bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spatial dimensions of the marginalisation of cycling – marginalisation through rationalisation?
Authors: Koglin Till
Published: September 2020

This chapter analyses the impact of the spatial dimension further and connect the spatial dimension to a form of rationalisation of transport planning that has been very influential in Swedish transport planning. The theoretical starting point for this chapter is threefold. First, the chapter builds on the production of space by Lefebvre. Second, the rationalisation of the social sciences (Marcuse and Flyvbjerg) is connected to the development of transport planning as a rational profession. Third, the concept of urban space wars is used to theorise on the effects of this kind of rationalisation (Bauman). Through this theorisation of space and transport planning an entity into the field of the marginalisation of cycling is developed. From that starting point the Swedish transport and urban planning system is analysed. Through the analysis and the connections to the theoretical framework of this chapter it is shown that Swedish transport and urban planning operate on very rational levels that marginalise cycling in many cities around Sweden. Moreover, it is shown that this rational planning has created urban spaces and infrastructures, which marginalise cycling in several ways and make it hard to use the bicycle for transport in everyday urban life in Sweden.
Safety, risk and road traffic danger: towards a transformational approach to the dominant ideology
Authors: Whitelegg John
Published: September 2020

This chapter reviews survey data on perceptions of road traffic danger and how this compares with standard statistical sources on death and injury amongst cyclists. Objective reality is, however, not enough to convert potential cyclists into actual cyclists. Perception is the reality and if potential cyclists are frightened we must take clear, practical, effective steps to reduce road traffic danger. The chapter reviews the role of the Swedish Vision Zero road safety policy in dealing with fear and road traffic danger reduction. Such a policy has the potential to change mindsets and create a positive environment for the kind of behavioural change that will increase cycling rates. It is argued that there cannot be increases in cycling until we have eliminated the dominance of the car and the truck. This will require a major transformational change in the way that politicians, urban designers, planners, etc. think about the world they are shaping. The chapter concludes by summarising the debate about transformational approaches to sustainability and changing mindsets.
Hard work in paradise. The contested making of Amsterdam as a cycling city
Authors: Feddes Fred , de Lange Marjolein , te Brömmelstroet Marco
Published: September 2020

This chapter, drawing on a broader body of research into the history of cycle activism and its role in shaping Amsterdam as a cycling city (Feddes and de Lange, 2019), four important contributory elements are examine. First, favourable qualities of the urban structure, some dating from long before the existence of the bicycle. Second, there is a wider social and political context of the 1960s and 1970s when cycling found new impetus despite severe external threat. Third is the subsequent construction of a systemic cycling city in which the relation between bicycle activism, (local) government, and the broader ‘bicycle culture’ is examined. Finally, the chapter discusses the roles played by cycling activists organized in Fietsersbond, and the city government of Amsterdam. It concludes that there motorised modes of transport play a dominate role in urban and transport planning in Amsterdam. If Amsterdam is widely regarded as a cyclists’ paradise, the city has obtained this honorary title on the cheap. Much of the indispensable observational, analytical and conceptual expertise on which the bike city’s success is built was delivered for free by devoted citizens working towards a more liveable city.
Context: commissioning in the English NHS
Authors: McDermott Imelda , Allen Pauline , Moran Valerie , Coleman Anna , Checkland Kath , Peckham Stephen
Published: September 2020

Chapter 2 provides the context, setting out the organisation and governance of commissioning in the NHS. It includes a short summary of the architecture of commissioning pre-Health and Social Care Act (HSCA12), and highlights the important changes which were brought about by the Act, including the abolition of Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities, the establishment of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), the creation of NHS England, transfer of commissioning responsibilities to different bodies (e.g. public health) and the setting up of local Health and Wellbeing Boards. The chapter also highlights the programme theories underlying the HSCA12, in particular the commitment to competition as a means of improving services and the expected benefits of greater clinical involvement in commissioning.
Ending homelessness? Policy and progress in Denmark, Finland and Ireland
Authors: Allen Mike , Benjaminsen Lars , O’Sullivan Eoin , Pleace Nicholas
Published: September 2020

This chapter provides a critique of shelter-based responses to homelessness, and the emergence of housing led solutions to homelessness. The chapter documents this shift to a nuanced and evidence-based understanding of homelessness, whereby a new and effective toolkit for ending homelessness had become available, changing the context in which policy was being developed, leading to the adoption of strategic plans to end homelessness.
Introduction: From the regulation of engagement to regulating for engagement
Authors: Howard Marilyn , McDermont Morag , Innes Martin
Published: September 2020

This introductory chapter sets out concerns with the current state of theories and practice in regulation. It identifies a fundamental problem of regulatory practice, which turns more and more inward-looking, shutting out the expertise of citizens who experience the effects of regulatory systems. It was this gap that led to the five-year research programme, ‘Productive Margins: Regulating for Engagement’, which led to this book. The chapter then presents a brief outline of the book, exploring both the methodology of co-production and citizens' experiences of a number of substantive fields of regulatory practice in order that one can begin to see and know regulatory systems differently. Finally, the chapter sets the scene for explorations in regulating for engagement by illustrating some of the ways in which regulation is discussed — or not — in everyday life by drawing on interviews with participants in the research programme.
Who gets to decide what’s in my fridge? Principles for transforming the ‘invisible rules’ shaping the regulation of food habits in urban spaces
Authors: Millner Naomi , Cohen Sue , Cole Tim , Webster Kitty , Andrews Heidi , Cheung Makala , Evans Penny , Oliver Annie
Published: September 2020

This chapter focuses on the forms of regulation that shape food habits in ways that we are often unaware of. Here, the chapter presents some of the results of a co-produced research project that explored how people experience the regulation of food habits in their communities. It explores the notion of food justice, which seeks to embed discussion of food regulation in attention to the spatial dimensions of food access. The chapter points to the ways in which the project sought to make visible invisible rules and to develop processes of ‘commoning’ in order to address the spatial inequalities of urban food spaces. It then challenges notions of ‘cheapness’ and instead present ideas of food affordability. Finally, this chapter establishes the building blocks for a ‘more-than-food policy’ by demonstrating the importance of working with assets rather than deficits.
The new political economy of city-regionalism: renewed steps in Glasgow
Authors: Waite David
Published: September 2020

The resurgence of city-regionalism has been a dominant theme in sub-national policymaking over the last decade. Underpinned by narratives of growth engines waiting to be unlocked through greater local control coupled with targeted interventions, city-regions are now a privileged spatial arena in the UK for seeking economic development agreements with higher orders of government. This chapter brings into focus Glasgow’s experience of city-regionalism and notably the re-emphasis brought about by the City Deal. In doing this, multiple political tensions hinging on a series of local, national and UK-wide relationships are sketched out. The chapter - in referencing the wider city-region literature and taking cognisance of the local post-industrial trajectory - poses a series of considerations concerning how and in what form city-regionalism may evolve in Glasgow.
A place for urban conservation? The changing values of Glasgow’s built heritage
Authors: Madgin Rebecca
Published: September 2020

City strategies to remake places positioned at their core an improvement of the built environment. In turn, this necessitated a series of re-evaluations as to what future role the existing historic environment could play in urban redevelopment initiatives. The chapter examines three major trends in the use of historic buildings as part of urban redevelopment initiatives in Glasgow. Firstly, the ways in which the perceived benefits of restoring the historic environment grew to a point whereby heritage is now almost seen as a panacea for urban ills. Secondly, the chapter explores the shift in the ways in which urban conservation was managed between 1980-2018. Thirdly, and finally, the ways in which different sources of funding for restoring historic buildings became available over this period is examined.
A demoralisation or disparagement of the workforce?
Authors: Malin Nigel
Published: September 2020

This chapter discusses de-professionalisation as defined by a lowering of morale, or a demoralisation and denigration of the workforce. It provides examples of where de-professionalisation has become represented through an attack on the social status and position of a particular professional/occupational group, be it junior doctors, foster carers or university teachers.
The Finnish approach to errors and mistakes in child protection: trust in practitioners and service users?
Authors: Julin Essi , Pösö Tarja
Published: September 2020

The shortcomings of the Finnish child protection system have been vividly highlighted by the reports of historic abuse in residential and foster care and by some fatal tragedies. Nevertheless, very little academic research on errors and mistakes in child protection exists. The chapter thus aims to capture this fragmented and unexpressed field in the Finnish system.
In doing so, the chapter presents and analyses the preventative and reactive approaches to errors as defined by child welfare legislation. Examples of preventative approaches are regulations requiring some services and practitioners to be licenced and registered, a rather recent way to regulate practice and its quality. Examples of reactive approaches are the rights given to service-users (parents as well as children) to make complaints about and appeal decisions and the treatment they receive. A new practice is the regulation introduced in 2014 giving social workers the right and duty to report problems they encounter in their practice, a form of request for ‘institutional whistle-blowing’. In addition to the legal guidelines, the chapter will examine the national policy programmes which indirectly address errors. These programmes aim to guarantee that services are ‘rightly timed and tailored’ and that the assessments of children’s needs and risks are ‘correctly’ made. These reactive and preventative approaches may, however, have some unintended consequences which will be empirically highlighted.
Consequently, it becomes clear that the Finnish approach is coloured by trust in practitioners and service-users and their skills, competences and good intentions to tackle errors, mistakes and wrongdoings. This reflects the overall rationale of child protection as a form of service provided by public administration. Trust may overrule a critical examination of – and learning from – errors and mistakes. As the very organisation of social and health care services is rapidly changing, the trust-based approach might soon be challenged.
Discourses, approaches and strategies on errors and mistakes in child protection in Germany
Authors: Kindler Heinz , Gerber Christine , Lillig Susanna
Published: September 2020

Scandals have been part of child protection history in Germany for more than 100 years and it can be shown that they have been driving forces for legislation and concept development on several occasions. Scientific methods for analysing unexpected and unintended negative case outcomes in child protection have entered the field only recently and several approaches to case analysis have been developed. Due to a strong tradition of counterfactual thinking in penal law and ‘Fallverstehan’ in social work most approaches are not informed by empirical research on child protection outcomes. Proceduralisation and resource expansion have been the main responses to public inquiries on errors and mistakes in child protection in Germany which are still non-mandatory. Currently the role of ‘serious case reviews’ in German child protection policy is open for debate and it is argued they offer only limited and conditional value for creating a better child protection system.
Preventing and responding to errors in US child protection
Authors: Berrick Jill Duerr , Chambers Jaclyn
Published: September 2020

This chapter demonstrates how concerns about avoiding errors and mistakes have been at the centre of child protection policy and practice in the US for many years. In particular the chapter focuses on providing a summary of the state of the art relating to risk assessment tools and predictive analytics as strategies to reduce error in child welfare decision making. It also examines whether our understanding of ‘error’ needs to shift to account for the unknowns. When social workers make decisions based upon fundamental principles, and when they determine that it is in the interests of a child to privilege one principle over another, the result may appear in hindsight as an “error”, but when made as a decision guided by one widely-held principle which was in direct conflict with another. Examining child welfare decision making as a process of selecting and then privileging one principle over another narrows what we might otherwise think of as an ‘error’ and instead recasts some decisions as exceedingly difficult to get ‘right’.
Time and change: UK social work and comparative European welfare policies since 1990
Authors: Bell Linda
Published: September 2020

This chapter gives a brief contextual background history to ‘social work’. It emphasises the years after 1990. This period encompasses many policy and political changes and theoretical developments in the UK and internationally, which affect social work practice and education. This is the time period encapsulating the author's involvement with social workers and social work education. The chapter presents some comparative geographical locations partly to reflect aspects of this involvement with social work and contacts with social work and social workers in those places, as well as to reflect different kinds of welfare regimes and to indicate some different kinds of welfare professionals.
Growing: experiencing social work education and socialisation
Authors: Bell Linda
Published: September 2020

This chapter explores the views of some social workers and social work students about socialisation into their profession. It also provides some background about this concept from an anthropological perspective. The chapter begins with what social workers think they should learn and sets this against epistemological background material describing some key frameworks for social work theory and practice. Reflecting on examples and interviews with social workers and others, the chapter reveals that the often-stated attempt to ‘link theory and practice’ in social work education is much more complicated than it first appears. To set the stage for the next chapter, an experience relating to personal interaction and the use of self is described.
Symbolising: cultural representations in theory and in practice
Authors: Bell Linda
Published: September 2020

This chapter explores some ideas relating to symbols and what can be termed ‘cultural representation’ in social work. Exploring symbolism and cultural representation is an important aspect of anthropological enquiry. The chapter offers some personal reflections about symbolism, cultural representation, and social work. It includes recent developments such as materialism and the use of objects, as well as the ontological turn in anthropology. It also draws together some examples, using issues drawn from previous chapters, relating to a few key symbols that (in keeping with the uncertainties of social work) are characterised by ambivalence, in particular: ‘family’, professionalism, and work placements, being relevant to ambiguous, liminal spaces between education and the workplace as part of a rite of passage into professional social work.
Changing: the future – social work in wider society
Authors: Bell Linda
Published: September 2020

This chapter reflects on why social work and social workers continue to be relevant to society on local, national, and international levels. It suggests how the process of looking back across the past 30 years demonstrates how much has changed and will continue to change. However, the chapter contends that this in itself indicates a form of continuity. Although some observers may continue to predict the demise of real social work, the core activities of the occupation, involving a tension between caring or controlling, have, it seems, always existed. Yet, the value of compassion, in whatever setting, is what social workers always seem to want to exemplify and to encourage in themselves and others by working alongside people.
Devolution: A patchwork quilt of planning reform
Authors: Sturzaker John , Nurse Alexander
Published: September 2020

This chapter considers how the different nations within the UK are approaching issues of city governance. This includes an exploration of how the UK Government, responsible for England, has changed its regime funding and policy for cities; and how the devolved administrations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are proceeding in different or similar ways.
City regions and the cities within them: Connecting two overlapping scales
Authors: Sturzaker John , Nurse Alexander
Published: September 2020

This chapter charts the demise of the regional agenda and the shift towards city-regional thinking which has underpinned much of the recent devolution agenda. Considering the similarities to the metropolitan architecture of the 70s and 80s, this discusses the emergence of Local Enterprise Partnerships through to Combined Authorities. This sets the scene for a broader discussion of the Devolution Deals being agreed at the city region level. In doing so, the chapter takes a broader look at how city regions function and, in particular, how districts can cooperate towards collective goals. This draws down recent examples from the emerging devolution deals, including how new metro-mayors are exercising their powers within their city regions, as well as lessons that can be learnt from the now nearly 20-year-old London Mayoral post.
Local authorities: Powerhouses or scapegoats?
Authors: Sturzaker John , Nurse Alexander
Published: September 2020

Some have argued that reforms to urban governance in the UK in recent years have “hollowed out” the local level, emphasising the levels “above” and “below” it. This reflects a broader perceived loss of focus on cities themselves, but a great deal of power and responsibility still remains at the local authority level. This chapter considers how local government autonomy has changed in recent years, within the context of a broader history of local government in the UK. It then reflects upon the “entrepreneurial turn” in local government, for some a consequence of reduced funding for local authorities, and considers recent evidence of a return to “municipal socialism” in England and beyond.
Conclusion: Rescaling urban governance
Authors: Sturzaker John , Nurse Alexander
Published: September 2020

This chapter summarises and synthesises the preceding chapters, discussing a series of themes which have emerged. The first is the interaction between the levels of devolution which have been the focus of each chapter, reflecting upon overlaps between them and cumulative impacts of changes to different levels of governance. The second is that Brexit has dominated UK governance to an unhealthy degree, casting a long shadow over other issues, including localism. The third is the impact of ‘austerity’ and the reductions in central and local state spending consequent on it, and the fourth follows – that poorer people are consistently losing out from every round and type of reform. Our conclusion is, therefore, that localism as it has been instantiated in the UK has overall been a regressive force, but that this need not necessarily be the case – whilst we identify few lessons for other places, there is scope to work within and around formal governance frameworks to have a more positive impact.
Bringing theory home: thinking about child sexual exploitation
Authors: Pearce Jenny
Published: September 2020

This chapter connects theory to how child sexual exploitation (CSE) interventions can be approached. To explore this connection, the chapter offers some personal reflections that highlight the ways in which theory can provide meaning. It shows how one can explore why we, and/or our service employer connects with theory — we can bring it ‘home’. Theory thus becomes something that is important to talk about, even if its meaning is unclear or uncertain. In fact, the chapter asserts that the more uncertainty there is, the better, as it encourages those working with CSE cases to explore their motivations and how they justify their work.
Child sexual exploitation, discourse analysis and why we still need to talk about prostitution
Authors: Phoenix Jo
Published: September 2020

This chapter provides a discourse analysis of the emergence of child sexual exploitation (CSE) as a social problem in order to uncover the unchallenged modes of thought that dominate our practices and assumptions about what CSE is and how to deal with it. It first describes discourse analysis and suggests the sort of questions that such an approach raises. The chapter next describes the discursive field out of which emerged the discourse of CSE as a particular type of social problem. Afterward, the chapter turns to the discourse of CSE and the subjects of regulation that it creates. To conclude, this chapter reflects on the discursive erasures within the discourse and why it is important to still talk about prostitution.
Using an intersectional lens to examine the child sexual exploitation of black adolescents
Authors: Bernard Claudia
Published: September 2020

This chapter employs intersectionality as a critical lens to interrogate the ways that race, gender, class, and sexuality impact black adolescents' experiences of child sexual exploitation (CSE). In particular, the exploration is anchored in an intersectional analysis to extend understandings of the nuanced ways in which race-constructed otherness is experienced by young black people affected by sexual exploitation. It first briefly sketches the key messages from the literature on CSE and black children. The chapter next provides an overview of the intersectionality theoretical framework. Finally, it uses a case study, from the Serious Case Review (SCR) of child R, a 15-year-old black girl in the looked-after system, as an exemplar. From there, it presents ways that an intersectional lens can offer some analytical tools to gain a deeper insight into the challenges for black youths at risk of abusive and exploitative relationships. The chapter concludes with some discussion of the implications for a child-focused approach.
Worcester, Massachusetts Fall, 2003
Authors: Luttrell Wendy
Published: September 2020

This prelude provides an overview of the author's research conducted at Park Central School in Worcester, Massachusetts. The idea was to give kids cameras to record, represent, and reflect on their everyday lives. The goal was that their photos will serve as a window onto the school culture, and at the same time allow the author and her colleagues to ask other, more complex questions. The author and the principal of PCS, Dr. Galinsky, both agree that there is tremendous value in listening to kids' voices as a way to help educators improve teaching and learning. Thus, the author planned to use the children's photographs and recorded interviews about their images as materials that will engage graduate students and teachers-in-training in assessing their own ways of seeing, and perhaps questioning their own assumptions about children growing up in working-class and immigrant communities of color. A key discovery of this research is the centrality and saliency of how care matters in childhood, in development, and in schooling from kids' own perspectives.
Motherhood, childhood, and love labor in family choreographies of care
Authors: Luttrell Wendy
Published: September 2020

This chapter discusses how the Park Central School children used their cameras to render “choreographies of care” visible and to acknowledge and affirm its value. “Choreographies of care” is a concept meant to highlight the constellation of resources, people, rhythms shaped by different occupational demands and shifting schedules, feelings, and intimacies of family living. Amidst prevailing deficit and stigmatizing portrayals of wage-poor households and working mothers' invisibility, the children's photographs and accounts accomplish two things. First, when given the opportunity, the children confirmed their mothers' care work, educational presence, and value. Second, the children, albeit differently for boys and girls, highlighted their own participation in choreographies of family care. The chapter then calls the children's images and accounts counter-narratives of care because they offer an alternative way of seeing care as a concerted, collective activity, not as individualized or unidirectional. Through these interdependent activities (children and adults), the children's gendered identities are forged and emotional relations are structured.
The freedom to care
Authors: Luttrell Wendy
Published: September 2020

This chapter reflects on distorted visions of education, care, and freedom. It revisits the contours of the kids' perspectives of care as they played out over the course of the project, examining what these young people have to say about care—its value, its rewards, its invisibilities, and contradictions. Against this backdrop, the chapter considers the current realities of care in a neoliberal capitalist society, limited and structured by gender-, race-, and class-bias; institutional racism and anti-Blackness; and economic strictures that narrow people's conceptualizations of time, productivity, and human value. The young people's visions offer much-needed hope—and in their understandings, one can locate possibilities for a new narrative of care. Drawing on the continuing challenges that the Park Central School students identified and the insights that they offered, the chapter then imagines an alternative social orientation in which care and care work take their rightful place at the center of everyday life—highly visible and highly regarded not only in the spheres of family and school, but in the very fabric of democratic society and in the fundamental understanding of freedom and social justice itself.
Vignette 1 Choosing my journey
Authors: Abdul Kamal
Published: September 2020

“I’ve reached page ten thousand and fifty-nine. Completed. I must do this. This is my life in front of me. Hold on, what does this all mean? Not a Skooby!” This is the very beginning of my time in prison, all those 11 Ramadans ago. Remand. Belmarsh. Trying to understand the case against me: “Joint Enterprise” and case-papers stacked up to my shoulders. Then the realisation my reading age was 11....
Vignette 2 Avoiding the mind-numbing vortex of drivel …
Authors: Thomas
Published: September 2020

I had started my Open University (OU) studies prior to my conviction. I had completed the first of six years and had begun my second year just prior to my incarceration.

I was fortunate that the various men I shared a cell with were happy for me to continue my studies. One of them took inspiration from my studying and is currently halfway through his own BA (Hons) undergraduate degree....
Vignette 3 Starting a new chapter
Authors: Morgans Mr C.T.
Published: September 2020

I am 71 years of age and I was convicted in 2009. I find very little for me in the day-to-day life of an inmate but I have always had an interest in the world about me and I discovered the OU prospectus in the library. It seemed to be a Godsend, both a means of keeping busy and as a way of gaining some sort of higher education that I missed out on before. The process of enrolling was somewhat fraught in that the education department of the prison I was in had personnel that had no interest in higher learning. The whole remit was to cater for people to come up to 11+ standards, not that they had any interest in helping those who could not read at all....
Vignette 6 Message to a prisoner
Authors: McDonald Gordon
Published: September 2020

Oh, there you are.

I was wondering when you would turn to this page. The fact that you have read this far would suggest that you are, at the very least, interested in doing something constructive with your time while in prison. To be honest, and how many of us have been in the past, this is the sole reason that I looked at the possibilities of studying with The Open University (OU) back in 2014. I left school with a few qualifications, worked in various jobs, then everything went wrong and I found myself looking at a lengthy prison sentence. But enough of that!...
Dominance
Authors: Liu Helena
Published: September 2020

This chapter examines the hegemony of white masculinity and critiques the imperialist fantasy of white masculine dominance, strength and power. This historical image bestowed white men the right to command and control humanity, which translates in contemporary organisational practice to the abiding association of white masculinity with leadership. Classical leadership theories are explored, showing how mainstream texts from charismatic leadership to transformational leadership assume and celebrate a white masculine subject. Media profiles of celebrity CEOs, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs, are analysed to illustrate the ways contemporary business leadership embodies white masculine ideals.
Anti-Racist Feminisms
Authors: Liu Helena
Published: September 2020

This chapter draws on the collective wisdoms of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Chicanx, Middle Eastern and Asian feminisms to identify and challenge the interlocking systems of power that undergird leadership. Specifically, the chapter explores how the theorising and practice of leadership may embrace a recognition of interlocking oppressions, experiment with language and reach, and struggle towards solidarity, self-definition and love. The distinct and complex practices of anti-racist feminisms are not homogenised into any universal ‘how-to’ guide for leadership but offered instead as promising possibilities for localised struggles.
White Allyship
Authors: Liu Helena
Published: September 2020

This chapter addresses white readers in particular and acknowledges the guilt and shame that they may experience when engaging in difficult dialogues about race and racism. It analyses the concept of white allyship and, in particular, emphasises the need to understand white allyship as an ongoing process of redoing whiteness rather than a fixed identification. The chapter also delineates the concept of abolishing whiteness and applies it to leadership and organisations as a strategy to dismantle white supremacy. It explores how becoming a ‘race traitor’ comes with considerable risks, where white allies are often met with hostility from their white peers, and how they may overcome these challenges.
The Death of Affirmative Action?
Authors: Carter J. Scott , Lippard Cameron
Published: September 2020

In the light of high-profile Supreme Court cases surrounding affirmative action, this book looks at the actors involved in the debate and what they are saying. That is, the book looks at who is setting the line of discussion in the Supreme Court by look at legal documents arguing for and against the case as well as the framing techniques they use to make their arguments noteworthy. Findings demonstrate that while supporters are made of a heterogeneous array of individuals and groups with a stake in affirmative action in higher education (e.g., students, professors, etc.), opponents are mainly represented by think tanks and other interest groups. Furthermore, this book finds that frames vary greatly between the groups, with supporters raising concern of what eliminating the policy will mean for minority students and opponents conversely arguing that such a policy is dangerous for our society and for those who merit inclusion into elite universities would not benefit from affirmative action. This book uses prominent sociological theories to put these arguments in broader contexts.
Race, the Affirmative Action Debate, Education, and Past Court Cases
Authors: Carter J. Scott , Lippard Cameron D.
Published: September 2020

This chapter provides insights into the state of racial inequality in the US today, with a particular eye on income, wealth, jobs, and education disparities. Do these factors continue to be predicted by race? If they do not, then there really is no need to consider race when making policy at the national and state levels or in higher education. The discussions over affirmative action and how it should be implemented would be moot. This chapter also provides an examination of the impact of education in general and in particular for minorities. We look at how the elimination of affirmative action at the state level has affected enrollment of minorities in higher education. We then provide a look at the history of affirmative action related to higher education in the courts. As such, we offer a detailed synopsis of past court cases that have set the stage for how affirmative action is viewed and used in higher education today. In this light, we discuss the ever-present and surprisingly controversial notion of diversity and how it shapes the affirmative action landscape. We end the chapter by discussing our methodological and analytical strategies for the remaining portion of the book.
Children’s Distributive Outcomes: Equality of Opportunity?
Authors: Fowler Timothy , Fowler Timothy
Published: September 2020

In this chapter, I consider the extent to which my account supports equality of opportunity, understood roughly in the Rawlsian sense known as FEO (Fair Equality of Opportunity). FEO seems inconsistent with the priority view defended in Section 2. However, I argue there are powerful reasons of justice to think that justice requires limiting the ability of parents to pass on economic advantages to their children. I show an argument for equalising opportunity flows from my account of children’s wellbeing. I argue that children’s social relations with one another are dependent upon FEO, and in particular that children interact with the world as agents. This means that their lives take the shape they do because of their own actions and abilities.
Conclusion
Authors: Fowler Timothy
Published: September 2020

The central arguments of this book have been that children are owed a good environment in which to grow up and that adults are owed the stable and supported right to care for children if they so desire. In Part I, I explored how to conceptualize children’s justice and how to measure whether children’s interests are being met by their society. I showed why children’s interests cannot be understood in terms of holding a set of resources, even if resources are understood in a very broad sense. When the subject of justice is understood to be adults, then it makes sense that the role of principles of justice simply be giving each person their fair share. This was the perspective taken by the two most influential liberal thinkers of the last century, John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. I suggested their approach cannot cope with the needs of children, since children might have a fair share of economic resources yet grow up socialized into beliefs, values and practices that are harmful to their current and future flourishing. A theory of justice must, therefore, take holistic account of the various ways in which upbringing might affect a person’s life, thus looking at its effects on children’s well-being. To meet this challenge, I offered an objective list account of children’s well-being which suggested that this is principally driven by the quality of their relationships with others. This theoretical shift implies a reconceptualization of what justice is about. Instead of justice being understood primarily as economic fairness, it must be seen as fundamentally about creating a society with norms and practice which foster flourishing interpersonal relationships, with a particular concern for the least advantaged children whose interests must be given priority....
Environmental and Resource-Related Conflicts, Migration and Governance
Authors: Krieger Tim , Panke Diana , Pregernig Michael
Published: September 2020

This introductory chapter provides the outline of the book and the analytical framework to explore the interlinkages and dynamics between environmental and resource-related conflicts, migration, and the role of governance in this context. It introduces how and under what conditions environmental and resource-related problems lead to conflicts and how this can induce migration. It also reflects on the role of governance in this respect. Based on state-of-the-art research, the chapter highlights the importance of understanding the interdependencies between migration, environmental and resource conflicts, as well as the development and roles of national, regional and global migration governance regimes. While extensive academic literature exists on each strand of research, little are the academic exercises that bring them together, particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Extractive Resources, Conflicts and Migration
Authors: Soysa Indra de
Published: September 2020

This chapter focuses on non-renewable resources and their relation to conflict and migration. It explores the argument that conflict is not brought by scarcity of these resources, but rather by resource abundance and the fact that they make looting possible. Access to valuable non-renewable resources, such as energy resources, can create crises of governance. Accountability decreases and rent seeking and corruption become common behaviors. ‘Lootable’ resources increase the possibilities of high political repression and income inequality, which then cause small and large-scale ‘uprooting’. Thus, tackling the issue of bad governance is key in order to solve migration flows caused by ‘lootable’ conflicts.
The Individual Level: Selection Effects
Authors: Bates Diane C.
Published: September 2020

This chapter contributes to the explanation to how environmental migrants are ‘selected’ at the individual and small group level. It argues that individual decisions to migrate depend on the type of environmental change. The author distinguishes between sudden onset environmental problems (e.g. natural disasters) and slow onset environmental problems (e.g. climate change). Sudden onsets make push factors more important- They give migrants less power over their decision to migrate, and therefore include more vulnerable population groups. On the contrary, slow onset events create opportunities for individual agency. Governance can play an important role as it can influence migration and environmental change, especially on the local and state level. The author argues that democratic governance arrangements confer agency to individuals and non-democratic governance delimits it. Moreover, the management of sudden onsets in the short run can be more effective in non-democratic governance, while slow onset environmental changes call for democratic governance arrangements.
Introduction
Authors: Smale Bob
Published: September 2020

The purpose of this book is to take a fresh look at trade unions by focusing upon their identities and exploring what in this work is termed ‘niche unionism’. While media and politicians frequently refer to the unions as if they were homogeneous, even the most rudimentary exploration of union names reveals that they project an extremely diverse range of identities. Although UK trade union membership decline has largely halted over recent years, unions seem to be making limited progress in recruiting beyond their traditional membership territories. While new and existing unions are making some inroads into the problem of organizing the unorganized, UK unions’ age profile shows a preponderance of older members, leaving the vast majority of younger workers unorganized (...
Regulating the Female Body
Authors: Amery Fran
Published: September 2020

This chapter sets the history of abortion law this in the context of feminist critique, exploring the significance of access to abortion for women’s lives and the gendered structure of society. It contains a discussion of feminist writing on pregnancy and motherhood and what these mean for female subjectivity: from Simone de Beauvoir’s description of pregnancy as a ‘servitude’, to Shulamith Firestone’s call for reproductive technologies that can separate the process of reproduction from women’s bodies. This chapter also explores the reproductive justice movement, which has emphasised the ways in which the needs of poor, minority ethnic and migrant women may differ from those of white middle-class women. The chapter argues that access to abortion can have radical implications for women’s lives, freeing women from compulsory motherhood. Yet celebratory accounts of abortion in Britain must be tempered. Abortion law has always relied heavily on the capacity of the medical profession to control women’s reproductive choices.
Political Activism and Agency under Austerity and Brexit
Authors: Montgomery Tom , Grasso Maria
Published: September 2020

The purpose of this chapter is to better understand the dynamics that are (re-)shaping the political environment of the UK where austerity has widened inequalities across income, wealth, and geographies. It outlines the specific nature of austerity in the UK by addressing those policies and discourses that have led to welfare retrenchment at a time when constraints on the agency of various vulnerable groups have increased. Drawing upon unique survey data from the UK with approximately 2000 participants, the chapter analyses attitudes towards austerity and the disposition that UK citizens have towards specific repertoires of action such as protest and demonstration. It also focuses upon the referendum on membership of the European Union which set in motion a chain of events that continues to dominate the political discourse of the UK. Drawing upon the findings the chapter provides a timely and novel insight into the political fault lines that have come to define the politics of Brexit Britain.
The Economy of Brexit: Performance, Interests and Agency
Authors: Morelli Carlo
Published: September 2020

This chapter examines debates regarding the potential effect Brexit will have on the economy and, in particular, specific areas of the economy in which international trade plays an especially important role. It demonstrates how differing elements of British business not only have divergent interests in Brexit but that these differences arise from their position in the economy. It focuses on Brexit in relation to agriculture, financial services and internationally traded manufactured goods as three examples of sectoral interests. A second element of the chapter is to look at the social consequences of these economic transitions. It utilises agency in the area of welfare and poverty, as a means to understand linkages between Brexit and austerity, and to examine their impact on poverty in society.
A Sovereign People? Political Fantasy and Governmental Time in the Pursuit of Brexit
Authors: Clarke John
Published: September 2020

The political conflict over the United Kingdom’s relationship to Europe was dominated by projections of sovereignty, particularly the ‘restoration’ of political sovereignty from Brussels to Westminster. This chapter explores two different aspects of this projection of sovereignty as a desire to take back control and regain ‘people’s agency’. The first aspect concerns its role as collective fantasy in which the chapter traces the ways in which the image of sovereignty was constructed and deployed in the campaign to Vote Leave. In particular, it considers how the conception of the nation as a sovereign people was central to the political mobilisation of Brexit and has persisted as a key reference point for continuing conflicts over Brexit. The second aspect concerns the emergent disjuncture between the political temporality implied in the Leave campaign and the return of governmental temporality. In doing so, the chapter draws on and develops Taguieff’s insight that populist political discourse suspends time in favour of a continuous present. In the process, the fantasy of the sovereign people has continued to play a central role in the denunciation of delay, doubt and dissent.
Conclusion
Authors: Guderjan Marius , Mackay Hugh , Stedman Gesa
Published: September 2020

The conclusion draws together the conclusions of previous chapters and the different dimensions of contestation in British society, politics, economics and culture. Organising the book around the themes of Brexit, austerity and agency has allowed us to make sense of the current political conjuncture. The chapter outlines three phases of Brexit – pre- and post-referendum and the ongoing negotiations with the EU – and links them to broader social processes, particularly to austerity policies and politics. The chapter summarises the material, geographical and ideological conditions and contexts constraining and enabling the agency of different types of agents and actors, including citizens, classes, migrants, business, governments and political parties. The conclusion also provides prospects and lessons on how to restore the agency of those who are affected by austerity and Brexit.
The Practice and Potential of Counter-Terrorism Review
Authors: Blackbourn Jessie , de Londras Fiona , Morgan Lydia
Published: September 2020

This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of the (statutory and non-statutory) reviews that are possible in respect of two key parts of counter-terrorism: Prevent, and Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs). In addition to describing the counter-terrorism review assemblage that attaches to Prevent and TPIMs, the chapter also identifies the reviews that have been undertaken over the five-year period from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2018. For each of these, it includes a consideration of the standards against which these reviews evaluated the law or programme, identified by close textual analysis of the reviews themselves. This analysis shows that, in spite of the persistent reliance on review as a safeguard in counter-terrorism legislation, Parliament’s historical tendency not robustly to challenge security narratives from Government is remarkably resilient. While these mandated reviews do take place (and non-mandated or discretionary reviews seem to be less frequent), their success in evaluating the measures, engaging in reality, and showing capacity for action is questionable.