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 ‘behaving badly’ in contemporary anglophone media texts, including the films Bad Moms, Fun Mom Dinner and Bad Mom’s 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 ‘foundation parents’; 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 ‘new lad’; and this article suggests that the new lad’s counterpart, the ladette, is mutating into the mother behaving badly, or the ‘lad mom’. 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 – by examining who exactly is permitted to be hedonistic, and how – and by considering the MBB’s limited and partial imagining of progressive social change, the article concludes by emphasizing the urgency of creating more connections between such discourses and ‘parents behaving politically’

From social contract to 'social contrick' : the depoliticisation of economic policy-making under Harold Wilson, 1974–75

The 1974-79 Labour Governments were elected on the basis of an agreement with the TUC promising a redistribution of income and wealth known as the Social Contract. However, the Government immediately began to marginalise these commitments in favour of preferences for incomes policy and public expenditure cuts, which has led the Social Contract to be described as the 'Social Contrick'. These changes were legitimised through a process of depoliticisation, and using an Open Marxist framework and evidence from the National Archives, the paper will show that the Treasury's exchange rate strategy and the need to secure external finance placed issues of confidence at the centre of political debate, allowing the Government to argue there was no alternative to the introduction of incomes policy and the reduction of public expenditure

X-Rays from NGC 3256: High-Energy Emission in Starburst Galaxies and Their Contribution to the Cosmic X-Ray Background

The infrared-luminous galaxy NGC3256 is a classic example of a merger induced nuclear starburst system. We find here that it is the most X-ray luminous star-forming galaxy yet detected (~10^42 ergs/s). Long-slit optical spectroscopy and a deep, high-resolution ROSAT X-ray image show that the starburst is driving a "superwind" which accounts for ~20% of the observed soft (kT~0.3 keV) X-ray emission. Our model for the broadband X-ray emission of NGC3256 contains two additional components: a warm thermal plasma (kT~0.8 keV) associated with the central starburst, and a hard power-law component with an energy index of ~0.7. We find that the input of mechanical energy from the starburst is more than sufficient to sustain the observed level of emission. We also examine possible origins for the power-law component, concluding that neither a buried AGN nor the expected population of high-mass X-ray binaries can account for this emission. Inverse-Compton scattering, involving the galaxy's copious flux of infrared photons and the relativistic electrons produced by supernovae, is likely to make a substantial contribution to the hard X-ray flux. Such a model is consistent with the observed radio and IR fluxes and the radio and X-ray spectral indices. We explore the role of X-ray-luminous starbursts in the production of the cosmic X-ray background radiation. The number counts and spectral index distribution of the faint radio source population, thought to be dominated by star-forming galaxies, suggest that a significant fraction of the hard X-ray background could arise from starbursts at moderate redshift.Comment: 31 pages (tex, epsf), 8 figures (postscript files), accepted for publication in Part 1 of The Astrophysical Journa

GMRT detection of HI 21 cm associated absorption towards the z=1.2 red quasar 3C 190

We report the GMRT detection of associated HI 21 cm-line absorption in the z=1.1946 red quasar 3C 190. Most of the absorption is blue-shifted with respect to the systemic redshift. The absorption, at $\sim$ 647.7 MHz, is broad and complex, spanning a velocity width of $\sim$ 600 \kms. Since the core is self-absorbed at this frequency, the absorption is most likely towards the hotspots. Comparison of the radio and deep optical images reveal linear filaments in the optical which overlap with the brighter radio jet towards the south-west. We therefore suggest that most of the HI 21 cm-line absorption could be occurring in the atomic gas shocked by the south-west jet.Comment: 8 pages, 1 fugure. To appear in Journal of Astrophysics and Astronom

Radio Frequency Spectra of 388 Bright 74 MHz Sources

As a service to the community, we have compiled radio frequency spectra from the literature for all sources within the VLA Low Frequency Sky Survey (VLSS) that are brighter than 15 Jy at 74 MHz. Over 160 references were used to maximize the amount of spectral data used in the compilation of the spectra, while also taking care to determine the corrections needed to put the flux densities from all reference on the same absolute flux density scale. With the new VLSS data, we are able to vastly improve upon previous efforts to compile spectra of bright radio sources to frequencies below 100 MHz because (1) the VLSS flux densities are more reliable than those from some previous low frequency surveys and (2) the VLSS covers a much larger area of the sky (declination >-30 deg.) than many other low frequency surveys (e.g., the 8C survey). In this paper, we discuss how the spectra were constructed and how parameters quantifying the shapes of the spectra were derived. Both the spectra and the shape parameters are made available here to assist in the calibration of observations made with current and future low frequency radio facilities.Comment: Accepted to ApJ

A Unified Approach to Variational Derivatives of Modified Gravitational Actions

Our main aim in this paper is to promote the coframe variational method as a unified approach to derive field equations for any given gravitational action containing the algebraic functions of the scalars constructed from the Riemann curvature tensor and its contractions. We are able to derive a master equation which expresses the variational derivatives of the generalized gravitational actions in terms of the variational derivatives of its constituent curvature scalars. Using the Lagrange multiplier method relative to an orthonormal coframe, we investigate the variational procedures for modified gravitational Lagrangian densities in spacetime dimensions $n\geqslant 3$. We study well-known gravitational actions such as those involving the Gauss-Bonnet and Ricci-squared, Kretchmann scalar, Weyl-squared terms and their algebraic generalizations similar to generic $f(R)$ theories and the algebraic generalization of sixth order gravitational Lagrangians. We put forth a new model involving the gravitational Chern-Simons term and also give three dimensional New massive gravity equations in a new form in terms of the Cotton 2-form

'Just open your eyes a bit more': The methodological challenges of researching black and minority ethnic students' experiences of physical education teacher education

In this paper we discuss some of the challenges of centralising 'race' and ethnicity in Physical Education (PE) research, through reflecting on the design and implementation of a study exploring Black and minority ethnic students' experiences of their teacher education. Our aim in the paper is to contribute to ongoing theoretical and methodological debates about intersectionality, and specifically about difference and power in the research process. As McCorkel and Myers notes, the 'researchers' backstage'-the assumptions, motivations, narratives and relations-that underpin any research are not always made visible and yet are highly significant in judging the quality and substance of the resulting project. As feminists, we argue that the invisibility of 'race' and ethnicity within Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE), and PE research more widely, is untenable; however, we also show how centralising 'race' and ethnicity raised significant methodological and epistemological questions, particularly given our position as White researchers and lecturers. In this paper, we reflect on a number of aspects of our research 'journey': the theoretical and methodological challenges of operationalising concepts of 'race' and ethnicity, the practical issues and dilemmas involved in recruiting participants for the study, the difficulties of 'talking race' personally and professionally and challenges of representing the experiences of 'others'. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Rigorous Formulation of Duality in Gravitational Theories

In this paper we evince a rigorous formulation of duality in gravitational theories where an Einstein like equation is valid, by providing the conditions under which the Hodge duals (with respect to the metric tensor g) of T^a and R_b^a may be considered as the torsion and curvature 2-forms associated with a connection D', part of a Riemann-Cartan structure (M,g',D'), in the cases g = g' and g does not equal g', once T^a and R_b^a are the torsion and curvature 2-forms associated with a connection D part of a Riemann-Cartan structure (M,g,D). A new form for the Einstein equation involving the dual of the Riemann tensor of D is also provided, and the result is compared with others appearing in the literature.Comment: 15 page

Tales from the playing field: black and minority ethnic students' experiences of physical education teacher education

This article presents findings from recent research exploring black and minority ethnic (BME) students’ experiences of Physical Education teacher education (PETE) in England (Flintoff, 2008). Despite policy initiatives to increase the ethnic diversity of teacher education cohorts, BME students are under-represented in PETE, making up just 2.94% of the 2007/8 national cohort, the year in which this research was conducted. Drawing on in-depth interviews and questionnaires with 25 BME students in PETE, the study sought to contribute to our limited knowledge and understanding of racial and ethnic difference in PE, and to show how ‘race,’ ethnicity and gender are interwoven in individuals’ embodied, everyday experiences of learning how to teach. In the article, two narratives in the form of fictional stories are used to present the findings. I suggest that narratives can be useful for engaging with the experiences of those previously silenced or ignored within Physical Education (PE); they are also designed to provoke an emotional as well as an intellectual response in the reader. Given that teacher education is a place where we should be engaging students, emotionally and politically, to think deeply about teaching, education and social justice and their place within these, I suggest that such stories of difference might have a useful place within a critical PETE pedagogy

Recurrent growth factor starvation promotes drug resistance in human leukaemic cells

Multi-drug resistance can be induced by various environmental stresses including an exposure to chemical drugs and X-ray irradiation. In addition, hypo-nutritive conditions are known to promote multi-drug resistance in solid tumours. To understand the importance of nutritive conditions in the development of drug resistance in non-solid tumours and to know whether a transient malnutrition could induce a permanent reduction in drug sensitivity, leukaemic cells were transiently cultured under growth factor-starved conditions. Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor-dependent human leukaemic MO7e cells were cultured in the absence of granulocyte-macrophage colon-stimulating factor for 2 weeks, during which the majority of the cells died, and the minor viable cells were expanded in the presence of granulocyte-macrophage colon-stimulating factor for following 1 week. This procedure was repeated three times, and the surviving cells were cloned by limiting dilution. These clones underwent G1 arrest in the absence of granulocyte-macrophage colon-stimulating factor, while parental cells underwent apoptosis. Interestingly, activities of the downstream targets of granulocyte-macrophage colon-stimulating factor receptor were regulated in a granulocyte-macrophage colon-stimulating factor-independent manner, indicating that the ligand-independent activation of granulocyte-macrophage colon-stimulating factor receptor had not taken place. Moreover, the 4–7-fold increases in IC50 for etoposide and the 2–6-fold increase in IC90 for doxorubicin was observed. Furthermore, Bcl-2 protein expression was significantly up-regulated in the clones while no significant changes in Bax, Bcl-xL, P-glycoprotein and Hsp70 protein expression and no consistent changes in p53 expression were detected. We propose that recurrent growth factor starvation, which may occur in vivo when stromal function is damaged after intensive chemotherapy or bone marrow occupation by malignant cells, causes selection of drug resistant leukaemia cells that will expand when the growth factor supply recovers