Programme full

Thursday 16 April 2015 13:30 - 15:00
PAPER SESSION 5
An interdisciplinary approach is proposed to combine the multiple dimensions of sustainability and to discuss the
emergency of dealing with issues related to food and nutrition with regard to the urban context. As food is a basic and
everyday need, it surely affects our lives and the places we live. Therefore, nutritional patterns cause changes both on
the food system and on the environment. Hence the need to investigate in depth motivations and difficulties that
determine food consumption practices of citizen.
According to the literature, the diffusion of sustainable consumption behaviour is linked both to the development of
'green' lifestyles and particular values and to the contextual conditions that drive people to implement alternative
methods of purchase. It will be analysed the degree of impact of these elements and how they form in the city.
Are presented the results of a survey designed to identify the factors that affect the sustainable food consumption in
the city of Milan. The study examines the impact of both contextual and personal factors: socio-economic factors and
spatial accessibility, the importance of knowledges and information, values and cultural habits. Quantitative and
qualitative instruments are both used to show the reasons why citizens search for and create new ways of food
consumption and the barriers that they can find.
This study can provide useful indications to social researchers to adopt a more complete view on the sustainability
issue and to manage the different kinds of factors that determine the transition to sustainable consumption practices.
Families and Relationships
M225, GEORGE MOORE BUILDING
Domestic Abuse in the ‘Progressing’ British Military Community: Structure, Discourse, and Help-seeking
Gray, H.
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
This paper employs a feminist analysis to explore domestic abuse in the British military context. I conceptualise
domestic abuse not primarily as a crime of assault but as a gendered pattern of power and control in which a
perpetrator entraps his/her partner through micro-regulation of everyday life. In addition, the military is understood as
a social institution constructed through gendered structures and discourses. This construction is at present in a state
of flux – defined variously as progression or regression depending on one's viewpoint - as ongoing redundancies, rebasing,
and changing gender roles break down the traditional structures of camp life. I argue that the
progressing/regressing structures and discourses which shape the militarisation of gender to some extent reshape the
opportunities for the perpetration of and the resistance to abusive control and, therefore, victim-survivors' help-seeking
needs.
Drawing on interviews with civilian women who have experienced abuse in marriages to British servicemen, I tease
out the ways in which a range of factors including militarised constructions of the public and private spheres, wives'
evolving position on the borders of the military community, and discourses around heroism, duty, protection, and
precarity produce particular vulnerabilities to abuse, and barriers to, as well as opportunities for, help-seeking. In
concluding, I explore the contributions of this work for the provision of services to this particular group of women as
well as its wider implications for sociological understandings of domestic abuse.
Bringing ‘Social Work’ Families into Sociology: Exploring Practices of Support, Agency and Intimacy between
Mothers and Children Who Have Escaped from Domestic Violence
Katz, E.
(Liverpool Hope University)
This paper shows how the 'non-normal' families usually addressed by social work and clinical psychology (Wilson et al
2012) can be incorporated into sociological research on children's agency within the family. This approach carries
forward, to a new level, Gabb, Morrow, Smart and Williams' ground-breaking work on children's lived experiences and
sense-making within 'normal' families. The paper is based on Ph.D. research completed in 2014 that used the
Framework approach to analyse semi-structured interviews conducted with 30 UK mothers and children (aged 10-20)
who had been separated from perpetrators of domestic violence for an average of five years. These recovery-stage
families tended to have relationships remarkably similar to those discovered by Williams and others, with helpful
mutual supports taking place – children desiring to support their mothers as well as be supported by them. This
research therefore suggests the utility of adding such adversity-affected families to sociology's exploration of support,
agency and intimacy within family settings.
177 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University