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.     

Falsificationism is not just ‘potential’ falsifiability,but requires ‘actual’ falsification: Social psychology,critical rationalism,and progress in science

Based on an analysis of ten popular introductions to social psychology, we will show that Karl Popper's philosophy of ‘critical rationalism’ so far has had little to no traceable influence on the epistemology and practice of social psychology. If Popper is quoted or mentioned in the textbooks at all, the guiding principle of ‘falsificationism’ is reduced to a mere ‘falsifiability’ and some central elements of critical rationalism are left out – those that are incompatible with positivism and inductivism. Echoing earlier attempts to introduce Popper to social psychology by Paul Meehl and Tom Pettigrew, we will argue that a discussing Popper's ideas in more depth could help social psychology to move forward in view of the ‘crisis of confidence’ (Pashler and Wagenmakers, 2012) that has emerged recently in view of the ‘Stapel affair’ and the reports of failures to replicate social psychological experiments in high‐powered replication attempts.     

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.     

Models of Disability, Work and Welfare in Australia

In discourse around disability there has been a shift away from a ‘medical model’, which perceives disability as an individual problem to be ‘cured’ or contained, towards a ‘social model’. The latter focuses on the relationship between people with disabilities and their social environment, locating the required interventions within the realm of social policy and institutional practice. Drawing upon a small qualitative study conducted in Melbourne, this article argues that recent plans by the Australian government to introduce mutual obligation requirements for recipients of the Disability Support Pension (DSP) sit in tension with this shift from the medical to the social models of disability. Mutual obligation is based on the assumption that income support recipients need to be taught how to be more ‘self‐reliant’, to ‘participate’ in society more fully and to become ‘active’, rather than ‘passive’, citizens. This language appears to overlap with that used to articulate a social model, which places emphasis on participation in the community and attempts a shift away from reliance on the medical profession. However, examples from interviews conducted with current and former DSP recipients demonstrate that, in practice, mutual obligation is likely to reinforce a medical model of disability, frame DSP recipients as ‘conditional’ citizens and ignore the obligations of the state and society regarding access and inclusiveness for people with disabilities.     

Explaining Different Paths in Social Health Insurance Countries – Health System Change and Cross‐border Lesson‐drawing between Germany,Austria and the Netherlands

The issues of ‘policy diffusion’ or ‘policy transfer’ and ‘mutual learning’ have become important topics in comparative research on social policy and health systems. In current debates on explaining reform in ‘Bismarckian’ social (health) insurance systems, however, these issues have been neglected. In particular, the role of ‘negative lesson‐drawing’ in the sense of avoiding mistakes of others has not often been considered. This article compares health system change in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, three countries with health systems of the social insurance type. In contrast to the existing literature, our analysis stresses that these countries have taken different reform paths since the 1990s. By applying a most similar systems design, we analyze how far cross‐border lesson‐drawing has contributed to health system divergence in the three countries. The empirical basis of the analysis is semi‐structured qualitative expert interviews, a method appropriate for tracing processes of lesson‐drawing. We argue that in order to fully understand the diverging reform trajectories, we need to take into account how political decision‐makers refer to (negative) experiences of other countries. Generally, national driving forces for health system change were at the heart of many crucial reforms during the period studied. Nevertheless, we claim that it was the German bad practice role model that kept the reform paths of Austria and Germany apart in the Austrian health reform discussion between 2000 and 2005.     

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 cultural wantons of the new millennium

In Culture and Agency (1988/1996, CUP), I made the distinction between the ‘Cultural System’ (C.S.), that is all items logged into the universal cultural archive, and ‘Socio-Cultural’ (S-C) interaction, namely how we persuade others to accept our views. The two are distinct; but any adequate explanation in social science involving ‘culture’ must respect this distinction and needs must come in a SAC, namely always entailing ‘Structure’, ‘Agency’ and ‘Culture’. Although not accepting that culture (C.S) was or is ever fully coherent or shared by definition, I charter a precipitous decline in its free accessibility as part of the Commons everywhere, but most markedly when and where morphogenesis predominates today – adding new variety to the (C.S.) and fostering divergent (S-C) aims. Together, their ideational opportunism greatly augments Fake News as opponents lock in conflict, particularly when social integration is already low. Such Fake News is especially harmful to personal and collective Reflexivity and the ‘data smog’ of social media induces a ‘presentism’ that generates cultural wantons (Harry Frankfurt's term) amongst both those lying and in receipt of their lies.     

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.     

The Search for Coordination: The Case of the Central Policy Review Staff and Social Policy Planning, 1971–77

The Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) attempted to create an ambitious strategy for the horizontal coordination of social policy in the UK during the early 1970s. The attempt – inspired largely by planning, programming and budgeting systems – was a failure, and gave way to a much modified ‘joint framework for social policies’ in 1975. Recent research has compared the CPRS's joint framework approach to the Labour government's promotion of ‘joined‐up government’ (JUG) in the 2000s. This article provides a case study of the CPRS's work on social policy planning, using archival sources. The case study addresses themes that remain significant, particularly approaches to and the politics of horizontal coordination. Finally, the article makes a modest attempt to signal the differences between the 1970s' approach and ‘JUG’.     

Social inclusion under Labor in South Australia

Social inclusion policies were championed by the former Rann Labor government in South Australia from 2002 to 2011. In 2011 the Social Inclusion Unit was dissolved by the South Australian government. It is argued that the relatively narrow focus of the former SIU on ‘problem’ communities limited its capacity to provide more than residual solutions. The diminishing political returns on social inclusion also encouraged the South Australian government to abandon this initiative. In 2014 this government has had to grapple with the end of car making in Australia and a declining manufacturing labour force, traditionally a ‘mainstream’ constituency of the Labor Party. The return to ‘mainstreaming’ social policy in South Australia might offer limited space for realignment of social policy with the concept of social citizenship. It might also represent a move away from the functionalist morality of social inclusion. Social inclusion as practiced in South Australia has limited capacity to address generalised social disadvantage. The latter is likely to concern a re‐elected Labor minority government grappling with significant job losses and a declining local economy.     

‘Doing it right?’– accessing the narratives of identity of newly qualified social workers through the lens of resilience: ‘I am,I have,I can’

Using narrative enquiry, this paper accesses the construct of identity through exploring resilience in newly qualified social workers based in statutory children's services. In seeking to avoid deficit‐based models of this role, this paper aims to present inductively the ‘voice’ of three social workers in a semi‐rural authority, storying the positive ways in which resilience has developed during their first year. Using the Grotberg resilience framework (1995) –‘I am, I have, I can’– as an analytical tool at the interface of personal, professional and organizational identities, we conclude that ‘I am’ and ‘I have’ are more important than the skills dimension of ‘I can’. Positive role models, trust, ‘managed’ optimism, flexibility of support in and beyond induction, and, crucially, self‐efficacy and space for reflexivity, are more prominent as sources of resilience and strong identity. The reflexivity, inspired by the process of narrative enquiry, is an important contributor to self‐efficacy. We propose that a positive view of growth and identity is preferable to deficit models in the context of the transition between the two ‘communities of practice’ and of the challenges of the workplace. Organizational approaches based on this view will be more likely to promote a sustainable workforce.     

The 'Dole or Drudgery' Dilemma: Education, the Work Ethic and Unemployment

Before the recession, Labour ministers claimed that much unemployment in the UK was voluntary. While social policy authors have repeatedly countered such claims by stressing that unemployed people generally possess a strong work ethic and employment commitment, their accounts typically neglect the role that choosiness in job search behaviour plays in deciding individuals' employment status. Fifty in‐depth interviews with both unemployed and employed respondents exposed considerable diversity in attitudes towards ‘dole’ (being unemployed and claiming unemployment benefits) and ‘drudgery’ (doing less attractive jobs). The more educated were more likely to prefer ‘dole’ to ‘drudgery’ (this was also found using National Child Development Study survey data), yet they usually found jobs despite their greater choosiness. Those with very low educational attainment often desperately wanted jobs but could not find them due to their low employability – which might offer an explanation for the often replicated (yet paradoxical) finding that unemployed people generally exhibit a strong work ethic and pro‐employment attitudes and behaviours. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the scope for many Jobseeker's Allowance claimants to increase their net income by undertaking an unattractive job is greater than social policy authors often imply. The question of ‘who must do the least attractive jobs?’ has been neglected by both social policy academics and policy‐makers.     

Renewing the Social Vision of Care

Care is a fundamental condition of human existence, an inherently social activity. Yet surprisingly, care has only recently begun to receive serious attention from social researchers and the public. Despite the fact that care has become a public issue over the past twenty‐five years or so, current thinking in policy and advocacy for carers has developed an overtly narrow and self‐limiting focus with a strong emphasis on the plight of primary or sole carers, with care being seen predominantly as a burden. From looking at Australian policy on carers, it may be concluded that care is essentially understood as a private, individual concern, a one‐way activity in which the active agent, the carer, does something to the other, passive, recipient. The challenge posed in this paper is to move beyond this approach to that of a more social conception of care. Following a review of the uses of the terms ‘care’ and ‘carers’ in the current Australian policy context, a discussion of the meaning of the term ‘care’ is presented and an alternative understanding of the term, with the potential of recognising and promoting care as a complex, social outcome is advanced.     

‘The Bang’ and SNAP: Controversial Issues in Schools

Over the last few years there has been a series of ‘moral panics’ over the introduction of Peace Studies into educational institutions. This case study examines the recent public controversy over an educational play call The Bang presented in secondary schools in New South Wales, and the associated attacks on student interest groups called Students for Nuclear Awareness and Peace (SNAP). The case study raises questions about power relations in the social construction of ‘controversy’ and ‘objectivity’ and the strategic dilemmas these imply for progressive teaching about social issues in schools.     

Redefining the 'Rural Question': The New 'Politics of the Rural' and Social Policy

Politics in the countryside has undergone a significant shift in emphasis in recent decades, which may be characterized as a transition from ‘rural politics’ to ‘a politics of the rural’. Whereas ‘rural politics’ refers broadly to politics located in rural space, or relating to ‘rural issues’, the ‘politics of the rural’ is defined by the centrality of the meaning and regulation of rurality itself as the primary focus of conflict and debate. However, far from marginalizing social issues – as early work on the new rural conflicts by Mormont implied – the paper argues that the new politics of the rural has liberated rural social policy from the shadow of agricultural policy, providing a new language and context through which rural social issues can be placed on the political agenda. Three examples of this are discussed, drawing on illustrations from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and North America – conflicts over the rationalization of public and commercial services in rural communities; campaigns around the closure of rural schools and their symbolic place at the heart of rural communities; and issues of difference and discrimination in the countryside, including responses to travellers and asylum‐seekers.     

The origins of the ‘creative class’: provincial urban society,scientific culture and socio-political marginality in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries1

Recent historiography has revealed the importance of scientific culture in British society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with scientific knowledge shown to have been central in a wide range of sites and contexts, from botanical gardens to mechanics’ institutes. The article draws upon the insights of historians of science, urban historians and others to argue that the concept of the English ‘urban renaissance’, the Habermasean model of the public sphere, various aspects of post-structural, post-modern and feminist theory, and attention to ‘the space’ and geography can all be used to enhance the understanding of this culture. Given that scientific culture has often been associated with social groups that have sometimes been described as ‘marginal’, the article explores the historiography of various aspects of what it defines as the ‘marginal model’ of cultural expression. Aspects of its various manifestations are explored with special reference to groups often perceived as ‘alternative’ or ‘peripheral’ to ‘dominant’ or majority culture, such as women, dissenters, gays or immigrants, including recent work in the United States concerning the activities of the ‘creative class’. It is contended that this can illuminate our understanding of British scientific culture, for instance through its emphasis on urban and regional differentiation and on the irrational aspects of intellectual endeavour. The study assesses how successfully models of social marginality account for the varied character and geography of this culture, using case-studies of scientific societies in different types of English town and a review of Scottish Enlightenment science.     

RECONSTITUTING COMMUNITY: SOCIAL JUSTICE,SOCIAL ORDER AND THE POLITICS OF COMMUNITY

Social policy debates are informed today by a rhetoric of the ‘politics of community’ which focuses on problems of social fragmentation and exclusion in the new era of globalisation. While this rhetoric was earlier associated primarily with debate on social justice, it now more frequently relies on notions of social order, notably in the Federal Government's welfare reform agenda. ‘Community ‘ is thus a central and dynamic focus of debate, especially in relation to the arguments over ‘social capital’. The most important question in this project of ‘reconstituting community’ is the kind of community likely to emerge under globalisation: which question cannot be raised without shifting the current focus on social order back to one on social justice.     

Housing and the Social Exclusion Agenda in England

In the period immediately following its election in 1997 the current Labour government in the UK declared a commitment to ‘combating social exclusion’ to be at the core of the domestic policy agenda. The interpretation of the term ‘social exclusion’ has been the source of extensive debate. This paper focuses on one aspect of the current debate, exploring the relationship between housing and social exclusion, both in theory and in contemporary central government policy in England. I argue that theoretical imprecision is a very real issue, not least because it allows policy makers to refer to rather vague causal mechanisms or social processes to justify actions and interventions. I identify some of the areas that require further exploration and theoretical development if we are to have a rigorous understanding of the concept of social exclusion and its link to housing. Most fundamentally, I suggest that the question of whether the concept of ‘social exclusion’ contributes anything valuable to our ability to understand social disadvantage needs to be addressed directly.