Liberal Orientation Research Articles

Believing in Women? Examining Early Views of Women among America’s Most Progressive Religious Groups

This paper examines views of women among the most prominent “progressive” American religious groups (as defined by those that liberalized early on the issue of birth control, circa 1929). We focus on the years between the first and second waves of the feminist movement (1929–1965) in order to examine these views during a time of relative quiescence. We find that some groups indeed have a history of outspoken support for women’s equality. Using their modern-day names, these groups—the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and to a lesser extent, the Society of Friends, or Quakers—professed strong support for women’s issues, early and often. However, we also find that prominent progressive groups—the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the United Presbyterian Church—were virtually silent on the issue of women’s rights. Thus, we conclude that birth control activism within the American religious field was not clearly correlated with an overall feminist orientation.

The Implications of the Departure of the UK for EU Social Policy

This article considers the significance of the UK departure for EU social policy from the perspective of the economic orientation of policy, institutional configuration and associated political agency. The analysis first focuses on the role the UK has played since it joined in 1973, highlighting the UK's strong support for the EU as a market project with a secondary role for social policy. It can as a consequence claim some success in imprinting its (neo)liberal orientation on EU policy while at the same time securing favourable terms for its own selective engagement with EU policy. The signals regarding EU social policy's future after the UK departs are very mixed. While there are some signs of a more social impulse in policy, the strong ties to a market approach, lack of consensus around the need for a different type of EU social policy engagement and institutional and political hierarchies constrain change.

An anthropocosmic view: what Confucian traditions can teach us about the past and future of Chinese higher education

The historical debate between a liberal orientation of university education and a university education with a more practical orientation has been reproduced by defenders and detractors of the course that is being adopted by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Instead of resorting to a dichotomous view of these two arguments, this article employs an anthropocosmic worldview to look at the university by examining the past and present of Chinese higher education, in contrast to the philosophy and reality of the European university within the framework of the EHEA. The anthropocosmic view is central to Confucian holistic humanism, which asserts that humanity is part of a continuum consisting of community, Earth and Heaven. With the self as a ‘centre of relationships’, the individual is interconnected with an ever-expanding network of human relatedness, extending from the self to the family, the community, the country, the world and beyond. The authors argue that despite being based on a European model, the Chinese university, in fact, boasts a unique Chinese character that can be traced back to its Confucian learning tradition, which itself reflects this anthropocosmic worldview. In our world today, a world of unprecedented globalisation, an anthropocentric view of higher education is no longer sufficient. Instead, to address the challenges humanity faces, a Chinese model of the university based on anthropocosmism presents a potential new pathway for the global university of the future.

Dating, love and relationships in Mamamia

This article examines how 'Mamamia', an online Australian women's site, produces contradictory narratives about contemporary heterosexual dating and relationships. Reading 'Mamamia' as an updated digital women's magazine, it shows that instead of constructing love and relationship around pleasing men, it instead produces an image of heterosexual love that problematises male behaviour. While the focus of their content centres around men's bad behaviour this never develops into a critique of gender relations or heterosexual norms. Rather, these complaints appear to be offered as a strategy to create a sense of shared experience among the female readers. In line with critiques of postfeminist culture (Gill, 'Gender'; McRobbie, 'Aftermath'; Tasker and Negra) 'Mamamia' gestures towards a feminist orientation, yet remains invested in the traditional gender norms that structure heterosexual relationships.

Transnational Media Cultures

The field of transnational feminist media cultures emerges from the intersection of three key analytical realms: the geopolitical site, a feminist orientation, and media technologies and cultures. Each of these realms originally derives from a specific discipline and its reinvention. The geopolitical site stems from area studies and its de-insularization under the pressure of globalization theory. The feminist orientation bespeaks a desire for gender and sexuality equality that has drastically reconfigured sociopolitical theories. Media technologies and cultures have been undergoing major transformations since the turn of the twentieth century, resulting in a highly dynamic field that embraces proliferating and interacting media studied through an array of historical, theoretical, and sociopolitical lenses. What brings these three analytical realms together is their shared transnational and poly-local drive, which is borne out in their historical genesis, and is only accelerating in the current era of expanding globalization characterized by five “scapes” of border-crossing flows—ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes—as theorized by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai.1 As a film scholar committed to exploring the border-crossing movements, translations, and transpositions of film technologies, cultures, and workers, while paying special attention to women's contributions as makers, performers, users, consumers, prosumers, historians, and critics, I find my intellectual home in transnational feminist media …

Audiences and Moviegoing

Observers—sociologists, reformers, inspectors, journalists—have been interested in cinema's audiences virtually since the medium's emergence. Their observations constitute a rich source base for scholars that gives us access, however oblique, into the experiences of moviegoers. As these sources show, motion picture exhibition has been a dynamic social space for subjects marked by gender, race, class, national or regional identity, and age. These various vectors of identity, quite often in concert, shaped how audiences responded to what they saw on the screen, the performative milieu of the theater, and the discursive space of fan magazines and other print venues that published news and advertisements about motion pictures. Around the world, women's filmgoing became a particularly vexed topic, and women emerged as savvy observers of cinema's role in modern society.1 In this short essay, I trace a genealogy (not the genealogy) of feminist scholarship on audiences, sometimes referred to as historical spectatorship, and suggest the generative possibilities of a feminist orientation in historicizing cinema's audiences. In early scholarly accounts of cinema audiences, most of which focused on the nickelodeon, the contours of women's engagement with cinema were initially subsumed by concerns with class and ethnicity. In their considerations of American cinema, for example, Lary May and Robert Sklar argued that moviegoing became the site of a struggle for control over American mass culture, as the middle classes sought to exert control over the nickelodeon's working-class, ethnic …

Islamist and Non-Islamist Currents and the Struggle for Post-Gaddafi Libya

This paper examines the origin and the relationship between Islamist and non- Islamist political trends in Libya, highlighting the development of the contestation between the two before and after the fall of Gaddafi’s rule. The relationship appears to be that of a contestation between Islamists and liberals but this may be misleading. Islamists are not united but they share an adherence to the establishment of a Muslim society and some form of a khilafa. However, non-Islamists may not easily be identified as “on current.” Indeed, the “current” includes an array of political factions of various dispensations with some not necessarily subscribing to liberal models of democracy. Some belong to pre-Gaddafi-era political parties or were political and human rights’ activists during Gaddafi’s reign. They range from leftist, nationalist, and liberal orientations to populist Arab nationalist forces (including the Ba’th, Pan- Arabists, and others with socialist or communist orientations). When the uprising took place in 2011, the positions each trend took differed before some tactical unity was deemed necessary. When the regime fell, however, differences remerged and became more evident once the transitional structures were put in place. Just before and during the first elections in 2012, Islamists broke ranks with their struggle comrades and fired their cannons at the leaders of the liberal, nationalist, and other elements within the non-Islamist orientations. Islam then became crucial in political expression and rhetoric, especially for Islamist actors. Focusing on the development of this contestation, this paper analyzes the reaction of both Islamist and non-Islamist trends to the policies and tactics adopted by each side in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising and the post-Gaddafi phase. It suggests that although ideology, specifically references to Islam, became crucial in the political contention between Islamists and non-Islamists, the cleavage was not entirely ideological, as both trends considered the Islamic identity of Libya central to their political programs. The interviews with leading representatives of both trends that the author conducted for the purpose of writing this article confirm such a view on the role of ideology in the contestation. As the following discussion indicates, ideology is evidently part and parcel of each sides’ tools, ready to be employed against the other. However, when it does not suit all their purposes, they claim ideology has no role, offering insights into the instrumental and tactical approach to the ongoing contestation of both sides. The article therefore examines the struggle between the two factions as a political competition for the control of resources and positions of power, yet it also argues that ideology and ideas have a role to play, as they constitute the instruments deployed in this struggle, which has, with foreign involvement and backing of different sides, reduced Libya to a “failed state.” In fact although ideological contraposition figures in the contestation, political factionalism and contention in post-2011 were actually fuelled by political factors related to the struggle over access to power and resources, which are instrumental in enabling each side to shape the future state and its political order according to their plans. The struggle between Islamists and non-Islamists may have been the most visible, but it is certainly not the most significant factor in explaining the political dynamics and contention in the country since the fall of Gaddafi.

The front line of free speech: Beyond parrhêsia in Finland's migrant debate

ABSTRACTAmong Finland's public‐service broadcasters, there is a contrast between professional ethics and the “fearless speech” of parrhêsia. This contrast reveals some of the diverse forms in which free speech is pursued in contemporary liberal polities. In 2015, Kansanradio (The people's radio), a popular Finnish radio show, became a site for fresh controversies over free speech when the so‐called migrant crisis dominated its discussions. Caught between the parrhêsia of public intellectuals and bigoted listeners, Kansanradio’s hosts pursued a dialogical approach to truth telling. Whereas parrhêsia risks the relationship between interlocutors, this dialogical modality rests on a carefully cultivated multivocality of viewpoints. It challenges the assumption—common to both the scholarship on parrhêsia and some (but not all) liberal orientations—that voice is a person's private property. [free speech, parrhêsia, truth telling, migrant crisis, radio, voice, Finland]

Polscy ekonomiści akademiccy okresu transformacji. Kilka refleksji na tle wyników badań

The change of the system in Poland in the early 1990s meant that, like other areas of social and economic life, academic economics was subject to the profound transformation. It was connected with the change of the existing method of analyzing economic phenomena, as well as with the search for new theoretical approaches. The expression of this was, above all, the departure from Marxist theory and the assimilation of the neoclassical and Keynesian tradition. This was also reflected in the economic programs. The aim of the article is to take a look at the environment of Polish academic economists in the context of their theoretical choices. The basis of the formulated reflections are the results of research carried out as a part of the research project Identifying Polish economists with schools of economic conducted in 2014-2016 at the Institute of Consumption and Research of Business Cycles and research on PIB and literature studies. The broad characteristics of the scientific community of economists is enabled by the data collected during the project implementation on their theoretical choices, views on the state of economic sciences, barriers to the development of the Polish economy, as well as personal characteristics. Studies have confirmed that sex and age are important variables that differentiate economic school choices made by economists. In the context of the further development of the Polish academic economy, particular attention was paid to the views of economists aged 36-45, because they will have a decisive influence on the content transferred within the framework of teaching economics at universities in the following years. Their theoretical choices indicate that the new institutional economy may lose its importance, and the views of the orthodox schools of economic thought will dominate reagrding the preferred solutions of economic policy. This indicates the strengthening of the advantage of liberal orientation in the Polish economy in the coming years.

La stampa liberale di fronte allo squadrismo e al fascismo (1919-1922)

The essay examines the role of the press of Liberal orientation in front of the rise of Fascist squads. After the First World War the role of the newspaper is deemed crucial by politicians, publishers and journalists. The rising awareness of the importance of newspapers, within the context of a difficult post-war transition, contributed to the radicalisation of liberal newspapers. An anti-Socialist legacy, combined with Union busting, joined with the new nationalistic wave which was emphasised by military victory. The hostility against Socialism turned into a kind of showdown after the appearance of Fascist squads, to which the major Italian newspapers (Corriere della sera, Giornale d’Italia, La Tribuna) offered their support. They depicted the Fascist movement mainly as a phenomenon in continuity with the Liberal state and ideology, never as an external one. Its violent expressions were either not mentioned, or dis-torted, or even justified. While Fascist press showed off the cases of threats and violence, the Liberal one tended to conceal them, thereby favouring in silence a shift of opinion towards Fascism. Liberal journalists, then, observed middle-class public opinion becoming motionless or angry, in both cases ready to move towards Fascism. An autonomous fascistizzazione of Liberal press was, in fact, realized even before the march on Rome, in a process that involved also local newspapers.

Representation between Utilitarianism and Liberalism: Focalization inPhineas Finn

This article argues that the form of Anthony Trollope's Phineas Finn mediates sociality without the resources of interiority. This has important ramifications for understanding the politics of the novel by way of the kinds of relationality it makes available between characters and readers. Even as Phineas Finn speaks the idiom of John Stuart Mill's liberal orientation toward feelings and beliefs, the novel's distribution of narrative focalization provides an alternative pedagogy in Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian orientation toward action. Reading the novel's form against its content in this way borrows from Jacques Rancière's understanding of the correlation between aesthetic and political regimes, and this article elaborates and historicizes Rancière's theory at the turnover between utilitarian and liberal ideologies. In particular, it argues that Rancière's understanding of politics belongs specifically to the technologies of representation developed by mid-Victorian liberal thinkers, especially the political scientist Thomas Hare.

Feminist reflections on life in (im)balance, career praxis, and the PRME

The opportunity to reflect on the achievements and the aspirations of the PRME from diverse feminist orientations came through a project exploring career experiences and aspirations of senior academic women known for their engagement with the social and environmental degradations expressed in the call for submissions to this Special Edition of IJME. In our conversations, the notion of vitality emerged as a fruitful concept referring to participant observation of life in (im)balance. Influences on their fluctuating vitality were expressed in quite radical feminist terms. Paradoxically their responses were mostly framed in neo-liberal feminist ways. Our reflection on this paradox is intended to consider what feminist orientations might bring to the transformation of the social and environmental challenges placed before PRME committed scholars in a rapidly changing geo-political climate. The thread from the project we develop in this paper invites inquiry into the PRME's capacity to radically impact trajectories of university governance, to attend to the employment conditions of their female scholars, and through support of the career aspirations of these scholars, provide leadership that enhances not only the vitality of women scholars in universities, but to manifest human organisations serving the vitality of all people and our life-sustaining planet.

A sanctuary of tranquillity in a ruptured world: Evaluating long-term counselling at a women’s community health centre

The longitudinal study described in this article evaluated long-term counselling provided at a women’s health centre in the UK for service users on low incomes. The article focuses on the qualitative aspect of the study in which 59 women were interviewed individually before and/or after their counselling. The interviews explored how women make sense of long-term counselling in the context of their gendered experiences and complex needs. The data were analysed using thematic analysis informed by a feminist orientation and attachment theory. Four main themes emerged: “violence and loss in the context of female oppression”, “a sanctuary for women”, “non-medicalised long-term counselling in a safe setting”, and “benefits of the long view”. Participants attributed various benefits to receiving long-term counselling in a women-only environment. These included gaining employment; reduced suicidal ideation, anxiety and depression; improved physical health, improved confidence and being able to make positive changes in their relationships. The women interviewed post-counselling valued long-term counselling in this context, in contrast to short-term therapy in a medicalised environment. Wider implications with regard to clinical practice and research are discussed.

Feminist identity among women and men from four ethnic groups.

Multiracial feminist theory proposes that the meaning of feminism and the pathways to feminist identity may differ on the basis of cross-cutting social categories such as ethnicity and gender. However, there is currently little research that has included systematic examination of feminist identity among women and men from diverse ethnic backgrounds. We examined feminist orientations among 1,140 undergraduates (70% women) at a Hispanic-Serving Institution who identified as African American, Asian American, European American, or Latina/o. Three related research aims were assessed through a combination of closed- and open-ended questions. First, we examined whether the meaning of the term feminism differed depending on participants' ethnicity or gender. We then tested for ethnic and gender variation in rates of feminist identity. Lastly, we examined participants' reasons for either identifying or not identifying as feminists. Ethnic and gender differences were obtained across each of the 3 research aims. For example, there were significant ethnic differences in rates of feminist identity among women, but not among men. Relative to past research, through the current study, we have provided an especially comprehensive examination of how ethnicity and gender interact to shape feminist attitudes. Consistent with multiracial feminist theory, findings demonstrated that attitudes about feminism vary as a function of both gender and ethnicity, yet key ethnic and gender similarities also emerged. (PsycINFO Database Record

Different Lenses: Women's Feminist and Postfeminist Perspectives in Public Relations / Diferentes Lentes sobre Perspectivas Feministas e Pós-feministas das Mulheres em Relações Públicas

Gender inequalities in public relations (PR) persist. Industry researchwithin the UK reveals a gender pay-gap, which shows significant disparities inpay between men and women (CIPR, 2015; PRCA, 2016). Feminist research, mostly undertaken in the US over the past twenty years and adopting a liberal feministperspective, has identified some of the factors that influence inequality forwomen, such as balancing career and family; while other studies examine thesocial processes that perpetuate inequalities, such as gender stereotyping, the ‘glass ceiling’ effect and the ‘friendliness trap’. Liberalfeminism is critiqued for not recognizing gender regimes. This has led to callsfor critical research to examine the underlying social processes in the PR field that influenceposition opportunities, roles, the pay-gap and discrimination. Three theoretical positions – liberal feminist, radical feminist andpostfeminist - were selected to address the following research questions, ‘How does gender influence everyday practice in public relations?’ ‘Whichfeminist perspective(s) are suggested by practitioner narratives?’ Postfeminism, used as a critical lens, potentially enables ‘multiple feminisms and femininities’ (Lewis, 2014) to be expressed. For this paper, anexploratory, qualitative pilot study involved semi-structured interviews withfour female PR practitioners in northern England. Transcripts were analyzedusing narrative analysis and reflexivity. The narratives revealed complex and sometimes contradictoryinterpretations. Therefore while three out of the four narratives showed strongliberal feminist inclinations, including a belief that women are able tocompete alongside men, two also expressed radical feminist orientations;although in line with previous research, not a desire to change the system,except on an individual level. A fourth narrative expressed ideas consistentwith postfeminism, demonstrating an apparent acceptance of gender rolesegregation in PR, and therefore no inclination to change the status quo. Finally, we offer further ways of advancing critical feminist studies inpublic relations, through research and education.

The Clergy Work Orientation in Transition: An Analysis of the Structure and Change in Work Orientation Among the Finnish Lutheran Clergy

Abstract The article focuses on the work orientation and changes therein among the clergy in Finland, and on its implications for practical church work. The article is based on a survey conducted among the clergy in Finland (N=878). The research shows that clergy make distinctions between various work tasks that are in line with the traditional distinction between “function” and “performance”. The results show that liberal theological orientation, which is linked to performance-orientation, is increasing. The aspects of work which seem to be most threatened are evangelization, missionary work, and reading and teaching the Bible. There are also many areas of work that are likely to remain stable and unite the clergy regardless of their gender, age or theological orientation.

The BRICS’s Economic Growth Performance before and after the International Financial Crisis

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the issue of why some BRICS countries are doing much better than others after the international financial crisis. Although these economies share some common economic historical ground, and collectively had been performing much better than the world average in the last decades, their room to maneuver to administrate short-term economic policy to sustain growth in the context of world recession is not similar. Our main assumption is that their different performances can be explained by the degree of their external vulnerabilities, which basically depend on how cautious they were to embrace the liberal policy orientations that became dominant in the 1980s and 1990s with the so-called new macroeconomic consensus.

Public Opinion towards Cannabis Control in Ontario: Strong but Diversified Support for Reforming Control of Both Use and Supply

In Canada, cannabis control has long been controversially debated, yet recreational cannabis use and supply remain criminally prohibited. Recently, there has been an increased “normalization” of cannabis use as well as debates about how cannabis should best be controlled under public health approaches; increasing proportions of Canadians have indicated support for liberalizing cannabis control. The present study is based on the 2014 CAMH Monitor, an annual representative, cross-sectional, telephone interview–based survey of Ontario adults aged 18 years and over. In 2014, the CAMH Monitor assessed public opinion on several items related to the control of recreational cannabis use, production, and distribution among a sample of 2,004 respondents. Results indicate that the majority of Ontario adults support reforming the – currently criminal – control of recreational cannabis use. However, preferences for how this control should be reformed are split between decriminalization with a fine, legalization with mandatory education and/or treatment, and categorical legalization. Further, the strongest support was expressed for production and distribution regimes that are tightly regulated by the state. More liberal preferences regarding control were observed, in some instances, among male and younger respondents. Current public opinion among Ontario adults overall supports liberalizing cannabis control, yet concrete reforms would require choosing among options that are not universally supported by the population.

Feminist Perspectives on Family Relationships: Part 3

In Part 3 of the three-part collection on feminism and families, we revisit the 13 articles that appeared in two previous issues of Sex Roles, and then present the six additional articles published in the current issue. We address the ways in which these articles examine feminist perspectives on family relationships from various interdisciplinary lenses and the ways in which all the articles link various intersections among gender, race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and embodiment to deal with key feminist family topics such as motherhood and fatherhood, work and family, families and violence, emotion work and household labor, and the interplay between private experiences and public institutions. We position these articles so as to highlight diverse feminist theoretical perspectives and methodological orientations, and we address the innovations these articles contribute to the scholarship on feminism and families.

Moroccan Muslim Women Fulbrighters and Social Change

This paper sets out to investigate the relationship between Moroccan Muslim women's educational travel to America and social change in their homeland. Obviously, over the past few decades, many Moroccan Muslim women from different walks of academic and professional life were selected as Fulbright grantees within the well-known Fulbright program with a view to improving their professional profiles and broadening their research horizons in America. Back to Morocco, after completing the period assigned to them, many Muslim women Fulbrighters, impacted by the cross-cultural education and training they were exposed to, have launched and participated in a plethora of projects and initiatives in an attempt to effect change in their own society in light of what they learnt in America. In the course of my paper, the focus will be put on some of these projects and initiatives and the ways these women have gone through to induce a feasible social change in the Moroccan society, including their new acquired conceptions of gender and feminist orientations. Equally important, the paper will simultaneously examine the impact of Fulbright program on Moroccan Muslim women grantees themselves.