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AG About Gender - Rivista internazionale di studi di genere, Vol. 12 No. 23 (2023): (Re)Constructing gender and sexuality in and through mobile media

This contribution is aimed at shedding light on how the concept of utopia is closely linked, both in terms of content and method, to the gender perspective and, more specifically, to feminist reflection. We do so by dwelling on some of the most influential voices that have contributed to the recent rediscovery of utopia as a sociological method and mobilizing force for critiquing and reacting to advanced capitalism and existing arrangements of gender relations.The article closes with some reflections on how utopian realism can enable us to overcome the fear of change in gender relations and counter the risk of “retrotopias”.

In this paper, we study whether and how firm-level unionism and collective agreements affect workplace training. Theory provides inconclusive predictions on the various channels and processes through which firm-level industrial relations may affect workplace training. Quantitative and qualitative analyses, when used in isolation, have also proved insufficient for an adequate account of the various factors at play. In the spirit of opening the ‘black box’ of firm-level unionism and collective bargaining, we combine quantitative and qualitative strategies. Our results suggest that workplace unionism, and especially decentralized collective agreements, favor workplace training in subtler and often more dynamic ways than commonly understood.

The pandemic represents a turning point which affects the micro‐politics of managing productive, reproductive and social life in our new everyday lives. In this article, we make a contribution to the recent and growing scientific debate by exploring academic researchers’ processes of construction and de-construction of spatial, temporal and relational boundaries that take place in the pandemic work-life stay-at-home style. Particular attention is paid to some macro-structural drivers of work and family life, specifically the role of gender and the organisational culture of the neoliberal university. We chose an exploratory, qualitative, non-directive methodology in order to grasp the permeability between the public and the private that this pandemic, as ever before, makes clear. The empirical material consists of ten in-depth narrative video-interviews conducted online with Italian researchers living in different Regions. The article offers an empirical analysis of working from home with a specific focus on the academic context, which is a privileged setting for the investigation of gender inequalities. The analysis sheds light on subjective experiences of the disarticulation of boundaries and their intertwining with the neoliberal ideal type of academic researcher that have unequal consequences on the experience of time-space, productivity, and intimate relationships between men and women, women with and without children and people who live alone or with family., Italian Sociological Review, Vol 10, No 3S (2020)

Among the steps to improve a country's competitiveness, several commentators and international institutions include a general emphasis on deregulation and decentralization of industrial relations. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by studying whether and how firm-level unionism and collective agreements affect workplace training, a key ingredient to competitiveness. Theory provides inconclusive predictions on the various channels and processes through which firm-level industrial relations may affect workplace training. Quantitative and qualitative analyses, when used in isolation, have also proved insufficient for an adequate account of the various factors at play. This is where our paper mostly contributes. In the spirit of opening the "black box" of firm-level unionism and collective bargaining, we mix together quantitative and qualitative strategies. Our results suggest that workplace unionism, and especially decentralized collective agreements, favor workplace training in subtler and often more dynamic ways than commonly understood.

Since the mid-1990s, a rich critical literature has emerged on the effects of New Public Management (NPM) on academia (Chandler et al.). Referring to neoliberal policies which are adopted in order to reshape the academic world on the blueprint of a market, NPM controls academics through practices that foster hyper-competition including temporary contracts increasing job insecurity, funding pressures, and performance accountability measures (e.g. audits, rankings, and research assessments) (Ball, 2016; Clarke et al., 2012; Larner, Le Heron, 2005; Nikunen, 2014; Thomas, Davies, 2002). This literature has emphasized that these practices do not only increase the workload of academics but also at once exert control by enjoining individuals into self-definitions, identities and social relations aligned with the neoliberal norms of individualized efficiency and performativity (Ball, 2012; Brunila, 2016), accountability towards multiple audiences (Frølich, 2011; Roberts, 2009; Zanoni, De Coster, 2016), academic entrepreneurship (Brunila 2012; Nikunen, 2014), and flexibility (Knights, Clarke, 2014). Once so redefined, academic subjects enforce control through self-regulation on the one hand (Foucault, 2008; McKinlay, Pezet, 2017) and come to undermine collegiality and collective resistance on the other (Davies, Petersen, 2005). Whereas we have a rich knowledge of the changing working conditions and subjectivities of professors and other academic actors, the literature has to date addressed less how NMP has changed university students, with the exception of few studies on the increasing consumer orientation to academic study (Tomlinson, 2017; Williams, 2012; Woodall et al., 2014). Yet the neoliberalization of academia-as part of the neoliberalization of society at large-has not left student subjectivities unaffected. Since neoliberal university is expected to provide the student with a tertiary education that is increasingly understood as a commodity to use in a changing, insecure and competitive labour market, graduate students' professional outcomes are seen as empirical evidence of its increased employability and labour market preparedness. At the same time, as students' educational performance and experiences (including numbers, duration to completion, scholarships, etc.) are themselves used as key measures of university performance, students have themselves increasingly become a means to access resources (Larner, Le Heron, 2005). This paper relies on critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, Wodak, 1997) to explore how and with what consequences neoliberal discourses and governance practices have affected students' understanding of themselves, their opportunities and desires during the academic life period, as well as how university administrative and academic staff understand them. Specifically, it contributes to the extant literature on neoliberal academia by answering the following two questions: 1) How is the neoliberal discourse of higher education reshaping students' subjectivity? 2) How is students' subjectivity in neoliberal academia affecting the nature, status and function of university knowledge? The questions are addressed empirically through the qualitative data collected in a large mixed-methods case study of a university of medium size in the north of Italy aimed at exploring the quality of life of students. The topics investigated include the impact of recent neoliberal reforms and new governance practices on students' lives, their needs and expectations in regard to teaching, to other university services, and more generally to academic life. Data was collected through 49 semi-structured interviews with key informants, lasting around 1.5 hours, including university students (n = 16), administrative personnel (n = 14), teachers (n = 12), and staff of agencies that interact closely with university and provide services for students (n = 7); 1 focus group with 5 students' representatives lasting 2 hours; a large amount of open comments left by the students at the end of 2,867 on-line questionnaires; and ethnographic notes taken by the first author during fieldwork in the period

Dagli anni Novanta, le ricerche dei work-family studies hanno indagato la dimensione temporale della quotidianità, vale a dire a come i membri di una famiglia spendono il proprio tempo e lo distribuiscono tra le diverse sfere di vita. Se inizialmente, intrec-ciandosi con la prospettiva di genere, le analisi sono di carattere descrittivo e incentrate sull'uso “domestico” del tempo da parte delle donne, successivamente l'interesse va a comprendere anche l'universo maschile e altre sfere d'attività.

La tesi ha l'obiettivo di comprendere quale sistema di nuovi valori, aspirazioni e norme sociali, rispetto all'ideologia delle sfere separate, orienta l'agire di neogenitori in coppie dual precarious e con quali conseguenze dal punto di vista soggettivo, tanto nella quotidianità quanto lungo il corso biografico. Il lavoro di ricerca adotta un approccio sociologico di tipo interpretativo e si articola su tre fuochi di analisi specifici: gli assetti culturali e normativi influenti nei processi di sense-making tra famiglia e lavoro, le pratiche quotidiane di boundary-work fra gli ambiti di vita e i processi decisionali lungo le esperienze biografiche. La tesi fa luce su come i meccanismi, allo stesso tempo pratici e culturali, collocati in contesti familiari, strutturali e culturali specifici, concorrano, talvolta in modo conflittuale e talvolta attraverso taciti processi di adattamento, ad innovare e, per altri versi, a riprodurre i modelli egemoni di conciliazione famiglia-lavoro.