Category Archives: Voices

A Youth-Driven Pact to Promote Ethics in Costa Rican Politics

August 28, 2024
By 31231

In November 2023, Mauricio Artiñano (Princeton University, 2013) organized a transformative retreat for youth leaders from 37 Costa Rican political parties that led to the drafting of a groundbreaking Interparty Ethical Pact addressing campaign issues like hate speech and corruption. Culminating in a historic signing event by parties from across the political spectrum, the SLI-supported, media-acclaimed project produced a commitment to democratic integrity for the February 2024 municipal elections and beyond.

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Imagine sending almost 60 representatives of different political parties to a rural community for a weekend to live together and work to draft a pact of ethical principles for a campaign period. It sounds like an idea for a reality show, one that would likely end in fighting or scandal. Few people would guess that a social experiment of this nature would result in new friendships and a consensus agreement.

In November 2023, though, thanks to a Sylff Leadership Initiatives (SLI) grant, I worked with the civic association Costa Rica Íntegra—the Costa Rican chapter of Transparency International—to facilitate a retreat for 59 young men and women representing 37 local and national political parties from across the country’s ideological spectrum.

Many people we consulted about this project were skeptical about our chances of success. However, thanks to a unique, self-designed methodology, the support of an excellent facilitation team, and, most importantly, the hard work of the youth leaders, the group was able to draft a 25-point pact that they named Interparty Ethical Pact “Sitio Mata” in honor of the community where we held the retreat. The Pact includes commitments related to such controversial issues as hate speech, disinformation, corruption, attacks against democratic institutions, campaign finance, and the environmental impact of political campaigns.

Youth leaders (and the author, shown standing in the top photo) discussing and drafting the ethical pact.

An Environment Conducive to Building Rapport

According to the youth leaders, another factor that helped set the stage for a successful conclusion was the place we chose to hold the retreat. Most events of this nature are held in hotels or retreat centers, but our meeting was held at a rural community center, and the youth leaders and staff stayed with local families that run a rural community tourism project in the village of Sitio Mata, some 50 km east of the Costa Rican capital of San Jose. With this choice, we were able to support a thriving, women-led tourism venture and the local economy, while also giving the young leaders the opportunity to get to know the local community. The participants agreed that the hospitality and warmth of their adopted families helped promote a sense of community that fed into the negotiations for the Pact.

With the momentum generated by the retreat and the Sylff grant, we were able to obtain additional financial support from the Swiss Embassy in Costa Rica, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA International), the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Indefinido Design Studio, and the European Union Delegation to Costa Rica. These funds allowed us to work with the youth leaders to organize 11 different events to promote the Pact and give political parties and candidates the opportunity to sign it. We were also fortunate to have the support of four University of Costa Rica political science students, who chose this project as their professional practice (a graduation requirement).

The largest of the 11 signing events took place a few weeks after the retreat, at the University of Costa Rica’s main campus. Forty-two political parties signed the Pact at that event, which was also attended by representatives from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, organized labor, the business community, and academia.

In addition, we were honored by the presence of the ambassadors of Switzerland, Perú, the Netherlands, Canada, Chile, and the European Union, and a representative from the Embassy of Japan (who also happened to be a Sylff fellow!). It was especially noteworthy that we had representatives from nearly all the national political parties sitting side by side at the same table signing the Pact. Various observers remarked that they couldn’t remember the last time so many political parties signed the same document.

Representatives of political parties signing the Pact at the University of Costa Rica event.

The initiative also received widespread media coverage, including TV and radio interviews and even a mention on the front page of La Nación, Costa Rica’s largest newspaper. The press coverage was also a great opportunity for the youth leaders to engage with the press and learn skills related to public relations, interviewing, and dealing with the media.

In total, 53 political parties signed the Pact out of the 75 that presented candidates for the February 4, 2024, municipal elections in Costa Rica, representing 86% of all candidates. With the support of Indefinido Design Studio, we were able set up an online platform for individual candidates to sign the Pact. Only 467 out of more than 37,000 candidates signed it individually, however, prompting the youth leaders to note—during a lessons-learned retreat held two months after the elections—that the online platform may have been set up too late and that many candidates believed that there was no need for them to sign the Pact individually if their party had already signed it. This was an important lesson for possible future iterations of this initiative.

At the follow-up retreat, the youth leaders expressed their deep gratitude for the opportunity to participate in this initiative and for the skills, connections, and inspiration that they derived from the project. They were especially enthusiastic about continuing to work together as a network of youth leaders committed to democracy and electoral ethics and integrity. Together with some of the funders of the initiative, we are currently brainstorming ways of continuing to support the youth leaders and maintain momentum. We are also looking forward to leading a similar exercise for the 2026 presidential and legislative elections.

Youth leaders who participated in the retreat.

My two main objectives with this project were to foster ethical principles in the context of the Costa Rican municipal elections and to promote the leadership and initiative of the next generation of leaders in the country. In her speech announcing the preliminary results of the elections, the presiding magistrate of the Costa Rican Supreme Electoral Tribunal—the institution in charge of organizing and supervising Costa Rican elections—mentioned the Pact as a successful civil-society-led initiative to promote democratic values. I was very proud of that recognition and very proud of the results of this initiative, particularly of the network of youth leaders that was created. I also had an opportunity to give a TED talk in April about this experience. All this was possible thanks to Sylff, and I am deeply grateful for its support.

End-of-Life Care Decisions for People with Dementia in China: Patients Rarely Have a Say

August 22, 2024
By 30592

Given that Asian medical decision-making experiences tend to be overlooked in academia and policy design, gerontologist Yifan Lou (Columbia University, 2019, 2022) conducted an SRG-supported study to provide empirical evidence for end-of-life decision-making narratives in China. She hopes to contribute to effective interventions and services for older Chinese with dementia and their family caregivers, as well as to discussions on culturally specific definitions of a “good death.”

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With generous support from SRG, I was able to finish the data collection, transcribing, and preliminary analyses of the project entitled “End-of-Life Decision-Making Experiences among the Primary Caregivers for Older Adults with Dementia in China.” This study aims to understand the values and unique challenges around end-of-life care among Chinese dementia caregivers, the results of which can inform the future design of a culturally sensitive intervention on advance care planning (ACP) for people living with dementia and their family caregivers in China.

China is the country with the largest population of older adults and people living with dementia in the world. The country’s population of people living with dementia is projected to reach an estimated of 75.6 million by 2030 (Xu et al. 2017). Unlike other critical illnesses like cancer, dementia always requires primary caregivers to make many end-of-life care decisions, including but not limited to admission to nursing homes, tube feeding, and do-not-resuscitate orders, on behalf of the people living with dementia themselves. Those decisions are extremely hard for caregivers, especially if they are experiencing physical exhaustion from long-time caregiving, emotional distress, and “anticipatory grief” due to the nature of dementia (Jones et al. 2019). Advance care planning can help to relieve the burden of caregivers and also make sure that those with dementia will receive the treatments that align with their preferences. Studies suggest that people at an early stage of dementia are still capable of making ACP choices (Yaffe et al. 2002; Hirschman et al. 2008).

ACP is still an emerging concept in China, however, where death and dying are cultural taboos. There are no studies elucidating the experience of dementia caregivers around end-of-life care decisions, and little is known regarding how their emotional burdens can be relieved to make sure people living with dementia can meet a dignified death. ACP in China cannot be promoted without knowing the Chinese people’s perceptions of and their current experiences with this issue. My study thus seeks to provide empirical evidence for decision-making narratives in China, which can significantly contribute to future developments in interventions and services for older Chinese with dementia and their family caregivers.

Having No Say in Care Decisions

In the project, I was able to interview 20 dementia caregivers and 5 health-care professionals in collaboration with community-based health-care centers. I conducted semi-structured interviews with the 25 participants on their experiences and perceptions of medical decision-making for people living with dementia. I also administered background questionnaires on their socioeconomic and health information. The participants had diverse backgrounds in terms of socioeconomic status, rural/urban residence, relationship to people living with dementia, and their own health status.

©fzant/Getty Images

Because the majority of participants used the Shanghai dialect in the interview, I outsourced the transcribing to a research assistant who can understand the dialect and have basic knowledge of social science research. The research assistant and I further worked on data analysis, the results of which were finalized and will be presented at the annual scientific meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in November 2024. To disseminate the results and make real impact, I also plan to present the results to community-based social service agencies and work with social workers in the agencies to design culturally appropriate interventions and evidence-based practices.

Our preliminary results show that people with dementia in China never have a say in their medical-care decisions. More specifically, as was seen in with my previous research in health communication during end-of-life care, we consistently observed three different types of power dynamics in the triad relationship among primary caregivers, medical professionals, and other family members: shared power between primary caregivers and doctors, balanced power between primary caregivers and other family members, and unbalanced power among the three stakeholders. Guided by Dahl’s relational power model (Dahl 1957), we further discussed the outcomes of the three different types of power dynamics. None of the three, though, involved the person who is actually experiencing death and dying. Primary caregivers, health-care professionals, and other family members frequently cited as reasons for such exclusion concerns about filial piety, the uncertain validity of the people living with dementia’s expressed wishes given their cognitive status, and concern for family harmony.

The nuanced data has the potential to spawn more research questions related to death, dying, and medical decision-making involving people living with dementia. More particularly, we will further explore the unique challenges of caregivers and health-care professionals when they try to make big life decisions for the patients without being able to confirm their wishes and preferences. We will also investigate how culture plays a part in medical decision-making so as to inform the development of culturally appropriate interventions and service delivery.

It is also possible to use this data to understand how family members communicate needs and information with health-care professionals. Health communication is an important topic in China because of frequent conflicts between the patient, family, and provider in hospitals. By understanding the concerns of family members and providers simultaneously using the data, we will be able to detangle the potential reasons behind the miscommunication in medical decision-making.

Framework for Intervention

My study is among the first to understand the experiences of advance care planning in the Chinese community. The study provides practitioners a framework for understanding and intervening in medical decision-making and ACP for surrogates of people with dementia. The results highlight the distinct decision-making experiences of people living with dementia in China compared to those in the West and suggest that policymakers should consider the voices of the local people and families. The study may also shed light on the medical decision-making process in other Asian countries with similar cultures, such as Korea and Singapore.

The Asian medical decision-making experience is largely overlooked in academia and policy design, particularly given that end-of-life care, hospice care, and ACP are all Western concepts. I thus hope to contribute to the growing conversation on adopting ACP and related concepts in Chinese and other Asian societies and to the larger discussion on culturally specific definitions of a “good death.” Future studies can provide a comparative lens to more comprehensively understand how health-care decision-making in end-of-life care settings works in Asian and Western countries.

References

Dahl, R. A. (1957). The Concept of Power. Behavioral Science, 2(3), 201–215.

Hirschman, K. B., Kapo, J. M., & Karlawish, J. H. (2008). Identifying the Factors that Facilitate or Hinder Advance Planning by Persons with Dementia. Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, 22(3), 293–298.

Jones, K., Birchley, G., Huxtable, R., Clare, L., Walter, T., & Dixon, J. (2019). End of Life Care: A Scoping Review of Experiences of Advance Care Planning for People with Dementia. Dementia, 18(3), 825–845.

Xu, J., Wang, J., Wimo, A., Fratiglioni, L., & Qiu, C. (2017). The Economic Burden of Dementia in China, 1990–2030: Implications for Health Policy. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 95(1), 18.

Yaffe, K., Fox, P., Newcomer, R., Sands, L., Lindquist, K., Dane, K., & Covinsky, K. E. (2002). Patient and Caregiver Characteristics and Nursing Home Placement in Patients with Dementia. JAMA, 287(16), 2090–2097.

Bridging Cultures, Building Futures: Empowering the Amahuaca through an Innovative Educational Model

August 5, 2024
By 31278

A major challenge for Indigenous peoples transitioning from a forest-dwelling life to a settled one is lack of access to formal education as a pathway to empowerment. Even when schooling is available, though, new issues can arise, such as the loss of language and identity. To address these challenges, Pilar Valenzuela (University of Oregon, 1995–96) used an SLI grant to develop a novel approach to preserving traditional knowledge while meeting modern needs.

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How is it possible for a community to exist in the twenty-first century without access to school, with residents lacking the opportunity to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills? Sadly, this stark reality confronts certain Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon, particularly those families who are part of the initial generation transitioning from a forest-dwelling life to settling in a village and establishing regular contact with Peruvian society. Among these communities, the Amahuaca people residing in the upper reaches of the Inuya River face significant challenges, including lack of access to formal education.

In Alto Esperanza, the village that serves as their home, leaders passionately express their desire for a primary school. They envision a pathway for their children to access formal education, not only to protect them from unscrupulous individuals seeking to manipulate or exploit them but also to empower them so they may safeguard their territory and exercise their rights as both Indigenous people and Peruvian citizens.

The residents of Alto Esperanza are not willing to sacrifice their language and culture, though, in exchange for educational access. This, unfortunately, has been the choice other Amahuaca villages have had to make when establishing primary schools, as non-Amahuaca teachers invariably conduct classes exclusively in Spanish.[1] The children who attended these schools no longer speak their Native language, severely compromising their identity as members of the Indigenous community.

Motivated by a desire to find a solution to these challenges, I embarked on a collaborative effort with the villagers of Alto Esperanza to devise an alternative educational model—a school that values and integrates the language, culture, and knowledge of the Amahuaca people while simultaneously teaching children Spanish and introducing them to Western culture and science. Thanks to a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant, the initial stage of this crucial project was successfully completed in January 2024.

Developing Teaching Materials

A dedicated team consisting of representatives from Alto Esperanza, Amahuaca educators, Amahuaca leaders, and myself as the linguist collaborated in the nearby city of Atalaya to meticulously design a tailored preliminary curriculum for Alto Esperanza. The curriculum incorporates an outline of monthly projects that align with the community’s engagement in such activities as hunting, fishing, gathering turtle eggs, opening small clearings in the forest sustainably for horticultural practices, and utilizing medicinal plants in a traditional manner. Additionally, we developed a range of teaching materials focused on fostering children’s literacy skills, encompassing essential aspects, such as reading, writing, and numeracy.

A page from the curriculum material incorporating both Spanish and Amahuaca vocabularies.

During this period, we also had the privilege of conducting classes for two boys and one girl from Alto Esperanza who were eager to learn and unwilling to wait for the opening of a local school in their village. Over a span of three weeks, they participated in both morning and afternoon sessions, held daily from Monday through Saturday. Each child received personalized instruction delivered by a dedicated Indigenous teacher.

Jacinto,[2] an 18-year-old young man with no prior school experience, started from the basics, mastering fundamental motor skills required for writing. He successfully learned the Amahuaca vowels, basic numbers, and simple additions. The second child, Liliana, approximately 12 years old, had received one year of education in another village. She achieved proficiency in learning some syllables and doing simple additions. The third child, Carlos, around 15 years old, had undergone two years of elementary education, also in another Amahuaca village. He exhibited substantial progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic during the project’s duration. Overall, we were deeply impressed by the children’s desire to learn and their remarkable knowledge about the Amazon rainforest. Moreover, upon their return to Alto Esperanza, I was thrilled to learn that Carlos has started conducting classes with seven Amahuaca children!

Liliana, a student of the class, practices writing.

A Viable Alternative for Other Communities

The project was a resounding success, and we believe that the schooling model we are developing can serve as a viable alternative for other Indigenous groups facing similar challenges. Our focus now is on securing funding to ensure the successful launch of the community school in September 2024. We plan on launching a GoFundMe campaign and are keeping our fingers crossed to obtain the necessary resources to make the elementary school in Alto Esperanza a reality. Alto Esperanza has already decided on the school’s name: Vachi Maitiya, which means “Those wearing the Amahuaca tall headdresses.”

By bridging cultures and building futures, we are not only providing educational opportunities but also empowering the Amahuaca people to preserve their language, culture, and identity while acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the world outside of their community. Together, we can create a brighter future for the Amahuaca community and inspire others to embrace innovative educational models that respect and celebrate diverse cultures.

[1] Schools in rural areas, such as those along the upper Inuya River, often have only one teacher overseeing all six grades of primary education.

[2] In order to protect the privacy of the individuals involved, the names of the children mentioned in this article have been changed.

Blazing a Trail for Female Orchestra Conductors in Leadership Positions

July 29, 2024
By 31775

On April 13 and 14, 2024, Sinfonietta Passau—a symphony orchestra founded and led by Eleni Papakyriakou (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, 2012)—performed highly acclaimed concerts supported by an SLI grant. She outlines the significance of the orchestra not only in promoting gender equality but also in enriching the cultural life of the community and achieving musical and social harmony.

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Sinfonietta Passau is a newly founded symphony orchestra in the Bavarian city of Passau, on the German-Austrian border. The orchestra consists of 64 musicians, mainly freelance professional musicians from the wider region and advanced students from the nearby music universities in Linz, Munich, and Salzburg—a well-balanced mixture that combines quality, passion, vitality, and youthful energy. The 33 female and 31 male orchestra members came to Passau over three weekends in March and April 2024 for intensive rehearsals and two concerts in Passau and nearby Deggendorf. The program consisted of:

  • Philipp Ortmeier (Passau-born composer): “Tree of Life” for soprano and orchestra, German premiere (first prize at the March 2023 “Orient/Occident” international competition in Ukraine). Soloist: Sarah Romberger
  • Gustav Mahler: Orchestral songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” Soloist: Sarah Romberger
  • Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (Bruckner Year 2024)

 

Sinfonietta Passau, April 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

The concerts were highly successful—the press reviews and the feedback of the audience were very enthusiastic:

“A great evening: standing ovations for Sinfonietta Passau with Bruckner’s Seventh and Philipp Ortmeier’s “Tree of Life.” You can feel the trust between the orchestra and the conductor. The orchestra is highly motivated. The conductor masters the large orchestra with clear gestures and great calm. She takes the pauses seriously and makes them wonderfully fitting in the room.”
—Passauer Neue Presse

“Great musical sensitivity: The conductor succeeds in making the sound layers in this monumental work [Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony] audible in a finely nuanced way. The Bruckner interpretation receives standing ovations and many “Brava” calls for the conductor.”
—Rabenstein Kultur Blog

 

Sinfonietta Passau performing at the Church St. Peter in Passau, April 13, 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

Back in my teenager years, the beauty and power of Anton Bruckner’s music awakened in me a love for the orchestral sound and a strong will to become a conductor. I wanted to understand the masterpieces of the symphonic repertoire and the message of the composers in depth and then share it with the audience. I already had a vision of the social impact music can make—as the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein said: “Art never stopped a war. But it can change people. It can affect people, so that they are changed—enriched, ennobled, encouraged—they then act in a way that can affect the course of events . . . by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.”

Several years later, my dream came true. After studying orchestral conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and my professional experience with various orchestras in Europe, I decided to create my own symphony orchestra. Together with other supporters we founded the nonprofit association Sinfonietta Passau e.V. in October 2022. My vision was not only to share with the public the beauty and the message of orchestral masterpieces, which are so rarely heard around Passau, but also to have a major social impact. As it turned out, the social benefits were much more than I had thought at the beginning. 

Like many other female conductors, I faced discrimination and unfair treatment in my professional career up to that point. A study by the German Cultural Council in 2021 showed that currently only 8% of conductors in leadership positions in Germany are female, and the same percentage applies worldwide (study commissioned by the conducting competition, La Maestra Paris, in 2022). As the founder and music and artistic director of Sinfonietta Passau, I wanted to send a powerful message to the world of classical music: musicality and leadership skills have nothing to do with gender. Female conductors are equally capable of effectively leading an orchestra as their male colleagues, so they should be given more chances and should be treated with the same respect. This applies also for women in leadership and managerial positions in general.

 

Eleni Papakyriakou conducting Sinfonietta Passau in the Church Mariä Himmelfahrt in Deggendorf, April 14, 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

During the post-pandemic revival of the cultural scene, another goal was to provide greater opportunities for freelance professional musicians. According to a survey by the Berlin State Music Council, a third of freelance musicians no longer see any future in the music profession, and many have already given up or are in the process of reorienting themselves. In addition, I wanted to offer advanced music students the chance of working with professionals, which is of great educational value. The music students can also supplement their CV with professional experience, which gives them a higher chance of being invited to audition for permanent orchestra positions.

An important part of the social action of the orchestra is the inclusion of musicians who come from disadvantaged or war regions, thus promoting mutual understanding and helping create a more open society that is free of prejudices. The peaceful coexistence of people from different origins and social backgrounds is one of the most important purposes of an institution like an orchestra, as well as of music in general. For the April 2024 concerts, professional musicians who fled Ukraine because of the war were invited to participate.

In the small but culturally vibrant city of Passau, a large part of the modern orchestral repertoire—symphonic music by composers such as Bruckner, Mahler, and Sibelius, as well as contemporary music—was almost never heard. But the region has some exceptional local composers, whose works are worth listening to. This combination of old masterpieces with contemporary music, along with rarely performed works, proved to be very successful in enriching the city’s musical life. At Sinfonietta Passau’s founding concerts in 2023, we performed the world premiere of a work by Bavarian composer Cornelius Hirsch. And in the recent concerts in April 2024, the “Tree of Life” by Passau-born composer Philipp Ortmeier impressed the audience and the critics and ensured the composer the recognition he deserves.

Sinfonietta Passau also aims to act as a springboard for young, talented soloists, who are at the beginning of their careers, in addition to collaborating with internationally acclaimed soloists. In the founding concerts, the award-winning young Greek flutist Stathis Karapanos and the internationally renowned flutist and professor at the Paris Conservatory Philippe Bernold performed the rarely played flute concerto by Carl Nielsen. In April 2024, we had the honor to perform with mezzo-soprano Sarah Romberger, who has already started a brilliant career in Germany. The public was moved and excited with her powerful interpretation of Philipp Ortmeier’s “Tree of Life” and Gustav Mahler’s songs.

 

Mezzo-soprano Sarah Romberger and Sinfonietta Passau, April 14, 2024. ©Florian Stelzer

All in all, the two concerts in April 2024 were a huge success and resonated widely in the local community. The objectives of the orchestra were achieved, and everyone is looking forward to future activities. Sinfonietta Passau aspires to become an important cultural institution in the region, making the city of Passau a radiant artistic center on the German-Austrian border that is worthily represented in international festivals in Germany, Austria and neighboring countries.

 

Sinfonietta Passau performing on April 14 at the Church Mariä Himmelfahrt, Deggendorf. ©Florian Stelzer

Facing the World Alone: New Perspectives on Iran’s Nuclear Negotiations through the Lens of Ehsan Abdipour’s All Alone

July 11, 2024
By 28868

The box office success of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer suggests a strong public interest in the narrativization of scientific and political history. For Elham Hosseini (University of the Western Cape, 2019–20), it reconfirmed the effectiveness of cinematic techniques used in an Iranian film detailing the adverse impact of the Iran nuclear sanctions on the lives of ordinary citizens. This article is adapted from a longer paper written with Miki Flockemann, an extraordinary professor at UWC and Hosseini’s academic supervisor.

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All Alone: The Messenger of Peace is a 2013 Iranian film by Ehsan Abdipour about a boy living near the Bushehr nuclear power plant whose friendship with the son of a Russian engineer is forced to end as the result of the nuclear sanctions against Iran. The film tangibly illustrates the impact of international sanctions on the lives of individuals through the lens of children and highlights perspectives often not directly addressed in the adult world, as the liminal position of preadolescents provides new space for exploring the unacknowledged effects of the sanctions.

On a personal level, the 2023 release of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer triggered in me—an Iranian who closely followed the nuclear talks between 2013 and 2015—immediate recollections of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known more commonly as the Iran Nuclear Deal. In particular, the questions J. Robert Oppenheimer grappled with as a youth about the nature of the universe struck me as paralleling the dilemma faced by the young protagonist in All Alone. In the following, I will examine some of arguments advanced by Iran at the time All Alone was made in the light of new questions raised by Oppenheimer.

Illusion of Control

The connections between Oppenheimer and Iran’s negotiating team need to be clarified at the outset. Obviously, Oppenheimer’s mission to develop the most potent means of mass destruction the world had ever known is distinctively different from the attempts by Iranian negotiators, who included scientists and political representatives, to define the limits of the country’s nuclear program. Yet, one thing they had in common was the illusion of control—either over the results of their research or the outcome of the negotiations—a slippery slope when political interests are involved.

After the atomic bombing of Japan, Oppenheimer experienced a crisis of conscience and tried to warn American politicians against further nuclear development. He was met with hostility from rivals like Lewis Stauss, who supported nuclear development, as described in the Pulitzer prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer: “Oppenheimer gave us atomic fire. But then, when he tried to control it, when he sought to make us aware of its terrible dangers, the powers that-be, like Zeus, rose up in anger to punish him” (Bird and Sherwin 2005, 15).

Iran’s second negotiating team, headed by a former foreign minister, meanwhile, made a successful attempt to break the international consensus against Iran by pledging a transparent nuclear program in return for revoking the threat of UN resolutions and the lifting of sanctions. However, the negotiators faced two serious obstacles: one was the presidency of Donald Trump, who ignored almost every international agreement between the US and the world—JCPOA being one of them—and the second was the position of hardliners in Iran, who scorned the team’s apparent naivety in believing what they saw as US false promises and urged the withdrawal from the deal as an act of retaliation—which did not, however, happen.

In this regard, the rise and fall of Oppenheimer, an expert in a specialized field of theoretical physics to whom the US government turned during a time of crisis, can be said to resemble the fate of the Iranian representatives tasked with breaking the impasse in the nuclear negotiations, in that both Oppenheimer and the Iranian team were subjected to false accusations despite having achieved what they were instructed to do.

The Figure of the Child in Iranian Cinema

Child-centered cinema has been a defining characteristic of neorealist filmmaking from the outset. As Deborah Martin (2019, 15) notes, these features typically include “a focus on the poor and working classes, a concern with social inequality, the use of natural actors and on-location shooting.” This aligns with All Alone, as Ranjero, the protagonist, and his young friends have to work to supplement the family income (although he is depicted doing so in a cheerful, entrepreneurial spirit, rather than as a victim of poverty). Shooting the film on location in Bushehr put this remote area of Iran and the struggles faced by the marginalized communities there in the spotlight. And while the youth playing Ranjero was not a “natural” actor, many of the other children in the film were nonprofessional, contributing to a sense of authenticity.

Two Iranian boys walk along a beach near the Bushehr nuclear power plant in a coastal village on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf. Bushehr is Iran’s first and only active nuclear power plant and was fully operational and connected to the national electricity grid in 2011 after a long history of construction delays and political challenges. ©Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images

 

Martin notes, “where filmmakers wish to denounce injustice or wrong, the child’s gaze is particularly useful, since cinema ‘tends to project into the child a certain ideal of visual neutrality’” (Sophie Dufays, quoted in Martin 2019, 15). What is interesting in the case of All Alone is that the film interjects three scenes from an adult perspective at strategic points in the cinematic narrative to unsettle the “visual neutrality.”

Drawing on Hamid Reza Sadr’s (2002) comments about how depictions of children in the post-revolution cinema of Iran contribute to exposing lived social realities, Anne Patrick Major (2012, 25) notes, “children in Iranian post-revolutionary cinema function empathetically, and by relating to individuals in a way that bypasses national and social belongings, children become a device to produce intercultural meanings.” While this comment refers to the way the spectators empathize with the characters and are thus affectively drawn into the narrative, the “intercultural meaning” generated is also manifested by the way Ranjero and the Russian boy, Oleg, interact with one another despite language barriers.

Major adds, “Sadr goes on to explain that children’s ‘personal troubles tend not to remain personal,’ which implies their existence in the world anterior to a given film is more realistic,” and this is borne out by Ranjero’s incarceration on an Italian ship. The perspectives outlined here thus clarify how “children allow for humanistic empathy despite the presence of national or cultural signifiers that could produce political and ideological readings if inscribed upon an adult,” which can then explain why the effects of nuclear sanctions in Iran are more compellingly presented via a child-centered narrative.

Emmanuel Levinas’ ideas on ethics presented in Totality and Infinity questions the traditional Greek/European notions based on the “ego as the self-conscious knowing subject” (Levinas, quoted in Nojoumian and Nojoumian 2020, 200). Instead, Levinas proposes an ethical system that puts in question the subject’s own ego and as a result is essentially characterized by the other: “one is in a face-to-face relationship with the other, with infinite responsibility” (quoted in Nojoumian and Nojoumian).

Accordingly, the traditional notions of “self,” which ultimately nurture an egotistical subject, are replaced by a concept in which the self is not only defined by and dependent of but also responsible for the other in their very recognition or being. Attempting to further clarify this responsibility, Amir Ali and Amir Hadi Nojoumian explain that children do not feel responsible toward the other out of reciprocity but essentially as the “self’s obligation” (2020, 200), which sees the other as part of the self, thus enabling a relationship between two boys who do not speak each other’s language.

Making the Unseen Visible

What follows is a close analysis of the film All Alone, which helps clarify how children’s portrayal in fiction and film narratives can move beyond stereotypical assumptions and raise questions about the issues that adults find so difficult to approach. There are certain factors that help All Alone express the genuine feelings of children while also engaging effectively with the world of adults, that is, the nuclear negotiations and sanctions. The first is Ranjero’s age: he is an adolescent, about to step into adulthood but still very much in touch with childlike emotions, which puts him in an “in between” position throughout the film.

The second is the character of Olga, one of the engineers working at the Bushehr plant, who becomes the translator between the Oleg and Ranjero and a facilitator of their relationship. In her role as an interpreter of the events of Ranjero’s life to the captain of the ship in Italy where Ranjero was kept in custody as a stowaway, we too are being informed. Yet, as noted by Sadr, because of the affective identification with the child protagonist in a child-centered film, the viewer responds empathetically (like Olga) to the “intercultural meanings” (quoted in Major 2012, 25) of the worldview of Ranjero and Oleg.

Ranjero’s questions about the nuclear talks can be used to address a range of concepts from a child’s perspective. For instance, in “Visible Man or the Culture of Film” (2010), Béla Balzás makes a connection between a child’s point of view and “the secret corners of a room” (quoted in Han and Singer 2021, 4) that are exposed so that the often unseen becomes visible and open to question through the eyes of a child.

In her 1995 novel Ten Is the Age of Darkness, Geta Leseur uses a poignant metaphor to describe the child’s viewpoint as a “forgotten camera in the corner” (quoted in Flockemann 2005, 117), whose presence may not be felt but fulfills its function to observe and record and, in the process, offers an unconscious critique of the adult world (Flockemann 2005, 117). In a much broader sense, Negar Mottahedeh (2005, 342) draws on Sadr to offer a reading of the child figure in Iranian cinematography as an allegory of the restrictions faced by the film industry: “The child can embody spatial positions and emotional states that other filmic characters cannot. The figure of the child, then, allegorically foregrounds the constraints of the film industry under state-guided dictates.”

Challenging the Viewer

Ranjero’s role in the film is to serve as a liminal agent, moving between the children’s and adult worlds to raise new ethical questions regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the controversies surrounding it. His dreams, at the beginning and end of the film, parallel the troubled worldview of the youthful Oppenheimer, which is intriguing in that the physicist’s research can be seen as one source of Ranjero’s anguish. Like the young Oppenheimer, Ranjero is distraught, being stuck on a ship and homesick and crying aloud in his sleep for Heleylah, his hometown. An emotionally immature Ranjero is troubled by visions of a “hidden universe” that he thought he could understand.

What is troubling both Ranjero and Oppenheimer is an apprehension of what is to become of the adult world that, for Ranjero, constitutes “nightmares.” At the end of All Alone we are left with an unanswered question, namely, will Ranjero find a way to overcome the nightmares he has about the future and realize the sweet dreams he hopes for? The open-ended conclusion is deliberately unsettling because Ranjero’s question, posed as a child, offers a challenge to the grown-up viewer.

 

References

All Alone: The Messenger of Peace. Directed by Ehan Abdipour, Edris Abdipour (Studio), 2013.

Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robbert Oppenheimer. Vintage Books, 2005.

Bushati, Angela. “Children and Cinema: Moving Images of Childhood.” European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2018, pp. 34–39.

Flockemann, Miki. “Mirrors and Windows: Re-Reading South African Girlhoods as Strategies of Selfhood.” Counterpoints, Vol. 245, 2005, pp. 117–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42978695.

Han, Yunzi, and Christine Singer. “Transformational Identities of Children within Iranian and South African Fiction Films: Ayneh (The Mirror) and Life Above All.” Open Screens, Vol. 4(1), No. 5, 2021 pp. 1–9. https://doi.org/10.16995/os.40.

Major, Anne Patrick. “Bahman Ghobadi’s Hyphenated Cinema: An Analysis of Hybrid Authorial Strategies and Cinematic Aesthetics.” Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2012. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/f1475305-fd95-4a29-adc2-3c2c02812b3c.

Martin, Deborah. The Child in Contemporary Latin American Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-52822-3.

Mottahedeh, Negar. Review of Richard Tapper, ed., The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation, and Identity. Iranian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2005, pp. 341–44. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4311731. 

Nojoumian, Amir Ali, and Amir Hadi Nojoumian. “Towards a Poetics of Childhood in Abbas Kiarostami’s Cinema.” In Bernard Wilson and Sharmani Patricia Gabriel, eds., Asian Children’s Literature and Film in a Global Age: Local, National, and Transnational Trajectories. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 195-211, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-2631-2_10.

Sadr, Hamid Reza. “Children in Contemporary Iranian Cinema: When We Were Children.” In R. Tapper, ed., The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity. I.B. Taurus Publishing, 2002.

Education and Social Mobility in India: Campus Socialization and the Process of “Self-Making”

June 7, 2024
By 29668

Through an exploration of the differential experiences of students across social backgrounds of caste, class, religion, and gender, Taniya Chakrabarty (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2021–23) explores how diversity—often promoted as a virtue in modern corporate culture—is viewed, understood, experienced, structured, and reproduced on the campuses of India’s elite universities.

*     *     *

The role of structure and agency and the relevance of the individualization thesis remain an ongoing debate in the social sciences. In recent years, a consensus has emerged among scholars that although education, in principle, creates new opportunities, the structures and processes through which education is imparted often give rise to inequalities, as not all members of society equally benefit from it (Chitnis 1972; Rivera 2012; Littler 2017). Given the complex but close relationship between education and occupation in modern capitalist societies, inequalities in the system of education also give rise to inequality in matters of employment and social mobility (Beteille 1991).

In this regard, elite educational institutions play an important role not simply in conferring academic credentials but also in cultivating cultural fit and merit that together valorize individualism in terms of hard work and capabilities. Under such a system, individuals are forced to internalize the market perspective of competition and hard work and are made to believe in the need to invest in all-round development to make themselves suitable for the market.

It is commonly argued that there are differences in aspirations among people depending on whether they are located in the margins or the mainstream. In recent years, the policy of reservations in India has enabled students from marginalized backgrounds to secure admission to elite, public-sector educational institutions,[1] giving them not only access to high-status credentials and skill training but also the opportunity to interact and socialize with the privileged classes and to cultivate social and cultural capital (Khan 2023). Although still disproportionate in terms of presence, through their admission into eminent institutions, educated students belonging to lower castes and classes have been able to successfully enter previously restricted markets for high-status, high-paying jobs. As a consequence, the Indian middle class of today is an expanding space with variable levels of privilege and claims to merit, making the discussion on merit significantly more interesting and complicated.

Using a primarily qualitative method of in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions, my SRG study looked at the process of “self-making” among MBA students at a premier business school in Kolkata, India. Through an exploration of the differential experiences of students across social backgrounds of caste, class, religion, and gender, my study explored how diversity—often promoted as a virtue in modern corporate culture—is viewed, understood, experienced, structured, and reproduced in elite campuses.

Merit, Culture, and Social Identity: Understanding the Linkages

Elite educational institutions in India, have a distinct institutional habitus comprising several formal and informal norms for academic, nonacademic or extracurricular, and social or interactional pursuits. The management training offered at in premium B-schools are known for their distinct quantitative pedagogy and the system of relative grading that assesses students based on the performance of their colleagues. Students reported relying on group studies as a means of matching up with each other; described as “cooperative competition,” such a method of learning acclimatizes students to the cultures of competition and teamwork prevalent among elite educational institutions and business corporations.

©Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Following implementation of the policy of reservations, the MBA batches on campus included students from both reserved or marginalized and unreserved or dominant segments of society. However, because of its unilateral benchmark for performance, the system of relative grading was found to overlook histories of inequality in opportunities and outcomes among students in expecting them to compete for a common standard of performance. While such methods, in principle, can be expected to promote collaborative learning, students from marginalized backgrounds argued that they, in practice, are often unequal and exclusionary, as they create a graded pattern of competency, where success is dependent on their relative positions of privilege.

Guided by the concept of “cooperative competition,” whereby cooperation is fostered to produce competitive outcomes, students reported relying on group studies and projects to meet educational standards. However, the groups formed were described to follow traditional norms of collective formations, that is, students largely collaborated with colleagues belonging to similar social and cultural backgrounds and levels of academic competence. This, in turn, meant that students from less privileged or diverse backgrounds had little room to collaborate with their higher-performing peers and were instead left to either study by themselves or collaborate with students experiencing similar struggles. Such a practice shifted the onus of performance onto weaker students to match up to their privileged peers but with limited opportunities for learning.

Yet again, within the institutional habitus (Bourdieu 1986), relative grading reinforced the set boundaries of social reputation and status. Early investment in education, such as good schooling, tutoring, and mentorship, significantly impacted methods of acquiring knowledge, training, and proficiency among students. Although relative grading in practice indicates students’ performance relative to that of their peers and not their actual quality of knowledge, those unable to match up to their colleagues were observed to adopt several strategies, such as altering their choice of courses or withdrawing from social engagements due to lack of confidence or fear of social judgment.

In addition to academic engagements, top-ranked business schools also greatly emphasize extracurricular activities as part of the self-making exercise, providing multicourt sports stadiums, inter- and intra-collegiate sports events, and institute clubs for dance, music, debates, quizzes, and the like. Those proficient in such activities are often rewarded with positions of responsibility and viewed as the elites or “campus stars.” Although, in principle, such opportunities are available to all students, in practice, not all students actively participate in such activities. Students struggling to academically compete with their privileged counterparts were observed to largely withdraw or maintain a low profile in such activities. However, with potential employers increasingly emphasizing extracurricular activities as endorsements for soft skills and culture fit at the time of recruitment (Rivera 2012), such acts of withdrawal or reduced participation worked against applicants during the recruiting process.

In keeping with market prescriptions, MBA students closely emulated the cultural norms, behaviors, and expectations associated with corporate culture, following specific guidelines for acceptable and desirable behavior in various aspects of campus social life, including fashion and style, personal hygiene, appearance, hangout spaces on and off campus, food and beverage consumption, the nature of interactions, self-preservation, presentation styles, social behavior, attitudes, and personalities—all of which were observed, compared, and consciously embraced by students as part of their self-making process.

Accordingly, respondents in this study were observed to adopt a process of cultural adaptation through alterations in language and discourse; lifestyle and consumption choices; appearance and presentation; social behavior during interviews, preselection corporate dinners, and events; participation in extracurricular activities like sports, quizzing, or debating; and consumption patterns. Such markers of merit and corporate fit identified by respondents necessitate early investments of social, cultural, and symbolic capital that together form the ideas of self among students.

Adhering to pervading notions regarding competition and merit, students on campus were broadly categorized into two categories: the negative “complainer” who would express their dissatisfaction, struggles, or annoyance with the competitive system, and the positive “go-getter” who would consider such difficulties as a challenge and work toward overcoming them to succeed within the system. Through exhortations like “Don’t be a complainer but a go-getter,” the university’s cultural habitus compels students to accept and internalize competition as both inevitable and aspirational while simultaneously disallowing students the space to speak of their struggles in coping with such a system.

Self-Making and Social Mobility: Confirmation or Anticipatory Socialization

Bourdieu (1986, 46) argued that to retain their claims to privileged positions, the elite creates an “imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, . . . and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can be anything.” With role models in their habitus (Bourdieu 1967), the process of “self-making” or reputation building among privileged students is not something new or unfamiliar; rather, it is a reproduction of inherited knowledge and shared experiences learned in their homes and performed with ease (Khan 2012); such students are not required to alter what they learned through their primary socialization. Evidence of this was found among respondents who succeeded in this system. Primarily coming from families with histories of academic and professional achievement, such students exhibit familiarity and ease with success, ascribing this to their “winning attitude”; in contrast, students from less privileged backgrounds, often encountering this system for the first time, spoke of their struggles and repeatedly requested that their circumstances be given greater consideration.

Many less privileged students were observed to engage in a process of anticipatory socialization, where they viewed the ideas, values, attitudes, lifestyles, and communication and behavioral styles of their privileged peers as reference for their cultural training (Merton 1957). Even though they struggled to adapt culturally, students from marginalized backgrounds, especially first- and second-generation learners, nevertheless found that this experience contributed to a sense of self-realization and offered them a chance to re-envision their future. Students from marginalized castes, classes, or religious backgrounds are less likely to have a network of rich, influential, and resourceful people and/or lack the cultural knowledge required to form market associations. Some respondents pointed out that their families often held opposing cultural beliefs. In this regard, elite educational institutions offer such students a rare opportunity to socialize and form networks of information and cultural exchange:

“Some of us did not learn about business, investment, generating funds, or having a risk appetite in our homes. But here we learned about these in class, from case studies, etc., but also from our classmates who learned all of this from their fathers or brothers. So now even we dream of starting something of our own one day and have the confidence that we can make it work. Because we now know people who did that. Some of the guys here already have that experience, and we learn from that.”

With professional training and exposure to ideas concerning business, investment, planning, strategy, and risks, respondents from socially disadvantaged sections were found to alter and reorient their aspirations. This change in ideas of self and outlook for the future was also observed among women students.

Although still disproportionately low, female representation in the MBA course has been increasing. Further, following widespread calls for gender-diverse hiring policies, female students were reportedly hired early in the placement process; but they nonetheless encountered stagnation post-recruitment, as diversity policies were limited to entry-level positions and did not extend higher up the organizational hierarchy. An interesting corollary has been that while female students reported feelings of empowerment due to their high-status jobs, emerging as critical providers for the family—a role traditionally designated to males—owing to their increased earnings, they also reported difficulties in finding suitable marriage partners with comparable income levels.

The hiring of professionally trained individuals thus appears to be strongly influenced by social and cultural factors. Successful performance is based not on individual effort alone, moreover, but is significantly conditioned and constructed through such collective determinants as family history, educational and vocational histories, cultural exposure, social networks, and experience of cultural adaptation. Although individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds have indeed demonstrated their abilities and achieved upward social mobility, my study has shown that their success is nevertheless contingent upon their proximity to middle-class cultural norms.

Conclusion

My SRG study was an attempt to unravel the processes of self-making and privilege reproduction, as well as the struggles that students from marginalized backgrounds encounter as they strive to validate their achievements and claims of merit within established institutions. It examined the process of self-making experienced by students from diverse backgrounds, especially through specialized education.

My research revealed that as students from socially marginalized families adapt to corporate culture, they are simultaneously engaging in a process of self-development and navigating potential conflicts with their families and with themselves. It may be worthwhile in the future to examine how educational institutions are responding to the changing social and cultural composition among their students and also to investigate the policy changes institutions are implementing to maintain their exclusivity while simultaneously complying with affirmative action policies.

[1] The reservation policy in India is an affirmative action process of reserving a certain percentage of seats (with a maximum limit of 50%) for socially marginalized groups like Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), religious minorities, and more recently Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in educational and employment organizations. However, the policy is binding only in the public sector. Private-sector institutions have successfully lobbied to remain outside the purview of these quotas.

References

Beteille, A. (1991). The Reproduction of Inequality: Occupation, Caste and Family. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 25(1), 3–28.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In J. Richardson, ed., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 241–58.

Bourdieu, P. (1987). The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field. Hastings Law Journal, 38.

Chitnis, S. (1972). Education for Equality: Case of Scheduled Castes in Higher Education. Economic and Political Weekly, 1675–81.

Khan, S. R. (2012). The Sociology of Elites. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 361–77.

Khan, S. R. (2023). Legacy Admissions Don’t Work the Way You Think They Do. Guest Essay. New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/opinion/alumni-affirmative-action-legacy-admissions.html.

Littler, J. (2017). Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility. Taylor & Francis.

Merton, R. K. (1957). The Role-Set: Problems in Sociological Theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 8(2), 106–20.

Rivera, L. A. (2012). Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms. American Sociological Review, 77(6), 999–1022.

Raising Awareness: Addressing the Impact of Childhood Trauma and Promoting Trauma-Informed Care

May 20, 2024
By 29706

In February 2024, a conference was organized by Dorjkhand Sharavjamts (National Academy of Governance, 2020) using an SLI grant to address the pervasive issue of childhood trauma in Mongolia. Held in Ulaanbaatar, the meeting brought together experts in children’s care, child protection advocates, parents, and policymakers to elevate awareness, share insights, and strategize on improving mental health outcomes for children.

*     *     *

Since I was very young, I have always been tuned in to the problems kids face, including the issues I went through myself. I was particularly struck by how parents and their kids talk to each other. This was troubling for me, given the high prevalence of divorce and alcoholism in Mongolia and the observation that many adults seemed ill-prepared for the responsibilities of parenthood. These issues appeared to be systemic, contributing to a cycle of dissatisfaction and underdevelopment permeating Mongolian society at every level.

Even though I focused my energies on my studies, I never stopped thinking about how families can hurt or help each other. I have always wanted to shine a light on these issues and get people talking about the family traditions that are worthy of passing on to future generations and those that need to be discouraged. The chance to research these issues and disseminate my findings presented a unique opportunity to address these concerns head-on.

When I was attending the National Academy of Governance in Mongolia, I learned how I could make a difference in the world when I met Mr. Ryoichi Sasakawa during his visit to Mongolia in July 2023. His speech exuded kindness and emphasized the importance of contributing to society. His suggestions to us gave me the push I needed. Inspired by him, I decided to organize a conference, hoping it would get people talking about protecting kids, stopping harmful behavior, and helping children who have been through tough times.

Receiving the SLI award was a significant milestone, as it marked the transition from intention to action. The award prompted me to focus on making the biggest impact I could. And I did not want the project to just be a one-off event. That is why I worked to establish an NGO called the Public Mental Health Promotion Center in October 2023—just after I received the award. The aim of this NGO is to continually engage the public in critical conversations and provide support to those in need, particularly in understanding and addressing psychological issues.

A Microcosm of Collective Resolve

On February 24, 2024, we held an event called “Breaking the Chains: Understanding Childhood Trauma” in Ulaanbaatar. Our conference was organized into three segments, each including a lecture, a workshop, and a panel discussion, to cover the multifaceted issues of childhood trauma. We hosted three expert lectures that delved into the effects, recognition, and healing of childhood trauma, alongside the significance of trauma-informed care in child protection and mental health.

The February 2024 event attracted over 100 participants from a cross section of Mongolian society.

The conference revealed the many difficulties kids in Mongolia must deal with because of old beliefs, financial hardships, a shortage of schools and hospitals, and most importantly a lack of knowledge among parents and childcare professionals about how best to work with children. Our ambition was to forge a space where professionals, advocates, parents, and policymakers could converge, share insights, and collaboratively chart a course forward to improve the mental health outcomes of children who have been impacted by trauma. Drawing over 100 participants from a cross section of Mongolian society, including government officials, NGO representatives, educators, legal professionals, and parents, the conference represented a microcosm of communal concern and collective resolve.

The event was structured to foster a comprehensive exploration of childhood trauma, from its origins and impacts to strategies for recovery and resilience. Starting with compelling opening remarks from Professor Khishigjargal Bazarvaani of the National University of Mongolia and extending through a series of expert-led presentations and workshops, the conference facilitated a deep dive into the multifaceted nature of trauma. Participants were not merely passive recipients of information but engaged contributors, sharing personal narratives, professional insights, and practical strategies for addressing trauma.

The author was one of the keynote lecturers at the conference, who, along with Professor Khishigjargal Bazarvaani and practicing psychologist Adyiasuren Enkhbaatar, provided a strong scientific foundation for understanding childhood trauma.

Compilation of Actionable Recommendations

From the perspective of promoting effectiveness, participants were divided into 10 subgroups from the beginning. Perhaps most impactful were the smaller, breakout discussions and workshops, where the lines between personal experience and professional expertise became blurred. Each participant brought their unique perspective, enriching the discussions that deepened everyone’s understanding of the issues and reinforced our determination to enact positive change.

Discussions in each group were moderated by psychology experts, giving each participant a chance to freely share their experiences and express their opinions.

One concrete outcome of the conference was the compilation of actionable recommendations. This collaborative endeavor resulted in a robust framework for action spanning many different areas, from individual behaviors to systemic reforms—all aimed at fostering a supportive environment conducive to the healing and thriving of children. These recommendations reflected the collective insights and understanding of the conference participants, embodying a shared commitment to making a tangible difference in the lives of children affected by trauma.

Participants introduced recommendations and plans for further action generated by each subgroup. (Photo1)

Participants introduced recommendations and plans for further action generated by each subgroup. (Photo2)

The overwhelmingly positive feedback received post-conference underscored the event’s profound impact on attendees. Many participants reported gaining deeper insights into childhood trauma and leaving with a renewed sense of purpose and commitment to integrate what they learned into their personal and professional lives. Such enthusiastic responses were a testament to the conference’s success in reaching a diverse audience, stirring hope for better days ahead.

Reflecting on the “Breaking the Chains” conference fills me with a deep sense of gratitude and optimism. I am thankful for Sylff’s support, the wisdom shared by our speakers, the dedication of our participants, and the collective belief in the possibility of change. This event, though a single point in time, represents a significant step forward in an ongoing journey to build understanding, healing, and resilience. I am grateful for the support from everyone who joined our effort. This conference was just the start, and it showed how talking and working together can lead to big changes. We have a long way to go, but I believe we can make life better for kids in Mongolia by working together to break the chains of trauma, one link at a time.

Identifying Core Values of Neoliberal Folk Justice to Build a Theoretical Argument for Policy Consensus

May 14, 2024
By 30626

It appears that global opinion has been shifting toward a preference for neoliberal policies over the past half century, despite growing inequality in many major economies. Dai Oba (Waseda University, 2020) used an SRG award to advance his research at the University of Oxford to investigate complexities behind  this trend among British voters, who appear to have embraced a loosely defined set of attitudes that the author calls “neoliberal folk justice.”

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In May 2023, Onward, a center-right think-tank in the UK, described millennials as “shy capitalists” based on the results of a questionnaire survey. Although millennials are thought to hold egalitarian values and downplay the importance of economic growth and individual effort, Onward found that they also prefer policies of low taxes and less redistribution.[1] This is a good example of how people’s economic views can be quite complex, defying neat categorization into right or left. Similarly to this finding, my research looks into people’s complex views that I call “folk justice”.

In the past half-century, the world seems to have become gradually and increasingly more “neoliberal,” by which I mean an orientation emphasizing the role of the market and associated ideas of the economic right, such as efficiency, personal responsibility, and autonomy. To be clear, most people do not necessarily identify themselves as adhering to a coherent set of beliefs like libertarianism. Rather, many tend to hold beliefs that are loosely defined and not always coherent, which might be described as neoliberal folk justice.

My research is focused on this loosely defined set of attitudes that seems to have a strong and stable hold on a large segment of the population. Increased support for the left, on the other hand, has been relatively rare and short-lived. This is surprising because the comparative merits of egalitarian institutions seem rather indisputable for the majority of the working public, especially in the aftermath of major economic crises in 2008 and 2020. How can this be explained? Is there anything we are not seeing?

 As a political philosopher, I am primarily interested in theories of justice and equality. But in analyzing the neoliberal trend, I wished to start with what folk neoliberals on the street believe. Clarity and coherence are extremely important for theories, but people’s beliefs and attitudes can often be unclear and incoherent. So, I wanted to first identify the core beliefs of neoliberal folk justice and build theoretical arguments from the bottom up in the hope they can serve as resources for reasoned democratic deliberation that are accessible to ordinary citizens.

In the following, I will describe my findings of an investigation into neoliberal folk justice, conducted with the help of an SRG award.

People’s deeply held convictions inform their political attitudes. Photo by Dylan Bueltel, https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-red-jacket-holding-a-cardboard-with-message-5233241/.

Complex Attitudes Toward Inequality and Wealth

The complexity of neoliberal-leaning attitudes has been documented by many scholars, whose research reveals some common themes.

Jonathan Mijs, for example, has noted the paradoxical acceptance of inequality in the face of fast-growing inequality and an apparent correlation between such acceptance and levels of inequality. Using International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data covering 23 Western countries and three different periods (1987–88, 1991–93, 2008–12), Mijs tested hypotheses regarding people’s acceptance of rising inequality. He “argue[s] that what explains citizens’ consent to inequality is their conviction that poverty and wealth are the outcomes of a fair meritocratic process.”[2] People’s belief in meritocracy tends to be stronger as society becomes more unequal because, Mijs claims, the affluent and the poor live increasingly separate lives in an unequal society. He posits that greater inequality goes hand in hand with stronger meritocratic beliefs and that stronger meritocratic beliefs, in turn, lead to reduced concerns about inequality.

He also tested the inverse relationships between inequality and notions of structural inequality (that is, lower inequality correlates with stronger awareness about structural factors of inequality, and stronger beliefs about structural inequality correlate with greater concern about inequality). He confirms the hypothesis, with the effect of meritocratic beliefs being stronger than the effect of beliefs in structural inequality. Mijs’s key finding is that economic inequality tends to be seen as acceptable when people believe their society embodies meritocratic principles, a belief which, in turn, is strengthened by a rise in inequality.

While Mijs’s findings suggest links with the idea of procedural justice, the notion of meritocracy is a vague one. In fact, Mijs construes meritocratic beliefs rather narrowly as people’s belief in the importance of hard work as a factor for economic success. There can be some variety in what people mean by the “importance of hard work” ranging from, for example, hard work in employment and non-paid work to being responsible and prudent in managing their finances and “giving back” to society.

 Regarding what makes inequality (appear) legitimate, Rachel Sherman conducted interviews with 50 wealthy couples in New York and found that the affluent feel a strong need to be able to justify their wealth. Her interviewees had household incomes within the top 5% in New York City—the most unequal large city in the US—and were characterized as the “new elite” who “believe in diversity, openness, and meritocracy rather than status based on birth.”[3] To Sherman’s surprise, many affluent New Yorkers expressed moral conflicts about their privilege and shared various narratives to demonstrate their worthiness, which she broadly categorized into three types.

The first narrative is that of the hard worker marked by such redeeming qualities as productivity, self-sufficiency, discipline, and independence. The second narrative is that of the prudent consumer. The rich New Yorkers cast themselves and their spending habits as “normal” in an attempt to distance themselves from the negative image of the “leisure class.” In line with the Protestant ethic, disciplined spending is considered part of the meritocratic ideal and thus a legitimator of their wealth. The third narrative is that of someone actively “giving back” to society typically by donating their money or time to charitable organizations.

We can see certain aspects of folk neoliberal values underlying these research findings, namely, the idea of meritocracy, under which economic success is ascribed to an individual’s personal merits; the value placed on hard work over idleness and dependence; the ideal of prudence and responsibility; and the imperative of “giving back” to society.

Four Values of Neoliberal Folk Justice

Rather than describing the minute details of people’s complex attitudes, I focused on the following two claims as being the core beliefs of neoliberal folk justice, namely, that redistribution is unfair and that government should not intervene in the market.

These claims can be unpacked  into the following four normative values. First, social cooperation should be on a quid pro quo basis, and freeriding  should not be allowed. This requires that there is  a certain equity between contributions and benefits. Second, those who rely on welfare do not deserve further assistance because they lack a sense of personal responsibility. This claim points to a  personal virtue of using of resources (including time and talent) in a prudent and thoughtful manner. Third, market outcomes are morally fair. This can be understood as an expression of trust in the market mechanism and its ability to legitimate distributive outcomes. Fourth, each person is the sole author of his/her life, and the government should not interfere or even offer any help. This expresses the moral ideals of self-sufficiency, independence, and, most importantly, the ability to advance one’s life as his or her own project and no one else’s.

In sum, the four core values of neoliberal folk justice are (1) reciprocity, (2) responsibility, (3) procedural fairness, and (4) autonomy.

Survey Findings

What do people believe about just economic policies? Photo by Karolina Grabowska, https://www.pexels.com/photo/quote-board-on-top-of-cash-bills-4386367/.

I conducted an online opinion survey of 2,065 adults living in Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) to directly test the above selection of core values. Along with two dummy values (“solidarity” and “efficiency”) and after explaining what each value stands for, I asked respondents to rate the importance of the four values when thinking about economic policies that are fair for everyone  (respondents were asked to select from ‘very important’, ‘fairly important’, ‘not very important’, ‘not at all important’, and ‘don’t know’).

The results of the survey confirmed my selection of the above four values. Comparing the percentages of those who answered “very important” or “fairly important,” the four values all scored 70% or higher (79% for “procedural fairness,” 78% for “responsibility,” 71% for “reciprocity,” and 70% for “autonomy”), while the dummy values scored significantly lower (59% for “efficiency” and 58% for “solidarity”). Additionally, correlations with respondents’ past voting behavior revealed that for both the 2015 and 2019 general elections, those who voted for the Conservatives supported the four values significantly more than those who voted for Labour (the difference ranging from 10 percentage points to 30 points). This supports my hypothesis that the four values have particularly strong resonance with folk neoliberals.

Toward Theoretical Arguments and Policy Consensus

Based on the above findings, the next stage of my research will offer repertoires of theoretical arguments regarding the four values of neoliberal folk justice, each of which represents a potential salient political position that citizens may adopt. As a final output, I aim to describe potential areas of policy consensus between those different arguments, showing that reaching an agreement on desirable and feasible social welfare policies for the twenty-first century is a realistic possibility.

 

[1] Jim Blagden and Sebastian Payne, “Missing Millennials,” Onward, May, 2023, https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/missing_millennials-1.pdf, accessed 19 October 2023.

[2] Jonathan Mijs, “The Paradox of Inequality: Income Inequality and Belief in Meritocracy Go Hand in Hand,” Socio-Economic Review, vol. 19, no. 1: 7–35 (January 2021), p. 29.

[3] Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp.13–15.

Women’s Empowerment in Japan: From Tokenism to Critical Mass?

April 19, 2024
By 21688

A decade ago, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a policy aimed at promoting more women to leadership positions in Japan—a country that has long ranked near the bottom in the Global Gender Gap Index. The pace of progress since then, though, has been embarrassingly slow. Thanh Nguyen (Waseda University, 2014) used an SRG award to analyze corporate data over the past decade to identify where improvements have been made and what more needs to be done to enhance women’s boardroom presence.[1]

*     *     *

In spring 2014, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a speech on “A New Vision from a New Japan” at the World Economic Forum, stating, “Japan must become a place where women shine. By 2020 we will make 30% of leading positions to be occupied by women.” This led to an increase in the number of female board directors, but Japan still failed to achieve the 30% target by 2020 and had to push back the target date by up to a decade.[2] The situation today is still not promising, as the Global Gender Gap Index in 2023 ranked Japan 125th out of 146 countries; the country has remained near the bottom of the list over the last 10 years. Will Japan be able to reach the 30% milestone by the revised deadline of 2030?

In my research, I gathered updated data about female leadership in Japan from 2012 to 2023. I first measured the impact of recent changes in Japanese policy and law aimed at promoting the appointment of women to management and leadership positions, focusing on Abe’s “Womenomics” policy launched in 2013 and the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace implemented in April 2016. I examined whether firms appointed more female directors during the policy period compared with earlier periods.

Second, I examined the critical mass of female directors and the firms that succeeded in increasing the number of female directors to this level. Critical mass is defined as the number of female directors needed to affect policy and induce real change. I identified firms as being successful in reaching critical mass if 30% or more of their board members were women—the target figure set by the Japanese government. My main research question was whether gender policies actually helped to increase the number of female directors, especially up to critical mass.

Scrutinizing Womenomics Policies

Many countries have introduced a mandatory or voluntary quota for female leaders to address gender inequality. For example, Norway has a 40% female board membership quota, while Britain maintains a 25% female board membership target. By contrast, the Japanese government promotes female leadership not with a quota but through its Womenomics policy package that encourages large corporations to promote gender- and employment-related policies. In particular, firms have been advised to establish and disclose their action plans to improve gender equality and to disclose relevant data.

To answer my research question, I collected data on the directors at listed firms in Japan from the Yakuin Shikiho (Executive Officers Handbook), published by Toyo Keizai Inc., which includes the name, age, position, gender, place of birth, education, and previous experience of each director. My final sample consisted of an unbalanced panel of more than 40,000 firm-year observations from 2012 to 2023. I then created a group of variables representing the characteristics of the board, including “total number of board members,” “total number of female board members,” “ratio of female board members,” “chairperson gender,” and “CEO gender.”

30% Target Reached by Only Small Minority of Firms

I found that only 9% of surveyed firms had at least one female board member in 2012 but that this figure increased gradually each year, climbing to 63.4% in 2023, with 2,482 out of 3,915 listed firms having at least one female board director (Figure 1). This indicates that many more firms appointed female board directors during the years of Womenomics. The steady uptrend was unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Policymakers may be happy with these changes in corporate governance and claim that the Womenomics policy package has been effective. The truth, though, may not be that rosy. When I calculated the share of female board members and grouped the firms according to this percentage, I found that the group claiming shares of 30% or higher accounted for only 0.59% of all firms in 2012 and a still very low 4.06% in 2023.

This figure has been increasing gradually each year, to be sure, but the pace has been very slow, and the spread is consequently very small. In 2023, among the 3,915 listed firms, only 159 met the 30% target for female board members. This means that although more firms appointed women to the board during the Womenomics years, the number of appointees has been minimal. If this situation continues, Japan will fail for the second time to reach its target of “30% of leading positions to be occupied by women.”

I also examined the number of women serving as the chair, the CEO, and a board member for each year from 2012 to 2023 and found that there has been no uptrend for either the chair or CEO. These figures fluctuated year on year with a very small change spread. Among the 31,520 board members in 2023, there were only 21 chairwomen and 54 female CEOs. In other words, of the 3,915 listed firms, only 54 firms were headed by women—hardly a robust picture of female leadership in Japan.

Figure 1. Share of Female Board Members, 2012–2023

 

As for board members, in 2012, only 374 of the 26,294 members were women, accounting for a mere 1.42% of the total. If chairwomen and female CEOs are deducted, the total number of female directors in 2012 was 335. Figure 2 shows that even with the jump in the number of female directors from 2012 to 2023, the ratio of female board members was still small. My data shows that in 2023, the percentage of female board members was 10.93% in 2023; in other words, males still occupy 89% of the boardroom. Without fundamental changes, the chances of Japan reaching the 30% target by 2030 appear bleak.

Figure 2: Number of Female Board Members, 2012–2023


I also examined the relative shares of outside and inside female directors. In 2023, outside directors made up 84.33% of the total, implying that firms have tried to increase the number of female directors by tapping human resources from outside the company, appointing such professionals as business consultants, university professors, and leaders of other firms. Indeed, it is easier for firms to appoint a female director from outside the company, since nurturing and promoting female employees to take on management responsibilities takes time.

This pattern highlights another challenge for Japanese corporations: the small pool of qualified female candidates for leadership positions, both inside and outside the firm. Appointing outside female directors is, at best, a short-term strategy, as even the external supply of qualified candidates is small. This is proven by the fact that outside female directors often serve on the boards of several firms. This situation will not fundamentally change until firms begin actively recruiting more female employees and providing them with opportunities for promotion to senior and leadership positions.

Need for Drastic Change

My research was an attempt to provide an overview of women empowerment efforts in Japan over the last decade and to present updated data about female leadership. It led to new findings on the number of female board directors during the twelve years of Womenomic policy (2012–2023).

During these years, corporate governance reforms resulted in more female directors, especially outside directors, being appointed to executive boardrooms, compared with the years before the policy’s implementation. Policies promoting female leadership thus appear to have been effective for listed firms. However, they have had no tangible impact on top positions, like corporate chairs and CEOs. And Japan may once again fail to reach its 30% target without drastic changes over the next six years.

These findings can serve as meaningful references for investors, corporate leaders, and policymakers. There have been calls for stronger measures to promote gender equality both inside and outside corporate settings so that this target can be reached by 2030. Policymakers need to do more than simply ask firms to hire more women and elevate them to leadership positions. And investors, especially institutional investors, must perform their stewardship duties by engaging directly with the companies in which they invest, persuading management teams and board directors to promote gender diversity, which can, in turn, create more sustainable, fairer, better-run, and faster-growing companies.

[1] This is a short English summary of a paper by the author that was originally published in Japanese. The full Japanese version can be found at: https://www.jsri.or.jp/publish/review/pdf/6402/05.pdf.

[2] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200626/p2a/00m/0fp/014000c.


References

Kubo, K. and Nguyen, T. T. P. 2021. Female CEOs on Japanese corporate boards and firm performance. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 62, 101163.

Nguyen, T. T. P. 2021. Effects of board gender diversity on firm investment and performance. Waseda Commercial Review, 461, 47-92.

Nguyen, T. T. P. and Thai, H. M. 2022. Effects of female directors on gender diversity at lower organization levels and CSR performance: Evidence in Japan. Global Finance Journal, 53, 100749.

Nguyen, T. T. P. 2024. Nihon ni okeru josei no enpawamento: Tannaru shinboru kara kuritikaru masu e? Shoken Rebyu, 64(2), 115–129.

Genetic-Level Explorations into the Gut Microbiota

April 12, 2024
By 29989

To analyze the relationship between the gut microbiota and host diseases, Tomoya Tsukimi (Keio University, 2021) used an SRG award to conduct experiments at the University of Tsukuba, where he examined the mechanisms of intestinal bacterial colonization at the genetic level. He eventually hopes to enhance treatment outcomes through the development of personalized medicine.

*  *  *

About 40 trillion bacteria inhabit the human body, the majority of them in the gastrointestinal tract.(1) One place where these bacteria are particularly abundant is our large intestine. These bacteria, collectively known as the gut microbiota, have a lot of genes—even more so than human beings.(2, 3)

The intestinal bacteria form part of a complex ecosystem in the gut as they interact with host cells. Studies have shown that they boost resistance to pathogen infection,(4) affect host bile acid metabolism,(5) help maintain immune homeostasis,(6) and are even involved in brain functions. (7) Furthermore, there is growing evidence of a relationship between the gut microbiota and host diseases—not only digestive disease(8, 9) but also a wide range of systemic ailments like cancer,(10) diabetes,(11) and psychiatric disorders.(12)

The gut microbiota also influences the pharmacological effects of disease treatments.(13) This has spurred the development of methods to control the gut microbiota for the prevention and treatment of disease,(14, 15) such as through prebiotics, probiotics, and fecal microbiota transplantation.

Health Benefits of Probiotics, from BioRender, https://app.biorender.com/biorender-templates/figures/all/t-64400e6d675cf5f619cd17db-health-benefits-of-probiotics.

 

The question my research seeks to answer is, “What factors are important for the bacterial colonization of the host intestinal tract?” Recent studies have shown that imbalances in the intestinal microbiota are associated with various diseases. While fecal microbiota transplantation therapy and probiotics have been used to treat these diseases, studies indicate that exogenous bacteria have difficulty colonizing a patient’s intestines.(16)

Previous studies have discussed intestinal bacteria based on information regarding genus-level composition. But dietary composition exerts selective pressure on not only the species but also variants and substrains within the same species.(17) This points to the importance of studying the mechanism of intestinal bacterial colonization at the genetic level. I have therefore focused on genetic mutations of E. (Escherichia) coli during intestinal colonization in mice. E. coli is prevalent in the human gut as well, and its genetic manipulation is well established.

Identifying Genes Important for E. Coli Colonization

E. coli has approximately 4,000 genes. I examined which genes mutated when E. coli colonizes the mouse intestine and the mechanism by which these genes mutated. I decided to use germ-free (GF) mice, which has no bacteria in their intestines, thus enabling me to clarify the relationship between the host mouse and E. coli mutations.

Unfortunately, the laboratory with which I am affiliated does not have a facility to breed GF mice. So, I conducted my experiments at the University of Tsukuba, a national research university in Ibaraki Prefecture, which has one of the best-equipped animal experiment facilities in Japan. It was thanks to a Sylff Research Grant that I was able to finance my travel and lodging expenses to carry out my research there, so I would like to thank the Sylff Association for giving me this opportunity to advance my studies.

The University of Tsukuba campus.

I have been able to identify the genes that appear to be important for the colonization of E. coli. The study also helped to elucidate the adaptive mechanisms of the gut microbiota. A paper summarizing the results is currently under review for publication in a peer-reviewed, international journal.

Developing a Treatment for Bowel Diseases

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are inflammatory bowel diseases that are associated with intestinal bacteria for which effective treatments have not yet been established. There are some 300,000 patients of the two diseases in Japan and 1.6 million in the United States. This study has the potential to more clearly explain the bacterial colonization mechanism, leading to a highly accurate method for controlling the intestinal environment and contributing to the development of a treatment for these diseases.

Although there have been cases of clinical recovery using prebiotics, probiotics, and fecal microbiota transplantation therapy, the success rate varies widely from one individual to another. By focusing on the mechanism of intestinal colonization at the genomic level, the findings of this study can be used to develop methods for controlling the intestinal environment that are specific to the individual. In the future, I hope to contribute to the development of tailor-made medicine targeting intestinal bacteria and to the realization of a society where everyone can lead a healthy life.

I believe this research also has implications for discussions of human traits that are universal and those that are unique. As mentioned above, about 40 trillion bacteria inhabit the human body. This is comparable to the number of human cells. Since bacteria are associated with various diseases, “the human body can be considered a superorganism; a communal group of human and microbial cells all working for the benefit of the collective.”(18)

Studies have shown that bacterial composition and metabolite concentrations in the gut differ among individuals.(19, 20) This suggests that commensal bacteria—those that live in harmony with humans—can be regarded as one factor that distinguishes the self from others. Studies like mine on commensal bacteria may therefore offer clues to such overarching questions as “What am I?” and “What makes me different from others?”

 

References

  1. Sender R, Fuchs S, Milo R. 2016. Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the body. PLoS biology 14:e1002533.
  2. Qin J, Li R, Raes J, Arumugam M, Burgdorf KS, Manichanh C, Nielsen T, Pons N, Levenez F, Yamada T, Mende DR, Li J, Xu J, Li S, Li D, Cao J, Wang B, Liang H, Zheng H, Xie Y, Tap J, Lepage P, Bertalan M, Batto JM, Hansen T, Le Paslier D, Linneberg A, Nielsen HB, Pelletier E, Renault P, Sicheritz-Ponten T, Turner K, Zhu H, Yu C, Li S, Jian M, Zhou Y, Li Y, Zhang X, Li S, Qin N, Yang H, Wang J, Brunak S, Dore J, Guarner F, Kristiansen K, Pedersen O, Parkhill J, Weissenbach J, et al. 2010. A human gut microbial gene catalogue established by metagenomic sequencing. Nature 464:59-65.
  3. Nishijima S, Suda W, Oshima K, Kim SW, Hirose Y, Morita H, Hattori M. 2016. The gut microbiome of healthy Japanese and its microbial and functional uniqueness. DNA research 23:125-33.
  4. Ubeda C, Djukovic A, Isaac S. 2017. Roles of the intestinal microbiota in pathogen protection. Clinical & translational immunology 6:e128.
  5. Sayin SI, Wahlstrom A, Felin J, Jantti S, Marschall HU, Bamberg K, Angelin B, Hyotylainen T, Oresic M, Backhed F. 2013. Gut microbiota regulates bile acid metabolism by reducing the levels of tauro-beta-muricholic acid, a naturally occurring FXR antagonist. Cell metabolism 17:225-35.
  6. Kawamoto S, Maruya M, Kato LM, Suda W, Atarashi K, Doi Y, Tsutsui Y, Qin H, Honda K, Okada T, Hattori M, Fagarasan S. 2014. Foxp3(+) T cells regulate immunoglobulin a selection and facilitate diversification of bacterial species responsible for immune homeostasis. Immunity 41:152-65.
  7. Bravo JA, Forsythe P, Chew MV, Escaravage E, Savignac HM, Dinan TG, Bienenstock J, Cryan JF. 2011. Ingestion of Lactobacillus strain regulates emotional behavior and central GABA receptor expression in a mouse via the vagus nerve. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108:16050-5.
  8. Frank DN, St Amand AL, Feldman RA, Boedeker EC, Harpaz N, Pace NR. 2007. Molecular-phylogenetic characterization of microbial community imbalances in human inflammatory bowel diseases. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104:13780-5.
  9. Gevers D, Kugathasan S, Denson LA, Vazquez-Baeza Y, Van Treuren W, Ren B, Schwager E, Knights D, Song SJ, Yassour M, Morgan XC, Kostic AD, Luo C, Gonzalez A, McDonald D, Haberman Y, Walters T, Baker S, Rosh J, Stephens M, Heyman M, Markowitz J, Baldassano R, Griffiths A, Sylvester F, Mack D, Kim S, Crandall W, Hyams J, Huttenhower C, Knight R, Xavier RJ. 2014. The treatment-naive microbiome in new-onset Crohn's disease. Cell host & microbe 15:382-392.
  10. Kostic AD, Chun E, Robertson L, Glickman JN, Gallini CA, Michaud M, Clancy TE, Chung DC, Lochhead P, Hold GL, El-Omar EM, Brenner D, Fuchs CS, Meyerson M, Garrett WS. 2013. Fusobacterium nucleatum potentiates intestinal tumorigenesis and modulates the tumor-immune microenvironment. Cell host & microbe 14:207-15.
  11. Everard A, Belzer C, Geurts L, Ouwerkerk JP, Druart C, Bindels LB, Guiot Y, Derrien M, Muccioli GG, Delzenne NM, de Vos WM, Cani PD. 2013. Cross-talk between Akkermansia muciniphila and intestinal epithelium controls diet-induced obesity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110:9066-71.
  12. Jiang H, Ling Z, Zhang Y, Mao H, Ma Z, Yin Y, Wang W, Tang W, Tan Z, Shi J, Li L, Ruan B. 2015. Altered fecal microbiota composition in patients with major depressive disorder. Brain, behavior, and immunity 48:186-94.
  13. Maier L, Pruteanu M, Kuhn M, Zeller G, Telzerow A, Anderson EE, Brochado AR, Fernandez KC, Dose H, Mori H, Patil KR, Bork P, Typas A. 2018. Extensive impact of non-antibiotic drugs on human gut bacteria. Nature 555:623-628.
  14. Markowiak P, Slizewska K. 2017. Effects of probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics on human health. Nutrients 9:1021.
  15. Crook N, Ferreiro A, Gasparrini AJ, Pesesky MW, Gibson MK, Wang B, Sun X, Condiotte Z, Dobrowolski S, Peterson D, Dantas G. 2019. Adaptive strategies of the candidate probiotic E. coli Nissle in the mammalian gut. Cell host & microbe 25:499-512.
  16. van Nood E, Vrieze A, Nieuwdorp M, Fuentes S, Zoetendal EG, de Vos WM, Visser CE, Kuijper EJ, Bartelsman JF, Tijssen JG, Speelman P, Dijkgraaf MG, Keller JJ. 2013. Duodenal infusion of donor feces for recurrent Clostridium difficile. N Engl J Med 368:407-15.
  17. Yilmaz B, Mooser C, Keller I, Li H, Zimmermann J, Bosshard L, Fuhrer T, Gomez de Aguero M, Trigo NF, Tschanz-Lischer H, Limenitakis JP, Hardt WD, McCoy KD, Stecher B, Excoffier L, Sauer U, Ganal-Vonarburg SC, Macpherson AJ. 2021. Long-term evolution and short-term adaptation of microbiota strains and sub-strains in mice. Cell host & microbe 29:650-663.
  18. Sleator RD. 2010. The human superorganism - of microbes and men. Medical hypotheses 74:214-5.
  19. Song EJ, Shin JH. 2022. Personalized Diets based on the Gut Microbiome as a Target for Health Maintenance: from Current Evidence to Future Possibilities. J Microbiol Biotechnol 32:1497-1505.
  20. Di Domenico M, Ballini A, Boccellino M, Scacco S, Lovero R, Charitos IA, Santacroce L. 2022. The Intestinal Microbiota May Be a Potential Theranostic Tool for Personalized Medicine. J Pers Med 12.