Sociology

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Sarah Charlton
and
Meseret Kassahun Desta

Chapter 11 focuses mainly on vanguard peripheries in Ethiopia and South Africa and draws on often spontaneous accounts in diaries and interviews of people’s experiences of food and related retail in state-led housing developments. In South Africa the presence or absence of powerful supermarket chains feature prominently in our respondents’ daily lives and imaginaries, including for crucial services and experiences they offer beyond grocery sales, but smaller shops are little encouraged in the residential neighbourhoods, although informal micro-enterprises emerge nevertheless. In Ethiopia, where large private supermarkets do not dominate as in South Africa, shops are encouraged on the ground floors of condominiums along key roads, assisting with mixed-use vibrancy and local purchasing for residents, although they also desire access to bigger markets which require travel elsewhere. In both contexts access to choice, diversity and cheaper goods can often only be accessed elsewhere, or in the vicinity, years after housing has been occupied. In the meantime residents’ narratives make clear that the initial approach to facilitate retail opportunities in vanguard developments can significantly shape everyday lives.

in Living the urban periphery
Open Access (free)
Tom Goodfellow
,
Paula Meth
, and
Sarah Charlton

This chapter examines transport and mobility in the urban peripheries of South Africa and Ethiopia through an analysis of existing forms of transportation and argues that the urban peripheries produce particular challenges around cost, time and infrastructure tied to the histories and logics of the varying peripheries. It discusses investments in road and rail infrastructure and considers the significance and limitations of walking for residents, impacted by often very significant geographic peripherality. Stuckness and immobility are key concepts underscoring the experiential realities for residents, and the chapter calls for a relational understanding of these concepts to situate peripheral locations relative to more centralised environments.

in Living the urban periphery
Ethiopia and South Africa
Alison Todes
and
Tom Goodfellow

This chapter discusses visions of the urban periphery in South Africa and Ethiopia and how these have influenced development in the case study cities of Johannesburg, Tshwane, eThekwini and Addis Ababa. In the context of international policy debates over appropriate spatial policy, it draws on empirical material from key informant interviews and documentary analysis to demonstrate the complex ways in which urban spatial policy and implementation are shaped by (shifting) politics, institutions, agencies and actors. Although urban peripheries may be considered in spatial policy, little attention is given to their diversity, their dynamism and to the everyday lives of residents, which emerge in other chapters.

in Living the urban periphery
Open Access (free)
Care for older people in Europe
Pat Thane

The chapter surveys the main themes of the case studies in the volume, stressing how much these otherwise diverse nations have in common in their approach to elder care. In all cases it has never taken priority in policy-making compared with other welfare issues. Discrimination and stereotyping of older people have been pervasive. Everywhere female family members have taken the main responsibility for care, with little public support. The pressure upon them has grown, often stressfully, as care services, public and private, have declined further with the spread of neoliberalism and the still greater impact of the COVID pandemic. This has generally made the inadequacies of care more public but there is little sign that it is leading to improvement anywhere.

in Politicising and gendering care for older people
The rhetoric of a family policy in Portugal
Ana Paula Gil

Like other Mediterranean countries, Portugal is characterised by a strongly familistic care regime, where women continue to play a central role in family care. Recently, Portugal has attempted to implement the Informal Carer Statute, a policy to support family carers. This chapter aims to chronologically reconstruct the evolution of the carers’ policy in Portugal and identify controversies around this social policy. Based on a documental and historical analysis, 15 regulations were identified between 2016 and 2022, focusing on the benefits for informal carers, cash benefits, and state co-payment of services. Eligibility criteria, based exclusively on income, limit the access of thousands of carers who are silenced by the state. The new care regulation has exclusively become a measure to combat situations of poverty. Recognition of the carer's contribution and protection in retirement and ill-health have been minimised, although these constituted one of the main demands that pushed for the emergence of a carers' movement in the public arena. The struggle for recognition through the social movement for informal carers (O movimento dos cuidadores informais) turned into a struggle to change the law, mobilising civil society. The National Association of Informal Carers, as the representative body of its members, emerged from the social movement and, recently, was the promoter of a citizens' legislative initiative. Through the Portuguese case, different examples of strategies of a process of politicisation are portrayed. Care becomes thus an object of political struggle within the social and political field.

in Politicising and gendering care for older people
Open Access (free)
Notions of belonging and the impacts of COVID-19 on festivals in Scotland
John Wright

During the Covid-19 pandemic, cultural festivals in Scotland faced unprecedented challenges with government restrictions on gatherings, travel and venue closures. Many festivals were forced to cancel or postpone their events, with uncertainty over rescheduling, and rethink how they engage with audiences and wider communities. Festivals are complex organisations of people and places that bring together different communities, from freelance cultural workers to local residents. The pandemic brought disruptions to these communities and enforced rapid shifts to remote working and digital-born content production. These changes have had significant socio-cultural and economic impacts on festivals and posed questions about the long-term sustainability of mass cultural gatherings.

In the unprecedented context of these challenges, this chapter traces the impact of Covid-19 on cultural festivals in Scotland. Based primarily on a series of interviews and conversations carried out in 2020 and 2021, with festival producers, directors and organisers, the author presents findings that illuminate the different responses that festivals have implemented during the pandemic, from moving to hybrid models of live and digital content to fundraising for local foodbanks. The chapter combines a broad analysis of cultural festivals in Scotland from different locations, art forms and sizes with three short case studies of specific festivals to develop a comprehensive understanding of the complex challenges faced by festivals at local, regional and national levels. It traces the interrelationship between notions of belonging and place within digital and hybrid festivals to explore its impact on future planning.

in Pandemic culture
An introduction
Anca Dohotariu

This chapter introduces the topic of care for older people as inherently political and gendered and the related politicising and gendering processes in Europe. First, it presents the epistemological and academic motivations underpinning the need to elaborate a multidisciplinary collective volume on a topic that has not been tackled and developed previously. One of the most important reasons informing this choice is that both politicising and gendering care for older people are two transversal processes that share the same reference to some inherent and pervasive features of care, namely care as political and gendered by definition. Second, the chapter introduces a conceptual background indispensable to establishing a clearly defined focus of all contributions to the book. Neither exhaustive nor providing a deductive approach or theoretical framework shared by all chapters, this conceptual background concerning politicising and gendering care for older people in Europe serves as a reference tool guiding different country-based and multi-level analyses. Its primary role is to introduce one clearly outlined exploration interest while opening up diverse research questions and multidisciplinary studies. Third, the introductory chapter presents the book’s structure and the topics, questions, and research directions addressed by each contribution to the volume. These multidisciplinary investigations depend primarily on the specific and relevant aspects concerning politicising and gendering care for older people and how these occur in different European settings and at societal and political levels.

in Politicising and gendering care for older people
A gendered perspective
Ljiljana Pantović
,
Bojana Radovanović
, and
Adriana Zaharijević

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the care of older adults in Serbia. Under the guise of care for ‘grandpas and grandmas’, the government enforced policies, measures, and protocols that severely impacted the already fragile system for the care of older adults in Serbia, at the same time creating a situation in which those older persons who were previously independent turned completely dependent, while those who were truly in need of care were unable to get it. On the other hand, the underpaid, undervalued caregivers – the main subjects of this chapter – bore the greatest brunt of the pandemic-induced politicisation of care for older adults in Serbia. Prior to the pandemic, care of older adults was already a gendered issue, as women were the primary providers of both informal and formal care. The pandemic has exacerbated this gender imbalance. In addition, the pandemic has shed light on the shortage of skilled caregivers and the precarious position of paid care in the informal economy. The shortage of caregivers has made it even more difficult for women to balance their paid and unpaid work, and it has also led to a decline in the quality of care for older adults.

in Politicising and gendering care for older people
Museums and galleries in northern England during the COVID-19 pandemic
Danielle Child
,
Karen Gray
, and
Harry Weeks

During the Covid-19 pandemic, museums and galleries were forced to rapidly rethink how they engaged with their publics. While some focused their energies on reaching wider audiences (often via digital and online provision), many asked what they could do to help the communities that immediately surrounded them. The north of England was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, experiencing extended lockdowns and high-tier restrictions. From interviews with over thirty gallery, museum and arts workers in the north-east and north-west of England, the authors identify an increase in community engagement and outreach from galleries and museums throughout the pandemic.

The chapter examines the community engagement and outreach activities provided by these institutions and asks: How do galleries and museums provide support during unprecedented times? Who do galleries and museums serve? Who benefits from this provision and can it be sustained in the long term? What are the implications for the workforce, missions and business models of galleries and museums? How do these practices inform new narratives of ‘levelling up’ and post-pandemic recovery within areas already highlighted for investment? In responding to these fundamental questions about the civic responsibility of arts institutions in times of crisis, the chapter undertakes a close analysis of three case studies: a large art gallery; a local authority museum; and a small, embedded arts organisation.

in Pandemic culture
Northern Ireland’s response to the COVID-19 crisis
John Wright
and
Ali FitzGibbon

This chapter traces the impact of Covid-19 on arts and cultural activity in Northern Ireland through the lens of emerging and collaborative approaches to leadership. It draws principally from a series of practitioner interviews and discussions carried out in 2020 and 2021, combining the knowledge of a range of organisational leaders with creative freelancers and policy-makers. The authors examine the role and nature of what constitutes leadership within the Northern Irish cultural economy.

Although exacerbated by the crisis, the tensions of how cultural leadership is recognised and defined (who and what is a leader?) predate the pandemic and are intrinsically linked to concerns of representation and consideration in regional, national and subnational policy structures and within the systems of arts and cultural practices. By pointing to where leadership has emerged in new or more strident forms, it equally points to where it has been absent, excluded or ignored. Through analysing these emergent forms of collaborative leadership, the authors suggest ways in which these practices could shape the future direction of cultural policy-making in Northern Ireland.

in Pandemic culture