bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Frontal Plane Angular Knee Deformities in School Children in Kribi, South Region of Cameroon
Authors:   Department of Surgery and Specialties of Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé 1, BP 1364, Yaoundé, Cameroon Department of Mechanical Engineering, ENSET, University of Douala, BP 2701, Douala, Littoral Region, Cameroon., Tsiagadigui Jean Gustave , Ateh Robinson Mbako ,   Faculty of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Douala, BP 2701, Douala, Littoral Region, Cameroon., Yamben Marie-Ange Ngo ,   Department of Surgery and Specialties of Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé 1, BP 1364, Yaoundé, Cameroon, Ngongang Franck Olivier ,   Department of Surgery and Specialties of Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé 1, BP 1364, Yaoundé, Cameroon, Eone Daniel Handy ,   Department of Surgery and Specialties of Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé 1, BP 1364, Yaoundé, Cameroon, Sosso Maurice Aurelien ,   Department of Surgery and Specialties of Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé 1, BP 1364, Yaoundé, Cameroon
Published: January 2024

Bone problems such as angular deformities of the knee are common in children in Africa. The aim of this survey was to study epidemiologic aspects of frontal plane angular knee deformities in school children in Kribi. A total of 860 school children in Kribi aged 3 to 18 years were surveyed in a cross-sectional descriptive study from December 2019 to March 2020. Each child was examined. Intercodylar distances, intermalleolar distances and the tibiofemoral angles were assessed. The type of knee deformity in the frontal plane was determined from the children`s tibiofemoral angles and compared with reference values of normal children in the same age ranges. One hundred and fourty two (142, 16.5%) children surveyed presented with frontal plane knee deformities, with genu varum representing 68.0% (96 cases) of the deformities. The prevalence of these deformities in school children in Kribi varied significantly with age. We did not find any significant difference in the variation of these deformities with gender or ethnic groups. We identified some frontal plane angular knee deformities, including bilateral deformities being predominant 90.71% (127 cases). The mean body mass index was higher than those of normal children. 15.5% (22) of them presented with associated deformity in the sagital plane, dominated by bilateral genu recurvatum and 33.8% (48) of them presented with associated rotational knee deformities, dominated by bilateral medial rotation. Frontal plane knee angular deformities are common amongst school children in Kribi. Their prevalence is 16.51% (142 cases). This prevalence varies with ages. Sagittal plane and rotational plane deformities are equally present in children presenting with these deformities. Keywords: Bone, Children, Deformities, Cameroon.
Atypical Osteoid Osteoma of Proximal Femur and its Surgical Challenges: A Technical Note on ‘Wandering Nidus’ and Double Lesion
Authors:   Department of Trauma & Orthopaedics, (SRIHER) Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Porur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India., Chokkalingam Sitsabesan , Murali Arunan ,   epartment of Radiology, (SRIHER) Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Porur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India., Santhosham Roy ,   epartment of Radiology, (SRIHER) Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Porur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India., Menon Gopinath ,   Department of Trauma & Orthopaedics, (SRIHER) Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Porur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Published: January 2024

Introduction: Osteoid osteomas are painful benign bone tumors, accounting for 10% of overall primary bone tumors. Typical osteoid osteomas are located intracortical or intramedullary in the metadiaphyseal region of the long bones. The Atypical ones are the Juxta and Intraarticular type, posing greater challenges in its diagnosis and management. CT and MRI scans have better chances of defining the nidus lesions in Atypical osteoid osteoma of the hip joints. Surgical treatment options include, image guided percutaneous interventions such as Radio frequency ablation, Laser or Cryo ablation. These modalities achieve surgical cure, but lacks the opportunity for a histo-pathological confirmation. Our cases will highlight the ‘wandering nidus’ in hip osteoid osteoma and the possibility of dual pathology (Osteoid osteoma and Osteomyelitis) in the same hip. Case study: We present two cases of hip joint osteoid osteomas (aged 18 yrs and 10 yrs) to highlight the diagnostic challenges and to discuss the different methodology of treatment. CT scan with additional MRI studies confirmed the radiological diagnosis after a delay of 6-8 months. The first case will highlight the wandering nature of the nidus (explained by the position of the calcific spicule within the nidus with reference to the needle tip), the challenges for needle trajectory with close proximity to femoral vessels and the “coaxial technique using chopstick maneuver” for CT guided needle excision. The second case will highlight the feasibility of percutaneous excision and surgical curettage in the presence of dual pathology. Conclusion: Both the cases were successfully treated by CT guided n excision biopsy and had the histopathological confirmation. Needle technique allows confirmation of diagnosis and exclusion of other differential pathology. Keywords: Wandering nidus, Atypical osteoid osteoma hip, Chopstick maneuver, Coaxial technique, Double hip lesion.
Muhammad Ayub, ed.,
Economics and Economic Policy – Islamic Perspective (Islamabad: Riphah International Islamic University, 2022), 670.
Authors: Shaikh Salman Ahmed
Published: January 2024

This book is jointly written by a group of eminent experts in Islamic economics and finance including Prof. Dr Muhammad Fahim Khan, Prof. Dr Muhammad Ayub, Prof. Dr Anas Zarqa, Prof. Dr Akram Laldin, Prof. Dr Muhammad Tahir Mansoori and Prof. Dr Ma’sum Billah, among others. The book is divided into six parts and 22 chapters. Part one builds the ground for a new approach in economics by highlighting the theoretical and socioeconomic challenges being faced under the mainstream paradigm of economics. It is argued that beyond market economics, ethical values and the role of the entrepreneur in the production process are undermined or ignored in mainstream economics.
Midlife and the adult child
Authors: Brett Bethany Morgan
Published: January 2024

Chapter 1 begins with a critical account of the life course and life stage models of human development. The focus then turns to the unique challenges faced by those in the midlife period. One of the key features of the midlife is a shift in generations which sees the loss of the older generation and changes in the generation below, bringing with it an increased awareness of ageing and personal mortality. This existential anxiety is heightened when the adult child is faced with the care for, or loss of, their older parents.
Becoming a carer
Authors: Brett Bethany Morgan
Published: January 2024

This chapter highlights how family relationships can change when making decisions about care for an ageing parent. There is an exploration of the definition of ‘care’, ‘the feminist ethics of care’, and the implications becoming a ‘carer’ has on the adult child’s sense of identity. There is a particular focus on sibling dynamics and the coordination and division of care labour within family systems.
Materiality, clothing, and embodiment in care
Authors: Brett Bethany Morgan
Published: January 2024

This chapter begins by looking at the materiality of ageing and how meaningful attachments are made to objects associated with or involved with the transition into care – what possessions are taken into the home and who made those decisions about what to take, and which belongings help older people feel more connected to their past social identities. In particular, it is argued that clothing is central to personal and social expression. Having someone else choose your clothes for you, or having personal garments communally washed can contribute to a sense of disconnection, not only to the social environment of the home, but also to one’s sense of self (Twigg, 2013). In the transition into care most parental homes need to be sold, rented out, or returned to the council. The experience of sorting through a parent’s property and clearing a home is highlighted as a particularly physical and emotionally demanding task for the adult child.
Social connections and relationship building in residential care
Authors: Brett Bethany Morgan
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the challenges faced by older people as they settle into their new home, and how they find new avenues of self-expression, autonomy, and friendship. It highlights the relationships that are made in the home between the older person and other residents, staff, and visiting relatives.
Discipline and its discontents: multi-, inter-or trans-disciplinarity?
Authors: Telling Kathryn
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores one of the only features that characterises all liberal arts initiatives in England: interdisciplinarity. Using Rob Moore’s distinction between routine interdisciplinarity and hyper-interdisciplinarity, it relates how institutions’ promotional websites reject disciplines and the complex ways that this rejection is negotiated by students and academics. They seek to disentangle celebratory liberal arts advocacy by drawing attention to how interdisciplinarity is practised on the ground in higher education. First, academics note the educational structures that are required to sustain (or not) interdisciplinary innovations, where broader questions of specialisation, progression and the modularisation of the curriculum must be considered. Second, students, in particular, can be critical of very grand assertions about the capacity of applied, problem-based learning to solve all manner of complex, ‘wicked’ problems.
Understanding Abuse in Young People's Intimate Relationships
Authors: Davies Ceryl Teleri
Published: January 2024

This book enriches our understanding of the influences of gendered social norms on the nature of young people’s intimate relationships. It explores the gendered power to negotiate and dictate the progression of young intimate relationships and the dynamics of abusive behaviour patterns within these relationships. The discussion includes a focus on evaluating the nature and progression of the relationships, including an exploration of the gendered patterns of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ abuse, and the nature of coercive controlling behaviour, including the impact of everyday forms of harassment and sexual bullying in schools and beyond. The book illustrates the importance of creating a ‘female-only space’ for this form of discussion, with a focus on demonstrating the importance of promoting young women as ‘active agents’ to share their views. The discussion finalises with an exploration of a whole-community approach to promote healthy young intimate relationships across our communities.
Framing young women’s voices
Authors: Davies Ceryl Teleri
Published: January 2024

The voices of the young women shaped the foundation for this book. This chapter ‘sets the scene’ regarding the nature of the problem and the context of young people’s intimate relationships. The emphasis is on how young women continually modify and negotiate their behaviours as a result of their interactions and how their understanding(s) influences existing and new definitions of behaviour within these relationships.
The nature and patterns of abuse in young intimate relationships
Authors: Davies Ceryl Teleri
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the key differences in the nature, patterns and visibility of abuse in young intimate relationships, in comparison with adult intimate relationships. The severity and impact of intimate partner abuse on young women is highlighted, with a specific focus on exploring the continuum of abuse. This includes looking into the nature of coercive control and the psychological harm inflicted by such abuse, as well as everyday forms of harassment, such as sexual bullying, including groping, and gendered patterns of verbal abuse in schools and beyond. The discussion within this chapter will also begin to explore the impact of abusive behaviour on young women’s well-being and identity.
The gendered ‘doing of sex’: sexual double standards
Authors: Davies Ceryl Teleri
Published: January 2024

Chapter 4 explores the dichotomy of a slag/angel and gendered ‘sexual double standards’, and this appears as a challenging dilemma for young women from their attitudinal understanding and experiences. The discussion will focus on the pressure on young women to perform the overt sexual role which is aligned with being a ‘slag/slut’. Despite acknowledgement by young women that this is problematic and an unfair label, this is perpetuated by these women themselves. Pervasive ‘double standards’ exist in relation to girls’ and boys’ sexual activity, which function as a dichotomy for young women of angelic femininity and the stigmatised sexual slut/slag/whore, illustrating the precarious nature of their sexual reputation, in sharp contrast to young men’s laddish/sexual hero role. Thus, it is permitted and expected for young men to have a focus on the physicality of intimate relationships. The ingrained fear of transgressing gender norms and challenging this sexual emphasis places young women within the quandary of ‘sexual double standards’. The discussion explores how the ‘doing of sex’ for young women ignites a web of controversy and dilemma, often placing them in an impossible position.
Tax and the social policy landscape
Authors: Lymer Andy
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides an overview of the UK’s tax system, with a particular reference to its relationship with social policy. It reviews the tax system in its current form and provides some historical perspective to help understand the system. It seeks to outline what a tax is, why tax is an important feature of a modern democracy and how it is administered for social benefit. It discusses what are known as the three ‘tax bases’ – the broad classifications under which taxes are created. It also discusses how tax policy is set and how taxes are administered in the UK – in general terms but also in terms of some of the key features of the policy-setting process and administration that have evolved over the 40 years since the book was published upon which this title looks to build (Sandford et al, 1980).
Fiscal welfare and tax expenditures
Authors: Sinfield Adrian
Published: January 2024

Fiscal welfare and tax expenditures are tax reliefs created by governments to run public policies through taxation rather than through public spending programmes. Yet their impact on individuals, the economy and broader society is still remarkably neglected. Left hidden, if not secret, they are not scrutinised and analysed along with direct public spending. As the chapter shows, their UK scale is considerable, greater than in most countries, and the costed policy-motivated reliefs alone probably exceed 8 per cent of gross domestic product. After introducing the concepts and their definitions, the available UK evidence that HMRC has at last begun to reveal is considered. While many more tax reliefs are now being costed, there is very little analysis, especially of their distributive and behavioural impact. Yet most income tax reliefs and many others are means-enhancing and confer greater benefits on those liable to higher rates of tax: this is in marked comparison to social security, which has become increasingly means-tested for those of working age. Failure to take account in policymaking of this reinforcement of inequality in society and other behavioural consequences serves to undermine, if not sabotage, public spending objectives with considerable political as well as social impact. In addition, the benefits of tax reliefs to employers and institutions such as pension funds, building and other industries have received little scrutiny. Possible policies to achieve greater transparency, accountability, equality and fairness are considered.
Tax, benefits and household income
Authors: McKay Stephen
Published: January 2024

This chapter demonstrates how the system of social security benefits and taxes affects final incomes. It considers the range of different types of taxes and benefits and their role in either increasing or decreasing inequality. Comparisons are made with other countries – the UK doing less by way of redistribution. It also considers the response to COVID-19 and lockdowns. More generally, it traces the development of policy over time, and the move towards less progressive indirect taxes compared with income tax.
Taxation, health and social care
Authors: Ruane Sally
Published: January 2024

This chapter considers key aspects of the role of taxation in health and social care in the UK. It examines the connection between taxation-based funding and universal access to NHS services, and public opinion regarding tax increases for higher funding. It contrasts the more stable and highly popular approach to funding the NHS via taxation with the unsatisfactory, crisis-prone approach to funding social care, which is primarily dependent on private fees and unpaid family labour. It outlines the introduction of the shortlived Health and Social Care Levy in 2022 as a proposed but flawed solution to the social care crisis. The chapter examines the role of charitable status in successful private but unsuccessful public attempts to reduce the tax liabilities of health care providers. The contribution of taxation to sustaining health and wellbeing both via behaviour-changing duties on cigarettes, alcohol and sugary drinks and via the part taxation plays in reducing inequality is described. The chapter finishes by assessing the options available to governments seeking new approaches to taxation in the funding of health care.
Homes, housing and taxation
Authors: Gregory James , Lymer Andy , Wynter Carlene
Published: January 2024

In 1980, housing policy in the UK was described as ‘a dog’s breakfast’ that could not be rationalised either in terms of declared government housing objectives or the more general aims of the fiscal system. This chapter explores the extent to which this situation has changed in the 40 years since these remarks were made. In this chapter, we focus on the taxation-related tools used by governments in creating the national housing supply. The use of general taxation is key to the provision of direct public revenue to support these housing objectives. However, governments also make use of varied tax interventions that are directly housing related, including providing a variety of tax reliefs and applying a mix of various taxes specifically on housing, including stamp duty, council tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, income tax and value added tax. We will touch on how each of these are used in this chapter.
Gender and taxation
Authors: Himmelweit Susan
Published: January 2024

This chapter outlines how attention has moved since the 1980s from challenging gender inequality within taxation itself to examining how the tax system works to increase or decrease a variety of gender inequalities in society. After a brief look at independent taxation, the defining gender issue when Taxation and Social Policy was published in 1980, the chapter introduces Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB), a movement to democratise and make budgets more gender sensitive. The main principles of the GRB approach are outlined, including why gender responsiveness across a range of inequalities should be the aim rather than gender blindness, and its application examined both internationally and through its specific focus within the UK. These GRB principles are then discussed by applying them successively to the societal functions of tax and some specific UK taxes.
The climate crisis and taxation
Authors: Bridgen Paul , Büchs Milena
Published: January 2024

Few commentators believe the UK government’s policy framework for achieving its target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net zero by 2050 is sufficient. There is a strong case for a carbon or energy tax, but from a social policy perspective such taxes raise distributive concerns. Yet, as this chapter shows, taxation of carbon already exists in the UK in a range of fiscal instruments that affect the cost/price of GHG emissions. These have emerged uncoordinated with little concerted analysis of their distributive impact or the adequacy of benefit payments that mitigate impact. The chapter shows existing UK carbon taxation to be highly regressive with mitigation efforts wholly insufficient, particularly with respect to the lowest-income decile households. What is required, it is suggested, is a re-consideration of domestic energy taxation encompassing the development of fully worked through compensatory mechanisms, including universal services delivering basic needs.
The oppressive history of ‘child welfare’ systems and the need for abolition
Authors: Dettlaff Alan J. , Copeland Victoria
Published: January 2024

The history of the ‘child welfare’ system in the United States, as is true of the history of most government systems following abolition of human chattel slavery, is a history that has centred on maintaining and preserving the system of White supremacy upon which the United States was founded. Since its earliest origins, the ‘child welfare’ system has been designed to maintain the superiority of White Americans while maintaining the oppression of Black Americans, first through intentional exclusion of Black families when services focused largely on poverty relief, and later through intentional over-involvement when those services shifted to surveillance and punishment due to poverty. While the practice of forcibly separating Black children from their parents as an act of racial oppression originated with human chattel slavery, today the ‘child welfare’ system, which we more accurately refer to as the family policing system, maintains this oppression through the forced removal of Black children from their families at a rate nearly double that of White children. This act of racial oppression perpetuates harmful outcomes among Black Americans in the form of poverty, homeless, joblessness and others, which each serve as drivers for their continued involvement in and oppression by this system.
Social assistance in Franco’s fascist Spain (1939–75): a history of social control, family segregation and stolen babies
Authors: Inés María , Herrero Martínez
Published: January 2024

The founding of the first Spanish school of social work in 1932, in Barcelona, is a well-known and celebrated milestone in the development of the social work profession in Spain. The school was financially supported by Raül Roviralta and was linked to a Belgian Catholic school of social work. The activity of this first school of social work was short lived, as it came to a halt with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. But very little is known or discussed about some dark ramifications of the school´s work and the pro-fascist political trajectory followed by its patron, Roviralta, during and after the war. This is just one small reflection of a significant area of political blindness affecting most historical accounts of the evolution of social work in Spain: a lack of explicit acknowledgement of its history of complicity and collaboration with the social control, oppression and indoctrination methods of the far-right dictatorship which was established at the end of the civil war in 1939 and lasted until 1975. Extreme implications of this complicity include instances of involvement in human rights abuses such as forced removal and stealing of babies from political prisoners and other families deemed unworthy or incapable to raise their children, according to the Spanish religious and cultural values which the dictatorship vowed to protect and enforce. Little is known, either, about histories of social workers´ individual and collective resistance to such abuses.
The radical roots of popular social work in Palestine
Authors: Lavalette Michael
Published: January 2024

This chapter looks at the roots of what we might term an ‘organic’ Palestinian popular social work. There is a growing interest in social work within the Palestinian Authority, but too often this focuses on the introduction and implementation of formal international standards of social work practice, at the expense of a focus on specifically Palestinian traditions of collective, community welfare provision. To put this in context, professional interpretations (and many academic histories) of social work often ignore the contested nature of the social work project. They suggest a unified profession which has developed and grown over time, reflecting a common origin, set of practices and methods and a shared value base. The chapters brought together in this collection immediately throw this conceptualisation into question. Social work is divided by competing interpretations and traditions of what it can and should be. These are important, and different, perspectives within professional social work and speak to different values and political standpoints on the social work project. But they remain different approaches within the institutions of the profession, a social work primarily organised ‘from above’ to meet the demands of service providers, institutions and states. One could usefully consider social work as having ‘two souls’: one the official ‘soul’ of professional social work and another developing out of the alternative cultures, practices and struggles of oppressed, marginalised and class based networks within capitalist society.
Institutionalisation and oppression within the mental health system in England: social work complicity and resistance
Authors: Moth Rich
Published: January 2024

This chapter begins by locating institutional oppression in the English mental health system within its wider sociopolitical and historical context. It does so by introducing the Gramscian notion of the ‘integral state’ to examine the dialectical interaction between the coercive, disciplinary and distributive functions of the capitalist state, and how the counterbalancing of these elements, in particular force and consent, shapes and reshapes welfare regimes over time. It goes on to apply this theoretical lens to a historical overview of forms of mental health provision in England from the Victorian asylum to contemporary neoliberal services. The chapter then explores the social work profession’s engagement with these oppressive institutional systems and psychiatric practices which has ranged from complicity to resistance. This Gramscian mode of analysis is utilised to examine some of the tensions and contradictions underpinning these divergent responses.
A refugee crisis or a crisis of anti-immigrant politics? Hostile refugee reception, the pandemic and new solidarities in Cyprus
Authors: Trimikliniotis Nicos , Tsianos Vassilis
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the challenges for grassroots social work that emerge when states fail or refuse to meet basic requirements for the protection of asylum-seekers, or when states choose to neglect or even expel them, thereby generating a racialised hostile environment. It focuses on de facto divided Cyprus, examining issues pertaining to overcoming the ethnic and racial discrimination faced by migrants and asylum-seekers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, measures were introduced which have had a lasting effect in reshaping the rights of citizens and non-citizens, exacerbating old divisions and contradictions and configuring new ones. As a result, we have seen the derogation of rights, as well as the resurgence of racist ideologies. This has impacted intensively on the rights of non-citizens (asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants). It is important to understand these current processes in historical context. Since British colonial times, official state-sanctioned social work in Cyprus has been one of complicity rather than resistance. Social work was shaped by the history of the country’s political conflict and socioeconomic development. With independence in 1960, social work was reshaped by the protracted ethnic conflict (1963–74) leading up to the 1974 coup by the Greek junta and invasion by Turkish troops that resulted in the de facto division of the country. The north of the island, which is majority Turkish Cypriot and de facto governed by the non-recognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus remains economically less prosperous than the south. The south is majority Greek Cypriot and hosts the internationally recognised government of the Republic of Cyprus. Efforts to resolve the Cyprus problem have failed and, as a result, peace is maintained via a United Nations-controlled buffer zone (called ‘the Green Line’); except for a few checkpoints that allow for crossings, the Green Line has strong military presence on both sides but is the main entry point for asylum-seekers. Cyprus has seen an unprecedented growth in the numbers of asylum applications as other routes to the EU, such as the Aegean Sea, have become blocked. These are major factors reshaping social work, both the complicit practice as well as the non-state social-work-as-resistance. The story of migration and asylum is a major issue in Cyprus and is influenced by geographical factors, the division of the country and the troubled Cyprus–Greece–Turkey triangle. This is the context that social work ‘from below’ is emerging contra to the state-sponsored social work, which is either outright hostile or simply failing at moments of necessity. We are witnessing praxis-based initiatives, manifested in the form of solidarity work emerging out of a humanitarian crisis. The chapter explores the potential for solidarity on the ground in Cyprus and examines the processes of remaking radical social work and politics from below.
‘We want social workers to hear our story’: learning from parents whose children were taken away
Authors: Shennan Guy
Published: January 2024

This chapter has its origins in an unexpected encounter that took place in 2017. I was attending a narrative therapy conference and heard a keynote presentation entitled ‘“I’ll always be a Mum”: young women talk about finding peace after their children are adopted’. After the three young women had spoken, we listened to a small number of conference attendees reflect on what they had heard, in the role of ‘outsider witnesses’, an interesting practice from narrative therapy. As I listened, I mused on my own role and realised I had more than one that was relevant to that moment. While I was attending the conference primarily as an independent practitioner and trainer specialising in the solution-focused approach, I was also at that time the Chair of the British Association of Social Workers, and I had formerly practised as a social worker in the system that these young women had been subject to. While I was also a witness to the parents’ account, rather than being fully outside of it, I felt as if I was somewhere in ‘the space between’ the positions of insider and outsider. I was implicated, in a way that the other mental health professionals there (I did not come across any other social workers) were not. During their presentations, one parent said, “I think it’s really important for social workers to see what’s going on”, and another that she wanted social workers to hear their story.
Decolonisation and critical social work pedagogies
Authors: Bald Caroline , Amadiegwu Akudo
Published: January 2024

There is much said about social work’s complicity in state violence globally. Be it systemic intergenerational trauma resulting from ideologically driven social policy; from stolen babies in Spain and Ireland, to institutional racism inherent from Nazi Germany to apartheid South Africa to First Nations oppression. With each exposed scandal, there is both justified outcry that a profession purporting to stand for social justice should be involved in such brutal subjugation and a reluctance or push-back to scrutinising social work as a whole. It has caused many to ask if social work, by its very nature, is the apparatus of the state of the day. If social justice statements are comforting fig leaves soothing a profession’s moral conscience, it may indeed be that social work can only truly decolonise by untying its tether to power altogether. Or is a binary view of social work as state or anti-state too simplistic? Is abolitionism a spectrum social work has always been engaged in, giving space for daily micro and macro resistances within the system? This chapter pays respect to both the labour which has gone into exposing social work’s complicity with oppression and ways in which decolonisation might be achieved. The focus herein is on social work education as a space for resistance and activism. The specific focus which follows is on the structural design of social work education as perhaps lesser explored areas of resistance – who enters social work education, who teaches, and the constructed classroom.
Rethinking citizenship education for political literacy
Authors: Breslin Tony
Published: January 2024

This chapter traces the way Bernard Crick’s aim to raise the level of political literacy shaped the development of citizenship education in England, and how it was thwarted by obstacles that included policy shifts following a change of government, lack of the requisite teacher training, inadequate academic support for the new subject, and the constant marginalisation of the political dimension when other issues such as community cohesion and volunteering dominate the citizenship agenda. It argues for a renewed focus on the need to teach the political dimension of democratic citizenship, backed by the recognition that it should be taught in a subject-specific and cross-curricular manner, with the skills for deliberation and cooperative engagement developed through practices that influence school policies and activities.
Populism, classrooms and shared authority
Authors: Sellers Kathleen M. , Abowitz Kathleen Knight
Published: January 2024

This chapter sets out how the spread of different forms of populist ideas challenges democratic politics when wider engagement in public issues calls for much more informed participation. It points to constructive responses based on Freirean arguments for replacing banking education by problem-posing education, and the application of the organisational power theories of Mary Parker Follett to structure control and authority through cooperation rather than subordination. These are illustrated with practical examples of pedagogy that shares authority, including public sensemaking in high school mathematics that cultivates respect and acknowledgement of one another’s perspectives; expressing civic agency through science education collaboration; and the use of controversial issues discussions designed to give students practice in inclusive deliberation, critical reasoning and explorations of and tolerance for political and other forms of difference
Towards civic learning for all
Authors: Kawashima-Ginsberg Kei
Published: January 2024

This chapter draws on the author’s experience with a wide range of state and nationwide initiatives in the US in support of education for democracy, and maps out five pathways to provide high-quality civic learning for all young people so that they can form a strong working knowledge of the ways in which civic and political institutions function, and thereby leverage these systems for public good. The pathways cover: expanding civic learning to address skills for collective thriving; connecting pedagogy and practice to collaborative problem-solving in school and community; leveraging students’ curiosity as an entryway into deeper inquiry over time; adopting a coalition-building and evidence-based approach to exploring consensus in meeting the needs of students and their families; and engaging parents and carers in shaping the civics curriculum.
Just health, just care
Authors: Taylor Sebastian
Published: January 2024

Inequalities in health and life expectancy are widely considered to be undesirable and even morally offensive. Yet no clear concept of ‘just health’ has emerged. Faced with the substantial potential costs of engineering the social conditions necessary for more equitable population health, governments tend to concentrate on improving fair provision of healthcare, included in the agenda for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) enshrined in the SDGs, and on remediating basic healthcare shortfalls among the poorest communities. This chapter argues that UHC, while admirable, will not deliver anything remotely resembling health justice – because the roots of health injustice lie in deeper problems of hierarchy, social status and inequality of power. It argues that UHC is a ‘supply-side’ model of justice, defined by what the prevailing systems of power are prepared to offer, not by what populations should demand.
A kingdom of ends
Authors: Taylor Sebastian
Published: January 2024

Inequalities in health are rooted in inequality of power – power not just to participate in society, but to participate in the way in which the rules are formulated and agreed. Redistribution in power is rarely enacted spontaneously by the powerful. It needs to be demanded by the disempowered, which is problematic as the communities of advantage and disadvantage are increasingly hermetically sealed off from one another. This chapter argues that active policy measures to bring those communities together is the key to engendering a clearer, common understanding of what equity entails and what an effective demand-side for justice should look like.
All for one
Authors: Taylor Sebastian
Published: January 2024

Across the Western world, there is much anxiety that popular faith in the democratic idea is waning. This chapter argues that in order to understand this trend we need to be more specific in what we mean by ‘democracy’. Drawing on global evidence and a comparison of India and China, the chapter demonstrates an ambiguous interaction between political democratisation and human health. It argues that the credibility of the democratic model requires much deeper forms of social engagement than the sterile formalism of electoral enfranchisement and the periodic vote – a much stronger emphasis on local processes of deliberative dialogue. And it concludes that health, as a matter of intense individual and collective interest, offers a fertile ground in which for such democratic localism to grow.
Introduction
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

Does paid work as we know it meet basic standards of social justice? As the challenges of automation and globalisation reshape the nature of work in radical and dramatic ways, it is critical that we pause to consider the tools with which we chart our course forwards. In contrast to economists, social psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and others have a far richer perspective on the meaning of paid work and its impact on our life. This book argues that we should be striving to understand the positive value that work holds beyond money – the social, psychological benefits felt on the personal level, as well as the broader social and economic benefits of full employment.
The scope and limits of economics
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

The perspective of economics, as presented in the textbooks and classroom, is overly narrow. The professional literature is richer, but even so it focuses almost exclusively on monetary rewards. Chapter 3 ties this development to a cadre of influential economists determined to gild their discipline with the authority of a hard science – an imperative that contributed to the role of mathematics as the structural scaffolding of economic theory. Acknowledging the invaluable contribution mathematics has made to the discipline, this chapter highlights the problematic ways in which mathematics tends to eliminate features that don’t readily lend themselves to mathematical representation – regardless of the magnitude of their actual contribution to the issues being analysed.
Enter neoliberalism
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores specific policies embraced by centre-right governments in the UK, the US and Australia between 1980 and 2020. Parallels are drawn between the fierce battles these governments waged against trade unions during this period, with much wider implications. In unison, all three nations embarked on large-scale privatisation of their respective public sectors and granted substantial tax cuts that favoured the top echelons of the corporate sector, the wealthy and those on high incomes. The chapter concludes by examining the pivotal role played by libertarian academics and captains of industry in bringing about these political transformations.
Profits vs the duty of care
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

Chapter 8 highlights the shameful actions of major corporations that knowingly hid from their employees – sometimes for decades – the truth about the toxic substances they were exposed to. In particular, this chapter outlines the tragic case of an Australian corporation that sold lethal blue asbestos, despite knowing for several decades that it was potentially lethal. This company’s use of asbestos caused many who had come into contact with their products to contract mesothelioma, a debilitating illness that prematurely ended many of their employees’ lives, as well as the lives of others working in associated industries.
Still waiting – gender, race and ethnicity
Authors: Gill Flora
Published: January 2024

Sadly, discrimination along gender, ethnic and racial lines is still rife within our workplaces. This is particularly the case when it comes to access to jobs and opportunities for promotion. ‘Outperforming’ all other economically advanced Western countries is the US, which regularly tops measurements of racial and gender discrimination in the workplace. This chapter introduces literature illustrating the ways in which discriminatory mindsets can modify our perception of objective facts, even when those facts are unambiguous.
London Calling: Being Mobile and Mobilizing Capitals
Authors: Ingram Nicola , Bathmaker Ann-Marie , Abrahams Jessie , Bentley Laura , Bradley Harriet , Hoare Tony , Papafilippou Vanda , Waller Richard , Friedman Sam
Published: January 2024

This chapter takes as its focus London and its role in the reproduction of inequality through the perpetuation of discourses that problematically conflate social and geographical mobility. While London is widely recognized as a hub for elite graduate recruiters, particularly in respect to jobs in finance, law and information technology, and a place that has seen a disproportionate growth in professional and managerial positions in comparison to the rest of Great Britain, it requires the mobilization of elite forms of social, cultural and economic capital. Moreover, moving to, or living in, London is seen as an obvious next step for graduates with high aspirations, without any recognition of the privilege required to facilitate such aspirations and opportunities for mobility. This chapter explores these issues by considering how proximity and access to London itself operates as a form of capital but that this is not enough to ensure success. We highlight the importance of embodied forms of cultural capital that are recognized as cosmopolitanism and argue that through processes of social magic these bodily displays read as competence in what Cunningham and Savage have termed the ‘elite metropolitan vortex’.
Following Dreams and Temporary Escapes: The Impacts of Cruel Optimism
Authors: Ingram Nicola , Bathmaker Ann-Marie , Abrahams Jessie , Bentley Laura , Bradley Harriet , Hoare Tony , Papafilippou Vanda , Waller Richard , Friedman Sam
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on ‘following dreams’ and considers success in the graduate labour market from graduates’ perspectives of meaningful work. It does this through the lens of aspirations for jobs that are deemed to have a social worth and traces the classed and gendered experiences of two graduates. The chapter engages with Berlant’s notion of ‘cruel optimism’ to explore the structural conditions of possibility that shape experiences of success. It offers two narratives as examples of contrasting classed processes of struggle and ease in labour market transitions, and as a means of demonstrating the important role of capital conversion in securing a graduate life. In doing so, we show how aspiration and capital accumulation are not enough to ensure successful labour market transitions. We argue that symbolic closure can be generated through ‘cruel optimism’ when aspirations are delegitimated by ideas of valued graduate activity.
Transformations of Health in the Digital Society
Authors: Kent Rachael
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s chapters and analytical journey of the empirical research. It provides a historical contextualisation of health tracking and public health communication from the post-World War Two development of the welfare state, through the birth of neoliberalism, until today’s individualising practices of digital health tracking and quantification of bodies. Through an examination of these three phases of public health quantification of bodies, encompassing the socio-economic, cultural and political shifts since 1948, combined with the development and wide adoption of digital health and self-quantifying technologies, this chapter traces the changing landscape and the dramatic implications this has had for shifting who is responsible for maintaining ‘good’ health. These shifts are a product of wide corporate systemic structures and neoliberal free market strategies of individualised health practices and self-management, adopted by citizens in their construction of identities, for themselves and their communities, to be responsible ‘healthy’ and morally ‘good’ citizens. The chapter explores whether digital health has become tied to individual citizenship practices. This discourse still pervasively exists as we move into the digital society of the 2020s, through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, with public health strategies internationally promoting the use of digital health tools in our everyday life, further positioning citizens as entrepreneurial subjects, adopting extensive techno-logical measures in an attempt to measure and ‘optimise’ health, thereby normalising the everyday monitoring of bodies.
Discipline and Moralism of Our Health
Authors: Kent Rachael
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines ‘health’ fitness and lifestyle management in relation to neoliberal moral self-disciplinary discourses, which position the human being and body as a subject to be worked upon. Within discourses of self-tracking and ‘bad’ health, self-worth can become tied to data. This chapter critiques these discourses, by examining the problematic and moral issues that arise from adhering to such regulatory practices. These ‘health’ surveillance and tracking practices intrinsically assign an individual moral obligation to preserve one’s own health as public duty, free from state or institutional support. This chapter examines the (perceived) lack of self-discipline, health anxieties that legitimate inactivity, self-surveillance and the moralism of body image and, lastly, the burden of self-surveillance and self-tracking as some of the key moralising and regulatory practices of the digital health self today.