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In response to instrumental cultural policy agendas in the United Kingdom, the paper explores the practice of collaborative cultural work in the criminal justice system through the lens of professional ethics in prison libraries. It seeks to balance narratives on the value of arts and culture in cross-government policy agendas with a nuanced consideration of the realities of such work in non-conventional organisational settings.

“Instrumental Values: Professional ethics in collaborative cultural work” was a two-year empirical study (2017–2019), including ethnographic fieldwork in three case study sites representing prison library services in England. Following a “communities of practice” conceptual framework, research methods included participant observation of day-to-day cultural work and specific events; successive research interviews with library and prison service staff and volunteers; and interviews with key collaborating organisations from extended professional networks.

Data from three prison library case studies show consistent ethical implications relating to the extent of collaborative complexity in the field and its impact on participants’ emotional resilience; navigation of the prison regime by cultural workers; consequences for emotional labour and care in the field; and the re-negotiation of ethical boundaries and practices.

The research makes an original contribution to debates on the instrumental value of arts and culture via its intimate focus on prison libraries as microcosms of situated, truly integrated cultural work, both from a physical, organisational perspective and in their representation of a cross-policy function for arts and culture.

This study examines the public’s perception of cash transfers for children in societies where children's welfare is often viewed as a private affair.

Based on 12 semi-structured interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) conducted in urban Jakarta, Indonesia, we explore mothers' perspectives on cash transfer programmes for children within low-income families during fieldwork in October 2023 and January 2024. In addition to the semi-structured interview, a FGD involving parents and other related stakeholders was conducted to increase data accuracy.

Our findings reveal that cash transfers function as a “caregiving allowance” in Jakarta, allowing mothers to prioritize familial obligations while maintaining a reasonable standard of living. Contrary to the “de-familisation” focus observed in advanced welfare countries, these cash transfers for children reinforce traditional family labour division (familisation). Interestingly, despite reinforcing the familisation function, the initiative receives significant support. These results clearly highlight the influence of familisation-oriented welfare production, demonstrating a focus on enhancing family resilience in the design of child-related policies in Indonesia. Overall, these results make clear the visibility of traditional division of labour influences on welfare production, revealing a focus on the familialisation effect in the design of child-related policies in Indonesia. These findings reinforce the suitability of the term “familistic welfare regime” as an appropriate descriptor for Jakarta in particular and Indonesia in general.

This study enriches our understanding of the evolution of child-related assistance in the Global South through a defamilisation lens, shedding light on the complex interplay between gender inequalities and social policy formulation in these regions. Furthermore, it offers valuable insights into the ongoing discourse on welfare regime studies in Indonesia, suggesting that mainstream narratives of productivist transition are only partially validated. The insights garnered from this research open avenues for future studies across diverse contexts.

The aim of this study was to address the unmet information needs of Malawian informal carers. We report on a three-year project which we co-created with informal carers, medical doctors and NGOs with the view to disseminate health advisory messages.

This study was developed on the principles of co-production. The impact of our health advisory messaging approach was assessed through observations and questionnaire-based surveys for quality, clarity and usefulness.

The messages were disseminated beyond the local support groups and reached a much wider community via word of mouth. The messages also led to short and medium term benefits for informal carers and their loved ones.

Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the contextual conditions of informal caring and that of co-producing interventions with the people these aim to benefit.

As populations are ageing and the global average life expectancy is rising, the provision of care for older people is an increasingly salient issue. This paper aims to focus on family-provided care for older immigrants, examining how older immigrants and care providers experience and construct family caregiving.

Based on interviews with care recipients, family care providers, municipal staff and representatives for migrant organisations in Sweden, this study presents a typology of family caregiving for older immigrants.

The authors found three caregiving types, namely, solely family-provided care and a combination of family care and public care (predominantly one or the other). The decision to select family-provided or publicly-funded care depends on personal and institutional factors.

The paper makes three empirical contributions to the literature on care provision for older immigrants. Firstly, this study provides insights into the structural and personal factors that shape care-giving arrangements for older immigrants. Secondly, this study examines the perspectives of care recipients and care providers on family-provided care. Care expectations differ between both groups and sometimes result in intergenerational disagreement. Thirdly, in terms of institutional support, this study finds that the Swedish state’s notion of individual needs does not match the needs of immigrant elderly and their caregivers. The paper places the care types in a broader discussion about eldercare provision in the Swedish welfare state, which has experienced a decline in publicly funded care services and an increase in family caregiving in the past 30 years. In addition, it addresses questions of dignified ageing from a minority perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to compare home care workers' views of their employment conditions by provider type – private for-profit vs public and non-profit – using the case study of Ireland.

An online survey was distributed to care workers (n = 350) employed by private for-profit, public and non-profit home care providers in Ireland. Returned questionnaires were analysed statistically in R using chi-squared tests to systematically compare key aspects of employment conditions.

Analysis shows that conditions are perceived to be significantly worse for those employed by private for-profit providers (and to a lesser extent non-profit organisations) compared to the public provider. There are wide disparities between public and private sector conditions in terms of contracts, pensions, unsocial hours pay and travel time allowances. The main area of convergence is in relation to employer support, where although the public sector performed better, the difference between the three provider types is smaller.

Relatively little research compares working conditions in private for-profit providers vs public and non-profit providers in Ireland and other countries. The findings can be understood in the context of marketisation reforms and may partly be explained by a lack of regulation in Ireland's home care sector and low unionisation rates amongst care workers employed by private for-profit providers.

Transnational migration has produced a state of flux in the naturalized conception of home as a fixed, bounded, discreet and trouble-free place of origin, (re)casting home as a more complex, or perhaps simpler, project entangled within the workings of the global capitalist economy. In this context, here the author qualitatively explores migrants’ engagement with the notion of home in the sense of how they conceptualize and experience home, based on the lived experiences of Sri Lankan women who have migrated to Kuwait as live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) independently of their families. The stories of the MDWs simultaneously made the meaning of home as conventionally defined, more straightforward and more complicated: home was taken on a journey with them to a faraway foreign land. The MDWs negotiated and constructed belonging and not belonging dialectically in multiple homes, thus being simultaneously “here,” “there” and “nowhere.” In migration, home thus manifests the evolution of female power and duty, portraying it at once as a locus of women’s liberation and as new and perhaps more extreme forms of (re)subjectivation in the emplacement of home within global capitalism. Migration performs home as a space in the (un)making: an ongoing project through the course of life.

The purpose of this paper is to map the process of (social) valuing by people encountering built heritage in their daily environments. Value-based approaches are not well researched and formalized in Flemish policy context. New questions and issues are emerging in relation to values-based heritage management and the (adaptive) reuse of heritage within a context of spatial development and urban renewal practices. This paper firstly focus on what factors influence the process of (social) valuing, secondly on the hybrid character of the process and finally at the conflicts between the values frames of the different actors. This way it also inquires the potentials of participatory design supporting alternative regimes of care.

Within the research trajectory, the authors approached built heritage as a social construction and a social product, where there are as many stories as users. What heritage is and how heritage is dealt with, forms the basis of negotiation and valuation processes. An ethnographic approach was embarked on to get a grip on the socio-cultural significance of immovable property heritage in Flanders.

This paper describes the process of (social) valuing of by people encountering built heritage in their daily environments and offers an integrated conceptual framework for this kind of dynamic processes.

New questions and issues are emerging in relation to values-based heritage management and the (adaptive) reuse of heritage within a context of spatial development and urban renewal practices. This paper firstly focuses on what factors influence the process of (social) valuing, secondly on the hybrid character of the process and finally at the conflicts between the values frames of the different actors.

The case study has several objectives: to gauge the evaluation of the direct-to-consumer industry in the economy of India, to analyse the competition of the brands, to ascertain the evolution of smaller direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands on the purchasing capacity of consumers, to analyse challenges in branding in Tier 2 and 3 cities and to evaluate the strategic branding decisions of Mamaearth.

During her pregnancy, Ghazal Alagh and her husband Varun Alagh, the co-founders of Mamaearth, were looking for some good and natural products for their baby’s skincare. However, she could not find products that were 100% safe. Hence, as a concerned mother, she started using a few hands-on home remedies for her baby, which were 100% organic, and then the idea clicked to her to start a baby care brand named Mamaearth, which later also included personal care products. The company started as a DTC/internet-first brand in 2016, which only used to sell products online without any intermediaries when it was still trying to make its way in the market and was aware of the stiff competition by giants such as Hindustan Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, who were ruling the market for decades. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the market saw a shift in consumer buying patterns. There was greater use of e-commerce touch points for shopping, as various digital platforms such as the official site of products, social media and mobile platforms were used by consumers during the pandemic, leading to digitalization in buying and digitalization of consumer shopping journey. These technology platforms were expected to play a substantial role in reaching and creating consumer awareness, transaction and retention post-COVID according to reports by Deloitte 2020. Moreover, such a shift in behaviour amidst the COVID-19 pandemic shot up sales of this DTC brand and made itself the big shot it is today, where they were looking to get into an initial public offering in just seven years of its launch. They re-evaluated their strategy, which helped them become the biggest brand in no time.

This case study is suitable for Doctor of Philosophy students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.