Theorising The Everyday

This article reflects on the gender politics integral to theories and cultural histories of the everyday in the contemporary Humanities and (to a lesser extent) Social Sciences. Since the 1990s feminist scholars have observed the gender bias integral to many canonical twentieth-century theories of the everyday. In spite of these observations, I suggest that much everyday life theory and recent studies that map a cultural and intellectual history of the everyday continue to reflect this gender bias. I suggest that one possible reason for this is women’s historical exclusion from the realm of theoretical discourse broadly conceived, and propose that in order to trace alternative critiques and histories of the everyday feminist scholars need to look to alternative modes of cultural and discursive production—for example, literature, the essay and art—through which to trace implicit and explicit analyses of the everyday by women. The second part of the article turns to the work of the twentieth-century photographer Dorothea Lange as a case in point. While Lange’s work has never been discussed in studies of the everyday, the concept underpins her practice and her work offers some suggestive points of comparison to approaches to the everyday both in Lange’s time and in contemporary theory. Focusing on her little-known essays ‘Documentary Photography’ and ‘Photographing the Familiar’ and some of her images of rural California during the Depression years, I examine her account of the role of the ‘familiar’ and everyday to the social, aesthetic and ethical potential of documentary photography as a medium at the time.     

Experimental criminology: looking back and forward on the 20th anniversary of the Academy of Experimental Criminology

Journal of Experimental Criminology - This article summarizes key points made in a panel at the American Society of Criminology (ASC) meeting in Atlanta in November 2018, entitled “20th...     

Does Spending More Get More? Health Care Delivery and Fiscal Implications From a Medicare Fee Bump

While salient features of the Affordable Care Act include insurance expansions and private coverage reforms, various other provisions are embedded within the law. We focus on a temporary 10 percent fee increase for primary care visits supplied to publicly insured (Medicare) beneficiaries. Using administrative and survey data, we assess the price shock's impact on service volume, physician labor supply, and quality of care. Primary care physicians (PCPs) in independent practices demonstrate, at most, a marginal 2 percent increase in new patient visits while horizontally and vertically integrated PCPs show no change. Both PCP organizational types witness declines in established patient visits, on average, but there is marked heterogeneity: established patient visits increase by 1 to 2 percent among PCPs with fewer Medicare claims in the pre‐period. The Medicare fee bump did not observably impact other labor supply outcomes and quality of care margins. We estimate that the policy introduced a $1.5 billion transfer from taxpayers to providers during the initiative's first three years.     

Local government reform in South Africa: An analysis of financial management legislative compliance by municipalities

South African local government has undergone radical transformation. The reform process included a local government financial management best‐practice technical assistance programme (MFMTAP) targeting financial management and especially budget quality reform. Dollery and Graves (2009) earlier examined the efficacy of the South African National Treasury (NT's) municipal budget funding compliance technique for measuring adherence to the Municipal Finance Management Act's (MFMA) budget funding requirements using a single metropolitan municipality case study. This article further evaluates the robustness and validity of the funding compliance instrument as a reform performance measurement tool by comparing the results of four geographically and demographically different municipalities. Also introduced is a performance ‘trend’ instrument similar to a ‘Likert scale’ for comparing municipal performance. Optimal tax revenue theory is invoked to examine this key revenue variable for producing a compliant budget. The article finds the ‘budget funding’ reform component of the Best‐Practice Technical Assistance (BPTA) programme presently ineffective and unsustainable. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.