The ambivalence of adoption : adoptive families’ stories

The making of family through adoption is an emotionally and politically charged legal and social process. Both its historical and contemporary manifestations are characterised by ambivalence. Contemporary domestic adoption in the UK is at a point of profound reflection, as many of its ambivalent features are articulated at the levels of national policy making as well as within the micro political sphere of family life. Drawing on an online archive of adoption stories, in particular blogs written by adoptive parents, this article attends to the affective ways in which this ambivalence manifests within adoptive families. Queer theoretical resources are used to engage with themes of haunting, absence and loss, the strange temporalities of adoptive kinship and the complex politics of undoing at the heart of adoption

The affective work of art : an ethnographic study of Brian Lobel's fun with cancer patients

This article demonstrates the sociological possibilities of using affect. In particular the discussion rises to the methodological challenges posed by affect theories when attempting to undertake empirical research. Drawing on ethnographic data from a study of Brian Lobel's Fun with Cancer Patients art exhibition, it is argued that the development of critically entangled methods, attentive to fleeting, partial, complex and often ‘inaccessible’ knowledge and experiences, is necessary. In Fun with Cancer Patients the aesthetic event offered opportunities for art participants and visitors to engage with different discourses and subjectivities around cancer. An affective lens makes this engagement intelligible. The analysis contributes to ‘live sociology’, demonstrating that developing live methods attentive to affect can provide insight into the political potential of aesthetic encounters

Sexual cultures in university : an arts-based intervention

Universities are increasingly recognized as spaces and cultures where gendered and sexualized harassment is endemic. This article pays close attention to the manifestations of sexualized behaviours in a campus university in the UK, examining some of the ways in which formations of masculinity are encouraged and reproduced through university structures, processes and aesthetics. The discussion draws on data generated by a creative project utilizing film-based materials as a prompt for collaborative reflections. Bringing together staff and students from across the university in a creative space enabled diverse experiences to be shared and produced rich and detailed insights across disciplinary and generational differences. The paper argues that such creative interventions are a vital form of feminist pedagogy offering a powerful resource for future work in this increasingly urgent field of study

The WASS Collective: Gender Transformations in Higher Education

This paper offers a critical perspective on issues around gender and sexual transformation within the context of UK Higher Education. Drawing on qualitative data carried out by undergraduate and postgraduate students, the analysis explores some of the diverse and often challenging ways in which young/er women and men are thinking and talking about gender, sexuality and feminism, as well as their strategies for turning ideas into political action. The research focuses on the activities and opinions of students belonging to an anti-sexist organisation within one UK university, who are engaged in campaigns to raise awareness about the damaging effects of gender and sexual inequalities, as well as promoting the popular appeal of contemporary feminisms. Locating the voices and research findings of the students themselves at the centre of the discussion, the paper is produced collaboratively between students and teachers who are involved in both the activist and research elements of this project. The paper also argues for (and provides evidence of) the transformative potential of alternative and critical forms of student engagement and student/ staff collaboration in relation to gender informed academic activism.Feminism, Post-Feminism, Anti-Sexism, Higher Education, Activism, Academic Activism, Praxis, Critical Pedagogy, Collaborative Methods

Redistributing the sensory : the critical pedagogy of Jacques Rancière

Jacques Rancière remains neglected within educational debates. In this paper I examine the potential of his philosophies for enacting critical interventions in relation to contemporary (higher) educational concerns. Rancière argues against the progressive temporality of pedagogic relations and provides an alternative thesis that equality is a point of departure for social and pedagogic encounters. He also emphasises the importance of aesthetics and the ‘distribution of the sensible’ as a mechanism for understanding who is un/able to be seen, speak and produce knowledge. These arguments are examined through an analysis of two research-based art installations: Sociologists Talking (2008, 2009) and The Idea of a University (2010). I consider the potential for ‘alternative’ forms of knowledge production and communication to enact different pedagogic methods and re/distribute the sensory spaces in which research and teaching take place

Psycho classrooms : teaching as a work of art

Taking its title from Psycho Buildings (2008), an exhibition of architectural sculptures at the Haywood Gallery, London (UK), this paper explores the complex relationship between pedagogy and space. Specifically, it aims to re/conceptualise teaching and learning as 'aesthetic encounters', paying attention to the haptic, experiential and participatory aspects of spatialised pedagogic practice. Drawing on examples taken from pedagogic art, a field of practice hitherto neglected within critical pedagogy, it is argued that the design, construction and critique of teaching and learning spaces needs to engage with the aesthetic distribution of what can be seen, said, and experienced by teachers and learners. These ideas are explored through one example of a psycho classroom, The Reinvention Centre at Westwood at the University of Warwick (UK). It is suggested that as spaces of creative dissensus and ruin, psycho classrooms can work to disrupt and reconfigure the distribution of the sensible (Ranciere 2004) and as such represent spaces of potentiality

Fierce sense : the art of queering urban space and time

This article examines the political possibilities for an aesthetic disruption of urban space and time. Locating the discussion within debates about the neoliberal city, selected art-works from Fierce live art festival in Birmingham, England are used in order to examine how, in a specific and localised context, normative spatial patterns and temporal rhythms can be challenged and subverted. The analysis draws on, and contributes to, a sociological account of the centrality of aesthetics to political and social organisation. </jats:p

Pedagogies of participation in higher education : a case for research‐based learning

This article addresses the question of the role and function of contemporary higher education in western industrialised nations through a focus on the participation of undergraduate students. The discussion examines some of the dramatic changes brought about by neo‐liberal educational policy, in particular the hierarchical division of teaching and research and the negative construction of students as consumers. Drawing on critical debates within the fields of art and education, what it means to participate – in both theory and practice – is interrogated. Research‐based learning is then presented as a participatory form of pedagogy. Combining evidence from the wider literature with that provided by the recent activities of a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in the UK, it is suggested that research‐based learning has the potential to reconfigure students as intellectual producers through their active engagement with research and their participation in the research cultures of their departments and disciplines. In so doing, such pedagogies present scope for critical and constructive intervention in relation to some of the damaging trajectories of educational reform in the UK and elsewhere

New Labour, new leaders? Gendering transformational leadership

Transformational leadership is widely recognised as being central to the implementation of educational reform. In this paper I draw on selected educational speeches made by New Labour politicians in order to locate shifting discourses of leadership within the broader accountability framework through which the terms of the relationship between central government and head teachers have been re/configured in the United Kingdom. The gendered politics of transformation are examined, highlighting new and renewed forms of masculinity embedded within new leadership ideals. It is suggested that a gendered critique of transformational leadership offers an important contribution to critical analyses of the neo-liberal and managerialist educational project