Unpacking the client(s): constructions, positions and client–consultant dynamics

Research on management consultancy usually emphasizes the role and perspective of the consultants. Whilst important, consultants are only one element in a dynamic relationship involving both consultants and their clients. In much of the literature, the client is neglected, or is assumed to represent a distinct, immutable entity. In this paper, we argue that the client organisation is not uniform but is instead (like organisations generally) a more or less heterogeneous assemblage of actors, interests and inclinations involved in multiple and varied ways in consultancy projects. This paper draws upon three empirical cases and emphasizes three key aspects of clients in the context of consultancy projects: (a) client diversity, including, but not limited to diversity arising solely from (pre-)structured contact relations and interests; (b) processes of constructing ‘the client’ (including negotiation, conflict, and reconstruction) and the client identities which are thereby produced; and (c) the dynamics of client–consultant relations and how these influence the construction of multiple and perhaps contested client positions and identities

Homosexuality and the Construction of “Anglican Orthodoxy” : The Symbolic Politics of the Anglican Communion

Peer reviewedPostprin

'Divided they stand, divided they fail': opposition politics in Morocco

The literature on democratization emphasises how authoritarian constraints usually lead genuine opposition parties and movements to form alliances in order to make demands for reform to the authoritarian regime. There is significant empirical evidence to support this theoretical point. While this trend is partly visible in the Middle East and North Africa, such coalitions are usually short-lived and limited to a single issue, never reaching the stage of formal and organic alliances. This article, using the case of Morocco, seeks to explain this puzzle by focusing on ideological and strategic differences that exist between the Islamist and the secular/liberal sectors of civil society, where significant opposition politics occurs. In addition, this article also aims to explain how pro-democracy strategies of the European Union further widen this divide, functioning as a key obstacle to democratic reforms

Contested spaces of hegemony: left alliances after the crisis

This reflects on the insights that geography can bring to bear on discussions of hegemony. It draws heavily on the work of Doreen Massey, for whom this essay is a form of tribute. It shows how Massey was able to make a very specific contribution to discussions about the politics of a given moment (the conjuncture) through her insistence on including the specificities of place into the many overlapping levels that constitute a political moment. This can be seen in her work on London, in which she drew attention to its role as a city in shaping the emergence of neoliberalism, or her work on de-industrialisation, which showed how unequal regional development is driven by specific interest groups – as seen in the strikingly different kind of help offered by successive governments to the bankers of the City as compared with the steel workers of the de-industrialised regions. Drawing on this work, David Featherstone draws on this work to discuss the current political situation in the devolved nations, the Northern Powerhouse, and relationships between nationally based parties and the Labour Party

‘Of course we must be equal, but …’: imagining gendered futures in two rural Southern African secondary schools

Based on focus group discussions held with students at rural secondary schools in Lesotho and Zimbabwe, this paper argues that secondary schools provide important spaces for the (re)construction of gendered identities among rural girls in southern Africa. Central to processes of identity formation in rural secondary schools are normative discourses centring on notions of ‘culture’ and ‘equal rights’. These discourses are (re)produced in secondary schools and are appropriated by students in making sense of their lives. Both are ambiguously related to dominant gender ideologies and are mobilised by students in ways which do not simply conform to an accommodation/resistance dichotomy. Also highlighted is the complex articulation of identity production and materiality. Identities are constructed in the context of the school in relation to expected material performance in contexts removed in time and space. The ‘culture’ and ‘equal rights’ discourses are understood and negotiated in relation to expectations of future lives beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of the school: lives imagined in relation to particular (generally urban) geographical contexts

Convergence in the making : transnational civil society and the Free Trade Area of the Americas

The paper analysis the role Hemispheric Social Alliance network in its efforts to build a transnational coalition between labor unions, social movements, indigenous, environmental and citizen organizations throughout the Americas to oppose the establishment of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The prospects of hemispheric solidarity cannot be assumed in face of such heterogeneity of social actors. Drawing from social constructivism and the theory of structuration, the paper will propose a methodological approach to the study of transnational collective action in the Americas by stressing the political value of building discourse coalitions and embedding collective expectations. Defying the official meanings of the FTAA project, the Hemispheric Social Alliance has been articulating a counter-hegemonic critique to neo-liberal approaches to development in the Western Hemisphere

If I am woman, who are 'they'? The construction of 'other' feminisms

Characterizations of feminist identities are presented, represented and, arguably, misrepresented within current public debates and popular media. Issues of sameness and difference have come to the fore as both timely and politically relevant. This paper aims to address issues arising from engagement with feminisms, in particular those which we experience as 'other' but which, concurrently, resonate with many of our concerns. Conflicting views revolve around the viability of constructing stable political identities for women who elect to include the term 'feminist' in their selfdescription. These debates become increasingly complex when contextualized within relative power positionings of knowledge production in differing arenas. Drawing on the literature around the legitimization of gender and political identities, the authors reflect in this paper on the possibilities of engaging with these identities, both in our capacity of 'others', but also as individuals whose theoretical positioning resonates with the issues under consideration

Depicting urban boundaries from a mobility network of spatial interactions: A case study of Great Britain with geo-located Twitter data

Existing urban boundaries are usually defined by government agencies for administrative, economic, and political purposes. Defining urban boundaries that consider socio-economic relationships and citizen commute patterns is important for many aspects of urban and regional planning. In this paper, we describe a method to delineate urban boundaries based upon human interactions with physical space inferred from social media. Specifically, we depicted the urban boundaries of Great Britain using a mobility network of Twitter user spatial interactions, which was inferred from over 69 million geo-located tweets. We define the non-administrative anthropographic boundaries in a hierarchical fashion based on different physical movement ranges of users derived from the collective mobility patterns of Twitter users in Great Britain. The results of strongly connected urban regions in the form of communities in the network space yield geographically cohesive, non-overlapping urban areas, which provide a clear delineation of the non-administrative anthropographic urban boundaries of Great Britain. The method was applied to both national (Great Britain) and municipal scales (the London metropolis). While our results corresponded well with the administrative boundaries, many unexpected and interesting boundaries were identified. Importantly, as the depicted urban boundaries exhibited a strong instance of spatial proximity, we employed a gravity model to understand the distance decay effects in shaping the delineated urban boundaries. The model explains how geographical distances found in the mobility patterns affect the interaction intensity among different non-administrative anthropographic urban areas, which provides new insights into human spatial interactions with urban space.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, International Journal of Geographic Information Scienc

Essentialism in social representations of citizenship: an analysis of Greeks’ and migrants’ discourse

Following a Social Representations approach, the article examines the representations of citizenship held by both migrants and Greek citizens in Greece after the announcement of a heavily debated citizenship legislation. Essentialism, a way of representing social categories as holding an underlying essence that determines their characteristics, was used as an analytical tool to understand the inclusive or exclusive function of representations of citizenship towards migrants. Findings showed that Greeks construct representations based on ethnic, civic, and cultural ideas, while migrants construct representation of citizenship based on civic and cultural ideas. Essentialism was a way of constructing ethnic and cultural representations of citizenship and functioned in both exclusive and inclusive ways, but assimilatory terms accordingly. Civic and cultural representations of citizenship were constructed in nonessentialist ways and functioned in inclusive ways. However, from Greeks' perspective, civic inclusion was conditioned upon an often-questioned legality of migrants and upon cultural assimilation terms. Studying both the content and the essentialist/nonessentialist formulation of representations of citizenship is an important tool in understanding the politics of inclusion and exclusion of citizens in the social arena