Making Bengali Brick Lane: claiming and contesting space in East London

Based on a recent empirical project on 'the Bengal diaspora', the paper explores the construction and contestation of meanings around the iconic East London street, Brick Lane. Taking the 2006 protests around the film Brick Lane as its starting point, the paper draws on original interviews conducted in 2008 with a range of Bengali community representatives, to examine the narratives of space, community and belonging that emerge around the idea of Brick Lane as the 'cultural heartland' of the British Bangladeshi community. By exploring the representation, production and contestation of 'social space' through everyday practices, the paper engages with and contests the representation of minority ethnic 'communities' in the context of contemporary multicultural London and examines the process of 'claiming' and 'making' space in East London. In so doing, the paper contributes to a critical tradition that challenges essentialising and pathologizing accounts of ethnic communities and racialized spaces, or that places them outside of broader social and historical processes - redolent, for example, in contemporary discussions about 'parallel lives' or 'the clash of civilizations'. By contrast, this paper views social space as made through movement and narration, with a particular emphasis on the social agency of local Bengali inhabitants and the multiple meanings that emerge from within this 'imagined community'. However, rather than simply stressing the unfinished and processual nature of spatial meanings, the paper insists on the historical, embodied and affective dimensions of such meaning making, and a reckoning with the broader social and political landscape within which such meanings take shape. The focus on Brick Lane provides an empirically rich, geographically and historically located lens through which to explore the complex role of ethnicity as a marker of social space and of spatial practices of resistance and identity. By exploring Bengali Brick Lane through its narratives of past, present and future, these stories attest to the symbolic and emotional importance of such spaces, and to their complex imaginings.     

Social Exclusion and Participation in Community Development Projects: Evidence from Senegal

This article seeks to provide a new insight into the debate about participation through a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms at play behind community participation. The combined use of the concepts of social exclusion and of game theory is explored as a dynamic and innovative analytical tool to understand participatory processes in community development projects. The framework is tested against the analysis of participation in an NGO‐led community project in Senegal. Policy implications point to a need to unravel the complexity of participation to design more effective and sustainable community development projects.     

The ratio bias phenomenon: fact or artifact?

The ratio bias—according to which individuals prefer to bet on probabilities expressed as a ratio of large numbers to normatively equivalent or superior probabilities expressed as a ratio of small numbers—has recently gained momentum, with researchers especially in health economics emphasizing the policy importance of the phenomenon. Although the bias has been replicated several times, some doubts remain about its economic significance. Our two experiments show that the bias disappears once order effects are excluded, and once salient and dominant incentives are provided. This holds true for both choice and valuation tasks. Also, adding context to the decision problem does not alter this finding. No ratio bias could be found in between-subject tests either, which leads us to the conclusion that the policy relevance of the phenomenon is doubtful at best.     

‘Speak roughly to your little boy’? Sex Differences in the Relations Between Parenting and Preschoolers’ Understanding of Mind

The present study explores relations between young children's understanding of mind and parental emotional expression and disciplinary style, along with gender differences in these relations. Participants were recruited from a study of 125 same-sex twin-pairs (58% female; group mean age 5 43 months, SD 5 1 month). Each child received a comprehensive set of theory-of-mind tasks, and was filmed at home for 20 minutes in dyadic interactions with the primary caregiver, who was also interviewed about disciplinary strategies. Ratings of discipline and positive and negative parental affect and control were made from direct observation, from the interview, and from the videoed interactions. Strong correlations were found between family SES, parenting measures, and child verbal IQ and theory-of-mind score. However, regression analyses showed that parental behaviours were significant predictors of children's theory-of-mind performance, even when sex, verbal IQ and family SES were taken into account. Sex differences in these relations were also identified; parental affect was especially salient for understanding of mind in girls, while discipline was more salient for boys. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of individual differences in the proximal processes associated with early understanding of mind, and suggest that development in mental-state awareness is associated with distinct aspects of parenting for girls and boys.     

Acknowledgements

This article explores whether it is possible to understand the perspectives of people with whom we find it difficult or impossible to empathise, because their moral and political views are very different to our own. Focusing on our dilemmas in carrying out qualitative research with conservative evangelicals and anti‐abortion activists, we take issue with the assumption that understanding is connected with the presence of rapport and empathy in research interviews. This article argues instead that a reflexive approach, which considers researchers’ orientations towards their subject and their respondents and their emotional journeys through the research process, will enable more comprehensive interpretation of our research material.