The Glass Phallus: Pub(lic) Masculinity and Drinking in Rural New Zealand*

Abstract In this article I report the findings of an ethnographic study of men's pub drinking in rural New Zealand. By using the idea of hegemonic masculinity and incorporating theoretical ideas of gender performativity, the analysis focuses on aspects of drinking performance that are central to the establishment of hegemony by a particular version of masculinity in this community. Two important characteristics of pub drinking performance are conversational cockfighting and the disciplines of drinking. These combine to ensure that a particular version of masculinity, here called pub(lic) masculinity, is able to reproduce itself. A further finding is that masculinity in this kind of performative situation develops a degree of invisibility. Using the metaphor of the “glass phallus,” I engage with the difficulties of analyzing an invisible masculinity and argue that rendering masculinity visible is an important task for any sociological analysis of both public leisure sites in rural society and the embodied performance of alcohol consumption by men in public spaces.     

Introduction: “There Is a Person Here”: An Interview with Judith Butler

In this interview, the coeditors, along with other contributors, ask Judith Butler a variety of questions regarding queer theory, gender identities, scientific and legal discourse, bodily abjection, race and class positioning, and political organizing. This range of subject matter suggests not only the breadth of Butler's work, but also its applicability to any number of people, whose relation to theory ranges from highly politicized to politically indifferent. The interview demonstrates the responsiveness of Butler's work to cultural translation and political action.     

Reports of Conferences, Institutes, and Seminars

This quarter's column features reports from the 2011 Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference; the 2011 North Carolina Serials Conference; the 2011 Association of College and Research Libraries Conference; the 2011 Kansas Library Association Conference; the New England Technical Services Librarians Section of the New England Library Association Spring 2011 Conference; and the 2011 Texas Library Association Conference.     

Exploring internalized ableism using critical race theory

This paper is an attempt to theorize about the way disabled people live with ableism, in particular internalized ableism. Typically literature within disability studies has concentrated on the practices and production of disablism, examining attitudes and barriers that contribute to the subordination of people with disabilities in society. My exploration occurs through examining the insights of critical race theory (CRT) and the contribution that CRT can further make to thinking through the processes, formation and consequences of ableism. A focal concern is the possible ways that the concept of internalized racism, its deployment in CRT and application to critical disability studies. The paper is interested in working through points of difference between the way internalized racism/ableism are mediated in the processes of subjectification and identifying points of convergence that can benefit dialogue across varied sites of scholarship. The author concludes that the study of ableism instead of disability/disablement may produce different research questions and sites of study.     

Arrow's theorem for economic environments and effective social preferences

Arrow's impossibility theorem has been proved for the realm of private goods and economic preferences by Border and by Bordes and Le Breton. However, their proofs require the exclusion of the zero vector from the commodity space. This paper proves the impossibility theorem for the entire allocation space and the classical domain of economic preferences by adding effectiveness to Arrow's hypothesis. Social preference is effective if every nonempty compact set contains at least one socially optimal allocation.Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) is gratefully acknowledged. The comments of an anonymous referee were much appreciated. The author assumes responsibility for any errors.     

Fathers and absent fathers: Sociodemographic similarities in britain and the united states

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey and the National Survey of Families and Households in the United States, we present a sociodemographic profile of fathers and compare the determinants of absent fatherhood in each country. Although fatherhood has a younger profile in the United States, especially for blacks, predictors of fathers’ residency with their children are remarkably similar in the two countries. In both countries, the strongest predictor of a father’s absence is the parents’ relationship to each other at the time of the child’s birth. Policy implications of this finding are discussed.     

Getting to yes … or no: Nonprofit decision making and interorganizational restructuring

This article explores the decision‐making process nonprofit organizations use to determine whether to pursue merger or other forms of interorganizational restructuring. The research uses a case study design, analyzing four examples of interorganizational restructuring. The findings describe both the structure and the characteristics of the processes used in four cases. The research found that the decision‐making processes used in the four cases had several core elements. Participants in restructuring customized decision‐making processes to meet their needs, and power dynamics shaped those processes. Findings about the characteristics of the process emphasize the importance of communication and trust. How partners used power affected the decision‐making process and had implications for postmerger success. Decision‐making processes for cases involving two partners exhibited characteristics that were different from those involving multiple partners. Future research should consider the role of trust in restructuring decisions and the responsibilities of board and staff in the restructuring assessment process.     

Parenting as a Dynamic Process: A Test of the Resource Dilution Hypothesis

In this paper, we tested the resource dilution hypothesis, which posits that, because parenting resources are finite, the addition of a new sibling depletes parenting resources for other children in the household. We estimated growth curve models on the self‐reported parenting practices of mothers using four waves of data collected biennially between 1994 and 2000 on a nationally representative sample of 2,082 Canadian children aged 2 to 5 at initial interview and in continuously intact, two‐biological‐parent households. Results showed that when new children were added to the household, mothers exhibited declines in positive interaction, but increased their levels of consistent parenting. Taken together, these findings suggested that parenting resources were reallocated, rather than diluted, when family size increased.