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‘All about Eve’: Mothers, Masculinities and the 2011 UK Riots
Abstract
The riots that erupted in English cities in August 2011 were provoked by a complex mix of socio-economic factors. Sidelining structural explanations for the civil disorder, conservative commentators argued that dysfunctional families had caused the riots. Reinforcing traditional connections between criminality, the family and welfare, conservatives contended that the absence of fathers in lone mother-headed families explained both the dynamics of the civil disorder and the aggressive behaviour of some of the young men involved. Such claims located both the causes of the riots and solutions to expressions of violent masculinities in the familial sphere. Employing the framework of critical studies of men and masculinities this article interrogates these narratives and maps their depoliticising effects. Additionally, it exposes how the effects of a range of social problems were projected on to poor, lone mothers, reinforcing a range of regulatory narratives and practices that target this social group.
... Importantly, the narratives dominant in policy and popular debates (including some parenting guidance) blame mothers generally, and especially single mothers, nonheteronormative families and the absence of fathers as reasons for boys failing or being 'in crisis' and for a range of ills, including the 2011 England riots (Sandretto and Nairn, 2019;Ashe, 2014). But research, such as a recent study of trans parents in the UK (Imrie et al., 2021), suggests that this hand-wringing about children growing up in nonnormative families is unfounded. ...
From education and achievement to mental health and well-being to violence and
aggression, the ‘state of boys’ has long been a feature of UK (and global) educational,
societal and political debate. Against this backdrop, a raft of evidence-based research
has not only contested the notion of a singular ‘state’ of boys, but also complicated the
category of ‘boy’ and, therefore, what it means to be a boy today.
This literature review aims to capture some of this research in order to provide insight
into the complex and ever-changing conditions of UK boys and to inform practice
and thinking in this area. Understanding the multiple ways that boys, boyhoods and
masculinities are constructed and produced in contemporary societies, and how these
relate to other gender formations, is fundamental if we are to support and respond
meaningfully to the diverse experiences of boys.
... With the majority of rioters tending to be young men, gender also looms large in the structural dimensions of riots. Ashe (2014) has noted how conservative commentators laid blame on the family unit in the English riots, using a lack of a male "authority figure" to explain the perceived failures of single mothers to control their unruly sons. Such discourse helped politicians to avert the popular gaze away from structural inequalities exacerbated by austerity, and toward a pathologizing explanation based on individual dysfunction (cf. ...
Urban societies are experiencing intensified social frictions which have manifested in a growing occurrence of riots. Urban riots are often treated as ephemeral outbursts which create only short-term or immediate responses by the state or residents. However, this paper aims to move beyond such present-centrism by proposing a research agenda for studying their contextually longer-term legacies. Particular consideration is given to three thematic areas: (a) policy responses, (b) temporalities and urban memory, and (c) feelings and subjectivities. Drawing upon empirical illustrations concerning riots in London (2011) and Stockholm (2013), the paper uncovers variations within and across the two cities, such as differing state and private sector interventions; reshaping of civil society; and how residents variously resist, adapt to, and promote change. The paper thus reflects upon how riots’ afterlives in different urban contexts are constructed, mobilized and contested. Such variations point to the importance of the situated study of urban riots’ diverse legacies.
... It takes stock of insights from existing research on womanhood and motherhood in such contexts as, inter alia, the media (Johnston and Swanson 2003), consumption (Taylor, Layne, and Wozniak 2004;Davis et al. 2010) or, indeed, celebrity culture (McGannon et al. 2012;Gilchrist 2007; for an overview, see de Laat and Baumann 2016). By looking at a variety of contemporary, including new/ social media, discourses, the article furthers the existent scholarship on motherhood by highlighting the salience of intersectionality, in particular of gender and class (Ashe 2013;Ponsford 2011) including in the context of the media (Raisborough, Frith, and Klein 2012) highlighted, inter alia, by such class-based distinctions in mothering as the opposition between "celebrity moms" and "welfare mothers" (Douglas and Michaels 2000). ...
This paper critically explores how contemporary practices of commercialised self-mediation by "celebrity mothers" increasingly normalise a strongly commodified and consumption-driven vision of motherhood. Drawing on the affordances of mediatisation and self-mediation embedded in the wider neoliberal and celebrity culture mindset, the article analyses how motherhood becomes increasingly linked, in public discourses, to economic relations of acquiring or gaining material goods-rather than being viewed as a socially or individually significant process or role. Looking at mediated discourses in Sweden and Poland, the paper shows how, over time, strong commodity and product orientation becomes a major feature characterising "good" mothers but also a fundamental way of expressing contemporary maternal identities and emotions. However, in doing so, the ever more hegemonic discourse of the commodification of motherhood normalises the wider vision of motherhood as set within a strictly consumption-related mindset founded on social and material status-closely associated with the affluent middle-class-whilst ideologically and tacitly excluding women and mothers who cannot follow discursively constructed celebrity-like lifestyles or patterns of consumption.
... This has had a notably gendered impact, with a 'marked silence' (Nixon and Hunter, 2009: 119) in policy discourses on the disproportionate surveillance of households headed by lone women. Discourses of parental responsibility obfuscate the reality that mothers rather than fathers tend to be held responsible for their children's conduct and welfare (Nixon and Hunter, 2009;Parr, 2011a;Ashe, 2014). The relationship between family intervention services and housing providers in addressing 'anti-social' behaviour has particular implications for personal privacy and the right to family life (Brown, 2004). ...
This article explores the experiences of families within the Troubled Families Programme in responding to professional concerns about the condition and maintenance of the family home. Drawing upon care ethicists’ development of relational autonomy perspectives, neoliberal assumptions about personal agency and responsibility are challenged, and the complexity of the constraints upon families highlighted. Within this framework, family interventions can be repositioned, not as an intrusive form of domestic surveillance levied at working class women, but as an opportunity to support families (and especially mothers) to overcome oppressive conditions which constrain their capacity to act.
This chapter explores the juncture of feminist and anti-racist struggle across several fronts that came to characterise the politics of sisterhood within the Abasindi Cooperative: domestic violence; immigration controls; police brutality, youth justice and the educational advancement of Black women and children. Reflections of the role of the organisation in social action on each of these areas are interwoven with a critical analysis of contemporary literature. The aim of the chapter is to highlight the ways in which the politics of sisterhood grew and morphed in response to the needs of the community in which Abasindi was located. As Gramsci and Hoare argued, theories of change must emerge from the everyday struggles that drive the need for social transformation (1978); we were Black women; we were Abasindi women and ours were the children we fought for. However, ours was not an activism that was solely concerned with local conditions; our education and influences came from international liberation struggles for social justice and this enabled us to connect with women from around the world; local activism within the context of a global vision.
The 2018 Windrush Scandal prompted widespread condemnation of the British government’s treatment of older Caribbean migrants. Yet broader questions pertaining to the effects of the scandal on the wider Caribbean community remain underexplored. Given the salient position that Caribbean mothers occupy in the British nation, this article examines narrative interviews with five Caribbean mothers living in London, addressing how the scandal affected their sense of belonging and subsequent mothering strategies. The findings indicate that the scandal is part of a broader repertoire of racialized exclusion instigated by the state, and identifies three mothering strategies deployed as tools of resistance.
Chapter 6 and this chapter critically examine backlash men’s movements, especially fathers’ rights groups and the politics of fatherhood. Both chapters are based on in-depth, qualitative analysis of interviews with members of (Real) Fathers 4 Justice. This chapter explores (R)F4J’s construction of ‘hypermasculinity’; the associated idea of the ‘father as superhero’, and interviewees’ constructions of ‘bad fathers’ and ‘bad mothers’. ‘Conservative’ crisis-of-masculinity themes were explicitly articulated through hypermasculinity, where notions of men’s victimhood were prominent. The findings suggest that ‘softer’ bourgeois-rational and new man/new father masculinities exist in an uneasy tension with aggressive hypermasculinity. Further, all three masculinities are argued to be problematic, each reinforcing existing power-laden gendered binaries. All three conceptions of fatherhood are also limited in their potential to revision dominant gendered identities.
Cambridge Core - Criminal Law - Children as ‘Risk' - by Anne-Marie McAlinden
This chapter offers a comparative analysis of the mainstream media reporting of the riots and the responses from young British musicians. The aim is to demonstrate that musicians’ reactions and commentary were much more nuanced and balanced than that of the mainstream media and Conservative Party politicians. After providing a biographical context for my interest in the riots, the chapter then outlines the media’s representation of the riots and rioters. In the final section, the chapter examines some of the academic analysis of the riots, before surveying the musicians’ responses.
The key factor differentiating gangs from ordinary, and even delinquent, youth groups has been argued to be violence, which serves as a tool for acquiring, maintaining, and enhancing a perceived social status and for commanding respect. Thus, not only do gangs attract people with a propensity for criminal involvement, including violence, and increase the opportunities for engaging in such behavior, but they also seem to act as a magnet for those concerned with their social status when the legitimate avenues for upward social mobility are seen as scarce.
Research linking social and penal policy has grown extensively in recent years. Wacquant (2009) suggests that retrenchment of welfare support and expansion of the penal system work together to bear down on marginalised populations in a ‘carceral–assistential net’. Empirical and theoretical examinations of these regimes are often underpinned by gendered assumptions. This article addresses this limitation by foregrounding the experiences of women; qualitative interviews offer an insight into their experiences at the intersection of welfare and criminal justice policy in austerity Britain. Their reflections make visible the complex, heterogeneous raft of social assistance, institutional neglect and intensive intervention that characterises women's experiences of the ‘carceral–assistential net’. The evidence presented suggests that for marginalised women interventions intensify once behaviour becomes problematic or in times of crisis. While some interventions are valued by those engaged there is little significant impact on their socio-economic position.
'It's the Family, Stupid! Continuities and Reinterpretations of the Dysfunctional Family as the Cause of Crime in Three Political Periods'
in R. Matthews and J. Young, Eds, (2003) The New Politics of Crime and Punishment, Willan (Republished in 2013, Taylor Francis
This article addresses the relationship of women's studies, gender research and men. In particular I ask the question: What are the implications of recent critical studies on men, for women's studies and gender research? I first outline some of the ways in which the social category of “men” has been taken for granted in the social sciences, and some of the broad features of critical studies on men. The implications of these studies are then examined, first in terms of the different political positions and discursive practices that may be adopted in studying men; second, the problematicizing and rethinking of research methods and methodologies; third, the kind of “results” of empirical research, and particularly the complexity of power relations; and fourth, the construction and possible transformation of academic disciplines ‐ including women's studies, traditional malestream disciplines, and interdisciplinary work. The article concludes with a brief discussion of issues that need future attention: the close monitoring of critical studies on men; the naming of men as men and the deconstruction of men; the transformation of the relationship of men's subjectivity and objectivity; and the specific areas of study that have been neglected. Examples from research on men's violence to women, and research on men in organizations and management are used throughout.
O conceito de masculinidade hegemônica tem influenciado os estudos de gênero em vários campos acadêmicos, mas ao mesmo tempo tem atraído um sério criticismo. Os autores traçam a origem do conceito a uma convergência de ideias no início dos anos 1980 e mapeiam as formas através das quais o conceito foi aplicado quando os estudos sobre homens e masculinidades se expandiram. Avaliando as principais críticas, os autores defendem o conceito de masculinidade como fundamental, uma vez que, na maioria das pesquisas que o opera, seu uso não é reificador nem essencialista. Entretanto, as críticas aos modelos assentados em características de gênero e às tipologias rígidas são sólidas. O tratamento do sujeito em pesquisas sobre masculinidades hegemônicas pode ser melhorado com a ajuda dos recentes modelos psicológicos, mesmo que os limites à flexibilidade discursiva devam ser reconhecidos. O conceito de masculinidade hegemônica não equivale a um modelo de reprodução social; precisam ser reconhecidas as lutas sociais nas quais masculinidades subordinadas influenciam formas dominantes. Por fim, os autores revisam o que foi confirmado por formulações iniciais (a ideia de masculinidades múltiplas, o conceito de hegemonia e a ênfase na transformação) e o que precisa ser descartado (tratamento unidimensional da hierarquia e concepções de características de gênero). Os autores sugerem a reformulação do conceito em quatro áreas: um modelo mais complexo da hierarquia de gênero, enfatizando a agência das mulheres; o reconhecimento explícito da geografia das masculinidades, enfatizando a interseccionalidade entre os níveis local, regional e global; um tratamento mais específico da encorporação1 em contextos de privilégio e poder; e uma maior ênfase na dinâmica da masculinidade hegemônica, reconhecendo as contradições internas e as possibilidades de movimento em direção à democracia de gênero.
Shame has long been a dubious tool of criminal justice and has been carried on by state authorities in a variety of ways through the ages. However, since the latter part of the 20th century, humiliation has become amplified through the mass media in the name of crime control and entertainment. This article situates mass-mediated humiliation within broader trends in criminal justice and popular culture. While the enactment of humiliation via popular culture works powerfully within prevailing cultural beliefs about crime and criminality, there also exists a subversive possibility that threatens to disrupt the forces that attempt to invoke shame for purposes of profit or social control. The popular American tabloid news magazine, Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator, is used as an example to highlight the ambiguous cultural place of shame.
Under the dehumanizing conditions of modernism, boredom has come to pervade the experience of everyday life. This collective boredom has spawned not only moments of illicit excitement—that is, ephemeral crimes committed against boredom itself—but larger efflorescences of political and cultural rebellion. In the same way, the machinery of modern criminology has organized a vast collectivity of boredom buttressed by rationalized methodologies and analytic abstraction. Against this institutionalized boredom, cultural criminology offers a rebellion of its own, and with it the possibility of intellectual excitement by way of methodological innovation, momentary insight and human engagement.
A substantial body of empirical work suggests that young, economically marginalized males are the most likely perpetrators and victims of serious physical violence. Interpreting these findings in a historicized way that has been neglected by the criminological discourses of the moment suggests that physical violence has become an increasingly unsuccessful strategy in the quest for social power in liberal-capitalist societies. Although it has been displaced by symbolic violence as the principal domineering force in capitalism’s historical project, physical violence has not been genuinely discouraged but harnessed as a specialist practice in a pseudo-pacification process. From this perspective, violence has a complex relationship with liberal-capitalism. Can the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ help criminology to deal with this complexity and inform violence reduction strategies? This article argues that, in the context of pseudo-pacification, the notion that violent males ‘rework the themes’ of an institutionally powerful ‘hegemonic masculinity’ inverts and distorts the concept of hegemony, which for Gramsci was the self-affirming cultural production of the dominant political-economic class. Thus the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ tends to downplay political economy and class power, which suggests that it is too far removed from historical processes and material contexts to either justify the use of the term hegemony itself or explain the striking social patterns of male violence. This intellectual retreat is representative of a general political evacuation of capitalism’s global socioeconomic processes, a move that is allowing sparsely regulated market forces to continue the economic insecurity, specialist roles and corresponding cultural forms that reproduce the traditional male propensity to physical violence.
In this review article, we explore discursive configurations of motherhood and the ways in which class informs how young women engage with these in the construction of their biographies. Our theoretical starting point is principally sociological; we contend that the meanings and identities associated with 'the maternal' have been transformed by the impact of neo-liberalism, and that these produce dilemmas for young women as they constitute themselves as learners and future workers. This article reviews contemporary literature which engages with the ways in which the maternal is a key feature in the (re)making of classed and gendered identities.
As an emergent orientation in sociology, criminology, and criminal justice, cultural criminology explores the convergence of cultural and criminal pro-cesses in contemporary social life. Drawing on perspectives from cultural studies, postmodern theory, critical theory, and interactionist sociology, and on ethnographic methodologies and media/textual analysis, this orientation highlights issues of image, meaning, and representation in the interplay of crime and crime control. Specifically, cultural criminology investigates the stylized frameworks and experiential dynamics of illicit subcultures; the symbolic criminalization of popular culture forms; and the mediated con-struction of crime and crime control issues. In addition, emerging areas of in-quiry within cultural criminology include the development of situated media and situated audiences for crime; the media and culture of policing; the links between crime, crime control, and cultural space; and the collectively em-bodied emotions that shape the meaning of crime.
The paper analyses a moral panic mobilized by the Israeli government, targeting single mothers who protested against a new economic plan that led to dramatic cuts in their welfare benefits. The moral panic occurred during a period of political and economic transition when Israel was moving toward a market-oriented mode of government. By incorporating issues concerning new modes of penal rationalities and practices into the analysis of the dynamics of moral panics, the paper shows that the Israeli campaign was shaped and supported by ideologies and beliefs central to the working of the political economy of neo-liberalism. The analysis shows that the moral panic was similar to other moral scenarios in its external form, but not in its internal content, which was conditioned by the wider context of neo-liberal regime and its techniques of rules and governance.
Since 1997, child welfare services have been faced with new demands to engage fathers or develop father-inclusive services. This book emerges from work by the author as a researcher and educator over many years on the issues posed by this agenda for child welfare practitioners in a variety of contexts. In locating fathers, fathering and fatherhood within a historical and social landscape, the book addresses issues seldom taken up in practice settings. It explores diversity and complexity in fathering in different disciplines such as psychoanalysis, sociology and psychology and analyses contemporary developments in social policies and welfare practices. The author employs a feminist perspective to highlight the opportunities and dangers in contemporary developments for those wishing to advance gender equity. A key strength of the book is its inter-disciplinary focus. It will be required reading for students, graduate and postgraduate, of social work, social policy, sociology and child and family studies. Academic researchers will also find the book invaluable because of its breadth of scholarship.
One of the first comparative reflections of its kind, this book examines the challenges that young men face when trying to grow up in societies where violence is the norm. Barker, who has worked directly with low-income youth and witnessed first hand the violence he describes, provides a compelling account of the young men's struggles. He discusses the problems these men face in other areas of their lives, including the difficulty of staying in school, the multiple challenges of coming of age as men in the face of social exclusion, including finding meaningful employment, and their interactions with young women, including sexual behaviour and the implications of this for HIV/AIDS prevention. The book presents examples of evaluated programs that have been able to aid young men in rethinking what it means to be a man and ultimately focuses on 'voices of resistance' - young men who find ways to stay out of violence and to show respect and equality in their relationships, even in settings where male violence and rigid attitudes about manhood are prevalent.
This book is about the meanings of masculinities within the social networks of the streets of an American city (St Louis, Missouri), and how these shaped perceptions and enactments of violence. Based on a large number of interviews with offenders the author provides a rich description of life on the streets, contextualizing criminal violence within this deviant subculture, and with a specific focus on issues of gender. The book provides one of the most detailed descriptions yet of the forms masculinity takes in disadvantages communities in the United States. it establishes how street based gender identity motivated and guided men through violent encounters, exploring how men's relationships with women and their families instigated violence. One key issue addressed is why men resorted to violence in certain situations and not in others, exploring the range of choices open to them and how these opportunities were interpreted. The book makes a major contribution to the study of the relationship between masculinities and violence, making use of a much larger sample than elsewhere.
The field of masculinities research continues to expand, and has become increasingly complex. Much of the contemporary analysis of men, masculinity and power has been influenced by the work of a number of profeminist writers who have been leading figures in developing new political interventions around men's identities and power. These men have been at the forefront of interrogations of the concept of masculinity and have attempted to develop new forms of radical gender-conscious politics for men who seek to extend gender justice. The New Politics of Masculinity is the first single-authored feminist text to engage critically with the theoretical frameworks which leading profeminist writers have developed in the field of masculinity studies. Drawing on new social movement and contemporary theory, the book examines the different models of politics that such writers have evolved for men who want to challenge dominant forms of masculinities and inequitable gender relationships. It also assesses the broader effects - on the field of men and masculinities research - of these writers' diverse theorisations of key political concepts such as masculinity, subjectivity, power and resistance.
This paper will critically examine the assumptions structuring policy discourses of support and inclusion, and will link them to wider political and theoretical debates. Reflecting an increasing professionalization of childrearing practices, recent policy documents have emphasized the need for all parents to have access to support, advice and guidance. Implicit in this approach is the notion that 'socially excluded' parents in particular are isolated from the information and assistance that enables effective parenting. Meanwhile, the concepts of poverty and inequality are becoming increasingly detached from government definitions of social exclusion. Policies addressing the 'condition' of exclusion commonly emphasize a perceived disconnection from mainstream values and aspirations, as opposed to marginalization from material resources. In the case of family policy, interventions framed within the discourse of 'parenting support' stress the importance of helping parents to do the best they can for their children. However, tacit moral judgements direct the nature and type of support that is promoted, with a particular emphasis placed on advising and 'including' marginalized parents. In this paper, policy definitions of support will be analysed and their implications in terms of gender and class will be drawn out. It will be argued that despite a rhetoric of empowerment and investment, the current emphasis on support represents a top-down projection of values and standards on to families, thereby 'supporting' conformity rather than promoting access to parenting resources.
The concept of hegemonic masculinity has influenced gender studies across many academic fields but has also attracted serious criticism. The authors trace the origin of the concept in a convergence of ideas in the early 1980s and map the ways it was applied when research on men and masculinities expanded. Evaluating the principal criticisms, the authors defend the underlying concept of masculinity, which in most research use is neither reified nor essentialist. However, the criticism of trait models of gender and rigid typologies is sound. The treatment of the subject in research on hegemonic masculinity can be improved with the aid of recent psychological models, although limits to discursive flexibility must be recognized. The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not equate to a model of social reproduction; we need to recognize social struggles in which subordinated masculinities influence dominant forms. Finally, the authors review what has been confirmed from early formulations (the idea of multiple masculinities, the concept of hegemony, and the emphasis on change) and what needs to be discarded (onedimensional treatment of hierarchy and trait conceptions of gender). The authors suggest reformulation of the concept in four areas: a more complex model of gender hierarchy, emphasizing the agency of women; explicit recognition of the geography of masculinities, emphasizing the interplay among local, regional, and global levels; a more specific treatment of embodiment in contexts of privilege and power; and a stronger emphasis on the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity, recognizing internal contradictions and the possibilities of movement toward gender democracy.
Unrivalled in its clarity and coverage, this sparkling new edition of Chris Shilling's classic text is a masterful account of the emergence and development of body matters in sociology and related disciplines.A timely, well reasoned response to current concerns and controversies across the globe, it provides chapter-by-chapter coverage of the major theories, approaches and studies conducted in the field. Each chapter has been revised and updated, with new discussions of ‘action network theory’, bodywork, pragmatism, the global resurgence of religious identities, ‘new genetics’, biological citizenship, and figurations of the living and dead.Packed full of critical analysis and relevant empirical studies the book engages with the major classical and contemporary theories within body studies including the: Naturalistic; Constructionist; Structuralist; Realist; Interactionist; Feminist; PhenomenologicalOriginal, logical and indispensible, this is a must-have title for students and researchers engaged with the study of the body.
Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are two distinct political rationalities in the contemporary United States. They have few overlapping formal characteristics, and even appear contradictory in many respects. Yet they converge not only in the current presidential administration but also in their de-democratizing effects. Their respective devaluation of political liberty, equality, substantive citizenship, and the rule of law in favor of governance according to market criteria on the one side, and valorization of state power for putatively moral ends on the other, undermines both the culture and institutions of constitutional democracy. Above all, the two rationalities work symbiotically to produce a subject relatively indifferent to veracity and accountability in government and to political freedom and equality among the citizenry.
This is an overview of the well-known difficulties of engaging fathers in the child protection process and makes some suggestions about constructive responses from services. There is brief discussion of the historical context of the problem, current child welfare policy, the culture of front-line practice amongst child protection staff and the behaviour of fathers who come to the attention of child protection staff. Ideas for changes in policy and practice include embracing more sophisticated theory, avoiding the dualistic responses of seeing men as either risk or resource, institutionalizing the engagement of men as core business and building on interventions that have been found by research to be effective. A range of effective interventions may be relevant, including cognitive-behavioural work with abusive men and strengths-based family work such as the family group conference.
Modern Fiction Studies 41.1 (1995) 5-33
--Julia Kristeva
--Judith Butler
Unsurprisingly, the anti-feminist backlash and virulent homophobia that have formed such pronounced strains in American culture of the last several years are closely related to (though not fully explained by) the economic troubles with which the United States has been struggling to cope. This relation operates on a number of different planes, some more immediately accessible than others. On the simplest level, resentment of women's efforts to attain equality in the job market has risen as that market has "down-sized" in the shift from an industrial to an informational economy. In addition, homophobia has been exacerbated by the scapegoating tendency that in times of economic crisis so often displaces material anxieties into hatred of and violence against the marginalized. Of the many recent avatars of this pathology, the skinhead phenomenon is perhaps the most spectacular, but the efforts of many states to prohibit ordinances protecting gay rights, as well as the (at times literally) violent reaction against attempts to ease prohibitions against homosexuals in the military, are equally symptomatic.
However, increased intensities of reaction in matters of the politics of gender and sexualities were not merely phenomena of the recession of the Bush years, nor are they likely to abate much even in a cycle of "recovery." Rather, they represent a set of deep and persistent fears on the part of a formerly dominant order that has begun to recognize that it is becoming residual. Needless to say, anti-feminism and homophobia are, in part, reactions against progressive attempts to destabilize patriarchal heterosexual hegemony (attempts to which I hope my writing may contribute). But they are also condensations and displacements of popular anxiety, particularly masculine anxiety, over a whole complex of other destabilizations. These include both changes in the material and economic base (fears of which are neither unfounded nor necessarily retrograde) and the general collapse of master narratives. As Yvonne Tasker has pointed out: "Postmodernity . . . signals significant shifts in the definition [and, I would add, the availability] of work and the masculine identity that it proposes. Postmodernism also calls into question the production and status of knowledge and categories of truth. These developments help to situate and historicize . . . shifts in Hollywood's representation of the male hero," whose current struggles embody "anxieties about masculine identity and authority" (242-243). In what follows I will attempt, through an analysis of an immensely popular text, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, to show how feminism and homosexuality become tropes for these postmodern developments and foci for the disease caused by late capitalism -- and thus how popular hostilities toward feminist and gay underminings of the traditional masculine subject are overdetermined and intensified by the anxieties of postmodernity.
Ultimately what all these destabilizations -- of base and superstructure, gender and sexual orientation -- have in common is that they pose threats to the continued existence of the reified subject of bourgeois humanism and compulsory heterosexuality, as well as to the privileged site of that subject's being and security: the nuclear family. In short (as Tasker suggests), the traditional subject, particularly the masculine subject, is in the throes of an identity crisis. Moreover, this crisis is a particularly radical one -- too radical, in fact, to be contained within traditional humanist boundaries. For it is not simply a matter of discovering or choosing for oneself a single, unified, coherent identity from a range of cultural possibilities. Nor is it only a matter of the subject's dislocation or transition from an old place to a new one. Rather, the current crisis threatens to transform or even overthrow the whole concept of identity. This is the point of convergence of fears of late capitalism, fears of theory, fears of feminism, fears of any swerving from the path of "straight" sexuality: the fears that, together, constitute what I want to call "pomophobia."
This crisis is also the latent content of Sarah Connor's dream of nuclear "judgment day" in Terminator 2--a dream that propels her actively to assault the future in the...
This article examines current controversies in youth culture studies and relates them to recent developments in ‘cultural criminology’. On the one hand, post-subcultural theorists argue the concept of ‘subculture’ is redundant and obsolete and should be replaced by less bounded or rigid concepts, such as ‘neo-tribe’, which supposedly better capture the essence of identity formation and lifestyle choices in postmodern consumer culture. On the other hand, critics argue postmodern subcultural theory is an apology for consumerism and posit the continuing relevance of social class as an analytical category. In the last decade or so, and unbeknownst to those working in youth culture studies, cultural criminologists have attempted to adapt ‘traditional’ subcultural theory to new experiences of ‘transgression’ which now emerge in the transition to late modernity. Cultural criminology nevertheless has poststructural tendencies. By examining the ‘chav’ phenomenon in Britain as well as research in youth transitions under ‘consumer capitalism’, this article argues that ‘old’ theories and concepts, such as subculture, ought not be so readily disregarded and discarded, and that the notion of ‘style’ remains applicable to some young people who are marginalized and disadvantaged. The article thus proposes a ‘critical cultural criminology’ of youth.
Constructions of fatherhood are key signifiers of masculinity/ies and, in the context of a new politics of fatherhood, these constructions have been articulated in opposition both to motherhood and femininity/ies and to ideas of the ‘deadbeat dad’ (Collier 2006, Gavanas 2004, Kaye and Tolmie 1998). The fathers' rights movement has contributed to this redefinition of fatherhood. In the case of the UK group, Fathers 4 Justice, the central message is that ‘Dads aren't Demons [and] Mums aren't Madonnas’ (fathers-4-justice.org). The paper draws on in-depth interviews conducted with members of the fathers' rights group, Real Fathers for Justice/Fathers 4 Justice, to explore and illustrate the conceptions of fatherhood underpinning the campaign. My analysis of the interviews suggests that there is indeed an anxiety to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ fathers and also to underline the need for fathers by highlighting the existence of ‘bad’ mothers. In addition, conceptions of the good father expressed in the interviews can be further subdivided into the ‘nurturing father’, the ‘father as superhero’ and the ‘good enough father’.
This article discusses the challenges of meeting the needs of teenage boys who become homeless as a result of domestic violence. In particular it focuses upon the impact of age limitation policies upon teenage boys, which many refuges still operate. It considers the reasons for these policies which, it is argued, still include reliance upon so-called ‘cycle of violence’ or ‘intergenerational transmission of violence’ theories. It is argued that such theories are problematic as they correlate being a man and being violent. Consequently, teenage boys of violent men are constructed as ‘potentially violent’. The ways in which absent fathers are discursively constructed as responsible for any possible future violent, criminal behaviour of their sons is also problematised. Such assumptions which presume a casual effect between absent fathers and the future behaviour of teenage boys, are argued to be part of the reason why theories, such as the ‘cycle of violence’, persist. The article contends that there is a need for more adequate theorising of the relationship between men, boys and violence. It also argues that access to refuge service provision should be based solely on physical and economic resource constraints, and not by reference to such problematic theories.
The dismantling and restructuring of Keynesian social security programmes have impacted disproportionately on women, especially lone parent mothers, and shifted public discourse and social images from welfare fraud to welfare as fraud, thereby linking poverty, welfare and crime. This article analyzes the current, inordinate focus on 'welfare cheats'. The criminalization of poverty raises theoretical and empirical questions related to regulation, control, and the relationship between them at particular historical moments. Moral regulation scholars working within post-structuralist and post-modern frameworks have developed an influential approach to these issues;however, we situate ourselves in a different stream of critical socio-legal studies that takes as its point of departure the efficacy, contradictions and inherently social nature of law in a given social formation. With reference to the historical treatment of poor women on welfare, we develop three themes in our critical review of the moral regulation concept: the conceptualization of welfare and welfare law, as illustrated by welfare fraud; the relationship between social and moral with respect to the role of law; and changing forms of the relationship between state and non-state institutions and agencies. We conclude with comments on the utility of a 'materialist' concept of moral regulation for feminist theorizing.
About the book: This collection examines the profound transformations that have characterised cities of the advanced capitalist societies in the final decades of the 20th century. It analyses ways in which relationships of contest, conflict and cooperation are realised in and through the social and spatial forms of contemporary urban life. In particular, the essays focus on the impact of economic restructuring and changing forms of urban governance on patterns of urban deprivation and social exclusion. These processes, they contend, are creating new patterns of social division and new forms of regulation and control.
The New Labour government has arguably broken new ground by making `masculinity policy'. Whereas the policy process is always inevitably gendered, with implications for men as well as women, it is only in the last few years that a government has made quite such explicit references to men in some areas of policy. The most high-profile initiatives have been in relation to fathering and the education of boys. In this article, we make out a case that New Labour proceeds with policy optimism about men in the home and pessimism about men outside the home. In contrast, there has been policy pessimism about women in the home and optimism about women outside the home. Where New Labour is optimistic, it tends to produce policies that are encouraging and facilitative, and where New Labour is pessimistic, it can produce policies that are authoritarian.
Tens of Thousands of Families to Lose £83 a Week in Benefits Cap
- A Asthana
- M Savage
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Gender TroubleTerminating the Postmodern: Masculinity and Pomophobia', Modern Fiction Studies
- J Butler
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The Culture of Masculinity Costs AllToo Much to Ignore', The Guardian
- C Cockburn
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Folk Devils and Moral Panics
- S Cohen
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London Riots: Millionaire's Teenage Daughter Charged with Looting
- Daily Mail
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The Biggest Crisis Facing Britain? Too Many Parents Don't Have a Clue How to Raise Children
- F Field
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Good Dads/Bad Dads: The Two Faces of Fatherhood The Changing American Family and Public Policy
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UK Riots Being Liberal is Fine, But We Need to be Given the Right to Parent', The Guardian
- A Gentleman
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The Terror of NeoliberalismReading the Riots: Investigating England's Summer of Disorder' [online] Available fromreading-the-riots-investigating-england-s-summer-of-disorder-full-report
- H A Giroux
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Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture
- S Hall
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Cameron's Trap: Lessons for Labour from the 1930s and 1980s' [online] Available from: www.policy-network.net/publications_download.aspx?
- B Jackson
- G Mcclymont
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London and UK Riots: The Long Retreat of Order
- P Johnston
Johnston, P. (2011) 'London and UK Riots: The Long Retreat of Order', The Telegraph, 9 August, p.
Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity
- J Katz
Katz, J. (2011) 'Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity' [online]. Available from: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI [Accessed 30 January 2012].
Rioters Say Anger with Police Fuelled Summer Unrest
- P Lewis
- T Newburn
- M Taylor
- J Ball
Lewis, P., Newburn, T., Taylor, M. and Ball, J. (2011) 'Rioters Say Anger with Police Fuelled Summer Unrest', The Guardian, 5 December, 2–5.