Gender and class in Britain and France

This article examines the treatment of women's oppression in feminist theory, focusing on the engagement of second wave feminists with the concept of class and its relation to gender. This examination is carried out with reference to British and French feminisms, identifying the main trends and shifts that have developed over the last 35 years and noting that while these are undoubtedly influenced by a particular national context they are also shaped by increasing European integration and social, political and cultural exchanges at a global level. The authors find evidence of a number of similarities in the questions that feminist theorists have asked in Britain and France but also demonstrate that there are significant differences. They conclude that areas of convergent theoretical interests will extend along with cross-border flows of peoples and information

Children, family and the state : revisiting public and private realms

The state is often viewed as part of the impersonal public sphere in opposition to the private family as a locus of warmth and intimacy. In recent years this modernist dichotomy has been challenged by theoretical and institutional trends which have altered the relationship between state and family. This paper explores changes to both elements of the dichotomy that challenge this relationship: a more fragmented family structure and more individualised and networked support for children. It will also examine two new elements that further disrupt any clear mapping between state/family and public/private dichotomies: the third party role of the child in family/state affairs and children's application of virtual technology that locates the private within new cultural and social spaces. The paper concludes by examining the rise of the 'individual child' hitherto hidden within the family/state dichotomy and the implications this has for intergenerational relations at personal and institutional levels

Affective equality: love matters

The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation

Home sweet home: a critical comment on Saunders and Williams

While accepting the need for research which focuses on the social meaning of the home, this article takes issue with some of Saunders’ and Williams’ formulations for a research programme — in particular, the emphasis given to physical and design features of the home at the expense of an understanding of more fundamental gender and generational relations within the home. It attempts to uncover the assumptions lying behind those formulations, to clarify some of the conceptual confusions, and to point out some of the serious theoretical difficulties which such formulations have to resolve. It argues that theoretical advance in this area does not have to depend upon the adoption of a Weberian perspective, but must be situated within a broader theory of the production and maintenance of ideology, and this theory must be explicitly linked with theories of power and kinship. In particular, it is emphasised that power relations within the home, associated mainly with gender and age differences, need to be investigated in greater depth if the social significance of the home is to be properly understood

A Java interface for the integration of legacy numerical software into the NetSolve system

NetSolve is a client-server application that enables users to solve complex scientific problems remotely. The system accesses both hardware and software computational resources distributed across a network. NetSolve searches for computational resources on a network, chooses the best one available, solves a problem using retry for fault tolerance, and returns the answer to the user. A load balanc- ing policy is implemented in the NetSolve system to ensure good performance by enabling the system to utilize available the computational resources as effectively as possible. Some objectives of the NetSolve project are user-friendly interfaces, more productive use of system resources, and the integration of any numerical software as a resource into the NetSolve system. Numerous interfaces have been designed and implemented which enable users to access and use the system more easily. An agent-based design has been implemented to ensure more efficient utilization of the system\u27s resources. Thus, the work presented in this paper focuses on the goal of arbitrary software integration into the NetSolve System. One of the key characteristics of any successful software package is versatility. In order to ensure the success of NetSolve, the system has to be able to incorporate any piece of numerical software, regardless of its format, with relative ease. There can be no restrictions on the type of numerical software that can be integrated into the system. The process of adding and updating NetSolve computational resources or servers is greatly enhanced and facilitated by the addition of a Java interface. Java is a new object-oriented programming language and environment that is secure, dynamic, architecture-neutral and multi-threaded. The NetSolve server interface is designed so that any scientific software can be translated and compiled into a common source code. The Java interface design is able to incorporate some of the tasks previously implemented in the NetSolve server compiler. The Java interface also guarantees that every formal language file presented to the compiler is always in a predetermined error-free format. Thus, the implementation of the Java interface resulted in the NetSolve server compiler being redesigned into a more efficient and effective tool. With the use of the Java interface, the NetSolve resource administrator can cre- ate and dynamically change a NetSolve computational server simply and clearly. The administrator no longer needs to know about the complexity of the under- lying formal descriptive language utilized by the system. The only information required is that of the software package being added to the system. So now with the development of the Java interface, in conjunction with the use and transla- tion of the formal descriptive language used by the NetSolve server, any scientific numerical library can be integrated into the NetSolve system

Freight Management in Logistic Sector Using Android

Logistics plays a major role in transforming a developing country to developed country. Since the business sector becomes very competitive, establishing communications between the customers and transporters is very important. This gives rise to a high economic status. Nowadays various difficulties such as unreliable load delivery, unorganized logistic sector etc. are encountered during transportation of goods in business communication. To ease these complexities faced by load owners in the transportation sector, an innovative mobile app has been developed; in turn, addressing the inefficiencies and fragments plays a major role in the unorganized logistics sector. This mobile app achieves transparency, standardization and reliability in the transportation industry. The work is implemented right from vendor selection, assigning vendors to carry load, matching the right trucks for different load requirements to monitoring load, handling payments till the depth of entire transportation. The proposed work carries out the transportation workflow and personally addresses them using technology to deliver the promise of shipment from its origin to destination in a reliable way with great customer service throughout.

Experimental Study: Acceptance of Student Moral Developing Through Games Education with Expectation Confirmation Theory

Students' moral development is an important aspect of education, especially in the digital era, where media plays a significant role in the formation of moral values. Video games as interactive media have become a potential tool for developing ethical and moral decision-making abilities. Video games offer a simulated environment that allows students to confront complex moral dilemmas, which have previously been shown to hone critical thinking skills. This study explores the acceptance of video games as a tool for developing students' moral reasoning, using the Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and DeLone and McLean Information System Success Model (D&M). Involving 150 students, the study measured constructs such as perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), information quality (IQ), system quality (SQ), user satisfaction (US), intention to use (IU), and user behavior (UB). Results from SEM analysis showed that while perceived usefulness and ease of use positively influenced intentions to use, actual user behavior did not always align with these intentions after confirmation. However, user satisfaction remained a strong predictor of continued engagement. This emphasize the need for better alignment between user expectations and experiences. These findings highlight the potential of video games in moral education and suggest avenues for improving their design and implementation to enhance educational outcome

Experimental Study: Acceptance of Student Moral Developing Through Games Education with Expectation Confirmation Theory

Students' moral development is an important aspect of education, especially in the digital era, where media plays a significant role in the formation of moral values. Video games as interactive media have become a potential tool for developing ethical and moral decision-making abilities. Video games offer a simulated environment that allows students to confront complex moral dilemmas, which have previously been shown to hone critical thinking skills. This study explores the acceptance of video games as a tool for developing students' moral reasoning, using the Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and DeLone and McLean Information System Success Model (D&M). Involving 150 students, the study measured constructs such as perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), information quality (IQ), system quality (SQ), user satisfaction (US), intention to use (IU), and user behavior (UB). Results from SEM analysis showed that while perceived usefulness and ease of use positively influenced intentions to use, actual user behavior did not always align with these intentions after confirmation. However, user satisfaction remained a strong predictor of continued engagement. This emphasize the need for better alignment between user expectations and experiences. These findings highlight the potential of video games in moral education and suggest avenues for improving their design and implementation to enhance educational outcome

Faking like a woman? Towards an interpretative theorization of sexual pleasure.

This article explores the possibility of developing a feminist approach to gendered and sexual embodiment which is rooted in the pragmatist/interactionist tradition derived from G.H. Mead, but which in turn develops this perspective by inflecting it through more recent feminist thinking. In so doing we seek to rebalance some of the rather abstract work on gender and embodiment by focusing on an instance of 'heterosexual' everyday/night life - the production of the female orgasm. Through engaging with feminist and interactionist work, we develop an approach to embodied sexual pleasure that emphasizes the sociality of sexual practices and of reflexive sexual selves. We argue that sexual practices and experiences must be understood in social context, taking account of the situatedness of sex as well as wider socio-cultural processes the production of sexual desire and sexual pleasure (or their non-production) always entails interpretive, interactional processes