A gendered media analysis of the prime ministerial ascension of Gillard and Turnbull: he’s ‘taken back the reins’ and she’s ‘a backstabbing’ murderer

In contemporary Australian politics, challenges to the Prime Ministerial role have become more common. Australia saw five Prime Ministers from 2010 to 2015 including Australia’s first ever woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. A stark contrast is evident in media portrayals of Gillard and her male counterparts, apparent most recently in the response to Malcolm Turnbull’s ascension to the Prime Ministership. A range of evidence has been produced, in disciplines including political science and media studies, suggesting the existence of systemic gender bias in the mainstream media in English-speaking democracies. This article is the first to compare the media portrayals of Gillard and Turnbull’s respective ascensions to leadership, which it does drawing on Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and using a content and discourse analysis. It contributes further evidence of gender bias in the coverage of political leaders.     

‘Just looking’: domestic workers' consumption practices and a latent geography of Beijing

The post-socialist Chinese city has been an important site to explore the formation of modernity in its everyday shape and manifestations. A common way of understanding urban experiences is through the prism of consumption. Rural migrants in the city cannot compare with urban residents in terms of their consumption level, but they are seen to be equally enthusiastic in partaking in consumption, and their identities are also believed to be (re)shaped by consumption practices. Drawing on several years' extensive ethnographic research in Beijing, this article suggests that these scenarios cannot adequately account for the diversity and complexity of rural migrants' experience in the consuming city. In this article, I put forward a methodological argument for considering the lived spatiality of ethnographic subjects in conceiving and considering consumption. Then, through an investigation of how migrant domestic workers use urban spaces, I consider the ‘dialectic of freedom and constraint’ which marks their agency and their individual choices and decisions. Finally, I explore the social production of space by considering migrant domestic workers' ‘subversive’ behaviours within rather than in opposition to the capitalist commercial logic and space. This discussion demonstrates that consumption practices are at the same time spatial practices, and despite the many obstacles and constraints, migrant domestic workers are actively availing themselves of the opportunities that the city has to offer. This creative process is crucial if we are to gain a new and more nuanced understanding of consumption as a social practice. I further argue that it is also a process by which rural migrants hold on to their sense of dignity and self-respect in an environment of exclusion and discrimination.     

‘Queen’s Day – TV’s Day’: the British monarchy and the media industries

In contemporary British history, Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 is typically imagined and narrated as the moment where television was anchored as a national cultural form. In addition, it is well documented by commentators and scholars that during preparation for the coronation, politicians and the palace had reservations that live television might fracture the carefully constructed mystique of monarchy. This article revisits the coronation to consider why and how television was perceived as a watershed moment for both monarchy and television, and what difference this has made to royal representations since. Using the work of Michael Warner, it argues that the mediated intimacies facilitated by television as a new cultural form encouraged viewers to enact participatory and active processes of spectatorship as royal ‘publics’, who are brought into being through being addressed. That is, it was the act of emphasising the centrality of television’s role in the coronation, and in reinforcing the apparent distance between monarchy and (popular) media, that these ‘meanings’ of the coronation were constructed in the public and historical imaginary.     

A systematic review of climate change education: giving children and young people a ‘voice’ and a ‘hand’ in redressing climate change

ABSTRACT

The reality of anthropogenic climate change has been established ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ by leading scientists worldwide. Applying a systematic literature review process, we analysed existing literature from 1993 to 2014 regarding climate change education for children and young people, with the aim of identifying key areas for further research. While a number of studies have indicated that young people’s understandings of climate change are generally limited, erroneous and highly influenced by mass media, other studies suggest that didactic approaches to climate change education have been largely ineffectual in affecting students’ attitudes and behaviour. The review identifies the need for participatory, interdisciplinary, creative, and affect-driven approaches to climate change education, which to date have been largely missing from the literature. In conclusion, we call for the development of new forms of climate change education that directly involve young people in responding to the scientific, social, ethical, and political complexities of climate change.     

‘Favourite places in school’ for lower-set ‘ability’ pupils: school groupings practices and children’s spatial orientations

This paper contributes to the recent turn within Children’s Geographies concerned with understanding and illuminating educational inequalities. The focus is upon pupils assigned to lower ‘ability’ groupings, in a school under pressure to raise attainment. The objective of the paper is twofold, firstly to consider how school grouping practices affect children’s sense of belonging in lessons, and secondly, to contextualise these findings against children’s spatial orientations within the broader school environment. It is argued that a spatial focus may shed light upon the educational policy drivers that contribute to the exclusion of disadvantaged children. Neo-liberal imperatives of accountability and performance can be seen to shape hierarchies of belonging, where pupils’ positioning in ‘ability’ groupings enables/limits the spatial agency that they can exert. Macro policy concerns are mapped onto micro school processes concerning the construction and governance of school spaces, using theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and R.D Sack.     

‘God was with me everywhere’: women’s embodied practices and everyday experiences of sacred space in Czechia

In this paper, we approach religion and spirituality through the analytic lens of the everyday and examine how ordinary women make sacred space through their embodied, emotional, and spatially varying practices. Our research is grounded in Czechia where about 80% of inhabitants do not declare any religious affiliation and ‘new’ religions are on the rise. We deploy auto-photography as a method that invites participants’ own visual representations and interpretative narrations of their quotidian experiences. Thirty-eight Christian, Buddhist, and non-religious women participated in this study in 2016. Our analysis of photographs and interviews shows that our participants turn places that are not primarily associated with religion or spirituality (such as a kitchen sink or a bus stop) into sacred or spiritual places while at the same time integrate officially sacred spaces (such as churches and meditation centers) into their daily lives through social activities. Thus, we argue that a mutually transformative process is taking place in contemporary Czechia. In this process, religiously affiliated and non-affiliated women alike transform everyday spaces into sacred sites through their embodied and emotional practices that seek calmness, peace, and transcendence. At the same time, women who participate in organized religions remake the sacrality of officially sacred sites through their emphasis on social connections and feelings of communal belonging and shared identity. Our findings underscore that sacred space is not fixed in any one location and its production involves the continual emotional and material investment by ordinary women.     

Difficult heritage and digital media: ‘selfie culture’ and emotional practices at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

ABSTRACT

This article sheds light on the entanglements of difficult heritage and digital media through an ethnographic analysis of digital photography and social media practices at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. After a discussion of the project ‘Yolocaust’, through which an artist publicly shamed the ‘selfie culture’ at the memorial, the article argues that the sweeping condemnation of digital self-representations in the context of Holocaust remembrance remains simplistic. Instead, many visitors explore and enact potential emotional relationships to the pasts that sites of difficult heritage represent through digital self-representations. This observation raises critical questions about the role of digital media in current transformations of touristic memory cultures.     

‘Germany’s salvation’: Carl Schmitt’s teleological history of the Second Reich

Although Schmitt’s enthusiastic conversion to National Socialism is well known, his short history of the German Kaiserreich, published in 1934, remains neglected in Anglophone scholarship. This article contextualizes Schmitt’s narrative through the National Socialist conception of history and its accompanying teleology leading to the formation of the Third Reich. By placing Schmitt’s historical text in conversation with his earlier Staat, Bewegung, Volk, this article argues that Schmitt appropriated the history of the Kaiserreich to construct liberalism as a social pathology which could only be cured through the ‘concrete state theory’ he outlined in Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Furthermore, this article argues that Schmitt’s history relied heavily on propagandistic clichés of the Third Reich and thereby functioned as a rhetorical legitimation of Hitler’s rise to power.     

‘It’s a different time. It’s a different era. It’s a different place’: the Legacy of Vietnam and Contemporary Memoirs of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

This article examines censorship of US journalists in World Wars I and II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War, and from war to war, trends in types of censored information. This article also answers whether any censorship has avoided bloodshed or been legitimate, and concludes by examining how, in any future US wars, the government or military could most legitimately ensure safe reporting.     

‘They installed a speed bump’: children’s perceptions of traffic-calming measures around elementary schools

ABSTRACT

Growing scientific literature evaluates the impact of traffic-calming devices in terms of mobility behavior and safety, but little is known about their perceived impact from the point of view of children. Our study asks children about their perceptions of different traffic-calming measures around their schools. It draws on data gathered through eight focus groups, followed by walking tours with Grade 6 children (11–12 years old) (n?=?65, 27 boys, 38 girls) from elementary schools in different urban contexts in Quebec, Canada. Qualitative analysis of the discussions shows that (a) vehicle speed is the main perceived threat for participant children; (b) children are confident about the effectiveness of self-enforcing traffic-calming devices that reshape the street geometry; and (c) they are skeptical about the effectiveness of ‘informative’ measures such as signs and lines (marked pavement). Our findings inform public policy for a more effective promotion of walking and cycling among children.     

India’s Part in the Politics of Fiji’s Decolonization: From ‘Outworn Slogans’ to ‘Pragmatism and Realism’

United Nations (UN) demands for the unconditional ending of colonial rule troubled British officials confronted by local political difficulties impeding their efforts to establish self-government for Fiji, alarmed Indigenous Fijian leaders who initially resisted that reform, and encouraged the polarizing demand by Indo-Fijian leaders for a common franchise. India was initially at the forefront in maintaining UN pressure on Britain to move Fiji rapidly to independence with this franchise. Yet in the last two years of British rule, as ethnic tension in Fiji rose dangerously, India assumed the lead in urging moderation at the UN. India’s volte-face from antagonist to ally of the British helped open the way to the political accord on which Fiji’s independence constitution was based. The article highlights the major part played by the pre-eminent Indigenous leader Ratu Kamisese Mara in winning India’s support for a cautious approach to reform.     

Lampon’s Episode in Xenophon’s Ephesiaca: The Reformulation of a Goatherd

The article examines the figure of Lampon, an uncharacteristic goatherd appearing in a folk-tale-like story in Xenophon’s Ephesiaca 2.9–12. It has long been recognized by critics that the circumstances of the Euripidean Electra are recalled in the episode under discussion. Comparisons are made with the Euripidean scene and the “reshuffling” of the main roles is expounded, including the novelist’s decision to make Anthia the partner of a goatherd and not the wife of a lowly farmer. On the basis of thematic and verbal similarities, it is argued that Xenophon appears to have a direct knowledge of Euripides’ Electra, which he imaginatively exploits. Subtle details of occupation and name are also discussed in relation to the stereotypical α?π?λο? and the ?γροικο?. A characteristic feature recalling the Aristotelian notion of ?γροικ?α is pointed, and it is concluded that Xenophon skilfully subverts the stereotypes, as he does not endow Lampon with the traditional negative marking of ?γροικοι and α?π?λοι, and indeed moulds an anti-aipolos.