Contested Concepts in Violence Against Women: ‘Intimate’, ‘Domestic’ or ‘Torture’?

Abstract

Ritualistic, overwhelmingly violent bikie gang or cult-inflicted abuse of women, entrenched by co-opting third party cult or gang members, has been referred to as ‘domestic violence’, ‘intimate violence’ or ‘intimate partner violence’. The present article questions the aptitude of these terms to convey the realities of this violence, in light of the experiences of women attending a South Australian domestic violence service, all of whom were escaping violent partners who were members or associates of bikie gangs and cults. The paper asks, ‘is torture an appropriate term for such violence?’ and discusses the impact of social, legal, organisational and human rights parallel states that collaborate to make it almost impossible for these women to escape this violence and make it difficult for social workers to work effectively with them. The paper concludes that the State needs to adopt a human rights rather than legal focus when addressing the issue of violence against women.     

The ‘compliant’, the ‘pacified’ and the ‘rebel’: experiences with Swiss disability insurance

Switzerland’s social policies in the field of disability have been significantly reshaped over the last two decades by reducing the number of allowances awarded and by increasing the recourse to vocational rehabilitation measures. What stances do individuals who experience the implementation of these policies adopt? What kind of tests are they subjected to? How can we explain the posture they adopt – be it ‘compliant’, ‘pacified’ or ‘rebellious’ – when facing the (re)assignations of their identity and professional status? Drawing on interviews conducted with individuals who have recently been involved in programmes set up by Swiss disability insurance, we highlight their uncertainties and concerns relating to their place in society, as well as their reactions to disability insurance’s interventions.     

Failing ‘Abyan’, ‘Golestan’ and ‘the Estonian Mother’: Refugee Women,Reproductive Coercion and the Australian State

Abstract

In September and October 2015, the story of detained Somali refugee ‘Abyan’ unfolded in the Australian media. A victim of rape on Nauru and seeking an abortion that could not be obtained on the island nation, Abyan was escorted to Sydney where she was to attend an abortion clinic. She was ultimately returned to Nauru without having had an abortion. This paper situates Abyan’s story alongside other stories from Nauru and in a longer history of reproductive coercion in Australian Immigration Department accommodation since the Second World War.     

‘CHANGE TODAY,CHOOSE FAIRTRADE’

The Fairtrade consumer is widely represented as an individual who intentionally and reflexively consumes Fairtrade goods in order to register their support for the plight of producers in the developing world. This figure is imagined to ‘vote’ with her/his pocket every time they visit the supermarket thus demonstrating their commitment to the Fairtrade trading model. However, this image of the Fairtrade citizen-consumer does not emerge automatically as a response to the increasing availability of Fairtrade goods in the market-place but has to be made by various intermediary actors and organizations. This paper examines how the Fairtrade consumer was constructed and called to action by the Fairtrade Fortnight promotional campaign that occurred within the UK in 2008 and was co-ordinated by the Fairtrade Foundation. This annual event offers a unique window into the processes and actors involved in the mobilization of the Fairtrade citizen-consumer. Through a close focus on the promotional material distributed to different audiences and the events that occurred during this Fortnight, this paper reveals the contingent and shifting nature of the citizen-consumer identity. In so doing, it highlights how varying degrees of reflexivity and action are demanded of different audiences and how this shapes the way that Fairtrade goods are qualified and distributed in the market.     

Slavery, ‘respectability,’ and being ‘freeborn’ on the shores of nineteenth-century Lake Tanganyika

Concepts of slavery and freedom dominate the historiography of labour and social relations in nineteenth-century East and Central Africa. This article argues that such concepts oversimplify the complexity of other forms of servitude. It does so by analysing the position of people who referred to themselves as ngwana on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Ngwana translates from Swahili as ‘gentlemen,’ and it implies ‘respectability’ and ‘freeborn’ status. Yet most ngwana could not claim to be free, even if they had ceased being slaves. Rather than freedom, ngwana sought ‘respect,’ and in so doing blurred the lines between slavery and freedom.     

Chinese,Japanese or ‘Oriental’?: Vietnamese-passing in ‘super-diverse’ London

The young British-born Vietnamese are a relatively invisible group in ‘super-diverse’ London who are often misidentified in their everyday encounters. Eluding more straightforward processes of ethnic or racial assignment, the young Vietnamese ‘pass’ in various different ways as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai or ‘Oriental’. Drawing upon primary interview data and participant observation, this article traces ‘passive’ and ‘deliberate’ forms of passing to highlight how intersecting processes of class, gender and place enable/engender different kinds of passing. It is argued that Vietnamese-passing challenges more ‘celebratory’ readings of (super-) diversity by concealing (and depoliticising) difference and erasing Vietnamese voices rather than allowing for their proliferation. It is suggested that practices of passing may become more common in super-diverse societies, as markers of visible difference become increasingly complex and less determinable, especially among newer, non-colonial migrant groups who are more ambiguously positioned within existing identity regimes.     

‘Northernness’, gender and Manchester’s creative industries

This article explores northernness and gender in the context of creative industries in Manchester. I argue that a version of northernness has been mobilised by those within the creative industries and that this identity is strongly linked with masculinity. The article examines the emergence of new creative industries in Manchester from the 1980s onwards. Many of these new creative industries were connected with music and club culture and often prioritised ‘lads’ and their interests. The ‘heritage’ and influence of this seedbed stage of Manchester’s creative industries and the dominant discourses about Manchester’s pop cultural creativity has had a profound influence on the ‘gendering’ of subsequent creative industries in this city. A paradigm of northern ‘laddishness’ pervades the creative sector in Manchester, and this is amplified and sustained by a powerful, media fuelled, cultural identity of the city and its popular culture. A number of local specificities have had an impact on linking creativity to ‘northern’ masculinity in the Manchester case. This has contributed to the ascendency of closed, male-dominated networks in the creative sector. This appears to stand in the way of women’s full access to, and participation in, the city’s creative industries. I suggest that all empirical case studies of creative industries could find value in reflecting on the local context and specificities of place. Using Manchester as a case study, I argue that place-specific identities could productively be explored in debates about exclusion and underrepresentation of women in creative industries.     

Uprisings in ‘Arab Streets’, Revolutions in ‘Arab Minds’! A Provocation

The uprisings sweeping the Arab world are already transformative even if in the end they fail to bring about fundamental changes. They have already articulated a globalist outlook showing that it is possible to move in step with the world without alienating indigenous political and philosophical anchors. They have already energized an attitude that is not afraid of or embarrassed about the multiple legacies that shape the modern Middle East, including Islamic legacies. They have shown that those legacies need not be shunned in contemporary political projects but can be deployed critically in support of transformative political solidarities. Orientalism that has long maligned the Middle East and its people is now practically unsustainable. However, a genuinely cosmopolitan horizon demands conscious cultivation of diverse thought-worlds beyond the familiar civilizational discourses.

Los levantamientos que recorren el mundo árabe ya son en sí transformadores, aun si a la final fallan en producir cambios fundamentales. Han planteado una perspectiva globalista que muestra que es posible cambiar al paso del mundo, sin alienar los polos políticos autóctonos y filosóficos. Ya han energizado una actitud que no le teme ni se avergüenza a los múltiples legados que dan forma al moderno Oriente Medio, que incluye el patrimonio islámico. Los levantamientos han demostrado que esos legados no deben ser rechazados en proyectos políticos contemporáneos, mas pueden ser utilizados fundamentalmente en apoyo a solidaridades políticas transformadoras. La difamación del orientalismo por largo rato en el Oriente Medio y su gente, ya está prácticamente insostenible. Sin embargo, un horizonte cosmopolita genuino exige un cultivo consciente de mundos de pensamientos diversos, que va más allá de los discursos familiares sobre civilización.

横扫阿拉伯世界的起义已经产生了改变作用,即使最终它们不能导致根本的变化。它们已清晰展示了一个全球主义的前景,表明与未疏远本土政治和哲学依托的世界保持步调一致是可能的。它们已给这样一种态度注入了活力,即不害怕或不窘困于塑造现代中东的多重遗产,包括伊斯兰遗产。它们已表明,人们不必在当代政治规划中回避这些遗产,而是可被批判性地有效利用,以支持转型中的政治团结。长期中伤中东及其人民的东方主义现在实际上已不可持续。然而,一个真正世界性的视野要求在所熟知文明的话语之外进行不同思想世界的有意识培育。     

NEITHER ‘NON–’NOR ‘BECOMING’

The concept of whiteness is seductive; it strikes a chord and resonates, highlighting what was long ignored in the history of immigrants in America. However, in reading the literature, one cannot help but be troubled by the reduction of a plethora of relations to a singular binary, as important as that binary may be. This paper examines the experience of Polonia (the Polish Diaspora) in America, drawing on broad historical evidence as well as a particular ritual of identification (the Pulaski Day Parade in Philadelphia), in order to highlight the follies of reducing the immigrant experience to one of ‘becoming white.’ This paper challenges three major assumptions in whiteness studies: the particular relationship between ethnicity and race found therein; the assumptions regarding the assimilation of immigrant groups; and the centrality of the white/black binary in processes of identification. Ultimately, the argument presented here posits that to maintain whiteness as an analytically useful concept, it needs to be placed within the complex multitude of relations in which it occurs in the actual experiences of immigrants.     

‘The Rule of Men Entirely Great’: Republicanism,Ritual, and Richelieu in Melville’s ‘The Two Temples’

Abstract

This article explores the complex and multifarious reasons behind Herman Melville’s decision to refer to the English playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1839 work Richelieu, or The Conspiracy in his 1854 diptych ‘The Two Temples’. It responds to a critical consensus that has seen the reference merely as a sarcastic attack on William Macready (whose rivalry with the American actor Edwin Forrest was the nominal cause of the bloody 1849 Astor Place Riot in New York), by contextualizing the play within traditions of antebellum American Anglophilia. By using a combination of new critical work on Anglo-Americanism and anthropological ritual theory, I show how Bulwer-Lytton’s play was significant to Melville’s artistic development. In particular, I demonstrate how the play influenced his increasing engagement with republican and theatrical forms of expression that emphasized the importance of filial relationships between America and Britain in a period of increasing hostility between the two nations.     

‘Cinema,Glamour, Atrocity’: Narratives of Trauma

Abstract

Cinematic treatments of trauma have to confront the challenge that every aesthetic choice is also an ethical one. This challenge poses special problems for questions of truth and the representation of victims and perpetrators. Three documentaries made by Mark Kaplan (1996–2004) explore the history of South African student activist Siphiwo Mtimkulu, tortured and murdered by security policemen in the early 1980s, and the subsequent interaction between Gideon Nieuwoudt, one of the perpetrators, and the Mtimkulu family during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings. Ian Gabriel's fiction film, Forgiveness (2004), uses key aspects of this history in his treatment of a repentant perpetrator seeking forgiveness from his victim's family. In my analysis, I argue that respect for a realist aesthetic – the notion that the camera can and does reveal the world to us – may be combined with self-reflexivity, narrative layering and generic innovation to produce a complex representation of truth, victim and perpetrator. I suggest, further, that the initial choice of subject will determine to some extent the degree of complexity with which issues of truth, on the one hand, and the nature of the victim and the perpetrator, on the other, will be developed.     

Sex, ‘race’ and riot in Liverpool, 1919

Racist violence which occurred in Liverpool in 1919 is analyzed in this article, and it is argued that three main themes can be identified in media, policing and political debates which followed. These are fears of sexual relations between different ‘races’, competition for employment, and questions relating to citizenship occasioned by a scheme of assisted repatriation introduced to remove black migrant workers from the ‘mother country’. The article argues that the issue of ‘racial’ difference between the communities involved in the disorders should not be treated as a straightforward variable in its own right. Instead recognition of the articulation between racialised discourse and other factors, such as sexual relations, is central to a full understanding of the events.     

实习平台：当今教学中的‘‘软肋’’

社会工作实习在社会工作专业教育中具有特别重要的地位，因为社会工作专业是一门十分注重直接为人们提供服务的专业。学生必须亲自参加社会工作的实践活动，增进专业意识、专业价值观和应变与成长的能力，才能成为合格的社会工作专业人才。然而，在当前中国社工教育的现实情境中，实习却是一大“软肋”。     

The future of PR is ‘fantastic’, ‘friendly’ and ‘funny’: Occupational stereotypes and symbolic capital in entry-level job advertisements

Over the past decade, there has been a move towards examining public relations as a socio-cultural practice, acknowledging practitioners as influential communicators who produce and symbolise cultural values through public relations messages. Ideally, a diverse group of professionals would aide in representing a diverse society, but to date, the profession remains female dominated. In this article, it is proposed that practitioners’ own discourse do not only establish what is most valued in the occupation and which habitus suits the practice best, but that the discourse also opens and closes occupational entry for new practitioners thereby contributing to a lack of diversity.This article presents the findings of an indicative thematic content analysis of one of the most common, yet under-research sites of discourse, namely entry-level job advertisements in New Zealand and Australia. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the analysis found that the advertisements placed little to no emphasis on the nature of the work, instead focusing on elements of ‘fit’ whereby new entrants were expected to be charismatic, friendly, and willing to work in an environment that is ‘fun’ and ‘flexible’. In doing so, public relations practitioners tacitly created invisible barriers, a self-limiting occupational culture and furthered existing stereotypes of the ‘perfect’ practitioner.     

‘Building Bridges’

Abstract

‘Building bridges’ is a metaphor we have used to describe a collaborative research process involving social work academic and senior practitioners from government and non-government child protection and family service organizations in Victoria, Australia. The purpose of the research was to develop a ‘practice-generated approach to policy implementation’ in child protection practice. The research sought to explore the appropriateness of social constructionist approaches for child protection practice that might enhance the existing risk paradigm. This article aims to critically evaluate the process of ‘building bridges’ and its outcomes, by focusing on how potential and actual differences between organizational contexts, namely universities and various service-providing organizations, may influence relationships between theory and practice. We critically reflect on our research process comparing it with idealized forms of collaborative research discussed in the literature.