Technology as a Tool for Environmental Engagement. The Case of Digital Participatory Mapping (DPM)

The conservativeness of traditional scientific methods, which nevertheless still tend to dominate much of the (social) sustainability sciences, is challenged by technological progress when untested tools of research are proposed as innovative scientific methods. This is the case of online platforms. The knowledge creation process in the digital era, including forms of research communication, can be profoundly different from traditional research methods. We already know how digital tools may influence the performance of research methods, mainly by maximizing the efficiency of data collection and elaboration. However, the original and collaborative practices in which they can develop, as well as their possibilities towards more democratic and inclusive participation processes, remain an unexplored domain. This chapter is an attempt to include digital technologies, and particularly the case of online participatory platforms based on geographic information systems (GIS), in the array of creative and visual research methods.We discuss software packages and current online approaches, such as web apps and native apps (Klettner & Huang, 2011, Scholte et al., 2018). The exploration of the innovative opportunities offered by digital tools starts with a concise review of their application from an historical perspective and its progression until recent times. The review focuses mostly on the options that digital platforms offer to involve citizens in the co-creation of research studies by enabling peer-to-peer environments that may inspire democratic discussions. The adoption of different types of online platforms is then discussed, not only presenting their virtues but also their downsides. This takes the form of an open discussion between the two authors, informed by each critically reflecting on their first-hand practical experiences in adopting digital tools in their research.We are entering a new era, in which access to big data—through platforms using GIS—provides resources and power to bring to the table the silent majority that is often overlooked in decision-making processes. The many possibilities offered by this unprecedented access to information are yet to be tested. Whether digital platforms will turn out to be a solution for improving the inclusiveness of research studies or not will likely depend on the consciousness and motivations of the designers and developers of these tools.

The Silent Majority: Aging With HIV

Those over the age of 50 represent the majority of people living with HIV (PWH), most of the HIV research, prevention and service retention work is targeted at ‘at-risk’ communities under age 50. Given this diverse and growing population, intersections of age with HIV need to be prioritized. This focus would actively increase quality of care and life experience for older PWH and the growing numbers transitioning into old age. Using local, national, and international data, this symposium will highlight the unmet social needs of older PWH. Presentations will provide evidence of unmet need, decreased self-esteem, enhanced health burden, and the damaging nature of stigma. Given the impact of COVID-19 globally, the data will further demonstrate the need to support immunocompromised older PWH. Older PWH are a marginalized community and the effects of COVID-19 have been disproportionately severe. With the adverse health outcomes experienced because of COVID-19 and intersectional stigma, it is important to understand the support structures that are and are not in place for older PWH. Advance care directives make up an integral part of future planning, especially for those living with chronic health concerns, yet little research has previously evidenced the steps taken by OPWH. Finally, using data from sub-Saharan Africa, emotional and instrumental social support sufficiency will be described to highlight the unmet needs of these older PWH. Our discussion will focus on the need for policies and programs to support this growing segment of the HIV population with increasingly diverse and unmet needs.

The Return of the “Lurker”: A Longitudinal Study of Citizens’ Use of Social Media in Danish Elections 2011, 2015, and 2019

In this case study on Denmark, we particularly focus on trajectories of participation, the question of increasing mobilization, and the perceived outcomes in terms of efficacy. Contrary to other studies, we seek to establish a coherent perspective including the “silent majority.” By combining studies of participation, mobilization, and efficacy, we wish to provide not only a rigorous documentation of mobilization and efficacy of social media during election campaigns, but also a historic documentation of the participatory use and perception of social media as a democratic and political tool during three national election campaigns from 2011 to 2019.

“People Drive Automobiles”: Esther Shiner, the Silent Majority, and the Popular Case for the Spadina Expressway, 1971–1987

This article examines pro-expressway politics in Metro Toronto in the 1970s and 1980s. It focuses on Esther Shiner, a North York housewife and later councilor who led a 16-year battle to revive the Spadina Expressway after it was canceled by premier Bill Davis in 1971. Shiner founded an advocacy group, Go Spadina, and became a beacon for what one journalist called the “Spadina revivalists”—groups of (mostly) suburbanites, inside and outside municipal government, who articulated a popular rather than a technical case for building the expressway. I argue that Shiner’s campaign was an early example of the “auto populism” now common in Toronto politics and also one expression of a much broader “silent majority” politics in the 1970s and 1980s. Although Shiner’s campaign was ultimately a failure—the expressway was never completed—her Spadina revivalism should be understood by historians as one early example of a deep and popular impulse in suburban politics.

A Review of G. S. ZELENINA, OGNENNYY VRAG MARRANOV: ZHIZN I SMERT POD NADZOROM INKVIZITSII [The Fiery Enemy of the Marranos: Life and Death under the Supervision of the Inquisition]. Moscow; St Petersburg: Center for Humanitarian Initiatives Press, 2018, 396 pp.

The book by the well-known historian and anthropologist Galina Zelenina deals with some problems of the historical experience of baptized Jews in the Pyrenean peninsula. The scholar explores some issues of life under the severe control of the Inquisition and social surroundings through the perspective of cultural anthropology, stressing the problems of the “silent majority” and its identity. Zelenina emphasizes that conversos were located between two worlds whilst being Others to both, relativists and multiculturalists of the period. She also stresses the ethnic and racial aspects of enmity towards Marranos in Spain and Portugal. This ethnic component of anti-Jewish attitudes were, according to the author, first signs of the racial anti-Semitism of the 19th–20th centuries. Drawing on various sources, Zelenina considers different issues of the life and experiences of crypto-Jews under circumstances of control and hatred. Among these were rites of passage, rituals which canceled baptism, the role of women in the rituals of “new Christians”, general gender aspects of the culture of conversos, food practices of Marranos, and the specific “competition” of narratives about sanctity between Christians and crypto-Jews. The scholar pays attention to the specifics of the bloody libel against “new Christians” in Spain and deviant sexuality which was often connected with Jews and Marranos. Concluding her book, Zelenina returns to the racial aspect of many accusations against Jews of the period under investigation and considers them from an anthropological perspective.

Wrote a Song for Everyone

Led by John Fogerty, Creedence Clearwater Revival had a breakthrough when they recast rock music as an unpretentious voice of ordinary people, at a time when many acts were preaching psychedelic revolution: not everyone who enjoyed rock ‘n’ roll was necessarily an enemy of the Establishment. Through songs such as “Fortunate Son” and “Proud Mary,” the music’s vocabulary could now include stoicism, integrity, and class consciousness, along with rebellion, indulgence, and radicalism. The appearance of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steppenwolf, and others during the time that President Richard Nixon was invoking the American “silent majority” signified a looming schism within the rock audience