Rob Stones

SCALS: a fourth-generation study of assisted living technologies in their organisational, social, political and policy context

Introduction Research to date into assisted living technologies broadly consists of 3 generations: technical design, experimental trials and qualitative studies of the patient experience. We describe a fourth-generation paradigm: studies of assisted living technologies in their organisational, social, political and policy context. Fourth-generation studies are necessarily organic and emergent; they view technology as part of a dynamic, networked and potentially unstable system. They use co-design methods to generate and stabilise local solutions, taking account of context. Methods and analysis SCALS (Studies in Co-creating Assisted Living Solutions) consists (currently) of 5 organisational case studies, each an English health or social care organisation striving to introduce technology-supported services to support independent living in people with health and/or social care needs. Treating these cases as complex systems, we seek to explore interdependencies, emergence and conflict. We employ a co-design approach informed by the principles of action research to help participating organisations establish, refine and evaluate their service. To that end, we are conducting in-depth ethnographic studies of peoples experience of assisted living technologies (micro level), embedded in evolving organisational case studies that use interviews, ethnography and document analysis (meso level), and exploring the wider national and international context for assisted living technologies and policy (macro level). Data will be analysed using a sociotechnical framework developed from structuration theory. Ethics and dissemination Research ethics approval for the first 4 case studies has been granted. An important outcome will be lessons learned from individual co-design case studies. We will document the studies’ credibility and rigour, and assess the transferability of findings to other settings while also recognising unique aspects of the contexts in which they were generated. Academic outputs will include a cross-case analysis and progress in theory and method of fourth-generation assisted living technology research. We will produce practical guidance for organisations, policymakers, designers and service users.

The bridge between ontological concepts and empirical evidence:an interview with Rob Stones

Purpose - To share interdisciplinary ideas about the purpose of social theory in empirical research. Design/methodology/approach - The formal interview took place in front of an audience at the Strong Structuration Theory and Management Research workshop at IAE de Paris, Universite Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, on 10 May 2016. A recording was made, transcribed and then edited. Elements from a recorded lecture on the same day are also included. A conversational format is retained to enhance the sense of interdisciplinary dialogue that characterises our research project. Findings - The use of strong structuration theory as a conceptual methodology is explained, and the use of agent’s conduct and agent’s context analyses is elucidated providing pointers regarding how accounting research can be developed further by basing our analysis in an understanding of the status and adequacy of knowledge on which people act to produce and reproduce structure. Originality/value - The value of the interview is to provide insights into the process of empirical research and conceptualisation, which are likely to be particularly helpful for early career researchers.

Social theory and current affairs: a framework for intellectual engagement.

The paper aims to facilitate more adequate critical engagement with current affairs events by journalists, and with current affairs texts by audiences. It draws on social theory to provide the intellectual resources to enable this. The academic ambition is for the framework to be adopted and developed by social thinkers in producing exemplary critical readings of news and current affairs texts. To this end it is offered as a research paradigm. The paper situates its argument in relation to the wider literature in media and cultural studies, acknowledging the subtle skills required to appreciate the relative autonomy of texts. However, it draws attention to the lack of an adequate perspective with which to assess the frames, representations, and judgments within news and current affairs texts. To address this lacuna it proposes the conception of a social-theoretical frame, based on a number of meta-theoretical approaches, designed to provide audiences with a systematic means of addressing the status and adequacy of individual texts. Social theoretical frames can reveal the shortcomings of media framing of the contextual fields within which news and current affairs events take place. Two illustrative case studies are used to indicate the value and potential of the approach: the analysis of a short newspaper report of the return of protesters to Cairos Tahrir Square in 2011, and a critique of four current affairs reports from various genres on the political turmoil in Thailand leading up to the clashes of May 2010.

Social theory, current affairs, and Thailand's political turmoil : seeing beyond reds vs. yellows

The paper argues for social theory’s potential for productive critical engagement with news and current affairs accounts. Such accounts typically offer free-floating, surface, spectacles, and oversimplified linear narratives. Social theory suggests that it is much more appropriate to embed complex social processes in plural and configurational narratives. A synthesis of strong structuration theory, critical realism, and cultural sociology is employed to produce a theorised frame – underpinned by configurations of powers, norms, and values – through which to critically engage with, and assess, media accounts of current affairs. A sustained and focused analysis of recent political conflict in Thailand reveals the superior capacity of social theory to deal with the complexity of the moral, causal, and strategic issues involved.

Government-finance relations in Britain 1964–7: a tale of three cities

The emphasis of this paper is on the differential impact of Labour Government policies on the City of London in the years 1964–7. Three different areas of Government policy are distinguished and it is shown that Government-City relations in each area had their own very distinct characteristics. Whether or not the policies in a particular area were framed in such a way as to satisfy the perceived interests of the financial institutions was closely related to respective Government-finance power resources and to their respective strategies and objectives. These conditions varied in each of the three policy areas. Controversially, it is argued that the Wilson Government’s strategy was informed throughout by Labour party ideals and that these were pursued with loyalty and great skill in the face of much hostility from the City. The final section draws on the analysis of the present paper to indicate just how misleading the standard accounts of City-Government relations have been.

One world is not enough: the structured phenomenology of lifestyle migrants in East Asia

The paper is based on original empirical research into the lifestyle migration of European migrants, primarily British, to Thailand and Malaysia, and of Hong Kong Chinese migrants to Mainland China. We combine strong structuration theory (SST) with Heideggerian phenomenology to develop a distinctive approach to the interplay between social structures and the lived experience of migrants. The approach enables a rich engagement with the subjectivities of migrants, an engagement that is powerfully enhanced by close attention to how these inner lives are deeply interwoven with relevant structural contexts. The approach is presented as one that could be fruitfully adopted to explore parallel issues within all types of migration. As is intrinsic to lifestyle migration, commitment to a better quality of life is central to the East Asian migrants, but they seek an uncomplicated, physically enhanced texture of life, framed more by a phenomenology of prosaic well-being than of self-realization or transcendence. In spite of possessing economic and status privileges due to their relatively elite position within global structures the reality for a good number of the lifestyle migrants falls short of their prior expectations. They are subject to particular kinds of socio-structural marginaliszation as a consequence of the character of their migration, and they find themselves relatively isolated and facing a distinct range of challenges. A comparison with research into various groups of migrants to the USA brings into relief the specificities of the socio-structural positioning of the lifestyle migrants of the study. Those East Asian migrants who express the greatest sense of ease and contentment seem to be those who have responded creatively to the specific challenges of their socio-structural situation. Often, this appears to have been achieved through understated but active involvements with their new settings and through sustaining focused transnational connections and relationships.

Sociology’s unspoken weakness: Bringing epistemology back in

Following the sustained criticism of positivism and empiricism in the social sciences through the 1960s and 1970s, social theory turned its attention resolutely towards ontology. This ‘ontological turn’ has provided sociology with an enviably rich and diverse palette of understandings emerging from a variety of theoretical traditions. This development has been accompanied, however, by a failure to construct a parallel epistemology with which to translate the variety, fullness and nuance of ontological concepts into strong and defensible empirical accounts. The article signals the complex nature of the consequent challenge and presents the components of a new epistemological framework designed to enable the social sciences to respond to it. Grounded theory is taken as an example of how an influential prior approach attuned to the role of concepts in making sense of empirical data could be constructively integrated into the new epistemology while being greatly strengthened by it. The article concludes with a critical discussion of John Law’s After Method. Closely associated with Actor Network Theory (ANT), Law offers a ‘hard case’ against which to pitch my argument. This is because he holds that the subjective, contingent and ‘assembled’ character of knowledge renders both undesirable and impossible the project of epistemological rigour I present as both possible and essential.

Lifestyle migration in East Asia : integrating ethnographic methodology and practice theory

This project was designed to study the lifestyle migration of British migrants in Thailand and Malaysia and Hong Kong Chinese migrants to mainland China. With a focus on the meanings, motivations and outcomes of lifestyle migration in Asian contexts, the goal was to tell practice stories. Practice stories explain a phenomenon by describing how it develops over time as norms, rules, and organizational arrangements are acted on and adapted by individuals as part of their daily lives, in the context of their communities, groups, networks, and families. This paper provides an explanation of the research project and its initial aims; describes what is meant by practice stories, and indicates their role in the design of the research; considers how practice stories emerge from a bringing together of strong structuration theory, the concerns of the lifestyle migration literature, methods, and empirical data; discusses the fieldwork undertaken by the authors in Malaysia and Thailand, and thus, illustrates how a project underpinned by ethnographic methodology and practice theories can address the initial aims of the research project.