(De)familialization and (De)genderization – Competing or Complementary Perspectives in Comparative Policy Analysis?

This article critically engages with Saxonberg's proposal (2013) to replace the (de)familialization perspective with the (de)genderization approach in comparative family policy/regime studies. It argues: (1) there is a need to refine the term ‘(de)familialization’ and to bring in the child's and elderly's perspective; (2) the ‘(de)familialization’ and ‘(de)genderization’ perspectives are mutually irreplaceable; and (3) there is a need to conceptualize the theoretical relationship between these two perspectives. The article further proposes to use the theoretical framework of Amartya Sen's Capability Approach (CA) to reinterpret both analytical perspectives with a dual advantage using that approach would lend. It first conceptualizes the de‐familializing and de‐genderizing policies as ‘means’ designed to increase peoples' ‘capabilities’ to achieve ‘valued functionings’ and not ultimate goals of policies that aim to change people's ‘functionings’. Thus, it addresses the criticism of de‐familialization and de‐genderization as policy strategies that enforce certain, potentially controversial ideals of societal and familial relations. Second, by using crucial CA concepts, i.e. ‘means’, ‘capabilities’ and ‘functionings’, it refines the interpretation of policy‐, regime‐ and outcome‐oriented analyses (typologies). As a result, it clarifies the distinction between these types of analyses and highlights the advantages of both a policy approach and a redefined regime approach.     

Dialogical Demand: Discursive Position Repertoires for a Local and Global UK Sex Industry

The increasing incidence of ‘trafficking’ has added an incontestably disturbing dimension to the contestable nature of a ‘non‐trafficked’ UK sex industry. Men who buy sex remain under‐researched, though some studies have indicated ambivalence within men's attitudes. This study combines a critical discursive psychology in support of dialogical self theory. Secondary data, from prominent UK media resources, were analysed using Edley's (2001) method of combining ‘interpretative repertoires’, ‘ideological dilemmas’ and ‘subject positions’. Contrasting discursive practices indicative of wider ideological conflict were found. Discursive concepts were ‘mapped’ onto Hermans and Hermans‐Konopka's (2010) ‘I‐positions’ to explore how these potentially dilemmatic positions might be understood in terms of identity production. The function of ‘uncertainty’, particularly salient with the increasing complexity of globalisation, was considered a factor in how men's identities might be limited by the current discursive space. A ‘dialogical’ model of self is introduced as a framework for understanding how men who buy sex might take up new, inclusive, positions. A corollary is reflected upon; that researchers, activists and buyers alike, who remain ideologically inflexible, may be sustaining the conditions for coercion through their contribution to the discursive conflict. The synthesis of discursive and dialogical analytical tools is recommended for investigating the production of selves in contested spaces.     

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.     

Discourses about children's mental health and developmental disorders in North American women's magazines 1990–2012

This paper describes and analyses the portrayal of children's mental health and developmental issues (CMHI) in articles located in a random sample of a selection of available high‐circulating English language North American ‘women's magazines’ indexed in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature from 1990 to 2012. It is based upon a qualitative discourse analysis. CMHI are portrayed as materially, biologically real, prevalent and growing in incidence, and severity. They are also portrayed as located in the ‘non‐normal’, ‘non‐nice’, ‘disliked’ and ‘non‐successful’ individual child. Neither the facticity nor the biomedicalization of CMHI is questioned. The psy‐scientists and practitioners cited as experts for the ‘disorders’ offer contradictory and confusing information and advice. The possible theoretical and pragmatic explanations and consequences of this portrayal are discussed.     

Social Policy's ‘Greatest Hits’

The ‘age of metrics’ or ‘the metric tide’ in the form of bibliometrics has largely by‐passed Social Policy. This study aims to broaden the focus from the most cited articles in Social Policy journals to discover the most cited works in Social Policy or ‘Social Policy's Greatest Hits’. It finds some 24 works with over 2000 Google Scholar citations, but only nine of these are by social policy writers. In terms of total citations, Gosta Esping‐Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is the clear leader by a significant margin, with the most cited Social Policy (or Social Administration) writers being Peter Townsend, Richard Titmuss, Ruth Lister and Jane Lewis. In addition to total citations, it presents citations per year, and ‘Social Policy citations’ (i.e. the use made of the work within the discipline of Social Policy). This list is headed by Gosta Esping‐Andersen and Paul Pierson, with the leading social policy writer being Jane Lewis. This article presents a set of the ‘most plausible contenders’ for the works with greatest influence within Social Policy or ‘Social Policy's Greatest Hits’. It is concluded that, even with its flaws, bibliometrics is an important approach to exploring the vast field of Social Policy.     

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.     

Models of 'ordinary' and 'special' daily living: matching residential care to the mental-health needs of looked after children

This paper proposes a set of distinctions between ‘ordinary’ and ‘special’ modes of everyday living in residential settings for young people in the ‘looked after’ system. The paper begins by reviewing both quantitative and qualitative evidence on the mental‐health needs of the young people, arguing that there is evidence of very high levels of mental distress and disturbance within this group, and that this distress is often undiagnosed and untreated both by psychiatric professionals and within the residential care system itself. There follows a commentary on the tacit assumptions underpinning much residential practice, especially the emphasis in some policy and legal documentation on the young people’s need for ‘ordinary’ everyday experience. The concept of the ‘ordinary’ is problematized, and it is argued that while young people do need to be supported towards mainstream ‘ordinary’ everyday living, they also need specialized everyday care in which their emotional and psychological needs can be recognized and responded to. Four models of ‘special everyday living’ are proposed, based upon existing literature on residential practice, and it is argued that residential care programmes should be based upon a mix of these special and ordinary provisions if the young people’s emotional needs are to be met.     

TWO WAVES OF CROATIAN MIGRANTS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA: CLASS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

This paper examines the ways in which two waves of Croatian migrants in Western Australia have constructed their ethnic/national identity following migration. These two waves – the first took place during the 1960s and the early 1970s and the second in the late 1980s/early 1990s – are considerably different in terms of their socio-economic background. The earlier wave came from rural areas of Croatia and can be described as typically working class, while the recent wave came from the cities and predominantly consists of professional people. Migrants from the 1960s wave express a strong identification with their place (village, town, island) of origin and form a rather close-knit ethnic ‘community of place’. There is a strong link between territory, ethnicity and identity in this group of migrants. Recent developments in Croatia (the war for independence) have helped to ‘enlarge’ this local-ethnic focus into an ‘imagined’ national identity. Ethno-national belonging and identification is not emphasised in the recent group of Croatian migrants. Their ‘Croatianness’ is secondary in the re-construction of their identity following migration. It is their professional identification that seems to be central in this process. They consider the Croatian ‘ethnic community’ to be irrelevant to their life in Australia and seek to integrate into the broader Australian community primarily through their professional work.     

From Gift Relationships to Quasi-markets: An Odyssey along the Policy Paths of Altruism and Egoism

Nearly forty years ago, the publication of ‘The Price of Blood’ (1968) and ‘The Gift Relationship’ (1970) added a new dimension of ideological conflict to the debate about the values, ends and means of social policy. The questions that Richard Titmuss posed in ‘The Gift Relationship’ are still discussed in current debates about the respective merits of unitary and pluralist models of welfare, the egoistic and altruistic motives that underpin them, and the rights and responsibilities intrinsic to the status of citizenship. The ways in which the content and focus of these debates have changed over the past forty years are here reviewed, taking Titmuss's ‘The Gift Relationship’, my own contributions in ‘Social Theory and Social Policy’ (1971) and ‘The Idea of Welfare’ (1979), and Julian Le Grand's ‘Motivation, Agency and Public Policy’ (2003) as the temporal and salient points of reference. A brief introduction describes how the academic debate became sharply polarized in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and how a key decision about the future development of this journal was taken at the same time.     

THE IMAGINED COMMUNITY OF ACCESS AND EQUITY

Access and Equity programs are framed within the discourse of citizenship and organised around the notion of individual rights. This marks a shift in orientation away from the individual liberation strategies of the 1960s and 1970s, which utilised the notion of ‘community’ as the major site of struggle. Nevertheless, Access and Equity programs must engage with the multiple and contradictory meanings that were infused into the notion of community during these earlier struggles. They must also engage with the ‘communities’ that were politically constituted during this era and utilise the community-based services that are now a fundamental part of the welfare system. It is argued that governments are able to utilise this legacy to resolve the contradictions inherent in Access and Equity programs, in particular the tension between ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’, universal citizenship and substantive equality. As this tension become more acute with government stringency measures, the limitations of reform strategies based on the notion of citizenship become more apparent.     

Why Health Care Reform Now? Strategic Framing and the Passage of Obamacare

Economic reform and health care reform were both focal points outlined in President Obama's policy agenda, with increasing pressure to address economic and social insecurity given that President Obama entered office during the Great Recession (2007–09). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’) successfully passed in March 2010 in the context of the economic crisis. We argue that the strategic framing of the economic crisis, through reasoning and arguments linking health care reform with economic downfall, is important in understanding the successful passage of Obamacare, and that this is reflected through strategic frames in speeches delivered by the President on health care reform. Health care reform has been successful not in spite of but rather because of the economic crisis of 2008, that allowed President Obama to use a strategic frame focusing on costs and economic problems. The two main frames identified are the ‘market’ and ‘rights’ frames. President Obama's strategic frames specifically surrounding the economic and cost‐containment priority of health care reform are categorized as a ‘market’ frame in this article. He used this frame until the passage of the law in 2010, when the frame shifted to ‘rights’ frames, largely portrayed through anecdotes and focused on the concept of ‘access’ to care rather than the ‘cost’ of care. This is observable through tracking speeches and statements made in support of health care reform between 2009 and 2013.     

A Rationale for Teaching Communication Skills to the Culturally Deprived

This paper presents a theoretical rationale for explaining the learning and achievement weaknesses noted in ‘culturally deprived’ children. Based on a theory of social competence which reveals schools as denying the validity of such children's experiences and ignoring the different competences they bring with them to the learning situation, the model suggests new teaching strategies which develop ‘first-order’ communication outputs as a prerequisite to ‘higher-order’ cognitive outputs. Research evidence of the applicability of the model is examined and an attempt to apply the teaching strategies in Australia is described.     

A Response to Farrell

This article responds directly to an article published in this journal in February 2010 by Graham Farrell entitled ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: rational choice and harm reduction versus “cultural criminology” ’. (Farrell's article, in turn, was a rejoinder to my original 2007 article ‘Situational crime prevention and its discontents: rational choice theory versus the “culture of now” ’). In his article, Farrell sets out a case for the role of ‘harm reduction’ and rational choice theory as tools to reduce the contemporary crime problem, concluding that ‘Cultural criminology seems to offer little, if anything, useful to inform crime reduction efforts’. This article rejects this statement and offers a counter critique of the instrumental approach promoted by Farrell. Importantly, this response article is not intended as an outright critique of situational crime prevention per se, rather it is an assessment of Farrell's specific critical logic and the various shortcomings associated with his argument.     

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.     

A Comparison of the Effects of Material and Environmental Values on Vehicle Ownership

The results of a 1988 survey of Brisbane residents demonstrate a consistent linkage between the respondent's values and their preferences for vehicle ownership and use. Through the use of the ‘Dominant Social Paradigm’ - ‘New Environmental Paradigm’ theoretical framework (e.g. Cotgrove 1982) and the testing of ‘known groups’ (business people and members of the Rainbow Alliance) the following pattern emerged. The businesspeople were less willing to conserve fuel, and were more concerned with ‘comfort’ considerations when purchasing a motor vehicle than the Rainbow Alliance respondents who were more interested in utilitarian aspects. When subsamples with similar demographic/socioeconomic characteristics (males, respondents aged 35–49 years, respondents with household incomes between $20 000 and $49 999) were compared, the Rainbow Alliance respondents were more likely to own older, less valuable vehicles with small engines and manual transmissions. The businesspeople were more likely to own air-conditioned vehicles with poor fuel economy. This finding is an example of how people's values influence their vehicle purchasing decisions and is useful to policy-makers seeking to improve the efficiency of Australia's vehicle fleet.     

The Royal Commission,ATSIC and Self-Determination: A Review of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

The National Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, in recommending fundamental reforms of government policy, proposed a primarily political and administrative notion of Aboriginal empowerment or ‘self-determination’. That is, the Commissioner argued the fundamental importance of publicly-funded Aboriginal organisations and urged governments to relax financial accountability requirements imposed on them. The paper quotes extensively from the National Report to argue that this, rather than ‘land rights’ or ‘economic independence’ is what the Commissioner meant by ‘self-determination’. But what is the place of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in such a view of Aboriginal and Islander political development? The paper demonstrates the Commissioner's ambivalence about ATSIC, and his failure consistently to project ATSIC's role when making his recommendations about health, alcohol and housing policies. It concludes by citing Commonwealth responses which indicate that ATSIC is likely to emerge as an obstacle in the Commissioner's scenario of Aboriginal and Islander political development.     

FDI,democracy and corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper investigates the relationship between FDI, democracy and corruption among 30 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period of 1985–2014 to determine whether the ‘helping hand’ or ‘grabbing hand’ hypothesis is most applicable. The results of GMM analysis show that corruption is used by FDI investors to overcome the region’s weak democratic regulatory and institutional status and thus the ‘helping hand’ is more prevalent. However, the results further show that as democratic capital accumulates, this association may outlive its usefulness and thus corruption as a ‘helping hand’ in time becomes a ‘grabbing hand’ instead. These results imply that SSA countries should focus on integrating into the international economy so as to take advantage of existing financial enforcement legislation while reconstructing and strengthening domestic constitutional anti-corruption legislation and institutions.     

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.     

Statistical equality and cultural difference in Indigenous wellbeing frameworks: A new expression of an enduring debate

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in developing indicator frameworks for ‘Indigenous wellbeing’. Implicit in each of the frameworks are particular conceptions of what constitutes the ‘good life’ for Indigenous peoples and what ‘Indigenous development’ should entail. In developing these frameworks, then, certain judgements must be made about whether statistical equality should be prioritised as a ‘development’ goal. This issue has generated long‐standing debate and in this context must be broached anew. In this paper we briefly examine the growing interest in Indigenous wellbeing and outline three prominent indicator frameworks: the Productivity Commission's indicators for ‘Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage’; the ‘capability indicators’ developed by the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership; and the indicators of wellbeing developed by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The first prioritises statistical equality between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians; the second adds a concern with ‘capabilities’; and the last emphasises the importance of distinct cultural preferences. We offer an assessment of these approaches, drawing in part on Amartya Sen's work. We argue that in seeking to improve the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians, policy‐makers should not only make their own normative assumptions clear, but also be aware of the implications of their decisions for constituents with different worldviews.