bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Protection from poverty in the European Court of Human Rights
Authors: Pribytkova Elena
Published: January 2020

This paper analyses the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which gives judicial protection to minimum socio-economic guarantees indispensable for freedom from poverty while addressing civil and political rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). I explore the normative basis, scope, strategies, conditions and effectiveness of the ECtHR’s enforcement of basic socio-economic guarantees, such as access to adequate food, water, sanitation, housing, clothing, health, and social security. The paper examines the virtues and shortcomings of the ECtHR’s approach and discusses legal and political measures necessary to improve judicial protection of the poor in Europe. It shows the necessity of the elaboration of a systematic legal conception clarifying the content and scope of socio-economic guarantees of freedom from poverty protected by the ECHR as well as common standards of their judicial enforcement. At the same time, I advocate for the direct judicial protection of socio-economic rights at the European level. An essential political measure in this sense would be the expansion of the Court’s jurisdiction to the rights enshrined in the European Social Charter and the Revised European Social Charter.
Exposing scale hegemonies
Authors: Papanastasiou Natalie
Published: January 2020

The first aim of this chapter is to present an introductory discussion to the book’s empirical focus on education governance. It demonstrates that education governance is a field that is teeming with politics of scale and therefore constitutes an ideal focus for exploring the book’s overarching conceptual puzzle. The second aim of the chapter is to present a useful entry point for policy scholars seeking to explore possible practices of scalecraft in policy contexts. The discussion outlines the key tenets of a genealogical perspective which draws on political discourse theory and pays particular analytical attention to the ‘dislocatory moments’ of policy. By tracing how European education policy evolved over time, the discussion empirically illustrates how a genealogical perspective is an invaluable lens for exposing the contingency of scale hegemonies and that this serves as an essential starting point for problematising scalar politics.
From the Windrush Generation to the ‘Air Jamaica generation’: local authority support for families with no recourse to public funds
Authors: Jolly Andy
Published: January 2020

The ‘Air Jamaica generation’ of migrants to the UK over the past 30 years has received less political and scholarly attention than the so-called Windrush generation. Children of this generation are often invisible in social policy discussions because they lack the legal right to paid employment, and are subject to the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) rule. This excludes them from accessing welfare provision, including most social security benefits, council housing and homelessness assistance. This chapter examines support under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, one of the few welfare entitlements which children and families with NRPF retain, arguing that, without access to mainstream social security, section 17 is an inadequate safety net to prevent poverty. The chapter concludes that this is rooted in discriminatory legislation and policy, resulting in situations which, while structural in cause, would be viewed as neglectful if perpetrated by a parent or carer.
Is the ‘lump of labour’ a self-evident fallacy? The case of Great Britain
Authors: Wels Jacques , Macnicol John
Published: January 2020

This article discusses the notion of a ‘lump of labour fallacy’ used since the end of the nineteenth century and more strongly over the recent period in order to criticise the idea that the number of jobs in an economy is fixed. Examining the recent literature using this notion, the article shows that the lump of labour fallacy is more often used as an assumption rather than examined in-depth. Despite a lack of empirical evidence, it became a key argument in the British debate, used, for instance, to justify an increase in the retirement age. From a critical point of view, the article concludes that an in-depth evaluation of the way the number of jobs varies still needs to be done, looking particularly at the evolution of working time.
Family as a socio-economic actor in the political economy of welfare
Authors: Papadopoulos Theodoros , Roumpakis Antonios
Published: January 2020

After years of neoliberal restructuring of social welfare, families are under pressure to act more strategically in absorbing the ever-increasing social risks and costs associated with social reproduction. Thus, we consider it imperative to expand our theoretical understanding of the family as a socio-economic actor whose agency extends beyond the realm of care provision. Drawing upon Karl Polanyi’s work on the variety of moral rationalities of economic action and upon critical realist sociological literature on the family as a relational subject this chapter conceptualizes the family as a collective socio-economic actor that deploys a portfolio of moral ‘rationales’ and practices (householding, reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange) to enhance the welfare of its members. We conclude by arguing for a new research agenda that treats the terrain of family’s collective agency as a separate level of analysis, where intersections of class, racial, gender and generational inequalities can be re-imagined in studying how different welfare regimes institutionalize the conditions for families to act as socio-economic agents.
Tracing the historical and ideological roots of services for people with intellectual disabilities in Austria
Authors: Kremsner Gertraud , Koenig Oliver , Buchner Tobias
Published: January 2020

This chapter begins with an exploration of the production and development of eugenic discourses, explicitly adopted by institutions at the beginning of the 20th century and subsequently reaching their height during the Nazi regime, Though officially condemned, these discourses continued to influence service provision after 1945, when most people with intellectual disabilities who did not live with their families had to live in psychiatric hospitals or large Christian or state-run institutions. Parent-led organisations, developing from the mid-1960s, led to the first significant change in quality of services for persons with intellectual disabilities. In the late 1970s, the adoption of new ideas of normalisation and integration led to the implementation of de-institutionalisation programmes. These however left some large institutional settings untouched and, despite several policy changes and efforts to create a more personalised system of care since the 2000s, the institutional system of service provision continues to cause serious problems, and eugenic discourses and practices endure.
A Greek Neverland: the history of the Leros asylums’ inmates with intellectual disability (1958–95)
Authors: Karydaki Danae
Published: January 2020

Drawing on unexplored archives and oral testimonies, this chapter aims to trace and historicize the practices and policies towards people with intellectual disability on the Greek island of Leros. Two institutions that accommodated people with intellectual disability, the Leros Psychiatric Hospital and the Leros PIKPA asylum, were established on Leros in 1958 and 1961, respectively. The author focuses on the period between the establishment of the institutions and 1995, when the first attempt for the deinstitutionalisation of the Leros asylums was completed. The chapter emphasises the ways in which people with intellectual disabilities were mistreated and socially excluded by being abandoned to live under inhumane living conditions on a remote island while being, at the same time, infantilised in the discourse of mental health professionals, policymakers, andfellow inmates. Hence, not only does this paper shed light on an issue largely neglected by historians but also attempts to complement an international perspective of the history of intellectual disability.
Intellectual disability in Hong Kong: then and now
Authors: Shui Wong Phyllis King
Published: January 2020

This chapter explores policy and practice in Hong Kong, and their impact on people with intellectual disabilities and their families. From a historical perspective, this development has consisted of three phases. Hong Kong, the world’s most populated area, remained a British colony until 1997, when it became a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. Early service provision began in the 1970s. This was followed by a so-called ‘golden period’ in the 1990s when it seemed that a new age of rights and family- and self-advocacy was dawning. From around the end of the twentieth century a worrying period of minimal progress and stagnation has threatened to submerge earlier gains. Life-stories reflect this trajectory from defiance and struggle in the early days, through the euphoria of progress and change, to the present state of anxiety as victory seems to appear in danger of receding.
People with intellectual disabilities in Iceland in the twentieth century: sterilisation, social role valorisation and ‘normal life’
Authors: Stefánsdóttir Guðrún
Published: January 2020

This chapter considers the history of people with intellectual disabilities in Iceland, paying particular attention to the last quarter of the twentieth century when ideas about a normal life began to influence Icelandic disability policy and legislation, which has emphasised social equality and participation for over 30 years. The first half of the twentieth century can be characterised by negative social perception and isolation at institutions. The ´professional community´ pursued aggressively restrictive meassure such as controlled marriage, sterilization and segregation through institutionalization. During the 1960s and 1970s ideologies (sometimes problematic) of normalization and social role valorisation replaced ideas of segregation and institutionalization, calling for a ‘normal life’ for people with intellectual disabilities and advocating their right to take part in regular community life. Historically they played a huge role in de-institutionalization. However, often there was a gap between experiences of people with intellectual disabilities and the normalization principle which assumed that people with intellectual disabilities should have the right to self-determination and to a normal life.
Introduction: Bringing communities and culture together
Authors: Jones Phil , Perry Beth , Long Paul
Published: January 2020

Introducing the book as a whole, this chapter examines how the arts sector and wider creative economy are evolving, particularly in the context of austerity. The idea of cultural intermediation is introduced, building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to examine how organisations and individuals attempt to use cultural activity as a tool to improve the lives of individuals living in deprived communities. Austerity economics has had a major impact on the work of intermediaries, with communities simultaneously made responsible for solving their own socioeconomic problems, while the institutions with the capacity to mitigate inequality have been eroded through funding cuts. The cultural deficit model is challenged, noting that exposure to arts activities in and of itself does little to overcome entrenched inequality and social exclusion. The chapter also introduces the wider case studies used within the book, primarily examining the UK, with a particular ethnographic focus on the neighbourhoods of Ordsall in Salford and Balsall Heath in Birmingham.
The creative economy, the creative class and cultural intermediation
Authors: Brook Orian , O’Brien Dave , Taylor Mark
Published: January 2020

This chapter presents an overview of recent work on cultural intermediaries and the ‘creative class’ in relation to social inequality. The chapter looks at Britain’s ‘creative class’ in relation to workforce patterns, tastes, social attitudes, and their faith in the transformative power of culture. Ultimately the chapter suggests we need caution when thinking about the impact of cultural intermediaries on social inequality.
Towards cultural ecologies: why urban cultural policy must embrace multiple cultural agendas
Authors: Perry Beth , Symons Jessica
Published: January 2020

This chapter draws on local ethnographic work undertaken in Ordsall, Salford UK. The Ideas4Ordsall initiative comprised 25 ideas for cultural activity generated by local people, funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programme. People’s ideas for cultural activities included dog-walking, beekeeping, photography, craft, cooking, bike workshops, a community festival, a community noticeboard and a graphic design company. We argue that local people’s ideas speak back and challenge narrow framings of the creative city, with a focus on  connecting community; curating history; developing social enterprise; capturing a sense of place and sharing knowledge. Although disconnected from mainstream cultural activities, our process revealed a rich and vibrant community in the area, running through family networks where people socialise daily with each other, and find culture in community, mutuality, sociality, history and place. We draw on our study to argue that progress towards cultural democracy can be enhanced through   anthropological understandings of culture as webs of significance and the patterns through which people accommodate their daily activities
‘An area lacking cultural activity’: researching cultural lives in urban space
Authors: Long Paul , Warren Saskia
Published: January 2020

Focussed on the Balsall Heath area of Birmingham, this chapter explores the specific ways in which individuals are situated by intermediation practices, policy imperatives, discourses and imaginaries as cultural consumers, participants and sometimes producers. In tandem with the attention afforded its demographic diversity, levels of deprivation Balsall Heath has been an object of cultural policy initiatives seeking to engage disadvantaged and ‘hard-to-reach’ communities. The chapter first outlines the particular socio-economic character of the area and discusses the method of walking interviews that was employed to engage with residents. The method does not offer am exhaustive picture of cultural engagement, conceived instead as a means of ‘thinking with’ participants within a local landscape of social, material and religious relations that shape individual agency.
Governing the creative city: the practice, value and effectiveness of cultural intermediation
Authors: Perry Beth
Published: January 2020

This chapter rejects the binary between top-down and bottom-up approaches to the creative city. It argues that we need to pay greater attention to the ‘grey spaces’ in the cultural urban economy, where a range of engagement practices are being undertaken by local cultural organisations under difficult circumstances. This chapter re-appropriates the vocabulary of ‘cultural intermediation’ to reveal, revalue and reassess the role of cultural organisations that operate within local contexts to bridge between formal and informal ways of understanding culture and creativity. It shows how local organisations are engaged in meaning making, market making, community making and making do under conditions of austerity. We need a more ecological approach to the creative city, in which alternative spaces, practices and norms are made visible and valued
Intervention: Force deep
Authors: Jam Chris
Published: January 2020

This chapter comprises an original poetic commission by Chris Jam reflecting on creativity and community in the Balsall Heath neighbourhood of Birmingham, UK. The poem was the key output from a community film making project in the neighbourhood, led by the author, exploring residents’ feelings about Balsall Heath, its many textures and rhythms. The poem is the author’s personal response to the raw material gathered in the film-making process, giving a unique artistic response to an area that has a long history of people working together to create a better community.
Strategies for overcoming research obstacles: developing the ‘Ordsall method’ as a process for ethnographically informed impact in communities
Authors: Symons Jessica
Published: January 2020

This chapter describes how a £1million research project on exploring the role of ‘cultural intermediaries’ and ‘hard-to-reach’ communities was perceived when carried out in practice. A low-income community in Salford, NW England was a prime target for research. However questions about ‘culture’ among those already living precariously on very limited incomes and with few options for work produced a strong and negative reaction. These perceptions stimulated a project redesign to match local priorities and so ultimately generated enthusiastic engagement and participation in the research. The adaptive and responsive approach to project design and delivery helped achieve impact through our research activities and the Ordsall Method was born from that experience.
2 Planning, knowledge and technocracy in historical perspective
Authors: Hebbert Michael
Published: January 2020

This chapter examines the planning histories associated with writings on technocracies. It highlights some of the core distinctions that exist between different schools of thought over the form, character, and roles of technical knowledge in the planning of cities and reflects on the extent to which we are now living in an era within which ‘new’ technocracies can be said to exist and what these might consist of. To make sense of the new technocracy, the chapter thus offers an understanding of the old. It puts the present critique of expert knowledge into historical perspective, looking back to the interplay of planning and technocracy in the century of two world wars, the New Deal, the Welfare State, and the Modern Project. It traces the roots of the technocratic critique to planning up to the mid-1980s.
Captured by bureaucracy: street-level professionals mediating past, present and future knowledge
Authors: Verloo Nanke
Published: January 2020

This chapter explores the role of ‘street-level professionals’ in planning, a peculiar expertise that emerges in response to the decreasing legitimacy and efficacy of public action in urban governance processes. In particular, it looks at the street-level professional in order to question the uneven tension between bureaucratic and tacit knowledge in contemporary participatory processes. The chapter shows how initiatives that attempt to mediate between governmental and local community ambitions are today trapped in existing bureaucratic structures. It argues that planners are in a unique position to develop an expertise for such street-level mediation. However, existing institutions tend to ‘capture’ that mediation through norms that require organising, reducing, and abstracting the complex knowledge of the community. Thus, the chapter contends that this entrapping capacity of institutions is a distinctive logic of today's technocratic planning.
Planning professionalism in the face of technocracy: ethics, values and practices
Authors: Gunn Susannah
Published: January 2020

This chapter considers the extent to which today's planners and planning experts fulfil a key role: assisting in the protection of disadvantaged and marginalised groups. While discussing these professional principles, the chapter questions the extent to which contemporary planning expertise is increasingly internalising neoliberal logics of interventions. It starts by presenting examples of how planning is currently being provided in councils to highlight how the planning service has become more commercialised through increasingly technocratic practices. The chapter subsequently reflects on what this means for planning's professional credentials and right to intervene, and concludes that planning is becoming increasingly commodified. However, planning practitioners are not questioning their professionalism or their profession's status. When set against the planning and professional academic literature's concern for altruistic public service provision, this appears to be a narrowing down of planning's and professionalism's understanding of social concern that creates disquiet for those observing the direction of travel.
Localism and the reconfiguration of planning’s publics in the landscapes of technocracy
Authors: Brownill Sue
Published: January 2020

This chapter explores the role of planning's publics within the emergent technocratic landscapes of planning. It does so by drawing on ongoing research into the localism agenda in England and in particular on neighbourhood planning. Neighbourhood planning was introduced in 2011 as a ‘community right’ to draw up a statutory land-use plan. The chapter explores the extent to which technical and ‘expert’ knowledge and the power of public and private planners is being challenged or displaced by the knowledge, emotions, and actions of citizen planners. As such, the chapter shows that technocratisation is a more varied and complex process than previously thought and that these seeming spaces of de-regulation are not immune to forms of re-regulation which seek to re-create local knowledge to align with technocratic language and purposes.
Planning by numbers: affordable housing and viability in England1
Authors: Layard Antonia
Published: January 2020

This chapter draws on the example of the English planning system to examine the role of lawyers and planning law structures and judgements in shaping local decisions. It focuses, in particular, on the growing reliance on quantitative evidence in understanding urban problems, which have an impact on how cities are governed. The chapter shows how the calculative approach to viability illustrates the technocracy currently so prevalent in the English planning system. A reliance on numbers runs throughout the framework: in objective assessments of housing need, efficiency targets for local planning authorities, governance by statistics, and annual reports. It is viability assessments, however, that are so dominated by commercial calculative practices, particularly profit and loss.
Are female part-time workers dualised in South Korea? Institutional structures and employment conditions of South Korean female part-time jobs
Authors: Song Min Young , Lee Sophia Seung-yoon
Published: January 2020

The Korean government has encouraged married women to take a part-time job since the 2010s. Under the strong influence of the labour market flexibility policy, however, most part-time jobs have been created on the basis of temporary contracts. Our analysis of the data from the 2015 Korea National Survey on Fertility, Family Health, and Welfare found that, on the whole, the hourly income of female part-timers with young children was lower than that of full-timers. This was because most part-time jobs were coupled with temporary employment of which wage levels was much lower than permanent employment. On the other hand, a sign of dualization was found within the Korean female part-timers; the gap in the average hourly income between those with a college degree and others was bigger among part-timers than among full-timers. We also found that the range of distribution of hourly income was much wider for part-time temporary workers than for full-time temporary workers.
Introduction: What Does Biosensing Do?
Authors: Roberts Celia , Mackenzie Adrian , Mort Maggie , Atkinson Theresa , Kragh-Furbo Mette , Wilkinson Joann
Published: January 2020

Biosensor devices and biosensing practices emerge where health experience, scientific and medical knowledges and online platforms meet. In a synoptic discussion, we map some of these meetings and introduce the approach to health biosensing followed in this book. Our approach questions pervasive elementary assumptions about bodies, time and measurement. It expands to include a gamut of biosensings by comparing experiences of different life events, ranging from conception to ageing.  We flag some of the significant institutional and regulatory problems in aligning scientific and clinical knowledges around biosensors. And we describe the volatile mixing of devices, data science, marketing and social networks on contemporary health platforms in terms of the cultural logics of biosensing.
Conclusion: What Might Biosensing Do?
Authors: Roberts Celia , Mackenzie Adrian , Mort Maggie , Atkinson Theresa , Kragh-Furbo Mette , Wilkinson Joann
Published: January 2020

Biosensing in all its forms has strong connections to the promise-horizon of the ‘soon.’ But stories of failure, disappointment and limitation abound. We need to bring the body – or the bio in all its senses – full centre when discussing biosensing platforms. Moving across the life course - from childhood, through the so-called ‘reproductive years’ into older age, we have highlighted the significance of geographical, historical and social location. Biosensing may be about health for many people but as yet has little to do with biomedicine. Yet it has the potential to change human bodies and lives, in barely imagined ways. Policy makers and practitioners of all kinds could do well to devote time and resources to listening to and engaging with ‘the word on the street,’ as filtered through social science. People of all ages and backgrounds are thinking about, using and/or encountering biosensing, and they have much to say about it.
Social work as policy innovator: challenges and possibilities in the UK
Authors: Smith Roger
Published: January 2020

This chapter provides a brief overview of recent and current developments in social work policy activism in the UK. It reflects on the ‘radical social work’ tradition, and the relationship between policy work and professionalism in social work. Drawing on examples of organisation around key campaigns, the chapter makes the case for policy-oriented practice, as integral to all aspects of social work. In this respect, the distinction between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ practice is redrawn, in order to demonstrate that both are equally infused with a policy dimension. It is impossible to undertake ‘policy-free’ practice; and the impact of policy and structures on service users has to be factored in to all aspects of social work intervention.
Social work, problem definition and policy change in the US: the case of sex-trafficked youth
Authors: Rozas Lisa Werkmeister , Feely Megan , Ostrander Jason
Published: January 2020

Critical theoretical frameworks are essential in helping social workers develop a comprehensive understanding of the manner in which political and social systems oppress marginalised populations. The central concern of critical theories is power and connecting the personal and the political, which can be accomplished by encouraging social workers and clients to use their life experiences to advocate for and change ineffective and outdated policies. This chapter presents two critical theoretical frameworks, structural social work and critical consciousness theory, to analyse the social problem of domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) and illustrate policy changes that were created to challenge this form of structural violence. Through a case example this chapter will demonstrate how social workers redefined a social problem and by doing so, facilitated the public participation in shaping social policies and institutions in the state of Connecticut to provide better outcomes for the victims of DMST.
The voices of Italian social workers: from a pilot anti-poverty intervention to a national policy
Authors: D’Emilione Matteo , Giuliano Giovannina Assunta , Raciti Paolo , Vera Paloma Vivaldi
Published: January 2020

Between 2013 and 2015 the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policy ran an experimental anti-poverty program in 12 metropolitan areas. The program provided households with children an income support through a conditional cash transfer scheme. In order to understand how the program worked within the different local welfare systems, an ex post process evaluation was developed. Focus groups were carried out with almost ninety social workers with different professional backgrounds (social services, employment services, schools, ONGs etc.) involved in the implementation of the program. According to the analysis of the collected data, the chapter explores in particular: how social workers perceived the implementation of the program; to what extent, the insights of the evaluation process and the voices of the social workers have been taken into consideration within the scaling up of the intervention at national level.
Social policy and welfare movements ‘from below’: the Social Work Action Network (SWAN) in the UK
Authors: Moth Rich , Lavalette Michael
Published: January 2020

Mainstream policy analysis tends to underplay the role of collective action and social struggles from below in influencing the political and ideological environment in which social policy agendas emerge. This chapter addresses this lacuna through an account of a social movement organisation, the Social Work Action Network (SWAN), and its involvement in campaigns to oppose neoliberal mental health and welfare policy reforms. The chapter examines SWAN’s primary modes of political intervention: ideological, agitational and grassroots campaigning which are underpinned by a strategy of cross-sectional alliance building that seeks to integrate the demands of diverse constituencies including practitioners and service users. We conclude that, while the network’s interventions may not have led directly to specific policy shifts, these strategic orientations have nonetheless strengthened challenges to service cuts and restrictions at both ideological and practical levels whilst simultaneously prefiguring elements of the inclusive, democratic and egalitarian welfare futures SWAN seeks to promote.
Policy work and the ethics of obedience and resistance: perspectives from Britain and beyond
Authors: Evans Tony
Published: January 2020

In this chapter, I will explore core tensions for social workers underlying their roles as policy implementers in welfare agencies, and consider the ethical questions this tension raises in implementation of or resistance to policies with which they don't agree. I will look at two ethical hunches that seem to swirl-around in this area. First is the idea that professionals — like all other public servants — must follow policies and procedures because they should respect the democratic legitimacy of policy. The second intuition is that professionals should follow their own commitments, act autonomously and disregard policies with which they disagree. Both intuitions have something important to say, but neither alone can provide a satisfactory account. The answer seems to lie in the relationship between the two in an area where one is often faced with choosing the least worst option — an area in which ideals can feel challenging, energising and distressing.
Social workers implementing social assistance in Spain: reshaping poverty in a familialistic welfare state
Authors: Castiñeira Sergio Sánchez
Published: January 2020

This case study analyses some of the processes that are restructuring public social assistance in the inequality regime that emerges from the recent economic recession in Spain. It shows how social workers turn what could be an inefficient public program into an active social policy through a cognitive, normative and emotional approach. A highly qualified and vocational workforce compensates meagre institutional support and lack of opportunities by instilling in the new poor new knowledge, abilities and attitudes to access basic informal resources from the local context. However, social workers’ agency could eventually contribute to confine clients within the material and symbolic limits of an expanding grey zone with scarce opportunities and diminished well-being, between inclusion and exclusion. This research is based on semi-structured interviews (17) and focus groups (8).
Layering, social risks and manufactured uncertainties in social work in Poland1
Authors: Poławski Paweł
Published: January 2020

This chapter shows the latent functions and perverse effects of activation policy, conditionality, and related governance reforms implemented on a local level in Poland from the perspective of social workers. The chapter focuses on the consequences of layering processes within welfare state institutions, and how these processes shape the structure of social assistance and affect social work. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with social workers that cover their experiences with the implementation of activation measures that have been modified and adjusted to local realities. The research confirms that orientation toward poverty management is strengthened by the pillarization of organizational structures and financial mechanisms, and that the reforms generate dysfunctions and strengthens uncertainties for both beneficiaries and social workers.
Conclusion: social work and the making of social policy – lessons learned
Authors: Klammer Ute , Leiber Simone , Leitner Sigrid
Published: January 2020

The concluding chapter draws on the results of the different contributions and considers their specific or generalisable character. It sums up how knowledge of the influence of diverse social work actors within different stages of the policy cycle adds to existing research, and which research questions are still pending.
Has social cohesion been eroded?
Authors: Greve Bent
Published: January 2020

This chapter looks into stories about people’s perception on welfare state developments, why they do not trust the political system and the administration or what is often labelled the elite. The chapter draws on a number of recent books and articles trying to depict and understand people’s opinion – from Brexit to the vote for Trump – where one might witness a contradiction between possible self-interest and support for populist viewpoints.
Concluding remarks
Authors: Greve Bent
Published: January 2020

This last chapter sum up what can be considered central aspects and elements to be aware of if connecting populism, welfare chauvinism and developments in welfare states. Furthermore, it presents a few suggestions for future development.
Community, development and popular struggles for environmental justice
Authors: Harley Anne , Scandrett Eurig
Published: January 2020

This chapter provides an introduction and theoretical overview of the book. It explores how the environment is a key battle ground and location for struggle, as economic decision making in the interests of capital accumulation lead to cost shifting onto the environments of those with least economic or political leverage. Building on the lasting legacies of colonialism and settler colonial relations, in the current stage of neoliberalism this environmental-economic dumping has become increasingly acute and systematic. Moreover, it has generated new waves of self-reflective community action and social movement processes in which community development plays a role. Such resistance draws on the rich yet conflicted theoretical resources which have developed through academic labour around analysing the social practices of community, development and environmental justice as well as the intellectual work of ordinary people engaged in material struggles to change the world from where they live and work and make community.
Tackling waste in Scotland: incineration, business and politics vs community activism
Authors: Mackay Jennifer
Published: January 2020

This chapter discusses the factors leading to a breakdown in community waste activism and the defeat of anti-incineration against the developments of ‘Energy From Waste’ and incineration technologies in Scotland. This is an attempt to understand how community action on waste lost momentum within the bigger picture of tackling waste and its impact on climate change. It also looks at the goal of ‘zero waste’ and how it was hijacked by vested interests. At a time when community recycling was at its highest popularity, waste industry businesses produced the new generation of waste disposal facilities, incinerators, which recover the energy released from burning waste. At the same time, a number of policy initiatives, under the influence of industry lobbying, were directing efforts away from community work and towards industry. These events stimulated intense but short lived community struggles against incineration and the demise of community waste initiatives.
‘Mines come to bring poverty’: extractive industry in the life of the people in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Authors: Butler Mark
Published: January 2020

Communities who happen to live where there is potential for big money to be made from mining the resources from under their feet, face a daunting set of challenges. Many people are saying ‘No’ to mining capital, and many communities are divided. We consider the thinking and praxis of militants from a number of areas in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) who are thinking resistance to a wave of real and prospective new coal mining initiatives. We conclude that this irruption of the “No” is simultaneously powerful and fragile. It is the assertion of the human life of the people against the forces of death. Provided the struggle that unfolds remains faithful to the fundamental 'No' that originated it, then it stops simply reproducing or modestly-reforming that world as-it-is, but instead marks out an emancipatory future of what could be.
The environment as a site of struggle against settler-colonisation in Palestine
Authors: al-Butmeh Abeer , al-Shalalfeh Zayneb , Zwahre Mahmoud , Scandrett Eurig
Published: January 2020

This chapter explores how the environment in Palestine has been a site of struggle for control between settler colonisers and Palestinians for over 100 years. It argues that the Zionist settler colonisation of Palestine may be understood as an ecological distribution conflict since the action of colonisers – from the British Mandate through the establishment of the state of Israel through to the military occupation of the remainder of the Palestinian territory – has been predicated on the expropriation of resources and the expulsion of the Palestinian population. Community development has been a component of the Palestinian popular struggle against settler colonisation. By exploring examples of community development, the chapter will analyse the context in which this has become integral to the popular struggle as well as threats that community development, especially in relation to environmental issues, has been used to normalise and legitimise the Zionist occupation.
Tania Murray Li
Authors: Clarke John , Brown Wendy , Cochrane Allan , Cooper Davina , Grossberg Larry , Larner Wendy , Lewis Gail , Li Tania Murray , Maskovsky Jeff , Newman Janet , Sharma Anu (Aradhana) , Stubbs Paul , Williams Fiona
Published: January 2020

The conversation begins from a collaborative puzzle, exploring our different journeys towards collaborative working. It then considers how we see concepts being made to work in practice, before turning to issues of conservative dominance in contemporary politics. The chapter ends by discussing the emerging global crisis of work and livelihood.
Anu (Aradhana) Sharma
Authors: Clarke John , Brown Wendy , Cochrane Allan , Cooper Davina , Grossberg Larry , Larner Wendy , Lewis Gail , Li Tania Murray , Maskovsky Jeff , Newman Janet , Sharma Anu (Aradhana) , Stubbs Paul , Williams Fiona
Published: January 2020

The conversation begins with an exploration about what it means to think with multiple resources (in theoretical and disciplinary terms). It then turns to the importance of seeing political subjects ’behaving badly’. It then explores the productive problems of defining NGOs, before ending with troubling thoughts.
Davina Cooper
Authors: Clarke John , Brown Wendy , Cochrane Allan , Cooper Davina , Grossberg Larry , Larner Wendy , Lewis Gail , Li Tania Murray , Maskovsky Jeff , Newman Janet , Sharma Anu (Aradhana) , Stubbs Paul , Williams Fiona
Published: January 2020

The chapter opens with a discussion about the place and significance of disciplines and disciplinary knowledge before reflecting on the processes of thinking across or beyond boundaries. The conversation moves to the unsettling implications of talking (and listening) to people in the research process. Finally it turns to consideration of emerging research questions (around legal gender and more)
Gail Lewis
Authors: Clarke John , Brown Wendy , Cochrane Allan , Cooper Davina , Grossberg Larry , Larner Wendy , Lewis Gail , Li Tania Murray , Maskovsky Jeff , Newman Janet , Sharma Anu (Aradhana) , Stubbs Paul , Williams Fiona
Published: January 2020

The conversation opens with reflections on the process of thinking with others, including the place of ‘ancestral voices’. It considers the delicate balance between certainty and uncertainty in critical thinking before turning to thinking with and through ‘race’. From there, the conversation explores some of the dimensions and dyna mics of crisis.
Afterword
Authors: Clarke John , Brown Wendy , Cochrane Allan , Cooper Davina , Grossberg Larry , Larner Wendy , Lewis Gail , Li Tania Murray , Maskovsky Jeff , Newman Janet , Sharma Anu (Aradhana) , Stubbs Paul , Williams Fiona
Published: January 2020

This short chapter is deliberately called an afterword rather than a conclusion as it’s difficult to see how the diverse and shifting discussions captured in the preceding chapters could lead to anything as definitive sounding as a conclusion. Indeed, that would, I feel, miss the whole point of the enterprise. So instead, this is an opportunity to reflect on the processes and relationships that underpin the book and which were the conditions for starting the project in the first place. So, not a conclusion but instead some thoughts about the pleasures and possibilities – and even problems – of thinking together....
‘Managing’ diversity: policy and practice
Authors: Vincent Carol
Published: January 2020

Chapter 1 considers the social and political contexts to the FBV requirement, as it argues that the enactment of particular policies cannot be understood without reference to the broader political and social climate. It discusses belonging in twenty-first century Britain, tracing policy approaches to diversity from multiculturalism through cohesion, back to an emphasis on integration, although emphasising that this is by no means a linear progression. It highlights the positioning of Muslim populations in particular, as suspect, as lacking in the desire to integrate. The chapter traces the development of the FBV requirement and immediate reactions to it. It discusses the requirements of both counter-extremist policy and the Equality Act 2010 as they apply to schools.
Citizenship, identity and belonging
Authors: Vincent Carol
Published: January 2020

Chapter 2 is split into three main parts. The first part discusses an approach to citizenship that stresses affect, and then moves on to explore some of the vast literature around citizenship and nationalism, focusing on what Conversi refers to as the ‘deliberate cultivation of common [national] allegiances’ (2014 p.28) and the role of universal democratic principles in so doing. I draw attention to the arguments of several commentators that asserting a national identity through commitment to apparently universal liberal democratic principles often obscures the existence of narrower cultural and ethnic understandings of belonging. Second, Chapter 2 considers the role of citizenship education in promoting national and global belonging, and identifies some of the recent developments in the subject. Third, it discusses these recent developments in England and elsewhere, including the entanglement with counter-extremist policies.
Promoting British values in schools
Authors: Vincent Carol
Published: January 2020

Chapter 4 starts with a general overview of the teacher-respondents’ reactions to the FBV. It then moves on to describe and analyse the four main school responses to the promotion of FBV identified in the research. These are Representing Britain, Repackaging FBV, Relocating FBV and Engagement with FBV (the latter is discussed in Chapter 5). The first response, Representing Britain, describes the use of symbols and stereotypes traditionally associated with Britain as a mechanism through which to promote FBV. Repackaging describes a ‘business-as-usual’ response where schools absorb the promotion of FBV into their existing practices. Relocating describes the rise in ‘inward-looking’ values/character education. I argue that this emphasis on personal development is preferred over more ‘outward-looking’ citizenship education. Throughout, I identify the characteristics of the ‘good’ citizen inherent in the different responses, focusing both on the desired characteristics of both the ‘good’ school citizen and the future adult citizen.
Morality, controversy and emotion in schools
Authors: Vincent Carol
Published: January 2020

Chapter 5 considers the response of Engagement to the FBV requirement. This is the more infrequent instances of direct engagement with the FBV in schools, including teachers’ incursions into controversial/sensitive issues. The chapter explores some of the practical and affective constraints for teachers, on conducting what Cantle has called ‘dangerous conversations’. Chapter 5 also explores the priorities of teacher-respondents, their interpretation of the FBV policy to fit with their emphasis on developing students’ moral behaviours, especially mutual respect, and the commonalities and differences across the schools in the research, in terms of how ‘useful’ staff understood the FBV requirement to be in relation to their pupil populations.
Introduction to Attachment Theory: Social Contexts and Changeability
Authors: Wu Chia-Huei
Published: January 2020

The aim of this chapter is to introduce attachment theory in terms of context-specific attachment styles, and the stability and changeability of attachment style. An attachment relationship exists not only between children and parents, but also in other relationship contexts. Context-specific attachment relationships, such as attachment at work, are more proximal to influence behavior in the specific contexts. This theoretical proposition helps illustrate how relationships in organizations are important to shape employee proactivity. Attachment theory also suggests the changeability of attachment style as individuals’ prototype of attachment style and internal working models of self, others, and the broader social environment can be changed when they encounter different experiences.
A Behavioural System Model of Proactivity
Authors: Wu Chia-Huei
Published: January 2020

The aim of this chapter is to build a behavioral system model of proactivity based on attachment theory and elaborate the role of attachment security in shaping the operation of the behavioral system. The chapter firstly indicates that proactive behavior, as a form to challenge the status quo, can be conceptualized as a form of exploration in which instigators aim to master their environment through self-directed change efforts. Next, building on the idea of exploration behavioral system from attachment theory, the chapter offers a behavioral system of proactivity specifically. As a behavioral system is operated in a goal-corrected manner, in which an individual regulates her/his behavior and goals in a feedback loop, the behavioral system of proactivity incorporates the process perspective of proactivity and the three identified motivational mechanisms of employee proactivity reviewed in Chapter 1. Finally, the chapter elaborates how attachment security can influence the operation of the behavioral system of proactivity, building a relational foundation for proactivity.