40 research outputs found
The complications of âhiring a hubbyâ: gender relations and the commoditisation of home maintenance in New Zealand
This paper examines the commoditization of traditionally male domestic tasks through interviews with handymen who own franchises in the company âHire a Hubbyâ in New Zealand and homeowners who have paid for home repair tasks to be done. Discussions of the commoditization of traditionally female tasks in the home have revealed the emotional conflicts of paying others to care as well as the exploitative and degrading conditions that often arise when work takes place behind closed doors. By examining the working conditions and relationships involved when traditionally male tasks are paid for, this paper raises important questions about the valuing of reproductive labour and the production of gendered identities. The paper argues that while working conditions and rates of pay for âhubbiesâ are better than those for people undertaking commoditized forms of traditionally female domestic labour, the negotiation of this work is still complex and implicated in gendered relations and identities. Working on the home was described by interviewees as an expression of care for family and a performance of the ârightâ way to be a âKiwi blokeâ and a father. Paying others to do this labour can imply a failure in a duty of care and in the performance of masculinity
On handling urban informality in southern Africa
In this article I reconsider the handling of urban informality by urban planning and management systems in southern Africa. I argue that authorities have a fetish about formality and that this is fuelled by an obsession with urban modernity. I stress that the desired city, largely inspired by Western notions of modernity, has not been and cannot be realized. Using illustrative cases of topâdown interventions, I highlight and interrogate three strategies that authorities have deployed to handle informality in an effort to create or defend the modern city. I suggest that the fetish is built upon a desire for an urban modernity based on a concept of formal order that the authorities believe cannot coexist with the âdisorderâ and spatial âunrulinessâ of informality. I question the authorities' conviction that informality is an abomination that needs to be âconvertedâ, dislocated or annihilated. I conclude that the very configuration of urban governance and socio-economic systems in the region, like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, renders informality inevitable and its eradication impossible
The geographies of food banks in the meantime
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support
given by the British Academy for this research (grant
no. SG131950). The âEmergency Food Provision in
the UKâ research includes: over eighteen months of
ethnographic research in a Trussell Trust Foodbank;
a national survey of the Trussell Trust Network and
Independent food banks (and other food aid providers);
and in-depth interviews with food bank managers,
volunteers and service-users in London,
Bristol, Leicestershire, South Wales, Devon, and
Cornwall
(Re) Locating community in relationships: questions for public policy
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.This paper argues that we should think of community as being about social relationships rather than a âthingâ that is âlostâ, âfoundâ or âmadeâ. The paper draws on the philosophy of Roberto Esposito and the sociology of David Studdert to highlight the overlaps in their approaches to community. Both argue that community is ontological, as unavoidably âwith usâ. The paper then draws upon two empirical examples to argue that this approach could enable a different kind of public policy in relation to community. Policy would focus on existing relationships as the starting point for any efforts to effect social change. The implications for contemporary debates about localism are explored at the end of the paper.I am very grateful to David Studdert and Valerie Walkerdine for inviting me to the workshop
on community and localism held at Cardiff University in April 2014 that stimulated this special
issue of Sociological Review. I am also very grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the research
funding and to Nick Coke, Tessy Britton and Laura Billings for their invaluable contributions to
the arguments made. The comments from three referees, the editors and Patrick Devine-Wright
were extremely helpful in improving the paper
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Convective self-aggregation in numerical simulations: a review
Organized convection in the Tropics occurs across a range of spatial and temporal scales and strongly influences cloud cover and humidity. One mode of organization found is âself-aggregationâ, in which moist convection spontaneously organizes into one or several isolated clusters despite spatially homogeneous boundary conditions and forcing. Self-aggregation is driven by interactions between clouds, moisture, radiation, surface fluxes, and circulation, and occurs in a wide variety of idealized simulations of radiative-convective equilibrium. Here we provide a review of convective self-aggregation in numerical simulations, including its character, causes, and effects. We describe the evolution of self-aggregation including its time and length scales and the physical mechanisms leading to its triggering and maintenance, and we also discuss possible links to climate and climate change
Observing convective aggregation
Convective self-aggregation, the spontaneous organization of initially scattered convection into isolated convective clusters despite spatially homogeneous boundary conditions and forcing, was first recognized and studied in idealized numerical simulations. While there is a rich history of observational work on convective clustering and organization, there have been only a few studies that have analyzed observations to look specifically for processes related to self-aggregation in models. Here we review observational work in both of these categories and motivate the need for more of this work. We acknowledge that self-aggregation may appear to be far-removed from observed convective organization in terms of time scales, initial conditions, initiation processes, and mean state extremes, but we argue that these differences vary greatly across the diverse range of model simulations in the literature and that these comparisons are already offering important insights into real tropical phenomena. Some preliminary new findings are presented, including results showing that a self-aggregation simulation with square geometry has too broad a distribution of humidity and is too dry in the driest regions when compared with radiosonde records from Nauru, while an elongated channel simulation has realistic representations of atmospheric humidity and its variability. We discuss recent work increasing our understanding of how organized convection and climate change may interact, and how model discrepancies related to this question are prompting interest in observational comparisons. We also propose possible future directions for observational work related to convective aggregation, including novel satellite approaches and a ground-based observational network
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The implications of rural perceptions of water scarcity on differential adaptation behaviour in Rajasthan, India
Water scarcity is one of the most critical issues facing agriculture today. To understand how people manage the risk of water scarcity and growing pressures of increased climate variability, exploring perceptions of risk and how these perceptions feed into response behaviour and willingness to adapt is critical. This paper revisits existing frameworks that conceptualise perceptions of environmental risk and decision-making, and uses empirical evidence from an in-depth study conducted in Rajasthan, India, to emphasise how individual and collective memories, and experience of past extreme
events shape current definitions and future expectations of climatic risks. In doing so, we demonstrate the value of recognising the role of local perceptions of water scarcity (and how they vary between and within households) in constructing social vulnerability.
We also discuss the implications of these perceptions of risk when understanding and incentivising local adaptation pathways