Search results

This article sheds light on the legal services offered by antiviolence centers through a discursive practice-based analysis of women who have experienced domestic violence and the lawyers who volunteer in the center.

Using a practice-based framework, the article utilizes a case study of the first legal meeting between a lawyer and a woman who has experienced violence. The case study illustrates how the legal advisors' expertise is deployed in the use of “discursive practices” in dealing with women who have experienced domestic violence. Through a systematic analysis of the verbatim narrative, the case shows how the lawyer performs her legal help through expert “discursive practices” which are situated in recognition of the texture of practices experienced by women in the legal system.

The case study shows how a practice-based approach is able to account for lawyers' discursive and interactional knowledge in dealing with domestic violence. This expert doing and saying includes the ability to read the complexities of abusive situations, using “professional vision” to identify, highlight and codify clues and patterns of a partners' violent behavior; the mastery of “co-implication” with women to support the development of a narrative of the abuse as a crime recognizable both by the victim and the legal system.

The analysis shows that practice-based approaches to knowing and learning in investigating discourse practices can provide insights on practitioners' interactional expertise as well as the relevance of the service. While a close look at the actual practices illustrates the lawyer's interactional mechanisms, the crucial role of legal aid in the antiviolence center can be appreciated by contextualizing within the texture of practices that characterizes women's experiences with violence.

To date, the cultural and societal effects of controversial advertising have been insufficiently considered. This study aims to investigate how advertising that uses violent representations of women transgresses the taboo of gender-based violence.

This study encompasses a visual analysis of the subject positions of women in five violent advertising representations and a critical discourse analysis of the defensive statements provided by the client organisations subsequent to the public outrage generated by the campaigns.

The authors identify taboo transgression in the Tease, Piece of Meat and Conquered subject positions, wherein women are represented as suggestive, dehumanised and submissive. Client organisations seek to defend these taboo transgressions through the use of three discursive strategies – subverting interpretations, making authority claims and denying responsibility – which legitimise the control of the organisations but simultaneously work to obscure the power relations at play.

The representational authority that advertisers hold as cultural intermediaries in society highlights the need for greater consideration of the ethical responsibilities in producing controversial advertisements, especially those which undermine the status of women.

Controversial advertising that transgresses the taboo of violence against women reinforces gender norms and promotes ambiguous and adverse understandings of women’s subjectivities by introducing pollution and disorder to gender politics.

This paper critically assesses the societal implications of controversial advertising practices, thus moving away from the extant focus on managerial implications. Through a conceptualisation of controversial advertising as transgressing taboo boundaries, the authors highlight how advertising plays an important role in shifting these boundaries whereby taboos come to be understood as generative and evolving. However, this carries moral implications which may have damaging societal effects.

This study aims to review the theory based on «otherness» as a form of social exclusion and symbolic violence from the constructions of realities of the media, with particular emphasis on the ethics and aesthetics of language and its role in materializing identity differences.

A search for specific criteria and boolean algorithms is carried out in Web of Science and Scopus on «otherness» [AND] «social exclusion», to then submit the emerging results to a co-occurrence matrix by citations with VOSViewer v. 1.6.13. From the relation tree of the most cited documents [min = 7] of the downloaded articles, a critical/analytical reading is made.

«Otherness» is reviewed to a greater extent from a Western perspective, and more specifically, from a Eurocentric one. This implies that the study of «otherness» is not sufficiently analyzed by Asian or African authors, who are excluded from the analysis. In this sense, «otherness» is understood as a theoretical construct and as any symbolic construction of the other (phenotypically, but also in ideology, values and customs), but which carries a load of stereotypes that can become polarization, demonization, ergo and violence.

Revisiting «otherness» as an informative construct becomes imperative in light of the emergence of extremist groups and xenophobic parties, as well as separatist policies such as Brexit or the Catalan split in Spain. Few articles contribute to elaborating a complete conceptual construct on «otherness» as an epistemological category of communication and information, so this research effort attempts to compile its theoretical discussion.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect, personally, regarding work, politically and theoretically, on 40 years of involvement in organization studies, profeminism and intersectionality.

The paper uses autoethnography.

The paper shows the need for a broad notion of the field and fieldwork, the development of intersectional thinking, the complexity of men's relations to feminism and intersectionality and the need to both name and deconstruct men in the research field.

The paper suggests a more explicit naming and deconstruction of men and other intersectional social categories in doing research.

The paper suggests a more explicit naming and deconstruction of men and other intersectional social categories in equality practice.

The paper suggests a more explicit naming and deconstruction of men and other intersectional social categories in social, political and policy interventions.

The paper points to recent historical changes in the connections between feminism, gender, profeminism, organizations and intersectionality in relation to equality, diversity and inclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to engage some of the central themes of Gayatri Spivak’s seminal essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak? (CSS)” In particular, her criticisms of post-structuralism’s treatment of the “subject” as well as its privileging of “discourse” and micrological analyses of power vis-à-vis her discussion of Foucault and Deleuze.

The paper also draws on a historical materialist approach to examine how Spivak’s own work often reinscribes the discursive and politically pusillanimous tendencies of both post-structuralist and post-colonialist thought.

This lends itself to the “complexification” of capitalism – a bourgeois form of mystification of capital’s essential workings and the underlying class structure of the globalized economy, inclusive of “postcolonial” societies.

The authors conclude that CSS – while an important question – is ultimately a misdirected one that, in effect, mistakes discursive empowerment for social and economic enablement.

The purpose of this paper is to understand, more deeply, what the field of citizenship education stands for, in both theory and practice, historically and currently, and especially, in relation to the new Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship. The authors have drawn on the backgrounds in social studies/social education, multicultural education, democracy education and Indigenous studies, in order to more deeply and profoundly understand “civics and citizenship education” and what it represents today in Australia.

Methodologically, the authors see epistemological spaces as discursive productions from post-structural/post-modern and critical perspectives. These positions draw upon the notion of discourse as an absent power that can validate/legitimize vs negate/de-legitimize. The authors employ a meta-level analysis that historicizes the spaces made possible/impossible for those in deviant subject positions through a critique of the current literature juxtaposed with a presentation and analysis of “citizenship snapshots” of the authors. In this way, the authors attempt to move beyond conceptions of deviant citizenship based on curricular content and instructional method, and explore the realms of epistemology through the study of exclusion/inclusion.

Reflecting the highly personal and individualized nature of the type of research required to be conducted in this aspect of national and personal identity, each of the authors draws here on personal experiences with aspects of citizenship that are not noticeably present in the current national curriculum. Specifically, the three “citizenship snapshots” at the heart of this paper’s discussion and analysis – snapshots constructed by academics who both understand and resist the racialised/classed privilege bestowed upon them by nation states – are: “The boomerang citizen”, “privileged and non-privileged citizen immigrants”, and “Indigenous citizenship, sovereignty & colonialism”.

Drawing both on the current international scholarship on citizenship, power and social changes and the critical/post-structuralist qualitative methodology set forth by the authors, this work describes and problematizes the evolving “citizenship identities” in an attempt to critically assess the new civics and citizenship component of the Australian curriculum; understand the ongoing development of national, regional and global “trans/international” citizenship youth identities; and make connections between citizenship education, identity development and the global youth “occupy”/liberation movements.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that rather than contest the artificial schism produced by social scientists between “qualitative” and “quantitative” research, we should to accept this binary, however, contingently, and use it productively. This would be an act of “strategic essentialism” that would allow us to be productive in the research and inquiry.

The paper uses postcolonial theory to make a case for contingent representation, i.e. using artificial categories to carve out a space for heterodox theoretical approaches.

Researchers devoted to qualitative research must resist thinking, speaking and evaluating that research using quantitative thinking. Also, while ethical considerations are paramount in qualitative research, we need to debunk the narrow understanding of ethics as “following rules.” Also, qualitative researchers need to be aware of the institutional pulls that the research will be subject to, and also be ready to resist them.

This paper discusses how good research resists the siren call of institutionalization. It challenges the “common sense” assumptions of the field and brings them into the realm of the questionable. It seeks to theorize the untheorizable, and anthropologize the dominant.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse pro-anorexia from a discursive, metaphorical standpoint in order to enable an understanding of how pro-anorexia functions as political resistance through technological bodies.

Techno-metaphor is used to reveal how pro-anorexic communities online function through technology.

Six techno-metaphors work to construct pro-anorexic cyborg embodiment through technology. This pro-anorexic cyborg embodiment offers relief from the tensions of patriarchal femininity and provides control over troublesome embodiment. Technology enables women experiencing anorexia to resist the dominant interpretations of their lived experience that subjugate them.

This research offers an understanding of pro-anorexia as resistance to intolerable femininity and reconstructed female bodies through technology. By exploiting technological political space, pro-anorexics are claiming positions and forms of embodiment previously off-limits to women and their biological bodies.

To provide relevant, appropriate education to the female student population, their perceptions as women and preparedness to work in male-dominated spaces, such as the construction workplace, is essential. The aim of this study, by the Professional Communication Studies and the HIV/AIDS Inclusivity and Change Unit, was to explore whether the students have been appropriately prepared.

A qualitative methodology comprising six semi-structured focus groups was conducted with student cohorts in 2016 and 2017. The focus groups were drawn from different courses in 2016 and 2017 and comprised a total of 17 female students between the ages of 20 and 23 years old. Themes were developed by using NVivo for “literal” (Mason, 1996, p. 56) coding prior to manually coding the data using an interpretive lens. Eight dominant themes emerged from the data, which are discussed in the findings.

Responses were that the students perceived that their gender is advantageous to their entering the profession, as there is legislative support but that the challenge remains that they need to prove their worth more than their male counterparts. The curriculum fails to prepare and/or sensitise students to respond to gender-based challenges, some of which they have already experienced during vacation work.

The sample is drawn from one institution. Whilst the university has a diverse student body, it is not confirmed that the sample groups were reflective of the broad base of women employed in the construction field in South Africa.

The findings were aligned with those from developed countries. Whilst some challenges specific to developing countries were cited, they were not considered to be insurmountable.

Gender research is an important topic for countries which, like South Africa, have legislated that employment of women in construction be increased but do not underscore gender in curriculum development of construction courses in universities.