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With a focus on the history, politics and economics of voluntary and community sector activity in Northern Ireland, this book explores the region’s neoliberal policy reforms and their implications for the sector, communities and governance. We chart the repeated ‘partnership turns’ in government rhetoric and policy, the networks and relationships that have developed between VCS actors and the state, and assess the nature and role of the sector after decades of financial and rhetorical support from governments and international funders. We will see how these developments had offered the voluntary sector a privileged role in the governance of a region that was making a transition to both relative peace and a highly localised version of neoliberalism. As this book will illustrate, the optimistic ‘glue that holds society together’ narratives that surrounded the sector in the decades of the peace process, and the ‘partnership’ policy discourses of the peacebuilding and New Labour heyday, are constantly resurrected in policy narratives that surround voluntary and community action in the region. However, such discourses are increasingly giving way to narratives and practices that are unapologetically grounded in neoliberal notions of civil society.

This book offers a new perspective on the theory of spectacle to explain the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism in American society and politics. While Trump is inseparable from the existence of a mass consumer culture under capitalism, few have elaborated on that aspect of his identity and rise to the Presidency. Drawing on Guy Debord and his interlocutors, as well as others like Deleuze and Guattari and Walter Benjamin, this book conceptualizes spectacle as an embodied assemblage that includes the affective and emotional components of life amid a broader materialization of capitalism in the everyday landscape. Inspired by the methodology of Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, this book triangulates theories of the spectacle with (1) journalistic coverage of the 2016 Presidential campaign and its aftermath and (2) other journalistic coverage of contemporary consumer culture. Together, the spectacle appears as a bundle of intense feelings and sensations that enrol us into new relationships with commodities, technology and data, as well as the materiality of the consumer infrastructure itself, including built environments and the technologies therein. In total, we get a sense not only of how the State uses spectacle to govern, but how the spectacle came to transform the political sphere itself, thereby providing a context for Trumpism. The spectacle, then, leads not only to “post-truth” horizons, but more precise articulations with the far-right. As such, this book illuminates how Trump embodies the frightening potential of capitalist consumerism to intersect with and further enable fascistic forms of power.

This book explores questions of trade union identities and what is termed ‘niche unionism’ in the work. It exposes the inadequacy of the extant industrial relations literature in explaining both contemporary union identities and the significance of niche to union organisation. It explores the contribution of alternative bodies of literature including organisational identity theory, social identity theory and marketing. The work introduces a new approach to understanding unions’ projected identities in the form of a multidimensional framework of analysis developed from more than ten years research designed to isolate the sources of union identity. The projected identities of trade unions certified in Great Britain are examined systematically under broad headings of general, industrial/occupational, organisational and geographical unions. Four drivers to change in union identities are explored, namely, union mergers, union rebranding, new unions and union dissolutions. The work provides a brief comparative analysis of union identities in five other countries, suggesting additional sources of union identity that might be required for a more comprehensive analysis. Finally, the work explores critical questions relating to the future of union identities concerning, the primacy of general unions, the persistence of niche unions, whether general or niche unions are better placed to organise the unorganised and finally whether niche identity a barrier to expanding membership territories.

Covering the period from the height of Empire to Brexit and beyond, this book shows how the vote to leave the European Union increased hostilities towards racial and ethnic minorities and migrants. Concentrating on the education system it asks whether populist views that there should be a British identity, or a Scottish, Welsh or Irish one largely excluding minorities, or whether arguments based on human rights, equality and economic needs will prevail. It covers events in politics and education that have left most white British people ignorant of Empire, the often-brutal processes of decolonisation and the arrival of migrants from post-colonial and European countries. It discusses policies and practices in education, race, religion and migration that have left schools and universities largely failing to engage with a multicultural and multiracial society

Locating localism explores the development of localism as a new mode of statecraft and its implications for the practice of citizenship in England. The book takes the long view of this new policy development, positioning it in relation to the political geo-history of the British state. It highlights the challenges of the state devolving itself and the importance of citizens having the incentives and institutions needed to act. Drawing on original research into community organising, neighbourhood planning and the organisation of local government, the book highlights the importance of citizens having the civic infrastructure they need to engage in decision making on their own terms.

Once considered the preserve of the wealthy, nanny care has grown in response to changes in the labour market, including the rising number of mothers with young children, and increases in non-standard work patterns. This book examines the place of in-home childcare, commonly referred to as care by nannies, in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada since the 1970s. In contrast to childminding or family day care provided in the home of the carer, in-home care takes place in the child’s home. The research extends beyond the early childhood education and care domain to consider how migration policy facilitates the provision of childcare in the private home. New empirical research is presented about in-home childcare in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, three countries where governments are pursuing new ways to support the recruitment of in-home childcare workers through funding, regulation and migration. The compelling policy story that emerges illustrates the implications of different mechanisms for facilitating in-home childcare - for families and for care workers. It proposes that these differences are shaped by both structural and normative understandings about appropriate forms of care that cut across gender, class/socioeconomic status and race/migration. Overall, it argues that greater attention needs to be given to the way childcare work in the private home is situated across ECEC and migration policy.

Schools have long struggled to embrace diversity while also responding to the pressure to improve discipline standards and attainment. This book takes a critical and empirically grounded look at how such concerns are increasingly being managed through the use of onsite ‘behaviour support units’. Commonly administered through pastoral support services these self-contained centres are located on school premises and enable difficult pupils to be removed from mainstream classrooms for extended periods without recourse to official exclusion channels. Despite a general acknowledgment that such units now exist in the majority of British secondary schools there is a remarkable gap in knowledge and literature about their workings. This book will offer a valuable and much needed insight into the politics and practices of internal school exclusion, as highlighted through the experiences of the young people attending the units. Drawing on uniquely situated ethnographic research in three London based behaviour support units this book provides an important and highly illuminating account of the institutional and inter-personal dynamics characterising internal school exclusion

Through its 14 chapters, this book presents a first view of the different perspectives within the fragmented field of behaviour change. The first part presents a series of perspectives of behaviour change as it is currently researched and implemented. This includes an overview of theories of behaviour, of evaluation and intervention design, the various approaches to behaviour change policy and a review of both behavioural economics and social marketing. The second part presents a series of approaches which are more concerned with questioning underlying conditions in which problematic behaviours occur. The activities of commercial marketers are scrutinised, the ethics and efficacy of participatory approaches – without systemic change - are questioned, and theories of practice and whole-system approaches are offered as perspectives which lead to a more complete picture of ‘problem’ behaviours and how to change them. The book paints a picture of a field that is undoubtedly fragmented and subject to a series of forces, both internally and externally. It highlights the breadth of perspectives and does not seek to hide the conflicts between them. Rather, the book seeks to suggest the potential of transdisciplinary behaviour change and to pave the way for further innovative discussions across the field and the setting of a firm agenda for its future.

This book offers a timely analysis of the impact of rapidly advancing knowledge about the brain, mind and behaviour on contemporary public policy and practice. Drawing on in-depth interviews with professionals in a range of social spheres including architecture and urban design, education, and the workplace, the book examines the global spread of policy strategies, UK based policy experiments and everyday practice informed by ‘brain culture’. It explores how neuroscientific, behavioural and psychological explanation have become increasingly influential in such fields, and examines their repercussions for governing citizens. Analysis of a neural turn in research, policy and practice is offered through the development of a geographical focus on behaviour, including the role of context, scale and situatedness in re-shaping political agency. The book provides a grounded critical commentary on the burgeoning field of social, cultural and political aspects of brain culture. It offers an alternative set of explanations for what matters in explaining why people behave in certain ways and how citizens’ behaviour could and should be governed.