Embodied Care and Planet Earth: Ecofeminism,Maternalism and Postmaternalism

ABSTRACT

The article engages with Julie Stephens (2011) book, Confronting Postmaternal Thinking, which argues for a ‘regendered’ feminism to counter the current postmaternal and neoliberalist focus on paid work to the detriment of relationships of care. Stephens points to ecofeminism as illustrative of a potentially new form of maternalism which could achieve this. While broadly agreeing with Stephens’s diagnosis of neoliberalism as amplifying the impoverishment of relations within natural and societal worlds, I contest her construal of ecofeminism and care ethics to maternalism. Instead, I propose a concept of embodied care that speaks to the ecofeminist imperative to support a radical restructuring of social and political institutions such that they focus on more-than-human flourishing. This is not to argue for a form of regendered maternalism, but neither does it seek to cast maternalism as something to be transcended. Rather, an approach to care that foregrounds connectivity and entangled materialisations provides an ethical resource to confront the dead hand of neoliberalism and a starting place from which to re-figure the postmaternal through a radical and liberatory focus on embodied relatedness.     

On Moving the Table: Reflections on an Author-Meets-Reader Session

Through a commentary on the enriching experience of receiving feedback through the Brewing Legal Times author-meets-reader session in February 2018, this piece reflects on the intellectual generosity and scholarly labour that makes such sessions an important form of academic social reproduction.     

A Moving Target: Reasons Given by Adolescents for Alcohol and Narcotics Use, 1984 and 1999

Previous studies have investigated adolescents' reasons for alcohol and narcotics use, but have tended to neglect changes in the reasons over time. This study investigates the reasons given by Finnish adolescents for their own alcohol use, and for the use of alcohol and narcotics by others. In 1984, a questionnaire on reasons for alcohol and narcotics use was administered to a sample of adolescents aged 14–16 (N = 396). The questionnaire was administered again to a similar sample (N = 488) in 1999. An increase was found in reasons involving inner subjective experiences, referring to the good feeling and fun resulting from alcohol and narcotics use. In addition, the goals of alcohol consumption were increasingly perceived as drinking to get drunk, and for its own sake. The results suggest that adolescents' attitudes have become more liberal towards alcohol and narcotics use, and that prevention campaigns may be aiming at a moving target of culturally held opinion.     

企业停产倒闭外迁不能归因于《劳动合同法》

近一年来,一些媒体和学者把企业非正常停产、倒闭或外迁的原因归之于《劳动合同法》的颁布实施。企业遇到困难既有市场因素也有政策因素,出口型企业受美国金融危机影响很大。《劳动合同法》虽然坚定地维护了社会保险制度,但并不足以引起企业劳动力成本的大幅增长,也不足以引起企业大批停产倒闭和外迁。《劳动合同法》的强力实施只对违法企业的劳动力成本支出有较小的影响。     

between Pachamama and Mother Earth: gender,political ontology and the rights of nature in contemporary Bolivia

Focusing on contemporary Bolivia, this article examines promises and pitfalls of political and legal initiatives that have turned Pachamama into a subject of rights. The conferral of rights on the indigenous earth being had the potential to unsettle the Western ontological distinction between active human subjects who engage in politics and passive natural resources. This essay, however, highlights some paradoxical effects of the rights of nature in Bolivia, where Evo Morales’ model of development relies on the intensification of the export-oriented extractive economy. Through the analysis of a range of texts, including paintings, legal documents, political speeches and activist interventions, I consider the equivocation between the normatively gendered Mother Earth that the state recognises as the subject of rights, and the figure of Pachamama evoked by feminist and indigenous activists. Pachamama, I suggest, has been incorporated into the Bolivian state as a being whose generative capacities have been translated into a rigid gender binary. As a gendered subject of rights, Pachamama/Mother Earth is exposed to governmental strategies that ultimately increase its subordination to state power. The concluding remarks foreground the import of feminist perspectives in yielding insights concerning political ontological conflicts.     

Pubertal Effects on Adjustment in Girls: Moving from Demonstrating Effects to Identifying Pathways

The present investigation examines mediated pathways from pubertal development to changes in depressive affect and aggression. Participants were 100 white girls who were between the ages of 10 and 14 (M=12.13, SD=.80); girls were from well-educated, middle- to upper-middle class families, and attended private schools in a major northeastern urban area. Three aspects of pubertal development were examined: (a) estradiol categories tapping gonadal maturation; (b) dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) levels indicating adrenal maturation; and (c) pubertal timing (early vs. other). Three potential mediators were also examined: emotional arousal, attention difficulties, and negative life events. Tests of mediated models indicated that early pubertal timing predicted higher emotional arousal which subsequently predicted increased depressive affect. Negative life events, and possibly attention difficulties, mediated the associations of both estradiol category and DHEAS with aggression. These findings highlight the potential for more intensive investigation of gonadal and adrenal processes in explaining affective changes at puberty.

When the Earth is Female and the Nation is Mother: Gender,the Armed Forces and Nationalism in Indonesia

Takamure Itsue has many faces following different phases of her life: poet, activist-writer, anarchist, ethnologist and historian. Throughout these transformations, Takamure maintained her feminist position. This article concentrates on her politics of love, sex and marriage, formulated and presented in the pre-war period during the time of Japanese colonial empire. A specific focus is placed on her positionality in the act of writing within the discursive field of women whose nation was colonizing others, notably Koreans. The combination of positivistic craving for ‘scientific’ history to substantiate the uxorilocal tradition of Japanese matrimony and uncritical acceptance of ‘motherhood’ as a superior virtue led her to consequently embrace Japan's colonialism.     

Labor History on the World Wide Web: Thoughts on Jumping onto a Moving Express Train

Most historians believe that inside contracting (IC), a system that had its origins in the early industrial revolution, remained an important practice throughout nineteenth-century America. Under IC, proprietors appointed a senior worker who agreed to supply components or completed articles at an agreed price. It was the contractor who bore the risk of failure or pocketed the profits. Here was a system that created an alternative locus of power within the workshop. Focusing on machine building, this article argues that IC should be seen as a feature of the earlier nineteenth century, primarily associated with New England's industrial development. In the workshops of 1870s and 1880s Philadelphia, proprietors and workers used the language of ‘contracting’ but its meaning was altogether different. In Philadelphia, a system of piece contracting (PC) emerged, encouraged by the crisis of the 1870s depression, as proprietors attempted to reduce costs and control skilled labour—in contrast to earlier IC which was an expression of owners’ reluctance or inability to take charge. At the Baldwin Locomotive Works and Cramp shipyard a sophisticated system of gang PC also developed. PC did not offer a share of the profits but only limited inducement to a layer of labour aristocrat ‘contractors’; overall, it intended to constrain the world of the skilled mechanic.     

年鉴条目的文体与文风

年鉴,是系统汇辑上一年度重要文献信息、逐年编纂并连续出版的资料性工具书.由于年鉴的性质和功能,年鉴大多为条目体,决定其条目的文体及文风.条目的记述文体与其它相近文体不同,而准确、简洁、质朴应为条目文风的要旨.     

安全生产与科技进步

当前,我国安全生产形势仍十分严峻,究其原因,同我国安全科学技术水平不高直接相关。因此,要从根本上扭转安全生产的严峻形势,就必须推动安全科技的进步。