Unleisured lives; Sport in the context of women's leisure

This article examines women's participation and non-participation in sport in the wider context of female leisure. It begins by setting out the reason why women's entitlement and access to leisure should be a major area of concern for feminists, comparable to employment and domestic labour. It then goes on, drawing partly on a study conducted by the author in the new city of Milton Keynes, to explore the dimensions of and constraints within which women's leisure operates, showing that for most women sport does not form a sizeable part of that leisure. Next some possible reasons why sport does not play a major role in women's leisure patterns and experiences are considered. Finally there is a brief discussion of some of the ways in which both sport and leisure could be made more accessible and responsive to the needs and interests of women, by changing not only aspects of sport and leisure, but also women's overall position in society.     

Gender in the Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper considers the three main ways in which social scientists are concerned with gender—as a field of study, as an analytical tool and as a social phenomenon structuring the social sciences themselves. It begins with a reconsideration of a report I wrote for the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 1998 on gender in the social sciences, and moves on to consider what has changed since then, emphasising the substantial internationalisation of Australian scholarship in thinking, method, focus, collaboration and communication. With the growing alliance of gender studies with cultural studies and the transformation of the latter from an interdisciplinary project into a new discipline, I suggest, feminist scholarship has become much more disciplinary in focus. For this reason, it has become important to understand why it is that women have found it much harder to achieve parity with men in some disciplines than others, and why it is that within disciplines, there remain strong gender differences. It concludes by observing that the vitality of gender scholarship depends significantly on its continuing engagement with public concerns and issues.     

Disrupting Identity through Visible Therapy: A Feminist Post-structuralist Approach to Working with Women Who Have Experienced Child Sexual Abuse

This article draws on feminism and post-structuralism to theorize a narrative framework for developing and critiquing therapeutic practices with women who have experienced child sexual abuse. I argue that both objectivism and relativism provide poor guides for conducting therapy and that it is only through situating our knowledges precisely that more liberatory therapy practices may be developed. This approach, termed ‘visible therapy’, is used to directly and explicitly challenge normative constructions of women, child sexual abuse and therapy. I argue that it is necessary to explicate the embedded assumptions produced through practices of abuse, and which serve to construct children's experiences of that abuse, in order to ward against their reproduction within therapy relationships. I demonstrate that it is through situating and explicating the operations of power that the authenticity of experience and identity may be questioned and women's ongoing positioning as guilty victims may be challenged. Thus, I am concerned not with who women ‘really are’ but with how they come to know and be known through practices of both abuse and therapy. This, then, is about making the tactics of abuse and therapy visible. Problems are not located within individuals, but rather within the narratives which situate both past and current relationships but which, through reiteration, obscure their own social production. I conclude that it is only when categorical identity is no longer assumed that progressive therapy practices with women who have been sexually abused can be developed and maintained.     

Connecting research and practice: Perspectives on the role of manualized programs in youth work

While there is a strong movement in favor of the use of manual-based programs in the arena of social care, there is a view that such programs are not applicable in the more fluid setting of youth work, which operates informally, using dynamic and organic methods. A critical pedagogical approach to youth work engages young people by encouraging them to become inquisitive, to question why things are the way they are and to pose problems through which they can learn. For some, manualized or evidence-based programs are not seen as having a role in such contexts. However, to date, the international debate in relation to this issue has been limited by an absence of published studies focusing specifically on strategies to implement evidence-informed practice in youth work contexts. This article aims to address this gap in the literature. The Irish national youth organization Foróige, which works with more than 56,000 young people in Ireland on an annual basis, has developed a range of manualized evidence-informed resources to support its youth work over recent years. Drawing on research findings from a range of studies conducted with youth workers focusing on implementation of these resources, the article explores the benefits and tensions associated with the use of program manuals in a youth work context. The findings suggest that such resources have a valuable role to play in youth work if designed in collaboration with youth workers, showing respect for core youth work values and allowing for flexibility and adaptability in implementation.     

East meets West: Utilising Western literature to conceptualise post-Soviet agrarian change

The following illustrations and commentary examine some of the visual images of the peasant found in popular literature and propaganda at the time of the German Peasant War. The historian of such popular movements is often preoccupied with written source materials, understandable enough in the context of the early sixteenth century. The development of printing and the spread of literacy represent a major social and cultural phenomenon, and the waves of written polemic and propaganda which flooded Germany as the great debate on religion unwound during 1520–25 created the first genuine mass literature and mass audience of the modern period. It is all too easy, therefore, to overlook visual evidence, but we argue two reasons why it is so important.     

Girton graduates: earning and learning, 1920s-1980s

This article is based on a sample survey of the life histories of female graduates of Girton College, Cambridge between the 1920s and 1980s. It uses part of the survey data to ask why a group of talented and highly skilled women had less conventionally successful careers than men of equivalent ability and training. Few of them came from highly privileged backgrounds, but rather from among the many strata of the British middle classes. Most them expected to earn their livings for some part of their adult lives; for their whole lives between graduation and retirement if they were among the 35% of Girton graduates of the 1920s and 1930s who did not marry. After World War Two the majority married. At the same time it became possible, as it had not been before, for middle-class married women to work for pay outside the home. But their career opportunities continued, at least to the 1970s, to be limited, above all to school-teaching, as had been the case before the War, a limitation which many women resented. When new career opportunities opened, as they did for some during the War and to a limited extent after the War, they were taken up enthusiastically. Many used their skills, rather, in voluntary activities, such as the magistracy. Those who competed in male-dominated paid occupations, such as medicine, business or the law often experienced male hostility or discrimination. Few at any time claimed to want a conventional male pattern of life, dominated by career, but many, throughout the period, regretted that it was so difficult to combine marriage and child-rearing with a career which made use of their talents and skills flexibly over the life cycle. Very few indeed regretted their experience of motherhood.     

Thwarted ambitions: the biography of Auvergne Doherty,an aspiring female barrister

ABSTRACT

Auvergne Doherty was the first woman from the Commonwealth to be admitted and called to the Bar of England and Wales.?In the first part of this article, Doherty's family background, education, legal training, and post-Bar experiences are set out. The second part analyses her profile compared with the other women called to the Bar in 1922 and considers why Doherty may not have gone on to practise as a barrister. This article argues that Doherty’s biography is important because it evidences how vital it was to have the necessary financial means and networks to be able to forget a career at the Bar. It was precisely the lack of these factors that impeded Doherty to fulfil her career as a barrister.     

Pacifists and Revenge-Seekers in Response to Unambiguous Peer Provocation

In order to better understand why some children retaliate when they feel provoked and others do not, the present study identified “pacifistically-oriented” children who made negative interpretations in response to unambiguous provocations, yet did not endorse revenge goals, and compared them to “revenge-seeking” children who also made negative interpretations but did endorse revenge goals. Groups were identified based on seventh graders’ (N?=?367; 54.77% male; 22.89% racial/ethnic minority) responses to hypothetical situations in which a peer excluded and insulted them. Comparing these groups revealed that Pacifists endorsed relationship-maintaining goals and emotion regulation goals more highly than Revenge-Seekers. Revenge-Seekers reported more anger and endorsed beliefs about negative reciprocity and aggression being legitimate more highly than Pacifists. Additionally, Revenge-Seekers were more disrespect sensitive than were Pacifists, based on a measure of vigilance for signs of disrespect and expectations that others would disrespect them. Together these findings point to social-cognitive and emotion-related processes that may inhibit revenge-seeking in unambiguous provocation situations, even when children interpret the peer’s behavior quite negatively.     

关于公共关系理论若干问题的看法

公共关系理论存在的问题是研究对象不明 ,核心理论不清。对公共关系理论性质的界定 ,是形成核心体系的关键。公共关系应属于管理学范畴 ,它对管理理论的重要贡献是 ,它不仅研究内部公众的管理艺术 ,而且研究如何通过一系列的主动行为对外部公共行为这一不可控制的因素施加影响 ,以达到某种程度的控制 ,以便使组织能够在更加理想的社会环境中生存发展     

Care-need and care-receivers: Views from the margins

Accounts of care from British academic feminist researchers have yet to include care-receiver experience at a theoretical and empirical level. This article examines some consequences for care-receivers and those with care-needs that arise from this omission. The question of why older people, and especially older women, with care-needs have been excluded from discourses of care is discussed. Drawing on empirical material from ethnographic research on care in later life, the article explores the ways in which care-receivers are silenced by their social position in the family and community. It is argued that care-receivers are not the homogeneous passive group that has been constructed in accounts of care and that the significance of generation for care relations has yet to be examined.     

Injustice and outcomes: a comparative analysis of two major disputes

Abstract

Injustice is said to be the cornerstone of collective action, but why is it so important, and how does the way in which it is framed for mobilisation affect the outcomes? This paper compares two lengthy disputes in the Australian electricity industry which demonstrate that a sense of injustice and a history of successful industrial action do not guarantee that a dispute will be resolved to employees’ satisfaction when the wider context is unfavourable. Although leaders of both disputes expressed confidence in success predicated on the outcomes of previous industrial activity, there were specific factors within the industrial, economic and political context which provoked determined employer and government counter mobilisation leading to unsuccessful outcomes for the workers in dispute. The reasons for the poor outcomes are discussed within the context of the framing of the injustice by leaders and the effect of the response of a determined government.     

dystopia as liberation: disturbing femininities in contemporary Thailand

Despite the stereotypical, outsider view of Thailand as a thriving hub of international sex tourism, traditional and local constructions of Thainess instead privilege the position of the ‘good’ Thai woman—a model of sexual propriety, demure physicality and aesthetic perfection. This is the image of femininity that is heralded by Thailand’s Tourist Authority and by government agencies alike as a marketable symbol of cultural refinement and national pride. But this disturbing ‘utopian’ construction of femininity might for some be considered a dystopia shaped by forms of power centred on elite urban rule. In mainstream definitions of Thainess, the monstrous and grotesque inverses of ‘good’ womanhood are located in the ‘dystopian’ visions of rural-based folk traditions that abound with malevolent female spirits and demons, and in the contemporary Thai horror films that draw on these tropes. Adopted by Thai feminists and by street protestors in Bangkok at times of recent political unrest, portrayals of a ‘monstrous-feminine’ have been adopted as central to a carnivalesque strategy of response and resistance to elite discourses of control. Such forces serve to symbolically disturb and destabilise middle-class constructions of a utopian vision of Thainess with Bangkok as its cultural core. This paper examines instances of how and why the counter-strategy of primitivism and monstrosity has developed, and the extent to which it translates ‘dystopian’ expressions of female sexuality in new imaginaries of ‘dystopia’ as a space of liberation from stultifying cultural and political norms.     

Politics of inclusion and exclusion in the Chinese industrial tree plantation sector: the global resource rush seen from inside China

In the last two decades, the industrial tree plantation (ITP) sector has expanded rapidly in southern China, causing important changes in land-use and land control. It involves both domestic and transnational corporations, and has provoked widespread conflict and political contestations. The villagers who are affected by the expansion of ITPs have reacted in varied and complex ways: some of the villagers were incorporated in the ITP sector, while others are excluded; some have embraced the change, while others have complaints; and some of the complaints remained latent, while others developed into (overt or covert) forms of resistance. This paper explores how and why various social groups have responded differently to the expansion of ITPs. This paper reveals the dynamics of villagers’ inclusion and exclusion in the ITP sector, covering both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ forms of inclusion and exclusion, resulting in differentiated political reactions from villagers. This paper hopes to contribute towards a more comprehensive understanding of the complex engagement of villagers in changes in land use and land control, not just in the most commonly studied countries in global land grabbing but inside China, and in transactions that involved large foreign companies, something that has so far been missed in the literature on land grabbing.     

Barriers to women’s access to decision-making positions in sport organizations: the case of establishing a girls’ volleyball academy in Israel

The aim of this paper is to highlight the nature of the barriers facing women in terms of their participation in decision-making in Israeli sport, and to identify and evaluate some of the strategies and tactics adopted to overcome these barriers. This is done by making reference to a particular case study, the case of the process of establishing a major policy initiative in Israeli sport – the founding of the national Volleyball Academy for Young Talented Girls. The case is analyzed in order to identify how and why the goal of establishing the Academy was successful, and to consider what may be learned in terms of the implications for the tactics and strategies used that might be adopted by other women in similar circumstances.     

‘Centre-left’ regimes in Latin America: History repeating itself as farce?

Examined here is the phenomenon of the‘centre-left’ regime that has emerged recently in Latin America, and the reasons why such palpably neo-liberal governments attract the uncritical support of leftist intellectuals worldwide. The‘centre-left’ governments of Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Tabare Vazquez in Uruguay, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Toledo in Peru, and Gutierrez in Ecuador are measured against a set of criteria designating espousal of leftist politics, a test failed by them all. It is argued here that, in order to develop authentically leftist views about future patterns of agrarian policy and transformation, and to support these once developed, it is necessary first to sweep away the rhetoric that these days is taken for‘leftist’ views.     

International Law as Remedy: When the State Breaches Child Protection Statutes

While legislative frameworks prescribe the legal obligations of the parents to protect and nurture their children, there is no equivalent legal framework requiring and sanctioning the conduct of agents of the state who act in loco parentis. In consequence some children continue to be “at risk” and may even be in greater danger once the state has intervened. This is a problem that is not confined to one or two countries, but a matter of global concern that touches most developed and developing nations alike. In this article I ask what remedies are available for addressing this perennial problem and suggest that one option is to use the existing human rights framework embodied in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) which specifies the rights of children. I outline the reporting UN mechanisms and provide an example of how evidence and argument can be used as part of that reporting process with a view towards securing some of accountability.     

‘disparate in voice,sympathetic in direction’: gendered political blackness and the politics of solidarity

While political blackness seems to be making quite a comeback, this resurgence has also met with frustration and ambivalence. This paper aims to make sense of why this mobilising concept is accepted in some contemporary black feminist circles and outright rejected in others. It unpicks the diasporic dimensions of political blackness, reflecting on the issues that converged to foreground ‘black’ as the basis for mobilising women of African and Asian decent to engage in collective activism. Attention is given to the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent, a national network that linked black women’s organisations and expressed and projected what the author defines as gendered political blackness. Interrogating its implications and the tendency towards ideological policing, the author argues that political blackness must be viewed as a politics of solidarity. If it is to maintain its viability, political blackness needs reframing, contextualising and further analysis. A retelling of its ideological underpinnings, and crucially the tensions and contradictions inherent in political blackness, offers a critical lens through which to rethink how we use it as a mobilising tactic in the present.     

The ‘Unscottishness’ of Female Rule: an early modern theory

History has played a central role in the construction of nations in the early modern period when national historiography replaced chronicles as the main historical genre. The treatment of female national characters by historians is therefore key to our understanding of the gendering of the nation in its infancy. This article contends that Scotland is a good case in point to explain why some nations were born ‘womenless’, for not only did Scottish historians of the period exclude women from national heroism, but one historian, Buchanan, went as far as theorising a Scottish exception that deliberately excluded Scottish women from the throne.