What do people do with porn? qualitative research into the consumption, use and experience of pornography and other sexually explicit media

This article reviews qualitative research into the consumption of pornography and other sexually explicit media emerging from a range of subject areas. Taking a critique of quantitative methods and a focus on measuring sexual effects and attitudes as a starting point, it considers the proposition that qualitative work is more suited to an examination of the complex social, cultural and political constructions of sexuality. Examining studies into the way men, women and young people see, experience, and use explicit media texts, the article identifies the key findings that have emerged. Qualitative work shows that sexuality explicit media texts are experienced and understood in a variety of ways and evoke strong and often contradictory reactions, not all of which are represented in public debates about pornography. These texts function in a range of different ways, depending on context; as a source of knowledge, a resource for intimate practices, a site for identity construction, and an occasion for performing gender and sexuality. The article reviews these studies and their findings, identifying what they suggest about directions for future research, both in terms of developing methodology and refining approaches to sexuality and media consumption.</p

‘I just think it’s dirty and lazy’: Fat surveillance and erotic capital

Contextualised within the UK mediascape, this article discusses how fat signifies the classed failures of neoliberalism. Because class aspiration, entrepreneurialism and the myth of the competitive individual are pivotal to the political economy of neoliberalism, fat is increasingly and vehemently vilified as abject across media platforms. Fat-surveillance media, which are marketed specifically to women by their visuals, gendered community, language, and structures of feeling, participate in a ‘gynaeopticon’ where the controlling gaze is female, and the many women regulate the many women. Rather than being a top-down form of governance and discipline such as in the panopticon, control is affectively devolved among systems or networks of the policing gaze. As well as monitoring women along the lines of class, I argue that these media circumscribe the de-individualising possibilities and passions of the libido

Towards a BIM-based decision support system for integrating whole life cost estimation into design development

A common barrier to achieving design intent is the absence of information about operational performance during key design stages. This results in uninformed decision-making, which has negative impacts on actual building performance and Whole Life Cost (WLC). It is proposed that Building Information Modelling (BIM) has the potential to assist design decisions at initial stages, if the model can utilize reliable and robust cost and performance data from buildings in use. This paper describes the findings of a research project that has investigated the integration of WLC estimation into BIM processes. Firstly, the research attempts to gather tacit expert knowledge by reverse-engineering unstructured processes to clarify information requirements for WLC assessment. The Integrated DEFinition (IDEF) 3 structured diagramming modelling technique was utilised for process mapping of information flows. As a result, value adding information, and the chain of interdependencies, were determined. The model has informed the development of a decision-support tool that automates prescriptive tasks and stream-lines information exchange procedures. The research findings support the idea that BIM can assist the accurate estimation of WLC of an asset, from the early design stages, through the implementation of a structured information exchange. However, source data is fragmented and in propriety formats and further work is needed to standardise and gather performance data and BIM model structures

Promoting healthy eating, active play and sustainability consciousness in early childhood curricula, addressing the Ben10™ problem: a randomised control trial

Background: This paper details the research protocol for a study funded by the Australian Research Council. An integrated approach towards helping young children respond to the significant pressures of &lsquo;360 degree marketing&rsquo; on their food choices, levels of active play, and sustainability consciousness via the early childhood curriculum is lacking. The overall goal of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of curriculum interventions that educators design when using a pedagogical communication strategy on children&rsquo;s knowledge about healthy eating, active play and the sustainability consequences of their toy food and toy selections. Methods/Design: This cluster-randomised trial will be conducted with 300, 4 to 5 year-old children attending pre-school. Early childhood educators will develop a curriculum intervention using a pedagogical communication strategy that integrates content knowledge about healthy eating, active play and sustainability consciousness and deliver this to their pre-school class. Children will be interviewed about their knowledge of healthy eating, active play and the sustainability consequences of their food and toy selections. Parents will complete an Eating and Physical Activity Questionnaire rating their children&rsquo;s food preferences, digital media viewing and physical activity habits. All measures will be administered at baseline, the end of the intervention and 6 months post intervention. Informed consent will be obtained from all parents and the pre-school classes will be allocated randomly to the intervention or wait-list control group. Discussion: This study is the first to utilise an integrated pedagogical communication strategy developed specifically for early childhood educators focusing on children&rsquo;s healthy eating, active play, and sustainability consciousness. The significance of the early childhood period, for young children&rsquo;s learning about healthy eating, active play and sustainability, is now unquestioned. The specific teaching and learning practices used by early childhood educators, as part of the intervention program, will incorporate a sociocultural perspective on learning; this perspective emphasises building on the play interests of children, that are experienced within the family and home context, as a basis for curriculum provision. Trial Registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12614000363684: Date registered: 07/04/201

Sexualisation's four faces: sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the Bailey Review

This paper explores the considerations of sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the recent UK government report Letting Children be Children. This report, the Bailey Review, claimed to represent the views of parents. However, closer reading reveals that, while the parents who were consulted were concerned about both the sexualisation and the gender stereotyping of products aimed at children, the Bailey Review focuses only on the former and dismisses the latter. ‘Sexualisation’ has four faces in the Bailey Review: it is treated as a process that increases (1) the visibility of sexual content in the public domain, (2) misogyny, (3) the sexuality of children, and (4) the mainstream position of ‘deviant’ sexual behaviours and lifestyles. Through this construction of ‘sexualisation’, gendered relations of power are not only hidden from view but also buttress a narrative in which young women are situated as children, and their sexuality and desire rendered pathological and morally unacceptable as judged by a conservative standard of decency. Comparison of the treatment of sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the review is revealing of the political motivations behind it, and of wider discourse in these areas

Sport in a youth prison: male young offenders' experiences of a sporting intervention

The numbers of children under the age of 18 being incarcerated in England and Wales has decreased of late, with official figures indicating that the current population of just over 1500 has halved during the last decade. But levels of reoffending among children released from prison remain the highest, with three out of four young people being reconvicted within one year of release from juvenile custody. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of community-based sports projects target children and young people, when it comes to incarcerated populations, sporting initiatives are less prevalent. Where sport has become well established as a useful social cohesion/inclusion strategy in community settings, some of these approaches have been translated into custodial settings. Resulting research has often proclaimed sporting pursuits as a modern-day panacea in terms of their social, psychological and emotional benefits, yet few studies have explored the nuances of sports-based interventions within secure settings. This paper comprises a small-scale, qualitative study of one such intervention in a Young Offender Institution in the South of England. Placing respondent accounts at the centre of the analysis, the paper sheds light on the practicalities of programme delivery by uncovering the motivating factors behind participant engagement whilst exploring broader notions of personal development. The paper concludes by highlighting that sport/physical activity can confer significant psychosocial benefits and promote the rehabilitation of young people leaving custody, particularly when integrated into wider programmes of support and provision

Childhood in Sociology and Society: The US Perspective

The field of childhood studies in the US is comprised of cross-disciplinary researchers who theorize and conduct research on both children and youth. US sociologists who study childhood largely draw on the childhood literature published in English. This article focuses on American sociological contributions, but notes relevant contributions from non-American scholars published in English that have shaped and fueled American research. This article also profiles the institutional support of childhood research in the US, specifically outlining the activities of the ‘Children and Youth’ Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), and assesses the contributions of this area of study for sociology as well as the implications for an interdisciplinary field.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Autistic Development, Trauma and Personhood: Beyond the Frame of the Neoliberal Individual

This chapter critically explores notions of childhood development, particularly in regard to autism, reactions to traumatic events and the meaning of ‘personhood’. The construction of the neoliberal individual is contrasted with that of personhood as experienced by an autistic person. Person-centred methods of engagement as outlined in this chapter can give opportunities for opening up a respectful discursive space where autistic development is not framed from the outset as ‘disordered’