Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this ... more Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this article examines UK news coverage of menopause from 2001 to 2021. We show that not only has there been a dramatic rise in menopause's visibility since 2015, and especially since 2021, but that the coverage is concentrated in the conservative right-wing press. We also document six peaks in coverage, which are driven by celebrity stories, news about menopause-related medical guidelines, national hormone replacement therapy shortages and menopause-related governmental interventions, as well as the use of menopause as a metaphor for the economy. Based on these findings, we discuss some key social, cultural and economic forces that may help explain menopause's heightened visibility. These include the rise of popular neoliberal feminism, celebrity culture, changing demographics and changes to UK work policy, ideological notions of biological womanhood and the influence of Big Pharma. We conclude by highlighting how menopause's new luminosity contributes to challenging its traditional invisibility and negative framing, and gendered ageism more broadly. Yet, at the same time, in its current iteration, menopause's increased visibility may reinforce a neoliberal feminist framework that deflects attention away from understanding menopause as a social and cultural issue, while also buttressing narrow conceptions of femininity and supporting neoliberal policies that aim to keep older women in the workforce for longer.
Justin Lewis's Beyond Consumer Capitalism: Media and the Limits to Imagination addresses a pa... more Justin Lewis's Beyond Consumer Capitalism: Media and the Limits to Imagination addresses a paradox that the author observes is deeply puzzling: Consumer capitalism is a system that potentially can cause environmental catastrophe. It is a system that no longer is delivering its original promise, namely quality of life. And yet ‘we remain so deeply committed’ to this system 'whose benefits are increasingly limited, whose promises are exhausted and whose environmental consequences look increasingly dire' (p. 48). Why is this? What could explain the developed world’s failure to grasp the capitalist system’s limit? And why cannot we imagine alternative models of human progress? Lewis sets out to address these questions in an ambitious book that draws on an impressively wide range of literatures and disciplines, and usefully reminds its readers the merits of political economy for understanding and assessing contemporary consumer culture and media
Menopause is currently a ‘hot’ topic in the UK. This article examines the Channel 4 television do... more Menopause is currently a ‘hot’ topic in the UK. This article examines the Channel 4 television documentary Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause as a key cultural text in the current UK ‘menopause moment’, demonstrating how the programme both reflects and contributes to the broader trend of menopause's growing visibility and the emerging menopause market. We begin by situating Davina within broader social, cultural and economic processes which provided a conducive context for the show's largely positive reception, and which constitute some of the key forces fuelling menopause's heightened public profile more broadly. We then move to investigate the discourses that Davina draws upon, mobilises and highlights. Our analysis shows how the programme invokes feminist terms, while discussing crucial structural conditions that underpin the continued stigma and shame around menopause. At the same time, we demonstrate that there is a striking disconnect between the structura...
This paper discusses preliminary findings from the 3 year research project, ‘Mediated Humanitaria... more This paper discusses preliminary findings from the 3 year research project, ‘Mediated Humanitarian Knowledge; audiences’ responses and moral actions’. The project investigates what happens in the gap between knowledge and action: through what socially constructed scripts do audiences come to understand humanitarianism and make sense of their responsibility towards distant suffering? What roles are humanitarian agencies perceived to play in facilitating or preventing audiences’ moral responses to distant suffering? What role do biography and emotions play in audiences’ responses? While reporting on the project’s general findings, the presentation will concentrate on how ideologically laden notions of what constitutes a ‘deserving victim’ mediate audiences’ responses to humanitarian communication.
Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this ... more Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this article examines UK news coverage of menopause from 2001 to 2021. We show that not only has there been a dramatic rise in menopause’s visibility since 2015, and especially since 2021, but that the coverage is concentrated in the conservative right-wing press. We also document six peaks in coverage, which are driven by celebrity stories, news about menopause-related medical guidelines, national hormone replacement therapy shortages and menopause-related governmental interventions, as well as the use of menopause as a metaphor for the economy. Based on these findings, we discuss some key social, cultural and economic forces that may help explain menopause’s heightened visibility. These include the rise of popular neoliberal feminism, celebrity culture, changing demographics and changes to UK work policy, ideological notions of biological womanhood and the influence of Big Pharma. We conclu...
National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their c... more National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articulating and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national ‘solidarity lite’ while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required...
A report aimed at NGOs and journalists working within the marketing and media coverage of disaste... more A report aimed at NGOs and journalists working within the marketing and media coverage of disasters, human rights and development. “If people only knew, then they would act!” The image of a suffering child or the story of a starving mother supposedly should make us care and want to alleviate that suffering and make a change. People know, but they do not necessarily act.
Examining women's magazines and lifestyle coaching, the article explores how positivity imper... more Examining women's magazines and lifestyle coaching, the article explores how positivity imperatives in contemporary culture call forth a happy, confident, hopeful, and vibrant subject during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis shows how these positivity imperatives acknowledge stress and difficulty, and at times highlight their gendered impacts, yet nevertheless systematically figure responses and solutions in individual, psychological, and often consumerist terms. The discussion demonstrates how positivity imperatives operate not only through verbal advice but also through visual, embodied, and affective means and through an emphasis on developing new social practices—from holding one's body differently, to keeping gratitude journals, to cultivating a new virtual persona for online work meetings. The article highlights a profound paradox: in times of a global pandemic that has affected women disproportionally, and when structural injustices and inequalities have been made e...
This article explores the media visibility of female keyworkers-workers deemed essential for soci... more This article explores the media visibility of female keyworkers-workers deemed essential for society's functioning, including medical staff, transport workers, and social care workers-during COVID-19. Focusing on UK women's magazines as an important genre regulating femininity, we analyze representations of female keyworkers during the pandemic's first six months, demonstrating how these depictions and the construction of keyworkers' femininity gesture toward "care justice" while simultaneously buttressing sentimentalized "care gratitude." "Care justice" is articulated through a focus on women's ordinariness, collectivity, and the voicing of critique regarding working conditions and the urgent need to invest in care infrastructure. "Care gratitude" is promoted through the magazines' celebration of "heroic" keyworkers who are overwhelmingly young, able, employed, resilient, and caring, reinforcing heteronormative femininity. Women's magazines thus constitute a mediated site where both the possibilities and the limitations of the recent media visibility of care work and those performing it are illuminated.
National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their c... more National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articulating and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national 'solidarity lite' while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required to address it.
Based on a thematic analysis of 7,569 posts on the online parenting forum Mumsnet Talk, in this a... more Based on a thematic analysis of 7,569 posts on the online parenting forum Mumsnet Talk, in this article we examine how domestic cleaning—one of the most invisible aspects of reproductive labour—and...
Is a collaboration between EDS and leading LSE academics from a range of disciplines researching ... more Is a collaboration between EDS and leading LSE academics from a range of disciplines researching the determinants of innovation, technology, creativity and productivity and the policies needed to foster them. The Discussion Paper series features the research of the four teams;
Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this ... more Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this article examines UK news coverage of menopause from 2001 to 2021. We show that not only has there been a dramatic rise in menopause's visibility since 2015, and especially since 2021, but that the coverage is concentrated in the conservative right-wing press. We also document six peaks in coverage, which are driven by celebrity stories, news about menopause-related medical guidelines, national hormone replacement therapy shortages and menopause-related governmental interventions, as well as the use of menopause as a metaphor for the economy. Based on these findings, we discuss some key social, cultural and economic forces that may help explain menopause's heightened visibility. These include the rise of popular neoliberal feminism, celebrity culture, changing demographics and changes to UK work policy, ideological notions of biological womanhood and the influence of Big Pharma. We conclude by highlighting how menopause's new luminosity contributes to challenging its traditional invisibility and negative framing, and gendered ageism more broadly. Yet, at the same time, in its current iteration, menopause's increased visibility may reinforce a neoliberal feminist framework that deflects attention away from understanding menopause as a social and cultural issue, while also buttressing narrow conceptions of femininity and supporting neoliberal policies that aim to keep older women in the workforce for longer.
Justin Lewis's Beyond Consumer Capitalism: Media and the Limits to Imagination addresses a pa... more Justin Lewis's Beyond Consumer Capitalism: Media and the Limits to Imagination addresses a paradox that the author observes is deeply puzzling: Consumer capitalism is a system that potentially can cause environmental catastrophe. It is a system that no longer is delivering its original promise, namely quality of life. And yet ‘we remain so deeply committed’ to this system 'whose benefits are increasingly limited, whose promises are exhausted and whose environmental consequences look increasingly dire' (p. 48). Why is this? What could explain the developed world’s failure to grasp the capitalist system’s limit? And why cannot we imagine alternative models of human progress? Lewis sets out to address these questions in an ambitious book that draws on an impressively wide range of literatures and disciplines, and usefully reminds its readers the merits of political economy for understanding and assessing contemporary consumer culture and media
Menopause is currently a ‘hot’ topic in the UK. This article examines the Channel 4 television do... more Menopause is currently a ‘hot’ topic in the UK. This article examines the Channel 4 television documentary Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause as a key cultural text in the current UK ‘menopause moment’, demonstrating how the programme both reflects and contributes to the broader trend of menopause's growing visibility and the emerging menopause market. We begin by situating Davina within broader social, cultural and economic processes which provided a conducive context for the show's largely positive reception, and which constitute some of the key forces fuelling menopause's heightened public profile more broadly. We then move to investigate the discourses that Davina draws upon, mobilises and highlights. Our analysis shows how the programme invokes feminist terms, while discussing crucial structural conditions that underpin the continued stigma and shame around menopause. At the same time, we demonstrate that there is a striking disconnect between the structura...
This paper discusses preliminary findings from the 3 year research project, ‘Mediated Humanitaria... more This paper discusses preliminary findings from the 3 year research project, ‘Mediated Humanitarian Knowledge; audiences’ responses and moral actions’. The project investigates what happens in the gap between knowledge and action: through what socially constructed scripts do audiences come to understand humanitarianism and make sense of their responsibility towards distant suffering? What roles are humanitarian agencies perceived to play in facilitating or preventing audiences’ moral responses to distant suffering? What role do biography and emotions play in audiences’ responses? While reporting on the project’s general findings, the presentation will concentrate on how ideologically laden notions of what constitutes a ‘deserving victim’ mediate audiences’ responses to humanitarian communication.
Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this ... more Drawing on feminist scholarship that interrogates cultural representations of ageing women, this article examines UK news coverage of menopause from 2001 to 2021. We show that not only has there been a dramatic rise in menopause’s visibility since 2015, and especially since 2021, but that the coverage is concentrated in the conservative right-wing press. We also document six peaks in coverage, which are driven by celebrity stories, news about menopause-related medical guidelines, national hormone replacement therapy shortages and menopause-related governmental interventions, as well as the use of menopause as a metaphor for the economy. Based on these findings, we discuss some key social, cultural and economic forces that may help explain menopause’s heightened visibility. These include the rise of popular neoliberal feminism, celebrity culture, changing demographics and changes to UK work policy, ideological notions of biological womanhood and the influence of Big Pharma. We conclu...
National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their c... more National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articulating and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national ‘solidarity lite’ while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required...
A report aimed at NGOs and journalists working within the marketing and media coverage of disaste... more A report aimed at NGOs and journalists working within the marketing and media coverage of disasters, human rights and development. “If people only knew, then they would act!” The image of a suffering child or the story of a starving mother supposedly should make us care and want to alleviate that suffering and make a change. People know, but they do not necessarily act.
Examining women's magazines and lifestyle coaching, the article explores how positivity imper... more Examining women's magazines and lifestyle coaching, the article explores how positivity imperatives in contemporary culture call forth a happy, confident, hopeful, and vibrant subject during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis shows how these positivity imperatives acknowledge stress and difficulty, and at times highlight their gendered impacts, yet nevertheless systematically figure responses and solutions in individual, psychological, and often consumerist terms. The discussion demonstrates how positivity imperatives operate not only through verbal advice but also through visual, embodied, and affective means and through an emphasis on developing new social practices—from holding one's body differently, to keeping gratitude journals, to cultivating a new virtual persona for online work meetings. The article highlights a profound paradox: in times of a global pandemic that has affected women disproportionally, and when structural injustices and inequalities have been made e...
This article explores the media visibility of female keyworkers-workers deemed essential for soci... more This article explores the media visibility of female keyworkers-workers deemed essential for society's functioning, including medical staff, transport workers, and social care workers-during COVID-19. Focusing on UK women's magazines as an important genre regulating femininity, we analyze representations of female keyworkers during the pandemic's first six months, demonstrating how these depictions and the construction of keyworkers' femininity gesture toward "care justice" while simultaneously buttressing sentimentalized "care gratitude." "Care justice" is articulated through a focus on women's ordinariness, collectivity, and the voicing of critique regarding working conditions and the urgent need to invest in care infrastructure. "Care gratitude" is promoted through the magazines' celebration of "heroic" keyworkers who are overwhelmingly young, able, employed, resilient, and caring, reinforcing heteronormative femininity. Women's magazines thus constitute a mediated site where both the possibilities and the limitations of the recent media visibility of care work and those performing it are illuminated.
National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their c... more National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articulating and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national 'solidarity lite' while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required to address it.
Based on a thematic analysis of 7,569 posts on the online parenting forum Mumsnet Talk, in this a... more Based on a thematic analysis of 7,569 posts on the online parenting forum Mumsnet Talk, in this article we examine how domestic cleaning—one of the most invisible aspects of reproductive labour—and...
Is a collaboration between EDS and leading LSE academics from a range of disciplines researching ... more Is a collaboration between EDS and leading LSE academics from a range of disciplines researching the determinants of innovation, technology, creativity and productivity and the policies needed to foster them. The Discussion Paper series features the research of the four teams;
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Papers by Shani Orgad