Networking practitioner research: synthesising the state of the ‘art’

The aim of this paper is to examine what we know about the experience and outcomes of networked initiatives aimed at facilitating practitioner research. We outline the roles and significance of practitioner research within social work; review emerging understanding of practitioner research network initiatives; and draw conclusions from a comparative analysis of three such initiatives in Auckland, New Zealand, Arhus County, Denmark, and across Scotland. We consider the nature and challenges of practitioner research and a number of responses to how such work should be formulated and conducted. Central to our argument is an empirically informed consideration—from our separate and shared experiences—of how well networks enhance the process and consequences, and art and craft, of such research projects.     

The state and future of social service enterprises—a Finnish case

There has been a rapid increase in private social services in Finland, where the tradition of social care services has placed the main emphasis on public services. The aim of this article is to compare the situation of Finnish social service enterprises in 2001 and 2005/2006, in the light of two national surveys, in order to increase knowledge about the state and the future of such enterprises as providers of social care. Particular attention is paid to the profiles of men and women as entrepreneurs, as these differed somewhat. The composition of private care enterprises and their management remained fairly similar between 2001 and 2005/2006. Most of the enterprises were owned by middle-aged women with an extensive experience of social and health care. The owners of the older enterprises were more pessimistic about the future than the owners of the more recently-established firms. Social workers have not been active in setting up firms, but the public–private processes should be steered and evaluated from the social work perspective, too, because they are actors who have a relevant part to play in the long-term co-operation and development work of public and private social services.     

Ups and downs of art commerce: narratives of “crisis” in the contemporary art markets of Russia and India

This article develops an analytical framework to study the role of narratives in markets and argues that there is a relationship between the structure and composition of narratives produced by market actors and market dynamics. With respect to theory, the article bridges the perspectives that study markets as cultures and as fields and draws from the organizational studies approach to the analysis of narratives. Two empirical cases of the crises narratives in the emerging contemporary art markets of Russia and India illustrate the use of the framework. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with artists and art dealers as well as observations in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, New Delhi, and Mumbai conducted between April 2012 and June 2013. The article shows that there is a widely shared crisis narrative with a coherent structure in the Indian art market. In contrast, fragmented and contested stories that lack narrative structure dominate in the Russian art market. The analysis of the first case highlights the narrative structure and shows the productive work it does in the Indian market—it provides a moral justification of existing market norms and produces a perspective for the future. The analysis of the second case focuses on the context of narrative production and connects the conflicting interpretations of the crisis in the Russian art market to contested hierarchies and persistent uncertainty.     

Replacement Migration: the wave of the future?

The Population Division of the United Nations issued a report in 1999 on using migration to counteract the effects of low fertility on population size and ageing. The report looked at eight industrial countries and two regions, Europe and the European Union. Using population projections, the analysts estimated the amount of migration necessary to maintain both labour forces and the ratios of workers to retirees at a constant level.
This article agrees with the report that substituting migration for low fertility requires politically insupportable levels of migration. The article also concludes that the labour force and retirement financing outlook is not as dire as the UN report insinuates.     

Religion,classification struggles,and the state’s exercise of symbolic power

Theory and Society - The capacity to classify social groups legally is a central characteristic of modern states. Social groups, however, often resist the classificatory schemas of the state. This...     

Problematizing the “informal sector”: 50 years of critique,clarification, qualification,and more critique

Since its coining in 1971, the concept of the “informal sector” has been used to draw scholarly, political, and philanthropic attention to hundreds of millions of workers who lack basic labor protections. But as the term proliferated, so too did its detractors. Critics claim that the label of “informal” homogenizes the world's poor and distorts understandings of the sources of and solutions to their economic woes. What are the origins of the concept's contradictory nature? What strategies have scholars used to increase the likelihood that it will be used to illuminate and uplift, rather than to distort and denigrate? This article analyzes how scholars have resignified and retheorized the informal economy in response to five conceptual challenges: stigmatization, definitional fuzziness, homogenization, an either/or fallacy, and the presumption of “formalization” as the solution. Such efforts have preserved the concept's analytic potency and political relevance. In the longer term, however, a true testament to the concept's value would be if it outlives its own utility; that is, if it mobilizes enough recognition and resources to the invisibilized majority of the world's workers that scholars and state bureaucrats no longer feel the need to lump them together under a misleading catchall label.     

A Whig view of slavery,development and the world market∗

This essay offers an interpretation of an influential theory of the relation between slavery, national development, and international economics developed by the American Whig leader, H.C. Carey, over a period of years, but most fully expressed in a single text published in 1856. Although Carey was widely read at the time, his mode of opposition to slavery was unorthodox, and his political situation put him under certain rhetorical burdens. Consequently his text requires a close reading to be be understood.     

On the ruins of the historical avant‐garde: The institution of art and its contemporary exigencies

The focus of this theoretical paper is the analysis of the European historical avant‐garde as an excess of modernism. As such, its goal was two‐fold. First, it tried to transcend the institution of autonomous art and second, it attempted to integrate art into everyday life. In this light, the paper presents the contingencies of the genesis and main features of the historical avant‐garde's doctrine and practice. It further argues that the historical avant‐garde ended in a collapse of the aesthetic and practical dimension without corresponding emancipation. This failure, in turn, laid down the groundwork for the post‐modern art which appropriated the stylistic and formal innovations of historical avant‐garde while comfortably remaining within the institution of art. Thus, the post‐modern betrayal of the values embedded in avant‐garde and modernist works of art appears to be a necessity.     

Parental breakup and children’s development: the role of time and of post-separation conditions

Review of Economics of the Household - In recent years, the relationship between parental separation and child outcomes has received massive attention. This extraordinary level of interest stems...     

Poor theory and the art of plastic pollution in Nigeria: relational aesthetics,human ecology,and “good housekeeping”

ABSTRACT

The art of plastic pollution from Nigeria marks more than an environmental consciousness. It also marks an ecological consciousness based on contemporary plastic-waste artists’ commitment to advocating the recovery of traditions of repurposing materials and of skilled craft work. These contemporary artists are proposing that Nigeria negotiate its own modern identity by recuperating creative traditions of object making that combine the values of utility and of artistry in the practice of craft. The emphasis on plastic specifically as an artistic medium highlights the clash of what eco-artist Bright Eke calls a “bottled life” – entrapped, wasteful, unhealthy, ego-centric – with a traditional ethos of interconnectedness and eco-consciousness. Drawing together data from personal interviews, filmed documentaries, and museum talks, this essay argues that the current generation of artists is using salvaged plastic as a primary medium to rethink Nigerian ecology in terms of “good housekeeping” – a specifically Nigerian oikos.     

The ingathering: Reasons of state,logic of capital and the assimilation of immigrants in Israel 1948–60

After more than 50 years of statehood ethnicity still looms large in Israeli politics as the division between Israelis of non‐European and European descent plays a central part in Israeli politics. This article, examining patterns of immigrant assimilation in the 1950s, seeks to explain why, despite an all embracing Jewish identity and the massive efforts of the state to erase ethnic identities, the categories have retained so much of their weight. Assimilation and modernization, directed towards immigrants, were both constituted and limited by the mutually constitutive, yet sometimes contradictory dictates of state building and the formation of a market economy. Assimilation facilitated the settlement of immigrants along the frontier, mobilized and motivated them into shouldering security demands, and helped to create a productive labour force. But, contrary to the inclusive military apparatus, the policies of settlement and employment relegated immigrants to the periphery. Consequently, while immigrants assimilated and gradually achieved some economic progress and political leverage due to the remaining disparities and past resentments ethnic identity persisted.     

Kinsey and the church—after twenty years∗

Abstract

This research was intended to discern any correlations between marijuana and human sexual activity. I was specifically interested in exploring the concept that the drug might produce different effects on males and females in regard to their sexual activity. Finally, I was concerned with the dosage of the drug which would produce the most pronounced effect on the majority of the users in regard to their sexual activity.     

Parish councils,partnership and governance: the development of ‘exceptions’ housing in the Malvern Hills District,England

Partnerships between public, private and voluntary sectors have been feted as an effective strategy to broaden engagement with policy delivery. However, their legitimacy has been questioned as some of the power relations within and between partnerships raise doubts over their inclusiveness and effectiveness. In light of these concerns, this paper examines ‘partnerships projects’ established to build affordable housing for local people in rural Worcestershire. Particular emphasis is given to the role and power of parish councils within these partnerships. It is argued that far from leading to greater participation, such partnerships can give voice and power to those who seek to exclude particular groups from rural spaces.     

Peace, reconciliation and a shared future: a policy shift or more of the same?

Developments in the late 1990s, including paramilitary cease-firesand the advent (albeit, short-lived) of devolved Government,offered a new dispensation from which to appraise the communityrelations problem in Northern Ireland and advocate policy action.This paper considers an emergent policy framework entitled AShared Future. Drawing on the experience of delivering betterrelations through education in Northern Ireland, it argues thatwhilst A Shared Future reflects progress in how the problemof community relations is defined, many uncritical assumptionsare made about the potential of suggested actions to addressproblems of intergroup fear, mistrust and hostility.     

Has the future of marriage arrived? A contemporary examination of gender, marriage, and psychological well-being

A long tradition of research and theory on gender, marriage, and mental health suggests that marital status is more important to men's psychological well-being than women's while marital quality is more important to women's well-being than men's. These beliefs rest largely on a theoretical and empirical foundation established in the 1970s, but, despite changes in gender and family roles, they have rarely been questioned. The present analysis of three waves of a nationally representative survey indicates that, with few exceptions, the effects of marital status, marital transitions, and marital quality on psychological well-being are similar for men and women. Further, for men and women, occupying an unsatisfying marriage undermines psychological well-being to a similar extent--and, in some cases, to a greater extent--than exiting marriage or being continually unmarried.     

Seven steps to market — the development of the market-led approach to countryside conservation and recreation

Fifty years of interplay between farming, environment and politics are reviewed within the context of the search for policy tools which reconcile the need for conservation and access to the countryside with the needs of those who own or manage the land. Seven main policy instruments which have been used to reconcile conflicts between the various interest groups representing farmers and landowners, conservationists and recreationists are identified and their strengths and weaknesses analysed. The significance and initial impact of the seventh of these policy tools — the incentives or market-led approach — is considered in greater detail.