The social dimensions of happiness and life satisfaction of Australians: Evidence from the World Values Survey

Relatively short‐term verbal therapies and other forms of intervention may help people to overcome difficult passages in life, but studies in recent decades have pointed to the salience of social and economic conditions in shaping life satisfaction and happiness. The present study contributes to our knowledge of this field by extending the range of social factors considered, but also, crucially, by the employment of statistical analyses that serve to disentangle the often overlapping variables associated with life satisfaction and happiness. Our results support previous ‘demographic’ findings as well as new results including education, marriage, children, human rights and, particularly in the context of Australian society, perceived choice in life. Establishing what the major contributing factors are can assist the formulation of social policy. Moreover, it can alert practitioners to the value of consolidating their work by encouraging service users to utilise community sources that enhance life satisfaction and/or happiness. Key Practitioner Message: ● The informed linking of service users to sources of life satisfaction and happiness can ‘value add’ direct service interventions; ● The salience of exercising individual choice to achieving life satisfaction reinforces the importance of the practice principle of self‐determination; ● A person's sense of physical wellbeing is a relevant part of social assessment and subsequent planned actions.     

Materialism, Agnosticism and God

The longstanding philosophical debate between idealism and materialism has recently entered the ontological terrain of critical realism (CR) and dialectical critical realism (DCR). This has been initiated by Roy Bhaskar’s most recent book, From East to West, which attempts an ambitious synthesis of philosophy, social theory and theology. On the one hand, Bhaskar’s attempt to root his philosophy and social theory in a ‘realist theory of God’ has found an echo within the CR and DCR research camp, some of whose members would urge us to take seriously the possibility of a ‘religious sociology’. On the other hand, Bhaskar’s abrupt ‘idealist turn’ has left many critical realists flabbergasted and horrified, particularly those working at the interface between realist philosophy and Marxist social science, especially since Bhaskar’s new philosophical trajec‐tory is radically at odds with the ‘synchronic emergent powers materialism’ outlined in his The Possibility of Naturalism. In response to this ‘split’ within the CR and DCR camp, the spectre of ‘realist agnosticism’ has been raised and defended by Mervyn Hartwig in this journal. Since neither science nor philosophy can settle the issue of what kind of stuff constitutes ‘rock bottom reality’, it is rational to be agnostic on the ‘ultimate question’, to deny positively affirming the claims of either one side or the other. Now this is the move that is resisted in this paper. My argument is that ontolog‐ical idealism is disputable on a number of grounds‐philosophical, scientific, ethical and political. In particular, I argue that objective idealism is unsupported by rational knowledge, is riddled with conceptual and logical defects, is contrary to the logic of scientific discovery, and is an obstacle to eudaimonia (human emancipation). Further, since realist agnosticism rests its case on the myth of infallible knowledge, and obviously stands or falls with the defensibility or other‐wise of objective idealism, this gives us ‘good enough’ reasons for accepting a thoroughgoing materialism as the ontological foundation of social theory.     

Nothing is Concealed: De-centring Tacit Knowledge and Rules from Social Theory

The concept of "tacit knowledge" as the means by which individuals interpret the "rules" of social interaction occupies a central role in all the major contemporary theories of action and social structure. The major reference point for social theorists is Wittgenstein's celebrated discussion of rule-following in the Philosophical Investigations. Focusing on Giddens' incorporation of tacit knowledge and rules into his "theory of structuration", I argue that Wittgenstein's later work is steadfastly set against the "latent cognitivism" inherent in the idea of tacit knowledge and tacit rules. I also argue that the idea of tacit knowledge and tacit rules is either incoherent or explanatorily vacuous.     

Correcting misconceptions about the development of social work in China: a response to Cunfu Jia

In this brief debate article we respond to Cunfu Jia's criticism of our article ‘Defining the Profession?’ (International Journal of Social Work 16: 382–389). We address the issue of ‘evidence’ and the issue of the applicability to China of the global definition of social work. We suggest that although debate articles by their very nature risk generating false dichotomies, they provide an important and welcome opportunity to explore commonality and difference and to develop our knowledge and thinking as a result of an international exchange of views.     

Social Acceleration Theory and the Self

In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of work in the social sciences that underscores the prevalence of the phenomenon of ‘social acceleration'—the speeding up of social life— in many parts of the Western world. Although research on social acceleration has tended to analyze the phenomenon on a social‐structural level, there is also a need to investigate how social acceleration has ‘ramifications for the socially dominant forms of self‐relation’. One way to gain a more in‐depth understanding of this facet of social acceleration is to investigate the speeding up of social life through the prism of the self. The central argument of this article is that there are at least five images of the self which can be associated with the social acceleration phenomenon: (1) the ‘detached’ self, (2) the ‘reflexive’ self, (3) the ‘reinventive’ self, (4) the ‘stationary’ self and (5) the ‘decelerating’ self. By explaining how these kinds of self relate to the speeding up process, we seek to advance a more nuanced and sophisticated theory of social acceleration, which captures some of the complexities and paradoxes that the phenomenon involves.     

H.L.A. Hart's Contribution to Legal Anthropology

In the first half of this paper I show how H. L. A. Hart's theory of rules can resolve, or at least clarify, a central methodological problem in legal anthropology that was first posed in Llewellyn and Egebel's The Cheyenñe Way In the second half I explore and develop Hart's theory (a) of rules, and apply it to problems of agency and behaviourism in legal anthropology, and (b) of legal development, and apply it to the problem of rule-scepticism in legal anthropology as it is posed in Roberts and Comaroffs Rules and Processes and elsewhere.     

Social ontology,practical reasonableness,and collective reasons for action

I argue that the ontology of human social institutions and collective intentionality could be anchored in the normative notion of ‘practical reasonableness’ as collective reason for action. This involves the deontic idea of mutuality, accepted rules, and shared attitudes of other‐regardedness. I examine John Searle's three primitive notions of social ontology: collective intentionality, assignment of social functions, and constitutive rules and procedures. I use these notions to provide a plausible basis for understanding how people reason, in order to arrive at practically reasonable decisions and collective agency. Searle argues that social reality, institutions, processes, and facts are grounded in collective intentionality and the acceptance of social rules, procedures, and functions. I argue that collective intentionality and socially accepted rules are anchored in the need for human interdependence that engenders the social rules and norms or attitudes of ‘practical reasonableness’. I analyze the concept of ‘practical reasonableness’ as a representation of human mode of reasoning that involves collective intentionality.     

Undisciplining Social Science: Wittgenstein and the Art of Creating Situated Practices of Social Inquiry

There are now countless social scientific disciplines—listed either as the science of … X … or as an ‐ology of one kind or another—each with their own internal controversies as to what are their “proper objects of their study.” This profusion of separate sciences has emerged, and is still emerging, tainted by the classical Cartesian‐Newtonian assumption of a mechanistic world. We still seem to assume that we can begin our inquiries simply by reflecting on the world around us, and by allowing our conceptualizations to guide our actions in our inquiries. Beginning our inquiries in this retrospective manner, however, means that our concepts and conceptualizations are both after‐the‐fact and beside the point, for ‘something else’ altogether is guiding us in the performance of our situation‐sensitive actions than merely our conceptualizations. We need before‐the‐fact, hermeneutically‐structured inquiries that can ‘set out’ inner ‘landscapes of possibilities’, to think‐with and to provide guidance, as we try in our more scientifically organized efforts to achieve socially desired outcomes in particular socially shared situations. Conducting such preliminary inquiries is thus an art, requiring not only judgment, but also imagination and poetic forms of expression aimed at creating such shared, inner landscapes among all concerned.     

Social Policy beyond Fear: The Globalization of Strangeness,the ‘War on Terror’, and ‘Spaces of Wonder’

Fear has become central to social scientific understandings of contemporary insecurities. However, this article argues that a focus on fear is not sufficient, and that an exploration of ‘wonder’ is more productive, particularly when trying to understand modes of governance and policy regimes introduced as part of the ‘war on terror’. An appropriate starting point for such an exploration is the globalization of strangeness. The idea that globalization has undermined the familiar territoriality of a world of nation states has become accepted in the social science literature. However, the nature of the resulting unfamiliarity or strangeness of the world is rarely explored. This article focuses on the processes by means of which the world is rendered strange and examines the opportunities for new forms of governance opened up by a world designated as insecure, uncertain and unpredictable. The article pays particular attention to the ways in which this strangeness can generate ‘spaces of wonder’. Examples of such ‘spaces of wonder’ include ‘the world’, the UK's border, now offshore according to the Home Office, and ‘global borderlands’. The article advances a critical reading of contemporary political responses to ‘spaces of wonder’, particularly the ways in which the unknown and threatening are rendered in familiar and cosy terms.     

Children's perceptions of others' understanding of moral transgressions: who should know better and why

The present study examined children's perceptions of other children's ability to make moral judgements. Preschool, kindergarten, first- and second-grade children rated the permissibility of moral transgressions for a same-age peer, a younger child and an older child. Children also were asked why the transgressions were wrong. Preschool and kindergarten children rated transgressions equally wrong for a same-age peer, a younger and an older child, whereas first and second graders rated transgressions for a same-age peer and an older child as more wrong than for a younger child. Preschoolers stated they did not know why the transgressions were wrong for a younger child, while kindergarten children reasoned that a younger child did not know the rules. First and second graders reasoned that a same-age peer and an older child should know ‘better’, but a younger child would not know ‘better’. Results suggest that children's perceptions of others' moral knowledge is related to children's ability to coordinate domains of social knowledge when making judgements of others' moral transgressions.     

Conspiracy to corrupt public morals and the ‘unlawful’ status of homosexuality in Britain after 1967

The common law offence of conspiracy to corrupt public morals has a long though controversial history in English law. It was a charge mainly employed against obscenity, procuring prostitution, keeping a disorderly house, public indecency and public mischief. These could be interpreted by the courts as facets of a single offence known as conspiracy to corrupt public morals. The charge was used intermittently in the twentieth century, mainly against the arrangement of prostitution and ‘disorderly houses’ used by homosexual men. It was applied again in 1960 in the Ladies Directory case and was subsequently used against gay men who advertised for friends and partners in the underground magazine International Times (IT). The prosecution of IT was based on the legal principle that certain forms of ‘outrageously immoral’ conduct were in themselves corrupting of public morals, whether such conduct was legal or not. This principle placed male homosexuality in the legal category of ‘unlawful’ or ‘wrongful’ acts. In that sense, even after the decriminalization of homosexuality between men in 1967, it still had an uncertain legal status. Conspiracy to corrupt public morals cast a shadow over early attempts to create a gay civil society that was partly based on magazines and personal advertising. For conservative critics of the 1967 Act, conspiracy charges had the useful effect of curtailing public expressions of homosexuality.     

The implications of dialogicality for ‘giving voice’ in social representations research

Social representations research is often undertaken by scholars who seek to ‘give voice’ to knowledge(s) that are held by socially disenfranchised individuals and groups. However, this endeavour poses a number of problems in practice, not least because it assumes that the ‘voices’ voiced by individuals and/or groups in social research will be unambiguous and uniform, and unchanged by the research encounter. Despite the growth of attention to the critical potential of social representations theory, there remains a lack of scholarship on the relationship between the theory's emphasis on the relational, or dialogical, nature of social life (the Ego‐Alter‐Object relation) and the implications of this for critical research. In this article, I argue that the dialogical epistemology from which social representations research must depart incites reflection upon (i) the design of empirical studies, which must equally attend to both ‘Ego’ and ‘Alter’, and (ii) the researcher‐researched relationship, which may itself be best viewed as an Ego‐Alter interaction. I make the case for adopting dialogical epistemology in critical social psychology, and argue that this is essential to undertaking ethical social research. I conclude by suggesting that claims to ‘giving voice’ have little place in critical social psychology in general, and social representations scholarship in particular.     

The destruction of liberty in French Guiana: law,identity and the meaning of legal space, 1794–1830

Abstract

This article examines the colonial legal culture of French Guiana from 1794 to 1830 during a period marked by dramatic historical rupture; slaves in the colony who were liberated by decree of the French legislature in 1794 were returned to slavery under Napoleon. People who managed to remain free in the nineteenth century endured humiliating legal handicaps as well as challenges to their free status. In Guiana during this period, a person's access to the ‘rights of man and citizen’ depended on intricate and ultimately fragile legal structures. The perils besetting Guiana's freed people during and after the French Revolution often arose from the highly adjustable character of legal space – the legal status of imperial territory in relation to domestic soil. This article draws on archival materials including notarial documents and trial records to reconstruct the role of law and legal discourse in mediating everyday life, familial relationships and social encounters on the French colonial frontier.     

Social investments in the knowledge economy: The politics of inclusive,stratified, and targeted reforms across the globe

As countries transition from industrial to post-industrial knowledge economies, education and skills are crucial. Consequently, policy-makers around the globe have increasingly focused on social investment, that is, policies aiming to create, mobilize, or preserve skills. Yet, countries around the globe have developed social investments to different degrees and in highly different forms. Our goal is twofold: First, we introduce a new typology of social investment policies, distinguishing nine types along two dimensions: three distributive profiles (inclusive, stratified, targeted) and three functions (skill creation, preservation, mobilization). This differentiation allows fine-grained analyses of the causes and consequences of different kinds of social investments, thus offering a perspective to study the relationship between efficiency and inclusiveness in a way that goes beyond the mere discussion how social investment policies grosso modo affect inequalities (‘equalizing’ versus ‘Matthew Effects’). Second, we theorize on the politics of social investment. We argue that the interaction of policy legacies and socioeconomic factors is the main explanation for which functions of social investment policies are introduced, whereas their distributive profiles are crucially shaped by political coalitions. We illustrate with empirical material from democracies around the globe.     

Badiou and the philosophy of social work: a reply to Stephen Webb

Imre R. Badiou and the philosophy of social work: a reply to Stephen Webb Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 253–258 © 2010 The Author, Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Stephen Webb's recent article ‘Against diversity and difference in social work’ claims that the work of Alain Badiou has the potential to be of great use in social work practice. Webb is faced with the problem of a discourse that has eroded any practical meaning attached to notions of diversity and difference, he laments the ‘ethical turn’ in social work practice and blames post‐modernism. Webb views the work of Badiou as a way to reinvigorate social work practice. I claim that Badiou's Being and Event is exclusive to ontology. Connections between Being and Event and possible ‘uses’ of Badiou's subtractive ontology, as an instrumentalisation, are not worthwhile. Critiquing Badiou's non‐ontological philosophies and political polemics is a better way to assess the practicality of his thought outside of his ontology. Webb's conflation of post‐modernism, neoliberalism and the difference, diversity and ethics discourse is also problematic and is critiqued here.     

‘More time for what?’ Exploring intersecting notions of gender,work, age and leisure time among people with cognitive disabilities

This article explores intersecting notions of leisure among middle‐aged people with intellectual disabilities in the setting of the Swedish welfare state. The participants are recipients of long‐term disability services and have experienced the changing ideological frameworks of the welfare effort, which has recently focused on normalisation, inclusion and participation. Structured activities are arranged by disability services in order to normalise living conditions and provide recreation for disabled people. However, the range of activities is constrained by financial resources, by notions of gender and age and by an institutionalised emphasis on the work ethic – leading to constructions of leisure partly as ‘time beside’ where ‘free time’ activities should not interfere with the duties of the working week. The participants' limited resources and their lack of a strong voice limit their ability to demand their legal rights and leave many of them with ‘too much time with too little to do’. Key Practitioner Message: ● A common idea of leisure is the relationship between social and physical activities, well‐being and health; ● People with disabilities, regardless of age, engage in fewer leisure activities than the general population due to a lack of resources; ● Even with legal rights, the lack of a strong voice as well as institutional constraints limit their leisure opportunities.     

Weighing it up: family maintenance discourses in NGO child protection decision‐making in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Examining the concepts underpinning the reasoning processes of social worker's decision‐making provides important insights into how social work practice is undertaken. This paper examines one of the major discourses used by social workers in decision reasoning in a non‐governmental organization child protection context in Aotearoa/New Zealand: family maintenance. This study found that family maintenance as a concept was strongly privileged by social workers. This resulted in attempts to preserve families and created a hierarchy of preferred decision outcomes. A preference for family maintenance was supported by legal, moral, psychological and Māori cultural concepts. This pattern of constructs underpinned the ‘weighing up of harms’ when considering removal, and generally reflected a child welfare orientation. In addition to this, it was found that ‘family’ was broadly defined, and could include people who had a relationship with the children, or Māori definitions of extended family, in addition to legal ones.     

Models of 'ordinary' and 'special' daily living: matching residential care to the mental-health needs of looked after children

This paper proposes a set of distinctions between ‘ordinary’ and ‘special’ modes of everyday living in residential settings for young people in the ‘looked after’ system. The paper begins by reviewing both quantitative and qualitative evidence on the mental‐health needs of the young people, arguing that there is evidence of very high levels of mental distress and disturbance within this group, and that this distress is often undiagnosed and untreated both by psychiatric professionals and within the residential care system itself. There follows a commentary on the tacit assumptions underpinning much residential practice, especially the emphasis in some policy and legal documentation on the young people’s need for ‘ordinary’ everyday experience. The concept of the ‘ordinary’ is problematized, and it is argued that while young people do need to be supported towards mainstream ‘ordinary’ everyday living, they also need specialized everyday care in which their emotional and psychological needs can be recognized and responded to. Four models of ‘special everyday living’ are proposed, based upon existing literature on residential practice, and it is argued that residential care programmes should be based upon a mix of these special and ordinary provisions if the young people’s emotional needs are to be met.     

Social work and social problems: A contribution from systems theory and constructionism

Social work builds its identity on social problems. The goal is to generate knowledge about causes, consequences and solutions. However, there is a lack of theory of social problems. We suggest that research on social problems can benefit by ‘bringing the observer in’: Loseke's constructionist framework and Luhmann's systems theory. According to Loseke, social problems appear differently when constructed by different observers. Constructions vary in terms of morality, conditions, victims/villains and solutions. From Luhmann we learn that modern society consists of a multitude of social systems (e.g. politics, science, economy etc.), each operating with their own communicative codes. Combining both approaches, we hypothesise that any social system constructs its own (version of) social problems. Illustrating with the empirical case ‘suicide among mentally ill people’, we examine how a phenomenon is constructed differently as a social problem by four different social systems: the disability movement, politics, medicine and social work.     

Sen and Aristotle on Wellbeing

A significant body of research and analysis concerning wellbeing has emerged across a number of social research disciplines, yet the concept of wellbeing does not admit of any unified meaning. Philosophical accounts of wellbeing are traditionally divided into three categories: hedonistic, desire‐satisfaction and objective list theories, reflecting longstanding doctrinal divisions in normative ethics. Rejecting the foundational monism associated with these approaches, Amartya Sen has proposed a pluralist ‘capabilities’ approach to personal wellbeing based on freedom of choice and the Aristotelian notion of a ‘function’. Recent Australian wellbeing research also shows promising signs of moving beyond reductive income‐based metrics towards plural indicators of poverty and social disadvantage. This paper reprises Aristotle's distinctive account of perfect wellbeing (eudaimonia) in the Nicomachean Ethics and investigates Sen's approach in its light, suggesting that future Australian research in the spirit of Sen's pluralism may benefit from Aristotelian insights into the ‘thickness’ of freedom implicated in personal wellbeing.