Author: Semira Berhe

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Movements / Social Change

Forging A Gender-Household Plastics Nexus in The Circular Economy

Inexpensive, lightweight and durable, it is difficult to imagine a world without the ubiquitous plastics. If you have ever looked around your kitchen, bathroom or living room, you will realise something: plastic is everywhere. From packaging and bottles to bags and straws, it is hard to escape the pervasiveness of plastics. However, plastics are a double-edged sword. Despite playing an indispensable role in modern society, plastic pollution has become a pressing environmental issue. Household plastics in particular, is a key...

Figure 1: A child abuse awareness and prevention poster, part of a public campaign managed by the national government. Image created by Riko Mukuta and the National Network for the Prevention of Child Abuse, 2023.

Applied Sociology / Opinion / Research Methodologies / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Children

Care equity and the welfare state in Japan: Contextualizing what the child protection system seeks to safeguard

The child abuse crisis: Japan has a lively arena of research on children’s social care. Yet, there has been relatively little attention given to social constructions of childhood, abuse, and other pressing topics of debate, particularly in relation to structural and cross-cultural contexts. This is interesting considering how widespread visual and discursive representations of child abuse have proliferated throughout Japan in the past 30 years. I recently wrote a paper on the social-cultural construction of child abuse and its possible...

Opinion

Logistics Violence and Harm: Unpacking Supply Chain Capitalism for a Critical Southern Criminology

We live in a world where 10% of the population takes 52% of the global income, while the poorest half survives on just 8.5% (Chancel et al. 2022). This wealth inequality is more severe within the Global South, where there is an extreme disparity between wealthier and poorer zones. This economic inequality also comes with high levels of state and non-state violence. For example, in 2022, 177 environmental activists were killed, 88% of them in Amazon rainforest countries, while none...