gendered politics of alienation and power restoration: Arab revolutions and women’s sentiments of loss and despair

From the start of the Arab revolutions in late 2010, a connection between the law, state, political economy, gender norms and orientalist ideology has formed the foundation of women’s systematic exclusion from politics. By unmasking processes in Egypt that have created the ideological and material conditions of externalising women’s revolutionary acts, estranging their political involvement, and exposing them to various forms of violence, this article offers a gendered political reading of the concept of alienation. The article suggests that gender-normative ideology’s characterisation of women’s images, roles and acts during and after revolutions, corresponds to the most profound form of alienation. The article identifies the externalisation and subjugation of women, and objectification of their revolutionary acts as modes of alienation. Moreover, it proposes that the implementing of these modes of alienation are necessary for creating conditions that allow for the reconfiguration of power dynamics that restore the authoritarian power of the state. This discussion suggests that the sphere of politics not only relates to political activism and conflict between revolutions and counter-revolutions, but that it is also a battlefield for the (re)production of gender-normative knowledge.     

Adolescents’ Experiences of Sexual Assault by Peers: Prevalence and Nature of Victimization Occurring Within and Outside of School

This study examined adolescent peer-on-peer sexual assault victimization occurring within and outside school. The sample consisted of 1,086 7th through 12th grade students, with a mean age of 15. Most of the respondents were White (54%) or Black (45%), and approximately half of respondents were female (54%). A modified version of the Sexual Experiences Survey was used to assess opposite sex sexual victimization in 7th through 12th grade students. Rates of peer sexual assault were high, ranging from 26% of high school boys to 51% of high school girls. School was the most common location of peer sexual victimization. Characteristics of assault varied by location, including type of victimization, victims’ grade level, relationship to the perpetrator, type of coercion, and how upsetting the assault was. Distinctions between sexual assault occurring in and out of school are conceptualized with literature on developmental changes in heterosexual relationships and aggression.

Profiles of Adolescents’ Perceptions of Democratic Classroom Climate and Students’ Influence: The Effect of School and Community Contexts

Students’ learning experiences and outcomes are shaped by school and classroom contexts. Many studies have shown how an open, democratic classroom climate relates to learning in the citizenship domain and helps nurture active and engaged citizens. However, little research has been undertaken to look at how such a favorable classroom climate may work together with broader school factors. The current study examines data from 14,292 Nordic eighth graders (51% female) who had participated in the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study in 2009, as well as contextual data from 5,657 teachers and 618 principals. Latent class analysis identifies profiles of students’ perceptions of school context, which are further examined with respect to the contextual correlates at the school level using two-level fixed effects multinomial regression analyses. Five distinct student profiles are identified and labeled “alienated”, “indifferent”, “activist”, “debater”, and “communitarian”. Compared to indifferent students, debaters and activists appear more frequently at schools with relatively few social problems; being in the communitarian group is associated with aspects of the wider community. Furthermore, being in one of these three groups (and not in the indifferent group) is more likely when teachers act as role models by engaging in school governance. The results are discussed within the framework of ecological assets and developmental niches for emergent participatory citizenship. The implications are that adults at school could enhance multiple contexts that shape adolescents’ developmental niches to nurture active and informed citizens for democracies.     

Perceptions of Dishonesty: Understanding Parents’ Reports of and Influence on Children and Adolescents’ Lie-Telling

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Previous studies suggest parents lack knowledge regarding child and adolescent lie-telling; however, no study to date has examined children’s and...     

“Disrupting the surface of order and innocence”: Towards a theory of sexuality and the law

Conclusion The dominant male discourse as expressed in the law of sexuality constructs the male subject. In each area — rape, incest and prostitution, it creates and extends the power which underpins the sexuality of the male subject to facilitate the non-consensual taking of women in rape and incest and the buying of them on the subject's own terms in prostitution.Further, the law constructs the female as Other not as freely consenting subject but as Other for the male subject in the space of unreason, for the logic of desire.In these constructions, lie the paradox of the law of sexuality. It exists purportedly to defend and protect the victims of rape, incest and prostitution but even in so far as it does so, it reasserts, through its constructions, the power of the speaking male subject through and the exclusion of the woman as Other from, the dominant male discourse as it is expressed in and enshrined by that law.The author is grateful for the comments of Glynis Cousin, Mike McConville, Brendan McSweeney and an anonymous referee on this work.     

Classroom Predictors of National Belonging: The Role of Interethnic Contact and Teachers’ and Classmates’ Diversity Norms

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Schools can be important for the development of national belonging in students with immigrant backgrounds. Following Contact Theory and prior research on...     

Socialization and Individual Antecedents of Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Moral Motivation

Socialization and individual differences were examined as antecedents of moral motivation in representative samples of 15-year-old adolescents (N = 1,258; 54% female) and 21-year-old young adults (N = 584; 53% female). The adolescents’ primary caregivers (N = 1,056) also participated. The strength of moral motivation was rated by participants’ responses to two hypothetical moral dilemmas in terms of action decisions, emotion attributions, and justifications. Socialization was measured by the perceived quality of friendship, parent–child relationships, and educational background. The importance attached to social justice and various personality traits were also assessed. Adolescents’ moral motivation was positively associated with the quality of their parent–child relationship and the importance of social justice. Young adults’ moral motivation was predicted by the perceived quality of friendships, the importance of social justice, and agreeableness. For both groups, moral motivation was greater in females. The theoretical implications of the findings for the development of moral motivation are discussed.     

Relationships of Adolescents’ Perceptions of Parental and Peer Behaviors with Cigarette and Alcohol Use in Different Neighborhood Contexts

This study examined the relationships of adolescents’ perceptions of parental and peer behaviors with cigarette and alcohol use in different neighborhood contexts. The sample included 924 adolescents (49% boys, 51% girls) 12–14 years of age whose addresses were matched with 1990 census block groups. Six neighborhood types were identified through a cluster analysis. The findings suggest that parental smoking was associated with increased adolescent smoking in suburban white middle socioeconomic status (SES) neighborhoods. Peer smoking was associated with increased adolescent smoking in rural neighborhoods. Parental monitoring was associated with decreased adolescent drinking in urban white high-SES neighborhoods and parental drinking was associated with increased adolescent drinking in urban white middle-SES neighborhoods, respectively. Peer drinking was associated with increased adolescent drinking in urban neighborhoods. This study demonstrates the importance of examining parental and peer influences on adolescent smoking and drinking in different neighborhood contexts.     

Stories of life Stories of living: Women’ narratives and feminist biography

Narrative structure in biographical accounts is currently a much debated theme. This article brings together methodological debates in life story research and discussions within feminism about women's narratives and feminist biography. Connections between gendered conceptions of time and structures in narrative accounts are explored, and seen in relation to the context of interviewing. The latter is problematized as a setting that affects both the form and content of the biographical accounts given by informants. From this approach the opportunity arises for illuminating connections between “private troubles” in people's lives and “public issues” in society. An empirical discussion based on biographical interviews with white, Norwegian, middle‐class women, is carried out to illustrate the points made.     

the gift of gametes – unconscious motivation,commodification and problematics of genealogy

Three-way baby making is not new: genetic surrogacy existed in Biblical times and donor insemination was recorded in Britain over 200 years ago. However, the gift of gametes between women breaks all social conventions. This paper examines the phenomenon of gamete-donation questioning whether a ‘gift’ of such magnitude can ever be ‘free’ (as the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority advocates), or a ‘true’ gift (in Derridian terms). Exploration of this unprecedented ‘gift’ from a psychoanalytic approach is supplemented by an interdisciplinary one, drawing on the gift literature in philosophy, anthropology, ethnography and socioeconomics, as well as neonatal research and reproductive medicine. Critics note the dearth of analyses that take seriously the psychological ramifications of contemporary treatments, protocols and expectations in reproductive medicine. Based on psychoanalytic therapy within a clinical practice devoted to reproductive issues, the author argues that institutionalised asexual reproduction alters unconscious conceptualisations of the act of procreation – converting the passionate intimacy of primal scene into a clinical coupling of gametes in a mechanised arena. The author argues that, too charged to contemplate, the gamete's transcendent quality and blurring of elementary personae/res distinctions leads protagonists, including professionals, to defensive commodification. Multiple emotional meanings are ascribed to gifted gametes by each in the triangle of donor, recipient and offspring, illustrated here with verbatim material. This article addresses some of the far-reaching socio-political consequences for class, race, age, gender and sexuality of asexual reproduction, related to selection procedures and uneven global and local distribution of fertility treatment and its cost in financial, physical, practical and emotional terms. Similarly, feminist unease over (patriarchal) reproductive control and gatekeeping policies are considered, as well as ethical concerns over genetic manipulation, pre-implantation screening, sex selection, selective foetocide and potential exploitation of transnational donors and surrogates.     

Adolescents’ internalizing and aggressive behaviors and perceptions of parents’ psychological control: a panel study examining direction of effects

This panel study investigated the directionality of relations between adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ psychological control and adolescents’ self-reported internalizing and aggressive (physical and relational) behaviors. Data were collected from a random, community sample of 530 adolescents ages 12–19 years old at time 1, and again 2 years later. Hierarchical regression analyses found that adolescents’ perceptions of parents’ psychological control at baseline did not predict changes in adolescents’ internalizing and aggressive behaviors over 2 years but higher internalizing behavior and physical aggression at time 1 predicted increases in adolescents’ estimates of their mothers’ and fathers’ psychologically controlling behaviors. Higher relational aggression reported by adolescents at time 1 predicted increases in their perceptions of mothers as psychologically controlling. This study provides more evidence for child effects on adolescents’ ratings of their parents’ psychological control than for parent effects of perceived psychological control on adolescents’ behavior.

Union labels and boycotts: Cooperation of the knights of labor and the cigar makers international union, 1885–6

Hard‐Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution, 1860–1910. By Mark Wyman. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979. x, 331 pp. $15.95.

Wage‐Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930. By Leslie Woodcock Tentler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. 266 pp. $14.95.

Feigned Necessity: Hawaii's Attempts to Obtain Chinese Contract Labor, 1921–1923. By John E. Reinecke. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, Inc., 1979. xvi, 697 pp., n.p.

Lumber and Politics: The Career of Mark E. Reed. By Robert E. Ficken. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. xi, 276 pp. $14.95.

The Mess in Washington: Manpower Mobilization in World War II. By George Q. Flynn. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1979. xi, 294 pp. $17.95.

The Great Fear: The Anti‐Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. By David Caute. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978. 638 pp. $14.95.

Which Side Are You On? The Brookside Mine Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. By Lynda Ann Ewen. Chicago: Vanguard Books, 1979. 139 pp. Appendix. $4.95.

A Ghetto Grows In Brooklyn. By Harold X. Connolly. New York: New York University Press, 1977. xv, 248 pp. $15.00.

Voices of Discord: Canadian Short Stories from the 1930's. Edited by Donna Phillips. Introduction by Kenneth J. Hughes. Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1979. 220 pp. $7.95.

Popular Disturbances in England: 1700–1870. By John Stevenson. New York: Longman, 1979. vii, 374 pp. $24.00.

Before The Welfare State: Social Administration in Early Industrial Brit‐tain. By Ursula R. Q. Henriques. New York: Longman, 1979. 294 pp. $10.50.

Aristocracy and People: Britain 1815–1865. By Norman Gash. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. vii, 375 pp. $20.00.

Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth‐Century London: John Gast and His Times. By I. J. Prothero. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 418 pp. $30.00.

The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability 1900–1914. Edited by Alan O'Day. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979. 199 pp. $19.95.

Goodbye to the Working Class: A Study of 122 Former Grammar School Children from Dagenham. By Roy Greenslade. London: Marion Boyars, 1979. 192 pp. $ 5.95.

The Action Française and Revolutionary Syndicalism. By Paul Mazgaj. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979. 281 pp. $24.95.

Paths To Authority: The Middle Class and the Industrial Labor Force in France, 1820–1848. By Peter N. Stearns. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. 222 pp. $12.95.

French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851. By Ted W. Marga‐dent. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. xxiv, 379 pp. $25.00.

The Service City: State and Townsmen In Russia, 1600–1800. By J. Michael Hittle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. viii, 297 pp. $20.00.

Karl Marx, Romantic Irony and the Proletariat: The Mythopoetic Origins of Marxism. By Leonard P. Wessell, Jr. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 297 pp. $20.00.     

The Constitution of Afghanistan and Women’s Rights

This article argues that women’s human rights were and are being violated in Afghanistan regardless of who governs the country: Kings, secular rulers, Mujahideen or Taliban, or the incumbent internationally backed government of Karzai. The provisions of the new constitution regarding women’s rights are analysed under three categories: neutral, protective and discriminatory. It is argued that the current constitution is a step in the right direction but, far from protecting women’s rights effectively, it requires substantial revamping. The constitutional commitment to international human rights standards seems to be a hallow slogan as the constitution declares Islam as a state religion which clearly conflicts with women’s human rights standards in certain areas. The Constitution has empowered the Supreme Court to review whether human rights instruments are compatible with Islamic legal norms and, in case of conflict, precedence will be given to Islamic law. Keeping this in view, it is argued that Afghanistan’s ratification of the Women’s Convention without reservations has no real significance unless Islamic law dealing with women’s rights is reformed and reconciled with international women’s rights standards.     

Kirishima Yōko and the Age of Non-Marriage

The “Age of Non-Marriage” describes major demographic trends evident in Japan since the 1980s: declining rates of marriage, delay in marriage, and rising divorce rates. As familiar stereotypes continue to exert influence over gender roles, many frustrated women opt out of marriage and child-bearing. Award-winning non-fiction writer Kirishima Yōko (1937– ) pioneered new ideas and lifestyles as a successful single mother in the 1960s and 1970s. Now in her sixties, Kirishima continues to encourage readers to free themselves from societal expectations in order to fulfill their potential. Japan is now more and more experiencing change in gender roles for men as well as women.