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 and 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 important contemporary issues of relevance to the journal's core concern: to strengthen and support development which supports women's empowerment and gender equality as goals. We'd also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender and Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: jporter@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     

Conceptualizing homonationalism: (Re-)Formulation,application, and debates of expansion

Although the concept of homonationalism is still relatively new, it has already undergone substantial reformulation from its original conception. Moreover, the concept has been the subject of substantial debate. Originally formulated by Jasbir Puar specifically in a US context, the concept sought to capture the reciprocal relationship between LGBTQ + movements/identities and nationalism/imperialism. The concept has since expanded in scope both geographically and analytically, applied to contexts outside of the United States, and increasingly analyzed as a global, inescapable phenomenon. This expansion has been sharply criticized with arguments that the concept has been overextended. Such critiques argue that the extension of the concept's scope has limited homonormativity's utility both critically and analytically. In this article, we seek to outline how the concept is applied and used as well as the debates emerging from the concept—and from its reformulation in particular. We also identify areas where further clarity related to the concept is needed. Given the concept's complexity and multifaceted usage, we suggest that future research engage carefully in the debates sparked by its development.     

Crime, Crime News, and Crime Views

This paper compares police, newspaper, television, and publicimages of crime trends for the seven FBI index crimes over time,the relative frequency of occurrence of these offenses, andthe characteristics of persons committing them. Media presentationsof crime trends over time are found generally unrelated to trendsin police statistics. Newspaper presentation of the relativedistribution of crimes approximates police figures more closelythan does the television presentation. Public views of the relativedistribution of crimes but not of crime trends more closelyapproximate media presentations than police presentations. Television'simpact on public views of crime is apparently minor. Reasonsfor these findings and their implications for crime news reportingare discussed.     

Facts, values, and evaluative explanation: Contributions of Leo Strauss to contemporary debates

As the 20th century comes to a close, sociologists remain mired in the long-standing debate surrounding facts and values. The tensions between value-neutral and value-relevant sociologists have raged for decades and no resolution appears likely; at least no resolution is likely within the parameters of the existing debate. This essay is an introduction to the work of social thinker Leo Strauss, whose orientation provides a different perspective on the issue. It was Strauss's conviction that sociologists were fiddling Neros, oblivious to the crisis of value they helped engender, but excused on grounds that they did not know they fiddled and that they did not know Rome burned. A value-free social science that denied the possibility of reasoned discourse on value, while surreptitiously advancing a vision of the good, created little but confusion while undermining the basis on which any vision of the good could be defended. A value-driven social science, animated by what Strauss called the “historical sense,” likewise undermined the legitimacy of the value this social science was designed to serve while casting suspicion on all subsequent value claims. Works by Bellah, Wallerstein and Alexander, Seidman, Collins and Denzin, among others, are used for illustrative purposes. Following Strauss, it is suggested that evaluation and explanation cannot be divorced; theirs was a natural relationship that modern philosophy, beginning with Machiavelli, had unwittingly denied. Strauss advocated a social science that understood value as something to quest for, rather than something to be assumed, and he judged theory to be a guide for action, rather than its substitute. It is suggested that Strauss's reading of the classics could be of benefit to sociologists seeking resolution to the crisis of facts and values.     

Globalization debates: bringing in microencounters

Resistance is not only a response to, but also an integral component of neoliberal globalization. Public debates and most scholarly discourse have focused on macroresistance, which signals a new dynamic in globalization, but to the neglect of microresistance. Macroresistance may be best grasped as a political intervention by a coalition of heterogeneous citizens' groups in a globalizing economy, often in the guise of movements, networks and even state policies. Not surprisingly, the least understood type of resistance is the more latent, often undeclared, diffuse and sometimes localized, micro variant. Microresistance is constituted by countless diverse acts and beliefs that send forth streams of doubt and questions concerning the viability and sustainability of neoliberal globalization. Studying microresistance suggests that a large part of the resistance to neoliberal globalization is scattered and differentiated, private and intimate, personal as well as public, as evidenced in Japan after the bubble burst. In so far as this resistance is local yet parallel to responses in different countries and regions, the emergent pattern is potentially freighted with macrosignificance. The analytical challenge is to come to grips with the interplay of micro- and macroresistances. Fundamentally, a priority in research is to uncover the whole series of mediations among resistances, which are central to the historical transformation known as globalization.     

Who now debates functionalism? fromsystem,change and conflict to “culture,choice, and praxis”

This paper makes a strategic return to an earlier sociological era as a way of charting where we have been and where we are heading. Specifically, it returns to the debate over functionalism as represented in a volume edited by the author and Richard Peterson in 1967 entitledSystem, Change and Conflict. The paper argues that little of that controversy remains, but that several key issues have taken on new forms and serve as the foci of new disputes. A comparable volume today would require a quite different title, perhaps “Culture, Choice, and Praxis.” The paper briefly reviews the three new movements referred to and the issues surrounding them. It concludes with remarks on the changing role of theory itself within sociology.     

Common frailty,constructed oppression: tensions and debates on the subject of vulnerability

Vulnerability holds a contentious position in critical disability scholarship. Tension surrounding the notion of vulnerability lies primarily in its straddling of two areas of concern: the phenomenological reality of living with impairment, and the idea that vulnerability is a socially constructed entity that oppresses people with disabilities. This paper is an exploration of current and historical understandings of vulnerability, drawing from disability scholarship as well as from the theoretical tenets of Kristeva, Douglas, and Foucault. Tensions within the field are considered, as is the possibility that such debate might serve to enrich and deepen considerations of frailty in disability studies.     

Introduction: the debates and significance of immigrant transnationalism

This introduction explores reasons for the continuing debate on the subject of transnationalism and persistent scepticism about the significance of the topic. The basis for such disagreements has to do less with the actual existence of the phenomenon than with methodological shortcomings that led to its overestimation in the early literature and the conceptual failure to distinguish between cross‐border activities conducted by major institutions and by private actors in civil society. I explore these various problems seeking to clarify the actual scope of the phenomenon of transnationalism and its novel character. Despite recent findings that point to limited numerical involvement of immigrant groups in transnational activities, the latter remain significant because of their prospective growth and their impact on both immigrant adaptation in receiving countries and the development prospects of sending nations and communities. The evidence presented in the following articles document in detail these various aspects and indicates the multiple forms adopted by this phenomenon among immigrant groups in Europe and the United States.     

Mothering,equality and the individual: Feminist debates and welfare policies in the USA and Sweden

This paper addresses issues raised by ‘welfare reform’ in the USA by using the example of Sweden's women activists in constructing a ‘woman friendly’ welfare state. In the USA, feminist advocates see a tension between the argument that motherhood should be valued by the provision of care allowances, and the view that work should be reformed to meet the needs of parents. This reflects debates about gender difference/equality, the possibility of commonality, and the individual.

The Swedish ‘woman friendly’ welfare state was built on the recognition, through social policy, of the interrelationship among care, material resources, and public voice. The interrelationship was embodied in what I call the ‘social individual’, and articulated in public child care and other policies and collective services. The adequacy of those universal policies and services was frequently judged by the situation of lone mothers, who ceased being ‘deviant’, and often became a model for understanding the interrelationship. Cross-class solidarity among women was a prerequisite for, and was built on, the social individual. This solidarity is now threatened by neoliberal economic and social policies that fragment care, resources, and voice, and therefore the social individual.

It is possible to challenge the downsizing of welfare states by moving the terms of discussion away from the poor as deviant other, acknowledging that all women have much in common with the targets of current policy making. This involves the creation of concrete social policies that embody the relationship among care, resources, and voice, and recognize the inseparability of community, work and family.     

The public sphere and debates about europe in Britain

This article undertakes an analysis of British public debates on European integration by recourse to an original data set on political claims-making. The public sphere is conceptualized as a space where citizens interact through their acts of public communication. Such public communications are an important source of the Europe-building process, because they potentially provide public inputs to the elite-led processes of European political institutional integration. Our empirical findings show that British public debates are internalized within the nation-state rather than creating links to supra- or transnational European polities. In addition, we find relatively low levels of civil society engagement compared to that of political elites, and a high level of political competition between the two major political parties, Labour and Conservative. Overall, we argue that elite ambivalence to Britain's position within the European Union has created this climate of uncertainty and political competition over Europe.     

Poverty and Disabled People: challenging dominant debates and policies

This article explores the relationship between poverty, disability and impairment in a global context. It challenges dominant critiques of poverty and disability, and explores the critiques, policy proposals and developments of the disabled people's movement to combat poverty. It offers an international perspective including the experience of both the North and South.     

The Edinburgh Review,The Quarterly Review,and the contributions of the periodical to the slavery debates

This article explores the representation of the slavery debates in two of the most popular periodicals of early nineteenth-century Britain. Anonymous reviewers in the Edinburgh Review and The Quarterly Review shared information on the slavery debates in Parliament with their readers, critiqued popular printed works on the subject, and put forth their own views and opinions. Their differing editorial positions and political affiliations led them to take opposing views. These differences, combined with the freedom of anonymity, turned the periodicals’ pages into an as-yet underappreciated theatre in which to argue, challenge, and defend two sides of the slavery debate. They reveal a far more balanced debate than has been traditionally imagined.