Ways Of Working Research Articles

Jokes, rhetoric and embodied racism: a rhetorical discourse analysis of the logics of racist jokes on the internet

This article outlines the racist rhetoric employed in anti-black jokes on five internet websites. It is argued that racist jokes can act as important rhetorical devices for serious racisms, and thus work in ways that can support racism in particular readings. By offering a rhetorical discourse analysis of jokes containing embodied racism – or the discursive remains of biological racism – it is shown that internet jokes express two key logics of racism. These logics are inclusion and exclusion. It is argued that inclusion usually inferiorizes and employs race stereotypes whereas exclusion often does not. The article expands this second category by highlighting exclusionary ‘black’ and ‘nigger’ jokes. These categories of non-stereotyped race or ethnic joking have been largely ignored in humour studies because of a reliance on a problematic and celebratory definition of the ethnic joke. Thus a wider definition of racist humour is offered.

Employee voice behavior: A meta‐analytic test of the conservation of resources framework

SummaryAlthough voice (i.e. expressing change‐oriented ideas and suggestions) has frequently been investigated as a way for workers to reciprocate to their employers for the positive treatment they receive, much less is known about how workers use voice to deal with stress. This study takes a conservation of resources perspective to examine the relationships among workplace stress, voice behavior, and job performance. We first examined the strength of relationships of three major groups of workplace stressors and strains (job based, social based, and organization based) with voice behavior. We then examined the relationships of voice behavior with performance variables (e.g. in‐role performance and creativity) to investigate how voice may help workers preserve or accumulate resources to enhance their performance. The meta‐analytic findings presented here provide support for a negative relationship between workplace stress and voice and a positive relationship between voice behavior and performance outcomes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Illegality at Work: Deportability and the Productive New Era of Immigration Enforcement

Abstract: Our goal in this paper is to identify how recent escalations in immigration enforcement and changes in migration practices affect the ability of the state to continue to serve two of its key “productive” functions: protecting capital accumulation within industry and ensuring the state's own political legitimacy in the eyes of the public. We draw on our ethnographic research on Latino migrant dairy farm workers in Wisconsin to examine the ways in which a group of migrant workers experiences the process of being enforced as “illegal” bodies. We find that migrant dairy workers’ palpable sense of “deportability” articulates with the specific structure of dairy work in ways that make the economically and politically “ideal” migrant: compliant at work and invisible otherwise.

Thriving, not just surviving, in emotionally demanding fields of practice

Research within the disciplines of Social Work and Education has for sometime acknowledged the tragedy, trauma, conflict and misery that can be experienced by workers in their associated professions. More recently, there has been an aligned interest in the role of passion, emotion and energy in sustaining these professionals through such experiences. This paper contributes to the growing literature in this area by reporting on a study conducted with five social workers and six teachers who work in Australian lower socioeconomic, urban-fringe and communities. It also engages the concept of the 'personal domain' to explore how these social workers and teachers cannot only survive, but can actually thrive in demanding work contexts. The methodology adopted for the study was an appreciative enquiry approach, where these professionals, each with over a decade of experience in urban-fringe communities, were recruited via non-probability, purposive, snowballing techniques and interviewed about what sustained them in their work during November 2008-February 2009. Thematic analysis of the interviews found that participants not only identified specific survival strategies, but could also articulate how their life experiences, ideologies, beliefs, values and other life resources informed their work in ways that aided their flourishing as professionals. The paper concludes by calling for further research into the work of social work and teaching professionals from a 'personal domain' perspective and considering the potential implications of such research for these professions, particularly in terms of promoting professional trajectories characterised first by endurance, and then by development and triumph.

The Inequalities of Equity and the Search for an Ethical Professional in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

The period in which Dickens wrote Bleak House was one in which England was heatedly engaged in a dialogue about what kinds of legal and social organization were best. These debates revolved around a series of mutually constructing juxtapositions: national tradition and Benthamite reform, families and the state, and the public and private. The solicitor, as a literary character whose profession historically demands continual movement between these realms, puts into focus the tensions between individual agency and institutional power. Dickens’s portrayal of solicitors is famously excoriating, but while several critics have argued that Dickens provides an alternate model for institutional authority by drawing on individuals in the domestic sphere, I argue that Dickens locates a model for the solicitor that, while emulating traits such as empathy and caretaking, is firmly rooted in the institutional world, that of the doctor Allan Woodourt. Dickens’s turn, however, is really an attempt to resuscitate Chancery’s origins: Woodcourt carries forth his professional work in ways that mimic Chancery’s original mandates. My argument begins with theorization of the term “character” as a literary and ethical concept, revisits debates between Utilitarian reformers and traditionalists, and draws on Dickens’s own concept of “fancy” as an ethical force in both imaginative and professional contexts.

Team Work in Context: Institutional Mediation in the Public-service Professional Bureaucracy

This paper examines how context shapes team work within the public-service professional bureaucracy. We examine the effects of an interaction between both macro-institutional and local-organizational context upon the micro-negotiation of team work. Specifically, we consider how features of local context mediate professional-institutional effects. Drawing upon neo-institutionalism (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Powell and DiMaggio 1991), we view team members as ‘institutional agents’ (Scott 2008), shaping team work in ways that either reproduce or transform professional structures within particular local conditions. Exemplary of international government transformative efforts for public-service enhancement (Newman 2001; Osborne and Gaebler 1992), we focus upon a UK government initiative to reconfigure professional relationships through introducing team work in National Health Service genetic care. Findings from two qualitative, comparative case studies reveal contrasting outcomes: reproduction or transformation of the professional institution, respectively. Specific local conditions — organizational, and human and social in particular — combine to produce these divergent mediating effects towards inertia or change. This highlights the importance of antecedents to team work and taking a historical perspective to understand the influence of context. While the challenges of reconfiguring professional structures through team work are shown, our analysis also suggests optimism regarding possibilities for change, albeit within certain local conditions. The challenge for management and policy-makers becomes the extent to which — and indeed, if at all — such facilitative local environments might be supported.

Property and Progress

Copyright laws aim to protect intangible interests in the use of literary and artistic works to provide creators with an incentive to produce. The law rationalizes that by granting exclusive “property” rights in creative works, authors will be encouraged to produce works for the ultimate benefit of society as the potential for commercial rewards is assumed to be the primary motivation for creativity. But, the exclusive control these rights give creators and owners of copyrighted works have been the subject of severe criticism because they create access barriers to the use of content, which, free speech and civil liberties advocates, argue should be free of restrictions for civil discourse and political dialogue. This Article argues that, contrary to contemporary thought that rights in the copyright system hampers progress, the protection of individual rights in literary and artistic works - besides encouraging creativity for progress - also brings into the copyright system a normative order for social conduct that advances society towards the Constitutional goal of progress. A strong institution of property rights for the copyright system correlates with greater progress of science and arts because the recognition and protection of individual authorial autonomy instills individual and collective social responsibility in how works are used and produced, generates public respect for the act of authorship, and fosters education, research, and economic development through the production and use of literary and artistic works. The creation of diverse works will contribute towards progress of science and arts only if an underlying foundation of property rights protect the creator of a work to instill a sense of individual autonomy and responsible authorship and directs public use of the work toward socially beneficial purposes in ways that strengthen, rather than weaken, the moral fabric of society. This Article concludes that the progress of science and arts is not only dependent on a system of statutory copyright provided by the Copyright Act but on an institution of property laws to provide normative guidance on proper conduct in the production and use of literary and artistic works in ways, which would advance progress.

Considering quality in qualitative interviewing

Within the field of qualitative inquiry, there has been considerable discussion of how ‘quality’ might be demonstrated by researchers in reports of studies. With the growth in the application of qualitative methods in social research, along with the proliferation of texts available to qualitative researchers over the last four decades, there has been increasing diversity in how quality has been demonstrated in reports. In this article, I focus on the use of qualitative interviews in research studies, arguing that with a growing array of theorizations of the qualitative interview, researchers must demonstrate the quality of their work in ways that are commensurate with their assumptions about their use of interviews. I sketch a number of possibilities for how qualitative interviews might be theorized, and show the different ways in which quality might be demonstrated from each perspective. I propose this typology as one means by which novice researchers might begin to work through design decisions involved in the process of proposal writing, the conduct of interview studies, and the writing up and representation of findings.

Orientations to Academic Workloads at Department Level

Universities confront many challenges in their efforts to manage staff activity with the aid of workload assessment and allocation systems. This article sets out fresh perspectives from an exploratory study designed to uncover patterns of subjective views about various aspects of workloads. Using Q methodology, academic staff in a single department provided composite pictures of the intensity of their views on workload policies and systems, and about their experiences of workloads. Factor analysis, interpreted with the aid of interviews, reveals three orientations based on traditional independent scholarship, collectivism, and stress and overwork. Together, the three orientations in one department show evidence of a generational shift, with leadership implications. Looking ahead, workload allocation systems may need to give weight to personal choice and to consider ways to credit shared work in ways that fit the contemporary university environment.

“The law cannot terminate bloodlines”: Families and child welfare decisions

Child welfare professionals are called to make determinations that affect whether children can stay or reunify with their families. These decisions are framed by policies that inform and constrain their professional and personal understanding of risk and relationships. This manuscript explores themes related to children's relationships with their families that emerged from a qualitative study with 18 child welfare professionals, including judges, lawyers, and masters-level social workers who represent different constituencies in child welfare cases. It is supplemented by interviews with 6 child-welfare involved parents, all of them biological mothers. The majority of participants' believe that existing families are nearly always better caregivers to children than legally mandated ones. Existing families are perceived as more likely to love and be loved by their children, to protect children from harm, and to be superior to currently available foster care and alternative placements. Yet, participants perceive the policies to prefer substitute, legally created families over already existing families. Such policies leave child welfare unenviable position of having to work in ways contradicts their personal and professional judgment of what is best for the families and children they serve.

NEW APPROACHES TO PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFT PREDICTION VIA GAUSSIAN PROCESS REGRESSION IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY

Expanding upon the work of Way and Srivastava 2006 we demonstrate how the use of training sets of comparable size continue to make Gaussian process regression (GPR) a competitive approach to that of neural networks and other least-squares fitting methods. This is possible via new large size matrix inversion techniques developed for Gaussian processes (GPs) that do not require that the kernel matrix be sparse. This development, combined with a neural-network kernel function appears to give superior results for this problem. Our best fit results for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Main Galaxy Sample using u,g,r,i,z filters gives an rms error of 0.0201 while our results for the same filters in the luminous red galaxy sample yield 0.0220. We also demonstrate that there appears to be a minimum number of training-set galaxies needed to obtain the optimal fit when using our GPR rank-reduction methods. We find that morphological information included with many photometric surveys appears, for the most part, to make the photometric redshift evaluation slightly worse rather than better. This would indicate that most morphological information simply adds noise from the GP point of view in the data used herein. In addition, we show that cross-match catalog results involving combinations of the Two Micron All Sky Survey, SDSS, and Galaxy Evolution Explorer have to be evaluated in the context of the resulting cross-match magnitude and redshift distribution. Otherwise one may be misled into overly optimistic conclusions.

Brood development into sexual females depends on the presence of a queen but not on temperature in an ant dispersing by colony fission, Aphaenogaster senilis

Abstract. 1. In eusocial insects, colony fission is a mode of dispersal by which a young queen leaves her nest with some workers to found a new colony. In these species, adult females (workers and the queen) should allocate most resources to increasing their colony size, which constrains the possibility of fission. In contrast, developing diploid larvae should have a preference for becoming a queen and having their own offspring, rather than becoming workers and rearing the offspring of other females.2. In the ant Aphaenogaster senilis, queens are produced in very small numbers, suggesting that adult females control larval development. We used a 6‐year series of data on more than 300 nests to determine the annual cycle of worker and queen production. Although both overlapped, the latter mostly occurred in the second half of the summer, after a major peak of worker emergence. Young queens were also often produced in nests whose reproductive queen had died, thus allowing her replacement. Overall, we estimate that only 0.07% of diploid larvae actually develop into gynes.3. Laboratory experiments indicated that brood is bipotent until the second larval instar. Diploid larval development into queen was favoured by the removal of the mother queen, but was not affected by rearing temperature.4. Our data suggest that most diploid broods are forced by the adults to develop into workers rather than into gynes. However, when the queen is not present due to death or after a fission event, a few larvae are allowed to develop into gynes. One way for workers to limit the development of larvae might be by controlling the amount of food they receive.

Language, games and the role of interpreters in psychiatric diagnosis: a Wittgensteinian thought experiment

British society is becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse. This poses a major challenge to mental health services charged with the responsibility to work in ways that respect cultural and...

Applying Merton's theory of anomia to career disruptions

PurposeTaking an innovative theoretical approach, the purpose of this paper is to apply Merton's theory of anomia as personal reactions to social disruptions to white‐collar worker reactions to being unemployed or under‐employed.Design/methodology/approachExploratory, quantitative, secondary data analysis using data collected from convenience samples of career‐disrupted, white‐collar workers in four community and church based outplacement support groups. Recognizing career‐disruption as a potentially anomic state, factor analysis was used to develop scales suggestive of Merton's categories of reactions to anomia, and cluster analysis was used to classify respondents into Merton's categories.FindingsExploratory scales developed and resulting cluster analyses suggest Merton's theory may be helpful in recognizing different white‐collar work reactions to career displacement.Research limitations/implicationsSecondary analysis and convenience sample data are major limitations, but results justify a call for further research into the application of Merton's categories of reactions to anomia to displaced white‐collar workers.Practical implicationsGiven the frequent shifts in the business environment, white‐collar career disruptions will remain a frequent concern for senior management officers charged with administering layoffs and outplacement programs. Insights suggested by these analyses may aid anticipation of reactions of displaced white‐collar workers in ways that may influence placement and counseling activities related to worker adjustments.Originality/valueThis study is unique in applying Merton's theory of anomia to career disruptions, although Merton himself illustrated the theory with reference to workplace situations.

Is teaching a discipline? Implications for teaching and teacher education

The background to this paper is based on the ongoing need to place more attention on the importance of teaching. The aim in so doing is to lead to a better valuing of teaching which, in the case of this paper, is through an exploration of the notion of teaching as a discipline. There are differing views about that which constitutes a discipline and considering teaching as a discipline is a provocative way of focusing on the complex nature of that work in order to make clear that teaching is much more than ‘simply doing.’ Through a review of the diversity of views of disciplines – and education as a discipline – as described in the literature the paper considers the consequences of conceptualizing teaching as a discipline which are significant not only for teaching itself but also for teacher education. The paper concludes that if teaching is to be considered a discipline, then teacher education itself needs to be understood and practiced as a much more scholarly activity. This paper works through some of the arguments that arise as a consequence of thinking about teaching as a discipline and challenges the teaching and teacher education communities to conceptualize their work in ways that will engender a great sense of valuing of that work.

Critical to care: the invisible women in health services

Who counts as a health care worker? The question of where we draw the line between health care workers and non-health care workers is not merely a matter of academic nicety or a debate without consequences for care. It is a central issue for policy development because the definition often results in a division among workers in ways that undermine care. Critical to Care uses a wide range of evidence to reveal the contributions that those who provide personal care, who cook, clean, keep records, and do laundry make to health services. As a result of current reforms, these workers are increasingly treated as peripheral even though the research on what determines health demonstrates that their work is essential. The authors stress the invisibility and undervaluing of 'women's work' as well as the importance of context in understanding how this work is defined and treated. Through a gendered analysis, Critical to Care establishes a basis for discussing research, policy, and other actions in relation to the work of thousands of marginalized women and men every day. © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008.

Geoffrey Holmes and the Public Sphere: Augustan Historiography from Post‐Namierite to the Post‐Habermasian

This article attributes the relative lack of attention to the ‘public sphere’ in Geoffrey Holmes's work to the pervasive influence of Lewis Namier and the Namierite conception of political history. Holmes's British Politics can be understood as a product of what might be called the revisionist's dilemma. Because the main thrust of the argument of this work was to challenge the Namierite interpretation of the structure of politics in Anne's reign, Holmes could not fail but to replicate the structures of the original Namierite paradigm. Nevertheless, Holmes's demolition of the Namierite view of Augustan politics also opened up new possibilities for further research; it ultimately widened our understanding of the ‘political’ and it prepared the ground for the remarkable interdisciplinary dialogue between literary historians, intellectual historians, and political historians. The article concludes with a discussion of how Holmes's successors began to build on his work in ways that can help explain why the Habermasian public sphere paradigm emerged to the foreground of current scholarship in a field where it had been ignored for three decades. Historians are now beginning to build a detailed post‐Habermasian understanding of the ways in which the public sphere affected the structures of politics in later Stuart Britain. Work along these lines may well finally help explain the transformation of British politics from an age of Stuart revolutions to the age of Hanoverian oligarchy.

Gendered Bodies: Negotiating Normalcy and Support

AbstractResearch on gender and negotiation typically focuses on formal bargaining about salary and compensation. This work needs to be expanded to everyday negotiations in the workplace, especially negotiations on organizational issues deemed germane to women. Drawing from research on work‐life issues, this study focuses on how women frame problems about menopause at work in ways that make them open to negotiation. Specifically, it examines message board posts on an online discussion board to see how issues are named, blamed, and claimed and how this framing situates them as interests, rights, or power concerns that foster or hinder opportunities for negotiation.

Der Herr Etatsrat : Theodor Storm’s Critical Reflection on Ersatzreligion

Scholarship on the role that Theodor Storm’s personal history plays in his literary work has frequently addressed the matter of his religious beliefs. David A. Jackson traces both Storm’s “Feuerbachian atheism” (Theodor Storm 106) and his resultant “concern with alternative values” (19). The ultimate “alternative value” for Storm, Jackson argues, is “die Liebe zwischen Mann und Frau,” which Storm characterizes in his correspondence with his then fiancee, Constanze, as “eine gottliche Offenbarung” and “unmittelbare Gottheit,” indeed to such an extent that “ja Liebe ist schon Religion” (qtd. in Jackson, “Storms Stellung” 46). Barbara Burns’s work on Storm represents a variation on – though certainly not a departure from – Jackson’s in two related ways. First, she qualifies Storm’s atheism as a “gradual movement away from religious faith towards secular humanism” (10), and the latter principle is certainly one foundation of Storm’s oeuvre. Second, she focusses the “Liebe” of the correspondence specifically on “[d]evotion to spouse and family,” which, she argues, “virtually constituted a replacement religion for Storm,” with “the idea of the family unit not only as the source of solace, but even of salvation and a degree of immortality.” This understanding of Storm’s religious views shapes Burns’s reading both of his early novellas, in which “the idyll of stable and peaceful relationships” is “removed from the evil and distress of the outside world,” and of his later works, with families that today would be called dysfunctional facing “the invasion of negative forces into what ought to be a sanctuary and an impenetrable stronghold” (19). Certainly, the replacement religion identified in Storm scholarship is reflected in his work in ways that have yet to be explored. This paper will analyze some of these, but is concerned primarily with Storm’s self-critical and socio-critical engagement with the very phenomenon of Ersatzreligion.1 While one typically – and rightly – associates this theme in Storm’s work with Der Schimmelreiter (1888), it is even more prevalent in the earlier and less familiar novella Der Herr Etatsrat (1881). In keeping with the darker nature of Storm’s later work, this novella

Recovering Love’s Fugitive: Elizabeth Wilmot and the Oscillations between the Sexual and Textual Body in a Libertine Woman’s Manuscript Poetry

Recovering Love’s Fugitive: Elizabeth Wilmot and the Oscillations between the Sexual and Textual Body in a Libertine Woman’s Manuscript Poetry