Workplace regimes: a sociological defence and elaboration

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
Alex J. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Managerial Control ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
The Core ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk

This article defends and extends the concept of workplace regimes, understood as the existence of identifiable systematic patterns of managerial control. In doing so a conceptual framework is developed for explaining both patterns in control and the dynamics of workplace politics. Specifically, this article elaborates on the approach of Michael Burawoy and extends it through an engagement with Science and Technology Studies (also known as Science, Technology and Society Studies) (STS) and Economic Sociology. The core of Burawoy’s framework is identified as the use of ideal-typical ‘workplace regimes’ to represent historically distinct positions upon a continuum between legitimation and coercion. This core is defended and it is argued that granular firm-level variations in the use of legitimation and coercion would only invalidate the theory if they were to make the identification of shifts in historical tendencies at the macro level of world systems impossible. In fact, it is claimed that once fully elaborated the resultant framework is able to explain commonalities and regularities across seemingly divergent contexts as well as variations within regimes. In the course of making this argument, an important distinction, that has not previously been fully recognised, between workplace regimes and workplace politics is highlighted. Finally, the potential explanatory power of this workplace regime approach is illustrated by drawing on recent qualitative research in the retail sectors of the UK and the US.

Administrative Law Values and National Security Functions

2020 ◽  
pp. 634-655
Author(s):  
Laura A. Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Executive Discretion ◽  
The Uk

This chapter focuses on the case of extraterritorial military detention by the US and the UK—two countries that quickly deployed and then repeatedly refined their detention policies during the nearly two decades following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Military detention is arguably one of the quintessential national security functions where deference to executive discretion is strongest. As such, it is an activity that differs markedly from the types of practices that form the core work of many domestic administrative agencies, and administrative law scholarship tends to ignore the national security domain. Yet even here, in a realm seemingly so insulated from administrative law norms, agencies in both the US and the UK have implemented a variety of administrative rules and procedures, as well as non-judicial administrative tribunals to assess the status of detainees. Although the US and the UK followed different pathways, both countries have ultimately come to embrace administrative law frameworks for military detention. And both countries have gradually moved to protect, at least to a limited extent, the core administrative law values of rationality, transparency, participation, and procedural protection even as they have rejected fully judicialized detention processes. This comparative case study therefore illustrates the significance of administrative law values in the area of national security and points toward the need for further scholarship at the intersection of national security law and administrative law.

Looking after Number One? Politicians' Rewards and the Economics of Politics

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hood
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Crucial Experiment ◽  
The Core ◽  
Rational Choice Model ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Uk

The nature and level of rewards to politicians is an important issue in public management. It receives little theoretical attention in academic political science today, although it offers the basis of a Popperian ‘crucial experiment’ for testing the explanatory claims of the rent-seeking rational choice model of politics. This paper discusses the extent to which the core rent-seeking model can explain observed patterns of political rewards. It considers the core model against two modified models (each with two variants), using data from Australia and the UK and a limited number of observations drawn from other countries. The core-rent-seeking rational choice model appears to have poor explanatory power. A familiar overdetermination problem arises in testing the explanatory claims of modified models. Some disaggregation may be needed to refine the approach.

The Fall and Rise of the 1 Per Cent

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-151
Author(s):  
Francis Teal
Keyword(s):  
New Labour ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk

We have a puzzle we need to resolve and the core of this puzzle is the remorseless rise in incomes of the poorest and the widening spread of incomes we observe across the world. The most politically conspicuous (and contentious) aspect of this rising spread is the increasing share of income going to the top 1 per cent, particularly in the UK and the US. In this chapter we compare income growth across the distribution for the UK and the US from the Thatcher/Reagan period until the years after the financial crash. The rise of the 1 per cent is shown to be largely at the expense of the 90–99 per cent. Inequality rose far more in the US than in the UK. In the New Labour years in the UK incomes of the bottom quintile (that is the bottom 20 per cent) of households grew faster than the top quintile.

scholarly journals ST(&)S: Martyn Pickersgill Talks with Sheila Jasanoff

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 320
Author(s):  
Martyn Pickersgill ◽  
Sheila Jasanoff
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Technology And Society ◽  
Distinct Mode ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Contested Meanings ◽  
And Training

In this interview, Sheila Jasanoff and Martyn Pickersgill discuss the contested meanings of STS, defined as either “science and technology studies” (often associated with European origins) or “science, technology, and society” (commonly seen as originating in the US). The interview describes how Jasanoff entered STS, and the ways in which she sought to bring together different traditions within the field. Jasanoff underscores how her intellectual and professional journeys were shaped through a mix of institutional context and personal choices, and reflects on the role she has played in shaping STS networks, programs, and departments. Jasanoff remains excited about the future of STS, yet also highlights the need for disciplining within the field. For her, STS represents a distinct mode of researching, approaching, and engaging with the world. This distinctiveness, Jasanoff argues, needs to be carefully cultivated and reproduced through creative but rigorous teaching and training.  A reflection by Martyn Pickersgill follows the interview.

scholarly journals Busting the myth of the ‘greedy elderly’

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
J Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Us ◽  
Optimal Policies ◽  
The Uk ◽  
National Governments ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract Background The politics of ageing are both personal, involving judgements about specific family members as well as broad social groups. This chapter evaluates the argument that governments implement packages of policies that are favorable to the elderly, but that are societally sub-optimal, because of political pressure from the elderly. It begins by laying out the core premises of the “greedy geezer” narrative: because pension transfers, high-cost medical care, and policies that protect transferable assets like housing are highly salient to the elderly and their advocates, intense preferences for these types of policies communicated to politicians and policy-makers will eventually crowd out other, more societally-optimal policies. Methods Looking at public opinion data on ageing, intergenerational transfers, and the welfare state this chapter wants to understand both how different publics understand and frame ageing and health as well as what priorities these publics identify, and why? Results The elderly and their organized representatives (e.g. pensioner parties, pensioner unions, and advocacy groups) in some contexts do push for policies that are “greedy” in the sense of being beneficial for the elderly or their own children, but not for society as a whole. However, this phenomenon is far from universal: It is especially pronounced in the US and the UK, but much less so in other national contexts. Moreover, the policy packages adopted by national governments are generally motivated by concerns other than appeasing the elderly. Conclusions Characterizing the elderly as uniformly “greedy” obscures the fact that inequality among the elderly means that many need more support than they actually receive.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

‘To see oursels as ithers see us’: Reflections on Scottish Independence from the United States

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Scottish Independence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Scottish Diaspora

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.

A Precarious Confluence: Neoliberalism, Race, and Water Insecurity

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mascarenhas
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
First Century ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Water Insecurity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Racial Projects ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Cities

Three very different field sites—First Nations communities in Canada, water charities in the Global South, and the US cities of Flint and Detroit, Michigan—point to the increasing precariousness of water access for historically marginalized groups, including Indigenous peoples, African Americans, and people of color around the globe. This multi-sited ethnography underscores a common theme: power and racism lie deep in the core of today’s global water crisis. These cases reveal the concrete mechanisms, strategies, and interconnections that are galvanized by the economic, political, and racial projects of neoliberalism. In this sense neoliberalism is not only downsizing democracy but also creating both the material and ideological forces for a new form of discrimination in the provision of drinking water around the globe. These cases suggest that contemporary notions of environmental and social justice will largely hinge on how we come to think about water in the twenty-first century.

Identity Politics and Migration

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Vytis Čiubrinskas
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Current ◽  
Respective Host

The Centre of Social Anthropology (CSA) at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas has coordinated projects on this, including a current project on 'Retention of Lithuanian Identity under Conditions of Europeanisation and Globalisation: Patterns of Lithuanian-ness in Response to Identity Politics in Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US'. This has been designed as a multidisciplinary project. The actual expressions of identity politics of migrant, 'diasporic' or displaced identity of Lithuanian immigrants in their respective host country are being examined alongside with the national identity politics of those countries.

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