Challenging Stereotypes: Muslim Women's Photographic Self-Representations on the Internet

This paper focuses on embodiment as enacted and expressed on websites and blogs produced or populated by Muslim women. While there is no agreement amongst scholars and believers in different schools of Islam whether Muslim women are required to wear the headscarf, it is acknowledged that Muslim dresscode should be guided by the principle of modesty. Modest dress in Islam is understood in different ways, from all-concealing garments such as the burqa, to long-sleeved tops and long skirts or tunics obscuring body shape, all available to purchase online. This variety is reflected in material published by Muslim women on the Internet who construct their online identity by writing but also by posting their pictures on sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Muslim or Islamic dating websites. According to some interpretations, depictions of human bodies should not be published and Muslim women advocating this position choose to use photos of still nature or abstract works of art as their avatars. Imagery on the websites is a useful springboard into considering the nature of online identity, therefore a range of Muslim women's profiles on social networks as well a number of websites and blogs are analysed using interdisciplinary methods (visual and discourse analysis). Muslim women's representations of themselves often contrast with their representations produced by the media; it is argued that the latter are negative and biased (Afshar, 1998, 2008), hence it is imperative to address the ways in which Muslim women speak about themselves in not only textual, but also visual modes

Training Organizational Soldiers: Leadership and Control in Trainee Programs

Title: Training Organisational Soldiers: Leadership and Control in Trainee Programs Authors: Anna Piela and Annika Theiss Supervisor: Jens Rennstam Submission Date: May 22, 2015 Purpose: The purpose of our research is to provide a more critical perspective on leadership and leadership development within the context of trainee programs. Therefore we aim to understand how leadership is constructed in trainee programs and how companies make use of trainee programs to control trainees. Methodology: We based our research on a qualitative research design and combined an interpretive and a critical stance. Theoretical Perspective: As a theoretical background for our study we provided an overview of the existing literature on trainee programs in connection to leadership, identity and control. Empirical Foundation: The empirical material for this thesis was mainly generated by eight semi-structured interviews with trainees from a trainee program in a globally operating retail organisation located in Sweden. Furthermore, we added survey answers, company documents and notes from conversations with the HR team to our empirical basis. Main Findings: We found that leadership is constructed as something solely positive in the trainee program and that the leadership discourse is used to trigger the trainees’ identity work. This discourse can, on the one hand, be supportive of the trainees’ identity work and, on the other hand, lead to struggles and uncertainties. In both cases it functions as an organisational control mechanism which de- and reconstructs the trainees’ identities in accordance with the organisational objectives

How do Muslim women who wear the niqab interact with others online? A case study of a profile on a photo-sharing website

This article identifies a gap in extant literature on women who wear the niqab and their representations in ‘traditional’ media: there are few academic sources that draw from these women’s own narratives. In order to address this gap, this article highlights niqabis’ self-representations in the form of photographic self-portraits published in new media and demonstrates a variety of positive ways in which these self-portraits are received by the audiences. The article is based on a case study of a profile of a prolific author who posts and discusses her work on a popular photo-sharing website. It throws light on contextualised and relational interpretations of the niqab and its meaning and at the same time challenges a common perception that non-Muslim audiences are uniformly critical of women who wear the niqab. Data analysis of the data so far indicates that women who wear the niqab exercise their agency by making visual references to the everyday and successfully establish dialogue and intimacy with their audiences. It is suggested that new media settings are particularly important in researching ‘niqab experiences’, as they foster a variety of relevant data types and narratives driven by participants, rather than researchers.</jats:p

Intrauterine deaths — an unsolved problem in Polish perinatology

Objectives: The Polish criteria for “intrauterine death” include fetal demise after 22 weeks of gestation, weighing &gt; 500 g and body length at least 25 cm, when the gestational age is unknown. The rate of fetal death in Poland in 2015 is 3:10,000. In 2020, 1,231 stillbirths were registered. Material and methods: An analysis using 142,662 births in the period between 2015–2020 in 11 living in Poland. The first subgroup was admitted as patients &gt; 22 to the beginning of the 30th week of pregnancy (n = 229), and the second from the 30th week of pregnancy inclusively (n = 179). In the case of women from both subgroups, there was a risk of preterm delivery close to hospitalization. Results: It was found that stillbirth in 41% of women in the first pregnancy. For the patient, stillbirth was also the first in his life. The average stillbirth weight was 1487 g, the average body length was 40 cm. Among fetuses up to 30 weeks, male fetuses are born more often, in subgroup II, the sex of the child was usually female. Most fetal deaths occur in mothers &lt; 15 and &gt; 45 years of age. Conclusions: According to the Polish results of the origin of full-term fetuses &gt; 30 weeks of gestation for death in the concomitant antenatal, such as placental-umbilical and fetal hypoxia, acute intrapartum effects rarely, and moreover &lt; 30 Hbd fetal growth restriction (FGR), occurring placental-umbilical, acute intrapartum often

Networked together: designing participatory research in on-line ethnography

Abstract. This book contains the conference proceedings of the third edition of Rethinking Educational Ethnography: Researching on-line communities and interactions Conference hold in Napoli from 6th to 7th of June 2013. In 2013, the third edition of the Conference has invited ethnographers in different fields of research (not only in education), and those involved in ethnographic investigations in diverse disciplines (anthropology, sociology, etc.) to present and discuss contributions on the challenges of participatory research design in digital ethnography

"I discovered I love to pray alone too" : pluralist Muslim women’s approaches to practicing Islam during and after Ramadan 2020

Public health guidelines implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the way many people practice religion. In the realm of Islam, practices from the margins-attending online mosques and prayer groups, or praying alone-suddenly became commonplace. This paper addresses the question : What religious processes have become more evident among pluralist Muslim women during the pandemic? Based on 34 open-ended online surveys completed by pluralist Muslim women living chiefly in the USA and the UK, our analysis evidences the existence of four narratives that reflect fluctuations in the intensity and type of religious practice. The first and most prominent narrative in our dataset conveys enthusiastic embrace of social-distanced practices; the second describes a profound sense of aberration impossible to overcome in spiritual ways. The third highlights that for some Muslims, the pandemic brought no changes, as they continued to be isolated from their communities. The fourth is focused on an affirmation of a "remote" sociality experienced online. While some respondents acknowledge the increased individuation in their religious practice, they also find fulfilment in collective, if transformed, sociality. The changes in social interaction have led to a re-evaluation of salient aspects of their religious identity or, alternatively, highlighted longstanding modalities of exclusion