Месяц: Сентябрь 2015

Effects studies

The dominant tradition of academic research on television and sexuality has been carried out by psychologists and sociologists who use ‘content analysis’ of texts and ‘effects’ research on audiences. Government and industry sponsors of various kinds, and also advocacy groups promoting specific religious agendas, have funded these in the main. This is an important tradition […]

GOAL 1 DEVELOPING AND ADAPTING THEORIES

There are several French women thinkers whose ideas have been influential in British and American feminist sociology. Christine Delphy’s ideas were publicised in Britain by Diana Leonard from the mid-1970s onwards, from her inclusion in Barker and Allen (1976) through to Leonard and Adkins (1996). Delphy is certainly a sociolo­gist, with a commitment to a […]

Did Social Change Movements Matter?

Social movements are usually started by ordinary people intent on changing — institutions they find intolerable. Ironically, subsequent generations often appear to be free riders, enjoying the benefits of earlier struggles and unconsciously or (to the dismay of the pioneers) consciously downplaying the relevance of struggle in the first place. Did the achievements of the […]

Historical Roots of Separatism

In nineteenth-century America, commercial and industrial growth intensi­fied the sexual division of labor, encouraging the separation of men’s and women’s spheres. While white males entered the public world of wage labor, business, the professions, and politics, most white middle-class women re­mained at home, where they provided the domestic, maternal, and spiritual care for their families […]

Emotional Processing and the Brain

Given the differences between cognitive and emo­tional aging, a number of questions have served to guide contemporary research in the area of emotional processing. Such questions include: what declines, what is preserved, and what improves? In addition, it is important to identify the conditions under which we observe decline, preservation, and improvement. The neuroscience approach […]

Neither young, nor luscious, nor sycophantic

developments in feminist sociology 1968-2002 The Leicester sociology department in which I studied from 1967 to 1972 was large, prestigious, and had a male-dominated academic staff. (Deem, 1996: 7) F or the women who became feminist sociologists in Britain after 1965, what Deem describes at Leicester is instantly recognisable. Deem argues that the Leicester Department […]

The Holy Nature of Motherhood

During the period between 1866 and 1954 the primary social role of women was to bear and rear children. Women who did not conform to this standard were made into outcasts. Childless women were, in fact, perceived to be poten­tially bad women. In the trials of Emily Sprague, Marie-Louise Cloutier, and Cordelia Viau in Quebec, […]

Situating young same-sex marriages

Despite international interest, and the wealth of literature debating for­malised same-sex relationships, relatively few detailed empirical studies of the actual experience of these relationships have been published (but see Badgett, 2009; Bates Deakin, 2006). This book is based on a qualitative study that sought to explore formalised same-sex relation­ships from the perspective of life on […]