Current Sociology, Ahead of Print.
The mainstream approach of social vulnerability to flood risk faces some challenges regarding its ability to address the complexity of its causal processes. The objective of this study was to analyse the causal processes of social vulnerability to flood impacts from a relational perspective. To this end, a social network analysis was performed that identified the conditions and causes of social vulnerability and systematically articulated the relationships between them. This analysis was tested on the specific case of flood risk on the coast of the province of Alicante (SE Spain). To ascertain the conditions and causes of social vulnerability to flood risk, a multidisciplinary group of local experts was consulted, and the resulting data processed in a relational way using Atlas.ti and Gephi softwares. The result was a social vulnerability network comprising 84 nodes and 189 edges distributed into four dimensions: the adaptive capacity of tourists, socio-economic structure, land use planning and risk management. The information was ranked for betweenness centrality, revealing the components with highest causal power of social vulnerability to social impacts in flooding events: low flood risk awareness, economic growth based on real estate boom, property speculation and lack of political interest in flood risk management. This proposal places emphasis on the driving forces of social vulnerability and not exclusively on the specific adaptive conditions of the population, which allows a strategic identification and management of generative forces that ultimately induce the social impacts of floods.
Category Archives: Arts and Health
‘They won’t wear condoms, so why would we expect them to wear masks?’: Social media, ‘circuit queens’ and the ‘gay civil war’ during COVID-19
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
This article examines the Instagram account @GaysoverCOVID which publicly exposed gay men who appeared to disregard COVID-related restrictions during the pandemic. While outwardly concerned to hold these men accountable, the article analyses posts and comments published on the platform to show how criticism focused on the appearance and perceived ‘promiscuity’ of the men exposed. The article draws on the work of Douglas Crimp (1989) to analyse this ‘moralism’ as a symptom of ‘melancholia’, a form of repressed mourning. It shows how the COVID pandemic has brought contested understandings of ‘safer sex’ to the surface, underpinning a set of anxieties concerning the loss of a ‘responsible’ gay subjecthood based on condom use. These anxieties were projected onto the figure of the ‘circuit queen’ in ways that reproduced long-standing discourses of ‘slut-shaming’. To leave this moralism behind, the author argues for greater attention to the affective dimensions of the transition from condom to PrEP-based HIV prevention.
This article examines the Instagram account @GaysoverCOVID which publicly exposed gay men who appeared to disregard COVID-related restrictions during the pandemic. While outwardly concerned to hold these men accountable, the article analyses posts and comments published on the platform to show how criticism focused on the appearance and perceived ‘promiscuity’ of the men exposed. The article draws on the work of Douglas Crimp (1989) to analyse this ‘moralism’ as a symptom of ‘melancholia’, a form of repressed mourning. It shows how the COVID pandemic has brought contested understandings of ‘safer sex’ to the surface, underpinning a set of anxieties concerning the loss of a ‘responsible’ gay subjecthood based on condom use. These anxieties were projected onto the figure of the ‘circuit queen’ in ways that reproduced long-standing discourses of ‘slut-shaming’. To leave this moralism behind, the author argues for greater attention to the affective dimensions of the transition from condom to PrEP-based HIV prevention.
Iranian women’s sexual reconstruction through the internet: Informal education and empowerment
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
The emergence of the internet offered a unique space for Iranian women to inquire about their personal autonomy, including sexual autonomy. While the internet accelerated Iranian women’s emancipation from sexual subordination, critical questions concerning the impact of socio-cultural mores on this relatively new experience remain convoluted. Grounded in critical feminist and sexual script theoretical frameworks, this research investigates some Iranian women’s comprehension and experience of sexual autonomy by closely exploring the educational role of the internet on the discourse of sexual autonomy and its interconnection with the Iranian culture of shame and silence. Through semi-structural in-depth interviews and online ethnography, this research investigates how the internet serves as an informal learning tool that disrupts traditional learning and expedites women’s sexual autonomy in both online and offline spaces. Adopting critical thematic analysis, this study determined that the online realm altered the meaning of sexual subordination and led to a reconstruction that shifted the boundaries of shame and silence around sexuality. Through the interaction and interconnection between online and offline spaces, Iranian women problematize the culture of shame and silence through learning, revisiting their existing knowledge, and then silently acting. Therefore, a cultural reconstruction that is gradually redefining sexual scripts is emerging.
The emergence of the internet offered a unique space for Iranian women to inquire about their personal autonomy, including sexual autonomy. While the internet accelerated Iranian women’s emancipation from sexual subordination, critical questions concerning the impact of socio-cultural mores on this relatively new experience remain convoluted. Grounded in critical feminist and sexual script theoretical frameworks, this research investigates some Iranian women’s comprehension and experience of sexual autonomy by closely exploring the educational role of the internet on the discourse of sexual autonomy and its interconnection with the Iranian culture of shame and silence. Through semi-structural in-depth interviews and online ethnography, this research investigates how the internet serves as an informal learning tool that disrupts traditional learning and expedites women’s sexual autonomy in both online and offline spaces. Adopting critical thematic analysis, this study determined that the online realm altered the meaning of sexual subordination and led to a reconstruction that shifted the boundaries of shame and silence around sexuality. Through the interaction and interconnection between online and offline spaces, Iranian women problematize the culture of shame and silence through learning, revisiting their existing knowledge, and then silently acting. Therefore, a cultural reconstruction that is gradually redefining sexual scripts is emerging.
Orgasm as women’s work? Rethinking pleasure, ‘sex’ and the power dynamics of orgasm through the embodied experiences of orgasmic meditation practitioners
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
Drawing upon interviews with 33 practitioners of ‘orgasmic meditation’ in the UK and US, I question the extent to which the practice of orgasmic meditation might facilitate ways to uncouple orgasm from negative gendered constructions. I explore how the practice in some cases enables people to establish clear bodily boundaries and encourages women to centre their own pleasure, as well as opening up space to rethink what constitutes a ‘sexual’ practice. Theorised through a queer feminist perspective, I argue that tensions remain with orgasm as a form of women’s work, with an onus upon women to police bodily boundaries, and with moments where boundaries are broken.
Drawing upon interviews with 33 practitioners of ‘orgasmic meditation’ in the UK and US, I question the extent to which the practice of orgasmic meditation might facilitate ways to uncouple orgasm from negative gendered constructions. I explore how the practice in some cases enables people to establish clear bodily boundaries and encourages women to centre their own pleasure, as well as opening up space to rethink what constitutes a ‘sexual’ practice. Theorised through a queer feminist perspective, I argue that tensions remain with orgasm as a form of women’s work, with an onus upon women to police bodily boundaries, and with moments where boundaries are broken.
Proving gender and sexuality in the (homo)nationalist Greek asylum system: Credibility, sexual citizenship and the ‘bogus’ sexual other
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
The aim of this article is to analyse and critique Greek authorities’ expectations for a ‘credible’ account in queer asylum claims. As some of the caseworkers’ accounts portray, through 16 semi-structured interviews, in order to be deemed ‘credibly queer’ applicants are expected to have passed through a painful, discursively narratable process of self-realization and have suffered enough in their ‘queerphobic and oppressive’ countries of origin. At the same time, they are supposed to find safety and protection in Greece, following a linear ‘affective journey’ from oppression to liberation, happiness and pride. However, as this research argues, decision-makers do not always comply with normative expectations but, simultaneously, through their performative assessments, they go beyond them. This way, they do not only reproduce but they often resist the homonationalist discursive framework that governs intelligibility in the asylum process; a framework founded on Eurocentric and white-centred presumptions of the ‘good and happy sexual citizen’ and the ‘bogus sexual other’. By drawing on this situated, from below critique, as well as on postcolonial feminist and queer theory, this article seeks to open up racialized, classed and gendered, normative definitions of queerness to different possibilities that do not conform with neoliberal sexual politics and urges for a more critical interpretation of the Refugee Convention.
The aim of this article is to analyse and critique Greek authorities’ expectations for a ‘credible’ account in queer asylum claims. As some of the caseworkers’ accounts portray, through 16 semi-structured interviews, in order to be deemed ‘credibly queer’ applicants are expected to have passed through a painful, discursively narratable process of self-realization and have suffered enough in their ‘queerphobic and oppressive’ countries of origin. At the same time, they are supposed to find safety and protection in Greece, following a linear ‘affective journey’ from oppression to liberation, happiness and pride. However, as this research argues, decision-makers do not always comply with normative expectations but, simultaneously, through their performative assessments, they go beyond them. This way, they do not only reproduce but they often resist the homonationalist discursive framework that governs intelligibility in the asylum process; a framework founded on Eurocentric and white-centred presumptions of the ‘good and happy sexual citizen’ and the ‘bogus sexual other’. By drawing on this situated, from below critique, as well as on postcolonial feminist and queer theory, this article seeks to open up racialized, classed and gendered, normative definitions of queerness to different possibilities that do not conform with neoliberal sexual politics and urges for a more critical interpretation of the Refugee Convention.
Book Review: Immigrants on grindr: Race, sexuality and belonging online
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
Book Review: Queer Judaism: LGBT activism and the remaking of Jewish Orthodoxy in Israel
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
Book Review: Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
Unpacking the global climate politics-to-local nexus: Renewables, community struggles, and social impacts
Current Sociology, Ahead of Print.
Accelerating renewable energy deployment is imperative to address the climate crisis, yet projects commonly face community resistance and local cancellation. Accordingly, interest has risen in social impact assessments (SIAs) to evaluate social viability and strengthen management. However, mainstream approaches overlook upstream political economy dynamics that shape projects and drive opposition. Analyzing renewable developments in Mexico reveals how international negotiations and national policies produce rushed, large-scale projects in marginalized territories, igniting rural social struggles. While SIA practices can be enhanced, upstream policies constrain their scope to reshape misaligned projects and performance to address complex sociocultural contexts. This prompts questioning why vulnerable regions bear concentrated impacts and the need to explore alternative development pathways, despite SIAs implementation.
Accelerating renewable energy deployment is imperative to address the climate crisis, yet projects commonly face community resistance and local cancellation. Accordingly, interest has risen in social impact assessments (SIAs) to evaluate social viability and strengthen management. However, mainstream approaches overlook upstream political economy dynamics that shape projects and drive opposition. Analyzing renewable developments in Mexico reveals how international negotiations and national policies produce rushed, large-scale projects in marginalized territories, igniting rural social struggles. While SIA practices can be enhanced, upstream policies constrain their scope to reshape misaligned projects and performance to address complex sociocultural contexts. This prompts questioning why vulnerable regions bear concentrated impacts and the need to explore alternative development pathways, despite SIAs implementation.