The impact of media representations on Somali youth's experiences in educational spaces
In this article, I examine how the politics of representation following September 11, 2001 attacks on the US impact the experiences of Somali youth in educational spaces in North America. This research draws from a discourse analysis of representations of Somalis and Somalia in North American newspaper articles (n=82) between August and October 2011 and 51 interviews with Somali youth between the ages of 14 and 30. It also draws from ethnographic fieldwork for 16 months ( July 2010−October 2011) in Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, Canada and Minneapolis-St. Paul, USA. This includes participant-observation at Somali youth events, organizations, centres, homework programs, mosques and after-school and weekend Islamic schools that provide spaces of learning for Somali youth outside of public/private schools. In this article, I argue that the representations of Somalis in the media as either perpetrators or victims of violence are gendered and have variously politicized Somali men and women within the current ‘War on Terror.’ As a result, Somali youth are targets of routine forms of structural violence, expressed in discrimination and marginalization as well as interpersonal forms of violence, including bullying. I examine how these forms of violence are both carried out and resisted in educational spaces and how they variously affect Somali youth’s experiences in school. The article shows how Somali community educational spaces provide spaces of belonging and a space to learn the skills needed to challenge representations of Somalis and Somalia in the media. Somali youths’ experiences of violence and within educational spaces reshape their identities.
Somali Women and Daily Islam in the Diaspora
Somali asylum seekers started migrating to Finland in 1990. Today, the number of Somalis, Finland's largest Muslim group, is around 7000. The author examines immigrant Somali women as religious agents, who in an active way follow Islam in their daily life and construct their identities as Muslims. Islam features as a practical and moral guideline, which helps Somalis to manage in a new religious and cultural environment, but which may also heal the sufferings of the civil war. In the diaspora, Somali women have started to actively redefine the essence of their religion. As is shown in what follows, possession cults known in Somalia are often rejected as non-Islamic. The article is based on ethnography carried out around metropolitan Helsinki.
Role of the coronoid process in varus osteoarticular stability of the elbow.
The role of the coronoid process in varus osteoarticular stability of the elbow was investigated in 10 cadaveric elbows. Testing was performed at multiple flexion angles after incremental removal of the coronoid. At each flexion angle, removal of more than 50% of the coronoid produced a statistically significant decrease in the load resisting varus displacement compared with all lesser resection levels (P < .003). There was a trend for decreasing load after removal of 50% of the coronoid. The mean decrease in load across all flexion angles was 10.1%, 50.4%, and 75.4% after removal of 50%, 75%, and 100% of the coronoid, respectively. Resistance to varus displacement tended to decrease more as a percent of control at lower flexion angles than at higher flexion angles after removal of more than 50% of the coronoid. The coronoid process was found to be a key varus stabilizer in the elbow and may contribute more to elbow stability in extension than in flexion.