Introduction to ‘Reclaiming democracy from below: from the contemporary state capitalist system to peoples’ sovereignty’

ABSTRACT

This Special Forum is based on a collective dialogue between place-based struggles to defend rights and territories and the dynamics of global trends. Behind apparently fragmented battles we see an emerging common vision, like a mosaic composed of separate tiles, building towards emancipation and justice. Based on discussions in a workshop in Siena in November 2018, the Forum assembles some pieces of the mosaic through five thematic articles crafted in exchanges between social movement, academic and civil society activists. In this Introduction we review other current convergence efforts looking at two related dimensions: sharing ideas and analysis in order to develop a common understanding of global evolutions, and bringing people together to take transformative action by building shared spaces, alliances, campaigns and solidarity. We then situate the Siena workshop and the People's Sovereignty process that has grown from it in this broader context. Finally, we introduce the five articles.     

Transforming Global Governance in the Post-2015 Era: Towards an Equitable and Sustainable World†

This article reports on a dialogic symposium that brought academics from a wide range of disciplines together with practitioners and activists. The purpose was to discuss key issues conditioning the possibility of establishing global governance mechanisms which could promote transition paths toward a more equitable and sustainable world. Following the structure of the symposium, the article is divided into four thematic sections. The first contextualizes the discussions by looking at the characteristics and challenges of global governance today. The second addresses power relations in global governance with a focus on the corporate and financial sectors. It discusses practices of multistakeholder governance and public–private partnerships, the unhealthy levels of corporate influence on the UN system, and the dominant discourse that naturalizes corporate power, ‘free’ trade, and corresponding definitions of ideas such as knowledge, efficiency, and development. The third section turns to sites and forms of countervailing power and practice with particular attention to transcalar approaches and social movement actors. It highlights the potential of multi-level, territorial approaches for breaking out of hierarchical and nation state-based frames and building alternative forms of democracy. It illustrates the relevance of bioregions and ecosystems as meaningful arenas for thinking about and organizing social and economic life and for managing common pool resources. It invokes the imperative of protecting the human rights framework from the multiple challenges it faces. Finally, it explores alternative ways of generating and sharing knowledge and of challenging narrowly defined ‘evidence-based’ policy by assembling legitimate, qualitative evidence rooted in lived realities. The concluding section raises the question of whether—and on what conditions—intergovernmental multilateralism can be seen as a locus for transformation, and suggests some avenues of future research.     

Family,activity, and stress reactions in exile

The possible protective effect of family and activity (including work and employment training) on posttraumatic reactions in traumatized refugees living in a host society was explored. A total of 966 refugees participated in the study, the majority of whom had been exposed to war and/or torture trauma prior to arrival in Norway. The study sample consisted of two groups: one had been referred to a psychiatric outpatient clinic for evaluation or treatment, the other consisted of refugees interviewed in connection with a health examination upon arrival in the municipalities to which they were allocated. The study showed that presence of family and employment/training had positive effects on posttraumatic symptoms regardless of level of traumatic exposure. But the results also showed that the higher the level of exposure to traumatic events, the stronger the effect of family (spouse and/or children) seemed to be. The study illustrates the importance of implementing psychosocial measures with special emphasis on activity and strengthening of family systems, in the integration of traumatized refugees in a host community. El artículo explora los posibles efectos protectivos que tienen las redes de apoyo familiares y el empleo/entrenamiento en las reacciones post-traumáticas de refugiados traumatizados residentes en una sociedad receptora. Participaron en el estudio un total de 966 refugiados de los cuales la mayoria fueron víctimas de varios eventos traumáticos previo a su llegada a Noruega. La muestra consiste en dos grupos: el primer grupo habia sido referido previamente a una clinica psiquiátrica para evaluación y tratamiento; el segundo grupo consiste en refugiados que habian sido sometidos a una examinación clínica llevada a cabo en las municipalidades que les fueron asignadas a su llegada a Noruega. El estudio muestra que la presencia familiar y los actividodos laborales/entrenamiento tiene efectos positivos en síntomas post-traumáticos, sin importar el nivel de exposición traumática. Los resultados también demuestran que los efectos de la presencia familiar en los síntomas son todavía más evidentes en personas que han sufrido experiencias traumáticas más fuertes. El estudio ilustra la importancia de implementar medidas psicosociales con especial énfasis en la actividad y el fortalecimento de los sistemas familiares para la integración de refugiados traumatizados en sociedades receptoras.     

Fathers’ Childcare: The Differences Between Participation and Amount of Time

The main research question of this article was whether and how predictors of fathers’ participation in childcare, defined as zero versus more than zero minutes of childcare, differed from predictors of participating fathers’ amount of time on childcare, measured as minutes on the survey day. The sample was drawn from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS) and covered surveys from ten industrialised countries from 1987 to 2005. Results showed that there were some similarities, but also remarkable differences between factors influencing participation in childcare and factors affecting participating fathers’ time spent with children. Thus they call for caution regarding findings from existing studies not distinguishing participation from participating fathers’ childcare minutes.     

Are Interactional Behaviors Exhibited When the Self-Reported Health Question is Asked Associated with Health Status?

The self-reported health question summarizes information about health status across several domains of health and is widely used to measure health because it predicts mortality well. We examine whether interactional behaviors produced by respondents and interviewers during the self-reported health question-answer sequence reflect complexities in the respondent’s health history. We observed more problematic interactional behaviors during question-answer sequences in which respondents reported worse health. Furthermore, these behaviors were more likely to occur when there were inconsistencies in the respondent’s health history, even after controlling for the respondent’s answer to the self-reported health question, cognitive ability, and sociodemographic characteristics. We also found that among respondents who reported “excellent” health, and to a lesser extent among those who reported their health was “very good,” problematic interactional behaviors were associated with health inconsistencies. Overall, we find evidence that the interactional behaviors exhibited during the question-answer sequence are associated with the respondent’s health status.     

Weighted Integral Test Statistics and Components of Smooth Tests of Fit

This paper considers families of statistics for testing the goodness-of-fit of various parametric models such as the normal, exponential or Poisson. Each family consists of weighted integrals over the squared modulus of some measure of deviation from the parametric model, expressed by means of an empirical transform of the data. Letting the rate of decay of the weight function tend to infinity, each test statistic, after a suitable rescaling, approaches a limit that is closely connected to the first non-zero component of Neyman's smooth test for the parametric model.     

Belonging to the library: humanising the space for social work education

Abstract

This article describes the running of four Living Libraries on a UK postgraduate social work course. A Living Library is a metaphoric remodelling of a conventional library where people, as authors of their experiences, provide specialist knowledge based on authorial areas of expertise. In the Living Libraries discussed here, ‘Living Books’ carried stories of social work—their narratives were of lived experiences as people using social care services; as carers in personal relationships with others who use social care services; or, as social work practitioners. The focus of this article is on those Living Libraries involving the participation of the first two of these groups. Drawing on social psychology, phenomenology and human geography, we propose that a Living Library can act as a connective space within social work education by engendering a discursive forum where all participants—people with experiences of services, students, practitioners and social work educators—are given both the freedom and obligation to talk openly about their differential experiences, fears and hopes for social work. Through this process, opportunities are created to consider how improvements that meet all stakeholders’ interests may be achieved.     

Requests, Blocking Moves, and Rational (Inter)action in Survey Introductions

We draw on conversation analytic methods and research to explicate the interactional phenomenon of requesting in general and the specific case of requesting participation in survey interviews. Recent work on survey participation has given much attention to leverage-saliency theory, but has not engaged how the key concepts of this theory are exhibited in the actual unfolding interaction of interviewers and potential respondents. We do so using digitally recorded and transcribed calls to recruit participation in the 2004 Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. We describe how potential respondents present interactional environments that are relatively discouraging or encouraging, and how, in response, interviewers may be relatively cautious or presumptive in their requesting actions. We consider how the ability of interviewers to tailor their behavior to their interactional environment can affect whether the introduction reaches the point at which a request to participate is made, the form that this request takes, and the sample person's response. Our analysis contributes to understanding how we might use insights from the analysis of interaction to increase cooperation with requests to participate in surveys.     

Death in Public Child Welfare

Child welfare workers are in a unique position to help children and youth in out-of-home care who have experienced the death of a significant person. This article discusses the response of children to death from a developmental perspective and offers suggestions on how child welfare workers can use an ecological perspective to help youngsters cope with their grief.