Consent as Resistance,Resistance as Consent: Re‐Reading Part‐Time Professionals’ Acceptance of Their Marginal Positions

The part‐time employee has traditionally occupied a marginal position in organizations. The recent increase in the numbers of part‐time professionals, however, has been seen as offering potential for the status of the part‐time employee to improve. Evidence to date suggests that this improvement has not taken place and that the part‐time professional is also marginalized. Interestingly, research suggests that part‐time professionals may not experience their subordinate positions as problematic, often believing that the drawbacks of reduced hours working are a legitimate consequence of their ‘choice’ to work part‐time. Such ‘choices’ are frequently attributed to part‐timers’ prioritization of non‐work activities. In this article, using a Foucauldian approach to identity, we argue that choices need to be understood as both situated in time and space and constituted through discourse. Using these ideas we provide a re‐reading of part‐timers’ consent to their marginalization, arguing that their responses to their positions at work can also be understood as resistance to some of the dominant norms of professionalism. We set out the conditions that might be implicated in translating subjective resistance into more material actions.     

Postmodernism, rationality and the evaluation of health care

This paper examines the logic of evaluation of health care services, calling into question the possibility of assessing the extent to which medicine and health care systems are ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’ The paper analyses and rejects claims to rationality made in discourses on evaluation and in particular economic evaluation, by recourse to Weber's distinction between formal and substantive rationalities. The rationality claimed by evaluation is a value-laden and therefore substantive rationality. Similarly, the claims of the rational actor model are seen to over-simplify the ways actors interact in the market. This leads to a postmodernist perspective rejecting the idea of a single rationality, which if it can only be grasped enables the achievement of Truth, and substituting the position of contingent and fragmentary discourse, brought into being to serve the interests of particular groups in determining knowledge and power. With regard to the evaluation of health services, whereas the modernist assumes that the Enlightenment metanarrative of rationality has imbued the provision and delivery of health care, and that the evaluation by another discipline within this metanarrative, for instance health economics, can fine-tune this rational system for efficacy and efficiency, and suggest changes, the postmodern position recognises that both are distinct discursive perspectives, constituted for local reasons. This position is then applied to a case study of the management of surgical services based on ethnographic work conducted by the author. Deconstruction of the ethnography derives an understanding of the disruption of surgery as being a consequence of the arrangements for clinical advice in the committee structure of management.     

Professionals' and parents' perceptions of A&E use in a children's hospital

Helpful keywords in accessing literature on the use made of hospital accident and emergency (A&E) departments are ‘misuse’ ‘abuse’ and ‘inappropriate’. While the medical literature is inclined to present patients (and, in the case of children, their parents) as irresponsible, or misguided, social scientists looking at similar data have tended to act as apologists for patients, explaining A&E attendance in terms of poor access to GPs, mistaken beliefs about the relative skills of hospital-based doctors and GPs and ‘lay’ health beliefs. Both of these approaches see the patient (or parent) as passive recipients of health care, rather than active caretakers of their own or their children's health. On the basis of a study of minor ailments presenting at a children's A&E department, this paper explores the differing views of health workers and parents. It suggests that a view of patients (parents) as largely passive custodians of their own or their children's health is inadequate. Patients (parents) can and do play an active part as providers of primary health care and their decisions to use A&E are not as irrational as health providers sometimes suppose. In this light, attempts to ‘re-educate’ parents to use A&E in a way which would be more acceptable to health providers is unlikely to succeed.     

Working with Violence,the Emotions and the Psycho‐social Dynamics of Child Protection: Reflections on the Victoria Climbié Case

In recent years, attention to the psychological and emotional aspects of doing child protection has been largely ignored in the literature and squeezed out of understandings of welfare practices. This paper argues for the establishment of a coherent psycho‐social perspective at the core of social work education and practice and in inter‐professional child protection work more generally. Central to this must be recognition of the complexities of service users, especially the challenges of working with resistant and often hostile ‘involuntary clients’ and the impact of violence and other health, safety and contamination fears on the capacities of workers and professional networks to protect children. These issues are grounded in a critical analysis of the Victoria Climbié case and the Laming report into her horrific death which, despite its strengths, presents rational and naïve solutions to what must be understood as often irrational and inherently complex psycho‐social processes. A psycho‐social reading of the case permits us to explain the unexplainable in how Victoria's abuse was missed. The general implications of these arguments are drawn out for education, training and practice.     

Captured by the Game: Might a Focus on the ‘Therapeutic Relationship’ Diminish the Attention We Give to the Client's Intimate Network?

A recent project sought to clarify how psychotherapists and mental health workers understand psychosocial health and pathology. In this enquiry, I paid particular attention to the client's interpersonal networks: did the professionals actively consider, and if so to what extent, ‘intimate social and family relationships’ in constructing their understanding of the presenting problem and in the process they used for goal setting. Twenty‐two semi‐structured interviews were undertaken, eleven with psychotherapists and eleven with mental health workers. Across both groups, interviewees tended not to see their clients as embedded, relational entities, but primarily, often quite exclusively, as autonomous beings. Second, interviewees accorded a high value to the importance of ‘the therapeutic relationship’. Is it possible that the emphasis practitioners place on ‘the therapeutic relationship’ has the effect of marginalising the attention that is given to the client's significant‐other network?     

The extent of children's knowledge of court as estimated by guardians ad litem

‘Knowledge of court’ questionnaires were completed by 35 designated professionals (guardians ad litem) with specific responsibility for children in family proceedings in the civil judicial system within England and Wales who then estimated the percentage of 11‐year old children, in general, which they would expect to provide a ‘full’, ‘partial’ and ‘incorrect’ answer to each question. These estimations were compared with normative data on this questionnaire obtained from actual 11‐year‐olds. This comparison suggests that guardians ad litem tend to overestimate the extent of such children's knowledge, implying that individual children may not be as well prepared for involvement with the legal system as such informed professionals might believe; such a tendency might render it less likely that easily corrected misconceptions and gaps in knowledge be identified and subsequently addressed, thereby failing to minimize the stress (e.g. fear of the unknown) which can often accompany contact with the courts. The possibility that the discrepancy between actual and estimated scores might be, in part, due to a failure in adults to adopt the ‘psychological perspective’ of the child in the unfamiliar world of the adult judicial system is discussed. Although this possibility requires further investigation, making an explicit effort to ‘get into the child's shoes’ is suggested as a potentially valuable and practical first step towards reducing such discrepancies. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Loyal resistance’: N.P. van Wyk Louw (1906–1970) and the intellectual

The article analyses the seminal role played by the poet N.P. van Wyk Louw in defining the intellectual in Afrikaans public discourse. It shows that Van Wyk Louw’s defence of key concepts such as ‘liberal nationalism’ and ‘the open discussion’ in the 1950s was a movement away from his earlier views on Afrikaner nationalism, in which he focused on non‐rational forces. In the contested terrain of debates on Afrikaner nationalism Van Wyk Louw emphasised the need for the intellectual to ground his interventions in the tradition of European political thought, which demanded a respect for justice and an attempt at reconciling nationalism with liberalism. The article finally comments on the relevance of Van Wyk Louw’s contribution to current debates on public intellectual life in South Africa.     

Developing an early intervention programme to prevent child maltreatment

This paper describes the development and implementation of a programme to prevent child maltreatment in a multicultural, inner city community setting with very high rates of physical abuse and neglect. The rationale and philosophy underpinning the prevention programme is outlined. It has a unique approach, combining several features present to varying degrees in other home visiting programmes within a well‐structured framework. This includes the identification of vulnerable parents during the antenatal period, the use of generic health professionals (health visitors) in identification and intervention with families, an ‘active engagement’ strategy, the development of specialist non‐stigmatizing clinics for parents and the creation of a consultation service for generic workers. A variety of interventions are briefly described which are used to support vulnerable families. These include antenatal parenting workshops; baby massage; dedicated crying, sleeping and feeding clinics; and clinics to help parents manage toddler behaviour.Evaluation over the first 5 years of these clinics shows almost 75% of cases have successful outcomes. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Event‐Related Attributes Affecting Donation Intention of Special Event Attendees

The practice of increasing donations through special events has significant financial implications for charitable organizations. However, little is known about how such events can be organized to increase individuals’ donation intention beyond their event attendance. In this case study, a post‐event survey was conducted with attendees of a professional golf tournament operating as a special event to identify event‐related attributes that affected their intention to donate to the cause supported by the event. The results indicate that attendees’ donation intention was positively associated with their event satisfaction, perceived contributions of the event to the cause, and sense of camaraderie at the event. Furthermore, the effects of event satisfaction and camaraderie were stronger for attendees whose primary motivation for attending the event was unrelated to cause support. These results support hypotheses drawn from social exchange theory and provide implications for charitable organizations engaging in special events.     

Reducing Child Protection Error in Social Work: Towards a Holistic-Rational Perspective

Social work in the UK remains embroiled in concerns about child protection error. The serious injury or death of vulnerable children continues to evince much consternation in the public and private spheres. Governmental responses to these concerns invariably draw on technocratic solutions involving more procedures, case management systems, information technology and bureaucratic regulation. Such solutions flow from an implicit use of instrumental rationality based on a ‘means-end’ logic. While bringing an important perspective to the problem of child protection error, instrumental rationality has been overused limiting discretion and other modes of rational inquiry. This paper argues that the social work profession should apply an enlarged form of rationality comprising not only the instrumental-rational mode but also the critical-rational, affective-rational and communicative-rational forms. It is suggested that this combined, conceptual arsenal of rational inquiry leads to a gestalt that has been termed the holistic-rational perspective. It is also argued that embracing a more rounded perspective such as this might offer greater opportunities for reducing child protection error.     

The Clinician's Voice and the Limits of Bioethics

The bioethics movement has long promulgated a model of ‘principled decision‐making’ in which ethical dilemmas and conflicts between various rights, interests, and ethical principles are central. In many respects this movement has had a laudatory impact on health care and on health professionals, but we will also argue that the bioethical model of ethical analysis has important limitations. The model's theoretical orientation is discontinuous with the training and skills of health professionals, the manner in which health professionals conceptualise and solve problems that arise in a clinical setting, and the time constraints inherent in most clinical situations. As such, the model is not readily applicable to much of the day‐to‐day work of clinicians and, in particular, to the routine ethical questions and situations that arise in caring for patients. What we suggest is that the bioethical model does not take into account that health care professionals, as part of their daily work, encounter and manage difficult, often conflictual situations and that they do so by bringing to bear conceptual frameworks and therapeutic techniques that have, embedded within them, the ethical values and goals of their own fields, as well as established ways of dealing with problems and addressing competing priorities. We further argue that from a systems perspective, the bioethical model and the pragmatic, problem‐focused ethical decision‐making of clinicians operate on different levels of complexity; whereas the former is especially appropriate for situations that resist consensus or that raise significant issues of public policy, the latter serves as an effective framework in less difficult or complex situations that can be moved effectively toward consensus and closure.     

Institutions and Policies for Pro‐poor Agricultural Growth

Global experience with pro‐poor growth and empirical work spanning India, Malawi and Zimbabwe demonstrates the importance of agricultural growth for poverty reduction in poor rural areas, while also pointing to the need for complementary non‐farm sector growth. Theoretical arguments, historical evidence and livelihoods modelling in poor medium‐potential rural economies suggest that, contrary to thinking dominating much of current development policy, subsidies to relieve critical seasonal credit and cash restraints and reduce market and input supply uncertainties need to help in ‘kick‐starting’ agricultural markets if increased smallholder productivity in food‐grains is to drive rural non‐farm growth. Establishing the base conditions for these to work, designing and implementing them to be effective, and then phasing them out are major challenges facing policymakers.     

(Visual) Disability – from exclusive perspectives to inclusive differences

By introducing the concept ‘inclusive differences’ of disability this paper suggests that disability is the outcome of historically specific, embodied human and non‐human configurations fabricated within the conduct of everyday life. Inclusive differences question the attempt given by exclusive perspectives that try to divide analytically, conceptually or politically ‘disability’ a priori into an individual (natural) bodily impairment or a purely socio‐cultural attributed disability. Applying the concept of inclusive differences, neither the domain of ‘nature’ nor ‘society’ can function as a disability’s self‐explanatory force. Rather, inclusive differences highlight the connection between human and non‐human relations that make up the different enabling and/or disabling scenarios of societal realities. Drawing on the practices of blind people in a visual culture this paper discusses related specificities of inclusive differences.     

Addressing systemic neglect of young indigenous children's rights to attend school in the northern territory,Australia

Indigenous children in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia have the highest school non‐attendance rates and the lowest literacy and numeracy outcomes in Australia. The NT Department of Health and Families classifies failure to send children to school as neglect, and as such, a form of child abuse. This paper contends that the failure to provide children with learning opportunities by a lack of insistence by authorities on attendance is a form of systemic neglect. It suggests that an educative approach is required to lead rather than coerce students into attending school, encouraging maximum participation in learning experiences that bridge cultural landscapes, and is inviting, inclusive and informed. The purpose of this paper is to recommend changes to ongoing systemic neglect of school truancy by examining models that build an Indigenous teaching staff and in so doing, integrate culturally responsive teaching with systemic support to produce a ‘school attending’ culture. Ethics approval for this paper has been sought and approved from the NT Catholic Education Office. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Young People as Co‐producers in Policing across England. An Evaluation of the ‘Youth Commission’ on Police and Crime

This paper discusses a recent study on three ‘Youth Commission’ on police and crime projects. Professional viewpoints were interpreted to understand how they valued young people's participation and made sense of their experiences and capabilities. Framed within policing reforms, the ‘Youth Commission’ projects regard young people as co‐producers, who work in partnership with professionals to address police and crime issues. The focus is upon professionals and their relationships with young people for transformative participation and social outcomes. Working in partnerships showed interdependency but identifies further challenges if professionals do not truly value young people's participation.     

Taking a Chance? The Risks Associated with Going Missing from Substitute Care

This paper reports on a study of over 200 young people going missing from residential and foster care in four local authorities. The proportion of young people missing from residential care was high, ranging from 25 to 71% of all 11 – 16‐year‐olds in mainstream children’s homes. Two types of absence were identified: the ‘runaways’ profile (those who ran away or stayed out) and the ‘friends’ profile (those missing to be with friends). There were variations in levels of risk for different sub‐groups within the sample. Risks included immediate risks of victimization, sexual exploitation (including prostitution), offending and substance misuse. A longer‐term risk of detachment was identified among those going missing often, involving high levels of non‐school attendance, detachment from carers and involvement in offending and in substance misuse. Difficulties in the assessment of risk are discussed and approaches to managing risk for young people who go missing from substitute care are explored. Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A critique of arguments supporting disability avoidance

Many prominent bioethicists argue that positive consequences follow from avoiding disability in offspring by preconceptual, preimplantation or prenatal means. This paper critiques two variants of these positions: ‘Open future’ arguments that avoiding disability is in the interest of the persons who will be affected by it if born and ‘non‐person‐affecting’ claims that failures to avoid disability in offspring are wrong for reasons independent of their effect on affected offspring. Difficulties with both person‐affecting and non‐person‐affecting accounts are discussed in support of the charge that these arguments do not show that positive consequences follow from disability avoidance.     

Women Constructing Masculinity in Voluntary Firefighting

Within gender studies, research and theorizing have used archetypal ‘masculine’ occupations to explore how masculinity is accomplished and practised in social interaction. In contrast, little work has explored how masculinity is constructed in the voluntary sector. In this paper, we address this gap by exploring how masculinity is constructed and experienced by women volunteers who are active firefighters in rural and regional Victoria. Firefighting is widely recognized as a non‐traditional occupation for women and they are underrepresented as volunteers as well as paid employees. We explore masculinity from the perspective of women volunteers because this can enhance our understanding of masculinity as a relational achievement as well as help to identify practices that they experience as problematic. Our research shows how voluntary work can afford a distinct range of resources for the ‘doing’ of gender and how this reflects the specific organizational and geographical contexts in which such volunteering occurs.     

If we practice posthumanist research,do we need ‘gender’ any longer?

This article offers a reflection around the question of ‘do we need ‘gender’ any longer?’ In taking up this problem and inspired by the way in which postqualitative inquiry has opened a conversation with Deleuzian philosophy and formulated a ‘concept as/instead of method’ line of thought, I wonder whether new images of thought might give the concept of gender ‘the forces it needs to return to life’ or the forces to abandon it. I propose four different images that might provoke the desire to experiment with a new image of thought in relation to the problem: a vegetal mode of thought, a musical mode, a fleshy mode as labiaplasty, a nonliving mode. This choice is connected to the dualities they target: the human/vegetal living world, the rational/artistic production of knowledge, the dis‐embodied/corporeal being in the world, the life/nonlife hierarchization. Each way of thinking of ‘gender’ stages, enacts, performs a different material reality of the concept that shifts the focus from linguistic representations to discursive practices. Hence, if gender has become a dominant discourse, it may be that positive repetition of this discourse might become a way of opening a new site inside it, by de‐territorializing it and re‐territorializing it otherwise.