The role of the non-human in relations of care: baby things

In this paper we argue that the non-human plays a vital role within networks of care. We do this through a consideration of the forms of work done by baby things in the giving and receiving of young-child care. We extend existing understandings of human-nonhuman relations by arguing that beyond the work of warming babies’ bodies and providing comfort, baby things function within care assemblages as both a means and a metric of parental care. Within the consumption literature, the work of home provisioning (typically undertaken by mothers) has been cast as an expression of love for others. We build on this by exploring the forms of participation and “caring capacities” of matter itself – objects such as blankets, soft-toys and pacifiers- in the caring-for of babies and young children. We attend to the flows and stoppages of baby things across networks of early childhood caregiving to consider what these patterns of movement suggest about how such artefacts participate within relations of care, and how they are used as a means to reflect on the care practices of others. Analysis is based on 30 interviews with mothers and ethnographic and survey work at 14 children’s clothing exchanges in different parts of England and Scotland. Drawing on scholarship from the New Materialism as well as Mary Douglas’s conceptual work on dirt and cleanliness,1 we advance conceptual work within and beyond Cultural Geography by arguing that analytical attention to the role of the more than human leads to richer and more nuanced understandings of how care relations work

Motherhood, mobility and materiality: Material entanglements, journey-making and the process of 'becoming mother

This paper is about the entanglements or mutually affecting engagements with the material world that occur in the course of trying to becoming mobile with a small baby. Drawing on a rigorous empirical base of 37 interviews with 20 families in East London, we analyse the relationships between discourses of parenting and the material practices of journey-making. Bringing together conceptual work on the new materialism and mobility studies, we advance the concept of mother–baby assemblages as a way to understand mobile motherhood, and consider the emotional and affective dimensions of parenting in public that emerge through journey-making. We argue that the transition to motherhood occurs in part through entanglements with the more than human in the course of becoming mobile (including matter, affects, policies and built form). We further argue that approaching motherhood from the perspective of material entanglements advances geographical scholarship by deepening our understanding of mobility as a relational practice. Finally, we extend conceptual work in Geography as a whole by showing the utility of new materialist philosophy as a means for theorising identit

Cultural activism and the politics of place-making

In this paper, we explore the relationship between creative practice, activism, and urban place-making by considering the role they play in the construction of meaning in urban spaces. Through an analysis of two activist groups based in Stokes Croft, Bristol (UK), we argue that cultural activism provides new political prospects within the wider context of global capitalism through the cultivation of a shared aesthetics of protest. By cultivating aspects of shared history and a mutual enthusiasm for creative practice as a form of resistance, Stokes Croft has emerged as a ‘space of nurturance’ for creative sensibilities. However, we note how Stokes Croft as an autonomous space remains open-ended and multiple for activists interested in promoting different visions of social justice

The Political Pen: Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Presented on Friday, February 21 as part of Messiah College’s 2020 Humanities Symposium. This exhibit, “Vulnerabilities & Securities in Historic Harrisburg: From Abolition to Suffrage,” was produced by the Center for Public Humanities Student Fellows and Dr. Sarah Myers’s Public History Class. In 1895, Alice Dunbar-Nelson published her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales. She also published a few plays, such as Mine Eyes Have Seen (1918) in The Crisis, the official magazine of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People. Dunbar-Nelson often used her creative works to address racism and limitations placed on women. Her poem I Sit and Sew expresses anguish about the way that society prevented African-American military nurses from serving in World War I. In her poem Memoriam, Dunbar-Nelson critiques the ways that society belittles women. This poster was edited by Dr. Jean Corey, Katie Wingert, and Dr. Sarah Myers.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/women/1001/thumbnail.jp

The emotional resonances of breastfeeding in public: the role of strangers in breastfeeding practice

This papers considers some of the disparate emotional and affective resonances that breastfeeding can produce. Breastfeeding is the iconic symbol of succour and comfort-giving. It is associated with better health for babies as well as lower rates of post-natal depression for mothers (as well as other health benefits). Yet it can also be a source of both physical and psychic discomfort, with the variance in the emotional resonance breastfeeding produces being bound up with where it takes place and the ‘sense’ of whether or not breastfeeding is welcome in that locale. In this paper I begin by putting the UK’s very low rates of breastfeeding beyond the first weeks post-birth in an international context, then trace in broad outline the spatial variability in breastfeeding rates across the UK. I then consider women’s experiences breastfeeding in public through a combination of interviews, survey-work, participant observation, and 770 posts to the UK parenting website mumsnet. I take conceptual work forward by highlighting the role of strangers within breastfeeding assemblages to shape mothers’ experiences and feelings about breastfeeding practice. Drawing on concepts of affective atmospheres (Anderson 2009), public comfort (Ahmed 2004 & 2010), and secret-keeping (Deleuze and Guattari 1998), I argue that women’s (often negative) affective experiences breastfeeding in public is a contributing factor in why breastfeeding rates in the UK are so low. Finally, I highlight some of the social and material changes that would be needed to make public space in the UK more breastfeeding-friendly

Sexual harassment and the right to everyday life

Freedom from harassment is a basic human right and precondition to mental and physical health. While sexual harassment has become a higher-profile issue in recent years across a range of cultural contexts, including through the global rise of the #MeToo movement and the Everyday Sexism project, this issue has also attracted the attention of policymakers at the highest levels, leading, in the UK, to a Parliamentary Inquiry in 2018 on sexual harassment in public places, and a briefing paper on sexual harassment in higher education from the House of Commons in 2018. All of these highlight the urgent need for both deeper understanding and cultural change on this issue. Meanwhile, sexual harassment constitutes an important area of academic inquiry across a wide range of scholarly fields including psychology, sociology, women’s studies, criminology, law and social policy as well as geography. This article critically reviews key trends in scholarship on sexual harassment in public. It focuses on the spatial contexts of the street, the night-time economy and higher education institutions. A fundamental question of spatial justice, I argue that sexual harassment can be approached through three conceptual lenses: the relational emergence of bodies; the politics of everyday spatial practice; and the ways affects and the atmospheres they generate shape spatial experience. I argue that geographers have a vital role to play in advancing knowledge on this issue, and conclude by outlining a research agenda tracing outlines along which this work might unfold

‘Neoliberal motherhood’: workplace lactation and changing conceptions of working motherhood in the contemporary US

Through an analysis of policy texts, population statistics and a targeted sample from the popular press, this paper both furthers knowledge about changing meanings of working motherhood in the contemporary US, and proposes a refinement to existing conceptual work relating to how wage-work and care-work are combined. I focus analysis on recent US social policy which grants new rights and protections for women seeking to combine lactation and wage-work (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2011). I critique this policy through Bernise Hausman’s work on the politics of motherhood, arguing that it represents a form of work-life integration that is particularly burdensome for working mothers. I further argue that maternal practice as well as well as expectations of working motherhood in the contemporary US are being reshaped around the demands of neoliberalism, producing what I term ‘neoliberal motherhood’. I assert that this policy represents a way of combining wage-work and care-work that is not captured within existing feminist theory, and suggest that a re-working of theory in this area is needed in order to address cases in which embodied care-work is enfolded within the time and space of wage-work

Men at work? Debating shifting gender divisions of care

In response to four commentaries on our paper ‘Regendering care in the aftermath of recession?’, we extend our discussion of the ongoing knowledge gap that prevails around shifting patterns of male work/care. Recognizing the spatial limits of extant theories of male primary caregiving, we discuss first the need to attend to the variegated landscapes of male caregiving across the globe. Likewise, the theoretical stakes of expanding the focus of ‘mainstream’ analysis to take account of the situated experiences and knowledges of men and women in countries of the global South. We then consider the subjects of our research inquiry (the ‘who’ of contemporary fathering) and how different definitions of male primary caregivers may reveal or conceal patterns and shifts in male caregiving practices. Lastly we consider questions of scale and research methodology. Although our paper employs a national-level analysis, we fully endorse the use of alternative scalar lenses and underline the need to analyse male care within the context of multiscalar and interacting sites of normative change: from nation state, to community, to home, to the body. </jats:p

Care goes underground: Thinking through relations of care in the maintenance and repair of urban water infrastructures

This paper extends understanding of the underground city and the workings of the urban backstage through a critical analysis of water infrastructure maintenance and repair. It is based on analysis of ethnographic work undertaken with water maintenance operatives on-site at 11 water infrastructure repair jobs between 2015 and 2016 in Bristol, England. In this article we argue that water infrastructure maintenance and repair constitutes an important but largely unrecognised form of care work. We extend existing conceptual work by arguing that nonhumans can be vital participants within practices of care