"For us it is like living in the dark": Ethiopian women's experiences with domestic violence

This article discusses the experiences of domestic violence among Ethiopian refugees and immigrants in the United States. A subset (n=18) of the larger study sample (N=254) participated in three focus groups with Amharic-speaking survivors of domestic violence who were currently in or had left abusive relationships. The research was conducted through a public health department, University, and community agency partnership. Findings show domestic violence as taking place within a context of immigration, acculturation, and rapid changes in family and social structure. Participants expressed a need for language and culture-specific domestic violence support and advocacy as well as education programs regarding U.S. laws and resources.     

sexual freedom and the promise of revolution: Emma Goldman’s passion

This article explores the contributions to a history of sexuality, capitalism and revolution made when we consider the work of anarchist thinker and activist Emma Goldman (1869–1940). I suggest that Goldman's centring of sexual freedom at the heart of revolutionary vision and practice is part of a long tradition of sexual politics, one which struggles to make sense of how productive and reproductive labour come together, and to identify the difference between sexual freedom and capitalist opportunity. Goldman's concern with the significance of kinship in holding together capitalism, militarism and religion, as well as sexual feeling's capacity to disrupt those relationships, echoes across more than a century to resonate with Marxist, feminist and queer scholars' engagements with similar issues. But where contemporary scholars often tend to retain the opposition between culture and society, representation and the real, making it difficult to produce a materialist analysis of sexuality as transformative rather than always already overdetermined, Goldman's energetic insistence on sexual connectivity as freeing provides an important vantage point. Not only does Goldman consistently situate sexuality in a broad political context of the sexual division of labour, the institutions of marriage and the church, consumerism, patriotism and productive (as well as reproductive) labour, she frames sexual freedom as both the basis of new relationships between men and women, and as a model for a new political future.     

The Spectre of the ‘Man-Woman Athlete’: Mark Weston,Zdenek Koubek,the 1936 Olympics and the uncertainty of sex

This article argues that women athletes were implicated in discussions of sex changeability occurring in 1930s Britain. The topics of the suitability of sport for women and of sex changeability were both given considerable press coverage. Sports officials were faced with the practical problem of how to differentiate female competitors from male ones. Medics at London's Charing Cross Hospital interpreted athleticism and an interest in sport as signs of maleness in patients. Sports practice developed muscles, which were held to be akin to a male secondary sex characteristic. An awareness of the unfixity ascribed to somatic sex means appreciating that debates about the masculinity of sportswomen cannot be understood simply as homophobia—the possibility of changing sex was a real concern.     

Book reviews

Datenhandbuch zur Geschichte des Deutschen Bundestages 1949 bis 1999. Edited by Peter Schindler. 3 Volumes. Baden‐Baden: Nomos, 1999. DM 98.

Finanzverfassung und Föderalismus in Deutschland und Europa. Edited by Thiess Buttner. Baden‐Baden: Nomos, 2000. DM 48 pb.

Krise und Reform des Föderalismus. Edited by Reinhard C. Meier‐Walser and Gerhard Hirscher. Munich: Olzog, 1999. DM 24.80.

Hinter den Kulissen von Regierungsbündnissen. Koalitionspolilik in Bund, Ländern und Gemeinden. Edited by Roland Sturm and Sabine Kropp. Baden‐Baden: Nomos, 1999. DM 74.

Austria — Out of the Shadow of the Past. By Anton Pelinka. Oxford: Westview Press, 1998.

Austria. World Bibliographical Series. Revised edition. Volume 66. By Michael Mitchell. Oxford: Clio Press, 1999.

The Official Concept of the Nation in the Former GDR. By Joanna McKay. Hants/Vermont: Ashgate, 1998.

NATO and the Future of European Security. By Sean Kay. Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.

Linguistics and the Third Reich: Mother‐Tongue Fascism and the Science of Language. By Christopher M. Hutton. Routledge Studies in the History of Linguistics. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.

The Language of the Third Reich. LTI ‐ Lingua Tertii Imperii. A Philologist's Notebook. By Victor Klemperer. Translated by Martin Brady. London and New Brunswick: The Athlone Press, 2000.

German Studies. Old and New Challenges. Undergraduate Programmes in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Edited by Peter Rolf Lutzeier. Berne: Peter Lang, 1998 (German Linguistic and Cultural Studies, vol. 1).

EU Enlargement and its Macroeconomic Effects in Eastern Europe. Currencies, Prices, Investment and Competitiveness. By Hubert Gabrisch and Rüdiger Pohl. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.

Welfare States in Transition. East and West. By Irwin Collier, Herwig Roggemann, Oliver Scholz and Horst Tomann. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.

Economic Transition in Hungary and East Germany. Gradualism and Shock Therapy in Catch‐up Development. By Johannes Stephan. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.

Doing Business with Germany. Edited by Jonathan Reuvid and Roderick Millar (consultant eds.). In association with German‐British Chamber of Industry and Commerce, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Eversheds. Business Lawyers in Europe. London: Kogan Page, 2nd edn. 1999. Reprinted 2000.

The German Skills Machine: Sustaining Comparative Advantage in a Global Economy. Edited by Pepper D. Culpepper and David Finegold. Berghahn Books, 1999.

Reconstructing Education. By Rosalind M.O. Pritchard. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999.

In a Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin, 1945–1948. By Wolfgang Schivelbusch. Translated by Kelly Barry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

The Longman Companion to Germany Since 1945. By Adrian Webb. London: Longman, 1998.

Ausgewcihlte Aspekte des Transformationsprozesses im Cesundheitswesen der neuen Bundeslander. Edited by Viola Schubert‐Lehnhardt, Christel Gibas and Birgit Möbest. Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 1998.

Lebensbedingungen, Lebensgestaltung und Lebensinn von älteren Frauen in Deutschland und Europa. Edited by Viola Schubert‐Lehnhardt. Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2000.     

Queer pleasures: Some thoughts

Queer praxis is often conceptualized as a creative construction of alternative ways of being; a strategic practice of self‐(trans)formation. The practice of queer pleasures constitutes one such mode of possibility. Within this model, queer pleasures represent the threshold of a politics that promises a radical confrontation with inhibiting normalities. Yet by applying political priorities to pleasure, and by incessantly equating pleasure with the sexual, there is a risk of re‐establishing hierarchies and conventions, and, moreover, of reinforcing a notion of the subject as self‐transparent, autonomous and intentionally motivated. This paper explores some of the dimensions of pleasure that this politics tends to ignore—the trivial, quotidian, accidental, embarrassing, boring, insignificant, mediocre—and asks whether this overlooking is accidental or a structural inevitability. I will explore queer's investment in the politics of pleasure, and speculate about alternatives