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This chapter explores how power obtained from societal hierarchies of gender, race, and economic status is covertly used by individuals within relationships, further maintaining systems of stratification. The case of marriage is used to examine how social stratification translates into and is reinforced within even the most intimate relationships in terms of control over decision making. Analysis of in-depth interviews with black and white wives in same-race and interracial marriages illustrates how economic inequality affects who makes what decisions within marriage and how race affects what decisions are made. In the midst of income and racial inequality, socialized gender roles dictate which spouse controls certain arenas versus others. Gender norms operate covertly to affect decision making dynamics through mechanisms of availability, areas of knowledge, and preference.

Considers the development of an in‐house software package to handle the ILL workload more efficiently at Michigan State University Library. Examines system design, how the system works, how records are updated, database search, system maintenance, and growth potential. Concludes that the system has proved to be efficient, but the true value will only be realised as its full capabilities are explored through further staff training.

How do participants navigate the sexual politics of multiracial dating and how does this relate to belonging? The results of this study illustrate that the 21 participants interviewed faced internal and external struggles and triumphs due to their mixed-race identity. For participants, trying to situate themselves into just one racial identity when they straddled both became a point of contention with romantic partners and themselves. Moreover, participants struggled with feeling like they were “enough” and if they belonged. Furthermore, mixed-race women and non-binary people were forced to navigate the racial expectations of others as well as the fetishization of their mixed-race identity. In turn, this impacted confidence levels, self-esteem, and sense of belonging and authenticity. The findings contribute to research on desirability and critical mixed-race studies by examining how mixed-race women and non-binary people perceive their own desirability.

Populations in the United States and Australia are also becoming increasingly culturally diverse. In the United States, for example, it is projected that between 1990 and 2050, the percentage of the US population of Hispanic origin will be almost triple, growing from 9% to 25% (making them the largest minority group by far) and the percentage Asian population will be more than double, growing from 3% to 8%. During the same period, the percentage of Black population will remain relatively stable increasing only slightly from 12% to 14%; while the percentage of White population will decline sharply from 76% to 53%. Australia has a long history of skill- and humanitarian-based migration policy. This has resulted in a culturally diverse society, especially in parts of the capital cities of the states and territories. This emphasis looks likely to continue in the future, and will continue to change the Australian society as the humanitarian needs change across the world.

The play text, You Strike the Woman, You Strike the Rock, (Klotz, 1994) takes its title from a protest slogan ‘Wathint Abafazi’Wathint’. This slogan is associated with the Women’s Protest March in 1956, the largest mass gathering of women in South African herstory where women gathered to demonstrate peacefully against the imposition of pass laws on black South African women. The play recalls the story of the Women’s March and their courage as they fought against the imposition of the pass laws and is based on the lives of three women, Sdudla, Mampompo and Mambhele who sell chickens, vetkoek and oranges near a taxi rank in the squatter camp of Crossroads in Cape Town. Sdudla is the political activist who tries throughout the play to politicise both Mampompo and Mamphlele by making frequent references to the Women’s March and recalling the defiance and strength of the women who went on that March. What You Strike the Woman You Strike the Rock does is firstly to emphasise and explore the personal experiences, and perspectives of three women and, importantly, to represent a break from tradition, secondly to use consciousness-raising as a way for the women to talk about their experiences; to offer their testimony and, thirdly, to use the process as a bonding experience.

The link between entrepreneurial intention and positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship for established and nascent entrepreneurs has been well documented in the extant literature, with the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) viewing entrepreneurial intention as a pre-requisite for entrepreneurial pursuit. Whilst scholars generally agree on these insights, little empirical evidence exists on how marginalised social groups can convert their intentions into action. This study aims to understand to what extent the elements of TPB, the attitudes towards entrepreneurship, self-efficacy and subjective norms, help explain the emergence of entrepreneurial activity amongst marginalised demographic groups.

This research focuses on unemployed women residing in social housing located in a deprived urban area of the United Kingdom to empirically examine how multiple layers of disadvantage faced by this group shape their motivations and intentions for entrepreneurial pursuit. A multi-source qualitative methodology was adopted, drawing upon inductive storytelling narratives and extensive fieldwork on a sample of unemployed ethnic minority women residing in social housing in a deprived urban area of the United Kingdom. Community organisation representatives and housing association employees within the social housing system were included to assess the interpretive capacity of TPB.

The findings display that TPB illuminates why and how marginalised groups engage in entrepreneurship. Critically, women’s entrepreneurial intentions emerge as a result of their experiences of multiple layers of disadvantage, their positionality and the specificity of few resources they can activate from their disadvantageous position for entrepreneurial activity.

By illuminating the linkages between marginalised women’s positionality and their associated access to the limited pool of resources using the TPB lens, this study contributes to emerging works on disadvantaged populations and entrepreneurial intention-action debate. This work posits that despite facing significant additional challenges through their positionality and reduced ability to mobilise resources, women in social housing can defy the odds and develop ways to overcome limited capacity and structural disadvantage.

This chapter suggests that the unsettling reconfiguration of ‘home’ in works of post-colonial literary adaptation has an affective impact on non-Indigenous readers, contributing, potentially, to processes of decolonisation. Ken Gelder and Jane M. Jacobs, in their book Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation, argue that Australian texts which seek to disturb readers by pursuing modes of post-colonial ‘unsettlement’ can activate new discourses and, thereby, inspire social change (1998). Focussing upon undergraduate student responses to two works of Aboriginal Australian literary adaptation, Melissa Lukashenko's short story ‘Country: Being and Belonging on Aboriginal Land’ (2013) and Leah Purcell's stage play, The Drover's Wife (2016), this chapter draws upon ideas pertaining to ‘affect’ to reveal how, through the subversive reimagining of tropes and structures commonly associated with Western dwelling, works of Indigenous literary adaptation elicit emotional responses in non-Indigenous readers and, in so doing, open up new spaces for listening within existing frameworks of white possession.