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We live in a historic period of heightened and intersecting uncertainties. This article draws on Bauman's (2012) metaphor of 'liquid modernity' to discuss the precariousness of family lives and child and family welfare provision in the context of austerity politics in contemporary England, before going on to consider the implications for research and researchers. Contexts of constant uncertainty have ethical and methodological implications for family research, particularly for studies concerned with services for children and families. When precarisation is an instrument of government, we need approaches to understanding 'what works' that are fit for liquid modern times: engaging with the complex contingencies of child and family lives and of the systems and services that they encounter, and actively resisting individualising and deficit-focused narratives in the study of child and family welfare. I focus my reflections on England because it is where I live and work, but the considerations I discuss have relevance for any context where the erosion of welfare provision coincides with growing inequality for children and families.

The 'American Girl' this paper considers is Helen Wills, the top-ranked women's tennis player from 1927 to 1934. Wills was the subject of numerous narrative and visual representations as well as many self-representations in both words and images. Reading Wills in the context of Henry James's Daisy Miller and the popular magazine Gibson Girl, the paper considers the mechanisms by which national symbols are constructed. In particular, it examines the ways in which Wills's style of playing, her clothes, and even her facial expression came to signify a particular version of modern, American femininity (in contrast to that of opponents such as Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Jacobs). It also explores her identity as a white Californian, a neo-classical girl next door, who appealed to Nativists like James Phelan and Gertrude Atherton and whom Diego Rivera placed at the centre of 1931 Allegory of California. In short, Helen Wills proved both a very flexible American symbol and a global celebrity.

There is a substantial academic literature on ethics in research with children and young people in low income or economically developing countries, emphasizing the need to be aware of special cultural and social considerations. However, considerations of culture and ethnicity are not particular to development studies. This article draws on examples from my own UK research with children, young people and families, alongside a wider academic literature, to reflect on the need to address ethics considerations in relation to culture and ethnicity when working within ethnically and culturally diverse societies.

AbstractThe complicated shifts in power and status that took place between Britain, France and the United States in the years immediately preceding the First World War resulted in anxious self‐examination and a series of identity crises whose social, cultural and political ramifications would be felt for decades to come. This was also a boom time for boxing, and one that was distinguished by a lively debate about the pros and cons of the "English" and "American" styles. This paper argues that these detailed deliberations about sporting technique often exposed a more general disquiet about national strengths and vulnerabilities and about the pre‐war balance of power. A consideration of straight lefts and slogging ruffians tells us something about the issues at stake.

This article critically examines the success of the Map Your Future women's mentoring programme (MYF) in challenging gender role norms with a group of women from four socio-economically disadvantaged communities of a large Australian provincial city. MYF was underpinned by a 'feminist-strengths' perspective and used a social intervention research framework to guide programme development, implementation and evaluation. Participants, who were predominantly of Anglo-Celtic ethnicity, came from communities where there was a persistent cultural expectation that women work within the home. Unemployment was significantly higher, one-parent families more common, the median weekly household income lower and completion of secondary education well below the state average in all communities (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2006). The findings suggest that group mentoring with women, from cultures where care-giving is valued over education and career opportunities, can assist women to broaden their educational and career interests and enable them to explore their hopes and goals for the future unconstrained by gender role norms.

Gegenstand der Filminterpretation ist der sechste Teil der "Rocky"-Serie "Rock Balboa" (Twentieth Century Fox, 2006), die in den USA eine große Popularität erlangte. Im Film wird nicht nur die mediale Präsentation und gesellschaftliche Wahrnehmung des Berufsboxens in der Gegenwart deutlich, sondern auch das nostalgische Verhältnis zur US-Geschichte, insbesondere zu den 1950er Jahren und ihrer Popkultur. Auffallend ist zum einen das Verlangen nach den von Sylvester Stallone geschaffenen und verkörperten fiktiven Heldenfiguren, die zum Bestandteil einer populären Kultur geworden sind, die im widersprüchlichen Umgang mit sich selbst nun ebenfalls ihre Klassiker erzeugt. Zum anderen erfolgt in diesem Sehnsuchtskontext eine Reinstitutionalisierung des (alten) weißen Vaters in seiner Rolle als Ernährer und Erzieher einer zerfallenen Familie. (ICI2)

Between 1920 and 1949 the British-led colonial government in Sudan embarked on a largely unsuccessful campaign to stop the practice of 'female circumcision' in the northern two thirds of the country, the part where Islam prevails. The form of genital cutting concerned has been identified as the most radical (type 3) in WHO publications, and accounts for approximately fifteen percent of cases world wide; it is practiced mainly in north east Africa, by people of several religious persuasions: Christian, Muslim, and indigenous. In Muslim Sudan it is referred to as 'pharaonic purification' and attributed to the ancient Egyptians; in Egypt it is referred to as 'Sudanese'. The procedure, technically called infibulation, involves removing the protruding clitoris and small labia, then paring the large labia and fastening them together to cover the vaginal opening, leaving a very small opening for the elimination of waste. A thick layer of scar tissue develops that all but closes the entrance to the womb; this must be opened at marriage and further cut to enable birth. The practice has long been a requirement of marriageability in northern Sudan; it is 'normalized' and supported by a deep-seated cultural logic of which I have written at length that affirms the aesthetic and moral value of 'covering' or 'closing' (Boddy 1989).

New-build city-centre residential development in the UK has increasingly been identified as a form of 'third-wave' or 'postrecession' gentrification. The aim of this paper is, first, to extend our understanding of new, developer-led, residential development in the context of nonmetropolitan urban areas in the UK, which it does by means of a case study of the city of Bristol. The second aim is to revisit the issue of whether such residential development should be seen as a form of postrecession gentrification and to question the meaning of the term 'gentrification' as it has been increasingly used in a global context. This discussion draws both on a detailed case study of Bristol and on a critical reading of Davidson and Lees (2005, "New build 'gentrification' and London's riverside renaissance", Envronment and Planning A 37 1165–1190) account of new-build 'gentrification' in London's riverside. In conclusion, it is argued that these forms of residential development and investment flows reflect a powerful and complex set of processes which it is important to understand. In contrast to Davidson and Lees, however, the conclusion is also that the extension of the term 'gentrification' to embrace such forms of development stretches it beyond the point at which it retains utility or meaning.

There is now a considerable body of work arguing for the importance of industrial clusters, networks, and linkage to the process of innovation and economic dynamism. Increasingly, as well, this has been drawn on in a policy context with the aim of emulating high-growth/innovative localities. This paper presents a brief review of this work, emphasising the different theoretical and conceptual traditions on which it has drawn. It then presents a critical appraisal of the attempt of the State Government of Victoria, Australia, in the late 1980s and early 1990s to boost innovation and technologically advanced economic development by means of spatially focused 'Technology Precincts'. It looks at the origins, implementation, and aftermath of the initiative, noting both the contingent impacts of economic and political shifts on the initiative but also the more fundamental problems inherent in attempting to emulate high-profile international exemplars of successful industrial districts and spatially focused innovation.