Beyond unities of identity in high modernity

This paper explores contemporary approaches to identity within modernity with reference to the influential recent work of Anthony Giddens (1991, 1994) and recent debates on hybridity and diaspora developed within what may be termed a postmodern framework. Unlike Giddens’ focus on the unitary self of high modernity, whose political project is self‐actualization, and unlike the focus on cultural social forms found in debates on diaspora and hybridity, I argue that social divisions lie at the heart of modern societies. The social divisions of gender, ethnicity, “race,” and class must therefore be prime concerns in sociology because they lie at the very heart of the modern social order. They are central in terms of constructions of identity and otherness and in terms of producing differentiated and complex social outcomes for individuals and groups (Anthias 1998a).     

A Privileged Pole? Diversity in Women's Pay,Pensions and Wealth in Britain

Is gender on its own becoming redundant in the analysis of employment experiences? There is a growing interest in economic diversity amongst women within the social sciences, with commentators suggesting, firstly, that a polarization in women's labour market experiences is occurring. Secondly, economic diversity amongst women may even be so distinct that a privileged pole is faring substantially better in wage and occupational terms than most men. This article uses data from the Family Resources Survey to explore these two suggestions. It concludes that the success on the labour market that has been achieved by an economically privileged pole amongst women supports the decline in the power of gender to explain variation in occupational patterns and wages, but it is clear that gender (tempered with awareness of the ways that it is cross‐cut by class, ethnicity and other social divisions) remains an invaluable explanatory variable for our understanding of economic security in its fuller sense, not least in the pension positions of women.     

Challenging the spatial politics of the European crisis: nationed narratives and trans-local solidarities in the post-crisis conjuncture

This paper explores the potential for the formation of political solidarities across the spatial divisions being intensified by dominant responses to the European crisis. In doing so, it takes inspiration from Doreen Massey’s thinking around the contested terms on which space and politics are articulated and her engagement with the 2008 crisis through projects such as the Kilburn manifesto. We argue that her book World city powerfully articulates a way of thinking about the spatial politics of a particular conjuncture. The paper traces the ways in which various political interventions in post-crisis politics have been shaped by distinctive ‘nationed’ geographical imaginaries. In particular, we explore how left-wing nationed narratives impact on the discursive horizon and unpack their implications for the articulation of solidarities and emancipatory politics in the context of the ‘European Crisis’. Building on this, we reflect on how trans-local solidarities and alliances might be articulated across socio-spatial divisions and contest the decidedly uneven, racialized, gendered and classed impacts of dominant European politics. We argue that such solidarities and alliances can form a crucial intervention in challenging the dominant spatial politics of crisis and articulating left political strategies on different terms.     

Surviving on the inside: Reflections on being a woman and a feminist in a male academic institution

This article considers what it is like to be a woman on the inside: a white woman lecturer and tutor teaching social work students inside the white male bastion of the university. Universities are notoriously male-centred in their organisation, their teaching and their knowledge base; women working in universities have referred to themselves as ‘outsiders in the sacred grove’ (Aisenberg and Harrington, 1988). We might expect Departments of Social Work to be different to this, since social work has historically been a profession staffed by women, working with female clients (Brook and Davis, 1985). I will argue that patriarchal ideas and practices persist throughout higher educational institutions and that the impact of gender (as well as class, ethnicity and ‘race’, sexuality and disability) must be addressed at all levels within social work education.     

Authorship,gender and the construction of meaning in the Eurythmics' hit recordings

Abstract

Pop songs are often interpreted, by fans, critics and even academic analysts, in relation to traditional notions of ‘authorship’. But in recent pop, such as the Eurythmics' hits, these notions are at the very least in tension with a more fragmented construction of subjectivity. This article seeks to develop a method for analysing such constructions, both generally and in specific Eurythmics songs.

The method draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theory of subjectivity and meaning, presenting the various parts of songs (i.e., both textural lines and structural sections) as interactive ‘voices’, each with its characteristic style-features. Such features are always culturally marked, through their multiple associations and their different positionings within various discursive domains. It is possible, therefore, to locate the styles, their features and their interrelations on a range of discursive axes (gender, ethnicity, etc.), making up a ‘map’ of the musico-discursive terrain, then to place the ‘dialogue’ constructed in a specific song in relation to these axes, this map.

For the Eurythmics, the gender axis is the most (though not the only) important one. It functions through the differential positioning of constituent styles (pop, blues, soul, disco, ballad, etc.) on this axis; in relation to other axes of meaning; through articulation in the specific socio-historical context of 1980s British pop; and via interaction with visual images (e.g., on accompanying videos).

After an analysis of eight songs, the article concludes with some implications of the method for the interpretation of gender — and more generally of the construction of subjectivity — in music.     

Doing Culture with Girls Like Me: Why Trying on Gender and Intersectionality Matters

Gendering is not a one‐size‐fits‐all process. Girls try on gender. In particular, girls – conditioned to value connections – search their cultural surroundings for ‘girls like me’ to answer the weighty question, Who am I? However, girls are not simply passive beneficiaries of culture, but actively construct their gendered selves by engaging in or ‘doing’ culture; girls activate certain features salient to their experiences. This paper examines how race, ethnicity, and class arbitrate girls’ gendered identities, emphasizing the concept trying on gender to capture the intersectional and experimental character of these processes. As girls try on gender –a local and culturally specific endeavor – they engage in a fluid, multifaceted, and sometimes tentative gendering process. Cross‐over literature by and for girls lends empirical support to how girls accomplish this multi‐constructed sense of self. The article concludes with implications for studies of girls, including a cautionary note about overemphasis on individualistic agency.     

Discourse variation,grammaticalisation and stuff like that1

General extenders (such as and stuff) are analysed here in the speech of adolescents from three English towns. There were no consistent patterns of gender or social class variation in their use, but a clear social class difference in the use of certain forms, with and that favoured by the working‐class speakers and and stuff and and things preferred by the middle‐class adolescents. The most frequent forms were analysed in terms of phonetic reduction, decategorisation, semantic change and pragmatic shift, changes that together make up the process of grammaticalisation. And that and and everything were the most grammaticalised, followed by or something, with and stuff and and things lagging behind. The multifunctionality of the general extenders caused problems for a rigorous analysis of their pragmatic functions. The paper argues that we must consider their functions within the local contexts in which they occur, to take account of their interaction with other linguistic forms. It is also important to avoid generalising about their functions and, instead, to prioritise the fact that as pragmatic particles they are multifunctional. In this data the general extenders had functions in every communicative domain, often simultaneously. The implications for the quantitative analysis of discourse forms are also considered.     

Globalizing ‘Girl Power’: Corporate Social Responsibility and Transnational Business Initiatives for Gender Equality

The recent emergence of ‘transnational business feminism’ [Roberts, A. (2014). The political economy of ‘transnational business feminism’. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 17(2), 209–231] accompanied by numerous ‘transnational business initiatives for the governance of gender’ [Prügl, E., &; True, J. (2014). Equality means business? Governing gender through transnational public–private partnerships. Review of International Political Economy, 21(6), 1137–1169] constitutes a significant area of debate in the feminist political economy literature. In this paper I focus on the confluence of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda with the visibility of gender issues in development and the resultant corporate agenda for the promotion of women and girls’ empowerment. The paper draws on two gender-focused World Bank collaborations with private sector actors: the Global Private Sector Leaders Forum and the Girl Effect campaign. The paper argues that the dominant model of corporate citizenship inscribed within the discourse of transnational business initiatives is framed in terms of capitalizing on the potential power of girls and women, achieving an easy convergence between gender equality and corporate profit. I suggest that the construction of an unproblematic synergy between these goals serves to moralize corporate-led development interventions and therefore does not challenge corporate power in the development process, but instead allows corporations to subscribe to voluntary, non-binding codes and cultivate a socially conscious brand image.     

Locating difference: class, 'race' and gender, and the shaping of social inequalities

The current interest in difference has arisen in part because of its importance in recent recognition claims, and in part because of a belief that as a concept it can illuminate social diversity. Debates here have stressed the importance of the symbolic in the construction of social relations and social diversity, and have highlighted the relational underpinnings of diversity. In this paper we seek to take forward aspects of such an analysis by examining some issues in the shaping of difference and inequalities in the domains of gender, class and ‘race’. It is our argument that we can gain insights in these domains by better describing and theorising the mutuality of value and material social relations. The paper argues that issues of identity and difference need to be more firmly located within relational accounts of social practice, and in the nature of claims (to recognition and resources) which emerge out of different social locations. By exploring issues of difference in debates on class, gender and ‘race’, we argue that relational accounts must be placed within a perspective that also emphasises the content and patterned nature of (highly differentiated) social relations.     

Against exceptionalism: the legitimacy of the neoliberal age

ABSTRACT

After the financial crisis of 2007–08, many commentators, adopting a broadly Polanyian logic of reasoning, expected a departure from neoliberalism. The failure of this shift to materialize has typically been accounted for in ‘exceptionalist’ terms: the persistence of neoliberalism is understood not as a function of a specific legitimacy it has itself engendered, but in terms of external interventions by elites who manage to ‘capture’ executive and regulatory institutions and so to bypass democratic pressures. This paper argues that such an approach underestimates the endogenous sources of legitimacy and resilience that neoliberal governance commands. It criticizes the idea that neoliberalism is at its core dependent on a Schmittian exceptionalism and suggests a perspective on Hayek's articulation of neoliberalism that dissociates it from such an exceptionalist approach. The article proceeds to interrogate the rationality of neoliberalism by examining its distinctively secular temporal logic, rooted in speculation, preemption and reaction.     

Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities

Although the classed dimensions of ‘taste’ have, following Bourdieu, been widely discussed, expressions of disgust at perceived violations of taste have been less frequently considered in relation to class. This paper considers various expressions of disgust at white working‐class existence and explores what they might tell us about middle‐class identities and identifications. I argue that the narratives of decline and of lack present in such representations can be seen in terms of a long‐standing middle‐class project of distinguishing itself. Drawing on Bourdieu's critique of Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the ownership of ‘taste’ is understood as reflecting true humanity, and as conferring uniqueness. Ironically, however, this uniqueness is only achieved through an incorporation of collective, classed understandings. The paper calls for a problematization of a normative and normalized middle‐class location that is, I argue, given added legitimacy by a perceived decline in the significance of class itself. [A]n account of class, rank or social hierarchy must be thin indeed unless accompanied by an account of the passions and sentiments that sustain it (William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, p. 245). Social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat (Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 479). What we read as objective class divisions are produced and maintained by the middle class in the minutiae of everyday practice, as judgements of culture are put into effect (Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture, p. 118).     

Present and absent in troubling ways: families and social capital debates*

Social capital has become a key concept in Government policy‐making and academic circles. Particular forms of social capital theorising have become dominant and influential, invoking certain conceptions of the nature of family life. Inherently, ideas about ‘the family’ not only draw on gender divisions in fundamental ways, but also on particular forms of intergenerational relationships and power relations. This paper explores the place, and understandings, of family in social capital theorising from a feminist perspective, including the way that debates in the social capital field interlock with those in the family field. These encompass: posing both ‘the family’ and social capital as fundamental and strong bases for social cohesion, but also as easily eroded and in need of protection and encouragement; the relationship between ‘the private’ and ‘the social’; notions of bonding and bridging, and horizontal and vertical, forms of social capital as these relate to ideas about contemporary diversity in family forms and the nature of intimate relationships; and analytic approaches to understanding both the natures of social capital and family life in terms of an economic or moral rationality. It argues for greater reflexivity in the use of social capital as a concept, revealing rather than replicating troubling presences and absences around gender and generation as fundamental axes of family life.     

Being neither Pollyanna nor Henny Penny: Responding to McDonald and Jones

Abstract

This paper provides an account of the earliest contributions to family theory and practice by social workers, beginning in the late nineteenth century. The paper argues that the first widespread practice of ‘family work’ by the helping professions was carried out by social workers, primarily women, despite this being rarely acknowledged in the family therapy literature. An analysis of gender and its place in the development of professional status and the ownership of ideas is provided.

Summary

This paper has traced the place of the family in social work theory and practice since the beginnings of the profession, with a particular focus on theoretical developments in social work in the United States. A number of points have been argued. Firstly, there is significant historical evidence that social workers, most of them women, pioneered family work many decades before the term ‘family therapy’ was invented. This directly challenges the claim made by a number of family therapy historians that work with families was pioneered by psychiatrists in the 1950s and 1960s. It is argued here that this discrepancy is largely a result of differences in professional power and gender status.

Secondly, it is argued that the impact of psychoanalytic theory on social work was profound, not only in terms of how it might have distracted the profession from further developing its early family systems focus, but also in how its multidisciplinary practice tended to place social workers, again mostly women, in somewhat limited and prescribed positions.

In addition, it is argued that social work's emphasis on the family and family intervention has waxed and waned due to these concepts not appearing to fit neatly into divisions between fields of practice, such as casework, group work and Community development. While social work struggled with finding a place for the further development of family social work theory, the rapidly growing domain of family therapy quickly colonised this field of practice, giving little credit to the ground already laid by social workers.     

Rereading David Morley’s The ‘Nationwide’ Audience

This article intends to revisit David Morley’s work, The ‘Nationwide’ Audience: Structure and Decoding, by reanalysing his findings in a way of revealing some distinct decoding patterns. While The ‘Nationwide’ Audience has been acclaimed as one of the most influential empirical works in audience studies, it has been often misunderstood as if the work failed to find out systemic and consistent influences of viewers’ social conditions on decoding practices. On the contrary, by using a statistical method, this paper demonstrates that the audiences’ decodings of the programme presented by Morley are in fact clearly patterned by their social positions. The findings reveal the over-determined effects of various social conditions such as class, gender, race and age. Particularly, the results seem to restore the importance of social class on the interpretive process, which has been displaced and ignored in many current media studies. Highlighting audiences’ structural social positions, the reading patterns rediscovered here allow us to rebut not only the traditional Marxist view of class determinism but also any relativist accounts of cultural activity.     

Roma and the politics of double discourse in contemporary Europe

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the politics of ‘double discourse’ in relation to Roma that has evolved in contemporary neoliberal Europe. On the one hand, the double discourse promotes the integration, rights and equal opportunities of Roma, on the other, it denies recognition of, and ways to address, enduring structural violence and rising social insecurity. The article argues that the politics of ‘double discourse’, as a neoliberal approach towards Roma, is structured by two contradictory discourses that speak to different audiences, using duplicitous approaches to create anti-Roma consensus and maintain the critical difference and subordinated position of the racialised Romani populations in Europe. By studying the representation of Roma in the cases of so-called 'child theft' in Greece and Ireland, and in the recent ‘refugee crisis’, the paper identifies and discusses three dimensions of contemporary neoliberal double discourse: racialised de-Europeanisation, neoliberal undeservingness and (dis)articulation of citizenship.     

Feminism,voluntarism and the welfare state: Toward a feminist sociological theory of social welfare

In current debates about social welfare, the terms public and private are often equated with state vs. nonstate realms. This paper argues that a feminist sociological analysis would reconstitute notions of public and private as forms of social relations that occur in a wide range of activity, thus disentangling them from institutional divisions. It reviews contemporary feminist theory and practice and spells out implications for a feminist sociological theory of social welfare. It uses these implications to look at a particular kind of women’s grassroots voluntary organization that contains possibilities for rethinking societal responses to social welfare needs. She is author ofWomen of the Upper Class (1984), and senior editor ofShifting the Debate: Public/Private Sector Relations in the Modern Welfare State (1987).     

Moving beyond the Janus face of integration and diversity discourses: towards an intersectional framing

This paper proposes the need to move beyond current integration and diversity discourses (and their practices). It argues that whilst purportedly aiming to attack social divisions, on the one hand, these are underpinned by binary and essentialized constructions of these very divisions, on the other. They thereby reinforce notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. In order to retain their more progressive concerns with heterogeneity and inclusion, the paper brings into focus an intersectional approach that considers the complex and irreducible nature of belonging and social hierarchy. The paper also considers the potential of notions of solidarity and interculturalism in dealing with some of the social issues involved.     

The Politics of Conversion: Religious Change,Materiality and Social Hierarchy in Central Upland Borneo

Contrary to the assumption that religious conversion is strongly influenced by the hegemony of global forces (colonialism and modern state formation) over local communities, this paper argues that internal class antagonisms and material conditions also play an important role in the dynamics of adoption of or resistance to Christianity. By taking narratives of inter-class contestation between aristocrats (paren) and commoners (panyin) and ritual changes among the Kayan-Kenyah in upland Central Borneo during periods of religious conversion, this paper shows the significance of social hierarchy on people’s decisions to change or retain their religious practices.