Gender seminar series at Sussex coming soon

We are organising a seminar series about Gender, which will be launched in the spring term at Sussex University.

The series has the aim to get researchers in gender and gender-related issues from both Sussex and Brighton universities to showcase their work as well as getting to know people from other disciplines who are researching and/or are interested in this area.

A call for papers will be shortly announced.

Seeking participants for new experiments

I have started to recruit participants for two new and exciting experiments on language skills.

I need male and female heterosexuals aged between 18-50. They will come to our Sound Lab at Sussex University and will be paid £3 for their participation (unless they are Sussex students, in which case they can opt to get 2 credits).

If interested, drop me an email at: v.cartei@sussex.ax.uk.

It’s worth it!

Dealing with the abuse: Writing

note: This blog post is part of the posts relating to my experience as a volunteer for women survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

In the latest drop-in sessions, I discovered how writing can be important in the healing process that this women are going through. Thus, I think it is important to share some “tips” that they found useful,in the hope that others will also find them beneficial.

Writing about…

…Voices
If you hear voices, you are not going crazy. Don’t dismiss them, they won’t go away.
Write them down instead, as they come up to you.Just by the mere fact that you write them down, you acknowledge them and take care of them. You take care of the parts of you they represent. It doesn’t matter if you follow what they say.
In fact, You’ll find that they conflict with each other, most likely. You may want to follow one, and the others will accuse you you are neglecting them. But you are not. You are telling them, loook I can take care of you, because I am listening to this voice now, next time I may listen to any of you.

…Your Abuse
When you talk about your abuse, you often do it in general terms. You may do so because it is too painful to explain the details, or you can’t find the words, or you are afraid to upset your listener.
But what you feel is miles away from that general statement. You may recall the sensory emotions related to your abuse: the curtains, the smell in the room, the abuser’s touch, what you were wearing, how the light filtered in the room, the time of the day and so on.
Write all this down.
Writing your memories is important: if you write your memories, you will start to take that lid off, the cap that is pressing you down. You can go back to them and use them as a validation of your experience, even if, as sometimes happens, you forget some of the memories you wrote down. It doesn’t mean that you invented them, your brain can switch them on and off and this may leave you with a sense of confusion and doubt.
Also writing your memories will help you release what you feel you can’t say. And you can let someone read what you wrote or keep it to yourself.
Often your memories won’t be in sequence and you will feel that you can’t make sense of them. It doesn’t matter, write what you have got. If you feel that there’s something you can’t write, then write that there is something you cannot write yet. It helps you identifying particularly painful areas.

evolution and altruism

An outline of the processes of evolution and how altruism is an adaptation resulting from the selective forces that have operated during evolution.

The impact of evolutionary theory on psychology is exemplified by the recent rise of the evolutionary psychology perspective. This essay will outline the key evolutionary processes which evolutionary psychology draws upon, to explore universal human behaviours in terms of their evolutionary history and adaptive functionality.
As an example of such behaviours, the essay will consider functional explanations on the adaptive role of altruism, focusing on hypotheses of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity and sexual selection. Evidence of altruistic behaviour in non-human species will also be considered.

The theory of evolution was first devised by Darwin as a slow, unpurposive process, by which complex organisms are derived from common simpler ancestors.
Evolution presumes that a population will exhibit random variations of physical and psychological characteristics, by which some organisms are advantaged over others to cope with their environments. Evolutionary change is achieved through selection of these characteristics (“survival of the fittest”, (Clegg, 2007, p.121)) and their accumulation over time through inheritance.

With the advances of genetics, Darwin’s ideas have been revised in terms of genetic variation and selection. Diversity occurs through sexual reproduction, genetic mutation due to environmental influences (i.e. radiations) or chance. According to Dawkins’ (1976 as cited by Clegg, 2007) ’selfish gene’ theory, if the genetic variations lead to characteristics that increase the survival and/or reproductive rate of the organisms, the genes underpinning those characteristics will be selected in virtue of their likelihood to be passed on through generations (in Clegg, 2007, p.121).

Thus, physical and psychological traits evolve as adaptations of the organisms to their environments, selected in virtue of their capacity to increase survival and/or reproductive success (’sexual’ selection). Because of the differential between evolutionary time and human progress (in Clegg,2007,p.131-32), some traits today may appear maladaptive. Also, there is debate on what influence genes and environment have and which characteristics can be considered as adaptations, by-products of adaptations or are socially constructed (Clegg, 2007, p.123-124).

Several studies support the universality of altruism in modern and early humans and the existence of a genetic basis related to altruistic behaviours, thus suggesting that altruism has an adaptive role (cited in Clegg, 2007, p.144). However, the notion of altruistic behaviour as a disinterested sacrifice performed to favour others seems in contradiction with the aim of adaptive behaviour to maximise one’s reproductive success.
The apparent paradox is partly addressed by Hamilton’s theory of kin selection (1964), according to which, as evolution operates at the level of the gene, reproductive success of an individual can be maximised either increasing the individuals’ fitness or indirectly favouring those who are more likely to share some of their genes, their relatives (in Clegg, 2007,p.144) .

The hypothesis of kin selection seems to be supported by the evidence of the correlation between high mortality rates among early humans and their tendency to live in small groups of relatives (Symons,1979,cited in Clegg,2007, p.146). Hamilton’s explanation, however, does not account for altruistic acts that are performed towards non-relatives. This is better explained by the concept of reciprocal altruism, according to which individuals act altruistically to those that they believe are more likely to reciprocate. However, as the probability of being reciprocated in the future is uncertain, an explanation is needed to understand what triggers individuals to act altruistically.

In response to this dilemma, several studies have focused on cooperation using different versions of the prisoner’s game. Here, two prisoners are asked separately to collaborate with the police: if both prisoners don’t trait each other, they will be put in prison, but the punishment will be smaller than the one given if both deceit; if only one collaborates, the traitor will be set free, thus getting the maximum gain, while the deceived prisoner will have a greater punishment than in all the other scenarios.

The evolutionary stable strategy, ‘tit-for-tat’, that emerges in the iterative version of the game, is one by which each individual starts off by co-operating and then mirrors the action previously performed by the other individual. The explanation given is that if iteration is sufficiently high the benefit for cooperation and thus for reciprocal altruistic behaviour, is greater than the benefit for selfish defection (in Clegg,2007, p.148).

There are several criticisms to these studies. Fehr and Fishbacher (2003, cited in Clegg, 2007), argue that these experiments are largely based on unrepresentative samples of the population (Western university students) and therefore their findings cannot be generalised. Also, as suggested by Barrett et al.(2002, cited in Clegg, 2007), the prisoner’s dilemma inaccurately models real-world experiences such as non-simultaneous situations where the individual’s response is informed by the other’s decision Finally, they do not account for altruistic acts being reciprocated by a third party rather than the direct benifeciary. This type of altruism, known as indirect reciprocity, seems to be better explained in terms of a gain in reputation by the altruistic person, that leads the him/her to have greater access to resources and support from others (Clegg,2007,p.149).

Altruism has also been related more closely to sexual selection. A possible explanation suggests that altruistic behaviour has evolved as a strategy by which individuals maximize their reproductive success enhancing their attractiveness through altruistic acts (Clegg,2007,p.150). Findings (Farrelly et al.,2006, in Clegg,2007,p.150) on the tendency to act altruistically towards more attractive members of the opposite sex and the positive correlation between perceived attractiveness of an individual and his/her reputation as an altruist all seem to support this hypothesis.
Finally, several studies have looked at the presence of altruistic behaviour in our ancestors. However, although evidence of altruistic behaviour has been found in other non-human species (Hauser et al.,2003;Workman and Reader,2004), interpretations on findings of altruism in other hominines such as chimpanzees are too controversial to confidently support such claim (in Clegg,2007,p.150).

After introducing the key tenets of evolutionary theory, this essay sought to explain the adaptive functionality of altruism from an evolutionary perspective. As we saw, rather than a comprehensive theory on the subject, different hypotheses have been formulated, which, by focusing on different types of altruistic behaviour and by drawing from different sources of evidence, complement one another in their explanation of the adaptive role of altruism.

References

Clegg, H. (2007). Evolutionary psychology. In D. Miell, A. Phoenix, & K. Thomas (Eds.), Mapping Psychology (2^nd ed., pp 43-95). Milton Keynes: The Open University

Is contemporary society fascinated by and frightened of crime?

Crime is usually approached by individuals and societies in terms of narratives. The reasons behind the use of these stories might be several, for example they might help us express our emotions and feelings, give us keys to make sense of what happened or let us identify possible solutions.
The two main types of stories which are widely spread today, describe a society which is increasingly frightened by crime and yet, at the same time, is increasingly seduced by its deviance.
With particular reference to contemporary UK, this essay will explore these stories and their origins.

Today’s fear towards crime relies strongly on the shared belief in a present of ever-increasing criminality, compared to a relatively safe past. Attempts to explain this apparent decline, point at social fragmentation of the family and the community, greater economic inequality and a general moral forfeiture as the main causes. This is the common-sense story, the story which everybody believes in: middle-age and older people refer to the higher honesty and integrity of their earlier days, through news, books, reality shows and so on, media present us with a growing violent society and politicians have included crime prevention and reduction in their key issues.

In fact, the tendency to compare a safer past with a more dangerous present has always existed and, as Pearson pointed out, this kind of stories, which he terms respectable fears, is more common as people grow older. As a past example of these accounts, we might consider the pamphlet that Defoe wrote in the 1730, where he expressed his concern for the rising levels of street crime in the 17th century London (Pearson, 1983, quoted in Mooney et al., 2004, p. 22).

Respectable fears, especially in periods of rapid changes like today, lead to what Stanley Cohen defines as moral panics, where targeted behaviours are perceived as serious threats to social stability and security, thus increasing the sense of anxiety and, in turn, giving rise to a wider social reaction (Cohen, 1973, quoted in Mooney et al., 2004, p. 23).

However, we cannot conclude that respectable fears and moral panics are the only causes for our increasing sense of vulnerability. In fact official figures relating to crime in the UK indicate a general increase in crime over the past 50 years, although evidence is influenced by several factors. Examples are: the appearance of new crimes, the increased number of crime reports, the greater opportunities for criminal actions as more valuables become available and are exhibited. Data also seems to indicate that people’s perception of crime is different from the actual crime rates and is influenced by factors such as gender, ethnicity, income and location (Muncie and McLaughlin, 1996, Mirrlees-black et al., 1998, Social Trends, 2002, quoted in Mooney et al., 2004, p. 16-22).

The escalating presence of crime fiction and non-fiction in various media, clearly shows how our society is not only scared but also attracted by crime. This seduction might be related to the thrill for the risks involved in committing criminal actions or because of the fact that the individual, by breaking the rules, stands against society and confronts what is defined as socially acceptable.

Again, fascination with crime is a characteristic which contemporary society shares with the past: 19th century murder ballads, peep-shows, Chambers of Horrors, crimes reported in the newspapers (Reijinders, 2005, p.5) and ‘penny dreadfuls’, can be all set as examples of how crime has always attracted us.

In conclusion, we have seen that the view of a contemporary society that is frightened of as well as fascinated by crime, coincides with the two main types of stories that we, as individuals as well as a society, tell ourselves to confront the crime problem. In fact these stories are not specific to contemporary society, but have been similarly told in the past.

We have also seen how fear and anxiety rely upon the common-sense story of a present where crime rates are increasingly higher. This belief can be partially explained using the concepts of respectable fears and moral panics, which indicate how fear of crime might reflect a more general sense of uncertainty.

Quantitative and qualitative data on the levels of crime in contemporary UK, however, seem to confirm a growth in crime rates in the last 50 years. On the other hand, evidence shows that this growth is overrated and should in any case be read bearing in mind all the numerous factors which come into play in reporting and recording crime.

How useful is a ‘social approach’ in explaining differences in health amongst different social groups?

Introduced in the 1980s (Smith and Goldblatt,2004,p.70), social explanations emphasize the impact of socio-economic structures to create and maintain differences in health amongst different social groups.

In order to assess the usefulness of this approach, this essay will first outline the model’s main characteristics. Then, by focusing on ‘The Black Report’ and ‘The health divide’ analyses, the discussion will move on to identify the model’s strengths and weaknesses, also taking into account how some of the latter have been dealt by alternative approaches, such as the ‘complementary’ model and ‘the New Public Health’.

Social explanations focus on the overall health of society rather than individual health, by assessing and comparing the health of its populations, categorized according to socio-economic factors such as occupation, gender and ethnicity. Health is usually measured using statistical methods: data is collected for a representative set of health indicators (i.e.death rates) then figures are compared in order to find patterns which may suggest links between social groups and their social environments. Statistical data is sometimes backed up by qualitative evidence.

Two government reports on UK society, ‘The Black Report’ (1980) and ‘The health divide’ (1992), are examples of how the social approach could be employed. These reports included the mortality, morbidity and life expectancy statistics according to social class for 1978-79 and 1992.

Although improvements in health within each class were recorded between the two periods, class differential remained steady, with people on lower incomes still suffering from poorer health than those in the higher levels of the socio-economic scale, despite access to health services was made free since 1948 (Smith and Goldblatt,2004,p.52-54).

In contrast with restricting health and illness to the realm of human biology, as the dominant view of the time suggested drawing on the medical model, the reports highlighted the main strength of the social approach: its inclusion of socio-economic factors in explaining health differences.

By looking for associations between health variations and socio-economic factors, social explanations can also identify which of these structural forces might have the strongest impact on the health of different groups, thus directing governments in promoting targeted polices. For instance, the authors of the reports focused on material resources, such as poor housing, suggesting that a more equal distribution of resources was needed. This was also confirmed by a later experiment where relocating families from low income to richer areas resulted in an improvement in their health (Smith and Goldblatt, 2004, p.52-55).

The large use of statistical surveys to gather evidence, is also another strength of the social model, as claims can be backed up by the higher degree of objectivity and reliability accorded to such scientific techniques(Smith and Goldblatt,2004,p.71).

However, the social model does have some limitations .

Firstly, its highly focused analysis of social structures leads other structural forces, such as biological factors, to be overlooked. For instance, the association between high mortality rates and manual unskilled groups in the two reports was interpreted as the influence of low class position on health. Yet, it can be argued that if these groups had a higher percentage of old people, the impact of social class would have been less clear (Goldblatt,2004,p.30).

Secondly, the social approach fails to take into account the impact that individual agency has on health. Even if cultural explanations (Goldbatt,2004,p.31) within the social approach recognize a role to lifestyle, the individuals’ position in society may prevent them from making healthy choices, for example if economically unattainable (Smith and Goldblatt,2004,p.67). However agency can be exercised through collective action, by tackling socio-economic inequalities at the level of national policies (Smith and Goldblatt, 2004,p.70).

Another criticism to the social approach regards the danger of creating statistical artifacts. Even though evidence is gathered through scientific techniques, the acts of observation and data interpretation always involve a subjective component. Thus, an opposite interpretation of the two reports could suggest the influence of health on class position on the grounds that physical weakness may prevent access to the top jobs. Besides, figures may not represent accurately individuals’ mobility within the labour market nor they account for the class shrinkage occurred in the last years (Goldbatt, 2004,p.31-32).

For a more comprehensive explanation of health differences amongst different social groups, the Complementary and The New Public Health models could be considered.

Both approaches, whilst acknowledging the importance of biological and social factors, focus much more on individuals’ agency and prevention. Thus, they can help explaining health differences within and between social groups that can be related to individuals’ choices and clarify what control we have on our health.

The complementary model embraces an holistic view that sees body and mind as interlinked. Thus psychological and emotional factors are acknowledged and the responsibility on our health as well as the capacity for treatment is placed upon us. However, the effectiveness of the approach is hard to demonstrate because it relies on individual experience rather than scientific observation (Smith and Goldblatt, 2004, p.58-60).

By contrast, The New Public Health’s focus on lifestyle and risk assessment benefits from using techniques based on the scientific approach (Smith and Goldblatt, 2004, p.63-69). It also focuses on health promotion and prevention not only within the individual but also in the communities. For example, whilst the social approach could suggest that better housing conditions are needed in order to improve the health of people living in depressed areas, the New Public Health could highlight the need to facilitate people in making healthy choices, for example by offering health resources, such as sport facilities, in those areas (Smith and Goldblatt, 2004, p. 62).

In conclusion, the usefulness of the social model in explaining health differences amongst social groups draws upon its ability to address the impact that socio-economic factors have on health differences, using rigorous, albeit not entirely objective, evidence, to support its analyses.

However, the model’s primary focus on social structures risks to overlook other factors that influence health, with particular disregard to individual agency.

Thus, alternative, more rounded approaches, such as the complementary model and the New Public Health, could also be considered for a better understanding of health issues.

References

Goldblatt, D. (2004) DD121 Workbook 2, Milton Keynes, 2nd edn. The Open University.

Smith, B. and Goldblatt, D., (2004) ‘Whose health is it anyway?’, in Hinchliffe, S. and Woodward, K. (ed.) The Natural and the Social: Uncertainty, Risk, Change, London, 2nd edn. The Open University.

being an undegraduate: the interaction of agency and structure through social roles

The freedom and control to shape our own identities are influenced by personal, material and social structures.

The aim of this essay is to support this claim by showing the interaction between agency and some of these structural influences, taking as an example my role as an undergraduate IT student at Queen Mary College of London in 2004.

In particular, I will focus on three aspects of this experience: the influence of gender in subject choice (Information Technology), the economic and ethnic factors entangled with the choice of the institution (Queen Mary) and the collective identities built around the college societies.

Information technology is centered on the study of computer hardware and software. It belongs to the realm of the scientific subjects, which are generally considered as ‘masculine’, with male students outnumbering and outperforming female students. In my case, more than 80% of the students enrolled on my course were male (Davis, 2006).

In fact, gender-related patterns in subject choice and in academic performance are present since primary school, with girls performing better in humanities and boys prevailing in science and technology (Gove and Watt, 2004, pp.61-64).

Research has pointed at different causes to account for this phenomenon: biological differences between the two sexes (Kimura, 1992), social factors such as gendered activities and interests as well as teachers’ perception of gendered identities (Murphy and Elwood, 1998), have all been considered.

Nevertheless, the presence of female students in my course and the fact that none of us failed, clearly shows that we can actively challenge this gender gap in performance and subject choice, a gap that, according to statistics, is already narrowing in primary and secondary education (Gove and Watt, 2004, p.62-63).

My choice on which university to enroll in was largely influenced by economic factors. Coming from a low income background, Queen Mary College appeared to be the more convenient solution, as it offered me the highest grant.

However, I discovered that for some of my fellow students, who came from Asian countries, ethnicity also played an important role. For them, Queen Mary was an attractive option because of its large percentage in Asian students, as well as its location, which is in an area of East London were these communities have a strong presence (Tower Hamlets Research and Scrutiny, 2005). The university itself was clearly aware of this and its prospectus offered often images of cheerful, successful Asian students, seeking explicitly to interpellate this kind of audience.

An important aspect of the student life was also socialization by means of joining one or more

societies, voluntary groups funded and run by students within the university. Most societies at Queen Mary represented ethnic communities, while others were based on religion and a minority on leisure activities, thus suggesting a hierarchy of importance in the factors that influenced the creation of group identities within that institution.

Choosing to join a group was entirely voluntary, as long as prospective members shared the aims of the society. Therefore students were likely to be members of the societies they most identified with, shaping and taking up for themselves these collective identities.

Furthermore, there was no limit in the number of societies a student could be member of. For

example a Jewish student was also member of the Palestinian society, which shows firstly that

individuals have multiple identities, which may well be in conflict with each other, and secondly how agency can challenge stereotypes and assumptions, in this case the perceived incompatibility of being a Jewish who supports the Palestinian cause, thus promoting a change in the structures that impose such definitions.

In this essay I have described some of the most common ways in which structure and agency

interact in shaping our identities, with reference to my university experience.

Firstly, I have focused on the relationship between gender, subject choice and academic performance and how these are both being challenged. I have also pointed out how structures influence each individual differently, showing how income influenced my choice of university, while for other students this choice was based more on ethnic considerations.

With regards to university societies as sources of collective identities, I have stressed how joining a society is strongly based on the similarity among its members and that by joining different societies individuals can take up multiple identities, even though these may be perceived in contradiction with one another.

Thus, individuals exercise their agency in shaping their identity and may challenge the structural constraints imposed on them.