Suchergebnisse

This article discusses some of the challenges involved in conducting research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments. We respond to the need to develop new child-centred research techniques which move beyond existing power relations among children and adults by anchoring our approach in the idea of mystery. The paper reports on research utilising a mixed-method design which includes one new technique – the Big Brother diary room. We discuss the unpredictable nature of the fieldwork, reflect on the 'messiness' of the research process, and critically evaluate our own research design.

ABSTRACTSince the drafting of Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill in 2009, considerable attention has been paid both in Uganda and across the African continent to the political and social significance of homosexual behaviour and identity. However, current debates have not adequately explained how and why anti-homosexual rhetoric has been able to gain such popular purchase within Uganda. In order to move beyond reductive representations of an innate African homophobia, we argue that it is necessary to recognise the deep imbrication of sexuality, family life, procreation and material exchange in Uganda, as well as the ways in which elite actors (including government officials, the media and religious leaders) are able to manipulate social anxieties to further particular ends. We employ a discourse analysis of reporting in the state-owned newspaperNew Vision, first considering how the issue of homosexuality has been represented in relation to wider discourses regarding threats to public morality and national sovereignty. Then, through fieldwork undertaken in Uganda in 2009, we explore three key themes that offer deeper insights into the seeming resonance of this popular rhetoric about homosexuality: constructions of the family, the nature of societal morality, and understandings about reciprocity and material exchange in contemporary Ugandan society.

This paper explores questions of sexual difference and religious belief in relation to recent debates in urban studies and geography on urban encounters. Although it has been widely suggested that increased contact between members of different groups is an important driver for tolerant and respectful intergroup relations, there is need for more careful consideration of the kinds of sites that actually facilitate 'meaningful encounters'. Specifically, we draw on empirical research in Episcopalian churches in New York City and examine how straight-identified parishioners and clergy narrate and perceive their encounters with the city's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population. Moving beyond the traditional focus on public space in the literature on cosmopolitan urbanism, we examine how churches serve as 'micropublics' which organize, facilitate, and/or limit encounters with sexual difference. To capture the tension between orthodox theological understandings of human sexuality and lived experiences in a metropolitan context where homosexuality is expressed relatively openly, the discussion focuses in particular on an evangelical case-study parish, where the church leadership is opposed to full LGBT inclusion in the church.

This article addresses the intersection of sexual orientation and religion and belief through a focus on a specific religious community — the worldwide Anglican Communion. It does so by unpacking a particular event within this Communion debate: the decennial Lambeth Conference, at Canterbury, UK. Events have received little attention within sociology, yet case studies of particular events potentially represent an effective way of empirically researching the complexity of the ways that intersections of categories, such as sexual orientation and religion and belief, are experienced in everyday life. By focusing on the strategies of pro-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) groups at Lambeth, this article demonstrates how, in the material space of an 'event', abstract discourses and positionings in diffuse social networks become transformed into tangible emplaced social relations where power is outworked.

Recent discussions of the international Anglican Communion have been dominated by notions of a 'crisis' and 'schism' resulting from conflicts over issues of homosexuality. Existing accounts of the Communion have often tended to emphasise the perspectives of those most vocal in the debates (particularly bishops, senior clergy, and pressure groups) or to engage in primarily theological analysis. This article examines the nature of the purported 'crisis' from the perspectives of Anglicans in local parishes in three different national contexts: England, South Africa, and the United States. Unusually for writing on the Communion, attention is simultaneously given to parishes that have clear pro-gay stances, those that largely oppose the acceptance of homosexual practice, and those with more ambivalent positions. In doing so, the article offers new insights for the growing body of literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians, as well as wider discussions about the contested nature of contemporary Anglican and other Christian identities. Key themes include the divergent ways in which respondents felt (and did not feel) connections to the spatially distant 'others' with whom they are in Communion; the complex relationships and discordances between parish, denominational, and Communion-level identities; and competing visions of the role of the Communion in producing unity or preserving diversity amongst Anglicans.