Date archives "April 2019"

“The Future Is African”

 

Future Africa just unveiled its ultra-modern campus in South Africa, with the dream of building a ‘transdisciplinary’ research center.
The legacy Future Africa is working towards is building a truly Pan-African research hub. Being able to say, years from now, that the center was instrumental in training a Kenyan Ph.D. student or a postdoctoral fellow who has gone home to launch a life-changing project in Nairobi, is an ambition worth chasing, Slippers says. “By providing quality research environment in Africa that connects to the global network, we don’t have to go to Sweden, Sweden can come here.”

Illustration (& header image) by Miriam Sugranyes for BRIGHT Magazine.

Data-oriented approach ends homelessness in 3 USA cities

Nine more have ended veteran homelessness. It’s part of a national program called Built for Zero that uses a data-based approach to help officials figure out exactly who needs what services. Now it’s accelerating its work in 50 more cities.

 

Ecuador Legalizes Gangs as Cultural Associations, Murder Rate Plummets

Ecuador legalized gangs. Murder rates plummeted.

In Ecuador, the unprecedented decision to legalize gangs across the country was basically a decision to adopt the opposite attitude [to the USA] . The country allowed the gangs to remake themselves as cultural associations that could register with the government, which in turn allowed them to qualify for grants and benefit from social programming, just like everybody else.

This approach appealed to David Brotherton, a sociologist at the City University of New York who’s been arguing since the 1990s that US policy wrongly pathologizes gang members. So in 2017, a decade after Ecuador legalized gangs, he headed over there to conduct ethnographic research on major groups like the Latin Kings and Queens.

It turned out they’d undergone a stunning transformation. The members were still very active in their gangs, but these were functioning more like social movements or cultural groups. Previously violent Latin Kings were working in everything from catering to crime analysis. And they were collaborating with other gangs they’d warred with in the past.