Industrial injuries in British manufacturing industry and cyclical effects: continuities and discontinuities in industrial injury research

An article appeared in The Sociological Review for May 1990 by Steve Tombs that bore the same title as an earlier one by me (‘Industrial injuries in British manufacturing industry’ May 1986) and which took as its starting point my ‘The business cycle and industrial injuries’ which appeared in August 1989. It is argued here that Tombs's analysis does not represent the step forward that might have been hoped. It is for example extremely important in the analysis of industrial injury rates to pay careful attention to what injury rates of different degrees of severity might measure. Tombs's article is shown to be technically deficient in that he makes mistakes both of fact and interpretation in his treatment of the all reported (or minor) injury rate. Moreover, Tombs advances the claim — in the context of reference to ‘a pure “business cycle” argument à la Nicholsw’ — that ‘a generalised discussion of [business] cycles obscures important aspects of the political economy within individual cycles. In particular, the strength of the labour movement is related to the incidence of accidents at work’. For the record, it is also spelt out below that this represents an unwarranted interpretation of my own position.     

After ‘ethnicity’: Migration,identity and political economy

In an earlier article¹ I have argued that British ‘African Asians’ can not legitimately be described as an ‘ethnic’ community. This argument was made by means of a critique of sections from the 4th PSI Survey. I show that the attitudinal responses of British ‘African Asians’, as evidenced in the Survey, do not reveal any special emphasis upon the components of ethnicity (religion, skin colour, ‘extra‐British’ origins, ‘racial’ grouping) specified by the Survey's authors and that parental roles in marital decision‐making, thought by the Survey's authors to be important in maintaining ‘ethnic’ boundaries, and their attitudes towards ‘mixed marriages’, are now little different from the majority of Britishers. My chief objection to the ‘ethnicity’ paradigm, incorporating the notion of ‘ethnic identities’, is that, as with all analytical concepts, it inhibits those whom it embraces from inclusion within alternative conceptions: marking individuals and communities as ‘ethnically’ special robs them of parity with their ‘non‐ethnic’ neighbours.

In this article, in opposition to the current vogue for ‘ethnic’ labelling and in sympathy with Robert Miles's well‐known position, I contend that British Gujarati Hindus (who form a majority of British ‘African Asians') should be considered in the same analytical light as any other group of British citizens. The focus of the article is on those members of the Gujarati Hindu Patidar caste (commonly having the surname Patel), who settled first in East Africa and then, often not through their own choice, in Britain. I argue that their caste identity, the dynamics of their migrations and changes to their socioreligious culture are all fully explicable by non‐'ethnic’ political sociology.     

How manufacturing industries connect cities across the world: extending research on ‘multiple globalizations’

In this article, I concentrate on a macro‐level analysis of inter‐urban linkages in a ‘world city network’. Empirical research on the formation of a world city network has mostly concentrated on global service providers. Yet, globally operating manufacturing firms also choose distinct urban regions throughout the world as locational anchoring points. In this article, using social network analysis, I present the first global‐scale analysis of how manufacturing firms connected cities across the world (in 2010). To detect the differing ‘sectoral profiles’ and nodal centralities of cities functioning as geographical hubs of transnational production networks, it is necessary to analyse the network structure of distinct industrial subsectors within the global urban system. The data collected for analysis cover 120 top global firms from three manufacturing subsectors, of which two are analysed in more detail than the third. I then compare the nodal centralities of cities included in these subsectors' global networks with the GaWC research on the producer services sector that has been at the centre of previous analyses of the world city network. The comparison reveals the cities' differing positioning within ‘multiple globalizations’. The aim of the article is to extend research on world city networks.     

Mother Died Today or Maybe Yesterday: Reflections of L'etranger on Team‐Based Forms of Work Organization

One of the most enduring images of late twentieth‐century popular culture was the individualist and iconoclastic portrayal of the ‘grumpy old man’ Victor Meldrew in the BBC television series One Foot in the Grave. Richard Wilson's portrayal of the recently retired security worker is the antithesis of everything that contemporary organizations require from the idealized vision of employee as ‘team‐player’. As one who revels in the way that the epitaph ‘Victor’ is thrown at me at regular intervals both by my partner and children, at times when I think I am behaving normally, I thought it would be interesting for me to reflect, in public, on my relationship to contemporary workplace relations. It is my contention that Meldrew's characterization is not wholly based around the age dimension but is equally based upon his portrayal as an individual ill at ease with the mores of gregariousness. The essay therefore is a self‐reflective piece in which the author places himself in a particular milieu—that of L'etranger and uses this ‘placing’ in order to discuss the relationship between what he defines as ‘the outsider’ and the issue of age discrimination in contemporary blue‐collar environments. It is suggested that whilst the outsider or L'etranger is accepted under certain conditions within the managerial labour process this same level of organizational tolerance is not afforded to older workers within blue‐collar areas. It moves from a reflective, even autodidactic exploration of the relationship between the author and cultural articulations of L'etranger and uses this to inform an analysis of the acceptance of L'etranger within some aspects of the managerial labour within team based manufacturing units. In exploring these issues the essay then attempts to develop a third narrative in terms of now L'etranger, approaching the age of retirement fits in to the new academic labour process.     

A Buddhist Middle Way Approach in Therapy

For many years I have been practising Buddhist meditation in my personal life. In this article, I present one way in which Buddhism has influenced my work. People who seek counselling often swing between two unsustainable or unsatisfactory alternatives, for example being ‘full on’ or doing nothing. Polarisations that trap people can be lived, remembered or imagined. Buddhism proposes the middle way as a path out of these extremes. I present ways to deconstruct dichotomies, allowing people to find more effective alternatives. I show how to actualise a ‘middle way’ approach that is appropriate to Western therapy. I will also examine times when a middle way is not an ethically acceptable response.     

‘What would it be reasonable for the kid to be called?’ – negotiating the racialised essentialism of names

In this article I assert that the importance of names within the process of racialisation has been under-explored in the UK context. I consider data from seven qualitative interviews, which suggest that names are racialised in the UK and that this racialisation can affect the naming choices of multiracial/ethnic parents. My participants indicated that, when choosing children’s forenames and surnames, there are juxtaposing concerns: a fear of potential discrimination faced by children on the basis of them bearing a ‘foreign’ name, and a desire to reflect the children’s multiracial and/or ethnic heritage. I describe and discuss two consequential strategies that my participants suggested: to give the child a white British name in an attempt to help them pass as white British, or to oppose the fears of racism/discrimination and give them a name that displays their Otherness. I discuss these ideas in relation to racial passing and whiteness literature.     

Racialisation and the afterlife of colonial divide and rule: a response to Avtar Brah

In this response to Avtar Brah’s review of Race Otherwise (2017) I briefly clarify the relationship between the concepts ‘racism’, ‘race’ and ‘racialisation’. I expand my framing of the book as less about racism and more about specific processes of racialisation. To this end I draw on material from and beyond the book to illustrate the value of the concept ‘racialisation’ for understanding the afterlife of colonial divide and rule in South Africa and other former British colonies in Africa. I show the ways in which re-articulations of the ‘signification-action complex’ at the heart of processes of racialisation in post-1994 South Africa produce a politics of evasion as well as tensions between struggles for recognition on the one hand and on the other, struggles for justice and freedom. With these re-articulations come varying convergences - of claims of culture, belonging and victimhood, genomic science, jurisprudence and global discourse on indigenous rights – that reify notions of ‘race’ and ‘tribe’.     

The Quest for Family and The Mobility of Modernity in Narratives of Postwar British Emigration

In this article I focus on ways in which the postwar generation of British migrants to Canada and Australia construct their stories as epic struggles with family themes of both loss and triumph at the centre. While, during the postwar years, there is among some migrants evidence of the emergence of a more adaptable, sojourning ‘mobility of modernity’, most life stories told by the migrants suggest a more traditional pattern in which family themes dominate. In these narratives postwar migrants structure their accounts along traditional ‘epic story’ lines reminiscent of Oscar Handlin's long superseded thesis about dislocation in the old country, alienation in the new and ultimate triumph over material and cultural obstacles. But the ‘epic’ quality of these stories is deeply attached to family themes; the disruption of family networks and attempts to rescue the old or create new ones are central to the way the migration experience determines the structuring of life memories. The very act of migration focuses attention on its impact on kinship. The predominantly urban, nuclear family form of postwar British migration does contrast sharply with more traditional rural patterns based on extended family movements and ‘chain migration’. But British migrants' emphasis on the ‘quest for family’ and the refashioning of migrant identity in their narratives underlines the coexistence of traditional themes within countervailing trends towards the mobility of modernity.     

Lights of disenchantment: a study of Max Weber’s thesis on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ from the perspective of visual studies

At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.     

‘It feels right in my heart’: affective accountability in narratives of attachment

This article makes a contribution to discussions around ‘affect’ in the social sciences (Clough and Halley, 2007; Connolly, 1999; Massumi, 2002). It emerges from a research project involving a network of mothers – in London – who breastfeed their children to ‘full term’. Typically, this would be up to the age of three or four, though ranged, in this case, to between one and eight years old. For many women, the most fundamental reasoning in their decision to breastfeed to ‘full term’ is that it simply ‘feels right.’ The article therefore explores anthropological approaches to the ‘feelings’ that embodied experiences generate, as revealed in the accounts and practices of the people we work with (whether at the physiological, emotional or moral levels). It considers various means of describing the feelings experienced by women during of long‐term breastfeeding – such as ‘hormones’, ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’– but ultimately argues for a theoretical framework of ‘affect’ to incorporate best the combined physiological and moral aspects of ‘doing what feels right in my heart,’ so critical to women's perceptions of themselves as mothers.     

Allies in Learning: Critical-Reflective Practice On-line with Allied Mental Health Practitioners

This paper is a reflection in action using personal examples of student feedback to guide teaching. In 2003, a post-graduate course was developed at Victoria University in New Zealand for occupational therapists and social workers employed in the mental health services. The aim of the programme is to provide opportunities for on-the-job learning while recruiting and retaining a skilled allied mental health workforce. The programme is publicly funded for students as part of a national workforce development strategy for mental health professionals. In this article, I reflect upon my first year as co-ordinator of the programme in 2007–2008. Due to my background as a social worker and my familiarity with social work theories of practice, I focus on my theories of teaching from a social work perspective while returning to reflect on themes for the student cohort as a whole. The programme is delivered using distance methods supported by nine days of on-site learning throughout the academic year. A problem-based learning (PBL) approach delivered on the Internet platform, ‘Blackboard’, enables students to study from their workplaces. The conceptual model of teaching evolved is a process of ‘creative attunement’ to the learner's world. I conclude by providing examples of the key elements of my teaching/learning model as a ‘work in progress’.     

Anthropology, class and the 'big heads': an ethnography of distinctions between 'rough' and 'posh' amongst women workers in the UK pottery industry

In the context of the take‐over by a global corporation (Royal Doulton) of a family‐owned and run pottery factory in Longton Stoke‐on‐Trent, known as ‘Beswick’, and the subsequent re‐structuring of production, this paper explores the way in which women pottery workers make social distinctions between the ‘rough’ and ‘posh’, ‘proper paintresses’ and ‘big heads’ which cut into and across abstract sociological notions of class. Drawing on ethnographic data I show that for these working class women, class as lived is inherently ambiguous and contradictory and reveal the ways in which class is gendered. I build on historical and sociological studies of the pottery industry, and anthropological and related debates on class, as well as Frankenberg's study of a Welsh village, to develop my argument and draw analogies between factory and village at a number of levels. My findings support the view that class is best understood not as an abstract generalising category, but in the local and specific contexts of women's working lives.     

Revisiting 'communities in Britain'

In this article I re‐examine Frankenberg’s Communities in Britain (1966) and his use of a ‘morphological continuum’ within his analysis. This analysis is itself a re‐assessment of some influential community studies conducted within the British Isles. I look at some particular ideas within the more theoretical part of this book, especially the ideas of ‘social redundancy’ and the distinction between ‘complex’ and ‘complicated’. I then consider some themes arising from some more recent studies. These themes include identity, networks and social capital and time and I argue that Frankenberg's analysis can still provide the reader with useful tools to think through the ideas and practices of community.     

Mobile Persons: Cell phones,Gender and the Self in North India

In this article I analyse the varied ways mobile phones are integrated into the daily lives of low-income people and the implications for courtship practices, marriage relations and kinship ties. Rather than offer a celebratory analysis of the mobile phone's empowering effects, my ethnographic research reveals a more complex story, one that shows how the presence of the mobile both reinforces and undermines gender roles and institutions of authority. Conceptually, I argue that mobile communication provides insights into north Indian personhood as ‘nodal’, while also stimulating new practices and ideologies that render this technology central to the struggle for (and over) power and domination.     

Fighting Battles with History: The Novelist Louis Golding and the Story of the ‘Doomington Wanderer’

This article explores the writing of Louis Golding in the context of existing scholarship on the Anglo-Jewish novel. It assesses the importance of Golding's background and beliefs in shaping his fiction. Golding's views bridge the cultural gap between eastern European Jewish schtetl life and interwar British society. On one hand, he was a militant supporter of Jewish/non-Jewish intermarriage, of secular Judaism and religious freedom. At the same time his writing reveals a sustained belief in Jewish ‘race’ and Jewish spirituality. Golding's writing on ‘race’ will receive particular attention. Like so many other British Jews in the period, the author seems to have been caught between his desire to fight the racism of the Third Reich and his own confused ‘racial’ attitudes.     

Censoring the Sexual Self: Reflections from an Ethnographic Study of Gay Filipinos on Mobile Dating Apps in Manila

This paper reflects upon Evelyn Blackwood's 1995 ‘Falling in Love with An-Other Lesbian’ essay on love and desire during fieldwork research as it intersects with the figure of the ‘virtual anthropologist’ in Kath Weston's 1997 essay of the same name. My multiple subjectivities (specifically those nativised) enabled and restricted what I considered bonds and differences between me and others during ethnographic research among gay Filipino men using mobile dating apps. I revisit an experience from four weeks of preliminary data collection between May and June 2015 in Manila, Philippines, where I decided not to include a sexual encounter with a research participant named Wesley. Moving forward with my study, my reflections on censoring sexual encounters with research participants helped me to acknowledge several sources of moral anxieties and ethical considerations that influence how this specific testimony took its shape and to consider how to construct and apply a malleable ethic of honesty for current and future projects especially when intimacies themselves are the focus.     

Beyond ‘developmentalism’: A relational and embodied approach to young children's development

This article begins by discussing ‘developmentalism’, one of the key debates that has characterised the current theoretical impasse in the development of childhood studies. I use Norbert Elias's concept of the relation between love and learning as a foundation to develop the way in which young children's development is a non-linear, temporal and embodied process. I argue that we need to develop a relational approach that moves beyond some of the binary divisions between ‘nature’ and ‘biology’, drawing on concepts from particular theoretical traditions that have been under-utilised, particularly the relational school of psychoanalysis and the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.     

Who's Afraid of Third Wave Feminism?

This article addresses some issues related to the question of the ‘third wave’ within contemporary British feminism, situating British debates within an international context. My argument is that existing accounts of third wave feminism treat it either in terms of what the term means to the author, or it is treated as a coherent and easily recognizable movement or set of positions within contemporary feminism. By contrast, I adopt an approach drawn from poststructuralist discourse theory which emphasizes the diverse and overlapping ways in which the notion of a ‘third wave’ is appropriated by academics and activists alike. From this theoretical base, I trace two different conceptions of the ‘third wave’ – one referring to a poststructuralist and postcolonial critique of the second wave – and another referring to a specific generational cohort of young feminists. I argue that the latter conception has become dominant in the contemporary British context and to a lesser extent elsewhere. The second half of the article develops a critique of the ‘generational paradigm’ of third wave feminism, drawing on interviews with activists and postcolonial academic perspectives.     

COMMENTARY (12 YEARS ON) ON ‘THE CONTRIBUTION OF OBSERVATION TRAINING TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL WORK’ BY JUDITH TROWELL AND GILLIAN MILES

This article aims to stimulate discussion about relationships between the lives of professionals and of service users. The idea is that when parallels are explored and developed, power dynamics between professionals and social workers are reduced, the quality of interaction and work with service users can be improved, and professionals can also be helped in overcoming difficulties in their own lives. I start with an outline of my own personal background and highlight my development throughout, including my emerging identity as a Buddhist. I discuss a case study involving ‘Sally’ and her family and our work together while I was a social work assistant in a Children and Family's team. I try to show the interconnections between the different difficulties that we faced and how that informed my work. I look at some of the benefits, pitfalls and boundaries of working from the point of view that service user and professional are both working to overcome their problems. I also interweave interactions I had at the time with Carlos, a drug user friend in a crisis and the impact he had on me. Because I include my own situation I have called this article a ‘case experience’.

Throughout I refer to Buddhist and psychoanalytic thinking and particularly to agreement between the two around ideas that inner‐resistance is the main barrier to personal evolution. I argue that faith is the key to unlocking resistance, and that faith should be understood as the development of a belief within people that they are able to progress rather than be destroyed in the face of inevitable problems.     

Reflections on conducting research on the ‘war on terror’: religious identity,subjectivity and emotions

In recent years there has been an increase in literature which has explored the insider/outsider position through ethnic identities. However, there remains a neglect of religious identities, even though it could be argued that religious identities have become increasingly important through being prominent in international issues such as the ‘war on terror’ and the Middle East conflict. Through drawing on the concept of subjectivity, I reflect on research I conducted on the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on British Muslims. I explore the space between the insider/outsider position demonstrating how my various subjectivities – the ‘non-Islamic appearance I’, the ‘Muslim I’, the ‘personal I’, the ‘exploring I’, the ‘Kashmiri I’ or the ‘Pakistani I’, the ‘status I’ and the ‘outsider I’ – assisted in establishing trust, openness and commonality. I conclude by demonstrating how the ‘emotional I’ allowed me to manage my own emotions and participants emotions.