Societal Understandings Research Articles

Theories of Militancy in Practice: Explanations of Muslim Terrorism in India

This article analyzes the interaction between theories of radicalization and state responses to militancy in India. Focusing on the interpretation of the increased frequency of terrorist attacks in Indian metropolises in the last decade, the article examines the narratives surrounding those classified as terrorists in the context of rising Muslim militancy in the country. Different state agencies operate with different theories about the links between processes of radicalization and terrorist violence. The scenarios of radicalization underlying legislative efforts to prevent terrorism, the construction of motives by the police, and the interpretation of violence by the judiciary all rely on assumptions about radicalization and violence. Such narratives are used to explain terrorism both to security agencies and to the public; they inform the categories and scenarios of prevention. Prevention relies on detection of future deeds, planning, intentions, and even potential intentions. “Detection” of potential intentions relies on assumptions about specific dispositions. Identification of such dispositions in turn relies on the context-specific theories of the causes of militancy. These determine what “characteristics” of individuals or groups indicate potential threats and form the basis for their categorization as “potentially dangerous.” The article explores the cultural contexts of theories of radicalization, focusing on how they are framed by societal understandings of the causes of deviance and the relation between the individual and society emerging in contemporary India. It examines the shift in the perception of threat and the categories of “dangerous others” from a focus on role to a focus on ascriptive identity.

Gender Regulation: Renée Richards Revisited

In 1976, a reporter at a tennis tournament identified the rookie standout Renée Clarke as Renée Richards, the former male professional tennis player Richard Raskind. The discovery of Richards, a male-to-female transsexual, immediately caused protest. While Richards’ very presence disrupted the socially constructed conceptions of ‘male’ and ‘female’ in sport – and her successful legal suit for inclusion into women's professional tennis challenged the long-standing system of segregation in athletics – she has continuously embraced societal understandings of gender difference. Building on previous research, the author utilises Richards’ two autobiographies and a 2009 oral history to analyse her embodiment of stereotypical femininity and later opposition to the International Olympic Committee's Stockholm Consensus. In addition, a comparison of the New York Supreme Court case – which ruled Richards eligible to compete professionally as a woman – and the Stockholm Consensus demonstrates the widespread concern with gender malleability. Both decisions extended classification to include transsexual athletes, yet each preserved a two-sexed model. This article illustrates an individual and institutional conviction in the naturalness of two separate and polar gender categories.

Theories of Militancy in Practice

This article analyzes the interaction between theories of radicalization and state responses to militancy in India. Focusing on the interpretation of the increased frequency of terrorist attacks in Indian metropolises in the last decade, the article examines the narratives surrounding those classified as terrorists in the context of rising Muslim militancy in the country. Different state agencies operate with different theories about the links between processes of radicalization and terrorist violence. The scenarios of radicalization underlying legislative efforts to prevent terrorism, the construction of motives by the police, and the interpretation of violence by the judiciary all rely on assumptions about radicalization and violence. Such narratives are used to explain terrorism both to security agencies and to the public; they inform the categories and scenarios of prevention. Prevention relies on detection of future deeds, planning, intentions, and even potential intentions. “Detection” of potential intentions relies on assumptions about specific dispositions. Identification of such dispositions in turn relies on the context-specific theories of the causes of militancy. These determine what “characteristics” of individuals or groups indicate potential threats and form the basis for their categorization as “potentially dangerous.” The article explores the cultural contexts of theories of radicalization, focusing on how they are framed by societal understandings of the causes of deviance and the relation between the individual and society emerging in contemporary India. It examines the shift in the perception of threat and the categories of “dangerous others” from a focus on role to a focus on ascriptive identity.

The Visual Rhetoric of Innocence: Lolitas in Popular Culture

Lolita-like or eroticized representations of girls in popular culture have been and continue to be transformational in our societal understandings of female sexuality. Complex issues related to the desirability of innocence, passivity, and submissiveness in media representations of girls are examined. In this essay, I explore the intertextuality of Vladimir Nabokov’s 1958 novel Lolita , Lolita-like images in mainstream media, art photography of nude minors, and the visual rhetoric of the eroticized innocent. I question how girls are affected by being visually possessed, desired, and discussed. Specifically, do they have any power over their own images? Author-created collages offer critical counternarratives.

What Is and What Can Be: How a Liminal Position Can Change Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

In this article we analyze what happens when undergraduate students are positioned as pedagogical consultants in a faculty development program. Drawing on their spoken and written perspectives, and using the classical anthropological concept of “liminality,” we illustrate how these student consultants revise their relationships with their teachers and their responsibilities within their learning. These revisions have the potential to transform deep‐seated societal understandings of education based on traditional hierarchies and teacher–student distinctions. [liminality, position, student consultant, learning, change]

Animal welfare: establishing a dialogue between science and society

AbstractFarm animal welfare has become an important issue for the European public, especially in the last two decades when a number of crises (eg Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Avian Influenza) have affected farm animal populations. Public concern about this issue led the European Union to fund the Welfare Quality® project. This project aimed to develop a protocol for assessing animal welfare on farms and at slaughter plants, to identify the main animal welfare problems, and to address possible welfare improvement strategies. In fulfilling these aims, the Welfare Quality® project incorporated inputs frombothscience and society. This was crucial, as the public perception of what constitutes ‘animal welfare’ sometimes differs from animal science-based definitions. Furthermore, these differences are often interwoven with broader variations in ethical- and value-based understandings about human/non-human animal relationships. This paper presents the steps that we adopted to establish a dialogue between science and society during the construction of the Welfare Quality® assessment protocols. This dialogue involved numerous interactions between animal scientists, social scientists and members of the public. These interactions took several forms, including: meetings, conferences, workshops, websites, newsletters, interviews, focus groups, and citizen and farmers juries. Here, we address four key moments within this dialogue: the development of the initial list of twelve welfare criteria; the consumer focus groups; the development of the Welfare Quality® scoring system; and the citizen juries. In particular, we focus on the results of the focus groups and citizen juries. The focus groups were conducted in France, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Hungary and the citizen juries were carried out in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Drawing on this research, we highlight the similarities and differences between societal understandings of farm animal welfare and the views of scientific experts. Furthermore, and crucially, we outline how the animal scientists took account of societal opinion when developing their farm animal welfare assessment tools.

Locating the Bodies of Women and Disability in Definitions of Beauty: An Analysis of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty

Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" aimed to widen cultural understandings of diverse bodies and embodied beauty. In this essay, however, I question the ability of the campaign to confront the limits of our current cultural understandings of embodied beauty and diversity. Drawing on feminist-disability theory, I argue that the campaign represented an ideology of naïve integration. While the acceptance of diverse physical bodies was espoused by the campaign, the textual and visual discourse simultaneously reflected many traditional beauty standards and practices. I draw key examples from the discourse to support my claims that the campaign's discourse (re)inscribed meaning to the normate body and (re)made the body through traditional beauty practices. The subsequent ramifications of societal understandings of the body and the aesthetic value of women with physical disabilities are discussed.

“I, too, am America” The Founding of Bennett College for Women

During the Jim Crow period of racial segregation, higher education provided one of the few avenues for black women to participate in citizenship. Societal understandings of race, gender, and class fundamentally distinguished the higher educational experiences of black and white women. The founding of Bennett College for Women, one of two historically black colleges for women, provided a rare space for black women to exercise citizenship. Moreover, examination of Bennett College for Women’s educational model reveals how the College provided a progressive liberal arts education to black working-class women by manipulating conservative understandings of race, gender, and education. In doing so, Bennett College for Women expanded the scope of who was responsible for racial progress and the scope of black women’s role as citizen.

Women teachers' aspirations to school leadership in Uganda

PurposeThe under‐representation of women in the leadership of secondary schooling is a problem common to many developing countries, raising issues of social justice and sustainable development. It has its roots in societal understandings about leadership, the schooling and career aspirations of girls, the organizational characteristics of the education system, and the expectations and preparation of teachers for leadership positions. The purpose of this paper is to identify factors, both specific to the country and common across cultures, contributing to the low numbers of female teachers leading Ugandan secondary schools.Design/methodology/approachA survey of 62 female secondary school teachers from six coeducational schools in different areas of Uganda, is used to establish leadership aspirations and teacher perceptions of the factors helping or hindering them in realizing these aspirations.FindingsThe paper reveals that the majority of female teachers surveyed aspired to school leadership, but few had positioned themselves to do well in the competitive application process. Many thought the process corrupt and did not expect to get the support of their current school administrator.Originality/valueThe results of this paper support existing research worldwide that suggests leadership preparation for women should be gender specific. Women teachers need help to visualize a career path to leadership, encouraged to gain relevant experience, and given training that builds confidence in practical school management skills and builds on personal leadership skills.

Rethinking Geographies of Assimilation

This commentary argues for a reconsideration of the concept of assimilation in geographical research. Whereas critics of assimilation theory have often misrepresented assimilation research, those working within the assimilation framework have seldom explored societal understandings of “sameness.” This commentary advocates that geographers look at assimilation not only in terms of spatial patterns but also in terms of the discursive and material practices through which dominant and subordinate groups negotiate the terms of social membership. The need to arrive at a richer understanding of assimilation becomes more pressing as the assimilability of migrants becomes an increasingly salient topic of debate.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies

American society has typically associated motherhood with biology. Assisted reproductive technologies (ART's) challenge this view by fragmenting motherhood into the social, the genetic, and the gestational. To ascertain the extent to which such a challenge has actually succeeded in changing societal understandings of motherhood, this study explored court cases involving four types of ART's. The findings suggest that although these ART's have the potential to re-create societal conceptions of motherhood, such a change has yet to occur in toto. Rather, certain aspects of biological motherhood continue to be seen as more permanent than social motherhood.

The Faces of Distortion

Objectives: To illustrate the variety of ways that the media are able to manipulate not just information but also societal understandings of critical issues and events. To connect disparate media and time periods via an activity extended over several weeks Courses: Issues in Mass Media, other courses on Media and Persuasion

Leadership: a critical construction

The study of leadership or leader behaviour and the formation of leaders is a constant fascination and part of the agenda of this journal. This article sets out to argue for a richer framing of these studies to include society and organisations as well as psychology and personality. Reviews the way in which corporate leadership is caught up in wider societal understandings and suggests that the narrow goal of the principal and agent model is unsustainable. From the admission of the idea of institutionalisation of leaders, argues that it would be necessary to extend the study field to include social theory as well as critical social theory as this latter illuminates the way things are taken to be. The knowledge of leader formation has been shown to be limited and it is argued for a multidisciplinary extension to formation studies that contextualises leadership formation in social and organisational processes.

(Con)textualizing Toxic Shock Syndrome: selected media representations of the emergence of a health phenomenon 1979–1995

Societal understandings of health risk, and attitudes towards health and illness, are influenced and shaped by the ways in which print-based media, including popular magazines, represent health issues. The study reported here explores the way in which a relatively new health phenomenon, Toxic Shock Syndrome, has been represented in selected articles in Australian print-based media between 1979 and 1995. By exploring the discourses framing the discussion in these articles, changing and different representations of Toxic Shock Syndrome and related women's health issues and risks are uncovered.

The Marriage Services of the United Church of Canada: Stages on a Liturgical Journey

The United Church of Canada orders for the Solemnization of Marriage provide a unique overview of the history of liturgy in the denomination. The two orders contained in the 1926 Forms of Service were an attempt to provide transitional services retaining the flavour of the uniting denominations. The marriage liturgy of the 1932 Book of Common Order represents the height-of the Prayer Book tradition — an attempt to recapture the' catholic' pattern of the marriage service in the western church. The draft orders of 1962 and 1965, culminating in the marriage liturgy of the 1969 Service Book4 and the 1975 'contemporary' revision, portray the ferment and confusion of the 1960s and 70s. The 1985 Celebration of Marriage for Optional Use ... represents the growing ecumenical convergence in worship patterns of which the United Church is a part. A sequential examination of these liturgies reveals the stages the United Church has travelled through on its liturgical journey: from denominational particularity through the search for a larger catholic tradition, the concern for relevance in a rapidly changing world, to the concern to be faithful to the tradition but in a contemporary way. In addition, the marriage service, perhaps more than any other liturgy, demonstrates the intricate interplay between societal understandings of what the church should be about and the traditions which have shaped the church's worship life.