A more representative chamber: representation and the House of Lords

Since 1997 there has been substantive reform of the House of Lords in an effort to make the chamber ‘more democratic and more representative’. Whilst the Labour government failed to press ahead with any of the proposed plans for further reform following the removal of the bulk of the hereditary peers in 1999, it remained committed to the notion that such reform must make the second chamber ‘more representative’. The coalition government's programme advocates a long-term aspiration for a House wholly or mainly elected on the basis of proportional representation, and a short-term approach based on additional appointments to ensure a balance of the parties. What is clear in all of these proposals for reform is a desire for the House of Lords to become more representative than it is at present. However, what is less clear is what is meant by ‘representative’ – who the House of Lords is supposed to represent, and what form representation will take. Moreover, in proposing to make the chamber more representative, either through appointment or election, little attention has been paid to how the current House of Lords provides representation. This article examines these questions in the context of Pitkin's classic conceptions of representation and peers' attitudes towards their own representative rol

Nonlinear dynamic analysis and seismic fragility assessment of a corrosion damaged integral bridge

Purpose In this paper the impact of corrosion of reinforcing steel in RC columns on the seismic performance of a multi-span concrete integral bridge is explored. A new constitutive model for corroded reinforcing steel is used. This model simulates the buckling of longitudinal reinforcement under cyclic loading and the impact of corrosion on buckling strength. Cover concrete strength is adjusted to account for corrosion induced damage and core concrete strength and ductility is adjusted to account for corrosion induced damage to transverse reinforcement. This study evaluates the impact which chloride induced corrosion of the reinforced concrete columns on the seismic fragility of the bridge. Fragility curves are developed at a various time intervals over the lifetime. The results of this study show that the bridge fragility increases significantly with corrosion. Design/methodology/approach This paper firstly evaluates the impact which chloride induced corrosion of the columns has on bridge fragility. Finally, fragility curves are developed at various time intervals over the lifetime of the bridge. The results of this study show that the bridge fragility increases significantly with corrosion. Findings 1) It was found that columns dominate the system fragility at all levels of deterioration. Therefore, it highlights the importance of good column design in terms of both seismic detailing and durability for this integral bridge type. 2) In terms of foundation settlement coupled with corrosion, it was found that settlements on the order of the discrete levels adopted for this study increased the system fragility at the slight, moderate and extensive damage states but their impact at the complete damage states is negligible. 3) Ageing considerations are currently neglected in widespread regional risk assessment and loss estimation packages for transport infrastructure. The result of this study provides a methodology that enables bridge managers and owners to employ in seismic risk assessment of existing aging bridges. Originality/value The modelling technician developed in this paper considers the impact of detailed corrosion damaged of RC column on nonlinear dynamic response and fragility of a corroded integral bridge under earthquake loading. The current modelling technique is the most comprehensive 3D fibre element model for seismic analysis and risk assessment of corroded bridges. </jats:sec

Designing and implementing a communications strategy: lessons learnt from HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health Research Programme Consortia.

In recent years there has been increasing recognition of the importance of strategic research communication. Health research organisations need to be able to communicate their research effectively to increase the probability that the findings influence policy and practice, and benefit those in greatest need. Many research funders are making communications a requirement of research funding. This paper reflects on the experience in developing and implementing communications strategies of several Research Programme Consortia funded by the Department for International Development.Different research topics will require different communications approaches in order to be effective. This is reflected in the diversity of strategies employed by different research programmes. Strategic research communications designed to influence policy and practice require different skills and expertise from those required for carrying out research and writing it up for publication in academic journals. Therefore researchers involved in communicating research should be supported in this work. One of the ways in which research programme consortia have sought to do this is through convening workshops to develop the communications skills of researchers from partner organisations. These have proven invaluable. Another way of providing ongoing support to those involved in communicating research is through a Communications Community of Practice. Where this has been used it has proven a good way to support researchers both with ideas and resources, but also a strong sense of belonging to a community that shares a common concern with communication. Developing strong partnerships with research users, other research organisations, knowledge intermediaries and other stakeholders is vital for effective communication.Embracing the challenges and opportunities presented by communicating research to influence policy practice is vital if research is to have maximum possible impact, and demonstrate its worth at a time when funding for health and development activities is at risk. Sharing lessons learnt in this process between research programmes is important to support this work

Pregnancy and childbirth in English prisons : institutional ignominy and the pains of imprisonment

© 2020 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Foundation for SHIL.With a prison population of approximately 9000 women in England, it is estimated that approximately 600 pregnancies and 100 births occur annually. Despite an extensive literature on the sociology of reproduction, pregnancy and childbirth among women prisoners is under‐researched. This article reports an ethnographic study in three English prisons undertaken in 2015‐2016, including interviews with 22 prisoners, six women released from prison and 10 staff members. Pregnant prisoners experience numerous additional difficulties in prison including the ambiguous status of a pregnant prisoner, physical aspects of pregnancy and the degradation of the handcuffed or chained prisoner during visits to the more public setting of hospital. This article draws on Erving Goffman's concepts of closed institutions, dramaturgy and mortification of self, Crewe et al.'s work on the gendered pains of imprisonment and Crawley's notion of ‘institutional thoughtlessness’, and proposes a new concept of institutional ignominy to understand the embodied situation of the pregnant prisoner.Peer reviewe

Flagships and tumbleweed: A history of the politics of gender justice work in Oxfam GB 1986–2015

This article contributes to scholarship on the political nature of feminists’ work in international development NGOs. The case study of Oxfam GB (OGB) is contemporary history, based on compiling a brief history of gender justice work between 1986 and 2014 and 18 months of part-time participant-observation fieldwork during 2014–15. I describe funding pressures and imperatives, contestations of meaning and power struggles within OGB and argue that gender justice becomes entangled in both internal and the external politics of international development. This is part of a wider research programme about how ideas on gender equality norms travel between and around development organizations, so I finally draw conclusions about how norms are contested and embodied. The shapeshifting political nature of feminist work challenges prevailing theories about how norms and ideas travel and take hold within organizations

Pion-Muon Asymmetry Revisited

Long ago an unexpected and unexplainable phenomena was observed. The distribution of muons from positive pion decay at rest was anisotropic with an excess in the backward direction relative to the direction of the proton beam from which the pions were created. Although this effect was observed by several different groups with pions produced by different means, the result was not accepted by the physics community, because it is in direct conflict with a large set of other experiments indicating that the pion is a pseudoscalar particle. It is possible to satisfy both sets of experiments if helicity-zero vector particles exist and the pion is such a particle. Helicity-zero vector particles have direction but no net spin. For the neutral pion to be a vector particle requires an additional modification to conventional theory as discussed herein. An experiment is proposed which can prove that the asymmetry in the distribution of muons from pion decay is a genuine physical effect because the asymmetry can be modified in a controllable manner. A positive result will also prove that the pion is NOT a pseudoscalar particle.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Mothers behaving badly: chaotic hedonism and the crisis of neoliberal social reproduction

This article focuses on the significance of the plethora of representations of mothers ‘behaving badly’ in contemporary anglophone media texts, including the films Bad Moms, Fun Mom Dinner and Bad Mom’s Christmas, the book and online cartoons Hurrah for Gin and the recent TV comedy dramas Motherland, The Let Down and Catastrophe. All these media texts include representations of, first, mothers in the midst of highly chaotic everyday spaces where any smooth routine of domesticity is conspicuous by its absence; and second, mothers behaving hedonistically, usually through drinking and partying, behaviour that is more conventionally associated with men or women without children. After identifying the social type of the mother behaving badly (MBB), the article locates and analyses it in relation to several different social and cultural contexts. These contexts are: a neoliberal crisis in social reproduction marked by inequality and overwork; the continual if contested role of women as ‘foundation parents’; and the negotiation of longer-term discourses of female hedonism. The title gestures towards a popular British sitcom of the 1990s, Men Behaving Badly, which popularized the idea of the ‘new lad’; and this article suggests that the new lad’s counterpart, the ladette, is mutating into the mother behaving badly, or the ‘lad mom’. Asking what work this figure does now, in a later neoliberal context, it argues that the mother behaving badly is simultaneously indicative of a widening and liberating range of maternal subject positions and symptomatic of a profound contemporary crisis in social reproduction. By focusing on the classed and racialised dynamics of the MBB – by examining who exactly is permitted to be hedonistic, and how – and by considering the MBB’s limited and partial imagining of progressive social change, the article concludes by emphasizing the urgency of creating more connections between such discourses and ‘parents behaving politically’

Prime beef cuts : culinary images for thinking 'men'

The paper contributes to scholarship theorising the sociality of the brand in terms of subject positions it makes possible through drawing upon the generative context of circulating discourses, in this case of masculinity, cuisine and celebrity. Specifically, it discusses masculinity as a socially constructed gender practice (Bristor and Fischer, 1993), examining materialisations of such practice in the form of visualisations of social relations as resources for 'thinking gender' or 'doing gender'. The transformative potential of the visualisations is illuminated by exploring the narrative content choreographed within a series of photographic images positioning the market appeal of a celebrity chef through the medium of a contemporary lifestyle cookery book. We consider how images of men 'doing masculinity'are not only channelled into reproducing existing gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in the service of commercial ends, but also into disrupting such enduring stereotyping through subtle reframing. We acknowledge that masculinity is already inscribed within conventionalised representations of culinary culture. In this case we consider how traces of masculinity are exploited and reinscribed through contemporary images that generate resources for rethinking masculine roles and identities, especially when viewed through the lens of stereotypically feminised pursuits such as shopping, food preparation, cooking, and the communal intimacy of food sharing. We identify unsettling tensions within the compositions, arguing that they relate to discursive spaces between the gendered positions written into the images and the popular imagination they feed off. Set against landscapes of culinary culture, we argue that the images invoke a brand of naively roughish "laddishness" or "blokishness", rendering it in domesticated form not only as benign and containable, but fashionable, pliable and, importantly, desirable. We conclude that although the images draw on stereotypical premeditated notions of a feral, boisterous and untamed heterosexual masculinity, they also set in motion gender-blending narratives

Embodying prison pain: women’s experiences of self-injury in prison and the emotions of punishment

This paper explores the meanings and motivations of self-injury practices as disclosed in interviews with a small group of female former prisoners in England. In considering their testimonies through a feminist perspective, I seek to illuminate aspects of their experiences of imprisonment that go beyond the ‘pains of imprisonment’ literature. Specifically, I examine their accounts of self-injury with a focus on the embodied aspects of their experiences. In so doing, I highlight the materiality of the emotional harms of their prison experiences. I suggest that the pains of imprisonment are still very much inscribed on and expressed through the prisoner’s body. This paper advances a more theoretically situated, interdisciplinary critique of punishment drawn from medical-sociological, phenomenological and feminist scholarship