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.
Kameel Ahmady, British-Iranian Anthropologist, Detained In Iran – News Updates (August 2019 to February 2021)
This photograph is of my friend and colleague, the British-Iranian anthropologist Kameel Ahmady, in happier times when he kindly came to support my book launch, and attended the U.N. FGM conference in Geneva in 2016.
But in mid-August 2019 Kameel was detained, and months later bailed, in Iran on vague and political criminal charges relating to ‘national security’. The upshot was a verdict of nine years’ imprisonment and an unthinkably massive fine.
Just after his sentence however Kameel, his wife Shafagh Rahmani and their little son managed in December 2020 / January 2021 to escape to Britain, from where he hopes to continue reporting on female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage and ‘white marriage’ in the Middle-East
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Speaking Out On Population
The Global Population Speak Out is a programme of fundamental importance promoted by the Population Institute in Washington DC. It is, they say … designed to bring new voices into the realm of population activism and public education. By demonstrating that population is an approachable issue, especially in the context of international sustainability initiatives and discussions, the capacity of the human community to achieve long-term sustainable living scenarios with our planet is strengthened.
Big Society Voluntarism Harms The Knowledge Base
The Big Society so far is no fun at all. It seems to be on-line-style tea and sympathy all round. Almost on a daily basis emails arrive from hard-working, committed contacts, saying their job, role and whatever else is finishing, and they as yet have no clear idea what, if anything, will happen next. And, incredibly short-sighted though this may be, in general it appears no provision is being made by these people’s organisations to retain core knowledge or maintain legacy.
For The Truth About British Society, Follow The (Housing) Money
The Chartered Institute of Housing, Shelter, Rowan Williams and Boris Johnson all seem to agree; whether social housing can continue meaningfully to exist in the wealthier parts of the UK – mostly London – is doubtful, following the autumn 2010 spending review. Quite rightly, we currently focus on people in social housing, at risk of homelessness and most vulnerable. But the other issue is who owns what housing, where; and why.
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Talking Is Key To Engagement, But Do We Know How?
Communicating with each other is held to be really important as an element of community engagement – and of formal stakeholder consultation – so why do most of us in this line of work spend such little time considering it? Do we need to focus more directly on supporting the bond between parents and dependent children, as a critical element of community life?
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Does Old Age Have To Mean Life On The Sidelines?
What happens to people as they get older? What should be the starting points for more consideration of this vexed question? With post-war babies now reaching retirement and many of their parents still alive, the numbers of elderly people in the UK is increasing dramatically.
Socio-economic infrastructure nonetheless still often lags behind; whilst never unimportant, advanced old age was until quite recently not a widespread issue. But significantly extended life expectancy is something which will now impinge on most of us, directly.
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Communities Are Much More Than Localities
The new agenda in regeneration is emerging, and with it will emerge also a new lexicon. Each of us will have their own priorities for terminological redefinition. Mine is to re-examine the meaning/s of ‘community’. Communities are not just localities; but this is rarely reflected in thinking on regeneration or social policy.
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Move On If You’re Monied (Or Now Alone)
The status is still unclear of recent proposals by senior politicians that social housing (‘council housing’ and the like in old parlance) be only for those in greatest financial need. But whether simply political musing, or seriously on the agenda, these propositions are a very bad idea. And so, without very careful preparation, is the idea that you must move on if you are job-seeking or if family changes mean your house has fewer residents and in official terms becomes ‘underoccupied’.
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Brokering For Adequacy In Austerity
A bit like redundancy, ‘more for less’ can look OK unless it’s you that’s in the firing line. There’s little most of us as individuals can add to the current commentary about what’s happening to the public sector, beyond hoping (a) that perhaps it won’t be our own name next on the list, and (b) that somehow we’ll cope. But beyond this, someone has to consider how to reduce the likely damage which will ensue.
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I gave a keynote this morning (6 July 2010), at the Entrepreneurial Cultures in European Cities Conference, held at the Maritime Museum, National Museums Liverpool. The talk was entitled Culture: Civic Badge or Serious Business? Some thoughts on transaction, creativity and enterprise.My powerpoint presentation, based on a ‘walk down Liverpool’s Smithdown Road’ from downtown to the leafier suburbs, asked how can we shape (relative) gentrification to include the entrepreneurs who bring it about? Where do civic, creative and community interests coincide?
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Homes, Job Prospects And Horizons: How Far Is ‘Away’?
Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, proposes to help people move house in order to get work. This is not a new idea; from Norman Tebbit’s ‘on your bike’ onwards it’s been variously proposed by the main political parties that those without employment need encouragement to become domestically mobile. But jobs are not necessarily to be found just around the corner, a mere bikeride – Duncan Smith’s fifteen miles – of where those unemployed currently live.
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Inaction On Regional Trains Speaks Louder Than Words
The electrification of railway lines in the NW of England (and elsewhere) has been planned for some while. Money was allocated for this programme by the last government, which recognised the need to modernise regional intercity connections for both economic and environmental reasons. But in the new coalition government’s austerity-focused scheme of things it seems this plan is under threat.Recent personal experience demonstrates why action now on upgrading these lines is essential.
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A Trial Of Two Localisms
Has nationally-prescribed double devolution somehow morphed into nationally-prescribed strategic localism? Is either of them actually meaningful without fairly generous national support – whether in resources or in serious leadership?
What Skills Shortage? Sustainability For All…?
The much-debated ‘skills shortage’ in regeneration was never a clear-cut issue; plenty of volunteers (and some third sector workers) have skills which are consistently underused. And the current economic climate has left even experienced professionally qualified practitioners without a job.
Nonetheless, the skills and knowledge sets for the green economy will surely be different from those required hitherto.
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For practitioners of sociology, the sociological imagination shapes our understandings of politics as we try to make sense of the General Election, Politics and Power. As a sociologist you can either observe society from afar or get involved as many of us feel compelled to do. The sociological prism, once perceptually engrained, is deeply compelling; and never more so than when focused on Power.
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Sure Start, But Weak Connection
Elections offer the opportunity to take stock and choose futures – as do decisions taken in regeneration every day, year in year out.
But to act wisely we need to understand how things come about. Politics locally or nationally underpins almost everything which happens in urban and community renewal, yet it remains often unperceived as the changes occur.
‘Right To Buy’ Heads Up The Housing Agenda Again
Apparently ‘Right to Buy’ – a key policy in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s time – is with us once more. It seems Conservatives in Wandsworth are keen to re-introduce the sale of council housing to tenants as a serious element in civic regeneration strategy. And there may also be other local authorities with the same idea, which some of us hoped had gone for good.
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Quotas For Women On Top Boards
Do we need a quota system to get women into top Board positions? is the question asked today by the (Liverpool) Daily Post’s Business writer, Tony McDonough. It is sadly the case that some very successful women argue no special case should be made for more women to join them; perhaps this was true for them as individuals. But this ignores the huge untapped talents of the female half of the population.
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Regeneration Disappears Along With Regionalism
Where’s the regeneration? is a question which continues to worry many of us, as we look at (read reports of?) the political parties’ manifestos. This remains a valid and critical matter; but perhaps the invisibility of regeneration in its full-on form is inevitable. First there is a large degree of consensus about needing to concentrate on the smallest units of community life, and then, before we can say Sustainable, the bigger units have disappeared from view.
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The Big Society And ‘Dysfunctional’ Communities
The Conservatives’ Big Society proposals, derived from their Broken Britain idea, might more truthfully be called the Boot Straps (community use of) proposals; for that is what they advocate. Scant hope here that disadvantaged communities will receive the support and investment they still need. The Big Society help them join mainstream society. Rather, Big Society rhetoric – ‘dysfunctional communities’, not disempowered ones; ‘platoons of volunteers’ comprising all adults in every UK community – suggests an altogether more prescriptive model of modern British society.
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Hilary Burrage 