Origins of the epithet ‘government by public relations’: Revisiting Bruce Catton's War Lords of Washington, 1948

While it might make public relations professionals and faculty cringe, the term ‘government by public relations’ is a negative one, implying that governmental decision-making is guided by appearances rather than on the merits. This tag line is a relatively common American put-down of politicians and senior civil servants. This article examines the origins of the term, locating its usage in the WWII memoirs of Bruce Catton, then a government public information officer and later a renowned popular historian of the American Civil War. Catton's use of the term, his 1948 book War Lords of Washington, and his philosophy of government public information are examined in more detail to give context to the phrase ‘government by public relations.’     

Religion,Religiosity, and the Attitudes Toward Homosexuality—A Multilevel Analysis of 79 Countries

Although attitudes toward homosexuality have become more liberal, particularly in industrialized Western countries, there is still a great deal of variance in terms of worldwide levels of homonegativity. Using data from the two most recent waves of the World Values Survey (1999–2004, 2005–2009), this article seeks to explain this variance by means of a multilevel analysis of 79 countries. We include characteristics on the individual level, as age or gender, as well as aggregate variables linked to specificities of the nation-states. In particular, we focus on the religious denomination of a person and her religiosity to explain her attitude toward homosexuality. We find clear differences in levels of homonegativity among the followers of the individual religions.     

Three notes on a political economy of youth

The paper seeks to makes a contribution to a recent debate in the Journal about what a political economy of youth might look like. The paper will take up aspects of Sukarieh and Tannock’s [2016. ‘On the political economy of youth: a comment.’ Journal of Youth Studies 19 (9): 1281–1289] response to the initial contributions by Côté [2014. ‘Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.’ Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543, 2016. ‘A New Political Economy of Youth Reprised: Rejoinder to France and Threadgold.’ Journal of Youth Studies.] And France and Threadgold [2015. ‘Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.’ Journal of Youth Studies], and will take the form of three ‘notes’: Capitalism: From the first industrial revolution to the third industrial revolution; Youth as an artefact of governmentalised expertise; The agency/structure problem in youth studies: Foucault’s dispositif and post-human exceptionalism.

These notes will suggest that twenty-first century capitalism is globalising, is largely neo-Liberal, and is being reconfigured in profound ways by the Anthropocene, bio-genetics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). A political economy of twenty-first century capitalism, let alone a political economy of young people, must be able to account for a capitalism that in many ways looks like the capitalism of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, but which is at the same time profoundly different as it enters what has often been described as the Third Industrial Revolution. It is these profound emergences that pose the greatest challenges for engaging with a political economy of youth.     

Patriarchal capitalism with Chinese characteristics: gendered discourse of ‘Double Eleven’ shopping festival

In this article we consider the Double Eleven shopping festival as a major discursive site where the hegemony of what we call patriarchal capitalism with Chinese characteristics is articulated. The state, the market, the corporations and the media, both mainstream and social media, all played an important role in building up a national spending spree that is deeply embedded in the current class and gender structure of China. The phenomenon of Double Eleven emerged at a time when state capitalism has been overwriting socialist institutions, while patriarchal ideology being further intensified through consumerism. As a consequence, the intersectionality of class and gender becomes increasingly manifest in the Chinese society. We start with a brief overview of the trajectory of gender politics in China since 1949, with specific focus on how the socialist project of seeking gender equality was gradually replaced by the quest for ‘womanhood’ and ‘femininity’. We then discuss, using both secondary sources and our own analysis of news coverage of Double Eleven, why maintaining a high level of consumer demand is of crucial importance for the Chinese state and what the state’s role has been in configuring the hegemonic gender order. A brief section on ideology and discourse lays out the conceptual framework of our analysis. It is at the intersection of a dissipating socialist ethos, emerging economic stagnation and ascending consumerism that the sexist discourse in relation to Double Eleven proliferates, and this is the analytical focus of our empirical section. We elaborate on the theoretical implications of the empirical analysis before concluding.     

Review essay: on Mamdani’s mode of thought

This essay tracks the formation of a global intellectual, perhaps the only one, whose work moves across Africa, America and Asia. Mahmood Mamdani has been a central figure engaging in explaining the most controversial issues such as refugees, popular versus state nationalism, mass killings (Rowanda), settler versus native, colonial citizenship and its governed subject, September 11, the Dafur movement (and its self-indulgence), Imperial Human Rights, decolonizing university and knowledge production (the US as the first and never decololinzed), settler colonialism, etc. Fearless and thoroughly grounded, Mamdani’s mode of thought is to historicize the conditions of the existence of the problematics in question with a theorization emerging out of the analyses. As a whole, Mamdani’s political practices as educator and public intellectual and the body of brilliant work have been inspirational. The essay is written as an introduction to Decolonizing the World: A Mahmood Mamdani Reader, a collection of his selected work, to open the channel of interaction between Asia and Africa.     

Performance anxiety: women’s sexed bodies in Pakistan

The nexus of Islam, gender, race and violence has been keenly revisited in some post-9/11 scholarship. The concern over the racialized Muslim male body is justifiable in cases of rendition, torture and the kind of battlefields that mark the War on Terror. However, the sympathetic analysis of the tortured Muslim male body as a permanent and universally vulnerable imaginary has necessarily challenged the framing of sexual politics for Muslim contexts. This bid to shield the vulnerable Muslim male body from Islamophobia and imperialist violence forecloses the notion that Islamist patriarchy and politics can themselves be fundamentally violent in the post-9/11 moment and within the Muslim community. This obscures the range of routine, domestic and normative violent expressions observed by men in Muslim societies. This essay discusses two cases that illustrate the means and methods by which female bodies have been sexed by the narrative of the War on Terror in Pakistan. These cases highlight how the academic efforts that seek to rescue the racialized Muslim male body complicate the struggle of resisting (lay) female bodies.     

Children's Experiences of Time When a Parent Travels for Work

This qualitative study focuses on the different ways time is experienced by children in families who face time challenges because of a family member's job that required work travel. Data are from a family‐level study that includes interviews of all family members older than age 7. Using grounded theory methodology, this study illustrates the ways in which job demands and family processes interact. The analysis centers on 75 children's perspectives from 43 families. Holding together assessments of having enough time while wanting more time with their parents, children express emotion, generally unrecognized by parents, around the topic of family time. Children's experience of time with parents is rushed or calm, depending on the activities done in time and the gender of the parent with whom they spend time. Findings are interpreted through a feminist social constructionist lens.     

Toward a gender politics of aging

The article proposes a Gender Politics of Aging approach to the study of aging societies. The approach recognizes the feminization of old age, ageism’s roots in sexist discourse, and the need to recognize the role of politics in driving demographic debates. Drawing together arguments from feminist gerontology and political demography, the article argues that the intersection of politics and gender must be considered if appropriate responses to an older, feminized demography are to be produced. I conclude that the work of aging feminists provides a rich vein of research and praxis from which a gender politics of aging approach can draw.     

Feminism and science in Masters of Sex

This article examines the fictional characterization of the real-life sex researchers and scientists William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson in the Showtime television program Masters of Sex (2013–2016). The historical Johnson had a complicated relationship with second-wave feminism: she disdained the movement and was interested primarily in improving heterosexual marriages and the sex lives of married couples. The Johnson character speaks in a language of postfeminism with minimal interest in collective action and broader social change. However, second-wave feminists later used her and Masters’ research in order to support their own beliefs about sexual autonomy and freedom, within and beyond marriage and heterosexuality. The television program demonstrates Johnson’s importance to both phases of her and Masters’ research—in the first phase, when they are based in a hospital and university environment, and in the second, when they establish their own research institute and raise funds directly from the clients that they serve. Johnson exemplifies postfeminist depictions of ambitious women in prestige television, her aim to have a successful career and marriage conflict, and while she is willing to compromise scientific values to serve her own goals, her male colleagues temper that ambition in service of “objective” science.     

Innocent victims,creepy boys: discursive framings of sexuality in online news coverage of the celebrity nude photo hack

Following the hack, theft, and digital dissemination of hundreds of nude celebrity photographs—colloquially referred to as “The Fappening”—in August 2014, online news sites filled with speculation about and commentary upon the actions of both the hackers and the celebrities. Through a critical discourse analysis of coverage of the female celebrities and hackers in six online news outlets this project presents “The Fappening” as a case study for better understanding the ways in which the media produces discourses about sexuality, particularly sexual deviancy and victimhood. The discourse surrounding this incident was inflected with feminist ideals. The celebrities were constructed as victims not only of the hack but of broader structural issues around women’s bodies, while the hackers and posters of the photos were derided as perverted, lonely thieves. Overall, the feminist leanings of the discourse around “The Fappening” indicate that the actions of the celebrities—that is, taking and privately sharing nude photographs—can be integrated into dominant understandings of sexuality, while the online communities that stole and shared their photos must be rejected. However, the coverage indicates that celebrities who use their sexual allure for publicity deserve their victimization, undermining the apparently progressive focus of the discourse.