Encountering the Fairtrade Farmer: Solidarity, Stereotypes and the Self-Control Ethos

Recent research in social psychology has identified a specific social representation, the ‘self-control ethos’, which is constituted through neo-liberal virtues of self-management, reliance and discipline. This functions to mark an ‘ingroup’ through its allegiance to core values and behaviours, from an ‘outgroup’, forged through a perceived ‘lack’ or rejection of those values and further, serves as a basis for the denigration of outgroups. However, recent developments in mainstream social psychological theories of stereotype content have developed a model of prejudicial intergroup relations as ambivalent, involving both negative and positive content. In this paper we maintain an emphasis on the self-control ethos but depart from an emphasis upon denigration to focus on a particular outgroup – the fairtrade farmer/producer. We argue that developments in social representations theory and mainstream social psychology can both contribute to a deeper understanding of this particular example of a cultural encounter apparently engendering social solidarity. Recent social psychological models of stereotype content contribute an important emphasis upon ambivalence based on perceived structural relationships in the representations of outgroups. However the self-control ethos allows an understanding of the visual, symbolic and affective work involved in making solidarity with a ‘distant’ outgroup a possibility. Finally we claim that although representations of fairtrade farmers/producers ostensibly become the vehicle for a progressive cultural encounter, the forms of solidarity it encourages require critical scrutiny

Age as trouble: towards alternative narratives of women’s ageing

Ageing is trouble for women: our longevity and a lifetime of gendered pay inequalities can leave us exposed to precarity and hardships in later life. Our bodies are thought troublesome as they sag from the registers of heteronormative attractiveness. Age is trouble too because it is the perfect site for the exercise of neoliberal cruel optimism; surveillance, monitoring, individualization and a increasing turn to the market for supposed solutions for the ‘problem’ of age. Can these ageing troubles be troubled and how? This paper applies a critical optimism to explore how older feminist- identified women make their aged-lives habitable in an anti-ageing culture. It discusses how feminism, as a changeable, mobile but mostly problematic resource because of its silence around ageing, nonetheless helped women (aged between 40 -101) articulate how their responses to anti-aging culture are formed and informed and shaped their ambitions for ageing on their terms. This paper concludes by making a case for us ‘age critically’ and explores what obligations and opportunities that places on us as POWES feminist researchers and scholars

Representations of the National Health Service (NHS) in UK print Media

Generating negative news of state has been as a to create for aimed to such provision. coverage welfare p rovision strategy designed public support radical To date of this kind has on and However, little is known about the complex relationship between media representations of specific events, and those of media representations in the lead up to these events, what we refer to as periphery representations. Drawing on a coding framework methodology, this paper analyses the frequency and intensity of peripheral representations of the National Health Service (NHS) in the British print media for one week a month before and for one week during three key events in recent NHS history: the official consultation period for the Health and Social Care Act (2012); the publication of Five-Year Forward View, and the first Junior Doctor Strike. This article finds that negative NHS representations in articles that are peripheral to particular topical issues of controversy evidence fluctuations, amplifications and intensities across time periods, depending on the particular context. The paper concludes by arguing that repetition of negative themes in news helps to build a sensibility of ‘inadequacy’ of vital services. We hope that this focus on the ways in which amplifications and de-amplifications in negative intensity of peripheral NHS representations across time and content, helps to contribute to debate about the complex interplay between public health services, media representation and policy consent

"‘It’s like going to the regular class but without being there’: A qualitative analysis of older people’s experiences of exercise in the home during Covid-19 Lockdown in England."

It is expected that the Covid-19 lockdown will have increased physical inactivity with negative impacts for older people, who are at greater risk of health complications from the virus. This paper draws on customer evaluation questionnaire of a Pilates class aimed at people aged over 50 years old, which transitioned from a studio setting to online classes via Zoom at the start of the lockdown in England. The paper aims to (i) evaluate the shift of exercise services to online and (ii) examine how engagement with online services has influenced people’s reaction to Covid-19 and unprecedented confinement to their homes. Our analysis shows that experiences of exercise in the home are dependent on prior exercise engagement, particularly a sense of progress and competency in exercise movements, trust in the instructor and socio-economic privileges that enable participants to love and appreciate their homes. This paper argues that online classes have had positive impact on participants’ ability to cope with lockdown: routine, structure and being seen by others all proved important well-being aspects

When Fat Meets Disability in Poverty Porn: exploring the cultural mechanisms of suspicion in Too Fat to Work

There has been a distinct neglect of dis/ability in socio-cultural analysis of poverty porn (Runswick-Cole and Goodley 2015). This paper applies framing analysis to reality TV documentaries that feature larger bodied, disabled, welfare claimants to examine how cultural literacies of fatness and ‘obesity’ are drawn upon to cast suspicion upon disability welfare claimants in so-called poverty-porn. With a focus on Channel 5’s Benefit Britain series, Bene£its Too Fat to Work we demonstrate that enduring and harmful representations of 'obesity' are put to the work of securing public consent for a post-welfare society in the UK

Observing weight stigma in the editing of UK factual welfare programming

Media representations of fat and weight play a central role in the circulation of weight stigma. However, the production practices involved have received little attention. This paper focuses on the editing techniques deployed in a UK reality television documentary series, On Benefits. Our analysis of cutaway shots suggests a quantitative and qualitative difference between an episode featuring “‘obese”’ people claiming welfare, compared to the rest in our sample. We examine the cutaways to show how weight stigma intersects with welfare stigma on the grounds of self-control. We conclude that images of bodies, food, and medical aides mobilize weight stigma to overdetermine welfare claimants as underserving while casting suspicion about the purpose of State welfare in the UK

When fat meets disability in poverty porn: exploring the cultural mechanisms of suspicion in Too Fat to Work

There has been a distinct neglect of dis/ability in socio-cultural analysis of poverty porn (Runswick-Cole and Goodley 2015). This paper applies framing analysis to reality TV documentaries that feature larger bodied, disabled, welfare claimants to examine how cultural literacies of fatness and ‘obesity’ are drawn upon to cast suspicion upon disability welfare claimants in so-called poverty- porn. With a focus on Channel 5’s Benefit Britain series, Bene£its Too Fat to Work we demonstrate that enduring and harmful representations of 'obesity' are put to the work of securing public consent for a post-welfare society in the U

Critical Future Studies and Age: attending to future imaginings of age and ageing

This paper draws on cultural gerontology and literary scholarship to call for greater academic consideration of age and ageing in our imaginations of the future. Our work adds to the development of Critical Future Studies (CFS) previously published in this journal, by arguing that prevailing ageism is fuelled by specific constructions of older populations as a future demographic threat and of ageing as a future undesirable state requiring management and control. This paper has two parts: the first considers the importance of the future to contemporary ageist stereotypes. The second seeks potential counter representations in speculative fiction. We argue that an age-aware CFS can allow us not only to imagine new futures but also to reflect critically on the shape and consequences of contemporary modes of relations of power

Ageing as Adaptation

In traditional gerontological terms, adaptation is usually understood as the production of physical aids to mitigate the impairment effects caused by age-related disabilities, or as those alterations organisations need to make under the concept of reasonable adjustment to prevent age discrimination (in the UK, for example, age has been a protected characteristic under the Equality Act since 2010). This article will be the first to examine ageing in relation to theories of adaptation within cultural studies and the humanities. It is thus an interdisciplinary intervention within the field of cultural gerontology and cultural theories of adaptation. Adaptation studies in cultural studies and the humanities have moved away from fidelity criticism (the issue of how faithful an adaptation is to its original) towards thinking of adaptation as a creative, improvisational space. We ask if theories of adaptation as understood within cultural studies and the humanities can help us develop a more productive and creative way of conceptualising the ageing process, which reframes ageing in terms of transformational and collaborative adaptation. Moreover, for women in particular, this process of adaptation involves engagement with ideas of women’s experience that encompass an adaptive, intergenerational understanding of feminism. Our article draws on interviews with the producer and scriptwriter of the Representage theatre group’s play My Turn Now. The script for the play is adapted from a 1993 co-authored book written by a group of six women who were then in their 60s and 70s, who founded a networking group for older women