School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemNarratives of Rehabilitation in a South African Prison(Oxford University Press, 2023)How individuals incarcerated in the Global South engage with the official rehabilitative model remains largely under-documented. Through analysis of the narratives of men and women living in a large, medium-security correctional complex in Gauteng, South Africa, I argue that the grandiloquent official discourse of rehabilitation constitutes an important resource for those incarcerated. Highlighting the importance of local context in debates about carceral rehabilitation, I demonstrate that not only prisoners’ personal circumstances, but also the wider socio-economic context of enduring colonial legacies of structural inequalities shape their interactions with the penal regime. By foregrounding what those subjected to penal power make of their incarceration, I argue that the official rehabilitative discourse helps many to make sense of their predicament, actualise their lives, and sustain hope. I highlight how individual narrative strategies are channeled by and mapped on the official discourse of rehabilitation, free will, and personal responsibility, attesting to the success of the disciplinary project of the post-apartheid prison. I demonstrate how prisoners incorporate engagement with the rehabilitative model into a moral order of carceral cohabitation. I suggest that narrative work in the prison constitutes a nexus of individual needs and private aspirations and structural regimes of inequality, poverty, deprivation, and neglect.
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ItemThe gendered framing of language impairments in criminalised young people(SAGE Publications, 2023)Young people whose language performance does not meet socially expected standards are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Pragmatic language skills encompass the social aspects of language, which include constructing narratives, the rules of conversations, turn-taking, topic management, and non-verbal communication. Current research on pragmatic language impairments in criminalised young people – that is, on their symptomatic difficulties with social communication and language – remains inconclusive. The purpose of this study is to uncover the perceptions and framing of pragmatic language impairments in a sample of studies involving boys and girls from Australia and the United States. Drawing on content analysis of a sample of pertinent research, we expose the deeply gendered framing of pragmatic language performance and associated behaviours of criminalised young people. We demonstrate that available studies often represent female participants’ problematised use of pragmatic language as a personal choice, thus locating the problem within the individual and responsibilising girls and young women. However, for male participants, current research often presents problematised use of pragmatic language as a consequence of institutional failures. We argue that this gendered framing has political implications for criminalised young people and future research.
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ItemKnowledge–practice gap in healthcare payments: the role of policy capacity(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2023)Fee-for-service remains a popular mode of paying for healthcare despite widespread knowledge of its ill effects. This has resulted in a gap between policy knowledge (understood as consensus among experts) and policy practice (actual policy measures to implement the consensus) in healthcare. The existing literature attributes such gaps to a range of factors, including the stakeholders’ different interests, incentives, ideas, and values. Our focus on this debate is through the lens of policy capacity, specifically the ability of public actors to utilize policy knowledge and inform policy practice. We show that the observed knowledge–practice gap is rooted in the complexity of healthcare payment reforms. While actors agree on the problematic condition, there is a deep disagreement on what to do about it. Agreeing on and adopting alternate payment arrangements are challenging because reformers need to anticipate and respond to the future while accommodating the interests of the current providers who benefit from the status quo. In such instances, the capacity of public actors to devise reforms and overcome resistance to them is critical. We argue that the knowledge–practice gap in healthcare payments exists because of deficiencies in the analytical abilities of governments to devise workable alternate arrangements and shortcomings in their political capacity to overcome the resistance to proposed reforms. Put differently, we argue that no amount of evidence or consensus among stakeholders is sufficient when the analytical and political capacities to act on the evidence are lacking. The arguments are illustrated with reference to payment reforms in South Korea and Thailand.
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ItemJourneying into the experiences of persons accused of witchcraft: rethinking development theory and practice = Parcours des expériences des personnes accusées de sorcellerie: repenser la théorie et la pratique du développement(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023)Regarding controversies and debates around ‘witch camps’ and whether or not they should be abolished, there are several issues that directly speak to the gaps in development scholarship, policy and practice. These gaps manifest in how individuals experience and understand their circumstances and how development interventions are designed, planned, and executed. In this article, I explore how individuals accused of witchcraft speak about themselves and their circumstances from three levels: rumour/gossip, accusation/confrontation, and eviction/banishment. I assert that there is discord between the perceived over-concentration of development interventions in the communities that offer refuge after displacement compared to other levels. Though intervening in such communities is essential, I argue that the broader debates are fixated on the existence (or lack thereof) of witchcraft. This leads to conversations that centre around whether such communities should be closed, and individuals accused of witchcraft allowed to return home. In these debates, the experiences of persons accused of witchcraft are footnotes in the argument. Although the study of witchcraft beliefs and practices is significant and has generated an impressive body of theories and debates, the issue of development intervention is relatively unexplored at the three levels mentioned above. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Gnani community of northern Ghana, this paper highlights the implications of the problematic development constructs and subjectivities that are framed around the closure of receiving communities, eliding a more nuanced understanding of individual persons’ concerns and desires at each of the three levels. There is a need for development to be more responsive to how individuals express themselves and understand their circumstances before support or intervention can be leveraged. Dans les controverses et les débats autour des « camps de sorcières » et de la question de savoir s'ils doivent être abolis ou non, plusieurs questions concernent directement les lacunes dans les connaissances et la pratique du développement. Ces lacunes se manifestent dans la manière dont les personnes individuelles vivent et comprennent leur situation et dans la manière dont les interventions de développement sont conçues, planifiées et exécutées. Dans cet article, j'explore comment les personnes accusées de sorcellerie parlent d'elles-mêmes et de leur situation à trois niveaux: rumeur/commérage, accusation/confrontation et expulsion/bannissement. J'affirme qu'il existe une discorde entre la surconcentration perçue des interventions de développement dans les communautés qui offrent un refuge après leur déplacement, et d'autres niveaux. Il est essentiel d'intervenir dans de telles communautés, mais je soutiens que les débats plus larges sont obsédés par l'existence ou l'absence de sorcellerie. Cela entraine des discussions sur le fait que ces communautés devraient être fermées et les personnes accusées de sorcellerie autorisées à rentrer chez elles. Dans ces débats, on donne peu de place aux expériences réelles des personnes accusées de sorcellerie aux différentes étapes.
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Item#MeToo, Cisheteropatriarchy and LGBTQ plus Sexual Violence on Campus(SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2023-01-01)This article examines two case studies related to LGBTQ disclosures of sexual violence on university campuses, in the US and Australia. We argue that in a landscape of mediated #MeToo discourse, LGBTQ testimonies are often mapped onto a cisheteropatriarchal framework which limits adequate institutional responses to LGBTQ experiences of sexual violence. We illustrate how resolutions are often imagined via individualised empowerment narratives, and how this works in concert with the cisheteropatriarchal framing to delimit responses to sexual violence. We consider alternative possibilities for accounting for LGBTQ experiences going forward, and how institutions like universities might better respond to these issues.
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ItemEmancipatory political ecology pedagogy in and out of the classroom(Indian Society for Ecological Economics, 2023)In this brief commentary, we reflect on two aspects of contemporary political ecology scholarship: The first is a reflexive assessment of socio-political relational positionalities as a necessary condition, not only to challenge but also to act upon socio-ecological injustices. Second, we examine the effective delivery of cross-cultural pedagogies of care that inform the development of self-reliant political ecology (PE) scholars and/or activists within the constraints of neoliberal education. We argue that both issues are relevant to position PE as an emancipatory pedagogy and praxis in a decolonizing world.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableGuerrilla Gardens: Memories and Hope in a Lemon Orchard(The India Forum, 2023-07-20)A surrendered ULFA insurgent's transition to lemon farming in Assam is the story of continued dreams of sovereignty and freedom.
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ItemFrederick K. Errington (1941–2021)(Wiley, 2022-12)
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ItemUrgent issues and prospects in correctional rehabilitation practice and research(WILEY, 2022-09)Abstract The aim of this paper is to identify some of the urgent issues currently confronting criminal justice policymakers, researchers and practitioners. To this end a diverse group of researchers and clinicians have collaborated to identify pressing concerns in the field and to make some suggestions about how to proceed in the future. The authors represent individuals with varying combinations of criminal justice research, professional training (e.g. social work, criminal justice, criminology, social work, clinical psychology) and clinical orientation, and experience. The paper is comprised of 13 commentaries and a subsequent discussion based on these reflections. The commentaries are divided into the categories of explanation of criminal behaviour, clinical assessment and correctional intervention, and cover issues ranging from the role of clinical expertise in treatment, problems with risk assessment to the adverse effects of social oppression on minority groups. Following the commentaries, we summarize some of their key themes and briefly discuss a number of major issues likely to confront the field in the next 5–10 years.