David Beckham as a historical moment in the representation of masculinity

There can be no doubt that David Beckham is a public figure of intense media interest in contemporary Britain. This paper is the first stage in a project which aims to explore the circuit of representation and reception of Beckham in current culture. I use a grounded theory approach to generate and categorise the ways in which representations are constructed. The empirical focus is on the discourses around Beckham which are apparent in magazines from May to October 2002. This six month period covers some extremely significant events in his private and professional lives; from his injury just before the World Cup; his recovery and subsequent captaincy of England during the tournament; his on-going fashion and celebrity career with consecutive cover spreads for major magazines, to the arrival of Romeo - his second child. As such, this time-span provided ample and diverse examples of how he is represented in this particular form of lifestyle media. The conceptual categories generated through the grounded theory approach are analysed using ideas drawn from queer theory. My aim is to explore whether queer ideas of discursive resistance, disruption, or destabilisation, are useful explanatory frameworks when discussing the modes of representation which are deployed to construct David Beckham as a working class heterosexual subject. I suggest that queer theory does allow an appreciation of new elements being coded into working-class masculinity. However, current changes in the representation of masculinity may be more usefully understood as expansions of the 'sign' of masculinity operating as a commodity form

Is straight the new queer? David Beckham and the dialectics of celebrity

In his book, Understanding Celebrity (2004), Turner provides a comprehensive overview of the vast literature which has developed on issues of celebrity and fame, painting a broad picture of concerns divided between the significance of the apparent explosion in celebrity 'culture' and the focus on celebrities themselves. Within the literature on the social significance of celebrity culture, we can discern two key themes. First, celebrity culture is a manifestation of globalised commodity consumerism in advanced capitalism and second, its social function as a system of meanings and values which is supplanting traditional resources for self and social identities in late modern culture, including structures such as class, gender/sexuality, ethnicity and nationality. Whilst the authors mentioned above both draw on and contribute to these arguments, their focus remains broad, citing Beckham as a key manifestation of the complex interdependence between globalised sports and media industries, and transformations in gender and consumption. For example, although Cashmore's book is solidly researched on the impact of media finance on football and has a sound argument on the significance of consumerism, he is prone to generalisations about the transformations in masculinity and celebrity culture which he suggests are central to understanding Beckham's significance

What really matters? The elusive quality of the material in feminist thought

The concept of the 'material' was the focus of much feminist work in the 1970s. It has always been a deeply contested one, even for feminists working within a broadly materialist paradigm of the social. Materialist feminists stretched the concept of the material beyond the narrowly economic in their attempts to develop a social ontology of gender and sexuality. Nonetheless, the quality of the social asserted by an expanded sense of the material - its 'materiality' - remains ambiguous. New terminologies of materiality and materialization have been developed within post-structuralist feminist thought and the literature on embodiment. The quality of 'materiality' is no longer asserted - as in materialist feminisms - but is problematized through an implicit deferral of ontology in these more contemporary usages, forcing us to interrogate the limits of both materialist and post-structuralist forms of constructionism. What really matters is how these newer terminologies of 'materiality' and 'materialization' induce us to develop a fuller social ontology of gender and sexuality; one that weaves together social, cultural, experiential and embodied practices

Navigating homocolonialism in LGBTQ2+ rights strategies: sexual and political possibilities beyond the current framing of international queer rights

LGBTQ2+ rights have reached a threshold of international attention and promotion and, concurrently, provoked widespread resistance from many governments, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and socially conservative and religious movements, both in the Global North and Global South.[1] This process of contention between homophile proponents and homophobic opponents, results in what we call “homocolonialism”: a political process through which LGBTQ2+ human rights are deployed and then resisted as part of both an actual and perceived neo-colonial dynamic (Dellatolla 2020, Rahman 2014; 2020). This dynamic consists on one side of a globalized but yet modular strategy of promoting LGBTQ2+ rights and, on the other, political homophobia consisting of particular forms of social stigma and legal oppression, led by the state but often in alliance with conservative social movements (Bosia and Weiss 2013) and targeted at the full range of non-heterosexualities. Below, we explain the homocolonial dynamic and then suggest pathways to disrupt its negative effects. To illustrate the potential of these disruptions, we focus on a case study of the 156queer movement in Bangladesh, a South Asian Muslim-majority nation that has retained legal homophobia from the British colonial era. We then conclude with a discussion of the implications of such examples for a different approach to queer human rights beyond a focus on “known” sexual identities and the prioritization of legal rights-based strategies

DFT Based LDA Study on Tailoring the Optical and Electrical Properties of SnO and In-Doped SnO

In this paper, the structural, electronic and optical properties of tin-monoxide and the impact of Indium (In) doping into tin-monoxide are computed by Local Density Approximation (LDA) under density function theory (DFT) framework. The calculated bond length of Sn-O in tin-monoxide is 2.285 angstrom and that deviates greater than 3 percent from the experimental value. The Sn-O and In-O bond lengths in In-doped tin-monoxide are calculated to be 2.3094 and 2.266 angstrom, respectively. Interestingly, the band gap of pure tin-monoxide is calculated to be 2.61 eV whereas it is significantly dropped down to 2.00 eV in the case of In doped tin-monoxide. The Total Density of State (DOS), Partial DOS and electron density are depicted for tin-monoxide and In-doped tin-monoxide films. As a consequence of In-doping static value of the refractive index and real part of the dielectric function for tin-monoxide decrease from 1.9 to 1.4 and 3.6 to 1.97, respectively. Therefore, In-doping enhances the properties of the tin-monoxide film, which may lead the material to be applied in future to develop electronic and opto-electronic devices

Repairing and commissioning of an AC motor speed controller for a centrifugal pump

A centrifugal pump was installed in 1984 in the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory of Mechanical Engineering Department of Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology. The motor of the centrifugal pump was dc motor and was not working. It could not be commissioned for a long time because of the damaged speed controller. The main shaft (rotor) was also jammed. In this project work, the dc motor was tried to repair. But it could not be run because the specification of the motor and the operating manual was not available. To complete the project successfully, the dc motor was replaced by an ac induction motor. After replacing the motor, the speed of the new motor was controlled by a variable frequency drive (VFD). Using this device, the speed was controlled from 600 rpm to 3000 rpm smoothly. After the replacement, the testing of the centrifugal pump was successfully performed and the motor was controlled in various speeds. Experiment on the performance test of the centrifugal pump was carried out satisfactorily running the pump in various speeds operated by the VFD

Logistics Hub Location Optimization: A K-Means and P-Median Model Hybrid Approach Using Road Network Distances

Logistic hubs play a pivotal role in the last-mile delivery distance; even a slight increment in distance negatively impacts the business of the e-commerce industry while also increasing its carbon footprint. The growth of this industry, particularly after Covid-19, has further intensified the need for optimized allocation of resources in an urban environment. In this study, we use a hybrid approach to optimize the placement of logistic hubs. The approach sequentially employs different techniques. Initially, delivery points are clustered using K-Means in relation to their spatial locations. The clustering method utilizes road network distances as opposed to Euclidean distances. Non-road network-based approaches have been avoided since they lead to erroneous and misleading results. Finally, hubs are located using the P-Median method. The P-Median method also incorporates the number of deliveries and population as weights. Real-world delivery data from Muller and Phipps (M&P) is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. Serving deliveries from the optimal hub locations results in the saving of 815 (10%) meters per delivery

The shape of equality: discourses around the Section 28 repeal in Scotland

This article focuses on conceptualizations of equality in the discourses deployed in the campaign to repeal Section 28 in Scotland. I use the parliamentary debates and two newspapers: the Daily Record, which supported the campaign to Keep the Clause, and The Guardian, which supported repeal, to exemplify the different discursive articulations around equality and citizenship. I suggest that the Scottish example provides further evidence of the ways in which liberalism naturalizes heterosexuality as the standard for citizenship and thus bequeaths a hierarchy of 'equality' and citizenship in the realm of sexuality, wherein lesbian and gay citizenship is either rendered invalid or characterized as 'special rights'. However, within the narrow confines of the parliamentary debates, more expansive and differentiated notions of citizenship and equality are evident. Whilst I conclude that the 'shape' of equality achieved through the repeal has been moulded to support institutionalized heterosexuality - with Section 28 replaced by statutory guidelines on sex education which advocate marriage - I also suggest equality is contested, both through the recognition of transformations in heterosexual family forms and the appeal to non-discrimination as a democratic principle. It is possible, therefore, that current destabilizations of the heterosexual social order simultaneously destabilize the precepts of liberal democracy