Governing through accountability: Gendered moral selves and the (im)possibilities of resistance in the neoliberal university

Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethically accountable subject, this study examines the production of gendered moral subjects under neoliberal governance in contemporary academia. The analysis of 40 semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with postdoc researchers and assistant, associate and full professors in a Belgian university reveals how in academics’ narratives of their ethical relations of (non‐)accountability towards multiple stakeholders, gendered subjects are performed along the heterosexual matrix reproducing the gender binary. The conjunction of gendered and ethical demands imposed through relations of accountability further opens up distinctively gendered possibilities of consent and resistance under neoliberal governance. We advance the extant literature on gender in academia which largely focuses on women's symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. By locating power in the gendered relations of accountability towards multiple others, it re‐conceptualizes gender as an ontological struggle in the constitution of the self as moral along gendered norms. The study rejoins recent scholarship that calls for the recognition and elaboration of a relational ethics by showing how such ethics enables the emergence of open and responsive subjectivities in relations of accountability.     

Possessed by Poe: Reading Poe in an age of intellectual guilt

Abstract

This essay enters the debate over the French appropriation of Poe not by seeking redress for the supposed political misdeeds of either Poe or the French, but rather, by addressing itself to the American response to the French reception of Poe. While American cultural studies critics in particular have sought to hold the French accountable for ignoring Poe's troubling biography — one in which the question of Poe's relationship to, and possible support of, antebellum slavery remains unanswered to this day — I argue that the important question of how we as critics situate ourselves in relation to material history is too often buried under a moralizing rhetoric of accountability. Following from, and extending, Jacques Derrida's notion of ‘speciality,’ I maintain that material history is itself a kind of conjuration that belies any strict distinction between the material and the immaterial. Against the demand for accountability, the notion of history‐as‐conjuration allows us to address questions of historical responsibility in a manner that circumvents the impulse to hold Poe accountable for his crimes’.     

Analyzing Children's Learning and Development in Everyday Settings from a Cultural-Historical Wholeness Approach

The main point in this article is to conceptualise how demands connected to children's life conditions influence both children and caregivers. To pursue this aim I advocate an extension of Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory of children's learning and development. Vygotsky pursued a wholeness approach to children's development with his concept of “the child's social situation of development” as the child's dialectic experiential and motivational relation with his or her surrounding. This conception I extend with the concepts of institutional practice and activity setting. The conditions for children's activities are the institutional practice and its activity settings. But a child's activities in these settings also has to be seen from the child's perspective, that is, his or her motive orientation. To focus on the child's motive within an activity setting—requires the researcher to focus on the child's social situation of development to discern how the dialectic between the child's orientation within an activity setting and the demands from the setting and other persons influence the child's activities within the child's zone of proximal development.     

Accountability of nonprofit organizations and those who control them: The legal framework

Legal accountability, understood as either an obligation to meet prescribed standards of behavior or an obligation to disclose information about one's actions even in the absence of a prescribed standard of behavior, is imposed on nonprofit organizations and those who manage them by state law and by fedral tax-exemption law. A perception that charities are exempt from both the electoral control that holds government accountable and the market forces that discipline business encourages a tendency to look to law to ensure accountability in the charitable sector, to perceive that shortcomings in the law are responsible for shortcomings in the sector, and to conclude that repair or reconstruction of the legal framework is the appropriate corrective. However, although the legal framework is far from perfect, sweeping change will not likely solve the problems and may well undermine the most positive characteristics of the sector. Some aspects of accountability cannot and should not be the subject of legal rules. Efforts to make charities accountable by redrawing legal standards of behavior in accord with popularly recognized standards of propriety, or even “excellence,” are likely to be counterproductive. Instead, adjustment of the legal framework in the hope of improving accountability should be incremental and should be evaluated in the context of organizing principles and core values that reflect our best understanding of the unique strengths of the sector and the functions it serves in our society.     

The Role of the American Nurses' Association in Maintaining Professional Accountability

Abstract

A professional association has been defined as a group of practitioners who organize to perform functions they cannot perform as separate individuals and to judge one another as professionally competent. History reveals that when a profession becomes clearly defined, the responsible practitioners form an association in order to establish standards of practice and enforce rules of conduct.

As the professional association for nurses, the American Nurses' Association is inextricably involved in the development of mechanisms that guarantee professional accountability. A standing priority of the association is to improve the quality of care provided to the public by such means as 1) setting a timetable for establishing qualifications for entry into nursing practice; 2) evolving a coherent credentialing system; 3) establishing systems to assure the profession's accountability for practice and for the delivery of services; and 4) providing for expansion, accessibility, and improvements in continuing education in nursing.

If nurses are to assume greater responsibility, the profession must be in a position to assure the public of quality nursing care. Since the public holds the profession (as a whole) accountable for the competence of its practitioners, the professional association has a responsibility to establish mechanisms by which to judge the competence of its practitioners and to evaluate the quality of care.     

Seeking exemptions from nursing home routines: Residents' everyday influence attempts and institutional order

Using ethnographic data collected from a Swedish nursing home, this article analyzes residents' everyday or subtle influence attempts relative to the maintenance of institutional routines. Residents' efforts to carve out some autonomy or fulfill personal preferences in everyday matters could be categorized as (1) disruptions, (2) disturbances, or (3) “good matches” relative to ongoing and up-coming nursing home routines. Striking disruptions were often fruitless, while attempts rendered as disturbances were typically postponed or modified. In general, the outcomes of residents' maneuvers were shaped by brief and situational negotiations of whether (and how) temporary exemptions from the institutional order were deemed accountable or not by the staff. Although the staff sometimes arranged situations in which residents were given some defined or symbolic decision-making authority, the findings of this study show how an inflexible local routine culture can constitute a constraining and only occasionally porous framework for residents' self constructions and everyday life.     

FIELD EDUCATION AS THE SIGNATURE PEDAGOGY OF SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION

In its EPAS, CSWE (2008) identifies field education as the signature pedagogy (Shulman, 2005b) of social work education. This article analyzes the field education– signature pedagogy fit. It finds congruence in selected organizational arrangements that are pervasive and routine, and disparities with respect to expectations about public student performance, peer accountability, the view of adaptive anxiety, and accountable talk. This article asserts that practicum effectiveness could be enhanced by a broader application of Shulman's criteria through a greater emphasis on group structures for learning/teaching in the field.     

Young People as Moral Beings: Childhood,Morality and Inter‐Generational Relationships

This article uses the work of Goffman to explore how a group of older children presented a moral self in a study of inter‐generational relationships. By reflecting critically on their own behaviour and that of other young people and adults, they presented themselves as morally competent agents, whilst questioning the taken‐for‐granted moral competence of adults. Their presentation of a moral self involved portraying themselves as moral beings, whilst acknowledging that they are also moral becomings. The findings highlight how the embedded authority and associated moral accountability of adults in relation to children militate against recognising children's moral agency.     

Moral Reasoning in Interactional Context: Strategic Uses of Care and Justice Arguments in Mediation Hearings*

Previous studies of moral reasoning have treated moral reasoning as a product of the individual. This article extends the study of moral reasoning by analyzing its use in strategic interaction. I analyze how participants in a naturally occurring situation of conflict use moral arguments strategically and negotiate over the types of arguments that are acceptable. Gilligan's Care and Justice modes of moral reasoning are identified in participants' justifications for positions taken in nine videotaped mediation hearings. I found that participants may use both modes of reasoning during the course of a hearing, and that the type of moral argument used is often a response to the actions of other participants. Strategic uses of moral arguments included shifting mode to challenge or support another's position, bridging a difference in mode between two disputants, and shifting mode to refocus the topic. Because of their institutional and interactional roles in the hearings, mediators play a major role in negotiations over mode of moral reasoning.     

The State and Civil Society in Disaster Response

Abstract

This paper, based on the report “The State and Civil Society in Disaster Response: An Analysis of the Tamil Nadu Tsunami Experience,” (Srinivasan, Nagaraj, & Venkatesh, 2005) is essentially an empirical analysis of state and civil society responses in Tamil Nadu (India) to the tsunami of December 26, 2004. It examines interventions by state and non-state agencies, as well as people's experiences in the relief and rehabilitation phases to identify factors influencing both positive and negative outcomes of the tsunami response. Issues related to vulnerability and exclusion, equity, transparency and accountability in different sectors of disaster intervention are explored to highlight themes revolving around reach and efficacy of relief and recovery processes. These analyses bring out some interesting lessons with regard to the importance of institutional autonomy, non-politicized decision-making, and synergetic state-civil society interfaces in fostering inclusive, transparent and accountable rehabilitation processes. The roles played by institutional responsiveness and flexibility in shaping an effective disaster response also emerge very clearly from this study of the Tamil Nadu experience. Another crucial finding points to the need for detailed, reliable and disaggregated geo-demographic and socioeconomic records as a resource base for informing relief and rehabilitation interventions. The study draws extensively from the experiences and insights of people affected by, and involved in tsunami response, and from secondary knowledge resources available on the disaster.     

The influence of accountability for the crisis and type of crisis communication on people’s behavior,feelings and relationship with the government

In this paper we investigated to what extent the willingness of people to take advice from the local government, people’s feelings of collective efficacy and empowerment, and their relationship with the local government, is dependent on whether the local government was accountable for the crisis or not. In addition, we were interested in the influence of empathic versus neutral crisis information on people’s behavior, feelings and their relationship with the local government. The results indicate that people’s intention to follow the advice of the local government is generally high, even when the local government is held accountable for the crisis. However, accountability negatively influenced people’s relationship with the local government, as well as collective efficacy. Our research shows that this negative outcome for people’s relationship with the local government cannot be countered by empathic crisis information. However, conveying empathic concern in the crisis information did enhance level of collective efficacy.     

Boards of trustees must assume responsibility for making alcohol prevention on campus a top priority

ABSTRACT

Few colleges have made the prevention of alcohol-related injuries and deaths an institutional priority, and even fewer have implemented prevention strategies with a solid evidentiary base. We look to presidents to provide leadership on this issue, but those who do are atypical. Boards of trustees should step in by asserting that student wellness be a primary focus in the institution's strategic plan, with specific, measurable goals; holding the president accountable for progress in reducing high-risk drinking and its consequences; and mandating a line item in the annual budget, with adequate staffing and revenues to put evidence-based practices in place. Boards will be more likely to respond when led to focus on the cost implications of the campus alcohol problem; the link between high-risk drinking and mission-critical institutional objectives such as academic performance, student engagement, and retention; and the institution's potential liability if evidence-based prevention strategies are not in place.     

Accountability in Action?: Program Evaluation in Nonprofit Human Service Agencies

Program evaluation can be used as an excellent tool to promote nonprofit human service organizations' accountability. This article lays out several conditions that need to be met before evaluation achieves its potential. Application of this framework to nonprofits in Dallas, Texas, indicates the usefulness of the approach. Results show that considerable numbers of evaluation are being conducted but that the quality of the research methods and measures is low. This indicates that evaluation cannot currently be said to be providing the level of accountability possible. Additional efforts by all stakeholders to promote the use of evaluation to hold agencies accountable for efforts and results are necessary.     

Accountability Agreements in Ontario Hospitals: Are They Fair?

Governments can be accountable for improving the fairness oftheir priority setting through enhanced transparency and stakeholderengagement. A case analysis is conducted of priority settingin a government health care context in Ontario, Canada, assessinghow implementation of hospital accountability agreements meetsthe conditions of a leading international ethical frameworkfor priority setting, "accountability for reasonableness" (A4R).Hospital accountability agreements provide a mechanism for governmentto ensure that public funding achieves desired performance inhospitals. A key goal of priority setting is fairness. A4R linkspriority setting, legitimacy, and fairness to theories of democraticdeliberation, making a claim for fairness if the four conditionsof relevance, publicity, revision/appeals, and enforcement aresatisfied. Regarding the relevance condition, this analysissuggests that government only partially met the relevance conditionproviding limited stakeholder engagement but with evidence ofpolicy learning and movement toward the establishment of inclusivestakeholder arrangements. Evidence suggests that governmenteventually progressed toward meeting the publicity condition.Government only partially met the revision/appeals conditionand did not meet the enforcement condition, as the other conditionswere only partially met. It is our view that regional governancestructures in Ontario (i.e., Local Health Integration Networksor LHINs) provide an opportunity for the province to improvethe fairness of their accountability agreement processes throughenhancing transparency and stakeholder engagement. More broadly,this case study provides a guide for government to enhance accountabilityby focusing on A4R to improve the fairness of its priority setting.     

The persistence of cliques in the post‐communist state. The case of deniability in drug reimbursement policy in Poland

This article explores a key question in political sociology: Can post‐communist policy‐making be described with classical theories of the Western state or do we need a theory of the specificity of the post‐communist state? In so doing, we consider Janine Wedel's clique theory, concerned with informal social actors and processes in post‐communist transition. We conducted a case study of drug reimbursement policy in Poland, using 109 stakeholder interviews, official documents and media coverage. Drawing on ‘sensitizing concepts’ from Wedel's theory, especially the notion of ‘deniability’, we developed an explanation of why Poland's reimbursement policy combined suboptimal outcomes, procedural irregularities with limited accountability of key stakeholders. We argue that deniability was created through four main mechanisms: (1) blurred boundaries between different types of state authority allowing for the dispersion of blame for controversial policy decisions; (2) bridging different sectors by ‘institutional nomads’, who often escaped existing conflicts of interest regulations; (3) institutional nomads’ ‘flexible’ methods of influence premised on managing roles and representations; and (4) coordination of resources and influence by elite cliques monopolizing exclusive policy expertise. Overall, the greatest power over drug reimbursement was often associated with lowest accountability. We suggest, therefore, that the clique theory can be generalized from its home domain of explanation in foreign aid and privatizations to more technologically advanced policies in Poland and other post‐communist countries. This conclusion is not identical, however, with arguing the uniqueness of the post‐communist state. Rather, we show potential for using Wedel's account to analyse policy‐making in Western democracies and indicate scope for its possible integration with the classical theories of the state.     

Institutional Amnesia: Sustainability and Peacebuilding in Croatia

This article studies the relationship between sustainability and institutional memory in postwar Croatia. Is institutional memory preserved after interventions end? Is so, how and by whom? What are the causes of loss of institutional memory? What are the consequences for sustainability and accountability? When international organizations pulled out of peacebuilding operations in Croatia in the mid to late 2000s, they quickly lost their institutional memory of their projects. Donors, international nongovernmental organizations, and intergovernmental organizations all lost their ability to recall the work they had done in the past. Using interview, ethnographic data, and archival documents gathered over five years (2008–2013), I define three types of memory—archival, human, and electronic—and show how each of these forms of memory eroded as international projects in Croatia ended. The loss of international memory has implications for international organizations' own stated goals of sustainability and their ability to achieve and assess sustainability, and for the downward accountability of donors to their beneficiaries and the countries they worked in.     

Social accountability as social movement outcome: Protests in a Chinese city

ABSTRACT

Social accountability is a concept that has been used much in development studies and democratic theory to study informal ways for civil society to achieve social change and hold governments accountable. Surprisingly, it has been far less used in social movement scholarship and we argue that social accountability, understood as a combination of answerability, legal claim attainment, and sanction, is a useful way to examine social movement outcomes in China. Social accountability directs the focus of research towards the target of protest and not only whether the protest resulted in policy changes or not. Based on field work in 2013–2015, this article examines four cases of social protests in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. In line with previous research we find that when citizen claims accord with government policies and protesters are well-organized, local authorities tend to accommodate the protesters’ claims. However, answerability and sanction do not always follow the same pattern. Answerability can be relatively high also when legal claims are unsuccessful. This means that cases that are commonly seen as unsuccessful protests because the legal demands were not accommodated may still result in partial social accountability. In addition to the presentation of original empirical findings, the study makes a theoretical contribution by linking the two research fields of social movement and social accountability, which will be of interest to a wider scholarly audience.     

Taking children's rights seriously

SUMMARY. How are we to justify our criticisms of current policies in relation to children? This paper, delivered as the Fourth Brian Jackson Memorial Lecture at Huddersfield Polytechnic on 6 November 1987, argues that we need to address the questions of why we ought to take children's rights seriously and of how this can be done. The article examines the moral grounds for rights for children and concludes by suggesting some institutional changes including the establishment of a Children's Ombudsperson. The suggestion is also made that a ‘child impact statement’ should be attached to all new legislation and other major policy statements.     

Public accountability in non-profit industrial development organisations

Non-profit industrial development organisations (NIDOs) represent a common but little studied community response to widespread deindustrialisation in the United States. These non-profits are organised as chartered not-for-profit corporations, public authorities or agencies of local government. Most receive at least some public funding to promote local industrial development. Thus, a key issue is how accountable NIDOs are to the public they have been created to serve. Data from national surveys of NIDO executive directors in 1984 and 1994, as well as a survey of six case study boards of directors, suggest that public accountability is an increasingly important concern among NIDOs. Public hearings, efforts to diversify the boards in terms of gender and race, and connections to community development corporations and other local organisations are among the ways NIDOs attempt to be accountable to the general public. Although few women or racial minorities serve on NIDO boards, those boards with representation of these groups tend to be more concerned with public accountability. Boards containing public officials tend to be less concerned, presumably because their presence makes the NIDOs more directly accountable as a result of the participation of elected public representatives.     

Public reporting: A neglected aspect of nonprofit accountability

Nonprofit organizations have a compulsory external accountability (largely involving financial reporting) to government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and state regulators. They also have a pragmatic “must‐do” accountability to their funders, clients, and other obvious stakeholders. But are nonprofits also accountable to the public at large? If so, how can such accountability be implemented, given the diffuseness and breadth of the public as an audience? This article suggests that nonprofits should consider the citizenry as a stakeholder, if only due to the substantial taxpayer subsidy of the sector. The theory of public reporting that emerged in public administration literature beginning in the 1920s and 1930s can be helpful. Using principles, templates, and examples from public administration, nonprofit organizations can pursue more vigorous public reporting as one method to increase citizen confidence in their activities and in the sector as a whole.