bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sources of power
Authors: Oakley Ann
Published: January 2025

This chapter looks at two of the most fundamental of all modern housework technologies: gas and electricity. Along with running water and sewerage, they form the ‘technological infrastructure’ of housework. The story of their evolution interweaves several themes that are central to the household science movement. One is the impact of scientific-technological developments. How core is technology to the doing of scientific housework? Has technology really reduced household labour? A second theme is how such developments have helped to shape women’s position as workers both inside and outside homes. Third, there is the fascinating question of the relationship between scientific understandings of housework and the modern culture of mass consumption. The chapter looks at women pioneers of domestic gas and electricity and at how demonstrating the use of these new devices enabled some women to slip into the technical-scientific world through the back door.
Legacies and meanings
Authors: Oakley Ann
Published: January 2025

The household science/sanitary science/domestic economy/home economics movement brought many individuals and groups in many nations and cultures together in an effort to make homes cleaner, food better and people healthier. The intellectual apex of this ambitious programme was the provision of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in household science. While the household science movement didn’t achieve any obvious revolution, there were some spectacular successes along the way. In addition to its academic achievements, the household movement created new opportunities for women who wanted to do science. There was also an indisputable effect on health. Knowledge relevant to domestic life generated by scientists in their laboratories and offices from the later 19th century onwards wasn’t accessible to the general public until the domestic science movement took on the mission of broadcasting it. The result was a unique impact on health improvement. According to some of those who have studied this process, the result adds up to a transformation of social habits as great as that generated by the first Industrial Revolution.
Introduction: Trans ageing and care – a review of the terrain
Authors: Toze Michael , Willis Paul , Hafford-Letchfield Trish
Published: January 2025

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the contemporary issues and topics in trans ageing and care and outlines the book’s contribution to enhancing understanding, navigating more confidently and improving practice with trans older adults. The chapter includes an overview of the trans and gender diverse ageing population in the context of the social and political landscape and introduces common terminology along with some of the themes and concepts that are followed through in subsequent chapters such as intimacy, family, community, accessing and using care and support services, and health disparities. It also provides an understanding of trans life trajectories, including the diversity and intersectionalities of the population, and the emerging emphasis on non-binary identities and what this means for later life.
Trans and gender diverse ageing and the life course: what can evidence from quantitative studies tell us about how trans people age?
Authors: Kneale Dylan , Tabor Evangeline , Bécares Laia
Published: January 2025

This chapter investigates quantitative evidence around trans ageing trajectories. While there has been theoretical development, the data infrastructure for exploring trans ageing in the UK is underdeveloped. We identify an absence of longitudinal data to understand ageing trajectories, an issue that is a global challenge. Nevertheless, this chapter illuminates the role that quantitative evidence can have in enhancing our understanding of trans ageing through exploring the features of 32 studies. These studies underscore inequalities in health, wealth and access to care, although some studies also show that despite challenges, most older trans people feel they are ageing ‘successfully’. Furthermore, the findings reinforce the value that concerted investments in the data infrastructure can have, with larger US surveys generating several publications that contribute to the quantitative evidence base on trans ageing. Further investments in data infrastructure could allow researchers to unravel not only the complexities of trans ageing but also to better understand the positive, supportive elements of trans people’s ageing experiences.
“I need to get on with it”: experiences of older trans people navigating healthcare
Authors: Callahan Evelyn , Vincent Ben , Holti Richard
Published: January 2025

This chapter will discuss the healthcare needs and experiences of older trans and gender diverse (including non-binary) people in the UK, drawing upon empirical qualitative data collected through the Integrating Care for Trans Adults project, conducted at the Open University from 2019 to 2021. This project included an exploration of the unique health challenges faced by older trans people with transition-related and non-transition-related healthcare. These data comprise 33 semi-structured interviews with participants ranging in age from 51 to 82 years old. A major theme we unpacked was the concept of waiting – especially waiting for gender-affirming care and managing a sense of ‘time running out’. A wide range of overlapping and specific considerations for the healthcare of trans elders were explored, including hormone replacement therapy, healthcare screening programmes, hair removal limitations, surgery later in life and plans and concerns about social care. Consideration of trans elders requires a nuanced consideration of time, as an individual trans elder may have transitioned historically, or recently, such that one is young in ‘trans time’. Most of the participants in this study transitioned relatively recently and so reflected on the mental, physical and social challenges transition as an elder specifically created. The participants in this study discussed the factors posing barriers to transition earlier in life and lack of access to information. All participants reported transition as a positive life step, and although many wished they had transitioned sooner, this was not a universal sentiment.
“You know what? I’m not agreeing”: older trans people’s experiences of navigating, building and refusing care
Authors: Toze Michael
Published: January 2025

Studies of older trans people often emphasise potential vulnerability and discrimination when accessing services in later life. While acknowledging the very real challenges faced, this framing can unintentionally create the impression of older trans people as being a passive population, awaiting intervention and outreach from community and health services. This chapter explores the accounts of 13 trans people aged 60–82 in the UK. While many participants did indeed describe facing challenges from systems and services not configured for their needs, they also outlined a variety of proactive choices and responses to care barriers experienced. These included strategic compliance, lobbying for change, building alternative support networks and in some cases rejecting services that did not meet their needs. Practitioners and service providers need to be aware of this diversity in life experience and responses and consider how service provision can support resilience and autonomy.
“What happened to my body over the past decade?” Trans masculine ageing and embodiment in a cisgenderist and ageist society
Authors: Baril Alexandre
Published: January 2025

While cisgender aging men face a delegitimisation of their masculinity as a result of ageist, ableist and heterosexist tropes associating ‘real masculinity’ with virility, ability and youth, this phenomenon takes a particular toll on middle-aged and older trans men. Founded on an autoethnographic methodology, this chapter focuses on my desire for a top surgery (mastectomy) resulting from bodily changes associated with ageing, as well as structural factors such as cisgenderism and ageism. To do so, I first point to some limitations in the literature on trans ageing. Second, based on an autoethnographic account anchored in my experience as a trans middle-aged man, I provide personal narratives that can help healthcare professionals better comprehend the complex intersections of transness and ageing and cisgenderism and ageism. Third, I insist on the importance, for academics and practitioners, of endorsing an intersectional approach to better serve marginalised populations living at the intersection of multiple oppressions.
Examining the views and attitudes of health and social care professionals towards older trans people: findings from the Trans Ageing and Care study
Authors: Morgan Deborah , Willis Paul , Dobbs Christine
Published: January 2025

This chapter is about the perceptions and attitudes of health and social care professionals towards older trans people in the United Kingdom. Findings from the Trans Ageing and Care study highlighted the obstacles and discrimination trans people in mid to later life encounter when seeking to access medical transition services (Willis et al, 2020, 2021). We present descriptive survey findings from the same study. A total of 165 health and social care professionals across Wales completed an online questionnaire that assessed their knowledge about trans’ legal and medical issues in later life, and familiarity with trans individuals, among other knowledge domains. Findings indicate respondents are familiar with trans issues – with the media being the most popular source – and are generally supportive of trans civil rights. However, we also identified gaps. We conclude by outlining core components essential to developing a trans-inclusive training curriculum for health and social care professionals.
Professional preparedness for supporting older transgender adults when working in social services in Sweden
Authors: Smolle Sofia
Published: January 2025

Swedish research has shown that older trans adults experience fears of becoming recipients of care as they grow older. Research also indicates fears among caregivers in the form of professional insecurities when discussing future care for older trans adults. The research is however limited in this area. Thus the purpose of this study is to give examples of issues such as professional prerequisites and insecurities from the perspectives of social workers. The chapter focuses in particular on professional preparedness for supporting older trans adults among social workers in the municipal social services in Sweden. The results of this study show that social workers have some professional preparedness; however, they also lack knowledge about certain aspects of older trans people’s lives, and a number of respondents expressed insecurities around the risk of causing offence through their choice of language. By implementing norm-critical strategies, social workers could become better prepared professionally to challenge cisnormativity and provide trans-affirmative support.
Gender-affirming surgery in later life: centring older adults’ perspectives to promote equitable access and person-centred surgical care
Authors: Castle Elijah R. , Kimberly Laura L.
Published: January 2025

Pre- and postoperative considerations for older transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people seeking gender-affirming surgery are often overlooked. In this chapter, we examine how older age impacts pathways to gender-affirming surgery, the experience of surgery and postoperative surgical and psychosocial outcomes. We address perceptions of older adults’ appropriateness for surgical candidacy based on assumptions about sexuality in older adults, patient preferences and postoperative outcomes, resulting in both inequitable access to surgical procedures and minimal outcomes data for this population. Financial resources, adequate health education and information specific to healthcare and sexuality for older TGD individuals present additional factors influencing equitable access. We also explore how insufficient trans competency in various care-based settings can impede access to surgery and compromise postoperative care. Finally, we examine the role of social support for older TGD individuals and identify best practices for supporting older gender-affirming surgical candidates before, during and after gender-affirming surgery.
Trans history as cultural competence
Authors: Heyam Kit
Published: January 2025

This chapter argues that knowledge of trans history is an undervalued form of cultural competence in supporting older trans people which deserves to be understood as an integral part of professional development for practitioners in this area. It demonstrates first that the desire to be ‘up to date’ in concepts and terminology of trans experience does not always effectively prepare practitioners to support older trans people, providing a historical overview of changes in trans-related terminology and concepts and of how the experiences of those who transitioned in the 1960s and 1970s may affect their decision making and relationships with medical professionals today. Secondly, it argues that a deeper understanding of trans history can help us to think more critically about how we validate trans identities and self-articulations and shows that the structures which shape these processes of validation or invalidation were produced by the specific contexts of the mid-20th-century gender clinic.
Reframing gender neutrality in dementia care cultures
Authors: Harper Phil
Published: January 2025

The chapter aims to utilise the translocational positionality framework to suggest ways that care professionals in dementia care settings can reflect and support their organisations to be more inclusive. It explores key notions of identity, gender, power dynamics and micro-aggressions within care settings. The chapter adopts Foucault’s concepts of power and knowledge to enable professionals to reflect on the role they play in ensuring settings are inclusive for gender non-conforming individuals with dementia. Intersections between gender non-conformity and dementia will be explored by considering common micro-aggressions, subtle forms of discrimination that occur through language and actions (Pierce et al, 1977), and how they occur against gender diverse and transgender individuals in dementia care settings. Recommendations for practice are also included to support the development and delivery of inclusive care for gender non-conforming individuals with dementia, such as adopting gender-inclusive imagery, literature, recognising power dynamics and the need for advocacy in care planning and delivery.
Theoretical Explorations II: Racialization
Authors: Kehl Katharina
Published: January 2025

This chapter explores the concept of racialization, or the social ascription of race to certain bodies, as a central marker of Otherness in contemporary constructions of (non-)belonging around sexuality and gender. By drawing on works from the fields of Black studies, critical race studies and post/decolonial studies, it conceptualizes how notions of race have been a central category for hierarchically differentiating people and communities, as well as of the implications these hierarchies have had, both historically and in contemporary contexts. It discusses racialization processes (including Whiteness) in relation to migration and Othering in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. It finally argues that by combining Black perspectives on humanity and liberation beyond the recognition of the law with queer approaches that challenge the presumed coherence of concepts such as ‘the normal’ or ‘the perverse’, we can nuance claims about the homonationalist character of certain political processes of boundary making, as well as analyse the ways in which LGBTQ people are variously positioned to deal with these processes.
A Flag Worth Defending? Rainbows, Pride and the Swedish Armed Forces
Authors: Kehl Katharina
Published: January 2025

Since the early 2010s, the rainbow flag has re-appeared in campaign and information material published by the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) in different ways, gaining more prominence as time went by. Drawing on a combined analysis of visual and textual campaign material, this chapter looks at the role the rainbow flag has played in the SAF’s pride-related marketing material, focusing on the years 2017–22. It analyses the various ways in which LGBTQ rights are employed to ascribe meaning to the SAF as an organization as well as to justify the increasing rearmament and reterritorialization of Swedish defence in the face of anti-gender mobilization across Europe, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the increasing militarization of European defence discourses. It analyses how the pride campaigns perform a certain kind of ‘Swedishness’ through conveying a specific image of the SAF. It finally reflects upon how LGBTQ people are made intelligible within the context of these campaigns (both as soldiers and civilians), and the possible implications this may have for LGBTQ movements and their fights for LGBTQ rights.
Racialized Grids of Intelligibility in Swedish LGBTQ Contexts
Authors: Kehl Katharina
Published: January 2025

By taking a closer look at the experiences of young LGBTQ people racialized as non-White and/or Muslim within predominantly White Swedish LGBTQ contexts, this chapter investigates some grids of intelligibility that make up the ‘field of the recognisable’ (Butler, 2015, p 34) in these contexts. It does so through an analysis of experiences shared on an activist Instagram account, identifying predominant grids of intelligibility for LGBTQ people racialized as non-White and/or Muslim within White Swedish LGBTQ contexts. The chapter identifies four major ways in which LGBTQ people racialized as non-White and/or Muslim are made intelligible in predominantly White Swedish LGBTQ contexts: as the victims of a hateful Other, through coming-out narratives, via exotification and tokenism and via experiences of lacking representation. All of these revolve around notions of LGBTQ people racialized as non-White and/or Muslim as never quite belonging, never quite recognizable. They are instead frequently situated between White, gender-equal and LGBTQ-friendly ‘Swedishness’ and threatening, LGBTQ-phobic racialized ‘Others’, made intelligible only in relation to these. However, the analysis also shows that the writers in various ways navigate, manoeuvre and thus expand the grids of intelligibility available to them, among other things by creating separatist and activist spaces for themselves.
Decoding the Cold War
Authors: Leoni Zeno
Published: January 2025

This chapter problematizes the phrase ‘Cold War’ to show that this is not just a monolith, that is, a space- and time-specific concept. Rather, it can be deconstructed in several ways to show that if it is a more malleable term than it seems, then there is an academic rationale (and perhaps even a right) to employ it in different contexts as this book does. By doing so, this chapter confirms that, in the past, scholars and policy makers might have thought about the Cold War in too black-and-white terms. In conjunction with the rest of the book, this chapter provides a fertile terrain for developing fresh thinking through International Relations theory.
The Uneven Geostrategic Competition of the New Type of Cold War
Authors: Leoni Zeno
Published: January 2025

This chapter zooms in on the most competitive if not conflictual dynamics of the relationship between the US and China, while emphasizing that even within this sphere there are limits to confrontation. It argues that US–China relations in the 2010s were progressively militarily conflictual within the First Island Chain and the Western Pacific; yet, when moving away from this confined region, military tensions declined. This is because China lacks the necessary strategic depth to challenge US power, in addition to an interest in taking international leadership responsibilities. To an extent, throughout the 2010s the US was also seeking to deter China in a cautious manner, or was facing the challenge of dealing with allies that were not convinced about the idea of containing China. At the same time, while the possibility of war between the US and China was always remote if one considers the geography of the whole world, it is true that the stakes within the First Island Chain were high. This condition has not changed in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.
Back to Bloc Politics? From the Cold War to the New Type of Cold War
Authors: Leoni Zeno
Published: January 2025

This chapter argues that the international order shows tangible signs that it is moving towards the return to bloc politics with the strengthening of a Western bloc and the potential rise of an Eastern bloc. While the Western bloc is a cohesive yet small entity, which has realized since the war in Ukraine that much of the world is unpersuaded by its narrative, the ‘political East’ could potentially represent a greater number of people, but it is unlikely to achieve a level of political cohesion similar to the one seen in the transatlantic region in the post-Second World War era. Part of the issue, it is argued, is the lack of a recognized leader in Asia and the fact that China is not keen to make formal alliances. Such a scenario dangerously reinforces a security dilemma at a time when the US and China appear to be developing irreconcilable narratives about world politics.
Conclusion
Authors: Leoni Zeno
Published: January 2025

This book has sought to make sense of the contemporary relationship between the US and China. While this has become a hot topic discussed in many fora by an increasing number of pundits, it continues to be a complex phenomenon in international politics, in as far as this relationship is characterized by deep economic interdependence and major security concerns. Before Trump was elected president of the US in 2016, however, the academic debate on US–China relations was not as lively as it is today. There has been an acceleration of production as the two countries are entering a security dilemma whose influence will be a challenge to escape; in parallel to this, many pundits have been deploying the phrase New Cold War as they see many similarities with the confrontation that involved the West and the East between 1947 and 1991. Therefore, this book has attempted to both disentangle the crux of the problem of US–China relations and, at the same time, to contribute to the most recent academic discussions on the topic. With the majority of the debate leading to a polarization between those who see the concept of a New Cold War accurately reflecting US–China relations and those who find it methodologically flawed, and with a group of middle-ground contributions which remain undeveloped, this book has sought to contribute to the latter from a different perspective. Firstly, contrary to any other contribution, it provided a thorough conceptual analysis of the Cold War. Secondly, it intentionally avoided a comparative analysis between the Cold War and the New Cold War, acknowledging that this would involve too many important differences and similarities to be of any rigorous value.
From the National to the International: The Makings of the Global Discourse of Children’s Rights
Authors: Twum-Danso Imoh Afua
Published: January 2025

As part of tracing how the dominant discourse of children’s rights, which emerged in Western Europe and North America by the end of the 19th century, became so closely intertwined with contemporary global children’s rights principles and discourses, this chapter provides an historical account of the evolution of children’s rights principles at the global level. It starts off with an analyses of the 1924 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and underscores the racial limits to these discourses at the time, mainly as a result of avoiding interference with the agendas of colonial forces. It then proceeds to discuss the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The chapter devotes focused attention to this latter treaty, highlighting the various ways it has advanced discourses around children’s rights and realities, as well as the ways it has remained limited in transforming children’s lives both in terms of its underlying principles and its application.
The Plurality of Childhoods and the Significance for Rights Discourses: An Exploration of Child Duty and Work Against a Backdrop of Social Inequality
Authors: Twum-Danso Imoh Afua
Published: January 2025

To explore the plurality of childhoods within the context of Ghana this chapter focuses on the work that children engage in both within and outside of the context of the family. Drawing on the phenomenon of work (both paid and unpaid), this chapter demonstrates that work is a key feature of childhood socialization in Ghana regardless of socioeconomic status. This is due to the value placed on interdependence, the mutuality of duty and reciprocity within social relationships in this society, including those that are intergenerational. Further, this focus on work in childhood can also be explained with reference to the gendered nature of Ghanaian society due to the importance of ensuring that children are socialized into the roles they will adopt as adult men and women. The importance of work notwithstanding, its intensity in the lives of children in this context varies depending on their social and economic positioning in Ghanaian society. Hence, the intensity of the work in which children in poorer families engage is substantively different from those from more affluent areas. Therefore, work can be utilized to distinguish the experiences of social groups and the childhoods individuals experience within these differing groups.
Introduction
Authors: Simpson Alex , Simpson Ruth
Published: January 2025

This introductory chapter draws on Massumi’s notion of the felt force of affect as an ‘echo’ to construct place as a ‘constellation of processes’. This is the way that spatial ecologies are framed by variable events – twists and fluxes of interrelation – rather than specific moments of encounter, fixed in space and time. In doing so, the chapter frames affect within the social and material ordering of space before going on to discusses the ‘in between’ nature of these reverberations through encounters with bodies, objects and space. Here, the chapter visits the multiple ways in which we move through the material and social world, highlighting how the intersection of gender and place are woven into affective experience. Finally, the chapter sets out the rationale and aims of the book, positioning gender as inclusive of cis-gender, trans, gender queer and non-binary identities. The chapter concludes with a summary of contributions that make up this edited volume, outlining the structuring themes.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Affective Responses to Space, Objects and Atmosphere in a Writer’s House Museum
Authors: Horne Jessica
Published: January 2025

Historic house museums are affective spaces, offering potential for engagement with the past in the present. This chapter draws on Sara Ahmed’s understanding of ‘happy objects’ to explore volunteers’ affective responses to space, objects and ‘atmosphere’ in the context of Monk’s House. Both a historic house museum and a National Trust property, Monk’s House is known for being the former home of the 20th-century novelist Virginia Woolf. The museum relies on the labour of volunteers, many of whom are volunteering in retirement. This chapter examines how, in being ‘moved’ by the house, garden and ‘atmosphere’, volunteers ‘make’ meaningful attachments to place for themselves and contribute to the remaking of gendered spaces at the museum. Separate from the main house, the writing lodge and bedroom are physical spaces used exclusively by Virginia Woolf. In these physical spaces, volunteers revealed different affective responses to Woolf that are in many ways shaped by the ‘angle of arrival’ to their volunteering at Monk’s House.
Affecting a Desiring ‘Woman Worker’: A Spatial Interpretive Ethnography of a Café in India
Authors: Chennangodu Rajeshwari , Kandathil George
Published: January 2025

This chapter explores the process of producing an urban café in India, as a women only workspace, which is explicitly attached with a claim of empowering women through employment and skilling. Through an interpretive ethnographic exploration, the chapter analyses various notions of ‘women’ and ‘worker’ and the interconnecting affect that acts upon these notions and is acted upon by them within the production and embodiment of space. The spatial analysis of affect not only exposes the dominating neoliberal forces that prioritize a logic of commodification over other logics but also how they invest human bodies with an intense desire to become a ‘better woman worker’ by skilling oneself towards understanding and submitting to the hierarchical logics that run through various bodies. In doing so, the chapter argues, firstly, that ‘woman worker’ performs a desire to connect with other bodies that are constructed as higher and better in comparison to other bodies, the predominant metric being proximity of the bodies to the market and its embodiment of market logics, and secondly, that ‘woman worker’ attempts to move closer to the market logics and embody them as neoliberal forces tend to become dominant in the café space.
Taking Place in-as Soho: Understanding the ‘Here and There, Then and Now’ of Gender and Affect Work
Authors: Tyler Melissa
Published: January 2025

With reference to London’s Soho, this chapter explores some of the ways in which working communities are composed of sociocultural, material and affective references that are spatially and temporally situated in ways that enable particular settings to ‘take place’. It considers how Soho ‘takes place’ – that is, is both performatively enacted as a meaningful location and colonizes or dominates a particular setting, seizing it through a specific yet dynamic and evolving set of associations. Drawing on insights from feminist sociology, phenomenology and geography, the chapter concludes that sociocultural, material and affective configurations of gender operate as sites both for exposing and for displacing the reified connotations of Soho as a place of gender exploitation. This line of argument is situated in an emphasis on Soho as a setting that brings together elements of its past, present and future (its ‘then and now’), and of reference points within and beyond its physical and perceptual boundaries (its ‘here and there’), into a constellation of affects, meanings and materialities that provide opportunities for gender to ‘take place’ in complex, contradictory and often critically reflexive ways.
Affective Atmospheres of Finance: Gendered Impacts of Financialization within Sydney’s Barangaroo Development
Authors: Simpson Alex , McGuinness Paul
Published: January 2025

This chapter presents an emerging examination of the impact of financialization on the material design and construction of the contemporary global city and how the altered urban landscape shapes and genders social interaction in Sydney’s Barangaroo development. The scale of urban redevelopment in Barangaroo, as with other global city projects, presents new challenges regarding the potential ceding of public space to financial industries and speaks to wider issues of ‘social cleansing’ of prime urban locales. In this context, the chapter draws on the concept of ‘affective atmospheres’ to examine how people, buildings and technologies, including forms of non-human life, come together within Barangaroo to engender an affections response to place and create, in turn, a gendered ‘energy of feeling’. The chapter focuses on and explores the affective atmospheres of the boundary, temporality, the slippery material properties of glass and light and the gendered effects of these spaces. In doing so, it analyses how Barangaroo’s urban design, framed by a tough exclusionary exoskeleton common to financial place making projects, engenders a sense of alienation and displacement by embodying or projecting finance capital’s culture of masculinist rationality.
Unsettling Metronormativity: Locating Queer Youth in the Regions
Authors: Hill Nicholas , Johnson Katherine , Hickey-Moody Anna , Innocent Troy , Harris Dan
Published: January 2025

Mobility is a key trope framing how we understand the lives of gender- and sexually diverse youth who grow up in rural and regional environments. It is only through leaving unwelcoming small towns and hostile rural environments that LGBTIQA+ youth begin to live a full and connected queer life. A lack of stories about LGBTIQA+ connections and queer belonging in the regions reinforces this perception and has ramifications for the availability of LGBTIQA+ specific services and public health initiatives outside urban environments. This chapter reports on a collaboration with LGBTIQA+ youth living in a regional town located approximately one hour from Melbourne, Australia, and our attempt to co-create a transformative intervention that would foster positive queer feelings of place, connection and belonging. It explores how creative methods can reveal alternative stories which better align with how young queer lives are lived and experienced in regional towns and isolated rural areas. These positive stories of queer emplacement unsettle normative understandings of queer youth in the regions as out of place and make available more hopeful narratives that can be harnessed to facilitate connection and belonging for LGBTIQA+ young people who choose to live outside of metropolitan areas.
Conclusion: Gender, Place and Affect
Authors: Simpson Ruth , Simpson Alex
Published: January 2025

This concluding chapter draws the different strands from our 14 chapters together to throw further light on our organizing themes of attachment, disruption and belonging and how these key affective-geographical formations are imbued with gendered dynamics. It explores how chapters speak in different ways to affect’s relationality, transmissibility and bodily capacity, furthering our understanding of the dynamic interplay between the transpersonal processes of affect and gender in the making and experiences of place. With a focus on place as both material and processual, and with an emphasis on gender as spatial, relational and embodied – a corporeal and affective process of becoming that is inseparable from context – this chapter explores the affective and spatial dimensions of advantage and disadvantage. With an inclusive categorization of gender and other categories of difference, such as race, class, sexuality and/or whiteness, this chapter examines how the affective processes of place are shaped, encountered and experienced. It concludes with a discussion of place making, atmospheres and intensity, highlighting a view of gender as spatial, relational and embodied.
From Thing-Ownership to Bundle of Rights to Social Relation
Authors: Ireland Paddy
Published: January 2025

This chapter looks at the historical development of ideas about property and property theory in modern capitalist societies. It begins by exploring the emergence and rise of the Blackstonian conception of property as ‘sole and despotic dominion’, before moving on to look at the rise in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of the alternative idea of property as a bundle of rights and/or social relation and at the even more radical claim that property is a ‘conceptual mirage’ that has ‘disintegrated’. It then examines the recent re-emergence of neo-Blackstonian, ‘new essentialist’ conceptions of property as thing-ownership. Drawing on the work of historians and anthropologists, it notes the conceptual limitations and historical and cultural specificity of the very concepts of ‘property’ and ‘ownership’ as we understand them.
Defending the Property Status Quo: Analytical Jurisprudence
Authors: Ireland Paddy
Published: January 2025

This chapter explores the emergence in recent decades of so-called ‘new essentialist’ theories of property which seek to re-establish the idea of property as thing-ownership. This particular chapter focuses on the work of the new essentialists operating from within the analytical jurisprudential tradition. It notes the highly abstract nature of much of this work: it seeks to abstract both from specific sets of property institutions and from different kinds of resources (personal possessions/productive resources; tangible/intangible property). It notes that this work tends to universalise some of the specific features of the property institutions of modern capitalist societies and, as a result, tends to naturalise private property in all resources and to legitimate the property status quo. This work also tends to be underlain by an implicit account of how our property system operates that is ideological and inaccurate.
Defending the Property Status Quo: Law and Economics
Authors: Ireland Paddy
Published: January 2025

This chapter looks at the ‘new essentialist’ theories of property that have emerged from within law-and-economics. It begins by looking at the perceived threat to private property rights in productive resources posed by the increasingly social nature of productive activity and the rise of the modern public corporation. In this context, it looks at the attempts by early exponents of law-and-economics to reconceptualise the public corporation as a (private) nexus of contracts; at the reconcentration of shareholdings in financial institutions; at the reassertion from the 1980s of shareholder primacy (in the new guise of ‘shareholder value maximisation’); and at the highly financialised nature of contemporary corporate governance. It moves on to critique the information-cost theory of property developed by Merrill and Smith, arguing that it too ignores the empirical realities of property and provides a deeply misleading and ideological account of how our property system actually works.
Safeguarding Property-as-Capital
Authors: Ireland Paddy
Published: January 2025

This chapter explores the historical and material conditions of existence of the modern conception of property as private property and thing-ownership, linking them to the rise of capitalist social relations. It moves on to look at what an empirically grounded analysis of any specific set of empirically existing property/property institutions would involve, and at the role of law in constituting and safeguarding modern property and property rights. In this context, it focuses in particular on the intangible financial property forms that are now central to wealth and power, and whose value is based on expectations about future revenues. Against this backdrop, it explores the policy prioritisation of investor protection, the rise of the ‘new constitutionalism’ and ‘derisking’, the impact of these phenomena on democracy, and the gulf between neoliberal rhetoric and neoliberal practice.
A Community Rainbow
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

This chapter contextualizes the community revival that began in the US in the late 1960s, focusing on the diversity of intentional communities that emerged. It proposes to reduce the complexity of the community landscape by distinguishing three elementary ideal types of community: societal, anarchist and identity-based. Finally, it studies the case of a community (The Farm) initially characterized by a form of charismatic domination, but which, over time, evolved towards a societal model.
From Walden to Twin Oaks
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

This chapter traces a genealogical thread. The proposed path begins with the emblematic figure of Henry David Thoreau and his seminal book, Walden. The following stage is charted by the work of psychologist and utopian B.F. Skinner, the author of Walden Two, which sheds light on the conditions that led to the birth of Twin Oaks in 1967. Twin Oaks, the community primarily studied in this book, began as an attempt to apply Skinner’s plan to a ‘natural’ space of the kind Thoreau loved.
The Why and How of Community Involvement
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

This chapter helps to understand who chooses to become a communard. At Twin Oaks, as elsewhere, withdrawing into a community is mainly the preserve of the young, white, and middle class. It then describes the reasons why Twin Oaks, like other communities, regularly recruits new members. The conditions under which the book’s author was recruited as a visitor to the Twin Oaks community are then detailed. The chapter continues with a presentation of another community (Acorn), which was the subject of another visit by the author. In both cases, it highlights the reasons that drive young people to join a community, the forms of attachment to the community, and the compromises that, on a daily basis, communities have to make with their environment.
Work: The Shadows of the Market
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

This chapter describes the organization of commercial community work, its principles, and its empirical variations. In both studied Virginian collectives (Twin Oaks and Acorn), the production of goods and services that has been made a priority to assure the communards of a minimum income is doubly revealing. First, it indicates the gradual shift towards activities more in line with the ecological values that both communities now include on their list of preferences (respect for the environment, concern for consumers’ health and well-being, and so on). Second, it illustrates a form of permanent pragmatism that has a significant effect on the communards’ working conditions.
Community Destinies
Authors: Lallement Michel
Published: January 2025

The final chapter shows that, since its creation, Twin Oaks, like most other intentional communities, has sometimes had to cope with high turnover rates. While this is not necessarily a sign of dysfunction, it does raise questions about the long-term dynamics of the collective in general and individual destinies in particular. The chapter thus highlights the existence of a wide range of trajectories within communities, from very long-term residency (until death in the community) to much more temporary stays. It also provides data on the fortunes of communards who chose to return to the outside world, identifies the motivations that led them to make this choice, and concludes that the community experience was not, in the vast majority of cases, a mere frivolous interlude in the course of an individual’s life.
A Leader-Centered Theory of Foreign Policy Change
Authors: Brummer Klaus
Published: January 2025

This chapter introduces a “leader-centered theory of foreign policy change.” The theory seeks to account for the independent, systematic, and predictable effect of leaders in bringing about major changes in a country’s foreign policy, in the sense of broader redirections that entail multiple decisions spanning different issue areas. More specifically, the theory explores the possible effect of leaders on the “why,” the “what,” and the “how” of foreign policy change in terms of: (a) the reasons due to which leaders try to fundamentally redirect their countries’ foreign policy, which is henceforth referred to as “triggering change”; (b) the substantive direction in which leaders seek to change foreign policy, which is henceforth referred to as “guiding change”; and (c) the actions that leaders undertake to bring about change in the domestic political arena, which is henceforth referred to as “implementing change.”
U.S. Foreign Policy Change toward Cuba under Obama
Authors: Brummer Klaus
Published: January 2025

This chapter opens with a discussion of whether U.S.-Cuba policy during the Obama administration actually qualifies as an instance of major policy change. It suggests that this is indeed the case as per Charles Hermann’s typology. The chapter then explores whether President Obama had a systematic and predictable effect on the redirection of U.S. policy toward Cuba. To that end, the chapter first examines whether Obama considered the Cuba policy of his predecessors as a major policy failure, which is considered as main trigger for the initiation of policy change (“triggering change”). The chapter then identifies Obama’s political beliefs with respect to Cuba. Based on a comparison with the beliefs of his immediate predecessor George W. Bush, the chapter infers the direction of policy change that U.S. foreign policy should have taken based on Obama’s “Cuba beliefs” and examines whether those expectations align with the empirical record (“guiding change”). Finally, the chapter ascertains Obama’s leadership traits. On that basis, it develops expectations on how Obama should have gone about putting his goal of changing U.S.-Cuba policy into practice and finally matches those expectations with the empirical record (“implementing change”).
Alternative Explanations
Authors: Brummer Klaus
Published: January 2025

This chapter zooms in on three structural factors located on different levels of analysis that are frequently emphasized in the FPA literature as important for bringing about policy change. Those are: international pressure; bureaucratic pressure; and societal pressure. The discussion explores the extent to which those factors offer similar or even better explanations of the fundamental changes in U.S.-Cuba policy during the Obama administration than the one based on the leader-centered theory of foreign policy change presented in the previous chapter.
Sexual Violence against Peacekeepers and Aid Workers
Authors: Donnelly Phoebe , Mazurana Dyan
Published: January 2025

This chapter covers sexual abuse within peacekeeping and the aid industry by focusing on peacekeepers and aid workers as victims. Policies focused on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) are a positive step forward for gender dynamics within peacekeeping and aid, but SEA tends to focus only on victims in the communities where peacekeepers and aid workers are working. This chapter seeks to understand the dynamics of sexual abuse occurring inside peacekeeping missions and aid organizations. Despite the difference in the populations (peacekeepers and aid workers) discussed in the chapter, there are three key similarities that lead to sexual abuse perpetrated against peacekeepers and aid workers by their colleagues, including patriarchal and sexist power dynamics, toxic organisational cultures and cultures of impunity.
Missing the Mark in PSEA
Authors: Naik Asmita , Westendorf Jasmine-Kim
Published: January 2025

Protecting recipients of aid from harm caused by aid workers goes to the heart of the ethical responsibility of the aid sector. For a sector so dependent on its moral authority to carry out its work, acknowledging and tackling aid worker abuses with integrity is both the right course of action and essential to maintaining public perceptions of the sector’s legitimacy. This chapter traces the momentum towards and then away from independent accountability mechanisms for protection from sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector and considers why cultures of exploitation and impunity persist within particular contexts. We consider why considerable efforts to date have not resulted in significantly improved accountability outcomes in the aid sector. Challenging the oft-repeated claim that the problem lies in ‘under-reporting’ by victims, we argue that ‘under-action’ by organizations contributes to the endurance of cultures of impunity in the sector. We show that the critical challenge now is overcoming inadequate implementation, insufficient political will and reluctance on the part of donors and aid agencies to move beyond rhetoric and bureaucracy in order to proactively address the systemic and structural factors that give rise to sexual exploitation and abuse, discourage reporting of incidences and hamper effective investigations and accountability mechanisms.