Splitting hairs : a sociological approach to educational knowledge

Bibliography: p. 189-214.This thesis represents a series of investigations into the sociological study of symbolic forms. It seeks to address the question as to whether, in the informational or knowledge society of late modernity, all symbolic forms are necessarily isomorphic, or whether they will correspond with the new form of the division of labour and will therefore differ in form and social distribution. The symbolic forms examined here are those integrally involved in the production and reproduction of educational knowledge, that is, the curriculum, pedagogy, and educational research for policy. In each of the chapters of the thesis a debate is staged between the former and the latter position, and each chapter attempts to show that the former position, in order to make the argument, collapses certain distinctions which I argue are not only essential to make, but more importantly, whose collapse will have unfortunate and sometimes pernicious effects especially for learners of the working class. This thesis is thus a series of explorations into the need for certain distinctions, into the nature of symbolic distinction; that is, into the nature and need of the boundary

Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances

This research examines the role of smartphones in refugees’ journeys. It traces the risks and possibilities afforded by smartphones for facilitating information, communication, and migration flows in the digital passage to Europe. For the Syrian and Iraqi refugee respondents in this France-based qualitative study, smartphones are lifelines, as important as water and food. They afford the planning, navigation, and documentation of journeys, enabling regular contact with family, friends, smugglers, and those who help them. However, refugees are simultaneously exposed to new forms of exploitation and surveillance with smartphones as migrations are financialised by smugglers and criminalized by European policies, and the digital passage is dependent on a contingent range of sociotechnical and material assemblages. Through an infrastructural lens, we capture the dialectical dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and the forms of resilience and solidarity, that arise as forced migration and digital connectivity coincide

Size Acceptance: A Discursive Analysis of Online Blogs

This document is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Fat Studies on 25 May 2018, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2018.1473704. Under embargo until 25 May 2019.Dominant discourses of “fatness” and “fat people” have implications for physical and mental health. Although alternative discourses such as “size acceptance” exist, there has been little consideration of the ways in which these alternative arguments (and speakers) may be positioned to be heard. Using a discursive thematic analysis, the authors demonstrate that size acceptance online bloggers have created a community online that enables them to persuasively provide alternative claims to “expertise,” which positions their views as credible and legitimate alternatives to those of more established authority figures—such as health professionals. This has implications not only for the lived experience of fat people, but also for researchers by emphasizing the importance of exploring not just what is said, but how, if we are to understand how different articulated positions are to be persuasive.Peer reviewe

Intersecting Inequalities: Research to Reduce Inequality for Immigrant-Origin Children and Youth

This is one of a series of five papers outlining the particular domains and dimensions of inequality where new research may yield a better understanding of responses to this growing issue.Immigration has grown across all post-industrial nations, and inequality has risen at a steep rate on a variety of indicators, including income distribution, child poverty, residential segregation, and numerous academic outcomes.In this report, we see that among the children of immigrants, inequality is manifested against a backdrop of wide disparity in post-migration conditions faced by new immigrants. Indeed, immigrant groups represent some of the most and least advantaged groups in the U.S. in terms of skills, education, and assets. Many immigrant-origin students struggle academically, leaving school without acquiring the tools necessary to function effectively in the highly competitive, knowledge-intensive U.S. economy, in which limited education impedes wages and social mobility

Co-constructing a new framework for evaluating social innovation in marginalized rural areas

The EU funded H2020 project \u2018Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas\u2019 (SIMRA; www.simra-h2020.eu) has the overall objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation. This paper outlines the process for co- developing an evaluation framework with stakeholders, drawn from across Europe and the Mediterranean area, in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. Preliminary results show the importance of integrating process and outcome-oriented evaluations, and implementing participatory approaches in evaluation practice. They also raise critical issues related to the comparability of primary data in diverse regional contexts and highlight the need for mixed methods approaches in evaluation

"The good days are amazing", an evaluation of the Writer's in Prison Network

The Writers in Prison Network (WIPN) was established and appointed by the Arts Council in April 1998 to administer the Writers in Residence in Prison Scheme. The Scheme places writers and creative artists into prisons across the UK to deliver creative writing, drama, video, music, oral storytelling, journalism, creative reading and publishing programmes. The Scheme employs writers who are experienced or established in particular literary fields; many have been creative writing tutors, or have worked in publishing, the theatre, television, radio or journalism. In administering the Scheme, WIPN supports up to 20 Writers in Residence at any one time (with an average of 15-16 residencies per year and a maximum of 22 residencies per year undertaken during the lifetime of WIPN). In 2010 the Hallam Centre for Community Justice at Sheffield Hallam University was commissioned to undertake an evaluation of the Writers in Prison Network. The evaluation was primarily qualitative in approach which aimed to inform and support the future development of WIPN

Explaining social-class inequality in voter turnout : the contribution of income and health

Occupation-based social class is an important, yet under-explored, factor in electoral participation. In this article, social class differences in voter turnout over time are measured, and how two other resources – namely income and health – mediate or modify this relationship is analysed. The analysis is based on an individual-level register-based 11 percent sample of the entire electorate in the 1999 Finnish parliamentary elections, and secondarily on smaller register-based samples in the 2012 presidential and municipal elections. Results show that income mediates part of the effects of social class on voting, while social class and utilised health indicators exert mainly independent effects on turnout. Social class differences remain largely stable in all income and hospital care groups, except that no differences between classes are observed among those most severely affected by health problems. Results are also mostly similar between those of working age and the older population, and between men and women, and remain stable over time and in different types of elections. The findings imply that social class should be taken account in theoretical and empirical models of turnout.Peer reviewe