Suchergebnisse

The aim of this article is to examine how women with children define 'moral' behaviour in relation to the issue of divorce. The data consist of life stories written by married Finnish mothers who say that they have contemplated divorce or separation. The analytical focus is on how the decision process is narratively constructed. The theories around a feminist ethic of care provide the theoretical framework for the discussion, and I examine how concrete individuals in specific situations negotiate morality. The narrators present their decision to divorce or stay married as a moral dilemma and argue for their own solutions in moral terms. I also consider the consequences of using an ethic of care in the study of divorce. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Discourse and rhetoric of service-user involvement are pervasive in all mental health services that see themselves as promoting a Recovery ethos. Yet, for the service-user movement internationally, 'Recovery' was articulated as an alternative discourse of overcoming and resisting an institutionalized and oppressive psychiatric model of care. Power is all pervasive within mental health services yet often overlooked in official discourse on user-involvement. Critical research is required to expose the unacknowledged structural and power constraints on participants. My research problematizes practices of user involvement in one mental health service area in Ireland. Part I of this article examines the background context of policies and practices of user-involvement from the service-user perspective and explains developments in relation to service-user involvement in the case of Ireland. Participants in my study articulate their motivation for engagement with mental health service reform in terms of the right to participate in social justice terms, of wanting to improve services and humanise care. Power dynamics emerge as one of the primary obstacles to equitable involvement. Part II of this article presents an explanatory framework of power, using a model developed in the field of development studies; Gaventa's (2006) 'power cube.' The three dimensions of the cube represent the forms, spaces and levels of power. The explanatory potential of this model to highlight how hidden and invisible power operates in mental health services is illustrated by selected comments from the same participants. The power cube is a useful tool to illuminate the dynamics occurring in service-user involvement spaces. Showing how different forms of power operate in the spaces and levels of mental health involvement can develop service-users' awareness of the hidden and invisible aspects of power. Through this awareness, they can strategize around their potential to influence decision-making in mental health services.

This article studies the western bourgeois home, and argues that its social construction as a familiar, autonomous, safe, private haven is predicated not only upon the exclusion of undesired social elements (anomie, homelessness, social conflict, etc.) but also upon the exclusion of undesired natural elements (cold, dirt, pollution, sewage, etc.). Using the domestication of water in the western world as a vehicle, the article analyses the historical-geographical process through which nature became scripted as 'the other' to the bourgeois home, and explains the contribution of this separation to the conceptual construction of the home as a distinct and autonomous 'space envelope', supposedly untouched by socio-natural processes. This analysis identifies an inherent contradiction: despite the intense efforts at 'othering' and excluding nature from the premises of the home, the function and familiarity of this space is increasingly dependent upon the production of nature. Although the complex set of socio-natural networks, pipes and cables that carry clean, produced, commodified nature inside and pump bad, metabolized nature outside the bourgeois home remain visually excluded, it is this same excluded socio-nature that constitutes the material basis upon which the familiarity of the home is constructed. Thus, in a simultaneous act of need and denial, the bourgeois home remains the host of the elements that it tries to exclude. This contradiction surfaces at moments of crisis (such as power cuts, burst mains and water shortage) when familiar objects acquire uncanny properties. At such moments, the continuity of the social and material processes that produce the domestic space is unexpectedly foregrounded, bringing the dweller face to face with his/her alienation, within his/her most familiar environment. © Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004.

After many years of debate in the UK about the need for a degree-level qualification in social work, the arguments for a minimum degree-level qualification were accepted. The requirements for the degree in England were developed drawing on work from a number of sources, including a benchmark statement for undergraduate degrees in social work and focus groups with stakeholders. The new degree in England, launched in 2003, involves one extra years study; improvements in the qualifying standard for social work; and specific curriculum and entrance requirements. At the time of launching the degree, the government department responsible for funding (Department of Health) commissioned a three-year evaluation of the implementation of the new degree to establish whether the new qualifying level leads to improvements in the qualified workforce. The aim of the evaluation is to describe the experiences of those undertaking the degree, collect the views of the various stakeholders about the effectiveness of the degree and measure the impact of a degree-level qualification on those entering the workforce. This article, written by the team undertaking the evaluation of the England degree, explores the reasons for the methodological approach adopted and the issues that have arisen in setting up the research.

In recent years, there has been rapid growth in the volume of research output on the topic of e-government. To understand this research better, we used content analysis of eighty-four papers in e-government-specific research outlets (two journals and one conference series). Our analytical focus took in five main aspects: perspectives on the impacts of e-government, research philosophy, use of theory, methodology and method, and practical recommendations. Normative evaluation identified some positive features, such as recognition of contextual factors beyond technology, and a diversity of referent domains and ideas. Alongside this, though, research draws mainly from a weak or confused positivism and is dominated by over-optimistic, a-theoretical work that has done little to accumulate either knowledge or practical guidance for e-government. Worse, there is a lack of clarity and lack of rigor about research methods alongside poor treatment of generalization. We suggest ways of strengthening e-government research but also draw out some deeper issues, such as the role of research philosophy and theory, and the institutional factors - particularly pressures of competition and time - that may constrain development of e-government as a research field. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Political representation in the UK continues to be dominated by white, middle-aged, middle-class men, but several equalities groups now have an established presence in national political institutions. This article draws on research with stakeholder organisations, lobby groups for under-represented groups within political parties, former, current and unsuccessful candidates and sitting and former elected politicians conducted prior to the 2010 General Election. It finds that where aspiring candidates from under-represented groups have been selected, it was because they were 'acceptably different' conforming to aspects of the 'archetypal candidate'. We argue that increasingly dominant professionalised 'pathways' into national politics have allowed greater diversity, but remain narrow and exclusionary. Progress is less a reflection of a more open political system, instead representing accommodation of still under-represented groups to, and by, the existing system. Copyright © The Author [2012].

This article addresses the changing relationship between traditional legal definitions of motherhood and fatherhood and newer scientific definitions of parenthood. It is acknowledged that procedures like DNA testing have transformed legal interpretations, but in so doing it is argued that the social and cultural significance of kinship has been squeezed out of consideration. There is now an almost unassailable presumption that it is best for a child to know his or her genetic origins, yet there is also evidence that families still keep certain matters (eg donor conception) a secret. These families are increasingly defined as out of step with modern, ethical thinking yet it may be important to understand how such families define a child's welfare. The problem with knowledge about genetic links is that it is not mere 'information' but is powerful knowledge that changes relationships regardless of the wishes of those involved. The fear of such changes may mean families prefer to reject openness, especially if the risks of loss appear too high. These issues are explored through data on family secrets and also through an unusual legal case involving a child who took the decision not to know his own genetic origins. The article concludes that it is important, in the rush to impose transparency and openness on families, that we are aware of the negative as well as positive consequences. © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Under David Cameron the Conservative party recovered sufficiently to deliver a Conservative Prime Minister. Cameron achieved what three leaders before him did not: a consistent poll lead over Labour and a broadening of the Conservative message. This chapter also highlights two major limitations to the Conservative 'recovery'; (i) the size of the Conservative base has not enlarged: roughly the same proportion of people identify with the Conservatives as did so in 1997, and voters' feelings towards the Conservative party saw just a small improvement; and (ii) although many evaluations of Conservative competence were less negative by 2010, the ratings were not yet clearly positive. The Conservative lead entering the election was narrow on many key criteria, and the campaign failed to change this position. Furthermore, this article suggests that Conservative ratings became positive in 2008, as the financial crisis occurred, and narrowed as Britain emerged from recession. Although much can be attributed to the selection of a new leader, the Conservative 'recovery' was due to the broader political context, and it was also a partial recovery, at best. © The Author 2010.

This article focuses on the ways in which financial crisis has altered conceptions and forms of regionalism in the global political economy, and thus compels a change in our theoretical understandings not only of regionalist dynamics but also of 'governance' in the broader sense. To this end, my aim is to look through a South American lens at the central issues involved in the reformulation of regionalism. I propose to do this by setting out a series of three interconnected responses to the question of where regionalism fits into a 'post-globalisation', 'post-Washington Consensus' reconsideration of key structures, development models and policy issues. These are considered in turn in successive sections of the article.

This article examines the relationship between football (soccer) and the military in Britain to explore how "invisible nationalism" has evolved. Here, invisible nationalism refers to the phenomena by which the presence of the military at major British sporting events is both highly visual and has been rendered culturally and politically invisible: It is hidden "in plain sight." We applied the conceptual framework associated with the "Annales" School of structuralist history to explore how the inextricable links between football, the military, the monarchy, and established church have influenced the evolution of invisible nationalism. We conducted ethnographic fieldwork, including observations, interviews, and focus groups, and also analyzed visual data. These comprised television broadcasts of national sporting events and figures taken at English football clubs. We conclude that the power of the dominant metanarratives of British nationalism serves to render these phenomena invisible to most spectators, especially those who consume football via television.

This article uses the theory of 'communities of practice' to explore the discontinuity of knowledge sharing across different groups co-located within a collaborative research partnership. It presents the findings of a qualitative case study conducted within one of the Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs)-large-scale UK-based knowledge mobilization initiatives bringing together the producers and users of health research. Focusing on the boundaries emerging between and within the research and implementation strands of the CLAHRC, the article describes how differences between communities of practice give rise to discontinuities in knowledge sharing. Its findings highlight the role of fragmented organizational design, divergent meanings and identities, and dysfunctional boundary bridges in the (re)production, legitimization, and protection of boundaries between groups. Finally, the article questions the role of research implementation as a boundary practice bridging the gap between academic research and clinical practice.

New Institutionalism has shown that the 'rules of the game' are crucial to structuring political life in terms of constraining and enabling political actors and influencing political outcomes. A limitation of this approach, however, has been its overemphasis on formal rules, with much less attention paid to how informal rules work alongside and in conjunction with formal institutions to shape actors and outcomes. This article contributes to an emerging literature that highlights the importance of informal institutions by bringing into focus one element that has been hidden in these debates - the influence of gender norms and practices on the operation and interaction between formal and informal institutions. It highlights some of the key benefits of a gender analysis for understanding political institutions in both their formal and informal guise and considers some of the challenges in building a research agenda that requires new methods and techniques of inquiry. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This article shows that the work of the German Marxist philosopher Theodor W. Adorno offers a surprisingly rich resource for postcolonial theory. Adorno's work addresses the world outside Europe more often than one might expect. But it is not so much what Adorno thinks as how he thinks that makes him a postcolonialist. Adorno's philosophy of negative dialectics tracks particular phenomena to the totality of which they are a part. Everything, from the most innocuous details of everyday life to the Holocaust and imperialism, is linked to the world-encircling, thought-frustrating and violence-inducing system of capitalism. But Adorno's characteristic negativity also makes him sensitive to that system's fallibility and its vulnerability to alternatives. The article therefore touches on the normative dimensions of Adorno's moral philosophy. Adorno's work commands attention because of its dialectical style of thinking, its consequent focus on capitalism's intrinsic violence, its belief that effective political action presupposes introspection and a moral capacity for empathy with others' suffering, and its attractive conviction that these aptitudes can be enabled by aesthetic experience. Accordingly, the essay concludes with a reading of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace. This article seeks to show that an Adornian postcolonial criticism is as concerned with the gratuitous longevity of capitalism and imperialism as it is inspired by the prospect of erecting a more just and egalitarian social order. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

This article assesses Bulpitt's treatment of the centre or central state. It begins by reviewing Bulpitt's argument that the UK centre elite developed a detached style of territorial management and recognized the limits to the state's power. The argument is that the elite at the centre sought to avoid the costs of intervention in the periphery so it could retain its autonomy over decisions affecting the economy and international affairs. The article then assesses Bulpitt's claims against extant evidence from the study of UK politics. It concludes that, in spite of Bulpitt's failure to appreciate the interest of the centre in the detail of local administration, the account holds up surprisingly well and could be adopted as a comparative framework for analysing how central elites seek to keep their grip on power by managing territorial politics successfully. © The Author 2010. Journal compilation © 2010 Government and Opposition Ltd.

In many political systems the political neutrality of senior managers' tenure is often cherished as a key part of the politics-administration dichotomy and is subject to formal safeguards. We test hypotheses about the impact of political change on senior management turnover drawn from political science, public administration and private sector management theory. Using panel data to control for unobserved heterogeneity between authorities, we find that changes in political party control and low organizational performance have both separate and joint positive effects on the turnover rate of senior managers. By contrast, the most senior manager, the chief executive, is more sheltered: the likelihood of a chief executive succession is higher only when party change and low performance occur together. Thus the arrival of a new ruling party reduces the tenure of senior managers, but chief executives are vulnerable to political change only when performance is perceived as weak. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.