Seismic Waves in Heterogeneous Crust-Mantle Layers under Initial Stresses

This article investigates the propagations of SH-waves and Rayleigh-type waves in a pre-stressed heterogeneous half-space and also Love-type waves in a pre-stressed heterogeneous layer overlying a pre-stressed heterogeneous half-space. Wave-velocity relations for SH-waves, Rayleigh-type waves, and dispersion equation for Love-type waves are derived. The results reflect that initial stress and inhomogeneity decrease the phase velocity of the SH-waves and Rayleigh-type waves. The phase and damping velocities of Love-type waves decrease with wave number, initial stress of the upper media, and inhomogeneity of the lower media, whereas they increase with initial stress of the lower media and inhomogeneity of the upper media.     

Getting personal while narrating the ‘field’: a researcher's journey to the villages of the Narmada valley

In this article, I discuss my experiences, dilemmas and emotions following my field surveys conducted in the rehabilitated villages of Sardar Sarovar. The Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) is a multi-purpose river valley project that has dislocated thousands of Adivasis and non-Adivasis from their traditional lands. I have used the narrative method to research and gain insights into the lifestyle changes of the Adivasis displaced by the SSP. Accordingly, I reflect critically on the negotiation of ethics and insider–outsider status in international field research and pay close attention to the importance of reflexivity, positionality and power struggles.     

Violence on bodies: Space,social reproduction and intersectionality

Abstract

Social categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, caste, and class have been analyzed by feminist geographers, who collectively argue that as individuals we experience and live the effects of these social categories simultaneously. Violence as a result of living these categories is not specific to certain spaces or contexts. Nor can violence be imagined as only social – it is also political, economic and institutional. Silvia Federici’s work can assist feminist geographers in understanding how this violence plays out in various contexts. Federici's detailed archival searches and empirical analyses of bodies and reproduction show parallels with contemporary forms of direct and structural violence of the state, patriarchy, and capitalism through unequal power relations and unequal life chances. Refining the scarce scholarly acknowledgement of women (and men) who are exploitable or labeled as irrational and vulnerable, and of human and non-human populations that have been relegated to the realm of surplus and expendable bodies – explain how the organization of capital facilitates and, indeed, relies on violence. In support of this argument, the authors in this collection seek pathways within Federici’s ground-breaking works Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero, which could enrich existing works in the discipline. The contributors reflect on how these particular books have been pivotal to feminist thought generally and their own research, analysis, and pedagogical practice specifically. Through their disparate studies the contributors have intertwined the geographies of structural, institutional, and/or state-sponsored violence with themes arising in Federici’s work.     

Fearing Food: The Influence of Risk Perceptions on Public Preferences for Uniform and Centralized Risk Regulation

Public opinion features prominently in policy research because it sets bounds on the definition of policy problems and acceptable policy solutions. We contend that public opinion is also important for setting bounds on the level of government at which policy hazards are regulated by shaping preferences for uniformity of regulation and, relatedly, preferences for centralization. We offer a theoretical argument for why risk creates pressures for uniform standards and examine the extent to which preferences for uniformity and centralization are the product of fairly stable individual-level predispositions (e.g. partisanship and ideology) versus more fluid attitudes like perceptions of risk, which vary in response to crises, new information, and issue framing. We test our argument using survey data in the policy domain of food safety and find that individuals who anticipate greater risk from food-borne illness prefer more uniform food safety regulation, which translates into preferences for federal-level policymaking. Our results imply that contextual circumstances and strategic communications that influence risk perceptions can create not only generalized public demand for more regulatory policy but specific demand for uniform, centralized regulation.