Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the current policy of extending personal budgets to older people.


Design/methodology/approach
In developing this explanation, the paper draws upon a species of de-centred, post-foundationalist theory which draws attention to the way in which certain narratives can sustain a longing for the implementation of policies that are ultimately unachievable. The paper also draws upon original data from an evaluation of a national ageing charity's project to increase take-up of personal budgets.


Findings
The paper draws attention to, and seeks to explain, the paradoxical discursive positioning of older adults as "the unexceptional exception" within the general narrative of universal personalisation.


Research limitations/implications
This analytical approach can secure a different vantage point in this debate by paying closer attention to the ideological and ethical dimensions of personalisation than has been the case until now.


Practical implications
The paper contributes to the critical interrogation of the personalisation agenda, in which debate (both in academic and practitioner circles) has become highly polarised.


Social implications
The paper contributes to discussions in critical social gerontology which point to a bifurcation of later life into, on the one hand, an ageless third age and a frailed fourth age, on the other.


Originality/value
The paper makes clear that the discursive positioning of older people as "the unexceptional exception" risks an inadvertent ageism.

In early twenty-first-century China, online fantasy is one of the most popular literary genres. This article studies a subgenre of Chinese fantasy named xiuzhen (immortality cultivation), which draws on Daoist alchemy in particular and Chinese religion and culture in general, especially that which was negatively labelled superstitious in the twentieth century, to tell exciting adventure stories. Xiuzhen fantasy is indebted to wuxia xiaoshuo (martial arts novels), the first emergence of Chinese fantasy in the early twentieth century after the translation of the modern Western discourses of science, religion, and superstition. Although martial arts fiction was suppressed by the modernizing nation-state because it contained the unwanted elements of magic and supernaturalism, its reemergence in the late twentieth century paved the way for the rise of its successor, xiuzhen fantasy. As a type of magical arts fiction, xiuzhen reinvents Daoist alchemy and other superstitious practices to build a cultivation world which does not escape but engages with the dazzling reality of digital technology, neoliberal governance, and global capitalism. In this fantastic world, the divide of magic and science breaks down; religion, defined not by faith but embodied practice, serves as the organizing center of society, economy, and politics. Moreover, the subject of martial arts fiction that challenged the sovereignty of the nation-state has evolved into the neoliberal homo economicus and its non-/anti-capitalist alternatives. Reading four exemplary xiuzhen novels, Journeys into the Ephemeral (Piaomiao zhilv ), The Buddha Belongs to the Dao ( Foben shidao ), Spirit Roaming ( Shenyou ), and Immortality Cultivation 40K ( Xiuzhen siwannian ), this article argues that xiuzhen fantasy provides a platform on which the postsocialist generation seek to orient themselves in the labyrinth of contemporary capitalism by rethinking the modernist triad of religion, science, and superstition. ; Published version

In 1993, the British government turned to the private sector to finance much needed investment in public infrastructure and manage services under its Public Private Partnerships (PPP) policy (Edwards et al., 2004), with transport forming by far the largest component by value of the PPP programme. (.)

AbstractThere is a hysteria over plasmonic sensors based on metal‐insulator‐metal (MIM) waveguides and researchers around the globe are extensively studying these devices over the past two decades for diverse sensing applications for instance temperature, refractive index, pressure, and biochemical applications among others. The sensors based on MIM waveguides (WGs) are compact and offer unmatchable sensitivity as assessed with dielectric waveguide‐based sensors along with an extraordinary figure of merits (FOM). However, the major concern is that most of these sensors are only numerically simulated/analyzed and there is no experimental demonstration accessible to date. Therefore, in this mini‐review, these highly alluring sensor designs are critically analyzed to identify if they are practically feasible or just a fantasy among the scientific community.

Can we move fan participation and the co-creation of storylines outside the sphere of the culture industry to better understand their potential functions for constructing individual subjectivity and empowering social change? With an attention to experiences of migration, exile and detainment, and through close readings of documentary The Wolfpack (2015), HBO's bilingual horror comedy series Los Espookys (2019) and Manuel Puig's novel, El beso de la mujer araña (1976), I argue that it is necessary to move beyond a speaker–audience dialectic, as in traditional storytelling, and towards transmediated activity, where static or linear temporal and spatial orders are both reproduced and subverted. By converging performance studies with border studies and phenomenology, this contribution counters assumptions about submissive viewership while unpacking the political utility of entertainment. Ultimately, 'Doubling the fantasy, adapting the reel' challenges what it means to be a 'storyteller' and what constitutes a useful 'story' in the context of political advocacy and activism.

Magical realism as an artistic genre has been specified principally as a literary genre in its development. It is generally thought to have originated in South American folklore and literary writing, but this is a creative style that is quintessentially African. Defying a neat definition, magical realism is understood in this article as about human beings interacting with their environment. Characterised by elements of the fantastic woven into a narrative with a sense of presentation, magical realism is controversial. The controversy ranges from political undertones where critics have thought the term a postcolonial label employed by colonisers to marginalise the fiction of the colonised to express alterity. In African oral literature, magical realism is a genre that has serves to reveal the intimate relationship between reality and fantasy. The focus in this article is therefore on the use of magical realism as a device in selected African literary works in English to show that this device is not only employed by third world writers to cover up their lack of artistic merit, but also to instill cultural values and norms. The intention is also to indicate the often subordinated grandeur of African oral and literary classics.