Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 141-164, Autumn 2023.
Toward Aspirational Care Labor: Dementia Care Meets Documentary Filmmaking
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 237-258, Autumn 2023.
Cover
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 49, Issue 1, Autumn 2023.
Ethics of Care Born in Intersectional Praxis: A Feminist Abortion Accompaniment Model
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 63-87, Autumn 2023.
Introduction: Complexities of Care and Caring
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 49, Issue 1, Page 1-6, Autumn 2023.
“Wayfearing” and the city: Exploring how experiential fear of crime frames the mobilities of women students at a city-based university using a bespoke chatbot app
Mobile Media &Communication, Ahead of Print.
Personal safety apps provide new ways for crime data to be utilized by citizens within the context of urban mobilities. Yet, high-profile stories reveal the fear many women continue to experience in their daily lives. Operating as locative media, personal safety apps seem to imply that environments can simply be avoided. This is not always possible. Women students attending a city-based university, for example, might have to move through various urban spaces to get to their institution. Using a bespoke chatbot app for recording the experience of environments rather than avoiding them and semi-structured interviews, the purpose of this article is to examine the experiential fear of crime (EFC) that women students attending a city-based university experience in their daily lives. Between May and June 2022, 24 students who identify as women and attend a London-based university took part in this project. Our research first explored the question, how does EFC frame the experience of moving through a city-based university? Second, how does EFC frame the experience of ambulating the wider urban environment beyond campus? The article contributes to the wider field of locative media, by revealing how fear can shape extant understandings of digital wayfaring.
Personal safety apps provide new ways for crime data to be utilized by citizens within the context of urban mobilities. Yet, high-profile stories reveal the fear many women continue to experience in their daily lives. Operating as locative media, personal safety apps seem to imply that environments can simply be avoided. This is not always possible. Women students attending a city-based university, for example, might have to move through various urban spaces to get to their institution. Using a bespoke chatbot app for recording the experience of environments rather than avoiding them and semi-structured interviews, the purpose of this article is to examine the experiential fear of crime (EFC) that women students attending a city-based university experience in their daily lives. Between May and June 2022, 24 students who identify as women and attend a London-based university took part in this project. Our research first explored the question, how does EFC frame the experience of moving through a city-based university? Second, how does EFC frame the experience of ambulating the wider urban environment beyond campus? The article contributes to the wider field of locative media, by revealing how fear can shape extant understandings of digital wayfaring.
Re-reading Fatima Meer’s Prison Diary and art through the lens of Saidiya Hartman’s concept of ‘stealing away’
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The necessary confluence of sociology and social impact assessment in the era of global change
Current Sociology, Ahead of Print.
Despite the intrinsic and natural connection between sociology and social impact assessment, the latter often does not hold a prominent place in the academic theory and practice of sociology. This monograph aims to justify and reclaim the rightful position of social impact assessment within the sociological discipline, through the contributions of some of the most renowned international experts in this field. This introductory article reflects on the necessary mutual contribution between sociology and social impact assessment, which, through their epistemological, methodological and axiological dialogues, establish an applied working space aimed at providing solutions for real-world problems. Sociology and social impact assessment must join forces to become agents not only of knowledge production but also of improvement of the living conditions of those in situations of social vulnerability, being this an urgent task in the face of contemporary global changes and growing inequalities.
Despite the intrinsic and natural connection between sociology and social impact assessment, the latter often does not hold a prominent place in the academic theory and practice of sociology. This monograph aims to justify and reclaim the rightful position of social impact assessment within the sociological discipline, through the contributions of some of the most renowned international experts in this field. This introductory article reflects on the necessary mutual contribution between sociology and social impact assessment, which, through their epistemological, methodological and axiological dialogues, establish an applied working space aimed at providing solutions for real-world problems. Sociology and social impact assessment must join forces to become agents not only of knowledge production but also of improvement of the living conditions of those in situations of social vulnerability, being this an urgent task in the face of contemporary global changes and growing inequalities.
After 50 years of social impact assessment, is it still fit for purpose?
Current Sociology, Ahead of Print.
Social impact assessment is a field of applied social research that is now over 50 years old. With its ongoing evolution in practice and thinking, social impact assessment is a valued part of project development and will continue to be so. Over time, there has been a shift in understanding, from social impact assessment being a regulatory tool to now being the process of managing social issues throughout the life of a project. The range of issues considered has become much wider, now also including human rights. More than a tool or approach, social impact assessment is a discourse, a body of scholars and practitioners, a paradigm, and a philosophy about development and the rights of affected communities. The proper consideration of social impacts is now expected by all project stakeholders and is a requirement of international standards and project financing. There is now recognition of the need for projects to gain and maintain social acceptance, or a social license to operate and grow. Key current issues include: human rights; doing good rather than just doing no harm; benefit-sharing arrangements; Indigenous-led social impact assessment and community-based social impact assessment; and gender, LGBTQI+, two-spirit people, and intersectionality. Social impact assessment is increasingly being used to assist communities in negotiating Impact and Benefit Agreements (or Community Development Agreements).
Social impact assessment is a field of applied social research that is now over 50 years old. With its ongoing evolution in practice and thinking, social impact assessment is a valued part of project development and will continue to be so. Over time, there has been a shift in understanding, from social impact assessment being a regulatory tool to now being the process of managing social issues throughout the life of a project. The range of issues considered has become much wider, now also including human rights. More than a tool or approach, social impact assessment is a discourse, a body of scholars and practitioners, a paradigm, and a philosophy about development and the rights of affected communities. The proper consideration of social impacts is now expected by all project stakeholders and is a requirement of international standards and project financing. There is now recognition of the need for projects to gain and maintain social acceptance, or a social license to operate and grow. Key current issues include: human rights; doing good rather than just doing no harm; benefit-sharing arrangements; Indigenous-led social impact assessment and community-based social impact assessment; and gender, LGBTQI+, two-spirit people, and intersectionality. Social impact assessment is increasingly being used to assist communities in negotiating Impact and Benefit Agreements (or Community Development Agreements).
Social reproduction in crisis: Gendered labour regimes in agro‐export sectors in Ecuador and Chile
Abstract
The pandemic lays bare the centrality of social reproduction in upholding global commodity networks. Capitalism's reliance on gendered and racialized systems of social reproduction has deepened structural contradictions and socio-economic divides across agro-export sectors and agrarian communities. We analyse how COVID-19 policies and responses in Ecuador and Chile are reshaping systems of social and labour protection in feminized agro-export sectors. We integrate labour regime and gender regime frameworks, showing how they are (1) co-constituted via global forces, national policies, institutional pressures and local practices; (2) intertwined in neoliberal and social-democratic development models; and (3) forged through control, consent and resistance. We analyse national legal frameworks and policy responses to COVID-19, as well as industry, union and worker reactions, illustrating how ‘neutral’ policies have gendered outcomes, (re)creating false binaries between production and reproduction and paid and unpaid work. We find that the pandemic has reshaped gendered labour regimes in agro-exports: in Ecuador, undermining the fragile commitment to a social-democratic gendered labour regime and in Chile, strengthening social-democratic supports and promises of a more equitable gendered labour regime. In both cases, states and firms have neglected to include social reproduction in the ‘costs’ of development, thus threatening national development models grounded in the exploitation of cheap female labour in agro-export sectors.