‘Beyond the Scope of the Possible’: Art,Photography and Organisational Abjection

This paper explores the impacts Wal‐Mart's operations have on community culture. However, through the application of the psychodynamics of mirroring and a thorough version of dialectical analysis, we can see that community culture turns on itself to mirror what Wal‐Mart wants that culture to be. As such, community culture has little or no power or even desire to counter Wal‐Mart's negative affects and the result is an unfinished dialectic. The unfinished dialectic parallels the rudimentary concept of dialectics as being only thesis, anti‐thesis and synthesis, where synthesis is assumed to be, generally, a positive outcome, for everyone involved. As the investigation into Wal‐Mart continues, we see that there are negative outcomes on community culture as well as on Wal‐Mart leadership that require negation but are not negated. With that which fulfils our desires, we allow ourselves to become enraptured by only positive images or the perceived ‘good’ of something or someone when it is too difficult to unravel ambivalence and ambiguity of the mutual causality of opposites inherent in relationships.     

Umhlaba 1913–2013

This essay argues that the violent explosion at Marikana is an indication that ordinary South Africans are rapidly losing faith in the democratic institutions and social contract arrangements that underpin the 1994 post-apartheid South African democratic social contract, whether Parliament, the collective bargaining system, or the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). Similarly, “legitimate” institutions, such as political parties, trade unions and civic organisations – the organisations which pre-date 1994 – are also increasingly experienced by their members and supporters as not responsive, relevant or accountable. Marikana shows that if democratic institutions and “legitimate” institutions do not become more responsive, accountable and democratic quickly, ordinary people will increasingly look to new ones, including populists ones, or seek answers in violence. The essay concludes that although there are still many democratic and “legitimate” institutions which generate high levels of trust and enjoy widespread credibility and legitimacy, South Africa may have to renew aspects of its democratic social contract, institutions and rules, and in some cases, even create new, more relevant ones.     

Domestic violence and child abuse: developing sensitive policies and guidance

Domestic violence is everywhere and nowhere. No statutory organization or health service has work with either perpetrators or survivors of domestic violence (usually women and children) as the primary focus of their service, yet all agencies will have very significant numbers among their clients/service users. It is therefore crucial that the policy framework is developed both within and between agencies to address the need, and scope, of intervention in this area and particularly the impact on children. Currently, significant steps have been taken by some agencies in the UK to address this previously neglected issue, though the developments are patchy. This paper draws on a UK‐wide research study which mapped the extent and range of service provision for families where there is domestic violence and also developed a framework of good practice indicators for provision in this area. This article examines one of the indicators of good practice arising from the research—that of policy development—within social service departments and within the multi‐agency arena. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Findings on the impact of treatment for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia on family relationships

Paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) has provided a landmark in cancer therapy as the first disseminated and otherwise lethal malignancy to be curable in the majority of patients. Although the success rate is high, this benefit is achieved through a long, invasive and very arduous treatment process. The experience of undergoing such intensive treatments affects not only the child, but the entire family. To date, however, psychosocial research is only beginning to describe the depth and breadth of the impact on families of this experience. This paper presents findings from a recent qualitative study of families coping with the initial stage (induction remission) of treatment for childhood ALL. The findings indicate that the experience is so profoundly disturbing and disruptive that it challenges the families' sense of normalcy and stability. These findings provide evidence of significant hardship and stress, with the consequent indication of the need for social work support. Above all, such families need to hear the comforting message from social workers that what they are experiencing is normal under the circumstances. Along with practical assistance, they need reassurance about the intensity of feelings they will experience and an affirmation of the difficulty of the challenges they face.     

Learning How to Make Life Swing

How do we explain the contradiction between the centrality of African-American culture in the U.S. and the simultaneous marginality of African-American people in contemporary American society? Pursuing an answer to this question through my ethnographic work on the Lindy Hop led to a radical rethinking of current approaches to cultural appropriation. This article serves as an intervention into ethnographic research on race and ethnicity by synthesizing Wacquant's carnal sociology with his call for the formation of an analytical theory of racial domination. This synthesis, in which theory and method work reciprocally, offers a new model for undertaking research in the areas of race and ethnicity by which we are able to differentiate and dissect the material and symbolic mechanisms that generate racial domination in particular historical contexts.     

Towards a Philosophy of Containment: Reading Goffman in the 21st Century

On the occasion of the re-publication of Erving Goffman’s Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, including the remarkable appendix, “Insanity of Place,” the authors propose new ways of reading Goffman’s work in order to highlight his attention to havoc and containment. Goffman’s “Insanity of Place,” explores the phenomenon of mental illness by asserting that it is an instance of havoc, a symbolic and practical condition that disrupts the social order of life, and one that must be contained. By situating this essay at the center of Goffman’s oeuvre they examine Goffman’s “philosophy of containment,” and trace its trajectory from Asylums, Stigma and “The Insanity of Place” to its full crystallization in Frame Analysis. The authors offer a generative reading of havoc and containment in order to understand the incoherence, irrationality, unreason, incomprehensibility and unbearableness of social life and the imperative to preserve social order from collapsing, dissolving or imploding. This reading enables us to see the cracks in the social order and understand containment as the constant effort exerted to recuperate transgressions and deviations back into that order. Goffman’s analysis becomes an opening into engagements with the work of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault around the notion of the normative order and the issues of containment and transgression. Thinking through Goffman’s philosophy of containment as the framework for an analysis of socialization, normalization, and social ordering affords an approach to thinking macro-micro linkages of order and instability that confront both our contemporary society and the discipline of sociology.