‘The Woman was a Stranger’: childbirth and community in eighteenth-century England*

On 17 December 1766 James Field stood accused at the Old Bailey of the ‘wilful murder of a new born child, by casting it into a tub of water’. The case was exceptional in many ways—not only was the accused male but he and his family had removed themselves from the network of neighbourly interactions that characterised lower status life in this period. As a result, the court's deposition statements record ideas of belonging and community with unusual clarity. Using Field as a case study, this article explores the involvement of the local community in the experience of childbirth in the eighteenth century. It will argue that childbirth had an active role in the creation of neighbourhood, and momentarily captured shifting eighteenth-century understandings of community.     

Pathways from Childhood Maltreatment to Unsupportive Emotion Socialization: Implications for Children’s Emotional Inhibition

Journal of Family Violence - Adults who have experienced child maltreatment report problems with emotion regulation (ER) and parenting difficulties, which have been associated with maladaptation in...     

Who Consents? Competing Pivots in Federal Judicial Selection

The salience of judicial appointments in contemporary American politics has precipitated a surge of scholarly interest in the dynamics of advice and consent in the U.S. Senate. In this article, we compare alternative pivotal politics models of the judicial nominations process, each capturing a different set of potential veto players in the Senate. We use these spatial models to guide empirical analysis of rejection patterns in confirmation contests for the lower federal courts. Using data on the outcomes of all nominations to the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. District Courts between 1975 and 2006, we show that models incorporating the preferences of the majority party median and the filibuster pivots best account for confirmation patterns we observe at the appellate and trial court levels, while advice and consent for trial courts has more recently been influenced by home-state senators.     

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.     

Market-Oriented Reforms as a Tool of State-Building: Russian Pension Reform in 2001

Despite domestic opposition and several policy alternatives, in 2001 the Russian government adopted a pension reform that was potentially costly and had uncertain long-term benefits. Demographic and fiscal pressures created the desire to reform and a more cooperative Duma made it possible to do so. These points do not explain why Putin chose the pension privatisation option. Russia's pension reform is best understood as part of a state-building strategy to diminish the role of powerful bureaucracies. Russia's welfare state was not merely the product of a powerful and popular president, but rather a tool to create a stronger executive.