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'While nuff ah right and rahbit; we write and arrange’: deejay lyricism and the transcendental use of the voice in alternative public spaces in the UK
Get PDF“While nuff ah right and rahbit; we write and arrange”, is taken from a statement made by the British deejay, Trevor Natch, on the London based Diamonds the Girl’s Best Friend, Sound System in 1984. The suggestion was that during that historical moment, many deejays were content to either rely on gimmicks when chatting on the mic, or they were content to pirate (copy) other performers. For this reason, there was a dichotomy that placed those types of performers, ‘pirates’, at one end of the deejay spectrum, and the ‘originators’, who prided themselves on research and composition, at the other. To make this aspect of the culture known, the paper will present an understanding of the centrality of these types of lyricism that were, in essence, far more than forms of resistance, but were in fact forms of linguistic, cultural antagonism. Significantly it was the practised usage of ‘oral skills’ in the British deejays’ take on patwa (Jamaican language), couched in Rastafarian and Garveyite sensibilities, that underpinned and ensured the perpetuation of these politically driven, vernacular cultures. By focusing on samples of this lyricism, the paper will argue that these types of expressive musical culture, combat the imposition of a Eurocentric ‘alien’ worldview on African peoples on an Outernational level, across Gilroy’s ‘Black Atlantic’
Getting to the point? Reframing narratives on knife crime
Get PDFKnife-enabled crime has emerged as the most significant national debate on UK youth crime for several years with public debates mostly exploring offenders’ motivations which then center on commonly recognised tropes of protection, safety, ubiquity and normativity. Recent academic research continues to widen these motivational debates acknowledging perceptional insecurity, (Traynor 2016), engagement in deviant lifestyles (Harcourt 2006), and lack of trust in police (Brennan 2018) as key variables. Building upon these perspectives this article seeks to re-frame the dominant narrative by examining how knife-carrying and knife-enabled crime is also a signifier of street ‘authenticity’ and thus for some, an agentic route to advancement within the social field of the street gang
A growing pool of talent
Get PDFRecent government policy has prioritised degree apprenticeships to address the construction industry’s skills shortage while at the same time helping to boost UK economic growth.
Degree apprenticeships represents a vocational route into higher education with the same prestige as other conventional study routes
Mental health and wellbeing in doctoral students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds (BAME)
Get PDFThere is a large body of evidence for the poor mental health of both undergraduate and postgraduate students in higher education settings (Peluso et al., 2011), leading to the Higher Education Academy calling for higher education (HE) institutions to embed information and support on mental wellbeing into teaching and learning strategies (Houghton & Anderson, HEA 2017).
There is a dearth of research on doctoral students. The limited evidence available suggests that doctoral students may experience a greater degree of difficulty with maintaining good levels of mental health and wellbeing compared to undergraduate students (Peluso et al., 2011). Evidence also suggests that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) doctoral students face specific challenges that are not addressed by universities’ support structures (Peluso et al., 2011). The objective of this study was to explore the mental health and wellbeing of doctoral students from BAME backgrounds
Migration, racism and the hostile environment: making the case for the social sciences
Get PDFBrexit, the European immigration and refugee situation and the Grenfell and Windrush scandals are just some of the recent major events which issues of migration have been at the heart of British social and political agenda. These highlight racism and the fundamental relations people who have settled in the UK have to British collective identity and belonging as well as to the British economy, polity and social relations. 9.4 million UK residents are foreign-born, 14% of the population, just over a third of whom are EU-born. Less than 10% of UK residents are not UK nationals. 20% of the population is of an ethnicity other than White British.
Social scientists have observed and analysed such public issues and the public policies that both framed and resulted from them throughout the years. In doing so they have not only helped to document and analyse them but contributed towards their critique and problematisation as part of a public intellectual endeavour towards a more equal and just society. In doing so, much of social sciences research has been empirically informed, often methodologically innovative, theoretically productive and has contributed to our understanding of how processes of racialization and migration have been experienced in diverse ways by different groupings. In this report we aim to highlight some of these contributions and their importance to British society and institutions.
At the end of this report, we list, as Further Readings, some of the main contributions members of AcSS and other social scientists have made throughout the years in the field of migration and refugees, racism, and belonging. Rather than attempting to sum up these contributions in the report itself, however, we have selected some of the main issues in this field of study, which present particular challenges to contemporary British society and institutions. We focus in this report on the specific contributions of social sciences to these issues.
British social science has been playing for many years an important, often leading, innovative conceptual role in international social science debates. Although the issues we study are presented within their historical and locational contexts, we focus in this report on present day issues which have been crucial to our areas of study, such as the development of a ‘hostile environment’ and everyday bordering as a major governmental technology in the control and disciplining of diversity and discourses on migrants and racialized minorities. We also examine how the issues we have been studying have been affected by the rise of extreme right and neo-nativist politics in the UK and the role of Brexit in these, as well as the ways different groups and social movements have been resisting these processes of exclusion and racialisation.
In this report, we do not present British social sciences as unified and non-conflictual; nor do we see social sciences in the UK as isolated from professional or political developments in other countries and regions. In addition, the report is multi-disciplinary; it covers research from the fields of psychosocial studies, sociology, social policy, economics and politics. It stretches from the local, to the regional and the national. And it is consistentlyintersectional, addressing gender, class, generation, race, ethnicity and religion
Editorial introduction: decision making, reasoning, context and perspective
Get PDFThis edition includes articles based on presentations to an international conference in March 2019 at the University of West London (UWL) in the United Kingdom, on the subject of “Shared Decision-Making, Person-Centred Care & The Values Agenda”—a conference organized by UWL's European Institute for Person Centred Health and Social Care, in collaboration with the European Society for Person Centred Healthcare and the Collaborating Centre for Valuesbased Practice at St. Catherine's College, Oxford, U
RETHINKING PRO-POOR POLICIES: A REVIEW OF POLICY OPTIONS FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROGRAMMES AND DEVELOPMENT IN ZIMBABWE.
No full textThis article reviews how pro-poor policies have impacted socio-economic development in Zimbabwe.
The paper draws on research and literature findings which suggest that the spirit and temper of policy
decisions generally bear the imprint of the prevailing macro dynamics. This paper qualitatively
interrogates, targeting howthe efficiency of government programmes may be better assessed. Using
the “pro-poor policy” (PPP) index, the study investigates not only the pro-poorness of government
programmes geared to the poorest segment of the population but also basic service delivery in
agriculture, education and health. The study concludes that for pro-poor policies to gel there is need to
put essential ingredients namely economic stability and good governance. The review recommendsthat
pro-poor policies needs to take on a developmental perspective to promote economic and social
development so as to ensure that growth will benefit all members of society and corruption must be
rooted out.
Keyword: policy; programmes; pro-poor; socio-economic development; Zimbabw
Narrating personal experience of living with learning disabilities and mental health issues in institutional and community settings: A case study
Get PDFThis is a case study about a man with learning disabilities who has mental health issues.
The case study describes the way that he told a researcher about his life.
Thirty years of his earlier life were spent in a long-stay hospital in England, UK and more recently he has lived in a community setting with five other people.
This research is important as it assists us to understand the experiences of people with learning disabilities who have mental health needs
Audio processing
Get PDFThis chapter initiates the discussion of post-production through an exploration of the ‘state of the art’ in both the practice and our theoretical understanding of audio processing, echoing the underlying pursuit the handbook stated in the introduction – that is, the bridging of dichotomies between the theoretical and the practical (the ‘how’ and the ‘why’) in/behind record production processes and outcomes. In some ways, this is also reflected in the tone and examples offered by the two authors, contributing both practice-based/phonographic illustrations, as well as surveys of relevant theorizations from other disciplines. In attempting to provide a theoretical map/ping between musical - sonic objectives, technological/processual actualization and pursued aesthetics (personal/stylistic sonic signatures in record production), we examine four domains of sonic characteristics, and ensuing tools and processes devised for their manipulation – namely ‘pitch’, ‘amplitude’, ‘spectrum and timbre’ and ‘time and space’