bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
How does the Fourth Estate work now in crime and investigative reporting?
Authors: Colbran Marianne
Published: January 2023

Over the last ten years the traditional crime journalist’s ability to fulfil their Fourth Estate role has been greatly diminished – by technological changes, the global crisis in the news industry and by the impact of the Leveson and Filkin Reports on police/news media relations. At the same time, non-profits such as the Bureau Local, The Bureau for Investigative Journalism and The Bristol Cable are challenging journalistic norms and changing the nature of crime news. Nevertheless, one key source – the police – increasingly controls the flow of policing news to the press and the public. The Fourth Estate may have transformed radically over the last ten years, allowing the opening of millions of new entrances to public life, but in the case of the police in the United Kingdom, the Fourth Estate has never been so hamstrung in its ability to speak truth to power. This chapter argues that the only way forward is a re-establishment of relations based on trust and reciprocity between the MPS and new and old media – but that such a renewed relationship may take many years to achieve.
When teachers become the external actor: private tutoring and endogenous privatisation in Cambodia
Authors: Le Hang M. , Brent Edwards, D.
Published: January 2023

Recent literature on neoliberalism and privatisation of education around the world has noted the growing and complex influence of external actors on educational policies, provisions, governance, and outcomes. The case of private tutoring in Cambodia, generally offered by public school teachers to their own students, adds an interesting dimension to this literature by addressing a situation where actors internal to the school system (teachers) are incentivised to act in external capacities. This chapter describes the ways that this form of private tutoring, rien kuo, is integrated into the schooling experience of students and becomes central to student progress from one grade to the next – and the consequential ‘hybrid public-private education system’ that this produces. We reflect on how this is a form of endogenous privatisation that involves the incorporation of ‘market-oriented mindsets’ into education and, more specifically, into the relationship between teachers and students. Our findings demonstrate how teachers acting in external capacities can have great impact on teacher and student motivations, curriculum and pedagogy, assessment, and broad expectations of public schooling – in ways that differ from contexts where private tutoring is provided by formally external actors.
New philanthropy in the heterarchical governance of education in Brazil
Authors: Avelar Marina
Published: January 2023

New philanthropy is now an increasingly influential external actor in education, promoting considerable shifts in the field. This chapter analyses how new philanthropy is enacting discursive, relational, and institutional activities within heterarchical structures of governance to change how education is conceived and done in Brazil. The example of an advocacy group, the Mobilisation for the National Learning Standards is presented. The group brought together several foundations and individual supporters who worked in public and private organisations to advocate for a standardised curriculum for the country. The case illustrates how new philanthropy executes a series of activities to construct itself as a legitimate and well-connected policy actor that is now part of the public management of education. In doing so, foundations blur the boundary between public and private, and profit and non-profit; they are active in all policy contexts and are making education policy in new spaces. Making sense of the complex and diverse roles played by new philanthropy in education governance supports new ways of thinking about external education actors and how they construct alliances to produce changes in education.
The Lifecourse And Old Age
Authors: Milne Alisoun
Published: January 2023

This chapter draws attention to the fact that the life course is both a lived experience and a conceptual frame of reference. A predominant theme when keeping the life course at the forefront of our inquiries is that stages in life are not necessarily standardised or chronologically fixed but are subject to a variety of social, historical and cultural influences. It is the linkage between the individual experience of ageing, on the one hand, and the social and historical contexts within which individual ageing occurs on the other, that differentiates the life course approach from the individual-level life cycle approach. As a field, critical gerontology is strongly influenced by the life course perspective, and the idea that life experiences, which are inevitably organised by social relationships and embedded in socioeconomic contexts, powerfully influence how people grow old. The chapter emphasises the power of linked lives and shines a spotlight on the significance of age, not only as a property of individuals but also as a product of social structure.
Barriers To Implementing Compulsory Income Management
Authors: Marston Greg , Humpage Louise , Peterie Michelle , Mendes Philip , Bielefeld Shelley , Staines Zoe
Published: January 2023

The chapter examines policy implementation of compulsory income management, with consideration given to the limits of the consultation approaches used by government, the mixed economy of welfare in the delivery of compulsory income management, and the role of intermediaries such as front-line social services and for-profit companies that provide the cashless welfare technologies. The chapter details the range of practical and administrative issues that have been identified by research participants living on compulsory income management in Australia and New Zealand. The chapter also considers the perspectives of community stakeholders. What the empirical analysis highlights is that the majority of the people targeted by the policy do not see themselves as having a problem with alcohol or gambling, or in managing money. What they lack are the financial resources to meet their needs. The analysis also shows that, with some exceptions, the introduction of compulsory income management led to a further deterioration of people’s financial wellbeing.
Pathways through food poverty
Authors: Drew Michael
Published: January 2023

Chapter 6 presents the results of the interviews with respondents, revealing their pathways through and lived experience of food poverty. It discusses the impacts of food poverty as revealed by respondents, including hunger, the emotional experience of obtaining food aid and social exclusion. The chapter also discusses the multidimensional aspects of life on a low income, including fuel poverty, and how respondents use multiple strategies to cope with these challenges.
The Transforming Lives research project and the further education policy context
Authors: Smith Rob , Duckworth Vicky , Tuckett Alan
Published: January 2023

Chapter 1 introduces the central focus of the book: the notion of transformative teaching and learning and its particular resonance in contemporary further and adult education contexts. We provide examples from our research to illustrate the breadth but also the layered aspects of our analysis. This opening chapter will also provide a policy frame for the book as a whole giving an insight into the structural factors and forces affecting further education and adult education in England over the last two decades and more. Important aspects we touch on in this chapter also include the instrumentalist way young people are represented in policy documents and, a central concern of much of the book, the damaging effects of the funding, accountability and performance apparatus (FAP) that shapes (and we would argue undermines) educational experiences in further and adult education.
So what is transformative teaching and learning? Extending our theoretical and embodied understandings
Authors: Smith Rob , Duckworth Vicky , Tuckett Alan
Published: January 2023

Chapter 7 will revisit current theorisations of transformative teaching and learning and position our work within that field. Drawing on the heritage of the British adult education tradition, we flesh out a distinctive, contextualised theorisation of transformative education. We draw on a range of theoretical perspectives as we pull together the themes from the teachers and learners’ chapters and probe the interconnected nature of teaching and learning in transformative education. This involves engaging with the principles of critical pedagogy, the debate around powerful knowledges, looking at symbolic violence and embodiment in educational experiences. The strongly aspects of transformative teaching and learning are addressed by exploring the role of affect, spatiality and the triad of belief, hope, love and care in transformative teaching and learning. Finally, we return to purposes: do we want a further and adult education orientated to maintaining the (flawed) social inequalities of the past, or do we instead need to reimagine it as a space for reimagining the collective personal development and socially just changes that we need in order to face the enormous challenges of the future?
Social work in neoliberal, ‘multicultural’ Ireland
Authors: Marovatsanga Washington , Garrett Paul Michael
Published: January 2023

The chief focus of the chapter is on the Republic of Ireland, where both authors live and work. It is argued that the neoliberalism continues to characterise how society operates. Moreover, the imperatives of neoliberalism structure and constrain intents to promote social justice with Black African and other minority ethnic communities. The particular focus is on social work with children and families. Additionally, the situation of Black African social work students is explored.
Localising employment policy: opportunities and challenges
Authors: Green Ceri , Hughes Paul , Sissons Abigail
Published: January 2023

UK employment policy is at a critical juncture and policies need to respond to unemployment and broader economic hardship induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, both immediate and longer-term policies need to take account of the body of research examining active labour market policies (ALMPs) to avoid replicating the problems of work-first employment support. This is increasingly important due to the growing numbers of applicants and former Tax Credit recipients to Universal Credit, a policy which extends conditional social security to those in work on a low income. Ensuring research into these developments influences policymakers should unite social security and employment researchers more broadly, as this unprecedented policy change has the potential to transform the way individuals, the state and employers interact, and the power balance between them. In this chapter, we explore the role of social policy researchers in this context and argue that policy development and research in this area to date has suffered from uneven engagement with diverse actors and research communities. We advocate a ‘pragmatic realist’ approach to policy engagement reflecting on examples of social policy engagement in the science–policy interface while also drawing on our own varied experiences of engaging with policymakers in relation to ALMPs.
Continuity, Attachment and Care
Authors: Davis Juliet
Published: January 2023

These powerful words were spoken as part of an interview in a 2018 documentary called In the Shadow of the Shard, by the filmmaker and writer John Rogers. The film looks at how residents experience development pressure and urban change in a formerly industrial, Central London neighbourhood – Bermondsey. Traditionally a working-class, production-oriented district of London, Bermondsey lies just to the south of the River Thames, outside of the old twin cities of Westminster and London, urbanizing from the seventeenth century. Though long a peripheral place, since the late twentieth century Bermondsey has been the focus of expansions of the City of London’s office development and recognized as an ‘urban frontier’ of gentrification (Keddie and Tonkiss, 2010). The Shard – a ninety-five-storey, ‘super-tall’ (Graham, 2014) skyscraper designed by the Italian design practice Renzo Piano Building Workshop and built between 2003 and 2008 over the London Bridge railway station – is seen in the film as symbolic of the encroachments of the centre, the city, capitalism, iconic architecture, and middle-class residents on the neighbourhood.
The Public Problem of Recycling
Authors: Hird Myra J.
Published: January 2023

Chapter 3 focuses on waste’s diversion (recycling) as an industrial profit-making enterprise. While reduction (reduced consumption) is consistently touted as diversion’s primary goal, it is recycling (and to some extent re-use) that most represents our global (downstream) response to waste production. Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive examination of diversion practices and their limitations, and provocatively argues that industry and local governments work in tandem to deflect attention away from the upstream issue of limitless growth and consumption as foundational to neoliberal growth capitalism.
Housing and Regional Rootedness: Home Ownership beyond the Metropolis
Authors: Cook Julia , Cahill Helen , Woodman Dan
Published: January 2023

Housing affordability and declining rates of home ownership among members of the 25–34 age cohort are key concerns for Australian young adults. However, discussion has focused primarily on the challenges associated with urban housing markets, leaving young adults’ experiences of regional and rural housing markets comparatively under-addressed. This chapter focuses on this topic, presenting the findings of a discussion-based workshop conducted with 19 young adults living in a regional part of Tasmania, Australia. It illustrates the complex work that the participants performed in order to remain in a regional area with slim property and labour markets. Drawing on emerging research focusing on immobility and ‘rural stayers’ who remain in or return to rural and regional areas, this chapter contends that choosing to buy into a regional property market can be read as a key element of the complex ongoing mobility decision-making of young people living in regional and rural areas.
Backward Youth? Racist Trolling and Political (In)Correctness among Young People in Rural Sweden
Authors: Areschoug Susanna
Published: January 2023

This chapter explores and challenges widespread notions of rural racism and backwardness by engaging with the use of irony and satire among Swedish rural youth. Rather than viewing racism as individualized traits or opinions, ethnographic data is used to show how explicitly expressed racism can be understood as discursive positions in a matrix of moral intelligibility, a position that is ‘humorously’ inhabited or rejected differently with regards to gender, class and emplacement. While Swedish educational policies enforce ‘norm critical pedagogy’ as a way to ‘educate’ youth on tolerance and antiracism, the chapter shows how this reproduces ideas of rural moral inferiority. Analysing instead the (satirical) embodiment of the ‘politically incorrect rural racist’ as ‘trolling practices’ which require youth to be well-informed of contemporary cultural politics, the chapter argues that racist trolling is a way of critiquing national imaginaries of urban progressiveness and rural Otherness.
At the Margins: The Persistent Inequalities of Youth, Place and Class
Authors: MacDonald Rob
Published: January 2023

This chapter looks back on three studies, completed over 40 years, to consider change and continuity in the experiences of young people growing up in rural and marginalized localities in the North of England. It also reflects briefly on some of the continuities and repetitions in sociological thinking about young people and youth transitions. All three studies showed how place makes immediate ‘the structure of economic opportunities’ for young people, how it generates different degrees of inclusion and exclusion, and how it contours local class identities that tell you ‘who you are’ and ‘what you can do’. Young people’s identities and transitions have undoubtedly become less fixed under the pressures and opportunities of globalization. Nevertheless, place still operates in powerful, complex and multiple ways, and at different scales, in shaping young people’s attachments, aspirations and future possibilities. This may be particularly true for young people ‘at the margins’.
Death, Family and the Law
Authors: Kirton-Darling Edward
Published: January 2023

This chapter introduces the inquest system, including the paradoxes which exist in this unique jurisdiction. It outlines the inquest process and the approach the book will take in relation to analysis of it, including the ways in which the inquest can be understood as having historic, modern and contemporary forms. It introduces the conceptual materials upon which the book draws, including three key themes of (1) kinship, (2) different forms of accountability (technocratic accountability and community or convivial accountability), and (3) process, procedure and jurisdiction. It introduces the methods used in the empirical research.
Family in the Driving Seat
Authors: Kirton-Darling Edward
Published: January 2023

This chapter focuses on the pre-hearing process in the inquest and the ways in which kin are enabled to participate in those investigations. It focuses in particular on the question of who gets to be an interested person (with rights which include the right to ask questions) and the disclosure of documents before the hearing. It develops a theme from the two preceding chapters about a preference for implicit, provisional decision making, and suggests that when a decision is required, the two different framings of accountability can be identified in the responses interviewees gave.
Capitalism and State Ownership Models
Authors: Christensen Sverre A.
Published: January 2023

This chapter traces the historical origins of the Norwegian state ownership model and the Swedish family ownership model, and compares important features of the two. The chapter offers two major insights. First, it shows how both models secured national ownership and control of the largest companies in each country, and thus the importance of a national dimension of capitalist enterprise. Second, the paper explains some of the controversies around the Swedish model as of today, given that the Norwegian state ownership seems more accepted. Norwegian state ownership was always perceived as a sign of weakness, not least in comparison with the active ownership in Sweden, embodied by the Wallenberg-family. However, the lasting endurance of the Anglo-Saxon corporate governance ideology has portrayed active ownership as less attractive a choice, and dominant owners are subjected to more scepticism. Second, this corporate governance ideology was suited to accommodate passive institutional owners, which suited the passive Norwegian state ownership.
Capitalism and Income Inequality
Authors: Casson Catherine
Published: January 2023

To what extent has capitalism increased or decreased inequality? This chapter shows that inequality arises when some locations or individuals have access to the scarcer, and therefore most valuable, assets, while others do not. Those with the valuable assets benefit from an enhanced income and potentially also increased wealth. In the early 18th century the most valuable asset was agricultural land, by the mid 19th it was money to purchase and operate industrial equipment. By the 20th it was the skills of an individual in coordinating operations and generating ideas. These changes were most pronounced at the regional and individual level. Regional inequalities became significant in the mid 20th century as the performance of industrial areas began to fall behind that of service-focused ones. Yet social mobility improved as the emphasis on education decreased the significance of inheritance..
Society as Stressor
Authors: Brossard Baptiste , Chandler Amy
Published: January 2023

A major trend in the sociology of mental health, the stress paradigm incorporates a vast range of works that study how various difficulties, from discrimination to car accidents through sexual abuse and other traumas, generate stress; and how stress, when not buffered with the appropriate material and ‘psychological’ resources, is a catalyst for mental disorders. Embedded into longer term thinking about the effects of modern, urban life, and its biological underpinning, many current approaches individualize reactions to stress, referring to social contexts as quite abstract entities; and at the same time universalize stress, despite repeated studies that demonstrate the cultural and historical variations of its meaning. This chapter proposes two productive avenues to overcome these issues. Firstly, the concept of ‘minority stress’ helps to situate stress within the power relations that generate its onset, intensity, meaning and consequences. Secondly, a fuller engagement with the sociological nature of emotions is advocated, illustrated through the examples of anger and paranoia.
Saving Liberalism from Itself
Authors: Stacey Timothy
Published: January 2023

In the wake of populism, this book critically reflects on what is missing from the liberal project with the aim of saving liberalism. It explains that populists have harnessed myth, ritual, magic and tradition to advance their ambitions, and why opponents need to embrace rather than eschew them. Via examples of liberally oriented activists in Vancouver, it presents an accessible theorization of these quasi-religious concepts in secular life.
Myths That Might Save Liberalism: Emotional Supplements to Moral Logics
Authors: Stacey Timothy
Published: January 2023

The term myth has historically been used to separate ‘primitive’ religions from Christianity, and later religion generally from a rational worldview. In liberal societies, the term myth conjures either images of ancient stories about muscular demigods, or else the lies spread by politicians and influencers seeking to sow division. In this chapter I characterize myths as stories of great events and characters that defy our expectations of what is possible and inspire us to take action in the world. Understood in this way, we all live by myths; it’s just that some people are better at spinning them than others. Liberals have spent the last few hundred years seeking to quash myths at their peril. As a result, populists now have all the good myths, and no amount of fact checking will dispel them. Liberals need to rediscover myths that champion their principles while building communities characterized by compassion. I offer frameworks for doing this. For those worried that they must choose between myths and facts, I argue that myths are not alternatives to moral logics but supplements to them.
The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) and Globalization
Authors: Verheijen Tony , Staroňová Katarína , Elghandour Ibrahim , Lefebvre Anne-Lucie
Published: January 2023

This chapter discusses the economic development models and economic history of the MENA region and four focus countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia), the changing pattern of relations of MENA countries with international actors, and, in that context, the evolution of their civil service systems. On the first two points, sequential patterns of strong engagement and integration and isolation and self-reliance can be observed, with the last two decades showing a strong trend of re-engagement of MENA countries in the global economy and with international actors. Civil service systems, however, have not yet followed suit, and a disconnect between reintegration in the global economy and relatively unchanged civil service systems appears to emerge. The in-depth analysis on the influence of globalization on civil servants in the remaining part of the book will shed more light on these dynamics, as well as on the extent to which a more professional and engaged civil servant type is starting to emerge.
Globalization and Civil Servants: A Response Typology
Authors: Verheijen Tony , Staroňová Katarína , Elghandour Ibrahim , Lefebvre Anne-Lucie
Published: January 2023

The concluding chapter focuses on adjusting, deepening, and finalizing the typology of civil servants proposed at the book’s outset, based on the evidence gathered from the analysis of the influence of three dimensions of globalization. Findings on the relevance and nature of filters, along with the relative importance of globalization transmission channels, are presented. The experience gained using an innovative methodological framework is also reviewed. Globalization, in the three dimensions reviewed here, has an impact on civil servants’ values and behaviours. However, civil servants’ association to global values is more evident than any real shifts in their behaviour. The potential for globalization’s greater influence is visible, becoming apparent mostly in the discussion on the global drive to performance, and least on the open government movement, although the latter has the strongest potential to generate change. The in-depth interviews, using a blend of vignettes and traditional methods, helped to confirm and deepen the response typology proposed at the start of the book, as well as fine tune the discussion on how global influences are filtered by national systems.
Navigating Probation and Managing Substance Use: The Roles of Gender and Class
Authors: Duffus Melindy
Published: January 2023

The nature of the Criminal Justice System in the United Kingdom has been argued to disproportionately impact specific groups of people, in the way they are policed and sentenced. This chapter addresses the way that gender and class impact on people’s experiences of probation in the context of substance use. The chapter draws upon semi-structured interviews with ten practitioners and eight service users of the probation service. The analysis of these interviews highlights how intersectional oppressions impact on how individuals navigate through the Criminal Justice System, and the influence that substance use has had on that journey. It will show that those who are from lower class backgrounds are likely to stay in the Criminal Justice System for longer, and face heightened issues with finance and housing, than those from middle-upper class backgrounds. It will also highlight how higher levels of domestic violence, and an increased likelihood of engagement with sex work for female service users, impacts on their substance use and offending. This will demonstrate, through an intersectional lens, the way that females and those from lower class backgrounds face numerous challenges that influence how they experience probation and their ability to desist from crime.
Intersectional Studies in Prisons Research: Prisons and Punishment in England and Wales
Authors: Osman Saabirah
Published: January 2023

This chapter provides an overview of the ways in which the prison estate in the United Kingdom has expanded so rapidly, locating the social and political influences that have resulted in the disproportionate incarceration of particular groups (Prison Reform Trust, 2005; McAvinchey, 2011). The chapter explores some of the issues identified within previous research examining how issues experienced within the prison system can be compounded by factors such as race, class, gender and sexuality (Van Hout, Kewley and Hillis, 2020; Bosworth and Carrabine, 2001; Cheliotis and Liebling, 2006). In doing so, this chapter calls for more empirical work to be done that explicitly engages with intersectionality as a framework and highlight the benefits of adopting this approach. In utilizing an intersectional framework, we will be able to better understand the unique, complex and nuanced experiences of those who are incarcerated.
Erotic Dancers and Strippers
Authors: Mulvihill Natasha
Published: January 2023

This chapter presents extended narratives from two erotic dancers and strippers working in England and Wales, as well as short excerpts from interviews with other participants. Topics covered include autonomy, harm, managing the law, the licensing of Sexual Entertainment Venues (SEVs) and hopes for the future. It also explores the impact of COVID-19 and on the experience of participating in academic and government research.
Reflection
Authors: Mulvihill Natasha
Published: January 2023

This final chapter describes the process of seeking feedback on individual chapters from each participant and reflects on the methodological implications of the book overall. Also acknowledged are the limitations and absences.
Decolonizing Research Methods: Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities
Authors: Ewing Sara
Published: January 2023

This chapter reflects on the motivations, practices, and collaborations of the Decolonizing Research Methods (DRM) project at Goldsmiths, University of London. Whilst Goldsmiths has written ‘Liberate Our Degree’ into its strategic plan, it leaves the strategies for complying to academic staff. The DRM project is based on a series of eight themed workshops that situate Western academic research in historical, political, and social conditions that are tied to colonial practices of difference and hierarchy. The aim of the workshops is to deconstruct the epistemological foundations and categories of knowledge on which academic research is based, including the social identities and relationships it establishes, reinforces, or perpetuates. The chapter provides detail about the design of the workshops, and reflections on practice. including how they generate and facilitate participants’ ideas, assumptions, experiences, and values in relation to the theme. The ‘lecturer’ does not use slides or prepared talking points but acts as a facilitator, providing directed tasks and suggested readings to generate ideas, provoke discussion, analysis, and reflection. This pedagogical format is a great opportunity for co-producing classes, but it also presents challenges, particularly in managing expectations and highly personal responses, as well as disagreements.
Decolonial Praxis beyond the Classroom: Reflecting on Race and Violence
Authors: Settler Federico
Published: January 2023

When South African universities exploded in widespread student protest demanding equal access to higher education and decolonizing the curriculum, two questions plagued activists and researchers: What do we teach students in this context? and How do we teach students in a manner that is responsive to the context? Regular teaching and learning proved insufficient to help students reflect on their situation and were even met with suspicion and hostility (Settler, 2019). This chapter will discuss the production of a series of public performances and memorials through which students were able to reflect on their social reality, and how a monthly on-campus Salon afforded academics and students the opportunity for deliberation in a flattened, non-hierarchical and decolonizing space.
Over the course of several years, members of the Salon curated performances that emerged as a decolonial praxis (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018) in response to their experiences of alienation in the university. These curated performances and memorials allowed students (a) to reflect meaningfully on violence, resistance, and the racialized self, (b) to trouble ideas about the purpose of the university, and finally (c) to expand our conceptions about teaching and learning by performatively incorporating our bodies, histories, indigenous practices into a kind of decolonial praxis that opened new possibilities for exchange and reflection.
Reimagining Rural Criminology in a Time of Change
Authors: Bowden att , Harkness Alistair
Published: January 2023

The shape of rural communities depends greatly on what is practised everyday by rural people. In addition to everyday life, rural areas are structured by the actions of states, by the economy and technology – and so we must regard the rural as a distinct socio-spatiality. Moreover, the rural is connected to and shaped by local and global forces that organise both in and beyond its boundaries. The rural therefore intersects with economy, environment and politics at the macro level, but also with gender, class and ethnicity and with struggles for power, resources and identity that shapes its cohesion and (in)security. This chapter is structured in three parts. First, it reflects upon the rural as a socio-spatial nexus comprised of rural practices and shaped by the external world and the state. Here, the chapter reflects further on the shared space between rural and green criminology with reference to the Anthropocene. Second, it considers some of the ways in which the rural and rural people are represented in popular discourse. It contemplates some of these themes through the lens of rural criminology. Third, the chapter provides an overview of the various contributions in this book.
A Left Realist Approach to Rural Crime: The Case of Agricultural Theft in Ireland
Authors: Windle ames
Published: January 2023

Left realism originated as an applied theory to support communities to tackle crime in British working-class urban areas. While there are challenges to transferring theory from one context (British urban) to another (Irish rural), using Ireland as a case study this chapter argues for the value of a left realist approach to agricultural theft. The objective of this chapter is to take a small step towards rectifying the hidden nature of agricultural theft, and fear of theft by ironing out some conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues. The chapter begins with a review of Irish and international farm victimisation surveys. The core concepts of left realism are then summarised and its lessons are applied to agricultural theft. The final section draws lessons for Ireland from the international literature and proposes a left realist research agenda.
A Bad Pub Quiz
Authors: Brooks Thom
Published: January 2023

This first chapter introduces the ‘Life in the UK’ citizenship test. It provides an overview of its origins, its aims and the evidence that it has fallen short. The chapter provides a further overview of the book’s structure and the need for an urgently revised test.
A New Beginning
Authors: Brooks Thom
Published: January 2023

This chapter focuses on the launch of the UK’s citizenship test in 2005. The test was widely mocked for a variety of mistakes, especially in relation to historical errors, in what came to be seen as a rushed effort. This chapter sets out how the new test tried to incorporate the justifying aims and exposes further errors with this first effort.
The Gendered Face of COVID-19 in the Global South
Authors: Grugel Jean , Barlow Matt , Lines Tallulah , Giraudo Maria Eugenia , Omukuti Jessica
Published: January 2023

The Covid-19 pandemic embroiled the entire globe in a health challenge that has tested the capacities of countries and societies everywhere. The pandemic has also provoked a full-scale development crisis, with the most marginalised in society shouldering the greatest burden, epidemiological, socially and economically. Nowhere is this challenge felt more acutely than in the Global South, where deeply embedded structural inequalities have been exacerbated, and the poorest and most vulnerable have been left struggling to survive the impact of the pandemic combined with the day-to-day impacts of gendered, racialized, uneven and fragmented development. Since the very beginning of the pandemic, experts at all levels have warned that the most marginalised girls and women in the Global South would be disproportionately negatively impacted by the pandemic and the policies introduced to deal with it. We show how, in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, governments failed to grasp the importance of gender in their pandemic responses, viewing it as peripheral, rather than central, to a sustainable and equitable exit from the costs of Covid 19. Women and girls are not casual collateral damage of policy making during Covid-19, we argue. Rather, the price they are paying can be explained by the long-term failure to take gender seriously in development.
Regional Governance: A Missed Opportunity to Tackle COVID-19’s Gendered Inequalities?
Authors: Grugel Jean , Barlow Matt , Lines Tallulah , Eugenia Giraudo Maria , Omukuti Jessica
Published: January 2023

In this chapter we explore the health challenge that the onset of Covid-19 has presented to regional organisations. The pandemic has tested the capacities of regional bodies to coordinate responses to a crisis which in most cases, has affected every member state in the region simultaneously. We show in this chapter that early in the pandemic, there was an overwhelming recognition across regions that the pandemic was not only bringing a health challenge, but it would also represent an unprecedented socio-economic challenge, with costs distributed unevenly across societies and with a significant differential impact on the lives of men and women. These centred principally around the high levels of women who work in the informal sector without social security protections, increases in care burdens, increases in gender-based violence, reduced access to sexual reproductive health services and increased barriers to girls’ education. We explore to what extent have these organisations been able to effectively articulate their concerns on gender and health and bring their perspectives to bear on policy making at the national level.
Inequality: Increase or Reduction?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The pandemic and the related recession have strongly increased socio-economic inequalities of all kinds. This is in stark contrast to previous global pandemics where a high mortality rate among workers have led to higher wages via labour scarcity. During the coronavirus pandemic, in contrast, fatalities have been mainly concentrated in older age groups. Income inequalities were increased via lockdown measures for low-income workers, whereas highly educated professionals were able to work from home. The young, women and ethnic minorities were particularly disadvantaged. Wealth inequality has increased even more than income inequality. Inter-country inequality also increases, as does absolute poverty. Increased social stratification seems to become a cornerstone for post-coronavirus capitalism.
Climate Change: Cheap Dirty Energy or Green New Deal?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

During the coronavirus recession, we have witnessed a substantial reduction of climate-related pollution. This observation should help in convincing those people that still doubt that climate change is man-made. However, this observation also strengthens the tension between the protection of the environment and the creation of employment via economic growth. Moreover, many poor households will need years to recover from the economic losses during the pandemic. They will not like the perspective to pay substantially for climate protection, via high prices for carbon dioxide emissions. Correspondingly, we will witness intense struggles about the redistributive effects of climate protection in post-coronavirus capitalism, unless these burdens are shared very widely within a ‘Green New Deal’.
Agriculture: Global Supply Chains or Local Community Support?
Authors: Nölke Andreas
Published: January 2023

The coronavirus pandemic has vividly demonstrated the dangers of the modern system of global agricultural value chains, both with regard to the spread of zoonotic diseases and the insufficient provision of food for those with limited financial means. While a return to domestic smallholder agriculture may not always be the solution to this problem, there are convincing arguments for a shortening of very long agricultural supply chains and a reduction of hyper-specialization in agricultural production, moving back a lot of food production to peasant agriculture and peasant markets in post-coronavirus capitalism. A reduced degree of specialization in global agricultural production would also help with the second major problem raised by the pandemic, namely the potential spread of zoonotic diseases. Specialized production with large monocultures is more prone to the latter than production for local community support, which often is focused on a variety of products and ecology-friendly inter-cropping.
Childhood Domestic Violence and Abuse
Authors: Levell Jade
Published: January 2023

In this chapter I consider the narratives of the respondents that centred on the early years of their lives, in particular between birth to the end of their pre-teens. In these parts of their stories, the participants described their circumstances at home, experiencing DVA, alongside their emerging engagement with violence in school and on-road. Central to the discussion a contrast between the way they performed masculinity at home (defined by subordinated masculinities), and at school (emerging protest masculinities). It became clear through the analysis that the different spaces of home, at school, and on-road afforded different masculinity performances.
Policy Links: Why Is ‘Domestic Abuse’ Not ‘Serious Violence’? A False Dichotomy
Authors: Levell Jade
Published: January 2023

In this chapter links to contemporary policy in the United Kingdom are made. The author highlights the disconnect between the UK government’s ‘domestic abuse’ and ‘serious violence’ strategic areas, which exist on different professional planets. The author also delves into the public health approach to violence, which is gathering global momentum, and critiques its gender-blind approach, which sidelines gender-based violence and fails to connect male violence and masculinity.
Transnational Rule and Resistance
Authors: Anderl Felix
Published: January 2023

In the transnational realm, it feels awkward to speak of rule because traditionally, IR was built on the distinction of domestic rule and international anarchy. Yet, many global governance theories have acknowledged that various kinds of hierarchy exist beyond the nation state. In liberal approaches, these are frequently justified with the epistemic authority, the ‘knowing better’ of international institutions, which are legitimated by their expertise rather than governing through coercion. This chapter critically discusses these approaches and builds on alternative conceptions of authority, rule, and domination in order to shift the perspective from compliance to resistance. In such a view, rule would hence become visible where resistance takes place. Rule and resistance are understood as a dynamic constellation. Through the latter, we know that the former exists, and can consecutively analyse both through their interaction.
Mechanisms of Fragmentation
Authors: Anderl Felix
Published: January 2023

Social movements struggle to oppose the managerial mode of rule in open global governance because the latter ‘can avoid the accusation of deriving from a will to domination’ (Boltanski 2011). Critique therefore becomes disoriented and fragments as a result. But how does this happen? This chapter operationalizes this process. It surveys principles and practices of process tracing and introduces an understanding of process as constitutive rather than causal and unilinear. Based on this, five mechanisms are introduced which both constitute complex rule in global governance and keep the social movement in fragmentation: economization, incorporation, legitimation, professionalization, and regulation. These mechanisms are observable in practices both on the side of the institution and among its critics. Among the critics, however, these practices are contradictory, in effect causing movement fragmentation.
A History Of Interaction: The World Bank Group And Its Early Critics
Authors: Anderl Felix
Published: January 2023

This chapter traces the history of interaction between the Word Bank Group and its critics from the mid-1980s until 2001. Advocacy against the World Bank Group gained in size and depth quickly. Coalescing with what became the Global Justice Movement after 1988, the strength of this movement was its diversity, ranging from hardcore autonomous street-action groups to reform-minded NGOs. The chapter shows how the World Bank Group reacted to this movement, beginning to take seriously the moderate critics and inviting them in from the mid-1990s onwards. Moderates, in turn, started to defend their newly won privileges by distancing themselves from the radicals. Furthermore, ruptures between activists from the Global North and the Global South are traced with the example of the anti-debt campaigns, leading to a fundamentally altered field of critique after the millennium.
When a Contentious Process Opens Up: Extractive Industries Review
Authors: Anderl Felix
Published: January 2023

At the peak of its resistance in 2000, a transnational protest movement against extractive industries managed to pressure World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn to agree to a review of all activities in this sector. Based on interviews with most participants, this chapter reconstructs that review process. Led by the independent ‘eminent person’ Emil Salim, many advocacy groups decided to join and debated with other stakeholders, governments, companies and World Bank Group staff. The resultant review took up many of the critics’ complaints and made progressive recommendations to the World Bank Group. These recommendations were strongly contested inside the institution. The official Management Response took up some of the recommendations but watered-down central recommendations. Surprisingly, the powerful social movement did not react with protest to this weak institutional reaction, despite being very disappointed by the result. During this review, several processes of fragmentation, in accordance with the mechanisms of complex rule, can be found and illustrated, explaining this lack of critical response.
Conclusion
Authors: Anderl Felix
Published: January 2023

The conclusion summarizes the findings and evaluates the concept of complex rule as a specific order with effects on both governance and resistance. First, it discusses alternative pathways and the problem of equifinality, suggesting that the proposed theoretical approach holds against these alternative approaches. Secondly, it discusses the implications for international theory and highlights the promise of a more constellational theory of global governance, covering the subordinating effects of a transnational order without falling into conspiracy-traps by overestimating the agency of a single institution. Finally, the conclusion emphasizes that movement fragmentation was not an automatism but happened as a consequence of (partly conscious) decisions. Complex rule emerged in the process of interaction itself and cannot be explained by an external reason, much less by the power of a single actor. However, the conclusion emphasizes that the perspective of the book helps movements understand how they are divided and ruled by a constellation that keeps their critique in fragmentation.
If Not Rome or The Hague, Where? Reflections on Sanctioning and Punishing
Authors: Brown Chris
Published: January 2023

In this chapter, Chris Brown reflects on law, sanctions and punishment in international relations. He critically reviews the capacity of a praxis approach to guide us in situations when international law is broken. Brown contends that praxis is not action-guiding in the direct sense of being able to help us decide what to do in particular situations, even if it is able to tell us broadly how we should go on in the world. To illustrate this tension, he discusses Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the international responses to it. Brown argues that Kratochwil’s thinking can tell us why neither the International Criminal Court nor the International Court of Justice are going to be helpful in this case, but it fails to give us an alternative answer. He concludes that producing such answers simply isn’t what the practice turn as elaborated in Praxis is all about, and that, accordingly, this approach is of limited help to those who have a commitment to engaging more directly with the world of international politics.