Suchergebnisse

This article examines why and how management of a department of the British civil service (`the Agency') has sought to use new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to change the organization of a complex form of administrative casework. In contrast to optimistic Information Age arguments that new workplace technologies will tend to benefit workers as well as employers, it is shown that Agency management have sought to use the new ICTs to increase their control over staff. This has involved the reorganization of some telephone work into a call centre for the first time. It is shown that the aim of increasing control has been not only to intensify work, but also to establish a technical basis for a broader restructuring of terms and conditions of employment that it was hoped would involve a reduction in the costs and place-bound nature of Agency labour. The article identifies a number of political and technical factors that have constrained managers from realizing the control they originally sought, so compelling them to preserve a complex form of call working and related employment conditions that they had originally intended to radically change. The article concludes with a discussion of how the new technical systems within the Agency have altered power relations between managers and staff, how government is hoping to use such technologies to cut costs across all civil service departments, and where resistance to such change may come from.

This article examines why and how management in a British civil service agency have sought to respond to the Modernising Governmentagenda of the present Labour government, by seeking to apply Taylorist principles of work organization to a complex form of administrative casework. This has led to the establishment of a call centre within the agency for the first time. The article discusses the response to this of the main trade union within the agency, the positive and cooperative nature of which is argued to be founded in the historic character of management–union relations within the agency, and in the 'high-quality' form that call centre working has so far assumed.The reasons for this are identified as having their origins primarily in a number of potentially temporary technical limits to the further realization of a Taylorist decomposition of call handling tasks.The persistence of these limits is argued to have compelled management to preserve complex working and employment terms that they may otherwise have sought to challenge and change.The article concludes by arguing that trade unionism in the agency is in crisis: a crisis consisting of a too uncritical understanding of the potential that the further development of call centre working has to enhance the degradation and devaluation of staff labour.

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh contain one-fifth of humanity, are home to many biodiversity hotspots, and are among the nations most subject to climatic stresses. By surveying their environmental history, we can gain major insights into the causes and implications of the Indian subcontinent's current conditions. This accessible new survey begins roughly 100 million years ago, when continental drift moved India from the South Pole and across the Indian Ocean, forming the Himalayan Mountains and creating monsoons. Coverage continues to the twenty-first century, taking readers beyond independence from colonial rule. The new nations of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have produced rising populations and have stretched natural resources, even as they have become increasingly engaged with climate change. To understand the region's current and future pressing issues, Michael H. Fisher argues that we must engage with the long and complex history of interactions among its people, land, climate, flora, and fauna

The U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in thousands of servicemembers and veterans diagnosed with PTSD or suffering from PTSD symptoms. As a result, PTSD has emerged as a salient social problem in the military context. This study is a social-historical qualitative study of war related PTSD during a decade of U.S-led war in Afghanistan and Iraq (2001-2012). Through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and extensive document analysis, I examine how public officials, veterans' advocacy groups, and researchers working in the U.S. military context have constructed PTSD and the policies addressing it. I emphasize issues and policies concerning diagnosis, treatment, and disability compensation, which are significant loci of action for veterans' advocates, public officials, and researchers. My findings first highlight that despite PTSD's long-standing codification as a mental disorder, the diagnosis is a controversial one whose legitimacy is at times disputed, particularly in U.S. military contexts. These disputes manifest not in questions about whether PTSD exists, but in queries and statements about how many individuals are, or should be, diagnosed with PTSD; the struggle is over prevalence rates. Second, I argue that various cultural meanings associated with PTSD--particularly perceptions of its "true" prevalence, high economic cost, and negative impact on military manpower--have shaped PTSD policy. Specifically, economic and military manpower implications have compounded concerns about prevalence and led some public officials and researchers to challenge the disorder's clinical validity as well as its diagnostic tools, procedures, and systems, and to frame PTSD as a clinical state which is often induced or falsified because of the prospect of "secondary gains" such as VA benefits. Finally, I focus on the range of veterans' advocate responses to and grievances about a lack of appropriate prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of PTSD. I argue that there exists a widespread channeling of veterans' advocacy efforts into health and mental health issues and postulate that this biomedicalization of advocacy funnels otherwise radical activity into collective action focused on VA benefits. This research builds upon sociological scholarship, most notably theories of the social construction of mental illness and social movements in health.