Chasing Dragons

When In Doubt, Blame Working Mothers? What About Capitalism?

A recent study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health claims to show that when socio-economic status, age, and ethnicity are taken into account, children from households where a mother works are more likely to be driven to school, to watch more TV, consume more sweet drinks and eat fewer portions of fruit and vegetables than those households where the mother stays at home.

And sadly, the British media has jumped all over these results with misleading headlines like 'Working Mothers Have Unhealthiest Children', 'Working Mothers Children Unfit', or this gem from the Mirror that represents a new acme in ignorant reasoning: 'Working Mums' Kids are Fatter and Lazier'.

Why is it that working mothers are being singled out in the headlines when there are a range of factors that contribute to kids with health problems or poor diets?

Well, what these headlines indicate is that there is a disturbing gender politics at play that is keen to direct both contempt and rage at mothers who work because they do not conform to traditional perceptions of 'normal' gender roles. The utility of this study for these conservative social forces is that it supposedly provides 'scientific' evidence that working mothers are 'bad moms' and therefore reinforces antiquated notions that a woman's proper place is in the home, raising her children.

However, there is a fatal flaw in the study that completely undermines these results and their popular interpretation. The researchers did not record whether the households were single parent, nuclear, mixed, reconstitutional, or multi-generational in composition. In other words, it may be that fathers or other carers, by their absence or by their presence due to work and/or other reasons, also play an important role in the health of children.

Moreover, looking at family composition might draw attention to the significance of the current structural inequalities of the British economy including the necessity of double-income households in some areas, poor public support for single-mothers, general increases in working hours, norms against flexible working hours, expectations regarding who should stay home to parent children, marked gender disparities in pay, weakened trade unions, inadequate and unaffordable child care options outside of school hours, and their corresponding effects.

But of course, it is far easier to just blame working mothers than it is to blame capitalism...

Photo credit: buridan

Testify David Mitchell, Testify!

Last week, the new metric that will be used by the Research Excellence Framework to assess the standard of research produced in UK universities was revealed. 60% of a department's score will be determined by the quality of the research outputs--as judged by other experts in the field.

15% of the final score will be earned by the quality of the research environment including things like conferences held, the number of Ph.D. students who have successfully defended their dissertations, and research infrastructure.

The final 25% is to be determined through 'research impact' which is supposed to be assessed based on how well research conducted addresses specific needs identified by key 'stakeholders', which is basically managerial speak for 'how closely does research conducted contribute to the needs of business and the government?'

Impact measurement will not only compromise the integrity of research conducted in the UK, but it will also diminish the amount of curiosity driven research in the arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering, AND natural sciences, all of which have contributed to some of the most significant discoveries that have previously advanced the human condition.

The idea that the likes of Boris Johnson, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown, George Osborne, any of the miserable lot on Dragon's Den, or the replicants of Rupert Murdoch should be determining what gets taught and researched in universities is absolute madness.

Unfortunately, it's not exactly difficult to get the general public to turn on academics--let's face it we come across as a pretty whingey bunch at the best of times--so the Labour government has been riding a wave of anti-intellectual populism by branding these moves as attempts to get rid of 'pointless studies' and 'useless degrees' that are funded by the tax-payer.

So, with a growing sense of despair over the negative impacts that a business-driven university agenda will have for both students and for research, it is a pretty demoralizing time for university lecturers.

Luckily, there are rays of sunshine out there. In today's Observer, comedian David Mitchell--of Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look-- has written an excellent defense of academic freedom. The closing line sums up it quite well:

• The Research Excellence Framework is starting to ask what sorts of curiosity our culture can afford, and that scares me even more than the demise of the silly survey because it strikes at the heart of what it means to be civilised, to have instincts other than survival.

How is it that a guy who helped to come up with the concept of 'Number Wang' gets it while those who are in charge of running the country completely miss the plot?

Photo credit: Iman

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 20

For your weekend reading pleasure:

• 'The Art of Psychographics' by Kerry William Purcell at designobserver.com

• 'Towards a New Journalism' by Fred Ritchen at afterphotography (credit to duckrabbit for the link)

• 'If not mass consumption, then what?' by Jeremy Crampton at foucaultblog

• 'Xplane visualizes our Digital State in "Did you know 4.0"' by Tracy Boyer at innovativeinteractivity

Enjoy the weekend!

Photo credit: kevindooley

World Politics and Popular Culture Conference: 19-20 November, 2009

I am very excited to announce that a conference on World Politics and Popular Culture will be taking place at the Grand Hotel in Tynemouth, UK on the 19-20 November, 2009. Organized by two of my colleagues at Newcastle University--Simon Philpott and Matt Davies--this conference will explore how popular culture contributes to the production of meaning in politics as well as how politics shapes popular culture.

Professor Michael J. Shapiro from the University of Hawaii'i at Manoa, author of numerous articles and books including Cinematic Geopolitics (Routledge), Violent Cartographies (University Of Minnesota Press), and Language and Political Understanding: The Politics of Discursive Practices (Yale University Press) is the keynote speaker. The proceedings will be kick-started by opening remarks from Phil Dixon and Christine Savage, who as members of Culture Quarter, have been instrumental in the cultural regeneration of the North Tyneside coastal region.

This conference is open to members of the public, cultural practitioners, students, and academics. The early bird registration rate (good until 30 September) is £70 for the two days--and less than that for students--and includes tea breaks and fully catered lunches.There is also a daily delegate rate as well.

For more details, PDFs of the conference flyer and preliminary schedule can be found below. The link to the official conference website--including registration portal--can be found here.

Download World Politics and Popular Culture Flyer

Download WPPC - Conference Programme

Why Are British Politicians Desperately Latching On To London Fashion Week?

One of the refreshing things about British politicians is that--in general--their sartorial sense is formal yet rather understated.  I cannot recall a published photograph of Gordon Brown not wearing a suit, David Cameron looks as though he is still dressed by his mom, Peter Mandelson sports the stockbroker by day-professional assassin by night motif, and Boris Johnson always looks as though he has just emerged from a dumpster located behind a really expensive haberdasher.

Why then have several notable politicians made a point of being 'seen on the scene' recently at London Fashion Week? Over at the Times Online, fashion editor Lisa Armstrong is speculating that a calculation has been made that the fashion industry can, 'for relatively little investment (unlike the car industry), be helped and ultimately reap PR dividends.'

My questions though are does a fashion industry still exists in the UK, and if so, what kind of industry exactly? Most of the major manufacturers--like Burberry--have relocated overseas. There are of course several globally established designers, smaller--often bespoke--producers, and a massive retail sector. But at least two of the three neither require, nor deserve, government support.

Promoting the regeneration of the productive manufacturing aspects of the fashion industry could be a welcome development if it could generate jobs while providing something tangible to the economy in terms of goods and skills. However, if effort goes towards boosting the retail sector or to designers who have their wares manufactured elsewhere-i.e., non-productive sectors like finance capital--the gains will be as transitory as those that got us into the current mess in the first place. Do you think this lot will have figured it out?

Image credit: ShedBOy^

Humor in Hard Times

There's a very cool feature over at the New York Times where cultural theorists and practitioners examine the constellation formed by politics, economic crisis, and humor. There's some interesting food for thought, particularly with regard to role played by late night talk shows in constituting the zeitgeist of the American public.

At the same time, I am surprised that there was no discussion of whether comedy and humor have become increasingly polarized with regard to satirical targets and the ideological content of jokes. Similarly, it was interesting to note that the potential contributions of class, race and gender--both of performers and intended audiences-- to the dynamics underpinning humor were largely ignored.

Photo credit:  JasonDGreat

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 19

This week's theme is epidemiology and the politics of fear:

• 'Swine flu could kill millions' from the guardian.co.uk

• This looks to be worse than a zombie outbreak according to sciencecentral@timesonline

• But it's potentially not quite as bad as a vampire outbreak from punkrockoperationsresearch

If we all can wash our hands regularly, sneeze into our elbows, carry around a crucifix, and resist the temptation to dine on brains, everything should be just fine...

Have a good weekend!

Image credit: Rebecca L. Daily

Humanizing the President or Shameless Photo Op?

I found these photos on-line as part of a sequence showing Sasha and Malia Obama running out to greet their dad who also just happens to be the President of the United States. Everyone looks really happy and it ends with a big group hug.

What interests me about the photos like these is what kind of political impact--if any--might they have? Does it humanize the President? If so, does that confer political benefits, for example by being able to gain traction with members of the voting public who are concerned that their leaders appear to be 'family men' (I hate that term by the way).

Or, whether genuine or staged (though I would bet on the former rather than the latter), do photographs like this get interpreted as shameless photo opportunities that exploit familial relations in order to garner political popularity? In other words, are the kids being used as props for political theater? And is it even appropriate for photographs like this to be released if there is possibility that the children might be politically exploitated? In other words, would it be better if these kind of moments in the lives of politicians remained outside of the public spotlight?

What do you think?

Geopolitics 101: Canadian Short Film Classic 'Neighbours'

Sometimes an artifact from popular culture can better sum up complex concepts than thousands of pages of reading. Such is the case with the 1952 classic short 'Neighbours', an Oscar award winner by Norman McLaren and funded by the National Film Board of Canada. (By the way, how cool is it that the NFB has put its archive on-line?) 

It's a simple story but that is probably why it is so effective in conveying the lunacy of violent conflict. At the same time, there are some rather orthodox representational practices being exhibited. The gendering of both militarized violence and of victimhood is quite apparent.

Similarly, it is interesting to note the additional make-up given to the central characters as things escalate. I'm not sure if this is meant to make them appear monstrous or if it is intended to portray their descent into violence as a retreat into the heart of darkness of the not-so-noble 'savage'? The former is fine, the later demonstrates a very problematic racial politics in that violence is represented as something normally confined to the (indigenous) Other.

Therefore, even in the simplicity of its presentation, Neighbours actually provides a very rich commentary--both explicit and implicit--on geopolitics, violence, gender, and race. 

A shout out to Jesse Brown for bringing this staple of Canadian television airtime filler back out from behind the shadows of cathode ray tubes past.

IR 'Theory Talks': Do You Dare To Listen?

International relations, the academic discipline in which I have been trained, is an odd one. In part, as a relatively new field of scholarly inquiry--the first department having been established at the University of Aberystwyth in 1919--there is a general insecurity about what international relations should examine and how it should do so.  Ironically, the claim that international relations is primarily about the material power dynamics that shape relations amongst states is often presented with supreme confidence by those who wish to delineate--and then gate-keep--the borders of the discipline.

Peer Schouten, a doctoral candidate in Peace and Development Studies at the University of Gothenburg, has been exploring and documenting these tensions through Theory Talks, a terrific blog where he interviews a range of scholars whose work could be located in the field of international relations.

There are few things that I find really interesting about this archive. First, apart from a few notable exceptions, nearly all of these scholars are completely unprepared to problematize or rethink what international relations might be, what it 'ought' to be, and its inextricable connections to broader dynamics of power.

Second, it is amazing to see how narrowly defined the spectrum of scholarly pluralism is for many of these folks, even as they speak of the importance of diversity to the field. In some cases, work from 'outside' the discipline is to be embraced only in so far as it confirms the shared assumptions and/or foundations of 'international relations' while offering piecemeal revisions to dominant currents of thought.

Finally, it is very troubling to see how the focus of many of these scholars is restricted to politics (i.e., institutions, formal political procedures, and policies) at the expense of the realm of the political (i.e., the broader relations of power that shape politics, our understandings of it, and what we think may be possible to achieve). Thus, the inability and/or unwillingness to confront the multiple dimensions of power, and the privileges that it offers, alienates much work in international relations from the most important questions of our time while offering the same old tired solutions to issues that are symptomatic of deeper and longer-standing dynamics.

Photo credit: Ma.Ka