Youth participation habits changes constantly. Efforts to keep up with new forms of political participation is seen in international organizations, national governments and the academic community. How do young people themselves regard their participation in these new forms? One alternative form of political participation is youth organizing. This study uses a multi-case research design by interviewing Kenyan and Swedish young people who have participated in one of two youth organizing programs, organized by the non-governmental organization Fryshuset. This study aimed to uncover what youth value with youth organizing as a participation form, what goals they have with their participation and how their self-organized initiatives reflect said goals, by applying theories on empowerment, delieration, agonistic pluralism and factors affecting political participation. What youth value with youth organizing is personal development, meeting new people and getting the opportunity to make a local impact. Furthermore the study found that the primary goal of their participation was to strengthen their local community. Finally the findings show how youth preferred deliberative means to achieve their goals.

Esta tese é o resultado de uma etnografia sobre a comunidade negra rural Família Magalhães (Nova Roma-GO), originária do território Kalunga. Procurei discutir, tendo em vista o reconhecimento do grupo como quilombola perante o Estado, formas específicas pelas quais ele produz relações entre parentes e não parentes. No último caso, me refiro a agentes do governo federal e estadual, presidentes da república, deputados, procuradores, advogados, prefeitos, vereadores e, também, a conhecidos, vizinhos, compadres e correligionários. Nessa trama, tocar amizade e fazer política aparecem como modos privilegiados de tecer territórios, entendidos em seu caráter relacional, sempre passíveis de serem atravessados por relações de caráter agonístico. Assim, investiguei como são geridos, entre os membros de Família Magalhães, movimentos contínuos de produção de vínculos e segmentações, trazendo à tona agenciamentos específicos do grupo em suas experiências de alteridade. / This thesis derives from an ethnography of a rural black community named Família Magalhães (Nova Roma-GO), originated in the Kalunga territory. Since that group is recognized by the Brazilian State as a maroon community, I tried to discuss specific ways in which it produces relations between relatives and non-relatives. By the latter case, I mean agents of the federal and state governments, presidents of the republic, deputies, prosecutors, lawyers, mayors, councilors and also acquaintances, neighbors, cronies and cohorts. In this plot, cultivating friends and engaging politically appear as privileged ways of weaving territories, which are understood by its relational character, always subject to being traversed by relations of agonistic character. Thus, I investigated how continuous movements of production of bonds and segmentations are managed among members of Família Magalhães, bringing up particular agencies of this group regarding their experience of otherness.

Rockfishes of the genus Sebastes are trophically important in most nearshore environments of the west coast of North America, and support important commercial and recreational fisheries. Though the 72 northeast Pacific species have drumming muscles along their swim bladders, little is known about sound production in the genus. Sounds produced by nearshore rockfish were recorded using fixed hydrophones and underwater video in aquaria, and acoustical dataloggers in the field. Sounds were analyzed from six species: Sebastes nebulosus, S. atrovirens, S.carnatus, S. chrysomelas, S. caurinus, and S.maliger. These six species are closely related, mostly bottom dwelling species with similar drumming musculature. No sounds were recorded from twelve other species in response to diver harassment or agonistic interactions. All the sound production observed was close range, agonistic and relatively quiet (estimated source level 122 dB re 1uPa). Sounds were recorded at all times of the day in the field, presumably from S. nebulosus. While courtship type behavior was observed and video-recorded for only two species, no sounds were produced during courtship. Analysis of the sounds (duration, number of pulses, pulse rate, peak frequency, interpulse interval) from the six species showed considerable overlap between call characteristics, although S. carnatus and S. chrysomelas produced some longer calls with more pulses than the other species. It appears that these agonistic sounds are designed for short-range communication and that they are not species-specific.

The thesis concerns the dynamics during the 1990s of political action by many groups of people, in what came to be called the movement of movements. The activists, who held that corporations were overstepping some mark, worked on alternative arrangements for self-rule. The thesis views the movement as micropolitics, using concepts devised by Deleuze and Guattari. It sets out particulars of the rhizomic make -up of the movement. A key point is that the movement trains participants in decentred organisation, which entails the forming of subject-groups as opposed to subjugated groups. The thesis records how the movement was shaped by earlier events in political action and thinking, especially from the 1960s on. The movement had previously been read as a push for absolute democracy (Hardt and Negri). The thesis shows that reading to have been incomplete: the movement is, in part, a push for agonistic democracy. More a practice than a form of rule, agonistic democracy is found where state power is bent on not moulding peoples into any unified polity. It is found where state power fosters conflicted-self-rule, so that every citizen may engage in the polity as a decentred "I". The thesis throws light on relations between the movement and the constitutionalist state. Part of the movement, while cynical about the existing form of state rule, wears a mask of obedience to constituted authority. When one upholds the fiction of legitimate rule, one can use the fiction as a restraint on the cynics-in-power. The play creates a shadow social contract, producing detente within the polity and within the �I.� The thesis also reports on a search in mainstream cinema for some expression of the movement's dynamics. The search leads to a cycle of thrillers, set in a nonfiction frame story about a coverup of gross abuse of state power.

Stress affects virtually all organisms and can result in both physiological and behavioral changes. Conditioned defeat in Syrian hamsters is a model of stress-induced behavioral plasticity that occurs in a social context. In this model, hamsters are defeated by a larger, more aggressive counterpart. Defeated hamsters subsequently fail to defend their own territory and show striking and long-lasting increases in submissive behavior even when paired with a non-threatening counterpart. The present series of experiments seeks to identify the brain regions and molecular mediators that contribute to this behavioral plasticity. One brain region that has been overlooked by our laboratory is the hippocampus. The results of the first study suggested that the ventral, but not dorsal, hippocampus is important for the acquisition of conditioned defeat as temporary inactivation of the ventral hippocampus prior to defeat training significantly reduced submissive and defensive behaviors when hamsters were tested with a non-aggressive intruder. Next, we sought to identify a potential molecular mediator of social stress-induced behavioral plasticity in hamsters identified as winners or losers after a fight. Using in situ hybridization for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) mRNA, we showed that winning and losing hamsters exhibited differences in BDNF mRNA in several regions including the basolateral and medial amygdala as well as the dentate gyrus of the dorsal hippocampus and CA1 of the ventral hippocampus. We next showed that neurotrophic activity in the basolateral amygdala is important for the acquisition of conditioned defeat because K252a infused into the basolateral amygdala prior to defeat training by an aggressive counterpart, significantly decreased submissive and defensive behavior during subsequent testing. Finally, existing data suggest that the amygdala and hippocampus interact to modulate the formation of emotional memories. To test the hypothesis that the basolateral amygdala and ventral hippocampus interact to mediate the behavioral plasticity observed in conditioned defeat, we simultaneously inactivated these regions either contralaterally or ipsilaterally prior to social defeat. Our results suggest that BLA and VHPC interact to mediate the acquisition of conditioned defeat, however, the nature of this interaction remains to be determined.

Acoustic signals are widely used by fish such as pomacentrids, to communicate during courtship and agonistic activities. Adult Stegastes lividus holds a permanent territory in a coral reef environment. Previous studies suggested that S. lividus seems to produce clicking sounds when intruders close to its territory. This study aimed to describe (1) the sounds produced by this species; (2) the behavioral pattern associated with these acoustic signals; (3) vocal activity of diurnal variation. The study site was near the water inlet of the Third Nuclear Power Plant in southern Taiwan (120¡C45¡¬E , 21¡C57¡¬N). 24-hour recordings at the habitat of S. lividus at 5-6 m and at 2-3 m were made in February, March and April, 2005. The synchronous video-audio recordings were also made at the colonies of S. lividus at 2-3 m. The observations showed that S. lividus produced clicking sounds for territorial defense (e.g. aggressive behavior). These sounds were composed of a variable number of pulses that had a dominant frequency at 200 to 400 Hz. Stegastes lividus produced different sound types to defend against conspecifics or heterospecifics. Although the acoustic signals were emitted throughout all day, more sounds were recorded during the noon, fewer sounds at night, and a small peak presented at sunset. Therefore, I suggested the acoustic signals of S. lividus may be also serves as species recognition. The fish may be a diurnal fish, and its social interaction peaks at noon.

Title from title page of PDF (University of Missouri--St. Louis, viewed March 8, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation consists of two studies: the first focuses on reliability of chimpanzee personality and subjective well-being (SWB) scores, the second on validating those scores by comparing them to subjective assessments of behavior in dyads. The first measured reliability of scores of personality and subjective well-being (SWB) across ten years. Dominance rank, and the Dominance and Extraversion Factors significantly correlated between time points. In the second study, I investigated the impact of personality, SWB, and demographic characteristics on individual variation in dyadic-level individual behavior. Age predicted likeability in females, and age and rank predicted likeability in males. Neither personality factors nor SWB were correlated to likeability. An Affable domain scale and an Agonistic domain scale were constructed from the personality items. The Affable domain scale correlated with chimpanzees who were scored high neutral in social interactions, and the agonistic scale correlated with low neutral score in social interactions.

Democracy Now! is an independently syndicated hour long daily audio and video program that is broadcast on 1179 radio, television, and internet stations throughout the world, as well as being freely available on their website under a Creative-Commons License. They are a global news organization based in New York City, with the stated goal of providing “rarely heard” perspectives in their coverage. Democracy Now! was one of the early independent news organizations to provide continuous coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York's Zuccotti park. Their early coverage of the movement is relevant to the extent that it helps to obviate the demographics of the OWS movement as well as highlight the potential for a “radically-democratic agonistic pluralism,” as conceptualized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Through the dual frames of discourse and intersectionality theories, this qualitiative study examines the coverage of Occupy Wall Street by Democracy Now!, in an attempt to understand the interplay of the movement's demographic heterogeneity and the manner in which its public antagonism is characterized by this independent media outlet. The sociopolitical and historical context provided by Democracy Now! is used to understand where the outlet exists with in the media as well as if this coverage can be part of “radical democratic possibilities.”

This essay has two aims. The first is to provide a better understanding of how youths in urban Mwanza envision a deepening of the democratic system in regard to the deliberative democracy theory by Jürgen Habermas and the agonistic pluralism by Chantal Mouffe. The second aim is to connect the empirical material – the democratic deepening visions of youths in urban Mwanza – to a theoretical discussion, transforming the democratic models into democratization chains. The theoretical contribution in this essay is to apply these theoretical models to an emerging democracy such as Tanzania, and to to transform the agonistic pluralism and deliberative models into democratization chains. The empirical material in this essay has further been gathered through semi-structured interviews with 19 youths in urban Mwanza. The results presented in the first analytical chapter shows that youths in urban Mwanza leans towards a vision of a deliberative model of democracy rather then an agonistic pluralism, but that a social class dimension could be seen as affecting the lean. Particularly less-educated females raised concerns that a deliberative approach would segment an unsatisfying political status quo. The theoretical discussion showed that the implications visions of a deepened democracy from youths in urban Mwanza theoretically could have on the democratization process changes if the theories are seen as models or chains.