Refusing disembodiment: abortion and the paradox of reproductive rights in contemporary Italy

Employing insights from Italian sexual difference theory on law and rights, this article examines how both the text of the Italian Abortion Law of 1978 and its operation reveal the contradictions within liberal rights discourse on reproductive freedom. The Act itself contains traces of both Roman Catholic and liberal pluralist worldviews and has, since its introduction, been the site of conflict over competing notions of citizenship and legal identity. This article explores the impact of the Act's paradoxical nature on its operation against the background of the complex debates within the different strands of feminist theory in Italy over the question of reproductive freedom. From the publisher's website at: http://fty.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/2/22

Voicing embodiment, relating difference: towards a relational legal subjectivity

Focusing on the writings of Adriana Cavarero and Lia Cigarini, this piece examines the possible counterpractices and counterspaces of a politics of relational subjectivity outside the time of the masculine legal order which are to be found in Italian sexual difference theory. Both Cavarero and Cigarini share a desire to create a practice of sexual difference based on relational subjectivity. In their writings and in their praxis they have attempted to bring into being spaces where the unique embodied existent can interact with other unique existents in a space of relational politics. This is a politics based on the unique existent who acts, speaks, and thinks for herself rather than one based on the ideal abstract individual of liberal rights ideology. In effect, it amounts to a politics of relational plurivocality

Law, biopolitics and reproductive citizenship: the Case of assisted reproduction in Italy

In 2004, the introduction of a restrictive law on assisted reproduction in Italy sees the privileging of a conservative model of family relations and a misogynist view of society by the political elite. This backlash politics excludes many individuals from full reproductive citizenship. In this regard what the Italian case allows us to see is the operation of a biopolitics which both governs and excludes. The 2004 Act excludes gay couples, single people and people who are carriers of genetically inherited conditions from access to assisted reproductive technologies. Such an exclusionary biopolitics has provoked a counter-politics of resistance against the legislation. This article examines the manner in which individuals have contested the legislation’s prohibitions, and, in so doing, looks at how this might constitute an example of what Nikolas Rose has termed an ethopolitics. The concept of ethopolitics allows us to visualize the potential of an active counter-politics of resistance for restoring reproductive citizenship to those deprived of it by legislative interventions of this nature

Resistant lives: law, life, singularity

This article examines the potential of Roberto Esposito’s work for a rethinking of the relationship between norm and life: in particular, the possibility of a vitalization of normativity which subverts the normative ordering of individual lives. Esposito’s intervention in biopolitical debates allows us to think of a micropolitics of life as zoe which contests the ordering molarpolitics of Life as bios. The author examines this play between normativization of life and vitalization of norm in the context of citizen resistance to the attempt to normatively order their reproductive choices in the case of the 2004 Italian law on assisted reproductionEn este artículo se examina el potencial del trabajo de Roberto Esposito en el replanteamiento de la relación entre norma y vida: en particular, la posibilidad de vitalizar la normatividad que subvierte el ordenamiento normativo de la vida individual. La intervención de Esposito en los debates biopolíticos nos permite pensar en una micropolítica de la vida como zoé que impugna el ordenamiento de políticas morales de vida como bios. Yo examino este juego entre la normativización de la vida y la vitalización de la norma en el contexto de resistencia ciudadana con el intento de ordenar normativamente las posibilidades reproductivas en el caso de la ley italiana del 2004 sobre la reproducción asistida

Multiple Intelligences Theory, Action Research, and Teacher Professional Development: The Irish MI Project

This paper presents findings from an action research project that investigated the application of Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory in classrooms and schools. It shows how MI theory was used in the project as a basis for suggestions to generate classroom practices; how participating teachers evaluated the project; and how teachers responded to the professional experience. Teachers reported successful student outcomes including more interest and motivation, better recall and deeper understanding, higher attainment, improved self-esteem, and more fun and enjoyable classroom experiences. For teachers themselves, the project was a challenge. They needed more planning time, more persistence, more collegiality, and more management support. All involved in the project found the experiment worthwhile, exciting, and a stimulus for radical change in their pedagogic practice and thinking. Teachers renamed and extended existing practices to include MI approaches and this led to a methods-shift and, ultimately, to indications of a mind-shift. It was apparent in the Irish MI Project that the premising of curriculum content and delivery, state certificate assessment, school organisational practices, and attitudes on a narrow, untenable and unfair construct of intelligence can result in educational exclusion and disadvantage for many students. Thus, it is suggested that the agency of intelligence in educational failure merits attention

Definition and Characteristic Features of a ‘Cultural Flashpoint’: A case study of Exploring Masculinities, a controversial gender and education programme in Ireland

The concept ‘cultural flashpoint’ (CF) has not been fully defined or described. The authors test this concept through the prism of a controversial gender-focused Irish school programme, Exploring Masculinities (EM). Adopting an instrumental case study methodology, they use media content analysis to develop a temporal trajectory of the CF, describe its shape, explicit and implied contentious themes, and its process. They identify characteristic features of a cultural flashpoint: (i) a focal issue, event and/or object; (ii) conflict; (iii) bounded time period; (iv) the involvement of exo- and multi-sectoral individuals and groups; (v) randomness, opaqueness and conflation among its expressions; and (vi) broadly cultural and not confined to its sector of origin. They offer a definition of a CF and suggest it as a conceptual device for identifying, analysing and understanding contestation about educational (and other) change occurring in the context of wider and more long-standing cultural, social and political movements

​Youth Smoking in Europe. Strategies for Prevention and Reduction

Youth Smoking in Europe. Strategies for Prevention and Reduction.Youth Smoking in Europe. Strategies for Prevention and Reduction. 2019. Dublin: TFRI. ISBN 978-0-9557528-3-4

Friends and family Matter Most: a trend analysis of increasing e-cigarette use among Irish teenagers and sociodemographic, personal, peer and familial associations

Background E-cigarette ever-use and current-use among teenagers has increased worldwide, including in Ireland. Methods We use data from two Irish waves (2015, 2019) of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD) to investigate gender and teenage e-cigarette use (n = 3421 16-year-olds). Using chi-square analyses, we report changes in e-cigarette ever-use, current-use, and associated variables. Using multivariable logistic regression, we analyse the increase in e-cigarette use and socio-demographic, personal, peer and familial associations, focusing on gender differences. Results E-cigarette ever-use increased from 23% in 2015 to 37% in 2019, and current-use from 10 to 18%. Compared with 2015, the odds in 2019, of becoming both an e-cigarette ever-user and current-user, were significantly higher for girls than boys (ever-use: AOR 2.67 vs 2.04; current-use: AOR 3.11 vs 1.96). Smoking and e-cigarette use are linked but never-smokers who try e-cigarettes rose significantly from 33 to 67% and those using e-cigarettes to quit smoking decreased significantly from 17 to 3%. Almost two-thirds of respondents (66%) in 2019 said that their reason for trying e-cigarettes was “out of curiosity”. Peer smoking is significantly associated with likelihood of e-cigarette ever-use (AOR 6.52) and current-use (AOR 5.45). If “Most/All friends smoke”, odds were significantly higher for boys than for girls (ever-use AOR 7.07 vs 6.23; current-use AOR 5.90 vs 5.31). Less parental monitoring is significantly associated with greater e-cigarette ever-use (AOR 3.96) and current-use (4.48), and having parents who usually don’t know where their child is on Saturday nights was also associated with significantly higher odds for boys than for girls (ever-use AOR 5.42 vs 3.33; current-use AOR 5.50 vs 3.50). Conclusion Respondents had significantly higher odds of being e-cigarette ever- and current-users in 2019 compared with 2015. Use is higher among boys but girls are increasingly at risk. Two-thirds had never smoked cigarettes at first e-cigarette use; two-thirds used out of curiosity but few (3%) for smoking cessation. The most prominent risk factors for e-cigarette use were peer- and parent-related, especially so for boys. Interventions that take account of friend and family influences may provide mechanisms for preventing an increasing risk of nicotine addiction