PARTICIPATORY EVALUATION: NAVIGATING THE EMOTIONS OF PARTNERSHIPS

This paper describes the processes involved in evaluating a Sure Start programme in one inner city area. The evaluation was set up in the spirit of participatory action research in which the researchers aimed to work in partnership with key stakeholders to both enable and sustain supportive evaluative processes. The evaluation supported the aspirations espoused by the national Sure Start agenda to improve the lives of children under four, their parents and communities through an expressed commitment to partnership working. The paper draws on ethnographic reflections to describe and analyse the processes involved in setting up the evaluation over two years. Issues of trust, ambiguity and conflict associated with partnership working are explored. In particular the emotional components of relationships required to work in partnership are described as a means of managing ambiguity and conflict and promoting trust. Emotional labour is taken as a conceptual starting point to analyse the relationships and the organisational conditions required to sustain partnerships. Further psychoanalytic and sociological studies are drawn upon to aid the analysis and in particular to understand the emotional components of partnerships in the relatively uncharted waters of inner city regeneration work.     

Frenzied attacks. A micro‐sociological analysis of the emotional dynamics of extreme youth violence

Inspired by phenomenological and interactionist studies of youth violence, this article offers an empirical evaluation of Collins's micro‐sociological theory of violence. The main question is whether situations of extreme violence have distinct situational dynamics. Based on analyses of 159 interactions taken from judicial case files, situations of extreme youth violence, here called frenzied attacks, were identified on the basis of the state of encapsulation of the attackers (absorbed in the violence, their sole focus is the destruction of the victim) and the disproportionateness of the violence (the attackers continue to hurt the victims even though they do not pose a threat or a challenge to them). Qualitative and statistical analyses revealed that this emotional state results from a social figuration in which the emotional balance shifts toward complete dominance of the attackers. Thus, the occurrence of frenzied attacks is associated with the moment victims hit the ground, paralyse and start to apologize, with the numerical dominance of the attackers' supportive group and with feelings of group membership, in the form of solidarity excitement and family ties in the attackers' group. Alcohol intoxication is of influence as well, but contrary to the expectation, this effect was independent from solidarity excitement. The article concludes that Collins's theory on the emotional dynamics of violence adds a new dimension to the phenomenological and interactionist traditions of research.     

Humanising Managerialism: Reclaiming Emotional Reasoning,Intuition, the Relationship,and Knowledge and Skills in Social Work

This paper develops Professor Eileen Munro's coverage of ‘emotional dimensions’ in her Review of Child Protection in England. It argues that managerialism has failed to recognise the importance of the emotional life of human beings and the importance of the relationships we build in social work and that this failure seriously hinders the quality and effectiveness of social work. The paper begins with an account of what an ‘emotional dimension’ might encompass and, drawing on conceptualisations mainly from neuroscience, looks at what is meant by the words emotions and feelings, affect, attunement and empathy. A second section looks at the skewed representation of logical thinking as innately superior to emotional and intuitive reasoning and the part played by conscious and unconscious elements within judicial decision-making. It then analyses the dangers evident in the more extreme and rigid forms of managerialism that can be found in some areas of social work and a final section argues that for managerialism to be humanised it calls for an emotionally responsive relationship-based practice to be located at the heart of social work.     

The relationship between social media use and sleep quality among undergraduate students

Insufficient sleep is a growing health problem among university students, especially for freshmen during their first quarter/semester of college. Little research has studied how social media technologies impact sleep quality among college students. This study aims to determine the relationship between social media use and sleep quality among freshman undergraduates during their first quarter in college. Specifically, we explored whether variations in Twitter use across the time of day and day of the week would be associated with self-reported sleep quality. We conducted a study of freshman Twitter-using students (N?=?197) over their first quarter of college, between October and December of 2015. We collected students’ tweets, labeled the content of the tweets according to different emotional states, and gave theme weekly surveys on sleep quality. Tweeting more frequently on weekday late nights was associated with lower sleep quality (β?=??0.937, SE?=?0.352); tweeting more frequently on weekday evenings was associated with better quality sleep (β?=?0.189, SE?=?0.097). Tweets during the weekday that were labeled related to the emotion of fear were associated with lower sleep quality (β?=??0.302, SE?=?0.131). Results suggest that social media use is associated with sleep quality among students. Results provided can be used to inform future interventions to improve sleep quality among college students.     

‘It's been hell.’ Italian and British practice educators’ narratives of working with struggling or failing social work students in practice learning settings

Periods of assessed learning in practice settings are common requirements for social work students worldwide. The ‘practice learning opportunity’ as it is known in the UK, and ‘tirocinio di servizio sociale’ as it is referred to in Italy, are important sites of gatekeeping in preventing unsuitable people from becoming social workers. The experience of assessing failing students in practice learning settings, however, has been found to be particularly stressful and challenging for practice educators. This article documents findings from two qualitative studies that explored field educators’ experiences of working with struggling or failing social work students in Italy and England. The study finds both similarities and differences in the narratives of the assessors from the two countries. Similarities include, unpleasant emotional experience of working with a failing student, internalisation of the students’ failing as the practice educators’ own failing, perceptions that the universities may hide negative information about students and lack of acknowledgement of the gatekeeping function inherent in the practice educator role. Differences include the level of emotionality experienced by educators, the way students are spoken about and the perceived role and responses of the university. Further comparative European research that focuses on practice education is indicated.     

Challenging the comfort zone: self-discovery,everyday practices and international student mobility to the Global South

This paper scrutinises the underlying motivations of short-term international students by unpacking the notion of ‘leaving the comfort zone’ for self-discovery and self-change. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Canadian exchange students volunteering and studying in the Global South, the paper contributes to scholarship on everyday and emotional geographies of international student mobility and wider debates in mobility by examining how emotions of comfort and discomfort as well as everyday practices are productive for self-discovery, belonging, home-making and distinction. It reveals how students align the boundaries of their comfort zone and an un/reflexive self along the international and imaginative borders of the Global North/South. Contrary to tourism and mobility studies, I argue that students view everyday life and their relative immobility while abroad as both a distinctive and reflexive exercise. I suggest that students want to extend the boundaries of their comfort zone and their sense of ‘home’ to the Global South.     

Are Constructiveness and Destructiveness Essential Features of Guilt and Shame Feelings Respectively?

This paper involves a critical evaluation of a conceptualization of guilt and shame, which guides a number of research mainly in social psychology. In the contemporary literature, conceptualization of guilt and shame shows variation. In one of the leading approaches, guilt is regarded as an experience that targets behavior in evaluative thought and shame as targeting the self. According to this distinction, guilt has a constructive nature and it motivates the individual to take reparative actions, since it targets the behavior, whereas shame has a destructive quality and is linked with problem behaviors, since it targets the self. The claim that guilt and shame are adaptive and maladaptive feelings respectively by their very nature, has been challenged by theory and research. Researchers from non‐Western cultures also criticized compartmentalization of guilt and shame as constructive and destructive emotions by emphasizing cultural variation in the experience of self‐conscious emotions. In this regard, the present paper argues that features of constructiveness and destructiveness do not necessarily follow from the definitions of guilt and shame and that this dichotomous conceptualization of guilt and shame, and the research findings based on this dichotomy need reconsideration.     

"为文造情"辨

为文造情,是《文心雕龙.情采》篇中提出并作为当时一个创作思潮而加以批判的,其目的是要确立传统的为情造文观念的地位。但其反对的为文造情之“情”中吸纳了个体性的诸如闲适等情感,并为文学虚构留下了相应的余地。它不仅是文学创作过程中的必然产物,而且也是中国传统文学为情造文观念的重要补充。     

王夫之诗学“声情”论析要

王夫之作为我国古代诗学的一位杰出总结者,充分注意到诗与乐的同一性,极为重视对诗歌音乐美特征及规律的研究,他是中国古代第一个用“声情”这一概念论诗评诗的诗学理论家,“声情”论是他的“诗道性情”命题的合乎逻辑的延伸,在他看来,“声情美”即诗歌艺术的“穆耳协心”,亦即在“动听”的同时又道“性情”(包括诗人和欣赏者双方的性情).“声情”论体现了王夫之对古代诗歌艺术审美特质和文体特征的精到认识,在其诗学体系中占有重要地位.     

山水画写出心源才是真

时代的变革,带来了人类意识形态和文化艺术语境的巨大变化,中国山水画呈现出理论上百家争鸣,技法上五彩缤纷的勃勃生机.山水画家将当代新的哲学观念融于"心源",以此探索书"写"更有力,更自由、更恰当的山水画文本之真.故"写"是山水画的造型要素;"心源"是山水画的酿成要素;真是山水画的终极要素.