Organizational scholars have established that sexual harassment, the most studied kind of sexual violence, is an organizational problem. Extending this work, we analyze two critical events regarding sexual violence in the United States—one in the military and another at a university—in which discourse detracts from understanding the problem in this way. We draw upon feminist new materialism and its primary method—diffraction—to track ‘cuts’, the practices that simplify and pause agency’s complex, perpetual motions. Our analysis shows that agency moves in discussions about the aftermath of violence. That momentum highlights the organization’s capacity to respond to rape. Even so, during discussions about enacting violence, the perpetual motion of agency congeals around discrete humans, thereby maintaining assault as an individual act. These cuts, whereby agency pauses on individual perpetrators, obscure how organizational dynamics make sexual violence more or less likely to occur. We suggest that a focus on agency’s kinetic qualities can help feminist scholars continue to highlight how the systemic aspects of harassment and other forms of violence become hard to notice.

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In 1999, Kelly Madison identified and assessed the "anti-racist-white-hero" (ARWH) film genre, describing how it sustains systemic racism even as it purports to expose and eradicate it. In this paper, I examine the film The Help in order to assess whether and how it evinces rhetorical strategies similar to or different from those identified by Madison. I argue that although the film accomplishes the same ends as the ARWH genre, it does so in notably distinctive ways, especially to the extent that representations of race and racism intersect with those of gender.

The Shepparton Irrigation Region (SIR) is an environmentally and economically significant area in northern Victoria of Australia covering 500,000 ha. The 1990-2020 Shepparton Irrigation Region Land and Water Management Plan (SIRLWMP) was developed in the late 1980s due to community alarm around increasing salinity and groundwater tables. The regional community (with the support of government, farmers and technical experts) started implementing the plan in 1990. The plan was unique and innovative in Australia in its approach to taking a long-term view of environmental sustainability. A long-term and adaptive partnership approach across all levels was vital because environmental problems did not always become apparent in the short term. All of the partners involved in the plan learned to persist and adapt their approach to build resilience in the socio-economic systems. The SIRLWMP has enabled many serious challenges to be successfully navigated and adapted to including extreme climate events, changing land use and community demographics. Each of these challenges required the ongoing collaboration of many partners to continuously improve the direction and achievements of the SIRLWMP. A 2020 review of the achievements of the 30 years of implementation showed the quantifiable breadth and depth of achievements against the plan's goals. However, there is still more work to do, and the SIRLWMP continues beyond 2020 in a challenging environment. It is expected that partners would continue to work together and continue to talk through difficult issues-because this is how real change happens.

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