Suchergebnisse

This article examines the aesthetics and contestations surrounding the planning of a far-reaching petroleum infrastructure and development scheme on the south coast of Timor-Leste. The project, known as Tasi Mane, is symptomatic of the central role that oil and gas revenues have come to play in the country's development. The article explores how promises of prosperity mobilise visions of societal improvement that were once associated with independence and examines some of the social and political effects that the anticipation of petroleum wealth and infrastructure engenders. While the availability of revenues from oil and gas generate modernist imaginaries of prosperity, the Tasi Mane project can itself be seen as a technology of state building. This process is, however, fraught with contradictions, since a state's legitimacy and autonomy are dependent on recognition by others.

Citizens with complex problems are often in touch with different welfare services and administrative systems in order to receive the help, they need. Sometimes these services overlap and sometimes they conflict. The lack of ready-made services to match the complex, multiple, and often shifting needs of citizens with complex problems presents a challenge to caseworkers in the welfare system. In this article, we zoom in on the management of a single user´s case, in order to examine in detail how caseworkers nevertheless make casework 'work'. We employ the concept of 'tinkering' to highlight the ad hoc and experimental way in which caseworkers work towards adjusting services to the unique case of such citizens. Tinkering has previously been used in studies of human-technology relations, among others in studies of care-work in the welfare system. In this paper, we employ the concept to capture and describe a style of working that, although not a formally recognized method, might be recognizable to many caseworkers in the welfare system. We show how tinkering involves the negotiation of three topics of concern, namely the availability of services, the potentials of services to be adjusted to the particular problems of the citizen, and finally, the potential for interpreting these problems and the citizen's needs in a way that they match the service. We further demonstrate that casework tinkering involves both short-term and long-term negotiation of services. Firstly, tinkering is involved in the continual adjustment and tailoring of services to the immediate needs of the citizen, but secondly, it also speaks to a more proactive process of working towards a more long-term goal.

The author interviews Francisco Xavier do Amaral, one of the founding leaders of Timor-Leste's independence movement, in August 2007, a few years before his death in Dili in March 2012

Essay

AIM: This article traces recent developments in Danish cannabis policy, by exploring how "cannabis use" is problematised and governed within different co-existing policy areas. BACKGROUND: Recently, many countries have changed their cannabis policy by introducing medical cannabis and/or by moving toward legalisation or decriminalisation. Researchers have thus argued that traditional notions of cannabis as a singular and coherent object, are being replaced by perspectives that highlight the multiple ontological character of cannabis. At the same time, there is growing recognition that drug policy is not a unitary phenomenon, but rather composed by multiple "policy areas", each defined by particular notions of what constitutes the relevant policy "problem". DESIGN: We draw on existing research, government reports, policy papers and media accounts of policy and policing developments. RESULTS: We demonstrate how Danish cannabis policy is composed of different co-existing framings of cannabis use; as respectively a social problem, a problem of deviance, an organised crime problem, a health- and risk problem and as a medical problem. CONCLUSION: While the international trend seems to be that law-and-order approaches are increasingly being replaced by more liberal approaches, Denmark, on an overall level, seems to be moving in the opposite direction: Away from a lenient decriminalisation policy and towards more repressive approaches. We conclude that the prominence of discursive framings of cannabis use as a "problem of deviance" and as "a driver of organised crime", has been key to this process.

Recently, many countries have changed their cannabis policy by introducing medical cannabis and/or by moving toward different forms of legalisation and/or decriminalisation. Researchers have thus argued that traditional notions of cannabis as a singular and coherent object, are gradually being replaced by perspectives that highlight the multiple ontological character of cannabis. At the same time, there is growing recognition that drug policy is not a unitary phenomenon. Based on the idea that drug policy is composed by multiple "policy areas" each defined by particular notions of what constitutes the relevant policy "problem", this article explores how Danish cannabis policy is composed of different co-existing framings of cannabis use; as respectively a social problem, a problem of deviance, an organised crime problem, a health- and risk problem and as a medical problem. While the international trend seems to be that law-and-order approaches are increasingly being replaced by more liberal approaches, we show how Denmark, on an overall level, seems to be moving in the opposite direction: Away from a lenient decriminalisation policy of cannabis use and towards more repressive approaches. We demonstrate how the prominence of discursive framings of cannabis use as a "problem of deviance" and as "a driver of organised crime", has been key to this process. ; Aim: This article traces recent developments in Danish cannabis policy, by exploring how "cannabis use" is problematised and governed within different co-existing policy areas. Background: Recently, many countries have changed their cannabis policy by introducing medical cannabis and/or by moving toward legalisation or decriminalisation. Researchers have thus argued that traditional notions of cannabis as a singular and coherent object, are being replaced by perspectives that highlight the multiple ontological character of cannabis. At the same time, there is growing recognition that drug policy is not a unitary phenomenon, but rather composed by multiple "policy areas", each defined by particular notions of what constitutes the relevant policy "problem". Design: We draw on existing research, government reports, policy papers and media accounts of policy and policing developments. Results: We demonstrate how Danish cannabis policy is composed of different co-existing framings of cannabis use; as respectively a social problem, a problem of deviance, an organised crime problem, a health- and risk problem and as a medical problem. Conclusion: While the international trend seems to be that law-and-order approaches are increasingly being replaced by more liberal approaches, Denmark, on an overall level, seems to be moving in the opposite direction: Away from a lenient decriminalisation policy and towards more repressive approaches. We conclude that the prominence of discursive framings of cannabis use as a "problem of deviance" and as "a driver of organised crime", has been key to this process.