bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Future Homes: developing new responses through new organisations
Authors: Gilroy Rose , Aitken Dominic , Miller Philip
Published: January 2022

This chapter charts the emergence of the Future Homes Alliance, a community interest company of which Newcastle University is a partner, formed to develop new models of housing. Against a background of diminishing power at the sub-national government level, the privatisation of public services and public finance cutbacks there is a growing discourse around what has been termed the 2.0 business landscape characterised by participation, co-creation and collectivism. In this new place-based leadership model, universities have emerged as key institutions who can identify evidence gaps, undertake research, facilitate knowledge transfer partnerships and create places of trust for exchanging ideas. It is in this context that the first author brought together a group of named individuals spanning the quadruple helix (academia, business/industry, the local municipality and the voluntary/community sector) to create new housing that responds to demographic change and sustainability. Planning permission has been granted in 2020 for the construction of 66 dwellings.
Introduction
Authors: Leahy Ann
Published: January 2022

This Chapter introduces the book, explaining that it is about how older people experience physical or sensory disability. It positions the book’s approach within critical gerontology but engaging with disability studies, aspects of medical sociology and lifecourse studies. The Chapter outlines the rationale for the book, introduces the empirical study that informs it, and refers to its key findings. Its rationale arises from the fact that the meaning that older people give to processes of disablement are largely overlooked, with biomedical approaches dominating approaches to ageing, and with even social science approaches tending to be dominated by concern with ‘third age’ or with older people without impairment. A further rationale relates to the separation of the fields of disability and ageing in public policies, activism, conceptualisation of disability and theorising, despite how disabled people age, and most people who are ageing will experience disability. The empirical study is introduced, outlining how it involved two groups usually considered to be categorically different, one being older people ageing with long-standing disability, the other, older people first experiencing disability with ageing.
Conclusion
Authors: Leahy Ann
Published: January 2022

The Chapter briefly summarises the book’s chief arguments and those of each of its Chapters. It argues for a broadening out of enquiry across the fields of ageing and disability towards engagement with ageing that is multifaced. It argues that critical gerontology could benefit by adopting an interactional or biopsychosocial model of disability, consistent with human rights approaches to disability. It points to areas within critical scholarship on disability and ageing and within lifecourse perspectives that represent starting points in opening conversations across the two fields. The Chapter outlines some future directions for scholarship and approaches to public policies on ageing. It points to theorising of personal meaning in life from a humanist perspective as offering potential to better communicate understandings of how a sense of value and meaning is achieved at any stage of life. It argues for a more realistic engagement with what it is to age and to live a life of meaning at all of life’s stages, for a more complete picture of the diverse experiences that are involved in disability and ageing, and for development of more realistic societal engagement with disability as an issue relevant to all human beings.
Where do children go when they can’t stay with their families?
Authors: Neagu Mariela
Published: January 2022

This chapter familiarises the reader with messages from international research in different types of placement: residential care, foster care, domestic adoption (in Romania) and international adoption (from Romania). It places the messages from research into the current context of adults who grew up in care or were adopted (in different countries) and their common human needs which are often not addressed. This chapter provides the context for the findings of the study presented in the following chapters of the book.
Teen years in care and their ways out
Authors: Neagu Mariela
Published: January 2022

Teenage years are marked by young people’s increasing interest in understanding and marking their place in the world, when personal relationships are developed outside the family environment. It is a time when family conflict between teenager and parents is not uncommon. But how are these common experiences lived by those who are not cared for by their parents? This chapter is rich in quotes providing insights into how the young people in the study recalled their teenage years in residential care, foster care, domestic adoption and intercountry adoption, how they made sense of their circumstances and the strategies they chose to overcome their care status.
“They are both shitty jobs … because I’m not free”: Sierra
Authors: Bowen Raven
Published: January 2022

This chapter shares critical reflections of duality in light of precarious work in sex industries and mainstream markets. Marxist concepts of alienation, estrangement and species-being along with contemporary labour arrangements such as zero-hours contracts, provide theoretical and practical contexts for feelings of disillusionment among Contributors who, after investing time and money in educational attainment, landed shitty, temporary, low paying square jobs. Contributors who hold roles in public trust, and those who have been on (sick) benefits, share how trapped they feel in gig economies across markets. As sex workers, they suffer the violence of being excluded from civil participation in policy discussions about the labour market and how sex industries ought to be regulated. Although duality provides flexicurity, many would rather have secure employment in the disciplines and fields that they trained in. The penalties associated with being out to the state as a known sex worker means that privileged lobbyists inform policy instead of the diverse populations of people active in UK sex industries, who can provide insights into who trades sex and how to reduce harm and exploitation relative to the changing design of sex industries for diverse on/off-street and online sex industry workers.
Engaging Black and Minority Ethnic Groups in Health Research
Authors: Darko Natalie
Published: January 2022

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in addressing ethnic health inequalities. However, there are misconceptions about Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups that focus on them as being hard to reach and difficult to engage in health services and research. This term is used routinely across all sectors of society. However, what is apparent is that they are “not hard to reach”, but rather health services and research “are not reaching” them, by assuming that health and health practices are experienced equally and services are effective for all.
This publication illustrates how this term plays a debilitating role in problematising BME people. It is argued that we need to shift away from the using this term because it contributes to exclusionary practices and has implications for escalating inequalities in health and healthcare access for BME groups.
The chapters in this book explore some of the exclusionary practices that occur in health research and practice and provides guidance for practitioners and researchers on how to avoid misconceptions about BME groups. Chapter 1, outlines understandings of key concepts and misconceptions about terms such as race and ethnicity. Chapter 2, explores the relationship between race, ethnicity and health and examines why ethnic health inequalities are occurring. Chapter 3, focuses on how we can improve research in this field to advance inclusionary practice. In the remaining chapters, principles of good practice and how to implement them by means of real research examples from the field are presented.
Improving research on race, ethnicity and health inequalities
Authors: Darko Natalie
Published: January 2022

It has been widely acknowledged in both health research and applied healthcare practice that health research on ethnic health inequalities is hampered by poor quality data. In light of this, it is argued in this chapter, that improvements need to be made to improve the visibility of ethnic minority groups in research and public health reports and in the methods utilised to research them. This chapter illustrates that by improving the equality and cultural competency practices of health researchers, we can improve the visibility of diverse BME groups in health research data and practice.
Conclusion
Authors: Darko Natalie
Published: January 2022

This chapter briefly summarises the central tenets of the text and reminds the reader of the key findings and issues raised in each of the chapters. The implications of the text are presented with a particular focus on the wider implications for health research, policy, healthcare practice and the methods used in health research and healthcare to examine ethnic health.
Purposes and paths in drawing practical lessons from policy theories
Authors: Weible Christopher M , Cairney Paul
Published: January 2022

This chapter presents ways to synthesise and communicate state-of-the-art knowledge from intellectually distinct fields, each with their own reference points and key foundational texts. It explains why the judgement of a theoretical contribution should change, from the need to provide new empirical material to demonstrating a particular way about a theory or approach. It also identifies lessons from policy theories for persuasion and learning, political participation and collective action, and structuring governments and designing public policies. The chapter defines policy process research as the study of the patterns of interactions surrounding public policy over time. It highlights the nature of political systems, policy subsystems within larger political systems, and authoritative decision-making venues.
The Growing Challenge of Youth Unemployment in Europe & US
Authors: Jagannathan Radha
Published: January 2022

This book examines whether or not the youth employment strategies practiced in the high efficiency and expanding economies of the United States and Germany can be adopted successfully in the Mediterranean countries of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and (southern) France, countries where youth face significant obstacles to employment. A distinguishing feature in the approach taken here is the importance placed on national culture, i.e., shared values and preferences with intergenerational sustainability that can have economic consequences. Like many other books on this subject the importance of the institutions and policies that underpin “free market capitalism” are discussed but an effort has been made to place these institutions and policies within a broader cultural and historical context. In the spirit of the pioneering work of Max Weber and the more recent contributions in the rapidly expanding sub-field of cultural economics, this book attempts to identify the elements of national value orientation that can facilitate or impede the adoption of new technologies, policies or institutional forms. It is the book’s contention, its overall thesis if you will, that a failure to correctly identify these value orientations will likely result in incomplete adoption and low levels of diffusion.
Introduction
Authors: Jagannathan Radha
Published: January 2022

This chapter describes the youth labor market and identifies the key institutions responsible for the smooth functioning of this market. It provides a theoretical framework for the rest of the chapters using perspectives used in cultural economics, sociology and political science. After a brief description of the German dual system and the American ‘freewheeling entrepreneurship’ approach, the chapter lays out the question of whether the American free market capitalism characterized by risk taking or the more scripted and coordinated approaches practiced in Germany distinguished by a high level of trust and cooperation among market actors can help other countries, specifically the Southern Mediterranean countries, in shaping their youth employment initiatives. The chapter concludes with a description of the organization of the rest of the book.
Labor Market Policies to Fight Youth Unemployment in Portugal: Between Statism and Experimentalism
Authors: Marques Paulo , Videira Pedro
Published: January 2022

Authors Paulo Marques and Pedro Videira use a comparative political economy framework and employ the varieties of capitalism typology to organize their work in this chapter. Arguing the absence of perfect free-market capitalism or perfect coordination of employment efforts by labor market actors, the authors hypothesize that (a) statism played a key role in tacking youth unemployment through programs that did not rely completely on either liberalized or coordinated markets; (b) the Portuguese government may have implicitly relied on an American entrepreneurship model to transition to a knowledge-based economy to stimulate economic growth; and (c) the state has had to rely on a mix of active labor market policies for youth advocated by the EU both on the supply and the demand sides of the market, but not in a consistent fashion (experimentalism). The authors use historic data on youth-oriented ALMPs implemented in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 to test their hypotheses, and present their results on the congruence of their hypotheses with empirical data. They conclude with a discussion of their expectations on the kinds of policies the government is likely to pursue in the next few years to address continuing concerns of absorbing young graduates into the productive workforce.
The Public and Their Platforms
Authors: Carrigan Mark , Fatsis Lambros
Published: January 2022

As social media is increasingly becoming a standard feature of sociological practice, this book rethinks the role of these mediums in public sociology and what they can contribute to the discipline in the post-COVID world. It reconsiders the history and current conceptualizations of what sociology is, and analyzes what kinds of social life emerge in and through the interactions between ‘intellectuals’, ‘publics’ and ‘platforms’ of communication. Cutting across multiple disciplines, the book envisions a new kind of public sociology that brings together the digital and the physical to create public spaces where critical scholarship and active civic engagement can meet in a mutually reinforcing way.
Defining ‘the Public’
Authors: Carrigan Mark , Fatsis Lambros
Published: January 2022

This chapter offers a critical inquiry into the idea of the public as it has been theorized within and beyond sociology. It points out how eloquently silent the debate on public sociology has been in discussing the public at any adequate length. It also explores some dominant themes that surround theories of the public that variously describe it through a language of crisis. The chapter rethinks the public as an identity, as an activity, and as a type of space that enables citizenship to take place and take root as a routine practice of everyday life. It offers examples of how one can be public in ways that turn an otherwise abstract word into a physical, material reality that could be likened to a muscle that needs to be exercised rather than an abstract aura that is alluded to in vague and elusive ways.
The Past, Present and Future of Public Sociology
Authors: Carrigan Mark , Fatsis Lambros
Published: January 2022

This chapter offers a potted history of public sociology by describing it as an old idea which became a new debate, following Michael Burawoy's presidential address at the 2004 annual meeting of American Sociological Association. It traces the public sociology debate to reflect on the evolution of sociologists' anxieties about the public nature of the discipline. It also emphasizes how to resist the temptation of thinking that sociology suddenly acquired a public deficit in the 21st century The chapter argues how public sociology has always been plagued by an existential crisis regarding its identity, purpose, and target audience. It raises questions in the context of sociology's disciplinary history and contemplates its future, digital or otherwise.
Witness Testimony
Authors: Hillier Tim , Dingwall Gavin
Published: January 2022

Chapter 4 turns to witness reliability. Juries attach great weight to testimony and yet witness’s accounts can be highly unreliable. An initial concern is that demeanour may give an unjustified impression of accuracy. The law also limits the situations where witnesses can present hearsay evidence – on the basis that it cannot be adequately tested – and the Chapter will review the exceptions to this rule and ask whether they compromise establishing the truth. Identification evidence is notoriously fallible and, it has been suggested, leads to a high proportion of miscarriages of justice. This links more generally into issues of memory; of how facts are processed at times of stress, and of how they are subsequently recalled in another stressful environment.
Life Course Theory
Authors: Herring Jonathan
Published: January 2022

This chapter introduces the reader to life course theory. It provides definitions of the life course and explores the challenges in defining the different stages of the life course. The interaction of law and life stages is considered. The chapter also introduces some of the themes that run through the book such as age discrimination and intergenerational justice.
South Asian Regionalism
Authors: Chakma Bhumitra
Published: January 2022

The book explains the politics of regionalism in South Asia from the vantagepoint of International Relations (IR). It engages three major IR theoretical approaches – Neorealism, institutionalism and constructivism - to explain the complex dynamics of South Asian regionalism – its origin, evolutionary process, outcome and effects. The study traces the origins and evolution of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) from its inception to the present day. Using comparative perspectives based on the experiences of similar regional organisations, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the performance of SAARC and its challenges and limits. The study divides the evolution of SAARC into two distinct phases. In the formative phase, the organisation primarily focussed on, based on the neo-functional idea of ‘spillover’ – low level issue areas for cooperation. In the second phase from 1993 onward, cooperation was initiated in the core economic areas, i.e. trade in goods and services, finance, investment etc. While the organisation achieved some tangible and intangible successes, its failures are more glaring. Terming the formation of SAARC essentially as a political project, the book argues that the patterns of regional international relations have primarily determined the outcome of regionalism in South Asia. While the socio-economic development constituted the key rationale for the formation of SAARC, its modus operandi was politico-strategic which led to its gradual erosion. Notwithstanding its limits, the book asserts that SAARC will have to be called back at a future date due to the persistence of the compelling rationale for which it was created.
South Asia’s International Relations: A Historical Overview
Authors: Chakma Bhumitra
Published: January 2022

This chapter provides an overview of South Asian international relations from 1947 to till date. It identifies its key trends and analyses the pattern of South Asian international relations. Arguably, the success or failure of a regional organisation is a function of the structure and patterns – amity or enmity - of regional international relations. This chapter, therefore, lays the foundation for analysing the politics of South Asian regionalism, specifically its origin, evolution, outcome and effects.
The Origins of SAARC
Authors: Chakma Bhumitra
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores the origins of SAARC and explains the politics behind it. Three specific variables are engaged in explaining the politics of the origins of SAARC: the role of systemic forces, the dynamics of regional international relations, and the socio-economic profile of the region and the regional states. It also explores another interesting aspect of the origin of SAARC; the initiative for a regional grouping was taken by Bangladesh, a middle-sized state in the regional system, and not by India or Pakistan, the two most powerful states of the region. This chapter explains why Bangladesh took the initiative and how different regional states reacted to the Bangladeshi proposal.
The Formative Years: 1980–92
Authors: Chakma Bhumitra
Published: January 2022

This chapter analyses the evolution of SAARC and the process of regionalism in its formative phase from 1980 to 1992. SAARC strived to consolidate regionalism by adopting the ‘spillover’ idea of neo-functionalism which it borrowed from the early days of European regionalism. The SAARC states started the process of regionalism by focusing cooperation on non-controversial, functional areas. The objective was to incrementally deepen regional cooperation and build a peaceful regional environment. Evidently, SAARC added many new areas of regional cooperation during this phase. A noteworthy aspect of South Asian regionalism during this phase was that the SAARC states did not start cooperation in core economic areas, rather they based regional cooperation only on functional areas.
SAARC after 1992: Disagreements and Differences
Authors: Chakma Bhumitra
Published: January 2022

This chapter explains the evolution of the organisation and its politics beyond the formative phase. The most important dimension of the evolution of the organisation in this phase was the decision to begin cooperation in core economic areas such as trade in goods and services, investment, finance etc. The most important initiatives in this context were the conclusion of the South Asian Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA) and the SAARC Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreements. This chapter illustrates the political and economic impetus for moving toward that direction and the constraints to implement the two flagship agreements of this phase of SAARC’s evolution. By explaining the constraints to implement the two agreements, it indeed explains the rise of differences and disagreements which culminated into the current stalemate in the organisation.
Beyond SAARC: Sub-Regional and Trans-Regional Cooperation
Authors: Chakma Bhumitra
Published: January 2022

This chapter analyses sub-regional and trans-regional cooperation that has developed within the framework of SAARC and beyond and their implications for South Asian regionalism. Within the framework of SAARC, the South Asian Growth Quadrangle (SAGQ) which came to be known as ‘Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal’ (BBIN) initiative was approved in the 1997 Male summit. To support the sub-regional initiative, the Asian Development Bank initiated the ‘South Asian Sub-regional Cooperation’ (SASEC). Beyond SAARC, the ‘Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar Economic Corridor’ (BCIM-EC) and the ‘Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation’ (BIMSTEC) have emerged which are trans-national in character. These initiatives have got implications for SAARC-led regionalism which are analysed in this chapter.
International Relations Theory and South Asian Regionalism
Authors: Chakma Bhumitra
Published: January 2022

This chapter illustrates the theoretical implications of this study for International Relations theories and their assumptions about regionalism which have been presented at the outset of this book. It assesses whether the theoretical assumptions of the three mainstream theories about the rise, process, outcome and effects of regionalism can explain South Asian regionalism. As will be analysed, the assumptions of standard IR theories cannot be applied in the case of South Asian regionalism. So, what theoretical insight can we draw from this case? It also illustrates what the lessons of this study tell us about the state of IR theories in general. It is generally posited that the current IR theories are Western-oriented and have been built based on the experiences of the West, hence there are questions about their universal applicability. Given such a context, there has developed a debate about a ‘Global IR’. Can the analysis of this study contribute to this debate?
Surveillance, Substance Misuse and the Drug Use Industry
Authors: Pycroft Aaron
Published: January 2022

This chapter provides a critical appreciation of the dynamics of the drug use industry in ultra-modern democracies. A hermeneutic of suspicion uncovers the onto-theological/metaphysical mechanisms of religious and archaic violence driving pre-criminalisation and exclusion, and a hermeneutic of affirmation seeks solutions to this cultural and institutional violence.  With respect to the drug use industry, our suspicion apprehends recovery as an example of the non-places that have come to define super modernity where the drug dependent person is always in transit but can never arrive.  Our affirmation of poetic space as a process of discovery rather than recovery for drug users provides distance from a repressive state apparatus allowing for the unlearning rationalism to discover new ways of being.
Theorizing Surveillance in the Pre-Crime Society
Authors: McCahill Michael
Published: January 2022

This chapter interweaves ‘surveillance theory’, ‘policing studies’ and ‘field theory’ (Bourdieu 1984) to examine the politics of ‘pre-crime’ and ‘surveillance’ in the ‘field of policing’. We begin by defining the key concepts (‘surveillance’, ‘pre-crime’ and ‘policing’), before drawing upon a wide range empirical research to examine how ‘risk’, ‘actuarial thinking’, and ‘predictive analytics’ are mediated by police managers, police officers, intelligence analysts, private security officers and citizens going about their business in police stations, CCTV control rooms, welfare offices, shopping malls and airports. The chapter concludes by calling for further research on the informal networks and crossovers that exist between the police and the emerging technological field expertise and on the experience of pre-crime subjects.
Mass Monitoring: The Role of Big Data in Tracking Individuals Convicted of Sex Crimes
Authors: Budd Kristen M. , Mancini Christina
Published: January 2022

In the United States, individuals convicted of sex crimes are arguably one of the most highly monitored groups of offenders in contemporary times. This chapter focuses on the ways persons convicted of sex crimes are monitored by detailing what we know on two mechanisms of data-driven social control: sex offender registration and notification (SORN) and electronic monitoring (EM). Both of these monitoring strategies amass large quantities of data (e.g., personal information, location tracking information) that are gathered, housed, and maintained by law enforcement and various other agencies and used by law enforcement, other criminal justice actors, and, to a lesser extent, the public. Regardless of who is “watching,” it is the mass accumulation of data that makes this possible. The chapter ends with a discussion and final thoughts on the role of technology in relation to public safety and sex crimes.
The Digital Technologies of Rehabilitation and Reentry
Authors: Reisdorf Bianca C. , DeCook Julia R.
Published: January 2022

The period immediately following prison release is challenging, as returning citizens need to obtain housing, find employment, secure health care, and reconnect with families. In addition to having a criminal record, returning citizens encounter a technologically savvy and hyper-secured society that requires use of touchscreens, mobile phones, computers, and the Internet, and relies heavily on dataveillance and big data analysis for predictive policing and crime-prevention. Most returning citizens do not have the digital access and skills needed for employment, access to online human and social services, enrollment in education, connecting with family and community, protecting their privacy online, and adapting to cultural changes. This chapter examines the kinds of technologies returning citizens encounter during reentry and reentry programs that focus on integrating digital technologies and digital literacy into their curriculum. We discuss the implications of the lack of such programs and the potential benefits of digital literacy training during reentry.
Surveilling the Civil Death of the Criminal Class
Authors: Deckard Natalie Delia
Published: January 2022

In a liberal democracy, the loss of the right to vote is tantamount to political - and social - death. Systematic felon disenfranchisement is correlated with equally systematic exclusion from the body politic. It can be argued that the resultant marginalization creates a feedback loop of criminalization – with community members rendered increasingly criminal as they become disenfranchised for their criminal status. In the single social space formed by the prison and the ghetto, disenfranchisement assures that communities do not vote, but are rather are voted upon. Understanding the mechanisms through which the feedback loop of marginalization is constructed and maintained is key to understanding the use of surveillance to control the very electorate that ostensibly controls the democratic state. This chapter explores the underlying logic of felon disenfranchisement as pre-crime and its development as a modality of carceral governmentality.
Trying to Find a Community of Philosophical Inquiry
Authors: Szifris Kirstine
Published: January 2022

This chapter moves onto the work in Full Sutton. Mirroring chapter 5, it begins with a description of the prison and a discussion of what happened in the philosophy classroom. Full Sutton, being a more traditional prison the chapter offers an insight into the prison environment. Focusing on the religious tensions, the chapter discusses some of the issues of being a Muslim in the prison system and provides a rich description of the turbulent journey towards community among mainstream and vulnerable prisoners
“Genuinely Keen to Work”: Sex Work, Emotional Labour, and the News Media
Authors: Easterbrook-Smith Gwyn
Published: January 2022

Following the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act, a specific mode of engaging in sex work was rendered more acceptable than others within New Zealand news media texts. Analysing texts published between 2010 - 2016 reveals the ways that acceptability is mediated through comparisons between indoor workers who see relatively few clients, and workers who see more clients and/or charge less for their services. News media discourses about sex work indicate that the acceptability of some sex workers relies on their ability to obscure the sexual and emotional labour which they engage in. Disguising this allows commercial services to be framed akin to unpaid sexual encounters within media discourses, a key site where the general public’s notions of sex work are contested and established. The willingness of low-volume indoor workers to present their work through an advertorial frame, emphasising an enjoyment of the work and foregrounding normative aspects of their lives, is prominent in texts featuring them. While such framing may benefit the businesses the workers represent, it is less likely to benefit them personally. This suggests that decriminalisation offers new and different media opportunities to workers, which in some circumstances could represent a burden of uncompensated emotional labour.
Living Well Together: On Happiness, Social Goods and Genuinely Progressive Sociology
Authors: Thin Neil
Published: January 2022

Sociologists, planners, and activists are prone to treating society as if it were an enemy of wellbeing. This ‘disapproval addiction’ seriously inhibits our ability to understand and foster the social goods that make happiness possible. Instead of focusing mainly on social pathologies, we could instead cultivate more deliberately appreciative and aspirational approaches to social qualities. Appreciation and positive promotion of happiness and social goods could then become our core concern. This chapter proposes the deliberate and explicit adoption of a ‘happiness lens’ in social scholarship and planning so as to emphasise positivity, empathy, and integrative linkages between life domains through the life course. This lens is used to explore different kinds of claim to foster ‘social progress’: remedial; preventive; provisional; and ultimately genuine moral progress. It is proposed that this could make our social learning strategies more appreciative and our social plans more aspirational and uplifting. Conversely, and more provocatively, it is argued that we cannot claim to be ‘ethical’, or ‘progressive’, or even ‘politically engaged’ if we don’t make happiness an explicit and central concern in social research and social planning. Overall, these arguments are intended to highlight the ‘disruptive’ potential of a happiness lens.
The Visual in Social Science
Authors: McClanahan Bill
Published: January 2022

This chapter describes the origins of visual criminology in visual anthropology, visual sociology, visual theory, cultural studies, media studies, and visual cultures. Noting the emergence of the visual as a field and object of study in a range of disciplines, it details the ways in which visual criminology has drawn on a diverse array of theoretical and methodological tendencies that preceded its formal development. This chapter also defines and operationalizes some key concepts and tensions in the field and in the book.
Drugs and the Visual
Authors: McClanahan Bill
Published: January 2022

This chapter addresses drugs as a key site around which visual criminology has grown, and around which it might continue to develop. The chapter considers the ways that photography, cinema, and other forms of visual culture have interpreted and made meaning from addiction and the world of illicit drugs. Tracing the place of drugs in popular and mediated discourses of crime, harm, and justice, like the global drug war and popular campaigns against marijuana, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine, the chapter outlines how a visual criminology of drugs can help us decode a visual culture teeming with drug images. This chapter also includes an expanded discussion of some of the ethical challenges facing a visual criminology of drugs.
The Work of Looking for Work: Surviving Without a Wage in Austerity Britain
Authors: Strong Samuel
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the everyday lifeworld of Jeff, an unemployed individual living in the Welsh Valleys—a highly deindustrialised area that is one of the UK’s most deprived regions. Jeff’s story demonstrates the damaging effects of austerity policies that have introduced greater levels of coercion and conditionality for the unemployed, accompanied as they are by heightened political rhetoric framing waged labour as the route to citizenship. Not only are these transformations callous: they also work against the ability of the unemployed to secure waged labour. Rather than a ‘workless’ existence, Jeff’s story illustrates the many and often desperate works that punctuate his attempts to survive without a wage—works that unfold socially and collectively through the politics of community and place.
Seeking Attachment in the Fissured Workplace: External Workers in the United States
Authors: Strauss Claudia
Published: January 2022

To save labour costs, many United States employers have externalised all or part of their workforce, turning employees into independent contractors, hiring temporary workers, and relying on subcontracting firms. External workers have jobs in the formal sector, yet they lack many of the legal protections and fringe benefits of standard employment. What do these external workers desire in their jobs, beyond a paycheck? This chapter examines experiences and meanings of work among external contractors in the US. It finds that external workers seek to develop affective ties to their organisation and co-workers in spite of their externalisation. The chapter concludes that belonging and connection are not futile post-Fordist affects. Rather, they continue to provide meaning for workers pushed out of standard employment.
Perfect Politicians? Voting Preferences in the United Kingdom
Authors: Weinberg James
Published: January 2022

Chapter 6 extrapolates to macro-level issues of representation and anti-politics to ask: do voters actually get the ‘wrong’ politicians’? The central argument in this chapter reduces to the existence of an unhealthy premium on the individual in contemporary democratic politics, both in terms of the ways representatives understand and execute their professional function and how/why voters become disillusioned regardless of their political choices. These assumptions are tested with an original conjoint experiment conducted with a representative sample of 1637 British citizens. The results show that personality outweighs other political and socio-economic variables as a voting heuristic in experimental scenarios. Compared with data from 168 MPs, these results also indicate that at the aggregate level there is less of a disjuncture than assumed between the personalities the public want in national politics and the personalities they get.
Introduction
Authors: Beeson Mark
Published: January 2022

An overview of the conventional theoretical wisdom and some of its key, possibly outdated assumptions. International relations (IR) theory still revolves directly or indirectly around ‘realism’ and even newer paradigms such as constructivism are not always good at suggesting plausible alternatives to the dominant discourse. This chapter analyses the assumptions of mainstream IR, discusses their unfortunate and inappropriate implications, and highlights the seemingly irresolvable nature of security dilemmas.
Environmental Security
Authors: Beeson Mark
Published: January 2022

This chapter spells out the environmental challenges and problems which are making traditional approaches to security problematic, if not dangerous. It explains why necessary international cooperation has proved so difficult to achieve, despite its increasingly obvious necessity. It is suggested that the EU is still the best example of international institutional cooperation, despite its current problems.
Unequal Security
Authors: Beeson Mark
Published: January 2022

Globalisation has produced winners and losers, and economic inequality remains a major problem both within and between different states. This chapter explains why this is a major threat to security, especially as climate change threatens to make some parts of the world uninhabitable.
Preparing to Outsource Government Services
Authors: Morphet Janice
Published: January 2022

This chapter reviews the UK government's preparation for the application of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which came into effect in 1994. It mentions how the Uruguay Round was concerned with the extension of procurement into the liberalisation of public services and to other parts of government. It also cites there were was some preparation to open the markets through the parallel development of the Single European Market (SEM) from 1985, which then came into effect in 1992. The chapter analyzes the UK government's preparation for the implementation of the GATS and the SEM through the restructuring of its institutional governance arrangements. It details how the preparation for outsourcing of some public bodies in the UK was undertaken through institutional separation, including between purchasers and providers.
The Problématique of Taiwanese Identity
Authors: Gartner Scott Sigmund , Huang Chin-Hao , Li Yitan , James Patrick
Published: January 2022

This chapter evaluates the secondary literature with regard to understanding the context for contemporary cross-Strait relations. Following the review of academic studies, the chapter shows an evolving identity for the people of Taiwan, which includes both ethnic and institutional elements. In peeling back the layers of Taiwan's identity choice, the chapter begins to uncover how and why Taiwanese identity is highly political and increasingly convergent with the changing tides of political support on the island. The chapter then shifts to cover the politics of Taiwanese identity and assess the impact of the rapid ascent of China to world power status. It then turns to how the People's Republic of China (PRC) exerts pressure on Taiwanese identity. The chapter examines the closely related elemental role that Taiwan plays in relation to the Mainland, and the nexus of the United States, PRC and cross-Strait relations.
From Exceptions to Cases of a Participatory Budgeting Phenomenon
Authors: Ryan Matt
Published: January 2022

This chapter provides an overview of the scholarship of PB to date. It is the most comprehensive overview to date of the methodological and theoretical lenses through which PB has been studies and explains key findings in PB scholarship. The chapter traces these findings as scholarship has become more ambitious but argues that the methods employed up to now require a complementary cumulation of case-knowledge using alternative tools.
Success: How Citizen Control of Politics Is Achieved
Authors: Ryan Matt
Published: January 2022

This chapter a logical comparison of the characteristics of cases of participatory budgeting and presents findings to inform the implementation of democratic reform. The touted necessary conditions for empowered participation such as participatory leadership and civil society demand for involvement are examined the specific circumstances under which they can be (ir)relevant to explanations of empowered participation are outlined. The evidence suggests that in a Brazilian context contentious politics must be combined with either rules enabling participation or a financial basis for implementation of projects to produce democratic deepening. Across the world meaningful involvement of citizens in collective governance often requires a combination of will and capacity to implement programmes from political and administrative leaders. Political commitment to participatory politics is only a sufficient condition for good outcomes in combination with bureaucratic capacities or financial freedoms.
The Role of Expert Reporting in Binding Together Policy Problem and Solution Definition Processes
Authors: Bourblanc Magalie , Bouleau Gabrielle , Deuffic Philippe
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, we study expert reporting as a type of political work that can powerfully link public problem with policy solutions. Expert reporting and categories can more efficiently play a binding and cementing role between problem definition and policy solution since they display the same properties as policy instruments (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2005), i.e., they implicitly carry specific frames and perform lock-in effects. We first demonstrate the political work taking place around ecological indicators which are far from neutral representations of the natural world. They are hybrid expert categories and partly political constructs that indicators’ promotors tweak to adjust to various influences. We show in particular that, to be sanctioned, actors promoting specific ecological indicators need to align their expert category with categories emanating from multiple streams and spaces. We then argue that in adverse contexts, when alignment across streams and spaces prove to be challenging, the imposition of expert indicators may occur through the rolling-out of scientific programs that feed indicators with data. Once expert categories are informed with such knowledge and data, they become more difficult to undo, hence binding together a specific way of seeing the problem and of conceiving its policy solution.
The Marks of Ownership: The Promotion of Carbon Capture and Storage in France
Authors: Chailleux Sébastien
Published: January 2022

Studying the case of carbon geological storage in France, the chapter develops the marks of ownership on a policy solution. This proposal bears the marks of both its co-owners, experts and industrials: carbon storage is defined as a global technical solution without much thinking about the social conditions of implementation; it is also a market-based solution subject to funding issue. The chapter also asserts the role of spaces of debate. Discreet spaces of dispute are an important location for experts to build policy solutions without much of a publicization. In such spaces, a particular regime of feasibility defines what an acceptable proposal is and redefines the problem the solution is supposed to fix. Translated into technical terms, a public problem such as climate change became an issue of industrial carbon emissions which can be solve through carbon capture and storage. While the marks of ownership contributed to the strength of the proposal in discreet spaces of dispute, they became a liability in the public forum where the carbon storage is criticized, among other things, as the solution from the oil and gas industry to limit radical energy policy change.
Discourse Coalitions and the Messiness of Policy Solutions: College Governance in Nevada
Authors: Martinez Magdalena
Published: January 2022

Magdalena Martinez examines the role of discourse coalitions on policy solutions through a higher education governance case study in Nevada in the United States. Specifically, through the observation of actors’ discursive practices (i.e., interviews, legislative testimonies, media accounts) Martinez focuses on how coalition actors created meaning for their proposals through policy statements and how they employed their discursive actions as a way to bind coalition identities around problems and solutions. Key to their strategy was their ability to create coalitions and bind specific policy statements and proposals to these coalition actors; in doing so they created ownership for their respective proposals. Yet the unequal political power advanced some coalitions over others, thus creating a dimension of conflict and power dynamics. Coalition conflict and power was disputed in multiple spaces in order to cement their policy statements and proposals. Notably, multiple hidden spaces of dispute determined who joined what coalition, and what policy statements and proposals were championed in public legislative spaces. The undercovering of these spaces can help us understand the hidden side of the politics of coalitions and their policy statements and proposals.
The “Ferguson Effect” and Emergence of “De-policing”
Authors: Deuchar Ross , Crichlow Vaughn J. , Fallik Seth W.
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, we report on the rise of a somewhat new phenomenon in policing. In doing so, contemporary policing is framed among developing counter-movements that place law enforcement in the middle of oppositional belief systems. Against a backdrop of historical inequalities and lack of law enforcement accountability, we consider the way some have questioned if the public are engaged in a “war” on police. We explore how public discord has had real consequences and been met with a somewhat galvanized de-policing response from law enforcement. The policing and crime costs of the Ferguson Effect, as this phenomenon is also known, is empirically explored. Though often framed through the words and lens of law enforcement, the semi-structured interviews (of officers) and participant observation field notes set the stage for alternative perspectives shared in later chapters.