-
Doing intersectionality in empirical research
Many Gender Studies students are well versed in the language and politics of intersectionality. But this often seems to fall by the wayside when it comes to designing their research projects. Intersectionality is easy to say, but difficult to do: this is work of designing and redesigning, questioning and (in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s words) ‘asking the other question’. In her famous article ‘Mapping the Margins’, Crenshaw defines three levels of intersectionality: Structural: how the social locations of Black women make their lived experiences qualitatively different from those of white women; Political: how feminist and antiracist politics have both marginalised the concerns…
-
Reckoning Up: an institutional economy of sexual harassment and violence
(Content note for sexually violent language and descriptions of traumatic experiences) I want to construct an ‘institutional economy’ of sexual harassment and violence. What does this mean? These phenomena are often positioned within narratives about boys – or men – ‘behaving badly’. While it is crucial to hold individuals accountable for their actions, as sociologists we must go further. Sexual harassment and violence are of the social: produced and shaped by gender and other intersecting structures of inequality, and framed by the neoliberal rationalities which, as Wendy Brown argues, have seeped into almost all aspects of our lives. An institutional economy…
-
Disclosure and exposure in the neoliberal university
This Spring, as part of a collaborative partnership of colleagues from the UK and 5 other European countries, I helped to launch a European Commission-funded project entitled ‘Universities Supporting Victims of Sexual Violence‘. Our main aim is to create university environments in which students can disclose experiences of sexual harassment and assault, through providing ‘first response’ training to key staff. We have committed to training 80 staff in each of our 13 Partner and Associate Partner universities. As we begin our work, I want to think more deeply about disclosure. The word is loaded, and the act is too: laden…
-
The university campus as ‘Hunting Ground’
The Hunting Ground is an incredibly powerful film. Its main strength is the testimony of the brave survivors who tell their stories on camera – tales of harrowing victimisation, and narratives of resilience and strength as they take on the machinery of their universities and help each other through trauma and recovery. I am full of admiration for these survivors – their voices break the silence around campus sexual assault, and in the process become part of a long feminist tradition of sharing experience to create political change. They are both male and female, although it is a shame the…
-
Why the ‘Nordic Model’ sucks (with references)
One aim of the recent Home Affairs Committee Prostitution Inquiry seems pretty clear. The first question contributors were asked to answer is ‘whether criminal sanction in relation to prostitution should continue to fall more heavily on those who sell sex, rather than those who buy it’. This leading formulation offers a choice between two modes of criminalisation rather than asking about all possible legal models, and situates the criminalisation of sex workers and their clients as separable when in reality they are not. There are numerous negative consequences of the so-called ‘Nordic Model’ criminalising sex workers’ clients in an effort to ‘end demand’ for…
-
Responsible self-promotion: negotiating the relationships between self and Other, myself and ‘my’ work
This is the text of a talk I gave at Sussex University, to a group of early career scholars and PhD researchers. ‘Responsible self promotion’. I think that is probably an oxymoron. Responsibility implies being accountable to something other than the self: the act of promoting the self is by definition, selfish. Is it possible to both promote the self and be accountable to the Other? I think the answer is ‘probably not’. But self-promotion is increasingly part of academic life: our readerships and research ‘impact’ are metricised by systems of reward and punishment like funding streams, league tables, and…
-
Writing a PhD proposal (social sciences)
For many academics, each new year brings a flurry of Email enquiries about PhD supervision. In my experience these tend to range between a vague notion about a topic (or a few possible topics) and a detailed account of a research idea, usually drawn from a successful MA thesis or an area of professional interest. What I hardly ever get, however, is a proper draft proposal that I can start working up with an applicant. For me, having at least a rough draft of your proposal before you contact potential supervisors is good practice, for a number of reasons: (1) it…
-
Sexism and violence in the neoliberal university
This is the text of a keynote speech delivered at the Sexual Harassment in Higher Education conference at Goldsmiths on December 2nd 2015. Content note for sexually violent language and descriptions of traumatic experiences. I want to talk about markets. Education markets, institutional markets, sexual markets: brought together by similar modes of assessment and audit. University league tables; module evaluation forms; ‘sex charts’ in student residences. Hierarchies of performance (which are often hierarchies of masculinity) at national, institutional and individual levels. Rate your university. Rate your lecturer. Rate Your Shag. 2013 saw the emergence of a number of Facebook pages…
-
Research with marginalised groups: some difficult questions
Every year, my students ask me questions about doing research with marginalised groups. The university is an incredibly privileged space, but some of our students are not – and many of the others are politically committed and care passionately about inequality and abuses of power. Often, they want to contribute to causes by conducting their dissertation research on related topics. However, there are questions around whether exploring these topics through research with human subjects is appropriate – too often, students end up asking for time and attention from people who already live difficult lives, and producing projects which (due to…
-
Why sex workers should be part of sexual violence campaigns
CN: some of the articles this piece links to contain extremely offensive ideas about sex workers. I have been asked a number of times how my work around ‘lad culture’ and sexual violence in higher education corresponds to my support of sex industry decriminalisation. The implication, which elicits arguments commonly made by abolitionist feminists, is often that the two are contradictory, that in supporting workers in the sex industry I am tacitly condoning the objectification of women and male sexual entitlement which feeds misogyny and violence. This may sound like good feminist common sense. However, I see it as a facile interpretation…
Alison Phipps 