Social Integration in Post‐Multiculturalism: An Analysis of Social Integration Policy in Post‐war Britain

Social integration is one of the most urgent issues in Western countries, where cultural diversity has been recognized to make social unity danger. In the past, social integration used to be tackled by multiculturalism, which was an effort to recognize cultural diversity as a positive aspect of society. However, multiculturalism is losing the moral support of society because multiculturalism itself could not be a social glue among different people; rather it is thought to make society unstable. Thus, a new philosophy and policy is required to manage the issues of social integration in a globalized social environment. In order to create social integration, on one hand, people with different backgrounds need to share the same concept of society. On the other hand, people have to become accustomed to cultural diversity. However, this is not easily accomplished because both measures for social integration seem to be politically contradictory and incompatible. How, and by what reasons, could these two conditions of social integration be satisfied? To answer this question, this paper scrutinizes the changes in social integration policy in post‐war Britain. I divide social integration policy in Britain into three stages focusing on the relationship between social unity and cultural diversity: from after World War II to 1979; Thatcher's and Major's Conservative Governments; and Blair's new Labour Government. The social integration policy and philosophy of the new Labour Government in particular is important because it represents post‐multiculturalism discourse for social integration. The Labour Government tried to establish social integration by introducing an abstract common identity, which both the majority and minority groups could accept and which is compatible with various cultural or religious conventions and teaching, as it were, citizenship and Britishness, as a set of liberal values. Although the Labour Government's policy itself was controversial, it is giving us a reference point for the debate on social integration in a post‐multicultural era.     

South African NGOs and the public sphere: between popular movements and partnerships for development

This article examines the widespread notion that post‐apartheid democracy can be deepened and civil society strengthened by NGO activities in the sphere of public debate and participation. I focus on a number of interrelated processes which I argue may compromise NGOs' ability to expand the public sphere: first, donors' overwhelming focus on NGOs as the sole representative of civil society may contribute to a homogenous and institutionalised public sphere; second, the tendency for NGOs to be drawn into partnerships with government bodies and corporate sponsors casts doubt on their ability to open up spaces for critical public debate. By directing attention to popular movements as potentially offering a site for the production of critique, NGOs' relationships to such movements are examined. It is argued that attention must be paid to the processes of NGO‐isation and reformism by which NGOs themselves come to define what civil society should be and may consequently contain counterpublic spheres.     

Coffee and the Business of Pleasure: The Case of Harbucks vs. Mr. Tweek

In this paper, I examine the representation of organizations in the television cartoon series South Park . In particular the South Park episode 'Gnomes' is reviewed - this episode contains a direct parody of the role and conduct of organizations in society as its story revolves around a 'fictitious' coffee chain, Harbucks', attempt at a hostile takeover of a small town coffee shop. Drawing on the episode's roman a clef (or perhaps cartoon a clef ) depiction of the global coffee retailing organization Starbucks, it is argued that this popular culture representation offers opportunities to critique and debate organizational behaviour in a way not available to modes of representation common to Organization Studies. Following Bakhtin's model of the carnival, South Park is read as exemplary of a subversive culture of folk humour that mocks, satirises and undermines official institutions - a culture rich in understandings of contemporary organizations and their relationship with society.     

Children's participation in national policymaking: “You're so adorable,adorable, adorable! I'm speechless; so much fun!”

Policymaking is one of the most challenging arenas in which children's participation rights are implemented. The goal of this study is to portray patterns of children's participation in public policymaking and characterize various adults' reactions to children's participation. The study draws on protocols of committees operating in the Israeli parliament and interviews with an advisory group of children and young people who had participated on the committees. The findings show the potential of children's participation in national policymaking to mobilize policy change and to contextualize policy discussions. They also demonstrate that children's comments in policy discussions may evoke extreme responses, expressed as either fawning or dismissing. The conclusions offer practices that may assist in preparing both the participating children and the policymakers and in diversifying the children's voices.     

Youth-Adult Partnership in Community Organizing

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of a campaign developed around sexuality education policy by a national youth-focused organization, Advocates for Youth, and its network of youth activists. The paper provides an overview of the national sexuality education debate and the specific strategies youth and adults use in partnership to advocate for a comprehensive approach to the education. The case study of the My Voice Counts!Campaign provides insight into the creation and evolution of a youth-adult partnership approach to community organizing, beginning with an online activism campaign and resulting in local youth-led projects to improve sex education policies and curricula. Following an analysis of the Campaign's accomplishments, the paper lays out recommendations for action and research to demonstrate the positive effects of this form of community practice.     

Public Support for International Human Rights Institutions: A Cross‐National and Multilevel Analysis

The expansion of international human rights institutions has drawn much attention. Bringing together theories from sociology, political science, and international law, this article examines what factors promote public support for international human rights institutions, using the recent wave of the World Values Survey data (2005–2008). The level of public support displays both cross‐national and cross‐individual variations, so I conceptualize it as a two‐level process and employ the multilevel modeling. At the individual level, it is found that men, younger people, and individuals with more education and income show a higher level of support. At the country level, national affluence, political change (de‐democratization), and linkage to the world society are associated with more support. I further integrate individual‐level characteristics and country‐level social contexts, and pay special attention to education. Education is the institutional link between macro‐level social influences and micro‐level individual attitudes. I find that the support‐promoting effect of education is contingent on social contexts. It is more salient in wealthy countries and countries with strong ties to the world society.     

A Glimpse of the Truth: Evaluating ‘Debate’ and ‘Role Play’ as Pedagogical Tools for Learning about Sexuality Issues on a Law and Ethics Module

Social work education is familiar with concepts such as social exclusion, marginalisation, anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice. This familiarisation implies that students are adequately prepared to embrace equality and diversity, become ‘culturally competent’ and subscribe to moral and ethical standards including the rights of service users to respect and support regardless of sexual orientation. The ability of social work students to articulate and develop their own theories for practice and to handle personal issues when these conflict with ‘theories’ on equality and diversity are important aspects of learning. Educators teaching about sexual orientation issues however currently have fewer texts or support networks to draw on when addressing these. This paper looks at the effectiveness of ‘debate’ and ‘role play’ as pedagogical strategies and tools when teaching complex ethical issues on a law and ethics module. Dramatic and creative participative methods were used through the tools of debate and role play. These were used with students to explore a specific topic around gay adoption in the context of learning about anti-discriminatory law. The paper seeks to evaluate the outcomes of this approach by drawing on the students' post learning reflection.     

State homophobia? India’s shifting UN positions on LGBTQ issues

Why has India adopted contradictory policies with regard to LGBTQ rights at the UN? From 2004 to 2010, India consistently supported draft language for a UN resolution to allow a Special Rapporteur to investigate extra-judicial executions that would include the term ‘sexual orientation’. More recently, however, India has opposed or abstained from UN votes on LGBTQ rights. While India's conservative posture on LGBTQ issues was catalyzed by the Supreme Court's re-criminalization of homosexual activities in 2013 and the rise of the Hindu nationalist BJP, we argue that the state's posture is not a reflection of deep ideological commitments or a new strategic realignment. Instead, India's policy reflects a generally uncoordinated foreign policy apparatus that has been unprepared to respond to the rapid ascendancy of LGBTQ issues on the human rights agenda. It is not currently possible to predict India's future posture due to its lack of a clear policy commitments.     

Taking Older People's Rights Seriously: The Role of International Law

ABSTRACT

Older people face many difficult challenges that amount to a deplorable violation of their basic human rights (poverty, discrimination, denial of social services, etc.). However, the world has been slow to react. Factors that limit global responses to the challenges of aging include: limited political will, the prevalence of neo-liberalism, and NGOs' longstanding advocacy for other seemingly “more” disadvantaged groups. Such oppression of and discrimination against older people require a concerted world-wide response. We contend that the introduction of an international convention on the human rights of older people is most relevant. Reinforced by a potent international monitoring system, the convention should contain comprehensive and legally binding provisions that require participating states to promote older people's rights. It is argued that international law would be a powerful force in defending and protecting older persons, operating as a baseline for establishing underlying values for national aging policies and linking older persons' concerns with other segments of society.     

Transformative Events and Generational Memory: A Case Study Over Time in Lithuania

Research on the distribution of collective memories in national populations has often been conducted in relatively stable societies, where most individuals have experienced a limited range of event types. We examine collective memories in Lithuania, a society that has seen substantial change, using three surveys conducted during the two decades since Lithuanian protests against Soviet rule began in the late 1980s. We identify two types of events that individuals may recall, drawing on Sewell's ( 2005 ) distinction between structure‐transforming events and other events that are significant but less momentous, and we find that the two types of events exhibit different patterns of change over time: in particular, transformative events may absorb other events through assimiliation and are likely to be the focus of commemoration. Recall of transformative events also shows a distinctive relation to birth cohort. Our results support the need to take into account the nature of events in order to understand which events are remembered as important and by whom.     

From Rights to Responsibilities: Identity Politics and Ethnographic Methodology,Dialogues with South African Musicians

Abstract

The ethnographic endeavour is often riven by a tension between two claims to the ‘right’ to research asserted either on the basis of identity claims or professional expertise. A closely associated debate within the academy is characterised by an oscillation between concern about uneven power relations and the desire to maintain effective research practice. Attempting to address the absence of voices of ‘subjects’ in this debate, I discuss the issue with musicians who critique both notions of identity and academic expertise as providing ethnographic authority, and propose a shift in discourse from rights to responsibility. This progresses beyond essentialism but insists that structural power inequalities between researchers and researched be accounted for, thus moving towards more situated, responsible ethnographic theory and practice.     

Evaluation from a Gender+ Perspective as a Key Element for (Re)gendering the Policymaking Process

ABSTRACT

Feminist scholars have challenged the neutrality of policymaking processes and the outputs resulting from these processes. However, some elements of policymaking have not been studied as well as others. In this article I explore the concept of evaluation from a gender+ perspective as an essential step for a complete gender mainstreaming strategy, which can help to identify gender issues that should be integrated into the content of evaluated policies and to ensure gender does not get lost in the policymaking process. This exploration is carried out by relying on feminist policy and evaluation studies.     

Reconceptualising and contextualising sexual rights in the MENA region: beyond LGBTQI categories

In recent years, LGBTQI rights have become central to debates around international development, human rights, refugee protection, and diversity. Yet research and experience in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) reveals significant problems with LGBTQI as a way of identifying individuals who do not conform to heterosexual and binary gender norms, in order to support their rights. In this article, we draw on experience of working to advance gender and sexual rights to illustrate the shortcomings of LGBTQI identity categories, and use findings from the Centre for Transnational Development and Collaboration’s (CTDC) four-year programme of research into LGBTQI rights in the MENA region to support our argument further. This research identified major problems in policies and debates on the rights of individuals whose sexual orientation and/or gender identity differs from the norm. In response to this, CTDC has developed a tool to address rights in programme development and advocacy, using a new approach, Sexual Practice and Gender Performance (SPGP), for work in the MENA region.     

Sociology and Human Rights in the Post‐Development Era

This article explores the dilemmas of the sociology of human rights – a growing field of academic research. Sociologists are increasingly conceptualizing poverty, global economic inequality, and social inequalities of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation not as social problems, but rather as human rights abuses. The shift of emphasis from the social problems perspective to the human rights perspective demands a different set of remedies from IGOs, national governments, and local authorities. Whereas in the past sociologists tended either to recommend modifications to social policies or to propose large‐scale social transformation, they now find themselves advocating the implementation of human rights on the global, national, and local levels. This has brought sociologists into the area of global governance. The process of delineating an explicitly sociological perspective on human rights is impeded by two overlapping dilemmas: (1) the tension between an approach that emphasizes the analysis of ‘rights effects’ on the global, national, and local levels and an approach that stresses the advocacy of rights as a palliative for social inequalities; and (2) the tension between an interdisciplinary vision, in which sociology would join other disciplines in illuminating human rights and a unidisciplinary vision, in which sociologists and their allies would push for a unified social science founded on human rights.     

Physical health characteristics of student service members and veterans by sexual orientation

Abstract

Objective: Little is known about the health status of the diverse population of student service members and veterans (SSM/V) enrolling in higher education in great numbers. The objective of this study was to explore the differences in physical health characteristics by sexual orientation among a national sample of SSM/V. Methods: Using secondary data, a series of maximum likelihood (ML) logistic regression models were estimated to explore physical health characteristics by sexual orientation in a sample of SSM/V. Results: SSM/V that identify as lesbian or gay reported higher rates of treatment and diagnosis for some physical health matters (respiratory illness and HIV) when compared with their heterosexual counterparts. Conclusions: Our findings support the need for campus health officials and policymakers to develop services to address the physical health needs of this population that differ from their peers.     

The Dual Strategy and Gender Policies of the Women's Movement in Korea: Family Headship System Repeal through Strategic Innovation

Abstract

Social movements sometimes successfully attain their goals by implementing policies and laws that represent their claims. Movement leaders raise issues susceptible to enactment as policies or laws, exploit legally and institutionally assured resources, and even participate at times in governmental policymaking and parliamentary lawmaking processes. This engagement strategy maximizes a movement's power to achieve its goals only when it is combined with the conventional activities of mobilizing collective action and forming dense networks across movement organizations to pressure the state. Based on the case study of Korean women's movements and their efforts to abrogate the patrilineal succession of family headship, I argue that movement activists' strategic innovation of blending “institutional politics” with conventional “movement politics”—that is, pursuing a dual strategy (Cohen and Arato 1992) and evolving into “movement institutionalization”—is critical to accomplishing gender policies and laws that, at least institutionally and legally, ensure gender equality.     

#MeToo from a Department Head Perspective

ABSTRACT

In this essay I discuss some key ways in which sexual harassment policies have changed over time and provide advice to department leaders on handling and combatting sexual harassment. I encourage department leaders to know and understand how to implement the sexual harassment policies at their universities, follow through and be persistent, proactively train colleagues and students, and ensure due process for, and respect the humanity of, all parties involved.     

"Everyone with Eyes Can See the Problem": Moral Citizens and the Space of Irish Nationhood

This paper examines Ireland's 2004 Constitutional Amendment which removes birthright citizenship from any future Irish‐born children of immigrant parents. I argue that for particular historical reasons, the ability of the state to convince its citizens of the necessity for this Amendment was remarkable and I suggest that it was able to do so by constructing citizenship as a moral regime and foreign‐nationals and their foetuses as ‘suspect patriots.’ I describe how the notion of immorality is laminated upon black bodies — specifically black pregnant women — and how the presence of black migrant workers, refugees and asylees consequently comes to be experienced in Irish national space as transgressive, their political subjecthood constrained by the supposedly legible abjectivity of their bodies. The issue of race remains unenunciated, and yet, as the Minister for Justice stated during the referendum debate, ‘anyone with eyes can see the problem.’ The Irish government's privileging of moral rather than cultural incommensurability is strikingly similar to culturalist rhetorics of exclusion that are often invoked when race is at issue in European public debate on immigration. Configured upon, and therefore experienced as a type of body, immorality becomes an alibi for race and is naturalized as a form of exclusion and as a potential site of state intervention in the form of xenophobic legislation and policymaking. Reading this decision as merely racist however, fails to give voice to the experiences of Irish Citizens who voted for this Amendment. Their struggle to build a “New Ireland” and to accept a multiculturalist framework in the face of neo‐liberal restructuring policies and a European‐wide retreat from the welfare state must be considered as being in dialectical tension with the ideological smearing of immigrants if we are to fully grasp the complex interaction between relations of power and the privileging of difference.