University of Kent Open Access Journals
Not a member yet
879 research outputs found
Sort by
Sovereign Stories and Blood Memories: Native American Women’s Autobiography (Annette Angela Portillo)
No full textrevie
ICT Skill Frameworks: Do They Achieve Their Goals and Users' Expectations?
Get PDFObjective: To analyze critically the features of existing ICT skill frameworks.Methods: First a simple skill framework is introduced based upon the nominal division between hard and soft skills. Then three existing ICT skill frameworks, specifically SFIA, e-CF and SF for ICT, are compared with the simple skill framework and each other to understand and facilitate a critical analysis of their salient features.Results: The existing frameworks differ in a number of significant areas, including the number of hard skills and the treatment of soft skills. Furthermore, all three frameworks surveyed might be considered somewhat complex in terms of defining skill proficiency using multiple attributes and the intricacy of the skill/proficiency mapping. Finally, there is a lack of unambiguous and universal certification criteria, which limits the portability of the frameworks between organizations.Conclusions: The significant differences between and the complexity of existing ICT skill frameworks implies that debate is still required about how an ICT skill framework should be designed to be of maximum use. Furthermore, the lack of unambiguous and universal certification criteria is an inhibiting factor to the more wide scale use of such frameworks because it limits the portability between organizations
The Sexual Contract in Paid Care Work: Evidence from the Prosecution of Care Workers for Failures to Care
No full textThe contemporary meaning of paid care work is best understood through a recognition that the contract of employment is only part of the story since it relies on a coexisting sexual contract. The sexual contract in paid care work is brought sharply into focus by the framing of criminal law. In this paper, I explore the criminalisation of care workers in relation to elder abuse. When handing down custodial sentences, judges narrate the gap between offending conduct and social expectations of the behaviour of care workers towards the people for whom they are employed to care. The legal capacity to prosecute depends upon the existence of a contract of employment yet the duties and obligations existing between the care worker and her employer are curiously absent from judicial narratives.The capacity to prosecute individual care workers for ill-treatment and wilful neglect provides powerful insights about the social meaning of paid care work. It reveals that in the shadows of the contract of employment lies a suite of private sphere obligations which the care worker owes to care recipients, and to society at large, as a consequence of her employment. This is the sexual contract in paid care work. Women who are employed to care are liable for prosecution as workers, yet they are judged as women. The root of their offence is an individual failure to exhibit caring behaviour and having a ‘couldn’t-care-a-less’ attitude.Reports of elder abuse by paid care workers have risen, in concert with the UK’s rampant privatisation of social care provision and increased public concern. Neglect, meaning the failure to provide care as and when it is needed, is the most frequent form of abuse in which care workers are implicated. The scientific evidence from research in care-settings is that poor quality employment relationships create conditions in which abuse occurs. The scale and nature of the UK’s elder abuse problem suggests systemic causes. However, the criminalisation agenda in the UK care sector has been recently expanded by new provisions which widen the scope for individual prosecutions in the shadow of the contract of employment. Drawing on Pateman, the paper identifies how the sexual contract serves as a form of discipline in paid care work and suggests that the state draws upon the subjection of women to legitimate its criminalisation strategy
Exploring Relationships between Time, Law and Social Ordering: A Curated Conversation
Get PDFThis interdisciplinary and international 'curated conversation' focuses on the relationship between time, law and social ordering. Participants were drawn from law, sociology and anthropology in the UK, Canada and the Netherlands. Their research is inspired by, and engaged with, feminist theory, post- or anti-colonial perspectives and/or critical race theory. In an extended written conversation lasting several days (and later edited), participants reflected on how questions of time have emerged in their research, the ways in which they have struggled with conceptual or methodological dilemmas to do with analysing time in relation to law or social ordering. The conversation focused in particular on how constructions of race are co-imbricated with dominant temporal idioms and practices and the challenges this poses for researchers interesting in unpicking the knotted relationships between race, colonialism, and specific legal technicalities or approaches
Reflection – Speaking About Feminist Subjects
Get PDFReflects on Nicola Lacey's influence on the author's thinking, writing and career development
Reflection – Learning from Unspeakable Subjects
Get PDFReflects on the influence of Nicola Lacey's work in teaching the author how to think and write critically about law, and applies insights gained from Lacey's book Unspeakable Subjects to the field of medical law
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage University of Kent Open Access Journals? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!