Programme full

Friday 17 April 2015 15:15 - 16:45
PAPER SESSION 8
because of lack of trust in the police by the members of public. This study investigates the relationship patterns in the
police and community in Nigeria. This paper has focused on empirical data collected from the interviews and focus
groups discussions with members of the community in Nigeria's Kogi State of north-central region. This data suggests
that there is communication gap between the police and community as a result of distrust in the police by members of
public. Consequently, this tends to have a range of negative impact on the community's sense of safety and security.
The findings have suggested that family values and community network as well as community's perception of policecorruption
are prominent among the risk factors.
Keeping the Head Down: Re-presenting the Lived Experiences of Incarceration as Told by Individuals with
Learning Disabilities
Gormley, C.
(University of Glasgow)
Despite better systematic approaches of identifying learning disability (LD), the politicisation of disability and the
gradual expansion of the prison population within the context of actuarial penal technologies, individuals with LD
appear over-represented among the prison population in Scotland. This paper is drawn from a study which aims to
understand how people with LD make sense of the criminal justice and penal systems in Scotland. The study provides
a platform for the lived experiences of 25 men and women with LD who were serving a custodial sentence or who had
been recently liberated from custody at the time of research. Multiple semi-structured interviews, which were
sensitively and appropriately enriched by an Appreciative Inquiry process, were used in order to attend to the potential
disabling barriers which longer interviews may present to individuals with LD. Initial findings suggest that the
individuals involved in this study feel so structurally excluded from decision-making processes that they passively 'just
do time' and are at risk of further social isolation among prison communities. However, participants also told stories of
resilience of self and resistance to prescribed notions of 'vulnerability'. This paper will argue that while individuals with
LD who have offended are required to take responsibility for their criminal actions, they still feel denied this opportunity
under paternalist penal practices. The lived experiences of these individuals seems to encapsulate the complex social
relationship between convicted persons with LD and wider society.
Social Divisions/Social Identities
M228, GEORGE MOORE BUILDING
Gay Guys Using Gay Discourse: Friendship, Shared Values and the Intent-context-effect Matrix
McCormack, M., Wignall, L., Morris, M.
(Durham University)
In this presentation, we use in-depth interviews with 35 openly gay male undergraduates from four universities in
England to develop an understanding of the changing nature of language related to homosexuality. In addition to
finding a diminution in the prevalence of homophobic language, we demonstrate that participants maintain complex
and nuanced understandings of phrases that do not use homophobic pejoratives, such as 'that's so gay'. The majority
of participants rejected the argument that these phrases are inherently homophobic, instead arguing that the intent
with which it is said and the context in which it is used are vital in understanding its meaning. We conceptualize an
intent-context-effect matrix to understand the interdependency of intent, context and effect. Highlighting the situated
nature of this matrix, we also demonstrate the importance of the existence of shared norms between those saying and
hearing the phrase when interpreting such language.
Translating Transgenderism: Using Western Discourses to Understand Samoan Fa'afafine
Schmidt, J.
(University of Waikato)
Samoan fa'afafine are biological males who express a more feminine gender identity than is normative for men in
Samoa. The extent to, and ways in which, fa'afafine express this femininity is significantly variable, and has been
notably influenced by both globalisation and migration. Since first contact with Europeans, Samoan and other Pacific
sexualities have been a source of western fascination, culminating in Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa.
Fa'afafine are no exception to this process of erotic exoticisation, and have been the subject of much attention in both
academic and mainstream texts. In this paper, I outline the various discourses that have been used to 'understand'
fa'afafine identities, which include functionalist and psychoanalytic approaches, and those which draw on primitivist
discourses, and/or serve to both eroticise fa'afafine and render them 'exotic'. These discourses draw heavily on
BSA Annual Conference 2015 304
Glasgow Caledonian University