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1 – 10 of 48Francesca Mapelli, Marika Arena and Paolo Strano
This chapter aims to understand how partnerships and networks can aid the development and growth of organizations whose goal is to foster social inclusion along the…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter aims to understand how partnerships and networks can aid the development and growth of organizations whose goal is to foster social inclusion along the agro-food supply chain, with particular reference to the social entrepreneurship sector.
Methodology/approach
The chapter draws on a framework proposed by Newth and Woods (2014) to identify the main drivers of resistance to the development of social entrepreneurship. The empirical evidence is based on a single case, involving an Italian social enterprise, Semi di Libertà, which produces high-quality artisan beer. Case material included an analysis of organization documents and interviews with key actors.
Findings
The case study shows how Semi di Libertà faced different types of resistance, related to formal and informal institutions and market drivers, and leveraged partnerships with other actors in the ecosystem. Some of these partnerships were planned a priori to overcome specific problems (e.g., the Prison’s Authority, Mastri Birrai). Other partnerships were developed “by chance” (e.g., “peer” associations) but turned out to be particularly important to deal with the above resistances.
Research limitations/implications
The case study methodology prevents the authors from generalizing too far past the obtained results. However, key elements from the case, such as the relevance of “spontaneous” partnerships and those with “peer” organizations, could be taken into account for similar initiatives in different contexts.
Originality/value
Recent literature has highlighted the relevance of partnerships in scaling social enterprises but has not explored the dynamics whereby these partnerships are created and developed. This chapter provides some preliminary evidence of how partnerships can be used to overcome the resistance limiting the growth of social entrepreneurship and the sustainability of socially inclusive initiatives.
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During the last decade of the Twentieth Century the advanced North Atlantic economies performed in a markedly profitable way seen from the perspective of corporate…
Abstract
During the last decade of the Twentieth Century the advanced North Atlantic economies performed in a markedly profitable way seen from the perspective of corporate business. This has neither led, however, to the impediment of a deepening social crisis, nor to the arrest of a crisis for liberal political values and norms of citizenship. On the contrary social exclusion was exacerbated, increasingly racialized and associated with immigrants and new visible ethnic minorities. A perhaps more conspicuous, but closely related, manifestation of this crisis of welfare and political values has, within the European Union, been the upturn of new nationalist, racist-populist political movements centered on the “problem of immigration.” This change of the political spectrum, brought about by the new right nationalist-populist upsurge, may eventually jeopardize the whole project of European integration, and the current tightening up of European regimes of both immigration and the societal incorporation of immigrants obviously reflects such worries. Simultaneously, however, influential employers, politicians and public servants have, time after time, cried out for the need for continued and increased large-scale import of low- as well as high-skilled migrant labor, seen as a remedy to Europe’s imminent “demographic crisis.”
Purpose – To use insights from economic sociology to analyze how U.S. employment law understands and regulates the relationship between prison labor and conventional…
Abstract
Purpose – To use insights from economic sociology to analyze how U.S. employment law understands and regulates the relationship between prison labor and conventional employment.
Methodology – Legal analysis of all published court opinions deciding whether federal employment laws such as the minimum wage apply to prison labor.
Findings – Courts decide whether prison labor is an “employment relationship” by deciding whether it is an “economic” relationship. Most interpret prison labor as noneconomic because they locate it in a nonmarket sphere of penal relationships. A minority of courts use a different conception of the economy, one which interprets prison labor as a form of nonmarket work.
Implications – The economic character of prison labor may be articulated using the same theoretical perspectives and analytical techniques developed to analyze family labor as economically significant nonmarket work. Doing so, however, too readily accepts the market/nonmarket distinction. Given the thoroughly social character of market work, prison labor's highly structured, institutionally specific character does not preclude characterizing it as market work, and some of its features support interpreting it as such.
In this legal context, identifying practices as economic or not, and as market or not, has concrete consequences for the actors themselves. Rather than using market/nonmarket distinctions as analytical tools, scholars might treat actors' designation of an economic practice as part of a market or not as a site of conflict, subject to institutionalization, and worthy of sociological study.
In this chapter, I trace Arizona's prison siting and construction history to examine how cultural norms and traditions, economics, political prerogatives, and notions…
Abstract
In this chapter, I trace Arizona's prison siting and construction history to examine how cultural norms and traditions, economics, political prerogatives, and notions about the prison's purpose shape how such institutions are conceived, planned, and realized over time. By looking longitudinally at how prisons have come to be – as physical entities – in one locale, I reveal both the continuities and changes in the underlying meaning of the prison. In doing so, I aim to contribute to a broader understanding of the process of late modern penal change, especially the proliferation of prison building in the past 30 years.
The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in research into the small enterprise environment of the Bolivian prison, and to examine that environment and its possible value…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in research into the small enterprise environment of the Bolivian prison, and to examine that environment and its possible value in prisoner rehabilitation.
Design/methodology/approach
To provide a first‐hand analysis of small business enterprises in the Bolivian prison, the author's experience of working in that context is used as field research material and provides the basis for a discussion of necessity‐based entrepreneurship in that unique context.
Findings
The paper provides a detailed description of the Bolivian prison's social organisation. It evaluates that structure as a unique environment distinguished from both other penal systems and other settings for necessity‐based small enterprise. The paper then discusses Bolivia's low recidivism rates, and draws the conclusion that the necessity for small enterprise activity in the Bolivian prison could have the unintended result of providing a successful prisoner rehabilitation mechanism.
Research limitations/implications
Due to lack of governmental resources, the collection of recidivism data in Bolivia is extremely difficult. Future research into data collection methods in the Bolivian prison will be useful.
Originality/value
This is the first known study of the Bolivian prison as an environment that both necessitates and fosters entrepreneurial activity. It encourages the field of entrepreneurship and small business enterprise to think openly about possible contexts and benefits of successful entrepreneurial ventures.
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This chapter will examine the basis for the teaching of integrity-based competencies to prison officers as part of their training. This training underpins the performance…
Abstract
This chapter will examine the basis for the teaching of integrity-based competencies to prison officers as part of their training. This training underpins the performance of prison officers in the execution of their daily workplace duties, and forms a part of the ‘Sustainable Justice’ approach to rehabilitation. At the heart of this approach is a desire to understand and explain how a prison officer can be taught to go beyond what is the basic requirement in their tasks, in order to deliver the ‘safe, secure and humane’ service required of them in the Irish Prison Service (IPS) Mission Statement. The degree of success in achieving this form of elevated integrity within the prison can be seen to impact upon the lives of the prisoners in the officer’s care, and on wider society as a whole.
This chapter will also discuss mentoring as a key form of learning within the prisons. While the world of the prison is one which is closed to many in society, the author gained insights when he worked as an ‘embedded sociologist’, working as the senior academic on the IPS recruit training programme for five years between 2008 and 2013 within Ireland’s prison system. Here, he used his academic experience to put together an award-winning academic programme with his colleagues and senior IPS training staff. This experience provided him with valuable sociological understandings into the hidden world of the Irish prison system, as well as the officers who work behind their walls.
This chapter calls attention to penal regime shifts, emphasizing the importance of comparing different periods of prison development. In particular, it examines different…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter calls attention to penal regime shifts, emphasizing the importance of comparing different periods of prison development. In particular, it examines different instantiations of prison across time.
Design/methodology/approach
I discuss three periods of prison development (1790–1810s, 1820–1860, and 1865–1920), focusing on the nature of prison diffusion across the United States. Specifically, I discuss the homogeneity and diversity of prison forms in each period.
Findings
I demonstrate that the first two periods were particularly homogenous, as most states that adopted prisons followed a single model, the Walnut Street Jail model (1790–1810s) and the Auburn System (1820–1860), respectively. By contrast, the post—Civil War period experienced the emergence of women’s prisons, adult reformatories, and distinctively Southern approaches to confinement. Using neo-institutional theory, I suggest this post-war proliferation of prison forms was only possible because the prison had become institutionalized in the penal landscape.
Originality/value
Scholars rarely examine multiple shifts in penal regime together, reducing their ability to make comparative insights. This chapter juxtaposes three historical periods of prison development, thereby illustrating the diversity of the third period and improving extant understandings of prison evolution.
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This chapter reviews the economic turn in criminology to contextualise the prominence of market rationalities in penal privatisation and outsourcing in England and Wales…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter reviews the economic turn in criminology to contextualise the prominence of market rationalities in penal privatisation and outsourcing in England and Wales. It illuminates how fiscal crisis and austerity have provided opportunities for transferring state penal assets and powers to private interests on an unprecedented scale. A series of scandals relating to fraud and mismanagement by private companies have revealed regulatory gaps and wilful oversight on the part of legislators. These factors virtually guarantee that state regulators will continue to be disadvantaged in asserting the public interest.
Design/methodology/approach
The chapter brings together the literatures on prison privatisation with theoretical critiques of neoliberal influences on state disaggregation. It applies those insights to recent trends and controversies surrounding the privatisation of prison and probation services in England and Wales.
Findings
The race to privatise more prisons and resettlement provisions in England and Wales is placing additional strains on an already inadequate regulatory system, which virtually guarantees that future scandals and crises relating to private sector custodianship will recur.
Originality/value
This chapter explores the under-appreciated criminogenic and governmental challenges to the regulatory environment which are brought about by outsourcing.
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