Cars,capital and disorder in Ivan Vladislavic’s The Exploded View and Portrait with Keys

There is a substantial corpus of criticism on the epistemology of walking in recent writing by Ivan Vladislavic. This article expands upon the literature through a focus on the ways in which The Exploded View and Portrait with Keys engage with and pressurise the socio-spatial dominance of car driving in Johannesburg. It maintains that while car-use radically organises space and place in the city, this hegemony is tested by alternate forms of mobility. As Vladislavic’s work suggests, disorderly and apparently liminal urban modalities and movements disrupt orderly expressions of urban capital aligned with car-driving.     

“Welfare Mother” Activism,Mainstream Feminism,and the Cunning of History in Ontario’s 1970s Welfare Debate

ABSTRACT

This article examines the voice of mobilized welfare mothers and the mainstream women’s movement in the welfare debate of the 1970s in Ontario. A question debated was whether welfare mothers had a right to “stay home” while receiving welfare. The article shows that a radical strain of welfare mother activists at this time demanded recognition of women’s unpaid work. While mainstream women’s groups were generally sympathetic to welfare mothers, their overriding focus on employability as the solution to their poverty served to derail the radical possibilities of welfare mother politics and solidify a policy agenda that undermined the deserving status of welfare mothers.     

Women’s Family Care Responsibilities,Employment and Health: A Tale of Two Countries

Journal of Family and Economic Issues - Persistently low employment of women in some countries can still be ascribed to a traditional perception of women’s role in society. According to...     

Skuka and the Absurd in Gogol'’s Tale of the ‘Two Ivans’

The present article is devoted to an analysis of Gogol'’s last story from his Ukrainian cycle, “The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich”; it makes use of canonical as well as innovative approaches to Gogol'’s tale in order to explore the significance of the epilogue to an interpretation of the story as a whole. The examination will encompass ideas on the temporal aspects of the narration, the philosophical concept of ennui/skuka, and the possible significance of the camera obscura as the setting for one of the key moments in the story. Whereas the camera obscura is the setting of the quarrel between the two main characters, the story ends with a manifestation of skuka from the narrator: how do these two elements relate to each other, and what do they suggest in terms of the possibility of reaching an all-encompassing interpretation of the ‘Two Ivans’?     

History,Politics, and the Cartography of Sexed Bodies in Iurii Illienko’s A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa

Abstract

This article explores the “corporeal” dimension of Iurii Illienko’s reconstruction of cultural and historical discourses in the 2002 film Molytva za het'mana Mazepu [A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa], which focuses on the hetman’s drama, his relationship with Peter I, and the defeat of Swedish and Ukrainian joint forces at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 that signified Ukraine’s submergence into a supranational, imperial community. Illienko’s cinematic space, in which plots of history and sexual politics are mapped onto one another, allows for conceptualizing the body as a site of political and cultural construction, contestation, and radical resistance. Demanding an intertextual approach that involves an open exchange between his cinematic domain and a “universe” of intersecting historical, cultural, ideological and political discourses, his multilayered re-memoration strategies expose both the fictionality and the political dogma surrounding the inherited mythologies. As a decentred reflection of the past, the film poses critical questions about competing histories and the dynamics of historical agency in colonial and postcolonial contexts, thus making a contribution to the protracted process of decolonization in Ukraine.     

A Tale of Two “Unorganizables”

How should we define “organizability?” I identify here four factors that contribute to a group’s organizability: organizers’ expectations, labor market structures, employers’ actions, and workers’ union sentiments. I briefly discuss how the first three factors correspond with workers’ union sentiments in comparing two divergent occupations: teaching assistants (TAs) and web designers. Workers must choose between conflicting identities in constructing themselves as “organizable” workers. While TAs ultimately framed their identities primarily as employees, web designers still consider themselves unorganizable. I explore similarities and differences between these cases and propose some steps union organizers and web designers could take in unionizing.     

China’s Non-governmental Microcredit Practice: History and Challenges

This paper provides a systematic assessment of China’s non-governmental microcredit practice. Based on survey results and existing key reports, this paper reviews the evolution and current situation, discusses the policy and legal framework, assesses the poverty outreach and social impact, and extracts the problems and challenges. This paper concludes with presenting some potential initiatives to address the key restrictive issues for sustainable development of the non-governmental microcredit sector.     

Dynamic Change Between Intimate Partner Violence and Contraceptive Use Over Time in Young Adult Men’s and Women’s Relationships

The negative association between intimate partner violence (IPV) and contraceptive use is well established, but much of this research treats the association as static (e.g., similar across all relationships over development or time). Such studies do not account for individual development of sexual and romantic relationship mental, social, and behavioral well-being, which relate to contraceptive use. These studies are also predominantly woman-focused; such work could be complemented by examining men’s associations. The current study examined how associations between sexual and physical IPV and consistent condom and birth control (BC) use changed across up to seven sequential relationships in young adulthood over a five-year period within a nationally representative sample. Results indicated that physical IPV–contraception associations were significant only across earliest or latest relationships. Sexual IPV–contraception associations were significant over more relationships but often changed in valence (negative to positive). There were few significant differences in these associations between men and women. Developmental context (e.g., prior relationship/IPV experience) may be important when considering IPV–contraception associations. In addition, although the IPV–contraception association does not appear to be a unique problem for women, research needs to explore how underlying mechanisms explaining this association may be a result of gendered and nongendered contexts.     

McDonald’s at the Gym? A Tale of Two Curves®

In this paper I present findings from an ethnographic study of interaction patterns among members and workers in two Curves® franchises in different locations. Curves® International markets rationalized fitness programs for women. Using a mixed methodology of participant observation, staff interviews, and comparison of facilities’ official data, I analyze these patterns in relation to the rules of the Curves® system and the possible factors that contribute to the observable differences across the two facilities. I argue that despite the corporate mandate for rapid and rationalized (McDonaldized) fitness, local Curves® organizational cultures and client preferences may constitute internal resistance to the McDonaldization process.     

Parents’ Health and Adult Children’s Subsequent Working Status: A Perspective of Intergenerational Transfer and Time Allocation

This paper frames how parents’ health problems may affect a child’s subsequent working status. Parental health problems occurring in their prime working years undermine an adult child’s resources and tend to affect the child’s preferences over time-allocations among leisure, market- and non-market-labor. Empirical applications in this paper focus on a situation with pervasive health problems, lack of social safety network, and a substantial gender gap in labor market return. Exploiting Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for the period 1994–2004, empirical results indicate that a father’s poor health status is a significant predictor of lowering a daughter’s educational attainment and working probability during her subsequent, adulthood years.     

Inside the Revolution: Power,Sex, and Technique in Freud’s “‘Wild’ Analysis”

ABSTRACT

This essay situates Freud’s “‘Wild’ Analysis” in its local and global histories, even while reading it for what it can tell us about psychoanalysis now. Even as it is taken on its own terms, this essay serves also as a means to consider psychoanalysis as host to crucial tensions, its ideas and their relation to technique, its traffic in power, and sexuality and the primal crime. Using a clinical vignette, the essay argues the heterogeneity and multiplicity inherent to psychoanalysis are a gift to later generations, even if they made trouble for Freud. In celebration and critique, it examines, in effect, where Freud was and where psychoanalysis is now.     

Beyond the Career Mystique: “Time In,” “Time Out,” and “Second Acts”

The career mystique is the belief that working hard and putting in long hours continuously throughout adulthood is the path to occupational success, personal fulfillment, and a secure retirement. This is a false myth, increasingly irrelevant for most contemporary Americans, given that (1) few employees today have the back up of full-time homemakers, and (2) a competitive, information economy has fostered a global labor market, destroying the implicit contract linking seniority with security. America’s 21st century workforce requires a reconfiguration of “time in” paid work, including opportunities for “time outs,” as well as for “second acts.”President’s Address, Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, February 2004; also presented at the parallel research and policy forum “Sustainable Careers for a Changing Workforce.”