gURL scenes and grrrl zines: the regulation and resistance of girls in late modernity

This article explores the images of ‘girlpower’ and ‘girls as risk-takers’ as important sources for the analysis and management of young women's experiences and behaviours under late modernity. It then focuses on what is known as the grrrlzine culture as a site where these contemporary images of girlhood are challenged and deconstructed. It is argued that grrrlzines create a community for young women within which they can participate in debates about the meaning of girlhood under late modernity. Grrrlzines offer spaces for young women to discuss and organize among themselves, and in particular to wrestle with and parody contemporary images of girlhood. In doing so, they help to complicate and advance feminist youth studies approaches to the role of the public/private split in girls' cultures, places for youth resistance and the ‘problem’ of girls' silence and invisibility in the context of late modernity. The article examines the ways grrrlzines appear to be complicit in the silencing of young women by insisting on expression only within liminal spaces. However, it is suggested that this constitutes an important attempt on the part of some young women to evade new regulatory regimes that operate primarily by inciting them to speak.     

Looking for Lela Simone: Singin’ in the Rain and microhistories of women’s sound work behind the scenes and below-the-line in Classical Hollywood Cinema

ABSTRACT

Despite her contribution to some of classical Hollywood’s most renowned musicals, the largely unknown Lela Simone exemplifies one of Hollywood’s ‘anonymous movie workers’ (Leo Rosten) working in the shadows of film history. As music co-ordinator for MGM’s Arthur Freed Unit (1944–1957), Simone’s exacting technical supervision of sound and music recording and post-production ensured films such as The Pirate (1948), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Gigi (1958) achieved perfect synchronisation and polished production values. Drawing on archival sources this article engages with the methodological and conceptual challenges of making visible the labour of women, like Simone, working below-the-line in technical roles. Taking Simone’s work on sound and music in the iconic ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ number as a case study, the article illustrates how a micro-historical focus can bring a previously invisible realm of women’s labour, and agency, into view.     

Clinical observations of ghetto four-year-olds: Organization,involvement, interpersonal responsiveness,and psychosexual content of play

This study attempted to refine the assessment of the effectance of four-year-old children through observation of their play. Two scales were developed; the first scale defined organization, involvement, and interpersonal responsiveness in play, and the second operationally defined psychosexual content of play. The validity and reliability of both scales and the inter correlations among the four major variables were explored. The results confirmed the validity and reliability of the instruments as measures of the children's effectance and important indicators of a child's capacity as a learner at age four.This research was carried out at the Dr. Martin Luther King Family Center and was supported by the Kenneth F. Montgomery Charitable Foundation in collaboration with the State of Illinois Department of Mental Health. Additional support was provided by the National Institutes of Health, General Research Support Grant No. 1-So 1 FR 05 666-01.Received M.D. from Tulane University School of Medicine in 1957. Presently Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Research interests lie in cross-cultural personality development and in psychophysiologic studies of human sexual arousal.Received Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1967. Presently Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Yale Child Study Center. Research has been mainly in the area of development and interference of effective learning in children.Graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1954. Presently Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Primarily interested in the effects of poverty on personality and social organization.     

Psychosocial Adjustment and Family Relationships: A Typology of Italian Families with a Late Adolescent

The importance of family relationships in human development and adjustment has always been recognized in psychological studies. The present study aims to construct a typology of families with a late adolescent and to analyze the family relationships present in each type. The typology, constructed using family satisfaction—a global index of family functioning—as the discriminate variable, took into account eight types. This study is focused on the two extreme types of the typology: Families with adequate functioning or satisfied families and Families with inadequate functioning or dissatisfied families. These two types of families were compared according to variables such as: (a) parent-child communication and its topics and (b) the family's decision-making process on topics related to the adolescent and his/her future orientation. All subjects completed a questionnaire composed of different scales. The results show substantial differences in the two family types regarding both family functioning and the role played by mothers and fathers. Satisfied families give evidence of a better communication process than the dissatisfied ones, greater sharing between parents and adolescents and, finally, a decision-making process based mostly on sharing and support. Moreover, in satisfied families the father has the role of social mediator. In this way, he succeeds in part in restoring equilibrium to the relational imbalance in favor of mothers so typical of Italian families.     

The conscientization of women: A rite of self- initiation with the flavour of a religious conversion process

In traditional societies, young men and women are initiated separately into the adult world and, for various reasons, the male rite has typically been much more dramatic and elaborate. In western industrialized society, the formal education system became the initiation rite, par excellence, by which boys passed from childhood and the world of women into the public, adult world of men. By gaining access, albeit belatedly, to this male initiation rite, many women have thus gained access to the public, adult world but have found that they have had to give up being women. Other women have remained with the traditional female initiation rites of marriage and motherhood and have discovered that society does not really consider them to be adults. Another group of women have tried both routes to adulthood and have been unable to integrate their identities as women and adults.When these women get together in consciousness-raising groups they find themselves undergoing a rite of self-initiation made necessary by the fact that neither the traditional female rites of marriage and motherhood nor the masculine rites of formal education are adequate for women who wish to be considered both female and adult. Women in CR groups develop a strong sense of themselves as adult women and then are faced with the crucial question of how to relate to a patriarchal society which does not accept or affirm this new identity. There is a parallel in the process of religious conversion which, if probed, can help feminists to reflect on what are the most effective ways for a minority group to influence the mainstream of society without losing its identity and original values in the process.     

A theory-based evaluation to improve youth participation in progress: A case study of a youth policy in Italy

A theory-based evaluation of an in-progress program for the development of new youth centers the South of Italy is presented in this article. The study investigated if and to what extent the program was working to increase youth participation. Data were collected through document analysis of the program, in-depth interviews and a survey with the managers of the youth centers. Consistent with some previous study, results suggested that some program mechanisms related to cultural openings, obligations and opportunities of participation had been effective in the activation of youth participation. Some contextual factors behind such mechanisms were also taken into account. Then, the study confirmed the need to further develop forms of youth work able to mediate between the regulatory pressures expressed by public institutions and the claims of autonomy and participation manifested by youth.     

A Person-Centered Approach to Adolescent Nonsuicidal Self-Injury: Predictors and Correlates in a Community Sample

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Growing incidence of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and a lack of intensive examination of NSSI variability among adolescents justify identification of latent...     

Cooperation and conflict: A case study of a women's research network in Norway

During four years (1978–82), 25–30 Norweigian women social scientists formed a research network of small local groups, studying ‘Women's mutual relations’ in various settings. Women's friendships, their cooperation in factories and local communities and in women's organizations were the focus of our research. This article, however, is not about the results of our research—although some of them are reported in the notes—but we describe the organization of our association, its purposes, structure and positive results, as well as our tendencies to build up conflict, fractionalism and withdrawal. The research network was established in opposition to male social science, both with respect to the choice of its main themes and its organizational form. A supportive work style, a ‘horizontal’ structure and a playing down of conflicts was more or less deliberately chosen by the network members. We discuss here some of the types of conflict that developed in the network, and the ways we dealt with them. Most conflicts were either solved ‘talking through’ or handled by avoidance. We ask the question if deliberate conflict avoidance is functional for a feminist network of organization. The case is made for a ‘horizontal network organization as a positive and fruitful supplement to usual academic organization structure.     

Writers with a cause: Sui Sin Far and Han Suyin

‘We're cause people, whether we like it or not,’ said Mai-Mai Sze to a black student who had just been shunned by two white students at a lunch counter in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Eurasian writers Sui Sin Far (Edith Eaton, 1867–1914) and Han Suyin (Rosalie Chou, 1917– ) would strongly concur. Though separated by space and time, both have taken as their cause the wrongs done to peoples of color, primarily the Chinese, and to women. In her short stories Sui Sin Far fought the prevailing notions of the Chinese in America as ‘heathen’ and ‘unassimilable.’ Attentive to the world situation, Han Suyin has been fighting for the oppressed in sixteen books from 1942 to her most recent novel in 1985. In several novels, she draws an important connection between colonialism and sexism. This paper compares the socio-political atmosphere of their times and their literary contributions to their cause.     

Gendered Outcomes of Socio-economic Restructuring: A Tale from a Rural Village in Iceland

Demographic dynamics are immanent in societal changes. However, recent research on work-related mobility and regional development indicate that translocal commodity chains have changed the formation of class and gender to such an extent that spatial constructions of belonging have not only become more complex in local communities but are also, to an increased extent, the main deciding factor in women's reflective decision-making processes on where to live. This article explores the reasoning behind women's choices about how to live and work, across functional occupations, age, and educational background, in a small peripheral village in north-east Iceland. The community aspect is crucial in this respect. How do they perceive their own function and embeddedness in the community? The findings indicate that the key reason for staying and living in a community with few occupational opportunities is the existence of family and social ties, although jobs suited to their educational backgrounds and economic needs are also of crucial importance.     

Nonintellectual correlates of satisfaction with acceleration: A longitudinal study

Two studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between several nonintellectual personal attributes and satisfaction with acceleration among intellectually gifted students. First, two cohorts of gifted students (top 1% in ability and separated in age by five years) who had utilized acceleration during the course of their education were surveyed at age 18 and again at age 23. Overall, no strong relationships were found between satisfaction with acceleration and the nonintellectual factors at either age. Second, similar analyses were conducted for a subgroup of subjects, using the Adjective Check List and the Study of Values. Again, few significant correlations were found; the correlations that were statistically significant were small. These findings indicate that some non-intellectual personal attributes, which are often assumed important to the selection of students for acceleration or to the evaluation of participants in accelerative programs, actually may not be appropriate for these purposes.This research was supported by grants to Camilla Benbow from the National Science Foundation (MDR-8651737 and MDR-8855625) and an anonymous service agency. Further support was provided by scholarships to Mary Ann Swiatek from Oberlin College and from the Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity.Received M.S. in counseling psychology from Iowa State University. Research interests include social and emotional aspects of giftedness, and social coping among gifted adolescents.Received Ed.D. in educational psychology from the Johns Hopkins University. Research focuses upon intellectual talent.