Hazards of being a male breadwinner: deadbeat dads in the United States of the 1980s
Titelübersetzung:Väter zwischen Schuldenmoral, Gericht und Medien in den USA der 1980er Jahre
Autor/in:
Krämer, Felix
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 41 (2016) 1, S 223-239
Inhalt: This article explores the "deadbeat dad" - fathers short on child support payments - as a contemporary figure originating in the Reagan era. It questions risks that were morally redirected in the 1980s, addressed towards particular groups of fathers and their relatives. After setting the question in relation to contemporary masculinity studies, the author brings "deadbeat dads" in line with the history of indebtedness and default. By scrutinizing how the claim to secure single mothers’ alimony was integrated into a neoconservative project and the state's retreat from welfare in the United States, the paper analyses TV newscasts displaying the prosecution of delinquent fathers publicly. Adopting a discourse-analytical perspective, the author sketches out how the figure of the male breadwinner resonated in claims for economic and biological responsibility that were revived in the Reagan years. Exemplified by the context of the current case of Walter Scott, the contemporary history of child support debtors demonstrates how black fathers do not only face a higher risk of becoming victims of police violence, but also how ascribing default to African American fathers tied irresponsibility to black masculinity.
Schlagwörter:Vaterschaft; fatherhood; Verschuldung; indebtedness; Strafverfolgung; prosecution; Delinquenz; delinquency; Unterhaltspflicht; support obligation; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; Diskriminierung; discrimination; Rassismus; racism; Männlichkeit; masculinity; Massenmedien; mass media; Berichterstattung; reporting; Diskurs; discourse; Moral; morality; Sozialpolitik; social policy; USA; United States of America; Zeitgeschichte; contemporary history
SSOAR Kategorie:Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung, soziale Probleme, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
Mediating the female terrorist: Patricia Hearst and the containment of the feminist terrorist threat in the United States in the 1970s
Titelübersetzung:Die Medialisierung des weiblichen Terroristen: Patricia Hearst und die Eindämmung der feministischen terroristischen Bedrohung in den USA in den 1970er Jahren
Autor/in:
Third, Amanda
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 3, S 150-175
Inhalt: In January 1976, the trial of Patricia Campbell Hearst caused a Western media sensation. Representing the culmination of her spectacular kidnapping and conversion to the terrorist cause of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), Hearst was on trial for her participation in the Hibernia National Bank robbery almost two years earlier. As of the commencement of the trial, the story of the heiress-come-female-terrorist had been captivating Western media audiences for two years. This article analyses the ways that mainstream media coverage of this event operated to contain both the threat of this particular female terrorist, and the threat of second-wave feminism more broadly. Within Western culture, there has historically been a concern with the need to regulate the mainstream media’s coverage of terrorist events. In this line of thinking, the mainstream media are a precondition for, and a potential site of the contagion of, terrorism. However, as I demonstrate, ultimately, mainstream media coverage of terrorist events in which women are key protagonists operates to recuperate the threat of terrorism. In doing so, it reproduces and reasserts dominant patriarchal gender relations and thus works in the interests of dominant culture, rather than against them.
Schlagwörter:gender relations; gender; Mediatisierung; Berichterstattung; Gender; Massenmedien; Diskurs; discourse; USA; woman; Geschlechterverhältnis; Feminismus; political violence; terrorism; feminism; mediatization; reporting; politische Gewalt; Terrorismus; United States of America; mass media; Patty Hearst; second-wave feminism
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Medieninhalte, Aussagenforschung
Escaping/transgressing the feminine: bodies, prisons and weapons of proximity
Titelübersetzung:Weiblichkeit überwinden/überschreiten: Körper, Gefängnisse und die Waffen der Nähe
Autor/in:
Agra Romeo, María Xosé
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 3, S 115-134
Inhalt: Assuming that gender relationships are essential to any analysis of terrorism and political violence, I shall examine how the sex-gender stereotypes work, as well as their transgressions. The female military protagonists in the Abu Ghraib media scandal and the women prisoners of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the dirty protest in Armagh (1980) are used as a framework in which issues of visibility/invisibility, independence/ dependence, invulnerability/ vulnerability of women will be addressed. The paper pays particular attention to both the violence against the body and also to the use of the body as a political weapon. From this perspective I analyse both the differences and similarities of menstrual blood as a weapon of proximity in both contexts. The two cases have in common the fact that they occurred in prisons and that women embodied non-traditional roles: soldiers, women political prisoners, allowing for reflection from feminist perspectives on the female inclusion in the citizenship, on participation in political violence and terrorism and on agency and autonomy.
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 38 (2013) 2, S 91-106
Inhalt: "The article provides an example of psycho-societal analysis of work related learning. Initially a conceptual framework of learning and life experience is established drawing on Alfred Lorenzer and Oskar Negt, and the interactional development of psychoanalysis. A case of learning experience from research into a retraining program for unskilled workers, exposing a very conflictual subjective experience of a traineeship, is presented and commented. The worker's experience is interpreted focusing on the gender aspects of the conflicts, seeing the learning process in the context of a work identity process, which is related to a career shift enforced by labor market transition requiring male workers to retrain for a social work profession which used to be female, and more widely to a reconfiguration of the societal relation between work and gender. The final section discusses the methodological framework for analyzing learning processes by means of interpreting language use. The notion of language game connects the level of unconscious social engagements and level of formal learning and knowledge, and the opportunity for a deeper understanding of professional learning and identity is indicated by reference to one more example." (author's abstract)
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialpsychologie, Allgemeine Soziologie, Makrosoziologie, spezielle Theorien und Schulen, Entwicklung und Geschichte der Soziologie
Titelübersetzung:Individualisierung und Fertilität
Autor/in:
Ehrhardt, Jens; Kohli, Martin
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 36 (2011) 2, S 35-64
Inhalt: "In this paper, the authors discuss individualization theory as a parsimonious framework concept to describe and explain core points of fertility change in Western societies since the end of the 19th century. They emphasize two dimensions of individualization: firstly, the increase in status of the individual in cultural, social, economic and legal respects (human dignity); secondly, the increase in autonomy and freedom of choice. In contrast to other approaches based on individualization theory, the authors do not use the concept of self-realization in the sense of an increased orientation towards purely individual interests, not least because this concept has failed before the renewed rise in fertility that has recently been observed in some advanced societies. They discuss the relevance of these two dimensions of individualization in the context of the first transition and the 1960s with its declining fertility rates. Whereas the first demographic transition can be mainly explained by the rising status of children, which increased the costs of parenting and thus changed the interests of (potential) parents to have children, the transition in the 1960s resulted mainly from the rising status of women in education and the labor market. An important but hitherto neglected change was the increasing divorce rates, as the possibility to dissolve a marriage devalued the traditional gender contract of the breadwinner/ housewife model and decreased the willingness of women and men to invest in marriage and children. The contrast between the recently growing fertility rates in Sweden, France and the US with the continuously low fertility in the German-speaking countries can partly be seen as a result of different divorce regimes. Whereas the first group of countries has limited the entitlement to spousal support through alimonies, the second group has institutionalized extensive entitlements for mothers." (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:Fruchtbarkeit; fertility; demographischer Übergang; demographic transition; historische Entwicklung; historical development; Individualisierung; individualization; Federal Republic of Germany; internationaler Vergleich; international comparison; Ehescheidung; divorce; Theorie; theory; westliche Welt; Western world; 19. Jahrhundert; nineteenth century; 20. Jahrhundert; twentieth century; Geburtenrückgang; declining birth rate; Bevölkerungsentwicklung; population development; woman; Bildung; education; Arbeitsmarkt; labor market; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; Schweden; Sweden; Frankreich; France; USA; United States of America; Nordamerika; North America
SSOAR Kategorie:Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung, Bevölkerung