tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57392563267571772922024-02-15T00:29:53.274-08:00Sociological Research Online Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-54063870790429711292018-08-02T07:12:00.002-07:002018-08-02T07:22:39.552-07:00Reflections on 'Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character' – Pt. 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQFIe8K9P5d6kez6A8Wr_8fX5j2wk60W3XshE5tOiTdOXEUVjPl6FEWlKcIfvUh2UyvlGh4dk2yc2p4HwVFJe-Ioj4Wdi2KF8b_VOx24S_-faqIs1b3G58CBc_8oZ7Nprv7T2hyphenhyphen-QwJM/s1600/digital+culture+large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="1600" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQFIe8K9P5d6kez6A8Wr_8fX5j2wk60W3XshE5tOiTdOXEUVjPl6FEWlKcIfvUh2UyvlGh4dk2yc2p4HwVFJe-Ioj4Wdi2KF8b_VOx24S_-faqIs1b3G58CBc_8oZ7Nprv7T2hyphenhyphen-QwJM/s640/digital+culture+large.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>by Akane Kanai</b></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><b><i>This blog series is adapted from talks given at the launch of the SRO special section '<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/23/2">Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character</a>', 2nd July 2018, Goldsmiths College. The articles in this special section (published June 2018, Vol. 23 Iss. 2) query how character and resilience have been operationalised as both the cause and solution to social problems as diverse as educational underachievement, poverty, unemployment, the gender pay gap, and social unrest. The authors highlight fractures, tensions and slippages in how character is conceptualised, interpreted and mobilised. In illuminating these, the special section contributes not only to endeavours to resist dominant formulations of character and resilience, but to a wider project of re-appropriating these. </i></b></span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When I was invited to respond to the recent special section ‘<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/23/2">Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character</a>’, I was very much struck by several key themes that the contributors bring so clearly to the fore in problematising the ‘turn to character’. To provide some context to my response, my work focuses on the connections between <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1367549417722092">gender, affect, and digital media</a>. A key concern of mine, which I think is shared with the authors in this special section, has been to think through the narrow, and highly interventionist ways we are asked to constantly adjust, modulate and makeover our subjectivity in line with neoliberal and post-Fordist goals. I want to outline three of the key insights the special section presented for me, and detail the way it connects to concerns across scholarship that I have been drawing on. At the end I’ll make some brief comments as to how this issue has raised further questions for me in a current project exploring contemporary feminism, subjectivity and digital culture. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">First, the emphasis on the masculinisation of soft or emotional skills, particularly noted by <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769671">Erica Burman</a>, and the continuing expropriation of women’s work. In following sociological interventions such as that of Lois McNay (1999) and Lisa Adkins (2003), we see continuing inequalities in which the ‘feminisation of work’ or rather the entry of middle class women into paid work, relies on the affective labour that women carry out while simultaneously de-gendering and devalorising that labour. In studies of digital culture I am particularly concerned with the way in which concepts such as immaterial labour and affect are used in ways that are completely divorced from analyses of gender and women’s work of social reproduction. It is vital to foreground this gendered dynamic, as this special section does so well. Moreover, I see applications of this kind of analysis in the valorisation of ‘resilience’, ‘vigour’, ‘grit’ and ‘non-fluffy’ feelings in the ways in which emotion in digital cultures is also valorised along gendered lines. For example, we might think of the ways in which feminist and antiracist campaigners are vilified as ‘snowflakes’, too emotional, too ‘soft’ compared to ‘trolls’ whose humour you just have to be ‘tough enough’ to withstand. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Second, the articulation of the turn to the standardisation and measurement of emotion and corresponding character traits. The special section highlights a calculated sameness that aims to erase the existence of structural inequalities, particularly in the entrepreneurial subjectivities that are cultivated as <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769670">Kirsty Morrin</a> points out. To me, outside of formal educational contexts and policy spaces, this raises the question of what kinds of relationality and sociality such governmental grids produce. I have learned from scholars like Arlie Hochshild (1983), Sara Ahmed (2004) and Carolyn Pedwell (2014), amongst others, that affect and emotion must be understood as a relational phenomena that locates us in relations of inequality and dominance. As such, in seeing such patterns in the production of character extended in neoliberal culture in general, I am preoccupied by the standardisation of affective communication seen in varying mediated settings as well. These include the social platforms that extract value from users’ struggles to format themselves into shareable, likeable form, as well as the simplification and decontextualisation of affects such as aspiration, determination and hope. For example, one disturbing trend that Ros Gill and I have recently been thinking about is the way in which discourses of diversity in brand culture condense multiple differences of race, gender, disability into a single discrete obstacle that must be overcome by the individual through sheer ‘grit’. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Third, and perhaps the most evident contribution of the special section is the focus on character itself. While I’ve been working in the area of gender, affect and digital media for a little bit of time now, the naming of the turn to character was a powerful articulation of the need to critically interrogate the production and intensification of certain moral subjectivities. As Kim Allen and Anna Bull state in <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769678">their paper</a>, across many contexts of austerity in post-industrial economies, we see concerted efforts to attach a socially conservative heart to neoliberal market principles. This was one of the most significant insights for me in creating conceptual links around the emotional landscape of the production of human capital in a context of social, political and economic crisis. And, in this special section and particularly in <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1360780418769679">Nick Taylor’s piece</a>, I observed resonances with the work of Stuart Hall (1988) in documenting the twinned discourses of Thatcherism and authoritarian populism some time ago, identifying the links between so-called Victorian values, crisis, economic transformation and abject and demonised subjectivities. The special section makes clear that in times of austerity, minoritised individuals are increasingly asked to lean in, bend, adapt to a society that gives little. In doing so it provides connections to the historical, nationalistic and imperialist histories that such a turn to character reinvokes, condensing, in Hall’s terms, the political and the moral in particular ways.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I want to conclude with some brief comments on some further connections with my current project that explores how self-identifying feminists are using digital spaces to learn about and participate in feminism. I think that this ‘turn to character’ is something of which we need to be cognisant, not simply in formally neoliberal state-based settings, or corporate culture, but also in the everyday mediated and even social justice settings in which we work. Here I’m also drawing on <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769673">Ros Gill and Shani Orgad’s observation</a> of mediated spaces as key to the proliferation of character discourses. In this project, feminist participants discussed their everyday social media use in explicitly pedagogical ways- that is, as spaces where a feminist curriculum could be learned outside of the classroom. But this learning dovetailed with significant work on the self. My feminist informants expressed a clear commitment to social justice causes. But it was equally evident that for many of my informants, perhaps because it felt too daunting to address larger structures, often the main ways in which feminist practice felt achievable and practicable was through ‘character work’. That is, by continual labour on the self, one’s disposition, and relations with immediate others. In the digital social spaces in which my informants participated, there was a sense that one’s individual feminism needed to be continually refined and improved as a personalised character trait. This dovetailed with the way in which feminism was at times conflated with moral notions of virtue and goodness; evidently, these are idealised traits historically associated with white middle class femininity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I hope I’ve been able to give a very brief account of some of the extremely insightful and useful connections this scholarship has allowed me to make in connecting the emotional and the moral with questions of gender, labour and digital culture. I want to thank the authors and especially the editors, Anna and Kim, for the opportunity to engage with this special section. </span><br />
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<b>About the author: Akane Kanai is a Lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. Her research on youthful femininities and digital intimate publics has been published in outlets including Feminist Media Studies, the Journal of Gender Studies, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Social Media and Society. Her first book, Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture: Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value is forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan.</b><br />
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Sources:<br />
Adkins, L. (2003) ‘Reflexivity: Freedom or Habit of Gender? Theory, Culture & Society 20(6): 21–42.<br />
Hochschild, A. (1983). The Managed Heart: The Commercialisation of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.<br />
Ahmed, S. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.<br />
Hall, S. (1988). The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the crisis of the Left. London: Verso.<br />
McNay, L. (1999) ‘Gender, Habitus and the Field: Pierre Bourdieu and the Limits of Reflexivity’, Theory, Culture & Society 16(1): 95–117.<br />
Pedwell, C. (2014). Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.<br />
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Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-84703410844868467652018-08-02T04:25:00.002-07:002018-08-02T07:13:36.738-07:00Reflections on 'Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character' – Pt. 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbSX30XPiWjCtXtITT0AiW4Dt5E4VmW-6zHpDl2_LVEaFFtAJdHewh1NX8XkvEXwiZil1xVPai0oDSWdo5JgxQPPaVXNfZLu6jV2GnxaDMtKtsgIA6ZxumHylvTnbuzJ5rPcAw8OAeVcI/s1600/character+education.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="724" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbSX30XPiWjCtXtITT0AiW4Dt5E4VmW-6zHpDl2_LVEaFFtAJdHewh1NX8XkvEXwiZil1xVPai0oDSWdo5JgxQPPaVXNfZLu6jV2GnxaDMtKtsgIA6ZxumHylvTnbuzJ5rPcAw8OAeVcI/s1600/character+education.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>by Val Gillies</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><b><i>This blog series is adapted from talks given at the launch of the SRO special section '<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/23/2">Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character</a>', 2nd July 2018, Goldsmiths College. The articles in this special section (published June 2018, Vol. 23 Iss. 2) query how character and resilience have been operationalised as both the cause and solution to social problems as diverse as educational underachievement, poverty, unemployment, the gender pay gap, and social unrest. The authors highlight fractures, tensions and slippages in how character is conceptualised, interpreted and mobilised. In illuminating these, the special section contributes not only to endeavours to resist dominant formulations of character and resilience, but to a wider project of re-appropriating these. </i></b></span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;">Let me start off by saying many thanks for asking me back to act as a discussant once again. I’ve been able to stand on the sidelines and watch this project develop since the </span><a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/cmci/eventrecords/2016/Grit,-Governmentality-&-the-Erasure-of-Inequality-The-Curious-Rise-of-Character-Education-Policy.aspx" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">first seminar</a><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"> the guest editors held, and out of which this special section developed. It’s been a privilege to see it take shape in this way. It’s a really important collection and I’m glad it’s being properly celebrated. Well done to everyone involved and particularly to Anna and Kim for taking the initiative and guiding it through to </span><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/23/2" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">publication</a><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;">. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was a bit shocked when I dug out my original comments to realize the first seminar was all the way back in July 2016. A whole two years ago! It was just after the Brexit vote and everything seemed so uncertain and unstable then. But that’s just become the new normal now. The Government’s been teetering for years, ministers come and go and the country lurches from one crisis to the next. Yet the same stale, hoary old narratives around character and resilience still hold sway, making the papers in this special section as relevant as ever. Various character infused programs, interventions and buzz words have waxed and waned over time, but the core ideology of the concept is deeply embedded. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A real strength of this collection is its ability to hold on to and critically describe the amorphous, nebulous but highly contingent nature of character as a powerful trope. The authors show how there are different manifestations in different contexts but trace them back to the same genus and show how they accomplish similar aims and objectives. </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For example, the authors discuss ‘resilience’, ‘entrepreneurialism’, ‘grit’, ‘positive mental attitude’, ‘moral responsibility’. It’s almost like a neoliberal dot to dot and the picture it creates of a mythical creature. An ideal, invincible subject who toughens up in adversity, takes it on the chin and is all the stronger for it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But as we know this ideal is being pushed while the human misery caused by late capitalism piles up all around us. We’re being sold the trope of character in the context of rising rates of destitution, hunger and malnutrition, even homeless people dying on the streets. The solution to acute social need and political failure is, we’re told, for us to become stronger as individuals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;">As <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769679">Nick Taylor’s insightful paper</a> points out there is a striking echo here from the 19th century when an orthodoxy of liberal individualism last reigned supreme. The parallels and the differences he teases out are absolutely fascinating and very telling. I found it particularly interesting because he discusses the role of the Charity Organisation Society, a historical institution I know a bit about. I’ve spent many hours buried in the COS archives as <a href="https://discoversociety.org/2016/07/05/collecting-data-about-disadvantaged-families-preoccupations-possibilities/">part of a recent project tracing the history of ‘troubled families’</a>. </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">I’m very aware of the role character assessment played in determining who did and didn’t get help during this period. These decisions were often ruthless and cruel. One of the case studies we drew on concerned the desperate Thorpe family and their starving children who were denied help in 1888 because they were deemed to lack self-reliance. So we know where a preoccupation with character led to in the past. And given the current political context there’s no reason to believe it will be any less brutal second time around.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;">But, perhaps more hopefully, we also know that the hard liberal virtues espoused by the 19th century elite came to be widely reviled and mocked. COS were colloquially dubbed as ‘Cringe or Starve’ while the Christian socialists filled out hilarious mock COS applications for Jesus Christ (<a href="http://www.stgitehistory.org.uk/directory/mockapplication.jpg">he was rebuked for his utter want of thrift, industry, temperance and for the bad company he kept</a>). </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">And even as Alfred Marshall was writing the Principles of Economics, COS were fighting a losing battle with the Fabians. Character then has always been a controversial and contested concept. Moreover, with organized opposition ‘character’ was excised from the political lexicon for the best part of a century (though blaming the poor for their own misfortune merely assumed other guises). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is no coincidence that the tarnished vocabulary of character has been buffed up and redeployed at a time when capitalism is once again in crisis, squeezing us ever harder, while having to account for the increasingly visible moral vacuum at its centre. Political and economic elites desperately need to mobilize some legitimacy at the moment. As Kim Allen and Anna Bull’s excellent <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769678">network analysis</a> shows, they are the ones behind the curtain, pulling the strings and building the apparent consensus behind character education. Kim and Anna’s paper skillfully strips back all the policy and practice rhetoric to reveal the global flows of power, influence and money that are directed towards the character infused version of ‘just desserts’ that we are now so familiar with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769671">Erica Burman’s paper</a> provides a perfect case study of how an evidence base for character education is produced through papering over contradictions, elisions and gaping holes in the logic. She also neatly and perceptively reveals how the hardening up of the ‘soft skills’ agenda associated with the turn to character re-inscribes old gender hierarchies between agency and relationality. This is a crucial observation, not least because gendered representations in school initiatives are so blatant and uncritical. My daughter is in Year 1 at infants school and gets to play with brightly colored puppets designed by the ‘<a href="https://youcandoiteducation.com.au/">You Can Do It</a>’ program, featuring ‘Ricky Resilience’, ‘Pete Persistence’, ‘Oscar Organization’ – and two for the girls ‘Connie Confidence’ and ‘Gabby Get Along’. The gendered dimensions are far from subtle.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5sb9f1wC80VYK0j-D77iG_LYy0T-297UbmyzTzF8ElyB_44onjbQ6Pb3oMG_ZDz0-ub3mMTn6aqYcozfv9D5npRnKq2W9PAQy7CzlNOuQGoQajFagtt_OmEDqfTZ-JZ0RcyqafKCJ5fU/s1600/pictures+for+Val%2527s+blog+2+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5sb9f1wC80VYK0j-D77iG_LYy0T-297UbmyzTzF8ElyB_44onjbQ6Pb3oMG_ZDz0-ub3mMTn6aqYcozfv9D5npRnKq2W9PAQy7CzlNOuQGoQajFagtt_OmEDqfTZ-JZ0RcyqafKCJ5fU/s640/pictures+for+Val%2527s+blog+2+copy.jpg" width="640" /></a><b style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><i>Pictured: the ‘You Can Do it’ puppets in action illustrating ‘British values’ in a London infants school corridor (even though they’re actually Australian). Connie and Gabby have exaggerated eyelashes and hair bows to feminize them. </i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;">But as <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769673">Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad’s paper</a> </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">astutely notes, Ricky Resilience later morphs into the face of the empowered middle class woman who ‘leans in’ through the career knocks and stays strong. They highlight the unsettling cultural saturation of resilience strategies and the self-investment this demands, particularly from women. What strikes me most about their analysis is the way that challenges to, or subversions of, prevailing power dynamics are seamlessly co-opted, defused and put to work to undergird the status quo. The psychological turn they identify within neoliberalism reframes and tames any resistance to the model, then flogs it back to us as a personalized prescription for overcoming its hurdles and triumphing.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;">And that brings me on to Kirsty Morrin’s excellent <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769670">analysis</a> of an entrepreneurial education program in a secondary academy school. I saved that one until last because it explores resistance in a really sophisticated and nuanced way and the potential for resistance is something I’m thinking a lot about at the moment. Also the very subtle resistances she documents are very familiar to me - I’ve seen the same dynamics in <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/pushed-to-the-edge">my own work in schools</a>. Kirsty references Stephen Ball’s ‘<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01425692.2015.1044072">politics of refusal</a>’ in her paper. </span><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">This is a concept I really like because it foregrounds the capacity we all have to disrupt and unsettle even the most totalizing logics we find ourselves incased within. Small acts on a mass scale can render some things unworkable, meaning we all have more power than we perhaps always recognise. Some, in social work have gone further and call for a form of ‘guerrilla warfare’, ‘a small-scale subversion of institutional strictures that disadvantage and misrepresent’ (Ferguson 2009).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course what Kirsty describes is not at all consciously political in this way. But the point is it could be. Our work as critical scholars can (and does) contribute to and support a politics of refusal. At the very least it troubles easy assumptions and opens up alternative perspectives. This special section does exactly that - I hope it’s widely read. Congratulations again to everyone involved.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><b>About the author: Val Gillies is Professor of Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Westminster. Her research interests include family, parenting and social class, marginalised children and young people, home school relations, critical social policy as well as historical sociology. Her most recent books include Pushed to the Edge: Inclusion and Behaviour Management in Schools’ (Policy Press, 2016) and Challenging the Politics of Early Intervention: Who’s Saving Children and Why (Policy Press 2017) with Ros Edwards and Nicola Horsley.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">Sources:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;">Ferguson, I. (2009) Another Social Work is Possible!’ Reclaiming the Radical Tradition, in V. Leskošek (Ed.), Theories and methods of social work, exploring different perspectives (pp. 81-98). Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana.</span><br />
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Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-40312511734347835762018-05-04T05:11:00.002-07:002018-05-04T05:11:23.209-07:00Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkd7hTtJxwsZJnx8zruzPT6ngLzb-fHiHBZjFYXAdcXxu2dPT2aNIw_9_WBNBgyktynVYFduV_O6uI0KqTmJUEW_UmgFId_Z1hCCsh1LRJaRUWNQiTsDzh4hyphenhyphen6LK3rI4gdiOGH0kAMMI/s1600/karate+kids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="701" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQkd7hTtJxwsZJnx8zruzPT6ngLzb-fHiHBZjFYXAdcXxu2dPT2aNIw_9_WBNBgyktynVYFduV_O6uI0KqTmJUEW_UmgFId_Z1hCCsh1LRJaRUWNQiTsDzh4hyphenhyphen6LK3rI4gdiOGH0kAMMI/s640/karate+kids.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Kim Allen and Anna Bull</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Under the Conservative government, a burgeoning number of policy initiatives and reports have asserted the importance of nurturing character in children and young people, with ‘character strengths’ such as optimism, ‘grit’, and ‘bouncebackability’ located as key factors shaping academic and other life outcomes. This includes the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility’s <i><a href="https://centreforum.org/live/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/character-and-resilience-web.pdf">Character and Resilience Manifesto</a></i> (2014), and the government’s <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/324103/Child_poverty_strategy.pdf">Child Poverty Strategy</a> 2014-2017 (HM Government 2014) which outlined strategies to build character and other ‘non-cognitive’ skills among poor children as playing a vital role in addressing child poverty. In 2015, the then-Secretary of State for Education Nicky Morgan, a passionate advocate of character education, announced a £5 million ‘Character Innovation Fund’ with the ambition to make England a ‘<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/england-to-become-a-global-leader-of-teaching-character">global leader</a>’ in teaching character (Department for Education, 2015). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This preoccupation with character education as a way of addressing social and educational inequality has not been confined to education but coincided with policies promoting ‘resilience’ and ‘confidence’ in areas as diverse as health and housing to employment and welfare. Despite the government <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/dfe-scraps-nicky-morgans-landmark-character-education-scheme">scrapping its character grant scheme</a> in 2017 against a backdrop of wider political upheaval, this policy agenda appears to possess remarkable ‘bounce-backability’. In 2018, the new education secretary Damian Hinds used his <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretary-opens-education-world-forum">first speech</a> to declare his commitment to the agenda, stating that ‘character and resilience are important for what anybody can achieve in life, as well as for the success of our economies’ (Department for Education, 2018).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This investment in character education needs to be understood as part of what we call a broader ‘turn to character’ within contemporary neoliberalism. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/0/0">The latest special section of <i>Sociological Research Online</i></a> explores and unpicks the current manifestations of this ‘turn to character’ across education policy and provision, as well as welfare and employment, and within popular culture. Exploring how the investments in character and resilience materialise across a range of sites and practices, the articles aim to disentangle both the emergence of this turn to character and its effects. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the </span><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769679" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">first article in this special section</a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">,</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Nick Taylor traces the lineage of the current agenda to moralising discourses of poverty within the Victorian era. Attending to the similarities and differences between past and current conceptualisations of character and social progress, Taylor provides a valuable historical perspective on today’s character agenda across education and welfare-to-work policy. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The next two articles foreground education policy specifically. Through a close discourse analysis of the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s Manifesto for Character Education, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769671">Erica Burman draws out key slippages</a> between the evidence base used in this policy document and the claims it makes. Burman’s intersectional attentiveness allows her to demonstrate how the Manifesto privileges particular gendered and classed subjects. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Also focusing on education policy but from the perspective of policy influence and formation, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769678">Kim Allen and Anna Bull’s article</a> investigates the key actors who have been influential in shaping the UK government’s engagement with character education as a thinkable policy solution; actors including academics, ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and philanthropic foundations. In particular they identify the influence of the US Christian neo-conservative philanthropic trust, The John Templeton Foundation, on UK policy, provision and academic research in this area. They trace how activity of The John Templeton Foundation has played a central role in the proliferation and legitimisation of discourses of character and resilience that promote a socially conservative agenda. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">While these articles demonstrate a powerful range of advocates for character education policy, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769670">the next article by Kirsty Morrin</a>, draws attention to the uneven, incomplete and unpredictable implementation of policy ideas ‘on the ground’. Based on ethnographic research in an academy school in the North of England, Morrin argues that the school’s inculcation of ‘entrepreneurial character’ reproduces class inequalities through a deficit model of working-class children. However, Morrin also draws attention to the everyday and ‘mundane non-compliances’ enacted by staff in relation to this agenda, sometimes in ways that serve more progressive or emancipatory ends.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Finally, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418769673">Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad’s article</a> extends this special section’s exploration of character and resilience within policy and provision to examine its presence across media and popular culture. Taking three resilience-based cultural texts as empirical case studies - women’s magazines, social media apps and self-help books – the authors demonstrate how these texts idealise the middle-class professional woman and mother as the resilient subject who bounces back from adversity and turns negative experiences into positive affects. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Across the special section, we are alerted to the ways in which discourse of character and their associated ideas are spread and legitimated: through networks of policy entrepreneurs, character advocates and academics; through the flows of money invested through philanthropic activity; in best-selling books and popular social media apps; and in the activities of schools and universities. Whilst the specific focus of their analyses and approach varies, the authors in this special section share a concern with how an emphasis or idealisation of character and resilience produces particular subjectivities and understandings of social problems and solutions within contexts of neoliberal austerity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Across these articles we can identify how character and resilience have been operationalised as both the cause and solution to social problems as diverse as educational underachievement, poverty, unemployment, the gender pay gap, and social unrest. The prominence of discourses of character and resilience across government policy involves the privileging of some explanatory frameworks and solutions whilst silencing others. As Burman’s article shows, the All-Party Parliamentary Group Manifesto draws together character and resilience by ‘individualising and responsibilising the precarity of current economic and political insecurities to render them as qualities (traits, characteristics) to be found within (primarily working class) children, and in so doing making that social context disappear’ in a ‘double occlusion of the social’. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Similarly, Nick Taylor contends that, ‘[t]he focus on character as an explanation for and solution to issues of social mobility and employability risks ignoring or actively displacing the structural aspects of poverty, inequality and unemployment’, and his article shows that blaming individuals for poor life outcomes is far from new or unique to contemporary neoliberalism but has much longer historical roots. By occluding the social context, individualised character ‘traits’ become located as the primary cause of social mobility or ‘success’ in life. Such character traits can then also be used to rationalise and justify unequal outcomes in life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Such a focus on individualised attributes is particularly insidious because it outlaws political anger at structural inequities and injustices, instead focusing it inwards. Indeed, <a href="http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1473494/1/Suissa_Character%20Education%20and%20the%20Disappearance%20of%20the%20Political%20FINAL.pdf">earlier work on character education in the UK from Judith Suissa</a> describes how character education materials ‘displace’ the political, for example Rosa Parks’ activism within the civil rights movement is narrated as an individual story rather than as part of a social movement (Suissa, 2015: 113). The articles in this special section extend and develop this critique by demonstrating how discourses of character focus on remaking or improving subject’s interiority as a way of weathering chronic hardship and worsening insecurity. As Gill and Orgad describe, it is the individualised, interior labour of self-transformation that is required rather than a recognition of wider structural inequalities and power relations and/or collective demands for societal change. In this way the current emphasis on character and resilience must be seen as part of what they call a ‘psychological turn within neoliberalism, intensified by austerity, in which new ways of being, relating, and apprehending the self are produced’.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Despite the pervasiveness of these ideas, it is important to recognise the possibilities for critiquing this ‘turn to character’. The articles in this special section - read individually and collectively - highlight fractures, tensions and slippages in how character is conceptualised, interpreted and mobilised. We hope that in illuminating these, the special section contributes not only to endeavours to resist dominant formulations of character and resilience, but to a wider project of re-appropriating these. This might usefully involve promoting other, critical ways of thinking about and with notions of character and resilience, and alternative pedagogies and approaches to character education. However, as well as these alternatives, within the current political context it is crucial to consider, as Suissa asks, ‘are there things we should not be resilient to?’ (2015: 111).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">References</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Bull, A., Allen, K., 2018. Following policy: A network ethnography of the UK character education policy community. Sociological Research Online.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Burman, E., 2018. (Re)sourcing the Character and Resilience Manifesto: Suppressions and slippages of (re)presentation and selective affectivities. Sociological Research Online.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Department for Education. 2015. “Character Education: Apply for 2015 Grant Funding.” January 12, 2015. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/character-education-apply-for-2015-grant-funding">https://www.gov.uk/government/news/character-education-apply-for-2015-grant-funding</a>. (accessed 22.2.18)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Department for Education, 2018. Education Secretary opens Education World Forum [WWW Document]. URL <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretary-opens-education-world-forum">https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretary-opens-education-world-forum</a> (accessed 2.12.18).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Gill, R., Orgad, S., 2018. The amazing bounce-backable woman: Resilience and the psychological turn in neoliberalism. Sociological Research Online.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">HM Government 2014. Child Poverty Strategy 2014-2017. June.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Morrin, K., 2018. Tensions in Teaching Character: How the “entrepreneurial character” is reproduced, “refused” and negotiated in an English academy school. Sociological Research Online.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Paterson, C., Tyler, C., Lexmond, J., 2014. Character and resilience manifesto. AAll Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Suissa, J., 2015. Character education and the disappearance of the political. Ethics Educ. 10, 105–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2014.998030</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Taylor, N., 2018. The Return of Character: parallels between late-Victorian and twenty-first century discourses. Sociological Research Online.</span><br />
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<br />Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-42277737809034533662018-03-28T02:36:00.001-07:002018-04-03T02:29:11.347-07:00Troubling Families?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b style="font-family: "helvetica neue", arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Jane Ribbens McCarthy, Val Gillies and Carol-Ann Hooper</b><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/23/1">Troubling Families</a></i></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">2018, Sociological Research Online, Vol 23.1</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">The term, ‘troubling families’, has the scope both to trouble what we
mean by ‘family’ and its continuing power,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>while also asking why some particular ‘families’ may be found by some to
be ‘troubling’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Talking about ‘family’
has been controversial amongst sociologists for several decades, ever since
feminists in the 1980s (e.g. Barrett and McIntosh, 1982; Carby, 1982/1996;
Thorne and Yalom, 1982) started to question its ideological underpinnings, its
intimate hidden (gendered and generational) dynamics of power, and its social
rather than ‘natural’ basis. In Anglophone literatures, the debate about how
sociologists should or should not employ the term has continued back and
forwards more or less ever since, but within these contexts, there seems to be
no denying the continuing central significance of ‘family’ in people’s
imaginaries, and in their everyday lives, as well as in public debates and policies
(Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2008/2012; Gilding, 2010; Gabb and Silva, 2011; </span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">Edwards et al, 2012 ; Ribbens
McCarthy, 2012), even as </span><span lang="EN-US">‘</span><span lang="DA" style="mso-ansi-language: DA;">families</span><span lang="EN-US">’ and households
become increasingly diverse. Both significant changes and powerful continuities
are apparent in how people in Anglophone and Western European countries live
their families and relationships.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">Paradoxically, these
decades of academic scrutiny of the term, and opening up of the ‘black box’ of
family, have also seen expectations of ‘family’ increasing, alongside ever
expanding idealizations of what ‘childhood’ should entail. These high hopes, or
fantasies, parallel the pervasive moral imperative of prioritising ‘children’s
needs’, whether enunciated by parents/mothers or politicians and policy makers
(Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2000; Gillies, 2014). Those who fail to live up to
‘family’ expectations, particularly in terms of the ‘care and protection’ of
children, may thus find themselves increasingly subject to scrutiny and a
variety of interventions from the State. One such UK initiative, for example,
has formulated a category of ‘troubled families’, defined by reference to a
particular set of characteristics, and constructed as a particularly
‘troublesome’ feature of the contemporary British social fabric, requiring
targeted interventions (Crossley, 2016). But our discussions here (and
elsewhere – Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2013; Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2018; Evans
et al, 2018) seek to ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">trouble</span><span lang="EN-US">’ ‘</span><span lang="DA" style="mso-ansi-language: DA;">families</span></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">’ in quite opposite ways from such objectifying and categorical
discourses and policies.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In these policy
processes, then, we see an apparent binary between ‘</span><span lang="DA" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">families</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’ that are
regarded as successful and un-troubled, and ‘</span><span lang="DA" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">families</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’ that are
considered deviant and problematic. Yet this binary is partly created by the
idealization of the term ‘family’ itself, since it is those households that
fail to live up to what ‘family’ is meant to be which may experience shame,
stigma, and potentially punitive scrutiny (whether merited or not).
Furthermore, we find academic work itself helps to construct this binary, with
sociologists focusing upon ‘ordinary’ families and mainstream social change,
while ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">trouble</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">some’ families are left to the attentions of social work and social
policy researchers. These two bodies of research rarely inter-relate, while the
researchers and academics involved attend different conferences and participate
in different debates and networks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">In this <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/current">special section
of </a><i><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/23/1">Sociological Research Online</a>, </i>we seek to move beyond
this binary through a two-dimensional focus on the notion of ‘troubling
families’, exploring both what may be ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">troubling</span><span lang="EN-US">’ about the notion of ‘family’, and how it
is that some particular families, and family practices (Morgan, 2011), may come
to be seen by some as ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">troubling</span><span lang="EN-US">’. On the one hand, then, some of the articles trouble the term
‘family’ and how the notion may itself shape people’s everyday experiences in
troublesome ways, even as they may resist such perspectives and seek to re-shape
them. The empirical underpinnings for these article include research with:
same-sex couple ‘</span><span lang="DA" style="mso-ansi-language: DA;">families</span><span lang="EN-US">’ (<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418754779">Brian Heaphy in the UK, exploring ‘the ordinary’ as an ambiguousdiscourse for same-sex couples</a>, and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780418754699">Luke Gahan in Australia, exploring the contradictoryimplications of idealising same-sex couple families with children</a>); the
transnational ‘</span><span lang="DA" style="mso-ansi-language: DA;">families</span><span lang="EN-US">’ of <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749464">Lithuanian mothers living apart from their children, who both
engage with and re-shape public ‘scripts’ that cast migrant mothers as ‘</a></span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749464">troubling</a></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749464">’</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749464"> </a> </span></span><span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;">(Irena Juozeli</span><span lang="EN-US">ūnienė and Irma Budginaitė); and the
<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749439">‘</a></span><span lang="DA" style="mso-ansi-language: DA;"><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749439">families</a></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749439">’ of ‘looked-after’ children living apart from their parents</a> in
Scotland, where children and carers may ‘talk back’ to the categorization of
their families as ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">troubling</span></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">’ (Vicki Welch).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These examples,
in differing ways, all challenge any easy binary divisions. </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The two concluding
articles address more particularly the grounds on which some ‘</span><span lang="DA" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">families</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’ and some
‘family practices’ may be seen to be particularly ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">troubling</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’, raising
significant sociological issues about the basis for such problematizing, and
the power dynamics involved. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417749250">Michael Rush and Suleman Ibrahim Lazarus focus onthe difficult topic of parental physical chastisement of children</a>, comparing
the histories and current framings of this apparently ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">troubling</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’ family practice
in the contexts of Ireland and Ghana, with evaluative shifts which they argue
to be linked to declining patriarchal power. And then <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417746871">Jane Ribbens McCarthy andVal Gillies tackle head on the question of who is troubled and why</a> in regard to
what may or may not be defined as harmful to children in diverse cultural
settings. While the general framework of ‘family troubles’ can very usefully
serve to highlight continuities across diversities (Ribbens McCarthy et al,
2013), at the same time, where might any boundary lie between ‘normal’ troubles
in children’s families, and troubles that are troubling - potentially ‘harmful’
- in ways that might be seen to require intervention? Ribbens McCarthy and
Gillies argue the inevitability of living with uncertainty in the face of such
conundrums, since there are no universal ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">objective</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’ ‘</span><span lang="IT" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a priori</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’ measures
for determining what is ‘harmful’ to children, whether through empirical
psychological research or through logical moral philosophising. But rather than
collapsing into some sort of cultural relativism in which ‘anything goes’, they
draw on the philosophical work of Fran</span><span lang="PT" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ç</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ois Julienne (2008/2014), to explore the
possibilities and difficulties for developing an inter-cultural dialogue, that
can at least attempt to go beyond the neo-colonial imposition of Anglophone and
Western European assumptions. In this regard they briefly outline dimensions of
four particular frameworks and world views: the legal approach of children’s
Rights; the African tradition of Ubuntu; the Indian spirituality of Avaita; and
feminist theorising of a relational ethics of care.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">By troubling the
concept of 'families', and asking how to interrogate the evaluative frameworks
and everyday assumptions that define some families, and some family practices,
as 'troubling', the special section thus raises challenging debates linking
substantive issues with theoretical and conceptual questions of diversity in
everyday relationships. Key sociological and social policy questions arise
concerning who it is who finds particular families troubling, what responses
are considered to be appropriate and by whom, and what are the historical
processes and power dynamics involved. And from family members’ own
perspectives, how does the view of their ‘family’ as ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">troubling</span><span lang="EN-US">’ impact upon
them, and do they find ways of resisting or accommodating such processes? In
these regards, the theoretical issues raised have the potential to develop
insights, across a diverse range of substantive topics, generating additional
perspectives. The questions raised in this process are themselves significantly
troubling, requiring considerable sensitivity and patience to explore the
complexities and ambivalences involved in seeking to engage with them. We are
grateful to the contributors to this special section for their participation,
and hope others will continue to engage and pursue these themes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">‘Troubling families’
may more faithfully and usefully illuminate contemporary family lives – whether
‘</span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">conventional</span><span lang="EN-US">’ or otherwise - in diverse contexts, and this may in turn help to
avoid creating further ‘</span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">troubles</span></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">’ to family members themselves. Sociology has an important part to
play in this, by attending closely to the everyday meanings and practices
through which people experience their family lives together and make sense of
their relationships, in circumstances shaped by power dynamics, material
inequalities and colonial and cultural histories.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">References:</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Barrett M, and McIntosh M, 1982 The Anti-Social Family. London: Verso. 2nd ed. 2015</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Carby, H.V. 1982 ‘White woman listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood’, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in Seventies Britain, London: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hutchinson. Re-printed in in H.A. Baker, M. Diawara and R.H. Lindeborg (eds) 1996 Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader, London: University of Chicago Press.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Crossley, S. 2016 ‘The Troubled Families programme: in, for and against the state?’ In M. Fenger, J. Hudson, and C. Needham, (eds) Social Policy Review 28. Policy Press. 127-146.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Edwards, R, Ribbens McCarthy, J. and Gillies, V. 2012 ‘The politics of concepts: family and its (putative) replacements.’ British Journal of Sociology, 63(4) pp. 730–746.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Evans, R, Bowlby S, Gottzen L and Ribbens McCarthy J 2018 ‘Family “troubles”, care and relationality in diverse contexts’, Children’s Geographies: Special issue (in progress). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gabb, J and Silva, EB. 2011 ‘Introduction to critical concepts: families, intimacies and personal relationships’, Sociological Research Online. 16(4)23</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gilding, M. 2010 ‘Reflexivity over and above convention: the new orthodoxy in the sociology of personal life, formerly sociology of the family’, British Journal of Sociology 61(4): 757-777.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gillies, V. 2014 ‘Troubling families: parenting and the politics of early intervention’, in S. Wagg and J. Pilcher (eds) Thatcher's Grandchildren?: Politics and Childhood in the Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave macmillan pp 204-224</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Julienne, F 2008/2014 On the Universal, the uniform, the common and dialogue between cultures, Cambridge: Polity Press. (Translated by Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkowski.) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Morgan, D.H.J. 2011 Rethinking Family Practices. London: Palgrave macmillan.Ribbens McCarthy, J 2012 ‘The powerful language of ‘family’: togetherness, belonging and personhood.’ Sociological Review, 60(1) pp. 68–90.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ribbens McCarthy, J. Doolittle, M. and Day Sclater, S. 2008 Family Meanings, Milton Keynes: Open University. Revised version published 2012, <a href="http://oro.open.ac.uk/31979/">Understanding Family Meanings: a Reflective Text</a>. Bristol: Policy Press.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ribbens McCarthy J, Edwards R, and Gillies V. 2000 ‘<a href="http://oro.open.ac.uk/17700/">Moral tales of the child and the adult: Narratives of contemporary family lives under changing circumstances</a>’. Sociology, 34(4) 785-803</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ribbens McCarthy, J, Hooper CA, and Gillies, V (eds) 2013 Family Troubles? Exploring Changes and Challenges in the Family Lives of Children and Young People. Bristol: Policy Press</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ribbens McCarthy, J, Hooper CA, and Gillies V. (eds) ‘Family troubles and troubling families’, Journal of Family Issues, special issue (in progress)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thorne, B and Yalom, M 1982 Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions. London: Longman.</span><br />
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<br />Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-68794734766479583742018-03-23T08:51:00.001-07:002019-06-17T02:04:13.153-07:00Contributor Guidelines<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-66698028319252157022018-02-21T05:59:00.000-08:002018-02-21T06:58:48.604-08:00The Sociological Inspiration: Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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By Carli Ria Rowell</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Over the course of my doctoral degree I have engaged with myriad sociological texts relating to the theoretical, empirical and methodological and I have spent much time discussing with my doctoral peers those texts that have sparked a passion for, interest in and commitment to sociological research. On a theoretical and empirical level, for me, it is those sociological texts that explore, validate, and enlighten my own experiences and the experiences of those around me, and on a methodological level it is texts pertaining to various methodological and ethical problems and possibilities that have been of greatest guidance.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As an ethnographer, researching the experiences of working-class students at an elite UK university a core focus of my study sought to explore participant’s experiences of transitioning, spatially, affectively and metaphorically between the elite sphere of the university and their working-class locale. Here, I was concerned with attending to social spatialisation and placed-images exploring the way(s) in which, if at all the physical, material and topographical site of the elite university and working-class locale worked to include or exclude participants; positing them as both in and out of place in both an actual, embodied, emotional and metaphorical sense. Recognising that “vision does not dominate the way we experience our environments” (Pink 2009:12) I adopted a somewhat visual approach to ‘data collection’. I conducted a number of photo elicitation interviews, walking and driving tours and it was through the utilisation of said research methods that I was introduced to participants’ home locales, often these locales were council estates. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">From the outset of my research a sub-set of participants shared with me their experiences of navigating their way through formal educational institutions that had rendered them, within the imaginaries of formal educators as ‘problem people’ from ‘problem places’. It was thus, in this vein that I compelled to explore the way in which the now educationally and spatially mobile working-class first-generation students experienced the constant transition from a vilified council estate to the geographical site of the elite UK University. However, questions pertaining to the practice and ethics of doing so pervaded. How am I to amble to sociologically explore such phenomenon? What methods might I draw upon? What are the ethical issues inherent in such line of enquiry? And how am I best able to manage these? Importantly, do I have the right to enter into such spaces for the purpose of my doctoral research and subsequent personal gain? These were the questions that the three <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/home/sro">Sociological Research Online</a> articles discussed here helped me think through and what I discuss in this post. I attempt not to provide a comprehensive overview of said papers but instead discuss the way(s) in which they shaped my research theory and practice.</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.5153/sro.3441"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy by Tracey Jensen</span></a></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">At the time of conducting my fieldwork there had been the proliferation in the mainstream media of what Sociologist Tracey Jensen has termed ‘poverty porn’. Poverty porn typically ‘documents’ the experiences of the poor, exploring the lives of families and individuals as they attempt to get by on welfare. As Jensen notes:</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">“It is through the explosion of 'poverty porn' television that welfare discourses of political elites have become translated into authoritarian vocabularies. Poverty porn television is not simply voyeurism, but performs an ideological function; it generates a new 'commonsense' around an unquestionable need for welfare reform; it makes a neoliberal welfare 'doxa'” (2.2).</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Typically, such antagonistic programmes are set on 'sink council estates' with a stark visual imagery of architectural decay, vandalism and environmental degradation and are accompanied by a narrative of intergenerational worklessness, petty criminality and anti-social behaviour and a lack of aspiration. Jensen’s paper sensitised me to the new forms of 'commonsense' of welfare and some of the stigmatising stereotypes that a number of my participants were subject to as a result of the narrative of poverty porn that was (and is) circulating in lay, political and media commentary.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The second article published by Sociological Research Online that has been central to the formation of my research methodology was the aforementioned paper by Moles. The paper foregrounds walking as a mobile methodological tool. In doing so, it engages with debates and discussions surrounding mobile methods, “methods employed that embrace and celebrate the different engagement with spaces that being mobile produces” (1.10). The purpose of the paper, as Moles herself writes, is “the demonstration of what Thirdspace methods might look like” (7.1). The paper draws upon the author’s experience of conducting in-depth research over three years in a park in Dublin. It begins by guiding the reader through spatial theory, engages with the concept of Thirdspace and argues for the inclusion of spatial practices within sociological research, before setting out the methodological act of gathering data through walking drawing upon anecdotes and vignettes from her fieldwork to illustrate the arguments being made.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Throughout the article Moles recognises the importance of pertaining to issues of place and space in a way that accounts for and encompasses its mobility. Moles foregrounds the importance of “recognizing the affinity between personal narratives and the movement through place" (Hall et al. 2006) and attends to a thirdspace of epistemology (1.5). It was through reading ‘A Walk in Thirdspace: Place, Methods and Walking’ that I was introduced to the cultural concept of bimbling, the act of wondering aimlessly through “a co-ingredient environment, which can be harnessed to prompt theretofore unstated or unrecalled knowledge of the life-world” (4.3). Blimbling became a central component within the numerous walking tours that I conducted with and alongside participants and the act of blimbling brought with it numerous methodological gains. Just at Moles notes, blimbling provided space by which dialogue between both the body and mind and the individual and the place can emerged (Anderson 2004). This enabled me to explore the way in which the place, the personal and the cultural interlinked and combined to shape participants' subjective experience of transitioning spatially, affectively and metaphorically between the elite sphere of the university and their working-class locale. Spaces and places mean different things to different peoples in different epochs. Thus the experience of moving within and between is dependent upon the idiosyncrasies of a particular participant and mediated by the social, cultural, political and historical. Familiarising myself with the concept of blimbling and executing said cultural practice within the various walking tours I conducted thereby enabled me to explore the way in which the special practices of participants contributed to their experience of being a working-class student in an elite British university.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Furthermore, through the method of blimbling I was able to translate my pledge to feminist research ethics into practice, most notably the commitment to dismantling hierarchical research relationships insofar as possible. As Hall et al. (2006 cited in Moles 2008) acknowledged, mobile interviews shift the balance of control away from the researcher. Finally, through the method of blimbling, the way in which participants experienced their working-class locale per se was uncovered. This enabled me to access meanings that seldom exist in dominant discourses surrounding working-class localities, council estates and council housing.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.5153/sro.3330"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Dereliction Tourist: Ethical Issues of Conducting Research in Areas of Industrial Ruination by Alice Mah</span></a></h2>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Mah’s ethnographic research was focused upon illuminating the way in which individuals live in and among sites of industrial ruination. Specifically, the research focus “was on places that were caught between being left behind and moving forward” (1.4) in relation to the unequal geography of capitalist development. The research was conducted in areas of industrial ruination in Russia, the UK and North America. In each case study location Mah undertook approximately 20-30 interviews, driving and walking tours of neighbourhoods with research participants, and informal visits with residents in their homes, at community centres, and at various meeting places in their communities. The average time spent in each field site was two months and it is in this vein that Mah noted that the relatively short period of time in each field site “contributed to the sense of being not only an outsider but 'just' a tourist, passing through” (1.5). This, coupled with the fact that the original inspiration for the research derived from Mah’s experience of a cross-country road trip through Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, in addition to her personal fascination with industrial ruins and the subsequent enjoyment of research, led Mah to feel as if she were a “dereliction tourist traipsing around the globe chasing the aesthetics thrills of ‘ruins porn’” (Mah 1.5) as opposed to a sociological ethnographer committed to, and conducting, social justice research. This led Mad to interrogate the role of the 'dereliction tourist' as a way of reflecting critically about the various ethical issues inherent in 'outsider' research. In doing so, the article explored the ethics of “voyeurism, romanticization, and the reproduction of negative stereotypes about marginal people and places” (Mah abstract) and discussed critically the role of an outsider researcher. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Throughout the article there is the critical engagement with the notion of 'ruins porn' (Clemens 2011, Mullins 2012), which Mah summarises to be “a metaphor for the aesthetic, sensory and self-satisfied pleasure of dereliction tourism” (1.1). However, Mah argues, “industrial ruins are only fascinating for some people, typically outsiders, passing by, snapping photos” (1.1). It was at this point that the parallels between the ethical and moral dilemmas inherent in Mah’s fieldwork and that of my own became apparent. I could not help but call into question the ‘enjoyment’ that I had for my doctoral thesis. Here I was especially concerned with interrogating my fascination with my doctoral participants' experiences of transitioning between the elite sphere of the university and their working-class locale, and the moral and ethical implications that were inherent and Mah’s article provided me with the sociological thinking to do so. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">One of the seminal luxuries of doctoral research, I am frequently told by those more senior than myself, is the luxury of time and the subsequent opportunity of endlessly immersing oneself in sociological texts. However, as a doctoral researcher near to submission, I have since reached the point where I am encouraged (or rather told) to read only that which is central to my thesis. My supervisors and peers are often hesitant to recommended readings for fear that I will ‘read the entire thing’. Whilst the skill of instrumental reading is nonetheless one that I am yet to master, for those who possess the luxury of time, I urge you to immerse yourself in wide-ranging sociological texts and when doing so I encourage you to take note of the lessons learned and guidance gleamed…</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/staff/syrnam">Carli Ria Rowell</a> is currently a final year ESRC doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick and a full time teaching fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Sussex.</b></span></h4>
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Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-32623275442903606842018-02-20T04:29:00.000-08:002018-03-21T09:39:24.838-07:00The Sociological Inspiration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />The editors of <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/home/sro"><i>Sociological Research Online</i></a> are pleased to announce the start of a new series that will feature on the SRO blog: ‘The Sociological Inspiration’.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This series offers reflections, from scholars of all career stages, on articles from the journal's back catalogue that have inspired them in some way - perhaps by changing their thinking, motivating their research or improving their teaching.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What’s been your Sociological Inspiration? We’d love to hear from anyone willing to write a reflection of approx. 800 words that highlights at least 1-2 articles from SRO, and up to one more from any of the BSA journals. For further details, or to submit a proposal, please contact the Editorial Office at <a href="mailto:sro.journal@britsoc.org.uk">sro.journal@britsoc.org.uk</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Read:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://socresonline.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/the-sociological-inspiration-part-1.html">The Sociological Inspiration: Part 1</a></span><br />
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Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-89187185554538746392018-01-08T06:31:00.001-08:002018-10-17T04:16:06.102-07:00Books for Review<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/home/sro">Sociological Research Online</a></i> publishes book reviews across the entire spectrum of sociological interests and concerns.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">We welcome reviews of the titles listed below, as well as proposals for reviews of other titles. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">You can find our latest book reviews in our <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/sroa/current">current issue</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you'd like to review for us, please send a request to the Review Editors at <a href="mailto:sro.journal@britsoc.org.uk">sro.journal[at]britsoc.org.uk</a> with the details of your preferred book and a brief outline of your background in the subject area. </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Current Books for Review:</span></b><br />
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<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/after-capital/book262219">After Capital</a><br />Couze Venn</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137371027">Bourdieu and Social
Movements - Ideological Struggles in the British Anti-Capitalist
Movement</a><br />
Joseph Ibrahim</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/british-social-theory/book261260">British Social Theory: Recovering Lost Traditions before 1950</a><br />John Scott </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/caravans-9781350029927/">Caravans: Lives on Wheels in Contemporary Europe</a><br />Hege Høyer Leivestad</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/celebrity-aspiration-and-contemporary-youth-9781474294218/">Celebrity, Aspiration and Contemporary Youth: Education and Inequality in an Era of Austerity </a><br />Heather Mendick, Aisha Ahmad, Kim Allen, Laura Harvey</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319635125">Midwifery, Childbirth and the Media</a><br />Luce, Ann, Hundley, Vanora, van Teijlingen, Edwin (Eds.)</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11264.html"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Misdemeanorland: </span>Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing</a><br />Issa Kohler-Hausmann</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319743844">Responsible Research Practice: Revisiting Transformative Paradigm in Social Research</a><br />Norma Romm</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/squaring-the-circle-on-brexit">Squaring the Circle on Brexit: Could the Norway Model Work?</a><br />John Erik Fossum and Hans Petter Graver</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Transformative-Life-Skills-Students/dp/0393711927">Teaching
Transformative Life Skills to Students</a></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Bidyut Bose, Danielle Ancin, Jennifer Frank, Annika Malik</span></li>
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Sophie Belfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04325656241505998633noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-21839912801507207052017-09-20T04:27:00.000-07:002017-09-27T03:49:31.878-07:00‘Culture is a meritocracy’: Why creative workers’ attitudes may reinforce social inequality<h2>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">There’s now extensive academic work on the creative economy,
to match the public, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/commentisfree/2017/jul/05/cool-britannia-inequality-tony-blair-arts-industry">media</a>
and <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/campaigncountdown/pages/1157/attachments/original/1502725031/Acting-Up-Report.pdf?1502725031">policy</a>
attention. Sociology has been an important disciplinary home for this work,
setting <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09548963.2016.1170943">empirical</a>
and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038038516650593">theoretical</a>
agendas on the creative economy. In this context, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417726732">our new paper in Sociological Research Online</a> aimed to give some new empirical insight to one of the key issues,
inequality, in the creative economy, as well as testing some recent theoretical
innovations. The paper is part of a <a href="https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/event/panic-2018">broader AHRC
funded project on the creative economy.</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">The paper makes three points: </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Our dataset of cultural
workers have attitudes about inequality that are broadly similar to the general
population; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In our dataset, those with the strongest attachment to meritocratic
views, that the cultural sector rewards hard work and talent, are those in the
highest paid occupational locations;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Younger respondents who are well paid
are less likely to hold critical or socially transformative attitudes.</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">To demonstrate these three points it is worth taking a
moment to think about our data. Whilst we are confident in the analysis and the
dataset itself, we do have some caveats. Data were collected in 2015, via an
online survey hosted at <i>The Guardian</i>.
The survey was part of an <a href="http://createlondon.org/event/panic-what-happened-to-social-mobility-in-the-arts/">on-going
partnership between academics and a range of cultural organisations</a> seeking
to understand issues of inequality in the sector. The survey was hosted
prominently on the newspaper’s website, and was repeatedly publicised across
social media and via publicity from prominent organisations in the cultural
sector. Because of this recruitment method, this is not a representative
sample; however, efforts were made to benchmark the sample against more
representative data on the population’s cultural and creative workers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">In total we collected a sample of 2487 people, the largest
survey of this group of which we are aware. We asked a range of questions, but here
we focus on those associated with attitudes towards getting in and getting on
in cultural and creative work. We asked ‘Looking at your creative occupation as a whole, how important do you
think each of these is in getting ahead?’’ and then offered a range of options,
including talent and hard work, class, gender, and ethnicity, amongst others.
These are all well validated and well-known survey instruments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Whilst the full and
detailed analysis is in the paper, we concentrate here on the overall patterns
observed in the dataset.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><b>Figure 1: responses
to the question “Looking at your creative occupation as a whole, how important
do you think each of these is in getting ahead?”</b></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURDTNyJYLMCyoIJYKJTK32aqOlgDH3aRIQjNVbeH7hhOCLv10icGFBr4IDPXO9HkrJNnwBrIU-jDJZFe_xBl0HscW3E7y3AXDM07eXpwqtFPs2dkstqQtowyVf73F-9-J9-zjQQGHnd4/s1600/Unknown-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="950" data-original-width="1300" height="467" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjURDTNyJYLMCyoIJYKJTK32aqOlgDH3aRIQjNVbeH7hhOCLv10icGFBr4IDPXO9HkrJNnwBrIU-jDJZFe_xBl0HscW3E7y3AXDM07eXpwqtFPs2dkstqQtowyVf73F-9-J9-zjQQGHnd4/s640/Unknown-1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">The responses to
each option are presented in Figure 1. This shows that respondents tended to
agree that hard work, ambition, talent, and knowing the right people are very
important or essential in getting ahead, while they were more sceptical about
the role of coming from a wealthy family, class, religion, gender, and ethnicity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Of these original
eleven options, we generated three factors using principal components analysis.
The three factors were around social reproduction, that characteristics such as
class, ethnicity, and gender were important to success; meritocracy, that characteristics
such as hard work and talent were important; and education. Of the three factors,
social reproduction and meritocracy were the key explanations identified by our
respondents for getting in and getting on in the cultural sector.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 2: individual
scores on the “Meritocracy” and “Reproduction” factors</span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1169" data-original-width="1600" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY6BLFEtR31Njn0P5FNxco8P_uLwoj01mBfBWL3ZzazBXLdr67we7uJ46RRDENlnClPbmL3DDnRa_zgW5A8m2-wv3CJd9VnYSCxnrHeEop1oTSQZQMQL30FVLQU3G56navnYWxWS2Dha8/s400/Unknown.png" width="400" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Figure 2 shows
the pattern of our respondents’ answers relating to meritocracy and social
reproduction. At the top left hand corner we find those respondents most
strongly attached to the idea that talent and hard work explains getting in and
getting on in CCIs, while not thinking that class and knowing the right people
are important. These respondents narrate the sector as ‘meritocratic’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">By contrast, those respondents clustered in the bottom right
hand corner were most likely to explain getting in and getting on as an aspect
of ‘social reproduction’. These respondents emphasised social barriers or
exclusions, rather than talent or hard work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, those respondents in the top right corner were
those who emphasised both social reproduction and meritocracy: those believing
hard work and talent are essential, but acknowledging the roles of barriers and
exclusions. Those respondents in the bottom left corner emphasise neither, perhaps
believing that success in the CCIs is more-or-less random.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Figure 1 showed us that the majority of respondents believed
that factors associated with meritocracy were crucial in getting ahead in the
cultural sector, while they were more sceptical about social reproduction. How
did this vary? In the paper, we found that people’s income from creative work
was one of the best predictors. Figure 3 shows that people who were less
well-paid in the sector had varying attitudes towards getting ahead, but that the
people who were better-paid are overwhelmingly in the top left quadrant, not
only believing in the importance of meritocracy but being more sceptical of the
role of social reproduction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Figure 3: individual
scores on the “Meritocracy” and “Reproduction” factors, by income from creative
work </span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="clear: right; float: right; font-size: large; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1308" data-original-width="1600" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM79FjyQfBxK22inap3AdPNVjaiQvgcg1Nsz2iKwiMniXPbsPs2mbWREtL3F6akJyYqE5waVroWRBhGBgHvqTSIJt6rFEg6Y_6QLPlgVykKrbHSrNJDXgSMis7yicQnKR9PKiplfdZIyk/s400/Unknown-2.png" width="400" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">These results make fairly grim reading for those who hope that inequalities in the cultural and creative industries might diminish. Almost everyone believes that hard work, talent, and ambition are essential to getting ahead, while class, gender, ethnicity, and coming from a wealthy family aren’t. People in better positions in the sector – those who are the most highly-paid, and most likely to recruit and elevate the next generation – believe most strongly in the meritocratic account of the sector, and are most sceptical of the role of social reproduction. Most strikingly, these attitudes persist whether people come from privileged backgrounds or not; it seems that once people have achieved success within the sector, their attitudes towards how one achieves success are similar regardless of background, and in spite of all the media, policy and public outcry about the inherent unfairness of cultural and creative work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This post is based on research published in Sociological Research Online. The original article can be found <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1360780417726732">here</a>.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Mark Taylor</b> is Q-Step Lecturer in Quantitative Methods (Sociology) at the Sheffield Methods Institute at the University of Sheffield. His research interests are in the sociology of culture and its relationship to inequality, in terms of consumption, production, education, and the relationships between all three, and he teaches quantitative methods and data visualisation.</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Dave O’Brien</b> is Chancellor’s Fellow in Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Edinburgh, based in the School of History of Art. He is the author of Cultural Policy: Management, Value and Modernity in the Creative Industries, and the editor of After Urban Regeneration, The Routledge Companion to Global Cultural Policy and Routledge Critical Concepts in Culture and Media Studies: Cultural Policy. He is currently working on inequality and the cultural and creative industries.</span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-30988254007248831232017-08-24T05:52:00.002-07:002017-08-24T05:54:47.898-07:00What is the impact of my outsider/insider status on the research process?<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">By Dr Irene Zempi </span></b></h4>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In this blog, I will summarise some of the key issues from my
recent article on <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.5153/sro.4080">‘Negotiating constructions of insider and outsider status in research with veiled Muslim women victims of Islamophobic hate crime’.</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Following terrorist attacks such as 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the
UK, bias, prejudice, hostility and ‘hate’ towards Muslims in the West has increased
significantly. Muslim women who wear the face veil (niqab) are particularly
vulnerable to Islamophobic attacks in public due to the visibility of their
Muslim identity. Against this background, my doctoral research examined veiled
Muslim women’s experiences of Islamophobia in public places in the UK. Specifically,
I employed a qualitative approach, which included 60 individual interviews and
20 group interviews with veiled Muslim women who had experienced Islamophobic
attacks in public in the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In qualitative research, critical reflexivity is important. Both
researchers and participants have multiple identities. Critical reflexivity
entails reflecting upon how similarities and differences between the researcher
and the researched might influence the research process and the knowledge
produced. Within the framework of critical reflexivity, an understanding of the
advantages and limitations of researchers’ insider/outsider status can enable them
to better prepare for and tackle the challenges of producing reliable and
ethical research findings. As an Orthodox Christian woman, my research was
primarily from an ‘outsider’ position. An ‘insider’ is a researcher who belongs
to the group to which their participants also belong based on characteristics
such as religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity, while an ‘outsider’ is
not a member of that group. A common argument in the research literature is
that insider researchers are more likely to be able to understand and represent
participants’ experiences. This can be particularly important in research with groups
that have been under-represented and socially/culturally marginalised. In
contrast, some of the perceived benefits for the outsider researcher include
the apparent objectivity that being detached provides. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 252.0pt 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In light of
my non-Muslim identity, access to potential participants was initially
challenging. I found that participants were keen to establish my motivations
for researching their experiences of Islamophobia before agreeing to take part
in this study. I found that being open, authentic, honest and deeply interested
in their lives encouraged openness and trust between the participants and
myself, and helped to assuage any suspicions about my motives. Also, the fact
that when interrogated about my faith, I answered that I was an Orthodox
Christian seemed, in the majority of cases, to contribute towards the idea that
I was a person with good morals who followed a religious code, and therefore,
could be trusted. Therefore, I was a partial insider not as a Muslim but as
someone who holds strong religious beliefs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Moreover, I
found that during the interviews and group discussions participants were
willing to explain things in detail, and voluntarily ‘educated’ me about their
lives because of my non-Muslim status. Relatedly, some participants told me
that they were keen to talk to non-Muslims in order to dispel myths about
Islam. In this regard, I found that many participants were concerned about the implications
of what they had to say, as they felt they were seen as representatives of
Islam. By answering my questions participants knew they were contributing in
some way to outsiders’ perceptions of Muslims. They felt the duty/burden of
projecting a good image of Islam to non-Muslims. Whilst this question of
individuals feeling representative of Islam at times affected the direction of
the interviews, in some cases this was probably the trigger that convinced some
participants to agree to participate in the study. As such, being perceived as
an outsider has a value in terms of encouraging individuals to take part in the
study. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nonetheless, although
I was an outsider in terms of my religious identity, I was an insider in that I
was a woman. This is important because it highlights one of the ways in which
the categories insider and outsider are not necessarily clear-cut and fixed. Despite
explicit religious differences between me and the participants, I empathised
with them through our shared identity as women. In this sense, I used my gender
identity to establish rapport and trust with the veiled Muslim women who took
part in the study. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Throughout
the study, critical reflexivity enabled me to work towards a deeper
understanding and awareness of my own identity and how this interacted with the
identity of my participants. Through the process of critical reflexivity, I
regularly questioned my methodology and deconstructed my interactions with the
veiled Muslim women who took part in the study. Similarly, I questioned my
understanding and representation of veiled Muslim women’s lived experiences.
Critical reflexivity also helped me to continually re-evaluate methodological,
analytical and ethical research processes as the research progressed. Ultimately,
critical reflexivity proved to be a very useful methodological tool in the
knowledge production in this study. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif;"><i>Dr Irene Zempi is a Lecturer in Criminology
at Nottingham Trent University. Irene is the co-author of the books <a href="https://policypress.co.uk/islamophobia">Islamophobia:Lived Experiences of Online and Offline Victimisation</a> (Policy Press, 2016
with Dr Imran Awan) and <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137356147">Islamophobia, Victimisation and the Veil</a>
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 with Dr Neil Chakraborti).</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-37243746426487854762016-11-09T14:07:00.004-08:002018-05-04T05:43:12.871-07:00Understanding the Complexities of Inclusive Masculinity Through the Footy Show<div class="MsoNormal">
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #191919;">Ryan Scoats and Adam White discuss their </span><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.5153/sro.4044">recent article in SRO</a></span></h4>
</div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;">A growing acceptance of homosexuality in
society is not just good for sexual minorities, but it also has a knock-on effect
for the ways that all men behave. In the past, a suspicion of homosexuality has
often been based on effeminate behaviours, like men wearing pink or holding
hands. Any boy not attempting to embody, or at least endorsing traditional
notions of masculinity, would therefore be singled out as feminine, and thus, a
fag. However, when men no longer fear being thought of as homosexual—because
being homosexual is no longer considered a bad thing—this broadens the range of
behaviours available to them. When men are able to choose their behaviours more
freely, not fearing stigmatization, being associated with that which were once
considered 'symbols of femininity' no longer has the same meaning. This is
something we are seeing within Western cultures of masculinities, particularly
amongst younger generations of men. For contemporary masculinity, having an
interest in fashion, crying during a film, or spooning with another man no
longer carry with them a homosexualising stigma. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;">This change in attitudes towards
masculinity can be understood through Eric </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Inclusive-Masculinity-The-Changing-Nature-of-Masculinities/Anderson/p/book/9780415804622"><span lang="EN-US">Anderson’s
inclusive masculinity theory</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;">.
Anderson says that as men's fear of being though gay declines, a wider array of
male behaviours are socially acceptable. Inclusive masculinity theory has been
used by many to explain the </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13573322.2015.1112779?journalCode=cses20"><span lang="EN-US">improved
attitudes towards gay men in sport</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;">, </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://jar.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/18/0743558415607059.abstract"><span lang="EN-US">increasing
physical tactility</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;"> between guys and the social
development of both metrosexuality and bromances. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;">Yet, </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://jmm.sagepub.com/content/18/1/100.short"><span lang="EN-US">some have mistaken
these optimistic findings as suggestive of a gender utopia</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;">. Unfortunately, not all areas of society change at the same rate. Some
areas of society do, and will continue to exhibit higher levels of homophobia
as well as be more prone to gender policing. Those who continue to subscribe to
orthodox/traditional notions of masculinity are unlikely to embrace new, softer
forms of masculinity. With this in mind, our recent research in Sociological
Research Online looks at these contrasting cultures of masculinity through the
lens of the media; specifically </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.5153/sro.4044"><span lang="EN-US">Australia's weeklyrugby league show: 'The NRL Footy Show'</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The Footy Show airs every Thursday
typically after 8.30pm Australian Eastern Time. It has run for 23 consecutive
seasons since 1994 and usually involves 3 to 4 consistent co-hosts whom are
regularly supplemented with ancillary hosts who are namely current rugby league
players and/or other athletes. The show consists of various scripted segments
related to rugby league as well as interactions with current players. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #191919; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: SegoeUI;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Using a content analysis to examine three
separate episodes of the show, we found there to be inconsistent messages put
forward around masculinity. Whereas the scripted portions of the show presented
orthodox notions of masculinity, including casual misogyny, the valorisation of
violence, and condemnation of femininity, this stood in contrast to the guests
on the show: current players. Instead, these guests demonstrated more
‘feminised’ behaviours such as vulnerability, being in touch with their
emotions, or flamboyancy. We interpret this this disparity in ‘message’ as a generational
divide between the ‘old’ proponent’s orthodox masculinity and the ‘young’s’
inclusive masculinity. The show seems intended to appeal to those socialised in
an era where extreme homophobia was compulsory to achieve masculinity. This
culture of relative orthodoxy, however, stands in contrast to the younger
athletes appearing on the show who were cultivated in an era more acceptable of
homosexuals and feminine practices. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It would, however, be simplistic to simply
view this as a clash of cultures—the old versus the new—and the show attempts
to navigate this disparity through the use of humour. We suggest that the </span>makers of the show recognise that the audience
no longer universally values orthodox masculinity, nor is it exalted by the
players they feature on the show. It is for this reason that the show aims to
shape a version of appropriate masculinity through humour. The tongue-in-cheek
style of the show suggests that all involved know that misogynistic and
homophobic statements are now socially unacceptable. However, this humour
allows for plausible deniability in their position. Thus, this strategy enables
the show to straddle the intergenerational divide: reinforcing traditional masculinity
to those with more orthodox appetites, whilst at the same time couching their
activities/language in humour that allows for the younger generation to
interpret them as innocuous banter. <span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-2904747152218823022016-10-16T18:58:00.003-07:002018-04-04T09:11:13.596-07:00Resisting Gentrification<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By Phil Hubbard </span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This blog offers some reflections on the recent SRO 'Rapid Response' in volume 21 issue 3.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In
my forthcoming book </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.palgrave.com/la/book/9781137521521#aboutAuthors"><i>The Battle for The High Street</i></a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span lang="EN-US">,</span></i></span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I argue policies for the regeneration
of British High Streets have been accepted almost without question, to the
extent few appear to be making the equation between the gentrification they are
promoting and the displacement of the poorer in society. It’s this that I
comment on in my Sociological Research Online </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/1.html">paper</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, which is one of nine
in a rapid response section of the journal on the theme of assessing the
impacts of, and resisting, gentrification. While gentrification is a fairly hoary
academic concept, and something that has been evident in the major cities of
the urban West for many decades, this call was issued in response to the
current ubiquity of gentrification as a process that has now effectively
displaced the working class from central London in a manner that now demands
urgent attention. Witness not just the ‘hipsterfication’ of inner city
districts like Hackney, Shoreditch and Brixton, and the ironic consumption of
landscapes of poverty and austerity commented on by Eleanor Wilkinson in her </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/2.html">paper</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, but also
the redevelopment of inner city council estate housing by cash strapped local
authorities who are thrall to the property conglomerates who see little profit
in constructing social housing. As Mara Ferreri and Luna Glucksberg argue in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/4.html">their piece</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, between
2005 and 2032 over 70 council estates have been or will be affected by
'regeneration' schemes, many of which require wholesale estate demolition and
redevelopment as mixed-tenure, with more than 820,500 m<sup>2</sup> of land
changing ownership from public to private, affecting over 150,000 Londoners,
between tenants, leaseholders and freeholders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EN-US">What
is particularly disheartening for those critical scholars determined to
challenge such accelerating processes of gentrification is that these processes
have be represented as not just inevitable but morally defensible: the
gentrifier is seen to have earned their ‘right to the city’, and those that
they marginalize or displace are regarded as having lost this right. It has
taken the </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://focuse15.org/">E15 mothers campaign</a></span><span lang="EN-US">, and the
attendant publicity they have gained, to even question this, and for at least
some to come to the conclusion that working class communities might have the
right to remain in the neighbourhoods and communities that they have
constructed over many decades. But there is perhaps not enough said about the
way the city has been taken from the working classes, and, as Waquant suggests,
perhaps too much emphasis placed on the aesthetic and cultural ‘improvements’
associated with the arrival of artistic, hip middle class gentrifiers who have
taken over inner London, and transformed landscapes of ‘austerity’ with spaces
of spectacular, artful consumption.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This
erasure of critical perspectives isn’t simply limited to London, being repeated
in other national contexts. Even in the US, where gentrification has been most
debated, critics sometimes appear somewhat ambivalent about urban upscaling. For
example, Sharon Zukin – perhaps the most influential interpreter of changing
patterns of culture and capital in the contemporary city – adopts an almost
celebratory tone in some of her descriptions of the gentrification of East
Village, New York, arguing that<span style="color: #262626;"> ‘far from
destroying a community by commercial gentrification, East Ninth Street suggests
that a retail concentration of designer stores may be a territory of innovation
in the urban economy, producing both a marketable and a sociable neighbourhood
node’; elsewhere she argues that Orchard Street, also on the Lower East Side,
has been ‘successfully revitalized by new investment, restaurants and retail
stores’, shaking off its ‘ghetto image’ with no attendant ‘crisis in moral
ownership.’ Here, there’s little said about class conflicts, with the obvious
onset of re-gentrification scripted as regenerative rather than necessarily
driving a wedge between the poorer and the more affluent. </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">What
seems to be happening here is a collective amnesia about why we study
gentrification: that is, to expose the processes which result in the
displacement of working class populations from the spaces where they live and
work. A book still little known beyond those working in queer activism, but highly
pertinent in this context is Sarah Schulman’s (2012) </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520280069"><i>The
Gentrification of the Mind: witness to a lost imagination</i></a></span><i><span lang="EN-GB">.</span></i><span lang="EN-GB"> This is a slim but powerful book in
which she makes connections between the consequences of AIDS, the literal
gentrification of the city and a ‘diminished consciousness’ about how political
and social change occurs. Her argument, though backed up by anecdote rather
than empirical data, is powerfully persuasive, and relates to what she sees as
the erasure of a ‘queer urban ecology’ due to the combined effects of deaths
from HIV, in the first instance, and, secondly, the gentrification of New York.
Here, she hypothesizes the injection of new middle class money into previously
mixed neighbourhoods – many of which were decimated by HIV – created spaces
more homogeneous in class terms than their predecessors. The eviction of the
less affluent, she argued, reduced urbanity: white middle class suburban
cultural values came to reign where previously diverse ones had mingled and
clashed. Yet, over time, she argues these gentrified neighbourhoods became
normalized as made by the middle classes, with incomers forgetting these
neighbourhoods had even existed before they ‘created’ them. As she sees it, the
failure of the gentrifiers – many of them gay white men – to acknowledge the
previous lower class inhabitants of the area, including people of colour who
had been active in the struggle against AIDS, is testament to ‘the loss of a
generation’s ideas’. As Shulmann states, gentrified happiness requires the
gentrification of the mind, and the forgetting of what has been suffered – and
achieved – by previous generations. The physical landscape has then adapted to
the consumer demand for familiarity, and adopted a bland homogeneity that, in
her words, “hides the apparatus of domination from the dominant themselves”. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This
argument, though specific to a particular queer struggle, has considerable
resonance for thinking about the wider struggles surrounding gentrification,
and our inability as academics to organise effective forms of resistance to
this phenomena. While not all academics are middle class, there is a sense in
which we are all seduced by new emergent landscapes of middle class consumption
and gentrified living.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">As
we wander around spaces like Soho, which Erin Sanders-McDonagh, Magali
Peyrefitte and Matt Ryalls </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/3.html">argue</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> is now seen as edgy,
but not seedy, with its mixture of chic restaurants, designer stores, and
creative businesses, we are also fooled into thinking this represents true
urbanity because it appears so bohemian, not bourgeois, and seems to signal
cultural acceptance, diversity and opportunity. But this diversity is only
available to those who can afford it, and gentrified areas like Soho are far
from accessible or open to all. The middle class, particularly its creative
factions, imagine their access to food, art and culture in Soho is due to their
personal worth and hard work, yet their wealth is partly a function of their
ability to define taste in favour of forms of cultural capital they are able to
transform into economic capital. The gentrified neighbourhood of Soho sets the
standard for acceptability, normalizing the tastes and proclivities of the
middle-class consumer in the process and embedding it within a particular
imagination of swinging, creative London. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Schulman
argues gentrification is the removal of the truly dynamic mix that defines
urbanity, the privileging of a particular set of class dispositions and the
disavowal of others. Despite initially appearing bohemian and edgy, Soho shuns real
social diversity and mix in favour of an upmarket form of consumption that
feigns cosmopolitanism, looks good, and feels safe, but is palpably not for
all. But somehow this exclusionary logic has been forgotten. A gentrification
of the mind has occurred. We still go to somewhere like Soho to experience
urbanity, the juxtapositions of grit and glitter that have defined the urban
condition, and taught us the importance of encountering difference. But it’s
apparent that, despite nods to the contrary, Soho, like many other inner London
neighbourhoods, how boasts an </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">ersazt</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
urbanity not rooted in any particular time or place.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But
if the future of our central city is not as a gentrified bubble serving only
the affluent, then what is it to be? Here, my own observations on the role of
High Streets in promoting vernacular creativity, conviviality, and senses of
belonging suggest that representations of incivility and abandonment should not
be allowed to dominate in descriptions of working class areas. Following
Suzanne Hall’s study of Peckham High Street and other ‘ordinary spaces’, I
conclude it’s vital that we value working class districts as, in Hall’s words, these
are ‘shared local spaces shaped by habitual associations rather than outright
compatibilities’, with the ‘aggregation of small spaces and diverse groups’
often creating deeply rooted ‘local’ cultures and senses of belonging. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">But quite how we might defend working class communities in the
face of post-political discourses that elides questions of rights in favour of
a rhetoric which equates gentrification with regeneration and, as </span><span lang="EN-GB">Hamil
Pearsall and Isabelle Anguelovski </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/6.html">argue</a></span><span lang="EN-GB">, environmental
improvement, remains open to debate. The purpose of this rapid response section
is to raise such questions, and to explore how diverse processes of
gentrification require different forms of resistance, such as the<span style="color: #262626;"> ‘lobbying campaigns against revenge evictions,
anti-eviction action, welfare cuts, housing corruption’ </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/9.html">described by Kirsteen
Paton and Vickie Cooper</a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #262626;">, or the squatting
activism </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/5.html">detailed by Sandra Annunziata and Loretta Lees</a></span><span lang="EN-GB"> in the
context of Southern Europe.<span style="color: #262626;"> But perhaps they also
require us all, as critical scholars, to be a bit more discerning in our own
consumption and lifestyle habits, perhaps looking for more ethical alternatives
to the Air B&B accommodation that is one of the prime battlegrounds of
gentrification </span>(as </span><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/3/10.html">Agustín Cócola Gant argues</a></span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> in the
context of Barcelona) or refusing to frequent the hipster businesses that are
overwhelming some of the neighbourhoods where ethnic and class diversity
previously reigned.</span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-55250835953885796472015-12-17T03:35:00.004-08:002015-12-17T03:35:59.829-08:00Gender, Intimacy, Equality
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">By Charlotte Faircloth
and Katherine Twamley <o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
This blog accompanies the special section we edited on
gender, intimacy and equality. Here, we give some background to the workshop
which led to the special section, explore some of the key themes which emerged,
and describe the kinds of conversations and reflections which the workshop
provoked (and which we hope the special section continues…).<o:p></o:p><br />
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The topics of gender, equality and intimacy were selected as
the basis for a workshop based on our own interest, and from our observation
that recent scholarship has begun to unpack their intersections, particularly
in the context of personal life <!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:
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style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA <![if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Jamieson 1998, Smart 2007, Gabb 2008)</span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->.
One conclusion of this work has been that, while some theorists predicted a
straightforward correlation between greater ‘equality’ between men and women,
and enhanced intimacy in personal relationships <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>ADDIN EN.CITE
<EndNote><Cite><Author>Beck</Author><Year>1995</Year><RecNum>161</RecNum><DisplayText>(see,
for example Giddens 1992, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995)</DisplayText><record><rec-number>161</rec-number><foreign-keys><key
app="EN" db-id="z00ppx2wsfzde3exxsl5dsdwfvwwr9apf5ws"
timestamp="1418385792">161</key></foreign-keys><ref-type
name="Book">6</ref-type><contributors><authors><author>Beck,
U,</author><author>Beck-Gernsheim,
E,</author></authors></contributors><titles><title>The
Normal Chaos of
Love</title></titles><dates><year>1995</year></dates><pub-location>Cambridge</pub-location><publisher>Polity
Press</publisher><urls></urls></record></Cite><Cite><Author>Giddens</Author><Year>1992</Year><RecNum>100</RecNum><Prefix>see`,
for example
</Prefix><record><rec-number>100</rec-number><foreign-keys><key
app="EN" db-id="z00ppx2wsfzde3exxsl5dsdwfvwwr9apf5ws"
timestamp="0">100</key></foreign-keys><ref-type
name="Book">6</ref-type><contributors><authors><author>Giddens,
A</author></authors></contributors><titles><title>The
Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern
Societies</title></titles><dates><year>1992</year></dates><pub-location>Stanford,
California</pub-location><publisher>Stanford University
Press</publisher><call-num>Previously
read</call-num><urls></urls></record></Cite></EndNote><span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(see, for example Giddens 1992, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->, this has not necessarily
been the case. Instead, empirically grounded work has revealed the three
concepts of gender, intimacy and equality to be ‘uncomfortable bedfellows’. An
important trend in this work, then, has been to explore the clash between
‘ideal’ relationships promoted by policy, expert and self-help literature, on
the one hand, and the pragmatics of family life, on the other <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>ADDIN EN.CITE
<EndNote><Cite><Author>Gillies</Author><Year>2009</Year><RecNum>13</RecNum><DisplayText>(Gillies
2009, Jensen and Tyler 2013)</DisplayText><record><rec-number>13</rec-number><foreign-keys><key
app="EN" db-id="z00ppx2wsfzde3exxsl5dsdwfvwwr9apf5ws"
timestamp="0">13</key></foreign-keys><ref-type
name="Journal
Article">17</ref-type><contributors><authors><author>Gillies,
V,</author></authors></contributors><titles><title>Understandings
and experiences of involved fathering in the United Kingdom: Exploring classed
dimensions</title><secondary-title>The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social
Science</secondary-title></titles><periodical><full-title>The
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science</full-title></periodical><volume>624</volume><number>July</number><dates><year>2009</year></dates><urls></urls></record></Cite><Cite><Author>Jensen</Author><Year>2013</Year><RecNum>275</RecNum><record><rec-number>275</rec-number><foreign-keys><key
app="EN" db-id="z00ppx2wsfzde3exxsl5dsdwfvwwr9apf5ws"
timestamp="1438773626">275</key></foreign-keys><ref-type
name="Journal Article">17</ref-type><contributors><authors><author>Jensen,
T.,</author><author>Tyler, I.,</author></authors></contributors><titles><title>Austerity
Parenting: new economies of parent
citizenship</title><secondary-title>Studies in the
Maternal</secondary-title></titles><periodical><full-title>Studies
in the Maternal</full-title></periodical><volume>4</volume><number>2</number><dates><year>2013</year></dates><urls></urls></record></Cite></EndNote><span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Gillies 2009, Jensen and Tyler 2013)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
In April 2014, we – the editors of this new special section
of SRO – convened an event at the IOE in London entitled <a href="http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gender-equality-and-intimacy-uncomfortable-bedfellows-tickets-9415368621"><b><span style="background: white; border: 1pt windowtext; color: #9f9f9f; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; padding: 0cm;">‘Gender,
Equality and Intimacy: (Un)comfortable bedfellows?’</span></b></a><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="background: white; color: #444444;">This workshop was set up to explore further how such
connections between equality and intimacy are experienced by men, women and
families. </span></span>At the workshop we aimed to create a dialogue between
junior and senior researchers, with presenters pre-submitting papers on new and
emerging empirical research, whilst respondents reflected on the papers’
theoretical contributions to the field. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Drawing on very different empirical examples, the authors in
this resulting special section explore how discourses of appropriate sexual
intimacy shape the personal lives of men and women, and focus on two themes in
particular: <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Representing
sexuality<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The first three papers examine representations of sexuality
in sex advice literature and ‘communities’, and the ways that these exert
influence on individuals’ experiences of intimacy in particularly gendered
ways. Introducing these papers, Professor Ros Gill noted that the pieces are
very ‘brave, difficult and challenging pieces of research’, which all, in
different ways, reject the optimistic treatise of the transformation of
intimacy school. They all also look at notions of mediation and story-telling
in intimate narratives, which intersect with gendered power relationships in
important ways. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/4/4.html">first paper</a>, from van Hooff, for example, explores
married women’s experiences of sex as these relate to idealised images of the
couple relationship; the paper problematizes what van Hooff calls (after
Jackson) ‘everyday, mundane, conventional sexual lives’ <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>ADDIN EN.CITE
<EndNote><Cite><Author>Jackson</Author><Year>2008</Year><RecNum>270</RecNum><Suffix>:
34</Suffix><DisplayText>(Jackson 2008:
34)</DisplayText><record><rec-number>270</rec-number><foreign-keys><key
app="EN" db-id="z00ppx2wsfzde3exxsl5dsdwfvwwr9apf5ws"
timestamp="1438772363">270</key></foreign-keys><ref-type
name="Journal Article">17</ref-type><contributors><authors><author>Jackson,
S.,</author></authors></contributors><titles><title>Ordinary
Sex</title><secondary-title>Sexualities</secondary-title></titles><periodical><full-title>Sexualities</full-title></periodical><pages>33-37</pages><volume>11</volume><number>1/2</number><dates><year>2008</year></dates><urls></urls></record></Cite></EndNote><span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Jackson 2008: 34)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:
field-end'></span><![endif]-->. This paper explores the considerable gaps
between aspiration and experience for many of her participants, a theme picked
up by <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/4/1.html">Woodiwiss</a>, who looks at women’s responses to what she calls a narrative
of ‘compulsory sexuality’ in self-help literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both these papers focus on the ways in which
cultural narratives around appropriate (hetero)sexuality impact on understanding
of self and intimate relationships. These narratives around gender appropriate
sexuality form the subject of the third article by <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/4/5.html">O’Neill</a>, who looks in
particular at the commercialisation of intimacy through a study of men in the
‘seduction community’ in London. This is both a chilling and fascinating
case-study into an increasingly ‘mediated’ intimacy. O’Neill argues that the
seduction community can be seen as ‘of a neoliberal sensibility or rationality
to the domain of personal and intimate life’ (p8). The implications of
O’Neill’s analysis, in terms of gender equality, are bleak: the men view women
as objects to attain - women who are ‘consumed’ and paraded as markers of
status. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
All three papers show how discourses of ‘normal’ sexual
behaviour are governing the lives of men and women. ‘Good housekeeping has now
been replaced by “good sex-making”’ <!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>ADDIN EN.CITE
<EndNote><Cite><Author>Hawkes</Author><Year>1996</Year><RecNum>271</RecNum><Suffix>:121</Suffix><DisplayText>(Hawkes
1996:121)</DisplayText><record><rec-number>271</rec-number><foreign-keys><key
app="EN" db-id="z00ppx2wsfzde3exxsl5dsdwfvwwr9apf5ws"
timestamp="1438772519">271</key></foreign-keys><ref-type
name="Book">6</ref-type><contributors><authors><author>Hawkes,
G.,</author></authors></contributors><titles><title>A
Sociology of Sex and
Sexuality</title></titles><dates><year>1996</year></dates><pub-location>Buckingham</pub-location><publisher>Open
University Press</publisher><urls></urls></record></Cite></EndNote><span
style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]--><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Hawkes 1996:121)</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:
field-end'></span><![endif]--> as Van Hooff comments (p9).<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Discussing the papers, Dr Meg John Barker noted that as
someone who tries to both write, and criticise ‘self-help’ literature, these
papers were particularly useful in thinking about the way in which we treat
both ourselves (and others) as objects. Barker also commented on the
relationship between emotional and sexual intimacy, noting that in all papers,
these different kinds of intimacy were conceptually separated, while in ‘real
life’ they tend to be conflated. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sexuality and parenting <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
The
second three papers look at sexuality and intimacy in the context of parenting.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
Commenting
on this, Dr Esther Dermott noted that the reason parenting raises questions of
gender equality is because it’s the organisation of parenting tasks and
responsibilities which seems to be the stumbling block, time and again, for
gender equality. Whilst transformations have happened in the realm of paid
work, this has not been matched in the domestic sphere. Similarly, the
suggestion that the transformation of fatherhood is the answer to this problem does
not seem to be the case – instead, research shows that ‘intimate’ fatherhood might
mean ‘new-ness’ without necessarily transforming gender relations. Rather than
continuing with this line of analysis, however, she noted that the papers here take
the focus off fatherhood, and refreshingly look at gender equality in parenting
through different lenses. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
For
example, <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/4/7.html">Layne’s paper</a> uses the case study of a ‘single mother by choice’
showing the uncomfortable relationship between parenting culture and the couple
relationship as traditionally defined. Layne’s research participant, Carmen,
happily avoids the compromises involved in a marriage. She wonders whether
marital intimacy is laden with negotiation around household labour and intimate
exchanges. Like Van Hoof’s participants who are in relationships, she expects
men to want to have sex more often than women and is reticent to enter into a
relationship where having sex, even when not wanting to, may be ‘part of the
deal’. Carmen’s intensive approach to parenting, whether in part caused by lack
of a romantic partner, also prohibits making more intimate adult connections. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/4/3.html">Faircloth</a>,
by contrast, explores how couples manage transitions around intimacy as they
become parents, looking in particular at the tensions between an ‘intensive’
parenting culture and a strong emphasis within the couple on the importance of
sex and intimacy. By taking into account the policy context shaping parents’
lives, especially their division of care, Faircloth explores the role of the
state in shaping the intimate lives of parents. <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/4/6.html">Morris</a> pursues the same themes
but through work with single mothers, showcasing the competing accountabilities
single mothers feel they must accommodate in order to avoid charges of
deviance. Gender inequality pushed them out of relationships, but also left
them vulnerable once out of them, economically, socially and emotionally. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="-ms-text-justify: inter-ideograph; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-language: JA;">What becomes apparent cross
both sets of papers, are the ways in which </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-size: 23.0pt; mso-fareast-language: JA;">men and women are increasingly treating their
intimate lives as projects of improvement and individual endeavor, which
Professor Gill referred to as the ‘toxic individualization of intimacy’.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Brought together, the six
articles from the special section unpack the ways that enduring gendered
discourses, whether ‘mediated’ through policy, social discourse or self-help
literature, shape intimate life, and the ways in which individuals attempt to
make sense of these in their narratives and intimate practices. Far from being
a straightforward correlation between greater gender equality and intimacy, a
look at shifting sexual practices across a range of settings shows that this
relationship appears to be more fraught than ever. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-86999392321411134602015-09-24T02:21:00.000-07:002015-09-24T02:21:00.207-07:00Measuring Paternal Involvement in Childcare and Housework
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Helen Norman and Mark Elliot, University of Manchester<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">How to measure the involvement of
fathers in childcare is a matter of wide debate (e.g. Dermott 2008, 2003;
Williams 2008; Mikelson 2008; Sanderson and Sanders-Thompson 2002; Cabrera et
al 2000; McBride and Mills 1993; Lamb 1986). This is in contrast to the concept
of maternal involvement, which is universalised and taken for granted (Miller
2010; 2011).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Paternal involvement is challenging to define and measure in quantitative
research because it is a subjective and manifests itself in varied ways (e.g.
see Dermott 2008; Pleck 2010; Palkovitz 1997). Yet a precise measurement of the
term would prove useful for creating a benchmark for further research and
conceptual elaboration as well as a reliable means for </span>assessing the
factors associated with being an ‘involved father’<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Simplifying a complex term into a quantitative
measure allows us to capture and summarise a diverse set of practices that
reaches out to all types of fathers. This is particularly useful for exploring
paternal involvement across a large cohort of fathers in order to help inform
UK policy debates on both fathers' and mothers' work-family reconciliation,
which has been a key concern for all UK Governments since the 1990’s. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In our </span><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/2/7.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">paper</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">, published
in Sociological Research Online, we derive two measures of paternal involvement
using household data from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study. These measures are
based on two dimensions of paternal involvement coined by Michael Lamb in 1986:
‘engagement’ and ‘responsibility’. Engagement represents the one-to-one
interaction time with the child such as feeding the child, helping the child
with their homework and playing. Responsibility is defined as knowing in detail
what childcare needed and ensuring it is provided by anticipating, planning and
arranging provision. For example, knowing when the child needs to go to the
doctor, making the appointment and ensuring the child gets to it is
responsibility – going with the child to the doctors and talking to them about
it is engagement. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another way in which a
father might evidence responsibility is through maintaining a clean and safe
standard of living for the child i.e. housework. This also relieves the other
parent (i.e. the mother) of these tasks so that she can concentrate on other
activities such as looking after the child.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In order to derive our two measures, we use variables from the MCS that
measure the fathers' accounts of their childcare practices when children are
very young and the mothers' reports on fathers' contributions to housework.
This use of a combination of mothers' and fathers' reports for different
variables is primarily driven by the structure of the MCS questionnaire design
but doing this also allows us to gain a balanced perspective of fathers'
involvement. We use three different factor analytic techniques to derive our
measures or ‘factors’. Factor analysis works by reducing a large number of
variables to a smaller number of factors that can be used in subsequent analyses.
Our factor analyses confirmed the existence of ‘engagement’ and
‘responsibility’ factors in the data.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We then explored the relationship between socio-demographic, attitudinal
and employment variables, and paternal engagement and responsibility. Our
results show that fathers are more likely to be engaged and responsible when
they work shorter hours or have a partner who works longer hours.
Interestingly, mothers' employment hours had a higher correlation with paternal
engagement and responsibility than fathers' own employment hours. Fathers were
also more engaged when they had a higher level of education and more
egalitarian gender role attitudes. Our analysis also reveals variations in
paternal involvement according to the father's ethnicity. For example, Black/Black
British fathers are most likely to show most evidence of responsibility
(through housework), and are also most likely to be engaged in childcare. Engagement
and responsibility is lowest for fathers with a Pakistani and Bangladeshi
background. The variations in paternal involvement according to ethnicity may
be related to cultural differences as shown by Hauari and Hollingsworth (2009) for
example, but further research is needed to explore this.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Our results suggest a modest shift in gender relations whereby it is no
longer the fathers' but the mothers' employment that primarily shapes how
involved a father is with his children. In two-parent households, fathers'
labour market roles have historically been given precedence as the 'primary'
earner in the couple (also see Warin et al. 1999) so this role is expected to
dictate the amount of time available to spend with children. However, our
results suggest this is no longer the case with the mother’s employment being even
more important than the father’s in shaping how involved he is in childcare and
housework.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In future, it would be interesting to explore the association between
paternal involvement and paternity and parental leave, as well as different
forms of flexible working, for a more recent cohort of fathers in order to
assess the impact and success of these different levels of Government support.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">References<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8624.00126/abstract"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cabrera
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">N. Tamis-LeMonda C. Bradley, R.
Hofferth, S. and Lamb, M. (2000). Fatherhood in the Twenty-First Century. <i>Child
Development, </i>Volume 71, Issue 1, p. 127-136.</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dermott., E. (2008): <i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Intimate Fatherhood: A sociological analysis</span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Oxon, Routledge.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dermott, E. (2003): <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Intimate Father': Defining paternal involvement. <i>Sociological
Research Online</i>, Volume 8, Issue 4. </span></span><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/8/4/dermott.html"><span lang="EN" style="color: windowtext; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">http://www.socresonline.org.uk/8/4/dermott.html</span></span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hauari H. and
Hollingworth, K. (2009). <i>Understanding Fathering: Masculinity, diversity and
change</i>. London, Joseph Rowntree Foundation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Lamb, M. (198). <i>The
Father's Role: Applied Perspectives</i>. New York, John Wiley & Sons.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200605800808"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">McBride
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">B. and G. Mills (1993) A Comparison
of Mother and Father Involvement With Their Preschool Age Children. <i>Early
Childhood Research Quarterly</i>, Volume 8, p. 457-477.</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00509.x/abstract"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Mikelson,
K. (2008): <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">He Said, She Said:
Comparing Mother and Father Reports of Involvement<i>. The Journal of Marriage
and Family</i>, Volume 70, p. 613-624.</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="http://ebooks.cambridge.org/ebook.jsf?bid=CBO9780511778186"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Miller, T. <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">(2010) Making Sense of Fatherhood<b>: </b>Gender,
Caring and Work, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="http://soc.sagepub.com/content/45/6/1094"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Miller <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">T. (2011) Falling back into Gender? Men's
Narratives and Practices around First-time Fatherhood, <i>Sociology, </i>vol.
45 no. 6: 1094-1109.</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pleck, J. (2010):
Paternal involvement: Revised conceptualization and theoretical linkages with
child outcomes in M. E. Lamb (Ed.), <i>The role of the father in child
development, 5th ed</i>, New York: Wiley.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Palkovitz, R. (1997):</span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Droid Serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Reconstructing involvement: Expanding
conceptualizations of men's caring in contemporary families, in Hawkins, A.J.,
Dollahite, D.C. (eds):'<i>Generative fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives</i>.'Thousand
Oaks CA, Sage.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1016569526920"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sanderson <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">S. and V. Sanders-Thompson (2002) Factors
Associated With Perceived Paternal Involvement in Childrearing. <i>Sex Roles, </i>Volume<i>
</i>46, Issue 3/4, p. 99-111.</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Warin J., Y.
Solomon, Lewis, & Langford (1999). <i>Fathers, Work and Family Life</i>.
Findings. London, Joseph Rowntree Foundation.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<a href="http://soc.sagepub.com/content/42/3/487"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Williams <span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">S. (2008) What is Fatherhood: Searching
for the reflexive father<i>.</i> <i>Sociology, </i>Volume 42, Issue 3,
p.487-502.</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-67813431326540199092015-09-01T10:48:00.002-07:002015-09-01T10:58:55.167-07:00The Matter of Race<span style="color: black; font-family: "Corbel","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><o:p><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">By Nasar
Meer, Anoop Nayak and Raksha Pande<o:p></o:p></span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Corbel","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Ideas of race seem as salient today as
they have ever been, even when we are not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">directly</i>
talking about issues of race. In our new themed section</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/13.html"><span style="color: blue;">The Matter of
Race</span></a></i>, and with contributions from Les Back, Paul Bagguley, </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Daniel Burdsey</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">, Sarah Burton, Bridget
Byrne, Yasmin Hussein and Maggie Tate, </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">we
show that because of the slippery fashion in which ideas of race have shifted,
transmuted and pluralised, race continues to matter even if it is presented as
non-race concern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we describe might
be understood as a trend in new directions in racial formation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Paul Gilroy (2004: 111) accepted over a
decade ago, ‘it is impossible to deny that we are living through a profound
transformation in the way the idea of ‘race’ is understood and acted upon’</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">. </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">We
can see this if we reflect for moment on how debates about the European Union
and sovereignty proceed with a firm view of the ‘migrant’ in mind, or how
debates about ‘British values’ quickly become entrenched in ethnic hierarchies,
or indeed how race is more broadly translated into a mode of ‘resentment as 'a
political idea'’ (Ware, 2008). Each of these moves a little beyond
Atlantocentric (black-white) notions of race, something that is further
illustrated in issue of Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Roma discourse.</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">In our themed section the papers by
Daniel Burdsey, and Paul Bagguley and Yasmin Hussein respectively, take up this
focus to span issues of </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">representation and sport, and the
ways in which ethnicities encounter crisis, diversity and re-composition in
post-imperial settings.</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Burdsey </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">focuses on a case study of England
cricketer Moeen Ali in order to explore how race, religion and citizenship are
configured in the sporting arena and made sense of in the wider popular press
and national media. The implications are that we might ‘</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">think differently about the
relationship between sport, politics and the sporting hero, and to reconsider
conventional analyses of agency, activism and the use of sport as a platform
from which to “speak” in the public sphere’</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (<a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/17.html"><span style="color: blue;">Burdsey</span></a>, themed section).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/18.html"><span style="color: blue;">Bagguley and Hussein</span></a>
meanwhile </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">present an analysis of how people present and negotiate
their ethnicity reflexively in relation to nation, citizenship and processes of
racialization. Using qualitative interview study (N=140) on how different
ethnic groups in West Yorkshire were affected the 7/7 London bombings, they
show how these different forms of reflexivity – meta-reflexivity, autonomous
reflexivity, communicative reflexivity and fractured reflexivity – become
operable amongst different ethnic groups. ‘The re-composition of ethnicised
identity claims, and increased reflexivity of identity that this is demanding
of people’, they maintain, ‘is seen to be rooted in the political and identity
crises generated by Britain’s role in and response to the war on terror’. In
their analysis these differentiated expressions are rooted in the specific
politics and histories of migration and racialization in relation to dominant
discourses of whiteness and the state. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">n her contribution meanwhile, Bridget
Byrne shows how </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">campaigns around citizenship rights in Britain rely on
the production of whiteness in a way that has profound implications for ideas
of citizens and non-citizens in Britain, whilst also highlighting the need for
a complex range of vocabularies to enable the analysis of different exclusions,
not least through intersectional registers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These different exclusions are, in her account, ‘clustered around these
imaginations are notions of integration, language and love which rely on shared
and interwoven assumptions about race, gender and religion as well as class and
sexuality’ (<a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/16.html"><span style="color: blue;">Byrne,</span></a> themed
section). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">These sets
of argument may however encounter the charge that we are witnessing a ‘growing <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">culture of racial equivalence’ (Song, 2014:
109).</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">In this view ‘</span>the
concept of racism has suffered from conceptual inflation, resulting in the
declining utility of this important concept’ (ibid. 108).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the recognition of racism’s plural
character (and its many possible incarnations) is not unequivocally welcomed,
it remains necessary if we are to capture the changing status of race concept
over a </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">longue durée, and
grasp</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> ‘what race <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i> and what is done in the name of
race’ (Murji and Solomos, 2-15: 276).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The
challenge for the discipline of Sociology is that race presents a paradox that
sociologists constantly grapple with. Many tend to portray the term under
erasure by presenting it in inverted commas so as to indicate that we are
referring to a socially constructed category, based upon a problematic idea,
instead of something that is self-evidently real in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even those who do not repeat this practice
agree with the thrust of the argument. Perhaps the simplest way to frame this
is to say that sociologists tend to be interested in the dynamic and relational
properties of race <i>as both a historical idea and social category</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Yet
is this insufficient? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Virdee
(2012: 1144), for example, reminds us that sociology did not stand outside a
racialised modernity that ‘endowed some Europeans with privilege along with the
power to occupy the centre of world history, and shape it according to its own
image’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The objective of this complaint
is not to devalue British sociology. On the contrary. it is to make the
argument <i>for sociology</i>, for ‘self scrutiny rather than sheer
defensiveness’ (McLennan, 2006: 97), to encourage ‘without guarantees’ (Hall,
1986) inquiry on the ways in which race and sociology are already deeply
implicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sociologies of race therefore
require ‘being attentive to the specificities of the current situation but
also historical linkages through time’ (Back, personal correspondence with
authors). This means going beyond surface level reconstructions, and
challenging sociologists to reflect on how their discipline is organised
across sociology departments, ‘just as sociologists have criticized other
disciplines on these matters’ (Murji, 2007: 853). As Claire Alexander (2011)
has put it:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
</o:p></span></span></span><br />
<div class="Pa18" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 12pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Corbel","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">I
think that sociology has at best failed to engage these discourses and
positions and at worse been complicit with them – within the academy,
discussions of ‘race’ have largely fallen from the agenda, and there is very
little work that deals with issues of racism explicitly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Corbel","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0pt; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Such an activity would include a
‘critique of sociology’s reformism and its neglect of the historical conditions
in which sociological ideas about race and racism developed’ (Murji, 2007:
853). Each of these concerns has implications for the kinds of research and
teaching programs sociology departments are currently promoting (and indeed
ignoring).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In our themed section the
interventions here from Sarah Burton, and Les Back and Maggie Tate respectively,
are instructive. For Burton, a focus on the figure of the ‘white theory boy’,
or ‘dead white man’ and his relationship to knowledge production, serves as a
means to probe the pedagogy of social theory teaching in the UK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one classical social theory module, for
example, she observes that of the 43 authors listed as ‘essential’ reading, 37
were white men and 6 were white women, and that ‘no authors of colour appeared
on the ‘essential’ reading lists in this course’ (<a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/14.html"><span style="color: blue;">Burton</span></a>, themed section).
The trend in her account is generalizable and falls not only along lines of
inclusion and exclusion into the ‘canon’, but in terms of thematic range, in as
far as minority sociologists are restricted to what are deemed minority topics,
rather than the story of sociology more broadly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This inevitably reflects how the ‘privileging
of white, male, Western, and middle-class identities are ingrained into the
very fabric of sociology’s ontological foundations’ (<a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/14.html"><span style="color: blue;">ibid</span></a>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The task of rediscovering alternative
histories in social theory is therefore ripe and persuasively developed in Back
and Tate’s contribution, and which challenges us to consider what an account of
race and the intellectual heralds for the wider sociological tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They point in their paper to two overlapping
issues. One maintains that the white sociological mainstream has historically
ignored the contribution of black sociologists, and the other that the
discussion of racism is demoted to a specialist sub-field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Black sociologists by contrast, they argue,
have long been attentive to a white sociology that has set the prevailing agenda.
Through a detailed exposition of the writings of W.E.B Du Bois and Stuart Hall
in particular, and their respective dialogues with figures like Max Weber and C
Wright Mills, Back and Tate make an argument for reconstructing sociology at
the levels both of analysis and of form – each of which changes the ways in
which sociology can talk about racism. ‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What is at
stake’, they maintain, ‘is the possibility of sociological reconstruction that
produces an alternative understanding of what sociology can include, starting
with augmented modes of telling and writing that attract a broader and more
inclusive audience’ (<a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/3/15.html"><span style="color: blue;">Back
and Tate</span></a>, themed section).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Our themed section on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matter of </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Race </span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">therefore</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> brings together a set of original argument authored by scholars who try
to explore some of the present and future oriented ways in which race matters,
and help us to plot out </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">new
directions in racial formation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="mso-bookmark: gilroy2004;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: gilroy2004;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Alexander
C (2011) <i>Sociology’s Jurisdiction: Sociology’s Identities and Futures for
the Discipline</i>. British Sociological Association address, 7 April<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="mso-bookmark: gilroy2004;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: gilroy2004;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Gilroy,
P. (2004) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Between Camps</i>. London:
Routledge.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Hall S (1986) The problem
of ideology – Marxism without guarantees. <i>Journal of Communication Inquiry </i>10(2):
28–44.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">McLennan
G (2006) <i>Sociological Cultural Studies</i>. London: Palgrave.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Murji,
K. and Solomos, J. (2o15) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theories of
Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives</i>. Cambridge: CUP. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Murji,
K. (2007) ‘</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Sociological engagements: institutional racism and
beyond’, <em><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Sociology</span></em>,
41(5), 843-55.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Song,
M. (2014) ‘Challenging a culture of racial equivalence’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">British Journal of Sociology</i>, 65 (1), 107-125 <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Virdee
S (2012) Forward to the past: Race, the colour scale and Michael Banton. <i>Ethnic
and Racial Studies </i>35(7): 1143–50.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Ware,
V. (2008) ‘Towards a Sociology of Resentment: A Debate on Class and Whiteness’,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sociological Research Online</i>, 13 (5),
<http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/5/9.html> doi:10.5153/sro.1802<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span> </span> </span> </span><br />
<span style="color: black;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-36536416442218713642015-07-17T00:46:00.001-07:002015-07-17T00:52:10.873-07:00Talking the Talk and Fitting In: Troubling the Practices of Speaking 'What You Are Worth' in Higher Education in the UK<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">By
Michelle Addison and Victoria, G. Mountford, Newcastle University<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
This blog is based on <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/2/4.html">a more in-depth article</a> in <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/">Sociological Research Online</a>, published in May 2015. We are both interested in how ways of talking, and accent, have taken on symbolic meaning in higher education (HE). We wrote this piece together because we are becoming increasingly concerned that in a climate of uncertainty in HE we are seeing that the importance of demonstrating one's impact, value and worth comes down to more than just productivity, qualifications and experience. It’s becoming more about who you are as a person – the ‘personality package’ (Brown et al., 2003). Yet distinctions operate to ascribe (classed) value and some people occupy a privileged position where their body and their voice are read as valued whereas others are not so lucky and cannot adapt or escape how they are seen and heard by others, regardless of other work or achievements. We base our discussions upon data from two qualitative research studies with employees (Addison) and undergraduate students (Mountford) in a traditional Higher Education Institution (HEI) in the north of England (Mountford’s also included students from a nearby post-1992 HEI), which are contextualised within this climate of marketization of HE in the UK. Whilst market logic and discourse pervade the field of HE, situating meritocracy and hard work as the key driver for success, our data tell a slightly different story of persistently reactivated cultural classed codes forming distinctions of worth and value within these educational spaces. <br />
<br />
How we talk says a lot about us and what kind of person we wish to be. Talking matters, but why do we think that talking about talking matters here, why now? Talking the talk is a valuable currency, our accents and specifically the way we talk, the words we choose and how we say them (for example, local phrases, swearing and slang), are resurfacing as conductors of value in HE and beyond. The way we talk is part of our person, our self and our own personal histories and circumstances; our bodies are vehicles from which classed value judgments are constantly read and reactivated in everyday exchanges and interactions. Knowing how to speak ‘worth’ in HE is important, tricky to get right, and can help or hinder the person in terms of getting ahead, depending on whether they know how to play the game. Particular ways of talking then, affect feelings of 'fitting in' or 'standing out' which can provoke strong emotions including shame or defiance to the affective judgements of ‘deficiency’ assigned to our voices (Loveday, 2015; Reay et al 2009; Abraham and Ingram 2013; Taylor 2012). In our article (2015) we focus our attention on practices of fitting in and belonging, and how this relates to ways of 'talking the talk'. What we do know is that talking a certain way shapes belonging in HE, and talking the right or wrong talk is connected to social judgements about class. Many people working and studying in higher education are classed because of the way they talk, and this can often be painful for some, while conferring advantage on others.<br />
<br />
I still feel like these people are clever[er] than us, probably more wealthy – and I don't know…why I think that…when I'm listening to them other people speak it just […] so easy to understand and I think I imagine them trying to understand me…now I'm so concerned about you know, fully pronunciating […] – you know what I mean, you're like kind of trying harder but because you're trying so hard you get really nervous and you kind of clam up and everything.<br />
(Craig, 23, Working-class student, Mountford’s study)<br />
<br />
It's not changing what you know, erm, if you speak with a so called 'Queen's English' that's how all the people who are professional or who are higher up life, that's how they speak, it's almost like that's what you should be like, but it's not really is it?<br />
(Simon, Surveyor, 31, lower middle class, Addison’s study)<br />
<br />
I'm like trying to so hard to speak, you know, quite poshly - and I've not got a really strong accent anyway but like I find myself like trying really hard but most of the time they can tell I'm from like Manchester (laughs)[…] but they just assume that you're more […] I suppose, common in a way and that you're not as well educated and you're poorer <br />
(Faye, 18, middle-class, student, Mountford’s study)<br />
<br />
Alan, he is still here, he has a very, very, very broad [northern] accent and they used to laugh at him! Behind his back, which is worse of course, he was very able and very good at what he did […] it is interesting there is this assumption that if you have this posh accent then you should be a lawyer, or a judge, and it comes with it that you are clever.<br />
(Linsey, Temporary Lecturer, 51, unsure of class position, Addison’s study)<br />
<br />
Accents and ways of talking are part of embodied class identities; whilst some ways of talking, for instance, via accent, carry connotations of intelligence, other regionalised accents are positioned as lacking value, as well as other cultural meanings (Lawler 1999). A classificatory system operates to organise and codify language, accent, and ways of talking according to class. Whilst the ‘Geordie’ (north east English) accent was associated with the locale of the research sites and no doubt therefore part of a broader notion of ‘fitting in’ to the locale, this prominent accent within the walls of HE had an alternative effect of ‘standing out’ within the classed space of the university. In certain social spaces and around certain people, talking a certain way can take on, or lose, value.<br />
<br />
The game that is being played in HE is about knowing how and when to 'talk the talk': that is knowing when to put on ‘poshness’, or dial down dialect (if that option is available of course!). The ‘Geordie’ will always be a Geordie as they say, with all of the historically working-class idioms and cultural connotations that are attached to this accent: so being able to play the game and get ahead by sounding ‘posh’ is just not an option for either of us authors, or many of our participants that we spoke to. Knowing how talk and accent are codified and laden with value is a vital resource in getting ahead of the pack in times of increased competition; recent reports on employers using a ‘poshness test’ (see Weaver, 2015; Ashley et al., 2015) reinforces these data and the claims we make. Mobilizing whatever capital is available in order to secure one's social position is not a new concept (Skeggs 1997, Adkins 1995; McDowell 1997) but what we highlight is that, perhaps more than ever, talking matters. This is a particularly interesting social and political time to be using accent and ways of talking to get ahead to present a particular kind of classed image. As Watson (2010) discusses too, the impetus to cement a strong and valuable image via elite status in these austere times, and beat the competition, is affecting everyone who works and studies in an educational establishment, from academics and students to cleaners (see also Chapelo 2010; Addison 2012; Taylor 2012).<br />
<br />
References<br />
<br />
Abraham, J. and Ingram, N. (2013) 'The Chameleon Habitus: Exploring Local Students' Negotiations of Multiple Fields' in Sociological Research Online, 18(4) 21 <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/4/21.html">http://www.socresonline.org.uk/18/4/21.html</a><br />
<br />
Addison , M. (2013) 'Knowing you way within and across classed spaces: The (Re)making and (Un)doing of identities of value within Higher Education in the UK' in TAYLOR, Y (ed.) Educational Diversity: The Subject of Difference and Different Subjects' Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire Palgrave Macmillan. p. 236-256 <br />
Ashley, L.; Duberley, J.; Sommerlad, H. & Scolarious, D. (2015) A qualitative evaluation of non-educational barriers to the elite professios’. London: Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission<br />
<br />
Brown, P.; Hesketh, P. and Williams, S. (2002) 'Employability in a Knowledge Driven Economy' in Journal of Education and Work 16 (2): 107-126.<br />
<br />
Chapelo, C . (2010) 'What defines 'successful' university brands?' in International Journal of Public Sector Management', 23(2)<br />
<br />
Lawler, S . (1999) 'Getting Out and Getting Away': Women's Narratives of Class Mobility' in Feminist Review 63(3): p.3-24<br />
<br />
Loveday, V. (2015) ‘Embodying Deficiency Through ‘Affective Practice’: Shame, Relationality, and the Lived Experience of Social Class and Gender in Higher Education’ Sociology 49 (3): 1-16 <br />
<br />
Reay, D; Crozier, G. and Clayton, J. (2009) '"Strangers in Paradise" - Working-class Students in Elite Universities' in Sociology, 43(6): p. 1103-1121.<br />
<br />
Taylor, Y . (2012) Fitting into Place? Class and Gender Geographies and Temporalities. Surrey: Ashgate<br />
<br />
Skeggs, B. (1997) Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: Sage.<br />
<br />
Watson, C. (2010) 'Accountability, transparency, redundancy: academic identities in an era of 'excellence'' in British Educational Research Journal, First.Weaver, M. (2015) 'Poshness tests' block working-class applicants at top companies.’ The Guardian. Monday 15th June 2015. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/15/poshness-tests-block-working-class-applicants-at-top-companies">http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/15/poshness-tests-block-working-class-applicants-at-top-companies</a> [Last accessed 14th July 2015]<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-72667793351043700042015-06-30T12:53:00.000-07:002015-06-30T12:53:02.076-07:00Connectivity in later life: the declining age divide in mobile cell phone ownership
By <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Chris Gilleard,
Ian Jones & Paul Higgs<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The divide between working and
post-working life has long been thought considerable – both in terms of income
and social exclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Old people -
retired people - have been seen as excluded from public life, their horizons
confined to the social relations of family and neighbours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have argued that later life is changing;
that it is richer and more varied than in the past and no longer restricted to
the confines of kin and near neighbours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One obvious source of change is the decline in later life poverty,
whether measured in terms of income or consumption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another is in the rise in home ownership.
Another is in changing community and social relationships, which is the arena
of change that we chose to focus upon in this study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We live increasingly in what Castells has called
a ‘network society’ that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>connects
people well beyond the limits of their neighbourhood. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A variety of technologies from mobile phones
to laptops enable people of all ages to keep in touch with spatially distant
kin, help old friends maintain their friendships and create the conditions for
new friendships to form. Furthermore, all this is rendered possible despite any restrictions
in physical mobility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">While some writers have argued that
age differences in cultural familiarity with Information and Communication
Technology has created new forms of exclusion – a digital divide between the
pre- and post-Internet generations – we thought that because the new ICT is as
much ‘home based’ as ‘work based’, such divisions are unlikely to be strong or
sustainable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this study rather than
focusing upon the Internet as a source of community and communication, we chose
to examine trends in mobile cell phone ownership among older people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We drew upon the individual data files from
the General Household Surveys of 2000 and 2006 and its successor, the General
Lifestyle Survey of 2009, all of which record information about ownership of
various household goods, including mobile phones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The existence of information about other
aspects of the respondents (such as educational background, gender, household
composition and income, and health) as well as age enabled us to explore both
age/cohort differences in mobile phone ownership and differences within age
cohorts – such as those associated with educational background, gender or the
presence of young people in the household.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">As anticipated, we found rising
levels of mobile phone ownership during this period. These were greater among
people <i>over fifty</i> than among those <i>under fifty</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, levels of mobile phone ownership
rose more steeply among people in their seventies than people in their fifties.
Generally those older people in less favourable social circumstances (renters
not home owners, those with low income not high incomes, those who left school
before 16 not those who continued their education, etc.) showed a consistently
faster growth in phone ownership.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
2009, the large divide in ‘connectivity’ that we observed in 2000, between
older and younger people and between more and less advantaged older people had
shrunk. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Within less than a decade, the
capability that mobile phone technology offers people to keep in touch is no
longer the source of division and exclusion it once was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it would be remiss to ignore the fact
that we excluded the oldest old (people in their eighties and nineties) from
our study, the critical point remains that ‘old age divides’ are shrinking as
fast as they appear in our network society.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Read the full Sociological Research Online article <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/2/3.html">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-26550107958516220352015-04-20T01:55:00.003-07:002015-04-20T01:55:44.203-07:00Who runs the countryside?<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By Sam Hillyard, Durham
University.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Why
would you want to study here?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was
the observation made by one resident of the village on which this blog and
related paper are based. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From their
point of view, not a lot happened there and, admittedly, it was a quiet, sleepy
kind of village, tucked away in a fairly remote county in the East of England. This
paper attempts to outline why it was important to look at and how the research
unlocked the complexity of that social setting, describing its methods and some
of its research strategies.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the main
challenges for sociology is to open-up to analysis what seems normal – even
dull.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence key thinkers like Erving
Goffman apply incongruous metaphors, such as Shakespeare’s metaphor – the world
is a stage – to society (Goffman 1959).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This asks how can we see our society afresh if we see it as a set of
performances?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another strategy is to
understand that, as one of my undergraduate sociology tutors observed, the only
constant is change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everywhere is
subject to some kind of change – the people, the place and what society is becoming
– so we can also explore that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for
example, one TV critic observed about a series that is was ‘set in
super-yesterday times’ and that hence had all of the privations of life in
Tudor England:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">People said it was slow, but to be fair it was set before
cars, so the main bloke had to go everywhere on foot […] it must have been
knackering.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">[…] if you think about it, they only lived in olden times,
so it wasn’t like they missed out on much, like they didn’t even have chips
back then, or Wi-Fi, or Mark Ronson or Broadchurch […] I mean there was nothing
to do back then, they were so desperate for stuff to do that for entertainment
they had to watch people sweep stuff up or poked cobwebs or read books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was [a] total shithouse.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is a danger,
too, that because something seems normalised or has been that way for a long
time it may hide inequalities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Social
scientists, like Goffman, are also very keen to examine how power operates
(even at local levels) and with what consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In rural areas, attention has been paid to
inequalities relating to social class alongside the ‘rural penalty.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, the opportunities or options urban
dwellers take for granted aren’t there – the modern-day equivalent to Tudor
absences (no mobile signal, no broadband and no shops open at reasonable
hours).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is also important, though, to
try and understand how such inequalities manifest themselves at the local
level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An ethnographic
approach was used here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This includes
looking firsthand at what people do, rather than relying upon what they say
they do (Atkinson 2015).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The style of
enthrophy adopted by the research was inclusive, that is, was primarily
qualitative but also included quantitative data. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The core principle is that it seeks to understand
the lived experiences and perspectives of the social group/ world under study. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Starting with the school (was it at the
heart of the village?), much bigger patterns of change began to emerge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, who was locally important – the
local squirearchy – had changed from long-term residents (villagers born and raised
there) to relative newcomers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
challenge was to try and understand why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Helping to get an insight into these changes, some ideas from Goffman
and also from a contemporary thinker on social space (Nigel Thrift), an
explanation emerged.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Key village changes<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In previous research,
with Carl Bagley (School of Education, Durham University) we explained a number
of themes, including what had changed inside the schools, from very
long-serving members (28 years in one case) to a rapid turn-over of staff and
what implications this had for how the school was seen by the village.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also saw the impact of economic change –
the other case study village was a former coal-mining village in Co. Durham, UK
– influenced how the school featured as a force of continuity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also were curious about and explored how
the school could be a centrifugal force for creating a sense of belonging in a
village – or inversely a means of exclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The theme of exclusion and how social clashes and some forms of deviancy
are handled in rural areas, too, was a theme explored elsewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the greatest
strengths of doing ethnography is its capacity to yield unexpected or
unanticipated results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By looking at the
recent social history, a change in guard seemed to have taken place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, who occupied the ‘front stage’ roles
of village life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why had this so
markedly happened?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this new article
in SRO, I present findings from the ethnography and use it to comment upon what
rural areas are now becoming – is it a performance or does the sticky issue of
space’s influence upon us (even as a penalty) hold fast?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Putsch?<o:p></o:p></span></u><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In first coming to
the village, where I lived for just shy of a month on three occasions with my
partner John and our two dogs, the layout immediately seemed strange.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were two main streets, in parallel to
one another and I could see what had been the heart of the village had closed
up (blacksmith and baker shutting), but a new store had opened towards the
A-road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did a lot of walking in and around
the village – dogs can be useful fieldwork ‘tools’ – and from the housing stock
could see its layers of expansion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Census
data and the old Norfolk county trade directories confirmed that the village
had really grown – and mostly since the Second World War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What was left in the ‘old’
village was its school and also a very fine church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking through their records – inside and
out of the church – several names cropped up again and again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many English villages also have Parish
Councils and I compared and contrasted who sat on what and when (i.e. the
School Governors became the Friends of the School and former and present Parish
Counsellors).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got to know who were key
people in the village currently, speaking to the current head, former heads, local
business owners and newcomers and established residents alike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were identifiable by the overlap between
who villagers themselves recommended that I speak to and the way in which
certain individual names cropped up repeatedly.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Payne (1996) observed
that, in his view, community studies always seemed to find the people they
researched were nice and got along with one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here it became very clear that the village
did not ‘gel’ and there was some historic rancour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The exploratory, open-ended character of
ethnography allowed me to explore this further.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Looking at the
records and speaking with residents and attending and interacting in events
across the village (spending time in school, at the shop, going to meetings and
talks and, obviously, walking the dogs) I identified two generic sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These were the established residents – those
literally with relatives in the graveyard – and the people who had not lived
there for so long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking into this
further, it seemed there were two types of incomer – a ‘professional’ class and
those who – quite literally – did not want to be there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, they were in housing association accommodation
over-spilled from the nearest market town.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
challenged a lot of the existing comments about rural life that suggest people
moved there to colonise or to sediment into a new lifestyle; that class lines
were purely about whether you worked on the land or owned it and that
gentrification was all about the people who lived there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I worked out that important people <i>didn’t</i>
always have the live there to have an impact upon what happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, the former Lord of the Manor had
never been resident, but had influenced what the village became by relinquishing
key land around the village pre-WW2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Also, given that there were fewer residential business owners (i.e.
blacksmith and baker has gone), those that remained were all the more
important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the head was important,
but had not been resident since the 1970s – when the tied accommodation (aptly
named School House) was sold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore,
the second home ownership in the oldest (and prettiest) part of the village
meant people who </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">weren’t there had influence –
driving up property values and living a lifestyle that was disconnected from the
village and its future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This created
parallels with my own, transitory relationship with the village – I was only
there for a few weeks, but looking at the guidebooks in one of the converted
barns I stayed in, nothing <i>inside or of</i> the village was showcased or
advertised.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So what to conclude from these changes?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">First, the performance of the countryside includes co-location
(being there) and also co-presence (people backstage, with a different,
indirect connection).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, what we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">imagine </i>those spaces to be informs what
they become because we act according to our imagined view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Chicago sociologist W.I. Thomas phrased
it, if you think someone’s great, then he [sic] is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What was curious here was that change – and change was inevitable to
some degree – had really shifted the <i>size</i> of the village. Once
everyone could no longer know everyone else, a certain sociability had been
lost. It was present <i>individually</i> (after Payne, I did actually like
everyone I met during fieldwork, with one exception) but a collective synergy
or goodwill had been lost. Rather than end on a negative note, which
would be easy because this village continued to experience economic pressures
and poverty, I could too see how the balance of power had changed into the
hands of people who were likely to weave new threads of connection. These
included the incomers and the non-residents and – intriguingly – for the most
part they were women. I hope this piece of – admittedly small – research
shows that the global can be viewed through the local and the capacity of ethnography’s
exploratory spirit to engage with such themes (with or without the help of your
dogs!)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<u><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Further reading and references<o:p></o:p></span></u><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Atkinson, P. (2015) <i>For ethnography</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>London: Sage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Goffman, E. (1959) <i>The presentation of self in everyday
life</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harmondsworth: Penguin.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Weekly Wipe (2015) ‘Philomena Cunk and Barry Shitpeas on
Wolf Hall’ Series 3, Episode 1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-hPLgXB-s"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="color: blue;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-hPLgXB-s</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> [accessed 19 March,
2015]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Read the full Sociological Research Online article </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/1/5.html">here</a>.</span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-4316198007149681422015-04-14T01:42:00.000-07:002015-04-14T01:42:55.134-07:00Everyday belonging and temporal displacement amongst the ageing<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">By Vanessa May </span><span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">& </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Stewart
Muir<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The question of what happens to people’s
sense of belonging to place as they age is a central concern among both
academics and policymakers, not least because of the rapidly ageing population
and the mounting evidence that shows that, as people grow older, become less
mobile and thus less able or willing to engage in an active way with their
neighbourhood, they are at risk of becoming socially excluded. Our research has
approached these issues from the angle of belonging by exploring how people
aged 50 and over, and living in or around a Northern city in England, </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">experience belonging in their everyday lives. By ‘sense of belonging’,
we are referring to a sense of connection with and attachment to the
surrounding world; a connection that is often built on a sense of similarity
and identification with people, places and culture. What we would like to add
to the discussions around ‘ageing in place’ is a better understanding of </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">the impact that time and ageing can have on
belonging and of what we have called temporal displacement. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Although previous research on belonging has largely focused on
geographical movement, for example international migration, or the effects of
urban regeneration, our research has highlighted temporal movement as an
important layer of belonging and not belonging. That is, ageing as an
individual experience, and the passage of time as a collective one, meant that
some people in our study experienced a sense of dislocation even whilst staying
in one place. This temporal dislocation frequently appeared as a kind of ‘belonging
from afar’, of feeling a sense of belonging to a place lost in time and/or of belonging
to a different time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">One example of feeling a sense of belonging to a place lost in time emerged
in the account of a study participant we have called ‘Harry’, a man in his late
60s who had been forced to take early retirement due to health reasons.
Although no longer working, Harry’s identity was centrally tied to the notion
of being a ‘good’ worker: honest, hard-working, diligent, and financially independent.
One way in which he emphasised his own identity was by distancing himself from
what he saw as an increasingly pervasive culture in his (relatively deprived) neighbourhood
of ‘lazy’ people who happily relied on the state to provide for them; of the
neighbourhood changing from a ‘great area’ to one that had gone ‘downhill’. Harry
strongly implied that this was a consequence of generational difference, with
the lazy ‘others’ mostly described as younger people. Furthermore, this
distancing and tale of decline came despite Harry also providing us with
numerous examples of extremely friendly and helpful relations with his
neighbours. As a result, Harry’s account of his daily life in his neighbourhood
and his overall estimation of his area did not seem to match. One way of
explaining this apparent contradiction came from looking at the point at which
Harry felt his neighbourhood tipped into a spiral of decline, namely when he
had to give up paid work. He seemed to be experiencing something that could be
called ‘belonging from afar’, which in his case is expressed as belonging to a
place (and self) lost in time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">While many of our respondents spoke </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">of a general
sense of common feeling with people of the same age, the sense of generational
affinity seemed increasingly acute the older our respondents were.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> ‘Louise’, an 80-year-old woman living alone in a relatively affluent
suburb, was in the process of moving from the ex-council house she had lived in
for over fifty years to an assisted-living flat. This move was not prompted by
physical need but rather because her age peers had mostly died or left the area.
In describing this change, Louise did not use the same tropes of decline as did
Harry: she noted that the place itself was largely the same as were the type of
people who lived there. She also still maintained friendly relations with her
newer neighbours and in some cases had known their parents. Yet, she felt that
such relationships were relatively shallow because they were not built on
common experience; she wanted the company of ‘people of my generation’ with
whom she would have ‘common ground’. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Many of our older respondents also commented on their estrangement from contemporary
trends in fashion, music and consumer spending and an ever-younger ‘society’. This
did not necessarily translate into a sense of non-belonging because many such
people still felt that they had a niche in contemporary life, at least for as
long as there were enough people of a similar age who viewed contemporary life
and remembered the past in a similar way. For some of our older respondents
aged 80 and over, however, this niche was perceived to be shrinking. It was in
this situation, when their generation was seemingly slowly dying out, that participants
keenly felt a sense of generational belonging. We suggest that a</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">geing potentially moves people out of a secure
place in the world in an analogous way to migration (but with certain key
differences, perhaps most notably in its partial but gradually growing impact).
Perhaps </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">people more clearly notice their generational
belonging when their interactions outside the home, even when amicable, are increasingly
with younger people who seemingly embody a different worldview. For some of our
participants this, it seemed, could feel akin to living in a country that is
simultaneously foreign and familiar, and helped generate a nostalgic sense of
belonging to a time when they were deeply embedded in their ‘own’ generation. This
also spilt over into how people experienced the places where they lived as </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">‘generationed’; as reflecting the values and lifestyles of certain
generations over others and therefore offering a diminished sense of belonging.
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Read the full article in Sociological Research Online <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/1/8.html">here</a>.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-527050300938026172015-02-27T09:27:00.001-08:002015-02-27T09:27:07.919-08:00Drawing homelessness and the ethics of charity fundraising appeals
<span style="font-family: Arial;">By Jon Dean, Sheffield Hallam University.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In
doing their work, charity fundraisers have to ask themselves moral and ethical questions.
Public requests for donations need to appeal to a wide range of donors in a
variety of ways, and face the task of competing for space in an already
image-saturated market. Therefore the fundraising campaigns they design need to
stand out, be effective in soliciting donations, and an efficient and prudent
use of funds. However, we also expect charities to hold themselves to a higher moral
standard. While we would expect a private company to present an air-brushed
(metaphorically and literally) view of their product, the fundraising materials
used by charities have a duty to represent the issues they are trying to tackle
sensitively and the services they can provide accurately. How do you be a
successful non-sensationalist in a cultural climate where sensationalism dominates?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2015/feb/15/we-must-hook-donors-but-feel-sick-picture-charities-paint"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">recent
blog for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Guardian </i>by an anonymous
charity fundraiser</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;"> reveals the problem: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 54.4pt 10pt 2cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In
charity marketing we know that we manipulate the truth – any story told in full
detail will lose 99% of readers. So we pick the bits that will have most
impact. We miss out the red tape of the process, our frustrations at the
charity’s inefficiencies and the confusing extra detail – they are too much to
explain in a direct mail letter or hard-hitting advert.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
fundraiser goes onto point out that they have to regularly put their morals to
one side to meet targets, even if this may damage long-term relationships with
donors. In this continuing debate within the sector, the voice of the recipient
of donations, the individuals (mis)represented, is usually absent. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In </span><a href="http://www.cgap.org.uk/uploads/reports/USER_VIEWS_OF_FUNDRAISING.pdf"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">previous
research</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;"> with Beth Breeze (Centre for Philanthropy, University of Kent) we
went into homelessness charities and asked homeless service users their
opinions on a range of images used in fundraising literature. Service users,
who came from a range of backgrounds but tended to be younger people, viewed
the fundraising literature we showed them as stereotypical, inaccurate, and in
some cases, a bit upsetting. However our participants were advertising
realists: the overwhelming message that came from our focus group sessions was
that charities should continue to use such images <i>if they were shown to be
the images that elicited the most donations</i>. Service users trusted the
charities that were helping them: while they were unsure that the images
currently used were completely ethical, they were willing to suspend their
moral discomfort ("You can't have morals when you're homeless", said
one young man) if that meant continued or greater service provision. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Ultimately
it has been reasoned that charity fundraising materials have to appeal to the current
public idea of that charitable issue, rather than challenging or reframing it:
the images in homeless charities’ fundraising literature have to represent what
charities think donors think homelessness ‘looks like’. Therefore </span><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/1/2.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">in this new article in SRO</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;">
I present findings from an experiment testing what potential donors think
homelessness looks like. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In
teaching, and later in recorded, anonymised focus groups I asked undergraduate
students to 'draw what homelessness looks like', building on the creative visual
methodological approaches of David Gauntlett, Nicola Ingram, and increasingly many
others. No more instructions were provided, and despite the occasional
protestation about their own drawing ability, it is a task which I have
regularly found students take to with gusto and intrigue. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
results of these drawings are quite stark. Picture after picture shows a
bearded man, begging and sleeping on the street. The inclusion of female
figures and families is rare. This issue of rooflessness, while the most
extreme and vulnerable instance of homelessness in the UK, affects, according
to best estimates, 2% of the homeless population any one night. The issues of
sleeping in hostels, or receiving shelter from friends, or being housed by a
Local Authority in temporary accommodation such as a bed and breakfast, or even
inadequate housing, are almost completely absent. The images shows individuals
not communities, and even though most of the students I work with are studying
for degrees in politics and sociology, political or social issues are missing
from their drawings. Inequality, domestic violence, serious injury, military
service, and mental health problems are all closely associated with pathways
into homelessness, but do not come up in participants’ instantaneous visions of
what homelessness looks like. The drawings are also very literal, with few
abstract or metaphorical contributions.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
vast majority of homeless experiences (many of which are </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/abby-and-libby-blog/2013/oct/31/too-poor-for-student-halls"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">gone
through by students</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;"> with </span><a href="http://www.yorkvision.co.uk/news/pictures-vision-investigation-reveals-student-squalors-across-york/03/02/2015"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">substandard
</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;">or </span><a href="http://www.yorkvision.co.uk/news/vision-hacke/29/10/2013"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial;">dangerous
housing</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;">) are ignored, with homelessness crystallised in the issue of rooflessness.
Of course, rooflessness is the most vivid and acute representation of
homelessness, but such a reduction of the issue has consequences. As discussed
in the article, some authors have argued that both policy practitioners and the
media have worked to present homelessness as narrowly as possible in order to
disconnect people's experiences from the reality, creating or reinforcing an
artificial divide between the homeless and non-homeless. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Using
their drawings as a starting point therefore, I saw these sessions as an
opportunity to practice Freire’s critical pedagogy. The process of drawing
literally <i>draws out</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">
preconceived ideas about homelessness</span>, and provides a base on which to
build critique and examine students’ own experiences of homelessness and the
emotions these have aroused in the past. This critical thinking occurs both
about the realities of homelessness, as students are unaware of the extent of
the different forms it can take, and about the impact of social structures and
institutions, such as the media, on their conceptions. As one participant said,
“The worst of it is all we see, and that is what society preys on.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Unfortunately,
this article concludes that as the reoccurring images produced by students are
so similar, narrow and stereotypical, producing fundraising literature which
contain more accurate and more contextual images could be a risk to the income
of homelessness charities. While social media and new technologies give fundraisers
a more diverse set of tools to spread their charity’s message, we should not
expect the traditional images associated with homelessness fundraising
literature to disappear any time soon. Therefore if efforts to critique,
politicise and deindividualise homelessness as an issue cannot necessarily take
place in fundraising literature, it must take place in classrooms and the other
spaces of civil society. It is hoped using creative visual methods such as the
drawing session utilised in this article may be small addition to achieving
this.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-8265584969956993132015-02-09T00:53:00.003-08:002015-02-09T00:53:58.645-08:00Neoliberal Nomads: Housing Insecurity and the Revival of Private Renting in the UK
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By John Bone, University of Aberdeen</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The emergence of a so-called
'Generation Rent' is a phenomenon that is gaining increasing prominence in
political and media discourse, in recognition of the growing numbers of, in
particular, young UK citizens who cannot gain access to the fabled 'property
ladder'. This growing constituency are depicted as the main casualties of a UK
housing crisis; victims of a combination of mushrooming house prices and
undersupply which have conspired to freeze them out of owner occupation, while
the level of disaffection being generated by this scenario was most recently
illustrated by London’s ‘March for Homes’. The roots of this housing crisis
have been exhaustively analysed, by a broad range of academic and other
commentators, while many of these accounts suggest that it has largely arisen
as much by design as via the caprice of markets. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A raft of interventions by
successive UK governments have facilitated and supported the increasing marketisation
and financialisation of the UK housing sector. In short, the late 1970s and
early ‘80s 'free market' shift in political and economic policy has had a
profound effect on housing. In the first instance, a newly deregulated and
expanded financial sector targeted residential property as a highly convenient
vehicle for the expansion of consumer credit. Consequently, extended mortgage
lending in a competitive market saw home ownership grow; a process accelerated
by the Thatcher government’s sell-off of council housing. In turn, expanded
mortgage lending was followed by rising house prices as private sector supply
failed to match rising demand. Against this background, potential gains from
rising prices also began to shift public perceptions, from viewing housing as
an essential utility to regarding residential 'property' as a lucrative
personal investment vehicle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This metamorphosis of the housing
market was consolidated by the revival of the private rented </span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">sector,
as both investment class and mainstream tenure. The latter was also facilitated
by UK government policy (introduced through Housing Acts of 1988 and 1996),
that radically reduced security of tenure, and by the financial sector's
offering of new Buy to Let mortgage products aimed at amateur investors. As we
know, these developments taken together have seen a great expansion of private
renting, while the investment activities of a million or so private landlords
has been a significant factor in driving prices ever higher and squeezing out
many potential first time buyers, who have now become private sector tenants.
Government support for this scenario has also extended to providing
advantageous tax arrangements for landlords over owner occupiers. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In addition to ideological
motivations, UK governments have also become ever more reliant on the
residential property sector as an engine of economic growth, as rising house
prices have boosted consumer confidence and activity in an expanded service
sector by providing collateral for consumer credit in what has become a
substantially debt-fuelled economy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In a number of senses the revival
of private renting has re-established some of the characteristics of the sector
that prevailed in the late 19<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> and early 20<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> century,
with the caveat that the new class of landlords are drawn from a much broader
base than the small exclusive elite who rented property to around 90 per cent
of the UK's population at that time. What is returning, however, is the spectre
of sub-standard, prohibitively expensive and, critically, insecure housing that
motivated a groundswell of political unrest in the past; the scenario that
mobilised the mid 20<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></sup> century's progressive reform of UK housing
towards a mixed private/public and highly regulated form of provision. While
there has been a good deal of attention paid to rising costs and declining
standards affecting contemporary tenants, perhaps lesser attention has been
paid to the consequences of long term insecurity. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It is clear that tenancies
covered by the Assured Shorthold Tenancy (the majority in the sector) are
wholly inconsistent with tenants’ capacity to establish a stable and secure
home, given that after an initial 6 month term tenants can be arbitrarily
evicted at two months notice. Evidently, this has practical implications in
terms of access to workplaces, and for children of the growing number of
families housed in the sector to rely on continuity with respect to schooling,
where the latter can be disrupted at the whim of the landlord.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Arguably, however, less well
understood are the subtler and deeper effects of the lack of control and
predictability experienced by private sector tenants, where again the
implications for families are perhaps particularly acute. In such conditions,
maintaining friendships and community engagement can be increasingly difficult,
while there are related implications for mental health and well-being.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Psychologists have long
understood that some of the most stressful aspects of experience are founded on
our limited capacity to deal with onerous demands and complexity as well as
unpredictable and uncontrolled change. Sociologists have also long recognised
the ill effects of such conditions on the psyche and, indeed, in terms of
collective well-being. Recent discoveries of how the human brain functions are
now offering evidence that underscores these widely recognised observations.
For example, it has been demonstrated that we have a highly limited capacity to
deal with information at a conscious level while, where we are overburdened,
the consequences are experienced as significant arousal of the 'fear system'.
In terms of ’real world’ implications, this may explain why we are prone to
routinising and simplifying much of what we encounter, attempting to impose a
significant degree of control, consistency and stability in our lives. It may
even be the case that modern urban living of itself, as Georg Simmel notably
observed, challenges us in this respect. Following from this, it may be
reasonable to suggest that chronic insecurity regarding something so
fundamental as one’s home (as with employment) is liable to critically
undermine the conditions conducive to emotional stability and well-being, while
a growing body of empirical evidence also supports this perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, once more drawing on
neuroscientific findings, it appears that there may also be a relationship
between the formation of long term memories, that are integral to the
construction of our personal biographies, <i>and </i>the neural processes that
orient us in geographical space. Simply put, it may be that spatial relocation,
particularly where this is also involuntary and uncontrolled, may have a subtle
but profound negative effect on our capacity to readily sustain a coherent and
consistent biography; a stable self identity.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the reasons outlined above, a
reappraisal of the social and psychological effects as well as the more evident
practical and economic ramifications of marketised housing is perhaps long
overdue. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Read the <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/4/1.html">full article</a> in Sociological Research Online on which this blog post is based.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-29637034353003444192015-01-15T07:37:00.000-08:002015-01-15T14:17:01.679-08:00The Labour Market Mobility of Migrants<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By: Julie Knight, Towson University <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">What are the experiences of post-2004
Polish migrants in the UK labour market?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>How have these experiences evolved since 2004? Are there any migrants
that have experiences that are uncharacteristic of the wider group of
Poles?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These questions have influenced
my research since 2005.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, many
personal and professional factors have contributed to my interest in the labor
market mobility of Polish migrants over time, including: my own migrant status
in the UK; my understanding of migrant labour market mobility through working
for migrants and with migrants; and my interaction with the wider literature
that quickly formed on this topic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These
factors were all accounted for in my PhD thesis, which served as the foundation
for an article recently published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/4/8.html">SociologicalResearch Online</a>.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">I migrated from the US to the UK in 2004 to
complete my Master’s degree at Cardiff University.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shortly after migrating, I worked part-time as
a bartender at a local pub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
unsociable hours, unruly patrons and lack of tipping did not bother me as I
converted the hourly rate (minimum wage) from GBP to USD and realised that I
was making substantially more in the UK being a bartender than I would for the same
job in the US.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As time moved on, I
gathered more experience and knowledge about the local area, moved on to other
jobs, graduated from the Master’s program, and eventually, in 2006, after
starting my PhD, started working as a researcher at Cardiff University.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While this seems like a great story unrelated
to Polish migrants, this journey through the labour market of a destination country
is very similar for other groups of migrants, regardless of their language
skills, previous employment or education level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">For example, using longitudinal data
gathered from high-skilled migrants in Australia, Chiswick et al.’s (2005)
U-shaped pattern of occupational mobility highlights the exact same movement
where high-skilled migrants enter a country, take any job regardless of previous
employment, gain location-based knowledge, and ascend in the labour
market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, the economic motivations
of migrants to stay in low-skilled jobs, particularly when initially migrating,
are commonly addressed in research on economic migrants (Anderson et al. 2006).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are commonalities between my story and
the literature highlighted here, where migrants are well-educated and take
low-skilled jobs for a short-term when initially migrating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These commonalities also extend to post-2004
Polish migrants in the UK if using the characteristics –young, economically-motivated,
well-educated, short-term, willing to take low-skilled jobs—ascribed by
academics, policymakers and the media immediately after enlargement (Home
Office 2008; Pollard et al. 2008; Anderson et al. 2006).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">However, after interviewing Polish migrants
in Cardiff in 2008 and 2011, it became clear that the characteristics of
migrants in terms of education level and expected time in the UK in the sample
were not uniform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lack of uniformity
existed both amongst the participants in the sample as well as between the
sample and the characteristics listed in the existing literature at that time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The increasing complexity of the migrants’
characteristics was also noticed by other academics in the field, most notably
in Kathy Burrell’s edited book (2009) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754673873">PolishMigration to the UK in the “New” European Union: After 2004</a>. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, from the sample in Cardiff, the
experiences of the migrants in the labour market in Britain also varied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those migrants that were low-skilled upon entering
the UK were not confined to low-skilled jobs throughout their migration period,
nor was their labour mobility confined to the ethnic economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Using the information gathered from the
interviews, I created trajectories to explain the migrants’ experiences and
ascent in the labour market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
contrasted the Linguists, who fit into the migrant paradox in the short-term
but moved up the labour market in the long-term, with the Careerists, who
ascended the labour market despite their low- education and skill levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both trajectories highlighted the experiences
of the migrants in the labour market, which along with the length of time that
the migrants spent in the UK, was unplanned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Beyond challenging the initial
characteristics and experiences of migrants, the novelty of these trajectories
lies in the timing of the fieldwork (2008 and 2011).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The timing is significant as the migrants
that I interviewed in 2008 could have stayed longer than expected in the UK
because of the onset of the recession and concern that conditions were worse in
Poland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, in 2011, the migrants
had stayed beyond what they initially expected and continued to be upwardly
mobile in the labour market in the UK, despite the failure of many other
workers during the recessionary period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
would not have been able to capture this labour market mobility without going
back out into the field in 2011, seven years after enlargement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ability of the migrants to stay in the
UK indefinitely has been paramount to this study, but it is increasingly a
cause for concern amongst policymakers in light of these findings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further research will also focus on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> the Polish migrants are living in
the UK as they are not settling with mortgages and loans but, in many cases,
are not planning to return. </span></div>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<br /></div>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Read the <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/4/8.html">full article</a> in the November 2015 issue of Sociological Research Online.</span></span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-72204506608529720202014-12-18T15:29:00.002-08:002014-12-18T15:29:49.780-08:00Music, Knowledge and the Sociology of Sound
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Martyn Hudson, Newcastle University<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As a ‘lover of music’ or what Antoine Hennion calls an
‘amateur’ I am constantly aware of the multiple meanings of the music I love.
Vinyl favourites on the deck at the moment include the first This Mortal Coil
EP, Luciano Berio’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Visage</i> for voice
and magnetic tape, the first Einsturzende Neubaten compilation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beat the Retreat</i> from Test Dept, Michael
Tippett’s third symphony, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Loving
Kind</i> from Girls Aloud. I am a huge fan of musical artists like Richard
Skelton, with a substantial academic piece on his work coming out early next
year, and I have recently completed a study of the musical sociology of Luciano
Berio. I have a book forthcoming from Ashgate on the memory and sonority of
slave ships and have recently completed an academic piece on ideas about
‘listening’ in the work of Jean Luc Nancy. I’ve also written elsewhere of my
firm intention to conduct a choral version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trumpton Riots</i> by Half Man Half Biscuit. I love the Cardiacs and
the Blue Nile. This is to give you some sense of me as a ‘listener’. But what
exactly is this stuff I am listening to?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council I was
part of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Northumbrian Exchanges</i>
project at Newcastle University and we hope this project will continue in new
ways. With my collaborators Julie Crawshaw and Frances Rowe we examined multiple
circulations of Knowledge Exchange around the arts in rural Northumberland. My
strand was to develop ethnographies and interviews with composers and
musicians, to look at a variety of commissions and to think seriously about
what sound and music meant in that landscape – a landscape made even more
beautiful by the wonderful music of Kathryn Tickell who was a co-investigator
on the project. From supporting the development of Ceilidh bands in rural
communities, to supporting music in schools and at festivals, and working
through the implications of working within different musical traditions in the
landscape I think the project was a success. Most resonant for me were the
three commissions by the sound artist Tim Shaw, the classical composer Matthew
Rowan, and the traditional musician Shona Mooney. It was also linked to the
superb <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Landscape Quartet</i> project of
Bennett Hogg and his collaborators and to the workshops, both practical and
theoretical, of Jamie Savan. The project was led by Professor Eric Cross, a
well-known conductor and the Dean of Cultural Affairs at Newcastle as part of
the new Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am a sociologist so to understand knowledge exchange in
rural Northumberland my first task was to try and ‘do a sociology of music’.
The paper, now published in <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/4/2.html">Sociological Research Online</a>, is my attempt to
think through the question of whether a sociology of music is at all possible.
It seemed to me that the sociologists thought yes, and the musicians thought it
was a much more problematic enterprise. The attempt to track the traces of
social relations in music has been a staple of the sociology of music. It has
been corrected over recent years by the hugely valuable work of Tia DeNora and
her collaborators in their attempt to understand the social powers and effects
of music or in the work of Hennion and his research into mediation and the
socialities around music. For me, addressing the artefacts and the processes of
music as I did, the more I listened the less I understood. Certainly I was able
to examine some aspects of social meaning in music of course: society is
represented through music. But to see music as a semiotic system that one can
somehow ‘listen through’ to hear social relations expressed not only didn’t address
the reality of music but somehow evaded it. So this article is a problem piece
where you can listen to my thoughts on this develop essentially in support of
what George Steiner calls the ‘radical untranslatability’ of music or at least
that attempts at translation are extremely problematic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I wanted to think about this question of translation by
thinking about sound art although I am conscious that I was limited in scope in
thinking about this and rely on the definitions provided by Alan Licht. There
is a lot more work to develop from this and more recently I have been working
with the sound artist Tim Shaw to think in more depth about the artefactuality
and materiality of sound art. I also have to say that it was conversations with
Bennett Hogg, composer and cultural theorist, that excited me about the
potential to do a ‘sociology of sound’. My reading of Jean Luc Nancy also made
me question the whole idea of social representation and sound by refocusing my
attention to the sounds themselves as sonorities rather than what they ‘meant’
or displayed. The practice of sound art still holds my attention, particularly
how it is structured in space, but also because the attention to listening and
sound can raise questions of ‘alternative modernities’ and different ways of
thinking about the world and the sociological tradition within which we situate
our sociological practice. Further, it raises really significant questions
about knowledge, data, evidence, sociological objects, method and attendance to
small, often quite microscopic, processes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Part of my ongoing concerns lie in the continuing relation
between arts and social-scientific practice. I think we need to think urgently
about questions of co-production and co-curation, of working within arts
communities and agencies, understanding the ‘work’ of art as Julie Crawshaw
often puts it to me. It also means understanding the landscapes within which
those practices are situated and the kinds of sociology and philosophy that can
help us understand the multiple circulations of knowledge out there in
communities. It is about what we might call ‘omni-disciplinarity’ whilst still
keeping a sense of our discipline as sociologists. It also means questioning
the ongoing relationship between the ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ worlds and how we
curate ‘collections’ of sound and music in archives and out there in the world.
Recently a friend and I spent a whole morning ‘curating’ our top 5 songs to
display through facebook. It was agony. My friend Paul said that he felt he was
letting down and abandoning all those songs that were being left off the list.
We know that this stuff is full of social meaning but let’s not translate,
let’s just listen and see what happens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-58155990717739700872014-09-19T01:25:00.000-07:002014-09-19T01:25:19.492-07:00Activist Scholarship in an International Resistance Project
By Stevienna de Saille, University of Sheffield<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
How do activists develop the knowledge they need in order to
make credible claims, particularly in movements which deal directly with
technology, rather than social identity? That question, combined with my own
history as an environmental activist, an intense curiosity about the new
biological fields which were emerging in the wake of the Human Genome Project, and
my involvement with the <a href="http://feministarchivenorth.org.uk/"><span style="color: blue;">Feminist
Archive North</span></a> (FAN), led me towards the topic of my PhD, discussed in an <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/18.html"><span style="color: blue;">article </span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>recently published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sociological Research Online</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p>As part of my work as a volunteer archivist at FAN, I had
helped unpack a huge collection of books and documents belonging to the
Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic
Engineering (FINRRAGE), a loosely organised network of individuals and groups
who had opposed the burgeoning permutations of reproductive technology, as well
as bioengineering and genetic modification of plants and animals. Although
largely associated with the writings of a small group of British, American and
Australian feminists, during its international phase (1984-1997) it had
representation in 37 countries ranging across all six inhabited continents, and
is estimated to have included about 1000 women in national FINRRAGE groups and affiliated
organisations. FINRRAGE groups continue to exist in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www5c.biglobe.ne.jp/~finrrage/"><span style="color: blue;">Japan</span></a>, <a href="http://www.finrrage.org/"><span style="color: blue;">Australia </span></a>and <a href="http://www.ubinig.org/index.php/campaign/index/english"><span style="color: blue;">Bangladesh</span></a>,
and there are individual women outside these countries who still identify as
FINRRAGE activists, but there had never been an internal hierarchy or an official
membership list, making the network difficult to study through typical social
movement models. FINRRAGE was not quite a movement of its own, not quite an
umbrella organisation, and not merely an information-sharing network.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
More important, I quickly found that FINRRAGE's form of
'resistance' was not accounted for in either resource mobilisation or new
social movements theory. The network did not seek to promote mass street-level
protest, and although local groups and individuals did occasionally create
protest actions or join larger campaigns against specific technologies using
the name of FINRRAGE, there was never a co-ordinated, FINRRAGE-sponsored international
campaign. Instead, the women mainly engaged in what one respondent notably
called 'demonstration in publication', a tactic which required verifiable facts
-- such as success rates, risk factors and psychological impact of undergoing
IVF -- which did not exist in the mid-1980s, when the network began. Because
FINRRAGE had a disproportionate number of women in both industrialised and
developing countries with advanced degrees, their strategy was therefore geared
towards developing and communicating both technical and non-technical knowledge,
so that women around the world could engage in public debate on their own
terms. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
How then to study this kind of activism? As a science and
technology studies (STS) scholar, and a former activist who has frequently been
asked to decipher highly technical publications to bolster the accuracy of campaign
information leaflets, I have long been interested in the way knowledge
functions as a component of protest. Within social movements theory there is
one model which has been developed to study these kinds of questions, the
cognitive praxis (CP) paradigm developed by Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison (1).
This gives a formal structure through which the organisational, technical and
cosmological (or underlying belief-system) aspects of a movement can be
reconstructed through the documents it produces. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The FINRRAGE collection at FAN includes books and peer-reviewed
articles published by FINRRAGE women in English, French, German, Spanish,
Portuguese, and other languages; a research archive of newspaper cuttings,
scientific papers and governmental reports; as well as organisational correspondence,
minutes, newsletters and other internal documents. Supplemented by lifecourse
interviews with twenty-four FINRRAGE activists from a wide range of countries,
it was therefore well-suited to a cognitive praxis approach.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The CP paradigm has some limitations which the case of
FINRRAGE made clear – for example, despite its acknowledgement that science and
society are intertwined, CP is still based on normative assumptions about
science, scientists and technical experts existing in a separate sphere from
the 'messy' movement field. FINRRAGE showed that both social and natural scientists
can and do become centrally active in social movements, bringing their
understanding of data, information, and evidence into the movement field to be
shared and utilised, whether or not the topic of the movement corresponds to
their professional expertise. While still identifying primarily as FINRRAGE
activists, the women were able to carry out some of the first systematic
studies on the experiences of women on IVF programmes, on clinical success rate
reporting mechanisms, and on variability in dosage, outcome and side effects
for the most common drug used for ovarian hyperstimulation, and to publish and
use this counter-knowledge when arguing against scientific claims of safety and
efficacy. FINRRAGE women also produced some of the first PhD dissertations in
the area, thus helping to legitimise it as a valid topic within traditional
disciplines, and for several years published a peer-reviewed journal, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Issues in Reproductive and Genetic
Engineering,</i> which gave both academics and activists a specific arena in
which to publish. Additionally, because various legislatures were intensely
debating regulation of IVF and embryo experimentation at the same time FINRRAGE
emerged, there was an unusual window of opportunity to offer a woman-centred
analysis comprising both technical and social scientific expertise to these
consultations, some of which is reflected in subsequent legislation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Drawing from work on expertise and epistemic communities
emanating from STS should help to overcome some of the limitations of the CP
paradigm. However, as its use in the study of FINRRAGE showed, it can be an
effective tool for studying the ways in which activists use social scientific
data in order to create counter-arguments for new technologies whose systemic
risks cannot actually be scientifically gauged. It also showed that some of FINRRAGE's
technological topics, such as unregulated expansion of international commercial
surrogacy, should remain of great social, as well as social scientific, concern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
This blogpost is based on the following article, published
in the August issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sociological
Research Online</i>: <a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/18.html">de Saille, S. (2014) 'Fighting Science With SocialScience: Activist Scholarship in an International Resistance Project' 19 (3) 18</a>.
The Feminist Archive North is located in Special Collections of the Brotherton
Library, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype>
of <st1:placename w:st="on">Leeds</st1:placename></st1:place>. <o:p></o:p><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5739256326757177292.post-51710629329295021262014-09-03T04:46:00.002-07:002014-09-03T04:47:29.521-07:00Should sociologists study the paranormal?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Madeleine Castro</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The paranormal is a subject often
found in popular media, and commonly perceived as a form of entertainment. It
is not a subject usually covered by sociologists and, at first glance, you’d be
forgiven for thinking this was as it should be. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
You might think that paranormal
experiences are reported by few people, and only by those who are psychologically
impaired, delusional, attention-seeking, gullible, or liable to misinterpret
ordinary events. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You may assume that paranormal phenomena
either imply processes outside of sociology’s scope (physical or psychological
ones, for example) or hint at a level of profundity which sociology is not best
equipped to comment on (philosophical or metaphysical issues). For these
reasons, many sociologists are likely to have considered paranormal experiences
to be outside their purview. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Weighing up the paranormal as a
worthwhile subject of study also leads to consideration of its perceived place
in ‘serious’ research and the effect of this subject on one’s professional
standing (see for instance, these blog posts by </span><a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/EverydaySpirituality/?p=27"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dr Sara MacKian</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
and </span><a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/EverydaySpirituality/?p=164"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prof
Charles Emmons</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> about precisely this issue). </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a sense, the paranormal is somewhat
tainted as a subject; and deemed likely to blight an academic’s reputation. At
the very least it is unlikely to be taken seriously. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This could partly be the result of
the highly visible, well organised voices of sceptics, who seek to debunk the
paranormal and ‘expose’ fraudulent claims (the website of </span><a href="http://www.csicop.org/about/csicop/"><span style="background: rgb(250, 250, 250); font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, CSI</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: rgb(250, 250, 250); font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 150%;">, </span>illustrates
this very well). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given all of this, why would sociologists want to research this
subject?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As our </span><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/16.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">article</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #00b0f0;"> </span>demonstrates, there is justification for studying
the paranormal sociologically and there are many aspects of genuine social
interest requiring further investigation. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2009, over 4,000 British adults aged
over 16 were interviewed in person</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/editor/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were asked whether they had
experienced any of the following:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Telepathy</i>
(mind-to-mind communication with another living person)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extrasensory
Perception </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ESP</i> (knowledge of
concurrent events or information without the use of the known senses)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mystical
experiences</i> (often involving a sense of oneness with the universe,
awareness of a numinous presence and altered perceptions of self, space and
time)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">After
death communication </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">contact with
the dead</i> (visual, olfactory or auditory encounters with the deceased or a
sense of their presence)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost 37% of British adults reported
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">at least one</b> paranormal experience.
This is a sizeable minority and illustrates just how common reported paranormal
experiences are. It shows that there are sufficient people reporting these
experiences for them to be of interest to a study of society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, it is not only the
quantity of people that are important but also the social demographics, which add
weight to the case for sociology’s consideration. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We found that women, those living
in the South West and those aged between 35 and 64 yrs were more likely to
report paranormal experiences overall (see the </span><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/16.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">article</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
for more detailed results). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is here
we can begin to employ sociological ideas to articulate these findings. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example, women are more likely
to report paranormal experiences, but how might we understand this
sociologically?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Historically, other surveys have
shown similar findings with women having higher reporting rates of such experiences.
Previous explanations for these kinds of results have tended to be fairly naive
or unconvincing. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One such explanation included the
idea that women are more naturally intuitive or ‘person-oriented’. However, contemporary
sociology is unlikely to accept an explanation such as this based on essentialism.
Other explanations include the social marginality hypothesis or compensatory
approach, which decrees that those with lower social status will be more likely
to report paranormal experiences as a means of escaping their relatively poor
social standing. However, there is little supporting evidence for this theory and
it conceals a problematic assumption: namely, that women have a
straightforwardly lower social position than men. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead, there is more to be
gleaned from research on similar topics. For instance, findings from research
on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and new age consumption suggest
that women are more likely to engage with both (e.g. Adams et al 2003, Mears
and Ellison, 2009, Saher and Lindeman, 2005). It also appears to be important
whether an individual has community ties or interpersonal networks which uphold
similar beliefs. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What these studies suggest is that
there is no simple reasoning which explains the relationship between being a
female and the increased likelihood of reporting paranormal experiences. It is
likely to be a more nuanced picture influenced by a variety of factors such as
interpersonal connections, lifestyle, spiritual choices, consumption and
practice.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whilst connecting these ideas comprehensively
with our quantitative study is not possible, and would require more qualitative
work to establish, it does begin to point to some of the more complex and
interesting ways in which sociology could contribute to a much more complete
social understanding of paranormal experiences. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Research on lifestyle, consumption,
and contemporary spiritualities, not to mention ageing and the life course could
play an important part in furthering this understanding. So too could material
on space, place and location, for instance, particularly if we consider the
findings relating to differential levels of reporting of paranormal experiences
by age and region.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was sociologist Andrew Greeley (1975,
1991) who first suggested that ‘the paranormal is normal’. We update and restate
this – the paranormal is (still) normal – and renew his call for systematic sociological
work in this area.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">References<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adams, J., Easthope, G. &<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sibbritt, D. (2003) ‘Exploring the
relationship between women’s health and the use of complementary and
alternative medicine’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Complementary
Therapies in Medicine</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>11 p.
156–168.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Greeley, A. (1975) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sociology of the Paranormal: A
Reconnaissance</i>. London: Sage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Greeley, A. (1991) ‘The paranormal
is normal: A sociologist looks at parapsychology’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research</i>, 85 p.
367-374.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Mears, D.P. & Ellison, C.G. (2000) ‘Who Buys New Age Materials? An
Examination of Sociodemographic, Religious, Network, and Contextual Factors’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sociology of Religion </i>61 p. 289-313.</span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-themecolor: text1;">Saher</span><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">, M. & <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Lindeman</span>, M. (<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">2005</span>)
‘Alternative medicine: A psychological perspective. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Personality and Individual Differences</i>’,</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Frutiger-Light;"> </span><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">39 p. 1169–1178.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/editor/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> This
research was carried out for the University of York by Ipsos MORI. For more
details see the </span><a href="http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/16.html"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">article</span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
in the August edition of Socresonline.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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