Elizabeth Parsons
Biographic Data
| ID | 106193 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Parsons |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Parsons |
| SIGNATURE | PARSONS E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Liverpool |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2034-3425 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 143 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
“Take back control”: Exploring the relationship between neoliberal inertia and far-right populism
This paper examines the connection between the persistent neoliberalism in today’s consumer culture and the rise of far-right politics, which offers a nationalistic alternative consumer society. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to analyse materials from the 2016 European referendum campaigns, our findings show that Remain discourse reinforces neoliberal globalist and individualist narratives, while Leave discourse promotes the …
Reconfiguring Migrant Meals and Doing Family: A Practice Theory Approach
Drawing on ethnographic research with six migrant families, this article explores how they reconfigure meal practices to stabilise family identity. The findings investigate three facets of the reconfiguration process: the reconfiguration of material arrangements; the reconfiguration of rhythms and spatial arrangements; and practitioners' changing enrolments across practice bundles such as parenting and working. We argue that there is a set of mac…
How Do Unsustainable Practices Remain Dominant? A Practice Theory Reinterpretation of Gramsci
Sociological studies of sustainable transformation have highlighted the relevance of 'unequal' and 'uneven' transformation dynamics. We argue that a practice-based approach provides far more insight into such unequal dynamics than currently recognized. We re-interpret the political concepts of agonism, antagonism and historic bloc that Gramsci used to analyse domination in order to theorize practice constellations and dynamics that are responsibl…
Zine infrastructures as forms of organizing within feminist social movements
This paper explores how feminist social movements are organized and re‐generated across and through different media, both online and offline, using the example of zines. We critically examine the emergence and growth of an intersectional feminist zine community through a 6‐year in‐depth qualitative netnographic and ethnographic study. Theoretically, we build on work concerning feminist digital information and archival infrastructures, bringing it…
Exploring the Nothing in Relation to Meister Eckhart’s God and Martin Heidegger’s Being
This paper aims to establish a parallel between Meister Eckhart’s statement that ‘God is Nothing’ and Martin Heidegger’s claim that ‘Being is Nothing.’ By observing a pattern of negation in the thought of both thinkers I will ultimately suggest that in these statements, they have reached the same conclusion. To observe negation in Eckhart I will examine his principle of indistinct distinction, which ultimately negates negation itself; for Heidegg…
Foodwork and foodcare in hard times: Mothering, value, and values
In this article, we analyze the foodwork of mothers when feeding their families on low and reduced incomes. By exploring their accounts of food shopping and household budgeting, we argue that foodwork is intrinsically linked to other areas of social life and dominant values associated with “good mothering.” Through a careful consideration of the contexts and relations in which foodwork is valued, embedded, and made meaningful, we draw two key con…
The unnaturalness of natural burials: Dispossessing the dispossessed
The rise of natural burials has not been without controversy. Traditionalist funeralists and a number of mourners struggle to reconcile new immaterial, anti-symbolic practices with those of old. Drawing from an extensive ethnographic study of German cemeteries of both traditional and natural denomination, and by employing a spatial theory approach, we consider the impact that the rise of natural burials has had on all parties in the funeral indus…
Intensive mothering in hard times: Foucauldian ethical self-formation and cruel optimism
Discourses of intensive mothering now seem to dominate European and American parenting cultures. This is a problem for those mothers who do not currently possess the resources to match up. In a study of Italian and British mothers who are experiencing low or reduced incomes, we observe the ways in which they internalize intensive mothering discourses through a process of ethical self-formation. This mode of self-formation involves detailed self-s…
Dimensions of marketplace exclusion: Representations, Resistances and Responses
This positioning paper explains and develops the concept of marketplace exclusion, which has received little attention to date in the field of marketing and consumer research. Essentially the concept refers to the mechanisms through which certain individuals and communities are barred from the resources and opportunities provided by the market. Participation in the market and the accompanying rights and responsibilities that allow individuals to …
Freethenipple - Digital Activism and Embodiment in the Contemporary Feminist Movement
Contemporary, or so-called fourth-wave feminism has heralded an era of online activism which celebrates the potential of this space to reconfigure and reorder gender relations. In this paper we explore an example of an online campaign, #freethenipple, which attempts to disrupt and destabilise a highly sexualised patriarchal breast ideal. We examine both the mechanisms of (re)inscription that feminist activists are using in the campaign and the re…
Unpacking the lunchbox: Biopedagogies, Mothering and Social Class
This study investigates how mothers respond to school surveillance of their children's packed lunches. In a context where increasing attention is focused on healthy eating, we adopt a biopedagogical approach to illustrate different positions and strategies which mothers occupy in relation to feeding their children in the school setting. We use photo-elicitation interviews and focus groups to trace both the discursive and practical significance of…
Right Taste, Wrong Place: Local Food Cultures, (Dis)identification and the Formation of Classed Identity
This article investigates how culinary taste contributes to the formation of middle class identity in a working class context in the UK. We explore practices of food consumption among a group of individuals working at a UK university located in a working class city. We find a rather limited and discrepant cosmopolitanism, in which culinary practices are evaluated in terms of those worth engaging in, and those not worth engaging in, based on their…
Constructing the culinary consumer: Transformative and reflective processes in Italian cookbooks
This paper explores how culinary texts operate in both performative and transformative senses in relation to wider societal norms of gender and cultural capital. As such, the paper explores changes to the way in which the culinary consumer is presented in British Italian cookbooks from 1954 to 2005. Across the period, we see a shift in the gendered representation of the culinary subject, from a housewife in the period 1954–1974, to a working moth…
Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli's Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox's Fern Gully (1992)
Informed by ecocriticism, this article conducts a comparative examination of two contemporary animated children's films, Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fern Gully (1992). While both films advocate for the prevention of deforestation, they are, to varying degrees, antithetical to environmentalism. Both films reject the principles of deep ecology in displacing responsibility for environmental destruction on to ‘supernatural’ forces and exhibit anthro…
Agents for Change and Changed Agents: The Micro‐politics of Change and Feminism in the Academy
This article explores gender politics and processes in the academy and investigates change from the perspectives of feminist academics. In particular, it explores the experiences of women academics attempting to effect change to the gendered status quo of their own institutions. Focusing on micro‐politics, the feminist movement is empirically explored in localized spaces of resistance and in the small but significant individual efforts at making …
Practising Thrift at Dinnertime: Mealtime Leftovers, Sacrifice and Family Membership
Exploring our relationship with mealtime leftovers tells us a lot about not only our relationships with waste, but with one another, in the home. In our study of British mealtimes we explore how leftovers are transformed and reused as meals. We refer to theories of disposal in exploring the skills involved in transforming leftovers. We also explore the motivations behind these transformations. Drawing on the work of Miller (1998) we examine how t…
Branded Lives: The Production and Consumption of Meaning at Work
Doing what your big sister does: Sex, postfeminism and the YA chick lit series
Mass-marketed teen chick lit has become a publishing phenomenon and has begun to attract critical interest among children’s literature scholars. Much of this critical work, however, has shied away from robust critical assessment of the postfeminist conditions informing the production and reception of young adult series like Private, Gossip Girl and Choose Your Own Destiny. Existing analyses may nod to the origins of the genre in women’s chick lit…
Nonprofit Marketing
Charity, retail or care? Gender and managerialism in the charity retail sector
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore how gender identity is played out in a particular type of work setting, that of charity retail, and to explore the impacts of increased managerialism on this process of identity construction. Design/Methodology/approach - The paper is informed by interviews with 22 charity shop managers from three UK cities. The narratives of three of these managers are chosen for more in-depth analysis. The paper…
Managing Change in Nonprofit Organizations: Insights From the UK Charity Retail Sector
Moves toward increased professionalism are now an almost taken-for-granted aspect of change across the nonprofit sector both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. This paper uses the case of UK charity retail to explore the impacts of this move to professionalism, on managers at the local level. In doing so it seeks to develop appropriate techniques for managing change both in charity retail and more broadly, in nonprofit organizations …
Chapter IV. Maternal Frightened, Frightening, or Atypical Behavior and Disorganized Infant Attachment Patterns
Agents for Change and Changed Agents: The Micro‐politics of Change and Feminism in the Academy
This article explores gender politics and processes in the academy and investigates change from the perspectives of feminist academics. In particular, it explores the experiences of women academics attempting to effect change to the gendered status quo of their own institutions. Focusing on micro‐politics, the feminist movement is empirically explored in localized spaces of resistance and in the small but significant individual efforts at making …
Intensive mothering in hard times: Foucauldian ethical self-formation and cruel optimism
Discourses of intensive mothering now seem to dominate European and American parenting cultures. This is a problem for those mothers who do not currently possess the resources to match up. In a study of Italian and British mothers who are experiencing low or reduced incomes, we observe the ways in which they internalize intensive mothering discourses through a process of ethical self-formation. This mode of self-formation involves detailed self-s…
Foodwork and foodcare in hard times: Mothering, value, and values
In this article, we analyze the foodwork of mothers when feeding their families on low and reduced incomes. By exploring their accounts of food shopping and household budgeting, we argue that foodwork is intrinsically linked to other areas of social life and dominant values associated with “good mothering.” Through a careful consideration of the contexts and relations in which foodwork is valued, embedded, and made meaningful, we draw two key con…
Practising Thrift at Dinnertime: Mealtime Leftovers, Sacrifice and Family Membership
Exploring our relationship with mealtime leftovers tells us a lot about not only our relationships with waste, but with one another, in the home. In our study of British mealtimes we explore how leftovers are transformed and reused as meals. We refer to theories of disposal in exploring the skills involved in transforming leftovers. We also explore the motivations behind these transformations. Drawing on the work of Miller (1998) we examine how t…
Managing Change in Nonprofit Organizations: Insights From the UK Charity Retail Sector
Moves toward increased professionalism are now an almost taken-for-granted aspect of change across the nonprofit sector both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. This paper uses the case of UK charity retail to explore the impacts of this move to professionalism, on managers at the local level. In doing so it seeks to develop appropriate techniques for managing change both in charity retail and more broadly, in nonprofit organizations …
Unpacking the lunchbox: Biopedagogies, Mothering and Social Class
This study investigates how mothers respond to school surveillance of their children's packed lunches. In a context where increasing attention is focused on healthy eating, we adopt a biopedagogical approach to illustrate different positions and strategies which mothers occupy in relation to feeding their children in the school setting. We use photo-elicitation interviews and focus groups to trace both the discursive and practical significance of…
Dimensions of marketplace exclusion: Representations, Resistances and Responses
This positioning paper explains and develops the concept of marketplace exclusion, which has received little attention to date in the field of marketing and consumer research. Essentially the concept refers to the mechanisms through which certain individuals and communities are barred from the resources and opportunities provided by the market. Participation in the market and the accompanying rights and responsibilities that allow individuals to …
How Do Unsustainable Practices Remain Dominant? A Practice Theory Reinterpretation of Gramsci
Sociological studies of sustainable transformation have highlighted the relevance of 'unequal' and 'uneven' transformation dynamics. We argue that a practice-based approach provides far more insight into such unequal dynamics than currently recognized. We re-interpret the political concepts of agonism, antagonism and historic bloc that Gramsci used to analyse domination in order to theorize practice constellations and dynamics that are responsibl…
Freethenipple - Digital Activism and Embodiment in the Contemporary Feminist Movement
Contemporary, or so-called fourth-wave feminism has heralded an era of online activism which celebrates the potential of this space to reconfigure and reorder gender relations. In this paper we explore an example of an online campaign, #freethenipple, which attempts to disrupt and destabilise a highly sexualised patriarchal breast ideal. We examine both the mechanisms of (re)inscription that feminist activists are using in the campaign and the re…
Right Taste, Wrong Place: Local Food Cultures, (Dis)identification and the Formation of Classed Identity
This article investigates how culinary taste contributes to the formation of middle class identity in a working class context in the UK. We explore practices of food consumption among a group of individuals working at a UK university located in a working class city. We find a rather limited and discrepant cosmopolitanism, in which culinary practices are evaluated in terms of those worth engaging in, and those not worth engaging in, based on their…
Constructing the culinary consumer: Transformative and reflective processes in Italian cookbooks
This paper explores how culinary texts operate in both performative and transformative senses in relation to wider societal norms of gender and cultural capital. As such, the paper explores changes to the way in which the culinary consumer is presented in British Italian cookbooks from 1954 to 2005. Across the period, we see a shift in the gendered representation of the culinary subject, from a housewife in the period 1954–1974, to a working moth…
Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli's Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox's Fern Gully (1992)
Informed by ecocriticism, this article conducts a comparative examination of two contemporary animated children's films, Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fern Gully (1992). While both films advocate for the prevention of deforestation, they are, to varying degrees, antithetical to environmentalism. Both films reject the principles of deep ecology in displacing responsibility for environmental destruction on to ‘supernatural’ forces and exhibit anthro…
Reconfiguring Migrant Meals and Doing Family: A Practice Theory Approach
Drawing on ethnographic research with six migrant families, this article explores how they reconfigure meal practices to stabilise family identity. The findings investigate three facets of the reconfiguration process: the reconfiguration of material arrangements; the reconfiguration of rhythms and spatial arrangements; and practitioners' changing enrolments across practice bundles such as parenting and working. We argue that there is a set of mac…
Zine infrastructures as forms of organizing within feminist social movements
This paper explores how feminist social movements are organized and re‐generated across and through different media, both online and offline, using the example of zines. We critically examine the emergence and growth of an intersectional feminist zine community through a 6‐year in‐depth qualitative netnographic and ethnographic study. Theoretically, we build on work concerning feminist digital information and archival infrastructures, bringing it…
Doing what your big sister does: Sex, postfeminism and the YA chick lit series
Mass-marketed teen chick lit has become a publishing phenomenon and has begun to attract critical interest among children’s literature scholars. Much of this critical work, however, has shied away from robust critical assessment of the postfeminist conditions informing the production and reception of young adult series like Private, Gossip Girl and Choose Your Own Destiny. Existing analyses may nod to the origins of the genre in women’s chick lit…
Chapter IV. Maternal Frightened, Frightening, or Atypical Behavior and Disorganized Infant Attachment Patterns
Managing Change in Nonprofit Organizations: Insights From the UK Charity Retail Sector
Moves toward increased professionalism are now an almost taken-for-granted aspect of change across the nonprofit sector both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. This paper uses the case of UK charity retail to explore the impacts of this move to professionalism, on managers at the local level. In doing so it seeks to develop appropriate techniques for managing change both in charity retail and more broadly, in nonprofit organizations …
Charity, retail or care? Gender and managerialism in the charity retail sector
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore how gender identity is played out in a particular type of work setting, that of charity retail, and to explore the impacts of increased managerialism on this process of identity construction. Design/Methodology/approach - The paper is informed by interviews with 22 charity shop managers from three UK cities. The narratives of three of these managers are chosen for more in-depth analysis. The paper…
Nonprofit Marketing
Branded Lives: The Production and Consumption of Meaning at Work
Doing what your big sister does: Sex, postfeminism and the YA chick lit series
Mass-marketed teen chick lit has become a publishing phenomenon and has begun to attract critical interest among children’s literature scholars. Much of this critical work, however, has shied away from robust critical assessment of the postfeminist conditions informing the production and reception of young adult series like Private, Gossip Girl and Choose Your Own Destiny. Existing analyses may nod to the origins of the genre in women’s chick lit…
Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli's Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox's Fern Gully (1992)
Informed by ecocriticism, this article conducts a comparative examination of two contemporary animated children's films, Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fern Gully (1992). While both films advocate for the prevention of deforestation, they are, to varying degrees, antithetical to environmentalism. Both films reject the principles of deep ecology in displacing responsibility for environmental destruction on to ‘supernatural’ forces and exhibit anthro…
Agents for Change and Changed Agents: The Micro‐politics of Change and Feminism in the Academy
This article explores gender politics and processes in the academy and investigates change from the perspectives of feminist academics. In particular, it explores the experiences of women academics attempting to effect change to the gendered status quo of their own institutions. Focusing on micro‐politics, the feminist movement is empirically explored in localized spaces of resistance and in the small but significant individual efforts at making …
Practising Thrift at Dinnertime: Mealtime Leftovers, Sacrifice and Family Membership
Exploring our relationship with mealtime leftovers tells us a lot about not only our relationships with waste, but with one another, in the home. In our study of British mealtimes we explore how leftovers are transformed and reused as meals. We refer to theories of disposal in exploring the skills involved in transforming leftovers. We also explore the motivations behind these transformations. Drawing on the work of Miller (1998) we examine how t…
Constructing the culinary consumer: Transformative and reflective processes in Italian cookbooks
This paper explores how culinary texts operate in both performative and transformative senses in relation to wider societal norms of gender and cultural capital. As such, the paper explores changes to the way in which the culinary consumer is presented in British Italian cookbooks from 1954 to 2005. Across the period, we see a shift in the gendered representation of the culinary subject, from a housewife in the period 1954–1974, to a working moth…
Right Taste, Wrong Place: Local Food Cultures, (Dis)identification and the Formation of Classed Identity
This article investigates how culinary taste contributes to the formation of middle class identity in a working class context in the UK. We explore practices of food consumption among a group of individuals working at a UK university located in a working class city. We find a rather limited and discrepant cosmopolitanism, in which culinary practices are evaluated in terms of those worth engaging in, and those not worth engaging in, based on their…
Unpacking the lunchbox: Biopedagogies, Mothering and Social Class
This study investigates how mothers respond to school surveillance of their children's packed lunches. In a context where increasing attention is focused on healthy eating, we adopt a biopedagogical approach to illustrate different positions and strategies which mothers occupy in relation to feeding their children in the school setting. We use photo-elicitation interviews and focus groups to trace both the discursive and practical significance of…
The unnaturalness of natural burials: Dispossessing the dispossessed
The rise of natural burials has not been without controversy. Traditionalist funeralists and a number of mourners struggle to reconcile new immaterial, anti-symbolic practices with those of old. Drawing from an extensive ethnographic study of German cemeteries of both traditional and natural denomination, and by employing a spatial theory approach, we consider the impact that the rise of natural burials has had on all parties in the funeral indus…
Intensive mothering in hard times: Foucauldian ethical self-formation and cruel optimism
Discourses of intensive mothering now seem to dominate European and American parenting cultures. This is a problem for those mothers who do not currently possess the resources to match up. In a study of Italian and British mothers who are experiencing low or reduced incomes, we observe the ways in which they internalize intensive mothering discourses through a process of ethical self-formation. This mode of self-formation involves detailed self-s…
Dimensions of marketplace exclusion: Representations, Resistances and Responses
This positioning paper explains and develops the concept of marketplace exclusion, which has received little attention to date in the field of marketing and consumer research. Essentially the concept refers to the mechanisms through which certain individuals and communities are barred from the resources and opportunities provided by the market. Participation in the market and the accompanying rights and responsibilities that allow individuals to …
Freethenipple - Digital Activism and Embodiment in the Contemporary Feminist Movement
Contemporary, or so-called fourth-wave feminism has heralded an era of online activism which celebrates the potential of this space to reconfigure and reorder gender relations. In this paper we explore an example of an online campaign, #freethenipple, which attempts to disrupt and destabilise a highly sexualised patriarchal breast ideal. We examine both the mechanisms of (re)inscription that feminist activists are using in the campaign and the re…
Exploring the Nothing in Relation to Meister Eckhart’s God and Martin Heidegger’s Being
This paper aims to establish a parallel between Meister Eckhart’s statement that ‘God is Nothing’ and Martin Heidegger’s claim that ‘Being is Nothing.’ By observing a pattern of negation in the thought of both thinkers I will ultimately suggest that in these statements, they have reached the same conclusion. To observe negation in Eckhart I will examine his principle of indistinct distinction, which ultimately negates negation itself; for Heidegg…
Foodwork and foodcare in hard times: Mothering, value, and values
In this article, we analyze the foodwork of mothers when feeding their families on low and reduced incomes. By exploring their accounts of food shopping and household budgeting, we argue that foodwork is intrinsically linked to other areas of social life and dominant values associated with “good mothering.” Through a careful consideration of the contexts and relations in which foodwork is valued, embedded, and made meaningful, we draw two key con…
Zine infrastructures as forms of organizing within feminist social movements
This paper explores how feminist social movements are organized and re‐generated across and through different media, both online and offline, using the example of zines. We critically examine the emergence and growth of an intersectional feminist zine community through a 6‐year in‐depth qualitative netnographic and ethnographic study. Theoretically, we build on work concerning feminist digital information and archival infrastructures, bringing it…
How Do Unsustainable Practices Remain Dominant? A Practice Theory Reinterpretation of Gramsci
Sociological studies of sustainable transformation have highlighted the relevance of 'unequal' and 'uneven' transformation dynamics. We argue that a practice-based approach provides far more insight into such unequal dynamics than currently recognized. We re-interpret the political concepts of agonism, antagonism and historic bloc that Gramsci used to analyse domination in order to theorize practice constellations and dynamics that are responsibl…
“Take back control”: Exploring the relationship between neoliberal inertia and far-right populism
This paper examines the connection between the persistent neoliberalism in today’s consumer culture and the rise of far-right politics, which offers a nationalistic alternative consumer society. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to analyse materials from the 2016 European referendum campaigns, our findings show that Remain discourse reinforces neoliberal globalist and individualist narratives, while Leave discourse promotes the …
Reconfiguring Migrant Meals and Doing Family: A Practice Theory Approach
Drawing on ethnographic research with six migrant families, this article explores how they reconfigure meal practices to stabilise family identity. The findings investigate three facets of the reconfiguration process: the reconfiguration of material arrangements; the reconfiguration of rhythms and spatial arrangements; and practitioners' changing enrolments across practice bundles such as parenting and working. We argue that there is a set of mac…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art (6 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (6 works) · Politics (6 works)