Programme full

Wednesday 15 April 2015 11:00 - 12:30
PAPER SESSION 2
differently on their online presence, but for both new media is part of the modernity they inhabit. New media also
presents a challenge, as narratives are altered when online audiences read, scrutinise and comment upon them.
This paper uses critical narrative analysis to piece together possible narratives of the two groups’ online activities. It
examines, whether it is possible to speak of narrative identity in this context, or whether the interventions are too
diffuse to construct a narrative. The data consists of a selection of textual materials the groups have posted online as
well as Facebook discussions where others contribute and thus alter the direction and tone of the discourse.
Intersectionality provides a frame to help understand complex and conflicting stories as part of one identity.
Recipes for Mothering?: Intimacy, Anecdotes and Publics in Mothers’ Blogs about Feeding Families
Elliott, H., O'Connell, R., Squire, C.
(Institute of Education, University of London)
This paper presents a narrative analysis of blogs about feeding families written by mothers in the context of
constrained resources - economic, emotional and time-related. ‘Mummyblogging’ has emerged in the past decade as
a means of documenting and sharing mothering practices, and of developing communities of interest and sites of
activism as well as commercial opportunities. Anecdotes are staples of this influential, widespread, potentially
lucrative phenomenon. In this paper, the narrative analysis of two indicative blogs, selected from a wider corpus as
part of a broader study of mothers’ food blogs, are related to how women story mothering for themselves and others in
their everyday lives and also public, semi-fictionalised anecdotal forms such as ‘mumoirs’ and newspaper columns.
Anecdotes, which are reworked and honed in the retelling but associated with the authenticity and immediacy of lived
experience, are at the borders between the public and private, the real and the unreal. This paper will draw out the
implications of taking maternal anecdotes out of the private spaces where we imagine mothering belongs, into the
public intimacy of digital worlds. Stories about maternal practices and subjectivities often involve children and other
family members: indeed part of impetus for writing may be fulfilling the traditional maternal task of memorialising family
life. The paper will conclude by considering the ethics of such public representation of others. This includes
representations in research which draws on publically available digital material, which cannot be made anonymous
and ‘private’ through the strategies social scientists have traditionally employed.
Frontiers 1
W308, HAMISH WOOD BUILDING
Postsocialist Disability Matrix
Mladenov, T.
(King’s College London)
In this paper, I propose a framework for critical sociological analysis of disability in the context of postsocialist
transition which I call 'Postsocialist disability matrix'. The treatment of disabled people in the Eastern Bloc countries
was one of segregation and stigmatisation. The state socialist system in Central and Eastern Europe disintegrated at
the end of the 1980s, but disabled people in the region continued to be treated negatively, experiencing social and
economic exclusion, cultural devaluation and political disempowerment. I argue that there are two major factors that
have contributed to this continuation of injustice: (a) socialist legacies, and (b) postsocialist neoliberalisation.
The 'Postsocialist disability matrix' invites a three-dimensional analysis of the interplay of socialist legacies and
postsocialist neoliberalisation in (re)producing injustices for disabled people. Following Nancy Fraser, I define justice
as 'parity of participation' or possibility to participate on equal terms with others in social life. Whatever impairs parity
of participation, then, is socially unjust. In the economic dimension, parity of participation is impaired by deficient
redistribution or 'maldistribution', which enhances economic inequality; in the cultural dimension, it is impaired by
deficient recognition or 'misrecognition' which intensifies cultural devaluation; and in the political dimension, it is
impaired by deficient representation or 'misrepresentation' which silences political voice.
The 'Postsocialist disability matrix' exposes the negative effects on disabled people produced by the interplay of
socialist legacies and postsocialist neoliberalisation in each of the three dimensions of redistribution, recognition and
representation. I apply the matrix by looking at disability in postsocialist Bulgaria.
91 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University