On board French imperial liners: Four transformative shades of intimacy in the Age of Steam

Research on men’s sexual violence against women has focused on individual- and peer-level contributors of sexual violence, with comparatively less focus on broader social contributors. Using four focus groups with a total of 29 Canadian heterosexual university men and a form of discourse analysis, we moved beyond this common focus. In particular, we examined how participants talked about sexual behaviors in intimate relationships and the dominant social norms or discourses about heterosexuality that they used. Participants’ conversations constructed a dominant version of heterosexuality that is male-centered and may support sexual violence. Specifically, they suggested that men have a higher and uncontrollable sex drive; that heterosexual initiation and progression occur naturally and without (men’s) verbal communication; and that men misinterpret women’s ineffective communication and this miscommunication causes sexual violence. They positioned these heterosexuality practices and dynamics as biologically determined and as generally the same across occasions and people. Some men did challenge male-centered and sexual violence-supportive discourses with varying degrees of success at shifting the conversation. Our results have important implications and highlight the need to encourage men’s critical engagement with alternative discourses about heterosexuality that do not support sexual violence and that privilege both women’s and men’s sexuality.

Ten years later: Satisfaction with intimate relationships and parenthood of young people aging out of residential care

This study examines perceptions of changes in intimate relationships among partnered, immigrant women in New York City during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We pay close attention to how structural oppression, particularly related to undocumented immigration status, shaped women's experiences with their intimate partners during a period of social upheaval. COVID-19 has exacerbated many existing structural inequities and subsequent stressors that have been shown to have an adverse effect on intimate relationships, including increased economic instability and mental health distress. Immigrant women may be particularly vulnerable to relationship strain because of intersecting social and structural inequities. We draw on in-depth, semi-structured interviews among a heterogenous sample of 22 women with varied legal status from Latin America, South and East Asia, and the Middle East. Findings reveal three primary pathways through which structural inequities shaped women's experiences with intimate partnership strain, including financial and material scarcity; uneven caregiving burdens; and constrained access to support in situations of violence and abuse. Our analysis demonstrates ways that structural inequity, particularly driven by exclusionary immigration laws, influence intimate partner relationships through the legal status of immigrant women. Understanding how structural oppression shapes immigrant partnerships is essential for the field of family demography and for family-serving professionals in referring clients to resources and services, as well as helping women explore sources of resilience and coping within their families and communities.

The Dongtan kidnapping and murder case, which occurred on May 12th, is a prime example of how the victim was left unprotected due to inadequate police response despite repeated reports and accusations. This case not only exposes the structural limitations of Korea's domestic violence response system, but also vividly demonstrates how intimate relationships, domestic violence, and stalking can ultimately lead to the victim's death or murder. Women account for the overwhelming majority of victims of intimate partner violence and murder, both in Korea and globally. According to UN data, 140 women were murdered every day in 2023 alone by intimate partners, including family members, spouses, ex-spouses, lovers, and ex-lovers. According to South Korea's homicide statistics, which have been more detailed since 2023, 192 murders occurred in 2023 alone, involving spouses, partners, and romantic partners. Meanwhile, the Korea Women's Hotline, based on media reports, estimated that at least 181 women were murdered by their male partners in intimate relationships, such as spouses or lovers, in 2024, a big increase by 31.2% from 138 in 2023. These figures demonstrate that violence against women is a common and recurring phenomenon, transcending simple interpersonal conflicts and becoming a structural problem rooted in gender-discriminatory social structures and cultural practices. The UN also attributes femicide to harmful social norms, such as discriminatory attitudes and practices toward women and girls, imbalanced power relations, and prejudiced gender role stereotypes. Therefore, the UN and relevant scholars assert that violence and murder in intimate relationships, such as spouses or lovers, are not inevitable phenomena, but rather crimes that can be entirely prevented through social, cultural, and legal interventions. So, what social, cultural, and legal issues are present in the response systems for dating, stalking, and domestic violence in intimate relationships? What social, cultural, and legal improvements can we identify to address these issues? This paper raises the following questions: First, based on a general analysis of violence and murder in intimate relationships, is legislation addressing stalking crimes in intimate relationships, such as dating violence and domestic violence, necessary as a prerequisite for improving the response system from a social, cultural, and legal perspective? Second, as seen in the two fatal cases involving victims in Korea, including the “Dongtan kidnapping and murder,” what caused the victims to fail to seek police assistance despite their requests, ultimately leading to their deaths? Third, based on the analysis of these fatal cases, we examine the problems in responding to intimate partner violence, stalking, and domestic violence, as well as overseas legislative precedents. Based on these findings, what legislative and policy improvements are available to prevent and eradicate “femicide” in intimate partner relationships? Consequently, this paper proposes the following as “improvement measures for the response system to dating violence, stalking, and domestic violence, based on an analysis of cases of violence and murder in intimate relationships.” First, we should include dating relationships within the scope of domestic violence regulations. Second, introduce a special provision for mandatory arrest for flagrant offenders and establish criteria for judging mutual assault. Third, establish a provision prohibiting coercive dating. Fourth, introduce a GPS electronic monitoring system to proactively recognize stalking crimes. Fifth, eliminate the requirement for non-punishment without consent and improve risk assessment. In particular, for the “special provision for mandatory arrest for flagrant offenders” to be effective, several institutional improvements are necessary, and among them, eliminating the provision for non-punishment without consent should be a top pr

Accepting the philosophical premise that numbers exist, as per Quine (1948), is ontologically different to accepting that numbers have a fixed reality. This differential is the essence of the reality of numbers as they are applied to indigenous populations. In First World colonised nations such as Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada and the United States, the question is not just 'are these numbers real', but also 'how are these numbers deployed and whom do they serve'. The reality query is not of the numbers themselves but of what they purport to portray. Numbers, configured as population or population sample data, are not neutral entities. Rather, social and population statistics are better understood as human artefacts, imbued with meaning. And, in their current configurations, the meanings re.fleeted in statistics are primarily drawn from the dominant social norms, values and racial hierarchy of the society in which they are created. As such, in colonising nation-states, statistics applied to indigenous peoples have a raced reality that is perpetuated and normalised through their creation and re-creation (Walter 2010; Walter & Andersen 2013). The numerical format of these statistics and their seemingly neutral presentation, however, elide their social, cultural and racial dimensions. In a seemingly unbroken circle, dominant social norms, values and racial understandings determine statistical construction and interpretations, which then shape perceptions of data needs and purpose, which then determine statistical construction and interpretation, and so on. Just as important is that the accepted persona of statistics on indigenous people operates to conceal what is excluded: the culture, interests, perspectives and alternative narratives of those they purport to represent-indigenous peoples. This chapter investigates how Australia's racial terrain permeates statistics on Indigenous Australians. I examine the shape and context of these statistics as currently 'done' in Australia (Walter & Andersen 2013) and also the absences-how they are 'not done'. Within this, I interrogate the construction and dissemination of the contemporary Australian statistical Indigene and its wider social and cultural contexts and consequences. The chapter also challenges researchers to consider how reversing the analytical lens to generate data conceptualised through an Indigenous methodological framework might alter the narrative, concepts, discourse and, ultimately, policy directions of Indigenous Australia.

Power inequalities originating from capitalist patriarchy are having an impact on and even determining our personal relationships: gender, class and ethnic inequality are consistently present in our intimate ties as well (Ridgeway 2009). For socially mobile individuals from lower classes, one of the main costs of moving between social classes is to exist in the complex conflict that arises from distancing from the social class of origin in order to integrate into new social spaces (Bourdieu 2005, Friedman 2016). These internal conflicts that are caused by broadened social structures are also present not just in the difficulty of finding a desired romantic partner (Durst at al. 2014) but in the process of sustaining an intimate relationship with someone from a particular social background as well. Structural inequalities are also determinative factors in partner selection, education homogamy and ethnic homogamy are highly present in society (Kamijn 1993, 1998, 2010, Kang Fu 2001). In this paper, through analysing narratives of educationally upwardly mobile women in Hungary, regarding intimate partner selection and looking at intimate relationships themselves, I aim to discover how their narratives reflect upon the hidden costs of mobility. I show how gender, education and ethnic inequalities emerge through the personal accounts of their mobility experiences and to what extent these inequalities determine the process of finding a desired partner or sustaining an existing intimate relationship.

Introducing ‘Intimate Civility’: Towards a New Concept for 21st-Century Relationships

This paper critically examines the experiences of women in heterosexual intimate relationships. It aims to understand how women negotiate social structures of family, marriage choice, and community through intimate relationships. Young women are challenging gendered power relations, traditional family structures, and marriage norms in their everyday lives. By this, women challenge the old structures of patriarchy, caste system, and control of their sexuality. A qualitative research design using in-depth interviews with 12 working women in the age group of 25–30 years who were in intimate relationships was conducted. The study was based in Delhi and done over two months in 2019. Women were selected through snowball sampling. Narrative analysis has been used to evaluate women’s experiences in intimate relationships. The narratives show the struggles and negotiations that women do for love and how these struggles are becoming a way of challenging various structures like patriarchy, caste, class, and religion. Women choose their life partners or arrange for their love marriage. Still, the choice of the partner and the idea of marriage are influenced by the broader patriarchal, caste, and class structures. The women in this study have been able to move beyond the traditional norm of arranged marriage but have still not taken the leap of choice free of the broader institutions of caste, class, and family. The paper concludes by emphasising that although women choose their heterosexual partners for marriage, their choices are still influenced by their caste, class, and patriarchal structures.

Globalization and immigration have changed American suburbs both socially and spatially. In Fremont, California, a suburb of Silicon Valley, neighbourhoods that were once primarily the domain of single-family tract homes and white, middle- and upper-middle-class residents have given way to high-income Asian immigrant families and custom-built “McMansions”. While most scholars advocate strict regulation of these properties, this paper questions the seeming mechanistic neutrality of the design reviews, guidelines, and development standards used to regulate large-home development. In an analysis of Fremont's pro- and anti-McMansion debates and McMansion policies, this paper argues that design guidelines and development standards often employ dominant social and cultural norms about “good” and “appropriate” design. Planning and design professionals, public processes, and policies tended to privilege established, white residents' values and meanings for their homes and neighbourhoods, while marginalizing those of many middle- and upper-middle-class Chinese immigrants. The paper shows how dominant social and cultural norms regarding the proper use and design of suburban space are often reinforced through planning, design, and public policy, and shape the built environment as well as non-white residents' sense of place and belonging in it, even for those of means.

This study draws on old and well-established evidence that economic change, and especially recession, affects people's lives, behavior and mental health. Even though the literature is rich on the relationship between unemployment and mental distress, there is a renewed research interest on the link between socio-economic inequalities and psychological health. The study investigates the relationship of social class with mental distress during the hard times of persistent and severe economic crisis in Greece by conducting a comparative, community study in the country's second largest city, Thessaloniki. A face-to-face structured interview covering living conditions, life events, chronic stressors and coping strategies was employed to 300 residents of socio-economically contrasting neighborhood areas. Social class was operationalized by Erik Olin Wright's social class position typology, based on ownership and control over productive assets. The method of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was also applied to analyze the collected data. The results indicated that mental distress was significantly differentiated across social classes and in each residential area. Unemployed and unskilled workers were the most vulnerable groups in terms of psychological health. Chronic stress arose in this study as a risk factor for poor mental health outcomes and it was associated to low marital quality, intense economic burden and impoverished housing conditions. Those who face income loss, job loss and disability are at high risk for poverty and marginalization, suffering from greater psychological distress.

Social stratification is the classification of people into classes that can be arranged in stages. Social stratification can also be referred to as layers between communities that classify individuals and groups who have differences. Vertical hierarchical classification of society resulted in the emergence of social classes so that the terms upper social class, middle class, and lower class emerged. This research will examine (1) how social stratification is described in the snowpiercer movie and also (2) what is the impact of social class classification in the snowpiercer movie. The research method used in this study is the qualitative method. By using the snowpiercer movie as the main data used in research studies. Based on the results of the study it was concluded that 1) the picture of social stratification that occurs in the snowpiercer movie leads to the division of social classes based on the economic status of eternal train passengers. Where people who have money will enter as first-class passengers with an upper social class and live in luxury while those who do not have money will become occupants of the rear carriage with a low social class and live in hardship. 2) The impact of this social class division is the occurrence of conflict turmoil that occurs from the lower social classes against the upper social classes or often known as class struggle. The underclass as the oppressed who try to get a good life by carrying out a revolutionary movement as a form of protest against existing differences.Keyword: social stratification, social class

This qualitative study, framed by social identity theory, examines how self-identified vegans and vegetarians negotiate diet-related social norm conflicts within their social networks. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews with 18- to 58-year-old vegans and vegetarians who represented five nationalities were analysed inductively through thematic analysis. According to the results, social norm conflicts occurred in contexts where tense family relations or boundaries between in-group and out-group were salient. The results also show that in order to manage norm conflict situations, the interviewees used strategies towards the dominant social norms, such as adapting, challenging, and weakening. In particular, adapting to the dominant social norms was used in relationships that were not close, whereas challenging and weakening were used within close relationships. The interviewees had developed practical solutions to resolve social norm conflicts, such as eating what was served, actively providing information, or acting as an example to others. The results enhance understanding of the challenges entailed by practising vegan or vegetarian diet in an omnivorous society.

Young people today grow up in a social landscape in which digital technology and social media are ubiquitous in daily life and interpersonal relations, including intimate (romantic and sexual) relationships. This study sought to study Filipino young people’s relationship motivations and contexts in the digital age. We found that digital technology and social media are transforming the way Filipino young people approach and behave in intimate relationships. Digital technology and social media are making it easier for young people to engage in social comparison with their peers and role models, expanding possibilities for social interaction, facilitating rapid relationship progression, and enabling digital togetherness and self-expression in a context where conservative religious and sociocultural norms and sexual double standards remain dominant. This social environment brings opportunities to engage in relationships in new ways but also exposure to risks that may lead to poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Our findings underscore the importance of comprehensive sexuality education in schools and at home, and highlight the need for critical dialogue about the social norms and stereotypes that perpetuate gender-based violence and inequality in online and offline spaces.

The paper examines early Daoism through the lens of marginalism, defining it as a philosophical movement that developed on the margins of the dominant social and intellectual currents of ancient China. In the context of the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), Daoism offered an alternative perspective on social organization, governance, and human existence in contrast to the dominant Confucian and Legalist ideas. By analyzing the values promoted by early Daoism – which often stand in opposition to those upheld by the ruling Confucian ideology – the paper demonstrates how Daoist concepts positioned Daoism in opposition to rigid dominant social norms and institutionalized power. It also explores the social structure from which Daoism emerged, with particular emphasis on individuals from the social margins who rejected the prevailing social order. Early Daoism, which entered Chinese society from its periphery, offered innovative perspectives and served as a form of rebellion against dominant social values and norms. Over the centuries that followed, Daoism played a significant role in shaping Chinese history, culture, medicine, and society.

BackgroundViolence is a critical public health problem associated with compromised health and social suffering that are preventable. The Centre for Global Health and Health Equity organized a forum in 2014 to identify: (1) priority issues related to violence affecting different population groups in Canada, and (2) strategies to take action on priority issues to reduce violence-related health inequities in Canada. In this paper, we present findings from the roundtable discussions held at the Forum, offer insights on the socio-political implications of these findings, and provide recommendations for action to reduce violence through research, policy and practice.MethodsOver 60 academic researchers, health and social service agency staff, community advocates and graduate students attended the daylong Forum, which included presentations on structural violence, community violence, gender-based violence, and violence against marginalized groups. Detailed notes taken at the roundtables were analyzed by the first author using a thematic analysis technique.FindingsThe thematic analysis identified four thematic areas: 1) structural violence perpetuates interpersonal violence - the historical, social, political and economic marginalization that contributes to personal and community violence. 2) social norms of gender-based violence—the role of dominant social norms in perpetuating the practice of violence, especially towards women, children and older adults; 3) violence prevention and mitigation programs—the need for policy and programming to address violence at the individual/interpersonal, community, and societal levels; and 4) research gaps—the need for comprehensive research evidence made up of systematic reviews, community-based intervention and evaluation of implementation research to identify effective programming to address violence.ConclusionsThe proceedings from the Global Health and Health Equity Forum underscored the importance of recognizing violence as a public health issue that requires immediate and meaningful communal and structural investment to break its historic cycles. Based on our thematic analysis and literature review, four recommendations are offered: (1) Support and adopt policies to prevent or reduce structural violence; (2) Adopt multi-pronged strategies to transform dominant social norms associated with violence; (3) Establish standards and ensure adequate funding for violence prevention programs and services; and (4) Fund higher level ecological research on violence prevention and mitigation.