Living up to Policy Coherence for Development? The OECD's disciplines on tied aid financing

Tied aid credits are a way for donors to look to boost the international competitiveness of domestic enterprises while simultaneously contributing to development in recipient countries. Though regulated through the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits, tied aid credits claim a place among the instruments of development policy and are eligible as Official Development Assistance (ODA). This raises the question of whether the international regulatory framework is equipped to safeguard the presumed development goals. This article examines the internal coherence of the tied aid disciplines of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) with the development principles coined by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Thereby, the extent to which the OECD lives up to its own promise of Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) is scrutinized.     

Cultural Sexism is Ordinary: Writing and Re‐Writing Women in Academia

When we ‘write women’ in academia, the focus in much of the literature to date has been to write about women. The focus of this article is the writing of women themselves; to give voice to women's experiences as constructors of knowledge. Through so doing this article uses writing as praxis; as a mechanism to disrupt, challenge and open a space for renegotiation of cultural norms within academic institutions. Based on qualitative data collection over a six‐year period, this article writes women's experiences and unpacks the way in which cultural sexism has become an ordinary feature of women's academic lives. It also considers ways in which the underlying cultural interpretations of hegemonic masculinized structures may be re‐written.     

Digital media,subcultural activity and youth participation: the cases of protest rap and graffiti in Portugal

Over the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of an academic debate surrounding the relationship between youth and the ‘new media’, with a particular emphasis on the social uses of different digital technologies within the sphere of youth activity. A specific area of research has been dedicated to studying the use of digital media in the context of the so-called youth subcultures. With this article we expect to contribute to this ongoing debate, by examining the problem through an analysis of two interconnected case studies: protest rap and illegal graffiti. Both cases may be defined as subcultures, insofar as they are characterized as alternative, subterranean, and to a certain extent, subversive movements. The empirical ground for this discussion is based on several investigations, with a qualitative basis, carried out by the authors in the course of over a decade in Portugal. This extended time frame allowed ample access to a diversified and matured analytical material and enabled a better perspective of the developments and the mutations involving the appropriation of the digital media. Our researches have shown that digital media and technologies have been gradually integrated in these urban youth subcultures, accomplishing several strategic roles.     

Totally tall sounds totally younger: Intensification at the socio‐semantics interface

In two social perception experiments, we explore the relationship between the social meaning and the semantic/pragmatic properties of the intensifier totally in American English. In Experiment 1, we show that totally is perceived as a more salient index of social identity categories – measured in terms of Age, Solidarity and Status attributes – when it targets a scalar dimension grounded in the speaker's attitude, as opposed to when it occurs in contexts where the scale is provided by the subsequent predicate. In Experiment 2, we show that the social indexicality of totally is even more salient in contexts in which the intensifier, by virtue of its pragmatic contribution, invites a stance of heightened proximity and convergence between the interlocutors. These results point to a principled connection between the semantic, pragmatic and personality‐based social meanings of totally, providing new insights into the dynamics whereby different layers of meaning conspire to determine what an expression ‘says’ when deployed in interaction.     

Discourses of cultural heritage in times of crisis: The case of the Parthenon Marbles

The paper focuses on the commodification and politicisation of cultural heritage using as a case study the ongoing debate on the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the U.K. to Greece, recently reignited by the press release for the movie The Monuments Men in 2014. Greece has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis for over six years with the ever imminent threat of Grexit constantly disputed. In parallel with this ongoing turmoil, discourses of Greek antiquity have been persistently prominent in the media. In this context, we problematise the complex nexus of relationships between the financial crisis, national identity and cultural heritage. We combine the Discourse‐Historical Approach and Interactional Sociolinguistics drawing data from an online forum, and investigate how the users negotiate pro‐/anti‐return positions and make the financial crisis relevant in the argumentation process. The analysis shows that history, identity, value, and debt are recontextualised in relation to the Parthenon sculptures. The analysis identifies an underlying process of value trade off and brings the current political and economic environment to the fore. We close the paper by foregrounding the implications of our study and provide directions for further research.     

Caring is not enough: the importance of Internet skills for online privacy protection

This article explains Internet users’ self-help activities in protecting their privacy online using structural equation modeling. Based on a representative survey of Swiss Internet users, it reveals past experiences with privacy breaches as a strong predictor of current protective behavior. Further, in line with the ‘privacy paradox’ argument, caring about privacy (privacy attitudes) alone does not necessarily result in substantial self-protection. Most strikingly, however, general Internet skills are key in explaining users’ privacy behavior. These skills enable users to reduce risks of privacy loss while obtaining the benefits from online activities that increasingly depend on the revelation of personal data. Consequently, Internet skills are an essential starting point for public policies regarding users’ self-help in privacy protection.     

Differences between paid and unpaid social services for beneficiaries

In many Western welfare states, social work services that have traditionally been provided by paid employees are being replaced by family support, community support, informal networks, and volunteering. For the field of social work, it is relevant to know what it matters to beneficiaries whether services are provided by volunteers or by paid employees. The central question of this article is therefore as follows: What are the differences between unpaid and paid social services for beneficiaries? The article is based on literature review and focus groups. Our results suggest that beneficiaries do experience some differences regarding the advantages of volunteer services for beneficiaries that can be summarized in three propositions: (1) services provided by volunteers are more relational than are services provided by paid employees, and they are therefore perceived as more equal, flexible and sincere. (2) The effects of volunteer services for beneficiaries are not exclusively positive. (3) Although particular tasks may appear to be interchangeable to some extent, the relative advantages of a given task depend upon whether it is performed by a paid worker or by a volunteer. Additional research is needed in order to provide further validation.     

Performance anxiety: women’s sexed bodies in Pakistan

The nexus of Islam, gender, race and violence has been keenly revisited in some post-9/11 scholarship. The concern over the racialized Muslim male body is justifiable in cases of rendition, torture and the kind of battlefields that mark the War on Terror. However, the sympathetic analysis of the tortured Muslim male body as a permanent and universally vulnerable imaginary has necessarily challenged the framing of sexual politics for Muslim contexts. This bid to shield the vulnerable Muslim male body from Islamophobia and imperialist violence forecloses the notion that Islamist patriarchy and politics can themselves be fundamentally violent in the post-9/11 moment and within the Muslim community. This obscures the range of routine, domestic and normative violent expressions observed by men in Muslim societies. This essay discusses two cases that illustrate the means and methods by which female bodies have been sexed by the narrative of the War on Terror in Pakistan. These cases highlight how the academic efforts that seek to rescue the racialized Muslim male body complicate the struggle of resisting (lay) female bodies.     

Effects of Africentric Socialization on Psychosocial Outcomes in Black Girls: The Critical Role of Gender

African American social work scholars recommend rigorous research and evaluation of Africentric interventions as one approach to building culturally appropriate, evidence-based treatments for the Black community. Following this approach, this pilot study evaluates the Imani Rites of Passage program, a 15-week Africentric curriculum with 10 Black adolescent females (mean age = 12.40), comparing their pre- and post-intervention data to that of a no-intervention group of 13 Black males (mean age = 12.08). The program evaluation is based on the degree of correspondence between theory and the measurement model spelled out by the cognitive-cultural view of African-American identity. The findings for Black females were consistent with the cognitive-cultural model in some ways but not in others, and they were more complex than the predictions. Future Africentric interventions guided by the cognitive-cultural model must consider gender differences in the outcomes. Implications for social work research and practice are discussed.     

“Let’s Talk About Children” resource: A parallel mixed method evaluation

Psycho-education interventions for families affected by parental mental illness have been found to be effective. This study aimed to assess the feasibility of a psycho-educational resource for parents, designed to initiate family discussions about parental mental illness and educate parents about the impact of their illness on children. In a mixed methods design, 19 parents read the “Let’s Talk About Children” psycho-educational resource and completed pre-and-post questionnaires measuring their perspectives of mental illness and awareness of the impact of mental illness on their children and family. 18 of these participated in a follow-up, one hour, individual interview to obtain further feedback on the resource. After viewing the resource, changes in parents’ attitudes and/or behavior in relation to mental illness and parenting were recorded. Interview findings indicate that the resource gave parents an awareness of the skills and knowledge needed for initiating family discussions about parental mental illness. The results of this study can be used to inform future interventions targeting parents who experience mental illness.