Having it all overseas: Aid workers and the international division of reproductive labour

This article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development through the prism of domestic service for expat aid workers in developing countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amid aid workers and their domestic staff in Dakar, Senegal, I argue that access to affordable care work greatly enhances the lives of women who work overseas in development. The postcolonial underdevelopment and poverty that aid work addresses is paradoxically critical to the aid workers' own access to affordable care, family balance and the means to do their jobs. I put this insight into the larger scholarly conversation about domestic work and global inequality, including on the Global Care Chain.     

Undercover policing and the spectre of ‘domestic extremism’: the covert surveillance of environmental activism in Britain

The spectre of environmental ‘domestic extremism’ has long been postulated by police leaders and security analysts in Britain. It is a narrative that has justified the commitment of enormous amounts of government resources towards police intelligence work directed at non-violent direct action campaigns. Most controversially, this has included the long-term infiltration of environmental (and other) activist groups by undercover police. This article provides a critical analysis of the justifications put forward in support of the covert surveillance of environmental activists in Britain. The paper proceeds by way of a single case study – a high profile, environmental direct action protest in the north of England – in order to reveal the levels of abuse, manipulation and deception at the basis of undercover protest policing. Through their court case, the activists involved with this action were able to obtain rare insights into the police authorisation documents for the undercover operation that had led to their arrests. An analysis of these documents provides us with a glimpse of the contradictory justifications given by senior police officers for infiltration – now under scrutiny by a public inquiry.     

Men,masculinities, and gender-based violence: The broadening scope of recent research

Men's relationships to gender-based violence (GBV) have long been an area of sociological inquiry, but until recently men have primarily been framed as perpetrators of violence against women. More recently, research on men and GBV has broadened to include studying men as victims/survivors, as investigators and law enforcement officers, as passive or active bystanders, and as allies in working to address this social problem. We review this research in an effort to bridge these divergent bodies of work; we identify methodological trends and gaps in existing research, make recommendations for improved theoretical and methodological robustness, and suggest that research perspectives on men and GBV have shifted over time as wider understandings of gender and masculinities become more hopeful and more inclusive. While we see optimism and promise in new directions of GBV research, we urge ongoing research to retain the wisdoms and critical perspectives that marked the beginnings of GBV inquiry.     

Mothering and everyday life during and in the aftermath of domestic violence among women with immigrant backgrounds in Norway

This paper focuses on how immigrant women experience and negotiate their everyday life with children prior to and after leaving a violent partner. Twenty‐three women staying at domestic violence and abuse shelters with their children were interviewed about their experiences with assistance services and their everyday life with their children. At the time of the interviews, most of the women were legally separated or divorced and were either living in or in touch daily with shelters. In this paper, we look at some of the challenges that women face when exposed to violence in a relationship that involves children. Being exposed to violence from a partner raises a number of economic, practical, and emotional concerns, both prior to and after leaving. For the mothers in our study, maintaining a regular routine is key to making the children feel safe in an unpredictable setting. For many, economic dependence on the partner is replaced with economic dependence on assistance services after leaving the partner. Services must recognize that providing help to mothers who have left a violent partner constitutes more than just practical support but is crucial for mothers' ability to re‐establish a predictable everyday life with their children.     

Driven by Inequalities: Exploring the Resurgence of Domestic Work in U.S. Cities

Domestic work, once the most common occupation for women around the globe, was thought to be well on its way to extinction at the end of the twentieth century. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, evidence began to appear that domestic work was in many places again becoming a growth occupation. My goal in this article is to examine the factors related to the recent expansion of domestic work in countries in the Global North, using the United States as a case study. I draw on U.S. Census data to document the resurgence of domestic work both nationally and in many large cities across the country, and then use multivariate analysis to compare rates of domestic work across these cities. The results indicate that rates of domestic work are highly related to variables measuring structural inequalities (racialization of the labor force, immigration, and economic polarization), while showing little relationship with variables measuring unmet care needs (care dependency ratios, female/maternal labor force participation, and availability of institutional care options). These findings underline the urgency of providing protections to domestic workers and point to the need for scholarship that better theorizes the relationships among unpaid care and different forms of paid care.     

Abused Women in Taiwan Who Seek Religious Support

ABSTRACT

This research explores the types of religious healing that abused women use and surveys their experiences with these practices in Taiwan. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of abused women, who had been recruited from 12 agencies. The findings show that participants sought religious healing for a variety of reasons, and that they had both positive experiences (e.g., useful religious support) and negative experiences (e.g., encountering deceptive jitongs and spending a large amount of money on services) regardingr the support provided by different religions. This study also found that women who believed in traditional Eastern religions had more negative experiences than women who believed in Western religions.     

Domestic help and the gender division of domestic labor during the COVID-19 pandemic: Gender inequality among Japanese parents

The enduring COVID-19 pandemic has gradually transformed our everyday lives. This study focuses on changes in work and family arrangements, with particular focus on changes in domestic help, and examines its impact on the division of domestic labor. Using a social survey of work and the family conducted in November 2020 and May 2021, the results show that from January 2020 (pre-pandemic) to May 2021, approximately 40% of respondents experienced a reduced gender gap for housework and childcare, while a large gender gap is still observed in the absolute frequency of undertaking domestic labor. Some lifestyle changes triggered by the pandemic, such as an increase in the use of takeaways or delivery meals, and the expansion of working from home, are found to be able to contribute a shift toward more equal sharing of domestic labor. However, the fact that the access to such lifestyle changes is more common among those with a relatively high income or high educational background suggests that the lifestyle changes imposed by the pandemic may exacerbate class disparities in the gender gap in domestic labor. Furthermore, the results show that decreased kinship support results in a greater childcare burden being placed on women.     

习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想的教育实践

为培养中国特色社会主义事业合格建设者和可靠接班人,以思政课的教育实践为例,对习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想进行研究。研究认为,习近平总书记从民族复兴、党和国家事业发展以及建设中国特色社会主义教育强国的全局出发,高度重视教师队伍建设和教育工作;作为用习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想铸魂育人的中坚力量,思政课教师要在学生心里埋下真善美的种子,始终做学生立德铸魂的引路人;思政课教师要坚持不懈地传播马克思主义科学理论,用习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想武装师生头脑,引领学生坚定理想信念,补足“精神之钙”,始终做政治清醒的明白人;要引领学生弘扬中国精神,锚定成长成才的“压舱石”,特别要在指导学生贯通学好“四史”,涵育家国情怀和培养创新实践能力方面下功夫;要引领学生培育和践行社会主义核心价值观,在学思悟践中掌握马克思主义科学思辩的方法论精髓和实践要义,切实解决好世界观、人生观、价值观这个“总开关”问题,帮助学生“扣好人生第一粒扣子”。     

法治理想及其要求

法治是当今世界公认的一种重要政治价值。法治理想的要义是通过法律规范的途径来限制任意专断权力的运作。为达到这一目标,法律规范在形式上必须满足富勒提出的八项要求,并且必须确立法律的正当程序来保障法律规范得到适当的运用。我们可以把这两方面称作法治理想形式与程序方面的要求。法治理想的要义还有助于我们理解人们围绕法治的一些重要争论,如关于实质性法治观念的争论,关于立法性法律的争论等。