Views,events, and debates

Welcome to Gender & Development's Views, events, and debates section. We'd like to invite readers to respond to any of the views expressed in this section, to contact us with reports of events, and to suggest debates on issues relevant to the journal's concern: to inspire and strengthen development initiatives which support the goals of gender equality and women's empowerment.

We'd also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender & Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: gadeditor@oxfam.org.uk     

Views,events, and debates

Welcome to Gender & Development's Views, events, and debates section. We'd like to invite readers to respond to any of the views expressed in this section, to contact us with reports of events, and to suggest debates on issues relevant to the journal's concern: to inspire and strengthen development initiatives which support the goals of gender equality and women's empowerment.

We'd also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender & Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: gadeditor@oxfam.org.uk     

Views,events, and debates

Welcome to Gender & Development's Views, events, and debates section. We'd like to invite readers to respond to any of the views expressed in this section, to contact us with reports of events, and to suggest debates on issues relevant to the journal's concern: to inspire and strengthen development initiatives which support the goals of gender equality and women's empowerment.

We'd also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender & Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: gadeditor@oxfam.org.uk     

Views,events, and debates

Welcome to Gender & Development's Views, events, and debates section. We’d like to invite readers to respond to any of the views expressed in this section, to contact us with reports of events, and to suggest debates on issues relevant to the journal's concern: to inspire and strengthen development initiatives which support the goals of gender equality and women's empowerment.

We’d also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender & Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: gadeditor@oxfam.org.uk     

More visualising, more methodologies: on video, reflexivity and qualitative research

This article was conceived as a response to Ruth Holliday's article published in The Sociological Review in 2001 (48 (4): 503–22) ‘We've been framed: visualising methodology’. Whilst recognising that Holliday's work makes both an important contribution to her substantive area and describes an innovative use of video in qualitative research, her critique of visual anthropology as a discipline that uses reflexivity as a muse to hide its positivist truth quest has some serious problems that need to be redressed. Here I shall draw from existing work to discuss how reflexivity has been a key theme in the development of visual anthropology since the latter part of the twentieth century.     

Reviews

Barbara S. Held, Back To Reality: A Critique Of Postmodern Theory In Psychotherapy Michael R. Butz, Linda L. Chamberlain And William G. Mccown, Strange Attractors; Chaos, Complexity, And The Art Of Family Therapy Michael J. Mahoney, Human Change Processes: The Scientific Foundations Of Psychotherapy James Hillman And Michael Ventura, We've Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy—And The World's Getting Worse Renos K. Papadopoulos And John Byng-Hall (Eds), Multiple Voices; Narrative In Systemic Family Psychotherapy Haim Omer, Critical Interventions In Psychotherapy: From Impasse To Turning Point Donald R. Bardill, The Relational Systems Model For Family Therapy: Living In The Four Realities     

What might have been-what could be: Working with the grief of children in long-term care

Abstract

“What might have been. what could be'. The stuff dreams are made of. However, the longing, searching, and yearning implied are, each in their own way, activities of anguish which shift the golden romantic dream to torment. Being near a child who is pining in this way is uncomfortable and causes us distress - and all the individual ways of dealing with that distress. We've all been children. We all know what it is to loose something, or to be separated from someone important to us. We know how it can consume us and feel as if it's the end of the world. “A child does not know death - only absence; and in absence, the parent may as well be dead, so overwhelming is the child's sense.of loss (Robertson, 1952);'     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Abstract Demography: Jobes , Patrick C., William F. Stinner, and John M. Wardwell (eds.). Demography: Ross , John A., and Elizabeth Frankenberg . Findings from Two Decades of Family Planning Research. Demography: Bull , C. Neil (ed.). Aging in Rural America. Demography: Bollman , Ray D. (ed.). Rural and Small Town Canada. Demography: Swanson , Linda L., and David L. Brown (eds.). Rural History: Jones , Jacqueline . The Dispossessed: America's Underclass from the Civil War to Present. Rural History: Craig , Lee A. To Sow One Acre More: Childbearing and Farm Productivity in the Antebellum North. Rural History: Mc Donald , Roderick . The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana. Rural History: Morgan , Sharon . Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: Creating an Antipodean England. Gender Studies: White , Sarah . Arguing with the Crocodile: Gender and Class in Bangladesh. Gender Studies: King , Elizabeth M., and M. Anne Hill (eds.). Gender Studies: Kahne , Hilda, and Janet Z. Giele (eds.). Women's Work and Women's Lives: The Continuing Struggle Worldwde. Agriculture: Almås , Reidar . Norway's Gift to Europe: Fifteen Selected Essays on Rural Persistence and Change. Agriculture: Csaki , Csaba, and Yoav Kislev (eds.). Agricultural Cooperatives in Transition. Agriculture: Winson , Anthony . The Intimate Commodity: Food and the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada.     

Book Reviews

Hannah Barker and Elaine Challus. Longman (eds), Gender in eighteenth-century England. Roles, representations and responsibilities Sarah Oerton, Beyond Hierarchy: Gender, Sexuality and the Social Economy W.G. Tierney, Academic Outlaws: Queer Theory and Cultural Studies in the Academy Bob Powers and Alan Ellis, A Family and Friend's Guide to Sexual Orientation     

Introduction: The Glass Coffin: What Age Is Desire?

To invite future contributions to the project taking shape in this special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, I defer making the usual theoretical introductory comments on our topic, What Age is Desire? in preference for what might emerge among the articles as they read and are read, open to elaboration and close wounds, engender desire and spark controversy—as do barfly and passerby eyeing one another at the Glass Coffin.     

Visual and Other Aids

One way that people learn, remember and communicate is visually. We combine past experiences with new visual information to construct meaning. In this study, elementary teachers introduced their students to the peoples and places of the ancient silk routes using illustrations from two children's picture books, Marco Polo, written by Gian Paolo Cesaerani and illustrated by Piero Ventura (1977), and We're Riding on a Caravan: An Adventure on the Silk Road (2005), written by Laurie Krebs and illustrated by Helen Cann. Students in the lower elementary grades were more literal than students in the higher grades in their observations of the books' illustrations. The older students had more knowledge of China and were able to construct more meaning from the illustrations than younger students. They were also able to recognize the illustrators' intent and manner of representation. Additionally the elementary teachers suggested contextualizing the activity within a study of China.     

Organization as a theatre of performance

In this paper we introduce Bergson's philosophy of "action, process and movement" and its relevance for social science and the study of organizational culture. Bergson's philosophy of change argues against the spatialisation of thought in which phenomena are broken down into discrete components to be numbered, sequenced and manipulated: rather he argues for a view of time as qualitative; intuition as situated within experience rather than about it; the importance of the body in social experience and the importance of morality and religion in social life - in short and embodied conception of culture. Bergson's culture is socialised time actualised in experienced duration or durée - culture is always in motion, and does not need culture clash to drive change, but cultural expression and formulations are not, which runs counter to functionalist and psychoanalytic views of culture. Creativity, or the élan vital , is the human impulse to organise, but to improvise rather than to locate, divide and control. Culture grounded in experienced time and driven by the élan vital is in ceaseless motion - it is duration because its is en-dured as a multiplicity rather than as a unity. Where heroic leaders in treatments of organizational culture invite us the change our place in the world, in Bergson's thought they invite us to change out time - our qualitative experience of duration. We examine these arguments through a review of Bergson's work, concluding that Bergson's resonates with postmodern approaches to culture which shift our attention from signification to implication.     

Habermas,Mead, and Rationality

This paper takes the position that symbolic interaction can become more relevant to the social issues of modernity and postmodernity by overcoming its traditional tendencies to be apolitical and to focus predominantly on micro aspects of social relations. It considers a serious reading of Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action as a contribution to this effort. Specifically it sees Habermas' reconstruction of the conception of the individual actor involved in communicating through significant symbols into one consistent with speech act theory and the concepts of speaker and listener as constructive and helpful. The paper also examines Mead's behav-ioristic theory of attitudes, types of attitudes and taking the attitude of the other(s), and relates it to his logical formulation of rational universals. It suggests that Mead's optimistic image of society and his position on rationality are no longer appropriate for discussing social issues in a global society with multiple rationalities. It sees possibilities for reformulation in Habermas' theory because, like Mead's theory, it construes rationality in communicative terms.     

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

TANYA BASOK, Keeping Heads above Water: Salvadorean Refugees in Costa Rica. PER BRASK and WILLIAM MORGAN (eds.),Aboriginal Voices: Amerindian, Inuit and Sami Theater. BRIAN BURTCH, Trials of Labour: The Re-emergence of Midwifery. SALLY COLE, Women of the Praia: Work and Lives in a Portuguese Coastal Community. WALLACE CLEMENT and JOHN MYLES, Relations of Ruling: Class and Gender in Postindustrial Societies. JAMES E. CÔTÉ and ANTON L. ALLAHAR, Generation on Hold: Coming of Age in the Late Twentieth Century. GLORIA GOODWIN RAHEJA and ANN GRODZINS GOLD, Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimaging Gender and Kinship in North India. DAVID LYON, The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society.     

Re‐inventing the Gendered Organization: Staff Attitudes towards Women and Gender Mainstreaming in NGOs in Malawi

Gender inequality within non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) is constructed on a daily basis through the gendered norms, attitudes and practices of individuals within them. The continual re‐invention of a gendered organization ensures the maintenance of the status quo and therefore the privileging of male/masculine interests over female/feminine interests. Gender mainstreaming is an approach designed to alter the status quo and facilitate women's empowerment. In Malawi, many NGOs have adopted gender mainstreaming as a strategy to address gender inequality both within their organizations and with the communities where they work. Gender mainstreaming initiatives involve a variety of activities including hiring more women staff members, designing policies within the organization to promote gender equality and educating staff members about gender issues through training workshops. While these strategies represent important steps forward for gender equality, it is not clear to what extent these policies and initiatives are translating into meaningful change within the organization.     

Dialogue under Occupation

This article critically examines the World Bank's report entitled The Other Half of Gender: Men's Issues in Development published in 2006. The Bank publication covers a range of topics on men and masculinities, and ultimately argues for ‘men-streaming’ development. Using an intersectional analysis, this article expands upon recent feminist scholarship in the field of Men and Development in order to take a closer look at race, culture and representation. In this article, I demonstrate how the World Bank's focus on the social construction of masculinities in the ‘men-streaming’ report places Third World men into a specific realm of visibility that renders them culpable for a wide range of development issues. In representing African men as homogenous, culturally inferior and individually culpable for the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in particular, the Bank's promotes ‘gender-adjustments’, which obscures the Bank's complicity in a variety of development disasters.     

The Management of Unwanted Pregnancy Among Women in Nairobi,Kenya

ABSTRACT. Objectives: This study probed both the meanings women ascribe to their unwanted pregnancies and the drivers of their choices in relation to the management of such pregnancies. Methods: Cross-sectional qualitative in-depth individual interviews were conducted with 80 women and girls in Nairobi, Kenya. Results: Gender, livelihoods, morality, marital status, and male partners exerted extensively complex and multidimensional influence on women's management of their unintentional pregnancies. For instance, although gender norms were frequently invoked to justify terminating unwanted pregnancies, they also regularly provided strong motivations for carrying such pregnancies to term. Conclusions: Urgently needed are programs and policies that support women to avoid unwanted pregnancies and help them respond safely and pragmatically to such pregnancies when they occur.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Women and Japanese Management by Alice Lam. Women and the Labour Market by Teresa Rees. Women's Career Development: A Study of High Flyers by Barbara White, Charles Cox and Cary Cooper. Gender Divisions and Social Change by Nickie Charles.     

Of Race/Religion,Nation and Violence: Incident at Vichy and Final Solutions

Abstract

Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy (1964) and Indian English playwright Mahesh Dattani's Final Solutions (1992) invite comparison in that they each deal with a historic moment that demonstrates contextually how violence can be common to racism, (organized) religion, and national imagining. While Miller's play externalizes human cruelty by locating it in the Nazi experience, Dattani's — centred around the recent Hindutva movement in India — clearly evokes the image of the Holocaust, without equating it with Nazism, though. Yet similarities between the plays abound — suspect secularity of the nation-state, insecurities around one's racial/ethnic/religious identity, denial of responsibility, and the eventual need for human communication. The endings of both plays posit a certain notion of justice, but without clarifying whether it can be realized through 'the true humanly valuable concepts' of decency and love or whether it functions more as 'a claim made by the oppressed'. This tone of self-criticality underscores the persistent need for restraint in the exercise of power.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organisations by Cynthia Cockburn. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies by Anthony Giddens. Gender and Bureaucracy by Mike Savage and Anne Witz (eds.) About Time: the Revolution in Work and Family Life by Patricia Hewitt.