Transportations of space, time and self: The role of therapeutic reading groups in managing mental distress in the community.

Background The practice of reading and discussing literature in groups is long established, stretching back into classical antiquity (Fischer, 2004). While benefits of therapeutic reading groups have been highlighted, research into participants’ perceptions of these groups has been limited (Walwyn & Rowley, 2011). Aims To explore the experiences of those attending therapeutic reading groups, considering the role of both the group, and the literature itself, in participants’ ongoing experiences of distress. Method Eleven participants were recruited from two reading groups in the South East of England. One focus group was run, and eight individuals self selected for individual interviews. The data were analysed together using a thematic analysis drawing on dialogical theories. Results Participants described the group as an anchor, which enabled them to use fiction to facilitate the discussion of difficult emotional topics, without referring directly to personal experience. Two aspects of this process are explored in detail: the use of narratives as transportation, helping to mitigate the intensity of distress; and using fiction to explore possibilities, alternative selves and lives. Conclusions For those who are interested and able, reading groups offer a relatively de-stigmatised route to exploring and mediating experiences of distress. Implications in the present UK funding environment are discussed.

The ‘peaks and troughs’ of societal violence: Revisiting the actions of Turkish and Kurdish shopkeepers during the 2011 London riots

This article examines an instance of contained violence during the 2011 riots in London, when Turkish and Kurdish ‘shopkeepers’ in Dalston, East London prevented rioters from entering the area. Introducing a ‘peaks’ and ‘troughs’ approach to the sociological study of violence, the article argues that we need to look at the troughs of non-violence in order to understand the peaks of violence and vice-versa. Based on a small-scale empirical study, this article also shows that contrary to the dominant representation of social actors playing fixed roles during social unrest, we found shifting positions and blurred boundaries in the drama of the 2011 riots. The paper demonstrates that the instance of contained violence in Dalston was informed by three types of reverberations. Firstly, we identified anticipatory reverberations, as the shopkeepers were aware of concurrent events elsewhere in London and, as a result, anticipated rioting in Dalston. Secondly, we saw experiential reverberations, as they used their own experience of unrest in Turkey to inform their behaviour. Finally, the representation of the action of the shopkeepers in traditional and social media may have contributed to the containment of violence elsewhere in England, suggesting representational reverberations.

Widening participation in higher education: the role of professional and social class identities and commitments

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and ‘massification’ of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an increasingly important role in redressing the under-representation of certain social groups in universities. Taken together, these trends neatly capture the twin goals of New Labour’s programme for education reform: economic competitiveness and social justice. But how do WP professionals negotiate competing demands of social equity and economic incentive? In this paper we explore how the hegemony of neoliberal discourse – of which the student as consumer is possibly the most pervasive – can be usefully disentangled from socially progressive, professional discourses exemplified through the speech and actions of WP practitioners and managers working in British higher education institutions.