Fractured compounds: photographing post-apartheid compounds and hostels

Hostels and compounds have held a compelling fascination for South African photographers over many decades, from the colonial to the post-apartheid era. The photographic representations of these spartan barracks have permeated the narrative of South Africa as the photographers showed the lives, recreations and living conditions, the institutionalised, alienating nature of the environment, its dehumanising conditions, and the cultural and geographical schizophrenia experienced by the migrant labourer navigating the urban/rural divide. In the last two decades, the monolithic structure of the hostel compound has become fractured, as aspects of this environment have altered due to changes in the political, social and economic landscape of South Africa. But it is not just the hostel that has changed, post-apartheid: the photographic representations have transformed too. These adjustments include: a shift from black and white to colour; an increased reluctance to present the hostel dweller as victim; decreased prominence of exposé; a more optimistic and less violent image of the hostels; essays which highlight the permanence of the hostel dweller; a trend which puts less emphasis on the hostel dweller and more on his or her environment; and new narratives around gender, sexuality and individuality have emerged. As a result of the use of colour, the display of these works in commercial art galleries and the decline of the human figure in the picture, the works are arguably less political. It is the complex nature of these shifts in post-apartheid hostel imagery that will be investigated in this paper, with specific reference to the work of Peter Magubane, T.J. Lemon, Sabelo Mlangeni, Angela Buckland, Jodi Bieber, David Goldblatt, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Sam Nhlengethwa.     

Women and the rural idyll

The existence of a ‘rural idyll’ has been widely accepted by social scientists working within the rural field. Yet the term itself has received relatively little critical attention. In particular, the variable characteristics and impacts of the rural idyll amongst different groups within the rural population has been largely overlooked. The cultural turn in rural geography and the emphasis which has recently been placed on identifying and studying the rural ‘other’ provides an important opportunity for the notion of a rural idyll to be unpacked from the perspective of different rural dwellers. This paper investigates the role of the rural idyll in maintaining rural gender relations. It examines women's attitudes towards and experiences of two key elements of the rural idyll; the family and the community. Drawing on material from interviews with women in rural Avon in the south west of England, the paper shows how women's identity as ‘rural women’ is closely tied in to their images and understanding of rural society. It is argued, in particular, that the opportunities available and acceptable to women are built on very strong assumptions and expectations about motherhood and belonging within a rural community. Some of the more practical implications of these expectations are explored in the context of women's involvement in the community and in the labour market.     

A double-edged sword: challenging women's oppression within Muslim society in northern Nigeria

This paper reports the consequences experienced by Islam women attempting to reform gender relations among Muslim societies in northern Nigeria. The article also examines the problems encountered and its relation to the ideas, plans, and programs of gender and development (GAD) programs. In Muslim communities, few men or women disagree with the content of the GAD program aimed at addressing women's practical needs and interests, or the reform of gender relations. However, many question the GAD program on principle, viewing them as illegitimate because they are "Western" in nature. In line with this, many Muslim activists may have been branded as Western agents, funded by foreign powers to undermine Islam. As a result of this attitude, fund sources show mistrust to organizations which have religious affiliation, which further affects the aim of the organizations which is to address Muslim women's needs. Furthermore, the GAD program, which focuses solely on women's issues, only created an impression that only women are vulnerable to Western influences. The program also suggests suspicion on the issue of gender and development which hardened their stand against interventions to promote women's interests and needs. Finally, the difficult and fragile relationship between Islamic women's organization and international donor organizations, which are predominantly from Western societies with a Christian heritage, perpetuates the marginalization of Muslim women activists in the transformation of their society and religion.     

Factors preventing the social reintegration of homeless persons: A comparison between residents of long-stay hostels and individuals living on the street

Homelessness is a major social issue in all Western countries. In France, many homeless persons do not have access to the accommodation and help with social reintegration provided in long-stay hostels, and remain on the streets or in other forms of emergency shelter. The objective of the present study is to identify the variables preventing access to these hostels and, more generally, to a process of social reintegration. We compared a group of 10 individuals housed in long-stay hostels with a group of 16 who were still living in the streets. All participants were assessed on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and underwent a semi-structured interview. Results showed that individuals who had not been admitted to a hostel were characterized by high levels of depression and anxiety, the attribution of responsibility to external factors, a vagrant lifestyle, a lack of social support, a negative approach to reintegration, and an inability to look to the future. This study highlights various factors explaining the reintegration difficulties encountered by a proportion of the homeless population. It suggests new ways of improving support for the homeless.     

Gender in Social Work Education and Practice in India

Social work as a profession is committed to the creation of an equal and just society. Social work pedagogy combines an analysis of psychosocial, economic and political contexts and methods of active intervention and administration of social welfare. Gender sensitization and awareness is an integral component of social work education and training in India. Through conscious efforts students are enabled to imbibe the concept of gender, to look at women not only as individual entities but also in relation to men, and the way relations between the two are socially constructed. This paper examines the integration of a gender perspective in social work education and practice and explores how this may play a part in enabling students to ‘unlearn’ their gender stereotypes imbibed during socialization. The paper draws on case study examples of some projects in India.     

On social work and what gender has got to do with it

Living in gendered societies makes it necessary to take into account the specific ways in which social problems and social issues affect the lives of women and men, girls and boys. Not only are social problems and social issues very often gender biased; this is also true for the professions dealing with these problems and issues, and for the training programmes for professions like social work. Sociological analysis of society and philosophical understanding of a good life are permeated by gender-specific perceptions -- often without those involved being aware of them. Furthermore, social policies reinforce gender-specific biases because they are based on gender-specific (i.e. male) standards. Gender as an analytical category has been brought into scientific and public discourse by feminist theoreticians and activists making women -- and thus also men -- visible with regard to structure and subject issues. The development of gender theory and research highlights the significance of gender arrangements to understand social phenomena and to support gender-equality ways of thinking and policies. At the same time, men and women are not only confronted with gendered structures, but via socialization processes and personal development they also reproduce these gender differences in their daily lives by 'doing gender'.     

Empowering or impeding return migration? ICT,mobile phones,and older migrants’ communications with home

In the last two decades, transnational social fields have been transformed by advances in information and communication technologies (ICT). Many scholars have noted the empowering effects of these technological advances for migrants. Drawing on the concept of return preparedness, it follows that ICT use should also empower prospective returnees, enabling them to be better informed and prepared for return. However, multi‐sited ethnographic research with older North and West African men living in migrant worker hostels in France finds that ICT use – particularly mobile telephony –impedes return. In some instances, mobile phones serve to amplify the pressures on the men to provide financially for their stay‐at‐home relatives. In others, mobile phones reinforce attachments to France by facilitating networks of solidarity among hostel residents. Instead of returning definitively at retirement, many hostel residents choose a bi‐residence strategy, dividing their time between France and countries of origin.     

Palestinian-Israeli single mothers accord motherhood a new meaning ‘I would like to teach my children a new way of life … I'm responsible for them now’

Over the last three decades, Palestinian society in Israel has undergone numerous changes, reflected in the rising numbers of families headed by single mothers. This article is based on a study conducted between 2007 and 2011 among 24 divorced, separated, and widowed Palestinian single mothers in Israel. I analyze this emerging family configuration, focusing on these women’s experiences as mothers and on how they accord new meaning to motherhood. My analysis will deal with the diverse ways these women ‘do motherhood’ and negotiate with different familial players. It will extend beyond the discourse on motherhood to shed light on the current changes in power and gender relations taking place in Palestinian-Israeli society.     

Newspaper Editors' Perceptions of Public Relations: How Business,News, and Sports Editors Differ

In this study, I develop a feminist theory of public relations by explaining discrimination against female practitioners and positing an agenda for change. Thirty-seven "long" interviews and three focus groups conducted with female practitioners revealed that major obstacles for women are marginalization of public relations, problems stemming from male dominance at work, women's "balancing" act between career and family, and gender stereotypes. Solutions for overcoming barriers are proposed for society, organizations, public relations, and women.     

Gender relations,development practice and "culture"

Most development practitioners have the following preconceived notions about gender and culture: 1) that gender relations are equated with the most intimate aspects of society; 2) that culture and tradition are immutable; 3) that there is no independent resistance to subordination within the culture; and 4) that religion is culture. These notions interfere with work on developing equitable gender relations and complicate efforts to allocate resources in ways that redress the imbalance of power between men and women. The validity of these notions can be tested by analyzing an experience the author had in 1984 when she published a book on women and development in India. On a publicity tour in Liverpool, England, she addressed an audience composed largely of men from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This audience attacked her book and defended an idealized version of the position of women in the culture of South Asia. They accused the author of being a traitor to her own culture and of being Westernized. A Pakistani woman member of the audience, however, thanked the author for her presentation and reported that she was working with Asian women facing domestic violence. The men understood the cultural identity of South Asia as being composed of identical families dedicated to mutual interest, love, and cooperation. However, this family unit requires the subsuming of women's interests. This myth of the family ignores real life experiences of women who suffer abuse and ignores the fact that the notion of "family" is constantly undergoing change. Development practitioners should use culture as a way of opening up intractable areas of gender relations rather than regarding it as a dead-end which prevents work towards equitable gender relations. A new definition of "cultural sensitivity" would be to acknowledge that contests surround the significance attached by a society to different aspects of social constraints and that these contests often represent challenges to hierarchical social relations.     

Revisiting the relationships among gender,marital status,and mental health

Three decades ago, Grove introduced his sex-role theory of mental illness, which attributes women's higher rates of psychological distress to their roles in society. Central to his hypothesis is that marriage is emotionally advantageous for men and disadvantageous for women. This article revisits this topic with data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The analyses indicate that the emotional benefits of marriage apply equally to men and women, but that men and women respond to marital transitions with different types of emotional problems. The implications of these findings for future research on gender and mental health are discussed.     

Domestic Violence against Men in India: A Perspective

In the absence of any systemic data, with more men coming up and reporting violence by women, it is important to understand and examine the issue of violence against men by women and associated factors. With changing gender roles and power relations, the author predicts that this will increase in the future, which will have far-reaching consequences and implications for the larger society and relationships between men and women. The paper attempts to understand the dynamics and factors that play or will play a crucial role in escalating violence against men by women. The paper is based on author's counseling sessions, discussion with men victims of violence, and other secondary sources.     

Vive la (Sexual) Révolution: The political roots of Bourdieu's analysis of gender

This paper argues that the French Revolution constituted the basic metaphor through which Pierre Bourdieu perceived and analyzed gender hierarchies; that the class structure of the ancien régime and the mechanisms of its legitimation were the major metaphors he used through his scathing critiques on the order of the sexes; and that the ideals of liberté , égalité and fraternité were always his reformatory aims for a just, gender-neutral society. The paper shows how this preoccupation with the Revolution of 1789 structured Bourdieu's analysis of gender relations and sexual identities in contemporary society. It exposes the ways in which he identified men with the nobility and women with the third estate; it presents his analyses of the role that traditional ideologies and state bureaucracies play in legitimating this arbitrary order of masculine domination; and it analyzes his proposals for a sexual revolution while exposing the counter-revolutionary forces that persistently negate attempts to reform gender hierarchies. Fundamentally, this new reading of Bourdieu's exegeses on gender suggests that he was working with a ready-made interpretive scheme, a model of society that he was inclined to see as always reproducing itself: the ancien régime .     

Male and Female Civility: Toward Gender Justice

This article examines the concept of civility in American society taking into consideration the influence of gender and gender roles, especially that of women in 20th–century America. This was a century in which social roles, especially those of women, changed or expanded dramatically, influencing not only individual rights and relationships but also the structure of almost every organization from the family to the classroom, from corporations to statehouses. As women have transformed themselves and their presence in our culture, men have also been forced to examine their relationships with women and, more subtly, the role of men in our society. A study of male and female civility must take into consideration the history of relationships between the genders at the both the micro level (i.e., interpersonal relationships) as well as the macro level (organizational behavior). As we move forward into the 21st century, we must not only reflect on the progress made during the last several decades but also continue to explore strategies that will continue to advance a climate where gender civility becomes more entrenched in our cultural values. Some of the issues and possible solutions that must continue to be explored in terms of creating a more civil society for gender relations are discussed.     

The circular migration of Puerto Rican women: towards a gendered explanation

"The purpose of this paper has been to outline a theoretical framework for the explanation of the circulation of Puerto Rican women that brings gender relations to the fore, but frames the island-mainland pattern of mobility in the context of core-periphery capitalist relations. We have argued that gender relations in the home and workplace are vitally important for understanding women's moves to the [United States] and return trips to Puerto Rico. Specifically, we posited that most Puerto Rican women move as tied-migrants or because of their obligation or desire to meet gender responsibilities. In addition, we also viewed migration as an action with the potential to modify gender relations and alter future migration decision-making, as women gain experience in the labour market and exposure to new social and cultural environments." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

“A Literature Review of Women and The Martial Arts: Where are We Right Now?”

Women who participate in male dominated sports engage in sport that is framed from a gendered ideology. Sports, within this society, is identified as masculine and, as a result, values masculine characteristics. Femininity, women in particular, have been marginalized. The focus of this paper is to examine the female martial arts practitioner within a gendered society. As Title IX has enabled women to gain access to participate in sports, it has yet to fully challenge dominate gender ideology. The female martial arts practitioner not only has to battle masculine traits within the martial arts studio, but also within gendered norms. Unfortunately, the research focusing on the experience of female martial arts practitioners is limited; however, when they are examined these women are either placed in the margins or in gendered terms. Upon further examination, the female martial arts practitioner challenges the gender norm in a unique manner; she questions the male as protector and the female as victim.     

Divergent female part-time employment in Britain and Denmark and the implications for gender equity

This paper examines women's employment in Britain and Denmark, societies characterised similarly by high proportions of female employees working part‐time but by rather different gender arrangements. Part‐time working is associated with female‐carer workers; women who have reduced their hours in the labour market to bring up children and are able to do this because of the presence of an alternative source of income—usually a male breadwinner. Yet Denmark has been conceptualised as having more of ‘dual‐breadwinner’ gender arrangement than Britain. It would seem then, that part‐time working is distinctly different in these two societies. Examining this question, the paper concludes that extensive part‐time working for women, and not men, does indeed tend to reinforce a traditional male‐breadwinner model. However, the strength of this reinforcement varies, depending on the relative conditions of the part‐time labour market. These conditions vary substantially cross‐nationally and can also change rapidly within one society over time. As a result, the typical ‘role’ a part‐time job plays for women can also vary cross‐nationally and can change over time.     

The relations of ruling: a feminist inquiry ∗

This paper explores the complex of objectified social relations that organize and regulate our lives in contemporary society. Its inquiry is driven by experiences in the women's movement of a dual consciousness, with the particularities of being mother and housewife on the one hand, and, on the other, the abstracted discourses and forms of organization creating the matrix of a consciousness outside the local and particular. A strategy for sociological inquiry is formulated which does not begin from a discursively structured position within the objectified relations, but from a standpoint traditionally women's, located in the actualities of the everyday of people's embodied living. The historical trajectory of these relations emerges as increasingly independent and increasingly pervasive organizers of people's everyday/everynight activities. The materiality of printed and electronic texts mediates the intersections of the relations of ruling and the everyday world. Texts are complemented by technologies or disciplined practices that standardize local states of affairs or events, bringing them into correspondance with standardized texts. Baudrillard's conception of ‘hyperreality’ is used to explicate characteristic forms of the text-mediated systems of corporate management. Finally the topic returns to the issue of gender, showing how the dual consciousness which brings the objectified extra-local character of these relations into view has itself been defined in the historical trajectory of their emergence. It is in this context, that a sociology from the standpoint of women can be seen as proposing an alternative organization of knowledge which does not reproduce the relations of ruling, but an explication of just those relations in which our lives are embedded.     

Kenyan women in androcentric political culture: from Julia Auma Ojiambo to Affirmative Action

This paper presents the oral history of Julia Auma Ojiambo as representative of the struggles of Kenyan women in androcentric politics and a reflection of their subordinate position in the state and post-colonial society. The oral history is derived from a series of interviews conducted with Ojiambo by the author in 2012. It also traces the development of formal and informal women-centred initiatives like women’s self-help groups and the National Gender Machinery as coping mechanisms adopted by women to subvert gender discrimination in politics from the colonial era to date. Further, it evaluates how provisions in the Constitution of Kenya like the one-third gender principle and Affirmative Action have impacted on political practices regarding women. The paper postulates that women display strong leadership in women’s movements that is not reflected in national politics. Their presence in national politics is low compared to men, mainly due to the destabilisation of the women’s movement in the post-colonial era, through co-optation and gender discrimination that prevents women from forming a strong force to combat androcentric politics. Therefore, women’s political participation is hampered by the androcentric nature of Kenyan politics and culture, but also patriarchy and gender and class inequalities in the social sphere.     

Scientist and non-scientists share a diversity of dimensions in their relations to urban nature

In the current biodiversity crisis, conservation scientists are urgently asked to involve themselves in education and communication initiatives toward non-scientists, who are considered as lacking knowledge to correctly value biodiversity. This is particularly argued in urban areas.In this paper, we showed however with an anthropological survey that urban citizens do express a variety of relations toward surrounding urban nature. Then, in an independent survey, we showed that these ways of being connected with nature were shared by students in conservation sciences. Conservation scientists and non-scientific city dwellers have therefore much more in common than is taken for granted in their relations and perceptions of urban nature, notably concerning emotional, sensorial and memorial relationships. Acknowledging these common features in the scientific community could improve the communication between science and the general public about urban nature, help bridge the gap between science and the society and eventually participate to build a new social contract on nature.