bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Adult skills surveys and transnational organisations: globalising educational policy
Authors: Evans Jeff
Published: May 2020

Organisations like OECD, IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) and the EU are increasingly involved in the production of transnational data. They function as key agencies for changing education and lifelong learning policy, promoting human capital approaches, and ‘governing by data’. I consider their growing role in assessing the efficiency of education and training systems. Particularly important in their organisational strategies are large-scale international performance surveys for school-age pupils, such as OECD’s PISA and IEA’s TIMSS. PISA for Development is addressing the problem that, in low income countries, not all 15 year olds can be surveyed at school. PIAAC, the Project for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, has so far reported results in 33 countries, in 2013 and 2016. It focuses on three domains considered basic for adults in industrial and ‘knowledge’ economies: namely, literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments, and on attitudes to and reported use of such skills. It uses electronic administration as a default, complex sampling designs, and statistical modelling to estimate the adult’s skill levels. I raise methodological issues relevant to the valid interpretation of such surveys and locate them in general policy developments, including globalisation.
Counting the population in need of international protection globally
Authors: Blitz Brad K. , D’Angelo Alessio , Kofman Eleonore
Published: May 2020

Different international and regional agencies count the number of persons crossing borders and internally displaced within states worldwide. Boosted in particular by conflicts in the Middle East, the number of refugees has grown to 15.1 million in 2015 and people of concern to 63.5 million. States have also sought to reduce the number recognised as Convention refugees (as defined in 1951) and are seeking to reinterpret their obligations and introducing limitations on those to be protected. The quality of data used to advance UNHCR programmes varies from one category of protected person to another, thus raising important questions for the management and delivery of protection-related services. Moreover, data are not disaggregated by age and gender, and in spite of greater efforts at multilateral cooperation, these datasets do not cover the same populations as those produced by other agencies. This chapter reviews the coverage of people of concern in the UNHCR’s guidelines and identifies gaps in the datasets used by UN and multilateral agencies tasked with the protection of refugees, IDPs and other people of concern. It suggests that these datasets need to be broadened to include other categories of vulnerable individuals and groups and that further disaggregation is needed.
The statistics of devolution
Authors: Byrne David
Published: May 2020

This chapter reviews the forms of statistical information available across devolved levels of governance in the UK. The focus is not only on statistics from the devolved nations – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – but also on statistics available for other levels where these is significant roles for devolved governance including city regions. Particular attention is paid to the regional / devolved nation Government Expenditure and Revenue Statistics (GERS) given both the salience of these in political argument and their significance in understanding the imbalance in the UK’s space economy. Data for sub-national geographies in England includes not only standard regions and local authorities but other forms including combinations of authorities and Local Economic Partnerships. Data about these levels is very useful for exploring variation within the nation which contains more than 80% of the UK's population.
Access to data and NHS privatisation: reducing public accountability
Authors: Ruane Sally
Published: May 2020

Recent decades, shaped by powerful neoliberal forces, have witnessed a significant encroachment on the UK state sector with privatisation advancing over many social and economic sectors. The extension of private sector involvement has implications for the effective public accountability of UK ‘public’ services. This chapter examines, through case studies drawn from the past ten or fifteen years, selected aspects of this diminished accountability. The three case studies concern the availability of data in relation to different dimensions of privatisation in the NHS: performance data in the provision of care when NHS-funded care is provided by private companies; financial and ownership details in infrastructure procurement; and technical data allowing an assessment of the character and implications of proposals in the policy process.
The ‘distribution question’: measuring and evaluating trends in inequality
Authors: Lansley Stewart
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the role played by key data sets and statistical analysis in the growing debate about inequality in the UK and elsewhere. It reviews the evidence from studies of long term trends in the share of top incomes in the UK and other countries, and the remarkable impact of the findings on the politics of the inequality debate. It shows the way the studies came to challenge key aspects of prevailing economic orthodoxy, and their profound influence on public awareness of how the economic cake is shared. It then examines the revived debate around the impact of rising inequality on economic growth and stability. Finally, it draws some lessons from the way UK official statistics on inequality have been used by government in the national debate about trends in the income gap.
What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism
Authors: Gray Jonathan , Bounegru Liliana
Published: May 2020

How and when might data journalism be viewed as a form of “data activism”? Data activism has been conceptualised as a set of practices which “interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication”, including through resisting surveillance and mobilising data to denounce injustice and advocate for change (Milan and van der Velden, 2016). In this chapter we examine how data journalist practices might serve not just to reinforce and reify dominant regimes of datafication, but also to interrogate them and make space for public involvement and intervention around data infrastructures. We examine three ways in which such practices may be construed as interventions around datafication: (1) assembling data publics; (2) making data differently; and (3) investigating datafication. Attending to such practices may contribute to the understanding of emerging sites, objects and action repertoires of data activism.
Tests, compromises and policy change
Authors: Hansen Magnus Paulsen
Published: May 2020

Chapter 2 introduces the meta-concepts inspired from French pragmatic sociology in order to develop an analytical model to map the plurality of moral and normative structures that are used to justify and criticise policies in public debate and lead to reforms in the governing of unemployment. The model is compared to other ideational perspective, mainly discursive institutionalism, discourse analysis and governmentality studies. Finally, the chapter presents how the model is operationalised through choices of case selection, data selection and coding procedures.
Cities of unemployment
Authors: Hansen Magnus Paulsen
Published: May 2020

Chapter 3 presents the mapping of seven cities of unemployment that political actors in the four reform processes in France and Denmark have mobilised. These are the city of Demand, Redistribution, Insurance, Incentives, Investment, Activity, and the Paternal city.
The cities provide the typology that is used in part II to analyse the disputes and compromises in the reform processes. The presentation of each city is structured around four key dimensions. Firstly, the overall principle and normative foundations of a city. Secondly, how the city qualifies the reality of unemployment and how policies are ‘put to the test’. Thirdly, the role of governing in the city is presented, i.e. what does it take to govern best and what kind of governing should be avoided, and when is it necessary (and legitimate) to use means of coercion? Lastly, the implications of being unemployed in each city. In other words, what characterises the unemployed moral subject and what makes the unemployed more or less worthy?
Testing thresholds: social assistance, France, 2007–08
Authors: Hansen Magnus Paulsen
Published: May 2020

Chapter 6 presents the reform process of the RSA (‘Income of active solidarity’) in replacing the existing French system for the uninsured unemployed which had been in place since 1988. The reform process was launched at the end of 2007 and adopted at the end of 2008 once the financial crisis started to reach across the Atlantic. RSA entailed a negative tax scheme to increase incentives for recipients to take low-paid part-time work, while also introducing a number of instruments and obligations with the aim of increasing the mobility of the unemployed. The result was a displacement of the compromise of the previous scheme and a radical requalification of the relation between poverty and work.
Intimate scandals: social assistance, Denmark, 2011–13
Authors: Hansen Magnus Paulsen
Published: May 2020

Chapter 7 analyses the reform labelled ’Everyone can be useful’ in Denmark in 2011-13. The reform transformed the system of the uninsured unemployed in several ways. It reduced benefits and installed an ‘education injunction’ for young recipients, required all ‘able’ recipients to work for their benefit, strengthened sanctions, introduced new instruments towards the ‘vulnerable’ recipient and young single parents, and created a complex system of ‘triage’ in order to categorise the recipients according to a variety of instruments. Part of the process were two public scandals in which two individual recipients came to exemplify the dysfunctions of the system. In different ways the scandals put the question of whether the system was in fact ‘active’ to the test. The chapter further analyses the problem of profiling recipients, as well as how so-called ‘utility jobs’ became a panacea for all able recipients.
Research, adult literacy and criticality: catalysing hope and dialogic caring
Authors: Duckworth Vicky , Smith Rob
Published: May 2020

This paper draws on a longitudinal UCU research project: FE in England - Transforming Lives and Communities to explore transformative teaching and learning in adult literacy education and to argue for the place of research in affirming localised understandings of education that cut across the grain of contemporary educational reform. In the context of the dominance of a ‘skills’ discourse in further education in England, this research project focused on literacy education as a creating a discourse community offering ‘differential space’ (Lefebvre 1991) that is emancipatory for many learners at the local level of family and community. The research data illustrate that adult literacy education can be disruptive of the rigid linearity of a model of ‘learning progression’ that sorts individuals according to a qualification/age matrix. Instead, it can offer organic tools for resistance – through consciousness-raising and transformation by acting as a hope catalyst for changes in learners’ lives and teachers’ practice.
Making spaces in professional learning for democratic literacy education in the early years
Authors: McKee Lori , Heydon Rachel , Davies Elisabeth
Published: May 2020

Literacy instruction in Canadian classrooms is entangled in neoliberal discourses that can limit teachers’ professional learning opportunities, pedagogical options, and children’s literacy options. And yet, there is hope. This chapter provides illustrations from one first grade classroom that participated in a multiple-case study of professional learning in literacy. The learning was designed to support teachers of children aged 3.8-8 years in creating multimodal literacy pedagogies. Data were collected through ethnographic and narrative methods. Analysis focused on mapping the network that produced classroom change, the children’s responses to the lesson, and the relationship to the professional learning activities. The findings suggest that the professional learning helped to create more connected literacies, joyful engagement in learning, and new relationships between children, teachers, materials, and meaning-making. The findings suggest how democratic literacy education can be fostered through professional learning spaces where teachers can exercise professional discernment and focus on children as pedagogical informants.
Nourishing resistance and healing in dark times: teaching through a Body-Soul Rooted Pedagogy
Authors: Desai Shiv , Secatero Shawn , Sosa-Provencio Mia , Sheahan Annmarie
Published: May 2020

For centuries, schooling has enacted trauma and cultural erasure. Today, the neoliberal corporate ‘reform’ agenda contributes to destabilizing communities and separating educators, children, and families from the power education holds to unlock inquiry, creativity, connectedness, and agency toward resistance. Authors shape a pedagogical framework for use across teacher education and schools utilizing Chicana Feminist and Indigenous epistemologies. In earlier work, authors posit six tenets of Body-Soul Rooted Pedagogy galvanizing resistance/resilience mechanisms enduring in body, spirit, and land to transform education. Here, we forward Tenet 6, which shapes a hopeful, healing, regenerative pedagogy for the traumas of U.S. schooling.
Moving against and beyond neoliberal higher education in Ireland
Authors: Finnegan Fergal
Published: May 2020

The chapter explores the impact of neoliberalism on Irish society and higher education (HE) and how this has been resisted. Taking a critical realist approach it seeks to analyse neoliberalism in HE in a way that is neither simplistic nor politically immobilising. It outlines the trajectory of neoliberal ideas in Ireland and their impact on higher education especially in the wake of the Great Recession. Most research on this topic neglects questions of agency and resistance. Thus, the main concern of the chapter is to document and analyse the various ways neoliberalism has been resisted in Irish higher education by staff, students and through social movement campaigns. It draws on mixed methods and qualitative research alongside documentary analysis for this purpose. The chapter concludes with reflections on how this resistance might be strengthened in the future by building alliances in order to reimagine the university.
The appropriation of cultural, economic and normative frames of reference for adult education: an Italian perspective
Authors: Milana Marcella , Rapanà Francesca
Published: May 2020

This contribution sheds light on the complex dynamic that produces cultural, economic and normative frames of reference for popular adult education. A cultural frame is what gives meaning, and assigns values to, popular adult education as a context, place-, and time-specific experience. A normative frame is what legitimises its provision, whereas an economic frame is what makes it sustainable. The authors apply a frame analysis to an Italian Third Age University, as an illustrative case, to examine its establishment and continuous operation over four decades, despite today’s dominant neoliberal discourse based on a competitive market approach. Drawing on this analysis, the authors pinpoint some actions that may open interstices for resistance to such a dominant discourse by popular adult education providers, but also policy makers, professionals, and volunteers who support or are involved in popular adult education.
Introduction: the repositioning of social housing and welfare provision
Authors: Bogue Kelly
Published: May 2020

This chapter sets out the background and context to the UK’s implementation of austerity measures following the financial crash of 2007/08. It examines the principles underlying the enactment of the Bedroom Tax policy before outlining the new regulations on room restrictions that have been imposed on those claiming housing benefit in the social rented sector. It discusses the controversy surrounding its implementation as well as the ways in which it has impacted different regions of the UK. This chapter also reflects on changes to housing benefit more widely and suggests that we are seeing the return of the ‘housing question’ in post-industrial Britain as austerity policies undermine housing affordability. The final part of this chapter outlines the structure of the book.
Towards an Ethos of Responsibility in Southeast Asia
Authors: Tan See Seng
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter presents the aims and architecture of the book. It introduces an emerging ethic of responsible sovereignty in Southeast Asia, which it calls the ‘responsibility to provide’ (or R2Provide), and seeks an ethical explanation for it. The chapter provides synopses of the eight chapters that follow, which collectively accomplish the book’s three objectives. Firstly, it identifies and assesses a number of regional developments in defence, security, diplomatic and economic cooperation in which Southeast Asian countries, individually as well as institutionally through ASEAN and its various functional manifestations and modalities, have sought to assist one another in collective response to challenging situations. Secondly, it discusses how the R2Provide has taken root in Southeast Asia, albeit more deeply so in some countries than others, as well as within ASEAN and its various functional subsidiaries and spinoffs, such as the ADMM, the ADMM-Plus, the AHA Centre and the like. Thirdly, contra communitarian and liberal perspectives on ethics, it introduces and critically applies the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, specifically his notion of responsibility for the other, to the R2Provide and more broadly to the quest for responsible interstate conduct in Southeast Asia.
From Cancun to Paris: The Coming of Age of a Policy Field
Authors: Nash Sarah Louise
Published: May 2020

This chapter provides an overview and detailed analysis of the central episodes of policy making on migration and climate change between 2010 and 2015. The first of these episodes is the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that took place in Cancun in December of 2010. This episode marked the first inclusion of the issue of human mobility in the context of climate change in a text agreed at the global level. The now infamous paragraph 14(f) of the Cancun Adaptation Framework, the provision relating to human mobility, invites Parties to undertake ‘measures to enhance understanding, coordination and cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned relocation, where appropriate, at national, regional and international levels’ and has been a defining feature of policy making that has followed. One of the first attempts to follow up on Cancun was when UNHCR made climate-change-induced displacement one of the topics to be investigated during the 60th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which opportunely fell on July 28, 2011.
From Paris to Katowice: Moving from Agenda Setting to Recommendations
Authors: Nash Sarah Louise
Published: May 2020

This chapter presents a continuation of the overview and analysis of the second chapter. The story is picked up at the close of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris negotiations, which, in the form of the decision of 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21), created a specific entity to work on the issue of migration and climate change and thus marked the beginning of a new era of policy making in this area. This analysis covers the time period from 2015 until the end of 2018, when this entity—the Task Force on Displacement—presented its recommendations. As is to be expected from a highly technical UNFCCC entity, the recommendations of the Task Force are highly technical, and include proposals for extending the Task Force; providing information on intended financial support; creating synergies with other areas of the work plan; and upporting developing countries in integrating displacement concerns into their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the UNFCCC. Despite events from the UNFCCC both setting the scene for and closing the chapter, a marked difference from the first fifteen episodes detailed in the second chapter is that the UNFCCC is much less the focus of policy making, with other policy fora also becoming important and actors that are new to the area creating new spaces for discussion.
The Process of Naming: Deconstructing Terminology Used to Conceptualise the Migration and Climate Change Nexus
Authors: Nash Sarah Louise
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines what language is used to label the phenomenon of the migration and climate change nexus, and the quirks and discontinuities of this language use. The nodal point of the phenomenon of the migration and climate change nexus is key to the discussions in this book, for without it the policy-making discourse on migration and climate change would not be possible. The construction of the phenomenon in such a way that it has become accepted as existing, valid, and fixed in some way has allowed for the discourse to be reproduced and for policy-making endeavours to be undertaken. However, there is still a great deal of contention surrounding what the phenomenon is, with it meaning different things to different people. The result is that there is no single clear term that is attached to this phenomenon, with a plethora of language sharing the same discursive space. Equally, the different terms carry different nuances of meaning, which are also shifting as the discourse develops, or depending on who employs the term. The chapter analyses three different discursive constructions that are all prominent in international policy making, before turning to four additional concepts that are also occupying the discursive space.
Language as a Contested Site of Belonging
Authors: Shindo Reiko
Published: May 2020

This chapter explains how the research on language in the context of migrant activism can advance one's understanding of belonging, of what it means to be a legitimate member of a community. To do so, it broadly sketches the relationship between language and community and discusses how the focus on linguistic interactions between citizens and noncitizens offers a productive yet unexplored site of investigation in migration studies. The relationship between language and community has a dual nature. Language solidifies the boundary of community, and separates citizens inside the community from foreigners outside. And yet, it can also obscure the line between the two, exposing fluidity of belonging, and in doing so, imagining community as a dissolving entity. The chapter then provides the specific context in which migrant activism takes place in Japan, and explains how the Japanese case study is helpful for examining citizenship and belonging in relation to language.
Silence and the Image of Helplessness: The Challenge of Tozen Union
Authors: Shindo Reiko
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus (FWC), the migrant workers' branch of the trade union, National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu (hereafter referred to as Nambu), and largely led by English-speaking migrants. It traces the events where the FWC split from Nambu, a trade union largely composed of Japanese-speaking members, to form a new union called Tozen. At the heart of the split was the question of silence. Many Nambu FWC members were troubled not only because they had been silenced by Japanese union members for their inability to speak Japanese, but also because their silence was linked to a sign of powerlessness. They were regarded as helpless victims, unable to act and speak on their own. By looking at Tozen's activities, the chapter also investigates how the union, driven by the need to make noncitizens audible, handles linguistic diversity among its members.
Employability in the North East
Authors: Leonard Pauline , Wilde Rachel J.
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores the rise of the concept of employability and how it has influenced policy and practical interventions to address unemployment. It explores how the concept has been understood as a threshold for labour market readiness or as a process of continual skills development necessary in a flexible labour market. It argues that employability is frequently utilised in neoliberalising forms of governmentality, shifting responsibility of gaining work onto the individual, rather than considering the various external and structural factors that affect employment prospects. A case study of an employability programme in the North East explores the practices through which the discourse of employability acts upon individuals.
Volunteering in Glasgow, Scotland
Authors: Leonard Pauline , Wilde Rachel J.
Published: May 2020

This chapter investigates volunteering, much vaunted in recent policy as a valuable means by which young people may gain valuable experience for work and careers. The chapter argues however that policies to encourage more youth volunteering are based on a conundrum: the fact that there is no robust evidence to support the view that volunteering is a beneficial means by which to access paid employment. Case study research of a volunteering organisation in Scotland, which delivers bespoke employability training to young people which includes daily spells of volunteering in a range of voluntary sector workplaces, provides some insight into why this might be the case. Work experience placements can consist of young people ‘time-filling’ with meaningless, poor-quality work and lack of engagement by employers makes it difficult for young people to gain experience in organisations offering paid employment opportunities. However, the chapter underscores the significant contribution of trainers to other beneficial outcomes of volunteering programmes, such as the confidence and wellbeing of young trainees.
Street Life, Crime and (Dis)Organised Crime
Authors: McLean Robert
Published: May 2020

Following on from the theme of the last chapter which highlighted the formation, membership process, and other structural characterises of gang types in the research context, this chapter continue by presenting the gang, again within the typology framework, and explores gang activity in a more generic sense. In doing so the chapter looks to present what is essentially a descriptive account of the collective and individualistic behaviour which is most commonly associated with each level of gang typology. While structure and activity, are always intertwined and feed off each other, nonetheless the purpose of this chapter is primarily to be descriptive, with structure largely being allotted a secondary role. This is largely because; a) the chapter is aimed at a broad audience, and b) the chapter is merely looking to attribute some degree of activity to the relevant typology, which can be vast at the lower end of gang spectrum.
Gangs and Drug Supply
Authors: McLean Robert
Published: May 2020

While chapter 4 sought to explore organisational and structural properties, chapter 5 sought to provide a generic and largely descriptive account of gang activities sin relation to level of gang organisation. Chapter 6 looks to build upon structure and activity by specifically focusing upon one, and the main, type of activity in which gangs are found to operate within. This is illegal drug supply. By doing so chapter 6 adds the relevance of context to the book discussion. The chapter opens by re-examining the supply of illegal drugs into the British Isles, and more specifically the research context (i.e. Scotland). The chapter then proceeds to outline how drug supply works in relation to context and specific level of gang organisation. YSGs are found to mainly be engaged in the social supply of drugs. YCGs are found to be involved anywhere between retail-level and wholesale drug supply. OCGs are found to be involved in importation and high-end wholesaling of drugs in the county. In addition, OCGs are also found to engage in illegal-governance and thus control to varying degrees the activities of lesser gang types within drug markets.
Introduction
Authors: Özkazanç-Pan Banu
Published: May 2020

The introduction provides the reader with a context for transnational migration studies and its importance for studying people, work and organizations today. Starting out referencing contemporary trends, such as Brexit, the election of Trump and general rise of anti-immigrant, righ-wing regimes globally, the introductory chapter lays the foundation for a transnational migration perspective. Key ideas from transnational migration studies, an interdisciplinary field born out of sociology, are explained and their relevance for theorizing and studying difference in the context of globally-mobile people made explicit. The chapter then outlines how existing approaches to the study of people and work under these new times and in the context of mobility has taken shape in the management, focusing explicitly on diversity and cross-cultural management areas. These two scholarly areas represent the dominant approach to the study of people and difference albeit there have been critical interjections into static notions of identity, place and work in these areas. Altogether, the introduction lays the foundation for the book in terms of the need for and importance of transnational migration studies as a much-needed theoretical approach for rethinking identity, difference and work in the diversity and cross-cultural management fields.
Transmigrants
Authors: Özkazanç-Pan Banu
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on transmigrants, a particular kind of transnational personhood derived from the idea that identity is not fixed and people can act in reflexive, agentic ways to craft their sense of self based on context. It then compares and contrasts this approach to personhood with existing notions of identity and self in the diversity and cross-cultural management research fields. Specifically, diversity literature that acknowledges and examines dynamic aspects of identities does so by focusing on identity formation and using intersectional lenses. Similarly, attempts to capture the multi-faceted and dynamic nature of people in the cross-cultural management field are dominated by concerns over whether individuals are blending national culture and economic ideology in ways that converge or diverge in organizations as a means to understand how individuals may be crafting their own set of values beyond culture. Based on these trends, the chapter provides comparative critique on existing approaches in the diversity and cross-cultural management field that aim to speak of a diverse and globally-mobile subject. The chapter concludes with the implications of such a mobile understanding of self for work and organizational life.
Hybrid Selves
Authors: Özkazanç-Pan Banu
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on hybrid selves, a new kind of self that arises as a result of the distinct context, experiences and set of social and material practices that a person engages in to understand themselves and those around them. While there are many different ways to define hybrid, its use here examines those novel socio-cultural transformations, combinations and “mixings” that take shape at the moment of cultural encounter. Hybrid selves form differently even if facing the same set of circumstances and conditions such studying the everyday lives of business people can elucidate the repertoires of actions that they embody and eschew. By outlining the main tenets of hybrid selves, this chapter challenges conceptualizations of ‘self’ that are based on static notions of identity which limit how we can understand people. It provides examples and comparative illustrations of hybrid selves and contrasts them with research that aims to study similar people in diversity and cross-cultural management. The chapter points out main differences between hybrid selves and bi-cultural or multicultural notions of identity that generally offer hyphenation as a solution to the complex ways people may understand themselves.
Cosmopolitans
Authors: Özkazanç-Pan Banu
Published: May 2020

As the final chapter expanding upon the new agentic, reflexive subjectivities arising from transnational migration, the focus herein is on cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitans. The first section of the chapter underscores the main tenets of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitans and thereby offers insights into the various ways this notion has been theorized. This sets the stage for empirical examples of cosmopolitanism in research that takes shape at the intersections of global business, work and difference. These examples challenge the notion of cosmopolitanism as referencing people who have a global mindset and are ‘citizens of everywhere and nowhere’ approaches which dominate cross-cultural management and examinations of difference in a global context. The third section focuses on the ways ‘global nomad’ as a particular example of cosmopolitanism challenges financialized notions of diversity in the context of organizations and neo-liberalism. In concluding this chapter, the final consideration is around the linkage of cosmopolitanism to an ethics of difference that embodies the epistemic, social and material aspects of transnational being and belonging. By addressing these concerns, the chapter offers new directions in relation to the quest for theorizing and accounting for various forms of difference in relation to people and work.
Diversity Research After Mobility: Multiculturalism
Authors: Özkazanç-Pan Banu
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses explicitly on the concept of multiculturalism by providing critique and offering new ways to proceed in research. The critique focuses on the fact that when research addresses multiculturalism, it does so as an add-on to an existing self such that the multicultural self is understood as the result of identifying with more two sets of cultural and to an extent, political values. Such approaches neither attend to power dimensions of race and ethnicity as they relate to multiculturalism nor to the structural inequalities that people with and without migrant histories face in their lives and work settings among other organizations. To move forward, the chapter discusses how multiculturalism in the context of diversity research must attend to historic formations and their present-day manifestations in relation to the possibilities of subjectivity: what kinds of selves are possible for whom and under what conditions in organizations? By way of this question and building upon the key insights of transnational migration studies in relation to new subjects of research, this chapter puts forth new ways of thinking or theorizing about multiculturalism and engaging in research to examine it in the context of work and organizations.
Inequalities on the Move
Authors: Özkazanç-Pan Banu
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses explicitly on inequalities to outline why and how they need much more attention in organizational research. The starting point of this chapter is examination of why ‘diversity work’ or practices to become more inclusive in organizations continues to be necessary in the context of multicultural societies. It then moves onto discuss power relations as relevant to the replication and emergence of inequalities in organizations, something that is not examined sufficiently in current scholarship on diversity and cross-cultural management. The chapter then moves on to outline how future diversity scholarship requires an ethical commitment to tracing the formation of multiscalar inequalities inclusive of organizational practices and policies that may be producing and/or replicating them. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the mobility turn in social sciences is not a celebratory one to suggest that everyone moves but rather, a serious engagement with the interrelated relations of power, inequality and dispossession taking shape in a multiscalar fashion as people move either out of choice, force or need in relation to work and organizations. In all, the chapter focuses on the relevance of inequality for scholarship on people and difference that span social fields in work contexts that span geographies.
Nonalignment to Multialignment
Authors: Hall Ian
Published: May 2020

This chapter outlines, by way of background, the evolution of Indian foreign and security policy after the country became independent in 1947. It discusses Jawaharlal Nehru’s dominance in the first phase and the generation of a Nehruvian tradition of thought about India’s international relations. It then explores the shift to a more realist approach under Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, and the post-Cold War transformation of foreign policy, prompted by a looming crisis in India’s economic and diplomatic circumstances. It traces the emergence of a more confident policy of ‘multialignment’ during the 2000s, as India’s economy grew and its regional importance developed with it. In the conclusion, it outlines Modi’s approach, comparing and contrasting it to those pursued by his immediate predecessors, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.
Hindu Nationalism and Foreign Policy
Authors: Hall Ian
Published: May 2020

This chapter analyses the Hindu nationalist tradition of political thought, focusing on its assessment of international relations and India’s role in the world. It explores the work of a series of Hindu nationalist ideologues, including – among others – Swami Vivekananda, V. D. Savarkar, and Deendayal Upadhyaya. It argues that although their thought is couched in very different terms to those generally used in Western international relations, they provide accounts of the nature of international relations in the modern age, the place of India and its national destiny, as they perceive it, and the manner in which both economic development and national security ought to be pursued by a state infused with what they argue is a proper Hindu ethos.
Modi and Moditva
Authors: Hall Ian
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the life and political career of Narendra Modi, from his origins in Gujarat to his time with the Hindu nationalist organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and his move into politics, first as a backroom figure and then as a politician. It explores too his time as Gujarat Chief Minister, from 2001 to 2014, and the political style he evolved to manage that state. It looks at Modi’s relationship with the Hindu nationalist tradition and the development of his version of Hindutva, which some term Moditva (Modi-ness). Finally, it lays out Modi’s rise to national prominence and his leadership methods as Prime Minister.
Conclusion
Authors: Hall Ian
Published: May 2020

This concluding chapter addresses the question of why Modi’s government sought to reinvent Indian foreign policy, whether the reinvention succeeded, and what lessons might be learned from this episode for our understandings of how policy is made and implemented in India. It argues that the reinvention was intended to displace inherited understandings of India’s role in the world in favour of a Hindu nationalist alternative. It argues too that giving Indian foreign policy a stronger ideological character was intended to appeal to the Modi government’s core constituencies and to others, to convince them of its authority and capacity. Finally, it suggests that the patchy success of the project is due to both inherent weaknesses in Indian thinking and the limitations of the Modi model of governance.
A Global and Intergenerational Storm
Authors: Diprose Kristina , Valentine Gill , Vanderbeck Robert M. , Liu Chen , Mcquaid Katie
Published: May 2020

This chapter situates the INTERSECTION programme of research within wider international debates regarding the relationship between consumption and climate change. It explores how this relationship is addressed in arguments for environmental justice and sustainable development, and how it is reflected in international policy-making. This discussion highlights how climate change is typically cast as both an international and intergenerational injustice, or the convergence of a ‘global storm’ and an ‘intergenerational storm’. This chapter also situates the original contribution of the book within recent social science scholarship that explores how people live with a changing climate, advocating a ‘human sense’ of climate and social change, and outlines the main themes of the subsequent empirical chapters.
Local Narratives of Climate Change
Authors: Diprose Kristina , Valentine Gill , Vanderbeck Robert M. , Liu Chen , Mcquaid Katie
Published: May 2020

When asking people across diverse geographical and cultural contexts about the impact of climate change on their lives, it is important to take into account how the idea of climate – and thus of climate change – may be differently conceptualised. This chapter explores urban residents’ perceptions of living with a changing climate, the cultural construction of climate change, and how it is conflated with local weather and high-visibility environmental problems such as air pollution, tree felling, industrial waste and changing land use. It discusses how local explanatory narratives differ in their treatment of climate change as remote in space and time or immediate and locally-rooted; and how this affects the extent to which people feel it has a direct impact on their lives. It argues that residents across Jinja, Nanjing and Sheffield were more or less anxious about climate change not only as a consequence of different levels of regional exposure, but also as a result of socioeconomic vulnerability to climate shocks, and the perceived physical deterioration or improvement of their immediate environment as a consequence of urban infrastructural change.
Moral Geographies of Climate Change
Authors: Diprose Kristina , Valentine Gill , Vanderbeck Robert M. , Liu Chen , Mcquaid Katie
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores how local perceptions of climate change intersect with considerations of environmental justice, contrasting moral readings of climate change that differently emphasise ‘universal’, ‘industrial’ and ‘local’ blame. It contrasts Jinja residents’ narratives of self-blame for recent droughts, which linked (local) climate change with local causality, with Nanjing and Sheffield residents’ focus on the global scale of climate change and ‘meta-emitters’ in government and industry. This chapter argues that these moral geographies of climate change affect the extent to which people are willing to assume responsibility for environmental stewardship; much more so than their relative carbon footprint. In posing the question ‘Who is responsible for what?’, it explores divergent moral framings of climate change as a problem for them, there and thenor us, here and now and the possibilities of caring at a distance. This includes attention to the intergenerational challenges of climate change vis-à-vis urban residents’ perspectives on caring for the future and historical responsibility.
Intergenerational Perspectives on Sustainable Consumption
Authors: Diprose Kristina , Valentine Gill , Vanderbeck Robert M. , Liu Chen , Mcquaid Katie
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers how arguments that cast climate change as an intergenerational injustice are complicated by a prevailing belief that younger generations consume more resources and live less sustainably than their elders. It explores urban residents’ narratives of socioeconomic transitions and their perceived impact on contemporary consumption practices, and finds that younger generations are typically blamed for unsustainable consumption. It considers the valorisation of resource conservation through narratives of scarcity and frugality, the influence of social conservative moralising discourses such as “make do and mend” and “qinjian jieyue” (‘being diligent and thrifty’), and the totemic role of waste in making unsustainable consumption visible. These ideas reflect concerns about both environmental and social degradation, attributing climate change to a more general moral decline.
A Generational Lens on Families and Fathers
Authors: Brannen Julia
Published: May 2020

This chapter assesses the concept of generation, which brings into view the historical period in which a person grows up. The popularity of the concept waxes and wanes, often coming to the fore in lay, policy, and sociological discourse in periods of rapid social change. A generational unit is formed not only when peers are exposed to the same phenomenon but when they also respond in the same way as a collective. A generation is not therefore only a matter of belonging to a particular birth cohort but the cultures, subjectivities, and actions that it forges. Thus, the concept has strong elements of agency and generational identity as a potential basis for political engagement. The chapter then addresses the application of a generational lens to family lives, with reference to the study of fatherhood. Placing an intergenerational lens alerts social researchers to what is transmitted across generations, including a variety of phenomena from material assets and occupations to values, political beliefs, and social status. Also important are the transmission and reproduction of moral and emotional bonds.
Families through the Lens of Food
Authors: Brannen Julia
Published: May 2020

This chapter highlights food as a key lens through which a sociologist may understand family relations in social context. Given that the meaning of food and its material form are subject to variation and change across time and place, the concept of ‘social practice’ has been employed in its study. A practice approach engages with the habitual aspects of human behaviour that are not easily open to reflexive engagement. From this perspective, it becomes possible to understand how practices are established and consolidated, and how they change. A practice approach, moreover, engages with the constitutive elements relating to a social domain, for example, cooking, eating meals and washing up, and the sequencing of, and the linkage between, these and other practices. Thus, a focus on food can suggest the ways in which family experiences and practices are reproduced, are in tension, or in the process of change. The chapter then looks at cases and interview extracts which demonstrate some of the methodological benefits of food as a pretext for entry into the field of family lives.
Life Stories: Biographical and Narrative Analysis
Authors: Brannen Julia
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses the growing interest in the use of auto/biographical approaches in the social sciences. Narrative research and narrative analysis are umbrella terms that refer to data available in a variety of forms and produced for a variety of purposes. Such data can be spoken, written or visual. Narrative approaches are not allied to any one set of methods of data collection or analysis. Meanwhile, life history methods are guided by the aim to elicit life course transitions, their ordering, and their relationship to historical processes, social structure, and social institutions. Biographic-narrative interpretative methods and similar methods need to be supplemented by more conventional forms of interviewing if they are to address a study's objectives and research questions. The chapter then describes the life histories of two men, which illustrate changes in fatherhood across family generations. Ultimately, the type of approach examined in this chapter suggests the complex interplay between the way people speak about their experiences and the structures against which such talk needs to be understood.