Social and psychological exclusion

The New Deal for Lone Parents is one policy in the UK which aims to reduce benefit dependency and enable lone parents to opt into a scheme which offers help and advice on jobs, benefits, training and childcare with the hope of improving job readiness. In tandem with this scheme there exists a myriad of community intervention initiatives whose aim may not be as explicit, but whose value can be equally empowering in raising self-awareness and self-esteem. This study examines the experiences of lone parents who participate in such schemes and contrasts this with the experiences of those who do not. The study shows that community-based schemes may not offer the best option for all lone mothers, but can provide an effective staging post for some towards a position of job readiness.

Poverty and social exclusion affect many different aspects of people's lives. They exist when people are denied opportunities to work, to learn, to live healthy, active and fulfilling lives …

Department of Social Security, September 1999, p. 3     

Stability of psychological symptoms: drug use consequences and intervening processes

We integrate aspects of coping response, impaired ability, and motivational explanations for the causes and consequences of drug abuse, all which were cast previously as competing or alternative paradigms. We projected a model of 1) continual daily drug use as a consequence of early adolescent psychological symptoms and 2) continual daily drug use as an influential variable in maintaining or exacerbating these symptoms over the young adult life-course. Gender, race, and education also were modeled explicitly according to their presumed theoretical importance. Finally, we modeled contemporaneous factors such as physical health and employment status as the common consequences of the shared independent variables in order to reduce bias in the estimated structural relationships. We found that continual daily drug use is significantly dependent on early psychopathology and increases psychological symptoms significantly. Daily proximate drug use has direct negative effects on education. Education, in turn, improves both mental and physical symptoms significantly. During young adulthood, psychological symptoms are related significantly to contemporaneous unemployment and physical health limitations; thus modeling these symptoms as common consequences reduces potentially biased estimates of the effect of shared independent variables.     

Diffusion of Variegated Neoliberalization processes in Euro-Mediterranean policies: a strategic relational approach

ABSTRACT

Recent contributions to the study of neoliberalism have made considerable advances in transcending the dichotomy between understandings of the concept either as an ‘ideology’ or as a monolithic ‘structure’. In particular, the Variegated Neoliberalization (VNLT) approach has proposed an understanding of neoliberalism that relies on a path-dependent moment (i.e. the ‘uneven development of neoliberalization’) which is then followed by a path-shaping moment (i.e. the ‘neoliberalization of regulatory uneven development’). Such a perspective allows us to understand both systemic and contingent tendencies in neoliberalization processes across different geographies, transcending the socially constructed North–South divide. However, the VNLT approach has encountered a number of critiques, particularly in relation to its treatment of agency. In order to transcend these critiques and propose a more nuanced understanding of ways agents reflexively and recursively interpret and deepen – or refrain from deepening – neoliberal norms, I turn to the Strategic-Relational Approach (SRA) proposed by [Jessop, B. (2001). Institutional re(turns) and the strategic – relational approach. Environment and Planning A, 33(7), 1213–1235]. Through the SRA, it becomes possible to pinpoint both instances of ‘structured coherence’ and ‘patterned incoherence’ resulting from agential reflexivity in different contexts of neoliberalization. I will therefore turn to cases where these two patterns can be observed in the context of Euro-Mediterranean policies – that is, Morocco’s ‘structured coherence’ due to its internalized and deepening neoliberalization, and Egypt’s ‘patterned incoherence’ as a result of its still uneven development of neoliberalization.     

Understanding the placebo effect. Part 2: underlying psychological & neurobiological processes

Placebo and nocebo effects are interesting and complex phenomena. In this article, I discuss some findings about the psychological and neurobiological processes that may underlie these effects on the basis of studies of pain, Parkinson's disease, and depression. From a psychological perspective, expectancy and conditioning theories have been used to explain placebo and nocebo effects. These psychological processes may be translated into physiological effects through overlapping brain circuits that are important for cognitive information processing, analgesia, and reward expectations. These brain circuits may represent a fundamentally important common underlying pathway that mediates placebo and nocebo effects in many conditions. Understanding these effects is important for designing clinical treatment studies and interpreting their results and is highly relevant for clinical practices.     

Completing the Circuit: Routine,Reflection, and Ethical Consumption

Efforts to explain why some people incorporate ethical concerns into everyday shopping for food and household goods, while many do not, have so far left significant variation in “ethical consumption” unexplained. Seeking to move beyond explanations that rely mainly on differences in consumers' social class, gender, and political engagement, I draw on concepts associated with “practice theory” to argue that ethical consumption is closely tied to people's willingness and ability to spend time, while shopping, on distinct activities associated with breaking old routines and establishing new ones. The central insight of practice theory is that most consumption is the product of unconscious routine. And it is precisely because consciously departing from routine is, according to my study, a fundamentally time‐consuming process, that lack of time emerges as a crucial obstacle to translating abstract ethical concerns into concrete action as a consumer.     

Building relational capital: The contribution of episodic and relational community engagement

In this study, we provide evidence of the theorized connection between community engagement and the development of social capital, and the perceived value or worth of relationships among organizations and stakeholders. Using thematic analysis to understand the policy and practice frameworks of community engagement in Australian local government organizations, our analyses reveal two different types of community engagement—relational and episodic—each of which has the potential to contribute to relational dimension of social capital. The study introduces and develops new thinking around the ideas of episodic and relational engagement within the context of community engagement, and their respective contributions to the development of relational capital. Recognizing and identifying episodic and relational community engagement as separate phenomena allows researchers and practitioners to understand the theoretical dimensions of community engagement as a framework for practice.     

The Heart of the Story:

No abstract available for this article.     

Expanding community: The internet and relational theory

Internet communities have received mostly negative appraisals among psychologists. Being on line is viewed as damaging to one's social relationships. In 1996, a group of therapists studying relational theory formed an online community. Our group has been a positive influence, expanding the idea that it is possible to have a vibrant and socially enhancing community online. Entre psicologos, han sido principalmente negativas las evaluaciones de las comunidades internet. Estar 'online' se considera perjudicial para las relaciones sociales. En el ano 1996, un grupo de terapeutas que estudiaban teoria relacional formaron una comunidad online. Nuestro grupo ha sido una influencia positiva, extendiendo asi la idea que puede existir una comunidad online efervescente y de realce social.     

Reporting suspected child maltreatment: Managing the emotional and relational aftermath

Social workers who report suspected child maltreatment often struggle with the potential consequences to the client–worker relationship. Families who are reported may have intense feelings and reactions that can lead to premature termination or a compromised relationship that interferes with optimal treatment. This article explores Ontario social workers’ retrospective evaluations of the impact of reporting suspected child maltreatment. Participants described a range of feelings, reactions, and impacts to the therapeutic relationship and clinical work. The subjective appraisals, obtained through an online survey, lead to practice recommendations.     

Identity and solidarity in the complex of citizenship: The relational approach

Within modernity, social identity and solidarity are deemed to be conflicting terms on principle. What has been called the culture of difference triggers a weak solidarity anywhere. But, if it is really so, how can we explain the rise of new social solidarities, a phenomenon which is nevertheless occurring throughout Europe along with concomitant processes of fragementation and differentiation? The author's general argument is that conflicts between social identities and solidarities cannot be understood in terms of a clash between individual and holistic perspectives. We need a relational perspective. From this angle, the author tries to explain why and how a post‐modern societal balance between social solidarity and social identities (i.e. a new citizenship) is emerging today, from the society rather than from the state, in such a way as to build up new forms of interdependencies and links between identities and solidarities. Sociologically speaking, it may be that a new societal semantic is emerging, according to which citizenship is a complex of rights and duties not only of individuals but also of social groups, arranging civic life into a number of ‘universalistic autonomies’ capable of reconciling collective goals and self‐management practices, solidarity and identity issues. This is the new challenge for post‐modern societies. The name of this new game is ‘societal citizenship’ or citizenship of social autonomies, including regional ones.     

Continuing the Story: Maximizing the Intersections of Cognitive Science and Sociology

This article is part of a special journal section addressing the sociology of culture and cognition and its future. In this essay, I use the areas of “serial position effects” and “sequencing” to illustrate ways of creating interdisciplinary dialogue between sociologists of culture and cognition and cognitive scientists. I view the body as an integral link in connecting these two fields.     

Government-community relationships: extending the relational theory of public relations

A study of government-citizen relationships found that public relations can contribute to community building. The study also found that the Bruning-Ledingham Relationship Scale is an effective tool for assessing relationship quality, and for predicting citizen behavior. Moreover, social exchange was found to serve as a useful concept for explaining human behavior within the broader framework of relationship management. Further, the study demonstrates the usefulness of the relational perspective as a paradigm for public relations.     

Mapping the relational construction of people and places

ABSTRACT

A new method is proposed here aimed at eliciting the mechanisms which maintain the relational positioning of people and places within social space. This ‘mapping tool’ is inherently relational by design and involves participants creating visual representations of their geographic imaginaries, encompassing their perceptions and preferences of different localities. This is followed by an interviewing approach wherein participants ‘speak to’ their map, producing ‘thick’ narratives detailing the ties that bind people and places. The method was developed and used as part of a 3-year study into the geographic imaginaries of young people in the UK, involving the collection of 1,000 maps, together with over 200 interviews, across 20 diverse localities. We draw on empirical examples of using the method from this study, including processes of differentiation within the middle classes and the place-based identities of towns, cities and localities.     

Inclusiveness and exclusion: trust networks at the origins of European cities

In Western Europe, cities grew fast between 1000 and 1300. This article looks at how the migrants moving to these emerging cities melded into communities and defended their collective rights in violent and hostile environments. It discusses a number of trust networks that were developed to meet the successive collective needs of particular social layers in rapidly changing urban societies. When a trust network became well-established and too large to allow face-to-face relations among all its members, institutions were created that operated under different rules.     

Factors in educational exclusion: including the voice of the youth

The processes of educational exclusion are multiple and diverse. Research has shown that exclusion from school goes far beyond access. It is associated with crucial issues related to educational processes (belonging, recognition or representation) and results (knowledge or certificates). The objective of this article is to delve into the analysis of factors in educational exclusion, including the voice of the youth, as a key element in understanding these factors. The article begins with a literature review addressing the meaning, mechanisms and profiles of educational exclusion. It then presents qualitative fieldwork, consisting of six focus groups of young people (aged 14–24) who have been excluded from mainstream educational institutions in Barcelona, Spain. The results of the empirical analysis point to four critical elements in the process of educational exclusion as experienced by the youth: educational transitions; the role of teachers; the impact of grouping practices and disciplinary mechanisms; and the contrast between mainstream educational institutions and alternative learning arenas. By including the voice of the youth, the article provides a better understanding of the factors contributing to educational exclusion so as to advance in the construction of an educational system able to guarantee students’ right to learn and succeed in school.