Journal articles on the topic 'Sikh women – Identity'

With the inauguration of the Khalsa in 1699 by the tenth guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh, a new understanding of ‘being Sikh’ was put in place. In examining the earliest prescriptive texts of the Khalsa, manifestations of Sikh religio-cultural identity and visual distinctiveness were deeply connected to the male Sikh body. This study locates Sikh women within a number of these early ritual and textual ordinances while also exploring how Sikh female religio-cultural materiality is contradistinct to the normative Khalsa male body. The production of phulkaris, a form of embroidered head covering (but having other uses as well) was historically associated with Sikh women and are here examined as alternate forms of religious belonging, ritual production and devotion. This study concludes with an examination of how the turban, for a small number of diasporic Sikh women, can be understood both as a rejection of traditional Sikh female ideals, as well as a novel form of Sikh women’s identity construction that is closely aligned with Sikh masculine ideals.

For decades, Sikhs have made the choice to migrate to the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (USA), or Canada, as these countries are held in high esteem by Sikh communities and appear to afford prestige in socio-cultural terms to those who settle in them. However, changes in border policies (among other considerations such as the greater difficulty of establishing themselves in other countries, the opening of borders by regularization processes in Spain, commercial business purposes, or political reasons) have compelled Sikh migrants to diversify their destinations, which now include many European countries, Spain among them. The first generation of Sikhs arrived in Spain as part of this search for new migratory routes, and there are now sizable Sikh communities settled in different parts of this country. All migrants need to follow a process of adaptation to their new living environment. Moreover, a novel living context may offer new possibilities for migrants to (re)negotiate old identities and create new ones, both at individual and collective levels. This article will explore a case study of a Sikh community in Barcelona to reflect on the forms in which Sikh men and women perceive, question, and manage their identity and their lives in this new migratory context in Spain. The present paper argues that adaptation to the new place implies identity negotiations that include the redefinition of gender roles, changes in the management of body and appearance, and, most particularly, the emergence of new forms of agency among young Sikh women. In addition, we argue that new forms of female agency are made possible not only by the opportunities offered by the new context, but also emerge as a reaction against the many pressures experienced by the young women and exerted by their male counterparts in Sikh communities, as the latter push against the loss of traditional values.

In order to examine gender and identity within Sikh literature and culture and to understand the construction of gender and the practice of Sikhi within the contemporary Sikh diaspora in the US, I analyze a selection from creative non-fiction pieces, variously termed essays, personal narrative, or life writing, in Meeta Kaur’s edited collection, Her Name is Kaur: Sikh American Women Write About Love, Courage, and Faith. Gender, understood as a social construct (Butler, among others), is almost always inconsistent and is related to religion, which, too, is a construct and is also almost always inconsistent in many ways. Therefore, my reading critically engages with the following questions regarding life writing through a postcolonial feminist and intersectional lens: What are lived religions and how are the practices, narratives, activities and performances of ‘being’ Sikh imagined differently in the diaspora as represent in my chosen essays? What are some of the tenets of Sikhism, viewed predominantly as patriarchal within dominant cultural spaces, and how do women resist or appropriate some of them to reconstruct their own ideas of being a Sikh? In Kaur’s collection of essays, there are elements of traditional autobiography, such as the construction of the individual self, along with the formation of communal identity, in the postcolonial life writing. I will critique four narrative in Kaur’s anthology as testimonies to bear witness and to uncover Sikh women’s hybrid cultural and religious practices as reimagined and practiced by the female Sikh writers.

Several North American Sikh millennials are creating online values-based fashion enterprises that seek to encourage creative expression, self-determined representation, gender equality, and ethical purchasing, while steeped in the free market economy. Exploring the innovative ways young Sikhs of the diaspora express their values and moral positions in the socio-economic sphere, one finds many fashionistas, artists, and activists who are committed to making Sikh dress accessible and acceptable in the fashion industry. Referred to as “Sikh chic”, the five outwards signs of the Khalsa Sikh—the “5 ks”—are frequently used as central motifs for these businesses (Reddy 2016). At the same time, many young Sikh fashion entrepreneurs are designing these items referencing contemporary style and social trends, from zero-waste bamboo kangas to hipster stylized turbans. Young Sikh women are challenging mainstream representations of a masculine Sikh identity by creating designs dedicated to celebrating Khalsa Sikh females. Drawing on data collected through digital and in-person ethnographic research including one-on-one interviews, participant observation, and social media, as well as fashion magazines and newsprint, I explore the complexities of this phenomenon as demonstrated by two Canadian-based Sikh fashion brands, Kundan Paaras and TrendySingh, and one Canadian-based Sikh female artist, Jasmin Kaur.

This paper is concerned with the identities of disabled South Asian women within Britain. It presents empirical evidence concerning how disability, gender and ethnicity are negotiated simultaneously for young disabled Muslim and Sikh women. How these identities are negotiated is analysed in the realms of family, religion and marriage drawing on qualitative interviews with the young women, their parents and siblings. The paper argues against ideas of singular identity or the hierarchisation of identities or oppressions. The paper contributes to contemporary debates about how young South Asian women are constructing new forms of identity in Britain.

The paper reflects on the role of women in Sikhism in theory and social practice, starting from a case study in northern Italy. Although the normative discourse widely shared in mainstream Sikhism affirms the equality between man and woman and the same possibility to manifest devotion through every kind of seva (social service within gurdwaras), empirical observation in some Italian gurdwaras has shown a different picture, as there is a clear division of tasks that implicitly subtends a gender-based hierarchy. This relational structure is challenged by intergenerational tensions, especially by young women born or raised in Italy, who may want to develop a different Sikh identity, considered compatible also with the Italian social and cultural context. In this initial process of collective identity definition and of agency, the female participation in the religious seva within gurdwaras is identified as the tool for change of power relations that cross genders and generations.

Gender studies has facilitated the exploration of Aids and Migration among other social problems, and has enabled a more sensible understanding of the discrimination practices that exist around them. This paper will discuss the aspects in which gender studies have contributed to assess issues regarding migration from the gendered diaspora perspective. This sociological construction of diaspora encompasses the many different reasons why migrants decide to leave their country, bounded by national, racial or ethnic background, which enroll in a strong political motivation. Although in this essay, the theoretical discussion will embrace male gendered diasporas as well, critics of the term have questioned how gendered diasporas have been traditionally understood of men. The first part of the discussion will be guided by the question: what is a gendered diaspora identity? The essay will emphasise the gendered category of analysis. I will argue how gendered identities are constructed under the circumstances of dominance and oppression that result from displacement. First, the deconstruction of the social category of gendered diaspora will be assessed, through an examination of Ella Shohat ́s agreement of identity. The essay will then examine the term diaspora and its ambivalences and criticisms. The second part of the discussion will consider three separate cases of how gendered diasporic identities are being understood, including: the cultural representations of Cuban Americans, the Sikh diaspora and Armenian women in Los Angeles.

This article adopts a subjective and reflective voice to convey my emotional response (in Boler’s, 1999 terms) to the passing of a recent Bill in Quebec. The article explores the question: How does one reconcile a Sikh identity that is worthy, respected and admirable in Quebec, and by extension in Canada, in light of Quebec’s Bill 21? Further, through the lens of a racialized minority, that of a Sikh woman calling Canada home, and from the perspective of my family who have lived in Canada for several generations, I contest the recent legislation in Quebec’s Bill 21, for having erected a very strong, man-made cage that effectively bars anyone with a Sikh identity from working in the civil service.

ABSTRACT Metabolic syndrome (MS) refers to a cluster of various interrelated cardiometabolic risk factors that promote the development of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). South Asians also seem to have a peculiar body phenotype known as South Asian Phenotype, characterized by increased waist circumference, increased waist hip ratio, excessive body fat mass, increased plasma insulin levels and insulin resistance, as well as an atherogenic dyslipidemia, with low levels of HDL cholesterol and increased triglyceride levels. Epidemiologists in India and international agencies such as the world health organization (WHO) have been sounding an alarm on the rapidly rising burden of CVD for the past 15 years. Thus, the primary aim of this study was to identify the prevalence of ms in the Urban Sikh Population of Amritsar by means of a door-to-door survey. A secondary aim was to identify the risk factors for the development of ms. The sample size of 1089 subjects was calculated. This study focused on Urban Sikhs living in Amritsar, Punjab. The overall prevalence of ms in Urban Sikh population of Amritsar was 34.3% with a higher prevalence among women (41.4%) compared with men (28.2%). We also found that the prevalence of ms increases with age in both sexes. We infer that out of 1089 subjects there were only 84 subjects who reported with not a single abnormal component of the ms. The rest 1005 subjects had either one or more component abnormal in them. How to cite this article Singh A, Shenoy S, Sandhu JS. Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome and its Risk Factors among Urban Sikh Population of Amritsar. J Postgrad Med Edu Res 2015;49(1):18-25.

Education leaders consistently make quick decisions that have substantial impacts on the students and educators, with whom they work, often based on ambiguous and incomplete information. Thus, in this fast-paced, imperfect decision-making environment, implicit, unconscious biases can influence their decisions. To become better decision-makers, education leaders must learn to identify their implicit biases and then minimize their negative influences. In this study of 1,751 U.S. participants, we examine perceptions of teaching ability based solely on a person’s appearance and how this initial perception of teaching ability relates to the person’s attractiveness rating, as well as race, age, gender, and some identifiable markers of religious devotion. Using linear regression and ANCOVA to analyze participant ratings of photographs of potential teachers, we found attractiveness to have a moderate to strong influence on perceived teaching ability. By group, there were only small differences in perceived teaching ability by race, gender, and age, with the exception of Sikh men wearing turbans and Muslim women wearing hijabs, where both groups had the lowest ability ratings. However, for individual photographs, across combinations of race, religion, age, and gender, ratings generally favored female over male teachers and disfavored Sikh men in turbans and Muslim women in hijabs.

This study aims to identify performance complience of nurses/midwives and its affected factors in using PlasmaMed for postpartum women at Hanoi Obstetrics Hospital in 2020. We used a cross-sectional degisn which combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. We used a checklist to observe 158 cases of PlasmaMed use and interviewed 14 manages and nurses/midwives of the hospital. Results showed that the rate of cases with good complience of required procedure for PlasmaMed in Caesarean delivery and normal delivery was 79.7% and 92.1%, respectively. We also found some factors having negative impacts on performance of nurses/midwives such as their insufficient knowledge about the technique, attitude of neglecting the importance of procedure complience, and their high pressure of workload. Keyword: Cold plasma at atmospheric pressure, performance, complience, nurses/midwives, caesarean delivery, PlasmaMed.

Objectives: Describe knowledge and attitude of women aged 20 - 35 about prevention of birth defects in Buon Ma Thuot city, Dak Lak province. Identify some factors related to knowledge and attitude of women aged 20-35 about prevention of birth defects in Buon Ma Thuot city, Dak Lak province year 2019. Methods: A cross-sectional study was used. The study subjects were the women from 20 - 35 years old living in Tan Tien and Hoa Thuan communes of Buon Ma Thuot City, Dak Lak Province. The sample size was randomly selected in the system with a total of 380 women. Duration of the study was from March to July 2019. Data was collected by direct interview the women with structured questionnaires; Data were analyzed by use the SPSS 22.0 software. Results: the percentage of women reaching required knowledge about the prevention of birth defects was 64.5% and having positive attitude about the prevention of birth defects was 81.8%. The group of ethnic minority women who were not reaching the required knowledge and having less positive attitude about prevention of birth defects were higher than that were in the Kinh women group with OR and p value were 1.92 and 3,12, respectively. The group of women with poor knowledge had a negative attitude on preventing birth defects 24 times higher than those with good knowledge. Conclusions and Recommendations: The percentage of women with good knowledge on birth defects is not high, especially the ethnic minorities group. There is a close relationship between knowledge and attitude on birth defects prevention. The study recommends that it is necessary to promote communication activities to enhance knowledge and attitudes of birth defects prevention for women of childbearing age, especially giving priority to ethnic minority women in the study area. Keywords: birth defects, ethnic minorities, knowledge, attitude, Daklak, Vietnam

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive breast cancer subtype. It disproportionately affects BRCA mutation carriers and young women, especially African American (AA) women. Chemoresistant TNBC is a heterogeneous and molecularly unstable disease that challenges our ability to apply personalized therapies. With the approval of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) for TNBC, the addition of pembrolizumab to systemic chemotherapy has become standard of care (SOC) in neoadjuvant systemic therapy (NST) for high-risk early-stage TNBC. Pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy significantly increased the pathologic complete response (pCR) and improved event-free survival in TNBC. However, clinical uncertainties remain because similarly treated TNBC partial responders with comparable tumor responses to neoadjuvant therapy often experience disparate clinical outcomes. Current methods fall short in accurately predicting which high-risk patients will develop chemo-resistance and tumor relapse. Therefore, novel treatment strategies and innovative new research initiatives are needed. We propose that the EGFR-K-RAS-SIAH pathway activation is a major tumor driver in chemoresistant TNBC. Persistent high expression of SIAH in residual tumors following NACT/NST reflects that the EGFR/K-RAS pathway remains activated (ON), indicating an ineffective response to treatment. These chemoresistant tumor clones persist in expressing SIAH (SIAHHigh/ON) and are linked to early tumor relapse and poorer prognosis. Conversely, the loss of SIAH expression (SIAHLow/OFF) in residual tumors post-NACT/NST reflects EGFR/K-RAS pathway inactivation (OFF), indicating effective therapy and chemo-sensitive tumor cells. SIAHLow/OFF signal is linked to tumor remission and better prognosis post-NACT/NST. Therefore, SIAH is well-positioned to become a novel tumor-specific, therapy-responsive, and prognostic biomarker. Potentially, this new biomarker (SIAHHigh/ON) could be used to quantify therapy response, predict chemo-resistance, and identify those patients at the highest risk for tumor relapse and poor survival in TNBC.

‘Women’s responsibilities call upon them to function in many spheres of human experience … (and so) their perspective on human security is comprehensive, including factors overlooked by the state security paradigm’ (Reardon, 2010a, The gender imperative: Human security vs state security, Routledge, p. 16). Recognising this, the following research article records threats to human security in Kashmir as seen from the point of view of a representative cross-section of Kashmiri women. It argues that in the context of the Kashmir valley, no discussion of security is complete without broadening the perspective from state security to human security. Again, no analysis of human security in Kashmir is complete without taking into account Kashmiri women’s experience of human security threats. The lived experiences of women in Kashmir and their perspectives should be at the heart of any human security analysis. This article aims at recording these threats faced by Kashmiri women in their daily lives, using a case study model. It records the lived experiences of 20 women from different ethnicities, religions, regions and locations within the valley. In doing so, it acknowledges not only the constraints of the case study model but also the centrality of women’s rights to identify and confront the threats to their conceptions and experiences of security. It limits itself to the Kashmir valley where the worst of the violence has occurred since 1989. Twenty women from seven districts—Srinagar, Pulwama, Budgam, Kulgam, Anantnag, Baramulla and Kupwara—have been interviewed over a 6-month period. In order to understand diverse conceptions and experiences of threats to human security, care was taken to include women from diverse ethnic and religious communities. The study covers Sikh, Sunni and Shia Muslim, Gujjar, Pahari and Kashmiri Pandit women.

Background: The research of hand anthropometry, upper limbs, height, and weight have produced many important specialties of applications such as rehabilitation, surgery, orthopedic trauma, labor medicine... Objectives: To identify some hand anthropometry, upper limbs, height, and weight of students of Thai Binh University of Medicine and Pharmacy. Subjects and methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study on 620 students of Thai Binh University of Medicine and Pharmacy from August 2021 to March 2022. . Results: The women’s and men’s average BMI were 18.91 and 20.66, respectively. In the hand anthropometry group, the male length hand (17.82 ± 0.83 cm) is larger than the female (16.42 ± 0.74 cm), with the largest middle finger from 73 mm to 78 mm, the ring finger. The little finger is always longer than the index finger, about 72 mm compared to 58 mm in men and 67mm compared to 53 mm in women. The thumb has a maximum width, followed by the middle finger, index finger, ring finger, and little finger (from 15.5 - 12.0 mm). The fingers are all thick, however, the little finger is thicker than the finger (8.92 ± 0.78 mm compared to 8.29 ± 0.78 mm in men). The length of the upper limb in men is much larger than that of the upper limb in women (76.12 cm in men and 70.17 cm in women) with p < 0.05, however, the length of the humerus in the two sexes has the least difference (29.19 cm in men compared to 27.4 cm in women). Conclusion: The multipliers for hand size, upper limb length, height, and weight were all larger in men than in women, the difference was statistically significant at p < 0.05. The length of the ring finger is always larger than the index finger, but the width is opposite at p < 0.05. * Keywords: Hand anthropometry; Upper limb; Height; weight.

The article is focuses on the study of the issues of participation of women of Ukraine in military formations in the First World War by modern Ukrainian historiography (1991-2016). Based on the topic, the author tried to solve the following research tasks: to identify which aspects of women's military history are within the interest of historians, to analyze the scale, character and level of research of the topic. The author found that the study of women's military history is gaining momentum. Historians are actively searching women's stories in the sources of those times; they are in the process of gathering information. They call military history “personal” because research on the subject is partially based on reports of the press about women volunteers and mainly on participants' personal documents, memoirs and letters. In the letters, women wrote about the way to the front, military life, a little about participation in battles, relations with soldiers; they also left information about each other. At the same time, each of the women had personal experience of war, own motives and results. Therefore, historians concluded that "this experience is quite difficult to summarize ". Modern researchers approach the study of women's stories not only in terms of heroism but trying to understand the causes and consequences of women's actions. The authors mention such main reasons as boredom of everyday life, escape from duties and national impulse. Inspired by the new fashionable views on life, the girls tried to escape from their everyday duties; they wanted to overcome social barriers and to prove that women were capable to cope with any work. The escape to the front was an attempt to change the way of life. Women who came to the front and participated in hostilities had to adapt quickly to difficult conditions and trials; they had to fight and to protect their own lives. The authors also analyze how society perceived the phenomenon of women in the war. Military commanders heroized their actions with the reason to raise the fighting spirit. However, the views of military men varied: the village guys welcomed and supported the girls; on the contrary, the men from the intelligent circle condemned women regarding them as competitors. Civil women believed that the girls had forgotten their traditional duty, they could have been more helpful in hospitals and doing charity. The author of the article also found that the participation of women in the military unit of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen was better studied. The researchers concluded that the Ukrainian women who lived in the Russian Empire supported the call in 1917 of the Provisional Government and Maria Bochkareva to form women's combat battalions. Women were motivated to go to the front by the same reasons as women in the ranks of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen: failures in love, the desire to escape from violence and humiliation in the family, domestic problems, the desire to avenge the dead relatives and loved ones. In big cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Poltava, the Ukrainian women willingly enrolled in the army. Anyway, the inclusion of women in the combat units of the army of the Russian Empire was found out fragmentary, there are almost no names and characteristics of the activity of the women's battalions. Only a few researchers pay attention to the messages in the then newspapers about escapes and the heroic deeds of girls in the war. These issues require the search of information and detailed study. The author came to the conclusion that most of the questions remain scientifically open requiring the search for information about women in the ranks of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and the army of the Russian Empire for the generalization of information and creation of a coherent picture of the military service of women at the front of the First World War.

Based on retrospective data from a sample of 602 women and 621 men living in couples surveyed in Switzerland in early 1999, professional trajectories of partners are compared using the optimal matching technique in order to distinguish typical sequence models. We identify dual-career couples and distinguish them from other couples with dual- or single-employment, showing that dual-career couples proper are a rather rare phenomenon, and that mobility trajectories continue to be strongly gendered: male trajectories respond to a predominantly occupational logic, whereas female trajectories are structured by both an occupational and a familial logic. A multinomial regression analysis allows to identify some of the factors conditioning couples’ trajectory constellations. Zusammenfassung Anhand retrospektiver Daten einer Stichprobe von Anfang 1999 befragten Paaren (602 Frauen und 621 Männern) vergleichen wir die Berufsverläufe zusammenlebender Partner und ermitteln typische Verlaufsmodelle. Mittels der Optimal-Matching-Technik identifizieren wir Doppelkarrierepaare und unterscheiden sie von anderen doppel- oder einfachverdienenden Paaren. Doppelkarrierepaare erweisen sich dabei als relativ selten. Außerdem sind Mobilitätsverläufe nach wie vor stark geschlechtsspezifisch: männliche Verläufe folgen einer reinen Beschäftigungslogik, weibliche Verläufe unterliegen zugleich einer Beschäftigungs- und einer Familienlogik. Eine multinomiale Regressionsanalyse erlaubt, einige der Bedingungsfaktoren für das Vorliegen der verschiedenen Paarkonstellationen zu identifizieren.

The present study focuses on families of Indian immigrants. The subjects in question come from the state of Panjab and have a Sikh religion. Purpose of the study is to show the linguistic and sociocultural conditions that the Indian preschoolers experience in their family life in Greece. As long as the family is the basic area of the children’ socialization, the culture that the children experience in their family environment specifies the linguistic and cultural background when they start attending the Greek preschool. The data of the case-study in question were gathered through the interviews given by eleven parents of the preschoolers and three kindergarten teachers. What the data analysis has shown is a tendency of linguistic and sociocultural separation of the families from the dominant language and culture. This separation has a direct impact on the children’ adaptation at school. The tendency that the analysis has shown is related to the desire of the family to preserve the ethnocultural and religious identity of their country and is increased due to the restricted role of the woman inside the family and the community. It is also supported by the social role that the temple built by the Indian community at Rethymno plays.

ObjectiveTreatment of patients with stroke presenting with minor deficits remains controversial, and the recent Potential of rtPA for Ischemic Strokes with Mild Symptoms (PRISMS) trial, which randomized patients to thrombolysis vs aspirin, did not show benefit. We studied the safety and efficacy of thrombolysis in a population of patients with acute stroke presenting with low NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores screened using MRI.MethodsThe NIH Natural History of Stroke database was reviewed from January 2006 to December 2016 to identify all patients with an initial NIHSS score ≤5 who received thrombolysis within 4.5 hours of symptom onset after being screened with MRI. The 24-hour postthrombolysis MRIs were reviewed for hemorrhagic transformation. Primary outcomes were symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (sICH) and favorable 90-day outcome modified Rankin Scale score 0–1. Subgroup analysis was performed on patients who would have been eligible for the PRISMS trial, which enrolled patients with a nondisabling neurologic deficit.ResultsA total of 121 patients were included in the study with a median age of 65 and an NIHSS score of 3; 63% were women. The rate of any hemorrhagic transformation was 13%, with 11% of them being limited to petechial hemorrhage. The rate of sICH was <1%. Sixty-six patients had 90-day outcome data; of those, 74% had a favorable outcome. For the subgroup of 81 PRISMS-eligible patients, none experienced sICH. Fifty of these patients had 90-day outcome data; of these, 84% had a favorable outcome.ConclusionsThrombolytic therapy was safe in our patients with stroke with minor deficits who were initially evaluated by MRI. Future studies of this population may benefit from MRI selection.Classification of evidenceThis study provides Class IV evidence that for patients with acute ischemic stroke and NIHSS ≤5 screened with MRI, IV tissue plasminogen activator is safe.

This paper seeks to identify, who is using online dating sites in Germany. Theoretically, it is drawn on the debate about the digital divide of society and the findings of sociological mate selection research. Several hypotheses are presented on how individuals using internet dating vary in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. These considerations are then tested empirically, using the data of the ARD/ZDF-Online Study 2007, a representative national sample of internet behaviour in Germany. Compared to the total population, the results show that online daters are rather male, younger, higher educated and live in households with a higher income. Compared to all internet users, online daters are also rather male, younger and living in single households; however, lower educated individuals are slightly overrepresented. Our work contributes to the research by showing that the propensity of men and women to participate in online dating depends on their individual perspectives at the marriage market. Particularly higher educated women and lower educated men belong to those groups that try to extend their pool of partners by using dating sites. Zusammenfassung Der Aufsatz stellt die Frage, wer in Deutschland die Möglichkeit der internetgestützten Partnersuche nutzt. Ausgehend von der Debatte um digitale Ungleichheiten werden in Auseinandersetzung mit den Erkenntnissen der soziologischen Partnerwahlforschung theoretische Hypothesen formuliert, nach welchen sozialstrukturellen Merkmalen die Teilnahme am Onlinedating variiert. Diese Überlegungen werden auf Basis der Daten der ARD/ZDF-Onlinestudie 2007, einer für Deutschland repräsentativen Erhebung zur Internetnutzung, empirisch geprüft. Verglichen mit der Gesamtbevölkerung zeigt sich, dass die Onlinedater eher männlich, jünger und höher gebildet sind, sowie tendenziell in Haushalten mit höherem Einkommen leben. Verglichen mit den Internetnutzern sind die Onlinedater wiederum eher männlich, jünger und alleinwohnend; allerdings sind hier niedriger gebildete Personen leicht überrepräsentiert. In Erweiterung zu früheren Untersuchungen zeigen unsere Ergebnisse, dass die Neigung von Männern und Frauen, am Onlinedating teilzunehmen, von ihren jeweiligen Perspektiven am Heiratsmarkt abhängig ist. Vor allem höher gebildete Frauen und niedrig gebildete Männer gehören dabei zu den Gruppen, die durch die Nutzung von Online-Kontaktbörsen ihre Partnersuche ausweiten.

This article explores the use of The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (BMGIM) to support 8 women as they struggled with the challenges of midlife. Unconscious forces can reach a critical mass at midlife and the Self is summoned to search for a new psychological identity. Case study data from 49 standard GIM sessions conducted over a 22 month period was pooled, analysed and reviewed for commonalities in imagery. This was a convenience sample based on clients attending a private practice in Sydney, Australia. The examination of the reported imagery discovered a number of emergent themes: 1) Land of death and darkness; 2) Betwixt and Between 3) Encounters with the Shadow, Archetypes and Helpers; 4) The Body and 5) Looking Forward.Keywords: midlife, guided imagery and music (Bonny Method)German An der Kreuzungen in der Mitte des Lebens: auf der Reise des Midlife-Übergangsmit Guided Imagery and Music Louise Terry-ClarkDieser Artikel untersucht die Arbeit mit der Bonny Methode der Guided Imagery and Music (BMGIM), 8 Frauen während ihrer Kämpfe in der Midlife-Krise zu unterstützen. In dieser Zeit können unbewusste Kräfte ein kritisches Maß erreichen, und das Selbst ist gefordert, eine neue psychologische Identität zu suchen. Daten aus Fallstudien von 49 GIM Sitzungen während einer 22 Monate langen Periode, wurden zusammengefasst, analysiert und überprüft, um Gemeinsamkeiten in den Bildern zu finden. Es handelt sich um ein Beispiel, das auf Klienten aus einer privaten Praxis in Sydney (Australien) basiert. Die Untersuchungen der beschriebenen Bilder enthüllen eine Anzahl immer wieder auftauchender Themen: 1) ein Land von Tod und Dunkelheit; 2)weder das eine noch das andere; 3) zusammentreffen mit dem Schatten, Archetypen und Helfern; 4) der Körper und 5) vorwärts schauen.Keywords: Midlife-Krise, Guided imagery and music (Bonny Method)Japanese中年期の岐路にて：音楽によるイメージ誘導法（GIM）による中年期への移行の旅路ルイーズ・テリー-クラーク本研究では、中年期における不調に悩まされている８名の成人女性対象に、ボニーメソッドによる音楽イメージ誘導法（BMGIM）を行った。中年期においては、無意識な力が危機的な集合体として現れ、自己が新たな心理的アイデンティティを模索する状態に陥る。２２ヶ月にわたる４９回のGIMセッションが行われ、ケース・スタディとしてデータ収集、分析され、イメージの共通項が検証された。このケースは、オーストラリア・シドニー市内の自己運営施設に通っていたクライエントのサンプルを集めたものである。結果におけるイメージの検証で、次のようなテーマが出現した；１）死と暗闇の世界、２）あいだ、３）影、元型、援助者との出会い、４）身体、そして５）期待。 Keywords: 中年期、音楽によるイメージ誘導法（ボニーメソッド）Chinese本文旨在探討邦尼式引導想像音樂治療法(BMGIM)用於支持八位掙扎於中年挑戰的女性。潛意識的力量可能在中年達到臨界點，並喚起自我去找尋新的心理認同。本研究從為期22個月，49個標準GIM療程中收集個案資料進行分析，並審視共通的意象。樣本的採集以方便抽樣法從澳洲雪梨一家私人診所的個案中抽取。檢視個案所呈現的意象匯聚出以下幾個主題：1) 死亡與黑暗境地；2) 搖擺不定；3) 與陰影、原型及幫助者相遇；4) 身體及5) 展望。Korean중년의 기로에서: 유도된 심상과 음악 기법(GIM) 및 음악과 함께 하는 중년의 여정Louise Terry-Clark초록본 연구는 중년의 어려움에 고군분투 하고 있는 8명의 여성들을 지원하기 위해 Bonny가 개발한 유도된 심상과 음악(BMGIM) 기법을 적용한 사례에 대한 연구이다. 중년에는 무의식적인 힘이 한계에 도달할 수 있으며, 자아(self)는 새로운 심리적 정체성을 찾고자 한다. 22개월동안 시행된 49회의 GIM 세션에서 사례 연구 데이터를 수집하고 심상의 공통점을 분석하였다. 본 연구는 호주 시드니의 사설 치료기관의 내담자들을 연구대상으로 하였다. 보고된 심상에 대해 분석한 결과 다양한 새로운 주제들이 도출되었다. 1) 죽음과 어둠의 땅, 2) 이도저도 아닌(어중간한), 3) 그림자, 원형, 조력자들과의 만남, 4) 신체 5) 기대

ObjectiveTo identify sex-related differences in the outcome of hospitalized patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (SICH), and to identify potential causal pathways between sex and SICH outcome.MethodsA total of 111,112 medical records of in-hospital patients with SICH were collected. Data- and expert-driven techniques were applied, such as a multivariate logistic regression model and causal mediation analysis. These analyses were used to determine the confounders and mediators, estimate the true effect of sex on the SICH outcome, and estimate the average causal mediation effect for each mediator.Results(1) Failure (disability or death) rates in women with SICH were significantly lower than in men with SICH. On the day of discharge, the odds ratio (OR) of failure between women and men was 0.9137 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.8879–0.9402], while the odds ratio at 90 days post-discharge was 0.9353 (95% confidence interval, 0.9121–0.9591). (2) The sex-related difference in SICH outcome decreased with increasing age and disappeared after 75 years. (3) Deep coma, brainstem hemorrhage, and an infratentorial hemorrhage volume of &gt;10 ml accounted for 62.76% (p &lt; 0.001), 33.46% (p &lt; 0.001), and 11.56% (p &lt; 0.001) of the overall effect on the day of discharge, and for 52.28% (p &lt; 0.001), 27.65% (p &lt; 0.001), and 10.86% (p &lt; 0.001) of the overall effect at the 90-day post-discharge.ConclusionMen have a higher failure risk than women, which may be partially mediated by a higher risk for deep coma, brainstem hemorrhage, and an infratentorial hemorrhage volume of &gt;10 ml. Future work should explore the biological mechanisms underlying this difference.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of female characters in the novel The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. Our aim is to understand better the evolution of artistic images by highlighting and researching the means the author uses for revealing the «nature» and «socialization» of a woman. The novel appeals to the understanding of a woman’s place in the socio-historical processes of the modern world. The author reveals a woman’s identity which is formed under the influence of the globalization factors as well as other ones. India’s modern history becomes the background for the evolution of the female characters. Salamn Rushdie is an English writer of an Indian origin who reveals in front of a reader bright and unique India, while he himself is caught between two cultural worlds – his native Indian and acquired European. In order to reveal the evolution of female characters, we will scrutinize the way in which the author describes motherhood and love in their lives.

Fire raised the ire of the Hindu fundamentalists in India after its nationwide release, and Water was watered down in the midst of its filming. Why is a constitutionally secular and historically tolerant country up in arms against its own less-than-sympathetic, yet arguably necessary, self-representations? Is the fire directed against the content of these films, or against its once homegrown and constrained, but now Canadian and “free”, director? Are western pronouncements of a lack of freedom of expression in developing societies like India producing such poetics of disturbance in their waters that a much needed self-appraisal is turning into a chauvinistic brand of religious nationalism? Deepa Mehta, the director of a trilogy comprising Fire, Earth, and Water, is a Hindu woman whose films tackle patriarchy and fundamentalist religion. In an attack that is reminiscent of the religious and political vitriol targeted at Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, all three of Mehta’s films, but particularly Fire and Water, have been the subjects of critiques of too much freedom inside the country, and these critiques have in turn led those outside the country to condemn the Indian body-politic for its lack of freedom. In the case of Fire, it may not be unreasonable to assume that the opposition to the film arose due its depiction of an unbridled version of female sexuality that challenged prevalent religious-patriarchal norms. Reading the local rebuttal of the movie in light of the struggle to define the role of women in a global context, Sujata Moorti argues, “local resistance to the global is manifested in a series of practices that invoke religion to regulate women; control over female bodies becomes a crucial strategy for rejecting the global” (“Inflamed Passions”, 20 June 2006). However, considering that Water was subject to the wrath of violent mobs right in the midst of its shooting in the ancient Hindu city of Varanasi, despite its script obtaining the approval of the Federal Government in India, the question arises—is religion merely an excuse to garner support for political battles? More importantly, are the political battles being fought in the name of a national cohesion that can only be achieved through “freedom” from the West? As developing societies like India make their way along the complex path of economic liberalisation and socio-political fundamentalism, is it the responsibility of the “enlightened” West to guide them through their difficult journey to the epitome of freedom? Is the West, then, not only claiming to be “free”, but also exercising hegemony over the very concept of freedom by deciding whether or not a country is free? Can a country ever be free if a pseudo-free Western collective judges its degree of freedom? Perhaps the writings of Jasmine Yuen-Carrucan, an Australian who worked as a camera assistant on the film Water, can assist us in sorting through these questions: There I was in India, sitting on the steps of this government office, clutching my piece of paper, fighting for the first time for the right for freedom of expression. I waved a little paper flag with all my heart but wondered whether it was the business of a foreigner such as myself to enter a country like India, steeped in religious traditions and strong political codes, and try to challenge them. I was, after all, only going to put my flag down and head home. Perhaps it was not my fight to pursue (“The Politics of Deepa Mehta’s Water”, 5 June 2006). If the fight for freedom of expression is not that of the foreign crewmember, is it that of the diasporic filmmaker? Reflecting on the protests by Sikhs in Britain against the play Behzti (Dishonour) by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, who is herself a Sikh, Salil Tripathi issues a warning to those of the diaspora who dare to be self-critical: “The defiant and deviant will inevitably face the community’s shame and dishonour” (164). Is Mehta being subjected to a similar fate? In reference to the ire over Fire, Moorti observes, “Mehta’s status as a Canadian resident and the film’s disavowal of traditional norms were used to mark the product as western” (“Inflamed Passions”, 20 June 2006). The doubts over Mehta’s “Indianness” are reminiscent of the primitivist/nativist tendency towards authenticity that post-colonial discourse has been attempting to dismantle in favour of a hybrid existence. Significantly, in the wake of a lack of self-appraisal from the so-called authentic Others, is it not the responsibility of the diasporic intellectual, with his/her awareness of the permeability of boundaries, to point out the “unfreedom” of exerting political or religious control to prescribe a unitary definition of cultural identity? In an interview with Richard Phillips, Mehta comments on her constrained freedom: The situation in India at the moment is that if you produce films with song and dance routines or unserious films, you are fine. It doesn’t matter how violent or vulgar they are. But if you want to make something even slightly introspective it is a no-no and you are accused of exploiting Indian culture. I keep on saying: Is Indian culture so weak that one film can destroy it? (“Deepa Mehta Speaks Out”, 5 June 2006). It seems that with the non-availability of both films in India, and the diasporic status of this very critical piece, the arabesque statue rather than the living form that is “Indian culture” is far from being destroyed. Perhaps it is time that “Westerners”, diasporic critics, and liberal “Easterners” tolerated the firing and subsequent watering down of democratic rights like the freedom of expression in non-Western countries. However, any defence of “unfreedom” would sound bizarre to our free-thinking Selves. If, in this age of post-modern uncertainties we are deconstructing our own freedom, and fragmenting our own identity, should we expect the same of the Others? Braidotti sums up the dilemma of feminist, black, and post-colonial subjects in a similar question: “how can we undo a subjectivity we have not even historically been entitled to yet?” (15). It appears, therefore, that before commenting on a particular society’s freedom or lack thereof, historical differences need to be acknowledged. While the current crisis of freedom in the West may not be entirely applicable to the East, its demonstration of freedom as “becoming” rather than “being” is perhaps indicative of a future we can all open ourselves to. References Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 2002. Moorti, Sujata. “Inflamed Passions: Fire, the Woman Question, and the Policing of Cultural Borders”. Genders. 20 June 2006 http://www.genders.org/g32/g32_moorti.html>. Phillips, Richard. “Deepa Mehta Speaks Out against Hindu Extremist Campaign to Stop Her Film.” World Socialist Web Site. 5 June 2006 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/meht-f15_prn.shtml>. Tripathi, Salil. “Drawing a Line.” Index on Censorship 2 (2005): 162-6. Yuen-Carrucan, Jasmine. “The Politics of Deepa Mehta’s Water”. Bright Lights Film Journal. 5 June 2006 http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/28/water.html.>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Khorana, Sukhmani. "Whose Fire on Freedom Holds More Water?." M/C Journal 9.4 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/4-khorana.php>. APA Style Khorana, S. (Sep. 2006) "Whose Fire on Freedom Holds More Water?," M/C Journal, 9(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0609/4-khorana.php>.

*Background: Overweight and obesity in students are increasing and becoming one of the challenges. This study was conducted to identify the status of overweight and obesity of students of the National University of Civil Engineering and some factors related. *Methodology: A cross-section study was carried out among 515 third-year students of the National University of Civil Engineering in the learning year 2018-2019 by self-reported questionnaires. *Results: The study results showed that the proportion of underweight students was 16.1%, overweight and obese was 17.9%, of which 10.9% were overweight; obesity 7.0%. The figures for overweight and obesity in men were 27.1% higher than women (7.7%). Some factors related to overweight and obesity including gender (OR = 4.47, 95% CI: 2.24-8.95); have a habit of consuming processed foods (OR = 1.65 (95% CI: 1.01-2.78); have a overweight and obese person in the family (OR = 3.63 (95% CI: 1.70-7.76); not regularly playing sport / gym (OR = 2.19 (95% CI: 1.29-3.80). *Conclusions: Civil Engineering University students need to pay more attention to risk factors related to gender, preference for processed food, and physical inactivity to adjust their habits properly to reduce the risk of overweight and obesity.

This critique is an arts-based, a/r/tographic research inquiry, focusing on my experiences of racism and oppression through my identity as a Brown, Amritdhari (initiated) Sikh woman. This piece will offer insights into how, over an 8-month period, my 20-minute performance was devised, a process intensified through two characters concerning embodied role-play. To aid my research I considered an Intersectional Feminist Approach, which recognises how a person can experience oppression through complex intersects of identity. The conflicts I experienced were contained through roles and enhanced by Landy’s Role Method to provide dramatic distance from the subject. This also offered an objective stance through the nature of relational inquiry, a concept intrinsic to the a/r/tographic process. Through this, I was able to consider and validate the suppressed parts of myself and bring my shadow to consciousness. In addition, Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques were utilised to deepen the revelatory journey. Consequently, I recognise how power and privilege can be acknowledged and challenged in the therapeutic relationship through the use of embodied role-play. They can offer containment for shame and internalised oppression, helping to shift the self’s narrative. As a result of this exploration, I feel more equipped to work from an anti-oppressive and de-colonised stance in clinical practice.

Background: Endovascular therapy (EVT ) is the only available reperfusion treatment in acute ischemic patients on prior oral anticoagulants (OACs). We evaluated the practice patterns, safety, and outcomes of EVT in patients on OAC therapy. Methods: From 2010 to 2019, 84,346 ischemic stroke patients presenting within 24 hours of symptoms across 107hospitals were enrolled in the Florida Stroke Registry, of which 5,702 received EVT. We collected data on demographics, past history, medications, NIHSS, symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (sICH), discharge destination and hospital characteristics and used multivariable-adjusted logistic regression models to identify differences in outcome based on anticoagulation status. Results: Among all EVT patients (mean age 71±15 years, 48% women), 969 (17%) were treated with OAC. Compared to those not on OACs, anticoagulated patients were older (mean age 75.5±12.8 vs 70.0 ±14.9 years), more women (56% vs 50%), Hispanics (25% vs 20%), Medicare patients (44% vs 34%) and more likely to have atrial fibrillation (78.5% vs 27%), present earlier to the hospital (101 min vs 122 min) with similar clinical severity (median NIHSS 16 vs 15). There was no significant difference in length of stay 0-6 days (OAC 45.7% vs 46.8%), mRS 0-2 (OAC 23.9% vs 30.9%), independent ambulation (OAC 31.1% vs 38.3%), sICH (OAC 6.1% vs 5.4%), life-threatening or serious hemorrhage (OAC 0.4% vs 0.8%) or mortality (OAC 9.8% vs 9.8%) between the two groups. After multivariate adjustment, EVT patients on OACs were less likely to be discharged home compared to patients not on OACs (OR 0.18, 95% CI 0.05-0.31). Conclusion: In this large, multi-center study, EVT for patients with acute ischemic stroke on oral anticoagulation therapy did not result in higher rates of sICH, life threatening hemorrhage or death, though these patients are less likely to be discharged directly home.

Background: Induced hypertension is feasible, likely safe and can improve neurologic deficits in patients who are not candidates for thrombolysis. The safety of inducing hypertension in post-thrombolytic patients with suboptimal recanalization after endovascular thrombolysis is not currently known. Objective: To determine the feasibility and safety of inducing hypertension in patients in the acute post thrombolytic phase. Methods: We analyzed retrospectively collected data from a database of patients who presented with acute ischemic stroke and who received endovascular treatment with or without intravenous (IV) r-tPA . Patients with suboptimal recanalization after endovascular thrombolysis underwent induction of hypertension (systolic blood pressure [SBP] target 140-180 mmHg) for a 24 hour period after an immediate post-procedure CT scan did not demonstrate any intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). We determined the rate of symptomatic ICH (sICH), and outcome based on modified Rankin score (mRS) at the time of discharge and compared these data to those observed in patients with non-induced hypertension and normotension. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify the odds ratio of neurological worsening and/or death after adjusting for initial National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score and success of hypertension induction, which was defined as a sustained mean BP of ≥ 30% above the admission BP over the first 24 hours. Results: A total of 16 patients (12%, mean age 66) underwent post-thrombolytic induced hypertension among 138 patients who were treated with endovascular treatment. The mean age (± standard deviation [SD]) of treated patients was 68 (± 15.3) years and 52 (46%) were women. Hypertension was induced using intravenous phenylephrine or norepinephrine infusion in 9 and 7 patients, respectively. The mean (±SD) increase in SBP was 140 (±16.4) mmHg. In multivariate analysis, patients with post-thrombolytic induced hypertension had similar risk of sICH (odds ratio [OR] 0.98, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.11-8.55) and similar discharge mRS (OR 1.85, 95% CI 0.50-6.84). Conclusion: There was no observed increase in sICH or poor outcomes associated with induced hypertension in patients with suboptimal recanalization after endovascular thrombolysis supporting safety. Further trials directed towards assessing efficacy of this approach are needed.

Background and purpose: Characteristics of reverse MRA-DWI mismatch, defined as large DWI lesion despite absence of the major artery occlusion (MAO), remain unknown, especially in patients treated with IV rt-PA. This study aimed to clarify the frequency, associated factors, and outcomes of patients showing reverse MRA-DWI mismatch prior to IV rt-PA therapy. Methods: From the multicenter (SAMURAI) and additional single-center (NCVC) rt-PA registries, patients with the MCA territorial stroke were included. Early ischemic changes (EIC) were assessed with the Alberta Stroke Program Early CT score (ASPECTS) on pretreatment DWI. MAO was defined as ICA or M1 occlusion on MRA. Patients were divided into 4 groups: the large-EIC match (LM) group (MAO, ASPECTS <7); the reverse mismatch (RMM) group (no MAO, ASPECTS <7); the conventional mismatch (CMM) group (MAO, ASPECTS ≧7); and the small-EIC match (SM) group (no MAO, ASPECTS ≧7). Outcomes included sICH per ECASS II criteria, and mRS 0-2 and death at 90 days. Multivariate backward stepwise logistic regression analysis was performed to identify independent clinical characteristics (demographic factors, risk factors, stroke subtypes by TOAST classification, and blood tests) associated with the reverse MRA-DWI mismatch and to compare the outcomes among the 4 groups. Results: Of the 486 patients (167 women, median age 74 years) enrolled, reverse MRA-DWI mismatch was observed in 24 (5%, RMM group); 108 belonged to LM, 161 to CMM, and 193 to SM groups. Among clinical characteristics, cardioembolism (RMM 92%, LM 76%, CM 69%, SM 49%) was only independently associated with the RMM group (OR 5.49, 95%CI 1.25-24.1). Median initial NIHSS score was 18 in RMM, 18 in LM, 13 in CMM, and 8 in SM (p<0.001). MRS 0-2 (RMM 54%, LM 19%, CMM 46%, SM 69%) was more common in the RMM than the LM group (OR 4.02, 95% CI 1.28-12.7). SICH (RMM 13%, LM 6%, CMM 2%, SM 2%) and death (RMM 8%, LM 12%, CMM 9%, SM 2%) were not different between the RMM and LM groups after multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Reverse MRA-DWI mismatch was observed in 5% of patients eligible for rt-PA. Cardioembolism was independently associated with reverse mismatch. Patients with reverse mismatch may benefit from thrombolysis, compared to those with extensive EIC with MAO.

The article investigates the role of space in the Song of Songs. Taking recent theoretical insights into spatiality (M. Foucault, E. Soja, H. Lefebvre) as a starting point for an exegesis of selected passages from Song of Songs (Cant 4,12–5,1; 6,2 f.) it is argued that by using the imagery of the garden and the vineyard, Song of Songs creates spaces that are in between the enclosed world of city and house and the wide-open countryside. Since the protagonists of the Song of Songs move and operate in all of these three spaces, binary opposites are only of a limited usefulness when explaining the structure of social and spatial relationships in the Song. The creation of alternative spaces beyond the public and private or town and countryside dichotomy enables the man and the woman of Song of Songs to contest and re-negotiate boundaries and cultural identity. In a further interpretative step the imagery of garden and vineyard is supplemented by comparative material from the Greek world.Der Beitrag untersucht die Funktion des Raumes im Hohelied. Ausgangspunkt sind raumtheoretische Überlegungen (M. Foucault, E. Soja, H. Lefebvre), die zur Exegese ausgewählter Passagen des Hoheliedes (Cant 4,12–5,1; 6,2 f.) herangezogen werden. So ist es möglich zu zeigen, dass das Hohelied den Garten und den Weinberg benutzt, um Räume zu schaffen, die zwischen der abgeschlossenen Welt der Stadt und der offenen, der freien Natur liegen. Da die Protagonisten sich in allen drei Räumen bewegen, sind binäre Interpretationsmodelle der Struktur der sozialen und räumlichen Beziehungen nur bedingt hilfreich. Indem sog. Zwischenräume geschaffen werden, können der Mann und die Frau im Hohelied die Grenzen der eigenen kulturellen Identität verschieben. Im Rahmen eines kulturellen Vergleichs werden die Bilder und Konzeptionen mit vergleichbarem Material aus dem griechischsprachigen Raum ergänzt.Cet article est une enquête sur la fonction de l’espace dans le Cantique des Cantiques. En partant des éléments théoriques sur la spatialité (M. Foucault, E. Soja, H. Lefebvre), l’exégèse de certains passages choisis (Ca 4,12–5,1; 6,2 f.) montrera qu’en utilisant l’imagerie du jardin et de la vigne, le Cantique des Cantiques crée des espaces, qui se situent entre le monde clos des villes ou des maisons et la campagne vaste et ouverte. Comme les protagonistes du Cantique des Cantiques se déplacent entre ces trois espaces, les oppositions binaires ne sont pas très utiles quand il faut expliquer la structure sociale et spatiale dans le Cantique. La création d’espaces alternatifs, au-delà de la dichotomie du publique et du privé ou de la ville et de la campagne, permet à la femme et à l’homme du Cantique des Cantiques de contester et de renégocier les frontières et l’identité culturelle. Dans un effort d’interprétation supplémentaire, l’imagerie du jardin et de la vigne est complétée avec du matériel comparatif tiré du monde grec.

Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham has shown to delighted audiences around the world. Released during the soccer World Cup (and just before it in Britain in case the Brits did poorly), the film capitalised on interest in the game with its good-humoured look at a young 18 year old’s passion for playing soccer. Where the film would seem to break new ground is that the 18 year old is not only a girl, but also of Indian Sikh background. In allowing Jess (Jasminder) to follow her sporting dreams to professionalism rather than the path her parents initially expect of her (university then marriage), the film stretches the boundaries of race, gender, and generation, allowing audiences the opportunity to identify with an atypical protagonist. The film won almost universal goodwill from critics and audiences alike, however Jess’ success seems to be predicated on the assumption that the audience will only accept a British Indian girl’s love of soccer if any taint of lesbianism is expelled from the film. Girls’ team sport has not much of a public following, yet Beckham topped the British charts for weeks, was voted viewers’ favourite in the Sydney Film Festival, and screened for months in Australian cinemas and elsewhere around the world. While Beckham’s name may have helped draw the crowds, a summary of the subject matter might be expected to have turned them away, rather than dragged them in. When Chandra was attempting to raise finance for the film, the response was invariably, “Soccer? Girl Soccer? Indian girl soccer? – no way!” (Urban) While it is true that positioning an audience to side with a protagonist can result in the most unexpected identifications, women’s sport often attracts either uneasiness or indifference rather than delight and acceptance. By having one set of fears allayed, an audience can often be induced to identify with a cause they might otherwise feel ambivalent about. If Jess is shown to conventionally love a man, then her love of soccer is rendered so much more acceptable. While the reception of women’s sport in the West has come a long way from the alarm which greeted its inception in the late nineteenth century, it still poses something of a conundrum in the public sphere. The first women’s professional soccer match, played in London in 1895, was treated with scorn by the press. In the early 1920s in Britain, men’s clubs stalled the development of women’s soccer (which consisted of about 150 clubs) when they refused to let women use their pitches. Currently women’s soccer is on the rise, especially in the US, but the press in particular often find it, and other non-traditional female games, difficult to report without resorting to tactics designed to allay readers’ (and possibly reporters’) fears. These fears revolve around the contradictions between the public role of sport and dominant cultural constructions of femininity. Such contradictions have been summarised as being between “femininity or ‘musculinity’” (Hargreaves 145). Ultimately, traditional femininity is seen to be in opposition to athleticism and the sportswoman is often involved in a complex negotiation between the two conflicting requirements. When the sportswoman’s appearance, behaviour, and especially her relationships uphold traditional femininity, her athleticism is not seen as problematic. On the other hand, when she fails to sufficiently ‘feminise’ herself, or even if she plays a sport considered ‘masculine’, her credentials as a woman may be called into question. The most devastating allegation to be levelled at the sportswoman is still that sport has made her butch. To be butch is to have failed to adequately perform femininity, and is generally also taken to indicate lesbianism. Even women who do little to conform to traditional measures of femininity may be redeemed in the press and in commentary by reference to their husbands, boyfriends and children. Lesbians present a different problem for sports writers and commentators; while many sportswomen are in fact lesbian, the public is generally shielded from this. Despite the fact that gay issues are being represented more and more in popular culture, in sport it is still a taboo for both men and women. In Bend It Like Beckham, the whole plot of the film depends on negotiating that taboo in as convincing a way as possible. In order to make possible a narrative of a girl’s self-fulfilment through soccer for mainstream audiences, it is necessary for the film to make the lesbian in soccer invisible at the same time. The filmmaker goes to great lengths to do this. The most obvious device is the romance plot, staple of popular film in almost any genre. Joe is the love interest of both girls in the heterosexual plot as, conversely, he is the plot device which separates them, in a potential lesbian plot. As the coach of the girls’ team, he does not detract in any way from either girl’s goal of playing professional sport. In order to satisfy parental characters and audience alike, he is necessary as the affirmation of Jess’ (and Jules’) heterosexuality. But the film goes further than simply making the central female characters straight. In order to expunge the image of the lesbian sportswoman, every scene depicting the team in conversation or relaxing features a performance of heterosexuality. This is done either through their locker room conversations about who is shagging whom and who fancies whom, or by their dress and demeanour at the club in Germany. There is such an underlying anxiety about lesbianism in the film that not a single representation of it is allowed to occur, despite how unrealistic this might be in women’s sport. It is not that Chadha is not prepared to deal with the issue; her last film, What’s Cooking, positively featured a lesbian couple among other couplings and family groups. However, obviously, the spectre of the lesbian is so great in women’s sport that it is necessary to omit it entirely in order to represent women’s participation in sport as a positive thing. This is done, above all, by affirming the girls’ femininity, and most of all their heterosexuality. Although Jules’ mother Paula is the butt of much of the film’s humour – the extraordinary variations in her cleavage provide a running sight gag throughout the film – she is also the voice of the audience’s fears about the direction of the girls’ relationship: “There’s a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one of them without a fella”. Despite the audience being let in on the truth about the girls’ apparent heterosexuality much earlier than Paula is, they are similarly set up to anticipate that these soccer-mad girls, with their posters of either Beckham or butch sportswomen on their walls, will gradually fall in love with each other over the course of the film. But as Jules tells her mother: “Just because I wear trackies and play sport, doesn’t make me a lesbian”. Paula’s response – “I’ve got nothing against it. I was cheering for Martina Navratilova as much as the next person” – hides the fact that she does have something against lesbianism. Finally her joy at the revelation that the girls are both keen on Joe rather than each other is mirrored in the audience’s laughter at her, laughter which to some extent could be interpreted as reflecting their own relief. While Paula is almost as self-conscious about Jess’ Indian heritage as she is about lesbianism, the film is more comfortable about racial diversity than it is about lesbianism. It’s not even gayness as such that is troubling. Jess’ friend Tony tells her of his attraction to men – “no, Jess, I really like Beckham” – and this is portrayed affectionately, despite the viewer’s knowledge that life for him may involve more difficult negotiations than Jess will have to make. The real focus of the film is on choices for women and establishing sport as a valid one of these. Jess’ soccer final is given equal footing with Pinky’s wedding, and the cuts between both occasions construct them as similarly fulfilling events for both sisters. The film is not concerned with undermining Pinky’s choices of marriage and motherhood either, although both Jess’ and Jules’ mothers are represented as conservative and limiting forces in their lives, much more so than their fathers. Bend It Like Beckham cannot, in the end, be ‘bent’ because it is so busy exorcising the spectre of the lesbian in sport. Establishing an Indian sporting female subjectivity comes at the cost of rejecting any potential lesbian subjectivity, let alone lesbian love. If Jess is to love sport, then she must love her man as well. In order to present a palatable narrative of female fulfilment in sport, Jess and Jules have to be pretty and feminine as well as athletic, and most of all, they have to be straight. Works Cited Hargreaves, Jennifer. Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sports. London: Routledge, 1994. Urban, Andrew L. “Bending Forward.” Urbancinefile October 3, 2002. http://www.urbancinefile.com 04/10/02. Links http://www.urbancinefile.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Treagus, Mandy. "Not Bent At All" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/beckham.php>. APA Style Treagus, M., (2002, Nov 20). Not Bent At All. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/beckham.html

Introduction This paper explores some specific conjunctions that tie together two nations, Japan and the Philippines. Over the past 30 years both have become entwined as a transfer of people, cultures and societies have connected and formed some interesting developments. Relations between both countries have been highly influenced through the deployment of State intervention (historically colonial and post-colonial), as well as through actors’ initiatives, leading to the development of a complex network that links both countries. It is in these relations that I would like to locate a transition between two stages in Japan-Philippine relations. I argue, this is a transition, where marriages of one kind (international marriages), the bonding of social actors from two distinct cultural spheres, gives way to another form of marriage. This transition locates the term marriage as part of an ongoing process and a discursive realm in a larger ‘affective complex’ that has developed. In this paper, I focus on this term ‘affective complex’ as it offers some interesting avenues in order to understand the continuing development of relations between Japan and the Philippines. By ‘affective complex’ I refer to the ‘cultural responses’ that people use in reaction to situations in which they find themselves which are not mediated by language. I suggest that this complex is a product of a specific encounter that exists between two nations as understood and mediated by Japanese actors’ positionings vis-à-vis foreign resident Filipinos. In tracing a moment between Japan and the Philippines, I delineate emerging properties that currently allude to a transition in relations between both countries. I would like to show that the properties of this transition are creating an emergent phenomena, a complex? This is developing through interactions between human actors whose trajectories as transnational migrants and permanent foreign residents are coming under the scrutiny of Japanese State forces in a heavily contested discursive field. This paper focuses upon the nature of the complex that entwines both countries and examines Japan’s particular restructuring of parts of its workforce in an attempt to include foreign migrants. To do this I first offer an outline of my fieldwork and then delineate the complex that ties both countries within present theoretical boundaries. This paper is based on fieldwork which deals with the theme of International Marriages between Japanese and Filipino couples. In the field I have observed the different ways in which Filipinos or Japanese with a connection to the Philippines orientate themselves within Japanese society vis-à-vis the Philippines. For the purpose of this paper, I will focus exclusively on a particular moment in my field: a care-giver course run privately with approval and recognition from local government. This course was offered exclusively for Filipino nationals with permanent residency and a high level of Japanese. As part of a larger field, a number of overlapping themes and patterns were present within the attitudes of those participating in the course. These were cultural responses that social actors carry with them which constitute part of an ‘affective complex’, its gradual emergence and unfolding. To further locate this fieldwork and its theoretical boundaries, I also position this research within current understandings of complexity. Chesters and Welsh have referred to a complex system as being a non-linear, non-deterministic system. However, from my perspective, these parameters are insufficient if institutions, organisations and human actors exhibit linear and deterministic properties (properties that discursively capture, locate and define elements in a system). In my research, I am dealing with actors, in this case Filipinos who are seen first as recipients and then as providers of welfare services. Japanese actors act as suppliers of a service both to long-term residents and to the State. In this case the following question arises: whose ‘complexes’ may be defined by a mixture of both these parameters and how can it be possible to take into account relationships whose existence cuts across them? Could a complex not be any number of these terrains which have emerged through encounters between two countries? Marriage could be a starting point for complexes that can come under scrutiny at a higher level, that of the State forces. In addition, a study of complexity in the Social Sciences focuses on how structures form rather than by focusing on any prior structured existence. Any focus on a complex system is to analyze holistic multiple elements in order to descriptively locate structures, what they penetrate, and what they are penetrated by. Human actors’ actions, strategies and expectations merge under the influence of these structures, while simultaneously influencing them. As elements interact, emergent phenomena (properties that emerge at a higher level) show a system that is process dependent, organic, and always evolving (Arthur 109). Locating Affect Deleuze and Guattari refined the discursive realm to emphasise how spaces of creation, dialogue and the casting of influence are affective, institutional and State-influenced. Within these spaces I locate the existence of ‘affective complexes’ which are discursively constructed and deployed by local actors. I will to argue that international marriages have laid a groundwork in which ‘affect’ itself has become a catalyst, re-orientating perceptions of and toward Filipinos. Following Deleuze, we can understand ‘affect’ as an intensity which, to repeat, is an expression of human relationships not mediated directly through language (Rodriguez). However, I want to suggest ‘affect’ also comes under the scrutiny of, and is discursively appealed to by, State forces as ‘affective capital’. When I refer to ‘affective capital’ I mean the potential labour discursively constructed. This construction is then “projected and tapped” in response to the changing nature of Japan’s labour market – in particular, the shortage of care-givers. This construction itself exists as an ongoing management strategy that deals with certain foreign nationals in Japan. Here, in response to the transformations of service work, ‘affective capital’ is the commoditised value of care inherent the discourse. It is the kernel of ‘affective labour’. This was very clear in my fieldwork, wherein Filipinos were targeted exclusively as the recipients of training in the health-care sector based on an understanding of the form of ‘affect’ that they possess. In this context, ‘affect’ adds intensity to meaning and is used in a wide range of cultural contexts, yet its very essence eludes description, especially when that essence as used by ‘active agents’ may be misconstrued in its deployment or discursively captured. Returning to the Deleuzian interpretation of ‘affect’, it could be interpreted as the outcome of encounters between actors and as such, a ‘mode’ in which becoming can initiate possibilities. I refer to ‘affect’, the deployment of shared, performed, communicated non-verbal ‘content’, as a powerful tool and an essential component in everyday habituated practice. In other areas of my field (not included in this discussion), ‘affect’ deployed by both actors, husband and wife, within and beyond the family, manifests itself as a mode of being. This at times adds to the location of actors’ intentions, be they spoken or performative. In this sense, locating the ‘affect’ in my research has meant observing the way in which Filipinos negotiate the availability of life strategies and opportunities available to them. At the same time, ‘affect’ is also produced by Japanese actors realigning themselves vis-à-vis both foreign actors and social change, as well as by effectuating strategies to emergent situations in Japan such as care management. ‘Affective capital’ is an inherent long-term strategy which has its roots in the cultural resources at the disposal of non-Japanese partners who, over the years, in the short and long term put to use discursively produced ‘affect’. ‘Affect’, produced in reactions to situations, encounters and events, can work in favour of long-term residents who do not have access to the same conditions Japanese may find in the labour sector. From encounters in my fieldwork, the location of ‘affect’ is an asset not just within immediate relationships, but as a possible expression of strategies that have arisen in response to the recognition of reactionary elements in Japanese society. By reactionary elements I refer to the way in which a complex may realign itself when ‘interfered’ with at another level, that of the State. The Japanese State is facing labour shortages in certain sectors due to social change, therefore they must secure other potential sources of labour. Appropriation of human resources locally available has become one Japanese State solution for this labour shortage. As such, ‘affect’ is brought into the capitalist fold in response to labor shortages in the Health Sector. Background The Philippines is a prime example of a nomad nation, where an estimated eight million of the population currently work or live overseas while remitting home (Phillippines Overseas Employment Agency). Post-colonial global conditions in the Asia Pacific region have seen the Philippines cater to external national situations in order to participate in the global labour market. These have been in the form of flows of labour and capital outsourced to those economies which are entangled with the Philippines. In this context, marriage between both countries has come to be made up almost exclusively of Japanese men with Filipina women (Suzuki). These marriages have created nascent partnerships that have formed links within homes in both countries and supported the creation of a complex system tying together both nations. Yet, in the entanglement of what seems to be two economies of desire, some interesting observations can be drawn from what I consider to be the by-products of these marriages. Yet what does this have to do with a marriage? First, I would like to put forward that certain international marriages may have developed within the above discursive framework and, in the case of the Philippines and Japan, defined certain characteristics that I will explain in more detail. Over the past 20 years, Filipinos who came to Japan on entertainment visas or through encounters with Japanese partners in the Philippines have deployed discursively constructed ‘affective capital’ in strategies to secure relationships and a position in both societies. These strategies may be interpreted as being knowledgeable, creative and possessive of the language necessary for negotiating long-term dialogues, not only with partners and surrounding family, but also with Japanese society. These deployments also function as an attempt to secure additional long term benefits which include strengthening ties to the Philippines through increasing a Japanese spouse’s involvement and interest in the Philippines. It is here that Filipinos’ ‘affect’ may be traced back to a previous deployment of categories that influences local Japanese actors’ decisions in offering a course exclusively for Filipino residents. This offers the first hint as to why only Filipinos were targeted. In Japan, secure permanent work for resident Filipinos can be, at times, difficult even when married to a partner with a stable income. The reality of remitting home to support family members and raising a family in Japan is a double burden which cannot be met solely by the spouse’s salary. This is an issue which means actors (in this case, partners) recourse to their ‘affective capital’ in order to secure means towards a livelihood. In this context, marriages have acted as a primary medium entangling both countries. Yet changes in Japan are re-locating ‘possible’ resources that are rationalised as a surplus from these primary encounters. Shifts in Japan’s social landscape have over the past 10 years led to an increasing awareness of the high stakes involved in care for the ageing and invalid in Japanese society. With over 21% of the population now over 65, the care industry has seen a surge in demand for labour, of which there is currently a shortfall (Statistics Bureau Japan). With the Philippines having strategically relocated its economy to accommodate demands for the outsourcing of health care workers and nurses overseas, Japan, realigning its economy to domestic change, has shown a new type of interest (albeit reluctant) in the Philippines. In 2005, changes and reforms to Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act successfully curtailed the flow of Filipinos applying to Japan to work as entertainers. This was in part due to pressure from the interventionary power of the U.S: in 2006 the U.S. State department published the Trafficking in Persons Report, which stipulated that Japan had yet to comply in improving the situation of persons trafficked to Japan (U.S. State Department). This watershed reform has become a precursor to the Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement ratified by Japan and the Philippines to promote the ‘trans-border flow of goods, person, services and capital between Japan and the Philippines (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and has now temporarily realigned both economies into a new relationship. Under the terms ‘movement of natural persons’, Filipino candidates for qualified nurses and certified care workers would be allowed a stay of up to three years as nurses, or four for certified care workers (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Nonetheless, this lip service in showing openness to admit a new category of Filipino is the continuation of a mode of ‘servicing’ within the Japanese nation, albeit under the guise of ‘care work’, and rests upon the capitalist rationalisation of hired workers for Japan’s tertiary sectors. The Philippines, a nation which is positively export-orientated in terms of its human resources in response to care inequalities that exist between nations at a global level (Parreñas 12-30), is now responding to the problematic issue of care that has become a serious concern in Japan. Fieldwork To place these issues in context I want to locate the above issues within a part of my present fieldwork. In 2006, I participated in a privately funded non-profit venture set up for Filipino residents with the aim of training them to be care-givers. The course was validated and acknowledged by the local prefectural government and primarily limited to a group of 20 participants who paid approximately sixty thousand yen ($485) for the three month course including training and text books. One Filipina acquaintance enthusiastically introduced me to the retired bank manager who had set up a fund for the three month care-giver course for Filipina residents. Through interviews with the course providers, one underlying theme in the planning of the course was clear: the core idea that Filipinos have a predisposition to care for the elderly, reflecting Filipino social values no longer existent in Japan. In particular, two Japanese words employed to reflect these views – ‘omoiyari’ (思いやり), meaning “compassion” or “considerateness” and ‘yasashisa’ (優しさ) meaning “kindness toward others” – were reiterated throughout the course as a requisite for dealing with the elderly or those in need of care. One core presupposition underlining the course was that the Philippines still cherishes values which are on the decline in Japan, offering a care ethos based on Christian values ready for deployment in such work. I believe this marks a transition point in how both countries’ relations are moving away from ‘entertainment-based’ care to ‘care within an institutional setting’, such as private nursing homes or hospitals. In both cases, ‘care’ (as it is ironically known in both industries, the deployment of hospitality and attendance), operates as a dynamic of desire within a social field which orientates how residents (i.e. foreign female residents with permanent residency) are used. Yet, why would the Philippines be such an attractor? It is not difficult to see how ‘affect’ is discursively rationalised and deployed and projected onto Philippine society. This ‘affect’ acts as an attractor and belongs to an ‘imagined’ cultural repertoire that Japan has created in response to its turbulent marriage to the Philippines. In this sense, the care course promoted this ‘caring affective side’ of Filipinas here in Japan, and provided a dynamic engagement for potential negotiation, persuasion and tension between ‘local actors’ (course providers and participants) who come under the direct remit of the Japanese State (care institutions, hospitals and nursing homes). I say “tension”, as to date only a handful (three women out of a total of sixty) of those who participated in the course have taken up employment in the care industry. As one participant, a divorcee, commented, the reluctance to seek work as a qualified care worker resided in an economic framework, she says: this is a useful investment, but I don’t know if I can do this work full time to live off and support my families…but it is another arrow in my bow if the situation changes. Yet, for another woman, care work was an extension of something that they were familiar with. She jokingly added with a sigh of resignation: Oh well, this is something we are used to, after all we did nothing but care for our papa-san (husband)! When I discussed these comments with an N.G.O. worker connected to the course she pessimistically summed up what she thought by saying: The problem of care in Japan was until very recently an issue of unpaid work that women have had to bear. In a sense, looking after the aged living at home has been a traditional way to treat people with respect. Yet, here in Japan we have experienced an excessively long period whereby it was de facto that when a woman married into someone’s family, she would care for the husband and his family. Now, this isn’t an individual problem anymore, it’s a societal one. Care is now becoming an institutional practice which is increasing paid work, yet the State works on the assumption that this is low paid work for people who have finished raising their children; hard labour for low wages. All the women have graduated and are licensed to work, yet at 1000 yen (U.S. $8) an hour for psychologically demanding hard labour they will not work, or start and finish realising the demands. Travelling between locations also is also unpaid, so at the most in one day they will work 2-3 hours. It is the worst situation possible for those who choose to work. The above opinion highlights the ambiguities that exist in the constant re-alignment of offering work to foreign residents in the effort to help integrate people into Japan’s tertiary ‘care sector’ in response to the crisis of a lack of manpower. To date most women who trained on this course have not pursued positions within the health sector. This indicates a resistance to the social beliefs that continue to categorise female foreign residents for gendered care work. Through three successive batches of students (sixty women in total) the president, staff and companies who participated in this pilot scheme have been introduced to Filipino residents in Japanese society. In one respect, this has been an opportunity for the course providers to face those who have worked, or continue to work at night. Yet, even this exposure does not reduce the hyper-feminisation of care; rather, it emphasises positions. One male coordinator brazenly mentioned the phrase ashi wo aratte hoshii, meaning ‘we want to give them a clean break’. This expression is pregnant with the connotation that these women have been involved in night work have done or still participate in. These categorisations still do not shake themselves free from previous classifications of female others located in Japanese society; the ongoing legacy that locates Filipinos in a feminised discursive space. As Butler has elucidated, ‘cultural inscriptions’ and ‘political forces with strategic interests’ work to keep the ‘body bounded and constituted’ (Butler 175). It is possible to see that this care course resides within a continuously produced genealogy that tries to constitute bodies. This resides under the rubric of a dominant fantasy that locates the Philippines in Japan as a source of caring and hospitality. Now, those here are relocated under a restructuring industry outsourcing work to those located in the lower tiers of the labour sector. Why other nationals have not been allowed to participate in the course is, I stress, a testimony to this powerful discourse. Major national and international media coverage of both the course and company and those women who found employment has also raised interest in the curious complex that has arisen from this dynamic, including a series of specials aired on Japanese television by NHK (NHK Kaigo no Jinzai ga Nigete iku). This is very reminiscent of a ‘citationary’ network where writings, news items and articles enter into a perpetuating relationship that foments and bolsters the building up of a body of work (Said) to portray Japan’s changing circumstances. As seen from a traced genealogy, initial entanglements between two nations, in conjunction with societal change in Japan, have created a specific moment in both countries’ trajectories. Here, we can see an emergent phenomena and the relocation of a discursive structure. An affective complex can be located that marks a shift in how foreign residents are perceived and on what terms they can participate or contribute to Japanese society. Within this structure, ‘care’ is relocated – or, rather, trapped – and extracted as labour surplus that resides in an antagonistic relationship of domination highlighting how a specific moment existing between two countries can be ‘structured’ by needs in the ‘engaging’ country, in this case Japan. Non-linear elements in a complex system that contest how discursive practices in Japanese society locate foreign residents, within the rubric of an ‘imagined’ ethos of compassion and kindness that emanates from outside of Japan, seem to display ‘affective’ qualities. Yet, are these not projected categories deployed to continue to locate migrant labour (be they permanent or temporary residents) within an ongoing matrix that defines what resources can be discursively produced? However, these categories do not take into account the diverse structures of experience that both Japanese nationals and Filipino nationals experience in Japan (Suzuki). Conclusion In this paper I have briefly delineated a moment which rests between specific trajectories that tie two nations. A complex of marriages brought about within a specific historic post-colonial encounter has contributed to feminising the Philippines: firstly, for women in marriages, and now secondly for ‘potential resources’ available to tackle societal problems in Japan. As I have argued a discursively produced ‘affective complex’ is an authorising source of otherness and could be part of a precursor complex which is now discursively relocating human resources within one country (Japan) as a ‘reluctant source’ of labour, while entering into a new discursive mode of production that shapes attitudes toward others. I also suggest that there is a very specific complex at work here which follows an as of yet faint trajectory that points to the re-organisation of a relationship between Japan and the Philippines. Yet, there are linear elements (macro-level forces rooted in the Japanese State’s approach to care vis-à-vis the Philippines) operating at the fundamental core of this care-giver course that are being constantly challenged and cut across by non-linear elements, that is, human actors and their ambivalence as the beneficiaries/practitioners of such practices. This is the continued feminisation of a highly gendered dynamic that locates labour as and when it sees fit, but through the willing coercion of local agents, with an interest in mediating services through and for the State, for the welfare of the Nation. The desiring-machine that brings together Japan and the Philippines is also one that continues to locate the potential in foreign actors located within Japan’s institutional interpellation for its care market. Within these newly emergent relationships, available political and social capital is being reshaped and imagined in reaction to social change in Japan. By exploring two entangled nations situated within global capitalist production in the twenty-first century, my research points towards new ways of looking at emerged complexes (international marriages) that precludes the reconfigurations of ongoing emerging complexes that discursively locate residents as caregivers, who fall under the jurisdiction and glare of political powers, government subjects and State forces. References Artur, W. Brian. “Complexity and the Economy.” Science 284.2 (1999): 107-109. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. Chester, Graeme, and Ian Welsh. “Complexity and Social Movement(s): Process and Emergence in Planetary Action Systems.” Theory, Culture & Society 22.5 (2005): 187-211. Deleuze, Giles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan). Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement Press Statement. 29 Nov. 2004. 29 Mar. 2007 http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/philippine/joint0411.html>. NHK Kaigo no Jinzai ga Nigete iku. 介護の人材が逃げて行く (“Care Workers Are Fleeing.”) Televised 11 Mar. 2007. 29 Mar. 2007 http://www.nhk.or.jp/special/onair/070311.html>. Parreñas, Rachel Salazar. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005. Philippines Overseas Employment Agency. “Stock Estimates of Filipinos Overseas.” 2 May 2007 http://www.poea.gov.ph/html/statistics.html>. Rodriguez, Encarnación Gutiérrez. “Reading Affect – On the Heterotopian Spaces of Care and Domestic Work in Private Households.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 8 (2007). 2 May 2007 http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-07/07-2-11-e.pdf>. Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 1995. Statistics Bureau and Statistical Research and Training Institute. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Philippines). 2005. 2 May 2007 http://www.poea.gov.ph/docs/STOCK%20ESTIMATE%202004.xls>. Suzuki, Nobue. “Inside the Home: Power and Negotiation in Filipina-Japanese Marriages.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 33.4 (2004): 481-506. “Trafficking in Persons Report.” U.S. State Department. 2006. 29 Apr. 2007. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/66086.pdf>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Lopez, Mario. "From Bride to Care Worker?: On Complexes, Japan and the Philippines." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/04-lopez.php>. APA Style Lopez, M. (Jun. 2007) "From Bride to Care Worker?: On Complexes, Japan and the Philippines," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/04-lopez.php>.

As Lewis Carroll’s Alice comes to the end of her journey through the looking glass world, she has also come to the end of her patience with its strange power games and arbitrations. At every stage of the adventure, she has encountered someone who wants to dictate rules and protocols, and a lesson on table manners from the Red Queen finally triggers rebellion. “I can’t stand this any more,” Alice cries, as she seizes the tablecloth and hurls the entire setting into chaos (279). Then, catching hold of the Red Queen, she gives her a good shaking, until the rigid contours of the imperious figure become fuzzy and soft. At this point, the hold of the dream dissolves and Alice, awakening on the other side of the mirror, realises she is shaking the kitten. Queens have long been associated with ideas of transformation. As Alice is duly advised when she first looks out across the chequered landscape of the looking glass world, the rules of chess decree that a pawn may become a queen if she makes it to the other side. The transformation of pawn to queen is in accord with the fairy tale convention of the unspoiled country girl who wins the heart of a prince and is crowned as his bride. This works in a dual register: on one level, it is a story of social elevation, from the lowest to the highest rank; on another, it is a magical transition, as some agent of fortune intervenes to alter the determinations of the social world. But fairy tales also present us with the antithesis and adversary of the fortune-blessed princess, in the figure of the tyrant queen who works magic to shape destiny to her own ends. The Queen and the mirror converge in the cultural imaginary, working transformations that disrupt the order of nature, invert socio-political hierarchies, and flout the laws of destiny. In “Snow White,” the powers of the wicked queen are mediated by the looking glass, which reflects and affirms her own image while also serving as a panopticon, keep the entire realm under surveillance, to pick up any signs of threat to her pre-eminence. All this turbulence in the order of things lets loose a chaotic phantasmagoria that is prime material for film and animation. Two major film versions of “Snow White” have been released in the past few years—Mirror Mirror (2012) and Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)—while Tim Burton’s animated 3D rendition of Alice in Wonderland was released in 2010. Alice through the Looking Glass (2016) and The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the 2016 prequel to Snow White and the Huntsman, continue the experiment with state-of-the-art-techniques in 3D animation and computer-generated imaging to push the visual boundaries of fantasy. Perhaps this escalating extravagance in the creation of fantasy worlds is another manifestation of the ancient lore and law of sorcery: that the magic of transformation always runs out of control, because it disrupts the all-encompassing design of an ordered world. This principle is expressed with poetic succinctness in Ursula Le Guin’s classic story A Wizard of Earthsea, when the Master Changer issues a warning to his most gifted student: But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. (48)In Le Guin’s story, transformation is only dangerous if it involves material change; illusions of all kinds are ultimately harmless because they are impermanent.Illusions mediated by the mirror, however, blur the distinction Le Guin is making, for the mirror image supposedly reflects a real world. And it holds the seductive power of a projected narcissism. Seeing what we wish for is an experience that can hold us captive in a way that changes human nature, and so leads to dangerous acts with material consequences. The queen in the mirror becomes the wicked queen because she converts the world into her image, and in traditions of animation going back to Disney’s original Snow White (1937) the mirror is itself an animate being, with a spirit whose own determinations become paramount. Though there are exceptions in the annals of fairy story, powers of transformation are typically dark powers, turbulent and radically elicit. When they are mediated through the agency of the mirror, they are also the powers of narcissism and autocracy. Through a Glass DarklyIn her classic cultural history of the mirror, Sabine Melchior-Bonnet tracks a duality in the traditions of symbolism associated with it. This duality is already evident in Biblical allusions to the mirror, with references to the Bible itself as “the unstained mirror” (Proverbs 7.27) counterpointed by images of the mortal condition as one of seeing “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13.12).The first of these metaphoric conventions celebrates the crystalline purity of a reflecting surface that reveals the spiritual identity beneath the outward form of the human image. The church fathers drew on Plotinus to evoke “a whole metaphysics of light and reflection in which the visible world is the image of the invisible,” and taught that “humans become mirrors when they cleanse their souls (Melchior-Bonnet 109–10). Against such invocations of the mirror as an intermediary for the radiating presence of the divine in the mortal world, there arises an antithetical narrative, in which it is portrayed as distorting, stained, and clouded, and therefore an instrument of delusion. Narcissus becomes the prototype of the human subject led astray by the image itself, divorced from material reality. What was the mirror if not a trickster? Jean Delumeau poses this question in a preface to Melchior-Bonnet’s book (xi).Through the centuries, as Melchior-Bonnet’s study shows, these two strands are interwoven in the cultural imaginary, sometimes fused, and sometimes torn asunder. With Venetian advances in the techniques and technologies of mirror production in the late Renaissance, the mirror gained special status as a possession of pre-eminent beauty and craftsmanship, a means by which the rich and powerful could reflect back to themselves both the self-image they wanted to see, and the world in the background as a shimmering personal aura. This was an attempt to harness the numinous influence of the divinely radiant mirror in order to enhance the superiority of leading aristocrats. By the mid seventeenth century, the mirror had become an essential accessory to the royal presence. Queen Anne of Austria staged a Queen’s Ball in 1633, in a hall surrounded by mirrors and tapestries. The large, finely polished mirror panels required for this kind of display were made exclusively by craftsmen at Murano, in a process that, with its huge furnaces, its alternating phases of melting and solidifying, its mysterious applications of mercury and silver, seemed to belong to the transformational arts of alchemy. In 1664, Louis XIV began to steal unique craftsmen from Murano and bring them to France, to set up the Royal Glass and Mirror Company whose culminating achievement was the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.The looking glass world of the palace was an arena in which courtiers and visitors engaged in the high-stakes challenge of self-fashioning. Costume, attitude, and manners were the passport to advancement. To cut a figure at court was to create an identity with national and sometimes international currency. It was through the art of self-fashioning that the many princesses of Europe, and many more young women of title and hereditary distinction, competed for the very few positions as consort to the heir of a royal house. A man might be born to be king, but a woman had to become a queen.So the girl who would be queen looks in the mirror to assess her chances. If her face is her fortune, what might she be? A deep relationship with the mirror may serve to enhance her beauty and enable her to realise her wish, but like all magical agents, the mirror also betrays anyone with the hubris to believe they are in control of it. In the Grimm’s story of “Snow White,” the Queen practises the ancient art of scrying, looking into a reflective surface to conjure images of things distant in time and place. But although the mirror affords her the seer’s visionary capacity to tell what will be, it does not give her the power to control the patterns of destiny. Driven to attempt such control, she must find other magic in order to work the changes she desires, and so she experiments with spells of self-transformation. Here the doubleness of the mirror plays out across every plane of human perception: visual, ethical, metaphysical, psychological. A dynamic of inherent contradiction betrays the figure who tries to engage the mirror as a servant. Disney’s original 1937 cartoon shows the vain Queen brewing an alchemical potion that changes her into the very opposite of all she has sought to become: an ugly, ill-dressed, and impoverished old woman. This is the figure who can win and betray trust from the unspoiled princess to whom the arts of self-fashioning are unknown. In Tarsem Singh’s film Mirror Mirror, the Queen actually has two mirrors. One is a large crystal egg that reflects back a phantasmagoria of palace scenes; the other, installed in a primitive hut on an island across the lake, is a simple looking glass that shows her as she really is. Snow White and the Huntsman portrays the mirror as a golden apparition, cloaked and faceless, that materialises from within the frame to stand before her. This is not her reflection, but with every encounter, she takes on more of its dark energies, until, in another kind of reversal, she becomes its image and agent in the wider world. As Ursula Le Guin’s sage teaches the young magician, magic has its secret economies. You pay for what you get, and the changes wrought will come back at you in ways you would never have foreseen. The practice of scrying inevitably leads the would-be clairvoyant into deeper levels of obscurity, until the whole world turns against the seer in a sequence of manifestations entirely contrary to his or her framework of expectation. Ultimately, the lesson of the mirror is that living in obscurity is a defining aspect of the human condition. Jorge Luis Borges, the blind writer whose work exhibits a life-long obsession with mirrors, surveys a range of interpretations and speculations surrounding the phrase “through a glass darkly,” and quotes this statement from Leon Bloy: “There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do . . . or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the register of Light” (212).The mirror will never really tell you who you are. Indeed, its effects may be quite the contrary, as Alice discovers when, within a couple of moves on the looking glass chessboard, she finds herself entering the wood of no names. Throughout her adventures she is repeatedly interrogated about who or what she is, and can give no satisfactory answer. The looking glass has turned her into an estranged creature, as bizarre a species as any of those she encounters in its landscapes.Furies“The furies are at home in the mirror,” wrote R. S. Thomas in his poem “Reflections” (265). They are the human image gone haywire, the frightening other of what we hope to see in our reflection. As the mirror is joined by technologies of the moving image in twentieth-century evolutions of the myth, the furies have been given a new lease of life on the cinema screen. In Disney’s 1937 cartoon of Snow White, the mirror itself has the face of a fury, which emerges from a pool of blackness like a death’s head before bringing the Queen’s own face into focus. As its vision comes into conflict with hers, threatening the dissolution of the world over which she presides, the mirror’s face erupts into fire.Computer-generated imaging enables an expansive response to the challenges of visualisation associated with the original furies of classical mythology. The Erinyes are unstable forms, arising from liquid (blood) to become semi-materialised in human guise, always ready to disintegrate again. They are the original undead, hovering between mortal embodiment and cadaverous decay. Tearing across the landscape as a flock of birds, a swarm of insects, or a mass of storm clouds, they gather into themselves tremendous energies of speed and motion. The 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman, directed by Rupert Sanders, gives us the strongest contemporary realisation of the archaic fury. Queen Ravenna, played by Charlize Theron, is a virtuoso of the macabre, costumed in a range of metallic exoskeletons and a cloak of raven’s feathers, with a raised collar that forms two great black wings either side of her head. Powers of dematerialisation and rematerialisation are central to her repertoire. She undergoes spectacular metamorphosis into a mass of shrieking birds; from the walls around her she conjures phantom soldiers that splinter into shards of black crystal when struck by enemy swords. As she dies at the foot of the steps leading up to the great golden disc of her mirror, her face rapidly takes on the great age she has disguised by vampiric practices.Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen in Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a figure midway between Disney’s fairy tale spectre and the fully cinematic register of Theron’s Ravenna. Bonham Carter’s Queen, with her accentuated head and pantomime mask of a face, retains the boundaries of form. She also presides over a court whose visual structures express the rigidities of a tyrannical regime. Thus she is no shape-shifter, but energies of the fury are expressed in her voice, which rings out across the presence chamber of the palace and reverberates throughout the kingdom with its calls for blood. Alice through the Looking Glass, James Bobin’s 2016 sequel, puts her at the centre of a vast destructive force field. Alice passes through the mirror to encounter the Lord of Time, whose eternal rule must be broken in order to break the power of the murdering Queen; Alice then opens a door and tumbles in free-fall out into nothingness. The place where she lands is a world not of daydream but of nightmare, where everything will soon be on fire, as the two sides in the chess game advance towards each other for the last battle. This inflation of the Red Queen’s macabre aura and impact is quite contrary to what Lewis Carroll had in mind for his own sequel. In some notes about the stage adaptation of the Alice stories, he makes a painstaking distinction between the characters of the queen in his two stories.I pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion—a blind and aimless Fury. The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm—she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the 10th degree, the concentrated essence of governesses. (86)Yet there is clearly a temptation to erase this distinction in dramatisations of Alice’s adventures. Perhaps the Red Queen as a ‘not unkindly’ governess is too restrained a persona for the psychodynamic mythos surrounding the queen in the mirror. The image itself demands more than Carroll wants to accord, and the original Tenniel illustrations give a distinctly sinister look to the stern chess queen. In their very first encounter, the Red Queen contradicts every observation Alice makes, confounds the child’s sensory orientation by inverting the rules of time and motion, and assigns her the role of pawn in the game. Kafka or Orwell would not have been at all relaxed about an authority figure who practises mind control, language management, and identity reassignment. But here Carroll offers a brilliant modernisation of the fairy story tradition. Under the governance of the autocratic queen, wonderland and the looking glass world are places in which the laws of science, logic, and language are overturned, to be replaced by the rules of the queen’s games: cards and croquet in the wonderland, and chess in the looking glass world. Alice, as a well-schooled Victorian child, knows something of these games. She has enough common sense to be aware of how the laws of gravity and time and motion are supposed to work, and if she boasts of being able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, this signifies that she has enough logic to understand the limits of possibility. She would also have been taught about species and varieties and encouraged to make her own collections of natural forms. But the anarchy of the queen’s world extends into the domain of biology: species of all kinds can talk, bodies dissolve or change size, and transmutations occur instantaneously. Thus the world-warping energies of the Erinyes are re-imagined in an absurdist’s challenge to the scientist’s universe and the logician’s mentality.Carroll’s instinct to tame the furies is in accord with the overall tone and milieu of his stories, which are works of quirky charm rather than tales of terror, but his two queens are threatening enough to enable him to build the narrative to a dramatic climax. For film-makers and animators, though, it is the queen who provides the dramatic energy and presence. There is an over-riding temptation to let loose the pandemonium of the original Erinyes, exploiting their visual terror and their classical association with metamorphosis. FashioningThere is some sociological background to the coupling of the queen and the mirror in fairy story. In reality, the mirror might assist an aspiring princess to become queen by enchanting the prince who was heir to the throne, but what was the role of the looking glass once she was crowned? Historically, the self-imaging of the queen has intense and nervous resonances, and these can be traced back to Elizabeth I, whose elaborate persona was fraught with newly interpreted symbolism. Her portraits were her mirrors, and they reflect a figure in whom the qualities of radiance associated with divinity were transferred to the human monarch. Elizabeth developed the art of dressing herself in wearable light. If she lacked for a halo, she made up for it with the extravagant radiata of her ruffs and the wreaths of pearls around her head. Pearls in mediaeval poetry carried the mystique of a luminous microcosm, but they were also mirrors in themselves, each one a miniature reflecting globe. The Ditchely portrait of 1592 shows her standing as a colossus between heaven and earth, with the changing planetary light cycle as background. This is a queen who rules the world through the mediation of her own created image. It is an inevitable step from here to a corresponding intervention in the arrangement of the world at large, which involves the armies and armadas that form the backdrop to her other great portraits. And on the home front, a regime of terror focused on regular public decapitations and other grisly executions completes the strategy to remaking the world according to her will. Renowned costume designer Eiko Ishioka created an aesthetic for Mirror Mirror that combines elements of court fashion from the Elizabethan era and the French ancien régime, with allusions to Versailles. Formality and mannerism are the keynotes for the palace scenes. Julia Roberts as the Queen wears a succession of vast dresses that are in defiance of human scale and proportion. Their width at the hem is twice her height, and 100,000 Svarovski crystals were used for their embellishment. For the masked ball scene, she makes her entry as a scarlet peacock with a high arching ruff of pure white feathers. She amuses herself by arranging her courtiers as pieces on a chess-board. So stiffly attired they can barely move more than a square at a time, and with hats surmounted by precariously balanced ships, they are a mock armada from which the Queen may sink individual vessels on a whim, by ordering a fatal move. Snow White and the Huntsman takes a very different approach to extreme fashioning. Designer Colleen Atwood suggests the shape-shifter in the Queen’s costumes, incorporating materials evoking a range of species: reptile scales, fluorescent beetle wings from Thailand, and miniature bird skulls. There is an obvious homage here to the great fashion designer Alexander McQueen, whose hallmark was a fascination with the organic costuming of creatures in feathers, fur, wool, scales, shells, and fronds. Birds were everywhere in McQueen’s work. His 2006 show Widows of Culloden featured a range of headdresses that made the models look as if they had just walked through a flock of birds in full flight. The creatures were perched on their heads with outstretched wings askance across the models’ faces, obscuring their field of vision. As avatars from the spirit realm, birds are emblems of otherness, and associated with metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls. These resonances give a potent mythological aura to Theron’s Queen of the dark arts.Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman accordingly present strikingly contrasted versions of self-fashioning. In Mirror Mirror we have an approach driven by traditions of aristocratic narcissism and courtly persona, in which form is both rigid and extreme. The Queen herself, far from being a shape-shifter, is a prisoner of the massive and rigid architecture that is her costume. Snow White and the Huntsman gives us a more profoundly magical interpretation, where form is radically unstable, infused with strange energies that may at any moment manifest themselves through violent transformation.Atwood was also costume designer for Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, where an invented framing story foregrounds the issue of fashioning as social control. Alice in this version is a young woman, being led by her mother to a garden party where a staged marriage proposal is to take place. Alice, as the social underling in the match, is simply expected to accept the honour. Instead, she escapes the scene and disappears down a rabbit hole to return to the wonderland of her childhood. In a nice comedic touch, her episodes of shrinking and growing involve an embarrassing separation from her clothes, so divesting her also of the demure image of the Victorian maiden. Atwood provides her with a range of fantasy party dresses that express the free spirit of a world that is her refuge from adult conformity.Alice gets to escape the straitjacket of social formation in Carroll’s original stories by overthrowing the queen’s game, and with it her micro-management of image and behaviour. There are other respects, though, in which Alice’s adventures are a form of social and moral fashioning. Her opening reprimand to the kitten includes some telling details about her own propensities. She once frightened a deaf old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, “Do let’s pretend that I’m a hungry hyaena and you’re a bone!” (147). Playing kings and queens is one of little Alice’s favourite games, and there is more than a touch of the Red Queen in the way she bosses and manages the kitten. It is easy to laud her impertinence in the face of the tyrannical characters she meets in her fantasies, but does she risk becoming just like them?As a story of moral self-fashioning, Alice through the Looking Glass cuts both ways. It is at once a critique of the Victorian social straitjacket, and a child’s fable about self-improvement. To be accorded the status of queen and with it the freedom of the board is also to be invested with responsibilities. If the human girl is the queen of species, how will she measure up? The published version of the story excludes an episode known to editors as “The Wasp in a Wig,” an encounter that takes place as Alice reaches the last ditch before the square upon which she will be crowned. She is about to jump the stream when she hears a sigh from woods behind her. Someone here is very unhappy, and she reasons with herself about whether there is any point in stopping to help. Once she has made the leap, there will be no going back, but she is reluctant to delay the move, as she is “very anxious to be a Queen” (309). The sigh comes from an aged creature in the shape of a wasp, who is sitting in the cold wind, grumbling to himself. Her kind enquiries are greeted with a succession of waspish retorts, but she persists and does not leave until she has cheered him up. The few minutes devoted “to making the poor old creature comfortable,” she tells herself, have been well spent.Read in isolation, the episode is trite and interferes with the momentum of the story. Carroll abandoned it on the advice of his illustrator John Tenniel, who wrote to say it didn’t interest him in the least (297). There is interest of another kind in Carroll’s instinct to arrest Alice’s momentum at that critical stage, with what amounts to a small morality tale, but Tenniel’s instinct was surely right. The mirror as a social object is surrounded by traditions of self-fashioning that are governed by various modes of conformity: moral, aesthetic, political. Traditions of myth and fantasy allow wider imaginative scope for the role of the mirror, and by association, for inventive speculation about human transformation in a world prone to extraordinary upheavals. ReferencesBorges, Jorge Luis. “Mirrors of Enigma.” Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Eds. Donald A. Yates and James Irby. New York: New Directions, 2007. 209–12. Carroll, Lewis. Alice through the Looking Glass. In The Annotated Alice. Ed. Martin Gardner. London: Penguin, 2000.The King James Bible.Le Guin, Ursula. The Earthsea Quartet. London: Penguin, 2012.Melchior-Bonnet, Sabine. The Mirror: A History. Trans. Katherine H. Jewett. London: Routledge, 2014.Thomas, R.S. “Reflections.” No Truce with the Furies, Collected Later Poems 1988–2000. Hexham, Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2011.