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This paper is a conceptual discussion of the ways in which the diverse lives, identities and collective politics of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people can be made visible, and how they are made visible, in long-term care environments for older people. The purpose of this paper is to problematise strategies of visibility as methods for promoting social inclusion in care environments.

This is a conceptual discussion that draws on several social theorists that have previously discussed the politics of visibility, knowledge and sexuality.

Promoting increased visibility in itself does not fully grapple with the ways in which older LGB can be represented and known as particular kinds of sexual citizens. This potentially curtails a more holistic recognition of their needs, interests and wishes, inclusive of their sexual lives and histories. Making LGB lives visible in care environments may not always be a productive or affirmative strategy for dismantling homophobic views and beliefs.

The theoretical implications of a politics of visibility warrant a deeper consideration of strategies for promoting visibility. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the practical implications for rethinking strategies of visibility in care environments.

Critical discussions about the application of visibility strategies, and the problematic assumptions contained within such strategies, are lacking in relation to mainstream housing and social care provision for older LGB people. This paper seeks to initiate this important discussion.

This paper aims to report the findings of a study that explores the contribution volunteers make to social care for older adults, identifying lessons for the social care sector and policymakers.

An exploratory multiple case study design was used to capture the perspectives and experiences of managers of services, volunteer co-ordinators, volunteers, paid care staff and older people. Seven diverse social care organisations took part in the study drawn from three locations in the South West of England.

This study identified three distinct models of volunteer contribution to social care services for older people. Although the contributions made by volunteers to services are valued, the study drew attention to some of the challenges related to their involvement.

The organisations taking part in this small-scale study were all based in the South West of England, and the findings are therefore not generalisable but contribute to the growing evidence base related to this important field.

This study demonstrates the importance of the volunteer co-ordinator role and suggests that it is properly funded and resourced. It also confirms the importance of volunteers receiving appropriate training and support.

Given the increasing involvement of volunteers in the provision of social care, this paper provides lessons to ensure the role of volunteers in social care enhances rather than diminishes the quality of care provided.

Education perpetuates inequality directly, in that messages distributed by schools are linked to student social class. A specific focus on the response of white working‐class and minority students' attitudes to school (in the USA) reveals that elites maintain themselves not only through their own education but also through the education of others; and that those at the bottom contribute to the maintenance of class structure through their own creative response to wider ranging inequalities, and the way these inequalities are mediated in schools.

The sociology of education has various traditions which examine the connections between education, culture, and inequality. Two of these traditions, symbolic interactionism and critical theory, tend to ignore each other. This paper creates a dialogue between these traditions by applying symbolic interactionist (SI) and radical interactionist (RSI) sensibilities to an important study for resistance theory, Paul Willis’ classic ethnography Learning to Labor (1977). The SI reading of Learning to Labor emphasizes the importance of group interactions and the creation of meaning, while the RSI reading highlights how domination unfolds in social interaction. We argue that SI and RSI have much to offer Learning to Labor, as these readings can avoid some of the critiques commonly leveled on the book regarding the linkage between theory and data, structure and agency, and the book’s conceptualization of culture. Likewise, we argue that the data in Learning to Labor have much to offer SI and RSI, as the material provides grist to further understand the role of symbols in domination while identifying escalating dominance encounters that create a set of patterned interactions that we describe as a “grinding” social order.

Max Weber called the maxim “Time is Money” the surest, simplest expression of the spirit of capitalism. Coined in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin, this modern proverb now has a life of its own. In this paper, I examine the worldwide diffusion and sociocultural history of this paradigmatic expression. The intent is to explore the ways in which ideas of time and money appear in sedimented form in popular sayings.

My approach is sociological in orientation and multidisciplinary in method. Drawing upon the works of Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Wolfgang Mieder, and Dean Wolfe Manders, I explore the global spread of Ben Franklin’s famed adage in three ways: (1) via evidence from the field of “paremiology” – that is, the study of proverbs; (2) via online searches for the phrase “Time is Money” in 30-plus languages; and (3) via evidence from sociological and historical research.

The conviction that “Time is Money” has won global assent on an ever-expanding basis for more than 250 years now. In recent years, this phrase has reverberated to the far corners of the world in literally dozens of languages – above all, in the languages of Eastern Europe and East Asia.

Methodologically, this study unites several different ways of exploring the globalization of the capitalist spirit. The main substantive implication is that, as capitalism goes global, so too does the capitalist spirit. Evidence from popular sayings gives us a new foothold for insight into questions of this kind.

This chapter is about the modern, Western education system as an economic system of production on behalf of the capitalist mode of production (CMP) and globalization towards a single, global social space around market capitalism, liberal democracy and individualism.

The schooling process is above all an economic process, within which educational labour is performed, and through which the education system operates in an integrated fashion with the (external) economic system.

It is mainly through children’s compulsory educational labour that modern schooling plays a part in the production of labour power, supplies productive (paid) employment within the CMP, meets ‘corporate economic imperatives’, supports ‘the expansion of global corporate power’ and facilitates globalization.

What children receive in exchange for their appropriated and consumed labour power within the education system are not payments of the kind enjoyed by adults in the external economy, but instead merely a promise – the promise enshrined in the Western education industry paradigm.

In modern societies, young people, like chattel slaves, are compulsorily prevented from freely exchanging their labour power on the labour market while being compulsorily required to perform educational labour through a process in which their labour power is consumed and reproduced, and only at the end of which as adults they can freely (like freed slaves) enter the labour market to exchange their labour power.

This compulsory dispossession, exploitation and consumption of labour power reflects and reinforces the power distribution between children and adults in modern societies, doing so in a way resembling that between chattel slaves and their owners.

The aim of this chapter is to encourage a reorientation of creativity research in Public Relations (PR). By identifying key themes which characterise the study of creativity in PR, the chapter highlights limitations in current scholarship, including an overemphasis on what is framed as the creative individual. To offset these research gaps, the chapter introduces a collaborative perspective on creativity which is new to the field and positioned as a viable focus for future investigation. It is argued that this social conceptualisation of creativity has important implications for PR’s strategic role in organisations, its wider impact on society, while also highlighting the importance of leadership to the creative process. This perspective brings a range of factors into play for those with an interest in creativity, and to synthesise key themes, a new conceptual framework is presented to guide future research.

Willis presents just one example of a fundamental and longstanding dilemma within qualitative and ethnographic research (Walford, 2001). The method requires a focus on a very small number of sites, yet there is often a desire to draw conclusions which have a wider applicability than just those single cases. Within the ethnographic literature about education there is a plethora of examples where schools, or particular groups of children or teachers within schools, are researched because they are seen as ‘typical’, or because they can offer ‘insights’ into what may be occurring in other schools. Thus, for example, we have many studies of single schools where racism and sexism has been shown to occur. Strictly, such studies can only show that events that have been interpreted as racist (usually by the researcher alone, but sometimes by those involved as well) occurred in that one particular school, with those particular teachers and students, at a time that is often many years before the publication of the academic article or book. Such studies cannot provide information about what might be happening now even in that same school and, most importantly, cannot provide any evidence about what is happening or what was happening in any other schools.