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Over the past decade, data-driven systems have transformed how UK public services engage with the population. This ethnographic study, conducted in one of the United Kingdom's poorest boroughs, investigates the implementation of a machine learning data system for identifying at-risk children in need of safeguarding. It examines the concept of a 'data consensus' amongst council workers pursuing the 'public good'. Within this consensus, the article explores contrasting stances on data's potential, namely that of data scientists, who use it as a tool to predict human behaviour and prevent harm, and social workers, who resist the notion that a person is predictable and therefore incapable of change. This reveals the political implications of these opaque algorithmic systems as various groups harness data in the name of public benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, Hannah Arendt's phrase the 'right to have rights' and her claim that having rights depends on belonging to and being recognized by 'some kind of organized community' have become key provocations on citizenship, statelessness and human rights. Arendt, however, has been criticized as perpetuating a state-centric framework that scholars and activists alike have sought to reimagine. In particular, the French political theorist Jacques Rancière argues that Arendt's 'right to have rights' formula is based on an artificial distinction between the social and the political, which creates an overly narrow definition of the political subject. This article contends that in the post-9/11 era, the distinction, often attributed to Arendt, between 'Man' and 'Citizen' is increasingly blurred; yet it suggests that this blurring does not necessarily offer any emancipatory potential. It argues that while national citizenship is still meaningful, being a citizen may not be so different from being a mere human in certain contexts. The article examines three sets of cases shaping the United Kingdom's 'regime of nationality deprivation' in which people are stripped of their UK citizenship for terrorism-related offences: Al-Jedda (2013), Pham (2015, 2018) and K2 (2015). First, it explores the tensions in the regime's attempt to reconcile a fundamental inconsistency between the recognition of the human right to nationality and the sovereignty of the state to define the citizen; and second, it considers the regime's spatial control of the denationalization process whereby denationalization orders are commonly issued and thus also contested when the targeted citizen is outside the UK's jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If municipalities were the caring platforms of the 19-20th century sharing economy, how does care manifest in civic structures of the current period? We consider how platforms – from the local initiatives of communities transforming neighbourhoods, to the city, in the form of the local authority – are involved, trusted and/or relied on the design of shared services and amenities for the public good. We use contrasting cases of interaction between local government and civil society organisations in Sweden and the UK to explore trends in public service provision. We look at how care can manifest between state and citizens and at the roles that co-design and co-learning play in developing contextually sensitive opportunities for caring platforms. In this way, we seek to learn from platforms in transition about the importance of co-learning in political and structural contexts and make recommendations for the co-design of (digital) platforms to care with and for civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent drops in the number of full-time theology and religious studies students in the UK raise concerns for all universities with departments of theology and religion. Without denying the importance of efforts to increase those full-time numbers, this article argues that greater attention be paid to possibilities of expanding part-time theological education, and not only in the context of formal ministerial training. At a time when greater religious literacy is needed, and buoyed by evidence of what older learners want from their studies – personal growth rather than just better employment prospects – expansion of part-time study opportunities may prove an additional, and important, initiative required by theology and religion departments. In this way, they would not only improve their own financial positions but they would also make an even greater contribution to their local communities and to individual and social well-being. A commitment would be needed, however, from universities themselves to recognize this important ‘public good’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on empirical data drawn from student feedback on their participation in a part-time BA Humanities and Arts programme at the University of Leicester. Exploring the reasons students provide for their studying, and relating these to aspects of pedagogical theory and practice which inform wise practice in lifelong learning, the article focuses especially on the place of the study of religion within general programmes of study. The importance of experiential forms of learning, of attending to the location of religious and religion-like practices in everyday contemporary life, of the potential intensity of exploration of religion and the civic importance of universities' role in fostering such exploration are all explored. The article concludes with a challenge to contemporary decision-makers in university life to consider closely the potential long-term community and political impact of decisions made about lifelong learning provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Foucault’s elaboration of neoliberalism as a positive form of state power, the ascendancy of neoliberalism in higher education in Britain is examined in terms of the displacement of public good models of governance, and their replacement with individualised incentives and performance targets, heralding new and more stringent conceptions of accountability and monitoring across the higher education sector. After surveying the defeat of the public good models, the article seeks to better understand the deployment of neoliberal strategies of accountability and then assess the role that these changes entail for the university sector in general. Impact assessment, I claim, represents a new, more sinister phase of neoliberal control. In the concluding section it is suggested that such accountability models are not incompatible with the idea of the public good and, as a consequence, a meaningful notion of accountability can be accepted and yet prized apart from its neoliberal rationale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In times of economic uncertainty, questions of the purpose and value of higher education come to the fore. Such questions have particular relevance when directed towards the preparation of professionally qualified graduates who might be expected to contribute to the public good. However, definitions of the public good are contested and the role of higher education is unclear. This interview-based study contributes to the debate by taking a professional capabilities index (PCI) generated in South Africa and interrogating it in the UK context. The PCI is oriented towards poverty reduction and is grounded in the human development and capabilities approach, an agenda to which UK respondents were broadly sympathetic although with differences in emphasis. This article argues that, if we are to move beyond a narrow economic understanding of the public good and a purely instrumental understanding of graduate ‘attributes’, the human development and capabilities approach has much to offer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A prominent feature of academic and popular writing about policing is the ‘transformation’ thesis: the contention that, as the ratio of private security to police actors increases in a policing system, the orientation of the system shifts from the public good to the market. The purpose of this article is to critique this thesis. Instead of analysing transformation using the ratio heuristic, it focuses on the everyday rationalities guiding policing actors. Applying this perspective to the British case, it argues that, rather than witnessing a marked shift towards the market, we are in fact seeing a complex blurring of identities, with both private security and police actors drawing upon a mix of public good and market rationalities to inform their actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biobanks as collections of population level genetic and health data will be central to the innovation of new drugs and drug targets. The UK Biobank, funded by massive public and charitable investment, was created to store and manage the genetic and health data of over 500,000 people in the UK. The UK Biobank will be available to researchers from both private and public sectors, and is intended to support innovation and serve the public good. We argue that the UK Biobank faces a dilemma in that the knowledge generated is potentially commercialisable and patentable. As knowledge resulting it is transformed into excludable or private goods by scarcity and patenting, it is subject to the tragedies of commons and anti-commons. We question whether the current ethics and governance framework can ensure that benefits will optimally accrue to the public who have funded and contributed samples to the resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]