Some reflections on discourses on football hooliganism

This essay is partly a response to the recent ethnographic research carried out by Armstrong and Harris, and partly a survey of a more general set of interconnected discourses about football hooliganism as a social phenomenon over the past thirty years into which the work of Armstrong and Harris fits. Discourses on football hooliganism seemed to have proliferated just as the ‘object’ in question seems to have disappeared from public view; at least in Britain, if not in other parts of Continental Europe. Part of the problem lies in the difficulty of defining accurately what we mean by the highly contentious phrase ‘football hooliganism’, a term which has no specific referent in English or Scottish law and whose boundaries, or ‘field’, are demarcated by these various discourses or ‘disciplines’ themselves: namely legal, sociological, psychological, criminological, geographical, architectural and so on. The essay offers examples of approaches which might overcome some of the difficulties experienced in researching football hooliganism.     

Medicine on the line? Computer‐mediated social support and advice for people with diabetes

The advent of thousands of Usenet groups on the Internet, covering a vast range of medical and welfare issues and ostensibly devoted to the mutual social support of participating members, has raised the potential for the development of new forms of 'virtual' health care. This article critically analyses the use by people with diabetes of one such Usenet group. It seeks to establish, first, the extent to which such a site provides some demonstrable measure of social support to its participants. This is approached by undertaking a structural analysis of the site to identify the extent of usage, and the nature of supporting interventions using a fivefold classification (instrumental, informational, esteem and social companionship and other). Second, the article attempts to identify any disparity between the lay health-knowledge in evidence and biomedical opinions proffered by the use of a panel of consultant diabetiologists. The results of the analysis suggest that the diabetes newsgroup provides an example of an active forum for largely well-informed participants who routinely use the media as an aid to the reflexive management of their medical condition. It also raises the prospect of a renegotiated relationship between medical knowledge and lay experience based upon shared learning     

The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

The research access/impact problem arises because journal articles are not accessible to all of their would-be users; hence, they are losing potential research impact. The solution is to make all articles Open Access (OA; i.e., accessible online, free for all). OA articles have significantly higher citation impact than non-OA articles. There are two roads to OA: the “golden” road (publish your article in an OA journal) and the “green” road (publish your article in a non-OA journal but also self-archive it in an OA archive). Only 5% of journals are gold, but over 90% are already green (i.e., they have given their authors the green light to self-archive); yet only about 10–20% of articles have been self-archived. To reach 100% OA, self-archiving needs to be mandated by researchers' employers and funders, as the United Kingdom and the United States have recently recommended, and universities need to implement that mandate.     

A toolbox for public relations: The oeuvre of Michel Foucault

In this article, we provide a brief introduction to the work of Michel Foucault. Our focus is on the major themes of Foucault's work: discourse, power/knowledge and subjectivity. We demonstrate the rich contribution that Foucauldian theory can make to public relations practice and scholarship by moving beyond a focus on excellence towards an understanding of public relations as a discourse practice with power effects.     

Research note: Safety,statistics and business cycles: a response to Nichols

This article considers three criticisms made by Nichols of my article on ‘industrial injuries in British manufacturing’. First, I argue that, notwithstanding recognised problems with data which include ‘minor’ accidents, this should not be rejected. I then question the reliability of the alternative data used by Nichols, namely that related to fatalities in British manufacturing. Second, I show that Nichols' claim that accident rates were increasing rather than decreasing in the years 1975–1979 can only be sustained if one shifts the years within which the trend is considered, and ignores other evidence to the effect that the latter part of the seventies witnessed a continuation of a long-term decline in accident rates in British manufacturing industries. Finally, in response to the charge that I misled readers in my original article, I note how Nichols' argument was indeed one that prioritised ‘business cycles; further, I indicate that Nichols has himself engaged in a highly focused reading of my earlier article.     

Treatment of the emotionally disturbed,mildly retarded youngster in the foster care system

This paper demonstrates the need for a broad array of clinical services in treating the emotionally disturbed, mildly retarded youngster in the foster care system. A hypothesis suggests that cognitive deficits and borderline pathology are interrelated, and that treatment involves modifications of traditional therapeutic techniques. The definition of clinical is expanded to include seemingly concrete and environmental services, in addition to the office therapy session. Finally, some systemic impediments to effective treatment of the population are explored.This paper was completed as a requirement of the Post-Master's Program in Advanced Clinical Social Work of Hunter College School of Social Work.     

Who owns the trauma? A Kleinian perspective on the dialogue between child protection social workers and the media

The present paper makes use of the developmental model of movement between mental positions that was formulated by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, aimed at understanding the dialogue that takes place between the media and social workers in the field of child welfare, centring around incidents of murder within the family. The basic concept in the paper is that when working with children who are victims of abuse and with their parents, and when reporting on them as well, the feeling of personal control is severely undermined, being associated with the loss of the hallowed social value known as ‘unconditional love of a parent for his child’. The paper illustrates these theoretical ideas by describing two cases that took place in Israel and recommendations are made regarding ways of promoting the dialogue between the professions.     

The sociology of late secularization: social divisions and religiosity

At the start of the twentieth century the religious differed from the religiously indifferent largely in being religious. Now they differ in a number of other social and demographic characteristics that reduce interaction between the two populations further than simple numbers would require. That some of the main carriers of religion are immigrants or adherents of recently imported faiths reinforces the sense that religion is what other people do. In the context of the stock of religious knowledge being depleted and religion‐taken‐too‐seriously being unpopular, the narrow demographic base of the religious makes conversion unlikely and thus makes the reversal of secularization unlikely.