ICT and institutional change at the British Library

The new information and communications technologies (ICTs) have stimulated a wide-ranging debate on the future of learning institutions in the age of the 'network society'. Recent academic commentary has tended to equate globalized information networks with commodification, the delocalization of learning, and threats to the public service traditions of higher education. This paper investigates the extensive programme of digitisation now under way at the British Library (BL), one of the world's largest knowledge providers and a key player in the UK research libraries network. The findings presented in the paper do not reflect the belief that the spread of global information networks will undermine the public service remit of large knowledge providers such as the BL - but the evidence does show that these providers are becoming more connected to other players in the digital environment, with inherently complex, and potentially far-reaching implications for the production of knowledge in the emergent 'network society'.     

Elements of a Sociological Contribution to Happiness Studies

A significant body of social‐science research on happiness has accrued in recent decades, produced mainly by economists and psychologists. Sociologists, however, have made more limited contributions to “happiness studies”. This paper provides an overview of concepts, methods and findings and suggests some questions about happiness that ought to be of substantial interest to sociology. Many sociologists are clearly interested in the well‐being of the people they study (sometimes suggesting “policy implications” emerging from their empirical findings); happiness is a presumptively important form of well‐being, and an engagement with happiness studies might constitute a way to develop more systematic connections between well‐being and academic research. Building on existing findings, sociologists would be well‐placed to consider the social context of happiness (as against an individualist orientation more common in other disciplines) as well as the unintended consequences of policy initiatives and happiness discourses.     

Civil Society or the State?: Recent Approaches to the History of Voluntary Welfare

Since the 1970s a drift away from state corporatist solutions to social welfare problems has had its parallel in an academic rediscovery of the voluntary sector. Revived confidence in non–statutory approaches often assumes two things. Firstly, that voluntary action is a vital component in civil society and that civil society itself is an attribute of liberal democracy. These ideas are central to the perceived 'crisis of the welfare state'. They are also related to debates about political culture and the future of democracy with the institutions of civil society cast positively as 'schools of citizenship'. Secondly, it is frequently assumed that there is an opposition in principle between the voluntary and the statutory and in some quarters an assumption (reversing an earlier presumption about the rationality of state welfare) that voluntary action is the superior mechanism (at least morally). The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I want to reflect on the revival of interest in the role of the institutions of civil society in the history of welfare provision. Second, I will survey some recent approaches to voluntary action and 'civil society'. Third, in the process of this survey I discuss the relevance of these approaches to the study of past states of welfare.     

The HDI 2010: new controversies, old critiques

Since its introduction in the first Human Development Report in 1990, the Human Development Index (HDI) has attracted great interest in policy and academic circles, as well as in the media and national audiences around the world. Its popularity can be attributed to the simplicity of its characterization of development - an average of achievements in health, education and income – and to its underlying message that development is much more than economic growth. The index was originally conceived by the late Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq, in collaboration with Amartya Sen and other scholars, as a response to their dissatisfaction with GDP as the standard measure of development. As Haq noted, “Any measure that values a gun several hundred times more than a bottle of milk is bound to raise serious questions about its relevance for human progress.” Yet the HDI’s very simplicity prompted critiques from the start, with some contending that it was too simplistic, while others who accepted its self-imposed limitations still questioned its choice of indicators and its computational methodology. This article discusses the concept and key insights learnt from the HDI, provides a detailed review of key critiques of the HDI, today and in the past, and explains the recent changes introduced to the HDI formula and indicators. Recent controversies are highlighted and placed in the context of longer running debates. The innovations to broaden the measurement of deprivations and disparities in human development are introduced, with some key global and regional insights.     

Lay discourses of the rural: Developments and implications for rural studies

Considerations of lay discourses of the rural - people's everyday interpretations of rural places and ideas of the rural - have become increasingly evident in some key articles addressing the theory and practice of academic rural studies. A major element of the retheorization of rural studies, which itself is set within the broader contexts of recent developments in social theory, considerations of lay discourses have concerned themselves with the nature and implications of everyday interpretations and constructions of the rural, and, in some cases, how academic discourses are complexly bound up with such processes. This paper sets out to review some of the key examples of how and why lay discourses are being used in academic approaches to the rural, and how some of these are also addressing the key question of the problematic relationship between lay and academic discourses. It then aims to develop these initiatives, firstly, by suggesting some clarification of what lay discourse is; how other discourses, particularly popular and professional, should be identified; and why close attention should be paid to how they link up. Secondly, drawing on qualitative case study material gathered from an academic incursion into lay discourses of a small village in south west England, it is suggested that the very different nature of lay discourses has not been fully appreciated, and this has led to only partial success in some academic attempts to assimilate them into new approaches to rural studies, particularly in the ongoing debate about definitions of the rural. It is shown that lay discourses of the rural, such as they are, can be expected to be both spatially and conceptually complex and incoherent to an extent that will make it difficult for them to be incorporated into established (modern) academic rural approaches and thus leads to conclusions that in part support Murdoch and Pratt's (1993) concept of the ‘post-rural’.     

Researchers Behind Policy Development: Comparing ‘Age-Friendly Cities’ Models in Quebec and Wallonia

Based on a reflexive method, this article explores the roles of researchers behind Age-Friendly Cities and Environments. Referring to Michael Burawoy's division of sociological work (professional, critical, policy and public sociology), it is structured around the international comparison of two empirical case studies: Walloon region (Belgium) and Quebec (a province of Canada). While the first case shows some difficulties faced by a limited policy sociology perspective with little room for research, the latter presents a more developed public sociology approach with larger involvement from research. If both cases started with policy links, the latter presents a special interest for praxis, through knowledge transfer as an ongoing public dialogue. Based on this comparison, the article concludes with a twofold use of praxis: on one side – knowledge in action – a public sociology position offers an original perspective on what AFC/AFE may mean and produce to avoid a limited field of actions focusing only on some stakeholders or advocates for older people. On the other side – action in knowledge – policy and public sociology question professional and critical sociology facing AFC/AFE programmes: is a purely academic knowledge of such a programme epistemologically realistic or should it necessarily be empirically fuelled?     

Research,policy and funding – academic treadmills and the squeeze on intellectual spaces1

In recent years, there has been a great deal of collective rumination about social scientists' role in society. In the post‐1997 UK context, public policy commitments to ‘evidence‐based policy’ and ‘knowledge transfer’ have further stimulated such reflections. More recently, Michael Burawoy's 2004 address to the American Sociological Association, which called for greater engagement with ‘public sociology’ has reverberated throughout the discipline, motivating a series of debates about the purpose of sociological research. To date, most such contributions have been based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. In contrast, this paper responds directly to Burawoy's suggestion that we should ‘apply sociology to ourselves,’ in order that we ‘become more conscious of the global forces’ driving our research ( Burawoy 2005 : 285). Drawing on an empirical research project designed to explore of the relationship between health inequalities research and policy in Scotland and England, in the period from 1997 until 2007, this paper discusses data from interviews with academic researchers. The findings suggest that the growing pressure to produce ‘policy relevant’ research is diminishing the capacity of academia to provide a space in which innovative and transformative ideas can be developed, and is instead promoting the construction of institutionalized and vehicular (chameleon‐like) ideas. Such a claim supports Edward Said's (1994 ) insistence that creative, intellectual spaces within the social sciences are increasingly being squeezed. More specifically, the paper argues we ought to pay far greater attention to how the process of seeking research funding shapes academic research and mediates the interplay between research and policy.     

Equal Citizenship for All. Disability Policies in the Netherlands: empowerment of marginals

In January 2001, two of the Netherlands' National Councils of Disabled People and of Chronically Ill People merged to form the Dutch Council of the Chronically Ill and Disabled People (CG-Raad). The strategic policy plan of the newly-formed CG-Raad combines the principles of equality and diversity. This article discusses various aspects of current disability policies in the Netherlands and presents the Dutch welfare state as a 'constructed society' whose policy classifications deconstruct people's personal lives. Everyday life in a society of this kind is a very complicated affair for disabled people. Disability management is presented as a way of overcoming the problems caused by these complications. This article presents an alternative proposition--the 'varied society'. This is a society in which all people are regarded as worthwhile. It is also the principle on which the CG-Raad's strategic policy plan, entitled 'Equal Citizenship', is based.     

Heavy Genealogy: Mapping the Currents,Contraflows and Conflicts of the Emergent Field of Metal Studies, 1978-2010

What is metal studies? How can we define and characterize it? How has it emerged as a body of academic enquiry? What are its dominant disciplinary strands, theoretical concepts and preferred methodologies? Which studies have claimed most attention, defined the goals of scholarship, typical research strategies and values? How has the claim for the legitimacy or symbolic value of metal scholarship been achieved (if it has): over time and through gradual acceptance or through conflict and contestation? How can this process of formation, or strategy of legitimation, be mapped, examined and interrogated and which methods of historical, institutional and cultural analysis are best suited to this task? Working with the most complete bibliography to date of published research on heavy metal, music and culture (the MSBD), this article employs Foucault’s archaeological “method” to examine the institutional, cultural and political contexts and conflicts that inform the genealogy of this scholarship. Such analysis reveals a formative, largely negative account of heavy metal to be found in the “sociology of rock”; a large volume of psychology work, examining heavy metal music preference as an indicator of youth risk, deviance and delinquency; sociological work on youth and deviancy critical of the values of this research and its links to social policy and politics; culminating in the work of Weinstein and Walser, who advocate a perspective sympathetic to the values of heavy metal fans themselves. Following Bourdieu, I interpret such symbolic strategies as claims for expertise within the academic field that are high or low in symbolic capital to the extent they can attain disciplinary autonomy. I then go on to examine the most recent strands of research, within cultural studies and ethnomusicology, concerned with the global metal music diaspora, and consider to what extent such work is constitutive of a coherent subfield of metal studies that can be distinguished from earlier work and what the implications of this might be.     

Making minorities history: population transfer in twentieth-century Europe

Leading Liberal Party politicians and some academic studies have suggested that the Liberal Party's stance on coloured immigration and race relations has been more principled than that of the other two major parties. However, close examination of the Liberals’ reactions to the issue of coloured immigration in the 1960s suggests that Liberal policy has not been very different from that of either the Labour or the Conservative Parties. All three parties moved to appease what appeared to be a hostile electorate.     

“Reconsidering the Study of International Migration: A Way Forward for Macrostructural Migration Research”

The “globalization of migration” has raised new and important questions about the macrostructural or global determinants of international population movements ( Castles and Miller, 2003 ). Yet there remains a dearth of cross‐national, empirical research in this area ( Portes, 1997 ). In one of the earliest attempts to empirically identify macrostructural determinants of migration, Amankwaa makes an important contribution to the literature (1995). There are, however, some conceptual, analytical, and methodological shortcomings in Amankwaa’s analysis of migration. These deficiencies merit comment because Amankwaa’s paper could become an increasingly important source of information for public policies and analytical research efforts, particularly as international migration continues to garner increased attention from public policy practitioners and academic researchers. I address key deficiencies in Amankwaa’s study and describe a more robust analytical framework and more rigorous methodological techniques for future research inquiries into the relationship between globalization and international migration.     

Changing class complexions on and in the British countryside

This paper explores the class complexion of the English and Welsh countryside utilising the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (or NS-SEC), as well as reflecting on the value of this classification given claims as to the ‘death of class’ as a meaningful subject of analysis. The paper situates analysis using the NS-SEC in a paradoxical context, whereby its very use appears, on the one hand, to demonstrate successful incorporation of academic constructions of class into the agencies of governmental social statistical production, while, on the other hand, academic discourses, including some within rural studies, appear to have undermined its very rationale. The paper argues that the classification lends support to claims that rural studies have used an overly aggregative concept of the middle class that obscures the spatial distribution of classes in the British countryside, although interpretation of the classification also needs to consider a range of broader criticisms of class analysis. The paper concludes by suggesting that the paradox surrounding the classification and rural class analysis more generally might be viewed through Latour's, [1999. Pandora's hope. Harvard University Press, London] concept of knowledge as a ‘circulatory system.’     

Marshall, Mannheim and contested citizenship

In this paper we address tensions in Marshall's account of the successive emergence of civil, political and social rights in citizenship. These tensions were Marshall's implicit and typically modern assumption of human nature, his privileging of the analytical rationality that follows from it, and the disjunction between the fixity of that rationality and the 'evolution' of his central metaphor. When he returned to it by emphasizing strains between democratic, welfare and capitalist moments that were co-present in the 'hyphenated society' rather than successive, he did so in a pessimistic tone at odds with the progressive modernism of his first schema. Although Marshall noted that conflicting principles in citizenship arose 'from the very roots of our social order', he did not elaborate the point in this first tripartite model. We argue that by adopting a single and typically modern form of rationality Marshall foreclosed on the contradictions that he held to be characteristic of academic disputes over citizenship. Since Mannheim had focused on the effects of such contradictions, his work allows a fruitful revisiting of Marshall's themes. To blend the two models we read Marshall through Karl Mannheim's early studies of political knowledge. Here Mannheim had anticipated the shift from stages to co-presence, and had prefigured a resolution of Marshall's sense of impasse. In his account of liberal, socialist and conservative thought-styles--the ways of seeing and knowing that are characteristic of particular ways of life--he saw political change as a dynamic interactive effect of individually calculating, dialectically collective and culturally symbolic forms of rationality.     

Migration,Policy, and Anthropology

In reviewing the articles in this special issue on the migration/policy/anthropology nexus, my comments will be in three parts: first, presenting a rough framework by which we might look at public policy in a way that bridges the academic and the practical; second, considering the actual cases presented in this special issue; and third, considering more broadly what the anthropological contribution might be to this complex and often acrimonious issue of migration policy. Throughout, the attempt is to search for a way of looking at migration policy that balances the inevitable academic critiques of public policy with a recognition of what public policy can and inevitably must be as a tool of societal discussion, planning, and progress.     

Pornography, Panopticism and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008

In May 2008, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act was passed in the United Kingdom. Among other things, this made it an offence even to possess what it describes as an 'extreme pornographic image'. This paper analyses the particular factors which gave rise to this measure, support for it amongst the police and politicians, and the problems which are likely to arise from attempts to enforce it. In particular, the paper argues that the measure is so ill-conceived that it is likely to criminalise the possession of a far wider range of images than was originally intended. More generally, the paper examines the Act in the context of (a) the increasing tendency on the part of governments both democratic and non-democratic to attempt to regulate the Internet and its users; (b) the development of the 'surveillance society'; and (c) New Labour's marked tendency to legislate for private and personal realms traditionally regarded as out-of-bounds in a democratic polity. The paper concludes that the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act is a disturbing symptom of the development of the United Kingdom as not simply a surveillance society but also a post-social democratic state.     

Income support policy in Canada and the UK: different,but much the same

This paper examines linkages between women’s experiences in accessing information, services and public policy relating to income support in Canada and the UK. Drawing on narrative interviews, the author finds mothers with disabilities are often embedded in complex relations of care, experiencing both embodied and social barriers. Additionally, by employing critical discourse analysis, it is clear that policy in both contexts is written not only inaccessibly and confusingly, but is directed toward an able‐bodied, independent, resource‐rich ideal citizen. Thus, policy in both contexts is disabling and pathologizing. There are differences in resources that are written into the policy and available through the UK network of Citizen’s Advice Bureaus that would indicate that the UK offers a breadth of services and avenues for advocacy that are unavailable in Canada. Further, the Canadian policy appears to be more adversarial and surveillance‐based than the UK policy.     

Social innovation,an answer to contemporary societal challenges? Locating the concept in theory and practice

Social innovation discourses see in social challenges opportunities to make societies more sustainable and cohesive through inclusive practices, coproduction and pro-active grassroots initiatives. In this paper we are concerned first that the concept has been stretched in so many directions that it is at breaking point. We illustrate this by documenting the varied uses of social innovation in different academic and policy discourses. Second, we assume that, if social innovation is to be a useful concept for policy-makers, then it must tell us something about what adjustments are needed to develop an effective political economy that is social innovation ready. Finally, we argue that what is needed is more theoretical and empirical work to help social innovation to develop into an effective policy tool.     

The black Atlantic,American studies and the politics of the postcolonial

Abstract

Twelve years of scholarship in the field of black-Atlantic-meets-American studies has resulted in a substantial body of knowledge around the extraterritorial excursions of US subjects and their cultural output. Despite the opportunities that the black Atlantic offered, it has begun to seem that the repositioning of academic perspective it stems from has itself become part of the discursive problems surrounding US American studies. This article suggests that it is time to rethink (black) Atlantic studies in the context of its partial institutionalization within the academy. First, it revisits the methodological and theoretical possibilities the field offered. Second, it examines some of the shortcomings which, in the early stages of the project, it was possible to overlook if not entirely ignore. Third, it looks at developments in the field of postcolonial studies, suggesting some conceptual tensions of relevance to postcolonial, US American, and American studies more generally.     

Contemplating a postmodern sociology: genealogy, limits and critique

As its title suggests, this paper explores certain directions a specifically postmodern sociology (rather than say a sociology of postmodernism) might take. It reinterprets Gouldner's prescient warnings of a crisis in ‘academic’ sociology as an expression of despair within modern sociology. In particular, three important ‘contradictions’ are examined as possible points of departure for a postmodern sociological discourse. Foucault's genealogical approach, it is argued, is useful in helping to orientate any attempts to develop a sociology of this kind. The analysis concludes by anticipating possible objections, showing how these might profitably be incorporated into future enquiries. The aim of the paper is not to offer concrete enunciations for a postmodern sociology, but to develop more modest rules of thumb through which such a discourse might be erected.