Dear all,

Please find below information about an ESRC Seminar Series, 'Feminism and 
Futurity: New Times, New Spaces'.  The series is being hosted by the School 
of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol and the first seminar 
is scheduled for Friday 26 March.  There are travel grants to support 
student/early career attendance (details below).  The Series website is 
available at http://www.bris.ac.uk/geography/feminism-and-futurity.

Seminar 1: Entrepreneurialising Gender, 10am-4pm, School of Geographical 
Sciences, University of Bristol.   Speakers include Harriet Bradley, Sarah 
Hall, Miranda Joseph, and Wendy Larner (see titles and abstracts below)

Attendance at all events is free and lunch will be provided but prior 
registration is required to help with catering arrangements and overall 
numbers are limited.  To register for the first seminar, please submit your 
details to Philip Nicholls <[log in to unmask]> as soon as 
possible, and by FRIDAY 19 MARCH 2010 at the very latest.

We are pleased to announce that funds are available to support the travel 
costs of postgraduates, postdoctoral fellows and early career researchers 
at the seminars.  In order to apply for one of these grants, please send 
your name, position, contact details and a statement of your research 
interests and why you wish to attend the seminar (50 words maximum) to 
Philip Nicholls at the above email address by MONDAY 15 MARCH 2010.

Gendered geographies of financial services training in the post-crisis City 
of London
Sarah Hall, University of Nottingham

The gendered identities of individuals working within financial services in 
the City of London is a well-established subject of academic, political and 
media debate.  Whilst some commentators have emphasized the declining power 
of 'gentlemanly capitalism' and 'old boys networks', others have adopted 
post-structuralist approaches to examine the continued dynamic and 
contested nature of gendered identities within finance.  However, the 
majority of this work has been conducted during a period of rapid financial 
services expansion.  Much less is known about how the ensuing 'global' 
credit crunch has impacted upon the performativity of gender and gender 
relations in financial services work. In response, in this paper I draw on 
research conducted into the training courses run by investment banks in the 
City of London from 2006 onwards to examine the changing ways in which such 
courses seek to perform and (re)produce gender and essentialised gender 
relations amongst investment bankers in the wake of the 'global' financial 
crisis.  In particular, I consider how the crisis has been scripted as 
being caused by 'male' bankers who undertook 'excessive risk taking' to 
meet their desire for 'instant gratification'.  I then explore critically 
how investment banks have sought to adapt their training courses in an 
effort to (re)produce 'feminine' investment banker subjects whom, they 
argue, embody a more 'nurturing' and 'caring' mindset.  I conclude by 
examining how this gendered understanding of the crisis and the resulting 
changes in investment banking training can contribute to wider debates 
about both the international financial system and understandings of the 
changing relationship between gender, gender relations and the economy.


Gender and the Performance of Personal Finance
Miranda Joseph, University of Arizona

There is substantial evidence that women have been particularly hard hit in 
the current economic crisis, over-represented in the "subprime" mortgage 
market and therefore in foreclosures.  While certainly some were subject to 
predatory and fraudulent lending practices, this does not explain the 
vulnerability perceived and exploited by aggressive lenders (were these 
borrowers being "girls" about money?), nor the desires (for homes, for 
credit itself, or what, really, did they want?) that drove the borrowers. 
That is, the role of financial subjectivity remains to be explored. This 
presentation will ask whether and how gender is constituted through the 
performance of personal financial attitudes and behaviors (budgeting, bill 
paying, managing credit and debt, etc.).  As a first step towards answering 
that question, I explore gendered social norms for financial behaviors as 
evidenced by social texts including financial advice and talk shows such as 
The Suze Orman Show and Oprah films such as Confessions of a Shopaholic, 
government documents and programs promoting homeownership, contemporary 
media representations of debtors and academic studies of debtors.


The knowledge economy and beyond:
gender transformations of production, reproduction and consumption
Harriet Bradley, University of Bristol

This paper will discuss some of the patterns of gender change in the 
economy over the last decades, focusing on the notion of the 
knowledge-based economy as a key discourse of the 1990s and early 2000s but 
also considering the early impacts of the current recessionary phase. The 
increasing success of women in achieving educational qualifications, 
combined with the continuing growth of service employment, seemed to hold 
the promise of further feminisation of labour markets, and, if not of the 
breaking down of structures of gender segregation, at least some further 
erosion. To explore why this has not been the case to the degree expected 
some aspects of the dynamics of the labour market will be discussed: the 
utilisation of male power to resist feminisation; the problematic insertion 
of the notion of care into the sphere of production; consumption trends 
promoting exaggerated versions of masculinity and femininity; and the 
intensification of practices of modern motherhood, which make it 
increasingly incompatible with labour market involvement. Focusing on the 
younger generation, with examples drawn from interviews, the implications 
of these trends for the gendering and regendering of work relations will be 
considered, utilising Glucksmann's concept of the total social organisation 
of labour.


Who Needs Cultural Intermediaries Indeed?
Gendered Networks in the Designer Fashion Industry
Wendy Larner, University of Bristol

This paper interrogates the concept of cultural intermediaries through an 
analysis of the New Zealand designer fashion industry, an industry composed 
of small networked enterprises which offer a wide range of educational, 
aesthetic and business services.  We argue that 'cultural intermediaries' 
can no longer be thought in terms of particular occupations, spaces or 
events.  Instead, cultural mediation is more productively thought of as a 
function of the multiplicity of activities and relationships organized 
around the new economic spaces (in this case of the fashion industry), all 
of which are subject to the exigencies of capital accumulation.  We show 
that the diverse participants in the fashion field, which includes not only 
those who make and sell fashionable clothing, but Fashion Week organizers, 
industry representatives, policy makers, hairdressers, makeup artists, 
models, and fashion stylists amongst others, are all producing, mediating 
and consuming fashion and fashionability in what Bovone (2005) has called a 
'virtuous circle'.  Moreover, the proliferating activities that comprise 
the New Zealand fashion industry and the 'virtuous circle' they create are 
profoundly gendered, both in terms of women's numerical dominance and the 
gendered skills and attributes that these activities mobilise. The growth 
of the industry and the associated proliferation of small businesses has 
allowed women to identify market niches and develop economic opportunities 
that fit with their self-described 'lifestyles'.  This is not simply a 
reinscription of the longstanding dilemma of combining paid and unpaid 
work, although this is clearly part of the story.  Rather, these women are 
quite explicitly developing small gendered businesses in fashion-related 
fields that allow them to 'live their dreams'.  They are all producing, 
mediating and consuming fashion; making up the complex economic and 
cultural networks which comprise the fashion industry and also supporting 
the industry through their own fashion consumption and the creation of a 
broader fashionable sensibility.   It is in this context we ask 'Who needs 
cultural intermediaries indeed?'


Best wishes,

Maria Fannin
Lecturer in Human Geography
School of Geographical Sciences
University of Bristol
University Road
Bristol BS8 1SS
United Kingdom

tel: +44 117 928 8928
fax: +44 117 928 7878
http://www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/staff/staff_fannin.html