Branded Solidarity in Fair Trade Communication on Facebook

The objective of fair trade to achieve economic justice through markets depends on establishing, via moral education, bonds of solidarity between Northern consumers and impoverished Southern producers. Moral education is increasingly realised by commercial brands who take advantage of the opportunities offered by social media. This article analyses the discursive construction of solidarity in the brand communication of Pukka (UK) and Pizca del Mundo (Poland) on Facebook. It identifies 3 discourses of solidarity: ‘solidarity through legitimation’, which presents the rationale for solidarity with Southern producers; ‘solidarity through affinity’, which constructs a moral economy between Southern producers and Northern consumers; and ‘solidarity through lifestyle’, which proposes everyday actions that can be undertaken by consumers to support Southern producers. These discourses are employed by the brands to different extents, with Pizca del Mundo attempting to establish a fair trade market in Poland and Pukka with an aim to increase sales of their fair trade products. The article concludes that primarily the discourses of ‘solidarity through legitimation’ and ‘solidarity through affinity’ serve moral education whose objective is to generate sustained commitment towards Southern producers as distant others.     

‘Education for All’ in Cambodia: Democratic Educational and Children’s Empowerment Global Values Facing State Patronage

Among countries in Southeast Asia, Cambodia hosts the most NGOs per inhabitant and is particularly influenced by international education policies. To this extent, Cambodia constitutes a pertinent fieldwork location for reflection upon the role of global governance of education in the ‘global South’. Grounded in long-term fieldwork in a village and primary school, and multi-sited fieldwork with education technocrats and functionaries at the national and provincial levels, this article examines the cooperation between the state and the ‘global-politic’ in the way that it is polarised around the development of the policy ‘Education for All’ (EFA) in Cambodia. I argue that the global actors in education are promoting a kind of ‘moral economy’ of education and that their different programmes, however diverse they may be, are underpinned by common democratic and empowerment values. These values remain fairly ‘silent’, buried beneath technocratic demands, and clash with the informal economy of patronage grafted onto the Ministry of Education. This is an informal economy to which I give some empirical depth. I defend the fact that this moral confrontation is part of the context in which a paradoxical situation has emerged and that some light needs to be shed on this paradox in a country where the post-colonial state of education agrees, to a certain extent, to delegate part of its sovereignty for the benefit of the ‘global-politic’ of education.     

Problem attribution and intervention. The interpretation of problem causations and solutions in regard of Brickman et al.

Typologies of problem perception are of great importance for the reconstruction of social workers’ professional ideologies. The best-known typology has been provided by Brickman et al. who differentiated between a medical, moral, enlightenment, and compensatory model. The article discusses this typology on a conceptual level and indicates its central flaws. An empirical study is presented in which an alternative attempt to develop a typology is tested. The evaluation refers to a wider spectrum of perceptions of problem causes and solutions than the typology of Brickman et al. The resulting typology comprises a ‘social’, a ‘workfare’, a ‘pathology’, and an ‘education’ type.     

Notes on contributors

Ethics is a central area for professional education in social work. The main educational strategies for the ethics component in social work programmes are often a combination of explicit attention to principles and implicit grounding in practice examples (such as ‘case study’ vignettes). These approaches equip students to recognise and respond to the complexities of ethics in practice. However, they may also encourage students to understand ethics as ‘rules of conduct’, in which there are ‘correct answers’ that can be learned and applied. This paper advances the view that it is more helpful to consider ethics as a ‘framework for thinking’ about the means/ends relationship in practice. It is argued that, as a consequence, the goal of ethics education should be to enable student social workers to grasp the inherently moral nature of practice and the ambiguities that follow from this. Such a position points to the paradox of social work education, that it involves teaching about things that cannot ‘exist’ separately from their being created in action. To explore this paradox in teaching ethics, the paper considers inductive approaches in learning as a way of responding to the ambiguities that are inherent not only in the subject but also in the experience of professional education.     

Arab school principals in Israel – between conformity and moral courage

ABSTRACT

The Arab-Israeli education system is a separate but not autonomous system serving Israel’s inhabitants whose first language is Arabic. These include the Muslim and Bedouin majority communities and smaller Christian, Druze and others, whose children attend schools in which the curriculum is determined by a Zionist perspective, taught in Arabic. Thus, in the context of a system established according to the Israeli cultural/national narrative, this study brings to light the voice of ten principals who, through open, in-depth interviews – ‘small stories’ – reveal their prospective and management of issues-in-conflict to formulate and present their professional identity according to their own sense of self. It presents the conflicts their position confronts vis-à-vis both the formal education authorities and the unique situation their society and culture pose in executing their educational/administrative and moral responsibilities. The findings reveal situations ranging from active acceptance of the institutional dictates of a conformist nature, through passive acceptance, (‘conformity’) to attempts at promoting autonomous activities within the defined limitations (‘moral courage’).     

The good, the bad and the delicious: the role of confectionery in British society

Food, contemporarily, has a high political and public profile in British society particularly in relation to health and health education. In this paper I explore why, despite the advice of the body technocrats, confectionery continues to occupy a prominent and pre-eminent place in the British diet. I suggest that the particular place which confectionery occupies in the system of food classification is between ‘rear’ and ‘junk’ food, and, as a ‘liminal’ foodstuff, confectionery has the symbolic power both to mediate social relationships and to confer particular sets of social meanings. These meanings are resonant of the wider moral space within which attitudes towards food in Britain are conceptually located. By exploring the ‘mythology’ of confectionery some explanation may be found as to why the much publicised warnings and advice of health educationalists and nutritionists go unheeded.     

Respect for persons

Abstract

The notion of ‘respect for persons’ is a key notion in moral philosophy as well as in social work ethics. The Kantian notion of a person has, together with individualism, liberalism and positivism, given rise to a strange ideological mixture which ‘guided’ social work theory and practice for some time. Gaita's concept of respect for human beings, examined in this paper, contrasts with the poverty of this ideological mixture. Concepts such as ‘goodness’, ‘remorse' and 'sensibility’ explain why Gaita sees the ethical as something that is both sui generis and of the utmost practical importance. They clarify the irreplaceability of human beings, emphasise the need for moral agents to have ‘historical integrity’, and in general show that a moral agent is much more substantial than a res cogitans. This paper attempts to indicate the relevance of these considerations for social work.     

European integration : Sociological process or political project?

Within debate about prospects for future European unification, ‘integration’ is a fashionable and often confusing word. Depending on context, it may refer to long‐term socio‐economic processes ('convergence'), to processes of political construction, to symbolic processes ('European identity'), or to the quite separate issue of prudential co‐operation between states—or to some uncertain mixture of all four. Yet the concept of integration has a reputable sociological pedigree and remains useful for thinking about the issues raised by Europeanization. Thus, a fresh look at Durkheim's thinking on the possibility of solidarity within complex societies is of direct relevance to the contemporary European case. Of particular importance is the Durkheimian distinction between three complementary dimensions of integration—shared practices, social intercourse (or ‘moral density') and common ‘consciousness'—, and the suggestion that, in the absence of ‘mechanical solidarity’ based on similarity, the latter is both deeply problematic and derivative rather than generative. They shed light on the ambivalence of the process / project of Europeanization and open up a space for specific discussion of collective prudence—originally the essence of Europeanization and which, while in principle separable from it, has tended in practice to become tangled with the integration issue. As the borders of Europe become potentially less stable, disentanglement is of vital importance.     

Social work education in Europe: towards 2025

ABSTRACT

Responses to profound contemporary transformation processes are characterised by ‘situationalism’ as the expression of resignation in the face of overwhelming complexity. An overemphasis on personal autonomy accompanied by a withdrawal to the seeming security of ‘given boundaries’ undermines programmes of social solidarity, which had been a means of creating stability and social integration at national and European levels. Social work’s origins as an academic discipline and as a profession reach back to the crisis phenomena that accompanied the early ‘project of modernity’, and reflection on that history can help to identify a critical role of social work education in view of what could be described as the current crisis of modernity. A future vision of social work education centres on the conventional mandate of this profession to ‘make a critical difference’ with regard to the deepening of social divisions through rampant individualism as well as concerning trends to impose uniformity as a substitute for equality.     

Settlers,target-earners,young professionals. Distinct migrant types,distinct integration trajectories?

In this article, we start out from theoretical concepts about different types of migrants that feature prominently in the immigration literature. By applying latent class analysis to a unique ‘mini-panel’ data set on recent Polish and Turkish immigrants in Germany, we identify two types of migrants that are in line with the literature, namely settlers and target-earners. We label a third group that is best described as educational target-earners: ‘young learners/professionals’. Regarding variation in these groups’ early sociocultural integration patterns, results suggest that they reflect primarily differences in migrants’ intention to stay, individual resources such as education, and opportunities for integration related to newcomers’ involvement in the educational system or labour force. In sum, migrant types – though certainly more intuitively appealing and vivid than single ‘variables’ – seem to have limited explanatory power when it comes to predicting newcomers’ early integration trajectories.     

Reading dis/ability: interrogating paradigms in a prism of power

The dichotomisation of literacy instruction into phonics instruction versus a whole language approach fails to realise a fundamental tenet of providing equitable educational opportunities to diverse groups of children. Diversity becomes a problem to solve through ‘inoculation programmes’ or ‘special’ education expertise. Moreover, children’s individual strengths can fail to be realised because they do not fit well with the programme of the day. Instead of being appreciated for the value that they may bring in higher order conceptual and intellectual tasks, these individual strengths may be neglected at great cost to the individual child because they offer cheap reward in the shape of aggregate test scores. This paper is a philosophical piece, which in refusing to prescribe what one should do on Monday morning joins other strident voices in disability studies in education to question what it is that we are doing today. Whilst not scientific, this is important work – it emphasises the a priori importance of philosophical, moral and ethical questions – reminding science that children are dynamic social beings who cannot be manipulated like genes to ‘express’ themselves in ways more conducive to quick and cheap educational programmes.     

The moral economy of austerity: analysing UK welfare reform

This paper notes the contemporary emergence of ‘morality’ in both sociological argument and political rhetoric, and analyses its significance in relation to ongoing UK welfare reforms. It revisits the idea of ‘moral economy’ and identifies two strands in its contemporary application; that all economies depend on an internal moral schema, and that some external moral evaluation is desirable. UK welfare reform is analysed as an example of the former, with reference to three distinct orientations advanced in the work of Freeden ( 1996 ), Laclau ( 2014 ), and Lockwood ( 1996 ). In this light, the paper then considers challenges to the reform agenda, drawn from third sector and other public sources. It outlines the forms of argument present in these challenges, based respectively on rationality, legality, and morality, which together provide a basis for evaluation of the welfare reforms and for an alternative ‘moral economy’.     

Research note: Promoting intercultural education through art education

Taking UNESCO’s proposal ‘learning how to live together’ as a starting point, we examined to what extent visual education can be used as a tool to promote the aims of intercultural education. We analyzed the power of using artistic images from different cultures to change students’ perception of cultural differences, thereby facilitating the development of attitudes of respect towards different ethnic/cultural groups. We also investigated to what extent this strategy could contribute to the integration of minority peers into a majority group. Students were assigned to either an experimental or a control group. The experimental treatment consisted of exposing students to several art object images associated with different cultures. Our measurement instrument was based on an adapted version of the ‘Draw‐A‐Person‐Test’, which we have called the ‘Draw‐Two‐Persons‐Test’. We also used a questionnaire to examine attitudes among subjects     

Issues in the integration of religious education and worldviews education in an intercultural context

ABSTRACT

The Council of Europe’s 2008 ‘Recommendation’ advocates the study of ‘non-religious convictions’ in schools in addition to religions. In 2018, there is evidence of growing academic interest in the inclusion of non-religious worldviews in the school curriculum, but few European countries include such a study within religious education. The guidance document, Signposts, recognises that the integration of religions and non-religious worldviews is problematic for policy makers, teacher trainers and schools and that there is a need for further research. Norway and England are at significant but different stages in the process of integration. This article presents a comparative study which draws on the findings of research in both countries which has investigated the process at classroom and policy levels, and issues raised by this. Four issues are explored: practical challenges; differing understandings of the concept of worldviews; the inclusion of non-religious worldviews as a political issue and influences on the selection of worldviews. The article concludes with a discussion of issues and findings within a supranational context and makes recommendations which highlight the value of integration and the need for both contextual studies and further comparative research.     

All that is solid melts into work: self‐work,the ‘learning ethic’ and the work ethic

In this paper I examine the intersections between a general commitment to education and learning and the moral and ethical dimensions of the work ethic under contemporary capitalism. Drawing on Kathi Weeks' (2011) recent exploration of the work ethic in The Problem with Work, I suggest there is a relationship between the form and function of the work ethic‐ and what I term the ‘learning ethic’. I suggest that commitment to a learning ethic, to the unreserved power of learning and education‐ may reiterate a moral commitment to the personal characteristics that define the work ethic under capitalism. As a consequence, consideration of the form and function of these moral character ideals in the continuation of unequal social relations across educational and workspaces, become obfuscated by a generalized celebration of learning, education and self‐work.     

Standing up to complexity: researching moral panics in social work

Moral panics are central to social work policy and practice. Voluntary agencies and statutory bodies (including governments) create and sustain moral panics in order to raise awareness of, and win support for, their own understandings of social issues and problems. This is not a neutral enterprise; on the contrary, moral panics often have consequences that are negative, whether intended or unintended. Far from leading to greater social justice and a more equal society, they may reinforce stereotypes and lead to fearful, risk-averse practice. This paper discusses one such moral panic in 2013 that centred on the story of ‘Maria’, a Bulgarian Roma child living in Greece. The paper explores the meaning and use of the concept of moral panic before unpacking this case-study example in more detail. We argue that the moral panic over ‘Maria’ has much to tell us about ideas of welfare and protection, institutional racism and children and childhood, as well as the connections between ‘private troubles’ and ‘public issues’. We conclude that social work as a profession must stand up to complexity, and in doing so, be aware of its own role in relation to moral panics.     

Imaginaries of postponed arrival: on seeing ‘society’ and its ‘immigrants’

This paper discusses a logic of seeing in official assessments of the ‘integration of immigrants’ in West European societies and interprets these as arrival narratives. In postcolonial and diasporic literature, the arrival narrative is not concerned with the actual date of arrival but with the question ‘how much has someone really arrived?’ (Quayson, A. 2013. Postcolonialism and the diasporic imaginary. Lecture series: New directions in literary postcolonial studies. Utrecht University, 7 Oct.). The official, state-initiated monitoring of immigrant integration is based upon measurements of the degree to which the population classified as ‘immigrant’ is ‘integrated’ in a ‘host society’. In literary terms, this can be interpreted as a narrative in which a personage – classified in highly specific, contingent ways, as ‘immigrant’ – is portrayed as being in a mode of arriving but without having arrived and without ever really arriving. The way in which this narrative of postponed arrival is shaped involves a specific way of seeing in the routinized work of quantitatively assessing immigrant integration. With the narratological concept of focalization we analyse a logic of seeing present in the reports and images of immigrant integration monitoring practices in the Netherlands. Moreover, we discuss the workings of a societal gaze, instituted on the basis of particular societal norms reproduced at the ‘place of arrival’, that is, the place imagined as ‘society’. This societal gaze operates as a performative practice distributing a way of seeing, thereby enacting the reproduction of existing power asymmetries between ‘members of society’ and ‘immigrants’. As such, we conclude, the hope for ‘arrival’ constitutes a form of ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham: Duke University Press).     

The moral basis of sustainable society: the Gandhian concept of ecological citizenship

Dominant approaches to sustainability have focused on environmental governance with efficient mechanisms and technical quick-fixes for regulatory changes and policy reforms within the growth-centred economic model. However, they fail to develop an authentic ‘ecological citizenship’ for a more fundamental change in the framework of moral values guiding individuals' behaviour and attitude towards the environment and their choices to live lightly on earth. This article argues that the transformation to a sustainable society necessitates deeper moral changes and the development of an ecological morality at the individual level as the core of sustainability. The article examines the distinctiveness of the Gandhian approach to ‘ecological citizenship’ within his paradigm of non-violence and ethical holism as an alternative to the dominant thinking. Within his broader moral-philosophical framework, the paper focuses on Gandhi's theories of eco-localism, unity of life, economics of well-being, and the moral praxis of subordinating the material to moral development realized by the human self through an ‘inner revolution’ with a goal to improve the ‘quality of man’, moving beyond the conventional ‘fear–greed’ dichotomy as motivators of behaviour to bring about a societal transformation towards a sustainable society based on freedom, equity, justice, and peace.