Social Representational Communities and the Imagined Antebellum South

Tourists come to museums with varied expectations and leave appreciating different aspects of their presentations. Thus, tourists/audiences are primed to see, hear, and experience certain representations and narratives when they enter museums. This is particularly so with plantation museums. Most Americans possess at the very least a vague sense of the antebellum South. They have a vague sense of a time and of a place populated by wealthy and esteemed plantation owners and their Black enslaved labor. We use, as our raw material, visitors’ responses to the question: “What is your level of interest in ...,” ten topics related to plantations’ presentations. This question was asked of visitors returning from tours at three plantation museums. Specifically, all three differ in their presentation of enslavement and as so, have been selected to represent the spectrum of plantation museums in regards to presentation of slavery and enslaved labor. It is expected that the differences in presentations at the three sites reflect differences in plantation audiences. To this effect, plantation audiences are mapped and viewed through the framework of social representation theory in an attempt to discern social representation communities using visitors’ levels of interest in topics/items presented on plantation tours at sites. Disregarding incidental cultural tourists, we found there to be basically two social representations that visitors to these three plantation museums hold: a nostalgic social representation and a Janus social representation.     

‘We are actually,after all,just children’: caring societies and South African infantilisation of adults with intellectual disability

This article comments on infantilisation by attending to South African adult intellectual disability (ID) care through an intersubjective ethics of care lens, and shows how such an ethic can shine light on shifting our responses towards ID. Care performance data were gathered from three sources within two South African specialist ID care sites – from 10 adult residents, 16 nurses as spatiotemporal carers, and three wards as ethnographic sites. Deeply embedded and interwoven throughout various care practices is the disabling of adults with intellectual impairment when literally referred to as ‘children’. These adult-unmaking processes constitute practices that fall short of Tronto and Kittay’s caring societies ethic. Care exchanges generate relational and intersubjective spaces in which people are understood as never meeting full criteria for personhood. Infantilising care dynamics require urgent attention if we wish to change ways in which ID is viewed and responded to in South Africa.     

‘There’s a lot of places I’d like to go and things I’d like to do’: the daily living experiences of adults with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities during a time of personalised social care reform in the United Kingdom

Adult social care services in the United Kingdom have undergone a period of transformation over recent years, characterised by a drive towards personalised care. Concurrently, social care budgets have been significantly reduced. This study aimed to explore the daily living experiences of adults with mild/moderate intellectual disabilities, who are at risk of no longer meeting eligibility criteria for statutory support. Focus group discussions, which included both people with intellectual disabilities and support workers, were analysed thematically. Two broad themes are presented: independence and agency; and social capital and well-being. While some participants echoed ideas central to the personalisation narrative, a number of contextual barriers to achieving greater independence and agency were discussed. Moreover, greater independence was not a desired goal for all participants. The findings highlight the potential mismatch between personalised social care, as delivered within significant budget constraints, and the needs of adults with intellectual disabilities.     

Towards intensive parenting? Changes in the composition and determinants of mothers' and fathers' time with children 1992–2006

Contemporary expectations of good parenting hold that focused, intensive parental attention is essential to children's development. Parental input is viewed as a key determinant in children's social, psychological and educational outcomes, with the early years particularly crucial. However, increased rates of maternal employment mean that more parents are juggling work and family commitments and have less non‐work time available to devote to children. Yet studies find that parental childcare time has increased over recent decades. In this paper, we explore the detail of this trend using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS), 1992 and 2006. To investigate whether discourses on intensive parenting are reflected in behaviour, we examine a greater range of parent–child activities than has been undertaken to date, looking at trends in active childcare time (disaggregated into talk‐based, physical and accompanying care activities); time in childcare as a secondary activity; time spent in the company of children in leisure activities; and time spent in the company of children in total. We also investigate whether the influence of factors known to predict parental time with children (gender, education, employment status and the age of children) have changed over time. We contextualize our analyses within social and economic trends in Australia and find a compositional change in parental time, with more active childcare occurring within less overall time, which suggests more intensive, child‐centred parenting. Fathers' parent–child time, particularly in physical care, increased more than mothers' (from a much lower base), and tertiary education no longer predicts significantly higher childcare time.     

Considering lesbian identity from a social-psychological perspective: two different models of "being a lesbian"

One long-standing project within lesbian studies has been to develop a satisfactory working definition of "lesbian." This article proposes two new models of a definition using principles of social psychology. Each model (a) utilizes the premise that gender lacks a categorical essence and (b) separates behavioral adherence to cultural stereotypes of femininity and masculinity from one's gender self-categorization. From these premises, I generate and critique two internally coherent models of lesbian identity that are inclusive (to different degrees) of various gender identities. For each model, the potential inclusion of trans men, trans women, genderqueers, and lesbian-identified cisgender men is evaluated. The explanatory power of these models is twofold. One, the models can serve as theoretical perspectives for scholars who study the intersection of gender and sexual identity. Two, the models can also characterize the everyday experience of people who have tacit working definitions of lesbian identity.     

Mapping the social geographies of autism – online and off-line narratives of neuro-shared and separate spaces

This paper draws together empirical work that has been produced by the authors in two different autistic spaces: the Swedish magazine Empowerment produced by and aimed at adults with autism, and English-speaking autistic communities online. While the two points of data collection are quite different, there are important points of commonality that enable us to explore central issues concerning autistic and neurotypical space and the meanings assigned to these in different contexts. The paper aims to introduce the notion of social geographies of autism, based on talks among adults with autism and a social movement to promote autistic identities, giving examples from our previous work that has spanned both online and off-line spaces. Key issues discussed in the paper include a focus on autistic political platforms and the carving out of both social and political spaces for people with autism. In doing so, neuro-separate and neuro-shared spaces must be negotiated.