Constructions of active womanhood and new femininities: from a feminist linguistic perspective, is Sex and the City a modernist or a post-modernist TV text?

Sex and the City has been the subject of close scrutiny within feminist scholarship in terms of whether it is considered to be a reactionary or progressive text. While this debate is valuable within a modernist feminist paradigm, it makes less sense from a post-modernist feminist perspective. Alternately using semiotic and feminist post-structuralist methods of textual analysis, this paper shows that Sex and the City can be viewed as reactionary according to a modernist reading, but is altogether more challenging and complex according to a post-modernist reading.

Everyday use of Spanish among bilingual teachers in New York City and their attitudes toward the language

The attitudes that bilingual teachers have toward the use of foreign languages seem to have an effect on the success of bilingual education programs. In this study, our purpose is to shed light on how often bilingual teachers in New York City use Spanish in their everyday lives, and to examine their attitudes toward the use of Spanish in the U.S. Overall, results indicate only moderate frequencies of use of Spanish in everyday life among bilingual teachers. In addition, the study shows that bilingual teachers have a favorable attitude toward the use of Spanish in the U.S. However, bilingual teachers whose first language is English seem to have a more favorable attitude than those whose first language is Spanish. Among the native Spanish speakers, those born abroad show a more favorable attitude than those born in the U.S. Although no group seems to favor the use of lexical borrowings and code-switching, bilingual native Spanish-speaking teachers born in the U.S. seem to have a less favorable attitude than native Spanish-speaking teachers born abroad. In addition, native Spanish-speaking teachers born abroad seem to have a less favorable attitude toward lexical borrowings and code-switching than U.S.-born teachers whose first language is English. Recommendations for the training of bilingual teachers are discussed in the conclusions of the study.

Employment outcomes and plant closure in a post-industrial city:an analysis of the labour market studies of MG Rover workers three years on

This paper examines how the loss of 6300 jobs from the closure of MG Rover (MGR) in the city of Birmingham (UK) in April 2005 affected the employment trajectories of ex-workers, in the context of wider structural change and efforts at urban renewal. The paper presents an analysis of a longitudinal survey of 300 ex-MGR workers, and examines to what extent the state of local labour markets and workers’ geographical mobility—as well as the effectiveness of the immediate policy response and longer-term local economic strategies—may have helped to balance the impacts of personal attributes associated with workers’ employability and their reabsorption into the labour markets. It is found that the relative buoyancy of the local economy, the success of longer-run efforts at diversification and a strong policy response and retraining initiative helped many disadvantaged workers to find new jobs in the medium term. However, the paper also highlights the unequal employment outcomes and trajectories that many lesser-skilled workers faced. It explores the policy issues arising from such closures and their aftermath, such as the need to co-ordinate responses, to retain institutional capacity, to offer high-quality training and education resources to workers and, where possible, to slow down such closure processes to enable skills to be retained and reused within the local economy.

Cadburys' new factory system, 1879-1919

This thesis examines the reasons for Cadburys' move from a city centre site to a greenfield site in Bournville in 1879 and the subsequent development of the factory and the Bournville community. The founding of the Bournville Village Trust by George Cadbury is discussed in relation to the Garden City movement. The welfare and personnel management policies which Cadburys adopted in the 1900s are considered in relation to welfarism in general, especially in the United States. The extent to which the idea of a `Quaker employer' can explain Cadburys policies is questioned both methodologically and empirically. The early use of scientific management at Bournville is described and related to Edward Cadbury's writings on the subject. Finally, the institution of a Works Council Scheme in 1918 is described and its uses are discussed. It is concluded that Cadburys instituted a new factory system in this period which consisted of a synthesis of ideas borrowed from elsewhere and that for a variety of reasons Cadburys was an appropriate site for their implementation.

Rebuilding the city:a focus for European industrial policy?

While the city offers the potential of dynamic agglomeration economies which can spur the achievement of economic growth and act as an engine that powers the economy, it often appears as a centre of crisis in mature ‘developed’ regions and countries, even before the most recent economic downturn. This paper attempts to reconcile these two seemingly paradoxical observations by bringing in a strategic choice perspective to explain how concentrated strategic decision making in the corporate entities that dominate our cities has diminished the very diversity that Jacobs identified as being essential for cities to flourish and develop. The industrial policy implications for cities are subsequently explored in terms of building new industrial districts, developing high skill ecosystems, and fostering multinational webs of cities, all with the aim of ensuring the conditions exist in cities for creativity and development to flourish, notably a diverse and democratic economic system.

Public libraries and the right to the [smart] city

The future of public libraries has been threatened by funding cuts and new digital technologies which have led many people to question their traditional role and purpose. However, freedom of information, ready access to knowledge and information literacy in all its digital and analog guises are more important than ever. Thus, public libraries remain significant spaces and places where people can socially interact and learn. In many countries public libraries are reinventing themselves and part of this process has been the redesign of library services and the design and construction of new library building and facilities that articulate the values, purpose and role of what has been termed 'the next library'. Following discussion of new library developments in London, Birmingham and Worcester in the UK, Aarhus in Denmark and Helsinki in Finland, the article concludes that public libraries are now both social and media spaces as well as being important physical places that can help city dwellers decide what type of urban world they want to see.

Transgressing community:the case of Muslims in a twenty-first-century British city

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in Birmingham, UK - a city significant for its sizeable Muslim population and its iconic role in the history of minority ethnic settlement in Britain - to consider how associations of place and ethnicity work in different ways to inform ideas about 'Muslim community' in twenty-first-century Britain. The paper charts happenings around a local event in an area of majority Asian settlement and how representations of the area as a place of Muslim community were used to implicate it in the 'war on terror'. The paper goes on to show how this sensibility is disrupted by Muslims themselves through alternative engagements with space and ethnicity. The paper argues that these offer a ground for making Muslim community in ways that actively engage with histories and patterns of ethnic settlement in the city rather than being determined by them.