Welcome. This website comprises mostly Hilary's sociological papers and articles about patriarchy, (gendered) harmful practices (e.g. female genital mutilation / FGM) and thoughts on science, health, environmental issues, sociological analysis, social policy and good practice.
Female Genital Mutilation In Britain: A Scandal About To Break…? (And The Risks Of Summer ‘Holiday’ FGM)
A version of this blog is the lead article today (7 June 2012) in the UK Huffington Post. Public awareness and concern about the awfulness of FGM is growing, as the active Huffington Post Comments debate which follows the piece demonstrates. Averaged over a year, 50+ children every single day are at risk in the UK; but still no legal sanctions have ever been applied.
How much longer must we wait before effective, substantive action backed up by proper national resourcing is at last a reality?
There is very serious concern in the UK about the increasing numbers of small girls – probably many thousands annually – at risk of FGM (female genital mutilation). This is indisputably a matter of child abuse; discussion and news on action about #NoFGM in the UK can be found on this website here. But many maintain (and I agree) that male circumcision – more properly, MGM – is also child abuse and should be banned. You are welcome to share (evidenced) views about male circumcision via the Comments box below. [PS Contributions so far are illuminating.]
Shaping The Future (North West Wales)
I was pleased recently to be invited to become an Ambassador for the Shaping the Future programme in North West Wales. This programme aims to ‘put human potential at the heart of regional development’ – an aim with which I immediately felt aligned; as I did also with the intention to create sustainable economic diversity by encouraging skills development, with retraining and redeployment for the highly-skilled employees of the Wylfa and Trawsynydd nuclear power sites as their careers are threatened by decommissioning over the next five to seven years.
The Spirit Level Documentary Film Campaign
The Spirit Level, a book by Professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, has already had a profound effect on the debate about equality (or the lack of it) in modern societies; and now the printed page is to be followed by a documentary film. The money is needed very soon. Given the significance of this timely development in the equality debate, I have attached below the message inviting interest, received today from the Equality Trust, an organisation set up by Wilkinson and Pickett.
Do support this venture in any way you can.
Understanding How Blackburn’s Pakistani Community Relates To Public And Private Institutions
Blackburn on a Saturday afternoon… and an invitation to join discussions with business, mosque and council leaders from the Pakistani community, as the Insight Out project comes to an end, with dedicated time to face outwards and engage additional concerned citizens.
It was a wide-ranging, open-hearted debate about what Pakistani heritage Blackburn residents might do to improve the outlook for both their own and their neighbours’ communities.
The move towards real action, I sensed, has begun.
Liverpool Economic Forum 2012
The Liverpool Economic Forum 2012, hosted on 15 May at Radisson Blu Hotel by North West Business Insider, offered important pointers to the future. Positively, a lot now hinges on new City Major Joe Anderson’s delivering his pledges to bring investment, cruise liners and much else to Liverpool. More problematically, whilst all agree the city now punches above its weight, concerns remain about whether Liverpool can deliver a coherent offer to potential investors. And still discussion of real sustainability and inclusion is absent.
Sociology, Democracy And The Economic Crisis
Aditya Chakrabortty of The Guardian has just (8 May 2012) published his second commentary about ‘the dearth of sociologists and other non-economists analysing how we got into’ the current economic crisis. This silence, he says, is in vivid contrast to the (dramatic but ineffectual) protests of academic social scientists when monetarists reigned supreme whilst Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. But, sadly older and wiser, this time we need to focus on a more encompassing agenda of transaction, impact and meaning.
Female Genital Mutilation: The Difficult Debates
Female genital mutilation (‘cutting’) is an inherently difficult subject. The clash of social mores, clamours of righteousness from all quarters, the vast contradictions evident in legal and child protection practice and the sheer sensitivities of the topic, contrasting personal vulnerability and grotesque practice, all make intervention perilous.
And beyond that there are the demands for clarity about male circumcision and appropriate ways to address it in the UK and elsewhere.
Estimates suggest more than 50 small children in Britain are at risk of, or suffer, the grim cruelty of FGM every day. It leaves deep scars, physically and mentally, and it maims and kills. How much more pain must be inflicted on girls and babies before this practice is stopped? Who will accept responsibility for halting the horrors of FGM?
Will only a full moral panic about scandals of professional ‘failure to care’ bring the barbarism of FGM to an end?
Please sign and forward this e-petition (for UK citizens), posted 25 June 2012 on the HM Government website:
STOP Female Genital Mutilation (FGM / ‘cutting’) in Britain
If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag #NoFGM and follow @NoFGM1. Thank you.
Female Genital Mutilation In Britain: Professional Culpability, Public Responsibility, Private Peril
Female genital mutilation (‘cutting’, or ‘FGM’) is a barbaric practice inflicted on young girls by their families, and often performed by their immediate women relatives. Operators rarely have medical training and FGM is expressly illegal in the UK. Nonetheless, every year some 20,000+ small children in Britain are at risk of this damaging, very dangerous ritual. But prosecutions there are none. Why are FGM perpetrators protected, rather than victims? Is FGM child non-protection on a par with the scandal of UK elder-care ‘services’?
Call The Midwife… Then, Now And In The Future
We might think that a book about midwifery in London in the 1950s is of little practical relevance today; but how wrong could we be? The true tales which Jennifer Worth (1935- 2011) relates in her Call the Midwife trilogy, now being televised by the BBC, are not as some suppose stories removed from the realities of the present time. They connect very directly with our current lives for at least two critically important reasons.
NB Further discussion of ‘Call The Midwife’ as a really successful BBC1 drama series (and about who wrote and performed the music for the drama) can be found on Hilary’s other website, DreamingRealist ~ Call The Midwife: A BBC1 Triumph For Real People. The blog on this website considers issues around delivering professional public service.
You are most welcome to add Comment on either post.
Green Hubs As Social Inclusion And Community Engagement
This paper proposes a possible framework to examine concepts of public space in relation to culture, knowledge, community engagement and inclusion. It is not a challenge to current ideas about the sustainable development of public space, but offers additional perspectives arising from wider debates about the importance of understandings in shaping resilience, cohesion and sense of place.
A version of this paper was also published in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Municipal Engineer, Volume 164 Issue 3, September 2011, pp. 167-174.
Teachers: The Internal Crisis (in 1981)
This article, which I wrote in Autumn 1981, was first published in the journal Social Science Teacher Vol.11, No.1. It refers to post-16 education in England immediately after the 1981 riots. As now, thirty years later, the labour market for young people was fragile, quasi-monetarist economic strategies were in force, and social unrest and concerns about the future were widespread. In these contexts it is unsurprising that teacher morale was under strain and the debate about occupational stress in education was beginning.
Let me start by saying in this Review that I’d urge absolutely everyone who has a professional concern for ageing to read this book. It offers fresh perspectives on and a very significant contribution to our understanding of difficult matters. Not only researchers (whether social or, e.g., medical) but also policy makers, practitioners, clinicians, journalists and many others will find their insights into this complex issue enriched by what Bill Bytheway, a social gerontologist and policy commentator of many years’ standing, has to tell us.
Our Community Bus Is Our Badge
Matters budgetary are pretty tight for most social enterprises right now. So is there still a case for capital spending by individual organisations on purchases such as, say, a minibus, even when a taxi account would do?
Rationally, most of us would probably say No. But with their hearts many might even now want to say Yes, there are still good reasons for acquiring and maintaining expensive capital items. But why? What does ownership offer which functional access does not?
FACTASS: The New (1986) Joint Forum of Academic & Teaching Associations In The Social Sciences
The 1980s posed a considerable challenge for those of us in the social sciences. Just when professional consciousness of the social curriculum was being articulated, the resources and opportunities to develop it were under serious threat, both politically and in terms of resources. Some of us in different social science and social education disciplines therefore conjoined as FACTASS (of which I was founder / Convenor) to address these threats directly. This 1986 Forum announcement was published in Social Science Teacher.
Ageing Is A National Issue
Perhaps it’s superfluous to observe that ageing is an issue which affects us all quite fundamentally; but you wouldn’t always know that, to judge from the general invisibility of the topic. And that invisibility is a big element of the difficult challenges which policy makers in this field face. Unless we’re very unlucky we shall all experience it, but how many of us want to think about old age? We don’t want to consider the often lonely lives, reduced mobility and other unrelenting afflictions which many older people encounter at some point in their senior years.
Read more…
Is ‘Ruin Porn’ A Good Approach To Regeneration?
The Centre for Cities 2011 report published in January makes for interesting reading, especially in its focus on the challenges ahead for places like my home town of Liverpool. The debate earlier this year at the launch – which, sadly, I had to miss – will have been compelling. The Centre’s 2011 projections are fairly upbeat for locations such as Bristol and Edinburgh (both, of course, renown for their knowledge-based economies), but the news for cities such as Liverpool (and Birkenhead), Newport and Swansea is measured and dire.
Read more…
David Cameron Stands By Big Society; Others Stand Askance
The ‘Big Society’ debate continues vigorously (13 February 2011), not least because Prime Minister David Cameron has himself chosen to write about it in The Observer (‘Have no doubt, the big society is on its way‘). But Cameron’s optimism is not shared by everyone, as many respondents to his piece have very clearly demonstrated.
Read more…
Kameel Ahmady is a British-Iranian-anthropologist who has for many years investigated and campaigned against female genital mutilation (FGM), child and other non-consensual marriage (CEFM), the persecution of e.g. gay people (LGBT) and other human rights abuses. In 2019 he was arrested in Iran and held in solitary confinement, accused of activities against the state; and in late 2020 he received a sentence of some ten years imprisonment. Shortly thereafter he escaped from Iran and now lives in Britain. (Details of these events here.)
At the same time as the court in Tehran decided his sentence rumours about sexually inappropriate behaviour by Kameel Ahmady began to circulate on social media. These resulted in his membership of the Iranian Sociological Association being rescinded. Below are two statements (both in approximate English translations) arising from and challenging this accusation and the ISA action arising from it. Read more…
Hilary Burrage 