Beyond defensiveness: Feminist research strategies

In the course of doing research for a book on utopian fiction by women, it became evident that my formulation of the project constituted a trap, for it affirmed the very thing I wanted to challenge: the assumption of the centrality of utopias by men and the ‘otherness’ of works by women. As I reoriented my research, I came to see that this contradiction pervades much feminist scholarship and is present as well in the very notion of ‘Women's Studies’. This essay describes the process by which I came to identify the problem; how the techniques of defamiliarization and reversal pointed toward a solution; and the two research strategies that evolved. These strategies, both of which depend upon reversal of the usual rules of relevance and irrelevance, can be applied to feminist research endeavors in other fields as well.     

Orwell's despair,Burdekin's hope: Gender and power in dystopia

George Orwell's 1984 bears a striking resemblance to a little-known anti-fascist dystopia, Swastika Night, that was published twelve years earlier. While the similarities between the two books are in some cases remarkable, of even greater interest is the different treatment of political domination and gender ideology in the two novels. Orwell's critique of power worship is inherently limited by his inability to perceive that preoccupations with power and domination are specifically associated with the male gender role. By contrast, Katherine Burdekin, a feminist writer who published Swastika Night using the pseudonym ‘Murray Constantine’, focuses her critique on the ‘cult of masculinity’ and the fascist dictatorship to which it can lead. Her novel is set 700 years in the future, after Hitlerism has been established in Europe as the official creed, and with it a ‘Reduction of Women’ to an animal level. This essay analyses the relationship between gender and power as understood by these two writers, one world-famous, the other forgotten.     

Informal socialization in public organizations: Exploring the impact of informal socialization on enforcement behaviour of Dutch veterinary inspectors

Organizations try to socialize employees' behaviour through formal practices such as training programmes and selection procedures. This article focuses on how times of informal socialization, outside the organization's direct sphere of influence, impact the behaviour of employees. The research is based on data from 67 semi‐structured interviews with Dutch veterinary inspectors in a cross‐sectional and a longitudinal panel. Their work is characterized by intensive and at times adverse contact with inspectees, yet limited interaction with their colleagues. The results show that informal socialization has an important impact on the organizational socialization of inspectors, and provides further insights into the dynamic interplay between formal socialization practices and informal socialization. In addition, the research provides empirical evidence for the role of emotional processes in organizational socialization.     

Political Parallelism in Media and Political Agenda-Setting

This article investigates whether agenda-setting relations between newspapers and political parties are influenced by political parallelism. Our case is the Netherlands, a country characterized by high levels of journalistic professionalization and independent media. We focus on newspaper coverage and oral parliamentary questions and use time series analysis to inspect influence both of parliament on newspapers and of newspapers on parliament. The results show that parties respond only to issues raised in newspapers their voters read, and that newspapers only respond to the agenda of parties their readers vote for. This demonstrates that even in mediatized, professionalized media contexts, parallelism is still of importance to understand the relationship between media and politics.     

Buffer or Brake? The Role of Sexuality-Specific Parenting in Adolescents’ Sexualized Media Consumption and Sexual Development

One main source of sexual socialization lies within family interactions. Especially sexuality-specific parenting may determine adolescents’ sexual development—adolescents’ sexual behavior and sexual risk behavior, sexualized media consumption and permissive sexual attitudes—to a significant extent, but different ideas exist about how this works. In this longitudinal study, we examined two hypotheses on how sexuality-specific parenting—parenting aimed specifically at children’s sexual attitudes and behaviors—relates to adolescents’ sexual development. A first buffer hypothesis states that parents’ instructive media discussions with their children—called instructive mediation—buffers the effect of sexualized media consumption on adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behavior and, vice versa, the effect of adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behavior on sexualized media consumption. A second brake hypothesis states that parents, by communicating love-and-respect oriented sexual norms, slow down adolescents’ development toward increased sexualized media use, permissive sexual attitudes, and sexual behavior and sexual risk behavior. Using four-wave longitudinal data from 514 Dutch adolescents aged 13–16 years (49.8% female), we found evidence to support a brake effect. More frequent parental communication of love-and-respect oriented sexual norms was associated with less permissive sexual attitudes and, for boys, with less advanced sexual behavior and a less rapid increase in sexual risk behavior. Parents’ instructive mediation regarding adolescents’ sexualized media consumption was associated with less permissive sexual attitudes at baseline, but only for girls. No systematic evidence emerged for a buffer effect of parents’ instructive mediation. In conclusion, although our data seem to suggest that parent–child communication about sex is oftentimes “after the fact”, we also find that more directive parental communication that conveys love-and-respect oriented sexual norms brake adolescents’ move toward sexual maturity.     

A commentary on the localisation of the sustainable development goals

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) embrace an ambitious and wide ranging set of environmental, social, and economic issues designed to effect a transition to a more sustainable future. Although the SDGs are global in nature, there is an increasing awareness that they also have an important local dimension. With this in mind, this commentary paper outlines the characteristics of the SDGs, reviews their importance at the local level, provides some illustrations of how they are being addressed locally within North Western Europe and United Kingdom, and offers some reflections on localising the SDGs. The paper suggests that progress in launching and developing local initiatives within the United Kingdom has, to date, been limited. In part, this reflects the lack of a clear national policy framework for the localisation of the SDGs and in part, it reflects the challenges of raising awareness of the importance of local SDG initiatives and of funding such initiatives. Looking to the future, communications and public relations professionals may have an important role to play in raising awareness of the importance of the SDGs at the local level, and this may help to change hearts and minds in addressing the policy making and financial challenges.     

The predictive validity of criminogenic needs for male and female offenders: Comparing the relative impact of needs in predicting recidivism

Most instruments used to assess offenders' risk of recidivism were developed and validated on male samples. Use of these instruments with female offenders is, however, common practice. This use with female offenders implies the assumption that the risk of recidivism can be predicted on the basis of the same risk factors for women as for men. Yet, this implied gender-neutrality of offender risk instruments has been the topic of much debate. This study compared criminogenic needs in male and female offenders and their relevance in predicting recidivism. A large sample of male and female offenders (N = 16,239) charged with a range of index offenses was studied. Results mainly support the gender neutrality of existing offender risk and needs assessment. However, results do suggest that some criminogenic needs may indeed have a different impact on recidivism for men and women. Problems with accommodation, education and work, and relationships with friends were more strongly correlated to general recidivism in men than in women. For women, difficulties with emotional well-being had a stronger correlation with recidivism than for men. In addition, relative to all other criminogenic needs, problems with emotional well-being were more important for women than for men in predicting general as well as violent recidivism. However, because the bivariate correlation for female offenders between emotional difficulties and recidivism is weak (as it is for male offenders), the question remains whether the relative importance of emotional difficulties in predicting recidivism in women actually has clinical relevance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Common Ground: the sustainable development goals and the marketing and advertising industry

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed at a United Nations General Assembly in 2015, embrace an ambitious and wide-ranging set of global environmental, social, and economic issues designed to effect a transition to a more sustainable future. The United Nations called on all governments to not only pursue these ambitious goals but also acknowledged the important role of the business community in addressing the SDGs. The high profile launch in June 2016 of the ‘Common Ground’ initiative to support the SDGs by Ban Ki-moon, United Nations General Secretary, and six of the world's leading marketing and advertising companies, namely, Dentsu, Havas, IPG, Omnicom group, Publicis Group, and WPP might be seen to herald a new era in the transition to a more sustainable future. This paper outlines the SDGs and business engagement with them, reviews the sustainably strategies and achievements currently being publicly reported by the six leading advertising and marketing companies, and offers some reflections on a number of the challenges these companies will face in contributing to the SDGs.     

A commentary on the City Deals in the UK

Within the UK, City Deals, essentially bespoke packages of funding and decision‐making negotiated between national government and local authorities, are increasingly taking centre stage in promoting economic growth. Each City Deal is seen to reflect the needs of individual cities and their surrounding regions, and each has its own distinctive funding and development agenda. Although the City Deal model has been broadly welcomed by national and local political leaders, concerns have been more widely expressed about its operation and effectiveness. This paper outlines the development and characteristics of the City Deals programme and offers a reflective commentary on a number of issues surrounding the programme, namely, accountability and evaluation, the relationship between the local and national states, the role of planning, and sustainable development.