Engendering Debate: Animals and Identity in Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

WITH THE GROWING popularity of theoretical approaches within medieval archaeology, identity has become a central area of research. Although such studies frequently expound upon the role of the material world in negotiations between individuals and society, there is a tendency to overlook what were fundamen- tal agents within this process: animals. This is especially true of Anglo-Saxon England, where farming determined the daily experiences of most people and the exchange of animals was fundamental to the struc- turing of social relations. Adopting an integrated approach, this paper explores the ways in which differing interactions with animals, in their assorted forms, affected human identities. Particular emphasis is placed on gender perceptions, but the mutual linkages between varying forms of identity necessitate the contextu- alisation of gender against other aspects of social personas. In doing so, the need to adopt a holistic approach to the study of interactions amongst people, and between people and their surroundings, is highlighted.     

Declining Youth In‐migration in Rural Western Australia: the Role of Perceptions of Rural Employment and Lifestyle Opportunities

Over the last two decades there has been a steady decline in youth migration to Australian rural communities. Generally, inland agricultural communities are the most seriously impacted by this trend. Coupled with high rates of youth out‐migration, many rural communities face difficulties in attracting young people to fill skilled job vacancies and apprentice positions. Declining youth in‐migration also has social consequences, effectively reducing the capacity of rural communities to replenish their skill base and social networks. This research identifies how urban‐based youth perceive rural lifestyles and employment opportunities and how this is linked to their willingness to move to rural areas. The study reveals that young people attach undesirable aesthetic values to the physical environment of inland rural communities and perceive them as socially isolating and as having minimal opportunities for career advancement. However, the perceptions of those who live, or had lived, in rural areas are far more positive than those who have had little experience in rural communities. Accordingly, those who had previously lived in inland regions were far more likely to move to rural areas than those who had limited lived experience of rural communities. Overall, the research found that perceptions of lifestyle and employment opportunities were important influences on young people's willingness to move to rural communities.     

Second home conversion during the economic crisis: the case of Artemida,Greece

The conversion of second to primary homes is a known phenomenon; yet, its emergence as a result of necessity in an era of economic crisis has not been adequately addressed in the literature. To fill this gap, the article discusses an interview study of younger adults who have made this conversion, conducted in a second home area near Athens, Greece. The study explores the factors that influenced respondents to move permanently to their second home and perceptions of their relocation. Given the ongoing economic crisis in Greece, the research is placed in a unique socioeconomic context, allowing the investigation to delve into the effects of the economic crisis on these housing choices, by comparing perspectives on conversions having taken place before and during the crisis. Findings depict second home mobility as a complex phenomenon linked to tourism, changing housing needs, social factors, economic pressures, but also new potential urban functions arising from the current economic depression in Greece.     

Surviving through movement: the mobility of urban youth in Ghana

In Africa, young people are engaging with a globalised world of flows and movements but are coming of age in environments characterised by uncertainty, economic hardship and unemployment. Drawing upon research conducted in Madina, a suburb of Accra, a social navigation perspective is adopted to explore young people's everyday mobility and their aspirations for future mobility. By drawing attention to the meanings young people ascribe to movement, and by analysing their movements as tactics of social navigation, the importance of spatial mobility to young people's everyday well-being and their processes of social becoming are illustrated. Young people find that their mobility is bounded by a range of factors including labour market characteristics, gender and generational relations, and their spatial location on the outskirts of the city and the margins of the world. However, neither their daily mobility nor their spatial imagination is restricted to Madina; real or imagined travel takes them to other parts of the city, into rural areas and across the nation's borders. Through illustrating how significant mobility can be for everyday survival, this paper contributes to ‘the mobility turn’ in the social sciences which has overlooked the importance of mobility for livelihoods in the global South.     

Youth,gender and livelihoods in West Africa: Perspectives from Ghana and the Gambia

In this paper we report on preliminary fieldwork conducted in Ghana and The Gambia on the interrelationships among youth, gender and livelihoods. We examine how policy in developing countries, typically characterised as related to child labour or education, needs to emphasise the linkage across processes that affect young people. We argue that policy will be improved if young people are given voice to express how work, education, social networks, and culturally-bound notions of responsibility are linked and how they perceive the opportunities and constraints on their ‘life chances’.     

Negotiating social identities: The influence of gender,age and ethnicity on young people's ‘street careers’ in Tanzania

This paper explores the diverse ways that children and young people negotiate their social identities and construct their life course trajectories on the street, based on ethnographic research with street children in Tanzania. Drawing on the concept of a ‘street career’, I show how differences of age, gender and ethnicity intersect with the time spent on the street, to influence young people's livelihood strategies, use of public space, access to services, and adherence to cultural rites of passage. Using the notion of ‘gender performativity’, I analyse how young people actively reconfigure gender norms and the concept of ‘the family’ on the street.     

'MOVING AROUND': THE SOCIAL AND SPATIAL MOBILITY OF YOUTH IN LUSAKA

Claims have recently been made for a 'mobilities paradigm' which is challenging the relative 'a-mobile' focus of much of the social sciences. The agenda drawn up for this mobilities paradigm is clearly based on Northern trends with little consideration of the South. African populations have always been mobile but little is known about the mobility of urban populations and in particular of the youth, who constitute a large proportion of the population. This paper explores the daily and residential mobility of young people in Lusaka building upon interviews held with low- and middle-income youth. The aim is to contribute to discussions of: how mobility varies by gender and class; the links between spatial mobility and social and economic mobility; the nature of the relationship between patterns of mobility and residential structure; and how examining mobility can illuminate many other aspects of young people's lives. Overall the picture emerging from Lusaka is rather bleak. In a context of spiralling economic decline and rising HIV/AIDS rates, the social mobility of youth is predominantly downwards which is reflected in the residential and daily mobility patterns of the young people. There is a strong link between young people's mobility and their livelihoods, an aspect of mobility that is widespread in the South but largely overlooked by the emerging mobilities paradigm.     

Young people,place and devolved politics: perceived scale(s) of political concerns among under 18s living in Wales

Despite clear linkages between conceptualisations and perceptions of politics, society, culture and territorial rescaling, research into young people’s political engagement, participation and representation is underrepresented in the field of social and cultural geography. Here the gap is addressed using perceptions of devolved politics, as a form of territorial rescaling, among young people living in Wales. Specifically, it shows the geographical scales at which young people locate their political concerns and where responsibility for these concerns is perceived to lie, with a focus on the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Government. This is a key contribution to our understanding of the role devolution plays in youth political engagement in the light of the following: the relative infancy of the devolved U.K. institutions; their asymmetrical development and increasing divergences; the growing variation in turnout among young people for different types of election and referenda; and the lack of research examining the youth engagement dimension of Welsh devolution as a political, social and cultural process of territorial rescaling in the U.K. The paper concludes with a critique of the notion that devolution poses a ‘politics of hope’ for youth political engagement in Wales, a very different picture to Scotland.     

Physical activity and rural young people's sense of place

This paper explores rural young people's perceptions of their local environments in relation to their experiences with physical activities through the use of visual methodologies. The main findings from map, photo and interview data from 13 rural young Australians included the importance of friends, family, and gender structures which are discussed in relation to developing a sense of place and how this shapes their experience in physical activities. The findings highlight the importance of sociocultural issues and raises questions regarding measuring physical activity prompting further qualitative research to inform sustainable and equitable physical activity promotion initiatives for rural young people.     

The dejuvenation of the Italian population

Abstract

In recent decades, a process of structural reduction of the weight of new generations in overall population (dejuvenation) has been observed. In Italy, this process started in the 1970s and accelerated in the 1990s. We present here its main consequences for Italian society and economy. The number of Italian young people (aged 0–29) was reduced from 24.5 million in 1951 (51.6% of the population) to 17.5 million in 2016 (28.8%). What is more, many young Italians are becoming a wasted resource and a social cost, facing high rates of unemployment, long economic dependence on the family of origin, renunciation of full achievement of their life plans, distrust of institutions, low social and political participation, and increasing emigration flow. We analyze, using multivariate models, the data of the Rapporto Giovani survey held by the Toniolo Institute in 2015. Our main finding is that generational disadvantages not only hamper economic growth but, in a familistic context, also exacerbate social inequalities.     

Youth aspirations and employment in provincial Indonesia: a view from the lower middle classes

ABSTRACT

Demographically and geographically, lower middle class youth occupy an ambiguous position in Indonesian society, embodying elements of both privilege and marginality. Drawing on interviews and 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2013, this article considers how an emerging provincial middle class seeks to make good on the promises of an expanding higher education system and proliferation of globalised youth cultures. I examine the capacity and limits of higher education in facilitating young people’s aspirations for youth lifestyles, jobs and the future in a regional labour market with high levels of youth underemployment and informality. Young people’s aspirations for employment and middle class standards of living are mitigated by their responsibilities towards their families and difficulties to establish the social connections needed to access jobs and opportunities. Faced with limited upward mobility, class as an aspirational category rather than everyday reality underpins young people’s claims about the good life.     

Education and perceptions of social status and power among women in Larteh,Ghana

In exploring the status of women in the developing world, most research emphasizes the impact of development indicators, like income or health, on women. This article goes beyond development indicators by discussing women's own perceptions of social status and power in rural Larteh, Ghana. It focuses primarily on the effects of gender and education on perception of social status and power. Section 1 offers a brief overview of the history of Ghana, reflecting the current position of women in the country. Definitions of social status and power within an African context are presented in section 2. Section 3 examines 24 interviews collected in Ghana, which asks respondents to discuss their own social status and power in relation to their community. In general, the results indicate that a woman's perception of increased social status and power is dependent on education and occupation. Other factors affecting perceptions of social status and power are wealth and culturally embedded positions held within the community, including elder, chief, and priestess.     

UNIQUE ISOLATION VERSUS NETWORKS OF OPPORTUNITY: THE COMPETING DISCOURSES OF TASMANIA

In order to understand why people move, we must first try to comprehend how they understand their migration decisions and recognize that such understandings are intricately tied to their understandings of places. Place construction – the way people understand and discuss the nature and meaning of places – occurs at all levels from individual constructions to constructions by economic and political interest groups. These place constructions necessarily influence each other, and hence they are in constant flux and reflect power relations evident in society. This article examines these issues in the context of the negative net migration of young adults in the Australian state of Tasmania through an examination of the experiences of thirty young return migrants who participated in in‐depth interviews and group discussions about their experiences of migration. It finds that bounded constructions of Tasmania – which stress the physical isolation and social and political insularity of the state as well as the uniqueness of the state's environment and society – appear to be dominant for these young returned migrants. However, the article argues that these bounded constructions necessarily exist in relation to networked constructions, which focus on the opportunities for people, ideas, goods and money to benefit through connections with other places as well as the loss of the uniqueness of the Tasmanian environment and society. This article concludes with a discussion of the political, economic and social consequences of these different forms of place construction.     

Renegotiating the Reproductive Bargain: Gender Analysis of Economic Transition in Cuba in the 1990s

This article argues that Cuba's economic demise following the collapse of the former Soviet Union should be seen as a crisis in reproduction as well as a crisis in consumption and production. Using qualitative field research carried out in 1994 and 1995 in Havana and in the province of Matanzas, the author shows that the commodities and services required for reproduction could no longer be guaranteed through the distribution system of the Cuban state. Consequently, people began to devise a range of survival strategies in order to ensure the reproduction of their households, including trading in unofficial markets, leaving formal employment and engaging in a portfolio of income-generating activities in the informal sector. Such strategies were patterned by the existing sexual division of labour and show a reinforcement of traditional gender roles. The article argues that these changes will have important political as well as economic consequences for Cuba's future.     

Degrees without Freedom: The Impact of Formal Education on Dalit Young Men in North India

This article considers the capacity of formal education to undermine established processes of caste and class reproduction in an area of north India, with particular reference to the views and strategies of educated Dalit young men. It draws on quantitative and qualitative research conducted by the authors in a village in Bijnor district, western Uttar Pradesh (UP). We discuss how educated Dalit young men perceive education, how they seek to use educational credentials to obtain ‘respectable’ jobs, and how they react when this strategy fails. Increased formal education has given Dalit young men a sense of dignity and confidence at the village level. However, these men are increasingly unable to convert this ‘cultural capital’ into secure employment. This has created a reproductive crisis which is manifest in an emerging culture of masculine Dalit resentment. In response to this culture, Dalit parents are beginning to withdraw from investing money in young mens’ higher secondary and tertiary‐level education. Without a substantial redistribution in material assets within society, development initiatives focused on formal education are likely to be only partially successful in raising the social standing and economic position of subordinate groups.     

Contemporary Irish theatre,the new Playboy controversy,and the economic crisis

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the economic crisis on contemporary Irish theatre. More specifically, I contend that the legal controversy surrounding Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s second production of Playboy of the Western World: A New Version in 2008 provides a case study of how professional theatre productions that dramatised stories of immigrant empowerment during the Irish economic boom were profoundly inhibited by the bust that followed. Their collaborative version of the new Playboy was widely regarded as Ireland’s most successful intercultural play and a commercial success when it was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in 2007. The subsequent breakdown in their relationship and ensuing legal dispute is more symptomatic of Celtic Tiger Ireland in economic collapse, I suggest, than the content of the play itself, or most other productions mounted in the period. I argue that this dispute did not simply reflect but also reinforced the social effects of the economic crisis, through its prolonged litigation, enormous expense, and especially the missed opportunity that it represented to position the multicultural and migrant themed Playboy within the Irish theatrical mainstream. More broadly, I suggest that the economic crisis has been marked by the disappearance of immigrants from the professional Irish stage, a void which was only partially filled by community theatre productions. A case in point is Adigun and Arambe’s most recent adaptation of Jimmy Murphy’s The Kings of the Kilburn High Road in The Paddies of Parnell Street (2013), a play which I positively appraise as an example of successful “intercultural re-appropriation”.     

Decadent pioneers: Land,space and gender in Zionist revisionist thought

Soviet Russia in the 1920s was the scene of intensified Zionist activity, fed by an economic and existential crisis among large segments of the Jewish population and tolerated to a surprising degree by the Soviet authorities. The article explores these factors and the “Soviet context” of Zionism, and documents the powerful influences they exerted on the young membership of the Zionist organizations. The author's interest goes beyond articulated ideological positions to include learned habits of work, political and cultural practices, and perceptions of the social and the personal. She analyzes the transplantation of these elements of political culture into Palestine by the 3,000-odd young Zionist immigrants who arrived between 1924 and 1931, cautioning that ideas and practices were borrowed selectively and modified by the reality of the Jewish settlement in Palestine.     

Estate youth and complicated migration in Malaysia's oil palm plantations: the emotions of leaving and connecting back

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the emotional relationship young Tamil Indians have with oil palm plantations they are leaving behind or have left behind. Working in a small town in Malaysia, as well as in a large estate, we show how communal and individual aspirations of migration shape young people's mobility. While young people recognize the poverty and marginalization of plantation life, they continue to be emotionally and affectually connected to plantations through socio-cultural and spiritual practices. Post-migration we show how youth maintain estate connections, and argue that the pull back towards plantations is contrary to state-sponsored ideologies of modernization. Not all young people feel the same pull; many try to distance themselves from their estate roots through consumption and other social practices. Responding to calls for researchers emotions to be present in youth research, the paper also briefly reflects how adult emotions shape our understanding of young people's emotions of migration.     

Narrating intersections of gender and dwarfism in everyday spaces

Dwarfs, midgets, even freaks, are among the terms that have been used to label little people. Feminist theorists have argued that discursive identities of women prevent any meaningful essentialised analysis of their experiences. Similarly, disability researchers have argued against generalising the experiences of disabled individuals. This paper explores the intersection of gender and dwarfism through the narratives of four women who are little people. Findings suggest that the ways women, who are little people, negotiate public spaces are affected by discourses of gender, disability and common conceptions of what is physically normal. Furthermore, these discourses have material implications in the everyday lives of these women. A brief historical overview of dwarfism is followed by narratives that describe experiences in public spaces, perceptions of height related to age and capability, gendered spaces and sexual stereotypes, uncomfortable spaces, violations of personal space and transportation. This paper provides a partial perspective on how discourses of dwarfism are manifest in social spaces and the built environment. Despite these significant commonalities that little people shared with other disabled people, there are socio‐spatial experiences that appear to be unique to people with dwarfism .     

Voices from the Top of the Pile: Elite Perceptions of Poverty and the Poor in the Philippines

How do elites perceive poverty and the poor? In this article, we present the results of interviews with eighty members of the Filipino elite, undertaken as part of a larger six‐country study of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor. Poverty, we argue, is a highly subjective phenomenon. People's perceptions of poverty, of who is and who is not poor, of how poverty affects them and others, and of how poverty can be effectively tackled, vary enormously between different types of people (defined in terms of class, status, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, gender or a myriad of other social identities). Wherever people cohere as groups, classes or other social constructs, perceptions of poverty are aggregated and refined and then embedded in social dynamics. The study of elite perceptions of poverty and the poor, we conclude, can both add to our understanding of the social dynamics of poverty and inequality and inform pro‐poor public policy.