This article serves as the introduction to the special issues of the International Journal of Comparative Psychology on the intersection of comparative and clinical psychology.  These two fields have a shared history going back to the beginnings of each.  Prominent names throughout psychology have work that crosses over between these two fields.  Freud referenced Darwin’s work throughout his work and Skinner’s research was almost exclusively comparative psychology research.  For much of the first half of the last century there was a clear collaboration between the two fields that was fueled by motivation to find the best ways of understanding psychological processes.  That collaboration has slowed considerably in the past several decades and this has coincided with increased specialization and compartmentalization throughout psychology.  It is hoped that the important articles included in this special issue will help spark further discussion of how these two fields can again collaborate for mutual professional benefit and for the benefit for the general public.

This paper examines the problems of defining and measuring access for blind travelers in an urban transit environment. Current accessibility measures do little to account for individual differences or the barriers faced by people with restricted mobility. Independent access to transit and activities in the urban environment are often denied or restricted for those with vision impairments. Their freedom of movement is not blocked by physical obstacles, but by information, signs, and spatial knowledge that are hard to access without vision. In this sense, services and facilities are considered inaccessible if people with limited or no vision lack the information necessary to adequately use them.

Thirty legally blind people made five simulated transfers to different transit modes at a transportation terminal to identify specific barriers to successful travel. Regular blind mobility methods were tested against a Remote Infrared Audible Signage (RIAS) condition to determine if the devices offered a suitable replacement for typical visual cues and information needed for efficient travel and use of transit. The difficulties of accessing various transit locations and performing necessary tasks were measured, in both conditions, and the extra time penalties were compared and modeled showing the travel constraints of vision loss and the efficacy of using RIAS to increase access. RIAS provided superior travel times, increased independence, and decreased error production.

A survey examined differences reported by blind travelers before and after exposure to RIAS. Many wayfinding tasks faced by transit users were shown to be quite difficult with normal navigation skills and aids, but presented little or no difficulty when using RIAS. High resistance to make mode transfers, especially in new environments, was reported. Inaccessible transit caused "non-trips" and also reduced travel and activity participation. RIAS revealed a hidden demand to travel more often, with greater safety, independence, and efficiency. These additional audible cues were perceived as enabling the users to access many more types of activities, such as education, employment, recreational, and entertainment. High monetary benefits were placed on the ability to travel independently and to gain access to urban opportunities, including increased income from employment.

The words and actions in the opening scene of Prometheus Bound, especially the piercing of Prometheus, have the effect of evoking ancient "binding curses," which would have been familiar to the Athenian audience.

We surveyed 55 blind and vision impaired bus riders in Santa Barbara, California to analyze their use of the local bus system and identify their frustrations, concerns and desires when using a mass transit system. The most important finding was that they needed better access to INFORMATION. We asked question on what kind of technology they would like to use to better access this information. The study revealed the benefits to be gained by using auditory signage to provide information to identify busses and trains, locate and safely cross streets and find and use terminal resources. We conclude this report with an examination of the benefits of using auditory signs.

In this dissertation, I offer a materialist account of the relationship between nation, nature, and political economy in Bolivia. Using the history and politics of Bolivia’s tin “mining cooperatives” (cooperativas mineras) as a window, I rethink key concepts in political economy in relation to the matters of mining: strata and resource, mountain and class, tin and labor, machine and value, and dynamite and state. In so doing, I argue that the political economy of resource extraction in Bolivia cannot be understood outside of either the matter of nature or the historical intertwining of nation, race, and gender. Colonial encounters of rock and laborers created the conditions of possibility for the consolidation of capitalist extraction, and these histories are key to understanding the political formations of the contemporary era.

Understanding these formations is politically pressing beyond Bolivia. Since the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous-identifying president, Bolivia has been hailed as a place of hope for progressives convinced that that the future of a world mired in economic, social, and environmental crisis depends on Indigenous political thought and action. In 2009, Morales ushered in a groundbreaking constitution that transformed the country from a republic into a “Plurinational State,” a change that signaled a reorganized relationship between the state and Bolivia’s many Indigenous, Afrobolivian, and intercultural nations and peoples. Given all of this, it might be assumed that resource extraction has been retooled to align with the goals of Indigenous territorial autonomy. To the contrary, the Bolivian state retains control over all subterranean resources, including but not limited to minerals and hydrocarbons, marking a vertical limit on Indigenous sovereignty. Through both direct and indirect involvement, the state has strengthened its control over the subsoil, often at the expense of surface-level communities.

Plurinational Bolivia is thus characterized by a tension between state-led (and state-authorized) resource extraction and a commitment to decentralizing resource governance in a way that prioritizes Indigenous territorial rights. Mining cooperatives embody this tension. With connections to both agrarian and market economies, these associations of small-scale miners have been involved in both defining the contours of the plurinational constitution and writing mining laws that facilitate resource extraction. Just as importantly, they have a long history of being in-between subjects, perpetually caught between both class categories of worker/peasant and racial categories of Indigenous/mestizo (mixed race). They have fallen on the outside of successive Bolivian nation-building projects, including this plurinational one. Usually interpreted as a conservative group that rose from the ashes of the country’s once famously progressive miners’ unions in the 1980s, cooperativistas are discursively figured as internal outsiders, a group of not-quite-rights whose very presence threatens the stability of national imaginaries. They are the fault lines of the Plurinational State, and following them allows me to rework political economy in ways that take seriously the material legacies of nation building and the production of social difference.

Drawing on over eighteen months of ethnography with small-scale tin miners, much of which was spent underground, as well as extensive archival research and over one hundred interviews with scientists, engineers, politicians, and activists, I argue that geosocial formations, forged in the vertical contact zone between miners and rock, perpetuate resource extractivism even in the context of putatively Indigenous nation-building. Bolivia’s subterranean was produced as a national ‘public’ space in the 20th century, imbued with masculinist and mestizo dreams of progress, and these nationalist ideals remain sedimented in the matter of the subsoil. These ideals shape cooperative miners in ways that reverberate on the surface when they take to the streets or run for political office. By tracing the influence of material nature and buried places on the more familiar terrain of resource extraction and contestation, this project rethinks the boundaries of political economy in Latin America and beyond.

It has been established that comparative psychology is in danger of becoming a footnote in the history of psychology. Six pieces of evidence to support this problem are few graduate psychology programs; little of no mention in introductory psychology textbooks or courses; insufficient number of undergraduate courses in comparative psychology; few teaching exercises; declining membership in Division 6 of APA; no recent textbooks in comparative psychology. Therefore, this article sought a viable solution to promote comparative psychology’s interconnections to different psychology areas. Specifically, a solution for combining comparative psychology into clinical fields by creating a course that combines comparative and clinical psychology was conceptualized. The rationales, history, barriers, benefits of creating a comparative and clinical psychology course were all examined to make a case for this solution. Concrete approaches to a course development covering domains such as cognitive, behavioral analysis, and scientific reasoning were presented. Also, the consideration of a ‘capstone course’ that is approached from the perspective of ‘challenge-based learning’ was recommended. This capstone course could offer students flexibility and promote problem-solving and innovative-think skills needed for careers. The rationales and recommendations covered in the article established that providing a course on comparative and clinical psychology can actually facilitate students to think differently about psychology and how exactly the different areas of psychology interconnect. In conclusion, it was determined that developing a course on the connectedness of comparative and clinical psychology is one way to help strengthen comparative psychology’s rightful place in the broad field of psychology.

Visitors to a foreign city know all too well the loss of independent travel when confronted with signage in an unfamiliar language. Street corners cannot be identified, people cannot tell where the buses that pass them are going, transit stations and mode changes are confusing, public buildings are hard to negotiate, and even finding the proper washroom can present a problem. Imagine a world without signs. One would not know where trains and buses led, where to find an information booth, or have clues on navigating a city or even a building. Consider then the trials of a blind traveler. Besides seeing no signs to help their orientation and information needs, they do not even see what the world around them looks like.