Representations of Labour: Visual Sociology and Work

This paper explores the potential that visual methods, approaches, and resources offer to the sociologist of work. It looks at the way work is represented in a range of publications and asks questions about what the visual can add to our understanding of the workplace, workers, and work processes. It argues that we need to develop and expand a sociological language of the visual in order to better understand cultural and other aspects of work and employment.     

From myth to history: Ethiopia and Eritrea’s transformations in four photographic works

As the Horn of Africa is going through major political, societal and cultural transformations, how does photography construct visions that take them into account? This short paper looks then at four recent bodies of work that evoke and revolve around the different perceived temporalities that go along them, raising questions on history, memory, transmission and finally on photography itself.     

Begging the questions: producing Shakespeare for post‐apartheid South African schools

This paper examines some of the ways ‘Shakespeare’ is functioning in the post‐apartheid education system. It is not based on education or textbook theory. Rather, it seeks to test some of the assertions of new historicist and cultural materialist theories by analysing the ideological work performed by editions of Macbeth produced for post‐apartheid schools. It asks questions about Shakespeare in the South African school classroom, and about the relationship of work produced in universities to the broader educational, and cultural, context.     

INTRODUCTION

This introductory essay considers how we might forge a critical language to discuss an emerging constellation of cultural production in South Africa: that which focuses on the work of ‘intimate exposure’ in order to shape a public–private sphere, which in turn forges forms of citizenship unavailable, or submerged by, a history of segregation. We ask the two following questions in order to better understand the dynamics of desegregation and re-racialization in twenty-first century South Africa: what is at stake in the dynamics of private exposure, particularly, but not limited to, the work of contemporary artists, be it exposure of the self or exposure of the lives of others – out of aggression or tenderness, as a gesture of ordinariness or excess, in relation to strangeness or love? Moreover, how do new dramas of secrecy, confession and exposure map onto or circumvent the staging of these issues during the apartheid years, which, itself layering over the scars of the colonial period, provide the subterranean foundation across which recent events play out? Addressing these and other questions takes us through a series of debates animating the current global and South African cultural studies.     

Overcoming the Neglect of Social Process in Cross‐National and Comparative Criminology

How and why crime rates vary across different societal and cultural contexts has been a perennial question within criminological research. Numerous studies have emerged in recent years responding to calls for criminology to examine the cross‐cultural relevance of contemporary theory. While many of these studies have made significant advances, a great deal of work remains to be done in the development of theory, measurement, and methods. The present article examines the state of cross‐national criminological research, including a discussion of challenges in examining key theoretical questions. Promising avenues for overcoming issues with data and developing key theoretical perspectives to better assess how social processes explain cross‐national variations of crime are discussed.     

INTRODUCING HISTORY (IN)TO CULTURAL STUDIES: SOME REMARKS ON THE GERMANSPEAKING CONTEXT

While ‘cultural studies is caught in a traffic jam’, at the same time the seemingly global crisis of cultural studies coincides with the late reception and high popularity of cultural studies in the German-speaking countries after the ‘cultural’ and the ‘linguistic turns’. Yet, the political and academic history and the contexts of the emergence of cultural studies and ‘Kulturwissenschaften’, as well as their by now established academic traditions and the manifold relations to current developments, are rarely defined and scrutinized. In this paper,we will relate some theoretical and historical perspectives concerning the relationship between cultural studies and the historical disciplines in the German-speaking context. We shall try to trace the potential of mutual benefits between cultural studies and history by foregrounding the political commitment of academic work that still seems to be one of the most important traits of CS as much as the necessity of a stronger notion of the contextualization that history and historiographical methodology provides.     

Conversations with Suwanrang: The Treatment Relationship in Cultural Context

Due to the changing cultural composition of the U.S., social workers are increasingly working with clients from different cultures. As a result of globalization, our schools of social work are training international students who return home to work in their native countries and take with them our theories and models of practice. It is essential that, as a profession, we address questions about the relevance of our models to work with clients from different cultures. This paper will use theoretical concepts from anthropology and data from field research with Suwanrang, a social worker in Northern Thailand to address these issues. The implications of the debate between universalist, relativist, and cultural pluralist perspectives within anthropology for psychodynamic, developmental models and social work treatment will be explored. The paper will focus on the ways the treatment relationship is shaped by and varies with culture     

Media/Crime/Millennium: Where Are We Now? A Reflective Review of Research and Theory Directions in the 21st Century

This paper aims to provide a reflective – and selective – review of key developments in media and crime research and theory from the vantage point of the new century. Writing primarily as a criminologist, though with a background in sociological theory and research, information studies, and cultural analysis, I will seek to identify some of the turning points and questions that emerge from what is a recently rejuvenated and expanding field. For the last decade media/crime research has been able to draw on an exciting array of multi‐disciplinary sources of inspiration in a way that has not happened before, and suggests new – intellectually complex – challenges for future work.     

Poverty (lab) oratory: Rastafari and cultural studies

This paper presents Rastafari Experience in Jamaica as one of the first cultural studies projects. This cultural studies project is located as originating in the 1930s in Kingston and in 1960 within the University College of the West Indies. It is argued that the Rastafari approach was demonstrative of a faculty of cultural studies at work – its members being drawn from a folk scholastic tradition originating from before the Haitian Revolution in 1791. It views the emergence of the Movement in Jamaica, as drawing on a multidisciplinary/trans-disciplinary approach towards the work of engagement and social re-interpretation of Jamaican ‘colonized society’. Poverty (lab) Oratory is thus a reading of the historical framework of the indigenous cultural studies project tracing the ‘process of institutionalization’ in the way Mato views this as the net effect of the English speaking intellectual cultural studies project. It concludes by examining what can be rightfully considered the ‘University’ in light of the role and place of the critical scholastic tradition brought by the folk leadership, in particular, Rastafari.     

Cultural studies as praxis: (making) an autobiographical case

This autobiographical essay ‘takes cultural studies personally’, drawing on experience, identity and the personal to indicate how and why the author is proponent of and is working on developing a model of cultural studies as social justice praxis despite the constraints academia in general and of the university as an institution in particular. The paper travels roughly from the author’s student and teacher days in Sierra Leone through his graduate student days in Canada to his current role as university teacher in the USA. He selectively concentrates on his experience as a teacher of literature (and African multi-role utilitarianism), education and cultural studies (using one of his cultural studies courses and students’ questions about the utility of cultural studies as example), his shifting and overlapping racial/ethnic identities (African/black) and the politics of identity, and his thoughts on the place of theory in cultural studies and a black approach to theory (black ambivalent elaboration) as contributory factors. While this account acts in its own way as an argument for conceptualizing cultural studies as praxis, the primary focus is more modestly on my own autobiographical account as a specific case. In fact, an autobiographical approach is employed precisely to be specific and in the attempt to avoid the pitfalls of over­generalization and the authority of authenticity.     

From Mastery to Accountability: Cultural Humility as an Alternative to Cultural Competence

Cultural competency has been a long held ideal for social work educators and practitioners. However, definitions and approaches to cultural competency vary widely depending on worldview, discipline, and practice context. Within social work and beyond, cultural competency has been challenged for its failure to account for the structural forces that shape individuals' experiences and opportunities. In contrast, the concept ofcultural humility takes into account the fluidity of culture and challenges both individuals and institutions to address inequalities. This article takes a critical look at cultural competence as a concept, examining its explicit and implicit assumptions, and the impact these assumptions have on practitioners. It suggests that cultural humility may offer social work an alternative framework as it acknowledges power differentials between provider and client and challenges institutional-level barriers. The authors advocate a move from a focus on mastery in understanding ‘others’ to a framework that requires personal accountability in challenging institutional barriers that impact marginalized communities. Cultural humility, while a promising concept, has not been fully explored in social work. Therefore, the authors present a conceptual model of cultural competency along with strategic questions for providers and organizations to integrate into social work practice and education.     

Examining Ecuadorian teachers’ perspectives on their students’ multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

This study investigated Ecuadorian teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual students. This work was informed by findings from two previous studies consisting of observations and interviews with secondary school teachers. In this mixed methods study, 26 teachers completed a 22-question Likert Scale questionnaire that explored their awareness of the influences of students’ cultural norms on classroom instruction. In small focus groups, participants responded to three open-ended questions documenting their definition of multiculturalism and philosophies of how to create a culturally responsive classroom. Findings suggest that Ecuador’s teachers are aware of the diversity within their country but report their training did not stress the pedagogical need to consider cultural influences on teaching and learning.     

Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating ‘British’ History

This paper pursues the question ‘who needs the nation?’ which was first posed by Kobena Mercer, the Black British cultural critic, in Welcome to the Jungle (1994). It interrogates not just the proposition of who needs the nation as a fixed referent, but who can afford to be content to be contained by its disciplinary boundaries. These are questions of interest to practitioners committed to understanding what the ramifications are for national histories in the wake of postcolonial studies and work around diasporic communities and subjects. Who writes—who even sees—the histories of subjects exiled from the ‘national body’, those refugees (deliberate or otherwise) from national history and its disciplinary regimes—before the 20th century, in the European context? Who questions the apparent naturalness of the nation as an analytical framework in western histories? And, finally, what does this question mean for the sovereignty of Greater Britain, whose historiography has traditionally been one of the technologies of the national state and which is in the process of being challenged and refigured through the analytics of culture, postcolonialism and feminism?     

What we talk about when we talk about ‘walking in the city’1

Originally published. in France in 1980 (and translated. into English in 1984), Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life has assumed. the status of an ur-text for many cultural studies academics and students. In particular, his chapter on ‘Walking in the City’ is often cited. as a blueprint for understanding key terms in the cultural studies repertoire such as ‘power’ and ‘resistance’. This article revisits ‘Walking in the City’ in order to supplement some of the established. understandings of his work circulating in the field of cultural studies, as well as the intersecting fields of cultural geography and urban studies. The paper begins by suggesting ways in which established. understandings of Certeau's work might be usefully rethought and extended. through a consideration of differentiated. instances of walking. Critiquing the account of body-subject relations posited. by Certeau through reference to the writings of Marcel Mauss on techniques of the body and self, the author calls, in particular, for a greater consideration of the role of assemblages and affect in understanding everyday urban practices. By the conclusion of the article, the author arrives at a more nuanced. understanding of the feedback loop between the body-subject and the city, and suggests ways in which Certeau's writing on walking remains productive for those strains of cultural studies interested. in the practices of an increasingly virtualized. urban space.     

READING HALL READING MARX

This essay introduces and highlights the significance of Stuart Hall' essay, ‘Marx' Notes on Method: A “Reading” of the “1857 Introduction’’ which follows. Hall' essay is a key text in understanding the theoretical work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the mid-1970s, specifically the Centre' engagement with Althusser. Hall' text sets the theoretical groundwork for the concept of articulation and raises important questions of method within cultural studies. It also represents an exemplary reading of Marx.     

Reflections on Colin Bell and the past and future of community studies

The aim of this contribution is to provide researchers involved in quantitative and qualitative cross-national comparative projects with a rationale and practical guidance for analysing socio-economic phenomena in relation to their institutional and socio-cultural settings. The paper tracks the shift in cross-national comparisons in the social sciences away from universalistic culture-free approaches to culture-boundedness, which has placed the theory and practice of contextualization at the nexus of cross-national comparative studies. It draws on a wide range of multinational and interdisciplinary studies to address a number of recurring questions, covering the selection of appropriate contextual frames of reference, the impact of the researcher's own cultural traditions, issues of equivalence of concepts and interpretation.     

MYTHOLOGIES REVISITED: ROLAND BARTHES AND THE LEFT

This essay arises from the author's scepticism about the received notion, prevalent both in literary and cultural studies, that Roland Barthes's work of the 1960s constituted an abandonment of the previous decade's social critique. The paper develops the argument that, to the contrary, understanding Barthes's socio-cultural development following World War II and in the French cultural context helps to situate the political engagement of his writings in the 1950s and to clarify the continued political commitment of this work from the 1960s onward. This essay addresses a series of questions: what was Barthes's relationship to the 1950s French intelligentsia that prepared his active participation in the heterodoxical Marxist journal, Arguments, a forum for many of the urgent intellectual debates between 1956-62? What is the relationship of this activity to his writings of the early 1950s, developed into Mythologies in 1957, as well as to the shift toward semiology and structuralism and to the purported abandonment of social critique betokened by this shift? How do these phases inform the different readings of Barthes's work developed in more recent interpretations of his writing? It is argued that we would do better to view the structuralist phase and especially the ‘later’ Barthes (from the late 1960s onward) more fully and deliberately in relation to the early, explicitly political period. This revised perspective, one not limiting Barthes to works such as Mythologies, will help us better comprehend Barthes's continuing legacy for sociosemiotic critique both in literary criticism and in cultural studies and to create new ground for interdisciplinary dialogue that is very much needed in an era of questioning the limits and borders of this field.