Response on Borders,Conflict Zones,and Memory

In response to five essays (including the historiographical introduction) written in her honour, Luisa Passerini offers precise commentary and wide-ranging reflections on the different authors’ applications of such key concepts as subjectivity, intersubjectivity, memory, narration, love, utopia, and ego-histoire. Mixing the intellectual, emotional, professional, and personal, she considers the varied implications of the transnational and multigenerational panel of scholars whose respective contributions address Mennonite refugee women's food memories; testimonies by far-left Chilean women tortured by the military dictatorship after the 1973 coup; memories of the war between East and West Pakistan, and India and Pakistan; and a self-reflexive re-visitation of her career-encompassing work.     

On Luisa Passerini: subjectivity,Europe, affective historiography

Weaving together the key themes of subjectivity, Europe, and affects, this article argues that the work of Luisa Passerini constitutes a paradigmatic shift in understandings of contemporary European history, culture, and politics. During the 1990s, Passerini's focus shifted from the history of fascism and memory to the study of ideas and experiences of Europeanness. She reclaimed Europeanism as a research topic for cultural history in order to articulate a critique of Eurocentrism. The coherence of her overarching thematic scope was safeguarded by a constant emphasis on subjectivity. Understanding the correlation between the theoretical privileging of the notion of intersubjectivity and the nurturing of collaborative, transgenerational, and transnational academic practices is thus very important for contextualizing Passerini's historiographical contribution. During the last three decades, Passerini has developed a historiographical framework that crosses many disciplinary boundaries and incorporates practices of teaching, learning, and researching into an integrated mode of producing historical knowledge.     

Technoecologies of Borders: Thinking with Borders as Multispecies Matters of Care

ABSTRACT

Reading Félix Guattari’s concept of ecology through feminist accounts of care and solidarity, and vice versa, in this article, we propose the concept of feminist technoecology as a speculative mode of thinking with borders. Rather than considering borders as lines on maps or primarily as physical arrangements, we argue that feminist technoecology allows for an understanding of borders as multispecies matters of care where cuts that matter are enacted, and precisely therefore calls for transversal solidarity and care that goes beyond the human. Turning to two stories revolving around the naturalisation of borders, bodies, and territories, we demonstrate that a technoecological take on borders not only fundamentally questions an a-priori distinction between technology, ecology, geology, politics, bodies, and a more-than-human world, but also foregrounds different modes of attentiveness with regard to questions of care, nativity, and mattering.     

Vulnerable Bodies, Vulnerable Borders: Extraterritoriality and Human Trafficking

In this article, I interrogate how the UK government constructs and manipulates the idiom of the vulnerable female, trafficked migrant. Specifically, I analyse how the government aligns aspects of its anti-trafficking plans with plans to enhance extraterritorial immigration and border control. In order to do this, I focus on the discursive strategies that revolve around the UK??s anti-trafficking initiatives. I argue that discourses of human trafficking as prostitution, modern-day slavery and organised crime do important work. Primarily, they provide the government with a moral platform from which it can develop its regulatory capacity overseas. It is not my intention to suggest that the government??s anti-trafficking plans are superficial, and that extraterritoriality is the sole driver. On the contrary, I argue that complex interrelationships exist and while the government??s interest in protecting vulnerable women from sexual exploitation may seem to be paramount, I assert that in fact it intersects with other agendas at key points. I consider how government action to protect vulnerable women in trafficking ??source?? and ??transit?? countries such as development aid and repatriation schemes relate to broader legal and political concerns about protecting the UK from unwanted ??Others??.     

The Scent of Memory: Strangers,Our Own,and Others

Using, as a point of departure, Tim Lott's recent autobiography where he attempts to make sense of his mother's suicide of 1988 through a reconstruction of his family genealogy, this article tries to map the production of gendered, classed, and racialized subjects and subjectivity in west London. It addresses the tension between Lott's discourse of his own white working-class boyhood during the 1970s where questions of ‘race’ are all but absent, and the racialized ‘commonsense’ that pervades the interviews with other local white contemporaries of Lott and his parents. These narratives are analysed in relation to the socio-economic context and the political activism of the period. Theoretically, it analyses the ‘diaspora space’ of London/Britain, interrogating essentialist ‘origin stories’ of belonging; reaching out to a glimmer on the horizon of emerging non-identical formations of kinship across boundaries of class, racism, and ethnicity; and exploring the purchase of certain South Asian terms – ‘ajnabi’, ‘ghair’, and ‘apna/apni’ – in constructing a nonbinarized understanding of identification across ‘difference’.     

Dating,Parent–Adolescent Conflict,and Behavioral Autonomy

Although dating is thought to contribute to adolescent development, little is known about how it affects autonomy development and relationships with parents. The contributions of dating status, grade, gender, and family structure to the frequency and intensity of normative conflict and to behavioral autonomy were studied. Tenth- and twelfth-grade public high school students (N = 859) completed measures of dating history, frequency, and intensity of parent–adolescent conflict, and of behavioral autonomy. Current daters (n = 325) had more frequent conflict and reported higher levels of behavioral autonomy than nondaters (n = 170). Additionally, males and twelfth graders reported more autonomy than females and tenth graders, respectively. Sophomores who were dating reported the most frequent conflict with parents, females who were dating reported the most intense conflict with parents, and seniors who were dating reported the highest levels of autonomy. Short-term daters had more frequent and more intense conflicts with parents relative to long-term daters and nondaters. These data highlight the utility of focusing on developmental tasks in addition to age when assessing conflict patterns and processes.     

Interparental Conflict and Late Adolescents' Sensitization to Conflict: The Moderating Effects of Emotional Functioning and Gender

The present study examined the extent to which individuals exposed to frequent and intense interparental conflict (IPC) across childhood and adolescence are sensitized to conflict during late adolescence. Late adolescents' perceptions of their exposure to IPC while growing up were examined in relation to their self-reported emotional and social-cognitive reactions to simulated conflict. Emotional functioning and gender were expected to moderate the relations of IPC to late adolescents' reactions. IPC exposure had stronger effects on the negative emotional reactions of adolescents low in emotional functioning and males than on the emotional reactions of adolescents higher in emotional functioning and females, respectively. Moreover, IPC was positively related to females' negative beliefs about conflict implications but unrelated to males' beliefs. Results are discussed in terms of the sensitization hypothesis and gender differences in sensitivity to conflict.     

Race,Class, Space,and Memory at Wo-Chi-Ca: A Look at Radical Leftist Summer Camping

Summer camping is a common experience for many young people in the United States. From the 1920s–1950s many young people, both Black and White attended summer residential camps together. These leftist interracial camps flourished in the eastern part of the United States, with support from labor unions and the communist party. Eventually, social pressure and the red scare closed most of these camps. This historical case study describes the history and practice of one of these camps, Wo-Chi-Ca in New York. Bringing together primary data, interview data of past residents and staff, and secondary data about the camp, this study describes how the camps were created, what it was like to attend the camps, and the social and economic forces that eventually led to their closure.     

Conflict Beliefs,Goals, and Behavior in Romantic Relationships During Late Adolescence

Little is known about social cognition regarding conflict in romantic relationships during late adolescence. The current study examined beliefs, social goals, and behavioral strategies for conflict in romantic relationships and their associations with relationship quality among a sample of 494 college students. Two dimensions of conflict beliefs, constructive and destructive, were identified. Constructive conflict beliefs were associated with relationship-oriented conflict goals and negotiation strategies during romantic conflict. Destructive conflict beliefs were associated with conflict goals focused on revenge or individual needs (self or partner) and with destructive conflict behavior (aggression and compliance). Conflict goals partially mediated links between general conflict beliefs and specific conflict strategies. Conflict beliefs, goals, and behavior also uniquely predicted the degree of conflict and intimacy in romantic relationships.

Procedural Justice in Family Conflict Resolution and Deviant Peer Group Involvement Among Adolescents: The Mediating Influence of Peer Conflict

The involvement of adolescents with deviant peer groups is one of the strongest proximal correlates to juvenile delinquency and stems from a variety of causes. Past research has linked ineffective parenting with peer variables, including deviant peer group involvement and peer conflict during adolescence. In this study, adolescents’ appraisals of procedural justice within the family (adolescents’ appraisals of how fairly they are treated by parents in the process of resolving family conflict) were examined as one aspect of effective parenting that may relate to deviant peer group involvement in early adolescence. Data from 1660 middle school students (ages 11–14, mean = 12.6) indicated that higher appraisals by adolescents of procedural justice during family conflict resolution were related to lower levels of both peer conflict and deviant peer group involvement. A structural model was tested in which the relationship between adolescents’ appraisals of procedural justice in the family and deviant peer group involvement was partially mediated by measures of peer conflict. This model was found to have adequate fit to the data, indicating that part of the relationship between procedural justice appraisals and deviant peer group involvement can be explained by levels of peer conflict. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The Work of Memory: embodiment,materiality and home in Jeanne Bouvier's autobiographical writings

In this paper I follow trails in the memory of work by reading the books and papers of Jeanne Bouvier, a French seamstress, ardent trade-unionist and passionate writer, who left a rich body of labour literature including four published historical studies, as well as the memoirs of her life, work and struggles. Work, action and creativity are three interrelated planes on which Bouvier situates herself, while memory and imagination are interwoven in the way she seeks to understand herself in the world with others. What emerges as a particularly striking theme from Bouvier's papers is a material matrix of mnemonic and imaginary practices, wherein bodies, places and objects are entangled in the narrative constitution of the self of the woman worker/writer.