bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Legends on the net: an examination of computer-mediated communication as a locus of oral culture
Authors: Fernback Jan
Published: April 2003

Building upon work that suggests an oral cultural dimension to cyberspace within real-time chat modes, this article supports that contention by examining traditional oral folklore as it exists within the textual context of the online environment. Specifically, this study is a formal analysis of online discussion groups devoted to the perpetuation and analysis of a particular type of oral folklore - urban legends - and the cultural significance of their existence in the online realm. As mediated human communication becomes more and more non-linear, decentralized, and rooted in multimedia, the distinction between orality and literacy becomes less evident and less important. The proliferation of urban legends online demonstrates the idea that cyberspace can serve as a locus for a primary oral culture and its attendant humanity and sociability in a simultaneously textual environment.
Mutiny on the bandwidth: the semiotics of statehood in the internet domain name registries of Pitcairn Island and Niue
Authors: Steinberg Philip E. , Mcdowell Stephen D.
Published: April 2003

The internet has evolved to have a complex top-level domain name system, in which generic top-level domains such as .com and .org coexist with country-code top-level domains such as .UK and .JP. In this article, the history and significance of this hybrid naming system is examined, with specific attention directed to the manner in which it simultaneously reproduces claims to globalism, state sovereignty, and the presumption of United States hegemony. It is found that the domain name system affirms the centrality of the sovereign state while concurrently challenging its underlying basis in an idealized nexus of nation, government, and territory. These themes are explored through case studies of two Pacific island microstate domains: .PN (Pitcairn Island) and .NU (Niue).
Radicals of presentation: visibility, relation, and co-presence in persistent conversation
Authors: Bregman Alvan , Haythornthwaite Caroline
Published: April 2003

When members of an online, distributed learning community revealed that understanding local patterns of communication purpose and form was key to learning how to operate in this environment, we turned to writers on genre and persistent conversation for help in understanding the basis of this community. We derive from genre literature the idea that radicals, that is root characteristics, of presentation exist in computer-mediated environments and define important aspects of conversation via such media. We propose three radicals of presentation that revolve around speaker-audience relations and identify areas of concern for communicators engaging in persistent, online conversations: visibility, addressing primarily speakers’ concerns with the means, methods and opportunites for self-presentation; relation, addressing the speaker’s concerns with the range and identity of the audience, and audience members’ concerns about relations with each other; and co-presence, addressing concerns relating to the temporal, virtual, and/or physical co-presence of speaking and listening participants.
Role and Position of Scientific Voices: Reported Speech in the Media
Authors: CALSAMIGLIA HELENA , FERRERO CARMEN LÓPEZ
Published: April 2003

The aim of this study is twofold: one, to determine the presence and function of scientific knowledge when it is required by such cases as `mad cow' disease, when the crisis breaks in the press; and two, to explore the role of scientific information through the analysis of quoted speech used by journalists in their discourse. Citation is the most explicit form of inclusion of other-discourse (D2) in one's-discourse (D1). Within the framework of the theory of énonciation (Ducrot's poliphony perspective), in combination with a critical view of discourse, we analyse the following: (1) the identity of agents of reference chosen by journalists; (2) the specific linguistic choices made in the pre-citation segment where the agents are introduced, that is, identification of discourse procedures and use of specific verbs of communication. The study shows the proportion of scientific and non-scientific voices, the different ways of representing science agents in the process of news communication as well as the use of citation by journal writers not just to confer authority and legitimation to their discourse but to set the scene of the conflict. The scientific role is not presented as a decisive social role capable on its own of reassuring public alarm and journalists fail to secure appropriate credibility for the scientific community.
Alchemy in sentencing
Authors: Roberts Julian V.
Published: April 2003

In the summer of 2001, the Home Office issued the Report of the Sentencing Review containing over 50 recommendations to reform the sentencing and parole systems in England and Wales. The White Paper, Justice for All, was published in 2002. The proposals constitute the most significant reform package in decades. A number of these proposals - such as the creation of a detailed sentencing guideline scheme, new sentencing options and recommendations to improve public knowledge of sentencing decisions - could well have a salutary impact on the sentencing process. However, the heart of the reform package contains an attempt to achieve the impossible: to reconcile within the same guiding statute (and sentencing guideline scheme) the conflicting sentencing philosophies of desert and utilitarianism. This article explores some consequences of the criminal record provisions by reference to the experience with sentencing reform in North America.
Alcatraz and Marion
Authors: Ward David A. , Werlich Thomas G.
Published: April 2003

The controversy over the behavioral and mental health consequences of confinement in high-security prisons has its origins in penal policies dating to the early 19th century. The rationale leading to the establishment of the first super-maximum custody prison at Alcatraz Island, California and the conversion in 1983 of the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois to a ‘supermax’ regime is briefly described. The subsequent application of the ‘Marion model’ by state prison systems is reviewed in terms of legal challenges and the criticisms of mental health professionals. Several measures of conduct after release from conditions of supermax confinement for Alcatraz and Marion inmates are presented. The need for systematic research and the difficulties in undertaking studies of this important new direction in penal policy are discussed.
Culminations of complexity
Authors: Vike Halvard
Published: April 2003

Political discourse in the Norwegian welfare state is characterized by the ambition to establish and secure universal welfare. In comparative terms, it has been quite successful in translating utopian goals to practical politics. The modernization of Norway, more so than most other western countries, has nourished a shared sense of politics as a collective activity and as the privileged tool for the realization of humanistic goals. The article attempts to show how this presumably salient element of Norwegian political culture developed as a part of the extraordinary continuity, characterizing both economic growth and the strengthening of a sense of political community, transcending the divisive effects of class differences. The contemporary version of local political discourse in Norway, while keeping the ambition of universal welfare very much alive, is faced with severe overload problems. Thus, local politicians, responsible as they are — both ideologically and institutionally — for providing welfare for the local population, find themselves simultaneously deeply involved in attempts to control swelling budgets and act according to the ideals of rational organizational management. These politicians think and act within an institutional field that, probably more so than most other such fields in modern society, is characterized by deep contradictions. By focusing on the complexity of the ideological and institutional field of local politics, the article demonstrates not only that this particular field absorbs contradictions, but that it transforms political activity and the politicians' sense of self in specific ways. Politicians often experience a sense of personal fragmentation as they attempt to represent their constituencies and `the weak ones in society', develop policies, represent the state's budget reduction requirements, control the municipal organization, while remaining loyal both to the bureaucracy and their sense of moral self. The concept of complexity helps to illuminate the ways in which the cleavages of early industrial society have `migrated', as it were, from the realm of political collectivities to the level of the self.
Hallowell's challenge
Authors: Garro Linda C.
Published: April 2003

A. Irving Hallowell challenged those involved in cross-cultural research to establish the categories used for making comparisons through an examination of how experience is endowed with meaning within the context of culturally constituted behavioral environments. Here, published comparative frameworks for explanations of illness are considered in light of findings from research in two culturally distinctive settings. Adopting Hallowell's behavior-centered orientation, I suggest that following actual cases in a systematic manner is critical to understanding the range of explanatory frameworks in a cultural setting, as well as the relative importance of available explanatory frameworks as cultural resources when dealing with illness. Taking Hallowell's challenge seriously requires that anthropologists maintain an openness to change in the categorical abstractions used to reflect epistemological and ontological realities in diverse environments.
Reciprocity's dark side
Authors: Narotzky Susana , Moreno Paz
Published: April 2003

This article proposes the concept of negative reciprocity as a necessary and substantive aspect of the general concept of reciprocity. We contend that the concept of reciprocity is useful only when conceived simultaneously in its negative and positive forms as they are articulated in historical processes. If treated in all its complexity the concept of reciprocity might help us to understand the ambivalence often present in social relationships. Reference to a moral domain is the central tenet that differentiates reciprocity from exchange. Reciprocity is based on a shared morality in its positive form and on the break, transformation or suspension of the moral order in its negative form. We base our discussion on the ethnographic account of the social relations that supported circulation of resources in the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, a comparative perspective indicates that the negative reciprocity pervading Auschwitz's social relations is an extreme example of a broader category of human interaction in no way unique.
Myths of discipline
Authors: Vincent Robin
Published: April 2003

In this article I focus on the prominent themes of a need for `discipline' and punishment in people's understandings of crime, authority, and the law, on the outer-city estates of Lower Shepton in Manchester, UK, drawing on my ethnography of the estates. I develop a Foucauldian analysis of the uneven relationships between local discourses and practices of `discipline', and `national' institutional frameworks — of legality, crime control and media — whilst avoiding the functionalist tendencies of recent studies employing the notion of governmentality. Using Fitzpatrick's formulation of the law as myth (1992), I show how disciplinarian strands in crime discourse, and their appeal to intact authority, provided a measure of symbolic resolution to some of the social conflicts and personal anxieties involved in the negotiation of everyday life on the estates, building consent for more punitive measures at the level of crime control policy in the process.
`Life is dead here'
Authors: Navaro-Yashin Yael
Published: April 2003

Using `no man's land' as metaphor for an abjected space outside the recognized domains of the international system, here Northern Cyprus, this article studies subjective experiences under an authoritarian regime. Inviting anthropologists of politics to `sense' the political that underlies contexts that would normalize disruption, the author here gathers signs, in the spatial surroundings and subjectivities in Northern Cyprus, of a glossed experiential catastrophe. The study of subjection under a self-declared `state' unrecognized by the international system is matched here with the reflections of subjective experiences in the radically transformed space. `No man's land' as metaphor does not isolate this particular context administered by an `illegal state' as a particular or peculiar space, but invites anthropologists to consider the `no man's land' aspects of other contexts (within the domain of `legal states') that they study. The article can be particularly read as a critique of anthropologies of globalization and transnationalism, which would reify mobility and ignore the immobilities and experiences of confinement that are produced by the very same international practices. The article addresses anthropologists of politics, of the state, of globalization, of space, as well as of subjectivity.
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Authors: King Barbara J. , Shanker Stuart G.
Published: April 2003

We argue that dynamic-systems theory (DST) offers researchers a promising alternative to the information-processing framework that has dominated the study of primate social communication. DST rejects a linear view of communication in which a sender transmits a signal to a receiver, who then decodes that signal for its information content. Instead, dynamic-systems theory envisions communication as an intrinsically creative process that unfolds as communicating partners continuously adjust their behaviors to one another. This process of continual adjustment, termed co-regulation, can be identified in the social communication of the African great apes. When researchers study communication in terms of co-regulated social interaction, new insights and research questions emerge that may help anthropologists better understand the nature of the vocal and gestural behaviors of our closest living relatives.
Late capitalism and ethnic revivalism
Authors: Rata Elizabeth
Published: April 2003

A new settlement between global capitalism and non-democratic forms of political regulation is emerging from the contingency between the neotraditionalist ideologies of ethnic revival movements and the modes of regulation of late capitalism. The discussion of the emergence of Maori neotribal capitalism illustrates the ways in which a neotraditionalist ideology (such as ascribed leadership and the assumed restoration of communal social relations of production) and non-democratic neotribal modes of regulation create the social conditions that guarantee the stability of capitalist accumulation. It is argued that this contingency threatens the historical and contradictory settlement between liberal democracy and capitalism and signals the possibility of a `New Middle Age' (Minc cited in Friedman, 1994: vii). This `New Middle Age' would be characterized by doubly oppressive social and economic structures: the oppressive political and social relations of traditional societies in conjunction with the exploitative economic relations inherent to capitalism.
With Elias in China
Authors: Brandtstädter Susanne
Published: April 2003

This article argues for the relevance of Norbert Elias' theory of civilizing process and social figurations of power for a political anthropology of institutional emergence. The empirical case discussed here is the emergence of seemingly traditional institutions in the more `developed' regions of rural Southern China — temples and lineages — after the economic reforms. I show how Elias' theory of social figurations of these institutions out of local interdependencies and competition, their relatedness with both the state and `civil' society, the past and the present, and their ability to combine competition and inequality with the production of a `moral community'. Using Elias allows integrating these apparent contrasts because in his theory social institutions and the direction of social change are not the result of human intentions or values, but of social figurations of power that, in turn, shape self-interested strategies and collective moralities.
Queer political news
Authors: Barnhurst Kevin G.
Published: April 2003

The American press no longer reports events but explains them, inadvertently enhancing the cultural authority of journalists. To discover how a prominent news provider exercises influence over political discussion, this case study analyzes National Public Radio (NPR) political coverage of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) communities. Reports increased in length and number during elections and the tone of LGBT reporting grew more positive than other coverage. As NPR manufactured news content more routinely and professionally, attention shifted from ordinary citizens to officialdom. Increased coverage was a mixed blessing, becoming more polarized as journalists balanced LGBT concerns against extreme right-wing attacks.
Bucking a trend in local television news
Authors: Kurpius David D.
Published: April 2003

This research investigates whether projects and movements designed to change the norms of local television journalism have succeeded. It explores this question through the case of Best Practices 2000 (BP2K), a foundation-funded organization aimed at improving local television public affairs coverage. This research compares BP2K to two other recent attempts to improve or increase local television public affairs coverage - civic journalism and the Wisconsin Collaborative Project. Stations working to improve public affairs coverage are compared to traditional market-driven journalism stations. This study explores the extent to which these efforts can change news coverage, and in doing so deepens our knowledge of the norms of market-driven news routine, which these projects, at least implicitly, question.
Book Review: Sweat not melodrama
Authors: Brennen Bonnie
Published: April 2003

Thirty years after the initial break-in, Watergate holds a mythic status within the history of American journalism. Whether individuals consider Watergate the beginning of modern investigative journalism or maintain that The Washington Post’s reportage helped destroy the legitimacy of the American political process, the press’s role in this political scandal continues to inspire journalists and provide justification for First Amendment protection of the press. Quite apart from the actual experience of Watergate, this essay suggests that the most famous chronicle of this political scandal, All the President’s Men, codifies an ideology of journalism which has framed an understanding of the role of the press in the United States and Western Europe since the 1970s. All the President’s Men can be read as an ur-text - a seminal text that illustrates a specific structure of feeling regarding the construction of contemporary journalistic practices.
Skills are not enough
Authors: de Burgh Hugo
Published: April 2003

This article argues that journalism can be taught as, and should be regarded as, a serious academic discipline and not simply a vocational training. Trends in society and polity place new responsibilities on, and require a better education of journalists. They must be equipped to make essential contributions as analysts and brokers of information. Journalism education has aspects specific to it: the particular balance of academic, applied and occupational learning; simulations of real working experience and engagement with the world; the conformity to professional standards of behaviour; the involvement with local communities; the application of the competency concept in assessment criteria; the high degree of transferability of skills, particularly research and composition skills. This combination can make for stimulating courses which provide a useful base for many types of work in later life and which compare favourably with other social science and humanities disciplines.
Biased Ministers, Inefficiency, and Control in Distributive Policies
Authors: Franchino Fabio , Rahming Anne J.
Published: April 2003

The literature asserts that legislators are unlikely to adopt inefficient policies unanimously. Yet the systematic and unanimous increase in quantities of Total Allowable Catch, under the auspices of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), is inefficient by internationally recognized standards. This article develops a game of distributive politics to explain this puzzle. The game is based on the assumption that specialized Council formations are composed of preference outliers and behave like `runway institutions'. The article shows how, over a period of 16 years, ministers were significantly less concerned with environmental protection, were more supportive of (agri-)fishery issues, and were more right-wing than their governments. The article also tests the conservationist preferences of the European Commission. Finally, we map these preferences into the policy output of the CFP and show how the Council deals with problems created by its own decisions and by national implementation through the restraining of national authorities and delegation to the Commission.
Which Decision Rule for the Future Council?
Authors: Nurmi Hannu , Hosli Madeleine O.
Published: April 2003

Decisions in the Council of Ministers continue to be surrounded by secrecy as far as the details of the decision-making process are concerned. Most of the research on reform efforts has focused on increasing transparency and on facilitating the management of various auxiliary bodies of the Council. In addition, a central focus has been placed on re-weighting of votes among the member states. In this article we argue that the current method of finding agreement and avoiding votes in the Council (`culture of consensus') will be impracticable with enlarged membership. Hence, formalized voting procedures will be needed. We discuss some desiderata of such procedures.
The Democratic Deficit in the European Union
Authors: Crombez Christophe
Published: April 2003

This paper studies the democratic deficit in the European Union (EU). It examines what constitutes a democratic deficit, analyzes whether there is one in the EU, and offers suggestions for a solution. I focus on the output of the legislative process and study whether policies deviate from those emerging in other political systems. In particular, I present a formal model of policy-making in a bicameral system, apply it to the EU, and compare the EU with the United States. I conclude that the institutional setup of the EU does not lead to policies that are fundamentally undemocratic, and that the composition of its institutions is not inherently less democratic than that of the US political institutions. I also find, however, that a democratic deficit may exist owing to a lack of transparency and an excess of delegation in the legislative process.
The State That Wasn't There
Authors: Hug Simon
Published: April 2003

`[C]onstitutions are unlikely to work as intended unless they employ the engines of Bentham, i.e., punishments and rewards.' (Sartori, 1994: ix)

`The transition to democracy consists of the design and manipulation of institutions... that render certain actions and the pursuit of certain outcomes in people's self-interest.' (Ordeshook, 1997: 111)
The Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Authors: Wacquant Loïc
Published: April 2003

This article first takes the reader inside the Los Angeles County Jail, the largest detention facility in the `Free World', to give a ground-level sense of how the entry portal of the US detention system operates by way of prelude to this special issue on the ethnography of the prison. A survey of the recent sociology and anthropology of carceral institutions shows that field studies depicting the everyday world of inmates in America have gone into eclipse just when they were most needed on both scientific and political grounds following the turn toward the penal management of poverty and the correlative return of the prison to the forefront of the societal scene. Accordingly, this issue seeks to reinvigorate and to internationalize the ethnography of the carceral universe understood both as a microcosm endowed with its own material and symbolic tropism and as vector of social forces, political nexi, and cultural processes that traverse its walls. Field researchers need to worry less about `interrupting the terms of the debate' about the prison and more about getting inside and around penal facilities to carry out intensive, close-up observation of the myriad relations they contain and support. This article discusses the obstacles to such research, including questions of access and funding, the professional organization of academe, the lowly social and therefore scientific status of the object of investigation, and the (mis)use of the military metaphor of `collateral damage'. It concludes by suggesting that getting `in and out of the belly of the beast' offers a unique vantage point from which to contribute to the comparative ethnography of the state in the age of triumphant neoliberalism.
Carceral Impoverishment
Authors: Marchetti Anne-Marie
Published: April 2003

This article draws on a year-long field study of and indepth interviews with inmates in seven French prisons conducted in 1993-4 to map out their penal trajectory and to show how the prisons operate not only to temporarily hide but also to produce and to consolidate situations of poverty. From initial entry, orientation, and internal transfers to furloughs and liberation, every stage in the carceral cursus contributes to the progressive and cumulative impoverishment of those inmates who are the most deprived of economic and cultural capital. Far from being a homogenizing force, imprisonment deepens inequality along a class gradient by accentuating pre-existing deprivations in the economic, material, physical, relational, cultural and affective realms. Not only do the poor go to prison more readily, but once behind walls they are also subjected to much more rigorous and deleterious conditions of detention and they come out of penal confinement with greater difficulty. It is argued that carceral impoverishment is the result of the unquestioned primacy granted to the imperative of security in the organization and routine functioning of the prison.
Psychopathy and the Face of Control in Supermax
Authors: Rhodes Lorna A.
Published: April 2003

In `supermaximum' or control prisons, inmates described as the `worst of the worst' are held in solitary cells under intensive surveillance. Ethnographic work in these settings shows how the prolonged isolation imposed on these prisoners occurs in the context of classification and placement within the prison. The category of psychopathy is used to designate inmates regarded as dangerous and to interpret their use of language through a merging of clinical and moral discourses. Diagnosis, conditions of confinement and public images of criminality are shown to mutually reinforce a logic of exclusion in which isolation comes to seem `inevitable' for some prisoners.
Perceived collective efficacy and women's victimization in public housing
Authors: Dekeseredy Walter S. , Alvi Shahid , Tomaszewski E. Andreas
Published: April 2003

Although it has not yet been applied to domestic violence and other types of crime in Canadian public housing, the social disorganization/collective efficacy model described in this article may help explain why people who live in such areas characterized by poverty and joblessness report higher rates of intimate partner violence and several other offenses than those living in more affluent communities. Using data generated by the Quality of Neighborhood Life Survey, a main objective of the Canadian study described here was to test this model. One of the most important findings is that community concerns about street crimes and informal means of social control designed to prevent such harms are not effective forms of alleviating intimate partner violence in public housing.
Trafficking of women for marriage in China
Authors: Zhao Gracie Ming
Published: April 2003

Trafficking of women for marriage is recognized as a modern-day slave trade, although it has a long history in China. The reasons for its resurgence in China include, but are not limited to, patriarchal values, state-tolerated sex discrimination, vulnerability of women and the transformation of socio-economic situations. Accordingly, the task of eradicating the trafficking in women involves combating feudal and patriarchal assumptions about male dominance and male supremacy; building up the confidence and dignity of the gender of female; systematic governmental and international support of issues of importance to women; restructuring legal systems where they are still imperfect; adjusting economic systems so that women are never exploited economically; strengthening fundamental and higher education of women; regulating objectifying and pornographic media images of women; and developing ways in which men and women can relate without either dependency or dominance. The author examines and evaluates both the strengths and weaknesses of the current criminal justice policy of the Chinese government against trafficking practices. She then argues that the existing policy against trafficking is insufficient and ineffective and needs to be reformed in a number of aspects as suggested. In this article, the author takes a multi-disciplinary approach, including historical, cultural, economic, ideological, sociological and legal study.
Fear, fumbling and frustration
Authors: Goldsmith Andrew
Published: April 2003

The dangers of doing fieldwork have received little consideration within the criminological literature. This article examines the author's experiences over the last five years studying policing and security in Colombia. It reflects upon a number of issues relating to the personal safety of the researcher and to the ongoing viability of doing field-based research in such an environment. The project `survival' skills of adaptability and methodological pluralism are contextualized and argued. The importance of local supports and acknowledging personal limits is also stressed. The need for criminology to look to anthropology and other field-oriented disciplines is suggested if criminology's quest for relevance in a globalizing world is to be successful.
The Internationalization of Long Term Care Provision
Authors: Holden Chris
Published: April 2003

This article analyses the extent and form of internationalization of the three largest for-profit providers of long term nursing and residential care for older people in the UK. This is a departure from most contributions to the analysis of the relationship between globalization and welfare, which have been focused at the level of the nation state. In focusing upon internationalized providers of welfare services, the article borrows from other disciplines such as international business studies. All three firms are found to be internationalized to some extent, although the form of that internationalization varies. This internationalization reflects the growing internationalization of services within the world economy more generally. The strategies of all three firms can be characterized as `market seeking' rather than `client following'. The parallel processes of internationalization and concentration are likely to increase in the UK long term care sector, as such firms take advantage of economies of scale at the expense of smaller providers.
Globalization and Social Policy
Authors: Yeates Nicola
Published: April 2003

Many accounts of globalization and social policy accept the `strong' globalization thesis in emphasizing the naturalistic, inevitable nature of globalization, the external constraints imposed on governments by international markets and international governmental organizations and the limitations placed on international and domestic politics and social policies. This article argues that a less `defeatist' and more fruitful way of analysing the relationship between globalization and social policy is to consider, first, how globalization has thrown up structures for contestation, resistance and opposition and, second, how states and other interests act domestically and outwardly through their own `multi-tiered', `multi-sphered' strategies to determine the pace, course, timing and effects of globalization. Accordingly, the article highlights the range of actions taken by states as well as by the voting, consuming and productive populations at a number of levels (local, national, regional, international) and in a number of spheres (national/transnational, political, economic) to regulate or oppose globalizing strategies. The outcomes of these struggles for social and economic welfare are never certain in advance but depend, crucially, on the context in which they are negotiated.
Global Social Policy, INGOs and Strategic Management
Authors: Ramia Gaby
Published: April 2003

The partial globalization of social policy is seen in the growth in importance of welfare programmes emanating from supranational and global governmental and non-government institutions. Yet social policy analysts have given relatively little attention to the significance of organizational management redesign for their field's global dimension. The primary objective of this article is to draw conceptual connections between `strategic management' patterns within the global (`super') international non-government organization (INGO) sector and the fight against global poverty. The principal argument is that the recent emulation by global INGOs of the strategic management methods of multinational corporations (MNCs) holds major implications for the effectiveness of delivery of anti-poverty programmes, and that this phenomenon calls upon researchers to pay closer attention to MNC organizational `structures' in assessing the effectiveness of global welfare reform. Primary among the salient INGO management changes have been the increasing use of INGO—government—corporate strategic alliances, stepped up contractualism, and various organizational redesign tools.
Researching black parents: making sense of the role of research and the researcher
Authors: Crozier Gill
Published: April 2003

Researching black parents has thrown into sharper relief the issue of the usefulness of research and that of objectivity versus subjectivity. These debates are hardly new but in research regarding participatory democracy it would be incorrect and indeed impossible to ignore them. Drawing on research with black parents, mainly mothers, and their views on their children’s schooling, this article begins to engage with the issues of data ownership and dissemination, together with the role of the white researcher and concerns of trust and risk in the research process. From the perspective of critical social research it is argued that in researching social justice issues and participation engaging the actors in a dialogic relationship with the researcher is essential, together with having some ownership over the data.
Exposing failures, unsettling accommodations: tensions in interview practice
Authors: Sinding Christina , Aronson Jane
Published: April 2003

This article aims to augment collective understandings of the ethical complexities of qualitative research, and to encourage more attention to the actual practices of interviewing than has usually been paid in discussions in this area. Drawing on interview transcripts, we offer an analysis of the ways vulnerability may be produced for research participants by the intersection of interview factors (an interview strategy, the interviewer’s presence, a line of questioning) with particular discursive and political surrounds. This conceptualization of the conditions of interviewee vulnerability prompts a revisioning of the power that researchers bring to, and exercise in, interviews. In reflecting on interactions with research participants we describe our efforts to use our power wittingly and responsibly.
Charisma Reconsidered
Authors: Turner Stephen
Published: April 2003

Charisma is a concept with a peculiar history. It arose from theological obscurity through social science, from which it passed into popular culture. As a social science concept, its significance derives in large part from the fact that it captures a particular type of leadership. But it fits poorly with other concepts in social science, and is problematic as an explanatory concept. Even Weber himself was torn in his use of the concept between the individual type-concept and a broader use of it to characterize the sacral character of culture and institutions. Which use is fundamental? Neither use seems to be able to be extended to account for the other, and in practice the term serves as a heterogenous residual category. Shils’ argument that the charisma of central institutions was fundamental was an attempt to make sense of the examples of institutional charisma that fell into this residual category, such as the jury, and assimilated charisma to the idea of the holy. But this conflicts with Weber’s idea of the originary or creative character of individual charisma, which by definition cannot derive from preexisting sacral qualities. Weber’s account of individual charisma focuses on success, and this suggests the idea that the power of the charismatic leader arises from the ability to confound and surpass expectations - to be extraordinary. This allows us to reconsider ‘originary’ charisma, and assimilate it both to rational choice and to Steiner’s account of taboo. A leader who produces a change in our risk perceptions by proving our previous perceptions wrong by the success of the leader’s actions is providing a novel rational choice for us: a new option together with new estimates of the risk in a course of action. Weber explained the situation of primitive or magical morality in terms of magical charisma producing taboos that were then rationalized, leading to permanent norms - which relies on the notion of charisma without explaining it. But Steiner goes further, by suggesting that taboo represents the intellectual organization of danger through the act of interdiction. The power to interdict is not based on some other power, but rather the power to organize danger through interdiction is originary. Is there originary charisma today? Or is the commonplace use of the term ‘charisma’ a transformation of the concept into something else? In popular culture, the term refers to role-models who break new ground, and if we consider the ‘dangers’ that they appear to their audiences to overcome, the phenomenon is not so different. Charisma seems to collapse into personal style, but in a world in which the old interdicts have lost their power, style itself becomes a matter of experimental success in the face of social danger.
Max Weber on Value Rationality and Value Spheres
Authors: Oakes Guy
Published: April 2003

This essay considers a question that Weber scholarship seems to have left untouched: is Weber’s concept of value rationality coherent? In making the case that it is not, I begin with the premise that value rationality is a product of processes of value rationalization that operate in value spheres. Because of self-destructive defects that undermine Weber’s analysis of these processes, his account of value rationality is invalidated as well. I conclude with some skeptical observations on his distinction between value rationality and instrumental rationality.
Social capital and migration
Authors: Pieterse Jan Nedeverveen
Published: April 2003

Intercultural traffic and mingling have been vital to economic innovation past and present — witness the role of travellers, migrants and diasporas as cultural brokers. While intercultural exchange is a prominent theme in cultural studies, studies of ethnicity have often been more occupied by group boundaries and antagonisms than by cross-group relations. In discussions of social capital, a central notion has been the ethnic economy. Here this notion is examined and rejected because it refers to national origin rather than ethnicity, and diverts attention from social and economic relations across cultural differences and boundaries. While immigrant groups may play a large part in national and transnational enterprise — formal and informal — this is not conceivable without considerable and extensive cross-cultural relations. This article also considers cross-cultural and interethnic enterprise from a long-term perspective and with a view to policy. The shift of emphasis to cross-cultural enterprise means taking into account the various types of social capital — bonding, bridging and linking social capital — within and across cultural boundaries.
Constructions of nation, family and gender
Authors: Komulainen Katri
Published: April 2003

The article investigates the collective nature of stories of war and the constructions of nationality embedded in these narratives. The material comes from a larger study, `Gender and Nationality in the Finnish Language Secondary School', and consists of 17 life stories of women who studied in secondary school in eastern Finland between 1927 and 1970. For the women, nationality — being a Finn — appears as a self-evident context of living, but stories about Karelia and the war form a theme with the help of which the banal nature of nationality is put to question. Narratives about the war are thus a part of the collective living tradition through which belonging to a (national) community can be constructed. What is crucial, however, is that the women use the concept of the family to reflect on their sense of belonging to a national community. The narrators equate Finns or Karelians with the extended family, a unit based both on familiar sentiments, such as loyalty, and hierarchies of gender and age. The article consequently examines two intertwined themes: 1) the collective nature of stories by Karelian evacuees, of whom there were about 420,000 after the wars between Finland and the Soviet Union in 1939—40 and 1941—44; and 2) the construction of abstract nationality with the help of the image of the family and the gendered construction of family loyalty. The article explores how the boundaries of nationality and the integrity of the community are conveyed and constructed by the metaphors of kinship, family and gender.
Access to Services and Meeting the Needs of People with Learning Disabilities
Authors: Lennox Tamsin N. , Nadkarni Joanne , Moffat Peter , Robertson Caroline
Published: April 2003

People with learning disabilities have greater primary health care needs than the general population, yet these needs often go unmet. A local survey of 49 adults with learning disabilities was carried out to consider patterns of access and need. Findings indicate that basic health needs, such as feet problems, incontinence, eyesight problems and specific medical conditions, of people with learning disabilities are frequently noted. Access to primary care services to address these needs is discussed along with suggestions for future research and recommendations for service planning.
Annual Health Reviews for Patients with Severe Learning Disabilities
Authors: Martin Graham
Published: April 2003

From 1997 to 2001 inclusive, annual health checks were offered to patients on the learning disabilities register of a general practice with a total of 14,410 patients. An average of 56 patients were invited each year and the attendance rate was 77.5 percent. The structured health check was administered by the community learning disability team (CLDT) nurse and general practitioner (GP) working together. The intervention rate was 1.56 per patient per year. This included referrals within the CLDT and to other professionals. Over half of all interventions (0.84 per patient per annum) were actioned within primary care. These included lifestyle advice leading to monitoring of obesity; ear and eye checks leading to referral or treatment; review of associated locomotor, hormone, skin, digestive system and CNS conditions resulting in medication changes; and blood tests. The health check highlighted continuing treatable conditions which otherwise might not have received attention.
Becoming a Learning Organization
Authors: Iles Ian K.
Published: April 2003

Following the White Paper Valuing People, person centred planning is now firmly on the agenda of services to people with learning difficulties in England. Person centred planning has its foundations in communities of practice that have innovated and developed person centred approaches to action planning for disabled people. This article suggests that services will need to undergo some radical re-visioning of their ways of working if they are to make a meaningful reality of person centred planning. It is further suggested that services need to become learning organizations, committed to values of inclusion and to living those values in their practice. Further, by promoting and celebrating innovation and creativity, by flattening hierarchical structures and promoting social entrepreneurship and cooperative working and inquiry, services can further develop person centredness in what they do and make a reality of the rhetoric in Valuing People.
Moving from Long-Stay Hospitals
Authors: McConkey Roy , McConaghie Jayne , Mezza Felice , Wilson Jennifer
Published: April 2003

A cohort of 68 persons had been resettled from a long-stay hospital over a 5 year period, with over 90 percent moving to residential and nursing homes. Interviews were conducted with 39 residents and 34 relatives. Residents had more likes and fewer dislikes about their present accommodation than about the hospital. Nearly all were happy to have moved. A minority of families had been unhappy before the move. After the move, all families felt the residence was at least equivalent to the hospital, with most rating it as much better. Families liked the staff, the atmosphere, the buildings, and the individual rooms. They disliked the congregated living models, the failure of people to move on, and the dearth of social networks. Recommendations include increased awareness of new housing and support options, regular reviews of clients' needs and aspirations, and opportunities for access to independent advocacy services.
Eating ‘Dawn’ in the Dark
Authors: Loudermilk A.
Published: April 2003

Romero’s masterpiece about cannibal zombies plaguing the world is set in a US shopping center, redefining the zombie so as to infect consumer identity. The popular perception of mindless consumer as zombie is owed strictly to Dawn of the Dead (1979), and extends far beyond the film’s genre, demographics and era. This film - itself a commodity - has earned a place in the American imagination by undermining that very imagination’s dependence on commodity culture. A combination of film analysis, cultural studies and personal narrative, this essay endeavors to tell the story of the story called Dawn of the Dead by locating the postmodern zombie historically in popular culture, analyzing the film as a satire of what Romero calls ‘the false security of consumer society’, exploring Dawn as a commodity itself (one appropriated by the very consumer culture Romero sought to subvert), considering Dawn as a master tale spawning ‘rip-offs’ and hybrids, and articulating all the while the parallels between Dawn’s postmodern zombie and the North American consumer.