Programme full

Thursday 16 April 2015 11:00 - 12:30
PAPER SESSION 4
discourse dictates that a lack of aspirations is a key ingredient in the failure of a significant number of young people to
make successful employment transitions. UTCs are proffered as one of a number of alternative vocational educational
providers that aim to address this perceived societal problem, and young people attending such institutions are led to
believe that if they have aspirations and gain qualifications then opportunities will open up. However, it is questionable
that this hope and aspiration will translate into opportunity. Arguably young people are being mis-sold a dream of
opportunity by buying into the promises of a broken education system in an increasing unequal society. Under such
structural conditions the education system cannot deliver its promises. Despite a lack of secure employment (and an
increase in surplus labour) we found young people far from suffering from a lack of aspiration to have developed
illusory aspirations beyond the track of their educational program. But who will be blamed when the promised goals
are not achieved? We argue that the focus on aspiration and the development of a belief in false educational promises
is likely to obfuscate the source of the failure in the material conditions of the economic system itself and lead young
people to locate failure within themselves.
“Money Makes the World Go Round ….Youtube Inspires Me I Want to Watch Coke King Godmother”
Mckenzie, L.
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
This paper raises the issues of how we challenge the now all too familiar narrative of deficit that working class people
are burdened with through mainstream political rhetoric which accuses them of ‘not being aspirational’ or ‘socially
excluding themselves’ or ‘being broken’. Asking whether the recent phenomena of Poverty Porn: pseudo-documentary
style programmes ‘Benefits Street’, and ‘Skint’ which claims to show life ‘on benefits as it really is’ helped or hindered
us as serious academic researchers? Being a sociologist and ethnographer can be difficult in countering these
simplistic claims of the non-aspirational working class whose culture is often blamed for their unsuccessful lives. This
becomes increasingly difficult when your research, the data you collect may feed in to the already negative
stereotypes that are peddled through our politics and media about working class people. This paper examines some
of the interviews, meetings, and observations I have undertaken in my research with working class people over the
last 8 years and collected through in-depth ethnographies. Asking what happens when statements are made by those
you interview appearing to confirm the common view of the un-aspirational teenager, or the lazy and feckless single
mother. I argue that context is needed, and that we recognise people’s aspirations cannot be understood in a vacuum
of what they say, even when they tell us something which may appear to confirm those negative stereotypes.
Sociology of Religion
W622, HAMISH WOOD BUILDING
Representation of Muslim Women in Bollywood: Contexts of Change Sites of Continuity
Hussein, N., Hussain, S.
(University of Warwick)
The current paper investigates the Indian film industry's role as a crucial producer and distributer of popular culture
and ideologies by exploring the kinds of identities that Bollywood's recent Muslim heroines represent in relation to
gender, religion and nationalism in India. While the older narratives of Muslims in Bollywood can be categorized in
binary identities such as good vs. bad Muslim, affiliation to nation vs. religious affiliation and the hyper-sexualized
Tawaif (courtesan) vs. the subservient veiled women, the recent narratives show some signs of change. We find that
recent narratives about Muslim women in Bollywood and their identities are borne out of their choice of life partners,
political participation, education, careers and varied embodied practices which empower these characters to a great
extent. However we argue that in comparison to the signs of change the sites of continuity are much more strongly
embedded in the religious-nationalistic meta-narrative that drives the paradigms of Indian femininity/women-hood.
Following Das (2006) we conclude that this continuity of stereotypical representation of Muslim women in Bollywood
helps to maintain a Hindu patriarchal social structure at three inter-connected levels: among the genders (ordering
women by men); among communities (bordering between Hindu and Muslim communal identities) and, inter-state
othering between Indian and Pakistani identities' (373). The paper also highlights the impact of these stereotypes in
rationalizing and normalizing violence against the Muslim community in the deeply fragmented political space of India.
With or without Bourdieu? The Uses of His Approach for the Study of Religious and Cultural Change
Thumala Olave, M.A., Donnelly, S.
(University of Edinburgh)
165 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University