A portrait of the chief as a general paralytic: rhetorics of sexual pathology in the Parnell split*

The O’Shea trial and the ensuing fall of Charles Stewart Parnell occupy an epochal position in accounts of the sexual politics of Victorian Britain and the development of Irish nationalism. This article examines how the “Parnell myth” came to serve (and was constructed from the outset) as a symbolic edifice within which anxieties concerning the relationship between Irishness and sexuality could be foregrounded and negotiated. In particular, it will analyse Timothy Healy’s influential post-split denunciations of Parnell, and the rhetoric of sexual contagion through which they were conducted, a campaign which set the discursive terms of twentieth-century mainstream Irish nationalism. Through an analysis of Healy’s post-split journalism, contemporary political memoirs by T.P. O’Connor, and a range of nineteenth-century medical and psychiatric texts, this article will highlight the ways in which discourses of sexual health were used to reshape Parnell’s public persona at the level of gender and ethno-national affiliation. In doing so, it will illustrate how a sensitivity to the history of medicine can enrich critical understandings of a crucial moment in the political and cultural history of Ireland, and shed fresh light on the vexed collocation of Irish identity and sexual purity which the Parnell split reinforced.     

Still methodologically becoming: collaboration,feminist politics and ‘Team Ismaili’

This article mobilizes a feminist analytic to examine team research and collaborative knowledge production. We center our encounter with team research – a collectivity we named ‘Team Ismaili’ – and our study with first- and second-generation East African Shia Ismaili Muslim immigrants in Greater Vancouver, Canada. We draw upon feminist politics to highlight the ways in which ‘Team Ismaili’ at once destabilized and unwittingly reproduced normative academic power relations and lines of authority. A ‘backstage tour’, of ‘Team Ismaili’ shows the messiness and momentum of team research and sheds light on how collaborative knowledge production can challenge and reconfirm assumed hierarchies. Even as we are still methodologically becoming, through this discussion we strive to interrupt the prevailing silence on team research in human geography, to prompt more dialogue on collaboration and to foreground the insight garnered through feminist politics.     

The Politics of Air Bag Safety: A Competition Among Problem Definitions

In light of 121 deaths attributed to air bag deployments, mainly to children and adults of small stature, recent policy debate has focused on modifying current Federal automotive air bag regulations. A problem definition perspective is employed to understand the nature of this debate. Utilizing a content analysis of the official record of one U.S. House and two U. S. Senate hearings, it is argued that four problem definitions characterize the debate over air bag safety: behavioral, regulatory, technological, and corporate greed. Furthermore, it is argued that a problem definition perspective offers a better explanation of recent changes to Federal air bag regulations than do pluralist, elitist, and principal-agent models.     

Making and remaking Tibetan diasporic identities

The fifty-year long Chinese occupation of Tibet has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and has produced a refugee flow that continues today. Although the plight of Tibetans commands international attention, this diaspora remains understudied and undertheorized. To speak to this silence, we follow Patterson and Kelley (2000) and argue that the Tibetan diaspora can be analysed as both a condition and a process. Diaspora as condition emphasizes the structural features of an exile population, such as race, gender, class and religion. Diaspora as process draws attention to lived refugee experiences--the making and remaking of diasporic identities. In the Tibetan diaspora, His Holiness the Dalai Lama holds a central position. Through his global profile, and a transnational nationalist political structure, he creates images of Tibet, builds community and works toward Tibetan self-determination. Within this nationalist frame, Tibetan identities assume a singular, unified and homogeneous form. Further analysis that focuses on individual voices, however, shows how Tibetan diasporic identities are contested, complex and embedded in not one but multiple narratives of struggle.     

Changing Ethnic Segregation and Housing Disadvantage in Dundee

Abstract

Dundee has a small black and minority ethnic (BME) population, which has been neglected by previous research, as have BME populations in small towns and cities generally. As in other British cities, the residential locations of the main BME groups are distinct from that of the white population. After briefly reviewing the history of settlement in Dundee, this paper examines the extent to which patterns of ethnic segregation have changed between 1991 and 2001. Some moves towards dispersal and suburbanisation are identified but there are important contrasts between different BME groups. The implications of segregation for housing availability are assessed through Census of Population data. The hypothesis is posed that the consequences of segregation for housing disadvantage are greater in small cities such as Dundee.