3,002 research outputs found
Football's coming home ? digital reterritorialization, contradictions in the transnational coverage of sport and the sociology of alternative football broadcasts.
This article critically utilizes the work of Manuel Castells to discuss the issue of parallel imported broadcasts (specifically including live-streams) in football. This is of crucial importance to sport because the English Premier League is premised upon the sale of television rights broadcasts to domestic and overseas markets, and yet cheaper alternative broadcasts endanger the price of such rights. Evidence is drawn from qualitative fieldwork and library/Internet sources to explore the practices of supporters and the politics involved in the generation of alternative broadcasts. This enables us to clarify the core sociological themes of âmilieu of innovationâ and âlocaleâ within today's digitally networked global society
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Mothers behaving badly: chaotic hedonism and the crisis of neoliberal social reproduction
This article focuses on the significance of the plethora of representations of mothers âbehaving badlyâ in contemporary anglophone media texts, including the films Bad Moms, Fun Mom Dinner and Bad Momâs Christmas, the book and online cartoons Hurrah for Gin and the recent TV comedy dramas Motherland, The Let Down and Catastrophe. All these media texts include representations of, first, mothers in the midst of highly chaotic everyday spaces where any smooth routine of domesticity is conspicuous by its absence; and second, mothers behaving hedonistically, usually through drinking and partying, behaviour that is more conventionally associated with men or women without children. After identifying the social type of the mother behaving badly (MBB), the article locates and analyses it in relation to several different social and cultural contexts. These contexts are: a neoliberal crisis in social reproduction marked by inequality and overwork; the continual if contested role of women as âfoundation parentsâ; and the negotiation of longer-term discourses of female hedonism. The title gestures towards a popular British sitcom of the 1990s, Men Behaving Badly, which popularized the idea of the ânew ladâ; and this article suggests that the new ladâs counterpart, the ladette, is mutating into the mother behaving badly, or the âlad momâ. Asking what work this figure does now, in a later neoliberal context, it argues that the mother behaving badly is simultaneously indicative of a widening and liberating range of maternal subject positions and symptomatic of a profound contemporary crisis in social reproduction. By focusing on the classed and racialised dynamics of the MBB â by examining who exactly is permitted to be hedonistic, and how â and by considering the MBBâs limited and partial imagining of progressive social change, the article concludes by emphasizing the urgency of creating more connections between such discourses and âparents behaving politicallyâ
Renewing industrial regions? Advanced manufacturing and industrial policy in Britain
The UKâs industrial strategy, with local variants, aims to support manufacturing in âtraditional industrial regionsâ (TIRs). Using novel data for advanced manufacturing (AM) industries over several decades, we examine long-term changes in their geography by regions and local authority districts. These industries have shifted away from large urban regions, and local authority districts in TIRs have lost ground relative to those in other regions, although there are variations between industries. Foreign direct investment has tended to locate in non-TIR locations. AM industries have not shifted decisively towards research-intensive regions. We consider the implications for policy initiatives seeking to spark clusters around innovation districts
Sports Volunteering on University-Led Outreach Projects: A Space for Developing Social Capital?
The focus of this article centers around an established universities sports outreach programâthe Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) projectâand explores how its core workforce, student volunteers, perceive that they develop effective working relationships with the projectâs âhard-to-reachâ clients. The SUNEE project represents an alliance between the regionâs five universities to tackle social exclusion, and promote and nurture social capital and civil responsibility through the vehicle of sports. This joined-up approach to sports development provides the regionâs student volunteers with vast opportunities to gain both experience and qualifications as sports coaches, mentors, and leaders by working with a range of hard-to-reach groups. To explore how the dynamics of the project influenced relationship statuses between SUNEEâs diverse participants, from the perspective of the student volunteers, this article draws upon Robert Putnamâs notion of social capital to interpret the experiences of the studyâs percipients (n = 40). Captured using semi-structured interviews, students indicate that over the course of their participation in the project, social capital served both exclusionary and integrative functions, yet as time elapsed, social capital was increasingly generated between SUNEEâs diverse participants, playing a crucial role in bringing both volunteers and hard-to-reach clients together
âLower than a snakeâs bellyâ : discursive constructions of dignity and heroism in low-status garbage work.
In this paper, we consider how dignity is discursively constructed in the context of work dominated by physicality and dirt. Based on semi-structured interviews with garbage workers, our analysis considers how the deprivations they experience are cast through discourses intended to construct their individual and collective worth. We consider the manner in which dignity maybe denied to such workers through popular repudiations of individuality and status. We demonstrate how this positioning arises from contact with physical dirt, and associations with socially dirty work based on ascriptions of servility, abuse and ambivalence. We go on to consider how garbage workers respond to this positioning through discourses of âeveryday heroismâ. Heroism is evoked through three inter-related narratives that speaks to a particular type of masculinity. The first takes the form of a classic process of reframing and recalibration through which workers not only renegotiate their public position and status, but also point to the inherent value to be had in working with dirt as part of that which we identify as a process of âaffirmationâ. The second narrative arises from the imposition of favourable social and occupational comparisons that effectively elevate garbage collectorsâ social position. The third discourseâand previously unobserved in respect of garbage workâcentres on paternalistic practices of care. Combined, these discourses disrupt the generally held view that dirty work is antithetical to heroism and wounds dignity
Assembling fear, practicing hope: geographies of gender and generation in Newcastle upon Tyne
This thesis explores young peopleâs emotional experiences of fear of crime. It is based on a long-term and in-depth piece of participatory fieldwork in a low-income urban area in Newcastle upon Tyne. I engaged in the use of participatory diagramming, group discussions and individual interviews in order to access the lived experiences and material realities of local residents, to identify and understand how fear works in the neighbourhood. The research includes insights from a variety of groups: the emphasis is mainly on the young, but with a perspective from older people too. It shows that fear is tied to power and has a bearing on peopleâs freedom, including their access to and use of space, their participation in social life and their ability to control their future. The theoretical contribution is to enhance understandings of fear, by showing that it is bound up with a practice of citizenship; and to enhance understandings of what citizenship means, by documenting its entanglement with fear. Methodologically, the work contributes to the development of participatory geographies. In both an empirical and a theoretical sense, the thesis brings to light how participating in research as well as in wider community activities enabled participants to envision ways that fear can be negated through increasing âconfidenceâ of all kinds. As such, the thesis concludes that participation â in the fullest sense of the word â can be empowering in the face of fear. It enables us to imagine the possibility of a more hopeful future trajectory
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Postfeminist sexpertise on the âporn and men issueâ: A transnational perspective
Focusing on womenâs online magazines produced between 2012 and 2014 in the UK and in Spain, this chapter examines peer responses to women feeling distressed about their male partnersâ consumption of pornographies, in addition to editorial content around the subject. Moving beyond âfor and againstâ positions, and driven by a social justice agenda, the chapter utilises this commentary about hetero-male- oriented pornographies as a point of analytical entry into the kinds of gendered and sexual pleasures, bodies, subjectivities and intimate relational possibilities contemporary (new) media and public sex and relationship advice bring into being and render (un)intelligible. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to feminist interrogations of the politics of mediated intimacy and pornification under neoliberalism and postfeminism, incorporating a much-needed transnational perspective
âWe All Dream of a Team of Carraghersâ: Comparing the semiotics of âlocalâ and Texan Liverpool fansâ talk
There are strong grounds upon which it can be argued that the English Premier League (EPL) holds global appeal. This article carries out a semiotic analysis on the role that Liverpool F.C.âs Bootle-born defender, Jamie Carragher holds amongst two spatially disparate supporter communities, one principally based in Liverpool and the other in Texas. Despite the historical influence and connection with locally born players, evolving European migration patterns and continental football philosophies have limited the progression of âScouseâ players at Liverpool. Jamie Carragher is a contemporary exception, who has become a focal point for the âlocalâ supportersâ affections. His status has been propelled by his interpretation and implementation of the core working class values of the city and the club, displayed through his conduct off the pitch and his performances on it. Drawing from the perspectives of âlocalâ and Texas-based fans, this paper expands upon these issues, and examines Liverpool supportersâ evolving heroism of Jamie Carragher. A mixed-method qualitative approach was adopted, involving ethnographic techniques, participant observation, interview methods and podcast analysis
Interaction Data Sets In The UK: An Audit
Interaction or flow data involves counts of flows between origin and destination areas and can be extracted from a range of sources. The Centre for Interaction Data Estimation and Research (CIDER) maintains a web-based system (WICID) that allows academic researchers to access and extract migration and commuting flow data (the so-called Origin-Destination Statistics) from the last three censuses. However, there are many other sources of interaction data other than the decadal census, including national administrative or registration procedures and large scale social surveys. This paper contains an audit of interaction data sets in the UK, providing detailed description and exemplification in each case and outlining the advantages and shortcomings of the different types of data where appropriate. The Census Origin-Destination Statistics have been described elsewhere in detail and only a short synopsis is provided here together with review of the interaction data that can be derived from other census products.
The primary aims of the audit are to identify those interaction data sets that exist that might complement the census origin-destination statistics currently contained in WICID and to assess their suitability and availability as potential data sets to be held in an expanded version of WICID. Tables or flow data sets are included for exemplification. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations as to which of these data sets should be incorporated into a new information system for interaction flows that complement the census data and also provide opportunities for new research projects
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