Love Scenes and Garden Plots: Form and Femininity in Elizabeth von Arnim’s Elizabeth and Her German Garden

Abstract

This essay reads Elizabeth von Arnim’s Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898) in relation to Alfred Austin’s garden book, The Garden That I Love (1894). The Garden That I Love presents the garden as a retreat modelled on the Horatian ideal, in which a man retires from public life to enjoy a peaceful rural existence. Von Arnim shows how the garden, or rather the good of retreat that the garden represents, is well-nigh inaccessible to a female subject. At the same time, she wants to claim the garden’s seclusion for the female subject. Ultimately, von Arnim takes the idea of feminine retreat to an unexpected extreme, generating, in certain passages of her text, a perverse garden fantasia that celebrates feminine autoeroticism and sexual self-sufficiency. Notably, it is specific aspects of the form of the garden book that allow von Arnim to develop her ambivalently feminist, unabashedly utopian vision of feminine withdrawal and retreat.     

The role of sectarianism in the Provisional IRA campaign, 1969–1997

This article concerns the nature of political violence in an ethnonationally divided society. The article engages with the debates surrounding the discrimination employed, or not, by the PIRA when selecting their targets and waging their campaign against British rule and partition in Ireland between 1969 and 1997. The piece challenges the assertion that the PIRA discriminated with religious bias, and that they actively targeted Protestant civilians. It does so by drawing upon analysis of original data collected for the piece, corroborated with qualitative primary sources including the memoirs of former PIRA members, and the sentiments of a former PIRA member turned informer, Sean O’Callaghan, who agreed to be interviewed for the piece. It is argued that the PIRA aimed only to kill individuals whom they deemed to be in some measure actively responsible for the persistence of British control in Ireland, and the prevention of a reunion with the Republic; and did so in a fashion that was, for the most part, blind to religious diversity. It is also argued, however, that the PIRA were either unable or unwilling to recognise the gap between the actual impact of their “armed struggle” and the intentions that lay behind it.     

Associations Between Trauma Type,Timing, and Accumulation on Current Coping Behaviors in Adolescents: Results from a Large,Population-based Sample

The development of adolescents’ coping in response to stress is critical for adaptive functioning; these coping strategies may be shaped by numerous environmental factors during childhood, including experiences such as exposure to trauma. Childhood trauma has been shown to undermine contemporaneous coping, but how does a history of exposure to trauma and the characteristics of that trauma (type, timing, and accumulation) relate to current coping among adolescents? We addressed this question using a nationally-representative sample of 9427 adolescents (ages 13–18; 48.9% female; 66% White). Adolescents reported on their lifetime exposure to 18 different traumas, including witnessing or experiencing interpersonal violence, accidents, disasters, and violent or accidental loss of loved ones, as well as their current use of coping behaviors when under stress (problem-focused, positive emotion-focused, and negative emotion-focused coping strategies). The study’s results highlight that exposure to nearly all forms of trauma was unrelated to problem-focused and positive emotion-focused coping behaviors, but strongly associated with increased negative emotion-focused coping. Use of each coping style did not vary with age at first exposure to trauma, but increased with the number of lifetime traumatic events experienced. The findings suggest that the extent of prior exposure to trauma, including variations across type and timing, may be related to a particular form of coping that has been linked to increased risk for mental health problems. Study results highlight coping strategies as a potential target for prevention and treatment efforts, and indicate a need to better understand the malleability and trajectory of coping responses to stress for promoting healthy youth development.     

Transformative Women,Problem‐Solving Men? Not Quite: Gender and Mediators' Perceptions of Mediation

A large field study examined female and male mediators' perceptions of their jobs, looking in particular at their attitudes toward mediation styles lying on the continuum between instrumental and transformative. Based on scholarship on gender and negotiation literature that has portrayed women as more interpersonal and somewhat less task oriented than men, we expected female mediators to be more transformative and less instrumental in their practice than their male peers. Our study was both qualitative and quantitative: we formulated the content of twenty in‐depth interviews into an extensive questionnaire, answered by a representative sample of 189 Israeli mediators. Compared with their male counterparts, we found female mediators to be more transformative, but no less instrumental, in their view of mediation's goals and orientation. They were also somewhat more facilitative in preferred style, while male mediators were somewhat more directive. We also found additional intriguing gender differences, including that women mediators reported higher job satisfaction than did male mediators, but they also displayed a greater readiness to perceive failure in mediation.     

The effect of incomplete information in a threshold public goods experiment

Fiscal stress and decreasing government budgets have led to renewed interest in voluntary contributions for the funding of public goods. This paper experimentally examines the Provision Point Mechanism (PPM), a voluntary contribution mechanism for the funding of lumpy public goods. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of this mechanism at providing public goods, however all were conducted in an environment of complete information, which fails to capture the uncertainties of the real world. This study tests the efficacy of the PPM in informationally limited settings. We find no significant differences in the rate of successful provisions or level of group contributions when subjects have limited information about the valuations of others than when they have complete information.     

Deadly divide: Malawi’s policy debate on HIV/AIDS and condoms

This paper examines the dynamics of condom policymaking in Malawi by analyzing debates, which took place in the Malawi National Assembly between the year 2000 and 2004. Using content analysis and key informant interviews, and situating the overall discussion within policy and science literature, we examine how scientific evidence is being applied in the policymaking process as it relates to the place of condoms within the context of HIV/AIDS prevention. The study not only shows the extent to which the policymaking process on condoms in Malawi largely embodies a tendency to blur the conventional divide between science and politics, but also demonstrates why controversy around condoms still persists at the highest level of government in a country with one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world. It was found that even when people are dying, consensus in HIV/AIDS policymaking can be difficult to achieve in a policy climate characterized by a binary perspective to social problems, and where different actors compete for control over the policy terrain. The paper makes recommendations that may be helpful in facilitating a more inclusive HIV/AIDS policymaking process in Malawi.     

Depression as a Moderator of Sociocultural Influences on Eating Disorder Symptoms in Adolescent Females and Males

This study aimed to explore the role of depression as a moderator of sociocultural influences on eating disorder symptoms. A sample of 509 adolescents (56% female) completed self-report questionnaires assessing depression, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, bulimic symptoms and sociocultural influences on appearance from family, peers and the media. Both girls and boys displaying high levels of depressive symptoms perceived stronger media and peer influences on appearance. Among girls, eating disorder symptoms were directly affected by sociocultural influences, in particular media influences, as well as by depression. However, depression played only a limited role as a moderator of these relationships. Among boys, sociocultural influences and depression revealed fewer direct effects on eating disorder symptoms. However, depression had a greater moderating effect on these relationships. Future research into the role of depression may increase the understanding of gender differences in body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness and bulimic symptoms.     

Beyond the Deficit Model: Bullying and Trajectories of Character Virtues in Adolescence

Previous work on peer victimization has focused primarily on academic outcomes and negative indicators of youth involved in bullying. Few studies have taken a strength-based approach to examine attributes associated with bullies and victims of bullying. As such, we examined developmental trajectories of moral, performance, and civic character components, and their links to bully status using data from 713 youth (63 % female) who participated in Wave 3 (approximately Grade 7) through Wave 6 (approximately Grade 10) of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development. Latent growth curve analyses indicated that moral character was stable across waves, whereas civic character increased slightly by Wave 6. Trajectories for performance character varied; some youth alternatively displayed positive versus negative growth. Youth who reported bullying behavior reported lower initial levels of moral, performance, and civic character as compared to youth not involved in bullying. Bully–victims reported lower initial levels of moral and civic character as compared to youth not involved in bullying. Implications for future work examining character-related components in the context of peer victimization are discussed.