Addiction,Power and Gender

This paper examines addictive behaviour in relation to power and gender and introduces the notion of ‘addiction as a disordered power arrangement embedded in gender’ (Bepko, 1989). The notion of power in terms of relationship positions and their impact on addictions is discussed. The popular concepts of powerlessness and co-dependency are examined in terms of their clinical usefulness and compatibility within this framework.     

The social power of algorithms

ABSTRACT

This article explores the questions associated with what might be thought of as the social power of algorithms. The article, which introduces a special issue on the same topic, begins by reflecting on how we might approach algorithms from a social scientific perspective. The article is then split into two sections. The first deals with the issues that might be associated with an analysis of the power of the algorithms themselves. This section outlines a series of issues associated with the functionality of the algorithms and how these functions are powerfully deployed within social world. The second section then focuses upon the notion of the algorithm. In this section, the article argues that we need to look beyond the algorithms themselves, as a technical and material presence, to explore how the notion or concept of the algorithm is also an important feature of their potential power. In this section, it is suggested that we look at the way that notions of the algorithm are evoked as a part of broader rationalities and ways of seeing the world. Exploring the notion of the algorithm may enable us to see how algorithms also play a part in social ordering processes, both in terms of how the algorithm is used to promote certain visions of calculative objectivity and also in relation to the wider governmentalities that this concept might be used to open up.     

‘Man up!’ bullying and resilience within a neoliberal framework

This study investigates perceptions in relation to bullying, with a particular focus on discussions around resilience, drawing on data from focus group interviews with young people (mean age 14 years old), parents and teachers (N?=?40). We view self-conduct and the governance of human behaviour as situated within a neoliberal framework, locating accountability and responsibility within the individual. Our methodological framework consists of a multi-level ‘synthesised’ discourse analysis. Firstly, drawing on discursive psychology, we focus on the interactive accomplishments of talk, such as managing facts, blame and accountability. The second level of discourse analysis focuses on the wider discourses that participants draw on to make sense of themselves, including common sense discourses and ideologies. In their narratives, the participants construct resilience in relation to bullying in terms of individual empowerment, responsibility and ‘manning up’; a skill that can be taught and acquired. Not only that, long-term implications of bullying are negated in favour of a neoliberal approach towards self-responsibility in the here and now. This has implications for strategies in relation to bullying and supporting young people in building resilience. More research is needed to establish key notions in relation to resilience, and the multidimensionality of protective factors in relation to bullying.     

Diversity and inclusion in local governance: An Australian study of seniors' participation

The importance of hearing older people's voices within local governance processes is well recognised; however, the increasing diversity among older people makes this complex. Questions around inclusion and exclusion, representation and representativeness create challenges for the ways in which diverse older people are engaged. This paper uses the results from a qualitative study conducted in Australia to address the key research question: how does diversity impact on older people's perceptions and experiences of barriers to participation in local governance? Results indicate that diversity impacts not simply on what barriers are reported by seniors, but on how those barriers are experienced. Patterns among the barriers reported and their relationship with diversity reflect questions around representation and inclusion. Thus despite broad acceptance of the notion that understanding diversity is integral to inclusion, challenges remain for older people's engagement with local governance processes. A deeper understanding of diversity and how it relates to inclusion are required.     

Personal identity between survival and integrity

In this paper several meanings of ‘personal identity’ are distinguished. It is argued that the ontological questions of unity and persistence should not be analysed using the notion of a person but using the notion of a human organism. The notions of personhood and personality are used to describe the evaluative and normative aspects of being a person. Based on these conceptual distinctions the classical philosophical problem of personal identity is dissolved into four sets of problems. Then it is argued that the ethical problems of intervening in the psyche of human beings should be discussed using the notions of personhood and personality, not unity or persistence. Finally, those ethical problems of interventions in the psyche of human beings directly related to personhood or personality are distinguished from more general ethical problems raised by these interventions.     

What governs governance,and how does it evolve? The sociology of governance‐in‐action

Governance addresses a wide range of issues including social, economic and political continuity, security and integrity, individual and collective safety and the liberty and rights to self-actualization of citizens. Questions to be answered include how governance can be achieved and sustained within a social context imbued with cultural values and in which power is distributed unevenly and dynamically, and how governance impacts on individuals and institutions. Drawing on Gramscian notions of hegemony and consent, and recent political science literatures on regulation and meta-regulation, this paper develops a sociological model of governance that emphasizes a dynamic and responsive governance in action. Empirical data from a study of pharmaceutical governance is used to show how multiple institutions and actors are involved in sustaining effective governance. The model addresses issues of how governance is sustained in the face of change, why governance of practices varies from setting to setting, and how governance is achieved without legislation.     

Moving from sustainable management to sustainable governance of natural resources: The role of social learning processes in rural India,Bolivia and Mali

The present paper discusses a conceptual, methodological and practical framework within which the limitations of the conventional notion of natural resource management (NRM) can be overcome. NRM is understood as the application of scientific ecological knowledge to resource management. By including a consideration of the normative imperatives that arise from scientific ecological knowledge and submitting them to public scrutiny, ‘sustainable management of natural resources’ can be recontextualised as ‘sustainable governance of natural resources’. This in turn makes it possible to place the politically neutralising discourse of ‘management’ in a space for wider societal debate, in which the different actors involved can deliberate and negotiate the norms, rules and power relations related to natural resource use and sustainable development. The transformation of sustainable management into sustainable governance of natural resources can be conceptualised as a social learning process involving scientists, experts, politicians and local actors, and their corresponding scientific and non-scientific knowledges. The social learning process is the result of what Habermas has described as ‘communicative action’, in contrast to ‘strategic action’. Sustainable governance of natural resources thus requires a new space for communicative action aiming at shared, intersubjectively validated definitions of actual situations and the goals and means required for transforming current norms, rules and power relations in order to achieve sustainable development. Case studies from rural India, Bolivia and Mali explore the potentials and limitations for broadening communicative action through an intensification of social learning processes at the interface of local and external knowledge. Key factors that enable or hinder the transformation of sustainable management into sustainable governance of natural resources through social learning processes and communicative action are discussed.     

Union collective action,social movement unionism and worker freedom in New Zealand

Freedom of association can include the right of labour unions to take collective action in the interest of their members. In this regard, it is presumed that unions increase worker freedom. However, there is little literature on how worker freedom as self-actualization is linked to union collective action involving coalition-building with civil society. This article uses the notions of freedom according to Berlin (1969) and MacCallum (1967) to assess the meaning of such coalition-building for worker freedom. It then employs a radical democratic perspective (Laclau and Mouffe 2001) of union engagement with the Just Transition in New Zealand to explore how unions enhance worker freedom.     

The Australian Landcare movement: towards ‘post-productivist’ rural governance?

This paper analyses whether the Australian Landcare movement complies with notions of ‘post-productivist rural governance’. The paper argues that Landcare has been a vast improvement on previous approaches to the management of the countryside in Australia, and that it has managed to mobilise a large cross-section of stakeholders. However, the Landcare movement only depicts certain characteristics of post-productivist rural governance. Although Landcare has some elements that fit in with theorisations of social movements, it still depicts many characteristics that show its close affiliation with the state and its agencies (in particular budgetary shackles). Landcare cannot be conceptualised as a fully inclusive movement, and there is little evidence that Landcare has been able to actively shape government policy. However, Landcare has contributed towards changing environmental attitudes, which can be seen as a key precondition for the successful implementation of post-productivist rural governance structures. In particular, Landcare's innovative approach of mutual farm visits, and its emphasis on the demonstration of ‘best practice’, has led to both an increased awareness of land degradation problems and the creation of grassroots ‘information networks’. There has also been some success with regard to Landcare's ability to change attitudes of the wider Australian public. Two important lessons with regard to conceptualisations of post-productivist rural governance emerge. First, individual components of post-productivist rural governance may change at different times, with the attitudinal level most influenced by Landcare, while underlying socio-political productivist structures will take much longer to change. Second, the problem in being able to label Landcare (the most innovative rural programme in advanced economies) as an expression of post-productivist rural governance shows how far away rural programmes in advanced economies still may be from such new forms of governance. The results, therefore, support those advocating that post-productivism may only be a theoretical construct in the minds of academics, rather than an expression of reality on the ground.     

Interpretive Historical Sociology: discordances of Weber, Dilthey and others

Abstract Relations of several notions of historical understanding to issues of explanation, historical complexity, practical and moral reason, and the differentiation of historical and natural science are discussed. Examination of the historical context of the German Methodenstreit exhibits similarities with current disjunctions within historical sociology and allows specification of crucial questions about its methods and cognitive goals. Max Weber and Wilhelm Dilthey are discussed as proponents of radically opposed methodological positions. Claims about Weber's reliance on Dilthey are dispelled as it is shown that Weber neither developed nor practiced a 'method' of verstehen , while Weber's congruence with Heinrich Rickert is upheld. Oppositions within historiography (Droysen vs.Buckle) and economics (Schmoller vs. Menger) are analyzed as prefigurations of the Weber-Dilthey rivalry. Finally, contemporary historical strategies are summarized with reference to pertinent issues extracted from earlier debates.     

Crisis Management by Subjectivation: Toward a Feminist Neo-Gramscian Framework for the Analysis of Europe's Multiple Crisis

The ongoing global crisis not only poses challenges for critical empirical analyses, it also forces us to reconsider central analytical concepts. This paper takes the multiple crisis as a starting point to reconsider notions of (state) power, hegemony, and subjectivation in contemporary crisis management. We discuss recent analyses by feminist and neo-Gramscian scholars, highlight their valuable contributions to a richer understanding of current crisis politics, and argue for their mutual complementarity. Neo-Gramscian perspectives, which productively highlight the current conjuncture's increasing (lack of) hegemonic qualities, need to be confronted with feminist insights regarding the current transformations of gender orders. In combining these approaches, we develop the notion of ‘crisis management by subjectivation’. To illustrate this we refer to the example of Greece: increasingly coercive and authoritarian modes of governance parallel the re-privatization of reproductive work and increasing reliance on gendered division of labor, traditional concepts of privacy, and gendered knowledge of care and the practices associated with it for the reproduction of social cohesion. With the notion of ‘crisis management by subjectivation’ we hence refer to the fact that austerity policies draw on a gendered (re-)allocation and subjective incorporation of social responsibilities as hidden resources of stability and hegemony. The crisis, through its management, is displaced into the gendered subjects themselves.     

A different head? Parental agency and early intervention

This paper considers the agency and identity of parents of children with Down syndrome within early intervention. It draws upon semi‐structured, conversational interviews with nine parents and the reflections of one of the authors upon their experiences within early intervention programmes. It considers how representations of the deficit model permeate the participation of the parent in this process. It explores the multiple identities of the parents and links these to notions of parental participation within the current policy context of early intervention in England. The notion of parental agency is an implicit driver within the current early intervention programmes, yet it appears to be compromised by the nature of those programmes.     

Stand Reconstructed: Contingent Closure and Institutional Change

The process is traced whereby crucially important, multiple denotations of classical sociology's key notion referring to social position—the Weberian German concept of Stand —have been stripped to create a simplified and inaccurate representation of social inequalities. Some historical material from central Europe is surveyed, with a brief look at Japan, to demonstrate validity problems created by blanket application of the culturally specific, streamlined notions of status/class. As an alternative, a notion of contingent social closure argues that relaxing the modernizationist assumptions of a single transition from estate to status/class increases the comparative-historical sensitivity of research on social structure, inequality, and stratification. A dynamic reading of Polányi suggests a reconceptualization of institutions as the "raw material" of social change. This might help to avoid the outdated contrast of the "West" vs. its "Others."     

Techno economic systems and excessive consumption: a political economy of ‘pathological’ gambling

This article argues that gambling is a paradigmatic form of consumption that captures the intensified logic at the heart of late modern capitalist societies. As well as a site of intensified consumption, it claims that gambling has also become the location of what has been described as a new form of ‘social pathology’ related to excess play. Drawing on Castells' (1996) notion of techno‐economic systems, it explores the ways that intersections between technology, capital and states have generated the conditions for this situation, and critiques the unequal distribution of gambling environments that result. It argues that, while the products of these systems are consumed on a global scale, the risks associated with them tend to be articulated in bio‐psychological discourses of ‘pathology’ which are typical of certain types of knowledge that have salience in neo‐liberal societies, and which work to conceal wider structural relationships. We argue that a deeper understanding of the political and cultural economy of gambling environments is necessary, and provide a synoptic overview of the conditions upon which gambling expansion is based. This perspective highlights parallels with the wider global economy of finance capital, as well as the significance of intensified consumption, of which gambling is an exemplary instance. It also reveals the existence of a geo‐political dispersal of ‘harms’, conceived as deteriorations of financial, temporal and social relationships, which disproportionately affect vulnerable social groups. From this, we urge an understanding of commercial gambling based on a critique of the wider social body of gambling environments within techno economic systems, rather than the (flawed) individual bodies within them.     

The role of private corporations in regional planning and development: Opportunities and challenges for the governance of housing and land use

There is a broad consensus that the corporate sector has an active role in facilitating community development through corporate-community investment. However, there remains uncertainty as to how much the sector should invest without taking on responsibilities and influencing decisions which are traditionally within the realm of the state. This paper explores the contemporary role of mining companies in regional governance through a case study of housing and residential land use planning and supply within the Bowen Basin coal mining and coal seam gas extraction region in Queensland, Australia. Mining companies were found to have a broad role in planning and development with far-reaching implications for land use and the wider regional community. These arrangements have emerged in response to corporate sensibilities, some recent policy requirements and most importantly, in pragmatic response to the institutional void apparent in many regional communities. In the absence of an effective regional framework with a clear and defined role for governments and corporations, powerful corporate interests risk effectively ‘capturing’ the regional development agenda within a framework that works on short-term paternalism rather than long-term regional partnerships. This also has implications for the efficiency of governance. Stronger institutional arrangements need to be developed to strengthen the capacity of the state to oversee these relationships. Regional governance and planning theory also needs to address this deficit.     

Practising politics: Technical project templates and political practice in a DFID country office

Development agencies including the UK Department for International Development (DFID) increasingly agree that if aid is to be effective, it should be politically smart and locally led. However, both the critical and the reformist literature have argued that development agencies persist with technical, template‐driven programming: political analysis and practice have not been widely institutionalized. This study aims to identify why development representations are persistently technical in their form, and what blockages have existed for developing locally grounded and politically aware programmes. The article presents an ethnography of the process of developing the core elements of the governance portfolio in an (anonymized) DFID country office. Focusing on a key design workshop, the study is situated within a wider organizational ethnography. The persistently technical justifications for programmes are a result of the bureaucratic form itself, its accountability and approval processes. Political analyses represent countries in such a way that officials can prioritize selection from a repertoire of technical models. However, scepticism about the tractability of governance problems to such analyses and programming has led to an emerging understanding of politics that creates space within the bureaucratic form for politically aware practice. Politically aware programming should emphasize good operational practice over explicit analysis and should continue to emphasize technical models like the adaptive management models which create room for such practice.     

Ethnicity and culture: thinking about 'police ethnicity'

Research about the development of ethnic identifications within contexts of employment has been neglected, not least by proponents of 'new ethnicities'. Drawing on evidence from a two year study of Black Police Associations in the constabularies of England and Wales, this paper is concerned with the construction and sustaining of a particular notion of ethnicity, related to police employment. Black Police Association members have claimed a distinct experience of police employment related directly to their being 'black' and, therefore, an essentialism forming a boundary marking them off from white officers. 'Police ethnicity', however, is a strategic notion that is somewhat fragile and exclusive. The consequences of BPA definitions of being a black officer are explored. The paper ends with a consideration of the wider, intellectual consequences of researching ethnicity within employment.     

Somewhere Between: Social Embeddedness and the Spectrum of Wild Edible Huckleberry Harvest and Use

Abstract This case study is centered in northeast Washington State and northern Idaho and focuses on the social ecology of the wild edible huckleberry. The theoretical notion of social embeddedness is the lens through which the harvest and use of this much‐prized resource is viewed and analyzed. Using grounded theory as an over‐arching method, qualitative data were collected over two harvesting seasons regarding who harvests huckleberries in the study area and why. Four categories of use/users were identified. The results suggest a rich tapestry of social relations surrounding this resource that belies the simplistic notion of “commercial” vs. “recreational” use. These relations include temporal, geographic, economic, and cultural dimensions. Policy implications include the need to move beyond the commercial/recreational dichotomy in regulating the harvest of berries as well as the need to link the notions of community forestry and subsistence to the harvest of non‐timber forest products more generally.     

Investigations of the British rural middle classes — Part 2: Fragmentation, identity, morality and contestation

This is the second of two papers concerned with understanding the causes and consequences of middle class presence in rural areas. This paper draws on the notion of an interpretative approach to class analysis as outlined in the first paper and, in particular, addresses the issues of power, difference and identity discussed, in a theoretical manner, in that paper. The focus of this paper is, however, more substantive in that it draws on research conducted in five rural areas of Britain as part of two research projects. The paper is structured into three parts. The first outlines the nature of the research projects and the forms of research conducted within them. The second part of the paper explores the issue of whether there are significant class differences within the middle class, and indeed within the service class. Attention is drawn to how the class classifications of John Goldthorpe and Erik Wright appear to cross-cut each other in ways which are suggestive of the presence of what may be termed a ‘service proletariat’. The significance of gender and other lines of social differentiation within the formation, as well as fractionalisation, of class relations is highlighted. The third part of the paper addresses the inter-relations between socio-economically established differences and those constructed through notions of culture and morality. It is argued that rural residents commonly evaluate people and places through notions of cultural competence and morality, as well as through constructions of socio-economic differences. The roles of both general and localised/ruralised constructions of cultural and moral differences are highlighted, as is the way that these constructions are used to contest, symbolically at least, the socio-economic construction of difference.     

Framing human rights: exploring storytelling within internet companies

This article explores human rights storytelling within two of the dominant internet companies, Google and Facebook. Based on interview with company staff as well as analysis of publicly available statements, the article examines how human rights are framed, made sense of and translated into company norms, products, and governance structures. The paper argues that the companies’ framing in many respects resembles that of the United States’ online freedom agenda, celebrating the liberating power of the internet and perceiving human rights as primarily safeguards against repressive governments. The companies see freedom of expression as part of their DNA and do not perceive any contradiction between this standard and business practices that may impact negatively on users’ freedom of expression, such as terms of service enforcement. Likewise, there is no sense of conflict between the online business model and their users’ right to privacy.