I analyze women’s flat-track amateur roller derby by asking: how do derby skaters negotiate the requirements associated with emphasized femininity? By drawing on Hebdige’s (1979) analysis of punk, I develop the term female signifiant to argue that roller derby is an aggressive contact sport with a theatrical edge. It provides a rich, adventurous space to satirize athletic and feminine norms. Specifically, skaters’ sport participation is characterized by an interrogation of emphasized femininity without necessarily undermining the masculine/feminine gender binary.

This article examines demand for guns for personal protection in the USA, South Africa, and India. To make sense of pro-gun sentiment across these different contexts, I argue that gun owners and carriers who arm themselves for personal protection represent a particular kind of ‘responsibilized’ subject. Drawing on Foucault’s analysis of sovereign power and governmentality, I develop a theory of the ‘sovereign subject’. This is a political rationality marked by private individuals’ capacity and desire to perform sovereign functions that the state has typically monopolized, specifically the exercise of legitimate, lethal violence. I conclude the article by suggesting four characteristics (historically precarious state monopoly on sovereign power; legality of civilian use of guns; preponderance of criminal guns; and US influence) that may encourage demand for guns in high-crime societies.

Focusing on police chiefs in three states, this study revisits the Weberian presumption of the state's monopoly on legitimate violence. Seventy-nine interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, Michigan, and California allow for an examination of their understanding of gun policy. Analysis reveals that they selectively embrace two frames of the state's relationship with legitimate violence: gun militarism for criminal gun activity associated with black and brown communities and drug-and gang-related crime and gun populism with respect to lawfully gun-owning Americans, often marked as white and middle class. Sensitive to state-level sociolegal regimes, gun populism takes the form of antielitism in gun-restrictive California, crime-fighting by proxy in gun-permissive Michigan, and co-policing in gun-lax Arizona. The racial politics of legitimate violence intersect with state-level gun policies selectively to erode police chiefs' investment in the state's monopoly on violence, demonstrating that gun politics is pertinent not only for understanding violence in the United States but also for understanding the racial complexity of U.S. policing.

Topsoil removal, compaction, and other practices in urban and industrial landscapes can degrade soil and soil ecosystem services. There is growing interest to remediate these for recreational and residential purposes, and urban waste materials offers potential to improve degraded soils. Therefore, the objective of this study was to compare the effects of urban waste products on microbial properties of a degraded industrial soil. The soil amendments were vegetative yard waste compost (VC), biosolids (BioS), and a designer mix (DM) containing BioS, biochar (BC), and drinking water treatment residual (WTR). The experiment had a completely randomized design with following treatments initiated in 2009: control soil, VC, BioS-1 (202 Mg ha(-1)), BioS-2 (403 Mg ha(-1)), and DM (202 Mg BioS ha(-1) plus BC and WTR). Soils (0-15-cm depth) were sampled in 2009, 2010, and 2011 and analyzed for enzyme activities (arylsulfatase, β-glucosaminidase, β-glucosidase, acid phosphatase, fluorescein diacetate, and urease) and soil microbial community structure using phospholipid fatty acid analysis (PLFA). In general, all organic amendments increased enzyme activities in 2009 with BioS treatments having the highest activity. However, this was followed by a decline in enzyme activities by 2011 that were still significantly higher than control. The fungal PLFA biomarkers were highest in the BioS treatments, whereas the control soil had the highest levels of the PLFA stress markers (P < 0.10). In conclusion, one-time addition of VC or BioS was most effective on enzyme activities; the BioS treatment significantly increased fungal biomass over the other treatments; addition of BioS to soils decreased microbial stress levels; and microbial measures showed no statistical differences between BioS and VC treatments after 3 years of treatment.

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