Whistleblowing processes in Swedish public organisations—complaints and consequences

Research on whistleblowing in Sweden is scarce. In this explorative study 21 cases of whistleblowing from human service organisations in Sweden were examined. Extensive material from thematic interviews with 28 whistleblowers, 30 key persons and documents from supervisory authorities such as the National Board of Health and Welfare have been analysed.

Some findings were that the organisation problems motivating whistleblowing were usually cutbacks in vital services for users, unethical working methods or abuse of clients. Internal whistleblowing was usually met with silence from supervisors and directors. The whistleblowers then went on with external whistleblowing by reporting the bad conditions to the higher supervisory authorities who started thorough investigations. Their actions caused a lot of negative reactions in the organisation, but they were also supported by media and ordinary citizens.

The retaliation processes against the whistleblowers were described. Half of the interview group has left their positions, either on sick leave or by changing jobs. The findings show a stigmatisation process with severe consequences for the individuals. But the cited organisations usually had to change their illegal or immoral practices and benefited in the long run from the whistleblowing events.     

Photography and ambivalence

Although scant attention has been devoted to the anthropological ‘crisis in representation’ of creating still images as part of anthropological research, several contemporary women anthropologists have written of their misgivings. In this paper, I examine the ideas and photographic practices of Ruth Behar, Lila Abu‐Lughod, Serena Nanda, Barbara Tedlock, Kristen Hastrup and Nancy Scheper‐Hughes, all of whom hold ambivalent attitudes toward photography. I will identify common concerns as well as strengths acknowledged by them. Also, I will examine new ways in which they and a number of other anthropologists are re‐visioning photographic practices and creating more equitable relationships between researchers and subjects.     

Boundary Politics in the Public Sphere: Openness, Secrecy, and Leak

The issue of openness/secrecy has not received adequate attention in current discussion on the public sphere. Drawing on ideas in critical theory, political sociology, and cultural sociology, this article explores the cultural and political dynamics involved in the public sphere in modern society vis-à-vis the practice of open/secret politics by the state. It argues that the media, due to their publicist quality, are situated at the interface between publicity and secrecy, which thereby allows for struggles over the boundary of state openness/secrecy in the public sphere. A theory of boundary politics is introduced that is contextualized in the relationship among state forms, the means of making power visible/invisible (media strategies), and symbolic as well as discursive practices in the public sphere. In explaining the dynamics of boundary politics over openness/secrecy, three ideal-types of boundary creation are conceptualized: open politics, secrecy, and leak. The theory is illustrated with a case study of the Patten controversy in Hong Kong.     

FOR MONEY OR GLORY? COMMERCIALIZATION,COMPETITION, AND SECRECY IN THE ENTREPRENEURIAL UNIVERSITY

Scholars have grown concerned that the commercialization of academic science is increasing secrecy at the expense of cooperation and information sharing. Using data from comparable surveys of academic scientists in three fields (experimental biology, mathematics, and physics), we test whether scientists have become more competitive and more secretive over the last 30 years. We also use the recent survey to test a multivariate model of the effects of scientific competition and commercialization (patenting, industry funding, and industry collaboration) on scientific secrecy. We find that secrecy has increased, and has increased particularly for experimental biologists. Only 13 percent of experimental biologists in 1998 felt safe discussing their ongoing research with all others doing similar work. Our multivariate analysis shows that this secrecy is most related to concerns about being anticipated (scientific competition). We find that patenting is associated with increased secrecy among mathematicians and physicists, but not for experimental biologists. We find that industry funding is associated with more secrecy, while industry collaboration is associated with less secrecy, across fields. Our results suggest that the recent concern over increasing scientific secrecy has merit. However, this increased secrecy seems to result from a combination of increasing commercial linkages and increased pressures from scientific competition. Our research highlights the central role that scientists' competition for priority plays in the system of science and that, while such competition spurs effort, it also produces negative effects that recent trends toward commercialization of academic science seem to be exacerbating.     

Judicial Conceptions of Tradition in Canadian Aboriginal Rights Law

The concept of tradition has, historically, played a significant role in the anthropological understanding of indigenous peoples. Since the 1970s, it has also played a fundamental role in the judicial determination of aboriginal rights claims in Canada and other Anglophonic common law countries, such as Australia and the United States. In order for indigenous practices to be recognised and protected by these legal systems, those practices must be proved to be traditional. This paper offers a lawyer's analysis of the ways in which Canadian judges have interpreted and used the concept of tradition in aboriginal rights claims. It is hoped that this analysis will provide anthropologists with a greater insight into the thought and practice of an institution with which they are increasingly in contact, and stimulate them to engage critically with that institution in relation to the interpretation and use of such concepts as tradition.     

Reframing the whistleblower in research: Truth‐tellers as whistleblowers in changing cultural contexts

Whistleblowing is fraught with conceptual dilemmas, including those who may be considered whistleblowers and fundamental concepts associated with the term. Whistleblowing is a dynamic concept, set within and deeply related to culture, yet scholarship has focused primarily on whistleblowing and its ramifications within management and organizational settings, as opposed to engaging with the wrong‐doing disclosed and conceptualizing how we assign meaning to whistleblowers/ing in changing landscapes of societal values and cultural institutions. To grasp the cultural sociological understanding of what constitutes whistleblowing, these themes and how they are shaped need to be drawn out in scholarship. Thus, the purpose of this review is to determine through which disciplines, lenses and discourse whistleblowing has been developed in academia and to identify gaps in disciplines and methods, highlighting how these affect our broader understanding of whistleblowing. This review article offers preliminary insight into how people engage in meaning‐making connected with terms such as whistleblowing, abuse and corruption through the lens of the #MeToo movement. The article encourages further research in disciplines such as sociology, political theory, human rights, socio‐legal studies and particularly, within cultural sociology.     

The processes-to-end(s) paradox of public relations

Public relations researchers, theorists, and practitioners should integrate professional practice with research topics, themes, concepts, theories, contextual intelligences, strategic processes, moral judgment, and functional practices by addressing the end(s) that public relations serves in community. Disciplinary intelligences feature outcomes that yield to specialized knowledge-based, processually achievable, intellectually justifiable, strategically valuable, and morally serviceable practices that constitute culture, society, and community. In that communitarian spirit, this paper draws on established research streams and strategic process-to-ends paradigms to argue that unique knowledge serves to collaboratively assist the constitution of community as place in search for order. Public relations’ unique knowledge, constantly refined and critically guided, adds strategic, emergent force to human’s communitarian imperative. This communitarian rationale for the constitutive paradigm reasons that as individuals, organizations and communities engage to communicate they communicate to organize through narrative continuity. Organizations, individuals, and groups engage on the winding path of agonistic, emergently epistemological and ontological cultural and societal moments to seek order in the public interest. Reputations (identities), complexes of relationships (institutionalized identification) and textuality of narrative continuity empower community members co-manage resources in service of shared interests’ license to operate.     

Practices of Engagement: Comparing and Integrating Deliberation and Organizing

The purpose of this article is to provide a comparison of institution-based community organizing and deliberative practices and to demonstrate how these are complementary approaches for civic engagement. In contrast to older typologies describing these two approaches oppositionally, we seek to reveal a shared democratic ethos and propose greater collaboration between action-oriented organizers and deliberative advocates. The article also identifies where deliberative and organizing practices diverge and proposes a model for how the two approaches can be integrated for mutual benefit.     

Whistleblowing and the Control of Organizational Misconduct*

The current study reviews the literature on whistleblowing and examines its role in detecting and controlling organizational misconduct. We begin with a definition of this concept, show how micro-level theories of “deviance” explain whistleblowing, summarize evidence on its prevalence and correlates, and examine the legal protection of whistleblowers against organizational retaliation. The effectiveness of whistleblowing legislation in encouraging the reporting of organizational misconduct is also discussed. The article concludes with a discussion of the relative costs and benefits of whistleblowing as a method of social control of organizational misconduct.     

Local and transnational care relations: relatedness and family practice among au pairs in Denmark

An increasing number of young women from the Global South have become au pairs in the Global North since the turn of the millennium. Through ethnographic analysis of three cases of au pairing in Denmark, involving Filipina and Caribbean women, this article discusses the nature of the local as well as transnational family relations in which these women are embedded as au pairs, and the opportunities and restraints that they present. We use anthropological theory to conceptualize family and kinship in terms of notions and practices of relatedness. This offers a useful framework for elucidating the different moral and contractual obligations and expectations associated with these varying family relations, the power asymmetries with which they are linked, and the agency that the au pairs display as they seek to position themselves in the most favourable way in relation to the multi‐directional ties in which they are involved.     

Making Media for Themselves: Strategic Dilemmas of Prefigurative Work in Independent Media Outlets

This article explores independent youth media outlets, one sector of the broader media democracy movement, to theorize the strategic dilemmas that actors negotiate as they attempt to prefigure the media change that they want to see in the world. The outlets operate as noncommercial spaces for youth to challenge the norms of mainstream media through the collective production of oppositional media. In this millennium, we see the increased presence of these outlets across the country and globally as youth are building nodes of communication through differing digital platforms. The article draws out a case study of one independent media outlet, Youth Media Action, in an urban area in the northeastern part of the United States to trace the dynamics of how these outlets attempt to prefigure or model media change through their structures, practices, and content with a changing cast of participating youth groups. I then analyze the tensions that actors confront as they seek to model an ideal (a more just media system) within a constrained environment (overextended staff and resources). The focus on these prefigurative practices and politics affords a closer view of the ways that these sites seek to build a more inclusive, egalitarian, noncommercial media system with limited resources and educational and political practices that do not always resonate with the participating groups and youth. This research contributes to social movement work that focuses on dilemmas that groups face as they look to themselves to build and model systems of social change.     

Leaks,legislation and freedom of speech: How can the law effectively promote public‐interest whistleblowing?

Attention is increasingly being focused on leaking, whistleblowing and associated compliance and incentives questions. The authors outline the differences between leaking and whistleblowing, notably on protection of the disclosers. They review provisions of international conventions on human rights and corruption, and compare approaches to protecting freedom of speech in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Their findings highlight the complex, sometimes conflicting issues involved: public, individual, commercial and financial interests; abuse of power; security; confidentiality; the individual as law enforcer; and the employment relationship.     

The transnational lives and third space subjectivities of British Nigerian girls

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in 2012 on British Nigerian young women who have gone to boarding school in Nigeria and returned to attend university in the UK, I use the concept of third space as a heuristic device for understanding their transnational subjectivities and practices. I argue that, for some, this third space is a transgressive one in which they can craft alternative subjectivities and narratives about African culture and political economy. Applying insights from decolonial theory, I seek to build on the transgressive nature of this third space. In positioning themselves variously as Londoners, Nigerians, dual and post‐nationals, they express key features of contemporary transnational European subjectivities. Yet, parental expectations that they marry Nigerians and members of the Nigerian diaspora serve to reproduce the racial distinctions and nationalist rhetoric of colonial modernity that their third space subjectivities contest.     

Preadoption Risks,Family Functioning,and Adoption Secrecy as Predictors of the Adjustment of Filipino Adopted Children

Using a correlational multivariate research design, partial least squares (PLS) was applied to examine the direct and indirect influence of pre-adoption risks, family functioning, and adoption secrecy on the adjustment (which is defined in this study as the internalizing and externalizing behaviors) of Filipino adopted children. Thirty-two sets of Filipino adoptees and their respective adoptive mothers participated in the study. Family functioning was found to predict the adjustment of Filipino adopted children while adoption secrecy predicted family functioning. Adopted children's perception of their family functioning and adoption openness buffer the impact of the early adversity experienced by the adopted children. Implications on the clinical practice and adoption practices in the Philippines are discussed.     

Intersexuality: On Secret Bodies and Secrecy

The article problematizes the treatment of intersex as a secret within the medical and family systems. Under the biosocial assumption that the “intersexual” body is pathological and requiring immediate surgical and hormonal regulation, intersex individuals are made to undergo a process of transforsexation, that is, the violent production of a normative masculinity or femininity by means of invasive clinical practices. In this process absolute secrecy serves as a central factor for the success of normalization. We argue that not only does “the secret” of intersex bodies become an active factor in the normalization of sex but also paradoxically it is counteracted by the body, which does not “speak” the language of “the secret” and continues to reproduce new forms of intersex combinations in response to ongoing medical intervention. Our analysis is based on case histories told by 6 mothers of intersex children and by 11 intersex adults, stories in which secrecy has been an essential theme in the process of transforsexation imposed by doctors and followed by the parents. Secrecy, even more than the surgery itself, was, in the experience of intersex adults, a great cause of confusion, anger, mistrust, and criticism. Because of secrecy, intersex children are thus deprived of a language to name their experience or interpret the sense of their body.     

Darts,drink and the pub: the culture of female drinking

Sociologists and anthropologists have paid little attention to women's role in the pub. This article, based on fieldwork reseach, sets out to describe the use of two pubs by two different groups of women in an English village. Through these examples, we seek to illustrate not only the social class differences between the two groups of women but also their differential use of the pub. For many working-class women, as opposed to their middle-class counterparts, the pub represents an important social centre in the village - joining the darts team provides one of a limited range of available options to get away from responsibilities of home and kin. This is not the case for middle-class women. For them the pub represents only one of many options in their social lives and as a result they make less use of the pub and its facilities.     

Reshaping tradition? Women negotiating the boundaries of tradition and modernity in Hong Kong and British families

In debates on social change and personal life, modernity has generally been conceptualized in opposition to tradition, though some have pointed to the persistence of traditional values and practices within modern family relations. In this paper we seek to extend these debates beyond their largely Eurocentric context. Drawing on a comparative qualitative study of women and social change in Britain and Hong Kong, we argue for an understanding of the traditional and the modern that takes account of the ways in which tradition is reshaped in the context of modernity. The accounts of young adult women and their mothers in Hong Kong and Britain reveal varied interpretations of family obligations and practices in relation to normative ideals of family life in each context. We consider how configurations of family life deemed ‘modern’ are inflected by the differing traditions and histories of Hong Kong and British society and argue that these differences are not only cultural, but also attributable to the material conditions under which family relationships are forged and negotiated.     

Negotiating the boundaries of intimacy: the personal lives of asexual people

This paper uses findings from research diaries to explore the use of practices of intimacy among asexual people. While much of the literature to date has focused on the supposedly transformative and political nature of uniquely asexual practices of intimacy, our findings suggest something different. Rather than seeking to transform the nature of intimate relationships, asexual people make pragmatic adjustments and engage in negotiations to achieve the forms of physical and emotional intimacy they seek. We discuss this in relation to three areas: friendships, sex as a practice of intimacy, and exclusion from intimacy. Our findings suggest the importance of not only considering the social context in which asexual people practise intimacy, but also how the practices in which they engage may be shared with non‐asexual people.     

Medicaid nursing facility reimbursement in flux: effects of federal regulatory changes and prevailing fiscal conditions, 1978-1998

Basic concepts and trends are examined in Medicaid nursing facility reimbursements between 1978 and 1998, because Medicaid payment reform is a common budget reduction strategy pursued by state officials. Non-incremental changes in state rate-setting methods, as well as incremental changes in per diem rates and expenditures per recipient, are analyzed. In addition to substantial cross-state variation, results reveal clear trends in reimbursement policy characteristics over time. Not only do these track closely with changes in the federal regulatory environment, but they also track closely with prevailing fiscal and economic conditions. Given the serious ramifications reimbursement policy changes can have for nursing home residents and providers, it is imperative that the impact of federal disengagement from this policy area be understood.