The general elections in Germany: new lessons for New Labour?

If the general elections in Germany on Sunday last week are anything to go by, New Labour should brace themselves for the worst. After the disappointing results in 2005 that ousted Gerhard Schröder from power and forced Germany’s oldest political party, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD, into a so-called ‘grand coalition’ under Angela Merkel, the SPD now saw their share of the vote slashed to a meagre 23 percent, their worst result in the history of the republic. Turnout also hit an all-time low, only about 72 percent of Germans eligible to vote actually did. Calculated on the base of all registered voters, this means that only 16.5 percent of the people decided to support the social democrats. For a party that considers itself representing the entire population and not just particular groups or interests, what Germans call a Volkspartei, Sunday’s results must seem a slap in the face.

Angela Merkel, the old and new German chancellor, can now form a centre-right coalition government, her preferred option. Although her party, the Christlich Demokratische Union, or CDU, didn’t do quite as well as expected, Merkel did a remarkable job in convincing the general public that the old government, the ‘grand coalition’ between CDU and SPD, was not really up to the job but that, nonetheless, she’s the right person to lead the country out of a recession under a more ‘pro-business’, ‘pro-market’ government with the FDP. Even her fiercest opponents agree that it is quite an achievement to win an election as the incumbent under these circumstances. Merkel did a good job in claiming the coalition’s successes for herself while putting the blame on the SPD for all the failed attempts at resolving the key issues, e.g. reforming the health care system. The dire state the SPD is in was surely conducive to Merkel’s victory.

So what is going on with the centre-left in Europe? With Berlusconi in Italy, Sarkozy in France and Merkel in Germany, the continent’s largest economies are governed under the firm grip of conservative, or centre-right leaders. It looks as if the centre-left are struggling to convince the public that they have the right answers to the pressing challenges Europe’s facing today. IBSS delivers 600+ hits on searching ‘SPD’. The edited volume ‘Germany’s gathering crisis: the 2005 federal election and the grand coalition’ by Alister Miskimmon, William E. Paterson and James Sloam (Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) looks at the wider socio-political conditions under which Merkel’s predecessor Schröder had decided to call early elections in 2005, a move that caused quite some excitement among commentators so used to the orderly and somewhat sober affair of German politics! Back then, Schröder faced a problem: he was convinced that his government’s concepts to reform the welfare state, labour market and social security systems – the notorious ‘Agenda 2010’ – was the right way forward. This was nothing short of a fundamental strategic repositioning of what social democracy, under Schröder, was supposed to be about in twenty-first century Germany. By incorporating a great deal of what (neo)liberals had been calling for (a more ‘flexible’ labour market, low income jobs employers don’t pay social security contributions for, and slashing benefit payments to the unemployed), parts of the opposition and a great deal of industry leaders applauded this seismic shift in German economic and social policy. Not surprisingly, however, these reforms proved a tremendous disappointment to many of the SPD’s loyal working class voters who increasingly started to turn their back on the party. The reforms imposed significant changes and hardship for a number of groups that helped to sweep Schröder into power in 1998: low income workers and families, and the huge number of unemployed in many parts of the country. The fact that his government received praise from the centre-right, and a good deal of business and lobbying groups, didn’t help to increase the popularity of the ‘Agenda 2010’ among those who felt the impact of these reforms first hand.

General public opinion and mainstream media in 2005 were hardly in favour of the government. After all, Schröder himself argued that early elections were needed because he was lacking support from his very own party. It was there and then that the slow demise of the SPD gained momentum: consistently losing a number of key local and regional elections in 2004 and 2005, people started wondering about the use of a social-democratic party that pretty much favours the same politics and ideas of reform as their centre-right opponents! People wondered why they shouldn’t vote for the ‘original’ if all parties seemed to advocate pretty much the same politics. The ‘pro-business’ FDP has gained in popularity ever since the SPD has been hitting low after low in the polls. On the other hand, long-standing centre-leftist supporters began to move to the somewhat more radical left, in particular to the newly founded ‘Linke’ party, headed by a former SPD party leader who left the party shortly after it had gained power in 1998 out of frustration at its drift to the right.

The SPD’s dilemma is not just a German phenomenon, however. A linked keyword search on ‘Social democratic parties’ and ‘Europe’ on IBSS prompts more than 200 hits. Simon Franzmann investigates the degree to which the centre-right and left in Europe have converged to similar policy models (‘Does a programmatic convergence across the West-European party families exist? A comparison of Christian and social democratic parties in Europe’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 37:1, pp.79-98, 2008) . This helps explain why voters find it increasingly difficult to identify real, substantial differences between mainstream parties. William Paterson and James Sloam take a closer look at the history of the problems labour and social democratic parties are facing in Europe today (‘Is the Left alright? The SPD and the renewal of European social democracy’, German politics, 15:3, pp.233-248, 2006). During the 1990s, the moderate Left managed quite successfully to ‘reinvent themselves’ as a an alternative to centre-right and conservative parties, they argue. Without doubt, Tony Blair’s Third Way in the UK provided a blueprint for electoral success – the SPD positioned itself as the Neue Mitte (new centre), and the ‘réalisme de gauche’ in France marked a similar convergence. These parties suddenly appealed to moderate voters who were not so much hoping for entirely different policy regimes but, perhaps, new faces and a more ‘benevolent’ government that keeps existing institutions intact but somewhat cares a little more about social policy issues and socioeconomic equality and justice.

After a decade in power, many voice a desire for change regardless of the current government’s actual achievements. But the problems of centre-left parties are more fundamental. What should a modern social democracy look like? Many voters in Europe seem to think that the centre-left can’t give a good answer to this question. Surely, communication is an issue. IBSS provides chapter-by-chapter records of edited books, and I come across an interesting volume by searching ‘Political parties’ and ‘Political communication’ in ‘Europe’: although not precisely what I’m looking for, The EU expansion: communicating shared sovereignty in the parliamentary elections (New York, Peter Lang, 2008) contains a very interesting chapter by Frank Esser, Christina Holtz-Bacha and Eva-Maria Lessinger’s on the dullness of political campaigning in Germany (‘A low-key affair: German parties’ TV advertising’) – indeed, the campaign prior to Sunday’s elections had been a truly boring affair!

Certainly, communication is a big worry for New Labour in the UK. At the moment, it seems virtually impossible for Brown to place a positive message about his government in the media. It is safe to say that all his attempts to redirect public attention to his efforts to steer the economy out of recession (whether or not he’s been successful in that is another matter), keep falling on deaf ears. The other day, The Sun publicly announced that the paper is now supporting David Cameron. Since then, there are daily editorials about how New Labour allegedly let down its voters on virtually all policy issues. Gordon Brown frequently points out the UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the US, and is keen to position himself as close to Barack Obama as possible. New Labour is curious to learn about successful campaigning from the Democratic Party. But if there’s any chance for Brown to turn things around, perhaps he better look to Germany’s elections to learn a lesson. Although the political setup in the UK is different (Germany’s got a proportional system so that the number of MPs depends upon their party’s relative share of the vote), the electoral dynamics and issues New Labour are facing, are very close to what has been going on in Germany over the recent past. Martin Kettle makes this point in a recent comment in The Guardian. The SPD won the elections one year after Tony Blair had taken office, and have been modelling their policy proposals very much on New Labour policies. They now suffered a crushing defeat. Issues of trust aside, the main problem seems that in times of economic gloom, undecided, moderate voters tend to favour centrist, or centre-right charismatic leaders that propose pro-business solutions. It will be interesting to see if New Labour, under Gordon Brown, or more likely under a new leader after failed elections, will be able to appeal again to this group without putting of their core supporters even more!

Juljan Krause

France, women and Islamic clothing

France is known for having an unhealthy relationship with its Muslim population. The 2004 act which banned signs of religious affiliation in schools can be seen as a law which asks Muslims to dress in a manner unacceptable to many of them, while leaving the Christian majority unscathed (crucifixes can be worn under school uniform by those who consider them important). Despite knowing about this long-standing tension in French society, I was nonetheless shocked and astonished to read an article by Angelique Chrisafis in the Guardian in June, which documents overt discrimination against ‘modestly’ dressed women in France: Veiled threats: row over Islamic dress opens bitter divisions in France (26th June 2009).   Fully grown adults wearing nothing more remarkable than a hijab (the basic headscarf) have been refused permission to withdraw cash from their own bank accounts, spat at, banned from their own registry office weddings and refused access to polling booths. Many French people would claim that they are not discriminating against Muslims, but are attempting to liberate Muslim women from an old-fashioned patriarchal tradition which subjugates them. If one left aside these infringements of basic rights, this may sound like a liberal, feminist standpoint, but having lived in France, I find it hard not to feel anger towards this arrogant hangover from colonial times. France is a society where the objectification of women is rife. The feminist in me was fully awakened when, walking down a French street, I encountered a billboard advertising a man’s watch. This featured a man (wearing said watch) with his thumb in the knickers of an otherwise naked woman… Here is another French advert for a watch:

…. and here’s an advert for yoghurt (a product which sees a lot of this kind of advertising in France):

It is beyond me how a state that permits marketing which deems it acceptable to use the image of a (generally unclothed) woman to sell anything and everything can at the same time consider itself knowlegable enough about women’s rights to pass laws (supposedly in favour of women) that dictate acceptable female dress codes. Reading the Guardian article, I was hardly surprised to discover that many women wearing the niqab (face veil) were French converts to Islam. These girls will have grown up with adverts like the ones above all around them. It’s understandable that they would rather keep their hair and bodies for themselves and their partners than dress in a more relaxed (or less covered) way in an environment where it seems that everyone will be judging how perfect or otherwise your body is.

The central piece of ‘news’ in the Guardian article was that France is considering an outright ban on the niqab. I decided to see if I could find out more about the niqab in France on IBSS. I tried searching for ‘niqab’ and ‘France’ but it seems that this is too new a topic to have generated academic papers. I expect IBSS will be full of such information by next year once papers have been peer reviewed and published, this being such a controversial topic. I amended my search to ‘hijab’ and ‘France’ and this uncovered a lot of relelvant articles discussing the central themes (basic rights, women, religion and state, clothing…). I will leave aside articles relating to the hijab ban in schools, as this is a vast topic in itself, and will discuss points raised by papers focusing on French society at large. It is, anyway, more controversial that the dress of grown adults is thought to be fair game for state sanction or otherwise.

In ‘Unveiling the veil: gendered discourses and the (in)visibility of the female body in France’ (2004), Michela Ardizzoni talks about why Islamic head coverings provoke such strong reactions. She argues that colonial art and Orientalist discourse eroticised veiled women, while simuntaneously focusing on ‘her eyes as a site of mystery/danger’. According to Ardizzoni, veiled women were de-eroticised with decolonization and postcolonialism, but the perception of threat continued, and immigrants or converts to Islam covering their hair maintain this sense of otherness, of ambiguous cultural identity confusing non-Muslims with an unfamiliar ’sexual femininity’. Ardizzoni argues that France has trouble accepting hybridity and allowing cultural change to become a legitimate part of French national identity. Gabriele vom Bruck (2008) argues along similar lines, and talks about the media’s role in affirming negative perceptions of female Muslims: ‘Western media have sketched a picture of the covered woman as a potentially subversive vanguard; her body is made to appear as a vehicle for the cultural colonialisation of Europe.’ Her next point is particularly interesting: why does Islamic clothing provoke more reaction than other clothing which marks identity? ‘This phenomenon raises important questions as to why this marker of difference—a specific style of hair covering—arouses much greater passion than, say, class-related difference as manifested in clothes (e.g., see Bourdieu 1979)’. This feeling is mirrored in a recent Telegraph article by Ed West:  France’s immigration minister is wrong to want to ban the burka and niqab (September 15th 2009): ‘Personally on a late night I’d rather see a gaggle of women in niqabs than some morons dressed in hoodies, but I don’t ask that American ghetto-wear is banned because it’s worn by criminals and people who want to look like criminals’. Admittedly it sounds like West has his own axe to grind, but this is an interesting point. If anyone else was surprised at the apparent liberal slant of this article, his conclusion is that niqab-wearing can be controlled by tightening up French immigration policy…

West has overlooked the fact that not all Muslim women who cover are immigrants. Afsaneh Najmabadi’s (2006) ‘ Gender and secularism of modernity: how can a Muslim woman be French?’ provides an interesting exploration of how personal, gender, national, transnational and religious identity sit together. It is historically, geographically and thematically broad in scope, and would provide an excellent introduction for anyone wanting to know more about the issues at stake in the French debate.

IBSS also helped me to find an article which talks about the effect of negative attitudes towards the hijab on Muslim women’s everyday life. Katell Berthou’s ‘The issue of the veil in the workplace in France: unveiling discrimination’ (2005) looks at how French law treats the wearing of hijabs at work. It is quite surprising that antipathy for Islamic headcoverings has meant that the issue  has made it into courts, but this is the case. The issue is discussed from a legal perspective, Berthou arguing that French courts fail to respect national anti-discrimination provisions and EU law’ and that French law ‘lacks a fundamental understanding of the concept of discrimination and negates the concept of difference.’

I wondered if the use of women in French advertising was discussed in IBSS, as I really consider it hypocritical for French legislators and policy makers to suggest that they want to liberate Muslim women while allowing women’s sexual appeal to be used as a marketing tool. I did a last search for ‘women’, ‘advertising’ and ‘France’ and found a very interesting article which highlights the bizarre attitude towards the use of women in adverts which prevails in France. In ‘Courbert, advertising and femininity’ Kate E. Tunstall discusses an advert for a cosmetic cream which provoked outrage in France. The advert places a slim, smooth-skinned French woman next to a less slim, less smooth-skinned woman from Courbet’s painting Les baigneuses, who is shown on the left in the original painting below.

Astonishingly, what outraged people and provoked them to ask for the advert to be removed from display was the body of Courbet’s woman. ‘Women are appalled by the shape of Courbet’s woman; they think her ugly, the phrase ‘c’est affreux’ echoed in their statements, and they would rather not be shown her’. This seems pretty remarkable to me, given that the woman in the painting is really no monster. In 2001 (when the article was published) France was by no means immune to obesity, so to take this attitude towards a woman which an M&S advert would deem ‘normal’ is surprising. The advert does not produce outrage by ‘the use of women’s bodies to sell a product, since here (for once!), the women’s bodies are actually relevant to the product being sold’. Tunstall points out that images of slim women ‘abound in French advertising’, and few ‘if any’ complaints  are ever made about them, regardless of relevance.

That slim bodies become the only acceptable norm in France because of the prevalence of such adverts is a real shame. That women’s bodies are used in such a way is wrong. And that many French women have converted to Islam and prefer to wear Islamic dress and prevent their bodies from being objectified in such a way is not surprising. And that is to say nothing of people’s right to dress how they like in what is supposedly an enlightened country. It is almost too hackneyed to mention Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, but I will: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité??

Social protest, political reform. Is Iran going to change?

Protesters have taken the streets of Iran ever since the last presidential elections of 12th June 2009. The turmoil started when the three opposition candidates accused the government of amending the election results, doubting that the not-so-popular incumbent candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could win two thirds of the votes – 63% of the total – while the Independent Reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi, stronger candidate with the opposition, just got 33%. The pre-election environment in Iran was already tense and the increasing pressure of international society to uncover the many irregularities of the electoral process has just intensified the magnitude of the protest. A month on from the electoral day, Iran is still in political turmoil, with more than 2000 dissidents arrested – according to human rights groups – and with a political representative body still unable to quell or evade the accusations of political fraud.

The approach that the Western academia has towards the Iranian turmoil is interesting. Some are starting to talk about a pacific revolution – the ‘Iranian Velvet revolution’ – and its implicit future political changes. Western theorists tend to attribute the strength of the revolt to the disposition of Iranians for democracy and political change and – to certain extent – overemphasize the role that massive citizen participation will have in the outcome of the social protest. In the opinion article ‘Iran’s manufactured revolution’ written by Lionel Beehner, columnist of the Guardian, the author questions the real outcome of massive revolts and explains that Western analysts tend to overestimate the political pressure of a popular uprising.

Recent European political history has evolved and shaped up to our current welfare state partly because of protest movements and workers strikes. Popular movements have had a similar influence when Eastern European countries claimed their independence from the USSR; it even led – to certain extent – most of the European colonies to their independence during the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The effectiveness of social protest has been prominent in our culture and, partly because of this outcome, many political analysts tends to look at foreign political situations from the same perspective. However, as Beehner points out, this is not necessarily the case of Iran. The country seems to have a stable political system and as the time gap from the electoral day increases, lower are the chances of the protesters to get a real change out of this turmoil. The incident has not been as serious as to justify further intervention from the international community, nor does the position of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seem to be in danger. Then, why are political analysts talking about revolution in the case of Iran?

Following this argument, I am interested to know the relevance of popular protest and political turmoil in the reshaping of a country’s political system. My topic of study is open and allows a wide research on the topic, from case studies to comparative international panorama and from current issues like Iran’s electoral turmoil to a wider historical analysis on the topic. I decide to narrow my search to pure theoretical approach on the relation between social movements and political change. I go to IBSS database and I introduce the keywords ‘Revolution’, ‘political systems’ and ‘political movements’ and I get 54 results. I scanned quickly the list that the database offers me and I pick an interesting article written by J. A Geschwender [1968] ‘Explorations in the theory of social movements and revolutions’ which will be helpful for an initial introductory background. Looking at the same list of results, I note down Kathia Légaré’s [2007] ‘The influence of the international system on the evolution of semi-authoritarian regimes: four approaches to the colour revolutions (2003-2005)’; John Ginkel and Alastair Smith [1999] titled ‘So you say you want a revolution: a game theoretic explanation of revolution in repressive regimes’; Asef Bayat’s [1998] ‘Revolution without movement, movement without revolution: comparing Islamic activism in Iran and Egypt’ and Mark P. Thompson’s [2000] ‘Whatever happened to democratic revolutions?’.

I try to use different keywords this time. I understand that for my research I need a broad selection of books that will allow me to have a good theoretical insight on the topic. Again I introduce the keywords ‘revolution’, ‘democratization’, ‘political movements’ and ‘social movements’ into the search box. This time the database gives me a narrower list of 22 results, from which I pick Adam K. Webb’s article [2006] ‘The calm before the storm? Revolutionary pressures and global governance’. The article focus on how globalization has made the great social revolutions more unlikely. It is an interesting article on how the international community and globalization itself can interfere in the social and political movements that leads a country’s revolution.

I consider that this first selection of articles will give an introductory approach to my topic of discussion and will, once read, open the debate for new focus on the discussion.

The outdated views on family structure and lesbian families

Congratulations to Brigette Sainsbury for being a winner in our recent IBSS blog competition! Brigette wrote an excellent blog entry on lesbian parent families.  In her blog she comments on society’s difficulties in accepting lesbian families who conceive through artificial insemination. Furthermore Brigette remarks on the impact this can have on the everyday life of young children. This blog makes for a thoroughly interesting read. Many thanks to Brigette Sainsbury.

Having watched the L Word (a programme about lesbian life in the USA), and seeing the prejudice towards lesbian couple Bette and Tina who conceived a child through a known sperm donor, my eyes were opened to how people perceive lesbian families. This led me to want to found out more about “what is best for the child” and the acceptance of this diverse type of beanpole family.

It is not very often you hear about lesbian families in today’s society. Being such a conservative country and government, the whole gay and lesbian taboo is often played down. The only time you really hear of homosexuality is when celebrities decide they are gay, Lindsay Lohan for example, in which case it is thrown in to the public eye. Other than that, all you hear are damning reports from closed-minded people stuck in the ways of the, ironically called, “New Right”.

For years, members of the New Right have promoted how family is the ‘cornerstone of society’, and yet they are only willing to accept nuclear families as valid ones. Another prominent message they put across is that homosexuality is bad and will be one of the reasons for society’s downfall. But surely if the family is really the ‘cornerstone of society’, should it really matter what it’s structure is as long as it is a healthy and happy one? Should it really matter whether parents are heterosexual or homosexual as long as the child is loved, well cared for and is growing up in a healthy environment? Is that not what is more important?

After searching the IBSS I came across an article called Families in transition: parents, children and grandparents in lesbian families give meaning to ‘doing family’. This article presents research into lesbian-parented families. It produces evidence which shows that ‘the outcomes of children in lesbian-parented families world wide demonstrate convincingly that children’s psychosocial adjustment and intellectual development is influenced more by family processes such as conflict between parents than it is by family structure’ (Bewaeys et al., 1997; Parks, 1998; Fitzgerald, 1999; Patterson and Chan, 1999; Clarke, 2000 Anderssen et al., 2002 and Golombok et al., 2003). This proves that it is better for a child’s development for it to be in a happy lesbian-parented family than it is in an unhappy, conflicting nuclear one. However, some people would argue that although this maybe true, the child would still lack having a male role model. But what most people don’t realize is that although both parents are female, most children still have regular contact with important men in their life, such as godfathers, grandfathers and uncles etc. These people also play an important part in the child’s socialization.

One part of the article is headed Being a child in a lesbian-parented family. It puts across a really poignant message to people that feel these children don’t have a normal life. Dempsey (2004) interviewed a 5-year-old girl who has lesbian parents. She knew she had been conceived through an unknown sperm donor. On her first day at school her new headmaster asked her about her father, she told him that she didn’t have one, just a donor. At this he argued with her and insisted that she must have a father, he was so closed to the ways of family diversity that he tried to suppress her knowledge with his own ideals of what a family “should” be. Ray and Gregory (2001) interviewed a group of children aged between 5 and 8 years old. They reported that many of the children they interviewed held firm on the simple fact that they have two mothers, despite curious and persistent questioning from their peers. The children were asked how they would define a family. They answered that a family was having two loving parents, they did not say having a mother and a father.

It seems to me that the only thing making lesbian families to be wrong are people with out dated ideals on how the family should be rather than caring whether it is really good for the child.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic a quick search on IBSS for articles relating to ‘lesbian*’ and ‘family’ pulls up 325 results. A search for ‘same-sex*’ yields 1,450 results while a narrowed search for ‘same-sex relationships’ comes up with 260 results. IBSS has an extensive number of indexed articles that focus on same-sex relationships and issues facing the gay community in today’s society across the globe.

How does social class affect socialisation within the family?

Congratulations to Tess Pearce, one of our blog competition winners! Tess used IBSS to explore the effect of class on the socialisation of children, and how this influences them as they move into adulthood.

The family is one of the most vital factors for primary socialisation and secondary socialisation for children. Class socialisation refers to the everyday experiences associated with a person’s class location and beliefs and attitudes. So does the family’s social class affect the child’s socialisation? Sociologists argue this matter some agreeing and suggesting that your social class does affect the norms and values you possess.

Children of the upper class and middle class have mannerisms and values that are distinct from those of other social classes. Upper class children are socialised into high culture, for example, being taken to the opera or playing a musical instrument. This contrasts to the popular culture of the working class who might watch celebrity television programs or have a McDonald’s meal. Even their speech has diversity as the middle class speak with an ‘elaborated code,’ in contrast to the ‘restricted code,’ the working class use according to Bernstein.

A social class research by Diana Kendall showed how the family continues to pass on cultural and economic capital. Kendall also showed that member of social classes have different lifestyle from and educational outcomes. From the IBSS website I found that the working class is associated with single parenthood, then it is likely that children within that class will also become a single parent. Recent surveys have also shown that Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rates. These teenage pregnancies are often linked to the working class. In addition to this, the rising divorce rates in contemporary society are often related to poverty – to low income and reliance on state benefits.

A study by Joann Miller and Ted. M Brimeyer looks at class socialisation and how it effects student’s aspirations. The research showed how studying the past, present and anticipated or aspired future class locations is necessary for understanding the attitude and beliefs associated with class. Obviously, depending on whether you are born into a privileged class location or a working class network provides different material resources. These will directly and indirectly shape their ideas on beliefs and values. In 1996 a survey showed how a number of first-year students, coming from families with a modest income, didn’t feel the need to get a job to pay for college. Smith and Powell (1990) saw how students from advantaged families may inaccurately assume that they will be better off financially after college than what they are likely to experience. In comparison, only 22.3 percent of working class students said that feel secure about future employment. However, they tended to anticipate occupations that rank higher in status than their parents’ occupations.

With today’s economic crisis, it is likely that the working class family structure will move to extended. This supplies extra role models for children whilst also providing more emotional support. These additional members within the family are unlikely to appear in an upper class family unit.

There is often a very close relationship between social class and life chances. The higher the class position of a child’s parents, the more likely the child is to attain high educational qualifications and a well paid, high status job. Research from Reay shows how middle class mothers are able to influence their children’s primary schooling more than the working class mothers. This research shows how demands of the working class mothers affect their time to devote to the children. Therefore the children will miss out on important socialisation with their mothers.

In contemporary society it is clear to see that social class does affect the socialisation of children. The working class families often lack role models and quality time with their parents, creating a vicious circle of teenage pregnancies, which is a big issue today. The upper and middle class also create norms, values and expectations that pass down through generations. Even though class divisions are getting more blurred, socialisation between these families is still very much present.

Tess has found some really useful material in the IBSS database. It is also possible to generate more specific search results. For example, searching the database with the keywords ‘class’ and ‘ socialisation’ gives 231 results. You can specify which subject area you want your results to come from, so if you select ‘sociology’ you get 173 results, and if you select ‘anthropology’ you get 45 results. There are also 58 articles written from a ‘politics’ perspective. Another useful feature of IBSS is that you can narrow your searches by geographical area. For example, there are 17 articles about class and socialization in the United Kingdom, and 8 about the same topic in Germany.

Mobilising computer models for policy

Diego de la Hoz, a winner of the IBSS blog competition, explores the use of computer models in public policy making in his entry below. Starting with the painful memories of the foot-and-mouth crisis, he leads us to innovative solutions for environmental policy. Computer modelling may not be at the heart of politics yet, but Diego shows us that if the academic world is anything to go by, it will not be long until the bytes will start flying.

You may know that some of best farmers’ markets in the UK emerged out of the despair and tragedy of the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001. This is the case, for instance, of the popular farmers’ market in Edinburgh, the city where I live. You may also remember that the decisions made by the UK officials in the face of the crisis became the subject of fierce criticism. At the core of the controversy was the mass slaughter of farm animals to control the spread of the epidemic disease. Significantly enough, these culling strategies relied on the outputs of computer modelling designed by epidemiologists rather than on the advice from vets and virologists who understood the specific nature of the disease. With the benefit of hindsight, ten million animals slaughtered was a grotesque overreaction. The media and the farmers coined a very illustrative expression ‘carnage from a computer’.

The handling of the Foot and Mouth is a good example of how computer models may matter for policy. They have an increasing role in the formulation of policies. At the same time, they also represent a common way of doing scientific work in the era of high processing power, enabling research in those areas where field experimentation cannot be considered. Computer models are all over the place! Therefore, I believe that they constitute an excellent tag for my first experience with IBSS. Moreover, it is interesting to test how IBSS responds to an entry that, while being a headliner within natural sciences and engineering, enjoys a mild popularity at best within the social and political sciences.

So here we go, I enter ‘computer model’ into the search engine and IBSS bounces back 66 results. Well, probably not an outstanding amount of hits but, definitely, enough informative material to get you started without feeling overwhelmed. For instance, I come across Vág (2005) ‘The short history and the plausible future of world modelling’. World modelling refers to any set of equations that attempts to capture some particular global dynamics. They became popular at the beginning of the 70s with the spread of IBM computers, particularly the model behind the Limits to Growth report. Published in 1972, it addressed the consequences that a world of finite resource supplies projected over its fast growing population. Policy informative models have continued to pervade public policy making, following the increase in computing power. However, to what extent are they used by policy makers? Interestingly, not to a great deal according to Måns et al. (2008) in their article ‘The use and non-use of policy appraisal tools in public policy making: an analysis of three European countries and the European Union’, also one of the results offered by IBSS.

At this point, while keeping the focus on public policy, I decide to refine my search by combining ‘computer model’ and ‘environmental policy’. This time IBSS returns only 4 hits, less than I would expect. Yet I am able to spot an interesting case study by Tuinstra et al. (1999) entitled ‘Using computer models in international negotiations: the case of acidification in Europe’. It provides insights of the key role of mediation played by a computer modelling in the context of the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) in 1994. Meanwhile, another hit points to a promising volume called ‘Public participation in sustainability science: a handbook’ (2003).

In a final search I opt to combine the tags ‘computer model’ and ‘climate change’, one of the most pressing environmental problem of our days both for modelling and policy making. Again IBSS returns only 4 hits, which is surprising given that this is a popular area of scholarship and general interest. Nonetheless, some of the results are thought-provoking. Nielsen-Gammon (2007) in the paper ‘An inconvenient truth: the scientific argument’ tells us about the relatively poor use of model-based evidence in Al Gore’s famous documentary film. Meanwhile, in ‘Seductive simulations? Uncertainty distribution around climate models’ Lahsen (2005) discusses how climate change modellers are so charmed by their models that they are unable to see the full range of uncertainties and shortcomings in the same way that the users of those models sometimes can. The final article that I want to single out is ‘Computer models and public’s understanding of science: a case-study analysis’ by Yearley (1999), who brings in the analysis of the public responses to computer model. Contrary to the general belief that use of computer models in policy is a barrier for the lay citizens wanting to express an opinion, Yearley accounts for their valuable contributions for the case of a the computer-based air-quality monitoring in the city of Sheffield.

In sum, when it comes to computer models IBSS covers informative sources for anyone having a general interest in these tools from a social and political sciences perspective. At the same time, I believe that it is just a matter of time before IBSS will fully reflect the ubiquity and importance of computer models across a wide range of environmental policies. I will stay tuned.

Diego de la Hoz

In addition to Diego’s research, a helpful way of searching IBSS is to use truncated forms of keywords. For instance, a combination of ‘comput*’, ‘model*’ and ‘environmental policy’ brings up a substantial 83 records. Similarly, ‘policy making’, ‘computer’ and ‘model*’ with 23 hits, is a practical search counting both models and modelling amongst the results.

Is it hard for working-class women to cope in higher education?

The IBSS team would like to offer our congratulations to Katy Higgs, who was amongst the winners of our recent IBSS blog competition.  Her entry, posted below, concerned working-class women and their ability to integrate into the higher education system.  My own investigation into the subject using the IBSS database yielded 189 results from the keywords ‘working-class’, ‘women’ and ‘university’, showing that there is a wide array of information held on this specific issue…

Everyone is being affected by the current economic climate; the recession is raging with no sign of an end. Recently the credit crunch has been having a particular effect on those studying, or planning to study at university. NatWest’s 2008 Student Living Survey showed that 25,000 more undergraduates had taken up a part time job than in 2007. The Guardian recently published figures that show a 20% rise in rent prices during the last 4 years. Even students’ social lives are taking a hit as alcohol sales have fallen by 50% over the last 10 years according to NUS Supplies.

Perhaps most affected are the working class, in particular the women. They not only have to fit into universities that are predominantly middle class in intake, but also have to fight financial hardship. I have used IBSS, in particular a study by Yvette Taylor[1], to find out about the experiences that working-class females have while attending university.

Working-class women are traditionally expected to pursue caring professions and social work. But many go to university in an attempt to better themselves and get rid of their working-class identity. Though universities never name a class barrier there is a hidden expectation that you need to be from a middle class background. In university, middle-class people see working-class girls as outsiders that are ‘spoiling the fun’. In many cases they are perceived as people who ‘just want to get by’ and set up families, not having any real ambition. Even the way the working class present themselves is criticised. The way they speak and dress is not feminine or respectable. The working class are shy and reserved, while the middle class are confident with their opinions. These women feel humiliated and angry. They blame themselves for not being able to change.

As if fitting in with other people were not a big enough challenge for working-class women, they also have to cope with financial pressure that going to university entails. While the middle class assume that they will go to university, the working class have much more to think about and always fear that they have made the wrong decision. The working class feel a sense of unfairness as the middle class’s loans are supplemented by their parents whilst they must do part-time work to make ends meet. This in turn affects the quality of their studies. Many hold the view that university makes finance an issue when it shouldn’t be when it comes to education. Women felt that the middle class took advantage of funding opportunities while the working class were not provided for.

There also seems to be a gender inequality in the working class. Males felt that they could cope with the middle-class climate of higher education and remain untouched. Men also seem to face less pressure to make personal adjustments to fit in with others. There also seems to be a positive view of working-class masculinity, so the working-class men are seen as sex symbols and to be admired while the women are simply seen as ‘slutty’.

In the end, working-class women seem to get the bad end of the deal as even when they have achieved their degree, they are still expected to pursue low-paid, feminised work.

I think that although this evidence seems to suggest that your class is a big issue, it doesn’t have to be. If you do not advertise your class, then there is no reason why you can’t fit in with those of a higher class. I’m sure in many cases middle-class people at university suffer the same financial problems as the working class. And this will surely increase more and more during the recession.

Katy Higgs

 

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[1] ‘Going up without going away? Working-class women in higher education’, Yvette Taylor (2007)

IBSS blog competition – winners announced!

As part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science week (9^th-16^th March), IBSS organised a blog writing competition to demonstrate how IBSS online could be used effectively in social science research.  Entrants were required to write a post for the IBSS blog on a topical social science issue, using background information available in the IBSS database. 

 

The competition has now closed and we are pleased to announce the winning entries below.  We offer them our congratulations and would also like to thank all those who entered the competition.  You can check out the winning posts now on the IBSS blog site by clicking on the links below:

  

Katy Higgs – Is it hard for working class women to cope in higher education?

 

Diego de la Hoz – Mobilising computer models for policy

 

Tess Pearce – How does social class affect socialisation within the family?

 

Brigette Sainsbury – Outdated views on family structure and lesbian families

Swimming and swimming pools

I recently learnt about an exciting outdoor swimming pool I can try out in London. Not only is the London Fields Lido heated, but, at 50 metres, it is Olympic sized! With a bit of investigation, I learnt that the 1930s lido was closed for over 20 years before reopening in 2006, thanks to pressure from the community. Another impressive London pool is the 100 year old Kentish Town Baths which I joined a petition to save back in 2005, and is now thankfully undergoing renovation, not destruction. The London Pools Campaign lists 25 pools which are either closed or at risk of closure in London, and of course this is an issue which extends far beyond the capital. Swimming is a form of exercise that is excellent for burning calories, strengthening muscles and, being low impact, is ideal for people such as pregnant women and those with injuries. The government is clamouring to tackle obesity and get more people more active more often, so why are so many pools at risk of closure?

My local pub, The Swimmer at the Grafton Arms, is something of a shrine to the aesthetics of swimming, with a fine collection of images of old swimming pools (such as a floating pool on the River Thames!), a diagram of about 15 strokes which predate the invention of the front crawl, and photos of bathing suit-clad men, and women in fancy swimming hats. I wonder if swimming has made it into academic literature, as a topic which crosses the disciplines of social history, the sociology of leisure and policy studies?

I searched for ’swimming’ in IBSS and got a surprising 120 hits. I quickly realised that the search was picking up on the metaphorical use of the word ’swimming’ in the title field, generating results like ‘Swimming with sharks: technology ventures, defense mechanisms, and corporate relationships’. Amending my search to ’swimming pools’ got me 17 bona fide results, and searching for ’swimming’ but limiting this to the Subject field gave me 23 records which had been tagged with the keyword ’swimming’ by IBSS’s team of indexer/editors. This seems to be a good number of results, showing that swimming has at least a minor presence in the academic world.

I found lots of really interesting articles on the development of swimming by Christopher Love, who is clearly the main academic working on this topic. Swimming also seems to be a pet topic of The International Journal of the History of Sport.  In ‘An overview of the development of swimming in England, c.1750-1918′ Love (2007) asserts that the activity can be dated back to the mid-18th century when public school boys splashed around in “swimming holes”. By the late 19th century, swimming had become a more common recreational pursuit. In ‘Local aquatic empires: the municipal provision of swimming pools in England, 1828-1918′ , I learnt that the first municipal swimming pool was the St George’s Baths, Liverpool, built in 1828. This was followed by many pools nationally, and swimming came to be seen as something that local authorities should encourage because of its benefits to health and hygiene. In fact, an image at my local pub corroborates the link between cleanliness and swimming: the Hornsey Road Baths was also a laundry!

My search on IBSS shows me that swimming has sparked academic interest on both sides of the Atlantic. From grimy, utilitarian municipal pools to glamorous photographs of swimmers in days gone by, the idea of swimming seems to provoke a reaction in many. Three books about swimming in the Americas catch my eye. Kossuth (2005) looks at the development of municipal pools in Canada in the Victorian age. Van Leuven’s (1999) The springboard in the pond: an intimate history of the swimming pool discusses American swimming pools from the perspective of modernism, and also links swimming to an American ‘obsession’ with recreation and health. Wiltse’s (2007) Contested waters: a social history of swimming pools in America takes a class, race and body angle. The race perspective is shown in the book’s cover which is adapted from an advert for swimming classes in New York from the 1940s.

In ‘The future of swimming’, a chapter in Statistical Thinking in Sports (2007), Ray Stefani discusses swimming from a competitive athletics perspective. It seems likely that the 2012 Olympics will have some impact in boosting the protection of swimming in London. The new Aquatics Centre will have two 50 metre and one 25 metre pools. A look at the architecture of the Kentish Town Baths shows how grand swimming pools once were: . I hope that new pools are treated the same level of respect in future, and that planners start to see the beauty and historical value of old pools.

The incest taboo

Josef Fritzl is currently on trial in Austria over the imprisonment and rape of his daughter. The case is grotesque, and because of this, I venture, also morbidly fascinating. It also brought back to The Times ‘most read’ section an article I was intrigued by over the summer – ‘I had sex with my brother but I don’t feel guilty’ – in which the author puts across the other side of the story: a relationship that was clearly consensual, and a positive experience for both.

I decided to search IBSS to look for articles on incest. There are c. 500 records dealing with the subject, and many are from the ‘abuse’ perspective, looking at how to identify and prevent cases of abuse, and how to help victims deal with their trauma. Pertinent to the Fritzl case, perhaps, is ‘Decisions to offend in men who sexually abuse their daughters’ (in the Journal of Sexual Aggression, 2007); or ‘Acting out the Oedipal wish’: father-daughter incest and the sexuality of adolescent girls in the United States, 1941-1965’, R. Devlin (2005), which takes a psychoanalytic approach. Though rarer, there is also a literature on mothers as abusers, for example ‘Speaking about the unspeakable: exploring the impact of mother-daughter sexual abuse’, Tracey Peter, (2008).

Many articles, however, take a cultural look at the subject rather than a psycho-social, and look at different attitudes to incest across diverse societies. Among them: ‘Incest between adults and children in the Medieval world’ (a chapter in the book ‘Children and sexuality: from the Greeks to the Great War’, Palgrave:2007); ‘Close relationships – incest and inbreeding in classical Arabic literature’, Gelder (2007); ‘Le bain mystérieux de la Tu’i Tonga Fefine. Germanité, inceste et mariage sacré en Polynésie’, F. Douaire-Marsaudon (2002) which looks at kinship, incest and sacred marriage in Polynesia); ‘Full brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt: another look’, S. Parker (1996); and ‘Rudras Geburt: systematische Untersuchungen zum Inzest in der Mythologie des Brahmanas’, J. Deppert (1977) – a look at incest in Brahman mythology. I could go on – there is really a fascinating range.

Given the widely different cultural approaches to incest over time and place, an interesting question is whether the aversion most people have to incest is cultural or biological. Two sides of the coin are represented by ‘Il tabu dell’incesto: un problema culturale’ (The incest taboo – a cultural problem), G. Marucci (1975) on the one hand; and on the other ‘The biological foundations of the incest taboo’, N. Bischoff (1972). Around 20 articles look at the Westermarck thesis, which I presume, therefore, is influential: ‘Westermarck proposed that humans have an incest avoidance instinct, triggered by frequent intimate contact with family members during the first several years of life. Westermarck reasons that (1) familial incest will tend to produce less fit offspring, (2) those humans without instinctive incest avoidance would hence have tended to die off and those with the avoidance instinct would have produced more viable offspring, and hence (3) familial incest would be, as indeed it is, universally and instinctively avoided.’ (quoted from ‘Instinctive incest avoidance: a paradigm case for evolutionary psychology evaporates’, J. Leiber, 2006). However this evolutionary approach does not seem to be as popular a field of research as that of the ‘cultural taboo’ surrounding incest. Among the more off-the-wall papers dealing with this subject is ‘Crossing the final taboo: family, sexuality, and incest in Buffyverse fan fiction’, K.Busse (2002) – a reference to the issue in Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

Some articles suggest that Western culture overplays the taboo, and that the line between familial love and sexual love is a rather finer one than we like to think. In her article ‘’I could eat my baby to bits’; passion and desire in lesbian mother-children love’, Jacqi Gabb (2004), asserts that ‘The legal-moral boundaries that are invoked prohibit intergenerational desire, upholding the incest taboos that dominate Western culture. However the construction of these boundaries neither stop adult-child ‘border skirmishes’ nor quash children’s ‘natural’ exploration of their sexuality. I explore how bodies and bodily boundaries are used to manage sexuality and desire in families.’ The author of the Times piece mentioned above might well agree.