The Re-invention of Sociology of Community

In today’s society the term ‘Community’ is frequently used. Politicians, religious leaders, policy makers and the media are repeatedly utilizing the concept to describe a particular scenario. Traditionally, sociologists have been fascinated with community, within a theoretical and geographical context. At the centre of the community is the debate of how external agencies work with the local community and how social policy can work at a local level. The aim of this paper is to critically explore the debate around community and how the subject has re-established itself within the discipline of sociology. To justify the arguments surrounding the Sociology of Community the author uses a case study of The United Kingdom

The Politics of Supervising Postgraduate Students: A Viewpoint

Postgraduate research training and research supervision has come under close scrutiny at many UK university institutions. Students today who decided to take up postgraduate studies go through a demanding process. Moreover, postgraduate study has become more complex for universities to deliver because the postgraduate student sector has become more diverse in terms of internationalisation, part time studies and curriculum outline in courses. This paper seeks to critically explore the complex relationships between postgraduate students and their supervisor. It is suggested that both the student and supervisor are on a learning curve that tests each other’s ability in the higher education sector

Everest, the Final Furlong: Completing a PhD

This presentation is about completing an academic mountain; the personal intellectual Everest of a PhD. Each doctorate is different, that is part of its purpose, but I hope any references to my own experience will apply to yours. I will try not to employ the Everest metaphor to the point of oxygen starvation, but hope that some references will prove helpful. Otherwise this presentation is something of a hybrid, between the closing section of ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ on Radio 4 and a Dublin literary pub tour

Community Development: A Shift in Thinking Towards Heutagogy

As a result of the distinct socio-economic changes that UK society has faced in over recent years more specific community health development approaches to curricula delivery are required to ensure the provision of effective methods and approaches to health improvement. An effective way in which to promote successful curricula is to adopt and engage with Barnet’s (1994; 2004; 2012) notion of a tri partite model, incorporating, societal, institutional and students needs. In order to achieve this, a holistic approach to curricula delivery must be adopted. However due to the fragmented nature of the delivery ‘community development’ curricula; good, effective, and pedagogical based delivery approaches and methods are not widely shared. The authors in this paper/presentation will explore the pedagogical basis of the CD curriculum and present a model of joined up thinking, incorporating a cross disciplinary approach to curriculum development and explore strategic approaches to teaching concepts in community development. In this paper the authors argue that a self-determined learning approach that involves an expansion and re-interpretation of andragological principles. A shift in thinking towards heautagogy will enable the learner to develop space, promoting the learner as an “architect” of learning

Remoulding Welfare Britain: The Philosophy of the Big Society in Cameron’s Britain

Since the election of David Cameron as Conservative Party Leader there has been renewed interest in the functions and philosophies underpinning the responsibilities of the state. In 2008 David Cameron advanced the argument that Britain was ‘broken’. During the subsequent 2010 election campaign he put forward a remedy seeking to ‘fix’ Britain. David Cameron’s perception is that some social dynamics of our society are living without a comparable sense of social responsibility, seemingly devoid of any form of self control. Cameron’s narrative was in part enhanced by the several days of rioting in 2011. The subsequent rhetoric of the senior Coalition partner was given rocket boosters in selling this argument to the electorate, and that only the solutions offered by the Big Society could tackle this divide in Britain’s society

Reconstructing Social Policy and Ageing

This article draws from the work of Michel Foucault to reconstruct an understanding of social policy and ageing in contemporary Britain. In many ways, policy provides three trajectories for older people; first, as independent self-managing consumers with private means and resources; second, as people in need of some support to enable them to continue to self-manage and third, as dependent and unable to commit to self-management. Governmentality provides the theoretical framework through which to view policy and practice that is largely governed by discourses of personalisation

Re-Discovering Aesthetics

The beginning of the 21st century has seen the renewed use of aesthetics as a critical and interpretive method within various discursive spheres. Particularly, and unsurprisingly, this move has been most pronounced in the discursive systems of philosophy and the artworld. It is to this more specific re-discovery that the authors in this journal address their arguments

Place, autonomy and the individual: short letter, long farewell, and a sorrow beyond dreams.

The two novels by Peter Handke which were published in Germany in 1972, Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell, 1977) and Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, 1976), illustrate the importance of place in Handke’s work from two very different perspectives: the former ends in an exaltation of America as the realization of the utopian dreams of its European narrator, the latter in a dystopian condemnation of the negative influence of his Austrian homeland on the life of the narrator’s mother and its contribution to the events leading to her suicide