Search results

This chapter critically examines dialogues between indigenous feminists and academic feminists about the role and significance of indigenous epistemologies in constructing social scientific knowledge, particularly feminist epistemologies. We argue that the term indigenous feminisms must be understood as broadly linking gender equality, decolonization, and sovereignty for indigenous peoples. In Latin America, this term typifies an activist and practical movement with cultural, economic, and politically specific dimensions. We posit that analytical and theoretical frameworks developed from indigenous women’s ways of knowledge production should be recognized and legitimated in feminist discourse because much is learned from their worldview about women’s emancipation, the importance of intersectionality in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender in indigenous contexts, in addition to political and cultural critiques. We show that indigenous feminist theoretical formulations are not homogenous but overlap in some areas of theoretical and practical formulations that involve new conceptualizations of the body, space, time, action/movement, and memory.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of black Sub-Saharan African (BSSA) migrants from war-torn zones in accessing health services in the West Midlands region of the UK. This may help to inform on factors influencing the uptake of health services for new migrant communities.

This study explored the experiences of BSSA migrants from war-torn zones in accessing health services in the West Midlands using an explorative qualitative approach. Ten focus groups made up of seven participants each were followed up with three in-depth one-to-one interviews from each focus group using a conversational approach where research participants were encouraged to direct and shape the discussion in accordance with their own experiences, views and particular concerns (Kvale, 1996) as opposed to responding to a pre-determined agenda.

Following transcription, coding and analysis of the focus group discussions and follow-up interviews, this study found that perceptions and attitudes of BSSA communities in accessing health services included difficulties in navigating the health system, intrusive and embarrassing questions from clinicians, stigmatisation through offering an HIV test, culturally unfriendly counselling support, unconfidently services and episodes of trauma flashbacks.

The experiences of BSSA migrants who sought health services in the West Midlands in the UK demonstrated important implications for future practice and informed service delivery. There is a need to consider cultural education for both BSSA migrants and health professionals to enhance understanding and trust between the groups. Basic professional training for health professionals should also encompass the needs of the growing ethnic populations in the UK.

Despite the ongoing increase of women in the top positions, they are still underrepresented in politics. The studies that primarily focus on women’s underrepresentation in politics neglect the role of gender as a category that structures and makes sense of social practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms that regulate the contemporary gender order in politics through discourse analysis and the contribution of the critical feminist perspective.

The study is based on 30 biographical interviews with Italian politicians and focuses on the account of their political experiences and on the meanings attributed to these.

The results of this paper underline the tendency to either absolve or blame women for gender inequality in politics through different interpretative repertoires: “Women’s disinterest toward politics,” “Politics as masculine context” and “Politics–family unbalance.” The analysis allowed to unravel the way in which the discursive practices create and reproduce the hegemonic gender order in politics.

The research is limited to 30 qualitative interviews, and so results cannot be generalized.

The findings of this paper highlight the importance of exploring issues relating to the gender gap in politics and stress the need to implement actions to promote gender equality in politics.

The paper contributes to an understanding of women’s underrepresentation in politics and offers causes for reflection on a phenomenon that has profound implications for our society.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss stigma and insensitive communication surrounding mental illness discourse amongst adolescents in the Polokwane Local Municipality against the background of a Foucauldian lens.

The literature reviewed included a discussion of perspectives on stigma and insensitive communication, contextualisation of the dual health–belief system in South Africa and the Foucauldian governmentality theoretical perspective. The methodology was based on a Foucauldian orientation and Geertz’ interpretivism. The methods followed to analyse the discourse were Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA), coupled with Geertz' “thick description.” The data were collected from six focus group discussions, which consisted of a total of 36 informants.

The findings indicated the dominance of the biomedicine discourse, neoliberal rationalisations for self-care and the policy of deinstitutionalisation.

The implications for practice using an FDA approach combined with an interpretivist stance exposes the actions, institutions, possibilities for action whilst understanding core beliefs in a complex dual health and religious belief setting. The addition of Geertz’s interpretivism adds a cultural flare and insight, which adds to the depth of the analysis.

The complexity of beliefs, experiences and health choices calls for culturally sensitive discourse about mental illness and also highlights how discourse about individual conduct and self-care is embedded in the discourse used by adolescents.

This paper reviews and assesses the aim, substance, and impact of Simon Susen’s book, “The Postmodern Turn” in the Social Sciences.

The review follows the structure of Susen’s book, by description and by evaluation.

Susen’s book encompasses a very large volume of literature of the self-defined “postmodern,” then concludes that the covered material has contributed little that is new to the social sciences.

The review has not been previously published, does not replicate any prior assessment known to the author.

As a fountainhead of postcolonial scholarship, Edward Said has profoundly impacted multiple disciplines. This chapter makes a case for why sociologists should (re)read Edward Said, paying specific attention to his warning about the inevitably violent interactions between knowledge and power in historic and current imperial contexts. Drawing on Said and other postcolonial theorists, we propose a threefold typology of potential violence associated with the production of knowledge: (1) the violence of essentialization, (2) epistemic violence, and (3) the violence of apprehension. While postcolonial theory and sociological and anthropological writing on reflexivity have highlighted the former two dangers, we urge social scientists to also remain wary of the last. We examine the formation of structures of authoritative knowledge during the French Empire in North Africa, the British Empire in India, and the American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan during the “Global War on Terror,” paying close attention to how synchronic instances of apprehension (more or less accurate perception or recognition of the “other”) and essentialization interact in the production of diachronic essentialist and epistemic violence. We conclude by calling for a post-orientalist form of reflexivity, namely that sociologists, whether they engage as public intellectuals or not, remain sensitive to the fact that the production and consumption of sociological knowledge within a still palpable imperial framework makes all three violences possible, or even likely.