The biopolitics of declassing Palestinian professional women in a settler-colonial context

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
The Body ◽  
Palestinian Women ◽  
Politics Of Fear ◽  
Market Class ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
Patriarchal Power

This article argues that the biopolitics of declassing Palestinian professional women in Israel, which constitutes part of the logic of eliminating the native, is mediated by colonial violence that secures labor market class sovereignty for settlers. In this context, the term declassing refers to rendering this class invisible by disregarding the women’s presence and/or value in the labor market. The study unpacks the logic of elimination through the racialized, everyday lived experience of middle-class professional women in Bedouin society who succeeded in entering the Jewish workplace. These women face sophisticated erasure tactics, paralleling various manifestations of the direct politics of fear that discipline the body, will and mind, as well as indirect opposition reflected in the settler-colonial reinforcement of patriarchal power against women. This article reveals concealed violent forms of power practiced by the colonialists to declass Palestinian women and preserve colonialist class superiority in the labor market.

The Choice of Health

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Bochow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Infection Rate ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
The Body ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Transnational Religion ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Right ◽  
Charismatic Christianity ◽  
Hiv Aids

Based on the reproductive histories of about seventy educated professional women and fifteen educated professional men in Botswana, a country with an HIV/AIDS infection rate of 25 to 30 per cent, this chapter discusses the exceptional life courses of Pentecostal women who have remained childless in their marriages. The chapter discusses Comaroff and Comaroff’s hypothesis of the creation of the ‘right bearing, responsible “free” individual’ launched by English nonconformist Methodist missionaries. It analyses how these women have come to prioritise their health over having children. Christian, and in particular Pentecostal, ethics are shown to be a pool of globally circulating biomedical ideas that stress the controllability of the body and favour postponement. As a transnational religion charismatic Christianity thus launches a health ethic that is attributed to the positionality of new middle-class subjectivities.

scholarly journals Deflecting Privilege: Class Identity and the Intergenerational Self

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852098222
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Dave O’Brien ◽  
Ian McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Privileged Class

Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular ‘origin stories’ which act to downplay interviewees’ own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this ‘intergenerational self’ partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success ‘against the odds’ that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory.

Is co-production working well in recovery colleges? Emergent themes from a systematic narrative review

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Louise Bester ◽  
Anne McGlade ◽  
Eithne Darragh
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Care ◽  
The Body ◽  
Bibliographic Databases ◽  
Service Users ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Practitioner Attitudes ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
The Impact

Purpose “Co-production” is a process in health and social care wherein service users and practitioners work in partnership. Recovery colleges (RCs) are educational establishments offering mental health education; a cornerstone feature is that courses are designed and delivered in parity by both mental health practitioners and “peers” – people with lived experience of mental illness. This paper aims to consider, through the identification of key themes, whether co-production within RCs is operating successfully. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a systematic review of qualitative literature. Relevant concept groups were systematically searched using three bibliographic databases: Medline, Social Care Online and Scopus. Articles were quality appraised and then synthesised through inductive thematic analysis and emergent trends identified. Findings Synthesis identified three key themes relating to the impact of co-production in RCs: practitioner attitudes, power dynamics between practitioners and service users, and RCs’ relationships with their host organisations. As a result of RC engagement, traditional practitioner/patient hierarchies were found to be eroding. Practitioners felt they were more person-centred. RCs can model good co-productive practices to their host organisations. The review concluded, with some caveats, that RC co-production was of high fidelity. Originality/value RC research is growing, but the body of evidence remains relatively small. Most of what exists examine the impact of RCs on individuals’ overall recovery and mental health; there is a limited empirical investigation into whether their flagship feature of parity between peers and practitioners is genuine.

scholarly journals How sociophenomenology of the body problematises the ‘problem-oriented approach’ to growth hormone treatment

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-11
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Murano ◽  
Jenny Slatman ◽  
Kristin Zeiler
Keyword(s):  
Growth Hormone ◽  
Short Stature ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Growth Hormone Treatment ◽  
Hormone Treatment ◽  
The Body ◽  
Psychological Assessments ◽  
Objective Space ◽  
Oriented Approach

This article examines how people who are shorter than average make sense of their lived experience of embodiment. It offers a sociophenomenological analysis of 10 semistructured interviews conducted in the Netherlands, focusing on if, how, and why height matters to them. It draws theoretically on phenomenological discussions of lived and objective space, intercorporeality and norms about bodies. The analysis shows that height as a lived phenomenon (1) is active engagement in space, (2) coshapes habituated ways of behaving and (3) is shaped by gendered norms and beliefs about height. Based on this analysis, the article challenges what we label as the ‘problem-oriented approach’ to discussions about growth hormone treatment for children with idiopathic short stature. In this approach, possible psychosocial disadvantages or problems of short stature and quantifiable height become central to the ethical evaluation of growth hormone treatment at the expense of first-hand lived experiences of short stature and height as a lived phenomenon. Based on our sociophenomenological analysis, this paper argues that the rationale for giving growth hormone treatment should combine medical and psychological assessments with investigations of lived experiences of the child. Such an approach would allow considerations not only of possible risks or disadvantages of short stature but also of the actual ways in which the child makes sense of her or his height.

scholarly journals The Temporality of Maximal Grip: On Pragmatists’ Readings of Merleau-Ponty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniil Koloskov
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Body ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Phenomenology Of Perception

In this article, I will pursue three aims. First, I would like to demonstrate the non-transcendental character of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, namely, his claim that a strict division between a priori and a posteriori is an abstraction that derives from a more primordial unity that is given in our lived experience. I will criticize authors such as H. Dreyfus and T. Carman who treat the body and bodily character of our existence as a classical Kantian a priori that functions as a condition of experience without itself being a part of the experience. The claim I would like to defend in this regard is that reflections on the conditions of our experience must themselves be a part of our experience. The second task is to show how Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of temporality helps him to avoid this strict division between a priori and a posteriori. Based on this, I will elucidate some of the most obscure passages of Phenomenology of Perception. Finally, I will claim that the notion of optimal grip can neither be explained by the reference to our body, as Carman claims, or to brains, organisms and their copings with the environment, as Dreyfus argues. Instead, I will claim that the maximal grip is rather a consolidation or intensification of the temporal ecstasy.

scholarly journals Statistical Reporting in Vocational Education: Review and Ways of Improving

2017 ◽  
pp. 58-69
Author(s):  
М. V. Lesnikova
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Technical Education ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
The Body ◽  
National Accounts ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Statistical Indicators

Labor potential for the Ukrainian economy cannot be formed without professional training of staff. The system for professional technical education (PTE) consists of professional technical institutions in an industry, other enterprises, institutions, organizations, and education or supervisory offices charged with the administration of the former. The studies demonstrate that the existing PTE network in Ukraine is ineffective and distanced from the needs of regional economies in terms of their demography problems and needs of their labor markets. The abovementioned raises the importance of the issues of access to high quality and complete statistical information, incorporating a wide range of statistical indicators, first and foremost the ones on labor market performance, enabling for effective decision-making. The author’s review of the respective statistical reports shows that the existing statistical indicators form three linked modules (labor market, formation of PTE system, national accounts of education), containing quantitative data on network, enrolment, teaching personnel, material-technical and methodological provision of professional technical education institutions, PTE financing. Sufficiency of the existing statistical information is assessed by use of multi-step typology by the technology based on the statistics of non-numeric data. The data obtained from users and makers of PTE system in time of Turin process in 2016 show that the existing statistical reports fails to meet information needs of labor markets in high quality statistical data. According to the respondents, the main barrier is unstable economic situation; more than one quarter of the respondents (27%) mention irrelevance of the body supervising the collection of statistical data, and lack of advanced methodologies and methods for recording of jobs. A pressing problem is related with overlooking the scopes of shadow jobs and reluctance of a major part of employers to inform the development plans of their enterprises. Measures to improve the existing statistical reporting on PTE are as follows: introduce the questionnaire-based interviews of employers, to calculate the number of graduates kept on jobs, by specialty; considering large number of small enterprises and private enterprises, improve the existing method for collection and processing of bid data; construct a standard method for calculating the rate of graduates’ job placement using the shadow economy ratio; create an integrated information and analytical system for PTE; calculate the rate of apprenticeship passed, by specialty, ours of apprenticeship, and location of apprenticeship; introduce the monitoring-based assessment of PTE quality; develop the method for balancing the scopes of professional technical staff trained in education institutions and labor market needs.

The New Service Class: Housing, Consumption, and Lifestyle among London Bankers in the 1990s

1997 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 2061-2078 ◽  
Author(s):  
L M McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Market Change ◽  
Residential Preferences ◽  
Producer Service ◽  
Professional Employees ◽  
Social Polarisation ◽  
Class Anxiety ◽  
The City

In this paper I draw on a survey of professional employees in three of the City of London's merchant banks to assess arguments about the residential preferences and lifestyle decisions of the ‘new’ middle class. It has been argued that an increasingly polarised workforce within producer service industries has, in part, led to greater social polarisation in inner areas through the mechanism of gentrification. Further the effects of the feminisation of the labour market, especially the rise in the numbers of professional women in employment, have been adduced as a significant factor in housing-market change. A number of commentators have suggested that women in professional occupations are key players in inner-area gentrification, although the evidence here is limited. Further, middle-class anxiety about employment prospects has been identified by Lyons in a recent article in this journal as a further reason for increased preferences for inner-area locations. In this paper I assess these arguments.

Embodied Inequality

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-54
Author(s):  
Erynn Masi de Casanova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
Domestic Work ◽  
Limited Resource ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Body ◽  
Health Food

This chapter examines the role of bodies and embodiment in domestic work. It argues that bodies matter for how domestic employees experience their work. Indeed, domestic workers' accounts emphasized physical labor and the embodied inequality between employer and employee. They described their work as exhausting, accelerating the deterioration of their bodies, and potentially dangerous. These accounts conceive of the body as a limited resource that women draw on to do their work, a resource that can be used up or damaged in the process. Bodies also matter because of the symbolic distinctions drawn between “good,” middle-class/elite bodies and “bad,” lower-class/deviant bodies—between employers' and workers' bodies. Workers face clear boundaries between themselves and employers in relation to health, food consumption, and appearance. Even employers who buck tradition by pursuing more egalitarian relations are aware of the differential values typically placed on differently classed bodies in Ecuador.

New Bodies in Cities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachana Johri
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Caste System ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Contested Spaces ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

Globalizing cities in India offer the promise of escape from caste- and gender-based identities, but those who make the journey often encounter difficulties, including the fragmentation of their home experience, and even violence once they get to the city. Lower-middle-class girls are seen as a challenge to ideals of chaste Indian womanhood, while Dalit boys and girls are challenging dominant ideals in Brahmanical India by questioning the nation state and its inherited ideals, including the caste system. This paper draws on cinematic and lived narratives to argue that cities in India are characterized by highly contested spaces, bodily practices, and technologies of the self, where the body of the city, and bodies in the city, are the lived realities of these tense negotiations.

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