The Institutionalisation of ‘TongNian’ and ‘childhood’ in China and Britain: Exploring Cautious Comparisons

This article engages with the question of how theorisation of the social construction of childhood can be applied across cultural contexts, taking China and Britain as examples. The paper draws on collaborative dialogue between scholars from the People's Republic of China and Britain, and literatures from both Anglophone and Mandarin sources. It takes forward emergent work on theorising childhood from diverse global perspectives by focusing on the institutionalisation of childhood in these countries, with particular reference to language, conceptualisation and legal frameworks relating to chronological age.     

‘It's Just Acting’: Sex Workers’ Strategies for Capitalizing on Sexuality

This article reports on an ethnographic study of female sex workers in Britain who work in the indoor prostitution markets. The empirical findings contribute to the sex‐as‐labour debate and add to the sociological literature regarding the gendered and sexualized nature of employment, particularly the aesthetic and emotional labour of service work. Grounding the empirical findings in the theory of identity management and emotional labour and work, the article reviews some of the existing examples of how sex workers create emotion management strategies and describes an additional strategy, that of the ‘manufactured identity’. I argue that sex workers create a manufactured identity specifically for the workplace as a self‐protection mechanism to manage the stresses of selling sex as well as crafting the work image as a business strategy to attract and maintain clientele. Drawing on comparisons between sex work and other feminized service occupations, I argue that sex workers who are involved in prostitution under certain conditions are able to capitalize on their own sexuality through the construction of a manufactured identity. The process of conforming to heterosexualized images in prostitution is conceptualized as not simply accepting dominant discourses but as a calculated response made by sex workers to manipulate the erotic expectations and the cultural ideals of the male client.     

Cleaning the ‘People's Home’: The Politics of the Domestic Service Market in Sweden

While there is a substantial scholarly literature depicting the abuses and exploitation of domestic workers in the informal cleaning sector, there is virtually no work that examines conditions in the formal market. This is not an oversight. For many, commodifying domestic labour entrenches gender and economic inequalities; we all should simply clean up after ourselves. We seek to offer a fresh approach: the vital question for those concerned with the women performing this work for pay is not whether to commodify reproductive labour, but rather what form the market will take and what conditions might render it a decent job. In order to make such an assessment, we need to look beyond worst‐case scenarios in the informal sector, and study instead the evolution of the formal market. Only by also examining the content and terms of the work can we address how not to perpetuate inequalities such as the gendered division of labour and its intersection with nationality, race and class. In this article, we analyse the market for household services in Sweden's gender egalitarian social democracy, where a recent tax policy fostered the rapid expansion of a formal market for domestic cleaning. We conclude that domestic cleaning can be a decent job and that there is no inherent contradiction between a market for household services and a social democratic political economy.     

‘Big Society’ in the UK: A Policy Review

Alongside the UK Coalition Government’s historic public spending cuts, the ‘Big Society’ has become a major narrative in UK political discourse. This article reviews key features of Big Society policies against their aims of rebalancing the economy and mending ‘Broken Britain’, with particular reference to their implications for children and young people, and for the voluntary and community sector working with them. Although many positives are acknowledged, flaws are identified in the lack of attention paid to the unique position of children in society, and in an inconsistent conceptualisation of the voluntary sector on which Big Society policies rely.     

‘A Blinding Lack of Progress’: Management Rhetoric and Affirmative Action

In this study we explore how versions of organizational reality and gender are constructed in management discourse and whether such patterns change over time. Specifically, we examine management explanations and accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations through their commentaries on their affirmative action programmes. In Australia private sector organizations with 100 or more employees are required to report to government on their affirmative action programmes for women. In these documents, management representatives outline objectives for the coming year and report on their progress in reducing employment‐related barriers for women. In doing so they account for the ‘problem’ of gender‐based discrimination that affirmative action is designed to address, justify their actions (or lack of action) and reproduce versions of gendered identity. Thus we use affirmative action reporting as cases of management rhetoric to explore how aspects of gender and organization are constructed, taken for granted, challenged or problematized. Comparing reports from the hospitality sector over a 14‐year period, we explore whether there is any evidence of discursive change in management accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations.     

The Afghan War and ‘postmodern’ memory: commemoration and the dead of Helmand1

Since 2006, Britain has been fighting an intense military campaign in Helmand in which over 200 soldiers have been killed. The article examines the way in which twentieth‐century commemorative rituals, which mourned the sacrifice of anonymous individual soldiers for the nation, have been superseded by new lapidary conventions which fundamentally revise the status of the soldier in public imagination. In acts of remembrance today, soldiers are personalized and domesticated, remembered as fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. The article concludes by considering the political implications of this revision of public understanding.     

‘Men Don't Have Families’: Equality and Motherhood in Technical Employment

Drawing upon evidence collected during a study of female technical professionals in the electronics sector, this paper argues that organizational policies and practices in respect of this group continue to be underpinned by the ‘norm’ of the typical male employee whose family commitments impinge marginally, if at all, on work responsibilities. Women, as actual or potential mothers, continue to be seen as deviants from this norm, whose family commitments are likely to adversely affect work performance or commitment. Not only do these assumptions condition the general treatment of women technical professionals, but they are embodied in those policies and practices designed to facilitate the combination of motherhood and paid work. Both the assumptions around which policies are framed and their implementation in practice reinforce as unproblematic the prevailing domestic division of labour. Such policies and practices therefore continue to function essentially as a concession to the deviant status of women in general and mothers in particular, rather than as tools of a broader equal opportunities policy.     

The powerful relational language of ‘family’: togetherness,belonging and personhood

This article examines the notion of ‘family’ to consider how it may be understood in people's everyday lives. Certain recurrent and powerful motifs are apparent, notably themes of togetherness and belonging, in the context of a unit that the person can be ‘part of’. At the same time, there may be important variations in the meanings given to individuality and family, evoking differing understandings of the self and personhood. I consider these ideas further through globally relevant but variable cultural themes of autonomy and relationality, suggesting the term ‘social person’ as a heuristic device to distinguish the sense of ‘close‐knit selves’ that may be involved in some understandings of personhood. I argue that this version of personhood may be powerfully expressed through ‘family’ meanings, with a significance which can be at least provisionally mapped along lines of inequality and disadvantage within and between societies around the world. These forms of connectedness may be hard to grasp through those theoretical and methodological frameworks which emphasize the (relational) individual. I argue that, in affluent English speaking societies, ¹ there may be little alternative to the language of ‘family’ for expressing such forms of relationality and connection.     

Public Sector Reform and Women's Work in Poland: ‘Working for Juice,Coffee and Cheap Cosmetics!’

The debate on the transformation of work in east central Europe has concentrated on the restructuring of employment in manufacturing to the detriment of any discussion of the transformation of work in the service and public sectors, where the majority of women are employed. Moreover, while it is frequently recognized that women have been hit hard by job loss and unemployment, less attention has been paid the changing experiences of women in work. This article looks at the profound impact of market‐driven reforms in the Polish health and education sectors implemented in the late 1990s, and considers their implications for women and their work. It reports on interviews with a cross‐section of women workers in schools and hospitals and with trade union leaders at both the national and branch level. The impacts of the reforms and the experiences of women workers are discussed through the themes of changing employment levels, the restructuring of working conditions, job security, wages, training, and the double burden of balancing domestic and work lives. The general findings are that although the impact has been highly uneven between workplaces and regions, in general women have experienced an intensification of work and deteriorating working conditions. Their personal lives are not only more stressful due to the pressure at work, but also the double burden of paid and domestic work has increased due to the marketization of public provision. In both sectors, the response to reform has been widespread and militant industrial action, which has gained considerable political attention. We therefore also focus on how women have contested change, both passively and actively, through trade unionism and other political practice.     

From ‘public health’ to ‘safeguarding children’: British health visiting in policy,practice and research

This study examines the location of British health visiting in contemporary policy discourses concerned with public health and safeguarding children. It argues that professional identity and orientation can be understood through health visiting’s long history of public health work with children and families, which has included an engagement with protecting children. The expansive safeguarding children agenda, which includes the requirement to undertake a progressive universal approach to service provision and which incorporates a broad concept of risk and requires early intervention, has created tensions, particularly given current workforce constraints. The location and visibility of British health visiting in the academic and practice worlds also shape how the profession is understood.     

Metamorphosis: From ‘Nice Girls’ to ‘Nice Bitches’: Resisting Patriarchal Articulations of Professional Identity

This article explores the random strategies women adopt in resisting patriarchal articulations of their professional identity and the kind of organizational discourses women’s resistance brings about. The focus is on describing the context, dynamics of contradictory tensions and ambivalence inherent in situations of resisting. The article draws upon the authors’ own experiences in academia. In addition to participatory observation, the authors are using themselves as research instruments that enable them to highlight the emotions and ambivalent dynamics in the construction of gendered identities and power relations in organizations. The study indicates that there are several sets of rules in motion in one and the same social situation, such as the rules of organizational behaviour, rules of friendship and the rules of gender relations in public places. By describing two overtly sexualized discourses that women’s resistance brought about, the article highlights that organizational sexuality does not necessarily differ in kind or in degree from ‘street sexuality’ or sexuality in semi‐public places. The study’s findings argue that it is important to extend research to both informal and semi‐formal organizational gatherings. These liminal spaces are important sites of communicative struggles over organizational meanings and identities.     

Overcoming the Glass Barriers: Reflection and Action in the ‘Women to the Top’ Programme

Numerous equality programmes have been launched with the aim of promoting a more gender equal work life, yet little substantial action has been reported. This article presents a study of the Women to the Top programme in Sweden, supported by the European Union (EU) and aimed at promoting more women into top management positions. The research suggests that large‐scale projects assembling such heterogeneous actors as industry representatives, politicians and scholars tend to generate further reflection and discussion rather than promoting adequate and highly needed action. Drawing upon Brunsson's distinction between action rationality and decision rationality, the relatively modest effects of large‐scale equality programmes are examined, not in terms of a lack of commitment or competence on the part of the participants but as a matter of the disjunction between reflection and action. Reconciling reflection and action, that is, emphasizing not only reflection on gender inequality but also privileging various forms of practical action (such as new policies, the appointment of female managers, restructuring gendered wage inequalities or new recruitment procedures), is therefore a top priority for policymakers desiring more substantial changes in the gendered outline of industry.     

Refugee Hospitality in Lebanon and Turkey. On Making ‘The Other’

This paper examines the hospitality provided to Syrian refugees during the refugee crisis spanning from 2011 to 2016 in the border areas of Gaziantep (southeastern Turkey) and the Akkar region (northern Lebanon). Hospitality, apart from a cultural value and societal response to the protracted refugee influx, is a discursive strategy of socio‐spatial control used by humanitarian agencies, local and national authorities. This paper, first, argues against hospitality as an assessment to ethically compare host countries (i.e. more welcoming versus less welcoming states). Second, drawing on Walters’ notion of “humanitarian border”, it shows how the governmental, humanitarian, and everyday workings of hospitality exercise an assertive politics of sovereignty over the social encounter between locals and refugees. We examine the state‐centered hospitality in the Turkish case and a humanitarian‐promoted hospitality in the Lebanese case. We also show how the hospitality discourse shapes the spaces that refugees, citizens, and earlier migrants partake in.     

Not necessarily a place: How mobile transnational online workers (digital nomads) construct and experience ‘home’

This article adds to current research on mobile transnational online workers (digital nomads) who travel the world in search of a holistic lifestyle that balances work and leisure. Using Kannisto's (2014) and D'Andrea's (2007) work on ‘global nomads’ as a theoretical lens and Nowicka's (2007) research on mobile professionals as a guide, I discuss the multiple meanings of ‘home’ for digital nomads who stayed in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2019. I will show that people feel at home when travelling with a loved one or by surrounding themselves with objects of emotional value. Furthermore, digital nomads create a feeling of being at home by connecting with their family via social media and video calling apps, while at the same time keeping them at a comfortable distance. Finally, some digital nomads envision an idealized ‘home base’ that is defined by social relations and not necessarily by the geography or amenities of a place.     

‘Caring/Sharing’: Gender and Horizontal Co‐ordination in the Workplace

Classical organizational theory assumes a hierarchical structure and the vertical co‐ordination of work. Horizontal co‐ordination between organizational participants is currently recognized only at upper and middle organizational levels. This qualitative study of workers at the lowest rungs of the organizational hierarchy finds that they do engage in horizontal co‐ordination by working together in ways that are invisible. This study also finds differences between same‐sex work groups in how they perceive working together. The caring/sharing phenomenon describes the sharing of work, and the implementation of horizontal co‐ordination, undertaken in the context of caring relationships among work colleagues, all of whom were women. Women and men working in same‐sex work groups differ in their conceptions of how those work groups form and how they function. The findings from this study indicate that common conceptions of teams and teamwork may in fact be male norms of horizontal co‐ordination.     

‘Like a fish in a bowl’: parents' perceptions of child protection services

This research involved a small qualitative study focused on family experiences of child protection practice, commissioned as part of a Best Value review of child protection services in a large rural Midlands local authority. Qualitative interviews were undertaken with 18 families who had received child protection services. Findings were mixed in relation to perceived helpfulness of the processes of child protection interventions, with 50% of families reporting some positive bene?t and 22% reporting that such interventions had caused them harm. From the families' perspectives, factors that are associated with positive and negative outcomes are outlined. These include the availability of preventive services, crisis support, respite care, actual provision of services speci?ed in protection plans and an engaging style of practitioners. Conclusions emphasize the value of research focused on family perceptions of services as an important contribution to quality control and service development in child protection service provision. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Becoming ‘Real’ Entrepreneurs: Women and the Gendered Normalization of ‘Work’

This article focuses on the way in which women entrepreneurs legitimate their place in a gendered economy by reifying a divide between ‘real work’ and ‘not‐real work’. Using ethnographic approaches to follow the everyday lives of several women who own and operate small businesses in the USA, our article documents three gendering practices the women use for ‘becoming real workers:’ embodied, spatial and temporal. The study shows that women entrepreneurs become ‘productive workers’ by recasting reproductive work as non‐productive or not‐real work. At the end, we explore two possible alternative conceptualizations of ‘work’ that could contribute to dissolving this gendered divide.     

Children and the ‘Social Cohesion’ Agenda in Sport: Children's Participation in ‘Ethnically Mixed’ Sports Teams in the North of England

This study is set in the North of England in the context of debates around the integration of communities, after a series of street disturbances in the early 2000s. The debates centred upon ‘social cohesion’ and the social mixing of Pakistani British and White British communities. The current study explores this from the context of 10‐ to 11‐year‐old Asian, Black and White British boys participating in cricket and football clubs. It draws on the sociology of childhood approach that sees children as active participants and co‐creators of their own lives. This more nuanced approach sheds important light on children's own negotiations of home, peers, sports clubs and identities that are key to how cohesion is achieved.     

From Work as Sex to Sex as Work: Networks, ‘Others’ and Occupations in the Analysis of Work

While once upon a time the social science of work and organization neglected or marginalized gender and sexuality, we have now lost sight of what people actually do, that is to say the activity of work. Gender and sexuality have been identified as crucial to organizational dynamics and, notwithstanding different theoretical emphases, this paradigm has become increasingly influential. We argue (contrary to most of its protagonists) that — within this model — the significance of sex and gender for organization rests principally on their role in the production of identities rather than in what they can tell us about production or work in any wider sense. The article highlights parallels with the ways in which prostitution is now generally understood, whether the emphasis is on subordination or agency. This literature also emphasizes gender relations and identities, even where the focus is on re–writing ‘sex as work’. We argue that this focus neglects the wider networks in which all work, whether mainstream or otherwise, is embedded and that a full analysis must take due account of both these networks and the discursive production of identities. Examples — of work in the finance and sex industries — are used to substantiate this argument and a case is made for the importance of the Chicago School’s analysis of occupations.     

A Talent for Living: Exploring Ghana’s ‘New’ Urban Childhood

This paper considers the lives of children living in a large informal settlement in central Accra, Ghana. Its contention is that children remain largely absent from the renewal of interest in slums and that where they do feature it is largely as objects of risk and vulnerability. Such an exclusive focus, it is argued, risks effacing the ways in which children are capable of actively confronting the terrible constraints posed by slum environments and the ‘talent for living’ that this involves. Drawing upon the findings of a small qualitative exploratory research project, the paper examines sources of support and cooperation between children and how their decisions to work are perceived as a strategy to actively support mothers and families struggling for a subsistence.