Processual Nature Research Articles

To Be Black Is to . . .

This essay shows that despite the variegated experience of Black-identified people globally and the unstable and processual nature of Blackness as a category, the meaning of Blackness remains anchored in the geography of the plantation, and the deathliness this produces still haunts the anglophone Caribbean. The focus is on how this haunting is palpable to the criminalized urban poor in Trinidad; yet Black has never simply denoted abjection. From the vantage point of postcolonial Caribbean nation-states founded on anticolonial projects of Black sovereignty, one can see not only the resilience of anti-Blackness that conditions what it feels like to be Black but also what Katherine McKittrick calls the “iterations of Black life that cannot be contained by black death.”

Why not? Explaining sympathizers' non‐participation: The example of Hong Kong's 2019 social movement

AbstractOver the last 2 decades, youth‐led protests have increased. However, whereas youth mobilization has been widely examined, why some youth participate while others remain on the sidelines has not been adequately explored and remains not well understood. In 2019, protests against an extradition bill amendment led to unprecedented mass demonstrations, riots, and electoral turnout in Hong Kong. Young people were among the largest and most engaged participant groups during the movement. Yet even though protest action became a part of daily life on campuses, some students who sympathized with the movement did not become active supporters. This analysis examined reasons for non‐participation using survey and interview data from undergraduate students. In particular, this study analyzed possible causes for the non‐conversion of sympathizers into participants and the erosion of protest participants. Differences among students were explored based on their origin. The findings showed that non‐participation was not merely a result of the ineffective mobilization of otherwise highly sympathetic individuals. Instead, perceived (in)effectiveness, identity conflicts, and barriers played an important role in individuals' decisions not to participate in protest action. The findings further our understanding of non‐participation and are discussed with respect to students' networked participation, the processual nature and individual agency in non‐participation, and the implications for culturally diverse societies.

Perplexity as a provocation: revisiting the role of metaphor as a ‘place holder’ for the potential of COVID-19 antibodies

This article revisits long-standing critiques of the role of metaphor in immunological discourse. Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead’s speculative philosophy of organism, I focus on the use of metaphor to...

Accounting for complexity - Intervention design in the context of studying social accountability for reproductive health.

Background: Social accountability interventions aim to propel change by raising community voices and holding duty bearers accountable for delivering on rights and entitlements. Evidence on the role of such interventions for improving community health outcomes is steadily emerging, including for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). However, these interventions are complex social processes with numerous actors, multiple components, and a highly influential local context. Unsurprisingly, determining the mechanisms of change and what outcomes may be transferable to other similar settings can be a challenge. We report our methodological considerations to account for complexity in a social accountability intervention exploring contraceptive uptake and use in Ghana and Tanzania. Main Body: The Community and Provider driven Social Accountability Intervention (CaPSAI) study explores the relationship between a health facility-focused social accountability intervention and contraceptive service provision in two countries.This 24-month mixed-method quasi-experimental study, using an interrupted time series with a parallel control group, is being undertaken in 16 sites across Ghana and Tanzania in collaboration with local research and implementation partners. The primary outcomes include changes in contraceptive uptake and use. We also measure outcomes related to current social accountability theories of change and undertake a process evaluation. We present three design components: aspects of co-design, 'conceptual' fidelity, and how we aim to track the intervention as 'intended vs. implemented' to explore how the intervention could be responsive to the embedded routines, local contextual realities, and the processual nature of the social accountability intervention. Conclusions: Through a discussion of these design components and their rationale, we conclude by suggesting approaches to intervention design that may go some way in responding to recent challenges in accounting for social accountability interventions, bearing relevance for evaluating health system interventions.

Genocide in Palestine: Gaza as a case study

ABSTRACT This article contends that Israeli policies that were enacted after the introduction of the siege in Gaza amount to slow-motion genocide. The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the serious implications of the Israeli siege and asserted that Gaza could soon be uninhabitable [Miriam Berger, ‘The U.N. Once Predicted Gaza Would Be “Uninhabitable” by 2020. Two Million People Still Live There’, Washington Post, January 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/01/un-predicted-gaza-would-be-uninhabitable-by-heres-what-that-actually-means/]. The present study adopts a sociological perspective and argues that genocide should be understood as a social practice rather than physical annihilation or merely mass killing of a group of people. It also situates the siege within a larger settler-colonial framework and emphasises the processual nature of the Nakba. Drawing on data collected through semi-structured interviews with Palestinian students as well as human rights reports, and historical and sociological materials, this article elaborates on how Israel commits a slow-motion genocide against defenceless populations in the Gaza Strip.

Smart Home Masculinities

ABSTRACT Existing research has shown dominant smart home imaginaries to be gendered visions of technologically deterministic lives of affluent young white men and middle-class hetero-normative white cultures. Instead, we argue, a more realistic, plausible and ethical approach to smart home design needs to originate from the different starting point of gender diversity and equality in the home. To demonstrate this, we situate smart home design within the dominant masculine and colonising narratives of industry and science. We then develop a design anthropological analysis of the everyday experiences as reported by four middle-class white Australian men living in heteronormative family households. We propose that existing masculinist imaginaries of smart home futures are not only limited because they fail to account for the diverse experiences and aspirations of heterogeneous households but because they also fail to recognise the messiness, contingency and processual nature of the social, material and experiential circumstances of the very heteronormative households they appear to be aligned with. A feminist approach to the smart home would need to be designed from and with gender-equal relations in the very site of the home.

Multiple Entrepreneurial Intentions: An Individual Case Study

Contemporary research has shown that entrepreneurial intention (EI) has become an increasingly popular topic of investigation. That being said, whereas the parent field of entrepreneurship is acknowledging its inherent dynamic and processual nature, the same is not true of EI. The current article therefore seeks to apply an emerging meta-theoretical process framework in the form of Manuel Delanda’s assemblage theory (AT) in ambition to extend our knowledge of how EIs unfold over time. A single in-depth case study design was implemented to track changes in an individual’s entrepreneurial intending. Data were captured using semi-structured interviews and then analysed using NVivo coding software. Findings suggest that it is through the interaction of contextually defined factors and their unique capacities that an emergent intentional whole can be created. The current article provides a foundation to consider intent through a more socially situated outlook and can act as a platform to guide further research in the area. The concept of entrepreneurial process intentions is introduced to atone for the dynamic interplay between spatially and temporally bound factors that can lead to a specific form of EI emerging.

Learning to plan? Knowledge framework and plan quality assessment dimensions for developing transport planning practice in South-East Europe

Development of urban transport planning practices in South-East Europe (SEE) must still rise to the standards of EU Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan guidelines. However, institutions in these regions also lack capacity for development, despite the urgency for action. As theory of transport planning focuses mostly on institutional contexts outside of SEE, and practical guidelines often lack depth for providing plan assessment recommendations, there is a clear need to develop further connections between theory and practice. This research synthesizes key concepts from neo-institutional, policy transfer, and organizational learning theory, to outline a knowledge framework for urban transport planning as a process. Suggesting that planning should be understood as an organized process of creative experimentation and learning aiming for sustainable outcomes, two dimensions for plan quality assessment are introduced. The framework is exemplified using a combination of quantitative and qualitative aspects for long-term organizational learning including plan quality assessment as a major milestone in the planning process. Future research directions should emphasise further the processual nature of planning, including a higher emphasis on collaborative and action-research methods, which would closely engage both practice and academia.

Strategic renewal: Can it be done profitably?

Industry transformation requires strategic renewal at the level of individual firms. Executives then face the dilemma of choosing renewal paths in the face of uncertainty over the competitive environment of the future, and hence the profitability of potential strategies. This dilemma motivates us to study industry transformation from the perspective of strategic renewal among 208 large firms in the global pulp and paper industry. The findings of our qualitative comparative analysis show that only a minority of firms in our sample succeeded in profitable proactive renewal. Content-wise, there were similarities in the pursued strategies over the wider population, but only a few maintained superior profitability while proactively renewing. Our results, overall, highlight the importance of understanding the processual nature and execution of strategic renewal.

Song and the Production of Anywaa Ethnicity in Gambella, Ethiopia

Ethnicity is highly politicized in Ethiopia, where Gambella region, on Ethiopia's southwestern border, has suffered from prolonged cycles of retaliatory ethnic violence. Among the Anywaa ethnic group in Gambella, song plays a role in producing ethnic consciousness, particularly since it is a medium for teaching and advising. Anywaa singers construct and valorize an Anywaa ethnic identity in their lyrics, and listeners value these songs for teaching them about their culture and gaining advice on how to act. Simultaneously, the variability in listeners' interpretation of songs highlights the ambiguous, processual nature of ethnicity. In the light of such sentiments, scholars should attend closely to the roles of expressive culture in ethnic movements and conflicts.

Closer than they look at first glance: A systematic review and a research agenda regarding measurement practices for policy learning

Learning is a cognitive and social dynamic through which diverse types of actors involved in policy processes acquire, translate and disseminate new information and knowledge about public problems and solutions. In turn, they maintain, strengthen or revise their policy beliefs and preferences. Despite the conceptual and theoretical developments over the last years, concerns about the measurement of policy learning remain persistent. Based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, this article reports the results of a systematic review of the existing practices for measuring policy learning in the public administration and policy research. In addition to operationalizations, data sources, methods of analysis and levels of analysis, we examine how the reviewed articles deal with the processual nature of policy learning. We show that the existing measurement practices transcend the research streams on policy learning for the most part, which extends the argument developed by Dunlop and Radaelli (2018) that policy learning is an analytical framework of the policy process. Based on these results, we argue for more transparent operationalizations, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of direct and indirect measurement approaches, and call for more creativity in designing measurement methods that recognize the multilevel nature of policy learning.

Risk and protective factors in the school environment. Case study of two former charges of social rehabilitation centres

The article discusses the issue of the risk and protective factors in the school environment of women who, during their adolescence, were formally controlled by the institutions of the system to prevent the demoralization of children and adolescents. The theoretical basis for the analyses was the concept of resilience. The main research problem is presented in the following question: What (risk and protective) factors occur in individual experiences of women – former charges of social rehabilitation centres. The study used the method of individual cases, while the technique of obtaining data was an autobiographical narrative interview. Based on the analysis of the obtained material, risk and protective factors in the school environment of narrators were listed. The configuration of these factors was reconstructed and their protective or risky value from the point of view of the development of the demoralization process was estimated. The most important conclusion is that the same factors (close relationship with a teacher, inadequate education) constituted a different value in the narrators' lives. The studies also showed the processual nature of the formation of the cumulative risk in the school environment. The conclusions confirm the importance of a case-by-case approach in assessing the value on individual (protective and risk) factors.

Using cultural hybridity as an analytic lens for missiological research

This article considers cultural hybridity as a concept that helps interpret complex social phenomena found in various intercultural contexts in missions. The concept of cultural hybridity is better used as an analytic tool rather than an object of analysis in order for it to have an interpretive power. Adopting cultural hybridity in missiological research requires focusing on its active, dynamic, and processual nature found in the verb form, “hybridization,” rather than a stationary concept depicted by the noun form, “hybridity.” When using cultural hybridity in empirical studies, the mission researcher needs to develop a framework using the concept by immersing in the prior and current scholarly discussions, analyze social processes at multiple levels, utilize the hybridity theory in conjunction with other relevant social theories, and close the gap between the theory and data by focusing on how things work rather than forcing meanings out of the data. These practices may aid missiologists in their empirical research and increase their understanding of challenging intercultural issues.

Mechanisms and Dynamics in the Interplay of Trust and Distrust: Insights from project-based collaboration

Trust and distrust are two distinct organizing principles that play a critical role in interorganizational projects where highly interdependent organizations collaborate to build tailor-made and technologically complex solutions. Whereas an emerging body of research has debated the conceptual distinction between trust and distrust, this paper emphasizes the processual nature of trusting and distrusting and the interplay between them. Drawing upon insights from project-based collaboration in a complex products and systems industry, we explore the distinct cognitive and behavioral mechanisms through which trust and distrust work and orient firms towards optimism and watchfulness in the interaction. Our findings show that trust and distrust can act both as substitutes and complements through three interconnected dynamics—undermining, enabling, and compensating. These dynamics develop and recursively interrelate through interfirm interactions within single projects and in the broader network. We conclude by presenting our contributions to interorganizational trust literature and by proposing that the interplay of trust and distrust can have both positive and negative effects on the pursuit of project-based relationships.

A Community in Quarantine: The Social Worlds of Alternative Theater During the Pandemic

The article describes the functioning of alternative theater community during the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical framework of analysis is determined by the social worlds theory, allowing us to capture the processual nature of reconstructing the social world of alternative theater in the era of COVID-19. We explore the ways in which independent theater is coping with the threat to its practice, understood as a tool for building a community “here and now,” i.e. its main technology, values, and the primary activity that organizes communication within the social worlds of alternative theater. We take into account changes brought on by the pandemic (the inability to build relationships via direct interaction with audience members/participants) and the constant, everyday experiences of people working in alternative theater (their ability to function in a crisis). Our analysis is based on empirical data collected in the course of socio-anthropological studies into: (1) the working conditions of Polish theater workers during the pandemic, carried out by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theater Institute in Warsaw; and (2) the modus operandi of the Węgajty Theater from the perspective of its participants’ experiences.

Accounting for complexity – Intervention design in the context of studying social accountability for reproductive health

Background: Social accountability interventions aim to propel change by raising community voices and holding duty bearers accountable for delivering on rights and entitlements. Evidence on the role of such interventions for improving community health outcomes is steadily emerging, including for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). However, these interventions are complex social processes with numerous actors, multiple components, and a highly influential local context. Unsurprisingly, determining the mechanisms of change and what outcomes may be transferable to other similar settings can be a challenge. We report our methodological considerations to account for complexity in a social accountability intervention exploring contraceptive uptake and use in Ghana and Tanzania. Main Body: The Community and Provider driven Social Accountability Intervention (CaPSAI) study explores the relationship between a health facility-focused social accountability intervention and contraceptive service provision in two countries. This 24-month mixed-method quasi-experimental study, using an interrupted time series with a parallel control group, is being undertaken in 16 sites across Ghana and Tanzania in collaboration with local research and implementation partners. The primary outcomes include changes in contraceptive uptake and use. We also measure outcomes related to current social accountability theories of change and undertake a process evaluation. We present three design features: co-design, ‘conceptual’ fidelity, and how we aim to track the intervention as ‘intended vs. implemented’ to explore how the intervention could be responsive to the embedded routines, local contextual realities, and the processual nature of the social accountability intervention. Conclusions: Through a discussion of these design features and their rationale, we conclude by suggesting approaches to intervention design that may go some way in responding to recent challenges in accounting for social accountability interventions, bearing relevance for evaluating health system interventions.

Dead Enough to Bury

Abstract This essay examines the concepts of life and afterlife as they appear across Beckett’s trilogy, through focussing on representations of the act of burial, an act which draws attention to a caesura between biotic and abiotic conceptions of both life and afterlife. As the worlds of the trilogy become progressively less biotic, The Unnamable might be thought of as a laboratory in which the ‘lives’ of its characters are subjected to various biological experiments, experiments which suggest that narrative fiction, like the act of burial, is a kind of prophylactic against the fundamental processual nature of biotic life.

Negotiating change for gender equality: identifying leverages, overcoming barriers

Introduction. Institutional change through gender equality plans is today the dominant approach to promoting gender equality in higher education and research. Building on our experiences as “technical support partners” in several EU-funded projects, we reflect on how change is negotiated in a variety of contexts. Objectives. Theoretically, using Feminist Institutionalism and the Science and Technology Studies concept of the trading zone, our objective is to analyse institutional negotiations among various, differently positioned actors with diverse backgrounds, value systems and negotiating power. From a practice-oriented perspective, our aim is to demonstrate typical challenges, suggest pathways towards solutions, and identify specific negotiation skills which underscore the capacity-building needs of change agents. Methodology. For our analysis, we have selected eight information-rich case studies through purposive theory-based sampling, illustrating the different transactions in the trading zones, based on our prior knowledge of the circumstances. The methods we draw on are primarily participant observation and textual analysis of project documents. Results. The selected theoretical combination allows us to identify leverages, ways to overcome barriers and the required skills and competences. Specifically, we underscore the use of participatory and co-creation techniques, strategic framing, spotting and using windows of opportunity, and wide mobilisation of stakeholders. We highlight key features of the change process, including its processual and incremental nature, the need for constant negotiation and the capacity-building needs of change agents. Contribution. With this analysis, we contribute, firstly, to the understanding of organisational change by identifying concrete barriers and opportunities as well as considering the ways in which a shared representation of gender equality is developed. The second, theoretical contribution lies in combining Feminist Institutionalism and the concept of the trading zone, which allows us to bring to productive dialogue issues of power, processuality and the need to address both material and discursive enactments of change processes.

Meaning-making: a underestimated resource for health? A discussion of the value of meaning-making in the conservation and restoration of health and well-being

This article discusses the function, development and maintenance of meaning and the importance of meaning-making from different perspectives, as it is based on a collaboration between professionals from health science and psychology. The aim is to discuss how meaning-making processes can be employed in the health context to enhance individuals’ well-being. Starting point is a description of the common basis of the understanding of meaning-making. Afterwards brief examples from the different professional areas will show how meaning-making can improve health care practice. We will focus on the processual nature of meaning-making, its existential layers, as well as the ways in which meaning-making is at play in everyday activities and limit situations, such as illness or suicidality.

(Not) a good place to stay! – East European migrants’ experiences of settlement in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Scotland

ABSTRACT In this article, we ask how migrants establish social relationships, attachments and feelings of belonging within and to disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Drawing on extensive qualitative research with East European migrants in Scotland, we explore empirically the material, relational and temporal aspects of experiences of settlement at the neighbourhood level. We consider the ways in which migrants encounter and assess the material and institutional realities of their neighbourhoods. We examine the social relationships which develop in place, paying attention to social and cultural distancing and mutual ‘othering’, which may run counter to the development of place-based bonds. We discuss the role of time and the processual and ambiguous nature of settlement. Importantly, in our analysis, we consider the possibility that theoretical frameworks developed specifically for understanding migrant experiences might overemphasise their uniqueness and risk overlooking similarities grounded in multi-scalar hierarchies of power, which cut across lines of ethnic or cultural difference. We draw on wider theories and studies of place-attachment, as well as migration studies theories of embedding and emplacement, to explore the ways in which our participants’ experiences may be understood as both similar to and different from more widely shared realities of life in deprived areas.