Social capital or analytical liability? Social networks and African informal economies

Abstract The rise of the ‘social capitalist’ paradigm has turned social networks into a concept that conceals more than it reveals. In this article I argue that the essentialism and cultural determinism of ‘social capitalist’ perspectives have seriously distorted the contemporary understanding of African informal economies. Attention is directed to more institutionally sensitive network perspectives that focus on how the economic performance of networks is shaped by their specific institutional content as well as by the nature of their linkages with the wider society and the state. Drawing on empirical studies from across Africa, the analysis highlights the role of ethnicity, religion, class, gender and the state in generating both positive and negative trends in the restructuring of African informal economies. Processes of continuity and change within networks are captured through the analysis of how the institutional legacies of the past interact with the social realignments, economic liberalization and globalizing dynamics of contemporary Africa.     

Family Group Conferences: User Empowerment or Family Self-Reliance?--a development from Lupton

Correspondence to Shirley Jackson, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Summary This article isa response to Lupton (1998). It is not in thetradition of a critical response, but rather a complementaryand extended exploration of the issues raised in the earlierpaper. It draws on the authors' respective experiences as innovatorand researcher in the field of child welfare and youth justiceand presents, within the overall debate, new material both fromchild welfare initiatives and from the recently completed studyinto the use of family group conferences in youth justice. Itconcludes that some of the key tenets of family group conferencesare in danger of being neglected by professional and politicalagendas if urgent attention is not given to the primary purposeof family empowerment and to adequate resourcing of FGC plans.     

Sexual Abuse as a Moral Event

Correspondence to Kate Stewart, 8 Sellbourne Villas, St Marys Road, Bradford BD9 4NN Summary This article suggests that the moral dimension of sexual abusehas remained implicit rather than explicit. As such, it hasreceived little examination and thought with the result thatthe blunt instrument of common sense morality is applied withoutanalysis. The article examines the way in which this commonsense morality is differentially applied to the event of sexualabuse and the events of the professional system's reactionsto sexual abuse. It proposes a form of moral mapping which willhelp children and professionals disentangle and analyse themoral dimensions of sexual abuse and other events in children'slives.     

Accommodation and Homelessness on Release from Prison

Summary This paper presents some of the results of a Home Office sponsoredresearch project in which men discharged from prison were interviewedbefore and after release. The findings compare pre-arrest andpost-release accommodation and demonstrate than many men arelikely to be in poorer accommodation after release than theywere before arrest.     

Stress and Organizational Culture

Summary The relationship between social work and stress is a complexone which remains relatively under-explored. This paper examinesissues arising from a comparative study of stress in three localauthority social services departments. The main focus is on the human resource management issues underpinningthe experience of social work staff. In particular, the roleof organizational culture is explored and the notion of a ‘cultureof stress’ is introduced. This is a key aspect of thetheoretical account presented. It offers an explanation of theidentified differences amongst the three authorities studiedin terms of the subjective experience of common stressors. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major implicationsfor social work agencies in which such an organizational culturehas developed.     

THE CONSISTENCY OF PERFECT AND MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION

In this paper I have suggested the formal consistency between the models of perfect and monopolistic competition. When products are differentiated only by their quality, the zero-profit equilibrium position of the perfectly competitive firm can be recast diagrammatically in a way which coincides with the traditional exposition of Chamberlinean tangencies. The illusory excess capacity theorem confuses average revenue product curves with demand schedules. These results should hardly be surprising. Indeed, if such a thing as “perfect” competition actually exists (even in theory), it must be conceivable within a model in which firms are allowed to compete in other dimensions as well as price.     

“That was Then,but This is Now”: Historical Perspectives on Intercountry Adoption and Domestic Child Adoption in Australian Public Policy

This paper brings historical perspectives to bear on the ambivalent and contradictory position of adoption in Australian public policy. It examines the divergent histories of Australian domestic and intercountry adoption (ICA) since the mid‐1970s and the impact of these histories on adoption policy in Australia. It identifies tendencies in contemporary ICA to repeat elements of pre‐reform era domestic adoption. In particular, it is argued that the resistance of ICA to the move to openness in local adoption has been an unacknowledged driver of ICA for many Australian families. We offer corrective readings of the rise of ICA in relation to domestic adoption and conclude by offering alternatives for adoption policy which better align the two kinds of adoption, focusing on the needs of children, as distinct from the desires of adults.     

The intergenerational transmission of fertility in contemporary Denmark: The effects of number of siblings (full and half), birth order,and whether male or female

Using the Danish Fertility Database, we investigate intergenerational fertility transmission, including the relationship between the number of children born to those aged 25 and 26 years in 1994 and the number of their full sibs and half-sibs. We find that the fertility behaviour of parents and their children is positively correlated, and that half-sibs and full sibs have broadly similar effects. We do not find, in this complete national population, the strong birth order effects reported in some earlier studies. Nor do we find evidence of a weakening of intergenerational fertility transmission over time, perhaps because the greater flexibility of lifestyles in this post-transitional phase provides the extended social space within which intergenerational continuities can manifest themselves. We show that members of large families are over-represented in subsequent generations - that they have far more kin than those from smaller families - and that intergenerational continuities in fertility behaviour play a substantial role in keeping fertility higher than it would be in the absence of such transmission.     

Disaster or Sustainability: The Dance of Human Agents with Nature's Actants*

Cet article défend une recherche sociologique qui allie le meilleur du constructionisme social avec le réalisme critique, et qui intègre la sociologie des catastrophes à la sociologie environnementale. Il montre comment les perceptions de la gestion des catastrophes sont socialement construites au moyen d'une action communicative dans un contexte d'incitations venant des ? actants? de la nature, comment les autorités sont tentées de remplacer la transparence par le secret quand ces incitations deviennent particulièrement dangereuses et comment les catastrophes sont utilisées a d'autres fins. La tempête de verglas de Janvier 1998, qui donnait l'impression d'etre une catastrophe naturelle (la plus dispendieuse de l'histoire canadienne), était plutôt un hybride déclenché par des constructions de la nature primale qui sont devenues désastreuses où la nature recombinante vulnérable est devenue socialement construite. This paper argues for sociological research that combines the best of social constructionism and critical realism and that integrates disaster sociology with environmental sociology. It documents how perceptions of managing disaster are socially constructed through communicative action in a context of prompts from nature's actants, how authorities are tempted to replace openness with secrecy when those prompts become particularly dangerous, and how disasters are used for other purposes. The January 1998 ice storm that seemed a natural disaster (the most expensive in Canadian history) was instead a hybrid initiated by primal nature's constructions that became disastrous where vulnerable recombinant nature had been socially constructed.