Theorising disability: a practical and representative ontology of learning disability

This article contributes to the ongoing development of the theorisation of learning disability, focusing on the value of the ontological turn. We argue that while social theory has influenced understandings of disability within academia, particularly within disability studies, it has had a limited impact on the discursive and practical use of the term ‘learning disability’. How ‘learning disability’ is constructed is of direct consequence to the lives of people with learning disabilities. Owing to this, we present a practical and representative ontology of learning disability in order to progress the ontological turn into everyday understandings of disability. To do this, disability theory is discussed, critically appraised and progressed. We then outline how this new theorisation could be re-contextualised within policy, with a view to further re-contextualisation into practice and the everyday. It is hoped that this article will spark discussion regarding how the ontological turn can be used for change

A role for independent peer review: reflections on the gateway review process

Healthcare organisations face constant pressure to change in order to pursue quality and performance improvements. As a result, professionals are often said to be experiencing change fatigue. This can be problematic for policy implementation initiatives. This paper reflects on an informal Gateway Review of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland's Integrated Point of Access Programme to make the case for independent peer review of healthcare management change programmes in order to work towards reducing change fatigue and its impacts. Peer review has been identified as an effective but underused process across health and social care provision and management. With this in mind, the Gateway Review outlined here is used to exemplify some of the practical benefits and challenges of external peer review. Based on this experience, a number of learning points and recommendations are outlined for those undertaking or thinking about undertaking peer review in healthcare management

The construction of marketing measures: the case of viewability

This study seeks to develop a critical understanding of marketing measures. Marketing measures inform a variety of marketing practices and have been subject to ethical, discursive and epistemological critique. Informed by a range of theoretical work, this study sheds light on the construction of a key marketing measure in digital advertising: viewability. It shows how a range of competing interests can be mobilized and aligned; how an object of interest can be stabilized; and how standards for measurement can be reconciled. Across this account, we can see how issues of accuracy, ideology and ethics are bracketed off as participants agree on which things matter and which things count

Creating Community in Rural Costa Rica

Master’s International (Peace Corps), Summer 2019 -- Las Nubes, Costa Rica -- Partner Agencie(s): Peace Corps; El Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres or the National Institute for Women of Costa Rica; Courts For Kidshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/152271/1/Cluley_Poster.pd

Taboo theorists:Karl Marx and marketing theory

On first impressions, the interests of marketing scholars and practitioners seem at odds with Marxism’s political, economic, and philosophical commitments. Where marketing theory mentions the name of Karl Marx, then, it is with a palpable sense of hesitation or laboured opposition. He is a taboo theorist. But does this antithesis of marketing and Marx hold empirical scrutiny? This paper provides a hauntological reading of how the discipline has tried, and failed, to exorcise Marxism. Drawing on a systematic review of 40 marketing journals, we reveal four spectres of Marx in marketing theory. We label these Prescriptive, Critical, Literary and Paradigmatic Marx. They indicate Marx’s historic and continued relevance to marketing theory and offer paths to renew this engagement – which we articulate as Marxist marketing theory. Broadening the discussion beyond Marx, we ask what it is about some theorists that make them taboo in marketing theory

Taboo theorists:Karl Marx and marketing theory

On first impressions, the interests of marketing scholars and practitioners seem at odds with Marxism’s political, economic, and philosophical commitments. Where marketing theory mentions the name of Karl Marx, then, it is with a palpable sense of hesitation or laboured opposition. He is a taboo theorist. But does this antithesis of marketing and Marx hold empirical scrutiny? This paper provides a hauntological reading of how the discipline has tried, and failed, to exorcise Marxism. Drawing on a systematic review of 40 marketing journals, we reveal four spectres of Marx in marketing theory. We label these Prescriptive, Critical, Literary and Paradigmatic Marx. They indicate Marx’s historic and continued relevance to marketing theory and offer paths to renew this engagement – which we articulate as Marxist marketing theory. Broadening the discussion beyond Marx, we ask what it is about some theorists that make them taboo in marketing theory.</p

Daily decision-making at the work-family interface. A couple-level study.

This qualitative study uses a grounded theory approach to examine work-family decision-making at the couple-level. It focuses on answering two questions: (1) How do couples develop and enact work-family routines and make non-routine decisions? And, (2) What is the role of identity construal in the way couples carry out their daily work-family responsibilities? By focusing on daily (or micro-role) experiences, I learned that daily work-family decisions are indeed made at the couple-level and that there are three types of daily work-family decisions, including decisions about work-family routines, decisions about immediate, unanticipated changes to routines and decisions about anticipated, scheduled events. Anchoring decisions made by couples over time create the context for decision-making for all three types of daily decisions. In terms of how couples make daily decisions at the work-family interface, I found that they consider multiple cues, including situational cues from their work and family contexts, activities cues, cues from their routines, cues from their relationships with one another, and cues related to family and parenting role expectations, but that the cues to which they attend and the processes for making sense of them varies by the type of decision and the type of couple making the decision. Overall, my analysis of daily decisions revealed that these decisions are made in a manner consistent with a logic of appropriateness, which involves situational recognition and enactment of appropriate behavioral rules. These rules emanate from family role construals. Couples can be classified according to differences in their family role construals and each couple type uses different appropriateness rules, and thus tends to favour different choices for both anchoring and daily decisions. From a practical perspective, the results of this study have implications for couples looking for better strategies to meet their work and family responsibilities and for supervisors looking for better ways to support employees’ efforts in carrying out their various roles. Theoretically, this research complements past work-family research, which has predominately focused on individual-level models and the negative aspects of combining personal roles with paid work. Also, it extends applications of identity theory in work-family science by broadening our understanding about the role of identity construals in work-family decisions

Becoming-care: reframing care work as flesh work not body work

This paper highlights the central role of the flesh within care relationships and how this disrupts and progresses existing understandings of care work. It is argued here that care work is a connected and fluid assemblage of diverse and changeable factors and that this relationship is best understood as a form of flesh work. Seeing care work in this way allows the care relationship between the person being cared for and the carer/s to be seen as a process of becoming; framed here as becoming-care. To illustrate this, two examples of a care relationship taken from a previous project are presented and discussed from a deleuzoguattarian standpoint. In this way, care work is assessed and theorised at the ontological level, resulting in the formulation of an alternative way of seeing care work that perhaps better reflects its reality–where the flesh is vital

Interesting numbers: an ethnographic account of quantification, marketing analytics and facial coding data

This paper asks why facial coding, a method for understanding emotions that was rejected by mainstream psychology for over century, has emerged as a popular method in contemporary marketing. Reading ethnographic, historic and technical datasets, the paper argues that facial coding works because it shifts the task of quantification from humans to computers. This grants facial coding an appearance of objectivity that allows marketing practitioners to open up new ways of understanding, talking about and acting in markets that go beyond the data itself. Informed by science and technology studies (STS), the paper offers the concept of interesting numbers to illuminate these contradictory tendencies in the quantification of consumer behaviours. It alerts us to the importance of the agents and forms of quantification in selling a measure to marketers. In short, the paper shows that, when it comes to marketing measures, the numbers count

'Pouring politics down our throats': political CSR communication and consumer catharsis

This chapter theorizes the outrageous consumer response that may follow the communication of political corporate social responsibility (CSR). We consider two recent cases (Starbucks’s offer to hire refugees and Pepsi’s appropriation of protest movements in an ad) and how consumers-citizens reacted when these corporations communicated political issues. By drawing from psychoanalytic concepts, we illustrate how consumers’ outrage, expressed in angry social media comments, and in the creation and sharing of memes, is cathartic of unconscious repressed matter: the realization of their own powerless and the domination of corporations. We further note how these expressions of outrage may be understood to result from defense mechanisms such as denial, displacement, or more complex sublimation that help consumers maintain a position of passive domination by corporations. Like all psychoanalytic applications, our interpretation represents only a plausible metaphor that can explain the “irrational” behavior of consumers. Positivist traditions of CSR theorization may demand further causal studies to confirm the ideas we express. Our study is an original exploration of what underlies consumer responses to political CSR. These cases could inform academics and practitioners working in the business and society arena asking them to re-evaluate whether and how political CSR should be communicated, and the implications of the rapid diffusion of messages in social media that include mocking parody and offensive brand comments