Consumption and digital commodities in the everyday

The category of the everyday has designated in social theory the remainder, what is left over after the important regions of politics and production. This left consumption in the under-theorized domain of the everyday. Since Veblen – and more recently Baudrillard and de Certeau – consumption has been reconfigured as significant in its own right, as a complex, articulated area related directly to culture. Liberal thinkers have also claimed consumer activity as central to society, as the domain where the individual is realized. This paper will review these positions and attempt to develop an understanding of consumption in daily life in relation to digital cultural objects. It will also argue that these mediated commodities, in the practices of appropriation connected with them, configure subjects in ways that are difficult to reconcile with existing structures of domination.     

Understanding localism

These two special issues of Policy Studies investigate various aspects of localism and draw insights from a broad range of different academic disciplines; which illustrates how ubiquitous the issue has become, both in the academy and in political discourse, particularly in the UK and increasingly in Australia. In this introduction, we begin by outlining three different types of localism – managerial, representative and community – which have underpinned both debates in the area and policy developments, before outlining our definition of the term. Subsequently, we introduce the theoretical and empirical contributions that this issue makes to understanding localism in Westminster-style democracies.     

Effects of an Individual Development Account Program on Retirement Saving: Follow-up Evidence From a Randomized Experiment

We examine the 10-year follow-up effects on retirement saving of an individual development account (IDA) program using data from a randomized experiment that ran from 1998 to 2003 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The IDA program included financial education, encouragement to save, and matching funds for several qualified uses of the saving, including contributions to retirement accounts. The results indicate that as of 2009, 6 years after the program ended, the IDA program had no impact on the propensity to hold a retirement account, the account balance, or the sufficiency of retirement balances to meet retirement expenses.     

Development and Application of a Standards-Based Inventory of Foundation Competencies in Social Work with Groups

The International Association for Social Work with Groups Standards for the Practice of Social Work with Groups is an essential document for advancing practice and teaching about social work with groups. However, surveys have reported that many group workers know little about the Standards or about how to teach or apply group work knowledge and skills. This article summarizes the research on the development of a reliable and valid inventory based on the Standards and an effective teaching strategy to improve learning about the Standards. The inventory and teaching method provide tools for advancing evidence-based practice and teaching.     

A method for considering the acceptability of novel biotechnologies for the control of brushtail possums

Abstract

Public acceptance and regulatory approval of biotechnologies is increasingly dependent on consideration of cultural, ethical and spiritual effects, and the opportunity for community involvement. The objective of this study was to articulate a means for researchers to identify relevant issues during the development of the technologies. It encompassed the substantive issues, such as safety, the provision of credible and adequate public information, and the opportunity for citizens, as well as stakeholders, to give society's informed consent. In this initial analysis of novel toxins and infertility or sterility-inducing agents being developed to manage pest populations of brushtail possums, several issues were identified. They included the risk associated with fertility controls entering the food chain, the severity of animal welfare compromise with toxins, and the adequacy of terminology used to describe pest control agents. This approach provides a means for researchers to acknowledge the issues contributing to public acceptance of biotechnologies during their development and with the involvement of those with interests in biotechnology.     

Foreign aid,public investment,and the informal economy

This paper examines the absorption of foreign aid in the presence of formal and informal production. Calibrating a two-sector open economy model to 67 aid-recipient countries for 1990–2019, we show that an increase in foreign aid drives resources into the informal sector, and away from the formal sector. With untied aid, the expansion of the informal sector can lead to an economic contraction through the Dutch Disease effect. An economic expansion with an increase in the share of formal production can be attained by re-allocating existing aid to public investment rather than an increase in the aggregate level of aid.     

Still connecting the dots: An investigation into infants' attentional bias to threat using an eye-tracking task

An attentional bias toward threat has been theorized to be a normative aspect of infants' threat and safety learning, and an indicator of risk for internalizing psychopathology in older populations. To date, only four studies have examined this bias using the dot-probe task in infancy and the findings are mixed. We extended the literature by examining patterns of attention to threat in a culturally and linguistically diverse sample of infants aged 5–11 months old (N = 151) using all measures previously employed in the infant dot-probe literature. Given that an attentional bias toward threat is associated with higher risk of developing anxiety disorders later in life, we also examined how negative affect—an early correlate of later anxiety disorders—is related to attentional bias toward threat in infancy. This study was the first to use a consistent measure of negative affect across the whole sample. An eye-tracking dot-probe task was used to examine attentional bias toward threat (i.e., angry faces) relative to positive (i.e., happy faces) stimuli. Results showed that an attention bias to threat was not characteristic of infants at this age, and negative affect did not moderate the putative relationship between attention and emotional faces (angry, happy). These findings therefore suggest that attention biases to socio-emotional threat may not have emerged by 11 months old.     

Informal Mentoring at Work: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

This paper reviews the literature on informal mentoring at work. Based on two basic premises of interpersonal relationships, it discusses four promising areas in current mentoring research that could be cultivated further by future research. The first premise that we hold is that relationships never exist in a vacuum. Traditionally, however, mentoring literature has often overlooked the context of mentoring. We propose that the developmental network approach can be further extended to gather more insight into the interplay between mentoring dyads and their context. Also, mentoring literature could pay more attention to temporal influences in mentoring studies. The second premise that is applied is that relationships are not only instrumental in nature. However, mentoring research to date has mostly applied a one‐sided and transactional view to mentoring. Relational mentoring theory could be helpful in examining relational motivations of both members. Also, mentoring literature can achieve more explanatory power by examining the underlying mechanisms of mentoring, next to social exchange principles, that cause these developmental changes. In summary, in each of these four research areas, we identify and discuss fundamental questions and developments in research that can advance mentoring theory and practice.     

What Do We Mean by Performativity in Organizational and Management Theory? The Uses and Abuses of Performativity

John Austin introduced the formulation ‘performative utterance’ in his 1962 book How to Do Things with Words. This term and the related concept of performativity have subsequently been interpreted in numerous ways by social scientists and philosophers such as Lyotard, Butler, Callon and Barad, leading to the coexistence of several foundational perspectives on performativity. This paper reviews and evaluates critically how organization and management theory (OMT) scholars have used these perspectives, and how the power of performativity has, or has not, stimulated new theory‐building. In performing a historical and critical review of performativity in OMT, the authors’ analysis reveals the uses, abuses and under‐uses of the concept by OMT scholars. It also reveals the lack of both organizational conceptualizations of performativity and analysis of how performativity is organized. Ultimately, the authors’ aim is to provoke a ‘performative turn’ in OMT by unleashing the power of the performativity concept to generate new and stronger organizational theories.