Decoding Valuing People

Government policy frameworks on the support of disabled people can often be difficult to 'read', as they contain contradictory elements that simultaneously support and confront social processes that create inequalities and oppression. Valuing People (VP), the UK government's policy framework for learning disability (intellectual disability), provides such a context for work that enhances learning-disabled people's inclusion in community and society, and to reverse some of the systemic disadvantage they have experienced. However, as an uneasy amalgam of the progressive and the neoliberal, the romantic and the practical, it has been difficult to evaluate in order to use its opportunities and minimise its dangers. This article attempts to decode VP in terms of ideologies in human services, and the current New Labour policy mix. Its emphases on Person Centred Planning, Direct Payments and employment will be analysed to try to establish what VP means, and to suggest more adequate priorities. This analysis might also be relevant to other sectors where there is a similar problem of decoding their particular policy context.     

People in Places

By studying people in places, qualitative researchers look at multiple levels of social life. The study of people in places typically draws on case studies but cases themselves are used in a variety of ways. By studying people in places, qualitative researchers can consider joint enterprises as well as shared circumstances, draw on various types of data, examine both individuals and institutions, and attend to both structure and agency.     

People behaving badly

With every cigarette we smoke, every fat-filled snack we consume, and every lap we don't take around the track, we risk our health. This state-by-state look at what we do and don't do reveals poor health practices wherever you look.     

科技奥运 惠及百姓(英文)

奥运会,不仅仅是一次体育盛会,也是国家综合实力的集中展现。奥运赛场,不仅是运动员为"更快、更高、更强"的目标奋力拼搏的竞技场,也是最新科技成果竞妖娆的"比武场"。     

Working with Deaf People

Whilst 17% of the population experience some degree of hearing loss, sociology has largely neglected the study of services to this group. This article attempts to move the debate from a sociology of the deaf community to a sociology of deafness that includes an examination of how professionals define the needs of hearing impaired people. Despite differences between different constructions, deafness workers offer a combination of social work, information, and interpreting services. Practice rules have been developed by deafness workers to control workloads, and to work in their preferred way. This article is based on a multi-layered approach with a contextual analysis, a survey of 123 deafness workers, 32 semi-structured interviews, and my own personal experience of deafness work.     

Let People Be People: Everyday Substance Use in a Public Work Site

This article complicates the prevailing portrait of substance use as being incompatible with work. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic data of one informal economic zone collected over a four-year period between January 2010 and January 2014, I expose the daily interactions through which substance use becomes compatible with work and the mechanisms by which drug and alcohol use become embedded in the local ecology of a public work site. To capture the ways in which people link their substance use to their experience of work, I utilize three concepts—taking a break, maintaining a cycle, and tipping the balance—each of which is suggestive of different patterned relationships between substance use and work in public. Data indicate that people link their substance use to their work in different ways and with different consequences and that each of these patterned relationships becomes an interrelated part of a single social system. These findings add necessary nuance and complexity to substance use literature, which is more frequently focused on abject abuse and disorder, and provide a more complete understanding of the ways in which substance use practices become linked to urban economies. Furthermore, they illuminate how participation in informal economic activity can play a variety of roles in the lives of people engaged in substance use practices.     

Blessed by the Holy People

ABSTRACT

Men-women and women-men have a long tradition in Diné (Navajo) culture where they were, and sometimes still are, held in high esteem. Their supernatural prototypes figure prominently in parts of the Diné Origin Story. It is in this cosmological worldview and tradition of acceptance that Carrie, a multi-dualistic spirit, grew up to be a female-bodied man supported and respected by his/her family and community. He/she has worked in various professions defined as “masculine” in Diné and Western contexts, such as fire fighter, heavy equipment operator, truck driver, and building contractor. In addition, Carrie is a keeper of Diné traditions, and has also been active educating Native and Non-Native audiences on 2SpiritLesbianGayBiTransIntersexQueer issues.     

People are conditional rule followers

Experimental participants are more likely to follow an arbitrary rule the more others in their reference group do so as well. The effect is most pronounced for individuals who follow few rules when not knowing others’ behavior. Unlike what is observed for conditional cooperation, learning that only few others follow a rule does not reduce rule following.     

千里驰援 情系玉树

在这一困难时刻，我需要尽快赶回国内，同我国人民在一起，投入抗震救灾工作． ——胡锦涛主席获悉青海“4·14”玉树地震发生之后决定提前回国时说