bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
How does the idea of ability relate to inequalities?
Authors: Bradbury Alice
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on inequalities, and how the idea of ‘ability’ relates to their maintenance and reproduction. It begins with an outline of current educational inequalities in England, from early years to secondary education, and the most prominent debates in the field of race and class in education. Then, data from a research project on grouping and other research are used to examine how ability interacts with inequalities, at all levels of the schooling system. Then the resurgence of ideas which link intelligence levels with different social groups, known as the ‘new eugenics’ are considered, along with the challenges posed by epigenetics to deterministic accounts of merit. Finally, the chapter explores how debates about inequalities in education have shifted and continue to change during the COVID-19 crisis.
Infantilised parents and criminalised children: the frame of childhood in UK poverty discourse
Authors: Lehtonen Aura , Breslow Jacob
Published: January 2022

In this chapter, Aura Lehtonen and Jacob Breslow consider how the lives of children and families intersect with, and are adversely affected by, contemporary policy and media discourses of ‘childhood’ and ‘family’. The chapter focuses on the UK government’s deployment of normative discourses of childhood in relation to austerity policies. The chapter argues that harsh, neoliberalising polices have been advanced precisely through discursive appeals to normative concepts of ‘childhood’. Specifically the chapter evidences how key policy programmes have simultaneously ‘infantilised’ poor parents and ‘adultified’ poor children to justify austerity policies which – ironically – have the most severe impact on poorer families with children most severely. The chapter thus shows how intersecting policy and media discourses, should be folded into relational understandings of children, young people and families’ lives in the current political-economic moment.
Sex and ageing in older heterosexual men
Authors: Lee David M. , Tetley Josephine
Published: January 2022

Sexuality is an integral part of living and growing older, but societal stereotypes of later life continue to place little value on the importance of sexual activity and fulfilment to older people. Here we draw on data from the nationally representative English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to highlight how transitions in health and sexuality among older heterosexual men intersect in later life. This chapter considers key data from ELSA, combining both quantitative and qualitative findings, to better describe and understand trajectories of later life sexuality. While the ELSA data reveal complex age-related changes in sexual health and wellbeing among older heterosexual men, many remain sexually active and sexually intimate into their 70s, 80s and 90s. We discuss the implications of these findings for practice and policy, particularly in relation to more proactive discussions around changing sexual expression in later life, and how health care professionals can more holistically support older men’s sexual health and wellbeing.
Consent and sexual literacy for older people
Authors: Reynolds Paul
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores the concept of sexual consent, and its apparent neglect in the literature on the intersectional on ageing and sexual and intimate lives. It explores the way in which valid consent (informed, free from coercion, capacity) is influenced by the way in which older people are desexualised in contemporary society. Consent is a complex concept that raises issues of how informed a person is and what constitutes freedom from coercion or capacity. With older people, the generational cultural context adds to those complexities and reinforces their desexualisation. It then explores how promoting older people’s sexual literacy as a means of enabling them to have an ethical sexual life.
The role of professionals and service providers in supporting sexuality and intimacy in later life: theoretical and practice perspectives
Authors: Hafford-Letchfield Trish
Published: January 2022

The transformation of intimacy and sexuality within care institutions is challenging established views about ageing. This chapter draws on scholarship from both sexuality and workforce development on how health and social care providers have yet to respond to the growing empirical evidence on what contributes a meaningful life for older care recipients in relation to their sexuality, sexual identities and meeting sexual needs. It is argued that there is an urgent need to transcend established views about the role of all professionals involved in the provision of care to people in later life and to recognise new opportunities for responding to the complexity of sexuality in such contexts.  This involves developing and promoting professional practice on theoretical and empirical standpoints that are inclusive of older people’s own voices. This chapter provides example of how we might recognise the complexity of older peoples’ relationship situations. These involve making spaces within assessment and the provision of care to enable information and support to be available and to recognise different relationships and creating conditions for them to flourish. It calls for engaging with sexuality as a topic within professional education, care practices and evaluation of services and working towards a culturally-competent, enquiring and authentic approach to workforce development.
Janet Beveridge
Authors: Oakley Ann
Published: January 2022

Janet Beveridge, born Jessie Philip, married the economist William Beveridge two weeks after his famous report heralding Britain’s welfare state was published in 1942. Her contribution to that report is insufficiently acknowledged, as also is her role in the ‘second foundation’ of the London School of Economics in the 1920s and 30s. As Secretary of LSE Janet was an important fund of ideas and initiatives, and she played a key role in securing the grants that enabled LSE to develop its international reputation.
The social question: reconciling social and economic imperatives in policy
Authors: Bateman Bradley W.
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on the enduring relevance of key economic ideas. It considers how the pressing social and economic questions of the day (the social questions, concerning rights and representation, diversity and difference) have been cast and recast, and the responses to these questions from the discipline of economics. In its original form, the ‘social question’ referred to the welfare of workers in the Second Industrial Revolution. The chapter begins with the fundamental questions of social democracy and equity. It seeks to answer the questions like: How would the rights of labour be established against the power being concentrated in the hands of capital? Would working-class people have the right to vote? Should workers have bargaining power through unions? The chapter then assesses the tendency of capitalist economies to cycle through periods of boom and bust. The chapter explores how traditional Keynesian ideas once again bear relevance in the continued attempt to balance our economic and social life, with capitalism again plunged into another crisis from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For better or worse?
Authors: Wilkinson Richard , Pickett Kate
Published: January 2022

This chapter points to something of an irony in the age of extreme inequality. It delves into the general lack of policymaking based on or informed by the knowledge of the social determinants of health and wellbeing. The chapter argues that while higher material standards are clearly needed in low-income countries, where many do not yet have access to necessities, in the rich countries there are sharply diminishing returns to wellbeing associated with endless economic growth. The chapter then jumps to display major encompassing societal changes in order to improve the quality of life for all. It first emphasizes the pressing need to escape excessive consumerism. The chapter then maintains that societies really need to address inequality in order to improve population wellbeing overall. It then argues that we must reduce the inequality which ramps up status competition and consumerism if we are serious about the transition to sustainability.
The struggle for social sustainability
Authors: Deeming Christopher
Published: January 2022

This chapter draws together some of the lessons from the volume as a whole, for thinking through the conceptual ‘lynchpin’ of the ‘social’ and the seismic shifts in social policy over time and space. It returns to the different conceptualizations of the ‘social’ of social policy, and reflects on social progress in the first half of the 21st century. The chapter then presents a number of broadly competing visions for sustaining work and welfare in the 21st century. Those advocating the right to work, ‘full employment’, ‘job guarantees’ and ‘employment insurance’, maintain there are strong ethical arguments that underline the capability to earn one's own living, a basic fundament of human dignity embodied in many constitutions and international conventions. The chapter examines the emerging global social policy frameworks, and proposed pathways and alternatives for accelerating global social progress.
Women’s liberation: strands, debates, transformations
Authors: Hague Gill
Published: January 2022

This chapter outlines the different strands of feminism, including radical, revolutionary, socialist and liberal/equal rights approaches. It debates the conflicts and divisions that sprang up within this vibrant movement, including around issues like pornography and prostitution. It outlines issues for Black and minority women, the importance of taking on racism and other oppressions and the development of concepts of intersectionality. The chapter debates the later development of identity politics, and also talks about women in the academy, the New Left, and the wider women’s movements across the world, concluding the historical discussions of women’s liberation.
A radical women’s politics: the light of innovation and new ways to organise
Authors: Hague Gill
Published: January 2022

Chapters 6 discuss the innovations in working with violence survivors and the new ways to organise which the domestic violence movement pioneered. They reflect on these radical, sometimes revolutionary, practices within the early refuges and the first domestic violence services in the UK, but elsewhere too. Some of these practices are no longer so prevalent, and the two chapters suggest that it is important to record them for the future while some of the women who made them are still with us. It is worth returning to, and learning from, their zeal and innovation. Chapter 6 documents the contributions of refuge, child support and outreach workers, the challenges of accepting funding, and the work of the ‘Support Group’, an informal collective form of a management committee. It discusses the radical notion of everyone involved, including the women using services, being members of the collective, and the brave challenges and successes of collective working. It debates women in the refuges having a say in decision-making and being eligible for jobs/careers, and radical employment practices for workers including women from working class backgrounds being offered greater job longevity. It outlines the collective regional and national organisation of Women’s Aid and refuges, in terms of spreading democratic decision-making.
Wider feminist principles and domestic violence: making a new world
Authors: Hague Gill
Published: January 2022

This chapter continues the discussion of the underly principles of the domestic violence movement. It debates its foundation in ideas about self-determination and empowerment for women survivors/victims of violence. It documents the struggles in the movement against racism, oppression and inequality. It also asks if the movement was sometimes slightly idealistic in its attempts to flatten hierarchies and break down power differences between women of different backgrounds and between women using the services and those providing them. The chapter discusses the commitment of the movement to being women only (with the contradictions this involves) after the decision to exclude men from the mid-1970s on. The chapter also discusses the reasons for the end of most of the collectives after twenty or more years in the early 2000s. The chapter concludes with a poem celebrating the early work into the 1990s of Bristol Women’s Aid.
How chairs use the pronoun ‘we’ to guide participation in rehabilitation team meetings
Authors: Dall Tanja , Caswell Dorte
Published: January 2022

The chapter examines rehabilitation team meetings in Danish employment services and approaches the data as critical examples of the challenge of collaborative and integrative practice. It foregrounds the concepts of the inclusive and exclusive ‘we’ as linguistic devices used to denote responsibility and authority. It demonstrates how chairs use the pronoun ‘we’, to examine how other team members and/or the service user are included in or excluded from decision making. The core finding is that, in terms of both service user participation and interprofessional collaboration, chairs’ use of ‘we’ works to place ‘the team’ in a position of authority.
City of Dreams: enabling children and young people’s cultural participation and civic voice in Newcastle and Gateshead
Authors: Dickenson Ben , Pollock Venda Louise
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on the process involved in developing a co-produced vision for young people’s meaningful engagement in the arts, at a time when access is challenged by funding cuts and changes within education. It does so through a case study of Newcastle Gateshead Cultural Venue’s initiative ‘City of Dreams’ (established 2018), which aims to enable all young people under the age of 25 in the area to take part in cultural and creative activity. It shows how, through a grounded, open process of consultation, reflection and iterative development, ‘City of Dreams’ is exploring the role that young people can play in creating more equitable institutions and access to culture, while necessarily identifying the barriers to participation. It demonstrates the value of understanding the conditions of young people growing up and suggests that through placing them at the heart of activity, their agency is potentially capable of transformative impact.
Literature: ageing, disability and lifecourse
Authors: Leahy Ann
Published: January 2022

This Chapter compares key theoretical perspectives on disability and on ageing, engaging especially with critical or cultural studies. It also engages with other areas of scholarship where theorising on disability and ageing could meet. The discussion starts with social theories of ageing, followed by social theories of disability, and then goes on to discuss an aspect of theorising within the sociology of health and illness and, finally, lifecourse perspectives. The Chapter shows how these various fields currently engage, or fail to engage, with the issue of disability in older age, as well as where there may be room for more conversations across them. It concludes that critical studies encompass a range of perspectives in both disability and ageing and often use similar paradigms to explore ageing and disability. However, the two fields largely progress on separate tracks. There is also a need for more exploration of subjective experiences associated with disability in later life.
Disabling or enabling contexts
Authors: Leahy Ann
Published: January 2022

This Chapter discusses how participants experienced disability and disablement in interactions with their contexts, perceiving themselves as more or less disabled due to a range of factors: social/familial; support and care; physical environments; and socio-cultural meanings in everyday interactions. Participants could be disabled by factors that disable people of all ages, such as inaccessible homes and environments and through being marginalised or excluded by disablist reactions of others. Experiencing disability with ageing could be perceived as entering a socially discredited or devalued category – thus, a transition experienced not just at a bodily level but also at a social, cultural and political level. An inverse process meant improvements in aspects of life for some participants ageing with disability, even if life was challenging in many ways and only because earlier life had been marked by a sense of exclusion or confinement. The Chapter then discusses how participants related to a disability identity and how some people were in the process of negotiating a disability identity in response to perceptions of being discriminated against or excluded. Some were developing a new sense of belonging with other disabled people
Responding to challenges
Authors: Leahy Ann
Published: January 2022

This Chapter argues that older people respond to disablement processes through ongoing, dynamic efforts to reestablish a sense of meaning in life. It first addresses what is understood by ‘meaning in life’. It then sets out how loss of intimates was intertwined with experiences of disablement, which in combination amount to threats to perceptions of life as meaningful. In response, participants tried to reinterpret and remake their lives to perceive them as meaningful. They did this by investing everyday activities with new meaning and by continuing to maintain activities, participation and connections, and by contributing to others where they could, sometimes achieving this with the help of community organising and public services, including care centres. This could involve new opportunities for connection and self-realisation. Participants identified with goals of self-development, activity and social connectedness typically associated with the ‘third’ not the ‘fourth age’.
Comparison: disability with ageing and ageing with disability
Authors: Leahy Ann
Published: January 2022

This Chapter compares experiences of the two groups of study participants - the group ageing with disability (AwithD) and that experiencing disability with ageing (DwithA). The Chapter shows how participants in both groups could perceive themselves as disabled by their bodies and their contexts. This included loss of intimates, lack of material resources or supportive public services, and inaccessible physical environments. Both groups of participants could be disabled by discrediting attitudes of other people and by discrediting societal framings of disability as a diminished state of being. But many of those factors had detrimentally shaped life for longer and for participants from the AwithD group. The discussion suggests that while differences have often been stressed in scholarship, there are also commonalities between the two experiences. The outcomes both groups wanted for their lives are similar, including connection with other people, meaningful activity and inclusion in what is considered the mainstream of life. The Chapter also points to the possibility of reinterpretation of the normative lifecourse from an ageing with disability perspective.
Exploring life trajectories: what mattered to them
Authors: Neagu Mariela
Published: January 2022

This chapter explains how the interviews were analysed, drawing on identity theories and children’s rights. It provides a zoom out of the different life trajectories highlighting similarities and discrepancies between individual care experiences. It makes reference to young people’s current lives at the time when they were interviewed and on what they felt helped them. These range from the kindness of strangers, abusive relationships caused by lack of choice to new opportunities provided by new legislation in Romania or the country’s EU membership with its associated freedoms.
Acceptable Jobs and the Epidemic of Youth Unemployment in Southern Italy
Authors: Caserta Maurizio , Ferrante Livio , Jagannathan Radha , Monteleone Simona
Published: January 2022

This chapter, written by Maurizio Caserta, Livio Ferrante, Radha Jagannathan and Simona Monteleone, takes a labor economics perspective to paint a portrait of Italian youth, especially in the Mezzogiorno, detailing their labor market preparation, prospects, and outcomes. After providing an in-depth look at the nature and magnitude of youth unemployment in the southern region of Italy in comparison to the rest of the country and the continent, it explores the contributions of the great recession, human capital development, and labor market coordination with the educational sector and resultant skills (mis)match, to existing high levels of youth disengagement. It is argued here that while the free-market principle uses the price mechanism to bring labor supply and demand to equilibrium levels, the segmentation of the Italian labor market, segregated along skill lines and by region, works against the efficiency of price-driven principles. After presenting some empirical evidence about prevailing values on work among youth, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the potential success of adopting an American or a German approach to youth employment initiatives in light of Italy’s historical and cultural legacies.
Dirigisme Pour L’Ordinaire: Vocational Training in 21st Century France
Authors: Camasso Michael J. , Moissonnier Guillaume , Jagannathan Radha
Published: January 2022

This chapter is authored by Michael J. Camasso, Guillaume Moissonnier and Radha Jagannathan, and begins with a description of some of the policy measures that France has attempted in order to blunt the growth of youth unemployment, with specific reference to their VET system. It is argued that the nearly uniform disdain attached to VET by French parents, youth and employers can be explained by dirigisme or the primacy of the role of the state over that of industry, and Etatisme, or state control over the citizens. The chapter goes on to discuss the French preference for intellectual or symbolic capital over market generated profits, the former driven by academic qualifications and the latter, by routine labor market engagement. The foundations of this intellectual superiority and its maintenance are traced to the unique system of Grandes Écoles that spawns future “state nobility” equipped to wield enormous power and control over the economy and other affairs of the state. By interweaving historical and comparative information on the functioning of the French, American and German labor markets, the authors provide insight into the French reverence for the Grandes Écoles system and under-valuation of VET.
Educating Youth for Future Unemployment in Greece
Authors: Jagannathan Radha , Tsoulou Ioanna
Published: January 2022

Written by Radha Jagannathan and Ioanna Tsoulou, this chapter begins with a discussion of the economic turmoil Greece has experienced in recent history and takes us through the debt crisis, the austerity measures that followed, and the cash-for-reform deal with the EU. Focusing principally on the supply side and on the Greek society’s tendency for over-educating its young, the chapter describes the rise of the precariat as a direct consequence of the labor market’s inability to absorb the high-educated/high skilled labor, and focuses attention on the prevailing norms of clientelism, nepotism and non-meritocracy that have earned Greece a rather dubious distinction as one of the most corrupt western democracies. After an overview of the Greek education system and the rather poor reputation of its VET, the chapter provides a comparative discussion of the active labor market policies in Greece and Portugal and why similar reforms in the two countries led to divergent results. The chapter explores Greece’s capacity to adopt an entrepreneurship pathway to curbing youth unemployment and presents results from a survey of 30 Greek youth who opined on the issues of youth labor market.
US Style Entrepreneurship as a Pathway to Youth Employment: Exporting the Promise
Authors: Jagannathan Radha , Camasso Michael J.
Published: January 2022

Radha Jagannathan and Michael Camasso author this chapter that examines the feasibility of exporting the spirit of entrepreneurship, a mindset that has traditionally existed in the mix of policies to promote youth economic development in the United States. Using a Tocquevillian view that Americans follow ‘the principle of self-interest rightly understood” as a vehicle, the chapter portrays how Americans approach economic activity generally, and provides an overview of policy tools adopted by the United States from both the demand and supply side of the labor market and the flexible character of the economy. The rather discouraging results the USA has had in implementing VET programs through various employment and training legislations are recounted in the chapter, as are some demand-side fixes to the labor market such as wage subsidies to employers and minimum wage changes. These discussions are prologue to a longer treatment of American entrepreneurship and how it has been used a pivotal youth employment strategy. Lastly, the chapter examines the transferability of American-style entrepreneurship to Greece, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain and provides some suggestions for success in this regard.
Criminal Justice and the Pursuit of Truth
Authors: Hillier Tim , Dingwall Gavin
Published: January 2022

Criminal Justice is popularly conceptualised as a pursuit of the truth. This book considers the extent to which this view reflects reality by exploring a number of key themes. The ‘pursuit of truth’ suggests an obtainable, single truth and the book considers the extent to which truth is a far more complex, nuanced phenomenon. Often the criminal process appears to be more about constructing a narrative and telling a convincing story. The book explores the extent to which a pursuit of truth can conflict with other values such as justice and the protection of human rights, with particular focus on illegally obtained evidence and confessions. The concluding chapters discuss the extent to which the pursuit of truth has shaped the modern trial process and assesses alternative approaches to criminal justice including restorative justice and truth commissions. The conclusion highlights some fundamental themes in the book and points to the limitations of the current criminal justice system not only in terms of establishing truth but in terms of realising significant social benefit. Three areas of focus are taken to assess the current system’s ability to find the truth: blame, juvenile justice, and the pursuit of justice. The book argues that the current criminal process adopts a person, rather than a system, approach to bad events with a focus on identifying individuals to blame rather than addressing the wider problems resulting from crime.
Adulthood
Authors: Herring Jonathan
Published: January 2022

This chapter explores adulthood, which is presented as the ‘prime of life’. It argues that the law privileges certain kinds of people by elevating rights to autonomy and privacy as central rights. In doing this it downplays the vulnerable, caring and interdependent nature of humanity. The chapter considers issues around infertility and domestic abuse to highlight the difficulties facing those who do not comply with the assumptions about the ‘natural’ human condition.
The Politics of Actuarial Justice and Risk Assessment
Authors: Day Andrew , Tamatea Armon
Published: January 2022

This chapter considers the widespread adoption of actuarial risk assessment tools across the criminal justice system. After providing a brief history of the development and use of these tools and the use of digital technology to assess risk, we consider a series of issues relevant to their construction, validation, and application. We argue that current approaches to assessing risk typically reflect narrow cultural interests and, specifically, that they have not been informed by peoples from Indigenous and other minority communities – many of whom are disproportionately present in criminal justice systems around the Western world. The analysis highlights critical questions about the socio-political context in which risk assessment occurs and the need to identify alternative ways of understanding the risk of criminal behavior occurring in the future.
Cameras and Police Dataveillance: A New Era in Policing
Authors: Gaub Janne E. , Koen Marthinus C.
Published: January 2022

Police use of surveillance—and dataveillance—is not new. However, the increased reliance on video technology in particular has brought us into a new era of policing. Using Kelling and Moore’s (1988) framework of policing history, we argue that video surveillance (CCTV, license plate readers, in-vehicle cameras, and now body-worn cameras) combined with the redirected focus from the war on terrorism has created a dataveillance era of policing.
Dataveillance and the Dividuated Self: The Everyday Digital Surveillance of Young People
Authors: Southerton Clare , Taylor Emmeline
Published: January 2022

For most young people in the western world, everyday routines are fundamentally entangled with digital surveillance. Data-hungry technologies have become deeply embedded in every aspect of life and mediate activities at school, at home and at play. It is no longer a question of when young people are under surveillance but how surveillance encounters script young peoples’ everyday routines on a micro level whilst, serving to (re)produce inequalities through processes of social sorting at a macro level. Drawing upon the Deleuzian concept of ‘dividuation’, this chapter examines the multiple ways in which the young person’s body is being endlessly fragmented into streams of data and coded information. We argue that dataveillance is oriented towards capturing the ‘dividual’ – comprised of extractable and measurable data that lends itself to aggregation and mass analysis from which decisions are made. This chapter seeks to examine the felt experience of encounters with this fragmentation, examining the potential implications of the digital surveillance of young people.
Personal Self-Exploration
Authors: Szifris Kirstine
Published: January 2022

This chapter begins with an outline of the discussion of Stoicism in Full Sutton. Asking participant to consider ‘the good life’ it provides the basis for a discussion of wellbeing. Participants were clear in articulating the relevance of philosophy in providing space to develop their own opinions, learning how to philosophise, and engaging in intellectual conversation. The second half of the chapter moves towards a discussion of self-reflection, articulating what the participants said they learnt about themselves in being part of the course.
Mobile Power
Authors: Bloom Peter , Jones Owain Smolović , Woodcock Jamie
Published: January 2022

This chapter introduced one of the central concepts of the book – “mobile power” and “remobilising power”. We argue that regimes of power draw their strength from their ability to be adaptable to a range of diverse contexts. More precisely, it must be constantly “remobilised” to flexibly accommodate a wide range of cultural and historical circumstances. This draws on an emerging understanding of power as not simply repressive or productive but instead dynamic and customisable. Yet the argument of this book takes these insights one step further. The contention is that power – encompassing dominant ideologies, practices, and actors – requires and is often at its most potent when it transforms people and places into “host subjects” and “problem-solvers” to innovatively adapt these discourses to their specific situation and context.
Organic Leadership for Liquid Times
Authors: Bloom Peter , Jones Owain Smolović , Woodcock Jamie
Published: January 2022

In this chapter we started to consider seriously how it might be possible to find durable relations of solidarity between various disparate groups to the extent that an impactful guerrilla democracy would be possible. It is here that we introduced our account of organic leadership. This type of leadership, drawing on Gramsci, acknowledged the necessity of rooting struggle in the particular, embodied and historically situated experiences of people within their communities (work, residential or otherwise) - which highlights the vital nature of cultivating and curating rich forms of knowledge and intellectual capacity. The leadership required of levelling upwards and outwards from such localised communities is moral and organic, one that never loses its symbiotic connection to community but that is capable of offering direction to a broader sphere of influence. Such leadership can of course be enabled by an appealing leader-figure but reliance on such figures is at best fleeting and at worst destructive. Rather, we need to be more imaginative about the digital forms in which we connect and build. Such an ethos and praxis would, in turn, foster “revolutionary resolidifications” for concretely cultivating and experimenting with new emancipatory forms of existence in a seemingly unchangeable and amorphous liquid capitalist world.
Shifting Care Horizons: Care-sharing Arrangements, Motivations and Transitions
Authors: Brooks Rachel , Hodkinson Paul
Published: January 2022

This chapter outlines the nature of the equal and primary care roles taken on by the fathers in the Sharing Care study, before exploring the circumstances in which these roles were taken on. The authors explore how, while for some fathers an extensive caregiving role had already fallen within their ideals and expectations (care horizons), for many others, it had represented a turning point brought about by circumstances. Moreover, for most of the fathers, equal or primary care responsibilities had not been taken on until after a period of several months (or more) of exclusive maternity leave for their partner. The taking on of care sharing by fathers, then, represented a substantial practical transformation of roles that previously were being discharged by the mother and, often involved a difficult transitional period.
Care-sharing Futures
Authors: Brooks Rachel , Hodkinson Paul
Published: January 2022

This final chapter explores equal and primary caregiver fathers’ overall reflections on their journeys and future horizons, before outlining broader conclusions and recommendations from the Sharing Care study. Conclusions centre on the importance of circumstances in enabling fathers’ roles and horizons to change, and on the extent to which extensive practical involvement in caregiving had prompted further transformation in masculinities and fatherly identities. The authors also emphasise challenges and barriers faced by fathers that had sometimes placed limits on their caregiving and that centred on deep-rooted assumptions of default maternal responsibility that continue to manifest themselves in policy, practice, interactions and values. A set of recommendations on how care sharing might be made easier for fathers is outlined.
Happiness as an Affective Practice: Self, Suffering and Biography
Authors: Hill Nicholas
Published: January 2022

Sociology has been reluctant to engage with the question of happiness because of a perceived emphasis within psychological framings on positive subjective experience, the prioritisation of inner resources, and its role within neoliberal strategies of government. This chapter argues for a reparative reading because of the centrality of happiness within the social imaginary. To highlight the relational aspects of happiness and how it is implicated in evaluations of the relationship between self and others and self and world, happiness is theorised as an affective practice. The chapter illustrates the utility of narrative methods for exploring people’s experiences and understandings of happiness, arguing that such an approach generates insights into how happiness functions normatively, framing understandings of good and happy lives. The chapter concludes by arguing that happiness is worthy of sociological research because of the way experiences and understandings are biographically and socially situated.
Environmental Harm and the Visual
Authors: McClanahan Bill
Published: January 2022

This chapter describes the intersection of visual and green criminology. It offers a concise outline of the cross-fertilization of these tendencies—green-visual criminology—as well as examples of the theoretical and methodological trends developing from that intersection, and of the ways in which environmental crime and harm have been taken on visually. The chapter discusses the ways in which problems including climate change, wildfires, and species loss have been—and might be—taken up by a visual criminology. This chapter also notes and describes the ways in which the material environment has played a significant role in the construction of distinct and powerful forms of visuality.
“Be Your Own Boss”: Entrepreneurial Dreams on the Urban Margins of South Africa
Authors: Dawson Hannah J.
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the question of why young men in South Africa prefer self-employment in the informal economy to low-end jobs. Drawing upon the life histories of two informal entrepreneurs in Zandspruit informal settlement, it demonstrates the ways in which wage work in South Africa’s racialised economy disrupts the rhythms of life in Zandspruit and disembodies people from the relationships that are essential to achieving socio-economic prosperity. By examining the social, relational and reciprocal dimensions of self-employment—often overlooked in individualistic and self-enterprising accounts of entrepreneurship—the chapter shows how ‘being your own boss’ opens up experimental spaces for forms of identity, agency and association which are otherwise unavailable in a racialised employment market. The chapter concludes by arguing that self-employment is attractive for young men insofar as it provides them with the time and space to invest in valued relationships.
Defending the Wage: Visions of Work and Distribution in Namibia
Authors: Fouksman E.
Published: January 2022

Can those who cannot access wage labour imagine alternatives to it? Drawing on in-depth interviews with the long-term unemployed in rural Namibia, this chapter explores perceptions of work and redistributive policy proposals such as cash transfers and universal basic income (UBI). The chapter shows that even at the site of the 2008-9 basic income pilot in Namibia, the long-term unemployed continue to see wage work or entrepreneurship as a ‘proper’ source of income, as well as the basis for social, psychological and physical wellbeing. I argue that in thinking beyond the wage, both theorists and policy makers must consider not only income security but also alternative sources of meaning, absorption and social embeddedness in order to forge a new social, political and economic imaginary that lies beyond the confines of wage labour.
All the Same! Demographic Homogeneity and Careerism
Authors: Weinberg James
Published: January 2022

Chapter 3 develops our understanding of how MPs are different, psychologically, to those they represent. The chapter is organised into two substantive sections. The first interrogates the model of candidate emergence presented in chapter 2 in more detail to show that the differences between MPs’ basic values by specific demographic characteristics – specifically gender and ethnicity – are actually smaller than those between MPs and corresponding demographic groups in the general public. The chapter tackles another psychological criticism of politicians: careerism. Analyses of survey data show that there are some descriptive differences in basic values between MPs by occupational background, but these are small and statistically insignificant. The data are used to question received truths about the professionalisation of politics.
The Psychological and Cultural Dimensions of Security
Authors: Beeson Mark
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the psychological dimensions of security issues, both in explaining why people feel insecure, and how personal traits may affect policy-making. Also considered are the general influences of national and strategic cultures, which help to explain the content of different approaches to security problems.
Introduction
Authors: Morphet Janice
Published: January 2022

This chapter provides a background on outsourcing in the UK, which started in the early 1970s and has had a profound effect on the role, delivery, and content of public services. It emphasizes how outsourcing represented a major policy punctuation that shifted public services from direct to indirect delivery for the user. It also talks about public organisations that have mediated their understanding of service requirements with the quality of delivery and performance and have never lost their responsibility for services purchased from third parties. The chapter discusses the ways in which outsourcing became a dominant mode for the provision of public services from 1980 to 2010. It examines how the approaches to outsourcing changed as it was introduced into different sectors by successive governments.
The Legal Basis for Competition in Public Services
Authors: Morphet Janice
Published: January 2022

This chapter scrutinizes the legal agreements and constructs providing the operating framework for outsourcing in the UK. It discusses how the concept of public sector procurement for goods and services from 1980 gradually replaced a direct delivery model that had prevailed as the norm in the UK since the 1880s. It also recounts the UK's adoption of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) in 1976, which was then in negotiation as part of the Tokyo Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The chapter reviews the obligation of the UK government to liberalise public sector procurement of goods and services after the GPA, opening it to competition from domestic and international organisations. It highlights international agreements, wherein each signatory state has to determine its own domestic policy agenda to achieve the delivery of terms of the international agreement.
Why Citizen Participation Succeeds or Fails
Authors: Ryan Matt
Published: January 2022

When and how do ordinary citizens gain substantial control over important collective decisions affecting their lives? This book provides new answers to that question by systematically accumulating evidence in novel ways. This comparative review of participatory budgeting reveals the factors behind its success and failures in achieving democratic engagement. The book describes the application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis to systematically accumulate evidence of citizens gain control over important collective decisions in Participatory Budgeting. Analysis shows that popular claims that there are several single necessary conditions for citizens to gain such control over collective decisions have been imprudent. Nevertheless, a political leadership committed to participation is almost always required for sustained citizen control of political decisions over the longer term. There is evidence that these good outcomes only occur where those willing leaders can rely on strong support and competence from administrative staff, or alternatively where participatory leaders have strong fiscal independence. Perhaps controversially, the evidence for the importance of civil society conditions, which have played a strong role in theories of successful citizen participation, is mixed. The relevance afforded civil society in explanation depends on the level of uncertainty that researchers are willing to accept in their theories and reveals issues of conceptualisation of civil society roles in participatory programmes. Where politicians and bureaucratic staff are committed to supporting programmes, mobilised civil society organisations may serve to overcome fiscal constraints. Comparing global examples of both positive change and notable failure, it provides persuasive evidence and guidance for future public involvement in policymaking.
Participatory Budgeting: How Do We Understand Exceptional Democracy?
Authors: Ryan Matt
Published: January 2022

This chapter introduces the scholarship on Participatory Budgeting. It explains how Participatory Budgeting emerged in Porto Alegre and how scholarship of Participatory Budgeting has emerged and how early scholars of PB tried to understand the phenomenon. The chapter explains what PB is and how the first cases inspired the attention of scholars worldwide.
Necessary Conditions for Democratic Reform
Authors: Ryan Matt
Published: January 2022

This chapter presents the analysis of necessary conditions and shows that strong claims about finding necessary conditions in PB research have been premature. Nevertheless, there is strong evidence that political leaders’ commitment to participation is almost always necessary for successes. The chapter discusses alternative calibrations of previous research and offers an assessment of Brian Wampler’s work on Brazilian PB using QCA, before offering an assessment of 30 cases worldwide.
How Citizen Control of Politics Is Negated, and the Puzzles That Remain
Authors: Ryan Matt
Published: January 2022

We can learn much from independently explaining the absence of citizen control. Where programmes have failed to empower there are at least two sufficient explanations. One is the absence of participatory leadership alone, which resonates with the idea that participatory leadership is a necessary condition for success. The other is the combined absence of bureaucratic support, autonomous civil society, and financial freedoms. Designers/adopters of participatory programmes are reminded that the otherwise beneficial features of political leadership can be immaterial where civil society and organisational staff participation is desultory, and funds are lacking. A key remaining puzzle is what distinguishes citizen control from its absence in cases where participatory leadership is present. The answers to this question remain inconclusive. Future research may need to investigate more closely whether the presence of some conditions are beneficial in the early stages of development of a PB but less so later and vice versa.
Binding and Unbinding Problem–Solution Associations in US Agricultural Policy Making: The Introduction and Demise of Direct Payments to Farmers
Authors: Alons Gerry
Published: January 2022

Agricultural policy is an area in which policy reform tends to be incremental rather than far-reaching, partly due to powerful farm interests. This chapter analyses two decades of debate in US agriculture on the role of direct payments to farmers as an appropriate policy instrument of state intervention, explaining why they could be constructed as a feasible policy solution in the debate on the 1996 and 2002 farm bills, but were later considered problematic, resulting in their discontinuation in the 2014 farm bill. This chapter provides an explanation for this policy shift by focusing on the discursive construction of problems and solutions, particularly how actors develop arguments binding particular problems and solutions, while delegitimating alternative problem-solution associations proposed by opponents. The case study highlights the importance of policy context variables (e.g. fiscal constraints, state of the economy) in the interaction with policy actors’ interests and discursive strategies, explaining why binding of particular problem-solution associations was successful at specific points in time, and not viable at others.
Police-Community Relations in Times of Crisis
Authors: Deuchar Ross , Crichlow Vaughn , Fallik Seth
Published: January 2022

The death of Michael Brown at the hands of a white Ferguson police officer has uncovered an apparent legitimacy crisis at the heart of American policing. Some have claimed that de-policing may have led officers to become less proactive. How exactly has the policing of gangs and violence changed in the ‘post-Ferguson’ era? This book explores this question, drawing on participant observation field notes and in-depth interviews with officers, offenders, practitioners and community members in a Southern American State. As demands for police reform have once again come into focus following George Floyd’s death, this crucial book informs future policing practice to promote effective crime prevention and gain public trust.