Practising social justice: Community organisations, what matters and what counts

This thesis investigates the situated knowing-in-practice of locally-based community organisations, and studies how this practice knowledge is translated and contested in inter-organisational relations in the community services field of practices. Despite participation in government-led consultation processes, community organisations express frustration that the resulting policies and plans inadequately take account of the contributions from their practice knowledge. The funding of locally-based community organisations is gradually diminishing in real terms and in the competitive tendering environment, large nationally-based organisations often attract the new funding sources. The concern of locally-based community organisations is that the apparent lack of understanding of their distinctive practice knowing is threatening their capacity to improve the well-being of local people and their communities. In this study, I work with practitioners, service participants and management committee members to present an account of their knowing-in-practice, its character and conditions of efficacy; and then investigate what happens when this local practice knowledge is translated into results-based accountability (RBA) planning with diverse organisations and institutions. This thesis analyses three points of observation: knowing in a community of practitioners; knowing in a community organisation and knowing in the community services field of practices. In choosing these points of observation, the inquiry explores some of the relations and intra-actions from the single organisation to the institutional at a time when state government bureaucracy has mandated that community organisations implement RBA to articulate outcomes that can be measured by performance indicators. A feminist, performative, relational practice-based approach employs participatory action research to achieve an enabling research experience for the participants. It aims to intervene strategically to enhance recognition of the distinctive contributions of community organisations’ practice knowledge. This thesis reconfigures understandings of the roles, contributions and accountabilities of locally-based community organisations. Observations of situated practices together with the accounts of workers and service participants demonstrate how community organisations facilitate service participants’ struggles over social justice. A new topology for rethinking social justice as processual and practice-based is developed. It demonstrates how these struggles are a dynamic complex of iteratively-enfolded practices of respect and recognition, redistribution and distributive justice, representation and participation, belonging and inclusion. The focus on the practising of social justice in this thesis offers an alternative to the neo-liberal discourse that positions community organisations as sub-contractors accountable to government for delivering measurable outputs, outcomes and efficiencies in specified service provision contracts. The study shows how knowing-in-practice in locally-based community organisations contests the representational conception of knowledge inextricably entangled with accountability and performance measurement apparatus such as RBA. Further, it suggests that practitioner and service participant contributions are marginalised and diminished in RBA through the privileging of knowledge that takes an ‘expert’, quantifiable and calculative form. Thus crucially, harnessing local practice knowing requires re-imagining and enacting knowledge spaces that assemble and take seriously all relevant stakeholder perspectives, diverse knowledges and methods

Reply To Kenneth B. Yatai, Mark J. Dunning, Dennis Wang. Consensus Genomic Subtypes of Muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer: A Step in the Right Direction but Still a Long Way To Go. Eur Urol 2020;77:434–5

In our study the Bladder Cancer Molecular Taxonomy Group collaborated to extend a first consensus report, addressing the need for a consensus molecular classification for muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) that would support basic research and clinical trials. We provide such a consensus classification and offer a single-sample classifier (http://cit.ligue-cancer.net:3838/apps/consensusMIBC_web)

Use of the University of California Los Angeles integrated staging system to predict survival in renal cell carcinoma: an international multicenter study.

Item does not contain fulltextPURPOSE: To evaluate ability of the University of California Los Angeles Integrated Staging System (UISS) to stratify patients with localized and metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) into risk groups in an international multicenter study. PATIENTS AND METHODS: 4,202 patients from eight international academic centers were classified according to the UISS, which combines TNM stage, Fuhrman grade, and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status. Distribution of the UISS categories was assessed in the overall population and in each center. RESULTS: The UISS stratified both localized and metastatic RCC into three different risk groups (P <.001). For localized RCC, the 5-year survival rates were 92%, 67%, and 44% for low-, intermediate-, and high-risk groups, respectively. A trend toward a higher risk of death was observed in all centers for increasing UISS risk category. For metastatic RCC, the 3-year survival rates were 37%, 23%, and 12% for low-, intermediate-, and high-risk groups, respectively; in 6 of 8 centers, a trend toward a higher risk of death was observed for increasing UISS risk category. A greater variability in survival rates among centers was observed for high-risk patients. CONCLUSION: This study defines the general applicability of the UISS for predicting survival in patients with RCC. The UISS is an accurate predictor of survival for patients with localized RCC applicable to external databases. Although the UISS may be useful for patients with metastatic RCC, it may be less accurate in this subset of patients due to the heterogeneity of patients and treatments