Psycho-social Processes
War in the Nursery Denise Riley. Virago 1983 ISBN 0-86068-273-0
£5.50. 250 pages.
This chapter draws on research interviews with forty mothers of infants to illustrate the influence of certain ideas from the psychology of child development (located historically), not only on current orthodoxies on what women ‘should’ do (the discursive aspect) but on women’s own aspirations and desires (the subjectivity aspect). [In this respect it is psychosocial ‘avant la lettre’.] Urwin draws critically on the post-structuralist... more
Valerie Walkerdine’s (1986) paper analysing a working class family’s reactions to watching a video of the box office hit Rocky II has made an invaluable contribution to film, media and cultural studies. It underlined power relations implicit in participant observation , challenged the application of a differential between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture as applied along class lines, and developed a framework for understanding viewers’ engagement... more
