotiate to get paid. I also get a little money from any links that I offer to y’all from Amazon!” (Huber 2022). She is letting us know (with a colloquial “y’all”) that even though she is making money from this, she’s really just like us: a normal person, where ‘normal’ is code (for all three women) as white, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgendered, neurotypical, and able-bodied. Pettitt takes corporate agency a step further by offering her own books on ‘Traditional Lifestyle & Etiquette’—co-authored by herself and The Darling Academy—for purchase via Amazon link.

The author points out that while the concept of tradwifery clearly contains aspects of misogyny and white supremacy, not all tradwives are anti-feminists or white nationalists (Proctro, 2022).

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- Proctor, D. (2022). The #Tradwife Persona and the Rise of Radicalized White Domesticity. Persona Studies, 8(2), 7-26; link
- photograph via

Becoming Old, Becoming a Stranger

Abstract: We start with the observation that aging gerontologists often engage in two distinct discourses on aging—one public and one private. This separation entails “othering,” which reproduces agism and stigma. Based on personal experience, insight from colleagues and writers, and concepts from symbolic interaction perspectives, we argue that becoming old to some degree involves becoming a stranger. Before reaching old age, both of us have been in the position of strangers due to social experiences that left us “off the line” or “on the margins.” 

Examples are crossing social borders related to nations, class structures, gender, race, health status, and generations. Our stories illustrate how aging is more than personal. It is interpersonal—shaped by social history, policies, interdependence in relationships, and the precariousness of old age. Such phenomena often show sharp contrasts in the interpersonal worlds and social experiences of women and men. Reflecting on our own journeys as life course migrants leaves us acutely aware of both the social problems and potential promises of aging. (Hagesta & Settersten, 2017)

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- Hagestad, G. O. & Settersten, R. A. (2017). Aging: It's Interpersonal! Reflections From Two Life Course Migrants. The Gerontologist, 57(1), 136-144.
- phtotgraph by Garry Winogrand via

World Oceans Day & Environmental Injustice in the Anthropocene Ocean

In the 1980s, the concept of environmental justice emerged in the United States recognising the disproportional distribution of environmental pollution and hazardous waste with Black communities and  socio-economically disadvantaged populations experiencing more environmental burdens and having less access to benefits. Comparably little attention has, so far, been paid to environmental justice issues in connection with marine and coastal environments. Here, too, impacts are "unequally distributed geographically and produce socially differentiated impacts across racial, ethnic, gender, age and socio-economic groups". One of the reasons why marginalised groups experience worse impacts is that they are often inadequately considered and mostly excluded from the deciscion-making process (Bennett et al., 2022). 

These colonial and racist acts fail to recognize ancestral ocean ownership and tenure rights, inclusion of marginalized communities in decisions, respect for human rights, and consideration of social and health impacts in the formulation of pollution prevention approaches. (Bennett et al., 2022)

Bennett et al. (2022) discuss five key hazards in the marine and coastal environment affecting some communities and populations more than others: (1) pollution and toxic waste, (2) plastics and marine debris, (3) climate change, (4) ecosystem, biodiversity and ecosystem service degradation, and (5) fisheries declines.

Liboiron (2021) challenges us to think about plastics as a form of colonialism enabled by global capitalist expansion. The amount of plastic waste generated per capita by individuals in many low- and middle-income countries is substantially less than individuals from high-income countries (Euromap, 2016; UNEP, 2021a). Fifteen countries account for 73.9% of the plastic waste that is exported, 11 of these countries are from the OECD (Pedra & Gonçalves, 2020). However, many Low- and Middle-Income Countries are unable to adequately manage their own plastic waste let alone the burgeoning amount of plastic waste shipped from High-Income Countries (Ritchie & Roser, 2018). The UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics underscored how this issue compounds due to the lack of adequate reception and processing facilities in lower income countries (Orellana, 2021). When combined with local gaps in waste management, this leads to substantially greater land-based inputs of plastics into the ocean with associated increases in environmental and societal impacts for populations in lower income countries (Pedra & Gonçalves, 2020; UNEP, 2021b, 2021a). (Bennett et al., 2022)

Some interesting excerpts:

emerged in the 1980s in the United States from concerns about the disproportionate burdens of pollution that were being placed on and experienced by Black communities and socio economically disadvantaged populations (Bullard, 1994; Cutter, 1995). Environmental justice research demonstrated that polluting infrastructure, such as oil refineries, mining and factories, as well as air pollution emissions and toxic waste disposal sites, were often situated near Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities (Bullard, 2018; Walker, 2012). Such environmental discrimination and racism was shown to be producing numerous negative health effects and wellbeing outcomes for these populations (Brulle & Pellow, 2006). The field of environmental justice has since grown globally and expanded to focus on a broader set of environmental hazards and harms, including climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, and declines in ecosystem services (Boyd, 2022; Chaudhary et al., 2018; Mutz et al., 2002; Sikor, 2013; Sze & London, 2008; Tsosie, 2007). Environmental justice has also come to refer broadly to both the distribution of environmental burdens and access to benefits, as well as the recognition, meaningful involvement and fair treatment of people in environmental decision making and legal frameworks emerged in the 1980s in the United States from concerns about the disproportionate burdens of pollution that were being placed on and experienced by Black communities and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations (Bullard, 1994; Cutter, 1995). Environmental justice research demonstrated that polluting infrastructure, such as oil refineries, mining and factories, as well as air pollution emissions and toxic waste disposal sites, were often transform-situated near Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities (Bullard, 2018; Walker, 2012). Such environmental discrimination and racism was shown to be producing numerous negative health effects and wellbeing outcomes for these populations (Brulle & Pellow, 2006). The field of environmental justice has since grown globally and expanded to focus on a broader set of environmental hazards and harms, including climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, and declines in (Boyd, 2022; Chaudhary et al., 2018; Mutz et al., 2002; Sikor, 2013; Sze & London, 2008; Tsosie, 2007). Environmental justice has also come to refer broadly to both the distribution of environmental burdens and access to benefits, as well as the recognition, meaningful involvement and fair treatment of people in environmental decision making and legal frameworks. Historically marginalized groups, groups that rely on subsistence harvesting or small-scale fisheries, and low-income nations tend to be disproportionately exposed to and impacted by increasing chemical and biological contamination in the ocean (Landrigan et al., 2018; Liboiron, 2021), a problem which perpetuates and exacerbates pre-existing inequalities. For example, the worst social-environmental impacts and public health effects of pollution are often experienced and absorbed by Indigenous people, people of color, and women (Landrigan et al., 2018; Liboiron, 2021). Inuit women from the Arctic are still among the most contaminated humans with POPs such as PCB and PFAS, while struggling for food safety and security and being affected by underlying health risks due to chronic and emerging diseases such as breast cancer and endocrine disruption in the face of climate change (AMAP, 2021; Ghisari et al., 2014; Wielsøe et al., 2017). Indigenous populations and small-scale fishers who consume high amounts of fish or mammals are exposed to the effects of methylmercury on their health (Donatuto et al., 2011; Probyn, 2018). Afro-American communities, who have tolerated the burden of colonialism and impacts of top-down government policies for generations, have been disproportionately impacted by offshore oil and gas exploitation in coastal Louisiana where they have faced persistent industrial hazards from the myriad of old pipeline infrastructure that impair coastal marshes and produce health and livelihood impacts (Maldonado, 2018; Randolph, 2021). The golbal nature of the disposal of pollution and other wastes in the ocean reveals patterns of environmental racism, with the dumping of wastes and the breaking of ships often occurring in the lower income countries in Africa and Asia (Frey, 2015; Okafor-Yarwood & Adewumi, 2020; Wan et al., 2021). Oil exploration and exploitation also tends to be more polluting in lower income countries - such as Ecuador, Nigeria or Nicaragua - where corporations take advantage of governance gaps (Alava & Calle, 2013; Allen, 2011; Andrews et al., 2021; Arif, 2019; O’Rourke & Connolly, 2003). (Bennett et al., 2022)

Bennett et al – Environmental Justice in the Ocean 9 2.3.2 Impacts and Distribution The litany of climate change impacts and knock-on effects described above are having substantial but differentiated implications for coastal communities and ocean-dependent populations around the world. Extreme weather events, coastal inundation and erosion, saltwater intrusion, marine heatwaves and HABs can have detrimental effects on economic benefits from the fisheries, aquaculture, agriculture and tourism sectors (Bindoff et al., 2019; Misana & Tilumanywa, 2019; Narita et al., 2012; Oppenheimer et al., 2019; Ritzman et al., 2018; K. E. Smith et al., 2021). Shifts in the abundance, productivity and location of fish stocks and shellfish from warming oceans and acidification are affecting fisheries jobs, revenues, and food security for many coastal populations (Cheung et al., 2010; Doney et al., 2020; Fernandes et al., 2017; Lam, Cheung, Reygondeau, et al., 2016; Narita et al., 2012; Tigchelaar et al., 2021). Rising sea levels, combined with increased storm and flooding events, are harming community infrastructure, housing and health in both rural areas and urban centers (Heberger et al., 2011; Liwenga et al., 2019; Rahimi et al., 2020; Ryan et al., 2016) and leading to forced retreat or migration away from the ocean (Ahmed & Eklund, 2021; Dannenberg et al., 2019; Dasgupta et al., 2022; Hauer, 2017; Schwerdtle et al., 2018). Climate change impacts on ecosystems can undermine provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting ecosystem services that are fundamental for human well-being (Doney et al., 2012; E. J. Nelson et al., 2013; Singh et al., 2019; Smale et al., 2019). In short, climate change threatens the human rights of coastal populations and nations to food, livelihoods, health and physical security (Ahlgren et al., 2014; Elver & Oral, 2021; Levy & Patz, 2015). There is substantial evidence that different racial, ethnic, gender, age and socio-economic groups experience the impacts of climate related changes to a greater or lesser extent (Benevolenza & DeRigne, 2019; Bindoff et al., 2019; Dankelman & Jansen, 2010; Flores, Collins, et al., 2021; N. Islam & Winkel, 2017; Thomas et al., 2019). For example, pre-existing social and structural inequalities tend to situate Black populations, women and the poor in more vulnerable positions when it comes to coastal flooding, storms, and other hazards related to climate change (Ahmed & Eklund, 2021; Gotham et al., 2018; Hardy et al., 2017). Communities and groups (e.g., small-scale fishers or Indigenous Peoples) who have a high level of resource dependence - either for livelihoods or food security - will also be more susceptible to changes to ecosystems, ecosystem services and fisheries brought on by climate change (Guillotreau et al., 2012; Lauria et al., 2018; Marushka et al., 2019). Similarly, groups with lower adaptive capacity - due to less access to financial resources, lack of alternative livelihood options, or structural barriers - will experience greater impacts (Cinner et al., 2018; Senapati & Gupta, 2017). Climate change adaptation and mitigation programs can further marginalize local populations when their needs and voices are not taken into account. Managed retreat, for instance, can have disruptive public health implications, including declining mental health, social capital, food security, water supply, and access to health care, that disproportionately affect Indigenous people (Dannenberg et al., 2019). In Bangladesh, climate adaptation projects have excluded and further marginalized women and minorities, and worsened income inequality (Sovacool, 2018). (Bennett et al., 2022)

8th of June was first declared as World Oceans Day in 1992 and designated by the United Nations in 2008. More on the day: LINK

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- Nathan J. Bennett, Juan José Alava, Caroline E. Ferguson, Jessica Blythe, Elisa Morgera, David Boyd, Isabelle M. Côté (2022). Environmental Justice in the Ocean, Working Paper, University of British Columbia, link

- photograph by Pierre Verger via

The Shaping of the Face Space in Early Infancy: Becoming a Native Face Processor

Abstract: Face perception remains one of the most intensively researched areas in psychology and allied disciplines, and there has been much debate regarding the early origins and experiential determinants of face processing. This article reviews studies, the majority of which have appeared in the past decade, that discuss possible mechanisms underlying face perception at birth and document the prominent role of experience in shaping infants’ face-processing abilities. In the first months of life, infants develop a preference for female and own-race faces and become better able to recognize and categorize own-race and own-species faces. This perceptual narrowing and shaping of the “face space” forms a foundation for later face expertise in childhood and adulthood and testifies to the remarkable plasticity of the developing visual system. (Slater et al., 2020)

- Slater, A., quinn, P. C., Kelly, D. J., Lee, K., Longmore, C. A., McDonald, P. R. & Pascalis, O. (2010). The Shaping of the Face Space in Early Infancy: Becoming a Native Face Processor. Child Development Perspectives, link
- photograph by Vivian Maier via

The Social Meanings of Men's and Women's Hats

"Until the 1960s, the article of clothing that performed the most important role in indicating social distinctions among men was the hat. The fact that it ceased to fulfill this role in the 1960s suggests that in the nineteenth century, hats, which continued to be worn during the first half of the twentieth century, were particularly suitable for the social environment of the period. Several new types of hats appeared during the nineteenth century and were rapidly adopted at different social levels. Exactly what roles did hats perform? Because hats represented a more modest expense than jackets and coats, they provided an ideal opportunity for "blurring and transforming . . . traditional class boundaries" (Robinson 1993: 39). 

Men's hats were also used to claim and maintain, rather than to confuse, social status, as seen in the fact that specific types of hats became closely identified with particular social strata. Elaborate customs of "hat tipping" as a means of expressing deference to a man's superiors reflected the importance of the hat in marking class boundaries (McCannell 1973). Since men represented their families in public space, men's hats, rather than women's, were used to indicate the status of the family. Women's head coverings during this period were more varied and more individualized than men's (Wilcox 1945). Women's hats exemplified conspicuous consumption instead of relaying coded signals referring to social rank." (Crane, 2000)

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- Crane, D. (2000). Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing, excerpt via

- photography via

Hunger has a Female Face

49,7% of the world population is female, however, women and girls make up 60% of the 309 million people extremely hungry right now. 126 million more women than men struggle securing their next meal (via). In countries facing hunger due to conflict, women often eat least sacrificing for their families. In two thirds of countries, women are more likely to report food insecurity than men. One in three women has anemia, a diet-related iron deficiency, which can damage organs if it is untreated (via).

photograph by Vivian Maier via

The Homophobic Climate Index: Estimating Homophobia in 158 Countries

Lamontagne et al. (2018) developed the Homphobic Climate Index including aspects such as institutional (e.g. laws that criminalise same-sex relations) and social (acceptance of homosexuality in population) homophobia. 158 countries - ranging from Sweden to Sudan - were ranked based on how homophobic or gay-friendly they were. The most inclusive countries were Uruguay and countries located in Western Europe. Latin America appeared as a region fighting homophobia, and in Africa, South Africa and Cabo Verde were the most inclusive ones.

The ten most homophobic countries were (in the following order): Sudan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Qatar, Nigeria, Guinea, Iraq, Burundi, Chad. The ten most inclusive countries were: Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Finland, Belgium, France, Uruguay, United Kingdom.

The authors found some interesting correlations. For instance, a 10% change in GDP per capita was associated with a 1% reduction in the index. Also, a higher homophobic climate was correlated with lower life expectancy among men as well as with social inequalities, such as gender equality (measured by share of parliamentary seats held by women) and the abuse of human rights.

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- Lamontagne, E., d'Elbée, M., Ross, M. W., Carroll, A., du Plessis, A. & Loures, L. (2018). A sociological measurement of homophobia for all countries and its public health impact. European Journal of Public Health, 28(5), 96-972, link
- photograph by Diane Arbus via

Different Ethnicities and the Gaze of Infants

Abstract: Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over other-race faces, but whether this experience has downstream consequences is unknown. Three experiments examined whether 7-month-olds (range = 5.9–8.5 months; N = 96) use gaze from own- versus other-race adults to anticipate events. 

When gaze predicted an event's occurrence with 100% reliability, 7-month-olds followed both adults equally; with 25% (chance) reliability, neither was followed. However, with 50% (uncertain) reliability, infants followed own- over other-race gaze. Differential face race experience may thus affect how infants use social cues from own- versus other-race adults for learning. Such findings suggest that infants integrate online statistical reliability information with prior knowledge of own versus other race to guide social interaction and learning. (Xiao et al., 2017)

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- Xiao, N. G., Wu, R., Quinn, P. C., Liu, S., Tummeltshammer, K. S., Kirkham, N. Z., Ge, L., Pascalis, O. & Lee, K. (2017). Infants Rely More on Gaze Cues From Own-Race Than Othr-Race Adults for Learning Under Uncertainty, link

- photograph via Design Mom