Collapsing fish stocks, gendered economies, and anxieties of entrapment in coastal Sierra Leone

This article explores the economic negotiations between Sierra Leonean fishermen and the women who compete to buy their fish; tracing how relationships of gendered intimacy and interdependence are being reconfigured in a context of deepening economic precarity. Fish stocks in Sierra Leone are in crisis. Fisherfolk look back with nostalgia to a past in which bountiful harvests had made it possible for transactions of fish to be simple and impersonal. Today, by contrast, it is almost impossible for women to access fish without working to develop strong personal relationships with fishermen: deploying gifts of food, loans of money, and even secret ‘medicines’ to secure the loyalty of potential customers. I analyze how men and women reflect on their growing impoverishment through discourses that emphasize their moral ambivalence at being drawn back into webs of interpersonal dependency and argue that these anxieties need to be understood in the context of Sierra Leone’s history of domestic slavery

'It's not just about the money': Non-resident fathers' perspectives on paying child support

This article explores the question 'Why do fathers resist paying child support?' through interviews with 26 separated or divorced non-residential fathers in Australia. Drawing on Zelizer's typology we argue that the men in this study attempt to define child support as a gift - a payment that emphasizes the power and beneficence of the payer and the obligation of the receiver - but struggle to do so in legal and bureaucratic structures that position its receipt as an entitlement. The tension between child support as a gift and child support as entitlement is informed by gendered power over money, a key element of fathering in traditional and non-traditional family structures.The payment and non-payment of child support is used to reinforce the economic dimensions of fathering identities and define family relationships in remarkably traditional ways

Killing them softly? Using children’s rights to empower Africa’s orphans and vulnerable children

This article considers ways to shift the implementation of children's rights-based aid approaches from protectionism, which hinders orphans and vulnerable children's (OVCs) survival strategies, to empowerment in order to transform OVC livelihoods. I emphasize children's citizenship as a means of increasing OVC participation in policy-making