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Publications
Publications (68)
This article analyses the operation of police vehicle stop checks in England and Wales. In contrast to other common police powers, vehicle checks are remarkably under-regulated and have received little academic attention, but they are regularly used coercive powers supported by criminal sanction. Based upon a 6-year ethnographic study, including ob...
Much media and academic representations of police work focuses on action, and moments of excitement, drama, and danger. In this article, we consider, instead, those long periods of relative inactivity that characterize routine operational policing, which we refer to as times of “nothing” (consciously using quote marks since we argue that these quie...
In efforts to combat organised crime, police forces have adopted variations on the pulling levers approach to individuals and groups identified with gun crime, drug supply and other serious offences. Once identified, those individuals and their networks are targeted for interventions from criminal justice agencies and their partners. When levers ar...
PACE, as amended by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, establishes a complex framework of factors that police officers must consider during arrest decision making. Officers must possess a reason to arrest, it must be necessary to arrest for that reason, and they must give at least a ‘cursory consideration’ to alternatives. Based on a...
Research on body-worn cameras (BWC) has tended, through evaluations or randomized controlled trials, to look to demonstrate some assumed benefit or consequence of the use of BWC. This article is concerned with the ways in which police officers use and talk about BWC and draw on ethnographic research over the past 30 months in one force as it rolled...
Police culture, talk and action: narratives in ethnographic data
The idea of police culture is almost as old as the field of police studies itself, and has been traced to the coincidence of concerns about violent and discriminatory police conduct with shifts in intellectual fashion, including a turn towards ethnography. This article considers some...
Following a case study of community development in public housing in Liverpool, UK, we present in this article three potential tyrannies of research. We show the tyranny of the researcher, of the method selection, and of the data. In so doing, we identify the methodological challenges of conducting research that seeks to privilege the voices and pe...
Purpose – As a critical and intimate form of inquiry, ethnography remains close to lived realities and equips scholars with a unique methodological angle on social phenomena. This paper aims to explore the potential gains from an increased use of ethnography in social enterprise studies.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop the argumen...
Purpose
The authors consider current policy debates in the UK about the professionalisation of the police to respond to changing patterns of crime and, specifically, the suggestion that officers be educated to degree level. Drawing on the ethnographic evidence, the purpose of this paper is to focus attention on how officers learn, and continue to...
Community Land Trusts (CLTs) offer a community-led response to housing problems and can provide affordable housing for low-income residents. Generally the academic work on CLTs remains underdeveloped, particularly in the UK, although some argue that they can be an efficient way in which to manage scarce resources while others have noted that CLTs c...
PurposeThis chapter develops a community perspective on entrepreneurialization and demonstrates the epistemic value of community-based analysis. It focuses on the particularities of socio-economic settings that shape the emergence of social enterprises and allows for a consideration of diverse groups of actors beyond entrepreneurs.
Methodology/appr...
A small part of the self-help housing campaign has been the slow emergence of the Community Land Trust (CLT) movement. CLTs are heterogeneous in terms of their scale and urban/rural contrast and because the motivations behind their inception appear to be so different. We outline the contradiction between housing as the process of activism and housi...
Together, the two volumes illuminate the worth of detailed ethnographic work and the weaknesses of some of the writing when engaging in debates that have been occupied by academic disciplines that value very different evidence. I for one would welcome the wider reading of Yanow's (2009) essay as a reader and a reviewer, though I recognise the diffi...
This article reviews the complex nature of health systems, organizations and cultures, and suggests that a nuanced understanding of these is important to thinking about leadership and change.
As noted in the editorial in Issue 2(2) of this journal (Yanow, 2013a,b), after the comments on Morey and Luthans’ (1987/2013) reprinted article had been assembled (Luthans et al., 2013), the editor of that symposium, Dvora Yanow, had occasion to meet Jean-François Chanlat, professor of business anthropology at the University of Paris-Dauphine, and...
This collective viewpoint concludes the special issue investigating austerity era regeneration by weaving different threads from each published article together with further insights. It is a collaborative effort — a synthesis of some diverse views and opinions — that seeks to extract some key themes, trends and possibilities relating to regenerati...
The dominant governance model of the New Labour years was that of partnerships. For some, the collaborative arrangements that sought to join-up government represented the ideals of innovation, inclusion and efficiency. The extent to which these values outweigh the perceived problems (slow decision making, lack of clear impact) is now being tested i...
This article considers the ways in which we might use group activities to more effectively introduce some key problems of conformity and obedience to authority. Using some of the classic psychology experiments conducted by Asch and Milgram might open up more critical reflection on the ways groups behave and our own tendencies to look to fit in and...
This article reviews Lipsky's Street-level Bureaucracy, a classic work of central importance to the discipline and teaching of public administration. The paper argues that Lipsky's portrayal of the dilemmas faced by front line workers challenges us to focus on the ethical, professional and personal development of student-practitioners.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the new journal, its history, scope and ambitions.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper reviews the current growth in interest in ethnographic research in organizational and management studies, reflected not least in the success of the Liverpool‐Keele Ethnography Symposium.
F...
The papers in this collection are some of those presented to a colloquium at the University of Liverpool in October 2010.1 The event was the first of a planned series bringing together academics interested in the study of the state to examine its emergence in different periods and societies and to explore the role of the administrator and of admini...
Drawing on four `tales from the field', provided one each by the authors, this article examines the ethical and moral dilemmas ethnographers can face during their research. In particular, we address two key questions. First, what does being ethical actually involve? Second, is there a moral duty owed by researchers and, if so, to whom is this duty...
In their heyday, Royal Commissions played an important part in the policy-making process. By today, Royal Commissions have declined almost to the point of extinction. Nevertheless, a range of other commissions, committees and inquiries are still established. They have different status and take various forms but, in common with Royal Commissions, se...
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to critically consider the role of partnerships in regeneration. There has been a proliferation of partnerships at local, sub‐regional and regional levels, that has brought new people together around a shared agenda, and has sought to challenge and change the ways in which mainstream public services are delive...
This chapter examines the evidence-based policy discourse for assuming that there can be clear and uncontested outcomes from interventions, which can then be fed back into policy implementation. It explores the extent to which this rational process was achieved in two local regeneration initiatives established as part of the URBAN programme in Brig...
Introduction
Area-based initiatives are, perhaps, one of the most monitored and evaluated policy arenas today. National and local evaluations have been commissioned of Health Action Zones, Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) funding, Neighbourhood Management Pathfinders, Sure Start, New Deal for Communities (NDC) and of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund,...
This article seeks to challenge understandings of partnership in order to reframe the discussion of common problems of partnership working. The very term partnership has become so common as to have no clear meaning beyond being a `nice' alternative to long tried and tested forms of governance. Yet failing to understand the complexities that are inh...
The Social Fund relies on officials to judge the merits of applications for assistance within a closely circumscribed framework of directions and guidance. Variations in the treatment of cases are inevitable in such a framework. However, the variations are not readily explicable in terms of the circumstances, or needs, of the applicants. This artic...
The processes by which feedback is gathered from students and courses evaluated provide challenges and difficulties. How much feedback is needed? Which instruments should be used? When should the feedback be gathered? From whom should the feedback be gathered? What does the feedback tell us? Does the process really improve the learning experience?...
Accountability in complex organisational networks has been identified as particularly problematic, and an issue to be addressed, both in academic and in official documents. Indeed, in launching its new public service reform agenda, the Labour government has undertaken to address accountability at a later date rather than as an integral part of its...