bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Questions of Meaning
Authors: Bazin Jean
Published: May 2004

This article argues that the common distinction between action and meaning that is often used in anthropological discussions of culture and its analysis is based on serious confusions regarding the nature of social action. The latter are exemplified in Geertz’ misinterpretation of the work of Ryle on thick description, one that divides behavior into meaningless and meaningful and assumes that the latter is different from the former in that it contains a component that is missing in the former. This assumes that behavior and meaning are two separate phenomena, but they are not. The intentionality of action is an immediate aspect of action and not something that can be interpreted in terms of a code or paradigm, i.e. a separate interpretative domain. Interpretative discourse is not the underlying meaning of action, but an action in its own right, with its own internal rules, just as is all action. Anthropology then need not, as certain anthropologists (e.g. Sperber, Le savoir des anthropologues, 1982) have argued, be condemned to remain a knowledge of cultures.
Dreams of Treasure
Authors: Stewart Charles
Published: May 2004

This article observes that dreams of treasure may not only be about getting rich. In Greece, a country with an illustrious ancient past and a less glorious present, history represents a vital national resource and enduring topic of social concern, not to say anxiety. Dreams of treasure arise as unconscious by-products of this intense historical consciousness in Greece. The treasures considered here are secretions of history, deposited at the moments of rupture that historians subsequently use to demarcate historical periods. Drawing upon the formulations of Heidegger and Binswanger, I further view these dreams as apperceptions of the temporality of being. The dream of treasure involves a divinatory look into the future to discover a past that will enrich the present. The motivations of historicization and temporalization thus converge in this case to create the dream of treasure as a significant cultural phenomenon in Greece.
Anthropology and Genocide in the Balkans
Authors: Cushman Thomas
Published: May 2004

This article examines scholarly discourse on the wars in the former Yugoslavia. It focuses on relativistic arguments put forward by anthropologists and shows how such accounts mask and elide central historical realities of the conflict. Relativistic accounts of serious modern conflicts often mirror and offer legitimation to the accounts put forth by perpetrators. In this case, several leading accounts of the wars in the former Yugoslavia display a strong affinity to those asserted by Serbian nationalists. The article addresses the issue of ethics and intellectual responsibility in anthropological fieldwork in situations of conflict and the problem of the political uses of anthropological research.
Franz Boas Out of the Ivory Tower
Authors: Baker Lee D.
Published: May 2004

Although the idea that Franz Boas was a public intellectual is widely embraced, there is nothing written that specifically addresses the way he initially got pushed, pulled, or better yet, dragged into the public debates on race, racism, nationalism, and war – the issues for which he used anthropology in public arenas. In this article, I seek to accomplish three tasks: first, to highlight how Franz Boas and his work got pulled into the public arena; second, to assess the impact of Boas’ work as a public intellectual; and finally, to discuss the ways Boas’ writing and research a century ago is being deployed, appropriated, and used in today’s public arenas.
Sharing by Default?
Authors: Widlok Thomas
Published: May 2004

The establishment of moral relativism does not exhaust anthropological comparisons of how people strive for a good life. In this article I suggest that comparative research into ethical systems and moralities can be productively complemented by an anthropology of virtue. Experiences from post-Cold War settings and ethnographic examples from Australia and Namibia illustrate my attempt to outline such an anthropological theory of virtue based on recent anthropological work on art and on skill. The anthropological approach to virtue envisaged here is both nonconsequentialist and realist in orientation. It is non-consequentialist in that it accounts for the moral dimension of practices such as ‘sharing’ and ‘reciprocal exchange’ without relying on problematic presumptions about net results or ultimate consequences. It is realist in so far as it is based not on rationalist categories but on situated social practices, which entail reference to basic human goods such as sustenance and mutual engagement.
Conservative Critiques of African-American Culture
Authors: Shanafelt Robert
Published: May 2004

This essay discusses a set of interlinked criticisms of black-American culture that have been put forward by commentators who are commonly associated with American conservatism. It looks in particular at the works of Dinesh D’Souza, John McWhorter, and Shelby Steele in light of ethnographic accounts of schooling and in terms of perspectives on rationality drawn from Jürgen Habermas and Dan Sperber. While the conservative assessments have the admirable aim of addressing perceived problems of black academic and professional underachievement, the critiques are often hampered by a lack of nuance, a narrow sense of means–ends rationality, and Platonic assumptions about culture. Nonetheless, these works are worthy of attention, especially in that they stimulate further thinking about the adequacies of anthropological conceptualizations of culture, ideology, belief transmission, and truth.
History and Explanation in Archaeology
Authors: O’Brien Michael J. , Lyman R. Lee
Published: May 2004

Pauketat argued (2001: 73–98) that a new paradigm – historical processualism (HP) as operationalized by practice theory – is preferable to processual, behavioral, and evolutionary archaeologies as a source of explanation for culture change. To make his case, Pauketat sets up several contrasts between HP and the other three approaches. He claims that HP is superior because it neither essentializes behavior nor calls on potentially false universal laws to create explanations. He argues that HP holds that human practices – individual, particularistic human behaviors – generate new practices as they are continuously re-enacted and renegotiated, and thus practice is the proximate cause of cultural change. Evolutionary archaeology incorporates such particularistic and proximate causes but goes far beyond HP by providing an explanatory theory that specifies ultimate causes of culture change. It employs Darwin’s scientific theory of historical change, rewritten in testable , archaeological terms. In contrast, HP provides no testable implications of historical change.
Ethnolinguistic Racism
Authors: Linke Uli
Published: May 2004

In late modernity, where the making of social worlds is governed by new media technologies, flexible systems of exchange, and an unprecedented traffic in money, markets, and people across sovereign borders, the problematic concept of the nation has been recuperated to fasten subjects to political space. In this context, the projected frontiers of the nation are increasingly mapped out through the medium of language, thereby producing new mechanisms for membership and exclusion. With a focus on German cultural politics, I examine how regimes of nationality and imaginaries of citizenship are forged by a racialization of language. Under the impact of global capitalism and European unification, ethnolinguistic racism emerges as a discursive medium for reconstituting subjectivities and sovereignties.
Towards a Heideggerian Social Science
Authors: Howarth David
Published: May 2004

This article elaborates a hermeneutical approach to social science by evaluating and drawing upon Martin Heidegger’s early and late philosophy, as well as James Weiner’s articulation of an overtly Heideggerian anthropology. It argues that Heidegger’s privileging of an irreducible and ultimately contingent ‘symbolic order’ that renders beings apparent, while withdrawing and remaining concealed, provides important resources for rethinking questions of freedom, ethics and subjectivity. Nevertheless, it argues that such an approach falls short of a fully-fledged research programme. Both Heidegger’s and Weiner’s projects fail to develop a sufficient set of ontological categories for analysing concrete social relations at the ontical level, and do not address crucial epistemological and methodological issues, such as those pertaining to the precise relationship between explanation and understanding, or the role of causal explanations, that necessarily arise in the social sciences. The article concludes by addressing these deficiencies from a post-structuralist perspective inspired by thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Ernesto Laclau.
Unsettling `body image'
Authors: Brain Josephine
Published: May 2004

This article critiques contemporary feminist theory's frequent ocularcentric readings of the anorexic body as a surface of cultural inscription or as a paradigmatic sign of the female body's alienation through sexual difference. In an initial speculative attempt to find a theoretical framework that might sustain a more generative and embodied account of anorexia, I read anorexia through Butler's theory of gender as psychic `incorporation' because she problematizes an interior/exterior topography of the subject. This Butlerian framework proves problematic because, by establishing an association between visibly queer gender and subversion, it effectively designates as hegemonic any sense of gender as a felt interiority. In a second framework, I draw on Prosser's anti-ocularcentric reading of transsexual `body narratives' derived from Anzieu's theory of the `skin ego'. Filtering Butler's theory of melancholia through this skin ego framework, I find a theoretical space for anorexia as a transitional embodied subjectivity which both re-lives and relieves the melancholic trauma of gender.
The Body As Crowbar
Authors: Van Lenning Alkeline
Published: May 2004

Can paradoxical or ambiguous sexual identities and practices change, or even go beyond, the meanings of masculinity and femininity? In other words: can the body be a source of social change? To answer this question I turn to the work of two theorists: Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler. After an account of their ideas, various sexual practices and identities will be described. The question is whether these practices and identities affect the meanings of masculinity and femininity. It will be concluded that, even in our postmodern world with its technological opportunities the division into the two sexes is extraordinarily persistent. However, we can expect some change from the extension of the categories of masculinity and femininity, rather than from attempts to break free from them altogether.
From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men
Authors: Hearn Jeff
Published: May 2004

This article evaluates the usefulness of the concept of hegemony in theorizing men. The discussion is located within the framework of ‘Critical Studies on Men’ (CSM), in which the centrality of power issues is recognized, rather than that of ‘Men’s Studies’, where it is frequently not. Recent uses, as in ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in the analysis of masculinities, are subjected to a qualified critique. Instead a shift is proposed from masculinity to men, to focus on ‘the hegemony of men’. This formulation seeks to address the double complexity that men are both a social category formed by the gender system and collective and individual agents, often dominant collective and individual agents, of social practices. This is explored mainly in relation to substantive studies on men, and briefly the institutional development of CSM. The concluding discussion examines how these arguments connect with debates in feminist theory and social theory.
Generational Identity and Memory in American Newsmagazines
Authors: Kitch Carolyn
Published: May 2004

This article examines the role of journalism in constructing generational labels - such as the Baby Boom, Generation X, Generation Y and the ‘Greatest Generation’ - and in articulating their meaning over time. Through narrative and rhetorical analysis, it examines 20 years of cover stories about generational identity in leading American newsmagazines. The study contends that, even while they situate particular people within particular historical contexts, such ‘special reports’ employ common narrative devices and themes of youth and nostalgia, blending the stories of individual groups into broader notions about generational and national identity. This kind of reporting extends journalists’ cultural authority and is a matter of memory as well as ‘news’, offering not just definitions of current social identity but also future understandings of a shared past.
The Provocation of Plaiting Palm Leaves
Authors: Haahr Jens Henrik
Published: May 2004

This article demonstrates how an underlying knowledge of education is relied upon and reproduced in a number of television presentations of a specific education scheme in Denmark, the Free Youth Education scheme. Employing post-structuralist analysis of discourse, the media’s critical presentations of the education scheme are shown to draw upon and recreate a conception of education as a non-leisure preparation for work, which should focus on obtaining specific, factual and immediately ‘useful’ skills and knowledge, and as an ‘un-free’ activity that does not contribute to personal development. In a Habermasian approach, the analysed news features could be viewed as instances of a responsible public service media fulfilling its role as the warning system in a ‘context of discovery’. In contrast, the post-structuralist perspective reveals the particular mechanisms and implications of a power-knowledge constellation.
If a Radical Screams in the Forest, Will She be Heard?
Authors: Ketchum Cheri
Published: May 2004

This article analyzes the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of the controversy over logging Headwaters, an ancient redwood forest in northern California. It contends that the Chronicle’s fundamental way of representing reality and judging the legitimacy of claims is through favoring an instrumental over ethical rationality. It concludes that this logic ends up limiting the ways that the main actors (Earth First! and Pacific Lumber) and the controversy itself are framed. This impacts the discursive landscape that the Chronicle creates because those in what Habermas (1984) calls the ‘systems world’ are favored over those in the ‘lifeworld’. The Chronicle’s coverage ends up setting up a set of unwritten criteria that embrace particular values and practices as necessary in order to be taken seriously as a political actor or speaker in relation to this environmental issue. This results from various journalistic routines and frameworks employed for constructing knowledge and legitimating actors and voices.
A Cross-Cultural Look at Serving the Public Interest
Authors: Berkowitz Dan , Limor Yehiel , Singer Jane
Published: May 2004

This study explores how the social dimensions of a reporter’s world shape ethical decisions through parallel surveys of daily newspaper reporters in Israel and one Midwestern US state. Through regression analysis, we found that personal factors (gender, years of education) were not related to ethical decisions nor were professional factors (professional experience, professional membership, having studied journalism). In contrast, the social context element (country of practice) was relevant for two of three ethical situations. We also found that personal, professional and social dimensions varied in their utility to ethical decision-making from situation to situation. Considering a reporter’s ethical predisposition, this study found that personal value systems may be more important for ethical decision-making than formal written codes. This study suggests that ethical foundations shared across nations can create cultural bridges – but that diverging ethical perspectives also may create journalistic barriers.
Surviving the Deadline
Authors: Mastenbroek Ellen
Published: May 2004

By focusing on the speed of transposition of European directives in the Netherlands, this article evaluates the claim made by various researchers and EU politicians that there is an EU implementation deficit. It has the twofold objective of assessing the timeliness of transposition and explaining delays, using the technique of survival analysis. The main finding is that almost 60 percent of the directives are transposed late, i.e. after the deadline specified by the directive. There hence exists an implementation deficit in the Netherlands. Various legal and political variables combine to explain the time needed for transposition, the most important of which are the legal instrument used, the responsible ministry and the EU decision-making procedure.
Bargaining in the European Union and Shifts in Actors’ Policy Positions
Authors: Arregui Javier , Stokman Frans , Thomson Robert
Published: May 2004

Although shifts in policy positions are a fundamental feature of the European Union (EU) bargaining process they have not yet been studied systematically. This article provides evidence on the extent to which position shifts occur and tests alternative models of the bargaining process that predict such shifts. We examine a subset of the DEU data set that contains information on shifts in actors’ positions on issues raised by 28 Commission proposals. The three bargaining models presented here posit alternative mechanisms that drive actors’ position shifts during the EU bargaining process. Our research shows that position shifts occur frequently during the EU bargaining process and these shifts in actors’ policy positions are best understood in terms of compromise and exchange among actors.
Decision-Making Models, Rigor and New Puzzles
Authors: de Mesquita Bruce Bueno
Published: May 2004

Comparative tests of predictive accuracy across models are exceptionally rare in political science. The collection of articles in this issue provides a rigorous, systematic evaluation of alternative models for explaining and predicting decision-making within the European Union. I examine how alternative models were evaluated and raise questions about the differences in the extent to which the operational definitions of variables match contending theoretical approaches. I also raise questions regarding the difference between models with regard to whether the issues are part of a repeated game or a single-shot game. Finally, I propose future tests to hone in on some of the puzzles raised by the findings reported here.
Voice and Access
Authors: Beyers Jan
Published: May 2004

This article examines to what extent European interest associations combine public political strategies with traditional forms of inside lobbying or the seeking of access to public officials. I compare two theoretical perspectives: a resource-based explanation focusing on the nature of the mobilized interest and an institutional account emphasizing the explanatory power of varying institutional conditions. My data show that institutional variables have a significant effect on whether and how public and inside strategies are combined. Although the institutional supply of access favours specific interests, the European Union contains important institutional opportunities for diffuse interests that aim to expand the scope of political conflict or signal policy concerns by using public political strategies.
Temporality and Experience
Authors: Rabelo Miriam , Souza Iara
Published: May 2004

This article inquires as to the meaning of nervoso(nerves) among poor, working-class women from Salvador, Brazil. Our aim is to understand nerves as an experience that emerges from the background of a life trajectory and that, in many significant ways, disrupts the taken-for-granted character of that trajectory. From a phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition, we explore the links between experience, embodiment and temporality and then discuss the relevance of this approach for the understanding of women’s nervoso. In order to do so we present the life histories of three middle-aged women who have been afflicted with nerves. The accounts describe significant ways in which culturally inherited possibilities - grounded in a lived context of class and gender - are recovered and come to pre-figure a certain future. As we argue throughout the article, it is only when we situate the experience of nervoso within the temporal frame of life that we can truly understand it - that is, grasp it as part of a movement that involves both recovery and creation of meaning.
Marking Time Along the Bulgarian-Turkish Border
Authors: Parla Ayse
Published: May 2004

As a minority group, the Turks of Bulgaria faced a cruel paradox: in Bulgaria during 1984-1989, they were persecuted by the government because they were ‘Turkish’; in Turkey, the symbolic homeland to which they migrated en masse in 1989, they were marginalized by the local population on account of being ‘Bulgarian’. More than 300,000 Turks fled Bulgaria in 1989, and, although more than half of those immigrants have returned back to Bulgaria after the downfall of the Bulgarian communist government, economically induced migrations from Bulgaria to Turkey have continued apace in the 1990s. This article offers an ethnographic account of these transborder movements and their shifting meanings centered around three immigrants whose crossings have followed different paths: a post-1989 migrant looking for temporary work in Turkey who plans to return to Bulgaria in a couple of years; a 1989 immigrant who left Bulgaria because of the assimilation campaign and settled permanently in Turkey; and a migrant who was forced to leave Bulgaria in 1989 and decided to go back after nine months in Turkey. These narratives of arrival and return, timed by a complex configuration of personal desire, political and economic necessity, and national border regulations, tell tales that complement but also complicate standard accounts of migration conveyed by dates and numbers.
Revealing the unmarked
Authors: Salzinger Leslie
Published: May 2004

Scholars frequently recount the ups and downs, the purportedly embarrassing – although always heroically turned to account – mishaps of research. However, acknowledging that one has rethought an analysis in the absence of new data makes explicit that social science is an interpretive project, and as such is rarely discussed in print. In this article I break that taboo, analyzing how I began to doubt my claim that a global shop floor was organized around an ungendered shop-floor subject. I then detail the more contextually sensitive reading of my fieldnotes that allowed me to grasp the fundamental masculinization of the shop floor in question. In the process, I theorize the aspects of gendered structure that enabled the error at the outset. Thus, the discussion reconstructs the life history of an argument – tracing the shifting development of analysis in a particular ethnographic case. In so doing, it follows epistemic problems back to their ontological roots, looking at how the tricky, obdurate situatedness of meanings – gendered and ungendered alike – requires an ongoing analysis of context in interpreting even our most minute and focused observations.
Understanding the growth in the prison population in England and Wales
Authors: Millie Andrew , Jacobson Jessica , Hough Mike
Published: May 2004

This study examines why the prison population in England and Wales has been rising steeply and progressively at a time when crime rates and court workloads have been falling. It concludes that while many factors are at work, the key drivers of the rise are sentencers’ increased readiness to pass custodial sentences, and when they do so, to pass longer sentences. The changes are a result of an increasingly punitive climate of opinion about crime and punishment, and inter-related changes to legislation, sentencing guidance and guideline judgments.
The Greening and Governance of Crime Control
Authors: Vaughan Barry
Published: May 2004

This article examines the suggestion that crime control policy should emulate environmental regulation by concentrating on the alteration of fundamental incentive structures. The ‘greening’ of policy can occur in a number of different ways. A dominant model of environmental regulation is skewed towards government and technicist in orientation. This model does not consider the diversity of incentives that incite action and runs up against a commitment problem. An alternative model of regulation, derived from the grid-group theory of Mary Douglas, is described and its promise for inspiring a culturally plural model of crime control that is not dominated by the state is explored. These suggestions are substantiated by examining recent debates concerning policing and crime prevention and the progress of the Crime and Disorder Act in England and Wales, which might point to an altered role for the state in the provision of security.
Protecting Dangerous Offenders from the Community:
Authors: Richardson Elizabeth , Freiberg Arie
Published: May 2004

In 1993 and 1997 the Victorian government introduced changes to the Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) enabling sentencers to impose longer than proportionate sentences for serious offenders in the name of protection of the community. Many commentators predicted that these provisions signalled the demise of proportionality in sentencing for those offenders. However, although incapacitation policies are popular with politicians and the public, it appears that the judiciary have not embraced these provisions. This article examines the way in which the serious offender provisions have been applied in the County and Supreme Courts of Victoria in order to determine whether there is a difference between the Government’s intentions in introducing the legislation and the outcomes.
Reviewing Literature
Authors: Manthorpe Jill
Published: May 2004

• Summary: This article draws on six works of contemporary fiction to analyse some of the depictions of the lives of people with learning disabilities in the context of their contact with professionals and services. It explores and illustrates the discussion through the texts.

• Findings: Fiction and its relevance to practice have been little commented on in the context of social work and learning disability. A close reading of the texts reveals a number of themes relevant to the practice of learning disability social work and beyond. The work considered highlights the importance of gender, of the activity and relationships of people with learning disabilities and of the many contexts of the lives of people with learning disabilities.

• Applications: In a context of increased attention to the arts and humanities in health and social care, the use of fiction to encourage reflective practice in supporting people with learning disability has potential and should be evaluated.
Issues Facing Adoptive Mothers of Children with Special Needs
Authors: Forbes Heather , Dziegielewski Sophia F.
Published: May 2004

• Summary: Intensive interviews were conducted with 14 adoptive mothers, which identified 16 challenges adoptive mothers face when adopting children with special needs. The purpose was to specify and understand the issues these mothers of special needs children present when seeking professional therapy. The intent was also to increase awareness for professionals working in the field of adoption.

• Findings: Findings indicated that these adoptive mothers were faced with a broad range of issues relating to societal, health, emotional, family, financial, and child behavioral factors. The prevalence of these issues was not influenced by differing demographics, by ages of the children at the time of adoption, nor by the types of adoptions.

• Applications: Adoptive mothering of special needs children is different from other mothering and needs to be recognized with its challenges. Post-adoption support services that adequately and financially meet the needs of these mothers and their families can help to build strong healthy adoptive families. In doing so, there is a strong potential for a decrease in the number of adoption disruptions and an increase in the level of adoption satisfaction.
Putting the Care into Residential Care
Authors: Emond Ruth
Published: May 2004

• Summary: There has been long-standing academic interest in the study of residential child care. Such study has made a valuable contribution to the development of both services and care practice. The perspectives of young people have, however, received less attention. This gap is most significant in relation to their group care experiences. Indeed the resident group is seen as a somewhat negative force and one from which children and young people require protection. This article uses data from one ethnographic study undertaken in Scotland to explore the ways in which young people in residential care offer one another support.

• Findings: The findings from this study illustrate the various functions that the group serves for residents and the ways in which young people achieve status within such groups. In particular this article focuses on young people’s use of support. It was found that support was provided in a number of ways, ranging from material provision to advice.

• Applications: It is argued that whilst the individualization of care is necessary in terms of care planning and intervention, the experience of group living must not be overlooked. Practitioners need to have a clear sense of how their group is functioning and seek to encourage positive group behaviours.
An Initial Assessment of the Extent to Which Risk Factors, Frequently Identified in Research, Are Taken into Account When Assessing Risk in Child Protection Cases
Authors: Warner Joe
Published: May 2004

• Summary: This article briefly outlines the development of risk assessment instruments in a social work context. This is followed by an analysis of the initial stages of analysing the presence, absence and consideration of identified risk factors within one English local authority child protection context using initial cases conference minutes. The article then examines the relationship between risk factors identified from the conference minutes with outcome measures for each child four years later.

• Findings: Many of the risk factors identified in the literature were not routinely recorded in conference minutes making risk assessment in general and the application of a risk assessment tool, in particular, problematic. There was some weak association between severity of abuse and subsequent social work intervention for a number of children, but there appeared to be little correspondence in respect of the majority of cases. There was support for Farmer’s (1999) concerns about children not being registered when at risk of abuse or being deregistered when the risk of abuse remains high.

• Applications: The need to routinely gather and record information on identified risk factors during the assessment process is highlighted. Though still at an early stage, the intention is to develop an empirically tested risk assessment tool, which can be used to evaluate potential risk more accurately and more consistently.
Evidence in Policy and Practice
Authors: Qureshi Hazel
Published: May 2004

• Summary: Over-generalization of the ‘effectiveness hierarchy’, and echoes of past paradigm wars about methodology, persist in generating conflicting judgements about the value of different research designs for evidence-based practice. A range of ways in which the worth of research is actually judged, and might be judged, are elaborated. The article then focuses on specific examples of the use of research, considering the kinds of evidence which could usefully support practice with carers, and the evidence which has been used to justify policy (the National Service Framework) for older people. The article concludes by using ideas about complex adaptive systems to illustrate similarities between uses of evidence in policy and individual practice.

• Findings: Fundamentally, considerations which affect our judgements about the worth of research relate to the values expressed in the process of conducting the research, and the likely usefulness of the results. Inboth policy and practice, a whole range of research evidence can be, and is, used to support values, identify and understand problems, inform negotiations, and suggest solutions, without necessarily determining action to be taken in particular cases.

• Applications: The article is a contribution to the ongoing debate about evidence-based practice in social care. It aims to clarify concepts and realities and thus promote an approach to this issue which remains rigorous but is inclusive with regard to both methods and stake aholders.
Specialization in Social Work Practice
Authors: Blom Bj÷rn
Published: May 2004

• Summary: Specialization in social work practice is increasing in many countries at the same time as textbooks argue for generalist practice. Is there any empirical evidence for one or the other of these approaches? This article discusses generalist and specialist practice, theoretically as well as empirically, by presenting a study of a personal social services organization in Sweden.

• Findings: The article demonstrates advantages as well as disadvantages of specialization for clients and social workers, and concludes that it is the work with clients within the personal social services which, to a large extent, demands that the social worker is a generalist. An outline structure for an alternative personal social services organization is postulated.

• Applications: It is argued that the alternative structure could 1) satisfy the need for generalist and specialist competence respectively, and 2) facilitate harmony between social workers’ professional needs and administrative requirements for management and resource allocation.
Talking Child Protection
Authors: Garrett Paul Michael
Published: May 2004

• Summary: In the United Kingdom, following the death of Victoria ClimbiÈ, child protection procedures are currently being reviewed once again. At the core of child protection activity is the police/social work relationship and the notion of ‘working together’ to respond to child abuse. However, there is often a failure to interrogate what rhetorical assertions about multi-disciplinary working actually amount to in terms of the micro-politics of ‘joined up’ endeavours. This police/social relationship needs to be analysed because of specific issues related to child protection, but also because of the creation of multi-disciplinary youth offending teams and the more encompassing popularity, within eee policy discourse of New Labour, of ‘joined up’ approaches to the delivery of child welfare services.

• Findings: Interviews conducted with police officers and social workers in three different locations illuminate how they view their roles. Respondents reveal the tensions in ‘working together’ and a police tendency to perceive themselves as the ‘lead agency’. In addition, issues bound up with recruitment and selection are significant. Within joint police/social work specialist units, there is a blurring of the social work role.

• Applications: It is argued that joint working between social workers and police officers needs to be subject to reflexive scrutiny. Perhaps, in the past, aspects of policing have been inadequately examined in social work education and training. The creation of a new social work degree may provide, however, an opportunity to address this issue. More generally, et should allow course participants the space to comprehend critically other ‘disciplines’ and the social processes that underpin joint working paradigms.
International Advice and Labour Market Institutions in South-East Europe
Authors: Arandarenko Mihail
Published: May 2004

This article describes and assesses the impact of evolving labour market institutions after the onset of transition in South-East Europe on economic performance and, at the same time, the impact of international advice on the direction and speed of institutional change. Institutions analysed include employment protection legislation, features of passive and active labour market policies and trade unions and collective bargaining structures. Countries of the region could roughly be divided into two groups – first, covering successor states of former Yugoslavia, with more rigid, and second, covering former centrally planned economies, with more flexible labour market institutions. This divide suggests the importance of institutional tradition. A simple test is undertaken to indicate whether the two groups differ significantly with regard to economic and labour market performance. No firm evidence is found to support the assumption that more flexible labour regimes induce better economic results, contrary to what has been the leading paradigm in the region, promoted by World Bank and IMF. Conditionality is only a partial explanation for their dominant influence; we argue that their agenda is better articulated and communicated than competing agendas of ILO and EU.
Transnational Corporations
Authors: Macleod Sorcha , Lewis Douglas
Published: May 2004

In terms of the New World Order, the largest Transnational Corporations (TNCs) are central players. They influence the policies of governments worldwide; they help to order the agenda of the World Trade Organization. They influence the destinies of individual economies in the developing world, they have a crucial impact on the eco-system, they set wage-levels, which can cause the first world to bend to their demands, and so on. Any constitutional architect who does not attempt to set a framework of accountability and global citizenship for the TNCs would demean their craft. How do we orchestrate the healthy influence of TNCs in terms of economic growth and opportunity with the necessity of their conforming to the underlying values of the world community? Can we legislate for corporate responsibility and if so, how? If not, what alternatives are available? This article will explore the values and mechanisms for ensuring that the corporate world is in tune with the expectations of cosmopolitan democracy. How much can be done by national governments, how much can be done by regional groupings such as the EU, how much can be done by bodies such as the OECD, what is the influence of global trade unions, can codes of practice be influential and if so, who are the most promising prime movers? Can procurement policies be directed to achieve corporate responsibility and how influential is civil society in the form of NGOs, for example? More and more detailed information is becoming available on the influential activities of TNCs but as yet there appears to be no game plan for where they fit in to canons of global responsibility. This article explores some possibilities.
Synthesis through meta-ethnography: paradoxes, enhancements, and possibilities
Authors: Doyle Lynn H.
Published: May 2004

Despite theoretical differences and methodological questions, the conversation about synthesizing qualitative research raises interest. Meta-ethnography, as initially described by Noblit and Hare (1988), is a foundation for a methodology to synthesize existing case study; however, there are weaknesses that need to be addressed. Using three stages of meta-ethnography, case selection, analysis, and synthesis, the author discusses these weaknesses and provides enhancements so that meta-ethnography becomes a viable option for qualitative researchers. Examples from application in the study of educational leadership illuminate and validate each enhancement. The author concludes by discussing how, when enhancements are made, meta-ethnography also becomes a methodology with compelling implications for making the research process a more democratic one.
A Spy, a Shill, a Go-Between1, or a Sociologist: Unveiling the ‘Observer’ in Participant Observer
Authors: Murray Susan B.
Published: May 2004

Based on data gathered from two field research projects, the author examines two key questions that underlie her process of becoming a sociologist: (1) How did I negotiate my multiple identities in the field, and (2) What am I really, ‘a spy, a shill, a go-between’ or a sociologist? Drawing from Goffman’s dramaturgical model, the author contends that much of the process of becoming a sociologist occurs within the shifting front and back regions in the field. Through a systematic examination of her ‘personal’ and ‘methodological’ field notes, the author captures these shifts from front to back and back to front, and attempts to elucidate the moral, ethical, and professional decisions that must be traversed along the way. Her aim, in other words, is to show how the identity negotiations that characterize ‘doing fieldwork’ are a key element of the process of becoming a (moral and ethical) sociologist.
‘Giving Voice’ to Students: Using the Internet for Data Collection
Authors: Shields Carolyn M.
Published: May 2004

This article explores the use of a web-based survey as a means of data collection with over 450 adolescents in an American school district with approximately 50 percent visible ethnic minority students. After describing the context of the study, I explore issues related to the ease of data collection, the potential challenges and promise of the web-based format, and the quantity and quality of data collected. I demonstrate that the data collected were extremely rich, and that students appeared to be more comfortable with the electronic data collection than with an in-person interview. Moreover, the inherent issues of power differential related to race, class, and position may be overcome using this strategy for data collection.
What’s So Funny?
Authors: Gouin Rachel R.
Published: May 2004

This article explores women’s use of humor in recounting their experiences and involvement in social justice movements and community groups. The author’s approach is qualitative and reflexive and explicitly presents her struggle with her role as a researcher/activist. She explores issues of relationship, solidarity and conflict in qualitative research, particularly feminist methodologies.
Intensive Performances of Mothering: a Sociological Perspective
Authors: Bell Susan E.
Published: May 2004

This article explores multiple identities and meanings of mothering by interpreting two narrative performances of mothering in the early 1970s. One performance is from a work of art by feminist Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document (1983), the other from a research interview conducted in the early 1980s with a DES daughter. Both women perform versions of intensive mothering. The essay shows that moving between narratives produced in a research interview and a work of art enlarges the field of narrative analysis and fills in details about how intensive mothering is a historically specific and embodied practice.
Researching shyness: a contradiction in terms?
Authors: Scott Susie
Published: May 2004

The image of the ‘ideal’ research participant as reflexive and articulate is typically associated with loquacious vocality. By contrast, the shy person is apparently quiet and reticent, representing the complete anathema of this ideal. Nevertheless, it is possible to conduct qualitative research with self-defined shy people if we treat shyness as an emergent property of interaction rather than a fixed personality trait. Methodological innovation can help us to avoid evoking shyness in the research encounter itself, as we see from a study in which in-depth interviews and an email-based discussion group allowed participants to step out of the shy role. Drawing on their experiences of observing social life from the margins, these actors provided detailed, reflexive narratives about the social context in which shyness is defined and managed. Paradoxically, therefore, the shy display a unique form of vocality and prove themselves to be remarkably similar to the ‘ideal’ research participant.
Comparing Telephone and Face-to-Face Qualitative Interviewing: a Research Note
Authors: Sturges Judith E. , Hanrahan Kathleen J.
Published: May 2004

This research note reports the results of a comparison of face-to-face interviewing with telephone interviewing in a qualitative study. The study was designed to learn visitors’ and correctional officers’ perceptions of visiting county jail inmates. The original study design called for all face-to-face interviews, but the contingencies of fieldwork required an adaptation and half of the interviews were conducted by phone. Prior literature suggested that the interview modes might yield different results. However, comparison of the interview transcripts revealed no significant differences in the interviews. With some qualifications, we conclude that telephone interviews can be used productively in qualitative research.
To be or not to be (Hispanic or Latino)
Authors: Marrow Helen
Published: May 2004

I use 1990 US census data and 22 semi-structured interviews with Brazilian immigrant youth in Boston to show how Brazilians are becoming racialized into the black-white binary of American society, but how over time they manage to escape the downward mobility of Hispanic/Latino categorization by becoming ‘American’ and playing off US natives’ Spanish-centered understanding of Hispanics/Latinos (which does not include them). Successful Americanization for Brazilians means not becoming part of a stigmatized Hispanic/Latino group associated with low socioeconomic status, racial discrimination and, on the heels of massive new immigration from Latin America, disempowered immigrant status - rather than becoming ‘Hispanic/Latino’ as part and parcel of becoming ‘American’. The Brazilian case exposes some of the assumptions behind dominant US racial/ethnic categories (particularly ‘white’ and ‘black’), and it lays bare the complexities and contradictions in the Hispanic/Latino ‘panethnic’ category, pinpointing anew its racial basis and embedded immigrant analogy. That Hispanic/Latino classification continues to conflate race and immigrant status as US-bound immigration from Latin America has increased, expanded, and raised the foreign-born share of the US ‘Hispanic/Latino’ population prompts a re-evaluation of who the group includes (and why or why not), as well as a reassessment of African American/Latino positions and relations in the US ethno-racial hierarchy.
Ethnic Minorities and Development
Authors: Campbell John R.
Published: May 2004

This article seeks to assess the impact of development on the lives and livelihoods of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers in Sub-Saharan Africa. It queries the discourses on human rights and on indigenous peoples and whether they accurately describe and address the situation confronting pastoralists and huntergatherers. The importance of access to land for pastoralists is examined and evidence is presented showing how policies have undermined livelihoods. The effect of ‘forced’ and of ‘voluntary’ sedentarization is discussed, and is followed by a review of the situation of contemporary hunter-gatherers. Finally, the article concludes by arguing for the need to move beyond the rhetoric of rights and to better understand how and why policies create and undermine pastoralists and hunter-gatherers.