Binary Narratives Research Articles

“Don't Touch!”: The Role of Cultural Knowledge in Low‐SES Parents' Perceptions of Museums

Museums can provide valuable benefits for children, but children from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds are less likely to have exposure to such institutions. We draw on interviews with 52 low‐SES parents to explore how perceptions of museums influence whether parents would consider bringing their children there. Respondents express a clear preference for enriching activities for their children. However, our findings reveal a tension between this general desire and parents' impressions of what museums are and how their children will experience them. We illustrate how limited familiarity with museums produces a circumscribed view of the range of experiences available at different kinds of museums and influences parents' perceptions of their child‐appropriateness, thus demonstrating the role of class‐based cultural knowledge in shaping the choices parents make about out‐of‐school activities. Our findings complicate the binary narrative that attributes parental investments to either preferences or resources and highlights how cultural knowledge about such activities may contribute to social inequality. The study also offers insights for cultural institutions that wish to attract a more socioeconomically diverse base of visitors.

The Cold War History of Wheat Flour in South Korea, 1945–1960: the Discourse of Corruption and the April Revolution of 1960

ABSTRACT One way that the United States conducted the Cold War was through its surplus food programmes (Public Law 480), which fed the hungry and supported anticommunist regimes. Consequently, South Koreans consumed over fourteen times more wheat flour by 1960 than during the preceding Japanese colonial period. This study presents a nuanced exploration of 1950s South Korea, using wheat flour — a central commodity in US aid — as a focal point to unravel complex political dynamics. It challenges the traditional binary narrative of authoritarianism versus liberalism, demonstrating how the Rhee regime’s promotion of wheat flour consumption reflected multifaceted strategies of corruption. This article underscores the unintended consequences of US aid, highlighting the intricate interactions between foreign assistance and local political, economic and social forces. By analysing the local responses to wheat flour distribution, it reveals how US aid, while aimed at bolstering anticommunism, inadvertently facilitated corruption and influenced public sentiment.

Exploring Mercosur‐EU interregionalism: A multifaceted analysis of its past, present and future functions and dynamics

AbstractThis article provides an analysis of the relationship between the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) and the European Union (EU) focusing on its purposes and functions, by exploring the literature on interregionalism through the perspectives of three distinct schools of thought: neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism and constructivism. Considering the functions theoretically fed by these theories behind interregional relations‐balancing, institution‐building and collective identity‐building‐, the paper attempts at providing a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing the past and current purposes and functions of Mercosur‐EU relations and holds the potential to anticipate future trends. Our central argument underscores the enduring relevance of the setting of rules and norms and the focus on material gains in shaping the core of the relationship, particularly regarding the trade agreement, while the ideational function of sharing collective identity and values has experienced certain erosion. Nevertheless, increasingly crucial will be the geopolitical purpose, concerning balancing and counterbalancing external actors, given the current era of geopolitical upheaval where binary narratives fall short. We are not concerned with forecasting the future of the relationship as a whole; instead, we aim to analyse which functions will hold greater significance.

From polarity to plurality: Perceptions of COVID-19 and policy measures in England and Scotland.

The aim of this study was to uncover perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic and the responses implemented by the UK and Scottish Governments to help control the spread of infection. Such understanding could help to inform future responses to pandemics at individual, community and national levels. Q methodology was used to elicit perspectives from people in England and Scotland with different experiences of the pandemic including public health officials, key workers, those on furlough, those who were unvaccinated or vaccinated to different levels, those who were 'shielding' because they were at higher risk and people with different scientific expertise. Participants rank-ordered phrases about different aspects of COVID-19 according to their viewpoint. Factor analysis was then conducted in conjunction with interview material from the same respondents. A four-factor solution was statistically supported and was interpretable alongside the qualitative accounts of participants loading on these factors. These four perspectives are titled Dangerous and Unaccountable Leadership, Fear and Anger at Policy and Public responses, Governing Through a Crisis and Injustices Exposed. The four perspectives demonstrate plurality and nuance in views on COVID-19 and the associated policies and restrictions, going beyond a binary narrative that has been apparent in popular and social media. The four perspectives include some areas of common ground, as well as disagreement. We argue that understanding the detail of different perspectives might be used to build cohesion around policy initiatives in future. The development of the statement set, which is rank-ordered by participants in a Q study, and factor interpretations were informed by views of the general public. The statement set was initially developed using existing publicly available material based on members of the general public experiencing the pandemic first hand. It was then piloted with members of the public experiencing different challenges as a result of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown and updated based on feedback. Finally, interpretations of the identified factors were presented publicly and edited according to their feedback.

Situated belonging as everyday practice in a semi-public Youth Living Room for undocumented young city dwellers

ABSTRACT This article discusses how everyday practices in a day shelter for undocumented youth interfere with binary narratives of belonging versus non-belonging. Tapping into scholarship on a home in the face of displacement and marginalization, this article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in the so-called ‘Youth Living Room’ in Amsterdam. Caught up in migration management, the undocumented young people present here experience structural exclusion and are cut off from welfare arrangements in the Netherlands. But while their precarious situation was reinforced even further under COVID-19 measures, in the Youth Living Room, undocumented youths engaged in mundane practices that incited feelings of belonging. In the absence of a house and faced with the closure of public space, the Youth Living Room as a semi-public place accommodated ‘homemaking practices’. These homemaking practices, I argue, attest to the complexities of belonging and rather suggest alternative orderings to a dichotomized politics of belonging; this paper shows that homemaking practices in this semi-public shelter alert us to the inherent situatedness of being at home in society. Situated belonging then challenges our political imagination to ask what collective practices of homemaking we want to engage in.

Honoring the Ancestors and Creator

Abstract Contemporary feminist scholars problematize the difficulties of creating meaningful political alliances between Indigenous and diasporic communities in settler states such as Canada and the United States. This essay uses a relational framework to trace how two feminist artists, one Indigenous and one diasporic, creatively resist the ongoing and uneven conditions of settler colonial capitalism. The essay examines artwork by Tannis Nielsen, a midcareer Indigenous artist with Métis, Anishnawbe, and Danish ancestry, and Rosa Sungjoo Park, an emerging diasporic Korean artist with landed status in Canada. Taken together, the artists’ works offer fruitful opportunities to think through difficult questions about power, history, and representation on Turtle Island. Both Nielsen and Park engage “pedagogies of the Sacred” to honor ancestral traditions and spiritual practices while disrupting binary narratives of tradition vs. modernity. I contend that their creative use of digital media draws on lived experience, embodied knowledge, and spirituality to refuse colonialism’s hyper-individualism and imagine alternative worlds.

Mexican social vulnerability as a sociological fact

The article aimed to construct a sociological interpretation about the relevance of the concept of social vulnerability, where social inequality, as a narrative, generally leads to highlighting the relevance of State institutions in the realization of citizen rights. But as a binary narrative, it forces us to include in the interpretation social behaviors organized by various beliefs derived from values, whose resonance is expressed in the mass media. In response to these arguments, it was decided to study the Mexican binary narrative in general to interpret some social behaviors recorded in the press

Gendering and Constructing Violence in Ellen McLaughlin's Ajax in Iraq

Objective: This study examines the reality of women soldiers’ violence in Ellen McLaughlin’s Ajax in Iraq and argues that women soldiers—like men—can be perpetrators of violence.
 Methods: The study is conducted in light of Judith Butler’s concept of performativity as theorized in her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). In relation to Butler’s theorization, which assumes that gender is a social construct, the characters’ violent acts and behaviors are analyzed in order to explore men and women soldiers’ violence. 
 Results: The study shows that the behaviors of the female soldier in the play go beyond the binary narrative of gender performance as well as the social construction of violence. This portrayal of violent acts suggests that acts of violence are de-gendered and that both men and women can be both victims and perpetrators of violence.
 Conclusions: The study concludes that acts of violence of military women are re-gendered and de-constructed through women’s performance in the play. It also shows that women soldiers’ behaviors are affected by women’s cultural and social environments, a situation which indicates that the binary system of understanding violence fuels inequality between the genders.

POPULARIZATION OF SCIENCE FICTION: FORMULA ANALYSIS ON ELLE McNICOLL’S NOVEL SHOW US WHO YOU ARE

This research is the formula analysis of popularization of science fiction in representing the neurodivergent character, Cora, in Show Us Who You Are. The novel, exposes the female autistic who would be the next hologram creation of Pomegranate’s experimentation. The method used in this study is an inductive-qualitative approach with comprehensive data collection and analysis that generate arguments and critical thinking. The material object used is the novel Show Us Who You Are written by Elle McNicoll, while the formal object is the formula put forward by Raymond Williams about conventions and inventions in the science fiction genre. The combination of science fiction and middle grade makes Elle McNicoll's work unique in reconstructing the romanticization of neurodivergent character from the neurodivergent perspective. Thus, these innovations are presented in various formulas which deconstruct the binary narrative through feminist critique in soft SF formed by the author in the delivery of an inclusive neurodiversity movement.

차이나메디컬보드(CMB)와 한국 의학연구 지원체계의 변화

Foreign aid has had critical impact on the development of Korean medicine since liberation in 1945. In particular, U.S. aid to Korean medical education, represented by the Minnesota Project, is often marked as a major turning point from Japanese-style to American-style medical education in Korea. However, there has been limited analysis of research, which has been a key function of medical schools and their affiliated hospitals. This paper examines the establishment of a system of medical research support in South Korea in the 1970s, focusing on the case of the China Medical Board (CMB). It explores how donor agencies transferred responsibility and authority to Korean counterparts through policy called matching-fund, and how this exit strategy affected the funding and utilization of medical research in Korea. As a backdrop to this policy shift, this study also examine the geopolitical context of U.S. aid policy shifts in the 1970s to show how aid was not only introduced but also exited in shaping the Korean medical research system. The case of the China Medical Board shows how a private aid organization formulated and implemented an exit strategy in the macro geopolitical context of the Nixon Doctrine and changes in U.S. foreign aid policy, and in the process shaped the Korean medical research funding system and its own efforts to secure funding. Rather than a binary narrative of aid versus post-aid, examining the accumulation and manifestation of Korean actors’ own experiences in foreign donor-driven decision-making provides an opportunity to look more critically at the process of shaping the contemporary Korean medical research funding system.

The ‘government of men’: Moving beyond Foucault’s binaries

Recent controversies surrounding Michel Foucault suggest tensions and unresolved issues in his unfinished work. Here we interrogate Foucault’s legacy in relation to his claim that the welfare-state is a secularization of the Christian pastorate. We challenge Foucault’s binary narrative of the Christian flock versus the Graeco-Roman citizen and expand the focus to other ‘technologies of power’ in medieval Islam. Rather than an outburst of governmentality in modernity, we suggest a transregional and longue durée history of which the Christian pastorate was merely one facet. This non-binary framework indicates that Foucault’s claim of a ‘demonic’ fusion of sovereign and pastoral power in modern politics requires significant revisitation. Finally, we claim that Foucault’s much-discussed fascination with neoliberalism may have roots in this one-sided narrative regarding the birth of the welfare-state.

A Call for Self-criticism in Defending Values: From Human Rights in China to the War in Ukraine

From the beginning of the Russian invasion, Western countries have rallied behind Ukraine and the war narrative of defending democracy against authoritarianism. Nevertheless, this binary narrative has been of limited appeal to developing countries and authors have discussed how the revival of great power competition around this narrative risks reinforcing the democratic decline. Considering these limitations, how can the academic community work to counteract a return to the kind of binary thinking that has been reanimated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine? To answer this question, I draw a parallel between responses to the war in Ukraine and how Western countries are handling the issue of human rights in China, including the emergence of a binary narrative that pits Chinese against Western visions of these rights. I argue that Western countries’ lack of self-reflectivity in defending values has hindered a genuine engagement with their own weaknesses. These weaknesses have thus been exploited by authoritarian countries. As democracy - like human rights - has been invoked as much to question oppression as to legitimate the status quo and economic interests, there is a need for scholars to scientifically engage with the geopolitical motives for defending values. We should not shy away from such research because of fears of instrumentalisation by authoritarian countries, as self-criticism will help rebuild the legitimacy and credibility that democracies increasingly lack.

Identifying the role of technology within the discipline of 21st century landscape architecture

OVERVIEW This research seeks to explore the meaning of Technology in Landscape Architecture (TLA) as part of Landscape Architecture (LA)’s body of knowledge. It will investigate TLA and its emerging specializations, along with related core domains and associated topical areas. This exploration will also examine the inter-relationships of DTT and research methods within the landscape research as a way to analyze the meaning of TLA and its significance on 21st century LA core domains. In this study context, this research will draw from three realms of knowledge: (1) Digital Tools and Technology (DTT) in LA; (2) LA Core Domains; and (3) Trends, Themes and Priorities in LA Research. This research proposes a mixed methods approach with the exploratory goal to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of TLA, its specialties and ways it intersects with the core knowledge domains within the LA discipline. This study on TLA will also be comprehensive in its examination of both contemporary scholarly research and professional practice including current trends and themes. The significance of this research demonstrates ways technology has evolved as its own significant domain where the discipline of LA has shifted from the art-science binary narrative to an emergent 21st century conceptual tri-partite core consisting of art, science and technology.

Tales of woe: farmers–herders conflict and victimisation experiences in Nigeria

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the victimisation experiences of farmers, herders and community members within the context of the persistent conflict between farmers and herders across Nigeria, with specific focus on Anambra, Benue and Oyo states in south-east, north-central and south-west geopolitical zones of the country, respectively.Design/methodology/approachThe study used the cross-sectional survey to elicit quantitative data from 725 respondents made up of 256 farmers, 225 herders and 244 community members aged 18 years and above, in six purposively sampled local government areas in the three states, while 16 in-depth interviews, 19 key informant interviews and 18 focus group discussions were conducted to extract qualitative data from purposively sampled farmers, herders, community leaders and members of the study communities.FindingsThe results show that farmers, herders and other community members in the study suffered losses in the form of destruction of farmlands and livelihood, internal displacement and human fatalities, for the farmers and community members; and destruction of livelihood, loss of money and human fatalities, for the herders. The paper predicts a worsening of the feud between these groups and the attendant reprisal attacks and victimisation if the current binary narrative of victimhood that privileges the needs and experiences of one group over the other persists, and urges stakeholders to put in place enduring structures that will minimise nomadic herding and ensure proactive security.Originality/valueThe focus on the issue of the “victimisation experiences” of herders and farmers and the invitation to researchers and policymakers to examine the role of the prevailing binary construction of victimhood in the conflict is a refreshing addition to other works on this subject.

Beyond Binary Narratives of Mental Health Advocacy: Latent Profiles of Mental Health Activists and Advocates With Lived Experience.

In this article, the authors used data from a national survey of mental health activists and advocates (MHAAs) with lived experience of psychiatric disabilities to investigate attitudes toward psychiatric care. The authors distributed a survey, developed by a team led by researchers who were also service users, to both mainstream and more critical advocacy groups and networks (N=547 participants), and they analyzed the data by using latent class analysis (LCA). Four survey variables regarding beliefs about involuntary hospitalization, assisted outpatient treatment, medication, and diagnosis were used to generate latent subgroups. The authors explored associations between key survey variables and latent classes with chi-square tests and analysis of variance. LCA indicated an optimal six-class solution. The classes existed on a spectrum of positions, ranging from highly favorable views of traditional psychiatric practices to highly critical views, with classes in the middle representing distinct profiles of attitudes toward treatment and diagnosis. Significant between-group differences were found for participants' psychiatric treatment histories, motivations to engage in activism and advocacy, and views about mental health care and advocacy priorities. Findings reveal considerable heterogeneity among MHAAs and challenge binary narratives of mental health advocacy.

Feminist listening and becoming: voice poems as a method of working with young women’s stories of domestic abuse in childhood

ABSTRACT This article presents reflections on using the listening guide, focusing on reflexive work with voice poems. It is based on research which explored the stories of ten young adult women who experienced parental domestic abuse in childhood. A dialogical theory is used to reflect on the process of working with three voice poems, showing that we engage with the material we work with in embodied, emotional, and personal ways. It considers working with voice poems as a ‘way in’ to our own stories and selves, by way of moving beyond empathy and attending to discomfort as a bodymind reflexive practice. Reflexivity is therefore not a mind-based activity that relies on declaring and engaging with a unitary self. Rather, researchers are dialogical selves that are both affected by, and that affect, the material we work with. This has implications for domestic abuse research where survivor-victim voices tend to be smoothened out resulting in dominant, binary narratives that risk reproducing epistemic injustices. This article concludes that poetic inquiry can be considered a method of resistance to such epistemological injustices, using bodymind reflexive engagement with our own selves, and examining the implications of this for knowledge production.

The Space in the Middle: Attitudes of Women's Health and Neonatal Nurses in the United States about Abortion.

Despite playing an integral part in sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion care, nurses are rarely the focus of research regarding their attitudes about abortion. A sample of 1,820 nurse members of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses were surveyed about their demographic and professional backgrounds, religious beliefs, and abortion attitudes. Scores on the Abortion Attitudes Scale were analyzed categorically and trichotomized in multinomial regression analyses. Almost one-third of the sample (32%) had moderately proabortion attitudes, 29% were unsure, 16% had strongly proabortion attitudes, 13% had strongly antiabortion attitudes, and 11% had moderately antiabortion attitudes. Using trichotomized Abortion Attitudes Scale scores (proabortion, unsure, antiabortion), adjusted regression models showed that the following characteristics were associated with proabortion attitudes: being non-Christian, residence in the North or West, having no children, and having had an abortion. Understanding nurses' attitudes toward abortion, and what characteristics may influence their attitudes, is critical to sustaining nursing care for patients considering and seeking abortion. Additionally, because personal characteristics were associated with antiabortion attitudes, it is likely that personal experiences may influence attitudes toward abortion. A large percentage of nurses held attitudes that placed them in the "unsure" category. Given the current ubiquitous polarization of abortion discourse, this finding indicates that the binary narrative of this topic is less pervasive than expected, which lends itself to an emphasis on empathetic and compassionate nursing care.

Overcoming Factionalism in Serious Mental Illness Policy Making: A Counter-Perspective

Overcoming Factionalism in Serious Mental Illness Policy Making: A Counter-Perspective

‘The race for space’: capitalism, the country and the city in Britain under covid 19

ABSTRACT This article draws on the work of Raymond Williams to argue that under covid-19 the dominant ‘ways of seeing’ the countryside and the city in Britain are working to obscure the structural violence of capitalism. Cultural narratives of ‘exodus’ from the city abound in British media, fuelling a material ‘race for space’ as the middle class rush to buy up rural properties. The ‘cottagecore’ social media aesthetic has proliferated, offering privatized solutions to the crisis through nostalgic imagery of pastoral escape. At the same time, nineteenth-century discourses of dark, diseased cities have been rearticulated, providing ideological support for racist migration policies. Exploited migrant workers in Leicester are framed as ‘modern slaves’ in the city’s ‘dark factories’; their bodies are transcoded as ‘dirt’ which must be ‘rooted out’ of the nation. We argue that these binary narratives and aesthetics of a bountiful, white countryside and an infested, racialized city lead to an ‘unseeing’ of the deep structural causes of inequality. We develop Williams’s analysis to show how these cultural imaginaries also sustain the gendered and racialized division of labour under capitalism, arguing that the country-city distinction, and the material injustices it obscures, ought to become a central focus for cultural studies.

Interracial relations and the post-postcolonial future in Zen Cho’s Spirits Abroad

ABSTRACT Malaysian supernatural and fantasy fiction typically belong to culture-specific mythologies that stay within the limits and boundaries of race and ethnicity. Zen Cho’s collection of fantasy short fiction Spirits Abroad, however, defies these limits and boundaries – and indirectly the ethnocentric politics of Malaysia – through representations of interracial and interspecies relationships. Exploring the emotional connections between human and magical or supernatural beings in selected stories, this article examines Cho’s subversive vision and articulation of an other-Malaysia that is made up of interstitial spaces and hybridized identities, and where the hierarchies and boundaries between native and migrant, self and other are dissolved. Her revisionary narratives not only contribute to the decolonizing of postcolonial Malaysia’s binary discourses and narratives of race and ethnicity, but are also essential to the imagining of a post-postcolonial Malaysian future.