It’s Boom Time! (Again): Progress Narratives and Women’s Sport in Australia

ABSTRACT

Over the last three years (2015–2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent “boom time” for women’s sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women’s Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women’s Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a narrative of progress that assumes that gender equality is becoming closer with every decade. This paper employs a critical historical method inspired by the work of Joan W. Scott to analyse articles that have declared or commented on a contemporary boom in women’s sport in Australia. The 120 contemporary articles are analysed alongside 400 historical articles that present similar arguments and themes. In identifying similarities between the historical and contemporary articles, this paper raises questions about the reality of the so-called moment of progress we are currently experiencing, and discusses the possible consequences for feminism and social change in sport.     

关键时期的社会矛盾与和谐社会的战略构建

我国正处在全面建设小康社会的关键时期。深刻认识关键发展时期的社会矛盾与问题,着力构建社会主义和谐社会,是以科学发展观为指导推动经济社会全面发展的迫切要求。推进社会和谐发展,必须统揽全局地把握社会主义和谐社会的本质与特征,始终坚持以人为本这一本质和核心。     

政治价值整合:欧洲社会民主党执政实践的重要内容

政治价值整合是政党树立执政权威、扩大社会基础、增强执政能力的重要手段。20世纪末,面对欧洲社会的深刻变化,欧洲一些社会民主党通过其传统价值理念的批判式反思,整合建构新的政治纲领,并通过创新党内民主和社会参与的方式,实现了政治价值的整合,取得并执掌了政权。其执政实践为我们研究执政能力建设提供了很好的借鉴。     

警察体育与警务技能辨析

警察体育是一种健全警察身体的基础教育活动,是发展警察体能、增进其身心健康、提高其工作效率和生活质量的体育训练活动,具有体育科学和体育教育的属性。警务技能是一种增强警察职业技术的能力的应用教育活动,是警察掌握职业技术,增强实战技能,提高战术意识,满足警务活动需求的技能训练活动,具有应用学科和应用教育的属性。前者是以身体教育为目标的基础教育,后者是以职业教育为目标的应用教育。两者既有鲜明的共性,又有各自的特征。     

论当前媒体对案件侦查的娱乐性传播

案件侦查传播经历了神秘、权威的古代传统思维到重视事实、证据的现代理念转型。与前两者均不同的是,当前媒体呈现出一个新的特征：热衷传播案件侦查消息,张扬弱势话语权利,迎合民众放松自我寻求休闲娱乐的心理,改变了案件侦查报道的严肃庄重风格,对案件侦查传播出现了娱乐化倾向。     

批判性研究:行政学领域亟待拓展的研究路径

自20世纪80年代我国行政学研究得到恢复以来,我国行政学学科取得了长足的发展,但在研究范式上存在一定的局限:社会学科学中诠释性研究和批判性研究受到广大行政学研究者的忽视,研究者的批判精神乃至批判意识普遍缺失.针对这种现象,本文借鉴西方批判理论的合理成分,主张行政学研究要通过合理的批判介质,建立自我反省关系;在开展实证研究的同时应当注重价值问题的探讨,实现工具理性与价值理性的有机统一;运用"总体性"的方法,展开对行政学理论与行政实践的总体性批判.这有助于我们形成并拓展批判性研究的思路.     

Can the best interests of young people be met in residential care? An Ireland case study

The search for factors essential to the achievement of congruence in residential youth care services in Ireland led to the discovery of five critical success factors, each of which affects all three organizational levels of such services. These critical factors included: needs-led, not regulation-driven, care; senior managers with workforce responsibility require domain expertise; shared vision and purpose across three organizational levels; practice-led planning and service development; and bureaucratic policies and practices that are congruent with corporate parenting obligations to provide developmental care that serves each child's best interests.     

Linguistic and visual strategies for portraying immigrants as people deprived of human rights†

The majority of news items on sub-Saharan immigrants in the Spanish press refer to their arrival by jumping the fences of Ceuta or Melilla or landing in small boats at the Spanish coast. The data in this article consist of all the news items published on the arrival of sub-Saharan immigrants in Spain by jumping the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, items that appeared in the digital editions of the two most popular Spanish newspapers, El País and ABC, from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2015. The principles of critical discourse analysis and visual grammar are used to deconstruct the linguistic and visual portrayal of sub-Saharan immigrants when they try to enter Spain by jumping the fence. This research reveals that the immigrants jumping the fence at Melilla are represented as wild and dangerous. There is no reference to their human rights. The study thus aims to provide a visual analysis of the way in which the arrival of these immigrants is represented visually in two serious newspapers. In this way, the study aims to unveil visual ways of negative representation of immigrants, who are portrayed as dangerous invaders.     

Modern post-colonial approaches to citizenship: Kwame Nkrumah’s political thought on Pan-Africanism

This project of critical citizenship studies and comparative political theory utilizes a framework of multiple modernities in order to deeply explore the ontological foundations and complexities of a non-Western conception of citizenship and nationhood: political pan-Africanism. It does so through a study of the political thought of Kwame Nkrumah, a deeply influential political theorist and actor, in the context of the Gold Coast’s struggle for independence and in the initial years of Ghanaian post-colonialism. How did Nkrumah conceive of Pan-Africanist citizenship and nationhood in political and ontological terms? How does this relate to both modern conceptions of citizenship as tied to the nation-state and traditional Ghanaian conceptions of citizenship and belonging? After considering these questions, this paper explores how Nkrumah’s vision of Pan-Africanism was influenced by, yet contradicted central tenets of, Western political thought and modernity. It explores the theoretical and practical tensions inherent between this non-Western conception of the nation and the dominance of aspects of ‘Western’ modernity. Exploring these questions through the lens of Nkrumah’s political thought offers an Afrocentric study in an effort to strengthen African historical agency and to deparochialize citizenship studies and political theory.