Suchergebnisse

The accounting processes of categorisation and classification are inherent in modern-day welfare systems, though little has been done to investigate the link these have to the social consequences for benefit claimants within these systems. This paper uses research from both primary and secondary sources to show how UK welfare reform has affected claimants and their inalienable human rights since its introduction in 2012. The data gathered for this work combine face-to-face interview data with press releases, and data and reports compiled and published both by the government and independent bodies. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with two illustrative participants, who were identified as being excellent examples of individuals with a close working knowledge of the welfare system. In addition to the primary data gathered, several sources of secondary data are used within the analysis to identify facts, figures and quotations from reliable government sources. Our analysis uncovers that the accounting processes inherent in the system have helped foster a culture of stigmatisation, food bank dependency and financial and emotional hardship for vulnerable welfare claimants in today's society.

AbstractMost of the research on transnational advocacy networks documents progressive, voluntary movements, motivated by values associate with human rights and public goods. There is little critical reflection on the role of corporations within such networks or on the material motivations behind movements. Meanwhile literature on corporate political strategies related to partnerships with civil society is limited to national level analysis. This article presents a case study of the International Coalition Against Plain Packaging, which is conceptualized as a transnational advocacy network, and documents its links to the tobacco industry. We find that, not only have tobacco companies provided network members – publicly presented and perceived as independent – with financial resources, but they have also been involved in producing the information used by the network to debate the benefits of plain packaging. In return, the tobacco industry is able to propagate ideas favorable to its interests through organizations perceived as legitimate experts, and to maintain a network of allies ready to counter tobacco control regulations when and where they arise. Considering the multiple benefits corporations might derive from engaging with transnational advocacy networks, there is need for greater research on private actors' influence within advocacy networks and on those networks that aim to counter or advance alternatives to progressive ideals.

Malawi, the world's most tobacco dependent country, has long defended the tobacco industry as essential to its economy. The impoverished living conditions of tobacco farmers, however, raise questions about the true benefits accruing to the country. While the government and industry often blame public health advocates for declining leaf prices, and thus lower returns to farmers, this article scrutinises these claims from a historical perspective. It argues that a context of state capture has characterised Malawi's tobacco industry, originating with colonisation and evolving since to become increasingly entrenched. The analysis is divided into four periods: colonial (1890s-1964); national (1964–1981); liberalisation (1981–2004) and accelerated globalisation (2004 to present). Each period demonstrates how industry interests influenced government institutions and policies in ways that increased dependence on a crop that only benefits a minority of Malawians. Today, a transnational elite prospers at the expense of local growers.

This article uses a case study of a highly publicized 1970 controversy over Canadian Pacific Air Lines' flight attendant uniforms—specifically, a switch from mini to midi skirt—as a case study in business-labor relations concerning the regulation of women workers' bodily appearance. Using company and union records and employing a historical, materialist, and feminist analysis, we trace how notions of aesthetic and emotional labor changed over time in relation to the political economy, gender ideologies, and the agency of workers themselves. The flight attendants' reluctance to challenge the airline's sexist advertising indicated how both accommodation and resistance were intertwined in complex ways in the workplace. Their acceptance of more "thigh in the sky" had much to do with a highly regulated and disciplined workplace, an entrenched division of labor on the airplane, and gendered notions of beauty and glamour in the industry, including women's strategic use of beauty on the job to their own advantage.

"International Organization and Health/Disease" published on by Oxford University Press.

Despite intense and interdisciplinary interest in the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, work on women and gender generally remains marginal to the dominant paradigms for understanding political and social change in the period from c. 300 to c. 800 ce. This article critiques these interpretations from a gendered perspective and also reviews recent work on women and gender in late antiquity, Byzantium and the early medieval Europe. By outlining similarities and contrasts between women's lives in early medieval western and Byzantine cultures, it emphasises the diversity of women's experience. Suggestions about how to envisage a fully gendered history of this period conclude with a call for radically new approaches to the study of the transformation of the Roman world.

In pursuit of greater France : visions of empire among Mus(c)♭e social reformers, 1894-1931 / Janet R. Horne -- "Special customs" : paternity suits and citizenship in France and the colonies, 1870-1912 / Jean Elisabeth Pedersen -- Redefining "Frenchness" : citizenship, race regeneration, and imperial motherhood in France and West Africa, 1914-40 / Alice L. Conklin -- Secrets and danger : interracial sexuality in Louis Couperus's The hidden force and Dutch colonial culture around 1900 / Pamela Pattynama -- Womanizing Indochina : fiction, nation, and cohabitation in colonial Cambodia, 1890-1930 / Penny Edwards -- So close and yet so far : the ambivalence of Dutch colonial rhetoric on Javanese servants in Indonesia, 1900-1942 / Elsbeth Locher-Scholten -- Islam, gender, and identities in the making of French Algeria, 1830-1962 / Julia Clancy-Smith -- Civilizing gender relations in Algeria : the paradoxical case of Marie Bug(c)♭ja, 1919-39 / Jeanne M. Bowlan -- "Irresistible seductions" : gendered representations of colonial Algeria around 1930 / Ya(c)±l Simpson Fletcher -- Emancipating each other : Dutch colonial missionaries' encounter with Karo women in Sumatra, 1900-1942 / Rita Smith Kipp -- Good mothers, medeas, or Jezebels : feminine imagery in colonial and anticolonial rhetoric in the Dutch East Indies, 1900-1942 / Frances Gouda -- Trekking to New Guinea : Dutch colonial fantasies of a virgin land, 1900-1942 / Danilyn Fox Rutherford