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New Special Issue of Studies in the Maternal, January 2013

Austerity Parenting: new economies of parent-citizenship
Guest editors: Tracey Jensen (University of Newcastle) and Imogen Tyler (Lancaster University)

Parents have long been a significant economic category for policymakers, governments, employers, social workers and public health officials, requiring answers to difficult questions around value, labour, care and responsibility. In the current global economic crisis and recession, many governments are implementing radically restructured welfare support systems, reducing public spending on a range of services and condensing public sector workforces. Several budget analyses have already demonstrated that women (and more specifically, mothers) are set to lose out disproportionately as these changes are implemented. At the same time, many government administrations (particularly the current Coalition government in the UK) have expressed their belief that ‘good parenting’ can compensate for economic disadvantage: in the UK this forms part of a large scale movement to replace significant parts of the Welfare State with forms of volunteerism and private enterprise. Some ministers have even suggested that austerity economics might represent a chance for parents to reconnect with their parenting, with profound future social benefit. In this context, the promotion of ‘good parenting’ is being newly envisioned as an economic opportunity, through which the current public `squandering` of resources on families can be transformed into an invitation that asks ‘parent-citizens’ to effect social and economic renewal for themselves. We are interested in interrogating the double-bind of the new economies of parenting, whereby being a parent makes one more vulnerable to the forms of economic austerity, whilst at the same time parents are being held more accountable than ever for the social (im)mobility of themselves and their children.

Is there a new landscape of parent-citizen responsibility – and how does this relate to the disbanding and dissolution of various public services? What will be the social and economic impact of these shifts to volunteerism and private enterprise on family life? What ‘counts’ and is valued in the new economy of parent-citizenship? Should parenting be publicly recognized as ‘work’? What are the state’s economic obligations to parents? How might policy respond to the gender pay gap, which is principally experienced by mothers? Why are we witnessing an intensification of parent governance, and parent-blame, in neoliberal times?

This special issue of Studies in the Maternal explores new directions (and old tensions) in the complex relationships between parenting, citizenship, social policy and cultural and economic value.

Forthcoming Special Issue of Studies in the Maternal, May 2013

Maternal Aesthetics: The Surprise of the Real

Guest Curator: Andrea Liss, California State University, San Marcos

Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real is a special issue of Studies in the Maternal, aiming to bring together a vibrant intermingling of work by visual artists, scholars of visual culture and feminist theory, poets, writers, activists and more, who are engaged in thinking about new conceptualizations of the maternal.

As guest curator of this special themed issue, I would like to bring forth the unexpected juxtapositions of images and texts that set maternal identities, subjectivities and inter-subjectivities in motion, where the previously displaced and devalued maternal is voiced from a mother’s perspective and configured anew. Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will therefore aim to elicit moments ranging from subtle awareness to the surprise of the real when feminist artists and writers became cognizent of themselves as mothers, when sense of self and sense of self with child(ren) brings about new subjectivities and inter-subjectivities.

The issue will include contributions that articulate such transformations: what sorts of ruptures, continuities, resistances, discomforts or other responses are experienced in domestic spaces, public workplaces and other cultural spheres by mothers and articulated as mothers (biological or otherwise). Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will create a forum to represent how feminist artists and writers understand, embrace, resist, live and perform the act of mothering in and throughout their lives. Reflections and analyses addressing such experiences of transformation between the mother and her adult child(ren), as well as intergenerational perspectives are also welcome.

MaMSIE is supporting a two-day interdisciplinary Humanities Symposium on Non-reproduction: politics, ethics, aesthetics, organised by Fran Bigman (Cambridge), Harriet Cooper (Birkbeck) and Sophie Jones (Birkbeck). Confirmed speakers include Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck, University of London) and Nina Power (Roehampton University). The Symposium explores critical perspectives on the idea of ‘non-reproduction’.

The Symposium is being held at Birkbeck on the 31st January and 1st February. Follow the link for details:

http://nonreproduction.wordpress.com/

New Special Issue of Studies in the Maternal, January 2013

Austerity Parenting: new economies of parent-citizenship
Guest editors: Tracey Jensen (University of Newcastle) and Imogen Tyler (Lancaster University)

Parents have long been a significant economic category for policymakers, governments, employers, social workers and public health officials, requiring answers to difficult questions around value, labour, care and responsibility. In the current global economic crisis and recession, many governments are implementing radically restructured welfare support systems, reducing public spending on a range of services and condensing public sector workforces. Several budget analyses have already demonstrated that women (and more specifically, mothers) are set to lose out disproportionately as these changes are implemented. At the same time, many government administrations (particularly the current Coalition government in the UK) have expressed their belief that ‘good parenting’ can compensate for economic disadvantage: in the UK this forms part of a large scale movement to replace significant parts of the Welfare State with forms of volunteerism and private enterprise. Some ministers have even suggested that austerity economics might represent a chance for parents to reconnect with their parenting, with profound future social benefit. In this context, the promotion of ‘good parenting’ is being newly envisioned as an economic opportunity, through which the current public `squandering` of resources on families can be transformed into an invitation that asks ‘parent-citizens’ to effect social and economic renewal for themselves. We are interested in interrogating the double-bind of the new economies of parenting, whereby being a parent makes one more vulnerable to the forms of economic austerity, whilst at the same time parents are being held more accountable than ever for the social (im)mobility of themselves and their children.

Is there a new landscape of parent-citizen responsibility – and how does this relate to the disbanding and dissolution of various public services? What will be the social and economic impact of these shifts to volunteerism and private enterprise on family life? What ‘counts’ and is valued in the new economy of parent-citizenship? Should parenting be publicly recognized as ‘work’? What are the state’s economic obligations to parents? How might policy respond to the gender pay gap, which is principally experienced by mothers? Why are we witnessing an intensification of parent governance, and parent-blame, in neoliberal times?

This special issue of Studies in the Maternal explores new directions (and old tensions) in the complex relationships between parenting, citizenship, social policy and cultural and economic value.

Forthcoming Special Issue of Studies in the Maternal, May 2013

Maternal Aesthetics: The Surprise of the Real

Guest Curator: Andrea Liss, California State University, San Marcos

Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real is a special issue of Studies in the Maternal, aiming to bring together a vibrant intermingling of work by visual artists, scholars of visual culture and feminist theory, poets, writers, activists and more, who are engaged in thinking about new conceptualizations of the maternal.

As guest curator of this special themed issue, I would like to bring forth the unexpected juxtapositions of images and texts that set maternal identities, subjectivities and inter-subjectivities in motion, where the previously displaced and devalued maternal is voiced from a mother’s perspective and configured anew. Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will therefore aim to elicit moments ranging from subtle awareness to the surprise of the real when feminist artists and writers became cognizent of themselves as mothers, when sense of self and sense of self with child(ren) brings about new subjectivities and inter-subjectivities.

The issue will include contributions that articulate such transformations: what sorts of ruptures, continuities, resistances, discomforts or other responses are experienced in domestic spaces, public workplaces and other cultural spheres by mothers and articulated as mothers (biological or otherwise). Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will create a forum to represent how feminist artists and writers understand, embrace, resist, live and perform the act of mothering in and throughout their lives. Reflections and analyses addressing such experiences of transformation between the mother and her adult child(ren), as well as intergenerational perspectives are also welcome.

This day-long symposium celebrated the life and work of the scholar, psychoanalyst and feminist art theorist, Roszika Parker. You can find a podcast of the event here.

Birthing Ideas

Joined by two figurative London based artists, Charlotte Lindsay and Eline van den Boogaard, Rebecca Baillie considered the notion that it is often artists without children, or those distanced in someway from the everyday experience of child rearing, who best articulate the meaning of maternity. Rebecca Baillie is a London based artist and writer. Charlotte Lindsay is a painter and founder of BHVU Gallery. Eline van den Boogaard is a photographer and curator.

Published 23rd September 2011 by Routledge – 194 pages

Series: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

Recommend to Librarian
Purchasing Options:
Hardback: 978-0-415-88542-3: £80.00

In this book, Alison Stone develops a feminist approach to maternal subjectivity. Stone argues that in the West the self has often been understood in opposition to the maternal body, so that one must separate oneself from the mother and maternal care-givers on whom one depended in childhood to become a self or, in modernity, an autonomous subject. These assumptions make it difficult to be a mother and a subject, an autonomous creator of meaning. Insofar as mothers nonetheless strive to regain their subjectivity when their motherhood seems to have compromised it, theirs cannot be the usual kind of subjectivity premised on separation from the maternal body. Mothers are subjects of a new kind, who generate meanings and acquire agency from their position of re-immersion in the realm of maternal body relations, of bodily intimacy and dependency. Thus Stone interprets maternal subjectivity as a specific form of subjectivity that is continuous with the maternal body. Stone analyzes this form of subjectivity in terms of how the mother typically reproduces with her child her history of bodily relations with her own mother, leading to a distinctive maternal and cyclical form of lived time.

Since the hardback is rather expensive, Routledge have an automatic facility for you to recommend the book to a librarian:
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415885423/

Guest Curator: Andrea Liss, California State University, San Marcos

Submit work to: aliss7@roadrunner.com

Special Issue of the on-line journal Studies in the Maternal
Birkbeck, University of London
Publication Date: Spring 2013

Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real is a special issue of Studies in the Maternal, aiming to bring together a vibrant intermingling of work by visual artists, scholars of visual culture and feminist theory, poets, writers, activists and more, who are engaged in thinking about new conceptualizations of the maternal.

As guest curator of this special themed issue, I would like to bring forth the unexpected juxtapositions of images and texts that set maternal identities, subjectivities and inter-subjectivities in motion, where the previously displaced and devalued maternal is voiced from a mother’s perspective and configured anew. Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will therefore aim to elicit moments ranging from subtle awareness to the surprise of the real when feminist artists and writers became cognizent of themselves as mothers, when sense of self and sense of self with child(ren) brings about new subjectivities and inter-subjectivities.

I am seeking contributions that articulate such transformations: what sorts of ruptures, continuities, resistances, discomforts or other responses are experienced in domestic spaces, public workplaces and other cultural spheres by mothers and articulated as mothers (biological or otherwise). Maternal Aesthetics: the Surprise of the Real will create a forum to represent how feminist artists and writers understand, embrace, resist, live and perform the act of mothering in and throughout their lives. Reflections and analyses addressing such experiences of transformation between the mother and her adult child(ren), as well as intergenerational perspectives are also welcome.

Artwork in all genres can be submitted, including video art and digital work made specifically for web format. Writing can be maximum of sixteen (16) manuscript pages.  Submissions will be blind peer-reviewed in collaboration with the guest curator.

Submit work to: aliss7@roadrunner.com
Deadline: December 1, 2011

University of London
PhD Studentship: ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Node
Three-year PhD Studentship (Full-time) commencing October 2011

Title: Electronic Constructions of Parenting Identities and Practices
Joint supervisors: Prof. Ann Phoenix and Prof. Julia Brannen

Project details

We are seeking applicants for an ESRC National Centre for Research methods (NCRM) node 3 year PhD studentship to be based in the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education in central London (commencing October 2011). The broad research focus of the studentship will be in the area outlined below but the student will have the opportunity to contribute to the design of their study within this area. The applicant will benefit from joint supervision from both Professors Ann Phoenix and Julia Brannen.  We are seeking applicants with a good 2:1 or 1st class undergraduate degree and a Masters in psychology, a social science or other relevant discipline. The Studentship includes the standard research council stipend and covers tuition fees. Applicants must meet ESRC eligibility criteria.

The proposed postgraduate project will be linked with a study of Parenting Identities and Practices which will conduct secondary narrative analysis of families’ habitual practices in two studies; one of adults looking back on ‘non-normative’ childhoods formed as part of transnational families and one of three generations of fathers in Irish, Polish and white UK families. These analyses will be linked with data from the Millennium Cohort study.

The postgraduate recruited will complement this work by collecting new data on how parenting identities and practices are created in CMCs. It will engage in virtual ethnography of sites such as MumsNet and conduct electronic interviews with parents in transnational families. It is anticipated that parents for this group will be recruited through advertising on the internet. The internet is increasingly being used as a mode of research interviewing. However, attention will be paid to both parenting practices and a comparison of how narratives collected via the internet compares with narratives collected face to face. One aim would be to produce written narratives on parenting practices and identities with 25 fathers and 25 mothers. The studentship will provide the successful applicant with an interdisciplinary training in qualitative analyses, particularly narrative analysis and in quantitative analysis at a level appropriate to the student’s experience.

Funding Details: Studentships will cover UK and EU tuition fees. UK students will be paid a stipend for a period of up to 3 years.

Eligibility: Applicants should hold a minimum of a UK Honours Degree at 2:1 level or equivalent in any social science, psychology, communications or IT and a postgraduate research training Master’s degree recognised by the ESRC or demonstrate a level of training consistent with the requirements set out in the ESRC Postgraduate Training Guidelines.

Further Enquiries: Professor Ann Phoenix

Special issue of Studies in the Maternal
Guest editors: Tracey Jensen and Imogen Tyler

Parents have long been a significant economic category for policymakers, governments, employers, social workers and public health officials, requiring answers to difficult questions around value, labour, care and responsibility. In the current global economic crisis and recession, many governments are implementing radically restructured welfare support systems, reducing public spending on a range of services and condensing public sector workforces. Several budget analyses have already demonstrated that women (and more specifically, mothers) are set to lose out disproportionately as these changes are implemented. At the same time, many government administrations (particularly the current Coalition government in the UK) have expressed their belief that ‘good parenting’ can compensate for economic disadvantage: in the UK this forms part of a large scale movement to replace significant parts of the Welfare State with forms of volunteerism and private enterprise. Some ministers have even suggested that austerity economics might represent a chance for parents to reconnect with their parenting, with profound future social benefit. In this context, the promotion of ‘good parenting’ is being newly envisioned as an economic opportunity, through which the current public `squandering` of resources on families can be transformed into an invitation that asks ‘parent-citizens’ to effect social and economic renewal for themselves. We are interested in interrogating the double-bind of the new economies of parenting, whereby being a parent makes one more vulnerable to the forms of economic austerity, whilst at the same time parents are being held more accountable than ever for the social (im)mobility of themselves and their children.

Is there a new landscape of parent-citizen responsibility – and how does this relate to the disbanding and dissolution of various public services? What will be the social and economic impact of these shifts to volunteerism and private enterprise on family life? What ‘counts’ and is valued in the new economy of parent-citizenship? Should parenting be publicly recognized as ‘work’? What are the state’s economic obligations to parents? How might policy respond to the gender pay gap, which is principally experienced by mothers? Why are we witnessing an intensification of parent governance, and parent-blame, in neoliberal times?

This special issue of Studies in the Maternal invites contributions which explore new directions (and old tensions) in the complex relationships between parenting, citizenship, social policy and cultural and economic value.

Studies in the Maternal invites submissions from academic researchers, activists, practitioners, clinicians and artists who work in any field relating to this topic and from any geo-political context or perspective. We welcome the following types of submission: 1. Short critical position statements of up to 3000 words. 2. Longer scholarly articles of up to 8000 words. 3. Submissions from those working in creative and non-written mediums, including visual and audio formats. As this is an online journal, we particularly encourage use of hypertext links and images in submissions.

Studies in the Maternal is a peer-reviewed journal, and all submissions will be subject to peer-review.

Please send enquires, abstracts for consideration or submissions to:
Tracey Jensen: tracey.jensen@kcl.ac.uk and
Imogen Tyler: i.tyler@lancaster.ac.uk

Final deadline for submissions: 1st November 2011

This one-day study day opened up debates about the relations between shared maternal and domestic labour, social class, ‘race’ and transnational motherhood across both recent scholarship on global care chains, and social historical and literary explorations of service and servitude. You can find the programme here.