‘Social media logic’ meets professional norms: Twitter hashtags usage by journalists and politicians

Social media is characterized by a set of principles defined as ‘social media logic’ [van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1, 2–14. doi:10.12924/mac2013.01010002], derived from the theory of ‘media logic’ developed in the era of mass media [Altheide, D. L., & Snow, R. P. (1979). Media logic. London: Sage.]. This article explores how ‘social media logic’ impacts on two interconnected but yet distinct professions, journalism and politics, by analysing one of the key principles of social media logics, namely ‘connectivity’, an advanced strategy of algorithmically connecting users to content and other users in social media [van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding social media logic. Media and Communication, 1, 2–14. doi:10.12924/mac2013.01010002]. The operationalization of connectedness in this study is the Twitter hashtag, as it is the most common feature for users to connect and relate to within a larger networked discourse [Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. (2015). Twitter hashtags from ad hoc to calculated publics. In N. Rambukkana (Ed.), Hashtag publics: The power and politics of discursive networks (pp. 13–27). New York, NY: Peter Lang.]. The empirical material consists of tweets posted by 10 Norwegian politicians and 10 journalists, selected on their level of activity on Twitter. The tweets are analysed with the emphasis on the frequency and content of the hashtags, and the methodological design is comparative between the journalists and the politicians. A key finding is that there are significant differences between how journalists and politicians use hashtags, but that they both use mass media hashtags to reach outside their follower networks. Consequently, this demonstrates that journalists’ and politicians’ use of social media is closely connected to their professional norms, and that the ‘social media logic’ is still related to the ‘media logic’ of mainstream and broadcast media.     

‘Stuck In The Middle With You’: Towards Enabling Social Work with Disabled People

This article explores progress to date in embedding enabling social work understandings and practices with disabled people by reviewing the UK social work curriculum. Based on these observations and the ideas from UK disability studies, it will offer possible solutions or at least better pathways to enabling practice with disabled people. As Meekosha has pointed out in a global context, to date social work has been experienced as an ambivalent practice [Meekosha, H. & Dowse, L. (2007) ‘Integrating critical disability studies into social work education and practice: an Australian perspective’, Practice, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 59–72], often both enabling and disabling; an intervention that can both lock and unlock resources, and challenge and reaffirm traditional notions of the ‘disability problem’ [Finkelstein, V. (1993) ‘Disability: A Social Challenge or an Administrative Responsibility?’, in Disabiling Barriers ‐ Enabling Environments, eds J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French and M. Oliver, Sage Publications in association with the Open University, London]. Social work also has the potential to both challenge, but also be an (inadvertent) apologist for contemporary social support and welfare systems. Indeed it is clear that social work as a profession and social care as a policy area have been the poor relations of healthcare and health professions [King's Fund (2011) Social Care Funding and the NHS: An Impending Crisis?, King's Fund, London]. Viewed anthropologically, social work remains a largely non-disabled workforce ‘ministering’ to disabled clients (BCODP, 1997). This might reinforce the perception of ‘us and them’ in some social work encounters. As Paul Longmore questioned, can we begin to go ‘beyond affliction’ (2003) in our work with disabled people? Can social work help support the collective struggles of disabled people or is their role inevitably to reinforce that of individual(ised) clients?

The development of the personalisation agenda and self-directed support is clearly welcome in this context [DoH (2006) Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services, Department of Health, London; DoH (2007) Independence, Choice and Risk: A Guide to Best Practice in Supported Decision-Making, Department of Health, London; DoH (2009) Personalisation of Social Care Services, Department of Health, London]. Such developments reflect the changing service user–professional relationship. The temptation to see these developments as the icing on the social support cake needs, however, to be resisted. Arguably, with the increased rationing of social support, the continued role of social workers in assessment and monitoring of support could be seen to require a yet more reflexive and enabling professional education and training in an age of austerity, one where previously supported disabled people are being told that their needs can no longer be met.     

New Institutional Entrepreneurship and a Celebrity CEO: The Role of Institutional Actors in Japan

DiMaggio and Powell [1983. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields.” American Sociological Review 48 (2): 147–160] suggest that the trend currently seen in Japanese organizations to develop organizational reforms, and notably downsizing, is a kind international ‘mimetic isomorphism’ based on Western blueprints. These concepts of isomorphism and legitimacy go hand in hand with the increase in the use of Western language. However, this paper shows that these concepts have not entered into Japanese culture without debate, resistance and transformation. The paper also looks at the newly developing concept of ‘institutional work’ [Lawrence, T., and R. Suddaby. 2006. “Institutional Work.” In The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies, edited by S. Clegg, T. B. Lawrence and W. R. Nord, 215–254. London: Sage; Lawrence, T. B., R. Suddaby, and B. Leca. 2009. Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Lawrence, T. B., R. Suddaby, and B. Leca. 2011. “Institutional Work: Refocusing Institutional Studies of Organization.” Journal of Management Inquiry 20 (1): 52–58], and argues that this is a useful concept in order to study how PR activities in the Western style have become institutionalized within organizations. The paper also investigates the roles of institutional actors in Japan, by examining the case of Nissan Motor. This industry leader announced drastic downsizing, almost for the first time in Japan, suggesting its contribution to creating new institutional entrepreneurship more widely within Japanese organizations. This research examines the role of top leaders and mass media, who are one of the main institutional actors but are less often considered by neo-institutional theory.     

‘Look at What We Made’: communicating subcultural value on London’s Southbank

ABSTRACT

This article sets out key findings of an interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project that uses Long Live Southbank’s (LLSB) successful campaign to retain London’s Southbank Undercroft for subcultural use – skateboarding, BMXing, graffiti art, etc. – as a case study to generate discussions about young people’s experiences and engagements with (sub)cultural heritage and political activism. At the heart of this inquiry is the perceived contradiction between the communicative practices of subcultures and social protest movements: the former typically understood to be internally oriented and marked by strong boundary maintenance, and the latter, to be successful, to be externally oriented to a diverse range of publics. In explaining the skaters/campaigner’s negotiation of this contradiction, we look to the inclusive and everyday concepts of ‘inhabitant knowledge’ [Ingold, T., 2000 Ingold, T., 2007. Lines: a brief history. London: Routledge.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge], ‘vernacular creativity’ [Burgess, J., 2009. Remediating vernacular creativity: photography and cultural citizenship in the Flickr photosharing network. In: T. Edensor, D. Leslie, S. Millington, and N. Rantisi, eds. Spaces of vernacular creativity: rethinking the cultural economy. London: Routledge, 116–126] and ‘affective intelligence’ [Van Zoonen, L., 2004. Imagining the fan democracy. European journal of communication, 19 (1), 39–52]. In eschewing the exclusionary and contestatory language of (post)subcultural and spatial theories, this article proposes new frameworks for thinking about the political nature of young people’s bodily knowledge and experiences, and the implications of this for the communication of (sub)cultural value.     

“Wish you were here”? Geographies of exclusion: young people,coastal towns and marginality

ABSTRACT

Within youth studies there is a growing body of research that pays attention to the importance of place in shaping young people’s identities, life opportunities and intergenerational relationships [Cuervo, H., and J. Wyn. 2014. “Reflections on the Use of Spatial and Relational Metaphors in Youth Studies.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (7): 901–915; Farrugia, D. 2014. “Towards a Spatialised Youth Sociology: the Rural and the Urban in Times of Change.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (3): 293–307; Woodman, D., and J. Wyn. 2015. Youth and Generation: Rethinking Change and Inequality in the Lives of Young People. Sage Publications]. Of critical importance to these discussions is the need to explore notions of ‘belonging’ and social citizenship, interrogating the extent to which differing perceptions and experiences contribute towards variations in the outcomes and life chances of disadvantaged young people. This article draws upon ethnography, participatory arts-based research, and semi-structured interviews (n31) with young people (15–25) who live in a deprived coastal town in the North of England. The research investigated processes of marginalisation and disconnection from the perspectives of young people who were deemed as disengaged, or ‘at risk’ of disengagement, from education, employment or training. The research took place during a time of rapid change and uncertainty as Britain voted to leave the EU. The findings of this study will ‘throw light’ on the how contemporary classed subjectivities are formed, how experiences of inequality and austerity are made sense of, and how, within a turbulent political context, young people negotiate complex transitions to adulthood.     

Reclaiming civil society: the future of global social work?

The topic of global social work has become a controversial one in the European Journal of Social Work, as the March 2004 edition acknowledges in an editorial statement. This statement was prompted by a pungent critique from Stephen Webb, in an earlier edition of the journal. Webb (2003), p. 191) dismissed the topic as being of marginal interest: ‘?… social work has at best a minimal role to play with any global social order, should such an order exist’, adding that ‘a global or transnational social work is little more than a vanity’. Lest the reader should still harbour doubts, Webb (2003), p. 196) added with powerful political import: ‘these writers on globalisation and social work posit what is tantamount to ethical welfare imperialism’. Strong words! We beg to differ and offer an alternative vision of the relationship between globalisation and social work that connects it to the vital democratic force of civil society.     

Modernity And Reform In India

Martha Alter Chen (ed.). Widows in India: social neglect and public action. New Delhi: Thousand Oaks; London: Sage Publications. 1998. 456pp., contents, tables, appendices, notes, references, index. Rs.495.00 (cloth) ISBN 81-7036-703-4 (India-HB); 0-7619-9248-0 (US-HB). R.S. Kharc. Cultural diversity and social discontent: anthropological studies on contemporary India. New Delhi: Thousand Oaks; London: Sage Publications. 1998. 282pp., contents, notes, references, index. Rs.395.00 (cloth) ISBN 81-7036-707-7 (India-HB); 0-7619-9250-7 (US-HB); Rs.225.00 (paper) ISBN 81-7036-737-9 (India-PB); 0-7619-9278-2 (US-PB). Patricia Uberoi (ed.). Social reform, sexuality and the state. New Delhi: Thousand Oaks; London: Sage Publications. 1996. 404pp., preface, references, notes, index. Rs.495 (cloth) ISBN 81-7036-542-2 (India-HB); 0-8039-9305-6 (US-HB).     

Framing ‘drug prevention’ for young people in contact with the criminal justice system in England: views from practitioners in the field

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the work of Rein and Schon (1993. “Reframing Policy Discourse.” In The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, edited by F. Fischer, and J. Forester, 145–166. London: UCL Press., 1996. “Frame-Critical Policy Analysis and Frame-Reflective Policy Practice.” Knowledge and Policy: the International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization 9 (1): 85–104), we explore the ways in which ‘young people’, ‘vulnerability’, ‘risk’, ‘prevention’ and ‘prevention practice’ were defined and framed by practitioners engaged in the design, delivery and commissioning of drug prevention interventions for young people in contact with the criminal justice system. We argue that practitioners describe their work in terms of both a preventative frame – based on a ‘deficit’ model – and a transformative praxis frame, more in line with an increasing shift towards ‘positive youth justice’ where practitioners aspire to actively involve the young person in a process of change. The implications of those, often competing, frames are discussed in relation to the development of prevention approaches and the challenges in designing drugs prevention for this group of young people. The paper is based on interviews and focus groups with thirty-one practitioners in England and is part of the EU funded EPPIC project (Exchanging Prevention Practices on Polydrug Use among Youth in Criminal Justice Systems 2017–2020).     

The regime’s worst nightmare: the mobilization of citizen democracy. A study of Podemos’ (aesthetic) populism and the production of affect in political discourse

In spite of not even being officially registered three months before the European Parliament Elections of 2014, the Spanish upstart party Podemos captured almost 8 percent of the vote, while barely nine months after its formation, in October 2014, social surveys were citing the party as the leading force in national politics. The overall purpose of this paper is to explore how Podemos’ aesthetic and its discursive strategies are being used to mobilize affect and create collective identities in the battle for political hegemony in Spain. I argue in dialogue with Laclau [2005. On populist reason. London: Verso], Errejón and Mouffe [2016. Podemos: in the name of the people. London: Lawrence & Wishart] that: (a) the articulation of a new political grammar and discursive conflicts in which the popular majority can identify themselves as subjects in opposition to an adversary ‘Other’ plays a central role in constructing ‘the people’ as a new form of political culture, especially in times of crisis whereby; (b) the notion of populism transgresses categories such as ‘oversimplification’ and/or ‘demagogy’ and can also be regarded in terms of exhibiting sensitivity to popular demands and participatory democracy. My findings show that welfare politics are not necessarily best communicated through traditional left-wing symbols, due to the left’s popular link with communism and political defeat; these having been repeatedly recounted by the media/culture industry throughout history. Indeed, many may share the idea of protecting a nation’s common social services without wanting to position themselves within a Marxist (leftist) framework. I point to the representative crisis as an affective crisis where there is a potential affective space to be filled. From here, I stress that resistance movements seem to need to learn the current media logic of conflict and recognition in order to mediate affect and produce identification.     

Hilary Arksey und Peter Knight: Interviewing for social scientists. An introductory resource with examples

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Hilary Arksey und Peter Knight: Interviewing for social scientists. An introductory resource with examples London: Sage 1999. ISBN 0-7619-5870-3. Preis: ￡ 15,99

     

WILLIAM WELLS BROWN

Travel and travel writing imply freedom of mobility and agency. That a fugitive slave like William Wells Brown could become a tourist is significant because it destabilizes our understanding of tourism. In The American Fugitive in Europe: Sketches of Places and People Abroad (New York: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, 1855), Brown grounds his critique of his tour in the experiences of his early life as a slave and in his insistence on ethical responsibility. He interrogates the inequities of American society by revisiting European history from the perspective of the oppressed. Brown moves beyond touristic hedonism to anchor the tourist subject onto the larger canvas of historical and socio-political reality. This paper explores Brown's shifting identity through Urry (The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies, London, Sage, 1990) and MacCannell's (‘Tourist Agency’, Tourism Studies, vol. 1, pp. 23–38, 2001) reading of the tourist gaze.     

Infectious Innovations? The Diffusion of Tactical Innovation in Social Movement Networks,the Case of Suffragette Militancy

This paper explores the diffusion of a tactical innovation – militancy – within the British Suffrage Movement, 1905–1914. It concentrates upon the influences that arise from personal social networks and which affect ego's decision about whether to adopt the new tactic. UCINET is used to map and visualise the activist networks of two suffragettes who made different adoption decisions. This reveals that ‘weak ties’ to ‘innovation champions’ (i.e. suffragette ‘travelling organisers’) connected both women to opportunities to learn about, observe and adopt militancy. In order to explain why one suffragette adopted the tactic and the other did not, however, there is a need to link structural and cultural analyses of social networks together. Here, I do this by following up empirically what Fuhse [Fuhse, J. (2009). The meaning structure of social networks. Sociological Theory, 27, 51–73] has called the ‘meaning structure of the network’ consisting of interpersonal expectations and network culture. I propose that the ‘meaning structure’ of the network is linked to the structural patterning of social ties – and the subjective meanings of ego – through the communicative interaction in which they both are rooted [Mische, A. (2003). Cross-talk in movements: Rethinking the culture-network link. In M. Diani & D. McAdam (Eds.), Social movements and networks: Relational approaches to collective action (pp. 258–280). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press]. Focusing on communicative interaction and intersubjective meanings indicates that there is value in approaching personal networks as socio-cultural ‘lifeworlds’ [Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action, volume 2: System and lifeworld. Boston, MA: Beacon Press; Passy, F., & Giugni, M. (2000). Life-spheres, networks, and sustained participation in social movements: A phenomenological approach to political commitment. Sociological Forum, 15, 117–144.). This approach is particularly valuable in highlighting the construction of a ‘moral point of view’ within networks, which fundamentally shapes the symbolic legitimacy of culturally controversial tactics.     

Marrying the social and the biological? A rejoinder to Newton

Marrying the biological and the social raises a complex series of issues that defy easy answer or simple resolution. In this brief rejoinder to Newton's (2003 ) recent paper in this journal –‘Truly embodied sociology: marrying the social and the biological?’– I take up some of these issues through: (i) a restatement of my own position in these debates and the broader sociological context within which it is located; (ii) a discussion of various problems and tensions within Newton's own critique of this ‘nascent material‐corporeal’ project to date. Newton's paper, it is concluded, is a welcome, timely and topical contribution to these (evolving) debates, though any such ‘dispute’ is probably more apparent than real: a case, in short, of reinforcing arguments about the complexity of these relations and the consequent need to ‘tread warily’.     

Review essay: Slavery in Africa

The Ideology of Slavery in Africa. Edited by Paul E. Lovejoy. Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1981. 311pp.

Transformations in slavery: a history of slavery in Africa. By Paul E. Lovejoy. Cambridge University Press, 1983. xvi + 347pp. Bibl., Index.     

BOOK REVIEW

ABSTRACT

HANDBOOK OF EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIOURAL DIFFICULTIES. Edited by Francis Yuen, John T. Pardeck, Peter Clough, and Philip Garner. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2004, 352 pp. Reviewed by Jean A. Musick     

Work,culture, and play in the neoliberal condition

ABSTRACT

Foucault’s [2008. The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the collège de France 1978–1979. New York, NY: Picador] lectures on neoliberalism present a powerful challenge to the Marxist critique of capitalist work as alienating and dehumanizing. Foucault suggests that neoliberalism allows work to be seen in terms of an individual’s pursuit of personal happiness. Seminal cultural theory in Hoggart [1957/2009. The uses of literary: Aspects of working-class life. London: Penguin] and Williams [1961. The long revolution. London: Chatto & Windus] view working-class culture as a matter of tacit rules and a ‘structure of feeling’ that permeates everyday life. Adorno’s critique of the capitalist ‘culture industry’, by contrast, suggests that a culture of neoliberal capitalism would be an oxymoron. This perspective is self-defeating, I argue, as we then essentially give up the task of understanding how neoliberalism translated into a pervasive social psychology. Following Richard Sennett’s [2008. The craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 2012. Together. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press] work on craft and cooperation, I examine some elements of such neoliberal culture. Across many contemporary cities, there is a clear trend of local small-scale production that stands at odds with the aesthetics if not the underlying reality of the globalized economy. This suggests that utopian counter-currents to neoliberal governance are better drawn from reconfiguration rather than abandonment of work.     

FSU students making contact and establishing links: London 2000 postgraduate student conference in Jewish studies

Shifting Czech Jewish identities. Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2000. XIV + 311pp. ISBN 0–520–21410–2

The First Zionist Congress: The East European perspective. Heiko Haumann (ed.), Der Traum von Israel. Die Ursprünge des modernen Zionismus. Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum, 1998. 329pp. ISBN: 3–89547–115–1

Comfortable lies and deceptions. Andrei Oisteanu, Imagined evreului în cultura român. Studiu de imagologie în context est‐central european (The Image of the Jew in Romanian Culture: A Study of Imagology in the East‐Central European Context). Bucharest: Humanitas Publishing House, 2001. 470pp. Illustrations

Pavel Florensky's ‘dark side’. Michael Hagemeister and Torsten Metelka (eds.), Appendix 2. Materialien zu Pavel Florenskij. Berlin and Zepernick: KONTEXTverlag, 2001. 216pp. 18 euro. ISBN 3–931337–35–9     

‘DWELLING IN DISPLACEMENT’

This paper is a successor to an earlier one (Malone, Community, Work & Family, 4(2), 195–213, 2001) which described the development of a ‘community saved’ among first-generation Irish immigrants in North-West London, UK. A distinct and health-enhancing ‘sense’ of community founded on mutual helping networks, a belief in family ties, the importance of paid work and the Roman Catholic Church was identified within this Irish immigrant group. For the second generation or London Irish, upon whom this paper focuses, ‘community’ and ‘sense’ of community have meanings which differ significantly from those of their first-generation forebears. The London Irish describe the anonymity they experience within their contemporary urban ‘home’ and yearn, instead, for an idyllic but mythical ‘homeland’ — the rural Ireland of long ago. Disparities between the two groups yield insights into those elements which truly shape experience of ‘community’ and ‘sense’ of community and which can only be understood within the conceptual, geographical and intellectual boundaries of what has been called the ‘diasporic space’.

Ce papier suit à un précédent (Malone, Community, Work & Family, 4(2), 195–213, 2001) qui a dépeint le développement d'une ‘communauté sauvé’ parmi les immigrants irlandais de la première génération au nord-ouest de Londres. Un ‘sentiment de communauté’, à la fois marqué et assanisant, et fondé sur des résaux d'assistance réciproque, le croyance dans les liens familiaux, l'importance du travail salarié, et l'Eglise Catholique, a été identifié parmi ce groupe immigrant irlandais. Pour les immigrants de la deuzième génération, ainsi nommé les ‘London Irish’, et sujet de ce papier-ci, ‘la communauté’ et ‘le sentiment de communauté’ ont des significations très différentes de la première génération. Les London Irish parle de l'anonyme de leur expérience dans le domicile urbain, ils brûlent de revoir le ‘terre patrie’, idylle mythique d'un Irlande rural du bon vieux temps. Ces différences fournissent des aperçus des éléments qui forment l'expérience de ‘la communauté’ et du ‘sentiment de communauté’, éléments qui ne sont compris que dans les bornes de la conception, de la géographie et de l'intellect, bornes de ce qui a été désigné ‘l'espace diasporique’.     

The price of youth: commodification of young people through malleable risk practices

Risk has become a dominant part of theory and practice in young people's services over the past 30 years [Kemshall, H. 2008. “Risk, Rights and Justice: Understanding and Responding to Youth Risk.” Youth Justice 8 (1): 21–37; Goldson, G. 2000. “Children in Need’ or ‘Young Offenders’? Hardening ideology, organizational change and new challenges for social work with children in trouble.” Child and Family Social Work 5 (3): 255–265]. Young people are simultaneously described as ‘at-risk’ and risky, ‘permanent suspects’ [Mcara, L., and S. Mcvie. 2005. “The usual suspects? Street-life, young people and the police.” Criminal Justice 5 (1): 5–36] with the potential for committing crime, using drugs, being sexually promiscuous or under-performing in the socio-economic climate [Turnbull, G., and J. Spence. 2011. “What's at risk? The proliferation of risk across child and youth policy in England.” Journal of Youth Studies 14 (8): 939–959]. This paper reports on a UK study of youth practitioners’ perceptions of young people in relation to ‘risk’ and how this affects practice. Findings identify a context where practitioners engage with notions of young people as at-risk or risky, managing tensions between external constructions and the ‘real’ individual on an on-going basis. ‘Risk’ becomes malleable, with young people's risk biographies being amplified or attenuated on the basis of the practitioner's view of needs, resource allocations, contracts, targets, practitioner or organisational fears, risk management processes, and the desire to get the best for the young person. Whilst of short-term benefit, this commodification of young people is counter-productive, magnifying the construction of youth as risky others. The paper calls for new approaches to challenge the continued dominance of the youth risk paradigm in practice, policy and the academic youth studies field.     

Women making sense of midlife: Ethnic and cultural diversity

Within social gerontology and the sociology of ageing there has been a tendency to focus on ageing and midlife as a period characterised by adaptation, consumption and commodification of the body (e.g. Biggs, S. (1997). Choosing not to be Old? Masks, bodies and identity management in later life. Ageing and Society 17: 553–70; Featherstone, M., & Hepworth, M. 1996. The midlifestyle of ‘George and Lynne’: Notes on a popular strip. In The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, edited by M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth and B. Turner. London: Sage). This has highlighted the extent to which an ageing appearance might impact on the formation of identity and self during midlife. However, a limitation of this focus is a lack of attention to the significance of ethnic and cultural diversity on how midlife is experienced and enacted. In this paper it is argued, such theorisations tend to overlook the complex meanings attached to midlife and how these are often bound up with past, current, and future ethnic and cultural belief systems and values. Based on empirical research with women from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, this paper seeks to examine the different meanings women attach to midlife. It considers the extent to which current theories of ageing have neglected experiences of midlife that are not structured around Western concerns and priorities. The main argument is that women's priorities throughout midlife differ significantly in relation to cultural and ethnic affiliation and background.