Teaching Students to Challenge the War-as-Justice Rhetoric

This paper will examine former supermodel Tyra Banks as a contemporary “celebrity entrepreneur,” focusing on Banks' recent shift from television persona to multimedia icon within a neoliberal popular culture. I argue that our contemporary new media environment, marked by convergent media texts, self-branding, and interactivity, provides an ideal space for Banks to produce and globally circulate her postfeminist star text. Through her websites, Facebook, and Twitter confessionals, Banks is able to successfully navigate the contradictory discourses that insist female celebrities be both “authentic” selves while maintaining a disciplined, hegemonic femininity that becomes legitimized and naturalized. I conclude that while Banks' mobilization of a hypervisibility and sense of individual agency generates an authenticity that may resonate with her fans, she remains contained by the neoliberal and postfeminist discourses that allow her to have such a prominent Internet presence. Consequently, this paper serves to raise unexplored questions about the relationship between celebrity culture, postfeminist and neoliberal subjectivities, and new media.     

Learning in organizations: HR implications and considerations

This paper looks at learning in organizations as one response to competitive pressure and accelerating environmental change. Two approaches, the learning organization and HRD, are examined in the light of new models of management and learning and a move towards the integration of work, learning, and strategy. The significance of employee participation is considered in relation to learning and some benefits and drawbacks discussed. The development of a learning orientation is seen as an organization-wide responsibility but HR practitioners can play a key role in the promotion of learning by gearing the more traditional HR activities towards the achievement of organizational goals.     

A complex solution to a complicated problem? Early messages from the national evaluation of the Children's Fund Prevention Programme

This paper is concerned with exploring the research and policy base that underpinned the development of the Children's Fund Prevention Programme. It discusses how the initiative developed, how it is being evaluated and how it is now contributing to the new policy agenda around prevention services. Early findings are discussed highlighting some of the challenges local projects have to manage around partnership working, participation of children and young people in the programme, and the embedding of prevention strategies in local practice. Finally the conclusion sets the Children's Fund in forthcoming central government policy activity and examines how the evaluation can best inform the development of collaborative preventative services to children and their families.     

FAST DOUBLE BOOTSTRAP TESTS OF NONNESTED LINEAR REGRESSION MODELS

It has been shown in previous work that bootstrapping the J test for nonnested linear regression models dramatically improves its finite-sample performance. We provide evidence that a more sophisticated bootstrap procedure, which we call the fast double bootstrap, produces a very substantial further improvement in cases where the ordinary bootstrap does not work as well as it might. This FDB procedure is only about twice as expensive as the usual single bootstrap.     

The Purchaser/Provider Split in Social Care: Is It Working?

This paper reviews the ideas of public choice theory that provided the rationale for introducing the purchaser/provider split and suggests that the notion of provider self-interest is as undifferentiated a concept as its rival: public ethos or duty. Using data from eighteen months' observation and interviewing in five local authorities, it then goes on to address the huge amount of work involved in separating purchasing from providing. We trace the changing understanding of the purpose of the split, problems of defining who is a purchaser and who a providers, problems of working the new relationship between purchasers and providers, and difficulties in developing the purchasing function.
We then seek to examine what are believed to be the main benefits of the purchaser/provider split, asking whether there is evidence that purchasers are doing a better job of identifying needs than providers, and whether there is evidence of competition involving multiple providers and multiple suppliers. Finally, we investigate whether there has been an increase in responsiveness, taking home care as an example. The paper concludes that while increased competition among suppliers has been one important factor in two authorities in securing a more responsive service, the evidence is equivocal as to whether the purchaser/provider split has been the key to securing competition.     

To See Ourselves As Others See Us? Incorporating the Constraining Role of Socio‐Cultural Practices in the Theorization of Micropolitical Resistance

In this paper, I explore micro‐political resistance (defined as resistance at the level of meanings, identity or subjectivity) within the context of professional part‐time working. Using Skeggs' (1997) notion of dialogical recognition, which refers to an individual's identification with negative portrayals of the social categories to which they belong, I argue that in transgressing dominant (and taken‐for‐granted) workplace norms, part‐time professionals experience guilt and a sense that they may not be fulfilling their professional obligations. Based on a qualitative study of part‐time working in the UK police service, I show how part‐time professionals navigate these feelings by both drawing attention to the instrumental value of conforming to certain work‐based norms, specifically long hours, and by refusing deployment to tasks and roles that they see as peripheral to their professional identities. It is through such refusals, I argue, that the micropolitical resistance I illustrate in this paper can be understood as effective because of its impact on how everyday routines are performed.     

THE "INCESTUOUS FAMILY" REVISITED: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF FAMILY THERAPY MYTHS

From a feminist perspective, the family therapy literature concerning incest fails to perceive the patriarchal context of abusive behavior and consequently blames the victim. This paper critiques the family therapy literature by drawing on the feminist discourse concerning incest. Several pervasive myths are identified: (a) that fathers and mothers are pathologically disturbed or inadequate; (b) incest is caused by separation and loss; (c) family isolation or a rigid external boundary explains incest; and (d) incest serves a function in maintaining family organization. By analyzing the contradictions arising from these polemical positions, we propose criteria for developing an adequate clinical account of incest.     

Counselor and client perceptions of the effect of social and physical contact on the therapeutic process

In 1991 a random sample of former clients of a metropolitan counseling center were surveyed as to their perceptions of the effect on therapy of 21 forms of social or physical contact between client and counselor. This article reports the results of a follow-up study conducted in 1992 in which the professional counseling staff of the same center were surveyed as to their perceptions of the effect on therapy of the same 21 types of contact. The results of both studies are compared, and statistically significant differences in evaluation of the behaviors by the two groups are noted.     

Working with ‘The Welfare’ in Child-at-Risk Cases

This paper, the second in a series concerned with family therapy in cases involving children at risk of abuse, focuses on how to establish a workable relationship between therapists and child protection professionals and child protection professionals and parents. After overviewing the difficulties faced by therapists in working with ‘the Welfare', we propose guidelines to overcoming common obstacles to successful case management, concluding that therapy often fails when therapists attempt to deal with intrafamilial issues long before external relationships are resolved.