Indebted life and money culture: payday lending in the United Kingdom

Critical social scientific research holds that credit–debt is a principal economic and governing relation in contemporary economy and society, but largely neglects money’s role in indebted life. Drawing on qualitative research in the payday loan market in the United Kingdom, the paper shows that borrowers typically relate to loans in monetary rather than financial terms and incorporate them into practices of payment, spending and online banking. To analyse how indebted life is variously experienced and enacted through money, the concept of money culture is developed to refer to money’s culture, money’s meanings and money’s affects. Borrowers enter into and negotiate payday loans through a digitally mediated money culture that both mobilizes and runs counter to money’s powerful fictions as circulating universal equivalent and calculative means of account.     

On-line public relations: towards an integrated theoretical model

Abstract

Much has been said about the so-called information superhighway. Organisations are realising that a whole new world can be created on-line: more and more organisations, and individuals, are entering this superhighway at an incredible rate. Ironically, most people do not have a clue what the information superhighway really is, which is, for example, evident in the 1993 advertisement of the telecommunication giant, Pacific Bell, which claimed that: ‘While others talk about the information superhighway, we're actually building it’, but only launched their consumer Internet access service in 1996. In spite of widespread ignorance, the exponential growth of the Internet provides public relations practitioners with constantly expanding on-line public relations resources and the opportunity to use these online systems to create or enhance the images of organisations in the market place.

Without theory, the field of on-line public relations has no framework for understanding, organising and integrating the many activities and purposes of online public relations. Therefore online public relations needs a body of knowledge grounded in theory. It is clear that the shift is away from mass communication towards dialogical or interactional communication. In order to understand the theory of on-line public relations, it is important to systemise it in terms of a theoretical aporoach. This leads to the main aim of this article, which is to propose a theoretical model, the Or,-line Public Relations (OPR) model, to provide a suitable framework for explaining the on-line public relations process, and if applied in the development of on-line public relations plans or strategies, it can maintain its utility as a framework for the analysis thereof.

Based on a qualitative approach, this article attempts to theoretically explore, describe, interpret and conceptualise the concept on-line public relations, with specific reference to the development of on-line public relations in South Africa, the shift from traditional paradigms to new on-line trends and the integration of on-line public relations with other communication processes. Particular reference is made to the theoretical foundations of on-line public relations, and it is argued that at the root of on-line public relations, as a framework for explaining it, lies the need for an integrated theoretical approach. In the last section, a new OPR model is proposed, and a brief discussion of the elements of the model, the conceptual foundation of on-line information and information overload is presented.     

Political Reliability and the Chinese Bar Exam

This article uses the case of contemporary China to explore an understudied type of political socialization: the bar exam. Content analysis of 3,996 exam questions from 2002–2014 shows a turning point in the mid‐2000s, when the test became explicitly political. The newly political exam is now a site of political learning where tomorrow's lawyers, judges, and prosecutors perform loyalty by exchanging politically correct answers for points. Viewed from this perspective, the Chinese bar exam has much in common with demands for public displays of correct behaviour in other authoritarian states. This adds a fresh, political layer to our understanding of whose interests bar exams serve, and why they take the form they do.     

The state in Africa: Implications for democratic reform

Significant changes in the global political climate during the late 1980s sparked off dramatic enthusiasm for democratisation which swept across much of the developing world. Previously authoritarian governments, through the combined pressures from both external and internal arenas began to topple, to be replaced by regimes organised along liberal democratic lines. Internally, the public reacted to the corrupt and repressive tactics of a predatory patron-client state system which had continually failed to operate in accordance with societal needs, with street riots, strikes and other outbursts of discontent as a result. Such events played a major part in introducing multi-party politics by demanding accountability from those in power. Such dramatic changes were also a product of marked changes in the external environment, with governments no longer able to rely on uncritical donor support to secure a bulwark against communism. Furthermore, excessive state repression and intervention, in terms of human rights violations were no longer deemed to be acceptable behaviour. This is mirrored by a clear policy change as evidenced by the British Government's White Paper (1997) which clearly outlines the need for a more enabling, effective and strengthened role for governments in the developing world which enables them to become more dedicated to promoting the interests of the most disadvantaged sectors of society. Only governments which demonstrate a commitment to good governance may receive funding and not adhering to these policy dictates could have drastic consequences in terms of future levels and types of support. This article charts the issues concerning the new role for the state and its implications for achieving sustainable, participatory democracies in the context of the state in Africa. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.