Towards unsettling community development

Community development was born out of a commitment to practising ways of empowering people to take collective control of their own lives. It requires profound changes in the ways in which societies are organized, and has held out the promise of heroic change. Although community development practitioners have been able to secure spaces for community development processes and policies, overall the successes of community development have been uneven and often quite modest. Indeed, the story of community development so far is one of the considerable unfinished businesses. Drawing on two research projects, this paper considers whether third-sector organizations, which are the main sites within which community development practice takes place, generate and nurture the types of active citizenship that are appropriate to community development activities. The paper develops a typology of active citizenship and considers manifestations of the types in seven countries. The applicability of the types to community development is dependent upon what form of community development is being considered. The paper argues that we need more than a settled form of community development based around social maintenance and defensive active citizenship. An unsettled and edgy community development is also needed that requires critical, proactive, visionary, cosmopolitan and active citizens who are prepared to challenge the existing power relations.

Community development today:engaging challenges through cosmopolitanism?

This article begins by outlining some of the challenges and opportunities for community development theory and practice today. Some of these have been present from the 1960s and 70s, some have been evident for several decades, others are new and some demand urgent attention. The second part of the paper notes three types of responses to the challenges. It argues the case for embracing one specific response, namely a deepening of a cosmopolitan outlook in both the theory and practice of community development. While acknowledging that community development is in someways already a cosmopolitan endeavour, the paper concludes with a call for exploration of the ways in which embracing a broader and deeper cosmopolitanism might enhance community development as it responds to contemporary challenges.

Implementation of China's new policies on organ procurement: An important but challenging step forward

In the last decade, health authorities in China have made a series of policy announcements concerning organ procurement programs and changes in practice have been intermittently reported (1). The international community of transplant professionals has followed these reports closely, preoccupied with one fundamental issue: the procurement of organs from executed prisoners, a practice that for many years has provided the majority of organs transplanted in China. Sharif et al. describe this practice as “ethically indefensible” (2), an evaluation that reflects the position embraced by the international community for more than two decades (3-5). Sharif et al. express concern that whilst some transplant programs in China have ceased using organs from executed prisoners, others continue to do so, and that all organs procured from the deceased may be allocated through a collective pool as part of the new China Organ Transplant Response System, effectively “laundering” organs obtained from prisoners. They also note that one of the new strategies to encourage deceased donation of organs among the Chinese public has involved financial incentives for donor families, another practice that has been strongly critiqued by the international professional community and global health authorities (6,7).

In China and in the United States, proponents of organ procurement from executed prisoners have argued that prisoners should not be denied the option to donate organs after their death if they so choose, as this may provide them or their families solace and an opportunity for moral, spiritual or social redemption (8,9). However, the predominant argument in favour of the practice appears to be essentially pragmatic: prisoners condemned to death represent an additional pool of potential “donors” with organs that will otherwise “go to waste” (10). In contrast, international professional societies and the World Health Organization among others have argued that the practice not only violates the core principles of medical ethics but also thereby undermines efforts to establish a sufficient supply of deceased donor organs. In this commentary, we reaffirm the ethics policy of The Transplantation Society (TTS) concerning organ procurement from executed prisoners (4), and briefly discuss the implications of this policy for international professional engagement with China at this time of significant evolution of Chinese organ procurement programs.

WOMEN, CYCLING, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE: HOW DISCURSIVE AND COMMUNITY PRACTICES AFFECT ENGAGEMENT

This thesis considers the impact that discursive and community practices have on women’s access to the public sphere by examining female cyclists and a cycling community in Miami, Florida via interviews and observation. In the interviews, female cyclists frequently reported fears for their safety, including concern over harassment, when riding in public space. I interviewed participants of the cycling community and observed Emerge Miami’s meetings and events, where publicly organized cycling excursions were a major component. Using the theoretical and methodological lenses of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis and Communities of Practice, I examined the interviews to understand how participants discursively framed and contextualized gender-based harassment. I found two meta-discourse frames in operation: a normative frame (that essentially accepted the status quo) and a feminist frame (that challenged the “naturalness” of women’s harassment as just what one had to live with). The feminist frame offered a pathway for women to exert control over their experiences and alter the cultural understanding of harassment’s meaning and effect. The local community practices of Emerge Miami also challenged the normative frames that often silence women, employing explicitly invitational practices, which demonstrates how local discursive and social activity can impact and increase women’s involvement by creating a more accessible space for women to engage with their local cycling community.

Negotiating national identity on film: competing readings of Zhang Yimou’s 'Hero'

How are national identities transformed? If they are mostly narratives of belonging to a community of history and destiny to which people subscribe, those boundary-making procedures that constitute the political field by instituting differences can provide a tentative answer to this question. This paper is concerned with one such cultural practice, namely film-viewing. Globalisation, a boundary-blurring practice, has been the backdrop against which transformations in national identity are often discussed, either bemoaned as cultural imperialism or celebrated as ongoing hybridisation. This piece of research took Zhang Yimou’s controversial film Hero as a point of departure, and asked groups of Chinese audiences how they understood the Chinese identity it conveys. Although it is still a work in progress, provisional results are reported below.

Comparison of medication policies to guide nursing practice across seven Victorian health services

Objectives The objective of this paper is to review and compare the content of medication management policies across seven Australian health services located in the state of Victoria. Methods The medication management policies for health professionals involved in administering medications were obtained from seven health services under one jurisdiction. Analysis focused on policy content, including the health service requirements and regulations governing practice. Results and Conclusions The policies of the seven health services contained standard information about staff authorisation, controlled medications and poisons, labelling injections and infusions, patient self-administration, documentation and managing medication errors. However, policy related to individual health professional responsibilities, single- and double-checking medications, telephone orders and expected staff competencies varied across the seven health services. Some inconsistencies in health professionals' responsibilities among medication management policies were identified. What is known about the topic? Medication errors are recognised as the single most preventable cause of patient harm in hospitals and occur most frequently during administration. Medication management is a complex process involving several management and treatment decisions. Policies are developed to assist health professionals to safely manage medications and standardise practice; however, co-occurring activities and interruptions increase the risk of medication errors. What does this paper add? In the present policy analysis, we identified some variation in the content of medication management policies across seven Victorian health services. Policies varied in relation to medications that require single- and double-checking, as well as by whom, nurse-initiated medications, administration rights, telephone orders and competencies required to check medications. What are the implications for practitioners? Variation in medication management policies across organisations is highlighted and raises concerns regarding consistency in governance and practice related to medication management. Lack of practice standardisation has previously been implicated in medication errors. Lack of intrajurisdictional concordance should be addressed to increase consistency. Inconsistency in expectations between healthcare services may lead to confusion about expectations among health professionals moving from one healthcare service to another, and possibly lead to increased risk of medication errors.

Shaping and being shaped: extending the relationship between habitus and practice

This chapter extends understandings of the contributions of practice in re/forming the habitus. In Bourdieu’s account, an agent’s practices are thought to reflect his or her habitus: that system of dispositions operating at the level of pre-thought or un-thought and expressed in tendencies and inclinations to think and act in certain ways under certain conditions. Evidence of the habitus can be 'read' from practice. The shaping and re-shaping of the habitus involves practices of family and community (primary pedagogic work) and of social institutions (secondary pedagogic work), in any given field. However, Bourdieu also describes habitus as constantly evolving and the outcome of past practices. This raises questions about the conditions under which an agent’s field-specific practices might, in time, influence the shaping of their habitus, leading either to a feel-for or a rejection of the dominant game that defines the field. The chapter explores these issues within the context of formulaic approaches to research production in higher education. It asks whether the practices required of academics in order to comply with conditions of the field are merely a performative response or whether they might also have a deeper role in the reshaping of the individual and collective academic habitus?

The temptations and failings of teacher effectiveness research: provocations of a ‘practice perspective’

This chapter provides a critical appraisal of teacher effectiveness research (TER). Like others before us, we argue that TER employs a reductive view of teaching—narrowly focused on the agency of individual teachers’ classroom-based pedagogic behaviours; overemphasising the role these behaviours have on student achievement; representing these behaviours as assayable in unproblematic ways; and, potentially having negative impacts on teachers and teaching. We suggest that the theoretical sensibilities of practice theory support more productive engagements with the complexities of teaching, and we argue that this alternative theoretical framing is more likely to engage teachers in transformational agendas than those offered by current manifestations of TER. We do this by drawing on the practice writings of Reckwitz (2002), Thrift (1996, 2007) and Schatzki (2012), who provide analyses of commonalities to be found amongst diverse practice theories. We argue that a ‘practice perspective’ provides an affirmative engagement with the complexities of teaching practice and is more likely to embolden new interpretations of what teaching is and can be.