Search results

Performing paid care work requires workers to simultaneously negotiate care and waged relationships. Mediating contradictions between the two often causes workers to experience frustration, a form of emotional dissonance. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 100 workers in Australian aged care organisations, this research identifies aspects of the work environment that enable care workers to successfully juggle or synthesise the emotional demands of their work. The research demonstrates that employers have an important role in alleviating frustration, and can do this by creating work environments which: give care workers relative autonomy; allow care workers to construct themselves as professional carers providing quality care; provide workers with support to manage their emotions and develop emotional resilience; and promote client recognition of workers' roles. Providing such work environments has the potential to not only alleviate workers' frustration, but also to increase job satisfaction and retain workers in aged care.

Care provider organisations are under pressure from funding bodies and regulatory procedures to narrowly construct care in ways that preclude its relational, emotional and social characteristics. This process of subjecting care to a managerialist‐market logic, however, creates tensions between the organisation and its key stakeholders: care recipients, care‐workers and unpaid carers. These tensions are significant and are likely to place organisations under pressure to develop a more holistic approach to care. In addressing this issue, this paper draws upon the concept of bounded emotionality to argue that it is feasible for organisations to be both instrumental and caring, and thereby be responsive to the needs of all of their stakeholders. The paper concludes by discussing some of the practical implications of organisations adopting a framework of bounded emotionality, and suggesting some directions for future research.

Activists need to construct and manage multiple identities as activists, as well as negotiate their activist identities in relation to identity positions in other social realms such as paid work or parenting. This research is an empirical application of Melucci's concept of metamorphosis to the processes through which committed activists manage identity work. Metamorphosis facilitates an understanding of how activists maintain a sense of continuity through changes in identity. From life-history interviews with twenty long-term Australian activists this research operationalizes the four concepts associated with metamorphosis: being present or "in the moment," taking responsibility for action, being reflexive, and having a rhythm for managing the identity process. The analysis of these concepts demonstrates the need to extend understandings of identity to incorporate non-instrumental aspects of cognition, such as emotion, the body, and passion. These facilitate an activist's capacity to metamorphose, and therefore manage various aspects of identity construction. Activism is therefore sustained when activists can maintain their passionate participation in creating social change, regardless of circumstances, rather than simply enhancing their commitment to a particular organization.

Activists need to construct & manage multiple identities as activists, as well as negotiate their activist identities in relation to identity positions in other social realms such as paid work or parenting. This research is an empirical application of Melucci's concept of metamorphosis to the processes through which committed activists manage identity work. Metamorphosis facilitates an understanding of how activists maintain a sense of continuity through changes in identity. From life-history interviews with twenty long-term Australian activists this research operationalizes the four concepts associated with metamorphosis: being present or "in the moment," taking responsibility for action, being reflexive, & having a rhythm for managing the identity process. The analysis of these concepts demonstrates the need to extend understandings of identity to incorporate non-instrumental aspects of cognition, such as emotion, the body, & passion. These facilitate an activist's capacity to metamorphose, & therefore manage various aspects of identity construction. Activism is therefore sustained when activists can maintain their passionate participation in creating social change, regardless of circumstances, rather than simply enhancing their commitment to a particular organization. 1 Appendix, 49 References. Adapted from the source document.

Activists are embedded in the world that they are endeavouring to change. However, to become a Subject, capable of truly creating society, Touraine argues that individuals need to be deintegrated. Achieving such deintegration involves developing skills in self-reflection. This research examines the practices of a cohort of Australian activists in developing these skills. In contrast to Touraine's normative-cognitive framework of self-reflection, these activists engaged in practices of emotional reflexivity. One of these practices was called re-evaluation counselling. It was only by reflecting through and on their emotions that they were able to identify and change the processes through which they both participated in and challenged hegemonic constructions of the world. If Subjects are to become social movement in late modernity, more attention is required on the emotional dimensions of de-integration. In moving towards this end, this research uses the concept of emotional reflexivity to build upon Touraine's theory of subjectivation.

Addressing issues of emotion in social movements, this internationally oriented volume will appeal to both sociologists and political activists given its broad approach and unique emphasis on emotions in protest, dissent and social movements.

Migrants are an important component of the Australian aged care workforce and workers from Asia are the fastest-growing migrant cohort in the sector. Differentiating between migrants from South-East, North-East and Southern Asia and comparing them to other migrants and Australianborn workers, data from the 2012 National Aged Care Workforce Census and Survey is used to examine experiences of working in aged care, including working arrangements, job satisfaction and future work plans. The findings provide a basis for developing more targeted and nuanced workforce strategies that could help attract and retain Asian-born workers and assist in their settlement and integration.

PurposeWorkforce shortages and maldistribution in the health care sector are the outcome of poor planning processes, entrenched power relations, jurisdictional boundaries and professional silos. In seeking to redress these problems, countries are moving toward establishing independent agencies to monitor, regulate and shape the health workforce. In Australia, for example, Health Workforce Australia (HWA) has been established to provide data on workforce numbers and fund clinical education. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether this strategy is likely to work. By locating HWA within the framework of an Independent Regulatory Agency, the implicit strengths and weaknesses of using HWA to manage workforce planning are highlighted.Design/methodology/approachA theoretical discussion on regulatory capitalism and Independent Regulatory Authorities provides the context for the case study: the gynaecological cancer workforce – a niche health workforce that is complex and multidisciplinary. Data are from a mixed method study commissioned by Cancer Australia.FindingsThe analysis of the gynaecological cancer workforce illustrates the difficulties that HWA will face in defining the health workforce, in measuring supply and demand and in setting targets for training and education.Research limitations/implicationsFindings are limited by the fact that HWA was only established in mid 2009.Social implicationsThe establishment of independent agencies to oversee and implement government policy is a new form of control over universities and health professionals that challenges their professional autonomy.Originality/valueThis paper points to the creation of new agencies of government control in the wake of an international health workforce crisis.

The role of niche media in discursively constructing and deconstructing powerful ideas is often underestimated. Using the 2004 `Redfern riots' as a case study, this article investigates how ideological elements of the riots were framed by the Koori Mail, a fortnightly niche Indigenous publication, compared to the more mainstream Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph. The research is conducted through a frame analysis of 155 media texts from these three newspapers. In comparing the niche and mainstream media, the contribution of the niche media to the contested nature of debate within the mediated public sphere is evident. By keeping the riots within a socio-political frame, the Koori Mail actively reframed dominant ideological constructions of racial identity and were able to construct a more nuanced and politicized critique of the riots than that offered by the two mainstream papers.

In constructing new ways of engaging with society and new visions of how society might be, social activists need to negotiate numerous social, political, philosophical and personal contradictions and tensions. Utilizing data from a discourse analysis conducted on web-based texts, this article focuses on three such tensions experienced by autonomous activists: autonomy versus collective, operationalization versus institutionalization and evasion of versus subjection to mainstream authorities. We examine how autonomous activists negotiate these tensions and argue that the way in which they 'live with the tensions' can be theorized using Lash and Urry's concept of 'aesthetic reflexivity'. This particular form of reflexivity augments cognitive and emotional reflexivity within autonomous activism, and provides further insight into how autonomous activists succeed in reconstituting their practice in ways that reaffirm their principles.