‘No girl wants to be called a slut!’: women,heterosexual casual sex and the sexual double standard

Recent shifts in the western cultural landscape mean that practices such as casual sex are contradictory terrains for women. Although permissive and liberal discourses construct women’s casual sex as acceptable, and even desirable, traditional discourses and a sexual double standard, do not. This article examines 15 young women’s negotiation of the sexual double standard in their talk of heterosexual casual sex. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis, with borrowed insights from discourse analysis, within a constructionist framework. All 15 women in this study gave accounts of an agentic and desiring sexuality, yet talked about casual sex and a sexual reputation in contradictory and contested ways. Three main themes were identified: the (un)acceptability of casual sex, a sexual reputation is what other girls have, and the making of a slut. Although an enduring sexual double standard was identified, all participants challenged its relevance and appropriateness. However, a sexual double standard also seeped into women’s accounts when talking about other women and the threat of garnering a negative sexual reputation was linked to women’s silencing of their own casual sex experiences. This work supports the continued need to dismantle un/changing codes of gendered heterosexuality.     

The rough guide to love: romance,history and sexualization in gendered relationship advice

Sexualization is changing the way we think about romantic love. According to recent research, young people are increasingly confronted by narrowing ideals of sexual attractiveness making romantic intimacy increasingly difficult forcing a choice between ‘raunch or romance’. This article investigates the alleged distinction between romance and sexualization, in the process challenging claims that the current crisis of sexualization is a product of societal change in late modernity. Responding to a call to consider sexualization from a hitherto neglected historical perspective, the paper employs critical discourse analysis to identify the formation of gendered meanings and practices in How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter, a late medieval advice text for young women, and twenty-first-century advice from the MyBliss website. Focusing on sexualized clothing, contact with others, reputation and social status, the paper argues that in both medieval and modern advice, discourses of romantic love and sexualization are mutually dependent. In addition, similarities between medieval and modern advice reveal that our current sexualization crisis is not solely a product of modern life, but is part of a longer pattern of gender normativity and inequality.     

Media discourse and pathos: sketching a critical and integrationist approach – Greek and French headlines before the Greek referendum of 2015

This paper examines media discourse and emotions in discourse (pathos) during the week before the Greek Referendum of 2015. Drawing on the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, we study the interrelation between macro-level (dominant) values and views, and the micro-level of media positioning, as retrieved from newspaper headlines. The headlines come from three Greek and two French newspapers of differing political, economic, and ideological standpoints. Focusing on the micro-level, we sketch an integrationist framework of analysis: We conduct a systemic functional analysis to scrutinize the transitivity structures of headlines, and an analysis of pathos in order to track constructed emotions. Among our main findings is that the newspapers, despite their different positionings and interests, converge on a dense discursive and emotional construction that favours the dominant values of a free market and the doctrine of austerity.     

Riding and reading the Shanghai metro: signs,subjectivities and subversions on and around line # 8

This article explores the diverse semiotic landscapes which may be experienced as a consequence of apparently mundane rides taken upon the Shanghai metro. I first present, and then untangle, the ideological discourses that form, clash and, at times, collapse during these journeys. In order to elaborate upon the composition of these signs, they are viewed from multiple perspectives, although significant reference is made to Roland Barthes’ punctum/studium dialectic. These signs are not only read as manifestations of robust ideology but also as indeterminate, and fragile. This article is also concerned with pragmatics on the Shanghai metro, or the relationships between people and signs, and illustrates how passengers perform within this semiotically charged environment in ways which, sometimes, undo, or subvert, urban rationality. Although this article specifically focuses upon the Shanghai metro, and one particular route in its parliament of lines, it is intended these observations not only inform but also are informed by accounts of social spaces beyond these limits.     

The Discursive Construction of Terrorist Group Identity

The media coverage of terrorist acts has been the subject of numerous scientific studies. However, the terrorist groups’ own communication perspectives have not been thoroughly researched. The following article deals with terrorist groups and their use of websites for identity building. We examine the discursive construction of terrorist group identity through critical discourse analysis (CDA). The CDA of online texts from websites of terrorist groups is based on a five macro-strategy scheme. Our sample consists of six terrorist groups, with each group of two sharing different motivations: social-revolutionary, ethno-nationalist, or religious. All the groups analyzed are listed as terrorist organizations by the European Union. The CDA of 27 terrorist websites, purposively sampled, was conducted using two coders per site. Through this analysis, the researchers draw conclusions on strategies employed by terrorist organizations in building identity and how to counter their unregulated propaganda.     

话语权的重构——论经济全球化境遇中的意识形态弱化问题及其对策

随着经济全球化的快速发展,社会行为主体日趋分化和多元化,利益格局也渐趋多极化。资本、商品、通信和新闻媒介的全球流动对主权国家的传统价值观和社会意识形态形成巨大冲击。社会主义意识形态的政治认同受到了一定程度的弱化。要强化社会主义意识形态的主导地位,就必须进行意识形态灌输教育,增强马克思主义对中国改革开放和现代化建设的话语权。     

Aesthetic Vertigo and the Jurisprudence of Disgust

This article engages with the intersection of law, legitimation and aesthetics by examining the controversies surrounding the exhibition in 1997 of two artworks: Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, andMyra by Marcus Harvey. The article is less concerned with issues such as freedom of expression or the rights of display, which by now are well-known in debates on censorship and the arts; rather, its focus is on the consequences for an artwork's exhibition when it is deemed to be `disgusting'. The judgment of the two selected artworks as disgusting is traced in public discourse, through newspaper reports, public protest, and in socio-legal responses to the artwork such as a civil suit for possible obscenity, in decency or blasphemy. The argument suggests that the jurisprudence of disgust in its response to a sensation of ‘aesthetic vertigo’ can provide a key means of understanding aesthetic controversies, and their legal regulation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

论米歇尔·福柯的知识考古学

福柯的“知识考古学”从知识的轴线上提出了对知识史根本概念的重构问题。它要求恢复历史文献的考古意义,从而开启了爱通向被历史学家忽略掉的历史现象的一个通道：关注那通常被历史学家删掉的零落时间的印迹,从人类思维长期的连续性中探测那些被中断的偶然性。它要求将档案当作历史埋藏物来看,从而动摇了传统和现代哲学的总体历史观念,是对愈来愈深地陷入困境的西方现代性社会和文化的一种清醒的反思。     

Power to make land dispossession acceptable: a policy discourse analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), Papua,Indonesia

The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) in Papua, Indonesia, is a state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels for foreign markets. The project has led to extensive land dispossession, accompanied by devastating social and ecological impacts. This contribution analyzes how discourse regarding food and energy crises has been employed to release land from customary tenure to a coalition of state, corporate and local elite actors. The interests of these actors have converged on the state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels in the name of national food security.     

Has the human security agenda come of age? Definitions,discourses and debates

The concept of human security (HS) and its accompanying agenda, 20 years after the publication of the Human Development Report (1994), are still in a state of flux. This article summarises the extent to which, based on an in-depth analysis of the original HS dimensions in the articles in this Special Issue, the HS agenda has evolved, to the extent that it has become a clearly articulated concept both in academic terms and as a guide to concrete political action for policy-makers. It is argued in this article, perhaps not surprisingly given the nature of the concept and its dimensions, that there is a great degree of variation over space, place and time in the way that it is constructed, received and appropriated. Importantly, it is suggested that personal, political and community security have all struggled to develop a shared understanding that has become a firm guide to action, whereas food security, health security, environmental security and economic security have not only become firm parts of debate and discussion, but also significant policy areas that have had considerable time, effort and money devoted to resolving. Overall, the debate on HS is still also very much in flux 20 years on, but there can be no doubt that it has had a major impact academically and in terms of political action.