Parturescence: A theorisation of women’s transformation through childbirth

ProblemThe potential for positive transformation through giving birth is under-acknowledged and poorly understood.Aim and methodBy drawing on theories of new feminist materialism to open up ways of thinking about childbirth and maternity care, we discuss how aspects of the process of matrescence, a woman’s ‘mother-becoming’, pertain to women’s opportunities in childbirth. We introduce the term, ‘parturescence’, as a moniker for the opportunity for ‘becoming’, and therefore transformation, offered in birth giving.Results and discussionUsing Davies’ interpretation of Bergson’s lines of descent and ascent we suggest the conditions of a woman’s parturescence (whether birth giving will result in a positive or negative transformation) is enabled by ‘with woman’ midwifery care. The intra-action between this care, and the materiality of birth – the pain and exhaustion women experience in labour and birth, results in a rematerialisation of who and what women are and the opportunity for women’s transformation.ConclusionThe development of this theory of parturescence unifies disparate aspects of maternity care and birth literature, provides insight into the potential mechanisms and conditions that impact women’s parturescence, and suggests that birth, including the challenging and destabilising parts, is not just for the production of a baby, but also a site of women’s ‘becoming’.     

Conflicting contexts: Midwives’ interpretation of childbirth through photo elicitation

IntroductionThis study seeks to explore midwives’ perceptions about childbirth and in particular their beliefs about normality and risk. In the current climate of increasing interventions during labour, it is important to understand the thought processes that impact on midwifery care in order to examine whether these beliefs influence midwifery clinical decision-making.Method12 Midwives who worked in a variety of metropolitan hospitals in Sydney, Australia were interviewed about how they care for women during labour. The study utilised an inductive qualitative design using photo elicitation during the interview process.ResultsSix themes emerged from the data that clearly indicated midwives felt challenged by working in a system dominated by an obstetric model of care that undermined midwifery autonomy in maintaining normal birth. These themes were: desiring normal, scanning the environment, constructing the context, navigating the way, relinquishing desire and reflecting on reality. Most midwives felt they were unable to practice in the manner they were philosophically aligned to, that is, promoting normal birth, as the medical model restricted their practice.DiscussionThe polarised views of childbirth held by midwives and obstetricians do little to enhance normal birth outcomes. Midwives in this study expressed frustration that they were unable to practice midwifery in a way that reflected their belief in normal birth. This, they cite is a result of the oppressive obstetric model prevalent in maternity care facilities in Sydney and the over use of technological interventions during childbirth.     

“I’d like an abortion please”: rethinking unplanned pregnancy narratives in contemporary American cinema

Released in 2014 and 2015, respectively, the American indie films Obvious Child and Grandma each feature a central protagonist who is dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and is pursuing an abortion. These pro-choice narratives not only challenge Hollywood cinema’s repetitive depiction of unplanned pregnancies that result in motherhood, but they critique the dominant political and societal discourses surrounding abortion and women who choose to terminate pregnancies. Tracing the history of cinematic portrayals of unplanned pregnancy, and reflecting upon how post-feminist culture has positioned the notion of choice, this paper notes the significance of Obvious Child and Grandma as films that not only feature abortion as a central theme, but utilize comedy in their navigation of a controversial subject. Furthermore, this paper argues that in their frank and positive engagement with termination as a potential resolution to an unplanned pregnancy, these films offer important attempts to destigmatize the subject of abortion.     

Beyond the “digital divide”: the “computer girls” of Seelampur

In the last decade, India’s position as a global information economy has aided its status as the poster child for Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) initiatives in the global South. Policy discourse emphasizes that crossing of the “digital divide” through access to technology will bring a leveling of economic and social hierarchies. Based on sustained ethnographic observations and interviews in Seelampur in New Delhi, my paper critically examines the promise of inclusion in the information society for low income “Muslim women.” In following the lives of the “computer girls” of Seelampur, I argue that access to computer training contradictorily reproduced and reified interconnected divisions of gender, class, caste, and religion. Ethnographic research reveals the complexities of everyday lived experiences among Seelampur women. The space of the ICT center was rigidly stratified and the center primarily attracted women from relatively higher class and caste positions within Seelampur. However, I argue that the women had contradictory experiences related to their status as India’s “middle-class” that restricted their economic and social mobility outside the ICT center. Their experiences testified to structural disempowerment that disrupted deterministic assumptions about ICT and mobility.     

“Talking Back”: The poetry of Suheir Hammad

This paper examines how Suheir Hammad's poetry “talks back” (bell hooks) to dominant gendered discourses. My central argument is that Hammad's influential poetry is constitutive of a discourse of resistance. This paper posits resistance as being counter-hegemonic. It demonstrates how these representations signify a re-articulation of identity and a call for a redistribution of symbolic power. On the basis of a textual analysis of Hammad's poetry, supplemented with an individual interview with the artist involved, some discursive tactics emerge as interventions. From articulating her reactions to the September 11 attacks to her more recent mediated involvement with the uprisings commonly referred to as the “Arab Spring,” such interventions are always subjected to co-optation. Nonetheless, they propelled her into the public sphere, thereby affording opportunities to present creative works that point to stronger possibilities for Middle Eastern womanhood.     

Hospital accreditation: Driving best outcomes through continuity of midwifery care? A scoping review

ProblemContinuity of midwifery care models are the gold standard of maternity care. Despite being recommended by the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, few women in Australia have access to such models.BackgroundExtensive research shows that if all women had access to continuity of midwifery care, maternal and neonatal outcomes would improve. Hospital accreditation, the main national safety and quality system in Australia, aims to encourage and enable the translation of healthcare quality and safety standards into practice.AimThis paper explored the realities and possibilities of a health care accreditation system driving health service re-organisation towards the provision of continuity of midwifery care for childbearing women.MethodsA scoping review sought literature at the macro (policy) level. From 3036 records identified, the final number of sources included was 100:73 research articles and eight expert opinion pieces/editorials from journals, 15 government/accreditation documents, three government/accreditation websites, and one thesis.FindingsTwo narrative themes emerged: (1) Hospital accreditation: ‘Here to stay’ but no clear evidence and calls for change. (2) Measuring and implementing quality and safety in maternity care.DiscussionRegulatory frameworks drive hospitals’ priorities, potentially creating conditions for change. The case for reform in the hospital accreditation system is persuasive and, in maternity services, clear. Mechanisms to actualise the required changes in maternity care are less apparent, but clearly possible.ConclusionsStructural changes to Australia’s health accreditation system are needed to prioritise, and mandate, continuity of midwifery care.     

‘Running on sandcastles’: energising the rhythmanalyst through non-representational ethnography of a running event

ABSTRACT

This article conducts an analysis that is informed by rhythmanalysis and non-representational ethnography of a five-day seasonal running event – Etape Bornholm – that takes place on the Danish holiday island of Bornholm during the summer school holiday. Firstly, I argue that rhythmanalysis in practice pays lip service to biological rhythms and is insufficiently corporeal, mobile or sensuous. In contrast, I energise the rhythmanalyst by outlining a perspective where the rhythmanalyst literally listens to his or her heartbeat and internal rhythms. I address this sensuous paucity in rhythm studies by connecting it with non/more-than-representational theories and ethnographies. Secondly, I advance landscape studies, sport geography and tourist studies by examining runners’ bodily ways of practising and sensing landscapes during races. More broadly, this article contributes to ongoing debates in tourist studies on how tourists corporeally engage with and sense landscapes.     

Community-Run Fisheries: Avoiding the “Tragedy of the Commons”

This paper discusses how fishing communities around the world avoid destructive overfishing through local and largely informal self-management. The paper offers many examples that undermine the widespread assumption that the tragedy of the commons is inevitable without government regulation.     

The Wealth of Nations and the Happiness of Nations: Why “Accounting” Matters

We review income-happiness research in light of competing theoretical frameworks, unit of analysis, and methodological issues. Within-countries, absolute income is weakly related to happiness, comparison effects depend on the measure utilized, and income change and perceived income produce inconsistent findings. Across countries, absolute income is a stronger predictor of happiness, different comparison effects are significant, income change results are predominantly positive, and the financial-life satisfaction relationship is more robust.     

Application of the “Benefit-Of-the-Doubt” Approach for the Construction of a Digital Access Indicator: A Revaluation of the “Digital Access Index”

The use of composite indicators as a tool for ranking and making decisions is ever increasing in a world marked by the inequalities and competition in all domains. However, the dependence of countries ranking on the weighing scheme used to aggregate individual indices or sub-indicators, most of the time set by experts/stakeholders may weaken the credibility of composite indicators. One method which is able to overcome these limits is the “Data Envelopment Analysis” approach, particularly named “Benefit-Of-the-Doubt” in the context of composite indicators’ construction. We propose a revaluation of the Digital Access Index given that Information technology is the most important factor driving improvement in a wide array of areas critical for the quality of life for individuals as well as societies. We have shown that this method is more suitable for identifying trends and drawing attention to particular issues and also for setting policy priorities. In fact, the weights of the individual indices, used to compute the composite indicators are based on the data itself and are proper for the country under consideration. These weights contain adequate information in order to help policy-makers to better understand the nature of the new innovation economy and the types of public policies needed to drive innovation, productivity and broad-based prosperity for its citizens.     

“The Freak of Nature”: On Erich Fromm’s Vindication of Binomial Sexuality and the Potentials of the “Homosexual Deviation”

As a Freudian revisionist and neo-Marxist, Erich Fromm (1900–1980) lessened the import of sexuality in the individual psyche but stressed the role played by the sex differential in the distribution of power throughout history and in the post-patriarchal form of matriarchy he envisioned. Seeking to reinforce the male/female divide and heteronormativity, Fromm outlined a “New Science of Man” that readily ignored not only the challenges posed to binary sexuality by post-Darwinian critical sexologies, but also the same-sex complexities evinced by key figures of his own cultural pantheon. Regardless of his declared pursuits, however, Fromm at times expressed insights suitable to undermine the cogency of his most cherished sexual convictions. As a tool for uncovering “indubitable commonsensical axioms” as sources of alienation, Fromm’s conception of “idology” challenges his own sanction of sexual binarity and heterosexuality, thus facilitating an understanding of the individual’s sexual difference as a unique modulation of male/female intermediariness.     

Sex/love skirmishes: “swinging,” “polyamory,” and the politics of naming

The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the logics of sex, love, commitment, and coupledom. In this article, I use a number of non-monogamy blogs and online glossaries as examples of the way these two words are often deployed against each other in an effort to position the speaker in relation to mononormative practices of sex and love. Leaving aside questions of the accuracy of particular definitions, I map a range of definitions against two existing scholarly/activist tools for describing relationship styles, specifically Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and Meg-John Barker’s sex/love continuums. This exercise is doubly fruitful: first, the tools reveal the political stakes of the definitional debates; second, the definitions demonstrate that the distinctions we commonly use to distinguish between types of relationships—including types of non-monogamous relationships—in fact rely on mononormative assumptions about sex, love, and friendship. If “mononormativity” is defined as the system of ideas, institutions, and practical orientations that provide the backdrop against which the idea of monogamy as coherent, common, natural, and right congeals, the sex/love skirmishes of “swinging” and “polyamory” remind us that its logics are both pervasive and deeply fractured.     

Interstate migration of the US poverty population: Immigration “pushes” and welfare magnet “pulls”

This study evaluates the social and demographic structure of poverty migration during the 1985–90 period based on an analysis of recent census data. Particular attention is given to the roles of two policy-relevant factors that are proposed to be linked to poverty migration. The first of these is the role of immigration from abroad and its effect on the net out-migration of longer-term residents with below-poverty incomes, from States receiving the highest volume of immigrants. Such a response, it is argued, could result from job competition or other economic and social costs associated with immigration. The second involves the poverty population magnet effect associated with State welfare benefits (AFDC and Food Stamp payments) which has come under renewed scrutiny in light of the impending reform of the federal welfare program. The impact of both of these factors on interstate poverty migration is evaluated in a broader context that takes cognizance of other sociodemographic subgroups, and State-level attributes that are known to be relevant in explaining internal migration. This research employs an exceptionally rich data base of aggregate migration flows, specially tabulated from the full migration sample of the 1990 US census (based on the residence 5 years ago question). It also employs an analysis technique, the nested logit model, which identifies separately the push and pull effects of immigration, welfare benefits, and other State attributes on the migration process. Our findings are fairly clear. The high volume of immigration to selected US Statesdoes affect a selective out-migration of the poverty population, which is stronger for whites, Blacks and other non-Asian minorities as well as the least-educated. These results are consistent with arguments that internal migrants are responding to labor market competition from similarly educated immigrants. Moreover, we found that the impact of immigration occurs primarily as a push rather than a reduced pull. In contrast, State welfare benefits exert only minimal effects on the interstate migration of the poverty population—either as pulls or pushes, although some demographic segments of that population are more prone to respond than others. In addition to these findings, our results reveal the strong impact that a State's racial and ethnic composition exerts in both retaining and attracting migrants of like race and ethnic groups. This suggests the potential for a greater cross-state division in the US poverty population, by race and ethnic status.Data Used: 1990 US census tabulations of full migration (residence 5 years ago) sample. Note: Detailed 1990 census statistics on migration of the poverty and nonpoverty populations for individual states can be found in: William H. Frey Immigration and Internal Migration for US States: 1990 Census Findings by Poverty Status and Race, Population Studies CenterResearch Report No. 94-320.This research is supported by the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty Small Grants Program and by NICHD grant No. R01 HD29725. The migration data for this paper were prepared at the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan from 1990 US Census files. The authors acknowledge Cathy Sun for computer programming assistance, and Ron Lue-Sang for preparing maps and graphics.     

“Battle of the Mei-Meis”

On May 7, 2011, Singapore held its 16th General Election. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) predictably secured a landslide victory, and yet the result was contextually historic, with the opposition winning six seats from a possible eighty-seven—the largest loss for the PAP since political independence in 1965. At the centre of the General Election was a persistent media buzz surrounding two young female candidates: Tin Pei Ling of the People’s Action Party and Nicole Seah of the National Solidarity Party. While the former suffered sustained criticism, the latter received sustained praise. This article seeks to analyze the manner in which these two women were positioned as inverse feminine subjects within the mediascape. The analysis emerges from data collected from 194 sources which appeared online between March 29, 2011 and May 8, 2011, comprising political blogs, discussion forums, articles, and reports from online news sites. It aims to reveal how the gendered media constructions of, and public responses to, both women interpolate a diametrically opposed positive and negative binary of womanhood which functions to: (1) reify national discourses of ideal femininity; and (2) corroborate regional conceptualizations of “good” and “bad” feminine subjectivities.     

When “They” Become “Us”: The Effect of Time and Ingroup Identity on Perceptions of Gay and Lesbian Group Members

ABSTRACT

Prejudice change manipulations rarely produce the expected attitude change effects. Our research suggests that attitude change depends on time-dependent memory consolidation processes. This study tested the effects of group information and time on perceptions of gays and lesbians. Heterosexual participants (N = 90) were randomly assigned to a condition where their ingroup, or an outgroup, included gay and lesbian individuals. We measured participants’ gay and lesbian political attitudes and evaluations of the groups’ members at a short or long delay. Results showed no effect of our manipulations on political attitudes, F(1, 86) = 0.14, p = .72. Contrary to predictions, participants evaluated gay and lesbian ingroup members less positively at the long versus short delay, t(49) = 3.72, p = .0004, d = 1.01. Results suggest that members of stigmatized groups are perceived more negatively when associated with one’s ingroup.     

The “Practice of Humanity”

“Practice of Humanity” examines visual and legal representations of transnational sex and domestic work. Specifically, we analyze a 2003 United Nations public service announcement, Cleaning Lady; the 2000 UN Protocol on Human Trafficking; the 2000 US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act; and current trends in the sociological literatures of both types of work. We demonstrate how these texts allow particular connections between domestic and sex workers, while foreclosing others. We draw out the ways these regimes suppress understandings of work in favor of moralizing about workers; how the “domestic” in domestic work, and “work” in sex work continue to vex humanitarian operations; and the ways national and racial privilege cut across connections between domestic and sex work.