bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A women’s NGO as an incubator: promoting identity-based associations in Nepalese civil society
Authors: Tanaka Masako
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents a case study of the unique role played by a women’s NGO in actively supporting agency, self-representation, and alliance building among marginalised women. The case study focuses on the NGO’s role as an incubator in promoting identity-based associations (IBAs) that represent and assert the rights of particular groups of marginalised and/or stigmatized women such as trafficking survivors and women working in the entertainment sector, e.g. dance bars, duet restaurants and massage parlours. The presented case demonstrates that IBAs can be empowered to address their own issues as long as NGOs and other supportive parties provide adequate input for provisional capacity building. Finally, the article underscores challenges to and prerequisites for enabling other NGOs to play such a role, to serve as a resource for other civil society organisations.
Gender democracy and women’s self-empowerment: a case of Somali diaspora civil society
Authors: Tavanti Marco , Abdi Cawo , MacHarg Blaire
Published: May 2017

The Somali diaspora plays a vital role in bridging the gap between international non- governmental aid organisations and local Somali civil society. Women’s empowerment initiatives face many challenges in transitional societies such as Somalia. Yet, concerted efforts and multi-faceted investments in this endeavour have the potential to improve the status of women in post-war contexts. This chapter explores the role that Somali diaspora civil society organisations (SD-CSOs) engaged in gender democracy and women’s self-empowerment efforts play in the promotion of gender equality. Through an analysis of capacity development at the meso-level, the study outlines how SD-CSOs are best equipped to support women’s empowerment processes in Somalia through the application of strategies that are both culturally acceptable and internationally recognised.
Bending the ‘Third Arm’: politicians and housing associations
Authors: Lund Brian
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines political attitudes to housing associations, regarded in the 1970s as housing’s third arm. It explores the politics involved in the changing fortunes of housing associations from the preferred mechanism for producing social housing in the late 19th and early 20th century to a niche role in the 1950s and 1960s followed by a leading role in social housing supply from the 1970s, with housing association diversity appealing to different parties for different reasons. Internal housing association politics, stock transfer from local government and the changing nature of housing associations are reviewed culminating in an exploration of the politics entailed in the Conservative Party’s 2015 manifesto commitment to extend the Right to Buy to housing association tenants.
Devolution: where is the difference?
Authors: Lund Brian
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores housing politics in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland both before and after formal devolution. It examines the role of local authority housing in Scotland prior to devolution in relationship to Green Belts and New Towns with particular reference to Glasgow and the sectarian politics in Northern Ireland leading to the creation of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and direct Westminster rule. Post devolution housing politics under New Labour associated with homelessness, planning, stock transfer and changes in the housing market are explored. Divergent policies between the home nations since 2010, associated with the Coalition government’s housing policies, are analysed with special reference to land, social housing, the Right to Buy, the bedroom tax, sustainable housing and the regulation of private landlords.
Transforming Probation
Authors: Whitehead Philip
Published: May 2017

Although it is possible to trace a recent history of far reaching change in probation, the criminal justice system, and penal policy since the 1980s, it is of specific interest to excavate the period from 1997 to 2015. This is because new labour 1997-2010 modernised the criminal justice domain, followed by the era of coalition government that imposed profound transformations in the form of the rehabilitation revolution. The latter culminated in a proportion of probation work being privatised following the creation of 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies. This updated, revised, and largely re-written book constructs an extended theoretical grid to develop a more sophisticated and critical analysis of modernising incursions and transformational traumas under the politico-economic conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Accordingly, in 6 substantive chapters, the book makes an original and timely contribution to theoretical excavation and research in the criminal justice system. To achieve this objective, the book has been expanded to accommodate theoretical insights elicited from Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Foucault, Lacan and Žižek. Additionally, there is a distinctive religious and personalist tradition of considerable longevity that must be factored into this analysis. This is facilitated by refining the conceptual device of moral economy. A major strength of this revised and updated text is the refined theoretical framework to excavate a recent history of politically imposed modernisation and transformation, largely associated with the reconstruction of the probation system.
Assembling the resources to theorise probation and criminal justice
Authors: Whitehead Philip
Published: May 2017

This chapter begins the task of assembling the academic resources to theorise the probation domain and criminal justice system during the era of modernisation and transformation. Bodies of social theory constitute the essential tools to engage in scholarly activity. Selected theories are advanced to develop and refine theoretical work within the criminal justice system. It is argued that Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Foucault, Lacan, and Žižek combine to construct a refined theoretical grid of critical resources that will later be put to work. The combined weight of these intellectual resources indicates the multifaceted theoretical framework required to excavate probation and criminal justice from 1997-2010 then 2010-2015.
Introduction
Authors: Stoker Gerry , Evans Mark
Published: May 2017

This chapter reflects on the realities of the policy world. Shortage of time, limited evidence or experience, the importance of value judgements and the power of vested interests all suggest that evidence based policy making is more easily rhetorically demanded than delivered. This chapter will conclude that social science has riches in its capacity to analyse evidence that as of yet are under-used in policy making. There are new forms of discovery just waiting to be discovered.
Visuals in policy making: ‘See what I’m saying’
Authors: Pearson Leonie J. , Dare Lain
Published: May 2017

The authors look at the technique of visualisation. Humans see the world and experience it through images, and so policymaking can engage citizens through those processes and support a way of learning that does not rely solely on written reports and arguments.
Nannies, Migration and Early Childhood Education and Care
Authors: Adamson Elizabeth
Published: May 2017

Once considered the preserve of the wealthy, nanny care has grown in response to changes in the labour market, including the rising number of mothers with young children, and increases in non-standard work patterns. This book examines the place of in-home childcare, commonly referred to as care by nannies, in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada since the 1970s. In contrast to childminding or family day care provided in the home of the carer, in-home care takes place in the child’s home. The research extends beyond the early childhood education and care domain to consider how migration policy facilitates the provision of childcare in the private home.
New empirical research is presented about in-home childcare in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, three countries where governments are pursuing new ways to support the recruitment of in-home childcare workers through funding, regulation and migration. The compelling policy story that emerges illustrates the implications of different mechanisms for facilitating in-home childcare - for families and for care workers. It proposes that these differences are shaped by both structural and normative understandings about appropriate forms of care that cut across gender, class/socioeconomic status and race/migration. Overall, it argues that greater attention needs to be given to the way childcare work in the private home is situated across ECEC and migration policy.
Introduction
Authors: Adamson Elizabeth
Published: May 2017

This chapter covers the definition of in-home childcare and introduces the broad trends that underpin the restructuring of early childhood education and care and domestic care work. This includes an overview of recent trends and shifts surrounding women’s and maternal workforce participation, children’s attendance in formal and informal types of care, and the prevalence of in-home child care in each of the three English-speaking liberal welfare countries that are the focus of the book - Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada. These trends are also presented in relation to other developed countries across the OECD countries. It introduces how these demographic changes and shifts in policy structures render the need for greater attention to the place of in-home childcare. It also provides a policy snapshot of in-home childcare in the three focus countries, outlining the funding structures, regulation and migration context surrounding ECEC and in-home childcare.
Rhetoric and rationales for in-home childcare
Authors: Adamson Elizabeth
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines different interpretations and objectives of in-home child care in Australia, the UK and Canada, and the ways in which these diverging interpretations are reflected in the policy mechanisms of ECEC that facilitate, or do not facilitate, different forms of regulated and unregulated in-home child care. It brings together scholarship on early education and women’s workforce participation to present different reasons and rationales for government investment and spending on ECEC. National governments and advocates, and international organisations, increasingly emphasise a human capital approach to social policy. This frames ECEC around children’s ‘early learning and development’ and concerns about child poverty, which often extends to include parents’ workforce participation. The chapter is based on analysis of primary policy documents and interviews conducted with key policy stakeholders across the three countries. The final section discusses tensions and contradictions across and within countries in relation to two dichotomies.
Cultures of in-home childcare
Authors: Adamson Elizabeth
Published: May 2017

This chapter brings together discussions from earlier chapters to understand the dynamic of these distinct care cultures. It considers the embedded norms and assumptions about the objectives of and responsibility for ECEC, and the role of migration policy in facilitating childcare in the home. The distinctive cultures of care are linked to the histories of childcare policy, policy systems and practices, rhetoric and rationales for different forms of ECEC, and the reinforcement of inequalities in the provision of in-home childcare. This chapter draws on policy debates about inequality in order to identify discourses that reflect distinct cultural ideas about the provision of in-home childcare. In each of the study countries, the ‘problem’ of in-home childcare is represented in different ways in policy debate and discourse. The policy debates revolve primarily around the three inequalities explored in the previous chapter: gender, class/income and race/migration.
Conclusion
Authors: Adamson Elizabeth
Published: May 2017

This chapter concludes by bringing together the previous chapters to consider the significance of the findings. In particular, it reflects on: what has changed, why it is has changed, and why it matters for social policy. It provides some further thoughts about the significance of the book for the concept of care culture and for regime typologies. It summarises how the patterns, policies and cultures of in-home childcare in Australia, the UK and Canada differ in multiple ways, in relation to funding, regulation and immigration. Some policy lessons and best practices are outlined in order to improve inequities among families, quality for children, and working conditions for care workers. It is argued that by using in-home childcare as a lens to analyse and compare ECEC policy, and by incorporating migration policy into the analysis, the differences among this liberal welfare regime type are magnified.
Evaluating the impact of NHS reforms – policy, process and power
Authors: Exworthy Mark , Mannion Russell
Published: May 2017

This chapter introduces the prevalence of NHS reforms since its inception and the lack of discussion and evaluation of these reforms following their implementation. The chapter offers a brief summary of the Coalition government health reforms, and introduces the concept of ‘reform fatigue.’ The authors state that in the remainder of the book, four themes will be used to explain the significance of Coalition health reforms in their analysis. The first theme is the re-organisation within fiscal constraints. The second is centralisation and localism. The third is marketization, and the fourth is health care quality and patient safety. The authors give further descriptions of these themes. The chapter concludes by offering an overview of the organisation of the remainder of the book.
An argument lost by both sides? The Parliamentary debate over the 2010 NHS White Paper
Authors: Greener Ian
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the rhetoric of government and opposition in the Parliamentary debate over the 2010 NHS White Paper ‘Equity and Excellence.’ It treats the debate as a process of deliberative argument in which Secretary of State Andrew Lansley justifies his reorganisation and explores the extent to which his policy argument was scrutinised by both the opposition and by members of his own Coalition government. The chapter suggests that Lansley offered an unjustified reorganisation based on market-based governance and decentralised accountability, which would at the same time generate substantial savings in a time of financial austerity. This is contrasted with the often fragmented arguments offered by voices in the opposition. The authors ask questions about the extent to which parliamentary debate is able to adequately scrutinise governmental proposals of the complexity of healthcare reorganisation, especially at the beginning of a new term in office.
UK-wide health policy under the Coalition
Authors: Hughes David
Published: May 2017

A volume on health reforms under the Coalition must necessarily expand its focus beyond Westminster to consider the larger UK policy context. Legislation enacted in 1998 established devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with power to make law or issue executive orders in certain specified areas, including health services. This meant that an English NHS overseen by the Westminster Parliament now existed alongside separate NHS systems accountable to devolved governments in the other UK countries. Thus, the major Coalition health reforms heralded by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 applied in the main to England only. However, devolved administrations needed to formulate appropriate policy responses that either maintained differences or moved closer to the English policies. This chapter describes the divergent approaches between the four UK NHS systems, but also sheds light on the nature of coalition policy making.
Provider plurality and supply-side reform
Authors: Sheaff Rod , Allen Pauline
Published: May 2017

Not only healthcare financing but also its provision was nationalised when the NHS was founded. Besides guaranteeing access to healthcare, Bevan and the other founders also intended to – and eventually largely did – ‘level up’ a supply side comprised of diversely-owned providers which provided correspondingly diverse levels of service access, quality and responsiveness to healthcare needs. Since 1979 neo-liberal ‘reforms’ of the NHS have had a supply side component, that of introducing ‘provider plurality’ under which a range of differently-owned organisations provide NHS-funded services. In the circumstances that most NHS services have hitherto been provided by public organisations and professional partnerships, proposals for greater provider diversity mean shifting the proportion towards providers such as shareholder-owned, dividend-maximising firms, social enterprises, and co-operatives and mutuals. Whatever the effect on healthcare supply, such a contentions policy has already greatly increased the supply of euphemism, confusion and obfuscation in health policy debates. This chapter attempts to give an overview of the empirical patterns of development, and unpick some of the conceptual confusions.
Achieving equity in health service commissioning
Authors: Wenzl Martin , Mossialos Elias
Published: May 2017

Equity was one of the main policy goals at the inception of the English National Health Service (NHS). The current literature on equity in healthcare distinguishes between horizontal equity, requiring that equals be treated equally, and vertical equity, requiring that unequals be treated unequally. For a healthcare system to be equitable, both concepts of equity need to be respected in financing and the distribution of services in the population. This requires that contributions be levied based on ability to pay and access to services be based on need. This chapter discusses equity in the NHS prior to 2010. It then summarises the reforms under the Coalition and assess the impact of these reforms. The chapter concludes by stating that equity appears to have been an afterthought in the NHS reforms under the Coalition. The authors recognise that further empirical analyses will be necessary to assess NHS performance on equity once sufficient time has elapsed since the reforms and once processes in the new structure have matured.
A view from abroad: a New Zealand perspective on the English NHS health reforms
Authors: Gauld Robin
Published: May 2017

The English NHS is of significance among health policy observers around the globe for various reasons. The NHS is particularly noteworthy for the fact that, for many, it represents the high-income world’s best attempt to have built and maintained a ‘national’ health system with a focus on universal access to care that is free at point of service. The NHS has been in transition for several years. Many commentators have highlighted the role and influence of US market ideals in this transition, with various UK governments clearly pushing this agenda. However, is often useful to look to countries more closely comparable to England, such as New Zealand, for comparison with a view to improvement. This chapter takes such an approach in looking at the NHS from abroad. It draws upon the case of NZ which, in many ways, is very similar to England when it comes to health policy and the healthcare system. In doing so, it aims to provide a critique of the NHS reforms and demonstrate that there are alternatives to the policies and structures being pursued for the English NHS by the Coalition government.
Never again? A retrospective and prospective view of English health reforms
Authors: Powell Martin , Exworthy Mark
Published: May 2017

This chapter takes retrospective and prospective perspectives on health reforms in English NHS. Retrospectively, we offer a precis of the preceding chapters, taking stock of the cumulative lessons from the significant body of evidence that has been presented in this book. Moreover, we seek to explain the ‘how and why’ of these reforms, using a specific conceptual model (multiple streams approach (MSA)). Prospectively, we consider the direction of health policy in the English NHS, and the research agenda which might inform this process.
Theoretical Understandings of Coercion as a Pathway into Crime
Authors: Barlow Charlotte
Published: May 2017

This chapter introduces readers to the concept of coercion as a pathway into crime for female co-offenders and explores a range of literature and perspectives related to the topic. The chapter explores women’s pathways into crime more broadly, before considering differing definitions of concepts such as agency and coercion. The literature exploring coercion within the context of abusive and controlling relationships is also explored and the potential social, cultural and personal influences which may impact upon some women’s ‘choices’ to offend is considered. The chapter concludes with a critical overview of criminology’s current engagement with and understanding of coerced women.
Understanding the Social Construction of Coerced Women
Authors: Barlow Charlotte
Published: May 2017

This chapter outlines the feminist methodology deployed in the analysis of the case studies, which involved adopting a woman-centred approach to research and aims to gain a more nuanced understanding of the co-offending women’s experiences and stories (Letherby, 2003). The chapter also discusses the benefits of using a case study approach in criminological research and critically considers the strengths and limitations of this particular method. Finally, the chapter identifies the sources of data used i.e. newspaper articles and case and court file documents, which are used as a comparative/ corroborative tool, as well as discussing the feminist framework developed for analysis. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the benefits of using a similar approach to data collection and analysis in other criminological research.
A Feminist Critique of Representations of Potentially Coerced Women
Authors: Barlow Charlotte
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the media construction of women co-offenders and their relationship with their male partner/ co-offender, using the case/ court file material as a comparative tool. It particularly considers the ways in which the women’s representation served to minimise and discredit their perspectives and defence, particularly in relation to the potential influence of their relationship with their male partner on their offending behaviour. It also considers the ways in which the women’s suggestions of coercion or coercive techniques (at varying levels) by their male partner were constructed, particularly in media discourse. In doing so, the chapter is divided into a number of key themes, such as ‘bad women’ and ‘equally bad or worse’. It is important to note that the themes apply to the women at varying levels and the extent to which they were evident in the women’s legal and media representation will be discussed.
Behaviour, choice, and British pension policy
Authors: Clark Gordon L.
Published: May 2017

Over the past decade, the British pension system has been turned upside-down. Once lauded as a viable, long-term mix of public and private institutions, each element has been challenged as to its efficacy. Notably, private sector occupational pensions have been discounted by employers, just as ‘mis-selling’ scandals in the financial service sector have eroded trust in long-term savings products. Lord Turner’s model for the future was influenced by the behavioural revolution in cognitive science and behavioural psychology. In this paper, the key elements of the behavioural revolution are identified and linked to new forms of British occupational pension saving. While supportive of this research programme, there remain significant shortcomings. The penultimate section of the paper shifts attention to the Chancellor’s budget announcement prior to the 2015 general election providing individuals access to their retirement savings. In conclusion, implications are drawn for understanding the future of the structured-choice pension policy regime.
Housing policy in the austerity age and beyond
Authors: Stephens Mark , Stephenson Adam
Published: May 2017

This chapter charts the radical reorientation of housing policy in the UK that was set in motion by the coalition government elected in 2010 and accelerated by the majority Conservative government elected in 2015. There is a strong tendency to favour home-ownership and worsening financial and regulative conditions for those who are not (yet) capable of buying a home. A variety of financial measures has increased the costs of housing for low incomes, whereas safety measures to protect these groups gradually have been abolished. Moreover, legal reforms with regard to tenure security for new tenants have even further worsened the position of low-income newcomers on the housing market. To conclude: the British housing policy redistributes rights away from low-income groups in favour of other groups.
‘Progressive’ neo-liberal conservatism and the welfare state: incremental reform or long-term destruction?
Authors: Page Robert M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the approach of the modern Conservatives towards the welfare state since David Cameron became party leader in 2005. This chapter shows that in shifting the Conservative Party’s narrative to embrace key social justice agendas from a non-egalitarian and more individualist perspective, Cameron has not only allowed the Conservatives to present themselves as being sympathetic to progressive ends but also to move the terms of debate to the efficacy of Labour’s (more statist) means.
Exploring out-of-work benefit claimants’ attitudes towards welfare reform and conditionality
Authors: Patrick Ruth
Published: May 2017

Chapter 6 explores whether and how far benefit claimants can see a logic for changes to the benefits system. The interviews with out-of-work benefit claimants show that many were angered by the impacts of Cameron’s welfare reforms on their own lives but nonetheless were supportive of the government’s broad agenda. This underlines the depth of a ‘new moral consensus on welfare’ that problematizes out-of-work benefits and those who claim them. In such an environment, it is very difficult for individual claimants to make a positive case for ‘welfare’ in general terms which, in turn, helps further embed the Conservative’s welfare reform narrative.
Personal health budgets: implementation and outcomes
Authors: Jones Karen , Forder Julien , Caiels James , Welch Elizabeth , Windle Karen
Published: May 2017

The main focus of this chapter is to explore personal budgets in health care and the main findings from the national evaluation of the personal health budget pilot programme. This chapter focuses on exploring the initial implementation process during the early stages of the pilot. It goes on to discuss the extent to which the implementation of personal health budgets was in accordance with the policy intentions underlying the initiative (as set by the Department of Health) and how much it had an impact on outcomes and cost-effectiveness for patients with long-term health conditions. The results indicated that implementation adhering to the main underlying principles of personal health budgets had the potential to have a positive impact on outcomes for budget holders and whether they were cost-effective compared to conventional service delivery.
Individualised funding for older people and the ethic of care
Authors: Locke Philippa , West Karen
Published: May 2017

This chapter uses an ‘ethic of care’ lens to examine individualised funding as a policy response to the provision of older people’s care. Approaches based on care ethics highlight the necessity of care to the human condition, and offer alternative conceptualisations of autonomy and dependence based in relationality. In the chapter the authors argue that when it comes to the care of older people, the stark ‘line in the sand’ between autonomy and paternalism that the current discourse of rights-based personalisation and individualised funding marks out, is hard to discern and is an inadequate basis for care policy for people in later life. It is not simply a matter of ensuring that personal budgets deliver ‘real choice and control’ for older people, but also one of enabling responsive caring relationships.
Research methods
Authors: Zempi Irene , Awan Imran
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents the methodology of this study and the rationale for using qualitative interviewing as the preferred approach. It discusses the practicalities of the research methodology, including the processes of developing an interview framework, engaging participants and analysing research material using Grounded Theory. This is followed by a discussion of the similarities and differences between the researchers and the researched, which are framed by notions of insider/outsider status. In this regard, we reflect upon how our positionality influenced the research process.
Nature and extent of online and offline Islamophobia
Authors: Zempi Irene , Awan Imran
Published: May 2017

This chapter reveals the nature of Islamophobia targeted towards ‘visible’ Muslims both online and offline. The chapter highlights that this victimisation is likely to be experienced as a continuing process, rather than as a single incident occurring online or offline, and reflects upon the tendency of victims not to report such incidents to the police. Participants highlighted that the visibility of their Muslim identity was key to being identified as Muslims, and thus triggering online and/or offline Islamophobic attacks. Both male and female victims remained ‘invisible’ in the criminal justice system, especially in relation to experiences of online hate.
Prevention and responses
Authors: Zempi Irene , Awan Imran
Published: May 2017

This chapter offers recommendations for preventing and responding to online and offline Islamophobia, based on the views and suggestions of the participants. Recommendations included better media training in order to report stories about Muslims and Islam fairly; witnesses intervening (where possible and safe) to protect, assist victims of Islamophobia and inform the police; more information in the form of workshops, advertisements, posters, flyers, reports promoted in mosques, community centres, businesses, shops, cafes and schools; social media companies making their systems of reporting hate crime more user friendly; diversity in the criminal justice system.
Reviews on HYCOM and MyOcean with focus on Brazil Current System, between Cabo Frio and Cabo de São Tomé
Authors: Boechat Ana Carolina Rochinha , Marques da Cruz Leonardo Maturo
Published: May 2017

Products of numerical models, such as HYCOM (Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model) and MyOcean, are widely used in scientific circles. In the present study, these two databases were compared for a radial between Cabo Frio and Cabo de São Tomé, aiming their application for the Brazil Current System. Therefore, this study presents analysis for the percentage of kinetic energy in each longitudinal band of the BC, and also for it volume transport and for it limits depth of occurrence.
“Rough South”: Beginnings
Authors: Hawkins Gary
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the beginnings of the Rough South designation. The chapter's author reflects on meeting Larry Brown, a largely self-educated writer who was born into a working-class family and remained a member of the working class. He also recounts the series of one-hour shows that he pitched to Wyndham Robertson at UNC-TV in the late 1980s, which he called “The Rough South of (name your author).” He said he dropped the fiction element for the first two episodes, on Timothy Reese McLaurin and Harry Crews. The author proceeds to explain how he met Crews, whom he interviewed for The Rough South show. In that interview, Crews expressed his views on topics such as writing, violence, and sports. The author concludes by talking about the principal photography that he made for The Rough South of Larry Brown.
Elevated above the Real: The Poor White Southerner in Cormac McCarthy’s Early Novels
Authors: Hamilton Marcus
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the work of Cormac McCarthy, whose early novels depicted the poor white southerner. In The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Robert Benson praises McCarthy for his vivid and honest portrayal of east Tennessee and its people—the lower classes in particular. Benson accurately characterizes McCarthy's work as a critical shift in the representation of lower-class characters in southern literature. McCarthy's focus on exploring and illuminating the lives of those often called “white trash” suggests a direct and important link between his work of the 1960s and early 1970s and the work of later southern writers invested in recovering the poor white southerner from the margins of literary representation. And yet, for several reasons, McCarthy's connection to later Rough South writers is decidedly complex. Furthermore, not all critics have been as quick as Benson to praise McCarthy's portrayal of southern poor whites. This chapter examines McCarthy's first three novels: The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark (1968), and Child of God (1973).
Daniel Woodrell, Ozarker
Authors: Miller Shawn E.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Daniel Woodrell's work, which features a time of knocking about before a homecoming. Born in 1953, Woodrell spent his first year in West Plains, Missouri, the Ozark town where his family had lived since the first half of the nineteenth century. Woodrell credits his mother, Jeanneanne, and a childhood illness that periodically left him bedridden, with fostering in him a passion for reading. Among his early favorites were Mark Twain and Nelson Algren. This chapter considers some of Woodrell's novels, including Woe to Live On (1987), Give Us a Kiss (1996), Winter's Bone (2006), and Tomato Red (1998). Woodrell also wrote the “Bayou Trilogy,” all of which bear all the window-dressing of urban pulp crime fiction: Under the Bright Lights (1986), Muscle for the Wing (1988), and The Ones You Do (1992).
Lee Smith: A Diamond from the Rough
Authors: Cook Linda Byrd
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Lee Smith's fiction, which consistently probes the crises of identity that plague so many contemporary Americans, particularly women. Born on November 1, 1944, in the southwestern Virginia coal-mining town of Grundy, Lee Smith was an only child and a voracious reader. Smith recalls that growing up in Grundy, she consciously tried to conform to the image of an aspiring southern “lady.” Initially Smith wrote about romantic and foreign subjects, but after encountering Eudora Welty's work in a southern literature course, she realized the importance of writing from one's experience. Like other members of her generation of southern writers, Smith creates a full, complex world of characters who confirm some stereotypes and transcend others. Her novels include The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed (1968), The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed—
Something in the Wind (1971), Fancy Strut (1973), Black Mountain Breakdown (1980), Family Linen (1985), Fair and Tender Ladies (1988), Saving Grace (1995), and On Agate Hill (2006).
Jill McCorkle: The Rough South from One Remove
Authors: Bennett Barbara
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Jill McCorkle's fiction, which reflects the whole South, rather than just its middle class. McCorkle did not grow up amid poverty, and in fact calls her upbringing in 1960s Lumberton, North Carolina, “very much middle-class”—even upper class by the standards of her elementary school classmates. Her 1990 novel, Ferris Beach, features a character named Kitty Burns, a transition figure between the old South, with its clear divisions of class, and the new, where what a person does is more important than where that person came from. Another character, Merle Hucks, at first seems to fit the “poor white trash” stereotype, and whose family encompasses all the Rough South stereotypes. Merle, however, transcends the Rough South stereotype and distinguishes himself from his family and friends. McCorkle also published a novel called Life After Life in 2013.
“The Spiritual Energy of the Trees”: Nature, Place, and Religion in Silas House’s Crow County Trilogy
Authors: Suter Scott Hamilton
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Silas House's Crow County trilogy, which demonstrates binding connections to both family and place: Clay's Quilt (2001), A Parchment of Leaves (2002), and The Coal Tattoo (2004). All three novels trace four generations of several families in fictional Crow County, Kentucky, portraying their struggles and triumphs in one of the northwesternmost extremities of the mountain South. Raised in the Pentecostal Church, House places important metaphysical emphasis on spiritual relationships with nature and one's native land. A closer examination of his Crow County trilogy reveals the ties and disparities between Pentecostal Christianity and meaningful spiritual links to land. Emphasizing the spiritual and religious beliefs of his characters, House demonstrates the significant role the natural environment plays in Appalachian culture. While he explores the importance of traditional religion, he juxtaposes those customary expressions with the spiritual significance of the natural surroundings.
Steve Yarbrough: Transplanted Mississippian
Authors: Dasher Thomas E.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses Steve Yarbrough's fiction, which is often set in Mississippi, particularly in Indianola, where he grew up, or in the fictional town of Loring, its fictional near twin. Yarbrough fills his work with people who, if they ever leave home, must return to it. They don't necessarily return to the Eden they may think has been waiting for them, but they do return. In many ways they have never left, of course, for their home creates the context for the rest of their lives. This is evident in Yarbrough's first novel, The Oxygen Man (1999). Yarbrough's other novels include Visible Spirits (2001), The End of California (2006), and Safe from the Neighbors (2010).
The Postblack Ethos in “Texts Out of Time”: Rosa Parks and the African American Freedom Struggle in Cultural Memory
Authors: Davis Carol Bunch
Published: May 2017

This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that this narrative limits the representation of African American identity within the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest leadership in the segregated South and casts Malcolm X's advocacy of black nationalism and the ensuing Black Power/Arts Movement as undermining civil rights advances. Through an analysis of five case studies of African American identity staged in plays between 1959 and 1969, the book instead offers representations that engage, critique, and revise racial uplift ideology and reimagine the Black Arts Movement's sometimes proscriptive notions of black authenticity as a condition of black identity and cultural production. It also posits a postblack ethos as the means by which these representations construct their counternarratives to cultural memory and broadens narrow constructions of African American identity shaping racial discourse in the U.S. public sphere of the 1960s.
“A Ghost of the Future”: Racial (Mis)perception and Black Subjectivity in LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman
Authors: Davis Carol Bunch
Published: May 2017

This chapter offers a reading of Amiri Baraka's 1964 play, Dutchman, focusing on its use of race icons to engage with white liberal response to racial uplift ideology and its implications for black subjectivity. The chapter considers Rashid Johnson's restaging of Dutchman and his assertion that his project creates an opportunity to find identity somewhere between “the narrative of struggle and the narrative of Negro Exceptionalism,” noting that it resonates in Baraka's (aka LeRoi Jones) contention that the struggle is as much about “the right to choose.” The chapter challenges claims that Dutchman relies upon essentialized blackness and the degradation of white femininity in order to prop up the identity of the African American protagonist, Clay. Instead, it argues that the play unpacks whiteness's investment in uplift ideology by employing a variety of cultural genealogies and practices to sketch identity, thus exposing the vulnerabilities of the African American Freedom Struggle era iterations of uplift ideology.
Postblackness’s Ancestors and Relatives or “The Past Pushing Us into the Present”
Authors: Davis Carol Bunch
Published: May 2017

This coda discusses recent revivals of the five plays examined in this book. The plays have been staged in a range of venues over the last ten years. A Raisin in the Sun, for example, returned to Broadway in 2014 and earned a Tony award for the year's best revival of a play or musical. The other plays were revived Off-Broadway or in university or regional theaters. Critics reviewing the plays approached them as cultural artifacts, historicizing the productions and situating them as markers of a pivotal era in the nation's history and its narrative about race. In effect, the plays become a history lesson about the African American Freedom Struggle. But as they argued for the historical significance of the plays, they elided the representation of African American identity's complexities present in the play. In light of cultural memory's dialectic of remembering and forgetting in service of the narrative of the Freedom Struggle era, the coda urges a reconsideration of postblackness's literary genealogies.
Invoking The Relative: A New Perspective on Family Lore in Stigmatized Communities
Authors: Bock Sheila , Horigan Kate Parker
Published: May 2017

In chapter 3, “Invoking the Relative: A New Perspective on Family Lore in Stigmatized Communities,” Sheila Bock and Kate Parker Horigan further extend this volume’s section on disability, ethnography, and the stigmatized vernacular into the narrative and familial realms. While family stories always signify the values and identities of particular groups, they also open up opportunities for individuals to contest articulations of morality and blame in contexts of stigma. Accordingly, Bock and Horigan approach the concept of “family” not only as a classification of a particular folk group or a descriptor of narratives’ thematic content, but as a rhetorical strategy employed by narrators in contexts wherein their reputations and identities are threatened. Bringing together fieldwork materials from two independent studies—one examining accounts of personal and community experiences with Type 2 diabetes and another examining personal narratives of Hurricane Katrina survivors—the authors highlight how the concept of “family” serves as a rich rhetorical resource in individual accounts of community trauma by indexing material and symbolic relationships across both time and space.
Falling Out of Performance: Pragmatic Breakdown in Veterans’ Storytelling
Authors: Willsey Kristiana
Published: May 2017

Unfortunately, coming to terms with disability and trauma are all too familiar foes for American combat veterans, many of whom receive inadequate, delayed, or nonexistent treatment options upon returning home. We conclude this volume with chapter 10, “Falling Out of Performance: Pragmatic Breakdown in Veterans’ Storytelling,” in which Kristiana Willsey provides new insights into the ways in which U.S. military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan make meaning and process trauma through the sharing of narratives. She argues that naturalizing the labor of narrative—by assuming stories are inherently transformative, redemptive, or unifying—obscures the responsibilities of the audience as co-authors, putting the burden on veterans to both share their experiences of war, and simultaneously scaffold those experiences for an American public that (with the ongoing privatization of the military and the ever-shifting fronts of global warfare) is increasingly alienated from its military. Importantly, Willsey asserts that the public exhortations in which veterans tell their stories in an effort to cultivate a kind of cultural catharsis can put them in an impossible position: urged to tell their war stories; necessitating the careful management of those stories for audiences uniquely historically disassociated from their wars; and then conflating the visible management of those stories with the “spoiled identity” of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“Doctor! I’m Losing Blood!” “Nonsense! Your Blood is Right Here”
Authors: Weber Johannes
Published: May 2017

This article discusses Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1931) within the larger context of the vampire film. While Vampyr is commonly believed to be inspired by J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 tale of a lesbian vampire, “Carmilla,” the film is less an adaptation of this Gothic tale than an appropriation of certain modes of narrative representation surrounding earlier vampires. In the opening credits, the film explicitly names its source: Le Fanu’sIn a Glass Darkly. This collection contains not only “Carmilla,” but four other stories as well. Dreyer uses, “The Room in the Dragon Volant,” as the model for the most iconic sequence in Vampyr in which a man meets his own corpse and faces the horror of being buried alive. Turning the representation of this experience into a depiction of the filmic condition per se, Vampyr goes beyond conventional views of adaptation and negotiates film as itself a vampiric medium.
The Lower Frequencies: Hip-Hop Satire in the New Millennium
Authors: Nishikawa Kinohi
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that hip-hop satire offers a critique of commercial hip-hop’s fetishization of racial authenticity. Mighty Casey, Childish Gambino, and Little Brother all challenge the definitions of blackness provided by mainstream and commercially-successful hip-hop. These artists rely on independent labels and internet outlets, and as such operate on the “lower frequencies” of African American cultural production.
Dirty Pretty Things: The Racial Grotesque and Contemporary Art1
Authors: Gillespie Michael B.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the use of the “racial grotesque” as a satiric technique in several recent works in a variety of media, including sculpture and internet videos. This chapter argues that the “racial grotesque” is employed by artists to recontextualize material objects associated with the legacy of slavery. Ultimately, these material objects bear witness to and address the nation’s attempt to erase America’s complicated racial history
Who’s Afraid of Post-Soul Satire?: Touré’s “Black Widow” Trilogy in The Portable Promised Land
Authors: Ashe Bertram D.
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides an analysis of Touré’s fiction in light of his later non-fiction Work that addresses racial authenticity. In Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?, Touré explores the fluid definitions of blackness in contemporary African American culture. These definitions are read against his earlier fiction, where he portrays the varieties of blackness through the character of the Black Widow, through which he explores notions of racial authenticity.
Pilgrims in an Unholy Land: Satire and the Challenge of African American Leadership in The Boondocks and The White Boy Shuffle
Authors: Leader-Picone Cameron
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides a reading of Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle and Aaron McGruder’s animated television series The Boondocks in order to explore the satirizing of leadership in the African American community. This chapter posits that a lack of hero figures allows for the satirizing of Martin Luther King, Jr. These texts, and the lack of leadership they portray, highlight the gap between the desire for racial harmony and the complexity of the contemporary African American experience.