Reciprocity and rape: Blackness and the paradox of sexual violence

This essay expands Saidiya Hartman's unflinching paradigmatic analysis in Scenes of Subjection of the modes of historical continuity in which Black women are barred from reciprocity, recognition, and incorporation ab initio (Hartman, Saidiya V. 1997. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.). By engaging the works of key Marxist feminist theorist Leopoldina Fortunati, I will demystify the ways in which these three homologies which non-Black women depend upon for the coherence of their complaint are parasitic on the flesh of Black women and men.     

the ethical ambivalence of resistant violence: notes from postcolonial south Asia

In the face of mounting militarism in south Asia, this essay turns to anti-state, ‘liberatory’ movements in the region that employ violence to achieve their political aims. It explores some of the ethical quandaries that arise from the embrace of such violence, particularly for feminists for whom political violence and militarism is today a moot point. Feminist responses towards resistant political violence have, however, been less straightforward than towards the violence of the state, suggesting a more ambivalent ethical position towards the former than the latter. The nature of this ambivalence can be located in a postcolonial feminist ethics that is conceptually committed to the use of political violence in certain, albeit exceptional circumstances on the basis of the ethical ends that this violence (as opposed to other oppressive violence) serves. In opening up this ethical ambivalence – or the ethics of ambiguity, as Simone de Beauvoir says – to interrogation and reflection, I underscore the difficulties involved in ethically discriminating between forms of violence, especially when we consider the manner in which such distinctions rely on and reproduce gendered modes of power. This raises particular problems for current feminist appraisals of resistant political violence as an expression of women's empowerment and ‘agency’.     

researching sexual violence against older people: reflecting on the use of Freedom of Information requests in a feminist study

Domestic and sexual violence research has traditionally been associated with feminist qualitative methodology; however, quantitative methods are increasingly used by feminists in research examining the prevalence of and issues related to rape and sexual assault, either as standalone methods or in combination with other, qualitative methods (i.e. mixed methods). Freedom of Information (FOI) requests are a data collection tool that allow citizens to obtain data held by public authorities in the UK and are particularly useful for uncovering information on marginalised groups who may be difficult to recruit in qualitative research. Whilst they are frequently used by journalists, their potential is yet to be fully realised by social researchers. This paper reflects on the use of Freedom of Information requests in a mixed-method feminist study exploring sexual violence against people aged 60 years and over.     

American labor history prior to the civil war: Sources and opportunities for research

In a single European aviation market that is open to innovative new business strategies, most notably the (ultra) low-cost model developed by Ryanair, nonterritorial forms of sovereignty have been used to redefine employment relations, exert control over labor, and extract surplus value. Although aviation unions recognize the need to shift scale from a predominantly local focus on their national (flag) airline, they have yet to develop effective strategies at the supranational level as low-fare airlines continually extend their geographical reach in the open skies over Europe and beyond. Union strategies are considered at different levels (national and EU) as well as the different processes to enact these strategies (technocratic and democratic). Unions need to develop a Euro-democratization strategy if they are to arrest the anti-unionism and social dumping of European “sky pirates” such as Ryanair and Norwegian Air Shuttle.     

Incidence and methodology in sexual harassment research in northwest europe

A substantial body of research addressing the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace has been developed over the past decade. In this article, we present the results of our review study of research on sexual harassment in the workplace in 11 Northern and Western European countries and consider the complexity of cross-cultural comparisons of the incidence rates of sexual harassment. In 1997, we reviewed 74 surveys and qualitative studies conducted between 1987 and 1997. Sexual harassment appears to be a workplace problem in all countries, although the incidence varies considerably. We argue that differences in incidence rates are not, for the most part, a reflection of national cultural differences, but are partly due to the definitions and methodology used in the studies. This implies that higher reported incidence figures in one country do not necessarily reflect a higher prevalence of sexual harassment compared to other countries. Less speculative is the comparison of incidence figures of sexual harassment from the perspective of organizational culture. Several organizational characteristics seem to facilitate the occurrence of sexual harassment.     

Abortion research: attitudes,sexual behavior,and problems in a community college population

One hundred fifty community college students, 95% Caucasian, were surveyed regarding their attitudes toward abortion, their sexual behavior, and their problems. Although 70% of the students were raised Catholic, 82% supported abortion choice. Eighty-six percent had engaged in premarital sex, 70% used contraception, and 26% had premarital pregnancies. When anti-abortion students were compared with pro-abortion students, they had more religiosity, believed that abortion was murder, were more punitive toward the woman and medical personnel involved, were less sexually active, and less likely to know someone who had an abortion. Many students had a history of, and were currently experiencing, serious problems, especially the females.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Tufts University. Research interests include gender development and abuse.Received C.A.S. in school psychology from Harvard University. Research interests include corporal punishment and battered wives.     

the ripples of violence

The received view in mainstream philosophy is that violence is an ‘act’, to be defined in terms of ‘force’ and ‘intentionality’. This approach regrettably and inexcusably tends to prioritise the agent performing the act of violence in question. This paper argues that we should resist this tendency, in order to prioritise the victim or survivor of violence, and her personal experience, not that of the perpetrator. Starting from an analysis of the devastating impact of violence that characterises the experience of sexual violation and its aftermath, based on the memoirs of Susan Brison (philosopher) and Alice Sebold (novelist), we will then proceed to argue that violence should not be thought of merely in terms of an ‘act’, but also as an ‘experience’, the difference being that an act is temporally determinate while an experience is temporally indeterminate. With the help of a phenomenological approach, we will argue that violence has time-indeterminate intended and unintended consequences; these are the ripples of violence. Finally, some of the moral, legal and political implications of acknowledging the temporal indeterminacy of violence will be highlighted.     

Fact,fiction and method in the early history of social research: Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness as case-studies

The development of social science research methods by women reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a largely buried history. This article examines the work of Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness, two British reformers who conducted many social investigations using a wide range of research methods. They also crossed genres in writing fiction, which was an accepted method at the time for putting forward new ideas about social conditions. Black and Harness were part of a vibrant network of women activists, thinkers and writers in late nineteenth century London, who together contributed much to the growing discipline of social science and to imaginative forms of writing about social issues.