The Irish Sandow school: physical culture competitions in fin-de-siècle Ireland

ABSTRACT

Beginning with an examination of Ireland’s turn of the century interest in physical culture, this article highlights the case of Eugen Sandow’s “Great Competition” and its Irish contestants. Seen as a precursor for today’s bodybuilding competitions, Sandow’s contest enjoyed submission photographs from hundreds of half-naked men – many of whom were Irish – posing in Greco-Roman pose. In studying this topic, the article addresses two pressing issues. In the first instance, the article examines how and why physical culture competitions became a competitive outlet for Irishmen in the first decade of the twentieth century. Secondly, it argues that these contests were often connected to broader societal ideals surrounding acceptable forms of masculinity. The article thus examines a previously unexplored but nevertheless important part of sporting and athletic behaviour in early twentieth-century Ireland.     

Women’s representation and participation in UNESCO heritage discourse

ABSTRACT

Gender equality represents one of the most challenging objectives in contemporary society and has become a priority for UNESCO (Medium-Term Strategy 2008–2013 and 2014–2021), as it is considered ‘an essential part of the equation for more inclusive and sustainable development’. However, in various World Heritage sites, women are still being marginalised from decisional processes concerning the identification and interpretation of the past and they are often underrepresented in the main narratives. Using the case study of the World Heritage Vineyard Landscape of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato (Italy), I explore how international and national documents frame gender equality in order to uncover underground power dynamics that risk undermining cultural representation and participation. Through the analysis of the interviews done with a group of local female wine producers, I compare heritage discourses with the perception women have of their contribution in the identity and heritage-building process. If dominant heritage discourses are characterised by a rather male-driven set of values, could lack of women’s representation influence the activation of their participation? Are women willing to participate in the management of a heritage which has not been recognised through their values and meanings? What kind of participation would they desire?     

#MeToo,white feminism and taking everyday politics seriously in the global political economy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines social media movements, specifically #MeToo, in relation to the politics of feminism and white privilege in the contemporary global political economy. Analysis of social media movements is located as a key part of the intricate web of practices that enable certain types of gendered identity and socioeconomic privilege to intersect, in powerful ways and to potent effect. The paper argues that, while scholarship on the global political economy has not often taken seriously popular culture sources in and across world politics, and needs to do better in this regard, investigating the politics of popular culture, race and socioeconomic privilege in contemporary world politics is important. This is because such analysis foregrounds everyday, cultural practices of knowledge formation, building space for emphasising relations of power but also highlighting the possibilities of and for resistance, agency and avenues for creative thinking and doing in world politics.     

Dominant,damaged, disappeared: imagining war through videogame bodies

ABSTRACT

Like other pop-cultural forms, videogames commonly reify militarist representations of warfare as straightforward, precise, and moral by obscuring conflict's embodied messiness. But videogames do not just reflect militarist interests in their content; they are materially, symbiotically entangled with militarist interests. Recognising this intimate connection, and the phenomenon of virtuous warfare that results, this paper takes videogames seriously as material cultural artefacts. This paper draws on feminist IR, critical military studies, and game studies to explore three categories of bodies, and their gendered logics, produced by virtualised warfare: the hypermasculine, technologised soldier; the oft-ignored broken bodies of the soldier and game developer; and the obfuscated civilian. Together, this analysis argues that the consumption and production of videogames benefits certain parties, in ways that are reproduced and sustained through the production and obfuscation of bodies. Such entanglements have real consequences for how war, and its popular culture production, is understood and imagined.     

Playing with mud- becoming stuck,becoming free? … The negotiation of gendered/class identities when learning outdoors

ABSTRACT

In recent years there has been a growth in outdoor learning opportunities for children of primary school age in part due to concerns that children spend less time outdoors and have become disconnected from nature. This paper draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted during the school year 2014–2015 in a school garden and two forest schools with children aged 3–11 years old. This paper explores how mud is used to form gendered and class-based identities through its management and social construction as dirt. The empirical research finds that the mud kitchen and wearing of waterproofs worked in part as assemblages to govern individuals and their experiences through the creation of cuts between bodies and mud. Yet, there were times when children’s encounters with materials exceeded their intended pedagogical function and resistances emerged.     

中国老年人口自评健康水平的空间分异及影响因素研究

基于2005年和2015年1%人口抽样调查资料以及2010年人口普查资料，采用ArcGIS分级制图和空间自相关分析等方法，刻画中国老年人口健康水平的时空格局及变化，并使用面板数据线性回归模型和Tobit回归模型识别影响老年人口健康水平空间分异的主要因素。结果表明：①中国老年人口健康水平存在明显的空间分异，老年人口健康水平高的地市主要分布在东南部省份、华北平原和新疆北部，老年人口健康水平低的地市主要集中在青藏高原及其周边地区；②十年间，老年人口健康水平的空间分异水平有所降低，老年人口健康水平中等的地市数量大幅增加；③老年人口健康水平呈现显著的空间正相关性，随着空间分异的缩小，空间集聚程度上升；老年人口健康水平的高-高类型区主要集中在东南部地区，低-低类型区主要分布在青藏高原及周边区域；④社会经济发展水平、人口结构、饮食习惯和自然地理因素是影响老年人口健康水平空间分异的重要因素，东部、中部和西部地区老年人口健康水平的影响因素存在显著的差异。     

纸质文物辐照消毒研究进展

纸张是人类历史文化信息的重要载体,纸质文物的妥善保存是文明延续的一部分。纸制品在使用及存储期间,除发生自然老化外,还受到以真菌为主的微生物损害,因此纸张消毒处理是保护过程中的重要步骤。本文总结了微生物对纸制品的危害以及常用的化学和物理消毒方法,重点介绍了电离辐射对纸制品消毒的成效,并分析了辐照对纸张机械性能、颜色和聚合度等方面的影响。     

高质量发展背景下黄河流域中下游绿色生产率时空分异研究

高质量发展背景下，以绿色全要素生产率（GTFP）视角考察黄河流域中下游各地市2003—2018年间的经济发展质量。首先，对GTFP进行测度并与传统TFP比较分析；其次，对GTFP增长率的内在动力进行解构；最后，采用变异系数和回归分析检验GTFP的收敛趋势，并验证其增长率的影响因素。结果表明：①GTFP较传统TFP表现出“中部塌陷”为特征的非均衡分布；②2003—2013年间，技术效率的提升是GTFP增长的主要推动力，2013年后技术前沿水平转变为主要动力；③在“追赶”效应下，各地市GTFP的差异呈缓慢缩小趋势；④该区域GTFP的提高受产业结构、财政科技投入等因素的显著影响。     

Avoiding the “F” word: feminist geography in Iran

Abstract

Little attention has been given to how feminist geography is defined, applied, and taught in non-Anglophone countries, especially in Muslim majority societies where Women’s Rights are quite different from the western world. The case of Iran among other Middle Eastern countries becomes even more isolated due to the several political, linguistic, and cultural limitations opposed on Iranian academics and international collaborations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Women make half of Iran’s 80 million population, 63% of university graduates, almost half of informal workers, 30% of Iranian professors, 13% of high level management position holders, and under 5% of the Islamic Majlis (Iran’s Parliament). However, feminist geography, the sub-discipline that has been traditionally dedicated to the inclusion of gender as an analytical lens within Geography, is not a recognized field at any departments in Iran. This essay aims to present the current status of feminist geographic research and teaching at selected Iranian Universities. My goal is to offer a better understanding of how the local social and political context affect what constitute feminist geographic work and how geographers navigate the political and hierarchal university systems to engage in gender studies. Through informal interviews via emails and Skype with several Iranian geographers, I illustrate why Iranian geographers often avoid using “feminist” terminology in recognizing their work, even though their work is feminist.     

Women bargaining with patriarchy in coastal Kenya: contradictions,creative agency and food provisioning

Gender analysts have long recognised that challenging existing patriarchal structures involves risks for women, who may lose both long-term support and protection from kin. However, understanding the specific ways in which they ‘bargain with patriarchy’ in particular contexts is relatively poorly understood. We focus on a Mijikenda fishing community in coastal Kenya to explore contradictions in gendered power relations and how women deploy these to reinterpret gendered practices without directly challenging local patriarchal structures. We argue that a more complex understanding of women’s creative agency can reveal both the value to women of culturally-specific gendered roles and responsibilities and the importance of subtle changes that they are able to negotiate in these. With reference to food provisioning, the analysis contributes to more nuanced understandings of gendered household food security and women’s creative approaches to maintaining long-term security in their lives.