David Middleton’s research while affiliated with Loughborough University and other places

This chapter examines the intellectual legacy of French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945) in order to address three research questions. First, how are individual and collective memories formed, retained, and manipulated? Second, what accounts for the persistence and changes of cultural memories? Third, how do spatial and cultural contexts influence memory? Despite his reputation as a theorist of how groups remember, Halbwachs’s real contribution to the study of social memory is his comprehensive account of the structure of the collective frameworks in which recollection is situated. The notion of a collective framework by itself helps to clarify what Bartlett (Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology, 1932) describes as an “organised setting,” namely, a structured set of meanings that stands in advance of a given act or remembering. However, Halbwachs adds an additional “physiognomic” dimension. The spatial locations occupied by communities become etched by frameworks in such a way that their particular perspective on the past comes to appear timeless–a “larger and impersonal duration” that marks the thought of individual members. Space becomes territorialized by collective memory. It then becomes apparent that remembering is profoundly shaped by the mutually responsive relationship between social groups and the places they inhabit. The greater the range of memberships held by an individual, the more complicated the nature of personal memory becomes.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the problem of achieving “organizational justice” for children within integrated children's services. Justice is understood, following Byers and Rhodes discussion of Levinas as respecting the “unique and indivisible” character of a given child. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical material reported here is drawn from a large study of interagency working in children's services in the UK. Data are taken from Developmental Work Research sessions. Methodological details are outlined in Daniels et al. and Leadbetter et al. Findings – The key finding discussed here is that in order to balance the outcome measures used in children's services, participants use a further abstraction “the outcome of improved outcomes”. The logical and practical consequences of this abstraction are analysed. Originality/value – The paper offers an empirically grounded contribution to conceptual debates about otherness and ethics in organization. In particular, it argues that a concern for the other need not preclude a high level of concrete categorization and minute target setting. The philosophical debate is seen to be “resolved” in practice.

This study addresses the challenges faced by organisations and individual professionals, as new practices are developed and learned in multi‐agency work settings. The practices examined in the paper involve working responsively across professional boundaries with at‐risk young people. The paper draws on evidence from the Learning in and for Interagency Working Project, a four year ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme study of inter‐professional learning which has examined the challenges involved in what Victor and Boynton (199827. Victor , B. and Boynton , A. 1998. Invented here: maximizing your organization’s internal growth and profitability, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. View all references) term co‐configuration work. In the context of professional collaboration for social inclusion, co‐configuration involves on‐going partnerships between professionals and service users to support young people’s pathways out of social exclusion. This work demands a capacity to recognise and access expertise distributed across local systems and to negotiate the boundaries of responsible professional action with other professionals and with clients. The paper outlines the activity theory derived theoretical platform adopted by the project and describes the intervention methodology that is being developed, as we study the learning challenges identified by children’s services practitioners in UK local authorities.

Background This article is concerned with professional learning within multi-agency settings. Since the publication of the government document Every child matters in 2003, professionals involved in working with children and young people have been moving into newly organized services that are required to deliver improved services for vulnerable children and their families. Although new ways of professional working are described in the plethora of government guidance that has followed Every child matters, there has been little examination of how this is being achieved in different teams around the country.Purpose This paper describes a current national research project, ‘Learning in and for Inter-agency Working’, which is investigating new ways of learning that develop, while teams of professionals work together around children and young people who are at risk of social exclusion.Programme description The research project is theoretically based and draws upon sociocultural and activity theory research to understand the practices that develop within the different agencies involved. The paper describes the derivation of the theory and the particular aspects of activity theory that are central to the project. In particular, the use of developmental work research (DWR), as the method of intervention with a number of local education authorities, is described and explained.Sample Some of the early work undertaken within phases 3 and 4 of a five-stage project which began in 2004 and ends in 2007 is described. Five different inter-agency teams of professionals working as part of Children's Services, from different geographical locations in England are the participants in the study.Design and methods The research uses activity theory to structure a series of DWR workshops with members of the multi-agency teams. Ethnographic data, including observations and interviews, are collected and form the subject-matter of the workshops.Results The data gathered are used to facilitate workshops where participants discuss their developing working practices and plan changes. The reporting phase of the project, where the findings across all sites will be analysed and summarized is not until mid-2007. However, early themes emerging from the research are included in the paper. These themes include: issues around co-location and co-working, evolving of professional identities, discussion of divisions of labour and professional expertise. These are described and illustrated using data from the research project.Conclusions As this is still ‘work in progress’ no firm conclusions can be drawn. However, it has become clear that new ways of thinking about professional working with children and families is necessary as old ways of working do not necessarily provide better outcomes for children.

Neonatal intensive care work may be understood as a network in which doctors, babies, parents, technology, and medical care are associated together in a complex social topology. The boundaries of what counts as the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are always shifting. The regular appearance of new members, new patients, and new technologies means that much effort must be expended to hold the unit together as a functional entity. We examine how the baby (the neonate receiving care) acts the 'object' around which the unit is continuously ordered. The identity of the babywhat it is, what attributes are considered important, what effects it generatesis changeable. We present an argument, drawing variously on debates in the sociology of translation (that is, John Law, Bruno Latour, Kevin Hetherington and Nick Lee, Annamarie Mol, and Marilyn Strathern), the monism of Henri Bergson, and the 'objectivity' of Michel Serres, which identifies two 'functionally blank' actors in the NICUa bilirubin machine and the baby itself. Both act to slow down and to stabilise networked relations. However, the 'hybrid agency' of the baby also acts as a resource that enables the network to turn back on itself or to be 'cut'. We outline how this process appears to operate and the way in which it serves to resolve issues of accountability.