Is Everything Compatible? A Feminist Critique of Hearn’s Composite Approach to Men and Masculinity

ABSTRACT

Since its emergence in the late 1980s, research on men and masculinity has expanded considerably into an established area at the intersection of sociology, gender studies and related disciplines. There is now a wealth of empirical research but the theoretical debates have largely centred on Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity. This article focuses instead on the theoretical contribution of Jeff Hearn, arguably one of the central figures within critical studies on men and masculinities over the last few decades. The article identifies the main tenets of Hearn’s theoretical writing and tracks its development over time, and offers a critical discussion of Hearn’s theoretical position. The critique focuses on ambiguous treatments of central concepts and argues that tensions between perspectives such as materialist analysis, queer theory and intersectionality are not fully acknowledged in Hearn’s work.     

Young people,friendships and gender learning: insight from student-produced microfilms and curricular implications

Friendship microfilms produced by students can be used to understand how students make their relationships meaningful. Hence, in this study, friendship microfilms made by Taiwanese students from 2000 to 2013 and uploaded on YouTube were collected and evaluated through a textual analysis aimed at deriving suggestions for relationship education curricula. Four types of narrative were identified in these films. A common theme was addressing romantic concerns among close friends and the effects that follow. The films present scenarios such as ‘I want to be more than merely your friend’ and ‘A conflict arises from a love triangle’, and the predicaments related to trust, honesty, loyalty and supportiveness that consequently arise. The films also reveal the anxiety of gay adolescents trapped in dilemmas involving being neither a love interest nor a best friend and wondering whether to come out of the closet. Moreover, the practices of homosociality in the film manifest gender differences. On the basis of the research findings, this paper provides suggestions for gender and relationship education.     

‘I Want to Wear It’: Fashioning Black Feminism in Mahogany (1975)

ABSTRACT

In this article I focus on the portrayal of fashionable clothing in the 1975 film Mahogany and connect it to the history of African American women engaging with sartorial self-representation as a means to assert their visibility in American culture. My aim is to analyse Mahogany’s emphasis on brightly-coloured highly-ornamented clothing, which has a long history of signifying bad taste and became part of accusations of racial and sexual inferiority. I want to show how Mahogany’s representation of fashion undermines the historically entrenched bias against colourful, highly adorned clothing while also revealing how this bias has played a subtle but significant role in the racism and sexism black women have encountered, further (but not finally) impeding them from the forms of recognition the category of femininity offers. Mahogany represents those impediments and repeats the sexual and racial commodification underlying them, but also resists them (albeit quite subtly) through the film’s loving display of fashion and its attention to the work of designing and making clothes. Mahogany tells a story of bright sartorial resistance that can be understood as an articulation of black feminist desires for women of colour to be able to compose the images through which their bodies are perceived.     

Between Government and Governance: Opening the Black Box of the Transformation Thesis

The notion of going from government to governance, known as the transformation thesis, as depicted in early Governance Theory has been subjected to substantive critique. This paper explores two different stances of such critique. The first critical stance is represented by Jonathan S. Davies’ 2011 book “Challenging Governance Theory: From networks to hegemony” and entails a radical rejection of the transformation thesis. The second stance offers a more moderate reconfiguration of the transformation thesis and is represented by the recently co-authored work of several prominent governance theorists titled “Interactive Governance: Advancing the paradigm”. While both aspire to set new agendas for governance research, this paper argues that the latter reconfiguration carries a problematic preposition towards overemphasizing the separation between government and governance practices.     

Global poverty and inequality: are the revised estimates open to an alternative interpretation?

The level of, and trends in, global inequality and global poverty are indicative assessments of who has benefited from economic growth. The revision of price data has led to a reassessment of those estimates. Through an extensive overview of the implications, we argue that the data can be read in different ways. Official estimates show global extreme poverty and global inequality are considerably lower than previously thought. We argue that these changes are much less significant than they at first appear, and we present a more nuanced alternative interpretation by exploring changes across the entire global distribution.     

The origins and politics,campaigns and demands by the international fisher peoples’ movement: an Indigenous perspective

Abstract

This reflective contribution discusses the intersection of Indigenous and Small Scale Fisheries’ (SSF) issues, and how the international SSF movement has a critical role in the broader struggle for the convergence of social justice regarding the environment, food and lifeways. I explore some of the political tensions around Indigenous and SSF struggles against global neoliberalisation of land and water resources, some of the successes and challenges of the international SSF movement, and future considerations for academic/activist ‘decolonising’ work.     

Building the Rule of International Criminal Law: The Role of Judges and Prosecutors in the Apprehension of War Criminals

International criminal tribunals are weak institutions, especially since they do not have their own police forces to execute arrest warrants. Understandably then, much of the existing literature has focused exclusively on pressure from major powers and on changing domestic politics to explain the apprehension of suspected war criminals. In contrast, this article turns attention back to the tribunals themselves. I propose three ways in which the activities of international criminal tribunals impact compliance with arrest warrants: through the selection of individuals to indict, demonstrated leniency on some suspects and outreach to domestic legal professionals. Using a duration model that accounts for sample selection and data collected on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, I test these theories alongside other existing explanations. I find that court activities can have an independent effect on the successful implementation of international criminal law.

Why Do States Commission the Truth? Political Considerations in the Establishment of African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

Although the use of truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) has grown considerably over the last 3 decades, there is still much that we do not know concerning the choice and the structuring of TRCs. While the literature has focused primarily on the effects of TRCs, we examine the domestic and the international factors influencing the choice of a commission in sub-Saharan Africa from 1974 to 2003 using pooled cross-sectional time series. We find that states which adopted a TRC prior to South Africa were generally repressive centralized regimes which used the truth commission as political cover. However, since South Africa’s TRC, democratizing states have been more likely to adopt a truth commission as a form of transitional justice.

Five Challenges to Legalizing Economic and Social Rights

In recent years, dozens of human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across the globe have begun to advocate for economic and social rights, which represents a significant expansion of the human rights movement. This article investigates a central strategy that NGOs have pursued to realize these rights: legalization. Legalization involves specifying rights as valid legal rules and enforcing them through judicial or quasi-judicial processes. After documenting some of the progress made toward legalization, the article analyzes five unique challenges involved in legalizing economic and social rights. It is important to identify these challenges because they must be overcome if the human rights movement wishes to refute the notion that economic and social rights are inherently non-justiciable (and therefore, to some, invalid as rights). These challenges also point to the possibility that legalization is not the only, or even the best, strategic pathway to realize economic and social rights effectively.

The Public Management of Risk: The Case for Deliberating among Worldviews

This article argues that the public management of risk faces inherent "wicked issue" problems which are further accentuated in the context of the contemporary regulatory state. It is suggested that in order to overcome these limitations and inevitable trade-offs, there needs to be a more conscientious effort in setting out distinct components of any public management of risk, which should be considered and discussed through the lens of distinct worldviews contrasting interpretations and solutions, as well as potential "black-spots." It is only by acknowledging limitations of any one strategy and by considering plural solutions that there is less likelihood of disappointment when dealing with crises and disasters.