bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Giving voice to Irish mothers experiencing separation and divorce
Authors: Crosse Rosemary , Millar Michelle
Published: May 2024

Lone-parent families are not a homogenous group; rather this family form is varied. Despite the vast array of research into the lives and experiences of lone parents in Ireland, there is a dearth of information on the particular groups that form the lone-parent cohort. This research fills the gaps in existing knowledge in relation to those who are lone parents through separation or divorce. Through utilisation of biographical narrative interviews, this study explores the experiences of 15 Irish mothers with primary school-aged children who have undergone a legal separation and/or divorce, and, using a voice-centred relational method of analysis, identifies the needs of this group to assess how Irish social policy and service provision respond to these needs. Underpinned by a feminist approach, this research amplifies the voices of the mothers by using biographical narrative interviews. These interviews showed that experiences of intimidation, constraint, uncertainties and responsibilities were often evident in stories shared by lone mothers. Significantly, these experiences are linked to differences and inequalities between mothers and fathers, with the consequences of such being more pronounced for mothers who are of a lower socio-economic status.
The devolved nations
Authors: Stewart John
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses the health policies of the United Kingdom’s devolved nations. These are placed in their historical and contemporary contexts, with due attention paid to the respective particularities of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland alongside an acknowledgement of commonalities within the UK as a whole. Even before the crucial decade of the 1990s, administrative devolution allowed for divergence in health policy, especially in Scotland. Political devolution, in principle at least, reinforced this trend, and a further component of the chapter is an attempt to explain why this should be so, and what this might mean for all the constituent parts of the UK.
Our NHS? The changing involvement of patients and the public in England’s health and care system
Authors: Stewart Ellen , Desai Amit , Zoccatelli Giulia
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on changing local structures of patient and public involvement (PPI) in the English NHS. We offer a historical overview of local structures of PPI over the decades, then review recent evidence on Healthwatch, which has been in place since 2012. We argue that the landscape of PPI has become increasingly disaggregated and diffuse within the English NHS, and reflect on the implications for NHS accountability to the population it serves.
Children’s rights and political subjectivities
Authors: Liebel Manfred , Budde Rebecca , Markowska-Manista Urszula , Meade Philip
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses the different meanings and ambivalences of subjectivity and subjective rights. In order not to let children fall into the trap of the ‘entrepreneurial self’ and the permanent need for self-optimization, an understanding of subjectivity is explored that gives children confidence and enables them to defend themselves against their degradation and the instrumentalization of their own initiatives and agency. The chapter concludes how, in contrast to an economic subjectivation that is based on permanent self-optimization, perspectives of political subjectivity can be developed that enable more or less subjugated subjects to object to their orientation towards ‘human capital’. The chapter explains that an important element here is the fact that the desired liberation from constraints is linked to the struggle for dignity, equality and social justice. Such aspirations can be seen wherever children from popular and indigenous sectors gather to resist both their relegation to silence and their stigmatization and social contempt as ‘poor’, ‘Indian’, ‘babe’ or ‘minor’. In this way, children reaffirm themselves as collective subjects of rights against every form of social injustice, racism, sexism and adultism at once.
The challenges of public health
Authors: Littlejohns Peter , Hunter David J. , Weale Albert , Johnson Jacqueline , Khatun Toslima
Published: May 2024

There is a crisis of public health in the UK. Although public health measures are known to be effective and cost-effective, UK government has shown a reluctance to adopt those measures. Reasons for this reluctance include: the wide-ranging agenda involved in dealing with the social determinants of health; a governmental decision bias against prevention; a similar bias against precaution; the problems of interorganisational collaboration and cross-government working; and the need for political leadership. However, the reluctance also reflects a dominant libertarian way of thinking about the role of the state, which needs to be replaced by a new social contract for responsible government.
Emergence of a Legal Regime Governing the Use of Sexual History Evidence
Authors: Conaghan Joanne , Russell Yvette
Published: May 2024

This chapter traces the emergence of sexual history as a concept of relevance and the form this has taken in relation to different conceptions of the harm/wrong in rape. This helps us to see both why a complainant’s sexual history came to be regarded as relevant to determining whether an offence has occurred and the varying ideas of what is meant by sexual history for these purposes. The historical and cultural contingency of rape as a crime is also highlighted, and law’s alignment with culturally male perspectives of female sexuality is exposed and analysed. By the end of the chapter, the reader will have a better understanding of what is meant by sexual history evidence and its doctrinal and fundamentally gendered roots. This lays the grounds for consideration of legal and policy efforts to restrict its use.
The Relevance of Sexual History Evidence
Authors: Conaghan Joanne , Russell Yvette
Published: May 2024

Chapter 6 probes basic assumptions underpinning claims of relevance and their allegedly logical or ‘common sense’ character. Drawing on perspectives from feminist theories of knowledge, the chapter asks: How do we know that sexual history is relevant, and what counts as ‘knowledge’ for these purposes? The chapter argues that the predominant way in which knowledge is generated and validated in law is problematic because it is based on the idea that what we know corresponds with what is real and, more importantly, that what is real is separate or independent from what we know. This representation/reality dichotomy, which is at the heart of modernist conceptions of knowledge, objectivity and truth, has been the focus of extensive critique by feminist and other critical scholars on the grounds that it enables the presentation of the knowledge of the powerful as objective and impartial when in fact it is subjective and interest-laden. Taking this critique of objective knowledge, the chapter shows how claims of relevance in a sexual history context are reliant on generalised assumptions and beliefs about women’s sexual behaviour which, upon examination, are often highly contestable.
Otherness as Subculture
Authors: Mehozay Yoav
Published: May 2024

This chapter reviews the era of the grand positivist sociological theories in criminology, all of which, despite representing different theoretical approaches, explain delinquent behaviour based on the idea of cultural difference. The chapter begins by looking closely at the work of both Edwin Sutherland (differential association theory) and, to a lesser extent, Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (social disorganization theory). It then moves on to discuss Albert Cohen’s subculture theory, followed by Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s concept of differential opportunity structures. The chapter ends with a short review of labelling theory and the sociology of deviance, particularly the work of David Matza and his critique of positivist criminology. Following Matza, I argue that all of these theories share a conceptual point of departure based on the existence of a delinquent other, one which then needs to be explained.
Managing the Other: Otherness in Practice
Authors: Mehozay Yoav
Published: May 2024

The chapter reviews the impact of the managerial movement on US criminological knowledge production. It follows this shift, in which scholarly priority was given to administrative criminology, by highlighting research on relevance and optimization of policy. The chapter begins with a short historical review of the development of managerialism. It then analyses paradigms of the movement that have emerged since the late 1960s and early 1970s: neoclassical theories, cohort research, the career criminal paradigm, risk factor prevention, all the way to the more recent development of algorithmic risk assessment. The chapter argues that, despite its rejection of aetiological explanations, the managerial movement did not break from the idea of otherness, but introduced a different form of otherness: otherness in practice, according to which a person’s risk score becomes their identity for almost all purposes.
Memories: What Memories Does the Future Need?
Authors: Leccardi Carmen , Jedlowski Paolo , Cavalli Alessandro
Published: May 2024

This chapter deals with a basic question: which kind of memories does the future need? The answer dictates the paragraphs’ succession: we will begin with discussing the interplay between memories and the public discourse; we will focus on the relationships between spaces of experience and horizons of expectations; and we will discuss the meaning of ‘working through the past’. After some notations on autobiographical narratives and the meanings of nostalgia, as well as on the specific impact of the media and the ‘new media’ in shaping our representations of the past, we will arrive to the notion of ‘memories of the future’, that is, the examination of the ways by which remembering and criticizing some futures we imagined in the past may be useful to renew present actions. At the end, an answer will be consigned to the following chapters: what designing the future needs is that kind of memory which consists of the capacity of transforming the past in experience.
Understandings and Experiences of Parenthood
Authors: Boddy Janet , Hanrahan Fidelma , Wheeler Bella
Published: May 2024

Chapter 6 turns to understandings and experiences of parenthood. It begins by focusing on the experiences of participants who are parents (all but one of whom were mothers), including the implications of child removal for understandings of parenthood and family. The chapter considers how participants practise family at-a-distance and how they manage and maintain identities as parents separated from their children, taking account of different permanence, placement and contact arrangements. Finally, this chapter engages with participants’ narratives of future imagined families and the ways in which those are positioned in relation to their past and present experiences, including relationships with partners and children not-yet-born, as well as the potential return of children who are currently in placement.
Talking Food: Classed Narratives, Social Identities and Biographical Transitions
Authors: Gibson Kate
Published: May 2024

Working with individual food biographies, Chapter 3 offers a socio-historical framing of participants’ self-understandings through food. It starts by considering the extent to which participants construct their identity as classed (or not) before juxtaposing these identity performances with participants’ food dispositions. Narratives of not belonging emerge powerfully. Participants appeared to distance themselves from being a monolithic product of their upbringings or collective class categories, offering instead a fragmented and reflexive account of their individuality and an orientation towards taste expansion and diversification. While this was recurrently conceptualized in relation to the increased production of variety offered by the global marketplace, participants’ openness to diversity appeared highly selective. Furthermore, the imagined figure of a working-class mass consumer emerges in these accounts as a point from which to enact differentiation.
Researching North Korean Women’s Human Rights: Methodological Considerations
Authors: Lim Hyun-Joo
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines methodological considerations, focusing on ethical issues and the challenges of studying North Korean women defectors and their human rights issues. It applies a critical feminist approach. The chapter begins with a phenomenological method, linking to the life history and power of storytelling. Due to the risk of potential repercussions that defectors and their families face from the regime, as well as the sensitive nature of the topic, the study raises several ethical concerns. In addition, the dynamics between a woman researcher of South Korean heritage and North Korean women defectors poses methodologically important questions. Reflecting upon these, the chapter discusses the complex dynamics between insider and outsider, knower and enquirer, in a critical manner.
Cycle of Oppression: Violations of Human Rights against North Korean Women
Authors: Lim Hyun-Joo
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines North Korean women’s individual experiences of grave human rights violations, both inside the regime and after they have escaped to China. The first part focuses on women’s narratives of human rights issues in North Korea, such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. The second part explores women defectors’ experiences during their escape, primarily focusing on human trafficking and forced/voluntary marriages to Chinese men. It also presents the harrowing experiences women endured during and after repatriation to North Korean detention centres. The main argument of this chapter is that North Korean women experience a continuous cycle of oppression throughout their lives, both inside and outside North Korea, owing to the intersection of the deep-seated patriarchal structure of North Korea, the absence of freedom of movement, and China’s treatment of North Korean border-crossers as illegal migrants.
Food Politics, Activism and Alternative Consumer Cooperatives
Authors: Oba Beyza , Özsoy Zeynep
Published: May 2024

Taking capitalism and capitalist forms of organizing as the only possibility for an economic and political system limits our vision; we do not see or try to experiment with alternative forms of organizing. In this book our aim is to show that organizations shaped by non-capitalist forms of production relations, value creation orientations and practices do exist. In so doing, we view alternative consumer cooperatives (ACCs) as an alternative, non-capitalist form of organizing and study ACCs as spaces for prefigurative food politics. In Turkey ACCs are different to conventional cooperatives that have been instrumentalized either by the state or by companies for private gain. ACCs proliferated after 2013 as a reaction to neo-liberal policies and the hegemony of capitalist relations (in production and distribution). ACCs are initiated by activist consumers and petty commodity producers who perceive food as a political issue and try to repoliticize the economy by transforming both production and consumption. The governance practices experimented with in the ACCs deliberately disregard a managerialist logic. The daily activities of the ACCs are carried out by consumers who offer their labour voluntarily and provide examples of non-marketable forms of economic transactions such as reciprocity and social obligation. Given all these features, the book studies ACCs as spaces of prefigurative politics where politically positioned consumers and petty commodity producers not only experiment and gain insight into alternatives to the capitalist logic, but also reshape the existing power relations in and around ACCs. In so doing, it exposes the strategies employed by the government in the construction of a globally oriented capitalist production/consumption nexus in agriculture and explores how ACCs develop counter-strategies to resist and challenge the status quo.
Experimenting with an Alternative to the Capitalist Food Provisioning System
Authors: Oba Beyza , Özsoy Zeynep
Published: May 2024

The chapter provides a deeper understanding of the alternative food provisioning model developed by the alternative consumer cooperatives (ACCs) as a response to the populist neo-liberal policies that have marginalized, both economically and socially, the middle class and the petty commodity producers. By focusing on how the ACCs appropriate and distribute surpluses, develop means to bypass the intermediaries in production and distribution, and demystify commodity fetishism, the chapter focuses on the transformation of the urban middle class and rural petty commodity producers as economic and political subjects; a process that aims to reconstitute peasantry by trying an alternative surplus generation model, by refusing scaling-up and constituting politicized urban consumers.
Escape into Responsibility
Authors: Traill Helen
Published: May 2024

The practices of care that form the bedrock of communality are here viewed from the perspective of escape; and the idea of escaping into responsibility is explored, with reference to community theory and especially Esposito’s work on the munis. This connects ethnographic material on social connection and rhythms of knowing to a discussion of positive freedom as developed in the work of Isaiah Berlin (1969). Instead of a more common notion of negative freedom, this chapter uses Berlin’s delineation of a positive freedom to recognize the liberatory capacity in the obligations and caring that come with social connection. The limits of this are also explored – in particular, the way that the closure within Berlin’s concept of positive freedom mirrors boundary work in communal practice.
Escape, Crisis and Social Change
Authors: Traill Helen
Published: May 2024

What continues and what changes over time in communal growing? Research on communal growing tends to take a snapshot in time, focusing on the phenomenon at a moment rather than considering them over longer durations in more longitudinal research. This chapter unpacks some of the changes over time within the garden, addressing later evolutions in inclusion and transformative projects. Understanding projects as fluid and reactive to the environment, this argues for a longer period of study to think through reactions to the broader urban environment and social milieu. Reflecting on crises faced by the sites in the early 2020s – both the COVID-19 pandemic and a local murder – allows too for the strength and resilience of the sites, their use as social infrastructure, to emerge.
Co-production of Scientific Knowledge and Societal Order
Authors: Soneryd Linda , Sundqvist Göran
Published: May 2024

This chapter goes deeper into the complex relation between science and democracy. Previous chapters discussed how science and politics are separate and that one elite (scientific experts) is delegated the power to represent nature (as knowledge objects) and another elite (decision makers, not only elected politicians but broadly speaking) is delegated the power to represent the people. This double delegation (delegative democracy) is based on a distinction between what is represented and who can represent. These two forms of representation divide the world into the two domains of knowledge and politics and, in addition, create a sharp division between those who are in power (the two elites) and those who are not (the ignorant mass). However, these separate domains are also interlinked, and the boundaries between them and their authority and legitimacy can always be questioned and change over time. The separation between science and democracy, between representatives and represented, is a joint product. One of the most important ideas within STS research is that knowledge and social order are intertwined or, as it is often expressed, co-produced (Jasanoff 2004a). Science and democracy are not independent from each other. Democracies legitimize and back up decisions and reforms with expert knowledge, and an uneven distribution of knowledge and education in a society is seen as a democracy problem (Sismondo 2010: 80). Governing requires knowledge, and science is intermingled with power. Science and democracy may be the result of a joint process, but they are often presented as separate, which has consequences for how practices are performed and leads to what they have in common being concealed. Knowledge is understood and presented as being independent of social order and power, especially in the scientific community.
Player Trading beyond Steam
Authors: Mette Thorhauge Anne
Published: May 2024

In the former chapters, I have analysed and discussed the ways in which the Steam platform has historically expanded the scope of economic transactions (Chapter 5), how this is enabled by the platform features (Chapter 6), and how different actors on the platform turn these affordances into ways of making business (Chapter 7). In this chapter, I will dive deeper into the way these economic transactions extend beyond the Steam platform on to the wider internet. My key point will be that the existence of extra-platform contexts of economic exchange not only serves to expand the number of economic transactions and grow the market, but potentially turns the Steam platform into a payment instrument and skins into a unit of transaction independent of the games from which they originate. Indeed, it can be interpreted as an attempt to create ‘money at the margins’ (Hütten and Thiemann, 2017) by transforming Steam and its extra-platform transactions into a ‘monetary network’ (Dodd, 1994). Firstly, I will characterize some of the extra-platform contexts of economic exchange and explain in what way they seem to be ‘powered by Steam’. As an extension of this, I will discuss Valve’s possible motives for enabling, or at least not policing, these economic practices. These motives can to some degree be tied to the business emphases addressed in Chapter 5, that is, expanding the scope of economic transactions by enabling microtransactions on third-party websites and allowing the secondary market of game items to expand beyond the platform.
Ambivalent Embodiment and HIV Treatment in South Africa
Authors: Mills Elizabeth
Published: May 2024

This chapter draws on long-term, multi-sited ethnographic research on women’s embodiment of HIV and antiretroviral treatment (ARVs), and the role that this embodiment played in shaping women’s perception of and engagement with the South African state. Drawing on ethnographic research methods, feminist new materialism, performativity and actor network theory, this chapter explores how both HIV and ARVs, as ‘things with social lives’, intra-act with each other and with women’s bodies. The chapter reflects on a set of emergent struggles around the embodiment of medicine that move beyond the framing of HIV as the ‘problem’ and ARVs as the ‘technofix’. Not only do ARVs extend life but they also introduce risk and uncertainty. These (side) effects interact in different ways within unique bodies that, in line with post-colonial critiques of feminist new materialism, need to be situated in a context of profound socioeconomic inequality. Building on long-term ethnographic research, this chapter explores how HIV medicines have precipitated a dynamic set of struggles that call attention to the world ‘inside’ the body (as embodiment) and, simultaneously outside the body (as forms of oppression in specific socioeconomic contexts). Through close engagement with activists, the chapter argues that, despite being involved in the struggle for medicines only a decade earlier, the gains of this struggle’s success are increasingly ambivalent.
Are Ovulation Biosensors Feminist Technologies?
Authors: Wilkinson Joann , Roberts Celia
Published: May 2024

Ovulation, the releasing of an egg from the ovaries, is triggered by the rise and fall of the so-called ‘sex’ hormones, oestrogen, progesterone and luteinizing hormone. These hormonal changes can (sometimes) be detected through saliva, urine and temperature. FemTech is also increasingly the subject of social research, as we describe later in this chapter. A key strand of this work highlights issues of data privacy and the commercialization of women’s fertility. Science and technology studies (STS) and feminist technoscience studies (FTS) approaches are central to this field, and we situate our research in this space . Although contemporary ovulation biosensors and fertility apps overlap in some ways, there are some key differences. Ovulation biosensors ‘sense’ bodily substance or quality (urine, saliva or temperature) in order to detect hormonal changes. This method is based on the understanding that the basal body temperature during the first half of a woman’s cycle will be lower than the second half, and ovulation is the moment of change between the two parts of the cycle, observed through a ‘dip and sharp rise’. However, the basal body temperature method does not give women advance warning of when ovulation will take place. Instead, it is often used to confirm ovulation or to give a general idea of when this takes place each month. Ovulation biosensing practices aim to address the temporal gap that emerges between trying to become pregnant and conception. This time is fraught with tensions and excitement as women and/or couples invest physically and emotionally in creating a pregnancy but do not know how long this may take or if they will succeed.
A Comparative History of Latvia and South Africa
Authors: Keahey Jennifer
Published: May 2024

This chapter presents a comparative history of development and change over the longue durée. It weaves between Latvian and South African history at pivotal moments in spacetime, with particular focus given to the historical processes of colonization, imperialism, and resistance. The chapter concludes with coverage of national independence and social transitions to democracy.
Jeta e Rrugës : Translocal On-Road Hustle, Within and from Albania
Authors: Levell Jade , Schwandner-Sievers Stephanie
Published: May 2024

This chapter aims explore the resemblances between Albanian ‘street life’ (jeta e rrugës) with life on-road in the United Kingdom. The salience of this proposed comparison is that the young people who took part in the research in Albania discussed being literally ‘on the roads’ as they experience international migration in adolescence, much of which involved journeys on both sides of the law in the respective countries. In drawing the comparisons between the hustle of the international ‘street life’ (jeta e rrugës) experienced by Albanian young people and the life ‘on-road’, we propose that some live the translocal on-road hustle. This chapter draws on original research findings derived from life-story interviews using music elicitation with young men in prisons and under probation supervision in the community. The authors conclude that the transnational aspect of Albanian street life is what distinguishes it from the UK on-road, which is conceptualised as more geographically localised.
The Visiting Mandate of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture
Authors: Evans Malcolm D.
Published: May 2024

Undertaking visits to places of detention sits at the heart of the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture. This chapter considers how the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has interpreted and applied its visiting mandate in practice, highlighting the practical problems it can face when seeking to do so. Since the visiting capacity of the SPT is inevitably limited, difficult issues which need to be addressed concern the size and shape of its visiting programme, the choice of countries to be visited and, in particular, the constraints that affect this, many of which are surprising in nature. The chapter also sets out how visits are prepared and announced, and discusses their ‘aftermath’, including the writing of reports and the confidential dialogue that results from them.
Working with Fictions
Authors: Evans Malcolm D.
Published: May 2024

This chapter argues that in order to prevent torture effectively, there is a need for greater honesty about the true nature and underlying causes of the problems which need to be addressed, and of the potential effectiveness of what is recommended. There is a tendency to assume – or work on the assumption – that things are the way we might like them to be, rather than the way we know they really are. This might include who in fact is exercising authority within places or detention, or over the detaining authorities; how ‘professional’ are professionals, including lawyers, medical staff and judges. In situations where things are not as they might seem, the standard ‘solutions’ are not ‘solutions’ at all, and putting then in place may offer a false reassurance, since such preventive safeguards may not be preventive at all.
‘Our Club, Our Community, Our Future’: Co-operation, Deindustrialization and Motherwell Football Club’s Journey to Community Ownership
Authors: Stewart David
Published: May 2024

This chapter argues that, by compelling workers to act in the interests of owners, customers and shareholders, work in hierarchical capitalist organizations frequently disconnects workers from their core values and from the communities in which they live. For workers, the result is a sense of estrangement from the self, and a weakening of social cohesion with both fellow worker and the wider community. In contrast to these experiences, it is argued that worker co-operatives can create opportunities for workers to reclaim and re-embed their values in the workplace and, through this, create work that is meaningful. Drawing on data collected from two worker co-operatives, the chapter will demonstrate how worker ownership and democratic member control can enable workers to cocreate meaningful work. In doing so it will show that meaning is derived not only through doing work that is good for the interests of society, but through the messy and ongoing process of negotiating and enacting environmental and social values. As such, worker ownership and democratic control are framed as both a precursor to, and core component of, meaningful work.
The Strange Death of Co-operative Britain? Comparing the Development of British Co-operation with Wider European Trends and Emerging Strategies for a 21st-Century Revival
Authors: Webster Anthony
Published: May 2024

For over half a century in the UK, awareness of the nature of cooperative enterprise and its ethical foundations has been fading. This is reflected not only in the retreat of co-operation as a distinctive social and economic movement in popular culture, but also in the paucity of coverage of the various co-operative business models in educational courses at schools and universities. This is in sharp contrast to the continuing popularity of cooperative enterprises in many European countries, where they still form an important part of the economic landscape. This chapter explores the reasons for this contrast and locates these not only in the commercial problems of consumer co-operation in the UK, but also the relative weakness of other forms of cooperative enterprise, a lack of political support and the absence of a clear strategy for the cooperative sector to work together in a collaborative way. This contrasts with many parts of Europe where a richer variety of co-operatives have had more success in working together, and greater political support has been evident. The chapter concludes by examining the scope for a renaissance of British co-operation, what might and is being learned from the European experience and which sectors offer the best prospects for a renewal of British co-operation.
Breath, Breathing and ‘Mum-Guilt’
Authors: Roberts Celia , Rasmussen Mary Lou , Allen Louisa , Williamson Rebecca
Published: May 2024

This chapter traces breath in mothers’ stories about bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic to contribute to a theorization of breath and breathing as feminist politics (Ahmed, 2010; Górska, 2018; Irigaray, 2004). Drawing on feminist new materialist thought that recognizes breath as intra-active phenomena (Barad, 2007; Górska, 2016), we configure breath as a mode reflection and attention to the material politics of living through crisis. We argue that breath is a material force that shapes lived experiences by materializing mother subjectivities that indicate inequalities around who bears responsibility for protecting children in crises. When the agency of the material world is acknowledged, smoky and virus-filled air eludes human control, leaving mothers to experience what one participant characterized as ‘mum-guilt’ over their ‘failure’ to prevent children’s exposure to the effects of smoke and COVID-19. A new materialist orientation to breath disrupts notions of human exceptionalism that scaffold notions of women having sole or primary control over the health and wellbeing of their (un)born children. Instead, women are recast as an inextricable part of a complex web of material relations where responsibility is materially distributed and not individually held. At a theoretical level at least, this conceptualization releases participants from ‘mum-guilt’ by recasting this responsibility to the world.
Smoke, Machines and Public Health
Authors: Roberts Celia , Rasmussen Mary Lou , Allen Louisa , Williamson Rebecca
Published: May 2024

During the bushfires, pregnant women were advised by public health authorities to avoid bushfire smoke because of its possible negative effects on foetal development. This chapter describes how our participants attempted to follow this advice by staying indoors, taping up windows and doors, purchasing air purifiers and monitoring air quality in their homes. We explore the rise of local citizen science projects that collated and shared air quality data, and ask what it meant for families to try to avoid the intense smoke and make decisions about their families’ health amid complex and rapidly changing information landscapes. We also describe the experience of escaping fire, and the significance of information sharing via social media, phone apps and radio during times of great danger. We show that being pregnant or parenting a newborn in these circumstances often created intense anxieties about exposures that were impossible to control. Such experiences, we argue, drawing on the work of Michelle Murphy (2013: np), expose the unequal distribution of risks that constitute life in climate crisis, and the need to collectively learn how to live with the ‘unchosen rearrangements of embodiments’ of the Pyrocene.
Homophobia, Hate Crime and Men’s Professional Football
Authors: Humphries Connor , Magrath Rory
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on English men’s professional football, which has traditionally been a hostile environment for sexual minorities. Gay male footballers, or even those suspected of being gay, have been excluded, marginalized and subordinated from the game by men attempting to (re)prove and (re)establish their heteromasculinity. Over the past two decades, however, attitudes towards homosexuality have seen a marked improvement in the United Kingdom and, indeed, across much of the Western world. While there remain claims that sport – and men’s football in particular – is slower to adopt social change, a significant body of research has documented how football is becoming increasingly acceptant and inclusive of homosexuality. In this chapter, we outline some of this research before examining some of the ongoing issues with respect to homophobia in the professional game – paying particular attention to Kick It Out’s annual reporting statistics, which include reports of discrimination based on homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.
Prosecuting Hate Crime in Football
Authors: Hawkins Nick
Published: May 2024

Professional football has attracted large crowds since its inception in the 19th century. It has also had players from different cultures, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientation. Few would argue that players, or indeed spectators, should go to stadia and be subjected to behaviour that would not be tolerated, either morally or legally, in other places. Yet that is exactly what happens on a weekly basis, with many abusive fans describing their behaviour as just ‘banter’ and those who challenge them as the ‘fun police’, whereas a more accurate description is ‘hate crime’. This chapter examines the prosecution approach to tackling hate crime in football. It starts by looking at hate crime generally and the football context specifically. The respective roles of the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts are considered as well as their interplay. The history of hate crime in football in the 19th and 20th centuries is examined, as it explains the genesis of the legislation used to tackle violence and disorder in football. An overview of the scale and breadth of the problem in hate crime is provided by considering events from 2000 to 2020. The chapter looks in detail at the key legislation in place at the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 and how policies and guidance have been developed for prosecutors, in partnership with the police. The two leading cases, on football banning orders (Gough v Chief Constable of Derbyshire) and Section 3 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 (Director of Public Prosecutions v Stoke on Trent Magistrates’ Court), are examined along with cases from the lower courts reported in the media. It is argued that while the legislation is robust, problems with hate crime persist. Also, the current legislation and regulations, which have been strengthened post COVID-19, and the prosecution police and guidance are assessed. The chapter concludes that while much has been achieved, there is much still to be done – and there is no room for complacency.
Situating the Research
Authors: Gibbs Nick
Published: May 2024

Chapter 2 introduces the various field sites that were researched as part of this book. First, a picture of the physical location which played host to the researcher’s traditional ethnographic fieldwork – ‘Potsford’ – is vividly painted. This insight encompasses Potsford’s ‘myopic provincialism’, its rich industrial heritage, contemporary decline, and apparent penchant for strength sports. On a micro level, the two gyms studied – Muscle Sanctuary and Predator Gym – are then evocatively described, before the online field sites of Facebook and Instagram are laid out. Ultimately, this chapter serves to situate the research and introduce the reader to the main places and actors that feature so prominently in the book.
Instrumentality, Competitiveness, and Hyper-conformity
Authors: Gibbs Nick
Published: May 2024

Building out from Chapter 4’s psychoanalytic foundations, this chapter examines the instrumental reasons why the sample used IPEDs to build their bodies. First, the role of competitive sporting activity is considered as a driver of consumption, and the underlying competitive individualist mindset present among the men under study is interrogated. Following this, the utility of attaining a muscular enhanced body for professionals working in the health and fitness industry, particularly personal training and online coaching, is investigated. This analysis is contextualized within the post-industrial political economy of Potsford and an argument is advanced that IPED consumption ought to be viewed as a means of hyper-conformity to the edicts of late-capitalist accumulation, particularly given the precarious nature of many roles in the sector. Ultimately, the chapter concludes that both the sporting context of consumption and the insecure local health and fitness economy represent ‘dopogenic environments’.
The Offline IPED Marketplace
Authors: Gibbs Nick
Published: May 2024

Chapter 9 offers an analysis of the local IPED market in Potsford. First, the sanctity of peer networks and informal contacts in the hardcore fitness community for those seeking to purchase IPEDs is highlighted, as the traditional ‘partial’ market is conceptualized as a space that requires a requisite amount of bodily and cultural capital to enter. As such, the chapter identifies the barriers that are deliberately erected to preclude those who lack the cultural embeddedness required to engage in the local market, which typically takes place in gyms, users’ and sellers’ homes, and through mutual acquaintances. This dynamic is exemplified through a case study of an amateur bodybuilder named Dom and the underground laboratory Astra. Dom’s connection to this UGL ultimately facilitated a number of other men’s purchasing, and the chapter argues that such a relationship is highly mutually beneficial for user and supplier alike.
The IPED Market in Transition: Commercialization, Normalization, and Digitization
Authors: Gibbs Nick
Published: May 2024

Chapter 10 seeks to track some recent shifts in the IPED market, centring on the interconnected processes of commercialization, normalization, and digitization. First, the increased profitability of UGL ownership, propelled by new-found direct-to-end user sales, is explored. Evidence of increased animosity and intra-lab rivalries is presented in a formerly amicable marketplace. This change is contextualized in relation to an influx of ‘market-oriented’ profit-driven dealers, intent on cashing in on the burgeoning customer base. Following this, the mainstreaming of the IPED market, stimulated by an increase in lifestyle use as well as the removal of many cultural barriers to supply, is examined. The chapter argues that this development has allowed many less culturally embedded users, who would otherwise lack the necessary peer networks, to purchase AAS and other substances. Ultimately, the chapter presents something of a chicken and egg problem, as it remains unclear whether an increase in lifestyle use has fed the expansion of the online market, or whether the ease with which substances can be purchased has encouraged consumption in a wider demographic of users.
Africa and US–China Rivalry: Between Webs and Bases
Authors: Benabdallah Lina
Published: May 2024

The rivalry between the US and China has expanded beyond the borders of either state to include competing for influence abroad. In the past, great power rivalry played out in both constructive and destructive ways in the Global South. However, the starting point of this chapter is that in order to understand the extent to which US–China rivalry impacts Africa in negative or positive ways, it is important to unpack the main areas and tools of influence that China has advantage over the US in. This chapter focuses its analysis on party-to-party diplomacy as an area of China’s foreign policy making in Africa, which is characterized by a relational approach centering mechanisms of social/human capital and professional network-building. This relational, network-building, approach is one of the fundamental differences between China’s approach in Africa and that of the US. The latter’s presence in the continent has mostly been focused on counterterrorism efforts while China has invested in relations with elites, government officials, and civil servants. Even more, as scholars of relationality and guanxi have argued, building social capital and putting a premium on expanding personal and professional networks between Chinese elites and their African counterparts are vital to understanding both the advantages and pitfalls of Chinese foreign policy making in Africa. Taking into account the global picture of China–Africa relations and building on robust scholarly work done in the field, this chapter starts from the observation that China’s presence (its influence and power) in Africa comes not only from Chinese investments in physical infrastructure buildings (as seen in the construction of ports, parliaments, and presidential palaces) but that it is also produced and manufactured through the creation of platforms for exchanging expertise which also serve as elite capture mechanisms.
Introduction: Why We Need to Rethink Approaches to Open Justice in the Criminal Courts
Authors: Townend Judith , Welsh Lucy
Published: May 2024

This first chapter introduces the book’s focal theme: the principle and practice of open justice in criminal courts in what is often characterised as the ‘digital age’. That is, the way in which court hearings and information about cases are made publicly accessible in the context of digital and technological advances in the 21st century, and the relationship to principles of transparency, access to justice and accountability.
The authors introduce recent developments in open justice policy and technology in England and Wales that raise, they contend, neglected practical and ideological issues relating to access to justice, individuals’ privacy, and public access to information.As well as setting out the authors’ methodological approach and the core themes of participatory accountability and transparency, the chapter explains why the book pays particular attention to the functioning and scrutiny of the Magistrates’ courts within the criminal justice system.
Conclusion: Towards a New Framework for Justice System Accountability
Authors: Townend Judith , Welsh Lucy
Published: May 2024

In Chapter Six, the book concludes by arguing for a broad approach to open justice that recognises the importance of public participation in a model of justice system accountability and does not wholly rely on the news media as a proxy for transparency.The authors suggest implementing more nuanced and evidence-based approaches to open justice that respond to advances in digital technologies and, in doing so, also attempt to lessen systemic and individualistic harms, including stigmatisation. Recommendations centre on widening public interest court reporting, improving justice data availability and accountability, and increasing resources and investment in the facilitation of public access.
Such an approach prioritises public legal education and access to justice, as well as effective scrutiny of the criminal justice system. The authors contend that the practical application of open justice demands regular scrutiny and debate, to take account of changes in the way that society and the courts work. Overall, their work demonstrates how the principle can be effectively dissected, by attending to the practical realities of its application, and by testing its objectives through socio-legal research.
Women and the Structural Violence of ‘Fast-Fashion’ Global Production: Victimisation, Poorcide and Environmental Harms
Authors: Hewamanne Sandya , South Nigel
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores how the profit motivation of private corporations and the demand for cheap goods from Western consumers result in environmental damage while furthering the oppression of marginalised women in the Global South. Specifically focusing on global assembly line workers in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the chapter investigates how the adverse effects of environmental damage, unregulated labour conditions and resultant disasters are disproportionately borne by poor women and how this is intimately connected to the lower socioeconomic status of women in these particular contexts. When the relentless pursuit of neoliberal forms of development endangers the lived environment, the consequences are experienced alongside already existing inequalities. Highlighting the Rana Plaza disaster of 2011 in Bangladesh and the aftermath, as well as everyday environmental degradation related to global production in both countries, the chapter argues that any public policy initiative to prevent or reverse environmental damage should take an intersectional approach that foregrounds the gendered and classed ways of experiencing the natural world.