Capital,state and white labour in South Africa

by Robert H. Davies. New York: Harvester Press, 1979, R40,45.     

New managerialism in the academy: Gender bias and precarity

In the era of global competition, academic institutions are increasingly being managed as efficient organizations where early career academics are the most vulnerable group in the academic hierarchy. We use gender budgeting to deconstruct the financial and managerial processes and procedures in a selected academic institution in Iceland. Drawing on multiple data collection methods, we argue that new managerialism enhances the precarious position of early career academics, especially women and those in the more feminized fields. Furthermore, we show that the system's bias in favour of so‐called hard science generates gendered consequences for early career academics. We demonstrate this structural gender bias in each of the first three stages of an academic career: PhD, postdoc and other temporary positions, and assistant professorship. By highlighting the gendered consequences of new managerialism, we want to direct attention to the need to include a gender perspective in the budgeting and all the decision‐making processes in academic institutions.     

Targeting the young,the poor,the less educated: thinking beyond traditional media

The research presented in this article focuses on ways to communicate pro-social messages to often overlooked and underserved societal subgroups. Specifically, the research focuses on methods of disseminating information to low-income persons lacking reading skills or a high school education (or its equivalent) to encourage them to enroll in classes provided by a state’s adult education (AE) programs.The results of the research suggest that traditional mass media may not be the most appropriate or efficient information channels for public relations and other communicators wishing to convey such pro-social messages to similar audiences. If mass media are employed, it may be necessary to rethink both the content and the intended receivers of such messages.     

Some new trends in Mediterranean labour migration: the Middle East connection

Changes in international labor migration in the Mediterranean region since the European economic recession of the early 1970s are examined. The authors note that labor migration to the oil-producing countries of the Middle East has increased and that this migration has differed from the previous movements to Europe, in that the migrants involved have been employed by contractors from their countries of origin or by other foreign companies. The probable future decline of this migration as infrastructure projects are completed is discussed, and the consequences are examined.     

Linking Professionalism and Community Organization:

A resurgence of community practice requires that the historical tension between professionalism and community organization be resolved. This paper proposes a scholar/advocate approach to forge a link between professionals and community organizations. The scholar/advocate approach facilitates social change, provides an opportunity for social work professionals to participate in community organizing, and empowers grassroots groups. The benefits and limitations of this method for professionals and community groups are illustrated by its application with three community organizations concerned about the urban poor and homeless. The paper argues that it is time for a resurgence of community-based social work and the development of new methods to attract students to this traditional, and still relevant, field.     

Professionalism and the Public*

To explore the factor of public opinion as a component of professionalism, the prestige ratings of rehabilitation occupations, as given by a representative national sample replicating the North-Hatt technique, are analyzed. Visibility of an occupation does not necessarily increase prestige. Segmental visibility varies by exposure to the needs served by an occupation and by familiarity arising from work experiences. Stereotyping in terms of broad occupational categories, however, appears more likely to form lay opinion than specific job knowledge. Attitudes of particular segments, rather than general public views, are considered critical in professionalism.     

Bodywork Boundaries: Power,Politics and Professionalism in Therapeutic Massage

In the last decade or so, complementary and alternative medicine generally, and therapeutic bodywork in particular, has been attempting to enhance its professional status and standing. By focusing upon the sex/gender dimensions of therapeutic massage and the wider historical, cultural and legal contexts in which such work is situated, this article explores and analyses the discursive formations and practices which women therapeutic massage practitioners deploy in the course of their attempts to achieve professional recognition. Drawing upon both primary and secondary data, it is argued that particular difficulties pertain in the case of the professionalization of therapeutic massage. Because of the widespread elisions between massage and sex work, women therapeutic massage practitioners have to mark out their professional distance from clients by deploying professional identifications and by using boundary‐setting devices or techniques which act to distinguish them from sex workers. This article explores these discursive formations and practices and argues that they act to create near‐intractable problems for women massage practitioners. The article concludes that, because these issues are not commonly acknowledged in much of the academic, policy or practitioner‐orientated literature, the neglect of sex/gender in the case of therapeutic massage has consequences not only for the professionaliza‐tion project of this particular therapeutic modality but for the ways in which various body work occupations in which women predominate tend to be seen as marginal and illegitimate ‘professions’.     

Racialising emotional labour and emotionalising racialised labour: Anger,fear and shame in social welfare

This paper brings together the empirical work of Yasmin Gunaratnam with hospice social workers and that of Gail Lewis with local authority social workers. It uses a conceptually expanded notion of 'emotional labour' to explore and theorise links between different forms of emotion management and racialised subject positions and practices in social care for both those categorised as 'ethnic minorities' and as 'white'. The analytic framework draws upon the political scholarship of Audre Lorde and Thandeka and the psychoanalytic work of Melanie Klein to explore talk about the production of anger, fear and shame. A common focus in the writing of these different authors is the self/other relation and the attention given to personal, interpersonal, inter-group and intra-group dynamics. The paper argues that the irrational and unconscious aspects of racial dynamics cannot simply be countered by appeals to the rational. There is a need to recognise and integrate rather than 'split' positive and negative emotions about the self and 'others'. Such integration is seen as a source of internal strength and psychic health making for the possibility of caring and constructive relationships in social care organisations through which the complexities of difference can be recognised and valued.     

The new ‘hidden abode’: reflections on value and labour in the new economy

In a pivotal section of Capital, volume 1, Marx (1976 : 279) notes that, in order to understand the capitalist production of value, we must descend into the ‘hidden abode of production’: the site of the labour process conducted within an employment relationship. In this paper we argue that by remaining wedded to an analysis of labour that is confined to the employment relationship, Labour Process Theory (LPT) has missed a fundamental shift in the location of value production in contemporary capitalism. We examine this shift through the work of Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto and Arvidsson, who offer theoretical leverage to prize open a new ‘hidden abode’ outside employment, for example in the ‘production of organization’ and in consumption. Although they can open up this new ‘hidden abode’, without LPT's fine‐grained analysis of control/resistance, indeterminacy and structured antagonism, these theorists risk succumbing to empirically naive claims about the ‘new economy’. Through developing an expanded conception of a ‘new hidden abode’ of production, the paper demarcates an analytical space in which both LPT and Autonomist Marxism can expand and develop their understanding of labour and value production in today's economy.     

Developing the new socialist Czechoslovak state: abortion,eugenics, and the politics of choice between 1945 and 1962

ABSTRACT

The author analyzes the political and medical discourses surrounding the legalization of abortion in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and the establishment of the institution of abortion commissions to approve women’s demands. Through a genealogical intersectional lens, she explores the continuity of this rationality, which started to fear the degeneration of the collective more than its depopulation. As the Cold War commenced, for the first time in history Czechoslovak women obtained reproductive rights, particularly when a pregnancy was recognized as a threat to women’s and children’s health. Drawing on biopolitical theories and other critical feminist scholarship that have problematized the liberal underpinnings of choice and autonomy, the author demonstrates how eugenics trespassed from expert circles into politics, and, with the help of planned parenthood, recreated a complex system of socio-biological classes, determining who should reproduce and whose life was worth living, and worth protecting. The text defies the classic totalitarian thesis that divides peoples and society into two types, the totalitarian subject and its liberal counterpart. The author argues that, regardless of the political system, abortion rights operate as a regulatory strategy of power aimed at maintaining a certain population optimum by re-defining women’s responsibilities to deliver a healthy child into a healthy environment.     

Paying nonprofits: Streamlining the new york state system

Many state and local governments now rely on contracts with nonprofit organizations to deliver a broad range of public services. Nonprofits benefit from these contracts but can also experience costly delays in obtaining payment for services delivered. The article describes two laws adopted by New York State to curb these delays. One law deals with slow payment of vouchers. The other addresses the costly problem of delayed delivery of contracts for activities such as child care or services to the disabled where nonprofits cannot stop delivering services without harm to the recipients.     

Theorizing transnational labour markets: a research heuristic based on the new economic sociology

In this article, I suggest that transnational labour markets are characterized by their multi‐layered embeddedness, not only in national but also in transnational institutional settings. Hence, the national institutional factors formerly at the centre of sociological labour market theories insufficiently explain the newly emerging transnational labour markets. To account for the full complexity and institutional context of the latter, I propose an inductive theoretical approach to transnational labour markets and develop a research heuristic to instruct empirical studies about particular transnational labour markets and inductive theory building. This heuristic draws on analytical categories as developed by the new economic sociology of markets. The empirical example of the transnational labour market that matches eastern European workers to jobs in the German meat industry serves to illustrate how one can use this heuristic, which reveals some preliminary features of transnational labour markets compared with national ones, as well as some research gaps to be addressed by future studies.     

Secular state,religious lives: Islam and the state in Malaysia

Debates on secularism in Malaysia often revolve around the legal, especially the constitutional, framework. To this end several NGOs organised a road show in 2006 to debate issues surrounding freedom of religion. Not only were these events mobbed by angry crowds, but also the state intervened and shut down these and future discussions on the topic of religion, deeming such debates sensitive. This article addresses the particularities of secularism in Malaysia vis-à-vis Olivier Roy's thesis in ‘Secularism Confronts Islam’ that sees religious space and secular space as discernable yet not antithetical and Charles Taylor's thesis in the ‘Secular Age’, where he points to a new definition of secularism as a pluralist and transcendent notion of belief. In Malaysia both variants are present, with the state playing a dangerous game situating itself between reactionary Muslim forces and a moderate majority.