Fighting with Oneself to Maintain the Interaction Order: A Sociological Approach to Self‐Injury Daily Process

This article proposes an interactionist approach to self‐injury behavior in youth. Mostly based on in‐depth interviews with seventy people who self‐harm or who have self‐harmed at some point in their lives, it describes the process of daily self‐injuring. It shows that this practice consists less in the self‐harm in itself than in a liminal emotional state, composed of several successive steps, and that self‐injury makes sense because concerned individuals subjectively see it as the most practical of known activities for releasing emotional troubles, then maintaining the interaction order surrounding them.     

Editorial

In this paper I shall provide a self‐reflective account of the development of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy service for the parents and carers of children considered to be at risk of abuse or neglect by social workers or child mental health professionals. I will discuss some of my thinking in setting up such a service and the difficulties, both clinical and operational, that I have encountered. I will draw tentative conclusions about the effectiveness of once‐weekly psychotherapy for parents in protecting their children from harm and promoting their development. I will illustrate the difficulties and my conclusions with clinical material.     

Tongues of fire: women's suicide and self‐injury by burns in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Self‐burning and self‐immolation are forms of self‐harm found across the Eastern Mediterranean region and South and Central Asia. The majority of those choosing these methods of self‐harm are young women. Using data from 100 young female survivors of suicidal attempts in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, this article analyses the phenomenon in the context of a life‐course progression arguing that the period around first marriage is a time of particular trauma to women. We suggest that self‐burning should be understood as a communicative act with an indigenous semiology which functions as an expression of subordinated agency within a male‐dominated society, in which marriage is a major source of conflict between generations and genders.     

Children's work and children's well‐being: Implications for policy

This article argues for holistic consideration of children's work. Dominant discourse on “child labour” attends only to dangers of children's work, leading to policies that damage some children's chances for development. Far from being universally negative in children's lives, appropriate work contributes to their well‐being and development, and to transitions to adulthood. Children's work can convey benefits for sustenance and quality of life, provide learning to complement and support school, offer psycho‐social benefits, particularly in building self‐esteem, and help develop social relations and responsibility. These benefits are especially critical for marginalized children. Common policies of abolishing child labour based on age of employment rather than potential harm deny such benefits to younger children.     

Cutting to Live: A Phenomenology of Self‐Harm

This exploratory study utilizes a phenomenological methodology as described by Moustakas (Phenomenological research methods, Sage Publications, 1994). Data were gathered via qualitative face‐to‐face interviews from a midsize southwestern community. Eleven participants, ten females and one male, were included in this study. Data suggested three categories that described the participants’ experiences of self‐harm: Self‐harm is Misunderstood, Self‐Harm has a Role, and Advice to Professionals. Among these categories, 11 themes emerged, including Self‐Harm is Not Suicide, Self‐Harm is an Addiction, Individuals Who Self‐Harm are Traumatized, Help That’s Not Helpful, Self‐Harm is a Release, Physical Pain versus Emotional Pain, Self‐Harm IS Control, and Need to be Punished. Advice to professionals who work with individuals who self‐harm is offered by the participants. The study concludes with a discussion of the phenomenon of self‐harm, as well as clinical and training implications for professionals. Future directions for research are also discussed.     

EDITORIAL

Although a contested concept, there is a growing awareness of the phenomenon of deliberate self‐harm (DSH) in the UK, and particularly of self‐injury by adolescents. Trends in the prevalence of DSH have been monitored, and schools have been used as a means for gathering self‐reported data from pupils, but to‐date there is no known research on the way self‐harm is perceived and responded to by schools and the agencies to which they refer. This paper reports a Nuffield Foundation‐funded project which examined the experiences and perceptions of DSH of 34 teachers and others in support and clinical roles. The report includes data on the range and prevalence of self‐harming behaviours encountered; levels of awareness amongst school staff; teachers' reactions to DSH; links between schools and other agencies (including CAMHS); and levels of training, support and supervision for teachers and others responding to DSH in school settings. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings, including the potential for CAMHS, social workers and other agencies to provide crucial training and support to ‘front‐line workers’ in schools.     

Sociological Approaches to Self‐injury

This paper reviews the burgeoning sociological literature on non‐suicidal self‐injury, in which individuals intentionally harm themselves by cutting, burning, scratching, or smashing their body parts. We identify challenges to studying self‐injury, such as conflicting definitions and categorizations. Comparing self‐injury to other behaviors such as suicide, body modification, and self‐mutilation, we assert that non‐suicidal self‐injury deserves its own conceptual category. We explain how a critical sociological approach provides a valuable counterweight to medical and psychological studies of self‐injury. In particular, this paper advances the deviance perspective. Finally, we highlight how technology has allowed self‐injurers to build supportive communities in cyberspace, blurring the line between hidden and public acts. We conclude with suggestions for future directions in the study of self‐injury.     

The Coalition,austerity and mental health

In the United Kingdom, the Coalition government’s recent commitment to improving mental health provision masks the extent that their policies of austerity have already brought harm to those same services. Government-driven policies have led to significantly reduced funding within mental health, increasing pressure on a system that was already chronically under-resourced. Further, people who are experiencing mental distress, and mental health service users, have been especially vulnerable to the harms of the current austerity programme, including being at the sharp end of the assault on public services and welfare spending. This piece discusses the impact of austerity, exploring the effects of government policies and with a critical perspective of the dominant discourses around mental health. It argues that by exacerbating social inequality, government policies are also directly leading to worsening mental health in the United Kingdom.     

Indian Country Poverty: Place‐Based Poverty on American Indian Territories, 2006–10

This article examines place‐based poverty in Indian Country, emphasizing that reservation characteristics are influenced by the system of federal Indian policy that affects American Indian self‐determination and antipoverty strategies within reservation boundaries. Using data from the American Community Survey five‐year file, 2006–10, I model poverty rates using multivariate, nested regression along key dimensions associated with American Indian antipoverty strategies and place‐based poverty. The results indicate that rates of female‐headed households and opportunity structures, such as lack of work, contribute to higher rates of reservation poverty while gaming acts as a slight buffer against poverty. Surprisingly, natural‐resource‐related occupations, thought to be associated with expropriation of tribal resources, was not associated with higher poverty, while self‐governance compacts, acting as a proxy for tribal autonomy, had no significant impact on poverty rates. As tribal governments seek to address poverty through strategies enabled by self‐determination policies, there is a critical need for more comprehensive and reliable data to understand how and whether tribal governments can effectively adapt federal policies to specific reservation conditions.     

Nonprofit agency dependence on direct service and indirect support volunteers: An empirical investigation

Thirty agency directors or volunteer coordinators were interviewed regarding the human resource techniques they use to attract and retain two types of volunteers: direct service and indirect support. Agencies that depend on direct (point‐of‐service) volunteers are more likely to bring volunteers on board and use the performance feedback process to guide any needed improvements. Role playing and mentoring are particularly effective training techniques for these volunteers. Despite the critical function of point‐of‐service volunteers, more sophisticated recruitment and screening techniques were not used, contrary to expectations. Agencies that depend on indirect support volunteers use the recruitment process to screen out those who would not be successful volunteers and terminate them quickly for lack of confidentiality and reliability, particularly if they have had on‐the‐job training. Agencies hesitate to terminate direct service volunteers even for lack of ability and violations of policies and procedures. Finally, agencies used nonmonetary rewards with indirect support, but not direct service, volunteers. Implications of these findings and others are discussed.     

Policy on Children's Work and Labour

Current international child labour policies emphasise removing children from work rather than improving their well‐being. Prohibited ‘child labour’ extends beyond work shown to be harmful, and work in poorer, majority‐world societies is particularly targeted. These policies ignore benefits that children can gain from work, and have been developed largely without the involvement of the children, families and communities most concerned, limiting chances of successful outcomes. This paper argues for alternative approaches, developed in collaboration with children and their communities, focussing on children's well‐being and development, and protecting children from harm and exploitation while allowing them to benefit from appropriate work.     

Engagement with Non‐State Service Providers in Fragile States: Reconciling State‐Building and Service Delivery

The OECD questions whether non‐state services in fragile states may delegitimise the state in the eyes of citizens, arguing that ‘state‐building’ depends on governments’ engagement in service management. This article reviews the available evidence to identify what types of engagement are feasible and most likely to contribute to service delivery, or not to damage it. It considers the capacity requirements and the risks associated with state intervention through policy formulation, regulation, contracting and mutual agreements, and concludes by identifying ways of incrementally involving the state, beginning with activities that are least likely to do harm to non‐state provision.     

Data quality in evaluation of an alcohol-related harm prevention program

The authors report the reliability and convergent validity in a sample of college students for 27 composite scales and two items covering alcohol use, cigarette smoking, marijuana use, and other drug use; beliefs relating to alcohol use; perceived norms for alcohol-related behavior; harm prevention skills; intentions to take prevention action; harm prevention action taken; risk taken; experienced harm; and other health-related behaviors and person characteristics. Data quality assessment strategies and missing data procedures were illustrated for large, multivariate, longitudinal data sets. Results indicate 23 of the 27 composite scales had at least acceptable reliability, and the remaining 4 composite scales had at least marginally acceptable reliability. At least moderate construct validity was demonstrated for 25 scales.     

Who Is Poorest? An Asset‐based Analysis of Multidimensional Wellbeing

Recent studies have endorsed asset‐based approaches as a strategy for attaining the Millennium Development Goals. This article discusses asset indices as a diagnostic tool for these policies, systematically breaking them down into separate dimensions of private household wealth and basic public‐goods access and discussing how shortfalls in public‐goods supply can be related to deprivations in basic human capabilities under the asset framework. It then illustrates how asset indices can be used for the targeting of public infrastructure investments and private asset‐accumulation policies, with the help of a detailed case study of deprivations in household wealth and public‐service supply in Madagascar.     

DIY Entrepreneurship? – Self‐reliance for Women Refugees in Australia

In this paper, we call for a re‐examination of the self‐reliance ideology based on a neoliberal perspective to make policies for refugee women's (self‐)employment and integration. We use a social constructionist perspective to conduct a narrative analysis of data from the lived experience of twelve women refugee entrepreneurs. Three prominent themes emerge from the women’s own narratives of their entrepreneurial journey – self‐reconstruction, social capital, and resilience. Our findings reveal the complexities of self‐reconstruction and socialization as experienced by refugee women entrepreneurs – for whom “push” factors take precedence over “pull” factors with the explicit understanding that the onus is on them to survive with their own resilience. We argue that offering people hope of a new life means offering them meaningful choices, built on forms of economic activity whose sustainability over the long term is evidenced by the positive supports available to make sure economic activity succeeds.     

Trauma and Bowen Family Systems Theory: Working with Adults Who were Abused as Children

Working with survivors of trauma is mostly challenging, exhausting, long‐term and often ‘messy’, when interventions that ‘should’ work, don't, or the unexpected arises. Nevertheless, explanations that speak to recovery from trauma more and more rely on neurobiological concepts to account for any positive change. Combining the family systems approach of Murray Bowen and recent research on the brain and trauma, post trauma symptoms are viewed as part of the ‘family emotional process’ even when traumatic events have emanated from outside the family system itself. Variations in responses to trauma, including dissociation and self‐harm are discussed in relation to chronic anxiety and ‘differentiation of self’.     

Supporting people with intellectual disabilities to take part in focus groups: reflections on a research project

This paper discusses how support offered to people with intellectual disabilities who take part in research might affect the resultant data. People with intellectual disabilities from a long‐stay hospital, a day centre and a self‐advocacy group, all in the UK, participated in focus groups during a research project on nurse advocacy. Their supporters were staff employed by those services who were familiar with and to the group members. The support given to participants reflected the ethos of the services involved, relating either to the medical or the social model of disability. The paper argues that the philosophy of care influencing supporters of research participants with intellectual disabilities may have profound effects on the support provided. It may facilitate or inhibit open exchange of information. It may also aid clarification or cause contamination of the resultant data.     

Between the Procedural and the Substantial: Democratic Deliberation and the Interaction Order in “Occupy Middletown General Assembly”

This article analyzes interaction from an intentional, self‐reflexive democratic meeting of ordinary citizens—a “General Assembly” from the 2011 Occupy Movement—to explore two competing theories of democracy: Habermas's democratic deliberation and Mouffe's agonistic pluralism. The group's rational ideals and procedures for democratic deliberation approximate those of Habermas's “ideal speech situation,” but appear limited in their capacity to ensure Habermasian understanding or consensus. Intertwined with these rational procedures are practices best explained in terms of what Goffman called “face‐work”—the ways in which participants maintain a working consensus of mutual acceptance and respect in conversation. These face‐work procedures—rather than sincere, rational intentions—help constitute the civility necessary for rational deliberation and participation. Such symbolic valuing of self and other provide interactional grounds for the liberty and equality of agonistic democratic conversation as conceived by Mouffe.     

Millennium Development Goal Achievements and Policies in Education and Health: What Has Been Learnt?

This article reviews the effectiveness and efficiency of key policy instruments for MDG (Millennium Development Goals) achievement, focusing on the role of demand‐ and supply‐side factors in education and health‐service utilisation. It comes to the following conclusions. First, specific policy interventions can have a considerable impact on social‐service utilisation. Second, demand‐side policies have proved extremely effective in the education sector, but may need more consideration in the health sector. Third, policy effectiveness and efficiency are highly dependent on initial conditions and the specificities of the respective policy. Fourth, complementarities between MDG targets are likely to be very important.     

European Youth Gang Policy in Comparative Context

The past decade has seen increased reports of street gangs across a range of contexts. In Europe, anxieties over street‐based youth has led to the development of gang‐specific policies across a range of jurisdictions, most notably the UK. Following a similar pattern of policy mobility in criminal justice, many of these policies have origins in the US system. In this review of international gang policy developments, we critically examine a number of these policies in a comparative context ‐ including gang policing units and intelligence databases ‐ and interrogate their efficacy. Drawing on cogent examples from the UK, we argue for caution in adopting US gang intervention tactics due to the lack of empirical evidence relating to their applicability or efficacy, and the corresponding potential for discrimination toward the most marginalised and socially excluded children and young people in society.