bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Research, policy and practice
Authors: Frost Nick , Jackson Bernie
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines research evidence that underpins family group conferences (FGCs) and addresses its implications for policy and practice. There are powerful value-based reasons for engaging with FGCs. The evidence base around the process of FGCs is strong; families find the process, in the main, empowering and engaging. Meanwhile, the evidence base in relation to the outcomes of FGCs is mixed in relation to both safeguarding and care placements, as studies have found positive, negative, and neutral outcomes following FGCs. There is no doubt that there is a requirement for more outcome-focused studies of FGCs. Nevertheless, as many researchers argue, there is enough evidence and professional and family-based experience to make a powerful argument for the embedding of FGCs in child welfare policy and practice.
FGCs in the youth justice system
Authors: Cohen Jonny , Norton Dave , Edwards Deanna , Parkinson Kate
Published: January 2019

This chapter assesses Family Group Conferencing in the youth justice arena. FGCs in the youth justice field sit under the umbrella of restorative justice. Restorative justice is the process of bringing together the ‘victim’ of a crime with the ‘offender’ to enable dialogue between the two parties with a focus on ‘repairing the harm’ to the victim. The restorative process is aimed at creating an outcome where the victim feels that justice has been served and that the offender is taking responsibility for their crime. The result is a ‘personalised’ justice process because it is the ‘victim’ who determines what needs to happen for them to feel that justice has been served. The chapter then looks at the ReConnect project, an FGC service based within Leeds Youth Offending service, to demonstrate that there is a broad need for family-centred responses to youth justice issues.
FGCs and adult social care
Authors: Fisher Tim , Mooney Beth , Papworth Andrew
Published: January 2019

This chapter addresses the use of Family Group Conferencing in adult social care. For FGCs with adults, professional guidance and legislation has been supportive from the beginning. Advocates of FGCs welcome guidance and the introduction of key concepts such as personalisation, wellbeing, and person-centred approaches. Indeed, the foundations are in place for FGCs to become an embedded part of adult social care policy and service delivery for vulnerable adults. The messages from research are clear: FGCs offer the potential to engage families for the benefit of vulnerable adults consistent with the underlying principles of legislation and policy. For this to pick up speed and for the practice of FGCs in the UK to develop, it is important for FGCs to roll out into a wider range of adult settings such as adult mental health, and among more populations, including offenders, prisoners, and homeless people.
Reinventing the nursing home: metaphors that design care
Authors: Braedley Susan
Published: January 2019

Drawing on findings from team nursing home ethnographies in Canada, the UK, Sweden and the US, this chapter argues that new designs for nursing home care draw from a social imagination limited by contemporary ideals of individualism, practices of consumerism and structures of inequality. As newly built or renovated nursing homes are designed to support better care for frail older adults, a contradictory mix of policy aims has emerged, including improvements to economic efficiency and sustainability, better standards of care and wellbeing for residents, and efforts to create appealing, hospitable environments. The research brings critical attention to walls, gardens and furnishings, arguing that they not only shape the everyday life of frail old age but also reveal tensions between what residents and those who provide care require, what is designed for them and what is expected of them.
The ever-breaking wave of everyday life: animating ageing movement-space
Authors: Andrews Gavin J. , Grenier Amanda M.
Published: January 2019

Older people move in cities, towns, across settings and in their homes and accommodations either in sync or out of sync with dominant flows, but certainly in their own unique ways. This chapter draws on Non-Representational Theory to think about how we might re-approach ageing movement in research and animate its happening. Specifically, it articulates five core facets or qualities of what might be termed ‘ageing movement-space’ that overflow conscious thought and action; rhythm and momentum, vitality and infectiousness, imminence and encounter. These, it is argued, might constitute key areas of a livelier social gerontology truer to the active world.
What’s exotic about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? Cinema, everyday life and the materialisation of ageing
Authors: Chivers Sally
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel cinema franchise (UK, 2011 & 2015) in relation to the care home franchise it represents. The films characterize the British seniors’ choice to outsource their retirement to India as both economically sensible and personally extraordinary, while glossing over the everyday life of Jaipur residents. The films try to make exotic the everyday (white) life of old age, including a need for new collective living situations, offering a unique perspective on contemporary aging as embodied and highly material without diminishing the potential value of older adults. However, the exoticism relies on what should be an uncomfortable racism arising from making one person’s everyday into another person’s exotic, offering a canny perspective on the disturbing and under-analyzed racial politics of contemporary aging.
Between ageing and ageism: portrayals of online dating in later life in Canadian print media
Authors: Rozanova Julia , Wada Mineko , Clarke Laura Hurd
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines how Canadian print media portrays online dating in later life, based on data from 144 articles published between 2009 and 2011. Results indicate that online dating extends romantic lives and catalyzes successful aging, while revealing that older persons are no longer competitive in the conventional romantic ‘market.’ Goffman’s concepts around the management of ‘spoiled identity’ and ‘stigma’ are particularly useful in this chapter’s portrayal of online dating as evidence that older adults’ success and failure at later life romance reflect wider debates about the nature of ‘normal’ aging versus idealized ‘successful’ aging on an everyday level. Thus, examples are provided of individuals whose behavior and attitudes successfully refuted and subverted the stereotypes about later life both as a de-sexualized zone and a negotiated one whereby aging-related stigma are brought to the ‘front-stage’ of public discourse while exposing the ‘back-stage’ processes and practices of growing older.
Closer to touch: sexuality, embodiment and masculinity in older men’s lives
Authors: Sandberg Linn J.
Published: January 2019

This chapter explores touch as an essential aspect of ageing embodiment, which also has a significant impact on experiences of gendered and sexual embodiment in later life. Drawing on an empirical study with older Swedish men who were both interviewed and asked to write ‘body diaries’ about their everyday embodiment, the research argues that their narratives of touch constitute alternative representations of both male sexuality and ageing embodiment as phallic discourses inevitably signifying decline and decay. In recent years, the increasing emphases of sexuality as vital to the accomplishment of successful ageing often overlook the more complex nuances of older people’s experiences of sexuality and intimacy, which may involve loss, pain and illness as well as unbounded joys. In contrast, this chapter concludes that a turn to touch directs us to the simultaneous vulnerability and potential for pleasure and excitation in ageing embodiment.
Dancing with dementia: citizenship, embodiment and everyday life in the context of long-term care
Authors: Kontos Pia , Grigorovich Alisa
Published: January 2019

Despite the critical knowledge base on dance from phenomenological analyses and somatic studies, dance scholarship and practice in the dementia field largely represents a movement towards cognitive science with an emphasis on embodied cognition and psychotherapeutic use of dance. This chapter argues that understanding and fully supporting dance, not as a therapeutic, but rather as a dimension of everyday life, requires a turn to citizenship, specifically to a model that emphasises both embodied selfhood and relationality. The chapter articulates this argument by analysing findings of an ethnographic study of selfhood in Alzheimer’s disease in a Canadian long-term care facility in the context of the relational model of citizenship. Relational citizenship brings a new and critical dimension to understanding self-expression through dance by persons with dementia, while also addressing broader issues of inclusivity and the ethical imperative to fully support dance through institutional policies, structures and practices.
Why clothes matter: the role of dress in the everyday lives of older people
Authors: Twigg Julia
Published: January 2019

Dress is part of the material constitution of age, providing as it does the vestimentary envelope that presents the body to the social world. Drawing on a series of empirical studies, this chapter explores the role of dress in the embodied lives of older people. It argues that a focus on dress is relevant not just to the younger old and to arguments concerning the new role of consumption culture among this group, but also for the day to day embodied lives of frail elders, in this case those with dementia.
Afterword. Relational entanglements: ageing, materialities and embodiments
Authors: Sawchuk Kim
Published: January 2019

This chapter reviews the contributions of the book’s research to critical ageing studies, along with identifying key questions for further research.
Food crime without criminals: Agri-food safety governance as a protection racket for dominant political and economic interest
Authors: McMahon Martha , Glatt Kora Liegh
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that the slow violence experienced by those in more traditional and alternative ways of food provisioning, which developed within public and private agri-food-safety governance, functions as a kind of protection racket that enables the dominance of particular epistemic, political and economic interests. While the institutional enactments of slow violence are typically not against the law they can be labelled criminal within a colloquial use of the term, not least because they are complicit with social injustice, exclusions and the rendering of many vulnerable to food insecurity and climate change. New feminist epistemologies, ontologies, and feminist ethics support a concern for care and justice while keeping people safe, as well as offer resources for better kinds of governance and would be more responsive to the contemporary opportunities from agro-ecology and food sovereignty.
Ethical challenges facing farm managers
Authors: James Harvey S.
Published: January 2019

Although an extensive literature examines how moral character and environmental context relates to ethical awareness, judgment and behaviour, very little work focuses on the ethics of farmers. Understanding farmer ethics is important because farmers face unique pressures and constraints that affect their ethical judgments and behaviours. Research shows that there are different types of ethical problems that farmers have to deal with, such as actions that cause harm or potential harm to others, the environment and non-human animals, and actions that are defined as wrong by law, contract or agreement. Important pressures and constraints affecting farmer ethics include increasing production costs and land prices, rising debt and worsening financial health, more stringent government rules and regulations, and reduced options for producing and marketing agricultural products.
Impact of hazardous substances and pesticides on farmers and farming communities
Authors: Prado-Lu Jinky Leilanie Del
Published: January 2019

Understanding the health risks of farmers and farming communities is essential in elaborating the phenomenon of food crime. This chapter argues that the production of agricultural food products is inimical to the health and safety of those who produce them. This is an ironic situation where the providers of food – farmers – become vulnerable, ill or injured, or disabled, or even die in the process of agricultural production. This is compounded by the lack of social and health protection for farmers, and absence of institutional support for farming in many developing countries despite the fact that farming is the most elemental and basic means of food production in society. This chapter argues that agricultural practices arising from market-oriented agricultural policies of institutions and governments present as food crime, and there should be conscious and concerted considerations at the institutional level, in including ecologic, health, and social implications of food production systems.
Prohibitive property practices: The impact of restrictive covenants on the built food environment
Authors: Canto Sugandhi del , Engler-Stringer Rachel
Published: January 2019

This chapter presents an overview of restrictive covenants as a corporate real estate practice that places conditions on land use, such as prohibiting the sale of food or prohibiting the development of grocery stores. Restrictive covenants are a significant barrier to establishing a new store in older neighbourhoods and the consequences are interconnected: when food stores act as anchors in a community shopping area, their closure can lead to a loss of neighbourhood-level identity and history. Rectifying existing nutrition deserts is much harder than preventing new ones. Alternative food systems are needed and should support urban agriculture, urban greenhouses and cooperative food store models, incentivise the development of mobile healthy food vending, and offer tax abatements or subsidies for healthy food retail in low-income nutrition desert neighbourhoods. Government support is needed to limit restrictive covenants and develop alternative food channels through various creative means.
Mass Salmonella poisoning by the Peanut Corporation of America: Lessons in state-corporate food crime
Authors: Leighton Paul
Published: January 2019

In 2008-9, the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) caused a salmonella outbreak that killed nine, hospitalised hundreds and lead to the recall of 4,000 products. It first provides an overview of salmonella in peanuts and its use in bioterrorism, along with the investigative process done by public health officials to identify a contamination source. A second section describes the conditions at PCA’s facilities, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act law on adulterated and misbranded food, and the 70 count indictment against PCA’s leadership. A third section discusses state-corporate crime, which examines corporate crime in the context of the failures of regulatory oversight and capable guardians. The conclusion argues against a triumphalist interpretation where justice and reform prevail in spite of a prison sentence for the CEO and the subsequent passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act.
Crime versus harm in the transportation of animals: A closer look at Ontario’s ‘pig trial’
Authors: Fitzgerald Amy , Tourangeau Wesley
Published: January 2019

In December of 2016 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s proposal to amend the Health of Animals Regulations was made public. Among the changes proposed is a reduction in the maximum amount of time animals can be transported without food or water. The timing of this proposal coincides with an on-going court case in Ontario that has come to be known as the ‘pig trial’. Anita Krajnc, an animal rights activist with Toronto Pig Save, has been charged with criminal mischief for providing water to pigs on a truck en route to slaughter. This chapter examines the Krajnc case and the newly proposed regulations from a green criminological perspective, and delves into the debate over what constitutes a food crime in the context of livestock transportation.
Coming together to combat food crime: Regulatory networks in the EU
Authors: Hyde Richard , Savage Ashley
Published: January 2019

A joined up response is necessary to respond to the challenges of food crime. With the increasingly globalised food system, sharing of information between different regulatory and law enforcement bodies is necessary. One method of ensuring information sharing is through the construction of regulatory networks. This chapter examines different methods for constructing regulatory networks, with a particular focus on the EU. It considers both the advantages and disadvantages of networks in responding to breaches of food law, and considers four case studies; the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed; the Food Fraud Network; Co-ordinated Control Plans; and the Opson Operations. The chapter argues that, despite their weaknesses, regulatory networks are essential in dealing with modern food crimes and harms.
Technology, novel food and crime
Authors: Sun Juanjuan , Liu Xiaocen
Published: January 2019

Thanks to technological development, how food is produced has been improving to provide more diverse and innovative food, as is the case of novel food. Yet, technological innovation also introduces the risks and facilitates crime opportunities that threatens social security in general and food safety in particular. As a result, food crime has brought new challenges to food regulation due to its characteristics of cross-board transaction and technological complexity. Putting great endeavour to guarantee food safety, China has established a science based regulatory system to deal with novel food and reinforced criminal sanctions against food targeted crimes. The specialty of the case of China is to legally provide specific food crimes in criminal law and punitive damages in the case of civil liability. The experiences in this aspect may be interesting but also illustrative to regulate technological risk as well as food crimes at other regions or international level.
Food waste (non)regulation
Authors: Long Michael A. , Lynch Michael J.
Published: January 2019

This chapter focuses on food waste and the lack of national and international regulations to reduce food waste. First, a history and overview of social science scholarship on food waste is presented. Next, the numerous ethical, social and ecological consequences of food waste are reviewed and it is argued that the current level of food waste and its non-regulation can be considered criminal. Potential responses to the food waste problem are then discussed, focusing on reclaiming waste as food and technocratic measures that turn food waste into energy. The chapter then notes that while these technocratic measures are helpful in reducing some amount of food waste, meaningful reductions in food waste will not occur without changes to neoliberal global capitalism.
Consumer reactions to food safety scandals: A research model and moderating effects
Authors: Barbarossa Camilla
Published: January 2019

Food safety scandals are recurring events in the food industry worldwide. Consumers and companies are not immune to these incidents. However, there is a paucity of studies that examine consumer responses toward food companies involved in food safety scandals. This chapter attempts to address these issues. First, it provides theoretical bases for the psychological mechanisms through which consumers form judgments of blame toward food brands involved in food safety scandals. Second, it clarifies how attributions of blame negatively affect relevant consumer non-behavioural responses (emotions and attitude) and behavioural responses (purchase intention, word-of-mouth, and boycott) toward faulty food brands. Third, it provides a literature review of the most relevant consumer-related, brand-related, and context-related variables, which may influence the psychological mechanisms of blame attribution, and subsequent non-behavioural and behavioural responses, in the context of a food safety incident.
Muslim women in contemporary Argentina
Authors: Somoza Mari-Sol García , Valcarcel Mayra Soledad
Published: January 2019

This chapter looks at the discourses, practices, identity constructions, performance, and modes of socialization among Muslim women in contemporary Argentinean society. The main aim is to understand and explain the process of identity building among women professing Islam in Argentina by analysing the ways they articulate and reconstruct their different loci of identity belongings — sex/gender, as well as Arab, Argentinean, and Muslim identities. The chapter delves into the specific modes of religious identity building in Muslim women through the development of careers, enabling comparisons to be drawn between the religious careers of women occupying different positions in the social field. It also describe how Muslim women experience and externalize their religiosity and religious identity, while paying attention to the different types of female agency and the relation they establish between their reinterpretation of Islamic principles.
‘Between me and my God’: a life story narrative of conciliating cultural discourses and personalization of Islam
Authors: Rahbari Ladan , Longman Chia
Published: January 2019

This chapter offers a better understanding of the relation between gender and Islam by portraying and exploring a subjective account of conciliating religiosity and modern individualism. The study is conducted based on a life story narrative of a Muslim migrant woman from Iran, living in Belgium. Her life story and experiences prior to and after migration are analysed to reveal how she has built and made sense of her religiosity in the European context. By adopting a life story method, the chapter aims to investigate dynamics of conciliating supposedly contradicting cultural and religious discourses, and to explore religious belonging and personalization of faith.
‘We are all Goddesses’: female sacred paths in Italy
Authors: Pibiri Roberta , Palmisano Stefania
Published: January 2019

This chapter reflects on the relations between gender and religion, by analysing a new form of spirituality coming from the Anglophone world — Goddess Spirituality — which has arrived in Italy in the new millennium. Goddess Spirituality is one of the most important and challenging forms, where the movement of rediscovering paths of the sacred female is evident. As some studies demonstrate, while an ever increasing proportion of women leave the Catholic Church, the majority do not redirect their spiritual seeking outside the Catholic milieu by approaching the world of so-called alternative spiritualities. Goddess Spirituality's contemporaneous spiritual/secular orientation is a source of empowerment for its adherents because it is capable of integrating into its symbolic, axiological universe a gender concept with a sacred dimension.
Explorations of spiritual embodiment in belly dance
Authors: Moe Angela M.
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines how US belly dancers view the practice as a spiritual endeavour, particularly in light of the negative perceptions surrounding it. It discusses findings from a decade-long ethnographic study (2003–13) involving several data-collection methods: observations; journal entries; online statements; and qualitative interviews, a mixed methods design needed due to the lack of research on this topic and the complexity involved in understanding it. Research suggests that belly dance holds much potential as an embodied spiritual practice, particularly when premised on holistic health (integration of body, mind and spirit). As such, the chapter contributes to the critical examination of women's spirituality within contemporary contexts.
From exclusion to inclusion: women and interfaith dialogue in the Mediterranean area
Authors: Antonelli Francesco , Ruspini Elisabetta
Published: January 2019

This chapter details women's contribution to interfaith dialogue in the Mediterranean. This area is often referred to a uniform region and usually depicted as highly problematic, since conflicts and migration flows pose considerable risks to the security of the entire region. Moreover, the Mediterranean is not only an area of crisis and conflict, but also a space for opportunities and dialogue. Interreligious dialogue is a powerful tool for achieving peace and stability. Today, institutions for intercultural dialogue and cooperation, religious representatives, and interfaith organizations are working together to build mutual understanding in the region. This chapter shows that the interreligious dialogue has been changing its nature through a twofold enlargement centred on the gender dimension: vertical, by women belonging to intellectual elites; and horizontal, through a growing involvement of civil society.
A continuum of acceptability: understanding young people’s views on gender based violence
Authors: Sundaram Vanita
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines young people's understandings of gender based violence (GBV) and the ways in which they talk about the acceptability of violence. It reviews research on secondary school pupils' views and experiences of gender based harassment and violence, showing the pervasive normalisation and acceptance of GBV by young people as well as the centrality of heteronormativity to their justifications of violence. Building on the concept of a continuum of violence, the chapter argues that we need to re-theorise young people's views on violence in terms of a ‘continuum of acceptability’. Finally, it considers how young people's acceptance of sexual harassment, coercion and sexual violence can be used to understand why some women engage in, or normalise and accept, ‘lad culture’.
Sexual violence on US college campuses: history and challenges
Authors: Klein Renate
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses the history of sexual violence in US universities to see where things have changed and where they have not. It first explains the relevant terms, such as ‘higher education institution’, ‘college’ and ‘university’ as well as ‘on campus’, ‘sexualised violations’, and ‘sexual misconduct’. It then reviews the early research which overlooked the gendered nature of campus sexual violence, the initial efforts that sought to ‘teach women how to stay safe’ which were critiqued for implicit victim-blaming, and more recent prevention approaches which focus on bystander intervention and the role of friends, peers and social networks in preventing violence. It also examines victimisation and perpetration, along with the interrelationships between perpetration dynamics, campus culture and institutional governance. The chapter concludes with an analysis of issues relating to policy framing and victims' formal reporting.
Using the law to challenge gender based violence in university communities
Authors: Whitfield Louise
Published: January 2019

This chapter considers the progressive potential of the existing legal frameworks, such as human rights and equality legislation, to challenge gender based violence (GBV) in university communities. It first highlights the limitations of existing university responses to sexual violence against students before explaining how the existing law could be used more to protect and provide justice for survivors of GBV, as well as bring about much-needed change in the accountability of universities and respect for women's rights. These laws include the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010 in the UK, European and international law and instruments such as the Istanbul Convention, the European Union Victims' Directive, and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The chapter also examines how those laws have been used in action by individuals and campaigning groups to improve university approaches.
The Intervention Initiative: theoretical underpinnings, development and implementation
Authors: Fenton Rachel A. , Mott Helen L.
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the theoretical underpinnings, development and implementation of The Intervention Initiative (TII), a public health intervention toolkit developed at the University of the West of England for use by all universities in the prevention of sexual and domestic violence (SDV). TII is an evidence-based programme predicated on bystander theories, social norms theory, the criteria for effective prevention programming, and the transtheoretical model of behaviour change (TTM). The chapter first considers intermediate outcome measures (for example, sexist attitudes, denial of violence as a problem, knowledge about violence) that can be used to evaluate bystander programmes for university settings. It then discusses the evidence base and the theoretical rationale for TII to demonstrate how it takes participants through each stage of change required for bystanders to intervene. It also offers policy recommendations for further implementation of the programme in the context of current agendas for the university sector.
The dynamics of regulating low-fee private schools in Kenya
Authors: Omware Gilbert Mitullah
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines Kenya's current approach to the regulation of low-fee private schools amid the tension between conceiving of education as a commodity provided for profit — where rules of the market determine growth and development — and conceiving of education as a fundamental right that the state must fulfil for every person in its jurisdiction. In Kenya, the contextual term for ‘low-fee’ private schools is ‘APBET’ schools (Alternative Provision of Basic Education and Training), after the 2009 APBET Policy. The Kenyan government still does not know exactly how many APBET schools operate in the country and therefore cannot adequately regulate them. As demonstrated by the fragmentation in the regulation of these schools, it reveals that there is a need to consolidate the incorporation, registration, licensing, and taxation regimes to ensure a uniform approach to law and policy on low-fee private schools. As such, a comprehensive overhaul of the regulation of APBET schools is required.
Education at the margins: the potential benefits of private educational initiatives for disadvantaged groups
Authors: Smuts Melanie
Published: January 2019

This chapter assesses how non-profit private providers can positively contribute to upholding the right to education by looking at the following: the equality of individuals; overcoming the legacies of racism, sexism, and colonialism; pedagogical innovations; and collaborative and cost-effective investment in education. Re-imagining education provision is essential for realising the equal right to education for all children. Education initiatives at the margins have found ways to empower, innovate, and re-imagine existing educational paradigms to better fit the lives and aspirations of those who have been excluded from formal education systems, from disadvantaged groups to poor communities. These systems have the ability to imagine and implement innovative learning strategies where states either lack the vision or the political will or capacity to implement those initiatives.
Conceptualising and enforcing the right to quality education for minorities and disadvantaged groups: reflections on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity litigation
Authors: Taylor Helen
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines how the focus on ensuring quality education for all can strengthen both the conceptualisation and enforcement of the right to education for minorities and disadvantaged groups, considering the Campaign for Fiscal Equity litigation in the New York State courts as a case study. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity litigation, which dealt with the constitutionality of New York State's education financing scheme, clearly demonstrates the strategic value that a human rights-based assessment of quality holds for ensuring equality in education provision. While the plaintiffs' argument based on education equality failed, their successful claim based on education adequacy indirectly helped to ensure a more equitable allocation of funding to public schools in New York City. The litigation also shows the close link and challenges between the conceptualisation of the right to quality education and the court's role when enforcing it.
From the classroom to the courtroom: litigating education rights in South Africa
Authors: Brickhill Jason , van Leeve Yana
Published: January 2019

This chapter focuses on two streams of education litigation concerning public schools in South Africa: first, cases concerning contestation over the power to formulate policy for schools in the education system established in the new democratic era; and, second, cases seeking to compel the state to provide specific education inputs. In respect of the power to determine key school policies, the South African Constitutional Court has sought to strike a balance between recognising the democratic and community-level legitimacy of school governing bodies, on one hand, and the need to empower government to act in the interests of all students and to promote equal education, on the other. In the second category of cases, the courts incrementally developed the content of the right to a basic education in section 29(1)(a).
Human rights and equality in education: Conclusion
Authors: Fredman Sandra , Campbell Meghan , Taylor Helen
Published: January 2019

This concluding chapter argues that a human rights-based approach to education offers a promising framework for identifying and addressing the obstacles that stand in the way of minorities and disadvantaged groups enjoying equal rights to quality education. It should serve as a blueprint for laws, policies, and programmes geared towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 — universal access to quality education. The diversity of perspectives featured in this book consider these obstacles from a variety of viewpoints, illuminating more fully the complexities that need to be considered in order to successfully overcome them. These conversations need to continue across countries in a way that brings together all the actors and stakeholders in the education system to work in partnership towards a rights-oriented vision of quality education for all children.
Introduction
Authors: Duggan Marian
Published: January 2019

This chapter explores the content and impact of Nils Christie’s seminal essay Revisiting the ‘Ideal Victim’: Developments in Critical Victimology. The chapter outlines Christie’s understanding of the ‘Ideal Victim’ and situates his work within a broader exploration of the emergence of victimology as a discrete field within criminology. The introduction goes on to outline the collection, providing summaries of the later chapters.
Creating ideal victims in hate crime policy
Authors: Mason-Bish Hannah
Published: January 2019

This chapter suggests that problems over the perception of the nature of hate crime mean that often victims of disablist hate crime are overlooked. Developed partly through campaign group activism and high profile cases, hate crime has become a solid part of criminal justice policy and practice. The legal framework recognises different forms of crime motivated by prejudice or hostility towards victims based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or disability. However, this chapter demonstrates that there are particular problems with the implementation of provisions related to disablist hate crime which can be understood by utilising Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ typology. Born out of an identity politics which sought recognition for the specific harms of hate crime, the development of policy has been shaped by sometimes simplistic perceptions of what it is to be victimised, often framed around issues of stranger danger and attributing recognition to ‘deserving victims’. This reliance on identity politics often means that victims of disablist hate crime are portrayed as weak and vulnerable, which can contribute to anxiety. This chapter shows the relevance of Christie’s ideal victim thesis due to an increasing emphasis on identity politics being used to determine ‘deserving’ and ‘legitimate’ victims.
New victimisations: female sex worker hate crime and the ‘ideal victim’
Authors: Corteen Karen
Published: January 2019

Female sex worker victim characteristics and their social, situational and interactive contexts have not substantially changed. Yet, the manner in which female sex worker victimisation is currently understood has changed in some quarters. This chapter documents the unusual inclusion of female sex workers into Merseyside police hate crime policy and practice. Given that female sex workers embody a ‘non-ideal’ victim identity the focus here is to consider what this development may mean for Christie’s (1986) ‘ideal victim’ thesis. In so doing the role (or lack of) emotion and compassion will be discussed. The chapter concludes that victims and victimisation have been reimagined and new victimisations have arisen. However, with regard to hate crime, and the social construction of, and criminal justice responses to the victimisation of female sex workers Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ thesis remains contemporarily relevant and predominantly intact.
The ‘ideal migrant victim’ in human rights courts: between vulnerability and otherness
Authors: Furusho Carolina Yoko
Published: January 2019

In light of the polarized debate surrounding the limits of ethical State responses to migration, two radical discourses can be identified. On the one hand, it is deeply worrisome how the notion of the deviant and dangerous migrant ‘other’ in societal imagination bears an intimate link to the ‘moral panics’ underlying national security discourses and increasingly stricter ‘crimmigration’ laws. The ascension of this derogatory stereotype resonates with Nils Christie's assessment that the more foreign and less human a person may be, the closer they come to the notion of ‘ideal offender’. On the other hand, expansion of globalized networks of solidarity has propelled a powerful albeit double-edged discourse on migrant vulnerability in human rights advocacy, framing migrants as ‘ideal vulnerable victims’ of human rights violations as a means to tackle the anti-migrant discourse which purports to construct the image of migrants as a priori offenders until proven otherwise. In this chapter, Christie's ‘ideal victim’ theory will underpin a critical analysis of the recognition of human rights victims in the context of migration, focusing on how regional human rights courts adopt the notion of ‘vulnerability’ as legal heuristic to ascertain the victim status of migrant applicants.
‘Our most precious possession of all’1: the survivor of non-recent childhood sexual abuse as the ideal victim?
Authors: Ring Sinéad
Published: January 2019

A key contribution of Christie’s has been to show that the notion of the ideal victim (and offender) is concerned with meaning-making. It helps society to make sense of the suffering of individuals, and to respond appropriately to individuals’ demands for justice. However, as Christie (1986) makes clear, in order to qualify as an ideal victim, a person cannot threaten established social hierarchies. Similarly, the ideal offender must be someone who does not threaten the status quo: they must be outside the norm, a kind of monster. The contours of who can and cannot be an ideal victim or ideal offender illuminate the values held by a particular society. This chapter examines the salience of Christie's conceptualisation of the ideal victim/offender in the context of legal and political responses in Ireland to reports of historical childhood sexual abuse. It argues that abusers were typically constructed as monstrous, but victims were not ‘ideal’ because they threatened the established order of Church and State. It is argued that, contrary to Christie, non-ideal victims may still gain political purchase, if their offenders are constructed as ideal offenders.
‘Idealising’ domestic violence victims
Authors: Duggan Marian
Published: January 2019

Domestic violence victimisation has long been a contested issue with regards to ‘idealised’ victims. Socio-political rhetoric often questions ‘why didn’t she leave?’ yet feminist research has long indicated that leaving a violent partner may increase a female victim’s vulnerability to escalated – and fatal – violence. This chapter assesses a relatively new policy designed to safeguard people from domestic abuse. The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, also known as ‘Clare’s Law’ permits members of the public to apply for information from the police about a partner who they have concerns about regarding abusive behaviours. If a disclosure of previous violence is made, the victim must decide whether to remain in or leave the relationship. Elements of this policy are evaluated in line with Christie’s ‘ideal victim’ concept to demonstrate how it may account for greater harms to applicants. In addition, the chapter explores expectations of safeguarding measures and the potential impact on wider victim-blaming discourses linked to domestic violence.
Environmental crime, victimisation, and the ideal victim
Authors: Davies Pamela
Published: January 2019

This chapter continues the tradition of concentrating on the sociology of phenomena by invoking a case study which draws on a personal experience of the closure of an aluminium plant in the north-east of England. From a victimological and feminist inspired perspective tensions between social and environmental justice are briefly summarised. The chapter first considers the victim in the context of green criminology and specifically the human victim in relation to environmental and global justice. The chapter then considers community victimisation as harm and as non-ideal victimisation. Next, the corporation as monster and non-ideal offenders are considered. A discussion about victimisation from environmental governance leads into the conclusion which laments the under-developed moral and ethical debates arising from a case study that has broader global relevance.
Revisiting the non-ideal victim
Authors: Fohring Stephanie
Published: January 2019

In comparison to Christie’s focus on characterising the ‘ideal victim’ and the sociology of the phenomena, this chapter instead focuses on the non-ideal victim and how this sub-group of victims is linked to individual reactions to victimisation. Christie’s discussion of the non-ideal victim goes only so far as ‘witches and workers’ – those victims who are made so due to either their ill health or ignorance of their victimisation, who do not have sufficient strength/power to claim legitimate victim status. Christie does not however consider the individual who does
not want to be associated with the victim label, and will in fact go to great lengths to avoid victim status, including not reporting crimes to the police or further engaging with criminal justice. Avoiding victimisation, or at least avoiding the victim identity and label, is thereby potentially an effective means of protecting one’s foundational belief systems and maintaining personal wellbeing.
Denying victim status to online fraud victims: the challenges of being a ‘non-ideal victim’
Authors: Cross Cassandra
Published: January 2019

Online fraud victimisation affects millions of individuals globally. Despite its prevalence, it remains a contested area, whereby there is a strong victim blaming attitude towards those who are victims. There is a strong negative stereotype that victims are greedy, gullible, uneducated and somewhat deserving of their victimisation. This works as a barrier to silence and stigmatise individuals who are fearful to disclose their victimisation to family, friends, law enforcement and other third parties. Using Christie’s (1986) notion of the ‘ideal victim’, this chapter examines how online fraud victims are denied victim status despite the offences perpetrated against them. Through an application of the five characteristics that Christie (1986) asserts constitute an ideal victim, this chapter explores the challenges that currently exist for online fraud victims to be recognised as legitimate victims, and the factors which operate to deny them of this victimisation status. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications for online fraud victims in the current environment. It advocates the need for change to better respond to online fraud victims, rather than exacerbating or adding to the trauma they have already experienced at the hands of offenders.
Towards an inclusive victimology and a new understanding of public compassion to victims: from and beyond Christie’s ideal victim
Authors: Gracia Jorge
Published: January 2019

Victimology is about human suffering, often focusing on the consequences generated by crime and how these affect victims and their lives. It analyzes how society manages pain, so concern about victims’ status and needs are important issues. Yet victimology has an undeserved bad reputation, often being accused of exercising commiseration towards certain victims while forgetting others, or providing excuses for the punitive turn in criminal policy. This chapter argues that another type of victimology is possible. Challenging inadequate understandings of compassion and its limits provides us with a useful tool rooted in public virtue which generates stronger and more accurate victim support. An analysis of victim hierarchies illustrates perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ victims; those worthy of support and compassion and those that inspire only oblivion or contempt. Further reflection on the ideal victim stereotype present in Nils Christie’s work offers a starting point from which to achieve an inclusive and critical victimology; a victimology that really embraces the conception of useful compassion which is strongly connected with justice as a public virtue in a democratic and decent society. The chapter argues that this may be a way to recover some of the lost prestige of the discipline.
Pushing the pendulum from politics to policy: the state of policy analysis in Turkey
Authors: Bakır Caner , Ertan Güneş
Published: January 2019

This introductory chapter delivers a synopsis of the progression of policy analysis in Turkey. The chapter argues that the pendulum of policy making – which swings between technocratic tyranny and populism and politics – has, in the case of Turkey, been too close to politics and too far from policy capacity and analytic technique. This chapter will go on to highlight the common themes across later chapters such as challenges in implementation and coordination before concluding with an overview and assessment of individual chapters.
The past, present and future of policy analysis in Turkey
Authors: Akdoğan Akif Argun , Morçöl Göktuğ , Orhan Gökhan , Yıldız Mete
Published: January 2019

This chapter summarizes the history of policy analysis in Turkey beginning with the Ottoman Empire and tracing the developments in the era of the Turkish Republic until the early 21st century. After a review of the history, the chapter assesses the current state of policy analysis education, research, and application in Turkey, before concluding that policy analysis and policy studies in Turkey have come a long way, but also have a long way to go. The chapter makes the observation that advanced theories and methods are not covered in most of the courses in policy analysis and policy studies, many of the publications are descriptive, and the legal requirements for public agencies to use analyses in their decision-making practices have not been implemented fully. The chapter recommends that Turkish governments should apply advanced analytical methods and all stakeholders should participate to public policymaking.