Disability activism in the new media ecology: campaigning strategies in the digital era

This article examines the changing nature of disability activism through the influence of social media. As disabled people in the United Kingdom have been subjected to acute austerity, this has coincided with a new era of disability activism channelled through increased social media participation. Drawing on the analysis of one group’s online activities and a qualitative content analysis of disability protest coverage in traditional news media during the 2012 Paralympic Games, this article positions this shift in the broader framework of ‘new media ecology’. We explore how emerging structures of disability activism have begun to offer a more visible profile to challenge government policy and negative stereotypes of disabled people. This highlights the usefulness of campaigning strategies for generating favourable news coverage for disability protest.     

Accounting for Disability: Customer feedback or citizen complaints?

This paper has two aims. First, it will summarise the findings of a study of the views and experiences of adults with acquired physical impairments. This entailed taking open-ended accounts from respondents in order to elicit their concerns and experiences. The paper will focus on two aspects of data from the study: views about health and social services; and those about citizenship. The second aim of the paper is to situate the role and status of personal accounts of disability within the health and social policy context of recent years, which has been characterised by both consumerism and an intensification in the activities of the disability movement. In the run up to the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act, it became clear that the purchasers (now 'commissioners') of health and social services would be encouraged to elicit users' views of services, to engender a needs-led not provider-led approach. Later in the paper we will discuss the relationship between this officially endorsed consumerism and the concerns of disabled people when voicing their views. It will be argued that personal accounts of disability have gained a cultural currency because of the convergence of processes linked to consumerism within recent British health and social policy on one side and new social movements on the other.     

International Parental Abduction and Its Implications for Social Work Practice: Great Britain to the United States

SUMMARY. Indications are that abduction of children by their own parents is on the rise and may increase further with the coming European Community and the relaxation of travel barriers between countries. A case example of an international parental abduction from Great Britain to the United States is used to illustrate some of the treatment issues confronting social workers who may come in contact with these families.     

Comparative Capitalism without Capitalism,and Production without Workers: The Limits and Possibilities of Contemporary Institutional Analysis

The aim of this paper is to consider the extent to which the comparative capitalism literature fully reflects the available empirical evidence in its attempts to model different versions of capitalism and, in particular, whether it adequately captures the roles of diverse stakeholders within the capitalist system. In doing so, particular attention is accorded to the varieties of capitalism literature, business systems theory and regulation theory. In addition, there is reflection in the paper on whether any strand of the literature is able to deal effectively with the recent economic crisis and systemic change. It is argued that more attention needs to be devoted to exploring the structural causes of change and the marginalization of the interests of key social groupings, most notably workers, from the process of institutional redesign.     

SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: American Economic Association , Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Eleventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, New York, January 3–5 1999 Katherine Betts , The Great Divide: Immigration Politics in Australia C. Y. Cyrus Chu , Population Dynamics: A New Economic Approach Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G. Williamson , The Age of Mass Migration: Causes and Economic Impact International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies , World Disasters Report 1998 Augustine J. Kposowa , The Impact of Immigration on the United States Economy B. Lindsay Lowell (ed.) , Foreign Temporary Workers in America: Policies That Benefit the U.S. Economy Christopher J. L. Murray and Alan D. Lopez (eds.) , Health Dimensions of Sex and Reproduction: The Global Burden of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, HIV, Maternal Conditions, Perinatal Disorders, and Congenital Abnormalities Jack Parsons , Human Population Competition: A Study of the Pursuit of Power Through Julian L. Simon , Economics Against the Grain World Bank , Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1998