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“I’m absolutely not complaining about it”: writing fiction as silenced cultural work
No full textThis chapter presents findings from qualitative research into how fiction writers make a living in the UK. In particular, it focuses on how a number of aspects of making a living from writing combine to silence writers as cultural workers. There is a growing body of knowledge around what we might term media and cultural work, which highlights issues of precarity and structural inequality. This new research finds that writing is a precarious way to make a living and supports survey findings on writers receiving low incomes. This chapter argues that writers as workers suffer from a lack of agency over career planning and are devalued by a publishing industry which produces them as voiceless and grateful providers of literary content for profit-making. In addition, it argues that writers’ own perceptions of writing as not-work, and the discourses of love and luck they employ when thinking and talking about writing, function in complex ways to position them in enchanted spaces which, nevertheless, exclude the possibility of complaint. In these ways, writers as workers lack both individual and collective voices.
This chapter draws on ideas of passionate work and explores how fiction writers in the UK are, despite giving voice to others in their work, lacking a voice as cultural workers
Echoes of love and place: a collection of Arabic and English poems and their translation
No full textHow can counselling training courses better prepare their trainee therapists to work with LGBTQ+ clients?
Get PDFAim: The purpose of this study was to explore the clinical and training experiences of recently qualified, LGBTQ+ identifying therapists who work with sexuality and gender diverse clients, in order to discover ways in which counselling training organisations might better prepare their trainees to work competently with this particular client group. Method: One‐to‐one, semistructured interviews with five therapists were conducted. Data collected from these interviews were subsequently analysed using the seven steps of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings: The analysis revealed six superordinate themes: Enhance tutors' LGBTQ+ knowledge and cultural awareness; Provide students with adequate supervision; Teach a range of LGBTQ+ topics; Integrate LGBTQ cultural competence training throughout the curriculum; Invite LGBTQ+ specialists; and Signpost students to additional resources. Conclusions: Participants felt unprepared by their entry‐level counselling training to work with LGBTQ+ clients. The perceived lack of LGBTQ+ knowledge and understanding of their tutors was regarded as a contributing factor to the limited time and depth of LGBTQ cultural competence training received. Several suggestions to improve training in this area were offered. Recommendations: Entry‐level counselling training courses should integrate LGBTQ cultural competence training throughout their curriculums in order to adequately prepare their trainees to work competently with LGBTQ+ clients. Additionally, it is important that counselling educators maintain their own LGBTQ+ knowledge, understanding and skills
Homeschooling in a digital age: how digital technologies can help children foster a love for (self-directed) lifelong learning
Get PDFOpting to homeschool children is a growing trend worldwide. However, surprisingly, there is a dearth of research on understanding how digital technologies are used by learners who opt for homeschooling. Thus, in the present study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten homeschoolers in the United States to examine: (1) how digital technologies are being used; (2) why these technologies are being used to support learning; and (3) what digital technologies are being used. Thematic analysis revealed that homeschooled children used a wide array of digital technologies to support their learning. Children’s learning projects commonly stemmed from their interaction with the real world, and a good portion of their learning was self-directed. Digital technologies afforded children access to specific materials and enabled them to collaborate with other learners. Perhaps most importantly, the homeschoolers reported a love for (self-directed) lifelong learning. They tended to learn in a self-directed and autonomous manner, and they commonly used digital technologies constructively and productively
Neoliberal feminism and women's protest motivation
Get PDFA popular form of neoliberal feminism seeks to advance gender equality in leadership and beyond by encouraging women to be resilient as individuals. By locating career advancement as within an individual's control, recent research has shown that this focus subtly shifts the blame for gender inequality onto women and reduces support for needed structural changes to tackle gender discrimination. We extend research into neoliberal feminism by examining anticipated negative effects on women's protest motivation. Across four studies in the United Kingdom (total N = 1,168), undergraduate women students and employed women with university degrees in both the control and resilience conditions first read about gender inequality. Participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions then read messages promoting individual resilience as key to women's advancement (Study 1–3) or participated in activities designed to build their own resilience as individuals to help them advance (Study 4). In Studies 1, 3, and 4, participants in the neoliberal feminist conditions compared to the control had lower collective action intentions – a negative effect that was either indirect, via reduced perceptions of gender discrimination (Studies 1 and 4) and reduced anger over inequality (Study 1), or direct (Study 3). Together, these studies provided partial support for our hypothesis that neoliberal feminism can undermine women's protest motivation. Future research can help establish how contextual and other factors contribute to the strength of these effects and explore how feminists can better harness messages of resilience. To advance gender equality, our findings suggest that advocates should focus less on individualistic solutions and more on addressing structural barriers, laying the groundwork for effective protest action and social change
Frankenstein (re)membered
Get PDFA kaleidoscopic vision of Frankenstein comprised of collaged fragments from the entirety of cinematic history and its various adaptations and influences
CBNRM and landscape approaches to conservation in Kunene Region, post-Independence
No full textWe review how national post-Independence policy supporting Community-Based Natural Resources Management has played out in Etosha-Kunene, highlighting a new impetus towards a “landscape approach” for conservation in communal areas. Communal land immediately to the west of Etosha National Park is currently divided into a series of communal area conservancies, inhabited by pastoralist populations relying additionally on varying combinations of horticulture, gathering, hunting and wage employment. A new donor-funding trend is now noticeable towards recognising how landscapes with conservation and livelihood value overlap these areas. In the 2000s a Kunene People’s Park was proposed to connect the Hobatere, Etendeka and Palmwag Tourism Concessions between Etosha Pan and the Skeleton Coast, although this was never formalised. In 2018 proposals for a ‘People’s Park’ were reignited with international support by conservation donors and the British royal family. Present proposals for an Ombonde People’s Park/Landscape currently comprised primarily of two conservancies on the western boundary of Etosha National Park are being implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism with support by multiple donors. We provide an overview of these conservation changes in Etosha-Kunene for the three decades since Namibia’s Independence in 1990
Walking-creating for fostering teachers’ education in peripheral coastal communities
Get PDFWalking-creating was adopted to probe orientations towards communities, while early career teachers were on clinical placement in the remote South West Peninsular of England. The aim of carrying out walking-creating events was to elicit whether and if so, the extent to which, early career teachers were sensitive to the communities where they had been placed and hence had begun to question deficit discourses tending to adhere to peripheral landscapes. We explored whether they were replacing these negative discourses with hopeful ones. We present a study of one early career teacher who during our creative activity disclosed how place awareness had been developing through interactions within the community. The novel walking-creating methodology is informed by a generative theorising of peripherality so as to contextualise the complexities of the multiple drivers likely to be coalescing in teachers’ peripheral placement communities