Postgraduate Essay Prize Winner for 2005 * A New Look at the Affluent Worker: The Good Working Mother in Post-War Britain

The number of married women working outside their homes afterthe Second World War rose rapidly despite widespread criticismof working wives and mothers. This article discusses three maintrends associated with this change. First, many women reactedto the discourse criticizing working mothers by trying to changethe view of ideal motherhood as exclusively domestically bound.They defended their actions by arguing that a good mother wasnot solely one who stayed at the beck and call of her family,but one who nurtured their self-reliance and independence bynot being constantly available and provided goods and pleasuresotherwise out of reach of the family. Second, the criticismof working mothers combined with the dual burden that most womenfaced in choosing employment to create an unprecedented demandfor part-time jobs. The change in women's work force participationsince World War II is almost entirely attributable to the risein part-time workers. Third, because observers and the womenthemselves so often described wives’ work as providingextras for the family, the value of women's work was debased.This obscured women's role in creating the affluent societyand allowed the male breadwinner ideal to continue unaffecteddespite major social change, as the public still generally viewedmen as having primary responsibility for family support.     

An oasis in a watery desert? Discourses on an industrial ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico Rigs‐to‐Reefs program

This article explores how in the years after 1980 a spectrum of historical actors came to see petroleum platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as a necessary part of the Gulf ecosystem and how such views affected platform removal policies. Through a discourse analysis of the Rigs‐to‐Reefs program, in which old offshore petroleum facilities were converted into artificial reefs, this article examines how actors presented to the public their notions of the relationship of the Gulf ecosystem with technological offshore structures. Through this case we see how ideas of technology and nature were mutually constructed via discourses and what affect that had on policies.