In good company: risk, security and choice in young people's drug decisions

This article draws on original empirical research with young people to question the degree to which ‘individualisation of risk’, as developed in the work of Beck and Giddens, adequately explains the risks young people bear and take. It draws on alternative understandings and critiques of ‘risk’ not to refute the notion of the reflexive individual upon which ‘individualisation of risk’ is based but to re‐read that reflexivity in a more hermeneutic way. It explores specific risk‐laden moments – young people's drug use decisions – in their natural social and cultural context of the friendship group. Studying these decisions in context, it suggests, reveals the meaning of ‘risk’ to be not given, but constructed through group discussion, disagreement and consensus and decisions taken to be rooted in emotional relations of trust, mutual accountability and common security. The article concludes that ‘the individualisation of risk’ fails to take adequate account of the significance of intersubjectivity in risk‐decisions. It argues also that addressing the theoretical overemphasis on the individual bearer of risk requires not only further empirical testing of the theory but appropriate methodological reflection.     

The use,role and application of advanced technology in the lives of disabled people in the UK

Disabled people are excited by the potential benefits of using advanced technologies at home. However, many devices are abandoned early and lie unused. This research project aimed to explore why this happens, what the users of such technologies require, how advanced technologies can rise to the challenges of flexibility and user choice, which applications enhance independence and improve quality of life and what the barriers are to take‐up and future utilization. It was found that disabled people wish to use advanced technology to increase independence in and beyond home but the cost of both mainstream and ‘specialist’ devices are prohibitive. The role of advanced technology should be to enhance independence and provide mainstream solutions that disabled people request, rather than designing and engineering ‘specialist’ expensive products. Furthermore, the application of advanced technology for use in the home should be directed by disabled people, collectively and individually.     

On Childhood and Risk: An Exploration of Children's Everyday Experiences in Rural Peru

Drawing on data from Peru, this article explores how poverty mediates diverse risks in rural children's lives. It offers four main arguments. First, risk is not simply a feature of ‘extraordinary’ childhoods, but integral to everyday, ‘ordinary’ lives. Second, children's responses to adversity are crucially shaped by sociomoral considerations. Third, children participate actively in household risk mitigation, their engagement structured by individual (biographical) and collective factors. Fourth, changing circumstances present new opportunities and challenges for children living with adversity. Current approaches focusing on so‐called ‘objective’ risks neglect children's own priorities and subjective experiences.     

‘Recovery work’ and ‘magic’ among long‐term mental health service‐users

Based on an extended period of qualitative research with mental health service‐users in north‐east England, this article considers the various forms of ‘magical work’ and ‘recovery work’ that emerge in the lives of people living with severe mental health problems. Given the now sizeable body of literature which seeks to problematize traditional conceptual boundaries of work, the article asks to what extent these hidden and unusual work‐forms might also be considered legitimate members of the category. Rather than argue for the expansion of the construct to accommodate these activities, the paper attempts simply to problematize the extent to which so‐called ‘mad’ forms of work are irresolvably different to more conventional forms of occupation. In challenging notions of the psychiatric patient as inevitably inactive, new vocabularies for service‐user work are explored. Concluding remarks are also directed to recent policy debates concerning ‘back‐to‐work’ welfare reform for long‐term out of work service‐users.     

‘It feels right in my heart’: affective accountability in narratives of attachment

This article makes a contribution to discussions around ‘affect’ in the social sciences (Clough and Halley, 2007; Connolly, 1999; Massumi, 2002). It emerges from a research project involving a network of mothers – in London – who breastfeed their children to ‘full term’. Typically, this would be up to the age of three or four, though ranged, in this case, to between one and eight years old. For many women, the most fundamental reasoning in their decision to breastfeed to ‘full term’ is that it simply ‘feels right.’ The article therefore explores anthropological approaches to the ‘feelings’ that embodied experiences generate, as revealed in the accounts and practices of the people we work with (whether at the physiological, emotional or moral levels). It considers various means of describing the feelings experienced by women during of long‐term breastfeeding – such as ‘hormones’, ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’– but ultimately argues for a theoretical framework of ‘affect’ to incorporate best the combined physiological and moral aspects of ‘doing what feels right in my heart,’ so critical to women's perceptions of themselves as mothers.     

Contextual Risk,Individualised Responses: An Assessment of Safeguarding Responses to Nine Cases of Peer‐on‐Peer Abuse

Practitioners, academics and policymakers are increasingly questioning the sufficiency of safeguarding practice in protecting young people from peer‐on‐peer abuse in England. Using the findings from an in‐depth analysis of nine cases where young people either raped or murdered their peers, this article explores approaches to assessing and intervening with those affected by peer‐on‐peer abuse. Building upon international calls for a contextual account of abuse between young people, the article identifies a professional struggle to address the interplay between young people's homes and the public and social spaces in which peer‐on‐peer abuse often manifests. Findings from this study are used to illuminate wider research into peer‐on‐peer abuse which has indicated a professional inability to: assess young people's behaviours with reference to the contexts in which they occur; change the environmental factors that influence abusive behaviours; and recognise the vulnerability of those who abuse their peers. The article concludes that to effectively respond to peer‐on‐peer abuse, multiagency partnerships are required which can identify, assess and intervene with the harmful norms in peer groups, schools and public spaces that can facilitate peer‐on‐peer abuse and undermine parental capacity to keep young people safe – thereby adopting a more contextual approach to safeguarding adolescents. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

‘Explores approaches to assessing and intervening with those affected by peer‐on‐peer abuse’

Key Practitioner Messages

• Social contexts such as peer groups, schools and neighbourhoods can make young people vulnerable to peer‐on‐peer abuse.
• Assessing and intervening with young people and families affected by peer‐on‐peer abuse will not impact upon the social contexts associated with the phenomenon.
• Multiagency partnerships need to intervene with social contexts that, albeit beyond the traditional remit of child protection, facilitate peer‐on‐peer abuse and undermine the capacity of parents to keep young people safe.

‘Social contexts such as peer groups, schools and neighbourhoods can make young people vulnerable to peer‐on‐peer abuse’

     

‘Go on,Go on,Go on’: Sexual Consent,Child Sexual Exploitation and Cups of Tea

This novel paper critically addresses a currently popular sex education resource which compares sexual consent to tea drinking. Drawing from a study which considered the meaning of consent through focus groups and interviews with young people and professionals, we argue that the central ‘risk avoidance’ message of such resources individualises the potential risks of non‐consensual sex and ignores the gendered social structures which shape interpersonal relationships. We suggest that simplifying and extrapolating sexual consent from broader cultural understandings is problematic. Conversations with young people are important, but they need to address the complexity of sexual consent, coercion and gendered sexual norms.     

Customer First and Customer Sexual Harassment: Some Evidence from the Taiwan Life Insurance Industry

Empirical research suggests that customer sexual harassment is a far more common problem than employee to employee harassment for female salespeople. However, to date, there has been relatively little research conducted on the problem of customer sexual harassment. Insurance salespeople sometimes need to meet customers outside the company, and customer sexual harassment problems may occur. Hence, by using Taiwan's life insurance industry as an example, this study explores three research questions: (1) When the idea of ‘customer first’ is fully recognized by insurance salespeople, does it make the salespeople more tolerant of customer sexual harassment problems? (2) When the idea of customer first is supported by the insurance company, will insurance salespeople expose customer sexual harassment problems? (3) Will insurance salespeople tend to be more tolerant of quid pro quo sexual harassment? A total of 223 full‐time and self‐employed insurance salespeople participated in and completed this study survey. The results showed that the company's attitude may significantly affect the respondents' intention to expose the customer sexual harassment, but the personal belief in ‘customer first’ may not affect the respondents' intention to expose the customer misconduct. Since the three research questions have been less studied in the literature, and customer sexual harassment problems could have serious effects on salespeople, we think the results of this empirical study may have some implications for researchers and practitioners.     

Time and Work–Life Balance: The Roles of ‘Temporal Customization’ and ‘Life Temporality’

This article poses a challenge to the orthodox binary, conceptualization of work–life balance only made possible by relying on the widespread ‘clock time’ worldview, which understands employment practices in terms of the basic time = money equation. In particular, it is the balance metaphor which relies on a quantification of both work and life in order to make sense and can therefore be seen to be based on an understanding of time as a measurable and value‐able unit. This article seeks to begin the exercise of examining the concept of work–life balance through a broader concept of the temporal dimension than simply limited quantitative notions. Two temporal themes are reported from a study which identified employees who had customized their working pattern to suit the various and multi‐dimensional facets of their lifestyles and thereby successfully improved their work–life balance. Participants in this study demonstrated that an improved work–life balance is more about a mind‐set that refuses to be dominated by a work temporality and is determined to create ‘me time’ rather than e.g. simply choosing a four day week or a part‐time job. It is argued that the notion of work–life balance is more usefully conceptualized within a broader notion of ‘livingscapes’ which contain both elements of work and life and that as researchers, our challenge must be to reflect the complexity of this weave within our analyses of individuals’ work–life balance.     

Students-as-insurers: rethinking ‘risk’ for disadvantaged young people considering higher education in England

The conventional view since the early 2000s has been that participation in higher education (HE) is a risky pathway for disadvantaged young people in England; the social risk of entering an alien environment combines with the financial risk of rising costs and questionable long-term returns. This riskiness has been constructed as a major barrier to participation. However, national administrative data cast doubt on whether this analysis still holds true. Despite significant rises in tuition fees, the proportion of disadvantaged young people entering HE has continued to rise, with advantaged groups seemingly being more price-sensitive. Data from recent qualitative studies has also suggested that young people are now less attuned to risks. This paper considers whether circumstances in wider society have shifted perceptions of risk. The volatility resulting from the global financial crisis appears to have repositioned HE as a less risky option than early entry to the labour market, especially with more jobs becoming ‘graduate’, while the social risk has declined as HE has diversified. The paper draws on theoretical perspectives from Beck, Boudon, Simon and Kahneman to argue that many disadvantaged young people now view HE as a form of ‘insurance’ against an uncertain future.     

People who live apart together (LATs) – how different are they?

‘Living apart together’– that is being in an intimate relationship with a partner who lives somewhere else – is increasingly recognised and accepted as a specific way of being in a couple. On the face of it, this is a far cry from the ‘traditional’ version of couple relationships, where co‐residence in marriage was placed at the centre and where living apart from one's partner would be regarded as abnormal, and understandable only as a reaction to severe external constraints. Some commentators regard living apart together as a historically new family form where LATs can pursue a ‘both/and’ solution to partnership – they can experience both the intimacy of being in a couple, and at the same time continue with pre‐existing commitments. LATs may even de‐prioritize couple relationships and place more importance on friendship. Alternatively, others see LAT as just a ‘stage’ on the way to cohabitation and marriage, where LATs are not radical pioneers moving beyond the family, but are cautious and conservative, and simply show a lack of commitment. Behind these rival interpretations lies the increasingly tarnished spectre of individualisation theory. Is LAT some sort of index for a developing individualisation in practice? In this paper we take this debate further by using information from the 2006 British Social Attitudes Survey. We find that LATs have quite diverse origins and motivations, and while as a category LATs are often among the more liberal in family matters, as a whole they do not show any marked ‘pioneer’ attitudinal position in the sense of leading a radical new way, especially if age is taken into account.     

Regrounding Youth Cultural Theory (in Post‐Socialist Youth Cultural Practice)

This article considers how the study of youth cultural practice in Eastern Europe informs theoretical and empirical debate about youth culture. It charts the trajectory of academic writing on East European youth cultures and suggests the region’s state socialist past (which made social inequalities relatively insignificant at a time when, elsewhere, youth cultural studies were dominated by class‐based readings) combined with the explosion of inequality in the post‐socialist period (by which time class‐resistant post‐subcultural theories led anglophone academic discussion), makes it an interesting vantage point from which to reconsider academic paradigms. Drawing on empirical examples of youth cultural practice in (post)‐socialist Eastern Europe, it argues for a perspective that integrates structural and cultural factors shaping young people’s lives. It suggests moving forward western theoretical debates – often stymied in arguments over nomenclature (‘subculture’, ‘postsubculture’, ‘neo‐tribe’) – by shifting the focus of study from ‘form’ (‘subculture’ etc.) to ‘substance’ (concrete cultural practices) and attending to everyday communicative, musical, sporting, educational, informal economy, and territorial practices. Since such practices are embedded in the ‘whole’ rather than ‘subcultural’ lives of young people, this renders visible how cultural practices are enabled and constrained by the same social divisions and inequalities that structure society at large.     

Twenty‐first century dis‐ease? Habitual reflexivity or the reflexive habitus

While certain theorists have suggested that identity is increasingly reflexive, such accounts are arguably problematised by Bourdieu's concept of habitus, which – in pointing to the ‘embeddedness’ of our dispositions and tastes – suggests that identity may be less susceptible to reflexive intervention than theorists such as Giddens have implied. This paper does not dispute this so much as suggest that, for increasing numbers of contemporary individuals, reflexivity itself may have become habitual, and that for those possessing a flexible or reflexive habitus, processes of self‐refashioning may be ‘second nature’ rather than difficult to achieve. The paper concludes by examining some of the wider implications of this argument, in relation not only to identity projects, but also to fashion and consumption, patterns of exclusion, and forms of alienation or estrangement, the latter part of this section suggesting that those displaying a reflexive habitus, whilst at a potential advantage in certain respects, may also face considerable difficulties simply ‘being themselves’. ‘I noticed how people played at being executives while actually holding executive positions. Did I do this myself? You maintain a shifting distance between yourself and your job. There's a self‐conscious space, a sense of formal play that is a sort of arrested panic, and maybe you show it in a forced gesture or a ritual clearing of the throat. Something out of childhood whistles through this space, a sense of games and half‐made selves, but it's not that you’re pretending to be someone else. You’re pretending to be exactly who you are. That's the curious thing.’ ( DeLillo, 1997 : 103)     

A struggle on two fronts: boundary drawing in the lower region of the social space and the symbolic market for ‘down‐to‐earthness’

In this article we use qualitative interviews to examine how Norwegians possessing low volumes of cultural and economic capital demarcate themselves symbolically from the lifestyles of those above and below them in social space. In downward boundary drawing, a range of types of people are regarded as inferior because of perceived moral and aesthetic deficiencies. In upward boundary drawing, anti‐elitist sentiments are strong: people practising resource‐demanding lifestyles are viewed as harbouring ‘snobbish’ and ‘elitist’ attitudes. However, our analysis suggests that contemporary forms of anti‐elitism are far from absolute, as symbolic expressions of privilege are markedly less challenged if they are parcelled in a ‘down‐to‐earth’ attitude. Previous studies have shown attempts by the privileged to downplay differences in cross‐class encounters, accompanied by displays of openness and down‐to‐earthness. Our findings suggest that there is in fact a symbolic ‘market’ for such performances in the lower region of social space. This cross‐class sympathy, we argue, helps naturalize, and thereby legitimize, class inequalities. The implications of this finding are outlined with reference to current scholarly debates about politics and populism, status and recognition and intersections between class and gender in the structuring of social inequalities. The article also contributes key methodological insights into the mapping of symbolic boundaries. Challenging Lamont's influential framework, we demonstrate that there is a need for a more complex analytical strategy rather than simply measuring the ‘relative salience’ of various boundaries in terms of their occurrence in qualitative interview data. In distinguishing analytically between usurpationary and exclusionary boundary strategies, we show that moral boundaries in particular can take on qualitatively different forms and that subtypes of boundaries are sometimes so tightly intertwined that separating them to measure their relative salience would neglect the complex ways in which they combine to engender both aversion to and sympathies for others.     

From Schism to Synthesis: The Off‐Centre Radical‐Reformist Role of Development Management

In a wide range of issues such as aid effectiveness, poverty reduction and planning, development management has witnessed a schism between reformists and radicals. This article traces the ‘schism’ between reformist and radical views, critiques their unnecessary dichotomization and proposes an epistemologically‐grounded metaphor for managing divergent ideas. Moving beyond the schism, the article examines current conceptions from Gulrajani that the synthesis should be at the ‘centre’ of the spectrum between radical and reformist frames. The article then proposes an ‘off‐centre’ radical‐reformist synthesis with a less apologetic acceptance of reformist or ‘managerialist’ approaches.     

The impact of EC border policies on the policing of ‘refugees’ in eastern and central Europe

It is increasingly becoming common knowledge that one of the major effects of the Single European Act 1986 will be to increase freedom of movement for some within the internal borders of the 12 European Community member States from 1993, while correspondingly restricting the influx of ‘outsiders’. What is still lacking, however, is informed research on the extent of this ‘exclusion’ and the likely impact of such exclusionist policy on the policing and movement of ‘refugees’ and migrants from South to North and East to West. It is the intention of this paper to address some of these issues. The main rationale behind these restrictionist and exclusionist policies is, on the one hand, a fear concerning floods of refugees invading the West from both the South and the East, due to either internal strife or poverty or simply economic disparity. On the other hand, a ‘tightening‐up’ of the asylum regulations and procedures is felt necessary on the official ground of ‘too many bogus applications’ being made to circumvent visa restrictions. This raises two problems in particular. Firstly, if the EC member States are becoming increasingly exclusionary, what happens to the refugee ‘flood'? Secondly, when is an ‘economic migrant’ not a refugee, or a refugee not a migrant, or even a ‘refugee’ not a suitable case for asylum? Moreover, even though it is realized at the political level that a long‐term strategy for ‘social and economic progress in the home countries represents the most important precondition to give the people in those countries a new professional and social perspective, which will encourage them to stay in their home countries’ it is nevertheless the case, unfortunately, that through Schengen and other EC inter‐governmental structures, the emphasis on control policy would seem to be dominant. Now that Hungary has joined the Council of Europe, has been a party to the 1951 (UN) Geneva Convention and the 1967 New York Protocol since March 1989, and together with Czechoslovakia and Poland has applied to join the EC, one has to wonder whether the ‘Cold War’ border between East and West is being shifted further East to become a ‘Closed ‘ border.     

Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client.     

Trust and technology: the social foundations of aviation regulation

This paper looks at the dilemmas posed by ‘expertise’ in high‐technology regulation by examining the US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ‘type‐certification’ process, through which they evaluate new designs of civil aircraft. It observes that the FAA delegate a large amount of this work to the manufacturers themselves, and discusses why they do this by invoking arguments from the sociology of science and technology. It suggests that – contrary to popular portrayal – regulators of high technologies face an inevitable epistemic barrier when making technological assessments, which forces them to delegate technical questions to people with more tacit knowledge, and hence to ‘regulate’ at a distance by evaluating ‘trust’ rather than ‘technology’. It then unravels some of the implications of this and its relation to our theories of regulation and ‘regulatory capture’.