Erin Sanders-McDonagh

Conducting “dirty research” with extreme groups: understanding academia as a dirty work site

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore dirty work sites within an academic context. Working with particular “unloved” groups (Fielding, 1993) can present a number of challenges to researchers, and if professional boundaries are not carefully maintained, researchers can be seen as “dirty workers” within an academic context. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws a qualitative research project that explores womens involvement with nationalist movements in the UK. Findings – Researching “unloved” groups, and in particular racist organizations, presents a number of potential emotional and professional, and can render researchers “dirty workers” if clear professional boundaries are not maintained. Originality/value – Examining academia and some academic research as a dirty work site adds to existing literature (Kreiner et al., 2006) that suggests any occupation can have a “dirty work” element that must be negotiated. This paper presents new challenges for managing spoiled “dirty” identities,...

Sanitising the City: Exploring Hegemonic Gentrification in London's Soho:

This article will explore the gentrification of Soho, reflecting on ethnographic research undertaken in the area over the past fifteen months, to argue that the recent social, political, and economic changes in Soho must be understood in relation to private, marketized and globalized neoliberal capitalist forces. We argue that the changes to the area result in a heavily-weighted form of gentrification that works to actively and knowingly sanitize the city, removing ‘undesirable’ people and venues from the area. As such, we propose to define this process as ‘hegemonic gentrification’, and distinguish this from other forms of gentrification in order to understand the different processes that underpin these specific changes, and more broadly, it allows us to problematize these changes as regards to the ‘right to the city’, and to expand current understandings in a way that allows for a more nuanced analysis of urban gentrification and its impacts within neolibreral capitalism.

Porn by any other name: women's consumption of public sex performances in Amsterdam

This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted in Amsterdam, exploring the ways in which women tourists engage with public sex performances, drawing comparisons between these types of shows and other types of pornographic materials. Empirical data collected in Amsterdam, focusing on womens visual consumption of public sex performances at a well-known tourist sexual theatres that features live sex (including vaginal penetrative sex and oral sexual encounters for/by men/women, as well as masturbation and other highly sexualized acts), suggests that sex shows are positioned as legitimate sexual entertainment for men, women, and couples, and that a wide range of tourist women from different backgrounds visit these shows in substantial numbers. By attempting to unpick the ways in which women visually consume public sex performances, and thinking about this in relation to broader discussions around pornography and the literature around womens consumption practices, this paper will argue that many of the ...

from pillar to post: understanding the victimisation of women and children who experience domestic violence in an age of austerity

The dismantling of the welfare state across the United Kingdom (and indeed a number of other Western industrialised democracies, such as Canada and the United States) and the reductions to welfare provisions and entitlements are having a detrimental impact on women’s equality and safety. Towers and Walby argue that the recent cuts to welfare provision in the United Kingdom, particularly for women’s services, could lead to increased levels of violence for women and girls. This paper makes the argument that female victims of domestic abuse experience violence on two levels: first, at the intimate/personal level through their relationship with an abuser and, second, at a structural level, through the state failing to provide adequate protection and provision for women who have experienced violence in intimate relationships. Using a specific example of post-violence community services delivered to both the children of women who have experienced domestic violence and the women themselves, this paper draws on empirical research carried out in 2010–2011 with London-based third-sector and public sector organisations delivering the Against Violence and Abuse Project ‘Community Group Programme’. We argue that the lack of services for women involved in, or exiting, a violent relationship can amount to state-sanctioned violence, if funding is withheld, or indeed, stretched to breaking point.

Resisting neoliberal policies in UK higher education: Exploring the impact of critical pedagogies on non-traditional students in a post-1992 university

In this article, we focus on how neoliberal performance metrics impact on non-traditional students at a modern university in England. We argue that the introduction of ‘quality assurance’ measures, (such as the National Student Survey and the Teaching Excellence Framework) are driven by an ideology which purports to have student’s best interests at heart by raising teaching standards, focusing on graduate employability and wider participation, but in fact works to discourage critical pedagogic practices that would allow for more democratic and dialogic spaces of learning. This article presents findings from one multi-modal qualitative case study at a particular higher education institution in London, where many of the students originate from socially and economically deprived areas and frequently come from ethnic minority groups. We argue that the radical space of the classroom provides a unique opportunity for students to move into collective and empathetic modes of learning that yield both normative measures of ‘success’ as well as more transformative outcomes. We maintain that critical pedagogies work to disrupt the neoliberal narrative that champions individual success and the student-as-consumer model, and by doing so, helps to redress the persistent inequalities that non-traditional students face in UK higher education settings.

Women’s Support for UKIP: Exploring Gender, Nativism, and the Populist Radical Right (PRR)

In her chapter on the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Erin Sanders-McDonagh explores the views of female UKIP supporters and adds to existing literature on the importance of nativism within the populist radical right (PRR). Nativism has often been seen as a key factor in determining electoral support for PRR parties, and women in this sample are clearly attracted to UKIP as a result of their adherence to nativist ideas. Drawing on in-depth interview data, she argues that women who support UKIP interpolate nativism in highly gendered ways—with Muslim women specifically seen to be a threat to ‘British’ culture and values. She looks at the shift from the 2014 UKIP Manifesto to the 2017 Manifesto, drawing attention to the ways in which Islamophobic sentiments creep in. Sanders-McDonagh highlights the consonance in the official discourses of UKIP and the anti-Muslim expressions in the interview data and argues that examining these shifts in political ideologies can reveal important aspects of the nature of gendered political dynamics.

Space, power and sexuality: transgressive and transformative possibilities at the interstices of spatial boundaries

Abstract The themed section consists of articles that explore the relationship between power and space in relation to gender and sexuality by looking at processes of transgression, subversion or expansion of normative spatial practices and narratives. Using a theoretical framework that draws out power and space within a more specific context of feminist and queer literature, the articles explore the possibility to transgress, subvert or expand norms at the interstices of spatial boundaries beyond traditional binaries and hierarchies. Collectively, the articles call for a continued theoretical and methodological focus into the importance of looking at everyday sites of struggles and resistance in the crevasses, the liminal zones of space. The transgression of spatialized norms of sexuality and gender present a transformative potential that should be recognized for its political significance but, we argue, with caution as heteronormative and heteropatriarchal norms too often remain de rigueur in a neoliberal context.

Immoral geographies and Soho’s sex shops: exploring spaces of sexual diversity in London

Abstract London’s Soho, situated in the urban heart of the city has long been understood as both a cosmopolitan and diverse space where transgression and deviance, particularly in relation to the sex industry and sexual commerce, are constitutive of this area. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, we add to some of the existing debates on sexual spaces in Soho by documenting the changes to the social/sexual landscape of sex shops in this area, and look to geographers interested in the spatial politics of gender and sexuality to understand the importance of this particular place. Looking at two particular sex shops in Soho, we argue that the spatial practices in this very specific part of the city encourage a disruption of traditional hierarchies that often govern gender and sexed practices, and invite women, LGBTQ and kink communities to inhabit more inclusive spaces of sexual citizenship.