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Based on a longitudinal and ethnographic study, this research examines how women experience the emotional aspects of their maternal foodwork in England across social classes. Maternal foodwork is linked to guilt and anxiety due to intense gendered and class-related ideals of proper feeding within the context of responsibilising discourses. This article contributes to the literature by introducing a temporal perspective, exploring how emotions beyond anxiety transform as caregiving arrangements evolve over time. It reveals that middle-class mothers adopt a downscaling strategy to counter maternal guilt when maintaining the standards set by intensive feeding ideology proves to be challenging with time. Working-class mothers adopt the same strategy to counteract feelings of inadequacy tied to persistent institutional surveillance and the challenge of embodying middle-class dispositions. The study underscores women's capacity to cultivate agentic responses, albeit within the boundaries of their class habitus, crafting pockets of resistance against intensive feeding ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the role of private planning consultants as intermediary-actors and their implications in relation to planning theory and practice. To do so, the paper focuses on niche consultants involved in servicing neighbourhood scale plan-making in England, clarifying that they hold crucial agency in local planning processes and adding to the understanding of consultancy roles and co-production dynamics in planning. The paper draws together the literature on private sector consultancy and on intermediaries, along with theoretical work highlighting the diversification of planning, the rise of the collaborative turn and the effect of regulation on creating niche markets in planning expertise. The conclusions drawn help clarify the 'action on others' that planning consultants, as intermediary-actors, have in collaborative governance and planning in and beyond neighbourhood planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lockdowns at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to extended school closures globally, and in many countries school attendance has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In England, education leaders have expressed concern both about increased anxiety among pupils and chronic absenteeism post-pandemic, against a backdrop of over a decade of increasing mental health need among children and young people. This article presents a narrative review with the aims of (a) conceptualising emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA), and (b) identifying strategies for supporting children and young people experiencing psychological barriers to attending school. The underlying reasons for school being experienced as a hostile environment by a minority of pupils are explored, with research findings specifically relating to the school experiences of neurodivergent pupils in mainstream settings included as an illustrative example. The psychological constructs of belongingness and agency are discussed as potential mechanisms of change. Finally, psychologically informed strategies to address EBSA are reviewed, drawing on the framework of multiple systems of support. To reduce absenteeism in pupils experiencing EBSA, and thus avoid exacerbating educational inequalities in disadvantaged groups, it is essential to understand psychological barriers to school attendance and to work collaboratively and compassionately with pupils and families towards solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In prisons, participatory mechanisms can foster important outcomes including fairness, legitimacy and dignity. Complaints are one significant (symbolic) mechanism facilitating prisoner participation. Ombud institutions/Ombudsmen handle complaints externally, providing unelected accountability mechanisms and overseeing prisons around the world. A fair complaints process can stimulate prisoner voice, agency and rights protection, potentially averting self-harm and violence, and facilitating systemic improvements. However, complaints mechanisms are little studied. Addressing this gap, we: i) contextualise discussion by demonstrating that prisoners' actions have directly shaped complaints mechanisms available today; ii) outline prison complaints mechanisms in the case study jurisdiction of England and Wales; and iii) provide a critical review of literature to assess whether prison complaints systems are, in practice, participatory, inclusive and fair? We conclude that complaints mechanisms hold clear potential to enhance prison legitimacy, facilitate prisoner engagement and agency, and improve wellbeing and safety. However, myriad barriers prevent prisoners from participating in complaints processes, including culture, fear, accessibility, timeliness, emotional repression, and bureaucracy. The process of complaining and experiences of these barriers are uneven across different groups of prisoners. Our article provides a springboard for future empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do institutional stakeholders and community activists differ in their perception of their agency to affect change? We explore this question by synthesising Archer's theory of structure–agency dynamics' and Easterly's development models as it is now, and debates on the 'just city' to explore narratives around urban transformation in data from two projects in England's second city, Birmingham. Our results show that, whereas institutional stakeholders affiliated with local government feel rather disempowered and defer to signals from national government or investors, community activists are focused on opportunities to use their agency and create change in their local areas. The implications of this divergence for the aims of achieving empowerment and social justice are discussed. Also, the benefits of a co-production model used in one of the research projects are reflected upon. Building on this model through policies of collaboration, forming social connections and active civic engagement could use the social energy and potential we identify to reinvigorate agency and the motivation of institutional stakeholders and generate change that is more bottom-up than top-down. To this end, we encourage greater reflection on notions of agency and participation in discussions on the 'just city'. However, in view of prevailing structural forces, we acknowledge that such efforts ultimately remain aspirational and difficult to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Exeter Book, a tenth-century collection of Old English poetry, contains ninety-odd riddles describing human interactions with objects, abstract concepts, and the natural world. Significant recent criticism has focused on how these riddles attribute agency, movement, or power to the nonhuman entities they describe, thus apparently decentering the human in accordance with twenty-first-century posthuman ethics. Yet this article, focusing on the obscene riddles of the collection, argues that although these poems do indeed attribute agency to nonhuman actors, this attribution does not always elevate these nonhuman actors so much as devalue "agency" as we understand it today. After exploring the pitfalls of reading for agency in Riddle 12 (Ox), I turn to an alternative method of attributing intention used in six of the collection's other obscene riddles: "willa." This concept, best translated here as "desire," is a quality that works—like agency or animacy today—to draw and redraw the lines of the human in these double entendre poems. Using the work of Mel Y. Chen and Eunjung Kim, this article argues that by contextualizing agency and its historical equivalents in our analysis, we are better able to track violent power dynamics at work in early medieval English texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While "resistance" is often used to describe "fighting back" against oppression and subjugation, for young people the word resistance is often used by safeguarding professionals to refer to negative, disruptive behaviours rather than evidence of their creativity, agency and strength in the face of oppression. In this paper, we share findings and reflections from Imagining Resistance, a three-year multi-disciplinary project that explored how young people in England (n=20, aged 13-25) who have experienced sexual abuse, violence and exploitation engage in processes and acts of resistance. Imagining Resistance set out to utilise photovoice (Wang and Burris 1997), a qualitative research method centred on photography, in a series of creative workshops with young people. However, our approach changed over the course of the project, influenced by O'Neill's (2012) concept of "ethno-mimesis", which involves collecting ethnographic data alongside the creation of visual and poetic responses to prompts offered within flexibly structured creative workshop settings. This shift occurred as the young people pushed back, resisting the intended methodology while remaining open to other creative arts methods. This enabled us to think more critically about how the use of participatory and creative arts methods can facilitate emancipatory research practices that are responsive to young people's developing understanding of resistance and their experiences of reimagining resistance as a fluid, generative and hopeful collective endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Chinese rules on agency do not impose broad "fiduciary" duties on agents--instead, there are a number of specific provisions designed to protect the principal against particular abuses to which it is peculiarly vulnerable in the principal/agent relationship. Chinese law, thus, deliberately refuses to follow the lead of English law, which imposes very strict and wide-ranging fiduciary duties on agents. This paper argues that this is probably wise. English law has to be seen against a matrix of a system of commercial law which was forged on the anvil of international trade and commodity supply contracts, leading to a set of rules that prefer certainty of outcomes (and the avoidance of litigation) overachieving particular justice in individual cases (such as might have been achieved by subjecting English law to an overarching "good faith" principle). English commercial law is adversarial, not cooperative. This explains why, in a relationship that is characterized by cooperation, such as the principal/agent relationship, the general rules of English commercial law are replaced by wide, justice-oriented rules. A system that is already based on cooperation, for which Chinese law is almost paradigmatic, is likely much more adept at applying the general rules to the agency relationship than English law would be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers social workers' in England understandings of the agency and choice-making of girls who are sexually exploited outside the home, by extra-familial persons. To further elicit their understandings, social workers' understandings of the agency and choice-making of girls sexually abused within the home, by a family member, is also explored. The social workers' understandings of girls' agency, and in turn their safeguarding response, is significantly shaped by where, and by whom the girl had been abused or exploited. Girls sexually exploited outside the home are understood to have more choice about whether or not to be in sexually exploitative situations; whereas girls sexually abused in the home are understood to have no choice about being in their situations. The understanding social workers have of girls exploited outside the home leaves social workers conflicted. They struggle to reconcile the tension of understanding sexually exploited girls as choice-makers, but not blaming them for those choices. This paper argues that a new discourse is needed around social work, and safeguarding generally, in which girls, whether sexually abused in the home or exploited outside the home, can be recognised as choice makers and agents but are not blamed for their agency. Indeed, their agency should be encouraged and enabled in positive directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restructuring of sub-national economic governance has been one response to persistent regional inequalities; in the United Kingdom, this has entailed a rescaling of strategic economic governance around city-regions. The variety of 'left behind' places, however, also includes peripheral and non-urban regions, prompting actors across different scales to seek arrangements for those places outside the city-regional paradigm. This paper provides insights into these processes through tracing the emergence of two new and overlapping spaces of governance in the largely rural South of Scotland, and across a larger area also including the far North of England. While driven by top-down priorities of the centre, new spaces are created through political processes contested across multiple scales, layered onto existing arrangements. These episodes demonstrate how regional actors exercise agency in shaping governance arrangements by articulating regional problems, and proposed responses, with political concerns of the centre. They also indicate the potential for dominant approaches, based on city-regional imaginaries, to be challenged. New regions offer at least the potential for actors in the periphery to secure resources for place-based development, within a fragmented and competitive landscape. They may however prove to be transient, requiring ongoing coupling of regional and central interests to be maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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When foster care is discussed in research, emotions are mostly kept out of the scope. This article explores emotions narrated by young people in foster care and by their foster carers. It brings together findings from two studies: The first used biographical interviews conducted with 100 young people from Germany, while the second draws on ethnographic interviews with 12 young people from France and England. The analysis, in line with relevant literature, shows that although emotions are hardly mentioned directly, they seem to be highly relevant in understanding the experience of foster care. Therefore, we suggest, professionalism and emotions need to be understood as complementary elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sharia councils have been in existence in England since the 1980s, providing advice and guidance in matters of Islamic family law. The vast majority of their users are women applying for Islamic divorces. The ulamā (scholars) at the councils encourage reconciliation and only grant divorces where this is deemed impossible. This paper, based on observations at a large sharia council in East London, supplements earlier institutional analyses by focusing not on what the ulamā are doing, but on what women are doing at the council. The paper identifies a spectrum of compliance with the council and its procedures, ranging between those who say they just want what the sharia wants, to foot-dragging, actively contesting the ulamā and exiting the council. Further, these forms of engagement may change over time. Overall, the paper contributes by illustrating the complexity of British South Asian Muslim women's identities and affiliations and engaging with questions of gendered agency. It is clear that even when women petitioners contest, confront or exit the council, they may inscribe their moves within, rather than in opposition to, Islamic norms and values. The paper draws out the wider political implications of this non-opposition between Islamic subject positions and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While matter clearly matters to organization theory, its absence from the study of organizational ethics is striking. Despite the obdurate materiality of the workplace, critical scholarship on organizations and morality sees ethics as interpersonal, subjective and embodied. Organizations, meanwhile, are characterized by moral anomie and dysfunction. This article advances our understanding of the material entanglements of organizational morality, drawing on the science and technology studies inflected study of markets to show how moral orders arise in dialectic between the social and the material. It argues that moral orders are entangled in the material infrastructures of organizations. Its empirical case is the founding and development of a small-company focused stock exchange, OFEX, launched in London in 1995, accessed through elite interviews and documentary work. The article seeks to develop our understanding of morality in critical organization studies, to further defend the Weberian notion of 'ethics of office' by emphasizing the sociomaterial dimension of organizational morality, and to contribute to an ongoing renaissance of the study of morality as a sociological phenomenon. There are implications for managers and engaged scholars alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how intersecting identities, stigma and health-based infrastructures are spatially affiliated and territorialised in the South East of England through the findings of three research projects aimed at understanding health inequalities among urban Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities including Gypsies and Travellers (BAME and GT) groups. It problematises Wacquant's approach to territorial stigma by explaining how Butler's notion of vulnerability and Castoriadis' notion of autonomous agency help to expand our understanding of the interplay between stigma and health infrastructures. Moreover, it suggests that such interplay requires an intersectional approach to identity as performative and embodied practice using illustrative examples. We propose that these health settings and infrastructures can be characterised as 'transbordering assemblages', following Irazábal who describes its embedded notions of pluri-locality (here and there: '[T]Here'), pluri-identity and practices of bordering (being in or out/in and out/in between) when experiencing health needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opt-in, open-ended mentoring for people with convictions, allowing them to dip in and out of services without sanction arguably offers a service configuration to match the paradigm of the zig-zag, nomadic desistance journey. Balancing supporting individual's agency while avoiding fostering dependency is tricky. What are the conditions which support the former and avoid the latter? We aim to answer this question by drawing on the lived experience of mentees and mentors collected during the evaluation of a mentoring scheme in England. We consider whether mentoring is unequivocally a 'good thing'. Despite its ubiquity, the evidence for its effectiveness is mixed. We suggest that it is possible to get too much mentoring, and advance the evidence base in the United Kingdom and internationally in other jurisdictions by proposing enhancements to the 'effectiveness framework' set out by the prison and probation service in England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little attention has been given to young workers' uses of private employment agencies as part of their job search and this paper seeks to rectify this omission. It does so by presenting a critique of recent interventions into the sociological debate about young people's agency, especially as this applies to the transition from education to employment. By drawing upon recent realist sociology, the argument is developed that recent debate presents either an over-socialised or individualistic account of young people's agency unable to establish meaningful accounts of young people's decision-making and action. In contrast, the social realist emphasis on the reflective and deliberative human agent is used to construct an alternative understanding of young people's decisions to use employment agencies by emphasising the importance of reflective deliberation, subjective intentionality and opposition. These themes are then explored by drawing on a large qualitative research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and providing unique and original data of the experiences of 134 young people making transitions into precarious employment in three cities in the Midlands of England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends our understanding of how university students make sense of, and respond to, sexual violence in the night-time economy (NTE). Based on semi-structured interviews with 26 students in a city in England, we examine students' constructions of their experiences of sexual violence within the NTE, exploring their negotiations with, and resistance to, this violence. Building upon theories of postfeminism, we interrogate the possibilities for resistance within the gendered spaces of the NTE and propose a disaggregated conceptualization of agency to understand responses to sexual violence, thereby offering useful insights for challenging sexual violence in the NTE and in universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between the professional learning of music teachers and their capacity and opportunity to act and engage agentically with the structures and discourses of music education. The authors begin by drawing on a range of education and music education scholarship to examine the concepts of teacher autonomy, teacher agency and professional development. They propose a socio-cultural understanding of teacher agency which draws on Gidden's theory of structuration and Priestley, Biesta and Robinson's ecological approach. Here, the relationship between structure and agency is not determinant but dynamic, with teacher agency dependent on the extent to which music teachers are able to engage in the discourses of music education. They explore the way professional development structures and policy in England and China affect teacher agency and especially how policy developments, the changing structures of music education, and the fetishization of advocacy narratives have constrained and marginalized the voice of the classroom music teacher. The authors conclude with a call for music teacher professional development to support music teachers to act agentically through reengaging with the epistemological and ontological dimensions of music and the policy discourses of music education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Rastafari smoking herbs (cannabis) and tobacco is central to spiritual practices, including grounding (the process of initiation into Rastafari) and reasoning (ritual discussions). This paper presents ethnographic research with Rastafari smokers in England. It shows that smoking is considered a 'professional' activity that communicates dedication to the movement, aids in learning different dialects, and facilitates experiences of communication with herbs 'herself'. Through rituals that 'professional' smokers engage in herbs becomes a 'plant teacher', which Tupper [2008. The Globalization of Ayahuasca: Harm Reduction or Benefit Maximization? International Journal of Drug Policy, 19:300] defines as 'a natural divinatory mechanism that can provide esoteric knowledge to adepts skilled in negotiating its remarkable effects'. Appreciation of smoking as a form of multispecies communication between 'professional' smokers and 'plant teachers' recasts the role of agency in anthropological studies of smoking and contributes to our understanding of consciousness and intentionality in both humans and plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to developing intersectionality theory by deepening understanding of how patriarchy and racism interact with other structural factors to influence low‐paid migrants' progression attempts. Using a critical realist approach and analysing interviews of 31 female and male migrants employed in five large organizations in Scotland and England, we reveal how major structural factors influence their main forms of identity work and the resources that they draw on in both the workplace and home. The feminist approach undertaken by this study makes significant advances to organizational intersectional theory in three ways. Firstly, it highlights the importance of examining the interaction of the influence of patriarchy within the home with racism and other structuring forces within the workplace. Secondly, it reveals how combinations of constraints and enablements that intersect with gendered and racialized identity work create formidable barriers to progression. Thirdly, it explores migrants' differential access to diverse resources, including financial, social, discursive and psychological resources in both spheres over time. These findings reinforce the need for policy actions that recognize the interaction of structural factors which influence female and male migrant progression and the need for support within and beyond the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research stresses that mealtimes in care homes for older people are vital social events in residents' lives. Mealtimes have great importance for residents as they provide a sense of normality, reinforce individuals' identities and orientate their routines. This ethnographic study aimed to understand residents' use of dining spaces during mealtimes, specifically examining residents' table assignment processes. Data were collected in summer 2015 in three care homes located in England. The research settings looked after residents aged 65+, each having a distinct profile: a nursing home, a residential home for older people and a residential home for those with advanced dementia. Analyses revealed a two‐stage table assignment process: 1. Allocation – where staff exert control by determining residents' seating. Allocation is inherently part of the care provided by the homes and reflects the structural element of living in an institution. This study identified three strategies for allocation adopted by the staff: (a) personal compatibilities; (b) according to gender and (c) 'continual allocation'. 2. Appropriation – it consists of residents routinely and willingly occupying the same space in the dining room. Appropriation helps residents to create and maintain their daily routines and it is an expression of their agency. The findings demonstrate the mechanisms of residents' table assignment and its importance for their routines, contributing towards a potentially more self‐fulfilling life. These findings have implications for policy and care practices in residential and nursing homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers findings from a small-scale qualitative research project that explores the inclusion of migrant children in education, drawing on the examples of learners in a multi-ethnic primary school in northern England. It takes a creative approach to methods, combining the use of picturebooks, photography, group discussions and observations. Against the background of migrant children's rights and the political and socialising roles of education, the research develops a framework for the inclusion of migrant children that involves educational access in terms of access to the curriculum as well as to the learning environment, both spatially and socially. The paper argues, then, that this understanding of inclusion can allow learners and educators to cross the tightly constructed borders of the deficit model of migrant abilities and identities and enter a space that recognises migrant learners' agency and allows more complex and co-constructed ways of knowing and learning to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: With the temporary housing of rough sleepers in response to the Covid-19 emergency, some commentators have been tempted to believe that the rising population of rough sleepers in the UK has finally been reversed. This paper aims to examine the choices made by persistent rough sleepers and how far they are influenced by the perverse incentives of social policies, in order to challenge the view that they sleep rough out of choice. Design/methodology/approach: Evidence for this paper is derived from two teams of frontline service providers with routine familiarity with the rough sleeping population: a street outreach team and a team of support workers working with adults with multiple and complex needs. Primary data from focus groups were combined with the secondary analysis of both numerical and narrative accounts routinely recorded by both teams. Findings: The exercise of agency by persistent rough sleepers is constrained by a mixed baggage of complex needs, past negative risk assessments, limited resources and regulatory deterrents to generate choices to reject help that appear irrational. These need to be understood if recent policy initiatives to end rough sleeping are to be effective. Originality/value: The paper draws on the experience and comprehensive records of practitioners with intimate knowledge of the rough sleeping population. It extends narrative accounts of causes by focusing on key choices to show how the perverse incentives of policy combine with personal factors to incline rough sleeping to persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research involving children, deemed to have difficulties with conventional means of communication, can perpetuate reductive forms of representation of children's knowledges and experiences. This article focuses on the possibilities and opportunities that visual and creative methods can offer to researching with children. Children advance their views in and through spontaneous and concrete forms of participation. Autonomy in aesthetic acts is central to this methodology; to explore practices that produce and reproduce presuppositions deriving from societal attitudes affecting research with children, their agency and self-presentation. This cross-cultural study was conducted in Central Italy and North West England: children contributed their perspectives and experiences through participation in a series of creative encounters resulting in aesthetic and embodied outcomes of sociological and educational significance. The study contributes to the debate on children's autonomy and the value and quality of participation through artistic practice. Examples from the corpus of data, which includes a series of artefacts and over 900 photographs from each geo-cultural context, are presented. The study shows that it is possible to harmonise power imbalances in spaces of creative freedom, in research and education, where children's choices and agency are respected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how school-based practitioners supporting children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) use particular social capital relations. Social capital theory together with selected 'Productive Pedagogies' items, are applied to re-frame and understand the co/production of support for such children. Empirical data from the 'Language for All' study, which investigates SLCN provision in schools in England, are analysed to understand support network social capital. Novel insights on the types and purposes of inter-professional connectedness within SLCN support networks, in particular how relational agency is inflected by affect, are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voice of children aged 4 to 8 years is seldom heard in research circles, within the constraints of high-pressure academic model which is the current education system in England. Children are rarely listened to but expected to listen in the current normative societal cycle. This deficiency of active listening as an everyday occurrence impacts on children's Mental Health. This article will give reference to an original empirical study, Hear Me and Listen. This study carried out in 2018 highlights the minimalistic practice of listening to children aged 4 to 8 years in the everyday. The research method used consisted of the Mosaic Approach. This approach provides various avenues for communication aside from the verbal. Data collected were analysed through a thematic approach. Themes which came from analysis included 'This Is Me', 'Relationships', 'Environment', 'Curriculum' and 'Practitioners'. This article draws on this analysis and concludes that a change in the normative discourse of 'hearing' and not acting to one of 'active listening' and supporting is a path worth mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As child sexual exploitation (CSE) has risen towards the top of the UK's political agenda, the concept of vulnerability has become a central frame through which to understand and address the issue. This article analyses problems with the concept of vulnerability as it is commonly understood in relation to CSE, taking first steps towards developing an empirically-grounded account of the notion which is more sensitive to the lived realities of victimhood for sexually exploited young people. Drawing on data from participatory qualitative research into life stories of 'moving on' from CSE in a large Northern city in England, the article illustrates how vulnerability is shaped through individual factors, situational dynamics and structural forces, connected by human agency through time. It argues that to respond effectively to vulnerability within the field of CSE, we need to move beyond discussion of 'risk factors' and denial of agency, towards an understanding of intersectional social divisions, social marginality, 'critical moments' and how these shape the investments and actions of vulnerable young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The career progression of teachers and academics of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage in England has been a matter of intense scrutiny among a range of actors including the public, politicians and researchers. Many reasons and explanations have been provided for the apparent lack of improvement in this area, despite an increase in the numbers of students of BAME heritage in schools and other educational institutions, despite the passage of the Equality Act 2010, despite student led campaigns such as 'Why is my professor not black?', and despite the substantial body of evidence on the benefits for students of BAME heritage of having same race teachers and lecturers. At the individual level, barriers have included interpersonal racism, and at the organisational level, institutional racism has been identified as contributing to, if not responsible for the lower than average progression of staff of BAME heritage in England's educational institutions. Nevertheless, over the last decade, an emergent and sustained body of research has emerged that examines 'how' and under 'what conditions' promotion/progression occurs or can be achieved. In arriving at a conceptual model of progression among teachers of BAME heritage, critical evaluation of the four available studies reveals four key factors or enablers: meritocratic agency; contrived agency; endorsement and institutional habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of austerity‐inspired reforms to public audit in England we investigate the extent to which audit firms mitigate management bias in public sector financial reports. A substantial body of literature finds that both public and not‐for‐profit managers manage 'earnings' to report small surpluses close to zero by managing deficits upwards and surpluses downwards. Under agency theory, auditors acting in the interests of their principal(s) would tend to reverse this bias. We exploit privileged access to pre‐audit financial statements in the setting of the English National Health Service (NHS) to investigate the impact of audit adjustments on the pre‐audit financial statements of English NHS Foundation Trusts over the period 2010–2011 to 2014–2015. We find evidence that auditors act to reverse management bias in the case of Trusts with a pre‐audit deficit, but find no evidence that this is the case for Trusts with a pre‐audit surplus. In the case of Trusts in surplus, these findings are consistent with auditors' interests being aligned with management, rather than principals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austerity politics in Britain are edging towards compressed learning and teaching identities, driven by competition for resources and normative standards. Policy changes since 2010 have impacted particularly on the arts, and have had an adverse effect on cultural diversity across society. This situation has international resonance for those encountering protectionist reactions to globalisation. Practitioners in creative fields face dilemmas of agency, as they seek to maintain the presence of their roles, and ability to make choices. This paper focuses on how practitioners in post-compulsory art and design and gallery education challenge hegemonic constructions of the self through practice. It reflects on Herne’s research of relational differences between teachers and gallery educators, raising points for connective interventions as boundary work. A comparative lens draws upon theories of agency to support critically engaged practice. Empirical data is investigated through Sartre’s concept of free will, and Foucauldian negotiations of autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This introduction surveys the methodological approaches, critical categories and vocabularies that have shaped scholarly responses to eighteenth‐century English religious writing. Recognising the significance of recent developments in book history for our understanding of the textual reception of religious texts, we argue for renewed attention to literary production in terms of the agency, identity and experience of both authors and readers. Literary‐critical analysis offers a productive means to this end, revealing the nuances of religious texts and providing powerful new lines of enquiry at the intersection of literary, theological and historical studies of eighteenth‐century religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the implications of children's out-of-school musical experiences and activities for conceptualisations of child agency. In particular, it engages with differing approaches to relational agency and considers their value for understanding music-related practice during middle childhood. Accounts from children (n = 111) living in three parts of England are explored, and the subsequent analysis provides the basis for proposing the potential of an interactional-relational approach for approaching questions about children's agency within such domains of practice and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As identity and agency are central to the well-being of people with dementia, this paper explores whether their dialogue conveys a gendered sense of identity and agency. The author discusses whether they demonstrate not just a subjective sense of being but also an understanding of their relational selves. Findings are presented from a qualitative study in the North of England which examined the everyday decisions made by married couples when one partner had dementia. Ethnographic methods were used, including participant observation and interviews. While dialogical analysis usually centres on the subjective self, it was also used to examine intersubjectivity. Comparisons are made between the dialogue of women and men in order to draw conclusions about the gendered nature of identity and agency. The study found that the women and men defined themselves according to their social and gender identities. The literature had suggested that agency might be a gendered concept and the study confirmed that men were somewhat individualistic and rational in their concerns, whereas women were more relational and even spiritual. Yet, women and men demonstrated emotional reflexivity. As national and international health policy prioritises living well with dementia, more systematic attention should be given to the role of gender in influencing well-being in dementia. Health and social care staff should recognise and facilitate the gender identity and related social roles of people with dementia (e.g. parent, carer and worker) in order to enhance their quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal locus of control is associated with academic success and indicators of wellbeing in youth. There is however less understanding regarding the role of locus of control in shaping the transition from school to work beyond the more widely studied predictors of socioeconomic background and academic attainment. Guided by a socio-ecological model of agency, the current study examines to which extent internal locus of control, understood as an indicator of individual agency, can compensate for a lack of socioeconomic resources by moderating the association between parental disadvantage and difficulties in the transition from school to work. We draw on data collected from a longitudinal nationally representative cohort of 15,770 English youth (48% female) born in 1989/90, following their lives from age 14 to 20. The results suggest that the influence of agency is limited to situations where socioeconomic risk is not overpowering. While internal locus of control may help to compensate for background disadvantage regarding avoidance of economic inactivity and unemployment to some extent, it does not provide protection against long-term inactivity, i.e. more than 6 months spent not in education, employment or training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Most studies of growing up with a long-term condition focus on older children and adolescents and are condition-specific. Relatively few studies address the experiences of children in middle childhood or consider their experience across a range of conditions, countries, and health settings. This study aimed to explore children's perceptions and understandings of how their lives are shaped (or not) by a long-term condition and its associated management. Design and methods A qualitative, participatory methodology using autodriven photoelicitation interviews (PEIs) with 45 purposively recruited children (6-12 years) with long-term conditions (e.g., hemophilia, arthritis, Crohn's disease), from England, New Zealand, and Australia was utilized. PEI facilitated the construction of inductively derived understandings of the children's experiences as the children had control over creating and then selecting which photographs to discuss with the researcher. Results Interpretive thematic analysis of the interviews and content analysis of the photographs resulted in an overarching theme, 'It's not who I am ...' but it is part of me, and three subthemes: getting on with my life; the special value of family, friendship, support, and comfort; and things that get in the way of getting on. Across all ages and the three countries, the children actively projected their self-concept as 'well' children and they strove, through their photographs and their accompanying explanations of their lives, to emphasize that they were 'normal' children. They were active social agents who demonstrated their capacity to shape parts of their lives interdependently with their parents and the requirements of their condition. Practice implications Pediatric nurses should be aware of the importance that children with long-term conditions place on projecting and protecting their sense of being normal and ensure that when they engage with children that they take account of the children's understandings and efforts to live a life constrained but not limited by the condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores relationships of solidarity constructed between London and the British coalfields from 1968 until the 1984-1985 miners' strike. Foregrounding the development of a culture of solidarity over this period resituates the support movement during the 1984-1985 strike as embedded in longer-term relationships, which suggests a more equal relationship between coalfield and metropolitan activists than is given by focusing narrowly on the year itself. I argue that a spatially and temporally dynamic sense of the development of these relationships allows us to better grasp the potentially mutual nature of solidarity. Thinking about the construction of this culture of solidarity can contribute significantly to understanding the nature of labour agency. I emphasise the generative nature of solidarity, particularly the ways in which the spatial and social boundaries of the labour movement were challenged through solidarity relationships, allowing in some instances a more diverse conception of working-class politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By placing emphasis on equity and social mobility, the current UK education policy for England focuses on narrowing the educational attainment gap between more and less advantaged groups of young people – an approach that has strong parallels in many other Anglophone countries around the world. We argue that these policy and associated practice proscriptions tend to privilege an individualised narrative of agency for young people, teachers and schools more generally. Our paper argues that this individualised approach is highly problematic in that it decontextualises the complex and real agentic work of young people in schooling, making it difficult to empirically and theoretically account for differences in educational outcome between and within groups of young people. Informed by a social realist perspective, and in particular the work of Margaret Archer, we propose a theoretical model that we suggest provides greater explanatory and predictive power. The model focuses on the way ecologies of development emerge for young people. We suggest that such ecologies reflect different structural and cultural factors and processes, combining in ways that enable and/or constrain young people's educational reflexivity and agency and their ensuing educational engagement and attainments. We believe that building a typology of such ecologies of educational reflexivity and agency provides improved ways of developing equitable educational policies and practice – ones that relate clearly to the compositional mix of young people in schools and enable the development of interventions that better relate to such ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well-being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of 'time' reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on 'space' highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of 'agency' illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners' children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners' children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing popularity of relational approaches to agency amongst archaeologists has led to increased attention on the specific contexts of interaction between humans and their material worlds. Within such viewpoints, non-humans are perceived as agents in their own right and placed on an equal footing with humans, with both acting to generate social categories in past cultures. However, to date, the focus of these interpretative models has been overwhelmingly directed towards inanimate objects. Animals are generally absent from these discussions, despite their ubiquity in past societies and the frequently central roles they held within daily lives and social relations. Moreover, living animals are set apart from material culture because, like humans, they are usually aware of their environs and are capable of physically responding to them. This ability to 'act back' would have made human-animal interactions extremely dynamic and thus offers different conceptual challenges to archaeologists than when faced with objects. This paper demonstrates that the notion of performativity, combined with understanding of animals themselves, can help to comprehend these relations. It does so by focusing on one particular species, the domestic cat, in relation to Anglo-Saxon England. The characteristics and behaviour of these animals affected the ways in which humans perceived and interacted with them, so that just one individual cat could be categorised in a range of different ways. The classification of animals was thus just as fluid, if not more so, as that of objects and highlights the need to incorporate the former into reconstructions of the social in archaeological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical realism suggests that historical structures may operate as underlying generative mechanisms but not always be activated. This explains the near-absence of references to racism by black students with sickle cell disorder (SCD). Through case studies we show how latent mechanisms are not activated, and how social actors come to develop corporate agency. Themes discussed include:wider/historical racisms(carers' own experiences of overt racism at school);conscious actions(moving away from a school where racism was experienced);awareness of anticipatory retaliation(multiculturalism as a form of societal inoculation against accusations of racism);naming racism as an emergent strategy(when communal discussions enable multiple negative experiences to be framed and named as racism); and‘passing’(not ostensibly experiencing racism if one is sufficiently light-skinned). Critical realism suggests how racism may be structuring the experiences of students with SCD at school even in the absence of specific accounts by young people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article re-examines E. P. Thompson'sThe Making of the English Working Class(London: Gollancz, 1963) as an attempt to resolve problems of Communist cultural thought that were derived from literary modernism, centring upon the relationship between intellectual and majority cultures. It argues that Thompson formulated a distinctive concept of ‘agency’ as the corporate attribute of an alliance between intellectuals and the working class, in order to envisage the repair of a quasi-modernist ‘dissociation’ that was constitutive of those groups; and that tracing the narration of this process inThe Makingilluminates the text's significance as a contribution to socialist political strategy in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the major shifts in the form and experience of contemporary family life has been the increasing insertion of the ‘expert’ voice into the relationship between parents and children. This paper focuses on an exploration of mothers’ engagement with advice around the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Much of the previous literature utilises a ‘decision-making’ framework, based on ‘risk assessment’ whereby mothers’ decisions are conceptualised as rooted in complex belief systems, and supposes that that by gaining an understanding of these systems, beliefs and behaviour can be modified and uptake improved. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which mothers negotiate such advice or the ways in which advice is mediated by positionings, practices and relationships. Analysis of data from a focus group with five mothers identified three themes: (i) Sourcing advice and information, (ii) Constructing ‘Mother knows best’ and (iii) Negotiating agency. Despite the trustworthiness of advice and information being questioned, an awareness of concerns about the MMR, and health professionals being constructed as remote, ultimate conformity to, and compliance with, the ‘system’ and ‘society’ were described as determining MMR ‘decisions’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The views of children diagnosed with ADHD have, until recently, largely been neglected in research, policy and practice. This article focuses on qualitative research which explored children's lived experience, drawing attention to the ways that they actively 'take' responsibility for managing their physical, psychological and emotional well-being within the constraints of a medical diagnosis. The neglect of a tradition which asks children about their own experiences of ADHD is crucially bound up with children's low social and political status in UK society and notions of competency and responsibility in relation to ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the findings of questionnaires completed by fifty-seven social work students studying at four universities in northern England and the English midlands. The questionnaires surveyed students' views about the extent to which issues of religion and belief had been discussed in practice settings over a twelve-month period. A range of factors are identified that either encourage or discourage them from considering or exploring religion and belief in their work, in relation to the attitudes of colleagues and service users, themselves and their agencies. Their responses suggest that individual perspectives on and experiences of religion together with the informal views of colleagues determine whether and how religion and belief are acknowledged as significant and relevant. Students reported that few agencies promoted any opportunity for staff development and training in respect of this area, perhaps because issues of religion and belief are not considered important or are given less priority amongst other issues and responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on children’s food in families and the power relations in which it is embedded. Drawing on paired interviews with parents and younger children in a qualitative sample (N = 47), and taking a case approach, the article analyses ways in which power and control are negotiated in parent–child relationships in relation to food. Types and extent of control over children’s eating are described, and the importance of resources and parents’ conceptions of ‘the child’ considered. In distinction to polarized debates about who does, or should, control children’s food in families, the article notes considerable variation between families. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two understandings of the dynamics of power developed by Foucault have been extensively used in analyses of contemporary healthcare: disciplinary power and governmentality. They are sometimes considered alternative or even contradictory conceptual frameworks. Here, we seek to deploy them as complementary ways of making sense of the complexities of healthcare organisation today. We focus on efforts to improve quality and safety in three UK hospitals. We find a prominent role for disciplinary power, including a panoptic gaze that is to some extent internalised by professionals. We suggest, however, that the role of disciplinary power relies for its impact on complementary strategies that are more akin to governmentality. These strategies foster organisational contexts that are receptive to disciplinary work. More fundamentally, we find that both disciplinary power and governmentality work on subjectivities in rather a different manner from that suggested by conventional accounts. We offer an alternative, less individualised and more socialised, understanding of the way in which power acts upon subjectivity and behaviour in professional contexts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There are a number of gaps in current understandings of the links between young femininities, agency and social class. Building on recent work, we examine how closely young middle-class women in one fee-paying school in England take up so-called top girl discourses and explore whether and how such discursive positions are linked to agentic practice within sexual and intimate relationships. Only one young woman in our study appeared to relatively successfully embody the idea of a ‘top girl’ and, through the use of an ‘I am powerful’ narrative voice, appeared also to demonstrate the most sustained, agentic approach to her sexual and intimate relationships, as well as many other parts of her life. Although other young women also drew on this idea of themselves as powerful, their narratives demonstrated fewer moments of agency, largely because they desired equally confident, assertive men as their partners (whom they understood would be dominant to them). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research studies have begun to investigate the post-16 outcomes for young adults with a specific language impairment (SLI). As yet only tentative conclusions can be drawn with respect to academic and employment outcomes and the factors that are associated with more positive outcomes. Evidence for these findings has relied predominantly on associations between various language, academic and psychosocial assessments. Little attention has been paid to the perspective of the young person. Aims: To investigate from the perspective of a group of young people with a history of SLI the factors they believed have enabled and presented a challenge to their post-16 education and employment outcomes and experiences. Methods & Procedures: Nineteen (four female, 15 male) young people aged from 19 to 23 years (average age 21 years), who had all attended the same residential special school for pupils with SLI, were interviewed face to face to explore their views as to what had enabled and limited their transition experiences to date. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Outcomes & Results: The majority of the young people saw themselves as key agents of change and very active participants in steering their own transition since leaving school. They acknowledged the important role played by their parents and families and how factors such as SLI had affected their transition experiences. Conclusions & Implications: The study supports evidence from research with different groups of young people with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities of the importance of school and post-16 curriculums which develop agency on behalf of the young person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]