The price of youth: commodification of young people through malleable risk practices

Risk has become a dominant part of theory and practice in young people's services over the past 30 years [Kemshall, H. 2008. “Risk, Rights and Justice: Understanding and Responding to Youth Risk.” Youth Justice 8 (1): 21–37; Goldson, G. 2000. “Children in Need’ or ‘Young Offenders’? Hardening ideology, organizational change and new challenges for social work with children in trouble.” Child and Family Social Work 5 (3): 255–265]. Young people are simultaneously described as ‘at-risk’ and risky, ‘permanent suspects’ [Mcara, L., and S. Mcvie. 2005. “The usual suspects? Street-life, young people and the police.” Criminal Justice 5 (1): 5–36] with the potential for committing crime, using drugs, being sexually promiscuous or under-performing in the socio-economic climate [Turnbull, G., and J. Spence. 2011. “What's at risk? The proliferation of risk across child and youth policy in England.” Journal of Youth Studies 14 (8): 939–959]. This paper reports on a UK study of youth practitioners’ perceptions of young people in relation to ‘risk’ and how this affects practice. Findings identify a context where practitioners engage with notions of young people as at-risk or risky, managing tensions between external constructions and the ‘real’ individual on an on-going basis. ‘Risk’ becomes malleable, with young people's risk biographies being amplified or attenuated on the basis of the practitioner's view of needs, resource allocations, contracts, targets, practitioner or organisational fears, risk management processes, and the desire to get the best for the young person. Whilst of short-term benefit, this commodification of young people is counter-productive, magnifying the construction of youth as risky others. The paper calls for new approaches to challenge the continued dominance of the youth risk paradigm in practice, policy and the academic youth studies field.     

Table of Contents

SAMHSA Issues Final Rule Allowing OTPs to Dispense Take‐Home Buprenorphine Vt. Hospital Program Manages Planned and Unexpected Growth Program to Screen Staff for Relapse Risk after DUI Tragedy Where Recovery Residences Fit in Health Care Reform Bill White ‘Retiring’ but Will Continue Work in the Field Study: Binge Eating in Teens Associated with Initiating Drug Use Resources Obituary Coming up     

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Goodyear Plan Uses EAP to Limit Substance Abuse Benefits Panel Vote Against Opioid Risk Strategy Shows Concern Over Voluntary Training Arizona SSA's Grim Message to Providers: Cuts Now and Later VA Allows Medical Marijuana Where It's Legal Cocaine‐Crack Sentencing Disparity Reduced by Legislation IC&RC and NCC to ‘Speak With One Voice’ Briefly Noted Names in the News Coming up     

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Methadone Clinic Move Facing NIMBY and ‘Redevelopment’ Barriers in Camden, NJ Maricopa Analysis Highlights Widespread Substance Use Problems in Jail Population First Drink Under Age 15 Raises Risk of Adult AUD Poll Looks at American Attitudes Toward Recovery Parity's Fate Hinged to House Vote on Bailout Package Painkiller Initiation Rates Keep Rising Briefly Noted State Watch Coming up     

Scientific advice and public policy: expert advisers’ and policymakers’ discourses on boundary work

This article reports on considerable variety and diversity among discourses on their own jobs of boundary workers of several major Dutch institutes for science-based policy advice. Except for enlightenment, all types of boundary arrangements/work in the Wittrock-typology (Social knowledge and public policy: eight models of interaction. In: Wagner P (ed) Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991) do occur. ‘Divergers’ experience a gap between science and politics/policymaking; and it is their self-evident task to act as a bridge. They spread over four discourses: ‘rational facilitators’, ‘knowledge brokers’, ‘megapolicy strategists’, and ‘policy analysts’. Others aspire to ‘convergence’; they believe science and politics ought to be natural allies in preparing collective decisions. But ‘policy advisors’ excepted, ‘postnormalists’ and ‘deliberative proceduralists’ find this very hard to achieve.     

‘Stuck In The Middle With You’: Towards Enabling Social Work with Disabled People

This article explores progress to date in embedding enabling social work understandings and practices with disabled people by reviewing the UK social work curriculum. Based on these observations and the ideas from UK disability studies, it will offer possible solutions or at least better pathways to enabling practice with disabled people. As Meekosha has pointed out in a global context, to date social work has been experienced as an ambivalent practice [Meekosha, H. & Dowse, L. (2007) ‘Integrating critical disability studies into social work education and practice: an Australian perspective’, Practice, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 59–72], often both enabling and disabling; an intervention that can both lock and unlock resources, and challenge and reaffirm traditional notions of the ‘disability problem’ [Finkelstein, V. (1993) ‘Disability: A Social Challenge or an Administrative Responsibility?’, in Disabiling Barriers ‐ Enabling Environments, eds J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French and M. Oliver, Sage Publications in association with the Open University, London]. Social work also has the potential to both challenge, but also be an (inadvertent) apologist for contemporary social support and welfare systems. Indeed it is clear that social work as a profession and social care as a policy area have been the poor relations of healthcare and health professions [King's Fund (2011) Social Care Funding and the NHS: An Impending Crisis?, King's Fund, London]. Viewed anthropologically, social work remains a largely non-disabled workforce ‘ministering’ to disabled clients (BCODP, 1997). This might reinforce the perception of ‘us and them’ in some social work encounters. As Paul Longmore questioned, can we begin to go ‘beyond affliction’ (2003) in our work with disabled people? Can social work help support the collective struggles of disabled people or is their role inevitably to reinforce that of individual(ised) clients?

The development of the personalisation agenda and self-directed support is clearly welcome in this context [DoH (2006) Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services, Department of Health, London; DoH (2007) Independence, Choice and Risk: A Guide to Best Practice in Supported Decision-Making, Department of Health, London; DoH (2009) Personalisation of Social Care Services, Department of Health, London]. Such developments reflect the changing service user–professional relationship. The temptation to see these developments as the icing on the social support cake needs, however, to be resisted. Arguably, with the increased rationing of social support, the continued role of social workers in assessment and monitoring of support could be seen to require a yet more reflexive and enabling professional education and training in an age of austerity, one where previously supported disabled people are being told that their needs can no longer be met.     

Supporting the transition of disabled students from university to practice placement

A modified action research project was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of a pre-placement procedure in facilitating eight disabled physiotherapy students’ transitions from university to practice. Feedback was gathered from the students, practice educators, visiting and academic tutors via questionnaire. Thematic analysis identified four main themes: ‘Procedure’; ‘Student in Control’; ‘Communication’; and ‘Disclosure’. The procedure was generally effective in supporting these students. Recommendations were made for: the need for ownership of the procedure from all stakeholders; the development of more effective communication systems; and the need for appropriate disability awareness training for all academic and practice-based staff.     

Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Independent comment on Audio‐visual and Print Materials; Whispers from the East Frances E. Steinberg and Richard G. Whiteside Risky Practices: A Counsellor's Guide to Risk Management in Private Practice; Nigel McBride & Michael Tunnecliffe Therapeutic and Training Tools from St. Luke's Parenting between Cultures: The Primary Years: A Program for Parents from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities; Catherine Blunt. Marymead Child and Family Centre, Kingston ACT, 2000 Bringing Up Boys, A Parenting Manual for Sole Mothers Raising Sons; Jo Howard Mothers and Sons; Bringing up Boys as a Sole Parent; Jo Howard Treating Huckleberry Finn; David Nylund. Jossey‐Bass Family Secrets: Gay Sons — A Mother's Story; Jean M. Baker Lesbian Step‐Families: An Ethnography of Love; Janet M. Wright ‘Rent Two Films and Let's Talk in the Morning’. Using Popular Movies in Psychotherapy; John & Jan G. Hesley     

Trump,proto-presidency,and the rise of sane supremacy

This articles opines that America’s far-Left is sowing the seeds of ‘sane supremacy’: first, by unapologetically tarring President Trump as ‘insane’ for political purposes; and, second, legislating for psychiatry to colonize the White House so as to remove Trump on account of his suspected ‘insanity’. This article deploys an anti-sanist lens and uses the notion of ‘prototypicality’ to show how the regressive far-Left portrays Trump as not meeting the ‘normative’, ‘proto-presidential’ standard. Instead of depicting Trump as mentally unfit, we need to focus on his politics and their effects.     

Bernstein's languages of description: Some generative principles

There are numerous ways of displaying Likert‐type scales but only a few investigators have investigated these differences systematically. In this study we report the results that we found when we compared four different layouts: scales that went numerically from ‘0’ to ‘10’, or from ‘10’ to ‘0’, and scales that went verbally from ‘clear’ to ‘unclear’, or ‘unclear’ to ‘clear’. Over 450 participants rated each of seven aspects of a structured abstract in a web‐based study, with each one using only one of the four scale formats listed above. The resulting data showed that the scale ‘Clear – 10 … 0 – Unclear’ consistently led to significantly higher ratings in all seven cases. Such findings have implications for the design of Likert‐type scales and for the data that are gathered from them.     

Family Therapy: Inner,Outer and the Issue of Pathology

This paper sets out to examine the relationship between ‘the inner’, ‘the outer’, and ‘the issue of pathology’ in the family therapy field. It begins with the observations that ‘pathology’ has become a rarely mentioned issue in family therapy, and ‘what is wrong’ is increasingly located in ‘the outer’: the family ‘game’, ‘linguistic activity’ or ‘the cultural discourse’. At the same time, family therapy often hosts forums in which presenters are ‘attacked’ for not seeming to hold the ‘correct view’. The paper considers these phenomena in tandem, looks at the matter of ‘method’, and applies James Hillman's critique of psychoanalysis to family therapy. The suggestion is that family therapy has been blinded by its own metaphor of ‘seeing’, symbolised and literalised in the one way screen. Alternative metaphors privileging intuition, feeling and aesthetics are put forward, before discussion points are raised, and before this paper on therapy concludes poetically, or this paper concludes that therapy may be poetry.     

Social acceleration and the network effect: a defence of social ‘science fiction’ and network determinism

This essay is a response to Judy Wajcman's essay ‘Life in the fast lane? Towards a sociology of technology and time’ (2008: 59–77). In that article Wajcman argued that recent developments in the sociology of temporal change had been marked by a tendency in social theory towards a form of ‘science fiction’– a sociological theorizing, she maintains, that bears no real relation to actual, empirically provable developments in the field and should therefore be viewed as not contributing to ‘a richer analysis of the relationship between technology and time’ (2008: 61). This reply argues that as Wajcman suggests in her essay, there is indeed an ‘urgent need for increased dialogue to connect social theory with detailed empirical studies’ (2008: 59) but that the most fruitful way to proceed would not be through a constraining of ‘science fiction’ social theorizing but, rather, through its expansion – and more, that ‘science fiction’ should take the lead in the process. This essay suggests that the connection between social theory and empirical studies would be strengthened by a wider understanding of the function of knowledge and research in the context of what is termed ‘true originality’ and ‘routine originality’. The former is the domain of social theory and the latter resides within traditional sociological disciplines. It is argued that both need each other to advance our understanding of society, especially in the context of the fast‐changing processes of technological development. The example of ‘technological determinism’ is discussed as illustrative of how ‘routine originality’ can harden into dogma without the application of ‘true originality’ to continually question (sometimes through ideas that may appear to border on ‘science fiction’) comfortable assumptions that may have become ‘routine’ and shorn of their initial ‘originality’.     

Women's Work,Dirty Work: The Gynaecology Nurse as ‘Other’

This article seeks to explore the world of the gynaecology nurse. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing; that is, women in a women's job carrying out ‘women's work’. It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women's reproductive health. Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ nature of gynaecology nursing gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’ but does not deter the gynaecology nurse from declaring her work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills. Qualitative data collected from a group of gynaecology nurses in a North West National Health Service hospital displays how they actively celebrate their status as women carrying out ‘dirty work’. Through the use of ceremonial work that continually re‐affirms their ‘womanly’ qualities the gynaecology nurses establish themselves as ‘different’, as ‘special’, as the ‘other’.     

On male femaling: a grounded theory approach to cross-dressing and sex-changing

This preliminary report is a study in grounded theory based on eleven years of qualitative sociological research with male cross-dressers and sex-changers in the United Kingdom. It reviews the cognate literature from the standpoint of grounded theory and re-conceptualises the research area in terms of the basic social process of ‘male femaling’. ‘Male femalers’ are males who wish to ‘female’ in various ways, in various contexts, at various times, with various stagings and with varying consequences. Three major modes of ‘male femaling’ are introduced: ‘body femaling’, ‘erotic femaling’ and ‘gender femaling’, and set within a phased ‘femaling’ career path. Typical features of each phase are detailed, indicating oscillations between the major facets of sex, sexuality and gender frequently confronted in each phase. Particular reference is made to the inter-relations between the three modes of ‘femaling’, to the categorisations ‘transvestite’ and ‘transsexual’, and to the constitution of ‘femaling’ self and world as being variously sexed, sexualised and gendered.     

ON 'MAELSTROMS LARGE AND SMALL,METAPHORICAL AND ACTUAL': 'GRAY ZONES' IN THE WRITINGS OF PRIMO LEVI

This article examines the work of Primo Levi, with a focus on the tensions between ‘witness’ and ‘public intellectual’ in Levi's work. It analyses the notion of ‘gray zones’ in Levi's writings, where it functions as a way of indicating transformations in political action and public discourse in the wake of Auschwitz: most importantly, the Nazi genocide undermined the position of ‘spectator’ crucial to liberal discourse by implicating the spectator as a ‘bystander’. The study goes on to discuss the concepts of ‘work’, ‘science’ and ‘intellect’ in Levi's writing, showing how these categories reflect Levi's ultimately unsuccessful struggle to uncover a mode of political thought and public intervention adequate to the changes in political space of which the ‘gray zone’ is symptomatic, i.e. a condition of universal complicity and powerlessness. It concludes that implicit (and undeveloped) in Levi's thought is a set of ‘aesthetico-political’ presuppositions concerned with the articulation of founding, legitimacy and judgement. These presuppositions challenge the reliance of emancipatory discourses upon subjectivity and the logic of self-determination, indicating the need for a politics based on ‘pedagogical accountability’. Resisting the postmodern logic of ‘testimony’, which emerges in the gap between universal claims and their performance and hence dismantles the ‘outside’ as a space of judgement, i.e. the determination of the legitimacy of actions, the politics of pedagogical accountability grounds such an outside in the conjoining of power, responsibility for the world and boundary thinking. This space ‘outside’ ideology and the circulation of subjectivities emerges via resistance to the specifically ‘anti-political’ violence pervasive in late capitalism, and through the clarification of the distinction between this mode of violence and that (‘pre-political’) violence aimed at ‘subjects’.     

Occupation as refrain: territory and beyond in Occupy London

Emerging with the wider ‘movements of the squares’ of 2011, Occupy London was defined by occupation, and by participants’ negotiation of what occupation meant. Its forms and meanings changed as London’s Occupiers moved between occupied sites, through uprootings by eviction, and into post-eviction attempts to extend Occupy’s territorial politics without the camps. This paper builds on three years of ethnography to consider occupation as an unfolding process, using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’. This describes territory in three ‘moments’: the marking of a fragile centre; the stabilization of a bounded ‘home’; and the breaching of boundaries, extending in progressive directions. This rubric is used to analyze London’s occupations, and their defining tension, between an expansive desire to ‘Occupy Everywhere’ – connecting to the wider ‘99 percent’ – and the tendency to become embedded in the protest camp ‘home’. The features of ‘home’ are analyzed using Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’, highlighting an alterity with ambivalent consequences for Occupy’s project. The paper argues that despite a desire to ‘deterritorialize’ occupation, Occupy London stalled in the moment of ‘home’, a consequence of the camp’s status as the ‘common ground’ of an often disparate movement, and the reduction of productive capacities characterizing Occupy’s terminal downswing.     

Independent comment on Audio‐visual and Print Materials

Book reviewed in this article: Family Therapy beyond Postmodernism Carmel Flaskas Fatherhood for Gay Men: An Emotional and Practical Guide to Becoming a Gay Dad Kevin McGarry Challenging Oppression: A Critical Social Work Approach Bob Mullaly The Black Grapevine — Aboriginal Activism and the Stolen Generations Linda Briskman Angry Young Men: How Parents, Teachers, and Counselors can Help ‘Bad Boys’ become Good Men Aaron Kipnis Family Empowerment Intervention: An Innovative Service for High‐Risk Youths and Their Families Richard Dembo and James Schmeidler Try and Make Me! Simple Strategies that Turn off the Tantrums and Create Cooperation Ray Levy & Bill O'Hanlon, with Tyler Norris Goode Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Kleinian Tradition edited by Stanley Ruszcynki and Sue Johnson Psychic Hooks and Bolts: Psychoanalytic Work with Children under Five and their Families Maria Emilia Pozzi The Importance of Sibling Relationships in Psychoanalysis Prophecy Coles Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Independent Tradition Sue Johnson and Stanley Ruszcynski (Eds) Reverie and Interpretation, Sensing Something Human Thomas Ogden Tales of Solutions: A Collection of Hope‐Inspiring Stories Insoo Kim Berg and Yvonne Dolan The Harveys and Other Stories: Invitations to Curiosity. Jennifer Lehmann     

Embodied Heterosexual Masculinities,Part 1: Confluent Intimacies,Emotions and Health

This and an accompanying article ( Robertson and Monaghan 2012 ) constitute a developmental ‘think piece’ on embodied heterosexual masculinities, emotions and health. After highlighting the imbrications of heterosexual intimacy, hegemonic masculinity and health – alongside a note on the relevance and limitations of existing literature – our discussion includes: a critical acknowledgement of (different) feminist scholarship and queer theory; reflections on the ‘pure relationship’ and ‘confluent’ or ‘liquid love’; the ‘individualisation thesis’ and the rise of ‘abstract knowledge’; the separation of love from sex as a possible masculine ruse; corporeality, eroticism and the rationalisation of sex. In conclusion, we underscore the need for more research on embodied masculinities, heterosexualities and emotions.