Cultural Expectations and Psychopathology in Women

1985 ◽  
Vol 30 (8) ◽  
pp. 647-648
Author(s):  
Bonnie R. Strickland
Author(s):  
Sarah Crabtree

Patience Brayton (1734–94), a Quaker itinerant minister from Rhode Island, completed two extended journeys: one year-long trip covering the American seaboard and a four-year trek through Ireland and Britain. These journeys required her to leave her husband and young children, navigate hazardous travel conditions, endure incapacitating illnesses (often alone), and contend with those hostile to women’s ministry. This chapter contrasts these feats with post-Revolutionary ideas about the weakness of women’s bodies and minds, arguing Brayton’s narrative resolved this conflict by reiterating her own discomfort with these anomalous experiences and by attributing her strength and success to God. Thus, although her journal documented myriad examples of female autonomy and authority, descriptions of her travels, absences, illnesses, and silences conformed to gendered expectations. While ‘in the light’ Quaker women may have stretched gender norms in early America, they could not escape the gendered boundaries of cultural expectations while ‘on the road’.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1468795X2199824
Author(s):  
Patrick Baert ◽  
Marcus Morgan ◽  
Rin Ushiyama

This article introduces ‘existence theory’ as a new approach to sociological theory and research. Existence theory starts from the assumption that people organise their lives around a limited set of existential milestones. Cultural expectations are such that without the accomplishment of those milestones, individuals may experience their lives as incomplete. Examples of milestones can include the attainment of formal education, a lasting partnership and the creation of a family, but in general the milestones which are important to individuals and their precise articulation will depend on a variety of cultural and structural factors. The achievement of existential milestones often depends on that of other existential milestones, thereby producing what we call an ‘existential ladder’. The article also elaborates on the significance of ‘existential urgency’ in that, due to a variety of factors (some biological, some cultural and structural), there are time limits on when certain existential milestones ought to be achieved by. In contemporary society, we note that individuals seem to have more choice about which milestones are important to them and when they can be achieved, although we emphasise that this flexibility is unevenly distributed. This then provides a steppingstone towards an elaboration of the power dynamics and inequalities underlying both the experience and the achievement of existential milestones. Finally, this paper shows how existence theory helps to reflect on a variety of social phenomena of contemporary significance: populism in politics, forced migration, and the coronavirus pandemic.


Author(s):  
Lillian Mwanri ◽  
Leticia Anderson ◽  
Kathomi Gatwiri

Background: Emigration to Australia by people from Africa has grown steadily in the past two decades, with skilled migration an increasingly significant component of migration streams. Challenges to resettlement in Australia by African migrants have been identified, including difficulties securing employment, experiences of racism, discrimination and social isolation. These challenges can negatively impact resettlement outcomes, including health and wellbeing. There has been limited research that has examined protective and resilience factors that help highly skilled African migrants mitigate the aforementioned challenges in Australia. This paper discusses how individual and community resilience factors supported successful resettlement Africans in Australia. The paper is contextualised within a larger study which sought to investigate how belonging and identity inform Afrodiasporic experiences of Africans in Australia. Methods: A qualitative inquiry was conducted with twenty-seven (n = 27) skilled African migrants based in South Australia, using face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Participants were not directly questioned about ‘resilience,’ but were encouraged to reflect critically on how they navigated the transition to living in Australia, and to identify factors that facilitated a successful resettlement. Results: The study findings revealed a mixture of settlement experiences for participants. Resettlement challenges were observed as barriers to fully meeting expectations of emigration. However, there were significant protective factors reported that supported resilience, including participants’ capacities for excellence and willingness to work hard; the social capital vested in community and family support networks; and African religious and cultural values and traditions. Many participants emphasised their pride in their contributions to Australian society as well as their desire to contribute to changing narratives of what it means to be African in Australia. Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that despite challenges, skilled African migrants’ resilience, ambition and determination were significant enablers to a healthy resettlement in Australia, contributing effectively to social, economic and cultural expectations, and subsequently meeting most of their own migration intentions. These findings suggest that resilience factors identified in the study are key elements of integration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 228-253
Author(s):  
Ahmad Agbaria

Abstract Cultural institutions and publishing houses have been essential to the making of Arab intellectual conversations in the post-colonial era. The publishing house of Dār al-Ṭalīʿah (est. 1959) played a central role in naturalizing social classifications, ideological views and cultural expectations that have influenced the then-new articulation of the notion of Arab authenticity. Yet, al-Ṭalīʿah was more than a publishing house: it was an intellectual hub that sustained intellectuals and unified them into a coherent group. Despite its centrality, however, the group of authors published by al-Ṭalīʿah has rarely drawn the attention of literary critics or intellectual historians. This article rethinks the connection between ideas and their institutional location, rejecting the conventional view that institutions are only secondary to, or even parasitic on, the supremacy of ideas. Looking at the idea of cultural authenticity (aṣālah) fiercely opposed by al-Ṭalīʿah authors, this article examines the ways the publishing house informed the meaning and deployment of aṣālah during the 1960s, even while rejecting it.


Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-363
Author(s):  
Anthea Skinner

The international disability music scene is a thriving musical subculture consisting of performers self-identifying as disabled who use their performances to explore experiences of living with disability. As a genre predominantly written by, about and for people with disabilities, it provides a space for discourse about life with disability which is largely unmediated by governmental policy, political correctness or able-bodied facilitators. As such, it is a medium through which people with disability are free to express opinions about sex and romance rarely seen in mainstream media. This article examines the ways in which the topics of sexuality and romance are explored within disability music culture. It will focus on four case study songs, I Love My Body (1988) by Johnny Crescendo, Vagina Ain’t Handicapped (2011) by Laura Martinez, Def Deaf Girls (2012) by Sean Forbes and No Goodbyes (2012) by Rory Burnside and Rohan Brooks from Rudely Interrupted. These four songs will be used to explore the themes of body image, cultural expectations of the disabled body, the benefits of dating fellow members of the disability community and relationships. This article also draws on the author’s own experience as a person with disability and a musician in a band that regularly performs on the disability music scene.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 143-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise O. Vasvári

The aim of this study is to define linguistic gender[lessness], with particular reference in the latter part of the article to Hungarian, and to show why it is a feminist issue. I will discuss the [socio]linguistics of linguistic gender in three types of languages, those, like German and the Romance languages, among others, which possess grammatical gender, languages such as English, with only pronominal gender (sometimes misnamed ‘natural gender’), and languages such as Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages, as well as many other languages in the world, such as Turkish and Chinese, which have no linguistic or pronomial gender, but, like all languages, can make lexical gender distinctions. While in a narrow linguistic sense linguistic gender can be said to be afunctional, this does not take into account the ideological ramifications in gendered languages of the “leakage” between gender and sex[ism], while at the same time so-called genderless languages can express societal sexist assumptions linguistically through, for example, lexical gender, semantic derogation of women, and naming conventions. Thus, both languages with overt grammatical gender and those with gender-related asymmetries of a more covert nature show language to represent traditional cultural expectations, illustrating that linguistic gender is a feminist issue.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document