Probation training,cognition and crime: Uses and abuses of theory

In this article it is argued that a fundamental revolution in the theory base of the Probation Service is currently underway. This is exemplified in the proposed changes to Probation qualifying training according to which the Home Office intends to remove this from both higher education and social work. The author argues that this represents an abandonment of a holistic approach to the rehabilitation of offenders in favour of a model of reformatory intervention plundered wholly inappropriately from a complex body of cognitive theory. The article reviews the recent history in relation to the application of psychological theories to probation and social work practice and education, and warns of the dangers of misusing theory to satisfy a perceived demand for a simplistic, reductionist view of offending behaviour.     

NGOs,gender, culture and multiculturalism: a Zimbabwean view

An African woman working for Oxfam in Zimbabwe considers the role of gender injustice in her own work and life. She has encountered discrimination among her colleagues, and she was introduced to the concept that women are inferior when she was in elementary school. When she worked as a nurse, she learned that oppression takes many forms and is maintained by social systems. Consequently, it is almost impossible to counter single-handed. Therefore, she undertook a program of study in adult education which emphasizes working within democratic frameworks in programs based on the concerns of the learners. This led her to realize that it is accepted that women are globally subordinate and that subordination is rooted in customs. Many women will, therefore, defend the injustice in their own lives by stating that it is "cultural." Whereas Northern activists may condemn a custom as barbaric and requiring immediate change, cultural change must progress gradually in order to give women the impetus to keep what is positive and reject what is negative in their cultures. This process of change can be fostered by popular education and by providing exposure to women who can act as role models. Popular education also takes multiculturalism into account and reveals the necessity to trust development workers. A multi-faceted approach is needed in order to challenge culture and promote social change.     

Asian multiculturalism in communication: Impact of culture in the practice of public relations in Singapore

This study aims to understand the role of cultural values in influencing public relations practice in Singapore. Given that Singapore exhibits a hybrid of cultures, it purposes to comprehend how multiculturalism is operationalized and to uncover if the values that have a greater influence on organizational communication resemble those in individualistic or collectivistic societies. Using Gudykunst’s (1998) seven dimensions that influence individualism-collectivism on communication as a guide, this study interviewed 20 public relations practitioners in Singapore. Our findings showed that although the patterns expressed is slightly more consistent with those found in collectivistic cultures, it does not resemble collectivism in entirety. Multiculturalism in Singapore displays a blend of certain cultural hybridity, which is aligned with it being a multicultural cosmopolitan city that embodies Western modernity while retaining its Asian values. Our findings further reinforced the idea that public relations professionals need to be multicultural themselves to effectively communicate with culturally diverse stakeholders in today’s globalizing era of multiculturalism.     

The translocation of culture: ‘community cohesion’ and the force of multiculturalism in history1

In his work on a Welsh border village, Ronald Frankenberg showed how cultural performances, from football to carnival, conferred agency on local actors and framed local conflicts. The present article extends these themes. It responds to invocations of ‘community cohesion’ by politicians and policy makers, decrying the failure of communal leadership following riots by young South Asians in northern British towns. Against their critique of self‐segregating isolationism, the article traces the historical process of Pakistani migration and settlement in Britain, to argue that the dislocations and relocations of transnational migration generate two paradoxes of culture. The first is that in order to sink roots in a new country, transnational migrants in the modern world begin by setting themselves culturally and socially apart. They form encapsulated ‘communities’. Second, that within such communities culture can be conceived of as conflictual, open, hybridising and fluid, while nevertheless having a sentimental and morally compelling force. This stems from the fact, I propose, that culture is embodied in ritual, in social exchange and in performance, conferring agency and empowering different social actors: religious and secular, men, women and youth. Hence, against both defenders and critics of multiculturalism as a political and philosophical theory of social justice, the final part of the article argues for the need to theorise multiculturalism in history. In this view, rather than being fixed by liberal or socialist universal philosophical principles, multicultural citizenship must be grasped as changing and dialogical, inventive and responsive, a negotiated political order. The British Muslim diasporic struggle for recognition in the context of local racism and world international crises exemplifies this process.     

The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy

This article discusses a recent retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state. This retreat has occurred both at the level of theory and policy. With the help of some recent liberal critiques of multiculturalism, the first part maps out some shortcomings of the notion of minority integration through cultural recognition, particularly with respect to immigrants. The second part discusses a retreat from multiculturalism policies in three states that had been prominently committed to them: Australia, the Netherlands, and Britain. This practical retreat of multiculturalism is due to a variety of factors, their importance differing across cases: the chronic lack of public support for multiculturalism policies; inherent deficits and failures of multiculturalism policies, especially in socio-economic respect; and a new assertiveness of the liberal state to impose liberal principles.     

Grieving for mestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan,Mexico

This article takes as its point of departure the highly contested theoretical terrain of ‘Maya’ identity in Yucatan, Mexico. Set in the physical terrain of a state psychiatric hospital, this article uses a framework of identity culled from the narrative of a young woman, ‘Claudina’, committed to its wards, to argue that being ‘in-between’ categories of ethnic identity, an experience she characterises as a painful sense of ambiguous loss, can be fruitfully analysed using an analytical framework of ethnic identity introduced by Claudina herself. Specifically, I argue that categories of identity culled from Claudina's story – mestizaje and elegancia – represent a valuable opportunity to think about how power dynamics and relationships operate in situations of ambivalent identities and social suffering. To this end, I use Claudina's language as a point of departure for understanding the lived experience of everyday life in Yucatan today.     

State carnivals and the subvention of multiculturalism in Singapore

Increasing attention is being paid to the specificities of Asian multiculturalism in relation to ethnic pluralism, citizenship and developmental state formation. This article examines these relationships by analysing three carnival events in colonial and postcolonial Singapore that were organized by the state to promote its official multiculturalism. Through its cultural logics of horizontal racial segmentation, cascading symbolic authority from the state to co-opted communal representatives and multi-modal ritual iteration, the 1937 King George VI coronation celebrations proffered an imperial multiculturalism based on mediating plural groups and procedural norms. Adopting the same cultural logics in the 1970s, the newly-independent nation-state revived and transformed Chingay, a creole Chinese religious procession, into an annual parade celebrating the nation as comprising racially plural groups bound together by the modern ethos of progress the developmental state exemplified. In the 2000s, Chingay has been turned into an international spectacle celebrating Singapore as a cosmopolitan global city of hybridizing multiculturalism. But indicative of new racial-class segmentation, the old nation-building pluralism is promoted by Racial Harmony Day carnivals held in suburban public housing neighborhoods. This bifurcated multiculturalism reflects the developmental state's attempts to deal with new citizenship trends as they grind against the old ethnic pluralism. While faced with the same issues globalization brings, this postcolonial multiculturalism is distinctively different from liberal multiculturalism, not least because the subvention of multiculturalism is achieved through the state appropriation of vernacular cultural practices through its carnivals.     

Critical perspectives on brand culture in the era of participatory and algorithmic media

Brands have become a ubiquitous feature of life in market‐based consumer societies. While marketers aim to establish brands as efficient devices for guiding purchase decisions, critical scholarship investigates how branding functions as a mode of exercising power by shaping consumers' identities and consumer culture more broadly. Beginning in the 1950s as a predominantly semiotic critique of advertising, critical research into branding has over the decades developed a more complex conceptualisation of brands and their interrelationship with “active” audiences and the cultural environment in which they operate. The first part of this essay summarises this conceptual evolution. It provides the necessary background for interrogating how brands engage with, shape, and capitalise on “algorithmic culture”. Recent dramatic changes in the data‐processing power of the developing algorithmic, platform‐dominated media environment is significantly altering the way brands operate and capitalise on consumer participation and popular culture. The present moment is therefore a crucial one to survey and evaluate emerging critical perspectives on brands and branding. By engaging with the current scholarship on social media, algorithms, and platforms, the second part of this essay outlines a number of novel and distinctive critiques emerging from this literature, which can help inform further research.     

Integrating education: Parekhian multiculturalism and good practice

This paper explores the concept of good practice in integrating education in divided societies. Using Northern Ireland as a case study, the paper draws on data from eight schools (both integrated Catholic and Protestant, and separate) that are identified as exemplifying good practice in response to cultural diversity. Analysis is provided through the lens of Bhikhu Parekh’s reconceptualization of multiculturalism from 2006 Parekh, B. 2006. Rethinking multiculturalism: Cultural diversity and political theory, , 2nd ed., Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.  [Google Scholar]. The data provide insights into characteristics of good practice from the perspectives of pupils, support staff, teachers and principals, in a society that is not only moving out of conflict but is also responding to the challenges of incoming minority students.     

Re-aligning rationality: Crisis management and prisoner abuses in Iraq

This paper focuses on the U.S. military abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib as a case-based illustration of a psychodynamic approach to organizations. Rather than viewing the abuse and its PR aftermath as an instance of poor crisis management, we argue that it should be seen as an expression of systemic neurosis at the highest levels of government. Understanding crisis as the normal outcome of a dysfunctional system provides an alternative explanation of the nature and causes of crisis and prescribes therapeutic intervention prior to training in crisis management and public relations.     

Representing harmony and diversity: media representations of multiculturalism and ethnicity in Singapore

This article investigates multiculturalism and ethnicity in Singapore. The study conducted a qualitative content analysis of articles appearing in the Straits Times newspaper over a three month period in 2010. It was found that multicultural harmony tended to be represented as unnatural, fragile, and requiring government intervention. There also tended to be a focus on distinct and fixed ethnic identities, reflecting an essentialist understanding of ethnicity. These beliefs about the nature of multiculturalism and ethnic identity were reflected in the coverage of three major social issues. These were the perceived needs to maintain the ethnic composition of Singapore’s population, efforts to prevent cultural corruption or neglect, and concerns about the impact of immigration on multicultural harmony.     

(En)countering terrorism: multiculturalism and Singapore

With national security concerns dominating the agenda for many states and with the management of cultural diversity under close scrutiny, can the agenda of multiculturalism—with its desire to accommodate cultural differences—survive? By assessing Singapore's review of its multiculturalism policy in this ‘age of terror’, this paper argues that the project of multiculturalism is far from over. Moreover, it argues that, if performed well and permitted to evolve constantly, multiculturalism may instead be a bulwark against the allure of what has become termed ‘home-grown’ terrorism. The argument progresses in broadly three parts. The first part defines the terms multicultural and multiculturalism, and presents a continuum of different approaches to multiculturalism. This section is keen to stress the diversity present in policies of multiculturalism in order to highlight the different policy options available to the management of difference. In the second part, Singapore's policy of multiculturalism is located on the continuum and assessed. Finally, by tracing recent alterations to Singaporean multiculturalism, the final part of the paper suggests possible adaptations that may be required of plural societies when (en)countering extremist ideology.     

Laïcité and multiculturalism: the Stasi Report in context1

French republican universalism – expressed most strongly in the principle and practice of laïcité– and multiculturalism have constituted opposite poles on questions of citizenship and integration. The report of the Stasi Commission on laïcité on 11 December 2003 and the following legislation on the donning of religious symbols in French public schools have once again, spurred debates over the meanings and practices of laïcité. The report and the law have been interpreted in different ways. Some have presented them as a reaffirmation of a historically constituted laïcité under new circumstances, others as a divergence from the real problems of racism, unemployment and gender inequality. In this article, I offer an alternative reading by supplementing a critical reading of the report with an analysis of its historical and immediate institutional context. I evaluate the Stasi Report in its immediate context of institutional change, and in the historical context of selected developments concerning laïcité since the 1905 law separating churches and State. I argue that the Stasi Report marks a fundamental break with French republican universalism, and I show that this break occurred contemporaneously with key gestures of multiculturalism: the establishment of the French Muslim Council and the creation of Muslim high schools under contract with the French state. This double movement to narrow the boundaries of laïcité, and for the state to expand the boundaries of identity‐specific, Muslim public institutions and private schooling constitutes a reorganization of the public sphere in France which qualifies as a move towards multiculturalism.     

Teacher training and multiculturalism in a transitional society: the case of the Slovak Republic

The authors explore a number of issues surrounding multicultural education in “societies in transition”, emerging from their experiences during a TEMPUS project that took place in the Slovak Republic. The TEMPUS project entailed the development of a multicultural education curriculum for teacher trainers, as a response to the conditions for entry into the European Union. The paper provides background information on the position of ethnic minorities in Slovakia, in particular the Hungarian and Roma population and the development of policies, especially in education, for combating racism. In examining the challenges to educators in developing a more open system than the command education of the recent past, issues such as the predominance of traditional pedagogies, multiculturalism and antiracism, the problems of “other isms” and of giving voice to minorities are considered.     

Threats and solutions: multiculturalism,religion and educational policy

The purpose of this article is to discuss how the interplay between multiculturalism, religion and education is described in Finnish national policy documents. The research question was as follows: How is the interplay between multiculturalism, religion and education portrayed in Finnish national policy? The data examined in this study included the national policy documents from 1998 to 2009. The qualitative analysis proposed five policy concerns with regards to multiculturalism, which were political radicalisation, ethnic relations, active citizenship, identity formation and human dignity. Religion seemed to be portrayed in a different manner in the different areas of concern. In the policy documents, religion is generally viewed both as a threat and as a solution in an increasingly multicultural society. In future, studies should be carried out concerning the intertwining of religion, power and nationality in school everyday practices.     

Immigration,religious diversity and recognition of differences: the Italian way to multiculturalism

Migration entails, among other consequences, the presence of different cultures and religions. Italy, being a latecomer among immigration countries, has had specific difficulties in acknowledging the new cultural and religious pluralism brought by migrations, due to lack of knowledge and reflection in this sphere. In the more recent context of social and cultural change in Europe, Italian society is also going through a phase characterised by reactive identities and cultural conflicts. They are producing a diffused anti-multiculturalist opinion, even though multiculturalist policies have not been openly implemented. Thus, on the one hand, this situation has so far prevented a real recognition of cultural and religious differences, particularly concerning Islam. But on the other hand, positive actions in favour of migrants can also be observed, especially at the local level.     

Cultural constructivism: the confluence of cognition,knowledge creation,multiculturalism, and teaching

Knowledge is created in the crucible of culture, and is mediated by the nature of nature. In the teaching of diverse students, teachers need to understand the process by which cultural paradigms, juxtaposed to the process of knowledge construction, may potentially create multiple realities for different students. When teaching diverse students, therefore, teachers need the heightened awareness by which they can more effectively decipher student knowledge. This will enhance their ability to direct their teaching towards their intended learning outcomes. In this paper, some activities are shared to illustrate the process by which culture may serve as a context for knowledge construction, and its implications for teaching.     

Assimilation vs. multiculturalism: Views from a community in France

A recent American survey of attitudes toward societal multiculturalism vs. assimilation has found surprisingly widespread support for maintaining heritage cultures not only among immigrant minority groups but also among most subsamples of majority host groups, black and white. Working-class whites are the one exception. This pilot study explores the same attitude domain in a contrasting European setting. Randomly selected samples of middle- and working-class families (a mother, father, and teenage son or daughter) from a small city in France were interviewed. As a group, they were neutral to slightly favorable to immigrants maintaining heritage cultures and languages rather than losing them through assimilation. On measures of attitudes toward specific immigrant groups, there were marked intergroup dyfferunces with Maghrebian Arabs rated leist favorably and Southeast Asians, the model immigrants, most favorably. Comparisons of subgroups of respondents who varied in terms of (a) political left-right orientation, (b) social class standing, (c) degree of religiosity, and (d) generational level provide the base for a more general discussion of cultural assimilation and multiculturalism.     

The uses and abuses of time: globalization and time arbitrage in India's outsourcing industries

Globalization has undoubtedly altered our conceptions and experience of time. It has sped up the pace of life and some scholars even suggest that a new temporal order is supplanting ‘natural’ and pre‐existing cycles and rhythms. Yet time is not dissolved in the global circuits of capital. Rather, globalization has brought about a complex mixture of temporal orientations; the workplaces of ‘new economy’, for example, are traversed by novel and retrograde modes of work pace, rhythm and time‐discipline. In this article, I explore the temporal implications of the outsourcing of information technology‐based service work to India. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with workers, managers and executives in the Indian IT and Business Processing Outsourcing industries, I address the following questions: (1) How are corporations using time arbitrage to reap the full benefits of a globally dispersed labour pool? (2) What impacts are these temporal changes having on the health and social lives of Indian workers? For corporations, time arbitrage means increased efficiency and cost‐savings. But for workers, it results in long hours, an intense work pace, and temporal displacement. Night‐shift employees, such as call centre workers, are particularly vulnerable to such displacement, as manifested in health and safety problems and social alienation. Globalization therefore does not entail the loosening of temporal chains, but their reconfiguration: a combination both rigid and flexible that binds even as it liberates.