Universal Parenting Programme Provision in England; Barriers to Parent Engagement in the CANparent Trial, 2012–2014

The CANparent trial, 2012–2014, was a government initiative in four English areas designed to develop a market in universal parenting support. Fourteen parenting class providers offered classes to all parents of children aged 0–5 in the areas. In three areas, all eligible parents received £100 vouchers exchangeable for a parenting class. Pre‐trial planning was that take‐up would amount to 20 000 parents. However, only 14 per cent of these parents took advantage of the offer. This article utilises 42 interviews with providers, and two parent surveys over two time periods (n = 1510 and n = 1603) to review barriers to engagement with universal parenting support programmes.     

Critical autism studies: exploring epistemic dialogues and intersections,challenging dominant understandings of autism

In this paper we explore how our cultural contexts give rise to different kinds of knowledges of autism and examine how they are articulated, gain currency, and form the basis for policy, practice and political movements. We outline key tensions for the development of critical autism studies as an international, critical abilities approach. Our aim is not to offer a cross-cultural account of autism or to assume a coherence or universality of ‘autism’ as a singular diagnostic category/reality. Rather, we map the ways in which what is experienced and understood as autism, plays out in different cultural contexts, drawing on the notion of ‘epistemic communities’ to explore shifts in knowledge about autism, including concepts such as ‘neurodiversity’, and how these travel through cultural spaces. The paper explores two key epistemic tensions; the dominance of ‘neuro culture’ and dominant constructions of personhood and what it means to be human.     

Towards a minor global architecture at Lamu,Kenya

Major accounts of globalisation from a built environment perspective bring global cities and celebrity architects into focus. In this paper, I resist this and give an account of globalisation from the perspective of one of its minor architectures. A minor architecture is not a minor architectural language, but rather one that a minority constructs within a major language, encoding it differently and subverting its prevailing myths. The paper investigates this proposition by focusing on Lamu, the historic Islamic seaport and World Heritage Site on the northern coast of Kenya where a skirmish between local, national and global interests is currently underway over the construction of a new deep-water port. The port is a building site, not only of one of globalisation’s major architectures – a port, free economic zone and transportation corridor, but also of one of its minor ones, taking shape through the strategies Lamu’s organisations are deploying to object it. Through the analysis of Lamu in the longue durée – its coastal geomorphology and historic spatial protocols, I read these strategies as contemporary deployments of those long put to work at Lamu, through which land- and sea-based logics have been entangled.     

The Passion Paradigm: Professional Adherence to and Consequences of the Ideology of “Do What You Love”

If changes to the material structures of work have ushered us into a “new economy,” cultural scholars assume that there must also be changes to ideological structures of work. Extant scholarship on precarious professionals and on the role of emotions in 21^st‐century work find that passion may be an important cultural component of white‐collar work in the new economy. Using data from engineers, nurses, and graphic designers who work in either less precarious or more precarious contexts, this paper contributes the first emic definition of work passion as the experiences of attraction, enjoyment, motivation, and perseverance. Because I find overwhelming adherence and conceptual consistency among professionals in my sample, I argue that the pursuit of work passion constitutes a coherent ideology of work, which I call the passion paradigm. I argue that the passion paradigm is compatible with and protects structures of work in the new economy because its logic of hyper individualism motivates workers to work hard and work well as a practice of self‐care, shifting the locus of critique further away from institutions and more toward the self. Adherence to and institutionalization of the passion paradigm may have myriad consequences, opening up broad areas of future research.     

Predation of artificial bird nests in suburban gardens of KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

As urbanization increases, the identification of nest predators becomes important for avian conservation and management of urban wildlife communities. We investigated bird nest predation using artificial nests in urban areas of the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province of South Africa. From June 2013 through February 2014 we installed seventy-five artificial nests in 25 suburban gardens in the Ethekwini and Msunduzi municipalities of KZN. Euplectes spp. nests were used and baited with two quail-sized, hand-made, silicon eggs. These were placed in residential gardens and monitored by camera traps for 2-weeks in winter, spring and summer respectively. Generally bird nesting occurs throughout the year in KZN’s subtropical climate, with some avoidance during the autumn season. Therefore, experiments were not conducted during autumn, as fresh nests were not available for use. Overall the rate of predation on artificial nests was 25 % (n = 19), with vervet monkeys Ceropithecus aethiops pygerythrus predating 20 % (n = 17) of the nests while domestic cats Felis catus predated 3 % (n = 2) of nests. Nest predation was significantly higher in the winter season, with 79 % of depredations occurring in winter (n = 15), 16 % in spring (n = 3) and 5 % in summer (n = 1), and in areas with less canopy cover. Our results suggest that vervet monkeys may have a negative impact on nesting birds in urban environments, however, in order to assess the rate of predation experiments on natural nests coupled with information on fledgling success is deemed necessary to investigate avian population declines.     

Managing the Dynamic Science and Engineering Labor Market in the United States

The five million workers employed in science and engineering (S&E) occupations, and the 20 million with S&E degrees, are considered keys to U.S. competitiveness in the 21st century. Most of those earning PhDs in engineering at U.S. universities are foreigners, as are many of those earning PhDs in science. Many U.S. employers assert that the U.S. Government impairs economic competitiveness with policies that force some foreigners who earn advanced degrees from U.S. Universities to leave and restrict admissions of H‐1B temporary foreign workers and that employers want to hire.     

Explaining Career Decision‐Making Self‐Efficacy: Personality,Cognitions, and Cultural Mistrust

The authors explore the hypothesis that career decision‐making self‐efficacy could be affected by negative career thoughts, Big Five personality factors, and cultural mistrust in a sample of African American and Caucasian college students. Findings demonstrated that negative career thinking, openness, and conscientiousness explained a significant amount of variance in career decision‐making self‐efficacy in a general sample of college students, but no unique variance was explained by cultural mistrust in a sample of African American college students.     

The Care–tech Link: An Examination of Gender,Care and Technical Work in Healthcare Labour

Despite the dramatic increase of technology in the healthcare field, little is known of how care work and technical work are related. Examining substitute healthcare providers offers a useful illustration of the care–tech link because nursing (care) and medical (technical) models often merge. Forty‐two interviews with men and women (nurse practitioners, nurse anaesthetists and physician assistants) were conducted in the USA. The results showed that the gendered nature of care–tech boundaries has shifted in small but important ways and that the gendering of work influenced the shape of these boundaries. Men often encountered barriers when moving too far into the care realm and attempted to overcome this by ‘caring cautiously’ and emphasizing problem‐solving care. Women faced similar barriers from the ‘old boys network’ when they entered highly technical areas. There is also evidence that men and women challenged existing care–tech boundaries and moved beyond their traditional roles.     

Representations of the ‘Damaged’ Child: ‘Child Saving’ in a British Children's Charity ad Campaign

This article discusses the representation of abused children as ‘damaged’, drawing on a series of three advertising campaigns for a British children's charity. The pictures and text of the advertisements seek to elicit readers’ concern for abused children by portraying them (a) as passive agents in their development and (b) as signifiers of the dangers of the world and the safeness of the home. The portrayal of abused children in the advertisements serves to reinforce a perception of the vulnerability of all children and the need for adult supervision and ‘care’. Without seeking to dismiss the seriousness of abuse or of the work done by children's charities, the article questions the implications of these representations of childhood and ‘damage’, and argues that the dominant representation of abused children drawn on in such campaigns oversimplifies many complexities in the worlds and the lives of children who have been abused.