Understanding ‘The Panty Shanty’: off-campus house signs as cultural texts on gender and sexuality

Students at a large, prestigious, public university in the Midwestern region of the USA have a long-standing tradition of naming their rented houses off campus and communicating those names to the student body through displaying prominent and eye-catching house signs. Examples of signs names and visual characteristics are: ‘Betty Ford Clinic’ (featuring an image of a martini glass); ‘Morning Wood’ (referencing male sexual arousal and depicting a tent with a man's legs sticking out); ‘Time Well Wasted’ (written in pink over a beach scene and a martini glass); ‘Fox Den’ (images of a fox tail and a well-known sorority symbol); ‘Tequila Mockingbird’ (a play on words); and ‘Down on U’ (the sign references a sexual act for a house located on University Avenue). Through a socio-feminist and social constructionist perspective, the researchers use content analysis to explore how these house signs serve as cultural texts on gender and sexuality norms in the American undergraduate college setting. Based on our data, house signs reinforce dominant forms of gender ideologies, including hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity, both of which are associated with upholding and promoting institutionalized patriarchy (Connell, R. W., &; Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005 Connell, R. W., &; Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender &; Society, 19, 829–859. 10.1177/0891243205278639.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender &; Society, 19, 829–859). These house signs are also shown through the data to promote a campus culture of heteronormativity where partying, drinking, and casual sex are standards for social belonging, and where high rates of sexual assault persist. As opposed to viewing house signs as simply manifestations of student wit and harmless humor, the researchers critically evaluate if and how these visual displays serve as a mechanism through which gender and sexuality-related inequalities are perpetuated within a higher education institutional setting. Implications for students and their college campuses are discussed.     

Caring consumption as marketing schema: representations of motherhood in an era of hyperconsumption

What can representations of women's ‘caring consumption’ (Thompson 1996 Thompson, C., 1996. Caring consumers: gendered consumption meanings and the juggling lifestyle. Journal of consumer research, 22, 388–407. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2489789.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reveal about broad cultural understandings of the nature of motherhood? We study Canadian television advertisements to gain insight into the production of cultural schemas and the reproduction of beliefs about gender and motherhood. Employing an inductive qualitative analysis of portrayals of mothers and women who are not depicted as mothers, we find that the defining feature of mothers' consumption is a unidimensional depiction of control and caring for others, presented as self-evidently gratifying and fulfilling, in the absence of competing consumption goals. Mothers' identity emerges solely from successful consumer choices that benefit others. Such unidimensional representations of consumption stand in contrast to the consumption of women who are not depicted as mothers, who are found to engage in hyperbolic and indulgent consumption targeted towards self-gratification. We thus provide novel empirical data which show that depictions of consumption in mothers and in women not depicted as mothers are extreme in nature. Our findings provide support for, and elaborate on, the concept of ‘caring consumption’ by helping to make sense of media representations appearing within the conjunction of the contemporary marketing context of hyperconsumption, and the parenting/gender context of intensive mothering. By examining extreme consumption in television advertisements, we gain insight into features of maternal consumption ideals that may not be observable in everyday instantiations, such as the lack of mothers' consumption for self-benefit.     

Strategies for Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable Children: An Exploratory Study of an Exemplary Model of Care in Kenya

This qualitative study explored the extent to which programs in a religiously affiliated agency in Kenya incorporate 12 internationally sanctioned strategies for supporting orphans and vulnerable children in Sub-Saharan Africa (Olson, Knight, &; Foster, 2006 Olson , K. , Knight , Z. S. , &; Foster , G. ( 2006 ). From faith to action: Strengthening family and community care for orphans and vulnerable children in Sub-Saharan Africa: A resource for faith-based groups and donors seeking to help children and families affected by HIV/AIDS . Santa Cruz , CA : Firelight Foundation . [Google Scholar]). The results indicated that all 12 strategies were being employed, though to varying degrees. The authors describe how each strategy was used by the agency and make recommendations for practice and future research.     

‘Control Grabbing’ and small-scale agricultural intensification: emerging patterns of state-facilitated ‘agricultural investment’ in Rwanda

The Rwandan government's ongoing reconfiguration of the agricultural sector seeks to facilitate increased penetration of smallholder farming systems by domestic and international capital, which may include some land acquisition (‘land grabbing’) as well as contract farming arrangements. Such contracts are arranged by the state, which sometimes uses coercive mechanisms and interventionist strategies to encourage agricultural investment. The Rwandan government has adapted neo-liberal tools, such as ‘performance management contracts’, which make local public administrators accountable for agricultural development targets (often explicitly linked to corporate interests). Activities of international development agencies are becoming intertwined with those of the state and foreign capital, so that a variety of actors and objectives are starting to collaboratively change the relations between land and labour. The global ‘land grab’ is only one aspect of broader patterns of reconfiguration of control over land, labour and markets in the Global South. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the state is orienting public resources towards private interests in Rwanda, through processes that have elsewhere been termed ‘control grabbing’ [Borras et al. 2012 Borras, S.M., et al. 2012. Land grabbing and global capitalist accumulation: key features in Latin America. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 33(4), 402–416. doi: 10.1080/02255189.2012.745394[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 402–416].     

Grrl explorers of the World Wild Web

Scholars in feminist rhetorical theory and linguistics have documented ways in which online environments reinstate patriarchal forms of control, leading to the continued online victimization of women. In this article, young women's resistance to a narrative of victimization is seen through the lenses of a feminist reconstructionist perspective and a gender diversity perspective (Foss, Foss and Griffin 1997 Foss Sonja Griffin Cindy Foss Karen. 1997 Transforming rhetoric through feminist reconstruction: A response to the gender diversity perspective. Women's Studies in Communication, 20 117 35  [Google Scholar]; Condit 1997 Condit Celeste M. 1997 In praise of eloquent diversity: Gender and rhetoric as public persuasion. Women's Studies in Communication, 20 91 116  [Google Scholar]). The author finds that grrls are best understood within a gender diversity perspective on rhetoric (Condit 1997 Condit Celeste M. 1997 In praise of eloquent diversity: Gender and rhetoric as public persuasion. Women's Studies in Communication, 20 91 116  [Google Scholar]; Butler 1990 Butler Judith. 1990 Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 1st ed. New York Routledge [Google Scholar], 1997 Butler Judith. 1997 Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York Routledge [Google Scholar]). Grrls appropriate the frontier metaphor and engender masculine talk to communicate resistance and change. The author concludes that the rhetoric of young women broadens the scope of feminist rhetorical criticism and calls for a re‐visioning of feminist rhetoric.     

Semiotics and lived-spaces: Merleau-Ponty's concept of freedom as a potential goal for community transformation

In Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1945 Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/1962). Phenomenology of perception (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) Phenomenology of Perception, there is a short chapter at the end of the book dedicated to the concept of freedom. Although brief, and often ignored, this chapter arguably presents the central crux of the thesis Merleau-Ponty works to constitute throughout a majority of the text: namely, that any sort of free action is only truly possible should one recognize, in his or her local circumstances, the reasons and conditions necessary for freedom to be considered at all. This current article takes up this concept of freedom, as well as others such as intercorporeity and the lived-body, as imperative points of consideration for both psychologists and child and youth workers who are interested in transforming communities on a local scale. Some examples of recent empirical research on community intervention are discussed in relation to the aforementioned concepts, with an emphasis on the importance of place and embodiment.     

Competency in Establishing Positive Relationships With Program Youth: The Impact of Organization and Youth Worker Characteristics

Frontline youth workers’ ability to form strong, positive relationships with program youth is a key element in maximizing the benefits of program participation. A recent National Collaboration of Youth (2006 National Collaboration for Youth. ( 2006 ). Capturing promising practices in recruitment and retention of frontline youth workers. Retrieved from http://www.nydic.org/nydic/documents/CompletePublication.pdf  [Google Scholar]) report identified six elements associated with youth workers’ competency to complete their professional roles: compensation, training opportunities, supportive work environment, clear work roles, sense that work is valued, and networking opportunities. The current study investigated whether having these elements predicted 459 youth workers’ self-reported job competency in forming positive relationships with youth. Regression analyses revealed that job efficacy, clarity of work roles, and benefits significantly predicted competency in forming strong relationships with program youth. Findings are discussed in relation to practice implications for the youth work field.     

Between Labour and Love: The Re‐erotization of Home‐making in Egalitarian Couples within a Nordic Context

This article addresses a proposed rupture between duty and desire in late modern intimacy: the optimistic account of liberated love propagated by Anthony Giddens (1991 Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar], 1992 Giddens, Anthony. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar]) on the one hand, and the feminist critique, among others presented by Lynn Jamieson (1998 Jamieson, Lynn. 1998. Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar], 1999 Jamieson, Lynn. 1999. Intimacy transformed? A critical look at the “pure relationship”. Sociology, 33(3): 477–494.  [Google Scholar]) on the other, that emphasizes a widened gap between ideals of pure love and a persistent gendered division of work. Drawing on a longitudinal study of egalitarian couples in Norwegian society, the article outlines an alternative picture. Faced with a noticeable erotization of work and an accentuated focus on the child as a project, neither negotiations for a fair distribution of practical duties nor the mutual disclosure and passion seem to provide the glue in these couples. Instead, the tensions between domestic responsibilities, heavy work requirements, and high expectations on emotional closeness seem to produce new configurations of commitment and desire. Rather than untying domestic necessities from passionate love, these couples transform the timebind into a narrative about shared projects. The achievements of these shared projects are twofold: they liberate the process of home‐making from the gendered narratives, and they permeate these de‐gendered narratives with a romantic spirit. By making these joint projects a focal point in their everyday lives, these couples have managed to reformulate both love and home‐making in a way that produces a committed “in‐between” in their intimate relationship, the overarching principle that is missing in Giddens' concept of confluent love.     

Landscape,revolution and property regimes in rural Havana

This article explores landscape as an expression of political change. It focuses on the radical transformations in landholding after 1959 and post-1989. Given that landscape is understood as a socio-cultural and political process rather than – as geographers commonly treat it – a cultural image fixed in place [Hirsch, 1995 Hirsch, Eric. 1995. “Landscape: Between Place and Space”. In The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space, Edited by: Hirsch, E. and O'Hanlon, M. Oxford: Clarendon Press.  [Google Scholar], this analysis examines how the political changes in Cuba are made manifest in Havana's rural landscape. It also looks at the ontological relationship to landownership particularly during the Special Period, and focuses on how property is conceptualised by smallholding peasants who belong to agrarian co-operatives.     

Authenticity,intersubjectivity and the ethics of changing sex

This paper examines how specific concepts of the self shape discussions about the ethics of changing sex. Specifically, it argues that much of the debate surrounding sex change has assumed a model of the self as authentic and/or atomistic, as demonstrated by both contemporary medical discourses and the recent work of Rubin (2003 Rubin, H. (2003). Self-made men: Identity and embodiment amongst transsexual men. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. [Google Scholar]). This leads to a problematic account of important ethical issues that arise from the desire and decision to change sex. It is suggested that by shifting to a properly intersubjective and performative model of the self, we can better understand (1) the diagnosis of transsexuality; and (2) issues of success, failure and regret with regard to changing sex. The paper also reveals the important implications this shift has for how the relationship between medical practitioners and transindividuals is understood. The paper concludes by showing how the model of the self as authentic can individualise identity and thus downplay or overlook the tight intertwinement between self and other. A properly intersubjective, performative concept of the gendered self places other people at the centre of both an individual's attempt at self-transformation and the ethical issues that arise during this process.     

Cross-Currents: Elizabeth von Arnim,Max Beerbohm and George Bernard Shaw

Abstract

When Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel Introduction to Sally appeared in 1926, the critical response was divided. Dame Ethel Smyth may have told von Arnim the book was her ‘masterpiece’ but some were less convinced; the reviewer in Punch, for instance, considered it ‘a coarse-grained fantasy’. By situating Introduction to Sally in a wider literary context that includes Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson (1911 Beerbohm, Max (1964a), ‘To Reggie Turner, 3 November 1911’, in Rupert Hart-Davis (ed.), Letters to Reggie Turner, London: Davis, p. 126. [Google Scholar]) and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1914 Shaw, George Bernard (1914), ‘Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts’, Everybody’s Magazine, Vol xxxi, (5). [Google Scholar]), this article explores the personal connections between these three authors and the thematic cross-currents in these texts. Is von Arnim’s novel really as ‘coarse’ and ‘vulgar’ as some earlier critics suggest? Or is it a novel that successfully mixes the plausible with the artificial, the comic and the socially catastrophic, in ways that, more than a decade later, resonate with the work of her friends to highlight several continuing preoccupations?     

Survival Strategies of Widows in Dijon during the French Revolution

When people talk about their lives, people lie sometimes, forget a little, exaggerate, become confused, and get things wrong. Yet they are revealing truths … the guiding principle for [life histories] could be that all autobiographical memory is true: it is up to the interpreter to discover in which sense, where, and for what purpose. (Passerini Passerini and Luisa. 1989. “Women's Personal Narratives: Myths, Experiences, and Emotions”. In Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Eds. Personal Narrative Group and Joy Webster Barbre 197Bloomington: Indiana, UP Print [Google Scholar] 197)     

Remaking markets in the mountains: integration,trader agency and resistance in upland northern Vietnam

As part of an ongoing agenda by Vietnamese lawmakers and local state officials to accelerate market integration in the northern mountains, rural marketplaces are being physically and managerially restructured according to standard state-approved models. Moreover, these market directives are coherent with the ‘distance demolishing technologies’ that James Scott (2009 Scott, J.C. 2009. The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]) suggests the state has implemented to bring these uplands more directly under its panoptic gaze. This integration strategy seldom meshes well with upland livelihood needs. In this paper we examine a number of power contestations currently unfolding as upland market traders – both Vietnamese and ethnic minorities – negotiate or resist these developments while striving to maintain meaningful livelihoods.     

RETHINKING THE CREATIVE SPACE

Anything painted has a particular beauty when seen in a looking glass, provided it be free from faults; and it is wonderful how every defect in the picture will therein show more considerable. (Leon Battista Alberti, quoted in Kahr 1976 Kahr, Madlyn Millner. 1976. Velasquez: The art of painting, New York: Harper & Row.  [Google Scholar], 176, n. 74)     

My Heroine

Desire is forced to maintain itself in this space between reality and pleasure, this frontier that power jealously controls with the help of innumerable frontier guards: in the family, at school, in the barracks, at the workshop, in psychiatric hospitals and, of course, at the movies (Guattari 1996a Guattari , Félix (1996a) , ‘A Cinema of Desire’ , trans. from the French by David L. Sweet , in Félix Guattari , Soft Subversions , ed. Sylvère Lotringer , New York : Semiotext(e) , pp. 143 – 54 . [Google Scholar]:144).     

Revolutionary Mothers? Interacting Power Relations,Agency, and Social Change

In this article a theoretical discussion about intersectionality is carried out in dialogue with the ways in which battered and separated mothers deal with their children's situation and their relationship to their violent co‐parents/ex‐partners. In line with Connell's (1987) Connell, R. W. 1987. Gender and Power. Society, the Person and Sexual Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar] argument that categories such as gender are shaped by several structures and that the social order is inherently instable due to historic “unevenness”, contradictions, and internal differentiation, it is shown how abused mothers both follow and undermine well‐established notions of childhood, gender, and parenthood when trying to tackle their situation post separation or divorce. What is furthermore shown is how their “doing” of age, gender, and kinship entails both dichotomization and neutralization. It is argued that constructions prominent in public discussions about children at risk—the intrinsic value of childhood, children's right to personal integrity, and need of safety and protection—serve as a resource when the interviewees argue against the norm prescribing contact between children and fathers post separation and divorce. Two established constructions of the child's best interests are set up against each other when the mothers try to undermine power associated with the father position. An empirically sensitive and actor‐centred intersectional analysis must be sophisticated enough to grasp such complexities if we are to be able to fully explore possibilities for social change.     

Transing the small screen: loving and hating transgender youth in Glee and Degrassi

The teen television shows Glee (2009-) and Degrassi (2001-) are notable for diversity in gender and sexuality representations. Glee represents a variety of masculine women and feminine men as well as gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters. Likewise, Canada's Degrassi franchise has portrayed non-heterosexual characters in significant and controversial ways. Its most recent incarnation, Degrassi (previously Degrassi: The Next Generation) is discussed in this article, alongside Glee, in relation to their recent inclusions of two transgender-identified teenagers bringing transgenderism to the fore of these programmes' discussions of gender and identity. As trans youth are highly vulnerable due to both systemic ageism and cisgenderism, it is not surprising that both detail narratives of discrimination and assault driven by bigotry and ignorance. Conversely, they also explore more positive aspects of the lives of young people, such as friendship and romance (even as these cause their own problems at times), also enjoyed by trans youth. As such, the themes of ‘love’ and ‘hate’ manifest in interesting ways in both of these televisual texts and guide this article's analysis. While challenging assumptions that trans lives are governed by negative emotional states, these representations continue to reify stereotypes, not only of transness, but also of boyhood, girlhood, race and their intersections. Both representations are grounded in material and emotional journeys (or movements) and the concept of the ‘moving body’ (Keegan, 2013 Keegan, C. M. (2013). Moving bodies: sympathetic migrations in transgender narrativity. Genders, 57. Retrieved from http://www.genders.org/g57/g57_keegan.html. [Google Scholar]) partly informs these readings. The privileging of certain modes of trans personhood and embodiment over less normative (unseen, unacknowledged, and thus invisible) ones is at stake in these representations, but they also lay the groundwork for diverse future depictions. By addressing this gap in research, this article elucidates how gender (diversity) is being constructed for consumption on adolescent television and its potential for (re)thinking trans/gender, identity, and embodiment for young people in contemporary Western societies.     

‘The Worst Job in the World’: Reform,Revolution, and the Secret Rebellion in Florida's Cane Fields

Governments around the world are embracing guestworkers as a flexible labor force. The untold story of 1960s-era strike wave among Caribbean sugarcane cutters in Florida shows how the longest-running US guestworker program – the H2 Program – has functioned. The program, which began in 1942 and continues today, provided Florida's sugarcane industry with its sole source of harvest field labor, and became all the more important in the 1960s as the Cuban Revolution and the embargo that followed it caused Florida's industry to expand exponentially. Expropriated Cuban sugar moguls adopted the labor practices pioneered by the US Sugar Company, importing mostly Jamaican peasant farmers as temporary workers and deporting those who refused to accept their terms. Federal efforts to mitigate growers' exploitative practices only encouraged worse labor abuses. Cane cutters defended themselves with frequent strikes but deportations made insurgency's gains ephemeral.

‘No ebery ting wha got sugar a sweet’.

Jamaican proverb 1 1. Frank Cundall 1924 Cundall, Cundall. 1924. Jamaica in 1924: A Handbook for Visitors and Intending Settlers with Some Account of the Colony's History, Kingston, Jamaica: The Institute of Jamaica.  [Google Scholar]: 56].