Suchergebnisse

In sociology, 'the professional project' is understood as a collective endeavour of occupational groups that only succeeds if those groups possess, and control access to, a unique stock of knowledge. Urban sociologists have been critical of public housing managers' collective endeavours to present themselves as a profession because they use generic knowledge and common sense in their work. They also argue that 'the professional project' of housing management is being further under-mined by the 'performance ethos', since this now allows service managers to exert even more control over what public housing managers do and thus de-skills them even more. Our argument is that this analysis of the impact of the performance ethos is based on a conceptually limiting view of power as a repressive force that enforces 'blanket restrictions' on group activity, i.e. what professional groups are free to do. Conversely, we adopt a Foucauldian view of power because it better explains our research findings. Foucault suggests that power does not simply repress group activity. Power is also appropriated by individuals who use it to redefine themselves, e.g. who and what they are. We draw on our empirical data to show how individual housing managers were appropriating the performance culture in productive ways to achieve their own individual ends (i.e. to 'work on' their professional selves so as to re-define themselves and thus their individual claim to professional status). We use this analysis to argue that an individualized (as opposed to collective) 'professional project of the self' is emerging in housing management that has not yet been adequately captured in the sociological literature.

This paper examines the intersection between food, recollection and Irish migrants' reconstructions of their housing pathways in the three English cities of Leicester (East Midlands), Sheffield (South Yorkshire) and Manchester (North). Previous studies have acknowledged more implicitly the role of memory in representing the Irish migrant experience in England. Here, we adopt a different stance. We explore the mnemonic power of food to encode, decode and recode Irish men's reconstructions of their housing pathways in England when constructing and negotiating otherness. In doing so, we apply a 'Proustian anthropological' approach in framing the men's representations of their formative residential experiences in the boarding houses of the three English cities during the 1950s and 1960s are examined. The extent to which food provided in the boarding houses was used as an instrument of discipline and control is examined. The relevance of food related acts of resistance, food insecurity and acts of hedonic meat-centric eating in constructing the men's sociocultural identity are also explored.

Urban sociologists are becoming increasingly interested in neighbourhood as a source of middle-class identity. Par ticular emphasis is currently being given to two types of middle-class neighbourhood; gentrified urban neighbourhoods of'distinction' and inconspicuous `suburban landscapes of privilege'. However, there has been a dear th of work on `marginal' middle-class neighbourhoods that are similarly `inconspicuous' rather than distinctive, but less exclusive, thus containing sources of `spoiled identity'. This ar ticle draws on data gathered from two `marginal' middle-class neighbourhoods that contained a par ticular source of `spoiled identity': social renters. Urban sociological analyses of neighbour responses to these situations highlight a process of dis-identification with the maligned object, which exacerbates neighbour differences. Our analysis of data from the `marginal' m idd le-class neighbourhoods suggests something entirely different and Goffmanesque. This entailed the management of spoiled identity, which emphasized similarities rather than differences between neighbours.

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) has been a major preoccupation of New Labour's project of social and political renewal, with ASBOs a controversial addition to crime and disorder management powers. Thought by some to be a dangerous extension of the power to criminalise, by others as a vital dimension of local governance, there remains a concerning lack of evidence as to whether or not they compound social exclusion. This collection, from an impressive panel of contributors, brings together opinion, commentary, research evidence, professional guidance, debate and critique in order to understand the phenomenon of anti-social behaviour. It considers the earliest available evidence in order to evaluate the Government's ASB strategy, debates contrasting definitions of anti-social behaviour and examines policy and practice issues affected by it. Contributors ask what the recent history of ASB governance tells us about how the issue will develop to shape public and social policies in the years to come. Reflecting the perspectives of practitioners, victims and perpetrators, the book should become the standard text in the field