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This paper presents a comparative analysis of artwork produced in the context of social movements waged by Mexicans and Chicanos (U.S. inhabitants of Mexican descent) during the two decades between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. Despite the fact that activists in these movements shared many elements of Mexican culture and history, were part of the same generation of radical social movements born in the 1960s, and experienced some significant interchange among movement participants from each side of the U.S.-Mexico border, an examination of movement art reveals significant differences in key elements of the movements’ collective identity and expression of political citizenship. Analysis of the artwork also highlights different aesthetic choices made by movement artists, particularly with regard to the deployment of formal elements associated with the “Mexican School” of art made famous by artists associated with the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century. Variations in the representational strategies developed by movement artists reflect the distinct relationship of movement constituents in Mexico and the U.S. to each nation's prevailing regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation. The analysis is based on an examination of 374 pieces of art.

Lorenzo Bosi is currently ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Social & Political Movements of the University of Kent. His research examines social movements, political violence, as well as consolidated political identities and relations, in socio-politically polarized contexts such as Northern Ireland. He is also participating as an affiliated researcher in an international research project: The European Protest Movements since the Cold War.

Purpose – This paper extends research on social movement media by focusing on the use of a literary genre – realist fiction – namely, the labor problem novel in the context of the labor movement and countermovement in late 19th-century America.

Methodology – I do a close reading of a significant early dialogical cluster of such novels to address three key questions: (1) Field position of authors – What was the position of these labor problem authors in relation to the movement field and literary field and how did that positioning matter? (2) Genre selection – What was it about the realist novel that attracted labor problem partisans to it? (3) Internal content – How did authors shape the internal structure and content of their stories?

Findings – As literary activists, authors pivoted between the movement field and literary field selecting the novel for the special powers that it possessed relative to other historically available media. Authors produced stories with a good/evil binary attached to characters that stood for emerging social categories in young industrial America. During the Gilded Age (and beyond) the novel played an important role as medium for the labor movement and its opposition – characterizing collective actors, dramatizing forms of action, providing materials for claims of injustice or threats, solutions to social problems, and new categories and collective identities – all with powerful emotional appeal and entertainment value.

Implications – This study suggests that social movement scholars might expand their purview of cultural media used by movements and also take genre and its selection by activists seriously.

Originality – This study demonstrates how literature – realist fiction – has been shaped by movement agents and played an important, but under-appreciated, role in the struggle over cultural supremacy in the context of movement–countermovement dynamics.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of governing in integrated care networks. Asking how and why the governance of these networks emerges and evolves over time, it responds to calls for more innovative thinking in this field.

Data result from a rare longitudinal qualitative case study conducted with the Healthcare Centre Lower Engadin, the lead organisation of pioneering health and social care network in a rural Swiss region.

Actors governed the network through repetitive sequences of collaborative inquiry, a practice through which they defined and addressed recurrent problems of network governance and joint network action in creative and experimental ways.

Explaining how and why the governance of integrated care networks emerges and evolves, this study adds a dynamic theory to previous research, which has studied the determinants of effective network governance without considering their temporal evolution. It also contributes to the wider network literature, drawing attention to the pivotal role of meaning making, creativity and experimentation for understanding network governance dynamics.

The study invites practitioners to reflect on how they want to design collaborative inquiry in their own contexts. Important design levers include the creation of communication forums, trust and information transparency.

The study adds a rare longitudinal perspective on the governance of integrated care networks.

Recruitment to social care roles can be the weakest link in many integrated systems, with vacancy rates being very high compared to other sectors, especially in remote and rural places. Analysis of Employer Value Propositions (EVPs) in social care can capture and challenge perceptions of care work.

This study of EVP in four organisations in a rural setting in Scotland focussed on young people as a target demographic. This study interprets recruitment challenges in social care in three contexts, the technical-instrumental, the hermeneutic and the emancipatory.

EVP articulation is at present not effective. Refreshed and new messaging has potential to attract, employ and nurture young people to the social care sector in remote and rural places.

Recruiting to social care vacancies is crucial for sustainable social care. Improving the recruitment of young people is a key part of the longer-term solution. More studies on recruitment in a variety of remote and rural contexts, with a range of demographics, are needed.

The potential impact is attracting more young people to the social care workforce, enhancing capacity for integrated care improving lives for people who receive care and for paid care workers and unpaid carers.

Remote and rural areas often feature a generational imbalance, with more older people from in-migration and fewer young people from out-migration. Employment in social care has the capacity to redress that to some extent.

This study is original in outlining the messages and methods that can be adopted to boost recruitment to social care.