Book review: Like Mother, Like Daughter? by Jill Armstrong

This book explores the influence of full-time working mothers on their daughters’ career aspirations and ambitions. It is based on a solid sample of 88 interviews with 30 mother–daughter pairs, interviewed separately and together. All mothers worked in professional and senior managerial careers, and most of the daughters also worked or were pursuing a university degree. The book is well-structured with eight chapters focusing on specific themes..

Fashion micro-enterprises in London, Berlin, Milan

This report provides an account of a series of interviews, observational visits and hosted events with 8-10 fashion designers in three cities: London, Berlin and Milan, carried out from 2012-2016. In some cases we interviewed the same designers two or three times over a period of nearly three years. The research project also entailed documented conversations and meetings with a range of fashion experts, consultants, legal advisors and policy makers in each city. Often these took place within the context of organised events undertaken as part of the research process. The aim was to investigate the kind of start-ups or micro-enterprises which have come into being in the last decade. We were interested in whether these were the outcome of pro-active urban creative economy policies or if they were self-organised initiatives, a reaction to the crisis of the euro-zone of 2008 and the consequent recession. Was it the case that long-term austerity policies and exceptionally high rates of youth and graduate unemployment across Europe had spawned these kinds of seemingly independent economic activities? We were also minded to consider the role of intellectual property (IP) and copyright in fashion as part of the wider UK government agenda for growth and wealth creation within the creative economy as a whole

Academic motherhood and fieldwork: Juggling time, emotions and competing demands

The idea and practice of going ‘into the field’ to conduct research and gather data is a deeply rooted aspect of Geography as a discipline. For global North Development Geographers, amongst others, this usually entails travelling to, and spending periods of time in, often far-flung parts of the global South. Forging a successful academic career as a Development Geographer in the UK, is therefore to some extent predicated on mobility. This paper aims to critically engage with the gendered aspects of this expected mobility, focusing on the challenges and time constraints that are apparent when conducting overseas fieldwork as a mother, unaccompanied by her children. The paper emphasises the emotion work that is entailed in balancing the competing demands of overseas fieldwork and mothering, and begins to think through the implications of these challenges in terms of the types of knowledge we produce, as well as in relation to gender equality within the academy

The Work of Seduction : Intimacy and Subjectivity in the London 'Seduction Community'

This paper explores negotiations of intimate and sexual subjectivity among men involved in the London 'seduction community', a central locus within what is more properly regarded as a community-industry. Herein, heterosexual men undertake various forms of skills training and personal development in order to gain greater choice and control in their relationships with women. As an entry point to this discussion I consider the international media event that enveloped American 'pickup artist' Julien Blanc in November 2014. Shifting focus away from the cultural figure of the 'pickup artist' and onto socially located men, I attempt to complicate a dominant narrative that characterises men who participate in this community-industry as pathetic, pathological or perverse. This analysis makes use of extensive ethnographic research undertaken within the London seduction community, and examines how men who participate in this setting engage a mode of intimate and sexual subjectivity ordered by themes of management and enterprise. Ultimately I argue that the central logics of the seduction community are not dissonant from but are in fact consistent with broader reconfigurations of intimacy and sexuality taking place in the contemporary UK context

Is a combination of varenicline and nicotine patch more effective in helping smokers quit than varenicline alone? A randomised controlled trial

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Shifting new media: from content to consultancy, from heterarchy to hierarchy

This is a detailed case history of one of London’s iconic new media companies, AMX Studios. Some of the changes in this firm, we assume, are not untypical for other firms in this sector. Particularly we want to draw attention to two transformations. The first change in AMX and in London’s new media industry more generally refers to the field of industrial relations. What can be observed is a shift from a rather heterarchical towards a more hierarchical organized new media industry, a shift from short-term project networks to long-term client dependency. The second change refers to new media products and services. We want to argue for a shift from cool content production towards consultancy and interactive communications solutions

Women, know your limits: Cultural sexism in academia

Despite the considerable advances of the feminist movement across Western societies, in Universities women are less likely to be promoted, or paid as much as their male colleagues, or even get jobs in the first place. One way in which we can start to reflect on why this might be the case is through hearing the experiences of women academics themselves. Using feminist methodology, this article attempts to unpack and explore just some examples of ‘cultural sexism’ which characterise the working lives of many women in British academia.This article uses qualitative methods to describe and make sense of just some of those experiences. In so doing, the argument is also made that the activity of academia is profoundly gendered and this explicit acknowledgement may contribute to our understanding of the under-representation of women in senior positions

Feminisation of success or successful femininities? Disentangling ‘new femininities’ under neoliberal conditions

This article critically examines what might be titled the feminisation of success that is ascribed to optimistic characterisations of new constructions of femininity for young women in the UK, particularly in relation to classed positions. In order to do this it is necessary to understand the complex relationship between feminism, post-feminism, neoliberalism and femininities, especially since the millennium. Young women have been positioned as the beneficiaries of successful social and political change which, together with ideas of individualism and reflexive constructions of identity, almost mandate young women to embody success. The article seeks to examine and assess the discursive constructions of ‘successful femininities’ in relation to their normative limitations and asks in particular whether the putative existence of ‘new femininities’ is attainable for all young women. With the impact of over a decade of neoliberal policies and austerity measures being felt by many, it is argued that the discourses of ‘successful femininities’ work to obscure the recalibrated inequalities that have been forged by neoliberal conditions

Beyond 'Global Production Networks': Australian Fashion Week's Trans-Sectoral Synergies

When studies of industrial organisation are informed by commodity chain, actor network, or global production network theories and focus on tracing commodity flows, social networks, or a combination of the two, they can easily overlook the less routine trans-sectoral associations that are crucial to the creation and realisation of value. This paper shifts attention to identifying the sites at which diverse specialisations meet to concentrate and amplify mutually reinforcing circuits of value. These valorisation processes are demonstrated in the case of Australian Fashion Week, an event in which multiple interests converge to synchronize different expressions of fashion ideas, actively construct fashion markets and enhance the value of a diverse range of fashionable commodities. Conceptualising these interconnected industries as components of a trans-sectoral fashion complex has implications for understanding regional development, world cities, production location, and the manner in which production systems “touch down” in different places