Moving towards hybridity in causal explanation: The example of citizen participation

The puzzle of causal explanation is a core issue for social science. Searches for causal patterns can be overly mechanistic, seen for example in the desire for the magic bullet in policy, or the lionising of the celebrity policy interventions of the moment. Emphasis in policy interventions on transferable practice is often dismissed as naive for failing to recognise the importance of context, contingency, and complexity. However, a focus on highly context‐specific narratives, drawn from single cases, can be equally problematic and exacerbate rather than help the problem of reification of knowledge. This paper makes a reflective theoretical contribution to the debate on the need to tackle the dilemma of contingency versus certainty in causal explanation in the social sciences. It attempts to address this issue through the lens of a specific concrete puzzle of explanation; that of citizen participation in policy. Citizen participation is a salient policy topic, which demands a thorough understanding of causation. Using extended empirical examples of citizen participation in policy serves to highlight the intractability of different traditions of causal explanation and grounds the need for greater compatibility in approaches. The paper then offers two propositions centring on the notions of transdisciplinarity and hybridity in research practices and methodologies. It concludes with a discussion of more and less desirable forms of hybridity.     

Designing Agendas to Reflect Board Roles and Responsibilities: Results of a Study

Over a nine‐month period the board agendas of a community nonprofit organization were redesigned to reflect a particular board agenda tool titled “Strategic Activities, Resource Planning, and Operations.” Feedback from the board members and executive director indicate strong support for the framework in focusing the work of the board. The framework also has implications for how the executive director and board members prepare for meetings and how the shared leadership of the meetings is played out.     

A Caring Profession? The Ethics of Care and Social Work with Older People

The feminist ethics of care present a challenge to social workersto re-assess not only the place of care within professionalsocial work practice but also the way in which concepts of justice,autonomy and rights are conceptualized and ageing is understood.In this article, the arguments for an ethics of care are consideredin relation to social work practice with older people. It isargued that the feminist ethics of care offer useful insightsthat are relevant to the practice of social work, particularlywithin contemporary demographic, economic, political and organizationalcontexts, all of which have made the task more complex and confusing.