What are we scared of? The absence of sociology in current debates about drug treatments and policies

The official public policy related to recreational drug use and abuse in Australia is harm minimization or harm reduction. Definitions of harm minimization vary but a general statement is that harm minimization is a policy or programme intended to decrease adverse health, social and economic consequences of drug use, even though the user may continue to use psychoactive drugs. This type of definition is most often compared to a zero-tolerance policy that aims to eliminate all recreational drug abuse by legal and other means. Sociologists have historically scoffed at this latter policy. Unfortunately, what this has meant is that harm minimization in all its forms has not been the object of analytical work on the part of sociologists.

Bringing Bourdieu to policy sociology : codification, misrecognition and exchange value in the UK context

The task of social scientists is to find ways of investigating and understanding the social, political and economic world, in order to offer insights into everyday and public life in the past, present and future. Bourdieu’s tool kit offers a particular way of theorizing the rules, narratives and self-held truths of social phenomena and of educational policy as a specific object of analysis. In this article I develop a series of propositions about the ways in which field theory might be applied to explain the abrupt public policy shift effected by the Thatcher government and the adjustments made to it by the Blair government. I suggest that a Bourdieuian approach shows policy working as a means of codification, as a doxa of misrecognition and as currency exchange within and across fields. I conclude with some thoughts about the difficulties of explicating interactions between fields.

Positive ageing, neoliberalism and Australian sociology

Australian sociology has wrestled with most of the big issues facing this society; however, when it comes to one of the most significant changes to face Australia in the next 30 years, it has suddenly lost its capacity to engage with the nexus between demography, social processes and political structures. While governments have forged ahead with responsibilization agendas in health, welfare and unemployment, sociology has voiced its concern about the implications for Australia’s most disadvantaged. Yet, when it comes to population ageing, sociology has been, in large part, silent in the face of neoliberal policies of positive ageing, which have framed the ‘problem’ as a deficit that must be managed primarily by individuals and their families. This article maps the field of positive ageing, identifies key social concerns with this policy approach and asks, where is Australian sociology?

Towards a sociology of measurement in education policy

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has developed impressive machinery to produce international comparative data across more than 70 systems of education and these data have come to be used extensively in policy circles around the world. In many countries, national and international comparative data are used as the bases for significant, high-stakes policy and reform decisions. This article traces how international comparability is produced, using the example of equity measurement in OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It focuses on the construction of the objects of comparison and traces the struggles to produce equivalence and commensurability across diverse and complex worlds. Based on conversations with a number of measurement experts who are familiar with the OECD and PISA, the article details how comparability is achieved and how it falters and fails. In performing such an analysis, this research is not concerned with ‘exposing’ the limitations of comparison or challenging their validity. Rather, based on the work of Steve Woolgar and other scholars, it attempts to mobilise a ‘sociology of measurement’ that explores the instrumentalism and performativity of the technologies of international comparisons.

Ageing well, ageing productively : the essential contribution of Australia's ageing population to the social and economic prosperity of the nation

In Australia we have become preoccupied with the potential adverse impact of our ageing population on our health and social systems. The projected cost of having increasing proportions of our population in the over 70s, retired, chronically ill category of the demographic profile is emerging as a major challenge for governments and private insurers: so much so in fact that the government is now urging older people to stay at work longer. In America, new approaches to the management and self-management of chronic diseases have been invoked to encourage and support older people to improve their quality of life and reduce their recourse to and dependence upon health care technologies, clinical interventions and health care management systems. Unless this is achieved, it is argued, the cost of looking after this emerging ‘bubble’ of elderly people will become increasingly unsustainable as fewer and fewer (proportionately) younger people work to pay the taxes that support ageing, retired, sick and dependent populations. This paper argues that we are at real risk of having our economic wealth and productivity impeded and truncated by the financial burden of looking after high demand and high cost dependants at the aged end of the social demographic. This paper offers an alternative view of our ageing population, as well as highlighting some of the assets we have in our elderly populations, and providing suggestions as to an alternative view of the phenomenon of ageing that incorporates elements such as flexible working arrangements and the application of new, enabling technologies. This approach to our ageing population dilemma is predicated on a concept of lifelong learning and social participation along with better preventive and early intervention systems of health care