Mobile Modernities: A South Asian family negotiates immigration,gender and class in Canada

For the modern Indian immigrant family ‘modernity’ is not necessarily found in the west. Using qualitative data drawn from in-depth interviews with one immigrant Sikh family, conducted in both Vancouver and the Punjab, we draw attention to the mobile and contradictory modernities family members have faced in their migration, settlement and subsequent transnational activities. We explore how class, gender and sexuality have framed the experiences of the members of this family in differential, partial and sometimes ironic ways. In so doing we construct a theoretical argument about the nature and geography of modernity, and how it relates to immigrant settlement in Canada.     

Fieldwork and disabled students: discourses of exclusion and inclusion

Disabled students form a significant but under represented minority in higher education in the UK. Participation appears to be particularly low in disciplines that contain a fieldwork component. Fieldwork has been recognized as a barrier to the participation of disabled students. This paper emphasizes a critical perspective on fieldwork, highlighting the way in which fieldcourses as currently conceived, enacted and experienced, can exclude disabled students. It discusses a survey of the experiences of providing learning support to disabled students undertaking fieldwork in geography, earth and environmental science departments in the UK. It also considers the various ways in which the images, spaces, practices and cultures of fieldwork may exclude or marginalize disabled students and the different ways in which fieldwork may be made more inclusive.     

The power of national symbols: the credibility of a dragon’s efficacy

It is only when symbols gain meaning as effective triggers of associated sentiments in many linked contexts, including that of daily life, that they become powerful. It is what is perceived as the proved ability of the state to correct disobedience to its rule and violation to its sovereignty that commands commitment and loyalty, necessary for state symbols to become effective. As long as the link between symbol and effect can be made credible as a natural connection of cause and effect, by rational or irrational means, by folk narrative or academic theory, triggering the national symbol works in the mind of its believers. In this article I discuss the role of academics in the creation of national symbolism. Using some examples of historical and anthropological interpretations of the notion of the dragon, I argue that the cognitive aspect of nationalism is of crucial importance to the efficacy of national symbols. Thus arguments on the dragon’ various shapes, origins and merits as totem, embryo and sea snake attach and support different symbolic and political meanings of the Chinese nation.     

Epilogue

This epilogue reflects on five questions raised by the papers in this collection. First, I ask ‘what are women's groups’. Second, I consider the centrality of Christianity in women's groups in colonial and contemporary epochs and review debates about how women's agency has been seen in becoming a Christian and in the perduring reality of Christian commitment. Third, I ponder the expansion of agendas from ‘welfare to empowerment’ and the proposition that even groups with conservative agendas can empower women. Fourth, I review the relation between self‐help and help from others and the associated issue of divergent local and global agendas. Fifth, I consider the differences between women grounded in age, rank, and class, highlighted by several authors. I caution against seeing such differences as irredeemable, irrevocable divisions. In conclusion, I pose the sensitive question of the relation between Western feminist scholars and the diversity of Melanesian women and espouse Teresia Teaiwa's value of Oceanic fluidarity rather than solidarity in coalitions of women.     

Lobbying Reform and Nonprofit Organizations: policy Images and Constituent Policy

This article explores the interaction of politics and policy through the case of the "Istook Amendment"–proposals made primarily during the 104th Congress that were designed to change policies concerning the permissible lobbying and political advocacy activities of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). It discusses elements that contributed to a shift in the policy image of NPOs, how this shift opened an opportunity for dramatic policy change, and offers possible explanations for why such change failed to be enacted. Conceptually, lobbying reform is treated both as an example of constituent policy and as a device to explore the political dynamics of this type of policy.