“A View You Won’t Get Anywhere Else”? Depressed Mothers, Public Regulation and ‘Private’ Narrative

The existence of ‘postnatal’ or maternal depression (PND) is contested, and subject to various medico-legal and cultural definitions. Mothers remain subject to complex systems of scrutiny and regulation. In medico-legal discourse, postnatal distress is portrayed as a tragic pathology of mysterious (but probably hormonal) origin. A PND diagnosis denotes ‘imbalance’ in the immediate postnatal period, although women experience increased incidence of depression throughout maternity. Current treatment patterns emphasise medication and tend to elide the perspective of the individual sufferer in favour of a blanket disease model. I emphasise the need for a feminist reassessment of maternal distress and the means available to ‘testify’ to its forms, and argue for PND to be analysed in biopolitical terms, perhaps as a ‘habitus’ materialising the low status and pervasive privatisation of Western mothers.

Hedonists and husbands: piracy narratives,gender demands,and local political economic realities in Somalia

The grand narrative of piracy has been instrumental in shaping how piracy off the coast of Somalia is understood and responded to. Self-proclaimed pirates, suspected pirates, and convicted piracy prisoners continue to tell the story of taking up arms against foreign illegal fishers to protect their personal livelihoods as well as Somalia’s natural resources. Although the grand narrative remains the most popular piracy narrative, this paper introduces and examines two newly emergent narratives of Somali piracy – the Somali women’s narrative and the piracy prisoner self-narrative. I explore how these narratives reveal a central paradox surrounding piracy and social reproduction in Somalia that, until now, has been absent from discussions about piracy narratives and the issue of Somali piracy. Whereas the grand narrative of piracy fails to address gender demands and local political economic realities in Somalia, the new narratives present piracy as a gendered experienced that is situated within the broader, evolving context of courtship and marriage in Somalia. I argue the new narratives can help push beyond over-simplistic understandings of piracy off the coast of Somalia as a ‘man’s crime’ that should be addressed by men.     

Feminist utopias and questions of liberty: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as critique of second wave feminism

Taking her cue from the recent Cindy Sherman exhibition at Metro Pictures, New York, 'New Photographic Work 2000', Meagher considers the ways in which feminist art critics have analysed Sherman's work since it was first 'discovered' by Douglas Crimp in 1979. Her claim is that analyses of Sherman's work are involved in a debate about whether the images are useful or destructive to feminist politics. More importantly, what has come to be known as Sherman Studies places an emphasis not upon Sherman's art, but rather upon the identify of the artist. Instead of enquiring into the political status of the art works (are they feminist?), critics often end up asking after the political status of the artist herself (is she feminist?). Meagher's essay is in four sections: 'Encounters' traces the critical reaction to Sherman's work; 'In or Out of the Picture' considers the critical tendency to impose a narrative upon the work and the simultaneous insistence that this narrative is informed by the artist's feminist intent; 'New Photographic Work 2000' looks at the most recent reactions to Sherman'swork and prepares for the final section, 'Feminist Occasions', in which Meagher draws upon Nancy Miller and considers the relationship between feminist critics and their resistant celebrity.     

Erzählungen des Kindes‐ und Erwachsenenschutzes: Eine Anwendung und Erweiterung des Narrative Policy Frameworks

The Child and Adult Protection Authorities (KESB) have been the subject of controversial discussion since their establishment in 2013. The reform of the Guardianship Law provided for an institutional shift away from local guardianship authorities to regional specialist authorities. This article uses the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine the history of today’s controversy, simultaneously proposing an analytic strengthening of said framework. Previous NPF studies summarize policy actors into opponents and proponents. As a result, we do not know whether different actors use different narratives. We therefore separate the expert from the MP discourse. The analysis shows that the experts' arguments for a new institutional arrangement and a person‐oriented narrative dominated, which put the fundamental rights of the persons affected by guardianship measures up front. The study contributes to the understanding of the current controversy, in which a person‐oriented narrative seems to be dominant again, directed against the new authorities.     

《迷失在游乐场》中的后现代主义叙事特征

约翰·巴思是美国后现代主义文学的代表人物，其作品《迷失在游乐场》中的叙事特色，正体现了典型的后现代主义特征：引证性、片面性、不连贯性和不确定性等。巴思在《迷失在游乐场》叙事结构上有很多创新，例如循环结构和对应结构。另外，叙事方式中不可靠叙述的应用使得《迷失在游乐场》中的故事之一《墨涅拉俄斯》在环环相套的叙述中讲述出来。叙述的不可靠性，需要读者不断地对叙述进行双重解码才能理解原作意图。     

Policy Narratives across Two Languages: A Comparative Study using the Narrative Policy Framework

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) focuses on the role of narratives, drawing from a rich scholarship in narrative, language, and culture. Despite the understanding that narratives are constructions of language and that narrative construction differs across languages, NPF studies have not focused on policy narratives in languages other than English. Language characteristics of narratives are important to assess the stability of policy narratives when there are multiple dominant languages in a political system. This study investigates the use of narrative elements in policy narratives in agricultural biotechnology policy in India across Hindi and English media coverage to examine the NPF assumption that narratives have generalizable narrative elements irrespective of variation in linguistic context and, specifically, tests the transportability of narrative elements. Findings validate the transportability of narrative elements in Hindi narratives, indicate variation in the use of narrative elements over time, and have implications for applying NPF across languages.     

浅谈德育叙事的实践价值

德育叙事即通过德育主体的故事叙说来描绘德育行为,进行意义建构并使德育活动获得解释性的意义理解。其对德育者、德育对象、德育方法和德育评价方式都具有突践价值。     

国学考据学的证据法研究及展望——从一重证据法到四重证据法

本文论述人类学对传统的国学方法之开拓与更新:文学人类学和历史人类学作为现代以来的人文研究新范式。在方法论上与国学考据学相对接,经历了从 20 世纪初期的二重证据说,到 90 年代的三重证据说,人类学视野与方法的介入给国学带来的格局变化;再到 21 世纪初的四重证据说,描述跨学科潮流影响之下的文化整合认知范式出现及其意义,侧重在古史研究方面,梳理出从信古、疑古、释古到立体释古的四阶段发展演变轨迹。对立体释古范式的现阶段应用实践及其前景,结合人类学中新兴的物质文化研究和新史学发展潮流,作出学术评估与展望。     

作为社会共同体建构技术的法律修辞

法律不是一种纯粹客观的物质性力量,其对社会治理的参与,需要借助于社会共同体所分享的共识发挥作用。就此而言,法律可被理解为一种想象的力量。法律作为社会共同体的想象而获得力量,同时也通过生产想象而作用于社会共同体的建构,在实践中表现出建构社会共同体的技术。法律修辞通过将话语组织起来的方式,在社会中生产关于法律的想象共识,从而成为一种社会共同体的建构技术。法律修辞既能通过叙事来指引关于共同生活经验的想象,以历史和现实中所分享的共同经验形成认同,从而建构社会共同体;又能通过论证来指引关于共同价值观念的想象,使彼此激烈冲突的不同价值观借助修辞的软化而达成某种程度的共识,并通过关于价值判断的认同建构社会共同体。法律修辞的这些特点,使之在形成共识时所达成的更多是相对共识而非绝对共识,表现出模糊的特征,从而达成不完全理论化合意来回应现代社会中价值判断的多元分歧,更有利于社会共同体的建构。