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??

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.

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)

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.

Congestion charging – local or national issue?

The people of Greater Manchester have voted against congestion charge plans which would have involved a peak-time road charge of up to £5 a day with the aim of providing a £2.8bn transport investment. A majority of voters in the region’s 10 boroughs voted against the plans, with 812,815 (79%) no votes and 218,860 (21%) in favour of the charge.

As someone who does not have a car and who has benefitted from improvements to bus journey times since the introduction of congestion charging in London, I’m interested to see what I can find on IBSS about the introduction of congestion charging schemes, so I do a couple of searches for “road traffic and congestion charging” and for “road transport and congestion”.

‘Road pricing in Britain’ an article by Chris Nash ( 2007) examines the success of congestion charging in London and the expectation that this would lead to further schemes being introduced in cities in Britain. However, the paper shows that implementation is some way off, with government policy focussing more on encouraging local authorities to introduce local schemes than to take action itself. This is no doubt part of the reason why cities like Manchester are having trouble getting schemes accepted.

In the case of Manchester, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly confirmed on 9 June 2008 that the Government provisionally agreed to invest £1.5bn in improved public transport in return for the introduction of the congestion charge scheme in Manchester. But the result of the vote shows that this commitment was not enough to persuade local people. The campaign group Manchester Against Road Tolls (MART) condemned the proposal saying it would force low-paid drivers off the road. Critics also argued that, once in place, charges could be increased without consultation. With respect to pricing it’s interesting to note that in Singapore – where they have had road pricing since 1975 – decisions to raise road charges are taken at ministerial level (“Road pricing in Singapore after 30 years” by Gregory Christainsen (2006)). This emphasizes what an important political issue road charging is, and that leaving it to local government may not be realistic.

The Manchester vote also underlines the problem of trust and of gaining acceptance by the local community. This is examined in the article ‘Explaining variations in public acceptability of road pricing schemes’ by S. Jaensirisak, M. Wardman and A.D. May (2005). The paper shows that whilst planners recognise the importance of charging for alleviating congestion, fighting environmental impacts and raising revenue, they may not be focussing sufficiently on the “acceptability properties” of proposed road charging schemes. Reviewing the available research, the paper shows that acceptance by the public depends on a wide range of factors including: information about what the pricing revenue will be used for, in particular in terms of public transport and environmental improvements; the balance of views of car owners and non-car owners; information provided on potential time saving benefits and the severity of current congestion; any options for rebates on other road taxes; and the overall issue of freedom and fairness.

Is it time for central government to show the sort of courageous leadership displayed by the London Assembly and look at road charging legislation for all major UK cities both to relieve congestion and to tackle environmental issues?

Western perceptions on global poverty

The word ‘poverty’ is, no doubt, a key word of our times, extremely used and abused by everyone, above all in the Third World context. Huge amounts of money are spent in name of poor countries. Thousands of books and expert advice continue to offer solutions to their problems. But where does the current discourse on poverty come from?

Interested in writing an essay on the anthropology of poverty, I read the book Encountering development. The making and unmaking of the Third World by Arturo Escobar (1995). According to the author, poverty on a global scale was a discovery of the post-World War II period. Before this date, during colonial times, the concern with poverty was conditioned by the belief that even if the natives could be enlightened by the presence of the colonizer, their capacities for science and technology – the basis for economic progress – were nil. Therefore, any attempt by the colonizer to help the poor to improve its conditions by its own means would be senseless. It was, in fact, the decolonization phenomena factor that allowed the ex-colonizers to reconsider their views on the poorest countries.

The modernization of the poor was increasingly seen as a social problem that, without the intervention and guidance of the West, would not be possible to solve. The invention of a politics to balance global poverty became central to the world order. The representation of the Third World as a child in need of adult guidance was not an uncommon metaphor and led to what Escobar has called the secular theory of salvation. In order to understand the European construction of reality regarding the poor, I need to first “anthropologize” the West and the domains that they have granted as universal. In order to do so I would like to explore how other academics have approached this topic.

The first author than promptly comes to my mind is Edward Said and his studies on Orientalism. I log into IBSS and enter ‘Orientalism’ in the title field and ‘Said’ in the author one. Six results are returned, corresponding to the six different revisions that Edward Said has done to his work since 1978. For my purpose on the study of the European stereotypes, I choose the first option ‘Orientalism once more’ published in 2004. I decide to search again under the term ‘Orientalism’, but this time adding another subject term ‘otherness’ in order to contrast other academic contributions to this topic. This brings up eighty two records. Since not all the records are relevant to my topic, I do a quick scanning and I am immediately interested in the article by Jean Ferreux ‘The other as an historical invention’, included in the book ‘Imagining the Arab other: how Arabs and no-Arabs see each other’ edited by T. L. Djedidi (2008). Further down in the list I found an article more directly relevant to the subject I am interested in; the historically built discourse on otherness and poverty. This in an article written by Michal Buchowski (2006) titled ‘The specter of orientalism in Europe: from exotic other to stigmatized brother’, which combined with the M. Haldrup, L. Koefoed and K. Simonsen (2006) article on ‘Practical orientalism – bodies, everyday life and the construction of otherness’, will give me a good start for the first section of my essay.

In order to cover the second section of my essay, I need to look for what other academics have said about the Western paternalistic approach to global poverty. This time I look for the subject terms ‘paternalism’ and ‘poverty’ in the IBSS database. I have a promising list of eighteen records, from which I decide to have a close look at four of them: L. M Mead’s (2000) works on ‘The new paternalism: supervisory approaches to poverty’ and ‘Telling the poor what to do’ (1998); N. Jesurun-Clements (1992) article on ‘Paternalism and the alleviation of poverty’; finally, as an interesting contribution to my essay, I select the article of F.Manji and C. O’Coill (2002) ‘The missionary position: NGOs and development in Africa’, which focuses on how the current NGO are perpetuating the work of former colonial missionaries in terms of poverty alleviation and westernization (and therefore, preventing the emancipation) of local societies.

The quality of social services in the UK

The violent death of ‘Baby P’ has sparked a heated debate on the quality of social services in this country: despite 60 visits from social workers over the course of one-and-a-half years, Haringey Council authorities failed to remove the 17-month-old baby from his violent mother and her partner and place him in good care. After the baby’s horrific death, the whole tragedy came to light and an entire country is shocked at the unimaginable degree of violence and torture the little boy had to endure in his short life. Emotions run high in cases like this one, and calls for ministers, local Council authorities and social workers to resign, and entire departments to be reorganised are loud and frequent.

This sad case raises more general questions about the quality of public services, and surely proves a bit of a dilemma for the Labour government. After all, to improve public services had been the top priority on their agenda when they took power more than ten years ago. Today, many people are wondering to what extent the performance of the public sector has improved. Some defend Labour’s record passionately, in particular in times when approval ratings for the government have hit a new low, and point out that Labour bashing on public services failures is nothing but populist talk. After all, the government can demonstrate that public spending has risen significantly and argue that things have changed for the better. But just how much? This seems difficult to say, given that everybody feels so strongly about this issue.

It’s time to bring some clarity to this matter and have a look at the facts and figures. I log on to IBSS and search for ‘Public services’ as a general keyword and ‘United Kingdom’ as the geographic term. The number of hits is well above 1,500 and thus unmanageable, so I refine my search further. First of all, I’m setting a limit to papers that have been published in the past five years. It seems fair to assume that any political change will need some time to reflect in actual outcomes. Plus, ‘Public Services’ might be a bit too broad – I opt for ‘Social services’ instead, as this is the particular issue that has made the news for the past two days. However, still this gives me roughly 1,000 records. A quick glance at the first 20 or so show that they are spot-on. In ‘The lives of foster carers: private sacrifices, public restrictions’ (Journal of Social Policy, 37:3 (2008), L Nutt and G Gillespie examine the regulatory and institutional issues foster carers face. In ‘Contracting out employment services to the third and private sectors: a critique’ (Critical Social Policy 28:2 (2008), S Davies argues that there is actually little evidence that the outsourcing of services to the private sector in recent years significantly boosted the efficiency of service provision. MJ Moseley focuses on rural areas and asks what are the likely changes that the countryside will see in terms of general care provided in the years to come (‘The future of services in rural England: the drivers of change and a scenario for 2015’, Progress in Planning 69:3 (2008)).

IBSS allows me to limit my search further by simply clicking on a list of related search terms, so I limit this set of records further down to articles that specifically revolve around ‘Social work’. This gives me a digestible number of 192 records – all about social services in the UK published in the past five years! Including the search term ‘Performance’ yields more quantitative research, and if I wanted to, I could limit the search even further to keywords like ‘Public Administration’, ‘Health Services’ etc. With regard to ‘Child care’, C Day and H Davies call attention to the success of newly established outreach clinics for children (‘The effectiveness and quality of routine child and adolescent mental health care outreach clinics’, British Journal of Clinical Psychology 45:4 (2006)).

The overall picture is anything but straightforward. Just reading through a small sample of the vast number of papers that have been published on this issue shows how tricky it is to arrive at an overall nation-wide assessment. Plus, there is the issue of methodology. In ‘Performance measurement in social care: a comparison of efficiency measurement methods’, P Clarkson and D Challis (Social Policy and Society, 5:4 (2006)) are right to point out just how terribly difficult it is to find the right method to actually evaluate performance levels. They emphasise how important targets and measurement have become these days but remind us how the results are, of course, contingent on the methods chosen, and argue for closely monitoring the methods used. It seems difficult to come to a final conclusion on this matter. Public spending on social services has increased substantially and it is safe to assume that this results in better performance to some extent. To what extent precisely is notoriously difficult to say. Perhaps sometimes actual figures and ‘hard facts’ are difficult to match with people’s highly subjective perception of what they think the true levels of quality are. The saddening case of ‘Baby P’ shows how deeply concerned people are about the provision of social services – surely, this issue will play a decisive role in the next parliamentary elections!

Could Slow Food improve the aftertaste of the credit munch?

Over the past few months the roof terrace where I live has been transformed into a herb haven. Bit by bit we have added new plants and attempted to grow our own food. So far the only real winners have been our cherry tomatoes and radishes. Most every meal these past few months has had garden fresh flavour added to it. I find cooking quite therapeutic in itself but adding your own herbs to any dish is all the more satisfying. My parents, having much greener fingers than I, and a real garden to boot, have outshone all efforts I have made. Their home-grown potatoes are the best I’ve tasted and helping my dad to pick them right before they were cooked was such a wonderful feeling, as nauseating as that may sound. All this thought of home grown goods got me thinking about the phenomenon that is Slow Food. I have heard of the term for many years but have never really known what it stood for. Is it simply a forum for anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist and anti-globalization debate?

With its mission being to promote “good, clean and fair food” (slowfood.com) I find it hard to understand why it has not achieved a greater level or popularity since it was founded almost 20 years ago. Running a quick search in IBSS for “slow food” I got a selection of 17 results (10 of which had abstracts). I can fully understand why Slow Food (hereafter referred to as SF) endeavours to broaden the appeal of typical local produce (“The practical aesthetics of traditional cuisines: slow food in Tuscany”. Miele, Mara and Murdoch, Jonathan. Sociologia ruralis, 42:4, 2002). I sometimes find it depressing to see giant flavourless strawberries and the likes on supermarket shelves all year round. At the same time I would mourn the loss of choice available to us at present. We need to find a happy medium.

I wholly agree that it is important to make an effort to buy local seasonal products but the reality is that most of us still need to buy discount supermarket goods in order to survive the credit crunch. I am passionate about food, with a chef for a father, my family tend to be somewhat food obsessed. The idea of SF really strikes a chord with me (“Out of time: fast subjects and slow living”. Parkins, Wendy, Time & Society, 13:2-3, 2004) but at £35 annual membership I do not feel I can justify becoming a member.

As for eating out, I love the idea of dining in a restaurant that ethically sources its menu ingredients. My father once ran a restaurant in the 1970s in which he used only fresh, local produce. Absolutely nothing from a tin! It makes my mouth water at the thought of it. Sadly, it proved too costly and as a result not financially viable. The SF restaurant, while a clever marketing angle, is simply a modern luxury I cannot afford (Reverse psychology marketing: the death of traditional marketing and the rise of the new ‘pull’ game. Sinha, Indrajit and Foscht, Thomas, Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). It ranks up there with organic food markets as a way of life I long for, but know I cannot be a part of (“Sensing Cittàslow: slow living and the constitution of the sensory city”. Pink, Sarah, Senses and Society, 2:1, 2007).

An article in Food, Culture & Society (8:2, 2005) rang all too true stating that, ‘Slow Food’s efforts to develop an ethics of taste are, to some extent, undermined by its failure to adequately challenge its own elitism and privilege’ (“The pleasure of diversity in slow food’s ethics of taste”. Donati, Kelly). Sadly, as with many farmers’ markets, it feels as though the SF community is out of my price range. For now, at least, I shall have to make do with my terrace herb garden. I would far rather be a part of an independent SF movement, the one in my own home, a.k.a. the credit munch.

Gangs and violence

For months now there has been wide coverage of the number of murders of and knife attacks on young people in London. Only last weekend there was another murder in Hackney bringing the total for London to twenty-four during 2008. I learnt on the news last night that individual gangs control three areas of Hackney, and that one of these gangs has started encroaching on the others’ territory. This leads to a general sense of unease, an anxiety for young people in the area and a sense of helplessness about what to do about gang culture.

I thought I’d explore on IBSS to look at some of the issues related to gangs. I started by looking at the IBSS online thesaurus and using the keywords ‘gangs’ and ‘violence’ to do a search. I limited this to material produced between1995 to 2008 and this gave 102 results. What the results reveal is that there are of course numerous issues relating to the formation and role of gangs and the use of violence.

An article which caught my eye was ‘Gang-related gun violence: socialization, identity, and self.’ Paul Stretesky and Mark Pogrebin (2007). The article describes a study using interviews with twenty-two inmates convicted of gang-related gun violence. The findings show that gangs are ”important agents of socialization that help shape a gang member’s sense of self and identity.” In addition, those interviewed said that guns offered them protection, and also helped them “to project and protect a tough reputation”. The study goes on to look at “the way gang socialization leads to gun-related violence and has implications for policies aimed at reducing that violence.” The article emphasizes the role of the gang in giving young people a sense of belonging and status amongst their peers.

Another article, ‘Gang membership as a risk factor for adolescent violent victimization’ by Terrance Taylor, Dana Peterson, Finn-Aage Esbensen and Adrienne Freng (2007) looks not at gangs’ violent behaviour but at “the link between gang membership and violent victimization”. The findings “suggest that gang members are more likely to experience violent victimization, as well as greater frequency of victimization, than do non-gang members”. It is ironic that young people feel safe in a gang, in terms of status and belonging, but that in fact membership of the gang threatens their safety.

Another interesting angle is raised in a review of the book ‘Gangs in the global city: alternatives to traditional criminology’ edited by J Hagedorn and reviewed by Irving Spergel (2007). The book mentions the factors usually considered important for high gang crime rates, such as drugs, and for the lowering of crime rates, such as zero-tolerance policing. However the book puts forward and examines a different issue – the role of housing in gang formation. The review mentions the 2005 riots in Paris and that “the concentration of economically disadvantaged ethnic minorities in high-rise housing projects has created conditions for violence even in Europe, where violence is historically very low” and goes on to say that “within cities and regions, certain factors such as slum clearance, gentrification, or other aspects of a city’s housing policy may have an effect on social behaviors, including violence.” This would certainly be an area I’d like to investigate further with regard to our Hackney example. Over the past five years there has been a lot of re-development of notoriously bad areas of high rise housing into new mixed low-rise housing. On the surface this appears to be a vast improvement with a nice square at the centre of the development meant to give a community feel. But rumour has it – and a large police presence in the area seems to back this up – that drug pushers and gangs are still prevalent and that gentrification of the area has not solved the problems but pushed them into smaller areas.

I found it interesting to dip into IBSS and explore a couple of different aspects of this vast topic: the impact of issues like housing, the role of gangs in giving young people a sense of identity, and the irony that although being in a gang makes young people feel safer it actually makes them more prone to attack.