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
The influence of popular beliefs about childbirth on fertility patterns in mid-twentieth-century Netherlands
Titelübersetzung:Der Volksglauben über Geburten als Einflussfaktor auf Fruchtbarkeitsmuster in den Niederlanden Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts
Autor/in:
Bras, Hilde
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 76-103
Inhalt: "Ever since the Princeton European Fertility Project on the decline of fertility, the question of how (changes in) cultural beliefs have influenced the historical fertility transition has been in the forefront of historical demographic research. Previous research has however mostly assessed the influence of religious denomination and has not examined the impact of wider beliefs or 'cultural life scripts'. On the basis of a folklore questionnaire, this article examines the occurrence, content, and geographical patterning of popular beliefs about childbearing in relation to fertility patterns in 1.022 rural Dutch communities during the nineteen forties. Beliefs in isolation and churching of women existed in almost half of all communities, particularly among Catholic populations, while fear of enchantment of infants was still alive in about a fifth of all municipalities. To be sure, such popular beliefs were rapidly vanishing and remnants were still found in isolated and strongly religious areas. A multivariate analysis shows that in communities where beliefs in churching and witchcraft still existed, birth rates were significantly higher. The study shows the salience of including popular beliefs in studies of fertility behavior and fertility decline. Moreover, it extends the concept of cultural life scripts beyond that of age norms to include prescriptions on social contexts, conducts, and practices surrounding important life passages." (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:20. Jahrhundert; Netherlands; Geburtenrückgang; fertility; Katholik; birth; reproductive behavior; determinants; kulturelle Faktoren; declining birth rate; faith; Fruchtbarkeit; Glaube; cultural factors; Roman Catholic; generatives Verhalten; Ritual; Aberglaube; ritual; woman; Geburt; superstition; Religion; religion; gender-specific factors; Determinanten; twentieth century; Niederlande; cultural life script; popular beliefs
SSOAR Kategorie:Religionssoziologie, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung, Bevölkerung
Sportlife: medals, media and life courses of female Dutch Olympic champions, 1928-1940
Titelübersetzung:Ein Leben für den Sport: Medaillen, Medien und Lebensverläufe niederländischer Olympiasiegerinnern, 1928-1940
Autor/in:
Derks, Marjet
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 144-162
Inhalt: "Starting from the assumption that cultural historical analyses can help our understanding of changes in life cycles and life courses, this article explores the way in which a specific socio-cultural phenomenon, sport, changed and defined the life courses of women in pre-war Netherlands. While similar questions are often being researched from a psychological or sociological and hence short-term perspective, here a long term and biographical analysis is being applied. Focusing on a group of medal winning participants in the Olympic Games, the leading question is whether their physical talent allowed these women to pursue a different life course. A second question is how their international careers matched with dominant cultural life scripts, which stated that young women should prepare to become wives, mothers and homemakers. It can be concluded that the presented biographies reveal an ambiguous reality. On the one hand, sporting successes opened up several possibilities for the women concerned, who became public figures and their country's first national female sport heroes. Thus, they embodied the beginning of a new cultural feminine ideal that opened up existing scripts. Their personal life course underwent profound changes as well, albeit of a confusing nature. All coming from lower class families, they saw their social careers set off because of their swimming, but also getting disrupted because of it. Sport-related disagreeing life scripts were tensional rather than advantageous. At least in hindsight, the women blamed their sporting career for the strenuous course their lives took." (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:Netherlands; Olympische Spiele; cultural factors; sports; life career; Berichterstattung; image of women; Sport; Medien; Olympic Games; kulturelle Faktoren; Frauenbild; Karriere; woman; Lebenslauf; career; reporting; media; Niederlande; cultural life scripts, inter-war era, sporting careers, female sport heroes, biographical method
SSOAR Kategorie:Freizeitforschung, Freizeitsoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung
"At age 27, she gets furious": scripts on marriage and life course variation in The Netherlands, 1850-1970
Titelübersetzung:"Mit 27 Jahren wird sie unruhig": Skripte über Ehe und Lebenslauf-Variation in den Niederlanden, 1850-1970
Autor/in:
Kok, Jan
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 113-132
Inhalt: "Marrying too old, too young, or not at all could elicit scorn from all sides: family, friends and neighbours. The same could occur when a partner was much younger or older. During modernization new societal norms on marriage are supposed to have emerged and to have become more pervasive, as individual access to and timing of marriage became less dependent on family fortunes and family strategies. In this article, life courses of more than 15.000 Dutch individuals are studied in order to answer the question: was their timing of marriage and choice of partner related to (changing) life scripts - and what social or cultural groups were the carriers of these scripts - or still predominantly determined by family dynamics?" (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:20. Jahrhundert; Netherlands; 19. Jahrhundert; soziale Norm; Ehe; cultural factors; marriage; wedding; Heirat; kulturelle Faktoren; socioeconomic factors; social norm; sozioökonomische Faktoren; woman; Partnerwahl; choice of partner; gender-specific factors; age; twentieth century; Lebensalter; nineteenth century; Niederlande; celibacy; late marriage; early marriage; age homogamy; life scripts
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Familiensoziologie, Sexualsoziologie, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung
Life scripts and life realities: women in nineteenth-century Nijmegen
Titelübersetzung:Lebensskript und Lebenswirklichkeit: Frauen im Nimwegen des 19. Jahrhunderts
Autor/in:
Engelen, Theo
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 1, S 104-112
Inhalt: "On average, more than one fifth of the 19th century Nijmegen brides were pregnant at the date of marriage. In a society where extramarital sexuality was explicitly forbidden, and where the success of marriage restriction depended on following that rule, this finding is remarkable. Obviously, the cultural life script that allowed sexuality only within marriage was not a script all inhabitants lived up to. A remarkable secondary finding is that the protestant population had a much higher proportion of bridal pregnancies than the Roman Catholic population, although both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic clergy strongly opposed sexual activities, unless within marriage. Therefore, when bridal pregnancy among Protestant couples was twice as high as among Catholics, this points either at a stricter control by the Catholic clergy, or at more deviance among Protestant youngsters. In any case, when studying cultural life scripts on sexuality, it is always important to note that it can be countered by human agency." (author's abstract)
Schlagwörter:Netherlands; 19. Jahrhundert; Protestant; Ehe; cultural factors; marriage; Roman Catholic; Katholik; Schwangerschaft; kulturelle Faktoren; sexuality; pregnancy; Protestant; Sexualität; woman; Lebensbedingungen; living conditions; nineteenth century; Niederlande; cultural life script; bridal pregnancy; extramarital sexuality
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung, Bevölkerung
Titelübersetzung:Geschichte des Wissens, Terrorismus und Gender
Autor/in:
Grisard, Dominique
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 3, S 82-99
Inhalt: This article focuses on 20th-century terrorist phenomena as gendered objects of knowledge produced and disseminated through history books, mass media and state institutions. By taking 1970s West German terrorism as my field of inquiry, this article will critically discuss how a bourgeois understanding of violence as fundamentally masculine has shaped the way terrorism has been represented, conceptualized and historicized thus far. I will go on to problematize the mas-culine gaze of mass media and state institutions and their tendency to objectify the terrorist. Last but not least, I will delineate how mass media and historiog-raphy of terrorism have relied on a narrative structure that pits rebellious sons and masculine daughters against figural and literal fathers, a frame that is overtly masculine and familial. In so doing I will point to blind spots in the study of 1970s terrorism, namely masculinity and the gender of state institutions. My goal is thus to show how not just individual and symbolic, but also institutional facets of the bourgeois gender order influence the way terrorism has been conceptualized and historicized thus far.
Schlagwörter:Massenmedien; Diskurs; discourse; gender role; Federal Republic of Germany; Geschlechtsrolle; historiography; RAF; Geschichtsschreibung; feminism; masculinity; mass media; gender; Stereotyp; Gender; stereotype; woman; Feminismus; political violence; Männlichkeit; terrorism; politische Gewalt; Terrorismus; RAF; oedipal narrative
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung
Titelübersetzung:Terrorismus, Gender und Geschichtswissenschaft - eine Einleitung
Autor/in:
Schraut, Sylvia; Weinhauer, Klaus
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 3, S 7-45
Inhalt: After some introductory remarks, this article gives a brief overview on contem-porary terrorism research in the political and social sciences. Then, the important contributions historical studies have made to enhance the academic knowledge about terrorism are sketched. The third part provides an overview which not only critically discusses the state of research on gendered aspects of terrorism but also demonstrates the stimulating insights gained by employing a historical perspective in this field. In the fourth chapter, the authors outline some promising topics of future terrorism research which all can be studied from gender sensitive historical perspectives. Finally the results of the contributions put together for this HSR Special Issue are summarized.
Schlagwörter:zone; soziales Milieu; gender; historische Entwicklung; social milieu; victim; communication; Raum; Kommunikation; Gender; Opfer; Diskurs; discourse; research approach; Forschungsansatz; historical development; political violence; gender-specific factors; terrorism; politische Gewalt; Terrorismus; periodization of terrorism; cultures of memory
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung, politische Willensbildung, politische Soziologie, politische Kultur
Titelübersetzung:Politikwissenschaft, Terrorismus und Gender
Autor/in:
Herschinger, Eva
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 3, S 46-66
Inhalt: This contribution aims to give an overview on the state of the art of research on terrorism and gender in the field of Political Science and International Relations (IR). Contemporary analyses of terrorism have begun integrating gender aspects into their frameworks. This article supports the call for a much more coherent use of gender as an analytical category as this is beneficial for the analysis of ter-rorism in a threefold manner. First, gender as an analytical category in the study of terrorism exposes the gender blindness of the term terrorism; second, gender challenges the political myth of protection central to international politics, i.e. that states can legitimately fight wars to protect the vulnerable – vulgo women and children. Third, gender also challenges the myth of an intrinsic peacefulness/vulnerability of women. The paper closes with the plea to integrate a coherent historical dimension into a gendered analysis of terrorism in order to potentially achieve a more empirically attuned theoretical understanding of terrorism and political violence in current times.
Schlagwörter:international relations; gender; Stereotyp; victim; Opfer; violence; stereotype; Gewalt; woman; political violence; Täter; internationale Beziehungen; gender-specific factors; terrorism; politische Gewalt; Terrorismus; political science; Politikwissenschaft; offender
SSOAR Kategorie:Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Sicherheitspolitik, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Sozialgeschichte, historische Sozialforschung
Titelübersetzung:Islamismus und Männlichkeit: Fallstudie zu Pakistan
Autor/in:
Aslam, Maleeha
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 39 (2014) 3, S 135-149
Inhalt: In Muslim societies, men use Islamism and its variants as means of self-actualization and directly in service of matters associated with personhood, masculinity, and particularly honor. This expressive trajectory i.e. exercising masculinity via Islamism holds true in Pakistan and can be broadly attributed to three elements. First, Pakistan’s postcolonial baggage – a well-documented history of rise of Muslim nationalism, and Islamism in the subcontinent; second, western domination and interference in Pakistan’s socio-economic and political domains (as in competition with Islamic heritage and governance frameworks) affecting some segments (and not all) among Muslim youth; and third, decades of authoritarian rule taking turns with weak democratic governments who have largely disappointed in terms of alleviating absolute to relative poverty, marginalization and alienation troubling Pakistani society. Pakistan’s history and contemporary settings both reveal a dissonance between the prescribed, normative and idealized Muslim masculinity imperatives – and the socio-economic and political location of Pakistani men in the real world. Mostly leading dangerous, disenfranchised, and economically deprived lives it is difficult for them to uphold, for example, Quran’s masculine imperative of being a qawwam or an ethnic normative of honor. Islamism becomes one such avenue that increases the possibility of self-assertion and actualization of masculinity imperatives and as they appear in religious and cultural texts, narratives and anecdotes – for instance the theme of martyrdom. The resulting death will not only be divine, but also heroic. In the presence of precedence i.e. in form of documented history highlighting jihadism – this becomes plausible and ultimately adds to individual and collective rationality among Muslims. To develop these ideas further, this article draws upon empirical data sets and historical archival records.
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.
