Collecting visual voices: Understanding identity, community, and the meaning of participation within gay rodeos

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshoula Capous-Desyllas ◽  
Marina Johnson-Rhodes

Rodeos have been an integral part of American cowboy culture since the 1800s, however, it wasn’t until the 1970s when gay rodeos began to form and challenge some of the assumptions about ‘cowboys,’ ‘sexuality,’ and ‘masculinity.’ The purpose of this ethnographic study was to utilize participant-driven photo-elicitation (PDPE) method to understand how individuals who participate in gay rodeos experience their identities and the meanings they attribute to their participation in this queer subculture. The diverse images shared by the participants illustrate their unique identities and the various meanings they attribute to their participation in gay rodeo. The findings from this study serve to highlight various aspects of the gay rodeo subculture and the role of gay rodeo as a site of support and solidarity for LGBTQ communities. In this study, gay rodeo emerges as a space of contestation, resistance and reification of gender norms and heterosexuality. The findings call into question tensions that exist when trying to dismantle sexual minority stereotypes while simultaneously perpetuating white hegemonic masculinity through the pervasive image of the gay cowboy. Interrogating the ways in which gay rodeo participants simultaneously reinforced and challenged hegemonic masculinity helps to understand how the idealized (hetero)sexual images of cowboys connected to symbolic power, strength and self-worth, position gay rodeo participants. This research study also reveals that participants of gay rodeo, who travel within and across the USA in order to participate in rodeo events, experiment with multiple non-heterosexual identities as they search for spaces and communities away from compulsory heterosexuality.

Author(s):  
Giselle D' Souza

Test anxiety and distress occupy pivotal positions in students' lives today, because of over emphasis on academic achievement in the modern educational system. The need for high performance in examinations has defeated the very purpose of education. The SSC examination has come to be an exhaustive exercise that makes the students learn by rote rather than comprehension. There are a few who feel completely trapped in their situation and indulge in self-destructive acts like suicide. The present research study attempted at understanding the likely role of personality correlates namely, academic self-concept, self-efficacy and locus of control in alleviating the different dimensions of stress encountered by students of standard X. It revealed a significant relationship between stress and the mentioned variables and could have important implications in helping students of standard X come to terms with their invaluable self-worth in effectively coping with the evil of the present century -stress.


Modern Italy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-284
Author(s):  
Caterina Satta

In Western countries children's identities have been constructed through their bodies and the different meanings attached to them. Children's bodies are central to defining their social and spatial position in the city. They are in fact, more than any other group, subjected to a set of spatial bans and prohibitions that confine them within places specifically targeted at them during their free time (i.e. recreational, ludic and sports organisations). One of the recreational activities most commonly engaged in by Italian children is sport. However, little is known about children's approach to sporting activities. What is proposed here is that the site of children's involvement in sport is a valuable key for the observation of the ambiguous construction of children's citizenship through spatial borders and body training. Based on a long-term ethnographic study of the Cagliari football club academy for children, and informed by the new sociology of childhood approach, this article investigates the role of organised sport contexts in the urban generational order. The conclusions stress the contradiction detectable in a structured football club academy as a site that, on the one hand, promotes children's rights to play and, on the other, restricts their substantive citizenship within the public space.


1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Storper ◽  
R Walker ◽  
E Widess

The impact of performance regulations on industrial location in the USA or elsewhere has been little researched. This case study shows conventional assumptions to be questionable on two counts. First, industry appears not to consider local regulations until after selecting a site on more basic economic reasons. It assumes that regulations are not a significant barrier, owing to local eagerness to attract new growth. Second, the letter of the law is not the effect of the law, given the role of politics. In the case study described, opposition led to strict enforcement and the company's withdrawal, but a business backlash restored a more normal degree of governmental accommodation to industrial growth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 398-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Shangani ◽  
Kristi E. Gamarel ◽  
Adedotun Ogunbajo ◽  
Jieyi Cai ◽  
Don Operario

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Veronis

Issues of immigrant political incorporation and transnational politics have drawn increased interest among migration scholars. This paper contributes to debates in this field by examining the role of networks, partnerships and collaborations of immigrant community organizations as mechanisms for immigrant political participation both locally and transnationally. These issues are addressed through an ethnographic study of the Hispanic Development Council, an umbrella advocacy organization representing settlement agencies serving Latin American immigrants in Toronto, Canada. Analysis of HDC’s three sets of networks (at the community, city and transnational levels) from a geographic and relational approach demonstrates the potentials and limits of nonprofit sector partnerships as mechanisms and concrete spaces for immigrant mobilization, empowerment, and social action in a context of neoliberal governance. It is argued that a combination of partnerships with a range of both state and non-state actors and at multiple scales can be significant in enabling nonprofit organizations to advance the interests of immigrant, minority and disadvantaged communities.


Author(s):  
V. V. Makarov ◽  
D. A. Lozovoy

  Enzootic bovine leucosis (EBL) has been known for more than a century and a half. Its occurrence and registration may have historically been associated with intensive breeding of dairy cattle in Western Europe to increase target productivity. It is known that any limiting intervention in the nature of the animal organism is always accompanied by an uncontrolled and unpredictable change in the genotype of a wider range than the required, particularly negative order. In particular, a decrease in the resistance to macroorganisms and the possibility of the new diseases emergence, including infectious ones (for example, immunodeficiencies such as BLAD syndrome of black-motley cattle and stress syndrome in pigs, the occurrence of scrapie and other slow sheep infections). In the last two decades of the last century, in many disadvantaged countries, primarily Western European, national programs for the eradication of EBL have been developed and subsequently successfully implemented. First of all the motivation was the economy of dairy cattle breeding (mainly the extension of productive age, as well as the tightening of requirements in international trade in cattle and bull products, breeding, pricing, etc.). In an analytical article are reviewed the elements of epizootology of EBL in the foreign countries with special attention to the situation in the USA, scenarios of various control programs, and promising methods for assessing the role of infected animals in the epizootic process. A critical assessment of the problem of EBL in the Russian Federation is given, the reasons for the ineffectiveness of against leucosis measures are discussed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document