bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Endogenous misery: menopause in medicine, literature and culture
Authors: Barry Elizabeth
Published: September 2019

This chapter addresses the changing conception of menopause in philosophy and culture—a particularly fraught example of the intersection of ageing, gender and sexuality. It takes as its starting point the oblique but revealing representation of the 'turn of life' in the work of Virginia Woolf, looking at how the cultural history of the menopause offers a context for today's attitudes and practices. It also considers Germaine Greer’s heated critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s conception of menopause, in particular the gap between the political stance in The Second Sex and the capitulation in Beauvoir’s memoirs to society’s construction of a disempowered menopausal woman. The chapter goes on to reflect on the way that both Beauvoir and Greer, however, unwittingly echo discredited scientific theories about menopause as ‘deficiency’, and to think about how Woolf’s fiction might offer a more nuanced account of the gains as well as losses of female midlife.
All change please: education, mobility and habitus dislocation
Authors: Wilkens Jill
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines the intersection of ageing, gender, class and sexual identity, and highlights the significance of same-sexuality social groups for older lesbians and bisexual women. Interviews with 35 women aged between 57 and 73, discussed ‘coming out’ in the 1950s and 1960s, loneliness and isolation and the experience of attending affinity groups. Many participants were rendered ‘out of place’ by aspects of their social mobility, generation, gender and sexuality. The chapter draws on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cleft habitus’ to consider the contradictions of these mobilities, suggesting that these women faced unprecedented and unique disjuncture between their original habitus and the new classed, sexual and gendered locations in which they finally ‘arrived’. The chapter looks at the potential of social groups to alleviate loneliness and isolation; for many, they are sites of resilience, helping to promote positive ageing for those who have faced marginalisation across their life course.
Intersecting identities of age, gender and sexual orientation in gay and bisexual men’s narratives of prostate cancer
Authors: Fish Julie
Published: September 2019

Intersectionality brings a distinctive lens to nuanced differences in gay and bisexual (GB) men’s experiences of prostate cancer health along dimensions of age, hegemonic masculinity and sexual orientation. This chapter reports data collected from seven GB men diagnosed with the disease who formed part of a larger study. The data are presented in three emerging themes: Gay and bisexual men’s embodied sense of self; Managing the emotional roller-coaster of prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment and Intimate and sexual relationships following prostate cancer. The data allow us also to understand men’s strategies of resistance and resilience in coping with adversity. GB men are not privileged by heterosexual gender relations, but their narratives suggest they draw on discourses of hegemonic masculinity in contingent and temporal ways..
Cartographies of social transnationalism
Authors: Savage Mike , Cunningham Niall , Reimer David , Favell Adrian
Published: September 2019

The chapter takes up the challenge of a ‘cartography of social transnationalism’ first proposed by Steffen Mau (2010) in his study of German nationals in the post-war period. It emphasises, as Mau did, the need to find modes of operationalising the grand, abstract social theory of globalisation at a regional European scale. Using EUCROSS data on Europeans’ familiarity of other countries, the chapter maps variations in global connections across the six countries of the EUCROSS study, going on to map for each the particular cartography of their citizens’ social relations within Europe. It also visualises the kind of stratification apparently inherent in access to these transnational lifestyles. European nations still have quite specific, historically rooted ‘imperial’ relations with the rest of the world, something which anchors their overall geo-politics.
Corporate funding and local community development: a case from the mining industry in Australia
Authors: Mayes Robyn
Published: September 2019

This chapter elucidates the social and political complexities of corporate community development as practised in the mining industry, with attention to implications for meanings of ‘community’ and ‘development’. This is achieved through examination of corporate funding of community initiatives in the rural Shire of Ravensthorpe in Western Australia, the greenfield site of the Ravensthorpe Nickel Operation owned by BHP Billiton (BHPB) until 2010. The chapter begins with an overview of corporate social responsibility and the contested concept of development before examining the community development practices undertaken by the mining sector in Australia. It critically analyses BHPB's claimed commitment to community development and then explores more specifically its role in ‘developing’ Ravensthorpe.
‘Others’ in diversified neighbourhoods: What does social cohesion mean in diversified neighbourhoods? A case study in Istanbul
Authors: Eraydin Ayda
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines how residents in Beyoğlu — the most diverse district in the Turkish city of Istanbul — designate others, and the effects of this designated ‘otherness’ on social cohesion in this area. It shows how residents in Beyoğlu use a variety of attributes to define others, most notably socioeconomic and occupational attributes, or whether they are established or new residents or come from the same hometown. Ethnic and cultural differences are not so important, although the aforementioned attributes are strongly linked to certain ethnic and cultural categories since most new residents are migrants with a low socioeconomic status and usually of Kurdish ethnicity. A majority of the respondents regard living with others as something positive because of the possibility of getting to know different people and learning about their cultures. Still, the rapidly changing demographic composition and character of the district is seen as a threat to local social cohesion.
Living with diversity or living with difference? International perspectives on everyday perceptions of the social composition of diverse neighbourhoods
Authors: Großmann Katrin , Alexandri Georgia , Budnik Maria , Haase Annegret , Haid Christian , Hedtke Christoph , Kullmann Katharina , Shokry Galia
Published: September 2019

This chapter analyses which categories are mobilised by residents to describe the social groups in their area and which normative assessments are attached to those descriptions. This intersectionality approach allows one to see social stratification at work in how inhabitants of diverse neighbourhoods in Leipzig, Paris, and Athens perceive, describe, and judge their social environment. The three cities that are analysed represent different histories of diversification, and all three of them have experienced societal disruptions and change. The residents' own positionality shapes how they categorise other residents and judge their social environment. Moreover, the construction of social groups in diverse neighbourhoods in these cities draws on a variety of rather classic social categories and is influenced by national discourses. Stigmatisation often occurs at the intersections of these categories. Also, neighbourhood change is an important factor in the construction of social groups.
Introduction
Authors: Kay-Flowers Susan
Published: September 2019

In this chapter the reason for researching young adults’ childhood experiences of parental separation is explained and the nature of the study described. The process of working with young people to design the research and create specific research tools is outlined, this involved an online questionnaire and the creation of a short video clip based on a fictionalised case study scenario which became known as the Prompt Simulation Video (PSV). The layout of the book and content of each chapter are described.
How does arts practice inform a community development approach to the co-production of research?
Authors: Bell David , Pool Steve , Streets Kim , Walton Natalie , Pahl Kate
Published: September 2019

This chapter draws on arts practice to discuss ways in which artists have collectively re-imagined better futures. It takes the form of a conversation, which has been edited to reflect the ideas of four people who work in the arts with a focus on how the arts can support transformational change in communities. The conversation is situated within theory that looks a the role of arts in communities, and relates to the field of socially engaged arts practice. The role of the arts in effecting change is debated.
Ages and Stages: creative participatory research with older people
Authors: Bernard Miriam , Rezzano Jill , the Ages and Stages Theatre Company
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines a creative participatory research programme which highlights the benefits of theatre engagement for older people. Creative participatory research of this nature has a number of benefits and challenges. First, this kind of research places older people very much at the centre as opposed to simply being respondents to surveys and interviews. Second, using the artistic medium — namely, theatre and drama — in which the researchers were working to ‘show’ rather than just describe or write up the research findings was a logical approach to take. Third, there are, of course, challenges for everyone involved: the whole process is a risky one. Ultimately, the benefit of this approach is that it recognises, acknowledges, and enhances the skills and abilities that older people have; captures and conveys some of the less tangible aspects of experience and participation; and shows audiences something of the actual creative process.
Later-life gardening in a retirement community: sites of identity, resilience and creativity
Authors: Miller Evonne , Donoghue Geraldine , Sullivan Debra , Buys Laurie
Published: September 2019

This concluding chapter explores the experience of gardening in later life, focusing on how older people who move to a retirement community maintain or reinterpret their gardening identity. Gardening is a site of identity, creativity, and resilience in ageing: a strategy for defining and maintaining ‘body, mind and spirit’ in their new home. Phenomenographic analysis revealed that residents experienced later-life gardening in five ways: the productive gardener; the creative gardener; the restricted gardener; the contemplative gardener; and the social gardener. The chapter then highlights the significance of designing retirement communities that encourage engagement between residents and the creative leisure pursuit of gardening as a means of supporting individual happiness, pleasure, and resilience.
Media and public accountability: typology and research agenda
Authors: Jacobs Sandra , Schillemans Thomas
Published: September 2019

The role of the media in public accountability has often been discussed. This is especially the case for public sector organisations, whose accountability relations have changed in the shift from government to governance. In this paper, we develop a typology of the ways mass media are involved in public accountability processes. Media can stimulate actors to reflect on their behaviour, trigger formal accountability by reporting on the behaviour of actors, amplify formal accountability as they report on it or act as an independent and informal accountability forum. To explore the presence of these roles in practice, we focus on public sector organisations in the Netherlands. Our quantitative and qualitative analysis in the Netherlands suggests that the media primarily serve an indirect role in public accountability, either by invoking pre-emptive self-criticism in public organisations in anticipation of potential media scrutiny or by triggering formal accountability demands from MPs
Editor’s introduction
Authors: Dwyer Peter
Published: September 2019

This edited collection considers how conditional welfare policies and services are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users across a range of UK policy domains including social security, homelessness, migration and criminal justice. The book showcases the insights and findings of a series of distinct, independent studies undertaken by early career researchers associated with the ESRC funded Welfare Conditionality project. Each chapter presents a new empirical analysis of data generated in fieldwork conducted with practitioners charged with interpreting and delivering policy, and welfare service users who are at the sharp end of welfare services shaped by behavioural conditionality.
Supporting people? Universal Credit, conditionality and the recalibration of vulnerability
Authors: Stinson Helen
Published: September 2019

This chapter considers how Universal Credit (UC) has been shaped by the rise in political and public expectations that benefit claimants should be held personally responsible for, and expected to overcome, their vulnerable circumstances. Part One explores how successive British governments have co-opted longstanding political and public attitudes towards the protection of ‘the vulnerable’ to justify the extension of behavioural conditionality to increasing numbers of UC claimants. Part Two then draws upon data generated in semi structured interviews with 18 UC claimants to explore how UC policies aimed at protecting those in vulnerable positions act to ease, circumvent or exacerbate lived experiences of vulnerability. The chapter concludes by arguing that UC can act to further exacerbate the social exclusion of vulnerable UC recipients who are unable, or unwilling, to accept the conditions attached to their benefit claim.
Exploring the behavioural outcomes of family-based intensive interventions
Authors: Ball Emily
Published: September 2019

Conditionality is embedded into many areas of social welfare and has become increasingly stringent in the last twenty years. This chapter explores welfare conditionality in the context of family-based intervention projects that have been a policy mechanism to deal with the longstanding issue of so-called ‘problem’ families since 1997. Programmes, such as Family Intervention Projects and the current Troubled Families Programme are an assertive and joined up approach to challenge the perceived negative behaviours of families.
This chapter, drawing on PhD research, questions the concept of behaviour change – and importantly, what counts as successful behaviour change in policy and practice. The research shows that practitioners acknowledge families cannot always change their behaviour or sustain behaviour change in line with policy expectations, especially if their basic needs have not been met. Therefore, this chapter considers the policy implications of non-behaviour change by exploring the concept of ‘good enough’ change, defined by practitioners as enabling enough progress for families to function from day to day without equating to transformative behaviour change. The chapter argues there needs to be a more nuanced conceptualisation of behaviour change that embeds the complexities and nuances of engagement and non-engagement.
Pride and shame in the creation of child and family social work
Authors: Gibson Matthew
Published: September 2019

This chapter considers the role of pride and shame in creating, maintaining and disrupting practices that have resulted in child and family social work. As people sought to develop ways of addressing social issues related to children and families, different discourses on children, families and social issues provided competing and conflicting messages about what was praiseworthy and shameful behaviour. Different representations of social work practice can, therefore, be seen to have been constructed within these competing discourses. This chapter outlines these representations as social administration, social policing, activism, therapy and practical help, demonstrating how pride and shame were central components in how these practices were institutionalised. This chapter then analyses how a discourse of neoliberalism has sought to change the boundaries for praiseworthy and shameful behaviour to reconfigure professional practice.
Co-writing about co-producing musical heritage: what happens when musicians and academics work together?
Authors: Ball John , Bowring Tony , Hield Fay , Pahl Kate
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines the process of researching how to transmit musical heritage through the process of co-writing. The Transmitting Musical Heritage project team involved a number of different partners, all with particularly complex sets of skills. These interrelationships embedded between the academic institution and community partners had a strong impact on the project, its processes and its destinations. It involved varied approaches to practice and research, with the team and the co-producers, at times, occupying an amorphous zone where academics were academics, academics became musicians, musicians became academics, and musicians were also musicians. This community of practice was able to uncover tacit knowledge about playing and the process of making music together, as well as to unfold narratives about which heritage was valuable and why. This enabled a shared vocabulary of practice.
Visibly authentic: images of Romani people from 19th-century culture to the digital age
Authors: Matthews Jodie
Published: September 2019

This chapter assesses how heritage can be circulated and discussed through active means, looking at the dangerous and damaging stereotypes of the Romani community in the media and on social media. The politics of these translations reflect discourses of racism, commodification, culture, community, and identity in the 21st century. A common consequence of such a discourse is the relegation of visitors to heritage sites — or, in this case, viewers of popular media — to the status of a ‘passive audience’. The point here is that there are alternative ways of both creating and learning about Romani heritage that do not depend on these centralised, powerful forms of production that are then consumed passively. Digital and other collaborative forums for reclaiming Romani heritage by Romani people not only fill a knowledge gap induced by a wider politics of Romani exclusion, they also enable better heritage practices.
From researching heritage to action heritage
Authors: Marwood Kimberley , Cleall Esme , Crewe Vicky , Forrest David , Pillatt Toby , Thorpe Gemma , Johnston Robert
Published: September 2019

This chapter presents a few of the Researching Community Heritage (RCH) projects in more depth, introducing the activities of narrative, creative practice and engaged learning that were shared ways of working during the research. It reflects on how these activities engaged the participants with heritage as a creative and social process, rather than heritage as a body of immutable facts about the past. Through this attentiveness to process during the RCH project, the researchers became conscious of how researching was a means of enfranchising participants, and of revealing and contesting inequalities within and beyond the projects. The chapter then proposes an ‘action heritage’ framework for undertaking co-produced heritage research. RCH began with the seemingly straightforward aim of helping local community organisations find out more about their heritage. By the conclusion of RCH, the researchers were all aware of the radical repositioning of roles engendered by co-production.
Conclusion: Co-producing futures – directions for community heritage as research
Authors: Graham Helen , Vergunst Jo , Curtis Elizabeth
Published: September 2019

This concluding chapter explores future directions for community heritage as research. These directions are indicated through reflections on, and for, some of those who will bring the futures of heritage into being: funders, universities, schools, and activists and communities. In the open future for funders of heritage projects and programmes, funding agencies would have built on the many successful experiments for developing co-produced and collaborative research. Research on heritage would be recognised as being at the vanguard of universities' roles in their communities, both local and global. Schools that can find the curriculum in heritage, rather than in learning facts about the past, would create space for pupils and teachers to play an active role in researching the past in partnership with community and other heritage groups. Meanwhile, activists and communities would be enabled to have a much greater role in researching and telling their own heritage stories.
New Labour: Wars, race and education, 1997-2005
Authors: Tomlinson Sally
Published: September 2019

The New Labour government under Prime Minister Blair came to power asserting that a modern nation valued diversity and recognised the inequalities facing minorities. The government initially claimed it could join market competion with social democracy and a reformed welfare state, claiming education as a priority. It continued the market driven legislation and central policy initiatives that had characterised Conservative rule, the academies programme initiated in 2002 eventually leading to a breakdown of a national democratic system. But it attempted to take on social and racial grievances. Thus, included setting up an inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence murder, offering Muslim schools state-funding on a par with other religions and creating an ethnic minority achievement grant. Rioting in northern towns in 2001 led to further claims that multiculturalism had failed and a commissioned report on the future of Multi-Ethnic Britain disowned. Blair supported seven wars during his tenure, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq helped to radicalise a small number of Muslims but led to a further scape - goating of all Muslims.
Editorial introduction: the modern slavery agenda: policy, politics and practice
Authors: Craig Gary , Balch Alex , Lewis Hannah , Waite Louise
Published: September 2019

This introductory chapter notes the recent heightened profile of the term ‘modern slavery’ in the UK. Various phenomena, practices, and policies have been bundled together under this term, which requires careful analytical and critical attention. It is argued that it is vitally important to understand how the discourse of modern slavery has recently emerged — and the histories that continue to shape present-day discourses — as the terms of engagement shape what are considered appropriate and adequate policy responses. The main goal of the rest of the book is to develop a robust critique of the development of law, policy and practice relating to modern slavery in the UK, in particular, for the benefit of those engaged in some way in anti-slavery work.
Modern slavery in global context: ending the political economy of forced labour and slavery
Authors: McQuade Aidan
Published: September 2019

This chapter begins by setting out the root causes of slavery, and demonstrating the fundamental role of the failure of the rule of law in enabling slavery to persist. It then sets out how particular failures in the rule of law give rise to four ‘peacetime’ political economies of slavery (i.e. state-sponsored slavery, state-tolerated slavery, state-facilitated slavery, state-muddled slavery). Where international mechanisms exist to uphold human rights standards, these political economies may be reformed somewhat. However, in addition, what is needed is a more fundamental reform of the nature of all political economies to establish processes to empower vulnerable individuals and groups and to uphold human rights standards. The chapter then sets out what forms these reforms must take to establish political economies with the potential to reduce slavery, if not eliminate it completely.
Investing in the future! Three case studies of social innovation in the Emilia-Romagna Early Childhood Education and Care services system
Authors: Bassi Andrea
Published: September 2019

Taking evidence from three contrasting locations in the region of Emilia Romagna, Bassi demonstrates how high-quality early years provision is achieved through the co-creation and sharing of knowledge, expertise and experiences that are generated by innovative forms of public governance. A key success factor was a strong focus on continuing professional development activities organised in the form of ‘laboratories for social change’ – empowering early years professionals – rather than as top-down training. With regards to the financing of Social Investment, a significant lesson is the success of flexible combinations of different funding sources (public, philanthropic and private enterprise). This case study provides exemplary evidence of diversified provision, serving the needs of children and families within local communities and realised with a special focus on accessibility and economic sustainability.
The Youth Guarantee and One‑Stop Guidance Centres as a social innovation and a policy implementation tool in Finland
Authors: Sorsa Kaisa
Published: September 2019

Chapter 5 introduces the Youth Guarantee and One-stop Guidance Centres, Finland. Youth Guarantee supports young people to gain a place in education and employment to prevent prolonged youth unemployment. The One-Stop-Guidance centres (OSGs) are a mechanism for Youth Guarantee implementation, giving young adults tools with which to improve their social situation, e.g. enhancing access to education and jobs. This is a social innovation that creates in a new form of public–private–people partnership with young people actively shaping their own future. OSG Centres invest in young people’s social capital. Turku OSG Centre, the focus of the case study, achieved its goal of empowering young people by involving them from the very beginning and throughout implementation.
Social Investment and the causes of energy poverty: are cooperatives a solution?
Authors: Willoughby Michael , Millet-Roig José , García-Sabater José Pedro , Saez-Mas Aida
Published: September 2019

This chapter is about a successful energy co-operative in Spain. With rising poverty and energy prices among the most expensive in Europe and, the cooperative not only provides a reliable source of clean energy to consumers, but also forms a central part of the community in which it is situated. The case study points to a need for private enterprises to collaborate with local authorities and social services to provide solutions to drastic situations of poverty that are still prevalent, particularly in areas of Southern and Eastern Europe. The Spanish energy cooperative demonstrates one way in which the social economy can help to shape the future of the welfare state in the absence of state funding and in the face of national policies that are not well aligned.
Tracing the Consequences of Child Poverty
Authors: Boyden Jo , Dawes Andrew , Dornan Paul , Tredoux Colin
Published: September 2019

What matters most in how poverty shapes children's wellbeing and development? How can data inform social policy and practice approaches to improving the outcomes for poorer children? Using life course analysis from the Young Lives study of 12,000 children growing up in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam over the past 15 years, this book draws on evidence from two cohorts of children, from 1 to 15 years old and from 8 to 22 years old. It examines how poverty affects children's development in low- and middle-income countries, and how policy has been used to improve their lives, then goes on to show when key developmental differences occur. The book uses new evidence to develop a framework of what matters most and when, and outlines effective policy approaches to inform the no-one left behind Sustainable Development Goal agenda.
The Young Lives design and conceptual framework
Authors: Boyden Jo , Dawes Andrew , Dornan Paul , Tredoux Colin
Published: September 2019

This chapter outlines the Young Lives study design and conceptual framework. Child development is fundamentally shaped by the national, community, and family contexts in which children live, and by the relationships within which skills, beliefs, and wellbeing are fostered. As such, fully understanding children's development through the life course requires a broad framework that includes attention to the many structures and processes affecting caregivers, families, and households, as these in turn affect children. The bioecological model provides the core conceptual basis for the Young Lives study, identifying the many layers and influences on children's development, and encouraging an analysis of how those wider structural determinants shape poverty and inequalities facing children. Since the cascade approach helps explain how advantages and disadvantages accumulate, it provides a policy tool to assess the factors that make the greatest difference for which children and at which point in their lives.
Modelling the development of language and mathematics abilities from early childhood to adolescence
Authors: Boyden Jo , Dawes Andrew , Dornan Paul , Tredoux Colin
Published: September 2019

This chapter assesses what mattered most during the phases of human development. This is done by introducing a new approach, Latent Growth Modelling, which allows the analysis to go further by simultaneously evaluating multiple paths that affected children's development, over the five survey rounds, and deciding which were relatively more important. The model is applied to the Younger Cohort and the aim is to illustrate the operation of developmental cascades for changes in receptive vocabulary and mathematics abilities. These models are especially suitable in the case of Young Lives because they bring together 15 years of longitudinal evidence and are tested across the four study countries. The chapter then uses the findings both from the earlier chapters and the modelling presented here to lay out a positive developmental cascade for transitions to adulthood. This provides a framework for action based on Young Lives data, regarding what mattered most and when.
EU Migrant Workers, Brexit and Precarity
Authors: Duda-Mikulin Eva A.
Published: September 2019

In June 2016, after 43 years as part of the European community, the UK people decided to leave. In March 2017, the UK Prime Minister officially started the process of Brexit – the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. While Brexit was decided by a relatively small margin of people, one issue was key in the debates preceding the EU referendum. This was migration. People have been migrating since the beginning of time but today the issue of migration has been elevated to a key national concern. It is now one of the most contentious and divisive matters in the UK. This book investigates EU women migrants’ perspectives on the Brexit vote in the UK. It presents accounts from EU nationals and considers the wider implications in relation to precarity and the British paid labour market. This book offers important insights into the world of the UK paid labour but from the point of view of EU migrants and more specifically Polish women whose livelihoods have been disrupted by the Brexit vote and the decision that the UK should leave the EU whilst any solid guarantees with regards to migrants’ rights are yet to come from the UK government. Through analysis of new data generated in qualitative interviews, this book makes an original and grounded contribution to understanding the significance and impacts of the result of the Brexit referendum on migrant workers from the EU resident in the UK.
Precarious lives post Brexit vote
Authors: Duda-Mikulin Eva A.
Published: September 2019

Chapter five considers precarity post Brexit vote and migrants’ future plans with the message that precarious legal status and a lack of guarantees are likely to affect EU migrants’ future plans. This chapter investigates the notion of ‘precarity’, particularly in relation to the paid labour market and the migrants within it. The fashioning of precarious workers is analysed and put against the backdrop of EU workforce. Precarity has been much discussed by politicians (Neilson and Rossiter 2008) and in the theorisation of neoliberal labour (Standing, 2011). This discussion provides a comparative perspective on how the socio-political, cultural, demographic and geographic context interlinks with individual migration experiences. I explore whether the process of migration always brings about some element of uncertainty and thus whether precarity and migration are synonyms. The chapter ends with discussion on precarity in contemporary world which is characterised by increased job insecurity which consequently heightens uncertainty about the future. Throughout this chapter I present extracts from interviews with migrants to the UK referring to their lives before 2016 and after as well as their plans and hopes for the future.
The Importance of Collective Control
Authors: Coote Anna
Published: September 2019

Attempts at improving state-citizen cooperation will fail unless the protagonists ensure that citizens share control over the process with their counterparts in the state on a genuinely equal footing. This chapter focuses on collective control and the pivotal importance of confidence – the perception that it is possible to influence decisions and make things happen, or prevent things happening – for the benefit of the community. Drawing on published findings as well as the New Economics Foundation’s own field research, it considers how systems in state institutions can be geared to build the confidence and capacity of citizens to collaborate constructively with public sector policy makers. The second part of the chapter examines collective control and state-citizen co-operation in relation to ‘the commons’: resources that are essential for human survival and flourishing. It shows how the ‘commoning’ movement will help to test the limits of both citizen and state control, as well as the potential of state-citizen cooperation.
Community Action and Civic Dialogue
Authors: Quirk Barry
Published: September 2019

This chapter, by one of the most experienced local authority chief executives in the UK, looks at how communities can be genuinely empowered through civic dialogues to improve their quality of life. It reviews the approach that supports community action by systematically discussing options with local people, involving them in setting priorities, and enabling them to take control of defined resources and specific public buildings as community assets. Lessons are drawn from initiatives and the experiences of diverse communities, that show that success is only possible with a more participatory and deliberative approach from central and local government. Criticisms are directed at the formulaic and passive arrangements that characterise many existing attempts at community empowerment. The chapter concludes by arguing that, notwithstanding economies of scale and the benefits of standardisation, the design and delivery of services can achieve much more through well-planned community engagement.
Developing Public‒Cooperative Partnerships
Authors: Conaty Pat
Published: September 2019

Public-cooperative partnerships – cooperative organisations acting in collaboration with government bodies to involve communities and meet their needs – offer many opportunities to strengthen state-citizen cooperation. This chapter reflects on lessons from past examples of associative democracy and reviews the evidence from new innovations from different countries. In Northern Italy, multi-stakeholder co-operatives provide social care for the elderly, the disabled and marginalised groups, with workers, volunteers, and service users all given a real say. New social contracts in support of public-cooperative partnerships have been drawn up and backed with local authority by-laws in cities such as Ghent and Bologna. In the US, community land trusts have flourished in Vermont and other parts of the country. In Wales, politicians and communities have jointly developed new forms of democratic housing. These diverse examples demonstrate how public-cooperative partnerships can be more widely developed to expand the scope and depth of state-citizen cooperation.
Imaginaries, Sociability and Cultural Patterns in the Post-Neoliberal Era: A Glance at the Argentinean, Paraguayan, and Venezuelan Experiences
Authors: Natera Miguel Ángel Contreras
Published: September 2019

From the final years of the 20th century onwards, radical changes in forms of political subject formation have taken shape in Venezuela. These changes have displaced the dominant forms of economic and political regulation of the past fifty years. The emergence of political imaginaries rooted in social and political struggles has entailed the constructions of new forms of sociability, new cultural paradigms, and new modes of historical memory. These have contributed to the reformulation of the meaning of politics and the dislodging of neoliberal hegemony across Latin America. A new popular vocabulary focused on resistance and the critique of neoliberalism has resulted from these processes. The Venezuelan experience in this sense amounts to a turning point in the political development of the region. However, the far-reaching consequences of the global crisis that began in 2008 have entailed problematic consequences across Latin America. Tensions caused by fragmented practices of consumption, the extension of criminal networks and the dislocation of social policy have had profoundly destabilising consequences. This chapter seeks to formulate a comprehensive analysis of the tensions, divisions and uncertainties in popular imaginaries of the social in Latin America. Its argument will focus on Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela, contrasting divergent modes of social change, from the moderate and progressive development of Argentine society to radical transformation of Venezuela. Against this backdrop, the chapter will explore alternative modes of social development in the context of the widening social structural heterogeneity of Latin America.
Making Neoliberal Selves: Popular Psychology in Contemporary Mexico
Authors: Nehring Daniel
Published: September 2019

Since the 1970s, academic debates have considered how psychological discourses may legitimize or challenge capitalist forms of social organization. However, these debates have largely focused on the USA and Western Europe. The roles which psychological discourses play in contemporary popular cultures in Latin America remain poorly understood. Here, I use an analysis of the Mexican self-help publishing industry to examine the roles which psychological narratives may play in constructing, bolstering or subverting neoliberal subjectivities. Self-help books, my subject matter, are widely read in Mexico and at the international level. They therefore constitute a nexus through which the narratives of self and social relationships of academic psychology percolate into popular culture. In Mexico, self-help publishing involves, first, the translation and sale of texts written elsewhere, often in the USA, Europe and other Latin American nations, and, second, the sale of books by Mexican authors. This gives the Mexican self-help industry a distinctively hybrid character, as a variety of interpretations of self-improvement compete with each other for a readership. Here, I contrast self-help texts that blend psychological concepts with Christian nationalism with secular accounts that rely on pseudo-scientific and philosophical arguments to formulate a moral vision of a successful life. In spite of their narrative diversity, I argue that neoliberal understandings of self, choice, and personal responsibility are pervasive in self-help texts. The organization of the self-help publishing industry according to neoliberal economic principles and the refashioning of authors as competitive self-help entrepreneurs may explain this narrative convergence to some extent.
Re-imagined Community: The Mapuche Nation in Neoliberal Chile
Authors: Michel Gerardo Gómez
Published: September 2019

In the last decades, one of the punchlines that has sought to legitimize neoliberal political discourse in Latin America is that of a harmonious multicultural community resulting from the recognition of cultural difference. However, progressive multicultural policies are routinely confronted with neoliberal economic mandates and prevalent socio-economic inequalities grounded in dominant criollo-mestizo culture. In this context, the multicultural policies of many of the region’s governments achieve little when it comes to improving the lives of indigenous peoples. Neoliberal multiculturalism may come to constitute a disciplinary framework deployed against indigenous groups to enforce political and economic demands. This chapter analyzes the ways in which some indigenous communities, namely the Maya in Mexico, the Mapuche in Chile and Afrocolombians on the Pacific coast, deal with and challenge these multicultural politics in their countries. Governmental efforts to promote multiculturalism may result in important limitations, as in the case of ambiguous legal procedures to define who can be represented as part of an indigenous culture. One of the ways indigenous communities (here we took Afrolatinamericans as well as indigenous people) have found to challenge neoliberal intercultural policies is to re-imagine their culture identity through memory and literature. Constructing a discourse of self-recognition as a different “imagined community” from the hegemonic criollo-mestizo group within the territory of the Nation-State they inhabit, they articulate a counter-narrative that not only challenges the infamous narratives about them inherited from the Colonial era, but also challenges those of recent times dictated from above
Neoliberalism and the Negotiation of the American Dream in Contemporary Latina Narratives
Authors: Skolnick Jenifer A. , Alvarado Emmanuel
Published: September 2019

This chapter will examine the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades among Latinos in the US. Over the past thirty years the US has experienced notable reductions in social safety-net coverage, in the context of successive waves of neoliberal economic reforms. This has left members of the Latino and Black community particularly vulnerable to economic cycles and downturns. Within this context, this chapter analyzes the nexus between neoliberal political discourse, potent cultural narratives found within American Christianity and public support for social protection policies. In particular, the chapter addresses the way in which Christian themes, such as the Catholic social teaching, the mainline Protestant social gospel, the American adaptation of liberation theology, and the evangelical ethos of self-reliance and independence, interact with the formation of public attitudes towards greater or lesser support for social safety-net policies among American Latinos. Additionally, the present chapter will also bring to the foreground the role of Christianity among US Latinos in the creation of an issue-bundling effect in recent electoral competition since moral or social value issues are often bundled along with opposition to social protection policies in the two-party American political system. Lastly, the present work will propose a broad framework through which to interpret our findings grounded on the existence and interaction of two counterpoised cultural narratives on social protection found within Latino American Christianity.
Shifting faces of the state: austerity, post-welfare and frontline work
Authors: Humphris Rachel
Published: September 2019

This chapter presents the position of frontline workers in the UK welfare state who are tasked with caring for new migrant families. The chapter is underpinned by a theoretical discussion of the ‘relational state’ and conceptualisation of ‘the frontline’. It emphasises the importance of integrating the intimate space of the home into debate on relational encounters. The chapter presents the notion of ‘everyday discretion’ to describe the situated decisions that frontline workers had to make in the face of ethical dilemmas. These areas of discretion and uncertainty allowed sentiment to overtake rights and created individualised and fragile relationships of care. These decisions drew on and were justified through frontline workers’ own life histories, cultural discourses and their own understanding of performing the ‘good citizen’ within a post-welfare state. This chapter acknowledges that frontline workers themselves have multiple ‘roles’, including being mothers, and may also have experiences of migration or marginalisation that shaped how they ‘make up’ the state for Romanian Roma mothers. This chapter identifies the unexplored issues of race, migration background and citizenship status in discussions of class in relation to home inspectors and examines institutional factors in the power dynamics of the domestic visit.
Romanian Roma mothers: labelling and negotiating stigma
Authors: Humphris Rachel
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines the position of new migrant families to the UK and how they come to be perceived as Romanian Roma; the generative and coproduced nature of labelling; the symbolic violence that is accomplished through this label; and how it comes to hold currency in the UK state apparatus. The first section of the chapter focuses on how the label developed. The second section charts how being categorised in this way led to home encounters through the particular lens on child safeguarding. The third section of this chapter considers how mothers’ understanding of their position and room for manoeuvre were shaped by their backgrounds such as illiteracy and previous experience of state violence. The chapter examines how encounters came to contribute to the mutual constitution of respective identities and how these shaped understandings of, and fears and desires for, the state.
Interlude | Clara’s Belgian torte
Authors: Humphris Rachel
Published: September 2019

I first saw Clara in a large framed picture in the front room of the house where Maria stayed. It was a wedding picture. Clara was dressed in an elaborate white dress and next to her stood Sergui in his suit, waistcoat and baby-pink tie. Clara had her hands on her hips and head slightly tilted. Sergui stood beside and slightly behind her, looking straight at the camera. I learnt later that she was 15 in this photograph and Sergui was 17 years old. Their fathers were brothers, making them first cousins or ...