Cook,eat, man,woman: understanding the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,nutritionism and its alternatives from Malawi

The Group of Eight Countries (G8) launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition to improve nutritional outcomes through private sector involvement in agricultural development. The accession of Malawi to the Alliance reveals the assumptions behind the intervention. We show that while the New Alliance may seem to have little to do with nutrition, its emergence as a frame for the privatization of food and agriculture has been decades in the making, and is best understood as an outcome of a project of nutritionism. To highlight the failings of the approach, we present findings from the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Initiative in northern Malawi, which has demonstrated success in combatting malnutrition through a combination of agroecological farming practices, community mobilization, women's empowerment and changes in intrahousehold gender dynamics. Contrasting a political economic analysis of the New Alliance alongside that of the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Initiative shows the difference between a concern with the gendered social context of malnutrition, and nutritionism. We conclude with an analysis of the ways that nutrition can play a part in interventions that are inimical, or conducive, to freedom.     

Women in Television in the Multi-Channel Age

This article explores the impact of structural and technological change on women's employment in the UK television industry. It looks at the challenges faced by women in working in what has become since the mid-1980s a largely freelance industry where short-term contracts, informal recruitment procedures and long, unpredictable work schedules mean that women find it increasingly difficult to combine a career and family. Through case studies of individual careers, of a women's magazine programme for S4C Digital and a survey of women's credits on a selection of the newer channels (Sky One, UK Living and Channel 5), it argues that technological advances in digital transmission and production will not improve working conditions and opportunities for women's participation in all areas of the industry if they continue to replicate existing practice.     

an interview with Kim Longinotto

Kim Longinotto is one of the UK's leading documentary directors whose body of work explores women's lives and their struggles for autonomy and human rights in a range of international cultural contexts. Her strategies interrogate the observationalist traditions of documentary cinema and visual anthropology to produce engaged and profoundly empathetic feminist films. She works in collaborative ways with her subjects, often with other directors, to represent the contradictions and multiple layers of their lives and political and social situations. This interview focuses on Longinotto's approach to representing her subjects and using the medium of documentary as a form of witnessing.     

‘She killed not from hate,but from love’: motherhood,melodrama and mercy killing in the case of May Brownhill

This article examines press portrayals of and public reactions to a ‘mercy killing’ in 1930s England. May Brownhill, sixty-two, killed her ‘invalid’ adult son by giving him an overdose of aspirin and poisoning him with coal gas. Through the conventions of melodrama, May was portrayed in the press as a respectable, devoted and self-sacrificial mother deserving of sympathy. The case also resonated with contemporary debates about euthanasia. It is an historical example of popular leniency, whereby although guilty of a crime, an individual is not seen as deserving of punishment. The case contributes to our understanding of how popular leniency was shaped by gender, class and age, and by contemporary views on ‘mercy killing’.     

Constitutional and Conceptual Complexities in UK Implementation of the EU Harassment Provisions

This essay evaluates implementation in the UK in recent yearsof EU provisions on discriminatory harassment. From a technicalpoint of view, aspects of the new law are vulnerable to judicialreview challenges of various kinds. The correct interpretationof important elements is also unclear. From a principled perspective,these doctrinal complexities are liable to obscure the mostimportant underlying issues.     

The Continuing Conceptual Crisis in the Common Law of the Contract of Employment

The effects on the common law of the contract of employment of the decision of the House of Lords in Johnson v Unisys Ltd are considered. The focus is on liability rather than remedies. It is argued that the case created conceptual instability in the common law understanding of a breach of a contract of employment. The logical consequence of the majority reasoning is that in some cases the existence or not of a breach by an employer is contingent on an employee's reaction. Relevant case law history and developments since the Johnson decision inform a detailed critique of the arguments that underpinned it. A solution is suggested according to which, prima facie, contracts of employment would be required to be performed in accordance with terms that have been implied by law.