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We reflect upon the practices of two projects working with older people - one involving health promotion and the other arts - in terms of the discourses deployed in their work. The material discussed is drawn from evaluations which, through their use of feminist and critical methodologies, were committed to revealing and challenging the layers of inequality often present in practice with older people. The familiar notions of friendship and conversation are shown to be useful in conceptualising the work of these projects. It is argued that the discourses within which these ideas are embedded offer the basis of progressive practice with older people even in routine settings such as housing, social care, recreation and social work. These concepts offer the possibility of thinking of older people as active subjects within, rather than passive objects of, practice and of challenging inequalities through reframing more functional discourses. KEY WORDS - Evaluation, arts, health promotion, practice, discourses, voluntary sector, critical and feminist research, residential and daycare.

Projects are ubiquitous throughout the management of public services and the implementation of public policy but implementation processes often remain a 'black box'. This article argues that technical approaches to project management neglect the role of power. Combining Foucault's concept of the productive power of governmentality with the notion of timescapes into an analytical lens, the ethnography opens up the black box to reveal how project management functions as a powerful disciplinary technique. I show what escapes the imposed boundaries of the project as, in contrast to rational representations of the linearity of the project life cycle, decisions are retrospectively framed and the past rewritten. Simultaneously, project managers attempt to bring an uncertain future under control, discursively enrolling actors into their visions. Discursive and symbolic meanings of projects link to materiality as resources are represented as plentiful or meagre. Financial year-end exerts a disciplinary force so that time gets compressed and decision making becomes expedient. As resources move between budgets, governmentality is enacted, while budget headings of 'other' account for inevitable remaindering. Creative 'time tactics' are an adaptive response to achieving externally imposed targets while performing local project success. It turns out that time is at once metaphysical and mundane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, debates are taking place about sustainable healthcare. In England, guidance on patient and public involvement (PPI) advocates ‘engagement’ and references Arnstein’s ladder of participation, but recent proposals provoked controversy around service closures and the perceived exclusion of patients and the public. This article reports an ethnography of engagement, prior to formal public consultation on plans for major service change. Our analysis uses Cultural Political Economy, linking micro interactions between staff and ‘involvees’ to processes of political economy. We found that co-optation and contestation both occurred. Involvees queried whether the forthcoming consultation was genuine or whether decisions had already been made but the issue of whether NHS services should be delivered by public or private bodies was kept off the agenda. We conclude that engagement in system transformation programmes implicates PPI in a neoliberal agenda that rations state support for healthcare and introduces service models from the USA and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]