Re-assembling climate change policy: Materialism,posthumanism, and the policy assemblage

National and international policy-makers have addressed threats to environmental sustainability from climate change and other environmental degradation for over 30 years. However, it is questionable whether current policies are socially, politically, economically, and scientifically capable of adequately resolving these threats to the planet and living organisms. In this paper we theorize and develop the concept of a “policy assemblage” from within a new materialist ontology, to interrogate critically four policy perspectives on climate change: “liberal environmentalism”; the United Nations policy statements on sustainable development; “green capitalism” (also known as “climate capitalism”) and finally “no-growth economics.” A materialist analysis of interactions between climate change and policies enables us to establish what each policy can do, what it ignores or omits, and consequently its adequacy to address environmental sustainability in the face of climate change. None, we conclude, is adequate or appropriate to address climate change successfully. We then use this conceptual tool to establish a “posthuman” policy on climate change. Humans, from this perspective, are part of the environment, not separate from or in opposition to it, but possess unique capacities that we suggest are now necessary to address climate change. This ontology supplies the starting point from which to establish sociologically a scientifically, socially, and politically adequate posthuman climate change policy. We offer suggestions for the constituent elements of such a policy.     

New materialist social inquiry: designs,methods and the research-assemblage

This paper discusses issues of research design and methods in new materialist social inquiry, an approach that is attracting increasing interest across the social sciences as an alternative to either realist or constructionist ontologies. New materialism de-privileges human agency, focusing instead upon how assemblages of the animate and inanimate together produce the world, with fundamental implications for social inquiry methodology and methods. Key to our exploration is the materialist notion of a ‘research-assemblage’ comprising researcher, data, methods and contexts. We use this understanding first to explore the micropolitics of the research process, and then – along with a review of 30 recent empirical studies – to establish a framework for materialist social inquiry methodology and methods. We discuss the epistemological consequences of adopting a materialist ontology.     

Identities in Transition: Women Caregivers in Bereavement

Population aging and longevity due to medical advances over the past few decades have meant that the approximately 44 million caregivers in the United States and eight million caregivers in Canada must provide more intensive levels of care and for longer periods of time. Consequently, caregivers are often profoundly affected by their caregiving role in emotional, psychological, physical, and financial ways. Thirty years of research on this population have helped to create a caregiver profile and identify the significant challenges for caregivers. One area explored to a much lesser extent is the postcaregiving period, when the caregiver transitions into a period of bereavement. This period can be particularly challenging for caregivers given the commitment inherent in the caregiving process. Research has shown that the emotional reactions of caregivers as well as practical challenges do not end with the death of the care recipient. In fact, complex realities, tensions, and responses continue well after the death into the postcaregiving period. This study of bereaved women caregivers explored their lived experiences in the postcaregiving phase. One central theme emerged and suggested that the experience of caregiving had an effect on the caregivers’ identities, which then influenced their bereavement processes and experiences.     

Assessment methods in social work education: A review of the literature

Student assessment is an important component of social work education, and consumes considerable effort on behalf of both students and staff members. Social work educators in higher education face the challenge of constructing assessment methods, which encourage the development of reflective and critical learning, as well as enabling students to demonstrate acquisition of required knowledge and/or skills. While there is now a substantial literature on field education, the assessment of classroom-based units has warranted less attention. This paper examines the range of assessment methods reported in the social work education literature, the evidence which supports the use of these methods and issues associated with the identified assessment methods.     

Schooling the public on boys: the ongoing salience in media representations of the “crisis” in boys’ education

This paper explores the salience of the “crisis” in boys’ education as it is articulated in Australian print media. We will consider the ways in which this crisis is expressed through a gendered language which simultaneously represents boys as “forgotten” by teaching practices thought to be prioritising girls’ learning, and as an equity (disadvantaged) grouping who require specialised teaching methods different from those currently offered within the Australian school system. Further, we will examine the extent to which feminist-inspired reforms in education are either implicitly or explicitly referenced as an explanation for boys’ apparently poor education attainment, and relatedly consider the work of “experts” supporting claims of a pro-feminine bias that adversely affects boys’ learning outcomes, particularly those experts offering neurological or psychological/cognitive findings which assert a biological basis for gender difference. In this context, we argue that rather than advancing gender equity in schools, popular public discourse, as presented in Australian print media, reinforces and perpetuates notions of gender difference and masculine entitlement.     

Mixed methods,materialism and the micropolitics of the research-assemblage

We assess the potential for mixing social research methods, based upon a materialist and micropolitical analysis of the research-assemblage and of what individual research techniques and methods do in practice. Applying a DeleuzoGuattarian toolkit of assemblages, affects and capacities, we document what happens when research methods and techniques interact with the events they wish to study. Micropolitically, many of these techniques and methods have unintended effects of specifying and aggregating events, with the consequently that the knowledge produced by social inquiry is invested with these specifications and aggregations. We argue that rather than abandoning these social research tools, we may use the micropolitical analysis to assess precisely how each method affects knowledge production, and engineer the research designs we use accordingly. This forms the justification for mixing methods that are highly aggregative or specifying with those that are less so, effectively rehabilitating methods that have often been rejected by social researchers, including surveys and experiments.     

Clinical supervision in child protection for community nurses

Community nurses have been recognized as having a key role in the protection and care of children, particularly in relation to the identification and detection of child abuse. In order to fulfill this role in a competent manner, they need to have access to appropriate supervision. The aim of this paper is to explore community nurses' and health care managers' understanding and experience of clinical supervision in child protection. The findings presented here were collected as part of a larger study commissioned by the Greater Glasgow Primary Health Care National Health Service (NHS) Trust. Ninety‐nine nurses and nursing managers were interviewed, either individually or in groups, about their professional involvement in child protection issues and support for their involvement in child protection work, as well as their current knowledge and perceived training needs. The interview data was subjected to a thematic analysis. A lack of consensus was found among nurses and managers in Glasgow as to what constitutes clinical supervision and a good deal of variation in nurses' experiences of clinical supervision in the field of child protection. The historical difficulties with regard to supervision were attributed to several aspects of nursing culture. However, both nurses and managers emphasized the need for formal, regular, systematic supervision for all nurses regardless of their specific role with regard to child protection. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organizational Legitimacy and Stakeholder Information Provision1

One interpretation of the concept of organizational legitimacy is that it stems from the cultural values of society, and suggests that businesses operate under a mandate that may be withdrawn if organizations are seen not to be doing the ‘right’ things. This suggests there is something in the nature of a principal-agent relationship in existence, and that some form of accountability is then owed by the agent (the organization) to the principal (society). This paper seeks to investigate the nature of this accountability, distinguishing between the accountability which exists towards those elements of society with which an organization has a contractual relationship, and those where it does not. Adopting a pluralist stance, stakeholder theory is then used to illustrate the possible nature of both the form of legitimacy relationship extant, and of the accountability that the principal might expect of the agent.