Rehearsals in Citizenship: BBC Stop‐Motion Animation Programmes For Young Children

This paper examines new managerial discourses and practices in which the dialectic of labour is reconstructed as a series of acts of self‐understanding, self‐examination and “self‐work”, and through which the “self qua self” is constituted as the central object of management technologies. We interrogate concepts such as “excellence”, “total quality”, “performance”, “knowledge”, “play at work” and “wellness” in order to decipher the ways in which managerialism deploys what we term therapeutic habitus, and projects a new horizon of “human resourcefulness” as a store of unlimited potentialities. We invoke management’s wider historical–cultural context to situate managerialism within the framework of modernity as a cultural epoch whose main characteristic is what we term “derecognition of finitude”. It is the modern synthesis — with the “self” at the centre of its system of values — that provides the ground for current elaborations of subjectivity by managerialism. The paper examines how current vocabularies and practices in organizations use “work” to rearticulate discursively the human subject as an endless source of performativity by configuring work as the site of complex and continuous self‐expression. Management thus acquires a new discursive outline: instead of appearing as an authoritarian instance forcing upon workers a series of limitations, it now presents itself as a therapeutic formula mediating self‐expression by empowering individuals to work upon themselves to release their fully realized identity.     

The Presentation of Self and the New Institutional Inmate: An Analysis of Prisoners' Responses to Assessment for Release*

This paper bases an analysis of the prison experience on Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life rather than on Asylums. It describes the situation of prisoners in an institution where release decisions are individualized and where release recommendations depend on official assessments of the character, background, and moral “change” of each prisoner. The paper then focuses on the work that prisoners do to demonstrate institutionally approved character and “change” to the prison staff or, in the words of prisoners, to “show them who you are.” The concepts and premises of dramaturgy are employed to analyse prisoners' techniques of self-portrayal and to analyse prisoners' resistance to institutional assessment through describing their behaviour as simply “conning” and “manipulating.”     

State work and the testing concours of citizenship

Anyone trying to be a citizen has to pass through a set of practices trying to be a state. This paper investigates some of the ways testing practices calibrate citizens, and in doing so, perform “the state.” The paper focuses on three forms of citizenship testing, which it considers exemplary forms of “state work,” and which all, in various ways, concern “migration.” First, the constitution of a “border crossing,” which requires an identity test configured by deceptibility. Second, the Dutch asylum process, in which “being gay” can, in certain cases, be reason for being granted asylum, but where “being gay” is also the outcome of an examination organized by suspicion. And third, the Dutch measurement of immigrants’ “integration,” which is comprised of a testing process in which such factishes as “being a member of society” and “being modern” surface. Citizenship is analyzed in this paper as accrued and (re)configured along a migration trajectory that takes shape as a testing concours, meaning that subjects become citizens along a trajectory of testing practices. In contributing both to work on states and citizenship, and to work on testing, this paper thus puts forward the concept of citizenship testing as state work, where “state work is the term for that kind of labor that most knows itself as comparison, equivalency, and exchange in the social realm” (Harney, 2002, pp. 10–11). Throughout the testing practices discussed here, comparison, equivalency, and exchange figure prominently as the practical achievements of crafting states and citizens.     

Emotions into Disorder: Anxiety Disorders and the Social Meaning of Fear

This article explores what we refer to as norm-stimuli-state discrepancies, which are disparities between people's physical-emotional responses to emotional cues and the normative meanings of those cues. Drawing on forty qualitative interviews and participant observation research at support groups, we show that people with anxiety disorders describe two forms of norm-stimuli-state discrepancies. The first form involves discrepancies of type, in which people label fearful emotional states as deviant for being caused by the “wrong” stimuli. The second involves discrepancies of intensity, in which people label fearful states as deviant for involving feelings or displays of “too much” anxiety in response to an “appropriate” stimuli. The article further addresses the role of stimuli in prompting treatment seeking. Unexpected and intense emotional distress in combination with the falling away of external cues—which we refer to as “stimuli-less fear”—serve as a critical juncture on the path to an anxiety disorder diagnosis.     

Death and the Penguin: modularity,alienation and organising

ABSTRACT

The originality of this paper lies in the ways in which it explores how the depiction of organised crime within Andrey Kurkov’s novel Death and the Penguin can inform our understanding of organisational modularity. This non-orthodox approach might open up new avenues of thought in the study of organisational modularity while further illustrating how novelistic worlds can inform accounts of organisational realities. Two main research questions underlie the paper. How can Andrey Kurkov’s novel further our understanding of the complexity of organisational worlds and realities by focusing our attention on different landscapes of organising? How does Kurkov’s novel help us grasp the concept of modularity by drawing attention to new forms of modular organisation? Drawing from our reading of Kurkov’s novel, we primarily explore organisational modularity through Kurkov’s depiction of organised crime and consider the themes of alienation and isolation in the context of modular organising.     

Policy Research and the Future: An Exemplar for a Critical Symbolic Interactionism

Abstract

Policy research is inquiry that seeks to inform organizational decisions. As such, it is embroiled in the construction of whatever futures these effectuate. Symbolic Interactionism has untapped resources for the conduct of policy research in its basic assumption that human nature and its situations are human creations. Within that tradition, it is always possible to compare what has been produced with some “future,” and to do so “critically.” The most relevant contemporary exemplar for such a comparison may be found in the work of Hugh Duncan. His analysis of the sociodramas that individuals perform, and his examination of comedy and tragedy as competing forms of social order is discussed. Finally, his attempt to exhibit the comedic as the humane form of social order is presented as a “formal” exemplar for the conduct of policy research which entertains a variety of futures in the investigation of present situations.     

Local Motions: Surfing and the Politics of Wave Sliding

Tapping into the politics and rhythms of surfing, this paper embodies a “set” of waves that seeks to erode the sedimentation of Hawaii's modern political orders. By foregrounding a more fluvial and dynamic sense of the political, this paper treats surfing not only as a heterotopic site of agency, but also as an opening for an “other” kind of politics.     

Youth Culture Religious Movements: Evaluating the Integrative Hypothesis*

This paper assesses the “integrative hypothesis” as an aid to understanding the current emergence of new religious movements appealing mainly to young persons. Four ways in which these movements reintegrate young persons into the social system are identified: adjustive socialization, combination, compensation, and redirection. The limitations of each of these as an explanation for the integrative consequences of youth culture religious movements are discussed. A distinction is made between adaptive movements which actually appear to reassimilate social “dropouts” into conventional instrumental routines, and marginal movements which appear to take converts out of conventional roles and routines, but which also perform latent tension management functions for the social system. The correlated properties of adaptive and marginal movements and the tendency for marginal movements to evolve into adaptive movements are discussed. Finally, the problem of “reductionism” in analyzing religious movements in terms of their latent integrative “functions” is discussed.     

Is interpersonal trust a necessary condition for organisational learning?

Abstract

The organisational behaviour and management literature has devoted a lot attention on various factors affecting organisational learning. While there has been much work done to examine trust in promoting organisational learning, there is a lack of consensus on the specific type of trust involved. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of interpersonal trust in promoting organisational learning and propose a research agenda to test the extent of interpersonal trust on organisational learning. This paper contributes to the existing organisational learning literature by specifying a specific form of trust, interpersonal trust, which promotes organisational learning and proposing a future research direction. The paper is organised as follows: firstly, a common conceptualisation of organisational learning is revisited. Secondly, the existing literature on trust reviewed and salient points on how interpersonal trust enhances organisational learning discussed. Finally, a research agenda to test the extent of interpersonal trust on organisational learning is being set out.     

Between Money,Morality and Masculinity

Abstract

This paper focuses on the supply-side of Chiang Mai's gay bars, that is, the male sex workers called dek bar or “bar boys”¹ in Thai. I formulate some explanations why these young men -more than half of whom do not consider themselves to be “homosexual” -take on a job as a male sex worker. In this analysis I focus on certain notions in traditional Thai society, trends in contemporary urban Thai society, the economics of work in a gay bar, as well as the sexual behaviour of male sex workers and the concepts they use to describe their work.     

Community,Ethnicity, and Class in a Changing Rural California Town*

Abstract This study investigates how community is constructed, maintained, and contested among diverse residents of a rural town in California's Central Valley. Drawing on observations, interviews, and archival material, I examine the way in which ethnicity and class play a significant role in recasting how community is organized and interpreted by Mexicans and long‐term white residents. In my field site, Mexicans have long been involved in (in)formal community‐making, yet long‐term white residents perceive a “loss of community” because social relations are no longer structured around an agrarian culture that at one time reinforced ties through volunteerism and interaction in local mainstream institutions. This article demonstrates the continual significance of place and interaction in defining community, but suggests that immigrants develop communities of need aimed at providing important social, emotional, and political support absent in mainstream society. Finally, this study also speaks of the competition for representation and respectability among rural residents developing a sense of belonging. “Community” is never simply the recognition of cultural similarity or social contiguity but a categorical identity that is premised on various forms of exclusion and constructions of otherness     

The Construction of Historical Equivalence: Weighing the Red and Brown Scares

Whether two events “belong together,” cognitively and in terms of collective memory, requires that we develop classification strategies. Historical equivalence refers to the perception that two events, separate in space and time, belong to the same cognitive category, or speak to the same issues. They are “good to think together.” Rejecting a radical constructionism that suggests that everything is a matter of ontological preference, I argue, following Gubrium (1993) , that interactionists should prefer a cautious naturalism. While interests and resources affect the presentation of historical claims, an obdurate reality permits the evaluation of empirical claims of comparability. To determine historical equivalence, we need to examine events in light of their magnitude, metaphorical continuity, analogous causation, and comparative effects. To examine the construction of historical equivalence, I discuss the similarities and differences between the Red Scares of 1919 and the late 1940s and the Brown Scare of the early 1940s. What you choose as an historical analogy begins and ends the conversation. —Elazar Barkan, “On Accepting Historical Responsibility: Refugees and the Right of Return” (2004)     

Hakk or Right: A Veblenian Narration of the Differences between the Justice Notions in Western Europe and Turkey

Using Veblen's status emulation theory in the background, but essentially engaged in theoretical debates on the transition to capitalism and modernity, this paper attempts to provide a comparative account of different forms of domination in Western European feudal society and the Ottoman Empire. In contrast, an individualistic representation of reality gained prevalence in social conflicts in Western Europe, precisely because forms of exploitation associated with European serfdom were far more severe and un‐tempered than was true for the Ottoman Empire. Due to being short of a legitimate claim to genuine nobility, Western European feudal aristocracy was driven into an insatiable hunger for luxury and waste. In the absence of a powerful central authority, members of this class “turned inward” for their ever‐increasing exploits and waged war against their servants, living and working under their private jurisdictions. The peasants, both free and serf, not only revolted repeatedly, but also ran into the cities to have “fairly secure property rights” so that they would be “the lord” or “dominus” of their own lives and morality. Out of this, a new justice notion had grown, that of natural rights law, which equated all human individuals within one single concern, that of “the right to self‐preservation,” eventually dragging the whole social fabric into heightened self‐centeredness. The Ottoman ruling class could not turn inward and wage an open class war against its servants. This was the land of peace, dar‐al Islam. All people, Muslim and non‐Muslim lived, or were supposed to live, in peace and harmony under the supreme order of Hakk. The transition to an individualistic justice notion along the lines of natural rights law was on the whole clogged in Turkey.     

“The Last Refuge of the Scoundrel”: Debating between History and Theory

When “History” is called to represent silence, its metaphysical position is symptomatically felt. Tracing what Fasolt calls “the historian's revolt”, this paper identifies the political impetus behind it as the symptom dictating Foucault's own silences/silencings (regarding Derrida's intervention in his History of Madness). In naming such a symptom/silence – in taking “Derrida's position” – this paper performs its own violence/decision by, both “justifying,” and betraying, this position; by installing itself in, instead of “above,” this curious “debate”. “The last refuge of the scoundrel” appears then as the reflective exteriority of a political antagonism that's based on a metaphysical difference with regards to the legitimate “seat” of authority (in Fasolt, an antagonism between the historian and the Catholic Church). Finally, this trajectory is installed within a wider – metaphysical and historical – context, where Hegel's famous saying, that the University is the Protestant's Church, might yet echo that distant metaphysical decision – still looming, like a “genealogical specter,” over Academia and its Social Sciences.     

The price of youth: commodification of young people through malleable risk practices

Risk has become a dominant part of theory and practice in young people's services over the past 30 years [Kemshall, H. 2008. “Risk, Rights and Justice: Understanding and Responding to Youth Risk.” Youth Justice 8 (1): 21–37; Goldson, G. 2000. “Children in Need’ or ‘Young Offenders’? Hardening ideology, organizational change and new challenges for social work with children in trouble.” Child and Family Social Work 5 (3): 255–265]. Young people are simultaneously described as ‘at-risk’ and risky, ‘permanent suspects’ [Mcara, L., and S. Mcvie. 2005. “The usual suspects? Street-life, young people and the police.” Criminal Justice 5 (1): 5–36] with the potential for committing crime, using drugs, being sexually promiscuous or under-performing in the socio-economic climate [Turnbull, G., and J. Spence. 2011. “What's at risk? The proliferation of risk across child and youth policy in England.” Journal of Youth Studies 14 (8): 939–959]. This paper reports on a UK study of youth practitioners’ perceptions of young people in relation to ‘risk’ and how this affects practice. Findings identify a context where practitioners engage with notions of young people as at-risk or risky, managing tensions between external constructions and the ‘real’ individual on an on-going basis. ‘Risk’ becomes malleable, with young people's risk biographies being amplified or attenuated on the basis of the practitioner's view of needs, resource allocations, contracts, targets, practitioner or organisational fears, risk management processes, and the desire to get the best for the young person. Whilst of short-term benefit, this commodification of young people is counter-productive, magnifying the construction of youth as risky others. The paper calls for new approaches to challenge the continued dominance of the youth risk paradigm in practice, policy and the academic youth studies field.     

Basking in Reflected Glory and Its Limits: Why Adolescents Hang Out With Popular Peers

The goal of this study was to examine whether popularity and likability were related to associating with popular peers in adolescence. Participants were 3,312 adolescents (M age=13.60 years) from 172 classrooms in 32 schools. Four types of peer affiliations of the participants with the popular peers in their classrooms were distinguished: “best friends,”“respected,”“wannabes,” and “unrelated.” Two types of benefits of affiliating with high‐status peers were identified: achieving high status or popularity for oneself and becoming liked by others. The results showed that popularity was associated with being closely affiliated with popular peers, whereas likability was more strongly predicted by a more distant relation with popular peers.     

The Dark Side of Art’s Social Turn: Towards a Discourse on the Impact of Art’s Use of Social Forms Upon the Social

The recent “social turn” in art, in which art favours using forms from social life above its own, has been extensively discussed. Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud, Conversation Pieces and The One and the Many by Grant Kester, essays by Claire Bishop who supplies the term “the Social Turn,” and her recent publication Artificial Hells, are now as important to the field as the art they scrutinise. Ironically, however, when this discussion regards the implications of the “turn”, it habitually addresses the effects of this development from – and for – art’s point of view, overlooking the way in which artists’ inroads into social life may be differently regarded in the social realm. As much as this represents a failure to illuminate a particular area for knowledge, it also signifies a failure to take art’s revalorised commitment to the social to its ethical conclusion: such, from two perspectives, is the “dark side” of art’s social turn. This article seeks to mitigate these oversights. In particular, it looks at art in which an artist undertakes another person’s professional work. Considering the effects of this on those whose practices are appropriated, I propose a consultative approach, involving ethnographic and empathetic modes of address. Consequently, this article does not present an answer to the question it poses, “how do professionals in the social realm see art’s appropriations of their practices?” but rather, a framework for approaching that.