Women and Kirk Discipline: Prosecution, Negotiation, and the Limits of Control

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Glaze

This article won the Women's History Scotland Leah Leneman essay prize for 2014 This article examines some of the many ways in which women interacted with the Reformed Kirk of Scotland between 1613 and 1660, as recorded in the Canongate Kirk Session disciplinary records, focusing on cases that reveal the negotiation for control over women's bodies, their dignity, and their performances of gender and sexuality. These include the kirk session's prosecution of illicit sexuality, such as fornication, adultery, and prostitution; its protection, albeit limited, in cases of sexual assault; and its role as mediator in wet-nursing cases, and leniency towards wet-nursing fornication penitents. The article then examines the limits of the kirk session's powers in controlling its parishioners. It argues that the relationship between the kirk session and female parishioners was multifaceted, contradictory, and shifting. The kirk was a powerful social force in Canongate, but women were also active agents in the system of repentance, absolution and control in seventeenth-century Scotland.

2001 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 249-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loraine Bacchus ◽  
Susan Bewley ◽  
Gill Mezey

Definitions of domestic violence vary according to the frequency, severity and nature of the violence as well as the context in which it occurred and the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. Though there is a lack of uniformity, a generally accepted definition of domestic violence is the physical, sexual or emotional abuse of an adult woman by a man with whom she has or has had an intimate relationship, regardless of whether the couple are living together. Although violence can be carried out by other family members or occur in same-sex relationships, it is argued that men use violence in order to maintain dominance and control over their female partners. Physical violence is just one of the many tactics that an abuser may use to exert control over his partner. Other behaviours include isolation, intimidation, threats of violence, threats to take the children away or hurt them and emotional or economic abuse. Whilst some studies have identified demographic patterns associated with domestic violence, it can affect any woman regardless of age, race, ethnicity, social class, employment status, religion, marital status or disability.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Gillmor ◽  
Michael J Bernstein ◽  
Jacob A Benfield

Among the many consequences stigmatized individuals face, infrahumanization (e.g., a subtle form of dehumanization) may be another novel consequence. We used experimental and quasi-experimental methods to examine whether victims of sexual assault (a stigmatized group) are infrahumanized, with the prediction that victims perceived as being sexually promiscuous will be infrahumanized more than sexually conservative ones. We predicted that, given prior work on the topic, individuals with a strong belief in a just world orientation would be most likely to show this effect. In three studies we show that promiscuous victims are infrahumanized relative to conservative victims (Study 1), this is moderated by dispositional belief in a just world orientation (Study 2), and the same effect occurs when we experimentally manipulate belief in a just world orientation (Study 3). We discuss these findings in terms of the relationship between stigma, dehumanization, and system justifying ideologies; that individuals who have a tendency to have a strong belief in a just world orientation or can be made to have such an orientation judge promiscuous victims as more to blame for their actions than is of particular importance for understanding not only the legal system but for the field of psychology more generally.


First Monday ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nishant Shah

When it comes to examining the relationship between digital technologies and gender, our discourse has fallen into two pre-wired sets of responses: The first set approaches gender as something that is operationalised through the digital, thus producing the rhetoric of ICT4D and women’s empowerment through access to the digital. This also gives rise to the DIY cultures that makes women responsible for the safety of their bodies and selves, and puts the blame of sexual violence or abuse back onto the body of the woman. The second set approaches the digital as something that operates gender, examining the regulations and control that the digital technologies exercise on women’s bodies, gender and desires. This focuses on practices like revenge pornography, privacy, protection and security in the age of growing cyber-bullying and attacks on women. In both these discourses, there is always the imagination of one of the two sites as passive — either the gendered body uses digital technologies for its intentions, or the digital technologies shape the gendered body following the protocols of algorithmic design. By looking at the figure of the digital slut, as it emerges in popular cultural practices and debates in regulation, that this separation of gendered intention from machine protocol fails to accommodate for the quotidian and varied engagements of bodies and technologies, and thus produces flawed regimes of regulation and law around digital gender. I propose two strategies to understand ‘digital gender’ as a moment of configuration rather than a finite resolved category: The first is to combine the protocols of technology with the metaphors of the body, producing a metaphorocol, which enables us to move beyond the aporetic production of body and technology in contemporary discourse. The second is to relocate agency and question the body as actor/the body as acted upon paradigm that is invoked in thinking of body-technology relationships. Consequently, I argue I propose two different approaches that draw from material practices of gender and the architecture of physical computing, to offer new ways of reading the practices of policing and pathology of gender in the age of ubiquitous networking. I argue in my conclusion that ‘digital gender’ as a concept helps us build upon earlier intersections of feminist thought and practice with other identity politics by opening up to other identities of regulation and control that emerge within data regimes of information societies.


Author(s):  
Joanne B. Y. Lim

Youth engagement is often said to be at the heart of democracy, though the extent of such efforts in affecting policymaking remains highly debatable. Nonetheless, there have been heightened attempts by “ordinary citizens” to reform the country's state of politics and to improve society's living conditions. Malaysia's authoritarian democracy has been a crucial motivation for young adults to “have their say” in challenging the current regime. This chapter highlights the various ways in which young adults use mobile media to activate and participate in civic, community, and political engagement whilst taking into account the many restrictions that are set up by the ruling government to monitor and control such engagements. Discussed alongside youth definitions of nationalism, citizenship, and activism that are embedded within the interviews, the findings are juxtaposed with present post-election discourses taking place within the country. The relationship between mobile media and youth engagement further affirms the idea of a new generation of mobile users that are not just technologically savvy but are using their knowledge to affect significant societal changes.


Author(s):  
Henry Power

During the seventeenth century the relationship between monarch and universities was a highly political one. This chapter considers the many collections of verse—in English and Latin—issued by the universities in response to royal successions. The protocols surrounding these volumes allowed for a certain amount of political self-expression. This chapter argues that these volumes became a means by which the universities could establish a relationship with the new monarch. The first half of the chapter charts the emergence and operation of protocols for producing these commemorative volumes. The second half offers a case study of Cambridge’s two commemorative volumes, respectively on the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and the accession of Charles II in 1660. The scholarly exercises contained within these volumes were capable of communicating significant political messages.


Author(s):  
David C. Joy

Personal computers (PCs) are a powerful resource in the EM Laboratory, both as a means of automating the monitoring and control of microscopes, and as a tool for quantifying the interpretation of data. Not only is a PC more versatile than a piece of dedicated data logging equipment, but it is also substantially cheaper. In this tutorial the practical principles of using a PC for these types of activities will be discussed.The PC can form the basis of a system to measure, display, record and store the many parameters which characterize the operational conditions of the EM. In this mode it is operating as a data logger. The necessary first step is to find a suitable source from which to measure each of the items of interest. It is usually possible to do this without having to make permanent corrections or modifications to the EM.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Gidycz ◽  
Steven J. Lynn ◽  
Joanna Pashdag ◽  
Catherine Loh ◽  
Cindy Dowdall ◽  
...  

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