Gender And Culture In Psychology: Theories And Practices

Gender and Culture in Psychology introduces new approaches to the psychological study of gender that bring together feminist psychology, socio-cultural psychology, discursive psychology and critical psychology. It presents research and theory that embed human action in social, cultural and interpersonal contexts. The book provides conceptual tools for thinking about gender, social categorization, human meaning-making, and culture. It also describes a family of interpretative research methods that focus on rich talk and everyday life. It provides a close-in view of how interpretative research proceeds. The latter part of the book showcases innovative projects that investigate topics of concern to feminist scholars and activists: young teens\u27 encounters with heterosexual norms; women and men negotiating household duties and childcare; sexual coercion and violence in heterosexual encounters; the cultural politics of women\u27s weight and eating concerns; psychiatric labeling of psychological suffering; and feminism in psychotherapy

Living with difference in hyper-diverse areas: how important are encounters in semi-public spaces?

Urban populations increasingly diversify in their socio-economic, cultural, religious and linguistic profiles as well as in their lifestyles, attitudes and activity patterns. This hyper-diversification can complicate feelings of belonging and community. Since diversity is negotiated at the neighbourhood level, micro spaces are central in building communities. Micro spaces tend to be semi-public and stimulate diverse groups to intermingle, which results in on–off as well as repetitive and structural interactions. Understanding the creation and impact of encounters is central to capturing contemporary notions of belonging and living with difference. This paper compares encounters experienced in two semi-public spaces in the hyper-diverse neighbourhood of Feyenoord in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Although encounters at the library were lighter and shorter than at the community-centre, all positively impact collective life in the neighbourhood. At the community-centre, encounters result in light as well as deeper relationships, making visitors feel more at ‘home’ because they recognize others elsewhere in the neighbourhood. At the library, encounters are lighter but visitors become familiar with diversity, making them feel more at ‘home’ and safe in their neighbourhood as well. The study suggests that fleeting encounters require more serious attention within the context of negotiating diversity

Narratives of power and powerlessness : cultural competence in social work with asylum seekers and refugees

With increasing international migration, social workers have not only been confronted with growing diversity, but also with the effects of displacement, trauma and immigration controls in the lives of their service users. Although the ongoing debates on migration, migrant integration and social cohesion have facilitated a growing literature on, and demand for cultural competence in social work, little progress has been made to arrive at an agreement of what exactly is required from social workers in cross-cultural encounters. This paper draws from the qualitative element of a mixed-methods study on social workers’ experiences of cross-cultural practice conducted in Glasgow, Scotland in 2016. By focusing on social workers’ experiences of accommodating and negotiating cultural differences with asylum seekers, this paper illustrates how social workers are moving beyond the cultural lens in understanding difference and disadvantage. The findings suggest that whilst culture continues to influence social workers’ encounters with service users, addressing cultural conflicts requires social workers to understand the complex power relations which asylum seekers are subject to both within and beyond the care relationship. Practice perspectives on the challenges and successes in cross-cultural social work illustrate the interplay between cultural and structural considerations involved in social work with asylum seekers

Negotiating cultural difference in everyday life : some insights for inclusionary local governance

With the waning of state-sponsored multiculturalism, local governments in Australia have assumed leadership and responsibility for establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships with stakeholders to promote diverse and inclusive cities. Engaging with residents often through consultation processes and interacting with key institutions, local governments aim to value local knowledge and mobilise citizen participation. This social interactive approach to building local knowledge in places officially and popularly identified as socially disadvantaged and culturally diverse, however, is fraught with interethnic tensions if cultural practices unintentionally privi&Igrave;ege whiteness. In this paper I argue that such tensions can also give rise to moments of affective ambivalence that ate productive if it leads to the acknowledgement and questioning of white privilege within the formal agencies of government. Such questioning provides the possibility to value the voices of local residents and engage in meaningful intercultural dialogue. This paper draws on indepth interviews with planners, elected local councillors and residents in the City of Greater Dandenong, Melbourne, to illustrate the potential that the affective dimension of living with cultural diversity has in building governance capacity and inclusive understandings of citizenship.<br /

'You have to be adaptable, obviously' : constructing professional identities in multicultural workplaces in Hong Kong

In spite of the increasing globalisation of the work domain and the mobilization of the workforce (Wong et al. 2007) only very little attention has been paid to the interplay between culture and professional identities in workplace contexts. This paper addresses this gap by exploring some of the ways through which professionals are required to construct and negotiate their various identities in increasingly multicultural contexts where notions of culture may become particularly salient. We focus on multicultural workplaces where, we believe, the intricate and complex relationship between culture and identity is particularly well reflected: In these contexts members are on a daily basis exposed to culture-specific perceptions, assumptions, expectations, and practices which may ultimately be reflected in workplace communication, and which impact on how professional identities are constructed. Drawing on a corpus of more than 80 hours of authentic workplace discourse and follow-up interviews conducted with professionals we explore how expatriates who work in Hong Kong with a team of local Chinese construct, negotiate and combine aspects of their professional and cultural identities in their workplace discourse. Our particular focus is on two issues that have been identified in participants’ interviews: Sharing decision making responsibilities and negotiating a work-life balance. Our analysis of these two aspects illustrates the complex processes of identity construction from two different but complementary perspectives: i) the ways in which participants portray themselves as adapting to, negotiating or rejecting the new culture in which they work and live; and ii) the ways in which these perceived identity construction processes are actually reflected in participants’ workplace discourse

Transnational encounters : crossing borders in Galician translation and interpreting studies

Exploring the ways in which languages and cultures interact across borders becomes particularly relevant in our increasingly interconnected world, as it ultimately enables an in depth understanding of how societies influence each other. Translation and interpreting, as mediating forces in transnational encounters, offer critical insights into this continuous crosscultural dialogue and negotiation. Of special interest for the Galician context, research into translation and interpreting —especially after the so-called cultural turn in the discipline— has often exposed asymmetrical power relations between languages and cultures and put forward alternatives to challenge them. Indeed, this has been one of the recurrent tropes in Galician Translation and Interpreting Studies scholarship since the 1990s

Transient, unsettling and creative space: Experiences of liminality through the accounts of Chinese students on a UK-based MBA

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ The Author(s) 2009.This article explores the experiences of liminality through the accounts of Chinese students on a UK-based MBA programme. The transient nature of the MBA experience, as well as the international status of the Chinese student, is resonant with conceptualizations of liminality as ‘in between’ space. Based on semi-structured interviews with 20 MBA graduates who had subsequently returned to China with their qualification, we explored their perceptions of outcomes from the course and their experiences as international students on a programme imbued with western norms and values. Results support the unsettling yet creative implications of liminality, as well as the fragmented insecure nature of identities, as individuals pass through the MBA ‘rite of passage’ in terms of ‘becoming’ a manager and entering a new phase of career. Accounts suggest the creation of hierarchical structures within liminal space whereby Chinese students, through their positioning at the margin, have uncomfortable yet illuminating encounters with alterity. At the same time, they experience levels of ambiguity and uncertainty in the post-liminal phase of China-located employments, as new western-based managerial identities collide with dominant discourses of Chinese organization

Negotiating French Muslim Identities through Hip Hop

In The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity, Gérard Noiriel contends that in France, the modern idea of the nation emerged as a means to subvert the dominant influence of the nobility, whose rule was underwritten by the aristocratic idea that “the nation was founded on ‘blood lineage.’”1 Noiriel posits that “the revolutionary upheaval discredited not only the old order but everything that harked back to origins, so much so that the first decrees abolishing nobility were also directed against names that evoked people’s origins: an elegant name is still a form of privilege; its credit must be destroyed.”2 The rejection of group differences as well as the exaltation of assimilation policies that were strengthened by a social contract in the postrevolutionary political climate reflected, above all else, a contestation of the privileges that had been accorded to the nobility.3 It is from this historical background that Noiriel examines contemporary arguments regarding assimilation—specifically, which groups are deemed “assimilable” and which ones are not. This rhetoric of assimilation under the banner of laicité has framed hotly debated discussions vis-à-vis the position of Muslims in France within the imagined national community. In an environment where Muslim bodies and symbols are relentlessly quarantined and prevented from “contaminating” secular spaces, this article will examine the ways in which French Muslim Hip Hop artists such as Médine, and Diam’s have employed different rhetorical strategies to navigate their French and Muslim identities through their lyrics

Negotiating cultures in cyberspace

In this paper we report findings of a multidisciplinary study of online participation by culturally diverse participants in a distance adult education course offered in Canada and examine in detail three of the study's findings. First, we explore both the historical and cultural origins of "cyberculture values" as manifested in our findings, using the notions of explicit and implicit enforcement of those values and challenging the assumption that cyberspace is a culture free zone. Second, we examine the notion of cultural gaps between participants in the course and the potential consequences for online communication successes and difficulties. Third, the analysis describes variations in participation frequency as a function of broad cultural groupings in our data. We identify the need for additional research, primarily in the form of larger scale comparisons across cultural groups of patterns of participation and interaction, but also in the form of case studies that can be submitted to microanalyses of the form as well as the content of communicator's participation and interaction online