Telling stories for a politics of hope

This paper is about listening to voices from an excluded past. The oral history of disabled people challenges accepted, formal history, the history from dominant voices well established in unequal power relations. The paper draws on an oral history project conducted with over 60 visually impaired people who gave detailed accounts, telling stories of their experiences of education. This oral history research was carried out through the medium of the interview. The analysis covers school life, focusing on the recurring themes of abuse and friendships. The paper then turnd to relationships with family and community, and how participants placed schooling within the broader context of their lives. These stories are a small part of the history of disabled individuals' exclusion within which, as we hope to demonstrate, the chinks of collective light were born.     

Management she wrote: organization studies and detective stories

It has been postulated that social sciences in general and organization theory in particular can profit from parallels and analogies with fiction literature. As the main form of expression in social sciences, like in literature, is a written product, inspired imitation can visibly improve the literary forms of organization theory, without diminishing its specificity. This essay argues that one genre in fiction literature is especially suitable for such comparisons. This is the genre of the detective story, where the detective, much like the researcher, must untangle the social tissue to arrive at an explanation.     

Telling it like it was. Audio-taping stories told by mental health service users and carers

This paper begins by claiming that the telling and hearing of stories is intrinsic to the social work task. Examples of the value of hearing stories in a variety of social work roles are provided, as are examples of the theoretical underpinnings which substantiate the importance of enabling service users and carers to tell their stories. The main focus of the paper is on relating how audio-taping the experiences of service users and carers evolved as part of the author's work. With the permission of those interviewed, examples are quoted from accounts of three different family members attempting to deal with a relative's progressive deterioration into severe dementia. These accounts are followed by the memories of a woman who took an overdose and was subsequently ‘ectioned’ under The Mental Health Act 1983. An interview with two parents attempting to respond to the needs of their schizophrenic son is discussed. Some of the unexpected positive repercussions of recording interviews with these service users are described and some cautions are also highlighted. The paper concludes with suggestions of how audio-taping the stories of service users can be used to benefit social workers engaged in various aspects of social work today.     

Disability,embodiment and ableism: stories of resistance

Non-disabled responses to visible impairment embody either social invisibility or over-attentiveness. The subjective and inter-subjective experiences of impaired bodies and intersubjective encounters within society are important aspects of disablement and the construction of a disabled identity. Impairment is read by and influences the social structure of ableism. This paper attempts to understand how ableist discourses about impaired bodies have impacted on and been resisted by disabled people and how embodiment is related to identity. In pursuit of these aims, a qualitative study was conducted with seven people who have visible physical impairments. The results indicate that disabled embodiment is produced and experienced within an ableist context that mobilizes the charitable gaze and the medical model to signify impaired bodies at the expense of the recognition of disabled identity. In order to deconstruct ableism and to recognize and respect the value of the disabled identity, a politics of recognition is required.     

Symbols,sentiments, and stories: Urban culture and social problems

Cultural approaches to the study of urban life have enjoyed brief bursts of popularity within the social sciences over the past century. Although many urban sociologists acknowledge that meanings, symbols, narratives, and feelings, in other words local culture, help shape urban places, relatively few take this notion any further. In this article, I first lay out the foundations of cultural approaches to the study of urban life. Second, I argue for the continued significance of the distinction between space and place. Third, I describe a contemporary stream of urban sociology called the urban culturalist perspective. Fourth, I describe important insights gleaned from studies embracing cultural urbanist approaches to an area of urban research receiving increasing attention: gentrification. Fifth, and finally, I outline a few ways in which micro‐cultural investigations of urban phenomena provide useful opportunities for public sociology.     

Interrupted stories, interrupted lives

In attempting to manage their practices efficiently, doctors may not allow seriously ill patients enough time to sort out their feelings and raise important questions. What is at stake here is not information about prognosis and treatments but the very survival of the soul.     

Telling Tales: Genre and Narrative in Post-Soviet Poetry

Abstract

The post-Soviet revival of a group of related genres of narrative poetry is explored, focusing on the work of two poets: Mariia Stepanova, with her connections to the ballad tradition and the uncanny, and Boris Khersonskii, whose cycles and collections document the lost world of Jewish life in southern Russia. There is an exploration of the ways in which narrative poetry, which had been closely associated with official Soviet culture, has now been revitalized by the adoption of elements drawn both from the traditional epic, such as the objective, impersonal narrative voice, and from popular culture, including horror stories and urban myth.     

Stories to tell,stories to sell: resisting textualization

A reflexive argument for reverse cultural studies in discussing problems in fieldwork, academic access and research accountability is developed. This paper reflexively analyses tensions and contradictions set in motion by the writing of articles on observer-observed relations within both San Bushmen communities themselves and between myself and development and other agencies working in one of these areas. Questions addressed relate to ownership of information, the relationship between the local/particular and the national/policy, and on how to ensure campfire dissemination/involvement of, and popular access to, the written product by a-literate and non-English-speaking communities.     

Multi-couple reflecting team: preliminary report

The aim of therapeutic help in marital crisis is to break the vicious circle of mutual hurtful accusations. The method that the authors present below involves a group of couples working within a closed cycle of meetings. In the course of successive group meetings, the various couples act as reflecting teams (RTs) for each other. This achieves two objectives: the couple recounting their crisis receives nonthreatening feedback, which helps them to implement positive changes and break out of the self-perpetuating destructive interaction. In addition, the couples acting as the RT learn nonjudgmental, nontheorizing and affirmative communication.     

Disability and dirty workers: stories of physical,social and moral taint

Returning to classics on dirty work and stigma, I offer another perspective on the difficulties that disabled people experience in employment. I claim that disabled workers with multiple sclerosis (MS) feel like ‘dirty workers’ not because of the work that they do, but because of their MS. Secondary analysis of phenomenological interview data revealed workers with MS feeling physical, social and moral taints normally associated with being a ‘dirty worker’ – but because of their MS-related impairments and disabilities. Two respondent stories are shared to illustrate this association.     

Indetermination: professional knowledge,organization and control

This paper is a critique of the tradition of sociological writing which has emphasized the ability of occupations organized on the professional principle to gain for their members an occupational monopoly and a position in the division of labour which provides them with autonomy to determine occupational tasks and functions. It is argued that theories which seek to account for the conditions which provide the framework for successful resistance to rationalization and codification in professional work have not adequately articulated the concept of power. The theoretical discourse on professional and managerial power has therefore tended, with few exceptions, to locate the determination and exercise of power as though it were a zero sum commodity deriving from social relations of organizations. Theories predicting the emergence of professional rather than mangerial forms of control therefore have little explanatory ability other than for a particular mode of rationality within a limiting theoretical framework. This analysis represents an attempt to propose a mediation between structuralist theories of power and organization and those theoretical reflections on the professions which locate the determination of occupational authority in a broader matrix of social processes.