Riley
Biographic Data
| ID | 13704 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Riley |
| FAMILY NAME | Riley |
| SIGNATURE | RILEY |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bath |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6712-6976 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 342 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 63 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
“It Just Adds More Fuel to the Weak Woman Fire”: Perimenopausal “Excuses”, Feminist Dilemmas, and the Politics of Menstruation Tracking Apps
Perimenopause is often marked by unpredictable bodily changes. This unpredictability sits in tension with dominant cultural discourses that valorise self-discipline, control, and health optimisation. In this context, menstruation tracking apps are promoted as tools for self-management through bodily surveillance, reinforcing a “mythical norm” of bodily control and stability. Using cooperative inquiry, within a poststructuralist feminist framework…
Problematising menstrual tracking apps: Presenting a novel critical scoping review methodology for mapping and interpreting research literature
OBJECTIVES: To showcase a novel, theoretically informed methodology for conducting scoping reviews by operationalising critical theory. And to advance the field of women's digital health by applying this critical scoping review methodology (CSR) to research on menstrual tracking apps (MTAs). METHODS AND MEASURES: 116 articles published in English, between November 2015 and November 2023, focusing on MTAs, and/or user's experiences of MTAs, were t…
Introducing three-dimensional body mapping as a creative method for exploring embodied experiences
This paper introduces three-dimensional (3D) body mapping, a creative methodological innovation that advances the existing feminist method of body mapping. We developed 3D body mapping to explore how feminist concerns are lived and felt through the body, and to illuminate the forms of knowledge that emerge from these embodied experiences. We situate these concerns within feminist phenomenology and recent turns toward new materialism and more-than…
Gendered Barriers and Dressing Rituals: The Role of the Uniform in Becoming Women Prison Officers in Men's Prisons
Men's prisons can be particularly challenging workplaces for women, who often experience barriers to belonging. While uniforms are recognised as important for professional identity in military and policing contexts, how they shape women's identity practices in prison work has not been widely examined. To address this gap, we completed a reflexive thematic analysis of data produced through a cooperative inquiry project with 16 women working in Aus…
Understanding the disconnect between lifestyle advice and patient engagement: A discourse analysis of how expert knowledge is constructed by patients with CHD
OBJECTIVE: Adherence to healthy lifestyle advice is effective in prevention of non-communicable diseases like coronary heart disease (CHD). Yet patient disengagement is the norm. We take a novel discursive approach to explore patients' negotiation of lifestyle advice and behaviour change. METHOD: A discourse analysis was performed on 35 longitudinal interviews with 22 heterosexual British people in a long-term relationship, where one had a diagno…
Resisting normative sexual subjectivities: A discourse analysis of how feminist alternative media re-shape constructions of women’s sexual desire
How (In)Visibility Shapes Women's Experience of Inequity in Prison Work: A Cooperative Inquiry With Women Working in Australian Men's Prisons
Research shows that women working in men's prisons face both scrutiny and exclusion within a high‐risk, masculinized occupational culture. Addressing a gap in theorizing the processes involved, this article explores the interplay of gender, visibility, and power through a poststructuralist‐informed thematic analysis of data from 16 women participating in four cooperative inquiry groups in Australian men's prisons. Theorized through Lewis and Simp…
Empowering middle-aged women? A discourse analysis of gendered ageing in the Chinese television reality show Sisters who Make Waves
Sisters Who Make Waves is a popular Chinese reality show that affirmatively centres "middle-aged" women.Given its popularity and positive framing, the show has significant potential to shape Chinese discourses of gendered aging.To examine this potential, we performed a discourse analysis on Season 2 of Sisters Who Make Waves, identifying its discursive constructions of gendered aging; the subject positions within these discourses; and the rhetori…
Postfeminist Healthism: Understanding the Gendering of Healthism Using Menstrual Tracking Apps as an Example
Postfeminist healthism’ offers an essential framework for understanding how healthism is gendered. In this article, we describe and advance the concept of postfeminist sensibility and its synergistic alignments with healthism. We then consider how postfeminist healthism operates as a subjectifying force for the millions of girls, women, and other feminine‐identified people globally—even when it harms their mental or physical health. We use menstr…
Coping with gendered racism in the British healthcare sector: A feminist and phenomenological approach
The UK National Health Service (NHS) is one of the largest employers in the world and relies heavily on Black migrant women. Nonetheless, reports of (gendered) racism persist. This phenomenologically inspired qualitative study shares findings from empirical interview data with female Nigerian doctors and nurses working in the NHS, with a specific focus on how these women cope with the racism and gendered racism they experience in their everyday w…
Postfeminism in prison: A discourse analysis of women correctional officers’ accounts of gendered appearance at work
This article explores sense-making among female prison workers as they negotiate their appearance at work. Appearance is a vehicle through which gender is performed; yet research into how women account for their appearance in this male-dominated profession remains limited. We address this gap through an analysis of 16 women's accounts of their appearance work produced from an in-depth cooperative inquiry with women working in Australian men's pri…
Digital Feeling
This book offers a trailblazing account of postfeminist sensibility as a digital feeling that shapes how we understand the world around us.
Love and lifestyle: How ‘relational healthism’ structures couples’ talk of engagement with lifestyle advice associated with a new diagnosis of coronary heart disease
OBJECTIVES: Healthy lifestyle change improves outcomes in coronary heart disease (CHD), but is rarely sustained. To better understand barriers to lifestyle change, we examined couples' talk of engaging with lifestyle advice after one partner receives a diagnosis of CHD. DESIGN: A longitudinal qualitative design, in which a poststructuralist discourse analysis was performed on 35 interviews, conducted with 22 heterosexual British people in a long …
All inside our heads? A critical discursive review of unconscious bias training in the sciences
In response to persistent systemic gendered and racial exclusions in the sciences, unconscious or implicit bias training is now widely established as an organizational intervention in Higher Education (HE). Recent systematic reviews have considered the efficacy of unconscious bias training (UBT) but not the wider characteristics and effects of the interventions themselves. Guided by feminist scholarship in critical psychology and post‐structurali…
How to have great sex: Exploring sexual subjectivities and discourses of desire in mainstream online media aimed at women
Affirmative sexual subjectivity and agency are fostered by positive understandings of sexual desire and pleasure. Yet, research shows that print media circulate problematic discourses, including constructing women's desire as passive, linked to objectification, or as a form of (postfeminist) empowerment enacted through pleasing men. Developing this work with a specific focus on digital media and the subject positions offered there, a Foucauldian-…
Developing a Choice-Based Digital Fiction for Body Image Bibliotherapy
Body dissatisfaction is so common in the western world that it has become the norm, especially among women and girls. Writing New Body Worlds is a transdisciplinary research-creation project that aims to address these issues by developing an interactive digital fiction for body image bibliotherapy. It is created with the critical co-design participation of a group of young women and non-binary individuals (aged 18–25) from diverse backgrounds, wh…
The production of difference and “becoming Black”: The experiences of female Nigerian doctors and nurses working in the National Health Service
In this article, we combine theory from cultural theorist Stuart Hall with phenomenological psychology to analyze the experiences of female Nigerian doctors and nurses working in the National Health Service (NHS). Drawing on 32 interviews with 24 nurses and doctors, our empirical analysis demonstrates how encounters with patients, colleagues and the structures of the NHS collapsed these health care professionals' identities into a single category…
Algorithms and Decision-Making in the Public Sector
This article surveys the use of algorithmic systems to support decision-making in the public sector. Governments adopt, procure, and use algorithmic systems to support their functions within several contexts -- including criminal justice, education, and benefits provision -- with important consequences for accountability, privacy, social inequity, and public participation in decision-making. We explore the social implications of municipal algorit…
Doing Your Qualitative Psychology Project
Introduction and Aims of the Book - Cath Sullivan, Stephen Gibson and Sarah Riley Coming up with a Research Question - Kathryn Kinmond Planning and Ethics - Cath Sullivan and Sarah C.E Riley Managing the Project - Sarah C.E Riley and Nigel King Doing a Literature Review - Michael Forrester Collecting Your Data - Siobhan Hugh-Jones and Stephen Gibson Analysing Your Data - Stephen Gibson and Siobhan Hugh-Jones Evaluating Qualitative Research - Noll…
The righteous outrage of post-truth anti-feminism: An analysis of TubeCrush and feminist research in and of public space
Contemporary gender relations occur in a polarised environment characterised by popular feminism and networked misogyny. This context structures feminist researchers’ public engagement and exposes them to online hostility. Addressing a paucity of work on the affective dimensions of digital hostility, this article analyses 2400 comments made in The Daily Mail Online in response to feminist research on TubeCrush, a website featuring unsolicited ima…
Digital health: Critical and cross-disciplinary perspectives Deborah Lupton
A poststructuralist-informed inclusive masculinity theory (PS-IMT): Developing IMT to account for complexities in masculinities, using learning to dance Latin and ballroom as an example
Inclusive Masculinity Theory (IMT) offers an important framework for conceptualizing masculinities within cultures characterized by declining homophobia. But the framework faces several challenges when it theorizes masculinities as relatively stable sets of attitudes and behaviours in the context of complex and dynamic contemporary gender practices and identifications. Offering a solution through a poststructuralist-informed IMT (PS-IMT), we reco…
QMiP Conference 2019Archives, experiments and rhetoric: Reflections on a secondary qualitative analysis of Stanley Milgram’s obedience experimentsQualitative methods and critical psychology – Can we w…
Jenny Mercer, one of the conference chairs, takes a look ahead to our forthcoming conference
I like to go out and have a good time: An ethnography of a group of young middle class urban Indian women participating in a new drinking culture
Celebrations amongst challenges: Considering the past, present and future of the qualitative methods in psychology section of the British Psychology Society
This article summarises the standpoint of the Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society regarding the current position of qualitative research in psychology in the United Kingdom. The article is in three parts. Part one documents the historical development of the section, outlining its rationale, remit, and current activities. These activities aim to champion and develop qualitative methods in psychology, supp…
Technologies of Sexiness: Theorizing Women’s Engagement in the Sexualization of Culture
‘Raunch’ culture and ‘porno-chic’ are examples of a dramatic rise in the re-sexualization of women’s bodies. Wrapped in discourses of individualism, consumerism and empowerment, and often excluding those who are not white, heterosexual and slim, this sexualization of culture has created significant debates within feminist literature with regard to the question of how to value women’s choices of participation in sexualized culture while also maint…
The ‘pleasure citizen’: Analyzing partying as a form of social and political participation
In this article, we explore the potential for leisure as a site for new forms of political participation. Using electronic dance music culture (EDMC) as an example, we locate our analysis within theories of neo-liberalism and neo-tribalism, both of which suggest that political participation may be occurring at an informal level through consumption. Interview and focus group data on participation in EDMC in the southwest of England were analyzed, …
It’s just between girls: Negotiating the postfeminist gaze in women’s ‘looking talk’
Feminists have argued that women’s bodies, appearance, and subjectivity are formed through a multitude of regulatory dispositif and disciplinary apparatus. One such disciplinary technique has been “looking”, evidenced in work on the male gaze, disciplinary power, misrecognition, objectification, and indirect social aggression. But there remains a significant gap in the role of women’s looking in subject formation, particularly within the context …
The gendered nature of self-help
Self-help promises the chance of being “better”. Across multifarious platforms, including books, apps and television shows, it offers hope that we can be our own agents of change for a happier life. Critical research troubles this premise, arguing that the recurring trope of the individualistic ideal-self found in self-help literature is at the expense of seeking solutions in collective, feminist, or otherwise politicised activism. Self-help is a…
Socio-spatial authenticity at co-created music festivals
From the early days of hippie counter-culture, music festivals have been an important part of the British summer. Today they are commercialised offerings without the counter-cultural discourse of earlier times. Drawing on participant observation, interviews and focus groups conducted at a rock festival and a smaller boutique festival, the paper examines how their design, organisation and management are co-created with participants to produce auth…
Feminism versus femininity? Exploring feminist dilemmas through cooperative inquiry research
This article analyses the findings from a cooperative inquiry study with seven feminist identified women based in the UK. It explores the tensions participants experienced in negotiating their feminist identification on the one hand and engagements in normative beauty practices on the other. A discourse analysis of participants’ talk identified an ideological dilemma of ‘feminism versus femininity’, a contemporary re-working of long-standing cons…
Doing weight: Pro‐ana and recovery identities in cyberspace
This paper explores the role of online ‘body talk’ (text‐based communication about bodies and bodily experiences) in the management, negotiation and development of eating disorder related identities. Two anorexia related Internet discussion forums (a ‘pro‐ana’ and a ‘recovery’ website) were analyzed through the means of discourse analysis. The analysis focused on the type of body‐talk produced in the different sites and the functions of this talk…
Algorithms and Decision-Making in the Public Sector
This article surveys the use of algorithmic systems to support decision-making in the public sector. Governments adopt, procure, and use algorithmic systems to support their functions within several contexts -- including criminal justice, education, and benefits provision -- with important consequences for accountability, privacy, social inequity, and public participation in decision-making. We explore the social implications of municipal algorit…
Managing Meaning and Belonging: Young Women's Negotiation of Authenticity in Body Art
It is a common sense ideology that appearance is vertically representative, in that the outer surface reflects the inner self. This paper explores the impact of this ideology on women’s understandings of their Body Art. Meaning and belonging were identified as central themes in accounts produced from two focus groups with young women in Glasgow, Scotland, who had piercings and tattoos. Meaning was constructed through two alternative accounts. Fir…
Postfeminist Heterotopias: Negotiating ‘Safe’ and ‘Seedy’ in the British Sex Shop Space
This article contributes to debates concerning the sexualization of culture in the European context by analysing shifts in contemporary forms of British women’s (hetero)sexual sexual subjectivities in relation to consumer culture. The article employs a ‘heterotopological’ analysis of how space is materialized through history, power and discourse. A two-part analysis is employed that, first, maps the history of British sex shops in relation to two…
The Management of the Traditional Male Role: A discourse analysis of the constructions and functions of provision
This study examines men's talk on gender roles in the context of the lack of a legitimate successor to the male provider role (Bernard, 1981) despite social change in gender relations and egalitarian value systems. Discourse analysis was performed on 46 interviews with professional, white, heterosexual men to examine the management and functions of talk that legitimised or contested traditional gender roles. Traditional gender roles were justifie…
Immaculate consumption: Negotiating the Sex Symbol in Postfeminist Celebrity Culture
Contemporary female celebrity is produced within a context of postfeminism, sexualised culture, consumerism and neoliberalism. Feminist analyses often argue that such celebrity figures commodify female sexuality and depoliticise feminist issues regarding autonomy and sexual agency; although some celebrate contemporary celebrity as a site for producing less conventional sexual identities. In this paper we contribute to these debates with analysis …
The Case for 'Everyday Politics: Evaluating Neo-tribal Theory as a Way to Understand Alternative Forms of Political Participation, Using Electronic Dance Music Culture as an Example
This article argues that youth cultural leisure and consumption practices have the potential to be sites for alternative political participation, an 'everyday politics' that involves a personalizing of politics and an 'aloof ' stance regarding official institutions. Drawing on the work of Harris (2001) and Maffesoli (1996), the article outlines the lenses that make up 'everyday politics', namely 'sociality and proxemics', 'solidarity and belongin…
Maintaining Power: Male Constructions of ‘Feminists’ and ‘Feminist Values’
Research in the past decade has identified a trend in which feminist values are given support while feminists themselves are constructed negatively. It is argued that the incorporation of feminist values into the mainstream and simultaneous rejection of those associated with the ‘movement’ itself can be understood through analysing related discursive practices. Although significant changes in gender relations have occurred, the decoupling of femi…
We achieve the impossible’: Discourses of freedom and escape at music festivals and free parties
In this article, we explore the notion of freedom as a form of governance within contemporary consumer culture in a sphere where ‘freedom’ appears as a key component: outdoor music-based leisure events, notably music festivals and free parties. ‘Freedom’ is commodified as central to the marketing of many music festivals, which now form a highly commercialised sector of the UK leisure industry, subject to various regulatory restrictions. Free part…
He’s a total TubeCrush”: Post-feminist sensibility as intimate publics
In this paper, we analyze the website TubeCrush, where people post and share unsolicited photographs of “guy candy” seen on the London Underground. We use TubeCrush as a case study to develop Berlant’s intimate publics as a lens for examining post-feminist sensibility and masculinity in the liminal space between home/work. The paper responds to notions of reverse sexism and post-sexism used to make sense of women’s apparent objectification of men…
A Feminist Construction of Body Art as a Harmful Cultural Practice: A Response to Jeffreys
The righteous outrage of post-truth anti-feminism: An analysis of TubeCrush and feminist research in and of public space
Contemporary gender relations occur in a polarised environment characterised by popular feminism and networked misogyny. This context structures feminist researchers’ public engagement and exposes them to online hostility. Addressing a paucity of work on the affective dimensions of digital hostility, this article analyses 2400 comments made in The Daily Mail Online in response to feminist research on TubeCrush, a website featuring unsolicited ima…
Presenting Critical Realist Discourse Analysis as a Tool for Making Sense of Service Users' Accounts of Their Mental Health Problems
Making sense of service users' accounts of their mental health problems requires a method able to deal with complexity. Yet the different underlying epistemological and ontological positions of the methods researchers use, based, for example, on biomedicine or social constructionism, produce highly partial analyses. Addressing this problem, this article offers a method of Critical Realist Discourse Analysis (CRDA) that employs a synthesized disco…
Beyond psychopathology: Interrogating (dis)orders of body weight and body management
As David Smail and Janet Bostock (1999: p. 78) noted a decade ago '[c]larifying the role of ideology and culture as ''distal'' influences on subjective experience is at once one of the most important and one of the most difficult tasks facing community psychology.' It remains equally important and, perhaps, just as difficult today. This special issue comprises a series of critical explorations of the ways in which subjectivities and subjective ex…
A poststructuralist-informed inclusive masculinity theory (PS-IMT): Developing IMT to account for complexities in masculinities, using learning to dance Latin and ballroom as an example
Inclusive Masculinity Theory (IMT) offers an important framework for conceptualizing masculinities within cultures characterized by declining homophobia. But the framework faces several challenges when it theorizes masculinities as relatively stable sets of attitudes and behaviours in the context of complex and dynamic contemporary gender practices and identifications. Offering a solution through a poststructuralist-informed IMT (PS-IMT), we reco…
Celebrations amongst challenges: Considering the past, present and future of the qualitative methods in psychology section of the British Psychology Society
This article summarises the standpoint of the Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society regarding the current position of qualitative research in psychology in the United Kingdom. The article is in three parts. Part one documents the historical development of the section, outlining its rationale, remit, and current activities. These activities aim to champion and develop qualitative methods in psychology, supp…
Perception vs. reality: The relationship between low-income homeownership, perceived financial stress, and financial hardship
How to have great sex: Exploring sexual subjectivities and discourses of desire in mainstream online media aimed at women
Affirmative sexual subjectivity and agency are fostered by positive understandings of sexual desire and pleasure. Yet, research shows that print media circulate problematic discourses, including constructing women's desire as passive, linked to objectification, or as a form of (postfeminist) empowerment enacted through pleasing men. Developing this work with a specific focus on digital media and the subject positions offered there, a Foucauldian-…
The Effects of Differential Interviewer Incentives on a Field Data Collection Effort
Surveys routinely offer incentives to motivate respondents and increase the likelihood of their participation, yet surprisingly little is known about the effectiveness of interviewer incentives. If interviewer incentives increase interviewers' success in gaining cooperation, they could help address declining survey response rates. In this article, we present the results of an experiment testing the effectiveness of interviewer incentives in the f…
Maintaining Power: Male Constructions of ‘Feminists’ and ‘Feminist Values’
Research in the past decade has identified a trend in which feminist values are given support while feminists themselves are constructed negatively. It is argued that the incorporation of feminist values into the mainstream and simultaneous rejection of those associated with the ‘movement’ itself can be understood through analysing related discursive practices. Although significant changes in gender relations have occurred, the decoupling of femi…
A Feminist Construction of Body Art as a Harmful Cultural Practice: A Response to Jeffreys
The Management of the Traditional Male Role: A discourse analysis of the constructions and functions of provision
This study examines men's talk on gender roles in the context of the lack of a legitimate successor to the male provider role (Bernard, 1981) despite social change in gender relations and egalitarian value systems. Discourse analysis was performed on 46 interviews with professional, white, heterosexual men to examine the management and functions of talk that legitimised or contested traditional gender roles. Traditional gender roles were justifie…
Managing Meaning and Belonging: Young Women's Negotiation of Authenticity in Body Art
It is a common sense ideology that appearance is vertically representative, in that the outer surface reflects the inner self. This paper explores the impact of this ideology on women’s understandings of their Body Art. Meaning and belonging were identified as central themes in accounts produced from two focus groups with young women in Glasgow, Scotland, who had piercings and tattoos. Meaning was constructed through two alternative accounts. Fir…
Critical Realism in Discourse Analysis: A Presentation of a Systematic Method of Analysis Using Women's Talk of Motherhood, Childcare and Female Employment as an Example
In critical realism, language is understood as constructing our social realities. However, these constructions are theorized as being shaped by the possibilities and constraints inherent in the material world. For critical realists, material practices are given an ontological status that is independent of, but in relation with, discursive practices. The advantage in taking a critical realist, rather than relativist, approach is that analysis can …
The Case for Critical Realist Discourse Analysis as a Viable Method in Discursive Work
In this reply to Speer's response to our paper we argue that in presenting our method for doing critical realist discourse analysis (CRDA) our paper provided a systematic method from which to do CRDA that was timely, rigorous and significantly different from conversation analysis (CA) in its examination of material practices. We note that our paper addressed a methodological, not epistemological, issue and make a call for a commitment within the …
Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management
Using work produced from the critical and postmodern arena in social sciences, this book examines three key areas - representation, identities and practice - to explore and interrogate how body and we
The Social and Cultural Uses of Ketamine
INTRODUCTION: Pregnancy is a crucial period which ultimately directly impacts two individuals health and wellbeing. Within the UK, a standardised pattern of care is established with collaborations across disciplines to the benefit of women and babies. During the COVID19 pandemic, this pattern of care was disrupted to align with protective protocols which until now, has not been formally reported. METHODS: A retrospective, mixed methods study of U…
Ketamine: The Divisive Dissociative. A Discourse Analysis of the Constructions of Ketamine by Participants of a Free Party (Rave) Scene
This article examines the multiple and contradictory understandings that participants of a free party (rave) scene in the South West of England drew upon when talking about ketamine, and the role of these understandings in identity and consumption practices. The data is drawn from 19 semi-structured interviews and one focus group conducted in two phases over a period of 17 months with participants associated with a particular sound system. The da…
Beyond psychopathology: Interrogating (dis)orders of body weight and body management
As David Smail and Janet Bostock (1999: p. 78) noted a decade ago '[c]larifying the role of ideology and culture as ''distal'' influences on subjective experience is at once one of the most important and one of the most difficult tasks facing community psychology.' It remains equally important and, perhaps, just as difficult today. This special issue comprises a series of critical explorations of the ways in which subjectivities and subjective ex…
Doing weight: Pro‐ana and recovery identities in cyberspace
This paper explores the role of online ‘body talk’ (text‐based communication about bodies and bodily experiences) in the management, negotiation and development of eating disorder related identities. Two anorexia related Internet discussion forums (a ‘pro‐ana’ and a ‘recovery’ website) were analyzed through the means of discourse analysis. The analysis focused on the type of body‐talk produced in the different sites and the functions of this talk…
Turn on, tune in, but don’t drop out: The impact of neo-liberalism on magic mushroom users’ (in)ability to imagine collectivist social worlds
Postfeminist Heterotopias: Negotiating ‘Safe’ and ‘Seedy’ in the British Sex Shop Space
This article contributes to debates concerning the sexualization of culture in the European context by analysing shifts in contemporary forms of British women’s (hetero)sexual sexual subjectivities in relation to consumer culture. The article employs a ‘heterotopological’ analysis of how space is materialized through history, power and discourse. A two-part analysis is employed that, first, maps the history of British sex shops in relation to two…
The ‘pleasure citizen’: Analyzing partying as a form of social and political participation
In this article, we explore the potential for leisure as a site for new forms of political participation. Using electronic dance music culture (EDMC) as an example, we locate our analysis within theories of neo-liberalism and neo-tribalism, both of which suggest that political participation may be occurring at an informal level through consumption. Interview and focus group data on participation in EDMC in the southwest of England were analyzed, …
Technologies of Sexiness: Theorizing Women’s Engagement in the Sexualization of Culture
‘Raunch’ culture and ‘porno-chic’ are examples of a dramatic rise in the re-sexualization of women’s bodies. Wrapped in discourses of individualism, consumerism and empowerment, and often excluding those who are not white, heterosexual and slim, this sexualization of culture has created significant debates within feminist literature with regard to the question of how to value women’s choices of participation in sexualized culture while also maint…
The Case for 'Everyday Politics: Evaluating Neo-tribal Theory as a Way to Understand Alternative Forms of Political Participation, Using Electronic Dance Music Culture as an Example
This article argues that youth cultural leisure and consumption practices have the potential to be sites for alternative political participation, an 'everyday politics' that involves a personalizing of politics and an 'aloof ' stance regarding official institutions. Drawing on the work of Harris (2001) and Maffesoli (1996), the article outlines the lenses that make up 'everyday politics', namely 'sociality and proxemics', 'solidarity and belongin…
Action, Scholarship, Reflection, Renewal
I'm honored and delighted by your invitation to give this talk today; it feels like a homecoming
The Effects of Differential Interviewer Incentives on a Field Data Collection Effort
Surveys routinely offer incentives to motivate respondents and increase the likelihood of their participation, yet surprisingly little is known about the effectiveness of interviewer incentives. If interviewer incentives increase interviewers' success in gaining cooperation, they could help address declining survey response rates. In this article, we present the results of an experiment testing the effectiveness of interviewer incentives in the f…
Feminism versus femininity? Exploring feminist dilemmas through cooperative inquiry research
This article analyses the findings from a cooperative inquiry study with seven feminist identified women based in the UK. It explores the tensions participants experienced in negotiating their feminist identification on the one hand and engagements in normative beauty practices on the other. A discourse analysis of participants’ talk identified an ideological dilemma of ‘feminism versus femininity’, a contemporary re-working of long-standing cons…
Perception vs. reality: The relationship between low-income homeownership, perceived financial stress, and financial hardship
Finding Support and Negotiating Identity: An Analysis of the Structure and Content of Newbie Posts and their Elicited Replies on Five Pro-Eating Disorder Websites
Building on work that has identified the difficulties ‘newbies’ (people joining an internet forum for the first time) have in negotiating acceptance onto eating disorder related forums, the present study reports a discourse analysis and a descriptive statistical analysis of the structure and content of newbie first posts and the responses to them. Analysis of posts from five English language pro-ana sites, collated over the course of one month sh…
Immaculate consumption: Negotiating the Sex Symbol in Postfeminist Celebrity Culture
Contemporary female celebrity is produced within a context of postfeminism, sexualised culture, consumerism and neoliberalism. Feminist analyses often argue that such celebrity figures commodify female sexuality and depoliticise feminist issues regarding autonomy and sexual agency; although some celebrate contemporary celebrity as a site for producing less conventional sexual identities. In this paper we contribute to these debates with analysis …
What does REF mean for qualitative psychologists
Lord Stern’s review of the Research Excellence Framework: QMiP response
This is the QMiP response that was submitted to the British Psychological Society Research Board. The context for this response was a consultation call by Lord Stern who is charged with reviewing the Research Excellent Framework (REF)
We achieve the impossible’: Discourses of freedom and escape at music festivals and free parties
In this article, we explore the notion of freedom as a form of governance within contemporary consumer culture in a sphere where ‘freedom’ appears as a key component: outdoor music-based leisure events, notably music festivals and free parties. ‘Freedom’ is commodified as central to the marketing of many music festivals, which now form a highly commercialised sector of the UK leisure industry, subject to various regulatory restrictions. Free part…
Sociology (47 works) · Psychology (41 works) · Political science (30 works) · Gender Studies (23 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (21 works) · Gender Studies (18 works) · Social science (18 works) · Aesthetics (17 works) · Law (17 works)