Gendered discourses of facilitation in a probation learning environment: challenging the heteronormative ideal

This article focuses on the cognitive behavioural rehabilitation programmes run by the probation service in the UK. Drawing on Judith Butler's assertion that both sex and gender are discursively produced and Becky Francis' notion of gender monoglossia and heteroglossia, the article seeks to analyse and problematise the gendered discourses of facilitation that were mobilised by policy-makers and practitioners in this setting. The dominant institutional model of heteronormative facilitation promoted the ideal of each programme being delivered by one female and one male facilitator in order to provide a gender ‘balance’. But underpinning this ideal lay the binarised and essentialist notion that ‘masculinity’ arose naturally from the male body and ‘femininity’ from the female body. Female facilitators were positioned as bringing a calming and non-threatening atmosphere to the group and as naturally possessing skills of ‘empathy’ and ‘warmth’. Male facilitators were highly valued by managers, but were also under pressure to perform masculinity in very specific ways that were linked to notions of intellectual, rational, ‘middle-class’ masculinity. Through an analysis of interviews with probation practitioners and session observations, the article highlights that despite these dominant institutional constructions, a variety of complex and contradictory performances of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ were mobilised in this environment.     

‘Belles from Bristol and Bournville in New Surroundings’: female confectionery workers as transnational agents, 1918–1928

ABSTRACT

In existing histories of the development of multinational business, women are usually absent. Yet when the British confectionery companies of Cadbury, Fry and Pascall took the bold step to build an entirely new factory in Tasmania in the early 1920s, women workers were important, and mobile, actors. This article draws on business history archives and genealogical material, from both Britain and Australia, to explore how a select group of British women became the ‘pioneers’ of the Cadbury-Fry-Pascall company. It examines why women were key to the formation of an Australian subsidiary, how they influenced, and sometimes challenged, the creation of workplace culture and practice, and the consequences of this mode of female labour migration.     

The Longitudinal Role of Self-Concept Clarity and Best Friend Delinquency in Adolescent Delinquent Behavior

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescence tends to be characterized by a temporary peak in delinquent behavior, and friends in particular play a key role in the initiation and the development...     

Correction to: Age Patterns in Risk Taking Across the World

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - In the original publication, the legends for Figs 4 and 5 were incorrect, such that each regression line was mislabeled with the incorrect country. Below are the...     

Incidental myocardial infarction in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome type IV?

Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type IV is an illness that often leads to premature death due to arterial rupture or dissection and is characterized by very fragile connective tissue. This report documents the death of a 30-year-old man with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type IV from myocardial rupture and cardiac tamponade following a myocardial infarction. We believe that Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type IV contributed to the coronary atherosclerosis and myocardial rupture in this young man and that this disease led indirectly to his death by myocardial infarction, an unusual cause of death in this syndrome.     

Writing from Experience: The Place of the Personal in French Feminist Writing

Through a discussion of the work of Marie Cardinal and Annie Ernaux, this article aims to problematize the anglophone academic world's tendency to associate French feminisms predominantly with avant-garde or highly theoretical texts. The work of Ernaux and Cardinal is presented alongside a discussion of its reception by readers and critics in France, and by academics in English-speaking countries. The first part of the article identifies aspects of Ernaux's and Cardinal's works which cannot be encompassed within a critical framework based on the dichotomy between naive realism on the one hand and the politically and linguistically radical text on the other. Ernaux's plain language, for instance, is clearly very unlike the linguistic experimentation of ‘feminine writing’ nonetheless the emphasis on social class in her writing constitutes a political intervention which is at least equally valid.The reception study in the second part of the article provides further evidence of the relevance to gender politics in France of Cardinal's The Words to Say It (1975) and texts published by Annie Ernaux in the 1980s and 1990s. The ambivalent response of critics seems to indicate the troubling nature of writing which combines the codes of realism and autobiography (or autobiographical fiction in Cardinal's case) with the depiction of taboo subjects such as menstruation, or a daughter's response to her mother's debilitating illness and death. The article also charts the widespread popularity of these texts in France, particularly with women readers, and gives some examples of the pleasures described in letters to the authors. In conclusion, we argue that the ambivalent space between popular and high culture occupied (albeit differently) by Ernaux and Cardinal may be particularly effective in terms of gender politics, and that even in the late 1990s, the personal may be as political as ever.     

Isotope ratio mass spectrometry as a tool for forensic investigation (examples from recent studies).

The versatility of isotope ratio mass spectrometry is demonstrated by reference to diverse case studies. Variations in the natural isotopic composition of non-biological, organic materials are compared as a means by which samples may be associated or discriminated. These techniques may be used to augment or compliment conventional forensic methodologies. delta13C analysis was used to demonstrate that different masking tape had been recovered in two, apparently similar cases, involving the smuggling of money. Visually similar ecstasy tablets were compared by consideration of the delta13C and delta15N composition of MDMA extracted from the tablets. Although only a limited number of tablets were analysed, the isotopic similarity between two different seizures was sufficient to induce a guilty plea from a person suspected of possessing both. A combination of delta2H, delta13C, delta15N and delta18O together with GC-MS analyses were applied to small samples of seized heroin. Although GC-MS analysis indicated differences between the chemical composition of two of the heroin samples, isotopic analysis suggested similarities, which were confirmed by further delta2H, delta13C and delta18O isotopic analysis of the clingfilm in which the samples were wrapped.