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A strange phenomenon among women writers of the late eighteenth century, both conservative and liberal minded, was the predominance of female villains in their novels. While this can be seen as an after-effect of masculine patriarchal discourse, particularly for those women writers who possessed a more religious-based ideology, why was it prevalent among feminist writers of the time who should have been aware of misogynistic stereotypes? Two such writers who emulated this strange paradox were Mary Robinson and Charlotte Smith. Both these women had been vilified by the Anti-Jacobin British 18th press as notorious and corrupt ‘female philosophers’ who followed in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft. This chapter will conduct a historical feminist close comparative reading of Robinson's novel, Walsingham, and Smith's novel, The Young Philosopher, based on feminist scholarship on eighteenth-century female writers. It will examine how the female villains in the novels overpowered even the male antagonists and were often the cause behind the misfortunes, directly or indirectly, of the heroines/heroes. While these villains did serve as warnings against inappropriate behaviour, they illustrated the disaster for women when there is a lack of female community. Specifically, in the case of Robinson, her Sadean villains illustrated that no one is spared from the corruption of power and that the saintly female figure is nothing but an illusion of the male imagination. They were fallen Lucifers, rebels who relished in their freedom and power despite their damnation and punishment. The patriarchal system was temporarily demolished by them.

This article discusses information sources and critical interpretations of Mary Shelley's life and her most important work, Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus. In addition to publishing history and information about revisions, translations, inclusion in collections, and references to possible sources of the story, it will evaluate some biographical material about Mary Shelley and her family, and their influence on her. Finally, various critical approaches, the growth of interest in both the writer and her work, and possible reasons for it will be noted.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between Amartya Sen’s notion of adaptation and his views on identity politics by focussing on the issue of slavery and, more specifically, on the example of the happy or contented slave.

The paper is text based. The methodological approach adopted is that of conceptual analysis, as is typical for work of this kind.

The paper concludes that the example of the happy or contented slave is indeed a fruitful one for those interested in exploring the relationship between Sen’s views on “the adaptation problem” and his views on identity politics, especially in relation to the subjection of women. Here Sen’s debt to the ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill is particularly important.

One implication of the argument of the paper is that there is a need to consider more carefully the differences that exist between the views of Wollstonecraft and Mill, so far as the example of the happy or contented slave is concerned.

One practical implication of the paper is that, hopefully, it establishes the continued relevance of the ideas of thinkers such as Wollstonecraft and Mill today, not least because of the influence that they have had on theoreticians such as Amartya Sen.

The paper addresses issues which are of considerable social and political significance, especially for women in underdeveloped societies today.

The example of the happy or contented slave has not received much discussion in the literature on Sen, although Sen himself has suggested that the distinction between happiness and contentment is an important one, which does merit further discussion.

The place of G. H. Mead’s works in symbolic interactionism is both central and paradoxical. It stands at the very foundation of Hebert Blumer’s initial invention of symbolic interactionism with respect to Mead’s social behaviorism and has been discussed and debated ever since because of the problems caused by such a presumed direct filiation. Returning to Mead in order to broaden the perspective offered by Blumer is a must and has to face some fundamental issues raised in this context. This article starts by examining the ontogenetic and phylogenetic processes involved in Mead’s concept of society, in order to show the multiple dimensions involved in significant symbols. An illustration of Mead’s wider perspective is given in reference to the feminist movement as analyzed first by Mead’s student, Jessie Taft, and goes back to the origin of the movement with Mary Wollstonecraft. This leads to the analysis of the debate about the place of power in symbolic interactionism, initiated by Peter M. Hall, and addresses the alternative between domination and emancipation. This alternative has been worked out by Lonnie Athen’s radical symbolic interactionism analysis of domination on the one side, and by Kathy Charmaz and Norman K. Denzin on the other side of emancipatory symbolic interactionist practices. Another solution is proposed to this alternative, with the analysis of power being intrinsically constituted by domination and emancipation, in their respective contribution to the understanding of the symbolic dispositions of autonomy – a concept that remains relatively undeveloped in Mead’s works.

The purpose of this paper is to explore women’s resistance to the religion of civilising missions abroad through empathetic feminism.

Conceptually, this paper explores three thematic tools for transnational activism in the interwar period: empathy for silent history, intersectionality of race and class, and empowerment through advocacy within power structures. With the theoretical backdrop of Winifred Holtby’s activism inspired by the philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, this research compares the political involvement of Frances Emily Newton to Blanche Elizabeth Campbell Dugdale, and how their transnational activism contributed to post-colonial self-determination and the convolution of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict in the rise of the twentieth century nation-state.

These three feminists provided alternative narratives of human rights activism during the first wave of British feminism that both enabled transnational activism and planted seeds for empowering self-determination amidst colonial mandates and rising nationalism.

These women worked at the dovetail of colonialism and self-determination towards the twentieth century nation-state, and as the twenty-first century evolves with greater global integration and interconnectivity, imaginative insight in the transnational context evokes greater opportunities for empathy and compassion across intersectional identities, which in effect enables the mobilisation of positionality to confront structural violence perpetuating silenced voices.

By contextually evaluating transnational activism in a narrative of nuanced complexities, this research exudes opportunities for propagating universal human rights while maintaining the sensitivity to post-colonial sentiment for empowerment with the support of transnational networks.

The literature on friendship reveals particular tensions within the notion of friendship; tensions such as that between the significance of similarity by comparison with difference within the relationship; or the tension between liking a friend for his traits and qualities and liking him uniquely. The work of Jacques Derrida in The Politics of Friendship helps to elucidate the first of these tensions, beginning with an examination of the claim sometimes attributed to Aristotle: ‘O, my friends, there is no friend’ to argue that friendship as fraternity can become the schema that democracy adopts for the future. This paper explores and argues for the inter-relatedness of two questions about friendship in the context of politics: Can friendship act as a model for political community? And is friendship itself a political relationship? It argues that while both these questions can be answered in the affirmative, those answers create value by providing a guide that can support the development of our complex identities as mature individuals and citizens.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which transcription is creative work, the degrees to which current literature elides or explores these creative elements, and the ethical implications of researchers’ standard disacknowledgement of transcription as an intra-active suturing together of verbal exchanges, personal understandings, and texts.

The authors’ analysis is based on a review of literature, with this paper putting specific sections of qualitative inquiry into conversation with one another, along with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and Karen Barad’s concept of spacetimemattering.

First, in a preliminary literature review of 200+ articles, the authors found that few researchers acknowledge the creative and decision-making processes that are inherent in transcription. Second, building on that finding, the authors explore the ways that others have discussed transcription as creation/creative and the ways that Barad’s concept of spacetimemattering – which directly influences our use of Shelley’s Frankenstein – has influenced qualitative inquiry.

Transcription is pervasive in qualitative research, with some researchers finding that upwards of 60 percent of research is based on transcribed interviews. However, there is little examination of the creative processes inherent in transcription and the ethical implications of those processes. In terms of limitations, because this is a conceptual paper, it is based on a discussion of various aspects of the literature rather than specific findings demonstrating what the authors argue.

There is real risk in transcription being positioned as merely a task to be completed, to get to the “good stuff” of analysis and writing. Transcription carries implications bound with the responsibilities of creation and interpretation, and researchers who aim merely to achieve and work from a “verbatim” transcript skip over all of the parts that make this common process matter, both to researchers and the researched. The authors argue that qualitative researchers find before them a range of options when they begin the seemingly mundane task of transcription. The keystrokes begin the suturing process, binding together word, action and emotion in a document. Perhaps more importantly, though, the process of creating a transcription is a continuation of the range of ethical implications that research has for participants and researchers.

The authors suggest a similar degree of responsibility for researchers who transcribe and/or work from transcriptions, though the concerns are the inverse of Frankenstein’s creature’s. Researchers are focused on the final product – the transcript itself. That document becomes the basis of analysis, of arguments, of understandings. Researchers need to be as aware of the sutures, cuts and stitches that form their transcription as they are of the final product. There are ethical implications of not exploring the degrees to which the transcripts themselves are creatures – born of decisions, of available resources, of researchers’ own assumptions and understandings.

While Barad’s concepts of spacetimemattering and Frankenstein have informed qualitative inquiry, there is no scholarship linking this theoretical discussion to the process of transcription, which is an important element of a substantial amount of qualitative data.