Gendered discourses of facilitation in a probation learning environment: challenging the heteronormative ideal

This article focuses on the cognitive behavioural rehabilitation programmes run by the probation service in the UK. Drawing on Judith Butler's assertion that both sex and gender are discursively produced and Becky Francis' notion of gender monoglossia and heteroglossia, the article seeks to analyse and problematise the gendered discourses of facilitation that were mobilised by policy-makers and practitioners in this setting. The dominant institutional model of heteronormative facilitation promoted the ideal of each programme being delivered by one female and one male facilitator in order to provide a gender ‘balance’. But underpinning this ideal lay the binarised and essentialist notion that ‘masculinity’ arose naturally from the male body and ‘femininity’ from the female body. Female facilitators were positioned as bringing a calming and non-threatening atmosphere to the group and as naturally possessing skills of ‘empathy’ and ‘warmth’. Male facilitators were highly valued by managers, but were also under pressure to perform masculinity in very specific ways that were linked to notions of intellectual, rational, ‘middle-class’ masculinity. Through an analysis of interviews with probation practitioners and session observations, the article highlights that despite these dominant institutional constructions, a variety of complex and contradictory performances of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ were mobilised in this environment.     

Jewish joke telling in Muttersprache Mameloschn: performing queer intervention on the German stage

This essay explores the central role of Jewish joke telling in Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s play Muttersprache Mameloschn (first performed in 2012). Subversively revealing the problematic of essentializing cultural, national, and even sexual identity, Jewish joke telling figures as a performance of social and political resistance and disidentification in this play. Engaging with Jack Halberstam’s queer epistemology of failure and José Esteban Muñoz’s theory of queer disidentification, I propose that the act of Jewish joke telling by a young lesbian plays out as a new queer project of intervention in this play that confronts both antisemitism and culturally positioned sexual hegemony.     

社会工作者提升青少年自尊的策略——基于生态系统理论的分析

个体在青春期的发展任务是建立良好的自我同一性,而自尊的高低对于青少年自我概念和自我认同的形成起着关键作用。因此,社会工作者开展青少年服务的重点是帮助青少年提升自尊感。生态系统理论作为社工介入的理论依据,强调社工要以整体的视角分析问题,从个体与周围环境的互动入手,使服务对象与其所处的系统之间达到平衡协调。在实务工作中,社工可以从微观系统、中间系统、外部系统和宏观系统等多个层面进行干预,协助青少年提升个体自尊,强化其社会适应能力。     

School punishment and interpersonal exclusion: Rejection,withdrawal, and separation from friends

School suspension is a common form of punishment in the United States that is disproportionately concentrated among racial minority and disadvantaged youth. In labeling theories, the implication is that such stigmatized sanctions may lead to interpersonal exclusion from normative others and to greater involvement with antisocial peers. I test this implication in the context of rural schools by 1) examining the association between suspension and discontinuity in same-grade friendship ties, focusing on three mechanisms implied in labeling theories: rejection, withdrawal, and physical separation; 2) testing the association between suspension and increased involvement with antisocial peers; and (3) assessing whether these associations are stronger in smaller schools. Consistent with labeling theories, I find suspension associated with greater discontinuity in friendship ties, based on changes in the respondents’ friendship preferences and self-reports of their peers. My findings are also consistent with changes in perceptual measures of exclusion. Additionally, I find suspension associated with greater involvement with substance-using peers. Some but not all of these associations are stronger in smaller rural schools. Given the disproportionate distribution of suspension, my findings indicate that an excessive reliance on this exclusionary form of punishment may foster inequality among these youth.     

Where the Action Is: Macro and Micro Justice in Contract Law

In contemporary private law theory the relationship between ‘macro’ theories of distributive justice and the ‘micro’ site of interpersonal transactions remains under-explored. In this paper, I draw on the ‘macro’ theory of justice articulated by John Rawls and offer an account of ‘micro contractual justice’ that helps us understand how the micro domains of contracting introduce particular relational constraints on the infusion of distributive considerations into contract law, resulting in constrained conception of ‘relational Rawlsianism’ operating in contractual domains. My framework provides a bridge between the macro and micro, helping us understand how they are in various senses separate yet interlocking, and also provides a ‘third way’ between all or nothing positions on the place of distributive justice in contract.     

Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

The unseen hands: Collaborative instrumental leadership in the British renegotiation case

The article contends that an important but overlooked explanation for the European Union's resilience in the past decade in the face of several existential crises has been the informal instrumental leadership roles played by EU institutional actors collaborating with each other. In this article, a theoretical framework is developed that can explain why EU governments, facing a crisis, would choose to informally delegate leadership tasks to a set of EU institutional actors. A three-part mechanism of collaborative instrumental leadership provided by institutions is devised that explains why governments informally delegate leadership tasks to EU institutions, and the effects of this informal delegation. The core of the article is a process-tracing case study that explores how collaborative instrumental leadership actually works. The case selected is the British renegotiation of their terms of membership in 2015–2016. While the case has become more-or-less forgotten because the shock ‘no’ vote in the June 2016 Brexit referendum made its terms moot, the deal included quite exceptional reform proposals in which the EU bent over backwards to accommodate the United Kingdom, perhaps even going beyond the bounds of the EU Treaties themselves in the issue of immigration. Given this, analysing how collaborative instrumental leadership supplied by institutions contributed to producing the ambitious deal can shed light on the processes whereby intractable problems in the EU have been solved in the past decade.     

《舞论》对印度戏剧的历史影响:以库迪亚旦剧为例

婆罗多的《舞论》是印度古代著名的梵语文艺理论著作。它不仅深刻地影响了后世梵语文学与艺术理论的建构,也对一些重要的印度古代传统艺术如婆罗多舞、卡塔卡利舞和库迪亚旦剧等产生了重要的影响。与中国的昆曲一道,库迪亚旦剧于2001年被联合国教科文组织(UNESCO)列入首批人类非物质文化遗产代表作名录。库迪亚旦剧也是深受《舞论》影响的南印度喀拉拉邦的地方传统戏剧,它在漫长的历史岁月中,为了适合本土观众的欣赏情趣,大量吸纳了当地文化要素,从而为自己的长期流传打下了坚实的基础。《舞论》对其剧场建造、戏剧表演类型、戏剧人物塑造、形体与语言表演、舞蹈和音乐等各个方面均产生了积极的理论影响。库迪亚旦剧的表演至少涉及《舞论》提及的10种戏剧中的4种。库迪亚旦剧遵循《舞论》所规定的面部神态表演论、眼神表演论、手势论和步伐表演论等。《舞论》强调戏剧表演与舞蹈表演、音乐表演的三位一体,这一点在库迪亚旦剧中也有体现。库迪亚旦剧运用源自《舞论》音阶论和调式论的21种拉格和10种节奏类型。由于喀拉拉邦处在南印度达罗毗茶文化区,《舞论》基本原理和表演规范对库迪亚旦剧的影响,是后者的一种选择性或变异性接受。例如,库迪亚旦剧的服饰、化装与舞台布景,遵循与《舞论》所载区别极大的一种模式。     

英语教育的劳动市场回报及英语教育政策调整 —— 基于 2016年问卷调查数据

中国的英语教育近年来受到越来越多的重视。无论是国家还是个人都投入了大量资源用于英语教育,如此巨额的投入所带来的劳动市场回报值得关注。英语教育的劳动市场回报可以分为人力资本投入回报和信号作用回报。研究发现,英语在实际工作中使用越多,工资收入越高,是为英语教育作为人力资本投入回报的证据。但在工作中很少用到英语的人,通过英语四六级考试对其工资也有显著影响,反映了英语教育具有信号作用的功能。调查显示,英语教育的信号作用是英语教育劳动市场回报的主要方面。因此,中国的英语教育有过度教育从而导致资源配置低效率之嫌,建议及时调整国家的英语教育政策。     

Small winners and big losers: strategic party behaviour in the 2017 Dutch general election

Abstract

This article analyses party strategies during the campaign for the Dutch general election of March 2017, making use of issue-yield theory. It investigates whether parties strategically emphasise high-yield issues, by juxtaposing the issue opportunities provided by voters with parties’ issue emphasis during the campaign. More specifically, it asks whether parties strategically emphasised issues that were expected to reward them electorally. Analysing voter preferences and party campaign data, it is found that parties and most of their constituencies show high ideological consistency, that parties emphasise mostly positional issues and thus choose a conflict-mobilising strategy, and that most parties emphasise high-yield issues rather than following the general political agenda. Four small parties that won significantly behaved strategically while the social democrats – who severely lost – hardly did. The findings imply that the issue-yield framework can help to explain the election result in the fragmented Dutch multi-party context.