Practice Lens Research Articles

Willing to have, willing to help, or ready to own—Determinants of variants of stewardship social practices around Blue-Green Infrastructure in dense urban communities

IntroductionThere is increasing acceptance of the desirability of involving communities in stewardship activities around urban blue-green infrastructure (BGI) to generate acceptance, reduce vandalism and decrease the maintenance burden on authorities. However, little is yet known about the willingness of communities to engage in such stewardship, or the drivers to participate in activities.MethodsThis research adopted a practice lens and firstly defined three variants of BGI stewardship associated with passive acceptance, active care for and ownership of BGI. Secondly, the research conceptualized these practices within a complex of pro-environmental practices communities could perform. Through a face-to-face household survey in a dense UK urban area, the research sought to identify the prevalence of these variants of practice, their associations with other pro-environmental practices and the meanings, resources and competencies that drive a household's willingness to engage.ResultsThe research found different willingness for the three variants with passive most popular and ownership least. Meanings associated with BGI stewardship practice appeared to differ in crucial respects from other pro-environmental practices and were most associated with water-management rather than climate concern, however some place-based motivations were also involved. Practical resource and competency considerations also affected willingness to perform active stewardship and ownership variants.DiscussionThe research concluded that promoting the water-management aspects of BGI for all variants, along with facilitation of engagement with more active variants, could increase interest in BGI stewardship participation.

Under the surface of the professional practice the challenge of anti-oppressive practice in forced migration

ABSTRACT This article explores the dynamics and factors that influence social work practice with parents in forced migration. The lens of anti-oppressive practice supports the data analysis of the empirical research. Using the grounded theory, the article presents and discusses the conscious and unconscious manifestations of oppressive and anti-oppressive practice as they emerge from the experience of social workers (practice in action) and how they manifest at the systemic level (organisational practice). Finally, some implications are drawn for professional and organisational practice.

POLITICAL COMPETITION IN RIAU: A REVIEW OF CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

This study intends to discover the bias of Riau Pos in order to influence the actor's reputation in the nomination for Governor of Riau for 2024–2029. Through the lens of Faicrlough's text, discourse practice, and sociocultural practice, partisanship in the construction of reputation in news in the mass media is analyzed. The research data was gathered using a literature review and the listening technique. Fairclough's paradigm of critical discourse analysis was used to analyze the research data utilizing a comparable methodology. This study demonstrates that local political actors, such as Syamsuar, Edy Natar Nasution, Syamsurizal, Alfedri, Muhammad Adil, Abdul Wahid, and Achmad, have been influenced by the news in the Riau Pos concerning the 2024 Riau Governor election. Syamsuar, who is the Governor of Riau as well as the Chairman of the Regional Leadership Council Golkar Riau, appears to be a prominent figure in the published news. In addition to this, the media narrative has also contributed to Syamsuar's political image.

O Organizar de Práticas de Gestão de Atividades Artísticas e Culturais em uma Escola pública

Abstract This paper aims to analyze the organizing of art and culture management practices in a federal education institute. To that end, we utilize the contributions of two epistemological approaches, organizing and the practice lens. The study is characterized as qualitative research, developed in two main steps: an exploratory step, which involves the analysis of documents and two projective interviews; and a field immersion step, characterized by participant observation and by the analysis of management practices in the implantation of an Art and Culture Nucleus at the studied institute. As a result, an organizing approach articulated with art and culture management practices enables one to understand school management in a less orthodox manner in opposition to the usual binarism of the school management research field, which involves the disputes between elements and ideologies of the traditional school management and the democratic school management approaches. The study contributes by characterizing the process of re-signification of material aspects in the practice of school management, which makes it possible to problematize the use of administrative planning and the role of contextuality in the attribution of competences of group dynamics, and to point out the effects of decision-making in school management.

Antecedents of Primary School Quality: The Case of Remote Areas Schools in Indonesia

The policy of developing remote area schools’ quality in Indonesia is getting stronger. The government has set minimum service standards as a reference for schools’ development quality while remaining based on local, national, global, and 21st-century values. This study revealed efforts to improve the 21st-century school’s quality through the contribution of superior leadership, school climate, total quality management implementation, and the school principal’s performance approached quantitatively and analyzed descriptively using Structural Equation Modeling. Participants involved in the study were 147 remote area principals and teachers in two provinces in Indonesia. Results show that (1) school climate had the most dominant contribution to school quality and (2) there was a significant simultaneous effect among superior leadership, school climate, total quality management implementation, and the school principal’s performance on the school quality. Implications of the study’s findings from a theoretical and practical lens as well as recommendations for future studies are also discussed.

Classifying Social Adaptation Practices to Heat Stress—Learning from Autonomous Adaptations in Two Small Towns in Germany

Abstract Climate change adaptation planning and implementation have proliferated over the past years. However, we still lack an understanding of how society adapts itself outside of policy sectors and as part of what some refer to as “autonomous adaptation.” The way people respond to risk without deliberate interventions of public actors is not well understood. Given the increasing occurrence of climatic changes that affect our daily lives, the topic is regaining attention with an emphasis on behavioral adaptation. This angle, however, does little to enhance our understanding of how society adapts collectively and which practices and routines groups choose to adopt. This study investigates autonomous heat-stress adaptation efforts in two small towns in Germany. Autonomous heat-stress adaptation is approached through a lens of (social) adaptation practices. Small towns are understudied in adaptation research and have played only a minor role when it comes to public adaptation planning due to their lack of formal resources to develop public adaptation strategies. Based on empirical data, consisting of qualitative problem-centered interviews and a quantitative survey, concrete examples of (social) adaptation practices are identified and classified. The presented classification of practices goes beyond earlier attempts by generating insights on the role politics can play in providing a fruitful ground for enabling autonomous adaptation. The paper emphasizes the need for researchers and decision-makers to take a closer look at the wide variety of social adaptation practices already in place. This discloses insights on public–private adaptation mixes, which could ultimately also lift autonomous adaptation from its ad hoc and reactive nature. Significance Statement Social adaptation practices are not yet at the center of research and decision-making. We believe that adding practice-based approaches to adaptation governance widens the debate on who is vulnerable and possible coping mechanisms from within society. It shows that vulnerability and adaptation lie in people’s everyday actions. We provide a first classification of heat-health adaptation practices according to their heat-health target, the involved individuals and actors, the degree of coordination involved, and the spatial and temporal scales. This classification draws attention to potential governance leverage points to initiate heat-adaptation practices. Focusing more strongly on already-in-use and possible heat-health adaptation practices puts citizens’ wants and needs at the center of adaptation governance by including them directly in the adaptation process. This can be of special interest for small towns that want to introduce citizen-based approaches to heat-risk adaptation.

Policing the Sicilian Mafia: Repression and Control of the Mafia Phenomenon in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy

The article analyzes the repression of the Mafia phenomenon in Sicily between 1896 and 1901. The close attention paid to the Mafia by the authorities during this period produced a strong evidence base which this article examines through the lens of policing practices. These practices remain neglected as to date the historiography has focused on tracing legal developments rather than examining the application of laws by the forces of law and order. Accordingly, the article puts forward a series of historiographically important questions: what was the attitude of police forces in controlling dangerous individuals? How much do the practices adopted by police forces tell us about the possibilities for state intervention and the limits of its influence? What was the relationship between the perception of a criminal threat, police operations and the construction of judicial truth? The article reveals a very clear image of the Italian state in the liberal era. In fact, state officials and high-ranking institutional figures seemed interested in strengthening the social and political order by establishing control networks which could operate in any circumstances. They aimed to make it impossible not to interact with state officials. In this sense, rather than seeking a complete monopoly of violence, they aimed to oblige local power holders, social groups and semi-public figures to bargain with state officials. The effect was that social groups with means of violence at their disposal did not necessarily become a threat to the maintenance of order and nor did they necessarily forestall the possibility of state mediation and hegemony.

Reflections on the Customary Laws of Benin Kingdom and Its Living Cultural Objects in the Discourse of Ownership and Restitution

The British punitive expedition of 1897 led to the theft and vandalization of the cultural heritage of the Benin kingdom. The plunder included more than 3,000 cultural objects made of bronzes, ivories, beads, and other objects, which were produced since the 1st century AD to commemorate historical moments, political transitions, and ritual purposes. This theft dishonoured the spiritual and ritual significance of these living cultural objects, and has turned them into museum artefacts. As international debates on restitution and the return of Benin Bronzes intensify, two pertinent questions which arise are: Who will be the custodians of the returned artefacts?; and How will they be conserved? In this article, we address these two questions through the lens of Benin customary laws and practices. We argue that within this local jurisprudence, the Emwin Arre– the living cultural heritage described above –belong to the Oba of Benin and should be returned to the royal Palace, where they will be preserved, protected, and shared with the present and future generations.

Epic, Trauma, and Affective Practice in Carpentaria

This article draws on my concept of “cyclical haunting,” which describes the autonomous force of structural trauma in which traumatic transmissions feed into and out of individual and collective experience. I propose a new, related concept of “epic trauma” as the mode through which Carpentaria witnesses and testifies to historical trauma and its intergenerational transmissions. I argue that the spooked relationship between familial, community, and cultural-historical contexts in Wright’s masterpiece explicates pre-invasion relations circulating over time and across generations complicated by ingrained injustices, racist attitudes, and unethical Western practices and that Wright’s employment of the literary device of the (anti-colonial) epic is central to that project.I also consider Carpentaria through a traumatic-affective practice lens, focussing on the role of humour in sustaining an essentially tragic epic narrative. describes affective practice as “the emotional as it appears in social life”. Viewing the text in terms of affective practice and considering humour enables a more nuanced understanding of how Wright crafts her blend of trauma testimony, affective agency, spirited resistance, and sophisticated homage to Aboriginal cultural life, both traditional and contemporary.

Process tracing: a methodological proposal for a practice approach to family entrepreneurship

PurposeFollowing the lead of neighboring fields such as strategy and organization studies, entrepreneurship is gradually joining in the adoption of a practice perspective. Entrepreneurship as practice (EaP) is thus a nascent domain of investigation where the methodological debate is still unsettled and very fluid. In this paper, the authors contribute to this debate with a focus on family entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop a conceptual paper to discuss what it entails to look at family entrepreneurship through a practice lens and why it is fruitful. Moreover, the authors propose a research strategy novel to the field through which such investigation can be pursued, namely process tracing, and examine its inferential logic.FindingsProcess tracing is a strategy of data analysis underpinned by an ontology of causal mechanisms. The authors argue that it complements other practice methods by inferring social mechanisms from empirical evidence and thereby establishing a connection between praxis, practices and practitioners.Practical implicationsProcess tracing helps the articulation of an “integrated model” of practice that relates praxis, practices and practitioners to the outcome they jointly produce. By enabling the assessment of impact, process tracing helps providing prima facie evidentiary grounds for policy action and intervention.Originality/valueProcess tracing affinity with the practice perspective has been so far acknowledged only to a limited extent in the social sciences, and it is, in fact, a novel research strategy for the family entrepreneurship field.

System approaches to childhood obesity prevention: ground up experience of adaptation and real-world context.

Childhood obesity prevention is critical to reducing the health and economic burden currently experienced by the Australian economy. System science has emerged as an approach to manage the complexity of childhood obesity and the ever-changing risk factors, resources and priorities of government and funders. Anecdotally, our experience suggests that inflexibility of traditional research methods and dense academic terminology created issues with those working in prevention practice. Therefore, this paper provides a refined description of research-specific terminology of scale-up, fidelity, adaptation and context, drawing from community-based system dynamics and our experience in designing, implementing and evaluating non-linear, community-led system approaches to childhood obesity prevention. We acknowledge the importance of using a practice lens, rather than purely a research design lens, and provide a narrative on our experience and perspectives on scale-up, fidelity, context and adaptation through a practice lens. Communities. Practice-based researcher experience and perspectives. Practice-based researchers highlighted the key finding that community should be placed at the centre of the intervention logic. This allowed communities to self-organise with regard to stakeholder involvement, capacity, boundary identification, and co-creation of actions implemented to address childhood obesity will ensure scale-up, fidelity, context and adaptation are embedded. We need to measure beyond primary anthropometric outcomes and focus on evaluating more about implementation, process and sustainability. We need to learn more from practitioners on the ground and use an implementation science lens to further understand how actions work. This is where solutions to sustained childhood obesity prevention will be found.

Appropriate Feminisms: Ambivalence and Citational Practice in Appropriate Behavior

Abstract Across her body of work in film, television, and digital media, Desiree Akhavan has captured the awkward politics of cultural production for female filmmakers and media-makers. Yet she has also refused to straightforwardly align her work with feminist critiques of dominant cultural production practices, however much she is interpellated by them. Akhavan, a queer woman of color in a racist, sexist, and homophobic industry, negotiates both contemporary feminism's potentials for solidarity and its intersectional shortcomings. Akhavan's autobiographical characters wrestle with the need for social justice while questioning the “appropriate behaviors” demanded by serious commitments to the cause. Her work reveals the ambivalence of feminist attachments. This article reads the queer feminist politics of Akhavan's work, with a particular focus on her debut feature Appropriate Behavior (UK/US, 2014), through the lens of citational practice. The author argues that Akhavan employs citational codes that function in Clare Hemmings's words as a “storytelling tactic,” sustaining normative narratives about feminism's recent past. By employing an ambivalent trope that the author calls citation→disavowal, Akhavan troubles both the dominant cultures she is excluded from and the viability and legibility of her place within the movements that resist them.

How to Create an Innovation Budget: The Grail of Wisdom Is Dialog

Assembling an R&D budget is a challenging endeavor. It requires involving multiple stakeholders and considering many input factors. There is no one-size-fits-all approach with practitioners applying various approaches and methods to create the innovation budget during the budgeting process. In this article, we introduce and discuss five state-of-the-art approaches to derive a reasonable innovation budget with a strong practical lens. In reviewing them, we provide rich academic insights and offer practical guidance based on the years of experience in innovation management and corporate strategy.

Analyzing a teacher and researcher co-design partnership through the lens of communities of practice

Research-Practice Partnerships (RPP) bridge the gap between schools and universities. However, few have embraced the co-design process through a communities of practice lens and investigated how knowledge is co-constructed and negotiated. This mixed-method study explored how elementary school teachers co-construct knowledge with researchers to understand better how a community of practice can be cultivated during a co-design RPP. Findings from a survey, journal entries, observational field notes, and focus groups suggest teachers co-constructed knowledge while acknowledging and mitigating conflicts. Based on these findings, we offer ways to seed and cultivate communities of practice among teachers and researchers for co-designing educational innovations.

Eco-Preservation through the Lens of Igbo Beliefs and Practices: A Re-Imagination

This research was carried out to investigate the various cultural practices of the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria that were/are useful in saving the ecosystem from capricious human activities in traditional society. This is with the aim of finding how they could be adopted to checkmate the modern practices that degrade and violate the environment. The researchers adopted a qualitative approach for data collection. This is because the research is a social survey and addresses social issues. As such, data were collected using surveys and oral/personal communication. The study discovered that there is a nexus between indigenous cultural/cosmological knowledge and ecosystem preservation/sustainability and as such notes that the current earth devastation within modern Igbo society is a result of neglect of the indigenous knowledge system. The work observes that, if this knowledge system is incorporated into current ethics of eco-preservation, the present eco-risk would diminish. The work therefore recommends that cultural/indigenous environmental education, advocacy and ecosystem activism and locally managed ecotourism be incorporated into both formal and informal education of the modern Igbo knowledge system.

Constraining Tamil Transnational Political Action: Security Governance Practices beyond the Sending State

AbstractThis paper examines the security governance of the Tamil diaspora through a practice lens. It takes as its starting point the observation that the Tamil diaspora community has historically been subjected to complex and multi-scalar security governance. How this continues after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war period remains empirically and theoretically underexamined, with studies focusing instead on Tamil diaspora organizing. This paper addresses this gap by mapping and theorizing contemporary constraints to Tamil transnational political action (TPA), building on the growing literature on the transnational repression of diaspora. Further, it proposes to move beyond the state-centrism and liberal bias inherent in this literature, by centering security governance practices. Based on a review of existing literature and historical and ethnographic data collected through mixed-method fieldwork among the Tamil diaspora community between 2015 and 2018, this paper concludes that key security governance practices that constrain Tamil TPA, such as proscription, counterterrorism policing, and formal diplomatic practices, have continued since the end of the civil war, each revealing complex global security entanglements beyond the diaspora sending state.

Upholding Peace Settlements Through Constitutional Review in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia

This article examines implementation of the peace settlement compromises translated into constitutional arrangements in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia. The three countries struggle with their violent past, loss of interethnic trust and political fragmentation. Consequently, the implementation of peace settlement compromises that are translated into constitutional arrangements is hampered. Through analyses of constitutional jurisprudence in three countries this study provides further insights into the effectiveness and enforcement of the constitutional choices in practice. The article concludes that international supporters in the process of negotiation of peace settlements need to revisit the international assistance in constitution-making as a part of peacebuilding projects through the lens of constitutional review practices.

Memorisation is not rote learning: rethinking memorisation as an embodied practice for Chinese students

ABSTRACT Despite the many critiques of views that categorise and simplify Chinese international students’ use of memorisation as deficient or rote learning, these views persist. Using ethnographic methods to collect data over 18 months, this study identified the key practices employed by students as they negotiated their learning experiences in an Australian university. Through a practice lens, this paper disputes the oversimplification and extends existing knowledge of memorisation. It advocates memorisation as an embedded bodily activity in learning, via its deep connection to Chinese cultural and educational systems. In particular, it proposes greater theoretical nuance by suggesting (i) memorisation as entailing bundled practices; (ii) repetition in memorisation as generating new meanings, and (iii) memorisation as embodied and routinised practice. It concludes by discussing the implications of these key findings for academics seeking to understand Chinese students and support their learning experience.

Justice-Involved Veterans & Social Work: A Resource Dependence Theory Perspective

The salience of justice-involved military veterans endures as a pervasive social problem in the United States of America (USA). Since the 1980’s the percentages of Justice-Involved Veterans (JIV) have varied from a reduction in Vietnam to increasing numbers of Global War on Terror (GWOT) veterans (Bureau of Justice Statistics Report, 2015). In response, there has been a proliferation of magistrate diversion, correctional specialty units, Veterans Treatment Courts (VTC) and programming for JIV. Much of the progress is due to concerted identification and organizational sharing of resources. The USA Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), courts, corrections and non-profit organizations (NPO) provide a valuable service to our military men and women to remediate the JIV needs. Social work plays at critical in practice areas at the penal, VA and NPO systems in the USA. The JIV population are examined through the lens of social work practice, resource dependence theory (RDT), case example and future direction. The examination highlights the importance of internal and external resources and partnerships to meet organizational goals and to remediate JIV psycho-social problems.

Knowledge, expertise, craft, and practice: becoming and being a cycle technician

ABSTRACT This paper provides an account of the everyday workplace learning of cycle technicians. Derived from an ethnography of working cultures and practices at a bike shop in the North of England, this paper rests on a critical reading of Communities of Practice theory in order to explore the complex and heterogeneous learning of cycle technicians. Drawing on a series of vignettes constructed from the ethnographic data, the paper demonstrates the variety of experiences of both formal and informal learning that characterise the trajectories of new cycle technicians as they enter the industry. In addition to providing an account of a qualified and specialist workforce that is under-represented in extant research literature, the paper also provides an exemplar for ethnographic research as a vehicle for exploring working practices through a Communities of Practice lens, using the paradigmatic theoretical elements of the theory. The paper concludes by arguing that for cycle technicians, and perhaps other occupations as well, Communities of Practice theory can generate rich and complex accounts that do justice to the richness and complexity of the craft and practice being observed.