scholarly journals Dragon-slayers and Jealous Rats: The Gendered Self in Contemporary Self-help Manuals

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hazleden

This article traces two broad discourses concerning gender in a selection of relationship manuals from 1974 to 2004. On the one hand are manuals promoting traditional gender roles, and on the other are those that promote financial and emotional independence for women. In contrast to other analyses, I argue that these approaches cannot be categorised into a simplistic dichotomy of ‘feminist’ and ‘patriarchal,’ but that they are better understood as being bound up with conservative and liberal discourses of the self. I further demonstrate that these approaches both assume and require types of self that are somewhat removed from their historical antecedents and should be understood as neo variants.

Author(s):  
Gerardo Rodríguez Salas

In the present paper we discuss Gertrude Stein’s in-between position in the literary canon by alluding to her eclectic literary revolution. On the one hand, she is excluded from the patriarchal canon due to her disruptive style. On the other, she postulates a milder kind of revolution, in line with Luce Irigaray’s tenets, which implies a conscious reproduction of a constructed “femininity” in women (as opposed to the non-strategic and unconscious imitation of traditional gender roles) that finally unmasks the illusive character of a distinctive feminine identity. In her opinion, everything is a construct of the pervasive patriarchal model, where women reproduce an individuality taylored for them rather than their essential identity that is also ultimately questioned.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
María Ávila Bravo-Villasante

Resumen: En su libro Mujeres y discursos gerenciales. Hacia la autogestión feminista (2020), María Medina-Vicent aborda desde una perspectiva crítica feminista los discursos gerenciales dirigidos a las mujeres, desvelando el androcentrismo y la presencia —y perpetuación— de tradicionales roles y estereotipos de género en los modelos de gestión. Mi propuesta pretende incidir en dos aspectos del análisis realizado por Medina-Vicent, por un lado, remarcar los peligros de la despolitización de los discursos gerenciales dirigidos a mujeres —sobre todo en tanto que la literatura gerencial acaba por informarnos a todas—. Por otro, profundizar en la crítica que la autora realiza de la cooptación del feminismo por parte de estos discursos. Abstract: In her book Mujeres y discursos gerenciales. Hacia la autogestión feminista (2020), Medina-Vicent approaches management discourses aimed at women from a critical feminist perspective, revealing the androcentrism and the presence and perpetuation of traditional gender roles and stereotypes in management models. My proposal aims to highlight two aspects of Medina-Vicent’s analysis: on the one hand, to highlight the dangers of depoliticizing management discourses aimed at women - especially insofar as management literature ends up informing us all. On the other hand, the author’s critique of the co-optation of feminism by these discourses will be explored in greater depth. Palabras clave: discursos gerenciales, teoría feminista, antifeminismo, despolitización. Keywords: managerial discourses, feminist theory, antifeminism, depoliticization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 497-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Schulz-Nieswandt

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag diskutiert die Positionierung und die Rolle der Selbsthilfegebilde im Neo-Korporatismus des bundesdeutschen Gesundheitswesens. Dabei bilden sich gewisse Ambivalenzen einer Dialektik heraus, die mit gegenläufigen Trends in der Entwicklung korreliert sind. Einerseits fördern die parafiskalischen öffentlich-rechtlichen Sozialversicherungen des staatsmittelbaren Sektors im § 20h SGB V die genossenschaftsartigen Selbsthilfegruppen (Gebilde der selbstorganisierten und selbstverwalteten Gegenseitigkeitshilfe) und die regionalen Kontakt- und Informationsstellen zur Förderung der Selbsthilfe im lokalen Sozialraum als Sozialkapitalbildung (Lebensweltorientierung in der Förderung der Caring Communities), andererseits werden die Bundes- und Spitzenverbände der Selbsthilfe als Selbsthilfeorganisationen gefördert, die u.a. gemäß § 140f SGB V in die institutionellen Mechanismen der gemeinsamen Selbstverwaltung als Systemlogik funktional integriert werden. Die Selbsthilfebewegung steht damit am Scheideweg – zumindest im Spannungsfeld – zwischen Lebensweltorientierung einerseits und „Kolonialisierung“ durch das System andererseits. Abstract The German health care system is organized as an order of collective self-governance in the tradition of neo-corporatism. Part of the political grammar, social health insurances are para-fiscal self-governed institutions with relative autonomy in relation to the state sector. The paper is discussing the role of the health-related self-help movement in this German health care system. § 20h Social Security Code V includes on the one hand financial contributions to mutual aid groups and regional agencies to promote self-help groups in the context of local networks as social capital formation and on the other hand financial contributions to trans-regional and national self-help organizations, which are, as a channel of political participation of patient’s perspectives, also involved in the politics of the collective self-governance of the German healthcare systems, anchored in § 140f Social Security Code V. Therefore, we can, connected with several ambivalences, obtain the dialectics of different trends in the development of the role and role settings of the self-help movement: On the one hand the promotion of self-help groups as integrated parts of the Caring Community Building, on the other hand the instrumental functionalism of colonizing the self-help movement by institutional mechanism of involving participation of patient’s perspectives into the collective self-governance of the system.


1975 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 395-407
Author(s):  
S. Henriksen

The first question to be answered, in seeking coordinate systems for geodynamics, is: what is geodynamics? The answer is, of course, that geodynamics is that part of geophysics which is concerned with movements of the Earth, as opposed to geostatics which is the physics of the stationary Earth. But as far as we know, there is no stationary Earth – epur sic monere. So geodynamics is actually coextensive with geophysics, and coordinate systems suitable for the one should be suitable for the other. At the present time, there are not many coordinate systems, if any, that can be identified with a static Earth. Certainly the only coordinate of aeronomic (atmospheric) interest is the height, and this is usually either as geodynamic height or as pressure. In oceanology, the most important coordinate is depth, and this, like heights in the atmosphere, is expressed as metric depth from mean sea level, as geodynamic depth, or as pressure. Only for the earth do we find “static” systems in use, ana even here there is real question as to whether the systems are dynamic or static. So it would seem that our answer to the question, of what kind, of coordinate systems are we seeking, must be that we are looking for the same systems as are used in geophysics, and these systems are dynamic in nature already – that is, their definition involvestime.


Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.


Author(s):  
Stacy Wolf

This chapter examines the eight female characters inCompany, what they do in the musical, and how they function in the show’s dramaturgy, and argues that they elicit the quintessential challenge of analyzing musical theater from a feminist perspective. On the one hand, the women tend to be stereotypically, even msogynistically portrayed. On the other hand, each character offers the actor a tremendous performance opportunity in portraying a complicated psychology, primarily communicated through richly expressive music and sophisticated lyrics. In this groundbreaking 1970 ensemble musical about a bachelor’s encounters with five married couples and three girlfriends, Sondheim’s female characters occupy a striking range of types within one show. From the bitter, acerbic, thrice-married Joanne to the reluctant bride-to-be Amy, and from the self-described “dumb” “stewardess” April to the free-spirited Marta,Company’s eight women are distillations of femininity, precisely sketched in the short, singular scenes in which they appear.


Derrida Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-270
Author(s):  
Francesco Vitale

The paper aims to present a reading of the question of Testimony rising in Derrida's later works (from Faith and Knowledge to Poetics and Politics of Witnessing): the experience of Testimony as the irreducible condition of the relation to the Other, of every possible link among living human singularities and, thus, of the thinking of a community to come. This thinking is able to divert the community from the economy grounding and structuring it within our political tradition governed by the metaphysics of presence, which demands the sacrifice of the Other in its multiple theoretical and practical forms. We intend to read this proposal and to point out its rich perspectives by bringing it into the articulation of an ethical-political archi-writing. So we suggest going back to Derrida's early analyses of phenomenology and to De la grammatologie in order to present a reading of archi-writing as the irreducible condition of the relation to otherness and, thus, of the experience through which a living human singularity constitutes itself, a singularity different from the one our tradition compels us to think of within the pattern of the absolute presence to the self, free from the relation to the other.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Dalsgaard

This article refers to carbon valuation as the practice of ascribing value to, and assessing the value of, actions and objects in terms of carbon emissions. Due to the pervasiveness of carbon emissions in the actions and objects of everyday lives of human beings, the making of carbon offsets and credits offers almost unlimited repertoires of alternatives to be included in contemporary carbon valuation schemes. Consequently, the article unpacks how discussions of carbon valuation are interpreted through different registers of alternatives - as the commensuration and substitution of variants on the one hand, and the confrontational comparison of radical difference on the other. Through the reading of a wide selection of the social science literature on carbon markets and trading, the article argues that the value of carbon emissions itself depends on the construction of alternative, hypothetical scenarios, and that emissions have become both a moral and a virtual measure pitting diverse forms of actualised actions or objects against each other or against corresponding nonactions and non-objects as alternatives.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Malykhin ◽  
Nataliia Oleksandrivna Aristova ◽  
Liudmyla Kalinina ◽  
Tetyana Opaliuk

The present paper addresses the issue of determining the best international practices for developing soft skills among students of different specialties through carrying out a theoretical review. Basing on literature on present-day theory the authors make an attempt to explain soft skills dichotomies, summarize existing approaches to classifying soft skills, consolidate and document best international practices for soft skills development among potential employees of different specialties including bachelor students, master students, doctoral and postdoctoral students. The data obtained in the theoretical analysis reveal that the possible ambiguities in the interpretation of the concept of “soft skills” are caused, on the one hand, by the dichotomic perception of their nature by present-day researchers and educators and, on the other hand, by the absence of the common language which makes it difficult to provide a more unified definition most satisfactory to all concerned. The authors are convinced that soft skills have a cross-cutting nature and regard them as personal and interpersonal meta-qualities and meta-abilities that are vital to any potential employee who is going to make positive contributions not only to his/her professional development but to the development of a company he/she is going to work for. The results of the conducted theoretical review clearly indicate that the absence of the unified understanding of the concept of “soft skills” is reflected in the existence of different approaches to classifying soft skills, let alone, the selection of didactic tools for developing soft skills among potential employees.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
Kirsten Linnemann

Abstract. With their donation appeals aid organisations procure a polarised worldview of the self and other into our everyday lives and feed on discourses of “development” and “neediness”. This study investigates how the discourse of “development” is embedded in the subjectivities of “development” professionals. By approaching the topic from a governmentality perspective, the paper illustrates how “development” is (re-)produced through internalised Western values and powerful mechanisms of self-conduct. Meanwhile, this form of self-conduct, which is related to a “good cause”, also gives rise to doubts regarding the work, as well as fragmentations and shifts of identity. On the one hand, the paper outlines various coping strategies used by development professionals to maintain a coherent narrative about the self. On the other hand, it also shows how doubts and fragmentations of identity can generate a critical distance to “development” practice, providing a space for resistant and transformative practice in the sense of Foucauldian counter-conduct.


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